Author's note: Rather obviously, The TRON franchise belongs to Disney/Buena Vista Entertainment. I'm merely providing some new characters, organizations, locations, and lore to the franchise. Thanks and enjoy.

_END OF LINE

TRON: OVERLOAD

The young man sighed and tossed yet another empty Mountain Dew can at the trashcan; as completely unconcerned for his lack of accuracy as he was of the lateness of the hour. He was far too wrapped up in his own affairs to focus on his lack of aim.

"C'mon, Eddie, THINK!" he said aloud, running his hand through his mop of dark brown hair before adjusting his eyeglasses for the umpteenth time. Without taking his eyes off the cluttered virtual desktop on his computer monitor, he found his pack of gum; annoyedly tearing the mylar wrapper and shoving the cinnamon-flavored piece into his mouth. "What would dad do?"

ENCOM OS12 was his baby, his chance to shine. Sure, in the midst of last week's epic failure he had allayed the fears of ENCOM's executives and ever-finicky investors, but saving face had still cost the company millions of dollars. Dick Mackey, the newly-returned Roy Kleinberg, and some other senior staff dinosaurs seemed to be quietly blaming him for losing it to that idiot Flynn's ninja stunt. Like father, like son, Edward thought with no small amount of irony. Ed Jr. suspected it was only that sentimental old fart- Alan, the CEO that had kept him from being ejected from the board and into some deep, dark cubicle somewhere. He was better than that. Far better. Now that the prodigal son is home, they're projecting past problems with dad on me.

Flynn's yippee father pulled a similar stunt back in the eighties to wrest control of the ENCOM board from his father, Edward Dillinger Senior. Sure, dad had been doing some crazy things with that draconian AI control app he had written, but at least he didn't try to ruin the bottom line. Quite the contrary. In fact, after being cashiered by ENCOM in 1983, Dillinger Sr. had gone on to found Dillinger Systems Incorporated, now a Fortune 500 defense contractor that worked primarily with communications and military software. Dear ol' dad had pulled a string or two to get Ed Jr. on as senior programmer at ENCOM a few years ago rather than take him on at his own company. Paying one's dues, was his father's only explanation.

Hmmm, he thought, bringing up a secure, customized web browser to his father's private FTP server at DSI. Edward looked through his father's work, reading for quite a while. "SARK-ES-1117821", he said aloud. Very nice work as a network controller until it was deleted by one of that fossil Bradley's security programs. "TROFF-EX-1118092", now this was interesting. This simple sleaze program had helped to erase the MCP's (and his father's) complicity in stealing all those business and military secrets all that time ago.

Edward Jr thought for a moment that this app seemed familiar somehow. He made a search on some old hacking BBS's he had mirrored years ago and found it as a downloadable. So someone had copied and heavily modified his father's ghost program. Possibilities, possibilities.

The young man cracked his knuckles and started scripting, wincing as he saw yet another notice on Sam Flynn's induction into the board pop up on his outlook. "Sometimes the best defense is a good offense." he smiled, spitting out his gum; which tumbled straight into the trash can.

. . . . . . . .

Troff slid off his lightcycle; pushing the handlebars back together to retract the bike into its rod configuration in a glitter of soft light that reflected harshly off his light-gilded shades. He brushed his shock of long, dark hair from his face as he hurried through the turnstiles, hoping to catch the opening of the first round of the disk wars tournament. The arena bleachers were packed, so he slowed behind a line of others eagerly seeking to watch.

Someone cleared their throat behind Troff and tapped him on the shoulder. He was slightly shocked to see a program wearing a blue-studded lightsuit, showing his status as an internet subroutine.

"Greetings, program." The courier said. "Are you TROFF-EX-1118092?"

Troff's eyebrows knitted together and he suppressed a frown, "That was many upgrades ago."

The courier program seemed undaunted, "I have a user update for you."

The blank expression and unnecessarily good-natured voice irked Troff to no end. "I've had several users. Whic-" he managed to say as the courier pulled out his identity disk; a broad blue beam shining on the irritated program. The features of the program that faced the courier seemed to melt, and now looked completely different from the one the courier had just updated. Leaner, stronger, more capable, and yet utterly contemptuous, with icy eyes, aquiline nose and a harsh, tight slash of a mouth.

The courier seemed not to care in the least, "Thank you, program, and have a nice-"

The web courier flew into silvery pieces as the reborn program smashed through his head with his own identity disk. "Sarkoff. Sarkoff 1.0, if you please."

The program took stock of his surroundings. He was all alone in the hallways as everyone else had taken their seats in the arena. A dull roar showed that the excited ENCOM City fans were about to see their spectacle. Sarkoff grimaced, "I have much to do."

. . . . . . . . .

Alan Bradley put the cellphone to his ear and waited, idly tapping a pen on his desk. The desk, considered state of the art when it was installed in 1982, had been fitted with a prototype touch-based interactive panel and upward-facing monitor, twenty years before the hardware became commonplace on ATMs and smart phones. The computer inside had been replaced several times, and no longer ran SolarOS, but still had access to the ancient EN12-82 server.

Today the desk was covered with hardcopies and financial statements, and a forgotten mug of tepid coffee. A tense-looking, but attractive dark-skinned lady sat across from Alan, waiting for the CEO to finish his call.

"Hey honey. How did yoga go? Mmhmm. That's great. Listen. I have Claire here, and she's been finding some bad discrepancies with this weeks' statements. Yeah, I know that financial is not your department, but I thought maybe someone you knew had mentioned..."

Alan's eyes darted to those of the black woman, who shrugged. "It looks... kind of suspicious, yes. Well if this isn't a bug, then someone has both intimate knowledge of our company system and how not to leave any tracks... Flynn? Flynn? Lori are you out of your mind? We practically helped raise him. I'd sooner believe Kevin snuck back and did it than believe Sam would pull a stunt like this." Bradly brushed some papers from the desk; the dark, mirror-like finish reflecting Alan's ever-whitening hair.

Alan finished his call and sighed, looking back at his CFO, "She was kidding, Lori loves that boy."

Claire folded one shapely leg over the other as her delicately plucked eyebrows knitted together, "Well you have to admit, he can be sneaky. Security is still looking green around the gills whenever Sam shows up." A slow, predatory smile spread across her face, "At least he looks good in a suit." her English accent faded into a slight purr as Alan rolled his eyes.

Alan frowned, "I'm not about to equate childish pranks to million-dollar embezzling. I know him way better than that."

"As head of finance, I can't make that assumption. Are you certain that this couldn't be an outside actor?" Clair removed her cellphone from a pocket and pressed a button to silence it.

"We'll find out. I'm having Ed put together something to help find this leak, and plug it.