Chapter 3

Alan leaned back in his desk chair, arms crossed behind his head, and stared up at the sign hanging on the wall of his cubicle: "Gort Klaatu Barada Nikto." He used the sign like a mantra when he was trying to focus on some deep problem. At the moment, that was an unexpected glitch – more of a hiccup, really – that he'd observed in Tron this morning while running a security scan of the bundle of programs in the digitization lab. For a microsecond, his program had appeared to … well, shiver was about the only word he could come up with to describe it. But Alan had scrutinized the code until his eyes ached, and couldn't find a bug. Huh.

Stymied, Alan closed his eyes and let his mind wander to more pleasant themes – specifically, a certain blonde engineer with milky skin and clear, blue eyes, not to mention a body that …

"Hey!"

Alan lurched forward in his chair at the sharp, vaguely familiar voice. He swiveled to see the object of his fantasies standing at the entrance to his cubicle. Except in his fantasies, she never looked this … pissed off.

Lora Baines pushed her glasses further up her nose and glared at the startled programmer. She had a piece of paper in her hand, and she waved it in his direction. "What hell is this," she squinted briefly at his name badge. "Bradley?"

"Alan."

Her scowl deepened. "Huh?"

Alan cleared his throat, feeling withered beneath her hostile gaze. "My first name is Alan. Bradley is my last name." He flinched inwardly. She didn't even know his name!

"Well, whatever your name is, I want to know where you get off snooping around my program?" She thrust the paper at him.

Alan took it from her fingers. "Oh, this. It's my report to Vice President Dillinger on potential security gaps in the ENCOM network." He looked back at his interrogator. "Is there a problem?"

"You better believe there's a problem. As if Dillinger weren't already nosy enough, sniffing around the digitization program and trying to put it under the control of that stupid Master Control Program he's developing."

Alan snorted derisively. "MCP? Glorified chess program. You were writing more sophisticated code in kindergarten."

Her eyes softened a bit at that. "Be that as it may, I don't like uninvited programs sneaking around, glitching up my code."

Alan's eyebrows lifted. "Glitchy? That shouldn't happen. Tron is designed to interact with other programs without interfering with their code or functionality."

She shrugged. "Maybe, but something happened to my Yori when your program interfaced. It was subtle, like a …" she trailed off, searching for a descriptor.

"-shiver?" Alan supplied.

She nodded and – wonder of wonders – smiled at him. "Yeah. That's a good word for it."

Alan was so tickled by her response that he couldn't help grinning back at her. Wrong move. Her face immediately regained its stern expression. "Look, this isn't funny. I've put thousands of hours into that program, and just when I'm on the verge of a breakthrough-"

"You've succeeded in digitizing solid matter?" Alan interrupted, impressed.

"Not quite. But I'm close, really close." She sighed. Evidently she was struggling to maintain her resentment in the face of his obvious admiration. She gestured toward the paper still in his hand. "So how come you flagged Yori as a vulnerable program?"

"Because it is," he said simply. As she opened her mouth to protest, he held up his free hand. "Obviously, the programs you're developing are some of the most important – probably THE most important – in the company. If successful-"

"WHEN successful."

He grinned again. "When successful, your digitization process is going change … well, everything. Do you know what that's going to be worth to ENCOM? And how much our competitors would love to appropriate that platinum mine for themselves?"

She arched a brow skeptically. "You really think Yori is in danger from evil outside forces? Aliens, maybe?" He saw her gaze flicker to Gort Klaatu Barada Nikto, and he felt his gut clench. Why didn't he just wear a sign around his neck: #1 Geek. Still, he knew he was right.

"Make jokes if you want, but I'm serious. Tron has detected and neutralized three external threats in the last 10 days. They're out there."

"So if your Tron program is so invincible, Yori's got nothing to worry about, right?"

Alan pursed his lips and shook his head. She was being deliberately obtuse now. "You know as well as I do that any network is only as strong as its weakest code."

"You're saying my code is weak?"

"I'm saying it could be better."

Lora's eyes flashed fire. "Listen. You worry about your code, and I'll worry about mine, okay? Just keep your Tron away from my Yori. I don't want it infecting my program with some kind of virus." With that she turned on her heel and stalked out. Alan watched her go, hearing his romantic dreams fade with every click of her heels.