We Are Pilots
14
"-so sorry. I didn't mean to-I was just reading and-and I guess all that work I've been doing last week finally caught up with me, and I fell asleep and..."
Quorra's voice blends into the soft whirring of the servers and becomes a dull disorienting roar in his head. His heart pounds and his skin crawls as the weight of gravity slams into him like a freight train. As soon as the digitizer fully materializes him he slumps forward in the office chair, covers his face with shaking hands, and swallows hard against the rising bile.
"...phone went off and-Sam?"
He doesn't-can't hear her walking to his side over the pounding in his ear, but he feels her hand on his shoulder, fingers curling tentatively over its slope, and leans into the touch. The gentle pressure sparks his nerves, setting his senses on fire in the way the Grid never could, and he breathes in sharply. The air tastes stale and earthy and he thinks about installing a better ventilation system down here. Another breath and he tastes the age of this hidden room and all of its secrets.
Slowly he sinks back into his skin as the last echoes of the Grid fade away with each loud heartbeat. The tightness in his chest loosens just a bit and he rolls his shoulders forward; something cracks as Quorra takes her hand away and the sound rings awkwardly in the silence.
"Are you okay?" she finally, hesitantly, asks.
He has a thousand answers to her one question but he doesn't know which one to choose. He's okay - he's found direction in his life at long last. He's not okay - he can't erase the agonized regret in his father's recorded voice. Quorra is free to be whoever she wants to be, but Tron's trapped in the memories of Rinzler and a system that destroyed as much as it built. He finally has what it takes to take off as ENCOM's CEO but the world Flynn built is already calling for him. He's found himself but he's already torn in two.
Quorra prompts him again and he slides his hands off his face, takes a deep breath, and looks up at her.
"I'm fine," he decides to say. When the concern doesn't leave her face he says, "Just give me a minute."
She's not convinced but she nods and steps back.
Sam looks around the room. There's a pile of empty juice boxes on the floor next to the couch and upstairs the jukebox is still rotating hits from the 70s and 80s at an obnoxiously high decibel. Facing him in the lens of the digitizer and behind him-Sam spins the chair around, braces his hands on the edge of the touch screen table, and leans over its surface to read its list of recent activities. Near the bottom of the list is the message he sent from the I/O Tower hours-no, minutes ago and the digitizer being activated nine minutes later. The jukebox changes tracks while he stares at the glowing pixels on the screen, then brings up the keyboard and types in the command to shut off the digitizer. The device stops whirring loudly behind him. He then locks the touch screen and the tabletop darkens until only six digits remain to count the time.
05:07:89
Quorra appears on his right side. He looks up at her; she's chewing on her bottom lip as her bright eyes flick from the running clock to him and back to the display. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest and she's shifting her weight from foot to foot. Questions bubble up in her eyes but she hasn't decided which one to put out first so he waits.
"So...what happened?" she asks.
Everything.
He drops his gaze to stare at his reflection; he looks old, worn out, and so very tired. He closes his eyes and sees Tron's smile disappear behind the portal's white light, clenches his hands tightly and tries to breathe through the constricting pain in his chest. It hurts more than he anticipated and it bleeds into his halting reply.
"A lot happened. It's...it's a long story."
"Oh. Um..." He can hear the cogs and gears turning in her head as she tries to understand and figure out what she's supposed to say. "Do you...do you want to talk about it?"
He does...and he doesn't. He should, he has to, he needs to; everything's changing starting tonight and she of all people needs to know that. She needs to forget whatever Flynn had said about her changing the world, because for all his talk about the Miracle he never actually meant for them to fulfill his dreams. Their lives are their own; they don't have to live each day wondering what Flynn meant for them to do anymore.
And yet everything still feels too raw, too soon. He just wants to go home, lock the door, and sleep in his bed for a month. He needs time to process everything before he can trust himself to talk.
Time and coffee, actually. He could use a whole pot of it, and a plate of French toast. Eggs. Bacon. Hash browns. A setting that's neither the arcade basement nor the apartment.
"Let's go to Pipers," he says. She raises an eyebrow at him, so he shrugs and adds, "There's a lot to talk about and I could use some coffee."
She makes a show of contemplating it but he knows her answer will always be yes; she can never stay away from the eccentric Koreatown diner. Sure enough she nods, gives him a tentative smile, and turns to start gathering her things. Sam watches her for several long seconds, trying his best to ignore the sudden suffocating sensation in his chest; the smile echoes the one he'd see on Tron's face in the rare moments when the program was content with what he had going for him. It suddenly, strongly reminds Sam of his promise to come back and the uncertainty of when.
"You know I'm gonna come back, right?"
"Yes."
"Hold onto Dad's jacket for me, then."
"Sam-"
"I mean it. Keep it. I'm gonna come back for that thing, so you'd better have it with you when I see you again."
"Sam?"
He blinks and the stained concrete floor comes into sharp focus. He stares at the black low-heeled boots and tilts his head up to Quorra, who's wearing a frown and a backpack over her right shoulder.
He rubs his face and his thumb brushes over his bottom lip, a mocking echo of the care and attention Tron paid to his mouth. With a shudder Sam pushes away the memory and rises to his feet. "Yeah. Okay."
His fingers drag along the smooth edge of the tabletop while he watches the running clock. Quorra moves toward the refitted doors and, with a sigh, he breaks contact and turns his back on the tabletop and the humming servers. He follows Quorra out of the room, locks the doors behind him with the still-rusty key, and goes upstairs while a song booms through the old brick and concrete foundation.
Quorra pushes aside the machine hiding the stairs and the bright lights of the arcade spill in. Sam flinches - so much color, so much noise - and shields his eyes with his forearm. He stubs his toe on the second-to-last step, swears under his breath, and limps over to push the TRON game back into place. The jukebox changes tracks and Boston suddenly fill in the chilly early morning air.
Sam goes to the breaker to shut off the power while she picks up their helmets from the dusty air hockey table. The electronic cacophony of outdated beeps and neon lights go out in sections with each switch; Brad Delp falls silent and the jukebox darkens with the fourth switch.
He looks up at the old office; the lights inside are still on and the dusty windows glow soft gold. A memory taps at the back of his mind - a winter night, his hand in his father's, and all the arcade games lit up and waiting for him. Just three days ago he'd fallen asleep sprawled all over the musty couches, too exhausted from going through Flynn's yellowed files for the sixteenth time to go back home.
Those days are now behind him but the weight doesn't lift from his shoulders. It's simply replaced by something else, a calling so different from Flynn's.
Something moves out of the corner of his eye and his reflexes kick in, catching his helmet before it hits his left temple. He looks at Quorra, who tilts her head to the doors and pushes them open. A fresh breeze swirls in, bringing with it dried leaves that blow around his feet and into the arcade as he follows her outside. The sky is a paling shade of royal blue and the stars have almost all gone out; the moon is still high up in the sky and JetBlue roars home to LAX miles away from here. It's still cold enough for his breath to float around him in a dense white fog as he padlocks the doors. When he turns around, fingers picking through the keys for the right one, Quorra is sitting on the Ducati with her helmet in hand. She watches him keenly - Like a bird.- and he knows she's just barely keeping the never-ending flow of questions in check.
"Pipers, then?" she asks as she pulls her helmet on. Her visor is up and her eyes follow Sam as he straddles the bike and moves to put his on.
"Yeah." He pauses and stares at his distorted reflection, trying to decide how to occupy her mind on the twenty-minute ride to the diner. "...you know, I met someone while I was in there. The Grid. Met someone on the Grid. He, uh, he's a friend of Dad's."
Dawn's breaking and the horizon is painted gold. He thinks about an early morning six months ago, when he told Alan he was taking over and showed Quorra the sun.
It's a new day again.
"Sam?"
He breathes out slow, can't see the fog anymore. "Used to worship him when I was a kid. Meeting him..." The real him, meant everything to me.
A long second passes as he shoves his key into the ignition and then Quorra asks, "What's his name?"
Sam smiles.
"Tron."
Author's Endnote: There is one more chapter after this.