Of Neuromancy and Iron Wills 11 (Patreon)

I flipped a switch on an addition to my car I'd made and installed, a near silent whine filling the air that made Toni wince almost imperceptibly, before asking, "How's the rat hunt going with Rhodey?"

"Slowly, we don't want to spook the people behind it. And yes, we're certain that there's more than one involved. Currently, we think that someone high up in either Stark Industries or maybe even DC are lining their pockets by arranging for certain shipments to be 'stolen' once they're out of the country," Toni answered. She held a hand up to her ear and asked, "What is that?"

I flipped it off, and Toni relaxed, "Something based off the tech in the sonics division at Stark Industries. Not a weapon, but in the tests I put it through, even JARVIS couldn't pick up anything that was said in the car. Lip reading would still work, but that's why I waited until we got on the freeway."

"Huh," Toni mused. "Got any more?"

"Not yet," I answered. "To be honest, I'm strongly considering dialing back on the amount of patents I've been churning out, focusing on a few key areas and raising the standard level for everyone across the board in that field."

Toni turned to look at me curiously, "What in particular were you thinking?"

"The main things I've been considering have been augmented reality with the eventual goal of virtual reality and cybernetic prosthetics. Better arms and legs for amputees, artificial organs to take some of the load off the transplant lists, those sorts of things."

Toni leaned back in the car's seat, before she froze and leveled a hard stare at me, "You haven't already made plans to hack off your arms and legs and replace them, have you?"

I hesitated for a split second, before I I asked, "Would it help that the plans include an improved version of the tech I made to help Yinsen fish out the last of the shrapnel in you?"

Toni’s response was as dry as it was expected, “If you weren’t driving, I’d hit you right now. No dismembering yourself unless it’s a life or death emergency, got it?”

“Yes Ma’am,” I responded with a two finger salute. I had some other implants in mind I could install without replacing anything, so it wasn’t that big a deal.

“And talk to me before you install anything that doesn’t involve dismembering myself.”

“Curses,” I joked. “Foiled again!”

Toni rolled her eyes, and I pulled off the freeway to our exit. I’d read some good reviews on the paintball place online, and I miiiiiight have asked JARVIS to peek under their hood to make sure they weren’t secretly some gang training ground or something like that. Nope, all on the up and up. So here we were, our first official date. I was absolutely terrified. I didn’t want anything to go wrong, and it felt like whether or not our current relationship would survive was riding on how the next few hours went.

But, I’d set myself on this path, come hell, high water, and wet balls of paint, I’d see it through.

[hr][/hr]

“That was the most fun I’ve had in years!” Toni cackled as she hopped into the car. The amount of energy she was showing gave credence to her words, and I climbed into the driver's seat with a sigh of relief as the majority of the rising tension I’d been feeling bled from me. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” I told her with a smile. “It’s paranoid of me, but I kept expecting something to go wrong and make the date go bad.”

Toni quirked an eyebrow, her lips beginning to turn up into the hint of an amused smirk, “Like what? I accidentally shoot you in the dick?”

I paused, before turning to give her a flat stare, “If I weren’t in the driver’s seat, I’d be moving to protect my little buddies at that.”

It had been a valiant battle, but Toni lost her fight against her amusement, erupting into cackles as I started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. As I pulled onto the freeway, Toni asked me, “So, in all seriousness, how would you say the date went?”

I was tempted to make a joke about me only being able to hit anything if I was using some super tech pistol or grenades, but she asked for seriousness, so I took a moment to consider how to word my answer. Toni waited patiently, and after a minute I said, “I think it went quite well. It’s not a typical first date, but the purpose of a typical first date is to learn about the other person in an attempt to determine if there’s compatibility between them. Because we’ve been working so closely together for these last several months, we already know all that.”

“True,” Toni conceded, a cheeky grin appearing on her face as she gave a snort, “can’t say I’ve let any other guy see my heart before the first date.”

“I’ll just bet you tell that to all the guys who get you easy access to carbon nanotubes,” I shot back. “How about you? Did anything of note stand out to you? Besides my atrocious aim?”

“Well you already mentioned the big one,” she joked. “But in all seriousness, I really enjoyed myself. Today was easily the most fun I’ve ever had on a date. You were right, about typical first dates. They always felt like a necessary chore that you had to do in order to get to the good part. That’s what I was told anyway, ‘just go on a few more dates, it’ll pick up.’”

“They never did?” I asked, confused. I’d never been one for dating lots of women, but I couldn’t imagine not enjoying time spent with Toni.

Toni stared ahead, not looking at me as her arms wrapped around her stomach and a frown formed on her face, “Never got past the first time I tried to talk shop. To be honest… I kinda, just… gave up on dating for a while.”

I didn’t have any words to respond to that, so the car ride was quiet for a good ten fifteen minutes. Finally, I spoke up again, “Since the date’s over, the ban on shop talk is too.”

As I expected, Toni’s entire body language immediately brightened, like a kid in a candy store, “Great! I have some ideas I wanted a second opinion on!”

“Me too. For starters, how do you feel about adding flight stabilizers to the back of your suit? So that if you need to, you have your repulsor blasts while flying, because as it stands, you don’t really have any readily available combat options while in flight.”

“Good point,” Toni mused. “I’ve also been working on an onboard insulating and heating system. What do you think about using carbon wires to reroute power from…”

[hr][/hr]

I stared at the screen in front of me with a frown. It was crunching the numbers for the project I was working on, but it was just so slow. I realize that Toni had the most advanced, fastest, and most powerful computers in her personal home, but dammit, the stuff I wanted to make needed better computers. Unfortunately, the tech just didn’t exis…

…Power Reserves Increased…

…

…Bonding 81.81% Complete…

…

…Implanting Datafeed: Building A Better Babbage…

… well speak of the Devil and he shall appear. I closed my eyes as the information flooded my mind. Huh, so that’s how it worked. Thanks, buddy!

…My Pleasure…

…

…“Pal”...

I shook my head in amusement before cracking my knuckles. I have a supercomputer to make!

“JARVIS, in a few minutes I’ll be sending a file to ya, would you be willing to send it to the fabricator?” I asked as I got to work designing the first generation of the computer model that would kick both Apple and Microsoft to the curb.

“Certainly, Sir.”

“Thanks, JARVI-wait a second,” I turned away from the file I was working on to stare at the wall hiding JARVIS’s mainframe. “Since when am I ‘Sir’ instead of Mr. Gibson?”

“Since yesterday at approximately seven twenty two pm local time, when Toni returned from a ‘date’ with a smile on her face for the first time since I came online as a self-aware artificial intelligence.”

“Mental note, if any of Toni’s exes show up, give them a swift kick to the dingleberries,” I muttered under my breath as I returned to the file I’d started. After an hour or so, I sent the file to JARVIS who scanned it before forwarding it to the fabricator.

“Estimated time to completion: two hours,” JARVIS announced. “Excellent design, Sir.”

I sent a look JARVIS’s way. Not only would being called ‘sir’ take some getting used to, but I couldn’t remember a time JARVIS complemented me or even Toni on one of our designs. After a moment, I had to chuckle as I realized what it was, “Don’t worry JARVIS, I’ll design something for you too. You don’t need to resort to flattery or bribery.”

“Very well, Sir. I shall refund the tickets I acquired for you and Toni to the upcoming AC/DC concert,” JARVIS said, making me pause.

“…you know that if Toni finds out about me getting those refunded, she’ll hurt me, right?”

“A fair point, Sir. Very well, the tickets have been un-refunded.”

I snorted at JARVIS’s word choice. Clearly Toni and I had been a bad influence on the otherwise posh British butler of an AI. I was also both a little touched and somewhat amused by said AI acting as my wingman for the woman who might as well be his mother. It was both sweet and funny.

Taking a look at the clock, I saw that Toni was due back pretty soon, so I headed upstairs to get started on dinner. I was in the mood for chicken tonight, and wouldn’t ya know it, I had a big honkin’ bird in the fridge that had been soaking in a buttermilk brine for the last several hours. Preheat the oven, stuff the inside with some sprigs of rosemary and lemon quarters, slip some strips of bacon under the skin to baste it as it cooked, surround the bird with a bed of chopped carrots, onions, and spuds, on goes the lid, and viola!

When Toni got home about fifteen minutes after I put the bird in the oven, it was to the fragrant aroma of good food on its way to completion. Her eyes closed as she walked through the door, and she just took in a deep breath, inhaling the smell of cooking poultry and bacon. Chuckling, I walked over to her and knelt down just enough that our shoulders were of equal height (I’m six two, while Toni’s a shortstack at four foot nine). I then wrapped her into a hug and stood straight up.

“Will!” Toni cried out with a hint of a giggle as she swatted my shoulder and lightly kicked my shin, before wrapping her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. I just grinned at her before planting a kiss on her button nose and making my way towards the kitchen.

We still hadn’t done anything more than quick pecks, but in all honesty neither of us were in any particular rush. We were comfortable around each other, and we’d both agreed that we were fine taking our time in feeling out this new element in our relationship. Neither of us wanted to fuck things up by going too fast.

Upon reaching the kitchen, Toni let go of me and hopped down to her feet, and I shared the tidbit that JARVIS had told me, “For our next date, how do you feel about an AC/DC concert?”

Toni’s eyes widened and she stared hard at me before she answered, “If we were at that stage in our relationship, I’d be thinking of some sort of sex reward for you right now.”

“As appealing a mental image as that is,” I said with a perfectly level voice because I was not distracted by the images that put in my head, no sir. “I feel the need to say that the tickets were arranged by JARVIS. And I get the impression that he’s not interested in you that way. Unless you snuck in some code that was from Alabama when you made him.”