4Chapter 2 – Illume
I crouched in a corner far away from the door, next to the TRON arcade game. I'd been curled up here for at least an hour now, and I felt myself grow fatigued. I leaned heavily against the game, which caused it to shift and move. I looked down and saw scuff marks in a particular pattern.
This game had been moved a lot in a very specific way. Curiosity sparked in me, and I pushed the game aside to find a door behind it. A secret door.
Even if I didn't find a treasure trove of my uncle's work, this made a great hiding place if I was tracked here. I quickly opened the second door and let the arcade game slide back in place behind me. Only a clever person would be able to find me.
A little bit of light from street lamps outside somehow made its way into the staircase area, which I was grateful for. I didn't want to move around blindly and accidently hurt myself or damage something. I descended the steps and my eyes widened at the set of doors.
They were covered with warning signs like: "DO NOT ENTER," or "AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY." I glanced at the keys that dangled from the slot. The door's unlocked. Nobody would assume I went here, right?
As long as I didn't disrupt all of the dust too much.
I gripped the sides of the handle between the pads of my fingers as I gingerly pushed it downward. It opened with a crunch and the door creaked as it opened. I entered the space and pushed the door closed behind me, then I faced forward again to evaluate my surroundings.
It was not what I expected. My uncle had a secret lair underneath his arcade. By the state of the futon couch, the messy blanket that lay atop it, and the abundant items scattered across a coffee table's surface, I deduced that my uncle spent a lot of time here. But the excessive amount of dust and the musty air told me this place hadn't been touched in years either.
The room felt all the more eerie with the two facts in mind. From this vantage point, it was like Kevin Flynn vanished into thin air.
Against the wall under the window was a desk, and a paper map tacked to the wall was titled: The Grid. I wondered if it meant the same thing as what I heard from Sam - the bedtime stories.
"A digital frontier" he mentioned to the press years ago. I began to wonder at this point if he was talking about an open-world game. I approached the desk and swiped a hand across its surface. It lit up to reveal a keyboard and text box. I couldn't believe it. This computer was running since the last time my uncle touched it. All I remembered from the timer before it disappeared was 13 years.
He touched this computer 13 years ago before he disappeared. The realization finally dawned on me that this probably wasn't discovered by investigators after his disappearance. Could I be tampering with evidence?
I then decided that the computer likely had nothing to do with his disappearance, though could have been present during a key point in the timeline about his vanishment. I could dig through - heck, maybe I could find something useful to present to authorities. Or I could release his lost products and ideas to the world so not everything he did was in vain.
It wanted me to log in.
"Shit."
I tried typing in backdoor to see if I could get around, but it didn't do me any good. I was out of my element here; I didn't understand Linux operating systems very well, and it looked like that was what the computer had. Then I got an idea.
I dug around in the dress's pocket for my flash drive. "Alright GUS," I muttered. "Don't let me down. Find a way to let me in." I plugged in the flash drive.
I at least knew how to force an upload of my program into the computer. Once that happened, it would sign in for me - theoretically, I would be signed in as my uncle.
Then I watched the password type itself in: 3V0LUT10N. Evolution? I wondered why he picked that of all things. It wasn't what I expected, so maybe that was the point. I didn't dwell too much on it.
Once I was signed in, I looked up his history and squinted at one of the lines listed. "Laser control?" I typed in an exact copy of the lines of text I saw, and then I heard mechanical whirrs start up from the computer. It startled me.
I yelped and stumbled into the chair by my legs. It clattered to the floor on its side. I stared at it as I attempted to regain my breath and calm down again. I set it right in front desk again and then sat down in it. "Screw you too," I muttered back to the computer. Then I saw the new query box that was open.
Aperture Clear?
[Yes] [No]
I was still recovering from my brief surprise and was distracted by my curiosity that I was barely mindful of the soft, rhythmic beeps from behind me. I thought about the question for a moment, and then shrugged. I wanted to see what would happen.
I pressed the Y key
Then I heard more whirrs behind me, and I suddenly felt pins and needles over every inch of my body. It lasted only a few seconds before it was gone again.
But the atmosphere felt different. I looked around me in shock. Was I in some vivid dream or hallucination caused by binge drinking and PTSD? I preferred that explanation over the horrible sinking feeling that this was real. The entire room was different. The lighting was different. There was no dust. No futon couch. No blanket draped haphazardly over it. No coffee table. No knick knacks or stale snacks scattered around either. The room was bare.
I glanced toward the window and suddenly flood lights poured through into the room. I felt compelled to move away and get out. My flash drive was not there anymore. I didn't think too much about it. I exited the oddly clean room that disturbingly resembled my uncle's secret office.
I stopped fast upon exiting the room. There weren't any stairs to climb to get to the main receiving room. I was already there. Here, the office was directly attached through a neighboring door on ground level. "What the hell?" I squeaked.
I bolted through the main doors and turned in a slow circle as I looked around on the street. "No, no…" I didn't know where the hell I was, but it wasn't Los Angeles.
Parts of the freaking buildings around me were glowing! The street lamps were no longer a soft goldenrod, but a sharper, cleaner white. Gosh, some of the architecture of the buildings too were very bizarre and unrealistic. What was this dream I was stuck in? I pinched my arm.
A floodlight suddenly shone down on me, and I shaded my eyes as I gazed up. There was a terrifying machine flying through the air from above that looked a lot like a fancier version of the enemy vehicles in Space Paranoids.
Wait. Was I in a video game?
I quickly decided that, yes, I was in a video game and needed to not get killed. I turned and bolted down a random street. To my horror, it followed - not that I should have expected anything different. I spotted a narrow street that it wouldn't be able to fit through and turned the corner.
It moved upwards to continue its pursuit of me. I felt my hope of escape slowly begin to crumble. I needed to get away. I didn't want to chance dying for real if this wasn't some kind of simulation.
A hand reached out from the darkness and grabbed my hand to pull me into a hidden nook. I yanked my wrist back after, and did a double take at what was crouched in the shadows with me.
It was a person that looked like me, except he was male. He wore what looked like a black spandex unitard with glowing white lights running up and down the suit. There were some dark honey-colored yellow lights too, like secondary circuits. Fascinating; I wonder if they mean anything.
He looked over my outfit and appearance - especially my glasses, with equal parts perplexion and criticism. "You look very out of place," he judged. Then he peeked outside. "That recognizer's still hovering around this sector. We may have to wait them out."
"Uh, who are you?"
"Oh, I'm Gus," the blond-haired man smiled at me. Even his blue eyes looked just like mine.
I blinked. "You're Gus? As in the program I wrote?"
"Wait. You're my User?" He looked me up and down again, and then looked over himself. He sat down. "This is confusing. What did you do to me?"
"I don't know, I based you off another program written by my uncle. I inserted some of its source code into you, made it part of you. Maybe that's why you feel odd?" I shrugged and sat down next to him.
"I'm supposed to look just like you."
I froze and made eye contact with him. "Well, this is awkward."
"That's the least of our concerns," he sighed. "If you're a User, then we need to get you off the Grid. You don't belong here. It's dangerous for you."
"Yeah," I gestured outside. "I noticed."
He peeked outside again. "We need to get you somewhere safe. Abby will know what to do."
"Who?" I ask. Gus hadn't been inside the computer for very long, yet he still met a program that he already trusted? Did time pass differently here, or what? I groaned. "I have so many questions."
"Abby might answer them better than me," he answered.
"You're supposed to be a helping tool," I reminded him.
He lifted an eyebrow at that statement and I cringed when I reminded myself the very program I wrote looked human. And what was more, he seemed to have independent thoughts and feelings as well. "I haven't had the chance to learn every scrap of information yet," he reminded me. "Although your command to look up the history was very helpful."
"Okay," I backed up and tried a different way to obtain information. "Where am I?"
"You're on the Grid, a digital utopia created by Flynn and run by Clu 2 as the system administrator. Right now, we're in the limits of Tron city, but we need to get to the border by the Outlands if we want to meet up with Abby."
Flynn? "Wait, do you mean my uncle, Kevin Flynn?" I asked Gus.
He looked at me, mouth agape for a moment before he shook his head and groaned. "This isn't good. They'll come after you for sure. There's no way he'll let you go if he finds out."
Wait, what? Who? Why? What was he talking about? What kind of messed up world was this?
This program, my program, had begun to frustrate me a little from the poor communication between us. He either needed to learn more, or I made a mistake somewhere with his code. I forced myself to calm down. Getting angry wouldn't help the situation. "Fine. Take me to Abby, please."
Gus nodded once and turned to look back outside. "They're deploying sentries on the streets," he stood and helped me to my feet. "We need to move."
We kept our heads low and scurried away from our small hideout. We dashed in short sprints between hiding spots; he ran first and hid while I hurried to his previous spot. We'd wait a moment before he moved to the next point, and moved to his recently vacated spot. We repeated that for a long time until he told me that we cleared the sector and it should be better now.
Then he moved a hand toward his outer thigh. Like magic, a fancy stick appeared in his hand and he pulled the ends apart. It split in half and glowing yellow light poured out from the inner sides of both halves. Light traced an outline of a motorcycle resting between Gus's legs. More light filled in the image and it somehow became a solid, real vehicle in front of me.
"Get on," he sat down on the bike. Parts of it glowed white against the stark black body.
"How did you do that?" I approached it slowly.
"It's not going to bite you. Get on. We need to leave sooner than later."
"Is there a helmet?" I asked him.
"Uhh, nope." A black mask with white lines on it suddenly morphed over his entire head. He tapped the side of it with two fingers once, then twice.
"Look, I need a helmet or I'm not getting on that death machine."
"Yeah, I got it. Hold on." Gus reached out that hand and swiped it through the air sideways and downward. A screen appeared in front of him. He pressed a few buttons displayed and typed in a few things on a keyboard.
I heard a click, the screen suddenly disappeared, and a helmet identical to his appeared in his hands. That was amazing. This world blew my mind.
He gave it to me, and I carefully slid the helmet over my head. I had to take off my glasses in order to do so. I gripped them tightly. I could not lose them. I wouldn't get far otherwise. I climbed behind him and wrapped my arms around him like a boa constrictor. I promised I would never go out to parties again, or date older men, or run away from home, or eat any more junk food, or drink underage. That was if I survived. He revved the engine as he took off. I shrieked and held on for dear life.
His speedometer showed we were going almost two hundred miles per hour. I thought we were going to die. I screamed to pull over, stop, let me off, anything so I could feel safer and more secure again. I'd take my chances running from the strange floating vehicles, thank you.
"We're almost there," Gus reassured me.
"I'm going to be sick," I wasn't really, but I hoped it would be enough to get him to stop.
He hummed. "What does that mean?"
"It means to pull over now!"
"We're almost there," he parroted his earlier statement. So much for a chance of stopping.
Finally, finally, we slowed to a stop. The bike disintegrated under us as he put the stick back together and I stumbled away from him. "I feel like it's kidnapping at this point." I stuttered to him as I tugged off my helmet and dropped it. I put my glasses back on. "I told you to stop and you kept going."
Gus whirled around to face me. He fixed me with a stern look. "I hate to break it to you, User, but Abby and I might be your best chance out of here. You'll need us to help you blend in."
I hated to admit he was right. We stood in awkward silence and I twiddled my thumbs. We were outside a random, inconspicuous warehouse, and I was putting off going in.
"How much?"
"What?" What did he mean?
"How much of that other source code did you use besides your own designs?"
"A little…" He gave me a look. "Okay, I plagiarized a lot of code from the original CLU program when I made you."
He looked scandalized. "I wish you didn't tell me that much."
Whatever, I had a lot on my mind that I was concerned about. Never mind his feelings about where he came from and how.
He led me inside the warehouse and I followed warily. I had no reason not to believe this was a trap, but my only other option was to run. I didn't want to do that though if I truly could get help from Abby. He did what I guessed was a secret knock before he let himself in, and I peeked in after him.
The warehouse was a decent size, sparely lit, and even looked a little lived in. As I glanced around, my eyes eventually settled on a lone figure dressed in white, who stood in front of three holographic screens with crossed arms.
Gus nudged me with a shoulder. "I don't want to stress you out at all, but it's important for you to know you're on the clock here."
What? I followed him in with questions buzzing through my head at a million miles per hour. The person already in the warehouse must have picked up more than one set of footsteps, because the program turned around quickly and grabbed for the disk secured in its holder. It came to life with a threatening buzz and Gus acted quickly. "Whoa, hold up, Abby! This is Flynn's niece, she needs our help." He held out his hands in a nonthreatening way to coax her into putting her weapon away. I knew my best option was also to look unthreatening, so I mirrored what Gus did.
She sized me up immediately and I felt defensive because of her critical gaze. She looked like she was already judging me, and I hadn't even introduced myself yet. Abby turned to Gus, "You know the rules, nobody else is supposed to know this place or where we are. Bringing a User here… you could have compromised everything if the guards came after her."
"She's my User," Gus explained quietly and it gave her pause.
She looked at me again, then she pointed at Gus. "What kind of programmer are you?"
I felt my cheeks flush.
Gus jumped to my defense again. "Look, leave her alone - and I look fine. I have to escort my User to the Portal before it closes. We need your help."
I suddenly felt queasy and Abby sighed, "Fine." Then my stomach lurched and the alcohol I binged earlier tonight was emptied from my stomach all over the warehouse floor. She openly glared at me. "Good job, you've left evidence of your existence all over this place now."
She made a show of walking around the putrid mess I made as she approached me. How the hell could she even walk in those heels she was wearing? I would only privately admit how hot she looked in that white suit. She was still a bitch though.
Abby gripped my upper arm surprisingly gently as she guided me to a more secluded section in the warehouse. I hastily wiped my mouth with a sleeve as I followed. "So, do all female programs wear white?" I asked her.
She seemed to think a while about my question before she answered. "It seems you've arrived very recently - by accident, I'm guessing - and you're unsure of how things work in general." A straightforward and blunt assessment, but I nodded anyway.
Very suddenly, she stopped and made me stand still in a particular area. Then a small segment of the floor lit up around my feet and restraints locked over them to hold me in place. Surprise and anger rolled over me. "Hey!"
Abby held up her pointer finger and it lit up with a sharp hiss. The female program tilted her head as she analyzed me more. "I'll start you off slow and easy with your Grid 101 lessons. I'm Abigale, I'm a program with hacking abilities, and I'm going to put you in an outfit to help you blend in better." She used her weird finger-tool to slice up my clothes like scissors on tissue paper. I protested, blushed, and tried to cover up my naked body in the handful of seconds before a stretchy, comfortable black fabric of some kind spread from my feet up over my body to cover everything from the neck down. A unitard not unlike what I've seen on Gus and Abby. Little glovelettes were part of the suit and left my dainty fingers sticking out. I suddenly found myself wearing heels as well.
"I'm not wearing heels," I protested to Abby.
"Deal with it," she replied carelessly. "Lots of females do unless they're a medic, mechanic, or foot-soldier. You know, the hard-working, laborious functions.
"I can't run in them. Furthermore, they cause damage to people like shortened calf muscles and Achilles tendons. It can also lead to low-back pain, so no thanks."
Abby sighed. "Brat," she muttered to herself.
I clenched my jaw as I fought not to show her any reaction. Abby trotted back and forth in her heels like it was nothing as she opened up screens around me similar to what Gus did when he made me an extra helmet. I wasn't released from my restraints yet. I crossed my arms as I simply waited. After a few minutes of fiddling with a screen close to me, the heels disappeared and I was wearing level footwear. I could even feel support for my arches.
I guess they didn't skimp with orthotics on the Grid.
"Most programs don't wear armor unless they're in or from the coliseum," Abby explained. "But I think we should give you some to help protect you." Abby tapped a button on her screen. "I can't do that until you've got circuits on you."
She strode back over to me and held up her pointer again. "Don't panic. Don't move. Don't get weirded out. I'm not going to hurt anything." With that, her finger laser started again and she traced it over my chest, my back, my waist, my butt, my shoulders, down my arms, and my legs. I tried not to fidget in discomfort. I wasn't used to being touched, and this was downright weird.
To my amazement, bright white light lines appeared in the wake of her touch and my suit began to look more like Gus's and Abby's. "Can all programs do that?" My amazement was evident in my voice as I asked.
Abby paused. "Right now, I'm doing something that's a little beyond what Sirens do when preparing programs for coliseum games."
"A Siren?" And a coliseum? What the hell was this place? A digital Roman Empire?
It's a good thing Rome didn't have Space Paranoids ships flying around in their time. That would've been awful. Unfortunately for me, that was precisely my situation.
"Sirens are guides or outfitters, officially, under Clu. But they are also known for doing a lot of other things on the side," she shrugged. "Sirens are always female, and they dress in white. I am not one, of course, even though I chose to look like one and am currently filling the role right now." Abby rolled her eyes like I was such an inconvenience - which I guess I was, but it wouldn't kill her to be a bit nicer. I was here by accident. I didn't mean to.
As if she could read my mind, Abby softened a little bit. "Okay, the truth is I'm technically an enemy of the state. I've been dressed as a Siren since the moment I was created, but now I call myself one in short because nobody asks questions."
I realized that Gus was hanging out on the sidelines when I heard him laugh. "Has led to quite a few awkward incidences for you sometimes, hasn't it?" I couldn't see him and I guessed he couldn't see me either. Good. I would've felt embarrassed if they didn't somehow accomodate for privacy.
She turned away from me to work on one of her screens and I took a moment to admire her hair. It was flaxen blonde in color, and pulled back in a ponytail with a glowing white clip with bangs and longer strands in the front to frame her face. Her suit hugged her mature body in all the right ways, and I felt a mix of admiration and envy.
I knew she was a program and not a real person, but what were my chances of getting nice curves and an athletic body like that once I was out of my teenage years? Perhaps she looked that way because she was a program and could alter her appearance if she wanted to.
Out of all her physical attributes, what fascinated and unnerved me the most was her glowing yellowish amber eyes. They didn't feel human at all, like they could gaze right into my soul.
"Now," Abby interrupted my thoughts and turned around. "Let's get you some armor and a disk so we can get this show on the road." Panels opened up on the nearest wall and she retrieved a few small items. Then one by one, she pressed them up against my body. The pieces then clasped onto my suit and then somehow morphed into a larger part of my outfit, which wasn't what I expected.
Not even a minute later, my very soft spandex black suit was still comfortable on the inside, and felt rubbery but flexible on the outside. As I observed it, I realized there weren't any seams, buttons, snaps, or zippers.
"Wait, what if I need to use the bathroom?"
Abby looked at me, perplexed for a second, then she burst out laughing. "You won't need to."
Then a small podium popped up from the floor and it held a black disk that looked just like Gus's. Abby picked up the disk and stepped behind me. Then she spoke. "I want your attention. You are about to receive an identity disk. Everything you do or learn will be imprinted on this disk. If you lose your disk or fail to follow commands, you risk imminent deresolution."
Okay? I wasn't sure what that meant, but I guess the first rule was to make sure my disk was safe at all times.
With that, Abby docked the disk on my back, and I felt a quick, electric jolt run through my body for a few seconds before everything settled again. I blinked in perplexion. That was weird.
"Mirroring complete. Disc activated and synchronized," Abby stated. "You're ready."
Then she took off my glasses. "Wait, I need those!" I protested.
Abby lifted an eyebrow. "Nobody wears these. You'll stick out like a sore thumb."
"I can't see five feet in front of me without them."
She sighed before a glint appeared in one of her eyes. She grabbed my disk and opened its settings. I watched in fascination as she fiddled with the screen and somehow adjusted my sight to 20/20 vision. Then she tossed the glasses aside.
"Okay," Abby started as the restraints on my feet finally deactivated. "It's important to notify you that the Portal, which is your only way to leave this place, can only stay open for a full millicycle - about eight hours, in your case."
I walked around to get a feel for my new outfit. My boots or shoes or whatever they were felt very shock-absorbing. That was good; I had a feeling this journey would be high-impact. "There's a time limit?" I stepped outside and the two programs followed. I pointed at a single lone star by the horizon. "Is that it?"
"Yes, that's where we need to get you in… probably closer to seven hours now," Gus answered.
"We'd better get a move on," Abby added as she pulled out two sticks and tossed one to me. "Do you know how to ride one of these?" I shook my head and she sighed, "Okay, baby steps."
I was taught how to make my own mask activate and deactivate at will. Riding lessons were really tricky at first, but the controls were basic and I got the hang of it quickly. It wasn't too different from any other motorcycle, but these were souped up and could go much, much faster.
I was also shown how "pockets" work with the suits, which was really cool. My last lesson before we left our safe haven was basic combat training and how to handle different weapons: an identity disk, light sword, light staff, grenades, and the light ribbon that came from my bike.
Once Abby was satisfied I understood the weapons and mastered them well enough after the crash course, she ordered us to rez our bikes and follow her.
"Why is the Grid so unfriendly?" I asked both programs during the drive.
"Programs were written to be competitive," Abby answered simply. "But some things have changed too. After Clu seized control, the Grid became less User-friendly in general. Nobody really has faith in your kind anymore. Unfortunately, what this also means is Clu is now aware that someone new is here. He'll likely make it harder to reach the portal."
"I could just explain that I'm his creator's niece. He'd understand an honest mistake on my part, right? It's not like anyone will believe me if I try to talk about a digital world, so who am I going to tell?" I protested.
Abby sighed, "That's not the point. This is about power, and he's malicious about your kind too. He took matters into his own hands a long time ago, declared all Users corrupted because of how their flaws make them imperfect. Your kind does, after all, have a trend of diverting from original plans and policies. If Clu gets a hold of you, he'll try to use you to draw out your uncle, Kevin Flynn. Or worse, he could torture and kill you."
That sent a chill down my back. "Wait. My uncle's here?"
"Hiding, but yes. Nobody knows where he is. Clu's the reason he never got to leave and if you're not careful, it will happen to you too."
"Wait, 'me'? What about your guys? I thought you were helping me," I took some deep breaths to stay calm. I wouldn't make it on my own. I knew that. I needed help.
"We'll do our best to help you, as we promised," Abby reassured me. "You don't know the stakes and circumstances like we do."
"And what about my uncle? We need to find him and help him get home."
"He can bolt around whenever he wants to. Flynn's a wise man; whatever he does will be a careful and well thought out decision."
"You say that as if I'm not doing that," I couldn't keep the suspicion out of my voice.
"You've only been here for a couple of pectrocycles at best. You don't really know much about the Grid. Now your uncle, he's the maker. It means that no one knows the Grid better than him." Abby got me there. By this point we were back inside the city limits. I was told it would be okay now because the curfew is over. Sure enough, there were other programs milling about the streets. "We're going to make a stop at the End of Line Club before we leave the city, the program Zuse will know the best way to get to the portal."
"I thought you guys knew."
"We can't know everything," Abby sounded exasperated. "Information and secrets is a part of Zuse's trade, and he has a hand deep in it. He's our best shot at planning an efficient route without detection."
Okay, whatever. "Where's the club?"
"At the heart of Tron city - in fact, it's the tallest building here."
Before I knew it, we had arrived. I collapsed my bike back into the baton and put it away in one of my "pockets." Those were so cool; lots of storage space. I craned my neck as I looked up, eyes wide, "Now that is a tall building."
Abby turned to Gus and me and lowered her voice to whisper while we walked. I didn't make eye contact with anyone around us. "We need to make this a quick in and out. We don't have time to waste. There'll likely be undercover sentries inside the club to look for anything out of the ordinary, so it's important for you to blend in as much as possible. All I want to do is ask Zuse about the possible routes we can take and how patrols look."
I looked at the entrance we walked towards and my heart jumped in my throat. "Wait, is that a glass elevator? I'm scared of heights."
Abby rolled her eyes. "Have fun babysitting her, Gus," she quipped as we entered the box of doom, and she pushed a button. The doors closed behind us and I held onto Gus's arm tightly as I refrained from looking out the window during the ascension.
Sorry for irregular posting. It would seem there's more attention and demand on my Knights of Ren story as of now, but I don't mind juggling two stories for a bit. I appreciate everyone's patience. These past several months have been particularly hard for me.
Constructive criticism is always welcome. Until next time, cheers!