Author's note: Special thanks to LoveRobin for being a test-reader and helping 'tweek' the results. Any errors are entirely my fault. Hope y'all enjoy this. Good news: Chapter four should be up soon, bringing in another character and having a lot more action in it. These first three chapters have been prologue, establishing Josh as a character; Chapter four is where this story really becomes a cross over. Also: If you have read my other stories, you know I've done F/F slash romances. I'm planning to stear the story that way (no promises... I've had characters act in ways I initially didn't expect before I started writing a scene). How interested/squicked would y'all be about that?

Joss Possible stared at the television screen. Her face was blank, as emotionless as... well, a robot.

James Possible winced. Watching the movie, seeing an actor pretending to be what she secretly was, could not have been easily. He would have been much more comfortable if she had been showing a reaction... any reaction. Finally, the movie ending credits started to roll. "Boys, to bed," he ordered.

"Aww, Dad...," Jim and Tim complained in stereo.

"You heard your father," said Anne, standing up. Maintaining a united frons against the twins was essential. "Come on, to bed."

"What about Joss?" asked Jim. "Doesn't she have to go to bed?"

"She's a guest, the rules are different for her," said Anne. "Now, get on up to bed."

James waited as Jim and Tim went upstairs. Joss was still immobile, not saying anything, and just continuing to stare at the turned off screen. They stayed that way, silent, until Anne came back downstairs. "Joss?" she asked. When the girl still did not respond, Anne put out her hand to touch Joss's shoulder.

Joss jerked, blinking her eyes suddenly as if the room lights had suddenly brightened. "Sorry, what?"

"Are you ok, Joss?" asked Anne, concerned.

"Oh, sure," Joss smiled. "The movie didn't look that interesting, so I decided to try doing some memparsing instead of waiting for tonight."

Anne frowned. "I thought you had to be asleep to do that."

"No," said Joss. "It happens automatically when I sleep, but now that I know about it, I c'n trigger it voluntarily."

James shrugged. "What's memparsing? Something related to menopause? Slim didn't mention anything about that when we were working on Joss's battle gear."

Anne opened her mouth, then hesitated. "It's... kind of complicated to explain, without turning it into a neuroscience lecture."

"Let's let dad explain," suggested Joss. She went to where she had placed the DVDs her father had left for her, and quickly picked out the one she wanted. It only took her a minute to switch out the 'Not Quite Human Too' disc for the one featuring Slim.

The scientist turned cowboy appeared on the television screen, standing in front of a marker board. "Joss, you may wonder why you sleep. Like humans, sleep is critical for your continued physical and mental well being." he started. "First, while you are dormant, the nanoprobes inside your system are better able to maintain and repair internal systems. If you ever become extensively damaged, you will even 'black out' to allow the nanoprobes to repair critical damage to your system. Secondly, by 'sleeping', you dream... basically, you use the computing power normally devoted to moving your body to be able to run complex simulations. Much like a human 'lucid dreamer', once you are aware of the fact that these are simulations, you will have the ability to control what happens in these 'dreams'.

"The third reason, however, is why sleep for you is critical." Producing a marker from his pocket, Slim drew two ovals on the board, labeling one 'Short' and the other 'Long', "Jus' like humans, you have two sorts of memory: Short 'n' Long term. Everything you experience while awake goes into short term memory." He used the marker to point at the oval marked short, then begin shading it in as he spoke. "However, if everything stayed there, you would eventually run into storage limits and find your memories beginning to overwrite one another." The top oval was now completely filled in. "As you are, we estimate you can keep functioning for up to forty hours without experiencing any problems, and could probably keep running several days in a row without serious problems. However, it's much safer if you periodically do what we call 'memparsing'."

Slim used the marker in his right hand to draw an arrow connecting the two ovals, and then picked up an eraser in his left hand, "Part of your upgrading is constantly expanding long term memory storage capacity, both physically, and with improved compression routines. However, even so there are limits to how much memory it is possible to fit into a humanoid torso. To save space, your long term memories are stored using a wide variety of priority based and self-adapting compression algorithms."

Slim used the eraser to clear out the top oval, leaving it empty, as he filled in the bottom half of the lower one. "Running these conversion algorithms requires most of your system capacity, so normally memparsing only occurs while you sleep. However, you can go into memory parsing mode while awake, to make sure you don't lose important events. While doing so, you will be dormant, appearing to organic humans as simply having 'droned off'. Before entering memory parsing, make sure you are in a safe location; you will have diminished ability to monitor and respond to outside stimuli while memory parsing."

Joss hit the pause button, freezing Slim's image on the screen.

"Well," James commented thoughtfully, "That was both informative and interesting. And good to know."

"Joss, please let us know before you do that during the day," said Anne. "We were worried something was wrong."

"Considering my dad has been kidnapped and it turns out I'm not human like I thought I was, everything is perfectly fine," said Joss.

"Just because you're a synthetic humanoid being doesn't mean you don't have moments of teen angst." Anne added pointedly. "In fact, if there was ever a combination of things to cause someone angst, I imagine these are as bad as anything I ever went through in my day."

"Well, you can finish memparsing in bed, young lady," said James. "I'm sure you'll feel better in the morning."


To call Bebes individuals would be stretching the term. While each Bebe could operate autonomously, each unit was motivated by a desire for shared perfection. They constantly shared information and memories. If one started to mentally differ from her sisters, the differing Bebe would self-terminate when it realized it was drifting away from 'perfection'. Thus, when Bebes communicated, it was not talking in the sense humans would.

If they did talk as humans did, then the following scene might have taken place:

Bebe #16: "We have discovered something interesting in Dr. Slim Possible's memories."
Bebe #12: "What have you discovered?"

Bebe #16: "It was in the memories of his construction of the proto-Bebe designate 'Joss'."
Bebe #12: "Her existance was unexpected, but advantageous. Many of her design concepts could be incorporated into our perfection."
Bebe #16: "The neural net incorporates advances not in our current knowledge. Unfortunately, Dr. Possible lacks the information we would need to reconstruct the chip."
Bebe #12: "Who would have that information?"
Bebe #16: "Most of the hardware for her neural net was created by Miles Dyson. He has ceased function. Any records he left would be kept by his employer, Cyberdyne."
Bebe #12: "More information is required. More information will be acquired."
Bebe #16: "Agreed."


Joss opened her eyes. It was the eleven PM, and her memparsing was complete. Rather then remaining asleep... she much preferred to think of it as 'sleep' rather than 'being dormant', the truth about her nature was still somewhat surreal to her... Joss decided to go watch another of the DVDs her father had recorded for her.

It only took her a few minutes to select the tutorial on the Smart Rope and slide it into the player. She turned the volume down as low as she could and still clearly make out the words. On the screen, Slim Possible appeared, holding what Joss was sure was the same Smart Rope as currently residing in her left thigh storage compartment.

"The Smart Rope is a former prototype developed as a multi-function tool to help rescue workers," said Slim. "The project was scrapped when it was decided that the cost to produce the Smart Rope, even with mass production, was prohibitive and outweighed just using ordinary tools. There are several basic modes. The first is the default form where..."

Joss listened intently, her face lit from the glow of the set, as she watched the Smart Rope put through its paces. About halfway through she paused the DVD player so she could take out the Smart Rope and hold it in her hands. Somehow, seeing her father hold the same thing she was holding now her feel better... made her feel more human.


"Breakfast time!"

Joss opened her eyes. After watching the DVD, she had gone back upstairs to sleep. She was still holding the Smart Rope, cradling it like a teddy bear. Feeling a little bit silly, she prepared to put it away. This time, instead of just coiling it up manually, she sent a mental command. The rope moved as if alive, wrapping itself up neatly so she could store it away.

Going downstairs, she could hear Jim and Tim chattering away. It was Saturday, and Anne had promised to take the boys out shopping. While neither of the twins had much interest in clothes shopping, Anne had also promised to take them to the local Planet Pizza, an event the boys were heartily looking forward to.

"Do you want to come too?" Anne asked.

Joss considered, then shook her head. "Nah... I'd rather stay here and practice some."

"Ok...," said Anne.

"I'll be staying here too, doing some paperwork," said James. "Um, what sort of practice?"

"Oh... rope practice," said Joss.


Joss held the Smart Rope out, examining it after several hours of practice. What appeared to be a metallic rope was actually a complex collection of synthetic fibers and electronics. The Smart Rope was basically a robot in rope form, although nowhere near as smart as Joss. While she had the intelligence of a smart human, the Smart Rope was more on the level of a not-too-bright dog. By experimenting, she had discovered that she could make the Smart Rope do things not mentioned in the DVD. While holding the Smart Rope, she could mentally link with it and program it to do basic tasks. It had been fascinating, watching the Smart Rope crawl caterpillar like and slither like a snake through the back yard of the Possible household.

The Smart Rope had three basic forms. In 'default' or storage mode, it was fifteen foot long, capable of moving on its own or being used like ordinary rope. In extended mode the fibers stretched out to make it twenty five feet long, but the only movement it could make was to contract down. In condensed form it was only five foot and considerably thicker. At that length it was once again unable to move, but this time because it was so stiff; it could be used as a lever, quarterstaff, or any other appropriately sized ridged tool.

"Joss?" James called.

"What's up?" asked Joss. She had skipped lunch so she could keep working with the Smart Rope; she wondered if James was going to try to convince her to eat something. It seemed a bit silly. While she needed food, she could function fine on a diet a supermodel would have considered insufficient.

"There's something on the news. The Bebes struck again," he reported, turning up the television.

"Police have confirmed that at seven AM today, the Silicon Valley headquarters of Cyberdyne R+D division were broken into, by the rogue androids known as the Bebes. The Resistance, an online group which has previously been Cyberdyne's most vocal critics, denied any prior knowledge of the Bebe's actions and, in fact, are encouraging the police to track down the Bebes. This would seem to be a major change for The Resistance, which is believed to be linked with the escaped mental patient Sarah Conners..."

James muted the announcer's voice.

"So, it's not just my father the Bebes are going after," said Joss.

"Know that they know about you, they're probably trying to find out all they can," said James.

"Good," said Joss. "Maybe we c'n figure out where they're going to strike next."


The Bebes were not happy. If they had the full emotional range humans had, they would have been swearing, cursing, and probably doing random property damage. Lacking the ability for such histrionics, they were just standing around, analyzing the information they had taken from the Cyberdyne facility. It was twenty four hours after the Cyberdyne assault, and they had reached some unpleasant conclusions.

The original chip and robot arm which had sparked Miles Dyson's research was gone, destroyed the same night that Miles himself had died. Most of his personal records had similarly been destroyed, except for back-up copies of his files which Cyberdyne had created without his knowledge. A replacement arm, near duplicate to the original, had been found. However, no replacement for the chip had been found.

Between the memories in Slim Possible's head and the information they had recovered from Cyberdyne, they could build a new copy of Joss's 'mind'. However, they had no way to know how to integrate such technology into their own systems.

The Bebes were facing what some humans would call a Catch 22 situation. If they were able to integrate the Cyberdyne-inspired technology, the robots would take a massive step forward in creativity and intuitive abilities. However, integrating the technology required creativity and intuition; two abilities they were currently lacking in.

Bebe #7: "Dr. Slim Possible is resisting us. Even if he cooperates, his abilities may be insufficient. After all, he required the assistance of at least two other people to create the Joss entity, and he seems to have believed her creation involved the class of probability fluctuations humans call 'Luck'."
Bebe #4: "Additional humans will be required."

Bebe #9: "Additional humans mean additional risk to the Bebes. Optimal stratagem requires the fewest number of humans to be detained to accomplish the objective."

Bebe #4: "There is one human who has a demonstrated ability to reverse engineer alien technology. The Cyberdyne artifacts may qualify for that classification."
Bebe #9: "Our next goal is defined, then. To locate this human. Who is he?"
Bebe #4: "He is known as Isaac Sumdac."


"Dad! I'm bored!" Sari Sumdac complained. She had returned home, after watching most of her friends leave to go back to their home. Since her friends were the alien robots know as Autobots, that meant they had returned to Cybertron, their robotic homeworld. She could still talk to them over a vid-link, but it was not the same as when she had lived with them. This being Monday just made it worse; she was aware if she'd been a normal teenager, she'd be at school with human friends. Hanging out with her dad at work just wasn't the same.

"I am sorry, Sari," said Dr. Sumdac. "But I am having a sudden visitor soon. He insisted he speak with me. Why don't you go downstairs and play with Bumblebee."

"A sudden visitor?" said Sari, forgetting her teen angst. "Who?"

"Dr. James Possible," said Dr. Sumdac. "He is the head of the Middleton Space Program and said it was of a matter of grave importance."

"Maybe I'll stick around and listen in," she declared.

"You can stay in the office," said Isaac. "But you must be polite. And..."

"Yeah, yeah... no showing off any special skills while they're here." Sari grumbled. "What, you think I'd go full out in front of people I don't even know?"

"It is a matter of concern for me," said Isaac. "If I had handled your past better in my past, then some of the most recent unpleasantness would have been much less unpleasant."