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In order to maintain his image as a carefree playboy, Tony Stark once again woke up beside a woman whose name he probably didn't know.
Wearing a bathrobe, he stepped out of his bedroom.
After winding through a maze of hallways, he finally spotted his highly paid personal assistant sitting in the first-floor lounge, organizing the reports that the Chairman of Stark Industries was supposed to review.
"Pepper, take care of my room."
With that brief instruction, he crossed the upstairs gallery and headed for the bathroom.
"Yes, boss."
Virginia Potts replied in a weary tone.
Naturally, he wasn't asking her to clean his bedroom. The household staff handled that sort of thing.
What Virginia Potts was actually being asked to "take care of" was the unidentified woman currently occupying it.
Tony Stark never kept a steady girlfriend, nor did he maintain a stable roster of companions.
His tastes were so broad and unpredictable that nobody could ever figure out his type.
Unless someone was specifically trying to assassinate him, Tony Stark's method of selecting bed partners effectively prevented anyone from using women to gain control over him.
Of course, he didn't explain this strategy to many people.
Only Happy Hogan knew the truth.
As a result, the uninformed Virginia Potts found this aspect of her job deeply irritating.
If the salary hadn't been excellent—and if her other responsibilities hadn't genuinely matched her professional qualifications—the woman frequently nicknamed "Pepper" would have resigned long ago.
At first, she had always tried to send these women away politely.
Tony Stark's generosity was unquestionable.
He might gift an expensive evening gown or a piece of costly jewelry, and the women were always allowed to keep whatever he gave them.
Unfortunately, every one of them dreamed of becoming the lucky woman who landed the billionaire.
They always tried to stay, convinced that the previous night's chemistry had transcended the physical and reached the level of soulmates.
Everyone believed they had become indispensable to Tony Stark.
To get them out the door, Virginia eventually had to adopt increasingly blunt methods and language.
At first, she worried that such behavior might offend her employer.
Later, she realized that as long as she wasn't grabbing women by the hair and dragging them out like corpses, Tony Stark didn't care.
That was when she learned exactly where the scumbag's standards lay.
Now, her techniques for sending women away had become alarmingly efficient.
Efficient enough to be detestable.
Even Virginia herself disliked what she had become.
---
Once Pepper took over responsibility for the bedroom situation, Tony Stark settled into his bathtub and promptly stopped caring.
At this point in time, he hadn't yet installed voice controls and sensors throughout his mansion.
So he opened the laptop sitting beside the tub.
Naturally, he made sure to point the webcam somewhere harmless first.
"JARVIS, how did Alby do yesterday? Is it still losing to Big Sis A in learning efficiency? Anything interesting about me on the forums lately? Or anything you think I'd be interested in?"
A familiar male voice emerged from the laptop speakers.
"Sir, judging from the performance curves, the self-learning artificial intelligence Alby remains inferior to Miss_A in both learning efficiency and response speed."
"Where do you think we're losing?"
JARVIS answered immediately.
"In terms of response speed, no commercially available processor architecture currently exceeds the performance of Hollywood Kid's custom-designed chips.
"Even experimental laboratory hardware fails to reach Miss_A's processing speed.
"There is a 90% probability that Mr. Brown has developed a previously unknown processor architecture that dramatically increases computational power.
"There is a 9% probability that he has discovered a method for parallelizing supercomputers. Based on known parallel computing architectures, at least five Hollywood Kid systems working together would be required to achieve the observed performance.
"The remaining 1% probability is that Mr. Brown has discovered a method for parallelizing supercomputers and secretly compromised active supercomputing facilities, turning them into zombie nodes to utilize their processing power."
JARVIS paused briefly before continuing.
"As for learning efficiency, there is a 70% probability that Mr. Brown incorporated several recently published mathematics papers from academic forums to update Miss_A's algorithmic framework.
"There is a 30% probability that he implemented an entirely new underlying logic structure, resulting in significantly faster iterative learning than Alby."
Tony Stark's curiosity was immediately piqued.
"What new papers might actually be useful?"
Several browser windows instantly appeared on the laptop screen, displaying the papers JARVIS had referenced.
"Topology?"
Tony frowned.
"Meaning that every move Miss_A makes isn't merely evaluating the current position. It's potentially replaying historical matches simultaneously and predicting future moves based on similar patterns?
"If that's true, how much computing power are we talking about?"
JARVIS fell silent for several seconds while processing the new assumptions.
"Based on revised calculations, Miss_A would require computational power exceeding twenty-five times that of Hollywood Kid to achieve its observed response speed.
"Furthermore, under these updated assumptions, there is now a 99% probability that Mr. Brown is using a new processor architecture.
"Current supercomputer clusters cannot achieve equivalent performance."
While browsing through the papers, Tony suddenly noticed one in particular.
"This one's already been disproven."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Why would you think it's useful? Are AIs starting to get senile? Or did someone solve it in the comments?"
"Because the mathematical problem addressed by this paper falls within the same general category as several others," JARVIS replied.
Tony scrolled down into the discussion thread beneath the paper.
Everyone was debating the flaw identified by moderator CK.
Yet nobody had managed to produce the correct solution.
Muttering to himself, Tony said,
"So that guy solved it?"
As one of the very few people who knew CK's real identity, the suspicion came naturally.
His interest thoroughly ignited, Tony leaned half out of the bathtub and began examining the error himself.
He wanted to see just how difficult the unsolved problem really was if that guy had managed to crack it and integrate the solution into his algorithms.
"Anything else?"
Tony asked casually.
"On the private message board, Skye has once again posted a schematic for an electronic tracking device. She is asking whether any countermeasures exist."
Tony glanced briefly at the hand-drawn circuit diagram.
His interest vanished immediately.
"Elementary-school-level stuff."
He waved dismissively.
"Reply with sections two through thirteen of file C23-49."
He clicked his tongue.
"Honestly, I thought that little girl might help force some of that guy's hidden cards into the open.
"But all she ever brings are these second-rate toys."
JARVIS immediately ruined the moment.
"Sir, should I remind you that this device is currently used by professional intelligence operatives?"
"Professional operatives come in different grades."
Tony rolled his eyes.
"Nobody at the CIA would even look twice at something this amateurish."
After thoroughly roasting his own AI, he suddenly chuckled.
"Why am I taking this so seriously?"
Then he snapped his fingers.
"Oh right. JARVIS, connect me to Little Sis C—Miss_C."
A grin spread across his face.
"Let's see what that guy's interactive AI has evolved into these days."
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