Tron

06

HE CAME TO on an open, stagelike surface atop an enormous. building, surrounded by a cylinder of light that stretched up into infinity.

When Flynn looked at himself, checking for damage, what remained of his composure nearly fled. He was costumed in strange armor that weighted his shoulders and forearms. Over it, he wore a wraparound half-tunic. He held up his hands for a better look. He was aglow, a being of light.

Wasn’t I always? he gibbered to himself. Incandescent lines, resembling circuitry, ran over his torso and limbs, reminding him of the meridian lines he’d seen on acupuncture charts. He shook his head to try to clear it—not a very helpful gesture—and felt the weight of headgear. The touch of his fingers told him he wore a close-fitting helmet.

He looked around, dazed. Beyond the cylinder of brightness were a number of… men? Manlike beings, anyway; big, husky-looking uglies in uniforms that accentuated their breadth and bulk. They were cowled, faces hidden but for odd devices that reminded Flynn of gas masks.

They had the air of authority, or at least of power. They carried tall staffs that shone with what Flynn regarded as a threatening inner glow, handling them with gestures evocative of menace. Beyond them, Flynn could see the walls, balconies, stages, and towers of an incredible complex, ablaze with colors, brilliant, unmatched by anything he knew. Flynn couldn’t say much for the looks of the goons, but the buildings, though bizarre and unsettling, were arresting, even gorgeous.

There stirred in him a memory of his encounter with the MCP, and the recollection, too, of a computer maxim: “It’s all a problem of software; in hardware, there are no more problems.” As far as software problems go, his mind reeled, I think I just came across a doozy!

He gaped, staring around himself, muttering, “Oh man! This isn’t happening. It only thinks it’s happening!” The Flynnism only partially helped him regain control. Then one of the brawny staff-wielders moved up to face him through the light cylinder, while the rest fanned out around him. The one before him raised his staff and the shimmering column that had surrounded Flynn winked out of existence.

His memory was fragmented; this was far too much to absorb right now. His surroundings cried out for closer inspection, and he was in a dilemma that looked unpleasantly lethal. Several possible explanations for this impossible situation crowded one another for his attention: dream, coma, or hallucination? Something somebody had slipped into a drink? Except, he couldn’t recall having had one recently. The last thing he could remember was being at ENCOM…

Dream or no dream, Flynn didn’t like the looks of those staffs. He shifted his weight, readied his hands, and watched them warily. The darkness of the cowls made it difficult not to be intimidated. One of those apes, unarmed, would be a pretty tough project, he judged; three or four of them with those neon quarterstaffs—bad news.

Flynn cocked his fists, despite a determination to employ all diplomacy. Nothing left but grace under fire, he sighed to himself.

One of the gorillas stepped forward without warning and bashed the disoriented Flynn in the arm with his staff. There was a dazzle of light, and agonizing pain rocketed from Flynn’s fingertips to his shoulder. He fell back with a yelp, and knew that he was defenseless against such a weapon.

Those jokers were plainly not present for choir practice.

“Hey! Take it easy!” grated Flynn as they closed in around him. Maybe he really was lying in intensive care someplace with a concussion, but he didn’t feel like dreaming about having his head handed to him. Best keep it light, he philosophized.

“Look, if this is about those parking tickets, I can explain everything!” But the Memory Guards of the Master Control Program, herding him toward the cells of the Training Complex, gave no indication of having heard him.

High over the Game Grid drifted the long, gleaming shape of Sark’s Carrier, impregnable and vigilant and menacing, tacit threat and reminder. Recognizers came to and departed from its hangar bays without pause. Its free-standing antennae rotated in their fixed positions around its bridge, and its crew maintained constant surveillance. It was more than a vessel; it was the manifestation of Sark’s—the MCP’s—rule.

Sark himself, merciless Red Champion, stood within his podium gripping his energy handles, legs encased in the power outlets, consuming the energy allotted him by Master Control.

A crackle of static sounded briefly, then an image formed before him. It scintillated, rippling like disturbed water, then resolved into a visage Sark knew well, one that filled him with awe and carefully repressed dread.

The MCP’s ghostly image hung before him, a burnished cylinder of lustrous metal. Its face rippled in multichrome pastels. Sark heard its voice pronounced loudly, making the bulkheads vibrate.

“SARK, ES - 1117821. Open communication.”

Sark’s casque-helmeted head rose. “Yes, MCP,” he responded, a little hoarsely, withdrawing his attention from the power intake. He squared his armored shoulders, waiting like a faithful, ferocious dog for the orders, the approval or punishment, that his master might care to mete out.

“I’ve a challenge for you, Sark.” The MCP’s voice was like death itself. “A new recruit. He’s a tough case, but I want him treated in the usual manner. Train him for the games, let him hope for a while, and blow him away.”

Sark relaxed the merest bit. Easy enough assignment; he’d done precisely the same to so many programs that he’d lost track of them. And Sark had, with the orchestration of most of the MCP’s resources, captured Tron. Maybe he was about to meet one of those Department of Defense programs; Sark relished the prospect of a contest with a truly antagonistic program. And that program would, indeed, eventually be destroyed.

A feral smile curved his lips. “You’ve got it. I’ve been hoping you’d send me somebody with a little moxie. What kind of program is he?”

“He’s not any kind of program, Sark,” the MCP answered with no flicker of emotion. “He’s a User.”

Sark nearly lost hold of the energy grips, dumbfounded. “A User?” he echoed, lowering his voice unconsciously in some remnant of worship, a shadow of reverence.

“That’s right,” Master Control answered with what sounded like an element of irritation at Sark’s reaction. “He pushed me, in the Other World. When somebody pushes me, I push back. So I brought him down here.”

Sark felt its scrutiny upon him. “What’s the matter, Sark?” it asked, as he coped with the concept of deicide. “You look nervous.”

Sark licked his lips. “Well, I—it’s just—I don’t know. A User. I mean…” He who had persecuted and destroyed so many programs who’d still believed in their Users, who’d been given by Master Control the task of eradicating that loyalty, could not now deny to himself an awe of the Users. He himself had never been able to expunge it, and suspected, though he would never have voiced it, that he shared it with the MCP. “Users wrote us. A User even wrote you.”

“NO ONE USER WROTE ME!” the MCP stormed, and the Carrier quaked. Sark shrank from that anger. “I’m worth millions of their man-years!” It was a warning so plain that Sark dared not pursue that subject any further.

“But, what if I can’t—” he labored.

“You’d rather take your chances with me?” Somewhere, the MCP altered the flow of energy. “You want me to slow down your power cycles for you?”

Sark the Champion felt the influx of power ebb, felt his own energy level plummet alarmingly. The eddy-currents of energy around the podium’s sockets faded as the power fled from him. He slumped weakly, clutching the handgrips for support. Within him a terrible emptiness rose, debilitating and not to be defied, reminder of who was servant, and who master.

“Wait,” he gasped. “I need that.” Humbled, deprived of the strength Master Control allowed him, he saw that total obedience or total obliteration were his only options. Without Master Control he was not Champion, nor Command Program, nor even Warrior. The MCP misered its power jealously, and would accept the service only of those who obeyed it without question and without hesitation. And for Sark, existence was pointless without the high rank conferred upon him by Master Control. He’d drunk too deeply of power.

“Then, pull yourself together,” Master Control ordered with nothing but severity in its tone. “Get this clown trained. I want him in the games until he dies playing. Acknowledge.”

“Yes,” Sark managed, clinging to his podium, chastised. “Acknowledged, Master Control.”

The MCP watched him for another moment, and the Red Champion could feel its scorn. It was reassured once more that it, and it alone, held sway in the System.

And soon it would be so in that Other World; the Users would learn! “End of line,” Master Control announced, and its projection disappeared.

Energy surged; Sark felt it rush through him, revitalizing, filling every part of him with strength and life. And still it came, swelling him until it seemed to radiate from him, lifting and exalting him. Sark threw back his helmeted head and drank it in, glorying in it. If bending knees to the MCP was the price of such indescribable power, he told himself as he rode the exultation, then it was a bargain with which he was content.

Flynn was being escorted down a long corridor, past door after door. The nearness of the doors to one another suggested very small rooms; he had a stomach-wrenching feeling that he knew what they were.

The two guards in front of him stopped by one of the doors and it opened to some mechanism or command he couldn’t detect. Flynn hung back, hoping against hope that the cramped space within wasn’t meant for him. One of the guards said, “Video Game Unit #18. In here, program.”

Flynn’s temper got the better of him. He reached for the guard, snarling, “Who you callin’ ‘program,’ program?” But the guard grabbed Kevin Flynn with overwhelming strength while his fellow brandished a staff threateningly, and hurled Flynn into the cell.

The universe whirled around him while Flynn fought to recover physical and mental balance. The notion of simply ignoring it all, of trying to wake up or wait things out, wouldn’t do. He’d felt pain when the guards had roughed him up, and time seemed to be passing at a realistic rate; events would continue, he was convinced, whether he wanted them to or not.

He leaned against the door, looking down at his hands. They glowed and pulsed. He was willing to bet that he was no longer seeing in the 3700-to-7000-angstrom range, and wasn’t particularly eager to think about the rest of his bodily functions. A hardware phrase occurred to him: “User-friendly.” I bet this joint isn’t, he thought. He looked up from his hands, eyes wide. A tentative conclusion came to him, awful in its implications.

He forced himself to confront the things he’d heard and seen and felt, without self-deception. If reality was the product of mind—if awareness shaped existence—then, might not other intelligences fashion other worlds? Reality’s a matter of opinion, Flynn’s mind pounded at him. We’re all wave fronts on this bus. He recalled Lora and Gibb’s experiment, and had a feeling he knew what had happened. He thrust those preoccupations aside, freeing his mind to deal with problems at hand.

Flynn turned and addressed himself to the fiendishly designed cell, and found no relief. It was cramped, allowing no comfort and providing little room, and had a transparent ceiling, undoubtedly for the convenience of guards. He’d never been fond of single-room occupancy.

Flynn’s attention was drawn by low voices; he spied an opening to an adjoining cell, wherein a figure leaned in conversation with the prisoner in the next cell along. He couldn’t make them out too clearly except to note that they shared his luminescent appearance.

Ram glancing over his shoulder at Flynn, murmured to Tron, “New guy,” and sized him up.

Tron shook his head in regret. “Another free program off the line.” How many more, he wondered, would it take to put the entire System under the MCP and stamp out faith in the Users?

Ram sighed. “You really think the Users are still there?” He had put a note of doubt in it that alarmed Tron; if Ram wavered in his loyalty, who might not?

Tron was drained by constant rounds of competition in the arena and the confinement, which permitted no real rest. And he had thought, often, of the one he missed most, of she who meant everything to him. Not freedom, not survival, meant more than seeing Yori once more. At times, it seemed, his faith had come near failure. What was the point of it, what did it matter? MCP promised to take over the System without any real opposition but Tron’s. Why hadn’t the Users intervened? But then, Tron knew, they had—he was their instrument. But the cause, to set things right and restore order and purpose and safety to the System, seemed lost. Instead, there would be the dictatorship of Master Control Program and the savage spectacles of the beast Sark.

But, as always, another thought surfaced. Why would Sark and the MCP be so determined to stamp out loyalty to the Users if that loyalty didn’t threaten them? The Command Program and the MCP were the fanatics, not the User-Believers; their brutal efforts to suppress belief in the Users only served to confirm convictions vital to Tron. As they increased their oppression, so they reinforced his faith.

“They’d better be,” he answered Ram, “I don’t want to bust out of here and find nothing but a lot of cold circuits waiting for me.” And Yori! his mind resounded, the most elemental of prayers.

Ram smiled at Tron’s comment; wordlessly, they sealed the agreement that there would be no bowing to Sark and Master Control, and that there would be a future.

Flynn, at his window, strained to make out his fellow prisoners more clearly. “Hey!” They turned to him in the dimness. He made to reach through the opening. “Who are you guys?”

As his hand came into the area framed by the opening, it was stopped by something he couldn’t see. Discharges leaped outward from his fingers; a bolt of pain/heat/cold coursed up his arm. He snatched his hand back in shock, jaw dropping. “Youch!”

One of the figures turned, and Flynn could see him more clearly. “You want to watch those force fields,” Ram said. Flynn couldn’t have been more in agreement.

He came over to Flynn, a figure of radiant colors, gray predominating, limned with the circuitlike lines, resembling some celestial being. He wore armor and helmet, as did Flynn, but not the half-tunic, half-sash overgarment. “You’ll have plenty of chances to get hurt; don’t worry about that.”

Flynn chose to ignore the remark. But the implications of it made him feel as if the floor had just swung away from beneath him. He attempted to get a handle on things in Flynnish fashion: “Look, just so I can tell my friends what this dream was about—okay?—where am I?”

Ram regarded him strangely; he’d never seen a program quite like this stranger, never heard one speak this way. Perhaps he’s glitched, decided Ram, who replied, “You’re a… guest, of the Master Control Program.”

Without a paddle, Flynn’s mind said in no jocular manner. His sense of the absurd had long since given up the effort to convince him that it was time to wake up. But mention of the MCP summoned memories of himself at the console in the basement of ENCOM. He reached the inescapable conclusion that his situation was neither dream nor hallucination.

“They’re going to make you play videogames,” Ram finished. I’m putting you on the Game Grid, the MCP had promised Flynn, he remembered now.

He was relieved by Ram’s words, though. “Well, great! That’s no sweat. I play videogames better than anybody.” He speculated on what the local record for Space Paranoids might be. Ram looked at him skeptically, but Flynn barely noticed. This whole loony setup might have its appeal. If the locals—whoever and whatever they were—set store by the ability to play videogames, Flynn figured, he might have himself a political career.

Further conversation was prevented by a heavy pounding noise, as the door to Flynn’s cell opened. He looked up, to the origin of the pounding. A guard stood on the sheet of transparent material that was the ceiling of his cell; the ferrule of a staff struck against it once more. The guard moved on, pausing over Ram’s cell, and Tron’s, to pound on them.

Flynn, seeing no point in resisting, made his way into the corridor. Guards pulled other captives from their confinement up and down the row. He was shoved off in the desired direction but stopped suddenly, whirling on the cowled guard. “There’s been a mistake! I gotta see the guy in charge!” If they thought they had to keep him in a cage just to get him to play videogames, he’d straighten that out fast. Bring on Battle Zone!

The hulking guard, and another, marched Flynn on his way once more. “You will,” promised the one whom Flynn had addressed. Flynn liked the tone of it not in the least.

He was marched in a column of prisoners like himself, all wearing the half-tunic, onto a broad, terrace-like area. He saw that he was in a complex reaching down and down, reminding him of an enormous strip-mining operation. Flynn gazed down into a circular pit, far below. The diameter of the place, he calculated, was a mile or more. On this scale, he reminded himself, whatever that might mean. It was sub-divided into areas modified for different uses, the floor of each graphed in squares of varying sizes. The arenas’ walls were sheer, but above them rose level after level of expansive balconies, terraces, stages, and vantage points. Tiny figures moved about on many of them, allowing Flynn to gauge its size. He could think of no other structure so huge; it was as if the Grand Canyon had been executed in strange contours composed of geometric shapes and strips and patches of light. His astonishment almost made him stumble; he shuffled to avoid a collision with the program behind him.

The file of prisoners marched past another group of programs, armored and gleaming in red, who wore disks affixed to their backs. None of them wore tunics, leading Flynn to believe that the garment was some sort of badge for neophytes. The red looked mean and contemptuous; as Flynn and the rest passed by, they called out insults and provocations. Flynn gave them a hard look and hoped he’d get to shoulder up to a Tail Gunner against one of them with the others looking on. Under the circumstances, it was all he could. He trudged behind the others out into an open area, and stopped to the guard’s command.

He’d seen no one who appeared to rank above the guards, and knew by now that talking to them was useless. But here, perhaps, he’d have a chance to get to someone with real pull and explain things. A guard stood on a rostrum overlooking the line of captives.

He exhorted them with an uplifted staff. “Look operative, you guys! Command Program Sark will explain the training procedures.”

Flynn peered around expectantly, waiting for the opportunity to buttonhole somebody and get a few words in.

A shadow fell over the complex. For the first time, Flynn looked up. Again, his mouth hung open.

The sky of this strangest of all worlds was a fantastic vision, filled with brightness, and remarkable shapes and forms in unfathomable patterns, which reminded him somehow of clouds but resembled them little. He paid them scant attention though, when he saw what had blocked out the light. The craft was colossal, larger than the largest nuclear supercarrier, menacing in a cold, impervious way. Smaller shapes—though they would be large from close-up, Flynn saw—entered and left the vessel endlessly, swooping on missions or patrols.

Squinting for a better look, he gave a start of surprise. Recognizers! But not the tiny computer simulations he himself had conceived; those monsters were the size of the Arc de Triomphe! Flynn considered, with a certain tightness in his throat, what mention of ‘games’ might truly imply.

Sark glared down disdainfully from on high, at the specks who were his new conscripts, and spoke, his words amplified so that the entire Game Grid heard him. “Greetings.” Sarcasm dripped from the word. “The Master Control Program had chosen you to serve your System on the Game Grid.”

The phrase now filled Flynn with apprehension as he considered the arena below. The chilling voice boomed from the sky again. “Those of you who continue to profess a belief in the Users will receive the standard substandard training. This will result in your eventual elimination.”

The voice was without compassion—indeed, its owner plainly enjoyed the opportunity to toy with helpless victims. What have I gotten myself into? Flynn exclaimed to himself. Here were programs, their intelligence structuring a palpable World, and a power faction attempting to cut off all relationships with the Users, the better to rule. They’d hit on a pretty effective method, was Flynn’s opinion. He mentally kicked himself for strolling into ENCOM so casually and putting himself right where the MCP could tackle him on its own ground.

That diabolical voice spoke on. “Those of you who renounce this superstitious and hysterical belief will be eligible to join the Warrior Elite of the MCP.”

Two of the Reds standing behind the group laughed and nudged one another. The hard looks they gave the conscripts were clear enough; they had no preferences, and looked forward to combat or alliance with equal enthusiasm. They seemed bigger, more powerful than the prisoners, and Flynn assumed that to be by the MCP’s design. And Flynn knew, too, that he would never be one of them; the option offered the others did not apply to him. The MCP was out for revenge.

The programs around him were muttering to one another about Sark’s last remark. How could they yield their belief in the Users, they asked each other. How could they proclaim that they, and the System, were without any purpose or meaning but the MCP’s? And that only left one alternative, in Sark’s cold equation.

Flynn, gazing up at the enormous aircraft, forgot, for a moment, to be afraid. Even here, he thought, the old, old evil: surrender your beliefs or surrender your life.

Sark leaned forward on the bridge of his Carrier, to study the insects below. It was a comfort to him that the captive User was indistinguishable from the others. He thrust aside doubts, and thoughts of colossal, shining beings who’d shaped and directed the System in times past. The User was, after all, no great issue.

He finished, “You will each receive an identity disk. Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disk. If you lose your disk or fail to follow commands, you will be subject to immediate de-resolution. That is all.”

Now all the conscripts were directed to look down into the arena. Flynn saw that, far below, a game—a duel, he corrected himself—was about to begin. Arrayed against a lone conscript were four of the Red Warrior Elite. Sparkling, spinning circles of light flashed and flew between them, and Flynn, recalling Sark’s mention of disks, watched in fascination.

Not that it’s likely to do you much good, he thought regarding the unfortunate program who fought alone, but I’m for you. Believe what you want to believe! Get ’em!