Los Angeles
Alan Bradley's residence


Sam stood in the game room beside the Space Paranoids machine, watching as Tron and Clu played through another round.
As Kevin and Alan entered the game room, he turned and walked to greet them. When Kevin looked up to see his son, he grew more concerned, seeing in Sam's eyes a hint of the same gravity he'd seen in Alan's. Then he turned back around to see Alan closing the door to the hallway and flipping open the cover of a small panel which was attached to the wall.
Concerned and now confused, his thoughts hammered at him.
...WHAT is going ON?...

He was just about to ask that, when the panel made a chirping sound, then tiny beams of barely-visible laser light reached across each wall at the baseboards and ceiling, spanning from corner to corner all around the room.
As if that wasn't strange enough, with the press of another button on the panel a large semi-transparent metallic screen emerged from the decorative cornices just above the sliding glass doors, slowly lowering all the way to the floor and stopping when it reached the carpet.
He thought at first it was some kind of movie projection screen, but instead it seemed more likely to be a window covering, and one which looked more like it belonged on the Grid than in Alan's game room. His brows raised and his eyes opened wide, and he looked over at Alan.

"Okay. Wanna' explain? You're tipping the weird-o-meter here."

Alan sighed, glancing at Sam, then back at Kevin. "I don't want to cause alarm,... but..."

Kevin waited, and then after a few seconds with only a pause and no reply, his chin dipped as he stared at Alan, his voice getting that singsong quality again. "Bu-ut?..."

Alan just raised an eyebrow and glanced at Sam again.
Kevin' still stared at him, waiting, and then finally threw his arms out to his sides, upturned palms imploring his old friend for some sort of explanation.

"But WHAT, Alan?.. You've turned this room into,...into-... what ?...the bat cave?...Why?...What the hell's going on!"

Tron and Clu had turned around from the game machine to look at them.
They knew that sound in the Creator's voice - without a doubt it meant someone had some explaining to do.

Alan sighed again, adjusting his glasses.
How to even begin to explain this, especially to a man who had been out of the technological loop for over two decades.

"There's a...situation."

Still exasperated, Kevin's brows raised again. "Yeah, I kinda figured that."

Alan drew in another deep breath, then gestured at the room around him.

"Alright...except for the kitchen and living room, this whole place is shielded - wireless, radio frequencies, microwave, electromagnetic interference, you name it, it blocks it. Built-in shielding underneath the drywall, ceiling, floors, and this panel screen guards the window. The shielding is the reason the cell phone won't get reception."

Alan paused, reaching into his coat pocket for his cell phone, then turning it off.
Kevin eyed the tiny phone oddly. The last time he'd seen a cell phone it was as big as a shoebox and weighed about three pounds.
Eyes intense, he just nodded and looked back at Alan, still waiting for the whole explanation.
Alan pocketed the cell phone and walked towards the screen which had covered the sliding doors.

" And of course, there's an alarm system. But in this room, there's an added measure...the beams you see along the walls are part of a fiber-optic lattice designed to not only detect and block intrusions but to scramble any type of wave that gets through. The rest of the house is about 80-90%. This room,... is a fortress."

Kevin was now even more unsettled.
Not by the technology itself, though that certainly was stunning compared to what he'd known of in the late 1980's, but by the fact that Alan apparently saw the need for this right now.
And his son didn't seem to disagree, which obviously meant they knew something he didn't, and that was what he was trying to find out.

"Alan,...wh-..." Kevin started to speak, but Alan raised a hand, continuing his explanation.

"It's something I contracted to have done a while back. Years ago when the tech industry boomed, Encom started working with defense accounts, and a competitor tried concocting various scandals to knock us out of the market. After what almost happened to Hardington I wasn't taking any chances...oh, you weren't here for that, that's a long story,... but, anyway,...I consulted a security firm, and, well...voila."

Alan's face was still very somber. Kevin just stared at his old friend, frustrated.
He felt almost as though his eyebrows had been glued into the raised position, because he'd been standing there staring incredulously like this for long moments now, and still the explanation hadn't started making sense. Moreover, he wasn't concerned about the how of it...he wanted Alan to get to the point, and tell him exactly why all this was necessary right now.

"Alan...I know-...okay, no-... I don't know, obviously,...all the newest developments in security technology. Kinda' been out of the tech loop for a while. But,...man, what I'm asking you is – what is all this about? Why the need for it right now? Obviously something's happened, so tell me what it is!"

Clu at this point was standing beside the wall nearest the Tron machine, leaning close to it and keening his ear.
Tron was just staring at Alan, equally as intrigued and anxious as Kevin was.
Sam stepped forward just then, drawing a deep breath.

"Dad,...okay,... yeah. Something happened at the board meeting this morning."

Kevin just nodded.

"Well,...I kept an eye on Ed Jr. during the meeting. Couldn't help it, after what he said yesterday. So, he didn't even bat an eye when Alan was discussing the press release issue. Cool as a cucumber. Too cool. Didn't pay attention the whole meeting, and that's unlike him. Didn't even look up much, just kept looking at his tablet the whole time and typing."

Kevin looked at him strangely, then smirked. "Typing? That's pretty disruptive."

Sam paused, and looked over at him, then realized what his dad most likely thought. "Not like on a keyboard,...it's a small digital tablet,...wireless, hand-held,...it's like a-...well,..."

Kevin sighed. Of course. Another boon in technology he'd missed.
He just nodded, waving Sam onward to continue.

"So,...yeah, still pretty disruptive if you ask me,...but anyway, so, after he sits there like that for a half hour, I got...curious. Turns out he needs to tighten his wireless permissions, 'cause look what I intercepted...saved it as a document..."

Sam pulled a small flat device from his pocket, unlocking the screen and calling up the image, then holding it forth. Kevin inspected it, frowning as an uneasy feeling crawled over him.

The first ILC transmission was at 8:29:22.

EDJ_0431: YOU THERE DAD?

And then, not even five seconds later, a reply. Definitely some fast typing.

MCTRL_751: I'M ALWAYS HERE. WHAT IS IT?

Kevin's eyes narrowed with alarm as he read the rest of the transmission, Sam showing him how to scroll the screen. The first thing he noticed was the consistency of the almost-nonexistent time lapse which was in between each line and the reply from Dillinger Sr. Something about that was as disturbing as seeing the username itself. There seemed little doubt that it meant Master Control Program.

EDJ_0431: SLIGHT CHANGE OF PLANS. ABOUT THE MEDIA.

MCTRL_751: I KNOW. I HEARD.

EDJ_0431: FLYNN AND BRADLEY ARE UNDOING EVERYTHING.

MCTRL_751: NOT EVERYTHING. SOME THINGS CAN'T BE UNDONE.

EDJ_0431: YOU MEAN THE GRID?

MCTRL_751: YES.

EDJ_0431: WHAT ABOUT CLU?

MCTRL_751: I'VE ALREADY TAKEN CARE OF THAT.

EDJ_0431: SO WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?

MCTRL_751: WHAT I ASKED YOU TO DO FROM THE BEGINNING. KEEP A HANDLE ON FLYNN.

EDJ_0431: AND HIS FATHER?

MCTRL_751: I TOLD YOU, THAT ONE IS MINE. NOW LET ME PAY ATTENTION TO THE MEETING. END OF LINE.

Kevin looked up, his eyes meeting Alan's first, and then Sam's.
Now he understood the reason for the seriousness he saw in their faces, as well as the need for all the increased security.

Sam stepped forward just then, his expression even more solemn. He didn't really know how to break this news. His voice was softer. "That's...not the worst part."

Kevin just looked at him, waiting.
Sam glanced at Alan, and then took a deep breath, continuing.

"Did some records checking for a few minutes when I got back to my office, secure line, not the ENCOM intranet. Edward Dillinger Senior passed away four years ago, in upstate New York."

Kevin looked back and forth between Sam and Alan, suddenly feeling a sickening dread roll through him, and it didn't take him long to put the pieces together.
This was one genre of technology he'd been well aware of already, even back in '89, obviously, hence the Grid.
And now, obviously it had grown beyond just the point of being speculative science.
It had transcended the very boundaries of human mortality itself.
Artificial Intelligence. Electronic sentience after death. The final digital frontier.
His thoughts screamed at him, what he should have already known by now in his gut.

...Edward Dillinger Senior has become a ghost in the machine...

He turned and stepped towards the pool table, leaning slowly back against it, his gaze seeming faraway for a few seconds as he processed the overwhelming gravity of this.
How exactly does one take the news that one's worst nightmare never really ended?
What this meant for him, Sam, Alan, Clu, Tron, Quorra, basically his family, he couldn't even fathom. Not to mention what it meant for the rest of the world.

After a deep breath, he slowly shook his head, face more somber than either Sam or Alan had ever seen it.
He spoke just barely above a whisper, and this time there was nothing lighthearted in the statement.

"Bio-digital jazz,...indeed."