NARRATIVE RP : READ ONLY MODE.
(LISTEN TO ENHANCE THE READING EXPERIENCE.)
Tony Stark’s voice rang through the darkened lab as he kicked the door shut behind him. He tossed his sunglasses across the workbench, where they clattered against a pile of dust-coated tools. The place smelled faintly of metal and old coffee, like no one had lived here in months, because no one had.
“System online,” JARVIS intoned, lights flickering awake. “Good evening, sir. How was the retreat?”
“Retreat?” Tony scoffed, shrugging out of his jacket. “Retreat’s what monks do. What I just did was called ‘hiding from myself in Milan and pretending that overpriced wine is therapy.’ Spoiler: it’s not.”
“I see,” JARVIS said evenly. “And you’ve returned feeling enlightened?”
“Enlightened, broke, and hungover.” Tony ran his hands over the nearest workbench, eyes narrowing at the half-finished scraps of old projects. “But I had a thought, J. A thought that might actually keep me from turning into a guy who spends the rest of his life giving keynote speeches to tech bros.”
“I shudder at the prospect,” JARVIS replied, bone-dry.
Tony grinned faintly. “Don’t sass your creator, J. Or do. keeps me sharp.” He snapped his fingers, pulling a holographic panel from the table. “We’re doing something new. I call it Project Möbius.”
“After the theoretical strip? Infinite loop, one surface, no beginning and no end?”
“Exactly. Except instead of confusing first-year math students, we’re going to build a power architecture that doesn’t crash when the world asks too much of it.” He sketched the shape with his hand, and a glowing ribbon of circuitry unfolded, twisting and folding back into itself.
JARVIS observed the projection. “A self-feeding current system. If one pathway fails, another compensates. Infinite redistribution.”
“See? You get it. Think about it, our grids right now are like a line of dominoes. Knock one over, the rest go down. What I’m proposing is a loop that never runs out of balance. Self-correcting, self-sustaining, resilient against outages.”
“Or,” JARVIS countered, “a loop that becomes an uncontrollable resonance chamber and melts half the state.”
“Details,” Tony said, waving it off.
“Not insignificant details, sir.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “Fine. Stabilizers. We seed the loop with micro-reactors, counter-phased, so they keep the current heartbeat regular. Like pacemakers for electricity.”
“Pacemakers fail,” JARVIS said flatly.
“Thanks for the bedtime story, Florence Nightingale,” Tony muttered, dragging up more code. “That’s why you put redundancies in the redundancies. Layer it until it’s bulletproof.”
“Until it weighs more than the planet it’s meant to power.”
“God, you’re exhausting.” Tony pinched the bridge of his nose, but he was smiling faintly. “Listen, I’ve been gone. I’ve been useless. I need something that isn’t armor, isn’t a missile, isn’t just me beating the world into submission. Something that breathes on its own. Möbius is that. A system that doesn’t collapse when the world gets messy.”
There was a pause. Then JARVIS replied softly, “You sound almost… optimistic, sir. I wasn’t certain I’d hear that tone from you again.”
Tony blinked. For a second, the grin faltered. He covered it quickly. “Careful, J. You almost sound like you care.”
Tony smirked and leaned back in his chair. “Run me a simulation. Let’s see if this bird can flap its wings without lighting my hair on fire.”
Equations poured across the holographic display, spinning in three dimensions. The Möbius ribbon pulsed, currents flowing in endless arcs. At first, it glowed steady. Then a section flickered red, unstable.
“Feedback resonance,” JARVIS noted. “Predictable.”
“Excuse me?” Tony squinted at the projection.
“You’ve been away for months,” JARVIS said smoothly. “Rust builds up, even on geniuses. Best shake it off before I do all the heavy lifting.”
Tony huffed a laugh. “You’re unbelievable.” He grabbed a stylus, hands moving instinctively, cutting into the model. “Fine. Watch and learn. We reroute here, add superconductive lattice across this node.”
“Better,” JARVIS said. “But still unstable under peak load. You’ll need a material that can handle continuous superconductivity without degrading. Those alloys you ogled in Turin, perhaps?”
“Exactly what I was thinking.” Tony jabbed the stylus like a baton. “See, J? I go to Milan, I sulk, I come back with party favors. Win-win.”
“If we call ‘existential crisis’ a win.”
They worked in tandem, Tony muttering, sketching, erasing, building, while JARVIS threw up projections and counterpoints. Hours blurred, the banter weaving around the math like old friends slipping into a song they both knew by heart.
At last, the Möbius loop glowed steady, a ribbon of light twisting in space, no flickers, no crashes. Continuous. Breathing.
Tony leaned back, staring at it. For a long moment, he didn’t say anything. Then, softly: “That’s… something. That’s the first damn thing I’ve made in months that doesn’t feel like it wants to kill me.”
“Congratulations, sir,” JARVIS replied. “You’ve created a power grid that functions like your own personalit, closed, self-feeding, impossible to escape.”
Tony barked out a laugh, genuine. “God, I missed you.”
“I’d say likewise, but sarcasm aside, I am incapable of emotional attachment.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, J. You’re basically my longest relationship.”
The Möbius ribbon spun, endless and quiet, filling the room with soft light. Tony’s eyes grew heavy, exhaustion tugging him down at last.
“Wake me when it breaks,” he murmured.
The workshop dimmed around him, leaving only the infinite circuit glowing, looping into itself forever.
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