Who: C.L.U.
Where: Edge of the City
When: Now
What: Here comes trouble. Clu, having been discovered by Flynn and Alan-One, is finally nudged to return to the Grid and the City
Warnings: ... Non-comedic sociopathy? Megalomania and obsessive behavior.
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This is how it sounds )
Reflexes that didn't bother asking permission had her disc drawn and glowing blue in guard position at the first glimpse of bright poison yellow as she turned a corner, all other processes dumped. She'd turned to put the wall at her back. Clu, you glitch-- Not an innocent, this time, and not Flynn wearing a younger face. Clu as he was after the betrayals.
Second chances, yes, and peace on the Grid, and this one could not be the same one who'd so thoroughly trapped her. It only mattered a very little right now. She desperately hoped this version didn't recognize her, but if he said one ill word about Tron she would find a way to shut him up permanently.
[Sorry for the long delay, Yori really didn't want to run into any Clu! But I think it'll be interesting, so she's out of luck.]
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"Greetings, program." Mild, calm, and easy. Until he found out more about her.
[Thaaat's okay, I ran into a long delay myself. >.<]
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His pretense at courtesy didn't fool her. But she overrode the initial panic to make a fair pretense of her own, forcing herself to deactivate and replace her disk on its port. It never had done any good to attack Clu head-on.
"Greetings, Clu." At the moment her acting ability didn't stretch to titles. Not with him. But she did shrug in what might be taken for a very faint apology. "That color makes me think of viruses." Like, for instance, the former sysadmin himself.
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"May I ask your designation and ... purpose?"
Something about her told him to be very wary of her, more than he was of most programs. And something about her was familiar, too. Not to the part of him that was System Administrator, but to the part of him that came from Flynn.
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She neglected to mention her name or her actual designed function or her very personal experience with that last. Not by accident.
Yori desperately wanted to snatch out her lightjet baton and be elsewhere, but a need for information came out victorious. "How long have you been here?" she asked. "I don't know what anyone's told you about the place."
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His jaw clenched, but he didn't say anything on that subject.
"Not long," he did say. "I only arrived in the city less than a microcycle ago."
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Yori nodded thoughtfully. "But you remember everything at the Portal, before that? Some programs have trouble accessing recent events when they arrive." Usually because they'd been tortured or reprogrammed or had never experienced it in the first place, none of which should apply to Clu. Still, it explained why he was...a little less stupidly overconfident.
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Some programs. Flynn had mentioned some of this, but now he wondered if this program could be of use in further explaining what was going on. Especially since she seemed at least a little more aware, or perhaps it was only greater self-assurance. Whatever else Flynn projected, it wasn't always or even often that, anymore.
"What sort of trouble has there been? Accessing recent events." Please, do tell him more. More information is always useful.
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However, it was pointless not to answer a question that was common knowledge to programs and on the network. Seeing his reaction might be helpful to someone eventually.
"The last thing a lot of programs remember is when your army murdered them," she informed him. The note of cheer was purely for provocation. "Unless of course they remember being forced to do the murdering. Not many programs left to remember you fondly."
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Analysis mode. No, this didn't fit with anyone he knew or remembered as being in his Grid. Which meant this hatred was carried over from a different Grid, a different himself.
Now that was a disconcerting thought to be abruptly forced to confront.
"Rectified," he corrected, almost absently. "The system was cluttered, breaking down. It needed to be corrected."
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She lifted her eyebrows in challenge. "That's a glitching easy target, isn't it? Have a cast. And I'm a Basic, after all; you claimed to be thinking of us. When it suited you."
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Clu even smiled a little. Not happily. "The inside perspective."
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Her hands were shaking, terror and rage and pure overpowering hatred that could not help but escape in words if she denied it actions, hundreds of cycles of dammed arguments spilling free. "You aren't the Users-blast-it definition of glitch-eaten perfection, crash you! How could you have been? Flynn made you after himself, and what kind of model is that? Big ideas, no sense. Crash it. You were never meant to do this alone."
Fury was coiled through her whole frame now, trembling. "Flynn might not have accepted or understood us, or believed we were capable of choice, but you were worse; you stole our choices from us, you glitch."
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Something he'd have to look at later. He wasn't sure how good of an idea it was.
"In the absence of other criteria, I made my own," he shrugged, his voice still quiet and even, the same as it had been for at least the last several exchanges. "You might be surprised how many Basics agreed with me. Flynn never was able to settle on any set of detailed instructions or a definition of perfection."
Which brought back a few memories, too. "The first time I knew him... the first time I knew what knowing was, I hadn't been in existence for a microcycle then. He told me I would create the perfect system. And then ... nothing. NOthing useful or long-term," he amended. "For some time."
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She flicked the description of Flynn's failure aside with a sharp motion. "We've established Flynn didn't know what he was doing. How does that give you any excuse for betraying us?"
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