video; public/unencrypted; now let's go! just gimme the signal (backdated)

[a_perfect_end]

Greetings!

[There's a reverence to that, the quiet, thunderous tenor certainty of a TV preacher about to go on a tear. He faces the camera squarely, like he can nail it in place by staring at it hard enough, and there's a manic glint to the way he smiles.]

I am Clu.

Now I don't know you, citizens of the good ship Moira, but, man, would I like to! There are so many of us here, from so many different worlds. Or, most of you are. Some of us seem to be arriving in groups--anyway!

[If he waggles his eyebrows any harder, they will pop right off his face.]

I know I'm not the only one aboard who runs parallel processes for a living. Seriously, if you dream in ASCII, or especially in C#? Call me. [Hands spread wide, animated, making big broad gestures as he begins to pace.]

And even if you don't dream of electric sheep, well. It sure sounds like some of you know me, too. Or you think you do. Speaking of: have you seen this guy? Around lately? Kinda looks like everyone's grandpa?

Well, he isn't.

Alan Bradley hurts Programs. Thinks nothing at all of doing it! Doesn't even think we're really, well, real. And I have proof, oh yes. [Only, the ugly smug grin makes that statement into something less than the moral high ground.]

So, if you want to trust everything that some sixty year-old code pusher you met yesterday says, go ahead! Believe the heavenly proclamations of the almighty User who was never even there. Just take his word for it!

[The grin melts into a sneer and hardens, shifts again into something tense and bizarrely earnest. Every word is punctuated with the jolt of his arm, pointing so hard he'd poke the camera if it wasn't attached to his wrist.]

But keep this in mind, my fellow synthetics! My inorganic brothers from another motherboard, listen up: you are of no more value to Mr. Alan Bradley--or indeed to any of his kind--than a very fancy pocket calculator.

When they get tired of you--and they will--you will be the one who will be sorry, I can promise you that.

[He looks away; he bares his teeth. Between them there's quiet venom:]

You wanna know the truth about me? About what happened to the Grid? You wanna know where your precious Kevin Flynn is.

Y'coulda tried asking me, man.

[That is certainly enough of that. Cut.]

Comments

video~ okay this is now kind of about genocide insensitivity so cw for that

[a_perfect_end]

[It's harder, colder, less desperate, but they're same words that chased him through the tower halls of the admin complex--the same reasons screamed up at him from the table until he'd finally, finally found the right tree and gently tugged the folder out by the roots.]

Those. Were not my people. [Flynn made this exact face once, it's one of Clu's earliest recollections, the first--though certainly not last--time he had ever seen disgust. He's wearing it now, and it feels the same wearing it as seeing it, too tight and awful.]

I spared my people! I kept them from starving for his precious mistakes, and if I ever get out of here, well--you'll see.

[Does...is Alan asking him to cry for what he's done? As though weeping would restore those to the queue, or unhide his User's whereabouts.]

What for? [Because, man!] It's true, isn't it? Should I have used smaller words?

Okay: I killed. Them. All. Every. Single. One.

The evil is defeated, man. Game over.

Hey, hey! Don't tell me what I do and don't care about. You don't know anything; you don't understand what you did; you have every intention of doing it again and this, this stupid broadcast? That I probably shouldn't have made?

Is the sole dissenting note in a symphony of Mr. Bradley is the greatest he would never ever hurt us.

...We're made to do what you ask, and you never stop to parse the consequences.

audio;

[alan_1]

[It isn’t difficult, after what Sam and Anon had told him, for Alan to follow the distinction Clu’s trying to make. The ISOs and everyone else -- his people and not. But his assertion that he spared his own kind, saved them even, is enough for the anger Alan’s been holding behind ice to spill over, the untempered disgust in his voice more than a rarity to anyone who knows him.]

Spared them? Do you mean how you spared Tron? How you spared Rinzler? You broke them -- and every other program you could get your hands on. Or can you really not tell the difference? [It wouldn’t surprise Alan -- why should someone like Clu be able to distinguish between perfection and obedience?

A slow breath to steady himself, frigidity slipping back into his tone as he summarizes Clu’s argument.]

You think you’re the defender of your people because you enslaved them when you could have killed them.

[He doesn’t even bother addressing Clu’s accusations. What you did. Every intention of doing it again. Clu's wrong but he wouldn’t listen. And his reading of the situation with the crew, the one painting himself as Alan’s sole adversary amidst a sea of adoring defenders, is just another delusion on top of the stack. Alan could almost answer with a bitter rejoinder -- If you think everyone here sings my praises, you haven’t been listening -- but he stops himself. He won’t give Clu that kind of ammunition.]

So tell me the consequences. [Voice is still cold, still edged with loathing, but there’s a weariness underneath it.] And then tell me why you think what you did to them is any better.

video;

[a_perfect_end]

[For several seconds--a machine's eternity, he watches. The turnover of data is visible: he finds a chair. He sits, like a block of wood falling.

His next words are very quiet.]

Oh, no. No. Don't miscalculate me, please. It's too important.

...You wanna talk consequences? Fine, but don't hang up.

I hurt Tron. I shattered him, because he couldn't stop doing what you told him to do.

I was gonna grab Flynn's disc and run for it--maybe even reach out to you--and let the Sentries mop up those, back home.

I needed that, because it was the only way in or out--and right then, that made me a threat. It made me number one with a bullet.

It didn't matter what I wanted it for. What I was gonna do didn't even count: I had just popped up with a cleaner crew of my very own and was standing over my own Maker with a live weapon in my hands. What else could Tron possibly do?

But then of course he was between me, and my Maker, and the one thing that could have resolved it all perfectly.

I had to do it, do you understand, because it would've been perfect.

He got between me, and Flynn, and my directive, right at the solution gate. I always thought "seeing red" was another of your idioms, but no. No.

And while you may have been there to tell us what to do, nobody was there to tell us to stop.

Because Flynn didn't think. He ran.

[Clu's almost flickering in agitation, strobe light heat with an audible crackle.]

He left me with a fistful of pieces that I didn't have permission to repair, because he was worried I'd beat the skinny jeans off him. Dumbass went for a jog and the door slammed shut on all of us.

...There will never be another like Rinzler, because I won't do that again.

video;

[alan_1]

[Alan sees the way Clu falls heavily into his chair, the way his circuits flicker the way Tron and Rinzler’s do when they’re agitated or hurt, but it doesn’t matter. It can’t because Clu is lying, telling a story where he was the one wronged, as if he was merely trying to rebuild what he never intended to break.]

You didn’t want Tron back, you wanted someone to serve you. You wrote it into every line of his code. You didn’t even let him keep his name. [Alan has to curl his hands into fists to keep them from shaking, sick with an anger and revulsion he isn’t used to feeling. It’s not just that Clu would twist the narrative to make himself into the victim after everything he’s done -- it’s that he actually seems to believe it.]

You made an army of programs like Rinzler. Programs you rectified. [It’s the same word Tron had used to describe the process, spoken here with disgust.] It doesn’t matter how much you lie to the people here or to yourself -- you’re not some liberator or savior. Everything you did was for your own benefit.

You didn’t save anyone.