Voice testing; On decisions between future games

[perfectringofscars]

Now, now. Don't flake out on me, huh? You promised that when the others got settled, and you got this break, it'd be my turn.

Hey, you're the one that said it. And I'm not picky on places to end up, don't get me wrong. But uh...not sure about this user city you're thinking about. Too many problems, and I'm just one program.
But this glitched out other-Grid? Now that's just ridiculous. I'd go nuts in under a microcycle, just looking around at all that work undone.

You can do better. Come on, just let me do the choosing, and we'll get along just fine.
Now get me that list, and be quiet for a little bit.

Comments

[creator_man]

*just... watches him for a while, silently. And then* Who else do you share processor time with?

[perfectringofscars]

That's a long list.

Amazing how you will find anything, anything else to ask me about. Anything but what really matters.

[creator_man]

Or am I?

What does really matter to you, Clu?

[perfectringofscars]

[ Well, he walked into that one. ]

...Should I start with the part where you created me, yet gave me little to no specificity regarding your end goals? Or should we move straight into the fact that you would have created, and destroyed the Grid as nothing more than an elaborate simulation with your lofty ideas, and neverending need to be in control, but never in complete control?

[creator_man]

*he really did.*

I gave you all the specificity regarding my goals, short, medium, and long term - as I knew them at the time. What I failed to foresee was that I should have given you flexibility regarding them, but I couldn't know that the system would spring to me a surprise like it did, so I didn't know how far they would expand, my goals.

*shakes head* I did not want to destroy the Grid. But the alternative was possibly worse. If I had thought of the Grid as nothing more than an elaborate simulation, sections of it would have been gone long before your coup, my friend. *and no, the term is not used lightly*

Is that which matters most? The wrongs I did to you?

[perfectringofscars]

[ There's...an interesting byplay of expressions chasing across Clu's face at the response. Bitterness, confusion, anger, certainly. But other things as well. Things that don't have such easily labeled emotions, or responses. Perhaps easiest to settle on an resentment.
Resentment for what Clu sees as Flynn, once again, using kind words that he doesn't completely mean to try and soften the fact that he sees Clu as a failure.

Clu's response is easier to examine. ]

The Grid started with you. I began with you. I did everything you ever asked me to do, and did more than you wanted. And I did all of it for you.

And for what? For what?!

[ Why am I here? Why do I exist? Why did you turn your back on me?

Only, he's not sure how to say that. Or even what some of these ideas really are. Confusion turning to resentment, turning to anger, and then? To hate. And hate is like a floodgate. Once opened, there's no taking it back. It must run it's course...which always ends in the pain, and suffering of both the bearer, and the victims caught in it's path. ]

[creator_man]

You did. *Flynn lowers his head.* You didn't fail me. *Others who trusted Clu, maybe. Like Tron. But not Flynn* I failed you. Failed... everyone.

*but he does meet Clu's eyes again* For the dream of a better time. A better future. It was... so, so long ago.

*deep breath* The world outside, the world I come from. It has too long a time of evolution where mistakes were made and pain was accumulated. It cannot be made perfect - or even good - without destroying it, but that would defeat the purpose. I thought, back then, that if I started from scratch, avoiding the mistakes which crippled the source, it should work differently. And then users would be able to come to that world and find peace. Find a place where nightmares did not exist.

*that... was a very long time ago. Flynn was the one who brought the nightmares in, directly or not, though, wasn't he.*

[perfectringofscars]

Avoiding mistakes? You made more mistakes in "avoiding" them than anything else! You, and your impertinent, imperfect instabilities! The Grid was never designed to support that kind of drain on overall resources, and fighting the constant spiral of damage control would have lead to cascading system failure!

[ Oh, he's getting going in a rant, now. ]

And the ends justified the means, didn't they? Didn't they?! A perfect, streamlined, sustainable system! We were supposed to do it together, but when I showed you the truth, you hid away - playing games from whatever hole you crawled into!
And none of it mattered, not really! Nothing mattered because it was still your world, all made for you, and you turned your back on it before it was ever completed!

[creator_man]

Yes. I did. *make mistakes. The latter part... ... Flynn almost retorts, but abstains. Because he is not here to rub might-haves into Clu's nose. He suspects Clu had a lot of those in those thousand-odd cycles himself. And if he didn't, anything Flynn might say would only make the administrator angrier*

There were to be no wrong means to need justification. But maybe they are too inherent in us, in me, for me to have ever successfully kept them away from whatever I created.

If I had turned my back on it, if I truly had, you wouldn't have been able to trap me the way you did, you realize that, right? I did not give it, you, enough, and I know that now, but I never turned my back to the Grid.