Gigabyte

*This article is about the character. For the episode, see Gigabyte (episode).*

Gigabyte is a Class 5 (energy absorbing) virus and an "upgraded," merged form of Megabyte and Hexadecimal.

## Biography

### S4 Flashbacks

Killabyte completed his upgrade into Gigabyte ("skipping a generation") just as Welman Matrix's gateway command opened onto his location, pulling him through to Mainframe. Also at the same time, Gigabyte was destabilizing (possibly as a result of the gateway command, possibly due to some unknown internal error, but likely due to having been shot through the head in mid-upgrade). He split into Megabyte and Hexadecimal, which fission resulted in a catastrophic explosion (possibly solely as a result of said fission, possibly because he was still standing in the middle of the gateway and caused *it* to explode, either through a chain reaction or because his very presence was an invalid input which caused a fatal error) which completely destroyed the Twin City, reducing it to Lost Angles, and deleted or nullified all of its inhabitants.

### Reunion

While possessed by the web creature, Megabyte captured a weakened Hexadecimal and remerged into Gigabyte. Bob approached him to see if the fusion had created a benign virus and was emphatically informed that it hadn't.

As a Class 5 virus, Gigabyte easily absorbed Bob's energy blast in their first, brief fight, and sliced well into (though not all the way through) Bob's armoured uniform with his claws. After Bob left, Dot fired on Gigabyte with a data retrieval vehicle, with much the same result: Gigabyte absorbed the blasts and then clawed the tail off the vehicle, crashing it. He went after Dot, but she and Bob escaped on zipboards. However, when Phong powered down the system, Gigabyte was able to catch up to them and corner them in a dead-end alley. He demanded Glitch so he could drain its energy, but Bob sent it away. Gigabyte was about to drain Bob and Dot instead when Mouse arrived and sliced off his right (clawed) arm; the three sprites escaped in Mouse's ship while he was reattaching it. Gigabyte went in search of other prey and drained the Indiana Jones-looking binome transparent and unconscious, then turned his attention to the Principal Office force field.

Bob lured Gigabyte to Floating Point Park and fought him there (with purely "solid state" weaponry and armour) to keep him from the Principal Office. Gigabyte nearly won the fight with a single blow, until Hack and Slash joined the fray, wanting their boss back. Together they kept him occupied, at which point Phong detached the sector from the rest of the system, with the intention of keeping Gigabyte isolated until he powered down. However, when Gigabyte drained Hack, Slash punched him all the way back to the "mainland".

With the power drained from Hack, Gigabyte was able to access Hexadecimal's ability to fly, and began to drain the Principal Office shield. When the shield was dropped, he tore his way through the door with the intention of accessing "all of this system's power" and was confronted by Enzo, AndrAIa, and Frisket. He fought and drained Frisket (again to the point of transparency and unconsciousness) and was confronted again by Bob, who kept him talking long enough for Phong to lower solid shields around the Principal Office and for Dot and Mouse to arrive in Mouse's ship, towing a tear, which they dropped on Gigabyte. Gigabyte began to absorb the energy from the tear with no apparent ill effects, but Bob used Glitch to stabilize it and split it into three separate portals, one each for Megabyte, Hexadecimal,and the Web creature.

## Powers/Abilities

* Physical Strength: Bob says Gigabyte is "at least as strong as Megabyte" as soon as he takes form. Gigabyte is able to batter Bob around quite easily and tears through the Principal Office door with ease.

* Durability: Gigabyte shows no damage or sign of pain no matter what's done to him, even after being punched for miles.

* Energy Absorption: By stabbing them with his claws, Gigabyte is able to drain a sprite until they become translucent. Energy blasts are passively absorbed.

* Everything Hexadecimal Can Do: Luckily he was stopped before he could do more than fly.

## Computer References

* A gigabyte is 2^30 bytes, or 1024 megabytes; it is one prefix larger than a megabyte and two prefixes larger than a kilobyte.

* At the time of the episode, the average new home computer would have had a single gigabyte of storage, and thus his name would have sounded a lot more impressive than it does now.

## Cultural References

* Gigabyte's distinctive threat is a pastiche of Oppenheimer's famous line, "Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds," when he saw the first atom bomb test—which is itself a quote from a Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita.

* He trails his claws along a wall while menacing Bob and Dot, in a shot similar to *A Nightmare on Elm Street*.

## Trivia

* Bob never calls for help in previous episodes and will turn it down in "Crouching Binome, Hidden Virus"—a Class 5 is implicitly a huge deal.

* As nobody *saw* Gigabyte and survived in his first appearance, none of the sprites are aware his second appearance *is* his second. (Megabyte and Hexadecimal, on the other hand, must both have memories of the event, in light of Hex's revelation to Dot and Megabyte's relationship with Nibbles.)

* Gigabyte seems to lack the cunning of Megabyte and Hexadecimal, relying on straightforward brute force.
* Dixon's statement that the upgrade was "skipping a generation" serves to justify Hex's statement that her merging with Megabyte would be "the next generation"—she and Megabyte represent the "skipped" generation. However, if the upgrade had *not* skipped a generation, the result would presumably have been a single entity.

* In his S4 appearance, Gigabyte is lacking the metallic reverb in his voice.

* An image of Gigabyte appears in the introduction to *ReBoot: Countdown to Chaos* but he is not featured in the game proper.
* As the web creature is later seen feeding on the energy of random sprites, it is possible that its reason for prompting Megabyte to recreate Gigabyte was to sponge off his feeding while it was too small to capture victims by itself.

## Gallery

### Posters and Print

art by Jim Su
1. ↑ What's Love Got To Do With It?
2. ↑ Gigabyte
3. ↑ Scan of a 1995 Montreal Gazette article on new computers
4. ↑ Trust No One