Disclaimer: Don't own them so please don't sue. Absolutely no money is being made from this
fic.
*****
Programming…
*****
It was a seemingly quiet
day at Capsule Corp. No aliens or
androids threatening to take over or blow up the world, or explosions from any
of the labs.
Bulma was in a lab fiddling
with something as usual oblivious to everything happening around her.
Vegeta was meditating under
a tree when he sensed a large surge of power coming from the mansion. * What the HELL was that? * He furrowed his brow but otherwise remained
a statue. * Oh it's just the boy.
He had better learn to control that temper of his. * He smirked and headed to the training room.
*****
Trunks was about to blast
the computer to the next dimension. *
Rasafracking piece of crud. Why did my
mother make me take this dumb course? *
* Flashback *
"Trunks, you will be
president of Capsule Corporation one day and you need to know how to program a
computer." Bulma was looking through
the course catalog. "Hmmm this seems
like a good one…programming in "C"."
"But mom, can't I pick out
my own classes?"
"NO! And that's final."
Vegeta smirked he was
watching this exchange from the kitchen doorway.
* Hahaha there isn't anyone
more stubborn than that woman. * His
trademark smirk got deeper while he thought of his extremely stubborn 'mate'.
Trunks looked at Vegeta * I
guess I won't get any support from dad. Sigh…I know I can't win an argument with her so I might as well go along
with it. *
Trunks enrolled in the
classes that Bulma picked since she did allow him to choose one course out of
five.
* End flashback *
That was three months ago
and he had four midterms and this small programming project from hell.
"Why won't this stupid
thing work?" The screen made no sense
at all it compiled okay but then when he tried to run it…"Error core dumped!"
* KILL…KILL…KILL! * He took
another look at his code trying to find the error. He continued to mutter obstinacies at the program under his
breath as he scrolled down the screen.
*****
Goten had just gotten out
of school when he decided to pay his best friend a visit. He took off and got to Capsule Corps. in
five minutes and knocked on the door.
Mrs. Briefs answered the
door, "Oh…hello Goten, how are your
parents an your brother? I haven't seen
them for so long…do you want some tea? I just put it on not to long ago."
"No thank you Mrs. Briefs…where's
Trunks?" He remembered stories about
Trunk's grandmother's tea.
"He's in his room doing
some kind of project for a class. Why
don' t you go up and see him?"
"Umm…okay." * Man his grandmother sure is weird. Where are her eyes? *
He made his way up to
Trunk's room and leaned against the door jam. His friend was still slightly powered up and looked like hell. His clothes were all crumpled up and there
were small balls of crumpled up paper forming a large ring around his
chair. He was holding his head like he
had the headache of the century. He
didn't turn around but Goten could tell he hadn't gotten any sleep the night
before.
" Hey Trunks, what's
up?" Goten walked in to the room and
grabbed the back of Trunk's computer chair as he looked around for the other
chair and soon found it. It was buried
under a pile of clothes.
He turned around and looked
at his friend. "Oh…Hi Goten. This assignment is making me nuts!" He looked as though he hadn't slept in days.
Goten took a look at the
screen. "What is that?"
"It's supposed to be my
midterm project for my programming class but it's not working." He ran a hand through his hair.
"Uh…okay. Do you want some help? I don't know anything about programming but
I am willing to try."
"I guess so." * I am ready to try anything…*
Goten moved the monitor so
he could see it better and stared at it for a while. * Gee whiz this thing looks like some kind of alien code. * "Ummm…what is this supposed to do?"
Trunks had his head down
while Goten tried to make sense of the statements on the screen. Lifted his head and rambled off something
about calculating arrival times and different time zones, given the flight
time.
*Okay…that made a whole lot
of sense…NOT! * He looked at the
screen some more and compared the statements. Just then he saw something…"Uh…Trunks?"
Trunks lifted his head
again and looked at his friend. "What?"
"By any chance does there
supposed to be a '&" symbol before this variable? You have one before the other one and it is exactly the same."
Trunks took another look at
the screen. "You BAKA language! One stupid little symbol missing caused all
of this stress…ARGH!" He quickly made
the change saved and recompiled it.
"Now to see if the stupid
thing runs correctly." He typed in the
command to run the program and was prompted to enter a departure time and the
blinking cursor.
Goten looked at the screen,
"Is it supposed to say that?"
"Yes, it is so lets enter a
departure time." He typed in a
departure time and hit enter. It
prompted him for the rest of the information and worked fine. It then asked for another departure time
which he provided and he hit enter again.
The cursor was just sat
there blinking at him.
"Blink…Blink…Blink."
Trunks screamed, "Nooooooo! You baka thing…why won't you work?"
Goten looked at his friend
and patted him on the back. *Uh oh…his
power level is starting to skyrocket. I have to get him to calm down before the
computer ends up in the next dimension. Gee I wonder what dad would do with it. * Goten started to laugh so much
he fell off the chair.
Trunks was still pissed off
and now his best friend was laughing at him. "What the heck are you laughing about ?" He unconsciously started to give Goten the patented
Vegeta death glare which only made him laugh harder.
When Goten was finally able
to calm down enough to speak, "I was
thinking about you blasting the computer to the next dimension. That then made me think of my dad and what
he would do with a computer. By the way
do you know that you look really funny when you imitate your father's death
glare?"
Trunks sighed and returned
his face to normal. He then thought
about Goku and what he would do with the computer and started to chuckle. "Okay that's enough of that. Now we need to figure out what's wrong with
the program now. It must be in a
infinite loop." He typed in the command
to kill the program. * Ha ha…how ironic
what the command does is what I want to do for real…but if it dies so does my
grade…I can't win. *
He brought the code back up
again and he and Goten looked at each line.
They were half way through
the code when Goten saw something and pointed to the screen. "Trunks, is there supposed to be a 'flag ='
in front of that line?"
Trunks looked at the line
Goten was referring to and, "Argh! BAKA LANGUAGE! TWO LITTLE THINGS
CAUSED ALL THAT STRESS!"
He quickly added the
missing variable and recompiled the program. * Now the moment of truth was that the only things wrong with it. * He entered the command to run it and entered
the needed information, it worked properly. * Good * It asked for more
information and he supplied it but hesitated before pushing enter.
* What is he waiting
for? If he doesn't push that button I
will…enough is enough I am going to push it. * Goten reached over and pushed it.
It gave the arrival time
like it should have. Trunks was in
shock but managed to speak, "It wworked…I don't believe it the baka thing
actually worked."
Goten jumped for joy and
started to cheer "Yaaaah! Now we can go
outside and spar a little. I think you
need to release some pent up aggression. Trunks…Heeelloooo! Anybody
home?" He started to wave his hand in
front of Trunks face.
Trunks finally came out of
his shocked state when Bra yelled at him. "What the heck is all the ruckus in here? Keep it down will ya I'm trying to talk to my friends."
"Uhh…okay Bra well keep it
down." Trunks still couldn't believe it
the programming assignment from hell actually worked. He jumped up and his hand flew out hitting the monitor. It went sailing off the table and on to the
floor with a nice loud crash.
"I HATE 'C'! Why did my mother make me take this
course?" He looked at the monitor
"Damn now I have to go and get a new one."
Goten looked at his friend
and then the broken computer monitor. *
I feel kind of sorry for him he hasn't gone out of the house in months. *
"Mom' s going to kill me
that's the fiftieth one since I started school. I guess if I hurry up and replace it there won't be any harm
done."
Goten offered to go with
him to get a new one.
Trunks then realized that
his friend was still in the room, "Okay…how did you notice the two mistakes in the code? I worked on that for five days in a row and
it still doesn't work. You look at it for five minutes and figure out the
problem in nothing flat. How do you do
that?"
"I am not sure how I did it
but if you look at something too long you tend to miss mistakes and I had no
idea as to what I was looking at but it seemed that something was missing. Maybe all you needed was another
perceptive."
"I guess I did…well we had
best be going if we are going to replace that monitor."
*****
So they left to get the
monitor. After they got the monitor
they hooked it up and went back outside to spar until Goten had to go
home. They promised to continue the
sparing session the next day. Hopefully
there won't be any more programming assignments for a while.
*****
The End
Author's note: I am not sure how old Goten and Bra are when
Trunks is old enough to go to college so I guessed. As for Goku still being in the next dimension…that was a guess
too. I'm still waiting for the net set
of dubbed episodes to be shown on Cartoon Network. Sadly enough I can only understand some Japanese words so the
original videos make very little sense to me. I know the dubbing sucks but it's all I understand. If I got stuff wrong…sorry but please let me
know. I will try to correct it. So how is it? Like it? Hate it? Let me know I can take flames.
- Kitcat
