Chapter 4: It's Mega-Weird

Sir ran back and forth between the lab tables to peruse the experiments, letting out little squeaks of excitement as he explored the lab with curiosity befitting a child. Minion hadn't yet mentioned the technological marvel that was currently concealed in a large vault under the floor because it was possible that Sir just might explode with the news. Considering that he'd almost passed out with rapture when he'd found the lightsaber, it was probably best to wait until he calmed down and was fully capable of keeping himself together before revealing that Mr. Scott had also invented a time machine of his very own.

Megamind took the lightsaber in his hands with such tenderness that it could have been a newborn baby.

"Does it work?" he whispered in awe.

"Not yet, but you—or he I mean—is very close to a breakthrough."

"I've tried many versions myself, mostly with lasers at first, but the beams extend infinitely and slash through everything no matter how many miles away. The lair was in shambles and so was the telescope at the observatory, which is probably why it was abandoned. I resorted to testing super-heated plasma. Is that what this device is attempting to utilize?"

"Yes, Sir only recently developed the right temperature that the ceramic chamber inside the titanium shaft can withstand," Minion answered with enthusiasm.

"12,256 degrees," Megamind assumed, holding the laser sword closer to his eyes in order to obtain a more detailed look.

"Exactly."

"But no workable power source I see." He tried the knob on the side, but nothing happened.

Minion's brow scrunched together. "No, he's tried everything from the ridiculous to the serious."

"Meaning rare crystals, double AA's and/or lithium?" Megamind asked dryly, having already been there done that.

He nodded, bubbles floating around his little body as he moved through the water. "Everything under the sun, but he just can't make it work."

"Though I've lately had no time to work on my lightsaber what with being the busy hero, I've been thinking of experimenting with nanotechnology. It would have to be comprised of trillions of nanobatteries," he went on, feverishly pacing back and forth, keeping a death grip on the lightsaber. "Which we haven't caught up to yet because the technology is still forty years away. My binky is a source of considerable power," he said, rushing through his words as he thought it out. "The trouble is that the power of the binky is one of a kind. I've made copies of it, but the science has never been as accurate or as reliable because the properties that made up the binky could only be harvested on my home planet. Earth has no such mineral."

"You're the brains behind the technology, Sir. If anyone can invent…well, just about anything, then that person is definitely you."

Megamind held up the laser sword in front of his face, imagining a blue glowing torch extending from the hilt. If he could just….

"NO! No! Home first. Sci-fi later," he said, gingerly placing the lightsaber back into its place of honor—inside a safe with an algorithmic sequence combination that he'd easily guessed in less than a minute and a quarter. He closed the door to the safe, but not before taking one last awestruck look at the elegant weapon.

Even though he truly believed Sir wasn't lying, Minion still needed further clarification. Mr. Scott—or Megamind rather, as he had referred to himself—claimed that by traveling back through time, he had changed the past thus producing a future that between the two of them, only Minion could remember. Though the alien fish was no genius, Sir definitely was and he knew his boss was capable of inventing just about anything, be it a time machine or an android.

The little fish considered Sir as his best friend in the world and watched as he began wandering around again. He studied the neatly organized notes tacked to the numerous corkboards around the lab while also holding an armful of spiral notebooks crammed with formulas and data concerning the various experiments. They were the same person and yet they weren't. Minion couldn't help feeling a little weirded out, especially by the strange costume Sir was wearing. He'd never seen Sir in anything except baggy jeans and t-shirts with slogans that said things like "What would Spock do?" This Sir's explanation for the black leather with the blue lightning bolt image and spikes had been a little vague, if it had been explained at all. He'd adamantly said it was very popular in his timeline and that all the citizens of Metrocity simply adored his fashion sense.

If Minion needed any further proof that this Sir was telling the truth, then it was the pronunciation of the city as one word. His Sir did the same thing. Lady Scott had always believed her adopted son had a speech impediment and had brought in speech therapists and linguists, but it wasn't fixable. Through the years she eventually gave up and grudgingly accepted Sir's natural speech quirk. She had always seemed embarrassed by it and had often made a point of explaining the impediment to guests at her stuffy parties and that's when Sir would disappear into the bowels of the basement—the only place he was at peace. Not usually prone to violence, those were the times when Minion wished he had arms and legs. Then maybe she'd really understand the definition of a speech impediment once a few of her teeth had been knocked out.

The thin line of black hair in the center of Sir's chin was difficult not to stare at. "So…is that a stick on?"

"Is what stuck on what?"

Minion pointed with his fin. "Your goatee."

"Hardly. I grew this all by my manly self, thank you," he said proudly. "Though you're not the first person here to be shocked by my appearance. That butler person thought it was weird too."

"You mean Basil saw you too?" he asked warily, scrunching his eyes worriedly.

"Accidently. I didn't intend to talk to anyone, but he just appeared out of nowhere! I think I handled the situation pretty well, if I say so myself. The moron thought I had hit my head. Everything I said confused him."

Minion closed his eyes and rubbed his head with a fin. "Well, I can't say that I blame him really. You're not exactly…"

Megamind slammed the notebooks down on the top of one of the lab tables, plopped down on a metal stool and gave Minion his full attention. "Not exactly what?"

"You're just…not…I mean…you aren't you."

"How can I not be me when I've always been me?" he asked confusedly.

"You're different. Rather, Megamind and Wayne Scott are two entirely different people."

"You can say that again," he said sarcastically.

"Look, you and Sir are both from the same planet, but that's mainly where the similarities end. He's not like you exactly and you're most definitely nothing like him," Minion explained delicately.

"What's so different?"

"Well…" he hesitated, worried that he was betraying his friend, but this was Sir too and he had already decided that he believed him strictly based on the fact that he had also wished at one very low point in his life to have never been born.

Growing up in a mansion with the money and power to accomplish whatever he wanted hadn't benefitted Sir at all. Childhood had been difficult and puberty had basically never ended. He'd been picked on at school so badly that Lady Scott had hired private tutors to complete his education at home, which meant all interaction with other children ceased. His parents, while financially able to give him everything he ever wanted, had neglected the one thing he'd needed. Love. They were too busy with their parties and month-long vacations to notice that they had a son who felt like an outcast in his own home. Because he was so unhappy, his Sir had also delved deeply into the controversial science of time travel and invented a time machine. Minion had no doubts whatsoever that the machine worked, but Sir hadn't tested its possibilities because he'd never been brave enough to try.

Minion had done what he could to be the best caregiver Sir needed, but it was difficult considering he'd spent his whole life in a tank that didn't provide him with the ability to ever go anywhere. He didn't have arms, which made hugging impossible. And Sir was desperately in need of a hug. He didn't have any friends and the people he worked with on a daily basis were definitely not friends. They were simply other scientists and inventors with their own socially awkward lives to deal with. Not that he really saw them in person. Skype was the method of contact for Sir every day. Rarely did he leave the confines of the basement, except for the annual technology conference in Paris. He had to go to these meetings of the minds whether he wanted to or not because it was necessary for his business to interact with the other inventors around the world to introduce his latest brilliant creations and to check out the competition. Not that anyone could compete with Sir. He was too good.

"You're just not very outgoing, Sir. I mean, he isn't. He wouldn't dare step outside in an outfit like that because he'd be afraid of what people might think."

"Ridiculous! I couldn't be handsomer than when I'm in black leather."

"No, no! I agree, but he's just a very low key person. He doesn't have any friends except for me and his parents are kind of distant so he's by himself a lot. Again, except for me. So he doesn't leave the basement too often. It's like he's…in a prison all the time," Minion said sadly, sagging.

Megamind sobered instantly. That certainly sounded familiar. Changing the past wouldn't have made one bit of difference anyway. There was a distinct similarity between the two realities. In either world, he would still have grown up in a prison of his own making. Long before he'd become Metrocity's hero, he'd wanted to take from Music Man the very same thing he'd been robbed of. He'd longed for a family with brothers and sisters. He'd just assumed that living in a mansion and having a bottomless bank account would give him all the happiness he'd always longed for. But it wasn't riches that had given him the first truly happy moment in his life. That moment had happened when a smart, kind, beautiful woman had thrown her arms around his neck, giving him the first hug he'd ever experienced. Roxanne became the happiness he'd been craving since he lost his parents. Though the hug didn't last long, he still remembered how the warmth of her body had seeped into his rigid, cold chest. If he concentrated hard enough, he could almost feel her arms now. It was weird really, seeing that had he been successful in changing the past years ago then he would have made the worst decision of his life.

"So this whole reality is wrong?"

Megamind shook himself out of his somber daydream and closed the notebook on cloning that he'd come across while perusing the various odds and ends of the lab. His eyes had widened each time he turned the page, seeing just how simple the process was. The human scientists had only successfully cloned sheep, but this was a carefully laid out formula for cloning people. He had read and then re-read the formula. Maybe he could just take this notebook back with him when he returned to his own time. Purely for scientific research. Naturally.

"Yes…for me at least," he said, looking up at his friend.

"But what about all of my memories?" Minion protested lightly, thinking back to the last time he'd seen Sir before he'd left for the conference. "They're still wrong?"

"Technically, no. Just different. Our lives took another course from what you know. I accidentally created a distorted version of the present."

Minion swam back and forth in a pacing way, fins calmly flapping. "I'm sorry, Sir. It's hard to believe, but I do believe you!" he added hastily when Megamind opened his mouth to protest. "What I meant to say is that it's a lot to take in, hearing that my past isn't yours and that even it though it did actually happen, it was in a different reality."

"It's all cause and effect. For every action there is a reaction. By accident, I went back to the past and changed everyone's future, which created a new future that is wrong. Unless I go back in time again to set things back the way they were, then this reality will continue with an entirely different course of events, which could prove disastrous. My presence here has created a paradox because there are now two of me in this version of the present, which could bring about unknown and catastrophic results since I'm here and not there and he's here too and if something goes wrong while I'm trying to change the past again for the first time, fail and then keep trying over and over, we could all be thrown into a causality loop of a continually recreated and never-ending chain of alternate realities that would destroy the space-time continuum because our universe can only hold so much matter and if these alternate universes exponentially increase in space each time I try to change the past, it's very possible that the cosmos will explode and suck every reality into the mother of all supermassive black holes of cosmic proportions so colossal that all life in every galaxy across the universe will be crushed into oblivion."

Minion's lower lip quivered slightly, but he attempted to think positively. "Oh, is that all? And I thought you were going to say…something…else," he laughed weakly.

Megamind shrugged. "That's one possible scenario. It's also possible that my attempt to put everything back to the way it should be will work perfectly, but it's impossible to predict. Either way, I have to try and fix this."

He leaned forward to rest pointy elbows on the counter of the lab table, cupping his face in his hands, and morosely stared at the wall. The prospect of getting home to the right timeline was going to be very complex if not impossible. The time machine was so badly damaged that it would take weeks to repair and he didn't have weeks. The longer he stayed in this alternate world, the worse it could be. If something happened to him…if he were killed or terribly injured, then this wrong world would continue when it never should have begun. The dehydration gun was dissectible and the duplicate binky removable, but if he couldn't get the time machine working, then it would be pointless.

As Roxanne's pretty face teased his eyes, his heart sank even lower. The desire to see and talk to her was suddenly stronger than ever. If she still lived in Metrocity, he could probably find her, but they wouldn't be married. She wouldn't know him as her husband. To her, he would be nothing but a stranger. And seeking her out could also create havoc because he didn't know if he could restrain himself from kissing her. It was very likely he'd never see his Roxanne again—the one he loved so much that sometimes it hurt. And even though he was talking to Minion right now, he still wasn't the right Minion. Megamind grew gloomier by the second.

"I wonder what she's doing right now. If she's worried about me…" he thought aloud. Then he mentally kicked himself. "Roxanne's not worried because we're all in this schtoopid reality and she probably doesn't even know I exist."

"Who?" asked Minion, confused by the obvious reference to this Roxanne person. Sir didn't know any women at all apart from his adopted mother, but that couldn't really be considered as knowing a girl.

"Oh!" Megamind dropped his head face first onto the surface of the cold lab table.

"Who's Roxanne?" Minion asked again, too curious to drop it.

Megamind raised his head, yanked off the glove of his left hand and sharply pointed to the plain, yellow band of gold enveloping his blue ring finger.

Minion's little eyes bugged out. "You're married?" he yelled, a stunned toothy jaw dropping open.

"Of course!" he fired back, annoyed at the shocked look on the fish friend's face. "We have been for two years, four months and sixteen days and we're still madly in love. The honeymoon never ended…if you get my drift," he said, grinning smugly.

Minion swam to a portion of the tank that extended over the lab table just above where Megamind was sitting, to squint at the ring. He rubbed his eyes first just to make sure the sparkle from the gold wasn't a trick of the light. "Seriously?"

"Aren't I always, Minion? And she's really hot!" he threw in.

Minion shook his head. "I'm sorry, Sir, but it's just hard for me to picture you…with a…girl." He chuckled nervously, rubbing his face with a fin. "You really are from a different timeline, huh?"

"Why is it so hard for you to believe that a woman—who's insanely hot—" he said again—just to clarify—"would be in love with me? Have you seen this profile?" He turned his head sideways and drew a hand across his face for effect.

"No, no, no! That's a given! I've always told you your looks are matched only by your superior intellect," Minion amended quickly.

"But…." He prompted.

"But the Sir I know can barely look a woman in the eye let alone be married to one."

"Why?" he asked, looking up at Minion with curious eyes.

"Well…" he said, trying to find the appropriate sequence of words that didn't come across as insulting. "You're…a…loner, Sir," he said kindly. "And so painfully shy that girls give you an upset tummy."

"An upset tummy? What am I? Six years old?"

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," he said, bristling some. "You—or Mr. Scott—is very intimated by girls because they can be kind of intimidating to nice boys like you. Or him, I mean."

"So I'm a troglobiont loser in other words," he said darkly, beginning to be irritated by the other timeline he.

"There's no need for name-calling," Minion said, annoyed at the assumption Megamind was making. "Sir's just as much of a person as you and me. He led a very sheltered life and didn't have the opportunity as most people do to make friends. All he had was me."

The corner of Megamind's mouth lifted upwards slightly. Same old Minion. He would always defend him alternate reality or not and had always been there to look after him from day one. Without that fantastic fish, Megamind knew that in all probability he'd never have left that little escape pod and would most likely still be there hiding from the world.

"You're all I had too for a long time until Roxanne came along. I wish I could talk to her. She'd know the perfect thing to say. She always does," he said, thinking of her knowing eyes and reassuring touches.

"How'd you meet her?" Minion asked with eager interest. He'd always hoped Sir would come out of his carefully constructed shell one day and find that special someone.

"Uh…"

Megamind didn't really want to explain the awkward kidnapping story since Minion remembered nothing about it. Not yet anyway. It had been hard enough meeting her parents for the first time. That's when he found out that Music Man's super abilities paled in comparison to his mother-in-law's stare of death, which he'd been on the receiving end of for one painfully awkward week. The ordeal had made him wish he was back in solitary confinement.

"She's a reporter and since I'm an alien from another planet she…interviewed me a lot," he said vaguely.

Minion cocked an eyebrow. "Do you mean Roxanne Ritchi?"

Megamind jumped to his feet with renewed vigor. "Yes! That's her! Metrocity's greatest reporter!"

"Wow!" he said with admiration. "Nice work, Sir. She is very—"

"Hot!"

"As you've said three times now, but I'm not counting! No, siree, Sir!"

"You don't happen to know if she still lives in the high rise on Main Street, do you?" he asked, knowing it was a long shot, but unable to keep from hoping.

Minion shook his head. "I'm sorry, Sir, but I don't know."

Megamind shrugged nonchalantly, but inside his heart lurched painfully. "Maybe it's better that I don't see her. She'd probably think I was nuts anyway. And it would probably be detrimental to the paradox we're currently in. We'd all blow up or something."

"Spontaneously?" Minion asked doubtfully.

"That's what the experts say, of which I am one, so yes, we would all explode."

Great. More good news. Minion knew he shouldn't have come out of his castle this morning. It would have been better just to sleep in. There was, however, one last thing he had to find out.

"Sir, I have to ask…why did you change the past? You seem happy and in love. Why would you want to change that?"

"It was an accident. Your fault really."

"Mine? Oh, no." Minion lowered his eyes gloomily, sinking to the bottom of the tank.

Megamind winced at the look on his Piscean friend's face and caved. "All right, all right! It wasn't your fault! It was mine, but only by .26 percent."

The fish brightened a little. "Oh, what a relief! I really don't want to be responsible for the destruction of the universe. Who needs that hanging over their head?" he joked. "Tell me what happened, Sir."

Megamind obliged and told him the whole story, from everything to Roxanne's curiosity about the time machine to the incorrectly placed binky. "I mean, who knew that pressing the 'On' button would actually turn it on?"

"Yeah, who knew?" Minion agreed loyally. "Anyone of lesser intelligence would have already blown up the universe."

"True. Lucky for us, it was me that traveled through time and not some dunderheaded human scientist."

"Are you going to try and reset the timeline?"

"Of course. This world," he said, pointing to the air in general with both hands, "isn't my home. Or yours. And…I can't just give up Roxanne. I won't."

To an outsider, Sir appeared in control of his emotions, but Minion knew better. Even though things were different in this reality, there was a lot about the two Sirs that were identical. They wore the same expression of dispassionate concern when something troubling had happened. But Minion could see the slight shift in the green gaze which belied that mask of detachment. Inside he was probably close to panicking, but wouldn't admit it even to Minion.

"I know this is a stupid question, but can you fix the time machine?"

"Yes, but the damage is considerable and will take time and a lot of money to fix. In my approximation, repairs will take six days and nine hours."

"If anyone can, Sir, it's you," Minion encouraged, knowing it was true.

"The binky is broken, which means I'm stuck here for now. I can remove the copy from this," he said, patting the gun in the thigh holster. "It will take great skill to extract it properly without damaging the coils and lucky for us, I have that great skill, but that would leave me unarmed. Too bad the technology hasn't caught up to the lightsaber yet. Not to mention that it's a delicate procedure because one false move will destroy the binky and any chance I have of getting home."

"It's not as bad as all that, Sir," Minion said knowingly.

"Oh really?" he asked in disbelief. "How would you know? Have you got a shiny new time machine hidden in here somewhere?"

"As a matter of fact, I do and I also know where there's an extra binky to spare so that you don't have to dismantle your gun."

Megamind gasped. "Of course! The other me would have a binky too! Where is it?"

"You have it."

Automatically checking himself over, Megamind looked all down his front to his feet. "I do?"

Minion shook his head, still smiling cheerily. "Not you. The other you."

"The other me as in Wayne Scott." He spoke the name through clenched teeth. "So where does he keep it? A secret vault of some kind?" Megamind looked around, trying to visualize where another safe could be.

"Uh…not exactly," Minion said delicately. "Sir tends to keep it with him. On a chain. Around his neck."

Megamind arched a pointy black brow. "I wasn't aware that I was into jewelry."

"You—or he—isn't either. Sir has…separation issues."

"Please tell me he doesn't parade around Metrocity sucking on it!" he cried in embarrassment. He was stared at enough as it was.

"No, he does not," Minion said, scaly hackles rising in defense of his best friend from his…best friend. It was really strange trying to differentiate between the two. "He wears it under his clothes!" He waved a reproving fin at Megamind. "You of all people know how precious that binky is. It's the last thing your parents gave to you and it's your last memory of them too."

Megamind sighed and slumped back down onto the lab stool, put in place by his friend's admonition. "I'm…sorry." Odd how he still wasn't entirely accustomed to apologizing. It tasted liked something sour had just touched his taste buds.

Minion smiled back leniently. "Oh that's okay, Sir. This is a weird situation for us both."

He nodded. "Do you think I can persuade me to let me borrow it?"

Minion's smile faded. "Um, probably not, but maybe Sir will make an exception since you're him and he's you. You'll have your work cut out for you though."

"If anyone can convince me, it's me!" he said with stout confidence, getting to his feet. "But first…where's the other time machine?"

Minion smirked. "Right this way, Sir."

He swam to the middle of the large basement lab and then pressed a switch inside his tank. Megamind watched, fascinated as a portion of the floor opened to reveal another flight of stairs leading down into darkness. Minion swam over to a corner where part of the tank disappeared into the floor and stopped.

"I'll see you on the other side." Then he was gone.

A/N: Sorry this took so long. I had to go out of town for work and for some reason that always interrupts my flow, which creates writer's block. I made a lot of references to Star Wars and Star Trek and I own none of that. Plus, I am not a scientist and I had to research time travel theories. I also referenced the Science Channel TV show called "Sci-Fi Science" and the episode is called "How to Build a Lightsaber", which is really fascinating to a nerd like me.

Also, an amazing author on this website, Hunger4righteousness suggested that everyone look up Jean Paul Gaultier's Par Homme, or Le Male, as it is actually called. I was in my local Ulta today and saw the very ripped blue torso, which is the bottle's design. I couldn't stop laughing! It smells really good too and I think Roxanne would agree with me. Very manly. Very Megamind.