by Brian Daley
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 af
ter 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!
TRON HELD HIS disk lightly, his weight forward on the balls of his feet, and met the gaze of his enemies.
They tried their best to show him nothing but ferocity, but none of them could conceal a degree of doubt. This was no hapless accounting program they faced; the very fact that there were four of them against him was proof of that.
And, they all knew the reputation of Tron, the independent, the User-Believer. By recanting his belief, Tron could have earned himself high rank, perhaps become the equal of Sark, or even supplanted him. In the minds of the four Reds, Tron knew by now, would be the same thought: if they’d had his prowess, they wouldn’t have wasted it defending their beliefs. That was a vast irony to him; they would never understand how his convictions and his abilities were intertwined.
Two Warriors went into casting positions. “Go,” one called. From that crouch they released, with snapping, side-on casts. The disks came, one low, one high. Tron went into a defensive posture, his own disk held before him in both hands, vertically, one leg set behind him now for balance. Calculating angles and speeds, he saw nothing else, thought of nothing else, but the weapons racing toward him.
He deflected the first with a crash of discharging energy, and it wobbled away, spent. But he had no time to watch it, and lowered his disk instantly to deflect the second. That one, too, rebounded from Tron’s disk. He launched a quick counterattack, throwing at one of the now unarmed Reds. His disk caught the Red, opening a wound in him, with a corona burst. The wound roiled with escaping energy, showing signs of de-rezzing.
Flynn looked on, amazed; it was a far cry from his arcade. And that User-Believer! Flynn could only admire the sure, quick movements, the complete control and unthinking agility.
Another conscript, seeing his expression, indicated the lone combatant. “See that Warrior? One hundred and ten wins, no losses.”
Flynn nodded, not doubting it a bit. But all the duelists had their disks back now, and the four Reds, the wounded one included, were circling their enemy. As much as Flynn admired the User-Believer’s skill, he didn’t see how the program could win.
Far down on the arena floor, one of the Elite yelled, “Waste him!” Crouched, expectant, nerves thrumming, Tron waited. All four hurled their disks at the same moment.
Tron ducked, dodged to one side, and blocked one disk with his own. The others passed through the air where he’d been standing a moment before. Tron instantly threw, and struck a Red Warrior who screamed as he was hit. The Red de-rezzed in a searing release of energy as the aura
of Tron’s weapon spread over him, replacing his own red one.
Tron straightened, took his disk as it returned to him. Holding it in a practiced attack grip, he pivoted, and cast. The Red who was his target saw, tried to elude the whirling plate of light, but failed. Struck, he crumpled backward; the shimmering scan lines and crackling static of his own de-rezzing were the last things he saw and heard. Tron ducked a second cast from another Red, throwing himself flat and rolling to his feet, rising just in time to leap out of the way as a low-flying disk sought him.
He caught his own disk as it returned, recovered, and cast once more in midair. The weapon found another Red who, not expecting such blinding speed even from the storied Tron, could only stare with foolish shock on his face as he was hit and a boiling de-rezzing engulfed him. The other Reds became grimmer, and fear showed on their faces. The odds were far different now and their adversary much, much more than they’d expected him to be.
Tron addressed himself calmly to the remaining Reds, keeping himself from any overhasty move, reminding himself that great caution was still imperative—was always so, on the Game Grid. His disk returned to his hand like a thing alive. He took a step and hurled it again, with all the power of his arm behind it.
The Elite at whom he’d thrown held up his own weapon to block, but Tron’s crashed through it with a violent meeting of energies and burst against the startled Red. Like a triumphant nova, the blazing aura of Tron’s disk spread to envelop the Red as he de-rezzed.
A stillness descended over the arena as Tron and his remaining opponent confronted each other. The Red had lost control of his fear now, and could only watch Tron with bulging eyes. Then, slowly, he brought his disk up, readying against all hope to hurl again. Tron saw that, as always, there could be no end when Elite and User-Believer entered an arena but for one side or the other to be de-rezzed. He cast once more, eager for it to be finished.
