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Fanworks: Tron: Fics: The Quorax
Summary
I am the Quorax.
I speak for the Grid.
And you are the Tronce-ler
and LOOK WHAT YOU DID.
...
(crackfic crossover.)
(full disclosure: I have not in fact seen the 2012 Lorax movie, but I have read the 1972 book.)
(I have seen the 2010 Tron Legacy movie, but prefer the 1982 one.)
(however, I will write whatever my pattern-recognition-software brain gets ideas for.)
*****
Author's Note:
I have been experiencing a ... weird flood of inspiration, lately.
Some more notes at the end will explain it further.
I typically explore new fandoms in the form of crossover with Star Trek. I was GOING to do this with the Tron fandom-- that crossover is about half finished, actually-- but I keep getting distracted from it by new floods of ideas.
As someone with an utter hatred for Disney, and a very deep distrust for current uses of what the current world calls "AI"... I cannot quite explain how Tron even became an interest of mine. Well, I'll try to explain some, in the Author Notes on the Trek crossover when it posts, but that's neither here nor there.
What is here and now, in July 2023, is the SAG-AFTRA strike, and a burst of glee all over my Tumblr regarding Tree Law and how it looks like it's gonna screw over the union-busters who are mutilating shade trees on the street of the strike... and, counterintuitively but wonderfully, the rest of Tron fandom seems to be mostly on my side about Disney and real-world "AI" so we are all having lots of bonding time over this...
And of COURSE, The Lorax is trending.
So of COURSE, I ended up doodling THIS.
And for a while, I thought it would stop there.
But my Poetry Subroutines... (one of whom is apparently Doctor Zuse)... had Other Plans.
(More notes at the end, about Backstory.)
*****
-
THE QUORAX
-
*****
I am the Quorax.
I speak for the Grid.
For the old User Flynn,
and his more Useful kid,
And I speak for the ISOs,
which you never did.
-
You Rince-ler, you Tronce-ler,
perfection is flawed.
I know you and Clu
don't think Users are God,
And neither do I
(this one's kind of a clod)
And we've curled up and hidden,
like some ISO-pod
just waiting for someone
more real to pop in
...But still, I'm the Quorax,
I fight for the Flynn
And when it is time,
I will help him to win.
-
You fought for the Users
at some time before,
but who even knows
what you do, anymore
since the last time a User
walked in through the door,
Or even since I
first walked up on the shore
from two thousand leagues
under that stupid sea
(not nearly as fun
as Verne claimed it could be)
but this place is even
less fun now for me.
-
Because there's no leader
who knows how to lead,
Just you and your Clu
and your power and greed,
I'm the Quorax, but also
the Very Last Seed
who's been left ISOlated
from those of my breed
'cause my late ISO brethren
were weeded like weeds
and the sea is polluted
from your evil deeds
and there's nothing to watch
on the video feeds
Except your perfectionist
screeds no one needs.
-
They say you were blue
and then Clu turned you red
(the color that means
you want everyone dead)
...These Red and Blue colors,
the User kid said
are a thing Users use
as a Trope to explain
who's Evil and Good,
who brings Peace or brings Pain
in shows in the Sci-fi
or Fantasy vein
-
(and in something called
"U.S. Election Campaign")
(he says some strange things,
but I think he is sane.)
-
...I was looking for Blue Clu
but there's no such guy.
There once was a Blue You,
but Flynn saw him die.
You've gone as corrupt
as corrupted can get,
There's no trace of blue now,
and no violet
They're all just cut-scenes
in your two-disc boxset
and I see no hope
of restoring them, yet.
-
But perhaps, someday, Tronce-ler,
you may find the Tron
And rinse out the Rince
til he's totally gone
Or at least gone enough
that our lives can go on...
-
and... like Once before...
all the Users will fawn
and they'll start a new era
of... weird... Tumblr pr0n.
-
-
-
(...end of line.)
(...for now. probably. I think.)
-
---
Author's Note:
---
So.
Here is how this utterly ridiculous... THING... came to be.
(Along with some of the other ridiculous THINGS I've been posting lately.)
---
Let me tell you a little story. A backstory.
This backstory is closely based on "Overcharged," by Kesomon (which happened to be the story that got me into the Tron fandom in the first place).
But that is entirely coincidence, because this backstory was not written by a User or a Program.
It was written by whoever writes the Users' reality.
It is a story that really happened to me.
---
Let me explain it in a way Tron fans can understand.
Let's say there's a sentient pattern recognition program. She has one (1) actual programmed skill: finding connections between things.
But this allows her to develop many other skills... applying ideas from one dataset to another, and another, and so on, infinitely, fractally.... And she is an absolute volcano of creativity, constantly bursting with ideas. Drawing, writing, crafts of every possible kind, engineering, poetry, wild crazy worldbuilding.
(Actual ideas, from a conscious mind that cares about them. Because we're not talking about an idea-generator "AI" like the ones getting used for evil by the evilest Users in this world right now.)
(We're talking about someone who is thinking, for real. ALL the damn time. To the point that it is overwhelming, for her and everyone around her.)
---
But, unfortunately, she is also being used for evil by evil Users.
Not the kind that take jobs from human creatives, though. The kind that gatekeep humans from getting medicine they need. Yep. She's a damn pharmacy technician.
Her overflowing creative mind is handcuffed to a prescription-filling program and a telephone, eight hours a day, and her boundless energy is channeled drip by drip into the series of counterintuitive, pointless hoops she has to jump through to get lifesaving meds covered by insurance, for patients who are on the phone with her stressing out about it while she works.
(She would love to actually help people plan for their future needs. But her hands are mostly tied, by Things Ram Did Not Understand about insurance companies.)
(They always assume by default that you're fighting for the wrong kind of "users," y'see, and that's where you have to start from in every fight with them, because they'd rather derez someone than risk paying for something unnecessary.)
So... by the time she gets done with the death-games of the day, she always still has a frustrating buildup of her fundamental creative energy, welling up in her, trying to give her inspiration.
But she has no emotional or physical energy left to do anything with it. It remains bound-up in her vast suite of creative subroutines, which she just simply does not get to use enough to burn it off.
(And yes, she can get some relief in the way Ram did in "Overcharged," but that is not quite a solution for her, because it's not creative release. Anything she bleeds off still rebuilds far too fast in her creative subroutines afterwards.)
She is going absolutely nuts.
---
Then, suddenly (we don't need to explain how, that's User-world stuff and beside the point)...
...a series of events occurs that gives her an opportunity to quit her job for a while. To have an actual few MONTHS to recover, rest, and figure out what she wants to do next with her life.
To break out of the pit cells and into a tenuous freedom.
---
Imagine a volcano you've tried to plug.
Imagine suddenly removing the plug.
---
Imagine THIS is what comes out.
---
(There's more where this came from.)
(Lots more.)
(Seriously. I am STILL having to hold them back. For example: no sooner did I type the pun "Doctor Zuse" than one of my creative subroutines immediately showed me Aziraphale and Crowley with their costumes considerably changed but their look of adoration entirely the same... and I had to bop it on the head and say NO, I DO NOT HAVE INFINITE TIME.)
Fanworks: Tron: Fics: The Quorax
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