Tron Legacy Read Free Page A

history. Sam ripped them all away. Using the keys Alan had given him, he unlocked the front door.
    A beeping sound reminded him to punch in the alarm code. Sam did, surprised his twenty-seven-year-old brain could still access his seven-year-old self’s memory.
    The arcade was dark. Even after Sam turned on the lights, the place felt gloomy. Strange shapes lurked under sheets covered with layers of dust, like the creation on doctor Frankenstein’s lab table.
    But Sam knew the only creations lurking under the dusty covers were the ghosts of forgotten video games from the 1980s. Every one of them was an antique. The multiplatform, Internet gamers of the twenty-first century had no use for them.
    But not everything in this place was useless. As in Frankenstein’s lab, Sam suspected there might be a secret lurking inside the arcade. He just had to find it.
    Before he could begin his search, something caught his attention. One game, covered in a sheet like all the others, was up against the far wall. He walked up to it, blew away the dust, and pulled the sheet off Tron. He dug into his pocket for a quarter. Just one game, he thought. For old time’s sake.
    Suddenly the coin slipped between his fingers and Sam groaned. dropping down to retrieve it, he noticed scuff marks on the floor. It seemed the Tron machine had been moved—and moved a lot.
    Why?
    Sam tugged on the game, trying to move it himself. For a moment it didn’t budge—and then the whole thing suddenly swung outward. The game was concealing a secret doorway!
    As Sam stepped over the threshold, an electronic eye activated the room’s power. Lights came on by themselves, and Sam gasped in surprise.
    It must be dad’s secret laboratory, he realized, his heart beginning to pound.
    Frozen in time, a twenty-year-old pot of coffee sat on a stove in the corner. The leather jacket his dad had been wearing the night he vanished was still draped over a chair. A layer of dust covered everything. gulping, Sam continued to move around, taking stock.
    He saw a map tacked to a cork bulletin board. The map outlined a landmass Sam didn’t recognize. His father had labeled it the grid.
    Computer mainframes lined the walls, and a glass and silicon laser array was placed in one corner. The laser was aimed at a chair and table in the center of the room.
    Sam sat down in the chair. Suddenly the table in front of him lit up. Sam brushed away two decades of dust and discovered that it was actually a worktable that controlled the computers surrounding him.
    Processors began to hum. Then the screen in the center of the table flashed a question: TRON PROJECT INITIATE SEQUENCE? Y/N
    Sam pondered the question for two whole seconds before pressing Y .
    Instantly, a brilliant blue burst of light washed over Sam. “Ahh!” he cried, blinded by the flash.
    For a moment, there was nothing but the bright flash and the heavy sound of Sam’s startled breathing. It was as if time had been suspended.
    Sam finally opened his eyes. darkness. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, but it didn’t help. All the lights in the room had shorted out.
    Reaching out in the pitch dark, Sam felt the surface of the table. There were no running lights on the control panel, no humming or vibrations. It was dead. Sam found a manual reboot switch and activated it.
    Nothing. No power at all, not even emergency lighting. Muttering in frustration, Sam felt his way out of the secret lab. He moved through the arcade, which was also pitch dark, and finally stumbled out the front door.
    Although it was still dim, at least now he could see. And go home. Enough trips down memory lane.
    The night air felt different now, wet, foggy, cooler. Maybe the jump off the Encom building had rattled his brain. Shaking his head, Sam walked over to the streetlight where he’d parked his motorcycle. It was gone.
    “What?!”
    He glanced around and realized the missing bike wasn’t the only strange occurrence. Lots of things were different now.