"Why are you making all this
noise down here?" Phil shouted down the basement steps.
"I
am inventing...THE INTERNET!" Joel shouted back.
"You're
too late, Bill Gates already did that."
"Oh. It still
makes a good segway, right?" He said, let down.
"Yeah, I
guess so-UAGH!" Phil shouted, cut off midway by a huge pull at
his leg.
Joel and Phil are sucked into the half-finished device.
The cyberpunk storyline begins now.
"As if my room wasn't
enough, now you redecorated my lab! With...blackness...and green."
Joel said, staring around at this new environment.
"That
wasn't me! Or maybe it was. Yes. No. Yes no yes-noyes--No." Phil
said steadfastly.
"Right then." Joel replied.
Phil
looked around. "It would appear that we've been sucked into a
computer program WITHIN A COMPUTER PROGRAM. Which somehow
allows for us to magically walk around in the code, and which is
somehow 3D and has mass."
"Brilliant exposition!"
Joel shot at him. "Now, let's go find a way to get out of this
place that is not a ripoff of the Simpsons!"
Chapter
II
-We are now in the "real" world, where
Evil has gained entry to their lab.-
Evil laughs maniacally. "Joel
Dawson's laboratory at last! His inventions are now mine to wreak
havoc with--oh sweet, a DS. Hey, is this Mario Kart? I've heard this
game's pretty good...Hm, is that another game pak--GAH!
He is,
predictably, also sucked into the apparatus. What wacky shenanigans
will come of this?
Chapter III
"Hey, Joel, you hear
something?" Phil said, looking behind him.
"Like what?"
Joel asked.
"It sounded like a sort of slurping, like when a
vacuum sucks up a spill." Phil explained.
"Strangely
specific noise, but I have no idea what it was. Hey, wait. What's
that up there?" Joel said, pointing ahead.
"That block
of code looks remarkably like a plot point--I mean house." Phil
pondered.
"Let's go see what's inside it." Joel said,
running ahead.
"Yeah, it OBVIOUSLY won't lead to death!"
Phil said sarcastically, picking up speed to keep up with
Joel.
"Relax, we'll just come back next episode anyways."
Joel replied. That was a pretty solid argument.
They raced ahead
to the block of code, which seemed to have an open door frame on it.
They walked inside and looked around when their eyes locked on the
source of a low groan.
"H-help...food...need..." said
the sickly figure.
"Who's this guy?" Phil said, looking
curiously at the person.
"That's not a guy, dude." Joel
said.
"Whoa!" Phil said, looking at the apparent girl's
thin, bony face.
"Who...who are you? Why are you...in this
place?" she said weakly. Phil pointed angrily at Joel. Joel
shrugged.
"Yeah, I was working on a machine in my lab and it
kind of malfunctioned. So we're stuck here and all." he said in
explanation. "How about you? How'd you get in...wherever we
are?"
"Don't...have enough energy to explain..."
she rasped.
"Oh, give up the act. You're thin, sure, but
you're speaking normally. You're fine." Phil said angrily.
"Man,
I've known you guys for, like, 3 minutes and I already hate you."
the suddenly normal-sounding girl said. Joel rolled his eyes.
"So,
you were saying?" Phil interjected, exasperated.
"My
name's Christie; I came here through pretty much the same way you
did. I was working in a lab on a project for Hereti-corp, when we got
hit with a power surge and I got pulled in here by the excess of
energy. I've been here ever since. This place sucks." she
finished matter-of-factly.
"Yeah. So how do we leave?"
Joel asked. Christie broke into hysterical laughter. Joel glared at
her. "Leave. Way. Now. Tell." he said forcefully.
"Fine...
I guess if we modified the code to reject our connection, we could
get out." she said.
"Wait, we're on the INTERNET!"
Phil shouted.
"Uh, yeah. Since we got in from multiple
places, I figured that was assumed." she replied. "But we
should get going."
"But it'd be awesome to see the Bonus
Stage site!" Phil shouted in her face. Joel grabbed him by the
collar and pulled him outside. Christie followed them with a worried
look on her face. Phil thought he saw a shadow shoot behind them, but
it was gone a second later.
Chapter IV
Evil dusted off
his death-cloak and lifted himself off the ground. "Those fools
think they can escape me! They know nothing!" he shouted at nobody
in particular. "I will have their souls!" With that pledge, he
raced off, running around the 1s and 0s of the code like a slalom
course. He kept an eye skirting his field of vision for any sign of
the two technological explorers, but so far had come up with nothing.
He then came up to a protrusion in the code, but it was just a lump.
It even burned when he touched it. "Just a glitch," he said,
jumping over it and flowing forward again. He had better things to
attend to. 10 minutes passed, and he saw a square-shaped bump in the
code ahead. He thought it was normal at first, but then noticed there
was a door frame on it. It was a little cyber-shack. He heard voices
from within and hid behind a 0. He looked through its center to see
Joel and Phil exiting the shack with a girl he didn't recognize. He
dashed out to a 1 to get closer, and saw a look of recognition dawn
on Phil's face, but it subsided, and he relaxed. He was going to
catch them. He didn't know when or quite how, but he would. An
invisible grin stretched across his pitch-black face. He then raced
off into the binary, the plan still formulating in his ethereal
head.
Chapter V
"I'm telling you, there's someone
following us!" Phil shouted, continuing to be dragged by
Joel.
"And I'm telling you to shut up before I duct
tape your lips together." Joel told him. Phil sighed and slumped
his shoulders. Then he saw the shadow again. His eyes went wild and
he pointed directly at the 0 he had seen it go behind.
"THERE!
BEHIND THAT! IT'S THERE! GET IT! AAAAHHHH!" he screamed. Joel
socked him across the face.
"Shut up. I'll check who it is,
and possibly have an action-packed fight scene with them, but I
promise nothing. Christie, make sure he doesn't get away. He's too
insane to be left unattended at the moment." Joel said, frowning
at him.
"I say that about you all the time, but nobody ever
listens to me..." Phil mumbled as Christie grabbed his shirt
collar and held him fast.
Chapter VI
Evil hid close to
the green 0 he was behind. He knew Joel was on his way, and he wasn't
about to be found. He flattened himself against the inside of the 0
and stayed quiet. Joel glanced around the number.
"There's
nobody here. Wow, you're paranoid, Phil." He yelled back.
"YES
THERE IS! HE'S HIDING INSIDE THE ZERO, ARE YOU BLIND!" Phil
responded. Evil suddenly shot out from the 0's inner surface and
slammed Joel across the face. "OK, maybe there WAS someone
there." Joel said, his hand over the area where he had been
punched. Suddenly the image on the screen flickered and blacked out.
A huge neon-colored screen shot up reading "INSERT HIGH-BUDGET
3D-RENDERED CGI FIGHT MOVIE HERE!" It faded out again and the
normal view reappeared. Joel was standing over Evil with his foot on
his mangled corpse. "Ya see, Evil? Nobody beats the main
character--I mean me." He said, smirking. "OK, now that
I've defeated the antagonist, we need to magically discover the way
to get out of here. Plot advancement...GO!"
Chapter
VII
"So, after finding an editor in the host computer, we
managed to expel our connection. If that's the case, shouldn't
Christie have come out here too?" said Phil in summation.
"Well,
she normally would, but during transit, she fell through a plot hole.
God knows where she is now." Joel responded.
Christie is
looking around a strangely blue and black screen. She is sitting on a
sentence of some sort. She floats off and reads it.
"Windows...has
encountered...a critical...error--OH DEAR GOD NO!"
