Programs tend to forget that there are scattered colonies outside of Tron City... or at least, that there were. In the User's year of 1989, that's where I lived. As I had done time and time again, I had sacrificed one thing I loved for another when I came there. While Tron City was beautiful, advanced, and growing in a kind of overwhelming splendor, surprisingly little was being done there that required the particular skill sets of my programming. At least, not to an extent that was challenging. I had begun to wither away under the monotony, ease, and boredom. And so, I came to Tron, and confessed to him that I needed to go somewhere else.

It was not what he wanted. It wasn't even what I wanted. But we both knew exactly how bad it was getting. I was running diagnostics on non-existent prototypes in my head with nowhere to develop them, sipping into reveries wherein I tried to solve unsolvable problems. I'd drained myself into stand-by doing it on more than one occasion. It worried him.

Typical for Tron, he didn't attempt subtlety when I confronted him.

"Yori," he told me, "Of course you should go." There was more to it than that, of course, but I still smile when I think of that line. It was just such classic Tron. His eyes were sad, his mouth drawn into a perfect line, his eyebrows knitting together and tucked down over his eyes, so much the opposite of sweetness and affection; but his words were sharp, commanding, without question, and that spoke of the gravity with which he meant them. He wanted to see me happy again, whatever the cost. He was simply not one to have ever, as Flynn would say, "sugar coat" things.

What happened after that... isn't important here. But that's how I came to live across the outlands on the far shore of the Sea of Simulation, while Tron remained across that impossible distance defending the city.

The colonies needed him sometimes too, however. And then he would come to me and everything stopped; work, everything. It would be just us for the next 3 milicycles, 6, 9, however long we had, just as soon as he'd accomplished what he'd come for. Or, other times, I was all he came for.

The last time I saw him... properly, was one of those times.

We spent a long while together that time. We didn't leave my quarters for . . . several milicycles, to say the least. He had always liked it there. I have enough of the old system in me to miss neon color, and I had filled it floor to ceiling with color in my own style: the geometric design of this system with the vibrant shades and detail of the old. I think it reminded him of a simpler time.

He had fallen into standby in my bed at some point, and stayed that way for such a long time that I half expected him to reboot as a new program.

When he finally did wake up, his hair had been smashed flat on one side, and was sticking out in every possible direction on the other. I smoothed it down with my gloved hand while he explained, enjoying the contrast between the light brown of his hair and the old-system blue of my uniform's finger lights, which, strangely enough, were a mirror to his.

"It's Clu again," he sighed. I knew what would follow. This wasn't the first time he had vented such concerns with Clu's erratic and daring behavior.

"Not only is he touting himself as the Creator's image here on the grid, now, but he's beginning to act like him," Tron hissed in exasperation, "And since the incident with the Sea of Simulation... he doesn't seem to have limitations anymore, Yori. I'm not sure how much longer it will be before he starts believing that he is the Creator."

I must've looked startled at that conclusion, because he twisted his lip and looked at me rather ruefully.

"That's the same reaction I keep getting from Flynn," he said, "He doesn't understand the gravity of what's happening here. His perception of reality prevents him from seeing how very real this is to us. He believes he understands, but he is still not of our world, so how can he?" He sounded increasingly frustrated as he spoke. I could understand why. His faith was troubling him. Flynn was troubling all of us, those days. I placed my hand on his face.

"Tron, you don't believe that. You've always said that we must forgive him because he is of both worlds," he threw me a flat but affectionate look with his tired eyes for disproving him, "The real problem is that he cannot live in both. One must always be secondary, a place that he visits. He isn't going to understand unless you make him see things as we do.

"He comes here to be happy. Maybe he doesn't want to see the bad. Take him around the grid, and make him see the things that we do. Has he stopped and just... had a dink somewhere? Heard the talk in the power bars, the clubs? Has he seen what Clu has done with the games? Derezzing losers?" His dark blue eyes were brightening as I spoke, and as my intensity increased, I noticed that the white rectangle of circuitry at his elbow was throbbing with my own blue color beneath my fingertips.

"If anyone can make him see things from our level, Tron," I concluded fervently, "it's you."

He looked up at me. (I was taller than him at that moment since he was still half sitting up from slumber, and I was sitting with my knees tucked under me on my bed.) He looked that way for a long moment, and then he smiled in that one way he had, a little more so with one side of his mouth than the other.

"I can always count on you, can't I?" he said warmly. It wasn't the first time he'd used those exact words, but I smiled, remembering.

"Always," I said, and I bent my head to press my lips on his.