Altador Cup

Virtupets

CTRL + ALT + …

Keetra and her team were midway through a virtual simulation game—a tight matchup versus an expertly modeled Team Kreludor—when Goltron Mk I went haywire.
     At first, the robot Tuskaninny began to repeat binary code, jamming up their team comms. Frustrating, but not unheard of—just one of those unique Virtupets problems that her friends on Neopia never had to deal with. Though they had problems of their own, with the grey spreading as much as it had. Keetra had often entertained thoughts of going down to visit…
     But she had no time to think of that now, because things had gotten weirder.
     Goltron had left their digital goal for no reason at all and was now virtually chasing Sela, their left defender, around the game board. A loud yell cut through the Yooyuball Simulator, and Keetra called a time-out to pause the game.
     The Cybunny captain quickly removed her headset and blinked, readjusting to the bright lighting of their real-life practice pitch. Goltron had cornered Sela, who was cowering with her back against the wall.
     “Go AWAY, Goltron!” the purple Xweetok yelled. She had already flung off her headset in the middle of the pitch.
     “01000110 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100100,” Goltron said again. “01010000 01101100 01100001 01111001.”
     Keetra bounded over to interfere. “What in the galaxy is going on?”
     XL Striker 3.8 joined her, translating the binary as he pulled his fellow robot back.
     “FRIEND, he’s saying. FRIEND… PLAY…”
     “01001000 01100101 01101100 01110000.”
     Striker straightened, rotating his head towards his captain. “HELP.”
     Keetra felt a chill run down her spine. “Friend” and “play”? That sounded a lot like Neopet V2, the evil program that had long been defunct… and the inspiration behind their team programmer’s online name. She glanced over at the programmer booth, but Weldar, her right defender, was already two hops ahead of her. The mutant Grundo pulled V2_4ever by his tail fin out onto the Virtupets practice pitch.
     “Explain,” Weldar growled, shoving the Koi closer to Keetra.
     V’s glowing dimensional lines burned into the captain’s vision, swimming beneath her eyelids every time she blinked. She’d always preferred speaking to their programmer over a headset; looking at him gave her a headache.
     V2_4ever fluttered his tail fin, miffed, the moment Weldar released it. “We won the year I built the Yooyuball Simulator, if you remember,” he said. “Then last year, the other teams caught up. They called our tactics. I knew we needed to upgrade to stay one step ahead.”
     “Some upgrade.” Sela accepted the large Grundo’s help up, moving farther away from their binary-babbling goalkeeper. She was shaking. Keetra couldn’t tell if it was fear or anger, but she knew it was likely both.
     Weldar glared. “The Koi must’ve reprogrammed Goltron to target Sela.”
     It was… plausible. The motivation was there: this year, Sela had been vocal in encouraging them all to trust their instincts, rather than rely so heavily on V’s programming skills to fill out their playbook. And the orderly Goltron would never have acted so recklessly on his own.
     “That wasn’t the intention,” V said through gritted teeth. “I’ve been researching advanced technology and happened across a floppy disk filled with old code.”
     “By ‘old code,’ you mean Neopet V2,” Keetra said, trying to keep her cool.
     “Barely!” V corrected. “Only slivers of him, really… The file is heavily corrupted. But once I saw what I had, I thought of Goltron: one of his biggest weaknesses is Athletic IQ. Knowing V2’s intelligence was off the charts, I carefully—carefully—extracted a couple lines and added them to Goltron’s programming. You know, since Plan A was vetoed…”
     He looked pointedly at Keetra, who’d folded her arms.
     “I’m not letting you clone me,” she said. He’d pitched the idea to her earlier this year: an entire team of prodigies built, above all, to win. She’d been V’s greatest champion in how much his programming skills could help their team, but even she’d known that idea was a bridge too far.
     V flug up his fins in exasperation. “You claim you’re so worried about your friends in Neopia, and yet your schedule is packed with practice and code review. Meanwhile, your clones could be helping Neopia in your stead. They wouldn’t even need to sleep.”
     “I don’t want to send a bunch of bot clones in my place—I want to check in on my friends and see what they need. It would mean a lot more for me to make the trip…” Keetra rubbed her face. “Which I should probably do.”
     “SAD,” Striker said, translating a new line of Goltron’s binary code. “FRIEND. MEAN. Well that could mean many things, Goltron. Who’s ‘friend’ in this instance?”
     Sela took a deep breath to steady herself. She looked worriedly at their Tuskaninny goalkeeper. “I think Captain has a good reason not to trust your work, V.”
     “They’d probably go the way of Evil Sloth Clones,” Weldar grumbled, “to be frank.”
     Now their programmer was vibrating with anger, his bright lines blurring. “You would never have won the Cup without advancing your tech!” He gestured at the headsets they’d left on the field. “Sure, sometimes it breaks. But that’s part of staying ahead: improving the code, testing new theories, iterating at top speed. Why can’t you see that?!”
     “01010011 01101111 01100010. 01010011 01101111 01100010. 01010011 01101111 01100010.” Goltron’s typical whirring noises had transitioned into a whine.
     “Oh. Oh dear. I’m sorry to do this, but…” Striker opened a panel behind Goltron’s neck and held down a button. The goalkeeper’s arms stilled as he fully shut down.
     “Poor bot… we’ll have to do a full reboot, using backup data.” The robot Wocky patted Goltron. “And on behalf of him: sorry, Sela. He wasn’t in his right framework.”
     Keetra returned to the pitch. “There are more important things than your programming, V, as impressive as it is.” She picked up Sela’s dropped headset. “It’s not worth hurting friends just for a bit more speed, or cleverness. Honestly… the grey crisis is a good reminder of what really matters. We’re so far removed from it, sometimes it can be easy to forget. But that’s real, down there, not some simulation.”
     She blinked hard, watching vestiges of V’s glowing lines dance behind her eyelids. “And you know what? Sela’s right about trusting our instincts. We’ve become so reliant on your tech to enhance our teamwork that we’ve lost sight of the strengths each of us bring to the team. I’ve been so wrapped up in improving our stats that I haven’t been thinking enough about everything—or everyone—outside of the Simulator. It’s like I’ve been trapped here.”
     “What are you talking about? We’re making huge strides!”
     She paused, looking at him one last time. “Find yourself someone else to clone, V. You’re done here.”
     The Koi’s jaw dropped. He stared at the captain for a long while and shook his head.
     “Big mistake,” he said, then swam through the air, out of the practice pitch.
     Keetra let go of a breath and closed her eyes—then felt the soft embrace of Sela, and a firm pat on the back from Weldar.
     “Thank you, Captain,” Sela said. “I know that wasn’t easy, but… maybe we don’t need a programmer. We can put our heads together, build on ideas that are more… us.”
     “And if you are making the trip down, I’m going with,” Weldar added with a grunt. “You’re not traveling alone anytime soon. Not with that goon on the loose.”
     Keetra shuddered. “Thanks, Weld. I am a little worried about what he might be up to next… but it is a relief knowing someone has my back. Several someones.” She took in this moment with her teammates, each of them a bright, burning star in their own right.
     “I do think I could really use some distance from this place for a little while,” she continued. “And helping friends in need would really help me get out of my head.”
     “A team trip to Neopia?” Striker said. “I can outline an entire schedule, based on the number of weeks we would like to stay. One? Five? Twenty? Let’s try one of each.”
     He stood still for a few moments. “And… done!”