Tron: Deliverance

SYSTEM TRANSFER IN PROGRESS

Jet was truly impressed with Flynn's security software for his hideout. It made sense though. Being hunted by an oppressive military regime would probably make a guy a little paranoid about being found.

He stared at the command node on the wall of the basement. Chewing on his lip as he considered the best way of taking a few layers off without leaving the place entirely vulnerable. Just finding these nodes was a process in itself. Another point in favor of Flynn's security.

"Oooooh I bet this place would be vulnerable to a limited range EMP. Just enough charge to knock out these alarms and firewalls for a few minutes. They would come back online rather quickly but you could explace some malware in that time frame" Jet said excitedly at his stroke of inspiration.

"Yeah that's fascinating Jet. But we're not trying to blow the place up" Sam said gruffly from the primary work station.

"The point wouldn't be to blow the place up. It would be to infiltrate the system. Keep up Sam"

Sam closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. They had been at this for a few hours now and success.....was limited.

Quorra and Gem were still hard at work recording data on the two programs in stasis.

"It seems that this program was originally an actuarial program" Quorra commented.

Jet leaned back from his task "Aren't those for calculating risk? Like for insurance companies?"

Quorra shrugged "I could not tell you what he was used for. Only his function"

"Eh neat! What was the other program?" Jet asked, needing a mental break from trying to crack Flynn's distressingly impressive security system.

"It seems she was an administrative program. Quite intricate too considering her age" Gem answered "Though I have never seen code quite like this. It definitely is not Flynn's work"

"That one's name is Yori. She was written by Aunt Lora" Sam commented.

"Oh I wanna see" Jet strode over to the tube with this mother's program. She was badly fragmented, little more than the outline of a person.

"Shoot, something really did a number on her" Jet said softly.

"I found a file dad wrote for Aunt Lora and Roy. It explains who Yori and Ram are and how they got like this. Apparently, they both knew Tron back in the old Encom servers. When my dad wanted to bring Tron over, they asked to come too. I guess you could say they were Tron's best friends" Sam narrated in a neutral tone, but Jet could see the story would be a sad one from the way he seemed to curl in on himself with the telling.

"Dad didn't have the portable storage to take all three of them, so he took Tron first and meant to go back and get them the next day. It shouldn't have been a big deal. I guess it just went sideways.

That night, the Encom servers got attacked by a virus and the only people in the building at the time were a bunch of interns and security guards that didn't know what they were doing. They tried to quarantine the servers but botched the job, badly. Most everyone at Encom lost what they had been working on for several days or they lost a lot of their historical files. It was a huge mess.

By the time my dad got there some decent programmers had clocked in and put out most of the big fires. But Yori and Ram both got badly fragmented in the attack.

My dad tried to get Aunt Lora and Roy to fix their programs. But by that point Yori and Ram were already bordering on obsolete. They didn't see much point in fixing old programs when they were going to have to roll to a new system anyway what with the huge mess they were dealing with.

And my dad, secret keeper extraordinaire, couldn't explain his more sentimental reasons for needing them fixed. He brought them to the new system to work on but could never quite crack it. From the looks of things he's been slowly making progress on them for the entire time he was trapped in here"

"Dang, that must have sucked for Tron" Jet winced in sympathy. To be moved to a whole new system, and then lose his two best friends when his old home got attacked.

"Yeah, apparently he was pretty broken up about it. But my dad just couldn't let it go. He never really told Tron he was still working on them. Guess he didn't want to give the guy false hope"

"Yeah, I dunno, if I was Tron I would probably have wanted to know" Jet said quietly, not wanting to pass judgement on Uncle Kevin but finding himself unable to agree with his reasoning.

Sam sighed deeply, resting his forehead on his hands. "I know and I did the same thing upstairs when I didn't mention any of this with Tron in the room. I just don't know. He seems kind of...fragile? Right now I guess. He seems like he's been through a lot. I wasn't sure if it was a good time to tell him about..." Sam gestured vaguely at the room around him but didn't bother to finish his sentence.

"From the looks of all that malware and the sheer mileage on his runtimes Id say he has definitely been through a lot" Jet agreed.

"I would want to know. If it were me and my friends" Gem said so softly Jet hardly heard her. Jet blinked at her "You think we ought to tell Tron about this?"

Gem shrugged noncommittally but some deep conflict radiated around her eyes.

"Come on, we'd appreciate your thoughts on this" Jet coaxed.

Gem raised an eyebrow at him "Were they my friends, even if you did fail to bring them back. I would find peace in knowing you had tried....When someone works for you, sacrifices for you but never tells you about any of it, then it is much harder to see how you have been loved"

Jet digested her words, feeling them resonate in his bones "You think it would help Tron to know that Flynn was trying to do this for him? Even if it means he loses his friends all over again?"

Gem shrugged again. But Quorra spoke, apparently agreeing with Gem's line of reasoning.

"I firmly believe that there are ISO's alive in the Grid. But what if I am wrong? What if I find very few of my kind remaining? Or I find that Gem,Zuse and myself are all that's left? Will that mean my people have died a second time?" Quorra stopped flipping through Ram's code and turned to Jet with eyes that seemed a million years old.

"I think hope, even false hope can give us courage to get through our troubles. Perhaps I will be disappointed. But perhaps not. Sometimes hope is all we have" she turned back to her task.

Gem nodded and gave Jet a small but sincere smile."Your worry for Tron is admirable and indicative of your good intentions. But ultimately, I would say it is his right to know about the fate of the people he cares for"

Jet returned the smile and looked back to Sam.

"Well there you have it boss. The team has voted to tell Tron"

Sam rolled his eyes "I'm not your boss Jet"

Jet shrugged "Well this is your mission and while your dad built this place you kind of inherited it. So Id say while we're in here, you are the boss"

Sam gave a weary chuckle "Well in that case I'm docking your pay for taking so long to figure out that security system"

Jet gasped theatrically "Look at this guy. Only been the boss for five seconds and he's already mad with power" Jet tisked as he turned back to the control node.

"Just get back to work. We're all gonna need to take a break soon and I want Lora and Roy to have something to work with"

"Yessir boss!"