Life is Stirring
Rating: K
Summary: Post Tron: Legacy. Sam has a lot to teach Quorra about the real world, but she can still teach him a thing or two about Go. A drabble from Sam's POV.
Disclaimer: Tron: Legacy and its characters, etc. do not belong to me
A/N: This little drabble was inspired by a question that I had at the end of the film… the same question Sam wonders toward the end of the fic (you'll see). Title is from the Jules Verne quote below. Edited only by me, so all mistakes are mine. Please read and review!

"The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides."
-Jules Verne

"Okay, your turn," Quorra said as she placed the smooth white stone on the board and looked up at Sam slowly. The glimmer in her eye and the smug grin she was trying to hide by biting her lip clearly indicated that his strategy was in trouble.

After twenty seconds of lazily scanning the Go board, Sam picked up a black stone from his bowl and laid it down on the grid. Her sudden inhale of breath made him glance up. Apparently he had played right into her plans and she was about to win; the glee was poorly concealed on her face. He glanced out at the river, not terribly concerned, while she contemplated her next move. He hadn't been following this game seriously anyway. Their fifth Go match of the day, his attention, interest and patience had waned. Her focus was typically better than his, but sometimes her strategy got a bit overzealous and he could still manage to win. When he was paying attention, that is. Not now.

It had been a long time since Sam had played a game without a screen for this many hours. But it was something familiar for Quorra in this new and strange world, and he sensed she needed some familiarity. She seemed to enjoy having something to teach him again, like on the Grid, to contrast all of the real-world things that he was teaching her.

She placed another of the small stones on the board, and collected a handful of his black stones that she had just secured. Oops, he should have seen that move coming. She smiled cheerfully at him once she had finished, indicating it was his turn again to hopelessly try to evade capture by her white army. He contemplated the board for 45 seconds this time, then placed another stone.

Their first weekend together in the real-world had been a leisurely one so far: dinner at the local pizza parlor, Sam teaching Quorra to skip stones across the river, another trip to the library, and now a Go marathon.

Sam was tired from the past few days; after his adventures in the Grid, he'd had to jump straight in to the logistics of ENCOM's change in leadership. He hated meetings already and confirmed his distaste for ties, but he knew it was what he had to do to set things right: what his dad would want him to do. Alan was there to help him at work of course, and Quorra was at the apartment with Marv to help him unwind in the evenings.

She had been so silent the first day, barely asking questions and just absorbing everything she saw. He was glad for it, because at first it was much easier to show her things – a sunrise, wind, hamburgers – than to have to explain it all in words. Although the hamburger incident didn't go down too well: once she understood where the burger came from and the sacrifice the cow had made just for her dinner, she couldn't eat any more and was glad to learn about the concept of vegetarianism.

The next day he'd dug out his public library card and they'd gone to the library, because she would need something to do while he was at work. He wasn't ready to show her the internet; give her at least ten days of adjustment into this reality before opening Pandora's Box, he figured. So instead they'd checked out all the Jules Verne and Isaac Asimov novels available, as well as an old set of Encyclopedia Britannica's as a preemptive strike against the plethora of questions that Sam knew she'd be asking. Staring at the pile of books stacked next to his end table, he absentmindedly counted the new books she'd brought home today, after they returned the novels she finished. She'd opted for more nonfiction: mostly history and natural science, with some philosophy and psychology thrown in too.

"I will win the game in a minimum of 10 moves, depending on how cleverly you place your stones," Quorra interrupted his wandering thoughts, sitting back in the sofa and watching him expectantly. She looked quite proud of herself.

With a sigh he replied, "Good job, Quorra, you win again!" Putting his hands on his knees he prepared to stand up, but caught sight of her face and paused mid-motion. "We can take a break and come back to it later, if you really want to finish," he added, noting her conflicted look of 'I know I've already won, but I want to actually win.'

"Yes, let's do that. Besides, you look tired."

Now that she mentioned it, he couldn't help but stretch and yawn as he stood up, stepping away from the short coffee table to give her room to move out as well. "Yeah… wanna watch the sunset and then start the stir fry? Sun's finally peeking out after the rain."

She nodded her consent before adding, "I'm going to practice skipping stones while it's still light out." As she moved out toward the water, Marvin barked and raced out of the bachelor pad to try to beat her to the river's edge.

They'd missed the sunrise this morning – well, Quorra had missed it because it was cloudy, and Sam had missed it because he was sleeping – so he guessed that she was particularly eager to see the sunset. She'd shaken him awake on his new bed (the couch) a worried look on her face, and asked what had happened to the sun to make it so dim today. She'd now experienced her first cloudy morning, and when they'd started the third Go game earlier that afternoon, her first rainstorm. Sam had moved to close the boxcar wall, only to be begged not to by Quorra; she wanted to watch the rain. He had conceded only because there was no wind, and because she had looked so joyful watching the heavens let loose their mighty torrent. He'd won that Go game, she was so distracted.

There was sure to be a beautiful sunset tonight, with the clouds breaking in the afternoon light and the rays of sunshine peeking through. On her second day off the grid Quorra had decided that she liked sunsets "nearly as much as sunrises, but not quite because a sunrise means the day is about to begin."

Sam flopped back down, this time in the sofa that Quorra had just been occupying. He contentedly watched her pick up rocks from the pile she'd formed last night: once she knew the characteristics of what to look for in a skipping stone, she'd searched out all of the possible candidates within a thirty foot stretch of shoreline and safeguarded them for future use. A smile crept on his face as he watched her wind up and prepare for the first attempt: skip… skip… sploosh. She paused mid follow-through, presumably to analyze her actions and how she could make them match Sam's movements the previous night when he'd gotten that speckled grey stone to skip seven times. Sam had noticed that the majority of her stockpiled rocks were some shade of mottled grey after he secured that record.

"Four skips, Sam, four!" Quorra turned around after the next try and yelled at her friend. He kept noticing how her childlike enthusiasm was coupled with a very adult grace.

"That's great!" he replied, and she returned to her attempts. As she the next rock went sailing smoothly over the water with a skip… skip… skip… sploosh, he wondered offhand whether she was moving her hips slightly more than necessary, and whether it was intentional. And whether he should be looking. Perhaps she had been watching more TV than he thought.

He had so much to show her, but he also had so much work to do. Soon he'd have to get an apartment actually suitable for a CEO of an international software company. Then Quorra would have enough space to keep a library of books, videos and pictures of the things she did in this reality. Her own real-world data disk, you could call it. Soon she'd know enough to start changing the world herself.

One of the first things on the list to do was to teach Quorra how to swim, Sam decided, because she was so fascinated by water. Which also meant they needed to go clothes shopping again. Sam was, he admitted to himself, not exactly against the idea of helping her pick out a swimsuit.

Speaking of clothes shopping and bathing suits, Sam wondered idly whether real-life Quorra still had that glowing ISO symbol on her arm that his father had described. Hmm.

Well, she was teaching him the patience to wait and find out.