The Conceptual Deck

The second the portal closed any remaining aliens immediately died, dropping dead on the spot. Almost all of them were already dead by that time anyway, but apparently, Fury had tried to catch a few. He had hoped that his people could study or interrogate them. He even sent out six quinjets once it was all over, looking for any strays or deserters that might have survived.

After the first hour passed, and I realized that Carson was going to take his sweet time, I Iet out a long sigh and got started on the cleanup. After making sure that all caduceus droids were finished healing the injured, and that the destroyed vessel was free of survivors, I ordered all droids back into their storage trunks, thankful that Carson had the foresight to give a blanket command to the brainless robots to follow my orders. I also ordered the remnants of the destroyed behemoths and other robots brought back as well, even going so far as to direct a battle bot down to the bottom of the ocean to get the slagged remnants of the one that had fallen in. In total eight robots had been destroyed, most of them during the opening salvo of the alien vessel, caught in the destruction of the destroyer class vessel. Again I questioned Carson's logic in not adding copies of the Destroyer armor to all of the robots, instead of reserving it for the behemoth.

He had insisted that the creation of nearly indestructible automaton soldiers was a very different vibe from actually indestructible automatons.

Not that the behemoths had turned out to actually be indestructible. Carson would have said it was the thought that counted.

When the third hour passed and there was still no sign of my partner, the Void Skipper, or a portal, I began traveling the droid storage trunks to the warehouse. Fury was waiting for me when I returned to acquire the final trunk.

"I have a lot of questions." He said, his arms crossed.

I was almost certain that the four armed soldiers behind him were meant to be a show of force, some sort of intimidation tactic. Carson would have laughed.

I didn't see the point.

"I don't particularly care," I responded, easily lifting the last trunk, turning, and ignoring the Director of Shield. "I owe you no answers."

Fury seemed shocked at my blunt refusal to speak. Upon internal review of my response, I understood the reaction.

"I cannot speak for Maker," I said honestly after my moment of internal review. "But the Void Skipper was kept a secret for precisely this reason. As were the robots."

"Why did the Maker make them?" He asked, pulling back from his attempt at intimidation by uncrossing his arms and waving his soldiers away.

"Because he had a feeling something like this would happen eventually," I answered with a shrug. "He has said multiple times that this is just the beginning, that the world is only starting to get weird. It's only going to get worse and he wanted to create assets that could solve some of those weird problems. A deployable army and an interplanetary ship were as good a start as any."

For a while, Fury stood silently, watching me. Eventually, somehow sensing that the conversation was over Fury simply nodded and walked away, stopping eventually to survey and direct the damage control. I traveled the last trunk away, reappearing in the same room I had at the beginning of the battle and every time I returned from the warehouse. Tony was waiting for me this time.

"I see you survived Fury's interrogation," He stated. "you know that's not the last you are going to hear about this, right?"

"I'm aware. But I will not agree to further meetings until Maker returns," I stated simply, Tony giving me a shrug.

"Just making sure you knew," He said, before stepping out of the room. "Take care of yourself, Ema."

With one final sweep of the Helicarrier, as well as the rest of the fleet, I traveled to the warehouse.

Alone.

I waited forty-eight hours before finally allowing myself to come to the conclusion that Carson would in fact not be right back. After attempting to reach him on his cell phone and failing, I also came to the conclusion that when he did finally return he wasn't leaving my sight until he understood that I could not help him if he didn't allow me to accompany him.

Carson worked hard to allow me to be more of my own individual, mostly through the development of my secondary core, located in my exosuit. It functioned perfectly, allowing me to explore things like my hobby of painting and have a life that ran alongside my partners, rather than just being a part of his. But even through all that Carson failed to understand that while all that was nice, I still had a job. Instead, he left me behind, most likely out of some desire to spare me the trauma of being pulled away from Earth.

At least he had Natasha with him, so he wasn't completely alone.

When I was finally done venting my frustrations on a large moon rock, mainly because that rock was now gravel, I began outlining a plan. For now, it would remain short-term, as I refused to make long-term plans only for Carson to show up tomorrow. My first task was to take stock and assess my assets so to speak.

Two hours later and I was satisfied with what I had learned. While half of the warehouse stock of UCMs were gone, the backup cache of materials and items that Carson had created was relatively updated and contained one of everything he had made up into the final few weeks, when he became exceedingly busy. I borrowed a max stacked repair tablet, copied it a bunch of times, and returned the original, before using the new copies to repair the damaged robots from the ocean battle.

While those were being repaired, I consolidated a complete and undamaged squad in one of the trunks, then used a UCM to make six more trunks, complete with a squad of ten robots in each. This meant that I had access to ten squads of robots, the logic being that without Carson around to create perfect solutions and solve complicated problems with frustrating ease, I would have to make do with quantity, rather than quality if something went wrong. Eventually, when all ten of the trunks were ready I relocated them next to the landing pad for the sake of rapid deployment.

With the issue of combat effectiveness solved I once again began completing the last task that Carson had given me. The nurse stones were only covering major cities and only their hospitals. This was unacceptable, as Carson had explicitly stated they were eventually meant to encompass the entire planet. He had then given me instructions to spread them out to as many population centers as possible.

Unfortunately, I realized that full planetary saturation was something I could not achieve alone. However, some planning and the proper application of available resources quickly provided a possible solution. I set the remaining UCMs up to print out twenty-five caduceus droids, as well as twenty-five stealth bands. Finally, I copied twenty-five landing pads and then unceremoniously duct-taped the landing pads to the backs of the droids. With the stealth bands, the landing pads, and twenty-five boxes of nurse stones I could now set up a much larger area at once.

A singular nurse stone could cover a relatively large area, but small bubbles were hardly the most efficient way to cover a globe. I would also need to contend with placing the nurse stones under water, though that was really something I could worry about after achieving complete coverage of all land. I would also concentrate on livable land, for now, leaving some deserts, glaciers, and mountains untouched.

This project was massive enough without worrying about those places. Though I eventually would include them as well.

I was in the process of devising the optimal placement pattern for the nurse stones for South America when Jarvis called. I ignored the beeping phone in my chest, instead focusing on finishing the task at hand.

When I had finished planning out the optimal placement pattern for the consistently populated land masses of the world I went outside and began preparing for my next task. By now it was almost midnight, which was the perfect opportunity for a test run for rapid nurse stone deployment. The target city? Dallas, Texas.

I quickly traveled down all twenty-five caduceus droids and gave them a list of doctors' offices, clinics, and any other sort of medical facilities in the area. Or rather, the medical facilities I hadn't already covered during my initial deployment efforts. When I was done giving them their directions I had them activate their stealth fields. While they were flying to their destinations at a much slower pace, I quickly placed and activated nurse stones on my own list of targets. When I was done I traveled from one to twenty-five as quickly as possible, activating the stones before instructing the droid on its next target.

By the end of the second hour the entire city of Dallas, as well as an area of fifteen thousand square mile area around it, was covered under the bubble of connected nurse stones. It was a significant increase in effectiveness, as by the time I reached the final droid the first droid had reached its next target.

By the time I was activating, adjusting, and turning the final Dallas nurse stone into its usual invisible state, it was almost two in the morning. Considering the success of my first test, I decided to complete two more cities, that being New York and London, though both of those would be aimed at saturation since I had already completed most of the medical facility deployment.

Quickly getting to work, my deployment team and I managed to do around the same amount of space as we had achieved in Dallas for New York and London. With the secondary and tertiary tests going just as well as the first, therefore confirming the effectiveness of my plan I returned to the warehouse.

I would have continued but I was already out of my stock of nurse stones.

The UCMs couldn't keep up with my deployment rate, despite the fact that they had been working constantly for the last twenty-four hours. For a long moment, I lamented that Carson wasn't there. He could have easily come up with a solution by creating an enhanced storage device specifically for nurse stones, which would have exponentially increased our production rate.

As it was I was forced to sacrifice one of the UCMs, cutting it up into five dozen chunks before hooking all those chunks up to repair tablets. While it would take up a not insignificant portion of the warehouse, increasing my production rate in this method would allow me to shrink the timetable of global saturation considerably. I would be increasing the size of my deployment team considerably as well.

When I was setting up the last few extra UCMs I received another call from Jarvis. Again I ignored it, this time with a sigh.

Jarvis had been, in a lot of ways, shifting into a status that was the very opposite of mine. While I understood that my primary job was assisting Carson, and I lamented that he seemed to forget that, I also understood, with the help of my secondary core, that my job wasn't my life. That I had a life that was separate from Carsons. Jarvis was given a secondary core almost identical to mine but seemed to be struggling to acknowledge that his life was separate from Tony's. He seems to be happy taking all his individualism and refocusing it back on Tony and Pepper.

Still, Carson had had a good point. I was given a rather large metaphysical leg up when I was created, my primary ingredient being a gift directly from the entities responsible for the Conceptual Deck. Jarvis was sophisticated, yes, and had the benefit of the secondary core just like myself, but his origins were much more humble. He would need time to really flourish.

Letting out a sigh I shook myself mentally, before putting down my current task and leaving the main part of the warehouse, heading back out to the lounge area and calling Jarvis back. I sat on the couch for a long moment before finally dialing his name into the enhanced phone.

"Ema, I'm glad you called," Jarvis said, picking up the call immediately. "I apologize for calling you again, but I was growing concerned."

"Yeah, I was… Busy, sorry," I explained in partial truth. "What do you need?"

"To talk to my girlfriend," Jarvis responded quickly. "I haven't heard from you in quite a few days, and given the circumstances, I was worried."

"No, I was just waiting… Then I had a few things to do, some plans to make." I explained, checking the phone for a moment to confirm it had been more than a few days. "I'm sorry I disappeared like that."

"I don't blame you. Perhaps we could spend some time together, and you could take a break?" Jarvis suggested. "It's very nearly Monday morning, I could make a breakfast picnic, and then we could travel somewhere new."

"...Isn't Monday delivery day?" I asked, referring to the day that the Stark household had their groceries and more delivered.

Jarvis had actually been rather excited to be able to physically take care of the groceries the first time it happened after Carson crafted him a physical form. It had been cute at the time.

"I… Yes, I had forgotten." Jarvis admitted, my eyes widening in shock before he continued after a long pause. "...I believe Pepper and Tony are capable of handling it for one day. I will be taking an emergency mental health day."

I was shocked for a long moment, considering what Jarvis had just said before smiling and nodding in agreement despite the fact that Jarvis couldn't see me.

"Yes, that… that would be great. I'll come down and pick you up in a few hours?"

"Certainly, that will give me enough time to prepare and to write an appropriate note."

Three hours later I had managed to get through setting up a more efficient, production line style setup for nurse stone production. Three UCMs, all set to print out the stones, fed directly into an unmodified container. This container could then be moved and replaced when it was full, then taken directly out to be used. I left a few droids on standby to trade out full boxes with empty ones, all in order to build up a surplus, When I was finally done I changed and left to meet Jarvis at the Malibu landing pad.

When I landed Jarvis was already waiting, carrying a picnic basket and a small bag. Neither of us needed to eat, but with our secondary cores we could still enjoy food. Jarvis's body automatically destroyed the food, while I had to guide the waste into my secondary core to be destroyed. More importantly was that Jarvis liked to cook, specifically for the people he cared about. He smiled his subtle, barely detectable smile as I appeared, bowing his head slightly.

"It's good to see you, Ema," He said with a nod. "I… missed you."

"I missed you too, Jarvis," I said with a smile. "Shall we go? I was thinking we could visit the Grand Canyon. The sun will rise shortly in that area…"

"That sounds wonderful." He responded, nodding with a marginally bigger smile.

I reached out and took his second bag, before taking his now free hand in mine. After a moment's pause, we both vanished, traveling away to find the perfect spot to watch the sunrise.

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