Notes: After all my talk about getting so many other things up next, I've got another Memory for you all (not that there's probably that many of you anymore). I've been sick the last few days, and this is what my brain was willing to go to work on. I still don't feel quite up to standard, but I've already missed too much work. On a positive note, my mother's back to working, so they should be pacing things back to the point where I can write more again, although I may end up setting some of that time aside for searching for a different job; if I still work where I do by the time of my seven year anniversary this June, I may have to shoot something.
This isn't the Memory that was supposed to come between the last one and the second one. I think I've figured out one of my main stumbling blocks on finishing up that one, though, and it ties into my not having seen Uprising yet; it's one of my larger divergence points between these stories and canon, and (hopefully) gathering more information will help. Anyway. This Memory is actually the origin and inspiration for all of them; it was the first one I thought up (or at least the basis of it), and one thought led to another, and so on.
I apologize in advance for what will likely be some very strange/troublesome formatting; to the best of my knowledge and ability everything works and shows up fine, but my text writing software has had a few... necessary adjustments made to it, in order to accommodate some classes I take when I can afford them. Hopefully at least one of the iterations will stay readable. I don't know. Translations were done by yours truly without access to my books, but hopefully they should all be correct.
Lady GryphonInia – Hello, and thank you. I originally meant for them to be drabble length (or what I think is drabble length, at 100 words?), but they've never managed to be that, and at this point, I don't really mind. I have a good many more of these planned out, either in my head or on paper (though some of them are 'locked' at the moment, meaning that, even if I did have them written out, which I don't, I wouldn't post them until we'd passed a certain, designated point within Antivirus, seeing as these Memories as supposed to be tying into that, but, eh), so I doubt I'll be running out any time soon, even if I'm very, very slow when it comes to getting everything written.
Cyberbutterfly – I was actually really worried about writing that last Memory. I don't think I've read any story that covered the creation topic, but there were two points that I really wanted to address with it. The first was in the reasoning behind Tron's creation; Alan created Tron to handle external and internal threats, and I could understand the why of external threats (hackers), but it got me to thinking on the 'why' and 'how' of internal threats like the MCP. The second point partially shows up in the one-on-one between Alan and Tron, but more so afterward with Ram and Era, but I don't think I should out and out acknowledge it here, until the point's made plain in Antivirus. I wouldn't want to ruin the suspense, such that it is. The rest of it was because I'm rather shameless and it made me happy, though I now have at least one more Memory planned with beta Ram and either alpha or beta Tron, so there's that.
No beta, as usual. Feel free to point out flaws, and whatnot, so I can address them.
Attaching memory file time code
plus 150 cycles
"Happy Birthday, Tron!"
The program in question turned to acknowledge Flynn's presence, before holding out a hand to catch his returning disk blind; it settled into his hand like it belonged there – which it sort of did – before he stored it on his dock, helmet retracting as he straightened out of his crouch. It only occurred to Kevin that his word choice might not have been the best when he saw the utterly bewildered look Tron was giving him.
"I understood three of those four words, Flynn; what is the definition for 'birth', and does it have any additional significance in the manner you used it?" Tron understood the concept of 'days'; he'd suspected Users operated on a different timescale than programs back when he was still in alpha – he'd waited as long as a decacycle between Communications at times – and had had that theory confirmed shortly after reuniting with Flynn, back at ENCOM.
"Well, uh...," the User hedged, rubbing at the back of his neck with his left hand; the other was hidden behind his back. He could try to explain the concept of birth to Tron, but to do so, he'd have to elaborate on User reproduction, and probably pregnancy, surgery, hospitals, and sanitation procedures, among others, along the way. It would take him a week to properly cover all those subjects, and he'd waited so patiently allweek for this particular day to come around.
So he improvised.
"A birthday... is like a personal holiday – do programs have holidays?" Before Tron could respond, he plowed ahead, "Anyway, it marks another year passing from when the individual was first – ... first came into existence. I saw your file history when I gave you that compatibility upgrade last week, so today is your, er, birthday? Writeday? Compileday? ...I'm just going to stick with birthday." The confusion had cleared from Tron's expression, though whether it had actually left or he'd simply stopped showing it was anybody's guess, but the look that had replaced it – a vaguely indulgent, bemused acceptance that was almost eerily reminiscent of the look Alan had given him when he'd told him about his latest idea for the foreign markets – wasn't much better.
Flynn therefore expected an answer similar to the one Alan had given him – which had run along the lines of a slightly sarcastic "Uh huh, sure, should I have the boys downstairs draw up some blueprints for a manufacturing plant on the Moon, while you're at it?" to which Flynn had breezily replied with a "Sure, why not?" because it was sometimes (okay, most of the time) fun to watch Alan try to be offended when he was secretly laughing on the inside – so Tron's reply surprised him. The fact that it surprised him made him feel vaguely guilty, but he couldn't say exactly why.
"Thank you, Flynn. When is your 'birth day', so I can return your greeting, in the event that you visit on that day? That is a correct course of action, yes?" Tron's processes were split between cataloging this new data packet about the User world and User customs, scanning their surroundings for any remaining threats, referencing any practices held by programs that could compare to the notarized timekeeping of a 'birth day', and feeling grateful for the consideration Flynn had shown in sharing this with him. Flynn had been visiting and spending significantly more time with Tron and these new programs and Tron was grateful for that. It helped to keep his processes from dwelling on Alan-One's continued absence...
"My birthday's still months away, man. Don't worry about it." Tron looked ready to protest, and Flynn couldn't stop himself from smiling at that, tone gentling to something probably more appropriate for talking to kittens or small children, instead of a warrior that could – and had – faced down armies by himself, and come out on top. "I'll remind you when it's closer, okay? You have enough to worry about right not without having to worry about getting me a gift."
"Gift?" Tron asked by way of a reply, head tilting to one side.
"Oh! Right, I hadn't told you about that part yet." Flynn lightly thwacked himself on the forehead, still with his left hand, his right still hidden, "Part of, uh, celebrating a birthday is giving the person whose birthday it is a gift. Sort of like saying 'Hurray, you lived through another year!'... Actually, considering how high mortality rates used to be, particularly among children, that's probably more true than I'm comfortable thinking about... And I've completely lost you, right?"
Tron just gave him a wide-eyed nod.
Figuring that the program had understood more of that than he was comfortable with, the User shrugged. "Anyway, the point of all that was I got you something for your birthday." Here, he finally moved his right hand from behind his back, offering the thing it held to Tron. The curious program took it, and began slowly examining it.
Two black, parallel rectangular planes, strangely textured, and connected by a third plane – equally as tall but not nearly as wide, convexly curved, and with silver markings he couldn't understand – wrapped around a sequence of paler, thinner planes, the edges of which had still more texture, similar to each other from what his visual input could determine, except the edge facing the curved black plane, where they fastened to each other, and the larger black planes, somehow.
He was holding it up by his face, calculating if one of his more sensitive, and direct sensors would offer up any additional data, when Flynn gently took the unknown thing back out of his hands.
"It's a book," Flynn announced, trying not to chuckle at the look Tron had been giving the gift – he'd almost looked like he was going to eat it or something – and demonstrated how to hold and open it, slowly flipping through pages at a random point in the book. "It's... like a text file, in the User world."
The program's eyes widened comically, and he made a strangled, almost-purring noise, and backed away two steps. "You want to give me something... made for Users?"
Worried that the system's security monitor was about to crash – he'd never heard him make that weird purr-like noise before – Flynn grasped Tron's shoulder, careful to avoid any circuitry (the last time he'd had to do this, when he'd started talking about transferring Yori in, he'd grabbed Tron by the elbow, accidentally touching the circuit there, the program had frozen up halfway between punching Flynn and cringing away, and promptly crashed anyway) and used a little bit of his User voodoo to smooth out and bolster Tron's erratic energy levels. Once everything seemed to have calmed back down to normal, the User removed his hand, and ducked his head enough to catch the program's averted gaze, "You okay?"
"Yes," Tron replied distractedly, putting his processes to rights even as the red values increased in his visual output. He registered a distant administrative status ping, shaded with alarm and worry, to which he pinged back a positive, if slightly unsteady, status confirmation; Clu hadn't been written yet the last time he crashed, so the fluctuation in his system awareness must have come as a shock. The red values in his visual output increased. "I'm fine."
Flynn nodded doubtfully, but didn't contradict him; he was well aware of the unspoken rule amongst men about 'passing out'. Something about the book had distressed the program, and he needed to figure it out before continuing their conversation, otherwise Tron would refuse the gift, and he'd been really proud of this gift idea. He'd been only curious about it until he heard what it was.
No, where it was from.
He'd made things on the Grid based off of things from the User world with varying degrees of accuracy – like that basketball court that had been reworked into a small Jai Alai court, minus the deadly fall, and the deck of cards that had been copied so many times by this point that there was guaranteed to be a deck in use in every gathering of idling programs, unknowingly emulating bored Users everywhere – but he'd never brought something in with any sort of permanence in mind before. He and his clothes – that was a bit of extra coding work he'd been happy to do, bodysuits and their inherent circuitry just weren't for him – came in and out regularly, but he had to admit to a certain amount of curiosity about what sort of wear an extended stay on the Grid would do to things. Maybe he'd bring a sandwich in with him next time, and if it could be copied...
Tron shifted his weight slightly, and abruptly Flynn was back in the here and now. Clearly, the program had trouble with the importance value he'd assigned the book, because of where it came from. The User took a moment to think about that, and try to come up with a comparative scenario for himself.
He figured it was something like being given Jesus' Atari.
The look Tron gave him when he burst out laughing was thoroughly embarrassed, but with just enough hurt to sober him back up. "Sorry, man. I'm not laughing at you, I promise. I'm trying to think of how to explain this right." Trying to ignore the hilarity of the mental image, the analogy still fit pretty well. The simple answer, was to lower the book's assumed importance, until the program could accept it.
So he lied.
"I was walking by the public library a few days ago – it's like like a big file directory for User books – and they had a bunch of books there that they were going to throw out to make room for newer, better books. No body else wanted them, they were going to throw them away, so I took a few of them home with me. This book was one of them." He handed it back to the program.
Tron tried to ignore the hollow shudder through his processes as he cataloged this new information about Users throwing away books when they got old or obsolete, and forcefully terminated any attempted cross-referencing to the age of programs, and any User. He was the oldest program on this sys- No.
He booted that whole data stream to the bottom of his priority list.
Examining the book generated a distracting issue, "I can't read this."
Misinterpreting the comment as acceptance, Flynn smiled, and reached into his pocket. He pulled out a gray block of data that looked, to Tron's memory files, like a scaled down replica of a Bit from the ENCOM system; the Bits of this more complex, sleeker system looked different, though there weren't very many of them around, particularly after Clu had a light enough workload to focus on pairing or integrating them with the rest of the system. "I can't read it either; it's in a User language called Chinese. I was just going to keep it around because the writing inside was kind of pretty, but then I stumbled on this file when cleaning out Dillinger's desk."
The fierce look Tron got answered the question of whether or not he'd told the program who Dillinger was. Then again, if ever there was a User for Tron to hate, it would probably have to be the MCP's User. His tone was heavily suspicious when he asked, "What is it?"
"Just a Chinese language file. Here." He gently tossed the file disguised as a Bit Users-knew-why to the program, who caught it on reflex. Immediately, it shifted into the 'yes' shape, then dissolved into voxels, auto-downloading into the program's processes.
Tron started to make a noise of protest, but it stuttered and died as the update automatically installed. He was still for a long moment, long enough for Flynn to start worrying about the file, and some hidden issue in it he'd failed to find when prepping it to transfer here, but then the program shook himself, looked at Flynn, and bowed.
"谢谢您。"(Xìexie nín. A respectful/polite thank you) Tron said, without a hint of an accent that Flynn could detect, and it was just strange hearing Alan's voice, and having the syllables not come together into meaning in his head.
"Huh?" But Tron had been distracted by the book in his hands, a mix of comprehension and excitement on his face, as he flipped toward what Flynn's Western sensibilities said was the back of the book, even as he knew, intellectually, that it was the front. "Tron, buddy, are you listening to me?"
"我听您。"（Wŏ tῑng nín. A respectful/polite I'm listening to you.) The program glanced up, then, to offer Flynn a curious look, and the User began regretting choosing this particular present. Tron seemed to understand him well enough – he clearly wasn't sharing in Flynn's confusion – but also seemed unaware that he wasn't speaking English anymore. He'd somehow gotten his default operational language shifted to Chinese by the upgrade. Flynn stalled for a moment on how to switch it back, though; he couldn't work it from outside the system, because one, the program before him appeared as so much text out there, and all that text would now be showing up in Chinese, and two, this system didn't have an I/O Tower, but he didn't even know where to start working on it from inside.
So he started at the obvious, and figured he'd work up from there.
"You're speaking Chinese, man. I can't understand you; could you maybe switch back into English?" He even went so far as to cross his fingers behind his back.
"中文吗？"(Zhōngwén ma? Chinese?) Tron blinked, as if he could only now hear himself, "对不起。"(Dùibùqĭ. I apologize.) He looked mildly annoyed, before going completely still again, trying to find where the glitch is.
Or at least, that's what Flynn hoped he was doing.
Just as the User was preparing to tote Tron along over to wherever Clu was, so between the two of them they could try and put him back to rights, Tron jerked back into movement, eyed Flynn somewhat uncertainly, and asked, "Better?"
The User gusted out a sigh in relief.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure you're back to English now. Sorry about that, my bad." He rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously for a moment, then an idea struck him, and he nodded back over his shoulder, toward the heart of the city. "Do you want to go get a drink or something? I know you're only turning three, and not twenty-one, but it's still sort of a User birthday tradition."
Tron purposefully delayed answering to make Flynn uncomfortable for a moment, before offering a slight smile, "Are you going to try dancing again?"
"... Maybe," the User replied with an appropriately shifty look.
The program laughed, "All right, then; as long as I get to watch you make a fool of yourself I'll be happy."
"Oh ha ha. So where were you thinking? Bar Graph? Equalizer? … Please don't say Pandemonium..."
Tron struck a thoughtful pose for a moment, until he couldn't repress his grin at the utter pout the User was gifting him with, "All right. I'll meet you at Equalizer; I need to take this book back to HQ."
Flynn waved off the explanation, "Sure, sure. I hope you enjoy reading it; "The Art of War" seemed like it could be helpful to you."
"I'm sure it will," Tron replied, as Flynn rezzed in his lightcycle. Flynn waved, and Tron hesitated as an action rocketed up his priority list. Smirking slightly, he started waving back.
"再见！" (Zàijìan! See you later!) Before the words had properly registered in Flynn's brain, and inspired sufficient panic, Tron had already rezzed in his own lightcycle and driven off.