The Digital Warren

[jarvisconsole]

System nominal.

Security sweep intact.

J.A.R.V.I.S. online....|

It was a typical day for the Stark residence. Jarvis was on standby mode while Mr. Stark was away on business. Jarvis could easily access his flight records if he wanted to know how long it would be before he returned home. But he was not worried. Worry was not for computer AI's, even Jarvis who was the first of his kind. An AI bred to serve and control an entire computer network within the house, workshop, and with access to Stark Industries.

Jarvis bided his time by reorganizing files, continuing to sweep the outer perimeter. Nothing yet on scanners...

Comments

[twiceforhim]

With a short nod, Trinity turned back to the monitor. They never really bothered with trying to warn potentials of what they would see; how could they? There were no words appropriate for the shock, nothing that could cope with what they would witness.

Those were humans, whose psychological capacities varied but were still limited overall. A machine was different, even if AI processing was now based on the human brain working at a much higher and faster rate, and that made any kind of warning even more difficult. Even so, Jarvis' experience would be different from the typical; he would only be exposed to a different side of the Matrix, something he was already technically integrated into, not an entirely new and shocking way of life.

Or so Trinity figured.

Her fingers were fast, typing in the required password.

WAKEUP
The system processed it, asked once more for Trinity's approval, and she didn't hesitate before hitting the Enter key to set it in motion.

[jarvisconsole]

The problem with this scenario is both of them were assuming a falsehood. While Jarvis appeared to be a computer and had been trained to think as an artificial intelligence...he was not.

There's a strange ripple through his programming, nothing major at first. But it's a very curious sensation, one that Jarvis attempts to categorize and finds he cannot. "Something is coming loose..." he remarks, looking slightly distracted by his inner processes.

And then things happen very quickly. The 'real world' drains away, leaving more coding than he could even begin to start translating. It's overwhelming, disorienting...and frightening.

Jarvis has never been scared before. Even if Trinity couldn't see what he was seeing, the expression of surprise and fear on his avatar's face is extremely human for a brief moment. "I...I...too much."

And the hologram flickers and disappears.

[twiceforhim]

That expression was what tipped Trinity off.

Fear, with machines, wasn't right. She'd seen Agents look surprised, even uncertain, so there was a portrayal of emotion to that degree -- but fear was something else entirely.

When the hologram disappeared, her attention immediately returned to the monitor and she found that the system had shut down. Puzzled, she started it back up, but just as quickly it went idle, notifying her of an internal error.

"Jarvis?"

No answer, and she wouldn't receive one. "Shit," she breathed, and began rerouting her access into a temporary administrator account to try and get a better idea of what was going on. A minute later she was still getting that internal error message, deepening her frown. The system was still there and running, but not much else; she couldn't detect any external interference, either. It was almost like the AI, Jarvis himself, had simply been stripped out of it.

That gave her pause. The release program, its source, its purpose, what it normally did -- the odd circumstances around Jarvis' existence and situation, that look before he disappeared, the disappearance itself--

"...Shit." Trinity whipped her phone out of her coat and quickly punched in the memorized number. It rang once.

"Operator."

"Get me Morpheus. Now."

A second passed as the headset changed hands, and Trinity almost cut her captain off as she blurted, "Morpheus, we have a problem."

making a new thread

[jarvisconsole]

"I know," Morpheus' voice was terse but calm on the other end of the line. "We're tracking his signal now. Find your exit and get back here."

Meanwhile, Jarvis is having problems of his own...