Sidekick in Peril!
Bendytimed to a few days after this.
Paco was paging through a book about computer-repair in the Titans' South base when his phone went off, the ringtone indicating that it was Hector and/or Nadia. He flipped it open and held it to his ear.
"Hey, you've reached Paco, best sidekick in the south. Whaddya got for me?"
"Results on that robot, underbossman!" Hector reported from the other end of the line. Paco whooped and kicked his feet off the consol they’d been resting on, clicking a few buttons to open up the Scarabcave. A new folder was waiting for him right there.
"Awesome, dude! What’s so urgent that it warrants phone time instead of just email?"
"Okay so, Lyndon "the B stands for 'Bot" Johnson, according to the schematics you sent us, is actually an older robot that's been tinkered with. Like, seriously older. Attacked El Paso in nineteen forty-nine older. Went by “THINKO!” then, which is a way cooler than PrezBot. Some guy named Alan Von Neumann built it."
"So this is, what, the mad scientist version of "you kids get off my lawn"?"
"If Von Neumann, senior, weren't already dead, then maybe."
"Okay," Paco said, leaning back in his chair. "So what else you got?"
"Alan Von Neumann junior was also a mad scientist type. But he built different robots called the Unimates, blah-de-blah-blah, arrested and tossed in Las Tunas Federal Corrections. Until, interestingly enough, the day of the Johnson statue unveiling. Guess who suddenly vanished out of his cell while all the attention was on you guys in Austin?"
"Von Neumann junior."
"Bingo." Oh hey, that was Nadia. Conference-call time. "But that's where it gets interesting. Junior wasn't that fond of dear old dad's toys. Not to mention, he'd have been pretty hard-pressed to do anything from inside prison. So we thought he might have an outside accomplice."
"Buuuuut we couldn't find diddly-squat," Hector chimed in again. "Seriously, no one visited Von Neumann in ages."
"But," Nadia interrupted, "I am a genius and thus managed to find out that he's got a daughter. Maria Boole, professor at EPSU. What's interesting about her is that we only found her because he mentioned her in an interview he gave years ago - no birth certificates on file or mentions of her in any other news articles or anything. Pretty fishy."
"Which is why we called," Hector concluded. "Fishy. Also, escaped convict. Always good press if you bring one of those in."
"All right, thanks guys. We totally owe you one."
"Several."
"Several then. I'll keep you in the loop. Later!"
Paco hung up and clicked through the stuff on the computer. Nadia had included Maria Boole’s home address. Maybe it was time to do a little snooping of his own...
---
Professor Boole’s place was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, as it turned out. Coming up with an excuse for being in the neighborhood was going to be harder than he’d thought, but Paco was a pretty creative kind of guy. He’d come up with something. And if worse came to worst, he had a communicator back to Southies’ HQ to call for back-up.
All in all, it was a pretty nice place. One story white stucco, with a half-wall around it that left the backside of the house open to the desert. Wait, no, two story, he could see windows for a basement beneath the bushes that hugged the sides of the house. It looked like a lot of space for one person, but maybe she just had a lot of books or something. He didn’t seen any security cameras, but if she’d broken her dad out of jail, she might have higher tech surveillance that he just couldn’t recognize. So he’d just have to act as unsuspicious as possible while snooping.
He approached from the back where the half-wall didn’t force him to go through the most visible path toward the house, then ducked down beneath the bushes and listened hard for any sounds from inside. Nada. Lucky him. He slowly began to make his way over toward the sunken window, pausing every so often to listen. Once he finally made it to his goal, he stopped and waited with an eye on the sky until a cloud passed over the sun so that he could peek in the window without casting a shadow inside.
Hah! Success! There was an old guy inside in what was certainly an orange prison jumpsuit! Paco started to slink backward, reaching for his communicator to call the Titans, then paused and inched forward again. Something wasn’t right with that picture. Was Von Neumann-
The sound of the safety on a gun clicking off interrupted him mid-thought and Paco immediately froze in place. After a second or two, he dared to peek out of the corner of his eye. The gun in question was in the hands of a blond woman in glasses, and even with the mouth of the gun holding most of his attention, he could see that she was shaking.
"Whoa, ma’am," he said slowly, raising both hands. "I’m not trying to break in or anything, I’m not gonna try and hurt you. I just lost my cat."
"Save it. Shut up," Professor Boole said tersely. "I think you should come inside."
*Some dialogue by Matthew Sturges, Blue Beetle: Armor Plated, October 2009
Paco was paging through a book about computer-repair in the Titans' South base when his phone went off, the ringtone indicating that it was Hector and/or Nadia. He flipped it open and held it to his ear.
"Hey, you've reached Paco, best sidekick in the south. Whaddya got for me?"
"Results on that robot, underbossman!" Hector reported from the other end of the line. Paco whooped and kicked his feet off the consol they’d been resting on, clicking a few buttons to open up the Scarabcave. A new folder was waiting for him right there.
"Awesome, dude! What’s so urgent that it warrants phone time instead of just email?"
"Okay so, Lyndon "the B stands for 'Bot" Johnson, according to the schematics you sent us, is actually an older robot that's been tinkered with. Like, seriously older. Attacked El Paso in nineteen forty-nine older. Went by “THINKO!” then, which is a way cooler than PrezBot. Some guy named Alan Von Neumann built it."
"So this is, what, the mad scientist version of "you kids get off my lawn"?"
"If Von Neumann, senior, weren't already dead, then maybe."
"Okay," Paco said, leaning back in his chair. "So what else you got?"
"Alan Von Neumann junior was also a mad scientist type. But he built different robots called the Unimates, blah-de-blah-blah, arrested and tossed in Las Tunas Federal Corrections. Until, interestingly enough, the day of the Johnson statue unveiling. Guess who suddenly vanished out of his cell while all the attention was on you guys in Austin?"
"Von Neumann junior."
"Bingo." Oh hey, that was Nadia. Conference-call time. "But that's where it gets interesting. Junior wasn't that fond of dear old dad's toys. Not to mention, he'd have been pretty hard-pressed to do anything from inside prison. So we thought he might have an outside accomplice."
"Buuuuut we couldn't find diddly-squat," Hector chimed in again. "Seriously, no one visited Von Neumann in ages."
"But," Nadia interrupted, "I am a genius and thus managed to find out that he's got a daughter. Maria Boole, professor at EPSU. What's interesting about her is that we only found her because he mentioned her in an interview he gave years ago - no birth certificates on file or mentions of her in any other news articles or anything. Pretty fishy."
"Which is why we called," Hector concluded. "Fishy. Also, escaped convict. Always good press if you bring one of those in."
"All right, thanks guys. We totally owe you one."
"Several."
"Several then. I'll keep you in the loop. Later!"
Paco hung up and clicked through the stuff on the computer. Nadia had included Maria Boole’s home address. Maybe it was time to do a little snooping of his own...
---
Professor Boole’s place was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, as it turned out. Coming up with an excuse for being in the neighborhood was going to be harder than he’d thought, but Paco was a pretty creative kind of guy. He’d come up with something. And if worse came to worst, he had a communicator back to Southies’ HQ to call for back-up.
All in all, it was a pretty nice place. One story white stucco, with a half-wall around it that left the backside of the house open to the desert. Wait, no, two story, he could see windows for a basement beneath the bushes that hugged the sides of the house. It looked like a lot of space for one person, but maybe she just had a lot of books or something. He didn’t seen any security cameras, but if she’d broken her dad out of jail, she might have higher tech surveillance that he just couldn’t recognize. So he’d just have to act as unsuspicious as possible while snooping.
He approached from the back where the half-wall didn’t force him to go through the most visible path toward the house, then ducked down beneath the bushes and listened hard for any sounds from inside. Nada. Lucky him. He slowly began to make his way over toward the sunken window, pausing every so often to listen. Once he finally made it to his goal, he stopped and waited with an eye on the sky until a cloud passed over the sun so that he could peek in the window without casting a shadow inside.
Hah! Success! There was an old guy inside in what was certainly an orange prison jumpsuit! Paco started to slink backward, reaching for his communicator to call the Titans, then paused and inched forward again. Something wasn’t right with that picture. Was Von Neumann-
The sound of the safety on a gun clicking off interrupted him mid-thought and Paco immediately froze in place. After a second or two, he dared to peek out of the corner of his eye. The gun in question was in the hands of a blond woman in glasses, and even with the mouth of the gun holding most of his attention, he could see that she was shaking.
"Whoa, ma’am," he said slowly, raising both hands. "I’m not trying to break in or anything, I’m not gonna try and hurt you. I just lost my cat."
"Save it. Shut up," Professor Boole said tersely. "I think you should come inside."
*Some dialogue by Matthew Sturges, Blue Beetle: Armor Plated, October 2009