The past is so familiar

[solarnaut]

Who: New Yori and whoever comes along
When: Now
Where: Just underneath/in the End of Line
What: Another Yori rezzes into the system . . . this time, one who didn't survive Clu's reign.
Warnings: None so far.

Comments

[creator_man]

Flynn hadn't been to the actual club; not since that time when he'd needed to get Sam and Quorra out of it; but he passed by the building on occasion. It needed little care from him, or at least nobody had told him it was needed, but there was plenty to be learned, from one of the tallest structures in the city.

The familiar blond hair caught his eye, and with the faded circuits, he suspected this was Yori - and not the Yori who'd been in this system for a longer time than him.

"Greetings," he called out. "And if you're recently arrived, welcome."

[solarnaut]

Yori turned, startled at the unpleasantly familiar voice. And then she paused. That wasn't Clu.

"Flynn?" she whispered. "Why are you here? It isn't safe for you, you know that! Clu will be here as soon as he knows you're in the city. You have to go."

[creator_man]

There was a brief look of sadness in Flynn's eyes at the distress on her face as she turned; and then the worry...

He shook his head.

"Things have changed. Clu is no longer in power, the Portal is open - a bit more so than I ever imagined it could be. But I'm all right. And whatever the last thing that happened to you was, so are you."

[solarnaut]

Yori stopped, blinked and tried to corellate the information. All she came up with was does not compute.

Thanks to long experience, it came out in User. "I don't understand, Flynn."

[creator_man]

He might have understood if she'd used the original version, too. He'd spent all this time around programs, you see.

In return to her confused response, though, he looked sideways at the spherical, unwavering light, then pointed it to her. "Have you looked at the portal lately?"

[solarnaut]

At the question and the gesture, Yori turned to look . . . and stilled, eyes wide in shock. "It's open. It's . . . Flynn, what happened to it? It shouldn't be acting like that."

And given that her original purpose had been to handle the traffic to and from the Portal, she ought to know.

[creator_man]

"Mm-hmm." Calmly. One hand light on her back, just as a reassurance. "We're not sure, as far as I know, what exactly happened to it, but since it's been like that since the energy of the reintegration hit it, that might have done it." Not letting the conversation linger on this part, he went on.

"It's resulted in all sorts of other impossible things. Most of them are surprisingly hope-inspiring, to be truthful. Especially, if not exclusively the return of lost - including derezzed - programs of either variety."

[solarnaut]

"The reintegration?" Add one more fact that didn't make sense. "But if you reintegrated with Clu, how are you still here?"

"Either variety? You mean . . . ISOS are returning?" She took a nanocycle to process it, then turned a smile upwards. "Flynn, that's wonderful!"

Below that reaction, however, she was calculating frantically. Correlating her recent memories with Flynn's statement that derezzed programs were returning, the conclusion was obvious.

I derezzed.

"Flynn? How long was Clu in power?" In other words, How much time did I miss?

[creator_man]

"Yes. ISOs are returning. After more than a thousand cycles, they are returning." He answered two questions at the same time, and then he tilted his chin towards the Portal again.

"It's all the Portal. I didn't expect anything to happen after that, and when I woke up in the Outlands, I didn't even remember who I was or where. It passed, with time."

He looked at the gentle, familiar, unchanged face. "What happened to you?" A small pause, and then he added, so she had warning if it hadn't been known earlier. "There's at least one more version of you, you know. She's been in the City - and at the Portal - since before I knew enough of myself to return here."

[solarnaut]

"Another version? Of me?" Yori shook her head, surprise and wonder on her face. "The Portal, again? It's duplicating programs as well?"

She was a little surprised at his request, but decided to go from the last point she'd heard from him. "When you told us - the Resistance - that you couldn't come up with anything that Clu couldn't counter, we continued. We tried to help ISOs escape the city, but Clu usually found them." She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the tiny piles of pixels left in the Outlands caves where they'd been hiding.

"I thought Tron was dead. Then I found out what had really happened to him." Her eyes squeezed shut again, and she shuddered slightly in memory. Opening her eyes, she looked up at Flynn. "About five hundred cycles later, I was rearguard while we were evacuating a Resistance base. Clu must have heard about us, somehow, because he sent Rinzler. It was . . . it was the first time I'd seen him. He wasn't Tron at all." She paused, pulling herself together. "I think he derezzed me."

[creator_man]

"We think so, yeah. Except I'm not sure that it's duplicates as much as... coming from different systems. Some of the details don't match, and duplicates would be matching. It's more like there were many parallel places where the system existed. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if I ran into another version of me. I mean, I know there is more than one version of my son, the rest would just follow... and yeah, I know that doesn't make much sense, it's just the only explanation which fits the facts somewhat. I think."

Flynn sighed, one hand resting on her shoulder, squeezing lightly. "I'm sorry. For withdrawing." He swallowed. "I didn't know he had survived, or what happened to him. But he was... Clu changed him. I've seen the modification of at least a couple of the versions. It wasn't kind to Tron."