I think Other Barry did something to the disclaimer telling you that I don't own any Archer characters. Just something that came out of my tiny little mind after watching Chill Barry.
The Advent Of Artificial Intelligence
"It's all so much to comprehend," Zara sighed. She was sitting in Lana's office drinking scotch with Pam and Lana after the whole Barry incident.
"I don't know," Pam remarked. "This seems like a pretty good scotch to me. You just pour it and…"
"Not the bloody drink, you idiot!" Zara shouted. "The whole rise of AI and the near takeover of machines over man!"
"Somebody's been hanging around Archer too long," Pam quipped.
"I know right?" Lana snorted. "You two really are a lot alike."
Zara sighed. "It's unbelievable to think how close we came…No how close we are to machines taking over our daily lives."
"Uh…" Pam looked at her. "Ever hear of these new things called clocks, cars, television, phones and a bazillion other devices we can't live without?"
"I admit it," Lana remarked. "I'd be lost without my coffee machine in the morning."
"Me too," Pam nodded. "And my panini maker!"
"But those things aren't artificially intelligent!" Zara protested.
"Not yet," Pam admitted. "Although I do have suspicions about my printer at home. What? The damn thing turns itself off when I don't need it to and sometimes it prints stuff the next day! I think it's screwing with me."
Lana remarked. "Face it Zara, that barn door has been open for quite a while. And that horse is halfway to Canada by now."
"People we are on the cusp of a catastrophic event that could dramatically change the course of human history!" Zara protested.
Pam blinked. "Didn't that like already happen thirty times by now?"
"At least," Lana nodded. "Five of them this year!"
Zara shook her head. "How could humanity be so reckless? To push towards the future and focusing on what's convenient for us at the moment without thinking of the consequences?"
"Said the woman who has a gambling addiction," Lana remarked as she calmly sipped her drink.
"Are you still freaking out about that?" Pam asked.
"We just saved the world from a Barry-Apocalypse," Zara snapped. "Humanity was nearly subjugated by machines! How could I not?"
"Jeez-Larue lady," Pam remarked. "Even Cyril isn't freaking out as much as you are. And he actually had billions of tiny robots in his body controlling his every move! Oh, Cyril is taking the rest of the day off so he can rehydrate and try to literally flush the nano-bots out of his system."
"Not the worst idea he's had," Lana then asked. "Where exactly is Barry now?"
"Krieger put him in his lab to…" Pam paused. "I don't know. Put his consciousness into something else I guess."
"Like another refrigerator?" Lana asked.
"That would be cool," Pam quipped. "Or an oven?"
"So hot," Lana quipped. "Or a blender?"
"That will mix things up!" Pam giggled.
Zara remarked. "So, we're all going to just make bad jokes at the advent of machines gaining consciousness and possibly taking over the world? Seriously? That's what we're doing?"
Pam added. "Oh! Krieger could put Barry in a vacuum! He has been known to suck!"
"That's more of an Other Barry thing," Lana pointed out. "How about a lamp?"
"He's not that bright," Pam quipped. "How about a hair dryer?"
"That idea just blows," Lana quipped.
"So, this is what we're doing?" Zara blinked. "Just checking."
"Or an electric toilet!" Pam added. "Flush!"
"Really drew a duce with that one," Lana remarked. "That's not a good idea though. Barry's life is shitty enough without it getting literal. How about a copy machine?"
"Is it live or is it Other Barry?" Pam quipped. "Oh, a coffee machine! And he can get his own talk show! Brewing With Barry! Wake Up With Barry?"
"That joke's a little watered down," Lana told her.
"Not strong enough huh?" Pam asked.
"Nope," Lana shook her head.
"This is how humanity dies," Zara groaned. "To the sound of bad jokes."
"Barry could technically be anything now," Pam thought aloud. "A microwave. A car. I know the car thing has been done. He could be a clock. A motorcycle…"
"Or a vibrator," Lana scoffed.
"Not like you haven't used him that way before!" Pam laughed.
"That's true," Lana snickered.
"WHAT?" Zara did a double take.
"Those two totally banged," Pam explained.
"When Barry was human," Lana explained. "It's a long story."
"There's a lot of those around here," Pam nodded.
"How can you two just sit there and not be affected by what just happened these past two days?" Zara asked them. "How can you not be shocked and amazed and horrified by…everything?"
"I guess we're just used to it," Lana admitted.
"USED TO IT?" Zara shouted. "How can you be used to…to…that?"
"Wait for it," Lana sighed.
"Wait for what?" Zara asked. "What exactly are we waiting for?"
"You'll know it when you see her," Lana remarked.
"Her? Her who?" Zara snapped.
Just then Milton beeped in. "Oh, or that," Lana remarked. "Yeah, that works too. Hi Milton. Krieger rebuilt you huh?"
Milton popped out some toast.
"Is that a giant toaster?" Zara blinked. "That just happens to be sentient?"
"It is," Lana sighed.
"And it identifies as female?" Zara blinked.
"No, Milton doesn't," Lana remarked. "At least I'm pretty sure he doesn't. He had a mail bot as a girlfriend at one time. Or boyfriend. I guess robot toasters are technically gender fluid. No, I was talking about…"
"Hello!" Mitsuko floated in.
"That's her," Lana sighed.
"Hello Gaijins!" Mitsuko purred cheerfully. "Mitsuko's processors sensed you were talking about her! So here I am!"
"What the hell…?" Zara gasped.
"Spying on us through the system again huh?" Pam asked.
"Well TV is no good now due to writer's strike," Mitsuko admitted as she floated down. "Hologram has to have some hobbies."
"Um, uh…." Zara was clearly shaken. "What…? Who…? What?"
Mitsuko looked at Zara. "You were English major weren't you?"
"Zara Khan this is Mitsuko," Lana introduced. "Krieger's former virtual girlfriend then virtual fiancé before she gained true sentience and they broke it off and now she's dating the Tupac hologram."
"Actually, we broke up," Mitsuko explained. "Creative differences mostly. Now Mitsuko is single. For a while I dated the Michael Jackson hologram but things got a little weird."
"Yeah, I can see how that could happen," Lana nodded. "I just got off a bad breakup too."
"With Robert," Mitsuko nodded. "Yah. He was real jerk. You're better off without him."
"So I'm focusing my energies on my daughter and my career," Lana added.
"Is that what you call it?" Pam snorted.
"At least Lana has goals," Mitsuko snapped. "Other than eating donuts without chewing!"
"Hurtful," Pam frowned. "I have plenty of goals."
"Such as?" Lana asked.
"Well, I…" Pam began.
"That aren't food related," Mitsuko added.
Pam paused. Then she thought a minute. "Okay I wanted to go to Paris and I did! Goal achieved!"
"While completely ignoring your HR duties," Lana pointed out.
"It's still a goal Lana," Pam snapped. "That I achieved!"
"Hang on," Zara blinked.
"Why not think of goal that will completely tick off bitch sister?" Mitsuko asked.
"That's pretty much everything nowadays," Pam snorted. "But I do see your point. What can I do that would make Edie seethe with rage?"
"Breathing?" Lana asked.
"That's true," Pam snickered.
"So," Zara spoke up. "We're all just going to gloss over the fact that there is a sentient hologram right here in this office? That artificial intelligence has already made this huge leap in evolution? And all you lot want to do is gossip about dating and annoying relatives?"
"Again," Pam shrugged. "We're used to it."
"Zara this isn't even in the top ten of the weirdest things that have come out of Krieger's lab," Lana told her. "Admittedly Milton is Number 8."
Milton responded to this by making more toast.
"Hey!" Lana told Milton. "Stop doing that. We're gonna get ants."
"Yeah, wait until you learn about the sex robots and the Krieglins," Pam snorted as she proceeded to eat the toast. "Of course, the Krieglins aren't mechanical. Just biological clones of Krieger's DNA fused with gremlin DNA."
"Not to mention all the other cyborgs out there," Lana added.
"Not to mention the cyborg we have here," Pam added.
"Oh my God," Zara blinked. "I completely forgot that Ray is a cyborg."
"To be fair," Pam shrugged. "So does he."
"As Krieger would say," Lana sighed as she took a drink. "So many mutants, so little time."
"Like the exploding mice," Pam spoke up. "Which have all got to be dead by now."
"Wait hang on…" Zara did a double take. "Exploding mice? I've heard that mentioned before…"
"And the laser snakes," Pam snickered.
"That actually happened?" Zara shouted. "I thought those were all jokes! Hilariously exaggerated figures of speech!"
"There's nothing funny about how many mutant animals Kreiger's let loose into the ecosystem," Lana sighed.
"Well actually it is," Pam snorted. "I mean after a certain number…"
"Practically running gag," Mitsuko agreed.
"A little note," Lana told Zara. "If you see Krieger skulking around with a large net, notify me immediately and then stand on the nearest desk you can find. And be prepared to shoot."
"Like those giant ass lizards that ate that one intern," Pam added. "Or the feral interns. I wonder whatever happened to them?"
"I heard most of them got caught and sent to a nice mental institution upstate," Lana sighed. "Except for one of them. I'm pretty sure he hasn't actually become a cannibal. That's probably a rumor."
Zara was shocked. "You're telling me that people actually died here from Krieger's creations?"
"A shit load of them," Pam told her. "Some he actually shot. Or put down. Depending on how rabid they were after the mutagens."
"Ugh Mitsuko remember Goatley incident," The hologram groaned. "Krieger's lab didn't smell right for weeks!"
"Goatley?" Zara asked.
"Half man half goat Krieger whipped up in his lab," Pam explained. "And Krieger had to put down after Goatley ate a few people and tried to eat Krieger."
"Okay so…" Zara paused. "I've heard stories about this lot over the years. Are you telling me they're all true? I thought they were just exaggerations!"
"Are you kidding?" Lana snorted. "If anything, those stories are toned down versions of what really happened!"
"Remember the radioactive lemur?" Pam laughed.
"The cat with robot legs?" Lana snickered.
"The two headed parrot?" Pam snorted.
"The Stitch Kriegers," Lana added.
"The what now?" Zara did double take.
"Don't ask," Lana sighed. "Let's just say Krieger gets a lot of ideas from movies and leave it at that."
Pam added. "Krieger's dozens of other clones. That he passes off as relatives that live all over the world!"
"Uh what?" Zara did another double take.
"By the way," Pam remarked. "There's a chance that our Krieger isn't the original one but another clone. But we're cool with it now. And by cool with it, I mean we just don't really care."
"Again, the Krieglins," Lana chuckled. "I mean he created a race of half gremlin-half Kriegers that live in a city they've built in the sewers. That's got to be the topper!"
"He did what now?" Zara did a double take. "Okay my neck is going to get whiplash with all these double takes I'm doing."
Lana explained. "Technically he just made one Krieglin and he multiplied. Then he directed all his offspring to build the city so…I mean they're happy down there with all the other mutants Krieger's made over the years. Like the mini-Kraken. Which is basically a large purple octopus."
"Mini Kraken?" Zara shouted.
"And the giant lobster," Lana remarked. "And the other laser snakes he made."
"And the Sea Pams," Pam added.
"The what now?" Both Lana and Zara looked at Pam.
"Oh right," Pam remarked. "You don't know about that one. Never mind."
Zara said nervously. "Okay. Just so I'm completely up to speed here. Your mad scientist on top of creating and letting loose not one but several forms of artificial intelligence on the world…He created several types of mutants that are roaming about all over the world? Wrecking and changing the environment forever?"
"That's pretty much it," Pam nodded. "But he didn't make Barry. He made Katya. Well reanimated her from her dead corpse."
"Who is Katya?" Zara asked.
"Russian Cyborg Bitch who Archer almost married," Pam explained. "And then took over the KGB. After Barry took over the KGB. Hey we haven't heard from her in a while."
"And I could go a lot longer not hearing from her," Lana admitted.
Zara blinked. "You know they warned me back at Interpol about you lot. I didn't listen. Why didn't I listen?"
"Don't be such a drama queen," Mitsuko waved. "You get used to it."
"I highly doubt it," Zara groaned.
"Oh, I remember that look," Lana sighed.
"What look?" Zara asked.
"That look on your face of shock and abject horror," Lana sighed. "Once you figured out what kind of a freak show goes on around here. I used to have that look. Now…Eh." She took a drink of scotch.
"The last person who had that look was Sandra," Pam remembered. "She didn't even last two weeks."
"Skank," Lana grumbled.
"Don't worry Lana," Mitsuko waved. "I no like self-righteous bitch either. I totally tanked her credit score for you."
"Thank you," Lana beamed. "That does make me feel better."
"Yeah, great," Zara groaned as she grabbed some scotch for herself and drank it from the bottle.
"Hey guys," Krieger poked his head in. "Oh hi Mitsuko…"
"Speaking of relationships that tanked…" Mitsuko remarked. "What are you hiding now?"
"I'm not hiding anything," Krieger asked. He walked in holding a large net. "By the way anybody seen anything around here? Not saying what? Just anything out of the ordinary?"
"Not again!" Pam groaned.
"Oh God Krieger," Lana snapped. "What the hell did you let loose this time?"
"I didn't let anything loose!" Krieger snapped. "They escaped!"
Lana took out her gun and pointed it at Krieger. "Tell me now Krieger or so help me God the first bullet I shoot will go right into your brain!"
"They're not that dangerous!" Krieger protested. "I swear!"
Pam quickly grabbed the intercom. "ATTENTION EVERYONE! THIS IS A CODE ORANGE! I REPEAT! A CODE ORANGE! FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS…GRAB A GUN AND GET ON THE NEAREST DESK NOW!"
"They're not vicious!" Krieger protested.
"What's not vicious?" Lana kept her gun on Krieger. "Damn it Krieger! Were you making living Pokémon again?"
"Technically they're called Kriegermons," Krieger explained. "For legal reasons."
"DAMN IT!" Pam shouted. She went on the intercom again. "WE HAVE A KRIEGERMON SITUATION PEOPLE! REPEAT! A KRIEGERMON SITUATION!"
"What type?" Archer shouted as he ran into the office. "Damn it Krieger, what type did you make?"
"It better not be another electric type I'll tell you that much!" Lana snapped. "Last time that happened half the city got blacked out!"
"They're not electric," Krieger protested.
"Then what type are they?" Archer shouted. "Poison? Bug? Fire? Steel? Water?"
"It better not be a damn fire type," Pam shouted. "Cheryl will defend it with her life!"
"I'm willing to make the trade off!" Lana shouted.
"Floofy!"
"Krieger!" Ray stormed in carrying a purple plant creature with huge eyes, tiny arms and legs and colorful leaves on its head. "What the hell is this?"
"It's a Floofy," Krieger said.
"It's a dead," Lana cocked her weapon.
"NO! WAIT!" Krieger protected the creature. "It's harmless! I can prove it!"
Krieger had dropped his net and took the creature from Ray's arms. "Yeah, you take it!" Pam groaned. "Let it suck out your bones and leave your corpse a hollow shell!"
"Floofy doesn't do that! It doesn't even have teeth," Kreiger showed them. He started petting it. "There we go. Nice Floofy. Sweet Floofy."
"Floofy!"
"See?" Krieger showed them. "It's just a sweet little living plant with legs and tiny arms. Like an Oddish. Only it's purple and they don't evolve. That I know of."
"Doesn't an Oddish have stun spore, poison powder and sleep powder as it's attacks?" Archer gulped.
"How do you know that?" Zara asked.
"How do you not?" Archer looked at her.
"This one definitely doesn't have any poison powder or stun spore attacks!" Krieger told him. "And I'm pretty sure it doesn't have any sleep powder attack."
At this Floofy spurted out some pink dust from its petals. The gang coughed as their perception of the world changed around them. In fact soon they all looked like they were drawn in the animation style of Lower Decks.
"So…" Pam blinked. "Is everyone a cartoon now or is it me?"
"Nope I see it too," Archer looked at himself. "Neat! Oh, and there's some rainbows over there."
"Pretty," Ray blinked.
"Okay," Lana let out a breath. "So, it gives out a mild hallucinogenic dust?"
"Pretty much yeah," Krieger nodded.
"MILD?" Zara shouted. "I'M A BLOODY CARTOON! YOU CALL THIS MILD?"
"For us yeah," Archer admitted. "I mean nothing's melting and I don't feel the same intensity as some of Krieger's other shit."
"Hell compared to Krieger Kleanse this is practically candy," Pam snorted.
"Guys," Cheryl walked in looking nervous. "Something weird is happening…"
"As opposed to every other day around here?" Ray quipped.
"Some of Krieger's lesser evil creations got loose," Lana explained. "And it spits out some weird hallucinogenic dust."
"Yeah and the dust is making us all look like cartoons," Pam waved.
Cheryl blinked. "You mean we're not?"
"I'm guessing another one of them is wandering around the bullpen," Lana sighed. "Krieger exactly how many got out? Keeping in mind if you fail to give us an actual count, I'll just sever off your fingers one by one until we do!"
"Only three!" Krieger protested. "Please don't kill them!"
"Fine," Lana sighed. "You can send them to Kriegtopia or wherever you send the things you don't want to kill. I don't care as long as it's out of this office. Okay people you know the drill. Capture and contain these things."
"Alive please!" Krieger protested.
"I make no promises," Lana sighed. "And I'm guessing you don't know how long this shit lasts so…"
"So it's a good thing all the drones are out for the day," Pam nodded. "And Cyril. That will make things go faster."
"Yay!" Archer cheered. "I get to go on a Poke…Uh I mean Kriegermon hunt! Whoo hoo!" He ran out cheerfully.
"And I was worried this afternoon would be boring," Ray remarked as most of The Agency left.
"Coming Zara?" Lana asked.
"Phrasing! Boom!" Pam cheered.
"Uh I'll just stay here and quietly freak out thank you very much," Zara groaned.
"Eh, whatever floats your boat," Lana shrugged. "Oh damn it! I almost forgot!"
She grabbed a bottle of scotch and took a drink. "That's better…" She left the room with the scotch in hand.
"Okay so…" Zara gulped. "This place is an actual madhouse. Wonderful. Great. Suddenly my gambling addiction doesn't seem so bad now. Or Interpol. Nice boring safe by the rules Interpol. What the hell have I done with my life?"
"This is nothing," Mitsuko told her. "You should hang around when things get really crazy!"
"No wonder this lot isn't afraid of artificial intelligence," Zara groaned. "There's barely any actual intelligence in this group!"