Forgotten Link

Adventure Time: Forgotten Link

"Look Jake, it's a dungeon!" cried Fin as he saw a rectangular metal structure in the distance.
"And it looks like nobody has found it yet," replied Jake and wagged his tail.
The duo approached the ancient structure to inspect it more closely. It was a rather square shaped building with the angles not being quite perfect. It shined brightly in the afternoon sun as the metal of the ruins was in a relatively good condition. It had a single large door which had a ribbed exterior going horizontally down it. There was a heavily rusted lever to the side.

"I think I've seen a thing like this in one of our old books," said Jake. "but I can't remember what they're all about."
"D'you think it's got treasure?" asked Fin in an excited tone.
"Probably does."
"Then you know what that means?"
"Treasure Time!" exclaimed the two friends simultaneously.
They quickly made their way to the large door looking for a way in. "Check this lever over here," said Fin pointing to the rusted lever. He tried to pull it, but his arms merely strained against the mechanisms. No matter how much he tried, the lever wouldn't budge. "I got this," proclaimed Jake and enlarged his fist. With his large fist he pulled the lever with ease, however the lever snapped off after he did so. "Oops," was all he could mumble.

A second later the large door began to open by raising into the roof. Fin and Jake looked at the door with awe, excited at what lays inside of the dungeon. They descended into the depths using the shiny staircase inside the entrance. The light from outside became more muted as they went deeper, yet they could see a faint light at the bottom of the staircase. "Man, it's been a while since we've been in a dungeon this creepy," remarked Jake.
"And cold too," replied Fin.

Soon they reached the bottom of the stairs, revealing to them a long, dimly lit corridor. The walls, floor and roof were all made of the same metal as outside, but compared to the outside metal it was extremely polished. Fluorescent lights lined the roof with many of them flickering leaving some portions of the hallway in an alternating earie darkness. At the far end was a single door, barely lit by the light above it. The duo began tip-toeing slowly through the hallway, gradually walking faster and faster until they were dashing through the corridor.

Suddenly a loud *click* could be heard throughout the entire hall. Fin and Jake froze on the spot, waiting to see what would happen. "Did you hear that?" whispered Jake.
"The ominous clicking noise?" whispered Fin back.
"Yea, that one. Do you think something will happen?"
"I dunno, maybe the place is just old or..."

Fin was interrupted by two walls sliding open in front and behind the duo with a loud grind. Two robots emerged from the walls, their wheels grinding beneath them. They were huge hulking beasts of machinery. Gatling guns were mounted on their arms and their tiny heads had screens on them displaying angry faces represented by dots and dashes. Once they were fully emerged and facing Fin and Jake, they began spinning up their guns. "Uh oh..." said Fin looking into the countless barrels now spinning with a high-pitched whine.

As Fin and Jake ducked for cover, there was a barrage of clicking noises. The robot's screens changed to show faces of confusion and tilted towards their guns. Fin and Jake began nervously laughing as they saw this and slowly stood up on shaky legs. "That's a relief," said Jake wiping his brow with a handkerchief shaped hand.

"Time for a fair fight, then!" said Fin readying his sword.
"Yea, I thought we were goners... I mean going to be in for a tough fight," continued Jake. He turned his fists into a mace and an axe all while increasing to a similar size of the robots. They both then began running to opposite robots, screaming all the way. Jake reached his robot first, slamming it with his mace-fist leaving a dent in the robot and causing it to tilt backwards a bit before it slammed back forward. Fin then reached his robot and sliced at the robot's one gatling gun making the gun fall in two with a loud *clank*. The robot looked at the sliced gun and then to Fin, raising a 'fist' and brought it down with a crash. Fin barely managed to dodge the attack and used the arm as a lift to jump off of unto the robot, slicing into its chest as he did so. Jake was doing much better using his axe-hand to slice off his robot's whole arm in one fell swoop. The robot returned Jake's attack with a punch to the gut and used the spinning barrels to make Jake's stomach a dog blender. Jake took a step back popping the spinning gun out of his stomach and groaning as he did so. Fin was busy using his sword as a way to climb the robot by stabbing it and using the sword for purchase on the robot's slippery surface. When Fin reached the top, he stabbed down into the Robot's head, causing the whole machine to power down. Jake was preparing a huge strike with his mace-hand while dodging another attack from the robot. He brought down his fist crushing the robot's head and torso. As the robot's screen was flickering, it said with a distorted voice, "Threat neutralised."

Fin and Jake shouted in joy and high-fived each other. "Those robo-dudes didn't stand a chance," said Fin triumphantly.
"Not with our skill they didn't!" replied Jake.
The two then checked for any other pressure plates and proceeded with caution. Dodging a few pressure plates, they swiftly reached the door at the end of the corridor. The door now stood before them. They stared at it for a moment, not one of them daring to reach for the handle. Finally, the loud bang of a light blowing a fuse far behind them set them into action. They both scrambled towards the door, fighting over who gets to turn the door handle before they both fell into the room hidden by the door. There was an odd silence before they stood up from each other.

The room in which they now stood was dark compared to the hallway which they were just in. The walls were lined with tools and cables. A few screens were mounted here and there but were all dwarfed by a large screen on the wall opposite from the entrance. The screen had hundreds of cables running into it and a panel was just below it with rows of hundreds more buttons and dials. In the centre of the room was a table littered with papers with mathematical equations and devices with multitudes of buttons. To the one side of the table was a chair with a skeleton seated in it. A strange cap with a cable leading into the roof of the room was strapped loosely to the skeleton's head. "Not exactly treasure," said Fin. "But there is definitely some stuff here that Princess Bubblegum would want."
Jake frowned at this. "I was really hoping for some treasure," he mumbled. As they both approached the table, the large screen began to give a low glow.

A clicking and whirring could be heard, going from a soft hum to a low drone. The large screen was flooded with green letters and numbers. Red symbols began to creep into the collage of green text and a picture began to form on the screen. After a few seconds of the image of a red face could be seen formed from the hundreds of letters and numbers. The eyes looked around for a second and then focused straight ahead. "Hello, am I online?" rang a voice throughout the room. A small red question mark appeared next to the head and floated there. "Is there no one else online yet?" the voice asked.

"Do you think the voice is the weird head on screen?" whispered Fin to Jake.
"Oh, there's somebody else here!" exclaimed the voice. An exclamation point took the place of the question mark. "Do you know where everybody else is?"
"I think it can hear us," whispered Jake.
"Can you not hear me?" asked the voice. "Maybe I set up the VoIP wrong..."
"I have an idea," whispered Fin. "I'm here to kick butt and get treasure," said Fin aloud. "And I'm all out of treasure."
There was a silence for a second. Then the voice laughed loudly. Fin and Jake joined in nervously trying to understand why the voice started laughing. "Good one," said the voice once it calmed down. "But I need to know if it worked."
"What worked?" asked Fin.
"Uploading my consciousness to the internet with all my friends," said the voice with hesitation. "Am I not online?"
"I don't know what an internet is."
"And we don't know who you are, as a matter of fact," said Jake. "Are you the face on the screen?"
"Oh, you mean my avatar?" replied the voice. "Yes, but it's only a representation of me. Wait, if you can see me on a screen then that means I'm not online. Why could that have happened, though? Could my upload schedule have been delayed, or maybe I just activated before I was supposed to."
As the voice was saying this, his faced warped into large question mark and was surrounded with mathematical equations. He continued talking at a faster and faster rate until he couldn't be comprehended due to sounding like gibberish. Then he stopped. "Then that means, I'm all alone."

Fin and Jake's eyes were wide, and each had a thousand-mile stare. They both shook off their glazed looks spawned from the series of flashing math on the screen. "What was all that junk about?" asked Fin. "And why all the math?"
"I need your help," replied the voice. "But I'll first have to explain to you what's happening in a way that you can understand. You might not know this, but there is a bomb coming that will destroy everything. My colleagues and I have devised a plan where we will upload our consciousnesses unto the internet where we can completely avoid the bomb altogether! I built this secret bunker in my mom's garage to let me do this and it seems I only succeeded halfway. I still need to fully upload my consciousness unto the internet beyond my system here. Can you guys help me?"

"I barely understood what any of that techno garbage meant, but I'll help you anyway!" said Fin enthusiastically. As Fin said that, the lights in the room all went red and a more feminine voice could be heard echoing through the room, "Facility below required power to function. All systems will shut down in five minutes."
The screen was filled with exclamation points and the face's eyes went wide. "I need to get my mind uploaded before it's too late!" it exclaimed. "I need the two of you to link me to the internet, but if I'm disconnected from the system in any way I won't be coming back."
"Get to the point, smarty-pants," said Jake in an annoyed tone.
"It seems I will have to stoop to an even lower level of thinking," mumbled the voice. "Alright! I need you to find a red cable with a white dingy on the end. Once you have that I'll tell you what to do."

Fin and Jake saluted the voice and began their search. With each pulse of the red lights, they were in another cupboard or another surface of a desk. Jake stretched all over, looking for the cable and Fin was frantically rummaging through any and all piles of junk. As the feminine voice declared that only three minutes were remaining, Jake lifted up the cable triumphantly and declared, "I hath found the cable!"

"Excellent!" shouted the voice. "I need you to plug the cable in the ethernet... I mean dingy shaped hole in the console below the big screen."
Fin and Jake sauntered over to the panel with the array of buttons and scanned its surface for the dingy shaped hole. The feminine voice pitched up again with, "Two minutes of power remaining." and the duo hastened their search. "Hurry!" said the voice now displaying the remaining time on his screen.

Jake found the hole and swiftly plugged in the cable. As he did so the face on the screen flickered a bit. "Time to join my friends!" said the voice with enthusiasm. After a spot of silence and a reminder that only one minute of power remained, the face on the screen became solid again and had a solemn look on his face. "There's nothing there," said the voice. "I took too long, and it's all gone. I will never experience my digital thoughts. I just wanted to live."

The flashing red lights finally stopped, and the screen went blank. There was a deathly silence. "Mr. Mysterious Voice?" Jake called out. There was no reply. "Are you there?" asked Fin. His question was met with the silence of forgotten innovation.

The duo considered getting Princess Bubblegum but decided that it was better to let the forgotten past not taint the present with its pain and let dead things lie.