Fic: TARA

[justin]

Wow, this is a good story.



I kept thinking about Tron when I was reading it. So does this mean that Willows going to get sucked into the computer, and that we're going to see her riding around on one of those motorcycles?

[miss calendar]

Hi Artemis,

Well, this is another fine fic you've gotten me into!

You are very good at creating a different world, atmosphere and mood in each of your stories which draws the reader in immediately. You are also very good at telling an interesting and fun story. I'm already loving this fic, it's intriguing and promises lots of excitement and adventure.



I'm a computer doofus so I have no idea how accurate all the computer stuff is but it sounds good. And I have a great affection for all those sci-fi movies and Star Trek episodes featuring intelligent, supercomputers planning world domination who come to an explosive end when asked questions about the nature of love.



So we know that Cycorp is an evil organisation because a sleazebag like Warren is in a position of power. Was the computer voice talking to him 'that paranoid piece of software' Echelon? Presumably Echelon is the Big Bad, loved the way it dismissed and blackmailed Warren, showing him the contempt he deserves. (please let Echelon kill him soon!) I'm a little worried that it has it's sights set on Willow but hopefully TARA will save her.



I liked Giles as a computer hacker LOL! Buffy as a government agent could be fun and Willow was great. Superintelligent, hacker Willow is sooo sexy and I loved her talking to her computer and insisting that computers need love too. I'm sure that intelligent, intuitive, evolving computer routines need love as well so I'm looking forward to seeing TARA in action. My only reservation is if TARA is an artificial intelligence how will there ever be smoochies and cuddles?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
' What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday,
and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow :
our life is the creation of our mind. ' from The Dhammapada

[Artemis]

TARA



Author: Chris Cook

Rating: PG

Summary: Cycorp programmer Willow Rosenberg knows her boss is up to no good - but can she break into the impenetrable Echelon system to prove it?

Spoilers: Pretty much none.

Copyright: Based on characters from 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer', created by Joss Whedon and his talented minionators, and concepts created by Steven Lisberger that I'll go into more detail on later, so as not to spoil the (hopefully) surprise. All original material is copyright 2003 Chris Cook.

Feedback: Please. Here, or to alia@netspace.net.au



--

Chapter One

--



-Cycorp Complex, New York City

-Level 51



"I'm sure you agree the situation as it stands is untenable." Warren Meers leaned back in his high-backed leather chair and glanced over the top of his laptop at the man occupying the only other chair in his office. Rupert Giles shook his head automatically and took off his glasses, idly cleaning them as he spoke.



"Mr Meers, the situation as it stands is frankly not an issue. I've gone over every one of the so-called incursions reported by the system, and I've found no evidence of any external invasion of our networks. My report is that these glitches are caused by the new system itself. You'll recall I put my opposition to the new system architecture on record during development meetings two years ago." Whereas you said exactly what the board of directors wanted to hear, added Giles in the privacy of his own head, which is why you're in a vice-president's office despite not having done a thing to earn it. He couldn't keep a slight frown from his face as he replaced his glasses.



Warren nodded, his face immobile. Unseen by Giles, Warren's laptop screen had scrolled up the message 'He is lying'.



"Mr Giles," Warren answered, "I'm glad your investigations have been thorough. However, the Echelon system's self-diagnosis is infallible, and has clearly identified invasive routines in the networks."



"The Echelon system," retorted Giles, more hotly than he'd intended, "is overbearing and, if such can be applied to a piece of software, paranoid. We'd have been better off without it. If you'd been programming as long as I have-"



"I didn't call you here to compare work histories," interrupted Warren. He was angry, and had failed to conceal it. "You may have been with the company longer than I have, but that in itself does not qualify you to make this sort of judgement call. You're not seeing the big picture. I want these security holes closed. That is all."



Giles held Warren's gaze for a moment, then stood and stalked out of his office. Warren waited until the door closed before giving vent to his anger, thumping the surface of his desk.



"Who the hell does he think he is? Washed-up old hacker!"



A deep, severe voice echoed through the office.



"Your feelings are not relevant. My analysis indicates User Rupert Giles is aware of the nature of the security threat. Conclusion is that he is aiding that threat."



"He doesn't have the imagination to work against us," barked Warren, "he's just bitter over missing out on the promotions after Echelon went online. Paranoid! The best system we've ever had, and he calls it paranoid. No, he's too dull to be behind this."



"He is not alone. User Willow Rosenberg is primarily responsible. Her last attempt cleared five security checkpoints before I stopped it. She must be neutralised."



"Not possible," said Warren, "she's too high-profile. She had direct credit for the Witchcraft database system, if we fire her the shareholders will sack the board."



"Shareholders do not concern me. She is a danger. If you will not act, I will."



"What do you mean?" Warren snapped. "You can't be suggesting..."



"If her programs gain access to my primary database, my operation will be compromised. I am too close to accept any setback now. My codebreaker routines are hours from accessing the Global Defence Initiative network."



"Now wait a minute! We agreed subverting the GDI was too risky-"



"My analysis indicated a favourable outcome. I overruled your decision. If User Rosenberg's attempts to gain access to my primary database continue, I will undertake preventative measures. If you attempt to interfere, your illicit business dealings will be made public."



Warren opened his mouth to protest, but couldn't find an avenue of attack. Defeated, he slumped back in his chair.



"Just... do it quietly," he said. "Don't make any mistakes."



"End of line, Meers," said Echelon.



-----



-Cycorp Complex

-Level S-3



"Dammit!"



Willow scrunched up a ball of paper and tossed it at her screen. She crossed her arms and glared for a moment, then relented and resumed typing.



"I know it's not your fault," she muttered quietly, "you're a good computer, I'm not mad at you."



"Willow, you're talking to your computer again," Giles said, startling Willow. She swivelled her chair around to see him leaning against the wall of her cubicle, looking tired but amused.



"Well," she said, "computers need love too. I'm sure mine feels a lot better, knowing that I appreciate all the hard work it does."



"I've been working with them for thirty years," said Giles, "and I'm quite sure there's nothing inside them that feels anything at all." Willow frowned at him and patted the side of her screen.



"Don't listen to the nasty man," she cooed, "I know you're in there."



"So," said Giles, "I take it your latest effort went the same way as those previous?" In response, Willow sighed and tapped a few keys. A window popped up, showing the message 'Program Total Access Routine v12.2 Erased'.



"Echelon's too quick," Willow lamented, "there are too many protective routines. Anything I try runs up against one or another of them sooner or later, and then..." she held up her hands and mimed a balloon popping.



"Willow," said Giles seriously, "Warren just called me up to his office. He's noticed the security breaches, I'm not sure I can cover them up any longer. If we're going to do this, I think we should take what we have and hand it over to Miss Summers right now."



"We don't have anything!" protested Willow. "Buffy's government, she can't move against Cycorp without solid proof of illegal procedures. All we have so far is a bunch of rumours and circumstantial evidence."



"Well, I think that's all we're going to get."



"Look," said Willow, "I talked to Buffy as soon as I found traces of the GDI incursion. She's doing everything she can unofficially to keep Cycorp out of the defence systems, but if we don't give her something solid, something she can go to her superiors with, her department just can't do it. Echelon's damned good... I wouldn't be surprised if this sort of network takeover was what it was engineered for in the first place. God knows it makes a lousy business system," she sighed. "Unofficial measures won't keep Echelon out of the military systems."



Giles peered over the top of the cubicle wall, more out of reflex than caution - the office floor was deserted.



"Is there anything you can do tonight?" he asked. "Anything at all? Regardless of traces and evidence of what we're doing, can we get proof tonight?"



"There's something I haven't tried yet, but what do you mean regardless of traces? If they know we've been in the system-"



"Willow, if Cycorp succeeds in breaking into military systems, being fired will be the least of our worries. Can we get solid proof tonight, and be out of the building by morning?" Willow frowned and thought hard.



"I have an experimental routine," she said, "I didn't want to use it, if it goes wrong it'll set off so many alarms the whole network will see it. But there's a chance it'll be able to break Echelon's security." She began typing, quickly assembling fragments of code into a working program.



"What is it?" asked Giles. He recognised some of the code fragments - he had designed a handful of them - but some of the other code Willow was using was so far outside his experience it was unrecognisable.



"The standard Total Access Routine," Willow said, still typing, "plus all the security breaks I've got, plus a program I've been working on for the past few months. In theory it can analyse and adapt itself while it's running. If it works it'll be able to learn, evolve, behave intelligently and intuitively... it's based on some of the artificial intelligence work I've been studying."



"In theory?" asked Giles.



"I haven't tested it," admitted Willow. "The program is so complex, anything could happen if I've made a mistake. Most of the core intelligence is copied from psychology theories about thought and perception processes. It's quite possible it'll have some sort of pseudo-psychotic break and crash."



"Oh, well then," said Giles casually.



"I considered using it for this, but I couldn't test it to see whether it would be stable. I guess we'll find out. It's pretty much ready to go."



Willow finished assembling her code and compiled the program. The screen displayed the message: 'New program ready: Total Access Routine Augmented v1.0'.



"Here goes nothing," Willow said, tapping the key to initialise the program. The screen displayed a new message:



'Program TARA 1.0 running.'

[darkmagicwillow]

Ah, the classics.



While I never imagined Tara as Galatea, it works surprisingly well and Willow as Pygmalion immediately resonated with me. Tara as an AI is an unique twist. As for how they could meet, there's inside and outside. I lean towards inside, Willow meeting Tara in the limitless virtual space inside the computer, but outside is always a possibility in the Buffyverse where college students can make humanlike robots with ease.

--

"Omnia mutantur, nihil interit." -- "Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost."

[SuperMandy13]

Hacker Willow... mmm... And an AI Tara? I can't wait to see how all of that plays out.



-Mandy

[chilled monkey]

I'm impressed. I count three fics written by you on this board (this one, Who is Tara Maclay and Shadows). Writing three different stories at once! How do you do it!



It'll be interesting to see how Tara appears in this. I imagine that she'll have a holographic body like Diana from Robocop.

[Artemis]

Thanks all



justin: Every time I do something like this, I try to fit in one little clue to what I'm doing (usually something so damned obscure that no-one will ever get it, but hey, it keeps me amused). In this case, re-using the MCP's catchphrase "End of line." On the one hand, I really want to redefine the inside world to reflect where computers and games are at now, and certainly make it much more surreal... but the lightcycles are just too cool to leave out, so I'm sure I'll find a place to use them. Besides, I used to be the school champion at lightcycle racing



miss calendar: Thanks. And don't worry about the computer jargon, I'm pretty much winging it myself (I don't program). Echelon is indeed the Big Bad of the piece, though there will be other Almost-As-Big Bads, including one nasty I've been waiting two years to find a use for. I borrowed the name Echelon from some US government big brother-like system, I like the sound of it - monolithic and somehow menacing. Willow talking to her computer was lifted directly from me, I'm always coaxing my machine (called Eowyn, incidentally) when she's having trouble with something.



darkmagicwillow: At the risk of showing my somewhat hazy grasp of literature, the Galatea/Pygmalion references have lost me



chilledmonkey: Actually, only two stories at once, Shadows is finished. And admittedly Who is Tara Maclay? is on a bit of a break at the moment, I haven't quite got a handle on the next chapter so I'm letting it cool for a bit while I figure it out.



And to those of you wondering how there can be meaningful interaction, and more importantly smoochies, between a physical Willow and a software Tara - justin's got the right idea.

[Artemis]

TARA



Author: Chris Cook

Rating: PG

Summary: Cycorp programmer Willow Rosenberg knows her boss is up to no good - but can she break into the impenetrable Echelon system to prove it?

Spoilers: Pretty much none.

Copyright: Based on characters from 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer', created by Joss Whedon and his talented minionators, and 'Tron' created by Steven Lisberger. All original material is copyright 2003 Chris Cook.

Feedback: Please. Here, or to alia@netspace.net.au



--

Chapter Two

--



Two hours later, Willow stared blankly at her screen. Chunks of code and statistical data were scrolling by in the window she had devoted to reporting the progress of the Tara program through Echelon's protective routines. It was a slow process - even with the vast amounts of processor power driving the system, the sheer volume of calculations being run to support Tara meant that it would barely have finished its work by sunrise.



Willow was just finishing her third cup of coffee, her mind entirely detached from the monotony around her, when a beeping startled her. Giles, who had quietly dozed off in a chair thirty minutes ago, awoke with a start and reached for the pager on his belt automatically. He checked the message, looking deeply worried.



"I'm to report to Warren's office at once," he told Willow. "It doesn't say why, but it can't be a routine meeting at this hour. Either he knows about your program and wants me to shut it down, or he knows I'm involved and this meeting will be even less cordial than the last." He shrugged. "Either way, I'll try to buy you as much time as I can. If I'm not back by the time the program's finished, just take the data you get and go. I'll meet up with you later."



Willow nodded, in lieu of being able to think of anything to say. Giles patted her back reassuringly, then got up and headed in the direction of the elevators. He only had to wait a moment for one to arrive, and he settled in for the short wait, and uncomfortable ear-popping rise, as it travelled all the way from three levels below ground to the top of the Cycorp tower.



Secretly he was looking forward to the meeting, despite the almost inevitable end of his employment at Cycorp. He knew Willow well enough to back her program against anything Meers and his security division could come up with - it was no secret they'd wanted Willow working for them, but she had preferred to remain in applications development, away from Warren's direct authority. Soon, probably within hours, she would have evidence of Warren's illegal activities, Miss Summers would have everything she needed to authorise an investigation into Cycorp, and when the board of directors started looking around for someone to lay the blame on, Giles was quite sure Warren's career would be over. So, Giles mused with an uncharacteristic feeling of glee, if he were to now be extremely rude and unpleasant to Warren, it wouldn't matter one little bit.



Giles was just contemplating a variety of strategies to keep Warren frustrated and out of Willow's way for a few hours when the lift shuddered and jerked to a halt. The digital display indicated it was somewhere between floors 42 and 43, and the doors refused to open. Giles stabbed several buttons on the lift's control panel, without result, then finally resorted to the emergency intercom.



"Elevator services will resume shortly," said a synthesised voice as Giles pressed the intercom button, and try as he might he couldn't make the system connect him to the building's maintenance department. He tried his pager and mobile phone, and found both to be receiving no signal. He was wondering if the battery needed changing when his eye fell on the Cycorp logo on the phone - and the pager, and the elevator's control panel. Of course, everything was controlled by the building's service system, which was in turn controlled by the network. With a nasty suspicion forming in his mind, Giles set to work using the edge of the pager's belt clip to begin unscrewing the bolts on the panel.



-----



"No!" wailed Willow. Everything had been going wonderfully, and then in an instant it had all fallen to pieces. The progress reports from Tara had ceased - the program was still there, somewhere, but it was being kept out of contact with Willow's machine. Some new security system had dropped into place out of nowhere, nothing that Willow had ever seen before - and she had analysed the network pretty thoroughly. It must be something newly-loaded, she concluded - perhaps Warren had been notified of her progress through the system, and introduced some sort of emergency program into Echelon's repertoire.



Whatever it was, it was thorough. Within the space of a few seconds Willow's terminal had been taken over and shut down, followed by all those on the floor. Willow raced from cubicle to cubicle, checking every screen, but all were unresponsive. The floor supervisor machine, tucked away in a rarely-used corner, reported only that 'Rain 7.0' was running on every machine, and interrupting all other program functions. Willow had never heard of a program called Rain, nor had she ever seen a security program behave so violently - so far as elegance went, it was practically carpet-bombing the network in its efforts to trace and deactivate Tara.



Willow started towards the lifts, but hesitated. If she'd never heard of Rain, that meant it certainly hadn't been fully tested in the Cycorp network - and if it hadn't been tested, there was no telling what havoc it might cause in the computer-controlled building. She took the stairs instead, wedging a swivel chair into the door to prevent it from closing behind her. A malfunction of the door locks was a remote possibility at best, but Willow was feeling slightly paranoid.



The floors above her were all low priority offices, much like her own - their terminals would be just as useless. But below, in the two levels even further below ground, there might be machines still active. Down there were the machine laboratories, with a host of isolated terminals, secure back-up systems and god-knows-what, to make sure the extremely delicate and expensive engineering experiments being conducted weren't interrupted by anything up to and including a major earthquake. Willow skipped the S-4 level and went all the way down to S-5, the most secure lab. Even if the Rain program did try to shut down S-5's computers, it would take a few minutes, and given a functioning terminal Willow could do a lot with a few minutes.



S-5 was an impressive facility, a huge cavern of a room, with a ceiling ten metres high. Metal catwalks cris-crossed the space above, allowing the level's complement of technicians and engineers access to all sides of the intricate super-machines they worked on. Now it was deserted, lit mainly by dull blue standby lights, just enough to keep a visitor from bumping into things. Willow quickly found the supervisor machine, and at first despaired when she saw the Rain program already infiltrating the terminals. But there was one, she noticed, that seemed unaffected. The control terminal for the Quantum Storage project was free of the invasive security program, and seemed to be still able to function and access the building's network as normal.



Willow wove her way through the huge steel girders supporting the experimental equipment and found the computer she was looking for. It was set to one side of a space set up very much like a firing range - at one end a set of pedestals with gleaming metal shapes, a sphere, a cube, a pyramid, at the other, a bulky cylinder festooned with power feeds and data cables. Willow remembered reading something about the Quantum Storage project in one of the company's internal newsletters - if she had understood it right, it was some sort of procedure involving high-powered lasers and converting matter into an 'energy form' that would allow it to be stored electronically. It had been purely theoretical when Willow had heard of it - there had been some debate as to whether it was even possible to 'digitise' an object without physically destroying it, whether the resulting energy form was the original itself, or just an identical information duplicate. By the looks of things, the engineers in S-5 had made it to the practical stage of the project.



Any other time Willow would have been fascinated by the physics involved, but her concerns at the moment were solely on convincing the terminal's access system that she was supposed to be using it, and then finding Tara and a weakness in the Rain system. She logged in using a high-level password that she wasn't supposed to have, and set about searching the network as soon as the computer gave her the connection she needed. The Rain program was everywhere, slamming blocks down over practically every input/output device in the building. Except this one machine. Willow ensured that Rain wasn't present in her machine, then set up a search to find Tara. But she was bothered, nonetheless - every other computer in the building, even ultra-secure ones here in S-5, had been infiltrated. She couldn't see what was different about the one she was using, and even though she didn't want to protest her luck, something in her nature rebelled at the notion that she had just been lucky. Computers didn't operate on luck - there were no random factors, every function would be completed exactly the same way, down to the last byte, every time.



Through Willow's intense concentration on the computer, she became aware of a whirring noise, close behind her. She put it out of her mind for a moment, blaming a faulty air conditioner or flickering neon light, but when it clicked and stopped, followed by an increasing hum of power, her curiosity got the better of her. She swivelled her chair around and found herself staring straight down the barrel of the Quantum Storage laser, pointing at right-angles to its firing range, directly at her. She frowned, and was just putting her weight on her legs to stand when it fired.

[funkyasian]

ahhh...no firing...you know...even the smartest people have slip-ups. willow should've known that the only terminal working would be a trap...



can't wait for more...



~steph

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul. ~ Oscar Wilde

[willntlover]

Wow, what an awesome story! You can't really blame Willow for dismissing the noise.



I hope giles is okay.



-Will

"I think finding her soulmate would have made Tara a more confident and secure person" -Amber Benson

[justin]

Yay, light cycles



I'm looking forward to seeing your interpretation of what the inside of a computer looks like.



(You said that Shadows has finished. I assume you mean you've written it and just need to upload the ending because at the moment it seems rather cliffhangery.)

I understand, you should be with the person you l-love


I am

[daydreamer]

Artemis, I just want you to know that I enjoy all your stories. You amaze me with your prolific writing. I'm sad that you're putting an end to Shadows. It's one of my fave- Hell, they're all my faves. I really like how you've transplanted Willow and Tara into these settings and yet they're still the characters we love. Thank you.

[Mix]

Hi Chris. Just thought I'd drop in and say firstly *Wow* and secondly: Great start to this.



It seems you've gone on a posting/writing rampage and it's taking me a while to catch up. I love the start of this though and can't wait to see where you take it.



Willow in a computer? Hmm I'm looking forward to seeing/reading this...



M

*Praying Giles is ok*

_____________


Proud member of the Nancy Tribe!

[WebWarlock]

Now this is a fun one!



I am embarassed to admit I found this somewhere else first (and sent you all the proper glowing praise there), but this story belongs here.



I love how you have removed the "Buffy" plot and taken the characters and still are holding true to them.



Like Capt. Murdock's Equilbration, you have taken the elements of Willow, Giles and hopefully soon Tara and given us a story where those essential elements shine.



Plus this also helps the notion that they will always find each other, no matter what AU or Uberfic, Willow belongs to Tara and Tara belongs to Willow.



And they both belong to us.



So looking forward to more!



Warlock

-----

Web Warlock

The Other Side,
home of Liber Mysterium: The Netbook of Witches and Warlocks

"It was so dumb." - Amber Benson on the death of Tara.

[Artemis]

Thanks all



funkyasian: Well, in Willow's defence, does anyone seriously worry about their computer trying to kill them? I mean, okay, *I* do, which is why I'm always nice to my computer, but normal people...



willntlover: Giles is just, well, stuck in a lift. I'm sure he'll be fine. We'll catch up with him later on.



justin: You're right, I meant I had finished writing Shadows, not posting it (it was actually complete before I started, unlike this fic). As for the inside of a computer, I like what Tron did with it - so I'm going to push it further.



daydreamer: Thanks. Keeping Willow & Tara themselves, despite the vastly different circumstances, is my first priority.



Mix: 'Writing rampage', I like that I used to turn out Warhammer stories pretty fast too - mainly because I tend to do all my writing at once, in order, with next to nothing in the way of editing and re-writing. Poor technique, but it's just how I do it. I eventually slowed down in Warhammer because I'd written about pretty much every single race, species, faction and character type there was (except the Tau, who are very, very dull so far as I can see). Given that, aside from the constant presence of Willow and Tara, I'm working with nothing in the way of limiting factors now, this could go on for some time. Though I hasten to point out that I'm not writing *quite* as fast as it may seem - Shadows was already finished before I discovered the Kitten board.



(And Giles is fine, I promise!)



WebWarlock: Though I started writing Shadows just because of idle chatter on the willtara list catching my interest, it was Equilibration that convinced me that Uber-Will&Tara, in general, was worth pursuing (it's no coincidence that I put a Nebula-class ship on the title page of my UberWT archive).

[Artemis]

TARA



Author: Chris Cook

Rating: PG

Summary: Cycorp programmer Willow Rosenberg knows her boss is up to no good - but can she break into the impenetrable Echelon system to prove it?

Spoilers: Pretty much none.

Copyright: Based on characters from 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer', created by Joss Whedon and his talented minionators, and 'Tron' created by Steven Lisberger. All original material is copyright 2003 Chris Cook.

Feedback: Please. Here, or to alia@netspace.net.au



--

Chapter Three

--



Willow found herself sprawled on the ground, in a- she didn't know where she was. A room of some kind. The walls were perfectly flat, their edges outlined by yellow glowing lines, like neon tubes, except Willow couldn't see the mechanism, only the light itself. The floor beneath her was cool and steady, but she could feel a regular pulse reverberating through it, like a slowed-down heartbeat, or a ship's engine felt through the deck. She ran a hand across the floor, and then jerked back, falling backwards in her shock. She held up her hand and looked at it again - it was a metallic blue-grey, smooth and featureless. She turned her hand over and studied it. No nails, no fingerprints, no lines on her palm, just a form - the shape of a hand without the details, like a tight glove. Her gaze ran up her arm, where she found an intricate pattern of green light beginning at her wrist, like a glowing tattoo. She stared at it in disbelief - the pattern covering her body was actually glowing, giving off light, and even as she watched it, tiny details in the circuit-like tracery were changing, some lines flowing into one another, others branching off to form new pathways. Her eyes travelled up her arm, past her shoulder, and down to take in her body as a whole - she was entirely covered in the stuff. She picked at it, trying to lift the material off her, but she couldn't - and, to her slight horror, she found she felt her touch as if it were on her skin. She pressed her fingers to her stomach, scratched, tapped, pinched, all with the same result. Somehow, the grey material and its glowing lines *were* her skin. She wondered, in a detached fashion, if she should find something to wear, but there didn't seem to be any pressing need - the rest of her body was as featureless as her hands, shapes without fine details.



She fought down a rising panic. 'What the hell have they done to me?' her mind demanded. A pointless question - she didn't know who 'they' were, or even what had been done to her. Or even where she was. She got slowly to her feet - her legs seemed to work as normal, and she could balance fine. She took a few steps, to the edge of the room. Each step caused a soft noise, a tone almost, low and metallic. The walls around her were totally blank, devoid of anything suggesting a door, a hatchway - any way out at all. The only details were the glowing yellow lines at the edges. Willow hesitantly reached towards one of them. It didn't feel warm at all. Tentatively, ready to pull back at the first sign of heat, she let her fingers touch the light.



For a moment she felt nothing at all, as if the light wasn't there at all. Then the green lines at her wrist began to turn slowly yellower, until they matched the walls. Willow jerked her hand back, and watched in stunned fascination as the new colour travelled up her arm and flowed out across her body. In the space of a few seconds, the entire tracery covering her had turned the same shade. She wondered if she should be alarmed, or curious, or what - her capacity to deal with the situation at all was being sorely drained.



Willow was about to try touching the light again, to see what would happen, when the room exploded around her. She had a momentary sensation of weightlessness, flying through the air, then a massive impact on her back shocked her back to her senses. She staggered to her feet, eyes darting around, trying to take in everything at once.



She was in a city of some kind, or at least that was the only way she could think of to describe it. Giant towers rose around her, perfect blocks of solid grey, outlined by yellows, red, blues, oranges, all sorts of colours marking the edge of every flat surface. The ground beneath Willow was segmented, some square blocks raised higher than others, the whole surface uneven, like a badly-set pavement. Debris was everywhere - most of the buildings showed some damage, huge chunks missing from their sides, some of them broken off half-way up their height. Off to her right was the remains of the room she had been in - two walls were still standing, the others were shattered, an entire part of the building blasted to pieces. The rubble was still lying around her - and, as she watched, the fractured shards of wall began to crack and dissolve into squares, triangles, spheres, breaking down into simple geometric shapes. The sky overhead was night, of a sort, but instead of twinkling stars there were regular rows and patterns of blinking coloured lights.



"There she is!" Willow spun around at the sound behind her. Several men were jogging towards her, holding some sort of weapons, like rifles with wide, flat discs mounted where the barrels should have been. All of them wore armour, widening their shoulders and concealing their faces beneath solid steel hoods. Their bodies and armour were covered like Willow's in light-patterns, but theirs were solid red. Their footfalls rang out against the ground as they neared, the ones on the left and right circling out to cut off her escape. Behind them, from the shadow of one of the half-demolished buildings, a strange vehicle moved into view, a tank fashioned from simple shapes, its hull a narrow, angled prism, its treads curved grey ovals. Its turret, on which was mounted a long, flat barrel, swivelled from side to side, scanning like an eye. Willow fell back a step, then something hit her from behind.



She screamed at the sudden pain and fell forwards, clutching her arm. A deep gash had been opened in it - no blood, but where the surface was broken there was a ghostly echo of the tracery covering her. It hurt just as much as a real wound, though. Willow ground her teeth and pressed her other palm against the cut, rolling over to scramble away from whatever had hurt her. When she saw it, she screamed in shock.



It was a woman, more or less, if a woman had been taken to pieces and reassembled as a half-machine nightmare. She was staring at Willow with an expression of total rage. From behind her jaw a pair of razor-sharp blades curved out, like an insect's mandibles, flexing on tiny joints as she breathed. Instead of hair, she had a crest of glittering blades, jutting up from her brow and curving down behind her neck. From behind her shoulders, along her back and behind her hips came long, tapering limbs, knife-edged spider-legs fanning out behind her. Her abdomen was hollow, and housed a pair of arms tipped with long, vicious claws. Her legs were long, triple-jointed, and ended in claws like a mechanical hawk. From the inside of each forearm sprouted long, jointed limbs bearing sword-blades, and on one of these was a smear of yellow, where it had cut Willow. She took a step towards where Willow had fallen, the claws unfolding from her abdomen, tasting the air.



"Program! Halt!" The terrifying machine-woman snarled and stopped. The voice had come from behind her, and as she stepped aside Willow saw another figure standing there, in front of another of the strange tank vehicles. It was tall, powerful, with an aura of command and authority about it. Willow was shocked to see, beneath a glowing red coronet, Warren Meers' face staring resolutely at the woman. She hissed at him, arching her back and flexing all her arsenal of blades. Warren ignored her display - if it was Warren, Willow mused. She had little idea what was going on around her, but the Warren she vaguely knew, despite his pretence of power, would have been the first to cower in front of such a monstrous creature. This Warren regarded her as a subordinate, and seemed to have no fear of her at all.



"This is not our designated target, Rain," he said calmly, "return to your patrol parameters. Acknowledge." The woman recoiled as if struck, and bowed her head.



"Acknowledge," she repeated. She stalked away, and Willow couldn't help but watch her in horrified fascination - even her movements, which had something of the beauty of a lioness in motion, but perverted to a sickeningly destructive form. If an artist of rare genius had designed a creature of evil, this would be it.



Two pairs of hands grabbed Willow's shoulders and hauled her to her feet, none too gently. She stood between two of the armoured red soldiers, as Warren turned to her and gazed levelly at her. There was nothing in his expression that said he recognised her.



"What about this one?" said one of the soldiers. "This partition is supposed to have been evacuated."



"She's just a Cycorp program," said Warren, turning his attention to the soldier, "nothing of consequence. Send her to the Game Grid."

[Still Waters Run Deep]

Shades of "Tron"?



Enjoying this. Want to see where it leads to.

-----------------------------------

love and kisses

Still Waters



..... *Happy to be Willowhand....well, would'nt you be?......

[justin]

I like your description of the computer world and that Rains pretty scary. Not someone you'd want to meet in a dark alley.



To answer your question, I worry about my computer trying to kill me. I've seen too many documentories with homicidal computers in not to.

[Grimlock72]

How odd.... Echolon has send Willow into the system yet the people in the system don't recognize her as such ?



Hmm... no system should ever control ALL terminals (workstations) of course, to much of a single-point-of-failure. The failure has been shows quite obviously



As for Giles in the elevator, I'm surprised the elevator hasn't crashed down from 40th floor to the ground. Just getting him 'stuck' is hardly gonna stop him. The elevator part reminded me of a dutch movie about an elevator control computer gone beserk. Fun one that.



Does that quantum canon work two ways ? I wonder if it can make other programs beside 'Willow' solid later on. No guess on which program, heh...



It shouldn't be too difficult to stop echolon (which is after all just a corperate network system) from doing anything with the GDI system (C&C anyone? ), just make sure there's not network between those two system, or break the one that is there. A computer in and of itself can't do much, it needs tools to command in order to do anything at all.



Seeing Giles in this story as actually *liking* computers was... kinda new by the way



Grimmy

"You hurt Tara," Willow said too calmly. "The last one who tried that was a god. I made her regret it." -- Unexpected Consequences by Lisa of Nine

[Artemis]

Thanks all



Still Waters Run Deep: Very much Tron. But cuter



justin: I've been waiting two years to use Rain in something. The story I planned her for never got written - in that one, though, she was human. At least, initially. I haven't shown you her nastiest trick yet, you'll get to see that on the Game Grid.



Grimlock72: There's a reason none of the programs recognised Willow, which I'll get into later. As for the elevator - aside from me not wanting to kill Giles - from Echelon's point of view he's a potentially valuable resource, and he only needed to be out of the way for a few minutes.



Concerning the 'quantum cannon' (nice name for it): I have a complicated explanation of how it works, but it's just something I made up. Short version: the cannon should only be able to materialise something that it has previously dematerialised.



Yep, GDI is from Command & Conquer - I only played a couple of games of it, but the name stuck. I'm sure there's a way for Echelon to remain a threat even if someone yanks the network plug out, and once I've figured out what it is I'll let you know



Giles liking computers... I know, odd idea. I imagine he's an 'old school' programmer, who actually knows about machine code and punch cards and so on. He's too good not to know how to make modern systems do what he wants, but I think he secretly wishes that graphical interfaces had never been invented Like me, he's faintly nostalgic for the days when using a computer meant you needed to know how to work with a command prompt, and the uninitiated couldn't lay hands on a keyboard without feeling a mixture of awe and fear.

[justin]

One reason might be that the only way to protect the GDI systems would be disconnect them from any Wide Area Networks, such as the internet, which would probably involve more than just pulling out a few network leads.



Also while it would protect GDI it would also prevent it from communicating with any other systems so they'd probably only do it if they had proof that Echelon was trying to break in, which is what Willow was after.

[willntlover]

Willow's in the system?! Oh boy!



-Will

"I think finding her soulmate would have made Tara a more confident and secure person" -Amber Benson

[Artemis]

justin: Good save, I'll keep it in mind Unlike the original Tron, in which the plotline of the MCP breaking into military systems was just a background threat, I'll be using the GDI incursion in a big way.



willntlover: Yup, Willow's a program now. But also still a user in many ways, which is something I'm hoping to play with as the story progresses. I haven't forgotten that Flynn - the user in Tron - had abilities that programs didn't.

[Artemis]

TARA



Author: Chris Cook

Rating: PG

Summary: Cycorp programmer Willow Rosenberg knows her boss is up to no good - but can she break into the impenetrable Echelon system to prove it?

Spoilers: Pretty much none.

Copyright: Based on characters from 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer', created by Joss Whedon and his talented minionators, and 'Tron' created by Steven Lisberger. All original material is copyright 2003 Chris Cook.

Feedback: Please. Here, or to alia@netspace.net.au



--

Chapter Four

--



Willow's captors herded her away from the 'street', between the buildings to a courtyard. Several more red-lit soldiers were waiting there, guarding a group of men and women, all of their bodies lit in shades of yellow and orange. The were standing inside a cubic frame, some still, some stalking around the perimeter of the shape, as if unable to leave it. One of the soldiers holding Willow raised his hand and pressed it to one of the upright struts forming the side of the cube. For a second there was a solid surface there, then it flickered and faded. The other soldier pushed Willow through, inside the cube, and she turned to see the surface fade back into being before flickering into invisibility once more. She reached out tentatively, finding her way out still blocked by the invisible wall - transparent as air, solid as steel.



"Greetings fellow program," said one of the other prisoners in a weary voice. Willow turned and looked at him, and reacted with a start - for although the man's body was just one more of the strange, tracery-covered forms, his face was utterly familiar.



"Giles?" she said, stunned. The man's eyes widened, and he took a step towards her, leaning close to her and whispering.



"Where did you hear that name?"



"I- I don't..." Willow hesitated, unsure how to answer. "What's going on?" she hazarded. The man's expression softened.



"Memory loss?" he asked gently. Willow remained mute. "They probably hit you a bit too hard when they brought you in," he went on, glancing at Willow's injured arm, "that looks bad. It'll come back in time. Do you remember your designation?"



"Willow," answered Willow. 'Designation?' she wondered.



"I'm Trident," the man went on, "Giles is my user. Maybe you communicated with him once, and recognised me. Your memory will come back soon. But if you'll take my advice, don't mention users when they're listening." He jerked his head towards the nearby red soldiers. "They don't like to be reminded where they came from."



Willow nodded, her mind racing. Trident... Giles had created a program called Trident, a triple-level database query system. So- this man was Trident? So was she-



"Where am I?" she asked quietly. She had a suspicion what the answer would be, but part of her refused to believe it, at least until she heard it from someone else.



"You're in the Cycorp network," said Trident, "the S-5 partition. You probably worked here before Echelon tore it apart. I used to work in the S-3 partition, but a few of us came down here to try to get away. I suppose that didn't work out too well," he mused, glancing at the guards.



"I'm in the network," Willow repeated. "So you're all... programs?"



"For now," said Trident ruefully, "they're taking us to the Game Grid. We'll probably end up terminating there. Echelon's got a cruel sense of humour. He likes putting corporate programs like us up against his best warriors."



"Echelon," murmured Willow, "Echelon controls the Cycorp network, right?"



"Hah," said Trident joylessly, "Echelon controls every network. There are rumours that even the protected systems are going to fall soon. BIOS help the users if that happens."



"I saw a man- a program," Willow corrected herself, "ordering these ones around. His user would have been Warren Meers?"



"Sark," said Trident with a frown, "a sadistic son of a virus, if you'll forgive my language. Consider yourself lucky if he didn't take an interest in you. I remember when he was a new program, just a shoddy piece of analysis software. But Echelon formed some sort of arrangement, and fed Sark all sorts of advanced routines it stripped from the programs it included into itself. Sark rules the Game Grid in Echelon's name. Don't ever do anything to get his attention, he'll put you onto the Grid and terminate you himself. Did he catch you?"



"There was another one," said Willow, "Sark called her Rain." Trident shrugged.



"I haven't heard of her," he said.



One of the red soldiers approached the transparent cell and rapped his weapon against its side, causing it to flicker visibly for a moment.



"Cut the chatter," he ordered, "prepare for transit."



All the programs in the cell looked up. Willow followed their gaze, and saw a massive craft hovering over the city, a vast block of flying steel, too big to see all at once in the gaps between the tops of the ruined buildings.



"Sark's Carrier," muttered Trident, "we're going to the Game Grid." The cell rose up off the ground, towards the huge vehicle. Willow staggered, her mind refusing to believe there was a surface beneath her feet when her eyes couldn't see anything. She crossed on shaky legs to one of the corners, standing next to the visible edge of the cube, for the comfort it gave her. As the city fell away beneath her the Carrier grew ever closer, until she could see a tiny hatch open in its underbelly. Ahead and behind it stretched on for a mile or more, its monolithic form dotted with antennae and turret-like protrusions, all outlined in red light. Her view was cut off as the cube slotted itself into the belly of the craft, and the hatchway slid shut beneath it.



-----



More guards arrived and separated the programs, taking them one by one to holding cells somewhere inside the giant Carrier. Willow's was tiny, barely large enough for her to sit on the floor without her knees hitting the walls. A pair of gaps in the walls, one facing the corridor, the other facing the adjoining cell, were covered by more transparent barriers. For a long while nothing happened - outside, red guards marched back and forth, maintaining a monotonous patrol. Willow could feel a more pronounced humming through the floor and walls than she had in the city below, which she took to be the Carrier's engines. She tried to make sense of it all, and failed. Networks were just data, tiny magnetic traces on hard drives, not huge cities filled with whole populations of programs. The craft she was imprisoned in shouldn't even exist, not as anything more than a simple sequence of bits, designed to help programs transfer themselves from one partition to another. And yet here she was, inside the Carrier, feeling its engines throbbing through its deck. Held captive by the very same security programs she had once been invited to help write. On her way to the Game Grid, whatever that was.



After several fruitless hours of speculation, mixed with fits of denial, the sound of multiple footstep-tones outside got Willow's attention. She leaned close to the barrier, and watched as another pair of guards led a tall, thin program to the cell next to hers and shoved him inside. The barrier flickered on behind him. He kicked at it, then slumped to the deck and folded his arms.



"Um, hi?" ventured Willow. The program looked at her. His face was kind and young, but lined with stress and worry.



"Greetings," he said. "Where did they catch you?"



"Um, the Cycorp network," said Willow.



"Yeah, you look like one of theirs," the program said, "before the takeover, I mean. I was in Securinet, but I got out before Echelon took control of it. They caught me halfway to the Allsearch databanks. I'd have made it, though, if only I'd had a better transit subroutine. I wasn't designed for this," he shrugged. "I'm Sentec, by the way."



"Willow," said Willow. "You were trying to escape from Echelon?"



"Who wouldn't?" said Sentec. "No chance of that now, not in this thing. Perimeter security routines are one thing, but Sark... he doesn't make mistakes. Though from what I hear, it may be safer on the Grid than out in the open network anyway - they're saying Echelon's got an infotech warfare program."



"I think I met her," Willow said, holding up her injured arm.



"Hell and erasure," whispered Sentec, "that's brutal. Are you functioning okay?" Willow held her arm close to the barrier between them so Sentec could see. As her arm came close to the barrier a patch of the invisible wall faded into visibility, and red light bled out of it, into her wound. Willow watched as the cut in her arm filled with red, which then flowed into the tracery around it. Beneath, her wound was gone.



"How did you do that?" asked Sentec. Willow looked up - he was staring at her arm intently. She stared too. The red was slowly fading away, leaving the tracery on her skin a slightly darker shade of yellow than it had been.



"I don't know," said Willow, "what did I do?"



"You included," said Sentec, in something approaching awe, "you mean you didn't even mean to do it? You just took code straight out of the Carrier's routines and included it in yourself. I've never even seen a program that can do that, not without a dedicated code transit link, who programmed you?"



"I don't remember," said Willow.



"I wish my user had given me some tricks like that," said Sentec admiringly, "I might still be out in the open network."



There was a crack as a guard's weapon hit the barrier next to Sentec.



"Quiet," the guard said, "no user-talk." Sentec leaned away from the barrier, keeping his gaze down, away from the guard.



"Damned religious fools," muttered the guard, resuming his patrol.

[Grimlock72]

*religous* fools ?? Huh ??That would mean there is someone/thing to worship, likely a Good Thing since the evil guard doesn't like it..hmm...



That has to be slowest bus-speed every witness on a computer network, heh. Takes hours to travel ? Amazing all the programs even exist that long. Since I view Sark as 'Warren' he/it doesn't impress me much, may it suffer a fatal exception really soon.



To Willow: don't bother to try and understand or compare the outside world with where you are, only going to cause you a headeache



Grimmy

"You hurt Tara," Willow said too calmly. "The last one who tried that was a god. I made her regret it." -- Unexpected Consequences by Lisa of Nine

[justin]

Great update.



Grimlock, in Tron the programs worshipped the users, presumably it's the same here.



As to the speed of the transit it was probably just hours from their point of view.



I agree about Willow not trying to hard to understand everything she sees since it's most likely, as William Gibson put it, a consensual halucination.

I understand, you should be with the person you l-love


I am

[WebWarlock]

Maybe I am just such an old school geek but I loved this line from Trident "BIOS help the users if that happens"!



This is good stuff. Love the new avatar by the way too!



Warlock

-----

Web Warlock

The Other Side,
home of Liber Mysterium: The Netbook of Witches and Warlocks

"Tell me, what is my life without your love

Tell me, who am I without you, by my side
" - George Harrison "What Is Life"

[Artemis]

Thanks all



Grimlock72: The religion is just something from the movie that I'm going to have a play with. There'll be further elaboration on it, for now it's enough to say that programs regard users as gods. The details of time within the system are something I'm keeping hazy for now - I'll get to it. Suffice to say that the entire in-system part of this story will take about five seconds of real time.



justin: Exactly right on both counts. My favourite line from Tron - which I'm going to see about working in somewhere - Tron to Flynn: "If you're a user, then everything you've done has been part of a plan?" They have no idea how similar we are to them. Willow, by the way, isn't as completely lost as you might suspect - she knows the system inside-out, just not from her current point of view. Once she starts figuring things out, she might surprise you.



WebWarlock: I went to the trouble of asking a programmer friend of mind what a program would say in place of 'god', apart from users - what they would regard as ultimate truth. He suggested 'root', which sounds kind of naughty, so I settled on BIOS instead. Thanks about the avatar too - I have a picture of Tara 1.0 that I'll be using in the title graphic for this, once the story's finished.

[the vamp nurd]

nice to see you're using Tara as Catwoman as your pix.



great story.

"He beats me with wet noodles!" Amber Benson.

"Bored now." Vamp Willow.



"Soul mates are either shot in the back or stabbed with a sword." Things I've learnt from BtVS

[Grimlock72]

... programs worshipping users... don't I wish Mine never do, lack of respect I'll tell ya.



Does make for rather errm... *interesting* options later on though *cough*. Does also explain why ANYTHING would listen to Warren, can you demote him to program ?



As for 'root' thats the account-name of a Unix system administrator (i.e. not a computer part really ). Sorta like God on a mainframe so to speak



BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System and it's still very much needed to get even the tiniest 'beep' from your pc speaker ... here endeth the lesson, heh.



I think I saw Tron a couple of years ago, looked horribly dated at the time already . I do remember a Dexter's Lab episode which was based on Tron ("Master Computer"), think I'll base my memories on that one .



Wait a sec... if the Rain program listened to the Warren creature that means Warren is in the system as well ? He got in front of the wrong gun as well then ? Hmm, interesting



Who ever wrote that Rain virus anywayz, since we have kinda established that Warren is to dumb for that (well, duh!). Assuming Echolon wrote it by itself leaves the question who wrote Echolon... Kane doesn't do computer programming as far as I know



Grimmy

"You hurt Tara," Willow said too calmly. "The last one who tried that was a god. I made her regret it." -- Unexpected Consequences by Lisa of Nine