RoadBoot

Through the glass doors and up the elevator. Push the button “2″. Doors open and we see…

Corrugated metal. It’s like being inside a giant refrigerator with a “Mainframe Entertainment” sign embedded into the wall. At the end of a short hall is a big glass wall with a big glass door. There are ReBoot icons stenciled (or ground, I can’t recall) across the middle of the whole thing, and beyond it we can see a reception area with a desk and a corporate-looking person talking on the telephone. The door, we come to find, is locked, so we wait to be admitted.

Finally the corporate-looking person notices us and lets us in. She cheerfully chats with us for a bit while subtly extracting information about who we are and what we are doing. After getting that straightened out she sits us down on some couches while we wait for her to prepare two Non-Disclosure Agreements.

In the corner is a life-size Mike The TV with a real television in his face. He’s playing the Mainframe Ent. promotion reel. Against the wall is a locked glass case containing show merchandise displayed like trophies. After a short wait our guide, Virgil, walks into the room. We all shake hands, sign our forms, get our escort badges dished out, and he takes us around the facility. (I am convinced that it must have been built with confusion in mind, as I got lost more than once in the twisty corrugated passages of that place.)

In large open bays row upon row of graphic designers sat hunched over large touchscreens. In a huge office in the corner of the building the CEO was completely suspended in telephone cords; as fast as his assistants could unwrap him he became entangled in more. But the deals were being made, and business was moving along. We met him for a few moments.

Hello, how are you, we are fine, we’ll let you get back to work now. Good luck with those telephone cords.

Way in the back, past the tech department and past the ANCIENT PAL-based video gear was a closet that held all the master tapes. The original ReBoot episodes were on these tapes, and on other tapes our guide, Virgil, said there were things that never made it to air. One of the tech guys plugged one of the tapes into the machine, and we saw on the monitor the suspended head of Bob, saying lines not heard in any episode.

All over the facility hung original concept artwork. Bad Bob and Megatruck, the original image of the Tor… CC and I spent some time looking at things which to us represented cherished moments in our childhood.

In a tiny little closet ReBoot merchandising that never made it to the shelves sat in cardboard boxes. Our guide, Virgil, showed us loads of weird stuff, including (don’t laugh) hexadecimal baby socks. There were backpacks, posters, watches, (no toothbrushes unfortunately), bedsheets, and strange articles of clothing not designed for human beings. There were board games and picture puzzles, VHS cassette tapes of the first four episodes in Spanish, in Japanese…. These things were brought out of storage, paraded before our eyes (and camera) and put away again.

The kitchen area, we were told, was built with Dot’s Diner in mind. We kinda saw it, in the color schemes, et cetera…. but not really. The coolest part of the whole tour came when our guide, Virgil, drew back a sequined curtain to reveal the embalmed body of Mark Ralston in a Megabyte-themed coffin.

Actually, I lied about that last part. Nugget Man is alive and well, shoveling up minerals in Nowhere Ontario.

The best part of the tour REALLY came when Virgil led us into a tiny glass elevator full of buttons, which covered the walls and ceiling. CC pushed the big red one, and we zoomed up and up and up, bursting through the roof and past the cumulii, soaring higher and higher into the clear air where a flock of birds, whistling cheerful death dirges as they floated through their native environment, snapped their delicate necks against our glass walls.

After a nice dinner and water-side interview with BlaqueWidowe we decided to drive around lost for awhile, until the MerBz overheated and I was forced to vent the radiator at a gas station, which resuted in a violent expulsion of green coolant all over downtown. Two gallons of antifreeze and a quart of oil later we were back on the road, with a new map and some directions.

We pulled into a parking space next to 2025 West Broadway, a three-story building situated across the street from a grocery store. Very homey. Very dark, since it was close to midnight. We strolled around a bit and peered in through the windows. MFE was upstairs, on the second and third floors. At one time, when they were huge, they had occupied the entire building.

We drove back downtown and secured the last room in the Vancouver Hotel. Checking my email I saw that I had been instructed to call our contact in the morning, but not before googling the news. We slept.

The news was pretty spectacular. Three hours before we awoke (no doubt due to time differences across the continent), Rainmaker told the press that they had agreed to purchase IDT Ent. Inc.’s stock in MFE. At the time of this writing the deal still has a weekend to go before closing, but as far as I understand it Rainmaker intends to acquire the rest of MFE later on this year, effectually merging the two companies.

Joxer was surprised when I mentioned the merger in an email, but that came later. Directly after calling MFE we threw our stuff in the car and hoofed it back uptown, parking in the grocery store lot. A few camera adustments, some quibling about tapes and batteries, a last check in the mirror….. lock the door.

We sauntered across the street in slow motion, turning out our toes at a 40 degree angle. Our shoulders were square and our arms were hanging naturally. You could have dropped a plumb line from our chests to our shoelaces. A passing bevy of schoolgirls sighed in unison, and several windows broke, while a flock of birds momentarily whistled our death dirge obscured the sun. A colorful hardhat came flipping up from an open manhole, as the baritone strains of a cheery work tune floated into the bright morning something something anything but air.

CC slapped me in the face. “Snap out of it!” he hissed. “You can’t do this to me now! I need you HERE!”

“Oh, right,” I mumbled. “…..where are we?”

He sighed. “The parking lot. Here carry the camera bag.”

I took the bag and looked across the street. 2025 West Broadway looked a lot bigger in the daytime. Turning back to the car I watched CC wrestle a fresh tape into the camera. Across the parking lot a bunch of schoolgirls were pointing and giggling, and there were some nasty birds up on a powerline shrilling out some avian funeral march.

“We got batteries?” I asked.

“I can’t find the third one” CC said, banging around in the back seat.

“Yeah, I we left it at Rebootmaster’s.”

“Oh.” He pulled out of the car. “Then I guess we’re all set.”

I locked the door, and together we waited at the corner for the light to change.

Color. What color is sprite blood? Is it the glowing energy seen coming from Matrix’s arm when he donates to AndrAIa? Is it the dark stuff seen when Dot is abducted by the web creature? This debate is years old.

Google Sprite Blood

According to Joxer, sprite blood corresponds to the color of the sprite’s skin. Dot’s blood is green, Bob’s is blue, Ray’s is yellow.

Jiggity jig.

So here I am back at the old haunt, clean shaven and bald as a grapefruit. Chris left from Portland late friday night, and all the tapes (minus one) are sitting in a yellow tupperware in my car.

*spills coffee on self*

Hard to believe that it’s all over. People ask me where I’ve been, and when I tell them they smile and say “cool”, but none of them really understand. I’ve seen America. I’ve driven in New York City, I’ve dodged antelope on the Texas highways, I’ve seen the sun set into the Pacific and rise from the Atlantic, I’ve been lulled to sleep by the waves of the Gulf and woken into the crisp air of the Canadian Rockies. I’ve driven through the Mojave hades, I’ve gone up the Olympic Mountains and held a microphone to the mouth of the god of chicks that kick ass.

All I have to show for the Great Adventure is a little yellow box full of MiniDV tapes. In that box are embarassing memories, bad image quality, worse audio, and poor shot direction. But at the bottom shines a single bright light: hope.

It is good to be home.

We can’t tell anyone how Season Four ends, unfortunately. We actually had to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with Mainframe, so if we violate that agreement we can be sued and other Fun Things.

Peter’s note, July 27th: As stated below in comments made by myself and a representative of Mainfraime, the claim above is not true. Chris and I DID sign an NDA, but that only extends to Mainframe’s business practices and copyrighted material. NDAs (as they have been explained to me) exist in the industry in order that organizations may avoid litigation. Mainframe (I believe) has no legal interest in any official or unofficial ending, and would not sue us if we told anyone. Also, nobody except the show creators know if scripts exist or not.

Joxer told us, over a beer, what went down with season four all those years ago. He told us how many episodes it was supposed to be, why it was cut back, why everything seemed rushed, why season three was so good, why they decided to kill Bob at the end of season two, why AndrAIa’s shirt changes sizes, why Bob destroys an ABC, and what color sprite blood is. Then he told us how season four finishes, after the hunt.

Any doubts I ever entertained about this trip, about why I went and did this crazy thing, were totally crushed by the knowledge of how it all ends. Everything has been vindicated.

We met BlaqueWidowe on a little side-street. From there we walked to a restaurant a few blocks away and ate a nice dinner in Kitsilano, the hip and trendy portion of Vancouver that was the inspiration for Kits Sector.

The food out of the way and the sun going down, we went to a nearby beach and interviewed BW in the light of the setting sun. It was chilly enough that I felt I could wear the ReBoot crew jacket for a bit.

We chatted about the show, about her visit to Mainframe when she was a little girl (she claims not to remember it, it was so long ago) and that the girl who voiced little AndrAIa used to live down the street from her friend’s house. Altogether it was another pleasant evening spent in the company of like-minded people.

We parted company and went our separate ways. Passing through the downtown area CC pointed out an establishment called “The Cecil”.

We wondered.

After leaving the gravesight of Webrider in Montana we skipped across the border into the Canadian Rockies. Tiny, beautiful little towns filled wth friendly canadians and small mom-and-pop eateries rolled past as we ooh’d and awe’d our way across 250 kilometers of brisk mountain scenery. It was a refreshing change after the never-ending plains of Wyoming.

We slept in the car for four hours, then returned to the narrow roads that wound between the wooded hills. Slowly the provincial villages became larger, the trees thinned out, and soon we were passing small cities. The road itself broadened into a four-lane highway with an official sounding name as cars appeared beside us, speeding toward our mutual destination.

As we crested a hill Vancouver appeared on the horizon, shining in the golden aftenoon. Our Mecca, and Mainframe, was before us.

Our day started at a Microtel Inn located in Kansas City, Kansas. Our destination was a little over an hour away. ReBootMaster.

The drive itself was interesting. As has been stated in previous posts, L.Acid’s car doesn’t have air conditioning. We’d been through Arizona, Texas, and Georgia. That humid, boiling heat seemed to be the height of our climatic plight.

In a way, we were right. Going through Kansas, it was extremely hot. Yet, this 104F heat didn’t seem to phase us as much as the low 90s of Texas, with it’s sticky humidity. It was interesting, to say the least. But not bad.

Having discovered the genius of maps, MapQuest, and common sense, finding RBM’s place wasn’t hard at all. We had to park on the side of the road, since L.Acid’s parking break is pretty much gone and the driveway was on an incline.

We were greeted by a tall, brown-haired figure in a white t-shirt and jeans. We shook hands, introduced ourselves, and grabbed our equipment. The promise of room temperature and ice water awaited us inside.

Inside, we headed straight for the treasure trove of all Booterness. RBM’s room was filled with all kinds of hand-made creations. Clay, ceramic, water-colour paintings. They filled the top of his fireplace. I paid special attention to the full ceramic tea set made of binomes.

Inside his room, we saw the Hex portrait he’d made with watercolours and framed. It was very professional. I gawked at the life-sized binome standing on the floor, made of ceramic and clay. That’s just cool.

We then got down to business. I setup both cameras at different angles around RBM’s position in front of his row of clay binomes. L.Acid took a seat across from him, putting on his Official RoadBoot Interview face.

They talked in length of RBM’s involvement in the fandom, from his humble beginnings at the Edge of Beyond, to starting and maintaining the massively successful ReBoot Club on DeviantArt. As well as a few other things. I checked on the video cameras periodically, and took production stills of the interview in progress.

Afterwards, we all chatted a bit, then headed downstairs for some much-needed water. We ran into several members of RBM’s family, none of whom seemed to be the least bit surprised or taken aback when they found out we were from ‘The Internet’. His mother did frown a bit in confusion, until we said we were from the ReBoot community. She then smiled, and said, “Of course.”

(more…)