A/N: Ahoy!
Today I got new gerbils! *fanfare* Their names are Moriarty and Magnussen and they're very cute and small and grey and I love them.
And my tablet pen kinda broke which isn't as great of an announcement but y'know whatever.
Ciao,
-Whisker
Dil Howlter didn't know exactly why he felt the need to go outside into the garden that night, but he did, so he went.
It was a chilly night and any person in their right mind would have stayed in bed where it was warm, but not Dil. He felt the uncontrollable urge to fiddle about with his satellite.
He looked up to the stars as he flicked a few switches. He wasn't even looking at what he was doing, but he was expecting anything, really; aliens, perhaps?
One thing he wasn't expected was for the fabric of the air to rip apart and for a whirlwind of coding to swirl about, forming around two figures with the numbers and pixels.
"Guys?" Dil hissed, bewildered, as his two creators fell to the ground in a sort of tangled heap, looking very dizzy, before the binary disappeared and the portal closed up with a 'vworp'.
Dan gave a groan and sat up, rubbing his head. Going through two barriers in such a short space of time was one of the worst feelings he'd ever experienced. For a worrying amount of time, he couldn't even tell which way was up, but one thing he could tell was that there was movement again. He tapped his friend on the back, frantically, but couldn't move his head to turn to him because of the giddiness.
"Wh- What were you doing?" Dil questioned, remembering that he hadn't seen them both in the living room when he'd come out of the bedroom to head outside.
"You don't want to know…" Dan mumbled as Phil shakily sat up beside him, his arms wobbling like twigs in a storm when he leaned on them.
"I do," Dil insisted, folding his arms, "What do you think you're playing at, guys?"
Dan looked about the garden to see the breeze rustling the leaves of the trees and gently creating tiny ripples on the surface of the pool water. The swish of the wind in the trees and distant bubble of the momentum conserver were suddenly very calming and reassuring. Everything had life at last, and there were sounds all around.
"Hey, we did it, Phil," Dan panted, swallowing, exhausted, and giving his friend a quick hug before turning to Dil, "What day is it?" He asked.
"Wednesday," Dil replied, sceptically, raising an eyebrow, One in the morning. Why?"
"Oh- oh, man, it worked!" Phil smiled, breathless, leaning on his arms to attempt to support himself. In fact he was so relieved that he gagged, violently, which wasn't usually something people did when they were excited, but going back and forth through dimensions messed up your whole system. Things happen.
"What worked?" Dil demanded to know, tapping his foot on the decking.
Dan stood up and helped Phil to his feet, too.
"I'll tell you when we get back inside. Coming?" He hummed, heading through the back door and into the warmth of the house.
The air was stiller inside but still thinner and easier to breathe in than how it had been in the Crash. All Dan really wanted was a lie down and a blanket and his friend, but now he had to explain to an impatient Sim about how he could have killed them all.
"You won't have been affected by it," he started, woozily, addressing Dil as Phil wobbled his way to the nearest object he could lean on, which just so happened to be the kitchen counter, "…But the whole game kinda'… stopped."
"What?" Dil exclaimed, "What do you mean 'stopped'?"
"It crashed," Dan said, blankly, "Everything froze."
"What's going on?" Came Tabitha's voice as she appeared in the room suddenly, clearly abruptly woken up by the talking and her husband's scared-sounding 'what?'.
Dan looked to her, turning around a bit too violently and going dizzy again. He didn't want to explain anything to anyone right now, but if he had to choose between Dil or Tabitha, Tabitha was probably going to react a bit more reasonably.
"The game crashed," he repeated, "Phil and I were out for a walk… seeing the stars… everything just sort-of stopped. We didn't know what to do."
"Oh, you poor things!" Tabitha breathed. She walked to the sofa, picked up the blanket from it, wrapped it around Dan's shoulders and sat him down comfortably on the armchair.
She always treated him and Phil as if they were her sons and took very good care of them if they ever felt a bit unsteady or ill or if they needed to talk about something. Phil and Dan appreciated her care and concern, and the fact that she didn't fire questions at them, but rather made sure they were settled before letting them open up.
"At first we ran back here to see whether the satellite had anything to do with it," Dan explained as Tabitha flicked on the tea machine, "But even if it did, it was frozen just like everything else, so we couldn't fix it. There was no sound or movement anywhere except this… machine-like whirring; it was so surreal."
"So what was it?" Dil asked.
His wife frowned at him for carrying on the questions when Dan clearly wasn't in the right state for talking.
"Let him relax first!" She told him, seriously, pouring out two hot mugs of tea and handing one to Phil, who was currently on the floor, leaning against the fridge. Tabitha decided he needed something nice and warm so she went to fetch her duvet after giving Dan his tea.
"I don't really know why it happened," Dan mumbled, the steam from the drink drifting up into his face. He hadn't had any tea for a couple of days and it felt nice to have a warm cup between his fingers and the smell of leaves wafting up his nose, "…I suppose it just happens sometimes. We went back through the barrier in the forest to get back home to try and sort it out."
"We didn't want to at first," Phil added in a croak, "We thought it might force us to reload from our last save… and that was the day we came… it would erase all the data from these two weeks."
Tabitha returned then with the green duvet wrapped up in her arms.
"But it didn't?" She asked, confused, as she wrapped it around Phil's shaking form, making sure he was tightly enveloped in it and softly rubbing his back.
Phil shook his head, trying not to spill tea over his jeans.
"We got back home and found that it wasn't as bad as we had expected…" he said, panting slightly.
"It hadn't stopped working completely but it was lagging pretty bad," Dan elaborated, "Of course, time is completely different up there, so the game was only running really slowly, but right here, everything had stopped. As I said, you won't have been affected because you're part of the game, but Phil and I aren't, so we were kinda' stuck inside the lag," he added, sipping his tea.
"So how did you fix it?" Dil asked, sitting down on the arm of the settee.
"We managed to save in-between the pauses and rebooted the whole system," Dan replied, "It was a bit risky but it was all that we could do. We loaded the game and sent you to beam us back with the satellite. We didn't know if it would work, but I guess it did…"
Howell hoped that the cross-examination would end there and he could snuggle up with his friend on the sofa, under a warm duvet and finally get some sleep because he was getting really tired now after his ordeal. But of course the grilling wasn't about to stop just yet.
"What would have happened if you left it?" Dil asked, curiously, sounding very serious.
Phil didn't know why he was worrying so much; everything was fine now, why was he carrying on with the questions? He should be grateful that they were still alive. Yet Phil didn't speak up because he didn't have enough energy for complaining.
"I don't really know…" Dan sighed, "I suppose it would have righted itself in the end, but it wasn't great being stuck in the lag, and we didn't know what was wrong, really, so we tried to fix it anyway," and he yawned.
"Well, I think that's enough questions for tonight, don't you?" Tabitha spoke up, and Dil sighed before apologising, "…Why don't you two get some rest?" She suggested, addressing both Phil and Dan, "I can't imagine that traversing through dimensions does miracles to your internal organs."
Dan nodded, enthusiastically, glad to finally be able to get to sleep.
"Sure," he affirmed, "I'll just finish my tea."