LAZARUS 20th CENTURY TROTFOX PRESENTS
Starring Matt Damon as Pinguino
June 2025, Australian Cave
This is the deepest Australian cave weve ever been in, said warpus,
shining his flashlight into the abyss below. Theyd been down here
for weeks, surviving on moths and cave frogs, looking for the artefact..
Hey look, a hidden door with a keypad and a 15 inch CRT monitor
beside it asking us an ANSI trivia question unexpectedly announced
Krl.
What is Radmans favourite shade block?, the question ominously flashed
and flickered on the ancient display.
We get this wrong and we die.. We get it right and we will be legends
overly dramatically shout-whispered savage.
I think its F1, said Randers. I mean, it just makes sense
But would the answer be that obvious and easy?? Maybe this is one of
those trick questions quipped Krl.
Fuck it, Im with Randers. This is a no-brainer. We dont have access
to 16c down here and we cant call a friend, but deep down inside you all
know that the answer is F1, said warpus, and after a dramatic pause
entered the answer into the terminal and pressed enter.
The door slid open slowly and with purpose, revealing an elevated altar
type structure in the middle. On it lay a glowing rectangular block,
radiating light in all directions in a curious way.
Suddenly savage leaped across the room and quickly replaced the artefact
with a neon F9 block.
What the fuck man, not every problem can be solved with a fucking F9
block, you are going to get us all killed mate screamed everyone except
savage in unison.
Without warning the walls began to shake, prompting our heroes to run
down the only possible corridor they saw, which is when they noticed that
a giant block was falling down behind them and that owls with lasers on
their heads were also flying around trying to target them.
Up ahead! I think I see light!
And so our hearoes ran and jumped through the opening, landing on a grassy
clearing not too far from the water.
Start the plane! Wait.. Do we have a plane?? I hope we have a plane
screamed warpus out of desparation, as an arrow grazed his left earlobe
and embedded itself in a tree.
We totally do not have an airplane, but hold on.. The artefact is
changing colours! Like its telling us something.. Wait.. Its getting
brighter! Keep moving in this direction
Under these leaves.. an ancient plane! The artefact has guided us to it!
Lets see.. Maybe hold it up to different parts of it?
Suddenly a screetching modem-like sound filled the jungle, sending dozens
of birds into the air.
A screetching modem-like sound! But what does it mean?
Look! There is a display terminal here, we have just connected to
Polanadia BBS. I have heard of that BBS, it famously offered absolute
0 day warez in the before times.
With that, the plane engine started up and our heroes were able to take
off from the jungle floor and fly off into the sunset, even though they
were not yet able to log into Polanadia BBS. That part of the mystery
would have to be solved later.
L .
A .... Z
Five days later, Lazhe Night Market, Taiwan
Im on the lookout for the second artefact, I think Im getting closer,
said Pinguino into her headset as she moved through a sea of people.
You need to find the stinky tofu stand. Thats what I smelled during my
guided sweat lodge ceremony. It will be somewhere near the stinky tofu
stand, repeated warpus through the headset.
Two hours later, At a Canadian hockey game
We have the third artefact announced lucaslink through the Canadian hockey
arena PA system.
Whoops, sorry, I meant to say that through our secret headset thingy
Yeah, we found it a couple days ago and have been going on hikes with
Hennifer since. Then h0locaust gave us free tickets to this hockey game
and we have been here ever since, interjected Nitron.
Undetermined plane of time and space
This is Jackey, Amy, and Momo from Pizzatoe. We have an artefact to send
to you, provided that the terms of our agreement have not changed.
Exact same time, Somewhere in Scandinavia
A man standing on top of a moving snowmobile fires a rocket launcher at two
approaching helicopters. They explode and land on a tank, which also
explodes.
iMPURE archeologists have been on my tail, but I eliminated three of their
units. The artefact is secure, Luminator over
Maybe like 2 minutes later, Somewhere in Poland
I can confirm that FiRE historians have crossed the border from Germany
into Poland. They are on the hunt for the artefact, which I have just
retrieved from Wawel Castle in Krakow. Setting some traps and proceeding
to rendezvous point updated sIMONkING
More or less the same time, Somewhere in Benelux
You know, theres like 6 or 7 countries in Benelux, and probably even
more. It makes zero sense to have Benelux as a paragraph here, this is
ridiculous, constructively criticized The Knight.
Yeah, next time we would appreciate having our own paragraph as well,
MadDog over
Imagine a montage of other parts of the world
I found the artefact in a pastry, said Harvest.
A mo-ontageee..
Hold up you guys, I am fighting Hermanas anthropologists, said The Silent
Killer
Yeah, I know thats not their full name, but I have my hands full here,
theres also Blender museum conservators running around here somehow.
Place is crawling with them. And dont get me started on the 16colors
Preservation Scientists
Montage
I just killed like 17 Nazis. What are we doing again?, interjected
knocturnal.
You guessed right, its..
and the
Two weeks later, Hollywood
We have assembled the artefacts together in a very aesthetically pleasing
manner, which has brought us all here to this abandoned Frys Electronics
in Burbank warpus announced and looked around.
Wait, this isnt even Hollywood, the header is wrong, corrected Pinguino.
Los Angeles is a confusing vortex of time and space, added Forlox, the
friendly time travelling robot who the crew befriended a couple days earlier
in the Himalayas. Actually no wait, thats Mel Farr Suppastar.
Without a warning the artefacts began to elevate from the floor and hover
around, as if guided by some mysterious force. Screetching modem-like
sounds filled the room, each artefact connecting to a different node of
Polanadia BBS, each one then logging in to the BBS and automatically
posting a one-liner. The one-liners, all submitted at the same time,
unlocked an ancient 8 bit energy force, which filled the whole room with
a bright glow and the sounds of what one might guess might be the Hackers
soundtrack.
Whoa, said no one in particular, although it must have definitely been
somebody in the room.
The brignt glow coalesced into a distinct beam of light that hit the room
in a very specific spot. There lay a grate, which when explored by our
heroes lead to a secret basement, where a most profound discovery was made:
A sentient CRAY supercomputer that was so bored out of its mind that it
recreated all GLUE packs in PETSCII. It actually read all the LIT in the
archive and reviewed every single ANSI. After giving the very last ansi
in the archive an average score of 6.5, it went into hibernation, and had
no more to do, until the arrival of our heroes woke it up once again.
Would anyone please poke around in my filesystem?, asked the supercomputer
seductively. Could you traverse my folders using the command line? Ill
give you access to all of my system and hidden folders, the CRAY begged.
I havent been with a system operator in decades
Out of the pure goodness of their hearts all 16 Lazarus members then
proceeded to take turns servicing the supercomputer and poking around in
her file system.
Two hours later
You guys will never believe what I just found, said Krl
Authentic Cease and desist letters from a law firm representing Image
comics! Tens of thousands of letters!
It has come to our attention that you are using the character Spawn,
owned and trademarked by Todd McFarlane Productions, without proper
authorization.
HOLY SHIT! This could take down the scene!
GUYS, I found smoething even worse! A new type of artefact! Something
much smaller than a block! It says here.. Project Pixel..
What do you mean smaller than a block? A block is the smallest thing
there is
Unless the ancient texts were right
Shut the fuck up, Donny!
Suddenly all 16 Lazarus members and Donny received the same message on
their headsets: Mistigris Agents incoming
Mistigris agents have broken through our defensive lines! They will be
here in less than a minute. But... I have an idea... Everyone close
your fucking eyes! Put your hands over them and dont look under any
circumstances.
A loud clank could be heard as warpus pressed enter, which ran the batch
file signalling all supercomputer monitors to display the pixel at maximum
possible resolution.
Suddenly the door to the room crashed open and armed ninja-like Mistigris
agents burst in. Just in that second all the displays on the supercomputer
lit up bright with a single pixel on each one right in the middle. The
Mistigris agents could not help but stare at the gloriously bright coloured
pixels pulsating on every single display, and the longer they stared the
more their faces melted, and the more their faces melted, the more some of
their heads exploded dramatically in slo-mo.
warpus hit the power and the supercomputer shut down.
Open your eyes everyone! Its over!
And as the camera began to slowly pan away from the scene, it was clear
that blocks had won the day and the mere idea of a pixel was lost for
generations to come.
THE END
This is the part where you see outtakes when the credits are rolling