Tron Legacy by Alice Alfonsi

WHEN SAM FLYNN WAS A LITTLE BOY , his dad, Kevin, told him a story every night before he went back to the office. Kevin didn’t work the night shift or anything. He owned a software company, Encom, and he worked there…a lot.
    Sam loved his father’s stories because they were almost always about Tron, the hero of the popular video game his dad had invented.
    “The grid is the digital frontier,” Kevin would tell Sam. “Add quantum paring, biodigital teleportation, enfoldment, and they have the power to change everything…”
    Hold up, dad, Sam would think. I’m only seven!
    Even though Sam wasn’t quite old enough to understand everything his dad said, he loved the stories anyway and would always try to follow along.
    “I imagined what it looked like inside the computer,” Kevin would say to his son. “I kept dreaming of a world I thought I’d never see. Then one day—”
    “You got in,” Sam finished, always right on cue.
    “I got in…” his dad would echo.
    Sam understood this part of the story. His dad had actually gotten into a computer. He’d played the games from the inside.
    “The world behind the computer screen was more beautiful and more dangerous than I ever imagined,” his father would explain. “But with the help of a brave warrior named Tron, I took down the evil Master Control Program. Then I got back out.”
    The story always ended there. Except for one important night ...
    “I tried to forget the digital world,” Kevin informed his son. “But I couldn’t let it go. I kept tinkering, and one day I got inside again.”
    Sam got excited. This part of the story was new!
    “It was my world, my creation,” Kevin said. “But I needed help to build a new system, so I created a program that could think. Like me. Like you. I named it Codified Likeness Utility—or Clu for short. But then something unexpected happened. A miracle!”
    His father did not go on. Sam pleaded with him to stay home that night. Sam wanted to hear more of the story. But Kevin shook his head.
    “I have to go, Sam,” his dad said. “We’ve got to see how the story ends, right?”
    Sam nodded, but his eyes were filled with disappointment. Trying to cheer him up, Kevin promised Sam that they would go to Flynn’s arcade first thing the next morning. They could play a couple of levels of the games that Kevin had invented: Space Paranoids and, of course, Tron.
    “Can we play on the same team?” Sam asked.
    “We’re always on the same team, kiddo,” his father said before stepping out of the bedroom. They were always in it together.
    But that wasn’t true.
    That night, Kevin Flynn disappeared…

MANY YEARS PASSED , and the pain from his father’s disappearance stayed with Sam, refusing to fade. His dad’s last words still echoed inside Sam’s brain: “We’re always on the same team, kiddo.”
    Sam shook his head angrily, trying to drown out the words. He revved his motorcycle’s engine. The wall of noise battered his ears, but the memories would not go away.
    Some team we are, Sam thought. I’m here, dad. I’ve been here all along! Where the heck are you?
    Heat lightning rippled across the night sky. Up ahead, cars hurtled along the freeway. Without warning, traffic slowed to a crawl. Bright red brake lights blinked in the night. Instead of slowing down, Sam sped up, expertly darting his bike around the scarlet lights.
    I have to get there on time, he thought. Especially tonight…
    It was exactly twenty years ago to the day, that Sam’s dad had finished his bedtime story, left for the office…and vanished.
    At the time, Kevin Flynn’s disappearance had been front-page news. After all, he owned one of the biggest companies in the world. There was a huge media circus. reporters camped out in front of Sam’s home. But the stories were all about the fate of Encom. No one really cared about young Sam. He was just a kid with a mom who’d died a few years before and a genius dad who’d gone