.hack//LIMINALITY Fan Fiction / .hack//SIGN Fan Fiction ❯ .hack//CHECK ❯ Inform ( Chapter 10 )

Chapter 10 // Inform

#Ring, Ring#

"This is Carter."

"Hello. This is the calling service with a wake-up call for Mr. Carter."

"Thanks."

Danny sprang from the bed, and glanced over at the clock. 4am on the dot. He walked to the curtains and flung them open. There was very little activity on the streets below. Danny suddenly remembered that it wasn't such a good idea for him to stand in front of a hotel window in nothing but his boxers, and quickly reached for his pants.

After brushing his teeth, Danny proceeded to do his normal workout routine. Every morning, he does 1000 crunches. It was 5am when he finished his crunches, and went to shower.

The sound of falling water ceased as the woman on his bed awoke from her sleep. Danny walked out of the restroom as he dried his hair.

"Oh, you're awake, Shere.", he said.

"Ooh... morning already?", she said as she slowly got to her feet.

"Don't worry, I tipped just about everyone who saw you. Officially, you weren't even here." He put on his shirt.

"Oh." She put on her robe, and fastened it.

"You can help yourself to room service. Studio's footing the bill. I've got to be on the set in thirty."

"I won't be here long, myself.", she said. "If I'm late one more time, my boss will kill me."

"Better get a move on. Bye." Danny left the room.

. . .

6:15am. Danny arrives on set. Many people rush about without abandon. Lights need to be checked, audio equipment inspected, and cameras calibrated.

"Carter! Where the hell have you been?!?", shouted the man in the director's chair.

"New York traffic, boss.", replied Danny.

"Yakkity-yak... Just get your butt to makeup, pronto! You know how Alphonse gets...", shouted the man.

Danny ran to the makeup room.

. . .

"All right, folks.", said the man, "That's it for today."

Danny checked his watch. 5pm. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and began to dial.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Shere, you available tonight? I heard of this one place with the best pizza ever."

"Ooh! Sorry, Danny, I'm gonna be working all night. These reports are killing me."

"I understand."

"Besides, I gotta get my mail. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Sounds cool. See you then."

Danny put the phone back into his pocket. "$#&%. Oh well... Wonder if there's any good Chinese takeout around?"

. . .

Danny stepped into his hotel room holding a plastic bag. He glanced at his clock again. 6pm. He went over to his laptop and hit the power switch. As the machine began to boot up, he sat and began to mix the contents of one box with the contents of his box of shrimp fried rice. As he began to mix the food with one hand, he typed in his password with the other.

#Chime, chime# YOU HAVE NEW MAIL!

. . .

Danny opened his new mail...

"Hey, Dan, Tiff, I found something interesting about our little friend named Swan.

I'll be on the IM."

. . .

JackSprat: I did a little more digging. You'll never guess what I found out.

SexyTiff2509: What?

STANspark: Yeah?

JackSprat: Swan's char doesn't even exist on any WIII server.

STANspark: Huh?

JackSprat: So, I checked the WII server...

JackSprat: And I found squat.

STANspark: Well, like, this guy doesn't exist or something?

SexyTiff2509: That's definitely interesting.

JackSprat: We know for certain he can't be on The World I's servers because those were shutdown permanently...

SexyTiff2509: Right. I remember, they forced us to World II when they shutdown the servers...

STANspark: That was a pretty good deal. We got to keep our characters, and a free copy of World II. What were we, lv 1 ...?

JackSprat: yeah. Back then, there were only like, 50000 people playing World I...

JackSprat: CC made that offer presumably to save money... I had just registered when I was forced off. . .

JackSprat: THAT'S IT!

STANspark: What?

JackSprat: you guys just gave me a great idea. I'm gonna check something. I'll contact you guys later.

. . .

Danny sat on the bed, and watched the television.

#Chime, chime# YOU HAVE NEW MAIL!

. . .

"Ha, ha! I thought so!

Dan, Tiff, IM me!"

. . .

STANspark: Where's the fire?

SexyTiff2509: What's up?

JackSprat: I found out why I'm not dead!

STANspark: I'm getting sick of typing Huh?, tell us already!

JackSprat: Okay. I did some more digging. This time, I went into CC's files.

JackSprat: Turns out, that after a certain incident, CC decided to take some safeguards.

JackSprat: After that incident every character was embedded with a special piece of "do-nothing"code.

JackSprat: They called the code the "Twilight Line". According to the file, the code was implemented...

JackSprat: To protect against a certain attack. That attack's name was...

JackSprat: Data Drain.

SexyTiff2509: Well, why did it delete your character? Why are those people dead?

JackSprat: For World II, the programmers had removed anything pertaining to something called an "Epitaph of Twilight"..

JackSprat: As a result, they could stop embedding the "Twilight Line" into each character. Since there was no chance of future disasters...

SexyTiff2509: Or so they thought...

JackSprat: Deacon was a new character I made in World III so he'd be affected for sure. Which means that only a handful of people are protected from this menace.

STANspark: Looks like I'M gonna have to spend fifteen dollars...