poeticterms | (no subject)

"Well, I'll just take the subwoofers if I have to. Damn."

Tony laughs. "Now I know what to get you for your birthday. If you've got a room I can rip the walls out of to install the whole rig, anyway."

"Traditionally he buys people cars," Jarvis explains, "but in this case I am sure you can tell where the flaw lies in that plan."

Amused: "Buying me a car sounds like a flawless plan to me, I don't know what you're talking about."

"This is where, if I was a huge asshole, I'd say 'Catch' and then throw a pillow at your face."

"Ah, yes, the good clean wholesome entertainment of making fun of the blind guy."

"You started it. Also, I am not totally sure you couldn't catch it, I'm like two feet away and you've got better ears than Sherry."

"You can try it sometime when I'm not expecting it, but I warn you that I'll make you feel guilty about it forever."

"Since I am not a huge asshole, I'll pass."

Beat.

"Can't promise the same about Sherry, though. If he thought you could, he'd totally try it."

"I'll keep that in mind," he says, very dry, and changes the subject.

"So what brand of speakers are you using for this set-up? If I can't buy your house, I can at least get your advice?"

"JBL through and through. Have fun. The real trick is in the placement—you would not believe the amount of math I did to get them all where they are. Or maybe you would."

He laughs. "Oh, I would. I might let you do it for me, but I would believe you."

"Hey, anytime. I meant it about the birthday present."

"Thanks, man. Are those the same speakers you're using for Jarvis?"

"No," Jarvis supplies. "My voice synthesis is very good, but not quite good enough to require that kind of fidelity."

"You could have fooled me," he says, with perfect honesty.

"I believev I will take that as a compliment."

He sounds very pleased.

"It's meant as one. Seriously, if you kept your voice to one spot in the room I might have had trouble identifying you. Tony, you've gotta give me the specs for the synthesizer, if nothing else."

(He says this without any real expectation of Tony giving him said specs. If Tony has any experience with the tech industry at all, he'll know how to guard his innovations.)

"They wouldn't do you much good, I'm afraid. Rather like copying the structure of your speech centers, putting them in a box, and expecting them to sing."

He pulls a face. "No good without the intelligence behind it, huh?"

"Exactly. I suppose you could teach a human to operate the code, but it is not designed for that sort of thing."

"And then I may as well just have a human read to me. Redundancy is not a useful concept in this case."

Thoughtfully: "Well, I'm sure it wouldn't take me long to design a text-to-speech interpreter that is better than most commercial models, if that's all you're after."

". . . It's only my life's dream."

"In that case, I would be happy to."

But when he does, the resulting program probably won't be able to smile like that.