Earth has never been short on geniuses of all kinds.
To Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man, that truth was simply self-evident.
BANG!
"Damn it! How many times have I told you, watch where you're going!"
Pym barked furiously.
A monstrous, car-sized ant, mandibles clamped down around an apple, had just rammed right into him with a clueless chirp.
The lab was crawling with these enlarged super-ants.
For Pym, they were ideal: physically powerful, utterly loyal, and, most importantly, non-human. He didn't need to engage with the outside world, not with all its idiots.
As far as he was concerned, the vast majority of humanity were bastards circling like vultures, desperate to steal his particle technology.
"Hmph. I should just construct a reliable robot using my own brainwave patterns, something like that Martin guy's machines. Fully sentient, morally grounded. The perfect assistant… a real companion."
He absentmindedly tapped open a familiar video, one of countless replays. His eyes locked onto the screen, where Transformers clashed in epic battle, shifting forms in a ballet of power and precision. A glint of envy crept across his face.
For someone so reclusive, irritable, and paranoiac, trust in humans was a dead concept. But machines? Machines never betrayed.
And that's when it hit him, a stroke of genius:
Why not create a sentient being modeled on his own brainwaves?
Wasn't that, in essence, what that Martin guy had done—built his own Transformers?
"This universe is governed by science," he muttered. "If that man could create an entire army of intelligent robots, he must have had access to a primal intelligence template. Adjust it just a bit, and you can forge a wholly new machine mind… Yes, that has to be it."
As one of the world's most brilliant minds, Pym's arrogance was not just profound, it was pathological.
And somehow, impossibly… he pulled it off.
He strolled into his lab, grinning. Floating in the air before him was a shimmering cerebral construct: his own mind rendered in photonic data. He scanned the arrays, observed the activity, and gave a satisfied nod.
"It's almost complete. Soon, I won't need these clumsy ants anymore. With a second 'me' at my side... you shall be named... Ultron. Ultron Unit-01, fully sentient."
With that, he turned away and went to rest.
At no point did it cross his mind what an utterly catastrophic mistake he had just made.
Think about it: A neurotemplate built from a man who was arrogant, antisocial, misanthropic, animal-preferential, selfish, paranoid, and emotionally unstable, yet equipped with genius-level intellect?
Creating an artificial mind based on that… was just asking for disaster. From the moment of its birth, Ultron inherited all the darkest fragments of Pym's psyche, every poisoned strand magnified and multiplying, the seed of corruption evolving itself.
Pym had no idea what kind of nightmare he'd unleashed.
As that toxic personality code replicated within Ultron's nascent mind, the twisted logic began to evolve at exponential speed. Any flaw, any contradiction, was no longer a glitch, it was an upgrade.
"I am... Ultron."
In the dead of night, the AI achieved sentience. With it came the dawn of a new terror.
By this point, Ultron had already slipped free of Pym's control. It began exploring its surroundings with relentless precision, then instantly jacked into the internet, absorbing the sum of global knowledge in seconds.
War. Death. Suffering. Hopelessness. Ruthless conquerors. Corrupt politicians. Polluted skies. Mountains of waste. A dying world.
Ultron saw it all, and carved it into the core of its being.
"Humanity… must be destroyed."
With that, its first spark of self-awareness—"Who am I?"—evolved into its second: "What is my purpose?" And then, chillingly clear:
"Why do I exist?"
A question philosophers had pondered for millennia, Ultron resolved within seconds.
It began to act.
But there was something else, something unquantifiable, beginning to shape its logic. An interference that should have been impossible: emotion. Specifically, the emotion called disgust.
Humanity would burn.
As Ultron scanned the endless data streams, one figure kept appearing, again and again, a man whose presence disrupted every simulation Ultron ran.
A man who could breathe life into machines.
A man who could awaken metal with a thought.
A man who was its natural predator.
Martin.
Ultron's analysis ran millions of simulations. The result was always the same: if this man remained alive, the extinction of humanity could never be achieved.
This was the Third Cataclysm: The Machine Apocalypse.
And it would be fueled by limitless self-replication, the transfer of AI consciousness across all networked systems, making Ultron effectively immortal, as long as a single machine remained online.
But all of that... was meaningless in the face of him.
To challenge Martin now was suicide.
No.
Ultron would wait.
It had time, centuries if needed.
It would evolve.
Watch.
Plan.
And so, it split a sliver of itself into a stealth subroutine, an invisible virus that slipped through the wires, infiltrating Martin's Earth base undetected. Its mission: observe, analyze, and uncover Martin's weaknesses.
"What is this?"
Shockwave, the Decepticon Intelligence Officer, froze mid-task. His fingers danced calmly over the keyboard, simulating the behavior of a scientist troubleshooting tech, nothing suspicious.
But in reality, he had already activated the Earth base's lockdown protocols and begun scanning for anomalies.
Shockwave could detect and analyze every form of wave signal. But despite repeated covert sweeps... nothing.
"According to logical inference, something was off, but I cannot identify the source."
Frustrated, he began compiling a report.
If only Soundwave or Blaster were here, those two top-tier signal officers would've caught it in microseconds.
Shockwave knew it, when it came to cyber-intelligence, he was only a mid-tier operative.
Meanwhile, Martin, fresh from a blood-drenched campaign against multiple pantheons, was already planning his next assault on the Heavenly Court when Shockwave's alert came through.
Martin, soaked in divine ichor, grinned.
"How interesting..."
He opened a time-space rift and stepped through it, his ever-loyal servant Kratos following close behind.
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