CHAPTER 17 — REUNION

EARTH – WEEK 2 DAY 2

ENCOM HEADQUARTERS

It has been almost a week since Alan returned to his old label: Interim CEO. The last time he held on to that position was when the world couldn't pin their hopes on the return of ENCOM's promising future icon, Kevin Flynn, and when the long-hidden vultures inside the corporation spread their ruthless claws to grab the vacant position of authority from the then young and abandoned successor, Sam Flynn. Alan had no other choice than to take the reins of the directionless management and maintain a sense of cohesion until Sam grew into the right age and at the right time. Only the situations and generations have changed, not his duty, he thought to himself. His second innings have been easier than he had imagined, and also boring at the same time. The soft bigotry of high expectations and accountability on his shoulders just got bigger than ever, mainly because the face of the new ENCOM, its young CEO Sam took a break much sooner than the former ones, which is not good news for a company on the brink of imminent downfall from the market leaderboard, followed by its interlinked reputation as well. On a normal day, this inheritance of power would've been a cakewalk for veterans like Alan. But no one knows what fate has in store, even for the most honest and sincere people on the earth. Despite the majority workforce in ENCOM and the Board Members in unison for their support towards Alan and his nephew Sam, Ed Dillinger is relentless in his accusations on the CEO-in-vacation, determined to propagate the rumors of a son following his father's playbook on running away from the company in its crucial stage.

Adding to his professional travails is the loneliness caused by Sam's absence. For a seasoned player like Alan, even a small personal yet universal problem of loneliness is like his inner Batman fighting with the invisible Joker of seclusion. It is a necessary evil for the world, in a way that, homo-sapiens of the first generation formed closely-knit human networks as the primary effective weapon to ward off this inevitable psychological evil, which became the predecessor for the modern civilization, or society, that we came to live in. Alan had never experienced isolation, at least in the form of companionship, in his colorful career. Be it Kevin and Lorraine in his heydays as a geeky coder, young Sam, and his own family during his term serving as Interim CEO from 1989-2010, and lastly, CEO Sam and his beautifully naïve yet exuberant lover Quorra, all of them never let the feeling of forsakenness disturb his peace even once. If anything, this Interim CEO 2.0 has neither human companionship nor the inner resilience of his younger self to tackle this hurdle for the first time. Adding to the fact is that for him, Sam is his second son, although he was technically assigned as Sam's caretaker until he reached the right age. Every father's worst nightmare is the loss or separation from his son, especially when the son is big enough to fill his father's shoes. Despite the age and circumstances, no loving father can afford to leave his son for a long time, and no doting son neglects his father for his ephemeral career growth.

Having a long-delayed siesta amidst the gloomy afternoon in his cabin, Alan began experiencing nightmarish visions of Sam and Quorra falling to their supposed doom inside the fiery crash from the highest mountain peaks in the visibly dark Grid they ventured into. The explosion following their doom was so dangerous and mind-numbing, it jolted up Alan from his short nap and left him soaked in his sweat. After having careful deep breaths from his harrowing vision, he clung hard to the notion that it was Sam calling him from the Grid through the dreams and then took out the earbuds from his pouch, the ones Sam gave him for emergency contact.

His thumb and index finger rubbed themselves vigorously, both fighting for the urge to dial the single contact embedded inside the pair of wireless headsets, rubbing the buds inside both palms each respectively. The emotional father in him rushed to contact his son right away and break down into tears of reunion, whereas the pragmatic Alan thought of gathering any intel necessary and rightfully contributing to Sam's goal before establishing any contact, being a stepping stone in his journey rather than another unintentional conundrum in his way. Lost in confusion, Alan decided to divert himself from the mounting tension and pulled up his memories with Kevin, including not only but also his shenanigans with his yesteryear nerdy colleagues in their prime form during the late 80s and early 90s. Surfing through every Polaroid, his mind reminded him f the fact that half of them either left the gang during their career peaks or went missing into oblivion i.e until he stumbled through one Polaroid sticking itself outside in the middle of the unordered stack. It is nothing but a simple and nostalgic group picture with the same team until a bespectacled nerd hiding in the right corner grabbed his attention. The sole cogwheel running round the clock, giving FLYNN LIVES the edge it may not have gained otherwise, the anonymous ZackAttack who drove the media and ENCOM corporate shills at that time into nuts: Roy Kleinberg. He then pinged his secretary and ordered her to summon Roy into his cabin immediately. Roy, surprised by Alan calling for him for the first time in months, started teasing Alan for his weak memory and started narrating their shenanigans one by one. Alan listened to the adventures very patiently until he abruptly gestured for Roy to check his phone. Roy silently pulled out his Ericcson and read the message: "FLYNN'S ARCADE, 30 minutes past five, ISOlated Thinker".

FLYNN'S ARCADE BASEMENT

Roy marked his attendance at the Arcade, where he started shelling out his loaded magazine of doubts, conspiracies, and suspicions. Alan then guided him towards the secret room inside the basement and explained to him the situation and its gravity by starting with the fact that FLYNN LIVES may not be a humbug after all. Roy's unassuming ears registered every detail from Alan in autistic detail, despite being clueless about whatever Alan was trying to emphasize. As both of them entered the secret room, Alan turned on the computer and then connected to the private server as Sam had instructed him before. Roy couldn't believe his eyes at the sight of the bundles and bundles of programming blocks resembling good ol' fashioned ENCOMs mainframe cyberspace of the 80s. As the server booted up to its latest version, Alan then turned on the Bluetooth Earbuds after entering the hash key inside the Communications Tab. Within two seconds gap, the webcam turned on, followed by the periodically repeating red blip of the modem-like miniature dongle connected to the CPU, whose camouflaged state within the CPU color was enough to startle anyone who listens to its welcoming alarm for the first time.

Meanwhile, inside the Grid, Sam and Quorra were slowly recovering from their bruises and injuries, as Quorra massaged the increasing pain on Sam's back with ease and affection. As they get involved in their only pastime other than resting, having their supper, and throwing soft banters at each other, Quorra gets pushed back a little as Sam's Disc blinks in red at regular intervals and lets out a mild alarm at every red color blip. As Quorra handovers Sam his Disc and watches him connect to the incoming connection, Sam briefly explains to Quorra how he managed to encode the Verilog Code of his set of Bluetooth earbuds inside the gateway key, also registering the Bluetooth ID of Alan's Buds inside as well using his custom prototype embedding software tool. Explaining that his prototype in its early stage still required that the one with Alan required the GSM Module to be connected to one of the physical ports of the CPU for better-sustained communication, Sam also stated Quorra that her Disc is encoded with the same Verilog Code as his and that her Disc will connect to the same ID in case Sam's Disc doesn't respond within five minutes of the transmission request, basically a backup for the worst situation. Connecting to the incoming transmission, Sam placed the Disc on the table, him and Quorra facing the top of the Disc as the holographic version of Alan shrieked in tear-induced excitement:

- You stubborn kids! Where are you? Is everything fine over there?

- Hold on, Al. Nothing to worry about here. Except for a few stitches up here (bending forwards to display his injuries)

- Still maintaining your notoriety over there, aren't you Sam? Which tower it was this time?

- This time it's Everest-level, Al. And not just me, Quorra had fun too.

- You pulled her in too? She's a good girl, why do you spoil her?

- She ain't that soft, Al. You should've seen her whoop up those dirty douchebags' asses up here.

- Language, Sam! At least for your wife's sake.

- (smiling) Yeah sure after she becomes mine.

- God, you're going to kill yourself for real one day. (Turning to Quorra) Coming to my sweetheart, how is she doing?

- We're fine here, Alan. Sam never thinks before anything, and that left us injured. We're lucky a nice lady saved us.

- And who's that?

- (Sam interrupting in between) Mara. Owns a hell of an automobile garage. The donor of a posh suite with a marble-white bathtub. Can't demand more for a perfect couple's shower.

§ (Giggling and pinching gently) Stop it, Sam. He's your dad.

§ Alan and I are buddies. He'll take it easy peasy.

- (Adjusting his throat) I am too old for your unexplored fantasies, kid. Any news about Kevin?

- Not yet, Al. This Grid's changed a lot. The master code and the inside world are not the same. It's a maze inside.

- (Roy taking over one of Alan's earbuds) Listen, Sam. This is Roy. Could you give me the updated blueprint of this "GRID" you're saying?

- Whoa! You brought in outsiders, Alan?

- (Alan interrupts in between) Sam, he's Roy, my friend. No time for introductions, but I vouch for him. If anyone can drill deep into hidden cyberspaces, it's him.

- (Turning to Roy) So, uh, Mr. Roy? What else do you need? And how do you plan to make things easy?

- Roy's enough, Sam. I need just the blueprint and Kevin's coordinates. Leave the rest to me.

- Do you need it right now?

- The sooner the better, Flynn. I'll take this setup along with me, the earbuds stay with Alan. I'll make sure the connections remain undisturbed; you have my word on that.

- Thank you, I'll contact Alan as soon as I get the map. (Turning to Alan) Time to go off, Alan. Mara's coming. Take care of yourself, old man.

You too, kid. And keep that lady away from your dirty business, son. (Laughing mildly)

DR. GIBBS RESIDENCY

STUDY ROOM

Poor old Gibbs has been working off his frail skeleton day and night under Ed's relentless shunting and pressure for the result. Using the suggestions of MCTRL, the advanced version of MCP Ed supplied to him, Walter managed to build the working prototype of the mainframe cyberspace of MCP 2.0, albeit with a few hiccups. Getting up from his seat to instruct the guards at his doorstep to contact Ed, Walter stops midway as he hears the blip from the Notification Center of the 2.0 and stares back at the screen, glinting hard from his old spectacles. He could see the connection underway between two Users: one from inside the anonymous yet advanced cyberspace mentioned as "GRID" and the other from an encrypted location somewhere around the globe. Gibbs immediately took big, exhausting leaps toward the guards and let out a deep breath as he prepared to report to Ed Dillinger:

- Speak up, Old Man.

- I got vital information from the MCP 2.0, son. It's almost ready but the information is accurate.

- I'm all ears.

- An anonymous transmission is online. User 1 reports from anonymous coordinates somewhere in the globe, but User 2 is from inside this advanced mainframe cyberspace "GRID".

- GRID? MCP was right. That coward must be hiding his arse up there.

- Whose arse?

- Not your business, sir. Find out more about that GRID and this TRON thing. I expect something more valuable from you this time. See you again, Doc. (Hangs up phone).