I know updates of this story are scarce, but I want to finish this story and hopefully my fans want me, too? So here is ch.11, for your reading approval. And believe me, from now on, things are going to heat up!
Back To Reality C.11
If an android looked pissed, J5 looked it now.
It's optical eye scanned the room and then zoomed in on Tommy Arashikage standing next to the conference table with the glass projectiles in his hand.
It raised its right hand and calculated the repair time it would take for its internal nanobots to fix it. The gun it was holding had exploded in its hand from an chain reaction overload caused by one of the projectiles lodged in the barrel of the weapon. But the gun wasn't its only weapon in its arsenal.
"J5. I order you to cease your actions, now!" Dr. Mindbender barked out an order; but J5 ignored him.
"Your option to surrender has expired," J5 said. "Kill the intruders!"
Releasing its internal nanobots, they swarmed around its right arm and began to rebuild it into something else.
"What's it doing?" Tommy asked nervously.
Dr. Mindbender's mouth went agape in shock, he couldn't believe what he was seeing. "Oh, no! It's using its nanobots to reconstruct its arm into a more powerful weapon!" he said. "You must take cover, quickly!"
Tommy and Snake-Eyes looked at each other and frantically found cover. Snake Eyes ran and jumped behind a leather couch and Tommy decided to take cover underneath what he considered the most secured part of the conference table.
--
"Watch this, gentlemen," Cobra Commander said, typing a few algorithms into the computer console, as Firefly and Slice watched on. "Let's see how our heroes do against a Super BAT." He chuckled and then laughed. "I love action flicks!"
--
The nanobots finished their work and crawled back into J5's body. What they left was truly awesome. They had rebuilt J5's right arm into a giant laser cannon. J5 then started to fire at them, sending a tremendous blast in Tommy's direction. When the blast blew apart half the conference table, Snake Eyes stood up, put his hands in the air, and shouted, "Stop it, we surrender!"
J5 repositioned his cannon on Snake Eyes. Snake Eyes stood frozen for a second, his eyebrows rose in fear knowing what was coming, and then jumped out of the way as a blast came at him. The impact blew the couch to sheds.
"Holy shit!" Snake Eyes said, looking back at the devastation. He lay on the floor next to the debris from the conference table. "We've gotta stop it!" he said to Tommy, insistent on a course of action. "And we gotta do it now!"
"I agree," Tommy said.
Suddenly three men in black uniforms burst into the room. The secretary in the hallway had called them. Witnessing the devastation and seeing a robot with a giant cannon for an arm, and two men cowering on the floor behind the conference table, they pulled out their guns and fired upon the strange-looking robot.
Dr. Mindbender dropped to the ground and ducked for cover as they fired upon J5. However, their blasts merely ricochet off of J5's metallic plating and hit the walls. He looked up, and shouted to security, "Stop attacking my android!"
"Doctor, what is this thing?" Major Sebastian Bludd, head of building's security, demanded, his heavy Australian accent coming through. He had a patch over his right eye, and was ex-military and a trained marksman.
"It's not complying to my override commands," Dr. Mindbender said back. "Be careful! J5 might classify you and your men as a threat and fire on you if you don't stop! It's malfunctioning, and I don't know how to stop it!"
"Dr. Mindbender. . ." Snake Eyes called out to him, cowering behind the conference table with Tommy. "Distract J5. I think I know how to stop it."
"How?" he said, over the sound of blistering weapons fire, looking at Snake Eyes across the room. "But okay," he further said. "Major Bludd, distract J5."
"And how am I supposed to do that, doctor?" Maj. Bludd said, as his men continued to fire on J5. J5 made no hint at retaliation and he was getting no damage from the laser blasts, but that could soon change if something wasn't done.
Major Bludd then he had an idea. He told his men to stop firing at J5 and then pulled out a small grenade, pulling the pin out with a thumb. "You know what this is, don't you, J5?" he said to the android. "I'm ordering you to cease and decease or I will destroy you."
J5 seemed unfazed by the Major's threat. If the laser blasts caused no damage, what could a small grenade do? Very little, if at all, with its heavy armor plating. Despite the major posed a threat to it, it did not fire upon Major Bludd or his men.
"Please put the grenade down, Major," J5 said unhostile-like.
"Disarm your weapon," the Major barked an order. "You're malfunctioning. Search your personal files and look for John Smith and Thomas Arashikage. These men work here." But J5 appeared to refuse to comply to the data retrieval order. "I will destroy you if you do not comply with my orders. Deactivate, now."
"Order to deactivate denied," J5 said. "Orders to terminate intruders supersedes deactivation command. Article 56. . ."
If there was ever a time to strike, now was the time. As J5 was distracted, Snake Eyes stealthily came around the conference table, making his way through its blind spot, got behind it, and surprisingly, going on instinct, kicked high in the air with a roundhouse kick and loped off J5's head. J5's head flew through the air and bounced on the floor a few times, rolled, and then stopped. Without its head, J5's body dropped like a lump of rubbish.
Everyone was astounded at such an astonishing feat. "Johnny, how in the hell did you do that?" Tommy said dumbfounded, standing up from the far end of the conference table. He held his right arm. He had been grazed by piece of flying debris that had been blasted apart when the laser blast hit the table.
"Are you okay, Tommy?" he said, noticing his friend's injury.
"Yeah, just grazed," Tommy replied. Tommy walked over broken glass and approached J5's lifeless body. Its limp metallic body lay on the floor like a pile of scrap metal. "Dr. Mindbender, what the hell were you thinking in creating such a deadly weapon?"
Dr. Mindbender swallowed nervously. "I apologize profusely, sir," he said. "But you authorized the project for the military, so we could mass produce them and save soldiers lives in hostile areas. I guess there were a lot more bugs in the data matrix than I realized."
"Who is the programmer to J5?" he demanded. "He has some explaining to do."
"I co-designed the analytical mainframe, but the majority of the memory anagrams were programmed by the S.I. Mainframe company and disturbed to us by M.A.R.S."
"What the hell is MARS?"
Dr. Mindbender looked relieved Major Bludd put the pin back in the grenade.
"Why didn't he attack us, doctor?" Major Bludd said.
"Probably because he recognized your voice pattern as being friendly," he said. "He has orders to apprehend intruders and terminate them if they pose a threat. Thank you for, Major. Your gave Snake Eyes the time he needed to do what he did. Which was remarkable, I must say!"
"I agree," Maj. Bludd said. "Do you have any martial arts training, sir?"
"Not that I recall," Snake Eyes said. "But something about it did feel familiar, like I knew exactly what I was doing."
"You two are experiencing amnesia, so perhaps when your memories return, you will remember something to explain it," Dr. Mindbender said. "Perhaps you took martial arts when you were a kid?"
Snake Eyes shrugged his shoulders in an I-don't-know fashion.
Suddenly Tommy looked around and saw Billy cowering in a corner with his arms over his ears. He went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. Billy jerked startled. Then he saw who had touched him and breathed relieved.
"Dad, I was so scared," Billy said.
"I know, so was I," he said smiling, and helped his son to his feet.
Then Billy noticed his father's arm. "Dad, you're bleeding," he said.
Tommy lifted his hand from the wound on his right bicep. Blood soaked his white shirt where he was grazed by a piece of flying debris. "I'm fine, Billy," he said. "I doesn't hurt, surprisingly. It looks worse than it feels."
"Major, call medical services, and have them send up a doctor to look at Mr. Arashikage's arm," Dr. Mindbender said.
"Right away, doctor," Major Bludd said, and radioed it on his radio.
Suddenly, a tall, handsome, muscular, bald-headed man, and a beautifully striking, long, dark-haired woman, with round glasses, shorter than the man, both wearing business attire, stood beyond the door to the conference room. The man was holding a black leather brief-case, while the woman, was holding what looked like a portfolio case. They looked awestruck at the sight they beheld.
"Mr. Arashikage, what happened here?" the man asked.
"Mr. McCullen, Ms. DeCobray. . ." Dr. Mindbender said surprised, stepping over J5, greeting them at the door. "We weren't expecting you for another hour. I must apologize for this mess, we had an incident with the Battle Android Trooper System prototype. It malfunctioned."
DeCobray eyed the room haphazardly. Then she said in a very noticeable, and heavy German accent, "That, my good doctor, is an understatement."
McCullen then said, "But the practical applications of this new weapon is truly extraordinary. Don't let one glitch ruin Extensive Enterprises greatest cash cow opportunity."
"It almost killed us!" Tommy said angrily.
McCullen turned his gaze to him. "Almost, Mr. Arashikage, but it didn't," he said. "Thanks to Mr. Smith's brilliant thinking, which we both saw, you are safe. Extensive Enterprises is in the business to make money, we'd expect a little glitch here and there in our merchandise. Nothing is perfect."
"Who are you?" Snake Eyes said.
For a second, McCullen was confused by the question. Then he looked at Dr. Mindbender, as if looking for the answer. "I apologize, Mr. McCullen, but Mr. Arashikage and Mr. Smith have just exited from the new A.I. simulator we're testing for the gaming expo next week, and apparently there are a few bugs with the system. Long exposure to it causes the user temporary amnesia." He said. "Mr. Arashikage, Mr. Smith; this is James McCullen, head of M.A.R.S (Marketing And Research Services), and his assistant, Ms. Anastasia DeCobray, his top marketing consultant. Together, they have been Extensive Enterprises godsend. Without their brilliant marketing campaigns, Extensive Enterprise would not be the Fortune 500 company is it today."
Tommy's eyes narrowed suspiciously. For some reason, he disliked the man already, and he didn't even know him. There was just something that rubbed him the wrong way about the man. McCullen looked like a thug in a business suit and he hated people like that, or at least, he thought it did.
"Shall we retire to another boardroom?" Dr. Mindbender offered.
"I think that would be prudent," McCullen said. "It's very unlikely that we are going to be able to conduct any business here."
Dr. Mindbender escorted them to a second boardroom that looked very much like the first, but smaller. Medical services arrived and attended to Tommy's arm.
They sat down at a large rectangular table. McCullen and DeCobray; Tommy and Snake Eyes sat on opposite ends. Dr. Mindbender sat beside Snake Eyes. Then McCullen said, noticing Billy, "This is no place for children, Mr. Arashikage."
"My son stays," Tommy replied strongly. "He's just had a very nasty experience and I want him at my side. Whatever is spoken will say between us, right Billy?"
Billy nodded. He sat down next to his father.
It was obvious that McCullen didn't like that idea, but he had very little recourse in the matter. Both M.A.R.S. and Extensive Enterprises had a symbiotic relationship, and each needed the other, so he supposed he could tolerate a little inconvenience, especially when it came to his best client. "Very well, Mr. Arashikage," McCullen said. "Shall we get down to business?"
For the next hour and a half, they talked business. From marketing campaigns to other business affiliates, distribution of future endeavors, financial gains and losses, and even the future of the A.I. game simulator which was to be the spotlight attraction at the gaming expo.
"Once all the bugs are eliminated from the simulator game," McCullen started to say, "we stand to make billions of dollars in sales and distribution in the first year alone. Then, once the system is established in America, we'll gradually release other games to stimulate grown."
"We're already in talks with a Japanese gaming firm to market the simulator in Japan," Anastasia DeCobray said.
"That sounds promising," SE said, eagerly interested, the DVB, resounding his electronic synthesized voice colorfully.
James McCullen looked at Anastasia, and then back at Tommy. "You should also seriously think about patenting the DVB and marketing the idea to the public, Mr. Arashikage. I believe this technology shouldn't by wasted on just one man. There are so many applications for this technology. Extensive Enterprises would make billions!"
"Thank you, but no," Tommy said straightly. "I think we've discussed enough business for today. My brother and I are feeling a little tried at the moment, if you excuse us." Snake Eyes agreed, and they then left the room. Billy followed them. The others were befuddled by their sudden exit.
Tommy lead SE a little ways down the hallway and out of earshot of the boardroom. "So, what do you think, Johnny?" he said to S.E.
"What they said sounds promising, especially when it comes to the simulator," SE said. "And I think they're right. You really should reconsider marketing the DVB to the world. We could help millions of people reclaim their voices. This brilliant technology shouldn't be reserved just for me."
"Not about that, I mean about McCullen and DeCobray," he said. "There's something about them that are awfully familiar and I don't mean in a good way."
"They're our business partners, are we supposed to like all of them?" Snake Eyes remarked. "But you're right, I got a bad vibe from them, for some reason. Like, they supposed to be someone else." Then Snake Eyes stood thoughtfully for a moment and then said, as if having an epiphany, "Cobra?" he said.
Tommy's eyes went wide, sharing the realization.
"What's Cobra?" Billy asked. "Are you talking about the game?"
But both shook their heads.
"No, Billy, weren't not," Tommy said.
-- tbc