So I’ve been thinking about the time system in the ENCOM system…
The Tron wiki pretty much ONLY talks about the time system as it applies on the New Grid.
(Saying that a millicycle is about eight hours, a cycle is about a year, and that time on the Grid is about a fiftieth of a year in the User world).
But that would make a microcycle about half a minute in Grid time.
Which doesn’t make sense with Ram talking about being stuck in the cells for 200 microcycles. He says it like he’s been there weeks or months, at least. Not hours or less.
So, in my writing (which is set in the Encom system) I tend to treat an Encom microcycle as a day.
But while working on my latest story, I had reason to wonder what exactly an ENCOM year is, then.
And I think I’ve figured it out.
ENCOM programs are made to interact regularly with the User world. So, their time system would be connected much more closely to User time.
So, I suspect an ENCOM “cycle” is equivalent to a year in User time.
And a millicycle should be a thousandth of that, and a microcycle a millionth.
So for ENCOM programs, if a microcycle is a day, then a cycle is like a million days (and a millicycle is like a thousand days).
That would mean (if I’m doing my math right, which is not certain, lol) one ENCOM cycle is like over two thousand years for a program.
Now, a program would have very different feelings about time from a User. Since programs are meant to interact with Users, they’re probably okay with waiting a couple thousand years for something a User would wait one year for (as long as that wait is within typical expected function for the program).
But I think, from now on, if I want to write about a period of time that’s more like a year for an ENCOM program, I’m gonna say maybe… a quarter-millicycle.
Okay, a few more things occurred to me.
Now, as for the contrast of one year to thousands of years…. programs and Users would have very different feelings about this sort of thing.
For every task that sounds absolutely ridiculous to a User, there are probably programs that find it perfectly ordinary because it’s part of what they’re programmed to do.
Looking at things from a program viewpoint requires throwing out a lot of the human viewpoint, and replacing it with the simple question, “Is this within my programming?” If yes, it’s fine! If no, then– at the very least– it feels weird and wrong.
So, since programs are meant to interact with Users, they’re probably okay with waiting any amount of time– even a couple thousand years– for something a User would wait one year for… as long as that wait is within typical expected function for the program.
OR… alternatively…
Perhaps a microcycle for ENCOM programs really is like half a minute…
and Ram really had been locked up for only about 100 minutes from his viewpoint…
…but, by the same logic above, it still felt far too long to Ram, because he wasn’t programmed to be in prison and fighting gladiator battles for even one minute.
Perhaps those minutes even literally felt to him like days or longer, because he was stuck doing something so far outside his programming.
Maybe for programs, the phenomenon of “time flies when you’re having fun and time drags when you’re not” is a much more vivid and literal time-dilation effect than it is for Users.
And… maybe this explains why Ram (a nerdy math calculator, by programming) turned out to be so startlingly successful as a fighter in the games.
Maybe he felt so damn uncomfortable, so far outside his rightful role, that the drag of all that time gave him freakin’ Flash powerscompared to the Red warriors who were enjoying themselves.
…I don’t know how much sense this makes, it literally just occurred to me now. I have yet to examine all the implications.
(For one, it would mean that Sark’s request for military programs was probably a request for easier opponents rather than harder ones, even if he didn’t admit that. Which is an intriguing idea but does NOT fit into the story very well. I shall have to give this a bit more thought.)
I always had the headcanon that the time dilation of in computer vs out of computer time is entirely dependant on the system clock cycles, that is the speed at which the physical circuitry (either crystal oscillator or RLC circuit) switches between states, which is how fast the system runs (and how much heat it generates). Which would make sense! The Encom system would be clocked slower than The Grid as it’s an older system as well as the fact that The Grid is supposed to be a supercomputer. So the time difference between the Encom system and real-time would be smaller than that of The Grid.
As for the wait time, ye olde mainframes (pre-pc era) were generally not turned on for very long as they were incredibly power inefficient and thus VERY expensive to run. You pretty much got 1 chance a day to run/test your program in the punch card days (punch cards are quite a bit older than the Encom system but it may still apply. Most didn’t stick with punch cards for very long when they got access to tape). I could imagine that whatever insurance company that Ram was a part of was not using the most up to date system at the time as those costed more to rent when an older system would still do the job fine.
Oh wow that is all fascinating! Hey I’m always happy to get technical background on these things– even if I don’t fully grasp it right away it still REALLY enhances my fascination with the world of the movies and gets my creativity speculating in really enjoyable ways!
Yeah I had always kinda figured the in-system time could depend on clock speed and could maybe vary from time to time based on that… As well as that some of it was filtered through Flynn’s perception and he may not have been perceiving everything in there exactly as it was from the programs’ viewpoint.
Question about what you’re getting at in the last bit… Are you saying the mainframe of the system Ram came from could be affecting how he perceived time after being transferred to the Encom system? Like, because software that was designed to run (or had been running) on an older system wouldn’t be calibrated for Encom’s timekeeping, or what?
Anyway I love all this, thank you very much!
Yes actually! Many programs used to tie their run speed to the system clock, which resulted in them running really, really fast when they would be used on a higher clocked system. This sometimes made them unusable, especially in games. PC manufacturers eventually added a turbo button, which despite being called a TURBO button actually slowed the computer down so that the programs could run at their normal speeds. Some fancy ones even had seven segment displays showing the current clock speed.
YESSS
hmm, another thought.
If Ram being from a slower system was part of what made him extra fast and therefore good at the games, that’s sorta in line with the idea I mentioned earlier in the thread…
…And it brings up the same question about Sark and the military programs.
I’m sure the military would have the absolute most cutting-edge system (goodness me, this was the 80s, cold war and all)
So I wonder what Sark was expecting from military programs. Wouldn’t they be slower if transferred to Encom?
He seemed to be seeking them as more challenging opponents, so… I suppose whatever military skills they had would need to be good enough to make up for THAT.
And now it is slightly annoying me that we never met any of those military programs.
I kiiiind of want to write a fic about them now
slow-as-hell military programs with the wisdom of Sun Tzu, finding ways to use the slowness to their advantage
storing up “move one pixel” commands for a whole microcycle as they stand there pretending to be a statue, and then go full Weeping Angel on his ass
