Tron

He had an irresistible confidence in himself and that was fortunate for him, given the number of times he’d gotten himself into scrapes.

The room was disorderly, clothes scattered everywhere, interspersed with empty Chinese-food cartons and pizza boxes and wax-paper cups. The room contained several large commercial videogames, and an unmade bed that hadn’t been used in some time. Flynn’s white-trimmed black hapi coat hung open; he had several days’ growth of beard. All in all, he felt much as he had back during his most dedicated periods as a computer hacker. But he thought he’d scented victory, and had the feeling he was onto something. At least, the password he’d managed to come up with stood a chance of getting his Clu program into the high-clearance memory that was his objective.

Flynn tapped the keyboard a few more times, leaned forward to read the cathode-ray tube, and hoped; he projected his determination at the CRT. Its intense colors lit his face.

Aboard the tank, Clu was studying the Input/Output Tower, thinking about his next contact with Flynn, when a warning light flashed on the control panel. Clu sat bolt upright, thoughts torn from his User, and stared at the alarm. The Bit whizzed down like an angry meteor to circle him in panic.

“Uh-oh,” Clu said, more to himself than to the little data bit. “We got company. A Recognizer.” The thought filled him with misgiving; his face held the same worry that his User’s did on those all-too-frequent occasions when Flynn’s brash nature brought him into conflict with higher authorities.

The Bit expanded momentarily to a jutting red star, just long enough to squeak, “No!” The instant it had delivered the word, it contracted into its smoother form once more.

“You said it,” Clu agreed wholeheartedly. “One of those Recognizers comes after me, I’m gonna hafta jump clear out of the data stream.” If I can, he added to himself; escape was by no means a certainty. He’d tangled with Recognizers before, and knew what the odds would be if he was forced to join combat.

He leaned to his scope again, setting it for target acquisition. His hands never strayed far from the cannon’s fire controls. Abruptly, the scope was filled with the dreaded shape of one of the Master Control Program’s Recognizers. It was enormous, many times the size of the tank, a glittering, metallic blue-black. The Reco glided toward him, not yet sure that he was an intruder.

It flew lightly, quickly, an inverted U of armor-plated battleship, shaped from field-bonded polyhedrons, its turret-head dangerously alight. Clu wondered if its crew, there in that fortress of a cranium, had identified him yet.

A second Reco floated into sight behind the first, its black component modules outlined in crimson energy. The two swooped toward Clu’s tank, their pairs of gigantic pincers opened wide, the inverted U’s at maximum deployment. Either ship could easily have gathered up a half-dozen tanks in a single clutch.

“Oh my! The long arm o’ the law!” Clu spat in consternation. But even as he did, he acted, a stranger to indecision. He watched his scope reticle and his hands flew across the controls as rapidly and surely as Flynn’s had across the keyboard of his computer terminal.

The tank’s turret swung, its gun ranging. The long cannon elevated and its wide, flat muzzle erupted. The cannon bolt was a white chevron of energy, flashing point-foremost at the Reco. Clu’s mastery of his controls was complete; he’d aimed and fired before either Recognizer crew had had the chance to take the offensive.

The first Reco was just beginning an evasive maneuver, its crew’s reflexes no match for Clu’s, when the V of energy struck it dead center in its head. Light leaped outward from the hit like an expanding bull’s-eye. There was a flash that made Clu blink, and an eruption of force, a secondary explosion from the Reco’s power banks that shook the canyon walls and even jostled the massive form of the other Reco. Its binding and supportive fields gone, the wounded Reco fell like a dropped safe to the canyon floor, where its components flew apart in a fireworks display of freed energy.

But the second Reco was still to be dealt with. And Clu didn’t doubt for a moment that more were on the way. He maneuvered frantically. The tank turned, its light-treads blurring, and scuttled into a side way as enemy reinforcements began showing up for the kill.

Clu plied his controls grimly, evading and dodging through the defile. The machine lurched and bucked, throwing him hard against his safety belt and chair back, even though the command sphere’s gymbals compensated for much of the punishment.

A second Reco closed in; again the tank’s main gun gushed white annihilation. The Reco fired a return volley, its beam springing from a point between the tips of its colossal pincers.

Clu sought to avoid the shot—flicking the controls with delicate precision—but there was only one way to do that, and his evasive maneuver slammed the tank against a nearby wall. The collision made the gymbals whine and nearly shook the command sphere from its mountings; Clue reeled, dizzy with the impact. The engines cut out automatically to avert an internal explosion and the tank went silent, its interior dark but for emergency lights. The cannon had bent against the wall, crumpling to uselessness.

Clu staggered to the turret’s main hatch, seized it, and heaved against it with his shoulder. The hatch fell open and Clu dragged himself out of the turret. A Reco closed in, pincers spread. Clu stepped out onto the turret as the Bit came shooting out of the tank, looped, and hovered near.

“Get outta here!” Flynn shouted at the glowing being.

“Yes! Ja! Si!” responded the Bit; it banked and zipped off. Clu dropped to the ground and, with a last look at the approaching Recos, dashed away, running for all he was worth.

A Recognizer dropped toward the tank, its crew examining the wreckage. Between the two tremendous pincers, an energy field crackled to life. The Reco swept over the tank and the ruined vehicle’s outline began to blur as the MCP’s guardian machine de-rezzed it. The tank grew indistinct, and in moments it had disappeared, the de- resolution complete. In the meantime more tanks crewed by programs loyal to the Master Control Program began to converge on the area. And more Recos appeared on the scene with each passing moment.

Clu fled along the deep, geometrical ravine, boxed in by its sheer walls, unable to find an exit. He heaved for breath, becoming light-headed from his injuries and fatigue. Some sense made him look over his shoulder as he ran, and terror clutched at him as he saw a Reco descending toward him. Far ahead of the program, the Bit flew for the turret head of the Reco downed by Clu’s cannonade. At the end of his reserves, gulping for breath, Clu saw that there was no shelter for him, no place to hide, no chance of outrunning the enormous robot craft. Pincers gaping for him, the Reco came closer, lower, blocking the sky. Clu could only stand and wait.

In another World, the words appeared on Flynn’s screen:

ILLEGAL CODE…
CLU PROGRAM DETACHED
FROM SYSTEM.

Flynn, hands raised over the keyboard, read it as his heart sank. He tried clearing the cathode-ray tube, but the words stubbornly refused to yield the CRT.

“Ah, hell; busted again,” he gritted as he made one more hopeless try to clear the screen. And the Clu program had been one of his best. Flynn slumped in his chair, staring moodily at the screen, and wondered what he could possibly try next. At such times, Kevin Flynn only knew what his next move would not be. It wouldn’t be to give up.

Clu was pushed into the chamber, a soaring, circular space. He couldn’t suppress a certain awe that nearly made him forget the brutal, staff-bearing Memory Guards who surrounded him, gazing down out of their black- shadowed cowls, chosen protectors of the MCP. Clu had been brought to the citadel of the Master Control Program, wellspring of the power that had brought the entire System under a single intelligence, abode of that intelligence.

He gazed up at the concave walls and the infinity of lights that interplayed and swarmed there. He looked, too, upon the MCP. Clu was aghast; he was a capable program, but no match for the tyrant of the System. He wished he’d gotten to talk to Flynn one last time.

A guard stepped before the MCP with a gesture to Clu. He spoke with deference, and not a little fear, to his Master. “Got a pirate program here. Says his name’s Clu.”

The Master Control Program’s voice resounded from the walls, hurting the listener’s ears, intimidating by its