When Sam finally managed to make it back onto the Grid, he half expected Beta to both greet him and escort him to the arcade. Instead, he found himself making his way over there alone.
On the bright side, it looked like the restoration program he had written up was doing a good job. Most of the dilapidated buildings still remained, but a decent amount of them had been restored. He noted that the restored buildings were sporadic; one newly repaired building sat amongst three or four destroyed ones. It was likely that it was because he made the program focus on buildings that could be repaired the quickest… oh well.
Finally arriving at the arcade, Sam knew something was amiss. He didn't know why, but something felt wrong. When he made it the office, he understood.
Tron was sitting in a heap of broken pixels by Beta's open closet door.
Beta herself was set up in what looked like a recharging station. She wasn't moving at all and as Sam moved closer he noticed that her normally green eyes were half lidded and dark- as if they were turned off.
"What happened?" Sam asked, kneeling down to Tron's level. "You shouldn't be moving around."
Tron actually sent a mild glare Sam's way.
"She didn't wake up for patrol. I called to her several times. I had to check on her." Sam's brows furrowed at this news.
"Let's get you back to the couch before you fall apart." Sam started, offering Tron a hand. "I know you must be worried, but it looks like she's not going anywhere… and you are breaking into pieces." Sam stopped Tron before he could retort and helped the program back to his seat.
Looking back, Sam winced at the pixels that littered the floor like glass. Yes. Tron was going to make fixing him a lot more difficult. Letting out a heavy sigh, he made his way back towards Beta while trying to avoid stepping on the glass-like pixels.
"She won't respond to any commands. I had to use an Override Code just for her to open her eyes."
Sam stared at her. She looked like a puppet. And then it dawned on him. Beta's eyes were now wide open. Still blank, but wide open.
"Tron… has Beta been acting strangely lately? Anything before today when you tried to wake her?"
He heard another pixel break upon impact with the floor.
"Yes. Before she put herself into recharge she had just come back from patrolling the city. She had almost forgotten to give me a report before I stopped her. It is unlike her to forget- and now that I'm processing it… it is stranger because the command prompt for the reports was an order from me."
"From you? That means any prompts received from you would be written into her routine until you terminated the command."
"Exactly. Being this slow to process data is becoming a nuisance."
"And I'll be sure to upgrade you once I repair the major damage later." Tron seemed to perk up at that. "But was there anything else out of the ordinary?" He gestured to the program in the closet. "Because-" Sam stopped short.
Beta's eyes were now partially lidded at the top, the slightest tinge of familiar green surfacing, and her lips were ever so slightly apart.
"She seemed slower…"
And it clicked.
"She's frozen." Sam said suddenly. "Just like when you bog a computer down by running too many programs at once!" He spared a glace in Tron's direction, noting the security program's confused gaze.
"She's just a beta program, so of course she has glitches and bugs in her systems. She must have encountered something that triggered this… glitch? Yeah, its probably a glitch." Sam paused and strolled back over to Tron. "And in the state she's in now, she isn't going anywhere so we are going to patch you up first."
"But-"
"No. She can wait a little longer. She's just slow; it isn't doing anything harmful to her from what I can tell. You have pieces of yourself scattered across the floor. Deal with it." Sam cut him off before anything and held his out for the disc. "Now hand it over."
Tron stared at the hand in a moment of hesitation before reaching back for his disc.
-failsafe-
"…pieces…"
"….slower…"
"….glitch….. bug…"
"…wait…"
-failsafe-
Sam sat at the desk with Tron's disc in hand. Brows furrowed, he searched through the masses of broken red data. Allowing his eyes to flick towards the program, he frowned.
Tron was just lying there, almost as if he was asleep.
Which, technically, he was. Sam had Tron go into sleep mode while he worked on the repairs. After he finished he would do a soft reboot so as to give Tron's body a chance to recover before waking.
If he had done all this while Tron was awake, it would probably be a much more exhausting experience.
Leaning back, Sam took a break from the swirl of red data to rest his eyes.
Beta was still in the closet and had only barely moved in the last half hour, according to Sam's internal clock. She hadn't really done much aside from slow blinking.
Letting out a sigh, Sam got back to work. It wasn't without a little debate that he had gotten Tron to agree to let himself be repaired first. Of course the security program had made a few valid points, but Sam wouldn't have it any other way.
The Grid would be ok without Beta out on patrol for a few hours. Especially according to the reports and repairs. There hadn't been very many incidents involving the basic programs, and the city's main defense did well enough to keep Grid bugs out of the city since it had been strengthened. It would only be a problem if a particularly malicious virus tried to gain access…
"Oh well." Sam said as he re-wrote a patch of code. "Just means I've gotta fix these two before that happens."
-failsafe-
"So what did you learn at Encom?"
The meeting consisted of Batman, Flash, J'onn, Superman, and Green Arrow. An odd assortment, but they were still figuring out who else would be assisting.
"The Flynn kid is still new to running the company. He barely knows what he's doing. He also doesn't want anything to do with merging with either Wayne Enterprises or LexCorp, that much I know for sure."
There were nods around the room.
"That's good. I know that Encom has been pretty quiet in the media unless it involved the boy, but its good to know he isn't letting the other companies push him around." Clark stated. "From what I've heard of the kid, he's got a lot of potential. I just hope he uses it the right way."
"But wait, what about this technology that supposed to be stolen? Do we even know what it is yet? I mean, obviously no one has broken into that place but what are we even supposed to be keeping an eye on?" Flash munched on several chocolate chip cookies. "I mean I know Encom is really respectable and all their products are top class… but do we know that this technology is worth protecting? Wait… that came out wrong." He swallowed another cookie. "Is it something that we should pursue, or something that we should let Encom and the police take care of?"
Everyone seemed to think about it.
"He's got a good point." Green Arrow said, pointing at the speedster.
"Encom specializes in computer software, but they do have departments for technology, and a division for video games." J'onn supplied. "Because Encom is such a leader in their field, it'll be difficult to find out what may at risk."
"Even the video games?" Clark arched an eyebrow.
"Well, probably not that."
"Hey, give Encom some credit. They may not do video games often, but when they do they are AMAZING." Flash grinned around another cookie. "I heard that they are planning something for the Space Paranoids anniversary!"
"Regardless, I don't think that a group of criminals will be after the latest video game release." Green Arrow replied.
"True!"
"According to published news, Encom wont be working on a new OS until next year. I haven't heard anything about any other software. Technology wise, the lines are silent." Batman pulled up a few holo-screens. Sparse information was displayed on each one. "Either they really aren't up to anything, or the company is ridiculously good at keeping things under wraps. There haven't even been whispers of what's going on."
"What about rumors?" Clark asked. "With a company that prestigious, there have to be rumors going around about what they'll churn out next. Even Flash said there was a rumor about a new video game."
Batman wordlessly summoned another holo-screen and entered a search. Data flashed by quickly in blur of letters and digits before finally stopping on a website.
"Flynn Lives?"
"Just a website about the conspiracy behind Kevin Flynn's disappearance."
The screen dissipated in a flash of numbers and letters before settling on another website.
"NET Rumors?"
"It looks like a forum dedicated to spreading rumors on the Internet, mostly about technology." J'onn squinted his eye. "Is that a thread for the Watchtower?"
It was.
"Not the point." Batman navigated the website and found the page with threads solely about Encom.
"Wow. A lot of them are about Kevin Flynn's disappearance and his son taking over." Ollie noted as Batman scrolled down the screen. About 182 pages worth of rumors.
Pausing, Batman entered a few commands and the page shifted. "Narrowed down the results to rumors associated with upcoming products since six months ago."
There were still about 25 pages to sort through.
-failsafe-
The Grid was mostly silent aside from the humming. As Sam worked, all he really heard was the humming that came from both Tron and Beta, and the little blips that came with repairing the damages in Tron's disc. It had taken a while but there was only about 25% of the damage left to go through. Although he had lost track of time, he was sure that he was still able to reach the portal.
Either way, it would do well for him to take a break.
Setting Tron's disc down, Sam stretched and made his way over to Beta's closet.
She still hadn't made much progress. Her eyes were now half-lidded but had returned to the normal shade of green. Other than that, her head was tilted off to the side.
If Sam didn't know any better, he would've mistaken her for some sort of confused woman asking a question and waiting for an answer.
Frowning, Sam took a look at Beta's setup.
She seemed to be in some sort of recliner that gave the illusion of her feet touching the ground when they were actually resting on a plate of metal. She didn't have any wires connected to her, but he did notice that certain lines of light on her suit matched up with the ones on the setup.
Grabbing Beta by the hand, Sam gently pulled her forward. She easily fell forward into his chest and Sam twitched an eyebrow.
"I wasn't expecting that to be so easy." He brought his hand up to her shoulders and held he back slightly; thank goodness she was still sitting in the contraption because she was surprisingly heavy as fuck. Looking back to her face, her expression had not changed.
Sam let out another sigh and looked back to the closet to get a better look. There were more lighted circuit lines that seemed to match up with the patterns on her suit, and it didn't look comfortable at all, but Sam caught sight of the circular indentation in the backrest. Looking down at Beta's back, he carefully clicked the disc off. Disc in hand, he gently guided Beta back into her reclining position and twirled her disc around his finger.
Still no response.
Strolling back to the desk were Tron's own disc lay, Sam sat and examined Beta's. Instead of the large circuit lines he was accustomed to seeing on most identity discs, Beta's had intricate trails of thin light. Apparently while Tron's suit was based on sparse lighting and circuitry, Beta's was all fine lines. The distinctions definitely set them apart from all the other programs.
Tron's lack of lighting was probably to help him blend into the darkness of the city more easily. Beta's design was one that Sam didn't quite understand, but he did know that she could turn off her lights at will and that alone was different.
Looking down at himself, Sam decided that he should probably find a way to wear clothes other then the Grid Warrior getup he had on. It wasn't unpleasant to wear, but it sure didn't mean that he enjoyed wearing it for hours on end.
Setting both discs aside, Sam reached for his own and found himself in something akin to jeans, a t-shirt, and a jacket about 20 minutes later. He had his own lines of light placed strategically as a band around one sleeve, a stripe going down one leg, and a few specks on his shoes.
"Better."
And so he resumed his work on Tron's disc. It wouldn't take that much longer.
All he had to do was finished patching a few strands of data, and rewrite a sequence of code…. Done.
Pulling up the command menu Sam prepped Tron for a reboot sequence. As the system began to shut down and restart, Sam watched in satisfaction as Tron's body began to rebuild itself.
It was different from the reconstruction of Quorra's arm. It started as lines of light crossing each other and forming grids. Then, he could see the segments of code that had just fixed appear and merge together. Thousand of dots littered Tron's body and formed together, building up into pixels. From there the pixels came to together like the pieces of a puzzle fitted over the grid.
It had taken about 20 minutes for the reconstruction to complete.
The few circuits on Tron's suit shined with light before abruptly being clicked off. It took a moment or two, but the lights slowly flickered back to life and went back to the normal setting. The humming got louder as the start up sequence initiated.
Sam made to over to Tron's side just as his eyes slid open.
"Rise and shine. Welcome back."
Tron gave Sam a bleary look as his eyes lit up with color. The bright blue was almost shocking; with the dark hair and outfit they popped quite a bit. Sam could have sworn that his eyes had not been that blue before, and he was also positive that he had not done anything to Tron's aesthetic data.
"Hello." His voice had been repaired nicely. It was smooth and clear, but still had a touch of computerized sound. "Repairs have been completed?" Tron sat up to give his newly repaired body a look over.
"Yeah, I also went ahead and did a basic upgrade on you. You should be able to process faster and all of that other good stuff, but the major upgrade will have to come later." Sam handed Tron his disc.
"Thank you." The disc clicked back into place on Tron's back as he stood. "Everything feels normal… it has been the best I've felt in a long time."
"Good to know. Now that you're back online, I can get started on her." Sam jabbed a thumb in Beta's direction. She really did look kind of… pathetic. By this time her eyes were closed again; she looked like she was asleep.
Tron nodded and let his eyes drag across the room to the closet space. "Will you require my assistance?"
Sam blinked.
"Uh… not particularly. We already figured out the problem, and with my dad's notes that you gave me it shouldn't be too hard to fix her up." Sam picked up Beta's disc.
"…I will go on patrol." He seemed a bit torn. "It will give me a chance to make sure nothing went wrong the repairs and I can get a better look at the city's restoration.
"Oh, ok. That makes sense I guess." Sam pulled the baton off his leg. "I haven't fixed your light cycle yet."
"Thank you." Tron took the baton and was off.
It was weird. Sam expected Tron to stay and watch over Beta's repairs. Especially considering how concerned he had seemed earlier. After being fixed, Tron sure was acting strange.
Sam could only hope that he didn't mess something up when he was working with the endless mass of data that was Tron.
He couldn't worry about it though. Beta was still stuck in slow motion. Taking a deep breath, Sam sat himself down once again and immersed himself into swirl of data that was Beta.
"Please let this be easier than Tron."
No such luck.
Pulling up the folder that contained his father's notes, Sam began to pull his hair out in frustration.
-failsafe-
asdfghjkl;
I have the main point of this fic all figured out. It is just filling in the little details between that has been killing me. Urgh. Hope you guys liked this chapter. The story is moving a long a bit slower then I had intended, so please bear with me.
So far we haven't reached the main point… but on the bright side Tron is fixed! Stay tuned for more!