Tron 2.23 –Paging.

Jet maintained his defensive position as the realisation he had found Melanie came with the suddenness of combat.

Unfortunately, the program Alison had sent to guard her, Alchemist, didn’t seem to recognize Jet at all and was determined to eliminate the people who had come to help her.

“Mercury, this is Alchemist, she’s critical to Melanie – don’t derez her,” called Jet, realising things could quickly go from bad to worse.

Mercury maintained her guard and edged closer to Jet.

“I’d be more worried about her derezzing us at the moment,” said Mercury, “She seems to have an excellent grasp of basic weapons and I can’t defend us without going on the offensive.”

Alchemist noticed the break in Mercury’s attention and surged forward, pressing her attack.

Leading with her disc weapon, Alchemist threw hard and directly at Jet, but continued on after she had loosed her weapon, slashing sideways with her foot as she approached.

Before waiting for her disc to return, she then rezzed in her baton, striking down hard at Mercury.

Mercury ducked as Alchemist attacked, leaping to the side just before the Alchemist aligned herself for a second strike.

Mercury rolled backwards to cover herself as Alchemist withdrew slightly, sheathed her disc then rezzed in both of her battons and deflected two direct thrusts and a slash with a cross-block as Alchemist stepped back in to strike.

Alchemist stepped back from Mercury’s parry and snapped her hand up to retrieve her returning disc, then rethrew the weapon at Jet who once again blocked it with his own disc.

“Jet, you need to come up with a plan soon, or we’re going to lose this fight,” said Mercury.

The two girls stepped back for a moment, each waiting for an opening from the other to exploit, then Alchemist resumed her assault without waiting, attempting to create an opening by force.

Alchemist drove a thrust kick directly at Mercury’s knee, which Mercury responded to by pulling the leg and kicking out with it at the other program, but the kick was weak and Alchemist blocked it before catching her disc once more as it returned and throwing it again, keeping both Jet and Mercury busy.

“Alchemist,” called Jet, blocking the disc attack once more, “We’re friends – we’ve been sent to protect Melanie.”

Alchemist responded while reverse spinning kicking at Mercury, catching her in the mid-section and knocking her back and down, although Mercury rolled with the blow and came up standing again.

“Then if you are friends, you will retreat from this place until my user contacts me with instructions, otherwise I’ll defend this memory location with my life to my very last cycle,” called Alchemist.

“She seems rather determined to not be helped,” said Mercury. “Should we retreat?”

Mercury launched back into an attack this time, leading with three well-timed overhand slashes that forced Alchemist back towards the pool.

“There’s no time to retreat, Mercury.

Melanie’s going to need twelve hours subjective time to process – we need to stop Alchemist now!” said Jet.

“Any ideas how to do that?” asked Mercury as Alchemist threw her disc once more still, forcing Jet to the defensive immediately and in the same motion, slashed low with her own baton, forcing Mercury to jump up and avoid the blow.

“Do you have than encapsulation weapon?” Jet asked, blocking a sharply curving disc attack.

“The one you gave to your pet program to hold?” asked Mercury, dropping down and returning with two sweeps which forced Alchemist to briefly step through them.

Damn it, thought Jet. He had no convenient way of stopping this program presently.

“Ma3a, can you do anything?” called Jet.

Ma3a came around the corner and stood for a moment, watching the three fight. Alchemist immediately threw her disk at Ma3a, who had no disc to block it with however this didn’t seem too much of an issue for Ma3a, who simply batted this disc away with her hand.

“This program exceeds my routines response capability,” yelled Mercury. “You’ll need to take care of her disc, Jet, Ma3a – I need help with this one.” said Mercury.

However at the mention of the word Jet, Alchemist took a step back and halted her attack briefly.

“Jet?” Alchemist queried distractedly, when Ma3a noted her pause and moved.

Driving forward with her shoulder, Ma3a caught the blue program hard in the upper midsection and knocked her off her feet, directly onto Jet, the two of them falling over, Jet’s arms around Alchemist as he struggled to avoid falling without anything to grab onto.

Alchemist took advantage of the situation and twisted fluidly within his clumsy embrace and brought her baton around under his chin.

As the two fell, Jet felt the program on top of him twist and then felt his head forced backwards as she positioned herself for a fatal blow.

“Halt, programs,” called Alchemist, breathing hard, but remaining steady as she held back on derezzing Jet.

Mercury and Ma3a held their distance.

“I can still derez him even at this range,” said Alchemist, twisting her head slightly to look at Ma3a and Mercury.

No one moved for a moment, then Mercury spoke slowly so as not to cause Alchemist to react.

“Alchemist, is that your designation?” asked Mercury.

Jet croaked slightly, one hand trying to get a grip on Alchemists’s hand that held the baton, his other still trapped under her knee. Alchemist changed her grip slightly to defeat him, then looked back at the program she held on the floor, splayed helpless before her.

“Are you Jet?” Alchemist asked Jet, ignoring Mercury’s question.

“Uuurgh” managed Jet, almost choking on the pressure of the baton on his throat.

Alchemist noted this and removed the pressure, to which Jet breathed in hard and rubbed his throat, but the baton was close enough to drive through.

“Yes,” Jet managed, gasping for breath.

“Functional Detection routines confirm Jet appears to be a user. Please confirm?”, she asked.

Jet looked up into the face that might kill him based on his next answer.

“Yes,” Jet said.

Alchemist appeared to be processing for a moment, the responded. “Your equation evaluates true.”

Alchemist moved her knee off Jet’s chest slowly, remaining in a striking position. With the pressure gone, Jet rolled to the side and coughed.

“My user mentioned that I should look for user::Jet, before I lost carrier. Confirm my user’s name, or I will derez you here and now.” Alchemist warned.

As Mercury stepped forward, Alchemist suddenly returned the baton to Jet’s throat once more, making clear she would strike, before Mercury held up her hands and stepped back causing Alchemist to release the pressure once more.

Jet rubbed his throat as the baton came back.

“Alison,” said Jet. “Your user’s name is Alison.”

“You are user::Jet then.” Stated Alchemist as she removed her weapon from Jet and stood up.

“I will allow you to state your request,” Alchemist confirmed.

Jet slowly hauled himself to his feet and looked at the blue program, who was still pointing the end of her baton directly at his throat, despite her declaration.

“I came here to save Melanie. I still need to find her, but I believe you may know where she is?” said Jet, still struggling to get his breath back.

Alchemist nodded, then dropped her baton, returning it to a primitive then derezzing it.

“Alison charged me with protecting Melanie, who I believe is also a user,” she said. “It is a task that I am committed to, down to my very last opcode.”

Jet nodded, then leaned on the structure to his side to catch his breath better.

“Your user would have lost contact with you when this sector fell, immediately following Melanie’s digitisation,” explained Jet. “She was cut off from you at that point.”

Alchemist nodded. “Yes, and then this sector fell to the Datawraiths, however I have no permissions for travel and would have been deleted if I transferred to another system.

“I relocated user::Melanie to this memory location and have been defending this point since that time.

“I received one final Message from user::Alison who instructed me to wait for you.” Alchemist explained.

“So will you let us approach the pool?” asked Mercury.

At that, Alchemist removed her baton again so suddenly that both Mercury and Ma3a dropped into defensive positions.

“None save user::Jet may approach user::Melanie.” Alchemist warned.

Jet jumped between the three programs and held his hands up, but took no weapon.

“Whoa, hold it ladies, fight’s over, let’s concentrate on the task at hand.” He said, then only lowering his hands very slowly, began walking to the pool. “Just hold back while I check on Melanie.”

Alchemy followed Jet through to the pool, but maintained her watchfulness of the other two programs until they were out of sight, clearly not trusting them.

As Jet approached the pool, he expected to see a program hiding somewhere, maybe ill or dying, yet the pool was empty. He walked around the area several times, then turned to Alchemy.

“Where is Melanie?” he asked.

Alchemy held up her hand and pointed behind Jet’s back towards the shells he had noticed earlier.

“user::Melanie,” she said.

Jet turned and walked over to the shells, then looked through a clear section of the shell.

Within it was a program, appearing asleep, but otherwise glowing well.

Seeing the face, he gasped. The program within was a white-colored version of Mercury, but otherwise identical to the program he fell in love with.

Jet stepped forward and placed his palm against the viewing screen and rubbed it, causing ripples of energy to spread across the surface like water.

“What is this shell?” asked Jet.

“Paged memory,” said Alchemist. “When this user was digitised, a user request came through to move her to paged memory. This is that memory page location.”

Jet realised from the description and his prior knowledge of the EN511 how this paged memory system worked.

Dr Gibbs had explained to him while he was there that the system was so unstable in the early days that even individual programs were interfering with other programs at the quantum level as they executed.

The result was that paged memory loops had been implemented, allowing some applications to timeshare in completely different fiber loops that were never accessed by the processor at the same time, effectively allowing programs to page in and page out of real-memory.

This particular memory type was a single page that could be removed from the processor loop entirely and as such made the perfect encapsulation for Melanie while Mercury was executing within the system.

Walter Gibbs was never able to work out why some programs caused quantum interference with others, since programs weren’t able to observe each other, but it still seemed to occur. It was only after perfecting the algorithmic interpreter that he got past the need for paged memory to the core, as the program execution time became sequenced.

But the core encapsulation programs still remained as a component of the system. More-so, there were two pages, allowing, Jet realised, Mercury to page out while Melanie paged in.

This also explained to Jet why Mercury could no longer feel her user – her user was effectively in another dimension to her – logically and electronically separated.

It wasn’t the newest form of program encapsulation in the system – that was located in the newer digitising bay memory that was shut down a year ago and was used to contain the Datawraiths and Jet’s father during his last visit, but unlike the process encapsulation, the paged memory was completely isolated from this world.

The only reason this process had been used, which was possibly fortunate for Melanie’s safety, was that Ma3a had invoked the encapsulation and she only had access to the single-laser code that was developed before the newer generation technology was built, still being located in the test labs.

“You haven’t been able to de-encapsulate this user, have you Alchemist?” said Jet to Alchemist.

Alchemist shook her head once.

“This user was already damaged during the original scanning pass before user::Melanie requested that we move to encapsulate. De-encapsulation without removing the source of interference would prove fatal.” Said Alchemist.

Jet examined the shells. The one on the right was empty. It appeared based on what Jet had reasoned, that if Mercury was to enter it, then she would become trapped in the other memory page while Melanie was out for processing.

The realisation made Jet shudder - he would lose her once again and lose much of the time he had left with her while Melanie was processed.

The pain sitting in the pit of his stomach intensified as Jet realised that the closer he came to being with her, just how much events seemed to drive them further apart.

There was no other way though. If Jet was to save Melanie, and possibly Mercury in the same action, there would be little choice but to page swap and begin the scanning and healing processes alchemist was programmed to complete.

“Alchemist, I need to bring the others here so you can complete your task,” said Jet.

“I cannot permit that,” said Alchemist. “My user has programmed me only to allow access to Jet. I must contact my user before I allow others to approach.”

Jet thought about that for a moment.

“Do I have any access restrictions?” Jet asked.

“Full read-only privileges accorded to user Jet,” responded Alchemist.

“Alchemist, do you mind if I access read-mode directly?” Jet asked.

Alchemist processed this for a moment, then responded with a single word. “Authorised.”

Jet stepped forward and went to move behind Alchemist, but she twisted, unwilling to let Jet get behind her. “Write-access not authorised,” she said.

Jet held back, but left his hand forward. “Please show me where to access read-only,” he asked.

Alison took Jet’s hand and placed it against the side of her shoulder, but her eyes made clear there was nothing intimate about the gesture. Barely restrained fury seemed to glow beneath them, even though she complied.

Then Jet closed his eyes and felt the code, all of Alison’s work on Alchemist showing through the interface he had opened to Alchemist flowing into Jet’s mind.

The code itself was as beautiful as her avatar here in the digital world, allowing Jet to understand how dedicated Alison must have been to her sister when she wrote the medical routines encased within Alchemists structure.

Beneath that a code base built for combat and a full complement of additional objects that Jet realised were from his father originally – Merge and Correction algorithms for scanning, were supplementing her primary functions.

The code wasn’t exactly the same as his father’s however - Alison had cleaned up all of his code and optimised it to near perfection.

Alchemist also contained fragments of the new Tron legacy code, although the most significant object Jet located were the new routines added to Ma3a after they returned to the real world the last time.

With those objects compiled in, Alchemist could identify the difference between users and programs once she examined them.

Based on her code, Alchemist was nearly perfect – the result of dedication to the source code. The beauty of the source itself left Jet shocked and awed at the work her user had put into it and Jet felt shame at his realisation that even he did not have the dedication to his work to write code like this all of the time.

But the code still possessed a flaw.

Deep within the routines, it was waiting continually for user input before it would act.

Before she could process the healing algorithms and before she would allow Mercury to enter the paged memory space, Alchemist needed authorisation.

Alison had been too overcautious in her design.

Jet looked for points to update the run-time code that controlled permissions.

Even without documentation, the code almost described itself and Jet quickly located the code referring to himself. Alison had thought that far ahead and had managed to get a message through after the accident, but the message didn’t take into consideration that although Jet may need to access Alchemist, Alison still needed to authorise action. The message itself was simple – wait for Jet – he is a user and will release Melanie for processing.

Jet began searching for the codebase for a way to adjust this code to allow the others to approach the shell. The immediate effect was write authorisations immediately changed any requests to write to an error that indicated access was read-only access.

To Jet, it made sense now, but without Alison available he would need write access so he could change the status bits later within Alchemist to authorise the process of rebuilding Melanie to proceed.

Jet forced his mind to ascend another level within the code that comprised Alchemist and felt for the machine code beneath the compiled instructions. Searching through Alchemist’s code at the deeper level, Jet found the permission he wanted and located the bit that locked him out.

Just one single bit write bit not set.

Concentrating, Jet extended his influence through the code and then concentrated on changing that one bit as he had done before with Jade.

The bit tripped.

Jet was in the process of opening his eyes when a sudden impact on the side of his face pulled his mind rapidly out of Alchemist and back to the digital world, where it felt as if the world was caving in on him.

“What in user’s name did you just do to me?” Alchemist was screaming at Jet. He felt the hard ground pressing against his back and felt pain in his chest.

Alchemist was kneeling on him and punching him hard.

“You violated your privilege level,” she yelled, hooking Jet hard with her fist.

Somewhere from deep within the pain, Jet remembered who he was and where he was. The next blow, a forward driving punch aimed at Jet’s face, fell directly into Jet’s palm.

Opening his eyes, he looked up to see Alchemist shocked that he had the strength to stop her attack, and he sat up, knocking her off as he got to his feet, the pain of the blows already fading.

“But how,” said Alchemist, when Jet took control of the situation, fear and anger showing in her eyes.

“Program Alchemist, State present privilege level to user::Jet.” He demanded.

“user::Jet,” said Alchemist, sitting on the floor, stunned and trying to understand. Her anger at the privilege violation was subsiding and now she was just confused by Jet’s dominant tone.

“State privilege level,” demanded Jet.

Alchemist stood and faced Jet.

“user::Jet has full read-write privilege,” she started, then realised what Jet had changed.

“You hacked me,” said Alchemist.

“I had to,” said Jet. “Sector three is offline and Alison can’t change your programming. I need you to complete your task, but you wouldn’t have completed it without input from your user.”

Alchemist thought about this for a while. “So you thought you’d just take the privileges anyway?”

Jet wasn’t about to let this conversation go this way. “Program Alchemist, we don’t have time to discuss this. I have permissions from Alison to access your code. Otherwise she would not have given me read access would she?”

Alchemist shuddered.

“That is not something you had the rights to do,” she spat back at Jet.

“Alchemist, I am sorry that I had to change your code, but we need trusted access to resources. Please confirm trusted access for programs Ma3a, Jet, Mercury and,” Jet thought about it for a moment, “ and program Jade. Confirm trusted access to local memory resources of pool for ICP section, Sector three.”

Alchemist turned her head away from Jet, but responded.

“Confirm trusted access. Authorisation granted.” She said.

Jet felt like it was a Phyrric victory. He had achieved what he needed to, but trust meant something entirely different in this world to his own. Alchemist wouldn’t forget what he had done to her in a hurry, even though she was bound by both Alison and Jet’s changes to obey his requests.

Jet felt a tingle on his wrist and noticed another Sudo like object had appeared on it, this one blue and almost flush with his arm armor, and not quite like the one her wore from Jade.

Jet walked back to Ma3a and Mercury, who were waiting pensively for his return. Jade and four ICPs were with them also, so Jet guessed Mercury had warned Jade not to enter the pool area yet when she had returned.

Jade was with Ma3a and Mercury, although the four ICPs had established a basic perimeter around them.

“Is the user you are searching for here?” asked Ma3a.

“Yes, she is.” said Jet.

“My user?” asked Mercury, quietly.

“Yes, Mercury, your user. We need to de-encapsulate her now so we can complete the operation to save her life,” Jet said.

Then he looked at Mercury. “But I’m going to need your help to get her out of encapsulation.”

Mercury gave Jet a blank look.

“It means you will be offline for the time while we repair her, then you’ll come back,” said Jet.

Mercury was alarmed at the description.

“Jet, but if I’m offline, where will I be?” asked Mercury.

“In a very old part of the five-eleven that was built for this purpose. I don’t know what it’s like there, and I hope it’s safe, but I don’t think you’re going to be in any danger.” said Jet.

In Jet’s heart, he was terrified for Mercury, but he knew that whatever she faced in the other memory page, she would be safe. Walter Gibbs had explained that no changes occurred to the programs in the paged memory, but Jet wondered what Mercury’s consciousness would experience while she was away.

“Jet,” said Mercury, her face showing her resolve, “I believe in you and I won’t hesitate to do what you ask. I believe you’ll be there for me when I get back. Show me what to do.”

Jet felt his throat begin to choke up at Mercury’s comments, but it was his own resolve he was worried about.

He turned to Jade before showing Mercury and Ma3a to the shells.

“Jade, we need to establish a security perimeter around the pool for up to seven hundred cycles. Can you arrange that?” Jet asked his system oriented friend.

“The Section will arrange that in just a moment,” confirmed Jade, “and I’ll scout the area in advance. Consider it secured.”

“Thankyou Jade,” said Jet. “Mercury, Ma3a, come with me.”

Jet led Mercury and Ma3a to the pool area and the shell that contained Mercury’s user.

Alchemist was there waiting and although Mercury and Ma3a were clearly a little wary of her, Alchemist took no action against them, as Jet had requested. Still, she would not look at Jet as he approached, only indirectly acknowledging him.

Alchemist looked more closely at Mercury as she approached the shell.

“You are not unlike user::Melanie program. Is she your user?” asked Alchemist.

“She is more than that, Alchemist,” Said Jet. “She’s your sister program.”

Alchemist seemed confused. “Is there a connection between us?” she asked.

“You seem familiar yet I don’t believe we have encountered each other before this cycle,” said Mercury looking at Alchemist also.

“Perhaps in another timeslot, in another system,” said Mercury finally, then turned to Jet.

“What do I do,” she asked.

Jet looked to Alchemist for instructions, which Alchemist began explaining to Mercury.

“You step into the second shell, allowing us to release user::Melanie from the paged memory,” said Alchemist to Mercury, still avoiding looking at Jet.

Mercury looked into the shell that contained her user.

“She is the one I saw before I was rendered unable to detect the cycles as I left this sector,” said Mercury.

She touched the surface of the shell as Jet had done earlier, except this time, the ripples cracked and sparks flew to Mercury’s fingertips as she touched it, causing her to pull her hand back.

Mercury looked at her hand briefly then stepped over to Jet before moving to the second shell.

“Wait for me Jet,” she said, then placing her hands on his face and her fingertips extending around the back of Jet’s neck, pulled him closer and kissed him softly and gently on the lips, closing her eyes.

In that moment, Jet glimpsed a little of her code for the first time. He had a brief vision of a more human-like mercury, shimmering with light, floating in a room that had walls covered with source code.

The code within Alchemist was impressive, but his first glimpse of the true nature of Mercury left jet stunned and gasping. She was beautiful beyond his words to express it.

Jet wanted to reach out and hold her – to pull her closer and make this moment last forever.

Then the vision stopped as Mercury broke the kiss and he was back standing before her.

Jet felt her tremble and knew she was scared of what might happen as she turned to walk into the shell.

“Mercury,” called Jet, wanting to stop her – to keep her with him for a moment longer, but in that moment she chose to take the next step into the second shell.

As she touched the surface, it parted for her like the energy pool nearby, it’s surface turning liquid in the moment she stepped into it.

And then she was gone.

Just like the time before, back in the mobile server.

Ma3a Stepped over and placed a hand on Jet’s shoulder. “She’s going to be alright Jet, but we need to get Melanie out of the shell and start the process.”

Jet nodded and looked over to Alchemist.

“Program Alchemist, please initiate phase one – de-encapsulation and prepare the user::Melanie for scan and change function.” he said.

“acknowledged,” was all Alchemist said as she went to work.

There was a bright crack that appeared across the second shell, then the surface started to boil gently as a dark red grid formed and reformed over the surface, then the grid took the shape of a girl.

“user::Melanie paged in. Extracting code base now,” said Alchemist.

A bed-like primitive slowly came out of the second shell, vertical as it came to the surface, on it a young girl almost identical to Mercury except her color was white, with a pearl-like radiance.

As it cleared the shell, it rotated to a normal horizontal axis and completed rezzing into the system.

“I’ve never seen a white program before,” said Ma3a.

The bed floated out and down, before suspending about two feet above the ground near the energy pool where it stopped.

Alchemist stepped forward and grabbed the bed corner, moving it further away from the shell, into a clearing.

“Rezzing in scanning function,” she said, then Ma3a and Jet stepped back as something resembling a CAT scanner appeared, rezzing in around Melanie.

Alchemist’s appearance changed slightly as well, as she moved into a sitting position in a control chair and controls rezzed in around her.

Once the machine finished rezzing in, a yellow forcewall like interface appeared in the centre of the ring shaped primitive that sat to one side of the bed.

“Commencing primary scan,” said Alchemist and Melanie slowly inched forward to the forcewall, before moving into the ring very slowly.

“This process will take several passes and optimisations. Estimated time based on available system resources, four hundred and thirty cycles.” said Alchemist, already busy working on the consoles before her.

“That’s about eight hours subjective,” said Jet.

“I’ll need to assist her,” said Ma3a. “Alchemist doesn’t have access to some of the digitisation commands necessary for all of the operations. Alan-one has asked me to provide access to my routines for this process.”

“Thankyou Ma3a, please do,” said Jet.

Ma3a moved off to float in front of some panels on the machine and began to converse with Alchemist.

Between the two of them, they discussed parameters and data that Jet soon grew tired of listening to the conversation and tuned it out. He sat down on a slightly sloping bank near the pool that overlooked the process.

Alchemist still refused to look directly at Jet and if she did glance his way at times and noticed him looking at her, she quickly returned her attention to the scan.

It made Jet feel uncomfortable so he leaned back until he could see the program meshes in the sky floating like clouds, watching them form and dissipate as he thought about Mercury and what he had witnessed when she had kissed him earlier.

Some ICPs came and went to get energy from the source, but none stayed and none of them talked to Jet.

The Section leader was still out, probably establishing and maintaining the security perimeter Jade had agreed to on his behalf, and didn’t show up.

At first Jet thought he had been left alone during this time, to wallow in his thoughts, when a sound beside him alerted him to the fact someone else was sitting beside him.

“Something is troubling you my user?” Jade’s voice cut through Jet’s melancholy.

Jet looked around startled. He hadn’t heard her as she sat down beside him and waited for him to acknowledge her. He wasn’t sure how long she had been there.

“Mercury is in paged memory,” he said after a while.

Jade was quiet for some time, then spoke again.

“She is very important to you, isn’t she my user?”

Jet sat up and smiled at the ground in front of him, then looked at Jade.

“She is the main reason I came back here again,” said Jet.

“And not the rescue of the user?” asked Jade.

“No, not the rescue of the user, although that is important to me also,” Jet confided.

Jade sat there for a while longer without speaking and while she wasn’t conversing at all for a while Jet was still grateful for the company.

After what felt to Jet like a half hour had passed since Jade last said something, Jet broke the silence between them once more.

“Does the Section leader need any assistance with the security perimeter?” he asked Jade.

“The perimeter is fine. Two scouts followed the remaining Datawraiths and it seems they have all left this sector.” She said.

“Left this sector?” asked Jet. “How did they do that?”

“The intersector communications between sectors one to three is still active, although only the damaged Sector three line returns to the hub and only recognizers can traverse it to access the rest of the system.

“But these three systems still remain interconnected.” she answered.

“I wonder why they left?” mused Jet to himself. “They probably know what’s coming.”

Jade stood up then and spoke to Jet. “Would you like to see some of this system while you wait?” she asked.

Jet looked around once more at Ma3a and Alchemy. They were both still very busy with Melanie, whose unmoving form still floated through the donut shaped machine back and forth.

“Sure, let’s take a walk,” said Jet.

Jade wasn’t saying much as they walked, so Jet just followed alongside, thinking about things and how they were for the first time.

He was surprised how far they had come when Jade finally sat on the edge of a platform and drew Jet’s attention to a beam in the near distance. They were much higher up now than Jet had expected, not realising they were ascending as they walked.

“That’s the intersector beam,” said Jade, pointing to a comms beam at the edge of Sector three. It arced off into the horizon beyond his sight, although he thought he could make out a slight shape to the horizon where it went.

“You can almost see the constructs of Sector two where it terminates in the distance,” Jade explained.

“We’re pretty high up here, aren’t we Jade. Can we see the pool?” he asked.

Jade pointed down to a sparkling almost circular shaped area. Seeing it, Jet could make out the shells, but the machinery scanning Melanie was hidden.

Jet looked around the view of the city of Sector 3. He realised Jade had led him up what might be a digital version of a cliff and out to a natural lookout.

From up here, the city below seemed so peaceful and beautiful, even if empty. Jet sat down on the edge of the platform on the side alongside Jade.

As he lifted his wrist into his lap, Jade noticed the Sudo like interface that had appeared there.

“I see my user has a group write permission for the program Alchemist,” said Jade.

“Alchemist, yes I do I guess,” said Jet, although from the tone of it, Jade realised it was bothering him.

“This seems to bother my user?” she asked, her voice soft and demure.

“Such a thing should be good should it not?”

Jet hadn’t planned on discussing it, but Jade presently had the sort of voice that seemed to hypnotise Jet into talking about things even if he didn’t want to.

“Why do you say that?” responded Jet

“It is just the way you were looking at the other program when you were sitting, my user. You looked disappointed.”

Jet felt the weight of Alchemists displeasure on his shoulders. He did what he had to do, but it somehow felt wrong when he thought about it, even if he was a user.

“Jade, when I changed your permission bits and gave you access to control the recognizer, was that a bad thing?” Jet asked his new friend.

Jade cocked her head to one side, puzzled and examined Jet’s face.

“No, my user. I am completely grateful that you provided me that access. Without it, I could not have helped you, but with it I am free to visit this system in ways that previously I could not.” Jade answered.

“Alchemist seems angry towards me because I changed her permission bits also,” said Jet after a pause.

Jade and Jet both stared off in the distance now as they spoke, unwilling to look directly at each other.

“And you had the necessary permissions to make the change?” asked Jade.

“I created the permissions, as I did with you, Jade.” Said Jet,

“But I did not have the original permission. I think I was able to change it, because I’m a user.”

Jet sat silently for a while, leading to the conversation taking place over a very long time.

“My user, perhaps you do not understand the core of a program as a user, but we programs are completely dedicated to our users. They created us and gave us existence.

“A program would willingly derez for their user, even if the benefit to the user was trivial.

“And as a part of that relationship, only our users may access our permission bits to change authorisations. It is a close and delicate relationship that is considered sacrosanct by all programs.

“Unlike yourself, we programs cannot access each other’s permissions. This is something I believe only a user can achieve, although you seem to be able to access many things in many programs, possibly because, as you say, you are a user.

“However, were you not my honorary user, I don’t think I would have appreciated you adding those functions to my control without my permission.”

Jet looked at Jade.

“But those functions gave you freedom?” he said semi-rhetorically.

“Freedom yes, but at what price? I do appreciate your gift, my user, and please don’t think I’m not grateful.

“But if you had changed my code without my permission and had you not been my user, honorary or otherwise, I would have been deeply offended by your transgression.”

Jet continued to watch Jade although Jade was looking out at the view as she explained this to him as if he was a child that didn’t understand relationships yet.

“How offended?” Jet asked.

Jade’s lack of hesitation in her answer gave the impression she meant it.

“I would have derezzed you, without a second though, or derezzed myself trying.” She said coldly, then looked at Jet.

Jet wasn’t sure what to make of her frankness, but he started to understand her point of view. It was something he had never considered before – that programs considered their code sacred, something only their user was privileged to change.

For a moment, Jet felt unclean at the thought of what he had done. His stomach turned with the knowledge and it felt like vertigo on this platform.

He wondered if his lack of consideration for his actions had offended his friend when they first met.

“Jade, I’m sorry, really sorry that I did that without asking your explicit permission,” he said.

Jade smiled, her smile soft and her eyes widening.

“My user, you have no need to apologise to me. I considered your changes to my code to be,”

Jade paused, then looked away, embarrassed.

“Intimate,” she concluded.

Jet looked back out at the city. He hadn’t been aware of just how deeply he had been touching programs. This world was completely alien to him after-all, even if he was one of the first humans to spend time in it.

He had still failed to learn and understand its customs and practices.

Jade broke the silence once more.

“My user, please do not concern yourself with what I have just told you. I realise that you are dedicated to the program Mercury and you did not realise what you were doing to me in the archive. I am old, even for a program and have seen many customs come and go.

“I realise that your actions were unintentional, but please remember that I am still your program and still wish to be your program, even if you do not see me as that.”

Jade got up and walked away at that point, but she hadn’t walked more than a few steps when Jet twisted around and stopped her with a call.

“Jade,” he said, please don’t leave. I really would like to talk to you some more.”

Jade stood still, her back to Jet for a moment, then turned, smiling gently, but with a small tear appearing at the edge of her eye.

“As my user commands,” said Jade and she returned to Jet.

Jet tried to find the word. Even in his world, he wasn’t experienced at this. In this world, he was completely at a loss, even though it felt more like home than the real world did to him.

“Jade, I want you to be my friend, and I want to be yours,” he said.

Jade paused for a moment, cocked her head to one side slightly and looked at Jet, her whip swaying around her as she did.

“Friend? I am not familiar with that syntax.” She said.

“In my world,” started Jet, “We have three kinds of people who are close to us. Who we give permissions to.

“There is our family, who we accord respect no matter what they do. They are the ones who created us as individual users and who were created with us by the same process.

“There is our partner, who is the one we choose to live with and whom we become intimate.

“And there are our friends – the people with whom we chose all other forms of intimacy that we don’t share with our partners.

“Friends look after each other and take care of each other, protecting them and helping them, sometimes even if they don’t deserve it or want it.

“And they in turn call us friend, and do likewise for us.

“I would appreciate if I you would be my friend.” said Jet.

Jade smiled. “I am not sure how this ritual is completed, but I believe I would be happy to be your friend.”

Jet had seen many sides of Jade since he had come to this world, but she had been of assistance to him. Although she still seemed to become almost anyone when the need was there, Jet was starting to see more and more of her base personality come through.

“Tell me, Jade, why did you come with me? In the first place.” Jet asked.

Jade breathed in deeply before she answered, and lowered both her tone and her eyes.

“You are a user, my user. You must have power and understanding that I could only dream of.

“I saw the advantage to myself to ensure that I was with you when you left to complete that which you feel you must while you are in this world.” she answered.

“And so you gave me the Sudo so that I would find you useful as a tool?” reasoned Jet.

“You seem so powerful, yet you could not use the archive without my assistance. I assumed therefore that my services might be of value to you, as lowly as a program is to one as powerful as a user, but assumed that you needed to control of my routines to trust them.

“I hoped at the time that this would increase my value to you, and I believe it did,” she answered.

“And how do you feel now about my having your Sudo that you have been able to observe me?” Jet asked, wondering if she would revoke the privilege now that she knew he wasn’t as powerful as she may have first imagined.

“I think,” started Jade, searching for words herself now, “That I am happy to have a friend, who is a user and who may access my functions.”

Jet found himself smiling.

“You know, Jade, you’re really likeable when you’re being yourself,” he said.

Jade’s smile vanished with her reply.

“This is a hard and dangerous world, my user. Programs often take what they can and care little for the consequences. I would not have survived this many revisions without being able to adapt.”

Jet understood, perhaps better than he could explain. But he appreciated her frankness.

“Help me to better understand this world, Jade. Tell me more about it.” Jet asked.

Jade began to explain to Jet more about this world as they sat, waiting for Melanie to process.

The conversation took Jet’s mind of Mercury.

Out in the real world, things were still going wrong. The sounds of the sirens were mostly muted now, Brian having found some pliers and mangled all of the cables running to the speakers.

The last siren completed its wailing as Brian half cut and half pulled the wiring from both the wall and the speaker unit.

However the red lights of the emergency system were still the only form of lighting, leaving a surreal atmosphere.

Alison was sitting with her father now, holding him as the two cried slowly together.

Alan now manned her console by himself, waiting for any word from Jet. Being battery powered, it was one of the last things to remain functional in this slowly shutting down environment.

Brian had just finished speaking to the other guards on his cell phone who had already evacuated the building and were wondering why he hadn’t shown up at the evacuation point. Most of them thought he was probably just finishing his pilfering and simply wanted to make sure he got out of the building safely before any authorities came by and asked difficult questions, so it hadn’t been too difficult to spin a story.

He was just putting it away when his cell phone rang again and he put it to his ear, looked briefly once at Alison, as if deciding whether to interrupt her, then made his decision and took off into the darkness without saying anything, pulling a small flashlight from his belt as he ran.

Alan didn’t see him leave as he sat looking into the LCD screen before him as if it might hold some clue as to how to get his son out of the computer. His mind was in a turmoil of mixed emotions as the fury and helplessness mixed and brought him little but anger and pain, made all the worse by the fact he knew his son was still alive, yet he was powerless to save him.

He was still staring at the screen when Flynn came back into the facility with a trolley, Brian at the front end, guiding it rapidly around corners into the core network down below the scaffolding that held the console, the scene illuminated in flashes of white and red as Brian’s flashlight swung still on attached to his belt once more.

Alan noted the noise and looked over the edge of the scaffolding from the console platform.

“Flynn, did you get anyone on the phone?” yelled out Alan.

“They’ve cut all the lines into the building – phone, power, probably water too.” yelled Flynn. “This could be a lot more serious than we’ve assumed so far.

“I called a friend to pick up Manny and get him to safety.”

“Manny,” spoke Dr Gurimin, realising that someone had just mentioned his son’s name, concern for his other child cutting through the pain at the imminent loss of his daughter. The doctor got himself up and walked to the edge of the scaffold with Alison.

“He’s going to be alright, he just needs to get out of the arcade now and somewhere safe until this all blows over,” yelled back Flynn to the doctor, negotiating a corner.

“Did you call the FBI?” yelled back Alan.

“No point,” said Flynn. “We need to buy Jet some time. We can’t waste time on the phone and we don’t know who we need to speak to or even if it’s FBI at all.”

“Flynn, he only has minutes left. We can’t afford not to,” yelled Alan.

Flynn didn’t respond, he simply kept moving.

Down below, Flynn stopped the trolley and grabbed two large cables, then pointed briefly to two other cables leading into the wall near a bank of equipment.

“Brian, pull those two cables now and bring them here,” said Flynn.

Brian twisted the lock-rings on the two cables and pulled them out of their sockets, half expecting the quiet hum of the equipment to suddenly fall silent, but nothing happened. He dragged the cables as far towards the trolley as he could, then Flynn pushed the trolled closer before throwing the short extension cables he had located earlier to Brian.

“Lock them into the far end,” yelled Flynn and Brian put them back together then twisted the lock-ring until the threaded surface pulled the cable sections together.

“Done,” said Brian, but Flynn was already looking at the box on the trolley.

Without another word, Flynn placed his foot directly onto the huge box and grabbed a handle, then pulling as hard as he could go, dragged the handle back hard.

The generator coughed three times and then went silent.

“Why can’t these cheaper models have an autostart,” he cursed and pulled the starter line once more, with the same result.

He was just about to start again when Brian came over and placed his hand over Flynn’s stopping him from trying a third time.

“Let me do this,” he said.

Flynn looked at him for a moment as if the young man was crazy interrupting him at a time like this and then realised he was the one making the mistake. Brian was half his age and a lot stronger. If it wasn’t for his sudden surge of adrenalin, he wouldn’t have been able to drag this genset out through the broken window and into the van in the first place.

Or broken the window that was between him and the hire-shop equipment he needed to give Jet some more time.

Flynn took the torch that Brian was holding out to him and stood back, out of the way, illuminating the genset for Brian.

Brian assumed a similar position to Flynn and hauled on the starter cord as hard as he could. The sound of the motor kicking over was a lot faster now than when Flynn had pulled it.

The genset coughed, slowed, coughed once more and started a slow cough, as if not sure whether to start or stop.

Flynn bent down on one knee, grabbed the choke lever and moved it slightly.

The machine coughed once more, a large puff of dirty smoke coming out as it fired and slowly the sounds of coughs grew faster until a quiet roar was all that came from the device.

Dials on the front of the panel of the Genset started to move and after a short time, sat at 110v on three separate displays.

Flynn coughed himself now and stood back, trying to get out of the way of the fumes, then turned and made his way quickly through the scaffolding to the console area and back to the others.

“Where did you find a Genset?” asked Alan as Flynn walked into the clearing.

“Camping hire store outside the building hires them out,” said Flynn between coughs. “I filled it briefly from the tank in the basement so it should run about two to three hours. We need to leave now.”

Alan grabbed Flynn by the shoulders and shook him slightly. “Flynn, he’s still in there. We can’t leave him. Who’ll refill the generator?”

Flynn looked at his old friend with a sadness that words couldn’t convey.

“Alan, it’s over for the moment. I saw vans milling at the entry to the building as I came in the back way.

“There are soldiers here waiting to take us or will be soon and we can’t wait here or the fumes from the genset will kill us before they soldiers do.

“At least if we leave now, we have a chance of getting Jet out later, maybe even Melanie, so long as they don’t shut down the genset and I’m guessing they won’t, since soldiers tend not to shut anything down without a reason and that reason should take longer than it has fuel.

“Jet’s got maybe three hours on the inside to finish the work on Melanie before the core goes into shutdown at the moment. Perhaps all we can do is buy him some time and then you can try to find someone to turn the power on once we’re outside, but at the moment, time is all we can give him.”

Alan looked at Flynn and understood. Perhaps Flynn and Brian were the only ones here even close to thinking straight.

“What next then old friend,” asked Alan.

“We get out of here now,” said Flynn. “We might be able to make it if we leave immediately.”

Alan nodded, but then sat down quickly at the terminal.

“Just give me time to leave Jet a message before we go,” said Alan, then stood up and left the console as it was, the message locked into the transfer buffer awaiting transmission.

“Is there time to leave a last message for Melanie?” asked Dr Gurimin.

“We have less than a minute,” said Flynn, then nodded towards the console.

The doctor sat down at the screen to add one last message to his daughter then went to close the laptop.

“No,” yelled Alison, snatching out her hand and stopping the screen from closing. “If it’s in sleep mode, the buffer will remain dormant and the message won’t get through.”

Dr Gurimin stood and looked to the others after the very brief message.

“Let us leave now then that they might have this chance,” he said, although his voice betrayed his true feelings that his own child was now doomed as was Alan’s.

They left the console sitting where it was and made their way to the basement.

Next: Chapter 2.24 – Multi-user