HELLO, HELLO! Neighbor... stranger... hor̵r̵o̶rs beyond my comprehension, all are WELCOME! Just make sure to cle̷a̶n the bottom of your shoes by the doormat first.
This is my home, my personal library and my S̸̫̍A̷̜̿NC̶͚̊T̶̞͛UARY in the name of His Glorious Majesty!
Come by my inbox... say hello... or give me an offering worthy of my Lord's many eyes.
If you'll stick around... make sure to get to know your ho-ho-H̶̪̟̽͊OST! (about me) And HOW TO BEHAVE INSIDE MY HO̵̜̳̾́́MȆ̶̲! (rules) :}
It took me a cartoonish amount of time to draw individual chibified refs for my selected characters and when I go to update their refs... the site is down 💔 but alas
HAPPY ART-FIGHTING EVERYONE!!! May the silliest clown or mysterious masked figure or scene theater kid win!!!!!!!!
Come friend me!!! (When the site is back up) and throw some art-piece-shaped tomatoes at the clown (me)
I'm prioritizing commissions first & other stuff in my personal life so I might not be able to attack a lot of whom I've got bookmarked or retaliate against many attacks, but I'm gonna try my best!!! Other than that I will establish one more rule for myself: my art will be BAD. As bad or chaotic as I can make it to fit with the clown theme. I don't have anything in particular planned, but I'm going to make mistakes, and I will not try to perfect it. 🗣
(( wouldya look at that, I live. Sorry for the radio silence lately, life's been a bit hectic but I intend to pick back up Bon's queues eventually at the very least.
In the meantime I wanna keep myself active with drawing something daily so, Artfight's in session!!! Two familiar faces have joined the OC roster on there :3 ))
It crawled out of the machine. No, not it, he. And he shall not be treated as an anomaly nor a creature. This is his world, his arcade, these machines all belong to him. His property, his domain. And now… this pitiful tale.
A raspy, strained voice coughed and wheezed behind the CRT screen as his figure slowly, carefully crawled his way out of the small, square opening of the game. Despite his grotesque, sharp and worn-down appearance, his grip was gentle, methodic and careful; like a spider making its way around its own web.
The robotic limbs of his machine-half was capable of twisting and bending beyond a mortal’s capability, thus they were the first to fully make their way out: a mechanical, clawed foot fell to the ground with a heavy thud, his human half making its way out next. Revealed to be hiding inside the very same innocent racing videogame was an amalgamation of human and machine: the ‘head’ was a mix of the cabinet’s screen being fused with a hairless skull wrapped in cables and wires, a large bundled cable protruded from the back of his head and into his back where four mechanical dorsal tubes rested; disconnected cables continued their way down his back, wrapping together to form this sort of multi-ended tail that reached the ground, some of them moved on their own like an octopus’ tentacles. His right arm and foot were entirely robotic and their shape (along with a cybernetic enhancement to his human left foot) resembled a more animalistic, kangaroo-like form, giving him a hunched posture. What little remained of his human half was also perverted by tech: fat cables and tubes protruded from his flesh in the neck and groin area, hiding more of his human features and traveling below the surface; glowing, thin red wires seemed to honeycomb all over, right underneath his skin, some even reached his fingertips, their ‘core’ appeared to be the heart as their glow intensified and dulled in sync with the pulsating, warm light that outlined his ribcage, like a contained ball of molten lava.
His mechanical right hand reached to pull one among the sea of thick cables that made up his neck, which caused a coughing fit once more, it squirted blood and shook lightly in his grip before going still. He then reached behind his back to pull out what cables remained connected pure-machine to whatever plug was inside his flesh or protruded from his back, all the while his glowing, white-hot stare never left the two young men, only ever lightly squinting his eyes whenever he coughed. His focus fell on one of them, the boy who’s holding the crowbar, yes…
He saw their shock, their terror witnessing something beyond natural before them, the panic in their voices and movements, but that mattered little right now. They would not escape. He couldn’t help but scrunch his eyes a little, as if a quick smile crept upon his lips even though his mouth wasn’t visible on the screen, satisfied as the injured thief tried to make a break for it with his friend… only the other didn’t budge.
He stared into those beckoning, yellow moons that never broke contact, never blinked. The crackling ringing, that persistent hum of the CRT screen growing louder inside the boy’s mind, he could not hear his friend yelling at him to snap out of it and trying to pull him away with what little strength he still had in his current conditions. When all attempts to drag him away had little to no success, self-defense came next; the taser had only one cartridge in it and was a last resort weapon… Evan ripped the crowbar from the limp grasp of his friend, his head pounding and his balance betraying him as he raised the weapon to his head, ready to strike.
All the while, the Programmer was coming closer, closer…
closer.
His pace was slow, calm. He was not in any rush, unlike the other sobbing mess beside the enthralled thief. His loyalty to not wanting to leave his friend behind was admirable, but sadly, it could only get him so far. There was no escape from him, not anymore.
A suckerpunch of a swing from the injured robber was about as predictable as sunrise, only to be caught in the cabinet man’s human hand. Again, defying appearance, his grip was strong and still unlike the other, trembling and anxious, now that they both shared their hold on the crowbar. Mike remained zombified still, mouth slightly agape, even when the Programmer slowly shifted his intense glare towards his friend.
“𝚈𝚘𝚞.. 𝚑𝚑𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚍𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚎𝚗𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚍𝚊𝚖𝚊𝚐𝚎. 𝙸 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕…” He rasped, words trailing off in some instances to cough and wheeze, one particular restrained coughing fit made him reach into the upper part of the large amount of cables that made up his neck, finally allowing himself to properly hack; when pulled back out, his metal claw was dirty with blood. He cleared his throat as he grunted with disapproval, eyeing his claw.
“𝙷𝚑𝚖.. 𝙸 𝚠𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠 𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚎.” The yellow moons focused back on the frightened intruder, this time with the faintest glint of anger and malice, although it was as if those emotions were bleached out. The red wires visible in the pale grey skin intensified in their glow as the Programmer forced his strength on his grip before abruptly removing the weapon from the thief’s hands with such force, he left Evan with his palms wide open in the air as he launched it across the room with a resonant clang.
Just as quickly as he disarmed him, with inhuman speed, the cabinet man rapidly stomped over to Evan until his CRT was right in his face, both his hands forcefully gripping the crying boy’s face and forcing him to look up into his screen, into the twin moons that now beckoned for him. It was time his loyalty paid off, and that he joined his friend. Eventually, the ringing in Evan’s ears became one and the same, regardless of the injury, the world outside was but a distant blur.
The Programmer sighed and wheezed softly, relaxing his grip and letting go, eyeing his newest thrall from head to toe before turning back to the other, hands folding behind his back as he approached, the long cables dragged behind him, sometimes spasming on their own.
Stopping in front of him, a clawed metal finger reached for Mike’s face, only to wipe away a single tear that had begun to stream down his cheek, terror and confusion forcefully restrained behind that locked, unblinking gaze, his eyes had begun to get red from not being able to blink on their own.
Through a muffled, gargled, and raspy vocal command from the voice behind his screen, a second Grappler was activated, crawling out of the valve opening from that now-hollowed TurboTime cabinet, tasked with switching on the Prototypes for some more aid... as well as handling the two vegetables that impaired one of his maintenance drones, damaged his life-support, tried to steal from him, and worst of all: forced him to retreat from Bon.
No time, he’d pay his penance once everything was back in order, and he had much to tend to, at least until Grappler 01 was back online.
They are not the first intruders, and likely not the last. But that was okay, despite the damage done, he could fix it. He always did. Besides, more guinea pigs always came in handy when your personal work and maintenance was as demanding as his.
The old arcade that was open to the public on working days was nothing special: a small building titled “8th-Wonder Arcade”, just a local business that loved doing the service it offered. It wasn’t always booming nowadays, as expected with something such as old-school arcades, but it was just enough to keep on trucking. It was a local hidden jem for the youth of the town and the retro lovers that were once kids.
Funny enough, one of the things that made this small, inconspicuous arcade stand out to some of the kids and young adults was the back of the building, protected by tall walls of barbed wire fencing. And this was bound to spark some curiosity from some daredevil players and particularly fanatic collectionists, eventually…
It was a hidden gem, indeed. Some greedy geologist was going to attempt to take advantage of it.
Late in the night, a hole was cut in the fence, and the two perpetrators were making their way over to the basement window in the back of the arcade. Dressed from head-to-toe in black, the two figures did not utter a word until they’d both crawled into the window and made sure there weren’t cameras recording their every move inside the arcade’s basement. The new owner was an older man; laid back, tech savvy but very naÏve, very trusting in the goodness of people. Surely nobody would ever break and enter into dear old Mr. Mason’s family business?
Then again… it’s not like they were stealing directly from him, nor was it really anything too important for him… nor did he often use the storage anyway.
“This feels so wrong..” one of the two mumbled as he took down his hood.
“Don’t tell me you’ve decided to back out now, Mike, we’ve gone over this since before Christmas!” The other hissed in frustration, putting away the pliers they’d used previously on the fencing, and rummaging through his bag, pulling out a crowbar, a locksmith set and a chisel.
“I mean, there’s no turning back now… I just don’t think I’ll be able to look at Mr. Mason in the face again. I don’t even think I’ll ever come back here, just in case.” He looked around, cautiously stepping around as if they were in an egyptian pyramid and he’d risk triggering some hidden trap.
The basement was surprisingly neatly organized, and the old owner’s “special collection” was not hard to see: collectibles of any available form of TurboTime were displayed on a wall-mounted cabinet protected by glass doors: an old, torn-up Turbo plush, toy cars, old art put into frames...anything that was ever made into merchandise for TT could be seen inside that display. But it was merely an appetizer compared to what took up most room in there: two full rows of TurboTime cabinets, one row was up against the wall; the other was in the center of the basement alongside what appeared to be servers, all were turned on and functional.
“Jesus Evan, you weren’t kidding when you said this guy was a real freak about this musty title. Does he.. still come around Mason’s place? I thought he completely gave it up to the old man.”
“Touché… Maybe he does? I mean, if I had this many cabinets in my possession of my favourite thing, I wouldn’t just dump them to my uncle one day and never stop by again. All I know is that nobody’s supposed to come down here except Mason, and even he barely steps foot in here.” The other replied, slapping the lock pick set into his friend’s hand, “We’ve got our work cut out for us, and we only have so much time, and on top of it we have to go slow on these things.”
Mike scoffed, “yeah, they’re old like my nana.”
The two young adults cautiously proceeded around the basement, mindful of the tons and tons of wires and cables that nearly coated whole parts of the floor; the whooshing of the fan that connected to the air vent outside was the only other sound next to the constant humming and whirring of the machines. Both of them internally wondered how in the world Mason allowed all of this to be kept turned on as well as the arcade cabinets upstairs on the main floor, not just the electricity bill- but the old man surely could trip on one of the cables on the floor and break his neck, made sense why he didn’t often go down here… alas, the kids wondered nothing further on the matter, it didn’t concern them.
There was one TurboTime cabinet that seemed to be off: located on the far right corner of the basement, furthest away from the other cabinets neatly placed together. This one seemed… different from the rest. It looked just the same as the others, except for the many, many cables connected to its backside, both thin and large; they all traveled from the cabinet itself, to two servers on each side. Upon closer inspection, the pair realized its screen wasn’t turned off, it was just… darker. Like it was night time inside the game. They could see the track of TurboTime, but no cars driving around, no theme music playing.
“What’s with this one?” Mike wondered out loud, briefly taking a glance to the side of the cabinet to one of the servers.
“Maybe it’s busted- look at the screen. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with it. And uh…” Evan trailed off as he crouched a bit to examine the side of the cabinet, there was what appeared to be a small, closed iris valve; there was another that looked exactly the same on the other side. “And then there's whatever these are.”
“The other cabinets don’t have them, though. Is this a different adaptation for the game?” Mike wondered, pointing towards the other TurboTime cabinets further away from this one.
“Or maybe, it’s a different access to the cash box, gimme those…” Evan gestured with his hand for the lock picking set. Mike watched awkwardly as the other tried to fiddle and crack open the valve, occasionally looking back towards the open window and the other cabinets. So many copies of the same racing game, the old owner must be a huge fanatic of the original title, there wasn't even one copy of any of the few sequels to the game. Whatever happened to the company that made these? Thinking about the game made a memory come back to him… only to snap back to reality as his friend yelped in pain, his head snapped back to him just as he dropped the tools and held his index finger tightly.
“Damn it..!” Evan hissed, before beginning to suck on the open wound.
“Shit, shit shit…” Mike mumbled as he began to go through his bag, pulling out tissues and bandaids, clumsily handing some to Evan before hurrying to the cabinet to clean up any blood. “See?? I knew this was a bad idea. If we end up caught, I’m blaming you.” He lectured in a hushed tone while cleaning the machine.
“I had the damn thing open! But a red light turned on inside and then it fucking snapped shut on me!” The other whispered aggressively while wrapping up his whole finger in tissues and putting pressure on the cut until the bleeding stopped to wrap a bandaid around it. That… did not sound good. Mike quickly stood up and examined his surroundings before glancing back to the cabinet, then to Evan, “Did you trigger an alarm or something??” he angrily whispered.
“A security thing maybe? Ughh… for the cabinet, I mean. At least it didn't start blaring an alarm.. Let’s try one of the older ones, and quick, at least I know where to look and how to open them without breaking or triggering anything.”
Once they ensured the machine was spotless just like before, they made their way back to the many retro TurboTime cabinets, one of the two slightly more unhappy than the other so far, but both equally nervous since they were aware they both just messed up because one of them got greedy.
Unbeknownst to them, lines of red coding script appeared on the lower left corner of that isolated cabinet’s screen; the dark, empty 8-bit racetrack of the game remained there in the background.
In truth, when they had gotten down there, the pair had expected unplugged machines and the usual storage messiness… the fact that everything was powered on and working just like the cabinets on the main floor complicated their heist. Still, they had a few tricks up their sleeves.
“I know a quirky little way around these things, specifically. And a few Sonic titles.” Evan said; once they took their pick among the many retro TurboTime copies, they kept their distance away from where the machine faced, to remain unseen by it's screen, approaching it form behind; the next step was to 'gut it from the back': carefully force open its backside with the help of a crowbar and pliers, avoid any wires and slowly tear open the back part of the wooden cash box with a chisel, until it was big enough to start taking quarters.
“It’s funny cuz I’ve tried this on a few, and the result is always different depending on… I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s like-” Evan shuffled a bit from his crouched position, before looking up to his friend,
“It’s like the machine is aware of what you’re doing to it? Unless it’s not. Best way I can put it in words is like when a patient’s undergoing surgery, but you don’t tell them because-”
“The stress could affect them during the procedure?” Mike finished the sentence, unsure.
“Yes! Some of these things even seem to have a bit of a personality? Like the ones I mentioned before, Turbo and Sonic. The main characters have this ego to them, it seems to rub off on the machine itself, and it ends up being too ‘focused’ on running the game to take notice of anything else going on. It’s a bit whacky.” Evan shook his head in disbelief of his own words. It was insane to even imagine an arcade machine being anything close to sentient, especially the outdated ones with old 8-bit games.
Silence fell for a while among the two, except for the noises of the fan, the servers humming, and the games running. The one they had picked to take change from remained operational, no dead-man switch triggered, the game continued uninterrupted.
‘Turbo-Tastic!’
After exchanging the chisel for a bag to his companion to begin slowly retrieving the change, Mike looked back to the lonely, seemingly busted cabinet that sat in the corner, connected to more servers.
“Evan, do you remember Litwak’s Arcade?” he quietly asked.
“Sure do, I think Litwak was buddies with my dad, hell- maybe even Mason himself used to be an old friend of his...” Evan trailed off to re-organize his position as well as the coin bag he held to make sure it didn’t rest over any cable or wire. “Nostalgic much?”
“I.. guess? It’s just kind of a thing that I haven’t thought about in years. Remember that day we were playing TurboTime, and the new game got plugged in right behind us?” The look on the other’s face made Mike smirk a bit. Evan’s eyes went wide open like plates as he snapped his head back to him.
“Oh shit, Roadblasters?? My dad chewed my ear good about it, he still thinks we broke the thing with just landing a finger on it!” He snorted while making a knot on the bag’s opening before throwing it over to the other to catch. “Even though it wasn’t us.” Evan gave Mike a knowing look with a slight nod, as if he knew what the other was thinking about.
“Yeah… what you said about like, these things having a personality and all… and that one busted cabinet over there.. It just made me think back to that. What’re the chances that the new racing game breaks down immediately after we tried playing it? After playing TurboTime?” The other replied in a quieter tone, crouching next to his friend to look at him finish ‘covering up’ the chiseled opening on the wooden box inside the cabinet.
“Seeing him in the new game and all right before it broke… it’s like he’d gone all the way from his own game to it. To get back to us. Freaky...” Mike continued, trailed off and recoiling his shoulders a bit.
“Stay with me in the present, bud.” Evan snapped his fingers twice, teasing a bit, before gesturing to approach and help him up slowly, and begin closing the backside of the cabinet once they were both far away from any cables and wires.
“On the bright side, I like these creepy arcade coincidences... but we are currently breaking and entering into an one for cash. And we don’t have the luxury to spend time reminiscing-”
SKRRRRRRR.
The sudden scrape of metal, although brief, was loud enough to make the two jump, muttering half-swears before quickly shushing themselves and taking cover behind the machine they’d just finished stealing from and sealing up.
They hid for a few minutes, listening. It was faint, but they could hear something slither…? Quickly around, somewhere in the basement.
“What the fuck is that.” Mike whispered anxiously, only to be shushed by his friend; Evan cautiously peeked from behind the cabinet to look around, Nothing that they could see so far… he gestured to the other to come out of hiding as they carefully stepped around, listening for more sounds.
“What was that??” Mike whispered once again, “I don’t know..” Evan’s voice sounded calm, but you could easily tell there was tension in his tone. The two pressed their shoulders together while looking around, holding hands to avoid losing each other just in case they needed to make a break for the window.
Then, they finally spotted something out of place, not a person, just... right in the small space between two of the cabinets: a dot of red light below, almost just on the ground level; as far as they could remember, that was not there before. Mike feared it being a camera that just began recording them, but Evan’s mind did not share the same belief, his blood ran cold. That red dot was familiar… he saw it back inside of..
They barely had time to react, the thing- resembling a metal snake with claws for a face, leapt on Evan; its clawed digits taking hold on, or wrapping around his head if they were long enough to do so; its tail wrapped around one of his arms for better stability. The young man let go of the other’s hand and stumbled back with a scream into one of the games. The machine loudly scraped against the ground, didn’t move much, but the force was enough to make it budge.
Stealth was out the window by now, especially with some crazed machine-part attacking his friend. Mike dropped the bag of quarters, jaw wide open in disbelief for a moment. “HELP- GET IT OFF ME!” Evan’s terrified screams snapped him out of it; his hands were gripping the writhing, metal body of the thing. The machine was slowly and forcefully inching its way closer to one of the man’s ears, its claws firmly grasping his skull to prevent being pulled off, scratching and drawing blood. It happened quickly, another scream came from Evan, “FUCK- MICHAEL!”. The pain was indescribable: once in proximity of the ear canal, Evan could feel this thing stab and dig something thin and sharp, right into his ear. But it didn’t stop. It went deep, and it went slow as he could feel it probing around.
He felt small shots of electricity zapping inside, his screams turning into choked gagging, and for the briefest moment, he had a flashback of… someone, or some thing, else’s memory: stubby grey hands in a red and white jumpsuit tightly gripping a car's wheel, driving at full-speed on a racetrack, a grotesque shrine of bones and some glowing-blue, writhing mass all around that seemed to only worship a yellow smiley face and centipedes, and a flash from the point of view of… some kind of beast’s chest, as it grabbed people out of cars and motorbikes, raised them above what this view allowed to see, and ate them alive as the eyes he was seeing through focused only on a red car that sped away into an endless road among the grass.
THWACK!
And back he was inside the arcade's basement, just like that. Evan finally felt the grip on his face loosening. The first chance he got, Evan ripped that thing off of him, along with whatever it was shoving into his ear: it was indeed a needle, but it looked way more… cybernetic compared to a medical one; it had what looked like a miniature ROM, backup battery and a southbridge, components of a motherboard. It sprouted from an opening below the glowing red lens of this metal snake-claw, its light flickered a little and its fingers twitched, some still trying to move towards him.
Mike panted, eyes wide and tightly holding the crowbar in his right hand; he helped take whatever this thing was off of Evan, violently chucking it far away from them before tending to his friend’s current state.
THUD.
The damaged Grappler made contact with one of the servers, it laid on the ground before it, still twitching as its red glow flickered.
FAILED ATTEMPT AT RECONNECTION. NON-CRITICAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED TO CENTRAL OPERATING SYSTEM. INITIATING ATTEMPT TO-
POP.
Two small, trailing thin wires shot across the organized lines of cabinets, reaching the Grappler and sending a crackling shockwave throughout it for several minutes. Evan kept his finger pressed down on the taser with one hand holding his bleeding ear. It finally stopped moving, the red glow of its lens flickering on and off. “Fucker..” Evan could only hear ringing in one ear, and his own trembling voice in the other. He kept the taser held up for a moment even when he’d taken his finger off the button once the cartridge had worn itself out, before dropping it and losing his balance for a moment, being caught up by Mike.
“Easy, easy…” He heard from one side only, the other was just white noise. He could only glare at the thing that laid on the floor while his friend tried to comfort him and tend to his injuries, just to make sure it stayed still now. His mind wandered from one thing to another, to what just attacked him, to the pain, to that needle it stabbed into his ear, to… the blood on the server that- that thing had been thrown against.
His gaze slowly raised, something had broken on that server rack from the impact: the part that had been hit was dented, and some steam came out from it. He thought the blood on the rack was his given the encounter, until he realized that the amount of red liquid that had begun to drip from the little openings in that impact spot in the machinery, it was too much to be from his injuries alone.
Drip... drip... drip…
Mike’s words grew distant and muffled as Evan observed one of the cables that connected to the server turn dark red, and it traveled on… into another server, another cable… like some sort of machine-variant hematoma… he watched and followed the trail, until the blood-filled cable finally reached the lonely cabinet, disappearing behind it. Mike followed his movement as his friend turned his head up and around, following his gaze with confusion and worry.
An abrupt coughing fit felt like it’d made everything go quiet, the games, the fan, the servers. It didn’t come from anyone hiding outside in the basement with them.
They didn’t even need to pinpoint which, the sound made it stand out, just like its lonely location: the isolated cabinet. “I…” Evan could only mumble, before another coughing fit accompanied by pained wheezing and gargled, desperate inhaling for air broke the silence.
Then, movement.
Muffled, slow, struggling and metallic. The sound of metal cranking and groaning came from… inside the machine. Like a large, old mechanism inside of it had just turned itself on inside. The two thieves only glared at the machine, partly in confusion to the noise, but also shock given what just transpired.
Now, now the screen of that TurboTime cabinet had gone completely black, pitch black, distinct color patterns flashed on the screen for a split second before it began filling up with red lines of programming script. The machine trembled lightly as the sound of metallic, disturbed movement continued to be heard from somewhere inside of it, eventually joined by the crackling sound of what seemed like electric cables being pulled out from their socket while electricity still flowed in them.
“W̵H̵A̴T̶ ̵ ARE Y̶̡͕̣͙̲̺̰̥̋̾̍̀͗͋͘ͅÒ̴̩̓͗̍͒́̂̃_Ű̷̞̥̩͇̘̜̹̰̩̔͒̿̏͐͊̕ ___ Ḋ̴̨̧͖͕̥̪̀̐̓̇̀́O̶͓̒͂͘I̶̛̳͇͖̩̞̹̝͍̎̃̈́̈́̈́͌̆͌̈́͐̀͝N̵̡̨̼̓̒͂͐͌̑͐̈́̑̐̈̄̃G̶̖̖͕͉̖͈̱̞̫͎̬̗̿͂͐͐̃̃̾̑̇́̀̈́͌̕͜.̶̧̢̻̬̝̞̜̞̗͉̹́̿̿̉̊̂̂̽̀͒̆͂͘͜͠”
Neither could make sense of the cabinet’s behaviour, still looking for some sort of familiar pattern they might’ve seen before in other malfunctioning devices, attempting to rationalize it, it was normal, there was no other thing they could think of. It had to be a normal malfunction.
Finally, the coding script on the machine’s CRT came to a halt; the two could notice with ease that the last line, slightly larger than the rest, had a YES and NO option outlined in white depending on which option was being selected. The command was…
read -p “EJECT ProgrammerByas ?“
Confirm YES NO
The pair could only glare at the screen from where they stood as the command on the screen chose the first option all on its own.
echo “Confirmed!”
<. USER codename e=b.apply: ProgrammerByas EJECTED successfully!
The old arcade that was open to the public on working days was nothing special: a small building titled “8th-Wonder Arcade”, just a local business that loved doing the service it offered. It wasn’t always booming nowadays, as expected with something such as old-school arcades, but it was just enough to keep on trucking. It was a local hidden jem for the youth of the town and the retro lovers that were once kids.
Funny enough, one of the things that made this small, inconspicuous arcade stand out to some of the kids and young adults was the back of the building, protected by tall walls of barbed wire fencing. And this was bound to spark some curiosity from some daredevil players and particularly fanatic collectionists, eventually…
It was a hidden gem, indeed. Some greedy geologist was going to attempt to take advantage of it.
Late in the night, a hole was cut in the fence, and the two perpetrators were making their way over to the basement window in the back of the arcade. Dressed from head-to-toe in black, the two figures did not utter a word until they’d both crawled into the window and made sure there weren’t cameras recording their every move inside the arcade’s basement. The new owner was an older man; laid back, tech savvy but very naÏve, very trusting in the goodness of people. Surely nobody would ever break and enter into dear old Mr. Mason’s family business?
Then again… it’s not like they were stealing directly from him, nor was it really anything too important for him… nor did he often use the storage anyway.
“This feels so wrong..” one of the two mumbled as he took down his hood.
“Don’t tell me you’ve decided to back out now, Mike, we’ve gone over this since before Christmas!” The other hissed in frustration, putting away the pliers they’d used previously on the fencing, and rummaging through his bag, pulling out a crowbar, a locksmith set and a chisel.
“I mean, there’s no turning back now… I just don’t think I’ll be able to look at Mr. Mason in the face again. I don’t even think I’ll ever come back here, just in case.” He looked around, cautiously stepping around as if they were in an egyptian pyramid and he’d risk triggering some hidden trap.
The basement was surprisingly neatly organized, and the old owner’s “special collection” was not hard to see: collectibles of any available form of TurboTime were displayed on a wall-mounted cabinet protected by glass doors: an old, torn-up Turbo plush, toy cars, old art put into frames...anything that was ever made into merchandise for TT could be seen inside that display. But it was merely an appetizer compared to what took up most room in there: two full rows of TurboTime cabinets, one row was up against the wall; the other was in the center of the basement alongside what appeared to be servers, all were turned on and functional.
“Jesus Evan, you weren’t kidding when you said this guy was a real freak about this musty title. Does he.. still come around Mason’s place? I thought he completely gave it up to the old man.”
“Touché… Maybe he does? I mean, if I had this many cabinets in my possession of my favourite thing, I wouldn’t just dump them to my uncle one day and never stop by again. All I know is that nobody’s supposed to come down here except Mason, and even he barely steps foot in here.” The other replied, slapping the lock pick set into his friend’s hand, “We’ve got our work cut out for us, and we only have so much time, and on top of it we have to go slow on these things.”
Mike scoffed, “yeah, they’re old like my nana.”
The two young adults cautiously proceeded around the basement, mindful of the tons and tons of wires and cables that nearly coated whole parts of the floor; the whooshing of the fan that connected to the air vent outside was the only other sound next to the constant humming and whirring of the machines. Both of them internally wondered how in the world Mason allowed all of this to be kept turned on as well as the arcade cabinets upstairs on the main floor, not just the electricity bill- but the old man surely could trip on one of the cables on the floor and break his neck, made sense why he didn’t often go down here… alas, the kids wondered nothing further on the matter, it didn’t concern them.
There was one TurboTime cabinet that seemed to be off: located on the far right corner of the basement, furthest away from the other cabinets neatly placed together. This one seemed… different from the rest. It looked just the same as the others, except for the many, many cables connected to its backside, both thin and large; they all traveled from the cabinet itself, to two servers on each side. Upon closer inspection, the pair realized its screen wasn’t turned off, it was just… darker. Like it was night time inside the game. They could see the track of TurboTime, but no cars driving around, no theme music playing.
“What’s with this one?” Mike wondered out loud, briefly taking a glance to the side of the cabinet to one of the servers.
“Maybe it’s busted- look at the screen. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with it. And uh…” Evan trailed off as he crouched a bit to examine the side of the cabinet, there was what appeared to be a small, closed iris valve; there was another that looked exactly the same on the other side. “And then there's whatever these are.”
“The other cabinets don’t have them, though. Is this a different adaptation for the game?” Mike wondered, pointing towards the other TurboTime cabinets further away from this one.
“Or maybe, it’s a different access to the cash box, gimme those…” Evan gestured with his hand for the lock picking set. Mike watched awkwardly as the other tried to fiddle and crack open the valve, occasionally looking back towards the open window and the other cabinets. So many copies of the same racing game, the old owner must be a huge fanatic of the original title, there wasn't even one copy of any of the few sequels to the game. Whatever happened to the company that made these? Thinking about the game made a memory come back to him… only to snap back to reality as his friend yelped in pain, his head snapped back to him just as he dropped the tools and held his index finger tightly.
“Damn it..!” Evan hissed, before beginning to suck on the open wound.
“Shit, shit shit…” Mike mumbled as he began to go through his bag, pulling out tissues and bandaids, clumsily handing some to Evan before hurrying to the cabinet to clean up any blood. “See?? I knew this was a bad idea. If we end up caught, I’m blaming you.” He lectured in a hushed tone while cleaning the machine.
“I had the damn thing open! But a red light turned on inside and then it fucking snapped shut on me!” The other whispered aggressively while wrapping up his whole finger in tissues and putting pressure on the cut until the bleeding stopped to wrap a bandaid around it. That… did not sound good. Mike quickly stood up and examined his surroundings before glancing back to the cabinet, then to Evan, “Did you trigger an alarm or something??” he angrily whispered.
“A security thing maybe? Ughh… for the cabinet, I mean. At least it didn't start blaring an alarm.. Let’s try one of the older ones, and quick, at least I know where to look and how to open them without breaking or triggering anything.”
Once they ensured the machine was spotless just like before, they made their way back to the many retro TurboTime cabinets, one of the two slightly more unhappy than the other so far, but both equally nervous since they were aware they both just messed up because one of them got greedy.
Unbeknownst to them, lines of red coding script appeared on the lower left corner of that isolated cabinet’s screen; the dark, empty 8-bit racetrack of the game remained there in the background.
In truth, when they had gotten down there, the pair had expected unplugged machines and the usual storage messiness… the fact that everything was powered on and working just like the cabinets on the main floor complicated their heist. Still, they had a few tricks up their sleeves.
“I know a quirky little way around these things, specifically. And a few Sonic titles.” Evan said; once they took their pick among the many retro TurboTime copies, they kept their distance away from where the machine faced, to remain unseen by it's screen, approaching it form behind; the next step was to 'gut it from the back': carefully force open its backside with the help of a crowbar and pliers, avoid any wires and slowly tear open the back part of the wooden cash box with a chisel, until it was big enough to start taking quarters.
“It’s funny cuz I’ve tried this on a few, and the result is always different depending on… I don’t even know how to describe it, it’s like-” Evan shuffled a bit from his crouched position, before looking up to his friend,
“It’s like the machine is aware of what you’re doing to it? Unless it’s not. Best way I can put it in words is like when a patient’s undergoing surgery, but you don’t tell them because-”
“The stress could affect them during the procedure?” Mike finished the sentence, unsure.
“Yes! Some of these things even seem to have a bit of a personality? Like the ones I mentioned before, Turbo and Sonic. The main characters have this ego to them, it seems to rub off on the machine itself, and it ends up being too ‘focused’ on running the game to take notice of anything else going on. It’s a bit whacky.” Evan shook his head in disbelief of his own words. It was insane to even imagine an arcade machine being anything close to sentient, especially the outdated ones with old 8-bit games.
Silence fell for a while among the two, except for the noises of the fan, the servers humming, and the games running. The one they had picked to take change from remained operational, no dead-man switch triggered, the game continued uninterrupted.
‘Turbo-Tastic!’
After exchanging the chisel for a bag to his companion to begin slowly retrieving the change, Mike looked back to the lonely, seemingly busted cabinet that sat in the corner, connected to more servers.
“Evan, do you remember Litwak’s Arcade?” he quietly asked.
“Sure do, I think Litwak was buddies with my dad, hell- maybe even Mason himself used to be an old friend of his...” Evan trailed off to re-organize his position as well as the coin bag he held to make sure it didn’t rest over any cable or wire. “Nostalgic much?”
“I.. guess? It’s just kind of a thing that I haven’t thought about in years. Remember that day we were playing TurboTime, and the new game got plugged in right behind us?” The look on the other’s face made Mike smirk a bit. Evan’s eyes went wide open like plates as he snapped his head back to him.
“Oh shit, Roadblasters?? My dad chewed my ear good about it, he still thinks we broke the thing with just landing a finger on it!” He snorted while making a knot on the bag’s opening before throwing it over to the other to catch. “Even though it wasn’t us.” Evan gave Mike a knowing look with a slight nod, as if he knew what the other was thinking about.
“Yeah… what you said about like, these things having a personality and all… and that one busted cabinet over there.. It just made me think back to that. What’re the chances that the new racing game breaks down immediately after we tried playing it? After playing TurboTime?” The other replied in a quieter tone, crouching next to his friend to look at him finish ‘covering up’ the chiseled opening on the wooden box inside the cabinet.
“Seeing him in the new game and all right before it broke… it’s like he’d gone all the way from his own game to it. To get back to us. Freaky...” Mike continued, trailed off and recoiling his shoulders a bit.
“Stay with me in the present, bud.” Evan snapped his fingers twice, teasing a bit, before gesturing to approach and help him up slowly, and begin closing the backside of the cabinet once they were both far away from any cables and wires.
“On the bright side, I like these creepy arcade coincidences... but we are currently breaking and entering into an one for cash. And we don’t have the luxury to spend time reminiscing-”
SKRRRRRRR.
The sudden scrape of metal, although brief, was loud enough to make the two jump, muttering half-swears before quickly shushing themselves and taking cover behind the machine they’d just finished stealing from and sealing up.
They hid for a few minutes, listening. It was faint, but they could hear something slither…? Quickly around, somewhere in the basement.
“What the fuck is that.” Mike whispered anxiously, only to be shushed by his friend; Evan cautiously peeked from behind the cabinet to look around, Nothing that they could see so far… he gestured to the other to come out of hiding as they carefully stepped around, listening for more sounds.
“What was that??” Mike whispered once again, “I don’t know..” Evan’s voice sounded calm, but you could easily tell there was tension in his tone. The two pressed their shoulders together while looking around, holding hands to avoid losing each other just in case they needed to make a break for the window.
Then, they finally spotted something out of place, not a person, just... right in the small space between two of the cabinets: a dot of red light below, almost just on the ground level; as far as they could remember, that was not there before. Mike feared it being a camera that just began recording them, but Evan’s mind did not share the same belief, his blood ran cold. That red dot was familiar… he saw it back inside of..
