Welcome to Tribulations, where we do our best to screw up the lives of the Incredibles! On our last program, Dash had a little problem with a mouse! What will happen this time?
Sorry, odd moment. Uno, I'd like to apologize. I haven't been able to upload at all because of being off at places. I wouldn't feel so bad if it wasn't for two. Two, I had this chapter written around a month ago. In fact, I'm up to thirty. Trois, school is coming, and for that, it must be shot. Do we have an accord? Saw Mary Poppins for the first time ever a few days ago. I know, sad.
Bob, Helen, Violet, and Jack-Jack waited outside a room at a local hospital. Finally the doctor came out, clipboard in hand, Dash following closely behind him. Dash, on crutches. His left leg had been broken in two places, and he now wore a heavy cast. The gash on his back from where the Robot Rat had scratched him had required stitches. The family immediately flocked him.
"Hey, Dash, how's the leg feel?" Bob asked his son.
"Fine, I guess."
"How's your cast, honey, not too heavy?" asked Helen.
"It's fine, Mom."
Just then, Lucious and Honey Best burst through the hallway double doors. "We came as soon as we heard." Lucious called as he and his wife trotted up to Dash. "How you holdin' up, Speedo?"
"I'm alright."
"Aw, you poor thing," Honey said, looking at the cast. "I'll have to make you a cake."
The doctor cleared his throat and Bob looked up. She motioned with her head and Bob followed her down the hall a ways. "Yes, doctor?"
"Well, whatever fell on your son's leg really messed it up, to be frank," the doctor began. "I want him off his feet as much as possible. You need to make an appointment with me for about two weeks from now to make sure everything's healing well."
Bob was nodding as the doctor spoke. He looked at his son. Honey was making suggestions for cake flavors. She must have just suggested something like pineapple and Swiss cheese, because Dash was suddenly laughing through a slightly disgusted face. He leaned in closer to the doctor speaking in a hushed tone.
"What about his running, will he still be able to?"
"If everything heals well and he has some physical therapy afterwards, I see no reason why he wouldn't be able to continue running."
Bob nodded. "And the cut on his back…?
"You'll have to ask Dr. Moore. I fix fractures, not scratches."
"Alright. Thanks, doctor," Bob said, shaking her hand before returning to the family.
"Who knows," Vi was saying. She was being uncharacteristically (A/N I can't believe how long that word is) nice to her brother. "You're a fast runner, a fast learner, maybe you're a fast healer too."
"It took me a month to get over a cold," Dash said.
Meanwhile, the Incredibles had employed Dean to dissect the rat. He opened a door from his house into one of his 'studios.' It was a dark, metal walled room with linoleum flooring, similar to an interrogation room in Dean's opinion, lit by a single hanging light bulb from the ceiling. A metal chair was against the wall with the door. There were three steel tables set up parallel to the walls that didn't have the door in it, about two feet from their corresponding wall. Two were smaller and on wheels, while the larger one had the giant robot laying on it.
Dean ran a hand through his hair and let his breath out. "Oh boy, the things I do."
Dean grabbed some tools from one of the wheeled tables, put on some protective goggles and 'ear muffs', and moved towards the rat.
(A/N I'd suggest listening to some hard core rock for this part. And read slowly. Imagine it in your head. sarcasm I'm not demanding, am I?)
First, the steel body-coverings came off. He leaned them against the wall with the chair.
Next Dean removed the tail wirings.
Then he was removing the claws, the rest of the paws, their wirings, and the rest of the legs. He placed them next to the tools on one of the tables.
After that, Dean took a chain saw to the neck, separating the head from the body. The empty wheeled table squeaked under the weight of the head Dean put on it.
He removed to red glass-like eye coverings. He'd been expecting to find some analyzing equipment with the main programming chips behind that, but when he removed the vision analyzing equipment, he was surprised to only find your normal wiring.
"Well where's the hard drive!" he asked, attempting to wipe the grease from his cheek. He pulled up the chair next to the rat head and set to work…
He removed everything from the frame. Sight analyzing equipment, scent analyzing equipment, hearing analyzing equipment, the wiring, even some rotten burrito that some moron left. He even took out the teeth.
Dean was amazed at the level of complexity in the beast. If the thing had artificial intelligence, he'd consider it alive. Of course, that was assuming it had any intelligence. Dean was staring angrily at the empty head frame while drinking some coffee.
He threw a wrench at the head, and it ricocheted into his coffee cup, breaking it. The coffee burst over Dean's grease and oil covered shirt.
"Aw, c'mon!" he shouted as he reflexively stood up. He reached for a rag to wipe the coffee off his pants and shirt. He walked towards the main table as he wiped himself off. He leaned on the table and rubbed his forehead with the other table, looking through his fingers at the robotic rat's body.
"Hmm…"
Dean went to the tool table and grabbed a crowbar. Aiming carefully, he jammed the crowbar into the 'pipe' that was a basic stand-in for a throat. Then he leaned down on it so that the bar and pipe tore through the top of the wiring.
Dean dropped the crowbar and moved next to the hole in the wiring he'd created. He pushed some of it out of the way, and smiled at what he saw. Right where a heart would be in a normal rat were the main chips; the hard drive. He carefully removed the chips and headed for the door.
It took him a while, but Dean finally managed to hook up one of the larger chips to his computer. The contents began to load up and Dean stretched happily. "All right, Mighty Mouse. Let's see what you're made of."
Dean was glad he was a better hacker than his father had been. It still took him about an hour to get through the security on the chip, but finally he was able to access the programming. It turned out the chip was where all the data pertaining to the rat's 'sense' were stored- including a video of everything it saw and heard from activation to detonation. Dean let the video play as he hooked up another chip and hacked into it.
"Figures," he said, looking at the content of the second chip. This one seemed to hold all the actual programming (and I mean all of it). But it was written in such gibberish it would take him hours to interpret it all. So, instead he spent one hour translating it.
The video started over from the beginning when it reached detonation.
Dean looked at the programming on his computer. He took out a sheet of paper and pencil and started to map things out. "Kay… so here's your basic stuff… motion, reaction… huh, a learning robot, idn't that wonderful… geez what a nightmare… what the…?"
Dean didn't understand what he was looking at. He glanced at the video, then back at the programming. He looked over at the last chip. He picked it up. This one was different than the others… He looked for some extra plugs and hooked up the last one as well.
Immediately a new window popped up on screen- no new codes, no new security… It had connected him to the Internet. Dean glanced at the video again, the clicked on something on the new window. As Dean watched, he felt his heart rate speed up. His eyes grew wider and wider as they darted around the screen, taking everything in. After a while, he felt a sort of panic take hold, and he ran out of the room.
That weekend at the Parr residence, Helen had done the unimaginable. She went to a photo shoot for that home-design magazine.
Helen got outta the cab with Jack-Jack and gawked at the skyscraper. She looked down at the address Jacob (the guy who first offered her a job) had given her. "Yeah, it's right." She walked towards the swinging doors… and got stuck. Go figure.
Round and round, Helen went in the swinging door, until an usher finally cam over and helped her out.
"Oh, thank you!" she said to the usher. "They oughta have warning signs!"
"Happens all the time."
Helen looked back down at her paper. She moved to the elevators and hit the up button. As if on cue, business men and women seemed to come through the swinging doors (without getting stuck), and joining Helen by the elevator. When the elevator opened, tons of people yakking on cell phones or palm-piloting (as I call it) or messing with some kind of device piled out of the elevator to the right of Helen and Jack-Jack, while the people who'd been waiting with Helen piled into the elevator to her left. Helen was swept away by it all and was forced to turn around in circles as the people pushed around her. Alas, she became the swinging door. Then the elevator dinged, the doors closed, and Helen was left standing there feeling very much a fool.
Helen walked to the other elevator and hit the up button. Immediately the elevator dinged and the doors opened. Helen walked in immediately for fear of becoming a door again, and hit the button Jacob had told her. There was only one other person there, a large, bald man who was smoking a large cigar.
The man and Helen both looked at each other, and Helen smiled neighborly. The man smiled around his cigar and went back to staring at the door. (A/N Ah, nothing like an awkward moment in an elevator!) Helen turned away from the man and coughed as quietly as she could.
The elevator unexpectedly stopped and a younger man with a cigar walked in. Immediately the cigar men started to talk… or at least what Helen thought was talking. They seemed to have trouble actually get real words out from around their cigars, so it just sounded like:
"AAAA, maramawa!"
"AAAA, ararawa!"
"ramayawana."
"oohhh, yama wa."
"oo?"
"raya… iya wamaramawa."
"AAAA, mara arayama!"
Jack-Jack was suddenly overcome with a coughing fit. As Helen comforted the baby, she turned to the 'gentlemen.'
"Excuse me…" she said, "could put out you cigars?"
"Eh?"
"Your cigars.
"arawarara. Arara?"
"Your cigars! Please put out your cigars!"
The men looked at Helen like she was some kind of alien. Luckily, the elevator dinged and Helen was able to promptly leave the men in their… well, smoke.
"HELEN!"
Helen jumped out of her skin as Jacob, and a zillion other people, suddenly surrounded her. Voices were everywhere.
"Helen, I'm so glad you came! Turns out one of our usuals up and quit on us!"
"Oh, look at the pretty baby, lookit'im!"
"Changing room's to the left, food's down the hall, bathroom- we don't got one, set is-"
"All right people, people! Let's look alive out there! I want teamwork! I want goals met! I want gorgeous photos! Ooo, I want that burrito. (chomp) Mmm! No throw it out."
"What are you wearing, my dear, this screams 'Western Living.' Our magazine is called 'West Living'!"
"Here, stand here!" Jacob said, shoving Helen onto a set while taking Jack-Jack off her hands. Someone handed her a pot of flowers. "Smile!"
Flash!
Someone took that flowers and positioned her by the sink.
"Think 'this is my life!'"
Flash!
Next she was handed a broom.
"Sweep, Helen, sweep like it's your life!" (flash, flash)
"You just said the sink was my life!" (flash)
"That was then, this is now."
Flash!
Ay carumba!
"Now here, take your son!" Someone pushed her onto a different set. "You're reading him a story!"
Flash!
"Beautiful! You've got the job!" (flash)
"Hey wait what?"
"Someone get'er to a changing room!"
"Yessir!"
And before she knew it, Helen was in a totally different room (Jack-Jack had been taken to a different one). A room where seventy-something creepy old women poked and prodded her and shoved her into some to the craziest looking outfit's a mother ever saw.
"Go, go now!"
This is worse than Edna!
Someone pushed her onto a set that looked like an outdoor garden.
"Yes, (flash) pour! Pour the water on the plants! (flash) That's perfect! (flash) You're a natural, Helen!"
I'm not doing anything!
"Stop!" the photographer screamed, and everyone froze to look at him. "Bring ze babay, pleeze."
Jack-Jack, changed into something Helen would NEVER buy, was handed to her upside down. He looked a little dizzy.
As the photographer had Helen pose, everyone resumed work and Jacob started pouring himself over a clipboard. However, it seemed Jack-Jack was not enjoying this. Can we say fire!
"WHOA!" the photographer shouted, coming up from his camera.
"W-what is it?" Helen asked, holding the crying fireball in her hands as she smiled very fakely.
"The baby's on fire! Jacob look!" the photographer shouted, turning to Jacob. Jacob looked up at the photographer from his clipboard.
"Huh?"
Jack-Jack sneezed and was back to normal.
"The baby!" the photographer shouted. "It's on fire!" He and Jacob looked at Jack-Jack in Helen's arms.
Jacob looked back at the photographer. "Rick, you really need to see a doctor. This is the third time this month."
"But I swear!"
"Just shoot the photo before I fire you."
Flash!
"Wardrobe change!"
Helen again was pushed into the room with angry old women. And again she was shoved out.
About half an hour had passed when Helen realized something. She was doing everything with one arm. While Rick and Jacob took a break, Helen tried to figure out… well… where her other arm got off to. Then she found the problem. Her hand had been closed on from the changing room. Now, she'd been pushed all around the ginormous room, and her arm had become a long… well… arm stretched around furniture all throughout the sets. She was about to start problem solving when one of the angry old women must have opened the door. Helen's arm went zap! And it konked out everyone in its path too.
By the time the arm had returned to Helen, she, Jack-Jack, and Jacob were the only ones left in the room still conscious.
Jacob looked up from his clipboard. "Did great today, Helen, you really did! Here, here's your check. We'll give you a call next time we're shooting, okay? We'll look forward to seeing you, bye now!" Jacob had pushed Helen into the elevator and before she knew what happened, she was getting into a cab and headed home.
She looked at the check in her hand.
"Where ya headed?" the cab driver asked.
With this much money, I could go to Mars.
Voila! A bit different. Not entirely pleased with the photo shoot scene, but I like enough to leave it.
Review…?
(have you hugged your couch yet today?)