JMJ

Chapter Ten

Boiling Over

Tiff did not use the stairs. That would have been banal. She did not use the secret elevator shaft as that was too obvious if Britt was involved.

Tiff was a slight thing— "petite" someone more refined might call it. Tiff was beyond mere refined. She was explosive in a small package and preferred to call herself "bite size". Not to mention she could still slip into the laundry chute, which she did with the ease of the pulley system, slippers on her feet still and all. Her perfectly purposeful "bed head" for lounging stayed intact as she leapt out of the hamper like flying squirrel into the basement level.

Then true to her lounge T, regal skill had her scurrying through the home labyrinth. The housekeeper was not down here at this time of day, so it was no surprise that there was no one to see around any corner, her weapon at the ready, but Tiff knew there was something going down down here.

With a simple pout, she took out a heat scanner.

No human sized heat seemed to be coming from anywhere. Just heat from the basement tech. Though, there was one abnormally large piece that she was not familiar with.

Her eyes narrowed as she peered around the corner into the main laundry chamber. It was the cleanest and the vastest part of the behind-the-scenes portion of the basement. There was more than one washing machine and drier, including a home dry-clean system. There were shelves of various soaps, softeners, and fresheners. Thick towels lined sleek black racks. Soft sponges sat in shell-shaped cups alongside hand-wash tools and bottles that looked like potions against the most serious stains. In the middle of the room was a big tub-sink like a fountain or a flower blooming from the colorful ring of tiles hiding a very efficient drainage system in case of emergencies. All of the floor tiles gleamed like the glossiest nail polish, and they were so crisp that they click-clacked against the softest shoes.

Tiff was as quiet as a cat in her slippers going from rug to rug to avoid the floor. She held up her pepper spray in the powdery, downy hush as though she had entered a thick glass cavern silenced with cotton-lining.

There was one thing out of place, and it was too stupid of a thing to be a trick of Britt's. There was a new piece of machinery from which heat was emanating. One of the immense magenta plush towels was draped over the top of it and could be making it hotter. It hid nothing about its great heft, and the middle's thickness. There was some sort of dial or dash on the top of it.

Was Tiff… paranoid?

Tiff shook her head. One could never be too careful when up against a Crust sore-winning streak, and Britt had one like a butt rash.

However, how else could something like this have been brought into the house was if it was not allowed? As it was in the laundry room and it was a good size for putting laundry into, she could think of one thing that was the most logical explanation whether it was a rigged thing or not.

"I didn't know we got a new washin' machine," she huffed and slapped a hand on her hip.

"Oh, that is it!" snapped a very big and strangely familiar voice.

Tiff staggered back saucer eyed as the towel was ripped from the Cluster criminal's body. He stood up and all she could think of to do was spray her pepper-spray up at him as best she could.

"Rugh," was all he growled from the affect.

He had no lungs or throat. It would not affect him the way it was meant to, and she was kind of short to reach even his chest.

She darted back.

"Oh, no you don't! 'Washing machine', huh? I know you! Foolish traitor girl."

What was she to do in a situation like this, pinned back against a wall and a giant robot in front of her that could crush her flat with the flex of a thumb?

"What? Traitor to you or traitor to the human race? I knew you was gunna lose just like you always do, short stop. Even yesterday's washin' board's more reliable than you," the bite-sized terror bit.

Smytus laughed. "Except you have no XJ-9 to come and rescue you. You have no effective means with which to destroy my army as I have no army here at this time. You have no means with which to use this tub of water against me as I'm on the same side of it as you are. Most of all, unlike the first time we met, you have no crystals of ultimate power."

Tiff sneered. "Yeah, 'cept the only reason why you'd be hidin' in here is if someone yur scared of's lookin' for ya, and if you make me scream, I know who'll come runnin' no matter what I did to her. Ain't that right?"

Smytus paused. "Then what do you propose?"

"I propose this, ya bucket head!" Tiff declared pulling on a fire-alarm.

But it was more than the alarm going off. It was the sprinkler system.

He downright shrieked as he ducked, clutching his chest like he had been stabbed. Or at least was in fear of being stabbed. She wasn't expecting that much of a reaction, but more than that he did something else unexpected from a pushover like the Cluster Commander. He grabbed her.

"Ah! Put me down!" Tiff squealed. "This was supposed to be my off-time!"

Crashing through the vast window of the open ended basement in the first part of the living-space section, Smytus exploded on the other side. He charged without stopping as Tiff took cover against the glass shards spraying like pastel rainbow shurikens. He charged like a bull right into the garage and took the biggest car. He tore up the side-hatch door and flung Tiff inside.

Bumps and bruises kneaded her like she was dough for a pizza, and she had scarcely time to scramble out of the way of the bulky metal mass pushing his way in after her no matter what damage was made to the structure. The two front seats were pushed up in a way that anyone larger than Tiff would not have been able to get up into a proper position easily, and even as she did she was just sitting in the driver's seat when she felt a claw clamp like a hair curler from the Outer Limits over her scalp.

She felt the pulse of the terror like an electric shock from hair-tip to toenail.

"Drive," Smytus said.

Boiling despite herself, Tiff's face tightened into a fearful grimace. "You can't just except me tah—"

"DRIVE!" roared Smytus. "Or you'll find your off-time your final time… meaning going offline."

Tiff gulped. She was just lucky the key was already in the ignition. Though, she was too short to reach it being held into position as she was against the seat. Her arms flailed and her teeth clenched.

"Lemme start this thing!" she snarled.

"I will allow you, but I'm going to be here all the time, little meat stick, so if you try anything you'll know decapitation or at least a head shave, which if I understand correctly means about the same thing to you."

"Okay, okay!" snarled Tiff as Smytus let her turn the key. "Where we goin' anyway?!"

"Florida," said Smytus darkly.

"Florida! If you're goin' on vacation you can at least—"

A zooming sound soared above the garage somewhere.

"Go!" snapped Smytus.

She floored it. Right through the garage door.

"Ah!" she cried even though she was the one who was doing it.

Maybe because she was the one who was doing it!

And she was so small she plunged right out of her seat.

Scrambling back and buckling herself in she turned into the slushy streets. She could see the flight trails of Jenny and a couple other bots hot on the trail.

"Ugh! Why'dya gotta be so janked!?" screamed Tiff. "Y'already got the whole world on your fat port-side! We ain't makin' it to Florida! We ain't makin' it to Town Park!"

The claw tightened its grip on her skull. It was because of a bump in the road rather than Smytus' anger. He seemed to be ignoring her words. It was then that she knew quite well as her neck gave a slight crick, that Smytus was keeping himself from leaning right into her spine rather than resting his hand on her for a prepared attack. It made her think twice about insulting him again.

What was the universe coming to when a robot was using a human as a tool rather than the other way around? Of course, the whole Cluster had been in the process of enslaving humanity last time they had had a party on Earth.

"Faster!" he snapped. "Into the traffic there!"

"Whadya mean 'faster?'"

"It'll make it harder for XJ-9 to catch us if she has the risk or collateral damage!"

She could already hear police sirens, but she still obeyed right into the traffic, right under a bridge and erupting through a yard at a bad turn as smog swamped some bot that sure wasn't Jenny square in the face and slowing it down. If this car had been any less made for rugged terrain (it was meant for the most rugged trails of off-road mountains for the fun of it and belonged to her father) it would have busted already with the abuse. It was plowing like a train as through hedges, fences, trees, and pieces of swing-set and sheds. They had not quite crashed in through a house yet, but she was sure it was a matter of time as Jenny could be seen rounded her way down for the kill!

With a giant magnet? Nice.

Tiff rolled her eyes and slumped in the best way she could being held there like a marionette, but she could not loosen her sweaty grip on the steering wheel as she swerved out of the way of a brick wall.

Smytus was inches away from shoving her face into the steering wheel.

"Ah!" she screamed with the pain of the whiplash.

"Ah, yes! There!" Smytus cried as though he saw the entrance sign to Miami Beach.

"Mmm…" Tiff moaned miserably.

If he tried that a second time it might actually cost her a neck!

Then who'd be driver for the loser?

Maybe it was time to rethink knowing super villains too well. They were starting to get too cozy enlisting her, and she was not in the mood for rubbing elbows with them these days, much less this.

Not knowing where Smytus' there was— she hardly knew where here was— she turned as the hand on her head motioned.

#

"Nothing like spending a whole day standing around in virtual reality on a volatile planet unfit for known organic existence to watch the explosion of an ancient volatile sun into a black hole without blasting our eye sockets out… Well, y'know, and surviving the electromagnetic radiation, the immensity of the relativistic jets of plasma, and being ripped apart past the atomic level before getting close to the event horizon… to be working with my hands on a homework project suit that could potentially allow you to survive even going out through the other side such a black hole however unknown the destination. Possibly another dimension in which one could meet with a parallel universe." Sheldon tapped his chin as he paused for a quick bite of a sandwich for dinner in between working. "I mean, just because I've channeled worm holes doesn't mean we should take lightly the power of a black hole that might spit you right out a white hole in an explosion that could start a whole new universe from its unstable infancy."

He stood up a moment to admire his work a moment in his favorite garage/workshop. It was a blueprint at the moment, but he had gathered some of the necessary tools and components for the recipe at hand. It was not going to be one hundred percent feasible unless he somehow got hold of some rare material from Nora Wakeman, but Wakeman made it quite clear that she was not going to help him in school project not even for such things.

Sheldon shrugged. "Well, that's what you get when you have to prove your own way in the world."

The virtual reality version would have to suffice.

Sheldon chuckled. "Or maybe I should say 'universe' as—Hmm?"

The sound of something exceptionally foreign came from outside. As he paused to listen, he wrinkled his nose at the grinding motor-sound, but what accompanied it was some kind of shrieking wail. Not to mention that though he soon realized that part of the sound was caused by some kind of truck, it was coming from the direction of the backyard.

CRASH!

Sheldon could not so much as scream. It was more than a mere shock to his system to see this sudden off-road vehicle that looked like it belonged in the Australian outback. Like some paranoid alien assassin, it tore through all his work as though it was necessary for the survival of a whole race.

In slow motion like life flashing before his eyes, his work bench, counter, exam table, research books, models and blue prints— all. It was like sentient jaws tearing and swallowing all in its path as a way of enacting vengeance against humanity like a Japanese monster of the ancient benthic beyond. And he had just been speaking of Gamera the other day, by the way, just to add to the uncanny horror!

His action figure of the character had fallen right now off one of the shelves— one of the few items that he knew was intact as it tumbled close to his feet.

The irony was beyond rational. It was more than his ability to register no matter what his IQ as he stood with blank white eyes. If his pupils were anymore contracted they would surely see through the quantum web that kept the universe in its weave into the realm between universes orbiting each other in some unfathomable abyss.

"See it's totaled, loser!" came a most incongruous voice from the broken seams of metal.

At last he blinked like the clock ticks of time/space.

The vehicle had been just as damaged by the impact as his garage. It was smoking like the mists of time and space personified in the Pillars of Creation. Still Sheldon stood there in his despairing out-of-body static-mode like he was in the trance of virtually immortal existence of the most improbable science fiction drama made for some old cable station.

Then came the sound of Jenny's boosters.

His head snapped up with the instinct of a dog to a dog whistle, but before he could completely be oriented back into normal human existence, an inhuman clawed appendage clamped around his middle.

"Ah!" he wailed, back to humanity now from the pain in his ribcage and the throb from his squeezed guts.

"I have this now! One of XJ-9's pets!"

"How do you know where I live?" cried Sheldon, understanding the situation as it was in small quick subdivisions.

"I have my ways!" Smytus assured him, but he was in a hurry.

He ran out of the garage ruins, but not before plucking up the other human in the busted vehicle who let out a cry very similar to his own.

Now, he knew quite well that Tiffany Crust was human, in theory, but to hear her scream so close to his own scream was something that boggled the mind more than anything that waited for mankind in another dimension.

Further proving that we still have too much to learn to go out beyond the mysterious of our own virtually infinite universe, thought Sheldon quite beside himself.