Tron: Deliverance

<PROGRAM DISCOVERED>

They passed several long hours flying over floating cubes and the occasional disc, bobbing in the water. It was always a sobering sight. The first few wrecks they had come across were far too damaged to gather any data. They had found half a recognizer that Jet was able to climb along the outside and hook into a data line. It was crude but no one wanted to risk trying to going inside. On his way back to the flier, Jet snagged a couple discs off the surface of the water.

He hopped back into the craft and Gem started flying along their chosen path again.

"What are the discs for?" Sam asked.

"Just wanted to look through them" he pressed a button on the inner circle of one of the discs. It flickered on with the helmeted face of a black guard. Then flickered off again. Jet slapped the side of the disc, but the light died completely and the discs started to crumble to dust. Quorra looked on with confusion.

"Strange, discs don't normally break down like that"

"I mean, it's owner died. Don't discs derezz with their programs?" Sam queried as he flicked through files. Much of what Jet pulled from the recognizer was too fragmented to use but Sam and Allen sifted through the files and lines of code to decide what to send through the link to Lora and Roy.

"Sometimes" Quorra said slowly "But often the disc survives. They are meant to store data outside a Program's function. This means that they can go on after the program is derezzed. But it usually takes a great deal of energy to overload and destroy a disc" Quorra took a handful of the dust, studying it with growing unease. "This looks like all the energy was pulled out of it"

Jet attempted to power up the other disc, getting the same results. He gathered up handfuls of the dust and sprinkled it out the side of the flier, not really wanting what equated to living remains clinging to his jacket.

"Strange" Lora said a few more hours later "stranger and stranger" it was approaching night time again and everyone was looking tired. Lora was yawning on the other end of the line.

"What's strange?" Allen asked, shifting uncomfortably. His joints were getting stiff from sitting in the roadster for so long.

"What Quorra said about the discs you're finding having all the energy sucked out. It's the same with the crafts that still have some of their stored memory available. They're logging normal function, then a huge explosion. Flynn, I'm guessing. Then critical failures on all levels. You'd think that would be it"

She paused and Allen let her formulate her thoughts into words.

"But they all have a base subroutine to keep recording as long as part of the craft still exists. It's a good idea, like a black box on an airplane. It would allow Flynn or whoever built the craft to examine why it malfunctioned and fix any potential bugs. So after these crafts were mostly destroyed and their personnel gone they switched into passive recording. Just keeping up with energy levels, which systems stayed critical or had to shut down, stuff like that. But about a cycle after that initial blast, energy started getting leeched out of them at an alarming rate. To the point the passive sensors started going all garbled when they too lost power"

"Could it be the effects of the sea?" Sam asked critically.

"The Sea does not drain energy. Not like that" Quorra answered in a weary voice.

"Like I said, strange" Lora finished.

"And also severely hindering our ability to gather data on the reintegration and how it will affect the grid" Sam grunted. He then sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Well I think everyone is about tapped out and I doubt we're gonna gather much more like this. Let's head back to land and bunker down for the night. Looks like we'll get to test out that emergency tent file you were playing with Jet"