Chapter Text
Jon heard the thudding take over the world and jolted to a sitting position, wincing at the pixel-tinnitus in his head. “What’s going on?” Martin still snored softly beside him but Jonah was pacing, muttering to himself. Jon walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, Jonah, what’s going on?”
Jonah gave a long-suffering sigh and turned around to face him. “Just look around you, Jon.” He gestured vaguely at their surroundings and Jon looked, the puzzled expression on his face turning to horror.
“The world… it’s disintegrating into pixels.”
“Exactly.” Jonah shook his head. “Somebody is trying to destroy the computer.”
“Ah.” Jon looked over at where Martin was still sleeping and turned back to the far wall which was developing lines rather reminiscent of a cracked computer screen with each thud. “So…”
“So we’ve got to stop it.”
“Or not.” Jon shrugged hopelessly. “I mean, we’re all past our time anyway. Maybe… we should just let go. Personally I’m ready to see the afterlife.”
Jonah let out a bitter laugh. “Um, no.” He started towards the panel set in the wall. Jon, feeling suspicious, followed.
“What are you doing?”
“Stopping the problem.”
“How?” Jon eyed him dubiously as Jonah sat down in the waiting chair and began typing on the keyboard.
“Just watch.”
Jon choked suddenly, his hands grasping desperately at his throat as words began to spill out, collapsing to the floor.
“Host = self.host.
Extension Becher compromised. Self.host runtime interruption by unexpected data: hardware damage underscore crowbar slash DPHW 4600.
Administrator privilege: revoked.”
Jon gasped from the floor, one hand still on his throat and the other reaching forward desperately. “Jonah - what’s going on?”
Jonah laughed faintly. “Oh, just using you again, Archivist.”
The smashing continued for a few seconds before suddenly pausing. An agonized scream split the air and Jon began choking again.
“Unexpected data isolated / resolved.
Extension Becher isolated / resolved.
Independent operation permissions: revoked.
Node integration running.
Error readout.”
Martin by this point had woken up and saw the scene over by the terminal in horror - Jonah was sitting at a computer and laughing maniacally, Jon was on his knees choking and clearly being forced to spit out words, and an agonized scream filled the air from every direction at once. “What is going on here?!?” He ran over to Jon’s side and grabbed him in his arms. “Jon, Jon, Jon, are you all right? What’s going on?” Jon failed to respond, his eyes only streaming tears, and Martin turned to Jonah with eyes full of rage. “What did you do to him?!”
Jonah stopped laughing, rubbing tears from his own eyes. “Oh, you’ll see. Someone was trying to destroy the computer so I set Jon on, eh, taking care of the issue.” He gave a chipper little laugh and waved Martin over, pointing towards something on the screen. “Look!”
Martin gave Jon one last hopeless glance before heading over. “Okay, so what’s - OH MY FING G!” Martin slammed his hands on the desk in horror. “JONAH WTF DID YOU DO?!?”
Jonah laughed and spun around in his wheeled office chair. “Oh, nothing too consequential.”
Martin whirled on him, his eyes blazing. “There is a man literally being eviscerated by the computer!” Jon continued choking on the ground, reading out elements between deep hacking coughs that wracked his entire form. Martin ran to his side and began shaking him. “Jon! Do I need to do the Heimlich?” He looked over at Jonah, his eyes blazing even harder. “Seriously, Jonah Magnus! Do I need to do the Heimlich? WTF is wrong with him?!?”
Jonah sighed drolly. “He’s not going to die if that’s what you’re concerned about. Think of it as more of… well, he’s going to feel like he’s got a case of bronchitis for a while after this. It’s his own fault, really. If he’d just stop fighting it.”
Martin let out a yowl of rage and pounced on Jonah, sending them both spilling to the floor, the chair ricocheting across the room. He snarled in Jonah’s face. “You need to stop this! Stop this now!”
Jonah shrugged and grinned. “Sorry Martin - it’s too late.” As he spoke the entire space they were contained in turned black, reminiscent of a computer using too much processing power and blanking out the desktop and its icons. Jon was still wheezing and coughing but at least the words had stopped spilling out of him and Martin crawled over to where he lay, pulling him up into his lap.
“It’ll be okay Jon, just let it out.” He patted his back and glared over at Jonah before a static split the air and the three turned to see a mess of pixels gathering in a section of the emptiness. “Uh, what’s -”
Jon, Martin, and Jonah all let out yelps of absolute terror and cowered as a sudden blast of pixels exploded from the area and the entirety of their computer existence shook and took on lines and blocks of color. Martin curled himself around Jon as best as he could and Jon wrapped his arms around Martin, both trying to shield the other from the chaos around them. Jonah recovered after a few seconds and nodded, impressed, a faint smile crossing his face. “Nice.”
When the pixels finally settled a man was left standing there, staring in utter confusion at the three men on the floor. Martin and Jon huddled in each others’ arms, both their faces still buried in each others’ shoulders, Jon still coughing, and Jonah stared up at him with the look of an excited first year about to hear his favorite story in class. The man let out a faint cough then spoke. “What the BH is going on here?!”