when your God betrays you (Closed)

[fight4theusers]

Who: Tron fight4theusers and Alan Bradley alan_1
When: After Alan's attempt to recode Rinzler
Where: The Library
What: Tron confronts his User about his liberties with Rinzler's code
Warnings: References to brainwashing

Tron made his way quickly to the library after contacting his User. He'd calculated that the place would be relatively empty and quiet, a neutral location to meet. Easily defensible, easily escapable, some part of him noted, though he tries to push that away. He has no reason to fear.

Questions, too many questions cycle through his processor. He's seen the posts on the network, heard the rumors of what happened... what Alan had attemped. Conflicting reports, second-hand accounts. Had Rinzler been altered? Had his code been... rectified? Tron could try to contact his double as well, but talking to Rinzler was difficult at the best of times. He had no idea of his state, now.

Worse, still, was what he'd said to Rinzler on their last conversation. He'd encouraged the other to trust their User, to know that he'd never do anything that Rinzler did not want. He'd told him to go to Alan-1 for help, for repairs. Not this, not... pulling out part of his mind.

Finding a table in a quiet corner of the library, Tron sat heavily, his circuits pulsing dimly in agitation.

Comments

[alan_1]

[Alan makes it to the library only a few minutes after Tron. It doesn’t take him long to find the program, the steady flaring of his circuits marking his location in a corner of the room. Alan hesitates for only a moment before approaching. He doesn’t sit across from the program, instead stopping a few feet away from the table. He had seen Tron’s comments on the network and even if he hadn’t, there’s plenty of reason for the program to feel uncertain around him right now.]

Tron. [The greeting is quiet and that has little to do with the location Tron has chosen for this conversation.]

[fight4theusers]

[Tron looks up upon Alan's approach, his expression unreadable. What can he say, how can he even begin to ask all the questions racing through his mind?

After a long moment, he stands, facing his User, still separated by a few feet of empty distance.]

Tell me your side. I've been hearing too much from everyone else. I want to know what you intended.

[alan_1]

[It’s as fair a request as Alan could have expected.] I wasn’t trying to change who he was. [It’s the first and perhaps the only thing he thinks to deny. The others were justified in their accusations that Alan had sought to alter Rinzler’s code, but the motives they ascribe to him are all wrong. He didn’t want Rinzler to be obedient. He never meant to lobotomize the program. He was only trying to help him.]

I thought… [He sighs and looks away, already ashamed by his own naivete.] I thought his behavior -- the attacks, the threats -- I thought it was caused by an error in his code. I just wanted to fix it.

[He looks back at Tron, the program who must have understood the extent of his mistake more than anyone else on the ship.] If I had known what was really causing it… [He shakes his head.] I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have even tried.

[fight4theusers]

[Tron listens, trying to understand as best he can. His User's reasons, while they make logical sense, still don't quite change what he'd tried to do.]

You could have asked.

[His voice is quiet, dangerously controlled.] Even if he couldn't tell you, I could have... I used to be him, remember?

[alan_1]

I know. [And he also knows why he hadn’t: he had suspected that Tron would object. That he would try and stop him. And at the time, when a recode had seemed the only way to prevent more bloodshed on either side, keeping the other program in the dark had seemed a necessary measure.

Ironic, how he had blocked his ears to the voice he most needed to hear.]

If I had asked you… what would you have said?

[fight4theusers]

[Ah, there it is, near-confirmation that Alan was trying to keep Tron willfully ignorant of his plan. He knew he could have asked. But he didn't.]

I would have told you the truth. Told you everything I could about what Clu did to him... to me. [His circuits brighten in agitation as the memories surge unbidden;

rewrite ripping through his code, every edit a blaze of agony, fighting to stay conscious, to hold onto himself, losing purpose and will and directive as circuits flashed blue-red-blue while promises are whispered by a gold-gilded tongue that everything will be perfect if he'd only let it in

and he shudders, forcing it back. He can't focus on those details.] I would have told you what he... we'd been rectified to be. What Clu wanted. Why Rinzler reacts the way he does, at least what I can understand now.

[Another bright flare of circuits, and Tron's fingers curl into fists.] And why... why both of us, why any Program would fear a forced rewrite.

[It's nothing like the edits and upgrades he welcomed from both Alan-1 and Flynn. Nothing like sending his disc up the I/O tower and waiting with awe and wonder for what his User would send him.]

[alan_1]

[Alan listens in silence. The strain in the program’s voice as he speaks of Clu brings with it a familiar pain. It’s the same sorrow Alan feels when Rinzler flinches away at a sudden movement or refuses to meet his eye: the knowledge of his own failure to protect them. That’s what he had been trying to change this time. And he had still failed.

He speaks quietly.] At the time, I thought I would be undoing what Clu had done to him -- to both of you. Not repeating it. [And he had thought so right up until he had seen the true nature of Rinzler’s code. He had known then that he wouldn’t be undoing Clu’s programming if he went through with it. If anything, he’d be finishing what Flynn’s program had started.]

I know that I was wrong about his code, but… if I wasn’t -- if all of this were something that I could fix without changing who Rinzler was or coding out his free will… should I really have chosen not to? If he was suffering and I could stop it… [He trails off, not quite willing to finish the sentence, though the question's intent is clear: 'would it have mattered if Rinzler were afraid?']

[fight4theusers]

[Tron feels as though his code is glitching, internal systems warring in a twisting, nauseating mass. Every instinct is to trust his User, to try to understand why, to accept that his reasons were just and right and good.

But he knows... he knows that his User was wrong, and telling him so is nearly a physical pain.]

If it were something you could fix... what did you think you'd fix? The fact that he's attacking, that he's killing? Would you take away his ability to fight? To determine a threat and respond to it?

[He forces himself to take a step back, realizing that he's been advancing on Alan in his agitation as he speaks.] You wrote us to be fighters. To run independently. To determine threats to the system and wipe them out. Clu... he only enhanced that. Perfected it. [He spits the word out, his expression twisting in a grimace.] Made him... me, fight for him instead of the Users.

If you try to code that out, to rewrite him to not be a fighter, then you won't even have Tron anymore, let alone Rinzler.

[alan_1]

[Alan doesn’t back away as Tron advances towards him. He’d had to push down more than enough fear during the attempt at correction itself and now the feeling doesn’t register at all. Too tired, too frustrated, and too confused for it to mean anything anymore. He just listens and tries to understand.

Tron’s choice of words are just as revealing as they are disturbing. ”You wrote us to be fighters. To determine threats and wipe them out.” Alan's first instinct is to respond that he didn’t know that’s what he was doing, but that’s not true, is it? He wrote security programs to protect and monitor the system and that meant coding them to isolate and remove anything that could prove dangerous to its operation.]

When you were on the ENCOM system and a program was marked as a threat… I programmed you to find and kill them. [It isn’t a question. Just a realization come far too late. Alan tries to hide the sick feeling that accompanies the revelation, the renewed knowledge of just how willfully ignorant he had been. It seems so obvious now -- what did he think he had programmed them for? -- but he hadn’t wanted to even consider it until now.]

Is that why you think he's attacking people? Because they threaten him first? [Rinzler had denied it when Alan had first asked him those two months ago. Had Alan been wrong to believe him? And if it wasn’t true, then why? Why would Rinzler lie if the lie would lead to this?]

[fight4theusers]

[Tron nods in acknowledgement to Alan's realization, hoping that his User is beginning to understand, now.]

I think that Rinzler is more likely to respond with violence to a threat. Clu enhanced that part of him.

I don't think he's actively seeking out people to attack. He has no reason to do so, unless they've been coded as a threat in his processes. That's why I voted for lenient punishment for him, and I've urged him to allow his memories to be shown. I think he was attacked first, threatened, and that's why he's been fighting back.

He won't say as much, and I don't know why. But I know how his processes work. [They were his own, after all, for many cycles.]

[alan_1]

[Alan thinks back to his first week on the ship, the crewmembers coming forward to report of Rinzler threatening or even attacking them. The threats, perhaps, can be explained: from what Alan’s seen on the network, Rinzler can be standoffish by default and that demeanor coupled with his appearance and sound could be seen as threatening even without a violent motive. Or Rinzler could have been deliberately trying to intimidate his crewmates with no intention of following up unprovoked. But what isn't so easily accounted for is Peter's testimony; his claim that Rinzler had not only tried to kill him but also had gone on to threaten to harm someone else just by association didn’t seem to have any logical explanation.]

What about Peter? When I first arrived on the ship, he told me Rinzler had attacked him for no reason and then threatened someone close to him.

[He wants to believe what Tron is telling him. He wants to believe that there’s a logical reason behind Rinzler’s behavior and thus a logical solution. But to believe Tron would be to believe the worst about Peter. And though Peter had shown himself to be dangerous when pressed, he had always presented his actions to Alan as an effort to protect the people on the ship. But if Peter had struck the first blow… had Alan been wrong to believe him?

His question is blunt:] Do you think he was lying?

[fight4theusers]

[Tron considers for a long moment, glancing down and away. He's seen Peter's rants on the network, heard his testimony at the trial. Peter is his roommate, but he's barely even seen him since this whole incident began.]

I don't know.

[It's as honest an answer as he can give, not certain of Peter's motives.]

I don't know why he would. Maybe he doesn't think he is. But I also don't think Rinzler would attack without a clear threat.

I tried to convince Rinzler to show his disc--his memories--to prove what had actually happened, but he refused. [Could not access his memories, truthfully, but Tron had told him a way around that, and he wouldn't consider it.]

I need to talk to Peter, too.