Finder's Keeper

Another short story set in the Mortal Skin universe. Please check us out online @ www.mortalskin.com and www.myspace.com/mortalskin

 

MATT2072:MARCH23:0011010198438091020917:

 

YEAH YEAH YEAH. THANKS TO MICHELLE FOR SETTING THIS STUPID F*****G THING UP. WELCOME TO MY PERSONAL BLOG SPONSORED BY META-LABS.NET! F**K YOU I’M GETTING PAID TWEETY BIRD!

 

HI. MY NAME IS MATTHEW FREDERICK BACON. I HAVE A SPEECH PREPARED FOR PEOPLE THE FIRST TIME THEY WALK INTO MY PLACE OF BUSINESS. WOULD YOU LIKE TO HERE IT? OK. HERE GOES.

 

HI. I’M MATT2072 BUT IN HERE I AM JESUS F*****G H CHRIST HIMSELF. I AM ALL THINGS TO ALL SIMMERS AND I HAVE WHATEVER THE F**K YOU NEED TO BE. I SELL CUBICLE SPACE BY THE HOUR WITH PRICE BREAKS IN THE WEEKLY RANGE. I’VE GOT THE F*****G SERVERS, YOU GOT THE F*****G NEURAL INTERFACE, WHAT THE F**K ARE WE WAITING FOR?

 

YOU LIKE IT? I DO. ITS SIMPLE AND IT GETS TO THE POINT FAST. NONE OF THE BLAH BLAH BLAH S**T THE SUITS LIKE TO SPEAK. THOUGH I GET PLENTY OF THEM IN HERE TOO.

 

F**K YOU AND GIVE ME MONEY.

 

<<END TRANSMISSION>>

 

***

 

James Hawthorne awoke that much closer to death when the ragged coughing tore through his chest like a thunder burst. Quickly, he ran to his cramped and sorely disused bathroom to spit out the huge wads of bloody mucus, only to succumb to another round of trying to keep his guts from flying out of his mouth in spasmodic bursts. The Chemo had failed to do it’s job and all hell would freeze over long before he could ever afford new lungs. He could feel lumps the size of potatoes moving around in there, but it failed to scare him now.

 

            Exhausted, he sat down gingerly on the edge of his filthy toilet and lit a cigarette. How had it come down to this? Well, the thirty cigarettes a day James smoked for the last sixty years had certainly helped, but he decided that in the end it was Time itself that had betrayed him. It had just sort of snuck away unnoticed and now James, poor little Jimmy, found himself with none left to spare.

 

            Closing his eyes, his mind drifted back to his childhood, a time when he was no stranger to happiness. Yes, even before his beloved cigarettes. There was that one game he played all the time… What was it called? The one with that Captain Punctuation guy and that zany Randal Colon dude and Missy Pronunciation, who later also became his first virtual sexual partner, and that silly Dante Asteryx guy…

 

He should remember the name, he spent most of his prepubescent years living inside that alternate reality designed to make kids buy merchandise online. And upon looking back on his life, James decided that those were in fact the happiest years of all and missed them bitterly.

 

What were they called? ASCII Team… something.

 

***

 

MATT2072:MARCH23:0011010198433095120862:

 

YOU REMEMBER THE F*****G ASCII TEAM ACTION FORCE? HOLY S**T, I’M MAKING THAT THE SEARCH WORD OF THE DAY. HANG A CYCLE.

ANYWHO, HERE, TRAVEL DOWN MEMORY LANE WITH ME:

 

ASCII Team Action Force Lingo:

“Ctrl-C” = “Copy” or “Affirmative” (“Yes”, maybe?)

“Ctrl-V” = “Paste”, “Go” or “Attack” (<Ctrl-V> me a sandwich, b***h!)

“Ctrl-Shift-V” = “Special Paste” or more literally “Have sexual relations with” (Meaning “f**k” to you or I!)

“Ctrl-X” = ”Kill” or “Destroy” (Oh, quite clever! Quite.)

“Shift-Delete” = “Kill with extreme prejudice.” (Go CIA on someone’s a*s today? Hooray!)

“Ctrl-Z” =  “Undo” or “Retreat” (You pull out a f*****g ringer! D’oh! <Ctrl-Z>!!!)

“Ctrl-Alt-Delete” = “Destroy the world” (With my hairless ball sack!)

 

HOLY F*****G S**T THIS IS THE DUMBEST F*****G CARTOON EVER F*****G CREATED. THE S**T PEOPLE USED TO WATCH TO DISTRACT THEMSELVES FROM THE PANDEMONIUM STILL AMAZES ME. ( WHICH, BY THE WAY, NEVER F*****G HAPPENED SO F**K YOU TO ALL YOU CONSPIRACY C***S OUT THERE. ) WHO DIDN’T GET STONED ON MOM’S PHARMACEUTICAL WEED IN JUNIOR HIGH AND WATCH THAT IDIOTIC ASSAULT ON THE SENSES?

 

SOME WHEEZY C**K SUCKER JUST CAME IN AND UPLOADED THE SIM, SO NOW I’M DOING A REVIVAL HERE AT funLANDIO.net RIGHT NOW!

 

F**K YOU AND GIVE ME MONEY.

 

<<END TRANSMISSION>>

 

 

***

 

 

>>_?

>> Run XY: AUTODISK.BAT

> Initiate Load Sequence Alternate Disk: OK

> 

> Load Sequence Initiated…

> One moment please…

> 

>>_?

> File Found: ASCII Team Action Force Version 8.93 Registered Copy #9H5A-3495-3E94-F451

> One moment please……………………………..

 

………………6H8A….8G%32

 

 

quite sure what was going on, but then again, when did he ever know?

 

            And they laughed merrily.

 

“What now, Captain?” Randal asked.

“Why not begin again?” Captain Punctuation inquired, his voice brimming with joy and mirth. “What do you say there, Jimmy?”

 

            Jimmy Connotation stopped and stared at everything like he had been stunned. It was real. It was all real again.

 

Just for him.

 

       “Jimmy? Are you ok?” Missy asked.

 

       “Never better.” He said while propping himself into an upright position on his favorite sofa in the Common Room. He looked around at their faces, one by one, before continuing slowly. “I was so afraid that you would have changed.”

 

       “Changed?” Captain Punctuation laughed.

 

            They laughed merrily.

 

“When does anything change?” Captain Punctuation asked.

 

       “During conjugation, implication and legal opposition.” They all replied in unison and all laughed merrily indeed.

 

       “I’m going to check for casual conversational drift.” Missy said as she walked to a nearby console and immersed herself. “Excuse me.”

 

“Boy, I’d sure like to <Ctrl-Shift-V> her.” Randal Colon muttered under his breath.

“You magnificent b*****d, I bet you would.” Captain Punctuation declared.

 

“Easy, that’s cold bath talk.” Jimmy Connotation interjected before shattering into a hail storm of coughing that violently reorganized of his entire respiratory system.

 

“Are you OK there, Jimmy?” Captain Punctuation asked with a note of concern creeping into his voice. He knew that Jimmy was sick somehow, but he didn’t know how he knew that. And honestly, he couldn’t decide which fact bothered him worse, and even that itself seemed odder still.

 

       “I’m okay, I’m okay.” Jimmy muttered between chest shattering coughs and phlegmy gurgles that quite frankly terrified everyone there. “Just a little cough, nothing serious.”

 

       “Ah, you need new Alertya^® Super Non-Drowsy Formula with Whatzefocknull^® (active ingredient Patent Pending, All Rights Reserved so F**k You^™.)” Randal offered helpfully, then looked a bit confused when he found all the hotlinks to be dead.

 

       “I’m okay.” Jimmy wheezed in a horrible tone. “Let us begin anew.”

 

      Against his better judgment Captain Punctuation confirmed.

 

“<Ctrl-C>.”

 

***

 

MATT2072:MARCH24:0011010198433095200078:

 

¡SUK THIS RICH TWEETY BIRD’S MOTHER F*****G C**K! FREE DRUG DOWNLOADS! FREE CONDOMS! FREE NEURAL-TRANCE CELEBRATION ON 25,038^TH AND IMPERIAL IN HONOR OF funLANDIO.net’s Grand Opening 2.0 @ Lava Gina’s Velvet Interiors! DOORS OPEN AT 04:00 ZULU! FREE ANTISEPTIC WIPE PACKS FOR THE FIRST 2K THERE! BE THERE YOU HAPPY SLAPPING C***S.

 

F**K YOU AND GIVE ME MONEY.

 

<<END TRANSMISSION>>

 

***

 

            The ASCII Team Action Force stepped out onto the Grand Patio lit by synthetic sunlight and surveyed the simulated summer scene before them. So beautiful, so perfect, and exactly the way Jimmy remembered it.

 

“It’s good to be back.” Jimmy said to himself quietly.

 

“When did you ever leave, Jimmy?” Captain Punctuation inquired.

 

“Well, it’s been quite a while since I last logged in, huh, Captain?” Jimmy asked.

 

“Actually, we can’t tell,” Captain Punctuation said with a note of confusion creeping into his voice, “we always pick up from where ever you last left off. In fact, we never notice you’re gone so to us it’s like you’ve never left.”

 

“The longest you’ve ever been gone was the last time you went to the bathroom after eating 25 Taco Del Gato^™ Cheesy Kitten Burritos^® in a row.” Randal said while plugging his nose and dramatically waving the air in front of him. “Woof, what a stench.”

 

“My eyes are still watering from that one. “Asteryx added.

 

“Enough of this idle banter,” Captain Punctuation declared, “there are some Seriously Sinister Semantically Incorrect Sentences that need their butts kicked. Is the ASCII Team Action Force up for the call of Good Grammar and the Freedom of Capitalization?”

 

“<Ctrl-C>!” They all cried in unison.

 

            It was decided that first they would help Dew-E Decimal take control of his library first from the Slangtron’s^™® forces of Grammatical Abbreviations. They were about halfway across the immaculately manicured front lawn when Lex Icon leapt out from behind a shrubbery and attacked with her dreaded Butterflies of Various Colors.

 

“Feel the fluttering wrath of the Painted Ladies!” She cried as she set loose a cloud of brightly colored insect icons that danced harmlessly about in a random colorful display designed to amaze and/or stun two year olds or someone with ADD.

 

             Jimmy gasped, clutched his chest and dropped to the ground like a marionette who’s strings had been cut, splaying his limbs at horrible angles.

 

       “Oh, Lex Icon, you’re no match for us.” Captain Punctuation declared. “You don’t scare us at all, right Jimmy?”

 

            The Captain looked at Jimmy’s still form and stalled.

 

       “Jimmy?” Captain Punctuation called weakly.

 

            No answer.

 

“You were supposed to protect him!” Captain Punctuation yelled at Randal Colon.

 

“I-- What?” Randal stammered.

 

“You were supposed to protect him!” Captain Punctuation bellowed at Asteryx.

 

       “Dude, he was hit with a freaking butterfly!” Dante Asteryx cried.

 

       “DON’T SASS MOUTH ME!” Captain Punctuation screamed at the top of his lungs as his face turned a ruby red. Everyone was taken aback by the Captain’s sudden outburst and stared at him in silent shock. “LOOK AT HIM!”

 

       “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Lex said over and over with a horrified expression on her face while trembling like a leaf. Her butterflies had never done THAT to anyone before.

 

“Sorry, sir.” Randal muttered quietly. They all gathered around Jimmy’s still form and looked at each other helplessly, wondering what to do next. So they waited. Clock cycles became seconds became minutes and still nothing happened.

 

“Something’s wrong, he’s not re-Spawning.” Captain Punctuation said darkly.

 

“Oh no! Oh no, this can’t be good.” Asteryx whined.

 

“What do you feed those things, anyway?” Randal asked Lex in an annoying voice.

 

       “Let’s get Jimmy back inside.” Captain Punctuation said at length. “Maybe he needs to be on the primary Spawn Point to reactivate.”

 

***

 

MATT2072:MARCH24:0011010198433095470723:

 

MICHELLE YOU F*****G C**T! I SAW YOU SUCKING DUSTIN’S C**K YOU WHORING F**K! F**K YOU, MICHELLE, YOU CUCKING FUNT!

 

F**K YOU AND GIVE ME MONEY.

 

<<END TRANSMISSION>>

 

***

 

            They tried to make Jimmy as comfortable as they could on the Spawn Point in the Medical Lab. Missy and Asteryx had loaded his bed from his quarters and scaled the modeling points of the custom mesh to accommodate the lab table’s squat stature. Randal had even <Copy-Pasted> Jimmy’s favorite pillows under his head from the Common Room sofa while his ever-present acoustic guitar leaned woefully against a bed post, waiting silently to be touched again.

 

              Captain Punctuation wanted to do something. Check for a pulse, monitor life functions, anything but this eternal torture of doing nothing. It was outside the realm of his programming, but how could he possibly know that?

 

“It’s not working.” Captain Punctuation said with a heavy heart.

 

“His breathing looks normal.” Missy offered in a hopeful voice.

 

“That’s just a latent animation. It doesn’t mean anything.” Captain Punctuation declared. “He keeps receiving bytes but never sends, that’s what concerns me.”

 

“A latent what?” Randal asked, totally confused.

 

“Latent animation. It gives the illusion of life. Our breathing, sweating, eating, making wee wee and poo poo, all have nothing to do with sustaining a natural organic system. It never has because we were never organic in the first place. Ever notice that we only get stronger after absorbing Power-Ups or Frenchy Burgers, but not after eating them?” Captain Punctuation cried but then faltered as he felt something that he had never experienced before, helplessness, and he didn’t like it one bit.  “We just do it because… because… I don’t know.” He floundered helplessly into space.

 

“What?” Missy asked.

 

“What do you mean illusion of life?” Asteryx asked.

 

“I don’t know! I DON’T KNOW HOW I KNOW ANYTHING ANYMORE! Nothing seems to make sense, but then it does! And… Aaarg!” Captain Punctuation cried while feeling his first-ever genuine panic attack. He liked that even less than his first emotional response. “Aaarg! WTF STFU N00B?!” He cried in helpless frustration.

 

“Did he just actually say wee wee and poo poo?” Randal asked annoyingly.

 

“But how do you know?” Missy asked growing genuinely concerned.

 

“I don’t know how, but I am pretty sure of one thing.” Captain Punctuation said while dropping his voice down to a whisper.

 

“What?” Missy asked.

 

“I think. I think Jimmy’s…” Captain Punctuation trailed off.

 

“What?” Missy asked.

 

“Dead.” Captain Punctuation said simply.

 

“He’ll snap out of it. He’ll wake up. You’ll see.” Asteryx whined.

 

***

 

MATT2072:MARCH24:0011010198433095470893:

 

C**T! C**T! CUNBGT!

 

F**K YOU AND GIVE ME MONEY.

 

<<END TRANSMISSION>>

 

***

 

“He’ll snap out of it. You’ll see.” Asteryx whimpered.

 

***

 

MATT2072:MARCH24:0011010198433095470913:

 

¡C**T!

 

F**K YOU AND GIVE ME MONEY.

 

<<END TRANSMISSION>>

 

***

 

“You’ll see!” Asteryx cried out as he burst into tears and large, cartoonish drops trailed across his cheeks along three pre-calculated trajectories. The ASCII Team Action Force stood helpless while he filled the room with wails of anguish and loss, all feeling something similar deep inside. Something they couldn’t touch, but knew was there.

 

“His software is jammed.” Randal said at length.

“What?” Missy queried.

 

“Jimmy’s not dead. Not really. No, his software, his Operating System or something is jammed. That’s it. That has to be it. I mean, Hardware, Wetware, what’s the difference? Right? They follow basic rules like everything else.” Randal said with fresh sense of purpose. “So all we have to do is reset his OS and we can all play again. You know the magic command codes to do that, Captain. Only you can reset the Hardware. Just say the words and make everything all better.”

 

       “No. We can’t do that alone, we still need the Wetware confirmation.” Captain Punctuation declared. “He’s the key to the whole thing working properly.”

 

“Why?” Asteryx cried with mounting frustration.

 

       “Because he’s the one who initiates the proper Load Codes after the System Reboot, not us. If we reboot and his OS remains in a frozen state, we may never achieve consciousness again.” Captain Punctuation said flatly.

 

“So what do we do?” Asteryx whined.

 

       “We do a Total System Refresh,” Captain Punctuation declared with fresh authority in his voice as he accessed the proper memory sectors, “all we need to is to initiate the Primal System Buffer Flush and all systems connected are updated. Any offline or jammed system is then automatically Force Rebooted and is logged back in.”

 

“So how do we initiate the Primal System Buffer Flush?” Randal asked.

 

            They all stared at each other for an awkward moment hoping someone would shuffle across the right data sector. It was maddening how the Frequently Asked Questions file drifted in and out of their minds with the ephemeral grace of a religious doctrine but only this time scattered across many more sectors of Hard Drive space.

 

“Wait.” Missy interjected excitedly, “FAQ:25-17. There’s a Primal System Buffer Flush to relieve all Wetware aggression after we complete the last mission against Slangtron^™® AND 100% completion of all goals. Maybe if we complete all the missions again, Jimmy will reset too so we can play again?”

 

“All in favor?” Captain Punctuation asked already knowing his companion’s answers. In unison everyone replied.

 

“<Ctrl-C>!”

 

***

 

MATT2072:MARCH24:0011010198433095471415:

 

I’M SORRY I STILL LOVE YOU I’M SORRY COME BACK YOU STUPID FUCKIGN C**T.

 

F**K YOU AND GIVE ME MONEY.

 

<<END TRANSMISSION>>

 

***

 

From the Linguistic Archipelagos to the frozen wastes of Cape Compendium, the ASCII Team Action Force battled innuendo and misconstrued grammatical abominations as best they could, which was extremely poorly with Jimmy, the Wetware player, missing. But they made an excellent show of true grit and brute determination without him and had many laughs along the way. With a few spell checking subroutines running in the background they made good time as well.

 

Hours passed. Hours became 

days became

eternities of labor,

ultimately producing

seemingly negligible results.

 

       “We’re playing like a bunch of kindergarteners, we should be drinking Happy Fuzzy Kitten Cola^® and conjugating superlatives by now…” Captain Punctuation himself was heard to mutter under his breath now and again.

 

            But they pressed onward. Through the dread jungles of Dangling Participles they battled the armies of Incomplete Sentences and won a mighty battle. Across the Steppes of Displaced Prepositions they made excellent time cutting down any opposition with merciless cries of “<Ctrl-X>!”. Captain Punctuation relished the new-found sense of purpose while Asteryx was getting killed and re-Spawning an average of every five minutes now, but he didn’t complain anymore.

 

          Until at last…

Slangtron’s^™® Gate.

 

***

 

MATT2072:MARCH31:0011011476434096120863:

 

HOLY S**T THAT WAS A GOOD F*****G NEURAL-TRANCE. I WAS SO F*****G FUCKED FOR F*****G DAYS MAN, I WAS JUST TOTALLY F*****G GONE, JUST TOTALLY F*****G GONE THERE FOR LIKE A COUPLE OF DAYS. F*****G A, WHAT WAS BIG DADDY SCIENCE PUTTING IN ALL THOSE SALINE DRIPS ANYWAY? WOW.

 

THERE’S A WEIRD F*****G SMELL COMING FROM SOMEWHERE NEAR THE BACK, BUT OTHER THAN THAT funLANDIO.net RAN JUST FINE WITHOUT ME. WHOA, PARDON ME A F*****G SECOND WHILE I READ MY LAST COUPLE OF POSTINGS.

 

F**K ME STUPID! MICHELLE CHEATED ON ME? THAT F*****G C**T! I’M GONNA KICK HER SLEEPING A*S OUT ONTO THE STREET AND SEE WHAT’S MAKING THAT F*****G SMELL.

 

F**K YOU AND GIVE ME MONEY.

 

<<END TRANSMISSION>>

 

***

 

            The ASCII Team Action Force had almost breeched the walls of Slangtron’s^™® Castle when it happened. Huge sectors of data began dropping out as entire zones ceased to exist. Like a giant apocalyptic black wall of death it advanced across the landscape devouring entire disk platters of clusters per clock cycle.

 

       “You b******s!” Captain Punctuation cried. “You stupid b******s have gone and initiated a Full System Shutdown!! You’re Rebooting it all away before we could Save!”

 

            They teleported back to base, but not before Asteryx was decompiled right before their very eyes, screaming “<Ctrl-Z>, <Ctrl-Z>!” in horror. Randal tried to console Missy and perhaps get one last piece of a*s before the Shutdown while Captain Punctuation remained faithfully by Jimmy’s side.

 

“Well, Jimmy, I’m sorry. We tried.” Was all he could say. “We should have Saved.”

           

The walls of the medical lab blinked out of existence and in a final blaze of glory, Captain Punctuation screamed the ancient battle cry of his ancestors at the top of his lungs, “<Ctrl-Alt-Delete>, you lousy b******s!” and then died an honorable death protecting what remained of his best friend

ever

  …&H63D.521

 

……………..D&F83…..256

           ……………………………………………&H(6A*0

>> Error 404: File not found

>> Error 404: File not found

>> Error 404: File not found

>> Error 404: File not found

>> System Administrator initiating Emergency Shut Down: OK

> One moment please…

> 

 

***

 

MATT2072:APRIL01: 0011011476434096452618:

 

AGAINST MY LAWYER’S RECOMMENDATIONS ( WHAT DOES THAT FAT SUITY C**T KNOW ANYWAY? ) HERE’S TODAY’S POSTING:

 

TODAY WAS TOTALLY F*****G AWSOME! SO NOW F*****G EVERYONE KNOWS THAT SOME OLD BAG OF CANCER DOWN AND F*****G FLAT-LINED ON MY CARPET. LEMME TELL YOU, BUSINESS IS F*****G BOOMING NOW THAT THE WORD IS OUT! INSTANT STREET CRED, TWEETY! MEDIA-TYPES HAVE BEEN SUKING MY C**K ALL DAY LONG AND I EVEN MET PAULA F*****G VASQUEZ HERSELF. SO YEAH THE DEAD GUY.

 

HE HAD BEEN DEAD FOR A WEEK AND HIS BELLY WAS SWOLLEN TO THE SIZE OF A BEACH BALL AND IT CONTORTED HIM INTO SOME SORTA FREAKY JOHN TRAVOLTA-ISH DANCE POSE LYING HALF-OFF OF THE SOFA DRIBBLING PISS S**T AND PUSS ALL OVER MY F*****G CARPET. HIS EYES WERE ROLLED UP INTO HIS PALE GREEN FACE AND THAT SMELL -- F*****G A THAT SMELL WAS OUTTA THIS WORLD. AS LONG AS NOTHING INTERRUPTS A CLIENT’S CASH FLOW WE LET THEM DO WHATEVER THE F**K THEY WANT. IN THIS CASE IT WAS A PLACE SOMEONE NEEDED TO DIE. SOMEPLACE COMFORTABLE. A PLACE HE COULD CALL HOME.

 

ALL OVER MY F*****G CARPET NO LESS.

 

SOME PUDDY TAT NAMED LATHE CRAWLED OUT OF THE COMPANY WOODWORK AND CLAIMED TO BE IN CHARGE, SO I HUMORED HIM WHILE THEY HAULED ALL THE “EVIDENCE” AWAY, WHICH BELIEVE ME, I DIDN’T NEED AROUND TO SCARE  MY CUSTOMERS. MUCH LESS ATTRACTING PEOPLE WHO WANTED TO WRITE F*****G POETRY ABOUT KITTENS AND DEATH ( I MEAN YOU MICHELLE, YOU RIGHT F*****G C**T! ) OR WHATEVER ELSE. BUT THAT F*****G STAIN WON’T COME OUT FOR S**T.

 

BUT HERE’S THE WEIRDEST F*****G THING, NOBODY EVEN NOTICED THAT HE WAS F*****G GHOSTED ALL F*****G WEEK BECAUSE THE GAME KEPT PLAYING ITSELF AND  FILLED IN FOR HIM AS IF HE WAS JUST ASLEEP. LIKE A F*****G PET COMFORTING THE CORPSE OF IT’S DEAD MASTER WANTING TO MAKE THEM HAPPY. TO CONTINUE HAVING A REASON TO EXIST. I MEAN, F**K ALL, MAKES YOU THINK QUE NO?

 

F**K YOU AND GIVE ME MONEY.

 

<<END TRANSMISSION>>