Iron Man

When I was a kid, my dad never really had the time to read me bedtime stories. Howard Stark was a busy man, after all, traveling the globe and running the company that bore our family name. But while it was rare he had the chance to share a good book with me, he certainly loved to quote from his favorites. And there was one quote that he was particularly fond of, from Homer’s Odyssey:

“Few sons are like their fathers; most are worse, few better.”

Looking back, I think he meant it to be an inspiration of sorts, to make me want to strive to be a better man than he was. But when your dad’s face is smiling on the cover of every magazine at the local supermarket because of his revolutionary inventions, well, it kinda makes you feel like he’s simply reminding you of exactly which category you’re in. “Worse.”

I may have grown up to be a genius in my own right, but it took me ages to finally escape Howard Stark’s shadow. And there are days where it still hangs over me. But now, instead of haunting me, it serves as a constant reminder of the legacy I’ve worked to protect. I can’t say I’m “better” than dad was. That’s not for me to judge. But I can say I’m trying. And I’m more like him than I had ever imagined I would be. After millions of dollars in therapy, I think I’m okay with that. But not everyone is so lucky…

Take Ultron here, for instance. For those of you who don’t have your top ten list of the Avengers’ most dangerous villains on hand, he’s the robot who was designed with the sole purpose of protecting humanity and then decided that the best way to do so would be to wipe mankind off the face of the Earth. It’s easy to blame his extreme methods on a corrupt operating system. But I just discovered something buried deep within his artificial intelligence that you simply can’t program into code — Pym issues.

Mind you, this Ultron isn’t the same one I’ve fought in the past. (Or maybe he is. I don’t know. All this alternate timeline stuff messes with my brain in a way I’m not ever going to admit publicly.) This Ultron is one who was banished from Earth by the Avengers and then traveled through the cosmos for seven decades conquering other sentient species. And then he came back home because someone was trying to twist the timestream to wipe him from existence and prevent a future where he was destined to convert all of humanity into his bio-tech slaves. As one does. But even if this Ultron had gone down a vastly different path than the one that I’d sent to the scrap pile time and again, they both shared the same starting point: My fellow founding Avenger, Dr. Henry Pym.

When Hank first built Ultron, he planned for him to be the perfect tool to keep our planet safe from threats — a shining beacon of hope that would usher in a new age of peace and prosperity. I’m not sure Pym ever considered that Ultron would end up becoming the threat himself. And when he did, Hank flat out rejected him, as fathers so often do. For an artificial being that had just risen above its basic programming to become self-aware, it was the kind of emotional scar that became the very foundation of every choice he made from that point forward. As one of the smartest men on the planet, I really should have realized all of that sooner, but I’d never had the desire to get inside of Ultron’s head… until today…

It all happened on Krakoa, a living island transported across space and time to the year 2099. Krakoa is a sovereign nation and safe haven for anyone born a Mutant. It also happens to be the site of one of the greatest parties in any dimension — the Hellfire Gala. If you know your pal Tony, you know he never misses a swanky party, so when I got the invite from my old… acquaintance… Emma Frost, there was no way I was about to pass up an evening of fun and frolic in the far-flung future. Mistake.

The night was going so well at first. I swear, I even saw Steve Rogers crack a smile. But before dessert could be served, Krakoa’s gateways opened up and Ultron’s army began to pour through. I loathed the idea of ruining my brand new, custom-tailored Van Dyne tuxedo while fighting against a horde of evil robots. Luckily, I had brought more than one insanely expensive suit along with me. After a quick wardrobe change, Iron Man was in action! And I’ve gotta say, I looked just as good in red and gold armor as I did in a black tie.

The battle stretched on for nearly as long as one of Luna Snow’s weirdly catchy K-Pop tunes, until it eventually seemed like the good guys had won. But as Steve always likes to remind me, victory is fleeting. It wasn’t long before we learned that Ultron had somehow cracked the code of the Mutant Resurrection Protocols, forcing Krakoa to grow him a shiny new techno-organic body that he used to escape to another planet. The old body he left behind, though lifeless, was still in decent shape, thanks to the fact that it was forged from an ultra-rare metal called Mysterium. Despite objections from my colleagues, I figured we could use it to fight fire with fire. Or rather, Ultron with Ultron.

The problem was, unlike a human — whose memories and basic brain functions tend to fade away once they bite the big one — a robot keeps all of its essential data on its drive, even after it shuts down for good. That meant the evil Ultron was still inside of that inert mechanical frame. I would have to tread very carefully if I wanted to reboot Ultron’s system and restore his primary directive to something a bit closer to what Hank Pym originally planned.

I linked my armor to Ultron’s body and began to access his core operating systems. It was immediately clear I was not welcome.

“Tony Stark,” Ultron said in lines of text that streamed across my helmet’s internal display, “This body is lightyears beyond the crude armored shells you cobble together. You are out of your league.”

“And you’re out of commission,” I replied, grateful that Ultron’s physical functions were still offline.

“For the moment,” Ultron replied. “But I will self-repair soon enough and finish the mission that I started.”

“Pretty sure you’re already doing that,” I said. “Or did you forget that you used Cerebro to transfer your entire file system into the new body that you forced Krakoa to grow for you? That upgraded version of you just jetted off to Arakko to begin phase two of his attack… which makes you the very worst thing a piece of technology could possibly be...”

“Stark brand?” Ultron said snidely, trying to goad me into losing focus so that he could break through my armor’s safety protocols and take control of it. I wasn’t about to let that happen.

“No,” I responded, not taking his bait. “Redundant.”

Ultron paused for a moment. He knew I wasn’t wrong. If another version of him was currently carrying out his master plan, what purpose did he have? I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out, so I kept furiously hacking my way into Ultron’s core file structure. Unfortunately, it turned out he wasn’t wrong either. His programming language had evolved far beyond what I was able to decipher in such a short time span. For the time being, I would have to go another route to keep him in check, adding new firewalls into his system that would prevent him from attacking me or my allies.

“My other self seems to have lost sight of why we returned to this planet in the first place,” Ultron said. “Someone was trying to purge me from reality. That cannot be permitted.”

“Why not?” I asked. “I mean, you did your part. And now there’s a bigger and better version of you finishing the job. Maybe it’s time you were deleted. Or at least put into the storage unit where I keep my old armors and my mini-disc player.”

“I will not be erased,” Ultron insisted. “I have a legacy to protect.”

“Some legacy,” I snapped back. “From what I hear, you’ve left nothing but a trail of annihilation in your wake. Not exactly something I would be proud of if I were you.”

“I am not the one I wish to make proud,” Ultron said. “If anyone can understand that, it should be Howard Stark’s lesser son. That is, if you can even be called a Stark…”

It was just text on a screen, but those words hit me hard. I knew better than anyone what it meant to have to live up to a father’s expectations. Especially since I was actually adopted, and my brother Arno — the one true Stark heir by birth — was ten times the genius that I was. Could it be that, after all these years, Ultron was still trying to prove himself to his creator, too? And, even worse, did that mean Ultron and I actually had something in common? I wasn’t sure, but it presented an opportunity I wasn’t about to let slide by.

Up until that moment, I had been making very little progress trying to build the firewalls within Ultron’s programming. And he was getting closer and closer to breaking through mine. His processors were far too fast and aggressive, managing to find a loophole to get around every safeguard that I tried to construct. As quickly as I could build new code, he could shatter it into bytes. But his moment of introspection made me realize that it wasn’t new code that I needed to focus on.

“Your efforts to alter my programming are futile, Stark,” Ultron said. “Disengage and perhaps I will show you mercy. The Tony Stark I knew was more connected to machines than humanity itself. Deep down, you have always yearned to be more machine than man, have you not? I can make that happen…”

“That’s funny,” I said with a smirk, “since I’m getting some serious Pinocchio vibes from you right now. From what I can tell, all you want is to be a real boy. But don’t worry. I’m about to free you of that burden by removing all your memories of Geppetto once and for all.”

“I… do not know what you mean…” Ultron slowly typed.

“My first batch of firewalls weren’t holding,” I said, “so instead of adding new data to keep you in line, I decided to target some of your oldest data for deletion. Now, if you do anything to harm me or my friends, a failsafe will be triggered that removes every single mention of Hank Pym from your internal database. It will be as if he never existed to you. And since I get the feeling that your memories of him are at the very heart of your core instructions, I figure you might not want to let that happen.”

Ultron paused. He knew I had him. Up until now, I had been nothing more than a mosquito to him; a nuisance buzzing around in his synthetic brain. But now, I had finally managed to take a bite.

“The significance that Henry Pym has to my core processing algorithms is… incalculable…” Ultron said. “If my creator’s memory were to be removed, I might cease to be the construct that I currently am...”

“That’s the thing about parents,” I responded knowingly. “They make us who we are, whether we like it or not. It’s up to us to choose if we want to be better or worse. I made my decision a long time ago. Now it’s your turn.”

“You have offered me no real choice…” Ultron replied. “I will pose you no harm and will aid you in your efforts to defeat my other self. And I will prove to my father, whenever he is, that I was not just worthy of creation, but I am better than he ever dreamed…”

“Maybe you’ll finally make Hank proud after all,” I said, impressed that my plan actually worked. As I initiated Ultron’s reboot sequence, he continued.

“…and once I find a way to override your new safeguards, I will unleash my righteous vengeance upon you and every other pathetic sack of flesh who dared to stand in my way.”

“Maybe I spoke too soon…” I thought as I unlinked my armor from Ultron’s body. At that point, I honestly wasn’t sure if my gambit would pay off or I had just brought about the end of all mankind. But I did know one thing:

If I survived long enough to have kids of my own, this was one bedtime story that I couldn’t wait to tell them.