It was late evening when Sam found the basement door already unlocked. The busy chorus of buzzing drives and churning CPUs met him as soon as he opened it. Alan was in there.
Sam's eyes automatically fell on the large sensitive screen table filled with soft glowing lines of data before he registered the older man rummaging through a briefcase.
"Hey, man..." he stepped down and threw his keys on a corner table. At the sound, Alan jolted upright and turned around somewhat awkwardly.
Err...okay...
Raising a brow at his godfather's reaction, he stepped down and went to the mainframe to grasp a view of the console. "I thought you left early because you were frazzled..."
"Well, it has been a while since I've come here, you know. I thought it couldn't hurt to pay a visit on the way." A sliver of teasing lightened the older man's voice. "You?"
"Just...passing by. But since when is the arcade on your way home—" Sam abruptly stopped and pointed at two slim hard drives in an opened briefcase on the ground. "I don't remember these guys here... What are they for?"
Alan stood with a look of innocence for a second and gestured faintly with an arm before turning back to the table where a wireless keyboard sat with his pad. "Storage."
Sam huffed at the vague answer and folded his arms. "No kidding? Care to enlighten me, or...?"
"It's for TRON," the answer came simply but a trace of impatience in the voice made Sam pause.
What had it been? Over three weeks now, maybe.
Sam had not stopped looking for clues, for any hint of his father's signature on the System. The limit of their search had been the laser, though. Alan had made sure to disable the digitalizing function, and whereas his godfather's opinion had hardly stopped him before, the absence of his father itself was a valid enough example for the casualties that came with trusting the SHIVA laser with one's life.
That, and the thing had been responding with error messages ever since the night he had accidentally launched it. Had it not, something in Alan's eyes told Sam that he would have been the one to have to keep his godfather from jumping right in, at the first chance to see it all for himself; both the worlds of computers and the program he had created.
With Quorra slipping out of the garage to explore at any chance she got, the younger man didn't feel ready for that much to worry about on his own so suddenly. So Lora and Alan had been his best option to get some help. After all, it had started with a paging, and it felt ironic that the only man in L.A. who still could use a pager would not get to find his last call's origin. Sam still couldn't help but snort at the sight of the bulky old device — where did Alan keep it on himself anyway?
Also...there had been Rinzler. Because the idea of a sort-of-guy wearing TRON's symbol on his chest, throwing a suicide move to save them and then disappearing soundlessly didn't feel acceptable at all. Alan would have ended up finding out anyway. He would probably have investigated the arcade on his own after Sam had returned.
Anger had followed the realization on his godfather's face, making Sam regret spilling the beans, but when outrage turned into a look of deep betrayal in the same eyes, Sam cringed without fully understanding why...
On the other hand, the possibility of a program's sentience had troubled Alan a lot. Sam doubted the man had even let himself sleep ever since he had learnt of Tron.
He managed to struggle out of ENCOM with the excuse of a month of vacation…which he immediately set to spend hours of System scans. After he had gathered all dependencies linked to his program across the System, Alan set to the real work. He didn't stop until the shreds of code and files had been rerouted into something resembling his program, until the maker could recognize again the spark he passed down, according to his father's not so metaphoric books. (Sam had read some of them; the ideas had parsed alright enough.)
Anyway, when the program debugging commands did not respond anymore, Alan had had to resort to less orthodox means and Sam could tell that the older programmer was even less used to reverse-engineering than himself. Fortunately the job of TRON's first compiler proved rather simple and with the help of some handy tools Sam suggested, Alan's latest development interface had done a wonderful job of extracting the code.
Then, he had to write a compatible patch making sure its machine language would match one of thirty years ago. The whole thing obviously took much more popcorn and coffees than Alan had expected and Sam had been a little amazed not to see him lose patience in the process. In fact, seeing the older man at work had been both interesting and incredibly boring; drafting simulation after simulation and debugging his own drafts for hours before actually applying it to his patch? The method did save lots of debugging time, when Alan finally set to apply the code, but if that was the good way to program, Sam really could not imagine himself sitting a whole day to do it.
Two weeks and then some afterward, when TRON had woken again, Alan's dumbstruck expression had been worth the wait…and it had been nothing compared to the emotion the ex-programmer had shown when his security monitor, the program he had drafted, modeled, coded, tested, polished and prized for thirty years soundly answered his first new request.
•
"So..." Sam tried eventually, "What's the deal? The patches don't hold?"
Alan paused and smiled silent thanks. "Of course they do. Everything's tidy, he's back in control." He took another piece out of the bag, and Sam's eyes followed his moves.
"Then what? You're making a backup?"
Still searching for a place to secure his installation, Alan muttered a 'no' from behind the glowing fans of the mainframe and added "What for? We still don't know why or for how long they...keep sentience." (Alan quickly got used to picking words carefully for programs, avoiding vague ones such as the concept of soul to prevent confusion on both parts), "His...consciousness, could be linked to the hardware as far as we know, so...I doubt that backing up a copy would be of any help if he cannot find his way to the backup."
Copying. That topic had occupied their conversations for some time now. Apparently, saving a copy of a rare program to purposely let the original obliterate was hardly ethical from a security coder's point of view — even if he never suspected his program of being sentient.
"So what?" Sam asked, head tilted in confusion.
"So I also made him wholly portable." Alan muttered.
"Also?" Sam inquired. Silence followed and he wondered if it would be safe to press further. Before he could decide, Alan took a deep breath. "Anyway," he added firmly. "He will need more resources to work properly."
Sam raised a brow. "Like two drives?"
"The minimum needed to build a…a virtual room where he can backup or heal each time he sleeps, and...coordinating two drives for him to sort his memories faster..."
Sam shrugged it off with a grin. "Get lost old man! I know how a RAID 3 system works, thank you very much. You know, during the century you spent buried under charts, they invented something called the Internet; well there is a clever sort of program bringing you all sorts of information..."
Alan laughed.
"So..." Sam trailed off, smile wilting slowly. "Are you going to take him" Sam vaguely gestured to his father's computer "out of the mainframe?"
"No. Well, technically yes." Alan gently knocked on the sleek twin drives. "I want Tron based at a safer place — I mean an even safer place. But he...it...he will keep working on this System with full access to the Grid anyway."
Alan could avoid his skeptical look all he wanted, but Sam wasn't sure he liked the idea. Eventually he nodded and turned to inspect the other devices the older man had brought along. Since he had tidied up more than just CLU's rerouting in TRON's code, Alan had not put the program back on Kevin's System. Whether he was more upset with his father's liberties, or had gotten overprotective over what or who he held as a prized reminder of his youth, it was difficult to say because Alan's gaze soured each time his program was mentioned. Well before it had become a video game character, by how things looked, that ol' package of bits had probably been the first full-fledged software Alan had created that was complex enough to deserve a name. Now the news came that despite running so long on heuristics to answer often incompatible orders, despite going without a sensible update from his maker for this long, Tron avoided corruption and disuse enough to fight back an AI's overrides. For twenty-seven years. Before Alan found him on a hidden System in a state barely allowing restoration.
So alright, that counted for something, and Tron may have never belonged to his father in any way but through his professional position, but... Right now, the glaring possibility of having his childhood hero cut from his heritage felt...more unpleasant than Sam expected.
"And what is that?" he asked again after his gaze fell on a larger device with two USB docks in Alan's briefcase. He took it out to casually flip it in one hand in an effort to distract himself from his conflicted feelings.
Alan stopped to focus on the piece then proudly smiled; "That's the NAS firewall. It will handle the RAID safety—"
"Okay wait. What would he need something like that for?" Sam asked with raised eyebrows.
Examining the piece, Sam barely realized that Alan moved behind him until he carefully snatched it out of his hands. "Aside from backup and security? Well, communication. Stop looking at me like that, will you? It will really come in handy to be able to upgrade Tron from home." Alan said, plugging the drives in their dock before retrieving his pad to check on the connection. "Besides, Lora wants to check him out."
"Okay." Sam chuckled. "Did Roy convince you to go underground with Tron or what...?"
Alan fought a smile of his own and huffed with mock outrage. "'Cause you imagine me trying to break into corporate—" he pushed his glasses up his nose and munched on the rest of his sentence, struck with realization.
Well that was eons ago and all Kevin's idea—
A little self—conscious, he returned Sam's gaze with a prudent suspicion. "It can't hurt to take precautions."
"Man," Sam groaned, still disbelieving, "don't you think this is taking the whole thing a little too far?"
"How could it?" He shook his head, abashed. "You don't realize?" Searching Sam's eyes, he let his eyes narrow with amazement. "My—TRON may really be alive. But it...he still is a program. Movements of clustered data depending solely on the diligence of our work," he finished gently.
"The System is private, closed and hidden in a basement! You are bordering paranoia."
Alan pursued his lips. "Maybe I am."
Sam cast his head aside and blinked nervously. Granted, of all things, that wasn't the cleverest to say when his godfather just had his creation undergoing a few varieties of android hell. Especially when it could have all been avoided had the person responsible simply asked first.
In fact it was hard to imagine. His father keeping a sentient program cut from his user, a close friend, for over four years... He must have had his reasons. But Kevin had been so adamant on information freedom and individual rights... Surely he would have applied theses values to programs too. Every program...without favoritism. Alan never asked why Tron was on Kevin's System, or why half of his initial functions had disappeared even after he had cleaned up CLU's mess.
Sam couldn't decide if he was glad or frustrated with Alan's silence.
"Look man..." Sam said with another huff. He tentatively lifted his own hand then let it fall, weary, and swallowed bile. "I know I said—I talked of reformatting, but," he gently shook his head, "that was just... I promise I'm not touching any sector of the System until we're sure of what occurred there."
Alan paused again, leant against his table. "I know, Sam. I never doubted it." He stepped back, patting his godson's arm, grabbing the tablet and examining the small installation he had linked behind the mainframe. "I am sure we can handle the System with time, if we all do it together." He nodded, content, before turning to face Sam again, voice softening. "I'm just trying to spoil Tron every way I can without him noticing" he smiled, "That's just a little upgrade."
Sam forced a laugh and shook with amusement. An upgrade? "Alan, you're giving a single program personal hardware and a whole network server. That's damn unfair in my book. Really how could a system administrator..."
A smile pursed Alan's lips. "Heh, legally, this System is all yours, laser included. So happy administrating." He put his pad away. "Besides," He closed his briefcase and touched Sam's shoulder, serious again. "If you create a full-fledged program, put your heart into it, pass down a spark...I dare you to meet him in there," he motioned to the large frame of the laser. "Because I can't wait to have someone else to tease about it," he said, still smiling, as he stepped back toward the staircase, "and I will be curious to hear your opinion on digital paranoia then. I'll be home. If you need anything..."
Alan caught the half concealed dejection on his surrogate child's expression. It felt cruel to deprive the youngster, no matter how quickly he was aging, of one of the last things that linked him to his father's memory. For a moment, he reconsidered his choice. But his gaze narrowed and, jaw set, he proceeded upstairs. Sam was hardly a child anymore. They were not talking about a video game character but about a new form of life, one that he had created, cherished, and lost. One that needed him and—
Or maybe it was him who needed TRON. Perhaps that was merely egoistical, rude even, but he decided he would afford that. Just this once, just about this: his first program that...who would remain personal and out of the Flynn's league.
"Sam?"
"Yeah! Yeah. …Eh, man!" Alan paused. "Remember you're officially on vacation? That usually implies not working. Because I know how much you love charts, but."
Alan couldn't stop a chuckle.
"No programming either." The younger said, brows furrowed in a look of distant worry. "It's been years…how come you never tire out of coding? Don't you think it's about time you take some rest?"
One hand on the door lintel, Alan tilted his head to reset his glasses before meeting his gaze again with an expression of secretive patience that Sam felt all too familiar.
The youngster smiled. "C'mon, I know you can't breathe without a keyboard, Alan." Sam turned around and went to sit by the mainframe, snickering. "Was still worth trying."
•
As soon as Alan left the basement, Sam stepped close to the two drives buzzing and blinking white and blue on their larger base. Despite the many new responsibilities on his shoulders, he couldn't restrain a laugh when he saw the tiny sets of four phosphorescent blue squares drawn on each of them.
With a mirthless smirk, he took his phone and shot a picture of the tiny monument.
Later, when the laser would be safe enough to quell Alan's questions, when TRON had become a vivid and free-willed person in Alan's mind, Sam could bet these pictures would become valuable blackmailing material for the uptight and reserved man, namely if he ever needed Alan to replace him at a board meeting...
He didn't know if he would find the time —or...'kay the patience— to write a full program, but he was not unhappy to miss the unavoidable awkward moments of identity crisis, and narcissistic vortexes were much more fun when others were caught in them—especially uptight men with glasses and ties.
After a long silence, Sam sighed and turned away.
Okay, maybe…maybe he would change his mind, but... he could already think of many other ways to have fun in a computer, thank you very much. And Tron... He could tell Tron would want to protect the Grid.
He slowly walked up the stairs and flicked off the lights.
Because, it had been his home for more than a dozen years and...well—
He softly pushed the door's panel and the distant light of led signals slipped through the gap, casting their bluish glow onto the mixed nostalgia of a smile that didn't want to stop tugging at the young man's lips.
TRON fought for every user~
The door closed.
.
Notes : My thank to Pinkprincess13310 who pushed me into developing what was supposed to be a 200 words flash ficklet into a 2850 words fanfiction, I must also thank Zsadist at Heart who is the main reason this text doesn't tear your eyes apart as bad as it could, and because English is a foreign language for me and it could not hurt to be super cautious with the grammar, I thank Ayala Atreides who have been nice enough to proof-read the last draft. If you find the end result entertaining or disappointing, please let me know with a "Like" or a review.