High Noon on Jefferson (scifi story): Chapter One

META: This is sequel to Dawn on Jefferson and set 3 years later.

Chapter One

Hi, there!

It has been a while, hasn't it.

I know, I know. I am supposed to talk to you and confess, ahem, allow you to chronodox everything. I mean, I know I was supposed to keep out of trouble and all, but, yeah, I didn't. I went off and had yet another adventure. I mean, what are the chances a girl out on the frontier of space would have two major adventures before she's 18!

I know, right?

Look, I'm sorry. I really don't want to do this right now. My folks made it really clear I had to do normal activities for a while. That's why I'm here, helping set of for the Winter Ball. I really need to do somethings that are...normal, y'know? Chronodoxing my latest adventure is not really, um, normal if you get my meaning.

You're not going to go away, are you?

Fine. Ok. Let's do this.

Wait. What? What are they doing? Those teens over there? They're, well, dancing. Duh. This is in preparation for a dance, after all. Why are they dressed in leotards from the tippy top of their heads down to their toes? Well, fine, we'll talk.

This is a costume dance. Those leotards have tag hide who they are, mostly, and the boosters then paint over, virtually. Not only does the person wear a virtual costume, but everyone does. Every single person gets to pick their own costume theme. Then they will see all their friends wearing the theme they see. Want a 16th King Louis of France theme. Poof. Everyone is dressed that way. or so the booster tells your brain. Want everyone to be characters from the House of Mouse? Poof. That too. Want to have a macabre dance in the halls of the dead. Poof! All of them happen at the same time and all of them are based on what you want to see. Get bored with one? You can switch. Want to mix it up so you are one thing and everyone else is based on what they want? Done, too.

All of that takes a lot of work to make sure you are deconflicted. After all, imagine if the preferences were set wrong and everyone's costume theme get mixed up. Who Framed Roger Rabbit got swapped for Dawn of the Dead and Armin Singh or Indiana Jones for Barney the Dinosaur or Sesame Street. If everyone did their own thing, it would be easy. When you want to share or change or both, then things get messy. Then there's the appropriateness checker.

Oh boy. Teenagers able to make a fantasy of all their classmates? Yup. Gotta be a little careful. That could end...badly. Really badly. So badly the word bad would flinch at how badly it ended up. Teenagers, boy or girl, are pretty bad in some ways and being able to let them run rampant...yikes.

How is this running rampant from my adventures?

Well, for one thing, my adventures are relatively wholesome over how this could turn out.

So, here we are, here I am, testing to make sure the bots babysit and get it right. So long as they do their job, we'll be good. And the dance will be good. And the kids will be good. And the night will be fun.

Do I have a date for the dance? No, not really. I wanted to ask someone, but he had a date already. So, alas, poor me. I'll go stag-ette. And, no, I have no plans to use this as the start of a new adventure.

Fine.

Let's talk about the adventure. The latest one. Though, I have to admit, I had a bad, Bad, BAD, BAD feeling this will not be my last. I don't seek out trouble, I swear. It seeks out me. And my Merry Pranksters.

For two years, we kept our noses clean. We barely did any pranks. We retaliated, to be sure, since we had a reputation, kids would often try to pull something on us, but we only one upped them and made sure they knew their place. You might think of it like the greatest gunslinger sorta thing: everyone who thinks they are the new baddest beast in the West wants to come and challenge the old champion. So they do and in our case, they kept getting their rumpus maximii handed back to them. No one out pranks the Merry Pranksters.

Besides, after what we saw and did, we had a little more serious side to us. We grew up a bit from coping with the events of the last time we got into real trouble. Juvenile pranks seemed to be a little less pressing. However, we had a title to defend and defend it we did.

Jacey Jenkins still doesn't know how he ended up duct taped to the top of that flagpole! Ha! Well, he shouldn't have made Jackie's hair turn white and threaten to fall out. He did not pull off a cool prank! Ours was though. And he knew we did it. Not how. After all, he went to bed in his bed and the next he knew was he was duct taped to the top of a flag pole. No worries, we had mushroom airbags in place just in case he decided to panic or gravity actually won the argument with the flagpole. Nice thing about Jeffersonian gravity, it's a little less than Earth's.

Fine. The real adventure. It's...more complicated than last time. We were just looking for a cloaked person, probably a hidden soldier in powered chameleon armor last time. This time...well...

It all began when I found a repticulate in my backpack. Yes, a repticulate.

No really!

Shiny, metal, lizard-like, digests biomass for energy...robotic!

I know!

And, yes, I know they're wildly illegal!

Those little reptilian appearing robots were a major headache on Earth. They powered themselves by actually eating bugs. That got them banned, because, well, they decided bugs were not the only thing they were going to try eating. All those dogs in San Francisco! Makes me sick every time I think about it. And, yes, we had to do an Immie for that for technology ethics class. And, yes, we had to watch. Half the class hurled.

But, yes, I found one. In my backpack. Here on Jefferson. And it wasn't looking for Earthlife to eat though.

And that, is where it all started...