Chapter Three: Semantic Errors


Night had fallen, but the sky barely looked any different than it had ten hours ago.

Sonic's cottage, lit only by a couple of dangling lightbulbs, illuminated its five inhabitants with its weak rays. Tails had returned to his project, a look of utter concentration on his face as he typed frantically. Everyone else was clumped together on the couch, staring at a rerun of some daytime television program that no one could remember the name of. However, after the seventh awful pun in a row, they decided unanimously that they didn't want to remember anything about it in the first place.

"Hey!" Knuckles stood up with an indignant look on his face after one of the main characters of the sitcom spouted yet another awful pun. "They stole that joke from me!"

One corny pun later, Knuckles wound up for a punch to smash the television out of sheer frustration, but thankfully, Sticks screeched and tackled him before it could come to that.

"Thanks, Sticks," Amy said. "That would've been the fourth time this year we've had to replace something important because Knuckles smashed it."

Everyone but Knuckles nodded right away. After the last incident- in which he cracked the stove in half because he burned his hand trying to cook something, and nearly caused the cottage to burn down in the process- everyone agreed to keep the appliances intact at all costs, and Knuckles made an agreement with the others that he would try to rein in his anger. And he'd done a pretty good job of it. Until now, at least.

Sonic finally did what should have been done fifteen minutes ago and turned off the stupid sitcom that was playing. Unfortunately, this just exchanged it for another, equally stupid sitcom. Knuckles stood up and left the room before he got the urge to smash the television again, which was a good thing. Once again, this sitcom was nothing more than an excuse to cram as many painfully bad puns into thirty minutes as possible.

Amy reached for the remote, and upon grabbing it, immediately flocked off the television. When everyone else gave her a look, she said, "Come on, guys. Comedy Chimp is funnier than this. When he's not performing."

Tails added "Even Sonic's Eggman puns are better than that. And I'll be the first to admit that most of those are awful."

"Guilty as charged," Sonic returned.

Tails returned to his project once more. He now typed so fast that Sonic couldn't tell his fingers apart anymore. Everyone's eyes drifted to Tails as he kept up his pace, a thin stream of salty sweat beginning to trickle down his forehead as he did. Tails didn't notice, instead choosing to mumble under his breath as he worked. Even when the others overheard little bits of what he was saying, those bits refused to make sense. All they heard were things such as "oh, I need to create a trigger for the internal wires," and "huh, why isn't the algorithm scrambler working properly?"

His mumbling, however, stopped a few minutes later, as he somehow picked up his pace even more for one final dash to the finish. He frantically entered a few more words, and then stopped, breathing heavily. Then, he pressed a single key on the computer, and let out an elated yell.

The noise caused everyone to turn their heads towards him, and they were semi-confused as to why this success had him fist-pumping and screaming "Yes!". Sure, Tails had made quite a few useful and complex programs work in the past, but their completion never caused this much celebration on his part.

"Tails, can I see what you've made now?" Knuckles had gone back to trying to sneak a peek at Tails' project.

"Sure, just let me get it running," Tails replied. Then, he pressed a couple more buttons, causing a new window to open up on his computer. However, said window failed to impress everyone else, with it just being a blank white screen.

"Okay, I need a volunteer for this part," Tails told the others. He desperately looked at all four of them, willing them to step up to the part. None of them seemed to want to. "Come on, guys! Please?"

Sonic rolled his eyes. "Alright, alright, I'll test your little doohickey. But it better not be anything like the last one." The program Sonic was talking about was a burglar alarm that Tails created a few months ago, which he decided to test without telling anybody. Sonic didn't notice it when he came home, and stepped inside without pressing the subtle button designed to turn off the alarm. Three seconds later, he found himself on the floor with several menacing knives mere inches from his face.

"I need you to do exactly as I tell you for a few minutes," Tails said. "If you do the next few actions even a tiny bit differently, it's not going to work. Please do what I tell you to the best of your ability."

"Can do, buddy," Sonic replied.

Tails then proceeded to ask Sonic to do several things, including press his finger on a pad, stare at an icon that popped up on the computer screen, speak into a microphone, and walk in a circle around the room. He complied with all these instructions, wondering what they could possibly be for. Then, after the instructions were complete (and Amy, Knuckles, and Sticks had gone to the bedroom to wait until the thing was ready) the screen finally changed.

Now, instead of the blank white screen that had once dominated the space on the monitor, instead, the screen displayed the words 'CALIBRATING FIGURE' in large, bold letters.

It stayed that way for a while. Sonic began to tap his foot with impatience. Tails' smile began to fade away. The two of them shared the exact same thought: "What the heck is taking so long?"

As if to answer that question specifically, about a minute later, the words on the screen changed to 'FIGURE CALIBRATED. ONE MOMENT, PLEASE.'

"Tails, I should have asked you this earlier," Sonic said, "but what's this thing doing that it requires this much information about me?"

Tails chuckled. "You'll find out in a second," he replied, gesturing to the screen once more.

The screen's display now differed from its previous state. Instead of the blank white screen Sonic had gotten used to, in that very screen stood a perfect replica of Sonic- on a smaller scale, but otherwise identical.

"Whoa. That's super cool, buddy!" Sonic clapped Tails on the back, smiling. Tails couldn't help returning the smile.

"It's like I'm looking in a mirror!" A third voice startled them all. It took another second for them to realize the voice came from the computer speakers. When the two of them investigated, they noticed that the Sonic replica was facing them, and he seemingly had his face pressed against the screen, trying to get as close to his real-life counterpart as possible.

"Another Sonic? Well, another another Sonic? Did Eggman inject me with drugs again or something? Because I think I'm seeing things," the replica said from inside the screen.

"You're not seeing anything. Well, not in that way," the actual Sonic replied. "Everything you're seeing is real."

"Whoa, cool!" The replica started jumping up and down like a child.

Sonic looked at Tails intently. "It can interact with everyone, too?"

"Of course it can," Tails replied. "The program essentially takes all your data, including your personality, and displays it on the screen. That thing right there is a digital replica of you, more or less."

"Wow, no wonder the program took three months to make," Sonic said.

"It would have taken longer if I didn't sink, like, four hours worth of my time into it every single day," Tails replied. "Some of those attributes did not take well to being scanned. This is the first time I'm testing most of it, but every time I even tried to run the program for a while, the computer crashed. This is one of the first times it worked properly."

Sonic turned towards the bedroom, where the others sat quietly and waited to be called outside. "Hey, everyone! Come and see this! This is really cool!"

Knuckles, Amy, and Sticks all hustled out of the bedroom and crowded around the computer's small monitor. The Sonic replica's jaw dropped. "Wait, what are all you guys doing out there? You should be in here, with me!"

"That's great, Tails! I can't help but wonder what my digital replica would be like," Amy said.

Knuckles gaped, sputtering out something that might have sounded something like words under normal circumstances.

Sticks just glared at it, muttering "I don't like the looks of that Sonic."

"Sticks, it's fine. You being suspicious of it doesn't mean anything anymore. You're suspicious of everything," Sonic replied. "Tails made the program, for crying out loud! You can trust him, right?"

"I guess," was all Sticks managed to say.

For the next twenty minutes or so, they all talked about Tails' new program as the Sonic replica stared at them and drank in all the sights. Eventually, they grew bored of this conversation, and decided that they wanted to see what their digital replicas would be like. However, Sonic thought otherwise, just because it was already past eleven o'clock at that point.

"Guys, it's dark out. And I don't know about you, but I need my eight hours of beauty sleep. Why don't we try this again in the morning when we have clear heads?"

Knuckles, Amy, and Sticks all nodded. They then proceeded to walk out of the cottage, heading back to their respective dwellings.

"Thanks for testing this out for me, Sonic," Tails said as he, too, began the trek home. He had forgotten his computer, but Sonic liked it better that way. He knew that if Tails took the computer home, he'd be up all night working on that project, and would be wired in the morning as a result. The last time he pulled an all-nighter, the he subjected everyone to a half-hour long, one-sided conversation about the physics of gum.

After saving the program and turning off the computer, Sonic picked it up and placed it on the wobbly coffee table, to make sure he didn't step on it or knock it over the next day. Then, he followed his own advice and trudged off to bed, ready to get some sleep of his own.

As soon as Sonic entered the bedroom, the computer, oddly enough, flared back to life once more with a series of beeps. Sonic was too tired to notice the noise.

And because he didn't notice the noise, he never saw the tiny, well-hidden line of text that appeared on the bottom of the screen.

DATA COPIED.


Author's Notes:

-Now, all the pieces are in place. The ball has started rolling, people, the ball has started rolling! We start to really get things going next chapter.

-Next chapter is where the disturbing imagery begins to start (which is most of the reason why I gave this a T rating). If you wish to continue reading, but can't stomach disturbing imagery for any reason, PM me and I'll send you a chapter summary.

-The update time, in case you didn't see my profile, will still be the Wednesday of every week, but now it will be at 7 PM EST instead of 9 PM EST. Hopefully, you can adapt to this change.

-See you next week, with Chapter 4!


Review Zone, Act II:

-Guest: Thanks for taking the time to leave a review! Also, that is a little weird, thanks for pointing that out. I just fixed it, because the limited word choice can be a little off-putting. I'll work on varying my word choice a little more in future chapters.