ReBoot Episode 03 (1_03)

QUICK AND THE FED

Synopsis

Dot gets partially erased by a magnet. Bob goes to get some really slow food to help her condition, but gets caught in a dragons and castles game. The damsel in distress is not who you would expect it to be.

Story

The story opens in Megabyte's cobra-shaped tower, the Tor. Hack, Slash, and Megabyte's worm Nibbles watch as he fires up a large impressive ray gun and starts to break though to the Supercomputer. Bob snags the magnet at the tip of the gun and puts it into a shielded container. Megabyte puts on his legs and goes bounding up the gun after Bob, but ends up hanging from a cable outside his tower.

Bob walks into the diner and is bowled over by Enzo. (This is the scene from the opening sequence.) A delivery to go proves that Dot's diner is the fastest food in Mainframe. Everyone is upset when Bob mentions that he has the magnet, but assures them that it is shielded.

Bob lets Enzo play with Glitch for a while. It's a lot of fun until he tries "jackhammer". The uncontrolled vibrations knock the container off the bar, the magnet breaks out, and attaches itself to Dot's head. She becomes sick and semi-transparent. Enzo is distressed, "she's too young to end-file, too young to quit without saving." Bob does not know how to reverse a magnetic erasure, the other people in the diner send him to see Phong.

This appears to be the first time that Bob has met Phong. Bob cannot obtain Phong's wisdom until he beats the old man at a game of Pong. Phong states that Dot is in an accelerated condition and needs to access some really, really, really slow food. Any sudden shock will totally disrupt her system.

Back at the Diner, Bob is told that the slow food is atAl's Wait and Eat on Level 31. Dot is stuttering badly, and Bob ignores her when she tells him it's too dangerous and to use a "vid, vid, vid, use a window to ca-ca-ca-call".

Al's place is a seedy joint, the customers include a gray skullhead, a purple water-cooler with floating eyeballs, a Zero wearing a toque, a woman with stripes on her shirt and face, a violet Five. Rasta Mon is a guy small purple shades, dread locks with knives at the ends, and a dark red face that looks like a specific computer programmer.

The guy running the counter, Al's Waiter, is a dingy brown and green One. Al, the cook, is out of sight in the kitchen. Bob is told to take a number. He gets 1000000000000 (four thousand and ninety six). "Now serving number 3".

Meanwhile, back at Megabyte's Tor, it is clear that MB can't tell Hack and Slash apart. (The red one is Hack, the blue one is Slash). He orders them to search and retrieve Bob.

Back at Al's, a large Seven scares a little Zero by burping at it. Bob asks why everyone is afraid of Seven, and the Toque answers "because Seven ate Nine!" Barrump-bump!. The counter man says he can't process Bob's order any faster because he has a partner on his back demanding a take-out order and Al only runs at three decahertz. Bob tries to talk an Eight out of his order of food, but no luck. At this point, Hack and Slash burst into the room. The proprietor's reaction indicates that Megabyte is running a protection racket.

Bob grabs some food, jumps on his zip-board, and leads Hack and Slash straight up to the top level (coming out between Baudway and the Terminals). Just then the User downloads an incoming game; Castles and Knights. Bob presses the ReBoot button and turns into a knight in gold armor. The User is a knight in silver armor.

Bob gets a blue dragon from the stable, the white knight gives chase on a red dragon. (Bob's dragon is operated by Al's waiter, and Al is working the fire-breathing part.) Bob and the boys best the knight in an aerial joust. Bob tells Glitch to "B.S.'n P" and they go through a stained glass window. He has to fight a walking skeleton and almost falls into a pit of sharp stakes. (The Broadcast Standards 'n Practices at ABC has asked that no major character ever be place in mortal danger like this again. B.S.'n'P. policies tend to cause headaches for many production companies.) Bob has Glitch fly up and turn into a VidWindow with large icon. This breaks the skeleton's bones.

When Bob gets to the tower, he finds Enzo in the Damsel's costume and Dot as a knight in green armor. They determine that the User can be defeated by hitting his icon enough times. The final blow is when Enzo throws his megaphone at the knight. Game over.

Dot explains that she and Al are partners. She just vidwindowed for delivery. Megabyte grabs Enzo and demands his magnet back. Bob obliges by having Glitch throw the magnet at MB's head. He falls off the edge and calls for Hack and Slash, who crash with him at the bottom.

Bob: Speaking of which ... Dot, is there anything in Mainframe that you don't own?
Dot: Maybe. Who wants to know?

The camera pulls back and shows Dot's Diner all by itself on a small lot. Three buildings of the multilevel Baudway are in the background. The billboards to the left (behind the Diner) are unreadable. The billboards in foreground say "ener G ener", "DeeCee's Powerbar", and something "soundcard".

References

Did You Notice


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