Tron 2.11 – Preamble.

Jet sat silent for a few minutes and sipped at his coffee, his mind furiously working to determine the best way to begin. Looking around as he collected his thoughts, the room around him brought back memories of when he worked at Flynn’s while he studied programming.

Despite his father’s wishes, the desire to build video games one day never left Jet, even after the arcade machines he spent most of his life around became obsolete, most of Flynn’s competitors disappearing until Flynn’s was the only arcade left.

Flynn returned to his arcade home at the start of the nineties, when arcades were at their peak. Home game technology hadn’t caught up then and the new generation of arcade games were bringing in the kids.

It was when Jet was 14 that he started working at Flynn’s. Almost two years after his mother’s accident. Flynn had always been Jet’s godfather and so the two got on pretty well. When Flynn offered Jet a job cleaning machine and looking after games, he jumped at it. It caused a little friction with his father, but he also needed the money and it helped him forget how sad he had been for the past two years.

The state of deterioration didn’t bother Jet. It felt like home to Jet and Flynn liked it this way. The peeling paint and faded colours reminded him what was real. What he could count on. What this world really was. He liked that and he understood why Flynn left this place looking less than perfect.

Flynn asked him to return here to work after his own digitizing accident but Jet refused. It wasn’t that Jet didn’t want Flynn’s help at the time, but rather that he didn’t need it. He needed to come to terms with it himself.

But right now, Jet needed Flynn’s help and he needed to convince Flynn to help him before Flynn talked him out of it. Jet never was good at keeping his own heading in life if Flynn chose to push him in another direction.

In the end, Jet settled for a simple starting point. Reaching into his oversized pocket, he felt around for the large round shape it had contained for the past three days. The final piece of the puzzle he had been looking to solve. His fingers closed around the almost primitive object and removed the brightly coloured sphere from his pocket.

Moving his hand across the table, he set it down. As he removed his fingers, the orange rolled slightly into the soldering iron station then sat still. Jet’s eyes lifted from where he had dropped the orange to Flynn’s face. Flynn was still concentrating on the orange.

“You need some vitamin C perhaps,” he said, frowning slightly. “Or perhaps you should get to the point.”

Jet nodded once as Flynn looked up at him.

“Doctor Walter Gibbs”, he responded.

Flynn picked up the orange slowly. “Wally eh?,” he began. “Just what do you know about Wally?” Walter Gibbs had left Encom around the same time Jet had been conceived. He was the original genius behind the Encom 511 and the Master Control Program although he didn’t write the MCP.

Gibbs Jr, his Son, had taken over from Flynn when he left in 1990, but like his father, was a relatively poor manager. It was his poor management that led to the Encom buyout by F-Con in 2003.

Still, the tactic worked. Now Jet needed to keep it working while he sold Flynn on his story. Flynn appeared preoccupied with the fruit, but Jet had limited time.

“Dr Gibbs developed the EN five eleven didn’t he?

Flynn’s eyebrow raised slightly at the mention of the EN511.

“ He left Encom just before Dillinger was indicted and wasn’t around at the time of the accident.” Jet started. “But after my mother was killed, he disappeared altogether. My mother was his protégé and my father wrote applications for Dr Gibbs before the accident.”

Flynn nodded. The death of Lora had hurt him deeply also, but he had always kept the pain away from Jet and Alan. It was something he held inside. Lora was his ex and he still wasn’t over her.

“I believe Doctor Gibbs developed the fiber loop memory for the five-eleven. A self repeating loop of photons clocked at the frequency of a green laser. He started with Encom attempting to design a new form of memory didn’t he?”

Flynn looked up briefly then back at the orange. Jet’s information was right on the money.

“Most of that is still classified, Jet, even nearly forty years later,” responded Flynn.” He was working at Encom long before I was there and even then it was a pretty esoteric place.

“But yeah, I do recall rumours that Doctor Gibbs started out Encom developing new forms of memory.

“RAM was a luxury back then. People used bubble memory, transistor memory, magnetic memory. You name it. I even saw them use a pool of mercury once, with transducers at either end to introduce ripples in the surface – data encoded in waves.”

Jet blinked at the mention of the work mercury.

“And Gibbs was the one who originally developed the laser digitizing technology wasn’t he? Feeding the reflected waves directly into the fiber loop at high frequency” said Jet, taking back the flow of the conversation.

“During his original research, he discovered some interesting things that he never expected. An accident in the lab in which a laser port was left open broke down his lunch when the laser misfired.

“At first he though it simply vaporized his orange, but later he discovered that the memory field he was working on had taken on what appeared to be random data.

“It was the first thing he ever digitized. Not just scanning an image like we do now, but literally converting the data of the subject into digital format.

“Then when he ran that data back through the laser, something vaguely orange-like came back out – right where the orange was originally located. Except it was completely messed up.”

Flynn put the orange down. He really didn’t want to remember things coming back out of the laser. He hadn’t been there when Lora died, but he had heard what happened. He was grateful that Jet had never wanted to know the details, but after his own accident, Flynn thought he might have an idea.

“And you also know I guess that Wally developed his laser storage system from there. The damn thing defied physics as we knew it. We never did work out where the matter went – conservation of energy and all that.” Flynn said.

Jet nodded. He leaned over and took a sharp knife from a drawer at the side of the table. To an outsider it would have looked threatening, but if Flynn felt threatened, he didn’t show it. “And one day instead of transporting an orange, Doctor Gibbs transported half an orange.

Jet looked up at Flynn as he positioned the knife over the orange.

“Said he was hungry and ate half the orange.”

Jet sliced the orange in two with a single cleave. The orange split in half and dropped to the table as two hemispheres, bright orange juice seeping down over the cleft edge and dripping slowly to the table.

“And what happened.?” Jet asked Flynn rhetorically as he placed the knife in the sink. It was obvious he already knew the answer.

Flynn looked to the orange then back at jet, before taking the second half and putting it back on the first.

“A full orange came back, but it was corrupted,” said Flynn. “That’s when we realized there was something in the orange we hadn’t ever realized. Physical material in this world seems to contain it’s own meta-information. It knows what it wants to be but it doesn’t always know how to achieve it.

Flynn held his hands up in the air as if he wasn’t sure what he was saying was correct.

“At least, that was Wally’s theory. He never did prove it, but that still was the time we first realized how critical the correction algorithms were, except there was no way to create an algorithm to predict the quantum data disruption caused by reading the data into the beam in the first place.”

“And that’s when the real research began isn’t it,” said Jet. “That’s when you realized you needed to find a way to correct the quantum read errors when the laser suspends the matter. That’s when Encom needed funding and Doctor Gibbs brought in investors and moved out of his garage.”

Flynn nodded. Jet’s research was exceptional - very few people knew the real startup story. Flynn had only learned the truth about it when he was CEO from Dr Gibbs directly even though he originally worked for the doctor in the late 70’s. Which was when he first met Lora.

Alan never knew anything about the transport system before Lora began to teach him and he started to work on the new generation of correction algorithms to be integrated into the Master Control Program.

“So how do you know all of this, Jet?” Flynn asked.

Jet smiled slowly. He had hooked Flynn’s attention completely. Now he had to real it in.

“I found Doctor Gibbs,” he answered slowly.

Flynn seemed surprised. “I didn’t know anyone knew where he was,” said Flynn. “His research was so sensitive that when he left Encom, the feds ghosted him. No social security number, cash existence. He maintained his anonymity and they supplied the funding. Even Junior didn’t know where he went, so how did you find his ghost?”

“I guess you could say that at some point he became aware that I was looking for him and made himself available to me,” Jet explained. “And I believe I know how to contact him again if I need to.”

“He still blames himself for your mother’s death, Jet. I heard rumour he surfaced for a brief while after that, but was never able to confirm it. He certainly never spoke to me again.” said Flynn.

Flynn knew in his heart that he still blamed Walter for the death of Lora. It was Walter’s research that ultimately took her life. Walter was a brilliant scientist but tended to cause accidents. These led to incredible leaps forward in technology but it was only his own innate understanding of the dangers of the technology that always kept him safe.

Lora was brilliant but didn’t understand the technology the same way that Doctor Gibbs had. She didn’t know how far she could get away with his method. Ultimately, it caught up with her when he was no longer around to reminder her of the dangers.

Jet looked at his hands for a moment, attempting to avoid the emotion coming up with the words he was choosing. “He asked my mother to stop her research, but by then she was determined to complete it. Dad was her lead programmer and later and moved to the Lab. With my dad there, I guess she felt safe.”

Flynn winced at the mention. In part, he too was responsible. He had encouraged Alan to shift projects and work with his wife. Even if he did blame the doctor, he too had played a part in Lora’s demise.

“He’s past blaming himself Flynn, but I think he was glad to be reminded that mom had me before she passed on. So he discussed why the MCP algorithms were so different from anything ever written before. From anything ever written since.” Jet said.

He continued. “We always talked about self-modifying algorithms. But we never understood how the compiler produced them. That was Gibbs’ secret. Algorythm Translation. A direct connection from the Algorythm to the final code. It was the Altran language that the system used, compiled by the MCP. “

Flynn thought a moment about where it all started.

The main driving force behind it all was the EN511. The only one ever built, it was decades ahead of other mainframes at the time.

The EN511 was unique. Multiple processing systems connected to a fibre loop memory. A Master Control Program coordinated all of the data streams through the fiber loop memory and delivered applications to the processors in each system.

The EN511 used advanced new concepts such as permanently self modifying algorithms and even pre-emptive distribution of algorithms to be encoded for execution on the fly. It could literally self-program based on quantitative criteria.

In many senses it was still just a normal computer, but the fiber loop memory gave it phenomenal processing speed and storage capability. It was like magnetic tapes on steroids, only millions of times faster.

But they never considered that the photons and waveforms transported in the fiber loop memory were entangled at the quantum level.

Quantum research was too new back then. They didn’t understand the meta-data that Quantum entangled fields attached to individual photons in the loop. Even if it wasn’t a quantum computer, there were many effects that the quantum entanglement had on the data within the system that could play havoc with the system’s operation.

Data tended to change unexpectedly and without external input. Memory bits seemed to alter themselves and sometimes programs started running code that was never intended to execute, yet didn’t crash.

A lot of the early research work was conducted just trying to shield the memory loops from outside interference. Even just looking at the streams in operation was enough to cause serious errors in the process.

But when a program did work, it sometimes worked in a way that was far beyond existing technology of the era. Flynn had realized early on that he could cross-compile data for some video game applications he had been working on, on the EN511. Using the Algorithmic Translation compiler of the MCP, he was able to write several programs for cross-compilation over a period of just months.

Ed Dillinger had stolen Flynn’s work, but it was Dillinger who realized then the capability of the MCP and EN511 to produce code at a much faster rate that which unaided programmers could achieve on other systems.

Yet they still didn’t understand how the MCP worked. The MCP had been running for years by then and had rewritten itself many times. It had even developed a macabre tendency to absorb new algorithms in other programs which it found useful.

Natural evolution had turned the operating system into a bloated monster, but it still continued to work right up until Alan Bradley wrote the viral application that destroyed it.

Walter Gibbs had originally seemed quite satisfied that the system was destroyed. It was around then that he had started to lose his sanity Flynn believed.

According to the old man himself, he actually believed that something other than the Algorithm Translation technology was behind the MCPs self-modifying aspects. He genuinely seemed to believe that there was a malevolent consciousness behind the application.

Jet continued his monologue, bringing Flynn back to the real world.

“The Master Control Program was just a complex switch, but it sat on the core that executed the data in the fiber loop memories. It managed the laser containment fields. At the base level, it was just bits but Gibbs believed in something else.

Flynn sighed. “Gibbs believed that Humans produce an active, living quantum field – that perhaps we are a quantum computer if you will – and that within the five-eleven our influence remained like a ghost, some meta-information that remained entangled within the programs people wrote.

“He believed that every single program ever written for the five-eleven was influenced by our own quantum state – our very consciousness. He believed that when we wrote an application, there was a little bit of us in it – it was touched by our spirit.

“And he was certain that this was causing changes to the stored data while it was within the fiber, the quantum mechanics of the photons changing the readable data of each packet.

Flynn took a deep breath. He didn’t necessarily believe the old man, even given his own experience.

“Wally believed that this was the real motive behind the self-modifying algorithms – a self-awareness that we loaned each program. A little piece of us that we don’t even miss.”

Jet nodded as Flynn confirmed what he already knew.

“Doctor Gibbs also told me that you really were inside the system, Flynn. He told me you met these program personalities. He explained to me you once told him how each program reflected it’s own user’s appearance, but without any direct connection. As if someone took the user, stripped his memories and gave them a task to do inside the computer.

Flynn shuddered at the memory. It was nearly a quarter century ago that he had had his own digitizing accident.

“You never told me exactly what happened when you were digitized Flynn. But you did tell Doctor Gibbs shortly after your return. I know about Yori and Tron. And if I had have realized it when I got back, then perhaps I wouldn’t have needed that therapy.

Now Jet went for the punchline.

“But that world really does exist Flynn, and we can find ourselves within it.

“And when I went in there, I left something behind that I didn’t want to.

“Something I never should have left there in the first place.”

Jet put his fingers together, steepled them then withdrew them into fists as if he were cuffed at the wrists. Then he made his plea.

“Flynn, perhaps you’re the only one who can help me. Dad won’t do it – he’d be too terrified I’d never return. It was only because of the correction algorythms that I got back at all.

Gibbs Snr is a recluse and the facility is locked down.

“But I need your help to break into Encom and get back to the other side of the screen.

“Please.”

Jet sat silently. It was done. Either Flynn would consider his request or start to talk him out of it then and there. Flynn only nodded and picked up his cup, sipping at the slowly disappearing and cooling coffee. He leaned back on his chair until it leaned against an old set of stairs that led up to his living space from the kitchen.

“He was a little crazy like that, old Wally.,” Started Flynn.

“He used to drive Dillinger mad with his techno-religious talk after I left the first time. He was the only one who originally believed me when I was digitized about the other world, which really screwed me up at first, because unlike you I really have come to realize it’s not there.”

Then Flynn fixed Jet with that stare he got when he needed to conclude something. “If you really do believe there’s something on the other side of that laser, then you’re going to have to convince me Jet. Otherwise I need to convince you that it doesn’t exist, because you can’t continue to live across two worlds.

“I’m your godfather and I don’t believe your mum would appreciate me leaving you torn like this.”

At first Jet looked crestfallen. Flynn hadn’t refused, but he hadn’t agreed either. There was one thing he still held in reserve however. He hadn’t mentioned to Flynn that he thought he brought something back when he returned from the other side of the screen. Something that he thought had remained when he crossed that barrier between worlds on the way out.

Jet’s eyes flicked to the door and then back to Flynn. “Do you still have any Space Paranoids machines? The old ones – not the new 3D version. ”

Flynn looked over his shoulder out towards where the arcade was. “This is still the home of Space Paranoids, Jet. You going to try to beat me?”

“Show me the machine Flynn,” said Jet.

Flynn nodded. “I’d forgotten about our agreement.”

Jet stood confused, then realized what Flynn was referring to. “That’s right. I never did beat you did I?. You always told me when I beat you I could make one request of you.”

Flynn was walking to the arcade as they spoke, his coffee still in his had. “Don’t do it Jet. If you lose you’ll hate me and if you win, I’ll hate myself.”

He flicked a switch on the wall as he walked by. Old fluorescent lights flickered into existence across the roof and walls, then the colours changes as neons and attract-mode devices started to power up. The sounds of arcade machines chimed as each went through post tests.

It took Jet back a long way to when we was just fourteen. The sound of the arcade coming to life each day before the customers started to come in slowly.

The arcade itself was still clean. Flynn always maintained it or hired someone to maintain it. Jet himself had done this for some time before he got a job as a programmer at Encom himself.

Finally, Flynn stood before six Space Paranoids machines. Each was starting it’s power-on testing and was far from ready for coins. The displays all appeared identical at this point.

“Do you know the versions?” asked Jet, approaching the first machine.

Flynn put his coffee down on an old table-top machine and stepped up before the ray tube based amusement machine. It was ancient now in this era of liquid crystal and plasma.

“I know each and every one of these machines, Jet, Why?”

Jet walked to the side of the machine, crouched and placed his hand just above the point where the processing board inside would be located. He closed his eyes.

“Version 1.63002 – 18^th March 1986” Jet stated. “About the same time as I started sweeping the floors for you if I recall.”

Just a moment after he said it, the machine started in earnest and the version number flicked across the screen. Flynn looked briefly then scanned the other machines. Each had a slightly different version number. Each had a different date. Collectibles were like that.

Jet’s guess had been correct.

“You memorised my game machine versions?” asked Flynn. “That’s the memory you brought out of the digital world?”

Jet shook his head. “Build information. It’s like a knack I suddenly realized I had developed a few months back. It’s not perfect and I get it wrong a lot, but I seem to have an intuition about builds.”

Jet patted the old arcade machine’s side. “ Of course, I seem to be a little more accurate with old MCP compiles like this. It’s as if something inside the box is calling to me – telling me what I need to know.”

Jet’s voice was softer now. Slightly difficult to hear in the sudden digital cacophony of the attract modes all firing up simultaneously.

“And it tells you dates as well?” asked Flynn, not sure if Jet was deluding him as well as himself.

“No,” responded Jet, curling his fingers and brushing his palm as if to remove dust from it. “But I do know that particular version and I know the build date. “

Flynn realized he needed a test – at least to prove to Jet that he was imaginging it. “Can you do it with something you have no experience with?” he asked.

“Not dates, no,” said Jet.

“Just a build version. Just the number.” Clarified Flynn.

“Sometimes,” said Jet. “Sometimes I can, sometimes I get it wrong. I remember when I was in the computer I picked up a program that let me identify the version of the programs I interacted with. I think it came back with me when I re-entered the real world.”

The comment frightened Flynn a little. Now Jet was opening up, it was clear he believed it.

Flynn walked to room at the back of the arcade where he kept his real collectors items. In the past, it was full of broken machines needing repair. Jet knew it now contained Flynn’s classic and rare machines.

He stood and followed Flynn towards the room. Flynn had unlocked the door and lit up the inside as Jet approached, although he could see little beyond the door, which swung back to almost a close behind Flynn.

Jet pushed the door open with is open palms and walked inside.

About a dozen machines lined the long room along each wall. Most of them Flynn knew at sight. Some were new even to him. One or two predated modern digital machines.

A realistic mechanical helicopter sat perched at the end of a long wire on one. A magnetic car sat attached to a printed racetrack on another. The types of games to take nickels instead of quarters.

A Cliffhanger original in good condition sat silent to the side as Jet walked by. Inside he knew an original roll of film contained scenes from an animated series about a character named Lupin, back before laser disc technology made the concept completed obsolete.

In fact none of the machines Jet saw would be considered anything other than obsolete by modern standards. Many were barely capable of the same computing functionality that a modern digital watch might even have.

Then towards the back, the last machine and facing Flynn, rather than the machines opposite, all by itself on a slightly raised pedestal was an original Light Cycles arcade machine – something that he knew Flynn had been looking for, for quite some time.

He had obviously found one.

The machine was sitting alone near a wall. Flynn had obviously tried to spend some time setting this one up correctly, because the wall was cleaned and painted and a stool sat to one side. Everything suggested this machine was the star of this room.

“Tell me the build,” said Flynn, reaching behind and flicking the power switch. The machine flickered and started to light up as power surged through it’s circuits. “It’s an original compile from the raw MCP source.”

“A little too easy,” said Jet. “It’s a version 1.0. I’d recognize one of these from a hundred metres away through a crowded mall. They changed the design when they released the first version rebuild. I see you finally got one?”

Flynn nodded. “Yeah, I did, but is that what your intuition tells you?”

Jet shook his head and went through the motions. He stepped to the machine and looked down at the light starting to glow upwards towards his face from the old cathode ray tube as it charged up and the electrodes heated to operating temperature. A glowing grid forming briefly on the phosphor screen again reminding Jet of that other place and the reason he had avoided video games since his return.

Pulling himself back to the present, Jet flexed his hand and moved it to the side where the mainboard was located. He closed his eyes then opened them again. Tried the motion with his hand and came back up as if he just grabbed something he wasn’t expecting.

“I don’t know,” said Jet. “Not 1.0”

Flynn nodded. “You have about 10 more seconds before the version appears.”

Jet understood. Flynn must have put a different build in here himself. It was a test. Only Flynn would know which version.

At first, Jet tried to think of the different versions he knew of. The later 1.1 boards, the 1.2 and 1.21 upgrades. The 1.7 commercial release and the 1.8 Japanese version. A later 1.9 and 1.91 and 1.92 had come out with different aspect ratios and multiplayer support. There had even been a version 2.0 at the end, but for some reason, the ending of that version left him wanting more.

Perhaps it really was a version 1.0 and Flynn was attempting to psych him out.

Not trusting his own instinct, Jet tried to glean a hint of the correct version from any cue at all, but all of the versions started the same and he knew it. The first thing to come up would be the version number. Flynn had chosen this test well.

Jet relaxed and opened his mind just as he had done that day in the casino when he found a buggy version of a poker machine. That had seemed so strange at first, but the machine paid out. Then he found another. It paid out too. Then he was thrown out.

He felt nothing at first, but knew when it came it would arrive unbidden if at all. He waited, watching as the machine went through it’s start up process and completed. In another moment, the version would show and it would be over.

Then it came to him dropping straight into his open thoughts like an epiphany.

“Point99 Beta.” Said Jet.

Jet looked at Flynn. His face was impassive.

“They never brought out a beta, Jet. Dillinger produced the first working copy at Version 1.0”

Jet closed his eyes and swallowed. He had guessed it seemed and had guessed wrong. He felt his stomach turn.

Jet looked back to the screen where is should now say something like “v1.0 – Encom Lmtd. 1980” but the final display was different as Flynn had suggested.

“v0.9 Kevin Flynn” he read out slowly. “1979”

Flynn nodded. “The only original beta file unaltered by Dillinger that we were able to trace in the system after he was fired. It was a pre-final build and the only difference was the name. When I built version one-oh, Dillinger added his name in. It always seemed tainted to me after that. This was the last of the programs I wrote and was the final piece of evidence I needed to have Dillinger convicted. I recently burned it to eprom for this one machine.”

Jet slowly smiled awkwardly not knowing if he was hoping too hard.

Flynn looked to the screen. “The only place the full version number is completed is inside the ROMs. It never gets displayed. Point 99 Beta.”

Jet looked relieved a little, but still nervous. “So I was right then?”

Flynn stood quietly looking at the screen where his name appeared. “Maybe you were, Kid, Maybe you were.

Next: Chapter 2.12 – Source Address