Jared's new job...

Jared arrived at Sci-lab, and began following the instructions written on the note someone left with his belongings back at the hospital. The first thing it told him to do was speak with the receptionist at the front desk, specifically to the one next to the elevator, and identify himself... Alright... whatever works for them...

He did as instructed, and approached the indicated receptionist... Once he was in front of the desk, the female receptionist politely inquired... "How may I help you, sir? "Pardon me. I'm a new employee here with Navi R&D, in Division 5." "Ah, may I have your name please?" Jared Travis Farnam... and I'm supposed to ask you for a security pass to get to my depertment. Then things became a little disturbing for Jared... Ah, I see. You're assigned to the Security Division. Here, you'll need this. she said as she handed him a jack-in plug... that wasn't attached to anything... "I'm what?" "You're with Division 5. That's Security. Please step into the elevator, and plug that into the jack-in port inside the elevator. In the future, you will need to have a PET with the proper pass to get to where you need to go." "I see. Thank you."

As instructed, he took the elevator to his floor...

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A while later, and after getting lost... twice; Jared finally made it to his office. He opened the door and walked in... and whistled at what he saw... There was a state-of-the-art workstation with a stand-alone setup in one corner, a large data storage system sitting next to it in a 6 ft-tall multi-tiered tower, and a full-up MPU data-processor unit on top of it. They had also provided a separate desk for 'paperwork' complete with bookshelves, a huge ammount of desk-top space, a built-in tool cabinet, and a rolling office chair to match. The room was a mix of office and lab, rolled into one.

Oh yeah... Look at all the toys they're paying me to play with... Jared thought with absolute professional-geek glee as he sat down at his desk. Then he noticed a dark gray PET on the desk nearest the tool cabinet, with a text-reader laying next to it... The message in the reader was a detailed account of the duties expected of him... which apparently began and ended with field testing a new Navi Model. The appended file contained information on the equiptment assigned for his use in this task... including a custom PET.

So, my job is to field-test Navis eh? Still what's so special about this Navi? Jared sighed at this thought... the reached for the PET and booted it up....

An enormous mechanical Navi appeared on the screen... Scorcery to science... what a switch. was jared's first thought upon seeing the Navi for the first time. The Navi then spoke to Jared... "Identify yourself."

You're kidding me.... thought Jared as he replied "I am Jared Travis Farnam, your assigned Net-Op. And you are...?"

The large Navi seemed to ignore Jared and began speaking once more "Operator name and voice print confirmed." The Navi paused a moment, then continued "Operator visual ID confirmed." Another pause... "I am Broadside.EXE. What are your instructions?"

Ok... this isn't a joke... but it's funny anyway. Jared almost laughed at how absurd Broadside was... but he managed to contain his mirth (barely) and instead said "We're going to be working together for a while, so there's no need to be so formal. Anyway, I'm supposed to test your abilities out in the real-world, and record all of that data here. So... I guess we may as well get started."

The Navi's expression never changed once throughout Jared's speech. When Jared had finished speaking, Broadside simply replied with one word: "Agreed."

"Well then... here goes." Jared said as he wirelessly jacked Broadside into the Sci-Lab network...
Several hours of programming after Broadside's return from the net...

"That should do it. How do you feel?" Broadside ran a self diagnostic on his restored and upgraded functions... then responded "My super armor function is offline." Jared sighed before responding, "Actually, it was damaged by that Boomerang attack, became useless, and had to be removed. In exchange for the defunct protocol, I added enhanced mobility control protocols. In spite of your enormous mass, you should be just as fast as any standard Navi now."

Broadside simply nodded at this. He started to continue his self diagnostic but was interrupted by a pulse from a distress beacon... Net Police encoding... ACDC signal protocol... This prompted Broadside to speak, "I'm receiving a Net Police signal from ACDC Net." This caught Jared off-guard for a moment... "Do what?" The beacons all shut off suddenly... "The signal has been lost. I will assume they have been defeated. Jared, please jack me into the net."

"If you insist..." he said as he jacked Broadside into the Net...

((Jack-in: ACDC-Link))
Broadside returned from the Net, appearing on the screen in his White Guard form... "That healing chip you provided me with in my last battle was extremely useful. I shall assume this was acquired recently."

...Jared shutdown the computer terminals, and switched the server to standby. Then he arranged his tools, placed them in their respective containers, and returned them to their storage compartments. He closed the cabinet with a click...

Jared cocked an eyebrow at his tone, but answered amicably in spite of it "Yes, I traded the Boomerang1 chip for it just as your battle with the BigBunny began."

...Jared got up from his desk, grabbed the PET, and shut off the lights on his desk...

Broadside's tone went flat, "Why?"

...He then rolled his chair back under the desk and started for the door...

Jared responded in a disarming manner "Hey, easy now... You have to admit, that chip is going to come in handy in the future..."

...He paused once more to shut off the lights, step outside, and closed and locked the door...

"...Besides, the money it and that old useless cannon brought in will be put to good use upgrading your functions permanently." While Broadside stopped to contemplate this revelation, Jared headed towards the elevator and on down to Suitachi's Navi Shop.

((To Navi Shop))
Jared returned to his office, booted up his computer systems again, and sat down to work...

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Hours later
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"Ahh... that's out of the way." He says with an intense sigh of releif... "Now we just need to test out your new combat capabilities. Feel up for a visit to Netopia?" Broadside simply nodded, seemingly non-plussed... "Then away we go. Time to visit my home network."


((Jack-in: Netopia via Net-Link))
((Placeholder))
Broadside returned from the Net, again in his white guard form, to find his Net-Op was extremely busy... Hard at work at his trio of terminal screens, programming god only knew what... However, he apparently had attention to spare, as he spoke while he worked... "You did extremely well during the NetPolice raid on the factory.

Broadside simply nodded, deciding there wasn't anyhing he could or should say at that moment. He watched as Jared worked, just as something to do while his self-repair protocols went to work fixing his battledamage slowly... He was not at all interested in what Jared was doing until his Net-Op pulled out a Recover 10 chip and a toolbox...

It appears you did suffer another glitch or two during the fight. These glitches are rampant..." ...Jared took out a set of fine probes and started to pry the chip's casing open... "And that worries me. You managed to overcome the effetcs of those glitches on the fly this time, but what if something goes horribly wrong during a major battle...?" ...Jared had the case opened, and had set the probes down. He then reached for a micro-circuit electroplate iron, and started to work on the insides of the chip... "The problem is, while I can fix the glitches, it takes hours to modify your code in any meaningful way. Those quick patches I've written for your code wont last much longer. It turns out your code structure has several more layers to it than I first thought, and the patches only got as far as the outer layer... I did wonder why it was so easy to work with..."

Broadside's eyebrows flew up at this, then downward as he considered the implications...

...Jared then took a data cable, plugged it into a connector on the chip, and extracted the data from it. The Recov 10 symbol on the front face of the chip blanked out...

Broadside spoke in a flat, emotionless tone... "In other words, my code is going to fail soon."

Jared responded, still working... "If I do nothing, yes. If I spend the time it takes to work through your security protocols to get at your core coding in all the places I need access to to fix the problems correctly, yes. However, I've come up with a solution for getting at your core code and making the patches into permanent upgrades and fixes."

Jared didn't speak again for about an hour, as he worked with the Recov10's data within his state-of-the-art terminal; then... "There. I've used the Recov10's universal code repair utilities to contruct a program that will decompile your data modularly, allow me to work with it, and recompile your code. With this, I can make you better than new, not to mention fix your glitches much faster."

As Jared hooked a second data cable up to the PET, Brodside spoke "Explain?"

Jared smiled... "You're designed to look and act like a "mech" in combat, right? Weeeell... Your code is the same way: It's designed to mimick a mech. So, that makes your code modular. You're contructed of several separate layers of code, with each layer composed of dozens of sets of individual code modules. It makes working on you a nightmare without the right program interface to do it with, as the code modifications wont be integrated properly. So, I made such an interface. Now we can repair your bugs in minutes instead of hours, and perform upgrades correctly too." Jared then picked up the destroyed chip and showed it to Broadside whith an apologetic look "Buuuut, I did have to wreck this Recov10 chip to do it. I'll bet I've probably broken a few laws too when I ripped the program, but it's an emergency." Jared told the terminal to upload the program into the PET then continued speaking, but this time, with a serious tone "They can fire me later, if they like. Right now though, we need to get you debugged, and quickly. I'm taking you offline now." As he finished speaking, Jared reached over and pressed a button.

For Broadside, the world went dark.

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

Jared booted up the custom code editing program he'd created. The screen showed his Navi, in it's mech form, standing silently in a mech maintenance bay. The bay was an alcove of metal superstructure that supported metal guide rails. Grapical representaions of robotic cranes, grappler arms, and work arms slid along those rails, able to get at any portion of code from almost any direction needed. Around the bay were machines for repairing code, replacing code, and churing out new code, much the same as their real world counterparts would have done with real mech parts. It all looked very realistic, which made Jared both blanch at the ridiculousness of it all, and yet feel grateful that this arrangement would make this all so much easier. If only they'd made him normal. What a mess. All this absurd graphical nonsense just to fix one Navi's code.

Jared got to work, repairing Broadside's code. The "machines" operated on his Navi just as they should in reality. The program also performed as advertised, and Broadside's code was in much better shape than it had ever been in in less than 10 minutes. Thanks to the program's stabilizing/storage feature, Broadside was in no danger of further code corruption while he was in this state. So Jared switched the PET to standby mode, cleaned up his office, and left for the day...

My pay should be at the front counter... Perhaps I should get this Navi a couple of surprise upgrades with it.

((to Suitachi's Navi Shop))

((Revov10 chip destroyed))