Tron Legacy the Junior Novel - Alice Alfonsi [14]
Sam recalled the conversation the night his dad had vanished. “The miracle?” Sam asked.
“The miracle,” Kevin replied. “Isomorphic algorithms. ISOs for short. The next step in evolution. If my coming here to the digital realm was a small step in mankind’s evolution, then the ISOs were a giant leap.”
“And you created them?” Sam asked.
Kevin stared into the fireplace. “No. They simply manifested, like a flame. They weren’t really from anywhere. The conditions were right, and they came into being.”
Kevin’s bearded face seemed suspended in the glow of the fire. “It was humbling,” he said. “Any program I wrote would inherently have my flaws embedded in it. But the ISOs—they were like flowers sprouting in a wasteland. They were individual. Creative. They had free will. As soon as I saw them, I knew this was why I came here, to build a world where they could be born into, then somehow bring their special gifts back to our world. The endless possibilities of their root code—their digital DNA—is spectacular. All I needed was time…”
“So what happened?” Sam asked.
“Clu happened,” Kevin said with a frown. “What I saw as a miracle, Clu saw as a virus. An imperfection. Clu took over. Staged a coup.”
Kevin’s frown deepened. “Clu tried to have me derezzed. But Tron helped me escape.”
“What happened to Tron?” Sam asked.
“The Black Guard captured him that day,” Kevin said sadly. “I think Clu destroyed him. Whatever the case, I never saw Tron again. I fled the city, to this safe house I had secretly constructed in the mountains. I saw the light over the city go dark as the Portal closed…”
Kevin turned away from his memories of that terrible time.
“Sam, I tried to come home,” Kevin explained, his voice earnest. “But the Portal shut down on me. As a fail-safe, I’d set the door to open only from the outside, and only for a limited time. during the chaos after Clu’s takeover, it closed. That was the last night I ever saw you.”
“Clu thought you’d forgotten your mission?” Sam asked.
Kevin nodded. “He knew that this great experiment of the grid was just that—an experiment. Clu also understood that the ISOs were a breakthrough. They were the future, and Clu wasn’t.”
Sam shook his head. “Why didn’t you fight?!”
“He did,” Quorra quickly replied.
“Clu fed on my resistance,” Kevin explained. “The more I fought, the more powerful he became. His first act was the elimination of the ISOs.”
“The Purge,” Quorra said.
Sam swallowed hard. “Clu killed them all?”
Kevin’s expression turned grim. “It was genocide.”
They sat in silence for a long time. Then Kevin led Sam and Quorra onto a veranda.
“So,” Sam said, taking in the view, “if the Portal was activated when I came in, it must be open now.”
His father nodded. “For a time, yes.”
“So we can go. Home,” Sam said. “We make a run for it, get you out of here.”
“Sam, don’t rush,” his dad cautioned.
“What do you mean?” Sam cried. “The Portal. It’s going to close!”
Quorra tried to explain. “The moment Flynn is on the grid, Clu will stop at nothing to obtain his disc.”
“My disc is everything, Sam,” Kevin said. “The master key. The Golden ticket. The way out, and not just for me—”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked.
“With my disc, it’s possible for Clu to escape, too,” Kevin said. “Our worlds are more connected than anyone knows. Clu figures if I can get in—”
“He can get out,” Sam concluded. “And what then?”
“Game over for our world,” Kevin said. “Clu doesn’t dig imperfection.”
Sam threw up his hands. “So that’s it? We do nothing? We just sit here?”
Under his beard, Kevin’s lips curled into a smile. “It’s amazing how productive doing nothing can be.”
“What?!” Sam cried. “That doesn’t make any sense. We have to make a run for it!”
“What we have to do is slow down,” his father insisted. “Clu has been growing exponentially more powerful. We’re safe here in the Outlands. But as soon as we step onto that grid…well, believe me, there’s no move we can make that Clu hasn’t already considered.”
Kevin could see Sam was confused.
“In here, nothing happens