The car stopped in a trailer park. Being a Sunday morning, everyone was sound asleep. The words "white trash" would have come to mind even to the most enlightened of bystanders at the spectacle that this piece of real estate offered. "Come on girls, get down."
"Is it safe?"
"This place's so full of freaks already, you two won't make a difference. Ehm, no offence intended." Jim added after getting a dolby-surround bad look from the Siamese twins. "Who's there?"
"A friend. Come on through."
The caravan on the farthest corner of the park was atypical to say the least. It had that squared design which was so popular in the early nineties, and was covered roof to wheels with homemade electronic gadgetry. "Looks like this guy's in your league, Jim."
"Oh, no. He's way over most of us. Kevin! Hey, Kevin!"
"IDENT POSITIVE, ENTER." the caravan answered, and the door opened outwards. Inside was a total mess; Sharon and Sandra felt dizzy from the sheer voltaic pressure caused by all the machinery inside. A slim man in his late fourties was sound asleep on a narrow bunk, a thick book laid open on his face. Sharon leaned sideways, of course dragging Sandra along, and picked it up.
"Critique of pure reason. Immanuel Kant, no less!"
Who?
Some philosopher. Considered the bunch of them, easier than other, still quite a hard read!
The man yawned, stretched, grabbed Sandra's leg and finally let it go realizing it wasn't quite right for it to be there. He sat on the bed and greeted Sharon-Sandra with the greatest nonchalance, shaking hands with both at once. "Jim, what the fuck did you do this time?"
"Not my fault this time, Kevin."
Seen that it was safe, the twins explained the situation to the man -- how Mr. Black kidnapped them, melded their bodies together, and how Jim lost his hand kicking the sorry ass out of the mad industrialist to let them free. "You know, that's cool. I'm a little too old for sneaking into companies though."
"Aw, come on, like you never did it."
"Huh?" "Huh?" The surprised face and sound, painted in stereo on Sharon and Sandra's face, prompted Jim and Kevin to laug heartedly. "You wouldn't say right now" he said with a sad smile on his face "but I was CEO of EnCom until 1992, that's when Microsoft did a hostile takeover on us. Ah yes... Kevin Flynn, the richest trailer trash in the whole fragging universe."
"Wow."
"Wait a minute, Kevin Flynn? I heard of you before... wait, yeah, you're the Tron guy!"
"Precisely, young lady. Those were the days... before we lost the revolution to marketing. Oh well."
"Kevin, we need your help. You're still one of the best hackers around, and, well, the more help we get the better."
"So you actually want to go in there?"
"Yeah, we do."
"First to get back to normal..."
"... and then to thrash those people until they forget their first name."
"Hmm. These BlackCo people seem tough. All firewalled, Kerberos check on every port..." Kevin commented after five minutes of snooping around with an Amiga 4000 running Solaris.
Kevin sighed; he knew what Jim was about to ask. "They've remained in this box for nine years, Jim. They aren't up to date... and you know how much this means."
"Come on Kevin. You know they can do it. Besides, with all the weird stuff BlackCo has... maybe we'll find bodies for them."
"Okay. I'll try to help from here. Close that 386 over there and get out the disk... you better get out the drive, too. I doubt they still use 5.25" drives."
"Thank you, Kevin."
"Take care, programs." he said as Jim and the twins left. Sarah was examining the old floppt drive, in perfect condition despite it's being a good 12 years old. What's that?
It's an old floppy disk. Probably has some kickass hacking program on it, beats me why it's on this old thing.
"Careful, girls. There's two guys in there who can help us get the data we need to restore your bodies... but if we crash that disk, we commit a double murder."
"What? What's in there?"
"TRON and IORI, of course!"
Sun Apr 2 04:05:42 2000