[Alan stares hard back at Nihlus.] I thought I would be removing an error that made him violent. If I had done nothing and it happened again -- if Rinzler murdered someone else or their trap worked the next time -- how many people do you think would demand to know why I had done nothing to stop it? I was wrong about Rinzler’s code and I made the wrong decision. But I don’t know if there was ever a right decision to make.
[He lapses into silence and his gaze falls away once again, frustration slowly giving way to something more brittle. He knows the true source of Rinzler's violence now. He knows and it's too late. The damage is done, and he has nothing else to promise the people who would rather see the program dead than have him remain a threat. When he speaks again, he doesn't seem to be speaking to Nihlus at all, the words barely above a whisper.] God, they’re going to kill him...
[Oh, goddess of the deeps, Nihlus is trying for patience but he's hungover and it was like talking to a spirits-damned wall.]
This isn't about you. This was never your decision to make, never your responsibility. Rinzler is an autonomous being who committed murders out of his own fucking poor decision making skills. His history of brainfuckery is really unfortunate, but he still killed J. and Spearfall and that's on HIM.
Sure, people would have tried blaming you, but you literally had no real involvement in his life until you landed on this goddamn ship, what, about two months ago? Then out of pure blissful, flipping ignorance and those two months, you suddenly know him and program medicine well enough to try to coerce him into getting involuntary brain surgery after making an, undoubtedly very well supported, diagnosis of, ah, 'error'.
[Cue a deeply unimpressed mandible flick.]
There are less convoluted and ethically questionable ways to make sure your alienated, digital relation doesn't get killed because of poorly planned vigilantism, you know, that, right?
[Nihlus bites his words back after that. He was slipping back to his merc accent again and this was getting too damn emotional. To him, the decision could never have been right in the first place, but there was something he was missing from Alan's perspective.]
What in the world ever made you think any of this was an error that could just be edited like that, anyways?
[The people who'd never interacted with Rinzler he could understand. The people who only saw Rinzler's violent side, he understands perfectly. But why did Alan think this?]
[Alan glares, and then looks away, letting Nihlus pick apart his actions without interrupting. He’s wrong about Rinzler not being his responsibility. About things being any better if he accepted that. He’s been down that path before and he knows how much damage inaction can do, whether by ignorance or choice.
But Nihlus is right that he went about it the wrong way. He’d have to be truly blind not to realize that by now. What he doesn’t see so clearly are the alternatives. The justice system on the ship had proven itself less than ineffective at protecting anyone. Rinzler had proven himself capable of taking the lives of the people around him. And the people around him had shown themselves capable of retaliating in kind.
The question at least has a clearer answer.] I tried to find another reason. After I found out he’d been attacking crewmembers. I asked if he targeted them because they were threats to the system. Or if they were threats to him. I asked him to give me any reason at all and he wouldn’t. It was as if… as if he didn’t even know. [Alan’s brow furrows as he remembers the frustration of that conversation. Of wanting so desperately to find another solution and only being met with a wall of silence.] I told him if he attacked someone again, I’d find the fault in his code. He was so afraid of being reprogrammed, I thought that would be enough to end it. And then a few weeks later, he killed Spearfall. [Alan looks at Nihlus again, though the temper has left his expression. He just looks tired and perplexed.] If he was so terrified of the consequences and he still attacked… what else was I supposed to think other than that he didn’t have a choice?
[He’s puzzled over that question for a while now. If Rinzler was so afraid of what Alan would do, why hadn’t he done anything to stop it before it was too late?] He knew I believed there was an error in his code and he said nothing to change my mind. He knew I’d try to correct his code if he attacked someone again and he killed two people in the next month.
It didn’t make sense. It still doesn’t make sense. [And when a person’s actions are so intensely not what they should be, it’s natural to assume something’s wrong with them. With humans, one could blame it on mental instability. A chemical imbalance. With programs, the only source could be the code.
Or at least, that’s what Alan had assumed. Having actually seen Rinzler’s code now, he has even less of an answer.]
[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.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninetydegrees
(no subject)
[He lapses into silence and his gaze falls away once again, frustration slowly giving way to something more brittle. He knows the true source of Rinzler's violence now. He knows and it's too late. The damage is done, and he has nothing else to promise the people who would rather see the program dead than have him remain a threat. When he speaks again, he doesn't seem to be speaking to Nihlus at all, the words barely above a whisper.] God, they’re going to kill him...
(no subject)
This isn't about you. This was never your decision to make, never your responsibility. Rinzler is an autonomous being who committed murders out of his own fucking poor decision making skills. His history of brainfuckery is really unfortunate, but he still killed J. and Spearfall and that's on HIM.
Sure, people would have tried blaming you, but you literally had no real involvement in his life until you landed on this goddamn ship, what, about two months ago? Then out of pure blissful, flipping ignorance and those two months, you suddenly know him and program medicine well enough to try to coerce him into getting involuntary brain surgery after making an, undoubtedly very well supported, diagnosis of, ah, 'error'.
[Cue a deeply unimpressed mandible flick.]
There are less convoluted and ethically questionable ways to make sure your alienated, digital relation doesn't get killed because of poorly planned vigilantism, you know, that, right?
[Nihlus bites his words back after that. He was slipping back to his merc accent again and this was getting too damn emotional. To him, the decision could never have been right in the first place, but there was something he was missing from Alan's perspective.]
What in the world ever made you think any of this was an error that could just be edited like that, anyways?
[The people who'd never interacted with Rinzler he could understand. The people who only saw Rinzler's violent side, he understands perfectly. But why did Alan think this?]
(no subject)
But Nihlus is right that he went about it the wrong way. He’d have to be truly blind not to realize that by now. What he doesn’t see so clearly are the alternatives. The justice system on the ship had proven itself less than ineffective at protecting anyone. Rinzler had proven himself capable of taking the lives of the people around him. And the people around him had shown themselves capable of retaliating in kind.
The question at least has a clearer answer.] I tried to find another reason. After I found out he’d been attacking crewmembers. I asked if he targeted them because they were threats to the system. Or if they were threats to him. I asked him to give me any reason at all and he wouldn’t. It was as if… as if he didn’t even know. [Alan’s brow furrows as he remembers the frustration of that conversation. Of wanting so desperately to find another solution and only being met with a wall of silence.] I told him if he attacked someone again, I’d find the fault in his code. He was so afraid of being reprogrammed, I thought that would be enough to end it. And then a few weeks later, he killed Spearfall. [Alan looks at Nihlus again, though the temper has left his expression. He just looks tired and perplexed.] If he was so terrified of the consequences and he still attacked… what else was I supposed to think other than that he didn’t have a choice?
[He’s puzzled over that question for a while now. If Rinzler was so afraid of what Alan would do, why hadn’t he done anything to stop it before it was too late?] He knew I believed there was an error in his code and he said nothing to change my mind. He knew I’d try to correct his code if he attacked someone again and he killed two people in the next month.
It didn’t make sense. It still doesn’t make sense. [And when a person’s actions are so intensely not what they should be, it’s natural to assume something’s wrong with them. With humans, one could blame it on mental instability. A chemical imbalance. With programs, the only source could be the code.
Or at least, that’s what Alan had assumed. Having actually seen Rinzler’s code now, he has even less of an answer.]
(no subject)
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.