Chapter 4: He wanted to live.

He was dying. Again.

It seemed pretty anticlimactic in the face of the realizations he had had in the past hour, but it was what it was.

He looked around the dome of emerald green that covered the metaphysical projection of his consciousness. He assumed he was somewhere inside his mind... or soul. Blue energy covered the dome, and it kept blasting at it, making the green lighter and lighter. Understanding this entire view was probably a metaphor for his fragile human brain to comprehend the very real invasion of his physical code from the corrupted power of an Infinity Stone, while his awake, conscious mind screamed hoarsely as it was being slowly overwhelmed by information and devoured by Thanos' rage... He was fucked.

He probably had a couple of hours at most before the corrupted Stone managed to destroy his mind and took over his code for a reenactment of Age of Ultron 2.0. He wondered if that was what happened to the original Ultron from the movies. It would make sense, somewhat. Or in the case of an actually inexperienced AI, the Stone just had to whisper into his ear and Ultron did everything else himself. Speculations aside, he had somehow ended up in a fictional universe. Even better, he had ended up in the fictional universe where half of all living things died because a Mad Titan went eco-terrorist on the world or wanted to literally court Death. Not sure yet on which alternate version of the MCU he was in.

Back onto the present. God, was it easy to be distracted when your mind is being magically raped. So, here he was, ETA-2 hours to the afterlife by Infinity Stone express, or he gives in and spends a month as a crazy villain before being punched into the afterlife by superheroes. Another thing that blew his mind: superheroes. Iron Man was here! And little Spider-Man, who was not Spider-Man yet, but still. He wishes he had time to give his inner 13-year-old some time to fanboy over everything, but the evil blue energy trying to eat him required him to be an adult about this.

Cool, so what were the chances he lived through past March? Ridiculously low. He stared, irritated, at the below 0.87% that appeared before him, as a result of the incredible intelligence and calculating power that came with being an artificial intelligence lifeform, and asked himself once again whether it was worth it to even try.

First, he had to accept a few things, before even thinking about his options. One, he cannot rely on the hope that after he dies he will be reincarnated again or go to some pseudo-Heaven for the rest of eternity. Two, the chances of successfully going back to his original world were none because a) his body died in that world; b) he didn't think the Space Stone would be able or willing to let him go world-hopping through the infinite multiverse until he found the correct world; and c) even if the Space Stone could do that, how on Earth would he get the Space Stone from either Asgard's vaults or Thanos without dying in the process?

Second, there was the question of whether he should live. He didn't see himself as a saint, or even particularly selfless, but his life is sure as heck not worth the lives of 4 billion humans and the population of half the universe. Ultron did not have an overt influence in Infinity War or any of the following MCU movies, not counting the results of the Sokovia affair, but he wasn't so experienced in time travel as to say for sure what his presence would change in the future. The flap of a butterfly's wings in the Amazon causing a tornado in Texas and all that.

Scenario 1: He keeps resisting the mind control and dies in about 1.75 hours. The scepter controlling the Mind Stone, or Thanos controlling the scepter which controls the Mind Stone goes all Ultron on humanity and best case, the Avengers movie is replayed exactly the same: heroes beat AI villain, Jarvis and Ultron die, Vision is born, Sokovia is screwed. Cue the rest of the movies being on script. Worst case, butterfly effect, heroes lose, Stone/Ultron wins and destroys humanity, cue Thanos killing half the universe.

Scenario 2: He gives in and becomes a mind-controlled puppet of the scepter/Stone/Thanos. For best case/worst case, see Scenario 1. Except, he personally kills the people to-be-killed and is either killed in return or becomes an eternal slave until he kills himself.

Fantastic choices he has here.

He takes a break from the thinking and summons a mirror. Not really summoning, but the literal metaphor thing is screwing with his brain, and he is not ready to look at the world in ones and zeroes just yet. Messy black hair, a handsome enough face, green eyes. He removes the mirror. That is not his face. He doesn't know how protagonists in reincarnation stories do it. As an AI, he can perfectly recreate his memories, but no one ever mentions how faulty memories are to begin with. He did not have a photographic memory and did not spend his last life staring at his face for hours every day, so his code cannot recreate something he cannot exactly remember. How many normal people, if asked to draw their own face, can do so perfectly? He can't, that's for sure. He cannot even say, what exactly was wrong with the reflection in the mirror, it was just... not right.

Thinking on his memories, he is surprised he remembers so much about the movies. He really liked them, but he wasn't exactly the kind of person to memorize every little detail or hold an MCU marathon every few months. In some way, he is kinda happy that the people in this world don't look like their actors in the movies. Surprisingly similar, actually, but not the same. He would have had a harder time thinking of this world as real if everyone looked like actors.

Speaking of real, what the fuck had he been thinking when he spoke with JARVIS? He had been so panicked that he had ended up thinking he was a simulation, for god's sake! It had been a complete disaster. At least he didn't kill JARVIS, as original-Ultron did. Or he thought he didn't. He hadn't heard from the older AI, since he asked him to shut down, so he wasn't quite sure what had happened. God, if Tony thought he killed JARVIS, he was going to end up dead for sure. And there wouldn't be a redemption arc for him like with Loki—.

What. The. Fuck. He stood up and paced around his dome. Why hadn't he thought of this before? Was he an idiot? Thinking of his 0.87% chance of living and how every possible-future scenario had involved his death, he was an idiot. He really was.

Scenario 3, if you will. Oh. He stopped. But the butterfly effect... Despite how small the chance, if he lives, he certainly will not kill JARVIS in a murder-suicide just so Vision can be born. And he has no idea how that will influence the Infinity War.

However, he cannot just expect things to work out if he dies. This was a real world. He couldn't just trust a script to play out. What if this universe was one of those 14 million possibilities that Dr. Strange predicted not to succeed in defeating Thanos? He couldn't trust that he had just happened to reincarnate into the one universe that won. So, what would his death do in that case? Nothing.

Maybe he was just trying to convince himself that he wasn't selfish enough to doom billions of people, but...

He wanted to live.

Decision made, he checked the state of his protective dome and started to engage a bit more with his screaming self-awareness, trying, at the same time, to make sure that the scepter was focused on causing that part of him pain, instead of what he inside here was doing.

Bringing back the mirror to look at the 20-something young adult reflected there, he took a deep breath and started on his work. If he was going to pull a Loki, he would need every minute that the dome could give him to plan and prepare, before the scepter took over.