Racing the Clock

### Starring the Voices of

Michael Benyaer, Kathleen Barr, Jesse Moss, Tony Jay, Shirley Millner, Michael Donovan, Phil Hayes, Garry Chalk

### Game(s)

*Formula One*

"Racing the Clock" is the second episode of Season 1 of *ReBoot,* and the second episode overall. It originally aired on September 17, 1994 on YTV and ABC.

## DVD Log Line

When business is slow at Enzo's new delivery service, he secretly accepts a job from Megabyte to deliver a package to Hexadecimal. —*ReBoot: The Definitive Mainframe Edition*

## Synopsis

Enzo has just started a new business, Enzo's Overwrite Delivery Service. He enthusiastically informs Dot and Bob how well it is going, but in fact has no customers at all yet and is privately feeling discouraged.

A short while later, Megabyte vidwindows Enzo and hires him to deliver a package to Hexadecimal. After the call ends, while Megabyte is laughing to himself, Scuzzy is seen spying on him.

In the Diner basement, Bob finishes mending a tear. Enzo approaches and tells him and Dot that he got his first order, and mentions that it is for Hexadecimal.

Dot and Bob stop Enzo outside before he can leave. Dot asks who sent the package, but Enzo lies. Bob X-rays the package, revealing a mask with a clock in the forehead reading "30". Dot and Bob declare Lost Angles too dangerous for Enzo, but rather than let him give up on his business, Dot tells Bob to deliver the package this time.

Scuzzy reports back to Hexadecimal and displays a recording of Megabyte plotting to hide a delete command in a mask and have it delivered to her. She resolves to delete both Megabyte and his "delivery boy" in retaliation.

Enzo follows Bob to Lost Angles. After some hijinks, Bob is dropped down a hole in the ground and ends up in Hex's lair. He gives her the package and she opens it; feigning surprise, she says she already has a mask and Bob will have to return it to Megabyte. Bob declines and attempts to leave, but Hex puts the mask on him (starting the countdown and preventing him from speaking) and throws him out of the lair entrance hole on a trajectory for Silicon Tor. Enzo stops the hole from closing and overhears Hex monologuing that Bob should reach Megabyte just as the clock reaches zero, deleting them both.

As Dot sees Bob flying by over the Diner, Enzo arrives, confesses his earlier lie, and informs her of the situation. She agrees that they have to warn Bob.

Bob, nearly at Silicon Tor, finally manages to remove the mask. He has Glitch form a rotor, arresting his flight. Meanwhile, Dot and Enzo are zipboarding to meet him. Just then, a Game arrives. Bob enters it, and Dot and Enzo follow.

The Game is *Formula One*. Bob reboots as a racer, with the mask mounted on the hood of his car; the binomes present reboot variously as racers or racetrack staff. The race begins, with the User in the lead and most of the other cars passing Bob immediately. Dot and Enzo arrive at the starting line and reboot into racers themselves in an attempt to reach Bob.

Various racing hijinks ensue while the clock counts down. In an attempt to gain ground, Bob uses his nitro (nitrous oxide booster). Dot catches up to him using same, but he misunderstands her warning, and before she can clarify, she goes off a ramp.

In Level 2 of the Game, the cars transform into hovercraft. Enzo picks Dot up from her crashed car, and she takes over driving his hovercraft; however, after the User deposits a minefield (which Bob successfully navigates), the siblings' craft is destroyed.

Level 3 is air racing, although the planes fly low and continue to follow the track. Desperate to get Bob's attention, Dot drives a tanker truck onto the track and has Enzo release the tank so that it lies across the track right before the finish line. Bob gives Glitch an unknown command right before both his and the User's planes reach the tank, just as the clock reaches 0. The User plane crashes into the tank, destroying them both. Bob's plane is likewise destroyed, although it is hard to tell whether it crashes or is destroyed solely by the mask; it leaves behind a ball of blue energy which absorbs the remains of the tank explosion, growing larger in the process.

Dot and Enzo are distraught, but Bob turns out to have escaped using Glitch, and descends on a rotor while the System Voice announces, "Warning: Game corruption." Bob declares the corruption-ball to be "an infinite data else-if loop" and instructs the others to run. The loop collapses in on itself into a toroidal shape and begins to suck in everything in the Game in a manner reminiscent of a black hole. It eventually devours the Game entirely, leaving the sprites behind, unharmed. Enzo finally explains the whole situation to Bob.

As they return to the Diner, Megabyte vidwindows and fires Enzo, who is unconcerned. Megabyte declares that he has found someone else to deliver his packages; Hack and Slash arrive carrying an enormous and obvious bomb, saying that "Hexadecimal says she already has one." The bomb explodes, blowing out the top of Silicon Tor.

## Glitches

* If Hack can hand Enzo the package through a window, from the Tor straight to the Diner... why do they need delivery services? The fact that *this* time it's a "surprise" doesn't justify the existence of the business in general.

## Computer References

* Overwrite: to replace old information with new information.
	+ Enzo's Overwrite Delivery Service is a pun on *overnight* delivery.
* "There's nothing worse than having to ask a null for directions." Because a null pointer doesn't point to anything, you see...
* While an "infinite data else-if loop" is awkwardly phrased, an infinite loop is a type of bug wherein a loop statement, such as a for loop, never terminates. Since it just keeps repeating the same instructions endlessly, this gobbles up processing power and, depending on the operating system, can freeze the program or the entire system. "Else if", on the other hand, can be found in some if statements to specify an additional condition to test if the previous condition is false. Such a statement could certainly be found inside an infinite loop, but is by no means an inherent part of one.

## Cultural References

* Hack and Slash's catcher's mitts say Mainframe Slugger, a reference to Louisville Slugger baseball equipment.
* Unlike actual Formula 1 video games, which are strictly focused on car racing, the Game here features Formula 1 car, hovercraft, and air racing.
* Monacode Racetrack puns on Monaco, site of the Monaco Grand Prix Formula One car race. (Surprisingly, they did not make it the Circuit de Monacode.)

## Trivia

* Although always meant as the second episode, this episode was made first so that the actual first episode wouldn't have "all the trainee errors."
* **Glitch commands:**
	+ unknown (tracking a tear)
	+ **mend**
	+ **X-ray**
	+ **rotor**
	+ unknown (escaping from plane)
* "Good to see ya again, Garry!" "Good to see you, Phil!"
* All the binomes' cars are numbered 00, Enzo is in car 01, Dot is in car 10, and Bob is in car 11. (see Binary) The only obvious significance to any of these numbers is that Enzo's matches his customary jersey. (Although it does put everyone in order of height.) The User is in car 5, *not* written in binary. While there is no car actually numbered 4, it's worth noting that in programming, counting tends to start with 0, so 00 through 11 *could* be thought of as 1 through 4 in that sense.
* Bob has a sponsor patch for Bits & Bytes, and Enzo for Dot's Diner and EnerG.
* The sign Bob interprets as 18th place actually reads "81st place", rotated 180°.

## Music

"Racing the Clock - Game Cube" by Bob Buckley

## External Links

* episode at Shout!Factory TV
* French episode on YouTube