Chapter ten: Codework
"Turbo?"
"What?"
"Are you alright... After what happened in the house?"
"I'm fine. Now stop asking."
Turbo was making his way towards the code room, with Throttle in tow. It was only a few minutes after Turbo's breakdown, and Throttle was understandably concerned. They were in the middle of their fourth year of being plugged in, and this was the first time Throttle ever saw Turbo cry. He forced himself to concentrate on the bigger problem, even though he was only going to hold the rope that tethered Turbo while he was in the code room, and nothing snapped himself out of thought to see that they were already at the podium, so he walked over to his kart, which was still parked there, and untied one of the lengths of rope from it, while Turbo tied the other end to himself. The twosome walked down the stairs, and Throttle punched in the password; he'd committed it to memory. Turbo jumped in and made his way towards the code boxes, while Throttle sat down just before the entrance.
Turbo floated amongst the many code boxes in TurboTime's code vault, using his arms to propel himself towards the correct code box, which was towards the side of the cluster. He reached the three code boxes of the characters of TurboTime, but saw that his code box was the only one with a name. The other two just said NPC-1 and NPC-2. Turbo figured that the box that said NPC-2 was Piston's box, since he was the one who came last, so he gave the box a tap, and his gasped when he saw the inside. Light blue pixels were clinging to a good half of the wires and icons, and when Turbo tried to pry some off, he found that they had an iron grip.
"Throttle!" Turbo called, nervous.
"Yeah?"
"I don't think I can do this!" Turbo yelled. It was true. He never encountered anything like this, and consequently didn't know how to deal with it.
"Turbo," Throttle called back, "please try!"
"Alright!" Turbo answered uncertainty, then returned his attentions to the code. He gripped one of the blue pixels, and, after struggling with it for some time, pulled it off. He let it go, and it floated in the void until it disappeared. Turbo knew those pixels were Piston's corruption software, which was what was causing the problem, not the pixels that made him up. Turbo now had to get rid of this software, fix the damage, and fix the original injuries, though they might not even exist now, after all the damage the corruption software caused. He sighed, and tugged on another pixel, which came off after a few minutes. He continued plucking pixels until his hands were tired from all the pulling, when he noticed that he barely dented it. At this rate, he would be stuck in the code room for the rest of the day.
"Come on... Get off!"
Turbo was yelling at the last pixel, which was stuck on the wire. Pixels stuck on the wire had to be handled sensitively, at risk of destroying the code. Finally, he pulled the pixel off the wire, and threw it into the abyss. He turned back to the code box, to survey the damage. Many of the little icons were dimmed and sparking, and a couple were out completely. Most of the wires were frayed, some more than others. Turbo lifted up his hand to start working, when he felt a sharp pain in it. He brought his hands up to his eye level, and felt sick when he saw them. They were badly bruised in choice places, and the tips of his fingers were red as well. Now that he paused for a moment, Turbo also felt lightheaded as well. He decided to do the rest of the codework the next day, so he gave the rope that was tethering him two tugs. Nothing happened, so he just floated back to the exit, where he found Throttle asleep on the ground, his end of the rope tied around one of his ankles, so it wouldn't drift off.
"Throttle, wake up!" Turbo yelled, tugging on the rope.
"What?!" Throttle snapped to attention and stood up, "Did you fix Piston's code?"
"Sort of," Turbo answered, "I got rid of the corruption software, so he won't be eaten alive by his own code, but I didn't fix the damage. I started getting lightheaded, which is what happens when you spend a long time in the code room, so I came back. I'll fix the damage tomorrow."
Throttle was nodding along with what Turbo was saying, then realized something.
"Are you going to come out of the code room or what?" Throttle asked rhetorically, because Turbo was still floating in the code room, just before the hallway. Throttle grabbed Turbo's hand and pulled him in, Turbo's legs buckling from the sudden rush of gravity.
"How bad is it?"
Turbo and Throttle were back at the house, where Throttle mustered up the courage to ask that question. He couldn't deny that he was scared of the outcome, and he wouldn't deny it. After all, Turbo did admit that he was uncertain on how to fix the code, so what if it's unfixable?
"Throttle, calm down," Turbo said, snapping Throttle out of his thoughts.
"I am calm," Throttle lied.
"No you aren't. You asked me how bad Piston's code was, then you started hyperventilating. Or, whatever you call something a little less than that. And, about Piston's code, I got rid of what was eating him alive, remember?"
"And, what was that?" Throttle asked, not remembering the earlier conversation very well, due to him being half-asleep during that time.
"His corruption software. Now all I have to do is-"
"Hold on," Throttle interrupted, "did I hear you correctly? Are you saying that Piston doesn't have any corruption software? What if- what if there's a virus around?!"
"Throttle, it's not that big a deal. I can easily get rid of almost any virus. True, I can't install a new corruption software, but it'll work out. And as I was saying, all I have to do now is fix what that corruption software broke."
Throttle nodded. Then, he remembered about the boxes in Turbo's code.
"Turbo, remember earlier today, we were in the code room, and when we came out, you finally fell asleep?" Throttle asked.
"Yeah, what about it?"
"Well" Throttle began, "when I was looking at your code, I saw this purple box that was knocked off of its wires by a jittering red box. I put that purple box back on its wires, then that's when we left the code room. I was just wondering what happened with the code boxes?"
Turbo thought for a moment, then remembered which boxes Throttle was talking about.
"Alright," Turbo explained, "you know how some arcades are open 24 hours a day?"
"Yeah?"
"Since the console can't decide where it goes after development, it might end up in one of those arcades. Usually, they're pretty empty at night, but what if there are more players than usual? The characters can't just fall asleep in the middle of a game! So, that purple box lets you sleep, in simple terms. When it's unplugged, it's impossible for you to fall asleep."
"But what about the red box?" Throttle asked.
"I'm getting to that," Turbo replied impatiently. "The red box controls emotions. Whenever you experience an extreme emotion, and I mean extreme, it'll start shaking. In fact, sometimes it takes two extreme emotions to get it shaking. That box in my code must've been shaking with such force that it knocked the purple box off its wires."
"So, what you're trying to tell me is that you got so guilty that the red box couldn't take it and started to shake so bad it ended up knocking the purple box off its wires?" Throttle asked, just to make sure he understood it.
"Yes, that's what I just said," Turbo confirmed.
Throttle pondered that for a while. Turbo clearly stated more than once that getting the red box shaking was no easy feat, so he came to the conclusion that Turbo was taking this harder than he realized. He was too concerned about Piston to notice it before now, but after he and Turbo sat down for a little while, he noticed that Turbo wasn't acting like himself. Far from it, actually.
"Turbo?" Throttle tried to think of the right words to say when he answered.
"Yeah?"
"You're not acting like yourself." That was blunt, and Throttle hoped Turbo wouldn't snap back at him. To his surprise, that wasn't what happened.
"I know," Turbo answered, "it's just everything that's going on lately. I mean, with all this happening, you can't possibly expect me to act normal. You aren't, for sure."
"That's not what I meant," Throttle tried to be less blunt. "You're acting different. Under normal circumstances, you would only be helping because you're the only one of us who knows code, and also to hold it over our heads later on. You're not doing that now."
Turbo sighed, and fiddled with his thumbs. After a few seconds, his shoulders sagged.
"Throttle," Turbo began, not even looking at Throttle, "if I tell you why I'm acting different, will you promise never to bring it up after this? Ever?"
This comment made Throttle wonder what Turbo's reason was that he was this secret about it, but nevertheless, he nodded in agreement, even though some nagging feeling told him that it was a bad idea.
"I promise," he added for good measure.
Turbo was surprised Throttle would agree when he didn't even know what his reason was. What if it was something atrocious? It wasn't, it was just embarrassing for Turbo, but what if it was?
"You going to tell me or what?" Throttle asked.
"Alright, I will. Just give me a minute."
"Let me guess," Throttle said, "it's either embarrassing, you're afraid I'll get angry, or both."
Turbo sighed. "Yeah."
"It's alright," Throttle reassured, "if its embarrassing, I won't hold it over you, and if I get angry, you can count on me not suffocating you."
"Alright, here goes," Turbo muttered to himself. "Besides the fact that this is all my fault to begin with, when we were racing, I accidentally hit Piston's kart. I swear I didn't mean to hit him, I don't know what happened, my kart just jerked, out of nowhere! About a minute after that, I heard something explode. I guessed what happened, so I distanced myself so I could be in denial. I tried to come off as uncaring, hoping you'd leave me alone, but it didn't work. Because of the insomnia I had, those nights I wasn't delirious, I thought about the crash, and after, well, earlier today, I felt like I didn't have to hide anything anymore."
"Oh," was all that Throttle said. He didn't expect something like this from Turbo. He figured that he had disbelief and shock written all over his face, when Turbo continued.
"It's hard, with all this on my shoulders. It's my fault, and I have to fix it, and I know for a certainty that everything won't be the same after this. You aren't helping either." The last sentence, Turbo muttered under his breath, but Throttle caught it anyway.
"What do you mean, I'm not helping?"
"All this week, you were keep saying that it was all my fault and everything. I'm not saying you were in the wrong, but it... It hurt, okay!"
Turbo hung his head a little, like he was ashamed of what he just said. Throttle, meanwhile, started stammering.
"Turbo, I didn't- you- didn't mean- didn't know-"
"Quiet, Throttle, I told you, you're not in the wrong."
"I know, but still, I had no right to say it to you so much-"
"Enough!" Turbo snapped, turning away from Throttle. "Just stop, alright?!"
Throttle was at a loss for words. He didn't expect Turbo to react this way, so he simply placed his hand on Turbo's shoulder in a comforting gesture. He accepted it, and after a few minutes of just sitting there, Throttle began to get restless.
"Turbo, I don't want to come off as insensitive or anything, but don't you think we should get some codework done?" That was a fail. To Throttle, that had to be the most insensitive thing he'd ever uttered.
"You're not coming off as insensitive," Turbo reassured. "In fact, I think we should get codework done too. But we can't."
"What do you mean, we can't?" Throttle asked, confused.
"If you stay in the code room for too long, you go insane. Ten hours is the maximum time on end you can stay. After that, you have to wait another ten hours to go in again. I glanced at the clock before we left for the code room, and I looked a second time when we came back. It was ten hours. Ten hours of picking little pixels off..."
Turbo's voice got quieter and quieter as he started ranting to himself about the stubborn corruption system,and Throttle just shook his head and smiled, despite the situation.
"We'd better get some sleep," Turbo suggested. "It would definitely kill some time."
"Yeah," Throttle agreed, leaning on Turbo, who seemed amused.
"Really, Throttle, you're the only person I know that can sleep for ten hours straight and still be tired," Turbo said.
"Well, you're the only person I know that hallucinates pineapples," Throttle rebuffed.
"The pineapples, right, are you going to hold that over my head for the rest of my life?"
"Maybe," Throttle responded, dead serious, though Turbo wasn't sure how he knew about them. Maybe because he mentioned pineapples while he was delusional, and Throttle put two and two together.
Turbo was a little annoyed at first by Throttle using him as a pillow, but eventually he internally shrugged and fell asleep right next to the twin, leaning on him as well.