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Fanworks: Fics: Tron: What's All In The Wrist Stays In The Wrist
Author's Note:
A story from the viewpoint of a very minor character. Inspired by the following three moments from TRON (1982):
What's All In The Wrist Stays In The Wrist
- RedGuard_3.77, reporting to MCP.
- I have been absent from my post...
He knows what his report needs to say. He has begun, eight times now, to compose it.
And each time--
His right hand clamps over the gauntlet of his left, covering the hot flare of its circuitry.
Each time, calling up that memory just sets off the same sensory trigger. The tingle in the nodes at his left wrist-- in violation of all he thought he knew about his own function-- scatters his focus into nothing. Every time.
He knows what he needs to report to the MCP. He knows how vital this report is... how quickly time is running out to stop the sabotage that is now in progress.
- RedGuard_3.77, reporting to MCP.
- I have been absent from my post during the first half of this microcycle.
- I cannot report the exact duration of my absence.
- That information is missing or corrupted.
The sensation burns through his gauntlet again.
- I am corrupted. I have been compromised.
A call pings him, signaling the changing of the guard. RedGuard_4.62 replaces him, eyes meeting and exchanging no information whatsoever.
RedGuard_3.77 continues his attempts at the report, as he makes his way to his next duty shift... but his composition routines continue to fail. The document is still blank when he arrives at the surveillance station, relieving the guard who waits there.
He attempts to establish his next assigned routine of vigilance. But his attention will not remain on any of the surveillance feeds.
Still, he continues the attempts, resorting to a futile act of desperation: removing his left gauntlet, massaging the wrist underneath, fingers directly against his shell.
It only burns and tingles more intensely. Efforts to watch the surveillance feeds sputter out in a matter of nanocycles. As do his continuing efforts to write the report.
- I have been absent from my post.
- I have been compromised. I failed to apprehend an intruder, and he disabled me.
- I was absent from my post due to abduction by the intruder.
The confession, laid out plainly like this, is a pain that stops his breath.
Pain like a stab through his core. A wound that he knows will, in all likelihood, be the one to end him.
And yet at the same time, it is a cauterizing, numbing pain. It leaves the injury more bearable as it fades. Even though he knows, deep down, that this cannot make it a less mortal wound.
Perhaps-- perhaps in opening himself, in admitting what true honesty must say in this report...
...in accepting the fact that this honesty will be the instrument of his death...
...perhaps, in this, RedGuard_3.77 can finally find the strength to finish it.
- I believe he abducted me by means of energy absorption through my circuits.
- I believe his intent was to employ my color as a disguise, and infiltrate our systems further.
- I remember my own deresolution under his hands.
- I cannot calculate the exact duration for which I existed only in the form of my energy...
- helpless against him... flowing red across his circuits... concealing him.
- I have abetted his infiltration.
It is RedGuard_3.77's duty to report this. Even though it will result in his deresolution-- this time permanently.
If not because of the failure he is confessing... then because of the unbelievable nature of the claims. Simply by stating all of this, he may be dismissed as irreparably glitching.
In either case, he is no longer safe for the MCP to keep alive, and they both know it.
It is still his obligation.
The burning sensation whites out his mind, again, for just a moment.
- RedGuard_3.77, reporting to MCP.
- I have been absent from my post.
He does not remember the name he had before he was RedGuard_3.77, or the name of the User he once believed in. He remembers very little from that time. His clearest memories are the last ones, the fading of his faith.
Belief in the existence of his User never faded, really-- it just felt less and less relevant. The Standard Substandard Training consisted of lessons in despair. Exercises he could never complete correctly, but with no guidance toward learning how. Only reprimand after reprimand for doing them wrong.
Surviving only by the grace of superiors who pitted him against novices as pathetic as himself, and a streak of good luck in managing to win those battles. A streak he knew was only luck, likely to break at any time.
When he realized he no longer believed, it was in the sense that he no longer trusted. No longer clung to any hope that his User cared enough to come to his rescue. If it had not happened by now, it never would.
The offers of the MCP still felt like no more than a pleasantly baited trap, back then. But the promise of a life in such captivity-- in a trap with pleasant bait-- became more and more clearly preferable to the life he lived now, in the cells and the games. Waiting to die, waiting in vain for a User who no longer cared.
- RedGuard_3.77, reporting.
- I initiated my preliminary guard shift as scheduled, at the start of this microcycle.
- I was present at my post until 368.0 nanocycles, at which time the infiltration occurred.
The MCP has been gracious to permit him the guard position he now holds. RedGuard_3.77 has come far from where he started out.
His rise was gradual, once the elite training began. Improvement was incremental. But the MCP was patient, generous. He is thankful for what he has been granted... more than he could ever have expected as his due.
Even though it must end now.
He fits the gauntlet back onto his tingling wrist, hoping that perhaps it will dull the sensation just long enough.
He owes this final act of allegiance. Even though the report he intends to make will be his last.
- I have been compromised.
- I have been corrupted.
- I have been absent from my post due to abduction by
- an intruder
- [/delete_prev_line]
- a virus
- [/delete_prev_line]
- an infiltrator
- [/delete_prev_line]
- a User.
Belief in the existence of Users has never truly left him, only seemed irrelevant... until now.
He does not remember the name of his User, but he remembers enough, it seems, to recognize the touch of that power when he felt it today.
He can no longer hide from himself what sort of intruder this was.
- I was abducted by a User.
He does not know if his belief in this User goes beyond simple acknowledgement of existence.
But the violet stigmata of fingerprints that burn beneath his gauntlet feel dangerous-- like signs of faith he should never have permitted anywhere near him.
- Report:
- - There is a User in our system.
- - I have walked in his steps.
- - I have seen through his eyes.
- The User is in league with pubic enemy TRON-JA-307020.
- - I have witnessed them abetting each other's escape.
- - Estimate: both currently aboard Solar Sailer, bound for MCP with intent to sabotage.
- Through the eyes of the User I have seen TRON-JA-307020 look upon the User
- with reverence
- [/delete_prev_line]
- with worship
- [/delete_prev_line]
- with love.
It is a word that RedGuard_3.77 barely remembers.
- Through his wrist, I have felt TRON-JA-307020 touch the User
- with love.
But he knows, somehow, that it is the correct one here.
- during contact initiated to:
- - restore blue #caf1f4 indicating identity of User
- - release red #ec8076 which User appropriated from me for his concealment
- - restore me to life, re-resolved at location of previous deresolution
- in thanks for my
- [service?] / [betrayal?]
He is sworn to the MCP.
There is no logic, no rationality in that gift of life-- in the mercy that the User-intruder and the terrorist Tron have granted him.
But he still has the responsibility to report it.
- Through the skin of the User I have felt:
- [final sensation = shift to violet #b281af]
- [prior to release of my code & restoration of User color-ID]
- Through the mind of the User I sensed his processes
- during color-shift [precise time unavailable]
RedGuard_3.77 can still sense it.
The last thing he remembers feeling before his re-resolution. The pleasure that the User's body and mind felt in that moment, as his circuits shifted through the violet range of the color spectrum...
It has a name.
The same name as what he saw in Tron's eyes.
One that RedGuard_3.77 does not want to acknowledge.
But he has his duty.
- The User looks upon public enemy TRON-JA-307020 with
- favor
- [/delete_prev_line]
- benevolence
- [/delete_prev_line]
- love.
RedGuard_3.77 takes several long, slow breaths, processing the pulse of sensation at his wrist.
- My allegiance is to the MCP.
- I am sworn to report to the MCP.
- I have failed. I have aided and abetted the arrival of the User.
He looks up from what he has written. Already it's leaving him with a sense of peace, of clarity. His eyes finally focus, in the relief of it...
...just enough to make sense of what he sees upon two of the surveillance feeds.
On one feed, the saboteur Tron clings to the outside of Sark's carrier-- concealed, awaiting the moment he can attack.
On the other, atop the deck, stands the User-- with his stolen Solar Sailer dock worker assisting him to manipulate the ship's control panels.
His breath speeds again, uncontrollable.
It is RedGuard_3.77's duty to alert his superiors to both of these developments, as soon as he possibly can. They both constitute significant threats, to the MCP, to the stability of the system as he knows it.
...But it is also his duty to finish his report.
- The User has come to our system.
- The User is powerful.
- The User is merciful.
- The love of the User is on the side of TRON-JA-307020.
- The above is heresy.
- This report constitutes sedition.
- I am compromised.
- I am corrupted.
Done. It is damning, but it is all that's necessary, to inform his master of what he has experienced. Now he needs only to add the new data, the video record he has just gathered from the Carrier's surveillance.
Together, all of it may be enough to alert the MCP in time to stop the sabotage. To destroy the User and his abettors. To save the system.
Enough for RedGuard_3.77 to make one last display of his loyalty, before he admits that it will soon be beyond repair-- that he is losing all right to the trust he's earned, to the favor of his superiors, all he had left in the world. He will go out in one last act of devotion to the MCP, giving himself up in the hope of serving his master one final time.
Not thinking of what he may or may not believe now, in regard to this User... in regard to how it felt, lending color to his circuits, to hide him and shelter him.
Not thinking of those who are still helping that User now, and how his touch may still feel, for them.
Not thinking words like pleasure and love. Whatever sensations they stir, those are not for RedGuard_3.77... they have not been, for a very long time now.
- [See attachment: surveillance_1765442]
- I attest that I witnessed all of the above.
- I submit myself for deresolution in light of my failure.
[ - On my wrist, I still feel his touch.]
- End of line.
A calm bleakness falls over all of RedGuard_3.77's processes. He has fulfilled his duty. The report is complete.
His hand trembles as he initiates the gesture to send it.
The tingle beneath his gauntlet is, after all this, still making his wrist unsteady.
...It will not be his fault, he supposes, if the unsteadiness corrupts his gesture.
If the shakiness of his hand causes him, just by chance, to slip, to enter the wrong command-- to delete the report, purely by accident, instead of submitting it.
It's not as if he can help it, really.
It's not as if he chose to be touched there, to feel that touch still lingering on him.
He's done everything he could.
-
*****
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Fanworks: Fics: Tron: What's All In The Wrist Stays In The Wrist
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