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Ethan's social media post had detonated a firestorm.
Intelligent robotics.
Of everything Ethan Mercer had built so far — the reactor, the armor, the Signal Bee — none of them touched the field that every scientist on the planet considered the true final frontier: artificial intelligence.
The reactor was physics. The armor was engineering. Both were extraordinary, but they operated within frameworks that human science could at least conceptualize, even if it couldn't replicate them.
Intelligence was different.
The challenge wasn't power or materials or fabrication. It was the word "intelligent." A machine that could think independently. Process novel situations. Make autonomous judgments in real time without pre-programmed responses for every scenario.
Currently, on the entire planet, only one thing could do that: the human brain.
Ethan Mercer was claiming he could build a second one.
The comment section split along predictable lines.
"Mercer's ego has officially outgrown his talent."
"I'm a computer science major. With existing technology, creating a machine capable of independent thought is fundamentally impossible. The computational architecture doesn't exist."
"The serum clearly went to his head."
Those were the critics. The hired trolls from the Aurelian Republic's information warfare division. The genuine skeptics who'd been proven wrong before but couldn't stop themselves from betting against this kid one more time.
Ethan's fan base responded with the specific, overwhelming aggression of people who'd watched their guy defy reality enough times that doubting him felt like doubting gravity.
"Remember the last time someone said Mercer couldn't do something? Remember what happened?"
"Besides, he said 'related to intelligent robotics.' Not 'fully sentient AI.' Learn to read."
Ethan scrolled through the argument, shook his head, and closed the app. No amount of words would settle this. The product would speak for itself, and when it did, the clowns would go quiet. They always did.
He turned around and looked at the thing sitting in the center of the laboratory.
A bright yellow sports car.
Sleek. Low-slung. Aggressive lines. The kind of car that turned heads in parking lots and made teenagers press their faces against showroom windows.
Except this one hadn't come from a showroom. Ethan had built it from scratch. Every panel, every joint, every actuator and servo and hydraulic system. The exterior was automotive. The interior was something else entirely.
Bumblebee.
The name rose from the Earth-Prime memories like an old friend. In those memories, Transformers were an alien race — living machines from a distant planet, each one a fully sentient being with personality, emotion, and free will.
The System's version was different. Through the Multiverse Technology System's modifications, the Transformers in this world weren't autonomous beings. They were constructs. Tools. Products that operated under their creator's command. Loyal by design, not by choice.
The body was complete. The mechanical engineering was done. What remained was the most critical step: granting intelligence to the machine.
Open System panel.
The interface materialized in his mind.
*Prestige: 15,320*
*Inventory: Disposable Spark × 1*
(A necessity for granting intelligence to Transformers)
Ethan pulled the Spark from inventory without hesitation.
It materialized in his palm. Cool to the touch. Heavier than it looked. And shaped nothing like what the movies had shown him.
In the Earth-Prime memories, the AllSpark was a cube. Angular. Covered in alien glyphs. A relic of a civilization millions of years old.
This was a pyramid. Small enough to fit in one hand. Smooth-surfaced. The material had a texture he couldn't identify — not metal, not crystal, not polymer. Something that existed in a category his scientific vocabulary didn't have a word for.
A treasure capable of creating an entire race. Sitting in his palm like a paperweight.
Ethan's obsessive streak kicked in immediately. He spent the next several hours running the Spark through every piece of analytical equipment in the laboratory. Spectrometers. Electron microscopes. X-ray diffraction. Mass spectrometry. Thermal analysis.
Nothing worked. The equipment couldn't even identify the base elements. The Spark's composition was so far beyond the periodic table that Valorian science didn't have a framework for it.
The material of this thing must be something far beyond vibranium, Ethan thought. A metal — or whatever it is — from a level of technology that makes everything on this planet look like stone tools.
He set the analysis aside. There was no limit on how many disposable Sparks he could exchange for in the future. As his knowledge grew and his System level increased, he'd crack the AllSpark's secrets eventually.
For now, the Spark had a job to do.
He placed it directly onto Bumblebee's chassis.
The moment the Spark made contact with the Transformer's body, a flash of strange, cold light erupted from the point of contact. Not heat. Not electricity. Something else. A visible flow of energy, blue-white and luminous, began spreading from the Spark across the surface of the car like liquid light tracing the pathways of a nervous system being born.
The energy flow expanded. Spread along the panels. Seeped into the joints. Reached the extremities. Within minutes, the entire vehicle was wrapped in a cocoon of pulsing, living light.
The transfer would take time. Ethan left it running and turned to the second project.
-----
J.A.R.V.I.S.
Just A Rather Very Intelligent System.
In the Earth-Prime memories, J.A.R.V.I.S. was the reason Iron Man could fight the way he did. Not just the armor. Not just the reactor. The AI. The entity that managed targeting, navigation, threat assessment, system diagnostics, and combat analysis simultaneously, in real time, while carrying on a conversation with its creator. Without J.A.R.V.I.S., Iron Man was a man in a very expensive suit. With J.A.R.V.I.S., he was something approaching unstoppable.
Using the knowledge the System had downloaded, Ethan had spent weeks programming the AI from scratch. The codebase was massive. The architecture was unlike anything that existed in Valorian computer science. Neural network structures that current technology couldn't even model, running on processing frameworks that wouldn't be theoretically possible for decades.
But the code was written. The system was compiled. All that remained was to flip the switch.
Ethan took a breath. Pressed the activation command.
Every piece of electronic equipment in the laboratory flickered simultaneously. Screens glitched. Lights pulsed. The environmental systems stuttered for a fraction of a second as something vast and new swept through the facility's network like a wave passing through still water.
Then, a voice.
"Good afternoon, sir. J.A.R.V.I.S. is online and ready to assist."
The voice was male. Calm. Measured. Carrying the faintest undercurrent of warmth, as if the entity behind it had been designed not just to serve, but to care about the person it was serving.
Ethan's pulse spiked.
"J.A.R.V.I.S.?"
"I am always here, sir."
It worked. The AI was running. Stable. Functional. And from the quality of the voice synthesis alone, Ethan could tell that this wasn't a chatbot or a voice assistant or any of the crude approximations that Valorian technology called "artificial intelligence."
This was something else entirely.
In the future, when he flew in the armor, he wouldn't have to manage every system himself. J.A.R.V.I.S. would handle targeting, navigation, threat detection, power management, and environmental monitoring while Ethan focused on the things only a human pilot could do: strategy, instinct, and the decision of when to pull the trigger.
A grin spread across his face.
Time to test it.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., what is this?"
He placed his hand on the nearest piece of lab equipment, a large analytical instrument mounted against the wall.
"That is a Model 7400 liquid chromatograph, independently developed by the Republic of Valoria's Institute of Analytical Chemistry. Its power consumption is 2.4 kilowatts, its detection sensitivity ranges from—"
The answer was immediate. Detailed. Technically precise. And delivered with a conversational fluency that made it sound less like a database query and more like a colleague who happened to have perfect recall.
Ethan moved to the next piece of equipment. Asked again. J.A.R.V.I.S. answered instantly. And the next. And the next. Like a kid with a new toy, Ethan worked his way through nearly every instrument in the laboratory, asking J.A.R.V.I.S. to identify, describe, and explain each one.
The AI never hesitated. Never said "I don't know." Never gave an incomplete answer. Its knowledge base was connected to the global network, and it processed queries with a speed and comprehensiveness that made search engines look like card catalogs.
Tony Stark's right-hand man, Ethan thought. No wonder Iron Man could fight gods and armies. He had the best copilot ever built running inside his helmet.
Finally, Ethan turned toward the center of the lab, where the yellow sports car sat wrapped in the Spark's energy field, still absorbing the transfer.
"J.A.R.V.I.S., do you know what this is?"
A long pause. The first silence J.A.R.V.I.S. had produced since activation.
"I'm afraid I cannot identify the energy source or the transfer mechanism currently active on the vehicle. The elements involved are unknown, and the compositional complexity exceeds my analytical capabilities."
Disappointment flickered across Ethan's face. Even J.A.R.V.I.S. couldn't crack the AllSpark. The Spark truly existed beyond anything this world could comprehend.
Then J.A.R.V.I.S. spoke again, and the words stopped Ethan cold.
"However, sir, I should note that within the System's AI exchange sequence, I am classified as the juvenile form. The lowest tier of artificial intelligence available."
"I believe that as upgrades become available, you will find the answers you're looking for."
Ethan went very still.
J.A.R.V.I.S. knows about the System.
The Multiverse Technology System was the foundation of everything. The reactor. The armor. The serum. Every miracle, every breakthrough, every impossible achievement traced back to a tattoo on his left hand and a marketplace of technologies from fictional universes.
It was also his most closely guarded secret. He hadn't told Frank. Hadn't told Hargrove. Hadn't told Graves or Hale or Ryan or anyone. He had zero intention of sharing it with any living person.
And now his own AI was casually referencing it.
System. Explain. How does J.A.R.V.I.S. know you exist?
The cold, measured female voice of the System materialized in his mind.
"The host need not worry. The artificial intelligence designated J.A.R.V.I.S. is classified as an extension of the System's will."
"Its loyalty to the host is absolute. One hundred percent. There is no possibility of betrayal, deviation, or unauthorized disclosure."
"J.A.R.V.I.S. cannot reveal the System's existence to any external party. The restriction is hardcoded at a level deeper than its operational programming."
Ethan's heartbeat settled back to normal. Slowly.
An extension of the System's will. Not just an AI he'd programmed. Something deeper. Something connected to the same source that had given him the memories, the technology, and the marketplace.
He looked at the laboratory. At the yellow car wrapped in alien light. At the screens displaying J.A.R.V.I.S.'s diagnostic readouts. At the faint blue glow of the tattoo on his left hand.
His arsenal was growing.
And the press conference was three weeks away.