An animated story . . .

By Former and Now Guest Blogger Mark Huber

You might remember Mark’s illustrations, animations, movies, and stories from last spring semester when he was a Blog Staffer. Mark is on a different elective track now, but he never stopped drawing and storytelling. He shares here the ongoing saga of “Mark” and “David.” Enjoy.

*Thank you to science teacher extraordinaire Mr. Killeen for use of his name and likeness(?).

I thought downloading Mr. Killeen’s image from the official PVS website would be as easy as downloading any other image. But, no, I was so very wrong about that. To tell you what actually happened, we’re gonna have to go a little bit back in time, about three days.

FLASHBACK!

“Hey, David,” I said, “you know what’d be funny? If I downloaded Mr. Killeen’s picture off the school website.”

“Oh, yeah, that’d be funny,” said David.

Aaaaaaand here’s where everything went totally wrong. Because I got all the way to the point where the option to download it popped up on the screen, and then I clicked on it. But nothing happened. So I clicked on it again. And again. AND again.

“Welp, that’s hopeless,” I said. And then I started walking away, when the computer said–

“Computer detonation in ten, nine, eight…”

I randomly pushed a whole bunch of keys on my keyboard, hoping that would stop the detonation.

“seven, six, five…”

I kept doing that. While doing so, I accidentally closed Chrome, opened the camera app, opened Chrome, searched for “fvhytfcvgtrdfghgfdsdfgh,” and played a YouTube video.

“four, three…”

“Why isn’t this working!?!?” I said.

“Two, one, zer- detonation purged,” it said.

“Phew,” David and I said. 

And that’s when all the electronics in the room turned to me. Even the lamps and reading lights. And the TV and the microwave, which weren’t even in the room to begin with.

“Uh, hi,” I said to the electronics. “How ya’ doin’?”

“We’re doing great,” said the TV. “We just want to destroy you and make the world perfect.”

“Um, that sounds great,” I said. Then I whispered to David, “We need to get out of here!” I picked up my iPad and grabbed David by the hand, and made a run for it. I had recently installed an emergency exit panel into my bedroom (it was just a part of my wall that hinged outwards). We ended up in the backyard, and then we both jumped into the same lemon tree (David’s a yellow pig, so he’d look like a lemon, and I’m green, so I’d look like the leaves). While in the lemon tree, I took a thing out of my snout storage that looked sort of like a USB. 

The “USB” was actually a device that when plugged into another device, would stop it from malfunctioning like this. I plugged it into my iPad, and it started a reboot. The reboot only took like 20 seconds, so I had all my stuff back really fast. I had this custom add-on thingy for Bad Piggies that I created, and, when activated, would turn anything built in the game into physical things in real life. I had the add-on thingy because it was much faster to build in-game than in real life. Pretty soon, we had a fast 2-pig car ready to go. It had a thingy to launch itself into the air, so we would be able to get over walls easily.

Once we got into the physical one, we drove it away. We launched the car over the gate. We thought the devices wouldn’t be able to get to us, but when we went past the front door, we saw them all. And at the front, was my homemade robotic clone, B.O.O.M. That stood for Bonkers Outstanding Oinking Machine. I should’ve known he would let the other devices in through my emergency exit hole, and then open the front door! He was the smartest piece of tech on all of Blerf, so what did I expect?

Anyway, he rocketed towards us (yes, he has rocket boosters) and tried to crash into David’s little watchtower place, but we turned around at the last second, and B.O.O.M. ended up knocking over a palm tree. I pushed the car’s motor to its absolute limit, and it started turning red. We were almost going as fast as B.O.O.M., but he was still going faster. He engaged his grappling hook (really just a plunger tied to a string attached to an air-powered propellant) built into his arm, and caught onto our car. He reeled himself in, and now he could much more easily destroy us and stuff.

David made a risky move and leaned out of his watchtower then shoved B.O.O.M. off. David quickly got in right before we hit a large rock, and the car went flying into the air.

The car broke into all of its little components. B.O.O.M. woke up and started coming after us again.

“I’m gonna get you, Mark and David!!! You will be gone from this world, and I’m gonna rule all of Blerf!!!”

B.O.O.M. picked up David and began crushing him. Normally, our species of pig is very squishy, but when we get tense, our entire body becomes super vulnerable to breaking. David was very scared, so he was very tense, so he was super breakable. This was bad. This was very, very bad. This could land David in the hospital. This could paralyze David (that means your whole body can’t move). This could be the end of David.

“NOOOOOO!!!!!” I yelled at the very top of my lungs. My vocal chords almost snapped. “I’M GONNA SLINGSHOT YOU AT A WALL OR PUT YOU IN A CRUSHER, IF THAT’S WHAT IT’S GONNA TAKE TO STOP YOU FROM CONTINUING THIS INSANITY!!!!!!!!!!”

I picked up the punching-glove-in-the-box and jumped at B.O.O.M., and started using it to punch him. He was getting dented and broken, but I didn’t care. I just needed him to quit crushing David.

“Stop your imperfect automated punching machine! I’m trying to bring perfection to Blerf!” yelled B.O.O.M.

“YOU QUIT TRYING TO CRUSH MY BROTHER!!! PERFECTION DOES NOT EXIST! IT’S NOT MEANT TO BE! SO STOP TRYING TO BRING IT TO BLERF! Listen, B.O.O.M.! The beauty of this world is that it’s not perfect! If you make it perfect, you’re just going to destroy it all!” I yelled back.

“Well, who cares, anyway!? Then I’m just gonna make as close to perfect as possible!” yelled B.O.O.M.

“Mark, would you shut up about perfection and help me!?” yelled David. “I’m almost crushed!”

“Right, then!” I said. I started punching B.O.O.M.’s arms, so that they would fall off and he’d have no way to crush David. They fell off right away, and then they raced back to B.O.O.M. Aw, dang it! I forgot that I installed magnets in his arm sockets so they would stay on! I had to opt for the last resort: the self-destruct button. I knew that if I tried to turn him off, he would override the command.

“I gotta push the self-destruct button, David! It’s the only way!” I yelled.

“NO! You’ll lose B.O.O.M.! We could just go into his code and delete the part that’s making him go bonkers!” David yelled.

“That would take too long! We just have to destroy him!” I yelled.

I opened his back panel (which contained the self-destruct button). I didn’t want to push that big red button, but I had to if I wanted to save the world, and save David.

I pushed it.

“Huh?” said B.O.O.M.

And then B.O.O.M. really did go boom. Well, “boom” just doesn’t describe it enough. It was more like, “Ka-BLOOEY splort garble clatter.” All the other devices now no longer had a leader, so they just turned around and went back inside, back to where they were before mr. killeen.jpg was downloaded. It was as if nothing ever happened, except for the collection of green robot parts on the road and the giant smoking crater.

“O-kay,” was all I said. We picked up all the B.O.O.M. parts and went inside the house.

“Boys, why did all the electronics go outside?” asked Mom.

“I tried to download a picture on my computer, and then it started a virus with all the electronics, and they started attacking David and I, and we decided to go outside,” I said.

“And what was that explosion noise?” asked Dad.

“That was B.O.O.M. exploding,” I said.

Dad laughed. And then he said sorry. He does that a lot.

“And there’s a smoking crater in the road outside,” David said.

No one said anything and just stared at David for a few seconds.

“O-kay, moving on,” said David. But, we still did have to fix the road. No one else was.

So we studied how to be a road fixer, and then we got college degrees in road-fixing, and then we fixed it in 7 minutes flat.

Yeah, right! We just made a makeshift cover out of wooden beams (from our snout storage) and called the people who actually fix roads to fix the road soon. While we are waiting, we just have to hope that our wooden beams can hold the weight of a car…

When I opened my computer again, it said on the screen:

So I’ve got some advice for you: If you ever want to download that picture of Mr. Killeen, you better be prepared for a robot apocalypse.

Now, back to the present…

Well, that was a crazy story. Let’s talk about what’s happening now.

I laid all the B.O.O.M. parts on my bedroom desk and got some tools from my snout storage. David came in to see what I was doing. Well, I was going to fix B.O.O.M.

“MARK! DAVID! DINNER’S READY!” yelled Mom from the kitchen.

“Okay, fixing B.O.O.M. will have to wait. For now let’s just–” I began.

“Robotal a-assistance persososon han c-celp youyouyouyouyouyou,” warbled B.O.O.M.

“What was that?” asked David.

“Just B.O.O.M. He’s still broken, so don’t worry if you hear something fishy,” I said.

We went into the kitchen and got our food. Cue more gibberish from B.O.O.M. heard over the baby monitor.

“Like I said, don’t worry about it,” I said.

To be continued…