I do not own the Tron franchise.
His father had explained the failed reintegration like two puzzle pieces that wouldn't fit together, no matter which way you turned them. Clu and Flynn were two souls that couldn't become one again. They were too separate, two completely different entities, no longer two halves of the same circle. Clu had evolved, his code had grown on its own, far beyond what had originally been written. The connection with the ISOs was what made Sam wonder the most, why they had to have this argument.
The two Users and two programs had taken up shelter in an apartment, a deserted residence in Tron City, or what was left of it. It was dark, everywhere it was dark, inside the air was cold and all circuitry had been dimmed as not to attract attention from the outside world.
Outside it poured and poured and poured like it was never going to stop, the liquid obscured all existing light. This place would have to do before they could create a fortified safe house that would be used as head quarters while they repaired the nightmare that had become of The Grid.
The Users wanted to work from the heart of the problem, in this city. Sam's mind was distracted by how they would pull it off, they would need outside help. He tried to focus on the current issue.
Programs ran wild in the streets outside like rabid animals, derezzing anything that crossed their path. Sam could hear them screaming for his own blood through the window blinds, he didn't want to think about what would happen if they were discovered hiding here.
Clu's tens of thousands of newly rectified soldiers hadn't taken their makers betrayal well. The army's directive, to fight the Users and perfect the outside world, had been contradicted when Clu surrendered. They all went insane, they were destroying their own world.
His father insisted it was the fault of Clu and his mysterious defective programming. He was arguing as if the original programming hadn't been flawed in the first place. Sam wondered what had happened to his father in the time the younger Flynn was away from the grid, transferring it to its current home on a modern server.
Had the reintegration scrambled his brain? Or had Clu's kicking him when he'd offered a hug ruined his optimistic mood? The older man had dark circles under his eyes, every line of his face seemed to have been gouged deeper with a knife. Sam thought he had never seen him look so tired, and there was a new unfamiliar rage burning behind his eyes.
Father and son were facing off, arms crossed in front of both their chests in stubborn defiance.
"Dad, you can't do this. I know you think you're protecting us, but what you're doing… it's no better than what Clu did to the ISOs! Deleting them for a glitch."
"You're wrong Sam. I'm doing this to save you, to save Tron, to save The Grid, to save the real world."
Sam glanced over at Tron. He didn't really seem to have an opinion on the matter. Tron sat in a chair, he was slouched against the wall of a far corner. The program's breathing was ragged, hoarse and weak. His eyes were distant and unseeing as he gazed into nothing, even though he hadn't shut down from injury. He was unhurt, but it looked like Tron was trapped in some kind of catatonic state.
His circuits flickered lazily back and forth between red and blue, like a broken traffic light. He was still soaking wet with sea water, and the fluid data dribbled off his suit making a constant drip drip drip, that filled the silence in the room.
Sam had to drag him up from the bottom of the sea before he went to meet Clu and his father. It had been as simple as taking the little Tron file icon from the Sea of Simulation folder, and dropping it into the Dumpy Apartment folder (actually named some long string of letters and numbers Sam couldn't recall) using his laptop.
Sam's gaze found Clu, head bowed, kneeling with his legs tucked beneath him on the other side of Flynn. Their eyes met and Clu quickly looked away, staring back down at the floor. His wrists were tied behind his back, bound together with glowing cuffs of light.
"You can't kill him dad. You're angry, I get it-"
"Do you Sam?" Flynn yelled. "Do you know what it's like, to be kept away from everything you know and love for a thousand years?"
Kevin sighed, he tried to explain how vital this was, more gently.
"Look Sam, I don't want to hurt Clu either, but this is the only way to get rid of the code. I didn't write it, we don't know where it's came from. Whatever it is, it's what made him destroy the ISOs, what made him take The Grid, it's what made him imprison me here. It separated us. This thing could be anything, what if it's like a virus? What if it spreads? If this monster manifests in other programs, in other machines, our entire world is screwed."
"You said it yourself, it behaves like something organic. It's grown throughout Clu's base code like tree roots. So what if you didn't write it? That's the miracle isn't it? It's created a freedom of choice no other basic posses. It's like the ISOs. You know who you sound like right now?"
"Clu is nothing like the ISOs."
"The funny thing about freedom of choice, is that the choice between good and evil is ours. A better comparison wouldn't be the ISOs, it would be us, the human race and all our terrible mistakes. He's evolving. Machines don't evolve, they are the sum of what we put into them, they're just slaves that do what we tell them to."
"If he's like us, than that's all the more reason to destroy him."
"Dad!"
The disagreement escalated into a screaming fight, it was the first time they had fought over anything. User energy pulsed in the air, the floor cracked below their feet and bits of the ceiling began raining down from above.
Thankfully all the noise was drowned out by the data falling from the sky. The argument ended with Flynn slamming the door to the apartment as he fled the building, disappearing into the rain. Sam took his father's abrupt exit to mean that he had conceded. The two of them didn't speak of the issue again.
—-
His creator stood over the screen of a machine, lines of green text were written across the dull black surface. Clu couldn't read them, most of it looked like nonsense, but he recognized the lines as the form code took in the User world. Clu's vantage point was over Flynn's shoulder, as if he were standing behind him as if often did on The Grid, the attentive pupil studying over his teacher's shoulder as he worked.
The program himself wasn't there, of course not. It wasn't just the fact he had no hands or feet, apparently only a disembodied pair of eyes that were frozen in place, he couldn't look away from what he was seeing. How could Clu be in the User world when he was right there? Clu was staring down at his own file, his creator's finger's hovered over his own code. Flynn pulled up another window, Clu could understand the text here perfectly.
Executing…
Function delete ();
/: Are you sure?
Flynn hit enter, it was as easy as a key stroke.
Clu started out of recharge, shuttering, gasping for breath. Everything around him was icy cold the touch, the sheets tangled around his legs, the artificial air on his face, he shivered. His shell was overheating, his own skin was burning hot to the touch.
It was just another one of those things, those visions that Flynn called nightmares. A long time ago, before the coup, before everything, Flynn had described to him all the different kinds of wonderful dreams Users could have. Since he was young, Clu only ever had the same vision, the same nightmare. He'd never said a word about it to anyone, as far as all the programs and Users knew, Clu couldn't dream.
He remained in his room, sitting Indian style on his bed. All the other lights were out, he had shut them all down, so that he might find some peace in the darkness. The only light came from his too bright yellow circuitry.
What was this? What was this feeling? He clawed at his chest, trying the remove the weight crushing him, like a Lighttank was sitting on top of what would have been his ribcage. There were deep gouge marks in his armor where his fingers had stripped the code away. The ends of his finger too, were beginning to crack and wear. What was this weight? There was nothing there.
It was like a nightmare, overwhelming pain inflicted by a foe he had no way of detecting or fighting. Breathing was becoming more difficult, he was suffocating, he was going to short circuit if he couldn't calm himself. There was a bizarre alien sting in his eyes, they felt wet. His hands went up to grab fist fulls of his hair, he drew his knees into his chest, he grit his teeth and screwed his eyes shut.
What was wrong with him? This terrible horrible feeling. Did it mean he was ill? Was he going to derez? He felt like he was going to derez. Clu hadn't been programmed to handle this. He didn't understand it, but he knew who would understand, Flynn would know what this was. He was a User, User's felt these strange feeling things all the time, he didn't know how they could stand it. How had their race survived without destroying themselves for so long?
That was it. There was a solution to everything. Even these new User emotions that didn't fit into any calculation.
There is a solution to everything. He repeated it over and over again in his head like a mantra, an attempt to calm himself. He would hope the opposite of this emotion, reason, would chase them away.
Maybe, maybe if he tried to talk to him again. Maybe this time, he would listen.
Clu found him in one of the work rooms, a small personal laboratory. His hand rested on his bearded chin as he studied a diorama -Clu recognized it as one of Sam's designers- that was hovering over his desk. It was a three dimensional miniature of a building that spun in the air at the flick of Flynn's finger, so he could view every angle. He was hunting for flaws that might compromise the structure's integrity, and editing them out when he found them.
"Flynn." Clu called, from where he was standing in the doorway.
There was no answer, he appeared to be so completely absorbed in his task that Clu hadn't been heard, but Clu saw a familiar flicker in his tired eyes. He could hear. Clu stepped deeper in the room, he went on speaking.
"Flynn, there's something wrong, there's something important I need to talk to you about."
A holographic screen popped into existence on Flynn's right, vying for his attention. It blinked back and forth from yellow to blue. The white text weaving across the screen told Clu what Flynn was about to say before the User even opened his mouth.
"Not now Clu. Sam's calling me from the observation deck."
"But Flynn, this is really- it's of vital impor-"
"Clu. Not now. Why don't you go threaten someone else for a change? Just leave me alone." Flynn's monotonous, detached tone turned biting and harsh. His eyes flared with a potent mixture of anger and hurt, turning on Clu, making the sysadmin feel like he was suddenly staring down the activated blade of a disk.
"But, but I wasn't-"
"There are more important things that need my consideration."
Flynn left the room via the teleporting device he'd created to make travel around HQ easier for the Users. His body began to glow before it dissipated, dematerializing in streams of white light and data, to reform elsewhere. The way Clu saw it, the transport was just a way to avoid him, to simply disappear whenever Flynn didn't want to deal with Clu.
He clenched his teeth in a snarl, he turned on his heels and headed back out the double doors. As he went he kicked over a table and sent a chair unfortunate enough to be the only thing within arm's reach, flying at a wall where it shattered on impact. He stormed down the dark hallway, every program in sight fled from the admin's rage, and the hall was soon vacant of anyone but Clu.
Sam. Sam. Sam. Sam. Sam. All that ever mattered was Sam! What was so great about SamFlynn?
"He's my son."
The words echoed in his head.
What the frag did that even mean? Was that word supposed to hold some sort of significance for Clu? What was so special about the 'son' designation? What made it this 'son' so much better? So much more worthy of Flynn's attention than Clu? How were they different? According to every User text Clu had read, 'son' and creation could be interchangeable terms, they were synonyms.
The son of Flynn was a lazy, irresponsible brat who ate pizza in the command room and left the box and the dishes lying around. He left his clothing on the floor, he created defective vehicles that blew up on ignition and buildings that collapsed on your head when you walked inside. He created programs that were dumb as bits and about as useful as Gridbugs.
He was like an error, the catalyst of disorder, chaos, and destruction. He was hopeless; clumsy and incompetent. He was completely helpless in a fight. Tron had to follow Sam around like a nanny, albeit a stoic, incredibly powerful nanny with a kick like a head on collision with a recognizer. That was time and energy Tron could have spent safeguarding the system.
On the other hand, Clu was loyal, Clu was skillful. Clu had given up everything for Flynn and his dream, the dream they were supposed to have shared. Clu put up with the nonsense of all the stupid creatures around him to do what Flynn asked, what he was programmed to do.
Clu, as ordered, was trying to put the system back together after that monster had shown up and ruined everything! Sam had brutally torn the system apart with the escape attempt and the reintegration he'd caused. Why? Why SamFlynn? And what was this, this thing, this thing that felt like it was going to grind him into dust under its weight? None of it made sense.
Clu did understand one thing about his emotions.
He hated SamFlynn.
—-
Tron was always busy. Sam wanted to have lessons with Tron, but he was always busy. Tron didn't actively try to murder him while they were supposed to be sparing.
A disk came flying at Sam's head. Awekwardly he ducked out of the way. His reaction was delayed and he moved at the last second, although it was difficult to tell if he had messed up a simple evasive maneuver or just tripped over his own feet.
As Sam fell the disk went over his head and he landed on his hand and knees. As soon as he avoided the first attack, the disk was back again. He had to roll out of the way, feeling like he was practicing what to do if his shirt caught on fire. In the next attack, the gold lit disk was spinning toward him.
Sam felt as though he was in an old horror film, strapped to a table as suspense mounted, a diamond saw grew closer and closer. The disk hit the ground before it hit Sam, throwing up a spray of pixels and orange sparks, grinding a path through the floor toward the User. The weapon struck his shoulder, Sam slammed his eyes shut to prevent himself from being blinded as blood spattered his face.
The identity disk flew back into its owner waiting, outstretched hand. The program smiled savagely at him, eyes mocking him as he let Sam stand, like a great cat toying with it's meal. The User found himself quickly retreating backwards as his opponent stalked toward him from across the arena, killing intent etched into every line of his face. His wounded arm hurt like hell but he could still move it, so he figured it couldn't have been that bad, right?
Lines the marked the space inside the rink, like the markings outlining a soccer field. The room reminded Sam of the gymnasium back at his high school years ago, only several times larger.
Sam gave him an unsteady smile, a nervous sweat having broken out over his face.
"Clu, ease up will you? We're just practicing here man. There's no need to be so seri-"
The program's disk was in his face again, filling up his vision. He turned his head to the side and the blade glanced his nose as it flew past, leaving a tiny red mark like a paper cut.
"Or what? Will you run crying to daddy?" He jeered. "Yes, we are supposed to be practicing. Are you going to fight back or stand there and continue to be useless?" Clu growled, deftly catching his returning weapon.
Maybe if you gave me a chance. Sam thought. He reached for his own disk, only for Clu's disk to knocked his hand away, leaving a thin red gash across his wrist.
"Not fair!" Sam yelled in indignation.
"It's completely fair. Do you think, outside this sanctuary, a virus is going to wait for you to draw your disk? Your infernal wifi connection has them running amuck all across my perfect system."
Clu's disk was careening toward him again, this time aimed for chest. Sam dropped, on the ground he rolled, using the moment when his back and arm were hidden facing the floor to unclip his disk. In one movement that was far more graceful than his last attempt, he was back on his feet, disk raised in defense.
Clu hummed in consideration as he looked Sam up and down, scrutinizing.
"Better." He said, and his disk was bearing down on Sam. Sam knocked it out of the way, he tossed his weapon. Clu side stepped effortlessly, giving an obnoxious imitation of a yawn to emphasize how easy it was.
Clu ran at him. He struck and Sam threw up his disk like a shield. They exchanged blows back and forth, as each strike was blocked sparks flared up between them, singing their armor. Sam knocked Clu's disk away from his hand, and it went skittering across the floor, bouncing like a Frisbee rolling on its side.
Sam didn't have time to smile at his victory before Clu's fist slammed into his jaw with a force like a speeding truck, he saw bits instead of stars. The User was knocked onto his back, he got up onto his elbows and reached for his disk, stretching his arm as far as it could go. His weapon was just millimeters from his finger tips.
Clu's boot slammed down on Sam's reaching hand like it was a cockroach. The User lashed out at Clu with a sweeping kicking, with his legs taken out from under him the admin landed sprawled out on top of Sam.
"Get off of me."
Sam's fist found Clu's nose and they changed places, now Clu was the one pinned under Sam.
User and program, yellow and white, rolled across the arena floor. They traded punched, disks forgotten.
"You stole my father from me!" Sam shouted in Clu's face, and he kicked Clu's hip.
Clu pulled Sam's hair like an angry child, the User yelped.
"No! You stole mine!"
Clu's hands curled around his neck. Sam choked, mouth open like a fish trying to breath out of water. His fingers clawed uselessly at Clu's. He kicked and flailed, all the while his circuits grew brighter until their light was blinding, until Sam's foot located Clu's stomach.
With all the energy behind that kick, the program was sent flying through the air, forty feet to the far side of the gym. He hit the wall with the loud resounding snap of braking pixels. Clu crumbled to the floor, motionless.
Sam struggled into a sitting position, gasping for air, rubbing at the angry pair of red imprints on his neck. They were quickly fading, and the pain in his wounded left arm was gone. He looked down at his wrist to see that the gash there had already healed. It was good to be a User.
"Illegal maneuver, combatant one disqualified. Victory goes to combatant two." An automated female voice announced.
"Aw come on! He still wins!?" Sam yelled up at ceiling, where the voice had emanated from, in outrage as he rose to his feet.
"This is not over yet." Clu ground out. He pulled himself up onto his knees, loose silver pixels cascaded down his back. The wall behind him had a new crack running up and down its length. Sam raised an eyebrow.
"You're still alive over there?" He called.
"Yeah I'm alive. And I'm still going to kick your ass, smart ass." He called back at Sam.
Clu reached for his disk, just as his fingers brushed the edge, it went soaring away as if attached to an invisible string. The disk was picked right up off the floor and carried into Sam's free hand. The User was grinning like an idiot.
"Awesome! Jedi powers!"
This was so cool, now he had two disks, just like Tron. The gold and white disks whirred in his hands. Clu tried to stand, he was unsteady on his feet and he had to put his arms out to keep his balance.
Sam kneeled, he pressed his hands against the floor. With a rumble like thunder and a tremor that shook through the room like an earthquake, the ground under Clu's boots shifted. It was like a rug had been pulled out from under him. Clu fell, he landed hard on his injured back with a yell of pain.
Sam laughed.
"Stop cheating. This isn't fair." Clu snarled.
"It's completely fair." Sam said, repeating Clu's words from earlier, mocking. "You think if one of my enemies found their way onto the grid, they would turn off their User powers for your convenience?"
In a blur of speed that made Sam stumble back in surprise, Clu was charging at him. Sam slashed out blindly with his stolen disk, he missed, but Clu had to veer sharply away to avoid the attack. Sam threw his disk, and the admin was forced to doge, he threw the second and Clu could do nothing but drop into a crouch. Sam smiled.
He chased Clu around the arena, disks following at the program's heals. Eventually the program's back was against one of the walls, and in front of him was Sam, disk raised to strike. There was no where left to run.
Clu's hand shot up and grabbed Sam's wrist, he gasped and sputtered when the program's knee rammed into his gut. He was left blinking, his opponent had moved so quickly he didn't understand what had just happened. Sam looked down at his hands to find them empty. He turned to see Clu standing several meters away, holding both disks, a triumphant grin on his face.
One moment the sysadmin was there, grinning like a fool, and the next he wasn't.
That trick Sam had pulled off to shift the floor, had weakened the structure, and the ground crumbled right out from underneath Clu.
Sam ran over to what became the gaping hole in the floor. A pair of hands clung to the frayed pixels at the edge, fingers white with the strain of holding on. The disks were both gone, having plunged into the blackness. What was down there? All he could see past Clu's dangling feet was darkness. He tried to think in terms of code, the three Users had never created anything beneath the HQ tower, did that mean Clu would fall for the rest of eternity?
"Sam!" Clu stared up at him with wide fearful eyes, and in them Sam saw the confirmation of his assumption.
Cracks began to form around the piece of flooring Clu was clinging to, and then it crumbled away.
Sam was on his knees in an instant, his arm shot out and grabbed for Clu's hand. Sam's hand was sweat slicked, and Clu's finger slipped right through his. The program's opposite hand connected with Sam's wrist and caught hold.
He hauled Clu up out of the abyss. He dragged him across the floor, because the program's legs had either stopped working or he had forgotten how to use them.
The two collapsed with their backs hitting the damaged wall, they slid down to sit on the floor, both feeling like inert piles of jello. Even when no definite winner of their battle had been declared, their limbs were far too heavy to move another centimeter.
"I don't think I… hate you as much as I thought." Clu admitted, still panting at the shock of his narrow escape of being sent into an endless fall.
"Thanks." Sam said, voice dripping with dry sarcasm.
"No, I mean it. I… you're not that bad, you're actually a fairly cool person. We're very similar, in that we were both aban- Maybe if things had been different, maybe if we met before the- before I took over, we might have been like fam-" What was the User word? He couldn't remember. "I-I'm, what I want to vocalize is that…"
Sam's eyes widened, and not just because he had never heard anyone butcher sentences so badly. Was this really Clu speaking? Who was this person and what had he done with the moody ex-dictator they all knew and loved to hate?
"When you defended me from Flynn back then, after the reintegration I mean-" He struggled awkwardly to make the words come together right, he wasn't made for this sort of thing. He was distressed and embarrassed that his tongue and lips couldn't form syllables with their usual crisp, clear perfection.
Sam decided to show mercy, and help him out.
"Clu, are you trying to thank me?"
Clu's face flushed, his eyes darted away, he looked everywhere but at Sam. His lips turned up in a snarl, he wanted to bite back with a cunning insult. Instead he sighed, defeated.
"Yes."
Sam offered him a smile.
"You're welcome. You're actually not half bad either, that was fun, thanks for helping me out with my training."
Clu blinked back at Sam in surprise.
Sam was a thrill seeker after all, he supposed a conflict nearly ending in his death and breaking every traffic law known to man on his motorcycle weren't all that different in terms of being fun, or dangerous.
Clu had taken time out of his schedule overflowing with system errors that needed fixing, after the Coup everyone knew how much the system and the programs living here meant to Clu. He didn't take time away from attending his world for anything.
"I'm sorry I tried to strangle you to death."
"S'alright. I'm sorry I almost kicked you through a wall."
"It's cool man."
"That was exhausting." Clu said. The crushing weight began to ease from his chest, leaving him so tired but also strangely warm where his heart would have been.
Thanking me, apologizing, or fighting? Sam wondered.
"Yeah." He agreed, meaning the fight. Just as he spoke, Sam's eyes became impossible to keep open. His lids fluttered as he attempted to stay awake, but to no avail. A blissful darkness was quickly robbing him of his senses, he could ask his dad to make them new disks latter. He lost consciousness at the same time Clu did. The two of them were left slumped against each others shoulders, asleep.
Up above the arena, below the ceiling the walls were a ring of glass. Anything in the gym below could be viewed from the hall wrapping around, like the viewing window above an operating room. Alan Bradley watched from behind the glass.
"Sam really believed that story about your needing to combat rebels in beta sector? There hasn't been rebel activity in cycles." Alan said, giving his companion a knowing smile.
Tron returned the smile. The two of them began walking, leaving the pair in the arena to rest. They traveled down the hall, shoulder to shoulder in their sweeping white robes. They had witnessed the entire match, like a pair of wise old philosophers in ancient Athens watching learning take place at their university. Tron's voice carried all the experience and knowledge of millennia surviving against impossible circumstances and enemies.
"He'll learn faster this way."