Part J 1

According to his digital wristwatch it was exactly 3:05 in the morning. The sun was still hours away and all that was perceptable was the strong darkness and the utter quietness.

Joe was stumped. The last thing he remembered doing, was him taking a sip of his cola whilst watching the commotion he had caused in #Wellmashed. Feeling in front of him, he couldn't find a keyboard or monitor, just a void.

"Hello?!", he whispered.Dropping on all fours he started crawling in the direction he was facing, calling out hello every 10 seconds. As it seemed there was just nothing here, which could have been a good thing, since nothing also meant no sudden deathtraps.

But nothing would also mean that if there really was nothing it would be really boring.
One hour into the nothingness, with not a clue how far Joe had crawled, he came up on a shiny and shimmering surface. It looked like water, but for that the surface was hard. 'A mirror?', Joe thought, looking upwards. But no, if it was a mirror, what could be causing the shine from above? All that was here was darkness.

Intruiged he crawled up on the shiny surface, when all of a sudden he felt it gave way under his weight. While falling down he quickly mustered the thought 'hmmm, time for a new diet when I get out of here alive', when he slammed into something soft. Something warm and soft. Something that was alive. Making noises. Unintelligble noises.

Feeling around he felt legs, a torso, an arm and the back of a head. 'Seems to be human', Joe thought. The arm was bound to a stake in the ground, while the head had a large scarf bound around it. After loosening the scarf, the unknown person uttered a couple of curses, exclaiming who the [bleep] he thought he was falling on top of 'me', [bleep] it. The voice sounded familiar, but it couldn't be, could it? "Foxi-Loxx?", he asked... "Yes, who else, you dumbnut. Can you now untie me and tell me where the hell we are?"

Still a bit dumbstruck, Joe loosened the ropes around his girlfriend's arms & legs. He quietly explained he didn't have the first clue 'where' they were, how they got there, why they were brought there and by whom. "But", he surmised, "if you and I are here, there's a good chance there's more people here".

With that in mind he looked around. Weirdly enough there was a low light around here. He couldn't see the source of the light, it seemed to be coming from all around, the walls and the floor. In the distance he could see a formless bundle and moved towards it, while behind him Hellen stroked her legs and made a move to pick herself up from the floor, silently mouthing how boyfriends could be so inconsiderate, then following Joe. Approaching the bundle he saw it was another human form, arms and legs spread and bound with ropes to stakes. Loosening his ropes and scarf from the head, he rolled the person over. "Who are you?", Joe asked. "My name is Joeypesci, who are you?", "Joe", Joe said, "and this is Foxi-Loxx". "Oh great", Joeypesci exclaimed, "here I thought I was in some kind of hell, well whatta ya know? I am!!" and he buried his face in the rock underneath him. Sounds as if he was trying to bite his way through the rock were coming from him, so Joe stepped back, a bit nervously.

Foxi-Loxx came in closer, clamped a hand around Joe's left arm and asked, "Any idea what this could be, where we are?". "I have an idea, but before I voice it let's see who else is around here. If it's only all my enemies, JP could be right: Hell", Joe said with a grin. "If it's not only my enemies, we could have been sucked into a parallel dimension specially designed for personal computer fans", he added with righteous humor. "Okay guys, let's split up and search the premises, look for other urhm bodies. Take them along and we'll meet again at this point in 30 minutes."

30 minutes later they gathered back together. The group had grown from their minute 3 to a group of 12. It wasn't all enemies, Joe found out. There was even a very peculiar thing going on: Everyone was from the PC Format forums. Going round the group there now were Joe, Foxi-Loxx, Joeypesci, Matt007uk, Jason Lewis, DJ Adam, keasy, Moonshine, indigo_prime, ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤, Becky and spooky7000.

"It almost seems like a group meeting of the forums", keasy said, "but for that I wouldn't have invited some of you."
DJ Adam was trying off his charm at Becky already, while she fended him off ferociously. "Look, gorgeous, we don't know how long we'll be here, so you may just as well fold now. You'll fold one day. No-one can resist me, you know?!" .. "Not even if you were the last man on this planet, if this is a planet. I'd rather go celibate than even think about you." .. Not put down, DJ Adam continued trying. "Baby, if you haven't met my thang, you can't say you ever did it. You don't have to believe me, just try me."
To which Becky answered "You'd best hope the story-writers don't put any guns or other deadly weapons in this story, for I will use one, hear me?!!"

On the other side of the group, indigo_prime, spooky7000, Moonshine and Jason Lewis were trying to figure out where they were or how they got to be here. "We'll have to ask what everyone was doing prior to ending up here", Jason Lewis said. "I was chatting with redaxe through MSN about his Baldur's Gate 2 game he had just bought. Then I blinked and found myself here."
indigo_prime answered "I was trying to sleep through the storm, when I turned over and found myself here."
spooky7000 only said "My PC BSODed for no apparent reason when I was downloading an illegal copy of Far Cry".
"Oi!!", Moonshine exclaimed, "That was my line of text!!"

¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤, keasy, Matt007uk and JP were doing the same on their side of the group.
"I was thinking about a new game to put up on the ChitChat forums, when all of a sudden there was this flash of light. Next moment, I was here.", ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤ said.
"A flash of light? You sure you saw that? I didn't see anything. I was watching one of my coloured ladies movies, but must've fallen asleep. I'm still waiting to wake up.", JP said with a tremble in his voice. Matt007uk could only mumble "Now I never know what caused my PC crash." and started to sob. keasy just looked around triumphantly. "It'll be only moments before my good mate wooster falls in here and then we'll go have a party!"

Just when everyone was calming down a bit and coming to their senses, a lone voice, seemingly disembodied, boomed out from all around them: "So, y'all have come to visit the Oracle of the PC Format forums?"

.... to be continued

Part J 2

Second installment, a recap. Our heros have been transported to a mystical place with no apparent entry or exit. Everyone knows what he or she was doing before they came here, but no one knows where here is, why they are there or who brought them here.

Just when everyone was calming down a bit and coming to their senses, a lone voice, seemingly disembodied, boomed out from all around them: "So, y'all have come to visit the Oracle of the PC Format forums?"

Startled the group splits apart and runs in various directions. Joe stayed where he was. With just a little trickle of sweat dripping from his forehead he squeaked "Who... brurhurghur", clearing his throat he glances around to see if no-one heard him say that, then tries again, bellowing "Who are you?!".

"I be who I am", boomed the disembodied voice. "What is this place?! Why are we here?", Joe tried. "You are here because you are.", the voice came back.

At that moment JP walked slowly towards Joe. "Come with me, I got to show you something", he whispered in Joe's ear. A bit disturbed Joe looked in JP's eyes and started to open his mouth to tear him down, until he saw a weird glint in JP's eyes. Closing his mouth, he nodded and trodded after Joeypesci to a far corner of the immense room. There was a door here, but by the looks of it it wouldn't open without the use of a bazooka, and then some.

DJ Adam, indigo_prime and Matt007uk were standing here as well. A couple of piles of computer junk parts were lying on both sides of the door. A network connection was visible in the left doorportal, a network cable spiralling down from it towards the ground.

"Seems as if it is a puzzle, like that green wall thingy", DJ Adam said, "and you know how much I hate games like this. I suck at them big time, no doubt about it."
The others started grinning at him, involuntarily. "Wonder how he finds his way out of his house", indigo_prime muttered under his breath, "the puzzle of life".

DJ glared madly at indigo, started to give a snarly reply but was cut short by Joe. "Pick up both piles of stuff over there and move them here into the light. We'll see what they are and if we can rebuild the machine."

DJ glared at Joe, Joe just looked back at him, flexing his muscles, a look of 'how do you want it and where do you want it' on his face. The showdown was over within seconds, with DJ Adam sagging his shoulders, turning around and walking towards the left pile.

Matt007uk was already sitting there. "Okay, glancing at these piles quickly, it would seem we have all the parts to make a good PC, but for a DVD-RW, a CD-RW, a good Radeon 9800XT and about 200 gigabytes of harddrive space. But I think it'll do".

DJ Adam ducked down and said "One network card, I think, for all I know it could be a modem. How the hell should I know? I am not Jorden!!, one S3 Trio 64V+ PCI videocard, one Sony POS CDROM player (2 speed), one 4 gigabyte Samsung harddrive of 1997. A load of cables and a mouse."

indigo_prime picked parts out of the right pile. "One non-descript motherboard, one Pentium 133 CPU, one 250 Watt PSU, one 64MB SDR PC66 DIMM, one CD of Windows XP Pro... ooooh this is going to be a challenge!!, one 14" nameless monitor and a Compaq keyboard."

"Okay, so we have enough junk to build a computer, but who knows enough of them damn things to do that in under an hour? I don't want to be here any longer than we already been here.", Joe said glancing at his watch. And that did it. He froze... According to his watch it was exactly 3:07 in the morning. It couldn't be, could it? All this had happened in just 2 minutes? indigo_prime and Matt007uk offered to do their best, regarding the situation. DJ Adam offered to do his best to stay out of their way and walked away.

Joe nodded, turned around and walked towards where the rest of the group was gathered. Here he addressed the booming voice again, saying "Can you explain to me why the time is going so slow here?". The voice came back immediately, "Time is meaningless so meaningless is time." ... "You know, he sounds like that Taiwanese website I once went to to find drivers", spooky7000 said with a grin.

keasy moved forward and told Joe "we've been to all ends of this castle like room, there's nothing but that huge door over there in the corner. No other exits that we can see. So I assume that must be the door to leave this place through. Any luck on re-assembling those piles of junk?". Joe quickly explained to the others what was found and that two of their group were busy trying to reassemble the computer. A cheer coming from the direction of the door cleared that up, it seemed to be working.

indigo_prime walked over, "We've assembled the PC, found a working wall-outlet and are busy installing Windows. At last estimate it's going to take 14 hours and 47 minutes on that slow CDROM." ... "Well, if we have one thing, it seems to be time, meaningless or not.", Joe answered, "So we'd all best get some sleep. One never knows how much we'll need it later."

Just as Joe was lying the tiniest bit comfortable on the hard rock floor, keasy came sitting next to him. "Have you seen DJ Adam lately?", he whispered, "I checked all around the room, but can't find any sign of him, Moonshine, ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤, Jason Lewis or Foxi-Loxx. It's as if we've been split in half."

Bewildered Joe looked up & around, saying "What do you mean, Foxi... she right he...She's GONE!! She was right here beside me!!".
"Is there a secret door somewhere we didn't look?", he asked keasy. "Well now Joe, if there is a secret door somewhere, how should we know? Once a secret door's been uncovered it's no longer a secret, is it, laddy? It can stay hidden forever if it's in a place we didn't look in.", the old Scot retorted. Sometimes this man can be soooo wise, you know?
"But rest easy, I looked everywhere. High & low, no sign of them anywhere. As if they were moved a second time. Or maybe they are the lucky ones and got transported home."

"I hope so.", Joe said. "DJ was getting seriously on my nerves already for all his glances in Foxi's direction. Okay, I take you on your word that they're not here, so let's..."

At that moment the ceiling started glowing, pulsing white, blue, red, orange. One bright beam of light shone down from above, small figures could be distinguished inside it. A faint scream could be heard, nearing them quickly. One scream became more than two, two became four. Then the screams stopped and the new arrivals hung free floating in the air, about a yard above the rock surface.

Joe stared at them. 6 had left the arena, 6 new people had come in. What was happening here? Why? The same questions were still left unanswered. Then the light beam went off and the 6 dropped unceremoniously to the floor. A bit shaken but none the worse for wear they got up, dusted off their clothes, blew noses and one even combed her hair.

"Heya", Joe said, "Welcome to wherever we are. I'm Joe, the others around are Joeypesci, Matt007uk, indigo_prime, keasy and Becky. Who are you?"

"Is it the light, or is it that you don't want to recognize me anymore, Joe?", Wellmashed growled. "What do you think it is, P3t3?". P3t3 was just looking around him, a bit flabbergasted. One of the girls in their midst was just a bit puzzled, looking sweetly around, trying to untie a knot in one of her dreadlocks. "Hi", she said casually, "I'm Fluff." The other girl heard that and said "Emma", nothing more.

"Hi, I am known as redaxe on the forums", rumbled a deep voice with an English accent as if it was ground through tonnes of rock. This from a barrelchested man, more wide than tall, the voice seemingly coming from his socks.

"That's 5", Joe said, "and you are, sir?" addressing the last in the group. Keasy jumped forward and hit the man on the shoulders, "wooster, mate!! finally you're here. Now we're ready to rock & rumble!!"

.... to be continued. Will we find out what happened to our other 6 heros? Will we get through that door? Will Windows XP Pro install on a PC that crap? What's with that voice? Did you miss the clue? Read it in part 3 out on Wednesday.

Part J 3a

Third installment, a recap. Our heroes have been transported to a mystical place with no apparent entry or exit. Everyone knows what he or she was doing before they came here, but no one knows where here is, why they are there or who brought them here.

A big door has been found with two piles of PC parts next to its portals. The guess was that the PC had to be assembled and installed with the given OS to be able to open up the door.

Meanwhile, 5 of our heroes have vanished in thin air, while 6 new heroes made their unexpected entrance.
------------------------------------
Still a bit flabbergasted by the sudden transition from his warm bed into what seemed a cave with nothing more than hard bedrock, p3t3 shook off some shivers. The others were staring at him in rapt amazement. They'd never seen a pyjama like this one before, bright green and flashing purple squares on a fiery red background. "For once I am mighty glad I am wearing PJs, usually I wear not much at all, leave it all dangling.", p3t3 shrugged with a thin smile.

"Man, you should be tortured for only thinking of wearing such an abomination!!", wooster said, "Looking at you, I feel like I am seeing things like the day after one of keasy's drinking nights. Ouch!".
Fluff was strangely attracted by the weird colour combination on p3t3's shirt. Maybe because she herself was wearing a bright green jogging suit with pink rabbit pictures all over it. She put her arm around p3t3's neck and whispered something in his ear. p3t3 quickly looked left & right, swallowed visibly and audibly, turned a deep red and mumbled a 'be right back' before hastily shuffling away from the main group. Fluff was straight on his heels. A moment later faint kissing and strange sloshing sounds came from the other side of the room.

Becky looked in the direction of the faint sounds, then around her, feeling a strange pang of missing DJ Adam. She sighed and looked at the other 4 newcomers. Maybe that she could team up with redaxe, he looked a bit like a Papa Bear figure. As long as he didn't speak much, she could cuddle up in his arms, be warm and... she snapped her thoughts away from that. 'Keep thinking about Chris, hon', she thought to herself, 'you'll be home in time for the wedding!'

Joe had explained to the 4 others what had happened and that they were waiting for XP Pro to be installed on that computer. "So what good will that do?", Wellmashed asked, "Do you know how to set up the network, which IP address, subnetmask and whole of that shrangila?"

indigo_prime nodded. "It's all on a small plate next to the door. Backwards & mirror imaged, but it's there. No problem. Not even that time goes slow for us, the Windows installer is installing in real time, interestingly enough. It came down to only 2 hours 33 minutes to go at my last check."

"You'll see that it will go up again at 99%, taking an extra hour and a half", redaxe rumbled. "Microsoft always does that. Didn't our abductors have a Linux version of sorts?"

Joe stopped the techno babble there and then by saying "Stop the techno babble here and now, people. You're scaring the girls." .. 'Plus I don't understand half of what they say, but I shouldn't show that', he thought.

A new cheer from the door snapped him out of his thoughts. He ran over to see that Matt007uk, spooky7000 and Joeypesci had the Windows desktop on the computer. "It's running the network already, the wizard came up and installed everything perfectly. That door is a DHCP portal, so we didn't need much, just the default gateway", spooky7000 shouted, "it's now reading the networked drive. Let's see if we can find a clue as to what we should do next."

As all the others gathered around him, with Fluff and p3t3 coming last, hand in hand, clothes still hanging loose, hickeys clearly (proudly?) visible, spooky7000 uttered "aha", pointed, clicked a link, IE opened up, the CDROM drive opened up and with a loud screech the door started to swing open. "That's why there wasn't a Linux version with it. Or an older Windows version. This needs Internet Explorer 6 to work, the only browser man should use", spooky7000 shouted jubilantly.

Everyone looked at the now open door, only to be badly disappointed to see yet another door, as massive and solid as its brother standing in their way, closed. In front of it was a small keypad numbered 0 to 9 and the letters A to F. "Oh God!!" muttered someone from the back, it could have been Emma, "we're never going to get out of here!!"

While everyone looks for a clue how this door should open, let us go check out what the heck happened to our 5 missing heroes, shall we?

Part J 3b

DJ Adam, Moonshine, ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤, Jason Lewis and Foxi-Loxx were even more shaken than before. Had they just gotten back to their senses amongst friends, then they were ripped away from them and placed... yes, what exactly was this place? At least it had more lights than the previous location.

Jason Lewis turned a 360 degree circle. "It looks like ... I know this place." He looked up and down. "I definitely know this place, but can't remember from where."
¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤ said "Whatever this place is, it looks as if the maid has had a month off", looking with a dirty face at the dust clinging to just about everything. Yellow and red lights were flashing on machinery in the background, a switchboard had all red lights showing, a humongous fan was showing in the background, it's blades motionless.

DJ Adam retorted 'A month? Make that a couple of years!", while he kicked against what looked like a barrel. Hurting his toe he hopped around on one foot, swearing under his breath for a while. Foxi looked at Jason, "I know what you mean, I've seen this place before as well, but not as dusty. Damn, couldn't Becky have zapped with us instead of that useless..." while glancing in the direction of hopping Adam.

"It's probably puzzle time again", Moonshine said, "which means we can leave Mr. Adam hopping around. Maybe, with the least of luck he'll disappear again." he grinned. "Let's just walk around this room and see what's there to see."

They fanned out in all directions leaving DJ Adam waiting behind as a central point to come back to. Foxi-Loxx quickly found what looked like a mirror, cleaned off the smudge on it and tried to do her hair. But what a weird mirror, it had something written on it.

But what could it mean? Had it something to do with where they were? She thought about it for a while but gave up on it when she heard an excited shout from her right. ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤ was waving everyone that could see her over towards her. She was standing in front of a small box-like structure with a keyboard, a red button and a monitor. "Look at this!", she said when Foxi and DJ Adam had reached her. She pressed the button in front of her and the monitor sprang to life, while something in the box started whirring.

<Mainframe systems online.... booting>
<.....>
<Loading FreeDOS 1.2>
<Ready>
<Reading Drive>
<Ready>
<Loading Command Overlay Function>
<Load Error in substructure 41, level 3 - non critical>
<Ready with errors>
<Loading Command Code>
<....>
<Command Code Ready>
{BLEEP}
<mainframe 5.6.2.4 all systems nominal>
<COMMAND:\>_

The red cursor blinked ominously on the black screen. ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤ looked at the others, with a big questionmark on her face. "Now what?" .. "Type in Help", Foxi said. "That usually works in the movies."

<COMMAND:\>help
<..>
<Help>
<This command can only be used in combination with another command>
<Example: Help Load>
<This gives all the options of the Load command>
<COMMAND:\>_

"Well, that was bloody useful.", DJ Adam sniffed. "Here, let me have a go, I'll see what this baby can do and can't do. It reminds me of my ZX-81 years.", shoving ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤ unceremoniously out of the way and placing his hands on the keyboard. After a short period of thinking, the ladies were almost certain they could hear his brain crack, DJ started hammering away, trying all the commands in his memory.

After seeing the 10th <Command unknown> flashing past, they turned around and walked towards the mirror Foxi had found, leaving DJ to play with his new found toy. "At least it keeps him busy with doing something other than glance at us.", Foxi said. "Glance at you, you mean," ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤ said, "He hasn't looked in my direction once, even when he speaks to me he's looking elsewhere. He's not a nice guy!"

"So, what do you make of my mirror with imprinted secret clue?", Foxi asked.
"I can't read what it says. Is it a barcode? What's that smudge at the top?"

Jason Lewis and Moonshine came walking back from their seperate directions. "Dust in the wind, if there was any wind from that fan at least, but nothing more that I've seen", Jason said. "Nor me", said Moonshine. "No doors, no windows, no ladders, no elevators, no escelator, no point to point transporter, nothing but dust covered machinery and flickering lights. There's a heavy raster behind the fan, before you ask. Impenetrable."

"All we found is an old terminal that DJ is trying to hack over there and this mysterious message", Foxi told them. The boys looked at the message. Jason started nodding, "I know what that is, it's a code." He started writing down the code. .. Foxi looked at him with fiery eyes and snapped "If that's all you can do, mister know-it-all, then you can probably tell us what it is a code for, huh? HUH?". Jason looked at her and merely nodded, then walked over to the terminal that DJ Adam was still hacking away at. "May I?" he said, moving DJ Adam out of the way.

"Let's see, a mainframe terminal. Probably from 1970 or there-abouts. 8bit machine, 164kilobytes of RAM, but with a boosting capacity of 800 MFLOPS which was big in its time."

He read the screen to see what DJ had been upto:

<COMMAND:\>Bugger
<Command unknown>
<COMMAND:\>Fuck you
<Command unknown>
<COMMAND:\>Load "*",8,1
<Command unknown>
<COMMAND:\>Be ready!
<Ready>
<COMMAND:\>the old red fox jumped over the fence with flying colours
<Command unknown>
<COMMAND:\>I give up
<Error: Command Line Interpreter could not find command: gi>
<COMMAND:\>_

"Had your fun, I see, DJ?", Jason said with a grin. DJ Adam shuffled his feet a bit, then straightened and said "You show your best shot then."
"OK"

<COMMAND:\>i
<Ready>
<CLI:\>D CC
<Memory command cache purged>
<CLI:\>L -c:\"$"
<Directory structure loaded into memory>
<CLI:\>P -c:\"*"
<Directing output to printer>
<Error: Printer offline>
<CLI:\>x
<Exit>
<COMMAND:\>P init -1
<Printer initializing>
<.......>
<Printer initialized, please specify port:\>66
<Port 66 specified>
<COMMAND:\>T -1 >>P66
<Test Print commencing>
<....>
<Test Print done. Print complete. Printer ready>
<COMMAND:\>i
<Ready>
<CLI:\>D CC
<Memory command cache purged>
<CLI:\>L -c:\"$"
<Directory structure loaded into memory>
<CLI:\>P -c:\"*"
<Directing output to printer>
<Printing>

And yes, from the side of the box fanfold paper started pouring out, written with the contents of an unknown directory. Jason picked up the first part when it reached the floor and started reading the contents. "Look, it's got a mint edition of Donkey Kong on the drive, I'm tempted, you know. It's been a while since I saw that in 16 colours."

Moonshine picked up the second part of the tailing paper and started reading the contents from there. "If you think what I am thinking, do you think that this could be it? 'ZZDOORS' it says here." .. "Mark it with a pen or a nail or..", ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤ reached out her lipstick to Moonshine, "Or that. Thanks Sugababe! Mark everything you think could be important, then we'll check them against eachother later on."

Part J 3c

Jason took Foxi gently by her arm and walked a few feet away from the others. "I have to ask you a question, Fox, do you have your mobile phone on you and if you do, do you have Joe's phonenumber in it?" .. Foxi flushed, patted her pockets, found her phone and looked at Jason. "I totally forgot I had that thing on me, how did you know?" .. "A guess, ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤ won't leave home without her lipstick, you won't without a way to reach Joe, I thought." .. Foxi kissed him on the cheek, "Thank you for that compliment."

They walked back to the others. "Okay, here's the deal", Jason said, "I said I had the feeling I knew this place, seen it before. It must have been in some game somewhere sometime, two groups of people seperated from eachother, were forced to help eachother advance from room to room, while it was unknown to eachother what they should do, how to do it or whatever. I have the feeling that we have to unlock a code out of this terminal, give it to Joe and his buddies, before they are able to open their door or doors. Foxi here has her mobile phone, let's just hope that it works in this place and that Joe's phone isn't lying at home on the table."

The others looked at him in amazement, like he was the new found Messiah. "You all figured that out while walking around here?", DJ Adam asked. "Partially yes. Now let's see if I am right.", Jason said.

He walked back to the terminal. It had stopped spitting out its paper, while Moonshine was busy marking programs on the last paper. "I found 3 possible programs, ZZDOORS, TWINTUR and BADEWASSER. Sounds Dutch to me."

<COMMAND:\>Load help
<Help: Load>
<Load {drive:\}{"name"}{/cache}{$}{/exec}>
<COMMAND:\>Load c:\"ZZDOORS"
<Loading>
<Ready>
<COMMAND:\>Execute
<Executing>
.
.
.
.
.
.
Drums schallen in das große Rund der Museumsmeile und dann sind sie da: ZZTop, Billy und Dusty in kompletter Mexikanermontur begeben sich ans Mikro und rocken los.
<COMMAND:\>_

"Ooooookay?! That was definitely not it.", Jason said. "Looks like German to me, not Dutch, but without some bearded person checking it, who knows? It all looks the same unintelligible when it's not English. Let's try the next one."

<COMMAND:\>Load c:\"TWINTUR"
<Loading>
<Ready>
<COMMAND:\>Execute
<Executing>
.
.
.
.
.

PASSCODE:

"YES!! This must be it! Okay, where's my notebook. Let's see, what was that code again from the mirror. Ah yes. Remember what the voice said when Joe asked it what it was? It answered with "I be who I am", right? Think in text language how you would write that. I B M ... Now go back to the mirror, what's in the code? The same letter combination plus some. So I think I need that."

PASSCODE:OPIBMPI-H
{Working}
{Ready}
{Dump}
03208B27A0F

"Alright Foxi, give Joe a call." .. Foxi took out her phone and dialed 0513-SECRETLOVER then waited for the other side to ring. "It rings", she said.

Cue splitscreen, Foxi on the left, Joe on the right.

Images nicked from the PCF Photowall and edited for use in the story.

Joe was looking at the keypad when he felt something vibrate in his pocket. 'Damn, my phone!! Why didn't I think...' he took it out, flipped it open and answered the call "Y'ello". "Hi Joe, it's your Fox", Foxi said excitedly. "Foxi, honey, where are you, are you alone, are you outside of here? Please give me some good news."

Foxi: "Okay Joe, the good news is: 03208B27A0F .. that's the code you need for that door. I've texted that to you as well. I'll text-message you the rest of our story later on, okay?"

Joe: "Is okay, hon. Is the rest there with you?"

Foxi: "Yes, dear. Everyone is alright, DJ's making a nuisance of himself as usual, Moonshine & Jason are playing Pong on the terminal and ¤º¤ºSugarº¤º¤ is muttering something about dinner."

Joe: "OK. See you soon, I hope."

Splitscreen closes, focusing on Joe.

With that he disconnected, looked up his text-messages, found the appropriate code and approached the keypad. Looking at indigo_prime he said, "I'll read out the numbers, you type them in, okay?"

It went like clockwork. As soon as the final number was put into the pad, the second door started opening without a sound. A slight hiss of warm, moist air passed the two men.

Beyond the door lay a black hole. Then, in the far distance, a first light went on. Then a second, a third, until 64 lights were on all the way towards the door. The lights illuminated 3 frozen figures. They were big, they were armoured it seemed, they all had a variety of strange and exotic tools and weapons sprouting out from their metallic armour.

The middle spoke first. "Halt, who goes there!" .. it wasn't a question, more like a demand!

Joe asked for the so-manied-time that morning "Who are you?"

"I am AMacdonald, but you can call me Aa." .. the figure on the left chimed in immediately, "I am Bonzrat, but you can call me Bee." .. then the figure on the right spoke "I am Cueball, but you can call me Cee."

Aa: "We are the guardians of Bath. Unless you tell us the correct passcode within the set timelimit, we're forced to eradicate you."

... to be continued.