Joel, Crow and Tom were exiting the theater after witnessing the cinematic sin known as 'Mitchell'. Joel was carrying a piece of fan mail in his hands an was preparing to read it on the bridge so Cambot could record it for posterity. "Okay guys, I've got the letter to read. Now let's-"
"Joel!" Gypsy practically collided with Joel in her haste to find him. "Joel! It's bad! It's bad! It's really, really, really-"
"Easy Gypsy!" Joel put his hands on her nose to try and ease her distress. "What's going on? Take a breath and tell me what happened."
Gypsy took in several fast breaths in an attempt to calm herself, but it wasn't working.
"Gypsy, you need to breathe slowly. In and out, come on..."
Listening to Joel Gypsy proceeded to calm her breathing and finally find the words to explain what had happened while Joel and the other bots were in the theater. "Joel, the 'Mad poopies' called and I overheard them talking about killing someone in a jumpsuit!"
"What?!" Joel, Crow and Tom were all surprised by this revelation.
"But it turns out it wasn't you!"
"It wasn't me?" Joel let out the breath he didn't know he had been holding. "Then who?"
"The temp they hired, Mike!"
"That's awful Gypsy, but what can we do? We're stuck up in space!"
The red light on the desk began flashing, indicating another incoming transmission from the 'Mads' down in Deep 13. The four stared at the flashing light, unsure if they should answer or not.
Crow pushed Tom toward the desk. "Go ahead, press the button!"
"No way!" Tom pushed Crow back. "You press it!"
"I'm not going to press it!"
"Well, I'm certainly not!"
Joel put his arms between the bickering robots and forced them apart. "I'll answer it." He slapped the red button. "Yes sirs?"
Frank's face appeared on the monitor screen that connected the Satellite to Deep 13. "Hey Joel." Frank greeted relatively warmly. "Dr. F is still in the shower, he should be out in just a moment."
"Great." Joel responded flatly. He casually rubbed at the back of his neck. "So, uh, what's going on down there?"
"Nothing much. 'Baywatch' marathons, eating some leftovers, still getting killed every now and then... You know, the usual!"
"Right, usual." Joel looked over at Gypsy who was still worried for Mike. "So, where's the new guy, Mike?"
"Mike? Mike..." Frank took a moment to try and place the name. "Oh, Mike! The temp! Yeah," he laughed a little. "funny thing is he's gone and we didn't have to pay him!"
"Really?" Joel was trying to feign innocence. "Was he feeling sick or get called away, or what?"
"Oh, nothing that dramatic. Some weird pale dude carrying around a brain took him away."
"What? Why?"
"Well, this guy, said his name was 'Observer', claimed he was from the future and was going to keep Mike from destroying some worlds or something, I wasn't paying that close attention."
"And... where are they now?"
"Huh?" Frank didn't put much thought into the whereabouts of Mike or Observer. "Oh, well, I don't know. They sort of disappeared like half an hour ago."
Dr. Forrester walked into the room wearing a neon green bathrobe and with a neon green towel over his shoulder. "Ah, Frank. Nothing like a good shower to make a man feel-" He noticed Joel and the robots watching him.
Joel just coyly waved 'hi' at his semi-descent captor.
"Gah! Frank! Why didn't you tell me Joel was..." He threw his towel on the floor. "Ah, never mind!" He crossed his arms and gave Joel an arrogant look. "Well, Joely-poley, how was the movie? Have you gone completely insane yet? Are you ready to bow down and kiss my sexy feet?"
"Not exactly, it was a pretty bad movie and all, but..."
"'But'? But what! Tell me!"
Joel had a cunning plan. "It's just we were curious about what happened to your temp. He's not around and we'll be too busy worrying about him to really pay any attention to any movie you send up."
"Frank!" He yelled even though Frank was standing right next to him.
Frank covered his ears. "What? I'm right here, you know!"
"Frank, where's the temp? Where's Mitch?"
"Mike."
"Right, where's Mel?"
"Uh..."
"Frank, please don't tell me you lost the temp."
"No, no sir, I didn't lose him."
"Well, you didn't kill him without me, did you? If you did I'd be really hurt, because, you know, kill is sort our thing. It's our 'us' time."
Joel and the bots just shook their heads in disgusted uneasiness at the conversation unfolding before them. Crow nudged Joel's leg. "Geez, what's with these two? It's like they live in a 'Lifetime' movie or something."
"Shh." Joel shushed the robot.
Frank was nervously wringing his hands together. "Well, you see Clay, or, er..." He stumbled on his own words. "Dr. Forrester," he corrected himself before continuing. "while you were in the shower some guy from the future showed up and took Mike away. I don't know where."
"WHAT?!" He yelled at his lackey with both anger and confusion. "How could you let that happen? How'd a man from the future get in here anyway? Now who am I supposed to kill?"
"Uh..." Frank tried to slink away.
"Frank! Get back here..." Dr. Forrester pulled a large chainsaw out from under his control panel and started pulling on the cord. "This is going to hurt."
"I know..." Frank whined.
"Just to be a good sport, I'll give you a five second head start." The chainsaw roared to life.
"Thank you see sir! AAAAAHHHHHH!" Frank bolted across the room and out of sight of the monitor.
"Until next time Joel." Dr. Forrester pressed the button and screen went black.
Joel and the bots just stared at the blank for a minute before Gypsy broke the silence.
"Well?"
"Well what?" Crow replied.
"What about Mike?"
"Who?" Tom responded sincerely.
"Mike!" Gypsy repeated. "The nice guy who was going to help me save Joel until I found out Joel wasn't the one going to be killed!"
"Not ringing a bell..."
"Joel!" Gypsy realized that Crow and Tom weren't going to be of any help at all. "Please! We have to help Mike!"
"I wish I knew how Gypsy, but we're kinda limited here. I mean, we don't know where Mike is, we don't know who this 'Observer' is and even if we did know where they went, the ship won't be able to take us anywhere. Dr. Forrester controls the satellite's orbit from down on Earth, remember?"
"Oh..."
Joel put a sympathetic hand on Gypsy's nose again. "I'm sorry girl, we can't do much."
Gypsy didn't say anything, she just slowly slithered off the bridge and toward her private room.
"Poor Gypsy." Joel hated seeing his robot friends upset.
"Yeah," Crow looked around the room, not really caring about this Mike person at all. "so who's hungry?"
"Me, me, me!" Tom answered energetically.
"You two go ahead without me, I'm going to stay here and work on the bridge."
"Okay, more for us. I'll race you bubble butt!"
"You're on big nose!"
Alone on the bridge Joel began taking apart the large communication console, exposing the numerous colored wires beneath. "Okay, let's see if I can't patch into the 'Mads' video feed..." He often spoke aloud to himself as he worked.
Testing each potential combination of wires, circuits and microchips, a static filled image of the latest security feed from Deep 13 began to appear on the monitor. Through the static Joel could barely see the blonde temp and the pale abductor, just seconds before they disappeared into thin air. A poor image with no sound was all Joel could extract.
Thoroughly intrigued, Joel rewound the stolen, grainy footage while trying to engage the audio function. "I don't know who you are Mike, but I get the feeling we were destined to meet."
...to be continued...
