Chapter 10 – Goh, No Goh

Drakken's Lair - Next day

Dr. Drakken emerged from the Phoebus Mark 2 beam feeling no different than before. He had only his confidence in the efficacy of the machine he had himself designed to convince him that the temporary smartness upgrade he had received in Iowa had become a permanent part of him. But he had no doubts.

He had slept badly that night. His brain felt like it was over-heating. Thoughts rushed through his mind at the speed of light, but they seemed formless and insubstantial – like a phantom – and just out of his grasp whenever he tried to examine them. Visions of his mother interspersed with strange-looking men with identikit faces, and plastic toys with creepy toothy grins plastered over their faces. At one point he saw a crowd of people gathered in front of him, but he could not determine if they were cheering or if they were jeering. His former college pals Bob Chen and Lakshman Ramesh were among the crowd. They turned to welcome a new arrival carrying a glass containing a fizzy drink. "Hi, James, sorted the cider tonic yet?"

Somewhere in the night, he had got out of bed and made his way to the kitchen, where he poured himself a glass of cold water and took a sleeping pill. Leaning against the sink, he had tried to make sense of the images that pounded his brain but was unable to do so. Eventually he had returned to bed and slept dreamlessly for the remainder of the night.

Shaking his head to clear his mind, Drakken's thoughts turned to Shego. His sidekick would have been taking her first class at about this time, allowing for the time difference, which always foxed him as to whether it was ahead or behind.

Even an evil genius has the odd blind spot.

He looked forward to having her back. Despite his undoubted authority in the lair, the only person who he felt he could really trust was the irascible but loyal woman who had inadvertently given him the idea of getting smart. With his new-found smartness, he had recently realized that Shego had not meant what he had thought she meant that day. But this no longer mattered. The consequence was what mattered, and the consequence was that he now had the intellectual capacity and justified self-confidence to pull off the dream that he had been waiting his entire career to achieve.

He saw that there was an unread email on his computer from his sidekick. Eagerly he opened it. Shego had sent it the previous night her time so it had arrived an hour or so ago. His smile grew as he digested the events of the Middleton Parade. A shame Shego had had to leave before she'd seen what was going on with Wade and these communication problems, but no doubt she would figure it out when she started at the school. And the information that Shego had provided so far hinted at complications in Possible's social life. Could she really be dating the buffoon? He, Doctor Drakken, couldn't remember his name, so how did she do it?

Why had he never thought before to enquire into what Kim Possible did when she wasn't interfering with his plans? There was so much good material already for throwing the teen hero off-balance!

If Possible has the hots for the buffoon, maybe Shego could threaten him to distract her?

Hey, that's not such a bad idea! They'd never attacked the duo separately before.

Ah, but wouldn't threatening the buffoon just make Possible more determined?

Gah, this stuff is difficult!

He was looking forward to Shego's return the following evening. The team would regroup on Thursday to review progress.

He thought about the conversation he'd had with Professor Dementor the previous day. There was something that had entered his mind as the Professor was explaining the properties of JT-3 aka synthoplasm. Something about programmable nanites. He concentrated, trying to recall the details of the dialogue.

Dementor said that Possible's mother had used a simulated brain signal to destroy the synthoplasm when it got out of control.

Sooo … the synthoplasm responds to neuro-stimulus?

That means … given the right input, it could be made to simulate a brain!

Artificial intelligence?

Yes, but how would a single AI help him to conquer the world?

Didn't Dementor say that his JT-3 was self-replicating?

Why stop at one AI?

If Shego had been watching Doctor Drakken at that moment, she would have seen a man oblivious to the world around him. That would have been nothing new, but had she been able to see inside his mind, she would have observed – instead of a flurry of half-formed ideas, junked as soon as another thought entered his head – the unfamiliar purposefulness of the pieces moving around, like sliding blocks in that puzzle she was so keen on as a child.

Shego had never taken to Rubik's Cube, but the Fifteen puzzle had always fascinated her. Of the millions of combinations, only a handful would allow the blocks to be lined up in order, from one to fifteen, leaving an empty square in the sixteenth place. It took an exceptional mind to achieve this without pure luck. Even fewer could achieve it while leaving the earlier completed rows intact.

How do I make use of dozens of AIs? I don't need extra brains to out-think Possible, not now?

One of his heated dreams came back to him at that moment. The men with identikit faces.

Identical twins? Or triplets? No, too many of them. They don't look very human to me.

Non-human clones?

Wait …

What if I used the synthoplasm to create robots? No, cloned androids. That looked like people but which were controlled by a self-replicating artificial intelligence?

I could create an army of loyal androids!

Numbers one to four slid into place in the grid.

Middleton High. Afternoon.

The buzz of conversation ceased as Steve Barkin walked into the classroom, accompanied by a striking red-headed twenty-something woman, dressed in a severe black frock matched with a dark-green blouse. Most of the male pupils stared openly at the attractive young woman, while the girls were looking more ambivalent as the pair strode to the front of the class.

"Listen up." The teacher called for attention.

"This is Miss Sheila Goh – that's gee oh aitch. She will be attempting to impart some math into your tiny brains for the rest of term while Mr. Al-Gebra recovers from a protracted bout of calculus. I want you to give her every assistance while she is here." He turned and exited the room.

Miss Goh smiled sternly at the class. "You will find me a demanding but fair teacher," she announced. "I expect you all to work hard and to submit your own work – if I catch any of you stealing from each other I will know about it immediately – I have plenty of experience of stealing. Anyone caught cheating will be burned!"

Ron gulped as the teacher stared straight at him. He had only got through this class thus far by borrowing heavily from his classmates. It was as if she could see right through him.

"You, what's your name?"

"Stoppable, Ron Stoppable ma'am," he responded nervously.

"Okay, Stonkable, what have you been studying so far this term?" A titter ran around the room as Ron froze. He had no idea what they had been studying. There was something about sideways eights, and he recalled some homework that involved angels, or maybe that was angles, but what it all meant … His face took on the look of a rabbit caught in headlights, until a perky voice from his right responded "We were doing trigonometric series, Miss Goh." Ron looked across at Justine Flanner with a sigh of relief as the spotlight shifted from him.

Sheesh, I thought that Barkin was bad!

Shego was finding it impossible to resist the temptation to mess with Team Possible's heads despite her instructions. She rationalized to herself that it's always a good idea to keep your enemy off-balance. The truth was, it was just too fun an opportunity to miss. She looked forward to the day when she could reveal her little subterfuge to the pair.

Ron relaxed as Miss Goh's gaze shifted from him to his best friend sitting a few rows away. Kim had not appeared at school until lunchtime, and they had barely spoken two words since the events of the previous night. Her normally-smiling demeanor had been replaced by an uncharacteristic withdrawn look.

Shego looked curiously at the cheerleader, noting the signs of fatigue and unhappiness. Ooh, trouble in paradise? She wondered. Now she thought about it, both halves of Team Possible were looking well below par. Something must have happened after I left last night. A bust-up maybe? Pity I had to leave before I figured out what that communication problem was. She made a mental note to investigate further after the lesson. But for now, some playing was called for.

"You, girl in the green tank-top, what's your name?"

Kim looked at the teacher with an instinctual distaste.

"I'm Kim Possible." She paused. "Miss Goh."

Shego gazed fixedly at the hero. "What can you tell me about the Taylor series expansion of sine?"

Kim stared back at the teacher unblinkingly. "Odd powers of x. Odd factorials in the denominators. Alternate positive and negative terms. Is that enough?"

Shego and the rest of the class were silent as Kim revealed her mastery of the subject matter. "That's one in the eye for you, Miss Sheila gee oh aitch!" she thought. She looked across at Ron for the first time, and a smile crossed her face as he gave her a thumbs up behind his neighbour's back.

Trust Ron to make her feel better! This whole mess so wasn't his fault.

The rest of the lesson proceeded quietly, and Shego avoided addressing either Kim or Ron again.

Previously

Ron made a point of arriving early at the Possibles in order to join them for breakfast, and to try and figure out where he and Kim stood. He had returned home the previous night after the aborted evening, worried for his best friend. She had been uncharacteristically quiet on their way back to her parents and he knew that she was thinking about the device that had been planted on her. He himself had found it hard to credit that someone could do that without Kim realizing, and the thought that her enemies had got so close without being spotted was unsettling. And it was even harder to guess their motives.

He had sneaked a glance at his best friend as they parted company. His heart was leaden as he felt the barrier of silence between them, an impenetrable wall of angst. He wished that she would reach out to him and reassure him that they were still tight, but in truth he didn't know where their relationship would go next.

Kim did not emerge from her bedroom and as James and the twins left the kitchen, Ron found himself alone with Anne Possible. She handed him a dishcloth as she washed up the breakfast plates and he dried. After a few minutes, she put down her gloves and turned to him.

"Ron, I know that something happened between the two of you last night. I don't want to pry but Kim certainly wasn't acting like a girl after a successful date when she came in."

Thoughts of deep-space rockets and black holes filled Ron's mind and he gripped the dishcloth tightly. Anne saw his tension and correctly interpreted it.

"James knows nothing about this … yet," she cautioned.

The blond boy sighed. "We never really got started."

Anne looked surprised. "The way the two of you were when you left … Kim looked ecstatic." She waited expectantly.

"Turns out that Kim was under the influence of some villain bug that was stuck to her neck. She only thought she like-liked me but her feelings were all messed up. When we found it and got it off her, well …".

Anne raised a hand to her mouth. She could imagine the rest. You poor kids!

Ron pulled out a tiny disc from his pocket and showed it to Anne. She examined the disc in alarm at the thought that this thing had been controlling Kim's emotions.

"I'm taking this to Wade today – maybe he can figure out what it's all about."

And how do you feel about Kimmie? She feared to ask. Instead, she commented. "So this device toyed with her emotions? No wonder she hasn't come down for breakfast."

"It's probably for the best." Ron looked up at the empty stairwell. "I think she's probably too embarrassed to see me this morning. I'd best be off to school – I need to drop the bug off on my way." He paused as his thoughts turned to Tara, now well off-limits with Josh. He thought it best not to mention her to Mrs. Dr. P. It would only complicate things, and he worried that the Possibles might think that he'd taken advantage of Kim's situation.

Anne misunderstood his silence and turned to face the young man. "Give her time, Ron. If you and she are meant to be, it'll happen when it happens. For now, she's going to need your friendship more than ever."

He nodded weakly, and Anne watched his back receding as he walked away from the house, shoulders drooping. She looked at the photo of the two children on the sitting room wall and grimaced.

Anne climbed the stairs and popped her head into Kim's room. Her daughter was lying in bed, feet pulled up to her chest and hugging her Pandaroo. She looked closer to eleven than seventeen. As Anne approached the bed, Kim opened her eyes. Her mother sat on the side of the bed and reached out a hand to brush away the strands of hair that were falling into Kim's face.

"Kimmie, Ron has told me something of what happened last night."

"I don't want to talk about it, Mum," the younger woman muttered. "Ron shouldn't have said anything."

"Kimberley, you know that Ron only wants the best for you." Anne could see the bright red patch on her daughter's neck. "I want you to come to the hospital with me this morning for a brain scan."

"I don't need a scan." Kim pulled away and glared at the older redhead. Anne smiled inwardly at the show of anger, which she found reassuring.

"Kim, I'm telling you as a doctor not as your mother. There's no telling what that bug may have done to you. We're not going to take any chances – the brain is a sensitive organ and if your limbic system has been disturbed, there could be consequences."

Walking toward the hatch, she looked back over her shoulder. "Now get up and I'll make you some pancakes."

Middleton High. Afternoon

As they left the classroom, Ron ran up to Kim. "Hey, KP, are you okay? You weren't here this morning. I was worried about you."

Kim gave Ron a weak smile. "Mum insisted on me being scanned after the bug incident. But they didn't find anything wrong."

Ron felt a huge wave of relief. He had been worrying all morning that Kim had had a relapse or something. Neither of them noticed their new teacher hovering in the background.

"That Miss Goh – some haribo isn't she?" he exclaimed.

"You mean harridan, Ron."

"Harry something for sure. Hey, have you noticed that Sheila Goh is only la away from Shego?"

"And an aitch," Kim said absent-mindedly. "Ron, I'm sure Miss Goh has nothing to do with Shego," she scoffed. "Temporary teachers are high school evil only."

"Go with me here, Kim. If she had black hair, green skin and those gloves she always wears, that would be Shego out there."

"Ron, Miss Goh is not Shego." But I suppose there is a slight physical resemblance. Can't do any harm to check.

Kim got out her Kimmunicator and called Wade. He responded after the first ring.

"Hi Kim, how are you today after the bug removal?"

"Fine, Wade, but I need your help. Can you check out a temporary math teacher called Sheila Goh with an aitch."

Booyah, Ron thought. Kim believes me!

"Sheila Goh, eh?" the African-American boy replied. "Sounds awfully close to Shego." Ron grinned at Kim, who rolled her eyes.

"Probably no more than a coincidence, but … well Ron wondered …". The blond pouted and Kim felt a twinge of guilt. "Actually, we both wondered …" Her best friend nodded approval.

"Sure Kim. But I wanted to speak to you both about the bug."

Ron peered at the screen. "What did you find, Wade?"

The young boy explained. "Every chip designer has a distinctive style, a fingerprint if you like. They can't help it. I haven't quite finished the analysis but I am ninety percent certain that this chip was designed by Cyrus Bortel."

Kim stared at the image. Bortel! She must have been tagged when she tried to stop Dementor. But neither Dementor nor Bortel came close to her! She cast her mind back. Just before she saw red and attacked the henchman she had crashed into the wall and a pile of stuff had fallen down onto her. Had that been when the bug attached itself? Was the whole thing a pure accident? How did she feel about that?

"Wade," she ordered. "Get Bortel on the Kimmunicator. I have some questions for him!"

The pair waited as Wade made the connection. Ron sneaked a look at Kim. She looked upset and he could see her knuckles whiten as she gripped the Kimmunicator tightly. He felt like an intruder into her innermost secrets.

You're freaked out by the whole bug thing aren't you KP? I've never known anything throw you off your game like this before.

Ron came to a decision. Kim needed to deal with this in her own way without the distracting presence of her sidekick. Girls' emotions were a closed book to him at the best of times, let alone when some villain had been messing with them.

"Kim, I promised to meet Felix after school. Catch you later at BN with Monique? Say 6?"

"Sure, Ron," Kim replied absently, scarcely noticing his departure.

The screen split into two and an eager-looking Cyrus Bortel shared the screen with Wade. Two pairs of eyes looked at the display. One pair belonged to a temporary teacher concealed behind a partition wall but with a crack just wide enough for Shego to see what was going on.

The conversation thus far was proving more than interesting. She had been slightly alarmed to learn that the buffoon was suspicious of the new teacher, but it was clear that he regularly had flights of fancy and Possible wasn't taking him too seriously. Shego was confident that her cover story would hold up to Nerdlinger's examination provided that he didn't dig too deep – and there was no reason why he would do so if nothing suspicious revealed itself initially. Nevertheless, she made a mental note not to underestimate Stoppable. Not for the first time, his instincts were correct.

"So, Ms. Possible. You have news of my Moodulator?" Bortel looked hopefully at the girl.

Wade held up a tiny disc to the screen for both Kim and Cyrus to see.

"What happened in your lab last week?" Kim demanded.

"My Moodulator – it went missing after your 'visit'. It was on the shelf. How did you get it?"

"It fell on me. Now what exactly does this moodulator thing do?" she challenged sharply.

Bortel looked at the angry face watching him and gulped.

"My moodulator amplifies emotions. I can control it with this remote control." He indicated the colored buttons. "See? Green – Laughter. Blue – Sorrow. Red – Anger, and Pink – Affection."

She hissed at him. "Your moodulator made me beat up one of Dementor's henchmen!"

"And fall for my best friend," she added silently.

"No, no," the scientist protested. "The moodulator does not create emotions, it only magnifies them. And it removes inhibitions about acting on those emotions."

There was a long silence as Kim processed this information.

"But I don't love Ron!" she burst out. Wade and Bortel stared at her.

"Not like that," she whispered.

Do I?

Wade decided to take charge. "Doctor Bortel," he demanded. "Do you have any other moodulators? Global Justice will insist on them being destroyed. They don't want to face an army with no inhibitions about violence."

"No, no … just the one," Bortel reassured the boy. Well, apart from my prototype Mark II.

"You'd better not be lying or you'll be looking at twenty years for attempted mind-control," Wade threatened. "I'm destroying the one I have and you'd better not make another!"

Bortel nodded guiltily and closed the connection. Wade turned his attention to the girl. "Are you okay, Kim?"

The hero looked shakily at the screen. "Don't worry about me, Wade." She shut down the connection and stared at the wall, failing to notice the eyes staring at her. She stood for a minute then walked away in deep thought.

Shego stood in silence. So Cyrus Bortel has a device that can control emotions? It certainly seems to have thrown Kimmie off her game! Something to get for Doctor D I think – I don't for one minute believe Bortel when he says this was the only device.

Nerdlinger, like all these heroes, is much too trusting. That's why the bad guys get away with it so often!

And the pairing last night was purely electrically induced, eh? Princess thought she'd fallen for the buffoon? And I'll bet Stoppable wasn't left unscathed either? No wonder they were finding it so hard to look at each other in class!

Surely there's an opportunity here to drive a wedge within Team Possible?

She smiled villainously as she prepared to report today's findings to her boss.

Drakken's Lair

"Manfred, a word please."

The security head followed Drakken into his office. He noted the gleam in his boss' eye.

"Did you sleep well, boss?" Manfred enquired politely, seeing the dark rings – darker than usual – around Drakken's eyes.

Drakken wasted no time on pleasantries.

"I have an idea for taking on Global Justice."

He outlined his ideas. The henchman looked at Drakken with a new respect. This might even work!

"How long will it take you to produce ten thousand of these artificial people and train them to use arms?"

Got to find them a better name!

Manfred considered. "I vil need to speak to the Professor, as he is the only vun wid the understanding of zis JT-3. But I vould expect no more than three weeks."

Three weeks? Excellent! His project remained on track.

Drakken dismissed Manfred and went to his room to lie down. The disturbed night was taking its toll, and he had a mild headache from the earlier exposure to the Mark II Phoebus device.

Ten thousand synthopeople? synthofolk? could not take on Global Justice indefinitely, but they would provide shock troops that would go on the offensive when his other plan to take over the world started.

The only problem was that he didn't actually have a take-over-the-world plan at this stage.

And he only had a few weeks to think it through and to execute it. Before some meddling teen or some GJ analyst with a modicum of brains figured out where he was.

His brain burned as his headache turned into a blinding migraine.

Why can't I see the main plan? Everyone thinks I've got it all worked out, but I haven't yet.

He closed his eyes. He heard a door open. His mother walked in. She was dressed in black. In mourning robes. The last time he had seen her wearing those was …

Still playing at being a villain? When are you going to achieve something?

"I am mother, really! I've got Shego following them and Manfred is going to make …"

And what are you doing, Drewbie?

She turned to the door expectantly. Drakken could hear the sound of heavy footsteps getting closer and closer to the room. A cold feeling of dread passed through him.

Your father won't be as forgiving as I if you fail again!

Memories of the late Andrew Theodore Lipsky Snr. that he had suppressed for years filled his mind as he watched as his martinet father raised the leather belt and swung his arm down towards the young boy cowering on the bed.

"Daddy, stop! Please. I promise I'll be good." Drakken was curled into the foetal position.

Do this for me, Drewbie. Or Daddy will come back again and thrash you to within an inch of your life.

"No, please keep him away from me. I'll do anything mummy. I swear." He was crying openly now.

His mother looked at him, and uttered a single word.

Synthodrone.

And then she vanished.

Author's Note: Middleton Days actually took place on a Friday evening in canon, but my story demands a school-day the next morning, so I have taken the liberty of reimagining it as a weekday the following week. Thus we are now just over four weeks to Junior Prom.