What really happened in Space Paranoids.
Based of the 1982 movie TRON and Space Paranoids from the game Kingdom Hearts II
By: Steven Lisberger and Disney
In the cyber world of Space Paranoids, the word ‘survival’ was synonymous to which it’s ‘residents’, or programs, once call it: ‘survival of the fittest’, ‘last one standing’, or ‘win, by any means necessary,’. The last one summed it up, since it was comparable to Russian roulette, where the ultimate prize is your life. And you don’t want to lose that do you? These phrases mentioned were what all the programs spoke of about the ‘grid’, including me, Tron. I mean, no on wants to lose, because if you lost, you were then ‘de-rezzed’, or deleted, and no one wanted to be ‘de-rezzed’.
The worst is that all the ‘de-rezzeing’ was conducted by one of two, or both, programs: the subordinate commander, commander Zark, and, or, the evil ‘ruler’, the MCP [Master Control Program]. They were the ones who forced us programs to once ‘play games’ against one another, but did we have a choice? Unfortunately, we didn’t at the time.
There were many kinds of ‘games’ we used to ‘play’, either from: light cycle, to a game I used to call: tank fights, ‘to get to this place or be de-rezzed by those creatures’, or to just ‘play’ against each other. The rule ‘survive’ was what the ‘games’ were based on, so you had to win to survive. That meant you had to win to live for the next ‘game’.
Oh! How rude of me. I forgot to introduce myself, I’m Tron, and I used to be a security program, but lost all my functions when the MCP attained control of the system. Ever since then, my powers were subsidiary, and I’ve been forced to ‘play the games’ with the other programs.
Now, the ‘games’ I’ve been talking about all this time. The games were light cycle, tank fight, get to the point, and death matches. These are the most common games played in the ‘grid’, to me at least. And for your information, the ‘grid’ was short for the ‘game grid’, where all the ‘games’ were held in. It’s basically a huge box with the top off and walls popping out of nowhere and at random. It’s pretty cool and is used for other stuff to, but mostly for the ‘games’.
The first ‘game’ you may want to know, that I mentioned that’s a part of this worlds’ history, was light cycle. The purpose of light cycle was to be the last one driving, awake, or on a cycle. If you ever have happened to ride a motorcycle before in your life, the light cycle were, and still are, somewhat the same, except when you needed to make a left or right turn, you would make a sharp 90 degree turn instead, still turning though. The only reason I knew how to ride one, was because my User rode a motorcycle in real life. And if I didn’t have a User to help me with everything, we would still be enslaved and forced to continue playing the ‘games’. You would not believe how many programs were ‘de-rezzed’ in that game alone. It was hard for us to get it at first, but we quickly got the hang of it and we won persistently.
‘Game’ two was what we called it, tank fights. Obviously, you can assume what we do in that ‘game’. Can you conceive what it felt; knowing that the next turn could be your last. I mean, everything happened concurrently: you firing, the other programs firing back, programs being ‘de-rezzed’ when there tank blew up, it was inconceivable. Luckily, we managed to get passed those ‘games’ alive, hurt, but alive.
‘Game’ three was a game where you had to get to a certain point, before these creatures, or viruses as we preferred them as, got to you, and when that happened, you were then ‘de-rezzed’. The only commodity we had, now world known, was the identity disk. The was ubiquities, cause everyone has, or had, one, but there also not ubiquities, cause everyone’s disk only work and obeyed the owner of the disk, that’s why it’s known as the identity disk. That was the only way to win, by getting pass the viruses with it, which was analogous to a boomerang, except it came back even if it hit something. We also found a way to win that game easily; we just had to wipe out the smallest batch of viruses in the way so they couldn’t supplement any more viruses.
Now the last ‘game’ was the MCP’s favorite and an important ‘game’ that would change Space Paranoids forever, that ‘game’ was the old-fashioned, one-on-one battle between two programs. The purpose was to defeat the other program, obviously. These match’s duration would be 10 seconds, to 2 hours, maybe more or less, long, at a time. The ways to win could be different then others. One way was to find an opening, which was mostly found when the opponent threw there disk and missed, leaving them vulnerable. Another was to throw the disk until the opponent ran out of stamina and couldn’t persevere any more. That was how some programs play this ‘game’.
Now to explain the two most important battles ever fought: the ones against the MCP and Zark.
When ENCOM, the creators of Space Paranoids and all the programs, created the MCP, they thought it would do what they programmed it to do, to make sure the system work appropriately; they never thought it would deviate from that programming. The MCP had a mind of it own and took control of the system, with the help of Zark. That why they created me, to stop them from destroying the system. Unfortunately, I failed to stop them from taking over the system. Fortunately, for 20 microcycles, more then 20 years, I have kept the MCP from destroying the system, and maybe the User world. And I knew with the help of my User, we could eliminate Zark and the MCP, and I could attain my purpose of taking over the system, away from them, and restoring Space Paranoids to what it should be. It was going to be a long battle, but it would change everything in the end.
Now the reason why I had to fight them was because they offered me to join them. They would watch me play the ‘games’ and saw that I was unbeatable. So when they summoned me, they ask if I wanted to join them. I said no, of course, and explained why. I told them that there was something written in my code that made know what to that was right, and that it was telling me that they were abusing there power, and that they should step down. And the turning point. I held my disk out towards them and promised them, that if they did not change there ways and do what they were programmed to do, that I would defeat them and repair Space Paranoids and restore it to the way it should be. The MCP and Zark were talking too, but when I said that, they were in rage, and told me that I just asked for me to be de-‘rezzed’. I replied that we were done, and left, with them angered.
Now to explain the fight with Zark, one of two important fights that liberated Space Paranoids. Zark stood there, but this time, he was different. The reason why was because of two reasons: one was because I had already beet him once, more then 20 microcycles ago, then, cause I was unable to persevere, the MCP was able to defeat me with out so much as a trouble. And two was because the MCP was now abetting this time, giving him almost the same functions as the MCP did. So when I got up, because he surprised me with a disk to the chest, I knew that it was going to be a troublesome fight, but I knew, that with my User controlling me, we were going to win. All through the duration of the fight was mostly us throwing our disks and avoiding the other programs disk attacks. What made Zark even angrier was that we were winning, making it harder for me. But with the new functions my User presented me, I was able to plan better tactics, do a thing called ‘grabbing’, and with it, Zark was defeated with an uppercut throw to the head. All that was left was the MCP.
Now, logically and ethically, Space Paranoids would soon be liberated from the MCP’s control. I also knew that he wasn’t going to just step down with out a fight. So we, the User and me, brought the fight to him. We pass the I/O Tower, were information from the User world and to other Programs across the ‘world’ could send info to and from, and were me and my User meet, and took a Solar Sailer Simulator to the Central Computer Mesa. This was were the MCP was going to be when we found him and Zark, he was there and that’s were he got the functions before we beat him. Unlike Zark, the MCP was much more advanced and much stronger then even me. Luckily, since my User always made me take illogical routes, we were able to hold a line against the MCP. The only flaw to the plan was his defense systems in place, like his blocks that deflected my disks and shot a particle laser when charged. What the MCP didn’t know, was that we had got a secret weapon, that would eradicate the MCP and anything it passes through, making it impossible to ever be recreated. Basically, he would be deleted permanently. The bad part was that, after the pervasive smoke pixels cleared, the MCP had dodged it and was preparing to finish us off. All of a sudden, my User and I, smiled. The MCP looked down, he was on his knees. I then realized that after I shot the laser, my User made me throw my disk, so when the air cleared, and the MCP wasn’t noticing, and was getting ready to strike, the disk would come back and hit him. Since was in disarray, we charged a beam of data and fired, striking him through the chest. And with that, the MCP fell, the battle was over, and Space Paranoids was cleared. The evil rain of the MCP was no more. I then took control of the world, and slowly started to reprogram Space Paranoids.
And that is what actually happened in Space Paranoids. And for those of you how are wonder about how things are now, don’t be. Everyone’s alright and everything is peaceful. There has never been a problem since that day the MCP fell, yet.