Return
and their tears are filling up their glasses
-Tears for Fears
He's standing on a balcony overlooking Tron City when Sam Flynn comes for him. The interruption isn't unwelcome; he hasn't really been seeing anything past the loops of feedback tying up his processes. A star shines where the Portal used to be, his fragmented memories don't make sense, and he welcomes the distraction as a simplification and crowds Sam back through the door, away from the open space and into the long, dim hall on the other side.
It's hard to see Sam in here. The white circuits that always read as program, enemy fill his limited vision; it takes focus to register the details of his identity between flashes of I almost killed you once and Flynn's son and User. Sam moves back, maintaining space between them, and he steps into it, unhurried, unsurprised.
"What are you doing here, User?"
He can't read Sam's face, but voices are easier, and Sam's is calmer than it should be.
"Something my dad would have wanted me to."
It's cryptic, an irritant, and his hesitation falls away; he shifts forward with his hands raised to catch the User and shake answers out of him. The scuff of noise behind him doesn't register until it's too late to turn. He sees the knowledge in Sam's eyes and thinks betrayal before something slams into his back, arms locking solidly around him, a bear-hug holding him still.
He can't break away.
He could, but he can't. So easy to turn, snap these arms that have strength but not nearly enough to restrain him, drive open hands into his assailant, feel memory core and CPU shattering around his fingers and he can't, he's somehow thousands of silent sectors away from the deathly snarl and roiling unrest that informed every tic of his existence for he can't remember how long and he doesn't know who he is anymore and isn't sure he could integrate it if he did.
"Hold on," says the one behind him. "Easy now."
The voice is his own, yet nothing like his own. Steady, gruff, gentle, a rumble that goes straight up his spine, reverberating through his chest, synced with his every letter and line.
"Careful." That's Sam Flynn, somewhere out in a space suddenly too vast to comprehend. "You have power here; you could hurt him."
There's no answer; there shouldn't be. Nothing can hurt him. He's always been the best, aside from Clu, and Clu is gone, and... he knows beyond all reason that nothing in this place where he is would ever hurt him.
"Easy," murmurs the voice against his ear. "You've done well. It's all right. I've got you."
His head is tipped back onto someone's shoulder, his hands on the forearms holding him up, and he breathes and everything is light.
.o0o.
"..stripped him down." The voice resolves slowly from a background blur into something with meaning, something he can understand. Language, intent, identity. Sam Flynn; the User.
"I've given him that back, anyway." That other voice is nearer: weary, as one who has accomplished a great work and still has to sort out the memories. "Some of it I think your father did. Always did want to cut me down to size."
"My dad messed with your program?"
"Wouldn't be the first time."
He drifts again, but not far. They're right beside him, both Users, and he can sense their presence with a clarity he hasn't been able to access for thousands of cycles. And it's not only them. He's aware of the dimensions of the room they're in, the channels of energy and communication traced through the walls, the locations of programs occupying other areas of the block, its place in the Grid's history... he recognizes so much more now than he used to. He has a feeling that if he opened his eyes everything surrounding him would stand out sharp and clear, undimmed by judgments of value to the system. All is present, immediate, unalloyed.
"..supposed to look like that," Sam is saying. "And - what about those, there and there?" A hand hovers above him, tracing an active circuit up his ribcage without presuming to touch it; the proximity is magnetic. "He didn't even have those before. How did you-?"
"No." There's iron in the other voice now. Anger, quiet but implacable, chilling to perceive, though directed elsewhere. "He did have those, and more. They were choked off with admin patches."
"Clu."
"I don't know, Sam. I just don't know."
.o0o.
He watched a world grow around him once, and understood as never before why programs were usually rezzed in after a system had already been prepared for them. He didn't ask for changes, even of small details that had bothered him in the old world, but Flynn had taken to noticing things and would delight him with eye-popping graphics and tricks of scale and scope before reverting the code and explaining patiently why the Grid was supposed to work this way and no other. The explanations satisfied him more than Clu, who had been restless from cycle one; he thought there were times that Clu asked questions just to hear himself talk, but Clu was too like Flynn to challenge directly. Programs, like protocols, needed their workarounds.
He'd woken from a downcycle once to something within him that stretched vast jaws below everything he'd become. It had yawned and gaped and echoed and he'd thrashed away from it into Flynn's grasp, the heartbeat against his back pulling him out of himself again until he could encompass what had been done to him. "Shh," the User had soothed, "it's just a memory upgrade. I told you, remember? The new process load would've been too heavy - hey, hey... it's all right. You'll need that space; it's more space to learn."
"Can he hear us? He just..."
"No way to tell. He could be coming back online. There's so much we don't know about them yet." He can sense the User bending over him, studying his face. So close, the warm pulse of the throat within easy reach, and yet he feels only peace. Language, intent, identity; the structure of all things; the heartbeat of the Grid.
Flynn's gone now. The vast gulf seethes with numbers, names, flickering scraps of sound and video, data he's been unable to access for a thousand cycles. Fresh patches and failsafes are woven through the worst of it, but they're meant to ease, not to alter: nothing is hidden anymore. It's become a structure instead of a pit, and he remembers everything, and he understands. Maybe anger will come later. Maybe. He understands, but he doesn't know.
"Maybe we weren't meant to get so close to them." The User's voice is gentle again, caring, concerned, sorrowful too at the outcome of all of these mysteries. He knows what the Grid has lost, what Sam has lost; the User also grieves.
"..yeah, well." Sam's voice is gruff, like his father's, hiding what he feels by flaunting it on his sleeve. "My dad had other ideas."
Again, there's no answer and he knows the other User's expression as though he were wearing it himself. Remembering some of Flynn's other ideas, he probably is.
But he understands.
He can tell Sam about his father now. They can tell him what comes next. There's room for them all to learn.
He opens his eyes and says quietly, "Alan One."