Prof. Booster and Waterway Cabin?

If you've ever beaten hard mode on Cave Story, you already know this: in order to save Curly after the Labyrinth Core fight, you have to take her on your back through the Waterway. If you don't stop at the Waterway Cabin to drain the water from her, she dies.

However, if you stop at the cabin without Curly, the computer that's there only displays this message: "04-08-08 Wife bore child." To date, I don't think anyone has really had a good hypothesis on what the heck this means, if any idea at all. Here's what I think: Professor Booster wrote that.

Why? Well, for one thing, when you do stop at that computer with Curly, it means that you had to get the tow rope in order to save Curly. To get the tow rope, you have to avoid talking to Professor Booster in Labyrinth B, and (apparently) let him repair the broken teleporter down there on his own that leads to Arthur's house. In other words: if you're at that computer in the Waterway Cabin with Curly, Booster is alive and at Arthur's House (you actually do find him in Arthur's House after the Waterway section on hard mode). If you're not with Curly at the cabin, then you had to talk to Booster and he died at Labyrinth B.

If Booster is alive and at Arthur's House (you didn't talk to him before), he can use the "chat algorithm" (remember from the Sue/Kazuma cutscenes?), supposedly, to communicate to any computer in the island. (My guess is that all the computers were originally set up so that during the killer robot invasion ten years earlier, everyone could communicate to everyone else on the island in order to locate the Demon Crown.) Anyway, so if Booster (alive) can talk to the Waterway Cabin computer from Arthur's House, and somehow he can tell you're there with Curly, look at what the computer first actually says:

#0201
<KEY<MSGWords light up the screen.<NOD<CLR
<TURWhy don't you take a rest?<NOD<END

(this is decoded from the actual script, hence the <NOD and <CLR and such).

Then after you take a rest with Curly:
#0202
<KEY<FL+1445<MSGWords light up the screen.<NOD<CLR<TURYou know, I often recorded what I learned in that notebook...<NOD<END

Doesn't it sound like Booster to write stuff in notebooks and just leave them lying around? He did that in the Prefab House, where you can still read his plans for the Booster 0.8 and 2.0. How did he manage to leave a notebook in the Waterway Cabin? I don't know, but he was part of a research team, so maybe he was exploring the Waterway and actually resided in that cabin for a while.

Anyway, once you read in the notebook about treating flooded robots, the computer reads:

#0203
<KEY<MSGWords light up the screen.<NOD<CLR
<TURI pray for your victory.<NOD<END

Now this is what originally convinced me. "I pray for your victory" ? If you talk to Booster back in Labyrinth B, he says the very same thing just as he is about to die. Now either this is a very common Japanese phrase that AGTP translated into English the same way two different times, or Pixel had this originally in mind when he wrote the game.

Okay, so I hope I have enough evidence and you understood me thus far: Booster was once in the Waterway Cabin where he wrote that notebook you see on the shelf, possibly called the cabin his home while he explored the Waterway, and probably even used the computer at some point. He also uses the computer in Arthur's House to talk to you and help save Curly (how he knows about Curly is anyone's guess).

Like I said before, if Booster and Curly are dead, then the computer in the cabin displays "04-08-08 Wife bore child." Assuming that Quote is the first person to access the computer since Booster used it when he explored the Waterway, Booster would have written that phrase, possibly as a log or such (more on that later). The only reason the computer screen changes when Curly and Booster are alive is because Booster is communicating to the computer, thereby overriding viewing the original message and instead Quote sees the chat.

That's my logic to say that Booster wrote that message. Now what does it mean? I have some ideas, but from typing this whole thing out I need to give my brain a rest. =P

Alternatively, the Wife bore child message might not even be written by Booster; I really don't know. If you have any ideas about it, share 'em!

 

I have a few ideas (...well, a few is an understatement), but stringing them together into the story is taking much, much longer than originally anticipated. I'd rather not go discussing them now, it'd either take too long, or start too much debate that would derail my own progress even more than it already is...

The "I pray for your victory" parallel is a good call, though. I never talked to Booster aside the first time I played (and I've played through five or so times since, all aiming for Hell), so I forgot that he'd said that back at the Labyrinth if the game flows through so that he dies, but it does ring a bell.

 

Then again, there are a few other places where you get anonymous good wishes, such as from the chest that you find the map system in. I think it's unlikely that Booster is intended to be read as the author of either the original note or the new one on that computer, as it's unlikely he'd ever have been there (the Waterway Cabin isn't particularly accessible) and he would probably not have had the opportunity to learn how to treat a flooded robot (for lack of any robots to treat, or any reason to want to treat them given that most of the robots on the island were hostile). My guess would be that the research and the journal were written by someone else 10 years earlier, but your theory does seem interesting at least. Realistically it's probably something that Pixel didn't develop any elaborate explanation for, though.

 

Y'know, I've thought more about this. After making the "Hidden Messages" topic, I remembered some text hidden in Labyrinth B that says, "2003/09/27 Studio Pixel" or something like that. 04-08-08 could simply be written in a similar format: yy-mm-dd. In other words, that would be August 8th, 2004. That doesn't sound like a date that would be used as part of the Cave Story plot; it sounds like something that happened to Pixel himself! I'm thinking: maybe Pixel had a son that day? Seems more likely, to me. I hadn't really considered what the date 04-08-08 meant until now. But if Pixel expresses dates in the yy-mm-dd format, then it makes sense...

 

Of course, it could really be 80, not 08.

 

wait wait wait, when you talk to booster, he dies, and you cant save curly. since you cant save curly, it will say wife bore child 04 08 08 in the water cabin thingy. right? so how could booster write wife bore child blah blah, when he is dead?? or am i not getting this..... ok so what wppwah is saying is that he was in the waterway b4 you, and he wrote "wife bore child" and/or "i write things in notebooks" (or something like that)? and then pixel made it so you get one or the other depending.....? is that right? because if it isnt, then i'd have to say booster is psychic for knowing to tell quote (over the chat alagorithm thingy) how to save curly, a girl/robot hes never met..... that we know of...... so anyway, whats up with that?

 

This would explain why he's suprised when Quote comes out of the teleporter alone.

 

From Pixel's BBS:

> 4-8-08
My child's birthday.
It is not related to the scenario of the game.

 

Title

Eh? I thought the message was talking about Pixel's wife, who bore a child.

Coulda swore I read that somewhere...

 

Eh? I thought the message was talking about Pixel's wife, who bore a child.

Coulda swore I read that somewhere...

hmm, sounds familiar...

 

Andwhyisit that you didn't post this before? >.<

Because Pixel only mentioned it fairly recently (6th of May).

 

Andwhyisit that he didn't post that before?!

Maybe because no-one asked. *shrug*

 

well, you could have deduced that much anyway.

 

>.>

Well it could have been anyone's child! Sue could have written it, about Toroko bearing a child.
Yeah, I said it. Sue and Toroko are lesbian lovers. Yum.

Way to corrupt a perfectly innocent thread.......again....
>.>;

 

No guys, that is not when Pixel's wife bore a child. No one puts the year first. No one.
That's actually August 4th, 2008. Pixel predicted when his wife would bear the One, the only one who can truly destroy the Demon Crown.
Didn't you know it's based on a true story? Except the floating island is actually a metaphor.

 

Lies.

No one puts the year first. No one.

Um, International Time?

 

Man, screw international time. Try learning AMERICAN time, because that's the only time I care about! IN AMERICA.
But yeah, I knew about international time. Don't worry about it. It's called humor. Try it sometime, maybe.

 

Regular Humor = Fail

Man, screw international time. Try learning AMERICAN time, because that's the only time I care about! IN AMERICA.
But yeah, I knew about international time. Don't worry about it. It's called humor. Try it sometime, maybe.

Psh, you should learn to use Internet Humor. =D
Just like sarcasm {There's special Internet Sarcasm, for that}, you can't use regular humor on teh netz, else no one will understand you!

 

Hey, the question was answered by the Word Of God, there's nothing more we can say now. The thread can as well be locked.

 

No, wait!

Hey, the question was answered by the Word Of God, there's nothing more we can say now. The thread can as well be locked.

Amaya just said that it didn't have anything to do with his personal life, he didn't say what it actually was about o.o;
We still have more to theorize and debate