Tron Reunion

By: Alan1Clone

Chapter 1: Contact.

Disclaimer:

I do not own Tron or any of the characters. I also do not make any money from these stories. Honestly? This story will, most likely, deviate from the chronology of events created by Disney in the Tron "universe." My apologies if I offend any fellow Tron fans. This is a reflection of my life, and not, necessarily, faithful to the Tron mythology. Thank you for reading. Alan1Clone

Alan Bradly sat at his computer terminal brooding. It had been several years since Kevin Flynn had been dragged, so to speak, inside the computer by the Master Control Program, or MCP as Flynn always called it. Edward Dillinger was long-gone, and Flynn had been made Encom's CEO. Lately, however, Alan noticed that Flynn would disappear for long periods of time.

At first, Alan's best friend didn't explain this, but then one night, Flynn arrived, wild-eyed, at Alan's door. He could barely contain his excitement as he described how he had gotten back on to what he called "the grid" and how the new free system was evolving quickly. Alan found this almost as difficult to believe as Flynn's initial recounting of his battle against the MCP. Yet, Alan thoroughly trusted Flynn, and besides, you couldn't fake the wild amazement that shone in Flynn's eyes. There was just no way.

Well, now, Flynn had been back and running Encom and growing the company rapidly. He had made Alan his second in command, but lately this was not an easy task for Alan. Laura had died, suddenly, after fighting cancer for a number of years. Her death left a void in Alan…a void that was threatening, daily, to swallow him.

When Flynn had returned from battling the MCP, he had described how there were programs that seemed to embody the users such as Alan, himself, Laura and even one of their co-workers, whose name escaped Alan at the moment. This thought had been nagging Alan lately. What if he could find Yori, Laura's program on the grid? No, this was stupidity. A digital replacement for Laura? Yet, life here, on the other side of the screen was increasingly empty.

Alan sat, lost in thought, barely paying attention to the monitor in front of him. His hands were in his lap, so when, suddenly, words appeared on the screen, Alan snapped out of his reverie. What he saw on the screen made him pause and stare.

"Hello, Alan1"

"What the devil is this?" Alan muttered. While Alan supposed it was some system admin trying to contact him, the clock on his wall told him this was impossible. Knowing this, he was curious enough that he typed a response.

"Hello."

Within seconds, he received a response. At first, he assumed it would be a syntax error message. Instead, he saw the following:

"Oh, good, you are there! This is Yori. We need your help here on the grid!"

Alan shook his head and rubbed his eyes. Someone was playing a joke. It couldn't be Flynn, because he was back on the grid. But, who else could it be? No one around here knew about Yori. Only Flynn. Something was up, and Alan decided to plunge in and find out what.

"What kind of help?" he typed.

"Something has happened to Flynn, and he always told me to contact you if anything happened to him."

Alan blinked. This was getting too weird to be any kind of prank. Something in his gut told him to just go with it.

"What happened? How can I help?"

Soon, the response came:

"Flynn has gone missing. We need you to find him. Things on the grid are starting to unravel without him."

"But, how can I help?" Alan asked.

"Use the digitizing array there in Encom. I will find you when you log into the terminal down there."

Alan again blinked in surprise. This was the very array that Laura and Walter Gibbs had been working on when the Master Control Program first drew Flynn into the grid. No one had touched it in a few years. He paused, thoughtfully, for a moment, then got up and raced down the stairs to where the array was. He picked the very terminal Flynn had used when drawn in by the MCP. He logged in there, and the first thing he typed was, "Hello, Yori."

After a moment's hesitation, Alan saw the awaited response.

"Hello, again, Alan1."

Alan responded in kind. Then, not sure what to do next, typed, "Okay, now what."

As he waited for the response to appear on screen, he suddenly heard the digitizer array power up. At the same moment, on the screen, he saw the response:

"Sit back and relax."

Next moment, Alan's view of the world shifted and twisted. Everything in his field of vision suddenly appeared to be formed from grid-like patterns. Then, there was a few strange flashes and flickers, and Alan found himself standing in a structure vaguely similar to a phone booth. Glowing bands of energy formed a barrier that held him inside this booth. Everything around him looked as if it was all drawn with computer aided design. It was all computerized 3-D models of buildings, etc, or so it appeared.

Alan spotted a button on the left-hand side of the booth's barricaded entrance and pressed it. The barrier disappeared.

"Now," Alan thought, "I can find out what in the world is happening. This just can't be happening!"

It didn't take him long to find out. As he stepped away from the booth-like structure, Alan spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. At the same time, he heard a voice that made him freeze in his tracks? Was it Laura? He shook his head adamantly. No, impossible, he told himself. Yet, the figure that suddenly faced him gave the lie to this thought. It had to be Laura. It looked exactly like her. The voice, however, said, "Hello, Alan1, I am Yori."