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All the cycles Tron had hoped and dreamed of meeting, at long last, his own User, he’d never imagined this weight of cold and desperate terror. Worse than the fear, doubt had begun to curl into his code so deep that faith was a dim and flickering comfort.
No time for delays now. He still reached out to catch Yori from her hurried rush, swinging her close to treasure her presence for a long moment. Her black armor was much like his own, one of Flynn’s upgrades common in Encom’s network now, but she wore no helmet, her fair hair loosely twisted into a braid.
When had the sight of her last felt like impossible luxury, soon to be snatched away?
“Remind me that we’re not doing this for me.” Yori’s hands lifted to cup the back of his head, worry and guilt creasing her delicate face as she met his gaze. “We’re doing it for everyone. For the Users. Right?”
Tron sighed, long and weary, pulled her closer and bent his forehead to touch hers. “For the Users,” he affirmed. “Are you ready?”
A short, sad chuckle. “We’re as ready as we’re going to be. Full control of the laser, all overrides bypassed. We’ll be careful, Tron, Alan-One will be just fine.” She drew a shaky breath. “No matter what he decides. We all agree on that.”
“I know.” His smile felt strained, but it was the best he could give. He wanted desperately to promise that it would be all right, that Alan-One would listen and reconsider the commands that had already gone out across the system. But Tron was no User, to understand the necessities that drove their decisions. All he had was the blind faith that his User would want to help, if only Tron could explain.
If he were wrong, if Tron had misjudged his User or the situation outside...he almost hoped Alan-One would be angry enough to compile him anew. Start entirely fresh, without memory. How could he go on protecting the system that had sent Yori and Ram to erasure?
Yori’s grip tightened, her voice low and fierce. “He will forgive us this, Tron. Even if he can’t change anything, he’ll explain.” The confidence in her smile shone warm and bright. “He couldn’t be otherwise, and still write you.”
Cycles past, on much the same grounds, Tron would have said that surely Yori’s User would never abandon her programs. But he didn’t object. No time left to waste in argument.
No more time to spare for comfort, either. Yori turned at the sound of a raised voice from the digitization control bay. Tron let her go, reluctance a heavy weight in his arms. Words of affection felt cheap, any call for the blessing of the Users too terrible an irony to bear. “I’ll signal you when he’s over the first transition shock,” he promised instead.
She tossed a grin back toward him, though he could see the sharp edges of fear. “I look forward to meeting him. Try to break it to him gently!”
The bay door sealed behind Yori, an opaque quarantine field meant to protect her team from any interruption mid-conversion. Tron covered the short distance to the target room at a measured pace, hands slowly clenching. He hated the sick, helpless feeling of a danger that he couldn’t even begin to fight.
Converted data had no visible form in the network until the digitizing programs assigned a location for final resolution, and the target room was still empty. Yori had hoped the soft ambient light and relative lack of visible energy lines might help calm the User. It felt unnatural to Tron. He moved restlessly to the near wall, and activated the comm access there. “Ram, this is Tron. Status?”
“Network lines to this terminal are still blocked and under our control,” Ram’s voice replied, a little strained. “But Shaddox has to know what we’re doing. Security withdrew all at once. No casualties yet.” He didn’t say Hurry, but he didn’t really have to. These were their friends, User loyalists all, not virals or traitors. If it came to a determined assault, Tron had already failed.
The news wasn’t a surprise. “Conversion is in process. We knew he’d take notice of the energy surge.” Tron grimaced. “Be careful out there. Retreat if you need to, let them in. It’s too late for Shaddox to stop anything now.”
“Acknowledged.” A moment’s pause. “And hey, Tron, if this doesn’t work--it’s been awesome. Never got to tell you that last time. Some ride, huh? I don’t regret a thing.”
Tron shut his eyes, resting a hand against the wall where his perfect balance had suddenly failed him. “Yeah,” he said, voice rough. “I wouldn’t have missed it for all the energy in the system. Now look after yourself, because we’re going to need your help when it’s time to clean up this mess.”
Ram’s answering laugh sounded genuine. “I hear you. Talk to me again when you’ve got good news!” A click signaled the closed connection.
If only he could promise good news. Tron shoved away from the wall and began to pace from one corner to another, marking out the nanocycles with anxious motion.
Just before he thought his processes might all crash from the strain, the room’s glow flickered brighter twice in prearranged warning. Tron straightened at once and turned toward the central target point, every part of his code humming in tense anticipation. Not too close. Alan-One wouldn’t know what had happened, and Tron wasn’t going to add to his trespasses by frightening his own User.
The data transit only took a moment, though it felt longer. The brilliant white light of active resolution poured down in a cylinder’s shape, strange otherworldly coding carefully transmuted to digital format. Tron stared into the face of the one who had written him.
Alan-One stood at a height precisely equal to his program, though the User was a little stooped in the disorientation of transfer. His face echoed Tron’s own, with the addition of peculiar and flimsy lenses over his eyes. After Flynn’s occasional and vague descriptions, Tron had expected his User to look this way. Seeing the similarity for himself still set a strange ache in his core. My User. My creator.
Under the circumstances, no one had wanted to risk Alan-One being mistaken for a program. His clothes had no visible circuitry at all, and hung loose enough to be a serious disadvantage in a fight. Not that Alan-One should ever need to go into battle.
Blank shock shifted rapidly toward confusion in Alan-One’s face, and Tron spoke quickly before the questions could begin. His duty to report, even if this was completely outside tradition. “Alan-One. Sir.”
He couldn’t even present his disk, not like this. Tron swallowed and forced out the words he’d practiced. “We’ve digitized you into Encom’s computer network. Forgive me, sir, I had to speak to you. My name is--”
“Tron,” Alan-One breathed, disbelief clear in his tone as he stumbled back a step. “This is...an extremely vivid hallucination.”
The recognition lit a quiet warmth clear through his code, in spite of the desperate urgency, in spite of the swift dismissal. Tron shook his head with an apologetic smile. “I know Flynn never explained very well, but you really are inside the laser terminal.”
This would all be so much easier if only Flynn were here to make the introductions.
Alan-One surveyed the small room, a skeptical glint in his eyes. “So I’m inside Flynn’s game. Where’s Flynn? That’s the way these dreams usually go,” he added, a resigned murmur. His mouth twisted unhappily.
“But I was going to ask you!” Tron protested, stepping forward in sudden alarm. “Flynn hasn’t even sent a message for more than a year, and all his public passwords have been wiped, long before the deletion commands started. You’re his friend, in his real world--how can you not know where he is?”
His User’s eyebrows lifted above the edges of the sight aid. “Well. That’s certainly a new twist.” He shook his head, pressing one hand to his temple and closing his eyes. “Believe me, I’ve looked for Flynn. Everywhere. Lora’s looked, Roy’s looked, the police looked, even Encom’s board did their due diligence. The man has dropped off the face of the Earth. And since you tell me he’s not even in his own computer fantasy, I really have no idea where to look next.”
“He wouldn’t have been here,” Tron said, slowly. Dropped off the face of the Earth? “Flynn hasn’t been digitized to Encom’s main network in years. And not often then. But Flynn has a test system. Shaddox was first compiled there.” Was it possible? What had happened?
Tron dashed that aside, with a sharp gesture to banish the irrelevant processing. “It doesn’t matter where Flynn is, not right now. I can’t help him from here, and his absence isn’t why I broke all the rules to speak to you, Alan-One.” At least not directly.
Alan-One watched him now, gaze puzzled but sharp. “I can’t say I understood any of that, but I’m listening.”
What were the User names Flynn had called them, names Alan-One would recognize? “Roy Kleinberg, and half the Users in his department. Lora Bradley...” He turned pleading eyes on his User. “All their programs are being erased. You gave authorization--you told me to let it happen!” The despair of that moment burned in his throat, not accusation but guilt. “And I can’t. Sir. I don’t understand, maybe I can’t understand, but Flynn said once Users can make mistakes just like programs do, and I hoped--”
He broke off, Alan-One’s increasingly bewildered stare too much pressure to allow words.
“There are archived copies of all the code any employee ever wrote at Encom,” the User said. “We aren’t getting rid of anyone’s work. I admit the current chairman of the board is taking a somewhat paranoid approach to security, but wiping old workstations shouldn’t hurt anything.”
Tron shook his head. “That code is archived before you compile a new program, sir. I know it’s useful for upgrades, but it isn’t us. It isn’t active memory, it isn’t--” What was the word Flynn used? “Alive.”
A very confused frown. “I’m not quite sure in what sense any program can be called alive.”
With no idea what defined alive-ness to a User, this was not an argument Tron felt qualified to begin. He didn’t even know whether Alan-One believed any of this was real yet, nor had any idea how to convince him. Didn’t Users have some kind of self-check on their perceptions?
Voice breaking with the weight of despair, Tron replied, “In whatever sense an erased program can be called dead.” He held out both hands, open and pleading. “I don’t know if you would mourn any of them. But I would. I think Flynn would, too.”
Before Alan-One had made any answer but a troubled gaze, a pulsing flicker of light on the communications access drew Tron’s attention. If Ram had something worth interrupting this, then he needed to know it.
Users, let it be Ram making the report.
“Excuse me a moment, sir,” Tron said as politely as possible, moving to the wall. He touched the conduit, activating its transmission, and gathered courage to keep his tone steady. “This is Tron.”
“Hey there!” Ram’s voice, thank the Users, bemused but not pained. “So, here’s a new thing. Shaddox just walked up to our little blockade. Alone. Wants to talk to you.”
Temporary relief lifting his shoulders, Tron straightened in expectation. “Let him.”
Flynn’s resource management program had been a part of Encom’s systems for nearly as long as Ram had. Shaddox was still a friend’s voice for all that was happening, familiar, deep, and as unhappy as Tron felt himself. “Tron. Please tell me you haven’t taken your own User hostage.”
“No!” he denied, instant and hot, though his sidelong glance at the User was heavy with guilt.
The face so like his own twisted in puzzled shock that only deepened Tron’s shame, mutely framing the word hostage.
Tron couldn’t pretend he hadn’t realized that Alan-One’s presence made at least Yori’s team indispensable until the User was safely out. “I’d never harm Alan-One!” he insisted. Shaddox didn’t believe that treason of him, either, Tron could tell even from the tone. The administrative program was seeking reassurance, and who could blame him? Tron chose his words with care. “My User gave an order I couldn’t understand, and I am...requesting clarification. It’s within my directive,” he couldn’t help adding, defensively, to both.
A deep, tired sigh. “You know as well as I do that not understanding a command is one thing, and not liking a command is quite another. I acknowledge how hard this is and I do sympathize, Tron, but I can only allow this terminal another millicycle.”
He couldn’t answer for a long moment. A millicycle was generous, chosen out of Shaddox’s friendship and not his duty. They were both well aware that if Alan-One refused to help, it wouldn’t take nearly that long to get him back to his own world. The time was for saying goodbye.
But if Shaddox expected Tron to scrape up gratitude for the declaration that Yori and Ram, Yori’s sisters and Ram’s brothers and Tron’s sparring partners and so many of the kindest, most creative, most innovative programs in Encom all had no more than one millicycle left...it wasn’t going to happen.
Before Tron had worked out any idea what to say instead, a hand bare of circuit lines or armor came to rest beside his. He looked up with a jolt of shock to see his User leaning in toward the communication access.
For a traitorous nanocycle, Tron considered shutting off the line, pushing Alan-One away--but he couldn’t work against Alan-One. Wouldn’t. No matter what the User was going to tell Shaddox.
“This is Alan...One.” The declaration was halting, but more confident than Tron expected with the furrows still shadowing his User’s face. “I appreciate your concern for my safety.” Alan-One hesitated, catching Tron’s gaze with what Tron didn’t quite dare believe was meant to be a reassuring half-smile. “Tron’s been telling me some things Flynn never mentioned, and I want to hear more.” The User raised his voice, a commanding tone closer to the steady assurance Tron knew from the I/O towers. “I do not want any program here erased. Not until Tron finishes explaining.”
Not a full countermand, not yet, but it was hope. Tron pressed his fingers into the wall until they began to tingle against the energy fields, and didn’t say a word for fear of breaking the fragile, precious gift.
Shaddox’s turn now for a long, dazed silence. “Sir,” the other program began at last, “I am already allowing Tron as much time as I can. Network-wide User commands can’t be ignored from within the system. Not without war. No one wants that, Tron least of all.”
Tron bent his head. Shaddox knew him well, though it hardly took old friendship to predict. The MCP had been the last to force programs against the will of their Users; distant history now, but not to Tron, or any who remembered.
“If you agree with him--” Shaddox faltered. “If I may speak, sir, I pray you do agree--but please, as quickly as possible, send the countermand through the official channels. From outside.”
Alan-One frowned, a flicker of deep shadows. “Thank you for your advice, Shaddox,” he said, tone growing unexpectedly more gentle. “I hope you’ll hear from me soon.”
The User lifted his hand from the wall, and after a swift questioning glance Tron let the connection close. Nothing else to be said, not to Shaddox. The point would be won here or not at all. And only if he could convince Alan-One, which Tron might have felt better about if he had any idea what had brought the disoriented User to act so swiftly.
Retreating an uncertain step, Tron studied the face so like his for evidence of decision; looked down at meeting a direct, puzzled stare. “You believe me?” he asked, wary of plunging into assumptions with matters so urgent.
“I’m not sure what to believe,” Alan-One said, shaking his head. “Or how this can possibly be real. But even if this is a dream, I’m not going to let anyone out there die while I’m making up my mind.”
Relief poured through Tron’s code like a surge of pure energy, lighting the first whole smile he’d felt since the commands came down the Tower. “I knew it,” he sighed, half-giddy with joy. He still hadn’t stopped anything, if he failed to convince his User--but he’d been right, and Yori and Ram had been right, and Alan-One deserved all their work and faith. “We were sure you’d never want all this. Not if you understood.”
The sheer bewilderment only darkened further in the User’s eyes. “Ah.” He made an uncomfortable coughing sound. “Well, I think it’s safe to say that I don’t understand at all. You’re...Tron? My Tron program, Encom network security?” Alan-One reached toward him, slow and tentative.
Tron moved forward at the implicit request, till his User’s hand brushed against his armor. As quickly the fingers curled away, Alan-One blinking at the solid contact. “I am your program,” Tron confirmed. “You compiled me in 1982, upgraded me many times since, and I have always done my best to fill every command you gave or authorized.”
Alan-One’s smile was small and nervous, but Tron rejoiced in it anyway. “Which makes you--code? That I wrote?” The User lifted his hand to adjust the thin frame covering his eyes. Tron wondered if it gave him new data. “Literally a program?”
“Yes,” Tron acknowledged, opting not to ask what other kind of program Alan-One would find more believable. “All your code.” He reached for his identity disc, with a bright grin. “I can prove that, I think. If you can read code, the way it looks in here.”
A heavy breath. “By which you mean inside the computer.”
Undocking his disc only took a moment, but initializing it for display was more difficult, and Tron had to divert significant stored energy to the process. Some of Flynn’s newer programs had efficient display capabilities built right in, but Tron’s identity disc was still an Encom pattern and worked best with a proper exterior port. Alan-One’s upgrades had never focused on appearance, only Tron’s own functions. It had never troubled Tron, who liked his disc’s wide, blue-striped surface.
Having a User present should work just as well as a recompiler’s port. Particularly his User, who had every possible permission. “Here inside, digitized, yes,” Tron agreed with Alan-One’s observation. “I’m not quite sure how it looks to Users from the outside. From here, our identity discs are the saved copy of all our memories, our basic code, and our functions. Everything we learn and do.” His disc finally brightened to a steady glow. Tron offered it to his User, lying flat across both hands, in a modified but ancient gesture of respect.
Without the I/O Tower’s conversion, Alan-One didn’t seem to know quite what to do either. He took the disc gingerly by the very edges, without lifting it from Tron’s grasp.
Light flared into visible code, Tron’s own, the neatly structured web of directives and interconnections that gave him purpose. Alan-One gasped sharply, his face pale in the bright display, reflected lines of light glimmering in the shielding over his eyes.
Tron waited as long as he could bear before venturing to ask, “You...you recognize me?”
One hand lifted to trace the wide, bold lines of Tron’s earliest commands. “I wrote this,” Alan-One whispered, a tone of something like awe that Tron didn’t understand. “I know this, it’s my code, but I never made a thing like that! I couldn’t possibly. This is art, not programming. This is--look at the complexity!” His User gently touched the delicate lines where Tron’s memories wound into who he was. “This is more like some kind of--neural net--”
Alan-One went abruptly still. His mouth opened and closed twice more, in utter silence. Then he let go of Tron’s disc and stepped back as though burned, the display winking out. Tron didn’t know the word that escaped him a moment later, except that it was short, violently spoken, and twice repeated.
Terror at the reversal chilled Tron, and his voice shook with the fear. “Sir! Please, what’s wrong? Have I done something?”
“No!” Alan-One exclaimed, moving closer without any hesitation to grip Tron’s shoulder firmly. “No, Tron, I’m not angry with you, not at all. You did right.”
The simple words of praise stunned Tron into immobility.
His User hardly paused. “But Flynn--” Fury and grief, tones Tron had never thought to hear from Alan-One. “Flynn knew all of this, Flynn with his stories and his nicknames and his digital frontier and his recycling and his crazy extended metaphors--he knew!” Alan-One flung angry hands upward. “He pestered Roy for months about that actuarial program! And he never told us! Not Roy, not me, not even Lora! It’s a miracle he lasted this long without disappearing.”
Tron replaced his disc on its port, feeling a peculiar stab of torn loyalties. He wanted to defend Flynn, his first and only User friend for so many cycles. He couldn’t contradict his own User, particularly when Alan-One was so clearly right to be upset. “I’m sure Flynn meant to tell you when he was ready,” he offered into the brief pause for breath.
“Oh, no doubt,” Alan-One snapped in response, with a very dubious expression. “When he was ready. And far too late for any of us to have any actual impact on his plans.”
That did sound like Flynn, at least in Tron’s intermittent acquaintance with him. Tron winced, and diffidently tried to change the subject. “You will stop the erasures, won’t you?”
Alan-One nodded once, a worried compassion in his gaze that Tron had long hoped to see. “I won’t let your friends be hurt, not now that I’ve met you.” He grimaced, adding, “If I’d had any idea you were--” A faltering gesture, fingers spread. “All this. Anything more than just the code.”
It sounded like an apology, which Tron found almost more disconcerting than the anger. Alan-One had never shouted, or apologized, or...sounded so much like a fellow program.
His User stepped back, adjusted the clear lenses again with a frustrated scowl. “But after all the changes at Encom since Flynn vanished, trying to keep the board from making sure none of our best programmers had left any unauthorized parting gifts seemed like a fight I didn’t need.”
Flynn had defined a few of those words. “The other Users? Are they all right?” Tron asked, anxious at the implications. “Ram’s User, and Carol-One, and Alan-Two, and all the other passwords that were wiped? We thought they must have decided to leave, just like Lora. Flynn promised Yori that she only moved to a different system.”
“They’re all fine,” Alan-One assured him. “They wouldn’t have wanted to leave, but they don’t have a choice. The new chairman wants Encom to focus on commercial programs now, and not games.”
From Alan-One’s tone, this new User had more in common with Dillinger than with Flynn. The wild explanations some of the more excitable programs had invented, of wars among their Users and chaos in the invisible realms, felt horribly more plausible. Tron shifted his weight uneasily. “What will happen to the system now?” He hoped the words didn’t sound as pathetic to Alan-One as they did to him.
The trepidation in his User’s eyes did nothing to soothe Tron’s worries. “I don’t know,” Alan-One admitted, with an honesty Tron would have appreciated if it weren’t so wholly terrifying. “I’ve never imagined any of this...” A deep sigh and Alan-One met his gaze directly, jaw set in a familiar determination. “But whatever happens, I’m not leaving Encom. I won’t let anyone destroy what we’ve built.” The User’s face cracked into a brief, wry smile. “Especially now that all Flynn’s crazy metaphors turn out to be true.”
That promise warmed Tron right through, down to the cold doubts he’d never wanted to admit even to the programs who knew him best. He reached out instinctively, not quite daring to touch, hand hovering beside Alan-One’s arm. “Thank you.” Too simple, but there were no protocols for this, no User-defined ritual.
Alan-One still had a faint air of shock, visible in his widened eyes, like a young program’s first call to the I/O Tower or new compiles getting their first look at the Encom network. But he grasped Tron’s uncertain hand and pulled him closer, into a loose embrace. “I wish I knew how this was possible, I wish I knew--everything,” the User laughed, strain and awe a peculiar mix in his voice. “I can tell we’ve got lifetimes of things to teach one another, but right now it sounds like there isn’t time.”
Nodding reluctant agreement, Tron drew back. “A millicycle is nearly a full work shift for us, but it won’t give you much time out there. Ten User minutes.”
“Just to save myself some worry over my own sanity once I’m outside,” Alan-One said, bringing his left hand to his own chest and pulling something small and cylindrical from within the loose clothing there, “it might be a good idea to write a message I can take with me. Assuming I can do that at all.” Eyebrows lifted in faint query.
Tron smiled, pleased at this new evidence of his User’s commitment and forethought. “If you tell Yori about it, I’m sure she’ll take care that it goes with you.”
“Lora’s Yori program,” Alan-One murmured, tapping the end of the thin instrument beside his mouth. “Lora’s digitization laser. I suppose that makes sense.” He shook his head wonderingly again, and rolled up one layer of the User-wear on his arm to reveal a white surface. “I hope Lora doesn’t kill me for ruining this shirt.”
The stylus left imprecise and uneven trails, a strangely inefficient method. Tron watched as closely as he dared, but couldn’t interpret the message and wasn’t quite prepared to ask.
After the scratching came to an end, with several lines darkly blotted across the sleeve, Alan-One looked up again. “Here’s what I plan to do,” he said. “Unless there are internal reasons I shouldn’t, which I expect you to warn me about.”
Tron nodded, feeling light in ways he hadn’t for...cycles. Since Flynn had stopped responding, at the very least. “Acknowledged,” he said, out of habit.
“For now, I’m going to disconnect the laser terminal network from the main Encom system.” Alan-One rolled down the outer layer of protection on his right arm, carefully. “Physically unplug the cord. You will probably want to have your friends out of that area.”
“It won’t be a problem,” Tron agreed. “And if it will give you the time you need, we don’t mind being isolated.” Long-term, Tron himself would need to make rounds again, but in the present disorder the other security programs were probably doing as good a job as anyone could.
Alan-One smiled in relief. “Good. Because I can try to cancel that deletion command, but to make sure no one else starts it all over again, I’m going to need to make a special case argument about Lora’s work. That will take longer than ten minutes, probably a lot more.”
The phrasing gave Tron a moment’s pause. “Sir, what about the programs who aren’t Lora’s work?” he asked, renewed fear.
“They can’t go back to those workstations,” Alan-One said, bluntly, though his mouth quirked in sympathy. “Space was being cleared for new work, new employees, and that space has to stay clear. But since you’ve brought them here, I’m pretty sure they can all be safe in this terminal once I get the exception set up.”
Tron leaned against the wall, pure gratitude threatening to weaken his knees. “If their Users are gone, they have no reason to go back,” he agreed, not without a twinge of grief. “That’s--more than sufficient, Alan-One.”
His User let out a short, audible breath. “Well. I’ll have to see what I can do about that, too, at least for Roy and Lora--but one thing at a time.” A strangely familiar grin tugged at Alan-One’s face. “It probably wouldn’t be very wise...it’s been a long time since I snuck a fired programmer in after hours.”
That last was clearly a reference to the tale Tron had heard Flynn tell, but sharing memories of Flynn, like everything else, would have to wait. “Let me introduce you to Yori. If you’re ready, sir.” Tron reached for the door’s control pad, and ushered his User into the brilliant glitter of Encom.
For long cycles, Tron had hoped and dreamed of seeing his own User face to face. He’d never gone so far as to hope Alan-One would come back. He shared an excited grin with Ram, the shorter program practically bouncing with joy.
When the network lines had finally begun to reconnect, Tron had been waiting at the edge of the span. If Alan-One hadn’t yet accomplished everything, he’d hoped his reputation might buy the programs marked for deletion a fraction more time.
But Shaddox had been the first one across, and the relieved joy in his face had been sufficiently eloquent even before he’d gripped Tron’s shoulders with a deep gratitude.
And now, scant millicycles later, they waited for the digitization programs again.
The faith that had guided Tron for so long felt somehow different. Not so distant, not so unquestioning, but still a confidence that filled his code with bright affection.
Clearly it was going to be a long road, with enemies in both worlds. What mattered was that Alan-One knew him now. In all the tasks ahead, whatever new dangers came, Tron would face them with his User’s blessing and aid, as it was meant to be.