Note to simdork: I'll make it clear to you that Charlie always acts childish. Sometimes more than others, because he feels compelled to act certain ways around certain people. Crystal and Liz he's very comfortable around, and is not afraid to show his real feelings. I'll have something about that later. I know you might be concerned that I'm slowing the story down a bit, but in case you haven't noticed, every so often I do establish a chapter to nothing but character development. It may have been light, sure, but don't worry about it.
On with the Chapter!
Chapter 45: Dungeon Crawling for Fun and Profit
The jeep rumbled to a stop right where the desert turned into a meadow. Charlie stepped out of the vehicle and gazed out over the dusty horizon, at the once senic mountains and hills of Hyrule. "Wow!" He yelled enthusiastically, "This is a whole lot cooler than it is in a game!"
"Correction, Charlie. . ." Ben muttered, "We are in a game. . ."
"Just because you say so doesn't make it true," Charlie quipped.
Crystal sighed as she rolled down her window, "Charlie, we have still well near a half tank of gas. Get back in."
"Okay." Charlie returned into the passenger seat, and Ben kept rolling down, into the grassy fields. Crystal leaned in and whispered into Charlie's ear, "Why do you act like you don't have feelings for Liz?"
"I do, I just don't. . . you know, nido nidoran. . ." Love her that way. . . Charlie whispered back.
"You're not very aware of your actions, then. . ."
"Hey, look!" Charlie rolled his window down to get a better look. Castle Hyrule was not too far off in the distance, and it was standing tall and magnificently. "Wow! That looks so much cooler than Bowser's grungy old keep!"
"Charlie, you're leaning too far out the window. . ." Ben started.
"Let him be." Crystal said, "He's having too much fun to stop him."
Charlie beamed at the wonder before him, the grand castle of Hyrule. The inner castle was whitewashed and capped with golden roof tiles; it seemed more splendorous than in the games. The outer walls were whitewashed, too, looking fresh and new like out of a storybook. The overhead clouds only added to the picturesque scene, backdropping to a world of pure fantasy.
"This is sooo cool! I can't believe it!" Charlie yelled, the wind blowing on his face and through his short brown hair. Crystal smiled as she watched him have the time of his life.
Ben set the jeep into park some ways away from the castle, behind a large rock. "Now, the way I figure it," he said, "is that we instantly find out exactly where to go by finding what happened ten years ago."
"Who would we ask?" Liz spoke. Charlie glanced back at her briefly; she normally didn't talk much.
"Well, if it hasn't been programmed yet, we may be able to ask anyone who was around ten years ago to remember it. If it has, we might need to complete some ridiculous sidequest."
"Where do we look, then?" Charlie asked. The suddenly was a THUMP on the roof of the van. Everyone looked at each other, then up to the roof. "I'll check what that was. . ." Ben said as he opened the door and climbed outside. Up on top of the van stood the Owl, as Ben knew him from the game. "Oh, it's you. . ." Everyone else climbed out of the jeep to see who he was referring to. Charlie jumped up and down from excitement.
"Hoo! Ben, where has young Phil gone off to?"
"He's gone crazy if you ask me. We're here to solve this problem for him."
"It shall be so. Hoo! What do you need to know?"
"We need to know where the odd occurrence took place ten years ago. . ."
"The Temple of the Underground Cult. Straightway east from here."
"Wow. That was easy."
"Maybe it was easy to say, not necessarily easy to do. Hoo!" The bird lifted its great wings and soared into the sky, back over the mountains.
"That was so cool!" Charlie yelled from his joy, "I want to talk to him next time!"
"Maybe you will." Crystal said, "Maybe you will."
"Everyone back in!" Ben said, "Due east to the temple of the Underground Cult!"
The day wore for a while, and Ben still had not seen anything for miles.
"Odd. . . Very odd. . ." Ben said, "We've gone several miles out and haven't hit desert yet. . ."
"There!" Charlie pointed out to the horizon, indicating the brown haze of the desert was visible. Ben stopped the car. "Well, where would the temple be?"
Charlie turned around to face the backseat, "Crystal, could you help?"
"I've been scanning. . ." She said, "I think there may be something a mile south of here. . ."
"Directly south?"
"Yes. . . Yes, I think so. . ."
"Gods. . . we don't have much time!"
"What do you mean?"
"The desert is slowly increasing in size! If we don't solve the temple by then. . . well, I don't know what'll happen!"
"Then hurry!" Charlie pleaded, and Ben pressed the gas to the floor , aiming south.
"Just what is it about dungeons in games that make them so important?" Crystal asked as the jeep rolled up to a small, slightly obscured temple-resembling structure in the raised ground, with pillars, and a large gate, adorned with many various kinds of runes.
"They're the sites that bosses like to congregate in. If we're lucky, we might not actually have to fight a boss. . ."
"Why not?"
"It may not have been programmed yet."
"Wait a second. . ." Charlie said, as everyone unloaded out of the jeep, "If there are some things that haven't been programmed, then what happens if there's an error?"
"A universe doesn't act like Windows." Ben said plainly, "Everything is still real, not programmed the way a normal program runs. Everything in the universe is static and dependent on itself, only interacting with things that affect them."
"What if what we're looking for isn't there? Like it hasn't been programmed?"
"I think. . ." Ben pondered as they approached the gate, "I think that individual object have to do what their real effects are. For instance, a sword actually cuts what it's swung at, at anything it's swung at, and not just anything programmed to be hit by a sword. Likewise, an object that's programmed to have caused a change ten years ago actually has to physically exist." Charlie stepped forward and pulled on the large iron handle on the door. It was stuck. Charlie pulled harder, and harder, until it slowly creaked along the ground enough to let them in. "That, also," Ben explained, "Charlie is not measured as just a static object, nor ever just a sprite. He's comprised of individual parts that act on their own behalf of his will, or core programming, such as, to try and force a door open. It's exactly how the body normally functions, in a normal universe."
"What would be considered normal?" Crystal smirked.
"Alright, alright. . ." The four walked silently down the hallway, and Ben lowered his monologue to a whisper, "Anything remotely resembling this universe on a non-programmed scale. The door has not been programmed to act upon a certain event, although outside circumstances may influence it, there's not any entirely specific way things have to be done. If the door was magically shut, it is entirely possible we could have dug into here."
"Except the roof is two huge slabs of rock." Crystal stated.
"You know what I mean." Ben smiled, for the first time in a while.
"Well I have no clue what you just said." Charlie admitted, "But I think it had something to do with the. . . universe."
"On the ball as usual, Charlie." Crystal smirked again. The quartet followed the hall until they reached another staircase, that spiraled down into the ground. Without another word, they all silently crept through the halls below.
"There's no monsters." Charlie finally said.
"I believe this was the dungeon Phil woke up in." Ben said, "The Game Master might not have put a respawn module in the dungeons."
"Respawn whatle?" Charlie asked.
"A program that will recreate monsters that have been defeated."
"So we don't have to fight?"
"Up until the point that Phil got to."
"Watch out!" Crystal suddenly pushed Ben onto the floor. A green slime Phil must have missed leaped at where Ben was, and missed. Crystal, reacting quickly, fired a bright rainbow colored beam from her hand. The Slime disintegrated quickly, and Crystal pulled Ben up and brushed him off. "You need to be a little more careful. . ."
"This is a dungeon crawl, what do you expect?" Ben brushed his shirt a little, "We may be getting near. . . Crystal, you can tell what's happening. . . you take lead."
"Alright, Ben. . ." Crystal looked about nervously, "I'll try."
Next time, on Video Game! The Dungeon crawl is crawling along, but how in the world do you solve a puzzle without the right equipment? All this and more next time, same Video Game time, same Video Game channel!
(Sorry for the lack of Gord last chapter.)
From the Acts of Gord, Book of Propaganda, Chapter Three: (Words of Gord in italics)
"I read that the Xbox will be able to play Dreamcast games."
"Yes, it will be able to."
"Last week when I said it would do that, you called me retarded."
"I was wrong. Not only can it play Xbox games, but PlayStation games, and Sega Saturn games."
"Wow!"
"It gets better. Through a port on the back, you'll also be able to play Super Nintendo games, Nintendo games, Genesis games, and Nintendo 64 games."
"That's incredible. It does everything but play PS2 games."
"Remember reading how you need to buy a remote for the Xbox to license the console to play DVD movies?"
"Yes?"
"Same thing with the Xbox playing PS2 games. You'll buy an add-on for $30 that will let you play PS2 games."
"Really?"
"No, not really. You're still just as retarded as last week."
www.actsofgord.com