#itfeltlikeflynn

Click! “If I could turn back ti-ime!” Sang Alan’s clock radio. “If I could find a way...” The man groaned and turned over as he pulled the pillow over his head. “I’d take back those words that‘ve hurt you, and you’d stay,” the clock dutifully continued. Turning over, Alan slowly uncovered his head and switched off the alarm. He sighed, staring at the clock for a while. There was a time when he wasn’t so tired in the morning. In those days, he was an early bird, getting up and catching the worm before most people had even warmed their first cup of coffee. Those, however, were his pre-Flynn days.

In the beginning of his friendship with Flynn, Alan managed to get up early on most days. However, it had become increasingly difficult, especially the more he became acquainted with ENCOM’s C.E.O. Not that Alan minded anymore. Not really. He missed the quiet of the early morning, but he’d long-since traded it for the boisterous, yet rewarding, relationship he had with his friend. Flynn hadn’t always been easy to get along with, but Alan had come to appreciate him. Now, he couldn’t imagine a day without the influence of his charismatic boss. The man was always working on something. Many things, actually.

In fact, a couple of nights ago, he’d come to Alan, practically dancing with delight. In fact, he was so excited that Alan had to calm him down before Alan could even understand what he was trying to say.

*

     “So, this is wh-” Alan heard himself saying, though he didn’t know why. He was standing in a conference room, speaking to those he assumed were board members. No, that wasn’t right. He stared at them and then looked all around the room. The foreign faces weren’t strangers, but were in fact younger versions of his coworkers, some of whom were no longer with ENCOM. WHAT? No! That can’t be right! He did a double take, but sure enough, his eyes verified what his brain said couldn’t be, or rather, shouldn’t be. He glanced around the room once more. The room- he’d been there before, many times in fact. He’d seen it, but it had been a while since it looked like this. What’s going on? What’s happening?

     Alan stood there, his mouth hanging open. Finally, one of the attendees broke the silence.

     “You were telling us how the latest software upgrade would promote healthy communication between departments,” the attendee prompted.

     Picking his way out of the wreckage of the former building was something of a challenge, considering that Ram was still wobbly on his feet. Whenever he stumbled, he’d put a hand out and Flynn would be there to keep him from falling. A tactile program by nature, he appreciated the brief moments of contact immensely. Some part of his processors was still struggling with the fact that this was real, that the User was really alive and here and with him after so much time had passed. What had long felt like an impossibility was finally reality.

     It proved what Ram had always privately believed -- that there was always a chance. Rarely, if ever, were the odds set perfectly at one hundred percent. A fractional percentage of possibility always remained, and that sliver of hope was not something to be taken lightly.

     Once they’d made it back out to the street, Ram was surer of his balance, though he kept close to Flynn as they walked. There were a million questions that he wanted to ask, and the biggest obstacle was figuring out which query to tackle first. The internal debate kept him quiet for a long moment, his eyes wandering over the urban sprawl around them. In current company, he was reminded that this entire system was mostly Flynn’s work, and being in the presence of the Creator made him consider his surroundings far more closely than he previously had.

It was a long Solar Sailer ride. Longer than usual, although Tron supposed it was because he hadn’t ridden in one since before he had been captured. And how long he had been imprisoned and forced to “compete” in the Games … both he and Yori had lost track of time a long time ago. All Tron knew was that he had been in the Games long enough to see many good Programs be needlessly derezzed, and that thought still depressed him, even after Flynn had secured their freedom.

Ram. Tron had never thought he would miss his actuarial companion as much as he had until Flynn had given him the bad news. It was always bad news, wasn’t it?

Until Flynn had confessed his true identity, that he was actually a User, the one who had created a good part of the games sector. Tron still wasn’t sure exactly what kind of news that was. Sure, Flynn was a little eccentric, so there was a good chance that he was just a few bits short of a byte, but some instinct within him wanted to believe that Flynn was telling the truth, that the eccentric Program who had set him and Ram free was actually a User who had been sent from above to help them. To help him. Tron couldn’t believe that part of it, though. If Flynn was helping anyone, he was helping everyone; defeating the MCP was a team effort, and Tron knew he wouldn’t have gotten as far as he had without Yori. He didn’t know what he would do if he didn’t have her.

Tron noticed that Flynn was idle on the Solar Sailer’s deck. Should he talk to him? Flynn was a User, but he had made himself very approachable. Besides, Tron needed something to get his mind off the confrontation with the MCP ahead, something that he couldn’t afford to be too nervous for. But the two of them really hadn’t had a chance to talk. Still, this was probably going to be the one time he would be able to talk to a User face to face. But what if he said something that would make Flynn upset? He had never had a casual conversation with a User before, so he had no idea what to expect, especially from Flynn.

He decided to do it.

Tron walked up to Flynn, trying to hide his nervousness with an enthusiastic smile.

“Hi, Flynn,” Tron replied. Okay, now he had said something … Now what? He hadn’t thought the conversation through this far. “So, um … You’re a User?”

itfeltlikeflynn

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The distant glow of Tron City lingered in the distance as the single Light Runner quickly ran across the Outlands, efficiently tackling the discombobulated tar black rockscape.

The driver?

Ms. Frannifer Williams. Age 20, currently standing at a little over six feet, and former girlfriend to a princess from an alternate universe.

The reason?

Frannifer had a lot on her mind.

Mainly due to the fact that she accidentally obliterated the universe she called home and everyone in it in a envy-fueled revenge scheme.

The screams of the innocent men...women....children, whose lives were snuffed out, the starways bathed in their blood...

Every time she closed her eyes, she could see her best ally, her former lover, the closest thing to family she ever had trying to take the metaphorical bullet for her husband to be.

She had been desperately trying to find someone, anyone, that she could talk to and not try to turn her away.

Send me a ◭ and I’ll tell you something my character does or would likely do around yours that is unique or specialized to their interactions.

hoo boy

They’ve both changed a lot, clearly, and most of the time Ram would just be trying to figure out what that means for their relationship. He’d be ever so slightly more nervous/ cautious than he normally is. It wouldn’t be out of fear or anything like that, just out of uncertainty. He knew Flynn as that weird self-confident program, not as the Creator of the Grid, and I think that would cause him to question how he should act around him a little bit. 

"Ugh... w-what?"

Ram couldn't remember much of anything at the moment, and only half of the stranger's syllables had reached him. He'd been... in a building? Or outside of one? It'd collapsed, in any event, and he could blearily recall trying to usher another program out of the way and getting hit by debris in the process.