PrologueThere I was, eating a large pepperoni and ham pizza, when Taylor got the e-mail.
We were in our medium-sized apartment, in our make-do living room with a 3-seated couch, a coffee table, jacket holder near the front door, and a ppassageway that lead to the bedroom and bathrooms. Next to the passage was a small kitchen with a sink, 4-space stove, 3-rack oven, and a double-door fridge with the ingredients to make delicious... well, anything! Taylor was on his Orange* laptop, checking through his Gobble Plus account. I was watching his father, Kingsley, tell us jokes live on the television we got with the money we saved from serving hungry customers.
"And then when I ask him why my plate of pasta is so dang messy," Kingsley states, "Doan says, 'Well, Kingsley, you told me to step on it.' " I laughed out loud along with the rest of the studio audience. After Kingsley told a joke about eating pizza with a world famous chess player on the Pizzeria's checkered tables, and how it took her 2 hours to pass Kingsley the salt, Taylor nudges me to look at his screen.
"Chuck, check it out," Taylor beamed. "I got an email on my Gobble account. It says if I download this file, I'll get 10,000 gems added to my Jacksmith account !"
"Eh, I'm not so sure, man. Doesn't look trustworthy, we don't know what or where it came from, and the file type is .x," I pointed out. "I mean, I've seen .papa, .js, .cmc, heck, I even still see .rgd! No one even PLAYS RGD anymore!" I exclaimed. "But never have I seen a .x file."
Taylor's eyes narrowed at me. "Dude. If you haven't seen this file before, then how the heck do you know it's dangerous?" he addressed. He has a point, I thought. "Well, when you put it that way, I guess we
could open it." I finally agreed. Taylor's narrowed eyes had excitement open them up again. "I knew you'd say yes! Let's download this thing."
Taylor double-clicks the file. The download starts automatically. I'm kinda surprised the laptop didn't give a warning or something, but then again, Tay would've ignored it anyway. The download takes a few minutes, but it completed.
Taylor opened the file. Nothing happened. "The gems probably synced into my account by now," Taylor assumed. He opened a new tab for his Jacksmith account. But then a pop-up appeared.
And another one.
And another one.
Soon, Taylor's screen is flooded with pop-ups and then his computer lag spikes, and crashes.
"Crap! Green Screen of Death. Hard drive's dead." Taylor explained.
I gave Taylor the I-told-you-so look. In return, he gave me the I-deserve-that-look look. I looked past Taylor's ignorance when something strange went on on the screen. Taylor followed my eyes. "What's going on with the text?" he questioned. The writing on the GSoD was turning into 0s and 1s. The entire screen was soon full of them. Before you know it, a 0 protrudes out the computer, and tried to suck us in. The more we resisted, the harder it pulled on us, until suddenly, I lost my footing and hit into Tay, sucking both of us into the vortex of binary code.
We screamed, as we saw the entrance close before us.
We screamed, as we were twisted and turned by the endless loops of the binary vortex.
We screamed, as the seemingly endless fall was leading right to a concrete floor.
We screamed as we hit the floor with a solid thud.
I woke up, at first dazed, in a large room, not knowing where I was, or how I got here. I could see a humanly figure and as my eyes refocus, the shape in fact was a human. But not just any human.
"M-M-Matt Neff of Cleveland?" I trembled.
"In the flesh," he replied.
I felt like fainting again, when Taylor woke up beside me and had the same shock and awe in his face as I did. "Are we in Flipline heaven?" he wondered.
Matt laughed. "Nope, you're not in Heaven. But you're not in the Flipverse either." He winked at both of us.
Taylor and I were extremely confused.
Matt laughed again. "To make a long story short, welcome to the Internet. I'll be your guide."
LBK PRESENTS
