Gone Belly Up

He wasn't familiar with the outerworlders citing that he "had bit off more than he could chew". But for an energy being – a cybermessenger, his primary habitation being in the bustling universe of cyberspace, as one of many countless, differently coloured brethren darting along the many highways of the world he knew before the outerworld – it was definitely his current, literal predicament.

What happened, and who was he? Well, you might have to ask Twipsy – yes, he, identifiable by his dark foreheaded, demilune head and large turquoise nose, his large orange arm, his odd shoes on his two feet – a high heeled green boot on the left and a blue shoe on the right – and his already swollen, bloated striped belly. The unfortunate cybermessenger was clearly not feeling very well from his recent feeding frenzy... not that there was something particularly wrong with his recent encounters with the outerworld... well, the real world where he met three brilliant inhabitants – Nick, Lisa and Albert, all three human children who became friends with him, and even showed him the best of the outerworld indeed. Of course being a sentient energy burst in a completely new world has its ups and downs... he fell in love with a lightbulb – peculiarly he finds light energy an attractive companion... and to make a short love story even shorter, the relationship accidentally shattered, and so did Twipsy's pulse, er, heart.

So what did a pulsebroken cybermessenger did to ease the pain of a dimmed relationship? Perhaps after investigating what curiosities the world had for him, Twipsy finally found something to cheer him up – indulging in outerworlders' food, and especially when the Walker family is asleep, eating out the entire fridge. Alas, his curiosity did come with inexperience – he didn't know he wasn't supposed to swallow the baking tray, nor the plates, not even to rip open the yoghurt tubs and eat the contents rather than swallow them whole. Whenever he was not delivering emails, he was often found raiding the refrigerator, to the chagrin of family father, Stan Walker...

...of course, the cybermessenger's indulgence had hit rock bottom as he finally succumbed to his gluttony. Twipsy ended up with a very sore bellyache, and with another problem – being so caught up in eating the delicacies the outerworld has to offer, he reached his time limit of staying out of his cyberspace home, and developed dangerous symptoms – a high fever, and worryingly, overheating – that he was going to fade into heat energy... his outerworld friends worried for him, and luckily sent him back home before he would suffer the worst irreversibly.

And here unlucky Twipsy was, flat on his back, pinned by the weight of his already bloated belly – too many meals from his snacking spree, and with too many worries running through his mind momentarily – his belly intermittently faded transparent, and to his appall, a glimpse of his internal stomach, stuffed with a grey mass, as if he earlier ate an entire meal of coals. Nauseated, he felt scarred, and lowering his head to the floor, he fell faint, shuddering and whimpering, not from the sight, but from his ailing condition, weakening him, almost destined him to potential loss... he felt his eyesight fading, blurring, but he saw someone... someone... a workmate...

Of cyberspace's numerous inhabitants – the cybermessengers tasked with shuttling data throughout the web – there was at least one passerby who bore witness to his ailing workmate. Mortray, a tall cybermessenger in shades of teal and grey, with a round head and nose, veered off the highway and landed on the kerb to check on the immobile messenger, already ailing in pain.

"Twipsy, what happened to you?!" Mortray gasped, appalled by his workmate's current condition, as he knelt down to check on his ailing state. Being the cybermessenger who wholly cares about his work, and its utmost organisation, this kind of left room for ensuring his closest friends remain out of trouble.

"Mort... Ray?!" Twipsy attempted to speak, but as he was stuffed and in immense discomfort, Twipsy could only deliver a whimper, a grunt of pain, as his only answer. He tried to sit up, but his bloated belly – still stuffed with his meals from the real world – only weighed him down. Twipsy could only wriggle and squirm, trying in vain to shift from one sore spot in his body to the next, but alas his depleting energy levels meant that he was definitely immobile. Mortray knew that his workmate was definitely in a critical condition, and decided that to act quickly would help him thrive.

"Twipsy, don't squirm, it will make the whole thing worse!" Mortray cautioned, laying both his gloved hands on Twipsy's belly, signalling him not to squirm and writhe anymore for the time being. "I'll get help, just stay here."

Unbeknownst to the tall, greyscale cybermessenger, help came, but disappointingly, in the form of a spherical being – Rumor Rumor, the infamous gossiper who normally sided along the belle of gossip, Miss Information. Mortray stopped to confront the little gossiper.

"And what are you doing here?!" he enquired. "My friend is currently in distress!"

"I see you have an important case that needs to spread like chain letters," Rumor Rumor explained, referring to the now weakened and still bloated Twipsy on the side of the highway. "I'll spread the word to anyone, everyone along the Alley Oop to the cyberdump, that we have a messenger down..."

"A messenger, down?!" That sent shivers up Mortray's spine. "He arrived sick, but unless you do something now..."

Twipsy slowly glanced at Rumor Rumor, and then decided to deliver a request to the gossiper. "I know you only spread gossip and rumours," he groaned, "but do right this time, and tell Nick... Lissie... my outerworlder friends... that I am going to recover... and now my belly hurts..." As he trailed off, he felt his stomach twitch and he groaned in pain, furrowing his eyes.

Now Rumor Rumor finally knew what do do for Mortray and his fallen workmate. "Then spread the word I will!" The spherical gossiper sprinted along the highway, as Mortray remained by the side of his bloated friend, whose stomach faded in and out of transparency, revealing the same meal of coals as before...

"Twipsy, did you eat something outerworldly?!" Mortray gasped, horrified at the glance of the burning mass inside his workmate's stomach. As he had not seen this before, Mortray began to worry... was it going to harm his friend?

More pained grunts and moans from Twipsy, too weak to fully wake up from his weakened stupor, probably the equivalent of a food coma. Mortray inched closer to steady and seat up his ailing friend, as if preparing to carry him along the highway to a suitable place to heal him. Of course, more and more cybermessengers pulled over to watch the scene unfold... perhaps they heard Rumor Rumor's impromptu news of their own coming home critically sick. Some had a quick glance before dashing off to ther destinations, but his closest friend – the smaller Mosey: with small rounded head, black forehead and rudder, large orange nose, and red-white checkered body – arrived at the scene first and offered to help Mortray carry Twipsy in his comatose, bloated state. Alas, it was a little too heavy for Mosey, given his diminutive stature and his tendency to sleep than work.

"Oof, he's heavy!" Mosey exclaimed, trying to lift the bloated and weak cybermessenger onto his feet. "And no wonder, how did his belly grow so big?!"

"Something tells me it was NOT from one too many energy shots," Mortray concluded, as he finally cradled the comatose Twipsy in his arms, propping him over his shoulder. "We seriously need to take him to someone who can save him... someone who could recover him... and maybe find out what he just did... well, to end up like this."

—

Light speed along the highways later, Mortray managed to carry his comatose, bloated cybermessenger friend towards a large, white honeycomb structure - diagnostics, the central venue for medical matters within the cybermessengers. Surely the cybermessengers, being a sentient energy species, were probably immune to some medical mishaps, but probably not injuries or the Trojan virus cold outbreak. It was only a few floors up the structure that Mortray carried his bloated friend, and he landed on his two feet, cradling the plump patient in his arms, and carted him down the waiting hallway – remarkably empty, but he joined a queue of other cybermessengers, called up for checkups. The wait, however was too much for the group, and especially with the fact that time would be running short for the bloated cybermessenger in Mortray's arms.

"Twipsy, just hang in there, you will make it," Mortray reassured, but too soon, Twipsy fell limp and unconcious, already lacking the strength to stay awake. The diminutive partner, Mosey, worried for the now unconscious cybermessenger, and dotted with fear and worry, he sped out of line, shouting for help.

"We have an unconcious patient, get help!" Mosey shouted, as he sped down the corridors – as far as his stubby little legs could allow him to run – trying to attract any urgent help to revive their fallen workmate.

"You shouldn't be queueing in here," a voice shouted from far away through the structure. "You have to hurry over here!"

Mortray finally heeded the warning and with a weak, stuffed and now unconscious Twipsy in his arms, he sped out of line and ran down the corridor. It only took a sharp left turn for the tall grey-and-teal cybermessenger to be greeted by an interesting, yet familiar figure – a circular body with multiple eye stalks, and skinny limbs – the Anti-Hackers, normally security guards for the World Wide Web, and vigilant in issues from the safety of user credentials, through to preventing anything chaotic happening on the network, also turned out to volunteer in medical work for the cybermessengers. The central Anti-Hacker, decked with an ID card around her lanyard, and a large monocle over one of her eyes, approached Mortray, now distraught from his workmate, currently unconscious from the incident. She took one glance at the unconscious cybermessenger, and she even picked up his large, orange hand, and temporarily held it for a handful of seconds, checking his pulse. She turned to glance at Mortray in his triangular eyes, and decided to tell him the news.

"Mortray, I know he is no longer with us at the moment," the physician Anti-Hacker somberly announced, "but I have picked up a pulse in his arm. He is still alive, but he needs intensive care."

Mortray glumly checked over Twipsy's comatose presence, and then carefully prepped him, as if hugging him for the last time. He could feel his workmate's pulse, alright, but he had second thoughts, so he decided to prompt the physician Anti-Hacker to help his bloated workmate.

"How long," Mortray worried, "do you think will be enough to help him recover?" He cautiously handed over Twipsy's unconscious body over to the arms of the physician Anti-Hacker's arms. That almost tipped her over forwards due to Twipsy's current weight, but she steadied herself, keeping her eye contact (multiple, of course) towards Mortray intact.

She sighed, knowing the task won't be easy, but then gave Mortray the necessary information for the task at hand. "You should wait by the reception,' the physician Anti-Hacker explained, "but we will diagnose and work on him as quickly and safely as possible. He will be okay."

The physician Anti-Hacker carried the unconscious, bloated large-handed cybermessenger into the operating and diagnosis chamber – the doors close behind her, obscuring any last visual glance of her and the patience. Mortray still had hope that his workmate will hopefully survive.

–

Slowly he woke up to a bright white light,  almost blinding him. Twipsy could only squint, unfamiliar with the sight since regaining consciousness. It was... it was unsettling for him to wake up, from the side of the cyberhighways, into now what appeared to be the inside of a ward... sterile, white walls, but the rest of the room was dark, save for the sole source of light above him, and the sides of the bed he lay on, a bright neon pink, jovially adding colour to an otherwise dull room. Slowly, Twipsy tried to shift and move his arms, to see if he still had any feeling left. Phew, his right, large, orange arm is okay – slowly he raised his arm and decided to rest it on his stomach... still bloated and fat, unfortunately, but the bellyache seemed to have subsided.

Well, at least I'm still fine, Twipsy pondered, but before he jumped to conclusions, he slowly regained feeling in his insides... his discomfort returned, already dampening his spirits in the recovery room. Nope, no I'm not, he resigned.

Of course, he heard footsteps coming from outside of the ward, and already, he felt the bed begin to incline upwards for examination. As the head-first part of the bed folded upwards, Twipsy still felt a little pressure build up inside his stomach... could he somehow lose his lunch, undignified and embarrassed?

Before he could worry, in came the physician Anti-Hacker, still with a monocle over one of her eyes, and currently writing on a clipboard. Right now, she bore an exasperated, yet also a worried expression on her face. Twipsy had just realised that he ran out of luck, and he now had to face the physician Anti-Hacker.

"Twipsy, you seem to be a very strong risk taker throughought cyberspace," scolded the physician Anti-Hacker as she approached the left wing of Twipsy's recovery bed, now prepped up forwards and supporting his back, keeping him upright. All that Twipsy could do was to swallow whatever words he was going to explain to the physician, and to stay silent. Alas, his worries are confirmed when she prodded Twipsy's already bloated belly... he could feel whatever air was trapped inside rising to his throat - of course, trying to play nicely, he tried to stifle it, and delivered a smile. The physician Anti-Hacker, however, didn't really see the funny side of the patient trying to stifle anything awkward.

"I see you just managed to stuff yourself sick with rather strange things again," she investigated and confirmed, yet again delivering an irritated glance at a worried Twipsy, now struggling to retain a straight face. "What exactly did you place in your stomach?"

Twipsy decided to open his mouth to speak. "Just some delicious treats from the real w–VRUUUUURRP!" Alas, his stomach had other ideas, though he seemed to feel just an inch more comfortable from the accidental belch, much to the physician's chagrin. Saving grace, Twipsy sunk back into the bed and only replied with a humiliated grin.

"What you have done so far is very dangerous, little spark," warned the physician to the already suffering cybermessenger, who begun to squirm from his bloated stomach, and his attempts to keep his potential belches inside. "Your typical diet is a few shots of substance energy in between shifts, and yet you managed to stuff your insides with foreign objects?!"

Twipsy suddenly felt a guilty feeling from eating too much outerworld food, as he glanced at his bloated belly - the fading had already stopped ever since he blacked out, and for once, none of the popcorn kernels were leaving his belly anymore. He seemed to be healing well this time, Twipsy thought, but then he realised that maybe the physician Anti-Hacker had something more to say about how dangerous the risk of indulging on such treats can be on an energy being like him.

"You finally learnt the hard way that you," the physician explained, "a cybermessenger, cannot survive too long in the outerworld without risk of degradation into another form of energy. And yet it's a miracle you made a full recovery. I understand you have friends who apparently are nice to you in the outerworld, but then there is your belly. Were you eating any delicacies while you were there in the outerworld?"

The bloated cybermessenger paused and sighed, ready to explain. "They had all those delicious desserts and snacks, they all look delicious..." Twipsy leaned back and ended up daydreaming again, this time focusing on... oh goodness, how delicious such delicacies of the outerworld were to him. "I know none of us have food like this in cyberspace..."

The physician Anti-Hacker gave a nod, but sternly decided to give him some necessary words. "Yes I know you have developed a romantic obsession for such delicacies... you do realise that outerworlders and cyberworlders are entirely different, and judging from your travels, I believe you already do," she continued. "I guess that you even had to face the unsavoury aspects of the outerworld, had you?!"

"Well, I have seen things..." Twipsy cringed and blushed bright red, even covering his face with his large orange hand to emphasise his shamefaced reaction to, well, how outerworlders have dealt with food after eating (at least their bodies, in context). "I don't know how to put it this way, but... ugh! I know one person, Albert Barkhorn... who became a great friend and chessmate: green sweater, glasses... he gave me a short course on how outerworlders tick..." Furrowing his eyes, he almost cringed a little inside.

"That settles it with the outerworlders," the physician explained, "but then there is you." Adjusting her monocle, the physician glanced at Twipsy, and then adjusts her monocle once again to deliver a small hologram – a chart simulating his, well, innards. Twipsy gave off a regretful sigh, finding himself facing a significant anatomical lesson of the didactic kind.

"You do know your insides - your stomach and further down, your guts, are only suited for absorbing substance energy?" The physician Anti-Hacker lectured the bloated cybermessenger. "I know you find the many delicacies outerworlders enjoy by the hour as enticing, even addictive to you," she explained, "but you do realise that outerworlders process them a little different to yours. You are an energy based being, while outerworlders are organic, chemical, nutrient based beings - they process delicacies through chemical means. And yes you do know why they sometimes smell wrong on certain levels."

He remembered the time when he met the Walker's family dog, Champ - a cinnamon golden retriever in her senior years - after unfortunately failing to fight off a stray skunk, and getting doused in its infamous stench (luckily he remembered the filtration mask that a fellow cybermessenger had built from him). That was nothing, he thought, when he remembered being trapped in the bathroom - having to hide in the bathtub... he, oh how he cringed, trying to forget the infamous memory from his memory banks... he remembered having build his breath for... forbid, fifteen minutes, while trying to escape detection...

"Indeed!" Twipsy gagged, trying to keep the memory out of his head, but now overcome with some nausea. The physician shook her head, and decided to direct the bloated cybermessenger, almost overcome with nausea, to calm down.

"Now, now, just sweep whatever memories you have aside," the physician Anti-Hacker continued. "As you are an energy being, your stomach chamber has no problems storing and processing substance energy in its pure form, but your tendency to consume such delicacies, we have discovered, takes a lot of your existing energy reserves – in fact, thanks to your gluttony, you have overdone and spent your reserves. In fact, have you seen anything out of the ordinary since you reached a critical condition?!"

Poor Twipsy couldn't hold onto his bloating longer, but he had to speak. "I... I did see my belly fade..." he recounted, "...and I saw dark lumps... sitting in there... dark lumps of – VRUUUUUUUURP!"

"We did, too," the physician agreed, "since we screened your insides, we can confirm your testimony as true." She adjusted her monocle, and the image switched to an x-ray image, much to Twipsy's now recurring shock, a negative revealing a large cluster of dark lumps, settled on the lower half... to an outerworlder, it looked like Twipsy may have swallowed coals whole, or humorously enough, pillaged enough liquorice here and there to mask the taste. "Alas, we are worried that with lumps like this, well..." she paused, trying to find a way to explain the next step in a dignified and benign manner (as if the bloated cybermessenger was already cringing), and then... "I can say that while substance energy will pass through the rest of you, and ending up fully absorbed with no incident... in your case, whatever is left of your snacking spree, I'm afraid to say, will stop you up, and if this keeps happening, you will end up... awkwardly uncomfortable, and it would make absorbing actual substance energy really difficult. Unless..."

That triggered his embarrassment. With a mortified "eep!", Twipsy covered his large nose and face with both of his asymmetrical hands, blushing bright red and even pressing his legs together, signalling to the physician that... no, he will not undergo such treatment.

"Anything but that!" Twipsy whimpered, trying to stifle his embarrassment, but still struggling to bridle his bloating as well.

"Okay, if you insist on being defensive of your insides," the physician agreed, "we may as well have to isolate you over at diagnostics for you to heal. Soon, we may allow your friends to see you; however you may be put in observation to see just how much bad your past mistakes will do to your body."

And with that, even as Twipsy softened and calmed down, ready to worry about his bloated belly again, the physician Anti-Hacker adjusted the monocle once more, switching it off, and the projected images vanished from view. She walked off, leaving the bloated cybermessenger on the recovery bed, already lowering down to its horizontal state, and leaving Twipsy to finally deserve his rest.

He took one last look at his bloated belly, the source of his aches and pains, and molecularly a hotbed for catalytic digestive activity... it took a lot of energy for his insides to break down a lot of his meals, he found out, than it was to simply store and absorb all the energy shots he previously drank between shifts.

"Maybe I really should call it a day," he confirmed, and he slowly rolled over to his right side, and instinctively he wrapped his large orange arm over his left shoulder and back, blanketing as much as he could of himself. He felt his belly flop with a squish, and he winced in pain, but worse still, he felt a pang of pressure-related nausea creep on him. Powerless, Twipsy knew that if he was going to end up crumbling in sickness, then he may as well.

But nothing messy happened. Only a bout of ructus - a loud throaty belch that shook the ward, and finally eased a little discomfort from his swollen belly, hard at work.

Alas, his shamefacedness quickly returned, and he snapped back to embarrassment, covering his mouth and chin with both his differently sized hands (even as his large orange hand remained a blanket and pillow), feebly trying to cover up the escaped abnormally loud belch that rang through the ward and its corridors. With wide surprised eyes, he paused, and his face and dark forehead blushed into shades of red, even.

I hope nobody heard me do that, Twipsy wished, and wondered just how on earth it was possible. And then he thought back to the many dishes he indulged on - how juicy each one was, and he realised why. Perhaps the fact that many outerworldly foods he ate had a lot of water in them, and that all this catalytic activity somehow evaporated it into air, somewhat contributed to his bloating. It was mind blowing for a cybermessenger's belly to react to such delicious foreign objects and still manage to cope. But enough worrying, he thought, and then decided that he should rest up to spare his body the shock, and hopefully enough time to deal with his bout of overindulgence. As he had earlier blanketed his recovering with his large orange hand, he lowered his head into the flexible and comfortable pillow that is his palm of his hand, and although it was not common nature for a cybermessenger to drift off into sleep, he finally did, and calmly.

—

Hours passed by until Twipsy slowly woke up from his therapeutic nap, and noticed that his striped belly had shrunk back to normal from being a bloated stuffed mass of outerworld food, now already digested and absorbed, its harvested energy contributing to his healing and recovery. It was a slow day for the formerly bloated messenger to finally wake up from his overdose, but it paid off. Finally confortable, he slowly sat himself up, lifting his upper body with both his asymmetric hands, and shifting his weight to his rear...

Hang on, that doesn't feel right, he came to and suddenly realised, that he felt a different kind of discomfort... alas, the mass may have left his stomach, and is now on its way through passage. The physician was right, he dreaded, as he began to squirm in pain, this time feeling the equivalent of a punch from within his belly... lower, and it was then that Twipsy feared the most... was his stomach going to burst?!

"Help me, my insides hurt!" the whimpering cybermessenger of a large nose and large orange hand pleaded, and he even wanted to sit himself up to, for the time being, shift all his pressure out of the way in his belly, but it would only make things worse for him.

Too soon, as another band of cybermessengers close to him - his nearest friends, with Mortray at the lead - came into the room to check on Twipsy, who right now had to keep a straight face, to hide his humiliated, and even now, painful expression radiating from his insides.

"Sorry to leave you worried," bashfully remarked the cybermessenger patient, hiding his unexpected cramping, "how is everyone?"

A short, squat, yellow cybermessenger with a large turquoise nose and orange muzzle - Flit, usually worried for the little things, happily saw Twipsy appearing to feel well. He sprinted and even hopped on the recovery bed to give him a "get well" hug.

"You're okay!" Flit cried, as he briefly wrapped his short arms around his workmate, before distancing a little. "But you appear to hide something... a little off."

Twipsy couldn't afford to let his current discomfort show right now, and even a few of his cybermessenger friends began to suspect that something may as well be the matter to him. Especially the stockier, helmeted and brash counterpart - Gazonk, recognisable by his squared off turquoise nose, and a white diagonal cross and red diamond across his chest - who had picked up Twipsy's discomfort almost immediately.

"Did you swallow the hand when it fed you, Twipsy?" Gazonk hinted, normally poking fun at the unfortunate workmate, but probably to shake off Twipsy's now defeated attempt to hide his discomfort.

The cramping cybermessenger slumped forward and glanced at Gazonk in the eye, now deciding to come clean. "They didn't feed me," he explained, "I ate everything they had on offer, and now it's payback. I ate so much, I ended up having to sleep to burn it all off... and now I'm still hurting on the inside..." and he felt a sharp cramp deep inside, causing him to grunt and clutch at his belly.

"Twipsy, hang in there, please don't die on us!" Flit panicked, giving Twipsy a deserving hug, as if trying to support the troubled cybermessenger.

But before Twipsy would give Flit a reassuring answer, he heard an echoing conversation coming from the corridors in the diagnostics building – Mortray was currently in conversation with the physician Anti-Hacker, as they discuss the patient's current status.

"So far I've been picking up the excess workload," Mortray explained his current backstory, "normally in his hands, and it's not very easy! Is there an exact date when he will have to own up to Information Control, and get back to work?"

"Judging by our results in observation," the physician Anti-Hacker replied, "he has cleared up quite considerably, and should be in work within, well, an equivalent of an hour..." Her gaze quickly shifted towards the unlucky cybermessenger, squirming in discomfort, and even trying to deliver a smile.

"Uhm, hi there doctor?" Twipsy whimpered, trying to hide his cramping, but failing miserably. He even crossed his oddly shoed legs just to look a little dignified and a little more comfortable, but the physician Anti-Hacker picked this immediately.

"Twipsy, you were supposed to have recovered after your pig out session," the physician scolded, "and judging by your current physical state... hmm, there's no use hiding it. Can you tell me how you are feeling?"

Twipsy slowly leaned to the left, still seated on his bed, and his large orange hand cradling his cramping stomach. "To explain," he moaned, "not very comfortable. Like deep inside..." but he trailed off and could only respond in a pained grunt, as he toppled on his left side, still resting on his bed.

The cybermessenger group pause for a moment... Flit noticed Twipsy's immediate glimpse of pain strike his belly once again, and decided to console the pained workmate, but was immediately escorted off the recovery bed by the physician Anti-Hacker.

"Now, now, messenger," the physician requested, as Flit carefully hopped off the recovery bed and rejoined the group of other cybermessengers, now worried for their workmate. "I'm going to be frank with you, now. Last time I've given you an internal lesson on how you have processed those treats into energy..." she adjusted her monocle once more and up popped three more little holographic screens: one a photo of Twipsy, bloated and nearly unconscious, with his belly slightly transparent (and being a basket for his previous meals, now a cluster of burning coals), the next photo below it showing his inner schematics, and... oh goodness, it was in writing, but that unsettled the physician Anti-Hacker a little.

"Is something bothering you, doctor?" Mortray enquired, this time concerned with the physician's recent findings in conjunction with Twipsy's current ailing state...

"Well, about your friend," the physician Anti-Hacker explained to the rest of the cybermessenger group, "he did manage to process a lot of, say, delicacies from another world, and miraculously without incident during his time in isolation. But, you see..." she attempts to explain it as frank as possible, "you do know with substance energy, you don't pull over between your shifts as it's easily absorbed, but in his case..."

"This is going to be awkward!" Gazonk slyly giggled, understanding the hint behind the physician's shock discovery, although the cybermessengers became a little unsure of what it means for their friend, but Mortray, who once browsed the health information archives (under the awkward lecture of Mr. Know-it-All, the cubic presenter of both useful and useless information), finally understood a little, but decided to let Twipsy know in advance.

"I think there is one thing you really should do right now," Mortray suggested, but he was rather unsure of what options he was going to mention. "You really... no. Maybe you should..."

That was when the moment of awkwardness hit him. Twipsy immediately took Mortray's unsure pattern of thought as a hint of probably suggesting some unusual approaches. All of a sudden, the awkward memories flooded back to him and he finally realised...

"What?! Impossible!" Twipsy defensively protested, even shielding his belly with his large orange hand, as if protecting it from harm. "I've been through the ups and downs of outerworlder life... I even learnt a lot about the differences between us and outerworlders... I know we aren't capable, but how am I supposed to release my meal that way?!"

"Get your blubbering insides together, it's not what you think!" Gazonk drilled some sense back into his ailing workmate, grabbing him by the shoulders and discussing other options, his squared off nose pressed against Twipsy's larger nose. "Whatever the outerworlders are able to do... well, no matter how awkward or unsavoury... well, we are different. You've learnt a lot about outerworlders, and there is no backing out now. You will be fine, know it." Normally Gazonk was the usual messenger who often centred Twipsy as the mark of many of his tricks to Gazonk's advantage, but Twipsy didn't expect to hear encouraging words of support from him.

Twipsy now appeared to battle the unexpected dose of embarrassment, and his increasing anxiety on... to put an awkward story short... battling the unfortunate end on the incident.

"Your team learnt a lot about me and my love for real world food," Twipsy whimpered, as he clutched his belly, "but based on your findings, what am I supposed to do now?!"

"I'm afraid there's no other option left," the physician began. "You really should make yourself comfortable, and perhaps consider... well, looks like you already slept off your gluttonous meal. Your stomach only has one job left to do, and you seem to be overreacting. Give it some time."

"This better do some good," moaned the bloated cybermessenger, now slowly inching off his bed, and almost feeling an intensifying belly cramp coming on. "Tell my friends... Nick..." he requested to one of the worried cybermessengers, albeit a stifled grunt in case he might end up... well... contributing to the worst, "...that I will be fine..."

Now the physician Anti-Hacker realised what might be happening to poor Twipsy as of now. "I think now would be a good time to leave the ward," she instructed the group.

The cybermessenger group slowly backed out of the room a little, worried about their friend now expecting the worst happening to him. Now the suffering Twipsy seized up, hunched over in cramps, his lesser left arm clutching his stomach. Flit's worries were realised, that this could be the last the group will see their friend.

"Hang in there, Twipsy!" Mortray pleaded, trying to reassure his friend, but to no avail. The suffering cybermessenger patient slowly stumbled on the floor, slumped forward in pain, and now a high level of urgency to get his friends out of sight, and potentially away from the impromptu damage he was about to cause.

"...no, I'm not fine...!" Twipsy painfully announced, as he ushered out the group away from the ward, and with split second reflexes, hit the button on the panel near the panel's entrance, causing an opaque frosted holographic barrier to appear, isolating him completely from the group.

"I'm going to report this to the others, he's going to reach breaking point," the physician Anti-Hacker announced, and she darted along the corridor, leaving the group of worried cybermessengers alone.

"Stay back, he's gonna-!" Flit shouted, but before he could finish, the room suddenly trend dark... the cybermessengers could only watch in shock and fear, and all off a sudden they sprint out of the hallway, opting to shelter behind the corner.

"He's sadly done it," Gazonk sighed. "He's blown himself up from all that food. Now we know why she says real world food is dangerous."

A silence later, as the cybermessenger group slowly came out of hiding, they returned to the exact ward... with the holographic barrier still up, they could still see some dusty patches of darkness stick to the inside of the room. Of course, the cybermessenger patient remained, hunched over as if given the mother of all bellyaches... exhaustively he managed to stand himself up, steadying himself, and even dusting himself off with his asymmetrical hands. Judging by the situation, he exclaimed in disgust as he dusted off and regained his bearings. Even through the barrier, Gazonk quickly jumped to conclusions, albeit restrained.

"Did he just...?!" Gazonk gawked, awestruck by the sight of the interior of the room. "I thought he blew himself up!"

Twipsy coughed a little, and quickly shook off whatever plumes of dust landed on him after the unexpected incident, and then hit the same button that separated his friends and the room. Now, everything, especially the recovery bed, is now covered in a powdery coating, in a faded grey haze. If felt as if the bellyache was finally cured inexplicably, but he heard footsteps coming from the corridor... the physician Anti-Hacker and her colleagues have returned, this time awestruck by the sight. Unexpectedly, his shamefacedness returned.

"Excuse me," Twipsy submissively apologised, as he quickly owned up to his accident. His toothy grin and bright red blushing were on show, and it even caused Gazonk to smirk and giggle a little, only to be elbowed on the side by a now defensive Mortray.

"Stop being insensitive, Gazonk!" Mortray scolded the nearby messenger. "He's been through something inexplicable, something that us cybermessengers... well, don't normally have to do."

Now the physician Anti-Hacker and her colleagues were surprised by the sight of the recovery room, now covered in a fine powdery dust. "What just happened?!" she asked, stunned.

"Well, he shut us out of the room," Flit explained at a loss for words, "and then he... he blew up in a plume of smoke... and now...!"

Now the physician Anti-Hacker came to a realisation. It was the first time that she noticed just how Twipsy managed to process all that food unusually... as cybermessengers were primarily sentient sparks of energy, it wasn't unusual for him to process it through heat energy, and unexpectedly, like an incinerator designed to sap and burn energy from whatever is consumed. In short, he was an incinerator on legs, and it unfortunately went somewhere.

"I'm sorry for this accident," Twipsy confessed, as he busily swept up some of the dust around his feet with his large orange hand as an impromptu broom, "just let me clean up."

"You don't have to," the physician Anti-Hacker advised, as she approached her patient and laid her hand on Twipsy's lesser left shoulder, gesturing him to stop. "I'll take you elsewhere for a few more tests, to see if you can get back to work sooner."

"Then who will?" Flit pondered, referring to the now dusty interior as a result of the mishap.

Of course, Mr Neat and his Tidy Team were nominated to dust off the interior of the recovery ward, to make it safe for the next patient. Due to the scale of the mishap, at least one member had only one word to say, in response to the unexpected... cough... incident in the ward.

"You have got to be kidding me."

–

After finally being checked out of diagnostics, it was only fitting for Twipsy and his band of cybermessengers to stop by the numerous highway bars for a round of energy shots and some discussions on the numerous events that had just happened during Twipsy's absence.

"...and I only escaped getting a ticket due to mistaken identity," Zeeto, the green faced, yellow nosed doppelgänger of the unlucky cybermessenger ally (seated directly to his right) recounted. "Not what I wanted for being a cyberstudent following in your footsteps!"

"Thank goodness you were lucky!" The now jovial and healthy-as-ever Twipsy replied, his smile finally radiating not only Zeeto's fortunate escape from an otherwise awkward brush with the law of the Web, but also Twipsy's own luck in relation to being alive from an otherwise undignified end.

"Speaking of lucky," Mosey, who was just seated next to Zeeto's left, sparked a discussion, "you should see what Twipsy has been through."

"Then what happened to you, Twipsy?" Zeeto enquired.

Twipsy thought long and hard, his lesser left hand scratching behind the dark top of his head, and then told his story. "I just gotten too obsessed and hungry for real world food... in all of its delicious glory. In fact, so much I just stuffed myself sick... and add to the fact I stayed too much in the real world, I would have faded away sick. Luckily my friends in the outerworld managed to send me home..."

"...and then I saw you by the kerb and saved you," Mortray finished, as he just sat behind the bench to the left of Twipsy, as he accurately recounted the moment he rescued and took his then exhausted workmate to diagnostics. "If you were with us, Zeeto, you would have cried... he was in terrible shape, and even the doctor didn't know if he was still with us or not." He bowed down his head in despair.

Zeeto paused, expressing his concern for the now healthy cybermessenger. "We have energy shots, why did you have to risk your life for delicacies?!" he asked. "Flit told me you, well, exploded!"

That somewhat caused Twipsy to blush a little, and even with a smile. "I guess I'll leave that to the doctor... or maybe Albert... to explain," he concluded, as he pressed a button in front of him on the bench. Two red cups of green substance energy appeared, and Twipsy happily drank some. Another, Flit, had just joined the group, sitting by Mortray's left, and for once was overjoyed to see Twipsy happy and well.

"I'm actually glad you went back to your old self again!" Flit exclaimed, a departure from his normally worried demeanour, stemmed from in-between anxiety-clouded shifts of email and data delivery. "Though the doctor really didn't need to explain the story about your insides, let alone what happened... ugh!" Poor Flit expressed a little disgust, as he had just received a lecture from the physician Anti-Hacker, just before Twipsy was cleared as an outpatient and released from diagnostics.

"At least I'm not the only one," Twipsy agreed with his workmate, referencing the times when he himself learnt a lot about life in the outerworld - the good and the awful. He finished his second drink, and already he felt recharged, ready for his next shift ahead. "Sorry to leave you waiting, but I better catch up on some lost work!"

"Good for you," Mosey clamoured, although the most dominant thing on his mind was to fall asleep with his head on the bench, "but afterwards, what are you going to do next?"

"After a few delivery shifts," Twipsy proclaimed, as he hopped off the seat, and completed his stretches, "I'll probably be taking my return trip to the real world, see how everyone is doing."

"But why are you planning to come back to the outerworld?!" Mortray enquired, already worried with what his friend had gone through since the incident.

"Just to say hi to my friends," the overjoyed cybermessenger added, finally strong enough to rejoin the traffic of other cybermessengers on their daily delivery commute.

The others paused in sheer confusion, and not to mention, they finally came to the conclusion that he might be hiding some motives from the group. Motives, linked to the incident that almost rendered Twipsy unconscious and close to his loss, much to the worry and chagrin of his group. Of course, Twipsy paused for a moment, and then decided that he should come clean.

"Okay, okay, you had me, but it's probably for a good reason!" he finally confessed, raising both his asymmetrical hands as if being held up by an undercover cybercop in the bar. "Just one, that is all."

"And what good reason do you have?" Flit asked, trying to restrain his apprehension and his previous concern for Twipsy's affected health at the time of the incident.

Now he no longer feared the worst, and Twipsy finally excitedly confessed his second reason to return. "I'm going back for seconds!" he happily announced, finally hopping on the many highways, and finally speeding off back to work. For the cybermessenger who survived and risked his all in the outerworld, it was going to be another interesting day around the Web and its networks.