Complications
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"H-Hello Master Jose!" the techno quaked as Jose goose-stepped into the cavernous Castle Laboratory, eight Fixed Ideas behind him, "I-I wasn't expecting you!"

"You weren't supposed to, you idiot!  Did you receive the message from my Father?"

"Y-Yes Master!"

"The battle against Cybersix was a bit too much for him.  He wishes to be left alone to recuperate, as well as celebrate!" Jose announced, "I am in charge now!"

"B-But Master!"

"WHAT??!!" Jose screamed.

"Helicopters are being sent from Krumens to take charge of the castle! H-He said-"

"WHAT!!???" Jose shouted, "I KNEW it!  He's finally showing his traitorous face now!  I never trusted him!"

"Duhhh, what do we do?" one of the Fixed Ideas asked.

"We shall rebroadcast the message from my Father to them.  If they obey, then no problem!  But if they don't--" he let the threat trail off into thin air, "Let's arrange a welcoming party!  You!" he pointed at one, "Go to the armory and arm everyone!"
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Lucas evaded the road blocks by going through back alleys, and soon found himself on the sidewalk in front of the address he had copied out of the Faculty Resume book.  He glanced at the address again, then at the street sign at the corner, then again at the number in brass letters set into the right hand brick gatepost.  His mouth curled into a bitter smile as his eyes surveyed the two story townhouse, "Figures." he muttered, shoving the gate open and walking along the stone path to the door.  He grabbed the knocker and started knocking at the door with it violently, "Come on!  Open it, you old-"

He heard the lock turning, and the door opened, "Lucas!" Dr. Zacharias exclaimed, "What are you doing here?"

Lucas pushed his way in, "Tilman was worried about you, so he sent me to check in on you."

"What?  Are there classes today?"

"No, and not for the next several days!  Not with 30 people bunking in your physics lab!"

Dr. Zack groaned, "And I left the telescope out!"

Lucas looked at him, frowning, "The mayor wants you to call him."

"Hmm.  I suppose he would."

"Why would he want you?"

"I lead a research team onto the Isle of Doom, and I guess he wants a-"

"Isle of Doom?  So, how did it get that name?" Lucas asked suspiciously.

Dr. Zack looked at him, puzzled by Lucas' hostile attitude, "I-ah-thought it was a rather appropriate name.." he stammered.

"Could you also explain THIS?" he demanded, handing him the book he had taken from Cybersix's apartment.

"Well, I ah, loaned it to Adrian.  He was interested in the subject matter, and-"

"Oh come ON, Doctor Zacharias! Adrian and I were pals and buddies!  He NEVER mentioned any interest in Quantum Mechanics to me!"

"Lucas, there was a lot more to Adrian than you know."

"Hah! I THOUGHT I knew him, but since Lori gave me these-" here, Lucas pulled Adrian's glasses from his shirt pocket, "I realized how much of a fool I was!"

"Where did you get-" Dr. Zack started, a bit startled at the sight of the glasses.

"Like I said, From Lori.  And she got them from Cybersix herself!"  He chuckled maliciously at the look on Dr. Zack's face, "I went to Adrian's apartment and found your book there.  Adrian never expressed an interest in Quantum Mechanics, but I have a fairly good idea why a genetic lab creation would wonder if she had free will! "Lucas paused, then asked, "So Doctor Zacharias, what did you and Cybersix do here in this fine mansion?"

Dr. Zack frowned at Lucas, "Mr. Amato!  What are you implying?"

"Don't take me for a fool!  You've got money, or you wouldn't be able to afford a place like this!  I'm a biology teacher, remember?  Do you know how much meat a panther eats in a week?  There's no wild game here except for the wild dogs in the street!  Her teacher's salary wouldn't be able to stretch far enough for both of them!  She had to get extra cash from someplace to pay for Data 7's upkeep, and-" He shook his head, "Awww, why bother?  Just answer me these two questions!"

"What?" Dr. Zack asked coldly, glaring at Lucas and shaking slightly.

"How much did you pay her, and was she any good?"

"LUCAS!  Don't be such an ASS!"

Lucas whirled around and stared at Cybersix standing in the doorway to what looked like the sitting room.  She had her leather suit on, but didn't have her hat, cape, or boots.  She walked up to him, limping slightly, "What do you think Dr. Zack and I were doing?" sha asked him, voice low, glaring at him.

"Well, what was it Lori said?  Ah!  With you having a thing for leather-" Lucas said sarcastically, using both hands to make a motion that was commonly used among Meridiana's prostitutes to signal their availability to prospective customers, "I would think something appropriately, ah, kinky coul-"

Cybersix's hand swept up, halting inches from Lucas' left cheek, shaking.

Then, slowly, it went to her mouth as she started to giggle, the fingers sliding up to cover her eyes as she struggled to control herself.  She turned to Dr. Zack and put her hand on his shoulder, "He thinks we-" she started, only to lose it completely and burst out laughing.

Dr. Zack gave a long, ludicrous snort through his nose, bent down, and began slapping his knee, "He ACTUALLY  thinks we-" He said, his voice two octaves higher than normal, his hands duplicating the hand signal Lucas used.  He then pointed at her, then at himself.  They were silent for a split instance, looking at each other, considering the implications, and then burst out howling again.

Lucas watched, a puzzled look on his face, as Cybersix and Dr. Zack leaned on each other like two drunks fit to pass out, put their arms around each others shoulders for support, and staggered into the sitting room and into the chairs there, howling with laughter with each uncertain step.  He blinked, waited until the laughter subsided somewhat, then walked in and sat down opposite of the pair.  The other two paused, looked at him, then at each other, and began to laugh again.

There was a roar from somewhere downstairs, "I'll get him." Cybersix said, getting up and limping out.

Lucas watched her walk out, then turned his attention back to Dr. Zack, "Tony, ahhh-" he started.

Dr. Zack started chuckling again.

"Nothing?" Lucas asked, hoping he sounded remorseful.

"Nothing.  *I* was the one feeding Data 7 all this time, by the way."

"Oh," he glanced at the door through which Cybersix had left.

"Turn left, go through the kitchen," Dr. Zack said, "Left again at the other end into the small corridor.  Go down the stairs to the basement."

Lucas got up and went to the door.

"Oh Lucas?"

He stopped, feeling bad, "What, Tony?"

"PLEASE don't touch any of my stuff down there."
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"NOOO!" Jose shouted at the chagrined Fixed Ideas, hopping up and down, tearing at his hair, "NOT THAT!  IDIOTS!  FOOLS!"
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"NOOO!" Krumens yelled into the receiver of the radio-phone, face livid,"NOT THAT!  IDIOTS!  FOOLS!"
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Lucas stopped at the bottom of the steps, looking around and taking in the disordered chaos of Dr. Zack's basement. "Not touching anything seems to be the smart thing to do." he thought.  He carefully weaved his way through the narrow trail between workbenches toward the two sheets suspended from the ceiling, beside which Cybersix was working.

"-have to wait a little while longer." Cybersix was saying as he walked up behind her.

Lucas blinked.  Data 7 was in one sheet, suspended from the ceiling as if from a sling, paws dangling a couple of centimeters from the floor.  He looked along the body, and noted that Data 7's tail was in a similar improvised sling.

Data 7 gave a whiny sounding growl, looking up and succeeding at looking piteous.

"No, I don't know how long.  Until you get better.  Be patient and eat, you bottomless pit." she said affectionately, rising from her crouch.

"What happened to Data 7?" Lucas asked.

Cybersix went to the sling, opened it up a bit, and pointed, "His tail got badly burned." she said, "Hopefully, the fur will grow back and he won't have a rat's tail."

Data 7 whined again.

"How did you-" Lucas started,

"Get away?" She finished, easing herself into a chair and pointing at another one behind him.  He sat down in it and watched as Cybersix pulled her right foot onto her knee and inspected the sole.  Her toes were small and delicate, and he stared at toenails painted the same tint of coral red as her own lips, "Get that bottle for me?" she pointed to something behind him.

He turned and saw a squeeze bottle.  It smelled of medication as he handed it to her.  She squirted a glob onto her palm and rubbed it into the sole of her foot.

He waited quietly, and after a few minutes, she said, "After I left you, I joined Data 7 and he led me to the observatory outside of town.  We got inside, where I fought a huge fixed idea that was twice the normal size if you can believe it.  I was nearly beaten, but the unborn transmitted some form of energy to me."

"Unborn?"

"Creations of Von Richter's that were still growing in their tanks of sustenance.  I don't know, but for some reason, they sided with me.  I don't know how they did it, but I suddenly felt strong again, and whipped the fixed idea easily with a single blow.  Then Von Richter came..."

Lucas waited patiently as Cybersix switched to her other foot, knowing it must have been an awesome moment for her to meet her creator.

"I threatened him-" she continued, reaching for the bottle.

"Cybersix?"

She looked at him.

He held out his hand, "May I-?"

She looked at him for a long moment, then tossed him the bottle and set her left foot onto his knee.  He put an extra large glob of the creamy goo on his palm and rubbed it into her sole, gently rubbing it in with the sides of his thumbs, his hands engulfing the small limb, "Cybersix-" he started, "I-"

"I threatened him, but he laughed it off.  He then offered to cure me of my dependence on sustenance-" she continued, interrupting him, "but only if I joined him.  We went into his lab, and that's when he told me it was a bomb and that it would explode, destroying the entire city.  Only, when he switched on the monitoring screen, it wasn't in Meridiana, but climbing the hill.  Seems that Jose betrayed him," Here, she smiled for the first time since he had come into the basement, "He made a last attempt to sway me, but I grabbed him and threatned him if he didn't stop it.  He couldn't, so I told him to move it into the forest, where I hoped the trees and the mountainside would protect the city."

"But it didn't go there.  It was at the cape, between the observatory and the ocean." Lucas said.

"Right, but I saw the targeting computer move the cursor into the mountain.  Well, as the thing passed, it shook the observatory badly.  That's when Von Richter took the opportunity to release the unborn, probably to keep me occupied while he escaped.  There must have been fifteen, twenty of them."

"How did you fight them off and get away?" Lucas asked.

She stared off in the distance for a long moment, "I didn't have to fight.  They joined me.  They cornered Von Richter and surrounded him.  One of them motioned for Data 7 and I to leave.  We did, making a dash for the exit."

"And got away before the explosion?"

"Oh no." she smiled, "We barely got out the door and noticed it wasn't in the forest behind the mountain.  I turned and leaped, only to run into Data 7, getting us both tangled in my cape.  That's when it exploded."

"Your cape protected you?"

"Well, Dr. Zack's cape." she said, "Mine was messed up from an earlier fight, so he gave me one."

Lucas looked at her and shook his head, "Your foot's burned,  and so is Data 7's tail.  That cape was more like woven cloth than leather.  How could it have protected you?"

She smiled, got up, and jerked her head.  He followed her to a welding area.  She picked her cape off the bench and handed it to him.  He opened it up and looked it over: red velvet on the inside, black woven cloth on the outside.  It was reasonably light, with weights along the bottom hem.

His attention was jerked away when he heard hissing.  He glanced up to see Cybersix holding a lighted torch, "Woah!  WAIT!" Lucas gasped as she shoved the torch into the cape.

But the cape didn't burst into flames.  Lucas looked over the top and saw the fiery tounge hitting the cloth.  It wasn't even glowing.

Cybersix turned the torch off and carefully put it into its metal holding rack while Lucas felt at the material.

"It's not even hot!" he gasped, "Even asbestos doesn't cool down this fast!  So how-"

"Dr. Zack calls it quantum wave cloth: it uses nanite technology to create some sort of quantum wave front that perfectly absorbs energy.  Its the most efficient solar cell on the planet."

"Where does the energy go?"

She pulled the cape up and unsnapped a fold on the hem.  She tugged at the cloth and uncovered a dark blue crystal that seemed to glow slightly through the gossamer-like copper net surrounding it,

"Copper Sulfate crystal." Lucas said, recognizing it immediately.

"But specially constructed by nanites to generate a different quantum wave front that enables it to store energy.  Huge amounts of it." Cybersix said, stuffing the crystal back into the hem and snapping the hem back into place, "The glow comes from the energy it absorbed from the explosion."

"So the explosion blew you away from it?"

"Well, not exactly.  The cape absorbed all the energy, so none got through to budge us."

"So how did you excape that fireball?  It was huge!"

She smiled, "Remember what I said about the Unborn giving me strength and energy to beat that huge Fixed Idea?"

"Yes."

"I had plenty left over.  Data 7 and I are normally equally matched, so I shouldn't have hit him when I jumped.  But having all that extra energy enabled me to leap harder and farther.  That's why I hit him, and even then our momentum was so great, we stayed barely ahead of the leading edge of the fireball.  The only things that stuck out of the cape, and so weren't as well protected, were my boots and Data 7's tail," she made a face, "Von Richter sure gave me a good hot foot, for I couldn't get my boots off fast enough.  Poor Data 7 can't shuck his tail, though.  He's rather attached to it."

"Yeah.  So I noticed."  Lucas observed, "So, you and Dr. Zack were discussing this cloth of his?"

She folded her arms and looked at him severely, "What DID you think we were discussing?"

"Look, I'm sorry.  I- well, I-"

"Were you jealous?" she asked him.

"Yes!  I mean No!  I mean-I thought you.  and he."

She sighed and rolled her eyes, "Lucas, he's over twice my age!  Really!"

"So, what did you discuss?"

"His research on sustenance."

"Sustenance?  He's trying to make sustenance?"

"Yes.  He's going to use his cloth to absorb enery from the sun and make electricity to power the world and free us from fossil fuel pollution.  That same energy will be used to charge sustenance so it can be used as a pollution free fuel for cars."

He looked at her skeptically, so she just crooked her finger and led him to the V6 that had been running on two vials of sustenance for the last six weeks.
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"Well, we won!" Techno 1954 said to Krumens.

"A pyrric victory for sure." Krumens said bitterly, "We've got a problem.  A BIG problem."

"I've told you how to solve it."

"Too risky.  Bringing in an outsider-"

"You do nothing, and you know what WILL happen."

Krumens sighed, "Okay, okay.  We'll do it."

Techno 1954 grabbed the phone and began dialing a phone number.
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"Look, I'm sorry!" Lucas protested as he followed Cybersix up the steps from the basement, "I just thought-"

She whirled around and glared at him, two steps higher than he was, so they were eye to eye, "For MONEY?  My god, Lucas!  What sort of woman did you think I was?"

"Well, I thought you lived on the streets and-"

"I had that option, of course." she said, folding her arms, "As a child and as an adult.  But I took the stupid way up and sweated blood and tears working my way through college and into a job!"

"Cybersix-" he stared, but she just whirled and stomped the rest of the way into the kitchen.

Lucas groaned and followed her, "Meathead!  How are you going to get yourself out of THIS one?"

She was at the door of the kitchen that lead into the hallway.  Lucas walked up to her, but she waved at him, so he kept silent and listened.

"-get this straight," said Dr. Zacharias, apparently on the phone, "You tried to capture the sustenance generators, but in the firefight, Jose's Fixed Ideas  blew some of the essential elements, leaving you with no way to make it.  Von Richter left no notes around, so you can't fix the equipment, right?"  Pause, "Um hmm.  Well, may I remind you that Von Richter and his creations have been the bane of Meridiana's existence for the last year or so, if not before that?  Why should I help you, when doing nothing will take care of the city's problems as all of your precious creations die of sustenance deprivation?   The city is in ruins from that oversized nuclear bomb he sent!  So, I don't give a da-"

Apparently, Dr. Zack had been interrupted, for he stopped in mid sentence.  Lucas couldn't hear the answer.  He turned, and saw Cybersix deathly pale, her lovely mouth formed into a silent "NOOO!" as she shook her head slowly.

Dr. Zack sighed and put the phone back into the cradle.

"You're not-" she started, rushing into the room.

Dr. Zack looked at her sharply, "You heard?"

"Don't trust them!  Don't go!" she said, shaking her head.

"Sorry, my dear Cybersix.  My mind's made up." he said, heading to the stairs and his second floor bedroom.

"What was that all about?" Lucas asked.

But Cybersix was just staring at the staircase, hand over her mouth, shaking her head slowly in disbelief.
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"Dr. Anthony Zacharias?"

Dr. Zack looked up from the table in the crowded McDonald's down the street from Meridiana High School. and noted the shaded skin around the black eyes that marked one of Von Richter's Technos.  There was something different about them, though, "Yes, that's me."

"I'm Techno 1954.  It's a distinct honor for me to meet one of the world's leading Quantum theorists."

"So, how did you know that-"

"That you were trying to duplicate sustenance?" The techno chuckled, "Why, that article in last July's issue of Annals, where you derived the equations for sustenance's decay rate.  Your value for its wavelength was within 30 anstroms of mine.  Well, what's your decision?"

"If I help reconstruct the sustenance generators, will I be allowed to go free?"

"Sorry, but you'll have to negotiate with my boss about that."

Dr. Zack felt two huge weights fall on his shoulders.  He glanced to his left and right, and saw great hairy hands with slightly greenish skin on each shoulder, "Okay okay!" he said, getting up, "No need to ruin my favorite coat!"

The foursome walked out of the fast food joint and into a long limosine.  Dr. Zack sat next to Techno 1954, and across from a nattily dressed blonde man.

"Good to meet you, Dr. Zacharias." Krumens said as the limo pulled away from the curb, "I'm glad you're willing to help us fix our little problem with the sustenance generators that Jose's army ruined for us."

"Hmph!  I've been working on charging that infernal stuff for months!  It'll be a relief to find out how its done!"

"Spoken like a true scientist." Krumens nodded approvingly.

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