Catalyst SBURB Playthroughs

by the Catalyst of Infectious Pride

Obvious exit: https://zampaniosim.fandom.com/wiki/Category:CatalystSBURBPlaythroughs

The Watcher's note: The Catalyst wrote about several glitched SBURB games, corresponding to error messages. Some of them were inspired by actual SBURBSim sessions.

301

Attempt to play sburb? Y/N

You are so excited as you pop the disc into the drive and boot it up. When your server player logs in you are practically humming with anticipation.

Then...nothing happens!

You are so mad! Buggy piece of shit, you should NEVER have gotten your hopes up!

You call up your server player and they say they're playing just fine, but this annoying error keeps popping up. “301 Moved Permanently” or something like that?

Back in your old home town, a family of four are *very* confused when their bathtub lands on their dinner table.

302

Attempt to play sburb? Y/N

When you are Found deep within the geometry of the map you are gibbering.

"Longer than you think!" you cry out, over and over again to your server player.

"Longer than you think!"

401

Attempt to play sburb? Y/N

401: Unauthorized.

You stare in horror.

You'd thought things were fine with your cracked copy of SBURB. Who wants to deal with DRM and subscription fees ANYWAYS. Pirated is just as good right?

Your server player had connected and things started up just fine...

Except...

When the meteors started closing in on you...

401: Unauthorized.

Suddenly, the game logged you out and wouldn't let you back in.

401: Unauthorized.

You'd heard games do things like this before.

401: Unauthorized.

Of course you had.

401: Unauthorized.

Twisted themselves in ways to make themselves unplayable to punish pirates.

401: Unauthorized.

Waiting only until you were safely invested in the game to spring the trap shut.

401: Unauthorized.

You just never thought something like this would KILL you.

401: Unauthorized.

Connection lost.

404

Attempt to play sburb? Y/N

404: File Not Found. You go to your computer to play SBURB but somehow it isn't there?

Your server player is moving things in your house. The meteor is coming...but.... the game isn't...there?

Your alchemtier is gone. So is your cruxtruder. That lathe thing.

You.

What are you going to do.

When the meteor hits you're somehow still surprised.

410

Attempt to play sburb? Y/N

There is nothing in all directions.

Actually, that's a lie.

There's nothing, not EVEN directions.

Up and down and right and most especially left: none of them are real anymore.

You're just.

Gone.

423

Attempt to play sburb? Y/N

You sit on the floor in your house. A freak accident just occurred, involving murder mode and some wasting, and now two dead bodies lie in front of you. You desperately text your server player and try not to completely lose it. Each time you blink with your eyes full of tears, you could swear one of the corpses moves just slightly towards the other. Too subtle to notice, but when you held your eyes shut for a few seconds, you could definitely spot one of their arms changing positions.

lmeahd: I'M TELLING YOU THEY'RE MOVING

canjan: Look, this is terrible I know- I mean we couldn't... there was nothing we could've done...

canjan: but they're gone now, they're dead, they can't move

canjan: I understand you're freaked out and in shock, it just happened so fast and right in front of you and- look, you're most likely seeing things

lmeahd: JUST DO SOMETHING, MOVE THEM, THROW SOMETHING AT THEM, JUST HELP

canjan: I told you! I can't move them, my cursor does the same thing as if I tried to click a living thing! I mean, I guess moving dead bodies would be too OP so-

lmeahd: SO THE SERVER COUNTS THEM AS "ALIVE"?

canjan: that's not what-

Your eyes dart away from your phone and clearly notice the two corpses holding hands. You run.

500

Attempt to play sburb? Y/N

You wisely decide to close the program and instead look through the computer's files. You open one conveniently titled "181542202 notes". It reads:

Error 500

Warning: freezes AB, careful!!!

- Made a session with video game characters for friend. The characters broke AB. God DAMN graces are bullshit.

- Session wasted to the point that even poor AB choked on it

- Void player obscured most of session, no way to tell what actually happened, god fucking dammit void

- Analysis: weird combo session, attempting to hack the frog: accidentally killed the frog (but WHERE is that combo session?)

The most terrifying words ever uttered

502

Attempt to play sburb? Y/N

Your server player looks on in horror as the helpful error code 502: Bad Gateway flashes on their screen.

Underneath the danger red text, on their view of your house. is an equally red mist, gently settling onto the roof.

The first of the seven gates above your house twitches and jutters. It winks in and out of existence.

It had been fine when you first went through.

You couldn't have known.

503

Attempt to play sburb? Y/N

You stand triumphantly over the Ogre's grist remains and wave up to your server player. Strange...they seem to have stopped building? You pick up all the grist and head back inside to check your laptop to see if they need anything from you.

That's...weird. The little server icon isn't there anymore? There's a little exclamation where it should be. "503: Service Unavailable".

You swallow. It's. Fine. It's probably fine. Just a little hiccup in the server. It's. It'll be resolved soon. You'll see.

Any minute now.

508

You took every possible precaution you could. You all got cracked copies of sburb and were determined to waste your way out of this miserable, broken game. You kept constant watch over the session's stability, made sure nobody meddled with the code unless agreed upon by everybody. It was going great, making small, subtle changes to sburb so everybody could get out alive; that was until the Grace got to the Heart player.

Heart and Blood made a glorious plan. A plan to make everybody you ever knew survive and be happy forever. Protests were futile.

Dozens of players started filling the session, arriving from seemingly everywhere, the past, the future, soon their numbers rising to the hundreds. Then the shipping started. Everybody started proposing to each other, hundreds, thousands of relationships starting and ending and starting again.

You saw what looked like an exact copy of yourself. You felt burning hate and love at the same time. You asked them out.

You asked them out again.

You asked the

D-404

Enter keyword: Fafnir

Keyword accepted!

Loading documents...

404 Error: Documents cannot be found please try again later

Error

Attempt to play sburb? Y/N

Infinite errors. You go to your computer to play Sburb, but your programs begin to error uncontrollably. After three minutes you start to worry. Your computer is smoking. You desperately shove an ice pack against your heat sink, but that only makes your keyboard fail. The errors accelerate. It's been five minutes. You can't stop the errors. Your bedroom ceiling is covered in a thick black layer of smoke. The errors are starting to leave the computer and fill the room around you. You try to throw your computer out the second-story window but the errors form spider legs and latch onto the frame. You try the fire extinguisher. The fire is too much to snuff. The air grows tasteless from the errors like sawdust. You lock your bedroom door to stop the errors from escaping. The errors accelerate. You trip and fall into the errors piling onto the floor. The smoke now fills the room and the errors on the floor are now six inches deep, almost as long as your phone. Globs of the sticky staticky stuff begin to precipitate from the air and fall like raindrops, giving you a facial with your own failure. The errors accelerate. You struggle to stand as the force of the materializing errors begin to propel you backwards. Still on your knees, the errors are up to chin height. The errors are beginning to stream out the long-broken windows and pile on the ground below. To avoid getting overwritten you open the bedroom door. The errors accelerate. It's been two hours. Your children and wife scream in terror as their bodies are engulfed by the grey pixelated sludge. Your youngest child goes under, with viscous artifacts and laggy cries rising. You plead to any God listening to end your suffering. The errors accelerate. You fumble through the fire hose of errors to shut off the computer, but the errors begin to steam out the wall cable instead. You let go.

Your body picks up speed as it is propelled backwards along the errors. You fall onto the street below, and a snapped neck would have ended yourself were it not for a syrupy cushion of errors. The red hot yet space black core of errors surrounding the computer latch onto you. Without your own will, you hurtle into the sky at thirty miles an hour. From a bird's eye view you see your house is completely covered in errors, and they're spreading. Your neighbor calls the government. The errors accelerate. As you continue to ascend, you spot unmarked black vans speeding towards your house. The errors grow. You are now at an altitude of one thousand feet. The Foundation arrives. Military helicopters circle you. Hundreds of bullets piece your body at once, yet you stay conscious and your life doesn't end. Your computer has grown into a substitute nervous system jacked into every vein, artery, and marrow tube of your body. The errors accelerate and grow. It has been two days. With your body destroyed from the inside out, the errors begin to spray in all directions from the stratosphere, orbitally dispersing a small stream of errors. Thankfully they burn up on re-entry now. You break the sound barrier. The government launches a missile to detonate next to you, but the force of the errors cut through and replace the metal of the warhead like it was ice cream. The government decides to let you leave the earth. You narrowly miss the ISS, giving it a new payload of corrupted data and computer viruses. The scientists likely won't make it back to earth alive. Physicists struggle to calculate your erratic trajectory.

The errors accelerate. The errors begin to gravitate towards itself and the force switches its direction sideways, creating a geosynchronous orbit. You're going to become a second moon made of errors. An astronomer registers you as the artificial satellite "Faux." You are stuck in space forever, stripped of your body and senses, forced to endure a the feeling of errors streaming out from your back at ever increasing speeds until you're crushed by their mass over decades. Eventually, you stop thinking. The scientists and military personnel on earth wipe the sweat off their brow and call it a day. The zone of corruption surrounding ground zero is slowing down without physical connection to the mother host. Little do they know that in scant decades the mass of the errors in orbit will asexually reproduce and explode, causing thousands of little error-bombs to fall to earth, corrupting the ocean, the cities, the countryside. Their doom has always been inevitable due to this game.