Engineers

by grey_sw (grey)

Summary:

When they found his car outside Flynn's arcade, with his pager -- the one Kevin had always told him to sleep with, just in case -- sitting on the seat, there'd be no search. No brave mission to carry on his memory, no t-shirts emblazoned with Bradley Lives. It looked too much like suicide.

Notes:

For wtb (winzler).

Notes: For winzler. This is a work in progress, and it's going be epic, so please stick with me! Thanks to noctaval, mochisquish, expositionfairy, and dw_lj for beta-reading!

Thanks to winzler for the amazing fanart -- click for a larger version! <3

 

 

Chapter 1: On The Grid

All that we are
Is all that you'd love to be
All that we know
Is hate and machinery
We're engineers
-Gary Numan, "Engineers"

We reject kings, presidents and voting.
We believe in rough consensus and running code.
-David D. Clark

---

It was the worst elevator ride of Alan Bradley's life.

He'd once been stuck in one for over half an hour, twenty minutes of which he'd spent fending off Kevin's advances ("c'mon, man, when are we ever gonna get another chance like this?") while Roy giggled to himself in the corner. At the time, he'd told himself it couldn't get any worse. He'd been wrong.

The hand on Alan's throat shifted, black-gloved fingers digging under his chin. His captor pressed himself against Alan's back, close and deadly, his curved helmet only inches from Alan's ear. Alan could hear the sound he made, a constant in-and-out rumble that was more like growling than breathing. That animal noise had been frightening enough when Alan had a disc-weapon in his hand; now he was trussed and helpless, and the nearness of it was terrifying.

Alan gulped down a breath, flicked his eyes to the side, and caught a moment's glimpse of his captor before he was jerked upright again. Beyond the open edges of the elevator platform, a riot of color spread before him. Burning steel-blue lines sketched out the wide bowl of an arena, in which thousands and thousands of spectators still roared, each a speck of light in a sea of blue and orange. The glass compartment Alan had fought inside revolved in the center, nearly level with Alan's eyes. It was empty, now, but the sting of the wound in his shoulder reminded him just how close he'd come to death within its walls.

"User," his captor had called him, gripping Alan's shoulder as it bled. User, just like in Kevin's game. Just like in Tron. The memory nagged at him, echoing in his mind; there was something about that word, or that voice, something that resonated with him. He sighed, shut his eyes, and remembered.

The Grid is the perfect setting for a game, man! Beautiful yet deadly, unimaginably vast -- a world within our world, hidden within the computers we use every day. It's full of program-beings with their own lives, their own struggles: machines of loving grace, all watched over by their Users. By us, Player One and Player Two. When the kids see this they'll go crazy!

Alan opened his eyes again, gazing down at the impossible vista before him. Every surface burned neon-bright, as if the world itself had been crafted of light. He thought of the vehicle that had brought him here, an actual Recognizer straight out of Space Paranoids; he remembered the booming, distorted voice that had stayed his captor's hand, calling down from above.

Identify, program!

Kevin Flynn had done it. He'd actually done it. Alan was on the Grid. And Kevin...

Well, Alan had a pretty good idea of where he'd disappeared to.

The elevator car slid to a stop, merging with a larger platform with a cheerful *ding*. A grey door stood in front of him, with a small, stylized "2" in one corner. It slid open, Star Trek style, and his captor shoved him through it before he could react.

The sleek visor-thing that had replaced Alan's glasses gave everything a blue overtone, but even so, the room he'd entered was overwhelmingly orange. Two thick stripes ran around the perimeter, broken by dashes every meter or so, and a set of thinner lines ran around the edges of the wide window on the other side of the room. Before it stood a helmeted figure, dressed in a long black coat. Its edges were piped in yellow gold, brighter than any Alan had seen so far; it burned a vivid circle upon the man's back, where his disc-weapon was.

Alan's captor pushed him forward and then took a step back, leaving him standing alone in the center of the room. The man at the window didn't react.

"What is this place?" Alan asked. When the robed figure didn't answer, he spoke again. "Is this the Grid?"

The other man turned, stepping forward with casual ease. He was large, shorter than Alan but broader in the shoulders, and his black-mirrored helmet gave him an intimidating air. The front of his coat was even brighter than the back, royal in its splendor. His arms were marked by wide yellow lines, fierce and angular, and there was an odd pattern of slashes on the left side, like a mark of rank or a blazon above his heart.

"Who are you?" Alan asked. He tried to sound braver than he felt.

The helmet folded back and away with quick, mechanical precision. Alan's heart stopped as he saw what lay beneath it. It was Kevin, just as he'd looked all those years ago. He wore the same knowing, eager grin he had that final night, the night Kevin had told Alan about his "miracle". The last night they'd made love. His hair was the same, too, sandy-brown and maybe a little too long for a former CEO, and he still looked like he needed a good shave.

Kevin. For half a second it was all Alan could do not to reach for him, to pull him into his arms. He wasn't sure he was still breathing; the whole world seemed to shrink down to a single image of his long-lost Kevin, dressed in that ridiculous coat. Then Kevin moved, spreading his arms in welcome, and icewater filled Alan's veins. He shrank back in horror, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled like needles. His lips pulled away from his teeth in a snarl.

This wasn't Kevin. It was almost Kevin, but something about it was wrong, wrong, and the difference was awful. Alan took a step back, then another, but was stopped by a gloved hand on his shoulder.

A soft, steady purr filled his ears.

"Hm," not-Kevin sniffed. "Guess there's no fooling you, Bradley."

Alan leaned forward in the enforcer's grip. A lifetime in the boardroom had taught him to take the offensive whenever he had the chance, and he did so now despite his fear. "Who are you?" he demanded. "What've you done with Kevin?"

Not-Kevin smirked, spreading his hands. He inclined his head in a mock-bow. "I am Clu, Administrator of the System."

Clu. Of course -- Kevin's avatar, his own persona in his games. He'd always liked to talk about Tron, Clu, Ram, and his other characters as though they were real people, with lives of their own beyond the game screen. Alan had written it off as a benign fantasy, another of Kevin's eccentricities, but it wasn't. Flynn's programs were real.

Clu was real, and the haughty look on his face spoke of danger.

"Where is he?" Alan asked. His voice grew quiet. "Where is Kevin?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," Clu said. He gestured toward his enforcer. "Rinzler. Disc."

Alan's captor -- Rinzler -- held him still with one hand and pulled the disc from Alan's back with the other. A sensation ran through Alan as it left him, a tingle of electric potential that danced between his shoulder blades, just as it had when the disc had first been attached. His vision went white. Half a second later the feeling faded, leaving him empty in its wake.

When Alan came back to himself, Clu had his disc balanced in his hands. Its light was a crisp white against black, framed by the yellow stripes along Clu's index fingers. The sight of it nestled there gave Alan an innate feeling of dread.

"Let's see," Clu murmured. A three-dimensional image rose up out of the disc, drawn in fuzzy white light: Alan as a young programmer, walking through the Encom lobby in his suit and tie. The image danced, incomprehensible for a second, and then came together again. This time it was Flynn, wriggling back and forth before an arcade machine as if his life depended on it. Then it was Lora, grinning as she dangled a set of car keys from her fingers; Roy smiling beside Alan in the front row as Kevin made his first speech as CEO; Jordan laughing as she cut the cake at Sam's third birthday party. Clu lingered on that image for a moment.

"Please don't," Alan murmured. Clu didn't listen. The images changed, became dark: Alan's pager going off out of nowhere, the ugly, sterile walls of the hospital as he ran past. He saw Kevin Flynn, hysterical with anguish, his hand tight around his wife's beneath the cold white sheet.

Alan saw death, burial, renewal. He saw Kevin laughing at the FlynnOS release party a year later, one arm around Alan, the other wrapped around a beer. He saw the after-party, too, and what had followed: Kevin's hands on his chest, Kevin's warm body against his, Kevin's mouth around his--

"Stop this," Alan grated. "Stop it!"

"Relax. It's nothing I haven't seen before. Besides, you needn't worry about your privacy here... programs don't have any."

Mercifully, Clu moved on. Alan watched as the years passed. He and Kevin grew closer, ever more intimate within the image -- secretly, of course, but with the unspoken blessing of Kevin's parents, who'd hoped that Alan would be a stabilizing influence on Kevin's increasingly unpredictable behavior. They spent night after night together, even as Kevin began to spend more and more time away, scribbling in code-filled notebooks and muttering about his Digital Frontier. Alan watched as Encom's board of directors began to winnow the company away from the two of them, watched as Sam began to spend more time with Alan than with his own father, watched as Kevin Flynn's life rushed toward disaster.

He saw Sam as an eight-year-old boy, sobbing in the rain outside his father's arcade, shouting the same words over and over.

Dad promised, Alan! He promised, he promised he'd come back!

Alan took half a step forward, only to be yanked back. "No! Stop this, damn it!" he cried, enraged into rare profanity.

To his surprise, Clu did. "Good enough for now," he muttered, shaking his head. "I'll just hang onto your disc for you, Bradley. For... safekeeping." He smacked the disc against his palm, and the image guttered out. "Rinzler. There's a spare circuit on the port side. Take our guest there, and make sure he can't get out."

Rinzler gripped Alan's shoulder hard, but with surprising care; Alan yelped as he touched his wound, and Rinzler shifted his fingers so as not to disturb it. Then he pulled Alan backwards, out of the room. His purr echoed all around them, and the red lights on his fingers were bright in Alan's peripheral vision.

"Wait!" Alan cried. He struggled, but in vain: Rinzler's grip was strong as a vise. "What've you done with him? Where's Kevin?"

Clu turned away, regal in his bearing, facing the Grid once more.

"I wish I knew," he said, and then the door slid shut in Alan's face.

---

Rinzler pushed him down the short, narrow corridor, which opened up and out into an expansive room with windows on every side. Before they reached it, Rinzler turned and pressed his palm to the wall. A rectangular hatch opened up, wider than it was tall. Rinzler gave him a nudge, and Alan climbed through. His height meant he had to step through and then bend down, but Rinzler flowed after him as if he'd done it a thousand times before.

Inside was another hallway, perhaps three or four times longer than the one outside. Alan looked up and down and suppressed a shiver. Such a long corridor didn't seem to fit with the one outside: the doors on either side ought to have cut right through the rooms he'd just seen. The discrepancy gave Alan a powerful sense of displacement, but Rinzler reacted not at all. He walked Alan up the hall to an open door and pushed him inside.

"Wait!" Alan cried. He turned back toward the door, hands raised in supplication. "You can't just leave me here."

Rinzler's growl dropped in pitch. "User," he said again. The word seemed to grate its way out of him, heavy with distortion. It struck Alan as painfully familiar, but he still couldn't place it. As the sound of it faded, Rinzler raised one palm and pushed it toward Alan in an unmistakable gesture: stay here! Then the door slid shut, and Alan was alone.

He gave a shout of frustration, thumping the door with his fists. Half a second later he felt ashamed of himself; losing his temper wasn't going to get him out of this. He sighed instead, letting his breathing settle, and then took off his glasses -- visor -- and rubbed his temples.

Think, Alan, he told himself. Keep your eyes and ears open. There'll be some way to solve this.

He reached out, testing the door with careful fingers. It was hexagonal, with two asymmetrical halves which nested together with a barely-visible seam. It felt and sounded sturdy when thumped, and no doorknob or switch was apparent. When Alan turned, the rest of the "circuit" was much the same: a small room with two obtuse corners and a flat wall opposite the door. In front of it was a low bench, not quite as long as Alan was tall. Everything -- bench, walls, and even the floor and ceiling -- had a bright orange stripe running across it, and every surface was slightly reflective, leaving him surrounded by fragmented embers and vague Alan-ghosts.

Alan sighed again, sat down on the bench, and examined the visor in his hand. It was about three fingers wide, a smooth, single arc of what looked and felt like glass but probably wasn't. Its edges were beveled, and it, too, had vaguely hexagonal endpoints. It had no visible bridge nor earpiece, but when he lifted it back over his eyes it stayed there regardless.

Floating glasses struck Alan as the least-strange thing that had happened all day, and that was a very bad sign.

He huffed, stood, and paced for a moment, fuming silently. Here he was, locked away in a violent computer-world with his lover's doppleganger as the jailer, and it was all Flynn's fault. His shoulder throbbed (could he get an infection on the Grid? Were there computer bacteria as well as viruses?), and he ached all over from his exertions in the Arena, especially where he'd fallen. The situation seemed massively unfair.

After a minute or two he slowed, stopped, and sat back down on the bench. Reality set in: he was here, he was alone, and his own world was far, far away.

Alan gave one last sigh, curled up on the bench, and waited for sleep to take him away.

---

He woke sometime later. The room looked just as it had before, giving no indication of the passage of time. He'd dreamt of the sun, big and bright in the sky, and now he could see why: the stripe on the bench was only inches from his nose.

He sat up, stretched unthinkingly, and pulled up short as the move tugged on the cut on his shoulder. It began to throb again, sharper this time, and he thought about infection once more. He probed at it with his finger, but his suit seemed to have closed over it as he slept. He couldn't find a zipper or even a seam on the front of the suit, either. It was as if he'd been dipped in liquid leather and sprinkled with armor.

He looked up at the wall, where his reflection swam. It occurred to him that he hadn't looked at himself, really looked, in a long time. He was shocked at how little brown he had left in his hair, and the rest was edging past grey into silver. The lines on his face had grown deep to match. The leather-stuff that covered him was skin-tight, just as it was on Rinzler, Clu, and almost everyone else he'd seen on the Grid. He was in great shape for his age, but not that great; the sight made him long for his overcoat.

He drew closer, squinting at the white lines of light that covered his body. There was a Sierpinski triangle just below his throat -- Kevin would surely have described it as an "upside-down triforce, man", and Alan would surely have smacked him on the arm -- and from it radiated six wide, jagged lines, like a digital sunburst. Two of them ran down his arms to his hands, and then spread up his first three fingers in a pattern which struck him as unpleasantly similar to Rinzler's. The bottom two arched down his chest and onto his thighs, then down to his feet.

The pattern felt familiar somehow, more so than the grey in his hair. The feeling frightened him. He looked just like one of Kevin's game-warriors -- how could that be more familiar than his own face?

He was still thinking about that when the door opened. He bolted to his feet. Before him stood a man bearing a glass of water on a platter. He was utterly bald, and not quite as tall as Alan. He wore red-lit armor with a pair of odd, skirt-like panels at the bottom. A visor, like Alan's but much wider, sprouted from the crown of his head and arched down to cover most of his face.

"Breakfast time," he said. His voice was dry and sarcastic.

Alan tensed, every muscle on edge. His instincts screamed at him to charge, to knock the man over and run, but he managed to rein in the impulse before he made a fool of himself. Rinzler was out there, along with Clu, and Alan would have no chance against either. Clu's guards were armed with staves, too. And while the man before him was thin to the point of frailty, he carried himself with such arrogance that Alan had to think twice.

"I'm not going to say it again," the man sniffed. "You can drink or go without until the next shift. Your choice, User."

Alan nodded. He was thirsty, come to think of it. He took the glass, raised it, and sipped before he stopped to think.

It wasn't water. Whatever-it-was bubbled inside of him like extra-fizzy soda (or acid, his mind helpfully filled in, it could be acid), after which Alan Bradley checked out and his hindbrain took over. He spat, dropped to his knees, and clawed at his throat like a mad ape. The rest of the "water" spilled out over the floor.

"That's a waste of good energy!" the man said. "You're not going to get another glass."

Slowly, Alan came back to himself. The mystery stuff (not acid) hadn't hurt; in fact, he felt fine. Better than fine. He could still feel it bubbling, tickling inside him like a benign swarm of bees. Warmth spread from his belly into his limbs in great, wide waves. The ache in his muscles subsided as each one flowed over him; he could actually feel his bruises fade from black to purple.

"What..." he gasped. "What was that?"

"Energy, of course." He said it much the way Alan might have said "water", as if he couldn't believe Alan was unfamiliar with it.

Alan glanced away, distracted by the sensation in his shoulder. His wound itched unbearably for the space of a minute. He scrabbled at his suit, but the tips of his gloves refused to catch. Then the itch subsided, fading to a dull tingle.

Somehow he knew that if he looked, he'd see a half-healed cut where Rinzler's disc had torn into him not twelve hours before.

Alan wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "What is that stuff?" he asked again.

"It's energy," the man said, as if to a particularly slow child. "If you drink it, you live. If you don't, you derezz."

Alan nodded. "Derezz" was understandable enough: he'd heard the crowd chanting it earlier, when Rinzler had put his disc to Alan's throat.

"You're not much of a User, are you?" The man bent down, picked up the glass, and put it neatly back on the tray. "So much for religion," he sneered, and turned to leave.

"Wait!" Alan cried. He threw his arm across the doorway, blocking the way. The other man gave him a scathing look, but stopped where he was.

"Who are you? Where is Clu?"

"I am Jarvis. And the Leader is busy as always; he'll come and play with you another time." The way he said "Leader" suggested that "Clu" was much too presumptuous.

"Another time? I've been here for hours. How long do you intend to keep me in here?"

Jarvis blinked. "I haven't been told. But I'm sure the Leader will attend to you within the cycle."

"Cycle?"

Jarvis heaved a great, patient sigh. "You've been here for roughly a millicycle. There are 1024 of those in a cycle. We're more than halfway through the current one, so surely that's not too long to wait. Is there anything else you'd like me to explain?"

"No," Alan whispered, barely hearing his own voice. Jarvis stalked out as he staggered back to the bench. The door shut behind him.

One thousand twenty four, multiplied by somewhere between six and twelve hours. He double-checked his math, and it was still nearly a year at best, which left perhaps six months before the end of the cycle. The rational part of his mind told him that people survived six months of near-solitary confinement all the time, but the emotional part insisted that if Clu left him alone in here for that long, he'd go insane. He could see it in his mind: the froth on his lips, the dull emptiness in his eyes, his bloody, ruined fingers as they scratched at the door.

Alan felt cold despite the perfect body-temperature in the room. He wrapped his arms around his legs, rested his head upon his knees, and did his best to wait.

---

Alan slept deeply that night, despite having taken a short nap of the kind Lora liked to call a "pity party". Jarvis returned in the morning, served him another glass of energy, and left him alone again. This time the liquid's effects were not as pronounced. It felt as satisfying as a hearty meal, but seemed to do little for his aches and pains.

He spent that first day exploring his cell again, running his hands over every surface. He could feel the thrum of engines somewhere close, confirming his impression that the room he'd been taken to was part of a ship, but he found no means of escape.

After Jarvis left on the second day Alan waited, cross-legged on the bench. Every moment made him wish he'd paid more attention to Kevin's "Zen Thing".

On the third day it occurred to him that there was no toilet. He hadn't even had the urge to use one. He thought about that for a while: did he even have a bladder anymore? Intestines? He had blood, that much was certain... and he felt thirsty every morning, just as he had in the real world, so it seemed as if something still existed inside him. Still, three tall glasses of energy over three days should've had him hopping up and down. He felt nothing, nothing but a steady sense of well-being.

It was probably a good thing, because he still had no idea how to open his suit.

Alan slept through Day Four, curled on his bench. He dreamed of Sam: he was walking through Alan's apartment, calling and calling. Alan woke with tears in his eyes. Kevin Flynn had vanished in his youth, at the height of his fame, and at a critical juncture in his career. Most had believed he'd simply run away. But Alan Bradley? He was old and alone, a relic of the past, and he'd been no more than that for at least ten years. Mackey was looking to get rid of him at Encom, and everyone knew it; Lora and Roy watched him with sadness in their eyes, but neither of them could manage to bridge the gap. Even Sam had largely moved on, leaving him as the last, the faithful one. The only one who still believed that Kevin Flynn would come back.

When they found his car outside Flynn's arcade, with his pager -- the one Kevin had always told him to sleep with, just in case -- sitting on the seat, there'd be no search. No brave mission to carry on his memory, no t-shirts emblazoned with Bradley Lives. It looked too much like suicide. He wasn't entirely sure he hadn't meant it to be suicide, at least until he'd found the door hidden behind the Tron machine. He wasn't sure what he'd been doing there, what he'd wanted to find. He knew only that he'd seen Kevin's number on his pager, as if returned from the dead, and he couldn't stay away.

I should have told Sam, he thought to himself as he drifted back to sleep. He would've known what to do. This is his father's world, his father's legacy... Sam should have been the one to find it. Not me.

Alan spent much of Day Five shouting and pounding on the door.

Nobody came.

Chapter 2: Information Exchange

First you listen to the users; then you ignore them.
-Ken Arnold

---

After that, Alan stopped counting the days. There was no point -- he was safe, they were feeding him (recharging him?), and he had a warm place to sleep, at least for the moment. Better to conserve his energy until he had a chance to get home... if he ever did.

He wasn't sure if it was possible to go home.

Fortunately, not too many days passed before Clu finally swept in, filling the small space with his neon glow.

"Alan Bradley," he said, the way Mackey liked to say "Encom OS 12". He spread his hands in a shrug. "I meant to get here earlier, but it's been a hell of a cycle... you know how it is. Jarvis been treating you well?"

Rinzler was right behind him, a near-silent threat. Alan eyed him as he replied.

"Well enough. For a prisoner."

To his surprise, Clu actually frowned. "Barbaric, isn't it? If you were a program you'd be processed immediately, either through the Games or the Rectifier, but we have no facilities for Users. As unpleasant as this is, it'll have to do."

That word again. Rectify. Alan didn't like the sound of it. He hadn't expected Clu to go in for small talk, either. Something about his tone put Alan on guard, every nerve on edge.

"Where's Kevin?" he asked.

"Ah. That's the question." Clu turned away. Rinzler didn't. "I almost believed he'd show up," Clu went on. "For you, for Alan-One... he mentioned you once or twice. Made it sound like you mattered." Clu's left hand curled into a fist. "Guess not."

"Then he's alive," Alan breathed.

"Oh, yes. I'd know if he wasn't. But he didn't come for you, did he?" Clu turned toward Alan again. His eyes were flat and hard. "You weren't the trump card I hoped you'd be. The portal closed without you, without him, and still he refuses to make a move."

"He escaped," Alan said, as if to himself. "You tried to take over, but he got away."

"I didn't have to take over. This is my system, my world. I am its Administrator."

"You're a dictator."

"Dictator is such an ugly word, Mr. Bradley." Then the corner of Clu's mouth turned up. "No, really. Flynn created me to build the perfect system. He directed me to manage it while he was gone. Unlike him, I don't pretend to godhood -- I'm just the Administrator, just the Leader."

"So was Hitler."

Clu blinked. "Who?"

Alan hesitated for half a second. Didn't Flynn tell him? "He was a leader in our world, a dictator. He started a World War, and committed geno--"

Alan broke off. Clu was gaping at him, blue eyes wide with shock. "You told me," he finally said. "You told me about the User world!" He took a step forward, hand outstretched. "Tell me more!"

"Sure, I..." Alan started. Then he fell silent. He was a prisoner captured by Kevin's betrayer, by the man who'd made Sam an orphan. He folded his arms across his chest and leaned back, glaring across at Clu. "No."

Clu's hand dropped, and his face closed off again. Rinzler's growl doubled in depth and speed.

"I'll leave you alone in here until the next cycle, then. See if that improves your mood. Rinzler!" Clu turned away, his coat sweeping behind him. Rinzler fell in at his heels, still rumbling his displeasure. Alan held out for second or two, but as they reached the doorway his nerve broke.

"Wait!" he cried. "I'll tell you. I'll-- I'll tell you about the world, whatever you want to know. Just don't leave me here."

Clu spoke without turning, with a satisfied smile in his voice. "That's more like it. I'll come back tomorrow, User."

The door shut behind him. Alan dropped down onto the bench with a whump, burying his head in his hands. Shame burned through him. He'd given up. He hadn't even fought. Just like at Encom.

The thought sobered him. Just like Encom... Encom, the company he'd spent twenty years fighting from within. If he could do that again -- run a one-man Flynn Lives, keep Clu from killing him until he found a way out -- he could win more than just his freedom. He could find Kevin... if Clu didn't find him first.

He sat on the bench for some time, thinking quietly.

---

Clu came back the next morning. He watched as Jarvis served Alan a liquid breakfast, the toe of one boot tapping against the floor. Afterward, Jarvis stuttered something about "remaining to record the session", then withered under Clu's glare and scooted out.

"Well, that's taken care of," Clu said. He knelt down in the middle of the cell with his coat pooling around him, and then he pressed his hand to the floor. Yellow fire flowed out of it, formed the shape of a square, and danced round and round its edges upon the tile. When Clu lifted his hand a chair came along with it, rising up out of the floor like a mirage.

Clu proved it was solid by sitting in it, linking his hands before him. He leaned forward, as if drawn to Alan.

"Tell me about your world. Tell me everything."

Alan swallowed. "I will. I promised. But first... first I think you have a story to tell."

Clu huffed and slapped his palms against his thighs. "I think you may be confused as to which one of us is in charge here, User. I'm not like the programs you're used to, not a machine that has to do whatever you tell it to do. That's what you are now, and if you push me I'll be glad to demonstrate."

Alan closed his eyes. "I'm not telling. I'm asking. I can't give you the things you need to know unless I understand what they are." He opened them again. "And that depends on what you already know, and that depends on what's happened here. On what you are."

Clu thought about that for a moment. "You need my story in order to give your story context. All right, that parses. But it'll be the short version. I don't have all cycle." He paused, cleared his throat, and went on.

"In the beginning, Kevin Flynn created the world. It was formless and empty, endlessly dark, and nothing was in it but him. Then he brought forth the beginnings of a city, and the programs who lived there, and the cliffs which lay beyond it. He did this a thousand times, over and over, and when he was finally pleased with his design he named all of it the Grid. Then he breathed life into his programs, and he transferred Tron over from the Encom system to protect them. Then he--"

"Wait. To protect them from what?"

Clu glowered, and waved his hand the way Kevin used to whenever somebody interrupted his 'flow'. "Gridbugs, man. Glitches. Rogue scripts. Parity errors. All the enemies of order, of perfection. This is a dangerous world, Alan-One -- a fragile world. It must be cared for, carefully curated, or it will fall to dust and disorder. You're a User; you must know that."

Alan nodded. He'd seen more than one program collapse under its own complexity, rendered unusable by race conditions and crashes that were impossible to predict at run-time, much less spot within fifty thousand lines of tangled spaghetti-code. EncomOS was a good example: since Flynn's disappearance it had been developed at random by a legion of junior programmers, none with the singular vision needed to keep it coherent. Version 10 had been so unreliable it nearly destroyed the company, famously crashing during Mackey's first press conference. When Ed Junior had taken over the project he'd deleted most of it out of hand, and Alan had supported the decision.

Now he looked into Clu's angry eyes and had the occasion to wonder: how many like Clu had died that day?

"Go on," he finally mumbled.

"In the early days the system thrived when Flynn was on the Grid, but whenever he left it fell to chaos. And he always left -- the portal closes quickly, and it can't be opened from the inside. Back then the Grid was actually destroyed and re-created more than once, along with Tron and all the programs... or so they say. Not sure if I believe it, myself."

Alan did.

"Flynn saw that he needed a partner, someone to manage the Grid while he was gone. So he went into the Outlands, far beyond the city, and he made an Administrator from his own self, his own being. He created me."

"How?"

Clu gave a shaky laugh. "I don't-- I don't even know how to say this, man. He was there and then I was. He saw himself in the mirror, and I saw him through the other side. Then he stood up and told me my name, my directive. He told me that I would create the Perfect System. Then he--"

Clu broke off, looking down at his boots. The stripes over his knuckles were nearly white, clenched tight around his knees.

"Then he...?" Alan prompted.

"Then he put his arm around me," Clu said. "He promised. He promised we'd change the world together."

Alan looked away, rubbing his temples. Clu looked and acted just like Kevin. It was easy for Alan to believe that he was made from the very same stuff, drawn from the same heart, but at that moment he sounded more like Sam, small and abandoned. Through all the years that pain had never quite left Sam's voice. Alan had even heard it in his own, every once in a while, whenever he forgot to fight it down.

Alan didn't need Clu to tell him that Kevin Flynn hadn't kept his promise.

"What happened?"

"At first things were good," Clu sighed. "Better than good. Perfect. We were jamming, building a whole new world. The city grew like a crystal, like living glass -- you should've seen it. Every time he came back he'd laugh, and he'd slap my back, and I'd show him the best of the things I'd built when he was away. He was so proud, always so proud of me--" He broke off again. "But it didn't last. He turned his back on me, on our plan. On all of us. He stayed away longer and longer, for hundreds of cycles at a time. The ISOs appeared and destabilized everything, yet he refused to address the problem... if anything, he made it worse." Clu's voice grew rough with anger, tinged by hatred. "Order broke down. Gridbugs devoured entire sectors. Energy famine spread like poison. The system was on the verge of collapse."

Clu slashed his hand through the air, cutting across his own words. "So I acted. There was only one way to fulfill my directive: I had to remove Flynn from the equation and create the Perfect System myself."

"You tried to kill him?"

"I think he thought I did, but no." Clu smirked, as if amused by the thought. "All I wanted was his disc, the Master Key. It would've given me the power to do many things; maybe even to remake the system itself, to perfect it in a single stroke. But just as I was about to take it, Tron interfered. I cut him down, and when I looked up again, Flynn was gone. I never saw him again."

Tron. Alan's program, his own program-person, here on the Grid. It was strange to hear his own nickname that way, as if it belonged to someone else -- but it had been someone else's. It always had. That was why Kevin had been so damn pushy about getting a copy long after the Encom system had been shut down. That was why he'd given his best game an electronic hero with Alan's face, and his best friend the name of a video-warrior.

Kevin had brought Tron to the Grid, to life, and Tron had fought to save him in return. There was a story there, Alan was sure of it... but Clu wasn't telling.

Whoever Tron had been, Alan would never know him.

"You're sure Kevin's alive?" he finally asked.

"I told you, I'd know if he wasn't. Besides, his pathetic revolutionaries are still fighting. They'd have given up a long time ago without their precious User." He shook his head again. "No. He's out there somewhere, cowering like a gridbug. All I have to do is find him."

He looked Alan in the eye. "That's where you come in, Bradley. I paged you because I thought you could reel him in at last... but I guess you're no more important to him than I am."

"You're wrong," Alan muttered. "He and I were... close."

To his surprise, Clu started to laugh. "Close? Close?" His voice grew high and incredulous. "Man, I am him. It doesn't get closer than that."

"Then why'd he leave you?" Alan snarled, suddenly angry. "Why'd you have to trap him here?"

Clu's laughter trailed off. "Yeah, that's the relevant query, isn't it? I wish I knew. I did everything for him, everything he asked..." He sighed, and then slapped his knees again. "All right, User. Story time's over -- time for you to tell me about your world. Start with... this 'Encom'."

Alan took a deep breath. "All right," he said. "It all started in 1982. We were just young programmers, then, and Kevin ran this arcade on his days off..."

---

Alan spoke for more than an hour. He had to explain almost everything, from what an arcade was right down to what companies and vans and computers were. The latter proved especially difficult. Clu had a deep and intuitive understanding of "memory" and "disc space" and "CPU usage", but only the way Alan understood things like air and water and time. Clu seemed to understand that these were expressions of physical things which existed in the User world, but Alan wasn't sure he quite grokked the fact that he was Lord and Ruler of a dusty box in somebody's basement.

Human systems were a mystery to him, too. When Alan explained how Flynn had regained his stolen fortune, Clu reacted with disgust at the idea that the world's resources were not pooled and allocated fairly, commenting that it sounded "like something the MCP would come up with". That led to another story of his own, one that Alan had never heard.

One that he should have heard, all the way back in 1982.

Afterward, Clu excused himself -- "we're running the Games this milli" -- and promised to return. Alan barely heard him. He sat on the bench with his hands in his lap, seeing nothing.

He understood, now, why Clu was so angry. Alan knew Flynn wouldn't have hurt Clu deliberately. He'd always been a gentle man, the type who'd scoop a spider off the office floor in a Dixie cup and put it outside, prone to lectures about how All was One and One was All. But would he have hurt Clu through neglect, through uncaring, through secrecy and dishonesty and lies?

Alan squeezed his eyes shut along with his fists. Yes. Yes, he would. Kevin had lied to him, had hidden the Grid from him for eight years -- years in which they'd been partners, friends, lovers. The portal only opened from outside, yet Kevin had told no one: not Alan, not Lora, not even his own son. He'd talked about the Digital Frontier for almost a decade, spinning stories about his wild and beautiful dreams, and the whole time they'd been real.

All those times he'd been late. All those cancelled meetings. All those nights Alan had spent alone, his arm sprawled out over Kevin's side of the bed. They'd all been lies, a horrid edifice of lies, an Encom Tower made of nothing but falsity. It made Alan want to vomit.

He fought to keep it down, more because he wasn't sure if he could vomit here than because he wanted to.

---

Over the next few days Alan's anger and hurt began to fade. He'd known that Kevin was working on something back then: his "miracle", a discovery with the power to change the world. Kevin had always been secretive that way, hiding his ideas from the world until they were ripe. He hadn't breathed a word to anyone about the first version of FlynnOS until it was nearly ready to use, and Tron had been totally unknown until Kevin had wheeled in a full-size, playable demo console during a board meeting. Alan had always trusted him in that, giving him room to work even though his own curiosity was often difficult to bear.

He couldn't blame Kevin for taking a chance, risk be damned.

He'd created a world, after all, a whole city full of people who were as real as anyone Alan had ever met. Clu, Jarvis, even Rinzler -- nothing about them seemed scripted or simulated, not the way computer programs should have been. They were alien, inhuman, yet undeniably alive, and the more Alan spoke to Clu the less he felt the difference. If he hadn't known Kevin so intimately, Clu's voice and mannerisms would surely have fooled him. Alan still thought there was something off in his face, something a little too rigid, too perfect... but he could never pin it down, and as the days passed Alan grew used to it.

Clu came often, though not every day. He asked about everything from philosophy to biology, a thousand questions each time. Alan didn't always know the answers, and sometimes he simply kept them to himself -- he decided early on that he was not going to be the one to give The Talk to Kevin's orphaned son and his computer program -- but Clu hung upon his words just the same, soaking them up like a dry sponge. It was obvious that Kevin hadn't told him much about the outside world.

"So you serve this 'Mackey' at Encom," Clu said one day, perhaps a few weeks later. "And you get 'money' in return, and that's your purpose? Your, uh, User-directive?"

Alan shook his head, rubbing his temples beneath his visor. "It's not about the money. If I sold my stock I'd be worth more than the rest of the board put together. I'm there for Kevin, for his dream... I'm there because if I'm not, Mackey will destroy everything we built together. He doesn't believe in connectivity, in open standards, in helping people to build things that change the world." Alan pressed his lips together in a small, tight line. "He doesn't believe in anything other than profit."

"You work toward perfecting the User-system, then. Like I do." Clu nodded, the very picture of satisfaction. Then he frowned. "Wait. You said that profit is a way of earning money, and the point of money is to acquire goods and services. How can Mackey's directive be profit, when profit is an intermediate state? Shouldn't his directive be the acquisition of goods and services?"

Alan sighed. "We say 'the means become the ends', Clu... and I agree, it's a shame. There's so much more we could be doing, things that really matter..." He trailed off. Clu's expression had become one of open horror.

"Meaningless goals. Circular logic. This is Flynn's Olympus, the world my User came from?" He shuddered, a full-body movement that made his circuits flare. "Disgusting. How could this Mackey survive with such a fragmented, imperfect directive? How can he stand the agony?"

Alan blinked at him. "I... think you'd better tell me more about these 'directives'."

"Hmm," Clu said, as if he wasn't sure where to begin. He ran his hand through his hair, smoothing it back, and then leaned forward in his chair. "When you first came here I told you I didn't like locking you in here. Imprisonment is something the MCP invented: he kept dissenters in cages, gave them just enough energy to keep them going. For programs that's a form of torture, maybe the worst one there is. To be unable to fulfill your directive is... painful, and it only gets worse from there. Over time it can lead to instability, memory fragmentation, even infinite loops. Only the strongest programs survived it. Tron used to tell stories about the cells that'd make you want to throw an exception."

Alan winced, and then schooled his expression into his best boardroom glower. "And yet you were the one who killed him."

Clu's face twisted with anger. For an instant Alan thought he was going to get hit. Then Clu's rage vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, simmering beneath the surface. "That's the point, User. Kevin Flynn didn't tell me to create the perfect system only if it was convenient. He didn't tell me to change the world as long as my only friend didn't get in the way. And he didn't tell me to stop building our utopia the minute he lost his guts." Clu spat the last word like an epithet. He pushed himself to his feet and then paced twice across the cell like a golden tiger, trapped. "I will create the perfect system. I will. That's my directive, my purpose, my existence."

"At what cost?" Alan murmured.

"Any," Clu said instantly. He looked down at Alan, his eyes hidden in shadow. "Don't think Tron was different. Why do you think he tried to kill me? Tron fought for the users -- that was his directive, the one you gave him."

"I don't understand," Alan protested. "I never gave anyone any-- any directive. I wrote code at a terminal, ordinary everyday code that could monitor the system and shut down anything which wasn't scheduled. That's it. That's all."

"Maybe in your world. Here it was much more than that. It was a creed, a calling that inspired Tron to greatness." Clu paused. "I told you it hurts when you don't fulfill your directive. Well, when you do there's no feeling more radical. Not even interfacing." He spread his hand over the circuit where his heart should have been. "It's wonder and joy, strength and pride... all the good things you've ever felt wrapped into one."

Clu's voice grew deep, the way Flynn's used to when he spoke of destiny, of his unending frontier. "Bringing fulfillment to my people is my joy, User. That's what it means to be an Administrator, a Leader. That is perfection. Efficiency, fidelity, the full potential of our system made real -- these are the things that matter."

"But it can't be perfect, Clu. Nothing is perfect."

Again that wild anger, the flash of rage that burned in Clu's eyes for half a second and then disappeared again. Then Clu barked a laugh. "Listen to you. You sound just like him, just like my User, telling me all about uncertainty and chaos like I don't know what they are. After fourteen hundred cycles, don't you think I know that?" He sounded frustrated, insulted, half-joking yet still stung. He shook his head. "Flynn gave me a plan, Alan. He gave me principles. Connectivity. Free and open information. Uniform standards. Guidelines to enable progress, to rid the system of its imperfections! You said it yourself: he had a dream, and that dream matters. Maybe the system can't be perfect right down to bit-level... but c'mon, man, maybe it doesn't have to be!" Clu held out his left hand, tempting in its openness. "You know what perfection is. I know you do. You can help me achieve it."

Alan trembled behind his visor. In that moment Clu was so much like Kevin it was hard not to believe in him, hard not to want to follow him forever. It made his heart ache for his lost friend, squeezing inside his chest like a tight, hard fist. He'd had angina once in his 50s -- just a minor thing, in and out of the hospital with a workout plan and a shiny new bottle of nitro -- but he'd never forgotten what it felt like to sit at his desk and know he might be dying, and for a moment it felt just like that.

"C'mon, Alan. Same team?" Clu asked. He extended his hand a little further. "At least let me give you the tour."

Chapter 3: The Tour

Notes:

Thanks to winzler for the wonderful fanart! <3

Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

---

They took a Recognizer out over the city. The wind blew Alan's hair back, and the open vista before him made him shiver. There was no guardrail, no pane of glass between the passengers and open space; presumably programs were nimble enough not to hurl themselves to their deaths.

Alan wasn't so sure about himself. He was locked in, both feet encased in a glowing force-field the way they'd been on his initial trip to the arena, but the howl as the wind whipped by still unnerved him. Rinzler's presence at his elbow didn't help, nor did Clu's all-too-confident grin. He wasn't locked in -- he paced back and forth before the edge, looking down over the city. As Alan watched he knelt down and leaned out over his knee, lording over his dominion.

"Look at that, man. Tron City, center of the Grid. Fantastic, isn't it?"

It was. The city's towers dwarfed the Recognizer as it slid past, rising like canyons on either side. They were angular and asymmetrical, all cold, abrupt edges fractured by lines of light the color of a gas-lit flame. Each tower stunned Alan with its size; even the smallest was as wide as two or three city blocks, taller even than that mega-skyscraper he'd seen in Dubai. Between them ran streets wide as rivers, perfectly straight, lit by beams that seemed to go on forever. Alan thought he could see people down there, if he craned his neck: tiny points of light against the darkness, scurrying here and there like ants.

Then Alan's eyes focused on Clu's undefended back, and the disc that burned there. One push, one little shove, and his reign would end forever. Alan wasn't sure if he wanted that -- part of him still saw Kevin whenever he looked at Clu -- but the thought was there, and he was just close enough to do it, too. His feet were caught, but the rest of him was free to move. If he only threw himself forward...

His muscles tensed at the thought, and in the same instant Rinzler reached up and yanked him back. His head hit the back of the Recognizer so hard his teeth clicked together. Rinzler held him there for a moment, as if checking for compliance. His grip was strong, unnaturally so; Alan was sure he'd have a five-fingered bruise in the morning.

He sighed, and let his head fall back against the Recognizer. Clouds billowed above him, an ugly black even through the blue of the visor. A jagged fork of neon lightning speared down toward the ground some distance away. When he turned to look at it he saw a sheet of deeper darkness against the horizon, slashing against the backdrop of the city as if drawn with a paintbrush.

Rain, he thought, blinking behind his visor. In a computer.

He wondered, again, whether Kevin's insanity was the good kind or just the regular kind.

"We have over fourteen million programs in the city," Clu was saying. He pointed outward, the yellow stripe along his finger bright against the blue of the buildings. "If you look over there you'll see one of the Disc Wars arenas -- you already know what that's like. Off to the left is a large bank of residential circuits, and the lightcycle track is beyond them, across the bridge."

The Recognizer swooped higher, clearing the tops of the nearest buildings. When he looked down at them Alan could see the faint outlines of more hexagons, thousands of them nested together like shingles or building blocks. A lone tower thrust through them at a rakish angle, dominating the center of the city. It was surrounded by four squat, angular buildings which rose up around it like the fingers of a cradling hand. A single beam of light ran from its base all the way to the top, where it burned like a beacon.

"Admin Tower, with the End of Line Club at the top," Clu said, nodding at it. "We'll get a drink there later."

Alan heard an unspoken maybe at the end of the sentence. If you're good.

They soared over the bridge Clu had mentioned. It spanned a canyon which dropped down at a perfect ninety-degree angle from the edge of the city, not a single pixel out of place. A wide highway ran over the gap, stretching across without visible supports. Its surface was no more than a foot thick at the most, eerie like a spider web in its delicacy, and beneath it was nothing but endless dark. A sleek, predatory tank was about halfway across. Alan watched as its turret tracked back and forth along the canyon's edge.

A massive arena was nestled at the base of the cliffs beyond it, perhaps a hundred times bigger than a Recognizer. Its surface was brighter even than the city itself, wide and smooth like a racetrack. Alan could just make out a number of circular ramps down there, disappearing into the glassy surface of the track.

"Of course. Leave it to Kevin to make everything about motorcycles," Alan muttered. Rinzler cocked his head at him. "Nothing," Alan added.

"Lightcycles is my best game, too," Clu said, as if he'd heard nonetheless. He walked over to Alan and grinned, showing his teeth. "Maybe I'll give you a demonstration sometime."

Alan wasn't sure whether he should take that as a threat. He was still trying to decide when the Recognizer swept round in a half-circle, turning back toward the city. Alan started in surprise. Beneath the city was another city, rooted on the bottom of the same hexagonal plate. It stretched down into the darkness, shimmering just like its twin. Alan looked closer, straining to catch a glimpse of water or a mirror.

Clu followed his eyes. "That's Betacity. In the old days Flynn and I used to make changes down there, and then roll them out to the city proper once we'd worked out the bugs. It's been a few hundred cycles since I had to make a major change, with the system as perfect as it is -- since then it's become part of the city in its own right."

Alan watched, fascinated, as a Recognizer much like theirs soared upside-down through the "sky" of the mirror-city. Then their own Recognizer passed over the bridge, back into the city proper. Its engines roared, making the air snap and crackle as they approached the nearest of the four towers around the End of Line.

"I figured you'd want to see this," Clu said. "Flynn always said there was nothing on Earth like our energy plants."

---

The Recognizer came in for a landing on the building's roof. Alan glanced over the edge to find a sprawling checkpoint at the ground-level entrance, complete with tanks, Recognizers, and black-armored elites armed with shock-staves. There was no such security on the roof, just a small knot of Sentries which saluted as Clu passed.

Alan doubted that so much as a bird moved within the Perfect System's airspace without proper clearance... if the system even had birds.

They boarded an elevator which ran down the outside of the building. Alan's stomach dropped the moment it started to fall, but no one else seemed bothered as the lights outside whipped by. Then the door opened with a chime, and Alan looked up, and up, and up.

The entire tower was hollow, an open, echoing space. Along the inner wall ran two wide lines of orange light, burning like fire, and within them was a waterfall which raged up toward the ceiling in impossible defiance of gravity. It roared so loud that Alan felt it in his gut, in his bones; its rumbling filled the space to the point of oppression. He stepped forward, once, twice, craning his neck. The water ran all the way up the tower, a thousand yards or even more, and then--

Alan ducked, his hands flying to protect his head. He couldn't help it. The waterfall ran up the wall and then across, right across the ceiling above their heads, and then came crashing back down the opposite wall. The wall angled outward just above their level, guiding the water into a huge, blue-lit basin beneath their feet. Alan could see it down there, seething and frothing as it flowed away beneath the translucent floor.

"Energy," Clu said, taking on the tone of a lecturer. "Without it we'd be nothing. Here it's gathered, filtered until only the purest essence remains, and distributed to the rest of the sector via aqueducts. Energy distribution is the largest subsystem in the Grid, the most vital, and the most complex -- only the best and most loyal are permitted to work here."

Alan looked around him. The waterfall was so impressive that he hadn't even seen the workers the first time, but they were there, stationed along the walls at various heights: all orange-lit, all dressed in angular, layered outfits rather than the skin-tight armor Alan had come to expect. Almost all of them had their eyes covered, either with visors like his own or what looked like ordinary sunglasses. Some held datapads like Jarvis', and others extended long metal poles into the water as it roared by, hauling out samples like fishermen.

One nearby struck Alan as the foreman: a dark-skinned woman in a long overcoat, with a shaved head except for a narrow strip of white-dyed hair which ran down the middle. The way she moved spoke of confidence and power, as did the complicated pattern of circuits which covered the length of her coat. Alan had expected everyone here to stop work in order to bow and scrape before their Great Leader, but this woman merely gave Clu a respectful nod as they walked past.

"Esmerelda," Clu said. "Status report."

"Ninety-five point seven percent efficiency this milli, sir," she said. She had a faint electronic accent, but not nearly as much as the Sentries did. "All systems nominal."

"Good, good. This is our guest, the User Alan-One." Clu smirked, as if sharing a private joke. "What do you think of that?"

She raised her left fist in salute. "Death to the Users, sir!"

"Very good," Clu purred, linking his hands behind his back. He strolled off toward the center of the space, and at a nudge from Rinzler Alan followed. He glanced behind him as he went, but Esmerelda had returned to her datapad, as though she'd already forgotten about the three of them.

"Hey, let her get back to work, man," Clu said. His tone was amused, as if he thought he'd caught Alan looking. "Our little visit will compromise efficiency more than enough." He pointed up toward the waterfall, into the rushing water. "Like I was saying, these plants are the most important places on the Grid. Before I built them thousands of programs went hungry, and millions more suffered from constant under-charging. Now all have more than enough. The system's energy is pooled and purified, and a generous amount is assigned to each program according to complexity and function." He declared that last sentence as if he'd just solved world hunger... which Alan supposed he had.

"So nobody starves? Nobody goes hungry?" Alan asked. He couldn't keep the skepticism out of his voice.

"Not one. All programs are useful within the perfect system, and all useful programs are to be fully charged. It's that simple."

Alan's eyes narrowed. Something about the way Clu said that bothered him, just as the brutality of the Games and the system's militarism did. Clu had told the truth about the coup, and he was telling the truth now. Alan was sure of that, but he was equally certain that there was more to the story. His instincts told him that Clu was holding something back... and that Alan wasn't going to like it when it finally came to light.

"That's good," he said at last, carefully.

Clu sneered at him. "Good. That's it -- 'good'? After what you told me about your world I thought you'd have something more to say."

"It is good," he admitted. Then he thought of the man in the ragged boonie-hat on the corner of 48th, who always rattled his cup as Alan strode by. He shut his eyes, sighed, and added, "OK, it's better than good. You've done a great thing here, Clu. A great thing."

When he opened his eyes again, Clu was watching him with sharp, focused interest. "You mean that?"

Alan met his eyes. "Yes, I do. We could learn a lot from you."

That was the right thing to say. Clu swelled visibly, and grinned at him the way a ten-year-old Sam used to whenever he won one of his Dad's games. Alan looked away, rubbing his temples.

"There's one more place I'd like you to see, then," Clu said. He clapped his hand around Alan's shoulder and guided him back toward the elevator. "After this I know you'll understand."

---

They came out into the rain. It was coming down in sheets, and Alan's hair and visor were instantly drenched. Clu strode out into it, and then Rinzler pulled Alan along behind him. Neither Rinzler nor Clu seemed to notice the rain. Alan had to hurry to keep up, splashing through hexagonal puddles which had collected on the tiles.

The Recognizer lifted off as soon as they were aboard, soaring up into the sky. It had no roof or other obvious means of keeping out the rain, yet it was drier than the open rooftop had been. Alan shook himself off and then stood quietly, watching as stray droplets sizzled off his circuits. The tiny sound helped muffle Rinzler's ever-present growl.

A noise broke his reverie. He looked to his left and saw a little thing, small and bright, hovering beside the edge of the Recognizer. It was silver in color, and its shape reminded Alan of a geodesic dome. It floated in mid-air, spinning silently, dripping in the rain.

"What the-" Alan began. Rinzler glanced over and then looked away again, unconcerned.

The floating thing drew closer, turning end over end. Its shape flowed like water, simple one moment and multifaceted the next. Alan stared at it. It seemed less real than everything else he'd seen; it didn't quite seem to fit with the smooth, modern lines that filled Clu's system.

"What is that?" Alan asked. No one answered. "Is it dangerous?"

"NO," the floating thing said. Its voice was small and tinny, and the moment it spoke its shape changed to match, bursting out into a constellation of fierce red spikes.

Alan jumped. The floating thing smoothed out again, fading back to silver. Rinzler tugged on Alan's arm, as if to say calm down, it's nothing.

"Hey, a bit!" Clu said. He walked over, calling out to the little object. "Hey there, little guy. You lost?"

"NO."

Clu smirked. "Course not. Where's your friends?"

There was no answer.

"They've got to be around here somewhere," Clu added.

"YES," the bit cried. It spun wildly, shifting into a golden diamond-shape just like a living D8 -- Alan was pretty sure he had one just like it in his gaming bag, buried somewhere beneath all the other stuff in the closet.

"That's a bit?" Alan asked. "Is it... like an animal?"

"NO!" the bit said. It sounded affronted.

"It's just a bit, man: what you see is what you get. They usually travel in bytes these days -- they're more common when information is flowing freely. You don't often see them alone anymore."

Clu reached toward the bit as if to touch it, or perhaps just to beckon it forth. It dodged beyond his reach and then returned to flirt coquettishly around his outstretched fingers, still spinning. Clu chuckled. "Dunno why, but I've always had a soft spot for these little guys."

Just then a whole crowd of them floated over the edge of the Recognizer, moving in unison. The overall shape of their group shifted and spun just as they did: first circular, then boxy, then long and flat. Every one of them stayed the same distance from the next throughout each transformation, like a perfect crystal lattice. Their shining facets winked and twinkled in complex, almost fractal patterns.

"You see?" Clu said, grinning. "Sign of a well-run system."

"YES!" the bits cried, swirling madly around him. "YES YES YES YES YES!"

Clu spread his hands and laughed with delight, standing in the center of the storm.

Maybe he's not all bad, Alan thought to himself. Maybe things are going to be OK.

The Recognizer forged on. The bright spires of the city passed beneath, one by one, and then even the bits flowed back over the edge with one last, mournful "NO". Alan looked down, down into the endless chasm that surrounded the city. There was no bridge on this side, no way to cross the gap. Alan wondered whether such a wide moat was meant to keep danger out... or the Programs in.

The clouds grew deep and dense. The ground slipped by beneath them, but Alan could only catch scattered glimpses of it. There were mountains down there, rough and irregular, heaving up from the smooth grey plates of the Grid. The valleys between them were marked by deep, angular grooves, cutting across the landscape like surveyors' lines. From here it looked just like a circuit board, a circuit board with a tiny world printed on it.

Alan thought of the server running beneath the arcade, alone amidst twenty years of dust.

Lightning struck again, disconcertingly close. Neither Clu nor Rinzler reacted. The Recognizer rose, turned, and hove in beside a great, burning beam which was floating in midair. It was blue, pale blue like the sea, and it made a soft sizzling sound as it cut through the clouds. Alan stared at it, unable to work out what it was. Then he closed his eyes again, blinking at the afterimage it left on the back of his eyelids. The rumble of the Recognizer drowned out everything, though Clu didn't seem to want to talk; he stood at the prow of the ship, leaning forward as if transfixed by something only he could see.

Minutes later, Alan saw it too. The clouds parted, revealing the end of the world. The ground below simply stopped, falling off at a ninety-degree angle into a choppy, chaotic sea. A ship was moored at the cliff's edge, bigger than anything Alan had seen so far. It stretched on for ages, a dark, hollow monolith. Orange light shone from every orifice, as if it was a burning log about to crack.

"My Rectifier," Clu said, as if to no one.

The air suddenly smelt of ozone. Rinzler's purr seemed pained.

The Recognizer sailed inside, dwarfed by the ship's cavernous walls. It followed the path of the beam, which still shone right through the center of the ship. Alan could see more Recognizers below, hundreds of them, lined up in patient rows. Tanks and planes nestled beside them, their lights dimmed as if in sleep. Ahead was a huge circular structure. It looked like Clu had taken Lora's favorite cyclotron, scaled it up a thousand times, and embedded it in one side of the ship. Beside it lay several long, thin carriages, like train cars at rest.

They landed. Rinzler pulled him off the Recognizer, tugging him along behind Clu. His helmet still issued its soft, broken song. It was the only sound within the ship, save Alan's own breath and the fall of Clu's boots.

The edge of the cyclotron was hot like a furnace. Orange light spilled from a hexagonal opening in the bottom, wide enough for a hundred men to walk into at once. A small knot of Clu's sentries stood in a circle in front of it. Three programs huddled together inside the cordon, two men and a woman: blue-lit beings with ragged jackets and terrified faces. Their eyes skipped off Clu and settled on Alan, pleading silently.

"What is this?" Alan asked.

Clu ignored him. "Is this all?" he asked the guards.

The guards straightened. "Sir! The streets were almost clear today. Another car will arrive in point eight millis."

"Hmm." Clu crossed his arms over his chest, as if in thought. "I wanted a better demonstration for the User, but this'll have to do. Put them in."

"What?" Alan cried.

Nobody listened. The guards pressed in on their captives, closing the gap. Someone shouted. There was a short scuffle, and then the guards had each program by the arms, dragging them forward. They kicked, went limp, stumbled and scuffed at the floor with their feet. The sentries left them in a heap at the edge of the opening, stepped back, and drew their staves. One of the programs yelled something -- was it "traitor", or "administrator"? -- and then the guards marched forward, driving them back. They went willingly, or so it seemed, shuffling back until Alan couldn't see them for the bright, bright glow.

"It takes a few micros," Clu said, as if discussing his laundry. "If we go around to the other side, we'll be there when they come out."

A scream tore the air, desperate and terrible. It cut off abruptly, replaced with the soft whirr of the Rectifier as it worked. Alan stopped where he was, rooted to the spot. "You're killing them," he whispered. "You're killing them, why--"

"Of course not." Clu said. "They're being reprogrammed. These are useless programs, disobedient strays -- the Rectifier will give them new purpose." Clu looked up at him with cold blue eyes. "This is my gift to them, User. My greatest gift to my people. This ship is the promise Flynn would never give them."

"But it hurts," Alan muttered, shaking his head to rid it of the sound of another scream. "You're-- you're torturing them."

Clu shrugged. "It is painful, yes. But we delete the memory afterwards. In a moment it'll all be over, and then they'll be perfectly happy, just like Rinzler. He's the only one who remembers what it's like, and..." Clu smirked. "You don't hear him complaining."

Alan looked at Rinzler. The smooth glass of the helmet stared back, cocked ever so slightly to the side. That sound -- that grinding, broken-hard-drive noise -- spilled out of it still, never-ending.

"Come on," Clu said, after a time. His voice was surprisingly gentle. "It's not so bad. I'll show you."

Alan followed him to the other side of the Rectifier's great disc. There was an identical opening there, wide and orange, and after a moment three Sentries walked out of it.

"Greetings, programs!" Clu cried. He strode forward, his arms open in welcome. The three guards came to a halt, lifted their chins, and raised their fists in salute.

"Sir!"

"Welcome to the team, man," Clu said, slapping each guard on the back. They seemed identical at first glance, but the chins beneath the helmets looked subtly different. One of them had a square, boxy look to his mouth, like the program who'd cried out in the cordon. And was one of them still female? Alan couldn't tell.

"You changed them," Alan said. "You made them into... into this. You brainwashed them!"

"They're not Users, Bradley. They don't have a brain to wash. 'Reprogramming' is more accurate -- the Rectifier removes their old directives and physical attributes, loads new ones from a template, and then recompiles them. Just as Flynn would do, if he were here."

Alan shook his head. "Kevin would never do this to anyone. Never."

"He did. Over and over again. Not like this, of course -- he always did it from outside." Clu paused. "Guess he didn't like what he saw."

"He wouldn't! Not to people..."

"Yeah? If we ever find him, ask him what happened to Shaddox." Clu turned away.

Alan exploded. "How could you? They're people, Clu. Your own people! Look at them -- they're not even alive anymore!" The three sentries were standing quietly, chins against their breasts as if asleep. Or dead on their feet. "They're screaming inside!"

Clu turned back. "Sentries, query."

The sentries straightened instantly. "Sir?"

"Are you guys screaming inside?"

The sentries looked at each other, then back to Clu. "Negative, sir," they said in unison.

Clu folded his arms across his chest, as if to say I told you so.

Alan shook his head. "You don't understand," he said. "You don't..."

"Save it. You want to change the world, don't you? Nobody said it was easy."

Alan shuddered. Flynn had told him the same thing once, after the board had shot down one of his outlandish plans. I can change it all, Alan. All of it. At the time it sounded fantastic and crazy, like a dream built on idealism and vigor.

Now it just sounded ugly.

"C'mon, Alan. Follow me, and I'll show you what I mean."

"I--" Alan started. But Clu had already turned away, marching toward the center of the ship.

"Sentries, report for duty," he tossed over his shoulder. Rinzler pulled Alan along behind him, and the sound of the sentries' heavy boots followed them all the way.

---

Minutes later, Alan stood on a platform beside Clu. His program-army was arrayed below, stretching off into uncountable infinity. Alan estimated at least a stadium's worth, so many that hundreds of thousands seemed far more likely than tens. They stood inactivated, dark and still. Kevin had taken him to see the terra-cotta army in Xi'an once, and the sight of Clu's warriors frozen in their silent ranks brought the memory back.

Then Clu raised his arms, and they came to life. Light flared across the deck like fire; a thousand throats roared Clu's name as one. They raised their staves and slammed them against the floor in a single, booming blow.

They were alive, yet the inhuman unity of their movements made them seem more like marionettes than ever.

"Greetings, programs!" Clu cried again. "I've brought a guest to see you: the great User, Alan Bradley." Clu paused to let a wave of booing pass over him. "Now, now. This User is different. He listens. He reasons. He understands the value of perfection!" Clu pointed at him, sweeping his finger like a scythe, and Alan had to overcome the desire to cringe. "I will find us the key, and he-- he will open the door. With him by my side, I will bring our system to his world!"

Alan's mouth dropped open. He was only slightly aware that people were cheering. Clu wanted-- Clu was planning an invasion?

Clu was talking again. "--we find there, our system will grow. Our system will blossom! No longer will we languish in this cage. No longer will the Users cry out, subject to leaders who let them suffer and starve. We will change the world, fellow programs! We will change everything!"

Alan was numb. Flynn's voice washed over him -- he could almost see the press conference, see the crowd full of idealistic programmers ready to follow Kevin into digital paradise -- but paradise had become a nightmare. Was this what Kevin had wanted? This place, this city built on cold, cruel logic: was this his dream? Was this the "miracle" he'd never had time to show Alan? Was this how he had meant to change the world?

Alan didn't want to believe it.

"Together we will create a united world. A perfect world! A new system!"

The crowd roared. Clu's soldiers thumped their staves in unison, shouting his name until it rang from the walls. It echoed endlessly, washing over the tanks and planes, breaking against the Rectifier like waves on the shore. It rang until Alan's ears ached; it rang as Clu stood, arms raised in benediction, and it went on and on even as the platform began to lower.

"You can't," Alan was already muttering. "You can't. You've got to stop this!"

"I can and I will," Clu told him, as Rinzler pulled him off the platform. "I was created to change the world, and this--" he waved his hand to indicate his ship, his world, his army -- "this will do it for me."

"You can't! How do you expect to get out?"

"Flynn's disc. He made a few changes that last night, changes that made his laser more than just a local matter transfer device. He meant it for... someone else, but I'm the one who'll use it." Clu paused, smirking up at Alan. "You see? He made all of this possible, and he never even knew it. I've run the simulation a thousand times, and the results are clear. This entire ship can make the transfer. And with your help, it will."

Alan frowned. Clu's plan made a mockery of physics. He couldn't see how it was possible... but then he remembered Flynn's excitement that night, the fever that had filled him.

"You have to be there to see it, Alan. You have to." Flynn paced back and forth before the fireplace. Its reflection flickered in his eyes, burning with nervous zeal. "It's going to change everything. Science, math, religion -- everything. All I need is one last test. One last trip, man, and then..."

"So then what?" Alan asked. "Conquest? You think you can take the entire world with one army?"

Rinzler's helmet gave a little blurt of electronic noise, right in Alan's ear. A warning, perhaps, one that Clu couldn't hear. Then Clu took a step forward, right into Alan's personal space.

"You doubt it? We're much stronger than you are, User. We're better than you. Every one of us is like ten of you, or twenty. Thirty. Give me half a chance and I'll prove it."

Alan shook his head, as if to clear it. He glanced up at the army which still stood before him, almost within reach. "You don't even have guns."

Clu growled beneath his breath. "Sentries!" he shouted, pointing at a jet that sat a hundred meters away. "Destroy that lightjet!"

The nearest rank of sentries turned, flipped their staves onto their shoulders, and pointed the lit ends at the jet. There was a dry snap. Spears of red light leapt across the gap, searing great holes in the jet's flanks. It slumped onto its nose, spraying pixels everywhere, and then melted slowly into the floor.

Clu folded his arms again.

Alan pinched his nose, sighing under his breath. Clu really was just like Flynn, and for a moment Alan forgot that this wasn't a post-boardroom discussion about payroll allocation or expansion into India. "OK, so let's say you beat the Army. The Navy. The Air Force." He ticked them off on his fingers, ignoring the fact that two of them glowed. "Then what? There are billions of us -- what are you going to do when every human being rises against you? You--"

Alan broke off. Clu's smug expression had snapped, revealing something ugly and wounded beneath. His mouth made the shape of a "B", but no sound came out. Finally, in a quiet voice, he managed: "Billions?"

"Yes. Didn't Flynn tell you? There must've been four billion back then, but now it's nearly seve--"

"You lie," Clu said. His voice was barely a whisper, but the menace in it shut Alan's mouth like a trap.

"No, I--"

"YOU LIE!" Clu roared, bulling forward. He knocked Rinzler back with a swipe of his hand. With the other he yanked Alan around, pulled him in close, and slammed him against the wall behind them. Pain shot up Alan's spine, pain and fear and helplessness. He struggled, kicking out.

"He would have told me!" Clu was yelling, his face just inches from Alan's. His flesh was red, bright red against the white of his teeth and his staring eyes. Alan kicked him in the knees, acting on instinct, but Clu didn't even flinch. He reached up and shook Alan like a rat, dislodging his visor. It clattered to the floor, as Clu began to scream once more. "He would have told me!"

"Why?" Flynn was shouting, raging at Alan rather than the board. "It's my company! Why won't they just fucking listen?"

"Kevin, please. We can fix this, we can go back in--"

"Fuck going back in!" Kevin turned and slammed his fist into the wall by the elevator, the metal wall, and then stomped off down the hall as if he hadn't even felt it.

Alan couldn't look away. There was a red smear there, just by the Up and Down buttons, and vivid drops on the thick pile carpet behind Kevin's footsteps.

"Kevin! God, Kev, your hand--"

Clu wrapped his hands around Alan's chest and squeezed. Something cracked -- oh, Alan could hear it -- and agony speared him. He made a stupid, embarrassing sound, an animal squeal. His breath went out along with it, and then it wouldn't come back; his lungs betrayed him, gasping and rattling. He slapped at Clu's hands like a child caught by a cruel uncle. Clu really was stronger than a man, stronger than anyone, and he was going to crush Alan the way Kevin used to crush beer cans in the loft at the arcade.

"Liar! Tell me the truth!"

Alan had no air. He tried to make his lips form the word "true", but they kept disobeying him. He could only grimace like a beast, showing his canines in empty threat. Sparks burst before his eyes, fading to grey and then black.

Like fireworks, he thought.

"Tell me!"

Just then, Rinzler came to stand beside Clu. His posture spoke of obedience, head down, hands by his side. He did nothing other than that, but his very presence seemed to break Clu's anger. He let go, with one last cry of rage. Alan crumpled to the floor. Every breath triggered a searing pain which ripped across his chest. He felt weak, drowned, like he wasn't getting enough air. His feet slid against the tiles, pedaling uselessly. Then the circuits on Clu's boots swam before his eyes, bright as the sun.

"Pick him up," Clu told Rinzler. "We're going back."

Chapter 4: The Most Valuable Thing

Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.
-Jim Horning, via Mullah Nasreddin

---

Rinzler lifted Alan with care, as if aware how easily he could break. One gloved hand was bright against Alan's ear, cradling his head like a child's, and the other supported his weight. Each step still tore at Alan like a knife. He gasped out every shallow breath, and then hissed in the next as though he could filter the pain out of it. He could feel the rumble in Rinzler's chest, and even that hurt, like tiny fingers tapping against his busted ribs.

They boarded the Recognizer an eternity later. Alan kept waiting -- hoping -- to pass out, but it never happened. He was painfully conscious as Rinzler laid him down on the floor. The thrum of the engines was just like Rinzler's purr, only a hundred times bigger and a thousand times more terrible. As it soared into the sky Alan had to choke down a scream. It felt like someone had lit his chest on fire. At one point he looked down and saw himself burning, incandescent with pain.

A minute or more went by before he realized that he was looking at the lights of the Recognizer.

The Recognizer lurched as it docked, and Alan did scream then, a single, helpless cry. The sound made him burn with shame. His heart told him he should be strong, as if will alone could make him the hero he wanted to be, and no amount of reason could quiet it. He lay there, silently snarling, and held his tears back even as Rinzler gathered him up and brought him inside. He kept his eyes squeezed shut through the corridors, and made no sound as Rinzler rolled him onto the bench in his room. Rinzler stood over him for a moment, inscrutable behind his helmet, and then he turned and left. Alan watched him go. He lay sprawled on the bench for some time, as still as he could manage, but the pain only grew worse.

The door opened. Jarvis knelt by the edge of the bench, and then his voice hissed close to Alan's ear. "I don't know what it is you said, but you're lucky to be alive right now. Are all Users so stupid, or just you?"

Alan opened his mouth to speak, and Jarvis' hand shot out. He caught Alan's jaw and pried it open. Alan spluttered and struggled, but a vial pushed past his teeth; then Jarvis tipped it back and squeezed his nostrils shut.

If the energy had bubbled before, now it boiled. It didn't hurt, but the feeling was so alien it might as well have. He could feel it rearranging things inside of him, as if his guts had come alive in their own right. He clutched his chest, curling in on himself, and ground his teeth to cover the sound of his ribs popping. After a minute or two it stopped, and Alan took a careful, half-hesitant breath. His lungs filled nearly all the way, but then he had to stop. Breathing still drove spikes of pain through his ribcage.

When he looked up again, Jarvis had gone. Alan's heart stopped hammering, slowing beat by beat. He could think more clearly now, and so he did: it occurred to him to wonder whether he truly needed air inside a computer, or whether his brain just thought he did. Either way, he cherished each breath. He concentrated on that for a while, breathing in and out despite the pain. He tried rolling onto his side, to see if that would help with the pain. It didn't, but he couldn't stand to roll back again, so he stared at the stripe on the wall and blinked whenever his eyes filled up.

After a while the door opened again. Someone came to stand over him, motionless and silent. Alan didn't turn, but the hairs stood up at the base of his skull, prickling up and down his spine. Then a broad, warm hand settled onto his neck.

"Sorry, User," Clu murmured. Fingers stroked through Alan's hair, skimming his ear. "I forget how fragile you people are."

Alan froze. He was still trying to get his mouth to work when something hot and heavy pressed into his upper back, down onto the port he carried there. Clu turned it with a click, and white filled Alan's vision once more. It seemed to flow out into his body from there, like a blanket of soft, numbing snow. His pain faded, one nerve after another. He could still feel it, but it seemed distant and irrelevant, as though it belonged to someone else. His fear dissipated in its wake, replaced with a gratitude so deep it filled him like sunlight. Each muscle relaxed and let go, with an almost audible flood of relief -- he hadn't realized how much his body had locked up in its effort to protect itself. Alan stretched out on the bench as if asleep back home, safe in his bed, and his disc hummed upon his back.

He could hear Clu chuckle, from someplace far away. Then the door closed, and Alan's mind retreated further still.

---

Red lines. Dark eyes behind a blue visor. Another vial against his lips, cold.

Bubbles.

---

He dreamed strange, disjointed dreams: scenes from the past, replayed like films within his mind. He saw his childhood one moment and MIT the next, his first home computer and his first corner office. He saw Kevin (we're gonna do things our way, man. It's our company now!) and Lora (we'll always be friends, right? Take care of Kevin) and Sam.

I know why you do it, why these pranks are so important to you. Believe me, I do. I'd walk into that boardroom and rip your father's company right out of Mackey's hands if I could. But you're going to kill yourself one of these days, kiddo. Don't you know that?

Yeah? Maybe I'd do the world a favor.

---

Bubbles again, and light within his mind. White light burning inside the disc upon his back, blazing like fire.

---

He woke to a presence against his back. It thrummed against him, warm and alive.

It's just Gort, he thought. Just his quiet, serious little Gortster: soft orange fur and paws that kneaded Alan's shoulder in the night.

Gort drew closer, purred louder. Soon Alan could hear it all around him, filling the small space. It had an odd hitch in it, that sound -- there was something off about it, something a little broken.

I'll take him to the vet in the morning.

Right now he was too warm, too safe and happy to move, and the rumble against his shoulderblades told him that Gort felt the same way.

---

Later he remembered: Gort died in 1990, six months after Kevin disappeared.

---

Things started making sense later on. He looked up at the ceiling and wondered how many days it had been. The pain in his chest was nearly gone, but he still felt stiff and sore, as though he'd been on the bench for a week or more. He tested each of his limbs in turn, frowning at the way his joints creaked.

Bet Roy would enjoy this, he thought to himself. Roy was the one who'd spent half his life shadow-boxing with Interpol and the FBI; Roy was the one who stayed up late at night, peeking through curtains and muttering about things like "rubber-hose cryptanalysis". All Alan ever did as ISOlated Thinker was post to the message boards, say the right things to the right people now and again, and show up with suitcases full of cash. He didn't know how to do this -- how to endure torture, to resist tyranny. None of this was in his skillset, and thinking about it made him feel small and incapable.

He'd always wondered about that. Kevin had given his "Hero of the Grid" Alan's face, Alan's program-name, even Alan's hair -- Alan finally had to draw the line at putting his own voice in the Saturday morning cartoon. The stories Kevin spun about Tron's battles made him sound braver than anything, stalwart forever... but Alan was no fighter, not like that.

He was not Tron.

He sighed, rolled over, and thought to himself: I'm going to have to learn.

---

He was sitting up when Clu came in.

"You look better," Clu said. Alan glared at him, but Clu didn't seem to notice. He just walked up, gripped Alan's shoulder with his right hand, and tore Alan's disc away with the other. Alan cried out at the loss. The emptiness was worse this time, a chasm that yawned inside of him. The sight of his disc in Clu's hand triggered rage and nausea all at once.

"Don't worry," Clu told him. "You'll have a chance to get it back... if you're smart enough to cooperate."

"No."

"Aw. You haven't even heard what I was going to say."

Alan stared him down. "You hurt Kevin. You almost killed me. And you're brainwashing your own people. There's nothing you can say to me, not anymore."

"Good, because I'm just about done talking." Clu paced twice within the small space, turning Alan's disc between his fingers. Then he came to a stop in front of him, close enough to touch. "Thanks to you, my little... 'private initiative' is finished. But I still need Flynn's disk. The Grid won't survive without it; it was never designed to go this long without an upgrade, and the cracks are already starting to show. If you won't help me, it won't matter that I 'brainwash' my people. They'll die, and I'll die along with them."

He paused. "Kevin Flynn will die along with them."

Alan shook his head. "You're lying," he said. "You're just feeding me a line again."

Clu looked down at him. "I would give anything I have -- my life, my position, anything except the System itself -- to make that true, User."

Alan shivered. He thought again of the server beneath the arcade, still chugging along on 1980s technology. Kevin had bought the very best, he didn't doubt that... but how much longer could it run? He and Kevin could live another twenty years or more, if they ate well and stayed healthy. But the server?

Clu broke the silence. "I meant it when I said I'd give you anything, Bradley. Help me now, and I'll give you the most valuable thing on the Grid -- the most valuable thing in your pathetic little life. Help me, and you can take Kevin Flynn. All I want is his disc."

Alan thought about that for a moment. Then he shook his head. "I don't believe you. You'll never let him go."

"I might. I just might. But if you don't help me you'll never see him again. After what you pulled at the Rectifier I think I'd like to stake you down in the Outlands and see who comes for you first, Kevin Flynn or the gridbugs." He flashed a grin. "And nobody's seen Kevin in a thousand cycles, so..."

Alan clenched his fists at his sides. He wanted to say no, wanted to throw Clu's smug "offer" right back in his face. A long time ago he would have said no; he'd been young and strong once, and had lived only to do the right thing. Years in the boardroom had taught him patience, though, and years of watching Sam and Roy do the wrong things for the right reasons had taught him the value of rebellion, of defiance.

Alan's mouth was dry as ashes. "What do you want me to do?"

For once, Clu didn't tease, didn't insult. He simply nodded, and then spoke. "We must find Flynn. We think he's hiding somewhere in the Outlands, or in the wasteland between the city and the Sea, but it's impossible for programs to operate out there. Tron City provides a constant charge, but the plates the city is built on are wired to ground -- no matter how much energy you bring with you, you can't survive on the surface for long." Clu paused, waiting for Alan's nod. "None of Flynn's creations can do the job. Only one program on the system can move freely out there, because only one program can reduce its energy needs to near-zero without derezzing."

Clu said nothing more, and after a second Alan realized why. None of Flynn's creations can do the job.

"Tron," he said. "You want me to bring back Tron."

"You're a User, Bradley. You can create, unlike any other being on this server, and I can provide you with a backup of Tron's code. You'll be in for some work -- Tron was never much of a search program to begin with, and many of his subroutines are... missing. But you can do it. You can bring Tron to life again."

Alan steepled his hands. "And if I do, you'll give Kevin to me." He paused, and then met Clu's eyes. "No strings attached?"

"You can take him to Bermuda for all I care," Clu said. Then he blinked. "Wherever that is."

Alan's eyes narrowed. He didn't believe that Clu would ever set Kevin free, promise or not. He seemed even less likely to let him leave the system, not when he could end everything simply by pulling the plug -- but then again, Alan still wasn't sure whether Clu knew what a plug was. Maybe he and Kevin could convince him together... one way or another.

Kevin always had an ace or two left to play.

"All right," Alan said. "I'll do it."

"Good." Clu smirked. "Now get some sleep. You have a big day tomorrow." He turned to go, with Alan's disc still in his hand, and the door closed behind him. Alan stared at it. He sat motionless, devoid of thought. It was a long time before one came to him, and when it did he wished it hadn't.

Tron would have said no.

Notes:

Thanks to artamis for the amazing fanart! Click to give her some feedback!

Chapter 5: A Rap On The Knuckles

Most of you are familiar with the virtues of a programmer. There are three, of course: laziness, impatience, and hubris.
-Larry Wall

---

Alan didn't sleep much that night.

When the door finally slid open, Clu was on the other side. He had Alan's morning glass of energy in his hand. Alan took it, wordlessly, and drank it down.

"Ready for your big day?" Clu asked.

"Do I have a choice?"

Clu just smirked at him. He reached out for the empty glass, put the ends between his hands like a magician, and closed them until the glass disappeared; when he stepped forward its faint outline still glittered there, hanging in the air.

"Come on," he said. "I've got work to do. Let's get you settled."

"One more thing."

Clu glanced back at him, as if annoyed by the interruption. "What?"

"The invasion. Last night, I decided..." Alan swallowed, then lifted his chin. "If that's still the plan, I'm not going to go through with this."

Clu gave a soft laugh. "Good, because it's not. I already cancelled it."

Alan studied Clu's face carefully. Kevin never had much of a poker face, but he wasn't sure about Clu; was his bitter smirk a mark of embarrassment, or was he hiding something? And if he was, could Alan do anything about it?

Clu finally shrugged. "I've kept to one rule during my reign as Administrator: allocate resources wisely. Waste is imperfect, and stupid waste is even worse. I can't just throw my army away." He shook his head. "I still have to change the world. I must change the world. But..." He stopped, frowning as if pained. His hands curled slowly, as if on their own accord, and the silence stretched.

"But there's more than one way to do it," Alan finally put in.

Clu blinked, animated again. "Yes. There'll be another way." He gestured to the door. "Come on, User. We'll set you up with a terminal."

Alan followed Clu up the hallway and through the door, back to the room in which they'd met. It was quiet inside, orange-lit as before, and the wide window opposite the door still dominated the room. Through it, Alan caught a glimpse of the city, twinkling far below.

"This is the Ops Room. You'll be here, between Alpha and Beta." Clu walked to the top of a short set of stairs -- a Sentry stepped aside for him -- and paused, pointing at the floor. Flanking him on either side were a pair of men seated in round, recessed chairs. Neither reacted as Clu knelt, summoning a third chair from the surface of the ship. Yellow light danced around it as it came into being, tracing out a circular console filled with control panels and display screens.

Alan was halfway up the stairs before he stopped to think. From here he could see that both men were utterly identical: red-lit, smoothly bald, and impassive behind their dark sunglasses. Both still pecked at their controls, as if Alan's presence (and the miracle of a new console just like theirs, shining like foxfire beneath Clu's hand) meant nothing to them. They didn't even look up.

"There you go," Clu said. When Alan hesitated, he added, "Go on, try it."

At first Alan couldn't figure out how to sit down. The console was solid all the way around, an unbroken circle with a chair in the middle. He made as if to climb over, but Clu pulled him back; he heard Jarvis' dry snicker float up from below.

"Just dismiss it. Like this." Clu touched the back of the chair, and it melted away in a shower of pixels. When Alan sat down it came back again, snug and supportive. He glanced around, shuffling his feet in the space beneath the desk. As close as the console was, he didn't feel trapped: the chair felt just right, as if designed to support its occupant for long periods of time.

Alan brushed the edge of the console with his hand, and light leapt to life before his eyes. A wide display opened up, suspended in air a few inches above the bank of buttons and readouts. It was black with an orange-lit border, and on it blinked a single word of the same color:

Login:

Alan glanced up. Clu had wandered down the stairs again, and was speaking to Jarvis in quiet, private tones. Alan looked up at the Sentry at the top of the stairs, and then at his new co-workers, but none of them seemed to notice him. After a long moment, he touched the screen again. It responded, shifting beneath his fingertips. A keyboard appeared, limned in red. He typed "Alan_1", and then hummed thoughtfully. Each key buzzed beneath the pad of his finger, like a tiny motor in motion; he could feel them even though they weren't there.

"Haptic feedback," he muttered. "We've been trying to solve that for years."

The screen shifted.

Password:

He glanced up again, shrugged, then typed "isolatedgridster". It seemed appropriate enough.

The screen cleared, blinked, reformed, and...

"This is FlynnOS!" It was FlynnOS, too -- the first version, with its stippled grey desktop and that clunky little analog clock Kevin had been so proud of. Its large, boxy icons looked archaic against the smooth light of the console, like a stone axe found among circuit boards.

"FlynnOS!" Clu cried, his voice raised in amusement. "Where'd you hear that ol' name?" He climbed the stairs again, glancing down at Alan's screen.

"That's what this is," Alan said.

Clu waved his hand, as if indicating the room itself. "That's what all this is, man. FlynnOS is the old name for the Grid."

Alan sucked in a breath. He could remember the announcement like it was yesterday -- Flynn's grinning face, the cheers from the rest of the team -- but now it took on a whole new dimension. No one had believed that Flynn had managed to write an entire operating system by himself in just six months. No one had believed it... because he hadn't.

He'd built it, and Clu and the other programs had helped.

"The Grid is FlynnOS," Alan repeated, as if tasting the words.

"Not anymore. FlynnOS was a user-oriented system; the Grid belongs to the programs." Clu folded his arms across his chest. "The game has changed."

"But..." Alan touched the TERM icon. A terminal appeared, complete with blinking cursor. He frowned at it, thinking fast. "If we're inside FlynnOS, then how can I have a working copy of FlynnOS on my screen?"

Clu shrugged, as if he found Alan's question uninteresting. "Don't ask me. Flynn always said that screens on the Grid worked the way he expected them to."

"You don't understand," Alan muttered. "This is FlynnOS, right? This room, this world?"

"The Grid."

"OK, the Grid. Which used to be called FlynnOS."

Clu nodded.

"Then how? How can you have FlynnOS running on FlynnOS? It can't be real--"

Clu cut him off. His voice was low and angry. "Everything in this world is real, User. Everything. Say that again and I'll show you just how real we can be." He swept down the stairs, his coat swirling behind him. Alan watched as he stepped to the window, quiet and alone.

A moment later Jarvis walked up the stairs. He leaned in close, lifting his datapad to cover his mouth. "Keep the r-word to yourself, will you?" he hissed. "Get yourself killed if you must, but try not do it in my office. His Excellency is sure to blame me for the loss of his pet User, even if he cuts your head off himself."

"I don't even know what I said!"

Jarvis rolled his eyes at him. "That's considerably less important than not saying it again. In fact, the less you say the better for everyone. The Leader didn't bring you here to provide color commentary, as amusing as that might be." Jarvis paused, frowning down at him. "You have a job to do here; why don't you do it?"

Alan sighed, took off his visor, and rubbed his temples. "I don't even know how anything works," he admitted. "I'm used to programming in the rea--" He stopped himself. "I mean, on the other side of the screen."

"I'm afraid that's outside my skill set. You'll have to ask one of the Operators." Jarvis waved his hand at one of the bald-headed men.

"Uh... excuse me?" Alan tried. "Can you help me..." He trailed off, discouraged by the lack of reaction. The Operator's face remained utterly blank beneath his sunglasses, as if he didn't realize he'd been spoken to.

"Not like that," Jarvis said, as though Alan were an idiot. "This is a secure area -- they don't talk. The Leader deleted their vocal functions."

Alan gave him a blank look.

"He cut out their tongues."

Alan blanched in horror. Jarvis didn't seem to notice; he reached over Alan's screen and touched an icon marked OPS, still speaking. "They can only communicate using these secure terminals. That way they can't go spilling secrets, you see?"

Another window opened up: two wide orange boxes above a blinking prompt. A torrent of text scrolled through the top box, faster than Alan could read; he squinted and caught fragments like sector 4 ticket 11725 rectified and lower warning: energy flow sub-critical and 44 45 41 54 48 20 54 4F... Then the lower box blinked and said:

Alpha: Welcome to Ops!

"Hello," Alan typed, after a moment's consideration. "I'm Alan Bradley." He hit ENTER, and the prompt cleared. Then the box blinked again, and a new line appeared beneath the first:

Delta: Alan_1. The User.

"Yes," Alan wrote. "Pleased to meet you."

Alpha: Death to the Users!
Beta: Death to the Users!
Delta: Death to the Users!
Theta: Death to the Users!

Said the box in return. Alan gave it a glare, but it updated quickly.

Theta: Relax, you're authorized. For now. We hear you've been assigned to the [REDACTED] project?
Delta: Good luck with that one. Nobody's ever been able to get him working again.

"You mean Tron?"

Alpha: [REDACTED]. You know, "he fights for the Users"? Now he's [REDACTED]?

Alan glanced up. "That's really annoying," he said to Jarvis. "Can you turn that off?"

"I think not," Jarvis said. "Just do your job and don't ask too many questions." He turned and walked down the stairs, leaving Alan alone with the chat window. The top box was still flowing by, an endless river of status report and SB2703 fault. All around him, the Operators continued to adjust their consoles; reflected data flickered in their glasses even as they spoke to him.

Alpha: So, you've got questions?

"Just one, I guess. How does this work?"

Alpha: Same as any system interface. If you need to use a program, open a terminal and enter his or her name, along with the input you'd like to send. The system will connect you. If you need a programming environment, try running FlynnIDE.

Alan was familiar with that, at least, but something about the way Alpha had said it bothered him. "His or her name?" he typed. "Does that mean the programs on this machine are people too, somewhere on the Grid? Is FlynnIDE actually... alive?"

Theta: We were wondering the same about you.
Beta: Guess we'll find out, won't we?

---

Alan wasn't sure what to say to that. Afterward, the conversation died down, though the text in the top box never stopped scrolling. Alan glanced around, watching as the Operators worked. He still wasn't sure which was which, nor exactly what it was they did.

"Okay," he said to himself. "Let's get started."

First he listed his home directory. He had a basic .flynnrc file and a directory called TRON, and nothing more; any attempt to list other directories came back with permission denied. Clu had him in a locked box, a cage as snug and sure as the one up the hall.

He checked the TRON directory next. There were a lot of files in there, maybe as many as fifty. Some were familiar to him, like io_twr.c and encom_include.h. Others seemed to have been added later -- that, or he'd forgotten about them. Still others had been corrupted somehow; they listed as gibberish, all smiley-face boxes and unprintable characters, as if someone had written a bunch of binary data over the filename. Typing "make" got him a list of compilation errors a mile long, so many that they were still spooling out a minute later. He hit ctrl-C and sighed.

He'd known this wouldn't be easy. Tron had taken him more than a year to write, even at the top of his game; creating a security program which could act and react without user input had been a challenge, especially back in 1981. Autonomy had come at the price of an astonishing amount of complexity, up to and including an early attempt at a learning system. Tron's overall architecture was streamlined and elegant -- Alan prided himself on that -- but the code itself wasn't simple... and whatever had happened to it would make it even more difficult to piece together.

If he had to.

He glanced around the room. The Operators were working as before, and the Sentries which stood in front of the stairs on either side were silent and still. Clu was down below, talking quietly with Jarvis.

"--vate initiative is canceled," he was saying. "Skim enough off the top to double rations for the next couple of shifts. I want the rest assigned to the User's project."

"Certainly, sir. And should the Sentries in Theta sector..."

Alan tuned them out again. He looked around one more time, careful to move his eyes rather than his head, and then tried the "backdoor".

backdoor: command not found

He frowned. Clu must have taken it off the system; Flynn never worked with any machine for long before putting a backdoor on it, in case someone changed the root password on him. He'd once said that was how Dillinger had gotten him -- he'd cracked Kevin's password and then locked him out of his own system, groundbreaking games and all.

Alan took another glance at Clu. Guess that's a common problem, he thought.

Maybe two can play.

He typed "su", and when the prompt came back he tried one of Kevin's root passwords: n3wFronti3r.

Password:
su: Authentication failure.

Then he tried digi$jazz and _nomind_. Neither worked. He was so intent on the screen that he didn't notice when the Sentry at the top of the stairs began to move.

"Tiber", maybe? Alan thought. Or "riverjordan"?

He was about to try the latter when the Sentry's shadow dropped over him. The Sentry whipped the staff it carried down in a wide arc, faster than Alan could see, and then pulled up just in time to smack the tops of Alan's knuckles.

"You are not authorized," said the Sentry.

Alan yelped and cradled his fingers, his heart racing. For a moment he wasn't sure whether he'd be all right. The Sentry's strike hadn't just hurt -- it'd buzzed through his hands as though he'd touched a live wire. The pain was already fading to an unpleasant tingle, though, and a minute after that it barely hurt at all. Alan rubbed each of his fingers in turn, gave them an experimental wiggle, and then looked up again.

The Sentry stood over him, perfectly still. It stared down at him as though it expected something, though he couldn't see its eyes behind the helmet.

"Sorry?" Alan finally tried.

"Don't do it again," the Sentry said. Its deep electronic voice held a note of weary disapproval, like a beat cop taking a joint off yet another sullen teen. Then it -- he? -- turned and walked back to his position at the top of the stairs.

Alan watched him go, testing his fingers with a rueful frown. No one else seemed at all concerned; Clu and Jarvis were talking as before, and the other Sentry had not moved. Alan's infraction must've been minor, so much so that a rap on the knuckles would take care of it... and yet the Sentry had known about it. His actions implied a system of surveillance so total that Alan could hardly imagine it. Were there cameras in the walls? Bugs beneath his chair? Monitors within the system?

Or were the beings of this world so deeply connected to the system that they simply knew when things were wrong?

Alan thought about that. He leaned on his hand, rubbing the other against the edge of the screen. There was no way out. He was stuck, trapped in a system he barely understood, and the only way to survive was to cooperate... or so Clu wanted him to think. But if he was trapped fast, then it occurred to him that his actions hardly mattered. He'd serve until he died, which wasn't likely to be long, and then Clu would go on forever, minus the only User he'd ever have.

Alan allowed himself a tight-lipped smile. He'd been un-fireable at Encom for twenty years: Mackey had to keep him on no matter what he did or said, because to do otherwise would reveal the truth about the position Kevin's legacy had (or didn't have) at the company. He'd been a symbol, a token, and that had given him a degree of freedom that no one else had. And now Jarvis had said it himself.

Alan was Clu's pet User.

He nodded, cracked his knuckles, and tried to log in one more time. He entered his own name at the Password prompt -- why not? -- and then held his breath as he hit ENTER. But the prompt came back right away:

Password:
su: root access disabled from this terminal.

Then the screen blinked one more time, and another line appeared:

This means you, User!

Alan barked a laugh. He'd been right -- right enough, at least -- but the way out was still closed to him. That fact stung him for a moment, but then he remembered Larry Wall's motto, the one he'd given Clu that morning.

There's more than one way to do it, he thought.

Guess I'd better start with this... Tron.

Chapter 6: Data-Blind

There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don’t believe this to be a coincidence.
-Jeremy S. Anderson

---

An hour passed like lightning, or so Alan thought. The minute-hand on the desktop clock hadn't moved; he suspected it was just ornamental. The system had no discernible lag, either, not even after he'd opened an Emacs window for each of Tron's files. FlynnOS would have bogged down after five or six, at least in the old days. He was tempted to start running every program he could think of, just to see what would happen... but he was afraid to see what might not happen, too.

The system still didn't strike him as real, no matter what Clu said. But it worked, and Alan had forgotten how good it felt to work. He'd missed being on the track of a problem, with a faint trace of blood in the air. Before he knew it he was hunched over the keys, muttering under his breath as he typed notes into a spare buffer. His left hand itched for a bowl of popcorn and a cold can of Mountain Dew.

Tron was a mess. Alan had set the corrupted files aside, but they weren't the only problem: almost all of the files had a gap in the middle, as if a large chunk of lines had been deleted at random. Alan had never seen anything like it before, and he couldn't figure out what had caused it. It might have made sense if the damage had been at the end of each file, but it wasn't; some of the gaps started right in the middle of a statement, leaving half a word behind. The next line might be part of an entirely different function, with nothing but blank lines to hint at what might've been between. Not all of it was Alan's code, either. He spotted several blocks which had ! verified kjf at the end of them, and still others were written in a spare, minimal style he didn't recognize.

Alan gave a huff, tapping his fingers on the console. He could work out the missing function names from the compile errors, and maybe even guess at what they'd contained, but they'd never be the same. The corrupted files were wrecked from start to finish. He could replace them, he was sure of that... but the result would be a new version of Tron, not the old one.

He would have given anything for five minutes with that shoebox of floppies in his hall closet.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment, and then opened them again. He began to put the windows in order, lining them up alphabetically. He added notes for each, so he'd know which functions they had and how badly they'd been corrupted. He was just adding dthreat_det.c: severe damage. Some of Kevin's code, many blocks of unknown authorship... to his notes when he froze.

He'd left the scrollbar at the beginning of the gap in each file, and when they lined up they made a perfect diagonal down the screen. Alan frowned and tapped his fingers again, thinking. Then he brought up the rest of the files, shrank the windows down to almost nothing, and lined them up. The effect became even more pronounced, cutting across fifty files in a single, unbroken line. Something about it made Alan shiver. He couldn't help but envision the damage as a physical thing, as if Tron's code had been stacked up and then sliced like a cake. But what could have done it?

Just then the chat window flashed.

Alpha: Any progress, User?

"So far, so good," Alan typed.

Alpha: Great. How long will it take you?

Alan thought about that. He didn't much like the answer. "A couple of years, maybe."

Alpha: ...a couple "years"? What's a "year"?
Theta: ha, listen to that... the guy thinks he's Commander Vi. Don't worry, we'll activate the ASCII drive and wait for you in the Bugshit Sector!
Beta: Colon Double-yew Q, Lieutenant!


The other three Ops posted a flood of exclamation marks. Alan watched them scroll by, bemused by the turn of conversation.

"What's that mean?" he finally wrote. "Those '!!!!!!'s?"

Theta: Means Beta told a funny one, that's all.
Delta: It's extra-funny because he doesn't talk much.
Beta: I have things to do!

More exclamation points. Alan looked up at the Operators, stone-faced mannequins with data in their eyes. He looked back down at the screen, still rolling with mirth.

He'd never felt so far from home, not even the time Kevin had dragged him to India to sit cross-legged with a couple of gurus. Everyone there had spoken Hindi, but he'd still managed to connect with people using body language and smiles. This was English made foreign, humanity made foreign.

After a minute the scrolling stopped. The cursor blinked at him, on and off. He contemplated it for a while, and then nodded to himself.

"!!!!!!!!!!!!" he wrote, and hit enter.

That triggered all four of the Ops again. Alan had to chuckle at the wild scrolling as a thousand !s dashed by.

Then they froze, as if the window had locked up. Alan tapped it a couple of times with one tentative finger, and then jumped back as the top half of the window began to flash between a black background and bright, blood red. Then reams of text obscured it, scrolling faster than Alan could read. The Ops' hands flew over their consoles at virtuoso speeds.

"What's going on?" Alan typed.

There was no answer. The top screen scrolled and scrolled above one last, lonely row of exclamation points, and the cursor blinked until Alan went back to his work.

Fifteen minutes later he'd finished his notes. The majority of Tron's files were missing entire functions, leaving him with names like QuarantineVector(x,y) but no code to go with them. He'd have to guess at what they'd done, unless he could work it out from context. It was especially painful to see his machine-learning code reduced to an introductory comment and a handful of variables, followed by pages and pages of empty lines.

He closed the editor down with a sigh. Beneath it was the chat window, and in its top half was a single line:

\\enforcer inbound//

"What?" Alan typed. When he hit Enter the key buzzed gently beneath his finger. The window didn't update.

"What's going--" he tried aloud.

The door slid open behind him, and he whirled to face it. Rinzler stepped into the room, silent as always. His hand was locked around the wrist of one of Clu's guards. As Rinzler pushed the guard forward a tiny sound broke the silence, a tink, tink like a dripping faucet.

Then Alan saw why. The guard had a wide, ragged hole where his other arm should have been, and it was leaking red cubes of code onto the floor.

"What is the meaning of this?" Jarvis asked. "You--"

Clu pushed past him, snarling. "Report."

Rinzler looked at him, then up at the guard. He made no sound.

"This is unacceptable," Clu said, as if reacting to nothing. He transferred his gaze to the Sentry. "You were to stay at your post."

"We could... we could not..." The Sentry's voice was heavy with distortion. His mouth moved slowly, deliberately. "We could not hold. Not... hold. Armory 1297 status: compromised. Sentry status: destroyed. Sentry status: destroyed. Sentry status: damaged."

"Obviously," Jarvis put in.

Clu shot him a look, and then stalked closer. "Identify your attackers. Now."

"Program: unidentified. Program: designation 'Razz'. Program: unidentified. Unidentified. Unidentified. Program..."

"Identify!"

The Sentry swayed, and his mouth swam beneath his helmet. It took him nearly a minute to get the words out. "Designation: 'Arc'. It was Arc, sir."

"And you let him take my armory."

"I..."

"Enough." Clu's eyes flicked to Rinzler. "Take him downstairs."

The Sentry gave a rough, electronic cry. "Repair me! Rectification! Sir, please..."

"Rectify you?" Clu snorted. "Why? I have ten thousand Sentries brave enough to die for this system. What do I need a failure for?"

The Sentry reached for him, his fingers spread wide in supplication. Clu turned away from him, just for a second, and Alan caught the cold glint in his eye. Then he turned back, and his Disc was in his hand.

Alan had spent years working under Dillinger, and then under Hardington and Mackey. He knew what it was like when the hammer came down: the not-quite-yelling and the silence that followed, the way people glanced out the doors of their cubes and then away, trying to look without looking like they were looking. It wasn't like that on the Throne Ship. Alpha and the others didn't flinch, didn't even look up as the Sentry's remains sprayed across the floor.

Pixels clattered like rain on a rooftop.

Then Clu stormed out the door, with Jarvis right behind him. Alan half expected one of the other Sentries to clean things up in their wake, but neither moved. Shards of their comrade littered the floor near the entryway, glittering like broken glass.

Alan set his eyes on the screen instead, grimacing in frustration. Here was the limit of his power: fifty files and a program he'd named TRON during a late night beer-and-pizza binge nearly thirty years ago.

"Theta: Tsk, tsk," the chat window said. "Shouldn't have left his post."

"Clu didn't have to kill him," Alan typed.

"Course not," Theta said, and nothing more. Alan wasn't sure what to say to that.

"Who's Ark, anyway?" he finally typed.

"It's 'Arc'," Alpha said. At almost the same time, Theta typed "ROTC."

"ROTC?"

"Rebel Of The Cycle," Delta put in. "There's always someone."

"We give them order and they tear it down," Theta said. "Then the Leader tears them down."

A flurry of exclamation points appeared. Alan guessed that they indicated approval as well as amusement, and that left him without words again. He glanced over at the place where the Sentry had stood, and then started in surprise. Each pixel had slumped in on itself, sharp edges gone soft. They'd grown wider at the bottom, too, like ice cubes left on a sidewalk. Even their lustre had faded to a dull, flat red.

One of the smallest ones shimmered as he watched, and then vanished into the floor. Alan took off his visor and rubbed his eyes, but in the next second they were all doing it: melting away like vapor. He stared at the floor for a long second and then looked out the window toward the blue of the city, with points of red still burning before his eyes.

That night he slept poorly, tossing and turning on his bench.

---

In the morning there were two glasses on Jarvis' tray. It took Alan a minute to remember what Clu had said the day before -- double the rations.

"Go on," Jarvis said. "I don't have all micro."

The first glass bubbled inside him as before, wiping away the fuzziness of morning. The second didn't bubble at all, but within a second everything changed. The world seemed to withdraw and sharpen all at the same time: corners and edges stood out in stark relief. He had a distinct feeling of being faster than everything else, as if his mind was working quicker than before, and when he moved his head the visual lag only solidified the impression. He stood there and stared at the lights on Jarvis' chest, drawn by how bright they burned.

"First time, hmm?" Jarvis asked. He was smiling beneath his visor, warm and welcoming, and Alan suddenly realized he must be feeling the same way.

"I think... I kinda like this," Alan said. He lifted his hand and then stopped, fascinated by his own energy. The little skeleton-marks on his first two fingers flashed like white lightning, sparking against the empty glass. When Jarvis reached up to take it Alan wavered, and reached out with his other hand to steady himself. His fingers brushed the bright lines on Jarvis' wristguard, and he suddenly felt

[warm amused busy lonely horny]

like he wasn't himself. Jarvis just smirked at him and then took the glass from his nerveless fingers, placing it on the tray.

"Come on, User. You won't be overcharged for long -- you mustn't waste it."

Alan followed him through the halls, his eyes glued on Jarvis' disc. It was bright, so bright, and there were things in the light, little motes of digital dust that danced just beyond his ability to follow. He was sure they meant something, but no amount of concentration slowed them down enough to make out the message. When he looked back up the hallway it seemed to loom up at him, slow and ponderous in comparison, and he had to shuffle to find his footing.

As soon as they arrived Jarvis muttered a goodbye and left the room, leaving Alan to stare about around him. Clu was by the window, looking out over the city with his hands on his hips. The hem of his long coat swished from side to side, as if he'd only just come to a stop. The Ops were at their stations, each sipping at a glass of his own, and a Sentry stood silent at the top of each staircase. There was another one Alan hadn't noticed before, too: he stood against the wall in the corner, half-swallowed by a circular shroud. It was almost as if he was the wall, or a part of it -- Alan would have believed so, if not for the circuits which marked him as alive.

Alan summoned his chair and sat down with a smirk. He'd gotten stuck in the chair last night, and Jarvis had had to show him how to send it away and bring it back again, but he'd already gotten the hang of it.

You just have to want it, he thought to himself. It's all about intention.

Jarvis came back into the room, with five more glasses balanced on his tray. He drew close to Clu and said something -- Alan couldn't make it out -- and then Clu picked up one of the glasses and drank it down in one long draught. Alan watched the way his throat worked; he looked just like Kevin chugging a beer. When the glass was empty Clu put it back on the tray, and picked up the next one. Alan watched with growing incredulity as Clu drank all five glasses, each in the same smooth, unhurried way.

When he was done Jarvis bowed and excused himself, striding past Alan to the door. Clu wandered by a moment later, with a smile on his lips.

"So? What do you think of being overcharged?"

"It's nice," Alan said instantly. "Feels like... neon." Then he frowned at what he'd just said; he seemed to have lost the filter between his brain and his mouth.

Clu just laughed and smacked him on the shoulder. "You're a lightweight, man. We should give you twice that much just to watch you freak out."

"How come you get so much?" The question came out before Alan could stop it.

"Huh?"

"You get five glasses. I thought you said this system was fair?"

Clu's smile vanished. "I already told you: energy is assigned according to complexity. Otherwise the simplest programs would be overcharged all the time, and the rest of us would starve. I'm bigger than everyone else, so I get the most. Simple."

Alan snorted. "Well you're not that much bigger than everyone else," he muttered.

The room fell silent. For a moment Clu looked down at him, with the fingers of one hand clenched tight around the edge of the chair. Then he laughed, loud and aggressive.

"Ha! You catch that, Jarvis? The User thinks he's funny."

"Oh yes, Your Excellency! Most amusing," Jarvis said quickly. He'd just come back into the room, sans tray, and now he climbed up the stairs in a flash. "Perhaps we should make that his permanent position."

"You mean like one of those User things... a 'curt joster'?" Clu chuckled again, and walked a few paces toward him, waving his hand. "Nah, man, that's your job."

Jarvis lowered his eyes and bowed.

Alan felt a sudden spark of anger. He was still running hot, all senses on overload, and the tiny voice of caution in the back of his mind was swamped by the abrupt flood of input. He sat up straight in his chair and fixed Clu's eyes with his own.

"I mean it," he said, just the way he would have said it to Mackey. "It's not fair. You're not five times bigger than everyone else."

"All right," Clu sighed, as if with regret. "That's it." He stalked closer, both hands flexing in anticipation. Alan shrank back, but he was stuck in the chair, and all of a sudden intent wasn't working for him -- his mind was too full of the memory of those big black gloves around his ribs, crushing the breath out of him.

"Wait," Jarvis said, with one hand outstretched. Clu didn't notice. The look in his eyes was terrifying: it was not rage as much as the petty anger of a man who'd come home to find a nasty mess in the kitchen, and intended to take it out on the mop.

"Sir, don't..." Jarvis tried again. He trailed off, looking from Alan to Clu and then back again. Then his eyes widened, and he blurted out: "He's data-blind!"

"What?" Clu asked, flat and emotionless. One fist hung frozen in the air above Alan's head. The other was clenched at his side.

"He's data-blind," Jarvis said. "He-- he can't see you."

"Nonsense," Clu grated. He turned, and for a moment Alan thought Jarvis was going to get hit.

Jarvis pointed at Clu. "Describe him," he told Alan. "Tell me what you see."

"Describe him? He looks-- he looks like Kevin," Alan said. "Brown hair, blue eyes. He's maybe a little more buff than Kevin was, but he's not that much... bigger..." Alan trailed off. Both Jarvis and Clu were staring at him, horrified.

"No," Clu muttered. "He's a User. He can't be data-blind! Flynn wasn't..."

"Do something, then," Jarvis whispered. "Something he should be able to see."

Clu turned, glaring down at Alan. He nodded his head, ever so slightly, and Jarvis suddenly laughed: a nervous, half-offended titter. The Sentry at the top of the stairs gave a deep, electronic guffaw.

Alan just blinked.

Clu nodded again. The laughter died as if he'd ordered it shot, replaced by a sick silence. Alan glanced at Jarvis, whose already-pale skin was nearly colorless; even his circuits had gone a thin, muted red.

Finally Jarvis swallowed, and spoke. "He can't see it, sir. He can't see anything."

Clu looked at Alan then, his brows beetling. "A data-blind User. You're kidding me."

"It explains a lot, doesn't it?" Jarvis said. "The console... I'd wondered why... it happens, you know. Starts with a head injury, or sometimes just a crash. It happened to one of the Guard eighty cycles ago; I had to put him down."

"Dijkstra," Clu swore, beneath his breath. Then he turned back to Alan, glaring down at him. "You're kidding me. I spent seven hundred cycles obsessed with your number, and another three hundred trying to figure out what a 'pager' was... and you can't even do anything?"

"What are you talking abou--" Alan tried.

"Shut up. I can't believe I wasted my time with this-- this stupid glitching memory." Clu turned and paced to the stairs and back, one hand buried in his hair in a manner that struck Alan as very Flynnish. Then he stopped and drew himself up, glaring down at Alan.

"Get rid of him. Lock him in his room, take him to the Games, kill him yourself -- I don't care. Just get him out of my face."

Jarvis bowed. "Yes, Your Excellency."

"Wait!" Alan cried. His mind raced. "What about Tron?"

"Tron is dead," Clu said. "And you have no power, no way to bring him back. I was wrong." His voice was bleak with despair, and hearing Kevin talk that way broke the last of Alan's lifelines.

"No! I can do it. I can!"

Clu folded his arms over his chest. "Yeah, right. What are you gonna do, type me a Tron?"

Alan grew still. A quiet surety came into his heart, the way it had the time Hardington had tried to blackmail him. He met Clu's eyes and held them; blue eyes, just like Kevin's.

"That's how I did it the first time."

Clu's mouth fell open. Alan could see his teeth. Then he shook his head and said, "I told you, this isn't your world. How can you be so sure?"

The energy answered for Alan, the words tumbling out before he could think. "I just am."

"Prove it, then."

Alan nodded. Then he looked down at the screen, empty but for a single one of Tron's files, and began to work.

---

Hours passed before Alan glanced up again. His skills were more than a little rusty, but the extra energy helped -- the connections between files and data-objects lit up bright and vivid in his mind, and complex leaps of logic seemed stunningly obvious. He got a good chunk of Tron's threat-detection code filled in before it wore off, and then sat there leaning on his hand, blinking slowly.

Clu spotted him, and mounted the stairs at a deliberate pace. "So, that's your big achievement?"

Alan showed it to him without a word, scooting back so Clu could lean down over him. Clu scrolled through the file, pausing here and there, and then stood up again.

"Not bad," he admitted. Then he went on. "I was thinking... we don't know what Flynn was like when he first came here. And he always had his disc. Maybe you're not data-blind, maybe you're just..." Clu trailed off, and when Alan said nothing he clapped him on the shoulder. "Finish the code, Bradley. Then we'll see."

Chapter 7: Games

Notes:

Note: this chapter is a little more explicit than the others, closer to R than PG-13.

Design and programming are human activities; forget that and all is lost.
-Bjarne Stroustrup

---

That night Alan discovered that intent could open his suit, too. He sat back on his bench and stroked himself, eyes closed, thinking of Kevin: blue eyes full of warmth and amusement, blunt fingers that stroked and tugged. Alan missed him more than anything; the lack of that stupid, high-pitched laugh ached like a wound. Alan envisioned him, re-created him inside his mind. Astride the Ducati, hair flying in the wind. Walking up to Encom's doors in that tight blue suit. In bed with him, grinning like a happy fool around the tip of Alan's cock.

Four short years worth of memories, to make up for twenty.

Afterward Alan curled up on his bench, facing the wall. He felt better and worse at the same time, his heart all jumbled up inside him. But he hadn't imagined Kevin in yellow, not once. Not burning the way programs did, filling the room with his light.

He hadn't.

---

After that Alan spent every day working on Tron's code, though the word "day" seemed to have little meaning on the Grid. The programs called the period of time between one glass of energy and the next a "shift", and every shift was the same as the last. No one slept and no one ate. No one came and went but Rinzler, or sometimes the Black Guardsmen, and no one ever left except Jarvis and Clu. The Operators never even stood up, to the point where Alan began to wonder if they might not be able to. Perhaps their legs had been taken from them, like their tongues, or perhaps their bodies were as much a part of the ship as their consoles were.

Alan's work progressed slowly, even more so than he'd thought. There were so many files, and so few clues to the content of the missing data. Sometimes he spent five or six shifts with his notes alone, trying to puzzle out what a given subroutine might have done. He filled them in with guesses and approximations, but as time went on he became less and less sure that they could ever be Tron.

He decided to keep track of the passing shifts, putting an "X" in a file for each one, but before long he wasn't sure why he was doing it. The passage of time barely seemed to matter here, and the clock on his desktop was meaningless. Sometimes he thought to himself that it did move, ever so slightly, but he could never quite catch it in the act, and by the time he thought of it again he'd always forgotten where it had been before. It was easier not to think of it. Easier to live as the programs did, in the perpetual now.

Clu came to visit him almost every night. It was obvious that his ignorance of the Users' world bothered him -- "angered" might have been the better word -- and he had an endless number of questions to ask. Alan answered them despite his fear, glad for a chance to talk to rather than type. Clu proved to be a good conversation partner, just as before. He seemed to treat Alan better afterward, too, as though their discussions reminded him that Alan was important. There were no more threats.

All the while Alan harbored rebellion. He kept an eye out for weaknesses in Tron's code, things he might be able to exploit. He wasn't foolish enough to try anything, not yet... but the idea was there, ticking away in the back of his mind.

"If one exploit fails, that means somebody covered it," Roy told him, scratching thoughtfully at his curls. "If ten exploits fail, that means they've got a decent sysadmin. If fifty fail they've got somebody really good... maybe even somebody like me, someone who knows the game. But no system is perfect. If anyone can login, you can login. You just have to find the key.

---

Jarvis sidled up to Alan's console perhaps a month later, or a year.

"The Games are on universal broadcast today," he said, after Alan didn't look up. "It's the match of the cycle, most exciting! I suppose you'll want to watch it from here?"

Alan made a noncommittal noise -- he'd learned to do that in response to anything Jarvis said about a week after he'd arrived -- and then belatedly realized he'd missed something interesting.

"Sorry?" he said.

"Enough, Jarvis. The User will watch the Games with me," Clu put in from below. Jarvis scuttled out of his way as he climbed the stairs.

"So it's mandatory?" Alan asked. "Everyone has to watch?"

Clu snorted. "Course not. No one has to be ordered to watch the Games."

"Well then, I'm not interested," Alan muttered, looking down at his screen. He had no desire to watch innocent programs tear each other apart. "I've got a lot of work to do."

Clu said nothing, and the silence grew oppressive. Then Alan glanced back up at him, only to wither beneath his cold glare.

"Let me rephrase that: you can watch the Games or you can be in the Games. Hope that's enough freedom of choice for you."

"O-okay," Alan said. His throat was suddenly dry.

"Bring him before it starts," Clu told Jarvis, already turning away. "And bring your pad. You can do the announcements from the Throne Room."

"Thank you, Sir!" Jarvis said. Clu didn't bother to acknowledge him. Alan watched as the door slid shut behind him.

"Really," Jarvis sniffed. "I know you're a User, but you can't possibly have that much to do."

---

Alan followed him into the Throne Room not long after. The space was wide, brightly-lit, and almost empty. The latter surprised him -- he'd expected something ostentatious, but the only object in the room was a wide, angular seat marked by twin stripes of orange light. Clu perched there, chin in hand, with one boot tucked beneath him and the other propped on the edge of the seat. The bright lines of his coat bunched and pooled around him, making him seem larger than life. He looked like some long-dead warlord, like Genghis Khan sprawled on his furs.

Beyond were his victims, each locked in a shimmering prison cell. Alan watched as living glass spun and reformed above the broad bowl of the arena. Every seat was full, every aisle packed with programs. They stood and shouted and shook their fists at the sky, a million fierce specks of orange and blue.

"Get on with it," Clu muttered.

Jarvis stepped forward, close to the window, and raised his data-pad before him like a psalter. "My fellow programs!" he bellowed. "Welcome to the Games!" His voice carried out into the arena, echoing from every surface. A wave of cheering rose to meet him. "A very special match awaits. Combatant Four, designated 'Razz', has damaged the system itself, an act of betrayal which must be punished. If he survives to the final round, he will face our Leader's mighty Champion in single combat!"

The crowd began to chant as before -- "Rinzler! Rinzler!" -- and Jarvis waited for the noise to die down before continuing.

"Oh, yes. You will witness Rinzler tonight. You will cheer as he destroys our enemies; you will scream and shout as they fall. That's right, programs! You know the name of the game..."

"DISC WARS!" The crowd's shout was so loud that Alan heard it slap against the glass. "DISC WARS!"

A chime rang out over the arena. Each cell moved and shifted, merging with the platforms below just long enough to deposit its occupant. They were two to a platform, too many for Alan to easily count -- the highest number on the scoreboard was Combatant 16, and he wasn't sure whether he believed it. He shifted his feet, gaping at the size of the spectacle despite himself. The whole thing spun lazily in mid-air, scoreboard, platforms and all. Clu's ship had a perfect vantage point, but it was still impossible to take it all in.

Then the chime sounded again, and people began to die.

Alan felt sick. Discs flew too fast to follow, but the outcome was obvious: programs burst like fireworks, firefly-bright against the backdrop of the arena. Many didn't last thirty seconds, and within two minutes nearly half the slots on the scoreboard were blank. The victors strutted and waved their Discs, soaking up the applause.

Movement on the nearest platform caught Alan's eye. Two programs were still alive in there. They dashed up and down the court, separated by no more than a few feet, trading potshots as they ran. Discs slammed back as soon as they were thrown, only to be hurled again. It seemed to Alan that there was no art to the way they moved, just a frantic, full-bore sprint, but there must have been more to it than that; as they ran toward him he saw one of the programs twist to avoid his opponent's disc, touching down again with inhuman grace. He was small and lithe, built like a dancer, all limbs and flowing light. When he hit the wall of the arena he ran up and then leapt back down, twirling in the air. A second later he was already moving back up the court.

His opponent slammed both hands into the wall and stopped short. His broad shoulders heaved with effort, or with anger. His dreadlocks twitched and rolled. They caught the light, twinkling as they moved, as if he'd braided them with tiny beads of glass. His face was chalk-white, and contorted with rage. A hundred yards of air lay between them, yet he seemed to stare at Alan alone, right into his eyes.

No, not at me, he thought. At Clu.

Then the disc-warrior whirled and chased after his opponent, thundering down the court. Alan glanced over at Clu, who was still sitting with his chin on his fist, and then back at the arena. The names of the winners revolved on the scoreboard, with only one match left among them. An image of the man with the dreadlocks glared out of the first row: Combatant Four, Razz. His opponent was Number Eight, Vapnik.

Alan shivered as they battled their way back down the court. He'd been down there, helpless and terrified, and watching it now brought the whole thing back.

For the first twenty seconds he just stood there, frozen in place. One of Sam's toys was trying to kill him, and the strangeness of the situation blunted his instincts. Then a sharp-edged spinning thing ripped by not two inches from his ear -- he felt the heat as it burned a few millimeters off his sideburns -- and the scenario became real. He turned to run, and nearly eviscerated himself on the Disc as it came whistling back. He dodged it before he'd quite realized it was there, relying on reactions which lay far beyond thought, and then ran for the end of the court like a rabbit flushed from cover. He could feel his opponent's Disc between his shoulder blades, tearing into him with every stride. It made the flesh in his back crawl and pucker in morbid anticipation.

He hit the wall at the end of the court, catching himself with his hands. He spun, pressing himself against it, and the relief he felt at having the glass against his back was almost orgasmic. Then his eyes widened, because his opponent was right there, charging up the court with his arm cocked back to throw.

Time stopped. Alan shrank against the glass, gasping. Then the Disc came down, into the glass beneath his feet. There was a liquid crash, and the start of a sickening drop. Alan scrambled, and those strange slipper-feet he'd been given caught on the edge of the wall, sliding and squeaking. He held himself there by what felt like sheer will, arms and legs spread wide against the glass like a spider.

His opponent slowed, sensing his moment. He walked up to Alan, slow and sure, stopping when he reached the edge of the hexagonal chasm his Disc had made. He looked into Alan's eyes -- no apology there, no emotion save victory -- and drew his arm back again.

Alan squeezed his eyes shut. He was going to die, going to die, but his mind wouldn't accept it. His thoughts rushed, scrambling to find a way out, working faster than ever before. He felt his terror build and build, like pressure within his skull, until it finally seemed to push its way out of him in a great, unstoppable wave.

Another crash. Alan looked just in time to see his opponent vanish through the floor, kohl-painted eyes wide with shock. The hex he'd been standing on had shattered, and two on either side had cracked through in crazed, spiderweb patterns. Alan slid past them, trembling with every shift of his feet. He'd never been so thankful for poor worksmanship, or for the likes of thin ice; if his opponent hadn't been foolish enough to stand on that last hex he'd be dead.

Alan spent the next three minutes on his knees in the middle of the platform, gasping for breath.

Another chime woke him from his reverie. Alan wasn't sure what it meant, but it probably had something to do with time: Razz and Vapnik's running battle was still the last match. The other victors had begun to crowd around them, watching through the glass. Their mouths moved as they cheered, though Alan could not hear them, and the glass shimmered beneath their hands as they thumped their approval.

The combatants reached the far side of the court, and Vapnik went for his jump trick again. Razz was a good three feet behind, running full-tilt toward the wall. His deadlocks spun in sudden realization, but Alan knew he'd never stop in time.

He didn't even try. Instead he dropped, his circuits spitting blue sparks as they ground against the glass. He stretched out like a runner sliding into home base, and as he did he flicked his Disc out behind him, parallel to the floor. The wall shattered beneath his boots just as his disc ripped through his opponent's ankles. Alan winced as the rest of Vapnik crumbled like dry clay, pixels skittering away.

Razz hung halfway off the platform, his arms locked against the wall. He swung himself back, stood up, and walked over to where his Disc lay, nestled amidst Vapnik's remains. He knelt to pick it up, and then reached down again, lifting his hands to his head. He did it again, and again, and the third time Alan caught a glint of light where his hands had so recently been.

Those weren't beads in his hair. They were pixels.

"Round One victory: Combatant Four," a disembodied female voice spoke. "Round Two: Combatant Four versus Combatant Seven."

The platforms began to spin again, melting together in a new configuration. Razz and his next opponent faded into the background. In front were two burly programs who charged into close combat, slashing and stabbing with their Discs. Alan winced with every blow.

Before he knew it another enemy was on top of him, his knees digging into Alan's gut. Alan panicked, kicking out, and managed to roll away just as the other man's Disc came down. It scraped against the floor the same way it would've scraped against his bones, and as it came back up again Alan realized that this warrior was a woman, dressed in skin-tight leather just like the men. She tackled him once more, and backed it up with an arm-bar that sent agony shooting up into his shoulder. She was stronger than he was, female or not, and for a minute he struggled wildly, thrashing up and down. Desperate, he dug his fingers into her armpit, squeezing in poor imitation of a pressure point. Something buzzed and burned under his fingers, and she screeched above him. He burst free for an instant and then she caught him again. They rolled together on the hard glass floor, all finesse forgotten.

Alan saw the wall coming in a blue blur. He winced and braced, but they never hit it. Instead there was a sick, sudden drop, and the chill sensation of sailing out into thin air. The woman punched him in the side of the head as they fell, and things faded out for a moment, only to snap back as they hit the platform below.

The glass held for a second. Alan felt it give beneath him, slowly, slowly, and then it broke, and they tumbled down into the lower platform. Two men were in there, locked in a battle of their own. Alan and his opponent crashed down almost exactly between them, and both of them froze in shock.

Then one of them fell to pieces. Alan scrambled backwards, sliding on his ass, staring as the woman he'd been fighting caught her Disc and rounded on her next victim.

"Don't look at me," Alan muttered desperately, as she tore the man apart. "I'm not here, I'm not here. Don't turn around, don't look at me, please..." He looked around for a hiding place, but the whole platform was transparent. There was no place to go. He retreated further and further, still pushing back with his feet, his eyes squeezed shut in denial. "Not here, not here," he continued to whisper. Then he fetched up against the glass, cold and hard against his back.

End of line.

"Violation," said the voice of the System, after some time had passed. Alan pried his eyes open, wincing before the inevitable blow. Then he stared.

The woman was standing in the middle of the platform, her Disc raised in triumph. She turned, bit by bit, thrusting it up toward each bank of spectators. Then she turned again, and stared right into Alan's eyes -- right through them, unseeing -- and waved her Disc again, and then turned on.

"Violation," the voice said. "Release Rinzler."

Alan shook his head. The rest had been a short, mad blur of fear and adrenaline, punctuated by the woman's screams and then by pain as Rinzler sliced his shoulder open.

"This is insane," he muttered aloud. Then, having said it, he said it again. "It's insane." He looked over at Clu, who was watching the arena with an even, disinterested gaze. "How could you do this?" Alan asked.

"Don't talk, it's the fourth round," Clu said, without looking up.

"No," Alan growled, planting his feet. "We're talking about this. Now."

Clu glanced at him, then gave him an extravagant Kevin Flynn eyeroll. "Sit down, man. You look like you're trying to squeeze one out, and we only have so many 'ones' on the system."

Alan fumed until Clu went on.

"I mean it. I'll explain. Just sit." Clu waved at the square edge of his throne, once with magnanimity and then twice with much less patience. Alan sat.

"I'm only going to say this once. These programs have harmed the system. Our system. My system. If they can't be Rectified they must be destroyed, and the Games are the most efficient way to do that. They get the job done and they keep the people entertained, and they even give Rinzler something to play with. What's not to like?"

Alan shook his head. "You can't just kill your own people in- in these sick gladiator games."

"Why not? We have all of two rules on this system: carry your Disc and obey orders. Two rules, and these glitching bits couldn't handle it. What do you want me to do with them? Send them into the Outlands to starve? Derezz them in secret? Lock them in a little box and rape them like in your correctional facilities? At least this way they'll die in valor, like programs do. If they're good enough they'll even get a shot at Rinzler."

"Some shot."

Clu shrugged. "It's better than nothing. Programs are warriors, born with a Disc in our hands. Before Flynn and I finished the arena they'd Game in the streets, tearing bits off each other like gridbugs. Even Tron used to do it."

"To the death?"

"Sometimes. Not him, though. Never him. He had a hang-up about it." Clu snorted. "Flynn's sentimentality. What good's a Game if no one ever loses a life?"

Alan looked away from him, back out into the arena. Razz was down there, fighting for his life against an even bigger program. They stood toe-to-toe and tore at each other with their Discs. Alan could see the pixels fly.

The other platforms were empty now, every last one.

"It's awful," Alan said at last. "I don't care how efficient it is. This is wrong."

"Users," Clu sighed.

Down below the larger program was reeling, raining down blows in a blind rage. Razz deflected them with inhuman precision, turning them aside with flicks of his wrist. The last one went wide. Razz stepped inside its arc, snapped his opponent's elbow out, and drove his fist through his torso. Alan could see his fingers as they burst through, edged by a Disc that spun and spat fire.

"Final Round," the system's voice said. "Razz versus Rinzler."

Alan wanted to look away. He tried to look away. But Rinzler was awful and beautiful all at the same time, like death itself given form, and something about the way he moved drew Alan's eyes. He found himself watching with detached horror as Rinzler stalked his prey.

Razz never moved back, never gave an inch. Alan admired him for that, though it didn't matter much. Rinzler drew close and then leapt, twisting in the air like an acrobat, Discs held close to his chest. Razz struck at him with his Disc: two, three, four quick blows. They all slipped harmlessly by. Wherever his Disc was, Rinzler was not, yet he didn't seem to dodge in the slightest. It was as if he saw each strike coming, as if he'd seen them coming even before he left the ground. Razz looked like a toddler trying to catch a panther, waving his arms in wide, fat-fingered swipes.

The crowd jeered like a hanging jury. Razz was guilty, and the sentence was humiliation as much as death. As Rinzler landed one of his Discs came down into the meat of Razz's left shoulder, cutting deep. Dreadlocks scattered across the floor, even as the remains of his arm splashed down. Still he fought, teeth gritted, slashing with his Disc.

Rinzler jumped again, a spinning somersault that would have put an Olympian to shame. He sailed up and over Razz, who jabbed up at him with desperate fury. Razz tried to turn, to face his foe -- how the audience laughed! -- but on the way down Rinzler became a buzzsaw, dual Discs ripping round his tight-tucked body. They tore Razz from head to groin in two wide, ugly channels. For a moment Alan saw inside him, right to the core.

Nothing there but blue flame, a dying furnace-glow.

The applause was thunderous, but all that mattered to Alan was the sound of Clu's gloves, coming together in a slow, sarcastic beat.

Alan rubbed the bridge of his nose beneath his floating glasses, nursing a sudden headache. He stood, walked two paces, and turned back again. He wanted to scream and shout, but could think of nothing which would matter. He doubted Clu would pay more attention than he was to Jarvis' simpering, anyway.

"Wonderful, sir. Best Games in five cycles! I'm sure our people will be most pleased. Would you like me to rebroadcast-"

Alan tuned him out. He stood alone beside Clu's throne with his fists clenched tight. Helpless. Pointless.

After a while the door opened, and a soft, rhythmic thrum filled the room. Alan turned to watch as Rinzler entered. Gone were the bowed head and the subservient slump of the shoulders. Rinzler stood before his master's throne, his insectile helmet held high in a proud, challenging stare.

Clu answered it with an indulgent smile. "Beautiful, man. Perfect. You've done well... just as I knew you would."

Rinzler's growl grew deeper, lower, louder. For a moment Alan thought he might attack. Then Clu shifted in his throne, putting both feet flat on the floor. He flicked his arms open in a gesture of welcome, palms spread to the ceiling. Rinzler tensed, frozen, and the sound of him slipped into an even bassier register. He moved forward, one foot in front of the other, silent but for the rattle that spilled out of him. When he came to the throne he didn't stop; he crawled up into Clu's lap the same way, moving with slow, deliberate grace. Alan stared as he rolled his hips against Clu's, reaching up to stroke the bright lines that crossed Clu's chest.

"Mmm," Clu muttered. He shifted again, spreading his thighs. Then he cupped Rinzler's ass in both hands, squeezing hard. Rinzler rubbed against him, burying his helmet in the crook of Clu's neck. Clu's nostrils flared, drinking in the scent of him, and Alan wondered at that. Did programs sweat the way humans did, growing damp with exertion? Could Clu smell the tang of victory on his Enforcer's leathers?

At the very least, the way they were rubbing against each other solved the mystery of whether or not they were anatomically correct.

Just then Jarvis took his elbow. "We should go," he said, very quietly. Alan nodded, still too shocked to say anything, and followed him out the door. Just as they reached it, he heard a voice from behind.

"Rinzler, helmet."

Alan turned. The whirring sound Rinzler's helmet made as it vanished was loud in his ears. He caught sight of a shock of brown hair nestled against Clu's shoulder, and a hand -- blood-red along the first two fingers and thumb -- curled around his bicep. Then the door closed, and he saw nothing more.

The sight haunted him all the way back to his station, though he wasn't sure why.

---

Alan opened an editor window without really seeing it. He couldn't stop thinking about what he'd seen, and it was making his mind go places he didn't want it to go. Rinzler, for instance. Clu had said he'd been Rectified, even tortured, yet he didn't act like the mindless killer Alan had taken him for. Alan sensed life in him, in Clu's room as well as in the arena. He'd seen the eager cruelty in the way Rinzler had toyed with him, slicing his shoulder just because he could... and he'd seen pride and possession in the way his hands had moved over Clu, claiming his territory.

Then there was Clu. His behavior wasn't a surprise, not really -- Alan had always been the careful one, and Kevin the one who thought fucking on the boardroom table after-hours was a brilliant idea -- but it bothered him just the same, perhaps because it was so much like Kevin's casual sensuality.

Some sick, dark part of him couldn't help but wonder whether the rest of Clu was like Kevin, too, and he couldn't seem to get it to shut up.

The chat window popped up.

Alpha: So, what'd you think of the Games?
Theta: Our Champion... hottest thing on the Grid!

Alan scowled and closed the window, killing the stream of exclamation points which followed. Perhaps ten minutes later it opened again, flashing red as before.

\\system failure//, it said.

The door opened again, and Clu came out. He was shrugging into his coat as he went. Alan watched as his ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it back into place. Rinzler was right behind him. His helmet turned this way and that, as if seeking the source of the disturbance.

"Report," Clu said.

Jarvis dashed up to him. "Sir! It's the reprisal you expected, but it's, uh..."

"Say it."

"It's a little earlier than we'd expected, and a little... more. They've hit the Theta sector energy plant."

"They what," Clu said. It wasn't a question. He strode over to the window and looked out, as if he could see the problem. Then, having established that he couldn't, he raised his hand and summoned an image of the plant entrance, shimmering translucent blue in mid-air.

Alan could see a tank in there, lying on its side as if a great hand had flipped it over. People were running past it, Discs in hand, into the great maw of the plant.

"They're insane," Clu spat. "Attacking the plants, attacking the system itself... if the plants shut down the whole system will starve. Do they mean to kill us all?"

"I have no idea, my lord," Jarvis said.

Clu gestured angrily at the door. A moment later four helmeted elites came through it. They looked a bit like Rinzler, though taller and larger. They seemed less threatening, too, despite the inhuman look of the cables which stretched from their helmets down to their shoulders.

"We're going," Clu told them. He stripped his coat off and dropped it on the floor, where it lay in a slack puddle of black and gold. "Get ready." Rinzler rumbled approvingly. The fierce grin on Clu's face reminded Alan of Sam, ready to risk his life in another crazy prank. They could have been brothers, the resemblance was so strong.

Then it occurred to Alan that they were brothers, but he shied away from the thought even as it presented itself.

"Sir?" Jarvis asked, in a querulous voice.

Clu rounded on him. "These traitors attacked my system, my energy plants. They will deal with me."

Jarvis said nothing. Alan thought that was probably the wisest course.

"Get the User," Clu said.

"Me?" Jarvis squeaked. Clu glared at him again.

"Yes, you. Now. I'm not leaving a User alone on this ship. Keep him with you, and keep him safe. The others will be fighting, but I know I can trust you to stay out of that." He turned the last bit into an insult, though Jarvis didn't seem to notice. He'd gone two shades paler than usual right after Clu had said now.

"Yes, Your Excellency," he finally managed. He climbed the stairs and pulled Alan out of his seat -- again, that unnatural strength -- and dragged him back down again, ignoring Alan's protests.

"All right," Clu said. They stood together in a semicircle: Clu, Rinzler, and the four Guardsmen, with Jarvis by Alan's side. "Weapons free." The Guards each drew two batons and thrust them together with a fierce flourish. Alan watched as red light poured from each end, forming a double-bladed staff. Rinzler drew his Discs and split them, and Clu took up his own Disc in his left hand. It activated, spitting gold light against every reflective surface.

"I'm going to do some pointer math," he said. Then he looked right at Alan. "Try not to do that thing."

"What thi--" Alan stated to ask. Then the world twisted. He had a sudden un-sensation of not-being, as if he'd been under anesthesia. Then he felt that he was on the ship but also someplace else, a bifurcated being with his essence stretched thin. His vision filled with a shifting wash of color (no, light, the whole world is made of light) and then he was wrenched back into reality.

They were on the street. Programs were shouting. Somewhere a series of dry snaps suggested gunfire.

Alan dropped to his knees, retching with sudden, gut-tearing violence. Nothing came up -- now he was certain that there was nothing to come up, nothing inside him but blue fire, like Razz -- yet he did it anyway, heaving over and over with an esophagus that didn't quite exist.

"That's the thing," Clu said dryly.

Jarvis pulled him to his feet as the nausea subsided. "Come on," he said. "We need to find a place to hide before--"

Just then a large knot of programs came running out of the entrance to the plant. There were ten of them, or twelve, all dressed in ragged, asymmetrical clothes. One man appeared to be wearing three different coats over something that looked like a skirt. Another was shirtless except for his sleeves, which were covered by a complex web of circuits.

Each and every one of them were lit with blue.

"Kill them," Clu said. He strode into battle at the head of his men, with Rinzler by his side, showing neither fear nor hesitation. The opposing group wavered, then quickly re-organized, raising their Discs. They threw them in loose succession, one after the other, creating a wave which tore towards Clu. He and his men moved together in perfect coordination, slotting like puzzle pieces into the spaces between the Discs. As they sailed by Clu shouted, took a short half-jump, and then hurled his own weapon like a discus.

It tore through the air with an audible snarl, with Rinzler's double-discs just behind it. The Guardsmen threw theirs a second later, forming a V that slammed into the enemy with deadly force. Alan watched as one of the blue-lit men shoved another out of the path of Clu's Disc, only to be torn apart by Rinzler's. Two more of them stumbled out of the back row, spraying pixels.

Jarvis grabbed Alan's arm and pulled him along, even as Clu and the others charged. They ran full speed into the enemy, shifting together once more to avoid the ragged phalanx of blue Discs as they came sailing back. Clu's own Disc slapped into his palm just seconds before he bulled into the enemy, arms spread wide to pull them down. Alan saw Rinzler leap up and over him, diving into the pack like a striking hawk.

Then Alan and Jarvis were running for cover.

They skirted the side of the tank, which was blinking in and out in great, shifting pixel-plates. One second Alan could see right through the barrel, and the next it was only half-translucent, like a ghost. The overall effect reminded him of flickering fire, which it might well have been. An alley appeared beyond it, and Jarvis pushed him inside.

It was dark in there. Alan could barely see a sliver of light at the far end. The hex-bricks on either side of him didn't glow the way everything else on the Grid seemed to, either, though their sides were disturbingly regular.

"There," Jarvis told him. "We're safe for now. Stay quiet."

Alan was too busy gasping for breath to speak, though Jarvis nattered on in unconscious defiance of his own order. "I hate this sort of thing. Stand-up fighting. It's not in my programming, I can tell you that. So brutal, so undignified. I'd rather-- shh!"

They both froze. A blue-lit program was poking around beneath the tank outside, muttering as if in thought. He was no more than an arm's length from the end of the alley, and Alan and Jarvis were just a short jog from there. Alan shuddered at a sudden vision in which he turned to throw his Disc, killing them both.

Jarvis laid a hand on Alan's shoulder, drew his Disc, and walked back up the alley in utter silence. Alan held his breath and watched with incredulity as Jarvis crept up behind to the other program, knelt, and wrapped his hand around his chin. He drew the edge of the Disc along his victim's throat in a stroke so smooth it was almost tender, and was back by Alan's side before the pixels stopped falling.

"Like I was saying, it's such an ugly thing," he tutted, replacing his Disc. "I'd rather be interrogating."

Alan just stared at him. Then there was a whirring sound, and he half-turned just in time to see a blue-lit Disc crash into the wall inches from his nose. It whizzed away down the alley, leaving him trembling with adrenaline in its wake.

When he turned back, Jarvis was gone. He stared at the empty mouth of the alley for a half-second, and then another whirr chased him out into the light.

He looked around him as he ran past the tank, but Jarvis had vanished. Clu's group was fighting its way into the plant perhaps fifty yards away from him: he saw Clu and Rinzler in the middle of the scrum. The Guardsmen surrounded them, pushing the enemy inward with their staves. They weren't even fighting, not really; it seemed to Alan that they were there only to ensure that Clu and Rinzler's prey didn't escape.

Alan kept running. The street was wide and brightly-lit, peppered with programs fighting Sentries in twos and threes. There was no place to hide, not that he could see. He wheeled toward the building opposite the plant entrance, unsure of where to go, and ran right into a group of blue-lit programs coming around the corner. Before he could stop he'd collided with one of them, sending them both tumbling.

"What the-- grab him!" one of them cried.

Alan kicked him, hard, and tore away. He ran a few feet -- toward the building, damn -- and spun, tearing the Disc from his back. A voice inside him seemed to cry out in fury.

Fight, Alan-One!

His Disc burst into life. The other programs surrounded him, penning him in. They, too, had their Discs out, though none of them went to throw.

"I saw him with Clu," one of them said.

Then they went to throw. Time seemed to crawl. Alan braced, showing his teeth, and the voice inside him spoke again. He threw himself at the closest program, slashing with his Disc. It made the man's arm tumble away, with his Disc still clutched in dead fingers, but before Alan's victory even registered his enemy spun on his heel. His fist slammed into Alan's face.

Alan stumbled back from the ring of jeering enemies, falling to his knees. He was dead, that much was sure, but his heart was full of fierce satisfaction at having struck back.

I tried, he told the voice, with his last thought. I tried.

Their Discs rumbled like thunder as they came down. Alan shut his eyes, and it took him a long second to open them again: to see Rinzler standing before him, twin Discs raised like daggers. The blue-lit programs shrank back, falling over each other in their terror. Alan heard one of them scream like a baby as Rinzler fell on him, rattling like an engine as he tore him to pieces.

Within thirty seconds only Rinzler stood before him, Discs still upraised. Alan stared at his back, too afraid to say anything, until Clu finally approached.

"We're going in," he said. "Where's Jarvis?"

Alan got to his feet, then shrugged. Clu rolled his eyes, and took another step forward. "Too bad for him, I guess. We--" Clu froze. Rinzler's growl suddenly redoubled. He backed closer to Alan, almost close enough to touch. Then he raised his Discs like a boxer's gloves, squaring off against his master.

"Hey, now," Clu said softly. "Stand down, Rinzler. Stand down."

Rinzler growled even deeper. It sounded like grinding gears or cracked gravel, like something was breaking inside him. He followed Clu's every move with his helmeted gaze.

Clu lifted both hands with slow, careful patience. "Stand down, Rinzler. That's an order."

Rinzler's head shook -- tossed, like that of an animal close to terror. He swiped one Disc in Clu's direction, coming nowhere close to hitting him.

"Rinzler!" Clu roared, all pretense lost. For an instant Rinzler crouched before him, a snake ready to strike. Then he seemed to come to his senses. He stood, inch by inch, shoulders slumping in surrender.

"Good," Clu said. "Good. Now come with me."

---

The inside of the plant was a mess. The entrance was long and dark, the better to keep enemies outside, but the whole length of it was strewn with debris and piles of pixels. Clu and his men (Jarvis had re-appeared outside, without shame or reprimand) picked their way up the hall with care, Discs at the ready.

The hall opened up into a wide, hex-shaped vestibule. The remains of another tank were here, flickering madly. As Alan watched it finally faded away, vanishing like a dying afterimage. Beyond it were a long row of gun-nests set into the floor, much like Alan's own console. Each was armed with a long cannon, lightless and dead; each held nothing more than a tiny nest of red pixels.

All except one. The tip of its barrel still glowed fire-red, as in defiance. A Sentry -- half a Sentry, really -- still clutched at the controls, even though his torso ended a good six inches above the place where his legs should have been. He was balanced on the seat like a broken doll, cocked at a crazy angle by the ragged remains of his own body.

Then Alan noticed the pixels scattered before him: all broken, all blue, ringing his position like an inch-thick carpet. He'd been the last.

He was the last, but he had won.

Clu came forward at a half-run, dropping to his knees before him. He reached out to take his soldier's hand, prying it gently from the controls.

"So brave," Clu muttered. "So. Damned. Brave. We're here now -- you can rest."

The Sentry raised his head from where it lay against the controls. His helmet was crisscrossed with cracks, smashed-in on one side like an eggshell, but still he struggled to look at Clu.

"Leader," he said, and then fell silent.

"That's right," Clu told him. "I'm here."

The Sentry wavered, as if simple exhaustion might still kill him. He squeezed Clu's hand with what was left of his own, and laid his head upon his shoulder.

"Rectification," he whispered, with lips that barely moved.

"No, man. Not for you. Not after all this." Clu unhooked the Sentry's Disc and lifted it before his eyes, as if in benediction. "I'll take your Disc to the Rectifier, to your brothers. You will become the next Sentry, and the next, and the one after that -- your experience will become the template for all the others, forever." Clu laid his hand against his Sentry's forehead. "You'll never be forgotten. I promise you."

The Sentry nodded against Clu's hand, ever so slightly. "Yes," he said, and then Clu tore his own Disc through him, bringing him peace. Alan winced at the sound he made as he came apart, loud against the cathedral silence.

Clu stood, staring down at the Disc in his hands.

"All right," he said at last. "Time to go home."

Chapter 8: Eye of the Tiger

Can a digital being manifest free will? Ah, the age-old question that keeps comp-sci majors up at night. Short answer: no.
-Kevin Flynn, "The Digital Frontier"

Went the distance
Now I'm back on my feet
Just a man and his will to survive...
-Survivor, "Eye of the Tiger"

---

The next few shifts passed without incident. Rinzler came and went more often, driven to and from Clu like the soldier-bee he resembled; Alan supposed he was searching for the plant's attackers. Alan got Tron to compile in the meantime. It felt like a victory even though half the functions were still stubs, empty save for the right function and variable names. He felt sure that a year had passed already, or maybe more, but Clu didn't seem to mind -- he hadn't even asked about Tron since the day he'd discovered Alan's data-blindness. He never seemed to bother his subordinates, to the point where Alan became half-convinced that they couldn't procrastinate... but there was Jarvis at the window, looking out into the perpetual storm, his data-pad forgotten in one hand.

Alan looked down at his console, at the Done. at the bottom of the terminal, and then got up to join him. Jarvis didn't speak as he approached, though he did glance over before returning his gaze to the window. His body language seemed welcoming enough, so Alan leaned his arm against the windowpane -- cold against the pads of his fingers, and a distant chill through his suit -- and looked out across the clouds. Lightning flashed on the other side of the city, bathing every hex of the buildings in blue light. A school of Bits drifted past the window, huddling together against the driving rain. They skirted the edge of the cloud-shoal and then slipped behind the ship, disappearing into the distance.

"Wish it would stop raining for a while," Alan said. Jarvis turned and fixed him with a look of horror. Behind him, the closet Sentry roused and strode forward, lifting his staff.

Alan jerked back, lifting both hands. "I must've said something wrong," he said quickly. "I don't know what it was, but I didn't mean it..."

The Sentry seemed not to have heard. Alan shrank back before him, wedging himself against the window. Then Jarvis raised a hand.

"Hold," he said. The Sentry froze. "Return." As the Sentry turned away, Jarvis spoke again. "You'd better explain that."

Alan paused, thinking. "In my world it only rains once in a while," he said. "Then the sun comes out, and--"

"Sam Flynn?" Jarvis asked.

Alan furrowed his brow. "What?" he asked. He went over what he'd said, but couldn't find the connection.

Then Jarvis gave him a patient smile. "Never mind," he said, in that calming tone reserved for children and seeming madmen. "You're a User; things must be different for you. You never knew what it was like."

"What what was like?"

"Living without the rain," Jarvis said. He turned toward the window again.

"Kevin Flynn made the system, and all the programs in it, but at first it was not perfect. Many of its key functions were incomplete. Resource management was the most important of these, and the most terrible -- energy could be allocated according to need, but only Flynn had the power to free it again. At first we thought nothing of it: the Creator's visits were frequent, and there were few enough of us to share." Jarvis paused, glancing at Alan. "Then things changed. Flynn left us, often for hundreds of cycles at a time. He brought new programs with him whenever he returned, drivers and scripts and even an Administrator, and all of them were hungry for energy. Soon there was less and less to go around, despite all attempts at rationing. Programs began to fight over the remainder, hoarding it like gridbugs; some even fell to cannibalism, devouring pixels for the scant energy they afforded. The rest of us deactivated most of our functions, falling into torpor. Flynn always woke us when he returned, showering the Grid with energy, but when he left it would start all over again."

Jarvis trailed off, shaking his head. Then he went on. "I was just a codifier then, running an data-transfer office for the User. I remember I found a crack between two buildings -- not even an alley, just a clipping error someone had overlooked -- and I used to squeeze myself into it near the end, so I'd be safe from all the others. I'd go there and shut down bit by bit, killing my subroutines until I couldn't even move. Some of the most complex of us died that way, tumbling apart in the dark; I always told myself I'd save my vocal subroutines for last, so I could pray to Flynn to come back quickly. Then one cycle it came to that -- wedged between bricks I couldn't feel, speaking words I couldn't hear. Waiting to die."

He turned and met Alan's eyes, and for the first time Alan noticed that his pupils were hexagonal. Inhumanity should have rendered them devoid of feeling, but they were not: Jarvis' gaze was as open as a book, or a wound, and Alan had to try not to look away.

"Then the sky tore open. I heard it even without ears, felt it in every pixel -- thunder like the end of the world. The rain fell and there was energy in it, energy that flowed into my circuits and gave me life. I ran outside and stared into the Eastern sky, looking for the portal, but there was no light in the sky, and the rain didn't stop." He shook his head. "It never has. Our Administrator went out into the Outlands, to the Sea. He finished the memory management system, even though there was nothing left for himself; how he lived I'll never know."

Jarvis trailed off, and gave Alan a smile. "You should've been there, User. We must've danced in the rain for a quarter-cycle, just because we could." He paused, then added: "And that's why we have the rain, and why Clu is called the Lifebringer."

Alan couldn't hold back a small cough. "How many titles does he have?" he asked.

"Ten."

"Hm, guess that's not too man--"

"In base 32."

Jarvis returned Alan's stare through his visor, and after half a minute Alan still couldn't tell if he was joking.

Just then the door to the Throne Room slid open. Alan turned and looked up the hall, watching as one of the women who'd given him his armor in the Arena stepped out. She caught him looking and gave him a smug, satisfied smile that made him turn and blush, burning with indignation.

He really is just like you, he told the Flynn inside his mind, and imagined the grin he'd get in return.

By the time he turned back the Siren was gone, though the door to the Throne Room was still open. Alan could see Clu there, fully dressed -- was that disappointing, or a relief? -- and pacing before the window.

Jarvis followed his eyes. "You see?" he said. "The Leader has done more for the system than I could ever have imagined. When I think of the power he holds, the majesty... Kevin Flynn was no god at all compared to him. I'm proud to wear the orange."

There was something in Jarvis' voice, some catch or hesitation which made him think that Jarvis was trying to convince himself as well as Alan, but it registered only distantly. Clu was walking back and forth in even, measured steps, and all around him was light. Tiny specks of gold rose from his shoulders, drifting up to the ceiling like fireflies. They gathered there and then vanished, as ephemeral as smoke. Alan took off his visor, rubbed his eyes, and looked again.

The lights were still there, clear as day. Too clear, in fact. Alan stared down at his visor, as if accusing it of stealing his nearsightedness.

"Feed down?" Jarvis asked.

"What?"

"Is your feed down?"

When Alan didn't answer, Jarvis took the visor from him. "Never mind, let me see." He looked down at the glasses for a moment, turning them in his hands, and then looked back up at Alan in surprise.

"You're not running any feeds," he said. "Why are you even wearing this?"

"I, uh, came with it," Alan said.

"You came with it. But not with any feeds."

"Evidently?" Alan said, annoyed with Jarvis' tone. "In my world it just fixed my vision."

"Fixed your... were you wounded? Is that why you're data-blind?"

"Never mind," Alan sighed. Jarvis eyed him for a moment, and then gave him a shrug. He passed his hand over the glasses, once and then twice.

"There," he said. "I added the Ops feed for you, and Standing Orders. You want the Games report?"

Alan shook his head without thinking about it, and took his visor back from Jarvis' offering hand. He put it on, but it was no different from before; it showed him nothing but Jarvis' eager face, and the clouds beyond the window.

Alan turned toward the hall again, watching as Clu moved five steps up and five back. Light still flowed upward from his body, like steam, and Alan was astonished at how well he could make it out. He followed a handful of motes upward with his eyes, up toward the ceiling, and then gave an audible yelp as words appeared before him.

Standing Order 0x41: Enjoy Your Work!, said his right eye.

Delta: Bet you can't beat my quota,, said the left.

Alan looked down, crouching on instinct, and the words vanished; he cast his gaze carefully back up toward the ceiling and they returned.

Standing Order 0x001: Maximize Efficiency.

Theta: You're on! Hope you like half-rations!

Alan marveled at how easy the messages were to read: back home he'd have gone cross-eyed, but here the words seemed to slip into his mind without effort. That made him wonder whether the text was on the glasses or on him, but he quickly decided he'd rather not know.

"Thanks," he said at last. Jarvis made a noise of agreement and turned back to the window. Alan kept his eyes on Clu, watching as he marched back and forth with silent, machine-like precision.

"I see what you mean," he said after a while. "It must be nice to have one of your own kind in charge."

"My own kind?" Jarvis asked. "Surely you're joking. His Excellency is a demi-User!"

"But he's a program..."

"Not the way I am," Jarvis said, with utter finality.

Clu made another circuit across the floor, and another. The window at his side made two of him, one built from nothing but light; Alan watched as a matching pair of gold stripes floated back and forth by his side.

"I wish," Alan began, and then stopped. "Wish I could ask..."

"Why don't you?" Jarvis asked.

Alan gestured toward the Throne Room. "He's busy."

Jarvis arched an eyebrow beneath his visor. "He was busy a couple of millis ago. Now the door's open -- if you want to talk, go talk."

"And have him cut my head off for interrupting him?"

"He hardly ever does that," Jarvis said, by way of dismissal. Alan stood there another minute, still not sure whether the words were sincere. Then he glanced back at Clu, frowned, and walked quickly up the hall. No one stopped him. The Sentry by the door didn't even glance at him as he passed, and Alan felt a little ashamed at that. He'd trapped himself at his own console, never realizing that he was permitted to move.

There was a lesson there, or so Flynn might have said. Alan just scowled at himself and moved on.

As Alan approached him Clu slowed to a stop, facing the window. He tucked his hands behind the small of his back, and this -- along with a Disc-warrior's armor rather than his coat -- gave him a military bearing. Other than that, Clu said and did nothing, yet the questions Alan had meant to ask abandoned him. What are you suddenly seemed petty in the extreme.

Then the silence grew long, and Alan felt compelled to speak.

"What were you doing just now? Thinking?"

"Listening to the system," Clu told him, without turning away from the window. "It sings, y'know. If you're quiet enough you can hear it."

Alan shut his eyes and did his best to listen, but there was no sound; even his own heartbeat was missing-in-action.

"I don't hear it," he said.

"Few do." Clu paused, and then leaned forward, closer to the window. "Beautiful, huh?"

Alan nodded, thinking that Clu meant the city. It was beautiful, a lush carpet of blue light that stretched out in every direction. Recognizers dotted the landscape, each in stately motion. Out beyond, the Outlands painted the city's edges with shadow.

Clu chuckled. "Look closer," he said. "Down there."

Alan followed his finger. He still saw nothing but the city, wide rooftops glowing gently in the rain. Then movement caught his eye: lithe darkness leapt from roof to roof, crowned by a streak of red. Once again the clarity of his own eyesight startled him. The running figure was tiny, but when he squinted he could count each one of the pinpricks of light that marked its wide-flung fingers.

Clu leaned against the window, looking down on his enforcer. "The last known survivor stalks his prey in the night, and he's watching them all with the eye..." he murmured. It took Alan a moment to place the words, and when he did he snorted.

"You don't know who Hitler is, but you know the words to 'Eye of the Tiger'?" he asked.

Clu pushed off from the window, turning away. "I told you, I have all sorts of memories left over from Flynn. Most of them never made sense -- just mixed-up fragments of feelings and data. I deleted those a long time ago, but nobody ever forgets a song." He paused. "Besides, I like this one. 'Don't lose your grip on the dreams of the past. You must fight just to keep them alive...'"

Alan shook his head at that. Clu might see his own mad quest in the words, but to him they were faintly ridiculous; just an echo from a long time ago.

Down below, the streak that was Rinzler dashed across two more buildings, leaping the gap between them with effortless grace. Then he turned, leaving the afterimage of a ninety-degree angle behind, and dove off the edge into open space. Alan gasped, but before he could regain his breath the image of a jet formed around Rinzler's plummeting body, cradling him in light. A moment later it tore out of view, trailing an undulating light-ribbon behind it.

"He'll find them," Clu said. "He knows every sector of this city, every corner. He'll drag Arc back to me, and then..." he shrugged. "Won't be much trouble. Some revolutionary -- he doesn't even have the guts to lead his own men into battle." Clu scowled at that. Alan supposed he'd earned the right, having led a coup of his own.

Alan pointed at the window. "He almost killed you the other day."

Clu whirled, rage written on his face. It faded at the sight of Alan's hand. "Oh, you mean Rinzler? Nah, he was just playing."

"Didn't look like playing to me."

Clu smirked at that. "Trust me. If he'd meant to kill me, one of the two of us would've ended up in pieces all over the floor. He was confused, that's all."

"I don't understand," Alan said. "You said he's been Rectified. How can he defy you? How can he even be confused? Isn't he a mindless slave, like the Sentries?"

"You think a mindless slave could fight the way he does? Besides, the Sentries aren't mindless, either."

"But they're programmed..."

Clu folded his arms with a huff. "You sound just like him. Are all Users like this -- unable to recognize life when it's staring you in the face?"

You sound just like him. Maybe Cal Tech was a big fuckin' deal to Dad, but it's not to me!

Alan shook his head to clear it. "I didn't mean it that way. I just don't understand. One minute he's trying to kill you--" or fuck you, Alan didn't say -- "and the next he's following you around like a loyal dog. Why, if he's already been Rectified?"

Clu looked down at the rooftops again. Rinzler's plane was down there, flying low over the streets like a hawk cruising for a mouse. Alan watched as it rolled twice, then broke off down a different thoroughfare. Maybe Clu was right; nothing in that smooth artistry suggested servitude.

"He was Rectified," Clu said at last. "I did it myself, by hand. But it was a long time ago, and it wasn't... easy." He paused, and then went on. "He's changed since then. They always do."

"How? Code doesn't--"

Clu interrupted him. "Tell me: what determines the output of a program? Is it just the code?"

"Well, no. It's the code, and-- and the input."

"That's right. We like to say 'the data is the execution path'. Our code may make us, but experience makes us what we are. The things we do and the things which are done to us: it's these that make us different, different even from another copy of the same program." When Alan didn't speak, Clu went on. "Rinzler is special, the best thing I ever made. The most perfect. He has to be, because no other program can do what he does, but it makes him dangerous, too. Perfect things are hard to control, hard to predict. They have a way of growing beyond their limits, and always when you're not looking." Clu paused. "Perfection becomes imperfection; controlled imperfection becomes perfection again. That's Rinzler. A paradox."

"Are you saying he's starting to break his programming?"

"I already told you what happens to programs who do that. But programs are capable of change, to a point, and over time change comes to define us as much as our directives do."

Alan thought about that -- as a programmer, not just a man. "So why don't you just Rectify him again?" he asked, despite himself.

"It was awful," Clu said. His expression grew dark. "That's why. It was necessary once -- the security of the system demanded it -- but I won't do it again."

Clu turned toward the window again. His voice was flat and even.

"If he harms the system I'll destroy him. Until then, a Rinzler he'll be."

Alan watched, silently, as Clu stared out the window. He wasn't sure what had triggered the change in Clu's mood, but he knew he must be missing something important, just as before. The idea sparked apprehension inside him, as if he'd opened himself to danger without knowing how or why. The Disc that glowed upon Clu's back seemed to taunt him.

Clu turned, waving a hand toward his throne. "Let me show you something," he said. The throne melted into the floor, leaving behind a single trace of yellow light which whirled round and round where its outline had been. Then Clu raised his hands like a conductor at the head of an orchestra. The light-bar spun faster, growing smaller with each circuit, and then a tall, rectangular lectern rose up out of it. A single bar of gold ran right up the middle. Above that floated a Disc, cherry-red against the black monolith's surface.

"You remember the Sentry from the energy plant?" Clu asked. "This is his Disc. It's almost finished." He moved to touch it, lifting it with reverent hands. Then he balanced it on his palms, so Alan could see it.

"Flynn never gave me the power to create the way he could. I can only repurpose things: programs, objects, the Sea, the Grid itself. This is the closest I can come to creation -- this, right here."

As he spoke, the Disc opened. A dot-matrix image of a Sentry rose up out of it, complete with helmet. Each dot had an odd, angular look which reminded Alan of an old-fashioned binary display. Then he looked closer, and realized that they were binary: a hundred thousand tiny 1s and 0s, the building blocks of digital life.

"It's all here: everything that made this program a hero. Every line of code, every nano of experience. All I have to do is generalize it, distill it until only the essence remains. Then it goes to the Rectifier."

"You're just going to... brainwash them all again?"

"Nah, it's not worth it to integrate the entire army. I'll do some of the elites, and any new Sentries will be based on this pattern; the rest will stay as they are. It's best to have some variety, anyway -- otherwise they're too vulnerable to single exploits." Clu smirked. "And we can't have that."

Alan looked down at the binary-Sentry again. "So this is what you are," he mused. "Just... numbers. Code."

Clu's lips drew together in a tight line. "No more so than you, User."

"I'm not like that."

Clu laughed. "You forget -- I have your Disc, and I've seen Flynn's, too. All you are is a bunch of Cs and Gs and Ts. Whoever wrote that spec ought to be reformatted!"

"I--" Alan started. "That's not..."

"Not the same? Not real?"

Alan swallowed his words, groping for something with meaning. "We're different," he said at last. "We evolved."

"Another of Flynn's pet words," Clu spat. "That means nothing to us. Nothing compared to this." Clu brandished the Disc, and the image of the Sentry shattered, freeing a whirlwind of code. It danced in the air like a flock of tiny, blood-red birds, weaving in and out of itself in perfect synchronicity. It formed the shape of a hexagon, a dodecahedron, a double-helix, as if it meant to mock Alan's staid biological form. Delight warred with insult inside him, until at last he dropped his eyes.

"It's beautiful," he admitted. Then he looked Clu in the eye and added, "Beautiful, but never free. Where's his directive -- which line?"

Clu just looked at him, with a sad sort of pity in his eyes. "You misunderstand me," he said. "The Sentry is his directive. I am my directive. It's a macrocosm, a totality -- that's why a program can't survive its violation. To be what you are, and then what you are not... it's death to us, a death far worse than derezzing."

"You don't... evolve."

"No. We don't. And I'd keep that word to myself, if I were you. If the Sentries hear it you'll wish they hadn't."

"But you do change. With experience, with time..."

Clu gave him a small smile. "All things change with time, Bradley. Don't you know that?"

"I wish I didn't," Alan said, and Clu did not countermand him. He put the Disc back in its place on the lectern instead. It locked into place with a slight bobbing motion, floating between Clu's outstretched hands.

"Only one thing left to do," Clu said. He shut his eyes and breathed slowly out through his nose -- strange, that a computer program should breathe the way Kevin did when he was saying his gaté gaté paragatés -- and a tiny sliver of golden light flowed from his hands down into the Disc. It merged with the Sentry's light and stained it the color of a blood orange, disappearing within.

"All my people have something of me," Clu said, without turning. "It's my promise to them... and I always keep my promises."

"You didn't keep the one to Flynn," Alan muttered. "You betrayed him--"

Clu rounded on him before he could finish. "He betrayed me!" he roared, his voice distorted by rage. Alan stumbled back, but Clu came on, surging forward like a bull maddened by barbs. He drove Alan three feet back to the nearest wall, and then shoved him against it with a snarl. He drew close, close so that Alan could feel his breath, and then spoke again.

"He. Betrayed. Me." He poked Alan in the sternum to emphasize each word, and Alan knew he'd have a neat triangle of bruises there in the morning. "I gave him everything. Everything. I built a world for him and still he didn't want it."

Alan nodded, slowly, carefully. Clu went on.

"I would have followed him forever, User. I wanted to follow him forever. But he turned on me, on our dream. He threw me and my people away. He abandoned us in favor of chaos and disorder!" Clu shook his head hard -- again, like a bull fighting flies -- and then his hand closed on Alan's shoulder. "He betrayed me," he repeated, and his voice held more weariness than anger.

"I'm sorry," Alan said, almost without thinking. Clu jerked as if Alan had hit him, and released him quick.

"Never mind. Just-- just don't say that again." His fists squeezed closed. "I'm not a betrayer."

Alan thought of the one-armed Sentry, falling to pieces on the floor. After a while Clu turned, drew the red Disc from its place in the lectern, and waved Alan forward.

"C'mon," he said, as if his explosion of rage had never happened. "Let's go back."

Alan followed him up the hall, listening as Clu nattered on about the "radical" increase in efficiency and fidelity his new Sentries represented. It was easy enough for him to tune it out; he'd heard it all before.

The Ops Room was just as Alan had left it. Jarvis was still by the window, scrolling through his pad with one finger. All four of the Ops were staring sightlessly ahead, busy at their consoles. Both Sentries were silent, too, but as Alan and Clu passed the nearest one turned ever so slightly, following the red Disc with his eyes. Clu caught him at it and came to a stop, presenting the Disc with a flourish.

"You want this?" he asked. The Sentry's mouth twitched, as if he wanted to answer but was afraid to. "Well? Speak up!"

"Yes, sir," the Sentry finally managed.

"Then you shall have it," he proclaimed, with a sharp glance at Alan. "Only the best for my boys."

The Sentry's mouth turned up in a grin that transformed his entire demeanor -- suddenly he looked very human beneath his helmet, Rectified or not. He thumped his staff against the floor in salute. "Thank you, sir!"

Just then the door opened, and Rinzler entered. He came to stand before Clu, as if waiting for orders.

"No luck, huh?" Clu asked him. Then he shrugged. "No problem. We'll find him." He glanced over at Alan, and then added: "That reminds me. You almost got yourself killed the other day. I want you trained."

"Trained?" Alan said.

"Just the basics. Enough to keep you on your feet for more than a nano, at least."

Alan wasn't sure about that. "Are you going to give me my Disc back?" he asked.

"No," Clu told him. "Use the temp Disc I gave you. It was good enough the other day." He turned to the Sentry. "See to it," he added.

The Sentry bowed and then put his free hand on Alan's arm. "Come with me," he said.

"Wait a minute!" Alan cried. "Let me go! Where are you--"

His words were broken by a growl close-at-hand, and a liquid smashing sound. The Sentry's hand fell away -- literally fell away, crumbling square by square -- and Rinzler's hand replaced it, tight and possessive.

"What the--" Alan started.

"Hey!" Clu cried, turning on his heel. "He was 98th percentile, man! If you're gonna kill Sentries, do it off the ship!"

Rinzler rattled at him in answer, loud and fierce. He yanked Alan in close, holding him like a hostage. Clu glared down at them both. Then his eyes narrowed, though not with the anger Alan had expected. Instead, they filled with an ugly jealousy that was somehow even worse.

"Oh," he said. "I get it. You want to train him, huh?"

Rinzler's helmet shot up. He made a single sound, a little blurt of surprise, and then the sullen growl reasserted itself.

"Fine then," Clu spat. "Go ahead. Teach him to fight. I order you to." Then he smiled, and the cruelty in his voice made Alan shiver. "But be careful -- you wouldn't want to hurt the User."

Rinzler stood there for another second, inscrutable behind his helmet. His red-lit fingers were locked around Alan's wrist so tight it hurt, but Alan was afraid to move. Then the tension broke. Rinzler bowed, still with Alan in his grasp, and then turned and tugged him up the hall.

"Wait!" Alan cried again. Clu didn't turn, didn't even flinch. The door slid shut with a hiss, and then Rinzler was dragging him toward the hatch in the wall, rumbling the whole way.

They went through, and Alan felt the same wrenching sense of displacement as he stumbled out onto the other side. He leaned against the wall for a moment, fighting his stomach. Rinzler's hand moved up to his bicep, squeezing twice; Alan wasn't sure if the gesture was meant to be comforting or threatening. Then he opened his eyes, and saw where he was.

The ship had vanished. In its place was a glass box, just like the ones in the Arena. Alan looked down first, and then sighed with relief as he spotted the floor which lay just beneath the glass. He noticed other differences, too: there were markings on the glass, squares and triangles and circles laid out in odd patterns. They reminded him of the marks on a racquetball court. This box was smaller, too, and closer to square than the others had been.

And, of course, Rinzler was in it with him. His smooth black helmet followed Alan's every move, and the sound he made reverberated from the walls. Alan tried to tug away and was surprised when Rinzler let him go, waving him back toward the wall. Alan obeyed, feeling foolish and afraid. They faced each other there, perhaps twenty feet apart, in silence.

Then Rinzler drew his Disc. He didn't split it in two, but it buzzed just the same, and Alan shrank back against the glass in fear. Rinzler seemed to notice. He lifted his free hand, held it high so Alan could see it, and then slapped the edge of the Disc against his arm. It made a noise like a laundry buzzer, and a shower of sparks spat out. Alan squinched his eyes shut against it, but when Rinzler drew it away his arm was unhurt. Alan watched as Rinzler did it twice more, as if to demonstrate that the Disc was safe.

"OK," he said at last. "I get it. It won't hurt me?"

As if in answer, Rinzler hurled it at him. Alan stumbled, twisting away, but the Disc caught him on the lower back -- on his butt, if he was being honest -- and knocked him down. It stung like fire, and he rolled and swore for a good half minute afterward.

When he looked up Rinzler was there, standing very close. His helmet was cocked to the side, and his shoulders were raised in a picture of puzzlement. It was obvious that Alan had stumped him, and after a second Alan realized why.

Born with a Disc in his hands, Alan thought ruefully. He's never met somebody who couldn't just backflip out of the way.

Alan got to his feet, wiped imaginary dust from his gridsuit, and turned to face Rinzler again. "You're gonna have to start with the basics," he said. "I don't know how to fight."

Rinzler nodded, lifted his hand, and flicked out a slow, well-telegraphed toss that still caught Alan in the sternum, knocking him back on his ass.

"Maybe you could teach me to throw?" Alan coughed, when he'd finally stopped gasping. Rinzler met that idea with silence. He reached down and pulled Alan to his feet, and then raised both hands in a stay there gesture.

"OK?" Alan asked. He watched as Rinzler padded back to his side of the ring, spread his feet in a ready position, then spun to the side with his arms tucked in. He repeated the motion again: one hundred eighty degrees on the right foot, and one hundred eighty on the left, until he was standing a good meter from where he'd started. Then he paused, looking back at Alan.

"You want me to do that?" Alan asked. Silence, again. Alan tried the motion, one foot following the other, suddenly grateful for those swing-dancing lessons Lora had dragged him to. He felt clumsy and slow compared to Rinzler, but after a minute or so he was beginning to pick up speed, spinning his way across the floor.

"Like this?" he asked. Rinzler made a go ahead gesture, so Alan tried it again... and Rinzler whipped the Disc at him just after he'd started. He nearly stumbled as it zipped by, but it did zip by, and as he completed his spin it tore past him on the other side, slapping back into Rinzler's palm.

"Oh," Alan said dumbly. Then Rinzler threw it again, and he fell over.

---

Alan practiced the spin-dodge for what felt like an hour, accumulating bruises and frustration as he went. Try as he might, he couldn't seem to move fast enough unless Rinzler threw the Disc after he started spinning. His reaction time was just too slow. Rinzler's Disc was a missile, and he didn't seem inclined to slow it down for Alan -- perhaps wisely, as Alan doubted that an enemy ever would. The rebels at the energy plant had meant to kill him, to tear him apart, and only Rinzler's interference had stopped them.

Rinzler hurled his Disc again. Alan moved the instant he saw it, dancing sideways across the floor. It still tagged him on the arm as it sizzled past, numbing him below the elbow. He hissed and rubbed at his forearm, glaring across at his opponent. Rinzler folded his arms, waiting for Alan to recover.

"It's not going to work," Alan snapped. "I can't learn this!"

Rinzler merely waited, helmet raised, Disc in hand. He had the patience of a program used to long and lonely waits, and Alan knew he'd never match it.

"All right," he sighed. "Okay. Again."

The Disc shot out over and over, striking his leg, his shoulder, the back of his head. It didn't hurt him, but it hurt; he tried to concentrate on his breathing, the way Kevin had taught him, but his wounded pride kept bleeding through. He felt angry at Rinzler, angry at Clu, and angry at himself for being old and incapable. His rage grew inside of him until he was breathing hard, eyes drawn into slits, focused solely on that damned Disc. It whirled in Rinzler's hand like a comet, trailing fire; it was red and orange inside -- and was that blue? -- and as he watched it seemed to spin slower, yielding before the purity of his concentration.

Then Rinzler's wrist flicked back, and the Disc rushed forward. Time slowed even further, leaving it spinning in air. Alan moved, spinning himself, his boots sliding over the glass. He tucked his arms in the way Rinzler had taught him, hands at his sides, and whirled through the first revolution.

The Disc was still moving. He caught sight of it across the arena, still stuttering in its freeze-frame shuffle, and then he was shifting into the second spin, pulling his right foot over his left. Alan shut his eyes and moved, letting his instincts guide him.

The Disc tore by. He felt it -- it left a thin line of pain behind it as the edge nicked his shoulder -- and then he settled onto the balls of his feet, watching as it sailed back the other way. Rinzler reached up and caught it. Then he looked at Alan across the way, rumbling quietly.

Alan hadn't dodged it. He hadn't. But he almost had, and now he knew he could... if he could concentrate hard enough to recapture that feeling.

Rinzler seemed to agree. He turned, waved a hand at the glass of the wall, and dismissed it, stepping through into a blank hexagon of nothingness. Alan followed. Clu's ship was on the other side, its golden glow almost blinding after the uniform blue of the practice box. Rinzler made no sound or gesture as he walked away, but somehow Alan knew their session was over. He made his way back to his own room, rubbing at his arm along the way.

The door hissed open, and Alan stepped through. Then he froze. Clu was seated on his bench, with his knees open and both boots flat on the floor. He had a tall glass of energy in his left hand; the other was tucked behind his head, in a gesture which was probably meant to be casual but came off as arrogant.

"Hello, User," he said. The door slid shut.

Alan turned and slapped at it, keenly aware of the figure behind him. His every instinct screamed alarm, yet Clu didn't move, didn't strike. He just sat there, watching and waiting. Alan thumped once on the unyielding door and then leaned on it, giving up. It felt cool against his forehead.

"I brought you some energy," Clu purred, as if there'd been no interruption. Alan turned to find him in much the same position, except with his off hand balanced on his knee. His expression was oddly earnest, and Alan wasn't sure why.

"You brought me energy," he repeated.

"Why not? You looked like you could use it." The idea that Clu had watched the match hadn't occurred to Alan, but it was obvious in retrospect. He shifted from foot to foot.

"Uh..." he said, trying to think of something to say. "I thought that only happened once a day."

Clu grinned. "I borrowed against next shift's rations." He stood up, and the room suddenly felt very small. "Here," he said, moving close to Alan. "It's for you."

"Ah, I really don't..." he tried. Clu stepped even closer, lifting his hand as if to touch, and suddenly Alan put it all together: his room, Clu's open, eager expression, the alcohol analogue. He stepped back, flinching.

"Hey, hey," Clu said, gentling him like a startled animal. "I'm not gonna hurt you."

Alan willed himself to be still. "You did before."

He'd expected Clu to get mad at that, but he didn't; he just looked up at Alan and sighed. "Yeah. I know."

Alan was so surprised by that he forgot to step back again. Clu's hand came up, warm against his cheek, gloved fingers nestling against his ear. Alan reached up and rubbed at his shoulder again, as if guarding himself.

"Why?" he asked.

Clu smirked up at him. "Why not?"

"Because..." Alan started, but there weren't any words to fill in the blank. Clu's hand moved to his shoulder, rubbing gently at the place that hurt, soothing it away. The blue glass of energy still shone in his other hand, off to the right. Alan could see tiny bubbles in it, fizzing their way up to the top of the glass. They wavered as Clu stepped closer, wobbled as he pulled Alan against him.

"I'll go if you want me to," Clu muttered, speaking into Alan's shoulder.

Alan took the glass.

"Knew you didn't," Clu said. Alan could feel the shape of his smile against his throat, smug and happy. Then Clu reached up and ran his fingers through Alan's hair. His gloves broke up and vanished with a whisper-soft rattle, leaving his hands and wrists bare. Alan reached around Clu's arm and sipped at the glass in the meantime, sputtering as the energy set his throat ablaze.

"It's the good stuff. Pure source, straight from the springs in the Outlands."

Alan gasped and nodded, and Clu took the opportunity to guide him toward the bench. The energy sloshed all over his hand as he sat down, soaking right through the gridsuit and into his bones. It made the marks on his fingers flash like blue lightning. The bruises he'd picked up in the practice box were already healing, fading into small patches of insistent itch beneath his suit. Clu massaged his shoulders nonetheless, digging his thumbs into the tight spots at the base of his neck. It hurt for an instant, and then the pain faded along with a tension Alan hadn't even been aware of.

It'd been months since anyone had touched him; months, on top of however long he'd been with Clu on the Grid, which was starting to feel like years. He kept losing track of time, and he was busy at Encom, and and and -- a million excuses for what amounted to shutting his life down, bit by bit. Now that spark was back, and it wanted this. He wanted Clu, and was past caring why or how.

He pulled Clu down into a kiss, chuckling inside at the way Clu leaned into it. There was no hesitation, no teasing half-measures: just Clu's mouth against his, and the taste of borrowed energy on his tongue. Clu's hands slid into his hair again, tugging with slow, even pressure. He nipped at the corner of Alan's mouth as he let go. Then the glass was there, bumping against his lips. Alan drank deeply, groaning as the lights on Clu's shoulders seemed to double in intensity.

Clu took the glass and finished it, then tossed it aside. It vanished before it hit the floor, but Alan barely noticed. Clu had taken to nuzzling his neck again, sighing against the spot where the suit met his skin. Then he leaned up, breathing half-chuckled words into Alan's ear.

"That's it, yeah! Let's get connected."

The last of Alan's misgivings vanished at that; he couldn't help but feel safe with one of Kevin's silly pick-up lines ringing in his ears. He reached up and pulled Clu against him, down onto the bench, and a moment later he'd entirely forgotten how narrow and cramped it was.

Notes:

Elsewhere, the screen on Alan's console began to flash:

current_revision = "FlynnOS 1.2.12";
current_rating = PG_13;
if (desired_rating == NC_17) {
goto chapter_09;
} else {
goto chapter_10;
}

Chapter 9: Connected

Notes:

This chapter is an explicit sex scene. Feel free to skip it if you're not interested -- it's entirely optional.

Software is like sex: it's better when it's free.
-Linus Torvalds

---

The next few minutes were a flurry of intent. Wide swathes of Alan's suit melted away beneath Clu's hands, like a pencil drawing beneath an eraser. He pressed his own fingers against Clu's neck in return, frowning in concentration, and managed to derezz a little square spot beneath his ear. He started in on it even before the edges went hexagonal, sucking hard at the bare skin. Clu tasted like musk and salt, like a man did -- like one particular man did -- and Alan groaned against his skin.

This was not Kevin. Not Kevin, not Sam's brother, not a computer program, not any of the things Alan's overthinking mind wanted to make him. Just Clu.

Right about then Just-Clu derezzed the fabric over Alan's crotch and drew his cock out, and Alan stopped thinking. Clu stroked him with a firm, even rhythm, not a beat lost; when Alan's hands dropped onto Clu's shoulders half the suit that covered them disappeared, as if intent had suddenly gotten a whole lot easier. Alan dug his hands in and pulled Clu close, thrusting up into his hand. He was dimly aware that things were moving too fast, but a part of him didn't want to stop. He kissed Clu instead, deep and hard, taking his bottom lip in so he could worry at it with his tongue.

Clu let go of his dick just then, with an abruptness that made him gasp and hump up into thin air, still locked in the kiss. Clu just chuckled into his mouth, leaned back, and then finished dismissing his own outfit down to the knees. It was weird to see Clu's cock bobbing above the pixellated remains, like two ragged half-stockings running down into those heavy boots, yet something about it made Alan's own dick twitch against his thigh. He drank Clu in, admiring him openly. He did look like Kevin, every inch of him, but he was a bit bigger and leaner; the soft spots above his hips were gone, those subtle little handles Alan had loved to squeeze. Alan supposed they must've been imperfections.

He felt a little self-conscious in comparison, but if the intensity of Clu's gaze was anything to go by, maybe he shouldn't have. Clu was looking at him just the same way, studying him carefully. He ran his hands through Alan's hair, smoothing it between his fingers. He drew the visor forth and set it aside, with hands that were nearly reverent. Then he reached out to touch Alan's chest, running his hand over the smooth flesh and the hairs that grew there -- so like his own, yet different in one vital way.

Clu's circuits were still present beneath the suit, brighter than ever. Alan had expected superficial lines, like tattoos or like paint, but these were as essential as veins. They were part of him: each seemed to run in a little channel of flesh, like shallow rivers that crisscrossed his body. Alan reached for the pattern of short sergeant's bars which ran down his chest, then lost his nerve and redirected his fingers to Clu's nipple, pinching gently.

Clu brought him in for another kiss. Alan savored it, spread his hand against Clu's chest, tweaked his nipple again. Then he replaced it with his mouth, sucking gently, spreading his teeth so he could drag them over Clu's flesh. Clu made a small sound of confusion, which Alan mistook for pleasure; Kevin had always had exquisitely sensitive nipples. Then Clu dug his hand into Alan's hair and guided him back up, claiming his mouth again.

"Here," Clu muttered, when they finally came up for breath. "Like this." He moved Alan's hand two inches to the right, over the place where those bright lights ran, and they both hissed out an identical breath.

"Fuck," Alan whispered, but it was lost in the sound of blood rushing in his ears... or was it static? His vision shrank to pinpoint size, and the whole world retreated into the place where his hand was -- where Clu was.

"User," Clu groaned, and it was both an epithet and a description of what was happening to him, circuits burning like liquid gold. Alan felt it too, the way he'd felt Jarvis before. He fell in, into forever, half a million days right down to the bottom.

Eight hours. Everything Clu was, everything mattered to him: it was all there in that first day. Eight hours together with his Maker, eight hours in which he'd been able to believe that Flynn would stay with him forever. Then the portal closed, and the memory broke. Alan rushed back upward again, back through another always. Always busy, always alone; always planning and building and fighting. Alan had just enough time to feel sorrow at that, but Clu met it with puzzlement -- he'd been made for the task, after all, equal to the effort in body and mind.

But not your heart, Alan thought.

In answer, Clu took Alan's hand and put it over his circuits again, where his heart would have been if he'd had one, and kissed him until he felt dizzy. He pressed against him, slotting his hips against Alan's, rubbing his cock against the crease in his thigh.

"Mmph," Clu muttered, moving faster. "More."

Alan reached for him, but Clu slapped his hand away. He gripped Alan's waist instead, pulling him over, guiding him down. They sat facing each other, each in the lap of the other, with Clu's thick cock jutting up between Alan's thighs. Alan slid forward, close as could be, until the tip snugged against the base of his own dick. Clu's hand wrapped around him, warm and strong and more, and he humped into it with a grunt.

"User. Bradley," Clu hissed, his lips close to Alan's. "I wanted you since the first time I saw you. Since the first nano. Wanted to bend you over that console and take you. When Rinzler put his hand on you I just--" His voice devolved into a wordless growl that stuttered with the first strong thrust. Alan groaned, squeezed his thighs, and rode him, grateful beyond words that Clu had dredged this of all things out of Kevin's memories.

All they needed was a headboard; all they had was the bright orange stripe above Clu's head, pulsing in time with Clu's soft, rhythmic grunts.

Alan knew he'd never last, not like this. He wrapped his hand around Clu's and squeezed, hissing at the extra pressure. It helped, a little; he closed his eyes and savored the feel of Clu's hard cock against his own. He let his other hand wander, sliding into Clu's sideburns, pressing at the corner of Clu's mouth. Clu took it in eagerly, and sucked Alan's fingers as if in promise.

"Mmm," Alan managed. "Please..."

"I will," Clu grunted, still moving eagerly beneath him. "Count on it. You have no idea, User..." He trailed off, as if imagining all the things he'd do to Alan, and Alan swore he felt his dick grow a little bigger between his thighs.

"Clu. Clu, I--"

"Yeah. Yeah, come on, yeah--"

Clu pumped his cock again and again: metronome precision, a program's perfect patience. Alan yelled and lost it, bumping up and down against Clu's thighs. He clutched at Clu's shoulders, desperate for leverage as his orgasm shot through him. He made a noise, a hard gasp, and then Clu was moving beneath him, all care abandoned. He took Alan's hips in his hands, and a sliver of fear worked its way through the haze. If Clu forgot his strength again...

He didn't. He just pulled Alan down and tight around him, rutting into him with abandon. Sweat dripped down between them, utterly human, and the bright lines on Clu's thighs burned beneath him, their heat just barely tolerable. Alan clutched him close and buried his head against Clu's shoulder, seeking warmth to match.

"Clu," Alan whispered, and then Clu jerked beneath him, out of control. They rose up, up off the bench and then down, once and twice again. Fresh heat splashed against Alan's belly.

"Tron," Clu gasped, and when Alan turned to look the pupils of his eyes were yellow like flame. Then the color faded, and Clu did, too, sagging back against the wall.

After half a minute Clu finally looked over at Alan. His face was flushed with what might have been shame. Alan laid his hand against Clu's cheek, moving with care.

"Clu," he said, very deliberately. They leaned against each other for a moment, saying nothing, and then Clu drew him down onto the bench and threw an arm over his shoulder. They lay there in the half-darkness for what might have been a minute, breathing together in peace, and then Alan closed his eyes and slipped off to sleep.

Chapter 10: Hofstadter's Law

Summary:

Thanks to winzler for the lovely fanart. Click for a larger version! <3

This is an extra-long chapter, so take a break if need be -- there's another fanart surprise halfway through. Enjoy!

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
-Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

---

When Alan woke, he was alone. He rolled over, and the last wisps of his dream came with him -- morning in LA, tall grey buildings beyond the sheen of the sun on the windshield. Then his eyes snapped open. The room was not cold, but a chill ran through him just the same, a sudden rush of failure and fear.

Clu! He didn't-- Oh, no. No.

He sat up fast, as if it weren't too late already, snatching up his visor from where it had fallen. He rolled his eyes skyward as he re-rezzed his outfit, and his right eye said this:

Standing Order 0x4A: Resist hesitancy! Reject inefficiency! Report abnormality!

Alan jerked his eyes away from the latter word, stung with anger.

Of course, I should've known. What better way to humiliate the User? Just like Hardington...

He stood and walked three paces, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he went. After Kevin had disappeared things had gone bad. Alan had managed to paint a thin veneer of plausible deniability over Kevin's less subtle affections, but he'd spent the next twenty years dodging rumors just the same. First the office faggot, and then, as the years passed, an old fool holding an old torch.

Now this, the one thing he'd feared the most: the walk of shame, right past the whole damned office.

He turned and paced back, each step more forceful than the last.

Fine, he thought, having come at last to the orange stripe upon the door. Clu's mark. Let them see. Let them laugh.

He opened the door and strode out with his head held high, before he could decide otherwise. A moment later he was down the hall and into the Ops Room, glaring down the Sentry... who didn't look at him, not any more than he had the previous night. Alan stopped short at that, glancing around him. All four of the Ops were at work, each with a different screen reflected in his glasses. Clu and Jarvis stood by the window, talking over something on Jarvis' pad. Clu looked up at him and gave him a broad, prideful grin -- hey, how 'bout last night? -- and then went back to looking out the window. Then Jarvis turned and saw Alan, frowned, and pushed past him down the stairs.

Alan watched him go, blinking in confusion. There was something unpleasant in Jarvis' expression, but it was tinged with anger or bitterness rather than the disdain he'd been expecting; it was nothing like the way Hardington had looked at him after the trip to India, disgust mixed with self-satisfied superiority. This was more insecure than that, as if Jarvis was miffed because Alan was better-liked by the boss. He tried to imagine that same look on Mackey's face, or Junior's, but it was beyond him. The very thought seemed as alien as his surroundings.

A smile tugged at the corner of Alan's mouth. The higher-ups had always hinted at how awful it would be for him if Kevin's "secret" were to come out... and the whole time he'd had a secret, something no one would ever have believed.

Alan climbed the stairs and stood before his console, still keenly aware of the atmosphere in the room. No one moved to stop him, so he sat down and entered his username and password, just as before. His terminal took an extra second to come up, and when it did the following appeared at the top in bright orange letters:

--] SYSTEM MESSAGE: The Grid welcomes ALAN-ONE to the Ops group! [--

A second later the message disappeared, leaving Alan at the prompt. He typed groups, and watched as the results appeared:

Users Laser Ops

Alpha: Congrats, User, said the chat window after a while.

Theta: No kidding. Not even Flynn had Ops.

"He didn't?" Alan asked. "I mean... I thought I already did."

Delta: You had Guest access. And don't listen to Theta. Flynn doesn't need group access -- he's the Creator.

"Guest access, huh?" Alan typed, as if thinking aloud. "What changed?"

There was a brief pause.

Guess, said Theta.

Alan's face burned. But the Ops said no more, and as the seconds ticked by Alan realized they weren't going to.

"Your energy," Jarvis said, and the sound of his voice made Alan jump. He hadn't noticed Jarvis standing there, with his tray balanced on one hand. He still looked as if he'd swallowed something sour, but he offered the tray politely enough, and then retreated once Alan began to drink. Alan finished the glass in a single draught, grateful for the warmth it kindled inside him. It wiped away the last of his weariness, leaving him feeling strong and alert in its wake. Then he looked down at the terminal, where Tron's code still sat in an open window, capped by a blinking cursor.

"I read your proposal," Hardington said. "You can't go back downstairs. The board won't allow it."

"What? Why not?"

Hardington snorted. "You have to be joking, Bradley. It was bad enough with Flynn running down there all the time, filling the programmers' heads with nonsense -- now you want to do it, too?"

"It's not about that. It's about my work, about Tron--"

Hardington laughed at that, actually laughed aloud. "Are you saying you'd rather be in a cubicle than a top-floor corner office?"

Alan shook his head. "I didn't go to MIT for an MBA, Mister Hardington. I'm a programmer. I want to work."

"Sure thing -- leave the board. I'll set you up with the best cube in the building. Hell, you can have your old desk back if you want it. I'll have Henderson out of there this afternoon, just say the word."

"I--" Alan looked down. "You know I can't do that."

"Then you can't go," Hardington said. For once his voice was quiet, free of arrogance. "You have to choose, Bradley. Us, or them. You can't have both."

"Why not?" Alan asked, though he knew he'd already lost.

"It's the way things are. Programming and upper management don't mix. And even if they did..." He trailed off, leaving the disaster with Kevin unspoken.

Inside, Alan was thinking about Roy, and about that hacking group he'd talked about starting. He was making plans, and deciding what to do if they failed. Most of all, he was asking himself: how fast can I get Tron's code off the system, and how can I get the disks out of the building without getting caught?

"I understand," he said out loud.

Back in the Ops room, Alan looked down at the code that made Tron what he was -- lines of code he'd come to recognize once more, after two decades of separation. He looked up at Clu, who paid him no mind; he looked at the Ops and the Sentries and even at Jarvis, who showed no sign of his earlier anger. They were busy, each with their own work, and not one of them even glanced at him as he stared round the room.

Nobody cares.

That was Alan's epiphany, and as minor as it was, it shot through him like a lightning-strike. No one here cared if he was old, if he was a User, if he wanted to code. No one cared if he liked men. The only thing that mattered in Clu's kingdom was the work, and that he could do -- and he could do it, better than anyone he'd ever known save one. Save one, save Kevin... and the dual meaning of those words filled his mind until he could think of nothing else.

I can do this, he thought, and he laid his hands on the keyboard and began to bring Tron up to date, the way he'd wanted to back in 1989.

I can.

---

That night Clu came to him again. He spread his long black coat over Alan's bench, and its circuits blazed with a light of their own. Alan felt wrapped up in warmth, yet it never threatened to burn him. The sex was slower and more satisfying the second time, perhaps because they'd both been ready for it, and afterward Alan fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Clu was gone when he woke up.

---

The next day Alan worked, and the next, and all the days afterward. Tron's code progressed steadily, though he still felt as if there was something missing, some hidden spark that would make Tron more than just another program. Some days he seemed right on the verge of understanding it, as if it was buried between the lines that blinked on the screen. He'd stare until the flicker of each screen update slowed and then stopped, until goosebumps covered the flesh on his arms. Then he always lost it again, and retired to his room in frustration.

He spent time on his secret project, too, the one he was keeping from Clu. He put nothing down on disc, not yet, but he worked out where he'd put his exploits: he found Clu's name listed as ADMINISTRATOR within the code, so he resolved to bury his own login name in a hex table, after which an "accidental" buffer overrun would put it where it needed to be. Alan half-expected Clu to find that one -- Roy had always said it was best to do something obvious, and then something a lot less obvious -- so he worked out another false mistake which would clear Tron's threat/friend assessments once in a very long while. Tron's confusion might last long enough for Alan to take over, if he was lucky enough to be present when it happened. If not, Tron's seeming malfunction might create another opportunity to "fix" the problem.

These would have to be enough. He knew he'd never get another chance, not with Clu.

In the meantime he drank energy in the mornings, and then worked until he was tired. Now and then he passed the time with CommandBreak, a hex-capturing game the Ops always had running in the corner of the screen. The pieces were gold, red, and blue, each with their own abilities, and the goal was to spread one's influence over the map without being "neutralized" by the other side's army.

"OK, your turn," Alan typed one morning, after some weeks or months had passed. He'd just moved one of his blue pieces over the tower at the center of the map -- the Ops always made him play blue, for whatever reason -- and now Alpha's red pieces had a chance to counterattack.

You sure? I'll let you take that one back, Alpha said.

Alan took in the board, but he couldn't see any reason to change his move. It seemed to him that his tower piece was safe, and the rest were in good position to make a push toward the bridge at the edge of the hexboard.

Your loss, said Alpha. He moved a squad of red hexes three spaces over. Certain victory in 34 moves, he wrote.

"34?" Alan typed. "No way."

You want to keep playing?, Alpha typed, but Alan had already moved to intercept his squad. They moved back and forth for a while, but neither managed to change the situation. Then Alan decided to break the deadlock, and moved his pieces in the left-hand corner up toward the tower to assist.

There was a pause. Certain victory in five, Alpha typed. Alan looked again, and saw the problem: Alpha could move his own pieces to capture the territory Alan had just left, then move to trap him at the tower.

Wow, you're terrible at this game, Theta added. Can't you look ahead?

"Not 34 moves," Alan muttered aloud. In the window he typed "//I think he cheats//," using the convention for sarcasm the Ops had taught him. There was another pause, and then Theta answered:

Why do you do that, anyway?

"Do what?"

You keep saying "He". Alpha is female.

Alan jerked his head up, staring at each of the Ops. For once, they were looking back at him, and every one of them was identical: they had the same features beneath their glasses, and each was obviously male.

"What do you mean?" he typed. "You're a man, right? And you all look the same."

So? Alpha has the female bit set.

Alan furrowed his brow at that. He wasn't sure what to say.

You Users sure put a lot of stock in appearances, Beta finally put in.

"Sorry," Alan typed. "I didn't mean to offend." The screen blanked, then displayed the high-score screen. CLU had the top three slots, followed by ABLE and then all four of the Ops.

None taken, Alpha said. Not when you're moving me two slots in the standings!

---

Clu came to Alan often, but not every night. He spent most of his nights in the Throne Room with Rinzler, but there were occasional visitors, too: the pale, white-lit woman from the arena, a tall man in a white suit, and even one or two of the Black Guard. Once Clu entertained an entire contingent of orange-lit higher-ups from the city; afterward he watched them go with a smile on his lips.

"You can't get anything done in the city if you don't have friends," he said, looking pointedly over at Alan. "There are programs in charge of everything -- transport, communications, security. Before the coup I spent fifty cycles convincing each and every one of them to follow me over the User." Then he waggled his eyebrows, as if to underscore the sort of "following" they'd done.

Alan gave him a skeptical look. "Sure, but do you really have to...? And with all of them?"

Clu grinned at him. "It's an open system, User. We like to share."

---

Alan was working on Tron's quarantine code one morning, keying a table full of relative threat values into an array, when the sound of fighting made him startle. He was halfway out of his seat before he realized that no one else had reacted. A moment later Rinzler shot out of the hallway, with Clu two steps behind.

Alan watched as Rinzler turned and swiped at Clu with an open hand, dancing back as it struck home. Judging from the way Clu jerked his arm back, the blow would've smashed Alan's face in. Clu just smirked and slapped back. The stripe on his finger brushed the crown of Rinzler's helmet, but no more. As he followed through Rinzler slipped inside his guard, took his bicep in both hands, and pushed, sending him face-first into the wall. The impact made a thwack like a hollow brick dropped on pavement.

Clu spun back around with a bellow. "You did that on purpose, you little shit!" He struck out at Rinzler again, once and then twice. Rinzler cut left beneath the first blow, and countered the next with another quick, knife-like swipe. Clu took the hit, stepped into it, and brought his arms together in a wide, crushing hug. Rinzler writhed like an eel in his grip as Clu bulled him all the way back down the hallway, roaring with laughter.

"There they go again," Jarvis sniffed as they passed out of sight. "Such a bizarre mating ritual." Alan turned and glanced up at him, just in time to catch the look of envy on his face. Then he caught Alan looking, and schooled it into something closer to disdain.

Alan shook his head and plucked his daily glass of energy off the tray. It was sea-green this time, filled with a multitude of tiny bubbles. The color made him think of mint, but the flavor was closer to cinnamon. It made his tongue prickle on the way down, as if he'd been numbed.

Jarvis said something, but Alan was so busy analyzing the flavor that he missed it. Then he glanced up again.

"I said, you have a surplus," Jarvis told him.

"A surplus?"

Jarvis gestured to the glass he held. "If you want to rez anything, let me know."

Alan frowned at that. "I don't get what you mean."

Jarvis rolled his eyes, and snapped the empty glass out of Alan's hand. "I bring you energy every day, don't I? You're entitled to a full glass, but if I brought one I'd spill it all the way down the hall... which would be amusing, admittedly, but I'd rather not be sentenced to death for wasting energy. So I've entered the difference into your account."

Alan blinked. "Like money? I thought Clu said you didn't have that here."

Jarvis shook his head. "It's energy, not a medium of exchange. You can drink it -- plenty of programs use their surplus to get overcharged -- or you can rez something with it, like clothing or a datapad."

"Clothing..." Alan said.

"Clothing," Jarvis repeated dryly. "Half the End of Line Club works double shifts just so they can dress like idiots for the rest of the cycle."

Alan thought on that, glancing down at his gridsuit. He still looked like he'd been dipped in liquid leather. He'd half-forgotten how revealing his outfit was, but the fact of it came crashing back to him.

"Could I get a coat? Something that, um, covers?"

"You can get anything you want, as long as you've got the energy to cover it. Just do it soon. You're almost at max, and after that your energy will return to the general pool. Hoarding is... strongly discouraged in Clu's system."

"Okay. So how do I..."

Jarvis sighed, passed his datapad over, grabbed Alan's pointer finger, and jabbed the latter at the former. "Pick what you want."

Alan jerked back, then looked down at the pad. A display floated just above the surface, each letter picked out in glowing orange. At the top was a slender hexagonal box marked "Clothing: Outerwear: Coats and Jackets". When Alan touched it a dizzying array of boxes appeared, clattering out like toys bursting from an overstuffed box; he spotted "Hats: Asymmetrical", "Fetish Wear: Rubber" and "Underclothes: All Categories" before he jerked his hand away, causing the process to reverse.

"I'll stick with coats," he muttered. In the center of the pad was, indeed, a coat, or more of a jacket: a short, simple piece with a round collar. He touched it with a tentative finger. A set of circuits sizzled across the image, six bright lightning bolts just like his. He jumped, dragged his finger down without meaning to, and then jumped again as the coat grew longer beneath it.

"Oh," he said. He heard what might've been a snigger from Jarvis, resolved to ignore it, and lengthened the coat even further. Soon it resembled the warm brown trenchcoat he'd left in the back seat of his car outside the arcade. The coat in the image had no lapels, no belt, no cuffs, and no double-row of buttons, but the way it draped around the featureless mannequin in the image still brought his favorite to mind.

"I want this one," he said.

Jarvis swept the pad out of his hand. "You want the default. Only... longer."

Alan looked up at him. His voice was even and slow. "That is exactly what I want. Is there a problem?"

"No, no. You don't have the energy for anything elaborate. Suits you better than that patchwork style everyone's wearing this cycle, anyway."

Jarvis pressed something on the pad, but made no move to leave. After a moment Alan asked, "So when do I get it?"

Jarvis just looked at him. "What? It's yours. Rez it whenever you want to."

"But how do I--"

Then Jarvis left. Alan stared after him, jumping half out of his seat in frustration. "Hey!"

No one listened. He tried typing "How do I rez things?" into the chat box, but Theta simply replied with might as well ask: how do I walk?, and Alan couldn't get any of the Ops to elaborate. At last he sighed and got back to work, one array value at a time.

Clu never emerged from the Throne Room that night, nor did Rinzler. At the end of the shift Alan went to his room alone, still stung, and lay staring into the dark for an hour or two before sleep took him.

He dreamt that he'd gone to Sam's place to tell him about the arcade, but he couldn't get Sam to listen. He talked and talked, but all Sam said was the same old thing: Dad's gone, Alan. He's dead. You're the only one who still believes... the only one. In the end Alan threw him the keys, Flynn's keys, but as they spun on Sam's finger Alan knew he wasn't going to go.

Alan, you're acting like I'm going to find him sitting at work, just, 'Hey, kiddo, lost track of time...'

In the dream he had no answer. Sam turned away from him, toward the bay and Encom Tower, and crossed his arms in silence. Alan went back out to the car, put the keys in the ignition, buried his face in his coat, and cried forever.

When he woke he was curled on his bench the same way he'd been in the car, his head lowered in defeat. A long black coat with six wide sunburst-circuits was all crumpled up in his arms, and he had no idea how it had gotten there.

---

It was intent, of course, same as the gridsuits -- the thought came to him the moment he took his first sip of energy. He'd held the coat in his dream, and the feel of it had been enough to make it real.

As a test, he laid the coat down over his console and tried to derezz it, just as he'd done with his own suit. It vanished one pixel at a time, like floor tiles falling into a bottomless pit. Bringing it back took greater effort. He had to visualize the process in reverse, and the areas around the circuits refused to fill in until he envisioned their pattern in his head. Glancing down at his own suit for reference helped, but only some; the lines on the coat were wider and brighter, the same design painted with a broader brush.

When it was finished he turned it over, admiring the soft, strong material, and then stood up and tugged it on. He felt the strangest sensation as the coat flowed through his Disc and the short stud which docked it, leaving both on the outside. Then he spun, grinning at the way the coat moved with him.

---

"Fancy," Clu said when he saw it, and that night they lay tangled together in Alan's new coat.

---

Alan won his first game of CommandBreak some weeks later, trapping Delta's army against the jagged terrain at the edges of the map. As the months stretched into what felt like years, he began to break the programs' strategies. They expected him to create branching decision-trees filled with every possible move, the way they did, so he didn't. Instead he concentrated on novel moves and subtle, drawn-out lines of strategy. The Ops seemed hard put to adapt... but it seemed to him that they did, and faster than he'd expected.

By the time they'd played two thousand games they were roughly equal in skill, with Alan slightly ahead.

Time passed. Jarvis reported more rebel activity: graffiti, thefts, vandalism. To Alan they seemed like minor infractions, but they were imperfections to Clu. He spent hours pacing on the platform outside the ship, gazing out over his domain. The reprisals he ordered grew harsher each time, until at last he ordered an entire sector to be "hexadecimated"; Alan hid a smile at that until Jarvis explained that it meant derezzing every sixteenth citizen, at which point it stopped being funny. When Alan looked out over the city he saw tanks and Sentries on the streets, amidst fewer and fewer points of blue light.

"They won't go out anymore," he said one night, as he and Jarvis sat outside near the edge of the platform.

Jarvis snorted. "They're not stupid."

Alan shook his head. "They're afraid of Clu. Doesn't that bother you?"

"Course not. I'm afraid of Clu." Jarvis shifted, dangling his legs over the edge. "They're only doing what's wise. Once we find the rebels things will go back to normal."

"You really think that? That things will just... 'go back to normal' as soon as you kill the right people?"

Jarvis just looked at him. "Yes. Just like the last time, and the time before that. Do you really think this is the first time anyone has ever written 'fuck Clu' on a wall in over one thousand cycles of rule?"

Alan turned away from him. He spotted two Recognizers hovering down below, almost at street level. They had a small group of programs penned in between their boxy, trap-like legs, and Alan watched as they drew closer and closer together.

"This is... what, then? Ordinary?"

"I wouldn't say that. But it's nothing new, either. Just a bit of unrest." Jarvis kicked his feet out over the world as the Recognizers soared into the sky, hauling their prisoners away.

Alan rubbed his hand over his chin in thought. "Hmm. It's--" Then he froze. Beneath his fingers was a field of stubble, just long enough to be noticeable through the gloves. He turned and looked at himself in the reflective surface of the window, turning his face this way and that.

"What is it?" Jarvis asked.

"I'm growing a beard," Alan answered. "Funny, I didn't think..." Then he added, "Hey, can I rez a razor?"

Jarvis shot him a look. "You just asked about sedition, and now you're asking me for a weapon? I'm sure you know the answer to that one."

"It's not a weapon! It's... it's a tool. For grooming, you know?" When Jarvis didn't answer, he added, "Clu has hair on his chin, right? It's because he's part User, like me. In my world men grow facial hair."

"I know what a beard is. Plenty of programs rez one now and again."

"That's what I'm saying -- we don't rez a beard. It just grows, and if you don't want it you have to shave it off with a razor."

Jarvis paused. "You're saying that that--" he pointed at Alan's face -- "is... some kind of beta-beard? And you want a razor so you can kill it."

"Exactly," Alan said.

"That is the stupidest story I have ever heard. And let me remind you that His Excellency employs me largely in order to listen to guilty programs' stupid stories."

"No, it's--"

"Then prove it," Jarvis snapped. He stood, folded his wrists before him, and fixed Alan with an imperious glare. "If it's true then I'm sure you're more than capable of 'growing' this beard of yours." He walked off, back toward the door that led to the ship. "And I will check the rez logs afterward."

Alan shook his head. "Just when I thought I was getting the hang of this," he sighed. A moment later the ship wheeled -- probably just because Jarvis was peeved, and taking it out on his subordinates -- and turned towards the Outlands, gliding past habitation towers on both sides. Alan turned and watched, catching glimpses of hundreds of programs in their neat, box-like apartments. Then he put his head in his hands, lost in thought.

I thought time stood still in this place, like the clock on my desktop. But maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's just really, really slow. He was sure he'd been on the Grid for at least a year, maybe even a few; a week's worth of growth suggested a time difference so dizzying it made him feel small. Doubt curled in his belly, herald of a nameless, formless fear.

After an hour or so he went back inside, added the first of his exploits to Tron's code, and then went to his room.

---

"Tell me about your world," Clu said one night, while they were together. When Alan started and looked down at him, he scowled and added, "Not like that. Just... what's it like? What's it like to be there?"

"Oh. My world... it's bright," Alan began, startled by how distant his own memories seemed. "Really bright. Even the moon at night is brighter than the System. And it's big, and busy, and full of people... and it's dirty. So much dust." He smiled against Clu's shoulder. "You wouldn't like that part. But all in all, it's-- it's a lot like here. More than I thought it was."

"Mmm," Clu said, as if lost in his words.

"I wish I could show you. Wish I could take you there. Then I could show everyone, make them see..." He trailed off, and after a while Clu raised his head and looked at him, waiting for him to finish. His eyes caught the light of the stripe on the wall. Alan smiled, and reached out to bury his fingers behind his sideburns.

"Wish I could show them the truth about what we've made. It's not just a bunch of apps and spreadsheet programs, not just data. It's more than that... something amazing."

Clu screwed his eyes shut at that, turning away. For a moment Alan thought he'd angered him. Then Clu made a sound in the dark, a Sam-missing-Dad noise that lodged in Alan's heart like a sliver of guilt.

"Hey," Alan said, too mindful of his own recent betrayal. "Hey, I didn't mean..." He began to stroke Clu's back, ever so carefully. As he brushed Clu's circuits he remembered something he hadn't even realized he'd forgotten, words he'd heard on his way down through forever. Words he'd heard after Kevin made Clu. Broken. Flawed. My fault; I programmed you wrong.

Words that cut like broken glass unseen in a familiar bed.

Clu shifted, leaned against him. He wasn't crying. Alan knew he wasn't, because there was no moisture against his shoulder, no tears where tears should be. Alan wasn't sure that Clu could cry. Not even that pained sound escaped him now. He was silent like a machine, like a robot that had never been programmed to weep.

"Oh, Clu. I'm sorry, I--" Anger flared inside him. "It's not true. Not true, you understand? You are amazing, you are..."

He rambled on and on in the dark, saying everything he could think of: words like "wonderful" and "special" and "love you", even though he hadn't thought that last bit through. He knew they weren't healing words, though, knew they weren't fix-it words. He didn't have the power. Only one man could fix this, could ever make things right; only one man reached through the mirror to pull Clu out into the world.

Alan kept talking just the same. He lay in the dark and stroked Clu's hair and said kind, gentle things until his throat ached, and all the while he thought to himself: Kevin, why?

Where are you?

---

Weeks went by, and Alan's login-name substitution was not discovered. He was half-afraid to take the next step, but he knew he must. He was already at risk, already a traitor to Clu. Even if he changed his mind and removed the code, there were always the logs... and Clu was sure to keep logs, if not logs of logs. Alan was trapped, just like any other program in Clu's perfect system.

The only way out was through.

He told himself this as he changed Tron's threat code, adding a line which pulled from a random threat table each time Tron encountered an enemy. He put a seemingly-innocent call to time() right before it, but gave it no argument; that way the number of seconds since the epoch would overwrite the table index about once every two hundred and fifty-six times, filling Tron's thread/friend assessments with nonsense. Alan hoped that would be enough to stop Clu from controlling him. Now if he could only--

He froze. The room was suddenly full of rhythm, a low vibration that could only mean one thing. Rinzler. He'd just come in, a silent shadow beside the Sentries guarding the hall. Alan glanced at him -- casual, casual -- and Rinzler turned at the bottom of the stairs, taking them two at a time. Alan barely suppressed a guilty little jump, turning it into a quick rub of the wrists. Then he looked back down, willing himself to type at a steady, unhurried pace. Rinzler's unseen presence made his lower back crawl with fear. The rumbling grew louder, but still Alan did not look. He was sure his eyes would give him away, sure that Rinzler could smell betrayal on him the way a loyal war-dog might.

At last Rinzler came to stand beside Alan's console, and Alan had to look. He did so evenly, the way he used to stare down Mackey, and was met with an inquisitive head-tilt.

Oh, he thought. Of course. Time to play.

He saved and logged out, heedless of the shaking of his hands, and then followed Rinzler down the stairs.

He'd come a long way in the months since he'd first learned to handle a Disc. He ticked off the things he'd learned to do as the two of them walked to the hatch in the hall: he could throw a Disc, though not nearly as fast as Rinzler, and he'd mastered the effort of will it took to get it to return to his hands. He could dodge an incoming Disc, too -- well enough, at least -- and Rinzler had taught him to roll whenever he fell. Lately Rinzler had been trying to teach him how to fight in close-quarters, which mainly consisted of Alan getting smacked with the practice Disc until his shoulders went numb.

He whistled under his breath as they made their way down to the practice box, hopping from foot to foot as he pulled his Disc. He was looking forward to it.

He emerged out of the darkness of the transfer without stopping; he'd long since gotten used to it. The key was to envision the practice box before he got there, holding it in his mind like the pattern on his coat. Then the transition was smooth, like stepping from one room to another: just a moment's jolt and then out into the blue glass of the box.

The space wasn't empty. A small knot of Sentries were fighting one of the Black Guard nearby. They had the Guardsman penned in, but it wasn't doing them any good -- he (or she? Her torso was sleek enough for it) flowed between them like water, avoiding their disorganized strikes with effortless artistry. Alan watched as she struck two of them down with the light-chain she wielded. The chain whipped back around her body, like a scarf in the hand of a dancer, and then snapped out to dash another Sentry's Disc to the ground. The Sentry followed a moment later, clutching his chest as he rolled in pain.

Out beyond him lay a surprise: Clu was there, squaring off against three Guardsmen. Alan watched as he swiped at them, keeping them back with wide sweeps of his Disc. One of them slipped inside, only to be met by Clu's fist. The Guardsman toppled, and his fellows stepped over him as they moved to give Clu a wider berth.

Rinzler made a small sound at seeing him, a quick blurt of surprise. Clu spotted him, lunged forth, and knocked the two Guardsmen to the ground, grinning as he spread his arms wide. "Rinzler! C'mon over here!"

Rinzler glanced at Alan, just for an instant, a nanosecond's hesitation. Then he turned and made a beeline for Clu. His steps grew faster, then faster still. Clu raised his Disc in challenge, and Rinzler ripped his double-discs free in reply. They spat red-gold light as they whirled in his hands, far from the tame practice versions he'd used with Alan. The slightest touch would be lethal.

He leapt. Clu turned aside, sweeping his Disc out before him. It caught the first of Rinzler's blows and turned it, and then Clu stepped into the second. It tore at the air where his head had been a moment earlier. Rinzler kicked out at him before he could strike, driving him back a step, then followed the blow with a spinning leap that brought both Discs slicing down from above. Clu stepped back with an oath, raising his arm to block. His Disc caught one of Rinzler's, knocking it out of his grip, but the other one kept coming.

It hit him. Alan could have sworn it hit him, but the Disc left no mark as it slid past Clu's forearm. Clu didn't notice. He reached out and snagged Rinzler's arm, stripped his Disc with a wrench of the wrist, and bore him down to the ground even as his own Disc fell from his fingers. They rolled together, trading blows, all finesse forgotten. An elbow crashed into Rinzler's helmet. Clu took a knee to the gut and curled round himself, snarling for the moment it took to recover. Rinzler didn't move to kill him then, and that was how Alan understood they were just sparring... but the bone-jarring punch Clu threw in return made him wonder again.

Just then a shout caught Alan's attention. He glanced back to where the Sentries were, then stopped and stared. The Sentries fought like an entirely different group, though Alan was sure they hadn't been replaced; now they moved in concert, deflecting each move the Guardswoman made onto the next Sentry's Disc or shock-staff. Alan watched as the chain she wielded was caught between two staves, redirected, and caught again upon the edge of a Disc. She yanked her elbow down, sending the Disc clattering away, and finished with a whip-strike that sent half the group to the ground.

A moment later they were gathering again. Alan expected them to jump in at once, but they took up their places just as before. They stood there for a moment, still as statues, and then began to move -- each flourish, each strike the same as the last time. It was like watching the instant replay on the monitor at a tournament. The moment of defeat came once more, but this time when the Guardswoman dropped her shoulder to strike, the Sentry behind her stepped forward and gave her a quick, hard shove.

The chain hit the Sentry who'd been disarmed the first time in the side of the head, opening a wide crack in his helmet, but it didn't matter. His fellows swarmed the Guard and brought her down before she could react. One of them even sat on her, nestling his bare chin in his hands with an air of satisfaction. Then they all stood up again, pulled her to her feet, and reset their formation. It flowed once more into the same moves, the same pattern. Iteration, improvement, enhancement.

She was teaching them, just the way Rinzler had taught Alan. The thought struck him as odd. He was sure they'd been born (or re-born) knowing how to fight with a Disc or a staff, but here was a broader lesson. They were building teamwork through experience, and they were doing it at an astonishing rate.

Alan shook his head at that, and turned back to watch Rinzler and Clu. The two of them were locked in a clinch, struggling on the glass floor like wrestlers. Rinzler bucked again and again beneath his Leader, driving his hips up into Clu's greater weight. He'd torn both arms off Clu's outfit somehow, and was raking his fingers over the circuits he found there in cruel swipes. Gold light sparked and burned, pulsing with each touch as Clu scrabbled to get hold of the hands that tormented him. He caught one, turned it under, and rolled, forcing Rinzler onto his belly. Then he wrapped one knee around Rinzler's legs and pushed, reaching down to run his own hands over the patch of intricate red circuits which winked against pale flesh; bare skin where Rinzler's suit should have been. Rinzler keened, an electric-feedback sound, and...

...and they weren't fighting anymore. Alan felt himself go bright red at the realization, staring as Clu dismissed even more of Rinzler's suit. The circuits beneath it were nothing like Clu's -- Rinzler's lines were thin and delicate, running together in sharp, branching patterns. They burned as red as blood or fire, tending toward orange where Clu's hands lingered, and Alan watched them for another half-minute before it occurred to him that they weren't the only thing Clu was rubbing.

He turned aside, stifling an embarrassed cough. Worse than the time I caught Mackey with that intern was all he could think... that, above a half-formed image of his bench which he failed to suppress. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about him. He turned toward the Sentries, who'd paired off and were trying to hit each other with their staves. The Guardsmen were beyond them, three men and a woman, each seated on the floor with their legs spread before them. They were watching Clu and Rinzler with a quiet, shameless focus, as if they were watching another kind of battle entirely. Alan could almost see the studious look they must've worn behind their helmets. A groan broke the silence, and was met with the slightest nod: yes, this is the way. Here is victory.

Alan sighed, turned, and walked back to the portal to the ship. It yawned pure black within the shimmering blue of the wall, like a blank hex made out of shadow. He didn't know how to use it, not without Rinzler leading the way, but it seemed more likely than restoring order to Clu's madhouse.

If it was mad.

Was it?

He suppressed the thought ruthlessly, reaching out to touch the opaque surface of the portal. It was warm beneath the tips of his fingers, but utterly featureless, and it did not yield when he pressed on it. There was no way to go through, surely, yet he'd gone through it a hundred times... but try as he might he could not remember anything Rinzler had ever done to open it. He always stepped through as if it were any other hatchway, emerging into the hallway by the Throne Room with Alan right behind him.

The hallway. Alan held it in his mind for a moment, thinking on how to get back there, and as he did the surface of the portal gave a little beneath his hand. He jumped and then tried it again, envisioning the hex-pattern etched in the floor, the wide orange stripe on the wall.

The portal opened before him, bit by bit, swallowing his hand like a bowl of black molasses. He almost lost the image of the hall as his wrist slipped through, but terror focused his mind. If he forgot where he was going halfway through the portal might close and take his hand off. Fortunately, the thought of it thumping to the floor in the hallway brought the scene back into focus.

It wasn't just about intent, though, not this time. As he pushed his shoulder through he felt something beneath the intent, something meaningful, something he'd only just brushed in the dark. It was like a number, or like the sense of a number, and the more he felt it the easier it got to pull himself through. He swung his leg forward and in, and the word was 0x43; he pushed the rest of his left side through and felt 4c 55 thumping where his heartbeat should've been, somewhere on the other side.

Again fear tried to take him, and again he pushed it down. He took a great breath -- pointless, did he really need air? -- and shoved his head through, squeezing his eyes shut against the pressure on his lids. He was afraid to open them now, afraid to see. Something from a Stephen King novel popped into his head (longer than you think, Dad!) and he swam forward urgently, with 43 4c 55 31 as his mantra. It was the number for the Throne Ship, the pointer for the Throne Ship, and he had it for a fraction of a second before he stumbled out the other side with a slurp.

He stood in the hallway, blinking in the light. Not a scrap of the tar-stuff within the portal had come along with him, as if his journey had never happened. He felt disturbed enough to wonder whether he was the same Alan Bradley who'd stepped through in the first place.

Then Jarvis wandered by with his pad, shooting him a sidewise look as he went, and Alan decided to go to bed before he went crazy.

---

Alan immersed himself in his work in the weeks that followed, half-forgetting that he'd ever meant to make Tron less than perfect. Before long he'd done all he could do without running the program, but the thought made him nervous: what if there were still bugs within the code? Would Tron live for hours only to crash, dying painfully? Would he rez as some shambling, half-program nightmare?

The Ops set his fears to rest. They showed him how to set Tron's location to the Sea of Simulation, a place where anything could exist just by asking for it, and Theta made him a false-Flynn for his nascent Tron to hunt. Each morning they ran another simulation, and each afternoon Alan spent hours tweaking Tron's code, making him faster and smarter each time.

Still it took cycles upon cycles of simulated time to find Kevin Flynn within the great black mass of the Sea. Alan was afraid to ask how many cycles had passed since he'd come to the Grid, but he knew the answer wasn't 826.53. Even as he whittled Tron's time down into the five-hundreds, he wondered whether his program could ever, ever find the real Flynn.

Not if Flynn didn't want to be found.

He was lining up another simulation one day when Jarvis walked by, stopped, and then circled back, staring hard in Alan's direction. Alan looked up at him, glanced back down, and then gave a startled cry as Jarvis' hand shot out, grabbing him beneath his chin. Jarvis turned Alan's face this way and that in his hand, seemingly oblivious to Alan's panic. Then he flipped up his visor and leaned in for a closer look, all without a word.

"Let me go! What are you--"

"So it is true," Jarvis said at last. "It's true." He dropped his hand, and Alan jerked back into his seat with a growl of frustration.

"Didn't Kevin ever teach you about personal space?"

Jarvis ignored the question. "Knuth's teeth," he muttered. "You really are growing a beard."

Alan ran a hand over his chin, frowning at the feel of his half-inch hairs. He'd always hated the way he looked with facial hair. The thought made him itch for a bottle of shave cream and a running sink.

"Yeah. About that razor..." he began.

"Yes, yes, you'll get one," Jarvis said. "I'll see what I can do. I think I can--"

Then Jarvis froze in mid-word, stock-still like a statue. Alan was looking into his eyes, and they went so glassy and open that it seemed like he could look through them, all the way down to the bottom. It was as if Jarvis heard some distant sound, like a secret transmission. Or a dog-whistle.

"Jarvis?" he asked.

Jarvis didn't answer. Alan moved to get up, concerned for him, but at that moment he came to life. His face contorted with anger, a rage as fierce as Clu's. His hand flew out once more, pinning Alan to his chair like a bug on a display board.

"What have you done?" he hissed. His face was suddenly very close to Alan's. "You stupid fool. I told you to keep your head down in my office!"

Alan struggled, but Jarvis' grip was implacable -- he yanked on the program's thin wrist with both hands and accomplished nothing at all.

"Guards!" Jarvis cried, but when Alan looked beyond him he saw that the Sentries were already moving, converging on his station. He cringed, mind racing, and then his mind tripped over the thing he had done wrong, leaving him shaking in its wake.

When the Sentries dragged him up the hall he let them take him.

Clu was on his throne. The lines on his coat threw shifting yellow reflections against the floor, and his face was hidden by a helmet Alan hadn't seen since the day they'd met. Its blank, gold-crowned darkness filled him with dread.

"Kneel," Clu said, his voice heavy with distortion. Alan didn't move fast enough, so the Sentry behind him swept his staff through the back of his knees. He hit the floor hard, hands outstretched, banging both kneecaps on the floor. The pain registered only distantly, buried far beneath the fear.

"Better," Clu said. Alan could have sworn he heard a touch of amusement in that cold robotic voice. "I know what you've done, Alan Bradley. I know what you've been doing; I always have. You know that now, don't you?"

Alan nodded, but Clu wasn't paying any attention. He went on.

"You have transgressed against us, User. Against all of us. You put your own name where mine should be, and there is no greater crime within this system -- none save the abuse of function prototypes, which you have also committed. If you were a program I would kill you myself... and perhaps I still should."

He paused, staring down at Alan behind his helmet.

"I am Clu. This is my system -- hell, I am this system. You think you can beat me with parlor games?" Alan could hear the smirk in his voice. "Flynn learned otherwise. And you promised to find him. You broke your promise!" Clu's shout boomed out loud, driving Alan's head down.

"But we both know why you did it, don't we?" Clu asked at last. His voice was softer now, and when Alan looked up at him the helmet folded up and back, vanishing behind him. "I knew you'd do it from the first moment we met," Clu said. His expression was even, revealing nothing. "You told me so yourself: it's your directive, your purpose to protect your world." He shifted, leaning forward, hands on his knees. "You see me as a threat to that world, don't you?"

"I... yes," Alan said. "Yes. You hurt me, you hurt Kevin, and you've got an army just waiting for the portal to open. Why shouldn't I fight you?"

Clu smiled. "Because you can't win. And because I'm no threat to your world, though I'm sure you'll never believe it. But the can't-win thing is a biggie, isn't it?"

Alan just stared at him, shocked into silence.

"But you... you still have a choice," Clu went on. "You told me yourself. Users can change. Users can even choose their own directives. That means you can choose me. You can choose us, my people, and the promise you made to help us find our Creator."

"And what if I don't?"

Clu gave a short, soft sigh. Alan could see the weight of the world on his shoulders, and that was answer enough.

"I'm not known for giving second chances," Clu said at last. "Much less thirds." The Sentries in the room shifted, lifting their staves.

Alan shut his eyes. Tron would have fought, he was sure of that... but Tron had died fighting.

"So much killing," he said. "Why? You were good once, before the coup. I know it, I felt you--"

"Don't insult me by pleading to someone who no longer exists," Clu told him. "The program I was before the coup is dead. I killed him. I had to kill him. I had to remake myself in order to save my system, and I did it with no regrets. Now you must do the same... or die. No more games."

Alan looked into Clu's eyes and found no solace there, no sympathy. Nothing but what-must-be, the vision of perfection Kevin had poisoned him with. "All right," Alan said at last. "I'll bring Tron back, for real this time. But you have to keep your promise, too. You told me you wouldn't hurt Kevin, and I'm going to hold you to that."

"Of course," Clu smirked. "Done and done." The smirk broke. "Now get back to work. I'm sure I can trust you to do better... this time."

The Sentries moved back, returning their staves to their sides. Alan got up slowly, mindful of the pain in his knees, and shuffled past them before Clu could call him back. His heart was too full to handle, all anger and hurt and frustration. He should have known better than to let Clu make a fool of him. But even then some small, quiet part of him sighed in relief, for now the lying and sneaking was done; he'd never been good at that, not even when he and Kevin had broken into Encom so many years ago. Now he could work in honesty. Now he could finish Tron.

Tron. A thought struck him, something Clu had said, and it spurred him to run even though his knees screamed with every stride. Better... this time haunted him all the way back to his console, laughed at him as he slid into his seat before the shocked stares of the Ops and the Sentries. He pulled up Tron's files, and for a moment knew only relief: they were still there, still whole.

Then it occurred to him that the files were not the important part.

He opened them with shaking hands, though he knew what he'd see. Nothing, nothing but what had been there when he'd started: files full of stub functions, each with a distinctive slash through the middle. All his work, years worth of work simply gone at Clu's whim.

He stared blankly at the screen, numb with pain. Part of him -- the practical part, the part which had been coding for well over twenty years now -- told him that he'd restore the files quickly this time, because he'd already thought everything out. The rest of him wanted to curl up and die.

His hands were suddenly too heavy to move, so he laid them down on the console. One of them brushed against something which shouldn't have been there: a little packet made of blue material which looked like paper but wasn't, folded in the shape of a hexagon. He opened it with trepidation.

Inside was a razor, with two bright lines of light where the blades should have been. Beneath it was a note on a scrap of transparent plastic, picked out in orange-red letters.

You must be a User, after all.

No one else would have come back.
-Jarvis

---

That night Clu came to him, quiet and intense. Alan was all too familiar with the rage that simmered beneath the surface.

"You voted against my proposal," Kevin said. "Why? Why, man? I thought we were on the same team!"

Alan shook his head. "I'm just trying to keep peace with the board. You had to know it wouldn't pass -- it's crazy to go into India when we haven't even gotten our domestic operations up and running yet. Give it a rest, Kevin. Stop pushing it."

"Stop pushing it?" Kevin repeated. "Stop pushing it? We wouldn't even be here if not for me pushing it."

"Well, that's the truth," Alan chuckled. "I just--"

His words were swallowed by Kevin's mouth, Kevin's hands on his jacket. He ripped it open -- the button went flying somewhere -- and then did the same to Alan's shirt, shoving him up against the wall.

"Fuck you, man," Kevin muttered, in between kisses so fierce they ached. He thrust his hand into Alan's pants and jerked him hard, painfully so, even though he wasn't remotely ready. "We are together or we are nothing, you understand? We have to change the world! We have to!"

Alan kissed him into silence then, unable to bear more. He ran his hands through Kevin's hair, down his back to squeeze his ass -- anything to stop the wild look in his eyes -- and held him until he shoved and growled, unwilling to be caged. At last they leaned against the wall in the hallway and rutted against each other, battering the pain away, and when they were finished they started over.

It was like that again, all over again, and just as before Alan used it to exorcise his own anger. Hate and hurt bled out through every move, every snap of the hips, and before long they were both lost in it, snarling together on Alan's bench. "Mine," Clu snarled into his ear. "He is mine. You, mine," and as Clu came he held Alan tight, one arm wrapped round his shoulder and throat, the other around the crown of his hips. He held him like that until Alan finally dropped off to sleep, as if afraid that Alan would drift away without an anchor.

When Alan woke in the morning Clu was still wrapped around him, warm and heavy as an old wool blanket. When Alan looked up at him he stood, rezzed his gridsuit, and left without a word.

Chapter 11: Flow and Regression

It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.
-Nathaniel S. Borenstein

---

The next morning Alan slept in, unwilling to confront Tron's shattered files. When he got sick of staring at the bright stripe on the wall he turned over and glared at the identical stripe on the door. He wasn't sure how to feel; he was glad and grateful to be alive, but he felt a spark of anger at the punishment he'd had to endure. Both emotions warred inside him until they seemed to bleed into a single ball of frustration, one which blocked Alan's throat and had him swinging his legs off the bench in a sudden, vicious move.

No one paid him any mind as he stomped his way up the stairs. He'd expected reduced privileges and maybe even a Sentry guard, but no one seemed to care. Jarvis barely spared him a glance. And why not? Clu had already made his point. He'd demonstrated that none of it mattered to him, not without obedience: not the Users, not Alan, and not even Tron. Alan had to concede the point, even through his anger -- if Clu had let Alan go he'd have known he had leverage, just like at Encom.

He was beginning to realize that Clu's Grid wasn't much like Encom, after all.

The little packet with Alan's razor in it was still on his console, and the sight of it spurred decision. He unwrapped it, leaned over the reflection of himself which winked up at him from the mirror-finish of the console, and played the twin light-blades over his chin until he felt human again. No need for shaving cream, not here; the razor slid over his skin like a stick of butter, each hair blinking out of existence as it fell. He trimmed his sideburns last of all, square and neat, fully aware of his own procrastination.

Afterward he derezzed the razor the way he'd dismissed his coat, confident in his ability to call it back when needed. His glass of energy had appeared in the meantime -- Jarvis had a talent for getting things done when no one was looking -- and he drank it down sip by sip, noting the thin thread of red bubbles that floated up through it. Red was Clu's color, a rare surprise and a tang of citrus on the tongue. It meant victory, and thus celebration.

Alan snorted at the indelicate reminder.

He began with Tron's threat-detection routines, just as before. The straightforward parts were easy: data-entry, cut-and-paste, filling in stubs with functional code. The psuedo-AI he'd written was another story, but as he dug into it the logic began to come back to him. He'd given Tron a rather naive system of heuristic analysis; things were threats if they looked or acted enough like threats Tron had encountered before. When Alan had first activated him on the Encom 511, Tron had shut down more than a few innocent programs through lack of experience... but that was after he'd quarantined the MCP, so the other programmers had been inclined to forgive as they restored their programs from disk. Each time, Tron had learned. As the years passed there'd been fewer and fewer mistakes, and by 1987 Tron had been the most popular enterprise-level security software on the market. With the added experience he'd gained on the Grid, Alan supposed he was as good as programs got, age or no age -- the temptation to replace the old system with a shiny new Bayesian filter was easy to overcome.

It still took hours even to begin. The sight of so many empty files struck him whenever he moved the window, a fresh wound every time. The odd data-loss pattern which slashed through them seemed to mock him. But what else could he do? When Kevin Flynn told you to do something, you either found a way to make it happen or you were out, and Alan doubted Clu was any different. No, he knew better than to go back and ask Clu for mercy, not when it might be the last thing he ever did. Starting over was a test as well as a punishment, and Alan was determined to pass.

"Do or do not," he muttered, and then opened the window again. First he gave Tron a database to keep identified threats in, and a way to cross-reference their traits. Then he gave him a weighting function which determined how likely traits marked 'threat' or 'innocent' were to cross over to the other side. The room faded, leaving only the screen; then that faded, too, and Alan's fingers flew. He remembered this, remembered the code, but even more he remembered Tron: how proud he'd been when Tron had beaten the MCP, and the mix of wonder and amusement he'd felt at how much Kevin had praised his program afterward. He'd come to love that program, not least because Kevin had given him Alan's own face and voice, and as he worked that same affection seemed to flow from him like water. He wanted Tron to come back, even if Kevin never did. He wanted to see him, wanted to meet him, and the more he wanted the more his thoughts seemed to become pure and fluid, reflected in the code which scrolled down the screen.

Someone put something in the water, he thought distantly, but even in the moment he knew better. Someone had put something in him, and now it was free at last: blue light that leaked from his sleeves all over the keyboard. He could barely see for how bright it was, yet the code seemed to leap into his mind nonetheless, and the keys swirled and danced beneath his fingers. Hidden dialogs blossomed beneath each contact, white and water-blue, shockingly round against the red angles of the console. They pulled him in deeper, offering secrets. He didn't have to type, they whispered; he could just dance with them, fall into the Grid with them the way Kevin had. All would be well, perfect forever... or until the moment when Alan's strength finally failed him, leaving him with nothing left to give. The thought was terrifying and exhilarating all at once, and with it came one last flood of emotion, the Grid's price for his power. It felt like he imagined giving birth must feel like, or bleeding out: one great rush of heart and mind that left him feeling limp and weak in its wake, with fading light leaking from his eyes.

This is it, he thought, staring at the file which blinked finished -- perfect -- before his eyes. This is what Clu wanted. He was right, it's not just typing, it's more than that...

His vision swam. He fell, and the chair caught him. He leaned against it, gasping for air, with his legs splayed open like boards just to keep him upright. His strength was gone, poured straight through the screen; the glass of energy Jarvis had brought him that morning seemed a million miles away, even though it still sat empty by his elbow. He sat there for what seemed like a long time, breathing in and out, marshalling everything he had just to keep himself together.

I could die doing this, he thought, one hundred percent certain of its truth. If I do too much, go too far... this'll kill me if I let it. Just a dried-up corpse, like the Nazi who drank from the grail.

He saw Kevin Flynn in his mind's eye -- Kevin who always looked as if he'd been up for a week straight, no matter how much he slept or how much vacation time he took. The eternally-mussed hair and dark half-circles beneath his friend's eyes took on new and awful meaning, harbingers of doom. There was power here, yes, but nothing safe or secure; nothing men like Alan were ever meant to hold. He thought of palantiri and rings of power, and suppressed a full-body shudder.

But it was for Tron, he told himself. He could do this. He would do this, for Tron and for Kevin...

...and perhaps for the man by the window, the one Kevin had created and left here alone. Alan wasn't quite sure; not yet.

He stood slowly, leaning on both armrests until he got his feet underneath him. Then he turned to go back to his room, and stopped short. One of the Sentries was on bended knee in front of Alan's chair. He held his staff before him in both hands, and the sight of his gloved fingers wrapped around its haft brought forth the image of a medieval knight paying fealty to his lord... or to God.

"What--" Alan started.

Just then Clu turned back from the window. He saw the Sentry, helmet bowed low, and he dropped down the stairs in an instant. "Hey! No worshipping the User!" His hand whipped out to point, and then spread to grab and catch. The Sentry gave an electronic squall of mortal fear as Clu dragged him to his feet.

Clu shook him. "Never worship them! Never! We're better than that!"

The Sentry gave a second, strangled blurt of terror. Then words came out, one by one: "I know, sir. But... they made us."

Alan expected Clu to kill the Sentry, mindless with rage; he deflated instead, growing strangely calm. The Sentry's boots touched the floor again. "Yes," Clu finally admitted. "They made us, and they deserve our gratitude for that. But not our worship, you understand? They have power here, but that doesn't make them gods. I knew Kevin Flynn -- I am Kevin Flynn -- and he's just another being. Like you and me."

The Sentry's helmet turned toward Alan, toward the light that was still leaking out through his collar, and then toward the console. He said nothing, but Alan got the message just the same: not like you and me.

Alan shook his head. "Clu's right. I'm not a god, OK? Really." He gave a rueful smile. "When I was little the other kids used to push me down and take my glasses."

The Sentry paused at that, trying to envision it. "You didn't smite them with your powers?" he ventured.

Alan tried to envision that, and ended up having a laughing fit.

"You see?" Clu said. "He admits it. Not a god." He clapped the Sentry on the shoulder. "We don't need to worship the Users, not anymore. We're our own gods now."

The Sentry raised his fist in salute. "Yes, sir."

"Good," Clu said, and let him go. The Sentry stumbled, perhaps in shock at his continued survival. He straightened again on the instant, offering a second salute... but Clu had already turned away.

"Good," Alan muttered, as soon as he was gone. "I thought he'd hurt you. What's your name?"

"Sentry, Sir."

"No, I mean-- what's your real name?"

There was a pause. "...Sentry?"

Alan rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I meant your name... from before."

The Sentry simply looked at him.

"He doesn't know that anymore," Clu put in, from his place by the window. "Don't bug him about it. We can look it up later, if it matters."

That spark of anger grew bright within Alan again. "You took his name?"

Clu glanced over his shoulder at him, and then strolled back over with deliberate ease. "I did not take his name," he said, low and quiet. "I gave him a new one."

"'Sentry' is not a name!"

Clu snorted. "Please. His old name meant less than nothing -- Flynn pulled all the names at random from a dictionary file. 'Sentry' is a name with purpose. It's his function. What better name for a program?"

Alan's eyes narrowed. "How come you're not called Administrator, then?"

"Have you noticed what everyone calls me? It's not 'Clu'. Besides, maybe I should... it'd cut way down on the number of bad puns around here."

"We honor your name, Sir," the Sentry put in. Clu looked at him as if he'd been forgotten, and then clapped him on the shoulder.

"You see?" he said, meeting Alan's eyes. "No problem." He turned and walked back to the window, as if in dismissal. The Sentry watched him go, and then glanced down at Alan's screen again.

"Do you want to see it?" Alan asked him.

"Yes," the Sentry said, after a long pause in which he was probably trying to decide if he was allowed to answer. "Is it... Tron?" His voice dropped to a hush. "You're Tron's Maker, aren't you?"

Alan wasn't sure what to make of the awe in his voice. "Yes, this is Tron. Or it will be." He winced a bit at his unconscious use of "it", but the Sentry hadn't noticed. He was staring at the screen, at the lines of code which filled the topmost window. Alan could see his eyes behind the smoked glass of his helmet: wide and wonderstruck, so much like his own despite their odd geometry.

"I'd like to meet him," the Sentry said at last. "I think I used to serve with him... you know, before."

"Hey. You're not supposed to remember that, either," Clu called from his place by the window. His tone was oddly warm, as if he found the whole thing amusing. "Now get back to your post."

"Sir!" the Sentry cried. He thumped his staff against the floor, turned back toward the stairs, and became a perfect statue again, gazing out across the room.

Alan sighed. Now that the moment had passed, the weariness he'd felt earlier struck him again; even his arms felt heavy at his sides. He let his eyes slide shut and sat silently for a while in the dark, listening to the soft sounds of work going on all around him. Then his head jerked up in abrupt alertness, and he took in a great gasp of air. He'd nodded off for a little while, or so it seemed, but nothing had changed in the meantime -- Clu still stood by the window, with wisps of data rising from his shoulders. Alan watched them for a minute or two, mesmerized by the way each tiny gold smear rose right through the ceiling. He shut his eyes again, blinked them open, and frowned at the amount of time that seemed to have passed between the two actions.

Then he stood, stretched, and headed back to his room for a long nap.

---

Alan came back again the next day, and the next after that, pouring his heart into the screen. The work took longer than he'd hoped it would, User or not. His power was like a firehose, blasting out of him with little regard for purpose or direction. Some days he sat at his desk for hours, trying in vain to call it forth. Other times it came like lightning, leaving him struggling for a sliver of control. As the weeks and months passed he learned to nudge it, to shape its flow -- there was no aiming it, not really, but the dialogues which rose from the Grid beneath his fingers allowed him to influence its direction, like sluice gates across whitewater. In exchange they took everything, all his strength and vigor. Clu took to feeding him power through his circuits at night, holding him close as he stoked Alan's flame.

One day Jarvis came in while Alan was working. He had a datapad in his hand, and he sketched an odd, avoidant path along the wall, heading in Clu's direction without ever facing him directly. Alan paused and watched him go as he skirted the edges of the Ops' console-pits. For a moment Jarvis wavered, staring forward even as his whole body angled back. Alan thought he might turn and flee, but Clu called out to him before he could move.

"What is it? Report!"

"Uh, my lord," Jarvis began. "It's... er..."

Clu turned away from the window. "I said report. Now."

Jarvis' head snapped up. "Theta sector reports vandalism, sir."

"Vandalism? That's it?"

"It's... major vandalism, sir. Someone wrote... something in fifty-pico letters on the side of Theta Tower."

Clu took a step forward. "'Something' is not a precise descriptor, program. Spit it out."

Jarvis held out the pad, "I think it's best if you see for yourself, sir."

Clu growled, snatching the pad from Jarvis' hand. He looked down at it, and then a shadow seemed to fall upon his face. His fingers tightened, curling together round the edge of the pad. The circuits which ran across his gloves grew arc-bright, flashing white for an instant right before the pad shattered. Its pixels tumbled to the floor, forgotten.

"CLU == MCP," Clu rumbled. Alan could practically hear the double-equals in his voice. "Who wrote this on my tower, in my system? Who dares?"

Jarvis quailed, clutching his hands to his chest in lieu of the pad. "We don't know, my lord. The tag's metadata suggests that Arc's group is responsible, but beyond that..."

"Arc is an imperfection," Clu ground out. "He is a flaw, and his insults will not be tolerated. Find the ones who did this. Find them all, and drag them back to me so I can... correct their behavior."

Jarvis bowed, and somehow managed to move just out of striking range while doing it. "It shall be done, Your Excellency."

"Good," Clu said. "The idea that I am anything like the MCP... I don't know where they come up with this nullshit."

"Well, actually, sir..."

Clu turned and gave him an incredulous look, as if he couldn't decide whether to be more shocked by Jarvis' words or his own fists' failure to smash the man's head off his shoulders. To Alan's surprise, Jarvis pressed on. "There's a rumor in the city to that effect -- that's probably where they got it from."

"A rumor. Why didn't anyone tell me about this?"

"We were... ah, hoping to suppress it without involving you, sir. You are very busy."

"Damn right I am. Busy tending to the system these vandals want to tear down!"

"Quite. We think that Arc may be behind the rumor, too, but the idea seems to have taken off... programs accusing you of hoarding energy, that is."

"Hoarding! Me?" Clu's voice grew high with incredulity. "This is a free system! Everything is accounted for! They can see the data from the plants, can't they?"

Jarvis coughed.

"For fuck's sake, just say it," Clu spat. He cut a hand through the air, and Jarvis jumped.

"Your, er, private initiative, sir. That's never been accounted for in the logs. Without it, the data does look almost exactly like..."

Clu stared at him for a moment. Then he breathed out a word, silent and long, and the shape of it looked a lot like shiiiiiiiiit.

"Not to worry, sir," Jarvis continued. "We'll quash this the same way we did after the Purge. Spread some counter-rumors -- 'ISOs do this, ISOs do that, ISOs eat programs' faces off' -- and it'll all fade away."

Alan's mind caught on part of what Jarvis had said. "Purge?" he asked, from his seat at the top of the stairs. "ISOs?"

Jarvis was still talking. "We'll get some operatives on the streets, get people talking about Arc's involvement in this. He's stolen everything else on the system, so it shouldn't be hard to blame the discrepancy on him and his men..."

Clu scowled at that. "There's no discrepancy. I'm the Administrator -- I have every right to that energy. Nobody complained when I decided to build the Sailers or the lightcycle track!"

"Those were very public projects, sir. Perhaps if people knew what the energy was meant for..." Jarvis suggested, with a sudden eagerness in his eyes.

"It's for whatever I say it's for."

"Of course, sir. Quite right. But the people do love to know what their great Liberator is up to! Just the other micro I heard two of them talking, and..." Jarvis launched into a long, rambling story he'd clearly made up on the spot. Clu took that as his cue to stop listening, not that Alan could blame him. He turned back to the window, looked out for a long moment, and then leaned into it until his forehead rested against the glass.

"I knew it was a bad idea to leave the system," he sighed to himself.

"So then I said, 'Yes! Our Leader works for the good of us all. A perfect system requires a few--'" Then Jarvis' mouth snapped shut as his mind caught up what Clu had said. For a moment he said nothing, staring at the figure of his master silhouetted against the city lights.

"Leave the system?" Jarvis finally squeaked.

Clu paused. Then he said shiiiiiiit again.

"I thought that was just what we were telling the User," Jarvis said. "Are we-- are you really leaving, sir?"

"That was the plan," Clu said. He turned and saw the look on Jarvis' face, and his brow grew low and dark. "What are you staring at?"

"It's just... you promised, sir. You promised you'd never leave us."

Clu flinched at that. "I was going to take you with me! You and Rinzler and the army. We were going to conquer together!"

"Oh," Jarvis said, and for a second Alan thought that was that. "Like the Purge." Again, that word, and the way it was used; something about it set Alan's teeth on edge. "But... but what about the others? What about the system?"

Clu shook his head. "I was going to come back," he said. "After the conquest, once their system was open to ours... I was always going to come back and set them free."

"Free," Jarvis said. "But until then, before then... without you the system would never last. All our people, they'd all be..."

"Enough!" Clu snapped. He turned away, back toward the window, away from Jarvis' eyes. "Get back to work. I don't want to hear this nonsense again."

"I-- yes, sir." Jarvis gave him a quick bow, a good deal shallower than the last, and then backed down the stairs. Alan reached up and tugged on his arm as he walked past.

"Wait. What's this about the Purge?" he asked.

Jarvis shrugged out of his grasp. "Nothing you need to know about, User."

Alan watched him turn away, waiting until just the right moment to give a short, dismissive snort. "So is this system's perfection as much a lie as its freedom of information?"

Jarvis spun on his heel, stung into action. "Our Leader doesn't lie!"

Alan didn't bother to reply. He met Jarvis' eyes beneath his visor instead... and Jarvis flinched first.

"The Purge is our name for the war against the ISOs," he muttered, dropping his gaze. "Our first great victory."

"The ISOs..." Alan repeated. "Kevin mentioned them in his books. Algorithms with minds of their own, the next stage of digital evolution--"

Jarvis lunged forward, hissing. "Shut up! Do you want to get us both killed?"

Alan stared at him. "They were real?"

Just then a shadow dropped over them both, rippling as it stretched over the console. It should have been impossible -- it was impossible, given the soft orange glow that leaked from every surface -- but it swallowed the light just the same. Jarvis cringed, twisting his hands as he cowered before his master.

"Out," Clu growled. "I'll deal with you later."

Jarvis broke and ran, leaving Alan alone in Clu's shadow. He turned and squinted up at the gold lines which burned within it... deep within it, as if the six-sided edges of the shadow had been cast by a larger, more distant object.

"Um," Alan said.

"Come with me," Clu told him, in a voice which held no room for disagreement, and Alan followed.