Zen and the Art of Light-cycle Maintenance
x – x – x
"You really think this will help, Flynn?"
"Just trust me, okay?" Privately Flynn thought that getting Tron to just relax and kick back for a while would be about as easy as teaching a cat to hang-glide, but he was not a man to admit defeat easily. The stoic, reliable security program had been nothing short of twitchy ever since Flynn had managed to erase Rinzler's aggressive code from his system. Tron still remembered it all, every horrible thing that creepy critter had done at Clu's twisted behest, and it had left him insecure. Afraid of himself. Convinced that the slightest relaxation of his self-control meant he was going to lose it and go on some crazy rampage through the newly-rerezzed Grid. What worried Flynn was the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even on the most trustworthy instruments, guitar strings wound too tightly had a tendency to snap.
Tron needed to find his centre. Needed to get his cool back. And, Flynn knew, there was nothing like meditation for chilling.
"I just don't understand," Tron was saying now, with uncharacteristic grumpiness, as Flynn derezzed his armour and replaced it with a more comfortable pair of kimono pyjamas (which were not entirely to Tron's taste, from the look on his face). "I don't get how sitting cross-legged, running nothing but the most basic processes for extended periods of time, is supposed to upgrade my programming."
"It isn't doing nothing, man."
"I beg your pardon?" Tron was thrown by the apparent lapse in grammar. Picky, pedantic program!
"I meant that meditation isn't about doing nothing. It's about...finding your calm centre."
"But what if Alan-One didn't program me with that function?"
Flynn snorted a laugh. "Buddy," he said, "Alan Bradley's about as spiritual as a bit's butt, but you're not him. You're you. You can achieve spiritual enlightenment if you want to, you just need a little guidance."
Tron looked very doubtful. "And you think such enlightenment will help my self-control."
"There's nothing wrong with your self-control," Flynn explained, patiently. "You've just convinced yourself there is. You need to give yourself a break. Just try this. It's all about taking a step back and not judging yourself so hard for things you can't change. It's good for your soul."
"I'm reasonably sure Alan-One didn't program me with one of those, either," came the dry response.
"Okay, so it's good for your meta-cognitive processor. Same thing. Now sit down and stop pretending you don't know what I'm talking about. You're getting seriously cantankerous in your old age, you know that? Real grumpy old program."
"I'm sorry, Flynn." Tron sounded genuinely contrite as he obediently settled himself onto one of two mats Flynn had set out on the floor.
Flynn patted him on the shoulder, before sitting on his own mat a few feet away. "Take it easy, buddy. I think you'll like this once you get into it."
xxx
Some time later, Tron had still not found enlightenment, his calm centre, or a way to sit perfectly still on the cold, hard floor without his buttocks going to sleep. Moreover, deliberately impairing his vigilance by reducing the input from his senses – keeping his eyes closed – made him uncomfortable. Nonetheless, he persevered. A User wanted him to develop this function: whether or not Tron saw the purpose of it was irrelevant. Besides, he couldn't deny that just sitting here with Flynn in peaceful silence was...soothing.
"How you doin', buddy?"
"I haven't yet achieved enlightenment, Flynn."
Flynn chuckled. Tron found himself smiling at the sound – it sent a surge of warmth flowing through his circuits. With his eyes closed, he couldn't see the grin on Flynn's face, but he could hear it in his voice. Interesting sensation.
"I don't think you need to worry," Flynn was saying. "It's not a race, y'know? It took me a few hundred cycles to even start to get a handle on it." He sounded very relaxed himself - not as though his power had dropped below optimal levels, but calm, as though perfectly content with himself and his surroundings.
Tron tried to conceal his alarm at the thought of sitting motionless on a mat with his eyes shut for hundreds of cycles. Still, if it meant that Flynn would keep talking to him in that slow, calm, happy-sounding voice, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
"I'm finding it hard to...relax," Tron explained, apologetically. "You said to 'let myself go' but if I release control of all my higher-order processes, I'll reboot."
Flynn chuckled again, and Tron felt another surge of welcome warmth wash through his circuits. It was very pleasant. He sighed, shifted his position a little, and found that against the odds, he was beginning to 'chill' after all. "Perhaps you can talk me through it," he suggested, hopefully.
"You wouldn't find that distracting?"
"Not at all. I enjoy listening to your voice, Flynn. When you first found me on the shore of the Sea of Simulation, back when I was..." reprocessing that particular set of stored data was not, he found, conducive to relaxation, so he broke off awkwardly and tried again. "While you were recompiling my base code, you talked to me all the time. I knew I wasn't alone." He remembered that terrible feeling of floating in an endless void, knowing that at any instant he might plunge back into a nightmare from which he couldn't wake – that was how Rinzler had felt to him. A dreadful waking dream in which he was forced to destroy that which he loved and had sworn to protect, over and over. And then Flynn's voice had come, out of the darkness, drifting towards him like tendrils of light, strands of reality he could grasp onto to pull himself back.You always fought for the Users, Tron, that voice had said, I need you to fight for me one more time...come back to me, man...it's going to be okay...just hold on...
"Did I ever thank you for all you did?" Tron asked, now.
"Aw, buddy, only about a thousand times. You apologised for Rinzler about a thousand times, too, not that you had to. I'm just glad to have you back. Now – how about we settle in and go for a take on this, all right?"
xxx
"Think of it," Flynn said, "as...uh...like riding a Light-cycle." He seemed pleased with the idea; Tron, opening his eyes briefly to glance in perplexity at the User, could see him nodding vigorously to himself.
"You want to play Light-cycles? Now? I thought we were meditating at the moment."
Flynn opened one eye; their gazes met briefly. "You are totally getting snarky with me, man."
"I didn't intend to be...'snarky'," Tron apologised. "Please explain to me how our current activity resembles riding a Light-cycle."
"Close your eyes and I'll tell you," came the firm response.
Tron did as instructed, though he couldn't shake the feeling that Flynn was making this up as he went along. Hadn't he once admitted – long ago – that Users lived from moment to moment just as much as programs did, maybe more?
"Okay." There was a slight shuffling sound as Flynn resettled himself on his mat. "I want you to imagine...sitting on a Light-cycle. Sitting on it with me. Yeah."
"Light-cycles are only designed to hold one person at a..."
"Use your imagination! And don't say Alan didn't program you with one."
"Yes, Flynn."
"All right. So. Here we are, sitting on our Light-cycle. Okay?"
"Okay. I should say that I don't find riding Light-cycles very relaxing."
"You do when it's with me. We're not gaming here, just going out for a nice, quiet Sunday afternoon ride, just the two of us..." Flynn's voice lowered, softened, became dreamy. "The road ahead of us is empty...stretching off into the distance, just miles and miles of empty desert road...the sun warm on our backs..."
"Flynn..." Tron hated to spoil the moment, but he couldn't let this pass. "I've never seen a desert road. Or the sun, for that matter."
"Tron, work with me here. You've seen pictures, you've read books. Just – visualise it. And stop interrupting, man, you're messing up my hypno-thing."
Tron fell respectfully silent, genuinely trying to do as Flynn asked, though he found himself less interested in images of a world he would probably never see, than what was already familiar to him – Flynn. He found it easy to imagine Flynn's touch, having experienced it often, myriad affectionate gestures, shoulder-pats and hugs...he saw himself on the back of the magically-expanded Light-cycle, his arms around Flynn's waist, his cheek resting against Flynn's shoulder, and while the picture he manufactured in his processor was fuzzy, the sensation felt surprisingly real. He could even feel the warmth of the sun...except it wasn't the sun, but Flynn himself giving off that heat.
"I see it," he murmured, to his own surprise.
Flynn's voice held approval. "Good. That's great. Just feel that big powerful machine, purring beneath you..."
Yes, Tron could feel that. He shifted slightly on the mat.
"We're riding along, heading for a deep, dark tunnel. But, uh, it's not dark in a bad way..."
Yes, Flynn was definitely making this up as he went along, but Tron found he no longer cared. He wanted to hear more about this journey they were making together.
"The tunnel's all lit with white and blue lights, soft, muted, and we're travelling along it to a quiet place where there's no anxiety, no judgement, just peace, and – and serenity. A calm clearing at the end of the road. I'm taking you there, okay?"
"Anywhere you like," Tron breathed. The lights of the tunnel pulsed around him, through a darkness which was soft and inviting, utterly unlike the terrible emptiness of the void he had floated in for so long...he could feel those lights filling him, whispering through his circuits, lulling and intoxicating him. He sighed.
"Please go on, Flynn," he urged.
"So we've reached the end of the tunnel, and we're coming into golden, late-afternoon daylight...we're in a cove, sitting on the sand, looking at the ocean..."
"Flynn," Tron said, quietly.
"Oh! Oh, crud, I'm sorry, man. Okay, forgot the ocean. We don't like oceans. No ocean. We're sitting by a...are we okay with lakes?"
"Lakes are probably fine, yes."
"Good. We're sitting – no, we're riding alongside a lake. It's big and blue and deep but - not too deep -" he added quickly. "Thing is, our Light-cycle's just about to run out of juice."
"That's unfortunate."
"Yeah. So, um – this Light-cycle, it's reliable and strong and really good at its job, and it's never let us down, no matter what it may think, but still, it's running on empty. It needs refuelling. It's tired. See where I'm going with this?"
"I think I understand your analogy, Flynn. Thank you for the compliment."
"You're welcome. So we park the cycle, and we see that the lake is actually a pure power source. Good for us, good for the Light-cycle, right? And we go great, cool, let's refuel our ride, 'cos, you know, we love our Light-cycle and we want it to be happy."
Tron wanted to answer, found that for some reason words wouldn't come. He somehow sensed that they weren't necessary, anyway.
Flynn seemed to understand Tron's lack of audio response. He went on gently, "so we ride right into the lake. The power lake. Remember that spring we found, you and me and Ram, all that time ago? The pure energy? Remember how good it felt?"
"Yes," Tron whispered.
"It feels just like that," Flynn whispered back. "Except better, because there's no danger, no risk, no quests, no enemies to fight. Just the two of us, filled with this energy, this power. We're part of the Light-cycle now. The three of us together, all one entity, you, me, and it. We can feel the power filling us up, expanding, running through us like liquid light..."
"Yes," Tron breathed, again. He could feel it, just as Flynn described...beautiful, pure, cleansing power flooding his circuits with euphoric, life-affirming bliss. He suppressed a groan, mumbled, "go on, Flynn...please..."
Flynn's voice was husky, mesmeric. "There's so much of it, this power, it's filling us up and overflowing into the world around us, everything, everywhere, all of it connected, building and building..."
Fantasy was becoming reality. Tron's circuits were throbbing with the flow of energy passing between Flynn and him, each word from Flynn's lips sending another pulse of dizzying euphoria through him. Not even the purest power had felt so wonderful before. And all of it words...just words...Flynn's words...
"You okay, buddy?"
Tron's answer was strangled, catching in his throat. "Finish it," he panted, "please, finish it."
There was a pause, an unbearable pause, then Flynn's voice resumed, a low growl now, deep and seductive, "...building until it's so strong, so bright, so earth-shattering we can't hold it anymore, we have to let it go, release it, and it explodes out into the universe like the birth of life itself, and we can't believe how beautiful it is, so much power..."
Tron heard no more; overwhelmed, his circuits pulsing wildly, lights exploding behind his tightly-closed eyes, he heard himself cry out, a single, ecstatic syllable. "Flynn!"
x – x – x
His systems rebooted slowly, processor coming back on-line with languid reluctance. After what felt like an age, he opened his eyes.
Flynn was standing over him, hands on hips, an amused expression on his face. "You're pretty relaxed now, huh? So you think you're gonna like meditation?"
Tron managed a dazed smile, any embarrassment he might have felt swept away by the warmth in Flynn's eyes. "I like it already," he replied, fervently.
Flynn's laughter washed over Tron, soothing his overstimulated circuits. "Just you wait till we get to the tantric stuff!"
x - x - x End x - x - x
Title is an homage to 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Robert Pirgis.