[Nihlus closes his eyes against the worsening headache. After a moment he moves to go fetch the water canteen he'd left next to the foot of his bed.]
I think he was more scared of you than he was of the recode threat, [he says softly after a sip. There's a bit of quiet after that, Nihlus sorting his actual thoughts out from the kneejerk, hangover fueled ones.]
Scared of you, scared of displeasing you. Or both. If you think of the situation that way, his behavior makes more sense.
[Or at least, it did to him. He got the impression that Alan wasn't a particularly happy man, but he didn't have the air of someone who'd had to grow up in violently unsafe environments.]
When you programmed him, what was Rinzler intended to be?
[Alan considers Nihlus’s words, expression troubled. It’s still muddled, but he can see some sense to Nihlus’s explanation; Rinzler could have refused to answer because he believed his answer wouldn’t be good enough. He could have feared Alan’s reaction. Still, when Alan remembers how hard Rinzler had fought when Alice had dragged him in, his desperate, broken plea of ”User” when Alan had taken his disk, it’s difficult to imagine that Alan’s disapproval could terrify the program more than the threat of recoding.]
He was a security program for the ENCOM servers. He was supposed to monitor incoming connections, remove malware, watchdog other programs… but I don’t think it was his functions that caused this. [He hesitates, unsure of how much he should say.] Tron… He was written for the same purpose as Rinzler. The same functions. But he hasn’t had any of the same problems. [Alan trusts Nihlus, but he still doesn't reveal that Tron and Rinzler have more in common than just their code. Given Bel's account, to say that it's a sensitive issue would be putting it very lightly.]
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I think he was more scared of you than he was of the recode threat, [he says softly after a sip. There's a bit of quiet after that, Nihlus sorting his actual thoughts out from the kneejerk, hangover fueled ones.]
Scared of you, scared of displeasing you. Or both. If you think of the situation that way, his behavior makes more sense.
[Or at least, it did to him. He got the impression that Alan wasn't a particularly happy man, but he didn't have the air of someone who'd had to grow up in violently unsafe environments.]
When you programmed him, what was Rinzler intended to be?
no subject
He was a security program for the ENCOM servers. He was supposed to monitor incoming connections, remove malware, watchdog other programs… but I don’t think it was his functions that caused this. [He hesitates, unsure of how much he should say.] Tron… He was written for the same purpose as Rinzler. The same functions. But he hasn’t had any of the same problems. [Alan trusts Nihlus, but he still doesn't reveal that Tron and Rinzler have more in common than just their code. Given Bel's account, to say that it's a sensitive issue would be putting it very lightly.]
no subject
Nihlus screws the lid of his canteen back on, the look on his face distant.]
Spearfall initiated the fight. Peter and Alice laid out the traps and J was killed because Rinzler thought she was part of the setup.
[He tucks the canteen under an arm.]
There's a lot of pieces still missing from this puzzle, but the pieces I do have seem to point to Rinzler being reactive in regards to violence.
[With that, the Turian turns, heading towards the door. He has a lot of work to catch up with still and he's already late.]
Something to think about.