Tron 2.28 – Resource Hungry

Jet ran through the transport back to the briefing room. The Section leader was alone when he entered.

“Section, we need to deploy on arrival before we enter the terminal.” Said Jet.

“I assume that the Datawraiths we chased here have set up an ambush, Sir, but with all due respect, it might be safer to approach the position from inside the transport until we’ve evaluated the nature of the threat. We can always back out and redeploy .” Said the Section leader, looking up from the map for only a brief moment.

“They didn’t derez their ship, Section, it’s still docked.” Said Jet. “And I don’t think we can stop for some reason.”

The Section leader looked up again, but this time held Jet’s gaze. He paused for a small fraction of a cycle then started walking away from the map.

“Sector Three Section, to the docking bay, we’re getting out of here.” the Section leader called out, loud enough that it didn’t need Ma3a’s redundant message moments later.

“All programs, brace for impact and forced deresolution following network collision upon docking.” Came Ma3a’s voice.

The Section leader slid open the door to the corridor, almost stepped out, then stepped back as five ICPs ran by in a rush.

“User Damn It,” swore the Section leader, then glanced at Jet. “Sorry, Sir, Nothing personal.”

Then he walked out into the corridor.

Jet wondered briefly if anything ruffled the Section Leader’s nerves, since he always seemed to know exactly what he intended to do next.

Jet followed him and made his way into the cargo and egress area of the transport. Upon walking into the area, Jet noticed that the Section leader had already gotten his troops ready for disembark in an orderly manner and five of them – just under half of the Section size – were now moving to the Shells, where Alchemist and Mercury were rushing to protect their encapsulated user, still held within the page swap.

Ma3a’s voice came through the transport once more. This one was a personal message.

“Jet, we’re going to hit hard enough to possibly derez programs within this transport. The collision avoidance isn’t going to work and the transport is going to take packet damage. The error correction protocols will reduce the level of damage, but ultimately, we’ll be detected as a frame error on arrival and the deresolution process will start immediately.

“Get Mercury, Alchemist and your user to safety, and watch out for Datawraiths - they have to know we’re here.

“I’ll make my own way out once we’re clear.”

Jet looked at Mercury.

“Will Ma3a make it alright?” he called to her.

Mercury was preparing motive plugins for the shell to disembark.

“I expect she’ll evacuate as soon as we’re locked to the docking process.” Mercury called back.

There was an incredible noise that rang throughout the ship as the loading hatch cracked open and dropped slowly to the disembark position, bringing the view of the world outside with it. As the landscape below shot past rapidly, Jet became acutely aware of their speed.

“Is she going to keep going in at this speed?” Jet yelled to Mercury.

“I have no idea, but once the collision is detected, we’re finished, so we need to get out before that. We’re breaking out before the transport algorithms can scan the packets.” Called Mercury.

Jet grabbed a LOL from the side of the bay and moved out onto the ramp. From here, the rest of the transport sat above and beside him, the termination point not quite reached yet, although Jet could see the platform extended well outside of the transit terminal. The Jetty might provide the safest egress point if they could slow down enough.

Ahead, partially obscured by the transport structure, Jet could see the beam heading into the terminal and between them and a safe docking, the smaller craft that the Datawraiths had used to escape with the exit ramp still extended.

Around Jet was an almost palpable thrumming sound caused by the passage along the beam. Jet felt a touch on his shoulder and Mercury was there beside him as he looked around.

“Why is their ship still there. “ Jet asked.

“They aren’t following the correct protocols. They’re supposed to clear their frames from the incoming buffer on exit,” Mercury said.

“Why doesn’t the system remove their frames?” Jet asked.

“It will after several cycles, but it obviously hasn’t been there long enough to trigger self-deresolution,” called Mercury back, over the noise.

As the transport came alongside the terminal jetty, the ramp lowered to a handspan above the jetty. It was still moving fast, but the large transport was slowing.

“Why is it we can’t we just stop out here?” called Jet to Mercury.

“The fifo buffers in the terminal should slow us down on entry, but they’re still full. We’ll keep slowing, but we won’t stop without the buffers clearing. Out frame is too large to fit within the remaining buffer, so it will overwrite when it strikes the other packet transport,” said Mercury.

Then she turned and ran back to Alchemist, who was preparing to shift the shells as they approached.

Several ICPs moved out onto the ramp, armed and ready to deploy.

The Section leader walked over to Jet.

“Ma3a suggests we deploy during the buffering phase after the ramp enters the terminal area of the Jetty, but before the packet collision.” He said.

Jet nodded. A wall separating the outer jetty and the terminal jetty was rapidly approaching still.

“Do you think that the Datawraiths are waiting in ambush?” asked Jet.

He looked down at his disc while he waited for the Section leader’s answer. Knowing what he did about Sector 2, he wondered if he could kill a Datawraith now in another sector, knowing another human life or even sanity might be forfeit.

But fortunately here in Sector one, he knew the Datawraith would recover only needing a little care. Here they could auto-return to their exit beam and rejoin the physical world, something he still needed to arrange for Melanie.

Here he could at least salve his conscious so here he would offer them no quarter, and steeled himself to remember that he could play it as a game, just as he had in the other sectors before he knew that users didn’t always return safely. Hoped he could overcome his haunting memories of those times.

Jet looked to the Section leader for his answer, but it was given by default as the Section leader ducked to one knee, firing from his LOL as he did so, a barrage of purple energy crackling around them.

A blaster shot slammed into the ICP behind the Section leader, shattering his armor and throwing him bodily backwards to the ground, although not sufficiently damaging to derez him.

Jet dropped, spun around, resting on one knee as he did so, bringing the LOL to his shoulder so he could sight the threats along its barrel. The quick glance he managed to take of the inside of the transit terminal told him there were at least a dozen Datawraiths waiting for them, just inside the entrance.

Jet had just brought the LOL around to aim at one, when a large hand grabbed his shoulder, hauling him forward and spoiling the aim. He tried to re-aim, but the pressure didn’t relent and he felt himself being dragged by his shoulder up and forward to the edge of the transport ramp.

“No time for that sir, we need to get off this transport now,” said the Section leader, then pulled Jet off the side of the ramp and onto the Jetty.

Jet fell onto his back as he did, skidding forward still at speed, his feet ahead of him and directly in his path stood a solitary Datawraith, who noticed Jet almost immediately and started to drop the muzzle end of the blaster primitive to bring it in line with Jet’s skidding figure.

Still holding his LOL into his shoulder since he was first interrupted, Jet didn’t use the aim this time – he just moved the barrel a little to the side to bring it into line with his target.

The Datawraith was quicker to fire and lines of purple energy crackled over Jet’s head, slamming into the Jetty surface behind him, ripping out small sections.

Jet continued to slide, his momentum taking him forward and between the legs of the datawraith, helping him bring his weapon to bear, firing a shot at point-blank range directly into the Datawraith’s midsection as he slid through.

The Datawraith was heavily armoured, but not against a direct shot like that. The LOL beam burst through his frame, his body derezzing even as he fell up and backwards, lifted high by the shot, his primitive blaster dropping directly into Jet’s Lap.

Still moving with momentum, Jet looked for more Datawraiths ahead, but none were close. They had set up their ambush at the entry point to the transit terminal and the Section had dropped directly into their position. Jet had continued to skid past all of them and was halfway through the terminal now.

Far ahead, Jet watched as the transport’s ramp left him behind, his own deceleration much higher, then the large craft ploughed directly into the prior transport still locked to the beam.

Jet wasn’t sure what to expect, but there wasn’t the sound of tearing metal he expected. The only sound he picked up was a large reverberating thud and tinny afternoise while the Datawraith transport broke up into pieces and shattered and the impact of the behemoth that had brought the Section to Sector 1.

For a moment, Jet was hopeful that the transport would overwrite the buffer with its own contents, but realized a moment later that the buffer wasn’t going to work as the packet transport continued on with still considerable speed and drove directly into the receiving port of Sector 1, before hanging out of the side of it through a large hole it had made itself.

Worse was yet to come. Sections of the transport vehicle itself now dropped into direct contact with the beam and crackled briefly in a brilliant explosion of sparks before shattering and blowing themselves in large chunks around the terminal.

The beam deflected off one large panel for a moment, disrupted completely and fired directly back into the terminal, just over Jet’s head. He didn’t see where it went, but felt the energy of its passing crackle around him as it went by.

Almost at a stop now, Jet pushed his feet down to use the last of his momentum to launch himself to a standing position, then turned around.

The last of the deflected beam finished ripping directly through the structure of the terminal, before it blinked out completely, damaged beyond function by the transport. As the light died down in the legacy intersector terminal, the view of intense brightness was replaced with pieces of terminal raining down where the beam had shattered part of the terminal structure completely.

The Shell itself had come to a halt just before Jet had and Mercury and Alchemist were taking cover behind it, returning fire with a Prankster Bit and Alchemist’s disc. Jet ran over and joined the cover with them.

“Are you alright,” shouted Jet over the cacophony of sound that began as the terminal started to shred itself, both from existing damage and from the damage the ensuing firefight was inflicting.

“We’re fine, but the rest of the Section is under fire and Ma3a’s still on the transport,” said Mercury.

“Still on the transport?” asked Jet. “Why didn’t she leave when she had the chance?”

Mercury looked back at Jet before rechecking her aim towards the approaching assault.

“She needed to slow the rate of approach to the terminal so we could evacuate. There wasn’t much time, so I expect she was trying to give us as much of a chance as possible.” Mercury said.

Jet looked back at the remains of the transport ship, now embedded into the shattered back wall of the terminal.

The emergency deresolution process looked like it was starting to begin. Lines appeared like scaffolding around the rear sections of the transport.

“Mercury, support the Section and keep Melanie safe. I’m going after Ma3a,” he called.

Mercury hestated briefly, not sure whether to follow Jet or to keep on defending the shell. A moment later, a brief barrage of fire raining into the side of the shell put her head back behind cover and made the decision for her.

Jet ran back to the end of the Terminal where the transport hung limply now on the edge of the jetty, it’s bulk still jutting out from the wall that had once held the termination lenses of the beam.

The deresolution process was well underway, but happening slowly and from the rear of the transport first.

The ramp that the Section had disembarked from so recently was no longer over the jetty, but it was close, suspended a little above the current level Jet was on. Judging that it was reachable, Jet leapt for it, still on the run, catching the edge, almost falling back, then crouching and finding his feet.

Inside the cargo area of the transit, all loose objects and even a few that hadn’t been were scattered around the badly damaged vehicle they had come in. A wisp of a deresolution line forming just outside the ramp reminded Jet he was working against the clock here.

Some of the panels inside were also damaged and Jet needed to almost perform a digital parkour to maneuver through previously accessible corridors, now a mix of ill-fitting blocks, as if someone had cut a channel from aligned panels, then jolted the panels out of alignment.

The bridge was, fortunately, readily accessible even if littered with damaged materials and block primitives as had been the cargo bay.

At the far end of the bridge, Jet found Ma3a slumped over the helm.

Jet approached her as quickly as he could and looked her over for any signs of damage or deresolution. When he saw none, he placed one of his hands under her torso and started to lift her off the helm.

Lifting her wireframe head in his other hand, Jet shook her gently. “Ma3a, are you alright? Are you going to make it?’

Ma3a’s digital eyes slowly opened and went in and out of focus.

“Jet, where,” she started, then looking around, realized she was still on the packet transport.

”Jet, you fool, this transport is going to derez. Get out of here before it does,” she scolded him.

Jet lifted Ma3a’s arm over his shoulder and strained briefly to take her weight. For a program that spent nearly all of her time floating around, Ma3a certainly seemed to hide the weight somewhere.

The ship lurched suddenly as a large section that was holding it in place derezzed.

Jet half-lifted, half-dragged Ma3a from the bridge and down the corridor towards the loading ramp, but without Ma3a being able to transport herself, the progress was very slow through the damaged sections and long before Jet got far enough down to see the ramp, he could see the corridor ahead of him derezzing itself.

“Damn, no exit that way,” Jet said to himself.

”You shouldn’t have come in here,” said Ma3a. “You’ll derez for certain if you fall from the transport during deresolution.”

“Let’s find another exit,” said Jet, then hauled Ma3a in the other direction, back towards the bridge.

“There are no exits,” said Ma3a. :”The only exits have been derezzed already.”

“I thought these craft only derezzed as the program exited,” said Jet, remembering the last time.

“This isn’t a requested deresolution, it’s a system initiated kill process. No graceful exit,” said Ma3a, confirming the worst.

Then she shifted heavily on Jet’s shoulder, groaning.

“My own time to derez has come also, Jet, it’s time to leave me here. You need to find a way to take your user back to your own world and spend what little time you have left here with Mercury,” she said.

Jet struggled with her weight, then propped Ma3a up against a bulkhead, still searching for a way out.

“And how are we going to use your correction algorithms then Ma3a?” asked Jet.

Ma3a’s voice started to phase shift as she spoke, leading Jet to wonder just how badly she was injured.

“The Datawraiths will have functional correction algorithms. F-con stole access to mine last time you were here. Clearly they have succeeded in duplicating them.”

“Yeah, well theirs don’t work as well as yours,” said Jet.

“Jet,” Ma3a’s voice reverberated with urgency. “You need to leave me now, while you still can. Alone, you have a higher probability of survival!”

The cabin primitives around Jet started to show the first traces of a deresolution process, thin lines forming around them like a virtual scaffold, converting solid surfaces into vector objects as the system resumed its own material.

“It’s too late for that, Ma3a, we need to get out of here another way – any ideas?” Jet said.

A large section of floor that Jet was standing on began to slowly rotate – jet realized the next step since he had seen the formation process. The transport was not just derezzing – it was being disassembled too.

“There isn’t a way,” said Ma3a. “The emergency process completes in the opposite order to the normal process – the exits are the first to leave.”

Jet looked back along the corridor for the room he had first spent a trip in with Mercury – It might not be too far to make if he left now, by himself, and he knew once the panel moved out, he could likely exit from it.

But a quick glance back at his broken friend put the thought of leaving her out of Jet’s mind.

Jet hauled Ma3a back onto his shoulder and made his way back into the bridge – the only remaining solid place within the transport as things started to happen him. He carried Ma3a to the forcewall that they had looked out upon approach, then looked beyond at the damage the front of the ship had done to the building around him.

The transport had crashed completely through the structure, shattering the wall into smaller jagged primitives, not unlike the hole he had hidden in when he was first attempting to get into the archive.

But the space outside of the forcewall seemed solid still and even likely to hold both Jet and Ma3a.

“Ma3a, does this forcewall derez before the floor we’re standing on?” he asked.

Ma3a was silent now.

“Ma3a?,” Jet asked, wondering if she heard him or if she was slipping away. The she responded with increasing latency.

“The wall goes last,” said Ma3a, then after a pause, “No way out.”

Jet set Ma3a down. The bridge was now in the deresolution phase and through the vertical forcewalls above him, Jet could see parts of the transport spinning away as they derezzed.

Jet felt the floor beneath him, looking for some way to slow the process. Perhaps if he could find something in the code, he could stop the gradual erosion of the transport. Feeling the code that made the transport, Jet realized what the objects did.

The code was simple, each component of a transport a part of the larger application, with each component receiving its own kill signal when it’s time had come and then coming apart, but unfortunately for Jet, It was hard wired into the code.

And the system knew how to shut down errant applications such as the transport even if Jet did stop the auto derez process.

“Ma3a, are transports multithreaded?” asked Jet.

There was a pause again, seemingly longer this time. The bridge floor panels at the other end of the room were well into their deresolution process by the time Ma3a answered and parts of the terminal around them were now visible through gaps in the structure.

“Limited multithreaded,” said Ma3a, then she dimmed almost to black before regaining her color.

Jet felt for the signal that would indicate to the code that it was time to shut down and waited on the panel to trap it. It came less than a cycle later, echoing from the next panel as it completed deresolution.

Jet located the signal and blocked it, using his own code as a firewall, absorbing the signal himself.

What he hadn’t expected was the pain that came with it as the signal drove itself into his core code, dissipating within him rather than passing through.

But the floor panel remained.

Jet looked around as the process continued. He thought he might be alright if he could keep this panel in place, when another signal came through, this one more urgent than before. He felt himself scream at the pulse as it dissipated within him as had the first, but with much more intensity.

”Jet, you can’t block the signals, eventually the system sends the kill signal, which might derez even a user.” Said Ma3a, her voice almost sounding broken now.

Jet kept his palms – his link to the raw code, held to the floor.

“And if it derezzes, the I go with it anyway, so I need to hold on,” Jet called back, then screamed again as the next deresolution pulse ran through him, shaking his head to fight off the pain.

“The next will be fatal,” said Ma3a. “Jet, please, don’t make me watch you do this with my final cycles.”

Jet held on, felt the trickle of energy as the system prepared a final pulse, possibly with all the force of a delete instruction.

Then the thread behind Jet that maintained the forcewall cycled through, and the forcewall fell into quick deresolution. Jet saw the panel go and withdrew his palms from the panel even as the floor panel took its final delete instruction from the system and began to rapidly break up.

Moving as quickly as he could, Jet grabbed Ma3a and leapt through the area where the forcewall had once been as the panel broke up beneath him, launching Jet and Ma3a into the cavity the transport had made.

They came down hard, and Jet rolled to the side to take the load of Ma3a as they landed.

After making sure they were safe, Jet Put her down and turned to look at the transport just as the last pieces spun apart and derezzed, leaving the terminal badly damaged but clear. The beam itself was still gone, possibly too damaged to return to operation from the impact of the two transports.

As the last pieces of transport dissipated, the view to the terminal cleared and the highlights of purple energy brought Jet’s thoughts back to his other friends, who seemed to be having difficulties of their own. Down below, he saw the intensity of purple light as the Datawraiths started to win their battle against the ICPs.

Jet unshouldered his LOL and lay down in the fractured wall, bringing the scope around into view and looking through it.

As the reticule shifted into Jet’s vision, an ICP derezzed under a concentrated barrage as he attempted to return fire, his shell dropping lifelessly before the lines concentrated and ascended to wherever derezzed programs went.

Seeing the detail at zoomed levels, Jet saw the remaining ICPs had now regrouped behind the shells with Mercury and Alchemist and were defending the shells, although from the intensity of fire hitting the shell, it was clear that the shell was also shielding them.

There were only six ICPs remaining from the original group now, and Jet’s triangulate function was showing him that those who did remain were low on defenses.

Looking then towards the back of the terminal, Jet counted seven still active points of fire, each indicating a stealthed Datawraith, coming out of cloak each time it fired at the ICP section. As the last of the ICPs moved behind the shell, the Datawraiths broke cover and made a dash for the shell.

“No so fast,” said Jet, dialing up maximum zoom. He took out the first running Datawraith with a headshot.

The Datawraith behind him paused long enough and close enough that Jet’s second shot once the LOL cycled took him down with a clear lance through his chest.

“Five to go,” Jet said to himself as he mentally calculated the remaining forces that had decimated the section’s defensive capabilities, even after their ambush partially failed.

A datawraith came running around the side of the shell, using it to provide cover from Jet, but once he could see the ICPs, he was exposed. Jet started to line up when the ICP threw his disc directly into the third Datawraith, derezzing him, before a fourth that was right behind the third fell to Jet’s lethal accuracy.

“Three left,” said Jet, scanning the area again for Datawraiths. They had all switched to stealth now, moving silently and invisibly.

A brief glimmer in the background alerted Jet to a cloaked Datawraith next to the shell, sneaking up behind Alchemist. There wasn’t enough time to wait for the Datawraith to decloak and there wasn’t any way to alert his friends to the danger.

Lining on the location where the centre of mass should be, Jet was rewarded as his next shot impacted the Datawraith in the side. The shot didn’t derez the Datawraith, but it did expose it and alert Alchemist.

Alchemist didn’t leave the opportunity waiting, dispatching the damaged foe with ruthless efficiency.

“Two left,” said Jet, then watched as the remaining two broke cloaking to sprint away.

“Not faster than a LOL,” said Jet, knocking one down with a shot between the shoulder blades. It must have been damaged already, because it started to rise, then dropped and derezzed, but the other made it behind cover at the opening of the terminal and escaped.

Waiting for the last Datawraith in case it returned to take a shot at the ICPs, Jet maintained a vigil as his friends pulled out of the terminal and moved towards the entrance to Sector one.

Once they were clear, Jet lifted his LOL up, rolled back, then shouldered it and moved over to Ma3a.

She was dimmer now than when Jet had put her there.

“Damn it, Ma3a, you need to hang on,” Jet said, then placed his hand on her shoulder and connected to her code.

What Jet initially saw terrified him. He had only looked in on the code of a few programs and while they were different, the results weren’t that suprising.

Jade was a few recent additions to legacy code that had been refined to the point of being bug-free and efficient, yet still showed it’s robust origins.

Alchemist’s code had been a work of ark, beauty mixed with sheer efficiency of design.

Mercury’s code had shown him the working of an expert programmer and her had further glimpsed the soul that lay beneath.

However Ma3a’s code hit Jet like a scene from a nightmare. Swirling in a sea of red primitives were lines of code that rewrote themselves in real time even as Jet watched. In the middle of her code view, was a single terminal which fired alternate pulses of red and blue into the sky, the terminal itself shrouded in vertical primitives that slowly rotated and pulsed.

The entire code based rested on a plateau that Jet was sure he had seen somewhere before.

And ahead of Jet, the face of Ma3a seemed to permeate everything in wireframe.

Still, Jet pushed back the dark impressions he received from the code, and looked to determine where the damage was coming from. He looked around her code with his mind, but as he started to read the code source, he heard Ma3a’s voice yell out “Jet, No!,” and suddenly his mind switched back to his normal view, where he found Ma3a’s hand locked around his wrist, holding it away, from her.

“No, Jet,” came her voice again, but weak this time. “It’s too dangerous. There are things about my code that you do not understand.”

Jet removed his hand as Ma3a let his wrist go completely.

“The Tron Legacy code is unstable at present. Your father only suppressed the adverse effects that you experienced during your last visit. Get me to Alchemist – if you can access my base code through her toolset, you may be able to help me without triggering the failsafe routines, otherwise you must let me pass on.” came Ma3a’s voice.

“Alchemist?” questioned Jet. Ma3a had known Alchemist for only a short while.

“Your friend’s program is more versatile that you imagine. It can remove the flux errors from my own code as well as a user’s.” said Ma3a

“My time is limited and my code almost auto-corrupting, so I’m going to enter sleep mode now. You will know if you have been successful if I awaken,” she finished, her voice very quiet and fading as she spoke, yet surprisingly human as she said what she had to. Then she closed her eyes and slowly went limp.

Jet heard a voice beyond the hole in the wall.

“Jet, are you alright?” came Mercury’s voice.

Jet moved back near the edge and poked he head out over the drop. She was standing on the Jetty near the damage. The shell was nowhere to be seen, although he guessed it wasn’t too far and that the Section had moved to somewhere more easily defended.

“Ma3a’s badly hurt, but I’m fine,” said Jet.

“Is she alright?” Mercury called.

Jet looked back at her. He wasn’t sure if she’d hold together. But now wasn’t the time to leave Mercury to worry about it.

“She’ll be fine. I’ll need to catch up with you all and fix her up.” Jet called down.

Mercury seemed relieved, took a moment to breath, but before she could ask another question, Jet wanted to put her mind elsewhere.

“Mercury, I seem to be stuck up here. Can you see a way down?”, he called to her.

Mercury shook her head. “You’re on top of the Terminal – I don’t think there is a way down, but the Terminal’s connect at the top and you should be able to find a way to the Hub Terminus from there. You should head there since it’s where we’re going, Can you reach the top of the terminal from there?” called Mercury.

Jet looked around. Presently he was surrounded by rubble and the shattered material of this world. Right at the moment, he wasn’t sure he could get to anywhere.

“Yeah, no problem. Is Alchemist there?” Jet called.

“She remains with the user she is responsible for,” called Mercury.

“Can you ask her if she would set up her diagnostics suite once she reaches the Terminus?” Jet asked.

“I will,” she said.

“Thanks Mercury, and Mercury?” Jet called.

Mercury paused, waiting.

“I love you,” he called.

Mercury smiled, although Jet wasn’t sure how well she understood what he had just said.

“Don’t delay – you’re somewhat safe if you stay high, but there are still Datawraiths in the area.” she said.

“See you at the Terminus,” Jet called back.

Then he rolled back into the gap and put his palms to his forehead. “I really seem to know how to find a way to make the situation worse, no matter how bad it is to begin with,” he said to no one.

Then he picked up Ma3a over his shoulders and began walking further back into the void, looking for a way to the top of the terminal.

Next: Chapter 2.29 – Biphase