Part V:

Epilogue

The first sensation the program is aware of is the breeze. It tickles his cheek, his lips, whispers for him to open his eyes. At first everything is hazy. Then everything hurts.

Out in the distance a light, white and ambient, is slowly burning out behind the clouds. The sea is below, rolling furiously as if it has just been tossed outwards from the epicenter of some cataclysmic event. It doesn't take any memory of who he is or why he was here in the first place to understand that he, soaking wet and aching, has been pitched up onto this rocky cliff-face by those waves.

He groans, which causes him to choke on the water he's inhaled, and coughs roughly, a cough which wracks his entire body. He has been lying on his side, and the force of it now sends him sprawling onto his stomach, barely able to hold himself up, bracing a forearm against the ground. When his body has purged itself, he collapses again.

The ground is cool against his cheek.

It clears his head.

Gradually, his first thought begins to form. It does not manifest in the form of words so much as a vague, searching need for purpose which overshadows everything else.

His systems scramble to answer him, initiating a diagnostic. Even this simple task is difficult, and slow to process. He has no discs to work from. His back is barren and empty.

Diagnostic results (diagnostic type- identification):

Program identification obtained—Identification: TRON-JA-307020—'Tron'

User identification: Alan-1 (sub user: FLYNN)

Compile date: 1900.83

Function: Security—directive: protect the system—directive: "fight for the users."

Processing…

One by one, a few slow and hazy memories begin to emerge. A system in blue and red and white, a user's voice, a hulking foe… a female's eyes, they all rise up before his eyes like shadows against the blurry horizon. He remembers enemies, and friends, and a choice.

"It's a new system, man. Come with me."

"But Alan-1…"

"I'll take care of him Tron, come on! You can take Yori too, if you want. Think about it, a totally free system. It's a revolution, man!"

He remembers a blank black slate, a never ending grid expanding to the edge of every horizon with only darkness above. He remembers the first landforms rising out of it, the first springs of power glowing blue in the darkness- the givers of life. He remembers the birth of the sea, and the rising of cities. He remembers the faces of so many programs, so many people he once saved and helped and watched over.

. . . And he remembers betrayal.

He remembers fighting until there was nothing left of him but some warped fragment of himself, bent on revenge, clinging to a dark sort of desperation. He remembers fighting, and fighting . . . and then a disc plunging through his chest.

After that everything fizzles out. He can tell that there are memories there, that he did something for the thousand cycles that have passed, but they are shadowy and distant, like someone else's thoughts flitting through the back of his mind. With them, there comes the echo of a name.

Rinzler.

It doesn't mean anything to him, not right away.

And then those memories begin to surface, too.

He opens his eyes, jerks upright on shaking limbs, feels as if he will crawl out of his own body he wants so badly to stop seeing what he's seeing . . . but he can't. He watches in silence, dripping hair sending drop after drop into his face, into his wide eyes. His mouth agape and his expression horrified, he watches it all. Every scene he can remember, right up until Rinzler –until he- plunged into the sea. There are still some memories buried too deep for him to make out, feelings he will never understand, but he sees enough.

Tron understands what he was.

He looks out across the barren outlands, scans the turbulent sea.

This system is broken, and he knows it. He can sense it with every pixel of his body, in every line of code. This system is broken and h- Rinzler helped Clu to break it. He watched as it fell, and now that fall is complete. The system is truly alone. Not even Clu in all of his misguided striving for perfection will come for it now.

There is no one left but Tron.

Tron, and the things he has done.

He closes his eyes.

It's the brighter memories that come to him now. He has to cling to them, has to chase away the orange-hued phantoms with something better that he's known. He has to inspire himself with something, and deep down, he knows what that is. Like a light on the horizon, it looms: his only real purpose. The directive that never leaves. The duty he owes to his user, owes every user, owes to the ones who gave him life. That gave him purpose.

Protect the system.

He opens his eyes again, and nods once, his expression hardened and stern. Then slowly, on shaking limbs, he gets to his feet; and Tron is born again.

-End of Line.-