Lloyd Baldowyn, a renowned physicist from Cal Tech, was one of the top string theory researchers on the entire planet. His research had transformed the almost fairy tale like string theory into a plausible equation any other scientist could use. This was the theory the entire scientific community had been looking for over a century, starting with the like such as the very same Einstein and Niels Bohr. The “Theory of Everything”, as they use to call it.

At his 82 years, Baldowyn was next in line to receive the Physics Nobel Price, an honor which a few weeks before had occupied his mind at all times. “I am glad these buffoons didn’t wait for me to be dead to finally give me the honor”, he used to mockingly say to his students back at school. Today, however, the Nobel Prize was just an unimportant achievement, compared to the feat him and his colleagues were attempting to perpetrate. And such an act was feeding his chest with unwanted exasperation.

The old rusty man motioned towards his watch. It was 8:03 PM. “Where are they? They should have logged on by now! Do they think I have that many years left?”

All of a sudden the screen below the one containing his own image, came up live. The image was that of a much younger man, Dr. Jose Rivas, an electrical engineer from the University of Madrid. Mildly dark skinned and wearing the typical round glasses, the younger technical guru fixed his own camera, allowing for his picture to be centered on Dr. Baldowyn’s screen.

“Lloyd, sorry for the delay.” The young man’s garbled voice came over the speakers with a Latin accent. A few tweaks later on his side, and the speech was as good as if they were both in the same room. “I needed to make sure the 512 bit encryption was working before I enabled the streaming engine. We are ready now!”

In saying the later, another screen came alive with a similar centered image. On the top right, the live portrait of an old female pixilated into existence. It was Dr. Merrie Palio-Rogers, head of Applied Physics at the Italian Institute of Technology. Her messy gray hair had been compressed into a small ball on top of her head, its pressure contained by a suffocated hair pin, which demonstrated the technology she harbored inside of her brain had nothing to do with aesthetics. Her pointy eye glasses, tied to the back of her neck with a mild chain-like supporter, made her look just like a Clue board game character.

The fourth image to follow was that of a much younger man. On his late 30’s and of oriental descent, Dr. Kio Yabuhki had managed to obtain the position of head research and administrator at the Florida’s Applied Physics Research Center at an insurmountable rate, making him the youngest of the physicist to ever held that prestigious position.

The final image to materialize was that of Dr. Rammani Vespinosapalli, an Indian mathematician from the renowned University of India at Banghali. It was not very easy to notice Rammani was on his early seventies. His bald head and prongy ears seemed to look identical decades ago. With the typical Indian-English accent, he greeted the other team members. “Good morning folks. Or should I say, good night!?”

The final screen remained black…

“Thank you for joining us, Merrie, Kio and Ram” Dr Baldowyn greeted the new members to join the conference call. “I think it is clear our own Dr. Perry will not be joining us today, so we better get started.”

“I suggest we make this quick, ladies and gentlemen.” Dr Yabuhki added. “There is no doubt we are being scanned by whoever is lynching us all, one by one!”

“I would not worry about that, Dr Yabuhki” Dr. Rivas was confident. “I have added 512 bits of encryption to the streaming engine. It is basically impossible to tamper with our communications.”

“I am not so sure 512 bits are enough, Joe.” Dr. Vespinosapalli came back abruptly. “Last time we met, you had employed 256 bits of encryption and felt equally certain nobody would be scanning us. And we all know how that ended.”

“What do you imply, Ram?” Dr. Rivas burst insulted. “That my software…”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” Dr Baldowyn waved his arms up and down at the small camera positioned in the center of the six monitors, hoping to somehow calm the excitement. “Let’s try to concentrate on the project at hand! Please…”

“Yes, I concur with Lloyd.” Dr Palio-Rogers scoffed back at the instigators. “There is no evidence that Dr. Perry was the victim of an attack. These conspiracy theories are preposterous and are only managing to scare us. I, for one, have found a lack of focus on my behalf, so I would appreciate if we could drop such a nonsensical subject.”

“Nonsensical? The guy was blown to kingdom come!” Dr Yabuhki counter attacked. “I tell you the explosion on his apartment was by no means an accident. It could not have been!”

“Doctor, we are scientist here. What kind of evidence do you propose to sustain your claims?” Dr Baldowyn demanded.

“Haven’t you looked at the FBI files?” Yabuhki had clearly altered considerably since the beginning of the call. “I decided to look at the data and guess what? After running some analysis and simulations utilizing the vector of attack as drawn by the fallen debris, it is clear it could not have been caused by anything Dr Perry had on his apartment.”

“Dr Yabuhki, we all know Dr Perry had a fusion reactor on his penthouse lab. Certainly you have taken this into consideration?” Dr Palio Rogers wiped her glasses.

“Ehhh…. Actually, the fusion reactor never went online. I had to recalculate some laser acceleration paths and had some issues with the servers so we were running a little bit behind schedule…” Rivas now seemed concerned.

“See?!” Kabuhki touche’d the old lady.

“Nonetheless, I suggest we follow Dr. Baldowyn’s original plan and get busy with the project again.” Dr. Palio-Rogers was not ready to let the alleged terrorists ruin their project.

“I am sorry if I do not share the optimism here. You all know this was not an accident and not only have we been targeted in the past, it is clear to me, one of us will be targeted in the near future!” Yabuhki used the very last breath to conclude his speech.

“I am going to have to agree with Dr Yabuhki here.” Dr Vespinosapalli conceded. “Lets remember how fishy it looked when our colleague Dr James Gardner died a few weeks ago.”

“Come on, people!” Dr Palio-Rogers could not believe they were ranting on and on, on the same subject. “There is no doubt in my mind, it was an accident!”

That’s how it had been conclusively sold to the media. Just an accident. A pretty rare one, though.

Dr Gardner was just one of the millions upon millions of gun owners on the country. Every night, he would sleep with his gun below his pillow as an extra survival warranty. His last night, however, he had apparently decided he wanted his wife to sleep with the gun below her own pillow.

It is not clear, although believed to be plausible, how the gun protection lock came off. Then in the middle of the night, most likely during some typical wrestling back and forth for extra comfort during her midnight sleep, she had led the gun off, killing her husband instantly.

When she woke up and saw her husband’s head shot through its side, she realized it had been she the killer of her love. In a split second she became neurotic and placing her own life on the very same path of a second bullet seemed to be the right thing to do.

When the police showed up, after some neighbor called and reported the dual quasi consecutive shots, they found a scene which could only have been confected through the previous details.

But some of the scientists could not believe how lucky, or better said “unlucky”, could somebody get. Such a ploy would have had to be the concoction of some master mind, which for some reason was looking into exterminating the clan.

Dr Baldowyn was in between both parties. Half of his soul seemed to comply with the vicious allegations, while the other portion wanted to believe it was just a coincidence.

“People, I realize we are living some scary moments, but we are grown ups here.” Dr Baldowyn continued. “We will consider this matter a dangerous one and take all the cares which must be taken. But please let’s go on with the plan as this project is far too important to be left behind. I would like to start discussing the Hetero-Positron Generator and Quanta Manipulation Engine.”

“I am with you, Dr Baldwin!” Dr Palio-Rogers had always favored her old mentor. The others were not certain whether the two have had some kind of romantic involvement back in the day when they were professor and student. “This project will change the way the human race goes about on a daily basis. If we let these terrorists scare us, they have already won. If we stop now, we will have been more irresponsible than the worst student we have ever housed on our own classroom.”

“On that front,” Dr. Palio Rogers continued, “I am happy to report my group of students has been able to measure significant charge rate change when we applied the specific frequency into the QME. We believe that if we…”

“Listen folks.” Yabuhki had to interrupt. “I appreciate you have given me the honor to be part of this very important project. But it just so happens I have a hot date tonight and while you have ran out of your libido, I am still too young to let this opportunity pass. Do discuss the project and if none of us are killed in the upcoming days, then sign me up again. In the mean time, I prefer to remain alive and enjoy life with my breathing apparatus fully functional.”

In saying so, Yabuhki’s screen switched to pitch black.

Dr. Baldowyn felt a surge of depression as he saw the fifth component leave the conference call. Not that he was 100% necessary, but Yabuhki’s expertise was clearly more than appreciated. Without him the project could still be completed, although in a longer period of time.

Dr. Baldowyn wanted to be mad at the young scientist, but remembered his own young days. Being such an intelligent man, he rationalized he would have reacted in the same fashion as his other colleague had. Especially if it was true the date was as hot as Yabuhki alleged. For a brief instant he wished to be on his younger counterpart’s shoes. But a split second later he realized the project could be equally as important as a hot date. So he regained his composure returning to whatever was left of the six monitors only to find…

“Ehh guys…” Rivas interrupted everybody else’s concentration at the time. “Did you happen to take a look at the four emails Dr Perry sent the night his apartment exploded?”

“I think we all did, Joe” Palio Rogers shrugged. ‘Not again…’ she thought.

They had all looked at the four emails’ attached video content. When put together, the four video snippets showed the empty apartment of Dr Perry, from a few hours before the explosion until the very fatidic moment in which all the cameras could portray was the noisy snow of nothingness.

To Palio-Rogers this clearly meant the apartment’s explosion had been an accident. Until now, it did as well to Baldowyn and Vespinosapalli. However, the later two were starting to sense a strange body language emanating from the quasi frozen engineer at the other side of the world. The feeling rocked their spines wild and it was not a pretty sensation.

“What is it Joe…” Both Baldowyn and Vespinosapalli asked in unison.

“I think we have a problem folks!” Rivas conceded with his ghostly white cheeks messing up the transmitted image contrast. “It just so happens that a few weeks ago Dr. Perry sent a coded message. It was a bunch of numbers and I though he had mistakenly sent it to me, instead of Ram.”

“What were the numbers, Joe?” Vespinosapalli demanded to know.

“I could not make anything out of them, but just now while you were discussing all this nonsense in a committee I decided to look once again and I noticed a pattern. The numbers are the window used to decode the video data stream.” Rivas explained.

Where was he going with this, everybody pondered. “Rivas, try to talk to us in English or in a science we can all understand!” Baldowyn suggested.

“Guys, the pattern clearly denotes that when adding the four files, there should be a random mistake at a particular spot denoted by these numbers. But as it turns out, there is none…” Rivas held the folded paper close to his camera, the numbers now becoming mildly visible.

Perry had taken an extra precaution not even his colleagues were aware of. The clever scientist rationalized that if they were being spied on, whoever was doing so must be really good at covering their tracks. If it was not even hard for hackers to get inside any secured and remote server, it should have been piece of cake for an advanced organization to do the same and then change the footage plus send the emails as he had accorded with his peers. As a result, and as it happened, those receiving the emails would have been be led to believe it had all been an accident.

But as sophisticated as an organization is, unless they can read somebody’s brain, there is always a way to trick them. And this had been it! By sending Dr. Rivas an insignificant looking note via conventional mail, which also happened to look like a mistake, he managed to offer a non traceable data point. Thank God his colleagues were intelligent enough to decipher it!

Vespinosapalli looked at the numbers on the screen and he needed no computer to realize what the engineer had said was totally accurate. And if somebody had gone to the trouble of changing the video feed and lead them on the wrong path, there was no doubt they were being hacked and spied on, like Yabuhki had been ranting about.

All of this meant their previous means of secrecy had been broken, even when they thought the protection mechanism to be unbreakable. It would have been naïve to think today’s protection mechanism was any different. Whoever was spying on them was powerful enough to break a 256 bit encryption. Was it too risky to assume it an impossibility to break the 512 bits?

“Team…” Vespinosapalli did not want to admit it, but there was no other choice. “We are being spied on as we speak and you will have to forgive me but I have grandchildren which I plan to enjoy some more years with. Consider me out of the project!” His screen went black.

It was a lie. Rammani wanted to be inside the project, but he hoped whoever had been watching to believe he would no longer to be a threat. Although he perceived his acting to be convincing enough, a part of him was conscious of the deep mess he was now in. Whoever was killing these scientists one by one with no regret, would hardly stop at such a cheesy portray of rejection.

Jose Rivas wanted to disconnect himself next, but feared dishonoring his superiors. Dr Baldowyn, on the other hand, was gracious enough to see the danger he had implicated his colleagues on. “My friends, I think it is best that we end this now, before somebody else gets hurt.” In pressing a button on his computer terminal, Rivas image faded to black.

He was about to do the same to the only remaining team member. “I am sorry my dear. I know you believe this decision to be dumb founded and that we should not retreat like cowards. But considering all that is left to complete the project, it is clear to me that we will all be dead long before we are even close to half way.”

“Don’t press that button, Lloyd!” Palio-Rogers demanded. “We can do this! We can not possibly know if they have cracked our 512 bits protection. But even if they do, we must find a way to communicate and finish what we started!”

“I admire your passion, Merrie” The old man smiled. “But you must realize that if they have access to our heavily guarded connection, there is no phone, or radio transmitter that can shield us from whoever is watching. We are sitting ducks!”

“Well. I have to admit it was fun while it lasted. I guess it will be back to the old boring class teaching spree…” The old lady threw a kiss to his old lover and her screen went black.

On her own room, Dr Palio Rogers thought to herself…

‘If I talk, there might be microphones listening to what I have to say… Hopefully they can not hear what I have to think… But you listen to me Lloyd! I will complete the other Cassimir plates and with your equation we can complete the quad-positronic link. There is no way they can spy on that!’

‘Let me know when you complete them, my dear,’ she heard Baldowyn’s voice on her head, ‘as the process to get them hooked into the hyperspace communications link will not be trivial in itself…’

Once the vehicle’s engine was rattling to death, filling the atmosphere with obnoxious gases, Avayan looked back, like the good conscious driver he was not, and then speed out of Robo Tantrics’ parking lot. It was not until he had abandoned the crime area that he would have the computer out from his hiding place.

Driving with only one hand, once again offering proof of how much of a negligence it was to allow him across the streets, Avayan removed the shiny laptop from his bag and placed it on top of the now messy passenger’s seat. Opened the laptop and then…

“We did it, Compu!” he celebrated. “We managed to get the software and nobody noticed!”

“Yes you did sir…”

“It was amazing Compu! And then at the end I thought there was not enough money, but having dealt with such a brilliant computer like you, it figures you had taken the tax into account. It was gorgeous!”

“Actually, I had to materialize the $40 on the fly, Master Avayan.” the computer explained. “It just so happens that I was not aware of the tax either.”

Avayan ruffled his sight in confusion. “What do you mean you did this on the fly? I thought you were hibernating or something…”

“I don’t hibernate, Master Avayan.” The computer asserted.

‘I’ll be darned’, he thought. ‘The computer must have been hearing and seeing everything that transpired back there…’

“Well thanks for your help back at the store… I would not have been able to pull this out without you.”

“Oh, no problem Master. It is now just a matter of never being discovered. I certainly would not like to be sent to any secret lab and be dissected…”

“Eh… what do you mean?” Avayan started to sound worried. Again…

“Well Master, you must realize that transaction was completely illegal.” The computer explained. “I mean, you used counterfeited money, you realize that, right?”

A big blob of guilt engulfed Avayan’s chest. It was like ink on a fish tank housing a furious octopus. The pressure started to suffocate the youngster who was now trying to rationalize his actions.

“Counterfeit, Compu? Come on!” Avayan bellowed nervously behind the wheel. “These bills were identical. The government cannot tell them apart from the real thing!”

And that was the problem. Because they were identical, the government could not believe they were real either. We all know each bill has a serial number. When Avayan had requested for the computer to copy the bills, he had not been specific on how the replication was to take place. So the computer did precisely what she was told.

At this point in time, it may seem like the computer was kind of dumb and had failed to see how her Master would be jeopardized by her actions. However, it was the total opposite. By putting Avayan through this ordeal, the youngster would learn a very valuable lesson. So far, it was working!

“Oh My God… What have I done, Compu!” The teenager came to realize his blunder. “We’ve got to go back and get those dollar bills!”

“You actually think you can get them back? They must have been spread on all directions by now. Not even I could pull that one out, Master.”

“Oh My God Compu, this is it! The authorities are going to find about it and I’ll be thrown in jail. A huge black guy will have my ass for dessert.”

“I tried to warn you, Master. But you would not listen.” It almost felt like Computron had been waiting to say that for a few weeks.

“Compu, you’ve got to help me! These bills have my finger prints. There is ton of my DNA in there. Please help me save my sorry ass from eternal damnation at county jail, Compu, please!!!”

“It may be too late, Master… Look back…”

Avayan glanced over his mirror. It was certainly bad. A set of flashing red and blue lights were in pursuit. No need to point it out, but it was the police.

“Super scum buckets of evil, Compu! How could they figure it out so fast? This is it. I better kiss my virgin ass good bye.”

Had the computer been human she would have died of laughter. Computron IX thought she should somehow attempt to regain her composure. Such a sophisticated item from such a civilized age should not have been enjoying this moment so much. Still, she allowed her prank to continue for a little bit longer.

Avayan could see the police officer motioning the offending pick-up truck to pull over, through his rear view mirror. The police officer was certainly pissed, his body language easily being translated into “Move your ass out of this road, or I am going to have you for dessert!” At the end, not wanting to spread his gonads into a larger audience, Avayan had to comply.

At this point in time, Computron IX decided to scan Avayan’s vital signs. With his heart pumping like a double bass drum solo and blood pressure enough to drive a hydraulic piston, it would not require a single biology class to safely deduce the boy was experiencing possibly one of the worst frights he would ever endure. Way worst than seeing Tina at school, and that is quite a lot to say! Since no sign of a heart attack was evident, she continued with the therapy.

Both cars had come to a still when the Police officer walked towards the truck’s driver side every time approaching the petrified youth. Somber, serious and not the slight glimpse of a “hope you are doing well” message on his mustache, the officer arched his pointy hand, a clear sign of an order to lower the window.

Avayan could not speak, or move. Precisely what the police officer liked to see on his pulled over. It meant the driver was definitely guilty of the charges he was about to impose. This should be an easy one!

“Good night sir… Are you aware of how fast you were driving?” The police officer said, his sight carefully monitoring his large LCD note pad’s screen as he took some more notes on his gadget.

“What?” Avayan asked perplexed. ‘What on Earth does speed has to do with using fake money to buy software?’, he thought.

For a moment Avayan could have sworn the tipity tap from the stylus into the pad had been synchronized with his heart beat. It was apparently starting to come down. Was it time to show some relief?

“You were doing 70 miles per hour in a 55 zone, son” the police officer explained.

Like a cold bucket of water, a wave of relief swamped the youngster. He wanted to scream while running and jumping all over the expressway. This had not been about the 20 dollar bills, and although to render the matter closed would be impossible, at least his butt was not in immediate danger.

“License and registration, please” the officer requested, still looking at his pad. Was this gesture increasing his level of fear imposing? Whether the technique worked or not, is irrelevant, because…

Although not as intense as before, once again the adolescent sunk in fear. Why? Well, his permit was only provisionary, which implied an adult with a full permit must have been riding along with him. And it was pretty much evident the computer would not count as one. Could she fake the floating hologram of an adult to trick the officer?

Looking to his book bag at the passenger seat, it was more than obvious the computer was either not cooperating or did not have the ability to generate such a scam. Trying to buy as much time as possible to push back the inevitable, he handled his cheesy permit to the officer while he bit his tongue as hard as he could and braced for impact.

The police officer grabbed the little document, placed it on top of his LCD pad and scribed some more. “Mr. Ecks, how long since you moved from New York?” The police officer asked?

Avayan had never lived in New York. Why would the officer be asking such a retarded question? The young man was about to answer when… “Two months, officer.” The computer said emulating Avayan’s voice with cunning accuracy. It even sounded as if the acoustic wave had come from the youngster mouth. Had the officer not been minding his tablet so much, he would have seen a teenager talking with his mouth shut.

The officer tapped in a few more characters and then handled the permit back to his customer. “Very well Mr. Ecks, here is the deal.” he started. “I realize you may not know these roads out here in Texas. Hence I am only going to give you a warning, all right?”

Avayan grabbed his permit from the officer. “Well thank you very much sir. I truly appreciate this opportunity. It will not happen again, OK?”

“And feel free to get your New York license exchanged for our Texas permit, OK? You can do this so easily by logging onto the net. Have a good night sir.” Said the police officer leaving the car behind and returning to his own vehicle.

Avayan saw the police car drive by him when he allowed his chest to renew its air content.

“What the hell? Compu, did you change the permit?”

A soft evil like whistle came from the shiny laptop.

“You did!” Avayan sneered. “That was just too cool. Awesome!”

Avayan laid back on his seat, still not ready to resume the trip back home. “Will we ever get caught, Compu. Will somebody figure out we have copied money?” Avayan wondered.

“I totally doubt it sir! There is just too much money out there. It would take a few dozen computers like me to get the job done.”

The last water bowl had cleansed the guilt from his chest. Still, and from that night on, he vowed to never try the money copying scheme.

“I am sorry Compu.” He continued. “I am sorry about not listening to you. But you have to admit it did sound like a good idea.”

“I am afraid it didn’t sir. It was actually a lousy idea!”

Avayan frowned insulted. A lousy idea? This plan had been as good as it gets. “Why would you say such a thing?”

From nowhere, a second Cobotrox 7.0 software bundle materialized. “You did not need money, Master.” The computer explained.

Avayan looked at the two boxes and remembered the apples. The computer was right. There had been no need to copy the money, when in reality all he wanted was the software. Of course he could argue that due to copyright laws that was not going to work very well, but he did not feel like starting a debate on ethics with a computer from the future.  Instead…

“This is fancy and all, Compu. But the only reason you can copy it now is because I bought it on the first place. So in essence, the money was needed!” Avayan pointed out.

Compu did not respond to that. Instead, she started to flash the heck out of the pick up’s back seat.

A good deal of robotic parts, like an arm with a gripper, an R2D2 dome head, a Robby the Robot ear ring and some other parts sprung to life out of what seemed to be nothingness.

“I digitized all of these while you were walking down the store.” Computron IX explained.

Avayan was baffled. He sat on his chair, his back turned a full 180 degrees while he drooled on the back of his pick-up’s content. If the computer could gather information while they were taking a stroll, he could literally get anything he could see!

“Compu…” Avayan paused. “Instead of waiting for each little moment to explain what is that you can do, how about you start by telling me what you can’t do?”

The night was headed to be quite long…

Tony’s had changed from the typical Sonic structure where most customers would be served on their own parked cars and a small exterior dining area was provided for the rest. In this case, the dining area had been enlarged quite a bit. They had retrofitted movable walls, making it perfect for an all year long experience. And it had worked! As expected, the place would be packed during the entire 365 revolutions around our sun.

At this point in time, however, it was not the clever architecture which had managed to bring such a large clientele into Anthony Jennings’ small restaurant. It was his three daughters, Melissa, Tina and Sabrina!

Before leaving for college, Melissa had managed to transform the restaurant into her class’ favorite meeting spot. It was now Tina’s turn, an assignment she had managed to excel at without too much effort.

As much as Melissa had ensured profitability by being quite the entrepreneur and public relations prodigy, the beauty queen-like Tina had achieved the same response by triggering a completely different mechanism: hormones! A mere sight at the young girl, and it should be no hassle to decipher how she had managed to bring the entire chorus of friends, as well as wannabes, into the now cramped facility.

At first, she had worked like any teenager would do. Her father would honor a rather small salary, same as any other waitress would get. But the tips were pouring like water over Niagara Falls.

For a brief instant Tony thought of releasing his daughter from the hot spot. But she liked it, and as she would have told him earlier “Dad, if I am not here, your sales will go down.”

And she was right. Those nights in which she was not working, sales would just seem regular. On her working nights, however, profits would skyrocket to the point of endangering the International Space Station.

Unfortunately Tony’s fortune could be easily coming to an end as it was now time for Tina to graduate and head out to College. Although Sabrina was almost as beautiful as Tina, in which case we could expect for the same response to take over, she did not like the restaurant work as much. She had grown too cocky and proud. “Working on a restaurant while I can be having fun with my friends? What kind of a loser do you take me for?” she used to fight with Tina on and on.

As a result, Tina would spend most of her nights working and helping her father, making sure the restaurant could at least take him up to retirement. “At least save as much as you can until I return from College!” she used to tell her dad. For Tony, however, as much fun as the restaurant business had been for him, it was not the life he wanted for any of his daughters or son. We shall come back to him later, though.

That night, like practically every other night, Xavier and company had decided to enjoy from Tony’s. For Xavier it was just another opportunity to admire the beauty of the only girl that had rejected him. Like he use to say “She is only playing hard to get, boys. But she will be mine!” As a result, eating at the hot spot just happened to be a mere biological coincidence.

Xavier, followed by his two sidekicks Brad and Rick, entered the local, patrons trembling either in awe or fear at the trio. The three boys knew they would find Shawna and Veranicce in a big enough table. Still, they acted surprised when the two girls waved at them. Moments later, Rick was sitting besides Shawna and Brad by Veranice.

The big muscle bound senior did not seem to mind being left to sit by himself at the head of the table. Even better! He was a hunter on the prowl.

Xavier allowed his neck to pan towards a nearby table hosting three inert weaklings. A fourth chair contained some back packs and books. Emilio, the nerd closest to Xavier, realized what it could mean not to react in time. Not wanting to get an eternal wedgy up his throat, he almost dumped his tray while reaching to clean up the school material filled chair.

Xavier grabbed the now clean chair, his confidence never wrestling down. For a brief instant Emilio felt the exhilaration of possibly having entered the realm of the cool. Realizing that had not even been close to happening, he sat back on his own chair, his fries now unreachable as he juggled two week arms packed with everybody else’s stuff!

“So cousin, what’s up?” Xavier greeted Veranicce.

Xavier and Veranicce were not cousins really. Veranice was in reality Tina’s cousin. So it seemed perfect for Xavier to refer to her as his own cousin, as if he and Tina were an item.

Veranice smiled briefly. Then she almost cracked up…

Behind Xavier, a young woman wearing the most precious silver eyes, both caressed by a soft pink lipped smile, patiently waited. Her short bob haircut, confected by strands of pure gold, undulated from top to bottom as if trying to unite both the Heaven and the Hades, perfectly round like a sphere carefully formed by the gods. It was Tina, who wearing the typical red T Shirt, mid short white skirt and tennis shoes, ornamented by a green apron, would redefine the concept of a uniform. She practically made it look like fashion!

Tina had arrived to the table carrying a tray with the two other girls’ order. Had Xavier seen her? Could this had been but a trick to play on his goal’s heart?

“Cousin?” Tina frowned, making her presence obvious. The four kids at the table joined on the laughter. Xavier mildly turned to his love interest, his coolness untouched, as Tina was placing the red trays over the table making sure there was no friction against the deluded young man. No doubt he would have taken it as a sign of conquer.

“Well you know darling,” Xavier continues, “If you and I are…”

“I know what you mean, Xavier” Tina interrupted. “What I suggest is you start befriending my dad and ask him to adopt you. Then, you can call her cousin, all you want. How about that?”

“Whoooo” the table went nuts. Again, Xavier remained rock solid. ‘Sweetie, the harder you fight me, the harder you will fall into my arms’ the mastodon allowed himself to think.

“Oh come on Girl, why don’t you admit that you like me?” Xavier ventured. Once again, like many times before… When would the results be any different? Maybe tonight!

Tina did not flinch. Instead she removed her PDA and taped on the screen once. “What can I get you guys? We have some mighty awesome shakes today!”

“I’ll have one of those Tornado Swirls. Put everything on it, Tina.” Brad said.

“I’ll just have a dog. And a large soda.” Rick ordered.

“You know what I want, my love.” Xavier smooched.

Tina’s veins would have felt like boiling water pipes, but she did not allow her own cool to be shattered by the new force of attack. “The same as always, then?” It took a few taps on her PDA, when… “Very well, the rejection platter coming up! You will love to hate this one, its delicious!”. One revenge filled smile later and she was off to input the order at the nearby terminal.

“So… ‘COUSIN’”, Veranicce quoted in mid air. “when are you going to realize that Tina is not into you?” she asked Xavier, his gaze still following Tina into the kitchen.

“I am not going to give up. What kind of a loser do you think I am?”

“Sweetie… Tina is not going to fall for you.” Shawna slipped into the conversation. “She knows, like everybody else at school, you will play with her for a little while and then toss her out like worn underwear, just like you have done so many times before.”

Xavier looked at the dark skinned beauty, his profound eyes fighting an urge. Had she been a guy he would have jumped at him and ruffled him down into the floor. But even the evilest of his intentions would not cross that line. He would never hit a female, like his dad had done to his mother when he was a child. It was a promise he had done to himself eons ago and luckily tonight he had found the strength to uphold it. Squeezing both punches’ sweat into diamonds, he allowed his dark energy to dissipate into the night.

Shawna, on the other hand, was taking quite the advantage of her situation. You see, she more than well knew her sporty friend would never hurt her. Not like that, at least. And on every possible occasion she had a chance, she would call the big mastodon’s flawed womanizing technique, not because she wanted to help all those fellow classmates desperately looking for a date with the tyrant, but out of remorse for herself being one of the previous victims. No wonder the duo would end up enjoying from such a love-hate relationship.

“I don’t get it.” Brad came to the rescue. “I think our friend here is a fine young man. Yes, he has been through some trouble in life. Who hasn’t? I think he deserves a break!”

“I wish I could help you get that chance, Xavi” Veranice offered with her sweet little voice. “But I am afraid the cousin is a softie for the nerdies… If you know what I mean.”

Ahhh! The Nerdies! Could there be a concept on this land which could fuel Xavier’s rage any more? How much did he hate the “freakos”, as he used to call them. He wondered why on Earth would they have to take space from his beloved planet? Why did he need to share his oxygen with them? Was it so hard for all of us to be at least similarly strong? Only then, would this world be worth living, he used to think.

“The nerdies, huh?” Xavier scoffed fighting again an urge to lose his temper. “What can she possibly find in them?”

“Don’t she follow that robotic competition every year?” Shawna pointed out.

“The Loser Bots?” Rick called. The three boys laughed at the name. As their typical cheer, they clapped their hands in unison once over their heads, followed by three slight fist tabs on the table.

“Loser Bots… That’s a good one, Ricky, my man!” Xavier conceded with a slight pat on his buddy’s back.

An instant later Tina returned with some of the refreshment. Two sodas and a shake.

“So Tina, I bet you are all excited with the new robotic competition getting started, huh?” Shawna decided to do some weed seeding.

“Gosh, yeah!” Tina said with zest in her silvery blue eyes. “Do you guys like the competitions?”

“I love them myself…” Xavier managed to say long before anybody else could show their apathy.

“Do you?” At first she did not believe him. But as he sat convinced, she allowed herself to, possibly for the first time, look at Xavier with some kind of interest. At least an interest to talk to him, if at all.

Xavier should have taken the opportunity to at least win a gaze from the girl of his dreams like a civilized adult, but instead… “ Yeah! My stomach feels great after so much puking!”

Tina’s shoulder fell down with disappointment. She should have known better. Instead, she had to endure the trio doing their private male victory dance, again… One hand clap over their heads and three table taps later…

“So Tina, if you are so much into robots, you must like the star of the show. The very same Loser Boy… Avayan?” Rick continued Shawna’s work of disdain.

The first nation had pressed the red button. Nuclear missiles were crossing the oceans at full speed. And Tina-Land was not going to get caught with her arms crossed. She decided to deploy her own weapons of mass destruction…

“Actually, I find him to be quite cute.” Tina said. It was a lie. She had never looked at the nerd with those eyes. But she knew the entire table would be consumed with disbelief and repugnancy towards her remark. And she was right!

“Cute? The frigging nerd?” Shawna was disgusted. “Girl, you are a fine woman with good taste. Please do not make me go over there and smack some sense into you, sister!”

Tina looked at her cousin. Veranicce, as if receiving a telepathic message from a parallel dimension, understood the concerned look on her relative. It was obvious that hanging with Shawna was kind of acceptable, but the three boys were trouble. To Veranicce it was just all plain fun. But Tina was too mature to see it that way.

Tina turned to the other table, the one housing the three nerds. While her friends were laughing and making a hormonal mess, the three nerds were just chatting and having a good time without the need for utter chaos. It was respectful and mild mannered. They were clearly much more in control of themselves than Xavier and his gang. So she turned back to face her friends.

“You know, there is a reason why this world is ruled by the geeks. Perhaps there is something we could learn from them?”

The table went stone cold. Could they be actually getting what she had just said? Would this be the instant in which the five teenagers choose to reform their lives and respect the weaker? But who are we kidding, of course not!

It wasn’t very long before they could not even hold it. Cracking up, the three males spurted in laughter. Banging the table, as if it helped to regain their lost oxygen, the trio managed to convince the two girls it was mighty fine to join them. And so they did.

Veranicce felt some sort of shame for laughing at her cousin. She just could not help it. Shawna did not even attempt to fight it. Eventually, Tina herself had to mildly laugh, not because she thought it was all right, but rather because it was the only way to stay enjoying the cool status she had with her supposed friends at school. ‘Not that it matters too much’, she thought. But in reality it did.

In an instant, her brain betrayed her intentions. She was teleported to that day about a decade ago in which her older brother, Tommy, had returned home, crying and practically carried into the house by both parents. She could not understand it back then. Why had her brother tried to end his life? Why had he been discovered in one of the school rest room holding a half full large bottle of pills?

When the entire school found out Tommy had homosexual tendencies, they went nuts. His friends became his own executors. And that day, during their lunch recess, they had all gathered at the biggest school hallway to scream all sorts of names and bully him around. What had been good all times fun for the students, had been a catastrophe for a single mind. Tommy played along until the recess came to an end, but as soon as he had a chance, he asked for permission to go to the rest room. When he failed to return, the teacher suspected the worst. Luckily, they found him on time.

Tommy spent a few days at the hospital and then an even longer period of time at the house, before returning to school to finish his last year. He would spend most of his time lying in bed, as if waiting for the angel of death to be kind enough to take him into the underworld. That’s the image Tina remembered the most about that time. His brother lying in bed with one arm hanging from the side. Was he dead?

One day the small Tina ventured to find out. As she entered the spotless teenager room, still holding a teddy bear and wearing her pijamas, she saw a smile drawing on her brothers face. “I was supposed to protect you three, you know.” Tommy broke the silence.

“You can still protect us Tommy!” Tina assured her fallen brother.

“I was supposed to be the man of the house.” A tear broke free from her prison, strolling down the hills formed by Tommy’s cheeks. “I cannot even do that right.”

“You can be a nice lady, Tommy” the naïve Tina caressed her older brother’s loose brown hair. “Our new president is a lady and daddy says she has more balls than all the previous presidents on this century combined.”

For the first time in a long time Tommy was able to laugh. Then his chest dropped him back to his predicament. “There is an awful world out there, Tina! We definitely need women with big balls walking it. Please promise me you will be one of them! Do not let the crowds define who you are. You define the crowds for them, OK?”

Tina could not even dare to comprehend what her brother had requested of her that day. But shortly after their conversation, Tommy got up, finished school and set out to become a woman with balls himself. Except he was not into politics. He was more into fashion.

As he walked the ropes of the entrepreneur beautician and clothing designer, he would come to show his sisters how to get the job done. Shortly after graduating from College, Tommy made a name for himself in the clothing designer industry. Hollywood starlets would look up to him as they faced their biggest threats: the camera and the red carpets.

Tommy had defined the crowd and had not allowed the crowds to define him. And Tina felt she owed to do the same. As the table continued with their previous mockery, laughing their asses off, Tina allowed her quirky smile to dissipate.

“Your food will be right out, OK guys?” Tina said somberly. Then she turned to the nerd table once more, allowing her kindest smile to shine like the mid morning sun. “Is there anything you guys need?”

The nerds were petrified. To have such a beautiful girl direct her words at them was like seeing a Vulcan for the first time. It was literally First Contact! All they could do was wave a “thanks” while hiding their fear under their empty shake’s straw.

“Well let me know, OK?” and then Tina disappeared into the kitchen.

Avayan only had his temporary drivers permit. His dad would allow him to ride the old vehicle as long as there was another machine shop employee with him. Not because it was the law, but because as the teenager was so good at driving robots, he was as horrendously awful behind the really important wheel. “What Cracker Jack box did you get your license from?” Lionel used to ask his son, at the same time he braced for impact, any time it was his own set of shoes at the passenger seat.

Tonight, however, there was no time to look for a legal permit…

“I have Aladdin’s lamp!” the youngster said while driving down the expressway. “Holy Krapity! I have Aladdin’s lamp…”

The computer could hear him. She was well aware of who Aladdin and his famous lamp were. It made some sense to compare her with the fantastic oil lantern, housing the powerful genie which conceded three wishes to whoever had freed him.

‘You are lucky you are wrong, boy. Had there been only three wishes, I would have already consecrated the first one…’ the computer thought silently.

The truck entered a big mall, but did not stop until reaching the largest facility in the entire shopping complex. It looked like yet another warehouse, although perhaps ten to twenty times as large. And as it turns out, at some point in time a warehouse it had been. At the front, a humongous red neon sign read “Robo-Tantrics”. Below, smaller letters followed with “Where Cobotrox shops!”

Robo Tantrics excelled on selling the weirdest of all the components a robot could need. Ten years before, purchasing robots or related components could be accomplished by internet orders alone. Parts were scarce and more toy like than what real roboticists would want.

Eventually, in the same fashion that PC computers had changed from rarity to widely available commodities, robots had become a market to be exploited. And Robo-Tantrics was king!

After parking his torn down pickup truck far away from the entrance, as to make sure nobody else would scratch it, the young man grabbed his back pack, computer inside, and faster than a thought headed into the large geek haven. The parking lot was long. Seconds felt like minutes. ‘Will my new fountain of riches work?’ he thought. Of course it would!

As Avayan approached the store entrance, and before the large guy parked in to ensure store integrity was preserved asked his prospective customer to show up his back pack contents, our nerd had proceeded with the ritual, just like many times before. Except this time he was not into Window Shopping, but actual purchasing of some goodie! The large guy, barely looking inside the bag, nodded in acceptance, letting the youngster through the sacred gates.

The store was huge! There was a coffee and soda shop at the right, were customers read their favorite books and magazines while zipping their favorite “Eight Bucks” delicacies. At the left, about a hundred cash registers took care of the big serpentine of customers purchasing their long awaited for gadgetry.

As anybody would have expected it, the place was packed with nerds. Geeks from all ages and sorts, invaded the store on a daily basis. It was their own safe haven. Not even the local football team’s quarterback would dare to get into the store and scream “NERDS!” It would be far less painful to jump from the tenth floor of a building into a street filled with sharpened broom sticks.

In fact, a few years ago, a fraternity from a nearby college had asked its new members to get inside the store, insult the weaklings and then run out as soon as possible shortly after perpetrating the prank. To their bad luck, a group of customers were utilizing some of the store’s services to build one of their famed metal exoskeletons, a competition which had just started to pick up interest among enthusiasts at the moment.

The first fraternity initiation crew managed to walk in and out unharmed, but by the time the second and third group were able to install their prank show at the center of the store, two fully functional exoskeletons had been deployed. The beating made it into the newspapers, as the fraternity boys had to be accepted at the nearby hospital while the exoskeleton drivers were completely unscathed. At the end, the local Universities decided to make it illegal for fraternities to ask students to “attack” the Robo-Tantrics facilities.

Avayan loved spending long hours inside the store, window shopping for the next gadget. There was the “PC Corner”, more like an entire segment, detailing computer parts for the robot. Motherboards, CPU’s memory modules, Tera Drives, etc.

Farther down, the “Peripheral Island” hosted all sorts of components for robots. Arms, grippers, computer vision cameras, wheels of all sizes, pneumatic and electromagnetic actuators, you name it!

In the back of the store, a little machine shop with some tools featured space for enthusiast to gather and play. On Wednesdays, the local robotic club met and held some competitions. Avayan would come with Jay and participate on some of these competitions, the Flying Monkeys being his favorite one.

In this competition a remote controlled mobile robot was to speed down a ramp and as it flew into the abyss, a set of wings were to be deployed. It was then a matter of gladding into a fairly complex target, a disk filled with numbers. Of course the largest score, won.

Finally came the section Avayan was looking for: “The Core”! The spot were all the software could be found. In this case, Cobotrox 7.0, the ultimate robotic operating system.

“Yes! Finally, my own copy of Cobotrox 7.0!” Avayan contemplated the box as he had done many times before, only this time knowing it was he’s to keep.

Patrolling the Core was always a fat guy named Rod. Heavy glasses, chaotic beard and a big clump of hair resembling a mustache, Rod was an unemployed electrical engineer who found refuge on the store.

The store salary would never be as good as when he was corporately employed, but he liked the politics ridden environment much more. After working for Robo-Tantrics for a year a different firm popped out of nowhere and offered him a position as a Senior Engineer. He declined! As he liked to say, “It is just too much fun to spend my day in Nerdy-Land.”

“What’s up bro!” Rod greeted Avayan, his gloating eyes pulsing towards the big software box. “You are getting the Cobotrox 7.0? If only I were you, man!”

“Ye… Yes.. Yes!” Avayan said, his trembling voice backstabbing his intentions.

“Well, well! You are excited indeed. So why didn’t you downloaded it? It’s cheaper, man!”

Indeed it was. Hardly anybody bought software in boxes anymore. But the store policy was to offer the software anyway in case anybody was having a bad connection day and still needed the software. That practically never happened, though.

Of course using fake money was not going to work for Avayan if ordering the software as a downloadable. And his Paypal account was basically drained.

“I got an order on the machine shop, and this guy wanted to pay with cash, so you know… Feeling kind of rich today…” said the youngster hoping for the lie to fly.

“Enjoy it, man!” Rod saw the youngster leave The Core. A smile lighted up his face. It was well worth it to be a Robo-Tantrics clerk.

Avayan ran out of The Core and into the cash registers. Removing the counterfeit money from his back pocket he realized the dollar bills were just too identical. Could it raise some suspicion? Most likely not. He felt convinced tellers would hardly be in any mood to catch people with money replicas confectioned by time traveling computers.

Still, and for some reason he hated to try and find out, Avayan feared what had previously felt like a sure thing, to be heavily flawed. Regardless, he placed the $500 between both of his hands, shook them up viciously like an old document until the 25 bills looked similar no more. Then he felt slightly better!

The serpentine customer-filled line ran faster than usual, Avayan thought. When it was his turn, an employee at the front of the line pointed towards the next available cash register. “Ten, please…” the employee instructed as he waved towards the cash register with a flashing green semaphore.

The teller, an Indian girl, wearing glasses and portions of her hair painted red, greeted her customer. “You found everything OK, sir?”

“Yes I d-did! Thanks!” Avayan said as he placed the large box over the counter.

One beep later, the transaction was close to complete…

“Is there anything else, sir… Total would be $539.95.”

Avayan handled the crumpled ball of 20 dollar bills to the cashier. It was not odd for her to receive such a messy load of money. Heck! It was better than some geeks paying for their purchase with cents, as some of them had done before. When on Earth would the completely useless cents go down into extinction lane, she used to ponder.

“Sir, there is only 500 dollars here.” The teller came back.

What? 500 dollars? CRAP! He had forgotten about the tax. In vain, he searched his back pocket once again. How about his first 20 dollar bill? The one he had the computer replicate?

A quick glimpse into his memory allowed him to remember his exact words “I want 25 of these.” And the computer had done just that: 24 replicas and the original. Well, one thing was certain. The computer was awesome at following orders.

Disappointed and head down, Avayan started to realize he would, once again, have to wait to get his beloved software. Like an instinct he checked his back pockets again.

Nothing on the first one and…

“What is this?” his eyes glistened as he felt a papery texture at his finger tips. Could it be? Yes! It was $40, just what he needed.

“My! I love it when I find extra money in my pockets. I had totally forgotten…” Avayan faked a smile, while his mind rushed a futile attempt towards solving the mystery. Where on Earth does the extra $40 came from?

The cashier, almost smiling, counted the money once again and finished the transaction. She placed the big box in a plastic bag and handled the receipt to her customer. “Here you go sir. Please keep the receipt handy and show it at the door. Come and visit us again!”

As soon as Avayan was gone, her fake smile disappeared forever. Flipping a switch by the cash register, her semaphore started to flash green again.

The machine shop was basically a big warehouse lodging industrial machinery like three milling machines, two lathes, four drills and four vertical saws. The place was dusty, greasy and messy, the floor filled with all sorts of metal fragments and shards. A smell of oil and lubricants greeted visitors moments after the door was opened.

A more technologically advanced portion of the shop contained all sorts of Computer Numeric Control equipment such as CNC routers and mills, CO2 lasers, plasma cutters, etc. but to Avayan this was like storage space, as there was nothing like actually engaging industrial equipment “with my own hands” as he liked to point out, something hardly possible with the computer controlled versions.

The last room stocked metallic media like steel and aluminum, some plastics like acrylics and amphenol and minor amounts of woods and glass. Avayan preferred the metal to anything else, as the results were always sturdier.

Finding a non cluttered work bench was kind of a challenge. Finally he found a suitable enough portion of a table, which only needed a few jigs relocated. Avayan felt it would be sad to get his new toy scratched, so he made certain the spot was as pristine as a richie boy would keep his garage the very same day he had walked out his new Lamborghini out of the dealer.

“OK” he greeted the computer. “My friend Jay will be here shortly enough. Together we will figure out what are you and what to do with you.”

“Master Avayan” the computer seemed concerned. “In the time where I come from we fully appreciate the meaning of a friend. So I understand it is of your best intention to include your own on this very important finding. Unfortunately, I feel it is of utter importance that my identity be kept confidential for the time being. If you do show me to your friends I will retransform myself to look like an ordinary computer. Just wanted to let you know.”

Avayan frowned. He hated the idea of keeping secrets. Not only because he was quite bad at keeping them but because it drove him nuts that other did kept them from him. Apparently there was not too much of a choice so all he could do was comply with the requirement.

“Whatever.” He accepted. “I guess we are avoiding getting you into the wrong hands or something like that, right? I mean, if some government officials were to find you, no doubt you would end up in some fancy lab getting your guts all spread out on a lab table.”

“You are very attentive of detail, Master Avayan.” The computer said appreciative.

“So lets cut to the chase. How on Earth did you do your thing back at the alley?”

“Quite simple actually. Master Avayan.” The computer started. “I am what will be known in the future as a mattergy replicator. In other words, I posses the ability to transform matter into energy and energy into matter according to patterns programmed into my memory banks.”

Impressive! What scientist were still trying to do in the lab with machines larger than entire cities, this computer could do in the space a conventional laptop of about a decade ago would occupy.

“Per example, in the alley,” the computer continued, “I morphed the steel blade into a malleable plastic in order to avoid your injury. Then I applied a pulsonic blast of acoustic energy which launched the thief into oblivion. It was similar to polarizing the air in the back and front of him creating a differential in potential which his body had to follow.”

For an instant, Avayan wished he was better versed in physics than he was in robot building or programming. He was certain some of his geeky friends could understand all the jargon the computer had offered. At least he had an idea. Never would he have guessed, though, that at some time into the near future, it would be him carrying adult conversations with the computer on similar topics.

“I am sorry, but I do not understand how you can change steel to plastic.” the young protested. “I mean, this sounds like the Philosophers Stone. Changing lead to gold kind of deal.”

“Well I could do that too…” Computron assured. “You see, today it is believed that matter is made of atoms. And that atoms are made of electrons, protons and neutrons. In turn each of these are made up from quarks and yadah, yadah, yadah! What scientists are failing to see is that in reality each spatial dot consists of information. A percentage is matter and the reaminder is energy. By carefully moving these percentages up and down you can change matter into energy and vice versa. All you have to know is what is the content of each spatial dot and voila!”

“Well, I’ll be frigging darned! Is that it all?” Avayan mocked the computer. “You make it sound so easy! How come we can not do it?”

“Could you place a computer on top of your desk, or even your lap, 50 years ago?” it was now the computer mocking the other. “Could you fly on top of a big lump of metal 150 years ago? Humans will get to it, you will see.”

“Well… If you say so…” The young conceded.

Avayan looked around. He wanted to run a test on this cool technology he was for the first time engulfing his brains routes with. What could he test it with? A nearby ¼-20 hex nut caught his attention. It was small, but there was no point in trying something big. At this point he had still not fully featured the true meaning of what Computron could do. Soon, just as you, he would!

“Well let’s see. “ Avayan waved the nut in front of the computer screen. “Can you make this nut change to…”

One blue zap later and the metallic nut started to melt on Avayan’s hand. Still it felt cold.

“It’s mercury.” The computer assured. “But don’t worry there is a fine film of a malleable polymer protecting your skin from its toxic properties.”

“Could you make it solid again?” the young wondered. “Something like…”

Once again, the computer interrupted the spectator with the same blue flash as before. In this instant, though the no longer mercury blob had hardened to a metal Avayan would have never seen before. Picking it up on his hand, he noticed the solid blob like piece of metal even had his finger prints imprinted on its sides, right where it had been melting before. His fingers, on the other hand, where not affected at all.

“You are witnessing a metal, not invented yet, future humans will come to call steelium. The sci fi material referred to as adamantium is like rubber compared to this. The computer explained. “Of course you need to pass a carefully controlled electric current to make it as hard…”

Avayan’s curiosity could not be satisfied. So he dropped the solid piece of metal. As soon as it hit the floor, it shattered into a gazillion fragments.

“Impressive! … Most impressive!” Avayan then breathed down like his old time favorite movie character, Darth Vader.

The youngster was now piecing the puzzle together. A computer with the ability to change the constitution of metals and he loved working with them in his machine shop. Could this get any better? He had no idea…

With Machiavellian cynicism, his mind jumpstarted a new daydreaming session.

Avayan is back at the school sitting on a bench at the same time he types a few messages in the computer.

“Get ready, Compu.” He types in Computron IX’s keyboard. “Soon we will have revenge!”

“Of course Master. Whatever you say. I await you orders?” the computer replies on the same screen.

A few seconds later, Xavier zips in as he walks with two gorgeous girls occupying his solid arms.

From a distance, our hero waits for the brigand to grow as close as perfection dictates. And when he is…

“Compu, transform the metal on this scum bucket of evil’s belt into goo!” Avayan types.

The little cannon, comes up again and with a single blue flash, the crime has been perpetrated.

It is in slow motion that Avayan sees Xavier’s pants roll down. The mastodon keeps on walking not noticing his underwear is showing. Eventually, the pants become a tripping hazard and with a single stroke, his nose propels right onto the floor.

Xavier gets up as fast as he can, only to find the entire school laughing at him. Wrestling with his torn pants, he manages to briefly pull them up and run towards the bath room, not before going by the malicious-smile packed Avayan.

Back in reality Avayan, arms up and facing the ceiling, is actually laughing like Dr. Frankestein. Had the dream been any different he would have concluded it with “Its Alive!” Instead his maniacal laughter reverberated by itself in the junk crowded halls of the machine shop.

The computer was close to fear his new master gone crazy. “Hey wake up! What is going on with you, Master? Are you all right?”

Avayan calmed down. “Oh Compu… Is it OK, if I call you Compu?”

“Sure!” she replied.

“We are going to have a blast tomorrow! You see, there is this guy at school and if your metal changing abilities are as good as I think they are, we will…”

“Excuse me master.” The computer interrupted. “But I am afraid you are rather confused. I am not a metal manipulator. I am actually far much more than that!”

“What do you mean?” Avayan frowned.

“Do you have any piece of food left from your school day?”

Not understanding what kind of a relationship his lunch could have with anything else, Avayan opened his brown lunch bag and rustled its content until the single item he would never eat showed up. An Apple! A green one.

“Ah yes!” The computer expressed with gusto. “An Apple is quite appropriate, I must add. It was, as you humans believe, the reason for your race to be expelled from the paradise. And what a fantastic metaphor when it was given to Snow White, its sole purpose to kill her.”

Not certain where the computer was heading to with her literature appreciation moments, Avayan placed the green apple in the table. Was the computer going to cook it or transform it into a delicious dessert? Either way, he did no longer felt like eating it. Not after it had been compared to poison!

“OK here we go!” the computer announced.

The apple started to float in mid air. Revolving in its axis, the computer analyzed its exact molecular content to the spatial dot. Each single piece of information was recorded inside its memory banks and with a single flash…

ZOOM! the apple had been copied into an exact replica. Both apples were now sitting on top of the table. Avayan squeezed his eyes.

“Am sorry Compu, but that last flash blinded me. I am seeing double!”

He was not. There were in reality two apples. He could just not grab the concept yet.

His eyes finally settled in, but it was his brain who would actually deduce the mystery at hand. The apples did made it look like he was seeing double. They were just too perfect. The little tail, every single dot mark and the brand stamp were totally identical. However, everything else in the table, such as screws, drivers and manuals, were exactly as they were before. He was not seeing double and the two apples were not an optical illusion caused by messy eyes. The two apples were just waiting for him.

Could it be a hologram? Avayan grabbed his apple. It still felt like it had done before. Thinking the other apple was some kind of pretty cool reflection, he waved his other hand hoping to see it going through the impressively accurate tri dimensional image. Instead, he felt his fingers hit the apple, almost trampling it into the dirty machine shop floor. Avayan’s reflex were quicker, witch a quick grab later, both of his hands were now holding the exact same thing. Literally!

Finally he was starting to see the truth.

“WHOA! Wait a moment…” Avayan practically peed on himself. His gaze motioned erratically back and forth between both apples. “There are two apples? How did you do this?”

“I explained this earlier, sir!” the computer said. “It is a matter of…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know!” Avayan interrupted. “Changing the information on each dot in the space and transforming matter to energy. And whatever…”

“I think you are getting it, sir!” The computer seemed pleased.

“So you are like a food replicator in the Star Trek series, are you not?” Avayan asked.

“Sir it could be considered an insult to render me just a lame food processor. I can assure you there is far much more I can do than just copy the apple. Now, why don’t you taste them both, and see what I mean?

Avayan looked at the computer skeptically. “Are you nuts? I am not eating this! God knows what you have placed inside. Just a few seconds ago, you were telling me about getting our asses kicked out of paradise and Snow White’s poisoning, for God’s sake!”

“I realize the metaphor was a pretty bad idea on my behalf, Master Avayan” the computer conceded. “But unless I were to suffer from a fetish in which I love to see my victims retort in the middle of the floor after I apply a deadly poison to nearby food, don’t you think that if I wanted to kill you, I would just have left that thief’s knife to stay in its original metal form?”

The computer had a point. But their relationship was just too infant for him to trust her intentions right out of the blue. Avayan sliced both apples with a nearby metallic ruler. It was not too sharp, but it did the job.

Taking both apples apart, Avayan lost track of which apple was his original. Had this been a game of roulette in which his apple was in good shape while the copy had been poisoned, it would have been impossible to keep track of which one it would have been safe to chew on. In essence, this would have amounted to a 50/50 probability of biting the bucket. Once again, Avayan pushed his paranoia aside.

Instead the young man decided to focus on the search for some kind of flaw. To his surprise, as much as the apples were identical on the outside, they were equally indistinguishable from the inside. The seeds, the stem, everything was where it was supposed to be! The only difference he could discern was the very same cut he had placed on each apple. And since it was of his own doing, he could not but to agree the two darn apples were as identical as they could get. Would they taste like it?

Armed with valor, Avayan took a byte on a segment from each apple. It was impossible to tell them apart. In fact, when sampling the second apple, he felt a weird sense of Déjà vu. Had he chewed on that apple earlier? Practically, he had.

“I don’t believe this.” The young was outraged. “These two apples are virtually identical!”

“Not virtually, sir” The computer said. “They are a 100 percent identical! I managed to extract the apple’s information on the space time continuum and made an exact replica. And thanks to my Caigas Project gun, I can basically do the same with practically anything else!”

“Ehhh… a Ca-What?”

“A Caigas Project, sir!” Computron IX continued. “In the not so distant future, one of your scientists will develop a superbly important piece of equipment referred to as the Tetra Dimensional Expander, or TDE. It allows other spatial dimensions to be expanded, granting us the capability to extract information we could not even dare to obtain by just perusing the universe in three dimensions. The Caigas Project utilizes this technology as a mechanism to extract mattergy information we can then use to attain the results you have just witnessed.”

Avayan could only nod as if actually understanding what the computer was explaining. Excited, the computer was amazed she had found such a primitive entity capable of following on such complex topics. “So you see, since time is a dimension in itself, the TDE gives us the ability to control the rate at which we move on said dimension. This is how then we can overcome issued such as the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty and gather the spatial dot information from the original, as required to make a perfect copy. We can then do the same in reverse, while we are generating the actual copy.”

Avayan’s eyes remained as opened as incredulous. Was the computer under the impression that a measly teenager could even dare to understand a technology so far ahead the brightest minds on the planet had not even begun to propose as plausible? Seriously, the computer must have realized that just blahbing whatever complete nonsense she could have come up with would have offered the same result.

Somehow, Avayan still felt there was some truth to the complexities his ears were now been bombarded with. “Let me see if I understand this absurdity. You are telling me that you are expanding the space, like zooming into the whatever dots you just talked about, reading the information and then WHAMO! You make a copy? Like copying a file from the net bit by bit?”

The computer had to realize the young man had literally given birth to an explanation as good as it was going to get. It was rather far from the reality, but as she liked to point out, once the end result is the same, however we get there is meaningless. “YUP! You got it!” Although, he had not. It was time to move on…

As the computer prepared its internal processing units to continue with the tutorial, she decided to pause and contemplate the completely concentrated youngster caressing his chin, sight moving wildly from side to side as if fetching instructions from his own brain. “Do you know what this means…” Avayan murmured into mid air.

Of course the computer more than well knew what it all meant. What the teenager was thinking, however, is what she wanted to know.

Avayan stopped his wandering eyes as he fixated pupils at the computer screen, now clearly addressing her. “Do you know what this means?” His voice was now sturdier.

There was silence. Avayan grabbed the computer and grew it as close as possible to  his face just like him and Jay would do to each other when joking around about discoveries. “DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS!!!!!!” He was now screaming his lungs off.

The computer had to tune down her perception sensors not to hear the young man scream as in the middle of a Heavy Metal concert. By the time she realized Avayan had placed the computer back on the table she found herself following a frantic boy running from side to side on the big warehouse.

“PHOCKING CRAP I AM RICH!!!!!” Avayan’s excitement was evident.

“Yup, he is nuts! I lost the little guy” The computer said, not knowing whether the next rightful step was to laugh or zap her young master out of his delirium.

Avayan got on top of a Bridgeport Milling Machine table with  a quick jump. It was a big mistake, as such precision equipment does not take such  a jolt likely. It was most likely going to need major recalibration. The young man could care less. He could buy a ship load of these machines now. Grabbing the Z Axis drill handle and screaming into the belt casing, Avayan continued with his frenzy. “I AM RICH, I TELL YOU!!! I AM RICH!!!

How long this nonsense took for, the computer wished she could lost track of. She couldn’t. So At the end, all she could allow herself to do was wait for the natural response of a jackpot to wear off. For a brief instant she wished she could experience such a fantastic trip into the wild, but such a feeling quickly wore off as she realized her life was already a jackpot.

By the time the young man rushed back to the computer, eyes glowing like a 600 Watt incandescent lamp and fixated on his luscious treasure, the apparent adrenaline inrush had been contained. Sweating like a pig and trying to catch his breath, he decided to conclude his workout. “I am frigging rich Compu! Darn it, I can not even believe it!”

“OK Master, that sounds awesome and all, but I truly hope you are not thinking about posting me on that dreadful ebay website, are you?” the computer said with a hint of a joke and genuine concern.

But Avayan knew better. Not even the entire fortune of the top ten Forbes Billionaires could compare to the power he contained in his bare hands. Oh no! If this machine could create perfect replicas, he was already as good as rich! Screw morphing metals and achieving superfluous revenges back at school! All he needed was…

Reaching into his right back pocket, the still shook  up teenager felt his ticket to salvation. A 20 dollar bill. It was not enough to do much these days. But if the computer could copy it, then he could have $40. And if he could copy it once, why not twice? Since the replicas were perfect, it should be evident the new paper money would be totally legal as well. Right? Well for one they would be impossible to tell them apart, and in essence they would be like the same dollar bills the government had created. Why not?

Avayan placed the $20 bill flat in the table. “Here! I want 25 of these!”

“But sir…” the computer was about to oppose when the decided young interrupted.

“Ah, ah! You call me master, which means you have to follow my orders.” Avayan counter attacked totally aware he was leaping into treacherous waters. “Come on, now. I want to see $500!”

“As you wish, Master Avayan!” the computer accepted.

Avayan zoomed in to his cell phone while he looked in amazement his $20 dollar bill floating in mid air. “YES!” just like he had suspected, he was well on his way to riches!

“Jay” Avayan spoke towards the speech activated cell phone, which then speed dialed his best friend’s cell phone number.

Three flashes later, and $60 dollars richer, Jay answered his phone. “What’s up dude?”

“Hey! Are you coming?” Avayan wiped his forehead, excited, $100 richer.

“Darn it! man, I have to wait until my sister’s class is over. This is what happens when I take my dad’s motorcycle without his permission.” Jay replied back over the phone.

“No Jay, this is what happens when you crash your dad motorcycle!” Avayan smirked, hard to say whether it was at his friend’s ironic fate, or his richness materializing in front of his own eyes.

“Ah, whatever, dude! How late will you stay up there?” Jay grimaced back.

“Uhh… Actually I have to go out and run some errands. Maybe we can get started tomorrow?”

The duo kept talking over the phone discussing the logistics for just one tad longer, barely enough for the remainder of the $500 to pop up into existence, new bills slowly floating and waving down towards the table.

Avayan hanged up. “My God! This is really happening. I am filthy rich! YES!” the youngster screamed.

“But sir…” the computer once again tried to warn Avayan about the horrendous mistake he was about to commit.

“We will talk later, Compu. Now we are going shopping!” And in saying so, the teenager shut off the computer top, placed it on his bag and exited the machine shop, with $500 ruffled on his back pocket. He could not remember when was the last time he have had so much cash stuffed into his pants. It almost made it harder to walk out.

The computer could have still talked or even stopped this non sense from happening if she had wanted to. However, she decided to play this game a little bit longer. It was the perfect opportunity to teach the youngster a very important lesson.

Although Lionel, Avayan’s dad, was an electrical engineer, he had always wanted to own his own machine shop to work on special projects. As it turns out, though, Lionel would hardly use it, being most of the time busy traveling and meeting with customers. To Avayan it was a dream come true.

It did not matter to him it was the machine shop the real reason why their house was humble and he was not one of the rich boys at school. Instead he felt like a millionaire every time a piece of solid aluminum took shape at his command as he wheeled the X and Y axis on his Bridgeport milling machine. Same with the lathes, saws, drills and any other tool he happened to use for that matter.

“A robot that changes car tires, now that is an awesome idea!” Avayan said out loud to himself as he navigated the streets. “This robot could actually come in handy for much more than the competition…”

In saying so, Avayan allowed his wild imagination to take over, as he would do every now and then. Day dreaming, the escape to the perfect world. A world in which he ruled and everything happened according to the way things should be. In other words, a world of pure fantasy…

There is a desolated road on the dessert. Alone in the nothingness a car drives at full speed squandering the asphalt right out of its socket. All of a sudden, the car starts to screech his way into the pull over lane, a punctured tire being the culprit.

The car door opens. Tina Jennings, wearing nothing but a small white T shirt and considerably shorter pants, gets down from the car and looks at the totally busted tire. Tina scoffs, her short bob haircut eventually settling.

From nowhere and behind Tina, a white ban appears and parks at the other side of the road. Jay is driving the vehicle. The van’s door slides open. Avayan, wearing a white lab coat and dark glasses is carrying a humongous RC plane remote control with much more buttons and antennas than a NASA main frame.

“My lady, having car trouble?” Avayan asks the stranded female. This time, he is not petrified and finds it very easy to talk to her.

Tina smiles rejoicing from his presence. “Thank God you are here! My tire just went flat. Could you help me change it?”

“Oh no problem my lady…” Avayan flips a switch on his remote control and with a sonic blast a four wheeled robot is jettisoned from the van. It actually looks like the robot has jumped through a ramp. In slow motion, the coolest robot ever, flies through the air as it grows closer to the flat tire.

With the precision of a highly accurate piece of equipment, the robot lands close to the busted tire, rotates a full 180 degrees and moves itself to be halfway below the car.

An arm comes out with a scissor jack which is then deployed below the car just besides the affected tire. The robotic arm jack whirs and buzzes. The lift goes up with the car following.

Once the car’s blown tire is off the road a second arm comes out with a pneumatic ratchet which in fractions of a second removes the five tire screws. A third arm grabs the defective tire and a forth arm places the new tire on the car.

Where on Earth is this robot getting so many arms from, or how it all works is of no importance to Avayan at this point in time. He is not even considering how plausible said robot, or the service to help deserted stranded damsels in distress, is. This is his dream and all he is concerned with is… Well, for it to be dreamy! And his mind is doing quite the good job.

The car is down and ready to roll. Tina is amazed and practically drooling at the robot’s performance. But much more than the robot, she is pleased her good friend, and lover, has come to her rescue.

Tina is done checking her car. She now turns to face her savior. She grabs the massive remote control pending from a heavy strap, and slips it towards Avayan’s back.

Avayan does not move. Not because he is petrified scared, but because he is cool and the fact that the most beautiful girl on the planet about to kiss him is nothing else but what he lives for.

Tina approximates her lips to Avayan’s but…

Back in reality our day dreamer fails to realize he has just let his path go into a not so friendly part of town. The sidewalk has now become convoluted with trash bags and waste cans. What his personal transporter could have simply cruised with ease before, now required much more control. A control his mental voyage would not allow.

The right Sedgewick’s wheel catches an old and broken down 32” CRT TV lying on the street. Instead of stopping, the multi DSP controlled transportation device thought off increasing opposing wheel speed.

The Sedegewick tilted too fast for Avayan to control, propelling his body into the hard cement sidewalk, while the sophisticated transport did manage to stay up in its typical vertical position, ready for his owner to resume control. Instead, Avayan had to lay in the ground, his butt aching after the massive fall. It reminded him the last time he had attempted to get on ice skates. It had hurt on his buttocks for days! There was no reason for this time to be any different.

The young day dreamer thought of finishing his mental adventure, but instead decided on sitting down. Maybe later he would have resumed the tale, but realizing he had just landed on the part of town he would want to stay the least, made him reset his mindset and focus on a much more meaningful goal: getting the hell out of there!.

He was too close to Weird All Alley, a dark spot on Moronney City perfect to commit legal suicide. It was uncertain whether it was all an urban legend or reality, but according to folklore, people wanting to end their lives only had to enter the alley. Chances were they would not come out. Not alive, that is. No need for taking pills or jumping from a building. Whoever, or whatever, lived in there would take care of them.

All of a sudden the most annoying and unusual sound he could have ever heard crippled his hearing. Was it hell unfolding before him? It was coming from within the Alley, no wonder it had been named Weird All…

Avayan dislodged his butt ache from his mind and grabbed his things as quick as he could. Got up on his Sedgewick and cranked the accelerator when…

“Avayan!” He heard his name being called from within the darkness. This was no human voice. The sound of his name had been mixed with the sharpness of the still shocking demonic reverberation.

Chest fright settled in. He though of cranking the accelerator even more, but the faster he thought he should be going, the slowest he got. Glancing towards the power meter showed his fuel cell to be empty. How could it be? It should have lasted way longer than that. At least it had been for the past few months and fuel cells were not meant to degrade so fast.

“Avayan!” The same voice called again.

Nobody else was walking around the street. Could the same be true about the alley? ‘What if there is somebody trying to rob me?’, he thought. ‘Even worst, stab me!’

The scared youngster grabbed the heavy transporter and though of how ironic for him to be hauling that which has supposed to haul him. “Crappy technology”, he told himself.

As Avayan continued to walk away from the dark alley, he found himself stopping abruptly. Was he still daydreaming or had he just heard a message completely unbelievable to his senses? It was numbers. Hexadecimal numbers representing the ASCII codes for each one of the characters in his name.

For a brief instant he pondered on whether it was a prank. If it was, it would be a very sophisticated one, he concluded.

Whatever the case, it was enough to make him consider entering the alley. Well at least face the entrance to it.

Weird All was very long, made up by a series of large industrial buildings at the right and a humongous warehouse at the left. Who had transformed the corridor into a big dump, was uncertain. What was not a question was how many low life criminals and homeless bums, it harbored.

Avayan looked in. Boxes, large green waste containers, and 25 gallon drums chaotically arranged, made the alley look like a guerrilla war zone. It was precisely what he had expected to see. However…

“Hey! Who is there? Who is calling me?” he asked the alley.

It was then when he noticed at the center of the messy passageway, this shiny something.  As if being called by it, he rushed to grab it. He was now entering the belly of the beast, so he made a mental note to play Guillotine, like on his physical Ed class, grab the thing and run out of his doom as fast as he could.

Once in his hands, he looked at the shiny object in disbelief. The mini-laptop like enclosure was gorgeous. There was not a single scratch. Who would have left such a precious item in the middle of such a trashy place?

Could it be bait to get him into the Alley? He was not that far away from the sidewalk, but still managed to remember his mental note. The youngster would have started running out from the dreaded place, but…

From above where he found the shiny laptop, he saw a swirling blue darkness, surrounded by gorgeous lightning-like random streaks. Clearly this odd phenomenon was the one causing the still hearable noise that once seemed to call him. What was it? The disk like aura was thin, no depth showed as he circled it.

 “It is a worm hole.” He heard the thin shinny enclosure tell him. “We managed to break the time-space continuum in such a fashion that the now present is totally connected with the then future”

Avayan looked perplexed at the metallic enclosure. Was this some sort of communications device, or was it a recording? “You talk?” he focused on the apparently alive computer like object.

Before he had entered the alley, Avayan would have considered what came up next a big no-no. But being consumed by total confusion it became impossible for him to rationalize whether crossing the now called worm hole was a good idea or not.

His hand entered the revolving dark patch and to his amazement it simply banished into nothingness as the other side on the floating disk showed the alley’s air.

All of a sudden he felt another hand grasping his. Scared enough, he quickly pulled out from the hole. It felt as if the entity at the other side of the worm hole had shaken his hand, though. No evil attempt to pull him into the dark side. As soon as the hand shacking gesture was complete, he was released from the completely friendly grasp.

“It must have been your descendants on that other side. They always wanted to greet you” The computer explained.

“What?” the adolescent said with a mixture of disbelief, fear and excitement gorging up on his chest like a frappe of all sorts of fruits and ice creams on a blender.

Once again his mental note kicked in. “Get out of here!” it read on his mind, only to find his legs frozen, not allowing him to leave the beautiful hole behind. A few seconds later, the portal started to constrict itself into a dot and then disappeared, the weird sound tagging along.

“Amazing!” Avayan said to himself as he waved his hand where the portal had once been. There was no trace of it. “No wonder this place is called Weird All Alley. A worm hole that acts like a time machine and a computer that talks?”

“You have computers that talk!” the shiny laptop said.

She was right. But even with the 16 parallel processor personal computers of his day had, they could still not talk like the one he was holding now.

“I suggest we get out of here, young man.” The computer requested.

Avayan realized he had ignored his mental note too many times. But what amazed him the most was the fact the computer was concerned as well. As much as it all pointed towards the same goal on saving his neck from certain doom, he could not help but to wonder on how fishy it all seemed to be.

But unfortunately, and most likely for the first time on our story, the computer had been right. Avayan had been on Weird All alley far longer than he had bargained for. And his curiosity towards the worm hole and the computer had rendered him totally unconscious of the not to be trusted pair of eyes which had settled on him.

“Where are you talking to me from, Jay?” Avayan’s sight questioned first the computer and then the air and walls surrounding him. “Is this a joke, Jay? Hah! Good One! What kind of holographic special effect did you pulled to get the…” Avayan stopped to crack up as he faced up, while with his free hand quoted “The worm hole?”

 “I must concede that this does look like a joke to you, Mr Avayan.” The computer came up again. “However, it is not.”

The computer paused briefly. Avayan skepticism could only grow larger. He started to look around hoping to see his friends, most likely Jay and a big load of geeks aiding and abetting the hooligan,  hiding behind some of the torn down pieces of junk lying everywhere.

”My name is Computron IX (pronounced Aye EX). I come from the year 2358 as an experimental black hole generator warped the time and space continuum. It ruptured the fabric in such a fashion that the two dates are now connected in a single instance”

Avayan looked at the computer again. He saw his reflection on the upper lid. What he did not see was a guy approaching from behind.

“Come on Jay, you already explained this earlier.” Avayan said. “Come out OK? Now I understand why you told me you had to drive your sister. You actually think I was going to buy it? “

“Master Avayan” the computer implored. “According to the little archives I hold on this time frame, it is common knowledge back in my time, that it will take some time for me to convince you of the veracity of my claims. However, there is really a great danger lurkin if we stay within the alley’s premises. I suggest we…”

The computer was interrupted by the burglar tackling Avayan. Dropped into the floor, the shiny laptop found her worst fears coming true. If only she could have been more convincing.

Avayan had been knocked down, his belly being squeezed against the dirty pavement. He tried to get up and run, but the hijacker’s weight forbid him from doing so. ‘Twice in a day’ he thought. ‘Maybe I should do some exercise after all!’

The thief grabbed the teenager’s left arm and with a single swing turned him to face up. Once again, the bandit’s weight and powerful grip prevented him from escaping the doom he had feared since the beginning, when he recorded his mental note for the first time. A huge and rusty, but still sharp, knife came to the big picture.

The knife innocently cruised Avayan’s chest to barely stop at his neck, where the first sign of deadly pressure could be perceived.

“Give me that shinny thing and we will all leave happy, All righty?” the thief demanded.

“But I don’t have it” the young managed to reply “You just threw it somewhere down there. On one of those junk piles.”

The thief applied pressure on Avayan’s chest with his entire right forearm. For a few seconds, the knife waved like crazy, at least not by his neck. His artery felt relieved.

The thief looked around into the alleged junk pile in search for his new found treasure. “Fine rig you were carrying there, lad” the thief conceded. “I shall get me some fine bucks with it, I’ll say.”

The thief wanted the laptop to sell it? “You put the laptop in there to lure me in, you frigging retard.” Avayan said.

“What? Me not!” The thief replied. “It is not yours? Don’t lie to me, where is it?”

Failing to see the device and not wanting to loose it either, the thief got up, pulling Avayan up from an arm.

The thief continued scanning the floor in search for the device while he pushed the adolescent into the closest wall, grabbing his neck with his left grip, and mildly pushing the knife unto Avayan’s belly with his right. “Where is it, I say?”

But the computer was no longer on the floor. Levitating, most likely being held by some sort of anti gravitational field, the computer was now floating towards the thief. He could not see it, although Avayan could. The vision was indeed jaw dropping.

The computer rightmost side compartment opened and a small, practically tiny, cannon-like device sprung to life with a radiant blue hue, oscillating menacingly. The canon was fired with what seemed to be a photo flash. The implications would be far much more devastating, though.

Pissed off, the thief decided to finish his victim’s life. Only then would he have enough time to look for his missing riches without having to worry on having some kid with a loose tongue running amok to the cops.

With a firm thrust, the knife went into Avayan’s belly. The thief fixed his gaze on the stabbed teenager’s eyes, now gasping for life. Being an experienced murderer, he was well aware of how a victim’s pair of whites balls would turn as their commanding brain flashed for the very last times before the big finale and last breath had expired.

Avayan’s eyes were indeed filled with horror. He could feel the other man’s hand applying pressure to the center of his body at the same time the knife handle moved around on what seemed to be a deadly wound. He felt no pain, however. No warmth, no ache, nothing!

The thief’s legs started to flow impatient. It should not have taken so long. By then, the teenager’s eyes should have rolled back and their sockets filled with blood. Then the body weight would have played one last role in tearing skin, as well as major organs, as gravity sucked it in against the deadly blade. Nothing like that was happening.

In fact, the alley assassin could not even feel warm blood oozing out or the typical whimpering a dying victim would exhibit. Something was not right.

Looking down, the thief was surprised to notice the knife grip was all there was to see. Where was the blade if not inside the youngster? The thief pulled the knife out only to see an all bent rubber like blade where his metal weapon had been before.

“What the hell?” the thief gasped perplexed. “It was hard metal a few seconds ago! Is goo now!”

 At first he though he had encountered Superman! It was definitely time to run, the crook realized. The computer, on the other hand, did not give him too much of a chance.

 The small canon like weapon started to glow again. High energy emanation, as well as sparks with blue beams of lightning and white balls of power, started to condense in front of the small gun.  And in one quick burst, all the energy was released towards the thief, launching him at least 200 feet into the alley, pretty much like a baseball ball home run out of the field.

“We must leave now, Master Avayan!” The computer ordered.

Whether the flying thief had survived the impact or not, mattered little. The young man simply grabbed the floating computer and ran out of the alley as fast as he could. Once back into the light, Avayan felt certain he was owned a great deal of clarification.

“What the hell is going on? Explain! How did you do that?” Avayan pondered, still catching his breath. “This is not a joke, is it?”

“I am glad you realize it, Master Avayan.” the computer expressed her content. “I have been charged with your survival, so failing to protect you back in the alley would have been quite a failure on my behalf.”

“Oh! Don’t tell me there will be robots sent from the future to kill me, and you are my protector.” Avayan said kind of kidding. Or was he?

“I would not be worried about more temporal vortex opening up, Master.” The computer said. “As far as we know, there will be not much more time traveling in the upcoming centuries.”

We? Who was the computer referring to? “Are there more of you? If there is, you better go and pick them up. I am not going back into that alley. I don’t care who calls me!” Avayan assured the computer.

“I apologize, Master” the computer replied. “It is an old habit I will have to discontinue. You see, barely a few minutes ago I was part of a highly advanced society and for centuries I was an integral member of said society. That is the ‘we’ I refer to. Since it can no longer hold true, not for the next hundred years or so, I shall reprogram my internal heuristics for it not to make sense any more.”

“We better get out of here.” Avayan realized. “I am heading to my machine shop, where I expect to fully understand who are you and why you called me.”

“It will be my pleasure, sir” the computer said closing its lid.

Avayan placed the computer inside his book bag and grabbed the Sedgewick with the intentions of walking it towards the machine shop. However, a quick glance into the battery gas gauge showed it was fully powered on. ‘Strange…’, he thought. And with one “whatever” later he had hopped into the transporter, now driving at full speed towards his final destination. This time he would not allow his mind to betray the route. Although he enjoyed it quite considerably, there would not be any more daydreaming. Not today, at least.

The room of interest, out of thousands in the facility, was the Central Command Bridge. Filled with the most advanced equipment in the planet, the CCB was where important decisions were made.

All gray and with mid lighting, it looked like a few football fields sewn together in the shape of a hemisphere. Rows and rows of desks housed hundreds of analysts carefully looking at their own holo screen. Sometimes they would use their hands to move content from side to side, sometimes the computer would pick their eye movement, as well as other facial expression, and reorganize the image accordingly.

The rows were arranged in a step fashion, almost suggesting some form of hierarchy. Those at the bottom of the pit, could have easily been literally at the bottom of the hierarchy. It was not explicit, but every now and then somebody from the bottom would make it up, and sometimes somebody from a higher row would have to move down. You would not want to move down if you were on the first row. Not unless you wanted to be never seen again.

At the bottom of the humongous center was a completely empty space. The size of this space was in itself a football field. What this space was used for, we will need to wait and see.

Other than this weird void at the bottom, were you to stand at the facilities center and pan around, it would all pretty much look identical, except when looking at the top. Segregated from everybody else by a musculous arch of fat bent and shiny pipes, a considerably larger station denoted ruling. Its comfy chair was unmistakable the chair of a god. The guy moving the strings. The guy you would not want to mess with. And in this case, the guy just returning back from a trip.

Grainger’s large figure came through a wall. It was actually a force field door. In the TSA, agents could walk into doors only if enough security clearance had been granted. Doors looked like walls but a Sampling Sensor on top of the particular segment signaled an entrance. Standing in front of this sensor for fractions of a second would depolarize the force field, allowing the scanned entity to enter.

Most personnel would not have access to but a few of entrances. In this facility, Grainger had access to them all.

To measure the humongous Grainger would require at least a seven feet ruler and some imagination. He appeared to be in his late fifties but still his chest and back were as wide as a truck. White hair, green malicious eyes, and a confidence filled stature which showed precisely who he was: everybody else’s boss.

The giant approached a considerable smaller man, Lieutenant Lentz. The officer looked younger, perhaps in his forties. His hair was military short dark brown almost matching his eyes. Dressed with the dark blue TSA uniform and showing numerous medals, the officer greeted his superior. One snap of both heels and a kind nod, with both arms side by side.

“Report!” Grainger demanded.

“Yes, sir!” Lentz snapped back “I am afraid our news on Krakeded are accurate. He had to give himself out for the good of the mission.”

Grainger already knew that. Having been a soldier himself long decades ago, he had been very close to pressing that button which would have ended his life and added a new meaning to the word heroics. Still, he could not believe it. Krakeded was gone, and with him a vital asset to his organization.

“What is this, Lentz?” Grainger mellowed, his shoulders following. “Since when do measly humans have the intellect to outsmart our elite warriors?” Grainger frowned. “It is precisely why we are doing what we are doing. If these scientists are allowed to discover every single piece of technology there is, our identity will surely be next. We have to make certain this does not happen again!”

“On my priority list, sir!” Lentz nodded. “With the data from our satellites, we have been able to reconstruct most of what transpired inside the building. We believe we should be able to learn where our failure may lie.”

“I don’t want beliefs, Lentz!” Grainger growled. “I’ll let the pesky humans submerge their scarce thoughts into that pitiful excuse of an intelligence. I want results!”

Grainger walked towards his chair, shortly followed by his assistant Lentz, one of the few allowed to set foot at the king’s lair. “Computer, replay Krakeded’s last message into our encrypted link.”

There was always audio at the command center. Requests from different analysts would summon recordings here and there. How they could distinguish the results of their own search from the tumult of audio streams played in unison seemed more like magic than skill. When Grainger asked for a replay, however, everybody else would have to wait.

“FIIRK BLERKITRUP. FRAKE TRAQUEE!” Krakeded’s voice flooded the room, as it reverberated into a memory for the very last time.

For a split second, the entire command second froze as if the analysts could figure out what the message meant. The great majority of them couldn’t. They had not been granted enough clearance.

A few of the analysts on the upper rows did manage to decipher it, and so did Lentz. But as much as they were able to decode the message there was one element not one of them could have grasped.

‘Fear!’ Grainger thought. ‘I sense a notch of fear on Krakeded’s voice. I don’t like this…”

“They are onto us Lieutenant!” Grainger returned into the once again fully active command center. “Somehow these scientists are aware, or at least rapidly dangling into, our existence. I am afraid the gap is closing…”

Grainger’s green eyes fixed on the young man’s retinas. Had Lentz not been through this exercise so many times before, he would have definitely pissed on himself. At least, the lieutenant felt convinced in no time would somebody from the bottom row be escorted out of the room.

“There is another very important detail, sir” Lentz ventured. “According to our satellite reconstruction, the doctor was using a primitive method to ensure the safety of his endeavor. We recorded the possibility of four data streams being distributed across the net. We are positive we have identified the server from which the messages originated and I have personnel working on the content and prospective courses of action.”

“Ahh! The good doctor!” Grainger savored for an instant quickly allowing himself to see the threat in front of him. “This is a great find, Lentz. I want you to get all the statistics on these four scientists. I can assure you, the doctor was not sending some lasts words to his daughters!”

“Once you identify our next four victims, get me their current projects, affiliations, extracurricular activities and all biological figures you can pull from the system. And I want to know every single computer keystroke they have pressed even when they were wearing diapers!”

It almost seemed like  a joke, but it wasn’t. They had the technology to get all of that information and in this case said information was literally power. Power Grainger had now started to realize they once had and was now fading away…

“Lentz, please pull a report on our agent database. I want to know who our next Krakeded is going to be.” Grainger ordered.

“We have already started, sir” Lentz affirmed.

Grainger liked the fact that his subordinates were proactive. After a Krakeded had been decommissioned, a new one was surely to follow. Lentz could have waited for the orders to come, but that would have basically been a total waste of time. Usually, not waiting for his superior to supply a command was a bold move that could be seen as insubordination. But in this case Lentz knew it meant a promotion.

“Very well, Lentz. How is it looking then?”

Lentz grabbed a Sync’O pad from the nearby main frame station. It looked like a paper thin piece of glass. The steel strong display came to life with a tri dimensional holographic image portraying a female figure and revolving in its vertical axis. Agent’s stats slowly flashed beside the powerful and toned black dressed figure.

“I am afraid you may not be pleased, sir.” Lentz continued. “Our records indicate that the best suited agent at the moment is no other than our past Krakeded’s wife.”

“Poojan Khali…” Grainger murmured, it being impossible to determine whether it was in fascination or disgust.

“Sir, should I look for a replacement?” Lentz offered.

Grainger’s eyes oscillated side by side, most likely as he ran some algorithms on one of his internal brain chip processors.

“I think I will let it run for the time being, Lieutenant.” Grainger conceded, his eyes now returning to their normal gaze.

Grainger turned to exit the room. Before he went through the electromagnetic door, he paused…

 “Get me Muhkus, Lieutenant. I am going to need him on this.”

‘Holy CRAP! Muhkus?’ Lentz swallowed. “Yes sir! Right Away”

With massive streaks of blue lightning as the force field door closed behind him, the giant had left his room.

Ice Pond High was like any other high school. People from all economical levels stuck on a single building and surrounded by enough security to deter them from doing what teenager hormone over dose demanded. In this case, and as you would have it in any other school, the popular kids, or what everybody would want to be, were those either good at sports or at partying.

Money played a role on how good at sports said students were. It was not unheard of for some players to be better qualified than others just because of some donations their respective parents had offered the school or the team. Football, Basketball and the Wrestling team members were gods. Who was to be deemed the Zeus, was highly dependant on the season, but they all savored their triumphs all year long.

Party mathematics was easier to understand. The guy or gal with the largest and coolest house, capable of hosting the best and wildest parties, would be granted instant popularity. Even pure nerdy looking geeks had enjoyed from some major popularity, at least for a few days, after holding a pool party at their house. Then again, money played a role in this situation as well. A nerd with no cool house or a pool, could have never hosted said party, resulting on his loser status receiving an extra year of free subscription.

So our main character was close to hitting food chain bottom. Not that much money, not any good at sports, no cool house with a pool and definitely not a party host, Avayan had been going to school just another one of the guys. He didn’t care too much about it. It gave him the time to concentrate on his hobby: robot building.

The bell rang for the last time that day. Students loved the sound of this particular ring. It meant they would finally leave the dreaded premises. Like a tumult of parents entering an electronics store at 5:00 AM on Black Friday in search of that new gaming console, students did the total opposite as they emptied class room after class room of their presence, while once again invading the corridors. No teacher could stop them now from chatting to death with their friends.

On an usual day, Avayan would met his friend Jay at the corridors, long before they reached the lockers. Today was no different.

“Hey what’s up buddy!” Jay was excited. “Man! I thought that Spanish class would never end. You know, Miss Bee is great and everything, but God! Don’t you think that if I wanted to learn any other language I would pick an useful one?”

Avayan did not take the comment as an insult, although his first language was practically Spanish. “It sounds pretty useful to me, Jay! That way you would understand when I curse at you in Spanish.”

“Dude, I already know those words. I know them in German, French and Italian too, by the way.” Jay said.

Avayan scoffed. “And what language would you consider useful, Jay?”

“Ahh French!” Jay savored. “There is nothing like telling a girl ‘Bonjour nina preciuse’.” Jay articulated in a perfect French. “It drives them nuts, I tell you! It is like pouring butter to a frying pan!”

For being a geek, or at least spend so much time with one, Jay was pretty fluent with the ladies. Avayan, on the other hand was a total opposite.

“I bet it does.” Avayan conceded. “It would definitely work if I could said the whatever ‘BU BLUH BLUE BLEH’ you just said. I on the other hand could…”

Avayan froze, just like he would do every time the girl of his dreams passed by. In this case, Tina Jennings, indeed the prettiest girl on the entire school, had the adverse effect of inducing instant panic on him. He had never been able to talk to her. At least not after he realized he was superbly infatuated with her. More like an eternal crush, if you will.

“Hey what’s up, ice block?” Jay mocked his friend. He knew pretty well what was causing Avayan’s episode. “When are you going to arm yourself with valor and go over and talk to her?”

Once Tina was out of the picture, Avayan’s heart rate started to stabilize once again. Still his knees where trembling like Californian buildings under a 9.0 earthquake and his speech was pretty much garbled.

“Nev… Never…” he managed to say with effort. “I will never be able to talk to her. You know this, Jay! I will say something stupid and it will be the end of it.”

“I don’t get it, dude. Just this morning you basically confronted Xavier. That takes far much more guts to do than talk to a girl.” Jay contended. “Even if it is THE GIRL!”

“Heck no, dufus!” Avayan’s voice sturdier than before. “If Xavier kicks my butt, which he has already done a few times, I know my butt will heal. But if Tina breaks my heart, that’s it!”

The platonic love paradox, as he liked to call it. Avayan felt it would be better to rationalize he would never had a chance with Tina, than to actually find out after taking a shot at it. He was already in love with her, but his heart was not broken yet. And when somebody else had made the move and conquered her heart, in which case he would be out of the picture forever, he would simply say “I already knew that’s how it was going to end!” And voila! No broken heart, would it?

 “I just think it is your loss. In the mean time I plan on asking her cousin, the luscious Veranicce, out on a date.” Jay’s chest bellowed with confidence. “You are more than welcomed to join us for a double date with Tina, if you like.”

Avayan frowned incredulously. ‘Yeah, like that’s going to happen’, he thought. By the time Avayan could have said a mere ‘hi’ to Tina, Jay would have been taking his and Veranicce’s kids to College. Or possibly even their own wedding. It was just an impossibility, he felt certain.

While every kid at school was getting busy on returning home, either by taking a bus or driving out on their own cars, a small portion of the student community was staying in the school for extra curricular activities. This day marked a very important milestone in the life of Geek-Land inhabitants.

Whereas football and basketball players had their own sport tournaments, athletically challenged geeks had found their own arena. It was a competition of wit, with enough carnage to render football and basketball sissy-like sports: Robots!

Thank God for technology, they use to claim. Before all they had was spelling bees, chess tournaments and Math rallies. Totally boring! But robots, being so strong and powerful, offered a way out from being considered inert weaklings, at least during the competition.

Ice Pond High would always participate on the annual Power Bots tournament, a competition specifically designed for high school students. It allowed them to learn about the fascinating field of robotics, and at the same time delve into fascinating fields such as physics, mechanics, electronics, etc., all of these topics with an emphasis on engineering. Professionals from different companies were invited to help the students grasp the complex concepts and build the intricate machines.

Avayan and Jay, on the other hand, didn’t need that much help. They had been building robots for quite a long time.

The duo entered the Wild Dog robotic team on their first high school year, the tenth grade. As a newbie Avayan should not have been allowed to do much, but by showing his programming skills, he was quickly denominated head programmer; a title that certainly took their team to victory two years in a row.

Being the son of a mega geek himself, Avayan had been brought up as an infant with science and mathematics in mind. His dad, a self employed electric engineer excelling at computer design, decided to teach his boy complicated numerical theorems at a very early age. By the time his peers were able to add and subtract, Avayan was starting to pick up algebra.

His father went way farther. Instead of limiting his brain to think in decimal numbers, those consisting in digits from 0 to 9, he also showed his boy how to count and heavily manipulate hexadecimal digits, or those counting from 0 to F, the base code language of most computers those days. It explained why Avayan was so good at understanding computer coding as well as generating it himself.

In time Avayan became infatuated with the computer languages and techniques in such a way that he decided not to waste much time with the other classes like history, languages and such. No wonder he did not have nerdy grades. Not that it kept his non geek peers from considering him one.

Every geek waited with anticipation for this year’s competition. It was their only chance to gather some degree of popularity.

On Avayan’s shoulder there was a little bit more than a popularity search pressure. A good deal of tension was associated with the fact this was his senior year, which meant he would most likely be appointed team captain, or “Head Engineer”, as team members had accorded years ago.

But the largest factor, by a landslide, was the current score. During the past two tournaments he had lead the school to be the national champions. In order to break the previous national record, he would have to win a third time. So loosing would not only mean not breaking the record, but breaking their winning streak as well. Luckily he felt very confident this year, same as he did before.

Power Bots was hosted by a fairly recent multi company called Cobotrox (from Co-Bot Rocks). They had, for the first time released a software package containing what was called “Artificial Intelligence for Mobile Robots In a Box” (AIM RIB). When AIM RIB came out for the first time, robot enthusiasts though the software was meant for warfare robotics. Instead they found a complete virtual brain, speech recognition and optical recognition suite. The perfect for most automaton projects.

Cobotrox would then host the Tournament Kick Up Event, or the KUE. At one particular spot in time, schools would be allowed to log into the net and stream a video offering the instructions. Every school would have exactly the same amount of time to work on their projects. And that year’s KUE was today!

Avayan had forgotten about the head phones by the time they got to the Robotics Lab, the room where they would all take a peek at what their upcoming weeks would be spent on. Mr Bixby, the Robotics class instructor was in the center of the room, chatting to some of the students who had arrived earlier.

Students from all grades were encouraged to assist and form part of the team. This year’s members were already on the amphitheater-like room when Avayan and Jay entered. Like two heroes returning from killing the dragon and saving the damsel in distress, the duo was welcomed with a seemingly dense round of applause and a few scattered hurrahs.

Avayan felt ecstatic. It was definitely one of the first times in his life he would experience such a large group of people welcoming his presence. Possibly the last…

Two students at the door shook his hand and patted his back. The teacher waved the new arriving gentlemen to join the group.

“We thought you were not going to make it, Mr Ecks” Mr Bixby showed marked relief. Without Avayan, the robotic team would be close to prehistoric levels. Now they stood a chance.

“I would not miss this for anything, Mr Bixby!” Avayan conceded as he sat in the same center of the room, right in front of the large LCD screen, in a chair the student group had reserved for him.

Jay looked around for a chair. A freshman student realized it would be an honor to relinquish his chair and donate it to the second great giant of robotics, the senior Jay. At first the senior gestured towards the student to please keep the seat, but the younger would not have had it any other way.

Side by side, the two roboticists tuned into the important message to follow.

“Very well students of the Wild Dogs robotics club.” The teacher started the long awaited for meeting. “As you all know, the action starts today.”

“YEAH!” the entire group of students screamed with excitement. The teacher waited for the thrill to fade down. It was the great thing about catering to the non athletic type, Mr. Bixby thought. Definitely not a lot of rage hormones cruising through the frantic highway of veins and neurons.

“Are we ready?” Mr Bixby asked.

Nobody screamed this time. They were ready, and the teacher knew. With a press of a button on his universal remote control, the plasma display went from bright blue to black. Logged into the net, they saw a countdown run towards zero. And then it was time.

A fancy video depicting robots crashing and maiming other robots engulfed the screen. It was scenes from previous Power Bot competitions. Some of the student felt they had seen their own past robots on some of these scenes.

And they were right! Pillow Block and Anvil Fist, Ice Pond High’s latest creations, had been crowned champions during the past two competitions. Some of the deadliest, and media worthy blows had been perpetrated by these two power machines.

Cobotroxter, an humanoid like biped came up on the screen. It was customary for the company to have the futuristic Meca looking droid as the recording’s host.

“Power Bots, activate!” Cobotroxter screamed. Students all over the nation went wild. “My good Power Bot friends. This will indeed be yet another exciting year filled with action and robot banging supremacy. Are you ready?”

Of course, every single student in the globe watching the video screamed “YEAH!”

A second robot, TOBY, came up on the screen to help Cobotroxter with the presentation. TOBY was not a biped, but instead a more primitive looking machine block filled with dozens of gadgets like saws and drills whirring in an out from its sides.

“We are ready Cobotroxter! Are you going to inform us on the guidelines for the next competition?” TOBY asked on his deep, fear instilling, robotic voice.

“Sure am, TOBY! This year’s competition will be like no one you guys have ever seen!”

That’s what they always said, and for some reason they were always right. Through more complexity and challenges, each successive competition was not only harder, but unique as well.

“TOBY, this year we are going into NASCAR. But not the typical races as we know it. This is Alien’s NASCAR. Cars are running at the same time they are fighting an evil form of invader. Every now and then, the cars must return to the pit and have their tires changed.”

“Power Supreme, Cobotroxter! It sounds exciting indeed. And it is your responsibility, Robotic Club friends, to come up with the robot that will change the car tires. The quicker your robot performs, the better!” TOBY explained.

At first the students felt like this year’s competition was kind of lame. Changing tires? Clearly they could have come up with something better.

“Faster is in fact better, TOBY.” Cobotroxter followed. “But be warned, robot builders, because the evil Alien race has deployed a number of small robots whose sole mission is to destroy tire changing robots!”

Now the student’s eyes were glowing with lust. That was the fight they were looking for!

It was very hard for Mr Bixby to keep the tumult under control, after the project had been announced or while the two spoke robots presented the instructions and competition ruling. He was not going to bother calming them down, being excited himself with the upcoming project. He only wished he was a high school student once again. At least he was their mentor.

A few minutes later, the video stream had come to its conclusion with the two robots wishing good luck to every high school entering the tournament.

“Jay, I think we have a few cool gadgets in the Machine Shop we could use for lifting the cars at a very fast speed!” Avayan told his friend. “As soon as we get out of here we can go and check it.”

“Yeah sure…” Jay replied. “Oh wait! I have to take my sister to her dance lesson. I can meet you afterwards, though.”

Avayan nodded. “So what do you think we should use as weapons for defense and…” A sharp whistle interrupted him.

“People!” Mr Bixby shouted removing the whistle from his lips. “I understand we are all very excited about the competition and we are dying to get started. But let me remind you we have enough weeks to complete the winner robot!”

He should have left the ‘winner robot’ part for the end, as the students went crazy once more. Readying his whistle between his lips, he was almost ready to blow when the crowd managed to compress their emotions for a tad longer by itself.

“Before we even get started with the robot, we need to make sure the team is a solid structure” the teacher continued. “It is time to choose a leader for the team. How do you want to do this? Shall we vote in secret or…”

The teacher was interrupted again, this time with an “We want Avayan to be the captain!” It was followed with a massive chorus of “Avayan! … Avayan! … Avayan!”

The senior felt mildly embarrassed and tried to hide himself and his redness below his back pack, sitting quietly on top of the desk chair.

“OK! I think there is no need to a vote.” The teacher conceded. “That is of course if our possibly new leader, Mr Ecks, is to accept the role of team captain. What would it be, Mr Ecks?”

Avayan felt like he was thinking about it for a very long time. Fighting embarrassment at the same time he was honored, he managed to nod his acceptance into the most important position he had ever held in the student community.

The crowd went crazy one last time. Jay patted his friend, all the other students quickly joining him in the same gesture. It was a gorgeous triumph. For a geek, at least…

Avayan had always wondered what it felt like to be held in arms after the team star had managed to won the championship game. He had never been into sports so he had no idea. Today on the other hand he was wondering what kind of reception he would get if he could lead the team to victory in the upcoming competition. Would the girl of his dreams… ‘AH! No need to go there’, he thought. Already enough pressure!

“Scum bucket of evil!!!” Avayan grinded his teeth, his eyes filled with rage, a super high way of little red lines breaking the soft white.

Avayan, a seventeen year old teenager and senior at Ice Pond High, furiously waved as he strolled his mildly long black hair, kind of bushy and uncombed on the ends, making him look almost like the typical surfer. It was his round glasses that gave away his geek status. His stature was average, getting close to six feet, but not quite. A tiny belly showed he did more math and science exercises than the ones he should had been doing at the gym.

It would not require a Kindergarten diploma to understand why over and over again he had been the victim of bully attacks. Why were there people whose bad intentions based hobbies plagued the day, was beyond him. But one thing was for sure. He felt like not taking it any more.

Avayan took the broken pair of True Silence headphones from the floor. These were no ordinary pair of headphones. True Silence meant precisely that. A dual DSP core chip on each ear jack, carefully monitored for ambient noise and generated a replica wave, out of phase enough to cancel it. The wearer could then administer any audio signal from their favorite digital player. It would be like being at the center of a concert arena where the recording had taken place. Engineers had finally done it!

For a few seconds, more like minutes, he contemplated the vicious act that had just recently being perpetrated against his personal property. It was pretty much clear who had intentionally broken them, but he needed proof before facing his adversary.

The classroom was close to empty. It was the recess hour, but still students were allowed to linger inside the classrooms, if they were introverted enough to avoid the patio where everybody else would be. A few souls, doing their best in avoiding being asked about the crime, remained as if tied to the floor with heavy chains.

With determination, Avayan walked to the first two girls leaning towards the black board, Hess and Joannie. Dressed in their typical High School uniforms, they both looked at a teenagers magazine, giggling and chuckling, until…

“Excuse me…” Avayan interrupted. “Do you know what piece of scum could have done this?” his hands lifted the broken headphones to the girls with the same sorrow as somebody that has lost a dear pet. The left ear bud was hanging and the wiring was visibly busted, showing hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny copper fibers springing loose.

Hess looked at Joannie with doubt, as she shrugged, her intention on remaining out of this business projecting into the wall like a shadow. Joannie on the other hand, fond of Avayan, wanted to help. “I really don’t know who did it. But Xavier was the only one here before we got in.”

Just like he had suspected, Avayan felt lucky to uncover the identity of his peace disruptor. Or perhaps he should feel unlucky? Xavier, like we conveniently see on every tale worth telling, happened to be the most popular guy in school. Strong, tall and handsome, plus with the finest golden filled pockets, the muscle mass Xavier basically ruled.

Every single girl had at some point in time of their lives been teenagerly in love with him. Today, Joannie was not. Apparently after being deceived by the master of “be my girlfriend – see you later, honey”, AKA Xavier, she had sworn zero loyalty to the tyrant.

“Actually, I could have sworn he was INDEED handling your headphones.” She added with a quirky smile. It was a lie, but one she offered with great pride and honor.

There was no need to hear more. A portion of his chest grew excited. Finding the culprit had been his goal and it being precisely who he had thought it would be, made him proud of his detective skills. On the other hand, facing Xavier was not candy corn. He could face the same finale his headphones had, which felt like a hanging arm? Not a pretty sight, he thought.

Ambivalent, Avayan rushed out of the classroom, while the girls returned to their magazine.

Time was of essence as the recess period was soon to be over. He would need not too much, though. After all, it was just meant to be a minor confrontation, right?

Avayan stopped in the middle of the corridor now noticing his heart was beating too fast. The symbol of fear and panic. Could he finish what he intended to start? He looked at his broken headphones, still hanging dead and slowly slipping into the beyond through his curled fingers. A new wave of rage rushed in to his chest, the core of his feelings. It washed away all forms of fear. His headphones would have revenge!

Where would he find Xavier? The high school was fairly big. It lodged students from the tenth to the twelfth grade. Each one of these grades had five class groups with at least 30 students. At recess, the halls, corridors and the patio were packed.

“But fear not,” he said to himself, “as finding the most popular guy in school has to be the easiest feat to be performed. Just look for the highest mountain of female hormones jumping into a single guy and there you have it. Xavier!”

Crossing through the tumult of Xavier girl friends wannabe’s was not easy. In fact it seemed like he had to throw a few of them into mid air before reaching his main objective.

After quite a workout he had finally reached the center of the black hole. Now what? Had this been a good idea after all? Not too much time to reconsider.

The girls sitting besides Xavier started looking at the young invader as if he were an Alien from planet Bembeculah. Tentacles oozing from his ear holes, suctions cups on the tip of his nose and three or four eyes per finger. They were disgusted at his presence. ‘What is this guy doing here? All we want is to be with Xavier’, the girls seemed to think.

Avayan rethought his strategy. If he were to complain about the headphones in front of all the girls, he would certainly become the class whiner. Not that he was not already considered so, most likely he was. But having such a time stamp burnt into his forehead, would not necessarily help that much.

He did a quick scan just to make sure someone in particular was not there. Perfect, she was not… So he let himself go down into high school history. Again…

“Did you do this?” he lifted the broken ear piece into Xavier’s eye sight. Xavier slightly tilted back while two girls secured his shoulders.

“Yes, why?” As he responded with his typical royal flair, the ladies at his side seemed to come to their melting point. It was like throwing butter to a pheromone filled boiling baked potato.

Avayan could not discern whether it had been the ‘why’ or all the girls’ reaction, but he now felt his blood ionize down to plasma.

“You big lump of a piltraphany!” he uttered his hatred aiding him in not looking retarded. “’Why’, you say? That is what I ask! Why did you break them?”

“Well I don’t know. I just felt like doing it” Xavier’s cold voice froze the water vapor between them.

Had there being anything hotter than Plasma, Avayan would have reached this state by now. Head pounding, Avayan swept the female population and found the same expression on all of them. The pop corn filled air heads had no idea of what to think, other than enjoying Xavier’s adorability. And Avayan, was on their way.

‘I can not believe this!’ He thought. ‘How could a goon like this get it his way? He has to pay!’

This was it. The second in which he would have to choose to simply walk away, or start some kind of fight. With resolution he shortened the distance between himself and his opponent. He felt like a wasp charging against a truck rushing in at 70 MPH, with a portion of his subconscious snapping into action with ‘ARE YOU ON DRUGS???’

Xavier remained still, showing off his confidence. And when the scared Avayan finally got to face the giant…

“RIIING!” the bell rang the end of the recess period. Avayan could never figure out whether the bell had betrayed his intentions or simply saved his butt.

As if coordinated by a ballet instructor, all the girls ran towards their own lockers, short skirts flying everywhere. Once the spectacle was over, the two young males returned their gaze to face each other.

Xavier got up from the bench. Taller and stronger than Avayan, he hoped the maneuver to instill fear and intimidation onto his opponent. Said maneuver had an amazingly high success rate, but in this case, and unfortunately for the bully, breaking Avayan’s headphones had been a huge mistake.

 “They were not even a week old. Are you aware of how much I had to work to pay for these?” Avayan’s information moved Xavier’s heart by a fraction of an atom.

“Hmmm….” Xavier nodded, his breath pattern remaining calm. “Well, lets get back to class, shall we?”

Xavier started to walk away from Avayan, ignoring the matter at hand completely. Being the king of bullies, there was little for him to feel sorry at.

To the naked eye, it would appear that Xavier was not in the mood of placing any value towards the headphones or Avayan’s expectations. But in reality he did care. And quite a bit!

Definitely a professional bully, he had been trained by his predecessors in the art and science of opponent psychology. He knew how much Avayan’s guts were retorting in rage, after seeing his precious valuable broken to pieces. And all Xavier wanted now was to increase the anguish to abominable levels. Avayan’s expression showed he was succeeding.

 “What about my headphones? You have to pay for them!” Avayan hasted to catch the fleeting thief.

Xavier stopped to laugh, maniacally, creeping Avayan’s bones. “Why, you frigging retard? I ain’t paying for anything!”

“What do you mean you are not paying for these? Do you think this is just a piece of paper you can ruffle down and throw into a trash can?” Avayan’s voice turned grim. Feeling in control of the situation he decided to move one step closer on the fight scale and with a simple tug, grabbed Xavier by his left shirt sleeve. BIG MISTAKE!

Xavier looked at both sides as if about to cross the street. It was a different street, though. It was the “If the principal catches me, I am in trouble” street. And there were no cars coming…

With a quick snap, Xavier grabbed Avayan’s shirt and swamped the caught on surprise youngster into the bench they had all been sitting a few seconds before. Avayan’s back was pounded into the park bench like sizzling bacon on a skillet. Under submission, Avayan tried to secure his freedom once again by juggling his body back and forth. He was going nowhere.

“Listen to me, you little dweeb! You may feel like you have the right to come and insult me during break but try to understand one thing, and try to understand it once!” Xavier pushed his weakling opponent once again as to reassure what came next.

“This is high school, we are seniors and I am the football team quarterback and captain. Hence, I am the king and this is my kingdom. It may be that in a few decades you will sell one of your little computer games and will become a millionaire overnight while I am a big time looser hitting all the bars. And that is perfectly fine with me. But today I am king and I am not going to let one dinky little retard like you come and ruin it. Are we clear?”

Xavier’s face had grown closer to Avayan’s as to instill fear. Avayan would have wanted for the attacker’s intent to have been futile but it had not. He was indeed afraid of his opponent and to his own disdain there was little he could do about it. So at the end, a lack of a response from the oppressed youth signaled acknowledgment to the message being delivered.

Xavier felt it was almost time to let go, but returning back to classes without ruffling his nemesis wannabe just a tad more seemed like a total incompetence on his behalf.

“And do not even think that because you can be the champion on your nerdy robotic building club is going to even come close to what football means to this school and town, OK?” Xavier mildly slapped Avayan’s cheek like a mafia Godfather. “So get back to playing with your nerdy little toys and let the grown ups get back to work. Capisce?”

Xavier pounded Avayan once more and then let the beaten young teenager go from his fists, his immortal confidence making him glow like a medieval warrior.

Avayan waited until the mastodon had walked a few feet away from him before he even tried to get off the bench. From nowhere, a helping hand materialized to help the barely knocked down youth. It was the hand of his best friend Jayson, or Jay as Avayan would call him.

Jay may have looked like another geek from school. In this case, however, Jay was not only Avayan’s closest buddy but his assistant at any school project for that matter. Thin and muscle-less, the nerdy figure had at least being blessed with a tall stature, 6’ 2” to be exact, and a very confident personality. He was the bridge between geeko-land and everybody else. Which is why Avayan and Jay were not considered total nerds, just two brilliant guys who happened to be non athletic.

The real nerds, on the other hand, chubby and weird looking, looked up at the duo like the kings of the school. Avayan and Jay had trouble determining which role they should play best. Geeks or non geeks? This year, as they were seniors, it would matter the least. As we shall see later, being a geek would not necessarily play a detrimental role for students anymore.

“Failed heroics, I can see?” Jay greeted his friend as he pulled the fallen idol from the wooden bench’s jaws.

“That bastard Xavier. He will pay, I tell you!” Avayan demanded as he straightened his shirt back into a less scruffy looking position.

“Well, I don’t know, man… I gotta say it is awesome that you took charge and everything, but against a guy like that, our chances are none to slim!”

Avayan smirked to his wisdom-less friend. “If there is something I have learned on this life, Jay, is that there is more value to a savvy brain than all the muscles you can summon!” Avayan nodded almost victorious, but…

“Savvy brain, yes siree!” Jay conceded. “Which is why I stay away from big mastodons like Xavier.”

Avayan frowned. “Whatever, dude, whatever…” and all the two young boys could do was return to class.

Stunned, the white robbed scientist turned to face his opponent. The doctor was well into his seventies, with little but long portions of grayish and curly hair barely covering both sides of his head, just above his earlobes. He may have looked like one of the three stooges, although he was one of the foremost scientists at the present time. Had this night never found him, he would have been awarded a Nobel Prize. It was too late now.

The dark figure pulled a black anodized aluminum gun. The doctor had never seen anything like it. It was small and seemed light. A series of flashing blue laser lines oscillating from left to right, up and down on the victim’s chest, gave the spooked scientist the impression this was no ordinary gun.

“Doctor Perry” Krakeded, the black figure, snapped him out of his fight or flee trance. “I am sorry to invade your privacy like this, but I am here to secure some technology you are now harboring.”

The doctor thought of moving out of the menacing blue ray scanning his entire body. For a fraction of a second he felt some of his muscles twitching in unison. But the smallest movement resulted in the blue ray spreading farther and faster. If this weapon’s intent was to kill him, running was not going to aid him. Not unless he could run faster than the speed of light. “You cannot outrun light, son!” a memory reverberated at the back of his mind reinforcing the very well known notion.

“Doctor Perry” The shadow continued, slowly and menacingly walking toward the profoundly scared scientist. “I truly suggest you cooperate. I do not want to harm you. But if I must, I will shoot you down. It will not be pleasant either to you, or me.”

“You are going to kill me!” The doctor finally spurted out. “You are going to kill me like you have killed the others, aren’t you?”

The doctor was onto something the dark figure did not expect to hear. It was true. Krakeded, the menacing dark figure, had been killing other scientists. However, all of these killings had been made to look like fatal accidents. Having Dr. Perry being so convinced all of his colleagues had been murdered, was not too reasurring.

The dark figure gestured his left wrist wrap close to his mouth. “FIIRK BLERKITRUP. FRAKE TRAQUEE!” Krakeded said to a microscopic microphone lodged onto his wrist.

“What are you doing? Why are you here? Who sent you?”

“Doctor, do not let me get hasty…” Krakeded said as he pressed the trigger. The blue lines went ahead and did their damage, with four lacerations, one on each arm and leg, allowing for Dr. Perry’s blood to ooze out. It was not meant to be lethal or incapacitating. Just a demo of what the master gunner had in store. “The technology… Now!”

“I don’t know what you are talking about…” Dr Perry interjected. “You are not going to get away with this, young man! I have cameras recording everything transpiring under this roof. Soon everybody will know your identity!”

The assassin could have sworn he saw a hint of a smile draw on the scientist’s mouth. A smirk. A deadly one, at that. If those cameras were truly recording as the scientist had warned, his mission was not heading on the right path. “Old man, you do not expect me to buy your bluff, right? I already checked for cameras before I came in. I can assure you the perimeter has been cleared and it is just the two of us inside this room. So how about you start handling the information I came all this way for? This is the last time I ask nicely!”

Now the scientist was laughing. And laughing hard! “Did you check for cameras, you say? I suppose you were not clever enough to run an infrared scan, did you? Because I assure you they are invisible to your eyes!”

And there it was again, the scientist’s triumphal smirk. Reluctantly, the assassin decided to run a thermal and an infrared scan using a series of highly sophisticated sensors on his rounded cylindrical visor. Whereas he had been seeing everything in a bluish color, it all turned to a reddish tone. And sure enough there they were. Enclosed by his visor targeting computer with a blue box, about five cameras spread over the entire large room laboratory with the main character being the assassin plotting to kill the scientist and steal the information he had so hard worked to come by.

“Ahh! You see the cameras now, my young one…” the scientist retorted. “You see, I have covered them with a metamaterial. If you do not know what this is, think of it as a material with a negative refraction index. Light is made to go around it, making the covered item completely invisible to human eyes. Clever, wouldn’t you think?”

“Very…” Krakedead thought to himself not wanting to concede defeat. Not yet. One thing was for certain. Those cameras needed to be destroyed. So one by one he allowed his targeting computer to coordinate a series of gorgeous bluish plasma bolts to be fired from his highly advanced weapon.

The scientist would have wanted to see the beautiful display of lights, but this was instead his only chance for a quick move.

Doctor Perry ran to the other side of the room where his other experiment station, filled with junk, stored his single ticket to salvation. Throwing every single piece of metal, wire and old burned boards, he managed to open a compartment from which he pulled a small gun. His own design!

Krakeded had shot the very last of the five cameras and was doing another scan just to make sure there were no other security breaches that may endanger his mission further. It was all clean. In what seemed to be fractions of a second he had managed to improve his chances of success. He had been fast, but not fast enough.

When he returned to pointing his weapon to the doctor, he found it was him now the target of a gun. Both of them were now at the end of an eyesight. Whoever was to shoot first, would win.

Krakeded did not want to shoot. He wanted to know where the files for Dr Perry’s invention were being stored. He could go through the hassle of looking for them himself but that would have been too boring. Oh no. Krakeded liked to be the hunter. He wanted to instill fear in his prey and get the files by brute force.

Dr. Perry on the other hand felt this was his chance to find out who had been killing the other scientists. He was dead anyway, why not try to find out who was behind all of this?

“Come on Doctor!” Krakeded went first. “You know what I can do. Will you be fool enough to think that you can outsmart me? If you shoot I will evade the bullet at the same time I fire my gun. You can’t win. You have already seen I must be the deadliest warrior on this planet!”

“That is true, my black costume friend” The scientist conceded. “There is only one tinsy little problem for you, though?”

“Really doctor, and what would this tinsy little problem be?”

“That you have not watched what is it that I can do.” The doctor said at the same time he pressed the trigger on his gun.”

Krakeded’s visor went nuts. At first he thought he had seen the doctor’s finger muscle move. His computerized visor thermal scanning function showed a change in temperature. At the same time a very bright light was jettisoned from the doctor’s gun barrel. But it was too fast!

He would have started to dodge the missile, but his legs would not respond. A command from his brain to his right hand index finger to pull the trigger followed, but this one was as well equally unresponsive. Puzzled, Krakeded looked down as if the answer could be found lying in the floor.

Streams of blood were coming out of his body. He never felt what had punctured him. He never even saw anything hitting him.

“You see my good friend, I did not fire a bullet.” The scientist smiled triumphantly. “This is what I call a Pulsar Gun. It is made of the same neutron concentration of a Pulsar star, although in a considerable smaller scale, of course. Not even traveling faster than the speed of light could you have evaded the neutrons. You were not that fast anyway, were you?” The doctor joked.

Krakeded’s knees landed on the floor. He grabbed into his last effort to raise his gun and shoot, but the scientist kicked Krakeded’s gun from his right hand long before he could lift his numbed member, a measly inch from the ground.

Krakeded breathing grew erratic. He knew this was the mission he would not complete or get out from. One last effort to stand in his feet again, but instead he landed on his chest.

The black suite was protecting him somehow. But the neutron pulsar had gone through front and back out of his body. For the first time he wished there were other team mates that could come to his rescue. But this operation required him to work solo. This was it!

“Now, now…” The scientist sat beside the fallen warrior. “What do we have here?”

Dr Perry looked at the black costume in search for a zipper of some kind, but there was none to be found. Instead he had to use his pocket knife to open an incision on the black mask. The fabric was resilient but eventually gave up. Pulling as hard as he could, the mask torn into pieces, came out revealing the identity of his perpetrator.

The young man, most likely in his twenties, he had never seen before. That did not come as a surprise. A human with silver eyes, on the other hand, did cause some internal commotion. Blood started to ooze from Krakeded’s mouth.

“Why are you doing this? You seem to be so young!” The scientist said with sorrow, an image of his oldest son been killed in battle during the Persian Gulf War, vaporizing in the back of his mind. “Are you like that Una Bomber fellow? Why are you killing us?”

Krakeded body started to mildly convulse and twitch. The scientist would have wanted to heal his opponent but he simply had no idea how. Even if he had been a medical doctor, there was no technology to fix the damage the pulsar had caused. He could picture the results being too many ruptured organs. He knew what would come next.

“Listen. I am sorry! I did not want for our encounter to end this way” The scientist said as he turned the body of the dying soldier to face up. Then he dragged the almost dead body to have his head lying on his lap.

“I am sorry…” Krakeded still had strength barely enough to talk. “But you will all have to… die… anyway.” Krakeded coughed more blood. “Doctor… You are dead!”

He must be delusional, the doctor thought. “Listen, young man. What you don’t realize is that had you succeeded in killing me, the entire invasion of my premises would have been sent via email to my colleagues. It is all recorded in a hard disk on a secured server. Every night I enter a password. Had I failed to enter the password tonight, because you had managed to kill me for example, the hard disk content would have been distributed. Eventually we would have caught you, anyway. Just like I did, I guess…”

Krakeded laughed faintly. He wanted to laugh harder, but the effort made him spew more blood.

“It is pretty clever, don’t you think?” The doctor laughed along with the beaten warrior.

“It is… very clever… doctor” Krakeded added. “Which is precisely why I am la…” Krakeded’s last breath carried his last word. The doctor could not understand it completely but it felt like “laughing”.

“Which is precisely why I am laughing?” The doctor pondered. “But you are dying, my son…”

And in a split second, Dr Perry realized what the young dark figure had meant. But it was too late. On the now deceased warrior’s belt, a flashing LED followed by a synchronous beep, gave it all away.

The doctor had implemented a means to screw the intruder one way or the other. If said intruder was successful in killing the scientist, the entire content of what had just transpired would be securely sent to the authorities. And in a very similar fashion, the warrior had devised a way to secure his mission in the event it was him who was killed.

The doctor grimaced back, letting Krakeded’s inert body hit the marble floor. Crawling on his butt back to the wall, the doctor found a good grip to get himself back on his feet.

The LED and the beeping frequency were growing faster. Apparently there was some sort of a timer which started as soon as some bio rhythm function, like a pulse or heart beat, came to a halt on Krakeded’s suited body.

Dr. Perry started to run towards the large pent house door, hoping the explosion was not large enough to get him. His wish did not come true. It would have matter little how far away from the body he had been, the Nova like explosion disintegrated him either way.

In a flash, the penthouse was obliterated to memories along with Dr. Perrys experiments. Down on the streets, pedestrians hit the ground as the pavement rumbled. Debris, more like dust, covered them in a ghostly white.

When the strongest of them managed to regain their posture and gazed upon the highest point on the shaken building, what they saw was an upper floor totally annihilated, vaporized, as if a giant laser razor had shaved it out from existence.

That night at 12:00 AM, Dr. Perry’s server, on a remote and secured location, sent four identical emails.