Tron (2 page)

Overhead, tall, shining readout letters materialized in the air:

WINNER: RED-SARK!!

He looked up at the confirmation of his win, reveling in it. He bellowed sinister laughter.

Striding through the Training Complex afterward, Sark looked neither left nor right. Tough, dangerous Warriors of his Red Elite sat or lounged, or leaned against the walls, some having completed their matches, others waiting to go forth onto the Grid and fight on behalf of Sark and the Master Control Program. Seasoned veterans, sure of their prowess, they trained and fought hard. Yet, as Sark went past, they stirred and shifted uneasily, showing wordless deference to the Warrior who could have crushed the strongest among them.

One of the Reds ventured a bit of ingratiation: “Sark, my man! You are
hot
!”

Sark chose to laugh. The other Reds took that as permission to join in. And Sark walked on, exulting.

There was, for Sark, a sensation beyond the elation of the Game Grid. He knew it here, at the podium aboard his enormous Carrier aircraft. At this podium he communed with the Master Control Program and drew from it the power that sustained and augmented him. But here, there was no surging joy of battle; before the Master Control Program, even mighty Sark knew a twinge of fear.

He approached the podium, stepped into it, and seized its hand grips. It was waist-high, intricate in its instrumentation and design, encircling him. The Command Program fit his booted legs into the power outlets, and into him flowed the heady, revitalizing energy. His circuitry blazed with it.

The Master Control Program spoke to him, its sonorous voice filling the compartment, seeming to come from everywhere, reinforcing Sark’s belief in the MCP’s omniscience and omnipotence. Himself a being who thrived on power, the Red recognized his master. He sought and valued the favor of the MCP, but was intimidated by it as well.

“You’re getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic.”

The bulkheads vibrated with the words. The power outlets glowed with the energy and Sark drank it in, eyes glazed like an addict’s.

“Thank you, Master Control.” His deity was well pleased. Sark’s chest swelled with pride.

“We might be capturing some military programs soon,” Master Control went on. “Does that interest you?”

Sark’s concentration was divided between the ecstasy of the power influx and the question. “Sure. I’d love to go up against some of those programs.” He closed his eyes and contemplated eagerly the sort of competition he could expect from the newest programs expropriated by the Master Control Program out of DARPA, the DIA, and other governmental agencies. “It would be a nice break from these accounting programs and the other cream puffs you keep sending me. Which branch of the service?”

“The Strategic Air Command,” came the answer. The Red detected a note of pride in that.

“Nice,” admitted Sark, even more impressed. Some of those programs would see things Master Control’s way and abandon their senseless loyalty to the Users. But the others . . .

Sark’s savage thoughts rested fondly on what he would do to the others.

Sark’s Carrier floated, titanic and gleaming, over the Game Grid’s Training Complex. It was, on the System’s scale, more than 2,000 feet in length. It had a flat top deck, reminiscent of the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. The vessel was triangular in cross section, though its armor, outer-hull convexities, and other design features masked that to some extent. From its side projected its bridge, a superstructure with a variety of rotating sensor antennae fixed, freestanding, around it.

Far below, in the complex itself, in a long, dimly lit corridor deep beneath the Grid, a frightened, confused program was being escorted to confinement by two burly guards. He was short and pudgy, a commercial program with a vulnerable look to him. Still, he’d been compelled to don the armor and half-tunic of a Warrior conscript. The Memory Guards’ faces barely showed under their cowls; their uniforms exaggerated the width of their shoulders. They were armed with energy-staffs; the unfortunate prisoner had already had a taste of what the staffs could do, and offered no resistance. But still he plead his case.

“Look, this is all a mistake! I’m just a compound-interest program! I work at a savings and loan; I can’t play in these videogames!”

The guard’s reply was amused, ironic; he’d often heard this sort of objection. How easily some of these characters started to come apart when Master Control plucked them out of their safe little situation! “Sure you can, pal,” the guard drawled. “You’re a natural athlete if I ever saw one.” He pushed the program along. “Come on.”

The prisoner, Crom, tried again. “Are you kidding?
Me?
I run out to check on the T-bill rates, I get out of breath.” The guard didn’t seem to care. Crom shrank from the thought of combat on the Game Grid. “Hey, really; you’re gonna make my User, Mr. Henderson, really mad. He’s a full branch manager!”

The guard’s smirk sounded in his voice. “Great, another religious nut!”

Crom stopped his protests. Their attitude was beyond comprehension—a refusal to even concede the existence of the Users.
How could that be?
he kept repeating to himself. Crom couldn’t understand what the point of functioning could be, if not to carry out the instructions of the Users.

They halted by a cell door. The guard shoved poor Crom into the cell despite his objections, disdainfully. Then its force field sealed the doorway, leaving the program forlorn and scared, completely disoriented, his world turned end for end. His blue circuitry was muted with fear.

The cell was small, a low, cramped space shaped by close, confining walls. The walls projected into the cell space, heightening the feeling of confinement. Crom, hurled against a wall by the force of the guard’s shove, found that he scarcely had space to turn around. Exploring the severe little room, he saw that there was no way to lay
or
sit down comfortably, none to stretch. The shapes and planes of the walls saw to it that a prisoner would always be aware of his imprisonment. The ceiling was transparent, and Crom glimpsed a guard on patrol overhead.

On both sides of the cell were windowlike openings that allowed Crom a view of the cells to his right and left. He forgot his misery for a moment when he found himself looking into the face of another captive. The other wore Warrior’s attire too, but without the novice’s half-tunic. He had a lean, lively face, intense and yet amiable. Crom went closer to the window.

The program smiled sadly. “I’d say “welcome,” but not here. Not like this.”

For some reason that returned to Crom a measure of his self-control. “I don’t even know what’s going on here!” he declared.

His fellow prisoner studied Crom, drawing nearer. “You believe in the Users?”

The question renewed Crom’s misgivings and confusion. The concept of the Users struck him as so basic, so intrinsic to all programs, that it should be pointless to ask. Then he realized that the question could have a very different answer here in the Training Complex.

But he replied, “Sure. If I don’t have a User, then—then, who wrote me?”

The other prisoner nodded gravely. “
That’s
what you’re doing here. Master Control Program’s been snapping up all us programs who believe. If he thinks you’re useful, he takes over all your functions so he gets bigger, but if he can’t use you, he sends you down here to the Game Grid to get the bits blasted out of you.”

The horror of it washed over Crom, waves of shock followed by an overwhelming, disabling dismay. He was only partially roused from it by the next question: “What’s your name?”

“Crom,” he answered, barely aware that he had.

“I’m Ram,” added the other. Seeing Crom’s face, he hesitated, but went on, thinking it best to tell the new conscript just what he was in for. “They’ll train you for the games, but—” He didn’t finish the sentence; Crom clearly wasn’t the sort of program who held great promise as a gladiator. Ram finished awkwardly, “Well, I hope you make it okay.”

Ram changed the subject quickly, before Crom had a chance to think too hard about the implications of that last statement. “Hey, what’s going on in the other sectors? I’ve been stuck in this Grid for 200 microcycles now.”

He gested over his shoulder with a thumb and Crom saw crossed-off rows of tick marks on Ram’s wall, representing the period of his imprisonment. Crom stopped agonizing over the possibility of destruction in the arena long enough to wonder whether captivity would be much better.

Crom shrugged. “It’s murder out there. You can’t even travel around your own microcircuits without permission from the Master Control Program.” He threw up his hands, trying to recapture some of the indignation that had evaporated when fear had set in. “Hauling me down here to play games! Who does the Master Computer Program calculate he is?”

But Ram made no answer. The cells around them, and the Training Complex, were answer enough. Crom suddenly felt tired, weighted with despair. “If only Tron was still around—”

Ram made a sudden noise under his breath at the sound of that name, a noise that spoke to Crom of surprise and anger. Ram’s face had gone cold, closing in his emotions.

But Crom went on, “Did you ever see that guy in action? A hundred-percent independent!” Crom shook his head in admiration. “MCP couldn’t tell
him
what to—”

He stopped. Ram had turned to look over his shoulder, at the window to the next cell beyond his. Crom, confused, asked, “What’s wrong? What did I say?”

There was a slight noise from the cell where Ram was looking, of someone moving around. A figure stood silhouetted by the light, his back to them, his glowing disk affixed to it. Crom strained to see, and as he did, the figure turned to him slowly. The compound interest program saw the features known so well to programs throughout the System: the clear, canny gaze and calm, strong face.

Crom gasped in disbelief. “Oh, my User—Tron! They’ve got
you
in here?”

Tron—a legend come to life. When programs throughout the System spoke among themselves of independence, of loyalty to the Users, of defying the MCP, it was Tron’s name that was most often invoked. Tron championed the User-Believers; Tron had defied all the MCP’s efforts to enslave or convert him. He had never been defeated in battle. No Warrior of the Red Elite had ever been able to withstand him.

Tron in a cell, captive on the Game Grid.

Crom slumped; Tron’s imprisonment had hit him like a physical blow, filling him with a sense of utter disaster. But the Champion’s first words lifted that feeling: “Not for long, friend.”

Crom’s spirits rose all at once. The words had been spoken without bravado, a simple statement offact, with all of Tron’s conviction behind them. For the first time, Crom began to feel hope. Sark and the MCP didn’t control the System yet.

I
N ANOTHER PART
of the System, a lone tank slid along, proceeding cautiously through a landscape of huge, planar surfaces, a maze of defiles. High walls bracketed a flat ground floor that wended in a series of obtuse turns. The rectilinear look of the Electronic World prevailed here too; blockish forms bordering the defiles were divided along precise edges by glowing demarcations and bands, and subdivided by areas of shading.

The tank was unlike any conventional vehicle, a collection of sleek curves with a wide, low silhouette. Its main battery was an enormous cannon, longer than the tank itself, complex and streamlined. It was mounted with its longitudinal axis lying along that of the tank, the gun mated in offset fashion to the turret, which was located on the right side of the hull. Instead of ordinary treads, rows of glowing, V-shaped light-tracks drove the war machine.

The vehicle’s command and fire-control center was gymbal-mounted in the turret for stability, tilting as the tank moved along, rotating to the operations of its lone crewman. The program’s name was Clu, and he, too, wore armor. Clu worked his controls with great dexterity, peering intently into the casklike guidance-targeting scope. The tank’s interior was bright with the glow of its controls and energy-channels.

Clu paused for a quick gulp from a container; his circuitry shone a little brighter. He stared into his scope once more, the fire-control center rotating around him. “Think we can merge into this memory okay, Bit?” he murmured, poised over the controls.

A shape of gleaming light suddenly appeared, many-faceted, zipping around the tank’s interior. In response to Clu’s question, it stopped dead in the air and expanded into a green, shining star, like some unearthly, spiky Christmas ornament. From it, a voice answered with an eager “Yes!”

As soon as it had spoken, the Bit reverted, shrinking back to its former shape. Clu nodded to himself absently. “Now, ol’ Flynn said for me to look over in here.” He worked the controls with a sure touch. The tank swung into a turn, advancing between lustrous defile walls.

Clu was annoyed and disappointed in that, after all his and the Bit’s work, the danger and the running fights and constant peril of encountering a Recognizer, they’d come up with nothing for his User, Flynn. Clu persevered nonetheless.