Clu sat at his office desk, on the top floor of Encom tower. Impersonating Kevin Flynn was not easy, but he was willing to do just about anything as long as his creator agreed to actually pay more than a moments fleeting attention to The Grid.
There were cramps in his fingers, in his legs, and his back felt like it was made of glass. He feared that if he moved he might break. It felt like he had been at the computer terminal for cycles, fingers skating over the keyboard. Did Users really spend this much time on these machines of theirs regularly?
"I'm boooooooorrred." The inevitable droning whine filled his ears, Clu flinched painfully.
"Occupy yourself." He demanded. Sam frowned at him from where he sat, lying back in a spare office chair. The child's blue eyes gave him a hard look that said 'seriously dude?'
From Flynn's stories, Clu had come to assume that human children were peaceful, lovable creatures. They were harmless and beloved, with wide adorable eyes, and round smiling faces. As he understood from Flynn's explanations, their sole purpose was to bring happiness to their caretakers.
Clu came to this world to discover that his creator had not just blatantly lied to him, Flynn had made him believe the exact opposite of what was truth.
They were monsters, terrible terrible beasts, all of them. And this one wouldn't leave him alone.
Flynn's evil spawn was draped sideways over the chair in an odd position that couldn't have been comfortable. His head was hanging over one arm, his brown curls a wild chaotic halo.
One leg hung over the oposite arm rest. His left arm flopped up over the back of the chair, and his right arm and right leg dangled over the edge of the seat. He looked at Clu like a program dying of energy depravation in the outlands.
"So boooooooorrrrrreeed." He howled "Booorred." "B.O.A.R.D." "Borrrrrrrrrrreeeeedddddd"
Sam began spinning absently in the chair, moving himself my kicking at the ground with his one dangling foot. It made a horrible, grating, squeaking sound. One that was sure to haunt him in his nightmares.
Clu was beginning to develop a twitch, some kind of annoying User glitch. When he was irritated the muscles in the right side of his face spasmed, they wouldn't stay put or be controlled.
This was the last time he would be taking Alan-One's advice. From the way Tron talked about his precious User, so proud, so adoring, Clu had been under the impression that this Alan-One was wise.
"Go on, take Sam to work with you, it'll be fun. Think of it as a bonding experience." He had said.
Users were masochists. Users were all insane.
"Clu, let's play a game!" Sam cried. "Let's play hide and seek."
Hide and do what? Clu had no idea what he was talking about.
Sam had stopped repeating that horrible 'bored' word, in favor of repeating his name over in over in varying accents and pronunciations.
"Clu." "Clu." Cluuu." "Big brother Clu." "Cleeeuuuu." "Clu!" "Clo." "Clue."
It was the last straw, as the Users would say. Clu exploded in fury, at his wits end.
"Sure!" He roared. "Fine. Whatever. Will it make you shut. up! Will it make you leave me in peace!"
His fist crashed down onto the desk, making a resounding crack as the cherry wood splintered under his curled fingers. When he lifted his hand there was a dent more like a crator left behind.
"Yay! I'll hide first!" Sam shouted in triumph. Clu felt his wounded pride. He might as well have been a kitten. He wasn't quite certain what a 'kitten' was but he knew the word was used as a synonym for incredibly weak, and completely innocuous.
The administrator's rage, which would have sent any of the basics on The Grid to their knees begging for mercy, bounced harmlessly off Sam. The child's face lit up with a wide grin, radiating such intense happiness Clu thought he might have to shield his eyes or risk being blinded.
Sam slid out of his chair, and in the time it took Clu to blink, he was gone. One of the things he had learned early on since coming here was that User children were incredibly fast, and their energy reserves were literally limitless. You would have no better luck catching one with a lightjet than on foot.
Clu guessed that was a yes. He was left to complete his work in the bliss of silence.
He watched the curious clock at the corner of the monitor as the User minutes ticked by. The time changed from 2:10 am to 2:40 am. He finally finished balancing, organizing, and paying the company expenses that Kevin had been ignoring for the past three months.
"Finished. Finally." He sighed in relief, Clu leaned back, exhausted into his chair. Now to leave this accursed place with its bland gray walls and it's even blander, grayer Users. Clu rose to his feet, accompanied by the sound of his cracking bones. He meandered out into the hallway.
"Sam! It's time to go!" He called. Clu looked in both ways down the empty hallway, built perpendicular to his office. "Sam?" He asked the open space, fully expecting some hidden eight year old to answer. "Sam?" This time there was a note of panic in his voice. The User couldn't have gone far, could he?
Clu chose a direction and began running down the hallway. He turned onto a floor that was a maze of gray boxes. Clu liked to call them 'command stations' each with a desk and a User working inside.
What had he been thinking? Letting the little User out of his sight. What kind of program was he? Losing his own creators only son. He should have listened, should have found Sam something to do, safe and nearby. He took a deep breath to calm himself; there was a painfully tight feeling in his chest that was making it difficult to breath.
The heads of employees turned in their cubicles when their apparent CEO rushed by, frantically screaming
"Little User, where are you! If you are in fact here, make your presence known immediately!"
One employee looked particularly shocked when Clu stormed into his cubicle. He picked up the waste basked and dumped it out onto the floor. A banana peel, candy wrappers, crumpled papers, and orange rinds were strewn across the rug.
"Um, Sir-" The small man began, blinking up at him with glasses that magnified his eyes, they more resembled dinner plates.
"Sam!" Clu called into the emptiness inside the trash. No, Sam wasn't there. What other tiny spaces might the User child become trapped in? He tossed the waste bin to the side.
Soon every trash bin on the floor had been dumped out and searched. The staff was too frightened by their incredibly angry and oddly behaving boss to say anything. He over turned two desks, successfully spilling the coffee and paper work sitting on each all over the tile.
Clu searched every closet, and found that the plungers, spare toilet paper, and mops within either did not know where Sam was or were to rude to answer him. He also searched every bathroom, much to the rage of the female employees, who threatened to file sexual harassment complaints.
After determining the top floor vacant of any tiny Users, Clu charged toward the stairwell. He nearly collapsed to his knees with relief when he saw a User he recognized. Descending the stairs Clu almost crashed into the little blond, face half covered by the stack of books she was carrying in her arms. He ground to a halt just in time.
Clu had come to discover that Lora Prime seemed to know just about everything that was going on in this strange world, surely she would know where Sam was.
"Lora. User Lora Prime, have you seen Sam?"
"No, I haven't." When the scientist answered she saw a horrified, miserable expression appear on Clu's face. He took off past her down the stairs. "Clu! Clu? Is everything all right?" She exclaimed, but he had already vanished.
Clu exited the stairway a floor below, the heavy metal door clicked shut behind him. He turned into the first room along this new hallway, it was a copier room.
There were several large, boxy, manila colored machines here of undefined purpose. Across the room was one of these machines, it was a tall rectangle. Set into the top face was a gaping mouth full of sharp metal teeth. There was something familiar resting on the mechanism.
Clu crossed the room, and recognized the object as a red sneaker, Sam's shoe. Printed on the front of the machine in unremarkable blue type was its designation.
'Shredmaster 5000'
He felt a momentary flicker of hope; Sam must be close, until he remembered where he had heard the term 'shredder' before. Lora Prime had explained to him that Users fed physical data and code they no longer needed to this shredder monster. Anything given to it was torn into hundreds of unrecognizable pieces.
There was no sign of Sam.
"Sam! Sam no!" Clu fell to his knees. He buried his face in his hands. He was supposed to be the greatest program ever created, the perfect program. How could he have let this happen? The User world was a dangerous dangerous place. It had machines that could shred Users into tiny bits, disease, man eating wild animals, weed whackers, house fires, explosions, car accidents.
He should have never let Sam out of his sight. He should be derezzed for his negligence.
"Took you long enough. Clu, the point of the game is to seek, not to yell until your opponent's deaf. Geeze."
At the sound of a boys exasperated voice, Clu looked up.
A box moved on the shelf above his head. Small hands lifted it away, and behind the box was sitting a familiar curly haired child, minus one shoe. Sam slipped down from the shelf. He landed on top of the shredder that he'd used to climb up, and jumped off onto the rug below.
Sam sighed. "Well, it was just your first try." He said, patting Clu's arm sympathetically, as if he were the child. "That was fun, let's play again-"
"No. No more hide and seek. I don't like that game." He scooped Sam up into his arms, Sam struggled to breath when he was crushed against Clu's chest. "Let's… let's just go home, ok?" Sam nodded into his shoulder, confused at how strange, how miserable Clu's voice sounded. He wrapped his arms around his guardians neck.
"Can we stop at the ice cream place on the way back instead?" He asked, as if not playing another round of hide and seek entitled him to this, 'iced cream'.
"I'm sure it will cheer you up." Sam promised him.