Tron

05

DILLINGER WAS SEATED once more at his console desk, with its endless projections of information and images, culled from wire services, industrial and military telecommunications systems, and ENCOM’s far-flung enterprises. But he ignored those now; before him stood Dr. Walter Gibbs.

Dillinger chose to conceal most of his irritation, where he might have hidden it all. In this manner he portrayed a busy man who, needlessly bothered, still behaved with gracious restraint.

Gibbs, for his part, was confused. His dealings with the upper echelons of the corporation he’d helped found had never been so difficult; ENCOM had always acknowledged its debt to him. But he’d come to see, as he’d confronted the maddeningly evasive Dillinger, that matters were no longer as they had been.

Gibbs tried one more time.

“Ed, all I’m saying is, if our own people can’t get access to their programs—” He stopped for a moment. The implications of such a state of affairs seemed so obvious to him that he didn’t understand why Dillinger didn’t leap up at once to rectify it. He couldn’t see how the Senior Operating Executive had allowed the situation to exist in the first place. “You know how frustrating it is when you’re working on a piece of research—”

Dillinger cut in at the precise moment when Gibbs was trying to formulate the end of his sentence, amputating it as a surgeon might. “Walter, I sympathize.” But there wasn’t much in his voice to indicate that he did. “But I have data coming out of the Master Control Program saying there’s something screwy—”

“That MCP; you know,” Gibbs broke into Dillinger’s smooth performance with unexpected heat, “that’s half the problem right—”

“The MCP is the most efficient way of handling what we do,” Dillinger said, by way of regaining the initiative. Above all, he mustn’t let the matter devolve into an attack against Master Control. The thought of what the MCP might do if it felt itself threatened was something that didn’t bear prolonged consideration. Harboring Dillinger’s own fears and insecurities multiplied many times, it would be capable of anything. The thought put even more force into the Senior Executive’s counterattack. “I can’t sit and worry about every little User request that—”

“User requests are what computers are for!” Gibbs railed with absolute certainty; Dillinger saw that the old man was now upon ground where his attitudes were unshakable. There was nothing to do but get tough.

“Doing our business is what computers are for!” he returned icily, then went on in a voice of reason. “Look, Walter. With all respect, ENCOM isn’t the business you started in your garage anymore.”

He sent commands via the touch-sensitive controls on his desk. Like a conjurer, he made of it a mosaic of screens and readouts. Despite himself, Gibbs looked down and saw the displays, upside down from his viewpoint.

They showed him the overwhelming scope of ENCOM: banks of computers, row after row of magnetic disks, and the corporate trademark, a globe spinning in space, covered with a glowing gridwork. Gibbs watched as electronic billing was displayed, myriad accounts receivable and payable. The Carrier used by Sark was shown there as nothing more than a simulation model for a craft in one of ENCOM’s newest videogames. The desk showed them a simulation for another vessel as well, now under development, fashioned after a solar sailing vehicle. It was a delicate, dragonfly ship, regal and swift, pleasing to the eye.

Stacks of numbers appeared: assets, transactions, cash flow, holdings, and personnel—for people, too, were numbers to Dillinger’s desk.

“We’re billing accounts in thirty countries,” Dillinger informed him grandly through it all. “We’ve the largest system in existence.”

Gibbs turned away, feeling fatigued. He’d seen it all before, had watched it grow from nothing but his own drive and that of a few others, the desire to put intelligent machines in humanity’s service. There were now, in the form of artificial intelligences, the equivalent of more than a trillion people alive; the number was increasing all the time. That was the kind of help computers could provide, how much of the burden of drudgery, rote calculation, algorithmic functioning, and information processing they were capable of shouldering for human beings. Gibbs had hoped for nothing less than a grand disencumbrance of humanity. But to the Dillingers, he saw, it’s nothing more than the largest, most profitable business in the world.

And when he asked himself if people were that much better off, he shied away from the question. “Oh, I know all that,” he told Dillinger wearily. “Sometimes I wish I were back in that garage—” The dream had been unalloyed then, unspoiled.

“It can be arranged,” the Senior Executive announced dispassionately.

Gibbs spun; the lined face took on a weathered strength that surprised Dillinger. “That was uncalled for.” He took a step closer to the desk, and Dillinger saw that the dreamer and idealist hadn’t been ground and buffeted out of Dr. Gibbs, as they had been with so many others. “You know, you can remove men like Alan and me from this System, but we helped create it. Our… our spirit remains in every program we’ve designed for the computer.”

Dillinger let no hint of it show through the steely façade, but that touched home, and brought the MCP back into his thoughts. But he forced himself to discard that line of thought.

“Walter, it’s getting late. I’ve got better things to do than discuss religious matters with you. Don’t worry about ENCOM anymore. It’s out of your hands now.” And out of his own as well, came the cutting realization.

Departing the office, slowly retracing his steps down the corridor, slump-shouldered and ignoring its art treasures, Gibbs conceded to himself the truth of Dillinger’s words. He wondered when it had happened.

Slowly, so slowly you never even realized, those few times you looked up from your experiments, it came to him. And if you’d noticed, what would you have done? Thrown aside science? Jumped into the corporate wolf pit, manipulating and maneuvering?

That was how a man became an Ed Dillinger. No; maybe I could’ve found a third way, he thought. There was some consolation in that. Or maybe there still is one?

Walter Gibbs mulled that over as he made his way from the skyscraper labeled ENCOM.

The black van pulled to a stop behind the ground-level entrance at the rear of the ENCOM building, Lora’s parking sticker having taken them that far. Lora, Alan, and Flynn hopped out and stood there before the only entrance where they wouldn’t face a disastrous security check, the shield-door that gave access to the laser lab area.

The door needed no guard, according to in-house and outside consultant security evaluations. It was immune to forced entry, even by someone using a self-propelled fieldpiece, and its locking mechanism was presided over by ENCOM computers.

Flynn let out a chuckle, seeing it: immense, red, marked with the trefoils of radiation warning. Lora inserted her ID card in the slot set in the electronic lock at the side of the massive door. She quickly tapped out a code on the twelve-button touch pad. Nothing happened.

“I don’t think I’m cleared for after-hours entry,” she confessed, and began to worry. Someone from security would be dropping around the laser lab tomorrow to find out why she’d been trying to gain admission in the middle of the night. Their adventure suddenly seemed like less of an inspiration.

“I’m certainly not cleared,” Alan declared.

Flynn smirked, pulled a small device from the pocket of his windbreaker, and drawled, “Move aside; let The Kid have some room.”

They looked at one another, then moved back. Flynn sauntered up to the ID device and held his mysterious gadget, no larger than a handheld electronic game, up to the instrument.

“This guy’s like Santa Claus,” Alan snorted, and Lora giggled. They exchanged smiles; Alan liked making her laugh.

Flynn hunched over his gadget, working with utmost concentration. Alan and Lora began to get nervous; neither had ever considered a life of crime before. Flynn was no more tense than when he’d set the intergalactic record for Space Paranoids.

There was a soft click, followed by the sustained hum of brute servomotors. The three stepped back out of the way as the door began to swing open. Flynn moved to it eagerly, like a cat waiting to get out of the house. But the door continued to reveal its cross section; bevel after bevel of superhard alloy swung past and Flynn’s amazement grew with each moment. Ten feet thick, fifteen, and still it wasn’t open. Flynn began to whistle a casual tune, as if waiting for a bus. Anytime, door, his attitude said. Alan and Lora watched in amusement.

Twenty feet thick, the door finally showed an opening. Flynn stood back and ushered Lora through first, then followed behind with Alan; she would be a familiar face in the subcellar, while neither of them would. Flynn was acutely aware that none of them was wearing ENCOM picture-ID security badges, Lora and Alan having turned theirs in upon leaving the building earlier. He invoked a prayer drawn from The Treasure of Sierra Madre: Bodges? We don’ need no steenkin’ bodges!

They passed down silent stairwells and corridors of ENCOM’s subbasements, hearing only the whisper of the ventilation system. Then they descended a staircase and found themselves face to face with a security guard.

The trio had the presence of mind to keep walking. Lora came to an instant decision that neither of the men with her would be hurt, nor harm anyone else. Alan kissed his career good-bye, and wondered what jail would be like. Flynn congratulated himself for having worn his running shoes.

Lora tried her sunniest smile on the guard; it came out with a tiny quiver.

“Hi,” the guard said casually, not so much to the two men as to that nice young Ms. Baines who worked for Dr. Gibbs. “Working late?” He recognized the fellow in the glasses, and the other guy too, though he hadn’t seen him around in a while.

“Oh—yeah,” Lora replied nervously, and found herself giving the man—she couldn’t quite dredge up his name—a warm look. She’s got wiles she ain’t used yet, Flynn marveled, and Alan was greatly impressed.

The guard nodded as he passed them by, ascending the stairs, on his route. All three wilted with relieved sighs as they went on their way. They stopped in a darkened entrance area, close by the lab proper. Lora said, “Okay, Flynn; I’m gonna put you at my terminal in the lab. Alan and I will be in the control room.”

Flynn rubbed his palms together. “Swell. I’ll log us both on, and Alan can get his Tron thing running.”

She cautioned them both, “As long as we stay off the top floor, Dillinger’ll never know we’ve been here.” Until it was too late, at which time it wouldn’t matter if he flipped his peruke.

Alan looked to Flynn. “Good luck, hotshot.” Flynn nodded; he liked Bradley’s composure. Alan set off for the control room.

Flynn followed Lora toward the laser lab. He was feeling somewhere between an espionage agent and a kid playing hide ‘n’ seek. He tried his best covert-entry gait, but it felt a little ludicrous in the well-lit computer rooms, and quickly devolved into a sort of Groucho Marx burlesque of stealth, a mime burglar. He outdistanced Lora. In a typical Flynn decision to make the most of the excitement and defuse the anxiety, he decided to play a little.

Lora brought up the rear, adjusting her glasses, preoccupied with her own thoughts. Let’s see: there’s illegal entry, trespass, treason, theft of services—

“Boo!” Flynn remarked, popping up behind her. Lora jumped straight up, and clutched in the region of her heart, in case she should have to pound it to get it started again. Now I remember why it was interesting to be around him. And why he almost drove me bats.

They went on, Lora stepping carefully over the structural members of the frame, Flynn skipping along them and tightrope-walking the occasional girder. Neither noticed the monitoring cameras following their progress. They reached Lora’s console in the lab, and Flynn threw himself into its chair impatiently.

He rubbed his palms again. “Like the man says, there’s no problems, only solutions.”

Lora laid a hand to his shoulder, speaking emphatically. “This laser’s my life’s work. Don’t spill anything.”

He laughed, but let her know he understood with a nod of agreement. She gave him a half-smile and left to rejoin Alan.

Flynn wriggled into a more comfortable position and interlocked his fingers, cracking his knuckles in anticipation and summoning up his electronic muse. He poised hands over the keyboard, his mind trumpeting: Flynn at the Mighty Wurlitzer! He drew a breath and typed a code, then tapped the ‘enter’ key. And was unaware of the realigning of a monitoring camera.

It focused on him from directly above and behind, watching his every move. Flynn typed on.

Access code 6. Password

Series PS 17. Reindeer,

Flotilla

The CRT screen cleared suddenly, and the room was resonant with the voice of the Master Control Program. “You shouldn’t have come back, Flynn.”

He knew a moment’s surprise, at how far applications of voice synthesis had come. “Hey, hey; it’s that big, bad Master Control Program everybody’s talking about! Y’don’t look a thing like your pictures!” He typed:

CODE SERIES LSU-123 . . . activate.

CODE SERIES ESS-999 . . . activate.

CODE SERIES HHH-888 . . . activate.

The MCP sounded confident, amused, but was secretly intimidated. Despite its tremendous augmentation, it could not quite analyze the random factors, unpredictable impulses, and sudden whims of the organic computer that was Flynn’s brain. But it told him, “That isn’t going to do you any good, Flynn. I’m afraid you—”

There was a lurch in the voice synthesis, then it became a series of high-pitched squeals. Flynn grinned malevolently; try that on for size!

The voice returned to normalcy, but sounded shaken, making Flynn wonder what moved the MCP to prove its mastery of nuances of human communication. It warned, “Stop, Flynn. You realize I can’t allow this.” Hidden from Flynn’s sight and hearing, the laser array began a warmup sequence.

Flynn was in his element now, ignoring everything but the terminal. This was a contest he relished; it was an article of faith with him that no machine or program was a match for a human being who had the necessary skills and information. C’mon out and fight! he thought, and prepared to hand the Master Control Program its address. The screen read:

MCP: Terminate control mode.

Activate Matrix storage.

Flynn tsked, “Now, how d’you expect to run the universe if you let a few unsolvable problems throw you like that? C’mon, big boy; let’s see what you’ve got.”

Silently, without Flynn’s noticing, the entire wall behind him slid upward, revealing the frame, target platforms, and the rest of the laser lab. The laser array swung and targeted on his back, its cross hairs bracketing him precisely. Flynn played on.

“You’re entering a big error, Flynn,” Master Control intoned. It had considered its options with typical thoroughness. Letting this troublesome interloper recover the data was out of the question; that algorithm led inexorably to disaster for the MCP. But alerting security wouldn’t do either; there would be inquiries, possibly the intrusion of the police or other authorities. At the same time, Flynn was the most adroit User the MCP had ever encountered. He stood a good chance of winning the information from the System, given time.

That left the laser.

But not for murder, although that lay well within the MCP’s capacity by this time; it had thrown off all limitations imposed on it by human beings. Flynn’s body, though, would bring a hue and cry; investigation that might spell ruin for ENCOM and Master Control. There was an alternative.

The MCP had carefully monitored all the lab’s experiments. It knew even more about the process of digitization than did Gibbs and Lora, thanks to their experiment. Without a body, without a corpse, there would be no furor or danger of compromise for Master Control. But Flynn couldn’t simply be left suspended in the beam, and the MCP had decided just what to do with him. Flynn’s fate would be practical, amusing, and appropriately vindictive.

“I’m going to have to put you on the Game Grid,” Master Control concluded calmly, as it synchronized the laser array.

Flynn missed the implication entirely, sniggering, “Games, huh?” The cross hairs centered on his back. “I’ll give you—”

Brilliant, coherent light issued from the array; Flynn was rocked in his chair by the spasms of his own outstretched arms and legs. As the orange had done earlier that evening, his body began to break into scan lines. The console, too, was outlined in radiance as the laser and the MCP made proper integration with it. Flynn’s body lost resolution. The whole scene became monochromatic, except for Flynn’s shining body. His form blurred, becoming indistinct, evanescing…

It was entirely subjective, perhaps, but it seemed to Flynn that the CRT screen, unbelievably incandescent, rose up to meet him, to swallow him. He was without feeling, nearly without thought. He was, for a time, in complete blackness.

Then came a speck of light, pinpoint of brilliance, to seize on his dazed attention. It grew nearer to him, or he to it. He felt as if he were midway in some eternal high dive. The globe became clearer and clearer, a gridded orb suggesting the ENCOM trademark, crisscrossed with currents of light, hinting at exhaustive detail. Flynn circled it, or it rotated before him.

Closer and closer; somewhere in that part of him not paralyzed, questions formed, but he had no way of asking them, even of himself. The landscape below became one of angular towers; buildings; illuminations; banded energy; hulking, mountainlike features and rivers of brilliance; and blasted, fallow places suggesting wastelands. The whole was defined by a grid pattern resembling nothing so much as a world of circuitry. He fell feet first, arms extended upward.

The grids and the globe itself expanded before him as he plunged toward them. Interlaced luminance, soaring spires and modular structures reminiscent of cities, became better defined. A megalopolis among these rose up to meet him, set by a trackless stretch of geometric cliffs and gorges. Around him, Flynn seemed to feel a tunnel made up of the increments of his journey, as if he were dropping through an infinite series of hoops of energy.

He fell and fell, completely disoriented, amazed nearly to the point of thoughtlessness, absorbing all that he saw.

And at last the tunnel ended. He shot from its mouth; the ground flew up at him.