Tron

01

THAT OTHER WORLD is vast too; to its inhabitants, their System is limitless.

The Electronic World enmeshes the Earth, and reaches beyond it. Information is moved through the computer systems and processed by the artificial intelligences. The programs compute and search, retrieve and collate; they are already indispensable to science, industry, education, and government—to society in its present form.

The programs challenge and entertain in videogames, with no risk of harm to their human Users; they teach in the carrels and test in the classrooms. They evaluate and mediate; their word is often final. Their World is vast; their Users know less of it than the Users suppose.

The programs are only algorithms as human beings are only collections of chemicals.

The two, boy and girl, stood before the garishly painted machine, its screen showing them lively mosaics of light in bright colors. They played the videogame expertly, sharp and shrewd and quick; picking up the knack of the games was fun, but it demanded an application of self amounting to diligent work. On the screen, computer-modeled figures warred, throwing disks of devastating power at each other…

Elsewhere, closer than the boy and girl would have believed and yet infinitely distant, Warriors faced each other across an arena on the Game Grid, in the System. They were human in form, but luminous, one red, the other blue.

They held their disks ready for lethal casts, studying one another warily. They wore close-fitting, rounded helmets which left their faces exposed, and were shod in knee-length boots. They were armored in pauldrons that cupped their shoulders and vambraces that encased their forearms. The armor had an instrumented, highly technical look to it. Their bodies were patterned with radiant lines suggesting vestigial circuitry. The Blue Warrior’s incandescent circuitry glowed a brighter blue than the rest of his body; his opponent’s shone a warmer yellow-orange.

The arena was only one of many in the Domain known as the Game Grid. It was, on their scale, hundreds of feet across. The soaring walls that enclosed it were perfectly smooth, divided into rectangles by lines and panels of bright illumination. The floor was composed of precise squares marked off by a glowing meshwork. Accustomed to them, the Warriors spared no attention for their fantastic surroundings. They waited, watchful, disks held between thumb and fingertips.

The Red Warrior moved suddenly, casting with a snapping motion. His spinning disk, blazing with a golden light of its own, sliced through the air at his opponent. The other tried to duck and block the weapon with his own. But the Red had been quick, and clever with his throw. The Blue missed his block and the disk struck him. There was a violent release of energy, smashing the Blue down onto the Game Grid. The red aura of the disk triumphed over the Blue’s aura, enveloping the prone Warrior. He de-resolved, fading rapidly from sight, becoming a swirl of static.

In a moment, the de-rezzing complete, the loser had vanished.

Far from the Game Grid, the boy turned to the girl, mortified at the ease with which she’d won. “Lemma play you again?” He figured he had her technique analyzed now, and was positive that he could beat her this time.

She shrugged; she sort of liked him, and enjoyed sharking him. “Yeah, if you’ve got another quarter.”

Into the videogame went the coin, where it joined millions upon millions of others earned by the programs. They and their playing fields, the videogames, were one of the most popular entertainment innovations in history.

The side of the machine bore the ENCOM logo, which could also be seen on computers and electronic equipment of every variety, factories and research facilities, skyscrapers and paychecks. ENCOM was the commercial superpower that had taken leadership of the computer revolution, unrivaled international leader in the field of artificial intelligence.

Another game was in progress over the Grid. It resembled jai alai, but the two Warrior opponents each stood at the center of a series of concentric rings, gleaming circles suspended in midair, shining in the Warrior’s color, blue or red. Each Warrior was armed with a power-cesta, the long, scoop-shaped glove with which the game-ball was hurled and caught. Above them, a broad, reflective disk, several yards across, was poised, unsupported but unmoving.

The smaller contestant waited nervously, and rightly so, for he was a User-Believer, a Blue. Unwilling to give up his commitment to those mystical beings whom all the programs of the System had once served, he’d been sentenced to play on the Game Grid until he died.

That moment seemed near. The User-Believer shifted uneasily as he waited. He was determined to do his best; that was as it should be with a program. But his adversary was Sark, the Command Program.

Sark the Red, the unbeaten; Sark the tall, merciless Warrior, had won so consistently that he no longer kept track of his victories. It was Sark who served as Lord of the System, under the rulership of the Master Control Program. Sark’s mission, the Master Control Program’s prime objective, was to wipe out all loyalty to the Users.

That fierce visage might cow any Warrior, cruelty spoke from every line. Programs in every Domain in the System had seen Sark’s wins, and knew the figure in the elaborate, vaned casque-helmet. They’d watched him eradicate the enemies of Master Control, and knew that to enter the arena with him was to die.

One of the User-Believer’s rings was already gone, demolished during an earlier exchange. But now he hurled the sparkling ball once more. Up it shot, a tight node of ruinous energy, to bounce off the mirror overhead and streak toward the waiting Sark at bullet speed. The Command Program, cloaked in his red aura, moved then; with apparent ease, Sark caught the pellet with his cesta. A sneer twisted his countenance, as if to ask if his enemy could give him no more interesting contest.

Sark readied, cast. The pellet rebounded from the mirror. The Blue saw that he must leap across an empty space where his vanished ring had been in order to, make the catch—either that, or see another of his rings dissolved. He took a running start.

But the User-Believer had miscalculated; Sark had foreseen what he would do in reaction, and played on it. The Blue barely made the leap across the gap. As he teetered on the edge of his ring, the game-pellet struck him squarely. The luckless User-Believer exploded in a brief turbulence of de-rezzing.

Sark’s laughter was full and chill. Only one feeling surpassed this elation he felt when he’d obliterated an enemy. Victory he must have, and often; conquering his foes was proof that he was the Command Program, Sark. His circuitry flashed brighter with the emotion coursing through him, gleaming red.

Overhead, tall, shining readout letters materialized in the air:

WINNER: RED-SARK!!

He looked up at the confirmation of his win, reveling in it. He bellowed sinister laughter.

Striding through the Training Complex afterward, Sark looked neither left nor right. Tough, dangerous Warriors of his Red Elite sat or lounged, or leaned against the walls, some having completed their matches, others waiting to go forth onto the Grid and fight on behalf of Sark and the Master Control Program. Seasoned veterans, sure of their prowess, they trained and fought hard. Yet, as Sark went past, they stirred and shifted uneasily, showing wordless deference to the Warrior who could have crushed the strongest among them.

One of the Reds ventured a bit of ingratiation: “Sark, my man! You are hot!”

Sark chose to laugh. The other Reds took that as permission to join in. And Sark walked on, exulting.

There was, for Sark, a sensation beyond the elation of the Game Grid. He knew it here, at the podium aboard his enormous Carrier aircraft. At this podium he communed with the Master Control Program and drew from it the power that sustained and augmented him. But here, there was no surging joy of battle; before the Master Control Program, even mighty Sark knew a twinge of fear.

He approached the podium, stepped into it, and seized its hand grips. It was waist-high, intricate in its instrumentation and design, encircling him. The Command Program fit his booted legs into the power outlets, and into him flowed the heady, revitalizing energy. His circuitry blazed with it.

The Master Control Program spoke to him, its sonorous voice filling the compartment, seeming to come from everywhere, reinforcing Sark’s belief in the MCP’s omniscience and omnipotence. Himself a being who thrived on power, the Red recognized his master. He sought and valued the favor of the MCP, but was intimidated by it as well.

“You’re getting brutal, Sark. Brutal and needlessly sadistic.”

The bulkheads vibrated with the words. The power outlets glowed with the energy and Sark drank it in, eyes glazed like an addict’s.

“Thank you, Master Control.” His deity was well pleased. Sark’s chest swelled with pride.

“We might be capturing some military programs soon,” Master Control went on. “Does that interest you?”

Sark’s concentration was divided between the ecstasy of the power influx and the question. “Sure. I’d love to go up against some of those programs.” He closed his eyes and contemplated eagerly the sort of competition he could expect from the newest programs expropriated by the Master Control Program out of DARPA, the DIA, and other governmental agencies. “It would be a nice break from these accounting programs and the other cream puffs you keep sending me. Which branch of the service?”

“The Strategic Air Command,” came the answer. The Red detected a note of pride in that.

“Nice,” admitted Sark, even more impressed. Some of those programs would see things Master Control’s way and abandon their senseless loyalty to the Users. But the others…

Sark’s savage thoughts rested fondly on what he would do to the others.

Sark’s Carrier floated, titanic and gleaming, over the Game Grid’s Training Complex. It was, on the System’s scale, more than 2,000 feet in length. It had a flat top deck, reminiscent of the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. The vessel was triangular in cross section, though its armor, outer-hull convexities, and other design features masked that to some extent. From its side projected its bridge, a superstructure with a variety of rotating sensor antennae fixed, freestanding, around it.

Far below, in the complex itself, in a long, dimly lit corridor deep beneath the Grid, a frightened, confused program was being escorted to confinement by two burly guards. He was short and pudgy, a commercial program with a vulnerable look to him. Still, he’d been compelled to don the armor and half-tunic of a Warrior conscript. The Memory Guards’ faces barely showed under their cowls; their uniforms exaggerated the width of their shoulders. They were armed with energy-staffs; the unfortunate prisoner had already had a taste of what the staffs could do, and offered no resistance. But still he plead his case.

“Look, this is all a mistake! I’m just a compound-interest program! I work at a savings and loan; I can’t play in these videogames!”

The guard’s reply was amused, ironic; he’d often heard this sort of objection. How easily some of these characters started to come apart when Master Control plucked them out of their safe little situation! “Sure you can, pal,” the guard drawled. “You’re a natural athlete if I ever saw one.” He pushed the program along. “Come on.”

The prisoner, Crom, tried again. “Are you kidding? Me? I run out to check on the T-bill rates, I get out of breath.” The guard didn’t seem to care. Crom shrank from the thought of combat on the Game Grid. “Hey, really; you’re gonna make my User, Mr. Henderson, really mad. He’s a full branch manager!”

The guard’s smirk sounded in his voice. “Great, another religious nut!”

Crom stopped his protests. Their attitude was beyond comprehension—a refusal to even concede the existence of the Users. How could that be? he kept repeating to himself. Crom couldn’t understand what the point of functioning could be, if not to carry out the instructions of the Users.

They halted by a cell door. The guard shoved poor Crom into the cell despite his objections, disdainfully. Then its force field sealed the doorway, leaving the program forlorn and scared, completely disoriented, his world turned end for end. His blue circuitry was muted with fear.

The cell was small, a low, cramped space shaped by close, confining walls. The walls projected into the cell space, heightening the feeling of confinement. Crom, hurled against a wall by the force of the guard’s shove, found that he scarcely had space to turn around. Exploring the severe little room, he saw that there was no way to lay or sit down comfortably, none to stretch. The shapes and planes of the walls saw to it that a prisoner would always be aware of his imprisonment. The ceiling was transparent, and Crom glimpsed a guard on patrol overhead.

On both sides of the cell were windowlike openings that allowed Crom a view of the cells to his right and left. He forgot his misery for a moment when he found himself looking into the face of another captive. The other wore Warrior’s attire too, but without the novice’s half-tunic. He had a lean, lively face, intense and yet amiable. Crom went closer to the window.

The program smiled sadly. “I’d say “welcome,” but not here. Not like this.”

For some reason that returned to Crom a measure of his self-control. “I don’t even know what’s going on here!” he declared.

His fellow prisoner studied Crom, drawing nearer. “You believe in the Users?”

The question renewed Crom’s misgivings and confusion. The concept of the Users struck him as so basic, so intrinsic to all programs, that it should be pointless to ask. Then he realized that the question could have a very different answer here in the Training Complex.

But he replied, “Sure. If I don’t have a User, then—then, who wrote me?”

The other prisoner nodded gravely. “That’s what you’re doing here. Master Control Program’s been snapping up all us programs who believe. If he thinks you’re useful, he takes over all your functions so he gets bigger, but if he can’t use you, he sends you down here to the Game Grid to get the bits blasted out of you.”

The horror of it washed over Crom, waves of shock followed by an overwhelming, disabling dismay. He was only partially roused from it by the next question: “What’s your name?”

“Crom,” he answered, barely aware that he had.

“I’m Ram,” added the other. Seeing Crom’s face, he hesitated, but went on, thinking it best to tell the new conscript just what he was in for. “They’ll train you for the games, but—” He didn’t finish the sentence; Crom clearly wasn’t the sort of program who held great promise as a gladiator. Ram finished awkwardly, “Well, I hope you make it okay.”

Ram changed the subject quickly, before Crom had a chance to think too hard about the implications of that last statement. “Hey, what’s going on in the other sectors? I’ve been stuck in this Grid for 200 microcycles now.”

He gested over his shoulder with a thumb and Crom saw crossed-off rows of tick marks on Ram’s wall, representing the period of his imprisonment. Crom stopped agonizing over the possibility of destruction in the arena long enough to wonder whether captivity would be much better.

Crom shrugged. “It’s murder out there. You can’t even travel around your own microcircuits without permission from the Master Control Program.” He threw up his hands, trying to recapture some of the indignation that had evaporated when fear had set in. “Hauling me down here to play games! Who does the Master Computer Program calculate he is?”

But Ram made no answer. The cells around them, and the Training Complex, were answer enough. Crom suddenly felt tired, weighted with despair. “If only Tron was still around—”

Ram made a sudden noise under his breath at the sound of that name, a noise that spoke to Crom of surprise and anger. Ram’s face had gone cold, closing in his emotions.

But Crom went on, “Did you ever see that guy in action? A hundred-percent independent!” Crom shook his head in admiration. “MCP couldn’t tell him what to—”

He stopped. Ram had turned to look over his shoulder, at the window to the next cell beyond his. Crom, confused, asked, “What’s wrong? What did I say?”

There was a slight noise from the cell where Ram was looking, of someone moving around. A figure stood silhouetted by the light, his back to them, his glowing disk affixed to it. Crom strained to see, and as he did, the figure turned to him slowly. The compound interest program saw the features known so well to programs throughout the System: the clear, canny gaze and calm, strong face.

Crom gasped in disbelief. “Oh, my User—Tron! They’ve got you in here?”

Tron—a legend come to life. When programs throughout the System spoke among themselves of independence, of loyalty to the Users, of defying the MCP, it was Tron’s name that was most often invoked. Tron championed the User-Believers; Tron had defied all the MCP’s efforts to enslave or convert him. He had never been defeated in battle. No Warrior of the Red Elite had ever been able to withstand him.

Tron in a cell, captive on the Game Grid.

Crom slumped; Tron’s imprisonment had hit him like a physical blow, filling him with a sense of utter disaster. But the Champion’s first words lifted that feeling: “Not for long, friend.”

Crom’s spirits rose all at once. The words had been spoken without bravado, a simple statement offact, with all of Tron’s conviction behind them. For the first time, Crom began to feel hope. Sark and the MCP didn’t control the System yet.