Tron 2.18 – Assymetric Path.

Jet’s world was very quickly starting to feel like it was unraveling.

For a long time, Jet had believed that the person he fell in love with existed only in his imagination. Then he came to realized that she was real, even if not really human.

That in itself was enough to drive Jet to the realization that he needed to return to the digital realm of the EN511.

Jet still had promises to keep and loose ends to tie down with his own life. He needed to discover the truth about what he felt for Mercury.

Getting to back into this side of the screen hadn’t been easy. Access had been shut down for more than a year and even then the site was now secured by government contractors. No access was permitted to the systems anymore.

Things had gotten worse when Jet realized that the EN511 system was about to be shut down, but he had been caught up in the flow of a different problem that was occupying the attention of the people he loved and cared for in the real world, although it was fortunate that both solutions lay in the same general direction.

Finally, Jet had found a way back to the other side of the screen and tracked down the location of his lost love, only to find out she was about to be terminated.

Jet had come so far to find the missing parts of his life and the news of Mercury’s termination just didn’t seem fair. He was determined that if there was any way possible he needed to save her.

Ten minutes in subjective time wasn’t much. He tried not to think about the fact that this was around ten seconds in the real world.

“Where is this execution happening?” asked Jet.

“It’s happening in the square, where the incoming connections from other systems arrive.” Jade answered. “The Kernel is constructing a holding platform on the dais so that Mercury will be derezzed by the next reset pulse.”

Jet realized then that he had come in through this very square. He was in the place he needed to be when he arrived. The irony that he had escaped the square to come here, only to locate his reason for coming where he first began the most recent leg of his journey was tragically poetic.

“Jade, I need to find a way back to the square where they intend to execute Mercury. How can I get there within 10 cycles?”

Jade looked to the Helix.

“There’s a recognizer depot at the base of the archive. They use recognizer code to scan the archives for any alerts that need to be sent to the kernel. Perhaps we can find something there.” Jade offered.

Jet thought back to Flynn’s tales. Flynn had supposedly flown a recognizer during his time in this world. Perhaps Jet could do so as well.

“Jade, can you get me into a recognizer?” Jet asked.

Jade thought about it a moment. “It would mean resetting a few ICPs but I think I could manage it.”

“Jade, I need to get to a recognizer and then to the square within 10 cycles. I need to save Mercury” Jet said.

“Is a user strong enough to halt a reset pulse?” Jade asked. “Any program that has tried before has been derezzed.”

“If it’s possible then I’ll find a way to save her, so I might need your help” said Jet.

“Then I’ll help you in any way I can,” said Jade. “I still have a debt to repay mercury for restoring my faith in users also. She helped me realize that the users do still look over us. Their sending you is proof of that.”

Jet realized Jade was attempting to fit him into her existing belief structure. His brief time here already left him with many questions he wanted to ask, but now was not the time.

“Jade, we need to move. Are there many programs who still believe in users?” Jet asked. “Could we get them to help us if we need others?”

“I would expect that they would already be at the square if they have heard of the termination, Jet, but they will not move against the Kernel. The ICPs are too strong and no program wants to be deleted.”

Jet considered how much time they had. He had difficulty fully understanding the flow of time in this place. Without a watch, he was at best guessing.

“Then let’s find Mercury. I’ve waited too long to get back here to be stopped right now.” Jet said.

Jet began to move with a purpose now, heading quickly for the helix index. Jade followed right behind him.

Jet disappeared from sight for a while as Jade attempted to catch up with him. She found him near the base of the archive, peering down through an opening in the base of the helix index in the lowest point of the archive.

“Don’t make any noise,” said Jade quietly, moving up behind him. “The ICPs can detect program noise.”

Beneath the hole in the base of the archive was a small platform which branched out to several others – enough that it appeared Jet could get down, but it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get back up again without something to stand on.

“Below this level is devnull. You don’t want to go there. It’s where they send the archives that fall out of the base of the stack.” Jade said.

She pointed in a direction towards one end of the long platform. “Over there is the final scan before the data logs pass into the Kernel’s domain. There’s a stationary recognizer scanning unit located there that I use to check the packets before they get deleted.”

Jet saw the form of a recognizer cockpit sitting up against the platform, although it was green in color, like Jade. The recognizer scanning beam was permanently locked onto the slow progression of old archives as they left the store through another hole and moved towards the nullspace below.

The system suddenly made sense to Jet. The log files were set to automatically delete older logs after the log file reached a certain size, however there was a log file scanning function that matched certain strings against the logs and if it found an entry it deemed to be important, it wrote it to a long-term log that was deleted manually by the users later, presumably.

Seeing the recognizer and understanding its capacity to get them out of here, Jet dropped to the platform below, wasting little time.

“Jet, No,” called Jade, but her warning was too late.

Suddenly a voice behind him that he hadn’t expected stopped Jet in his tracks.

“Program, you are executing in restricted memory space. Cease execution and prepare for real-time scan.” It said.

Jet had failed to notice the ICP that had been supervising the operation of the archive scan function. It had been hidden behind a stack of inert cubes and wasn’t visible from the archive when he had looked.

Jet realized his error too late as he turned around quickly. There was only one voice, but six ICPs were located within the obscured area. Jet didn’t have time for this contingency.

“Program,” the ICPs voice became more urgent. “I issued a HALT command. Cease operation and prepare for scan.”

The ICPs began to flare bright red and their energy staffs crackled. Armor began to form around their appendages as they noticed Jet’s right hand moving to his disc on his left elbow.

“Sorry guys,” said Jet. “Nothing personal”.

It had been a while since Jet had used his PID disc to defend himself, but his time here before had trained his reactions to respond without thought. Jet pulled his disc from his arm and threw it forcefully at the first ICP.

The disc scored a direct hit, smashing through the still forming armor as if it wasn’t there, but as the ICP derezzed, the disc continued on, slowed little by it’s passage and struck the immobile recognizer at a junction, wedging itself in tight. Jet had thrown it too hard.

“Oh crap,” said Jet, as the remaining ICPs looked once at the place their comrade had stood, then came at him as a group.

“Take that program down now,” Jet heard the lead ICP call. “He’s armed with high-level access”

Jet turned and ran towards the recognizer shell, but as he got there realized its screen was intact and it was still scanning. There was no access to the cockpit area or way past it. He turned again and faced the ICPs, who had slowed down and were fanning out to ensure he didn’t get away.

In his mind, he was trying to work out how to retrieve his disc, even as he was cut off from it.

“Can’t we talk this over,” Jet asked. “I really need to see the Kernel.”

Jet was stalling for time. He needed to get his disc back.

“The Kernel will read your logs after termination, program,” called the lead ICP as they came on. “Now prepare for deresolution.”

A green flash directly behind the ICPs was all the alert that Jet and the ICPs had to know Jade was moving in. The first ICP was kicked over the edge of the platform, derezzing on the way down. The second bent in two as Jade delivered a vicious kick to his midsection, deletion circles eminating from the power spike as it impacted his armor, derezzing the ICP even before it dropped to the platform it had been standing on. The still-shattering armor continued to fall away, derezzing in small pieces just as its host had done.

“Lookout,” called the lead ICP, but Jade flicked the ponytail-like attachment at the back of her head out, the cone at the end driving hard into its torso, armor shattering. The impact was sufficient to damage it’s routines, but not to derez it instantly. The ICP staggered a few steps then derezzed.

“The archive guardian,” cried the lead ICP, realizing who they were up against. “Alert the Kernel”.

The ICP held out a projectile weapon to shoot at Jade and re-formed its own armor thicker around the torso and appendages, but she stepped in too quickly for him to bring the weapon to bear and executed a reverse spinning kick which caught the guard side-on across the head. There was a circular shock wave as the power-spike impacted, flipping the guard end over end, spinning rapidly sideways from the platform and continuing on almost a horizontal trajectory until he hit the archive wall, holding there for a brief moment before deresolution.

The final ICP turned towards his original target, Jet, and hurled his staff like a spear, the deletion end driving directly at Jet’s head.

Jet attempted to recall his disc instinctively, but it vanished into a light blue mist that seemed to return to him rapidly, dissipating on contact, only to be replaced by another in his hands that extended its segments out as it appeared. He held the disc up as a shield, bringing it up just as the glowing end of the deresolution staff shattered in the impact as it drove itself into Jet’s disc.

Jet spun once then, dropping low as he did and threw his disk hard. The ICP was fast and managed to remove it’s own PID disc and deflect the blow, Jet’s disc bouncing out towards the archive wall.

Jet knew it wouldn’t return, but a memory formed in his mind then – sequencer. A quick reach to his elbow again reminded Jet he had another that would reform there, even before the original returned.

He stepped forward and threw this disc low, hitting the ICP at the lower leg level, knocking him down on his back. Before he could get up, Jet pulled yet another disc from his elbow and through it at the ICP, catching him between armor plates.

The disc penetrated the armor and bounced through, derezzing the ICP instantly where he lay.

“You have a sequencer,” said Jade recognizing that another disc formed on Jet’s elbow as the former discs continued on into a wall, each shattering and derezzing. “Program ID sequencers are illegal in this system. You’ll have to tell me later how you came by it,”

Jade walked over to the immobile recognizer. She ran her hand over the screen and the screen vanished.

“I still have all privileges in this tower. Foolish of the ICPs to think that a cut down recognizer could only respond to the kernel. They were probably trying to retrieve it.”

“Cut down?” questioned Jet.

“This recognizer doesn’t need to travel – it’s fixed in this one memory location and so just scans the final section of the queue. It can move, but it has no inter-segment travel capability.” Jade explained. “It won’t get you out of the archival area.”

“Are there any that have inter-segment mobility here?” Jet asked.

“There is a depot below. Presently, there is a full capacity ICP presence, but we should be able to intercede in the access delivery to take a unit. It won’t go un-noticed however.” Jade said.

“We can possibly recover enough transport function to descend there in this shell, however,” she added. “That’s still within this memory segment.”

Jet put his hand against the frame of the cockpit as he stepped into it. Immediately, he pulled his hand back as if it burned him, although the sensation he had experienced wasn’t pain. It was something less tangible – almost suprise that caused him to remove it.

He looked around the inside cockpit cautiously, looking at the place he had put his hand. Again he returned his hand to that location.

Jet felt something when he touched the cockpit directly. It was something he hadn’t noticed the last time he was inside the computer, a strange feeling as if he could feel the programming beneath the physical structure.

Jet moved his hand around and felt for it. Some places felt stronger than others. At first, it felt like a dim memory then the function came to him slowly. He could feel the application algorithm beneath the code that was executing.

This recognizer, he began to understand, reused several code segments from the original recognizer application. Within this unit, Jet could now feel the underlying code.

Within the code for this recognizer, Jet found he could recognize the scanning function that comprised the packet matching function and the heuristic detection algorithms. There were the alerting functions and the broadcast routines to send information to other applications through shared memory.

Jet found the interface calls which accessed the EN511 disk space and allowed it to read the lower lines of the log files, which he took to be a brief hack. One of the original users must have hacked this recognizer application to scan the log files and remove archival information before it was automatically deleted.

No version number either so it wasn’t even Beta - Just a hack. Jet guessed that the programmer hadn’t wanted to write these routines from scratch, so had reused the recognizer application to do this.

The recognizer itself was usually just accessed via application calls from the Kernel, but in this case, it was a standalone application being called by a basic shell script with some command line parameters and a separate set of recognition files.

The mobility section had been disabled, as Jade had pointed out. To Jet’s mind within the computer, this recognizer application resembled a recognizer without legs. Just the top section and the cockpit was visible, so he assumed the legs must represent the transport functions.

However a quick look at the mobility section of the code confirmed it was still there, just disabled. The programmer had been too lazy to remove the old code and just bypassed it pre-compile. From what Jet could see, the only difference between this recognizer and the kernel’s recognizers, was the hacked code and a single jump command. The transport routines were still compiled in.

“I’ll lower us to the depot,” said Jade.

“Wait,” Jet called out to Jade. “What if this recognizer had long-range access. Could you fly it directly to the square?”

“Perhaps, but this recognizer doesn’t have long-range scan function. It’s strictly the local memory segment. We’ll need to take one of the Kernel’s recognizers to make it to the square.” Jade answered.

“No, we can use this,” Jet said.

“This recognizer has been immobilized since it was placed here, a simple archive function. The Kernel would not allow me to travel beyond this archive. Even The ICPs still recognize it as their own although it is my function to control, so the Kernel would not allow it.” Jade said.

Jet shook his head to clear it, thinking this through. The recognizer shell they were in wouldn’t interrupt the Kernel if they took it. Jet looked further into the code and found it granted full access to Jade, no doubt because archival scanning functions would be in her domain.

“Flynn told me that when he was in the computer, he rebuilt a recognizer from damaged components. Usually, recognizers are called from the Kernel or at the time I think it would have been the MCP, so cannot be intercepted by other programs, but he found some damaged code and rebuilt his own. Now I think I understand what he did.”

“Flynn?” asked Jade. “The Flynn, who rescued Tron and returned the system to us? Do you know him?”

Jet glanced back to her. “He was the first user to enter your world. He was also one of the users who helped me get back into this place.”

“Flynn is a legend within this system. It was he and Tron who defeated the MCP.” Jade said, her voice betraying her awe once more. “Is this Flynn real?”

Jet looked at Jade for a moment. “Tron was my father’s program” said Jet. “and Flynn is a user. I never fully understood all of what he told me, even after I came here before, but I think I’m starting to understand it.”

“You know Tron’s user also?” Jade asked.

“Yes I do, Jade.” Jet said.

“Then maybe we have some chance of succeeding.” She said.

Jet stood still in the middle of the cockpit, moving his open palm over the recognizer near the controls. He could feel the application still running.

Jade followed him in, stepping deep into the cockpit.

“Jet, time is short,” she said.”We need to descend into the depot to take a recognizer.”

“If Flynn could do it, then I can do it,” Jet said.

“Do what,” asked Jade, concern that they were not moving to take a recognizer showing on her face.

Jet closed his eyes and placed his palm on the ceiling of the cockpit above him.

A blue light began to eminate in concentric rings out from his palm. “Active the dormant code,” Jet said. “The API still supports it. All I need to change is one jump instruction.”

Below the shell of the recognizer, two long stems started to resolve into place. Thin lines traced the outline then the panels between the lines gradually grew darker. There was a brief shudder and then the recognizer broke loose from the scanning dock that had been built for it. It was flying complete now, rebuilding itself around the cockpit module as it gradually moved back from the platform.

“Oh my user,” exclaimed Jade.

The front forcewall fell into place then, completing the cockpit.

As if no longer stable, the recognizer juddered heavily, flew backwards then forwards, then bumped into the dock, knocking several cubes from it. It shuddered up a little, then floated back down on a diagonal.

Finally, it made a series of jagged steps back and down before it stopped. A number of cubes tumbled from the dock to fall into devnull below them, derezzing as they dropped.

Inside the cockpit of the recognizer, Jet and Jade were thrown around until they both fell from a standing position when the recognizer stopped.

“What happened,” Jade asked.

“I can’t control it by the API. I’m not sure how to move it around” Jet said.

Jade pointed to the control column. “The controls have been removed. That’s what you need to move this around. Usually I only need enough interface to descend to the depot.”

A thin cone with an inverted cone above it sat at the middle of the forward screen. It was where Jade was pointing.

Jet crossed his legs and felt the floor with his hand. A small blue set of concentric rings started to spread out once more, then concentrated themselves around the cone and echoed back and forth within it.

“The control routines are gone. It must be something the Kernel adds before it executes the routine,” Jet said as he closed his eyes.

“So we can’t fly this?” asked Jade.

“This is an untraceable recognizer, Jade. If the Kernel doesn’t control it, then he won’t know we’ve taken it. If he doesn’t know we’ve taken it, we can make our way in with stealth. I need to find a way to make it fly right now.” Jet said.

Jade stood again and walked to the control column. “The ICPs seem to control it by a set of interfaces that appear here.” Jade said. The Kernel grants them access. It’s why some ICPs can control recognizers and others can’t.”

Jet closed his eyes again, stood up and then looked at Jade.

“Jade, I need to ask you something personal. I need to ask if I can review your programming.”

Jade got a worried look on her face. “Will it cause my functions to cease?”

Jet smiled. “I don’t believe so. I’m not even sure if I can do it, but if I can, then I might be able to fix this small problem.”

Jade walked over to him, put her arms by her side and lifted her chin, looking up into Jet’s eyes with a child’s trust.

She closed her eyes. “Then you may do with this shell what you wish, my user”.

Jet placed his hand across Jade’s chest between her breastplate and her throat, and closed his eyes. The connection to her on his wrist started to glow and pulse.

Jet felt the warmth within her, the things that made her who she was. She felt real – as real as anything Jet had ever felt. Jade moves slightly under Jet’s palm and moaned as he moved his hand slightly.

Then the sensation broke and Jet saw her true program beneath Jade’s manifestation.

Jade was a heavily modified syslog reporting application. There was something else too. Jet smiled when he realized what it was – Someone had merged the AI code of a 3D combat program into the program so it could recognize patterns directly.

That explained some of Jade’s attitude.

Early combat applications had a deep pattern recognition algorithm to allow them to recognize repeated successful attacks. It would have been an early attempt to integrate heuristic scanning functions into Jade. It also appeared to be connected to the function that allowed her to control multiple bits.

Jade controlled the flow of archive cubes and the equipment of the archive. She possessed high level permissions to read and write any files within the system log directory.

She was a highly complex program polished to near perfection over a long, long time. Her bugfixes were numerous and she had few vulnerabilities. Given her age, it was surprising that her application appeared so young – a legacy of the combat application code Jet thought.

Jade also had another sub-interface routine that controlled another application, through a quick add-on that had been installed by another user a long time ago. The same user that had written the hacked recognizer code.

It was exactly what Jet was looking for. It was what Jade used to control this recognizer’s scanning function.

A slight tweak to it, and Jet expanded the function call parameters by a single variable and locked it into the recognizer code base.

When Jet re-opened his eyes and looked around, the cockpit had reformed, with the rear wall moving out and around Jade. Only her torso and arms remained outside of the reformed cockpit material now, as if she was sitting within a protrusion from the floor and wall.

It was as if she had become one with the machine she controlled.

Before Jade sat a set of controls and a small console, although these were slightly different from the recognizer controls Flynn had described as the same as the game. It was more like a holographic keypad where Jade’s fingers sat.

Jade opened her eyes now and looked around. At first she was alarmed but then she realized she was interfacing to the recognizer with her own subroutines.

“You merged me with the recognizer,” Jade said.

She seemed puzzled as she examined her new access, staring at her hands while looking them over. “But how?”

“You always controlled the recognizer,” Jet said. “I just located the access routines and extended the input types. Now you can control the memory scanning functions outside of the local locked segment.”

“Is this the true power of a user,”asked Jade?

“No,” Jet said. “This was something you could do all along. You only needed someone to set the flags. Your codebase is tightly written – no exploits, but the recognizer was an attached function. It didn’t have the same level of security and once you let me in, I could change the control flags.”

The green beacon on Jet’s wrist slowly returned to its usual sigel-covered appearance.

Jade’s fingers moved across the keyboard and the recognizer began to move, it’s motion smooth and efficient. “I can control a recognizer,” she said. A smile appeared on her face as she realized it. “I’m free to leave the archive”

“Jade can you take me to the square,” Jet asked.

“We can be there in time I calculate,” Jade responded, and the recognizer dropped to the depot doors below swiftly and smoothly.

“There’s someone we need to pick up on the way. She’s going to be critical to me once we reach Mercury” Jet said. “Over near where the overflow stream flows on out of the archive pit.”

The recognizer made a slightly different sound with Jade piloting it. It was smoother and had a harmonic echo to it.

“I can take you there now,” said Jade.

The green recognizer moved slowly down and out of the depot at the base of the pit as Jade controlled it. Other recognizers turned to face, as if about to scan, but were too far away.

Once they got out of the depot and headed to follow the flow of the memory leak however, several recognizers ahead of them started to take notice.

One of the closest moved up and scanned them, the red light filling the cockpit. Jet cringed, stepping back to Jade and putting his hand on her shoulder, but the recognizer moved off afterwards without pursuing.

“They don’t seem to register us as a threat” Jade said.

“I guess you’re mostly the same code except for the payload,” Jet said. “That’s quite a security problem.”

The craft began to ascend towards the edge of the pit where the overflow continued out. The top of the recognizer came above the edge and the forcewall screen flickered out.

Jet jumped to the edge of the pit and ran over to where he had left Ma3a. She still sat there unmoving, hovering.

“Ma3a” Jet called.

“Non maskable interrupt, responding,” Ma3a came to full function and saw the recognizer. “Jet, Look out, there’s a recognizer” Ma3a warned.

“No time to explain, Ma3a,” Jet called, heading back. “Follow me.”

Ma3a floated towards the recognizer that was parked at the face of the pit and stepped into the open cockpit behind Jet.

As soon as she had stepped in, the screen re-rezzed into place and the recognizer started to rise, moving out over the edge of the pit.

Ma3a noticed the pilot of the recognizer.

“Syslog,” said Ma3a. “How did you leave your directory structure?”

“She’s helping me,” said Jet, then realized Ma3a knew Kade. “You know each other?”

“You can’t trust this program, Jet.” Said Ma3a. “She recognizes no authorities but her own.”

“I am loyal to my user, Jet” Jade said defensively.

“He is not your user,” corrected Ma3a, then she glanced at the band on Jet’s wrist, before making a facial motion that even for Ma3a, looked like raising an eyebrow.

“She has agreed to help us,Ma3a,” said Jet. “The Kernel is about to terminate Mercury’s process. We need to rescue her now.”

Ma3a looked to Jet. “The Kernel has Mercury – Where is she?”

“Near the square where we arrived. She was captured and she is about to be terminated. We have to do something.” Jet answered.

Outside the landscape dropped away as the recognizer rose rapidly into the air.

“Moving scanning function to the central processing area.” Jade said. “Leaving current segment limitations.”

The recognizer began to move rapidly over terrain that earlier had taken Jet and Ma3a so long to cross, accelerating very quickly as it went.

“How did she escape,” asked Ma3a.

“She always had the capabilities,” Jet said. “I opened her application flags to allow all operations.”

“You must be careful, Jet. She cannot be completely trusted.” Ma3a said quietly, only to Jet.

Jet thought about it. When he scanned Jade, he felt something that wasn’t code alone. There was something in there he couldn’t read. It was possible there was more to this program than was obvious, but right now, she was the closest thing to help Jet had.

“Nonetheless, she is helping us.” Said Jet.

“I owe Mercury a debt I intend to repay,” said Jade, this time to Ma3a. “You yourself know this statement to be true.”

Ma3a seemed to grimace. “I would have been happier if Mercury had deleted you and taken your permissions, syslog.”

“Ma3a, How long have we been in this world now.” Jet asked. He needed to bring Ma3a back around to the rescue operation underway and gauge how much time he had left.

From his last visit, Jet realized that time moved much more slowly in the real world than he perceived on this side of the screen. It was only now he started to understand just how much the ratio differed, but he needed to calibrate his own sense.

“Approximately two thousand and three cycles since your arrival in the city,” responded Ma3a.

“What’s that in minutes and seconds,” Jet asked.

“That is a question I cannot answer. I have no conversion function for real time,” Ma3a said.

“What exactly is a cycle,” Jet asked.

“Cycles occur every time the power load peaks within the system.” Ma3a offered.

This didn’t help Jet a lot. “Do you mean when more programs are running,”

“That is not correct,” said Ma3a.

Jet rephrased his question.

“Ma3a, under what circumstances does more power get drained that causes a cycle,” Jet asked.

“I have a link to the UPS API,” Ma3a said. “The UPS API cycles on and off power to this world. At every second solstice, we have a cycle. At these cycles, the Kernel executes housekeeping routines. That includes routine program termination. The terminations reset pulse occur every 1024 cycles.”

Jet thought about it. The EN511 would have originally had a linear power supply – not one of the newer switching mode supplies.

That meant that the cycles were linked to the power grid – to the 60 hertz cycle of the main power. The original circuits must have used this as a source to generate timing interrupts. These cycles were the day and the night for the programs inside the en511.

Jet did the math in his head and realized he had been in this world for what seemed like a half-day but in the real world, barely more than half a minute had passed.

A sharp bank of the recognizer brought the craft around a hill and for the first time since his memories returned, he saw the digital city from a distance and from the slightly higher perspective offered by the recognizer.

The city itself appeared to be a large, rounded shape, although smaller buildings extended out as far as the hill Jet had just come over.

At the centre of the city, rose a single blue beam that disappeared past digital clouds and mesh grids out to what looked, from this angle, to be infinity. Jet could make out the primary beam that had brought him here and the system square that it terminated into quite clearly, even from this distance.

At the top of the beam, an energy ball could be seen well off in the distance, individual beams breaking suddenly and briefly from its form. Jet looked up at it. “What’s that,” he asked.

“That,”Ma3a said, “Is the reset pulse. The execution has begun.”

The ball of energy, spitting out digital lightning was slowly descending, although from this distance, it still seemed to be moving quite slowly.

“Jade, can we make it in time?” Jet called back to his pilot.

“I can make it to the square just before the reset pulse terminates,” Jade called back. Jet looked at her and realized her face now showed intense concentration. Looking forward, he understood why.

The recognizer had come in from the high side of the city. From his present position, Jet could see just how large the city centre was compared to this recognizer and how cluttered it was near the ground.

The recognizer was descending rapidly and already close to the ground, but a number of towers and junctions were obstructing their way. As they moved in closer to the square, Jade was speeding up, the tone of the recognizer increasing as her eyes seemed to click skywards once in a while as if tracking the ball that was descending.

Jet looked forward again in time just to see the approach of a tower that was getting much larger and closer as Jade accelerated still, shifting sideways as she started to take evasive action to avoid the obstacles.

“I think you might want to grab hold of something, Jet,” Ma3a said.

Jet looked around the cockpit but saw nothing. “Behind you Jet,” called Jade, but her concentration was clearly elsewhere.

Jet looked around and saw a small seat resolve into existence as Jade summoned the change up in the application interface. As Jet sat down, the chair morphed around his waist until he was firmly held in place.

Ma3a simply changed her stance, yet for all purposes, appeared as if fixed to the floor now, no longer floating in a localized orbit.

The recognizer suddenly dropped down, almost vertically. Jet felt his stomach go weak as if he was on a roller coaster, then a walkway appeared in the view screen and as quickly disappeared again as the recognizer dropped below it. They were so close, Jet was sure he made out the surprised expressions of several programs on it racing to get out of the way.

Then the huge craft then darted suddenly sideways, then back as a small shape moved directly between the recognizer uprights at frightening speed.

Inside the cockpit, Jet was still being thrown around within the confines of the seat, holding on to what he could.

Sparks erupted from one side of the recognizer as Jade was a little too slow to avoid a large tower to one side, causing Jade to wince as if she felt personally pained by the impact.

The reset pulse could just be seen now from the top of the cockpit. Now it was closer, it was clearly moving much faster than was originally expected and was a little larger than it looked before also.

Worse, Jet noticed that the reset pulse wasn’t far from the square now, which was now close enough to see in detail.

Within the square, the Kernel was just visible, standing to one side while a few hundred other programs stood at the edge, here to watch the execution no doubt.

Jet could see the Kernel reading from some form of script as the pulse approached, seeming still much faster now.

Jet realized his vision was also zooming in on the scene – a brief thought, triangulation, appeared in his mind. The scene before him was suddenly coming in even faster than the recognizer was moving and clearing at the same time.

At the edge of the square, where the raised dais for incoming programs was located, a single program was bound by arrays in the kneeling position, help upright only by their sense of will, the form still proud, strong and defiant in the face of certain deletion.

As some of the obstacles cleared and the recognizer straightened up towards the final edge of the square, cockpit level at the same height as the execution dais, Jet realized he could now see the program more clearly.

Mercury.

Alone, proud. Not afraid of deletion.

Mercury kneeled alone on a small platform that had been constructed on the Dais. Two bounded arrays held her knees down and her hands were bound together, although otherwise loose, by another array.

Jet wondered what she must be thinking at the moment, facing her last moments. The kernel seemed to finish reading his script and turned to walk out of the square. He had taken a few steps when he looked around and seemed to noticed the large, green recognizer hurling towards the square as fast as the reset pulse and trailing green sparks from damage it was sustaining as it brushed obstacles like a physical incarnation of the reset energy pulse itself.

As the recognizer came on, it wasn’t able to avoid all obstacles and it smashed several large objects as it approached, breaking up slowly as pieces of it were destroyed, although most of it remained intact as pieces of it were taken out.

The Kernel gave some quick directions to the ICPs who started immediately to move people back.

Mercury noticed the distraction and looked back. Straight into the eyes of Jet.

Jet’s seat dissolved and he stood up. There were no more obstacles to dodge. The screen at the front of the recognizer derezzed. Jet’s vision snapped back to an unzoomed image and he realized he was almost on the square now.

“You’ll only have one chance to remove her from the reset pulse, Jet. I’ll deliver you to the termination platform on the dais.” Jade screamed.

Jet glanced back at his pilot. She was bleeding energy out of one eye, through what appeared like a crack and the other was going black. Clearly her attachment to this application was more than as a pilot. Jet realized right now that she was the recognizer.

“Jade, are you going to be OK?” he asked.

“Just save her Jet. That’s all I’m going to ask you. I’ll even deliver you right to her.” Jade said through clenched teeth.

“Thankyou Jade,” Jet said.

Jade smiled genuinely at him for the first time. “Just remember me if I don’t make it, my user.” Said Jade.

Then there was a screeching sound as the recognizer wedged between two beams as it hit the square. Jade screamed and Jet was launched from the recognizer cockpit with the speed that the recognizer had approached at. Jade’s aim had been good and his path continued up and over the dais and platform as the recognizer finally impacted with solid material.

Above, the reset pulse was bearing down at equal speed and was filling the space above the dais with light now, tendrils of energy arcing down to the dais around Jet.

As Jet moved, he got his legs under him and rebounded once. Mercury’s eyes were wide as she saw Jet moving across the Dais towards her, then she was in his arms and the bound arrays collapsed in a shower of sparks, freeing her as Jet’s momentum carried him the rest of the way over the platform.

Jet got his shoulder under him as the two careened down the surface of the Dais, Mercury on top of him, Jet’s arm around her as they impacted.

There was a blinding flash and resounding crack as the reset pulse slammed in just behind them, derezzing instantly the small platform that had been built on top of the Dais as an execution stage.

Jet skittered across the ground further, Mercury still in his arms, the bounded arrays securing her wrists the only remaining restraint on her. After crossing the remaining open area of the square, the two finally came to a stop at the Kernel’s feet.

A score of application probe staffs came down and glowed with energy as ICPs surrounded Jet and his reunited love.

Mercury lifted her chin and looked across at Jet, oblivious to the threat of the ICPs around them.

“Jet, is that really you?” Mercury asked.

Jet moaned and winced in pain. “The hero always comes in at the last moment,” he managed through clenched teeth.

“You,” exclaimed the Kernel. “What in User’s name are you doing back in my system.” Growled the Kernel.

“I still have some business here,” Jet Managed. “I thought I derezzed you in Thorne’s partition”

The Kernel looked around. The programs that had surrounded the square to see the execution were crowding in around to see what was happening now.

“ICPs,” Bellowed the Kernel. “Take these two programs captive and locate them in quarantine storage”

One of the ICPs drove his staff down into Jet’s shoulder. Jet yelled out in pain as the staff delivered it’s payload into his still hurting body.

“Leave him alone you misbegotten child process of a rogue application,” Mercury spat out at the Kernel from the ground. “A user deserves more respect than this. ”

The Kernel glowed bright red at the insult, then looked around, realizing that many of the programs that had come here were supporters of Mercury. They believed in the users, and had just witnessed a program flying from the open cockpit of a green recognizer across a secure deletion platform to rescue their leader from what should have been certain termination.

All around, a murmur began to circulate through the crowd, the word user becoming more and more prominent amongst the mutterings.

Suddenly one of the programs stepped forward, blocked only by the cordon of ICPs and confronted the Kernel.

“Kernel, is this program a user?” she asked.

The Kernel realized he had to act fast and remove these two from the square. He ignored the question.

“ICPs,” he commanded. “Remove these two programs to the holding area now.”

The Kernel stood and strode from the square as the ICPs began to move towards bringing their two new prisoners along.

Next: Chapter 2.19 – User Access.