Ghost Boy: Weirdos

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Weirdos

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Whimpers…muffled sobs…Turbo lifted his head drowsily. Beyond the door of his borrowed room, a little girl's voice was crying as it moved down the hall.

"Ralph? Ralph? C-can I stay in here tonight?" Sniffling. "I had a bad dream…"

"Oh, jeez. Yeah, sure, kid. You can stay in here…"

A door creaked as it was wedged open, and there was a scuttle of little footsteps rushing forward, but by that time Turbo had already been sucked down by sleep again. His typical restlessness was no match for the exhausting power of a few hard code resets and a barrage of emotionally draining news.

…

He was consumed by an incomparable agony, by a force that gnashed at his existence and warped the very components of his being. This wasn't like a mere stomachache or headache, in which the pain was concentrated within his physical self; something had wormed its way into his coding. He thrashed and struggled in the grip of the malfunction, pushing himself towards a pinpoint of light that he somehow knew would rescue him. At the very least, it was sure to transport him somewhere else, and anything was better than being here.

His efforts were made increasingly difficult by the fact that he was heading into an impossibly strong wind, some kind of push-pull force that made the sleeves of his jumpsuit snap erratically about his wrists and constantly tried to send him spinning off in the opposite direction. He was unable to tell if he was being sucked in by something at the center of this distorted world or shoved back by something at the edge of it, but he pressed on nonetheless. All he wanted was a release from this pain, and whether he died here or somehow made it to the exit, he would put an end to his suffering one way or another.

Since it was a dream, he abruptly transitioned into a new setting without bothering to wonder how he'd gotten there or even noticing that something was amiss at all: now he was in Game Central Station, only it was vacant, and the ceilings were too high, and the glaringly bright lights bleached out most of the color from the world around him. He fell into an automatic stride and started walking in the direction of home, but when he reached the portal, he stopped up short. The scrolling sign above the tunnel should have been spelling out "TO TURBO TIME," as it had for the past two years and four months. But there was nothing to label the entrance to his game. No sign at all, much less one that announced the area as Turbo Time.

"Jet? Set?" he called, and despite the vastness of this dream version of Game Central Station, there was no echo to his voice at all. He received no reply.

Even if it was the middle of the day, Game Central Station was never empty. A few odd NPCs and homeless characters could always be found milling about here and there, and Surge Protector constantly patrolled the area, eyes peeled for signs of suspicious activity. But now Turbo was alone. There was no one around to praise him, to comfort him, or even to mock him by calling him a ghost boy.

Cautiously, he stepped into the dark entryway that had at one time deposited him to his home…

…only to realize that it was now an endless black hole, and he fell so rapidly that the air currents snatched away his scream –

…

When Turbo came to his senses, he was sitting up in his strange new bed, clutching at his head, while various areas of his body exploded into scarlet pixels. He panted and lowered his arms, and as the fog in his mind was burned off, his glitching ceased. That was one downside of being such a light sleeper: any time he had a particularly vivid dream or a nightmare, there was a high probability that he would start talking or acting out the nonsensical events before his brain had fully woken up. He was just grateful that he'd managed to avoid actually getting out of bed this time. And if he'd screamed, at least nobody had come running.

He quizzed himself on the information that he had received yesterday. Turbo Time had been unplugged (that explained the nature of his dream) and apparently he'd almost died when it had; he had been reformatted by Fix-It Felix Jr. and taken to a game he'd never heard of called Sugar Rush; thirty years had passed; and everything and everyone that he'd ever known most likely no longer existence. Seemed like a fair summary to him.

He crackled into static again, causing him to flinch.

Oh, yes, and he was glitchy now, too. That must have been the cherry on top of the proverbial bad luck sundae.

Turbo swung his legs over the side of the sponge cake bed. If he was going to be living in this sugary game, then he figured that he was at least entitled to have a look around.

He eased open the thick gingerbread door and got his first view of the corridor beyond. Even from a few glimpses, he could gather that this building was huge, ornate, frilly, and constructed entirely out of sugary foodstuffs. He spotted candy cane pillars, gumdrop doorstops, fondant wallpaper, and who knew what else. He'd always been a big fan of chocolate milkshakes with whipped cream, but even the sight of all this junk food was giving him a stomachache.

He placed a hand over his abdomen, frowning. Actually, it was making him hungry. Could it really be possible that he hadn't eaten in thirty years?

Resolving himself to discover the whereabouts of the kitchen, he set off down the hall, passing rows upon rows of near-identical gingerbread doors. He was going to have a hard time finding his way back to his room later, that much was for sure. Hopefully he'd be able to find Fix-It Felix or someone else who would be willing to help him.

The hallway opened up into a sort of atrium, with two pairs of double doors inlaid into the walls. One set included sugar-pane stained glass windows, and since rays of natural light slanted inside from beyond, Turbo assumed that those doors led to the outside world. The other set was emblazoned with a crown symbol.

"What is this place?" he wondered aloud. His confused query was amplified, bouncing back and forth across the domed ceiling.

The crown doors unlatched, allowing a round green creature that hardly came up to Turbo's knee to slip out. It had the appearance of a sentient piece of candy – a jawbreaker, maybe, or a gumball. It wielded a broom twice its size, which it robotically swept over the floor as it moved forward. All in all, it couldn't have looked more apathetic as it went about its work, and both its face and its movements appeared to lack any shred of motivation.

"Hey, you!" called Turbo. "Um, 'scuse me! Green gumball guy!"

The green creature tilted its face towards him drearily. In an instant, its dull eyes widened in shock, and it took off running. Before Turbo even had a chance to react, it had bolted off down the hallway he'd just come from, dragging its oversized broom behind it.

Turbo glitched.

"Uh…okay then, don't help me," he muttered under his breath. "Weirdo." Unconsciously, he rested a hand against his cheek. He had grown accustomed to having people stare at him when they saw his face for the first time, but no one had ever overreacted like the characters in this game. Had those thirty blanked-out years given him an even more grotesque appearance, or something?

Without help, he now had three options available to him: he could double back down the corridor and see where the other direction would take him, he could try going outside, or he could find out what was behind those crown doors. Deciding upon the latter, he walked across the atrium cautiously. Although the doors seemed to have been designed to be majestic and imposing, they opened easily at his feather-light touch, and he slipped inside.

The room that awaited him was extremely, severely pink, and there were frills lining every object that had the capacity to be decorated. A strip of carpet carpet formed a path from the doors to a little alcove, where a piece of furniture that looked like a combination of a chair and a crown-shaped racecar had been placed. Windows and balconies were placed intermittently along the two longest walls; that explained why the whole place was saturated with a pleasant, rosy light. There wasn't another person in sight, which caused Turbo to realize how vacant this whole giant building was. Besides the little green gumball thing, he hadn't seen hide nor hair of anyone, not even any NPCs.

Maybe everyone was outside instead…he padded over to the nearest balcony window to take a look. Just as he was about to step into the sunlight and get his first glimpse of this game's world, someone lifted him up by the collar of his jumpsuit.

Turbo yelped, thrashing in his captor's grip. "Hey, what's the big idea?!" he demanded.

As he slowly rotated around, his collar held in the grip of two enormous fingers, he found himself staring into the scowling face of an extremely large man with unruly hair and bare feet, who was dressed in a pair of threadbare overalls. "You!" growled the man. "I've been looking all over the place for you!"

"Take it easy, it's not like I went very far!" protested Turbo. "I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to leave! Put me down!"

He glitched again, at exactly the wrong moment. He dissolved into red static long enough to escape the grip of the large man and went crashing to the floor hard enough to knock both of his knees.

"Oww," hissed Turbo as he dragged himself back to his feet. He was having a hard enough time being a glitch without it causing him physical injury, as well.

The large man blinked in surprise, before his frown became even more pronounced. "Did you just do that on purpose?!"

"Oh, please," Turbo shot back. "If I had any say in the matter, I wouldn't be doing it at all!" He rubbed his sore knees indignantly. "Wait a minute, I think I recognize you. Aren't you the bad guy from the Fix-It Felix Jr. Game? Break-It Ralph, or something like that?"

"Wreck-It Ralph," the man corrected, placing his hands on his hips. "And you're not supposed to be wandering off, Turbo." He spoke the name as if it was an insult of the worst kind.

Turbo rolled his eyes. "Then someone should have told me that before! I just went out looking to see if I could find anybody. There's hardly anyone in this whole place!"

"That's because it's the middle of the day," responded Ralph, his tone implying that this should have been obvious to anyone with even the bare minimum of deduction skills. "Everyone is out doing their jobs. In other words, racing."

Oh, yeah. This was supposed to be a racing game. The only problem was, Turbo hadn't seen anything that even remotely resembled a race track, or a trophy, or even a car, which were the objects that he tended to associate with racing. "Where are you supposed to drive around here? Do they race through this building or something?"

Ralph shook his head and jabbed a finger towards the balcony window. "The tracks are outside."

"Tracks? As in, plural?" Turbo scampered to the edge of the balcony, curiosity piqued. The sight that awaited him was like nothing he had ever imagined.

It wasn't the creative usage of various candies that got to him, nor was it the glitter-graphics that packed in more detail than any game of his own era. No, the sheer size of everything was what boggled his mind the most. The building in which he was standing was but a mere background feature of a vast sugary land, part of a landscape that included mountains and valleys and villages and labyrinths and who-knew-what-else just over the horizon. And there were indeed multiple racetracks. He spotted roads all over the place, doubling in on themselves in complex crisscrosses and squiggles, so unlike the plain oval course of Turbo Time or the endless long street of Road Blasters.

"What the what?" he gasped. "How could any game even have enough memory to hold all of this?!"

Behind him, Ralph shrugged his massive shoulders, not nearly so impressed. "Technology has improved a lot since 1982."

Turbo was still so enamored with the view that he hardly heard the response. Now he was able to pick out the racers, who were visible as little more than zooming dots shredding up the courses and leaving trails of dust behind them. They dodged obstacles and soared over gaps and did flips in the air – all of it looked infinitely more exciting that puttering around the same old circular path day after day. He grinned as he imagined himself getting down there to join in on the fun. "Can I go to the tracks and watch the racers today?"

"What?! Uh, no, absolutely not!" Ralph crossed his massive arms sternly.

Turbo turned around, his face pulling into a frustrated glower. "Why not?"

"It's not a good idea for you to go down there. You're just gonna have to listen to me on this one." Ralph wasn't showing one drop of sympathy towards the would-be racer. "I'm in charge of you for today, and I was told that you're not supposed to leave the castle, so – "

"You're babysitting me?!" interrupted Turbo. "Come on, that is so unfair! What do you think I'm gonna do that's so bad I need a babysitter?! Don't you have your own job or something?!"

"Not anymore," answered Ralph evenly, his tense posture betraying the anger that he was holding back. "Not since my game got uplugged."

If he had wanted to drop a major bombshell on the conversation, then he'd succeeded. Turbo stopped up short and winced as another glitch rippled through him. "Wait. Fix-It Felix Jr.'s been unplugged, too?"

"Yeah. It was a hardware error. Our console screen died on us about three months ago." Ralph's muscles relaxed slightly. "Happens to us all in the end, I guess. It was a thirty-year-old game, we knew that it wasn't gonna last forever."

Turbo paused. "So…you're homeless?"

"I'm between jobs," Ralph corrected. "Not homeless. I live here. And it seems to me that it's the same situation for you."

"Well, I'm not between jobs," Turbo retorted cheekily. "I already know exactly what I am. I'm a racer." He turned on his heels and strode back inside, grateful that he was slim enough to brush by Ralph without too much trouble.

Ralph watched him go with challengingly arched eyebrows. "You know, your voice sounds different," he remarked.

Turbo pressed his lips together. "Different as opposed to what? What it sounded like thirty years ago? 'Cause I haven't noticed any difference myself."

The wrecker's breath hitched. "Oh. Uh, just forget I said anything."

Turbo frowned, once again overcome by the sneaking suspicion that something was being withheld from him. "All of you people here are weirdos."

…

Ralph escorted Turbo to the kitchen for breakfast, where the estranged racer fixed himself some graham crackers smothered with cream cheese frosting. The meal was more sugar-laden than he was accustomed to, but tasty nonetheless. He had finished eating and was licking the white frosting from his equally white fingers when Ralph spoke again:

"So, Turbo, remind me of something here. What's your intended age?"

Turbo's tongue darted briefly around his mouth. "Intended age?" he repeated.

"You know, the age that your programmers designed you as. How old are you supposed to be?"

He hesitated, reluctant to answer the question. He was already irritated because he'd been assigned an babysitter; the last thing he needed was for this wrecking guy to know that he actually was a teenager. Then again, Ralph probably already suspected or knew that, and was only asking as a formality. "I dunno, maybe around fourteen or fifteen?"

Ralph's eyes widened. "…fifteen?!"

"Uh, yeah. That's my best guess." Turbo glitched once again, but did his best to ignore it. "What, did you think I was older?"

Ralph shook his head in bewilderment. "I don't exactly know what I thought…but I mean, fifteen?! You're just a kid!"

Turbo's eyes narrowed, and another indignant glitch zipped down his frame. "I'm not a kid!"

But Ralph paid no mind to the statement of protest, as he was still wrapped up in what appeared to be a mixture of surprise and frustration. "After all of this…fif-freaking-teen years old..." he muttered under his breath.

"What are you talking about?" demanded Turbo.

"Nothing, nothing!" Ralph exhaled harshly. "Why don't you just go back to your room for now? Somebody will come in and get you later."

"What, you're putting me in a time-out now?" snapped Turbo. "I didn't do anything except tell you my age, because you asked me for it! This whole morning you've been treating me like I did something wrong! Well, newsflash – it's not my fault that my game got unplugged and almost killed me! I didn't choose to come here!"

Ralph just stared, his face masked by an unreadable expression. "Just go to your room, Turbo."

Turbo glitched furiously and stomped off. Just as he exited the kitchen, he could have sworn that he heard Ralph mumble, "You have no idea what you just said, you dumb kid."

…

Oddly enough, Turbo overheard a similar snippet of a conversation later on that day, once again involving Ralph. It was after the morning had seeped into afternoon…or at least, he was forced to assume that it was afternoon, since it felt as if a decent amount of time had passed even though the luminous lemon-drop sun remained perfectly stationary in the sky. As he knocked about in his room with nothing in particular to do, his ears pricked at the sound of voices just outside his door, especially when he gathered that they were talking about him…

He tiptoed over and pressed the side of his head against the door, bound and determined to remain undetected.

"…gotten ourselves in way over our heads, Felix!" lamented Ralph. "I knew from the start that this was a bad idea!"

"I know it seems a little overwhelming now," answered Fix-It Felix's voice soothingly, "but it was the right thing to do, and that's the important thing."

"Still. If he was an adult, it would be hard enough, but he's fifteen! Who wants to deal with a stubborn teenager?!"

"Honestly, Ralph, I don't know why his age surprises you so much. I had a passing acquaintanceship with him thirty years ago, and even if I never knew exactly how old he was, it was easy to see that he was young. And consider what he did…it definitely seems like something a child would do, don't you think?"

"I guess so. But I don't know if it makes me feel better or worse that all of this trouble was caused by a spoiled snot-nosed little kid being…a spoiled snot-nosed little kid!"

"Keep your voice down!" hissed Felix.

Turbo was scowling now, feeling slight glitches bubbling beneath his skin. It had been thirty years since he'd last interacted with anyone outside of his own game, and despite the fact that graphics had drastically improved and the games he'd known had come and gone, people were still against him for no reason whatsoever. Not much had changed. Why had his developers punished him with such a cadaverous appearance, and on top of that, why had they thought it was a good idea to make him so young?! Didn't they realize how difficult they would be making his life?! Now no matter what he did, no matter what era he was in, nobody was going to see him as anything more than a kid.

Beside his ear, the doorknob clicked.

He gasped and scrambled back as the door opened a sliver, and he folded his arms behind his back, trying to look as nonchalant as possible so that Felix or Ralph wouldn't suspect that he'd been eavesdropping. But it wasn't either of them. Instead, the little black-ponytailed girl from yesterday stuck her head into the room.

"Oh, it's you," said Turbo. "Penelope, right?"

"Vanellope," she corrected, thrusting out her lips in an irritated pout. "Let's go, Turbo. You and I are going out for some lessons."

She plunged a hand into her pocket and tossed a limp, black object at him. Turbo reached up and caught the item easily: it was a pair of goggles, like the kind worn by pilots to prevent the wind from throwing dust into their eyes. He realized that in this game, since the ground was actually textured with dirt, goggles were probably useful when you were on the road driving an open-roofed kart all day. Uncertainly, he clenched his fist around the apparatus.

"Driving lessons?" he said, and sniffed. "I don't need driving lessons. I already know how to race."

Vanellope shook her head, her back already turned towards him as she strode into the hall. "No, not driving lessons. Glitch lessons."