thisavrou | audio; a warning

[The audio message is posted to the network at midday. Alan’s voice is measured and serious, though some may catch a certain strained quality undercutting his words.]

This is Alan Bradley speaking. I’m posting this as a warning about one of the ship’s new arrivals -- a program named Clu. [There’s a link to Clu’s page on the MID directory here, which includes an image of the program in question. Those who were present the previous month may also recognize the name from the emergency post Alan had made some weeks earlier. For those who weren’t:] He was created as the admin of a server called the Grid. A few of you may have seen the Grid firsthand through the Ingress on Amissis-Re, in which case you know what he’s capable of. He rewrote programs against their will en masse and kept his own User trapped on the Grid for years. [Some of the anger Alan’s trying to keep in check slips through here and still lingers as he continues.] He’s a danger to everyone on the ship -- especially to any inorganics with accessible code. His only interest in rewriting programs on the Grid was to make them completely obedient and loyal to him and there’s no reason to believe he won’t do the same to any AI he can manipulate here.

Don’t let your guard down around him and don’t leave him alone with any of the AI onboard if you can help it. Death may not always be permanent here, but what Clu could do might be.

[There’s a pause that might be a sigh and then:] I think we can all agree that it’s a theory better left untested.

[And on that note, the audio message ends. He won't address Clu directly here; the program has an MID like everyone else. If he wants to respond directly, he can.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ Wash doesn't believe what he's hearing at first. Some kind of awful joke, right? Because he knows enough about this Clu from everything that happened last month to know that him showing up here would be so far from good.

Except, it's clear that Alan's not making some horrible joke post, no matter what he'd prefer to believe. He's bristling by the time the message is over. Why does this shit keep happening? Sometimes it seems like the Ingress pulls in people specifically to fuck with certain others on the ship. ]

You've got to be fucking kidding me. He's here now?!

[ Repetitive, considering Alan just explained the whole thing, but Wash's anger doesn't care. ]

What can we do? Is there any way to prevent him from pulling any of this? Or is it just another thing we have to deal with around here now, not being able to leave inorganics out of our sights?

He is. And unless the captains are willing to enforce some kind of preventative measures themselves, I don’t know how many options we have. [If Alan had his way, Clu would be either in the hold or in cryo for the duration of his time on the ship. But given how the captains had handled past incidents, he doubts any such action will be taken.]

Clu's only one person, though. He's the one who needs to be monitored, not every inorganic on the ship.

Have you brought it up with them yet?

[ Not that he trusts the captains to take any preventative measures. Even at the risk of the inorganic crew. They won't do anything until they actually see a problem, and considering they didn't really seem to see any problem with the idea of Rinzler's code being messed with? He hasn't got high hopes on this case. ]

Fair. But he's going to notice that he's being watched. That is, if he hasn't already noticed this message. Is that likely to keep him on decent behaviour? Or more likely to egg him on into causing problems?

[ Because Wash is entirely prepared to keep an eye on the creep as often as possible in either case, but he'd like to know how likely it'll be that he'll have to pull his gun out. ]

I have. I’m still waiting for a response. [His grim tone says enough about how likely he finds the idea of the captains actually taking action. He’ll argue for all his worth that Clu is too much of a threat to be allowed to operate unwatched and unhindered, but given that these are the same captains who allowed one crewmember to torture another to death before taking action, he has slim hopes anything will come of it.]

I don’t know. I hope it’ll make him think twice about trying to manipulate other people on the ship, but if he’s set on trying to reprogram Rinzler and Tron, I don’t think anyone’s disapproval will stop him from trying. But their actions might. At the very least, people knowing about the threat will make it harder for him to follow through without being stopped.

Not surprising. They're not likely to do anything about it, anyway. Not unless they see proof of his behaviour.

[ And maybe not even then. Which only serves to anger Wash further over the situation because this is putting a good chunk of the crew at risk, some of whom are important to him. ]

I hope you're right about that. We have enough problems around here without having to re-add reprogramming to the pile. I'll keep an eye on him where I can and intervene if necessary. I'm sure others will, too.

Thank you. I hope that doesn’t become necessary. [However doubtful Alan finds that possibility.]

audio; a warning

audio, private;

audio, private;

audio, private;

audio, private;

audio, private;

audio, private;