Tron by Brian Daley

quickly, a little too glibly, he swung to Alan and asked, “She still leave her clothes all over the floor?”
    The change of subject caught Alan off guard. Lora, blushing, cried out, “Flynn!” Flynn, sniggering, recalled, algorhythms!
    Alan managed, “Uh, no. I mean, not that often.”
    “Alan!” Lora exploded. Flynn chuckled; Alan, scowling, wondered why he’d bothered to come.
    Lora, pointing to the arcade, told Alan, “You can see why all his friends are fourteen-year-olds.”
    Flynn picked up a handheld videogame, pointedly ignoring the barb. From the little plastic case came the sounds of miniature struggle. He grinned ruefully. “Touché, honey! Yeah; I’ve been doing a little hacking up here.” He looked up defensively. “Which I’ve got every reason, as you well know—”
    “Did you break in?” Alan interjected.
    Flynn made a face. “Tried to.” He indicated the terminal with a tilt of his head. “Can’t quite make the connection with that sucker, though.” He sighed. “If I had a direct terminal . . .” He let the sentence trail off, the broadest of hints.
    Alan met his gaze squarely. Flynn was surprised to find himself thinking that different circumstances might have made Bradley and himself friends. The man had no use for lies or evasion, non sequiturs or dishonesty. Alan sat down to Flynn’s right and asked, “Flynn, are you embezzling?”
    Flynn looked to the game again and did his best to sound like a B-movie shyster. “Embezzlement is such an ugly word, Mr. Bradley.”
    Alan looked vexed and Lora clicked her tongue impatiently. Flynn finished in a normal voice, “No. Actually, I’m trying to get some solid evidence together.”
    Alan kept that level stare on him. “I don’t get it.”
    Flynn looked at him, then turned to Lora, to his left. “You haven’t told him?”
    She shook her head, and Flynn understood then that he hadn’t been a popular topic between them. He went on, more or less, in the voice of Mr. Peabody, the time-traveling canine genius. “ ‘Sherman, set the Wayback Machine!’ ” He gave them a dumb-but-happy look. “Five years ago, Kevin Flynn,” he indicated himself and inclined his head modestly, “one of the brightest young software engineers at ENCOM.” Flynn snorted in derision. “He’s so bright that he starts going in there at night, and sets up a private memory file, and begins writing a program for a videogame he’s inventing, called—” with an elaborate wave to one of the games in the room, with its Recognizer stencil, “ Space Paranoids! ”
    Flynn rather enjoyed the astonishment on Alan’s face. Lora, lips pursed, watched the performance with displeasure. Alan demanded, “ You invented Space Paranoids? ”
    Flynn’s smile was lopsided. “Yep. And Vice Squad ; a whole slew of ’em.” He held up thumb and forefinger. “I was this close to starting my own little enterprise.”
    The hand fell; Flynn became less casual. “But, enter Ed Dillinger. Another software engineer, not so young, not so bright, but very, very sneaky. One night our boy Flynn goes to his terminal, tries to read up his file, and—nothing. A big blank, man!
    “We now take you to three months later. Ed Dillinger presents ENCOM with five videogames he has ‘invented’; the slime didn’t even change the names. And he gets a big fat promotion. Thus begins his meteoric rise to—what is he now, executive VP?”
    “ Senior exec,” Alan supplied. He found himself believing Flynn absolutely, as much because of his own estimate of the man as because of Lora’s confidence in Flynn’s honesty, or Flynn’s engaging style.
    Much of the lightness had left Flynn’s voice. “Meanwhile, kids are putting eight million quarters a week in Space Paranoids machines and I’m not seeing one dime except what I can squeeze out here.”
    And Dillinger had won a promotion for it, profit shares, stock options—professional success and a personal fortune. Alan set aside the