A/N- Alright... It took way too long to update but again -if you've read any of Artificial Romance you may already know- it was due to the untimely death of my aunt. I just have a handful of author notes. First, I have it as 2009 in Lewis's time but he's only 13 still because he has yet to celebrate his 14th birthday. Also, Wilbur is still 13 since he can go and visit any version of his dad that he likes with the time machine. Secondly, I took liberty with how Lewis might have invented Carl to work. Thirdly, I guesstimated with Laszlo and Tallulah's ages since like no one really knows and if you read any of my other fanfictions with them, I can assure you I don't keep their ages consistent through out them all. Finally, Homeland Security is completely from my own twisted imagination.

The Time Pause 3000 still belongs to Robin (doodlegirll) which I slightly hint at in this chapter...had Wilbur not been cut off...

When In Doubt, Ask Daddy!

"Wow, so retro," Camila commented her thoughts aloud.

"Shhh!" Wilbur snapped. "First you beg to come along so I let you and now you're talking even though I told you to be quiet?"

"Why do we have to be quiet again?"

"Because, we're invisible remember? There's only one person who can know we're here…and I already know he's not going to be too happy to see you."

"And why's that?"

"Altering the time stream, that's why," Wilbur explained as if it were common knowledge although he had always ignored the fact himself.

"You're here altering it too, Robinson," Camila spat back, proving once again that she was a match to be reckoned with.

Wilbur just rolled his eyes and shushed her again. "Follow me," he whispered.

"One problem, Mr. Definitely No Einstein. I can't see you," Camila pointed out.

Wilbur stopped in his tracks. She was right, as much as it annoyed him to have to admit to it, but he hadn't thought that they couldn't see one another. He sighed, wishing that he could think of another way than the plan that entered his mind but he couldn't. "Hold out your arm."

"What?"

"Just do it."

"Okay…it's out."

Wilbur sighed again and began grabbing the air until finally he found her arm. Startled by the sudden touch from Wilbur's hand, Camila jumped a little. "What was that for?"

"What was what?" she tried to hide the embarrassment in her voice.

"You know perfectly well what. You flinched! I know I'm not your favorite person but I don't have some horrible disease or anything," Wilbur said defensively.

"I never said you did, Wilbur. You just startled me, that's all. I wasn't expecting you to grab my arm."

"Well, why else would I tell you to hold it out? You know, for a genius…" Wilbur didn't finish because he thought he heard someone around the corner. "Shhh," he said barely audible. Sure enough, Carl's much younger prototype came racing by but was gone before they could barely blink. "He sure was running fast," Wilbur said when he was certain they were alone again. "If I know Carl, there must be something wrong for him to be in such a hurry. Come on, we should hurry too," Wilbur said and began dragging Camila quickly behind him.

--Robinson House Foyer--

"We won! We won! We won!" Talia jumped up and down exclaiming.

"Yes, you did," Tallulah smiled at the little girl's endless enthusiasm.

"So what are we going to watch?" Talia immediately asked.

"I elect we let Talia decide," Buzz said, obviously trying to impress Tallulah. "You know, since she did so well for her age."

"Well, that's for your team to decide together," Tallulah wasn't buying it. "Your whole team, Buzz. However, please no fighting. We all have to compromise, so if you can't come up with a unanimous decision, Carl and I will pick three random and appropriate movies and then we'll bring it to a vote. Understood?" Tallulah wasn't ready to have twenty-two kids arguing over a movie.

"That is a most excellent decision," Buzz responded cheekily.

"Lefty has just finished setting up dinner in the music lounge," Carl reported as he rejoined the bunch.

"Thank goodness that machine didn't affect him," Tallulah sighed.

"Hey, that gives me an idea!" Carl said excitedly. He leaned closer to Tallulah and whispered so that the kids wouldn't hear, "I think I know a way to keep the kids entertained through dinner. Just keep them here for about five minutes longer before taking them to the lounge." He then turned and left as quickly as possible.

"Okay…everyone, before we go to dinner, have any of you given any thought about what you want to watch?" she looked specifically at the group of children who had won the scavenger hunt and had obviously been talking amongst themselves.

They nodded in unison. "We want to watch Homeland Security," Talia said.

"I've never heard of it."

"It's a movie about a boy who is about to be adopted by a delegate of the U.N. and his wife but on the eve of his going to live with them, they are both abducted. Determined to find the people who were to be his parents, the boy runs away and soon finds himself at the center of a political battle for power between two nations," another kid, a movie buff, answered. "Wanda was going to let us watch it the night of the grand opening of the new orphanage, but she won't mind if we watch it tonight instead."

"Alright, Homeland Security it is then." Tallulah thought it sounded okay enough since Wanda had promised them anyhow. "Okay, who's hungry?"

The kids didn't answer. Instead they charged past her and towards the music lounge. She spun quickly on their tails, hoping that Carl was ready for them with his surprise entertainment. She heard the familiar sound of music. Sure enough, it was Frankie and the band performing for the kids who seemed utterly excited by the singing frogs. They had already sat down to eat and were bobbing along to the infectious rhythms that the frogs were executing perfectly with their instruments.

Tallulah just stood there amazed as Carl came over to her. "Your comment made me realize that the band wouldn't have been affected by the ray either. So, I thought they could give us a hand. After all, they love to give a performance whenever they can."

"You know what, Carl. I'm even happier that the machine didn't have any effect on you," she smiled at him and then looked back at the children.

"Me too," he answered with a nervous gulp.

--The Lab 2009--

"Uh, I think something strange is going on with my system," Carl said in a panicky voice to Lewis as he entered the lab.

"What's wrong, Carl?" Lewis turned his attention away from what he was working on and looked at his worried robot.

"Well, it's just that my radar keeps indicating that there's an unsteady force in the area. I honed in on it and it appears to be a whole in the time space continuum," Carl printed out a reading through his mouth and handed it to Lewis as proof. "I guess my radar is busted."

"No, I don't think it is," Lewis said, looking around the room slowly, listening for the slightest sound. He placed the paper on the desk next to him and walked a little ways away. He then winked at Carl, who was obviously confused, and then spun around quickly and said, "Freeze! I know you're there, Wilbur, so you can turn off the invisi-belt."

"How did you know?" Wilbur pushed a button, revealing himself.

"A father always knows. Even when his son technically hasn't even been born yet."

"Man, that is not cool." Wilbur suddenly noticed Carl. "Hey! You got Carl working!"

Lewis didn't answer. Instead he looked at his son's hand. "Wilbur, what are you holding on to?"

"Oh, I uh, I…" Wilbur suddenly remembered Camila. He let go quickly hoping to talk his way out of it, but before he could, Camila revealed herself as well.

Lewis gasped. "Who is that!? Your girlfriend?? You had the nerve to bring your girlfriend with you!? It's bad enough that you keep messing with the time stream, but now someone else to mess it up even more? Wilbur, what were you thinking!?

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Time out! I hate to interrupt this pep talk…actually, no I don't. First of all, she is NOT my girlfriend. She's not even really my friend, no offense," he directed the last part to Camila.

"None taken because I agree," she answered with a smug tone.

"And secondly, we're not here to mess with the time stream. We're here because we need help. I would have come alone, but miss smarty pants here just had to tag along," Wilbur glared at her.

Lewis sighed, "What is it now?"

"It's the future."

"I sort of guessed that already," Lewis said sarcastically.

"Oh, yeah, right. Okay, you have this new invention, see…although it's sort of an old invention. Basically just a silly rip off of the Time Pause 3000, which now that I think about it, is actually a rip off from…" Wilbur stopped when he saw Lewis, Camila, and even Carl staring at him, obviously wanting him to get on with it. "Basically, I pushed a button and now all of the adults within a half mile radius are uh frozen in time."

"What!?"

"And that's not all," Camila took over, realizing that Wilbur had already buried himself into a hole that he didn't know how to climb out of too quickly. "Your future self had invited myself and the rest of the orphanage to stay a few days until the new orphanage is opened for us. So now there's 44 other kids running around at your future house."

"44 kids? And you, not you," he looked at Camila forgivingly and then looked at Wilbur, "you left them alone!?"

"No, I'm not that irresponsible," Wilbur said defensively but of course now wasn't the time to try and convince his young dad of that. "Carl wasn't affected."

"Phew!" came the other robot's response.

Lewis just looked at him with a raised eyebrow and then back at Wilbur. "So you left Carl alone with 44 kids?"

"That's not very nice!" Carl whimpered. "I don't know if I like the sound of what my future holds…"

"Not now, Carl," Wilbur brushed him aside, not remembering that this Carl wasn't use to his bossiness towards him.

"Not now? I may not know much about my future yet, but if I'm anything like I am now, I can tell you this, there's no way I can handle 44 kids alone!! I didn't even like helping your dad here help babysit his one year old second cousin!"

"And I did most of the work," Lewis laughed at the remembrance of how Carl had thought Laszlo was an evil little monster bent on destroying all robots when he had thrown up on him. "Carl's right. You shouldn't have left him alone with that many kids to look after."

"But he's not alone," Wilbur intervened. "Tallulah had been out somewhere so wasn't affected either. So now she's there helping him."

"Wait, who's Tallulah?" Carl asked, suddenly curious. He had met everyone in Lewis's family that past Christmas, which had been his first.

"She's Laszlo's sister," Lewis explained to him. "She won't be born for I'd say another 3-4 years if my math is right."

"And it probably is since you're a genius," Camila complimented him.

"Thank you," Lewis smiled, still leery of having another visitor from the future.

"You mean to tell me…your aunt Petunia's going to have another one of those little, little…" he wanted to use a word like monster or brat but was afraid he would offend his inventor.

"Bundles of joy…yes. And once that happens, there will never be peace and quiet in the Robinson house again…especially after they come to live with us," Lewis said, remembering how Laszlo and Tallulah had been fighting the very first time he'd met them.

"There's never any peace and quiet now," Carl pointed out.

"That's true."

"So will you come back with us and help or not?" Wilbur finally asked.

"The problem is, sir, uh, Wilbur's dad, uh…" Camila wasn't sure if she could just call him Lewis. "I'm really smart myself, but I'm not smart enough to figure the equations out on my own."

"And two big brains are better than one…although I wonder if one is really just a big head minus the big brain," Wilbur added under his breath.

"I guess I don't have much of a choice. Tallulah might be of some help, but still 44 outnumbers 2."

"By 22!" Wilbur interjected, wanting to sound smart too.

"Don't you mean by 42?" Carl pointed out.

"No, silly robot, 22 times 2 is 44. Even I know that."

"But this isn't multiplication, it's subtraction!" Camila exclaimed.

Wilbur realized his error, but instead of admitting to it, he just crossed his arms and huffed. "Come on, we need to get back before they vaporize the house or something."

"Wilbur, those kids are better behaved than you are, I bet," Lewis joked.

"Well, most of them…but you'd be surprised," Camila couldn't lie.

"Alright, let's go then," Lewis said as they all began to walk towards the door. He then realized that Carl was also following.

"Wait, Carl, I don't think you should…"

"Please, can I go? Can I, can I, can I!? I promise I won't alter the future. I'll stay out of sight at all times. Please?"

"Alright, you can come. But you stay with me at all times, understood?"

"Okay!" Carl exclaimed and hurried outside as fast as his robotic legs could carry him.

"Why is he acting like such a…" Wilbur struggled to find the words he was looking for.

"Little kid?" Lewis filled in the blanks and Wilbur nodded. "It's because technically he is like a little kid. I haven't programmed him with everything that the Carl in the future has. He's just a basic robot with basic comprehension. He only knows what I know. As I grow and learn more, I'll continue to improve him and he'll grow and learn more."

"So basically, he's a 13 year old robot?"

"Maybe even younger since I programmed him to learn about normal life on his own. He's as much of a genius as I am when it comes to math and science and other studies. But I wanted him to have a life and soul of his own. So he learns about being human, so to speak, by asking questions and experiencing things."

"That's really ingenious," Camila said with a sense of awe in her voice.

"Thank you. I did it because I didn't want Carl to be just a robot who follows my commands."

"Instead, he wanted Carl to be a lippy robot who never trusts his little buddy even when he's right," Wilbur finished.

"Poor Carl, what was I thinking," Lewis joked. "I guess it's back to the drawing board."

"Ha ha, very funny," Wilbur rolled his eyes as they walked out of the front door.