08. [text]

[ifightfor]

"Breach" phenomenon insightful if disruptive.

Query: Occurrence of such phenomena frequent?

[private to the Admiral]

Thank you.

Comments

Spam

[hopeless_hacker]

[Toshiko had spent her time since the end of the flood reading and hating everything, and personally she felt like she could have used a couple of days off from being a Warden before she could get back into the swing of things, but then the knock sounded and - well. No rest for the wicked. She got up off the sofa and headed to the door, ambivalent about the figure she found in the corridor.]

Rinzler. [And then it drifted back to her; he'd threatened Slick over nothing, escalating idle nonsense into a real possibility of violence. She sighed and stepped back.] Come in.

Spam

[ifightfor]

[He stepped inside with the caution due to new territory, looking beyond Toshiko at the interior of her cabin. There was no reason to suspect an ambush here, but the tick you stopped suspecting threats from anywhere was the tick you got derezzed.

His attention shifted back to his Warden within the moment. Reaching down, he detached an object--bound up awkwardly in shreds of cloth--from one thigh, then offered it to Toshiko hilt-first, with a bow.

One of Rayne's knives.]

Spam

[hopeless_hacker]

[She hesitated for the smallest moment, because her life long before the Barge had taught her to be cautious about people holding knives anywhere near her - but it was an offer, not a threat. She accepted it with a nod and set it down on the counter.]

Thank you. How did you get this?

Spam

[ifightfor]

[He straightened, pantomiming a disarm of a hostile opponent. He'd taken it, of course. From who required a little more explanation, and he reached from the communications device he kept with him. A tap of the fingers brought up Slick's image on the screen, and he held it out for her perusal.]

Spam

[hopeless_hacker]

[She was already almost certain who she was going to be looking at, so the screen didn't need much more than a glance.]

Of course. What exactly happened? [And then, just in case he decided to start miming that too:] I can wait for you to write it down. I don't suppose you'd like a coffee?

Spam

[ifightfor]

[That was not precisely the response he'd been expecting. He stood there for a long moment with his communicator in-hand, staring at his Warden, before giving a slow shake of his head--no coffee.

Instead, he switched to the device's text function and cleared whatever had previously been on the screen, typing with his usual meticulous rapidity.

And still standing practically in the doorway.]

Spam

[hopeless_hacker]

[Well, Tosh definitely wasn't getting through this without caffeine. It was only when she reached the sink that she realised he was still standing there on the threshold like a semi-invited vampire.]

...come in. And close the door behind you.

Spam

[ifightfor]

[What are social behavior? Rinzler lifted his head from what he was doing, manner--if anything--faintly surprised at being disturbed, then did as he was bid.

Barely. The door did get closed, and he shuffled a few more feet into Toshiko's cabin before he resumed writing his incident report. Priorities, after all.]

Spam

[hopeless_hacker]

Thank you.

[Time passed where the only sounds were of her making a drink and Rinzler entering his message. She felt tired - not of him, exactly, but of the challenge she'd been presented in rehabilitating him. If she could simply reprogram him, or deprogram him, it would be relatively easy - strip away Clu's perversions of his program and make him complete again. It wasn't her job to make him function like a human being because despite whatever body the Admiral had wrapped him in, he wasn't one. She hadn't attempted to make Aleera human and she'd graduated just fine, although how qualified she was as a Warden was up for discussion.

Could she work on his level? Attempt a code-level intervention? How? She stirred her coffee in silence.]

Spam

[ifightfor]

[The trick would be more in coercing Tron back out from wherever he'd been trapped under all the layers of code and misdirection Clu had used to keep him from reasserting himself at an inconvenient moment. Rinzler's self-denial was a powerful force in maintaining that prison.

But Flynn's driving force in creating the Grid was that anything was possible. Anything could be made possible on the digital frontier. The Barge was scarcely less permissive.

Rinzler finished his report without flourish, considering it for a moment before adding one last line and padding over to Toshiko to offer it to her. It detailed his encounter with Slick and a "virus"--pictures of Eddie Brock were included--in his characteristic clipped language. The final line stood out:]

«Request reassignment to Level Zero for unauthorized assault on other Inmates.»

Spam

[hopeless_hacker]

[She spent longer looking at the report than she needed to read it, then donned her best poker face and offered him his communicator back.]

You need to explain to me why you did this. You overreacted to a threat that didn't even exist beyond the sort of rhetorical bullshit that gets thrown around on a daily basis. I couldn't even call it a preventive measure. By inciting violence, you created a threat to the security of the Barge that didn't exist before, directly contradicting your stated purpose. Why?

Spam

[ifightfor]

[He accepted the device, dismissing the write-up with a flick of a hand without looking away from her.

He'd wanted to, like a cat wants to hunt. Slick was a noisy, useless part of the Barge community that was better off silenced, like half a dozen other threats the Wardens wouldn't deal with with the finality they needed.

But mostly he'd wanted to chase something. And kill it. Not that that was a permissible reason.]

«Degree of actual threat unknown. Proper assessment required escalation of situation and recontainment.»

[He hesitated a moment, fingers splayed over the screen of his communicator, then his attention seemed to drift to a spot well beyond Toshiko. The continual rumble that accompanied him dropped in pitch, his circuits flickering off. On again.

One of his hands spidered over the communicator's keyboard, as with a life of its own.]

«H   e     was   wrong.»

Spam

[hopeless_hacker]

[She read the words as they stuttered out, and hid the trace of a smile behind her coffee cup.]

Yes. He was. What he said to Sarah was disgusting, and Brock isn't much better. That doesn't make it right that you attacked them, which I think you knew going into it, but yes. He was wrong.

Spam

[ifightfor]

[He didn't bother erasing the words he'd already typed; it was more important to speak before he was caught by the watchdog routines and shut down. Again.

The rumble vanished entirely as the circuits flickered over from red to white. Rinzler's deadman-switch program picked up on the audio change and chimed an alarm to Toshiko's device, for all the good it did.

He kept typing.]

«I t   w as     wrong too but
    it   want ed   an excuse I'm   sorry.»

[She was trying her best, after all. It wasn't her fault Rinzler was experienced in building a case on thin pretenses to pursue whatever objective he desired.]

Spam

[hopeless_hacker]

[Her smile grew a little, and she didn't try to hide it. Initially there had been some uncertainty, she hadn't wanted to assume, but she knew exactly who she was talking to now.]

I know. Believe me, I know.

[She understood that Rinzler had wants and drives beyond the strictures Clu had placed on him (or perhaps because of them); the Games had been an outlet, of sorts, that didn't exist for him any more. 'Proper assessment required escalation of situation.' Pssht. She moved a step closer.]

Don't be sorry.

Spam

[ifightfor]

[That helmeted head swung toward her as she approached--and he reached up to his collar, keying the helmet controls off and letting it fold back and away from his concerned expression.

And the scar. Still that ugly, sparkling scar. He shook his head a little, helplessly, at the idea he not be sorry for what had happened, hardly sparing a glance down as he typed.]

«I am   s till responsible for   w h at it does st i l l     remember. You
  do y our best.»