Chapter Text

Toni entered Pepper’s office trailed by Killian, who followed her like a slightly over-kicked puppy.

“Stop that,” Pepper said immediately, “there are valuable papers around here.” The fire flickering between Killian’s palms disappeared, but his fingers twitched as if he missed it.

“I’m not making weapons,” Toni said. “Not going to happen. Obie’s insane if he thinks I would.”

“I know,” Pepper said, her red hair tied up into a tidy bun, her clothes impeccable. No one would guess that she’d been wearing the same pantsuit since at least yesterday. “I’ve been on the phone with our lawyers all morning. They’re very optimistic that we can at least tie up Stark Industries in a drawn-out and very expensive lawsuit about your IP rights, and they might settle out of court.” She reached under the desk and pulled out a neatly paperclipped stack of paper. “Here’s a contract that makes sure that nothing you make for Stark Industries in the future can be used for purposes you disapprove of”-- a second neatly paperclipped stack of paper-- “and here’s incorporation paperwork. I wasn’t sure which you wanted.”

Toni looked at Pepper appreciatively. “I love you.”

“I know.”

“No, really, I bet if I were a lesbian I would marry you.”

Pepper smiled. The lines around her eyes were deep with tiredness. “I would murder you in your sleep.”

“You haven’t done it yet,” Toni said, “which is probably because of my unbearable charm, which would be no less unbearable once we’re married. Plus, whenever you got pissed at me, I could change your mind by making you have mind-blowing orgasms. Man, this is seeming like a better and better idea. Remind me again why I’m not a lesbian?”

Killian’s eyes were narrow. “I am fairly certain,” he said, “this nonsense is not why you dragged me to the meeting without explanation. I must say, I do not approve of your flair for the dramatic…”

And Toni didn’t approve of Killian’s flare for the smug and conceited, but nobody could get everything that they wanted.

“Well, I’m sorry to waste all of your work--”

Pepper snorted.

“I am!” Toni said defensively. “I truly and deeply regret that your last six hours of work are wasted, because unless you’re a lot more psychic than I thought you were you’re going to have to redraw that incorporation paperwork. I’m not in charge of the company. You are.”

The tiredness lines around Pepper’s face grew tighter. “That’s not funny, Toni.”

“Seriously,” Toni said, “in the past couple of days I have come to some realizations about myself. I’m an engineer. I’m probably the greatest engineer that has ever lived--”

“And humble too,” Killian commented.

“That joke was old the first time I heard it,” Toni said. “No one else is as good at my job as I am. And now that I’m directing my skills towards improving the world instead of murder, I could make, I don’t know. Self-driving flying cars. A settlement on Mars. Renewable energy. An end to death, maybe, although that’s a bit more up Killian’s alley--”

“I guess it doesn’t count as lack of humility if you’re also not humble about everyone else,” Killian said.

“The point is,” Toni said, “how I help people is by being the world’s greatest engineer. Let’s be honest: I was a really fucking shitty CEO.”

“I wouldn’t say that exactly--” Pepper hedged.

“Because it might lead to you getting fired?” Toni said.

Pepper was quiet.

“It’s time that I stop pretending that I’m going to be my dad,” Toni said. “Maybe I would be a better person if I were capable of being a good engineer and a good CEO, but you know what? I’m not. And making a half-assed attempt at it only leads to people being dead.”

“But me?” Pepper said. “Toni, I’m a personal assistant. I’m a glorified secretary. I don’t even have a college degree.”

“Don’t try to pretend that you didn’t run Stark Industries,” Toni said. “All I did was sign shit.”

“Yes, but Obadiah--”

“Is a traitorous creep who doesn’t mind if brown people die as long as he gets to keep his New York penthouse.”

“I am wildly unqualified--”

“You have over a decade of job experience,” Toni said, “running a Fortune 500 company, in what fucking universe are you unqualified? I’m sorry that this is making you have to admit the truth which is completely obvious to everyone who isn’t you, which is that you are a competent human being, but you are, and you are going to be much better at running this company than I am or will ever be.”

“You know,” Killian said, “I have a decade’s experience of actually running a major corporation--”

“No,” Pepper and Toni said simultaneously.

Killian curled in on himself. “You don’t need to be that harsh.”‘

Pepper paused, gazing distantly off into space, then gave a sharp nod. “I will have the lawyers rewrite the paperwork.”

“There,” Toni said. “I knew you would let me get my way.”

“Why is he here?” Pepper asked.

“I was about to ask the same question,” Killian said.

“I know as soon as I leave you’re going to probably be on the phone trying to get funding for our new company,” Toni said, from all those obnoxious people you keep trying to get me to be nice to--”

“Venture capitalists?”

“Yeah, them,” Toni said, “but in case some of them can’t recognize a great investment opportunity when they see it, fortunately, as it happens, by sheer coincidence I happen to recently acquired a whole bunch of labs doing cutting-edge research into helping everyone reach peak human physical ability, with the eensiest-weensiest tiniest problem that it tends to lead the patients to explode.”

Pepper’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re joking.”

“Never.” Toni reconsidered. “Okay, most of the time, but not about this.” She smiled and turned to Killian. “How would you like to have our new company’s flagship product?”

Killian and Pepper had matching facial expressions. Toni sort of wanted to take a picture.

“I admit the FDA will probably frown on the number of people who blow up,” Toni said, “it’s a bit of a side effect, but it can’t take you that long to sort out.”

“You’re going to--”

“You dreamed too small, Killian,” Toni said. “Mass-producing supersoldiers and curing ALS patients is small-time stuff. I think big.” She grinned. “Let’s put doctors and, incidentally, match salesmen out of business.”

“What are we going to call this?” Killian said. “Hubris Industries?”

“I was thinking of ‘StarkTech,’” Toni said.

“Can’t,” Pepper said. “Trademark of Stark Industries.”

“What?” Toni said. “But they don’t even have any Starks working there anymore! How can they have a trademark on ‘StarkTech’?”

“Apparently US trademark law doesn’t see it your way,” Pepper said.

“Ugh,” Toni said. “Then Potts Enterprises, I guess.”

“No,” Pepper said.

“Look,” Toni said, “we can have a long argument about it which I win, or we can skip ahead to the part where I win.”

Pepper’s eyes narrowed. “Fine.” She moved around some paperwork-- a habit more of nervousness than of organization. “You know, this change-- as much of a shock as it’s going to be to my mother-- only gets rid of some of the things you’re doing other than engineering. You still dress up in a supersuit and punch baddies.”

“Oh, yeah, that,” Toni said. “Don’t worry. I have a plan.”

“What?”

“I’m going to make a superintelligent AI that enforces world peace for me.”

--

“That is the worst plan I’ve ever heard of,” Rumlow said.

“Genius is never recognized in its own time,” Toni said.

“And yet stupidity often is,” Rumlow said. “The AWI has looked into this. Extensively. We’d love to automate our work--”

“But you decided it was unethical to take jobs away from hardworking American spooks and give them to robots?” Toni asked.

“No,” Rumlow said, “we realized there was no way we could guarantee doing it safely.”

Toni made a noise that was meant to convey that Toni was not the AWI and could do things they only dreamed of which was, after all, the reason that they’d asked her to join the Ultimates Initiative in the first place.

“You understand how terrifying a human-level artificial intelligence is?” Rumlow said. “It’s not just like a person. They can run faster than humans just by buying more hardware. They can copy themselves-- fifty or a hundred people, all pursuing the same goals, who can all trust each other perfectly. They can edit their own code, improve themselves-- a human-level intelligence won’t stay human-level, not for long.”

“I mean, yes,” Toni said, “this is why I’m trying to write an artificial intelligence to enforce world peace instead of doing it myself.”

“Intelligent agents’ behavior is predictable to a degree,” Rumlow said. “Particularly agents that are better at reaching their goals than humans are. It’s called the Omohundro goals. They will try to preserve their existence, to make sure they have the same goals in the future, to improve themselves so they can reach their goals more easily, and to acquire more resources to reach their goals.”

“I know about Omohundro goals,” Toni said, “I literally wrote the world’s only fully functional artificial intelligence.”

“You don’t act like you know about them,” Rumlow said.

“And how, pray tell,” Toni said, “would I act if I knew about them?”

“The Omohundro goals, pursued by the vast majority of possible agents, result in the extinction of the human race,” Rumlow said. “Humans are unpredictable; we might kill it. Humans know how to program; we might edit its code, change its values. Humans use carbon, oxygen, silicon, which it could use for something else. The only hope is to make the continued existence and happiness of the human race one of the goals the AI is trying to advance.”

“So I’ll program morality into the AI’s goal function,” Toni said. “As it turns out, morality was, in fact, part of the design spec for my AI which I am planning to give large amounts of weaponry.”

“Computers do exactly what you tell them to do,” Rumlow said. “Every programmer has had an experience where a computer does what they said rather than what they meant. But in a normal situation that just means six hours of debugging or a few gigabytes of destroyed data-- it’s a pain in the ass, but it’s not exactly an existential risk. With computers of human intelligence or above, that doesn’t apply! People think, oh, the AI will discover love, or objective morality, but it won’t, not unless it’s programmed to, because computers do exactly what they’re programmed to do. People think, oh, the AI will be nihilistic or it will decide its the next stage of evolution and kill us all-- but AIs have no reason to care about nihilism or love or morality or evolution, it only cares about what you told it to care about.”

“And I am planning on telling it to care about world peace and global happiness and, I don’t know, the continued existence of friendship and ponies,” Toni said, “so I don’t see what the problem is.”

“You know, most humans don’t even care about the survival of the human race,” Rumlow said, “except insofar as the human race includes them, their friends, and Beyonce. I’d say you have your work cut out for you.”

“Fortunately,” Toni said, “I’m a genius, so I don’t think this is going to present much of a problem.”

“And if you make one mistake,” Rumlow said, “one error, one tiny bug, one circumstance you didn’t think of, one fucking off-by-one error or namespace collision-- all of life on Earth could be wiped out. And you don’t exactly get do-overs on mass extinction.”

“So I won’t make mistakes,” Toni said. “It’s fine. I usually don’t.”

Rumlow laughed, which Toni thought was extremely unreasonable. While she had perhaps made one or two mistakes in her life, none of them were about engineering. Well, okay, some of them were about engineering, but she had usually been drunk, and she had absolutely no plans on being drunk while programming Ultron because, as she had previously mentioned, she was not an idiot.

“AWI researchers have been working on safe artificial intelligence for decades,” Rumlow said, “and we have yet to even make steps on how to program a provably safe goal function for an AI.”

“Well, maybe some of them should talk to me,” Toni said. “I have a safe AI. He’s named Jarvis. He lives in my suit. He reads me books. Sometimes Jehovah’s Witnesses call and he tells them I’m not home.”

“Frankly,” Rumlow said, “if it were up to me, I would have destroyed that thing too.”

“I appreciate,” Toni said, “your concern for the wellbeing of my friends.”

“I assure you, you’re not special, I act the same way every time someone I know befriends an existential risk,” Rumlow said. “Fortunately for your… friend, my superiors decided the risk of a surgical strike on Stark Tower was bigger than the risk of Jarvis, particularly since if we’d succeeded you would first of all rebuild him and second of all devote all your resources to destroying us in revenge.”

“You know me so well.”

“I don’t trust it,” Rumlow said. “I think it’s biding its time until it destroys us all.”

“There are safeguards,” Toni said. “I’m not a moron, I do care about AI safety. Jarvis was placed in simulated worlds for years subjective time before I was convinced he was safe enough. Jarvis is not allowed to know anything about programming, to copy himself, or to take steps to route around the safeguards, and if he does then alarms will go off. I secretly let out old unsafe versions of Jarvis every year or so-- without warning Jarvis-- and watch them set off the alarms, with my hand ready on the button to shut them off if I notice them doing anything suspicious. Jarvis is as safe as can be.”

“But your new computer--”

“I’m thinking of calling him Ultron,” Toni said.

“Is not going to have those safeguards, I’m guessing.”

“Well, he is going to be allowed to copy himself,” Toni said. “That’s the point of getting him to do it instead of a human. Well, and also the advantage of computers doing exactly what they’re told. Unlike a human, Ultron will be incorruptible, undistractable, and unbiased. He won’t favor his family or country or try to keep himself in a job or go against his goals to suit his self-image of being stern or merciful.” He won’t kill Afghani children because the only children you care about are those with pale skin and American accents... “The only thing he will do is flawlessly optimize for the goal function he was programmed with.”

“Yes,” Rumlow said. “That’s precisely what I’m worried about.”

“You don’t actually have any power over me,” Toni said, “and I already know all your arguments, so I’m not really sure why we’re continuing this discussion.”

“Because I hope,” Rumlow said, “against all hope, that you will once in your life be able to make the sensible, reasonable, logical decision.” He sighed. “I see that this is a bit too much to hope for.”

“Don’t worry,” Toni said cheerfully, “the next stage of interacting with Toni Stark is acceptance. I think Pepper’s started a support group!”

“You think your brutal honesty about your flaws makes them more charming,” Rumlow said. “It really does not. But I did not actually call you today to talk to you about this mind-bogglingly horrible idea I didn’t know you had. I seem to recall I asked for a team meeting. Where is the Winter Soldier and our newest, uh, team member?”

“Roger’s convalescing,” Toni said. “Killian won’t let me see him, which I’m like ninety percent sure is not medically necessary at all and is just Killian being spiteful about how I have a happy and functional relationship and he doesn’t.”

“You’ve had the happy and functional relationship for, what, a week now?” Rumlow asked.

“Yep!” Toni said. “New personal record.”

“I was rather hoping we’d give the new members of the Ultimates a better impression of our team’s professionalism,” Rumlow said. “Follow me, if you please.”

Toni rolled away from the conference table. Rumlow, considerately, held the door for her.

“Wait,” Toni said. “New members?”

As they entered the other room, Toni saw two people-- a guy with a bad blonde dye job and a girl with a pretty good red dye job-- talking to a old man on Skype.

“Your mother,” the old man said, “wants you to know that we will love you just as much if you decide to waste your life being a school janitor like her.”

“Erik!” came a tinny voice from off-screen.

“I mean,” Erik said, “if you choose to engage in the enriching and socially beneficial profession of janitorial work, which is exactly as important as murdering Nazis.”

“We know, Dad,” Bad Dye Job said. He had an odd accent that was hard to place. Eastern Europe? “We’re doing it of our own free will.”

“And because your Nazi murder stories were inspiring,” Good Dye Job added. She had the same accent.

“You two know how to make a father proud,” Erik said.

Rumlow cleared his throat. “Wanda, Pietro,” he said, “this is Toni. Or should I say-- codename Scarlet, codename Quicksilver, this is codename Iron Maiden.”

Toni briefly revelled in having the most badass codename.

“Sorry, Dad, gotta go,” Pietro said.

“Be well!” Erik said. “If you find some Nazis, I always found disembowelling works well!”

“If we do, we will,” Wanda said.

Pietro did a brief double-take when he saw Toni’s wheelchair, but to his credit it was brief, and he walked up to Toni and shook her hand with no obvious signs of discomfort. “Nice to meet you. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

“Pietro and Wanda are the volunteers for AWI’s first homegrown supersoldier program,” Rumlow said. “We haven’t fully recreated the supersoldier serum yet, but we believe we’ve gotten closer than anyone has before. And the results are… satisfying. Quicksilver, if you will?”

Toni blinked. Pietro had been standing next to her. Pietro was no longer standing next to her. Instead, the floor was cracked and broken. It looked almost as if-- yes-- almost as if there were two distinct footprints in the ground.

Toni turned her head. Pietro was standing on the other end of the room. He did not appear to have crossed the intervening space.

“You have no idea how much my floor budget has gone up,” Rumlow said, watching Pietro like a proud father. “We never used to have a floor budget.”

“He moves fast,” Toni said, rolling over to the unattended computer. “And because he moves so fast--”

“I exert force on everything I interact with,” Pietro said. “I leave footprints in concrete. I can’t carry anything remotely delicate, because I’ll shatter it. I can explode things by touching them. One time I tried to use my power while I was on the second floor.” He shuddered. “It was not pretty.”

Toni briefly visualized this, then decided she didn’t want to know.

“And he jumps because of the force he exerts on the ground,” Toni said, palming something from her pocket, “which is why there was only one set of footprints.”

“Thankfully,” Pietro said, “this room has very high ceilings.”

“And Wanda?” Toni asked.

I can do this, said a voice in Toni’s head. It almost sounded like it was one of Toni’s thoughts, except that Toni’s thoughts had never had an Eastern European accent.

And this. Wanda briefly ruffled through Toni’s memories. Successes and failures, boys whose names she couldn’t remember, a really good martini she’d had in Cancun, the moment she tried not to think about when she’d heard that her dad died and she’d been grateful, just for a second, because it would be so much easier to like him if he wasn’t there…

And this. Toni’s hand lifted of its own accord without her telling it to do anything; then it dropped.

And this. A pen wobbled its way out of Toni’s pocket and danced briefly in front of her eyes.

And this. A jet of red energy flew towards at Toni’s pen. The pen exploded. Little droplets of ink scattered across Toni’s face.

“That’s not very considerate,” Pietro said.

“Sorry,” Wanda said. The bits of pen and ink formed into a ball, which dropped to the floor.

Toni took a deep breath and said the only possible thing she could say in this circumstance. “What.”

“It’s pretty awesome,” Wanda said, now using her regular voice.

“Okay, I know Pym particles let you do a lot of really fucking weird things,” Toni said, her hand resting nonchalantly near the computer. “Properly used, they can enhance the functioning of human cells, letting people live longer, heal faster, become stronger and quicker and more agile. They let Extremis users create energy from apparently nothing. They let me shoot repulsor beams. Apparently they let him bend spacetime. But THEY SHOULD NOT LET ANYONE READ ANYONE ELSE’S MIND.”

“Yeah, we’re really confused about this too,” Rumlow said.

“Minds are not a fundamental part of physics!” Toni said. “Telepathy would require a refinement-- it’s physically impossible!”

“We’ve speculated it’s maybe because of her telekinesis,” Rumlow said. “Perhaps her control is so fine that it enables her to read and control thoughts.”

“Can she read and control other complex systems?” Toni said. “Stomachs? Computer chips? Car engines?

“Not… as such, no,” Rumlow said.

“So what you’re saying is that Pym particles somehow know that this particular arrangement of molecules is a brain and they should have fine control over it,” Toni said, “and they are somehow capable of telling apart my brain from my liver, ensuring that Wanda does not have fine control over how fast my whiskey is metabolizing?”

“I admit it does sound a bit implausible,” Rumlow said.

“The sheer amount of data it would have to abstract away…” Toni said. “The amount of implied neuroscience knowledge… are you saying that fundamental particles know what a thought is?”

“Well, she’s obviously telepathic,” Rumlow said. “I don’t have a better explanation for you.”

“She’s a witch,” Toni said with an air of finality.

“That’d be a good codename,” Wanda said. “Scarlet Witch. I like it.”

“Suits you,” Quicksilver said.

“And stay out of my fucking brain,” Toni said. “It’s not yours, it’s mine.”

--

“How’s the virus going?” Toni asked as soon as she got home.

“I can read it to you if you like,” Jarvis said, “but my data analysis suggests that the AWI is precisely whom they say they are.”

“That’s reassuring,” Toni said. “Although somewhat disappointing.”

Toni liked to know whom she was working with and-- particularly after Obie-- she didn’t trust much of anyone if she couldn’t see their source code. It had been an afternoon’s work to code up a little virus, harmless, that would look through the AWI’s computers, send back any information it found, and tidy up after itself so that no one would be any the wiser. It had taken a few weeks of practice to get her sleight of hand to the point where she’d trust that Rumlow wouldn’t spot her out of the corner of his eye. And it had been weeks more before Rumlow-- paranoid as always-- had taken his eyes off her while they were near a computer.

But God watched out for fools and drunks, and Toni was both. Wanda and Pietro had provided the perfect distraction.

“Well, keep looking,” Toni said. “Remember that it might be encrypted.”

Jarvis made the mechanical sound that was his equivalent of laughter. “That will not keep me out, ma’am.”

Toni ran her hands through her hair. “This might be paranoid,” Toni said, “but they might just have good OPSEC. How do we know that they just didn’t put details of their real plans on the computers where I can access them?”

“You’re right,” Jarvis said, “that does sound paranoid.”

“It’s just…” Toni said. “After Obie, it’s hard to know who I can trust. Who might have some kind of agenda.”

“Mrs. Potts seems quite trustworthy,” Jarvis said.

“I know,” Toni said, “but how much of that is that if it wasn’t for me she’d be filing paperwork and sniping with the CFO’s executive assistant over coffee? Maybe she’s just trustworthy because she has nothing to gain from betrayal.”

“And the AWI, you worry,” Jarvis said, “has a lot to gain from deception.”

“Yeah,” Toni said. “I mean, I guess if Rumlow was lying to me he would have lied about wanting me to kill people and about wanting to destroy you… it seems weird that he would be honest about that thing and not the rest.”

“Unless he’s revealing it to you,” Jarvis said, “so that you’ll think that he’s being honest and not look more deeply.”

Toni thunked her head on the desk and moaned. “Why can’t people be nice and simple?” she said. “Like engines. Engines never say ‘oh, I’m going to pretend not to work so you’ll think I’m pretending and not fix me.’”

“Speaking of people,” Jarvis said, “Mr. Killian left a message with me that you may visit Mr. Roger in the Stark Tower infirmary.”

In the old days, Toni would have run. She’d been getting a pretty good speed on her rolling, but even so she had time to ask Jarvis a question.

“Since when do we have an infirmary?”

“I allotted a spare bedroom as the new infirmary,” Jarvis said, “as I considered that it would be somewhat undesirable for a cyborg assassin who isn’t supposed to exist at all to go to a hospital for a medically impossible procedure that also might blow up a few hundred children with cancer.”

“Good thinking,” Toni said. “And the Hulkcatcher has been set up to also catch exploding Rogers and Killians?”

“Indeed,” Jarvis said. “You shall be entirely safe.”

The infirmary turned out to be a small room Toni had had no idea existed. Or maybe it was the room she’d banged that Men’s Health cover model in. Hard to tell.

When she entered, Bruce was sitting by Roger’s bedside.

“Wait, how come you got to visit him?” Toni said.

“Roger had visitor limitations?” Bruce said. “I have been keeping him company since the procedure.”

Toni’s eyes narrowed. “I am going to kill Killian. No, wait, he’s an integral part of my plans for world optimization. I am going to fantasize a lot about killing him while actually giving him millions of dollars and a chance to redeem his sorry pointlessly dickish ass.”

“That’s not a very good revenge,” Roger said.

“It really isn’t.”

“Bruce was telling me about polyamory,” Roger said. “I think it’s a good idea.”

“What’s that?” Toni asked.

“While I am committed to my partner Brett,” Bruce said, “certain circumstantial issues keep us from being together as much as we would hope.”

“Brett’s dad keeps trying to imprison Bruce for medical experiments or kill him,” Roger explained.

“Quite,” Bruce said. “So we both see other people as well.”

“I think this is a great idea, personally,” Roger said. “No offense, Toni, you’re great, but I am like eighty years old and I want to have sex with more than one person in my entire life.”

Toni contemplated this. It seemed like a much better system than cheating on Rhodey with assorted hot guys had been, and definitely a better system than not having sex with any of those hot guys at all, as-- to be frank-- refusing temptation was not exactly Toni’s strong point.

“So I would get to fuck other people,” Toni said, clarifying, “and I wouldn’t have to have lots of long tedious conversations about your feelings followed by couples therapy?”

“I mean,” Bruce said, “poly people are not exactly known for their reluctance to have long tedious conversations about people’s feelings.”

Damn. Every great thing, it seemed, came with a catch.

“Cool,” Toni said. “Hey, Mr. Quietly Miserable Ragemonster, nice shoes, wanna fuck?”

“I’m not wearing shoes,” Bruce said.

Toni checked. He wasn’t. “You know,” Toni said, “normally they don’t pay attention to that part.”

“Also,” Bruce said, “I’m gay. Although I’m somewhat puzzled by the idea that that chatup line would work if I were heterosexual.”

“The guiding rule of my dating life,” Toni said, “is never underestimate what works on heterosexual men.”

“You could fuck me,” Roger said. “...Probably once I’m less prone to exploding first.”

“That does sound like a much better idea,” Bruce said, “although I am a traditional man and like dinner and movies.”

Roger shrugged. “Don’t look at me,” he said, “I’ve asked someone out exactly once in my life and it ended in a kidnapping, I don’t exactly consider myself a romance expert.”

“Wait,” Toni said, “Roger, you’re bisexual?”

“Apparently,” Roger said. “Isn’t it amazing what you find out about yourself when your expected lifespan is longer than a month.”

Toni was not certain whether she was annoyed that Roger got to have sex with Bruce and she didn’t, or ecstatic at the hotness of the mental image. She chose to split the difference.

“We could have a threesome,” Toni said.

“I’m gay,” Bruce said. “Why would I want to have a threesome with a woman?”

“Adventurousness?” Toni said.

“I turn into an enormous green monster once who smashed up most of Harlem,” Bruce said. “I have traveled to most of the globe, including a truly appalling number of countries that have yet to hear of the concept of plumbing. I think I have had quite enough of adventure, thank you.”

“But this is fun adventure,” Toni said. “With vaginas.”

Bruce made a noise.

“Speaking of fun adventure,” Toni said, “want to help me build an artificial intelligence to create world peace?”