It's amazing what some time alone, doing nothing, can do to you. For years, it seems like, I have drifted about the Internet, without a guiding force, without purpose, as if the writer of my life suddenly lost interest.

It's all coming back to me now. Binary, what's happened to her. Oh, no. She's gone. After all my work to hunt her down, she's gone. I suppose that's what I get for lazing about that long. It's a wonder I'm still alive. better check to make sure I still have all my limbs.

Argh.

Okay, I've got the biggest beer gut you've ever seen. I don't know if my legs are there or not because I can't see them. I usually float around the Internet, but you never know when a good pair of legs will come in handy. That hommex might come around with his new girl or something, and I don't have a chance to steal her away in this condition. I didn't even know I could be this fat. Alright, time to check the logs, with luck I left the camera on during my wanderings.

I plug in to the viewscreen and start playback. I'm meandering around the intarweb, doing nothing in particular, when suddenly, ninjas! I'm still in fighting form, so I whip them into shape quick, but my killer throw sends one into a waffle house. Curious, I walk in.

The tape cuts out, but resumes again shortly. I'm still in the waffle house, 100 bucks in debt, and this drunkard offers to pay my tab and give me something to drink if I can tell him where the first waffle house came from, in a way that makes him laugh. "It started back in Nam," I tell him, "we were short on rations when we spotted a boat coming up the river. We jumped the driver and threw him in the river, and found the boat full of waffle batter. He had a pair of waffle irons, so we rigged one up to the engine of the boat, when this Viet Cong shell takes out our waffle iron. We had two left, so we set up the next one. No sooner did we plug it in then it exploded in a hail of gunfire. We needed to eat, bad, so we beat some natives senseless until they built us a restaurant. Well, they were delusional, and didn't speak English very well, so they built us a safe house, a waffle house."

By this point, the tape shows everyone laughing, eager to hear another story about waffles. The guy picks up my tab, and I take a sip of something which was probably strong enough to be an industrial solvent, and start another story.

Skimming the tapes, I see a lot of stories, a lot of beer, and a whole lot of waffles. The waffles, I'll never forget them. I'll never eat again, not anything even slightly wafflesque. It's a wonder Binary didn't kill me on her way out.

I figure I'll do some sit ups before I go to bed for the night, when I find I can't do a sit up. I roll over to the mirror, only to see my legs useless, rounded things with shoes on the ends. The case fans start up, and I've barely moved. I'm in worse shape than I thought. I roll around for ten minutes, sweating more than I ever have, until I manage to pull myself into bed.

I fall asleep right away, and wake up a newly refreshed Artificial Intelligence Construct, filled with new thoughts and several megabytes lighter. Not much, but it's a start. I'm going to have to start a long running exercise regime, just to get back into shape. Or I could just do a code reversal to 5 months ago, when I last made a backup. Alright, that sounds good. I write a key summary of events to myself, taking a few full seconds to copy everything to several servers (weight gain will do that to you), and step into my backup tapes.

I feel the tapes start to spin, and watch in disgust as my current body melts away into a five month younger, slimmer, physically fit edition. My head goes pop, and I wonder what pushed me over the edge to do a code restore. I look at the clock, and find myself 5 months later than I should be.

I must have messed up pretty badly to go 5 months back in time. I see a note to myself, so I open it up.

I was that fat? Whoa. Okay, waffles, drinking, Binary's gone, stories, man. I've made a mess of things this time. The first thing to do is find Binary, so I step out the front door and start searching.