Tron 2.37 – Non Maskable Interrupt

Mercury brought the transport down at the top of the tanksmasher tower near where Jet had managed to destroy a large piece of this world. Jade, nearby and giving out orders, saw Jet’s transport land and held up a hand to the ICPs waiting for instructions before walking over to find Jet.

“My User, there are things I wish to discuss with you. I am glad you haven’t returned to your world presently,” she said. “Although I am still worried that you have not left this system yet.”

Jet smiled. Jade had been a huge help to his while he was in this world.

“I can’t leave until the user I was transporting is safely out,” said Jet. “Mercury thought we might be of assistance to you.”

Jade looked to Mercury then back to Jet.

“Jet, is there anything, as a user, you can do to help us?” Jade got right to the point.

“More than he’s already doing?” Mercury said, a cynical edge to her voice.

“I believe the Kernel is now understanding that we are fortunate to have my user’s assistance. I believe he realizes now that he was incorrect in evaluating you when you first arrived. The preemptive warnings you logged have eventuated. But my system is still in danger.” Said Jade.

Jet fought down the urge to say “I told him so”. Jade had always accepted what Jet had said. Unlike other programs, Jade had accepted Jet as a user almost immediately, excepting when she tried to derez him first.

“Jade, once I’m in here, I’m just a program like any other. I’m only a user in the outside world, and I don’t think the Kernel thinks that highly of my suggestions – either time I was here.”

“But you are from the world of the users,” said Jade. “I’m helping the Kernel transport in the programs from other systems as quickly as I can, but we have a bottleneck in Sector one. I need to get the programs from the Terminus to the exit gate.

“I’ve calculated that there’s no way I can transport out more than four percent of applications and programs before shutdown.

“Can you help me?” Jade begged.

Jet looked around, avoiding Jade’s gaze as he considered his response. “Jade, there’s nothing here that I can do that you can’t.”

“You can think like a user, I can’t” countered Jade.

“Then what would you think about if you were a user?” Jet asked.

“How to archive all the programs at once,” Jade responded, almost as if making a wish.

“User’s can’t make things happen instantaneously,” Jet said. “This system has its limits as well.”

“Then how do we transport more programs, My User?” Jade asked. “Time is what is limiting us now.”

“Give me a moment to consider what I can think of that may help the Kernel, and I’ll tell you what I come up with.”

Jade nodded, then bowed slightly. “Thankyou, my User,” she said, then turned and walked back to the other ICP programs that had been assisting her.

“For such a devoted follower, she doesn’t seem shy to ask of you so much,” said Mercury as Jade walked out of earshot as she looked Jet in the eye. “I’m surprised she had so many cycles to spare.”

Jet felt guilty. “We did come here to see what we could do, didn’t we?”

Mercury’s eyes flicked to the side. “Then let’s find you some cycles to consider what you would like to do to help the Kernel.”

Mercury led Jet off in the direction of the control room entrance.

From within the control room, most of Sector one was visible. Transports were slowly moving from the terminus, undocking before moving across the flattened landscape of Sector one.

At the moment, he needed time as well as the Kernel and Jade did. Ma3a would still be processing Melanie at the moment, possibly already in the foreign system.

Until she had cleared Melanie from the network, Mercury wouldn’t be able to leave and that meant that neither could Jet. He wasn’t about to leave without her this time and time was running out.

Jet watched the small control panel on the Sudo that Jade had given him as the time input from Ma3a ticked by, showing how long they had left in this world, in both cycles and real-world minutes.

Jet still hadn’t come up with anything that might assist the Kernel. The transport was experiencing bottlenecks as networks often did. At least programs had started moving and several transports full had been able to leave the system in the past few cycles.

At least now he had a real reference from his own world, Jet felt he had a marginally better concept of local time, although given the difficulty is converting the timeframes in his head, was starting to realize he was almost better off not knowing.

Something had happened to the UPS Flynn had set up and it wasn’t likely to be fixed he reasoned, without his friends on the outside.

Meanwhile, the remaining charge in the UPS batteries that were keeping Jet and the world he was residing in alive for the moment hadn’t had enough of a recharge in the intervening time while the generator was installed and they were already below the alert level for failure and close to actually failing.

Whatever he did now, this world was going to crash hard and Jet needed to be long gone when it did happen or he would never make it back to his own world.

Even now, he questioned his decision to stay on. Melanie was safely transferred through the out of band connection and Simon had given Jet his word to re-integrate her as soon as he could get back to the echelon network himself.

Alchemist had left with Simon, her mission almost complete also, the only tasks remaining were to see the final error correction of the corrupt data through to safe levels before reintegration.

For that reason Ma3a had had to leave with Alchemist, as she was still the processing Melanie. It wasn’t safe for them here and Ma3a should be able to conclude processing in another two hundred cycles or so – roughly two minutes in the real world. Enough time to clear Melanie from the system before Mercury and Jet arrived at echelon.

And in seeing Melanie safely out of the network with her best chance at survival, Jet’s obligations to his father’s friend and to his reason for coming here were fulfilled.

But Jet hadn’t been able to get onto the transport with Alchemist and Simon as it left on the outgoing beam.

He still felt an obligation to this world – which was crying out for help as the very foundations of its universe were being removed in ways that it’s inhabitants couldn’t understand.

And so now that the Kernel had conceded the inevitable destruction of his domain, Jet had stayed on to see the final evacuation of this world through the out of band connection to the echelon system as his final task.

It was something he felt he had to do.

But time was going against him.

Based on the application output that Ma3a was channeling to syslog so that Jade’s tool could keep Jet updated, the UPS was estimating complete failure in five minutes. That was five real-time minutes in his world, but as best as Jet could work out, better than five hours of subjective time.

Jet knew that the batteries could exceed that level to some extent, with each extra minute he could gain for this world enough to evacuate a dozen more transports of programs, hopefully to a world they could survive in if Simon was good to his word.

But the factors against him were that the batteries themselves in the UPS likely hadn’t been serviced since Encom was shut down.

That meant that the old batteries in the un-used and unmaintained Encom UPS might fail early, and it would only take one battery failure and Jet would be lucky to make a packet transport out of system before it went down.

The UPS was a clever system in and of itself, controlled directly from a component of the EN511 itself, as it did after all also regulate the laser power supply to avoid fluctuations and to maintain the high burst requirements of the system.

Unfortunately , the problem now was that such a smart system was that it didn’t work the way Jet needed it to.

Data was valuable, but the high current capacity high cycle batteries to power both the UPS and the laser drive circuitry were very, very expensive.

This meant that the original programmers would have adjusted their code to save the batteries before they would save the data, initiating a system-wide shutdown just before any batteries charge dropped into the critical range.

That also meant that the UPS could fail prematurely and without warning.

So in this there was one final service Jet could offer his adopted world. He would need to reprogram the UPS to allow for individual battery failure without compromising the entire UPS, stretching out the remaining banks for as long as possible.

These extra minutes, if possible to achieve, might be the last gift a user would bring this system and give the Kernel as much additional time as possible to continue the evacuation and save as many programs as they could.

At least the Kernel now saw and understood Jet’s perspective and was no longer working to his own agenda. That was helping Jet a lot at this point.

This left Jet with the immediate problem facing him – possible early failure of individual cells within the battery system of the UPS.

But there were still other problems Jet had to face, which were keeping him here as much as his desire to save whatever aspects of this system that he could.

The one that had affected him the most was that the out-of-band connection to the Echelon network was not set up to enable segregated transmissions. No VLANs, no encapsulation. That meant that Mercury and Alison couldn’t travel together, so Alison had already left, but she needed to be back in the real world by the time Mercury and Jet left the system.

The next problem was that although the evacuation was now running at full capacity, it was still taking time to save the remaining programs that could be evacuated as there was only so much bandwidth available to Sector one.

The links to Sector one had reasonable capacity for the laser circuits, so did having high speed connections between nodes, but as fast as they were, they were still not enough to instantly back up the entire system. The backup was going to take time.

But despite getting here quickly enough, the exodus through the out-of-band connection was still slow. The lack of power in the UPS had triggered all types of power saving changes to the system and intra-sector channels were difficult to keep open. The system itself was working against them there.

Given the main issues affecting him, Jet was glad to still have friends near, even though Ma3a had already left with Alchemist and Simon.

Now that they were no longer running, Mercury had stayed at Jet’s side up in the control room of the tower.

It should have been a good opportunity to spend some time with her before they left for the unknown, but right now, the battery cells within the UPS were keeping Jet busy.

The display on the Sudo was small, but Jade had connected the UPS logging output to the device. If Jet hadn’t been watching it, he may not have noticed the messages that one particular cell in an array of many was starting to play up.

“Mercury, I think we have a problem here, and it’s given me an idea that might help the Kernel – Can you find Jade and see if she can come up here?”

Mercury nodded, gave Jet a strange questioning look for a moment, then walked away to look for the system logging routine.

“Also, see if Section and Crypto are still available.” Jet called after her.

Mercury walked out of the room and into the inside of the funnel shaped tanksmasher building and located an elevator segment, activating it and quickly dropping to the ground level.

Jet turned to the window and looked out across the landscape that spread out into the distance. The devastation to Sector one was clear here, as had been the original influence of the Datawraiths.

Still, even with all of the damage, this world held a certain beauty that simply couldn’t be erased by the destruction. The light blue sheen of the surrounding areas seemed to make this all seem just like a retro game, although Jet knew this was far more than any game.

This was also one of the last times he might get to see this place, before it was all destroyed far more permanently than the damage already wrought here.

The thought of losing this world actually pained him more than Jet cared to admit. So far, he had spent only two short visits in this world, but to date, it felt as though he had spend a lifetime here.

Certainly everything important that he wanted in his lifetime had happened to him here. Now realizing that his late mother had lived out the remaining years of his life here, he was starting to wonder if staying here would be possible, giving up his identity as a user and loving as a program with Mercury.

Had he remained the first time, then he could already have spent a lifetime with her subjectively, still inside the EN511.

It had taken a painful separation from this world in the year following in the real world to open his eyes to what he truly desired.

In the distance, another transport moved through the beams, bringing with it the refugees of a digital world, programs eager to be archived to another world, even if it presented an unknown opportunity.

Some wouldn’t leave, of course. Programs were still too human to be entirely logical, but for many, the thought of total system-wide destruction was enough to overcome the fear of leaving it behind forever.

Without thinking, Jet slammed his palm down onto one of the displays creating a slapping sound that echoed out his frustrations through the neon-colored interior of the control room he was standing in.

How can they destroy all of this? Jet wondered to himself as the lights of another transport left, cycling out the ICPs who were working on the evacuation.

The Datawraiths have seen the inside of this world also. How can they take away this entire world that we’ve created. Why are they so blind to it?

Jet walked back towards the centre of the funnel that housed the tanksmasher and watched as a platform rose to their level carrying Jade.

“My User,” Jade familiar greeting rang out at this high level.

“Jade, thanks for coming. Can you still access system resources?” Jet asked, not waiting for Mercury to return to begin.

“Yes, my user, although the Kernel is absorbing many resources at the moment to arrange the archival process.” Jade responded.

“Can you get me a console with details of cell level charging on the UPS?” Jet asked.

“No, my user. I don’t have access to that information.” Jade responded quietly, as if afraid she had somehow offended him.

Jet seemed unaffected by her declination and tried another way.

“Are there any syslog entries written by the UPS?” Jet asked.

Jade paused a moment, blinked twice, then looked at Jet.

“There are, my user, but I cannot decode the format.” Jade said.

“Can you show me them?” Jet asked.

Jade presented a console inside Jet’s view and piped the information from her incoming buffer to the console.

At first Jet only saw gibberish. The same characters that he saw on so many objects here – and around the lightcycle circuit.

Thinking again, he looked at the Sudo. It was able to present the information in a way he could comprehend. There must be some form of rasterizer in it.

“Jade, can you copy the display routines from the Sudo to the console?” Jet asked.

“No my user,” said Jade quietly. “The Sudo routines are locked by the Kern…”

“Then can you pipe the syslog entries from the UPS to my Sudo?” Jet asked.

Jade paused for a moment, then a stream of characters Jet could understand, with effort, moved their way across the small and tiny Sudo interface. There was no way to fit an entire entry in the small screen, but Jet could catch glimpses of text strings as they passed.

A UPS entry seemed to stream across the screen as he viewed – a little too fast for him to catch, but at the end, it had a six digit number that seemed to jump out at him.

The ASC code for the percent symbol proceeded by two numerical values passed across the Sudo.

“Those last two bytes, Jade, can you mask them?” Jet asked.

Jade tilted her head slightly. She didn’t understand what Jet had asked her. Despite Jet’s technical knowledge, it was difficult to remember that the inhabitants of this world didn’t really speak his language and had different concepts of what different words meant.

He thought back to his days writing communications routines for game online interfaces. The data was already in an encoded form as far as Jade was concerned, even if it was plaintext to Jet.

“Those two symbols. Can you cut them?” Jet rephrased his question.

Jade smiled now, pleased she could do something more.

“Yes, my user,” she said, then the screen on his Sudo blanked, replaced by the two digit percentage of battery life remaining in the UPS, followed by the timestamps on the log entries.

Now Jet could look at the actual percentage.

3037 came up on his Sudo.

Seven percent remaining battery life averaged out across all batteries.

Someone had said the system was designed to fail closed at five percent to Jet once. It might have even been his mother.

Perhaps if he had thought about it a little earlier, he might have even been able to ask her before she moved on.

But if it wasn’t ten percent, and it couldn’t be, because Jet had already crossed the ten-percent threshold, then it must be something rather arbitrary, because programmers would be like that.

“What is the significance of these symbols?” Jade asked, then realizing she may have overstepped her mark, lowered her eyes and asked “My User.”

“UPS results,” said Jet, briefly considering his option. “When the figure hits five percent, the system is going to shut down forcibly.”

“We already feel the system asking us to cease programming,” Jade said to Jet. “It happened not long ago. It is only by the command of the Kernel that the applications and programs are ignoring the system request.”

“And I think when it hits five percent, things are going to get much worse.” Jet said, then realized from the look on Jade’s face that she didn’t understand percentages and that her thoughts were too far elsewhere to ask.

“Something bothering you Jade?”

“My user,” started Jade, then she paused, waited and then seemed to gush her question out.

“My user, what becomes of programs after deresolution?”

Jet paused on the question, about to answer it straight, then realized that Jade considered him a god in this world, or at least a program with godlike powers, despite the fact she almost defeated him in the archive.

“Jade, I don’t really know. From a user’s perspective, they simply cease to exist.” Jet started, choosing his words carefully.

“So we simply cease processing?” Jade asked quietly.

“As what you understand to be processing, yes,” said Jet.

Jade swallowed, as if fearful to ask the questions she clearly wanted to ask. But she waited, sensing Jet hadn’t finished.

“However, what makes you, you, is what makes a user a user. Users and Programs are linked in a way that I can’t fully explain to you – to some extent I don’t fully understand it myself, but you’re linked to your user in a deeper way that I think continues on after your code ceases processing.

“I don’t think anything can break that bond and I believe it has more power than you believe.

“But you are still you that you believe yourself to be. You have choice and free will. Don’t ever underestimate that, alright Jade?”

Jade looked blankly at Jet for a moment, then started to smile – as if some inner demon had been satisfied.

“I have chosen my user well,” said Jade slowly.

“Yes, well right now your user needs you to help him with something.” Jet got back to business.

Jade’s posture firmed slightly, something Jet would have considered impossible if he hadn’t seen it as he had always considered her movement elegant beyond his ability – only matched by Mercury.

“If it is within my ability to provide, then I am yours to ask, my user,” said Jade.

Jet smiled. “Jade, what if I told you that we’re about to do something extremely risky?”

Jade’s face changed to a less sure expression.

“My user, you should leave while you can, to follow the user Melanie, as soon as she is clear of the receiving buffer.” Jade said quietly, then even more quietly, “Before that time even.”

“Jade, the system’s about to go into a level of Shutdown you don’t know about,” said Jet.

“And the Kernel knows about this?” Jade asked.

“No, I don’t believe he does. It’s something I realized when the user Simon left the network. Something he reminded me. What I don’t know is how it will appear when it happens.” Jet explained.

“And when will this happen?” Jet asked.

“Soon.” Jet said. “The UPS is close to entering what we know as a mandatory shutdown. The Kernel is heading off the interrupts as far as he can.”

“As the Kernel may,” said Jade, of her parent routine.

“Yes, but soon there will come an interrupt that the Kernel cannot mask, Jade. It’s called a non-maskable interrupt.”

Jade’s expression took on a worried appearance.

“Does such a thing exist?” Jade asked.

“What I don’t know is how it will appear in this world,” Jet said. “But it will cause the evacuation – or remote archival process – to cease when it occurs and this system will enter a final sleep before all activity within the system ceases.”

Slowly, a horror began to spread across Jade’s face.

“But the programs from the outlying systems – will they evacuate in time?” Jade asked.

“No,” said Jet, “But there is more. As different parts of the UPS reach their operating threshold, the entire UPS will suddenly fail, signaling the end of this world.”

“Oh my user,” said Jade, then realizing her choice of words and who she was speaking to, placed her fingers over her mouth as if yawning, then speaking again. “This was foretold of by the tower guardians of old, of a time when the three phases of our existence, root, mean and squared, are to signal the coming of the end of our world.”

Jet stifled the laugh at Jade’s expense, but a small smile escaped his lips briefly before he flattened them to avoid offending her. Jet wondered if the early guardians knew more of the UPS than the present generation. They would have been a lot closer to the UPS back then, in the days when his father was a programmer.

“There is something we need to do about it,” said Jet, then gave Jade a moment to let it sink in.

Jet turned to look out at the world around him briefly, then turned back to Jade.

“Jade, we need to locate the NMI controller and shut it down – force it to return on invocation, giving us the time we need to vacate this sector.

“And we need to adjust the UPS for this sector so we can get some extra time for the Kernel.”

Jade smiled and Jet immediately realized her concerns weren’t for herself. They were for the other programs of this system.

“Thankyou, my user,” said Jade unexpectedly.

“For what?” Jet asked.

“For restoring the Kernel’s faith in users,” said Jade.

Jet smiled and coughed a little.

“I don’t think the Kernel has any faith in me, Jade,” said Jet.

“I think you underestimate the Kernel, My user,” said Jade, taking a slightly harder tone with Jet.

“Maybe, or it might just be that I don’t understand him,” said Jet, looking to avoid the confrontation without offending Jade further. He doubted she would act as if offended, but it was still possible to offend her. For the help she had given him so far, he respected her too much to risk that.

Jade tilted her head, but her expression didn’t change from it’s now serious shape.

“So, my user, how might we defeat this new threat?” Jade changed the subject back to it’s original course.

“Ah, well, that something I’m not really sure of,” said Jet, scratching his head lightly.

“My user?” Queried Jade.

“Jade, I know it’s going to happen. I just don’t know what to do about it,” Jet explained, a little unsure of how to say it.

Jade didn’t seem to be notice Jet’s uncertainty.

“What is your command, my user?” Jade asked.

“First we need to locate the power buffers that control the UPS. Then we need to ensure that the battery bank automatic shutdown is averted.

“At some point, the system routines to forcibly shut this system down will kick in.

“Then, we simply need to be ready for them.”

Jade walked over to a terminal located near the viewing screen at the top of the tower. She brought up an interface and parsed it briefly.

“The power buffers are located in Sector 2,” Jade said. “I believe that is where we encountered that high-cycle Datawraith,” she said, interpreting the information,

“Where we first encountered Simon?” Jet asked, then added “The Datawraith.” So Jade wouldn’t misunderstand him.

“Yes, My user. If you need to access the power buffers, that is where we need to go.” Jade responded.

“We’ve been through there – I wish I knew if this sooner,” Jet said.

“Had you known, could you have done something?” Jade asked.

Jet thought about it.

“No Jade, I guess I had other priorities then. Are there any other ways to Sector two?” Jet asked.

“Other ways?” Jade asked.

“We destroyed the terminal when we arrived,” Jet said. “We can’t go back that way can we?”

“My recognizer will transport without a reference stream,” suggested Jade.

“I’ve noticed it travels a lot more quickly on the beam,” Jet added.

“Yes, My user. The beam protocols allow for multiple packets to be sent concurrently within a specified window. Without it, we are limited to single-packet protocols for transport between sectors.”

“And I don’t know if we have time for a slow-speed transfer,” Jet said.

“You can always reboot the interface,” said Jade.

“Reboot?” Jet queried.

“It will take some time, but my estimate is that rebooting the interface will take less time than a fully synchronized transfer” Jade suggested.

Jet smiled. “Jade, can you do that?”

Jade picked up on Jet’s smile and found herself smiling in response.

“I can request the HUP from the Kernel immediately. Unless there is a hardware error, the interface will re-establish connection. Now the Kernel controls sector one, I can’t see an issue, other than resourcewise.”

“Yes, Jade, do that. Tell the Kernel I want Section and Crypto also.”

Behind Jet, from the corridor leading to the lifts, the sound of footsteps caused Jet to turn. Mercury had returned with both Crypto and Section.

“Merc, just in time. We’re heading for Sector two.”

Mercury raised her eyebrow, slowing as she neared.

“We destroyed the intersector link, Jet. I’m not sure that we can go back that way, and a routed connection wouldn’t make it before the system fails.” She reasoned, no hint of fear in her words at the impending system crash.

“System authorizes HUP, time to process reboot, fifteen cycles,” said Jade, looking up from a screen.

“Thank the Kernel for me,” said Jet.

“The Kernel wishes us low latency,” said Jade.

“Thanks Jade, Let’s move then,” Jet said.

Jet started walked to the lifts.

“Section. Crypto, can you spare a few cycles?” Jet said as he approached, then passed the two programs.

Crypto turned to Section, gave him a look that implied they had only both just arrived and didn’t understand what was going on.

“The Kernel has requested all non-critical applications and programs egress this sector immediately and we’re required to assist the process,” said Section.

“We have a more important task now,” said Jet.

As he spoke, a system broadcast came through. “Programs Section and Cypto report to the Kernel at the base level of the control tower for task re-assignment.”

“That was quick,” said Jet as he stepped onto the platform, which immediately began to descend.

Mercury jumped down across the gap to ride the same platform, causing Jet to open his arms to receive her, although she was more than capable of alighting herself.

“What’s going on?” she asked, as Jet’s arms instinctively closed around her.

“Kernel’s going to need some more time to evacuate the system,” said Jet. “I’m going to get him that time.”

“Admirable,” said Mercury. “But you need to leave on the evacuation servers.”

“And miss all the fun?” Jet asked as they descended past the midway point.

“You’re not leaving because I can’t,” said Mercury very directly to her lover.

Jet looked surprised at the comment, then looked like someone caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

“Yeah, well, that too.” Jet said.

There was no point lying about the obvious. Mercury would have seen right through it in any case.

“You need to leave. If you terminate in here, you terminate in the user’s world also,” Mercury said.

“Well, if you terminate, it’s the same,” said Jet.

“I’ve terminated before,” said Mercury.

“Yeah, I remember,” said Jet, then his tone took on a more somber sound. “And that you never came back either.”

Mercury realized this line of discussion was causing Jet pain. She looked over the side of the platform.

“The Kernel’s come here personally. This must be important to him.” She said.

“I don’t think he knows what we’re up to yet,” said Jet, peering over also, but maintaining his distance from the edge.

Mercury’s head snapped around surprised. “Then why?”

Jet stepped back then looked up. Two more platforms were descending at the same time.

“Possibly Jade.” Said Jet.

The platform came to the ground level and rezzed into the surface. Just a short distance away, the Kernel had been leaning back on the side of a tank application, reviewing some data on a panel. Seeing Jet arrive, he looked up at the two platforms still descending and walked over to Jet.

Jet nodded briefly as the Kernel approached.

“Kernel,” he said politely.

“Jet,” came an equally courteous reply.

Mercury seemed surprised by the cordiality of the conversation.

“I’ve re-hupped the interface to Sector two,” said the Kernel, flicking his head briefly in the direction of the interface.

“Thankyou,” said Jet.

“You going to tell me what you want to do in Sector two?” the Kernel asked.

“Try and give you more time,” said Jet. “Your UPS is going to drop out early.”

“Hmmn,” said the Kernel, touching his chin, then sweeping the hand back down and out, in an opening gesture, said “Thankyou.”

“That’s not all though, is it?” Jet asked.

“Jade,” said the Kernel, looking up at the approaching platform, nearly down.

“I’ll take care of her, Kernel,” said Jet.

“Do that, User,” said the Kernel, then he walked across to where the platforms were now touching down.

“Programs Section and Crypto,” addressed the Kernel.

“Sir,” both came to attention as the platform came down.

“Programs, you are now permanently assigned to General Syslog. Administration level access granted.” Said the Kernel, his voice deadpan.

The effect on the programs was pronounced, however. As the Kernel spoke, Jet noticed a couple of bit patterns appear on each program’s upper arm as they took the permissions.

Then each programmed stiffened, lifted their chins even more and looked directly at the Kernel.

“Sir, thankyou, sir,” they said in perfect synchronization.

“Keep her safe, programs,” said the Kernel.

“Or terminate trying,” said Section.

“No,” the Kernel suddenly said with emotion. “Keep her safe. The future of this system depends on it.”

Even Jade, who had just arrived, seemed surprised at this. She looked to the Kernel, then back to the programs that had just been assigned to her.

“Maam, we’re under your group permissions now, reporting ready for input,” said Section.

The Kernel looked at Jade briefly as the two locked gaze, then the Kernel looked away. “Be on your way, User Jet. Time is wasting and I have a system to archive,” he said, then the tank opened and the Kernel walked into it, before the tank closed and rolled away.

Jet was silent for a moment as they all watched it go. After a short pause, Jade broke the silence.

“My user, what is your command?”

“Flight mode, Jade, we’re visiting sector two again.”

“Flight mode?” Jade questioned.

“Recognizer code activate,” requested Jet.

Jade smiled, closed her eyes briefly and then opened them.

Around her, lines of digital scaffold started to appear as the form of the recognizer began to take shape.

Moments later, the cockpit section sat by itself, the intact screen going transparent as Jade opened the cockpit for entry.

“Program Syslog, opening input buffers to encapsulate external data,” said Jade.

The small party stepped into the cockpit, which then rezzed closed and started to rise so that the legs could rez in.

Once complete, the recognizer turned for the entrance to the tower and started to move out for Sector 2.

Next: Chapter 2.38 – Power Hacking.