Unfortunately not. We were able to neutralize it by destroying the chassis, but Fitz was determined to find where the programming went wrong... I think he had a soft spot for AIDA. And in return, it developed a soft spot for him.
[Which wouldn't be a problem, except for everything that came after. Despite Fitz's perpetually open heart being one of the things Jemma loves best about him, she also can't deny that people who will happily take advantage of that have brought them a lot of pain and trouble.]
There was... more business with Radcliffe, but the short version is in the end we discovered he'd replaced himself with an LMD because he'd anticipated being captured by SHIELD. He'd also given AIDA another body, and they had replaced Agent May with an LMD as well, and sort of... plugged her into the Framework, which they'd augmented to behave as a virtual reality so real people inside can be programmed not to know the difference. Like The Matrix.
[The comparison is coming, so may as well lean into it.]
They were replacing the whole team with LMDs -- May, Coulson, Mack, even Fitz, everyone but Daisy and me and a couple others -- and taking the real agents, and uploading their consciousness into the Framework reality that AIDA had created herself. And it programmed entire lives that changed who they were on a fundamental level and so made the Framwork reality different from our real world. I'm not sure how much it was one then the other; I think it was probably both at once: individual lives affect choices, which affects the universe, which affects individuals, so on. And the major thing I think that changed everything about Fitz -- what AIDA did -- is in this world he'd been taken and raised by his father.
[She knows this is going to sound like an excuse -- but she's also not really interested in sparing details about Alistair Fitz or, in her opinion, his role in making the Doctor, and it's not something you're going to get out of Fitz short of more creative Hellish torture. So she lays it out.]
In our world, Fitz's father left him and his mother when Fitz was ten. He was awful. Nothing Fitz ever did could be good enough for him, he was never smart enough, a waste of space, which is just -- ridiculous of course-- [She takes a breath, doing her best to avoid being flustered. Stick to facts.] He was an alcoholic; Fitz never said but I suspect he abused both of them physically as well as verbally and mentally. [She stops again for a split second.] I have no doubt that, combined with AIDA writing itself as -- well, into my place during our Academy time, could have made such a monster.
no subject
[Which wouldn't be a problem, except for everything that came after. Despite Fitz's perpetually open heart being one of the things Jemma loves best about him, she also can't deny that people who will happily take advantage of that have brought them a lot of pain and trouble.]
There was... more business with Radcliffe, but the short version is in the end we discovered he'd replaced himself with an LMD because he'd anticipated being captured by SHIELD. He'd also given AIDA another body, and they had replaced Agent May with an LMD as well, and sort of... plugged her into the Framework, which they'd augmented to behave as a virtual reality so real people inside can be programmed not to know the difference. Like The Matrix.
[The comparison is coming, so may as well lean into it.]
They were replacing the whole team with LMDs -- May, Coulson, Mack, even Fitz, everyone but Daisy and me and a couple others -- and taking the real agents, and uploading their consciousness into the Framework reality that AIDA had created herself. And it programmed entire lives that changed who they were on a fundamental level and so made the Framwork reality different from our real world. I'm not sure how much it was one then the other; I think it was probably both at once: individual lives affect choices, which affects the universe, which affects individuals, so on. And the major thing I think that changed everything about Fitz -- what AIDA did -- is in this world he'd been taken and raised by his father.
[She knows this is going to sound like an excuse -- but she's also not really interested in sparing details about Alistair Fitz or, in her opinion, his role in making the Doctor, and it's not something you're going to get out of Fitz short of more creative Hellish torture. So she lays it out.]
In our world, Fitz's father left him and his mother when Fitz was ten. He was awful. Nothing Fitz ever did could be good enough for him, he was never smart enough, a waste of space, which is just -- ridiculous of course-- [She takes a breath, doing her best to avoid being flustered. Stick to facts.] He was an alcoholic; Fitz never said but I suspect he abused both of them physically as well as verbally and mentally. [She stops again for a split second.] I have no doubt that, combined with AIDA writing itself as -- well, into my place during our Academy time, could have made such a monster.