The sunset's last amber glow was fading as Sam coasted down the street and pulled the bike into Alan Bradley's front yard.
Pulling off his helmet, he glanced up to see the violet hues which streaked the sky, and immediately Quorra's remarks about sunrises and sunsets echoed back to him, along with so many other thoughts which were already there swirling in his head. All the way back from the Encom Tower he'd been distracted in thought, so much so that he'd almost missed the freeway exit.

Shuffling across the lawn, he bent to pick up the rolled-up Sunday newspaper. Glancing at portions of headlines through the clear wrapper, he could see that the front-page stories were still centered mainly around the Encom corporate restructuring and the 'Flynn Lives' investigation.
He sighed. It had been almost a week and the press hadn't let go of it one bit. He doubted they would for a long while, and it wasn't surprising to him...controversy fed this town, a hollow diet high in sensationalism and low on factual accuracy. But he hoped Alan would be able to set the media straight with a press release after Monday's board meeting. Then again, that would only correct the public's misconception of what was going on overtly with Encom and Flynn Lives. The covert and indeterminate agendas which seemed to underscore it all were another matter entirely, as was the nebulous factor of how it involved the Grid. All of that remained a mystery, and likely would for some time.

As he walked up the stairs to the front porch, suddenly a memory jumped into his already crowded thoughts...a remembrance of something his dad had told him at the safe-house, when he'd been speaking of the Grid, the ISO's ,and how he'd once hoped to change the world : Our worlds are more connected than anyone knows.

Now more than ever that comment made sense. If anything did.
He'd need to access the system through the interface at the arcade, but so far just from what he'd just learned while hacking the Encom system and servers, it seemed there was no longer a division between the Grid and the real world, and now Clu's erstwhile misguided aspirations to escape the Grid and to perfect the real world had already been trumped by someone who quite possibly intended to rule both.
The question was,...who exactly?

In terms of the router at the arcade, he now knew who the endpoint facilitator was, at least according to current ISP data and records – Ed Dillinger Junior - but there was no way this was one-man job, and it didn't seem feasible that the young Dillinger could have been involved from the inception. The DSL router was one of the first prototypes on the market, sophisticated machinery for its time, and only affordable to large corporations. Sam had tracked its serial number back to the original Encom purchase date in the early spring of 1997. Records dating back to its purchase showed that the router's serial number and software had been registered from the Encom Tower address, but trace logs showed that the router was remotely linked with the IP address of the arcade's system. Which would mean that if Ed Jr. was the one who purchased it, and the one who accessed the arcade to install it, then he would've had to have done so when he was merely a young teenaged apprentice just starting out at the company, and that seemed very unlikely.
Which then left Ed Sr. as the next plausible culprit.

But, even if Ed's father was involved, as Sam suspected he was, there was the question of how, why, and for how long.
With all the astronomical changes Kevin, Clu and Tron described as having fallen into place so suddenly on the Grid, it was as though it had all been intricately planned and set up beforehand in order to unfold the way it did...things which should not have been at all possible had happened, and had happened concurrently, defying odds and believability in the process.
And they were all things which weren't in any way congruent with Kevin Flynn's designs. His rival's designs, maybe.
But then again, as far as Sam knew, Ed Dillinger Senior was now well into his seventies. He'd been imprisoned in 1985 after the ENCOM scandal, and then upon his release in the late 1990's he'd relocated to a retirement community, so it was doubtful he'd had much involvement from either of those places.

Which left one more unanswered question – just how far back had all of this been set in motion?

Still wrestling with that thought, he tucked the newspaper under his arm and reached for his keys, shifting the motorcycle helmet to his other hand...and that's when he happened to glance at the stylized "89" sticker which graced the back of it.
His thoughts lurched.

...since 1989?...
...or even earlier?...
...oh surely the hell not...

Sam stood there staring at the sticker, his thoughts tumbling and sorting through all sorts of extreme possibilities.
If this was simply the work of the Dillingers, twenty-one years and two generations was certainly a really long span for a grudge, even considering Ed Sr.'s relatively short tint with incarceration in the mid 1980's after Flynn had blown the whistle on him. There was little doubt that both Ed Sr. and Ed Jr. had sociopathic tendencies and a tenaciously vindictive streak, certainly enough to concoct a motive in their minds, but Sam couldn't help but wonder - was it somehow more than that?
Had his father simply crossed the wrong person at the wrong time, or, had Kevin Flynn blundered into a discovery he wasn't ever supposed to make – the digital frontier - and then got locked away into the Grid because of it?

Just then the front door opened, startling Sam out of his uneasy ponderings.
He looked up to see Alan staring at him curiously.

"Is there some reason you're just standing there on the doorstep?"

Sam looked at him with raised eyebrows and gave a slightly awkward shrug, grabbing the newspaper from under his arm and offering it up to Alan. "Paper's here."

Eyes narrowing, Alan gave his godson a sidelong glance before taking the newspaper, slipping the plastic cover from it and stepping back into the foyer. Then his brow raised slightly and he smirked at the front page news from over his glasses.

"Oh, joy. And the beat goes on."

Walking a few steps into the kitchen, he casually tossed the unread paper down onto the table, finishing his sentence as the stacks of newsprint landed with a soft slap against the wood, "...I'm guessing Kevin may want to read it though, so, here it is."

Then he turned towards the stairwell, gesturing up the stairs ahead of him. "I was just on my way up to the study, to work on that press release for a little while. Maybe then the media can at least get the facts straight."

Sam nodded, looking over into the empty living room. "Where is he?"

Alan stopped halfway up the staircase, looking back at him. "Who- ...Kevin?"

Sam's brows raised, the hint of a sardonic grin on his face to match the slightly exaggerated nod. "Um,...uh-huh."

The older man smirked. "Hey, smart-guy. There are three possible answers to that question here,..." he paused, his smirk turning into a slight grin, "...one of them is soaking in the spa, and the other two are playing ... Space Paranoids."

Sam chuckled, suppressing a grin of his own as he started down the hallway towards the back door. "Got it."

Kevin sat leaning back against the smooth tiles, his arms stretched beside him along the concrete edges of the spa as soothing hot water from the jets pounded gently against his back and shoulders. Eyes closed in peaceful relaxation, he had simply listened to the soft, aerated whisper of the jets as it blended with the bubbling of the waters, until the combined sounds had lulled him into a place of non-thought. He'd sat that way for many moments, until the passing of the moments no longer mattered.

The thing which finally broke the blissful hypnotic lull was the abrupt lack of sound, as the timer reached the end of its cycle and the spa's propulsion motor cut off suddenly, slowing the bubbling waters to a gentle swirl and then to stillness around him. He didn't move or open his eyes, and instead sat there peacefully enjoying the silence.

Until he heard the soft whoosh of the sliding doors opening across the patio.
He didn't move or open his eyes at first.
But in the absence of a voice, coupled with the soft shuffle of approaching footsteps, his curiosity got the better of him and he finally opened his eyes, then gave a soft smile.

"Sam...you're back."

His father's voice was so calm and so quiet that Sam almost had to strain his ears to hear it.
He lowered himself to sit on the chaise lounge, moving the folded towel out of the way, and then just sat looking at his dad for a second...the placid, otherworldly calm Zen-like quality was back again, the way Kevin had been on the Grid when Sam had first seen him,...as opposed to the more energetic, youthful silly side he'd seen of his father as they'd all clowned around together, all of them laughing at the unintentional comedy show that the former-programs provided so often.

Kevin glanced at the towel on the chair beside Sam, and smiled. "Mind tossing that over?...'think I've been in here long enough."

Then bracing his hands flat on the side of the spa, he lifted himself up to sit at it's edge, his feet still dangling in the water, and then reached for the towel as Sam handed it to him.

"Thanks. This thing really is transcendental. I could stay in it for hours."

He dried his face and then ruffled the towel briskly through his damp hair. Then he stopped and peered quizzically through the pile of terrycloth when he heard his son's soft chuckling.

"What?..."

Sam grinned and gave a nod at the swimsuit his father was wearing - long, drawstring surfer shorts which reached nearly to his knees, made of bright red cloth, almost a day-glow shade, with white trim at the edges.
Kevin chuckled too, raising one foot from the water and looking down at the leg of the shorts.

"Oh. These. Ha,...yeah,...of all the pairs I had, these were the only ones I could still fit into. Not quite as lean as I used to be."

Sam shrugged. "I dunno,...seems like you're in pretty good shape."

Kevin glanced down at his water-stippled chest and arms, then gave a shrug as he slowly climbed to standing position.

"Yeah,...well,...maybe so. Aside from a few aches and pains here and there, can't complain. That's what twenty one years of yoga will do for ya', I guess."

His voice trailed off, and he gave a wry smile as he stood up slowly, wrapping the towel around the dripping-wet suit and tucking it closed around his waist.
Then he spoke again with a soft voice and a resigned, peaceful smile.

"Yoga is pretty much what I did all day,...besides meditating,...well, and the occasional bit of writing."

Sam wasn't quite sure how to reply...it still saddened him to think that his father had literally lost over two decades of his life and youth – a span which had seemed like a thousand years on the Grid - each day of it spent idly whiling away the hours in a virtual prison which was undeserved...but the grace with which he had accepted it all was what struck Sam the most, and it was part of what made him so speechless now. Wordlessly he stood from the chaise lounge, and the two slowly walked across the patio towards the house.
It was Kevin who finally spoke again, switching them to a lighter subject as they neared the sliding glass doors.

"They've been at this for a solid half-hour at least."

He nodded towards the interior of the game room, where Tron and Clu stood with rapt attention focused on the Space Paranoids machine, and then he chuckled quietly, watching them through the glass.

Sam gave a cynical half-chuckle and a smirky-grin. "Can't believe Clu didn't wanna' try the spa. Type A. Perfect customer for it."

Kevin smirked. "Oh,...he did. For like, two minutes. Got bored. Tron made it about five minutes or so. Then he went to join Clu. They've been glued to that game ever since."

Still grinning slightly, Sam rolled his eyes, shaking his head.

"Sometimes it's kinda like having two kid brothers. Only, they're like almost my age. Well,...one kid brother, anyway. Tron's kinda' like Alan's kid,... and Clu's kinda' like yours."

Sam glanced back at the two former-programs again, but Kevin just stared at him for a long moment, the uncanny statement sending his thoughts suddenly drifting back to the dream, and to what Dumont had said to him...make sure your sons are safe...

When Sam looked back at him, he blinked, intense eyes narrowing and softening as he mustered the hint of a distracted smile.

"Yeah,...kind of."