Initial Interface
As a fan of the original Tron film, I always wondered how Alan and Lora (and Tron and Yori) got together after Lora's break up with Flynn. Here is how I envisioned it. Usual disclaimers apply.
The employee cafeteria was characteristically bustling this Tuesday, but as far as Alan Bradley was concerned, there were only two people present: himself and, separated from him by a seemingly vast expanse of tables, Lora Baines. She looked serious as she paged through what looked to be a technical manual while she picked at her salad. Serious … but not as sad as she had looked for a long time after whatever happened between her and Flynn went down.
Alan frowned a bit as he stabbed at his mound of mashed potatoes. He hadn't known Kevin Flynn well; as a more junior programmer at ENCOM, Alan hadn't moved in the exalted circles that Flynn dominated. Sure, the man was brilliant – but he was reckless. A corner-cutting kind of guy, quick with the Big Ideas, but impatient. Alan couldn't even imagine Flynn fretting over countless iterations of code, methodically seeking the smallest bugs, the most obscure bits of language that would make a program faster, more efficient, most stable. A program like Alan's Tron.
The young programmer smiled softly to himself as he thought of his creation – and that's how he thought of Tron. After months of writing, testing, debugging and more writing, the program was still a work in progress. But Alan knew he was getting close. A dedicated, yet independent security program that could ward off attacks from outside systems, neutralize bugs within its own system and prevent malicious viruses from infiltrating and damaging the other important programs the resided on the Encom network.
Lora Baines was working on such a program, something called Yori. Alan didn't know much about it, only what he'd picked up through the grapevine. Some kind of simulations administrator, he gathered. Whatever it was, coming out of the high security R&D digitization unit, it was certainly going to be cutting edge – perhaps even revolutionary. Alan wasn't surprised; Lora was as brilliant an engineer as he'd ever seen.
He lifted his gaze from his plastic tray to look at her again, watched her idly brush a strand of golden hair behind one ear as she concentrated on the text before her. So beautiful. They'd started at ENCOM at roughly the same time, fresh out of their respective universities. The alphabetical proximity of their surnames – Baines and Bradley – had meant they were often assigned to the same cohorts for training seminars, especially early in their careers at ENCOM. Even in those early days, Lora had stood out from the crowd. She was quiet, serious … yet with an inner energy that radiated from her and brightened every room she occupied. Her brilliance and creativity had quickly attracted the attention of Walter Gibbs, who claimed her for his digitization project.
Inevitably, she had also been noticed by Kevin Flynn, whose good looks and charismatic charm gave him his effortless pick of women. Though Alan might have wished someone as extraordinary as Lora Baines would be immune to such flash, she was not. They were together the better part of a year, as far as Alan could tell from his vantage point far from the glittering movers and shakers at the company.
Alan wasn't really sorry to be among the largely anonymous masses of engineers and programmers who toiled in identical cubicles in the bowels of ENCOM. Company politics and schmoozing weren't his cup of tea. So okay, maybe he wasn't exactly exciting – he suspected his coworkers would describe him as steady, meticulous, methodical … possibly even plodding. But what was wrong with that? Alan was proud of the work he'd done at ENCOM. He'd developed several critical programs and had been working his way steadily, if not spectacularly, up the security clearance tiers and payscale. He fully expected Tron to cement his position as one of the company's most valuable – dare he say talented – coders. Alan believed it was better, in the end, to glow with a steady, reliable light than flare like a skyrocket. Roman candles had a tendency to burn out quickly, after all. Sometimes they even exploded.
A little like Flynn's career at ENCOM. Alan had no idea what ultimately caused Flynn's spectacular fall from grace. There were rumors of use of company resources for personal gain. Whatever. The bottom line was, shortly after Ed Dillinger's promotion to executive vice president, Kevin Flynn was out of a job. Alan heard he was running some rinky-dink arcade downtown now. Making money hand over fist, but still. Flynn's relationship with Lora seemed to have lasted a while after he left the company, but eventually that fizzled, too.
It hurt Alan to see the vibrancy, the humming energy that previously infused her slim form, replaced by a kind of flatness. She had thrown herself into her work, evidently; at least, the output from the digitization lab over the past six months had been remarkable, culminating with the Yori program. And gradually, over the past couple of months, it seemed like Lora was emerging from her funk. Alan had observed her heart-stopping smile appear more often as she greeted colleagues in staff meetings or conferred with Gibbs over mugs of coffee in the snack bar. Alan was happy to see Lora coming back and, irrationally, gave himself just a kernel of credit for that. True, he hadn't had any direct contact with Lora to offer her comfort and support. But from his distance across the cafeteria, he had been watching, hoping, WILLING her heart to heal.
At that moment Lora lifted her head and looked straight at Alan. He saw her eyes widen slightly to find him watching her, and the trace of a smile – bemusement, he thought – appeared on her lovely face. Mortified, Alan ducked his head, snatched up his tray, and fled.