"Humans Not Found: Abort, Retry, Ignore"

By Mistress Control Program

October 8, 1984.

"Do I look all right?" asked YORI nervously, turning around to view herself in the full-length silicon mirror. "I'm not used to this new uniform, I hope it's on straight." She fretted and tugged at the tights she was wearing under the knee-length glowing skirt, trying to smooth imagined wrinkles out of the microcircuit lines.

"You LOOK wonderful, as always", said TRON. "But why you WANT this job in the first place is beyond me. I mean, it's an awful lot of traveling to do every cycle--won't you get tired? Not to mention lost?"

"Dear, I'm a NAVIGATIONAL program. This is what I was WRITTEN to do. The only difference is that instead of guiding other programs to their destinations, I'll be guiding USERS! Think about that! The honor of getting to meet actual Users, every cycle. Of COURSE I couldn't pass that up! This is a very prestigious project, and after all this time, it's finally going to happen. And _I_ get to be the first User-Guide ever!" She grinned. "Wish me luck!"

Then she glanced at the spot on the wall where the chronometer was supposed to be and it obligingly glowed itself into existence. "I'm late! I gotta go. Did you remember to feed the Bit?" She indicated their hovering pet.

"Uh, yeah" TRON lied, stepping into one of his combat boots with a grunt. He was late for HIS job, too.

The small, silvery-white geometric shape in question flew right in his face at this. It morphed into a pointy red shape.

=NO= it said.

"Okay, I forgot!" said the exasperated program. He walked over to the energy sink and materialized a bowl of liquid electricity. "Give me a break, will ya?"

=NO=

YORI had to cover her mouth to keep the giggle from getting out.

"Here!" said TRON, laying the bowl next to the Bit in midair. "Satisfied?"

=YESYESYESYESYESYESYESYES=

YORI grinned. "Have fun fighting off those hacker-conscripts, dear!" and went out the door.

There was a knock at the door.

Flynn abruptly took his feet off the desk, switched off the tape of "Oh, Sherrie" by Steve Perry that was blasting across the room and picked up a pen, in a vain attempt to look professional. He WAS the President of a huge worldwide corporation, after all. Gotta keep up the illusion for the Mundanes.

However, the frazzled, slightly-too-long hair, his body language in general, and the bright colors and casual fit of his "suit" would have given away the fact to anybody with EYES that this young man was NOT exactly your typical stuffy executive.

"Come in", he said, running his fingers through his hair.

When he saw who it was, he relaxed. "Oh, it's only you guys", he smiled as Alan and Lora Bradley, his Head of Accounting and his Vice-President of Scientific Research, respectively--and two of his very best friends--walked in hand in hand. "What the heck are you still doing here, programs? I thought you were off on your honeymoon by now."

Alan cleared his throat and looked nervously at the floor. "Um, he said, taking off his thick glasses and wiping them on his conservative grey blazer, "we--um, well, we kinda--"

"That wonderful big house Alan was so hyped on turned out to cost quite a bit more than we thought." Lora broke in. "And we just don't have enough money to go to Hawaii now."

"Well, if all you wanna do is borrow money from me, sure!" chuckled Flynn. "After all, not even COUNTING my actual salary, the royalties I'm getting off that game I sold to that new company, Nintendo, about the two Italian plumbers who jump and throw fireballs ALONE would let me keep you guys in Hawaii for a YEAR."

"No, that's not it," said Lora. "You see, Alan says he doesn't want to fly--"

"I HATE heights", the tall man shuddered.

"--and that he gets seasick", she finished.

"But what other way IS there to get to Hawaii?" wondered Flynn, baffled. Then his eyes went wide.

"Unless--you mean--"

"Yep", grinned Lora. "The digitizing laser. It WAS originally designed to teleport humans from one place to

another. And it's been on-line and working fine for months now, so I think it's time we gave it a trial run. Didn't

you say YOU used it to get to Hawaii?"

"Uh, yeah", said Flynn. "I hooked up another laser at my beach house in Honolulu. Which you guys are welcome to use once you get there, by the way, and the car, too. The laser worked great. Of course, my luggage got lost at the O'Hare dataport, and the in-transit food was TERRIBLE, but--" Lora punched him playfully on the arm. They all laughed.

But what he WASN'T telling them was that in the 30 seconds that went by in the outside world while the laser digitized him, the process put him through the ENCOM worldwide computer network and reversed the process to spit him out in Honolulu. He had been through what felt like about a WEEK's worth of traveling in a computer fairyland populated by living programs! They would never believe him.

But they were soon to find out for themselves.

****

The elevator stopped at the Research and Design floor. Flynn, Lora, and Alan poured out.

"You might want to deactivate the TRON and YORI programs temporarily", said Flynn as they ran up the stairs to the laser station. "I mean--" he broke off. So you won't run into your own doubles while in the computer world and freak out? he thought to himself. Oh, yeah, like they'd buy THAT. Smooth one, Kevin. Real smooth.

Alan and Lora turned around to look at him strangely. "ENCOM will still need a security program while we're gone, and you KNOW TRON is the best one we've got," said Alan, confused.

"And we need YORI--I've just transferred it to the task of making sure digitized humans get off at the correct stop", said Lora, equally confused.

Flynn put up his hands and sighed. "Never mind."

DuMont, the older scientist, came from around an old mainframe computer at the sound of their voices. "Ah, Alan, Lora, you're still here!" he exclaimed, hugging both of them. "Why aren't you off on your honeymoon?"

"That's why we're here", said Lora. "We're going to use the digitizing laser to get there."

"Oh!" said DuMont, delighted to see his baby project get some actual use. "Allow me." He flicked a switch and the machinery warmed up, humming with power.

Alan flinched at the rather ominous sound. "I'm not sure I'm going to like this."

"Scaredy-cat", teased Lora. "It'll be just a short tingling, then the next thing you know you'll be in Hawaii! It'll take seconds! How bad can it be?"

Alan still looked unconvinced.

"Look I'll make you a bet", offered Lora. "I'll bet you LIKE this better than any other way of traveling you've ever tried before."

Alan chuckled. "You're on. If I win, I want you to buy me that DeLorean I've been looking at for my birthday. If YOU win, which is unlikely, you--well, what do you want?"

Lora bit her lip while she thought. "Um...how about, one favor from you to be called in whenever I happen to think of it?"

"It's a deal."

DuMont pushed Alan in front of the laser. "Stand here, please."

"You're making me go first?" he said in dismay.

"It won't send two objects through at once," explained DuMont. He threw the switch before Alan could complain again, and he was reduced to a thin, glowing grid of green lines and then disappeared, piece by piece, from head to toe, entirely.

"Neat," said Lora.

"Now, it needs five seconds to complete the cycle and warm back up again," said DuMont. "Here goes something."

And Lora disappeared too.

Flynn put his head in his hands. Boy, were they EVER in for a surprise!

***

Alan materialized safe and sound, but not where he expected to find himself. His eyes bugged out as he tried--in vain--to take in his surroundings. A huge vista of a jet BLACK sky filled with oddly-shaped vehicles soared overhead. Weird huge geometric shapes that he supposed were buildings of some kind loomed all around. The black floor had a large yellow grid pattern. Impossibly streamlined motorcycle-like things rushed by on walkways that hung in the air without anything holding them up. It was all very abstract, geometric, high-tech, and sterile.

And EVERYTHING, including the busy crowds of PEOPLE, seemed to be made of nothing but light!

"What happened to Hawaii?" Alan asked out loud of no-one in particular. "What IS this place?" He looked down at himself and saw for the first time that HE had been changed, too. He was now dressed in strangely glowing white clothing like all the other people. Molded body-armor covered the upper part of his body, and he had a plastic helmet over his dark hair. His hands were clad in rubbery gloves. And on the lower part of his body--

"White spandex tights?" he groaned. "EEwww." And all of it was covered with intricate patterns of lines and other geometric shapes like the data pathways of a microchip, blown up to larger size.

"Ok, Lora, Flynn put you up to this, didn't he?" he yelled into the void. "Very funny, now jump out and scare me already, 'kay?"

Nothing happened.

Alan waited. Nothing continued to happen.

One of those motorcycle-things suddenly zoomed right at him, almost running him over. He jumped out of the way just in time. "Watch it!" he yelled angrily.

The motorcycle suddenly disappeared into just a grid of green lines in the general shape of the vehicle, then into nothing as the person inside stood up and stretched. "Oh, sorry." said the driver. He then bent over, the motorcycle reversed the process and reappeared around him in layers, and he was off at blinding speed.

Alan rubbed his eyes.

"Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore", he muttered.

"Oh, hello!" said a cheery--and familiar--female voice. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting." A glowing woman in a miniskirt over circuit-patterned tights and cute little pointed-toe shoes walked over to him from around a corner.

"Welcome, honored User! I will be your navigation program--" She stopped abruptly as she saw his face.

"Dear!" she exclaimed, "what are YOU doing here? You're supposed to be at work!" She pushed him through a wall that disappeared as she approached it. "Get on the buss and get over to the memory bank 27-J!" She pushed him into some kind of a mass-transit vehicle that operated on antigravity as it flew into view.

"But--" said Alan. "This was all going WAY too fast for him. "Lora, what are you talking about--" the door to the vehicle sealed itself into a blank wall and it rushed off, with no motor, no noise.

"What a husband", smiled YORI. "Risks his job just to say hi to me on my first day at work." She sat down on a digital chair to await the first REAL Users.

***

Flynn looked at his monitor in disgust. He could not BELIEVE this was happening.

"MORGAN!" he yelled at the temp who was covering for Alan, "I just got this message saying that there's a hacker trying to get into our research files and they're almost all the way in! You KNOW it's your job to keep them out! What are you, asleep over there?"

"I'm sorry." cowered the small redheaded woman. "I don't know how."

Flynn clenched his teeth. "It's very simple. You just type 'ACTIVATE TRON PROGRAM PRIORITY CODE 4" and he--um, I mean, IT--will do practically all the work for you! All you have to do is supervise its progress between typing up those inventory reports! Shiesh!"

"Sorry," said Morgan again, and typed in the command.

YORI whirled around as she felt a tap on her shoulder. "Guess who?" said a voice in her ear.

"TRON!" she yelled. "What are you doing here? I just barely sent you off!"

"It's my break", he grinned. "I just HAD to come see you, my little snuggle-bit." He kissed her. "Besides, I got some other User running me now, she'll never notice I'm gone. Alan1 doesn't seem to be in charge at the moment."

"Ah, what the heck," said YORI. "There's nothing going on here, right now, either." She threw her arms around him.

Lora appeared in the same strange landscape her husband had appeared in what she THOUGHT was almost instantaneously ago. Of course, being of a scientific bent, Lora had a rather different reaction than Alan's.

"Cool."

She immediately set out to explore, and rounding a trapezoidal corner, she stopped in shock.

A couple stood there, two glowing microcircuit-covered people, kissing each other passionately. The woman had her back to Lora, but the man looked exactly like Alan!

"Get away from my husband, you little transistorized TRAMP!" she yelled, rushing towards the woman.

The woman turned around with an indignant look on her face. "YOUR husband?!" she snapped. "He's--"

They both froze.

Lora was looking at her exact double.

YORI was looking at her exact double.

TRON thought he had better lay off the fermented electron juice.

"Who the heck are you?" demanded Lora, putting her hands on her hips.

"My file designation is YORI," replied YORI in an angry tone, not too happy about being called a tramp. She put HER hands on HER hips. "Who are YOU?"

"This is just too much", muttered TRON. He wisely stepped back out of the way.

Lora blinked in surprise. "YORI?" she asked. "That's the name of the navigation program I wrote!"

"You're Lora2?" gasped YORI. "Forgive me, oh my User." She flung herself to her knees on the floor.

"My name is Lora Bradley", snapped Lora, "and get off the floor. I'm still waiting to hear what you were doing with my husband!"

"This is MY husband, TRON", YORI replied.

"TRON?" said Lora. "That's the name of the program Alan's so proud of!"

"Alan1", said TRON reverently. "And I sense he's near." He blinked and reeled a bit. "VERY near."

"Oh, no." gasped YORI as sudden realization hit her, her face going pale and her circuit-lines flickering in alarm.

"Oh, no oh no oh no oh no..."

"What?" said Lora, shaking her electronic counterpart.

"I just sent a USER off to do TRON's job!" She buried her face in her hands.

"Well, that's not so bad," ventured Lora. "He'll just be stuck doing some paperwork for a while, drink some digitized coffee--"

TRON interrupted her. "We are not the same person, and we do not have the same jobs." he reminded her. "I'm a security program. That means I have to FIGHT off hacked-in programs."

"He's the greatest warrior in the system," smiled YORI, putting her arm around the tall program proudly.

"Warrior?!" shrieked Lora. "But ALAN's no warrior! He's an ACCOUNTANT, for pete's sake! He'll be killed! Or deleted, or whatever you call it here."

TRON put his hand on his chest and staggered backwards a step, almost losing his balance. "My User", he panted, breathing raggedly. "He's hurt and in danger."

"Well, let's GO to him already! I assume that little link you seem to have with him will tell you where he is..."

* * * *

Alan lay on the floor, panting. The circular pad he was lying on was mostly disintegrated, and he was seconds away from falling into the bottomless pit below, but he was exhausted from all the unaccustomed running around. It's not that he was fat or anything by a long shot, but with his desk job, he just didn't get as much exercise as he should, and now he was really regretting it. All the other man had to do was attack ONE more time and he would be gone.

The skinny yellow hacked-in program caught his disk and looked down at Alan pityingly. "So, this is the greatest warrior in the system?" he mocked. "If had known it was going to be THIS easy, I would have broken into this place macrocycles ago!" He stood there laughing.

As Alan struggled to his feet, a voice sounded from behind them.

"Stop right there, you miserable excuse for an illegal function call!" bellowed TRON. Alan's jaw dropped almost to his boots as a man who looked EXACTLY LIKE HIM, down to the same markings on the armor!--leapt gracefully across the huge void and landed next to Alan on what was left of the platform. "Are you all right, my User?" he asked, concerned. He seemed half-afraid to actually touch him.

"Yeah, I think I'm"--Alan stopped as a bolt of yellow light suddenly whacked his mysterious double hard, right between the shoulder blades. The program fell onto his face, gasping in pain. His circuit-lines were flickering in and out in an alarming way.

"TRON!" yelled YORI from across the void, but she couldn't jump that far.

Alan looked up. The yellow program's disk was flying back into his hand.

"You JERK!" he yelled. "Attacking a guy when his back is turned!" Operating purely on anger, he leapt over to the hacked program's platform before his brain had a chance to tell his body he shouldn't be ABLE to do that. He picked the program up by his collar and shook him. "What kind of a creep does that!" The program just bugged his eyes out at how dangerous his formerly wimpy opponent had suddenly become. Alan tossed him over the side in contempt.

Then he went back to the other pad, where TRON was still on the verge of de-rezzing. "We gotta get you to the nearest hospital," he said, attempting to pick him up, "or whatever you call it--" he stopped as energy unexpectedly flowed down his arm and into the body of his security program. TRON's glow steadied, then went to an intense fluorescent blue.

"Thank you," he said, bowing to Alan. He waved his hands, and the platform they were standing on moved itself over until it was flush with the cliff that YORI and Lora were standing on. As the two men stepped off, both CORRECTLY-matched couples embraced each other.

"I guess you don't think I'm so great now", said Alan, embarrassed. "I mean, compared to that great warrior, I'm just a wimpy computer nerd."

"On the contrary", whispered Lora, running her fingers down one of the circuit lines on his back, "I thought you were GREAT there at the end."

"AHEM", said YORI. "I hate to break up this touching reunion, but I have a job to do! I have to guide you two Users to your destination. Where to?"

"Uh..." said Alan, with a glazed look on his face, "Hawaii."

"I have to stay here" said TRON, sheepishly. "Just because my personal User isn't running me doesn't mean I can just go off-line whenever I feel like it. I've got an important job to do and no-one else is going to do it for me."

YORI kissed him goodbye. "See ya later." She then turned to the human couple. "Let's go!"

* * * *

"Well", said Lora, snuggling up to Alan as they lay on a gorgeous beach outside Flynn's vacation home, watching the sun go down, "What did you think of your first digitized trip?"

"After all the almost-getting-killed part, it was lovely," I can hardly wait to go back and talk to all those people again." he answered, ruffling her hair.

"A-HA!" she crowed. "You LIKED it! You just admitted it! That means that _I_ win our bet! Ha ha!"

Alan had to think for a moment to remember what she was talking about. After all, even though only 30 seconds had gone by in the outside world, they both FELT as if they had just lived through a week. And what a strange week it had been!

"Oh, that bet." He sighed resignedly. "So, have you figured out what favor you want from me, then?"

"Yep," Lora grinned. "I noticed that you looked awfully CUTE in that white spandex costume." She waggled her eyebrows.

Alan gulped. "You WOULDN'T..."

Lora leered at him and dangled a set of key in his face. "Rev up the Ferarri, Romeo, we're goin' to the mall!"

----------------------------------------------------------

I hope you all liked it. Yes, I know that a story about the two of them meeting their alteregos for the first time

COULD be a super-dramatic epic, but an idea of how to do it as a COMEDY just suddenly came into my mind

and I hope you liked it. I also hope you liked the computer jargon slang. It's SUPPOSED to be corny, hey, it's

just a silly little lighthearted story! Hope it provided some laughs. :)

This is your dying-of-writer's-cramp Mistress Control Program, saying:

END OF LINE

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