The Chapter after Tron Legacy, Fan Fiction by Tamara Wilhite

Quorra could still feel the rushing air over her skin, though they’d gotten off the motorcycle and now stood in Sam’s apartment. An air vent, he called it. She closed her eyes and remembered the vivid colors of the sunrise, comparing that memory to the glow of the Portal to the outside world she’d ridden that night.

She opened her eyes again, continually amazed at the waves of sensations. Sight and sound translated perfectly here to her program – no, body. Her physical body. Sam gave her a beverage. This was another data input, but she’d had drinks at the End of the Line club. Taste, that was the word.

She set the drink down. She apprised the room. There were items here that were similar to the Creator’s residence off the grid. That made sense, since this living space had belonged to him. He’d replicated pieces of his life here over there. All that he’d created was gone, except for her. He was gone, too, everything of him lost except Sam.

“Sam, what should I do?”

Sam approached her, studying her emotions and her new, solid form. “Wasn’t the sunrise amazing?”

“Yes, it was everything I’d hoped for and more.”

He wrapped his arms around her, waves of sensory input more than she thought she could handle. Her mental processes were overwhelmed of logic, but she wasn’t unconscious. “You’re perfect,” he said, “just like my father said.” She was paralyzed with emotion, limbic systems and other things that had been theory until now overloading her software. She’d adapt, she was perfect, she knew she’d adapt with time. He did what he wanted, part of her wanted it, too. A part of her mind made the connection between male plugs and female sockets as their bodies did.

She wasn’t certain what this process was, but Sam seemed to know. She let the User use her. When the process was completed, he seemed to go unconscious. She felt slowed down herself. She went unconscious as well.

Waking up was a strange sensation. Her mind had replayed images of the Grid, but when her eyes opened, it was far less well defined patterns on the ceiling that greeted her. Her body ached in places and ways that were worse than a fight with Tron. Worse were the program flaws, her body leaking bits –

Sam startled awake, surprised, confused, horrified, and then other emotions she couldn’t fathom. “Let’s go to the bathroom,” he said.

He seemed to struggle to discuss waste disposal methods. He taught her purification routines. “What is your routine?”

“I typically get up, go to the bathroom – “

“We’re in the bathroom.”

“I use the toilet like you just did, take a shower, eat –“

“You eat in here?”

“I eat in the kitchen. I’ll show you in a minute. After I eat and get dressed, I’d plan my day or go to work …”

“Do you ride your motorcycle?”

“Sure, whether I’m visiting my friends or going to work or –“

“Can I ride it?”

“You need a driver’s license.” A worried look crossed his face. “Wow, I need to take care of that.”

“What should I do?”

“There’s food in the fridge. Try anything. I’ll take care of the driver’s license.”

“What will it do?”

“You have to have one to ride the motorcycle or else the police – our enforcers – could jail you.”

“Yes, take care of that, Sam.”

Quorra entered the area he pointed to; it was called the kitchen. There was an obvious assortment of beverages. She was uneasy with the waste disposal process she’d experienced, so she drank the minimum of what was necessary to quench her thirst. The first beverage was fine. The second was difficult to swallow, but Sam screamed, “Wait, wait, that’s raw egg –“

“What is an egg?”

He had her spit it out, and then put a variety of beverages on the counter. “This is orange juice. That’s milk. This is bottled water. These are safe to drink. Don’t drink the liquid egg whites. You can eat pretty much any food in the fridge, though.”

Quorra drank the orange juice. It tasted like the sunrise, if that were possible. Was her physical body malfunctioning? She walked into the room where Sam was sitting. “What are you doing?”

“You are so lucky I’m a hacker.”

“You’re a Creator.”

“Well, I create code and programs, but some of that is in violation of the law. I know people who can access databases, create file –“

“I can do things like that.”

“I don’t know how you can do things like that with the hardware we have. I don’t have cybernetic interfaces, and I don’t know if you know what to do with a keyboard.”

“Use your disk.”

“There is no disk.”

She put a finger on the hole on his central torso. “Wouldn’t it have gone here?”

He laughed. “That’s left over from my creation process.”

“Then why do I have one?”

“I think it must be considered part of the standard human form. Your form, though, is truly perfect.” He stood up and wrapped himself around her. He wanted to be with her. She needed to be with him to try to make sense of everything. He repeated the physical joining process again. He slept again, though she couldn’t. She simply absorbed all the sensory input, seeking connections to concepts she’d learned from the Creator and comparing them to the confused inputs here.

She couldn’t make sense of her body’s own inputs. A violent response began. Sam awoke, shouted, and took her back to the bathroom. “It is the raw eggs you drank.”

“You said I could –“ Quorra wretched, a word she wished he hadn’t had to teach her. He explained what this physical process was. He gave her water to drink to purge the bad taste. Then her body began another purge, this time from the other end. He had to sit with her as her body did it, because she couldn’t handle it alone.

“Oh, God, Quorra, I’m so sorry. This is a horrible first day for you.”

“It will not happen again.”
“I’ll make sure you don’t get sick like this again. I didn’t realize there’s so much I need to teach you.”

“This waste disposal routine is horrible. I don’t want to do it again.”

“No one wants to vomit. Defecation, though, you will do from time to time.”

“Urination was terrible.”

“Yeah, but that’s a couple times a day. Defecation may be once a day or twice a day –“ He was silenced by the sight Quorra’s tears. He struggled to remain calm and compassionate. For a moment, he was very much like his father. “It’s OK, it’s OK, this is normal.”

“How can Creators survive this?” she asked.

“We’ve been doing it all our lives. It is normal. And it is normal for us. You, now, too.”

“I will fix this. I’ll find a better food input routine –“

“You’ll always have to use the bathroom a couple of times a day. But you won’t be sick like this every day, I promise.” She let him guide her through a cleaning routine in the shower. Then he put her to bed. He said he had to do a cleaning routine in the bathroom.

She awoke hours later, her body in pain. He gave her more juice. He said he had good news. He’d paid someone a hefty fortune, but he’d secured a false identity for her.

“My identity is Quorra. How have you changed it?”

“My name is Sam Flynn.”

“I knew that.”

“Your first name is Quorra. I paid for someone to make a driver’s license, birth certificate and other paperwork. You’re now Quorra Flynn. In a couple of days, we’ll have a proper set of documents so you could travel.”

To share the name with Sam and her creator felt like an honor. “I’ll be Quorra Flynn.”

It took weeks of lessons for her to be ready by Sam’s standards to walk the streets. She had to practice conversations like a chat-bot, and he corrected her outputs every few sentences. It was at the grocery store that someone stopped them and started asking questions to Sam. About his girlfriend. “This is Quorra Flynn,” Sam introduced.

“Wow! She’s hot. Dude, you’ve got quite a girlfriend. Wait, Flynn. Is she your wife? Did you go get married?” The man struck Flynn, and Quorra tried to physically intervene in the assault.

She retorted, “We have the same Creator!” Sam pulled her back. “Take it easy, Quorra.” “Father,” she corrected herself.

The man stepped back a few paces. “Oh, she’s your sister. Where did this sister come from? You never mentioned one …”

“She’s from Europe,” Sam said. “She’s come to live with me.”

“You never said you had a sister, and your Mom didn’t have more kids …”

“Half. She’s half.”

“Is that what your Dad was doing in those twenty years he was missing?”

Sam looked angry, upset, fearful and a dozen other emotions. “I can’t talk about it.”

“Sure, man, sure. Glad you got something out of it, though.” The man left, and Sam walked her out of the store. “We’re going to have to get our stories straight.”

“You said I can’t talk about life on the Grid.”

“We’re way off the Grid, but what we just said works for now.”

“When will you be going to work?” Quorra asked.

“No, no, I mean, saying that you’re my sister. It will explain who you are and why you’re living with me. At least, it will until people figure out we’re having sex.”

“Don’t sisters have sex?”

“Not with brothers.” He shook his head. “I wish there was a way to download information into the brain or teach you faster.”

“Let me look at the hardware and software schematics. I’ll help you. That’s what I’m supposed to do.”

The next months had been incredibly difficult. He’d had to keep Quorra mostly in the apartment while he trained support staff to teach her, guide her, and work with her without blowing their secrets. It had taken only a few days, fortunately, to teach her how to use software so that she could transfer that brilliant expertise from the Grid to the real world.

The cybernetic implant designs and software to support rapid data transfers he’d sent on to Bradley. Brandley responded days later that the development team considered him a genius and they’d have prototypes working in weeks. They expected the revenue to be greater than what the company had earned in its prior five years.

Quorra’s pregnancy had been progressing and was now due in weeks. She had been perfect, but they hadn’t realized that this included full fertility. Quorra was frustrated with the changes in her body, and realistically, she’d have no clue what to do with a baby. Then again, Sam knew that his father had valued family over everything. That he and Quorra had made a baby would make his father a grandfather. They’d agreed to name the boy Kevin after his father. And they’d agreed to pay for nannies so that Quorra could still learn how to live in the human world. Sam hoped she’d learn how to be human as their son did, and he hoped the child would be quite human. The basic medical exams had said everything was normal, but he knew everything they didn’t and couldn’t know.

The only source of frustration for them both was her intolerance of his retreats to video games. She didn’t consider it an immature retreat from real life, though Sam remembered his mother and grandmother saying that. Instead, she considered it akin to murder. She watched him play video games the way a vegan watched someone else eat chicken. She’d become vegan, too, after learning what steak was. OK, Dad, she’s not perfect. But I’ll live with her and our family because that’s what you wanted me to be.