T.L.S.I.T.W.O.T.W. (B.S.) volume 2!

[DAN200]

...spent the entire 5 minutes camping behind the crates, "Round Draw!" said a voice from above, and they were both sent back to there relative spawn points, each credited with £2000 for surviving the round, they set off...

 

[Testin da Cable]

...only to get dc'd because zonealarm, running on the 486/16MB-win2k box that was their server, had decided that cs-serv~1.exe wasn't allowed to run as a server any more and promptly caused a BSOD. Slightly miffed, TdC and Erik looked up and...

 

[DAN200]

...saw a large grey box floating above them, stugelling to see, Erix purchased a sniper rifle and used the scope to anyalyse the sky, the box read...

"This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If the problam persists, please contact your software vendor"

Suddenly, a large white pointer began to scroll accross the voids of space and click the button labbeled END TASK on the great grey box. As the pointer did so, the world began to mutate horribly around them...

 

[old.-=>AEROTOON<=-]

...causing their faces to skew into a cube, and their weapons to look like they were running on a 1mb graphics card. suddenly...

 

[DAN200]

...the world turned silent, and all the walls turned various shades of pink and grey, and, just when thye thought it could get any worse the entire map exploded into its component peices before their very eyes, plunging them into blankness, they looked around nothing, they listened, nothing, everything was gone. Just then, they heard a very distinct high pitched sqweaking noise in the distance, so quiet you could barely hear it, then, the sound grew lounder and louder, untll it filled their ears. Suddenly, the sound stopped and another sound was heard, a voice. "Welcome" said the voice "To the glitch Dimension"...

 

[Summo]

... followed by a slight whimper, from behind them. They turned and saw Arthur, Ford and Marvin lying in a crumpled heap on, what could be constituted as, the ground.

"What on Earth was that?" asked Arthur.
"Don't worry," said Ford, brushing some dust off his velvet lapels "I've been here before."

Marvin creaked in a dejected way, and settled into his new position with familiar derision.

 

[DAN200]

..."Uh, hi!" said tdc,
"Who the hell are you??" said Arthur,
"Ooh" said Ford, "ive heard about these people, they're l33t spammers from the year 2001"
"Whats that?"
"Oh, just someone who spends their time posting messages composed mostly of numbers on a primitive version of the Sub-Etha net in an attempt to make themselves look cool"
"Oh, I see." Arthur paused, confused, "So who are you guys then???"...

(LOL at the Hitch Hikers refernce SomeGuy )

 

[Testin da Cable]

..."well", said Erik, "I'm...

 

[old.-=>AEROTOON<=-]

... the acest player at cs, and i was just about to blast this guy in here, before we both fell after the box of death appeared and opened the portal.
god i wish i wasnt here. how did you ppl get down here?...

 

[DAN200]

..."Oh, its a long story"
"Anyway" said tdc, "How do we get outta here?"
There was a very long pause...

"I think" said Marvin the paranoid android, "I have an idea, you wont like it and it will most probably go wrong, here I am, brain the size of a planet, and you ask me to get you out of here... Would you like me to pick up a piece of paper?"
"NO" said Arthur, Ford, tdc and eric simulataneously.
"Just tell us the idea" added tdc...

 

[Summo]

... Marvin let out a long, depressed sigh. It took the best part of ten minutes. "Well," he said, eventually then paused again for effect. "You need to reboot."

The others waited for Marvin to continue until it became clear that he had no intention of doing so.

Ford began. "We need to...?"

"What?" interupted Arthur.

"Reboot." offered Marvin, and sank into a melancholic silence, accompanied only by a series of painful grinding sounds which he reserved only for when he wanted to be particularly irritating.

"Well that's a great help, Marvin. Thank you. Thank you for..." began Arthur,

"Here," Ford tossed him his copy of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "See what it says about the Glitch Dimension in there."

Arthur punched the entry in the book and watched the letters swirl and disappear on the screen.

"The Glitch Dimension," spoke the Guide, "is..."

 

[Wij]

...absolutley the hoopiest place in the whole galaxy. It's a total fun experience where even the constant boredom and needle-like pains which constantly assault your skull seems fun."

"Oh yeh", shrugged Ford, "The guide is a little bit biased about these sort of things due to pressure from Microsoft."

Arthur hadn't noticed the 'Powered by Windows CE' sticker before.

The guide continued...

 

[Testin da Cable]

..."If you're interested in hearing more about the Glitch Dimension, drop by the metasite ms%//glitch and register for free upgrades. Remember, I withhold the right to give or sell your personal private information to anybody for any reason!"
The gang looked at the guide. "What was that?" said Erik. Marvin, sunk into a depressed heap, looked up...

 

[Summo]

... briefly, and let his head fall with a clang against his iron chest.

"It's a little out-of-date," said Ford. "You need Product Activation in order to get the upgrades and well," a mischeivous grin crept across his face, "I haven't actually paid for it yet, as such. So to speak."

The Guide piped up again. "Prone to universe-wide hangs, the Glitch Dimension frequently requires restarting. Visitors are strongly advised to be somewhere else in the event of a Memory Dump. Why not check out the virtual delights of the Task Bar? Where drinks are reasonably priced and happy hour is up 99.999% of the day."

Eric had let his eyes wander the impossibly black landscape and now stood staring at a small, grey rectangle at an impossible distance yet, impossibly close.

The rectangle contained a single word.

'Start.'

...

 

[Testin da Cable]

..."golly," Erik said, "I feel the intuitive urge to go there!" "Impossible," said TdC "that button must be a million miles from here dude, you'll never make it." Erik, his eyes and mind filled with the little grey button with the letters "START" printed on it didn't listen. Muttering to himself, he reached out his hand...

 

[Summo]

... and touched nothing. The button faded and re-arranged itself to read,

'Shut Down...'

"How did you...?" began Arthur

"I'm not sure about this," remarked TdC. "Little grey boxes are Bad Things in my experience. Now, penguins! I like penguins..."

Ford stepped forward, a little miffed that nobody had paid him much attention for a while.

"Now hang on, fellas,"

Eric's eyes were wide and he seemed giddy with his new-found power. His hand waved at the box.

'Restart...'

But it was too late. The air was filled with an clicking noises as though an infinite number of hard-drives suddenly found a new job to do.

Then all was silent.

Ford, Arthur, TdC and Eric looked at each other, waiting for the end. Huge white letters smacked into existence above their heads. Arthur read them aloud.

"Award BIOS. Energy Star compliant. Checking IDE drives..."

...

 

[Sir Frizz]

..."A Fatal error has occured at the location-876597645.*(&%*(74.875)*&.{~:~%$£9765.wijwozere"

the reboot had failed...

 

[Stazbumpa]

...so everyone stood and looked at each other for a while before TdC ventured "Anyone got an idea?"...

 

[Testin da Cable]

...an age of utter silence passed. "Well," said TdC, "I wasn't going to mention this [as some ppl don't appriciate it =p] but I've got a linux boot floppy in my back pocket and we might just manage to boot this baby up if we could only find a floppy drive." "What?" said Albert, "you mean that...

 

[DAN200]

...theres a possibility we can get outta this mess just by putting in that disk?"
"Uh, no, we'd have to install counter-strike first boot up and finish the round we had started earlier before it crashed..."
"But that would mean that..."
"Yes, thats right, we'd have to wait the best part of 46 hours for the updates to download"
"Hmmmm... so where is this floppy drive you speak of then?" asked Ford,
"Oh" tdc added "Just over there....

(His name is Arthur tdc, not albert)

 

[Testin da Cable]

...behind Arthur, and a bit to the left...

[soz gotta bit of a fever heh bear wiv me]

 

[DAN200]

...behind that Bill Gates statue, they proceded over to it and...

 

[Summo]

...stopped suddenly, when a woman's voice drifted calmly out of the darkness.

"For the last four years, " she cooed "you have been engaged in the Total Immersion Video Game, 'BarrysWorld'. As with all role-playing adventures, you will experience a certain amount of disorientation on leaving the game. It will be several minutes before your real-life memories return, so in the meantime, please disengage the game-playing machinery and relax until an attendant is free to answer any of your questions. On behalf of Leisure World International may we be the first to say, welcome back to reality."

...

 

[DAN200]

Eric then found himself sitting alone in a small dark laboratory with wires and probes attached to every orifice in his body, he looked around the room and a single computer monitor attracted his attenion, containing the words...

 

[PR.]

... "Windows XP Service Pack 12 has loaded in safe mode due to an incomplete bootup, some of the devices connected may function eratically"


Eric instantly realised that these probes were the devices connected... he paused unsure whether to just rip the probes off or use the Safely Remove Probes option in the Systray...

 

[Stazbumpa]

...then he realised that ripping them off was actually safer than using the option in Systray considering that the program had been written by Micro$haft and was therefore usefull for wiping peopes arses with and not much else.

So he ripped them off, and...

 

[Summo]

... and screamed "Everything's blue!" before dying.

Arthur, Ford and TdC observed a few seconds silence.

"Inevitable, really." remarked Ford. "You live and learn. Move on, froods."

They gracefully disengaged themselves from the equipment. Arthur noticed that Marvin was nowhere to be seen and remarked that no doubt he'd probably turn up at some point.

Once free from the game machinery they looked around their new location...

 

[Testin da Cable]

...they were in a large vaulted room lit by dim striplighting. Next to them was the machine they had aparently been attached to for the last six years. Passages led off to the left and right...

 

[Stazbumpa]

...which led to instant confusion and no idea which way to go. So they flipped a coin, head was left and tails was right. It came up...

 

[Wij]

...and then down a hole in the floor.

"OK. Let's be logical about this." stated Ford, with an air of authority he was both surprised and proud of.

He took out his Hypercompass and worked out that one door was North and one was South.

Using his new commanding voice Ford shouted to noone in particular, "GO NORTH"

Everyone now found themselves in a room with entrances to the East, West and South. On the floor lies a Hammer and a Herring.

"HIT GANDALF", cried Ford who was quite disturbed to find his skull cleaved soon afterwards.

"I could really do with a cup of tea.", whined Arthur who was met with a disembodied voice saying, "I DO NOT UNDERSTAND I"

"Arthur, you fool", whispered Ford, "You...