thisavrou_log | Code-Repair (Backdated to Jan 2-3, semi-closed)

Entry tags:

tron: tron

Code-Repair (Backdated to Jan 2-3, semi-closed)

Who: Tron, Sam Flynn, Meh Yewll, possible others if needed
When: After the fight with Rinzler and Tron's call for help
Where: Medbay
What: Patching Tron up!
Warnings: Possible discussions of brainwashing-type-things in regards to code-overwrite, injuries

Tron lay quietly in the medbay, waiting for Sam and Meh Yewll to arrive. He knew the damage inflicted by Rinzler was far too severe for his self-repair protocols to fix; this would require someone else to look at his base code. He couldn't do it himself, and without any sort of stasis field as he'd had in his isolation, the wounds would spread and worsen, eventually causing a total breakdown of his structure.

He had faith, though, that the young User and the AI would be able to repair him. While Sam was not Alan-1, his original creator, he was still from Tron's world, and was also the son of Kevin Flynn, who had written so many of the programs that Tron knew. Surely Sam had some knowledge that could assist. And Meh herself was a program of sorts, she and Tron had spoken of their similarities, and she could possibly understand his code and repair it.

Though... there was another issue, one Tron did not want to address yet. If his code was examined, what else might it reveal? The glitches he'd been experiencing recently were frightening, unexplained, reason enough to believe that Rinzler was not wiped from his system fully. If he were restored to an earlier state, would he be restored to... that? Agitation caused Tron's circuits to glow slightly brighter, and he tried to calm. He had to trust the others.

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Doc Yewll was quick to get there- she practically lived in sick bay. Medicine was her comfortable place, her other home. Whether it was programming or a healing touch.

It might have not seemed so from her attitude, though. Maybe to people she'd been around frequently, that could tell that despite her flippancy, she genuinely did care. And Tron was no less a person than any other Indogene, a biological, technologically minded race created for slave labor. Than a Bioman, designed for war. Tron was a Program and deserved the same care as anyone else.

"Alright tough guy, I know you like to play rough but lets see if we can patch all this up," she said as she came in, carrying some of the equipment they'd used to assemble the cage for Banner. The holographic readouts were in Indojisnen (hexagonal letters whose shape matched the "scales" that patterned her skin).

"So who's your friend I should be expecting?"

Sam had pretty much taken to camping out around the ship, so it was just luck that he happened to be near the medbay when Tron's SOS hit the network.

Honestly he had been avoiding both Tron and Rinzler. But apparently Rinzler was bent on making trouble or just plain attacking everyone from his world. Tron...well, Sam's issues with Tron stemmed mostly from being faced with one's childhood hero who looked like the Navy SEAL version of his godfather's nephew.

Coming into the medbay, Sam looked at Tron with a grimace.

"As far as I know it's just me, him and Rinzler. So that's probably me. Hi, I'm Sam Flynn."

Rinzler and Tron being separate Programs is weird on it's own, thanks. No one else would probably get how weird it was. With his uniform covering his Gridsuit, Sam shook his head at the state Tron was in.

"You look terrible."

At least he's honest?

Tron turned his head to see Sam entering the medbay, smiling faintly at the young User. "I've felt better," he admitted, wincing as he glanced down at the damage over his body. The worst was a deep gash across his chest, the pixelated edges glowing bright blue. Every so often, a few voxels would break loose, code shattering away as the wound deepened. If it wasn't repaired, Tron would eventually derez from it. Other, more minor wounds were on his arm and side, but the threat was obvious.

He looked between Sam and Meh, relieved that they were both here. "I hope between the two of you, you'll be able to repair the damage," he said. Shifting to sit up further, he grimaced as he tried to reach back over his shoulder. "You'll need my discs... to access my code..."

"Well, let's work on some system compatibility first..." She said as she picked up a scalpel. It wasn't for Tron, though. Instead, she took it to the back of her own neck, wincing while doing it. Carefully she inserted something under the small incision.

That's when a round ball, a drone, rose from a table behind her.

"Alright, how about you grab the man's discs and give me the lay of the land," she said to Sam as the drone hovered over. The hexagonal language in the readouts fizzled to being numerals. "He seems pretty confident in your skills."

Tron was very proud. Seeing a slight grimace was tantamount to a scream of pain. So Sam said nothing, simply came forward a little more and did his best to help without seeming to reach for disk or dock. He wasn't sure if he succeeded but that was the idea.

Of course Meh picking up the scalpel gets a raise of one eyebrow, but the little ball-bearing thing gets a raise of the other. Tron was really not the Program to be doing any kind of weird space Show and Tell on. Sam just gave Tron a significant look that says;

Is it alright with you if I show her?

Tron couldn't see exactly what Meh was doing, distracted by his own pain as he tried to reach his discs. Finally, he managed to detach the joined discs from his dock, and fell back to the pillow with a relieved sigh. He held the discs out to Sam, nodding slightly in response to his unasked question.

"I've released admin access to my code, for repairs," he said, gaze flicking between the two he trusted to work on him. Focusing on Sam, he reached over, resting his hand on the User's arm, with some effort. "Sam... there may be other edits, overwrites, still in my code. I don't know what will happen if you try to alter those." His expression pleaded with Sam to understand. I don't want Rinzler to take over, don't risk losing me in this. "Just... repair the damage, if you can?"

"I think I'll need to know what was edited. How similar are he and Rinzler?"

Then quickly, to explain.

"I want to know what's different, and what's the same. And why it's different."

Sam's expression hardly changed from both brows raised. His snort was more ironic than incredulous. Talk about the tough questions. Sam did have to look at what he was doing as he opened Tron's disk(s).

"How similar? Try written off the same template."

Because they aren't the same Program. They just aren't. And the first part looks like a slowly rotating version of Tron's head and a smattering of floating dots. Sam selects one of those dots and the slowly rotating head disappears to be replaced by a polygon divided up into uneven shapes. Some aren't as bright as others but some are very obviously outlined in orange. Those have a sort of mesh (or rather mesh-like simulation) over them and Sam does as best he can to leave that alone.

"What's different could fill a book. But you see these?"

Sam points at the orange mesh areas.

"It's where ...er - someone - tried to edit away anything like morality, personality or conscience."

It's not that Sam wouldn't talk about Clu. It's just that this wasn't a good time to get into it. Not that there WAS a good time to get into it, but fixing Tron was the last moment to try. Sam carefully doesn't look at Tron as he opens core code.

It was another polygon with too many sides to count. The orange mesh was here too, splintering at decision gate possibilities. Here it's less well-defined what's Rizler and what's Tron though it's plain to see the damaged parts are; they flash an angry red warning.

"Listen, Tron. I'm not going to rewrite these edits. But I'm also not going to delete them either. I'm not dad or Alan, though. If you get damaged too bad...well, I'm not sure I can fix you."

Sam could extrapolate based on what was already there, but he'd never seen a Basic's code before. What if he did something wrong? Meh had commented on Tron having a lot of faith in Sam, but as Sam started to rewrite what (he was pretty sure) had been there he felt way more scrutinized than he had even walking in.

Tron nodded in agreement to what Sam said, looking away as his code was brought up. He didn't want to see how much of it had been corrupted, how much damage Clu had done, how much still needed to be repaired. He'd been able to overcome those rewrites on his own, but for how long? And at what cost?

He focused on Meh instead. "Sam is correct. Rinzler and I... we were the same program. He was Tron, and I... I once was rewritten to become Rinzler. I remembered my self and restored back to Tron, just before being brought here. There is obviously still some of that... overwrite left in my code."

Tron's hand absently reached for Sam again, as though he didn't realize he was doing it, and he glanced back toward him. "You may not be my User, Sam, but... I know you can do this." A look at Meh as well. "Both of you." He had to believe, had to trust in these two. Meh he'd come to know in his short time on the ship, an artificial intelligence similar to his own, an understanding between the two of them that he had not found with others on the ship. And Sam... Sam he'd barely known, barely seen in the Grid, but he felt as though he'd known him for far longer. The implicit trust he held in a User was hard to shake.

She wouldn't judge. Couldn't. Since there were other Meh's out there. Maybe not Yewlls, but Mehs, Indogenes from the same genetic stock. Often with similar personalities. But they weren't the same- neither would Tron and Rinzler be.

"We can use both codes to fix you. What's damaged on you might not be on him, and if we look off his disc and filter through carefully we can do the job more quickly. He can be on the lookout for anything that looks wrong." She can canted her head towards Sam. "I can use a testing hologram for us to make sure your arm doesn't come out of your forehead. Or any worse parts."

Then she looked at Sam.

"His personality seems pretty stable. I think he can wear his scars well."

Sam hoped the vote of confidence was well placed, despite his worries. Meh seemed more practical about things, at least, though the mention of using Rinzler's disk as a guide definitely got Sam's attention. He visibly perked up at that, and looked painfully hopeful.

"Do you actually have that? like, accessible? Because being able to see the way the root code was constructed would make a huge difference."

Sam wanted to stay cautious about thins, but if he just had to reconstruct something that was already there, then he could easily do that. And not only that he would get a look at the way Rinzler's code was the same and the way it was different.

Tron managed to choke out something that sounded like a laugh, then shook his head. "Good luck getting Rinzler to let you see his code, or even touch his discs," he said. "I'd assume he's not in the most cooperative state at the moment."

While he trusted Sam to be able to fix his damage, he found himself wishing that Alan-1 was here as well. His own User could probably reverse the Rinzler overwrite as well, restore his base coding. Then again, Flynn had upgraded him when he imported him in to the new Grid, and a lot of his data wouldn't even be the same.

"Do you know if they were confiscated? They double as weapons as well, right?"

And honestly, she wasn't planning on changing his code but morally she had no problem with looking at it.

"I, uh, I wouldn't know if they were confiscated."

Sam looked a bit apologetic at that, but he was late to this particular hot mess. Likewise Sam had no intention of changing either Tron or Rinzler, but there was some poetic irony in using one to fix the other.

"But they do double as weapons, yeah."

Edited (html fail) 2016-01-28 15:45 (UTC)

"They'd be in the hold, if they were," Tron said, his voice quiet as he tried to conserve his strength. "Though... he shouldn't be without them too long. If his programming runs the same as mine, he'll glitch without them. Become a stray. Lose his memories." He winced as he remembered when his own discs had been taken on a planet, not too long ago.

"If we... borrow them, for now, we should return them to him as soon as possible. He won't be able to harm anyone with them if he's locked up. And perhaps that will help him to trust the rest of us more, if they aren't held away from him."

"I'll get them back to him quick." She wasn't happy about what was done to Tron. Not only did she owe him, he was one of the few friends she had (Meh wasn't exactly a personable woman). But Rinzler wasn't exactly in control of himself. And she?

Well, she was made to be a part of a slave race. She knew what control would be like.

"Okay, I'm going to contact Zam and go get the discs. You boys pow wow."

Sam really didn't like the idea of basically giving Rinzler back weapons, but short of pressing his lips into a thin line he didn't comment on how stupid he thought that was. He also knew Tron was doing pretty well, all things considered, coping with a major breach to his structural integrity.

"It's okay, you know."

Sam used a quieter tone this time, It probably didn't particularly matter, but intimacy or just companionship seemed the thing to do? Hopefully Meh would be back with those disks sooner rather than later.

"If you need to you can pass out - I mean drop into hibernate mode."

Tron shook his head at Sam's suggestion, though he did close his eyes briefly. "I've been in low-power mode almost since this happened. I'd rather stay awake." Blinking to focus again, he looked over at Sam, through the swirling mesh of data that comprised his damaged code.

"I don't want to power down and... not know what's going on." He trusted Sam to do the right thing, but he also didn't want to shut down and wake up as... something, someone different.

Doc Yewll made quick work of what she was doing. From a bit away she talked to Zam, and then went to retrieve the discs.

It didn't take her long. She returned with them at a quick stride and handed them off to Sam.

The surgical drone started to generate a hologram of Tron's damage, ready to simulate whatever code changes Sam made. In the meantime, she reached down and jostled his shoulder very lightly, even if she was putting on airs at being annoyed by him. "Don't make a habit of this."

Sam tried for his best imitation of one of Alan's judgey 'I'm disappointed in you' looks...and mostly just ended up looking like he bit into something sour.

Well, you get the idea.

"If the situation wasn't so messed up - not to mention urgent - I'd say take a second to realize how surreal this is."

As it is Sam sets the second disk next to the first, opens it and is ready to move past the second floating outline of Rinzler's (Tron's?) head when a prompt he hadn't seen before appeared. Surprised, Sam momentarily blinked at it...then realized.

When he did he closed his eyes and let out a long sigh.

"That anal retentive asshat had locked everyone out."

Tron closed his eyes briefly, his circuits dimming as he tried not to let disappointment take over. "Clu..." he murmured, the word forced past his lips like something unpleasant. "He would have."

Of course Clu would ruin this, even if he weren't here. Of course he'd hurt Tron again, his codes and rule defining Tron's life from beyond the Grid. A shudder ran through Tron's body, subtle but definite, and he held back the frustrated sound that wanted to escape.

She sighed, long and angry, almost like she was a ball of hate deflating. "Well, couldn't make this too simple, could he? Egotistical prick. Well, it doesn't matter to me. Just cuts into my lunch break."

Polite woman, Doc Yewll could be. She picked up something spined off the end table. She squeezed it into her palm with another hard, pained look, and it moved down into her skin. Obviously she was concentrating on something, and on the display she'd made Clu's blocks were being plucked away, one by one.

As she did this, in the same irritated way she hummed I've been working on the railroad. Even in the man's absence, and not knowing him, she was going to be absolutely flippant about it.

"Alright. You should be good to go." She said without opening her eyes, and still holding her hand tight around that spiked thing.

Sam almost told Meh there wasn't much point in any of this because Clu was already deleted when his father died. He almost felt bad she went to all the trouble of getting the disk only for them not to be able to use it.

Then the doctor picks up this weird spined thing, squeezed that into her hand and whatever she did, the prompt waiting for Clu's input closes. Instead there's a perfect copy of Tron's head, only in orange, slowly rotating above the opened disk. Sam is struck speechless for a moment. Only the fact that Tron was badly damaged got him moving pretty quick.

"Uh. Right..."

As he had told Meh, this wasn't terribly difficult if he was just recreating with a model to work off of. Though the parts of code so severely damaged were core pieces. It was a wonder Tron was still running, let alone conscious. Well on second thought it might be hard for somebody else. Model or no model.

The orange mesh was still over most of Rinzler's code. But parts of the original Tron coding were starting to show through until it looked more like Swiss cheese. The temptation to just alter Rinzler's code a little was there...but Sam resisted. Because it wouldn't matter what he did, large or small, any alteration to Rinzler's code would make Sam exactly the same as Clu.

Finishing the layers Sam closed first Rinzler's, then Tron's disks. The second was handed toward Tron.

"There. You should be alright to shut down now, I think that's everything."

Tron watched Meh with a furrowed brow, wanting to tell her to stop, to not hurt herself for him, though he had little idea what she was doing. Her operating system was far different from his, the interface unfamiliar and worrisome. How much did she have to damage herself to help repair him? What would he owe her now, for this? Cautiously, he moved his hand, reaching toward her, ready to stop her if she seemed in too much pain.

Yet, whatever she was doing, it seemed to be working. Clu's blocks were falling away, allowing Sam to work. Tron couldn't read his own code, couldn't edit it on his own, but he could see that Sam was able to copy the pieces of Rinzler that would help.

And maybe... maybe someday, they'd be able to help Rinzler with those overwrites as well. But not now. Not like this. Rinzler would need to ask for it, need to want it. To edit him without his permission... the very thought made Tron's internal processes twist. He knew how that felt. He'd never do it to another.

Sam's words brought him back to the present, and he took his joined discs with a faint nod. "Help me...?" he murmured, shifting to try to sit up, moving to re-dock the discs on his back. He wouldn't shut down until the sync was complete, he'd already determined that, despite how painful the code repair might be. It would be far easier for his body to recompile if he were in a reboot state, but...

He couldn't risk the other edits taking over. He had to be aware, be able to fight, to remember.

She washed off her hand and put a clear plastic cover on her palm, masking what she'd just done. Her own body adapts to technology. Some Indogenes are almost entirely melded to computers, especially those that ran Ark systems, merged with their AI.

Meh is a supercomputer in a way, but can only utilize it in certain ways.

"I'm returning his code to normal." She told Tron. Because she agrees, she won't change the man against his will. She's had enough of that nonsense. The war made demands of her that she doesn't want to relive.

"Hopefully he'll not make a habit of this. Might convince me not to." She had some morals, things to make up for, but she was no princess and sure as shtako could only take so much of her few friends being screwed with.

"Rinzler has his own set of issues. I don't think anybody has to worry about them rubbing off"

Sam seemed a bit dubious at first. He had only seen Quorra being repaired and she needed a full reboot for it. Something about any Program essentially being on and running didn't seem right to Sam, but maybe Tron was different? He was written to be a learning Program so maybe he's supposed to stay on.

What Sam didn't know is that no Program is written to run while having damaged data repaired. This process was extremely painful for a conscious mind as well as being unheard of within the Grid.

Nevertheless he did help Tron to lean forward enough that it would be possible to clip the merged disks to his empty dock without the risk of further data loss.

Minor code repairs were one thing, a scratch on a surface render, a minor injury... those could be done with a quick edit on a disc by a recompiler and fix without reboot. Tron had endured many such edits and repairs in his time as Rinzler, when a lucky disc combatant had managed to land a blow or two.

But this... this was something different, a massive overhaul, deep repair, and the rewrite was going to be nearly as traumatic as the initial injury. Still, Tron needed to know he was going to be himself still when he woke, didn't want to risk rebooting into that horrible mirror of his own code. He had to hold on.

The discs locked into his port, and Tron's eyes flashed bright blue as the data synched. For a moment, it seemed as though the re-write would happen peacefully, without incident.

Then Tron's body jerked, arched, and his eyes flew open wide. A cry ripped from his throat as the damaged voxels on his chest began to knit together, forming and overlapping out of the torn and ragged edges. He clenched his teeth, trying to hold back, but another strangled moan slipped past, as fire and ice raced through every voxel of Tron's body. He was being torn apart and put back together, piece by piece, every line of code a lash of an energy-whip. Falling, knowing nothing but pain, he reached out, hands grasping at air, needing something, anything to anchor him to reality.

Edited 2016-02-21 09:43 (UTC)

She put both her hands on Tron's shoulder once she was sure it was steady. Leaving them there while he was being knit back together. Despite her snarkiness, she wasn't going to leave his side. Not when she was going through this. She didn't know how different his pain was from those of any other organic being.

"Hang in there." She moved her hands to grab at one of his.

Sam had no idea this would happen.

For one wild moment he felt a stab of anger that his inexperience had just been used against him. That was pushed aside fairly quickly as it was very obvious Tron was feeling pain on a deep and very visceral level.

Sam had one hand on Tron's shoulder, keeping him from falling, and the other was almost being crushed in Tron's grip. It was painful, sure, but it was just this side of too painful to cope with. Which is to say that nothing got accidentally broken, torn or otherwise damaged. All of which is great, since Tron is more than capable of that, and not thinking clearly as data was being reconstructed across most of his core.

Held steady by hands on either side, Tron pulled through the pain, feeling his code rewrite and body re-form into its proper configuration. The cries of pain that wanted to escape slowly calmed, easing into soft gasps as his wounds finished knitting back together, the bright lines and pixels smoothing into normal surface render. Even his black bodysuit eventually covered the previous gap, his coded clothing repairing as well as his body.

Finally, Tron's grip eased on both Sam's hand and Meh's, fingers going slack. "Thank you," he murmured, eyes slipping closed as he allowed himself to power down.

Even if his grip was strong, she could stand up to a lot. But she didn't let go. Not quite yet. In fact, her treatment was almost motherly, more ginger than she would be for most other patients.

"So how do you feel now, sunshine?"

Much better, she suspected, after that special hell he'd just gone through.

Sam said nothing. Doctor Yewll may have her bedside manner, but Sam still had mixed feelings about the whole thing. He'd just been used and he knew it. He was mostly waiting for Tron to shut down for a proper reboot to leave.
His hand still stayed holding Tron's, but Sam did notlike how this went down.

Tron was on the edge of shutdown, his hands still curled around the others', holding him steady. Blinking slowly, he inclined his head toward Meh, nodding shakily. "Better," he murmured, his circuits already dimming and pulsing as he cycled down.

Turning back to Sam, he saw the confusion, the... anger?... Tron couldn't quite read his expression. He wanted to ask, wanted to explain, wanted to thank Sam for letting him go through the recode in his own way. But the drain on his system was too great, and he slipped down into recharge before he could speak again, eyes closing and fingers going slack.

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Code-Repair (Backdated to Jan 2-3, semi-closed)

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Sorry, comp froze last night

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