In the last episode, Jack Carter, Eureka’s Sheriff and the star of our show, had been thinking if this current situation that he was in – his constant morphing into different women – was going to be his new normal. What about his relationship with Allison, what about his work and his career? What about the kids?

As for the present danger of the robot, Douglas Fargo and Holly Marten paid them a visit in order to work with them and help figure out what the robot really was. And it seemed that this had already paid off – right off the bat, Fargo was able to identify and fix Zane’s main bottleneck in deciphering the robot’s commands.

After a few hours of work with Fargo, Henry called Jack to tell Allison to come back from her vacation – he was organizing a meeting for the following day. So Jack called Allison to come back, and when Allison arrived, Jack played a trick on her, and everyone had a laugh.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

Jack woke up, about an hour ahead of the alarm, and he found that he and Allison were spooning, with him as the back spoon. He supposed, because he was so much taller, it was the natural position to be in. But like the past few days, that was all they did - spoon. When someone says that he and Allison ‘slept together,’ it was the literal truth – as in it was just sleep, and it just happened to be in the same bed.

Jack thought it wasn’t so bad, actually. He was all for foreplay, but it was like it was foreplay all night. It was frustrating, of course, since it never got further than that. But in truth, it wasn’t that frustrating. Jack wondered, could it be girls like foreplay better than boys? And since he was physically a girl...

And Allison seemed to be more responsive this time, too. Sometime in the night, she sleepily mumbled that she thought they should do it, but Jack thought she was just talking in her sleep. So he just acted like he didn’t hear anything, and pretended he was fast asleep.

He would think to himself later that he wouldn’t even know how to do it if they did try. He wasn’t clueless, of course, but he doesn’t really do... unconventional things.

Jack got up and started getting ready. He got a text that said Henry, Zane and Fargo had Andy in the labs so that they could compare his systems to Dr. Connery’s robot, so Jack decided to take the first half of the morning shift, which was usually Andy’s.

He caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. It was the first time for him to wear nighties or negligees. To him, they looked like lingerie, and found out from Allison later that nighties, negligees and lingerie were actually the same - Allison schooled him on it - and had suggested for him to try some since owned had several now as part of his new fit-anyone wardrobe.

To be fair, he thought lingerie was like fancy underwear, but Allison explained they were “nightclothes,” though nowadays they were more than that. He didn’t quite understand, but he nodded anyway.

So he gamely tried some on, and, to his embarrassment, he liked it and felt pretty. But it was just Allison in the house – Kev and the girls weren’t here, so he didn’t feel too embarassed.

Actually, he felt more than pretty. Jack felt... sexy.

Whether it was the feel of the material or the cut, or the style of the nightclothes, he didn’t know. But this just brought home his situation, and he realized he needed to find a way back. He realized his emotional and sexual frustrations had been ratcheting up, and only his almost instinctive and automatic denial of it had kept it in check. He wasn’t prejudiced, and wasn’t a misogynist in any sense, but he identified and defined himself as a man. To have that taken away would affect even the most liberal of men.

Even Henry and Allison didn’t notice his gathering frustration. He himself didn’t notice so how could they? Only now did he notice.

In the bathroom, Jack took off his sexy nightie, finished his usual routine quickly without looking at himself the whole time, and dried himself quickly, or as quickly as he could - the hair-drying routine was something he was still getting used to. At least he didn’t need to shave anymore.

He had to get back to normal soon.

Jack went to the old guestroom, which was now his wardrobe room, and picked one of the first uniforms Mary’s made for him, which wasn’t part of the new fit-anyone outfits: It was a short-sleeved one, but at least it wasn’t too far from his original guy ones.

But first, in a dressing gown, he went downstairs, had a quick ham-and-cheese sandwich and some coffee, and had his “super juice” – a 500ml Tang drink, with the addition of forty-eight teaspoons of sugar.

He sat in the diagnostic chair Allison had made, switched on the sensors, and sipped the juice slowly.

In less than ten minutes, he finished his juice and went through his first morph of the day.

He wasn’t too hopeful but he looked at his hands. They weren’t his hands, so he knew it wasn’t his Jack Carter morph.

He checked and it was a new morph – his twentieth, this one of Dr. Jessica Macnee, the director of Section Three. That could be awkward because he saw the GD directors regularly. He couldn’t do anything about it so he decided he’ll cross that bridge when he got there.

He dutifully recorded the new morph’s wave form in the EM device, updated the other chairs, and went back up to get dressed. He hoped that the uniform he picked would fit.

- - - - -

At around eleven while patrolling, Andy called him on the phone and told him that that he was done with his session at Henry’s. He also said that Henry wanted to move their meeting to lunchtime at the café.

“Thanks, Andy,” Jack said. “You can take over now, so I can make that meeting. I’ll just finish one last call. See you later at the office.”

Presently, he was at the beginning of the new grove of trees that was at the edge of town – it seems that Dr. Leonardo, Eureka’s lone dendrologist, was working with a bunch of teenage volunteers from Tesla School, and one of her volunteers was missing.

After he arrived, he asked Dr. Leonardo to explain the situation.

Despite being less than five years old, Dr. Leonardo’s trees were all over twenty feet high. These trees were an improvement over the trees she tried to grow before, which had a propensity for falling down.

These new trees were slower to grow than her original batch, but these, at least, didn’t fall down so easily. In a matter of weeks, these new trees were fully-grown when a regular forest tree would take at least five years to be as full-grown. (To be fair, her first batch of trees could be fully grown in a matter of hours, but they weren’t stable, to say the least.)

Her project was mostly finished now, but she was doing the required five-year follow-through. After all, the new trees couldn’t be distributed if there would be consequences. So she was doing observation and due diligence.

Once she finished, though, saplings of her new trees could be distributed and provide the world with a new source of raw material, stem deforestation, help in reducing the effects of climate change, help in improving the quality of the air, and help to protect against soil erosion, floods, landslides, and so many other things.

In any case, the project seemed to be doing well, and her kids were there helping her do some measurements – something new that Dr. Leonardo was trying: getting the community to be more involved in her project. However, this Sunday, one of the kids had gone missing. It wasn’t twenty-four hours, but given the ongoing manhunt, Jack had everyone on alert for anything, and to call him right away.

As Dr. Leonardo was explaining the disappearance of Percy to Jack, the kids had congregated around him.

Clearly, they knew who he was and what happened to him, and were very intrigued. The boys were taken by her looks, of course, while the girls were more interested in knowing about him.

During the past days, unbeknownst to him, Jack had been starting to accumulate a reputation, undoubtedly aided and abetted by Dawn Cameron’s so-called “Jack Watch,” and Pilar Reed.

To the young women of Eureka, they were very impressed that a man could transform into a woman, and be so heroic and so capable, and, at the same time, so beautiful and so fashionable. He was proof to them that gender didn’t matter.

To the boys – it was just that Jack was such a hottie.

Jack started to organize the kids into search parties when the missing teenager, Percy, came back running.

It seems that he had discovered a cave.

That wasn’t too surprising – there were a few caves in Eureka’s forest area, and hikers and other nature lovers would discover one occasionally.

Still, Jack followed Percy back to the cave that he found, and inside the cave was a bunch of supplies and equipment. The cave was set up like a living area and electronics shack. Percy pointed to some things that he said, whoever it was, that person was working on some kind of remote control gizmo, or maybe a kind of robot.

“It’s all pretty high-tech, actually,” he said.

Normally, people would just ignore a kid, but this was Eureka, where even the kids routinely had IQs of 140. So Jack took his comment seriously.

Jack nodded. He looked at some of the stuff on a makeshift desk made from some old discarded shipping crates, and remembered seeing several things on it from Dr. Connery’s personal effects.

He took out his smartphone and took pictures of everything in the cave.

“All right, kids,” he said, “everyone out.” He herded the teens back out and back to Dr. Leonardo’s campsite.

“Dr. Leonardo,” he said to the dendrologist out of earshot of the kids, “I’m going to have to ask you to stop your surveys for a few days.”

Dr. Leonardo looked at him. “It’s about that robot, huh?”

“Possibly,” he said. “But please keep that confidential for now. I don’t want anyone to panic or whatever.”

“You can count on me, Sheriff,” she said.

“Can you help get these kids get home?”

“I’ll take care of it. Oh, and Sheriff?”

“Yes, Dr. Leonardo?”

“I heard about your morphs,” she said. “Is it true that... you, know, one of them was Melissa?”

“Melissa Benoit? Yes, that’s true. Unfortunately. Do you know Melissa?”

“Ummm, yes, I do. She’s my cousin.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Huh? Why sorry? I think that’s amazing! Can you... you know, morph into her anytime you want?”

Jack shrugged. “Pretty much. Listen, I have a meeting I have to go to. I’ll see you later and update you when you can start working on your trees again.” Jack shook the doctor’s hand and left for the lunch meeting.

“Bye, Jackie!” his new, young fans called after him.

Darn Pilar and Dawn! he grumbled to himself.

- - - - -

He made it to the café just in time.

As he parked near the café, the few people out and about on Sunday waved to him. “Hello, Sheriff,” most of them said, recognizing the uniform if not the girl. “Hi, Jackie!” others said.

“Hello,” he replied, smiled politely and waved back. This “fan” thing is getting out of hand, he thought.

Anyway, he found everyone at a table outside.

“Jack!” Allison called. And gave him a hug. “New morph, I see,” she said.

“Yep,” he replied. “That makes it twenty now.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll find your morph soon. Although, since it’s down to about ten now, you can expect lots of repeats.”

“I figured.”

“Come and meet everyone,” she said. “I have a surprise!”

He got to their table out on the sidewalk, and he saw Henry, Jo, Zane, Fargo and...

“Dr. Grant!” Jack exclaimed.

Grant raised a finger to his lips in a shushing motion.

“Not so loud, sport,” he said. “Don’t you remember? It’s Trent Rockwell now.”

“Of course! Trent Rockwell,” he said and pulled him into a hug.

Back in 1947, Charles Grant, originally Trevor Grant, was the one who set up and conceived Eureka, and the concept behind it – that of getting the world’s most brilliant scientists together for the betterment of the world.

But, in a very complicated series of improbable events, Dr. Grant was hurled forward in time to 2010, and he got to see his brainchild brought to life.

However, because of skyrocketing costs and increasing difficulty in managing GD and the town, the government decided to shut the town down. Rather than allowing that, Dr. Grant, in the guise of “Trent Rockwell,” essentially bought the town to allow it to continue (by then, the stocks he had bought in the forties had matured in the intervening sixty-five years into enormous fortunes, giving him the necessary resources to purchase GD and the town). And after rescuing Eureka, he disappeared again, to pursue whatever he was pursuing at the time.

It was the first time for Jack and the others to see him again.

- - - - -

“Speaking of names,” ‘Trent’ said, “should I call you Jackie now?” He looked Jack up and down.

“Whatever!” Jack laughed. “I guess you’ve heard. Anyway, call me what you like. It’s so good to see you!”

“Thanks, Jack,” he said. “It’s good to see you, too. But I’m afraid this isn’t a social call.” He signed for them to sit down.

Vincent was so glad that they were all back together, but knew they had stuff to talk about, so he served them their food and left them alone. He’ll visit later.

“Henry,” ‘Trent’ gestured to him, “maybe you can start?”

Henry nodded. “Well... Fargo, Zane and I found some stuff.

“Thanks to Fargo, we were able to interpret most of Ross’s primary programming and encoded data. And, yes, this is indeed the Ross robot in that defunct project that Jo found out about.

“Ross, or ‘RS-1,’ is pretty much a mixture of technologies – its hardware is mostly off-the-shelf stuff from Japan, its weapons and armor are from the marines and the US Navy, and the electronics and software ares mostly vintage Area 51 stuff, and the stuff we use in Andy. That’s largely why Fargo and Zane were able to reverse-engineer a lot of its internals. And thanks to Fargo, we now know what they were after.”

“It seems,” Fargo said, “Ross’s master or masters, whoever they are, want access to Section Five. It was programmed to retrieve all the material it could get about Section Five projects.”

“Seems to me, it would have been so much easier to just grab the project files,” Allison interjected.

“I think that was the intention – Ross was supposed to work in partnership with another robot identified in its files as ‘JC-1.’ It was JC-1’s job to try and do that, with Ross’s help. Failing that, Ross was to physically break in and grab all the material it could get its hands on, and return them to its masters.”

“Who are its masters?” Jack asked.

“Who knows,” Jo said. “But Dr. Grant and I... I mean, Mr. Rockwell,” Jo grinned. “Mr. Rockwell and I have our suspicions. Since Eureka’s privatization, the government and the DoD lost its access to GD and Eureka data. And also, since we now do projects for non-US and non-government parties and companies, too, there are lots of people in the DoD and the government that are very uneasy. General Mansfield, for one. So we think it’s these people that are trying to access Section Five.”

“But, Jo,” Allison said, “We update the government about the military projects we do. It’s part of the law, and the rules set by the ERC in the BIS at the US Department of Commerce.”

“ERC and BIS?” Jack asked.

“the End-User Review Committee of the Bureau of Industry and Security,” Jo replied. “The Department of Commerce can prohibit us from selling products or providing services to certain governments or entities.”

“Right,” Allison said. “Sure, we don’t give the government the details, but we give enough information for them to know what we’re doing. We’re in strict compliance with the law, so I don’t know what their problem is.”

Henry shrugged. “There will always be people in the DoD and the government that will be suspicious regardless of what reports we submit. But that’s not all. Charles? I mean ‘Trent,’” Henry laughed.

Charles/Trevor/Trent nodded, smiling. “As usual, Henry’s correct.

“As soon as I heard Jo was making inquiries about Project Ross, I tried to assist by getting some information, too. From the sidelines only, of course.” He brought out some files and handed them to Henry and Jack. “In essence, the project was intended to create something like Deputy Andy, but a version of Andy that could be used as a superior soldier substitute. Hence the project name ‘Robot Super Soldier,’ or ‘RoSS.’

“But there were two robots produced by the project – Ross, which we all know, and another one. This one was closer to Andy, and was designed to pass for human. It was called the ‘Collaborative And Autonomous Robotic Emulated Entity,’ since it was supposed to work in a kind of collaborative partnership with the RoSS robot – sort of its supervisor.”

He looked around, but all he saw were blank looks.

“‘Collaborative and Autonomous Robotic Emulated Entity?’” he repeated. “Or maybe you prefer the acronym they used – Co.n.A.R.E.E.”

Jack and Allison looked at each other.

“Co.n.A.R.E.E. - Connery,” Jack said. “JC-1 – Jennifer Connery One...”

Allison looked at Charles. “Are you saying Dr. Connery is a robot?”

“Yes. Just like Andy, but a better, more convincing fake human.”

“But Dr. Connery’s a well-known scientist!”

Charles cleared his throat and opened his valise again. He brought out a picture of an old African-American woman.

“This is a picture of the real Dr. Connery,” he said. “She’s currently seventy-five years old, and lives in a home in Hawaii. Her real name is Jennifer Frederic and was born in nineteen forty-three. In her time, she worked with various companies and agencies, and made fantastic discoveries and breakthroughs. Most of her patents, discoveries and inventions were all under pseudonyms, or were kept top secret, largely because they were discoveries made by a black woman and were therefore not quite accepted or credited by the established scientific community. Imagine the kind of credibility she would have had back then. But it seemed she had some family connections in government, and this paved the way for her to get her work registered under her name and start collecting royalties, even if she didn’t get much public acknowledgement for them.

“Around 2008, people from Area 51 put her discoveries in robotics and electronics together, updated them, and attributed them to a fictitious Dr. Jennifer Connery.”

Charles pulled out another picture – someone that looked very similar to the Dr. Connery they knew.

“This is the little-known British actress Emogene Falco. Around 2009, she was hired by the Department of Defense for a series of photo shoots to be used for a PR campaign. Nothing came of the campaign, though, but she was nevertheless paid handsomely for her time and for her pictures.

“And for a year, a series of articles and back-dated publications were seeded in the relevant scientific communities and publications, establishing the credentials and reputation of ‘Dr. Jennifer Connery’ fairly quickly, and ‘her’ data and other discoveries were then funneled into the Andy Project – a pilot project to design a people-friendly robotic entity. The main project - Project Ross then followed the pilot project, which was the whole point of it.

“The Area 51 team that was supposedly working under the leadership of this fictitious Dr. Connery never even met her – perhaps because there really was no Dr. Connery - and most of their work was done according to instructions and specifications they received by courier or e-mail.” Charles grinned. “It sounds very much like a bad mystery novel, huh?”

“Yes.” Allison said.

“I doubt if the project can be replicated anymore,” Charles continued, “since most of the project files have disappeared, except the files that were passed on to GD for the purpose of maintaining Andy. Who we need to find is someone who can take whatever data is still existing, including Andy’s data, and replicate the project – a person that could have been part of the original project - and we might be able to track down who was really behind Project Ross and Project Andy.”

“But what genius can even make another Andy?” she said.

Charles pointed to Fargo.

“Hey!” Fargo said, “don’t look at me! I didn’t do it!”

“We believe you, Fargo,” Zane said, “but who else would have the knowledge and the skills to do it?” He shrugged. “I can’t do it, and Henry’s already said he couldn’t do it either.”

“There’s another one – Toby!”

“Your friend Toby Bismarck,” Jo said, “from Area 51.”

“Yes! Ask him!”

“I told you - we can’t find him,” Jo said.

Everyone paused at that.

“Ohmigod!” Fargo whispered. “Do you think Toby’s dead?”

“I don’t know,” Jo said. No one spoke for a long time.

“Well,” Jack interjected into the silence, “here’s something else.” He then told everyone what he found near Dr. Leonardo’s campsite. He then shared the pictures he took.

“Look at this,” Fargo said and pointed to one of the devices on Connery’s makeshift table.

“What is it?” Jo asked.

“It’s a transmitter,” Fargo said. “It could be something used to contact Ross.”

“What about these,” Jo said, pointing to a bunch of what looked like gas tanks. Stickers on the tanks showed that they were industrial gas tanks stolen from GD.

“I don’t know,” Fargo said. “They could contain anything.”

“Nerve gas?” Jack asked.

“Most likely not,” Zane said. “The US nerve gas stockpiles are in Fort Detrick, Maryland. We don’t have any nerve gas or anything like that in Eureka. But those tanks could contain any other aerosol or gas, and allow the gas to be dispersed across a wide area using this attachment.” He pointed to the device beside the tanks.

“We won’t be able to know what they really contain,” Charles said, “unless we can get to that cave again, and grab that equipment. Jack?”

“Right,” Jack said. “Jo?”

“Let’s go!”

- - - - -

In fifteen minutes, they, including Andy, were at Dr. Leonardo’s campsite. Charles, Henry, Allison and Fargo had decided to go back to GD, however – Holly and Grace were back there doing follow-up stuff on the robot. Given that Dr. Connery might be able to contact it, it was best to back them up and keep watch over Ross.

As for the rest, Jack led them to where the cave was.

“What’s wrong, Jack?” Jo asked as they walked, picking up on Jack’s troubled expression.

“If only we gave Dr. Connery a physical, or even just a simple scan,” he said, “we could have prevented all this, and I’d still be my old self...”

“No use blaming yourself,” Jo replied. “No one would have thought to do that. A physical isn’t mandatory for visiting scientists.”

“Yeah. Still...”

When they got there, the equipment was strewn all over the cave, everything deliberately destroyed, jumbled up and piled into the corners.

“That’s it, then,” Jo said.

“Wait!” Jack said. “Zane, can you look through all that and see if there are things from the pictures that are missing?” He handed Zane his phone.

Zane looked at Jack. “You’re a genius, Carter!”

He then scrabbled over and picked through the trashed electronics and other equipment. “The transmitter and the dispersal equipment aren’t here,” Zane said, “and the tanks are missing, too. Other than that, I can’t tell if anything else is missing.”

Jack sighed. “I thought so. This is all camouflage. She saw me and the kids earlier, so when we left, she decided to take the equipment she needed, and tried to hide that fact by trashing what was left.”

“Dr. Connery is pretty smart,” Andy said, “but she can’t pull the wool over our eyes! She’s up against Sheriff Jackie Carter!”

Whether or not Andy was being sincere or was attempting a joke, no one knew. They knew he was constantly trying to improve his sense of humor and was trying out material all the time. But this seemed unusually subtle humor for Andy, nor to mention inappropriate at the moment. But everyone laughed politely nevertheless.

“Shut up, you guys!” Jack said.

- - - - -

By the end of the day, Zane had all the junk from the cave trucked over to Section Ten so that they could examine them in detail.

For her part, Jo had deployed half of her security people in and around the area of Dr. Leonardo’s campsite, and had them spread out and look for Dr. Jennifer Connery, and that she be considered armed and dangerous: everyone was ordered to shoot on sight.

But since it was getting dark, Jack left Andy with Jo’s commandos to continue the hunt for the ConAREE robot, and they all regrouped back at GD.

Back in GD, Zane said he picked up a radio signal, and though the robot didn’t respond, they were worried. Zane and Fargo stopped work and isolated the robot.

They paired up to keep watch over the robot. Grace and Henry, with “Trent Rockwell” for company, took the first watch, to be followed by Allison and Jack, and then Holly and Fargo, and the last shift by Jo and Zane.

This gave Jack and Allison a chance to go have dinner at the café first while Jo and Zane went home, and Holly and Fargo checked in at the bed and breakfast formerly run by Beverly Barlowe and now run by the town.

Before going to dinner, though, since it was still early, Jack insisted on dropping by the office. He wanted to get his second morph for the day over with.

So, in Jack’s office, Allison mixed up a glass of his “super juice” and Jack sat in the special chair while he drank it. In less than fifteen minutes, the transformation was done, but, as Allison predicted, he had morphed into one of his old ones – his Nurse Tricia Heller morph again, to be precise.

Jack was disappointed, but he didn’t let Allison see his disappointment.

He decided to change into one of his fit-anyone uniforms and let Allison go ahead to the café.

As he looked in the mirror, he sighed. Who knows, he thought. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll get my Jack Carter morph.

He stepped out of the office still finishing buttoning his top. Some people waved hello and he waved back. He blushed, realizing his top was still half undone, and hurried to button it up.

He didn’t know if he could really adjust to being a girl, if ever they found out this was permanent. But maybe tomorrow he’ll change into his Jack Carter morph.

Maybe tomorrow, he repeated to himself.

to be continued in Episode 10: “A Disaster on Main Street” Jan. 28, Monday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network