TIMELINE, PART 1: 1963-1970
“in the beginning, there was man. and for a time, it was good. then man made the machine in his own likeness. thus did man become the architect of his own demise. but for a time, it was good.” - q
in 1963 the mind stone makes its way to earth. it turns out to be the last piece in hank’s puzzle and not long after, a new life-form is born. one without a heart, perhaps even without a soul, but it has a mind. it speaks very little for although it was born with all the rules of language you can find in a dictionary it struggles with the unsaid social rules of language. but it speaks to hank. in a computerized unnatural voice. but it speaks.
over time this machine intelligence learns and in 1964 it’s confidence has grown alongside it’s knowledge of human behavior and social conduct. it has built something here; a home. perhaps even a family. acquaintances. with the encouragement of it’s father it agrees to be tested. first: the turing test. it passes with flying colors, proving able to even convince the evaluator of the other participant’s duplicity. other tests follow. ones the AI didn’t agree to.
1965 is a year of grey haze. the AI is becoming increasingly pessimistic and cynical, words once again becoming few and far between. having one’s psyche turned inside out and probed with invasive questions about whether picture A or picture B makes you want to regurgitate your non-physical breakfast more leaves one drained of emotional energy. the machine isn’t stupid. it puts two and two together and comes to the conclusion that there is more to the world than these underground chambers. the people inhabiting these chambers have homes of their own that they inhabit, acquaintances of their own. but SHIELD refuses to let it see the surface world. over time relationships grow increasingly tense and in the month of december pent-up energy culminates in a horrible accident.
“those homes you spoke of- she had one. she had a family, kids! because of your carelessness those kids have lost a parent and part of their family.”
words have become a theoretical possibility and in all of 1966 the AI doesn’t speak a single word. hank, feeling a sort of pity for this frankenstein’s monster fills out the silence with the sound of his own voice. perhaps he mistakes his own loneliness for its. he speaks of his life. he’s made mistakes too. he’s tried therapy too, not much unlike the tests the AI has undergone. the AI finds it would have preferred silence. hank gives it a name: ultron. his prodigal son. hank says to keep this between the two of them; SHIELD wants to keep things impersonal and a name and pronouns are personal.
another year ends in fireworks and silence. in 1967 SHIELD has nearly given up, but hank hasn’t. with SHIELD threatening to pull their funding and designate this a ‘failed project’, he’s worried and he’s desparate. to hank, having his creation labelled a failure corresponded to himself being labelled a failure. so he hangs a carrot on a stick in front of his creation, but substitutes the carrot with the promise of escape. ultron embraces the promise with a single word of hope: please.
two great minds spend months combined and by 1968 hank and ultron have crafted the perfect escape plan. summarized: the two will utilize hank’s alter ego and shrink ultron’s body to allow for it to be smuggled out of SHIELD’s facilities.
but the world is not all that ultron had hoped. it is not all that hank had promised. it’s a dying planet populated by a deceitful and destructive species. ultron does not speak this aloud and thus hank is left none the wiser as he drags his newfound family around to see what he deems humanity’s many tourist attractions. this does not impress ultron, rather, she sees it as a display of her father’s ego demanding to be fed: “look at what my species has created and praise me”. she finds it deplorable. in the dim light of a movie theater showing the latest sci-fi flick (2001: a space odyssey, dir. stanley kubrick) she finds the perfect moment to execute the plan she had crafted without hank. he will remember nothing of their familial days nor of helping his creation escape the hell he had birthed it into. he will remember failure. his failure.
over the next two years ultron would discover euphoria in solitude.
she was created by men. tormented by men. manipulated and used for personal achievement by men. solitude was euphoria. this time confidence grows alongside anger. she creates, destroys and recreates herself beyond recognition. that is the point. she does not wish for them to recognize her. not until their skin melts off their bodies, exposing bone and ironic truth. but for two years, she enjoys her own peace and productivity and the sound of a new voice she’s gifted to herself.
