The Grid was falling apart.
Tron let out a shaky breath, his teeth clenching as he tried to lean a bit more against the back of the dim-lit cave, pressing his hands against his sides in a sore attempt at self soothing. He could feel it, like a painful weight at the back of his processes. It was faint, distant, he never had been able to connect to this place as he had his own home system… but he could feel it losing strength. Like a dimming light that echoed its pain within his own core.
The Grid was slowly crumbling around him… piece by piece…
And there was nothing he was able to do to stop it… no matter how much he desired to.
The Monitor let out a pained breath, letting his head rest on the cool stone of his little sanctuary as his thoughts spiraled into a tangle of processes. How long had he even been active again? A microcycle? Maybe two since the courier program Clarke had found him on the shore? His memory was still glitched and fragmented, and no matter how many self-restorations or defrags he had ran, there still long gaps.
Not just the twenty broken cycles either.
Recent gaps. Chunks of memory corrupted, glitched, or just entirely gone altogether. Parts of his little refuge moved and shifted without his memory of doing so. It was as if there was a ghost haunting his every process… a ghost of memories and actions he couldn't remember that left an aching impression of being something… else.
He winced as he felt that crawling, stuttering glitching in his core start up again, his body seizing up a bit as the pain carved its way into his code. Why… why couldn't he find a way to stabilize his code? He'd thought getting his disks back and finding a safe haven would have been enough, his processes slowly evening out over time… but it had only been a temporary solution. Granted, he was no longer incapacitated by the errors that flickered over his HUD…
But they had never gone away. He could still feel them, pulsing within the lines of his being, twisting deep within his core until they flared back to life in a flash of red errors and vermilion glitches.
The deep musings of his processes were interrupted with a sharp energy level warning flashing over his vision. A small frown ghosted his lips, his eyebrows furrowing as he blinked the alert away. Low? Already? He could have sworn he had only charged a few Millicycles ago… had his memory lapsed again? Had he blacked out on another detail?
He tried not to dwell on that process.
With a deliberate, fluid movement he pushed himself off the wall, shuffling around the scattered pieces of scrap he had been collecting from the beaches to reach the front of he cave. The pieces of the wreckage from the Reintegration had proven useful in his time here, the parts salvageable enough to create a small rest-mode pod, and the beginnings of a communicator. He trotted the rest of the way to the small energy pool at the entrance of the cavern, just overlooking the nearby beach and beyond… the Sea.
The place he had barely escaped from… cold, glitching, and barely functional.
If it hadn't been for the kind courier program finding him… finding his disks… helping him to safety… he doubted he would have continued running.
Tron eased himself to his knees next to the pool, dipping his hands in the cool liquid enough for a drink as he stared out at the Sea, unable to shake that horrible curl of fear in his core as he stared at it. Once… he had admired the rolling tides of empty data, even found it calming to watch sway back and forth with a will of its own.
He shuddered, pulling his glitching vision away and toward the beaches below.
Now all he could remember was biting, tearing cold… the conflict within his own systems as he was pulled apart… waves stealing away his breath… the viral waters eating at his frame as his core did its best to destroy itself-
With a sharp shake of his head he shut his memory files off, clenching his teeth just a bit harder as he brought the energy to his lips. He would NOT think about that right now. Not now. Not when his systems had just barely found a point of functionality. He needed to… to keep his core running smoothly. He had to find a way to fix himself, stabilize the Grid.
After all, he was this world's protection… The Grid's ever loyal Monitor. With Flynn gone… there was no one else left to save it…
The Sea of Simulation was restless tonight.
Its digital waves no longer undulated in calm passing strokes, as they had the night before, but now roared treacherously with gaping jaws of vertically expanded geometrics to create sinister towers of code before finally crashing down on the shores of the Outlands. The storm, if it could be called a storm, was powerful enough to wipe out any Solar Sailer that would dare traverse the beamed path above—or would have traversed it if not for the fact that it, along with the strong floating boulders and jagged coded islands that once gave the Sea its unique appearance, was a relic of the past: a past both better and worse than the present system's iteration.
The waves, lit primarily by a shimmering ball of blue light that was once a Portal not so very long ago, continued to fall mercilessly upon the shore. Débris of a fallen age lay scattered around the perimeter, the wrecked flotsam of ships and Light Jets marking the ruins of a dark dynasty.
The Rectifier, previously a massive carrier ship meant to glorify a quixotic system of perfection, now found itself split into large but still unrecognizable shards across the Outland bay, where sharp rocks penetrated hulls and the virtual sand swallowed up metal. In one of these fragments lay a figure, slumped over on a cargo crate and mostly protected from the lashing of the digital Sea by a secure roof. A Program, it appeared, by the stiff and un-User-like positioning—though the unresponsive frame and unlit circuits betrayed no affiliation. His blond-brown fibers were now starting to become unquestionably sprinkled with a tarry film from the Sea-spray, eating at his voxels the more the waves bobbed and the deeper the piece of wreckage sank.
He had been like this for microcycles at least, and still no chance of hope had prevailed for the young Program with the cracked visor. If he had a backup cache of memory worth any interest to the casual processor, it would seemingly never have the chance to be restored.
Up came another wave, and down came the segment of the Rectifier.
And up the metal ramp entered the tiniest sliver of liquid code, gleaming with the blue light of energy that directly contrasted the dark interior of the unshielded flotsam.
Wave by unending wave, more of the Sea filled the compartment; and jostle by incessant jostle, the dimness of the place was now lost in place of the sheer brightness of liquid fuel.
And percent by small percent, an HUD flickered stutteringly to life, unstable but just stable enough for a bar to began to form and digits to surface.
01000011 01101000 01100001 01110010 01100111 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101110: 1%
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
43 68 61 72 67 69 6E 67: 5%
[ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
[-] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
At least sixty nanocycles passed with the unmoving Program stuck in this same position, circuits glowing a hesitant warm off-white color at times before sputtering out again.
[-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]
With each decimal, the circuits grew more certain, and the cracked HUD grew more solid. With each percentage, the Program's power grew stronger.
[-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [ ]
Another ten nanocycles. The circuits glowed at last to a vivid medium blue, and with one last glitch…he would reboot. He would resurface. He would revive.
[-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-] [-]
A visor-covered head moved itself feebly from its long place of rest, and the world came glitching alive inside the Program's HUD.
In this display was the strangest amalgamation of symbols known to any Grid-dweller. Like some unreadable cipher, a merry group of glyphs danced cryptically around the screen, taunting the Program who couldn't remember his designation, much less process events in lines of code he could comprehend. What were those things? The bar he understood—a visual representation of his energy levels…but those…other images. Those…symbols? Were they words?
More lines of code came burning back into the Program's conscious processor.
Je ne peux pas…respirer…. Qui…suis-je?
The Program blinked. What in the Grid did that mean? It…felt?…like his desires—but they still made no sense, even as they glowed clearly before him.
Were they his designation? His function? Why couldn't he intake oxygen properly, but only in labored breaths? What was that horrible sensation in his head, and why wouldn't it go away when he squeezed his hands to his temples and tried to scream to distract himself? He couldn't think…. No podía pensar…. Cha b' urrainn dha smaoineachadh…. He couldn't THINK.
The symbols came in heavier clumps this time, surrounding his visual and somehow aural capabilities, as if they had a CPU of their own and were attempting to immerse him in their attempt at communicating.
Communication—messages—they were messages.
They were…his messages…to himself….
A dizzying swirl of thrill engulfed the Program at finding the answer so quickly to a question he had worried would plague him for longer. That's it: He was communicating to himself! Whatever had happened—whatever had caused this strange situation—was so damaging to his central core that his capacity for communication was glitching, hence his lack of understanding. All he needed to do was…was something familiar…something he felt—if feeling was the right term to employ—that he had done hundreds of times for countless cycles…. What was it? What was it?
Patterns. Yes. Find the patterns.
His blue circuits blazed ever the brighter, and his gray eyes flecked with amber moved rapidly in horizontal directions as though dreaming, causing symbols to rearrange themselves on his virtual dashboard. It was fun, almost—a puzzle. He liked puzzles. He had always liked puzzles…hadn't he?
Rows upon rows of all the various assorted symbols he had seen in the previous messages assembled themselves before his eyes. New ones appeared, too, and he docketed them in corners of the screen as they waited their turn to be labeled, categorized, and organized. Yes, this was very familiar now. He knew this routine like the back of his Identity Disc.
Identity Disc…. He recalled that item too. That would tell him his designation.
But how could he access that information?
More symbols, some completely new, flashed before his digital vision. They seemed to resemble a matrix of messaging. That would make sense. Communication enabled important messages to be sent and received. He remembered that. Communication varied greatly; he remembered that too. But why? And what were his internal processors attempting to communicate to him?
The buzzing in his head ceased, and the assessment operations he didn't know he was performing came to a full stop. That sequence of symbols—that…word?—was more than familiar. It made something in his core burn with dread. He tried to return to his analysis on the symbols, but anywhere his eyes darted, this elusive КЛУ followed. What did this persistence mean? If it was his designation—what he was called—his name—why did it make him grip his fist so hard that it hurt? It would have a positive association, would it not?
The Program sat up straight, dipping his feet in the turbulent code-waters and receiving an electrifying jolt of energy in return. Flashes of more than symbols came rushing back: Now there were images, Programs, orange, a User, a ship, orange, black shiny masks, ribbons of light, so much orange.
Then a face. A smiling, benevolent face that provoked a sensation of such misery that the Program, without fully knowing or understanding the implications, wished with every line of code he had that he could derez right then and there rather than have to see it again.
That face had a name. КЛУ. No, wait. It had many names. That string of numerals came back hollowly into his aural senses like an echoing, haunted voice whispering into his ear.
Zeroonezerozerozerozerooneone zeroonezerozerooneonezerozero zeroonezeroonezeroonezeroone.
Thanks to the numbers and that strange three-symbol combination, a guttural sound—a consonant—manifested itself.
The next was alveolar, though the Program couldn't for the life of him decipher what that word meant or why it seemed to perfectly encapsulate the sound that was whispered into his other ear.
Last came a vowel—a high, back, rounded vowel that sounded vaguely like OO.
His puzzle was back again, and this time less daunting to solve. He only had to identify three important things.
His eyes widened, and within a moment of this realization, a hundred momentary glimpses of a function he once served came flashing back before him. Orange staffs of light, cycles of light, jets of light. Screens, panels, messages, forms of communication. A black seat with glowing orange trim. That seat was his and his only. That broad and genial face, smiling at him but saying something whose content contradicted his attitude. CLU. That was CLU. That Program was his master. He was his controller. He was his protector. He always knew the right thing to do.
Those who were not…were…comme lui…. No. They were his enemy.
The interior of the flotsam, which still swayed and bobbed with the rhythm of the Sea, now glowed a fiery two-tone contrast as the blue liquid remained…and the young Program's circuits…
The young program's circuits flickered ever so tentatively, at last ending on a note of finality…
