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Code n 0 0 b: Chapter 4 - HBOperative
Posted By: Skul<skulkrusha2000@hotmail.com>
Date: 6 April 2007, 12:03 am
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Code n 0 0 b: Chapter 4
"n00bs! They're able to get through our defences!" Rabid Gallagher cried again.
"I heard you the fourteenth time!" Syotica cried back.
"You had us at 'Hello'!" said Skul with a snigger.
"Shutup," said Syotica curtly without glancing at Skul who was standing in the doorway of Syotica's office. The office was filled with Japanese calligraphy. It was on every wall, covered most of the inside of the office's door and was stencilled on the white PC tower. On the back wall was a shelf on which a beautiful sword lay. Light glinted off its clean, sharp blade. Underneath the sword on another shelf was the sheath. The black surface of the sheath had golden Japanese characters flowing gracefully across it.
Syotica frowned and turned to face Skul, "What are you doing here, anyway? Stop standing in peoples' doorways! Get back to writing!"
"Okay, okay…" muttered everybody's bone-headed buddy and Skulked off. He would have been writing if it he hadn't come down with a serious case of Writer's Block. All the cures he had read of hadn't worked… mainly because he never tried them.
"Alright," said Syotica, turning back to Rabid Gallagher, "so what you're trying to say is n00bs are able to get through our defences?"
"Well, that's gist of it, yeah," said Gallagher.
"Just the gist? Tell me the whole thing."
"I was being sarcastic," said Gallagher, rolling his eyes, "Listen, are we gonna do something or not? I vote for doing something."
"We will, we will. I just have to report this to Wado, first."
"Right. What should we do in the meantime?"
"Nothing. Just go about your business and don't tell anybody anything. The last thing we need is people getting peeved because of some n00bs."
"Nothing? But…!"
Syotica cut him off, "We've got a man on the inside."
"What do you mean?"
"We have a sleeper agent within the n00b ranks. His name is Sebasman. He's been feeding us Intel for a while, now."
Gallagher sighed heavily, "Alright. I won't tell anyone."
"And make sure that idiot Skul doesn't go blabbing it to everyone," said Syotica, frowning.
Gallagher waved a dismissive hand, "Aah, he's probably forgotten it, anyway."
"Just make sure," said Syotica, jabbing his finger at Rabid Gallagher with each word, which Gallagher thought was rather unnecessary.
Skul stopped in the middle of the hallway leading to the parking garage – he had gotten lost again – and scratched his head while having an exaggerated look of confusion on his face.
"Hmmm… I seem to have forgotten that I overheard a conversation between Syotica and Rabid Gallagher concerning n00bs breaking through our perimeter. Oh well, I'll probably remember it later…"
Skul continued to search for his office as he wandered the very un-mazelike hallways of the HBOFF building.
Sebasman walked freely among the n00bs in their main base, which was known only as Posting Practice, or PP, with many a n00b making the same unfunny jokes about the abbreviation sounding like a name for urine.
Seb had been sent in as a sleeper agent for HBOFF. He was to send back any information every few weeks. If the matter was more urgent, he was to make contact at the soonest possible convenience.
The many n00bs never gave Seb a second glance, or even a first one, as he was dressed exactly like them. Despite his skin not being a freakish green-brown colour and the rest of his body lacking any kind of mutation real n00bs get when they are transformed into the strange, illiterate and rude creatures they are, he was able to do anything and go anywhere. As long as he did n00bish things and talked in a garbled language that vaguely resembled English with the very occasional "lol" and "wtf" thrown in, he was indistinguishable from a real n00b. To the foul creatures themselves, at any rate. He was lucky none of the Anti-Reading nor the Fanboy sections of the n00b army wanted to enter the Posting Practice building. Stupid as they were, he would stick out like a sore thumb to them. When asked how he felt about this lucky turn of events, Sebasman always began with, "Well, there was this plot contrivance, you see…"
The man of Sebas noticed that he was suddenly not as able to go anywhere he pleased as he once was; a single area was off-limits. Once the n00b leader had began formulating his plan, spanish spartan had made it clear, in a way, that nobody was to enter his office, not even the n00bs he granted permission to. The not-too-great one was in his office – which happened to be the first ever thread in Posting Practice – the majority of the time, Sebasman noticed. He would have to use this to his advantage, somehow. He couldn't think how at the current moment – there was something more pressing on his mind.
One time, he had walked openly into the unguarded basement of Posting Practice. Inside, he saw six gigantic, yet non-descript vats filled with a thick, green fluid. Badly painted on the sides of the containers was the name of the substance. In large, bright-green, yellow, pink and sky-blue letters were the words n00bius stereotypicos lol. The n00bs were creating the dreaded virus right in their own base. It was inconceivable that they had managed to create so much of it. However, with their plot holes, the creation process did not matter and the reason why the basement of Posting Practice had enough space for six huge vats did not have to exist. The plot holes were convenient to the n00bs. They used these reality-bending techniques unconsciously, without realising it. Plot holes were always dangerous to writers, as reasons for things do not have to exist. Good writers make sure to avoid using these convenience devices, since they degrade the overall quality of the story, despite them making the writing of the story easier – they don't need good reasons for anything.
If n00bs realised they could use plot holes to create whatever they wanted, to bend the very existence of storytelling to their will, every writer would be in for a world of hurt, including the n00bs, themselves. Plot holes are powerful devices, but they are made from the essence of bad storytelling. They are pure evil – the Dark Side of writing. Nobody knows what would happen if too many were used in a short story and nobody was willing to find out. Whatever would happen, it would be much worse than the story simply turning out to be freakin' horrible.
Unfortunately for Sebasman, the vats weren't the end of it. There was something worse in store for HBOFF, maybe even for HBO, itself. In the back of the basement, he had found a door, which opened to a plain corridor. At the end of the corridor was another door that lead to a generic laboratory. On the far wall, there was a large tube containing an abomination to everything writing stands for. Vats of n00bius stereotypicos, plus a tube containing that… thing… counted as urgent in Seb's book (only $19.99, plus shipping).
Managing to find himself a secluded area away from the hordes of the n00b army, Sebasman opened a COM link with HBOFF.
"Come in, Ark. This is Active Camo, repeat, this is Active Camo, come in."
Syotica's voice crackled through the COM link, "Active Camo, this is Ark. Your signal is very weak."
"Probably due to the increased n00bishness of the place, sir. Almost anything of good quality can't enter or exist here."
"Hmmm. I suppose we can take that as a compliment about our COM technology. Anyway, what is it? You reported in only two days ago with nothing. I assume you've found something important…?"
"Yeah," replied Sebasman, "I've not only found something important, I've also found something horrible. You won't believe this..."
"What is it?"
"Well…" Sebasman licked his lips, "it's something that we thought was dead."
"EXPost?"
"Er… no, not quite."
"Oh. Well, whatever. Just hurry up and tell me what you've found."
"Well, there are huge vats in the basement of the n00b HQ. They're filled with the n00bius stereotypicos virus."
"You're… kidding…!"
"I wish I was, sir. But that's not the worst of it."
Their came a crackling sigh from the other end of the transmission, "What's next?"
"I took a look inside a laboratory that is also located inside their basement. I found a big tube with something awful inside. The thing that's inside is..." Sebasman paused.
Syotica wished he had saved his earlier sigh for now, "What? Stop trying to build suspense!"
Sebasman took a deep breath, "The thing inside it… is t—"
Sy heard only static, "Hello? Active Camo? Are you there?"
Silence except for the angry, harsh hiss of static.
"Oh, for the love of...!" Syotica punched a convenient nearby wall, "Damn clichés!"
As his face slowly contorted into an expression of slight pain, Sy grabbed his hand by the wrist, ringing his aching fist.
"Owww…" he moaned.
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