Flynn had described drowning before. Once. He’d been staring out at the Sea, its waves gently caressing the shore, and told him, almost like it was a joke, that Users could die from being submerged too long.
“Funny part, though,” he’d said, turning to him with a grim smile, “is that it isn’t the water that kills us. Most Users think it is, but nah.” He’d pat the left side of his chest, where he’d once said his “heart” was, and said: “It’s because this stops working.”
Tron hadn’t understood it at the time. He still doesn’t—even now, enveloped by the Sea, its deepening depths dissociating him farther and farther from the surface, from Clu, from Flynn. But he wonders, now, if drowning is like a lack of information for Users. A deprivation that leads to the rest of the system shutting down. And if Flynn could die from lack of information, then Tron thinks he’ll die from too much of it.
The waters of the Sea are code. Pure code, capable of birthing an entire people without a User’s input—the culmination of cycles upon cycles upon cycles of information. And it surrounds him. He feels more than sees the history of the Grid—its foundations—the things that make the Grid the Grid—and he lets it hold him. Grip him. Tease into the gaps between himself and Rinzler and seep in, tear him apart. Programs before him, programs to come; everything that’s made up his reality for the last thousand cycles. It’s never not overwhelming, becoming something new.
… No. No, it’s unfair to think of this like his rectification. He can sense it—it’s kind. It’s merciful. It isn’t Clu, all cruelty and selfishness and misplaced ambition. It simply… is.
He closes his eyes, the Sea finally wiping away Rinzler’s helmet, and lets himself drown.