Fic: The Devil's Dues [5/10]
Fandom(s): Tron: Legacy
Characters: Sam Flynn, Tron/Rinzler
Rating: T
Disclaimer: All
television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary:
It wasn't so much that hope died, but that Sam realized it had only been wishful thinking all along.
For Winzler, and the prompt (misinterpreted):
The world ends. Nuclear wasteland, Mad Max style, etc. One day Sam comes out of the computer and everything is gone. The power will run out soon/the arcade is in danger/etc so Sam hurriedly brings a recovering Tron(zler) out to save him.
Tron is OK at first but slowly reverts to Rinzler under the stress of survival - and Sam eventually begins to lose it as well. In the end we’re left with 2 bugfuck crazy survivalist murdermachines roaming the wasteland together.
Notes:
This was a really quick chapter as I was inspired and wrote most of it on the same night I posted Part 4, and for once, I've actually mapped out the major steps to the end instead of flying by the seat of my pants like I usually do, so I mostly know where I'm going. Mostly.
And sorry, I ended up lying about the plot thing. =( I had been intending to end the first part of this chapter later on in the storyline, but then Danny's talk happened, and I felt like it was a good place to stop and just let it have its moment. So, more key chars and events will be introduced next time instead. =)
(You know, there are so many stories/games out there where a protagonist is fighting some evil world-domainting or world-destroying plan, and somehow, they always manage to win through and stop the countdown. It occurred to me that this could very well be one of those stories where they failed. Poor protagonist. Poor world. Also, as I was describing the (totally implausible) characteristics of the bio-virus, it also occurred to me that it behaved an awful lot like a computer virus brought into the real world. *eyeshifts cough cough* A story for another time, perhaps.)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
The woman's nickname was Xiao Yen, or "Little Swallow," though she had laughingly protested in accented English that she was not so little anymore.
"Everyone is little to me," Dr. Daniel "Danny" Chou, M.D. (retired) had smirked in perfect, American English. "Third generation Chinese," he had proclaimed at Sam's lifted brows, holding up three gnarled fingers. "I'm just as white-washed as you, boy."
The child's name was Eric, and in spite of his thoroughly western looks, seemed to understand Xiao Yen's staccatto Mandarin with the same ease as he pattered gently lisping English back at her and everyone else. (There had been another loose tooth which had promptly fallen out the day after Sam and Tron's arrival. It had been proudly presented to Tron in thanks for his services, and then Sam was forced to spend the next hour explaining tooth fairies, Santa Claus, and various other child-deluding customs before he gratefully took refuge in dinner being served.)
"We were all staying in this hotel when it happened," Danny confided. "We were the only survivors in it. He imprinted on her like a duck - they've been good for each other."
"Do you know what happened? You know, being a doctor and all," Sam waved his spoon vaguely to encompass all of Eric, from the scraggly salt-and-pepper hair bordering his bald dome to the cracked leather sandals on his feet.
"With the plague?" The old man had hummed solemnly, eyes closing as the sagging skin of his jowls drooped even further in a frown. "Well, people flying all over the country every day. Driving five, fifty, five hundred miles at a time. Our population shuffling around every few hours. If you had some infection that was real easy to pass on - maybe by just touching the same things, maybe just by breathing nearby - how far would that infection go? How quickly? What if no one knew they had it and it kept spreading for a week, an entire month ... until one day, there was a trigger, and it all activated, all at once?"
Another pause, this one more contemplative while Sam felt chills crawl down his spine - the scenario no less frightening, even after it had already come to pass - and then Danny shrugged phlegmatically. "All speculation at this point; the characteristics I just described didn't exist together in a single organism that also had a 98% fatality rate; at least, not in a wild type. I don't have a lab to isolate viruses or antibodies, and nobody's getting sick anymore. It's all over and done with."
"But, why were we the survivors?" Sam rolled his shoulders to try and relieve the itch between them. "There's no pattern. Young, old, where we were ... "
Danny shrugged again. "I could give you all sorts of scientific mumbo-jumbo on why that could be, but does it really matter? I wouldn't be able to prove any of it. We survived. And we should stay focused on staying surviving."
Danny had been the nucleus around which the other stragglers had collected, the rare doctor (even retired) in a world that had become much more uncertain. He happily provided them with his services in exchange for whatever they were willing to give up - labor, news from elsewhere, supplies - and then sent them on their way with a wave if they remained restless and footloose.
"You two going to move on?" he asked, bluntly curious.
"You kidding?" Sam said around a mouthful of soup-soaked bread. "I think this's the best thing I've tasted even before the world exploded."
"Xiao Yen will be glad to hear that. The Chinese have had centuries to perfect the art of creating meals from scraps," Danny cackled, eyes slitted until they were nearly lost in sagging wrinkles. "Your friend there looks like he's fitting in all right."
In the courtyard, Eric had caught up with Tron and was describing something with expansive gestures of one hand, the other propped on his hip in an awkward imitation of the program's more casual stance. Tron's brow was furrowed, listening to the boy as studiously as he would any adult - Sam had gotten as far as making the program understand that children were not "compressed users" but versions that were "still under development" and in potential need of the occasional "debugging," but wasn't sure how much further he should push the concept.
When Eric held up something he had dug from a pocket and demonstrated by putting it in his mouth, Sam had to quell the sudden urge to rush over and inspect it before Tron accepted an offering and did the same. After all, if the plague had not had an effect on Tron, surely a little dirt wouldn't kill the program?
He still couldn't help casting a surreptitious glance sideways to check if the doctor looked worried, though.
"But, seriously," Sam forced his attention back to his bowl when Danny appeared to be not at all concerned about sore throats or potential bubonic outbreaks, "we were originally just going to pass through on our way to Silicon Valley. I'm a ... well, computers were sort of my thing, so I thought - "
"Silicon Valley?" Sam's heart began to sink at Danny's grave tone, and the old man confirmed his fears with a small shake of his head. "A dirty bomb. Don't know if it was intended for San Francisco and someone managed to pull it off course, or it strayed on its own. Or maybe it was intended for San Jose all along, trying to cripple one of the nation's major technology centers. But nobody's going to be headed there for a long time. Not in your generation, anyway."
There was a frozen moment in which Sam tried to grasp the vaporization of America's computing capital, the home of the world's processing and internet revolutions. Arguably one of the birthplaces of what had put America at the top of the global food chain in his generation ... literally atomized. There would not even be rubble; just a gigantic, radioactive crater ... or would the edges be close enough to the bay and ocean that it would have flooded into a perfectly circular lake ...
All of through which Danny sat patiently until Sam finally shook himself out of his daze to roughly apologize, "It ... you think you've figured out the world's ended, you know? Things being ... well, like this, for weeks and weeks now. But sometimes ... it just hits you ... "
"It was a bit like this after 9/11, yes?" Danny hummed, pushing himself up creakily from the steps they had been squatting on and giving Sam's shoulder a companionable pat as he shuffled down. "It's this place. People living here, making friends, sharing food ... feels like normal life for a little while. Fools your brain. Then suddenly you turn around, and the towers aren't there, or you realize you can't just walk down to the convenience store for some milk and eggs, or you remember you hadta bury your spouse and neighbors ... it's all right. We all understand, here."
Sam swallowed thickly and looked down at the remnants of his stew as Danny called out a hello to an incoming party. And even though his stomach was now clenched into a painful knot, he remembered where he was and what the world had become, and forced himself to finish every last drop before he stood to follow the doctor.
"When I enlisted your help - "
"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."
" - I was not quite envisioning - "
"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."
" - quite ... Quorra, is this - "
"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."
" - really necess - Quorra, can you wait just a - "
"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."
" - just hold on - "
"Relea - "
The remainder of the command was lost to a smothered mumble as Tron slid a hand behind Quorra's head and clapped the other over her mouth, the security program scowling into the wide-eyed innocence that stared right back at him over his fingers. "Enough, Quorra, I am not a WAV program with a pause command that you can continuously mash without consequences. Will you desist?"
[ illustration by Winzler ]
Sam stared at the two programs from where he still stood frozen in mid-stride by the bizarre game he had wandered in on, until Tron huffed and dropped his hands with a defeated, "I should have known better than to ask."
"Uhm ... hi, guys. What's going on?" Sam finally ventured, and Quorra clasped her hands primly behind her back as she pinned one of those sweet, sweet smiles he was just beginning to learn to distrust on him.
"Oh, Tron asked me to help him - "
" - not abuse him," the security program grumbled.
" - run some experiments on how much he retains between triggers," the ISO finished brightly, not batting an eye. "He does seem to retain volatile memory better when the consecutive switches are rapid."
"I ... see. And how exactly did that become ... " He waved vaguely between them. " ... this."
"I thought he might find it useful to know how rapidly he can switch between personas," Quorra proposed.
"Eight times?" Tron groused.
"Every experiment needs to have its results validated and confirmed," she quoted.
"I think that had been firmly established by the second or third - "
"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."
" - iteration - Sam!" Tron virtually squawked with a betrayed expression.
Sam had to strain at withholding his grin as he stated solemnly, "An experiment has to be repeatable, and part of validation requires that it be repeated by separate parties." At Tron's aggrieved look, however, he couldn't hold it back anymore and bent over with a howl, leaning against a similarly discombobulated Quorra before he mustered as much sincerity through his amusement as he could and offered, "Well, do you want me to key the triggers to just me, like Rinzler's command structure?"
Tron somehow managed to look even more pained before he grudgingly admitted, "No, the reasoning was sound. It is best if anyone nearby could make the switch in case something went ... wrong."
"Alrighty ... so. Should I let you get back to it, then?" Sam waved between the security program and ISO as he straightened with a last wheezing inhale.
Looking slightly hunted, Tron quickly asserted, "I need to be in Sector Delta-One in ten microcycles for a diagnostic run, so I should be going. I will find you later." Neither of them had time to so much as draw another breath for a goodbye before his lightcycle was rez'ed and humming.
As Tron sped off in a graceful curve, Quorra asked, "Will he be all right?"
Sam's good mood ebbed as rapidly as the afterimages of the cycle's lights. "I don't know," he admitted with a frustrated sigh, unable to even pretend his usual bravado. "I mean ... Dad and Clu have been developing this stuff for longer than I've been alive, and I've had, what, two months to wrap my head around it all? And, oh, suddenly I'm also supposed to play psychiatrist-slash-cyberworld-surgeon to an AI warrior hero who also happens to have been around for longer than I've been alive. Longer than even the grid."
Quorra took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Don't worry. Tron is a strong program."
"Yeah, well, it's not his character I'm worried about."
"And we're not worried about yours either," Quorra riposted with frightening insight for a computer program, self-evolved or not. She looked up at him, and Sam had to swallow in the face of her utter conviction. "We trust you, Sam Flynn. You'll make everything right again."
Characters: Sam Flynn, Tron/Rinzler
Rating: T
Disclaimer: All
television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Summary:
It wasn't so much that hope died, but that Sam realized it had only been wishful thinking all along.
For Winzler, and the prompt (misinterpreted):
The world ends. Nuclear wasteland, Mad Max style, etc. One day Sam comes out of the computer and everything is gone. The power will run out soon/the arcade is in danger/etc so Sam hurriedly brings a recovering Tron(zler) out to save him.
Tron is OK at first but slowly reverts to Rinzler under the stress of survival - and Sam eventually begins to lose it as well. In the end we’re left with 2 bugfuck crazy survivalist murdermachines roaming the wasteland together.
Notes:
This was a really quick chapter as I was inspired and wrote most of it on the same night I posted Part 4, and for once, I've actually mapped out the major steps to the end instead of flying by the seat of my pants like I usually do, so I mostly know where I'm going. Mostly.
And sorry, I ended up lying about the plot thing. =( I had been intending to end the first part of this chapter later on in the storyline, but then Danny's talk happened, and I felt like it was a good place to stop and just let it have its moment. So, more key chars and events will be introduced next time instead. =)
(You know, there are so many stories/games out there where a protagonist is fighting some evil world-domainting or world-destroying plan, and somehow, they always manage to win through and stop the countdown. It occurred to me that this could very well be one of those stories where they failed. Poor protagonist. Poor world. Also, as I was describing the (totally implausible) characteristics of the bio-virus, it also occurred to me that it behaved an awful lot like a computer virus brought into the real world. *eyeshifts cough cough* A story for another time, perhaps.)
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
The woman's nickname was Xiao Yen, or "Little Swallow," though she had laughingly protested in accented English that she was not so little anymore.
"Everyone is little to me," Dr. Daniel "Danny" Chou, M.D. (retired) had smirked in perfect, American English. "Third generation Chinese," he had proclaimed at Sam's lifted brows, holding up three gnarled fingers. "I'm just as white-washed as you, boy."
The child's name was Eric, and in spite of his thoroughly western looks, seemed to understand Xiao Yen's staccatto Mandarin with the same ease as he pattered gently lisping English back at her and everyone else. (There had been another loose tooth which had promptly fallen out the day after Sam and Tron's arrival. It had been proudly presented to Tron in thanks for his services, and then Sam was forced to spend the next hour explaining tooth fairies, Santa Claus, and various other child-deluding customs before he gratefully took refuge in dinner being served.)
"We were all staying in this hotel when it happened," Danny confided. "We were the only survivors in it. He imprinted on her like a duck - they've been good for each other."
"Do you know what happened? You know, being a doctor and all," Sam waved his spoon vaguely to encompass all of Eric, from the scraggly salt-and-pepper hair bordering his bald dome to the cracked leather sandals on his feet.
"With the plague?" The old man had hummed solemnly, eyes closing as the sagging skin of his jowls drooped even further in a frown. "Well, people flying all over the country every day. Driving five, fifty, five hundred miles at a time. Our population shuffling around every few hours. If you had some infection that was real easy to pass on - maybe by just touching the same things, maybe just by breathing nearby - how far would that infection go? How quickly? What if no one knew they had it and it kept spreading for a week, an entire month ... until one day, there was a trigger, and it all activated, all at once?"
Another pause, this one more contemplative while Sam felt chills crawl down his spine - the scenario no less frightening, even after it had already come to pass - and then Danny shrugged phlegmatically. "All speculation at this point; the characteristics I just described didn't exist together in a single organism that also had a 98% fatality rate; at least, not in a wild type. I don't have a lab to isolate viruses or antibodies, and nobody's getting sick anymore. It's all over and done with."
"But, why were we the survivors?" Sam rolled his shoulders to try and relieve the itch between them. "There's no pattern. Young, old, where we were ... "
Danny shrugged again. "I could give you all sorts of scientific mumbo-jumbo on why that could be, but does it really matter? I wouldn't be able to prove any of it. We survived. And we should stay focused on staying surviving."
Danny had been the nucleus around which the other stragglers had collected, the rare doctor (even retired) in a world that had become much more uncertain. He happily provided them with his services in exchange for whatever they were willing to give up - labor, news from elsewhere, supplies - and then sent them on their way with a wave if they remained restless and footloose.
"You two going to move on?" he asked, bluntly curious.
"You kidding?" Sam said around a mouthful of soup-soaked bread. "I think this's the best thing I've tasted even before the world exploded."
"Xiao Yen will be glad to hear that. The Chinese have had centuries to perfect the art of creating meals from scraps," Danny cackled, eyes slitted until they were nearly lost in sagging wrinkles. "Your friend there looks like he's fitting in all right."
In the courtyard, Eric had caught up with Tron and was describing something with expansive gestures of one hand, the other propped on his hip in an awkward imitation of the program's more casual stance. Tron's brow was furrowed, listening to the boy as studiously as he would any adult - Sam had gotten as far as making the program understand that children were not "compressed users" but versions that were "still under development" and in potential need of the occasional "debugging," but wasn't sure how much further he should push the concept.
When Eric held up something he had dug from a pocket and demonstrated by putting it in his mouth, Sam had to quell the sudden urge to rush over and inspect it before Tron accepted an offering and did the same. After all, if the plague had not had an effect on Tron, surely a little dirt wouldn't kill the program?
He still couldn't help casting a surreptitious glance sideways to check if the doctor looked worried, though.
"But, seriously," Sam forced his attention back to his bowl when Danny appeared to be not at all concerned about sore throats or potential bubonic outbreaks, "we were originally just going to pass through on our way to Silicon Valley. I'm a ... well, computers were sort of my thing, so I thought - "
"Silicon Valley?" Sam's heart began to sink at Danny's grave tone, and the old man confirmed his fears with a small shake of his head. "A dirty bomb. Don't know if it was intended for San Francisco and someone managed to pull it off course, or it strayed on its own. Or maybe it was intended for San Jose all along, trying to cripple one of the nation's major technology centers. But nobody's going to be headed there for a long time. Not in your generation, anyway."
There was a frozen moment in which Sam tried to grasp the vaporization of America's computing capital, the home of the world's processing and internet revolutions. Arguably one of the birthplaces of what had put America at the top of the global food chain in his generation ... literally atomized. There would not even be rubble; just a gigantic, radioactive crater ... or would the edges be close enough to the bay and ocean that it would have flooded into a perfectly circular lake ...
All of through which Danny sat patiently until Sam finally shook himself out of his daze to roughly apologize, "It ... you think you've figured out the world's ended, you know? Things being ... well, like this, for weeks and weeks now. But sometimes ... it just hits you ... "
"It was a bit like this after 9/11, yes?" Danny hummed, pushing himself up creakily from the steps they had been squatting on and giving Sam's shoulder a companionable pat as he shuffled down. "It's this place. People living here, making friends, sharing food ... feels like normal life for a little while. Fools your brain. Then suddenly you turn around, and the towers aren't there, or you realize you can't just walk down to the convenience store for some milk and eggs, or you remember you hadta bury your spouse and neighbors ... it's all right. We all understand, here."
Sam swallowed thickly and looked down at the remnants of his stew as Danny called out a hello to an incoming party. And even though his stomach was now clenched into a painful knot, he remembered where he was and what the world had become, and forced himself to finish every last drop before he stood to follow the doctor.
"When I enlisted your help - "
"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."
" - I was not quite envisioning - "
"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."
" - quite ... Quorra, is this - "
"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."
" - really necess - Quorra, can you wait just a - "
"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."
" - just hold on - "
"Relea - "
The remainder of the command was lost to a smothered mumble as Tron slid a hand behind Quorra's head and clapped the other over her mouth, the security program scowling into the wide-eyed innocence that stared right back at him over his fingers. "Enough, Quorra, I am not a WAV program with a pause command that you can continuously mash without consequences. Will you desist?"
[ illustration by Winzler ]
Sam stared at the two programs from where he still stood frozen in mid-stride by the bizarre game he had wandered in on, until Tron huffed and dropped his hands with a defeated, "I should have known better than to ask."
"Uhm ... hi, guys. What's going on?" Sam finally ventured, and Quorra clasped her hands primly behind her back as she pinned one of those sweet, sweet smiles he was just beginning to learn to distrust on him.
"Oh, Tron asked me to help him - "
" - not abuse him," the security program grumbled.
" - run some experiments on how much he retains between triggers," the ISO finished brightly, not batting an eye. "He does seem to retain volatile memory better when the consecutive switches are rapid."
"I ... see. And how exactly did that become ... " He waved vaguely between them. " ... this."
"I thought he might find it useful to know how rapidly he can switch between personas," Quorra proposed.
"Eight times?" Tron groused.
"Every experiment needs to have its results validated and confirmed," she quoted.
"I think that had been firmly established by the second or third - "
"Release Rinzler. We made it, Tron."
" - iteration - Sam!" Tron virtually squawked with a betrayed expression.
Sam had to strain at withholding his grin as he stated solemnly, "An experiment has to be repeatable, and part of validation requires that it be repeated by separate parties." At Tron's aggrieved look, however, he couldn't hold it back anymore and bent over with a howl, leaning against a similarly discombobulated Quorra before he mustered as much sincerity through his amusement as he could and offered, "Well, do you want me to key the triggers to just me, like Rinzler's command structure?"
Tron somehow managed to look even more pained before he grudgingly admitted, "No, the reasoning was sound. It is best if anyone nearby could make the switch in case something went ... wrong."
"Alrighty ... so. Should I let you get back to it, then?" Sam waved between the security program and ISO as he straightened with a last wheezing inhale.
Looking slightly hunted, Tron quickly asserted, "I need to be in Sector Delta-One in ten microcycles for a diagnostic run, so I should be going. I will find you later." Neither of them had time to so much as draw another breath for a goodbye before his lightcycle was rez'ed and humming.
As Tron sped off in a graceful curve, Quorra asked, "Will he be all right?"
Sam's good mood ebbed as rapidly as the afterimages of the cycle's lights. "I don't know," he admitted with a frustrated sigh, unable to even pretend his usual bravado. "I mean ... Dad and Clu have been developing this stuff for longer than I've been alive, and I've had, what, two months to wrap my head around it all? And, oh, suddenly I'm also supposed to play psychiatrist-slash-cyberworld-surgeon to an AI warrior hero who also happens to have been around for longer than I've been alive. Longer than even the grid."
Quorra took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Don't worry. Tron is a strong program."
"Yeah, well, it's not his character I'm worried about."
"And we're not worried about yours either," Quorra riposted with frightening insight for a computer program, self-evolved or not. She looked up at him, and Sam had to swallow in the face of her utter conviction. "We trust you, Sam Flynn. You'll make everything right again."