My Life as a Teenaged Von Neumann Device

by Solomon-Grundy

Jenny explores her developing sexuality, which leads to romantic entanglements with Brad, Sheldon, and the other leading men in XJ9's life.

22. Chapter 22

My Life as a Teenaged Von Neumann Device

by Toonspew

Chapter 22

Grumbling, Nora Wakeman wrung her hands clean on an old oil-stained rag as she mounted the basement stairs. She had been hard at work in the machine-laboratory when violent sounds of fighting came drifting down to her work bench, breaking her concentration and interrupting her work. Not that this was uncommon… When Jenny wasn't tearing up the neighborhood fighting a super-villain, she was causing even worse destruction for the amusement of her friends. Which was why Mrs. Wakeman had built the house as a veritable fortress, incidentally. But it was still annoying to have all that ruckus going on upstairs, and Nora aimed to put a stop to it as soon as possible.

"Mom, get down!" came Jenny's voice as soon as her mother opened the basement door. Nora spotted her robotic daughter peering out from behind the living room couch, waving her arms to grab her attention.

Mrs. Wakeman was far too aggravated to heed her daughter's warning however, placing both hands on her hips, sternly demanding "Just what is going on up here?!"

"Eep!" Nora yelped as an end-table came hurtling through the air, as if to answer her question by narrowly missing her head. The haphazardly tossed piece of furniture impacted out of site with a small crash, and without further hesitation Nora sprinted to take cover behind the couch with Jenny. Ducking down beside her daughter, Mrs. Wakeman took a quick glance around her living room, and saw that it was in shambles. Aghast at the destruction of her well-appointed home, Nora asked "what on Earth is causing all this destruction?"

"It's Sheldon… he's gone crazy!" Jenny answered, shrugging her shoulders to emphasize her confusion. "He came in here acting like the Terminator, then started tearing up the house. He won't even talk to me, he just keeps reciting mindless catch-phrases."

As if to prove her point, Jenny extended a white flag from behind her head until it protruded above the couch and began waving back and forth. Seconds later a sizzling laser blast struck the flag and burned it down to a blackened nub, which Jenny retracted back into her body with a frown.

"Ha, take that, treacherous villain!" came the Silver Shell's voice echoing from elsewhere in the house.

Jenny folded her arms over her chest and shot a look at her mother, adding "See what I mean? I can't even fight back because I'm afraid he might hurt the baby accidentally."

Another loud crash came from elsewhere in the house, this one followed by a crescendo of brittle tinkling sounds. Mrs. Wakeman's mouth fell open with a gasp, "My fine china! Alright, this has gone on long enough!"

Rising, she grabbed Jenny by the hand and pulled her along behind her and walked brazenly into the kitchen to confront the rampaging Silver Shell. "Sheldon, what is the meaning of this?" Nora demanded, seemingly unafraid of the steel giant in front of her.

The Silver Shell turned to orient on the diminutive female scientist, his glare not betraying a hint of human emotion. Jenny noticed that the familiar mannerisms of Sheldon Lee's voice were gone from the robot's artificial timbre, as Silver Shell spoke. "Surrender, alien invader, or face the consequences!" the Silver Shell commanded, though his grandstanding failed to impress Mrs. Wakeman in the slightest.

With a snort, Nora laughed "Invader? You're the one in my house young man."

Having not received the submission he was apparently looking for, Silver Shell's armor plating on his massive shoulders and chest retracted, extruding a veritable arsenal in exotic cannons and dangerous looking mechanical claws. Jenny even heard the buzz of a chainsaw revving up, though she couldn't spot where it was coming from exactly. As the blank-faced robot boy loomed over Nora and advanced menacingly, Silver Shell announced aloud "Commence: Destruction."

"Oh for…" Nora sighed, exasperated. "Override code: Noreen Epsilon Three!"

Instantly, Silver Shell collapsed onto the kitchen floor in an inert heap like a marionette that had its strings cut. Shocked, Jenny rushed to her boyfriend's side to check for injuries. "Mom, what did you do to him?" she asked, failing to see the familiar light in Silver Shell's eyes that indicated consciousness.

"I activated the emergency shutdown override protocol in his programming. You never can be too careful when building self-aware robots armed with high-powered weaponry. Ever since my mistake with Armagedroid, I've included an override command in everything I build." Jenny's mother answered succinctly.

Uneasy with the idea of her mother so cavalierly shutting her down the same way she had just done to Sheldon, Jenny prodded "You mean… almost everything you've built, right?"

For a moment Nora just looked at Jenny with a blank expression, as though she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Then, a smile cracked through and she answered with a nervous chuckle, "Of course. Almost everything. Everything except you, XJ9." Before Jenny had a chance to follow up that thought, Nora pressed "Now help me get your boyfriend here to the lab, I'll need to take a look to see what's causing all this."

---

Clutching her pregnant belly, Jenny groaned softly, feeling gears grinding uncomfortably inside her midsection. Lately, these sorts of pains were becoming more and more frequent. Her mother had explained to her that it was just her reproductive systems trying to cope with the injuries she had received from Vexus, and given time they would settle down on their own.

That, or result in a system failure and the miscarriage of her unborn child.

But either way, there wasn't much Jenny could do to change the situation, so Jenny took a seat on a nearby chair and tried to ignore the pain, watching her mother work on Silver Shell's braincase instead.

Mrs. Wakeman was crouched over the upper end of a large work table upon which Silver Shell's inanimate body rested, the skullcap of armor plating surrounding his head pulled back to reveal the delicate electronic brain that housed Sheldon's human mind.

"It seems someone managed to find that remote control for the Silver Shell that had gone missing…" Mrs. Wakeman explained, pulling a tangled mess of circuitry from the motionless superhero's skull, snipping it off in a few places to fully disconnect it from Sheldon's brain. The appearance of the thing made Jenny imagine a big metal spider perched on Sheldon's brain, its legs reaching around to grasp all the connection points where Sheldon's mind sent commands to his various body parts. The idea of having a component like that inside your head made Jenny shiver.

Frowning, Jenny asked "Why didn't you just remove the remote-control adapter when you transferred Sheldon's mind in the first place?"

"It's not an exact science XJ-9, I didn't want to go needlessly mucking about in the boy's head without a good reason. I assumed finding and destroying the remote would be a simple task." Jenny's mother answered gruffly, removing her eyeglasses to clean them on her lab coat.

This whole situation seemed to have Nora more flustered then she would normally allow herself to become. Before she replaced her glasses back on her face, she massaged her temples for a few seconds and centered herself. Taking a breath, she continued. "Anyway, it's done now. Whoever took control of him won't be able to again, though that's not our biggest problem right now."

Nora put the disconnected remote control circuitry aside on a nearby workbench, and launched into full-on lecture mode. "Sheldon wasn't being controlled directly: the remote control was only used to reactivate the dormant Silver Shell personality programming. Which I'm assuming is why he was going on about stopping villainy and all that nonsense. With a few minor tweaks to the programming, the Silver Shell was convinced that you and I were alien threats, and that lethal force was required to stop us. To be honest, I don't know why he spent as much time stomping about making a mess as he did… as soon as he saw you, he was supposed to attack with everything he had."

"So why isn't Sheldon awake now?" Jenny asked, growing worried. Seeing Sheldon laid out unconscious on the lab table was bringing back some rather unpleasant memories for her. Not too long ago, she had come painfully close to losing Sheldon for good. At the time he had been one of her best friends; now he was so much more to her then that.

She couldn't bear to go through that again.

"I'm not entirely sure. All his systems are functioning normally, and I'm reading some irregular brain function." Nora offered as she looked over the computer monitors hooked up to Sheldon's inanimate robot body.

Sparing a glance away from her analysis, Nora noticed the upset expression on her daughter's face. Though she didn't have any specific evidence to support it, Nora decided it couldn't hurt to put forward her best current hypothesis.

"It's possible that when the Silver Shell A.I. was reactivated, Sheldon's mind was shunted into some unused memory banks. He could be in there right now, reliving past events in a sort of dream-state."

With some effort, Jenny got up and went to Sheldon's side, taking the Silver Shell's larger hand in her own, giving it a small squeeze to comfort herself. "So, can't you just find Sheldon's mind and reactive it?" Jenny asked, but her mother shook her head.

"That would be like asking me to find the part of the human brain that houses the soul. I can view all his memories and behavioral patterns, but I can't locate his consciousness without being able to directly interact with his mind."

"Then send me in." Jenny said resolutely, rising unsteadily to her feet. She had only a rough idea what she was asking, she recalled being linked to other computers before when her mother was running diagnostics or repairs, and sometimes was able to interface with the machine inside her own mind. Jenny had never interfaced with another sentient robot like this. But she would do anything she could to help Sheldon.

Her mother fixed a stern gaze on Jenny, equal parts strict and regretful for being so. "I'm sorry Jennifer, but I cannot allow you to take such a risk. While it is true that you'd have a better chance of locating Sheldon's mind, I don't think you realize the inherent dangers involved. If you become disoriented, you may not be able to disconnect from Sheldon without damage to one or both of your brains." Closing the distance between them, Jenny's mother placed her hands against Jenny's pregnant belly and softened her tone. "I know you want to help, but you're not just putting your own life on the line anymore. You have a baby to think about. You just don't have that same responsibility to Sheldon, even if you are dating him. Even if you think you love him."

Jenny looked down at the expressionless face of the Silver Shell… Sheldon… the father of her unborn child. Sighing, Jenny sat back down and pulled her mother down to sit beside her.

"Mom," she started, her tone letting her mother know she was about to confess something big, "There's something that I haven't told you. I'd been meaning to, but it was just so personal. And, I hadn't actually told anyone yet so… don't feel like you were excluded or anything."

Nora sat and listened, her expression showing motherly concern. Jenny blushed a little, trying to find the right words but failing. Instead, she opened a small compartment in her chest and reached inside, pulling a small object out of one of her storage spaces.

For a few minutes the two Wakeman ladies sat in silence, watching Jenny toy with the little sleek black case in her left palm.

Finally, wordlessly, Jenny opened the case and pulled out a small hoop of gold metal, and fitted it over her left ring finger. As soon as the plain looking ring was placed fully onto Jenny's finger, it emitted a small click to lock itself snugly in position and draw a minuscule fraction of power from the circuitry in Jenny's hand. Before their eyes, the gold band sprouted a shimmering, glowing gem unlike any Nora Wakeman had seen in her long and experienced life. The softly luminescent gemstone was a complex polyhedron in shape, and tinted the same baby blue as Jenny's hair.

Nora softly gasped "Oh my," as she watched the gemstone suddenly blossom like a rose filmed in time-lapse photography. As the form of the ring folded over onto itself and dimmed into a rich green hue, it eventually found a new shape just as intricate as the first. In the dimly lit basement lab, the iridescence from the ring was enough to bath the entire room in its soft light, lending Jenny and everything else in sight its vibrant colors.

"Jenny, that's lovely." Nora said reverently, watching the hologram rotate into a star shape and take on a rose colored glow. Nora's momentary shock subsided, and she began to understand what she was seeing. The "ring" was probably an ingeniously miniaturized projector for the holographic "gem".

"It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." Jenny corrected her. "Sheldon said the patterns were based on fractal programs, so I'd never get exactly the same shape twice. The colors depend on the energy currents running through my hand, so it works like a mood-ring for robots."

As breathtaking as the ring was, Nora was not so distracted that she didn't understand what it represented. "So, when did Sheldon propose to you?"

Jenny continued to stare at the engagement ring, answering "A couple of weeks ago."

Nora waited for more, but evidently her daughter was not in a very forthcoming mood. "And what was your answer?" she gently prodded.

Jenny remained motionless, but the hue of the ring gradually shifted to a somber violet. Nora picked up on the meaning, responding with a distant "oh."

"I… I know that I love him mom." Jenny stated, her voice threatening to crack. Jenny's gaze bore into the shifting engagement ring, which warped itself from its purple trapazohedron shape into a silvery spiral, then muted into a dull crimson double-pyramid. Jenny refused to look away from its hypnotic transmutations, even when her mother placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, though the casual contact did spur her to continue. "I didn't feel like I could say yes yet… I just needed some time to figure some things out first, you know? But now, Sheldon could be at death's door again, and…"

Jenny coughed loudly to clear her choking throat, casually wiping away moisture gathering on her eyelids.

"It's the pain from the baby." Jenny offered lamely, wondering why she made up such an obvious lie as soon as it left her mouth.

"I know I love him, that much is easy by now. But I can't figure out why he loves me."

Jenny's attention was no longer on the ever-changing hologram on her finger. In fact, she now seemed to be purposely avoiding looking at it, as if the sight of it was painful for her.

"Since the day I met him I've turned down his advances more times then I can count, dated other boys, very nearly gotten him killed more then once… and his devotion for me never wavered. How can he have such unconditional love for me, when I've given him every reason to treat me like dirt?"

"It seems impossible, it's true." Mrs. Wakeman agreed.

Jenny pulled her legs up against her body protectively, no small feat for a girl as pregnant as she was.

Nora smiled slightly as Jenny rested her heavy head on the shoulder of the much smaller woman.

"These emotions will seem like less of a mystery soon enough though. That is one of the benefits of becoming a parent: you come to understand a whole new level of love you could scarcely realize existed before. You should count yourself lucky that you've encountered a boy capable of such affection for you. Most girls… most women… never meet such a match as that."

"Did you ever meet someone like that?" Jenny asked her mother, making Nora frown slightly.

With a sigh, Nora replied "I once thought I may have, but… no."

"Then how can you tell me Sheldon isn't worth the risk?"

For that, Mrs. Wakeman had no answer. Instead, she tried to redirect the argument.

"It's not that I don't like Sheldon, XJ-9, quite the contrary. Since he became my protégé over the summer I even came to think of him like a son, but…" but Nora fell silent when she caught sight of the pleading expression on Jenny's face.

The debate had ended.

Jenny looked so honestly desperate to convince her that Mrs. Wakeman didn't feel she could continue to argue any longer.

"Fine then. Go lay down next to Sheldon on the worktable." Nora said with a frown, grudgingly collecting the necessary wires and connectors to hook Jenny's mind up to the Silver Shell's. She may not have been able to dissuade her daughter, but Mrs. Wakeman could still offer what limited advice she had.

"The environment you'll be sifting through is Sheldon's accumulated memories, so it may look and feel essentially like Tremorton. As seen through Sheldon's eyes, at least. Try not to interact with the memories too much, or you may end up altering them permanently. If you can, try to contact me through the lab computer: I've already linked Sheldon's brain to the mainframe, so getting in touch with me is just a matter of finding the connection point hidden within the illusions of Sheldon's subconscious."

"Be careful Jenny. And good luck." Her mother added, attaching alligator clamps to each of Jenny's hair-bolts.

"I will mom. And thanks." Jenny said, shutting her eyes. She had little idea what to expect, but she was nothing if not adaptable. At least she would get a small break from the discomfort of being pregnant. Jenny's thoughts became less and less coherent, and she felt as though she were simply falling asleep.

---

"Jennifer Wakeman, you've outdone yourself once again!" Jenny announced aloud to no one in particular, gently tapping out a miniscule dent on her shop class midterm project. All the other students had theirs arranged in a row to be graded, but all their cobbled together lamps and crude sculptures would pale in comparison to Jenny's scale model replica. "Your quarter-scale die-cast alloy figure of fandom's favorite super-hero… Captain Crush! You're sure to crush the competition!"

Jenny felt immensely proud of her achievement, enough to bring tears to her eyes. As she casually wiped away the moisture from her long eyelashes, she sighed wistfully "Oh Captain… if only you could fly!"

Jenny's happiness was abruptly halted by the intrusion of the voice of Leta, one of Tremorton High's many bullies and one that enjoyed picking on Jenny in particular.

"Heheheh, we can make him fly!" she laughed, snatching up the model that Jenny had worked so hard on and tossing it into the air, only to be caught by one of her snickering cronies.

"Captain! My Captain!" cried Jenny, her arms outstretched for her figurine.

Leta grabbed hold of the smaller, weaker girl before she could retrieve her treasured Captain Crush. "Jenny, we gotta talk shop…" Leta stated, hoisting Jenny into the air in a threatening gesture "… shop homework, that is!"

"N-no problem…" Jenny stammered, afraid of the beefy Leta. As was customary at this school, doing the bully's homework for her was the price Jenny paid to avoid getting beaten up… most of the time. "I've got it right here. Y'see? Your pop-can lamps are all.."

"Gimme!" snapped Leta, snatching the recycled lamps from Jenny's hand before she'd even finished taking them out of her backpack.

"…done." Jenny finished, "I even put heavy-duty batteries on them, in the event that you wanted to swing them around in a reckless fashion."

Leta smiled. "Heavy duty eh? Hnnh. I like the way you think." she commended, raising Jenny's hopes.

"Really?" Jenny asked. Sure, she didn't really like Leta, but it's not like she really had any other friends either, so she'd take what she could get.

Leta paused, just long enough to let Jenny believe she might finally have found some measure of popularity, then barked "…NO!!"

Within minutes, the helpless Jenny Wakeman was being tossed into the air just as her prized Captain Crush model was.

"Here, over here, toss one to me!" called one of shorter bullies, as the trio gleefully tossed Jenny back and forth in a game of keep-away. The smaller bully was distracted from his amusement by the intrusion of a new voice.

"Excuse me, I need to speak to the young lady you're terrorizing…?" asked the stranger, a robotic student that the bully recognized from around the hallways of Tremorton high. He was supposed to be some kinda super-hero… the Silver Shell, or something like that.

Unconcerned with the robot's request, the stumpy student refocused his attention on his game, shouting "Me, me, toss one to me!"

Growing annoyed, the Silver Shell casually reached and arm up and snatched the Captain Crush figurine out of midair, ending the bullies' game. "…As I was saying: I have a screw loose." He explained, now speaking to the leader of the gang, Leta.

"No kidding," Leta growled back, "Now do yourself a favor and get outta here!" The Silver Shell noticed that this bully had a hold of Jenny Wakeman, the local robotics nerd that he had come to see about his injury.

"..h-h-hellllp…" the red-headed girl squeaked, not even bothering to struggle in the much stronger Leta's grip.

"You say something?" Leta demanded from the smaller girl in her grasp. A tap on her shoulder caused the bulky bully to spin around and face the Silver Shell, which was all the distraction the robot needed to release Jenny from her torment by extending an arm around to Leta's opposite side and hoisting the smaller human free.

"You alright?" Silver Shell asked Jenny politely, putting her down gently on the ground.

Jenny nodded meekly, mumbling "Un-hunh".

The Silver Shell frowned as his attention was diverted back to the bullies again, their high-powered lamps turned on him to produce an annoying glare. They swung the batteries around menacingly, clearly intended to be used as potential weapons against him. "Excuse me Jenny, I have to go unplug somebody's socket." He said ominously, and advanced on the bullies.

Jenny watched happily as the Silver Shell made short work of her tormentors, feeling immensely grateful towards the heroic teen. He was quite a looker too; Jenny had inherited her mother's fascination with robots at an early age, but she'd never imagined one could be so… perfect.

Jenny wondered if a robot like him could ever be interested in a human girl like her.

Once Silver Shell finished giving the bullies their just desserts, he stepped over to Jenny and asked "So, Jenny, could you give me a hand?" while taking Jenny's hand in his own and displaying a minor injury on his elbow.

Jenny's heart skipped a beat. A boy was holding her hand! And a cute, robot boy at that… music began playing inside Jenny's mind, the rest of the world seeming to fade away as she felt herself develop her first real crush…

"Let go of her, you creep!" came a shout from elsewhere in the room, causing Jenny and Silver Shell to gasp. Turning to see the source of the interruption, Jenny spotted a thin, nerdy looking boy she knew as Sheldon Lee.

She felt as though she knew him from somewhere… but wasn't this the first time they had met?

This… this was their first meeting… this had all happened before! Jenny staggered from a massive sense of Déjà vu, releasing the Silver Shell's hand from her own.

"Jenny, you came to rescue me!" said Sheldon, rushing over to her side and helping Jenny keep herself upright.

That's right. She was here to rescue Sheldon… their brains were hooked up right now, and she was caught up in the memory of their first meeting back in shop class. Only, things had gotten reversed: this time Silver Shell was the one who had been injured, and Jenny was the nerdy human girl who developed a crush on him. The Silver Shell looked none to pleased that someone else was distracting Jenny from fixing his arm. Even as he reached out from Sheldon to remove the offending human, the injury in the Silver Shell's right elbow creaked in protest at his aggressive movement, and the gigantic robot clutched his arm in pain.

"Come on Jenny, we've got to get out of here!" Sheldon said hurriedly, taking advantage of the Silver Shell's momentary distraction. Pulling Jenny along by her hand, Sheldon rushed them both out of the room and pushed them through the classroom doorway. On the other side, however, was anything but the familiar hallways of Jenny's highschool. Instead, it looked like she was in Mezmer's malt shop. Sheldon pulled her into a corner booth, allowing Jenny a minute to orient herself and try to figure out what was going on.

"Where are we Sheldon?" she asked, looking around. She noticed a handful of familiar faces, although no-one seemed to notice her in return. Sheldon looked over his shoulder at the shop's patrons suspiciously, speaking in a low voice to avoid being overheard.

"We just hopped memories. I took us to the memory of your date with Don Prima that I inadvertently helped arrange. You know, when Don and I got into a fight over you? I've been hiding out here for a while before you showed up, it should be relatively safe."

Jenny started, "Safe from what?"

"From the Silver Shell. Or the A.I. that encompasses the Silver Shell personality that I programmed into the robot. It's been making its way through my mind, trying to erase, well, me. My consciousness."

"I think the computer sees me as being a weakness in the system, something that needs to be purged. I've been able to avoid him so far, so instead he's been selectively editing all my memories, erasing me from them and replacing them with himself. He'll get through them all eventually, and when that happens I'll still exist but... I'll basically be lobotomized, so the A.I. can live my life for me." Sheldon explained, looking extremely worn out.

Jenny looked around Mezmer's again, starting to understand. In fact, over on the opposite side of the shop she spotted Don Prima, the Silver Shell, and… herself! Or, the regular metal robot XJ9 anyway.

Which brought up another question: why wasn't she her usual robotic self? Instead, she was flesh and blood, with red hair and fair Celtic skin and a pleasant blue sun dress. Come to think of it, this was pretty much the same as she had looked back when she wore her upgraded human exo-skin. At least, before it tried to take over her life.

"The easiest were memories where I was wearing the Silver Shell armor. Very little needed to be changed, so they hardly took any time at all. After that were any memories I had of the two of us, I guess maybe because he expected you to come try to rescue me like this. So while he's been preoccupied replacing my memories with his own version, I've been hiding out in the ones he's already finished with."

"Sheldon, why am I human here?" Jenny asked bluntly, examining herself.

"I'm not quite sure." Sheldon answered, touching his hand to his chin in thought. "I had figured that in my own case, it just reflected that I never stopped thinking of myself as a human trapped in a robot body. In my subconscious, I'm still Sheldon Lee: nerdy, awkward human teenager."

"But as for you… maybe because when you first entered my memories, you took on a role that Silver Shell had edited you into: in my shoes, admiring him, instead of the other way around?"

Jenny shrugged. In any other situation, she would have been happy to explore what it was like to have a human body for a while, but at the moment there were more important things to think about.

Turning back to Sheldon, she asked "So if you're hiding from Silver Shell, why can't he see us now?" while pointing across the room at the Silver Shell attempting to sabotage Jenny and Don's date, exactly as Jenny remembered it happening.

Well, not exactly as she remembered. Jenny remembered Don being a lot less obnoxious then she was seeing right now. And she didn't think she was as pretty as Sheldon's memory portrayed her, either. Certainly her skin hadn't been that pure white, or her hair that blue.

"That Silver Shell isn't the actual Silver Shell A.I." Sheldon explained, distracting Jenny from her musings. "That's just the memory of himself, the same as how that Jenny over there isn't you, the real Jenny. As long as we don't interact with them, the memory-figments should just ignore us, and play out the memory as I remember it… or as the A.I. edited it."

"But why is this happening at all? It's your brain, can't you just shut down the Silver Shell, and wake up?" Jenny asked, still confused.

"It's not my mind Jenny. It's his."

"I'm the intruder here, I high-jacked his electronic brain and put my own mind into his blank memory banks. Originally my mind was installed in the brain as a super-user of this computer system, sort of like an Admin of a computer network. And the A.I. just went dormant, since I'd taken over all its functions."

"But something's changed that, I've been demoted in my own mind, so I can only make small changes. And something reactivated the A.I. system. Now it's using my life as a template for its own."

Jenny noticed that Sheldon was slumped in his seat, his eyes turned down to the table. His body language told her that Sheldon was tired, or worse, had lost the will to fight back against what was happening. She couldn't imagine what could make him want to give up possession of his own mind, but she needed to snap him out of it.

Across the room from them, she spotted her mechanical self heading for the ladies' room. Meanwhile, the memories of Silver Shell and Don Prima were fighting, arguing over her in her absence.

"Hmm, Sheldon, could you take us to the last memory you had before all this happened? Maybe that will give us a clue to start from." Jenny said, her mind starting to puzzle things out. If she could see what had started the Silver Shell A.I. on this rampage through Sheldon's brain, then perhaps her mom could isolate the problem and correct it.

Jenny stood up from her seat, and forcibly helped Sheldon to his feet as well. "Come on Sheldon, it's time for a trip down memory lane…" she quipped, but stopped short when the roof of the malt shop suddenly had a large hole torn in it.

Right, the metal-eating fly! Jenny remembered now. As she watched, Silver Shell tackled the mutant fly, then proceeded to brandish it like a weapon towards Don Prima. Don dodged the squirt of metal-dissolving digestive juices that Silver Shell aimed at Don's shoes, retorting, "What's your malfunction, lug-nuts? If it's that robot chick you're after, you can have her. She's nothing special."

Don's words cut deep into Jenny's pride. He had really said that? Jenny remembered that she eventually ended the date because of Don's obsessive interest in his expensive shoes, and her attraction to the popular boy had ended entirely shortly thereafter. So she shouldn't really care what he thought of her, but…

"You take that back! Take it back!" shouted Silver Shell angrily, defending Jenny's honor.

"Awww… that's so sweet." Jenny sighed involuntarily. Sheldon had always been looking out for her, even when she wasn't aware of it.

"Not that you noticed at the time" grumbled Sheldon bitterly, his voice low.

Did that still bother him, after all this time? In this particular case he was right, of course; any minute now, the memory of XJ-9 would emerge from the ladies room and catch Don and the Silver Shell fighting, misinterpret the situation, and berate Sheldon for being a poor friend. In light of this new information, Jenny didn't particularly want a replay of how she had reacted that evening, so she hurried herself and Sheldon out of the front door and into a different memory.

Jenny and Sheldon found themselves out in downtown Tremorton during the day, though Jenny couldn't place what specific memory this represented.

"This is the last thing you remember?" she asked Sheldon, who nodded and lead them off the main street.

"Well, about here is where I lost track of things. I remember following some strange urge to fly to this alley, and then… nothing." Ducking into a seemingly empty alleyway, the two teens hid behind some stacked trash containers to watch the memory play it's self out.

Within moments, a whir of jet engines powering down and the crash of metal on pavement announced the arrival of Silver Shell. This memory being more recent, probably only a day or two old, Jenny inferred that this Silver Shell was no longer an armor worn by the human Sheldon, but a robot host for Sheldon's disembodied mind.

As the scene unfolded before them, Silver Shell seemed to be struggling with each step he took, fighting against himself as he lurched into the alleyway past Jenny's hiding spot. He seemed to be under some form of mind control, but who was doing the controlling? Once clearly out of sight of the people on the street, Jenny got her answer.

Out of the shadows of the back alley stepped Brit Crust, Jenny's longtime rival.

Jenny had heard that Brit had experienced some sort of emotional breakdown at the Halloween party, even threatening Tuck's life. But Jenny had her own problems to deal with at the time, and by the time she was capable of searching for her, Brit was long gone. That was well over a month ago now… where had Brit been during all that time? Whatever had happened, she was back now, and apparently at the root of some new scheme to cause problems for Jenny.

"That's a good little toy soldier." Brit teased the helpless Silver Shell, brandishing the Silver Shell's remote control like a weapon. Jenny had no clue how Brit had gotten a hold of that, but it did explain how she had brainwashed Sheldon.

Trembling with restrained aggression, Silver Shell grunted and managed to bring his right arm up towards Brit in a hostile gesture.

"Now now, there will be none of that." Brit chided, tapping a few commands into the remote that forced Silver Shell to lower his arm to his side. Subdued, Silver Shell could do nothing to resist as Brit sauntered up to the much larger boy and leaned herself affectionately against his chest. Brit playfully tickled under Silver Shell's chin with the tips of her fingers, teasingly telling him "It's a shame I have to destroy you, Sheldon, but you're too much of a threat to be allowed to live. But at least you'll be able to perform a valuable service or two for me first."

What Jenny saw next made her grit her teeth and growl. With a few more casual taps at Silver Shell's remote, Brit forced Jenny's boyfriend down onto his knees, then forward onto all fours like an animal.

Brit giggled at the power she wielded over her rival's mate.

"Now bark for me." The sadistic teen girl commanded, and clapped with delight when Silver Shell reluctantly complied. Getting a little more creative, Brit punched a few additional commands into the remote, and told Silver Shell: "Now, repeat after me…"

As she said each line, the Silver Shell dutifully parroted the same phrase back to Brit Crust. "Jenny Wakeman is an overweight, chalk-skinned bitch with lame hair and a smelly gas leak."

"Ah! Shel-don!" Jenny exclaimed, aghast to hear those words come from her boyfriend's mouth, even given the circumstance.

"It's not my fault!" he yelped, defending himself.

Well, yeah, but that didn't make it any nicer for Jenny to hear. Settling down, Jenny resumed watching.

"Excellent, my shiny new toy." Brit praised, "And who is the prettiest, sexiest, best dressed girl in all of Tremorton?"

Silver Shell grunted, saying nothing. He had seemingly found new will to resist Brit's mental control.

Brit did not like being resisted.

"What's that?" she insisted sarcastically, grabbing hold of a knob on Shell's remote. "I can't quite hear you. Perhaps I'd best turn up the volume!"

With a flick of her wrist, Brit left the Silver Shell doubled over in pain. Jenny wasn't quite sure what Brit was doing (or, had done) to her boyfriend, but she did know just how badly certain systems could hurt when they were short-circuited or otherwise abused. An intense headache might be comparable, from what Brad had once told Jenny, if one replaced the description of "dull pounding" with "precise acid-burn". Jenny hadn't thought her loathing for Brit Crust could have grown any more intense, but she was proved wrong by Brit's next act.

"Now, I'll ask again." Brit stated coldly, "Who is the sexiest girl in Tremorton?"

"Y-you are…

…You are the sexiest, Brit."

Brit sneered, unsatisfied thanks to Sheldon's earlier attempt at resistance. "More." She demanded in no uncertain terms.

A momentary look of blank confusion passed the Silver Shell's features, until an impatient gesture from Brit urged him on. "Uhm… You have the, the… the prettiest eyes I've ever seen! And a… a great personality!"

"Try harder." Sheldon's tormentor warned, reaching again for the remote.

"You've got a great set of perky, full breasts!" Sheldon cried out in desperation, willing to say anything to avoid another jolt to his central nervous system.

Brit smirked a little, finally interested. "Go on," she encouraged, sticking out a hip to affect a more feminine posture.

"Well, you've got plump, luscious lips. And you can make men melt with a look!" Sheldon praised, his ingenuity at coming up with more creative descriptions making him even a little enthusiastic. "And you've got legs like a supermodel, and a tight little body that just screams 'sex'! And you've got an ass that doesn't quit!"

Brit's ears seemed to perk up on that last one, giving her a wicked grin. "You like my ass, eh?" she prodded, waltzing up closer to the kneeling Silver Shell with remote in hand. Turning around suddenly, Brit undid the front of her pants and pulled them down to mid-thigh, mooning Silver Shell right in the face.

"How about giving it a kiss then?" Brit taunted Sheldon as she waved her well-tanned buttocks in his face, knowing he really had no choice in the matter. Slapping one taut cheek and giving her athletic buns a quick jiggle, Brit added "right here, on my left. Kiss my ass, robot."

"Oh, that's just degrading!" Jenny complained, angry at what Brit had forced Sheldon to endure. What was even more frustrating was that Jenny was powerless to stop it, seeing as all this had already occurred some time ago.

Wanting to get the humiliation over with quickly, Sheldon closed his eyes and pressed his face forward, giving Brit her requested peck on her left ass cheek.

Giggling from the contact, Brit arched her back further and demanded "again, on the other side now!" to which Sheldon unhappily complied. Brit cackled with glee, seeming to lose herself in the moment. "Now the middle!" she insisted, rolling her hips and further arching her back until her lightly fuzzed womanhood was displayed prominently in Sheldon's face.

When he hesitated, Brit looked over her shoulder at him. "Come on… plant a kiss right there on my split peach. A long wet one… I want to feel that silver tongue of yours tickling my pink as deep as you can get it."

As Silver Shell extended his tongue from his mouth and gradually leaned forward to french kiss Brit Crust's increasingly excited cunt, Brit pushed her ass back against her new sex slave impatiently. Brit shuddered with pleasure as her damp girlflesh was penetrated by Shell's outthrust tongue, a faintly audible squelch following as her inner vaginal muscles squeezed down around the invading member and squirted a dollop of clear pussy-juice in Sheldon's face.

Silver Shell couldn't see anything but Brit's brown little ass, was only bothering to lightly wiggle his tongue, and was thankful that his robot body didn't need to breathe. Still, Brit didn't seem to much mind. She sighed and moaned as she ground the spread lips of her sex against Sheldon's open mouth, smearing her warm lube all over the abused boy's face and pouring even more down his gullet. Brit was pumping her hungry snatch up and down over Silver Shell's protruding tongue as though it were a small unusually shaped silver dildo, working it as deep as it would go and twisting her hips about on it to worth her pussy up into a froth of sexual excitement.

When her hand reached between her legs to begin frantically pawing at her swollen clitoris, Sheldon knew Brit was close to her climax. "Mmmhhh!" Brit sighed, biting her bottom lip. In a voice much more shrill then normal, Brit commanded "Open wide, robot! I feel especially wet today, and it's about to cuuu-UUMMM!" her voice squeaked out into an unintelligible series of gasps and whines.

Brit's thighs and rump trembled as her orgasm sparked through every muscle in her abdomen, making her clit twitch between her fingertips and her cunt clench spasmodically, wringing a river of her honey-like girl cum from her pink inner tissues and flowing out into Sheldon's submissive mouth. When the last tremors finally left her, Brit pulled away from Sheldon and wiped away the few feeble strands of fluid connecting Sheldon's lips to Brit's lower pair.

After Brit pulled her pants back up, she surprisingly leaned down and embraced Sheldon, drawing him into her arms and planting a deep kiss on Silver Shell's mouth. At first Jenny was confused by this sudden show of tenderness from Brit. But it made more sense when she saw the swallowing motions in Brit's throat. As she tongue-wrestled Jenny's boyfriend, Brit was greedily drinking down every drop of cunt cream that she had just spilled into Silver Shell's mouth!

After what seemed like much to long, Brit broke the kiss and pulled away from Silver Shell, wiping away some stray wetness with the back of her hand and joking "It's a good thing at least one of us swallows!"

Jenny was fuming now. Brit crust had raped her man! She couldn't imagine many girls had ever been in her position. Jenny grabbed onto the real Sheldon sitting next to her, making herself feel a little better with the idea that she could at least keep this Sheldon safe from Brit's depredations.

"Don't worry Sheldon, the next time I see Brit, she's going to pay." She promised.

Sheldon didn't seem quite as offended, and offered "you know, I don't actually remember any of this, and the Silver Shell isn't really my original body either, so it's more like Brit had sex with a really advanced sex doll."

Purring, Brit circled around the Silver Shell until she was behind him, leaning over his broad shoulders. "Thanks for the quickie, tin man. I'd offer to get your rocks off for you too, but I'm afraid I have some more work for you to attend to."

Using the remote control and her own hands, Brit pried open the inner circuitry in Silver Shell's braincase for her inspection, which she went to work on with far greater skill and knowledge then Jenny would ever have given Brit Crust credit for.

"This is wrong… since when is Brit such a computer expert?" Jenny whispered to Sheldon. Nothing seemed different about Brit. She was the same high school student that Jenny remembered, her hair had even grown back to its former length. But even if she had spent the past month doing nothing but learning about robotics, Jenny still doubted Brit would have been capable of effortlessly rewiring Sheldon's brain like this. So why were robots and programming now second nature to her?

Finished, Brit sealed up the Silver Shell's open access panels and gave him a command. "Now go, you big lumbering distraction! Go terrorize the Wakemans, kill them if you can. I'll be watching." Brit slapped Silver Shell's ass to get him moving, and in short order the enslaved superhero was flying in the direction of Jenny's house.

Jenny had seen enough. "Ok Sheldon, we found the source of the problem. Let's contact my mom, and find out what we can do to fix this."

"I'm sorry Jenny, but I've done all that I can from here." Mrs. Wakeman conceded.

"What? But you said once I located his consciousness… then..." Jenny stammered.

Jenny could see her mother shake her head on the viewscreen they were communicating through. Or, the memory of a viewscreen at least.

In order to get in touch with Mrs. Wakeman, Jenny and Sheldon had explored Sheldon's subconscious until they found the memory of the Cluster invasion. Jenny hadn't known it, being busy trying to escape from Cluster Prime at the time, but it was during that incident that Sheldon had first collaborated with Jenny's mother, and had first seen the inside of her lab.

There were no cameras into Sheldon's mind though, so the viewscreen was only one way: Jenny's mother could hear Sheldon and herself, but she wouldn't be able to see the human forms they currently wore.

"I said that I couldn't locate Sheldon's consciousness without interfacing with his mind." Nora answered, from back in the real lab. "Now you've located him, but… I still can't return his mind into a position of dominance over the computer brain. Only a user such as Sheldon himself can do that. But I can give you some information that may help: Right now the Silver Shell A.I. is making its way through Sheldon's memories of your little Christmastime 'adventure', when you were controlled by that spoiled little rich boy into ruining the year's various holidays. So you have some time to work out a plan before the A.I. reaches you."

Jenny sighed a little in relief, but knew the pressure was still on. She needed to come up with a plan to save Sheldon, and soon. Normally when there was a problem, Jenny could count on her strength and a little improvisation to see her through. But in this case they were fighting… information? It's not like she could just punch the A.I.'s self-diagnostic program and make everything better.

"Whatever you work out, try to do it as quickly as possible." Jenny's mom continued, "We have problems back out here in the real world too."

"Brit." Jenny agreed succinctly, already guessing.

Nora seemed surprised, asking "How did you know?"

"Just one of the clues I was able to turn up in Sheldon's memories. She's the one responsible for reactivating the Silver Shell A.I. and sending it after me. How did you know?"

"We have a visitor." Nora answered, stepping aside so that Jenny could see past her. Looking none to pleased to be there was Tiff Crust, her arms folded over her chest gruffly. Stepping back into view without blocking Tiff, Nora continued. "She just got back from taking Brad to the hospital. He's doing ok, but the doctors are still checking for anything serious. It seems that last night, they were attacked at Tiff's house shortly after your visit there."

Jenny was aghast. She knew Brit was out to get her, and even that she had gotten crazy enough to attempt to have Jenny killed, but she was still shocked to hear that Brit would actually attack Brad, and even her own cousin Tiff, with her bare hands.

"Why would Brit do something like that?" Jenny asked aloud.

"From what Tiffany here tells me, it seems Brittany has managed to combine herself with Vexus' remains somehow. So I'm willing to consider the idea that the poor girl may be under the control of the Cluster. On the other hand, I saw her at that party, even talked to her… it may be that she has simply completely lost her mind."

Jenny said nothing, taking a moment to process this information. If Brit was able to take on any of Vexus' powers or abilities, it made her a much more dangerous opponent.

"It gets worse," Jenny's mother continued, as if she could read her daughter's thoughts "Brit also has a Pip crystal."

"That is worse." Jenny agreed, gulping.

"We have no way of knowing when Brit may strike, but if she's already showing her hand by sending in Sheldon as a first wave, then it'll probably be soon." Nora added, looking pensive. "I've already alerted the authorities, and they've evacuated everyone from the surrounding homes. Unfortunately, because you are the skyway patrol's standard response to super-villains of this magnitude, their regulations say that you're meant to handle the situation on your own. Obviously I told them that that was rubbish, given your condition, but the paperwork to account for your "maternity leave" will probably take days for them to finish. So it's up to us."

Jenny frowned, but was not intimidated.

"All the more reason why I'll need to get Sheldon back on his feet then." She stated flatly.

Her mother nodded solemnly, agreeing. "I'll see what reinforcements I can scrounge up from around here. Good luck."

Mrs. Wakeman terminated the communication, turning to speak to Tiff Crust behind her.

Nora tried to maintain a cool head, but Tiff could see the stress starting to form cracks in her calm demeanor. Tiff felt a little awkward; here she was at the epicenter of all the action, but didn't have much she could do to help.

If it was even wanted.

Even though she no longer felt much animosity towards Jenny thanks to her relationship with Brad, she wasn't sure if Jenny or Jenny's family felt the same way about her. And speaking of Brad, Tiff felt she had already been away from the hospital for too long. She really should head back there now, to check on him.

Fidgeting, Tiff offered, "Listen, I ain't doin' much here. If I'm in your way or sumthin', I can…"

"…stay and help?" Mrs. Wakeman finished hopefully. "Excellent. I going to get as many security precautions up and running as soon as possible, but I still need someone to keep an eye on Jenny and Sheldon until they wake up." Before Tiff could protest, Nora was already heading on her way. "Just watch those monitors there and come get me if anything unusual happens. Back in a jiffy!"

"Aw, crap." Tiff complained aloud, to no one in particular.

Pulling up a stool from a nearby lab bench, Tiff took a seat and stared up at the blinking computer readouts measuring the two robot teens' health. With only the two unconscious robots to keep her company, Tiff was starting to feel like she was in the eye of the storm: a momentary calm while everything around her was being torn to pieces, and it was only a matter of time before the storm came for her too.

Upstairs, Nora scrambled the house's perimeter defenses. The whole building was one big panic room, in a way, with some extra levels of security for keeping the basement lab locked up tight. Nora mentally went through the checklist in her mind: first she would lock all the doors and windows, which were reinforced with steel plating of course, then she'd activate the perimeter motion sensors and cameras to keep Brit from taking them by surprise, then she could set-

"oh!" Nora yelped, nearly jumping off the ground at the sound of the doorbell ringing. Which was only natural, she supposed, being as tense as she was right now.

Was Brit Crust here already, come to kill Jenny and her baby? No, that wouldn't make sense; why bother ringing the doorbell? Cautiously, Nora Wakeman crept up to the front door and leaned in close, peered through the peephole to see who it was. The answer was even more surprising than if it had been Brit.

"Phineas Mog?" Nora exclaimed, perplexed as to why her longtime scientific rival was on her doorstop. He looked like he hadn't slept in a couple of days. Or at least, hadn't slept well.

"Noreen! I must speak with you, it's urgent!" he insisted from the opposite side of the door, waving his arms frantically.

Whatever trivial crisis he was facing was certainly nothing compared to the menace of Brit Crust's imminent arrival. "Go away Mog." Nora warned in an irritated tone of voice, "Get as far away from here as you can, there is deadly danger headed for this house!"

"I know!" Mog exclaimed, close to panicking, "And I may be responsible for unleashing the Crust girl on you all!"

Nora flung the front door wide, her expression stern. "What?"

Looking sheepish, Mog chuckled and fidgeted nervously. "I… I was the one who affixed the dead alien's components onto that Crust girl. I didn't know it would turn into all this. But! But I have good news as well." Fishing about in his lab coat pocket, Mog produced a small object and handed it to Nora. On first inspection, it looked like a simple, rather small dagger-like weapon. Nora adjusted her thick spectacles and peered closer at the device, spotting intricate circuitry all along the "blade". It did not take a scientist of her caliber to figure out that the haft of the blade would similarly house a sophisticated electronic device of some kind. Before she could puzzle out the device's purpose, Mog saved her the trouble.

"It's a killswitch program. Before I reactivated the dormant programming in the repaired remains of the robotic Cluster alien, I made sure I would have a failsafe method of aborting the project if it proved to be dangerous."

Nora quirked an eyebrow, "And?"

Mog sighed, answering "I'm not the spry young man I once was Noreen. This killswitch is simple so there's not a lot that can go wrong, but it does still require someone to activate it: namely, by piercing the outer shell of the creature with the "blade". I tried to do just that when the cyborg began rampaging through my lab, but I hadn't planned for the possibility of being physically overwhelmed. I barely escaped with my life."

Nora was attempting to weigh her options as best she could, but was feeling a bit overwhelmed herself. Mog and she had a long and colorful history, their relationship ranging from rivals in university to collaborators in the Skyway Patrol to nowadays, where they might best be described as contemporaries who kept a particularly critical eye on each others' work.

But in all that she never would really have said that she trusted him. Could this be some sort of ploy… perhaps Mog was even conspiring with Brit, or at least working for her? By his own admission, he had been the one who fused her with the remains of the Cluster tyrant.

But then, why did Mog look so scared? Nora could see his eyes darting about, though trying not to seem too obvious about it, as if he expected someone to sneak up and attack him at any second. If he was telling the truth, then he was in the same danger that Jenny and herself were. And he could provide valuable information about Brit's strengths and weaknesses… but what if he was lying? Could he be trying to sneak inside, and bring down the house's defenses from the inside?

"Just stab the killswitch into any armored portion of Ms. Crust's body, depress the plunger on the handle, and the program will do the rest." Mog explained, turning to leave.

"Wait!" Nora called after him, making the elderly scientist pause. If he had any sinister intentions, why just give them this weapon and leave? He had no guarantee she would even use it. "Mog… please, come inside." Nora invited, stepping aside to usher him in.

"If Brit is after you too, then the only place you're safe is here with my daughter and I. Please come inside, I have a lot of questions that need answering and I could use an extra pair of skilled hands to help prepare."

---

"So, we have a plan then?" asked Sheldon, walking beside Jenny as they traversed through his memory banks. Scenes from around Tremorton faded in and out in the background, mixing with memories of going to school, watching television, working in the garage, even memories of going to the bathroom or going to sleep at night. These memories weren't as pivotal to Sheldon's life, so were remembered less clearly and therefore, less likely to be immediately targeted by the Silver Shell for erasure. Still, it was best to keep moving until they had figured out a defense.

"Not really." Jenny frowned, shaking her head. The swishing of her pigtails on her head reminded her once again that she was a mere human girl here, with all the limitations thereof. "My mom said that we need to force Silver Shell into submission. I don't think we'll be able to physically force him to do anything, so is there any way we can out-think him? What does the Silver Shell want?"

With a shrug, Sheldon offered "Well, I built him as part of a plan to get you to like me, so I programmed him to be as smooth and charming as I could. His whole existence is to romance you, really."

Jenny pursed her lips in thought. Could they use that to their advantage?

"Maybe that's what he's doing right now. If Silver Shell is programmed to make himself desirable to me, then he'd see your presence in his personality as geeky, negative traits that he'd need to get rid of."

Sheldon chuckled a little, "That makes sense. People have been trying to get rid of me my whole life."

Self-depreciating humor like that didn't really sit well with Jenny, but she merely frowned and continued. "If that's the case, then fixing this problem is as simple as convincing the A.I. that I'm more attracted to you then I am to it."

"Are you?" Sheldon asked abruptly, making Jenny halt in her tracks.

"Sheldon, how could you even ask that?" she asked, her voice harsh and offended. Somehow Jenny felt that she should be angry or at least annoyed by a question like that, and expressed herself accordingly, but inside she only felt hurt.

"Don't get me wrong," Sheldon explained, "it's not like I want to have my mind erased or something. But I think it's a valid question. One that Silver Shell is going to ask. Since I've been trapped here in my own memories, I've had nothing to do but relive past events. And in just about all of them, Silver Shell is the one you're interested in, not me."

So that's why Sheldon had seemed so depressed ever since Jenny found him in here. Though she was relieved that that little mystery had been solved, Jenny was more concerned with the problem it revealed. As it happened, he was right: the Silver Shell A.I. would need to be convinced, and they had better have a strong argument ready for it. The fact that Sheldon's doubts mirrored Jenny's own feelings of inadequacy only made the topic that much more necessary.

"Come on Sheldon, I was young. I got dazzled by anything that seemed to promise happiness. The school social cliques, my time as a football star, even the time I allowed my image to be marketed as a toy line. But I eventually learned that happiness is something you can only get from inside yourself."

"So what about right now, then?" Sheldon pressed, "I mean, you only seemed to start liking me after I got dumped into the Silver Shell's body. How are you going to convince him that he isn't the one that you love? Maybe you'd be happier if we just let Silver Shell do his work… then when he asks you to marry him, you won't have to worry about me making things difficult for you." He added bitterly.

Jenny suspected that Sheldon wasn't really asking her to convince Silver Shell… he was asking her to convince him.

"Alright." Jenny stated, getting an idea of how to set things right. This would be a tricky challenge to navigate, but with a little luck and timing, and if her feminine intuition was correct… "Alright Sheldon, you've got a point. But now I've got a second chance here, so let's make the most of it."

Grabbing her boyfriend by his hand, she dragged him hurriedly through foggy memories until she found the one she was looking for.

"The Sadie Hawkins dance?" Sheldon asked, recognizing the scene of Tremorton High's gymnasium decorated with streamers and soft lighting and even a disco ball hung high overhead. In the middle of the empty dance hall were the robotic XJ9 and Silver Shell, dressed in the robotic equivalent of formal wear and sharing a romantic dance by themselves.

"Why are we here?" Sheldon asked cluelessly. Leading him into the center of the room, Jenny positioned them both so that they were superimposed over the memory of themselves. The robot couple quickly faded out, leaving only the two human teens in their place. Sheldon noticed that Jenny and his appearances had altered themselves to suit the moment as well… Sheldon was wearing a blue tuxedo, while Jenny's red hair was pulled back into a single ponytail, and was wearing a pretty pink party dress.

With a squeeze to his hand held in hers, Jenny answered "Because this is one of the many happy memories that were ruined because I misinterpreted a kind gesture. So lets get it right this time." Taking his other hand and placing in her hip, then putting her own on Sheldon's shoulder, Jenny added in a sultry tone of voice "Your lead."

Quickly finding the tempo of the softly playing music in the background, the young lovers easily lost themselves in the moment. The spinning points of reflected light from the disco ball overhead painted the walls in a sylvan luminescence, and the way that it lent an angelic shine to Jenny's eyes was not lost on Sheldon either. Sheldon did not have much in the way of experience dating human girls, and in truth he was probably more comfortable being with the robotic Jenny he was used to. But in the dim light of the ballroom Jenny's human features were doing an excellent job of captivating his attention. Her cute little nose, her pretty eyelashes, the scant sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks…

"Sheldon, you're staring." Jenny giggled, smiling at the blush this brought to Sheldon's face.

"Sorry," he apologized without shifting his gaze "I'm just thinking about what a great memory this will be."

The music slowed from a moderately paced waltz down to a crooning ballad, and the dancing couple slowed their movements accordingly. Shifting her grip to wrap both arms around Sheldon's neck, Jenny sighed and leaned herself against Sheldon, resting her head on his shoulder.

"This is a lot more enjoyable without worrying about space bikers ruining things." Sheldon commented, which Jenny answered with a quiet purr of agreement. His breath tickled the hairs on the back of Jenny's head, and thought that if she was careful, she could even detect the pulse of his heart beating inside his chest. Jenny could scarcely imagine a more romantic moment. But then again, this wasn't for her benefit… this was for Sheldon.

Pulling away just enough to look Sheldon in the face, Jenny couldn't help but smile. Here was her man. Nerdy or not, she didn't care. What mattered was that they accepted each other utterly, for what each other were at their core, not outward appearances. Which is all they really were here in Sheldon's mind anyway; their core personas, stripped of their physical limitations.

"I think I figured out why I have a human body in here." Jenny stated, momentarily halting their slow dance. Sheldon looked at her expectantly, and she went on, "Because subconsciously, this is how you see me. More then anyone else in the world, even Brad, even my own mother, you have never questioned that I was a person. A real person, not just a simulation of one."

"Sure Jenny, did you think I was only interested in you because you were a robot or something? Wasn't that clear?" Sheldon asked.

Jenny pouted a little, "I guess not."

"Sorry." Sheldon offered again, sheepishly. Jenny's frown disappeared, and she hugged herself to him even tighter then before.

"Don't be. It's the best compliment I could have asked for." She stated emphatically, before kissing him passionately. Sheldon's arms moved from Jenny's hips to wrap around her back, pulling her tightly into his embrace. A soft, fleshy human tongue pressed against Sheldon's lips and was soon met by his own, releasing a moan from Jenny's throat as their kiss deepened.

Time passed immeasurably while the two teens tongue-wrestled, feeling each other breathing and sighing. Jenny's fingers found their way to the back of Sheldon's head, where she soothingly played with his dark hair and enjoyed the texture of it between her slim fingers. Similarly, Sheldon's own hands roamed as well. Across Jenny's lower back, to her hips, and lower to affectionately rest on her backside. A pleased murmur from Jenny encouraged Sheldon to continue, as did Jenny subtly pressing her youthfully plump bum back against his palms.

Sheldon gave his dance partner a gentle squeeze with both hands, making Jenny yelp. "Oh!" she said, breaking the kiss. "Kinda got lost in the moment there." She offered, pulling away from Sheldon.

Confused, he asked "Is the dance over?"

Walking towards the exit, Jenny turned to look coyly back at Sheldon. "For now. Our time together at the Sadie Hawkins dance was pretty short remember… I only wanted to make it a happier memory, not cause continuity problems for your brain. Besides, this is your memory of our first dance together; I can't let you feel me up on our first dance, what kind of girl do you think I am?"

Jenny concluded with a playful wink at Sheldon, batting her new eyelashes and easily drawing the captivated boy to her. "Let's keep moving. There are plenty of other memories that could use a little 'touching up'".

The next memory they visited was the end of Jenny's visit to Cluster Prime, during the insurrection against Vexus that started the whole civil war currently plaguing the Cluster. Originally, Jenny remembered, she had been rescued by her mother at the last minute, who then did battle with Vexus and soundly trounced the Queen thanks to the high-tech battle gear she had cobbled together. Jenny had been just about ready to agree to move to Cluster Prime permanently when Sheldon had rapidly descended from the hovering battleship overhead, with a suitably dramatic cry of "Noooooooo!"

Of course, it was only now in retrospect that Jenny knew how much trouble Sheldon had gone through in order to make it there to Cluster Prime with her. Indeed, if not for his help, Jenny's mother probably wouldn't have been able to save Jenny's life when she did. This time, Jenny intended to thank him properly for his help and his concern for her.

"Sheldon!" she shouted excitedly. Smiling widely, she scooped Sheldon up in her arms and smothered him in a welcoming hug. For his part, Sheldon allowed himself to get lost in the memory and just respond naturally, trusting Jenny's plan.

When the hug ended, Sheldon exclaimed "Oh Jenny, I missed you! Please come back to Earth with us!"

Before she could answer him, Jenny was interrupted by Vega, the teenage daughter of Vexus that Jenny had befriended during her stay.

"Who's your friend?" she asked curiously, her voice carrying a flirty tone as she noticed how tightly Jenny and Sheldon were holding each other. Pulling away, Jenny stepped aside and introduced Vega to Sheldon as well as to her mother.

"A pleasure to meet you both." Vega said politely, shaking Nora's hand. Turning back to Jenny, Vega offered a disappointed little smile. "Well, I was going to ask you to stay here on Cluster Prime, but…"

"Yeah." Jenny agreed, taking Sheldon's hand in hers. "I'd love to stay here Vega, I really would. A planet full of super-powered robots is the one place in the universe I could truly belong. But you don't need me. I've got responsibilities on Earth…" She shared a sly glance with Sheldon, "…commitments."

"That's cool. Just make sure you come visit sometime, k?" said Vega, giving Jenny a quick hug goodbye.

Turning to leave, Jenny tucked in close to Sheldon and whispered "That's good for this memory, let's keep moving on to the next."

"Where are we now?" asked Sheldon, the memory they had now entered being unusually short on light.

"Well, I promised you another dance." Jenny said, as a series of black-lights and neon came on, giving the room a seedy, nightclub feel. It was clear that they were in some kind of dance club, but…

"It's that time I had my own 'crash pad' in the tool shed outside my house, remember?" Jenny reminded him, noticing Sheldon's confused expression. This didn't alleviate his confusion by much, and Jenny didn't blame him.

When Jenny's mother had given her permission to turn the tool shed into her own private living space, Jenny had been overjoyed, but at a bit of a loss when it came to how she would actually turn the crummy old shed into something livable. Although she possessed tools and materials in abundance, an engineer she was not. Thankfully, her ever reliable friend Sheldon had conveniently been able to help her out, and the two of them cannibalized a dozen other similarly dilapidated tool sheds, outhouses, pool houses, and a few other scraps in order to turn Jenny's new abode into a multi-level party central. And it had been an abounding success.

Except that once Jenny had her popularity rise, as was often the case, she forgot about the people that helped her get there. So after all the hard work he had put in, Sheldon could still barely get a moment of Jenny's time, let alone a dance. That's why Sheldon wasn't familiar with this room… he'd barely been in it!

"Right… about now I'd be up in…" the scene shifted slightly, re-orienting on Sheldon's memories of that night. Here he was, alone in the bathroom, dancing with a toaster. Sheldon groaned from witnessing his past self re-enacting such a low moment in his life.

"At least you won't reject me!" the memory proclaimed, followed a moment later by being 'slapped' by the slices of bread being ejected by the toaster.

"Uh, how humiliating." muttered Sheldon, not eager to relive this particular scene. Jenny smiled and positioned him properly within the memory, so that he was taking over the role of his past self once more. Holding his inanimate dance partner and looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, Sheldon waited while Jenny positioned herself just outside the bathroom.

"Knock knock." Jenny said as she gently edged the bathroom door open, entering the memory as she cautiously stepped into the bathroom. Before she entered fully Sheldon quickly ditched the toaster, tossing over one shoulder and hearing it land with a splash in the open toilet.

"Hey Sheldon, I've been looking for you." Jenny said warmly, "What are you doing up here? I was hoping to see you out on the dance floor."

"Oh, you know… just freshening up." Sheldon lied. Jenny must've known it wasn't true as well, but she didn't draw attention to it. Instead, she surprised him a second time by asking him to come dance with her. "I've learned a lot of cool new moves from the party, but… I need a dance partner that I can trust. Some of them are a little… racy." Jenny explained with a sight blush.

Taking his hand in hers, Jenny led Sheldon back downstairs to the thumping tones of the dance floor.

Despite the limited visibility, Sheldon could quickly see that Jenny had been right: this was a far cry from the elegance of the Sadie Hawkins dance. Boys and girls alike were grinding and thrusting their hips against each other, flirting kisses having transformed into full on make out sessions on the open dance floor.

Sheldon instantly grew uncomfortable, especially since the crowd was deferring to Jenny's presence and clearing a little room for her and Sheldon to take center stage. "Ah, errm, Jenny, I…" he stuttered, until Jenny reassured him.

"Don't worry Sheldon, you just have to stand there and move to the beat a little. I'll do all the work."

As soon as the next song started, Jenny was all over him. At first she just pressed herself closely against his chest and swayed her hips, the soft buds of Jenny's undeveloped breasts pressed warmly against Sheldon's torso. Sheldon placed his hands on her hips to steady himself a little, which Jenny seemed to appreciate. With one hand Jenny reached up to tickle the top of Sheldon's hair, then turned in a pirouette to face away from her dance partner. The hand tousling Sheldon's hair stroked down to hold the back of his neck, which Jenny used as leverage to lean back against him and allow him to support her weight. Her body writhed against Sheldon's front, and Jenny leaned her head back on Sheldon's shoulder, simultaneously exposing her delicate neck and allowing Jenny to observe the results of her dance skills.

Clearly, she was doing a good job. Sheldon's eyes were practically glazed over, and from the inclination of his head Jenny guessed he was trying to catch a good whiff of the smell of her hair. But the most telling evidence was the firm bulge that had grown in the front of Sheldon's pants, resting right between the tight young butt-cheeks Jenny was grinding against him.

"Is that a rocket in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" Jenny joked, though Sheldon was either to nervous or to stunned to laugh. Placing her hands over his, Jenny guided Sheldon's palms from her hips to her stomach, up her sides and exploring over most of her front, stopping just shy of actually placing them cupped over her small breasts.

Just when Sheldon feared the softly gyrating groove of Jenny's ass might bring him to orgasm right in front of everyone, Jenny let go of Sheldon's neck and slowly sunk down towards the floor. Keeping the rhythm of the music, Jenny pivoted on the ground so that she was once more facing Sheldon, this time crouching by one of his feet with his leg trapped between her thighs. The squatting pose forced the hem of Jenny's dress up her legs, until the only thing obscuring the crotch of her panties from view was Sheldon's shin as she worked his leg like a stripper's pole. Grabbing hold of Sheldon's belt, Jenny gradually pulled herself up to standing again, all the way grinding her heated muff against Sheldon's calf, knee, thigh, and eventually his hip. All the while, Jenny was staring up into Sheldon's face and making the sultriest come-hither looks she could muster. When she had climbed her way back to facing Sheldon she finished her dance with a feral purr of arousal.

The song concluded, and there was a short break in the music as the DJ selected a new disk to spin. In the meanwhile, the partygoers shuffled about looking for new dance partners or leaving for other sections of the building.

A nearby closet door opened and caught Jenny and Sheldon's attention, as out stepped a disheveled looking Brad! Immediately behind him came Tammy of the Orion's Angels space biker gang, who clung to Brad's chest affectionately.

"The closet's free." Brad announced, heading off elsewhere in the party with barely acknowledging Jenny and Sheldon's presence. Most of the other partygoers made a commotion however, with chants of "Seven minutes in Heaven!" and "Who's next?" accompanied by bouts of anxious laughter.

Soon enough, one of the more energetic girls in the crowd roughly nominated the hostess and the boy she was clinging to by shouting "Jenny's next!" and shoving them both into the closet, then slamming and locking the door shut on them. Landing unceremoniously on the collected pile of coats that was serving as the party's makeshift love nest, Jenny and Sheldon fell on top of one another in a jumble of limbs and giggled nervously.

It was strange, Sheldon reflected: in the back of his mind, he knew that this was Jenny, his girlfriend, the future mother to his child. They'd been a couple for a while now, and been intimate on a number of occasions. And yet, it was so easy to get lost in the memory of earlier times, to feel these emotions as if they really were happening for the first time. At this very moment, for example, he felt surprisingly nervous: he had been locked in a closet with the girl of his dreams, under the pretense of having to pass the time making out. This was his dream come true, and he had the butterflies in his stomach to prove it. If this had actually been how that night had actually gone, he had no doubt that Jenny wouldn't let him try anything with her. They were just friends, after all. But now, reliving the moment with the ability to edit it at will…

"I'm glad we have a minute out of sight," Jenny stated as she fussed about with the skirt of her dress "that last dance move gave me a wicked camel toe. I'm glad I never have to worry about my metal underwear riding up on me in the real world."

Feeling the nervousness that his role was pressing on him, Sheldon only gulped and offered "Oh, really…?"

Jenny smirked, remembering full well the part she was playing in rewriting Sheldon's memories and the liberties she was able to take.

"Yeah, really."

She laughed, catching Sheldon's hand in her own. Lifting the front of her dress up to her waist, Jenny pressed Sheldon's hand against the crux of her legs, where her plump young pussy lips protruded from around the thin fabric of her underwear.

"See?" she inquired of the speechless Sheldon, who gasped from the sensation. The silky soft labia rested against his palm, and a light dusting of fiery red pubic hair tickled his wrist, but more then that the throbbing heat from Jenny's nethers was what stunned him. Once again, Sheldon found himself caught up in how new this experience felt. As though he really was touching a girl's pussy… Jenny's pussy… for the first time in his life.

"Let me just fix this." Jenny murmured, pulling the offending underwear out from her girlhood and off to the side, leaving it naked for Sheldon's inspection. The inner lips could now be seen, pink and slightly parted, and a faint feminine scent wafted through the limited air in the closet, demonstrating Jenny's arousal.

Watching him watching her, Jenny purred "you can touch it if you want… it won't bite."

"O-okay." Sheldon answered, his voice cracking. As soon as his fingers touched the moist folds of her sex, Jenny took in a sharp breath. Rubbing the tip of his middle finger along the groove of her slit, Sheldon gently probed his way down to the depression that marked the entrance to her vagina, finding the wetness increasing to bathe his fingertip in a warm coating of the clear fluid. All the while, Jenny softly hissed her approval, one hand holding her panties aside and the other hand squeezing her inner thigh.

Working his finger around in the dripping entrance to Jenny's inner treasures, Sheldon gently massaged her insides as best he could, but found her to be incredibly tight and was unable to get in any more then his first knuckle of a single finger. Withdrawing, he drew the slick finger back up through Jenny's quivering lower lips until he encountered a swollen bud where the lips joined together, and smeared some of the juices onto it.

"Oohhhhnnn…" Jenny immediately groaned, thrusting her pelvis forward slightly to increase the pressure from Sheldon's hand. From the encouraging moans she was making, Jenny obviously enjoyed the attention this little nubbin was receiving. So Sheldon pressed on, collecting more of Jenny's flowing juice to rub over the protruding button and increasing the pace of his stroking.

Jenny was leaning forward now, holding onto Sheldon's shoulder and bicep and leaning her weight on him as he busily fingered her.

"Mmh, mmh, mmh, that feels so good." Jenny whimpered, her body steadily building to a critical mass. Wanting to give her as much pleasure as possible, Sheldon frigged her as fast as he was able, his fingers practically vibrating over the swollen clit.

"Hey lovebirds, time's almost up, hahaha!" came a voice and a knock from the other side of the closet door, making Sheldon halt his ministrations and Jenny relax the tension in her muscles.

"Damn." She grunted, frustrated. "Sheldon, I think it's time we moved on to the next memory. There's one more I think we should fix before meeting up with the Silver Shell A.I."

Around them, the dark closet shifted to a similarly dim environment. This one Sheldon recognized immediately however. The softly glowing LED lights of various colors, the faint humming of alien machinery and radiating warmth from nearby engines had painted a very romantic scene for two young robots with raging hormones… or, programming, or… whatever.

"This was where I first realized I loved you." stated Jenny softly, looking decidedly out of place as an attractive young human girl taking shelter inside a Cluster spaceship. Then again, Sheldon figured he must seem as out of place as she did, and at least Jenny now appeared in the delicate Cluster wedding dress she had been wearing on that fateful night.

"So, this is my plan."

Jenny explained, "We've changed things so that as far as the A.I. knows, I wasn't quite such a bitch to you when we were younger. And now I'll give myself to you all over again… to Sheldon Lee, not the Silver Shell, so there can be absolutely no doubt."

She didn't say "in your mind.", but it was implied.

This was the solution to her problem as well. In this way, Jenny would finally prove the depth of her love for Sheldon the way that he had demonstrated his love for her since the day they had met. And then, finally, she could say "yes."

Jenny pushed forward against Sheldon, more then eager to satisfy the emotional burden she'd carried, as well as the sexual desire she'd built up during this entire adventure through Sheldon's subconscious.

"Wait," breathed Sheldon, making Jenny hesitate.

He liked her plan, it was solid. And he wanted Jenny as much as she wanted him, perhaps even moreso. But this familiar memory, which he had so often revisited by himself ever since it had first occurred… Sheldon didn't want to reenact it just as it had happened the first time.

Already he was feeling the nervousness of that night, the tense anticipation of being moments away from losing his virginity to the girl of his dreams. Back then, Jenny was cheating on Brad by having sex with him, and it had left them both deeply conflicted. They had trusted that their hearts were in the right place and that that was enough, but it was hardly an ideal situation. And Sheldon had been the meek boy he always was when encountering self-doubt, allowing Jenny to dictate every move they made.

Well no more. If Jenny could edit these memories, then so could he.

"Sheldon, wha…" Jenny gasped, surprised by Sheldon forcefully pushing back against her and sealing his lips against hers. Their tongues met, writhing against one another and dancing back and forth inside the mouths of the young couple. Jenny hummed contentedly, allowing herself to lean back into the strength of Sheldon's arms cradling her back. She'd never known Sheldon to be this aggressive before, this commanding. But she liked it. She liked it a lot.

For a long while, Jenny allowed herself to be held by Sheldon, responding to the playful advances of his tongue in her mouth and curling up inside the protective embrace of her lover. Finally pulling back and gasping for air (a problem she'd never experienced as a robot) gave Jenny a chance to speak.

"What's this all about?"

"This should be the happiest night of our lives. Not just to convince the Silver Shell, but for us, too." Sheldon explained.

Stroking a hand through Jenny's beautiful red hair and undoing her pigtails to let her hair fall messily around her shoulders, Sheldon gazed straight into Jenny's perfect shining eyes and continued.

"So I don't want to have any regrets, or fears, or doubts about this memory we're creating. So before we do anything, I need to ask you."

"Jennifer Wakeman, here inside our own minds where we are nothing more or less then our bared souls, I have to know: Will you marry me?"

Jenny hesitated, but not out of fear. It was to savor this magical moment in time. She knew that in the days to come she would return to this memory many times, but it would never be as fresh or as new as it was right now. All the same, her hesitation made Sheldon gulp, so she blinked once and solemnly answered:

"Yes, Sheldon Lee, I will marry you."

Their lips met again, the kiss even deeper than before.

Their arms followed, wrapping around each other in a tight embrace. Eventually Jenny even curled her legs around Sheldon's hips and thighs, never wanting to be pried away from this wonderful man she was now devoted to.

The heat of their tightly pressed bodies, and the grinding gyrations of Jenny's hips rapidly raised Sheldon's tool to the steel-like firmness it had possessed out on the dance floor of Jenny's clubhouse. And thanks to the fondling her clit had received mere minutes ago, Jenny's pussy was as wet as a lake and as hot as a furnace. Both knew what they wanted. The time for foreplay was long since passed.

In less then a minute their clothes were gone, Jenny's delicate Cluster wedding dress once again shredded apart and cushioning the floor of their hiding place. Sheldon loomed over her, looking down at his flushed bride-to-be.

Every inch of her soft, milky skin was exposed to his gaze, from her delicately sculpted feet, up her smooth creamy legs to the small triangle of naturally red pubic hair nestled around her womanhood. Her hips rolled back, parting her thighs to welcome him into her body and flexing the slight bit of baby-fat adorning her taught stomach.

Jenny returned Sheldon's gaze, drinking in the form of the man about to ravish her. The effect it had on her was plain to see: Jenny's plump little breasts heaved in time with her breathing, a blush spreading over her chest, neck and face. Jenny's features were expectant, anxious, and hopeful all at once.

"Don't make me beg you" she whispered, her tone already pleading.

All at once, Sheldon descended on her. With a forceful growl of lust Sheldon gripped Jenny in his arms, making her gasp in delight as his kisses found their way from her collar bone, up her neck to her earlobe and the side of her face.

"Oh…" she sighed with each tender peck. The brief kisses slowed and became more intense, and the addition of a tongue and a light scrape of teeth turned Jenny's sigh into a moan. Her nails scratched down the length of Sheldon's back, urging him onward.

Their hips locked together, with Jenny's legs spread wide around Sheldon's, made it a simple matter for the tip of Sheldon's raging erection to find the hot, moist entrance to Jenny's pussy. There it hovered, nudging apart the delicate petals of her flower and prodding just slightly into her.

Jenny had never felt such raw need before in her life. It burned in her, like a fire inside her loins that could only be put out by being touched by Sheldon's thick tool. But it was good too… it made her feel like a beast in heat… more alive, more real then before.

This is what she had been missing with Brad, and even with Sheldon too, before now.

She had needed… to need. To be utterly at the mercy of her lover, because she could absolutely not exist without him.

Tilting her head back, Jenny was instantly rewarded by Sheldon fulfilling her unspoken desire: his mouth gripped her throat, gently but with just a faint hint of teeth to add the spice of danger to the act. No sooner had Sheldon flexed his dominance over her then she felt herself swiftly being filled by his lover's tool.

Her entire lower body tensed, bearing down on the intruding organ and squeezing it with all the force Jenny's body was capable of. The reaction was completely out of Jenny's control. It was as though she'd just had an instantaneous, albeit small, orgasm.

When he had managed to push the entire length of his cock into her body, Sheldon paused and released his grip on her neck, relocating his mouth to her ear.

"I love you so much Jenny" he whispered.

Jenny squeaked, but could say nothing. It was then that she realized that she had forgotten to breathe, and promptly sucked in a breath of air. As soon as Sheldon shifted his hips, slowly withdrawing his length from her before plunging back in again, Jenny's breath was stolen away again, escaping her as a series of mewling whimpers.

This was crazy, it was as though her entire life her senses had been on a scale of one to ten, and just now had suddenly been cranked up to eleven. Sheldon's cock was pumping into her now, and each stroke sent more electric shivers through her body. Any moment now Jenny knew she would launch into a series of orgasms, and she doubted she would ever stop.

Sheldon heard Jenny's moans, and more. He heard… even felt… the air entering and exiting between her lips. He felt her heart beating faster and faster, much as his own was. He could feel the tender caps of her breasts wobbling on her chest as his thrusts bucked her body underneath him, and the heat radiating off her skin and merging with his own. Out of sight, he could feel the tight confines of Jenny's vagina sliding up and down over the length of his cock, stroking his throbbing shaft and teasing his swollen knob. Somewhere deep inside her he thought he could sense a distant but intense vibration, and felt it matching one building inside his own body as well.

As he rocked against her, pumping their genitals together, Jenny seemed to find her voice again, though she was fighting to keep it. "I! … I Lo…(unh) Love! You! Unh! Love you… too! (ah) …Sheldon! Sheldonnnn….aaahhh…! SHELDON!!"

Her hips now periodically lifting off the ground to meet his thrusts, Jenny knew it was time. But she wanted to make this moment perfect, just like Sheldon had said. No doubts, no regrets, nothing.

"Sheldon, I want to cum!" she screamed, and the fluttering spasms in her pussy clearly agreed with her. For another couple, it would have seemed like Jenny was dissatisfied with the sex, that she was having trouble. But Sheldon knew it was just the opposite. Jenny would have already reached a shattering orgasm by now, but she was holding herself back. She was waiting for him.

"You want to cum Jenny?" he shot back, when his breathing allowed, "You want to cum with me baby?" She didn't have long to wait, but with each remaining thrust Jenny begged harder.

"Ahhn, please Sheldon! Let me cum! I need to cum so bad! I need to feel you spunking off inside me, making me pregnant! I wanna have your baby! Please do it, fill me up with your seed!"

Unable to forestall her body's natural reaction any longer, Jenny's body tensed, readying to unleash a torrent of her honey onto Sheldon's swiftly pounding cock. At the last second she pressed her lips against Sheldon's jaw and groaned "Nnnowww! Do it now!"

With one last thrust, Sheldon felt his body explode. Jenny's pussy clamped down in an intense fit of pleasure, her juices completing a perfect seal between her tightly stretched inner lips and Sheldon's pole. The hot semen coated Jenny's interior walls, filled her to the limit. Still, Sheldon's cock continued pumping more of the potent jizz into his love, until the excess was being pushed straight through Jenny's cervix and into her fertile virgin womb.

"Ahhhh Yessss!" they shouted in unison, overcome with lust.

Gradually, the racing pulses of the star-crossed lovers slowed, their bodies cooled. Both Jenny and Sheldon basked in the glowing pleasure they felt between them, catching their breath as they remained locked together at the hip. Sheldon poked his nose against Jenny's, making her giggle and blush.

"At least now no one can say our baby was an accident" she commented, running her fingertips through Sheldon's sweaty hair like a comb.

Changing the topic, Sheldon asked "So do you think your plan will work?"

Jenny scoffed pleasantly, pulling Sheldon's face close to hers. "Sheldon, I'm yours now. You've courted me all through high school, fought aliens and super-villains and even Don Prima… You've crossed interstellar space to win me over. And now you have me all to yourself. The only thing still standing in your way is a super-powered robot juggernaut named the Silver Shell… are you going to let a little thing like that stop you?"

Matching Jenny's grin with one of his own, Sheldon gave a short chuckle and answered "Not a chance."

---

"Well, that's the last of it." Stated Nora Wakeman with a resigned sigh.

For the past two hours she and Phineas Mog had been preparing the Wakeman household for the coming assault. At any time Brit Crust, wielding the powers of the Cluster tyrant Vexus and the reality-shaping Pip crystal, would arrive with the intent to kill XJ-9 and everyone around her. But at least now Mrs. Wakeman was confident that she had given her daughter a fighting chance. With all these defenses in place, Jenny just might have enough of an edge to defeat her insane enemy.

The other half of the headway Nora had made in the past two hours had come from talking to Mog. At first, Nora had been furious that Mog had fused Brit and Vexus together. After all, what possible excuse could someone have for giving that kind of power to someone that insane? Reckless did not begin to describe how bad a decision it was. But, after she had calmed down a little and the two had made their way around the house preparing as best they could, she had heard his side of the story. And, now, she was starting to understand how someone could be persuaded to do something so awful.

For one thing, there was the money.

Phineas Mog did not have the lucrative income that Nora Wakeman did. Since YK-9 didn't have the impressive track record that XJ-9 did (being about a year younger then her, and kept on a much shorter leash as well), the government wasn't nearly as generous with their research and development grants.

Add to that a few recent setbacks and a much less illustrious tour of duty in Skyway Patrol, and it was easy to imagine how Mog might be having some trouble making ends meet. And Brit had her entire trust fund at the ready, as well as money put aside for her college education.

Of course, greed did not excuse what Mog did. Nora was more convinced by Mog's scientific curiosity. She had to admit, even she would be tempted by the opportunity to dissect and study the body of a dead alien robot. What serious scientist wouldn't? Biology, chemistry, engineering, programming, anthropology… just about every aspect of human understanding could stand to benefit.

Having nothing left to do to better prepare for Brit's approach, Nora walked her guest to the kitchen and put a kettle on to brew some tea. She hoped it would settle both their nerves a little, while the caffeine kept them ready at a moment's notice.

Handing Mog a mug and fixing her own drink as she liked it, Nora continued to mull over what she'd been told.

"But why did you agree to help Brittany Crust use the remains as a weapon?" Nora asked aloud, suddenly speaking her mind. Mog was caught a bit off guard, but answered as best he could.

"Well it didn't only have violent purposes. The procedures I used to combine human and robotic brain functions was built upon the techniques you used on that Lee boy. I had all the theory worked out and… bang, there was a willing test subject."

"Aha!" Nora interjected, pointing an accusatory finger in Mog's direction. "You're stealing my ideas again!"

"Really Noreen, I would have hoped you'd be over that childish notion by now." Mog stated gruffly, folding his arms over his chest. With a frown, he added "I have contributed just as much effort and ingenuity to our collaborations as you have."

That took Nora by surprise. "Collaborations?!" she coughed, her eyes wide with disbelief. "You mean you… you were actually serious? All those times when you denied stealing my ideas? Come now Mog, how can you seriously say you contributed to my inventions?"

Thinking back to some of the ideas Mog had copied from her in the past, the most obvious example was the robotic teenagers they'd created.

"Take XJ-9 for example. Granted, adding a portion of canine features to your robot was a novel approach, but the Global Robotic Response Unit idea was completely my invention. You ripped me off!"

Instead of seeing his bluff crumple as she had expected, Mog only appeared baffled instead. "Ripped you off? You never would have built XJ-9 if it wasn't for my help!"

Mrs. Wakeman scoffed, obviously disbelieving.

"You want proof? Fine!" said Mog, indignantly. "How about the problems you had finding a suitable power source? Who stayed up with you all night showing you how to integrate the Neurotronic Protocore as a practical solution?"

Suddenly Noreen wasn't smiling as confidently as she had been a moment before. She did remember that.

Back during their days as Skyway Patrol civilian scientists, Mog had pointed out a solution to the seemingly insatiably energy hungry XJ-9 design. The Protocore was a recent invention by a Dexter…something… which few scientists really grasped, but Mog had adapted it for Nora's project. At the time she had thought Mog was just trying to make her feel dumb, and trying to pass of another scientist's work as his own.

"Or how about when the Robotic Response project ran out of funding, and Skyway patrol had already closed the books on their yearly research budget?"

"They told me the other projects had been scrapped." Nora defended herself.

"We did scrap them. Voluntarily, to redirect the funds into the XJ series. I had to convince my entire work crew to take a year's unpaid leave of absence because of how vital the XJ robots would be." Mog took a seat at the kitchen table, pinching the bridge of his nose to forestall an oncoming headache.

"Honestly Noreen, I knew you liked to keep your distance from the rest of your peers in the scientific community, but I had hoped that after all our history together you at least thought of me as a friend. Why would I try to steal your ideas?"

Nora gulped from her mug to avoid answering the question, a growing sense of unease forming in the pit of her stomach. There was something foreboding on the periphery just now, like a puzzle that she didn't want to put together because of what she might see in the assembled image.

How could she believe what Phineas Mog was telling her? That she had assumed the worst of him at every step when he had been helping her all along? She had been hurt so terribly back then, she didn't want to let anyone be her friend after what happened, especially not a male. It was a decade before she allowed herself to trust a man enough to go out on a date again, and never got much further then that.

Nora stared into her cup of tea, feeling too foolish to look at Mog. He was still talking, rattling off more ways in which he had contributed to XJ-9's existence. Nora heard him, but was trying not to. The more she heard, the more the puzzle pieces were fitting together. Building towards that terrible whole.

"…I mean, when you really think about it," Mog continued, "Do you remember who even gave you the original inspiration to build a Von Neumann Device?"

"Don't say that." Mrs. Wakeman demanded, slamming her mug down against the kitchen counter. She didn't want to hear it. Didn't want it to be true. It couldn't be true, he couldn't be…

"Don't you remember that night Nora?" Mog asked again, rising from his seat and stepping towards her.

He had noticed the abrupt change in Mrs. Wakeman's demeanor, that she seemed to know something but refused to speak. Surely her pride had not kept her from admitting the role he played in her life all these years? Had she been too drunk to remember their first meeting? He had to know the whole story.

"At the Halloween party?" he pressed, demanding a response.

"Shut up! Take it back!" she commanded, barely holding back emotions that were a lifetime old.

Nora didn't want this hideous truth. She preferred thinking of Mog as her deceitful little rival, plundering her ideas. Not as her unseen benefactor, who's kindness she repaid with years of scorn. Or worse, so much worse… That Mog could be him. The one she had waited for, the one whose absence had lost her sleep, lost her appetite, lost her child.

Lost herself.

"Nora, are you crying?" Mog asked gently, taking her shaking hands in his.

He was close now, attempting to comfort her. He had never intended to upset her like this. But a moment later, it was too late. As he brushed away a loose tear from Nora's cheek, Nora caught his scent.

All of his claims, all of his knowledge, they could've been rationalized away. But that scent… that unmistakable masculine scent that had surrounded her the night she had been ushered into womanhood.

She couldn't deny the truth any longer.

"Phineas, I'm such a fool!" she exclaimed, and fell onto Mog's shoulder, weeping. Thankfully Mog was as short as Noreen herself was, so he was able to hold her in his arms without difficulty, letting her cry. This was certainly not the reaction he had expected. It seemed almost beyond belief that she could have… that she didn't…

"Noreen, all this time?" he asked, disbelieving. Over the years he had invented dozens of reasons for why Nora Wakeman had kept giving him the cold shoulder after that night. Dozens, but never did he think that she simply didn't recognize him.

The petite scientist clinging to him continued to sob against his shoulder, "Such a fool… the years I let go to waste. It's inexcusable. You must hate me."

"Hush." Mog said calmly, holding her close. He outwardly kept his demeanor, but inwardly he was reeling as well. He needed time to digest this… a person couldn't just turn on emotions they hadn't felt since their twenties like a light switch.

What could he say next? How would Nora react? So much depended on what happened in the next few minutes.

---

Giving Sheldon's hand a squeeze, Jenny nervously asked "Are you ready for this?"

Sheldon nodded. The two stood amidst the memory of the previous year's holiday season, after Jenny had turned the tables on her captor and ultimately saved Christmas, clearing her name and teaching young Tod Sweeney the meaning of giving in the process. It was fun watching the scene play out in front of him, it had been one of the high points in Sheldon's life.

Brad had gotten him a subscription to the magazine "Not-so-popular mechanics", while Sheldon had got Brad a stack of vintage "Doc Savage" comic books. Tuck had hand made Mrs. Wakeman a touching Christmas card, while she had given Tuck a miniscule amount of anti-matter to play with (which still struck Sheldon as being a reckless thing to do, given Tuck's propensity for getting into trouble).

But there was one particular reason why Sheldon chose this memory to work from. This was where he got his first kiss from Jenny. Shutting down the Silver Shell A.I. trying to erase him was as much a test of Sheldon's mental fortitude and self-confidence as it was a test of his computer skills. And this was one memory that Sheldon knew didn't need to be altered in any way.

"First I'll need to reinstate myself as the 'super-user' of the brain, to grant myself complete access to all the various programs running." Sheldon explained, while Jenny looked on slightly distracted. Something was bothering her, but she couldn't tell what it was just yet. "Then I'll need to locate the Silver Shell A.I. in order to initiate a "kill" command. Luckily we know that it is already on its way to this memory, and we know it hasn't gotten here yet because the memory is unaltered."

Sparing a quick glance over at the memory playing itself out, Sheldon and Jenny watched the heartwarming moment when Jenny held a sprig of mistletoe over Sheldon and herself, and planted a grateful kiss on Sheldon's cheek. The younger version of Sheldon immediately froze and practically fainted as soon as he'd received the first kiss from his dream girl, and the real Sheldon chuckled a little at the immature reaction.

"Sheldon…" Jenny whined faintly, a worried expression on her face.

His mind was currently quite busy with the task at hand however, and Sheldon did not immediately notice Jenny's plight. Instead he rambled on the actions he was taking, unaware of Jenny clutching her midsection and grimacing in pain.

"Now, when I execute the 'kill' command, my brain will attempt to uninstall the A.I. If that doesn't work, I can try several different methods to delete or shut down the rogue program. If nothing works, then the surefire method will be to isolate the circuitry that the Silver Shell program is currently residing in, and physically cut the power to that portion of my brain, "killing" it where it is. Now this may take a bit of time to accomplish, but I should be able to keep functioning normally if I lose only a small portion of my processor."

"Sheldon, I think it's time." Jenny stated a little more forcefully, holding her abdomen and sitting down.

Narrowing his eyes in concentration but still failing to look down at her, Sheldon asked "What do you mean, 'it's time'? I'm already taking care of the problem as we speak."

Jenny reached up to grab Sheldon by his shirt collar, immediately directing both his sight and his attention down to her.

"I mean I think it's the baby's time!" Jenny growled, suddenly doubled over in pain. "Eunnhh! I… ahh… feel like my insides just turned into a trash compactor. Every servo having contractions at once!"

Sheldon looked equally worried now, trying to do whatever he could to make Jenny more comfortable. "What should I do?" he asked, suddenly at a loss once more.

"Nothing. Finish up here as soon as you can… I'm going to need you in the real world very soon!" Jenny instructed, before doubling up in pain again. "Aaaauunnngghhh!" she moaned, leaving her out of breath. "I'm cutting our mental link. Please hurry Sheldon, I don't want to do this without you."

Sheldon leaned down to kiss Jenny one last time, before she faded away from the shared dream.

Left alone in the illusions of his own memories, Sheldon attacked the problem with renewed vigor. Now it was just him and the A.I… Computer Program vs. computer geek. Before, he was doing this to save himself. Now, he was doing it for Jenny. The A.I. didn't stand a chance.

---

Being left alone in a quiet, darkened room with nothing to do but watch the soft blips and bloops on incomprehensible computer monitors was a sure guarantee to put Tiffany Crust to sleep. Gently snoring while slouched over on her seat, Tiff was rudely awakened by a pained yell.

"Tiff!?" cried Jenny, forcing Tiff awake with a start.

After recovering from nearly falling off her chair from the surprise, Tiff saw the now conscious XJ-9 sitting up and disconnecting the various wires attached to her head.

"Tiff, where's my mom? Why are you still here?"

Still shaking off the vestiges of her nap, Tiff rubber her eyes and offered "She went on upstairs fr' sumthin'. I dunno. Why?"

Jenny gave another pained cry for no reason that Tiff could see, which worried her. "I need you to go get her ASAP! Tell her that the baby wants to get out, and it isn't going to wait long!"

"Can't ya just pop it out like ya do with alla your other gizmos an' whatsits?"

"No, the baby's premature. Now please, just GO!" barked Jenny, clutching her pregnant belly in pain.

Tiff had never taken that kind of disrespect from anyone, not even Brit. But somehow, with the menacing look Jenny just shot her with… Tiff was oddly at ease with clamming up and doing as she was told. Just this once.

Hurrying upstairs as fast as her legs would carry her, Tiff sprinted around the house looking for Jenny's mother. Not in the living room… not in the kitchen, though she spotted the old woman's shoes strewn about on the floor, and unfinished tea and biscuits left out on the table. Weird. Not in the hallway or in the garage. Tiff scrambled up to the second floor, moving more on autopilot then on conscious thought. Bathroom door was open, so not in there… likewise for Jenny's bedroom… flinging open the first closed door she came across, Tiff poked her head inside…

Okay, now Tiff was fully awake. The surge of adrenalin saw to that. For a long few seconds, Tiff stood immobilized as she witnessed the shocking sight in front of her. Witnessed and heard. The wet smacking of flesh against flesh. Strained groans and animal grunting. It was awful.

"Oh, sick!" she exclaimed, announcing her presence. A flurry of alarmed shouts and embarrassed apologies followed Tiff as she quickly backed out of the room, gibbering "ohh gross so gross ewww sick nasty!" She tried to push the mental picture out of her head, tried to forget seeing a graphic display of…

Geezer sex.

"Tiff, what's the meaning of this interruption?!" demanded Mrs. Wakeman, stepping out of the room in a hastily drawn housecoat and slippers. Under her breath Nora muttered "every single time I get my motor started…"

Tiff couldn't bring herself to look the old woman in the eye. "It's Jenny, I think she's gone inta labor!" Tiff exclaimed, making Mrs. Wakeman jump.

Grabbing the shell-shocked Crust girl by the arm, she hurried off towards the basement, exclaiming "Then there's no time to lose! Come along Tiffany, I'll need you to help out as a midwife."

A few minutes later, Phineas Mog stepped out of the room, having finished redressing himself. He was just on his way downstairs to see what he could do to help when a warning buzzer sounded nearby.

Rushing into the kitchen to locate the sound, Mog saw a computer screen dropping down from a hidden compartment in the ceiling. "Warning, security breach!" the computer warned, before switching to a camera feed of the front door. In black and white video was just what Mog had feared: Brit Crust stood on the front step, covered in the armored carapace of Vexus and wearing a confident and malicious grin.

Looking directly into the camera Brit spoke; "Knock, knock."