Chapter Text
“What the fuck is a Power Hour?”
Cindy stands in front of him, hand hanging over the wire edge of the ‘50% OFF!’ bin, fingers running over spines of discs that have not been cleaned since the nineties. Her other hand precariously holds a bright pink DVD keep case, where big bubble letters take up fifty percent of the cover. Jimmy Neutron can barely make out the title before any sense of lettering and image is replaced by the gleam of the overhead light (and the grime of the consequence of sitting at the bottom of the wire bin. Of being forgettable. Replaceable) (When Cindy tilts it like so, Jimmy wonders if it is fate or nostalgia that makes it glow salmon).
“What does the description say?” Jimmy asks, and Cindy offers him a rather pointed look, as if it was daft of him to even ask. Jimmy matches her eyeroll with a scrunch of his nose, and she narrows her brows and purses her lips in response; scary enough to be a wolf.
Then, she reads the description and grins.
Her teeth gleam like they pierce as well.
It’s an expression that only Cindy can make look threatening, with each pull of her brows. On anyone else, Jimmy assumes that the same drawn out emotions would all be rather imprudent. More concerning, demonstrating cowardice.
Once, in an act of weakness, he tried to mimic the expression in an attempt to get his grandfather to stop making fun of his apartment (He’s a broke college student, okay? Plus, his roommate is Carl-fucking-Wheezer. Their microwave is broken, and Jimmy doesn’t really mind except for when he forgets to eat sometimes because he’s busy writing reports on isotopes and he needs to microwave rice but Carl keeps complaining about how expensive it is to replace the microwave when he was literally helping Jimmy build his own microwave for his own lab at the age of six, and, well—yeah. He makes a good point. Jimmy just doesn’t want to do it. He’d stab himself along the end of the exposed wires of the Goodwill sales bin before admitting that to his friend’s face, though) and all he got was a concerned look from his mom and a comment from Sheen about how he should “Get his face checked out.”.
“Expierence the wonders of the kingdom of Nickelodeonia!” She recites from the back of the case, and by the way her voice is too high and her smile too fake, Jimmy knows that the programmer of the game typed up the most deplorable shit and decided that, yeah, that’s the one that was going to make them sell a bajillion copies. “In one of the best adventure games of the decade, journey with the prince of the kingdom as you try to stop the ringleader of illegal evil! Through hardships, friendship, and epic battles, you’ll unlock your true power in an hour of need, and you’ll find yourself wishing that your time in Nickelodeonia will never, ever end! ;)”
“Illegal evil?” Jimmy repeats, offering his hand out in front of him. Cindy hands him the case with a laugh. “Is there even such a thing as ‘legal’ evil?”
“That’s what my grand-dad did in the sixties.”
“They actually typed out the winky-face at the end, too,” Jimmy notes, pointing at the emoticon on the back of the case. Cindy offers him an overexaggerated wink in response, the corner of her eyes wrinkling from laughter and bends.
“This says that the reason it’s fifty percent off is because the designer never finished programming it,” Jimmy continues, because it’s just fault after fault with this game, somehow. He adjusts his glasses as he squints at the bottom of the Goodwill sticker. “So. I guess you really do wish that there would be more time in Nickelodeonia.”
“Jesus Christ,” Cindy says with a laugh. “I mean, absolutely shitty if you’re a seven-year-old kid that wants to play a video game—but seems kinda perfect for you, huh?”
“I would assume,” Jimmy says, and he flips the case in his hands to look at the front over once more.
It’s nothing special—there’s the silhouette of a boy with curly brown hair standing in the path of the sun on a cliff’s edge, sword pointed outwards. Jimmy assumes it’s the fated prince of the kingdom, but he’s quickly learned through the countless game cases they’ve already examined that you can’t ever really be sure. The lettering is bright pink and clashes terribly with the image, and even if the game was decent enough writing-wise, Jimmy thinks the case would be a major turn-off for most customers.
“I mean, you could always take a chance with ‘The Mighty B!’,” Cindy starts, grabbing the yellow and brown striped keep case from the stack under Jimmy’s arm. She holds it out in front of her like a little kid during Show and Tell, arms fully extended and cover turned towards Jimmy. “But then you might have to play The Mighty C!, and I heard after that comes The Mighty D!.”
“I didn’t know you knew what came after ‘C’,” Jimmy says, only to be ignored as Cindy continues with: “You could definitely use some Mighty D!.”
Jimmy reaches to grab the keep case in her hands, a certain finger protruding as he slides the case back into the pile under his arm. The pile is protruding with the most idiotic games he could find—CatDog, Tuff Puppy, Back at the Barnyard. For some reason, Goodwill isn’t doing too hot when it comes to video games about animals. Jimmy doesn’t have the foggiest idea why.
“I’m kind of attached to Nickelodeonia now,” Cindy points out, and Jimmy knows that she’s only saying that because it’s by far the worst game in their pile. She just wants to fuck with him. “Maybe the prince is cute.”
Jimmy snorts. “Or the ringleader of illegal evil.”
And he really doesn’t want to spend five dollars on a video game that isn’t even finished, but his assignment is to recode a video game, and he went to Goodwill for a reason, goddamnit it.
While the other students in his class spend their weekends doing something easy (Jimmy assumes it starts with a ‘R’, and ends in a ‘ecoding their old versions of Fortnite in order to take out the guns and make NPC dialogue about how horrid and nasty violence is in order to suck up to their teacher.’) Jimmy has a reputation for being a smartass. He’s going to find the worst video game ever made, and he’s going to put in the effort to make it actually—
Well. You know.
Playable.
He sighs as he places the pile of cases underneath his arm into the sales bin, and Cindy throws her arms above her head in victory. “Fine, you’ve convinced me, I’ll finish coding this game.”
“Let’s go!” Cindy cheers, and Jimmy rolls his eyes as she circles around the bin and towards where he stands. He assumed when he walked in that he would be paying for the game (and the jeans Cindy found, because they were vintage and a particular brand and a lot of other things Jimmy does not particularly care about) but that didn’t mean he had to like it. “You better let me play it once you’re done doing your coding stuff on it; I want to explore the land of Nickelodeonia.”
Jimmy pouts in response, the edges of his lips curling inwards as he crosses his arms over his chest. He can hear the metal of the DVD clink inside the case, and Cindy grins, victoriously, from where she stands across from him.
“Make sure the disc is in there,” Cindy adds, more as an afterthought than any real concern. She is digging her heel into bloodied ground, rubbing salt into bleeding wounds. She wants nothing more than for Jimmy to drop out of Computer Science completely, in favor of joining her in Communications.
But, unfortunately, she makes a good point. The only thing worse than spending five dollars on a nineties video game titled ‘Power Hour!’, is spending five dollars on the protective case alone.
The DVD is there. For the record.
In hindsight, Jimmy wishes it wasn’t.
Jimmy drops Cindy off first, outside of the senior dorms on their college campus, where Cindy is approached by a group of her friends who invite her to an impromptu bowling session. Jimmy watches, almost invading, almost forlorn, as Cindy waves goodbye with a smile on her face and a laugh on her lips.
There is something here that has not once existed in the years they have known each other; it is foolish for Jimmy to try to convince himself otherwise.
They have known each other since diapers and cribs, friends since preschool and enemies since they could spit, drool. Jimmy has never known a life without Cindy and Cindy the same—it was foolish of Jimmy to think that he will ever be closer to a person than he is with Cindy; to think that he would be able to go to college without being accused of following the blonde halfway across the country.
And maybe Jimmy should know that their friendship relies on the cover-story of enemies. Maybe he should know that they hide feelings behind facades and emotions behind thick skulls. Maybe he should have known that Cindy would always be able to melt into the conforms of the society presented to her on the West Coast. Maybe he should have known that despite knowing Cindy better than he knows himself, there are things that he still has to learn.
(And maybe that says something about Jimmy—something deep and instinctual and scary, that Jimmy himself does not even want to uncover.
Maybe he knows Cindy better than he knows himself, because he has always been so keen on ignoring any change that happens inside. Maybe he is a different man than he perceives himself to be entirely, a stain on earth. Maybe he mistakes his own ignorance for observation.
Maybe he was never quite knowable in the first place)
He watches Cindy jump into the backseat of her friend’s car. He thinks he recognizes one of them from his first-year psychology lecture. He thinks he recognizes another from Cindy’s own dorm room.
He wonders when Cindy’s friends became people he never knew; strangers and classmates and people that do not come from small towns in Texas.
He wonders if Cindy knows that she knows all of his friends—the list is easily memorable; short.
Jimmy aches for something he does not know.
The drive back to his apartment is short and quiet and smells like fast food. He does not turn on the radio (Cindy is normally in charge of the AUX, and Jimmy is afraid to admit that his music taste has blended so unrecognizeably into hers that he does not even know if radio talkshows would entertain him anymore) and he does not roll down the windows and he does not even find it within himself to be angry at another driver on the road.
It is all completely still. Silence and tranquil and peaceful.
(Eerie, in a way. The calm before the storm)
When he gets home, he moves the clothes off of his desk, making an effort to throw away an old energy drink can. There’s just enough room for him to place his food on the desk—chicken next to fries in a styrofoam bin like he is six-years-old again—and sets the drink on the stool on the underside of the wood. Carl shouts something behind him, from a room down the hall, and Jimmy informs his roommate that he’ll fix the microwave soon.
Almost picky, almost tasteless, he blindly selects a fry from his desk and chews on the end, crossing the length of his room towards where he keeps disorganized piles of old technological cords and motherboards. He just needs something simple (that’s what the project is, in it’s entirety; it is simple and it is easy and it will make him look like a genius. Jimmy is a smartass and that is what he has going for him. That is all he has going for him. Jimmy is a smartass and that is what this project will prove) that connects the computer and the console. Something simple that he can transfer the code to.
He pulls a cord out with a frown, narrowing his brows as he untangles it from its brethren.
When he crosses his room once more and plugs the USB into the end of his computer, he makes a point of eating another fry from his styrofoam box (they’re soggy and unsalted and altogether terrible, but Jimmy cannot find it within himself to complain when it’s so readily available). He connects his computer (the one he uses for code—the one with stickers for colleges he never toured and state park’s he’s had dreams of revisiting on the back. The one that he has played games on since his junior year of high school and the one that he has taken numerous final exams on) to the small monitor he uses for his CD’s, where he enters the disc from the case into the respective outlet.
He’s moving more on instinct than thought as he sits down in his rolling chair, pressing the HDMI and power buttons on the outlet that connects to his monitor before switching to his computer, where he opens the app he uses for code. He uploads the code given from the video game disc (easy to know if you know where to look. Easy to find if you’re willing to search) and scrolls down to the bottom of the provided lines, where it ends on a prompted voice memo and linked image—Jimmy chalks it up to a scripted cutscreen (something that the author could do without code, without thinking. Without thought and process and life) and sighs to himself as he skims over the other lines of code, translating a coded fight scene and nothing more.
Jimmy did not become a comp-sci major in order to excel in the production of video games—his goals aligned more so with wires that spark and mainframes that glow; things that require thought and patience and practice. Video games and internet codes will never make as much sense to him as the very real feeling of computer parts under his fingers, but it is something necessary in the science to understand it at all.
And perhaps Jimmy does not care to know how to code—how to make things robotic, intelligent (but only artificial)—and perhaps Jimmy does not care to know how to design video games—repetitive, without life (only as smart as their creator). But there is something (breathing, living, nonartificial) in this project, and Jimmy will be damned if he does not figure it out.
He eats something new as he turns on his monitor and heads towards the additional port.
He is moving on instinct—on fingers that shake to a rhythm that he does not remember, does not sing along too; on faint music that echoes from Carl’s room next-over, something that sounds a little too much like Weezer and a little too less like something actually enjoyable; on the click of his computer mask and the whirring of fans.
He opens the game with another click of his mouse, and watches as the app bounces in the corner of his homescreen.
He thinks of Cindy, for only a moment—he wonders if she is having a fun time with friends that he does not know. He wonders if her friends know him the same way he knows them. He wonders why the idea of that hurts when it is all he has ever deserved.
(The Golden Rule is a two-way street, he thinks, he claims. He treats others one way and knows that he deserves to be treated the same way back. He treats others like they are forgettable and in response, he too is lost to those more noticeable. He is nothing if not a background character in his own story.)
He is thinking of friends and treatments and things that do not correlate with computer science courses when the app loads into the full length of his screen. It is a bright yellow as it loads, coloring his room a darker orange in the shade of the autumn setting sun.
He is thinking of things that are not princes and kingdoms and Power Hours when a loading green circle appears over the yellow, slow and robotic as it meticulously makes a singular loop around the center of its radius.
And he is certainly not thinking of how precious his little apartment is when he is no longer in it.
He is death and he is rebirth and he is incarceration.
His skin is turning inside, out. Repeatedly, troubling, again and again and again until what is abnormal blurs into the particular normal. He is death and that is normal and he is rebirth and that is normal and he is incarceration and that is normal. His teeth are falling out of his skull like they were never meant to be there, and Jimmy is blind enough to think that they have always been built to fall like that.
He balds and he regrows. He is short and he is tall. He is fat and he is skinny. He is that and he is this and he is everything and nothing. His body twists like a rubber band and stretches like gum.
And it is so incredibly painful.
He does not know if there is a feeling like it. He has been struck on fire, tied to a wooden pole in the middle of the town square. He has been waterboarded in the plastic pool he had as a child, memories killing him before anything else could. He has been stabbed with nothing but a killing combination of ambition and loneliness.
And at the end of the world, when you are more alive than dead, it is colorful.
A kaleidoscope of colors, twisting red and blue and pink—everything that Jimmy has never thought to compare to the black and white of skeletons and graves and the grim idea of death. Jimmy blinks as his arms are pulled taut behind his head, and he hears himself scream, loud, as the colors of red blur in the corner of his eyes like he is crying. He thinks he is.
He blinks again, feet being pulled until they are torn away from his pelvis and reborn. The world bleeds green, dark. It seeps from the corners of the endless abyss he finds himself in, leaking down the roof like water on the sides of a closed container, pouring around the edges. It stains the world green and Jimmy finds himself drowning in it.
He blinks again, and when he screams he does not hear himself.
He is silent, he thinks. His body is dead and his mind is buzzing with something that is too painful to be adrenaline and he cannot even call for his mom.
That does not stop him from dying (living) with his mother’s name on silent lips.
When he wakes up, he is in a bed that is not his own.
He is not fully conscious when he opens his eyes, laying in a deceivingly comfortable mattress with his eyes closed, yellow sunlight blinding his scleras a skin-stained orange. It is peaceful in a way that he has not felt in a long time, content to do nothing but watch as shadowy images dance along his view. He can hear something outside, walking along concrete flooring.
He can hear the hum of someone outside thin walls, cheery and light in a way that college kids usually are not (perhaps this should have been the first sign, Jimmy thinks. He is in a bed that is comfier than his own surrounded by people who are happier than his own. He is different because he is somber in a world that is so unlike the life he has grown used to). He wonders if Carl has received good news. He wonders if he has, finally, quote-on-quote woken up on the right side of the bed.
Then, someone knocks on the door.
Jimmy jumps, suddenly upright, suddenly awake.
He has never known Carl Wheezer to be someone who has known to knock.
He is conscious now, heart-racing. He notices the things that he had chosen to ignore before—the way the branches of a tree outside a window that hangs over his bed block the sunlight precariously, obscuring the rays of orange that appear in the room; the way that the ceiling above his head is high and vaulted, brown with wood and vertical with structural integrity; the way that he can look to the left and see a kitchenette and small living room, homely and tranquil and somehow holding no reminiscence of anyone who has ever lived here prior.
Someone knocks on the door, again.
Jimmy looks down at his clothes (he does not remember falling asleep) to see if he is even presentable. His mind is racing with things that align with kidnappings and nightmares and pranks performed by his roommate. He wonders if it falls too out of line for Carl’s character if the boy drugged him and then brought him to a secondary location (for his own sanity, he decides not. In fact, he prays and hopes and pleads to whatever force there is above that it is, in fact, Carl on the other side of the door). He does not know if he is pleased or pained to see that he is in a white robe—something velvet, something that he definitely cannot afford.
Someone knocks on the door, again.
They are not angry or impatient or even out of beat. It is eerie, in a way. The man on the other side of the door knocks in a repetitive pattern (three times, with a half-second pause in between) and continues to hum even when unanswered. He does not hurry the knocks as Jimmy does not answer, nor does he stop humming in favor of trying to yell through the thin wood.
Jimmy slowly lifts the covers to the bed he lies in. The wood creaks underneath his feet.
Someone knocks on the door, again.
This time, Jimmy counts the seconds in between.
At five seconds, he slowly rises from the bed. The robe falls to his knees, and he finds that he has awoken in socks and slippers (which is odd in a way that he chooses not to think about. He does not think he has ever known a man to fall asleep with slippers underneath the sheets. His socks are bright red with yellow hearts on them). He slowly, quietly, walks across aching floorboards to the front door, which lies in the open space in between the kitchenette and faux bedroom. He picks up a book from the bookshelf against the wall, raising it in a fighting position as he faces the door. It is thick enough to bruise and thin enough not to kill (because it is Carl, he tells himself. It is Carl playing a sick prank because Jimmy is a pushover who will fix the microwave at the slightest scare).
At ten seconds (exactly), the man knocks again.
Jimmy waits, patiently, hoping for the man to grow bored.
Jimmy thinks that the comfortable bed has made him a fool.
At ten seconds, the man knocks again.
Jimmy waits for a minute more. It is nothing more than a futile hope, pleading that the man will get bored—or at the very least upset. Jimmy knows that no soliciter is patient enough to wait five minutes for a single guy to open a door, and he knows that nobody important would ever knock on Jimmy’s door before texting him.
But the man continues to knock; once and then twice and then four more times, every ten seconds.
He does it like it is something he has been trained to do, every time he has ever answered a door, three times with a half-second interval every ten seconds, humming in between every knock. It is like instinct to him, and Jimmy knows in the back of his mind that it is not Carl. He knows that Carl is not patient enough to meticulously plan every second of knocking and every second of silence (and despite the small part of his mind that knows, he still wants with his full soul and body and mind for it to be Carl Wheezer, with his curly red hair and frecklish skin).
He opens the door on the eighth second of the ninth knock, book raised as a weapon.
The man (if he can even be called one) stands with his hands behind his back, and Jimmy hesitates (it would take him more than two seconds to extend his hand and knock. If he knocks every tenth second, how does he stand with his hands behind his back, the image of innocence?). The man, certainly not what Jimmy was expecting, grins up at him with a full set of teeth, incisors gleaming.
He stands on the brown, plain welcome mat outside of the front door that does not belong to Jimmy, resembling a kitchen sponge more than he does any human, with a square frame and a multitude of holes to match. His eyes are big and round and overpowingly blue, fluttering long eyelashes when he blinks. Jimmy does not focus on the oddness of his anatomy as he begins to speak, noticing the pointed nose and cartoonish clothes on a whim as the man—sponge, creature, thing—invites itself inside.
“I was beginning to think you slept in,” the sponge says, voice cheery and light, almost like a song. He keeps his hand taut behind his back, standing in the middle of the house as he turns to look at Jimmy. For a moment, Jimmy considers running out the open door (but something keeps him in place, still. Frozen to the spot. Jimmy has never known himself to be one to freeze at the sight of danger). “You sleepy head!”
Jimmy gapes at the man in front of him, mouth moving without sound. There is something that he wants to say, thousands of things he wants to ask (where is he, what is he doing here, how is the man in front of him alive when he is anatomically incorrect) but there are so many other variables that keep him from saying anything. He is moved to silence by the cottage he stands in, something he has never seen before. He is moved to silence by the living, talking sponge in front of him, physically impossible. He is moved to silence by everything that he has seen since he has woken up and all of the things that don’t make sense (everything).
Eventually, Jimmy manages to do something besides gape.
His voice sounds weak to his own ears, and he sounds less accusatory than he feels—more hesitant, if anything. “Who are you?”
“Why, did you fall out of bed and hit your head?” The man, sponge, (cryptid) asks. He laughs at the end of his sentence, like he is the funniest person he knows—his laugh is high-pitched and quick, like a dog panting or a hyena barking. “It’s me, silly! Your best friend!”
Jimmy hesitates, again. “Right.”
The man blinks at him, devoid of any emotion besides glee. He does not act enraged when Jimmy quite clearly does not recall who he is, and he does not get annoyed at the way that Jimmy is still dressed in the clothes he (thinks. He tries to remember. He tries to gaslight himself into believing) fell asleep in. He is nothing if not happy, smiling and laughing and swaying side to side.
“Oh, I get it!” The man says, like there is something here to get. “This is a prank!—” he laughs again, the same length and decibel and pace as before. He is a living recording, Jimmy thinks, being played on loops. “You’re pranking me.”
Then, the man winks. He is happy to be pranked and even happier to have caught on. “Well, in that case! My name is Spongebob Squarepants!—” (and Jimmy thinks that the name could have not been more on the nose. Spongebob Squarepants is a sponge with square pants that stands in the living room. He is the only person that Jimmy has ever met to live up to his name). “—What’s your name, mister?”
And as soon as Spongebob ends his sentence, there is music that plays overhead.
It is peaceful; instrumental. It sounds like the morning after in television shows and the moments before in movies. It is not supposed to be dramatic or heavy or even building up to anything—rather, it is the music that signifies that something has changed. Someone has been born anew.
“What the fuck.” Jimmy manages underneath his breath, eyes wide as he scans the corner of the house for anything: cameras or speakers or something that could signify why he’s hearing fucking music out of fucking nowhere.
“What the fuck?” Spongebob asks, giggling at the end. Jimmy turns to look at him with wide eyes. Spongebob does not say the phrase like it is a question, or even a statement. Instead, he repeats it like he is trying it out on his own tongue. What the fuck, he says, and then giggles. “Are you sure?”
Are you sure?
And Jimmy, hauntingly, knows what is happening.
He prays that he is wrong, though.
He remembers bits and pieces of whatever he was doing before he woke up here—buying the video game with Cindy, stopping for fast food, plugging his computer in at his own house, letting the program load as he ate dinner; blinding pain. Here and there and pressing and constant.
And he prays that he is wrong, as well. He prays that he is not as egotistical as he likes to claim—not as much of a smartass as everyone says. He hopes that he is wrong and he wishes that there is another, terrible explanation for this.
Because this doesn’t make sense.
And Jimmy cannot fix it if it does not make sense. He cannot code and he cannot build and he cannot think if there is nothing logistical behind it at all.
It is completely out of his control.
“No,” he says, slowly. Testingly. “No, I’m not sure.”
“Okay!” Spongebob says, just as gleeful as always. “My name is Spongebob Squarepants! What’s your name, mister?”
Jimmy can hear his heart stop.
It sounds like music, ringing. Something born anew. Jimmy Neutron is no longer the man he once was, because now he is here. He is not even alive. Jimmy Neutron has somehow—fucking—jumanji-ed himself into a video game. He is in the fucking cursed land of Nickelodeonia, where sidekicks introduce themselves in video game tropes and he wakes up in a fucking robe and slippers in a homely cottage.
“Jimmy Neutron,” he says, because he does not play video games, but he recognizes that Spongebob Squarepants is coded to ask for the player name at this very moment.
Spongebob Squarepants has been coded to prompt, coded to ask. He has been coded to always be happy, and to knock on time and laugh on time. He has been coded to always fit the stereotype that has been assigned to him; gleeful.
Jimmy thinks that that is a sad life to claim.
“Jimmy Neutron?” Spongebob Squarepants asks, scripted. “Are you sure?”
And Jimmy has never been less sure of anything, but he manages to nod.
“Okay!” Spongebob says, before his face falls from glee to confusion—the same as a sprite. “Hey, uh. What’s the point of this prank again? I think you forgot to tell me—or maybe I forgot to laugh!”
(And, just like always, just like he has been coded to do, Spongebob laughs at the end of his sentence.)
“There is no prank, Spongebob,” Jimmy says, still hesitant. He is confident in his hypothesis, but he does not want to be. He wants to be wrong, so, so badly. With every bone in his body and muscle in his skin. “I was just sleep-logged, you know?”
“Oh, of course!” Spongebob says, and Jimmy wonders (almost hopefully, almost idiotically) how Spongebob has scripted responses when nothing Jimmy is saying is scripted at all. “Silly me—I forgot how much you like your beauty sleep!”
“Right,” Jimmy says, because he’s unsure what else there is to say.
Spongebob smiles at him for a moment more, and Jimmy considers making a run for it again (but his feet stay still, unmovable. Like he has been coded to stand still. Like he is a part of the code. Jimmy Neutron is no longer in control of his own body, and there is nothing scarier then that) but Spongebob’s expression shifts into that of elation before he can make his move.
“What are you still doing in your pajamas?” Spongebob asks, and Jimmy almost asks how that connects to the obvious elation painted on the sponge’s face, but he likes to think that he knows better. It is unlikely Spongebob would be able to change his expression if he tried. “Don’t tell me you forgot!”
“Forgot what?” Jimmy asks, because nobody has ever been gunned down in video games for forgetting.
Spongebob gasps—big and dramatic and flowery. Jimmy almost wonders if he would have fainted, if he had not been coded to be a guide. “Don’t tell me you forgot!”
Okay. Jimmy thinks to himself. He changes his mind. He prays that he will be gunned down for forgetting.
“I guess it slipped my mind, okay?” Jimmy purses his lips, unamused. “Look. I’m putting it as simply as I can. I forgot.”
Spongebob gasps again, somehow louder than before.
Jimmy wonders if he has three lives to spare in this video game, and if it would be silly of him to waste one of them on stabbing himself in a kitchen that technically, kind of, maybe belongs to him. He thinks that if it is his own cottage, it would be fine. Besides, maybe it would allow for Spongebob to feel something other than happiness (and Jimmy thinks, because it’s the only thing he has left, that a little bit of sadness would help make Spongebob a little more circular; a well-rounded individual)
“And here I thought you had the best memory in the entire kingdom!” Spongebob exclaims, eyes wide. “You can’t even remember your own meeting with the Royal Prince, though! Oh dear! I really hope you’re prepared for the important meeting you have with him—otherwise, the entire meeting could be ruined!”
And, well, Jimmy’s not an idiot. He can pick up on important key details even when it’s subtly foreshadowed. Spongebob gives him the pleasure of not even attempting to be subtle at all. “Okay, I get it. I’m meeting with the Royal Prince. I have a meeting.”
“Phew, I thought you forgot!” Spongebob says, and it occurs to Jimmy that they’re making absolutely zero progress whatsoever.
“Can I ask—just to make sure we’re talking about the same Royal Prince—” Jimmy opens his mouth, unsure how to phrase the ending of his question without making it sound like he forgot. Because he would never forget. Because he’s perfect, and physically incapable of being incorrect. Because Spongebob is coded to always see him as the fucking hero or whatever.
Unfortunately, this makes the next word he says come out weak; uncertain. “—Who?”
“Prince Manny Rivera, of course!” Spongebob exclaims, announcing the prince’s name with a laugh. Jimmy does not laugh with him. “He’s meeting with you in the Royal Palace to discuss the inventions you made!”
“I’ve made inventions?” Jimmy asks, because, for the record, he has made and patented plenty of inventions, built in his own backyard. None of the things that he has made exist in a fourth-world dimension, though, and Jimmy is kind of grateful for that. He is not sure he would be able to take it if Spongebob knew about the machines he has made—if they are typical part of this world, where there are monarchies and sponge-creatures and silk robes.
“I’m really starting to think you’ve hit your head, Jimmy!” Spongebob exclaims again, but he laughs, and there is not an ounce of worry anywhere in his voice. “Of course you’ve made inventions! You’re the most famous inventor in the entire kingdom!”
“And the Royal Prince wants to talk to me about my inventions?” Jimmy asks, unsure. “What kind of inventions do I make?”
“Oh, all kinds!” Spongebob says, like he has a personal vendetta against Jimmy Neutron and the only way he knows how to display it is through faux cheeriness. Jimmy has never met a person that he has envied from personality, and it is embarrassing to know that he envies code alone. “But only the best!—As expected from Jimmy Neutron, the best inventor in all of Nickelodeonia!”
“A-bup-bup-bup,” Spongebob continues immediately afterwards, leaning forward and holding his finger in the air (like it means something. Like he is something more than coded interactions. Jimmy Neutron is not sympathetic enough to envy code, but there is something cold settling in his heart). “And before you disagree, just know that even the Royal Prince agrees!”
“He thinks I’m a good inventor?” Jimmy asks, and it comes out quieter than he means it to; more timid. Like Jimmy Neutron actually cares what some fuck-off prince thinks. “Sorry. Why would the Royal Prince find any use in my inventions? It’s not like I make something significant to—well. Royalty.”
In fact, Jimmy Neutron considers himself to be quite the anarchist.
It’s not like that’s significant in any way—but he thought that, in hindsight, it might be best for him to say that before the creator of fuck-all in Nickelodeonia can put words in his mouth.
(And the idea alone is terrifying; shivers down his spine and makes his limbs tense. What does this mean for Jimmy Neutron, as a living, breathing, person. What does that mean for his independence; his freedom. Is he alive with the swallowed pride of being different held in his left hand, or is he dead with the coded words of another stuffed into his mouth).
“Don’t say that!” Spongebob says, and he laughs again (and he laughs and laughs and laughs that, if Jimmy Neutron closes his eyes, he can mimic the noise for desperate sobs). “I know that ever since—” and he physically pauses. Jimmy can practically hear the ellipses “—the accident, you haven’t been confident in your inventing skills—but that changes today, Jimmy Neutron! You are the best inventor I have ever seen! You’re the one who’s been claiming that the Royal Palace has been bending themselves over backwards just to hold one of your explosives ever since they found out about their firepower!”
Jimmy barely comprehends the image that he has been assigned—the characteristic he’s supposed to fit; inventor of explosives and bombs and weaponry (something he has avoided ever since he was little. Something he has distanced himself from since he was fifteen and held a gun in his hand and heard about deaths and things even worse) before Spongebob continues: “Now, you have an opportunity to live the dream of every single inventor in Nickelodeonia—in fact, you could potentially become the Royal Palace’s live-in inventor! Which—no offense—is a whole lot better than this dump!”
“I quite like this house,” Jimmy says, but he is not fully focused on that; not really. Not when there are words being thrown at him and personalities he is being assigned. He is an inventor and a dreamer and a soldier. He is someone prone to violence and someone who wants to go far. It is so alike him and nothing at all.
Jimmy Neutron thinks that maybe that is terrifying as well.
He is not a violent person. He thinks, as he looks around the one-room cottage. He wonders if he could usher Spongebob out of the cottage and live out the rest of his days here, never moving and never returning home—a perfect purgatory.
(And the evil, misshaped part of his brain tells him that at least there is something here. A boy that wakes up early to knock on Jimmy Neutron’s door. A life of being recognized for his skill; city-wide fame within the palace. Silk robes and wealth.
He wonders if Cindy has noticed his absence. If Carl has even awoken.)
“Come on!” Spongebob exclaims, and he gestures towards the door with his hand, curved to a ‘c’. “The Royal Palace sent a horse and carriage—I’ve already named the horse!”
“Already?” Jimmy asks. He wonders if this is the speed that video games normally move at, or if he is just used to never truly experiencing it. He wonders if it is different to hear the music in the background and physically feel the ground beneath your feet, compared to watching your roommate play from a shitty bean bag in the corner of the room. “Can’t I—Do I need to bring something?”
“Well, nothing out of the ordinary!” Spongebob exclaims again, like it is common sense. “But, just in case you actually did hit your head, I would make sure to bring your backpack and signature missile-launcher gun! You never go anywhere without it!”
Jimmy follows Spongebob’s extended hand, gaze traveling across the cottage and landing on a maroon bag. It looks only half-full, with stains of something brown near the bottom and patches of denim along the zippers. Resting against the wall next to the bag is a long gun, with a hand-made barrel and loading dock that Jimmy recognizes from his own long hours working with metals.
It’s handmade, Jimmy thinks, first. Then, I made it.
(And Jimmy knows that he didn’t make it. But it is one and the same, he thinks. He does not even know if the he that he thinks of exists anymore. He’s trying hard not to think about anything besides talking sponges and the way his legs move and the way that he throws the bag over his shoulder perfectly.)
“Great job!” Spongebob says, and Jimmy wonders if that was supposed to be a tutorial of some kind—the press of a button to pick up an object. The weaving between physical objects with a joystick. “C’mon! Once you leave through this door, you’ll be a changed man!”
And Spongebob leaves without a second thought.
Jimmy watches as the top of his body, head, passes through the window panes of his walls. He can still hear the humming of his voice, and, almost stupidly, Jimmy thinks that he could confuse the sound of Spongebob’s footsteps against cobblestone as the knock-knock-knocking of a hand against the door.
Spongebob does not walk past the last window pane. Jimmy knows where he went—where the code has told him to go.
But that is not possible.
And Jimmy stands in the remains of his house. He stands and he breathes and he feels and he hears, like he is a living person. Like he will go to college tomorrow and eat dinner tonight and dream of internships and paying rent.
But that is not possible.
And, after a moment’s pause, Jimmy half-walks, half-runs out of the house. He clutches his gun to his chest and he prays that he will not have a panic attack. He closes his eyes as he feels wood change underway to cobblestone under his feet. He does not want to look behind him.
He opens his eyes and all he can see is black.
And that should not be possible.
But it is.