Please don't yell at me for this being a day late. It actually wasn't. I had it up on Friday as usual, but the site was acting weird. So I re-updated it.
(…) means twin's telepathy and ((…)) means Cosmo and Wanda telepathy.
No, I don't own FOP or any reference to its varied characters mentioned herein, and unless the new episodes that follow 'School's Out' begin showing the love again, I wouldn't want to. So, for now, Butch Hartman can keep his name tacked on…even if it is for nothing more than the royalties at this point.
Oh…and I don't own The Big Comfy Couch either. That belongs to some broadcasting company in Tennessee I think. : )
Fairly OddParents : The Next Generation
Chapter 20. OZ the Great and Powerful Can't 'See All'
The man looked in surprise at Wanda's dead even gaze, and then gave a heavy sigh.
"You're right. That's one of the downsides of being one of the top electronics engineering companies in the world. There's always someone trying to sneak in the back door."
AJ's head snapped up then and he stared off into nothingness for a moment.
"Mr. Ibrahim? Are you okay?" asked Tammy.
"I think I may have just figured out how any additional programs in the Vic-Bots might have been overlooked by any loyal programmer."
"Really? How?"
"A back door. Sometimes called a 'white rabbit', many programmers will make additions to a main program that can allow them to enter it at any time. For some its an ego trip. They were better or smarter than their competition or their bosses. Some look at it as insurance against getting fired or being treated unfairly. They could have linked a back door to a dormant program within the system that would not initialize until after the back door was accessed. The program would have been inactive and hidden and without knowing the initialization command, it could have sat undetected for who knows how long."
"Can it be commanded back into that dormant state?"
"If it was programmed in, and one knew the command, sure."
"Is there anyway you can find out if that's what happened?"
"Well, now that we know it could be in there, we could go through the programming and check every line of code for a back door trigger, but even with the computers we have here it would take my programmers days to go through every bit of it."
"I'm not sure we have days Mr. Ibrahim," said Wanda.
AJ gave a questioning look.
"What? Why? What exactly are the Vic-Bots stealing anyway?"
There was a moment of awkward silence.
"Fish!" yelled out Tommy quickly. "The one watching us stole our pet goldfish, uh, Cosmo."
"A goldfish?" asked AJ in disbelief.
"Its a very special goldfish. He was um, a gift! A gift from, uh, our,…"
"Godfather! " shouted Tammy quickly.
"Yeah, Our godfather gave it to us. We'd really like to get him back. I think most of the others have lost some valuables, but a couple of kids had birds, cats and even turtles stolen."
The man gave a little shake of his head.
"Well, I guess a kid's pet is pretty valuable and important. Okay. We can go see Irving Wells. He was in charge of the programming crew that designed the Vic-Bot's hard drive and run programs. If there's anything that could be questioned, he'll know what. Let's go."
AJ led them back down the fifteen flights to the ground floor by way of his own private elevator, for which Wanda was most grateful, and after a three minute golf cart ride further back onto the complex he brought them to a building marked with a large 'E'.
With AJ as their escort, the three were led right by every security guard without a second glance and three floors underground brought them to a large workroom. From where the four people stood they were separated from the workroom by two glass walls and a clean space of ten feet between the glass. On the opposite side of the walls, some seventy people, all dressed from head to toe in white suits, moved about at different stations. Some were looking at miniscule squares and rectangles while others typed non-stop on laptops. From some of the stations, occasional flashes of light lit from beneath the hands of some of the workers as they soldered little bits of metal to plastic. One man looked up and putting down a clip board, he began to walk towards the only door in the glass wall.
"Mr. Ibrahim, why is everyone in there suited up like that?" asked Tommy curiously.
"That, Tommy, is a static free testing room. This is were we put together and test the prototypes for just about every piece of electronic technology we create. Some of this stuff is so far ahead of the world, we won't be able to market it for at least another five to ten years."
"Why not?"
AJ smiled.
"Because some of what these discoveries would be capable of doing would scare a good portion of the world."
"I'm guessing that means that more than a few of what ever you've got in there isn't just for the common man, is it?" asked Tammy.
AJ sighed unhappily.
"Unfortunately you'd be correct. The government does like to keep their hands in the back pocket of every major electronics and scientific firm in the country."
Tommy looked at the people working.
"Militarily speaking, right?"
Wanda caught the slight twitch of AJ's eye before he shook his head and turned to look at the white suited worker who now stood still in the inner chamber room, letting a white mist fall down upon him. The fairy gave the corporate CEO a sympathetic look. He clearly could not say yes to Tommy's last question, but if she had to take a guess, she would have been certain he would have liked to have said 'No' and really mean it.
The outer door opened just then and the man in the white suit stepped out. He undid a zipper and pulled off his plastic head cover.
"Mr. Ibrahim, sir! What brings you here? Did you want to have a look at how the 'Seros' project is coming? It's not too much further along than it was last week when I gave my last report, but…"
"No no Jensen. Its alright. I'm not here about that. I stopped in to see Irving."
Jensen gave a little confused look.
"Irving, sir? Irving Wells?"
"I believe that's the only Irving we have in Programming and Electronics. Yes?"
"Uh, well, yes sir. But…"
"But what?"
"Well, its just that, he hasn't been here in two weeks."
"What? Why not?"
"We were told he quit, sir."
"Quit?"
"Yes sir."
"How can he have quit when I'm still receiving daily reports from him?"
Jensen was looking decidedly uncomfortable against his employer's unhappy glare.
"I, I don't know sir. But if those reports are coming from within the company system, then whoever is sending you reports isn't him."
The kids scooted closer to Wanda when the dark skinned man cursed slightly under his breath. Suddenly he walked over to the door and slammed his hand onto the 'open' button. The clean room door slid open and as he stepped into it he called to Wanda and the kids gruffly, "Come on."
"Mr. Ibrahim?" Tammy questioned.
The man looked at her.
"Tammy, my company may have fallen victim to corporate espionage and sabotage. A little static in a workroom is going to be the least of my worries right now."
With a nod the three people, along with Jensen, followed him in. They did not wait for the cleaning mist of air to shoot down at them but walked right through to the other side. The people in their white suits looked up and in surprise, many stopped what they were doing to watch as AJ made his way to an unused table halfway down and proceeded to open the laptop sitting there.
"Jensen. Have you seen anyone at his work station since the last time you saw Irving?"
"No sir,"
AJ typed several passwords in almost furiously and once inside, he began to go through the files one by one. But the further he went, the more irritated he seemed to become. After several minutes he gave a soft growl before he slammed down the lid of the laptop.
"Nothing! There isn't a single file from the Vic-Sit chip left on his laptop."
"We could open the hard drive and check its backup writing core."
AJ shook his head.
"I wouldn't even bother. Irving was a genius. If he took anything, then he took everything. And even if it wasn't him, I wouldn't doubt for a second that whoever engineered this is a professional."
The man gave a huff before looking at Jensen.
"Has there been anything else going on in here that I should know about that apparently I don't?"
"Uhhh, I, I don't know sir."
AJ shook his head, before he grabbed the phone on the desk and dialed a number.
"Lauren? Ibrahim. I'm coming back to my office in five minutes. I want the entire Vic-Sit project manifest on my screen by the time I get there."
He put the phone down and started to walk back up the walkway towards the exit with long strides, the kids and Wanda nearly having to run to keep up.
"Jensen," called Ibrahim as he continued to walk.
"Yes sir?"
"Get the master boot and reboot programs from the vault. I want to you get a couple of 'liners' and start going over every line of code in both. We have a back door and a rogue program somewhere in the there and I want it found and deleted immediately."
"But sir! That could take…"
"Days? I know. It's the new major priority Jensen and I don't care how long it takes. Find it and get it out of my babysitting program."
AJ nearly pounded the door button to get out of the workroom.
"So what do we do now?" asked Tommy as they continued to follow the man.
AJ glanced back as though having just remembered the other three were still with him.
"I'm going to have a look at the Vic-Sit production files and see if there is anything else I apparently didn't see going on right in front of my nose."
He stopped then and looked down at them.
"I'm really sorry that this had to happen to a nice bunch of kids like you, but I promise I'll fix this. I'll do whatever I can to find your goldfish as well as everyone else's things and correct my mistake."
"It isn't really your fault Mr. Ibrahim," said Wanda.
"Yeah." agreed Tommy. "This is a pretty big company and I don't think even a genius like yourself can keep an eye on everything that happens within it. That's why you hire people to be in charge of different areas of the company, right?"
The man sighed.
"Yes. But still, it is my company. I should have known that something was going on."
"You can't be everywhere at once. No one can. You can't beat yourself up about that," insisted Tammy.
AJ shook his head.
"You don't understand. Its more than just wanting to keep a tighter rein on what happens here. That babysitter project in particular is something I've wanted to do since I was your age. I didn't want kids today to have to go through some of the torture I went through as a kid at the hand of a merciless babysitter. I thought that if I could provide an acceptable alternative, it would save you all from this kind of pain. And looks like I was wrong. To be honest, the robots stealing things in my mind is just a secondary issue. Corporate espionage maybe ranks a third. My own reputation and that of my company sits forth. But first and foremost is the safety and welfare of the kids that my robots are supposed to be helping to keep happy and safe. Obviously something has gone wrong with that vision and I'm going to do everything I can to correct that."
"Is there anything we can do to help?"
"You three have done more than enough just by bringing this to my attention."
Wanda felt a tiny shot of panic run up her spine. It sounded too much like AJ was going to drop them out of this before they could find out anything else.
The man paused as he took in the disappointed looks on Tammy and Tommy's faces and the almost stricken expression on Wanda's.
"But…there are a lot of files to go though. How good are you three at handling a computer?"
The kids smiled and Wanda sighed in relief.
Doing something to help was far better than doing nothing and she didn't care if it did involve staring at a screen for hours. They'd gotten this far and it was a sure bet that by following this track, they were going to get a whole lot farther.
Besides, it was the only lead they had. It just had to go on from here.
Ten minutes later found the crew back in AJ's office, AJ before the terminal on his desk, Tammy and Tommy settled on the floor with a lap top before the pair, and Wanda sitting on a chair only a few feet away with a laptop…well…on her lap. AJ had given Wanda and the kids some relatively small, and not all that important, minor sections of the files to help look through. With his instructions to 'look for something that stood out against the rest of the file they were looking at', Wanda figured it was mostly just to give them something to do and let them feel as if they really were helping. A way of thanking them for showing him that something big was happening perhaps. Not that that mattered. To Wanda, it meant being there in case AJ found something they could use.
And of course it kept her occupied and not worrying herself to death.
The fairy smiled grimly. Even if for nothing else but that, she was going to have to send that man a thank you card.
Wanda's file had included mostly corporate project expense reports and as she perused it, she'd quickly discovered that AJ had to be taking a massive loss on the Vic-Sit program by itself. The estimated cost to build even one of the robots was more than poor Timmy probably brought home in five years and she couldn't imagine that the sitting services that purchased the units would have any easy time buying them, especially more than one, to use.
It really was a pet project pure and simple, and the only way she could see AJ to have recouped the losses would be to market individual components of the Vic-Sit robot to other companies with the potential to use them in other ways.
Unless recouping in his mind really did mean making sure kids had better babysitters.
"Any luck?" asked Tommy softly from beside Wanda suddenly.
She grimaced.
"No. I've just gotten through the company expense for the robots and now I'm starting the personal expense reports. How is it going with you two?" she asked as she maneuvered the arrow over the intended folder, clicked enter to open it, and started gazing down the slowly scrolling 120 pages of verified personal expenses.
Tommy made a bored face.
"Blah all the way. She's such a computer hog. That and I'm not sure looking at the project manifesto is going to show us much. Its dated by almost five years ago."
Wanda gave a half nod before cocking her head slightly. She sent the arrow up to a pause command at the top of the file window before rolling the file back by a few pages. She then stared at the pages intently, Tommy all but forgotten for the moment.
Tommy was just about to ask her what she had found when AJ called out from his desk, "I can't believe this."
The other three occupants in the room looked up at him.
"I just can't believe this."
"What is it?" asked Tammy.
"I was going through some of the inter office reports that are supposed to be given to the project leader daily so that he can make his reports to me."
"And?"
"And I've just noticed the names of individual programmers on the reports were the same every time until after the operating program was finished. After that, the names begin changing. In four months time, every person who worked on the original program is gone except for Wells."
"So the whole crew who developed the program is gone now?" asked Tommy.
"According to this…every one."
"This is even bigger than we first thought," said Tammy softly.
AJ nodded. "Too big."
"Mr. Ibrahim, may I ask what 'ISEE Rob Man' is?" asked Wanda.
"Ibrahim Scientific Electronics Enterprises Robotics Manufacturing. Its one of my manufacturing complexes. The one in fact where we make the Vic Sit robots. We assemble everything together in that plant. We mold the bodies, wire the electronics, put in the microprocessors, the chips, hard drives, soft drives, hydraulics…everything."
"And that project leader for the Vic-Bot programming…you said his name was Irving Wells, correct?"
"Yes," answered AJ as he looked at Wanda in high interest. "Did you find something?"
"Well, I'm wondering if there was any reason for a programming project leader in your company to have gone to this manufacturing site."
The man gave a dark look.
"Darned very little."
"Well, according to these expense accounts from your company car services, he was going there two and three times a week during what looks like the height of production for those robots."
"Wait," said Tommy. "He's a programmer. This man's world is computers. Why would he want to go a dirty manufacturing complex?"
Wanda nodded.
"My point exactly."
Tammy looked at AJ.
"Where is this place?"
"Its in the West Shore industrial complex. A 30 minute drive outside the city."
The twins and Wanda looked at each other with a nod before they started for the door.
"Mr. Ibrahim we really thank you for helping us, and letting us help you, but I think we've done all we can, so we'll just head out now and…"
The three turned to go before AJ's voice cut them short.
"Hold on a second there. I'm not letting you go just like that," he said.
The three turned to look at the serious face apprehensively.
Suddenly it broke into a knowing smile.
"I did say it was a half hour drive out there. I think the three of you might prefer a ride in a comfortable car rather than a bus. I know I would."
So did I have you there for a second? Did you actually think that maybe AJ really did know more than he let on and was just pretending to waste time? Lol. Nah. I know you all knew he was cool. I made two obvious movie references in this chapter with the use of a "white rabbit" and "lines of code". Anybody care to take a guess?
And as for the title of this chapter…All I could think off when I thought about AJ missing these hints was the Wizard of OZ. "The great and powerful OZ knows all!" Phiffft. Yeah right. Remember the very first time you ever saw Toto pull the curtain back to reveal that traveling magician? It was almost as much of a let down for me to see he was just an ordinary guy as it was for Dorothy and her friends. "Pay no attention to the man (or the very muscular fairy) behind the curtain!" Lol. You could take that whole little section by itself and find more than a few different levels to read into there.
Oh and no, I don't own the Wizard of OZ. I know I seem redundant about what I don't own even in all my references, but I'm not taking a chance in any way. I've spent far more time on this than I thought I would and I don't want to make a stupid mistake that would get it pulled. That would just bite big green weenies, ya' know?
Commander - Lol. "Evil dictator overlord"…that's funny. Nah. I could never make AJ out to be some weird 'take control over the world' sort of guy. He may have a decent sized ego, but with a brain like that…I think I can over look it, lol. And unless AJ and Timmy had a super huge major fall out in friendship I could see him being at least friendly with Tim's kids. As for giving them a little respect…I think maybe he might remember what it was like being a kid when most of the adults around them always questioned them. Sure his parents seemed smart and cool…but even they made mistakes. Like hiring Vicky as a babysitter. Glad you liked and yes, all will be revealed. Soon. Lol.
Band Geek - I think AJ is pretty cool too. Even though he is a genius, I can so see him as the owner of a multi million dollar company. I mean, he'll need to get the capital and resources from somewhere to do all his wonderful little tinkering, right? And I just can't see him liking the idea of being constrained by a boss or someone else's timetable. I'm glad you enjoyed the adventure in the office. My favorite part was Tommy dumping the pitchers of water on the security guards, lol. And you would be correct. AJ mentioning the trick-or-treating was indeed a reference to Scary Godparents. And cool! C&W pics! I wait with anticipation to see them! Pixar? That's awesome! I always wanted to be a Disney artist. But when I found out they used to send most of the old drawn frames out to other countries for painting and all, I was like, 'phft' forget that! So I'm doing the next best thing. No not writing. Training dogs. But that's a whole 'nother story, lol.
Amras Felagund - Repetitive is good…especially when it's 'good' repetition, lol. Give me time though. I'm sure I'll write something that really is bad in your eyes somewhere in here. I mean, I think I have already, but that's just me with my rejection complex. That and I am always my own worst critic. Awww. No scanner? Well, I'll just have to wait and be patient for that pic of Trixie I guess. Hmmm. I might just have to consider using Beatrix (I'm more familiar with the Beatrice version of the name myself) for her name in the other version. Unless I find something I think is better. ;) Just kidding. Yay! Star Wars! I love Star Wars! Ohhhh! Episode three finally came out on DVD! Whoo hoo! "You were the chosen one!"
lilylynn - I'm really glad you like my writing and are enjoying the story so much. Even though I just love writing this (even if for only myself), it means that much more that others can find it entertaining as well. Thank you so much for letting me know it!
Wanda Wish - Ohhhh good question! No Vicky isn't a technical genius…but she is a blackmailing genius. Having said that, I'm sure I can come up with a way to explain how she managed to have the Vic-Bots reprogrammed to suit her sadistic tastes in babysitting. Lol. Sorry, no Cosmo-lulu this chapter, but he's coming back soon. And go ahead and cheer as loud as you want! I don't mind. J
Kraven the Hunter - I surprised you? Wow…I mean…COOL! Lol. Glad you approve of my using Dorothy. It just made sense to me since it is the common name Tootie would be used in place for. I've seen Dottie used for Dorothy too, but I think I like Tootie much better. Yeah. I don't think Wanda enjoyed telling AJ 'to get back down to earth and realize bad things can happen in your company too' too much. She's just too nice to not feel a little bad for him after all the work that he obviously put into building the company up.
Aerinsoul - You were hyper again during that last review weren't you? Sugared up maybe? Lol. Glad you liked my fun with numbers and names. Its little things like that which help keep this fresh to me. I hate when stories go stale. Then I don't want to finish them! And you're not a fan girl posing as a writer/artist. You are a writer/artist! No! Anything but Crocker! Although it could be amusing to hear him ramble on about how in a world with fairy godparents, 2 plus 2 could be made to equal fish. Lol. Mmmm. Yummy. Sandwich…Grilled cheese would be nice, lol.
And don't worry everyone...you get a break from Wanda and the kids next week. ;)
Trixie21