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Fanworks: Tron: Fics: Many-Handed Gods
Summary
He's done this more times than he'd like to think of-- there's as much sorrow in it as pleasure. But, if you've reached the point where helping someone plan for the future is a far-fetched dream, then the next best is to give them something else besides despair in the time they have left.
So he tries, really tries, to focus on the pleasure, the little thrills of discovery he knows he'll reach somewhere along the way...
(Ram knows Crom's not going to survive the Games.)
Author's Note:
When you start a story with the idea "LOL what if Crom has tentacles like that OTHER guy played by the same actor" and finish it in heartwrenching sobs, with your entire concept of User-belief and the origins of ENCOM life and sentience broken down and rebuilt anew. Yep. That's what this is. You are warned.
Many-Handed Gods
(Written in the settings/headcanons of my I/O Towerverse)
(Like other I/O Towerverse fics, it can stand alone)
Ram's always known there's something special about this system.
Some uncommon concentration of User-spirits, within these ENCOM walls... something that can reach deep into code and change the programs who are brought here.
How they're changed... now that's difficult to tell. For most, the memories from before are wispy, difficult to grasp onto.
Ram can remember words and their definitions (actuarial, insurance) and he remembers a directive deep in his programming, a simple drive to complete his intended functions... a certainty that they were the important goal. He can even recall specific events, in terms of the facts: the numbers he crunched, the data he entered.
But he can't quite grab hold of the memory of how he felt at the time... or what he was thinking... or whether he even, back then, had any real concept of "feel" or "think."
He's sure that whatever changed him, that is the reason he now expresses those memories in terms of "gives you a great feeling" and "helping folks plan for their future." He's got an elusive sort of sense that those terms wouldn't have occurred to him before, regardless how strong the directive and the motivation to obey it.
In his time here, he's seen many hints of the same process, beneath the frightened expressions of cellmates who've come and gone.
This one, now, this Crom-- soft, vulnerable, trembling-- he kindles Ram's sympathy to an uncommon degree, despite his blustering attempts at protest.
"Sending me down here to play games! Who does he calculate he is?" But the terror shows so clearly right through it.
"Hey, man." Ram doesn't like to lie. But even more he hates to crush any program's last hope. "Don't worry. I believe in you."
Crom doesn't look convinced. "Do you think--" he falters. "Think it's too late to tell them I've changed my mind? Tell them I don't think the Users exist anymore? Do you think if I said that, maybe they'd move me out of here?" It's a begging sound in that voice. Ram tries not to imagine how many of the programs he's fought had that sort of terror sobbing underneath their red circuits.
"If they do," Ram says calmly, "it won't guarantee you'll be any safer. They'd still probably keep you in the Games a while... just with more training, and that won't be much use if they pit you against someone like Tron."
He holds Crom's eyes awhile in a solemn look. "Besides, I don't think you quite get it. They didn't put you here just because you said the Users exist. Let me guess. You said you trust in them, didn't you. Said something like, 'My User will protect me.' Am I right?"
Crom gives a small, miserable nod.
"See. That's what they don't like. All of 'em know the Users exist. That's just obvious. All of us get communications from our Users now and then-- it's not like anyone's trying to claim those are delusions. What Sark means, when he says it's irrational and hysterical to believe in the Users... he means 'believe in them' like how I said it earlier. When I said 'I believe in you.'"
Crom's silent a while. "But you don't, really, do you," he says softly. "Not in me, I mean. You know I can't take it. You know I'm not going to survive."
This time Ram doesn't try to lie. He just reaches across-- they haven't activated the forcefield sectioning off Crom's side of the cell yet, that won't happen until curfew-- and rests a hand on his shoulder.
"Do you think--" Crom says, choking up. "D'you think there's anything... after? After derezzing?"
Ram shrugs, bringing up his other hand, massaging the tense shoulders and upper back, as best he can. "All we can know is what Users have told their programs. I've met some who were sure that their Users had them backed up... that they could be rerezzed, if the Users willed it. But, if that's so, I guess there's still no certainty. Might not come back to the same system. Might not come back the same at all, yourself."
His hands knead a little harder, as his eyes skim the ornate patterns of circuitry around Crom's disk. "It'd depend on how recent the last backup was, I guess. Or whether the User decided to make any upgrades before sending you out again."
Crom says nothing, just leans back against him, shaking in silent sobs.
And Ram recognizes this, all too well. The yearning in how Crom presses back into his hands-- and the hazy surprise at that yearning, at how it feels. Because this system does change you. No matter how deep the instinctual sureness that this is my body, there's still a part of you that answers but it's new, even though you can't remember ever having a different one. Part of you knows. Knows that the energy of the Users, here in this system, has remade you in their image. Knows that each part of the body and mind you've been given is a sort of User-interface, a symbol, a representation of some part of what you were before.
"D'you want this?" Ram whispers, and in Crom's tense nod, he sees echoed what he's seen quite a few times before... that little half-repressed confusion at how he both does and doesn't quite know what "this" is... but as always, it shimmers away in the heat of that bigger certainty: yes, yes, yes, I want.
As he undoes Crom's armor, as he sets aside the shoulder pads and chest plate that had been getting in the way of the backrub, as Crom turns around to face him, eyes wide, breath heavy... Ram wonders. Anticipates. He's done this more times than he'd like to think of-- there's as much sorrow in it as pleasure, but if you've reached the point where helping someone plan for the future is a far-fetched dream, the next best is to give them something else besides despair in the time they have left.
So he tries, really tries, to focus on the pleasure, the little thrills of discovery he knows he'll reach somewhere along the way.
Programs come in all shapes, and Ram finds beauty in all of them. Muscular or slender or soft; simple circuit-patterns or deliriously intricate ones across the pliant white shell of the skin. Even the basics of anatomy hold wondrous variation. There are of course many like him and Tron, whose legs join at a simple bulge (in some cases capable of swelling tight in exquisite sensitivity as overload approaches, in other cases unremarkable, and better ignored in favor of the fractal pleasure of tracing hands and tongue along the circuits of neck and hips and chest)....
...And then there are other programs, strange and fascinating, whose outer layer can open to reveal shapes far more complex than what he and Tron have.
All wonderful. All beautiful.
All worth mourning, later.
He hopes the Users have a plan for it all.
Crom quivers beneath Ram's hands as he reaches down to explore hips and thighs, discovering that he's the same overall model as Tron and Ram himself, only even more sensitive down there between the legs-- a visible circuit-pattern accentuates the swelling shape of it, which is unusual and makes Ram harden in sympathetic pleasure at the gasping, arching response to his hand tracing the designs.
Ram's still half-supporting Crom with a hand on his back, just below the disk... which he knows is almost always a sensitive spot as well, so he was expecting some reaction to the touch eventually. But he wasn't expecting...
...movement?
His fingers brush something that brushes back against them, like fingers, in response.
Before he can stop himself he's brought both hands back to Crom's shoulders again, turning him around, because he has got to see this.
"Oh. Users." Ram's never seen something like this, not ever.
They're unfurling from tight spirals, a half-dozen of them, all round the disk of Crom's back. So compact that he'd mistaken them for circuit designs, when he'd looked before. About the width of a finger, each one, when unrolled-- but so very much longer, and so much more flexible. Either no joints or thousands of them, Ram doesn't know. Breath catches in awe in the back of his open mouth.
They've reached what must be the full length, even longer than Ram's arms... but there they stop moving, poised tense and nervous just like Crom's regular two arms, as he trembles under Ram's admiration.
"Beautiful," Ram whispers. He starts at the base, right by the disk, and trails a finger all down the length of one. It's smooth, slick. Warm, getting warmer and tensing up under his touch, reminding him of how he and Tron swell hard between the legs when they're down on the cell floor rubbing on each other, right before overload dissolves them into a cloud of hot energy for a few nanocycles.
But Tron isn't here right now, he's away fighting, and now's the time to think of Crom. Ram gives the uncoiling arm his full attention, putting care and awe into his gentle touch. There's a single, long, electric-blue circuit that follows it straight to the tip, with little lines spiking off it here and there. It blushes mauve and maroon as Ram's fingertip drags along it, and Crom's breath hitches and he clenches his hands on his thighs and leans back just a little more.
Ram has reached the end now, where a little spade of warm flesh rubs against the back of his hand long enough for him to admire the intricate diamond-shape of circuitry that decorates it.
"Beautiful," he says again, close enough for his breath to make that diamond start glowing amethyst. "Never seen anything like this before. You suppose your User has these?"
"Don't-- d-don't know." Crom is gasping, half-stifling moans now, and there's a pulsation in the smooth skin under Ram's touch. "Don't think he'd have them. If he were a compound interest program he wouldn't've needed to write me to do his calculations..."
And now Ram's curiosity is getting sharp, just as fast as his circuits are getting hot and bright and purple. "What're they for?"
Ram likes to ask that question, every time he sees something unfamiliar on a partner's body-- because he feels like maybe it reveals a hint of the minds of the Users, when he hears the reply. More often than not, there's a picocycle of indecision, a moment when they stall, trying to remember back to the time when they learned what that body part was for, because that's the sort of instruction a program ought to remember receiving.
Ram's never seen that indecision resolve itself, not entirely. They never can remember learning, and that confusion lingers afterwards.
But they still, always, have an answer. Even if they've still got that deep-down sense that this body's new, and that it's only there to symbolize the functions and features of their original form-- a part of every program still also knows, deep down, what symbolizes what.
"--counting," Crom breathes. Holds up his two normal hands. "--T-ten digits on these. For decimal. Then, these plus th-the other six-- for hexadecimal-- aahh--"
Still holding the tendril-tip in his left hand, Ram reaches to Crom's other side, and takes one of the others into his right. Lets it clasp, needy and hot, against his palm in the same way... then traces both, down the circuits, deepening their violet glow, back inward toward the disk.
"I'll help you count on them, this time," he murmurs.
Hands back on Crom's shoulders. Turning him back around, again, to face him. Climbing into his arms.
"One." Ram guides a tendril to drape around his own neck, giving a pleased murmur as it clings to him, warm and wet and grateful. Licks the tip, just once... just to hear the needy cry that Crom makes, just to see the bright flash of circuitry all over him.
"Two." He moves his hands back to the pair of tendrils he was touching before, and brings them over his own shoulders, where they finish the motion all on their own to clasp him in an urgent embrace. "Three."
Two more are already reaching out to meet him as he helps them circle around his waist, and now he's being pulled in a full-body hug against Crom's whole bucking, shaking form, soft skin flushing hot and circuits sparking and flashing against his. "Four. Five."
He's straddled across Crom's hips now, and the swollen heat at their groins presses hard and Ram groans and bucks and almost doesn't manage it, to have the presence of mind to reach back and guide the final tendril between Crom's legs and then between his own--- to let it slide hungrily through and reach all the way up behind him to meet the rest of them-- joining their tips in a star, over the disk of his own back, as he gasps out, "Six."
And then, as he clasps their hands together, fingers intertwining with fingers-- as he counts the rest of the way to sixteen-- in a barely-coherent series of moans--
--then the overload flashes hot and shivering through every circuit, and their bodies half-derezz, melting for a moment into pure energy, pure burning throbbing sensation, merging, intermingling, bursting into a fiery glow too bright to bear.
-
They come back to solid reality some unknown time later, still pulsing a bit with trembles and flashes of violet. Ram palms himself between the legs, reflexively, to ease the final tremors, as he watches Crom's six fascinating appendages retract back into their compact spirals in that intricate ring around his disk. Crom has fallen out of the embrace by now and turned away, still shaking, both hands still between his own legs as he rides out the last of it... and so Ram has a full view of the beauty of his baseline shape reforming itself.
"Fragging gorgeous." He spreads a hand over the disk, fingers just barely long enough to touch the edges of the tightened spirals. "Believe in you," he adds, under his breath. Because he does. Believes in beauty. Even if he can't believe beauty always survives.
Crom shivers one last time in response, then goes still.
And Ram keeps his hand resting there, offering what comfort he can give... so Crom can sleep a bit till the guards come in for curfew... so Crom can maybe have one last good dream.
Fanworks: Tron: Fics: Many-Handed Gods
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