After an encounter in Eureka’s main street, Jack disabled and captured the Jennifer Connery robot, and brought it to GD. At that time, Jack found himself changing into his twenty-first morph.

He only has ten or eleven more morphs to go, and is worried that none of them will be his Jack Carter morph.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

The following morning was chaos back at GD. Everyone was trying to recover from the devastating effect of the loss of communications in GD, and the gassing of about seventy-five percent of its people.

Most everyone was still trying to recover from the effects of being gassed and, as Dr. Parrish confirmed when he created the gas for GD’s NOLWEPS program, the after-effects were minimal, except for the extremely bad case of hangover.

Luckily, Dr. Grant, or rather, “Trent Rockwell,” knew of a hangover remedy that included tomato juice and honey, and a bagel with cream cheese on the side.

No one really believed it but apparently it works.

Allison agreed, actually. Like alcohol, Dr. Parrish’s gas makes one lose a lot of electrolytes needed by the brain, so the juice, as well as the salty bagels, helps with that, while the cream cheese gives a dose of protein that helps neutralize stomach acids. As for the honey – it helps raise blood glucose levels quickly.

“I never parsed my father’s hangover cure that way,” Charles said, “but I know it really works.” He took another sip of the tomato juice-honey combination.

“I’ll say,” Henry said. “Thanks, Charles.” He lifted his glass. “I’ll keep this in mind the next time I go on a bender.” He caught Grace’s glare. “... not that I ever would go on a bender...”

Grace nodded sagely at that, sipped her tomato juice-and-honey drink. And giggled.

They were all gathered in Henry’s office as they tried to pick up the pieces, and help Henry, Grace, Grant, Fargo and Holly recover from the after-effects of Isaac Parrish’s sleeping gas.

At the moment, Allison was very interested in the fact that Holly was equally affected. Holly’s body wasn’t, in fact, a real human body anymore, but was artificially grown for her – the Astraeus thing several years ago took away her body, and only Fargo’s and Zane’s artificial body helped her survive.

(Holly and Fargo explained that her synthetic body, aside from the metallic skeleton, was actually mostly human now, with very human DNA. She still had to take iron and other supplements for now, however, until she and Fargo can figure out if it was possible to replace her metal bones with real ones – a person’s bones was responsible for balancing the iron in one’s body, as well as produce blood cells and other blood components.)

- - - - -

By now, Jo and Jack were able to piece together all of the events from yesterday based on all the clues that they’ve been able to gather:

Sometime in the early morning, Andy, and Jo’s people led by Sergeant Dalton, were able to track down “Dr. Connery” in the forest, but it was mostly Andy who was able to follow her in the dark via his built-in night vision.

Dalton wasn’t completely sure since he couldn’t see everything, but Andy and “Dr. Connery” had an encounter. Whatever happened, Andy was left on the forest floor, deactivated.

A follow-up showed several broken tree branches around Andy that indicated a fierce fight. But since it was between two robotic entities, the fight wasn’t as noisy as it would have been if it were between people.

Andy showed some superficial damage on his arms and torso, but he was more or less intact. What deactivated him was the EMP device that the Jennifer Connery robot had with her, and she fired it at Andy at point-blank range. After which, the robot disappeared into the forest again. Marks on the forest floor showed that she was dragging several heavy objects, probably the air tanks. Further on, she got onto the access road that went into that part of the forest, and broke into a forest ranger’s emergency shack. She was able to grab the little pickup parked there and was able to bring her equipment to town (this was confirmed by the forest service truck that was found abandoned near Main Street, and the half-dozen empty high-pressure air tanks in its truck bed).

The robot then waited for the right wind conditions and then released about 10,000 liters of highly compressed sleep gas, covering over two square kilometers of Eureka, including GD, sometime between eight and nine AM. Even at twenty parts per million, the sleeping gas was effective, and it affected almost one hundred percent of the population in town, and seventy-five percent of those within the GD buildings.

Jo’s people also found the remains of the EMP device that disabled Andy at close range, and disabled GD’s communications at long range – the robot, perhaps to prevent it from being used against her and her partner-robot, RoSS, destroyed it.

The “Tesla weapon” that the robot used was essentially a two million-volt “polyphase electro-shock gun” that discharges at around fifty amps – more than enough to kill anyone. According to the literature in GD’s files, the Tesla was the standard weapon the agents from Warehouse 13 use. The power of the Warehouse 13 version was quite low, however, and could only knock out people and cause short-term memory loss. Dr. Connery’s version could burn up a person completely. It just brought home the enormous risk that Jack took to destroy that weapon.

The half-melted CoNAREE robot was completely destroyed, and was now laying on a table in Section Ten, along with the bigger, more intact RoSS robot. Just to be safe, Zane took out the CoNAREE robot’s power packs, so they were now sure it was a hundred percent dead.

As for Andy, his internals were EMP-resistant, except for his main actuating processor and power pack. By replacing them, and rebooting the robot, Zane was able to bring Andy back to life again, with memory and circuits completely intact.

Zane then “debriefed” him, and Andy’s data perfectly corroborated Jack’s conclusions, insofar as Andy’s part in the entire thing was concerned.

- - - - -

Andy asked to be excused so that he could have some rest and run some internal diagnostics. Smiling, Jack agreed and said that Sarah would be very happy to know he was all right. Andy nodded his thanks and left, presumably to go to Sarah.

“Ahhh, love,” Allison quipped.

Jack shook his head. “I will never get used to that,” he said.

“Oh, don’t be a spoilsport,” Allison said. “It’s all totally harmless.” She leaned over and gave Jack a kiss on the cheek. Allison felt a little awkward since Jack was still in his Hannah morph, and, though taller, Jack still appeared to be a teenager.

Someone cleared his throat. It was Charles.

Allison and Jack belatedly realized that they were surrounded by their friends. Looking around, they found everyone smiling at them.

Blushing, Allison and Jack made some excuses about getting Jack’s next morph over with, and they proceeded to her office where the special diagnostic chair was.

Jack was still wearing the stretchy cami string top that he borrowed before, but had replaced the miniskirt and velvet mid-calf boots with a pair of stretchy fatigue pants and combat boots from his fit-anyone wardrobe – being in such a short skirt was making him blush constantly.

Arriving at Allison’s office he sat down in the diagnostic chair. There were four of these chairs: one was in Jack’s office, another two were in their two houses, and this one was in Allison’s office in GD.

The purpose of the chairs were to use sensors to gather more information about Jack’s morphs as they occur, as well as to update Jack’s little “EM device” that allows him to pick which morph he transforms into. Each chair automatically updates the others so that Allison and Grace had the latest data about Jack’s morphs.

This time, when they triggered the morph, Jack came out as one of his previous morphs – the one that looked very close to Sgt. Kira Knight, one of Jo’s security people.

Both Allison and Jack were disappointed that it wasn’t his Jack Carter morph – the one that they’ve been waiting for ever since they found out what was happening to Jack – but were moderately cheered by the fact that, since this was a repeat, Jack still had ten or eleven remaining morphs, and they were both hopeful that one of them would be the Jack Carter morph they’ve been waiting for.

Allison consulted with Grace earlier, and though Grace wasn’t too much in a position to get into any deep discussions at the moment due to the lingering hangover, Grace lent Allison her tablet, and she was able to read Grace’s notes on why Jack’s morphs weren’t exact clones of the DNA donors.

Grace’s theory had to do with what is called epigenetics.

It’s been known for a while that the DNA doesn’t contain the complete details of what a person is, physically speaking, at least: though DNA does provide the genetic “blueprint” of a person, that blueprint does not tell the entire story, as there is something called “epigenetics,” which speak of heritable phenotypic traits, as opposed to inheritable phenotypic traits – heritable traits are not due to genetics and cannot be passed on to offspring.

Epigenetic changes are mostly because of external or environmental factors. Some changes can be the result of DNA damage but some are due to something else altogether, mostly environmental, causing certain genes to be expressed or suppressed other than because of their DNA.

Grace believed Dr. Barrows accomplished her morphs partly by genetic modification, but also partly by epigenetic manipulation. And it may be that, though Jack had the same DNA all throughout all of his morphs, the manner by which genes are expressed or suppressed may not be totally because of the DNA, but must include epigenetic effects of Dr. Barrows’ device.

Clearly, the differences of Jack’s morphs with the donor women were partly because of Jack’s original DNA. There were some constants – like Jack’s height or Jack’s fingerprints or Jack’s blood type – those came from his male form. But there were other constants that seemed to be the result of the mixing of the DNA, like Jack’s new female voice that was the same across all his morphs. But then, there were other changes that varied from form to form, which must have been pre-coded into Dr. Barrows’ device.

But even that theory didn’t fit.

Grace tried to find another reason for these variations, but the variation from what was expected was too inconsistent, and she couldn’t figure out why: some were thinner than expected, some were not; some were more blonde than expected, some were not; some were crystal blue-eyed when they should have just been regular. But as pointed out by Allison’s son, Kevin, Jack’s morphs were “upgraded” into hotties.

Grace tried that hare-brained idea again: what if Jack’s unconscious preferences were controlling or constraining some epigenetic modifications?

But how does one prove that?

Grace decided to look at Jack’s psychiatric records over the years he’d been in Eureka, and the years when he was with the US Marshals. By mapping his answers to questions in psychiatric questionnaires, and the preferences and tastes that he expressed in those government-mandated psychiatric interviews, Grace found a correlation, and she concluded that Jack’s morphs fit his preferences for female paramours. But does that mean Jack’s conscious mind played a role in his morphs? Was it totally unconscious or did his conscious mind control it?

There were some things that seemed to be beyond his influence, though – age, for example, or ethnicity, or even something as mundane as the length of the hair. Those seem to have been constrained by the genetics and epigenetics of the donor contained in the samples they donated at the time of their donation.

Grace then thought, well, if this was correct, did that mean that every time Jack changed to, say, his morph of Dr. Jessica Hartley, the primatologist from Section Three, will he always morph to the same state every time, and have the same hair every time? What if he had his hair cut, or had it styled? What if he cut himself, say, on his thumb? Will his morph have that cut? Will it have the new hair length or hairstyle? Will it always be the same age as the first time Jack changed into that particular morph? Conceivably, Jack could be immortal.

This idea of epigenetically constrained morphs was actually supported by Jack’s recent change into Hannah Cryus, Dr. Bill Cyrus’ daughter. (Hannah Cyrus did confirm that she donated her DNA to Dr. Barrows’ project, but she did it late into the project, which could mean that her donation wasn’t properly recorded, as Dr. Barrows had passed away by then, and recording became spotty when it became unclear whether the project would continue or not. In fact, there could be several other samples in the mix that they don’t know about. If ever, Allison would have to contact all GD and Eureka employees, residents and visitors in order to know.)

As far as Grace’s theory goes, when Hannah had her plastic surgery, she had effectively changed herself, and her changes were, one way or another “captured” in her epigenetics. So Jack’s morph reflected Hannah post-surgery.

It was very mind-boggling, actually, Allison thought. She agreed with Grace, but she knew they’d only confirm their theories over time by observing Jack and getting more data.

So, for the meantime, Allison decided to concentrate on the here-and-now.

She decided to add her own notes to Grace’s theories, as well as her own theories relating to Jack’s morph. One such theory was that Jack naturally morphs at least twice a day, probably because his energy levels go up and down as a natural part of his circadian rhythm.

If so, stabilizing his form may be a problem. But perhaps they could use the EM device they invented to continually morph him to the same form and, in that way, stabilize him. And if they do find his Jack Carter morph, that meant Jack could live the rest of his days as himself. Something she was praying for, for Jack’s sake and hers, as well as their family’s.

There were other questions, like can Jack keep on morphing? Is there a penalty to be paid for that? Or how quickly can he morph from one form to another? Or could he even learn to consciously stop it? She and Grace assumed he’d need about nine hours between morphs, but Allison now thinks Jack can morph as quickly as in an hour, or as long as two days.

She knew that they will be able to answer these questions eventually, but she thought they could use some help.

She therefore emailed a note to Grace and Henry’s email boxes that she intended to contact a friend of hers from the CDC – Dr. Vanessa Calder. She knew Vanessa worked on weird cases like this one, so she might be able to help. And though she does have connections to the intelligence community, as well as to Warehouse 13 (which they all have heard about before), Allison knew that she’s no spook, and that she trusted her implicitly.

For now, she’ll wait for Grace and Henry’s response before trying to contact Vanessa.

- - - - -

Jack knew enough now that he knew his Kira morph had the same measurements as his newest Hannah morph, so he didn’t bother to change.

Allison seemed to be busy, which left Jack with nothing to do. So he went in search of something.

He decided to pass by Section Ten, but was greeted with Sergeant Dalton, who was surrounded by his people, and they seemed to be very agitated.

“Hey, Sarge,” Jack said.

“Better not go in, Sheriff,” Dalton replied. “The big robot’s just switched on. All by itself. And it trashed Section Ten.”

“What!”

“Everyone except for Mr. Donovan was able to escape. I’ve informed Ms Lupo already, and she’ll be sending some backup in a while. In the meantime, we’re to maintain a perimeter.”

Jack agreed. He rushed to Section Ten’s main doors, which were wide open, and he found the robot had indeed torn up Section Ten. Jack looked around and saw Zane knocked out, but he seemed to be largely unhurt. Except for being knocked out, of course.

At the moment, RoSS, the big robot, was standing but immobile - it was looking down at the unmoving form of the other robot – the former Dr. Connery. Jack couldn’t help but feel the robot was grieving or crying as it gazed down at the torn up and half-melted Connery robot.

Used to be Jack wouldn’t think this way, but having had Andy as his deputy for a while now, and having Sarah taking care of his house and his family, he knew his way around AIs by now. He knew, almost as a certainty, that the robot was grieving.

Jack must have made some noise or something because the giant robot’s head swung around to face him. As the robot saw him, it squealed, like a stuck pig. If ever a robot could scream in anger, that was it.

Clearly, the robot recognized Jack. He was in his Kira morph when he “electrocuted” it that other time, and it wasn’t scared anymore – it was mad. It blamed Jack for what happened to the Jennifer Connery robot.

Jack backed away, and the robot started to follow him, slowly gathering speed.

That robot’s going to be unstoppable, he thought, but at least I can lure it away to where it can’t hurt people.

“Sarge!” he called. “Don’t get in its way! I’m going to the parking structure and lure it out of GD. As soon as we’re clear, get Donovan to medical, organize a team and track me!”

Dalton nodded and kept people away. Jack steered away from Medical where most of the gassed people were recuperating, and ran through the rotunda and into the elevator.

Ross didn’t care about keeping quiet and not causing any damage anymore, and just busted through walls and doors.

Jack jabbed at the elevator button and the doors closed.

He looked at the indicator and it slowly went down to the parking level. There was a bang on the elevator’s ceiling and a robotic hand punched through reaching for him.

Jack ducked and avoided the waving, reaching arm. The elevator doors opened and he jumped out.

Yelling for everyone to stay clear, he sprinted for his patrol jeep, and drove it right up to the wooden security barrier. He stopped there and looked into his rear view, waiting for the robot. In a few moments, the elevator door exploded outward and the robot came out.

As soon as Jack saw that the robot spotted him, he gunned the engine, slammed the security barrier into toothpicks and flew out of the parking structure.

The robot sprinted for him, chasing his jeep at a comparable speed. Jack realized some of the reasons for the over-powered motors of that thing: Ross hardly needed any kind of vehicle, and could go over any kind of terrain, unlike a car, but do it at a car’s pace.

But Jack’s jeep has been souped up by Henry Deacon, the greatest engineer in the world (he reminded himself not to let Henry hear him say that), and stepped on the gas.

The jeep shot down the street like a rocket, leaving the robot well behind. However, Jack realized his miscalculation when he saw some curves up ahead. He let go of the gas and fought against the instinct to step on the brakes. Instead, he used the handbrake and slowly pulled it up, gradually slowing the jeep enough for him to steer around the comparatively gentle curves.

That was, until he came up to a sharp hairpin turn.

- - - - -

The jeep wasn’t able to make the hairpin turn, of course, so it skidded onto its side.

Thank god I wore my seatbelt, Jack thought.

Carefully, he unclipped himself and as he did, he realized he didn’t have his gun belt, and therefore he didn’t have his gun and his other equipment as well.

Reaching into the glove compartment, he brought out his spare gun as well as several clips. His thigh holster was wrapped around it and he put the entire thing under his arm. He also spotted the high-tech shotgun-slash-automatic rifle Dalton gave to him before in the passenger footwell, and grabbed that, too.

Jack levered himself out of the tipped-over jeep and dropped to the ground.

Checking himself, he saw that he was unhurt. He strapped the thigh holster to his right thigh, but he had to loosen the straps given his thigh was a little... thicker, stuck his spare gun into the holster and clipped it. He looked down the street and there was no sign of the robot although he could hear it approaching. He slipped the shotgun-rifle’s strap over his shoulder and started making his way up the low hill and into the forest.

Jack knew he was just a few minutes to town by road, but maybe half an hour on foot through the forest. With all the trees, at least that would slow the robot down. When he was on top of the hill, he saw the robot appear around the bend. Jack ducked down so he wouldn’t be spotted.

The robot was actually running, like a person – arms swinging and head down, like a sprinter. If the robot’s appearance were more like Andy’s, he’d be indistinguishable from any person. Aside from being over eight feet tall, of course.

Time to make like a tree and leave, Jack thought and started weaving through the trees in the direction of town. In his office was Jo’s old gun rack. He had more than enough firepower there to squash Ross like a bug. But he needed to get to it first.

Behind him, he heard the robot scream its metal-screeching scream. Jack heard tearing metal and, when he looked back, he saw one of his jeep’s doors sailing through the air.

Pissed, I’m telling you, Jack thought.

After five minutes of jogging down an animal trail Jack stumbled on, he heard the robot crashing through the trees. The robot was tracking him well. Not surprising, after all. Andy would have been just as efficient.

Jack knew that it would probably be better if he got off the trail and make it more difficult for the robot. But he wouldn’t make good time anymore. Jack decided to stay on it, praying it wasn’t a mistake.

Turned out it was.

- - - - -

Jack could glimpse the road through the trees and down the little hill he was on. He was ten minutes from making it.

As he got to a natural fork, the robot came crashing through the trees.

Turning to face it, he fired Dalton’s shotgun.

The slugs, or whatever they were, hit the robot on the chest point-blank and exploded. Jack was knocked off his feet by the blast wave, but it knocked the robot down as well.

Scrambling back onto his feet, Jack made a break for it and ran on down the trail. The robot had a more difficult time getting back up so Jack made the most of his extra time.

Jack looked around and saw a small rise. He climbed up the mound, shimmied up a tree and waited. The robot started walking up the trail and Jack fired again, knocking the robot down again and into a little grove of small trees, knocking most of them down. Tree trunks, branches and other stuff fell on the robot. That should give him a couple more minutes extra lead time ahead of the robot.

One thing that he did notice from all of this morphing, he thought – he was so much faster and more flexible. He shimmied down the tree, more rapidly than he used to be able to, and didn’t mind the few inconsequential cuts on his hands and arms.

He decided to put this theory to the test and started sprinting down the trail, and it did feel like he was faster. That should count for a couple more minutes’ lead, and at this point, every minute counted.

As he sprinted down the trail, he felt a vibration on his butt.

He almost jumped out of his skin until he realized it was his GD-issued communicator.

GD communicators weren’t really anything fancy – They were just smartphones. Except that they voice-driven, had almost twice the standby time of the longest-lasting smartphone, twice the signal strength, was smaller than a small post-it note and as thick as two sticks of gum.

“Dammit!” he muttered, “I forgot about my phone! I could have called for help!”

“Hello,” he said as he ran – another thing he discovered he could do better – talking while running.

“Hello, Sheriff,” a girl he didn’t know answered. “Deputy Andy gave us your comm’s IMEI number and we’ve been tracking you for a while now. We saw your jeep by the road. I take it you’re with the robot.”

“More like running away from it, actually. What’s an IMEI?”

“That’s the International Mobile Station Equipment Identity number – it’s the identity code of your communicator.”

“Ahhh. So where are you now?”

“Sergeant Dalton’s team and my team are about ten minutes of your present location.”

“You’re on the road by the forest?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” he said, slowed down and then stopped. “I’ve stopped moving now so you you’ll know where I’ll drive the robot out. As soon as I do, you guys let him have it. Pour it on since this sucker’s tough!”

“Sgt. Dalton and Mr. Donovan told us, Sheriff. We are properly armed. ETA to your position five minutes.”

“Got it. I’ll flush it out in five, so you better get ready.”

“Don’t worry, Sheriff, we will.”

“By the way, who is this?”

“This is Sergeant Kira Knight, Sheriff Carter. See you in five.” And then she hung up.

“Kira Knight,” he mumbled. “Well, I’ll be...”

- - - - -

Jack looked around and found another likely tree. He climbed up the tree again, and positioned himself, aiming his “shotgun” at the general direction he assumed it would be coming from. He looked at the little glass readout of the gun and it said “05” – only five rounds.

Better make them count, then, he thought.

In a few moments, the robot came out from around the bend. It was “jogging,” looking around for him.

When it was where he wanted it, Jack whistled. It stopped in its tracks.

“Hey, you!” Jack yelled. “Yeah, you, you stupid bucket of bolts! Here I am!”

The robot turned to him, screamed its screeching, metallic scream, and as it was about to move towards him, Jack fired.

He fired low on its torso since he didn’t want it to tip over. The explosion did push it back against the trees on the opposite side of the trail, though.

Jack fired again, almost on the same spot, and the explosion pushed it back again. Jack fired two more times and the robot backed up on its own this time.

“That’s it,” Jack said, and when he saw the robot almost perched on the edge, he fired again, but this time right on the robot’s faceplate. This time, the robot did tip over - right over the edge.

Jack hurriedly climbed down the tree and ran over to the spot where it tipped over, and followed the robot with his eyes as it tumbled over and over until it reached the side of the road – right into the laps of Andy, Sgt. Knight, Sgt. Dalton and the rest of Jo’s people, and they let the robot have it.

Jack had to duck back as large explosions echoed through the trees.

The explosions continued for more than a minute and, as soon as it stopped, Jack peered over the edge and saw the robot in flames, not moving and not struggling. It was as still as sack of nuts and bolts.

A couple of trucks were burning, too – the result of Ross retaliating by throwing rocks, or being hit by burning robot parts, but at least they got the thing.

“Yes!” he cried in triumph, and the people looked up. One of them was Andy. He waved to them, and Andy waved back.

“Hey, Boss!” Andy called.

“Glad to finally meet you, Sheriff Carter,” Sgt. Kira Knight said and stuck her hand out.

Jack gamely reached out and shook her hand.

“Glad to meet you, too, Sergeant,” Jack smiled. “Why ‘finally?’”

Kira smiled. “Do you know a very intense teenager called Dawn Cameron from something called the Jack Watch?”

Jack laughed. “Yes, I do.”

“Well, she has been after me to become a member of the Jack Watch, since I’m one of ‘Jack’s Angels.’”

“Jack’s Angels? What’s that?”

“You know,” Kira said, and gestured to herself and him.

“Ahhh.”

Suddenly, they noticed the silence, and when they looked, everyone was staring at the both of them – near-twins, although Kira was a few inches shorter and her hair was styled better.

“What!” Kira and Jack said, almost at the same time.

to be concluded in Episode 12: “Just Another Day In Eureka” Jan. 31, Thursday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network