The characters of "My Life as a Teenage Robot" were created by Rob Renzetti, and are owned by him and his evil overlords at Viacom. Hey, this is just a fanfic, guys, so please: don't sic the lawyer minions on me. There are a few original characters in this story, and some you'll recognize from the first two installments of this trilogy. The primary one is my own creation and main fan character, Drew Nabholtz, a (formerly human) high school student with a synthetic body is made up of trillions of nanobots. He was introduced back in story number one, "Android Scam".
Well, we've finally arrived at Part Three of the Cluster Dawn Trilogy. If you're just happening across this story at random, then you'll definitely want to go back and read Part One ("Betrayal From Within") and Part Two ("Escape From Paradise") in order to follow what's been happening. The reviews and comments I've gotten from you readers have been completely overwhelming. I really do appreciate the five minutes of your life it takes to hammer out a review and press "submit". I also appreciate the concern expressed for Drew; and at the same time, I realize that many of you are approaching your OC tolerance levels, so I promise that Jenny will have a much bigger part in this story.
By the way, do you have any idea how completely geeked out I was when I was sitting in the theater, watching "The Incredibles", and heard Mirage tell Mr. Incredible that he had to fight an Omnidroid?
And oh, even though I've said this before, this time it's probably true: this story may not get finished before Season Two episodes of MLaaTR begin airing. So just assume that the events of "Cluster Dawn" take place before then. Okay, lights off, and … roll film.
COUNTDOWN TO MINDSHATTER
Part Three of the Cluster Dawn Trilogy
A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic
Chapter One – You've Got Mail
The large tires on the military helicopter hadn't even settled into the grass when a pair of army corporals rushed up to the door, ducking their faces away from the stinging air-blast that howled down from the rotors. They flung the door open and unfolded the stairs with an efficient urgency, then snapped to attention and delivered a pair of textbook-perfect salutes to an approaching officer with two stars on each shoulder. Mrs. Wakeman shook her head as she watched the white-haired man running towards her, and a growing sense of foreboding began to brew in her belly. In her dealings with the military over the years, she had found that it was more than common enough to see soldiers running about; but when the officers were running, it meant that something bad was happening. Whatever was going on right now was bad enough to make a two-star general run like a scalded dog.
He gave her a quick nod of his head and shouted over the still-screaming engines. "Dr. Wakeman, I'm General Brohammer. I realize that this is short notice …"
Mrs. Wakeman trotted down the stairs, struggling to keep her hair out of her eyes. "But it's an emergency. Yes, yes, when a flying contraption the size of a city bus plops down in your driveway, one can safely assume it's an emergency! I can only hope my autotomobile insurance covers helicopter collision."
"I'm right sorry about that, ma'am," he boomed in his deep Texas accent, "but we really are in a bit of a bind here. Are both robots with you?"
"In body, if not in spirit," she sighed. "XJ-9, will you stow that blasted thing away, already!?!"
Jenny, aka XJ-9, the super-powered teenage robot who had saved the world more times than she could be bothered to count, hopped out of the helicopter, pressing her hands tightly against a headset that she'd deployed out of the back of her head. One of her blue metallic pigtails was unfurled into a communications dish, and she was shouting urgently into a microphone as if the fate of the universe hinged on her next words. "Connie? Connie, can you hear me? So tell me, did Tamika finally decide if she was going to wear the indigo dress, or the cream one? Because if she goes with the indigo, then I totally have to rethink my entire paint scheme for Saturday! Maybe something in an amber …"
"X-J Ni-yun!" yelled the doctor. The number of syllables that she could stretch out of the word 'nine' served as a pretty good barometer of her anger level.
Jenny rolled her eyes with a huff as her mother/creator tapped her foot impatiently. "… looks like I gotta go, Connie, my mom is starting to spaz out. Give me a call later tonight, okay? Oh, and find out what Sam's wearing." She returned Mrs. Wakeman's annoyed glare as the headset mechanism re-folded back into her head, restoring it to spherical form. "Okay, okay … so what's the big crisis, anyway?"
"That's classified information, ma'am," said the general, "but I can assure you, it's extremely urgent. I'll fill you in once we're all inside."
Drew stepped onto the ground behind Jenny, his silver-green face slowly pivoting upwards. "Just great. I can't wait to get back inside of that thing." The sarcasm in his voice was thicker that the shimmering stew of nanobots that made up his synthetic android body.
"I second that opinion," groaned Jenny.
The giant Cluster starship overwhelmed the Tremorton skyline, even though it was sitting miles away from downtown, in a public park on the outskirts of the city. Its unfathomable bulk still sat in the exact same spot where it had landed three days ago, with its ugly olive-green, dome-shaped hull curving a thousand feet into the sky. Giant landing-struts were splayed and twisted away from the sides of the starship, and from the air, Jenny had thought that it looked like a bloated, obese beetle that had broken its legs and decided to make itself comfortable. It seemed unthinkable that the half-mile-long metal monster could even get itself six inches off the ground, but this ship had carried her five thousand light-years, from the strange robotic world of Cluster Prime back to her ordinary little piece of home on Earth. And for thirty kidnapped high school students, and three thousand human prisoners, the ship had been their means of escape from slavery, back to a world of freedom.
The ship was surrounded by dozens of military and government research vehicles, and numerous tents and trailers had been brought in, transforming the park into an impromptu military base. Hundreds of scientists and researchers were going over every square inch of the spacecraft carrier, hoping to harvest a bumper crop of Cluster secrets and technology. The security was extremely heavy – but General Brohammer was the man in charge, and soldiers parted before him like the waters of the Red Sea. Jenny and Drew followed closely behind, right behind Mrs. Wakeman, who was noisily letting the general know that she found the whole arrangement highly irregular.
Drew tuned his internal radio to Jenny's frequency, and nodded to the walking volcano that was Dr. Wakeman. "Your mom's in fine form today," he whispered with a silent smirk.
Jenny stifled a chuckle, and radioed back, enjoying the ability to chat behind her mother's back. "She's still upset that she wasn't picked to head up the alien ship research team. She seriously needs to just deal – and who cares about snooping around inside of a big ugly Cluster ship, anyway? I'm facing a major life-or-death situation here!" She unfolded a door in her pale blue torso, and out popped a thin robotic arm with a selection of paint strips, spread out like the feathers of a peacock's tail. "What do you think I should do for Saturday? Fuchsia, champagne, or light coral?"
"You're asking me? I didn't even know those were the names of colors." He cocked a confused eyebrow in her direction. "What's wrong with the blue paint you've got on now? It looks fine."
"Boys," she snorted, rolling her eyes again. "First of all, this isn't blue, it's pale aqua. And I can't just wear my same old paint color on Saturday! Sheesh!"
They briskly walked down a wide, busy corridor along the length of the starship's spine, passing open rooms filled with lab equipment, computers, and exotic weaponry. The human scientists seemed as awestruck as children on Christmas morning, but Jenny thought that nothing could be more boring than row after row of gadgets and science junk. There were simply more important things to worry about, like the Tremorton High School junior prom, which was now only four short days away. And she was horribly behind schedule – last week had been a total write-off, between that stupid shape-shifting Omni-droid, and getting kidnapped by Smytus and taken to Cluster Prime. A whole week of shopping days, lost forever! The injustice of it all was enough to make a girl's fuses blow!
"Come on, Drew, just tell me what you think," she pleaded via radio, as they rushed into an transport tube-car behind a glowering Mrs. Wakeman and the granite-faced general. "Take another look and tell me which color would look good on me!"
"All right, all right, I give up," he groaned, briefly considering the spectrum of paint strips before him. Jenny held them fanned out like a deck of cards, and Drew glided a finger across their surfaces before stopping on a soft shade of purple. "Hey, this one looks kind of nice."
"I was thinking of that one too!" she wordlessly cheered. "It goes really well with my base white color. It's a pale purple … sort of like a lavender … just like the color that Allison …"
Jenny winced, and silently cursed herself for being so stupid. Drew was in better shape than he had been yesterday – at least his surface didn't have that sickly, chalky texture to it anymore – but the mention of the name was like a knife being rammed into his gut. Just remembering the Cluster robot girl, and the horrible sacrifice she had made to help them escape Cluster Prime, brought a fresh glaze of synthetic tears to Jenny's eyes. Allison had been the first teenage robot girl Jenny had ever known, besides herself. They had become good friends almost immediately. But Drew and Allison had become something more than good friends. Jenny had watched them fall in love in front of her eyes … and then she'd watched Allison hurtle away into the black of space, while Drew had stared on helplessly. If there was something even close to a heart inside of his syrupy chest, it had been crushed into countless tiny pieces.
She abruptly retracted the color samples back into her chest. "Maybe purple's not the way to go," she whispered, trying to recover from the uncomfortable silence. If he heard her, he didn't acknowledge it. He stared sullenly at the floor with faraway eyes, as the tube-car started to decelerate. "Sorry, Drew," she added as an afterthought. No, he still wasn't over it, and she could hardly expect him to be.
Jenny suddenly realized that the general had finally started talking about the reason they'd been summoned to the giant ship on such short notice. She just hadn't been paying attention to him. "… and while we're eagerly researching the weaponry and the fighter craft down in the hangar bays, our immediate concern was intelligence gathering. That's why we focused operations on the ship's main computer."
Mrs. Wakeman shot her a suspicious, disapproving glance out of the corner of her coke-bottle glasses. She obviously hadn't heard a word of the robots' little radio-wave conversation, but she had an eerie ability to sense when her daughter's attention was drifting away from serious issues. "XJ-9, have you listened to a word that the general has said?!?"
"Weapons, fighters, computer doohickey," she said with an impish smile.
"And do you know what is wrong with the 'computer doohickey', young lady?!?"
If she'd been built with sweat pores, they would have been operating at full capacity. "Uhhh …"
Then the tube-car doors mercifully hissed open, and Jenny silently radioed a prayer of thanks for the timely rescue. Standing immediately in front of the car, on the starship's computer deck, was a short, disagreeable little man in a white laboratory smock and thick round glasses that dominated his face. A scowling sneer worked its way through a dark, ragged beard as the wizened old man frowned at the occupants of the tube-car, like a professor casting judgment on a lazy group of college students. Then his eyes locked with Mrs. Wakeman's, and the two diminutive scientists instantly assumed a hostile tone.
"I'll tell you what's wrong," grimaced Mrs. Wakeman. "What's wrong is that the military, in its infinite wisdom, saw fit to name this snake-oil charlatan as Head Scientist for the Cluster starship research."
"Hello, Nora," chuckled the little man, "I see you brought your automaton daughter with you. Hmmm, a scarecrow and a tin man. If that blob of nanobots behind you can shape-shift into a cowardly lion, then we're all set."
"Phinneas Mogg," she hissed, as if the name itself were insult enough. "So you've managed to throw a spanner into the works, yet again. My, what a surprise."
"I've already learned enough from the ship's computer to make your latest research project look like an sixth-grade baking soda volcano!"
"You wouldn't know a quantum decryption algorithm if it snuck up and bit you on the rear end!"
"Doctors, doctors, now's not the time," pleaded the general, comically towering over the bitter academic rivals. He separated them like a referee breaking up a pair of pint-sized prize fighters, then with a snap of his fingers, a pair of soldiers fell into step behind them, and ushered the group down a dimly lit corridor. Another pair motioned for Jenny and Drew to come along, and even though they were still somewhat confused as to just what the nature of the huge "emergency" was, they thought it best to keep up with the general and the scientists. Something about the way that the general kept glancing at his wristwatch was starting to make them a little nervous.
"Hold up! I still don't get it," said Jenny. "What's wrong with the computer doohickey?"
Dr. Mogg's slapped his forehead and shook his head. The mere sound of the word 'doohickey' seemed to send a visible shudder through his clammy skin.
"We've been searching the ship's main computer for any useful information about the Cluster's military plans," General Brohammer explained, for the second time. "But we've run into a bit of a … snag."
A pair of thick red-striped doors slid open in front of them, and they walked through them into a large oval-shaped room, filled floor-to-ceiling with dozens of video screens. It was the main computer room, the nerve and data center for the entire Cluster ship. They were immediately bombarded with the sounds of anxious, almost panicked conversations. Nervous technicians were hunched over control panels, frantically working through a spaghetti of wires and cables like medics performing emergency surgery. Keyboards clicked with rapid-fire desperation as the military's top computer experts worked at a feverish pace, frowning at pages of strange computer symbols that flickered on the smaller screens. But the wall was dominated by the huge main monitor, a giant oval screen thirty feet across that bathed the entire room in a soft white glow. And that giant screen was dominated by giant letters and numbers …
"Time to Self Destruct – 00:06:34"
Jenny's eyes sprang out of their recessed sockets like white tetherballs. "A snag!?! You call that a snag!?! You're gonna blow up the ship!!!"
Mrs. Wakeman's glasses nearly flew off of her face as she watched the counter tick away the seconds. "Sweet Ptolemy's protractor! Phinneas, what on Earth have you …"
"It started all on its own," he protested, mopping a trail of sweat from his brow. "We tried to open a new file, and we think we might have accidentally triggered some kind of booby trap. It must have been one of these junior-grade military hacks; I certainly didn't do anything wrong …"
"If this starship self-destructs, it will obliterate half the state!"
"That's why we didn't bother to order an evacuation – it would just cause a mass panic," said General Brohammer, looking more pale with each tick of the countdown clock. "We've been trying to disarm it every way we know how, but nothing works. And frankly, with only six minutes left, I think our chances of stopping it are slimmer than the chances of drawin' a straight flush in Vegas."
Jenny and Drew exchanged a panicked look, suddenly realizing that they might well be six minutes away from being blown into a million pieces. But Mrs. Wakeman simply folded her arms and glared at Mogg, convinced that his incompetence must have had something to do with the impending catastrophe. "Well, I trust you're satisfied with yourself, Phinneas," she frowned. "Honestly, a first year student at Poly Tech would have known to watch out for hidden traps in the file system. XJ-9, you must disable the ship's self-destruct mechanism any way that you can! Andrew, perhaps you could … eh … digest the offending equipment! Hurry, we haven't a moment to waste …"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa thar!" bellowed the general, sounding like he was bulldogging a rebellious rodeo bull. "Doctor, that's not the reason we brought the robots here." He pointed back towards the huge oval screen with a meaty finger. "That is."
Below the giant countdown clock, which now read "00:05:41", there was a row of slightly smaller text which read "Awaiting Confirmation". And beside it were two names: "XJ-9" and "Nanodroid".
Jenny's mouth dropped open in astonishment, and she suddenly realized that the burly general was looking at her in a very accusatory manner. "XJ-9, I have the utmost respect for what you've done to defend the planet Earth, but I have to admit: I'm very curious as to why your name is popping up on a Cluster doomsday program in the ship's main computer!"
"Whoa! Hey, don't look at me!" she yelled defensively. "I didn't put it in there! Do I look like some kind of loser programmer geek to you?"
As amazed as Jenny was to see her name on the Cluster computer screen, Drew was even more stunned. "Nanodroid? What the heck is … hey … I think Vexus called me that, once …"
And while the general argued loudly with Jenny, shouting to be heard over Mrs. Wakeman and Dr. Mogg, and the growing panic in the computer room, Drew saw the computer display change slightly. A small series of sine waves marched by on the bottom of the screen, and the letters "XJ-9" began to flash, until another message appeared below the letters: "Voice Match Confirmed."
"Voice match confirmed?" said Drew, scratching his head. "What the heck is that supposed to …"
A moment later, another "Voice Match Confirmed" message flashed beneath Drew's robot name. Then a shrill series of beeps rang out from the monitor, coming close to triggering a few heart attacks among the tightly-wound scientists and computer technicians. Every eye in the room, human and robotic, turned to the large oval screen, as the countdown clock's large numbers began to flash ominously.
Then the countdown accelerated. Drastically. The counter rolled past four minutes. Three. Two.
A few gasps went out throughout the room. Jenny clasped her hands to her mouth in fear. Mrs. Wakeman and Dr. Mogg stopped their verbal feud long enough to realize that the end was upon them.
The counter hit "00:00:00", and sat there, flashing …
And for a few horrible seconds, nothing happened.
Then the screen blazed to life with a large, evil, robot face … grinning a sick, twisted grin.
"Boom," said Queen Vexus, with a sadistic glint in her serpentine eyes. "And people say I don't have a sense of humor."
The general exchanged confused glances with his technicians, who simply shrugged their shoulders. The scientists buzzed with hushed whispers … nobody was quite sure of just what was going on. Drew looked at Jenny, his entire face an unspoken question. She simply frowned at the screen, sure of only one thing. Anything that involved Vexus could only be bad. "Very funny, you evil robot witch …"
But Vexus kept talking, and it was soon obvious that this wasn't a live video connection, it was some kind of recorded message. "Don't strain your puny little meat-brains, vertebrates, the ship is not going to self-destruct. I knew that you wouldn't be able to keep your fleshy little paws off of the main computer, so I took the liberty of having this little present downloaded into it via long-range hyperwave. Since you're watching this now, it can only mean you've begun to poke around in the classified computer files. Well, you can save yourself the trouble. You'll find they're all being erased, even as we speak."
Mogg and the general looked at young army technician holding a laptop interfaced with the ship's computer system, and after a few frantic commands, he confirmed their worst fears. "She's right, sir. All of the files have been wiped."
As if she could hear everything, Vexus' recorded image chuckled with smug laughter. "Tsk, tsk, didn't anyone ever warn you not to open up strange e-mail? Serves you right, primates."
Jenny's frown intensified, and her hands balled into a pair of furious fists as she realized that this whole 'crisis' was nothing more than Vexus' sick joke. She was using some kind of computer virus as a chance to gloat from five thousand light-years away. I've got more important things to do than …
"Jennifer, Andrew, this message was encoded using your voice prints as a password, so I assume that both of you are in the room right now." Vexus struck a pose of mock apology. "I'm terribly sorry about my little ruse with the 'self-destruct countdown', my dears. I simply wanted to provide you with a little … incentive to rush over here. You see, I wanted to pass along a message to both of you."
Now Jenny took a few steps closer to the screen, with a sense of morbid curiosity sizzling in her circuits. She stood next to Drew, and by the stunned expression on his face, she could tell he was completely overwhelmed with the idea of an evil robot dictator was sending him a personal message. Well, Vexus had begun to take a personal interest in him lately ... which was to say, she wanted him destroyed. She was probably even madder at him now, after the little "grey goo" incident at Base Zero-One …
"After all," continued the robot queen, "you left Cluster Prime in such a rush that I didn't even get a chance to say good-bye. And I know that you're both very concerned about the terrible mess you made."
At that, Jenny saw that even Drew had to smile; he was developing a hatred for Vexus nearly as strong as hers, and they both knew that they'd inflicted some serious damage on the Cluster's starship fleet …
But Vexus was still speaking in that irritatingly cool, refined tone that drove her nuts. "Well, you needn't stress your pretty little microchips about it … I just wanted you both to know that there's nothing to worry about. After all, you may have destroyed one of my military bases … but there are sixty-one others on Cluster Prime alone, and hundreds more spread throughout my empire. So just in case you were worried about the damage you've done to my war fleet, children, let me assuage your fears. One military base is but a drop in the oil pan."
"As for Base Zero-One itself," she continued, "well, as you might imagine, it was rather traumatic for the good citizens of the capital to see a giant silver android rampage through their fair city, and then smother the military base in a layer of dead nanobots. Well, you can relax. Nobody remembers it. After a restful night of sleep mode and a good backup session, every robot in the entire Cluster now knows that the damage to the capital was caused by a freak meteorite shower. They're all pitching in as we speak with the cleanup efforts. And the human slaves are working triple shifts to replace the equipment that you destroyed. I estimate that Base Zero-One, and the capital, should be restored to pristine condition in under a month. And once everything is back to the way it was … then I'll simply tell everyone that nothing ever happened."
Crackles of angry electricity leapt from Jenny's cheeks. She and Drew had risked their lives fighting Vexus' forces on Cluster Prime. Now thanks to Vexus' invisible-but-total mind control over the robots of the Cluster, she was going to simply 'erase' their victory, and pretend that it never happened. And she'd get away with it. Not only that, but she was going to make the lives of the human slaves even more miserable now. Jenny wished that she could reach into the screen and plow her fist right in the middle of that smug, conceited face …
"You see, it's very important to me that my robot subjects feel safe and secure," smirked Queen Vexus. "They need to know that the Cluster is eternal, and that nothing could ever jeopardize them. They need to know that their noble queen cares deeply for each and every one of them, and will always take care of them … no matter what happens."
Suddenly Vexus began to move, and it became apparent for the first time that she was standing in a large room filled with high-tech machinery. Jenny didn't fully understand what she was looking at, but it appeared to be some kind of communications center, filled with giant computers and networking equipment. There was a large semi-circular control panel in the foreground, and she could see various Cluster robot drones sitting at their work stations, with cable and connectors extending from their bodies to plug into the computer banks. The robot queen strolled casually to her left, and the picture followed her as she walked along the row of consoles.
"Take, for example, this rebellious little robot right here," she said with an evil grin. She rested a twisted hand on the robot's round, gleaming shoulder joint …
Jenny gasped in horror. Drew's jaw dropped open, and his face flashed a paler shade of gray.
Sitting at the communications console was a lavender-and-white robot girl, with a ramrod-straight posture and a blank stare on her face. Her large, oval eyes stared emotionlessly out of the video screen, softly flickering in colors of dull, drab red, like traffic lights. Her violet hair-foil hung limply behind her slender neck, and both of her forearms had unfolded to deploy a series of connector cables and interface sockets. She was plugged into the huge bank of computers in front of her, effectively becoming one with the computers herself.
Drew involuntarily raised a hand towards the screen. "Ally …"
Vexus shook her head in mock pity. "Poor, poor LSN-1482. Seems she fell in with the wrong crowd; a pair of out-of-town robots who came to Cluster Prime and filled her memory banks with a lot of foolish notions about human intelligence and free will. That kind of thinking was bound to lead her to ruin. Our local patrol ships found her floating in deep space, not too far from the planetary ring. Cold, neglected, and all alone … tsk, tsk, tsk. Such a tragedy."
"You miserable …" Jenny caught herself, and glanced over at Drew. He was grinding his teeth together.
The queen stared into the recording camera, and it was as if her eyes shot lasers right through Drew's chest. "The foolish girl seemed to have the silly idea that some robot boy was going to spirit her away and take care of her. Well, he certainly didn't do a very good job of it, did he? It only took, what, ten minutes for him to lose her? Rather pathetic, wouldn't you say?"
Wild patterns of silver-green began to dance over Drew's shimmering surface. His eyes began to quiver with insane rage, and his hands began to shake.
"But you see, Vexus' generosity is legend," said the evil robot queen. She leaned down and stroked Allison's cheek with her crooked, spidery fingers, smirking into the camera as the zombie robot girl's eyes mindlessly flashed with flickering pulses. "She tried to betray me, but instead of destroying her, I'm giving her a chance to rehabilitate herself, working in the Central Communications Node here in my palace. Oh, she needed an extensive reprogramming session. The poor dear was so very confused and upset when we brought her in, we had to start from scratch. But as you can see …" – she gestured to Allison's empty face – "… she's feeling much better now. In fact, she's the one transmitting this little message to you. I'm confident that she'll become one of my most productive LSN droids, in no time at all."
Vexus patted Allison on the head, and gave the screen a final sneering smile. "Well, that was all I wanted to say for now, children. I'm sure we'll all have a chance to get together again, very soon. All my best, darlings. Jennifer, Andrew … ta ta."
The large screen winked off, and Jenny blinked back angry tears, fuming at what Vexus had done to her friend. Allison had suffered through the same thing that Jenny had managed to avoid … total reprogramming in a Cluster laboratory. As she pondered the horrors of having one's personality re-written, she heard a primal yell, and caught a furious flash of motion out of the corner of her eye.
Drew looked like he was going to explode. He grew his right hand into an enormous silver-green anvil, and began to sputter and stammer with blind rage, unable to form complete words. Then he flung his anvil-fist into the floor with a force that nearly knocked everyone off of their feet, and collapsed to his hands and knees. Jenny knelt down beside him, and rested a comforting hand on his heaving shoulders.
"She'll pay for this," she whispered to her grieving friend. "We'll make her pay for this."
Continued in Chapter Two / Forty-eight Hours to Cluster Dawn