Bob stood staring in speechless lack of mournful horror. Boris…the once familiar building inspector and now hierarchy of Sunflower Valley had been consumed by a CGI pixel glitch. There was nothing Bob could do about it except stand still as a statue, staring in startled terror as the rubble began to tremble.
And then, Boris Bentley burst out with a hysteric scream. However, Bob couldn’t react with panic himself - Boris had become a ruin of his former self. The CGI disease had taken its toll on him so badly, that he started acting and behaving strangely. So strange, one word was to describe the hyperactive state he was in now: ear-splittingly loud.
Now Bob could only watch in dread as Mr Bentley, now a loud, Americanised, algorithm fuelled, fast paced, CGI butterfly out of his cocoon of death, running around hollering out adorkable phrases you’d expect to hear in films such as Tangled and Frozen, films Bob dared not see, in case this disease had even affected what once was beautiful and fair.
That word, THAT WORD:
Algorithm.
It had changed Boris too, yet not in the way his horrid third incarnation Ready Steady Build did. This incarnation brought back horrid memories of Bob’s exile from Sunflower Valley as soon as the apocalypse hit, and Bob’s brain ached with the memories as he watched Boris jump around the place, acting like a lunatic.
That word - algorithm - caused Boris’ every line of screeching dialogue to accompany themselves with, of all things, captions. The captions weren’t in proper English. They were in broken English, as if a feral man had broken into the system of Sunflower Valley and destroyed the coding needed to keep it in order.
That word - algorithm - also made an ear-splitting sound roar out after Boris’ every shrill yell. That sound. A sound Bob can’t bear to hear. One that made his sunrise-shaped ears bleed harshly with every time it rose up, then down. It sounded like…a laugh track.
Yes, a laugh track. The most horrible noise in the history of entertainment, just enough to make your hair stand in terror. It was in most American sitcoms, but now, from Bob’s viewpoint, every single show on the UK versions of Nick and Disney Channel are like this - ever since the rise of Hannah Montana and the childish nature of Shake It Up.
He knew both companies had no choice. No cartoons, no documentaries, no dramas - just one type of programming, with that awful sound going up every 2 seconds. Even hearing that sound is just enough to make Bob stand still in shock, as he could do nothing about it.
And then, Mr Boris Bentley was gone.
Everything suddenly stood to a standstill. The laugh track and broken captions had vanished from plain sight too, leaving a haunting, whistling wind howling through the black, destroyed grounds of what once was Sunflower Valley. Tears fell down Bob’s scarred, bleeding face as he dared not remember what happened to the rest of who used to be ‘his friends’ before he returned to find this place a total scattered junkyard.
He knew that if something had happened to Boris, he knew it might’ve happened to any survivors sliming like slugs across the dusty, unwatered grounds of the valley he once called his childhood sanctuary.
His work still needed to be done if he wanted to-
Eh?
Work?
A trigger word. From hearing this word and this word alone, Bob could hear his once friendly demeanour call out these words:
“Well, team, this is it - Sunflower Valley!”
Team? What kind of team did he have? From hearing this word too, not only did Bob hear the voice of the person he once was, but also some other voices. Voices he had forgotten about since his exile. They echoed in his now steel-carved brain as he heard these joyous words call out to him like some kind of angel and devil battle in the Heavens:
“It’s going to be a big, new adventure! Can we build it?”
“YES WE CAN!”
“Er….yes! I think we can!”
These voices…
These voices….they sounded like grown up children and teens. But he didn’t have any children. He and his partner, whose name he had also forgotten about, were not married at all. His adventures didn’t end there.
Bob had no memory of his past from all these years spent in exile, while all of Sunflower Valley had to suffer at the hands of this new CGI/algorithm plague. All his friends had been thought to suffer too, and Bob needed to do something about it.
He was going to fix it, no matter what happens next.
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