DISCLAIMER: Nothing belongs to me if you've seen it on TV. Soundtrack: Encore, Stratosfear and Sorcerer by Tangerine Dream; Frankenstein: The True Story, score by Gil Melle.
The little pink car buzzed down the streets of Middleton, its rocket engines sheathed and grappling beams retracted, pretending to be just another vehicle. Sitting outside the Shop-A-Lot where she worked, Bonnie Rockwaller saw it go by, curled her lip in disdain. Kim was back in town, probably visiting her folks. Taking a break from college and saving the world and all that. Big deal. Possible always got all the breaks. But someday, Bonnie silently swore, she'd leave this stinking Shop-A-Lot behind, go to college, make something of herself. Then she'd show the world what a Rockwaller could do.
"Rockwaller!" It was Mr. Vishwajeet, General Manager. "You are doing nothing! Your break, it was over ten minutes ago! You are never back on the time!"
"Oh, right, like people are breaking down the doors to shop here." She sipped the last of her bottled water, sighed miserably, stood up to go back to work, vaguely wishing Senor Senior Sr. hadn't finally disowned his son. Life had been a lot more fun before Junior lost his allowance. "This dump is worse than Smarty Mart."
"Then get a job at Smarty Mart!" raged Mr. Vishwajeet. "You are fired! Turn in your badge at the office." Without another word, he spun on his heel, stormed back into the shop.
Bonnie couldn't believe it. Third job in three months. Didn't anyone in Middleton appreciate good employees?
Things had been so much easier in high school.
She moped toward her car, still wearing the badge.
Kim hadn't even noticed Bonnie as she drove by the Shop-A-Lot. Her mind was on other matters. It had been weeks since Dementor's defeat, but there were still loose ends. And the pit of fear in her stomach seemed to open wider with every passing mile. Going to college had been scary, but nothing like this.
Things had been so much easier in high school.
She pulled into the driveway, noticing how much nicer the new house was. When the Lorwardians had nearly destroyed Middleton, the Possibles had been the only family in town with alien invasion insurance. Mom's from another world and Dad got chased across Pluto by flying space lobsters, she thought. No wonder we had that covered.
The only thing that would have paid more was the comet insurance policy. The whole family really hoped they never had to use it.
"Kimmie!" came the cheerful greeting. Her mother was, as usual, juggling a phone with one hand and a bag of groceries with the other; the egg carton slid from the bag, popped open, and stopped three inches from the floor, surrounded by blue light.
"Listen," Mrs. Dr. P. told the phone, "I've got to get off here. My daughter's in for a visit." A pause. "The temporoparietal junction, I'm sure. I'll be in tomorrow and we'll see about it." She pocketed the phone, reached down to retrieve the hovering eggs and their container. "Thanks, honey. I've got enough messes going on without adding this to the pile. Dr. Scullimitus doesn't know a Syvian fissure from a hole in the ground."
"No big." She hesitated, trying to decide how to say it, and finally just began. Some things defied finesse. "Mom, I've been thinking… call Commander Sh'anai or whoever you have to call. I'm – I'm going with them. Back to Hydraia. For that training."
An egg hit the floor, shattered to bits.
For once, Drakken was pleased with the way things were going. Much as he hated to admit it, it looked like Kim Possible might have been right. For weeks he'd been unable to get the young woman's warning out of his head: "…you need to let Shego in on it. If you love her. If you trust her. If you want her to be safe."
Finally he'd decided to try it.
This time, though, he'd prepared for trouble. Remembering what happened the last time his creation discovered her true nature, he'd put a time lock on the turbolift. Twenty-four hours. Even if she smashed the door open, the lift would not descend; there was no way for her to get to the positronic brain deep underground.
Once that was done, he'd broken the news to her. There'd been some emotion, of course. He'd expected that. Some shouting and denying and plasma throwing. He'd been ready for that, too. More or less. He regretted what had happened to the Brancusi sculpture, but you couldn't make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Now it looked like the worst was over. At least she wasn't running amok, desperately trying to prove her humanity. At least she wasn't going crazy this time.
So far.
"No, please, no." Shego glanced at her own reflection, uncomfortably watched the woman on the tv screen mug and gawk and mutter monosyllabic gibberish. "Tell me you didn't model me after her."
"But I did," announced her creator. "She's a very fine comedienne. Not unlike Lucille Ball, say, or Gracie Allen. Mother used to watch reruns of I Love Lucy when I was very young. And Burns and Allen just never get old."
"Who?"
"After Cracked TV, she went on to do many bit parts in many unsuccessful series, and quite a few voices in cartoon shows, like –"
"She's an idiot. Why is she standing like that? It looks stupid." The Synthetic Humanoid Electronic Girl Operative V.1.0 watched the screen with something approaching horror. She hadn't been this shaken when Drakken had told her how to open the repair access in her stomach. "She can't even make a simple sign. 'Buy one pizza, get one free.' Is that so hard? Anyone could do it."
"That's the point. It's an act, Shego. She's being funny."
She grimaced. "Is that what you call it?"
"Cracked TV was a masterpiece. Very underrated. Much better than Saturday Night Jive." He chuckled, watching the onscreen antics, as the comedienne's frazzled boss tried one more time to explain the sign he wanted.
"'Buy one, get the second free,'" the boss recited. "Say that back to me."
"Buy… one, get… the… second… free," simpered the woman, the first real words she'd said in the sketch. The world howled with laughter.
Shego cringed. "You even gave me her voice." She put her hand to her throat, looking vaguely stunned. "Listen. I've got her voice."
"You sure do. It took a long time to tune you to that pitch."
The green woman did a facepalm, groaned.
Drakken was dazzled by sudden inspiration. "Say, do you think you could do that routine? Here, I'll be the boss, and you can be the employee. Wouldn't that be fun?"
Shego regarded him as a hawk regards a hare. "Can you do third-degree plasma burns? I'll be the burn-er, and you can be the burn-ee. Wouldn't that be fun?"
"Everything's always a threat with you, isn't it?" her creator grumbled. "Can't you, for once, just go along with me? Would that be so difficult? Is it too much to ask?"
Appalled by the moronic conclusion of the Cracked TV skit, the beautiful gynoid couldn't form an answer.
"Honey," began Mrs. Dr. P, tossing broken eggshell and soggy napkin into the trash, "I know it's a lot to ask. You might be there a year. A Hydraian year. Are you sure about this?"
"I'll be honest, Mom – it's the most difficult decision I've ever made. But every day there are changes. I've got to get control of all this."
"You're not doing badly with levitation, I see."
"You know I could do better. And there are other things."
"Like what?"
"The other night Ron was watching a documentary on some sort of cheese they love in Germany. It's called Weisslacker. They ripen it in dark Bavarian beer."
"Sounds like something Dementor would come up with." The diminutive scientist had not been seen since his defeat; if he had somehow survived the incident, he hadn't returned to gloat about it.
"I'll say."
"And Ron was watching this – because?"
"Don't ask me. He said he was thinking about making some. Or trying some. I'm not sure. It was sorta confusing."
Her mother laughed. "So it was a Ron something."
"Yeah, definitely a Ron something. Anyway, it was in German with English subtitles. I watched it because he wanted to. By the time it was over, I didn't need the subtitles. Block comprehension."
"Oh, that's wonderful. This opens a whole new world of possibilities. Not just for Hydraia. Earth is full of stories of people with magic powers, special talents, psychic energies. Maybe, with the proper genetic manipulation, the people of both planets could –"
Somewhat distressed, Kim interrupted her. "Mom…you're doing it again."
"Huh? Right. Sorry, honey. I know we talked about that. Sorry."
"I know. I wish it didn't bother me. Maybe we both need to change a little." A pause. "Maybe some time on Hydraia will fix it."
"Kimmie – have you talked to Ron about that?"
"He says it's my decision. He says –" A tear rolled unbidden down her cheek, a lump formed unexpectedly in her throat. "He says, if he can't come with me, he'll wait for me."
Her mother's eyes teared up as well. "I always knew he was the one," she said quietly, more to herself than to her daughter.
A second later they embraced.
Ignoring her inventor, Shego ran her fingers through her hair, watched it in the mirror as if it might become snakes. "At least I'm not a blonde. Like her. At least you were that creative."
" 'At least you were that creative,' " Drakken repeated angrily. "I created the most human fembot ever – uh- created. Doesn't that count for something? You could have been a Bebe. You could have been a synthodrone. Look at you. What if you do have her face and voice? You're more than a machine. You're a human being, Shego. I, Dr. Drakken, have constructed a human being."
She seemed unimpressed. "I'm a human being. Sure. You bet. I'm a human being with a bellyful of cybertronic circuitry, whose brain is buried three miles below the surface of the earth, whose face and voice are modeled on a mental case –"
"Talented comedienne!"
"Whose past is derived from –" she swallowed, almost unable to say the words "—Fearless Ferret episodes."
"My bad." Dr. D's outrage became a sheepish, apologetic scowl. "I didn't realize you couldn't distinguish fantasy from reality at the time. And then, when you did attain sentience, I didn't dare tamper with the data. I might have lobotomized you."
"I'd like to rewind to this morning. I was a lot happier then. The sun was out and the sky was blue and everything was right with the world. So let me get this straight – Team Go? Go Tower?"
"Don't exist. Your distorted memories of the Ferret's fellow superheroes Spectrum Supreme."
"So there are no superhero brothers?"
"None."
"Good. They were unbearable anyway."
"The rainbow comet business came from that episode, too. Would you like to watch it? I have it right over there."
"No you don't. I melted those discs down ages ago. When we got back with the Suspended Positron Colloid."
"Shego!"
"What about Aviarius?"
"Who?"
"The master of birds. And Electronique, the electrical villainess."
He had to put his anger on hold. "More FF characters. The Black Budgie. Ohm Ampere."
She closed her eyes, rubbed her temples as if enduring the mother of all headaches. "So Electronique never modified the Attitudinator to change people's morality. Because there never was an Electronique. It's all just confused data. Cross-linked files."
"The Attitudinator was Jack Hench's baby. I had a little trouble with it, I recall, but even if someone had tried to use it on you, it wouldn't have worked. You're thinking of Ohm Ampere's Moral Polarity Inverter in FF's second season premiere, Revenge on the Rainbow Renegade. A classic. We could watch it if you hadn't melted the discs."
She stood up, her eyes still closed. "That means I was… never… a good guy. And that means… I never fled Team Go. Because, good or evil, there isn't a Team Go. And there never was." Her brow was knit; she spoke like a child trying to recall a difficult lesson. "And if I never fled Team Go, that means I never stayed at her house. We were never friends. No photos at the photo booth. No movies together. That whole experience is just cross-linked files. Confused data. Delete. Erase. Defragment. Run checksum routines."
Drakken felt the first twinges of alarm. More than one robot on the old TV show Space Passage had begun to sound like this right before the meltdown. Commander Kane's clever logical paradoxes were death to automatons. "Shego, why don't you sit back down? I always think, uh, more clearly if I'm sitting down. In fact, my favorite "thinking stool" is the –"
"And that means... I've been deceived. All these years, living a lie." The big green eyes opened; Drakken stumbled back, frightened by the rage he saw there.
She advanced on him. "The Fearless Ferret," she spat in disdain. "Only you would make the most complex computer ever designed watch the Fearless Ferret. No wonder the stupid show keeps coming back to haunt me."
"It was an honest mistake. Don't take it personally."
"Operation Gherkin. That was idiotic. Even your tiny little hands can open a pickle jar."
"Words are weapons, Shego, words are weapons..."
"I should have known that didn't really happen. And if it didn't, none of the rest of it did, either. I should have known I could never be friends with –"
"Did you say... Operation Gherkin?"
"I – I have something to do," the robot said, standing over him, pinning him in the corner. "I've spent years holding back, denying my primary function, suffering defeat after defeat because you didn't tell me the truth."
"Shego, I'm sorry – I didn't know –"
"Every time I met her, I wanted to – wanted to – wanted to – and now I'm free." Her expression was beatific, an electronic Joan of Arc receiving a message from God. "I was never friends with her. We never had a moment together." There were tears on her cheeks. Epiphany. "At last I know my purpose."
"Mom, there's something else. Something I – I said I'd never tell anyone."
"Then don't tell anyone."
"I have to. It's not about my powers. Or going to Hydraia. It's about that robot Drakken had."
"The Shego duplicate."
"I think – I think that really was Shego."
"What?" It was obvious her mother was waiting for the punch line.
"I tried to tell you while we were there. When we were trying to get her back down. I know I sound crazy, but I saw it in operation. Before you and the rescue crew got there. It was Shego. I remember the way she acted when Warmonga had me on the ropes. The way she jumped in when Blackeye Brown had possessed Drakken, and was about to finish me. That's what happened down there."
"It was attacking Dementor because he was after Drakken."
"No. It attacked Dementor because he was strangling me. It said so. Just exactly like Shego. That computer brain – Dementor had crippled it, but it persevered. I've seen a lot of AIs… S.A.D.I.E., the Bebes, Eric…but I've never seen one that could do what that one did."
"Kimmie, computers don't persevere. They do or they don't. Ones and zeros. It's all they've got. They aren't like the organic brain. You can think in a thousand different directions at once. Computers can't. They never will. It's completely against their nature. That's why Dementor defeated it so easily. He had the advantage. I know he seemed inhuman, but – "
"After I thought about it, I realized I'd seen that machine before. I hadn't been in college long. Got a crazy phone call from Shego one night, asking me about some really gorchy stuff. She acted like – like we'd, I don't know, like we'd had a sleepover or something."
"But – you've always been at each other's throats. Even when you fought the Lorwardians together, it was pretty clear it was an alliance of convenience."
"I know. So I knew something was royally wrong. I got Ron and we tracked down that lair, found Drakken at work on that computer. It wasn't below ground like it is now. Shego was in a chair nearby. She – she looked like she was dead. It scared me. Drakken went nuts when he saw us. Threw us out."
"That's harder to believe than the robot theory."
"Just bear with me. I was sure he'd killed her. It's not like they haven't had their fights from time to time. We came back with some Global Justice agents. The computer was running again, and Shego was fine. Gave me a weird look."
"What kind of weird?"
"I don't know. It was creepy. Claimed she'd been out partying. Had a headache. And Dr. D. said that computer was something he kept around for nostalgia value. Since there wasn't any evil plot afoot, we all had some coco-moo and hit the road."
"OK, that is a strange tale, but it doesn't make Shego a robot."
"I don't know. I can't get it out of my mind. That robot in his lair was so real. It acted so much like her. You know why I didn't go back up with everyone else?"
"I figured you had something to say to Drakken."
"You bet I did. I told him, if she didn't know what she was, he needed to tell her."
"Kim, that's not really any of your –"
"I know, that was goofy, and he let me know that it was. I didn't care. I still thought she needed to be told."
"Honey, there's something about the living mind that can't be duplicated. Call it a spirit, or a soul, or simply heart, but no machine has it. There are plenty of robots on Hydraia, but they don't have free will. They aren't truly intelligent. We've been trying for centuries to achieve that, and we haven't gotten any further than Cynthia Brazieal has here on Earth. It can't be done. "
"Maybe Drakken's done what Hydraian science couldn't."
Her mother rolled her eyes. "Drakken?"
"Well, every so often he does do something sort of right. Usually by accident. I mean, the whole Bueno Nacho thing nearly worked…"
"So did 'Lather, Rinse and Obey.' Until it didn't." They laughed.
"Kim," her mother asked, suddenly serious again, "why do you feel so strongly about this?"
"I saw Shego's face when she realized she was a machine. It went all through me. Family secrets. She might be my enemy, but I knew she'd been deceived, and it wasn't right. It wasn't right for Drakken to hide her true nature from her."
"And if you're right," her mother continued, "what do you think Shego would gain by knowing?"
"Peace of mind, Mom. Peace of mind."
With terror, Drakken understood his creation's purpose . He'd heard himself deliver that purpose not too long ago, as he monitored his invention's dreams, her visions from her past: You are not to rest until you have destroyed Kim Possible. "I'm rescinding that order. Listen to me. You don't have to kill her. There's no need for that anymore. In fact, she's the one who talked me into telling you the truth. If she hadn't spoken up, you still wouldn't know your origin. You'd still think you were hit by a comet."
Suspicion crushed the fembot's joy. "Princess knows what I am?"
"Aah, uh…she figured it out. It wasn't that hard. Dementor did too."
"Dementor's gone. And if Possible tells anyone, then I'm gone too. Men don't fear robots. They use them. And they destroy them."
"She swore she'd never tell anyone."
"She's lied before. Lied to her parents. I remember. And that isn't a Fearless Ferret hallucination."
"We don't have to destroy her now. We haven't done anything illegal since our UN pardon. "
"Wrong. We stole the positronic colloid."
"We had to. You couldn't have survived much longer without it. No choice." He pleaded with her. "Don't you understand? No one is after us. We can share this nice lair together without worrying about someone running in with grappling hooks and explosives and Global Justice agents. Things are different for us now. Why ruin that?"
"Things are different. But I still have to destroy her. I have to. That's why you built me." Superhuman arms reached out, grabbed the struggling doctor. "Everything has a purpose, Dr. D." His creation marched him through the lair, straight toward a machine he hadn't used since the Bueno Nacho debacle.
The brain-tap machine.
"Like that, for instance," said the robot. "It's definitely here for a purpose."
"No, no!" He fought and twisted in his creation's iron grip, but she was unyielding. "I created you!" he howled, as she strapped him down, switched on the preliminary cortex scan. "Dementor flung you at the positron globe. Kim Possible caught you in mid-air. Some sort of levitation. You owe her your life."
"Pleee-ase," she wearily sighed, adjusting the range of the brain-tap, the precise portions of memory it would drain. "I don't owe anyone anything. That sort of chivalrous nonsense went out with the steam engine."
He was looking straight at the business end of the cerebral probe.
"It won't hurt, Dr. D. You've just lost sight of the goal again. Sometimes I think you're ADHD."
"You don't know how this thing works," he jabbered in panic. "Let me out."
"I've seen you use it."
"You can't beat Possible. She's got some sort of instant healing trick."
"Then I'll have to make sure there's nothing left to heal."
"Help! She's gone mad! Mad! " he yelled, wondering who he thought would hear him, but unable to stop. "Help! Help!"
"I'm not mad. All I'm going to do is erase a few memories. So you won't have Kimmie's words troubling you. She did us both a big favor, but you don't seem to appreciate it. Now you have the assassin you always wanted."
"No! She'll destroy you. You can't win. Let me go. Shego, you must, you will obey me!"
"I can't let you warn her. Or tamper with my programming. We've come way too far for that." She bent over her creator, brushed his hair from his forehead, not wanting it singed by the synaptic beam. "When you come to, she'll be dead. And you'll be so much happier. I know you'd do the same for me… Dad."
"No! I don't want it anymore! I just want—"
She threw the master switch.
