In the last episode, Jack Carter, Eureka’s Sheriff and the star of our show, was again called to yet another emergency – Dr. Jennifer Connery was able to get to her robot creation and re-activate it. The robot tried to break into Section Five, where Global Dynamics worked on their highly confidential military projects. Jack and Andy were able to stop the robot again, but Dr. Connery managed to escape.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

It was several days now since Dr. Connery disappeared, and Jack, Andy and the people that Jo assigned him were so far unable to find her.

Henry had informed the DoD of the third incident, and, therefore, per contract, Global Dynamics was exercising its right to void the contract for cause and to return all monies and materiel. The DoD countered and said that they would like to hire GD to find out why the robot ‘failed.’

Henry was a little confused at that – it was like the DoD was deliberately misunderstanding the situation. Instead of recognizing GD’s voiding of the original contract, the DoD just canceled the contract altogether, and said that all fees already paid were to be assumed as the DoD’s penalty fee for the damage caused by their robot.

And as Henry, Allison and the other directors tried to wrap their brains around that, the DoD then offered another contract – a cotract to discover what went wrong with the robot, with a fee of a hundred million.

GD’s lawyer, Oliver Babbish, was consulted over videocon, and he said it was the DoD’s very transparent way of insulating themselves from any liability.

“Does the new contract seem to be similar to the first one?” Oliver asked, “in terms of the basic objectives of the project, I mean.”

“Well, yes – assess the robot, find out what’s wrong, with the exception of actually fixing it...”

“I thought so.”

“So, what do we do?”

“We take the money and run, that’s what!”

“Ohhh...”

“Lemme massage the wording of their contract a bit and email it back to you, and you can send it back to them and say it’s take it or leave it. I’ll highlight the main changes to allow them a quick review.”

“And if they don’t like it?”

“Then you say sorry, and walk away. But you’ll see – they won’t say no.”

“If you say so, Oliver,” Henry said.

“How long is the contract for?”

“Same as the previous one – six months.”

“Hmmm. Twenty-four weeks. Okay.”

In an hour, Henry got the new contract back, and it required an up-front non-refundable eighty million signing fee, with a million falling due every week for six months, with the contract specifying a no refunds kind of deal, with GD or the DoD having the option of cancelling the contract at any time with one week’s notice.

The contract was skewed so much in favor of GD that it was almost laughable, but the DOD returned the contract, signed, in about an hour, but with one change – aside from Dr. Henry Deacon being named the project manager, Sheriff Jack Carter was to be given approval and veto authority over any aspect of the project. Babbish said that was again another way to insulate them from any responsibility if other incidents occur. Furthermore, there was no mention of any DoD or other non-GD personnel working on the project. In fact, the DoD was required not to interfere nor assign people to the project, other than as observers - again another way of insulating them.

All in all, if not for the financial side of it, the contract looked like one of DoD’s old work orders when GD used to be under their control. Henry had to chuckle.

If I could get a few more of these contracts, Henry thought, I could guarantee the solvency of GD and Eureka for the next couple of years.

- - - - -

As for Zane, he was indeed able to gather the Primary Commands of the robot intact, but he was having trouble interpreting them. It seems these commands didn’t use the symbolic codec that the first chips that they saw used.

Zane definitely needed help, and hoped that Douglas Fargo, the one in charge of creating the second version (which was the present version) of Jack’s android deputy, would get to GD soon.

As for Jo, she had also continued her investigations. She unearthed some classified documents that referred to a “Project Ross:” According to these documents, the project was about the creation of a robotic soldier. The name “Ross” was actually an acronym for “Robotic Super Soldier.”

Dr. Connery was indeed a part of the project, which was appropriate since She was an indisputable authority in robotics but, contrary to what one would assume, she was not the head of this “Project Ross.” Rather, it was Douglas Fargo’s favorite sparring partner in Area 51, Dr. Toby Bismarck that was the main scientist in charge. That, in itself, was something fishy.

She put a call in for Toby but, for some reason, Toby was unavailable. There was definitely something going on.

- - - - -

As for Jack, he had a couple of his own questions: first - why was it that the robot recognized him in the morph he was in? It was the first time for the robot to see Jack in his Rebecca Roman form. Henry said that the quality of the robot’s optics was very low compared to, say, Andy’s, so it probably wasn’t seeing things well enough for purely visual identification, but extrapolated it – a higher-tier AI function that only Andy and a few other robots had.

Second – why didn’t Jo’s commandos use the nets right away, and immobilize the robot? Henry said that it was his fault – given that there were no civilians in harm’s way, and that it was a stalemate at the time, Henry asked not to immobilize it yet so that he and Zane could observe it in action and get some clues about its instructions and objectives, and its operation-slash-behavior.

This made Jack a little angry, of course – the priority is always safety. Henry promised it won’t happen again.

Other than these two particular questions, Jack left it to the experts to suss out the mystery behind the robot.

- - - - -

It was a peaceful few days since that time when “Ross” tried to break into Section Five. Nothing more dangerous than an almost meltdown in one of the experimental power generation plants on Mount Von Braun, and the accidental escape of thirty-two invisible mice – offspring of the original eighteen mice from Frank Philips’ abortive invisibility experiment about eight years ago. Nothing unusual.

It was only by chance that Andy was able to find the last of the mice in GD’s ducting yesterday. Good thing Andy came equipped with infrared vision.

It seemed that everything had gone back to normal, or as normal as it could be, except that Jack was still a girl.

Jack had finally told Zoe, his daughter from Abbey, his first wife, what had happened, but once Zoe found out that he wasn’t in any danger, she didn’t really much care, but did say she was excited to see him in one of his transformations.

He did send her pictures of his past morphs, and he promised to send pictures immediately after each new one.

“Can’t wait!” Zoe said in her typical manner.

So everything was back to normal now. In fact, Jack and Allison felt confident enough that they decided for the family to finish their visit with Allison’s folks, and she and the kids left in the morning, leaving Jack to his own devices for a week.

Jack now had fifteen different “morphs,” the EM waveforms for each being dutifully recorded. And via the EM device that Allison and Grace created, he could now select from these fifteen when he does morph. Unfortunately, none of the fifteen were his old male form.

That’s why he was still allowing the random nature of his changes to happen, in the hopes that one of these new morphs would finally be his male Jack Carter morph.

In the past few days, he had turned into four dark-haired beauties and one blonde. Jack had looked at his “portfolio” – the file of the people who donated their DNAs to Dr. Barrows’ Cloned Organs Program, and was able to identify who he had turned into: Penny Cruz, the daughter of Dr. Pablo Cruz; Megan Foxworth, the niece of Dr. Grace Foxworth; Natalie Portley, the sister of Dr. Abbey Portley-Smith; and Dr. Anna Beatrice Barrows herself – the inventor of the EM device that started all this. Jack’s last morph, the only blonde in the five recent ones, was Melissa Benoit - the cousin of GD’s lone dendrologist, Dr. Leonardo. None of the morphs were exact duplicates, of course, but he expected that.

Except for Dr. Leonardo, all of the scientists were from Section Nine – not surprising since Dr. Barrows and the project were from Section Nine, so many of the volunteers would naturally be from there. Dr. Barrows volunteering was actually expected.

However, something was a little off, and Kevin was the one who was able to point it out, and Allison and Jack looked at each other. If they were in a cartoon, there would have been a light bulb over their heads.

What Kevin pointed out was that, with all due respect to the people that Jack had been morphing into, they weren’t all lookers. To be fair, they were pretty good looking, but when Jack morphed, for some reason, his morphs had been... tweaked and amped up. All of his morphs were good enough to be models. Well, according to Kevin that is.

And whatever Allison thought of that, she was a scientist first and foremost. And even if it took a teenager to point out the obvious, she wouldn’t belabor the point that they did miss something.

Clearly, the “tweaks” weren’t random. And if they weren’t, the only logical agent for the “improvements” was Jack himself, that his subconscious mind had somehow selected the “improvements.”

Things like the age, and the length of fingernails and state of the hair could be explained away by epigenetics, and the state they were in when the samples were taken, but the other tweaks were all Jack’s.

It was sad that they lost Doctor Barrows’ device, especially since they had no surviving record of its specifications, because the technology had such potential - an ability to clone people, and the ability to “tweak” them according to their specifications. The possibility of specially modified body parts held such tantalizing potential.

And because of the potential benefits to the world, the Cloned Organs Program was reinstated, and half of the people in Section Nine was reassigned to the reinstituted program, the first part of the new program being the reconstruction of Dr. Barrows’ device.

- - - - -

Allison had given Jack the formula for his “super juice,” which was just simply commercially available orange-flavored Tang with extra sugar.

An eight-ounce glass of Tang would usually have twenty-four grams, or six teaspoons, of sugar. Therefore, half a liter would have twelve. That was already too much, but Allison said that he’d need to drink half a liter of Tang, as well as add forty-eight more teaspoons of sugar.

Whether there would be any adverse effects of such a large amount of sugar to Jack’s system, Allison said no – according to the data from the chair, the morphing uses up between 958 to 962 calories, so the “super juice” was just the right ticket, and would be used up right away so there would be no adverse effects on Jack.

“But, Allison,” Zane interjected, as he listened in to her explanation, “Jack’s body would need time to metabolize the sugar he drinks. How come he changes with only about a minute or two after he drinks his ‘super juice?’”

“Ahhh, yes,” Allison nodded, “in normal people, sugar is absorbed in about twenty-five to thirty minutes, but you see, Zane, Jack’s modified system cuts this time in half, plus, his ‘magic pituitary gland’ actually uses what’s already in his bloodstream – whatever is absorbed in that minute before the morph would be more than enough to top up Jack’s blood sugar to kick-start the change, and the rest would just replace what’s used up. And as his system becomes more and more adapted to this process over time, this grace period will become even shorter.”

“Ahhh!”

As has been part of his morning routine for the past few days now, Jack made up a glass of his “super juice.” He drank the toe-curlingly sweet concoction, sat in Allison’s diagnostic chair, and switched on the sensors.

He then waited for the transformation, which, from past experience, would usually come in a minute or so after he drank his juice.

Soon, he felt the usual running tingle that started at the back of his head and neck, and spread down his spine. In moments it was over.

He looked down at his hands and noted that they still didn’t look like male hands. Sighing, he got up, did the necessary things to verify that it was indeed a new morph, recorded the new EM waveform in his EM device, and updated all the other chairs (there was one at the other house, his office, and Allison’s office in GD).

He then went to the bathroom, did the usual stuff, like showering and so forth, and picked a new outfit. Nothing fancy – just the appropriate underwear, a pair of black leggings, sneakers and a long-sleeved gray sweater. After all, he was just going to the smarthouse to get one of his spare uniforms – he had run out of clean ones, and the only ones left were at the smarthouse. One thing he needed to do was to get some more from Mary’s.

He sighed. As a girl, the one thing he noticed was that he seemed to generate a lot of laundry compared to before, especially since Allison would not allow him to wear something twice. He wondered if that was a rule all girls followed, of if it was just Allison.

He studied his new morph. Looking at his “portfolio,” he noted that he was now the near twin of one of GD Medical’s nurses - a Nurse Rose Huntington-White. Jack’s new Rose morph seemed to be as slim as his Taylor Sweets morph, but this one had longer and straighter ash-blonde hair, and very red and pouty cupid’s-bow lips, sort of like a kewpie doll’s. He bet his new look would go over well with Kevin and his friends.

When he was all set, he went to the front of the house and then belatedly remembered Allison took the car, and he had neglected to bring either the sheriff’s patrol jeep or the patrol car. So he texted the problem to Andy.

Since Andy said it’d be about five minutes before he arrived, Jack decided to sit on a boulder behind the house and look at the view as he sipped sugarless tea from his favorite mug.

Over the years, Jack had fallen in love with the town, and loved to look at the view, especially in the mornings when there’s still a slight touch of fog and the sleepy yet wonderfully-peaceful Oregon back-woods vibe that was especially evident during the early morning and the late afternoon.

He failed to hear Andy’s arrival, and only noticed when Andy tapped his shoulder.

“Hey, Boss,” Andy said, smiling. “Your chariot has arrived.”

Jack appreciated Andy’s attempts at humor, and, in truth, he’d been getting better at it. Jack smiled at Andy’s efforts.

“Hey, Andy,” he replied. “I’m ready. Let’s go!”

- - - - -

Jack had decided to stay in the smarthouse for the duration, and brought the few things he needed.

Sarah, the AI that ran the smarthouse, was happy that he would be staying, at least for a while, and had the house ready.

Jack dropped his things in the bedroom, picked a uniform and got ready as quickly as he could since they were running late already, but it turned out he didn’t really need to. The day seemed to continue to be a slow day. Sure, there were things that needed to be done, but nothing major.

For example, there were a couple of out-of-towners that had stumbled over Eureka, and decided to drag race on Main Street. Too bad for them - they were up against Jack and Andy, and their GD-modified patrol vehicle, so the two kids were apprehended quickly, and were charged with speeding, ignoring traffic ordinances, endangerment, a DUI and a drunk and disorderly.

That meant Jack’s prison cell would have a couple of “guests” for a day, as they waited for their arraignment.

Jack also had to cite a couple of businesses for failing to follow some ordinances: the corner charging station and Callie’s dry cleaner’s had forgotten to charge people for their services again - all basic service businesses in Eureka were 100% subsidized and the people who run them didn’t really need to charge their patrons anything. But they’re required to charge a token amount and therefore allow the town government to track business performance, for statistical ananlysis. Regularly citing these people was one of his more boring but regular chores.

Jack also had to answer a couple of domestic disturbance calls. Though it wasn’t his job, he usually ended up mediating between the couple arguing, and more often than not, he would usually clear up the disagreement, and it rarely ended up progressing any further.

He also had to answer a couple of other calls which were not much different, except the arguments involved the use of high-tech-sounding words and a lot of esoteric talk. Over time, Jack had learned to filter all of this out and get at the heart of the arguments, and despite IQs higher that 140, Eureka’s citizens were just like regular people, and Jack was an expert at dealing with people.

It was a very long day but, paradoxically, it wasn’t really so tiring. Whatever these morphs had done to him, there was one thing he learned: being a cute girl really did have its advantages, as most people bent over backward to be more cooperative rather than be bitchy. Jack laughed to himself.

In fact, he thought of the day like a day off.

His last call for the day was actually laughably cliché – Ellie’s neighbor had lost her cat, which was currently trapped up a tree, so Jack got it down, and he had a pleasant time chatting with his young friend – he was one of the few that Ellie found easy to talk with because Jack was fluent in signing, and they eventually became friends. Ellie had an exciting bit of news: she was just told she was finally old enough and would be getting her permanent ear implant next week. Jack congratulated her and promised to visit after she had her operation.

His last stop for the day was his semi-regular stop at Café Diem, and have dinner. Vincent, Café Diem’s chef and proprietor, not to mention a michelin-star chef, world-class food scientist, culinarist and molecular gastronomist, knew Jack enough by now that, just by looking at him, Vincent knew what he’d like and never bothered to ask anymore.

Tonight, Vincent looked at the sheriff. Despite being a girl now, Vincent could still see the person underneath. Tonight, Jack seemed to be a bit tired and hungry, so Vincent got him a nice steak and potatoes – half-order only, though, given Allison’s instructions to him, plus a large salad. Vincent was pretty sure Jack won’t finish the salad but it was his way of encouraging Jack to eat healthier.

Café Diem was a bit different tonight – there were more people than normal. Jack’s fan club - what was rapidly becoming known in town as the “Jack Watch” - was in. Tonight there was about a dozen of them.

The girls who participated in the aborted Cloned Organs project of Dr. Barrows who donated samples of their DNA heard of what happened to Jack. They were very curious to see Jack’s morphs, especially after Dr. Cameron started telling everyone about how Jack morphed into an almost-clone of his daughter, Dawn.

So they got together and formed a sort of club, watching Jack turn into their almost-twins. Some felt a little jealous since Jack’s morphs looked so much better than they did, but they were all still curious. The current thing they were now into was to compare Jack’s morphs to the real thing, and were always hoping to meet Jack and get pictures or talk to him.

Their “clubhouse” was in Dr. Cameron’s garage, where Dawn, Jack’s first morph, organized club activities.

It was in the clubhouse-slash-garage where they had pictures of Jack on the walls, and where they kept statistics and other details about Jack’s morphs in large paper binders (they had all this in digital, too, of course, but Dawn felt it would be more fun to have paper-based books and binders in the clubhouse).

Dr. Cameron didn’t stop his daughter – Dawn was quite shy and this club provided a way for her to socialize. Besides, all the data that her club gathered was useful to him and the people of Section Nine, as well as with GD’s COO. It was also his way of getting some brownie points with her: GD’s COO just happened to be Dr. Allison Blake, Jack’s spouse... errr, wife.

Anyway, tonight, Dawn was in Café Diem, as well as nine other like-minded ladies, and excitedly chatted up Jack, or Jackie as they preferred to call him.

They also noted his new morph and Dawn, who had already memorized the pictures of all the DNA donors, declared it to be Rosie Huntington-White, one of the nurses at GD Medical. She rapidly dialed on her phone and called Rosie up, and Rosie said she’d be there in five minutes.

“Don’t let Jackie leave!” she exclaimed, and hung up.

Dr. Cameron had lectured his daughter about taking Jack’s pictures, and to only do so if Jack gave permission – something Dawn told everyone as well. But Jack was game, and said it was okay. Immediately, there was a flurry of flashes and clicks, and Jack found the camera flashes literally blinding.

“Girls, girls!” Vincent exclaimed. “Enough! Stop that, and allow the sheriff to finish her dinner in peace.” Jack didn’t bother to correct Vincent and just nodded his thanks.

Chagrined, the girls stopped and apologized, and left Jack alone. And though they only scattered to individual tables or sat two stools away from him at the counter, they left him alone.

Of course, with all the sidelong glances and the big grins they sent his way, he could hardly enjoy Vincent’s excellent filet mignon steak au poivre. It was just as well that it was a half-steak.

He sighed.

Soon, a girl, still in a GD nurse’s uniform rushed in and went straight to him.

“Ohmigod!” she exclaimed. “It’s true!”

Jack turned around and confronted the real Rosie Huntington-White.

- - - - -

It was a kind of relief to be able to go back home to the smarthouse. Those girls from his “fan club” just took it out of him, but it was quite flattering to have all those women almost fawning over him. He was sure the few men in the café resented it a bit, but not by much since he was hardly a rival, being a girl and all.

By the end of the evening, everyone was calling him Jackie, and he surprisingly didn’t mind it as much as he thought he would.

Before leaving for the smarthouse, he passed by the office and told Andy to pass all of the day’s paperwork to him. Andy took the lion’s share of the fieldwork today, anyway, so Jack thought might as well take care of the day’s paperwork. Fair’s fair. Andy gave him the folder, told him that he will take care of their prisoners tomorrow, and wished him good night.

He hadn’t noticed his bracelet’s crystal line had become red an hour ago, and as he arrived at the smarthouse, the red line had started to blink.

Oh, no! he thought.

It started blinking faster and faster. Jack was in such a rush to get to the chair, he didn’t even bother to have the lights turned on.

He knew he didn’t need to be sitting when he started to morph (he knew he had a few minutes after morphing). Even so, he thought it would be helpful to have more sensor readings while he was morphing.

He sat down on the diagnostic chair, switched it on and waited for the morph to happen.

After the odd tingling had faded and the buzzer sounded, he got up. He checked. Yes, it was yet another new morph, and after consulting his “portfolio,” he identified it as being Dr. Alexandra Ambrose, one of two non-Eureka volunteers. Dr. Ambrose was a consulting geneticist from the Area 51 labs, helping out Dr. Barrows at the time.

Oh, well, Jack thought, disappointed that it wasn’t his Jack Carter morph.

He sighed, took off his clothes and headed for the shower.

He sighed again and headed off to bed.

So ends my day off, Jack thought.

to be continued in Episode 8: “Fargo’s Back!” Jan. 22, Tuesday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network