The next day Ryu brought in pictures of himself in the Saiya-boy costume, to the Daily Brookings. Trying to look formal and neat, he wore a pink button-down shirt and black pants.
Ryu stepped off the elevator and into the lobby at the top floor. There was a woman, sitting behind a desk with a big “Daily Brookings” sign behind her.
“Uh, hi… I… Uh… I… I have an appointment with a Fred Robertson,” Ryu said nervously.
“Who shall I say…?” the woman asked.
“Oh… Uh, Ryu Son,” Ryu answered.
“There’s a Ryu Son here Mr. Robertson,” the lady said into a speaker phone. “I’m sorry, is he expecting you?”
“Uh yeah… I… I was the one who called about the… I got the pictures of Saiya-boy,” Ryu answered.
“He says he’s got pictures that… Okay. Okay,” the lady said. “Go right in and make a left, he’s the first door on the wall.”
Ryu walked over to a glass door, that had a sign over it. It read: News Room.
BZZZT! The door unlocked and Ryu opened it with a wide grin on his face.
“Copy!”
The news room was a busy place. All these people running around, talking on their cell phones, typing, moving boxes around. Ryu was almost intimidated by it. He walked around the corner to the editor’s office. The door swung open, and Strobe Talbot stormed out followed by Fred Robertson.
“The conversation was over five minutes ago, Fred. Answer is no,” Strobe said.
“Strobe…”
“A creature living in the sewer, Fred? What are we? Weekly world news?” Strobe asked.
“Jay says…”
“’Jay says.’ Jay Wang? What did I tell you? I said I want Saiya-boy. Did you think I was joking?” Strobe asked.
“I’m working on it,” Jay said.
“’Working on it,’” Strobe quoted. “Jay, if you paid whatever this paper costs every morning to sit down and read it with the morning cup of joe, would you be interested in a story about some creature that lives in the sewer?”
“Yes,” Jay answered.
Strobe looked at Jay for a moment.
“Well, you gotta point there. But I want Saiya-boy. I’m telling you: Saiya-boy will bring us big bucks,” Strobe said looking up and away from them.
Ryu shuffled through his backpack looking for the pictures.
“Strobe, we’re on Saiya-boy. Everyone is on Saiya-boy. But we have nothing. Nothing,” Fred said. “I mean, what can we do if…”
Ryu pulled out a picture of Saiya-boy that stopped Fred short. His eyes grew wide, and he nearly fainted.
Jay pulled around in front of the Ryu, to see the picture as well. His eyes also widened and he had a very large grin going across his face.
(This can’t be happening,) he thought to himself.
Strobe also saw the picture, and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. How on Earth, could this kid have gotten so many pictures of Saiyaboy, when all his best photographers couldn’t even get one?
It was a picture of Saiyaboy hopping backwards, his hands shielding his face from the camera. There was another in his left hand with Saiya-boy’s arms crossed. The shot made Saiya-boy almost divine. It was shot from below, and there seemed to be some sort light from below as well, illuminating parts of his costume. It gave Saiya-boy a defining presence. There were several more in his left hand but they were blocked from view by the second picture.
Ryu handed them to Strobe with a smile.
“Who on this God’s-green-Earth are you?” Strobe asked with astonishment, shuffling through the pictures.
“I… I… I… called. I had the pictures of Saiya-boy and…”
“Where’d you get these?” Strobe asked suspiciously.
Jay, and Fred were still looking at the pictures.
“He came to my school,” Ryu said.
Jay, and Fred looked up at Ryu.
“You go to Midtown?” Strobe asked.
“Yes,” Ryu answered.
“And you took these?” Strobe asked.
“Yes,” Ryu answered again.
“Crap…” Strobe took the first picture and tossed it aside. “Crap… Crap… What? Did you take these with a disposable camera?”
“I…”
“Crap…” Strobe tossed another one behind his back. “Crap.”
But suddenly, he stopped. His eyes grew as wide as a child with a new toy, and smiled. Ryu smiled confidently. Fred waited for his verdict. Jay got bored and was long gone.
Strobe showed Fred the picture, and Fred whispered something. Ryu strained to hear, and even leaned forward a little bit, to hear better, but there voices were too low. Then Strobe wheeled around with the picture in his hand, and leaned forward, causing Ryu to lean back.
“You swear this is the real deal?” Strobe asked.
“Oh yeah, of course,” Ryu answered.
“You’ll sign a release that says so?” Strobe asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” Ryu answered.
“’You guess,’” Strobe quoted suspiciously.
“It’s… they’re real. That’s… yeah,” Ryu said nervously.
“Strobe, the kid’s a kid. Crawl out of his nose,” Fred said pushing the two of them apart.
“I CAN’T STAND IT!” shouted a woman with black hair. She tossed her arms up in the air in frustration. The lady had beautiful blue eyes and glossy-red lipstick. She wore a purple business suit, and a purple skirt.
“How old are you?” Strobe asked.
“Sixteen,” Ryu answered.
“Sixteen?” Strobe asked.
“Well, sort of,” Ryu answered.
“Uh huh. I’ll give you fifty,” Strobe said.
“I thought it…”
“GOD!” the lady yelled.
“I don’t care what you thought. You’re a kid and I don’t know you and I’ll give you fifty. Someone get him a form,” Strobe ordered.
“I’M GOING TO LIGHT THIS PLACE ON FIRE!” the lady screamed.
“What now, Ms. Durrani?” Strobe asked with a sigh.
“I can’t… I’m not doing this anymore, Strobe,” Ms. Durrani answered.
“You’ll do what I…”
“No. No. I’m the associate book editor. I’m not the freakin’ web designer. I can’t get this freakin’ thing to work! It freezes up on me every time a take a deep breath and I can’t… I can’t… I can’t… Forget it. Nope,” Ms. Durrani explained cutting Strobe off.
“But we paid for you to take that class,” Strobe protested folding his arms across his chest.
Ryu looked over Strobe’s shoulder with excitement. Could that be web design?
“It was a one day class, Strobe. If I took a one day class in Chinese, I wouldn’t know it by the end of the day,” Ms. Durrani replied. “I don’t… ARRRGH!”
“Hey, what happened to our web site?! It’s not coming up on the freakin’ browser!” someone exclaimed poking their head into Ms. Durrani’s office.
“I don’t know! You sit!” Ms. Durrani barked as Strobe turned to see who it was.
Ryu studied the screen carefully, reading the html line by line.
“You crashed it!” the man exclaimed.
“You sit!” Ms. Durrani ordered.
“Uh, it looks like the script’s in a recursive loop,” Ryu finally said.
Strobe and Ms. Durrani both turned towards Ryu.
“A… A recursive loop,” Ryu repeated, getting nervous. “The line you changed is causing the script to call itself over and over again without a conditional statement to allow the script to exit or stop calling itself.”
“None of the pages on the site are rendered because the results of the script are needed, but since the script is recursively calling itself, you’ll never get results and the pages will never render,” Ryu explained to Ms. Durrani. “See? Technically, web sites don’t crash, web servers do. And the web server hasn’t crashed… yet. It will, if or when this recursive loop maxes out the web server’s cpu resources. All you need to do is add a conditional statement like this to the script, upload it over the older script.”
“I don’t have your telnet password but just… There!” Ryu typed in the last part onto the screen and pressed enter.
“How do you know this?” Strobe asked as Ms. Durrani leaned back in her chair with a satisfying sigh.
“I don’t know. Just, y’know, I know it,” Ryu answered.
“How old are you?” Strobe asked.
“Sixteen,” Ryu answered.
“You go to like a school or something?” Strobe asked.
“Yes. I just told…”
“You need a job?” Strobe asked.
“Seriously?” Ryu asked.
“You come here after school and work on this frakata web site for us. But you gotta start right now because I don’t ever want to hear about this thing ever again,” Strobe explained.
Ms. Durrani tossed her arms up in the air and shouted: “Hallelujah!”
“I gotta, uh… I gotta call home and ask…”
“Whatever,” Strobe said, dismissing Ryu.
Videl picked up the phone.
“Son… Ryu. Where are you? Are you okay?” Videl asked. “What?”
“My grandma wants to talk to you,” Ryu said handing the phone to Strobe.
“This is Strobe Talbot. Uh huh. Yes, I’m sure he’s a nice b…” Strobe was cut off, by Videl. “Uh huh.”
“Uh huh. Well that…” Videl cut him off again. “Uh huh.”
“Uh huh,” Strobe said closing his eyes.
They seemed to be on the phone for a very long time. Eventually, Strobe took the phone off his ear and just looked at it. Videl could be heard through it just talking and talking and talking.
“Uh huh. Yes I certainly see you… Uh huh,” Strobe started tapping his foot. “Uh huh.”
Finally Strobe hung up the phone, with deliberate delicateness.
“You ever do that to me again and I’ll toss you out a window,” Strobe whispered into Ryu’s ear.
Ryu was flying through West City when he heard a cry for help. Ryu cleared his throat, and shouted: “I’m coming, hold on… Helps on the way.”
Ryu landed on the roof of a warehouse and jumped over the edge. The big metal door to the warehouse was slightly. Ryu crawled under it, and called out: “Hello?”
Someone shrouded in shadow came out from behind a door.
“Thought you seen the last of me, huh?”
The person was holding a gun in his/her hand. When they stepped into the moonlight, Ryu saw it was the man who had killed his grandfather. Ryu was frozen with fear. BLAM! Ryu looked down expecting to see a bullet hole, but there was nothing there.
“Ryu…”
Ryu turned around and saw his grandfather there his shirt splattered with blood.
“…I wanted to tell you…”
“GGGAAAHHH!” Ryu screamed sitting up in bed. His face was soaked with sweat.
Videl slammed the door open.
“Ryu!” Videl exclaimed.
“Ughg! Grandpa!” Ryu cried.
“Videl! It… It was just a nightmare,” Videl said.
“Oh my God! Oh man!” Ryu sobbed, putting his head in his hands.
“Just a nightmare,” Videl said patting Ryu’s back. “Was it about him?”
Ryu looked at Videl. Tears were streaming down his cheeks.
“I couldn’t stop it… Oh God!”
Thanx for reading
Sephistrife15
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