You'll come back when they call you

[notglitching]

Who: Alan, Rinzler, and mostly-open!
When: May 14-16
Where: From the planetary Ingress to the Grid and back
What: Rinzler gets stuck in his old life and people go to get him back.
Warnings: Rinzler things and Tron canon. Depression, violence, NPC-murder, and copious references to genocide, mindscrew, etc. All culminating in... BSOD by warm fuzzies?


When Rinzler had first left the Grid, getting back was all that mattered to him. More—it was all he was capable of caring about. Directive and function were locked in alignment, every line created by a thousand cycles of correction pulling him the same way. Rinzler was the Grid's enforcer. Clu's weapon. He was perfect, he was right, and he belonged at his administrator's side.

Since then, he's spent months trapped in a user shell. He's spilled blood and lost fights, flown through half a dozen different skies and learned what stars look like. He's spoken. He's been listened to. He's shattered to a thousand pieces on lost memories, and cut himself on the truth they left behind. He's killed users. He's met [his] [Tron's] creator, and disobeyed his will.

It's painfully fitting for that to be what brings him back to the beginning. Rinzler is home, Rinzler is back, and everything is how it should be except him. Directive is a frayed leash, function warped by too much time spent wanting. Clu's voice still locks every process to obedience, but even as he bows and follows, Rinzler can't stop the squirming twist of terror underneath. He'll kill Clu's enemies. He'll serve exactly, precisely as directed. But the enforcer has always been unstable, always in need of fixing (breaking) to keep him working as desired.

Sooner or later, Clu will open up his code to check. And then, it won't matter how well he's fit himself back to the mold. His programmer will correct each flaw and imperfection, remove those memories and reset him to automation.

It's nothing Rinzler can fight. Nothing he can run from here, and even if he tried, there's nowhere to go. The ship already feels much too distant, but Rinzler remembers enough to know his absence will only bring relief. He'd been a disruption. A threat. Tron was the one the users wanted, and even that had never been enough before.

No one is coming, and nothing will change.

[[ooc: this is open to anyone signing on for the rescue effort here! As below, prod freely with any questions. Alan's monitoring things from the Ingress-side, and will make sure people get where they're trying to go.]]

Comments

[alan_1]

[Rinzler doesn’t answer and though it isn’t a surprise, it still leaves Alan feeling adrift. He’s all too aware that Rinzler doesn’t want to see him, that fear is the only reason he doesn’t respond in the negative. Perhaps Alan should just leave without an answer. But Rinzler’s already a ghost on the ship, invisible even as Alan knows he’s there. If he doesn’t speak with him now, he may not get another chance.

His hands lower to his sides. It feels like there are a thousand things he’d like to say, but most of them can be put into two words:]

I’m sorry.

[It’s too little, too late, but it still has to be said.] What I did to you… I should never have altered your code against your will. Especially not to change something so central to your function. [And that’s not even touching on the code’s actual structure, what it would have actually taken to force the change: either a full rewrite or the targeted deletion of what few fragments of free will remain. It would have been horrific either way.]

I thought it was my only option when I should never have considered it an option in the first place.

[notglitching]

[He's sorry.

His user's sorry, and Rinzler barely makes it past those words, past the twisting, awful snarl of mismatch that follows. He's sorry, but he shouldn't be, that's wrong. He's sorry, but he's lying. Alan-one is a user and Rinzler is a tool, made to be taken apart and built back to new standards. Rinzler is abandonware, left behind and unwanted, and Alan-one is the only programmer who'd cared enough to pick him up and claim him.

("Make you perfect.")

He didn't (doesn't) want that, but that's his error. His glitch. Rinzler loathes it; Rinzler wants to run. Rinzler should be grateful. There's no reason for his [programmer] to hold regret for correcting any fault. But his noise is stuttering in harsh, broken gasps, circuits shivering with nausea. The helmet lowers, but it's not a nod. Spine curved, mask bowed, apology/submission—but he can't stop his fists from curling or his weight from edging back, and he needs to stop, he needs to get away.

He'd tried (so much, so hard) but he'd failed. He still wants the words to be real, and that hurts more than anything.]

[alan_1]

[Alan watches the program’s head bow and his hands curl into fists, trying (always trying) to understand what’s going through the program’s mind. Is he angry? Afraid? Alan feels like he can’t trust any of his own conclusions, not when he’s already been so wrong before. He should say more. He shouldn’t. He doesn’t know if he’ll get a chance to speak to Rinzler again, but isn’t that for the best? But he can’t leave, not yet. He still has to understand.]

Do you remember when we spoke in the garden? I asked you why you had attacked those people. [But it had really just been Peter, hadn’t it? Bel hadn’t provided their account until later and theirs came with a reason. Everything else had been threats not acted on, speculation. Murky waters.] If it was because they threatened you first, you could have told me. Even if it wasn’t what you thought I wanted to hear -- I just wanted a reason. [The words aren’t right and Alan knows it. He sounds like he’s blaming Rinzler for what happened, but that isn’t what he wants -- he’s just trying to put the pieces together, trying to find what he should have done, even if it’s too late now to take anything back.]

You still can tell me. [Maybe not now, but the offer is there. Whatever caused Rinzler to lash out the way he did, he doesn’t have to deal with it alone.]

[notglitching]

[The helmet stays bowed. The fists stay clenched. Rinzler remembers being called and questioned, Alan-one demanding an accounting for his faults. Rinzler remembers knowing better than to answer. Better, always better to accept the punishment he was given than to return an excuse. Especially when the error was in fighting of his own volition.

He hadn't wanted to have that taken away. He hadn't wanted to be broken back to automation. But what the user's saying now... was that the reason? Not violence, but disobedience, not the harm he'd committed toward the other users, but the answers he'd failed to give his. His fault, for failing to comply. His chance, to make up for it now. All he has to do is admit the error. Flag the fault. All he has to do is confess to his programmer that his ability to choose needs fixing.

It fits, it matches, it makes sense. It's just the kind of test that Clu might set. But Alan-one isn't Clu, and the user's opened up his code already. He knows everything that's wrong with Rinzler, and the real question isn't why he'd chosen to recode him. It's why the user stopped.

Or if he had.

...no. The shivering of light grows stronger, circuits flickering bright/dark, and the sparks of blue that waver in beneath his colors only add to the rising panic. No, he doesn't want to think about that. He doesn't need to. Rinzler knows he was edited, but not how. Rinzler knows he wasn't wanted (wasn't real), but he doesn't want to be Tron either, and it's sick terror as much as defiance that jerks the black helmet to the side, over and over. This is a trick. A test. A lie. He is, and he doesn't want it, and he doesn't know what to do.]

[alan_1]

[Alan’s expression changes from concern to alarm as Rinzler’s circuits flicker and then change, those telltale flashes of blue sparking briefly through the default red-orange. The shaking of the program’s head (a refusal, even now) is harsh and convulsive, and it won’t stop.]

Rinzler, listen to me, you don’t have to answer--

[It’s so instinctive to step forward, to try and help, he doesn’t even remember his promise until it’s too late.]

[notglitching]

[Rinzler has to listen. Rinzler can't answer. The words are unnecessary, pointless, but twist far too sharply in the enforcer's code. But Rinzler doesn't have time to parse the match—not what his user meant, and not what it might mean to him.

His programmer steps forward, and there's no code stopping Rinzler as he flinches back.

There's no ground, either.

Weight shifts, a stumbling lurch out of lockup, and the transparent edge of the platform gives way to emptiness. Rinzler falls, the shrieking power of the storm whiting out all senses, and the sick certainty of error overriding the rest. He didn't want to go back. He didn't want to, but it's all he was good for, and even the hand that reaches for a baton is lagged and jerky and too slow. It wouldn't have made a difference. A surge of light comes up from the inverted portal, and a moment later, Alan's program is gone.]

[alan_1]

[It happens in the blink of an eye. One second the program is standing locked in his rigid stance and the next he’s flinching back, too quickly for Alan to even formulate a warning.]

Rinzler! [But it’s too late and the program is already falling, the platform left vacant before the name is even fully spoken. Alan stands, stunned, but only for a moment. He closes the distance to the precipice as fast as he can, panic rising with every step, hoping desperately that he’ll find circuit-lined hands still grasping the edge -- but it’s a hope that proves empty. There’s no sign of Rinzler, only the vast maw of the portal below.

Alan stands frozen with shock, already feeling sick as the consequences of what he’s seen solidify in his mind. The portal will take Rinzler back to the Grid and it will be a Grid where Clu is still alive and in control. And if Alan could see the damage to Rinzler’s code, the holes in the functions meant to restrict and blind, then Clu could as well. All it would take is a single look and Clu will do what Alan could not.

Alan takes a step back from the platform’s edge, pulse pounding in his ears. He can’t let this happen. Not again. He thinks, briefly, of jumping himself, but he knows he doesn’t have the means of getting Rinzler back with an entire system working against him. He needs more people. A list begins to form in his mind of crewmembers who might-- no, that’s too slow, he can’t wait for individuals to respond. A public post on the network, then. There have to be some people among the crew who will be willing to help and if there aren’t enough, he’ll find some way to convince them. It’s not much, but it’s a plan, and that’s enough to press the panic down for the moment -- even if he’s sure his hands are shaking as he reaches for his MID...]