thisavrou | audio; march 7th

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audio; march 7th

[The recorded voice that addresses the crew through the MID is affable and slightly apologetic.]

Hello everyone. This is Alan Bradley speaking. I have a couple of questions for the crew, and I think I might as well use this opportunity to introduce myself to those I haven’t met yet: As I said, my name is Alan Bradley, and I’ve been assigned as one of the ship’s MID Technicians. I’m afraid I don’t have any particularly interesting abilities outside of computer programming, but that should be enough for me to do my job here. Some of you may have already met Sam Flynn, my godson from back home, as well as Tron and Rinzler, two, ah, programs that I’ve written. [Is that how he’s supposed to introduce them? It’s quite clear from the misgiving in his tone that he isn’t completely sure. He isn’t even certain he can correctly refer to them as two programs if you want to get technical, but explaining that would be far too involved for a simple introduction, so he’ll have to settle for the potential inaccuracy.] If you ever need to contact me, I’m always available at my personal inbox. [A slight chuckle.] I guess we all are since these things are strapped to our wrists.

Introductions aside, I was hoping someone could tell me who I should see about getting a new pair of glasses? Mine seem to have been lost as I was coming through the portal here. And seeing as my job on the ship will probably require spending most of my day staring at lines of code, I’d like to get a replacement sooner rather than later.

Speaking of my job here, I’m also looking for suggestions for programs people would like added to their MIDs, or improvements made to the interface. I’ll admit, the technology here is quite a bit more advanced than what I usually worked with back home, so anyone with more technological know-how is welcome to offer guidance: other programmers, engineers, AI… I’d be grateful for any advice.

Just leave a reply if you want to get in touch. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

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[”Interrogation Tech” sounds rather ominous, especially in the context of asking to “talk” with him. But the message is polite enough and the observation deck is a public area -- that suggests “conversation” rather than “interrogation.”]

I can be there in the next hour. Does that work for you?

[sorry, Alan, Bel didn't coin the name.~ maybe the light, ambiguous alto makes up for it.]

Perfectly well. I'll see you there.

[the crewperson waiting on the deck when Alan arrives is several inches shorter than he, and looks ten years younger, but strides forward with an easy physical confidence that belies an apparent age gap; the smile, though wry, is one of greeting.]

Welcome to the Moira, Crewman Bradley. I can see the family resemblance.

[it's even more obvious up close. his stance, the set of the jaw, even the eyes. a meticulous man, a man who looks for answers.... well, there are plenty of questions to be had.]

[Alan arrives on the observation deck in his usual timely manner. He isn’t sure who he’s looking for -- the voice on the MID hadn’t given him much to work with -- but fortunately, his contact strides forward to meet him on their own. Alan can’t tell much about them by appearances besides the fact that they’re human and seemingly affable; that’s more than enough to have a conversation, in any case.

He smiles at their remark.] I’m expecting to get that a lot in the coming days. [Even if he hadn’t explained his connection to Tron in the network post, it would be hard for anyone to miss the resemblance between them; just looking at Tron is like seeing into a mirror thirty years into the past.] I take it you’ve met both programs, then?

[plenty enough for Bel, too. the gender thing comes up, or it doesn't; as long as the interaction is civil and unpresuming, it's not important.]

I have. If you ever get Rinzler's helmet off, let me know. We're all wondering what makes him tick.

[waves a hand to the deck's border, the edge of space; walk with them, Alan?]

I take it you hadn't met them until the Ingress got you. That's not uncommon. We're crewed by aliens and clones and giant robots and talking rocks -- most of those are unknown where I come from. There's been surprises for everyone.

[assessing look] Rinzler put Tron and myself in medbay the first day he arrived. I'd like to tell you about that, but first I wanted to get your view on them, and on their situation so far.

I wouldn’t hold my breath on that if I were you, [he replies, smiling apologetically.] It probably wouldn’t be anything you hadn’t seen before anyways. [Tron and Rinzler are the same program, after all. Just different versions.]

No, I hadn’t. I only knew Tron as lines of code on a monitor. [From the sounds of it, there may be even more surprising lifeforms on the ship. Talking rocks?

The smile disappears from Alan’s face when Bel describes their introduction to Rinzler.] I’m sorry. I... didn’t know that. [Tron hadn’t even told him. Of course, Tron seemed to avoid talking about Rinzler at all, and Alan can understand why it would be an uncomfortable topic for him, to say the very least.]

I know they’re both my programs. And I know that makes me responsible for them. [Whether or not Alan asked it of them, both programs seem to recognize him as their authority. He knows he has more influence over them than anyone else on the ship and if it came down to it... Well, he’d rather not think about more permanent ways of altering their behavior.]

The fact that both of them are able to function outside of their system means that they’re both growing beyond their code. And Rinzler… [Alan sighs.] I know he’s been causing problems for others on the ship, to put it lightly. But if he's capable of developing past his code, then there's hope he can change his behavior without... ["Without recoding," Alan almost says. But he doesn't want to raise that as a known possibility if it isn't one already.] Without other interference.

You didn't know you were programming an AI? It'd have been some incredibly advanced work for the R&D in my era, much less back in your day. [gathered as much from conversations with Sam and the programs, but it's important to hear it from the 'user' himself. adds, as an amused aside] Not to mention the hardware.

No reason you should have heard of it. [can imagine Tron had more to catch up on with his User than that, and of course Rinzler wouldn't have said anything. pauses on the walkway to study Alan's face.

at first, his answer takes Bel back to the Jackson's Whole mission, the wolf-faced supersoldier all of sixteen years old, the hand-wringing self-involvement of the geneticist who'd wanted to put her down to spare her the anguish of life in that monstrous body -- I created her, I'm responsible.... but the wary look eases as Alan goes on. these aren't the words of a man trapped in his own preconceptions. if the programs' programmer expects to listen and learn as much as to act, and is hoping for a noninvasive solution, this might not be the moral nightmare it could have been.]

Fewer problems than before, but he's a tough one. I've had some talks with him since. It sounds like he had a brutal time in there, and he thinks "user" values don't apply to programs.

I didn’t code an AI -- I coded a security program. [So this Bel is from some time in the future? Alan supposes it makes as much sense as anything else on the ship.] It’s… complicated. I don’t fully understand it myself, to be quite honest. [As he understands it, it’s possible that every program that’s ever been coded has the potential to exist as an “artificial inteligence” of a sort within a system. He’s not sure how they’re existing outside a system currently, but neither does Tron himself. For now, it seems destined to remain a mystery.

Alan’s already heard a general summary of what happened to Rinzler on the Grid, but the reminder is painful to hear nonetheless.] I can tell. The way he acts around me… [Alan falls silent for a moment as he remembers his confrontation with the program a few days earlier. It’s not just that the program was afraid; it’s that he was utterly resigned to the situation. No resistance, no attempt to escape -- just paralyzed anticipation of punishment. Even knowing the conversation was necessary, Alan can’t help but feel a pang of guilt at the memory.] It’s hard to imagine what he could have gone through to make him fear someone like that.

[He looks at his crewmate again, gaze searching.] But if he’s actually talked to you about it, then you probably know more than I do. [He smiles sadly.] He’s not very open around me.

[snort] Hell, I don't understand myself sometimes. Show me someone who understands sapience and I'll show you a fool.

[nods at the admission; pensively] 'Fear'... that's an interesting way to put it. I've seen him angry, destructive, could've sworn he was smug when he beat the training simulator -- I've never seen him afraid of other crewpeople. [brow furrows, a touch of sympathy in the brown eyes.]

Did he know you?

And I’ve never seen anything else from him. [Anger, belligerence, triumph… it’s almost difficult for Alan to imagine Rinzler displaying such emotions. But he’s already learned in no uncertain terms that the way Rinzler behaves around him is not at all comparable to how he acts around other users -- there’s an entire person who Alan has never met, hidden behind that apprehension and abject obedience.]

He must have. I didn’t know who he was before Sam told me, but Rinzler seemed to know who I was the second he saw me. [Alan can still remember their introduction in the garden, the way the program had froze in place in Alan’s presence, how that characteristic rumble of his had grown so fractured and painful that Alan had initially believed the program to be injured.]

He even spoke, believe it or not. [Alan hadn’t known the action’s significance at the time, but by now he’s realized that it was likely the first time the program had spoken in a very long time.] He called me “user.”

....Hell. "User" is a technical term, for them. People who aren't programs. Programmers, especially. But he never speaks; I thought he couldn't.

[you might well be a different class of User for Rinzler, Alan, and family resemblance aside, he certainly doesn't see you as another double.]

This must be like learning you fathered a son who grew up without you. [it's a brutal way to put it, but Alan had talked about responsibility, and there's more than one kind. it's possible, too -- since so much is possible, apparently -- that Rinzler had met a different version of Alan, and that the fear is sourced in experience. no way to know that, though, without asking the program.

if there is something different, something special, about a program's writer, if Rinzler's whip-tight frame carries trauma along with corrupted coding, Alan's arrival might be his salvation -- or destroy him. and Alan is still catching up on lifetimes of new information, with Bel only a little further ahead. slowing their pace as they approach the bow of the ship, Bel watches the play of emotion on his face. is he up to it?]

[Alan nods. It’s a reasonable assumption to make. Rinzler has only spoken two times in his presence since he arrived here and each time had sounded painful. He doubts the program would push himself to that extreme very often.]

I wouldn’t know, but… I imagine that’s a fitting comparison. [And not one that hasn’t occurred to Alan since arriving here. He had created life without even being aware of it, only to have it stolen and corrupted without his knowledge, the result a stranger too scarred to even speak. It’s worse than knowing that he hadn’t been there; it’s knowing that someone else had stepped in and taken advantage of that absence to twist the program into something he wasn’t meant to be.

Alan follows to the bow, expression distant as he remembers his first day on the ship, how he had met Tron here on the observation deck and then Rinzler in the garden. Sam had been right when he said they were no longer the same program. But he was wrong about Rinzler; no matter how different the code, Rinzler is as much Alan’s program as Tron is. The alternative would be tantamount to conceding him to Clu, and Alan can’t allow that.]

I know I have a lot of catching up to do, but… I know I can still help him.

[he's open, he's trying... it's no guarantee, but he'll do.]

I don't know who told Rinzler that "user values" don't apply to programs, but I can't assume it's true. There was... an analogous case in my home universe. Involving clones. [twisted smile. maybe there was some subliminal cue that had triggered Bel's immediate interference in the fight between Tron and Rinzler; the two were identical in battle, except for the helmet and colors. there's no knowing now, though. it all happened too fast.

it's Bel's nature to report concisely and accurately, so the description of the fight that first day is scant on emotional details; no need to traumatize Alan -- a stretch in sickbay and the cut had healed up fine. the followup conversation had been more revealing, though Bel's chagrin is palpable when explaining that they'd started out with no idea of what Rinzler was.]

You might learn more from Tron, as far as he's come out the other side of whatever happened to them in there; just... [touches Alan's arm gently; lips quirk in a smile] Even if they were identical once, they're different people now. Congratulations, Mr. Bradley; you've got twins.

[[omu when the whole thing goes down it's gonna be awful ;a; ]]

[Alan listens in silence as Bel relates the details of Rinzler and Tron’s fight, and her conversation with the program afterwards. The fact that Rinzler had designated Tron as a “corrupted copy” is especially worrying -- the last thing anyone needs is the programs trying to destroy one another due to a perceived glitch. His expression grows even more troubled when Bel repeats Rinzler’s definition of Users: ”You use us.” It’s not an untrue statement and that’s precisely what makes it so disturbing. Alan had gone his entire life up until arriving on the Moira believing that programs were tools -- brilliant, complex tools, but tools nonetheless, to be repaired or discarded as necessary -- and, besides one Kevin Flynn, that’s what the rest of the world saw them as too. There’s a bitter sting to realizing that he himself is likely just as culpable for Rinzler’s belief that “User values” don’t apply to him as Clu is.

He realizes too how little he knows about Tron, how much the program has been keeping from him. How much they’ve all been keeping from him, in truth: Tron, Rinzler, and Sam, all of them swallowed up by the Grid and ripped out of it as different people, each in the midst of their own trauma, leaving Alan to piece together what happened from what fragments they’re willing to share.

What he has now is an incomplete picture, but it’s the only guide he has for how to proceed. He sighs and when he speaks, his voice is tinged with a doubt he usually keeps to himself.] I just hope I’ll know to do what’s right. For all of them.

[it isn't everything Alan needs to know by a long shot, but it's all Bel has to give him, and that he's taking it in without prejudgment is the best sign that could be hoped for. it's going to be a long road.]

...For all of them... Sam too?

[Alan smiles.] Of course. [He looks back at the stars through the observatory window, expression growing pensive.] Sam was actually on the Grid with them. In many ways, he’s known them longer than I have. [If only Alan could get him to open up about everything that had happened… but he’s already promised him not to press and he doesn’t intend to go back on his word.]

But you've known him longer, haven't you? Back on your Earth....

[is this the time to mention that Sam's been sleeping outside his quarters, camping out all over the ship? it'd be one thing if he'd been doing it for fun, but it... hadn't seemed that way when Bel caught him at it.]

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audio; march 7th

audio; private

audio, private => in person

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