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Flynn promises the transition won’t be that bad.
Over in a heartbeat , he says. Over in a heartbeat.
And Tron doesn’t know what a heartbeat is, but as he stands on the portal base beside Flynn, holding on for dear life (Flynn tells him to hang on tight, he’s never tried this with two before, let alone with a non-User), he hopes heartbeat means quick . Analogous to a beat of the system clock.
“Hold on tight, program,” Flynn says, as if Tron needs a reminder.
And then Tron squeezes his eyes shut, and then Flynn’s body tenses beneath his arms as he raises his disc and then they are on their way up ...
The world splits apart behind Tron’s eyes and everywhere else
All he holds certain shatters into a thousand abstractions, things that feel like symbolism but pass beyond the reach of his mind
Colors he’s never seen before
Identifiers and keywords he almost recognizes
Everything is visible is code is something… something else… countless spinning pieces of energy, all hanging together, holding on to each other in the same way he’s holding onto Flynn.
All that is visible turns inside out and brings the invisible near.
And just when he thinks he can’t bear any more of this, it snaps back together again, and it is dark, and Flynn is calling his name.
Tron wakes up slowly, aware of nothing but Flynn’s voice, and Flynn’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. “Tron, c’mon, c’mon man, it’s okay! I promise, it’s good. Open your eyes.”
Tron does, and remembers to breathe again. In both systems, he needs to breathe, and he takes comfort in the consistency, even if breathing feels different here. It’s harder, the air is heavy and full, and suffocating, and the sight of Flynn smiling over him does nothing to soothe his nerves.
Flynn takes his hand. “Welcome to the real world, program.”
And there is something different, something Tron has only felt on a few occasions in the system, when he was close to a pure, central energy source, or lying beside Yori that one time she overcharged on energy.
Heat .
Heat, and it is coming from Flynn. The fact clicks and settles comfortably into Tron’s mind. Users radiate, just as energy radiates. It makes sense.
Tron takes a deep breath of that heavy air, and lets it out, slowly coming back to himself. All the other details are beginning to fall in line, all around the room, centering around Flynn and radiating outwards on the waves of heat. Flynn wears a strange, loose outergarment -- analog suit, black in color.
The ceiling is ridged, the thick air is red somehow, and there are sounds coming from everywhere, and it smells like… like something new, new and unclean and necessary all at once. So many nuances, and he begins to despair that he will ever catalog them all.
Flynn is laughing like the air is easy to handle. “Man. First program in the real world. Radical. How does it feel, huh? How does it feel?”
“I am in one piece,” Tron remarks. “That’s something.” Even speaking is harder, subroutines that are not subroutines, yet unused, and his voice sounds ragged. He clears his throat, and clears it again.
“Yeah. C’mon, I wanna show you around. Just upstairs, right over our heads, that’s the Arcade. Man, you’re gonna love it here.”
Tron nods, sitting up slowly. The motion sets his head spinning, and parts of the room fade out around the edges of his vision. He lets himself fall forward, rubbing his eyes. Static dances behind warm eyelids.
Warm, energy-filled. Like Flynn.
A hand rests against his back, and -- “You okay?” Flynn inquires, sounding far away.
There is a strange roaring in Tron’s ears, roaring like the deep rivers of energy that run through the heart of the Grid, bubbling up to the surface, driven along their path by the beat, beat, beat of the system clock.
Sometimes, Tron recalls, when he is near to the heart of the system, he can feel it. The beating of the clock, slow and steady through the ground and air.
He can feel that beat now, or something very much like it, but it isn’t the system clock.
It is coming from somewhere deep inside him. Something is inside him, something alive, something trapped, trying to get out. He presses his hands over his chest, the source of the sound, biting back a cry of fear, dimly registering that he is wearing the same strange clothes as Flynn. He looks up at Flynn, Flynn the User, Flynn who brought him here. Flynn will know. Flynn has all the answers. “What is that?” Tron asks, voice cracking under the weight of air and panic. “What is this?”
“Hey, come on, what’s what?” Flynn’s eyes are suddenly worried.
“Th-- that .” Tron grabs Flynn’s hands, pressing them over the thundering left side of his chest. “Feel that? What is that?”
“Oh!” Flynn lets out a great cackle of laughter. “Tron! That’s -- That’s nothing to worry about. That-- oh, man -- it’s just your heartbeat.”
“Heart? Beat ?” Tron blinks, unsure of where to file this new information.
Flynn is laughing again. “C’mon man, don’t sweat it, everyone up here’s got one. Here.” Flynn takes Tron’s hands and presses them over his own chest. “Feel that? I’ve got one, too.”
Tron concentrates, and in a short time, through Flynn’s analog suit, he finds it. A slow, certain beat, somewhere deep inside the User, constant as the system clock.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Flynn says. “If you didn’t have it, you’d be dead. Means you’re alive. It’s a good thing!”
Tron nods.
Flynn goes on rambling about other things, a flood of words Tron doesn’t understand, but he can’t hear Flynn any longer. He’s too overwhelmed with it all, the sensation of his heart as it echoes through his chest, alive, alive, alive.
Users have heartbeats , Tron reasons. Users have heartbeats, it makes them alive. And I… I have one, too. It is a simple fact, a small fact, but it hits Tron with all the weight of a lightjet. I have a heartbeat, like a User.
The ramifications are heavier than the air, heavy and wonderful.
Tron smiles and he doesn’t know why.
Slowly, Flynn’s voice fades back into his awareness, and the User is talking excitedly about something called a supermarket and other somethings called watermelons and something called tequila . This tequila in particular sets Flynn alight with excitement.
Tron gives his head a good shake, forcing himself to listen to what Flynn is saying. He can analyze the mystery of his heartbeat later.
Now Flynn is pointing to a box of some kind, a box with a black screen. Symbols of light flash in the dark and Flynn calls it terminal , and Flynn says it’s the place Tron is from.
Tron stares at the box, at the size of it, at the letters that don’t make sense. He shakes his head.
Flynn bounces back across the room, takes Tron’s hand, and they begin their unsteady walk towards the door. Tron pauses, staring at Flynn’s hand. “It’s different from the system,” he remarks. “You’re quite warm out here. Do all Users radiate heat?”
“Oh man, you are one for conversation starters,” Flynn says. “Yeah, sure, we radiate heat , I mean, you’re doing it, yourself. It means we’re alive. Warm-blooded creatures, that’s what we are.”
“What is blooded?” Tron asks.
“Blood is the stuff that keeps us alive,” Flynn replies. “It’s like… uh… energy. Kind of like energy. Oh! That’s what your heartbeat is for, keeps the blood moving, like energy through the Grid. Out here, you’ve got veins and nerves in place of circuits. Oxygenation, man. It’s a whole process. Lots of gnarly details. I don’t know, I never studied biology.”
It’s overwhelming, and it isn’t just the new keywords, it isn’t just the endless heat flowing out from both of them and into the other. It is everything else happening at once, every ridge in the floor beneath his feet, every tiny particle drifting around the air, the colors, the colors, shifting and undulating, darker on some sides of the objects, lighter on the others. Light is different here. The rendering. The details. There is too much of it.
And Flynn is taking him upstairs, into the place called Arcade , one burning arm against Tron’s back, and the air around him is growing.
Growing brighter, growing louder, filling and filling with so many sounds and smells and sensations. His heart beats faster, and Flynn is still talking, naming everything he sees, and his heart beats faster, and there are games and cars and birds and sky and popcorn and Users, Users, Users. Users everywhere, Users of every shape and size and color.
Colors, there are so many colors, in their skin, in their hair, in their eyes. Living color and light flash from their eyes, and heat, and inside each of them is a heart, a little system clock, beating and beating and beating at different times and tempos.
Tron’s own heart, minutes old and fighting to catch up, is accelerating. It beats and beats and he wonders if User hearts can burst, and the air is too full to breathe, and he squeezes his eyes shut and Flynn is the only thing keeping him upright.
Rarely has there been a time when he could not stand on his own, but the ways of this world, so bright and terrifying, are more than he can process.
“Is he okay?” It is a strange voice, a higher, softer one.
“Tron?” Flynn sounds scared. “Yeah, he’s fine -- Hey, Tron?”
The last thing Tron sees before the darkness is a little User, unfamiliar, far smaller than Flynn, kind eyes, dark brown and curved in worry.
When he wakes again, the light has changed. It is orange now, and darker than before. “Tron!” Flynn calls from somewhere, and rushes over beside him. “Back among the land of the living!”
“Flynn,” Tron says. “Hello. What happened?”
“Man, you can’t just go around collapsing.” Flynn claps his hand against Tron’s shoulder. “It really scares a person! Say. You know… you know, maybe you need to eat something.”
“Hm.” Tron slowly brings his hands back up to his chest, finding the beat. There it is. There. Good. “Well, I’m still alive,” Tron says, thumping one hand against his chest. “Still beating.”
“Oh, really?” Flynn asks, with a wide, mischievous smile. “Let me see.” He presses his own hands there again, and Tron inhales sharply, still startled by the warmth of Flynn’s hands. Startled, but not repulsed. Not in the least.
Then there is another feeling, something growling and even more alive than the heart. It is lower, deep in his midsection. He flinches, he’s terrified, but it comes out as impatience. “Flynn, what is that ?”
“Your stomach,” Flynn says. “You’re hungry. Yeah. I’ll get you something.” He pats Tron’s back and heads into the next room.
“How do you Users put up with this?” Tron grumbles. “Every time you need something, your insides start trying to escape? It’s terrible.”
Flynn only laughs. “You sound like Alan,” he says.
The name makes Tron’s heart leap , and he flinches again, a whole-body shiver, sitting upright, little sparks dancing all along his skin.
“Always complaining about having to eat,” Flynn continues. “ Why must we require food? Muh, muh, muh? How are we supposed to get anything done when we must constantly keep this pathetic vessel fed and well rested ? Sleep, that’s another thing Alan resents. Sleep.”
“Alan-One,” Tron whispers.
“Yeah, Alan-One. You can meet him, if you want. I’ll introduce ya!” Flynn gasps, clapping one hand over his mouth. “Oh, now I think about it, I don’t know if Alan’s gonna be all that thrilled about me taking you out of the computer.” Flynn shrugs. “Oh, well. Nothing we can do about that, now! Eat this. It’s called an apple.”
Tron eats it slowly. It is strange, it feels wrong, like eating a Bit, but he does it anyway. Flynn said he was supposed to, and he trusts Flynn, completely.
And he feels a little better after finishing the apple, well enough to stand up.
It’s better in the night. The color scheme is familiar, he can’t see the dust in the air, and the light does not hurt his eyes.
So when Flynn asks him if he wants to go for a ride on the back of his motorcycle -- “Same as a lightcycle, man, exactly the same! C’mon, you’ll love it!” -- Tron has no objection.
Flynn doesn’t wear a helmet because he likes to feel the wind, so neither does Tron.
He sits carefully behind Flynn on the bike that is so alien and so very much the same.
“Hang on tight,” Flynn shouts, revving the engine, sound and smell filling the air once more.
Tron locks his arms around Flynn, burying his face in the back of Flynn’s jacket so he doesn’t have to breathe the fuel.
“Maybe not that tight,” Flynn adds, and he is laughing.
Tron relaxes for a brief moment, redoubling his grip the instant Flynn hits the gas and sends them careening wildly down the street.
Flynn is a wild driver on the Grid, and he is even worse out here, wobbling left and right and left again, taking the turns through sloppy drifts. This does not surprise Tron. Nothing about this surprises Tron. The physics of this are very much the same as riding tandem-cycle through the system, and he finds the rhythm quickly. The very first thing to come naturally since his arrival.
He opens his eyes wide as they roar down the street, slicing through the thick, adventure-scented air, staring at the cracks in the road whizzing past -- so many cracks, is the User world slowly breaking apart? -- staring at the light-speckled sky overhead, and at the hundreds of Users on the road around them.
They move onto the freeway, and Flynn kicks it up into a higher gear -- Tron catches bits of Flynn’s laughter on the wind as they blaze over the road at unimaginable speeds, zipping and dodging between the cars, rounding the bend gradually, gradually, until the city herself glides into view. The User city.
For a moment, Tron is certain his heart stands still.
If not for the soft, golden light settling deep into the landscape around him, it all might as well be a scene straight from the Grid.
They disembark in a quiet place, far from the freeway and rushing sound. It’s peaceful, and the dark and endless roar of the surf crashes against the shore.
Even in the dark, everything he’s seen in the past half-hour collapses in on him at once. It’s all wrong and inside out, somehow. His head should feel heavy, it really should, but he’s lightheaded instead and he laughs, feeling empty and full all at once under the heavy, heavy air. Everything is so beautiful. He stumbles, leaning against Flynn.
“Hey, you okay?” Flynn asks.
Tron smiles against Flynn’s shoulder, humming something halfway between a yes and a no. Then he feels something tickling his arm. He looks down and sees a bug, moving slowly upwards on legs finely crafted, and the details in this tiny little thing amaze him. “What is this?”
“A bug,” Flynn says.
Bug. Grid bug. Threat to the system . Even in his blurring, overcharged state, Tron’s directive holds firm. The bug is crushed instantly, flattened between Tron’s hands.
But there’s something wrong. It does not go to cubes as expected, and Tron’s heartbeat strikes up again, beat-beat-beat , relentless, like a warning pulse. This is wrong.
“It’s…” Tron stares at the bug, or what used to be the bug, sticky and formless against his arm. Something catches, deep in his throat, and he feels sick. “It’s still here.”
“Well -- yeah, of course it --”
“It isn’t supposed to be here.” Tron shakes his arm, and the bug sticks, and he rubs it off, but it still sticks, and there’s a stain and it’s wrong, it’s all wrong. “ Flynn-- ”
“Oh.” Flynn nods. “Yeah, that’s… Things don’t derezz here.”
“What do you mean? It’s still alive?”
“No, it’s dead. You’ve terminated the lights out of it! Ha. But… things don’t derezz here. They just die, and… well… well, you know, maybe they do derezz, in a way. Nature takes them back. They become one with the Universe once more.” Flynn sighs. “Man, can we talk about something else?”
“Yeah, sure,” Tron says, flatly, but he knows he’ll never get that thought out of his head, the thought of a heart -- Flynn’s heart -- stopping, all the heat going away. He needs to get the bug off his arm. The world is spinning, and everything tastes like apples and malware-saturated energy, and his head hurts.
He sits down, and Flynn settles down beside him, warm and solid and a long way from derezzing, and Flynn rambles about the ocean, and the air and the heat and the darkness and the sound of the sea and Tron knows the sound of Flynn’s voice should make him calm. There is a lot that he doesn’t understand, but the two worlds have many things in common, and he can learn. Standing on the commonalities, he can learn. Surely he can learn. Surely it will be okay.
He doesn’t realize he’s falling asleep again until it’s too late to stop.
There’s something wrong when he wakes up.
The light is different again. It’s changed. It’s changed again , and he doesn’t know how he’ll ever keep track of all of it, his mind is full and overflowing with everything new, running all over like energy where it shouldn’t be, and he knows he’s derezzing.
His heartbeat is still there, pounding in his chest and echoing up to his ears, and he knows he’s still alive.
Still alive, but it’s getting harder to see it.
He ought to go back.
He needs to go back.
He can’t stay here, as much as he wants to, as much as he wants to learn, he must go back. Where is Flynn?
I need to go back.
He reaches out through the haze of dizzying chaos, stars and apples and light and license plates (the word falls into the whirlpool unbidden and he doesn’t understand it), reaching out for Flynn.
He hears a voice, but it isn’t Flynn’s. It is softer. It sparks with quiet rage, and is deeply, deeply familiar. “I still can’t believe you brought him into the analog realm, Flynn,” says the voice, and it calls to something deep within Tron, deeper, somehow, than his new heart. “I will never understand --”
The voice stops short.
Flynn’s picks up, bridging the space. “Here he is,” Flynn says, and he runs to Tron’s side. “Hey, you okay?”
“Flynn,” Tron says, dimly aware of how weak his voice has become. “I need to go back.”
Then there’s another face, eyes narrow and concerned and wonderstruck behind some kind of shining, protective visor.
Tron knows that face as well as he knows his own, and the thrill sets in, setting his heart to racing.
“Alan-One,” he whispers.
The User’s eyes -- his User’s eyes -- go wide for a moment. He smiles, and it is beautiful and out of place beneath his terrified eyes. His User touches the back of his hand to Tron’s forehead, and his touch is different than Flynn's, it's cold and grounding, breaking through the feverish aura of heat. “Yeah. Hello, Tron.” Alan sighs, and the smile is gone.
“Alan-One,” Tron repeats. The name fills his breaking mind, and it’s all he can say. “Alan-One.”
“Alan. Please. Just Alan. Now -- listen -- you’re going to be alright.” Alan-One closes his eyes, a little wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows. “I promise, you’ll be alright.”
Tron’s skipping vision catches on that little wrinkle, and he wonders if his own forehead does it, too.
“Hey,” Flynn starts in, voice all gravelly. “Listen Alan, I’m sorry, I had no idea the configuration would -- ”
Alan takes a deep breath. “Kevin Flynn, of all the childish, irresponsible, asinine things -- No. No, forget it, we’re not having this discussion now. But we will, oh, we will.”
The world is flying apart, and the center of the burst is the place behind Tron’s eyes. “Alan,” he says. “Alan… Alan, I need to go back.”
“Yeah,” his User says. “Yeah, you’re going back. Right now -- right now , don’t you argue with me, Flynn. C’mon, help me get him into the car.”
The ride sticks in Tron’s memory like pieces of shattered glass. The blurring of the lights, the strange, everpresent pain, Flynn’s hands tight around his own, warm and shaking as Flynn tells him not to be afraid, that it will be over soon, that he is sorry.
“Don’t be,” Tron says, or tries to say. And he means it. Flynn has nothing to apologize for.
Flynn has given him an unimaginable gift -- a journey into the invisible. Of course, invisible things are meant to stay that way -- invisible -- but he is grateful and awed by Flynn’s willingness to share it.
He’s seen the sea and dust and things unimaginable. He’s eaten an apple, and learned that Users have color and energy under their skin. He’s seen the box he was written in, and he’s met the one who brought him into existence.
He’s learned the meaning of a heartbeat. It is brief, very brief, like just one tick of the system clock. But it goes on and on and on, and it keeps beating, a steady reminder that he is still alive, still alive --
“Still alive back there?” Alan asks as they slow to a stop, and the two Users carry him from the car.
Tron manages an unsteady thumbs-up. He knows, he knows this place is killing him, and yet… and yet, he’s never felt more alive.
Flynn stands beside him on the digitizing platform, holding him up, warm and present.
Tron looks up, fixing his eyes on Alan, over by the laser. “Yes, Flynn, I know how it works,” Alan is saying. His voice is irritated, but his face is full of worry and wonder. “Tron… listen, it was excellent to meet you.”
Excellent , and it echoes in Tron’s heart with every beat.
“I only wish the circumstances had been better.” Alan clears his throat loudly, hurling a glance at Flynn.
Tron wants to smile, but nothing will move anymore.
“Don’t think this is the last you’ve seen of me,” Alan says, and he smiles, hand over the controls. “Ready?”
“Thank you,” Tron says, but it’s so soft that only Flynn hears.
And the world turns inside-out.
Back in the system, all is well.
The colors do what they are supposed to do. The sounds are soft and familiar, the sky doesn’t hurt his eyes, and there is no dust.
With a calm smile, Tron sighs, pressing his hands over his chest, searching automatically for the beat because it’s become a habit now.
Nothing.
There is nothing at all.
He is code again, no warmth, no blood, no heartbeat.
It is lonelier inside, empty without that beat.
Tron looks up to the sky, tracing the I/O tower’s blue beam, thinking. It isn't the beat he misses so much as Flynn, the User who dared to show him that other world, the Realm of the Invisible.
Flynn is gone now, swept up by the I/O beam to his bright, strange, overwhelming world.
But he'll be back. Tron is sure of it.
Back, as he promised, in a heartbeat.