Here's chapter two, "de-twitchified" ! That basically means a slower pace, and more savoring of details. Tell me what you think!
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"Sit here, X-J9, and for goodness sake, don't TOUCH anything."
Dr. Wakeman directed Jenny over to a chair by the big lab table, and then wandered off, looking for the diagnostic equipment. Jenny eased herself onto the seat, which creaked slightly under the newly supported weight. She leaned forward, putting her elbows on the tabletop and her chin in her hands.
On her left side sat the Petri dish with Dr. Wakeman's specimen in it, which, after so many electro-shocks from the probe, apparently passed out (assuming it was alive, of course).
I wonder what this was Jenny puzzled, noticing the dish. Probably leftovers from Mom's BIG paradox investigation. What was the question? Is it possible to be loud without making any noise? she snorted, taking note of the goo's hot pink color.
Suddenly, there came a crash from the other end of the basement.
"Rotten Hypo-Flibiconducers! Always managing to become tangled! I ought to get a new set; these never work when you need them, lousy Venutian design..."
Jenny sat up, ready to go see what the ruckus was.
"MO-OM!" she hollered "DO YOU NEED SOME HELP! HANG ON A SEC, AND I'LL..."
"UM, NO DEAR!" came the uneasy reply "JUST STAY WHERE YOU ARE!"
"I SAID STAY WHERE YOU ARE, OKAY?"
Jenny crossed her arms in front of her chest and put on a pouty face, schlumping down in her seat.
"I heard you the first time", she muttered under her breath, mostly to herself, "I'm not a baby..."
She looked down at the pink blob in the dish, which still hadn't moved. "Dumb squishy thing."
She narrowed her eyes at the goo, and then gave it a quick optical blast out of spite.
The glob jiggled from the jolt, then turned acid purple with a faint, lime green undertone.
Jenny's eyes widened in surprise.
Trippy. And COOL!
She gave it another blast, turning the glob shiny blood red. She gave it another. And another. Each time it was hit by the scorching red light, the helpless specimen turned a different gaudy color
Jenny giggled, "This is AWESOME!" She paused for a moment and inspected the results of her barrage. The gel was steaming slightly, but, other than that, it seemed perfectly unaffected. Well, thought Jenny, since I'm not really hurting it, I wonder what would happen if I...
She focused her eye beams into one steady, solid beam of energy. The goo began to change colors rapidly, each one flowing into the next, under the constant stream of laser fire. "Hee Hee! Just like the light show at the Space Metallica Concert!" Jenny lowered her face, bringing it close to the level of the Petri dish. The nearer she got, the faster the colors began to shift along the surface of her new toy.
Her nose was within an inch of the mesmerizing rainbow display when, without warning, the goop gave a shudder, turning pure black and shriveling down to nearly half its original size. It lay still at the bottom of its dish.
"oh no", Jenny whispered in disbelief, "I killed it! Mom's gonna be livid!" Holding her servos in anticipation, Jenny took a quick peek over her shoulder. She couldn't see or hear Dr. Wakeman anywhere. Then, out of the corner of her eye, her motion sensors detected a small figure struggling at the far end of the basement.
Jenny used her telescopic vision to zoom in on the activity. What she saw was Dr. Wakeman swatting at something invisible with what appeared to by a giant, glowing tennis racket.
"What is she doing?" Zooming in for a closer look, Jenny could see that her mother was actually aiming for multitudes of tiny, furry creatures that were hopping about. Dr. Wakeman would swing at a group, causing a bunch of the little creatures to disappear with a flash and sizzle.
Jenny gave a huge sigh of relief. "Good, the Screemite colony broke loose again. That should give me enough time to deal with this," she said, turning back to the black lump in front of her.
"Now, where to begin?" Her right eye telescoped outward, elongating with a series of clicks, until it had transformed into a mini-electron microscope. She placed the lens against the specimen and focused the eyepiece. "What was this?" Jenny was searching her data banks for something with a similar molecular structure, but was coming up blank.
"Oh well, I guess I couldn't do any more damage if I…gave it a good poke."
While still watching the specimen through her microscope, Jenny took her finger and gave the hardened jelly a quick prod.
The black casing surrounding the blob shattered under the impact, and Jenny's microscope-eye slipped into the gooey center with a sickening *SQUISH!*
"Ewwwwwww!!" Jenny jerked her head back in disgust. The slime clung to the outside of Jenny's eye, refusing to let go.
"ewewewEW! GEToffgetOFF!" She retracted her microscope, leaving the goo plastered all over her face. In a panic, Jenny clawed at what-ever-it-was with her hands. However, the harder she tried, the tighter the gel gripped her face.
"I know!" Jenny declared, jumping to her feet. The ground shook from the impact, but she didn't have time slow down. The slime had begun spreading, creeping across Jenny's eyes and mouth.
Jenny started spinning her head, faster and faster, trying to shake off the clinging crud.
"YAHaaaaaAHaaaaAHaaaAHaaAHaAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH!!"
A buzzing filled the air as Jenny's head reached 70,000 RPM, her top head-spinning speed. However, there was still no success, and Jenny was beginning to feel sick. Wanting to keep down her crude (oil) from last night, she reluctantly slowed her spinning head until it had completely stopped.
"OhhoOOhhh…" Jenny swooned from watching the room spin around her. "Don't feel too…"
*WHAM!* She tipped over, landing on her back, hitting the basement's cement floor with a hollow, metallic clang.
Jenny watched the ceiling spin crazily above her. However, in her vertigo, she failed to notice the black orb sitting in the shadowy basement corner. She also did not see the shiny lens on the orb as it whirred and clicked, focusing on the dizzy, drunken expression of her face.
"XJ-9, this is no time for fun and games!" Jenny's mother walked up from behind and stood over her sprawled body with an armful of sensors and equipment.
"MMmmp, hhumphemph, mumphmumph!!" Jenny pleaded, but the sticky goo had spread over her entire mouth, causing anything she said came out as a muffled jumble of syllables.
Dr. Wakeman sighed. "Oh, XJ-9, if only I had programmed a little more responsibility into you…"
Jenny sat up and scowled at her mother. "HMP! mm muphump! mumphUPmMHuphPumpm!," she protested, gesticulating wildly with her arms. Dr. Wakeman only shook her head slowly. Jenny *hurUMPHed!* and began to pout again, arms crossed in front of chest.
Her mom put the things she was carrying down on the table, and then walked over to a shelf, where she selected an old-fashioned de-atomizer. She brought it over to where Jenny was seated and knelt down. Jenny stubbornly turned her face away, despite the fact that the goop had nearly enveloped the better part of her head and one pigtail.
"Do simmer down, XJ-9."
Dr. Wakeman took the de-atomizer and spritzed her daughter's face with a murky brown liquid. The jelly turned the color of grape Kool-Aid, dissolving into a thin, watery texture that dribbled down Jenny's front, eventually collecting in puddles around where she sat.
"Now, get cleaned up while I set up the equipment, and then I'll run the diagnostic."
Still sulking, Jenny opened her chest cover, and a roll of paper towels popped out on a dispenser. She ripped off a handful and wiped her face clean of the residue.
When she was done, she wadded up the soaked towels and, forgetting her current predicament, tossed them at the trashcan. She overshot it by about 600 feet, but with a wall in the way, the sopping clump simply hit with a gross *SPLAT!*, showering the surrounding area with a sticky, purple rain.
"Forget about that, XJ-9, and come have a seat here."
"Yes, ma'am."
As you might imagine, Jenny was growing very tired and frustrated. She got to her feet with an exhausted groan and shuffled over to the diagnostic station.
"I know it's tough, dear." Dr. Wakeman looked sympathetically at Jenny as she positioned the coned shaped examination helmet over her head. "But look at it this way. If the problem is what I think it is, then I'll have you fixed up and off to school in no time."
"School! I can't go to school like this", Jenny cried, looking down at her purple stained metal body.
"Nonsense", chortled Dr. Wakeman, "a little Windex will give you a nice shine. And those gouges will buff right out!"
"GOUGES! WHAT GOUGES?!" Jenny held her hand up to her face, and the palm flipped open, revealing a lighted compact mirror. Sure enough, shallow grooves crisscrossed her face where she had clawed at the goo just a little while ago.
Jenny was seething. Through gritted teeth she muttered, "I knew that thing had it in for me..."
"Worry about that later, XJ-9," Dr. Wakeman chided, flipping on the diagnostic monitor. "Why don't you tell me what you did with the boys from next door on Saturday?"
"Well, okay. Umm…Brad came over and was all like, 'Come check out this cool cave we found', so I followed him into the woods about two miles to this creek…"
"Mmhmm?" Dr. Wakeman was fiddling with some knobs on the display.
"…and then he pointed behind me and was like 'Hey, look! A diversion!'…"
"Really…?" *fiddle, fiddle*
"So, like a big dufus..."
"Oh, you're not a dufus, dear" Dr. Wakeman said, distractedly.
"…I turned around, and when I turned back, Brad was gone."
"Oh, wow…"
"It wasn't that big of a surprise, Mom. Anyway, when I turned back, he was gone. That's when I knew something was up, so I started a thermal scan of the area…"
"Very clever…"
Jenny looked over to where her mother stood at the console. "Are you even listening to me?"
Dr. Wakeman glanced up. "What? Oh, yes, keep going…"
Jenny's eyes half closed and she gave an annoyed frown. Slowly, she began again, testing Dr. Wakeman.
"Soooo….then this big purple monkey dropped out of the sky and did a little dance with a giant strawberry Pop-tart that also appeared…"
Dr. Wakeman stiffened. She turned around suddenly with a hungry look in her eye, and Jenny could hear her stomach growling. "What was that about strawberry Pop-Tarts?" she asked, virtually drooling on the floor.
"Geez, Mom, get a grip." Jenny rolled her eyes. "I was just checking to see if you were really paying attention."
"Oh, *ahem*. Yes. Indeed." Dr. Wakeman straightened her lab coat. In a louder voice, she said, "Well, if you are done making jokes, I have discovered the reason for your abnormal strength."
"Really?" Jenny took a little step forward.
"Yes, it seems that the Internal Strength Modulator Chip I installed in you has been corrupted…"
"Corrupted?"
"Yes, corrupted. Actually, it is worse than that. It would appear that the chip has entirely vanished from your motherboard. Have you sustained any heavy damage before this morning?"
"I did have that battle with the Hammer-men from Hammertonstantanople a few days ago. They hit pretty hard."
"Hmmmm…I suppose a series of heavy blows could jar the chip loose, but that still doesn't explain its total disappearance, or the fact that your symptoms appeared almost instantaneously. I wonder…"
"But what does that mean for me?" Jenny cut in. She was beginning to look worried.
"Well, sans chip, your one-million-and-seventy man-power strength is uncontrolled and without bounds."
"My what?"
Dr. Wakeman sighed, massaging her forehead with her fingertips. "Really, XJ-9, you should pay more attention. Don't you even listen to your own theme song?"
Jenny just looked at her blankly.
Another sigh. "You know, '…with the strength of a million, seventy men, I guess I really shouldn't complain…', and all of that? I had it specially composed for your first activationday! How could you forget!"
Okay, she obviously didn't get much sleep last night, Jenny thought. "Ohhhhh, riiiiiiight, the "theme song" she smirked, brandishing a set of air quotes, "how silly of me to forget."
"Hmmmmm…" Dr. Wakeman gave her daughter a sidelong glance. She was not amused. "Perhaps I should explain it in word's you'll understand. Are you ready? Here I go!" Dr. Wakeman cleared her throat. "Jenny move around, Jenny smash 'em up! It's as simple as that. You're a walking hazard, XJ-9. Fortunately for you, I have a solution, albeit temporary."
"Oh, what could it possibly be, I wonder" Jenny asked with feigned enthusiasm.
"It just do happens I have a roll of what you need right here in the closet."
Jenny's eyes widened as her mother dove into the closet under the basement stairs, and then returned with a nice, long roll of…
"Hold on, is that what I think it is?! It had better not be! No, put it back! No! NOOOO!"
Until chapter THREE!