7. Sherlock
Geordi looked at the emitter with distrust. He'd been around plenty of transporter systems, but this one was the most unusual and most disturbing of all. Worse yet, it had succeeded in taking a friend and superior officer into an unknown world, and was being prepared to take yet another friend to the same place.
"Data, I don't like this thing. Can't you just reroute some subroutines and send your own programming in?"
The android looked at him with eyes that were filled with childlike curiosity – not that Geordi could see the curiosity. All he could see of Data were the same steady temperatures and light signatures that separated the machine from humans and aliens whose signatures were laced with biological patterns and heat fluctuations. "That is a possibility," his friend intoned in that smooth voice, "but the outdated systems of the emitter will not allow that much data to be compressed in that way. It can only transfer matter to information. If I were to attempt to simply transfer my functions into the computer, it may overload the system."
The engineer didn't argue. He'd known Data long enough not to question that type of judgment. Instead, he leveled the emitter. "I still don't like this. Good luck." With that, he activated the beam and watched as it systematically broke the android down into bits and fed them back through and into its computer system. In less than five seconds, the chair Data had been sitting in went from occupied to acapella.
Tron hadn't lied about the view. It finally made sense to Riker why the city was called the Grid. The freeways carved perfect line segments amid the buildings, making perfect right angles when a turn was required, and glowing with the energy present in everything he could see. The buildings seemed, from this height, to flatten out and somehow resemble a silicon data chip. The only other building that rose up from amid the city was the I/O Tower.
Moriarty's office held all of the trappings that Riker would have expected. The Grid's equivalent of tea brewed slowly on a hot plate, while various devices hung suspended in various states of dissection over tables. Two identity discs floated above the desk, no doubt the most recent fascination for the doctor.
Riker turned away from the invisible pane of solid energy and back to where Tron stood near the pad was. Knowing that he wouldn't be able to understand fully what Tron could say about resolution, Riker contented himself to simply wait for Data's arrival.
"I won't be able to deactivate Moriarty," Tron said suddenly, pulling Riker out of his dazed state of mind. "Not alone. The Master Control Program was weak compared to CLU, and CLU succeeded in rectifying my system. It took him cycles to take over the Grid… Moriarty came into control faster than a lightcycle on the game grid."
Riker stared at the pad in silence. Somehow, he knew that anything he could say to the program would not be reassuring enough. He tried to imagine what it was like to have a purpose that could not be fulfilled; he tried to imagine what it was like to know that he could only fail where he was designed to prevail.
"Moriarty had managed to take over the ship when he was created," he replied. "We work on a ship so massive that I doubt even Kevin Flynn could foresee its creation, or its mission. We travel between worlds as a humanitarian organization. If the ship were to fail in that space between planets, we would all be derezzed." The word came to his lips with some difficulty. "At the height of his power, he sought to escape a small portion of the ship and join us, but we didn't know how that could be possible. So we tricked him and placed him in a grid of his own, which simulated the world he wanted to find himself in."
He turned to Tron, who stared back with a patient expression. "This is not the Moriarty who took hold of the Enterprise. This Moriarty must be a copy, like CLU was. Powerful, yes, but not infallible."
Just as he finished speaking, a shimmering of light materialized over the pad. In the dim yellow light, Riker felt glad to be accompanied by yet another with bright blue circuitry, and was more than relieved to see the Starfleet chevron insignia on the chest of the newcomer. Data's chrome yellow face seemed even more pallid in the fiery light cast by the rest of the building, but his eyes still burned with the intensity that comes from insatiable curiosity.
"It is nice to see you, again Data!" Riker was only met by a questioning gaze before he realized that the android did not recognize the other program.
"I am sorry, but I believe we have not been introduced," Data said to Tron before extending a hand – rather awkwardly – in human fashion. "I am Lieutenant Commander Data, of the USS Enterprise."
"Tron," replied the security program. "Riker seems to have faith in you, which is enough for me."
The android turned to his commanding officer next. "A duplicate of my programming has been saved on the Enterprise computers, along with schematics and statistics regarding my construction, in case of emergency. The emitter is not capable of harnessing my raw programming alone, and required a physical presence to transfer onto the Grid."
"That is because, my dear Sherlock Holmes," stated a smooth voice from behind Riker and Tron, "I have requested that only a physical presence be transferred. After all, it would be rather difficult for our friend the captain to deceive me like he did my counterpart when his constituents are trapped in the same realm as I."
The three turned to see that a wall panel had slid upward as a door to expose a sinister program, indeed. A cloak wrapped around the slim figure that was the Doctor Moriarty, the fiery yellow lines of circuitry glowing and accenting the program's features.
"And now I have more than I had ever requested of the Federation."
