Error 503

Sometimes, when we explore the cyberspace, we have the feeling that something is about to happen. That ‘something’ could be hacker activity, spam, randomness, and even errors. We get around 404s and 500s, but I guess that’s just an Internal Error because of data overload…


I learned this the hard way…


I am a big fan of Pokémon (and I’m still being) since I saw the TV show and played the New games, such as Pokémon Black, Ranger, Mystery Dungeon… Still. My favorite Pokémon nowadays are Umbreon, Maractus, Lucario and Reshiram. My most favorite over all of them is Samurott. Well… she is still, but I don’t think making fun of her Pokédex number is the same thing anymore.


One day, I was quietly listening to ‘15 minutes VG music’ while browsing deviantART for Pokémon images, when suddenly, I got a message on my Gmail inbox (Gmail was open for that moment). I clicked on the tab to open Gmail. What happened next… was annoying!


‘Internal Server Error’.



I hit my face with my own left palm and refreshed the page. I got that goddamn ‘error 500’ again about 3 or 4 times, until it finally got me into Gmail, but it was kind of glitchy. Maybe the server was suffering of overload. It was a note from my friend, Michelle.


‘Hey Polly! I want you to try this game. It’s Pokémon Black. Nope. It’s not the one with GHOST. This is the original Black. You should try it at least onc-‘. The rest of the text seemed glitch, but I shrugged and clicked the attached file to download that game.


I always wanted to play a Pokémon game on computer, because all of my Pokémon games were wiped out due to reinstallation of system thanks to a virus. After the download was done, I extracted the files from the RAR file the game was on. There was: one ROM of Pokémon Black (pkmn-black.nds), a save file of it and a MS Word document file (503.doc). I wanted to see the Document first, but the thought of it being a walkthrough with a weird document name made me to play the game instead.


I simply got the annoying ‘Couldn’t find save data’ message whenever I opened it. I guess I forgot to input the Action Replay ‘no$gba fix’ cheat, which I had around the desktop just in case. I pressed F2, added the cheat and restarted the game. Now I was totally excited to play the game, but what I saw wasn’t pretty normal as I have seen. All I could see was a white screen, which faded to black after five seconds. ‘Maybe it’s glitchy’ I muttered. Suddenly, a message appeared.


‘This is inevitable. Errors are inevitable.’


I tilted my head at the message, thinking that Michelle hacked it for laughs. I pressed ‘A’ to continue. The message kept on.


‘Errors are part of our live.’

‘However, some errors are unforgivable and not worth of being in our lives.’


After this last message, I was taken to the Continue/New Game screen. The character (it was Touko/Blair/Hilda/Whatever she is called) was in grayscale colors and the usual background with lines and a Pokéball was nothing but pitch black emptiness. The data on the card read:

You
InternalGameError
Badges: 0 Pokédex: 503
Time: 503:00


What the hell? What kind of place is named ‘InternalGameError’? Why is her Pokédex and time 503 if she doesn’t have any badge at all? And mostly, why is her name referring to me? Is Michelle crazy? I did these questions on my mind while looking at the ‘Continue’ card. I shrugged it off and decided to start a New Game, but something couldn’t let me.


‘You made a big mistake. You can’t start again.’


I was completely annoyed by that message popping out around 4 or 5 times when I clicked on it. After wasting my time, I decided to try ‘Continue’ to see her progress.


The season that appeared wasn’t the normal “Autumn/Winter/Spring/Summer” words. It was some sort of glitch block. There wasn’t music either, and the player seemed to be in a black void or something. There was nothing…


I tried to walk around, but all I heard was the famous wall bump noise. I gave up trying to find an exit and opened the menu. I decided to check out the Pokémon Michelle had before. All she had was a female Samurott named 503. ‘I guess someone is in love with the number 503’ I giggled when I saw her name, but when I went on to check her stats, I stopped my humorous muttering.


Her cry was a glitchy mess of random sounds and cries of other Pokémon and her sprite was a glitch jitter of pixels where her lower half of her body and her left arm used to be, along with some blue pixels scattered on her torso, white stache and empty, black eyes. I checked all of her stats, which were all 503, his ability was ‘Error’, which described ‘Internal Game Error’ and his only move was Error with 503/503 PP.


I exited the entire menu by pressing the ‘X’ button and went to the bathroom to throw up. Then, I went to the faucet to wash my face. For a glimpse moment, I swore I saw my eyes all white and empty, and my right arm was glitched up, only to see myself okay after blinking. I returned to my computer, shrugging off after that weird moment, and I was welcomed by a message.


‘This is the result of all the forbidden errors of life. You have commited a big mistake by coming here, you abuser.’


Abuser? Why would I be an abuser?


‘Cheats. Perfection. Materialism. Uselessness. All these errors lead to nothing but punishment.’


I tried closing my emulator, but for some reason, my keyboard didn’t respond. I say so because I also tried to hit the Number Lock button and the LED of the keyboard didn’t turn off. All I could do was to see where will all this end up at.


‘Now, for your punishment…’


A battle started in front of my eyes. There was still no music, but when the screen faded in, there was a grayscale, frowning female character similar to mine. ‘Pokémon Trainer Me wants to fight’. My fear was fed up when I saw her name. ‘Okay, Michelle. Why did you and your sick mind named the Trainers like this?’ I muttered as I saw the Trainer’s name. She sent out a very glitch Kyurem named IntGamErr, which must have standed for ‘Internal Game Error’. Its wings and arms were totally glitched and it was miscolored with random blue and red pixels around his wings. My trainer sent out the Samurott, her back sprite resembling a lot what her front sprite looked like.


I chose ‘Fight!’, and the camera panned instantly on the upper screen. ‘Wait… didn’t he have a move?’ I thought.


‘503 knows why you are here.’

‘IntGamErr understands 503.’


What was that supposed to mean? Anyways, when the battle options came out again, I chose ‘Fight’ again.


‘503 used Error.’ ‘503 took IntGamErr with her.’ Samurott did an animation similar to Explosion, but the background was glitchy, as well as the explosion graphics. Aditionally, the HP of IntGamErr and 503 went to 1 instead of fainting. ‘IntGameErr endured the pain.’ ‘IntGamErr used Deep Freeze.’ The animation seemed untouched. ‘503 fainted.’ ‘IntGamErr fainted.’


After getting a draw, the other trainer appeared and said: ‘Errors always happens. You should know that.’ Afterwards, the lights went off in my house, which also shut off my computer. After one minute of silence, the lights went back on and my computer turned on. After it was done loading, I went into the folder to find out the game was gone, except for the Word Document from earlier. I opened it and I saw this text:


‘Now suffer your consequences.’


I got a call from my friend on my Ipod Touch. I answered.


‘Michelle, what kind of game you did?’

‘I will explain you when you get to my house, okay?’

‘Whatever.’


I ran towards Michelle’s house, and she explained me that she actually hacked the game a lot. He hacked it to make some of the Pokémon from other regions available early in game and Victini to be accessible, even without the Liberty Pass. However, while she was working on this, she began to hallucinate about herself being glitched and dream about a glitchy Samurott and Kyurem. Then, I remembered the moment I saw myself in the mirror at the bathroom in my house. I told her about what happened when I played the game.


She was shocked and told me that wasn’t meant to happen. Her hack was supposedly a Halloween special hack which included glitch looking Pokémon and creepy looking Pokémon, such as a mummified Vaporeon or a vampire Lopunny. Then, we looked at each other and waved goodbye to ourselves.


It’s been weeks since this happened. Michelle is still working on her hack, while I… I’m just wishing and praying for god to remove these nightmares about that glitchy Samurott from me.