In the last episode, Jack Carter, Eureka’s Sheriff and the star of our show, stopped Dr. Jennifer Connery’s giant robot, Ross, from taking over Global Dynamics. Andy was hit, but he was a robot, too, so Henry was able to repair him quickly.

So Jack deactivated the giant robot and captured Dr. Connery under suspicion of deliberately causing the robot to go berserk.

When everything was back to normal, Grace and Allison brought Jack to Medical and deliberately triggered another change in Jack, as planned. It was the first step to getting Jack back to normal.

It worked, and Jack deliberately morphed back to his first morph – he again turned into an almost-clone of Dawn Cameron, daughter of Dr. Cameron from Section Fourteen.

And now, the continuation...

- - - - -

After a good night’s sleep, they were all gathered at the dining table and having breakfast. After breakfast, Jack was to drop off Kevin, Jenna and little Kimmy at Eureka’s school, Tesla School, while Allison Blake, Jack’s spouse, and medical director & COO of Global Dynamics, was to go directly to GD to meet with Henry and Jo Lupo – they were about to interrogate Dr. Connery.

The usual banter was almost normal, except with Kevin. It seemed Kevin was quite attracted to his stepfather’s female form, which was really messing with him. But keeping in mind what his mother said, he tried to ignore that. But it was sooo hard.

“Here, Jack,” Allison said, handing Jack a metal bracelet. It was a pair of half-circles connected on one end by a hinge. On the other end was a lock. It would allow a person to put it around his wrist and snap it closed. Around the perimeter was a thin silver line, but upon closer inspection, Jack saw the silver line was actually glass or crystal.

“What a nice gift. Thank you, Allison. Do you want me to wear it now?”

“Yes, please.”

Jack snapped it closed, and he noted that it wasn’t tight on his wrist at all, but it was small enough that it wouldn’t fall off.

“Nice. Thanks, Allison.”

Allison chuckled. “That’s not a gift, Jack. It’s actually something to keep watch on your blood sugar.”

“Huh?”

“Remember that your morphs happen only if your blood glucose is at a certain level?”

"Ahhh!”

Allison nodded. “Yes. If the crystal line turns from silver to red, that means you have a high-enough blood sugar to power a morph. Also, if the line starts to flash, that means that your pituitary gland is about to fire. The flashing will start slow, and gradually become faster. If the flashing is so fast that the red light is almost steady, that means that your morph is about to start.”

“Oh. How long does it take from the time it starts blinking to becoming steady.”

“It depends. It can be as long as ten minutes or as short as a minute. And it won’t ever start flashing if you don’t have a high-enough blood sugar.”

Jack nodded.

“Also...” Allison handed him a little bottle of pills.

“What’s this?”

“That’s a super-fast-acting version of the pills that diabetics take to lower blood sugar. If you notice that your bracelet has turned red, or it has started to flash, you can take one of these and it’ll stop you from morphing, at least for an hour.”

Jack nodded. “Got it.”

“Okay, Jack,” Allison said, “it’s time.” She waved another big glass of that syrupy orange juice. With such a large intake of glucose, they knew Jack’s morph would be triggered.

“Really, Allison?” Jack groaned.

“It’s best to get through all your morphs quickly. It’s the quickest way to get to your Jack Carter morph right away.”

“All right,” he said, and got the glass. He then drank down the orange flavored sugar-drink and sat in the diagnostic chair Allison had installed in the living room.

Allison switched it on, and they all waited for the change.

Jack looked at his new bracelet and, in a minute, it turned red, and then it started flashing.

a minute after that, the flashing became faster and faster until Jack morphed again, this time into an almost-duplicate of Rebecca Roman, one of the administrative people at GD. Allison dutifully programmed the new EM waveform into Jack’s EM emitter – the computer mouse-like device that they used to select which morph Jack turned into yesterday. With this one, there were now six morphs recorded into the device. Twenty-five more to go.

Kevin looked at Jack with mouth agape. He couldn’t believe it – Jack had changed into yet another hottie. But this was his stepfather. He couldn’t think that way about his stepfather. He shook his head and muttered things under his breath as he went to get his books.

“Allison,” Jack said, “why not go through all the morphs in one go? That way, we can get it all over with right away.”

“That would be dangerous. Less than nine hours between changes can cause your brain to stop working.”

“Oh.” He looked at his bracelet and noted that it had stopped flashing and the crystal line had turned from red to clear.

Allison kissed him. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We can’t really force a change, and your body won’t allow changes that can be fatal.”

Jack nodded again. He went back upstairs to get dressed. He looked through his new uniforms. Looks like one of them would fit him now.

“This will be great!” he enthused. He had to wonder at the irony of it, being happy to wear his uniform. But anything other than girly clothes had to be better.

This new morph had light-brown eyes and strawberry-blonde hair almost down to the middle of his back, and it was fairly wavy – almost kinky. Allison showed him how to manage it by using a round brush.

He slipped the little tube of pills into his pocket, and walked downstairs with Allison.

In a few minutes, they all left the house – Allison went straight to GD to start their interrogation of Dr. Connery, while Jack went and dropped the kids off at Tesla.

At Tesla, as they got down from the jeep, Jenna and Kimmy gave Jack his usual kiss on the cheek and hug, and he and Kevin high-fived, as usual.

As Jack drove away, Kevin shook his head. “What a hottie,” he said to himself. “This is sooo messed up. Dammit!” He shook his head again, brought his sisters to their classrooms and then went on to his own classes, still shaking his head.

- - - - -

Allison had suggested that Jack not go on patrol, leaving that to Andy. Instead, she suggested that he do a day’s worth of foot patrol, to allow people to see him and get them more used to the new Jack.

He’d rather not, actually, since he was still embarrassed by his new situation, but he had to agree with Allison’s logic.

So when he got to town, he parked near Café Diem and walked across the street to his office.

“Good morning!” he said cheerily.

“Good morning Boss,” Andy answered.

Jack asked if Andy was feeling okay. Andy thanked Jack, and said he was back to one hundred percent – Henry’s repairs were perfect.

“Good, good,” Jack replied, and then told Andy his plan for the day.

Andy nodded and then went out for their usual patrol around town, especially to the perimeter of town, and then a quick circuit of GD’s main compound.

Andy also left yet another new uniform for Jack that Mary had made, and had it hanging in the bathroom.

Jack thanked him before he left and started on some paperwork, to delay his having to go out and allowing people to see him. But Andy had done most of paperwork again so, in less than thirty minutes, Jack found out that he was done.

He sighed. There was no excuse anymore so he decided to start his foot patrol.

Stepping out and walking to Café Diem, he tried to smile. As he walked, people started looking him.

“Is it you, Sheriff Carter?” the barber in the corner barbershop came up. And as usual, two identical barbers followed. Throughout the years he had been in Eureka, Jack had not bothered to find out the name of their town barber, or barbers, as the case may be, except that he knew them as the “Baker brothers.” In fact, during his entire time in Eureka, he’d seen the barber was actually one of a pair of twins, and then later triplets. Over the years, Jack had seen up to more than six of them at the same time. He just didn’t have the heart to find out if they really were clones or androids or whatever.

In fact he avoided the barber/barbers altogether, and would have his hair cut at a barbershop outside of town instead.

And, what do you know, he thought, here he/they is/are... how confusing...

“Yes, it is me,” Jack said, and shook hands with all the barbers. “Hi.”

“Quite a change, huh, Sheriff,” one of them said.

He smiled politely. “Yes, it has,” he said, “but I’m good.”

“Well, good luck to you,” another of them said.

He nodded. “Thanks!”

He thought of mentioning the Baker Brothers to Allison later – if they were clones, they might be able to help with his morphs.

Most of the people on the sidewalk also wished him well, and shook his hand.

Jack politely smiled and said hello. In a few minutes, he was at Café Diem.

“Hey, Vincent,” he called, “can I get a burger and fries, please!” He was feeling peckish, so maybe a bite would help.

It was his usual order, so Vincent must know it was him. Vincent was the proprietor of the town’s most popular restaurant. He was also Jack and Allison’s friend.

Vincent turned and saw Jack. His hands went to his face, which was a mask of disbelief.

“Ohmigod,” he exclaimed, “is that you, Jack?” He went around the counter to get a closer look at him.

“In the flesh,” Jack said. “And, damn, just look at that flesh,” he said humorously, looking down at his breasts.

“I was so worried,” Vincent said, and gave Jack one of his patented rib-breaking bear hugs.

“Vincent!” Jack protested. “I give, I give!”

Vincent let him down. “I’m sorry, Jack. Are you okay?”

“Super-fine, Vincent. So how about that burger? On second thought, make it a small one. Gotta watch the blood sugar.”

“Coming up!”

Pretty soon, the usual breakfast regulars surrounded him, and he found himself telling them what happened to him.

Not wanting to miss out on a nice, juicy story, Vincent was back in a flash with Jack's food.

Jack was having fun, and thought that Allison’s idea was a good one after all.

- - - - -

Allison got to GD and met up with Henry. His office, which used to be Douglas Fargo’s office, was mostly intact. The glass windows that looked down into GD’s main rotunda had cracked and starred, but didn’t break, so his office was intact.

However, the glass needed to be replaced and that was what Dr. Tanya Zimmer’s people were doing now. So Henry was happy to leave them to it and to go and interrogate Dr. Connery at Jo’s office instead.

Henry had just finished his examination of Ross, the robot that had gone on a rampage yesterday, but, as best as he could determine, it didn’t malfunction and was actually just following its programming. This was what he was trying to explain to Jo at the moment.

“The thing is, Jo,” Henry was saying, “we don’t really know what he was programmed to do.”

“Why?” Jo asked.

“Well, aside from shorting out the robot, when Jack electrocuted it, he also erased its onboard memory.”

Jo thought about it. “Maybe Zane can recover it. He was the one that was able to recover most of the memory of the Columbus’ organic computer years ago, and was able to reconstruct the data from the PALS’ hard drive. He’s not doing much at the moment, except reviewing telemetry data from Astraeus II.”

“Hmmm. Good idea. Get him on this.”

“I’m on it,” Jo said, and called Zane Donovan, one of Eureka’s best and brightest, and Jo’s fiancé.

Allison took that moment to come in.

“Hey, Henry,” Allison said. “How’re you? How’s the office?”

“Good morning, Allison,” Henry replied. “I’m doing all right. A little tired, though. I’ve been up all night checking out Dr. Connery’s robot.”

“I just bet Grace loved that,” Allison laughed.

Henry sighed. “You can say that again,” he said.

He then told Allison what he and Jo talked about, and Allison agreed that it would be good to get Zane working on this, too.

“But, speaking of memory...” Allison took her tablet and showed Henry some footage she got from the security cameras in Section Ten.

They saw Jennifer working on her robot. As she was working on it, they saw her reach into her lab coat’s pocket and bring out something. She then brought whatever it was up to the robot’s new head she had just installed and attached whatever it was to the inside of the head.

After doing that, she took something out as well, and she dropped whatever she took out into her pocket.

“What’s that?” Henry said.

“Let me see that,” Jo said. After her call, Jo had come back and had been peeking over their shoulders at the video.

Allison handed her the tablet, and, after Jo typed something, she was able to zoom in on Jennifer’s hand.

“That’s a memory chip!” Allison said. The picture was clear enough that they could actually read the ID numbers of the chip. They all agreed that Zane should start with that, and Jo sent him the picture.

“Okay, then,” Henry said, “let’s go to the interrogation. One thing, though, let’s not tell her we saw this. We might catch her in a lie.”

The others agreed and they went to Jo’s office.

“Jo,” Allison said, “What has the DoD said about all this?”

“They said they’re waiting for us to finish our investigation.”

“That’s weird. Wouldn’t they be more concerned about the project? They’ve already paid a hundred million for this project, you’d think they’d at least keep better tabs on it.”

“Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”

- - - - -

Except for Jack, Jo was second to none when it came to interrogations, and she did a thorough job, but they just couldn’t find anything wrong with Jennifer Connery’s statements.

Jennifer sounded sincere and she was offended that her word was being doubted. She even demanded that they use a lie detector test on her – it was her right, after all. And though the test indicated that she wasn’t lying, all of them knew that lie detectors weren’t foolproof. To Jo, the lie detector’s results were less than useless.

Jennifer asked what the DoD said, and Jo told her that they were waiting for GD’s investigation to be completed before they intervened.

“Well, then, when will your investigation be done?” Jennifer asked.

“Listen, you,” Jo said angrily, “your robot tried to take over GD, and it caused a lot of damage! And it hurt Andy! We’ll be done when we’re done!”

“Andy! Your tinker-toy deputy? Hah! That robot has nothing on Ross!”

Jo surged forward, trying to slap the roboticist, but Henry and Allison stopped her.

“Andy is a better robot than your pile of junk will ever be,” Jo said. “He’s saved this town dozens of times, and is a better man than many real people I know!”

“Anthropomorphism!” Jennifer said. “You’re just biased because he looks like a human!”

Allison looked at Jennifer. That’s an unusual thing for a roboticist to say, she thought. After all, the goal was to make a robot more human.

Allison and Henry dragged Jo out and closed the cell.

They then stepped out into the hallway, out of Jennifer’s earshot.

“Calm down, Jo,” Allison said. “We feel the same way about Andy, but we need information.”

Jo nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Allison looked at Henry. “What was that about anthropomorphism?” she asked. “That’s an unusual point of view for a roboticist to take about robots.”

“Yes. And if you look at Ross, it’s like they didn’t even try to make it look human.”

“What are you talking about,” Jo said. “It has two arms, two legs, a head...”

“But other than that, Jo, it’s not human-looking at all.”

“I don’t get it – wouldn’t that robot look more human-looking when they complete it? Isn’t it supposed to be an all-purpose robot to help substitute for people in dangerous or difficult situations?”

“Jo, Ross is finished. What Dr. Connery is trying to do is just fix its AI.”

“I don’t get it. You mean, that robot is supposed to look like that?”

“Yes!”

“That is weird.”

Allison nodded. “Yes,” she said. “and did you notice, she didn’t mention replacing any chip on the robot? Or how she got into the rotunda despite the fact that all the blast doors were engaged?”

Jo shrugged. “The surveillance cameras in that area were down at the time.”

“Suspicious...”

Henry nodded. “And another thing that’s suspicious is that the DoD isn’t more concerned with what’s happening.”

Jo shrugged. “I tried to get more information at the DoD when I was there,” she said, “but everything checked out, except that this robot project isn’t considered a high priority, and isn’t scheduled for trials for at least two more years.”

“That in itself is suspicious,” Allison said. “If this is supposed to be a project important enough for the DoD to throw half a billion dollars at for us to try and finish it in three months...”

“Something smells here,” Henry said. “Jo, ask Zane to rush that check of that chip.”

“Right. Oh, Henry, by the way...” Jo held up a half-inch square computer chip.

“What!”

“While I was getting ‘mad,’ and you were all distracted, I snuck that out of Dr. Connery’s pocket.”

“Jo, you are amazing!”

Jo chuckled. “But of course!”

- - - - -

Jack was at the new park that the town had put up a few months ago. This early in the afternoon, there were only a few people in there. He even caught a few kids that were playing hooky.

Eureka hardly needed a truancy officer, and the few kids who tried to skip classes were mostly those who were getting bored or were overdue to be graduated. Jack knew these kids, and the school wasn’t really too worried about these particular ones. They’ve been overdue to graduate for a while, anyway.

Nevertheless, he did tell them to get back to Tesla, or else he’ll have to tell the principal.

They grumbled and headed back to their “stupid classes.”

Jack hung around the park for a while, saying hi to the people there, and took it easy.

He leisurely went back to his office, and, as he opened the door, he heard a quiet beeping.

He wondered where that was coming from until he discovered it was coming from his wrist – it was his new bracelet.

He pulled back the sleeve of his right arm to look, and that was when he saw it flashing.

As he was looking, the flashing got faster and faster, and then he felt that now-familiar feeling. He was morphing again.

He sighed.

When he felt the morphing was over, he sat in the high-tech chair (there was one at Allison’s, at the smarthouse, at GD and, of course, there was this one here in his office) and pressed the button.

The chair did its quick scan and beeped, and he stood up. He went to the bathroom to see this new version of him, and it was yet another sexy blonde. Yep, he was a blonde. Again. But this time, at least the hair was straighter and not as long.

But his uniform didn’t fit as well anymore. Dammit! It’s clothes again.

Sure, he could just keep on wearing the uniform, but it was a bit too tight – the buttons were about to pop off, and he felt the pinch of the pants on his stomach and waist. Nope, he needed to change.

His eyes went to the new uniform that Mary had sent over. Hmmm...

It was a different style. It was still predominantly khaki, but it had a chocolate-brown collar, brown epaulettes, brown flaps on the front shirt pockets and the pants were brown with a khaki stripe running down the sides.

This was hardly like his old uniform. Plus it was small. Smaller even than the current uniform he was wearing.

Then he noticed a printed note taped to the hanger.

“Dear Sheriff Carter,” the note from Mary said, “Like I thought might happen, we are completely out of the ‘khaki material’ for your uniforms, so we did the best we could with the material we had available. We used a super-spandex material we are currently testing. Notice that it has short-sleeves since we didn’t have much of it in khaki, and we used brown for the pants and some other details. The ‘super-spandex’ makes the uniform extremely stretchy so it will fit you regardless of your measurements. Please let us know if this works, and if you want us to make you more. Thanks!!”

There was also a “p.s.” – it seems the colors and style were totally within the Sheriff’s Office Operations Manual. Hmmm. He decided to check out the manual later.

Anyway, since he couldn’t walk around if he looked like he was about to pop his buttons, he decided to try the new clothes.

He noted that the new uniform did indeed fit, but it was extreeemely close fitting.

He decided to vamp in front of the mirror, take a picture and send it to Allison.

Allison sent him back a tongue-sticking-out emoji, and told him he was now a semi-clone of nurse Tricia Heller from Medical, and that makes Nurse Heller number seven.

But Jack wondered why he changed so spontaneously, and why shorter than nine hours. He didn’t feel any different, and he seemed fine. So he called Allison to ask.

Allison answered and said she didn’t know, but she suspected that her time estimate was probably just off, and that it probably meant that his body had metabolized enough food to build up his energy reserves to trigger the morphing.

Jack could barely follow but he nodded nevertheless.

“Since I got you on the phone now, can you pass by GD? We need your expertise.”

“’Expertise,’ huh?” Jack grinned.

“Shut up,” Allison laughed. “Just get here as soon as you can.”

So he left his office and crossed the street to his jeep.

“Jack!” someone called. Jack turned and saw Kevin.

“I dropped Jenna and Kimmy back home with the sitter’s and I decided to get a burger.”

“Kev...” Jack said wearily. “You know how your mom feels about you cutting class...”

“But, Jack, it’s just Basic Differential Calculus! It’s so boring, and I know all of it already!”

If it were any other kid, Jack would have just assumed he boasting, but this was scary-smart Kevin. He probably did know all of it already.

“That’s not the point, Kevin. Go and grab a burger, and then go back to Tesla. Okay?”

Kevin pouted. “Okay...”

“Promise?”

“I promise!”

“Okay. I’ll see you and the girls at home later. I have to go to GD and meet your mom.”

“Okay. See you later. And, Jack –“

“Yeah?”

“Looking good!”

“Ahhh, shut up,” he laughed. He got into his jeep and left for GD.

Seems Kevin has a crush on me, he thought. That’s worrying. He decided to tell Allison, but maybe later.

- - - - -

Jack got to GD in about twenty minutes, and went straight to Henry’s office to meet with Allison, Jo and Henry.

As he got in, Zane Donovan joined them and they talked things over.

The additional information was that Zane did find the chip that Dr. Connery replaced in Ross the Robot, but it was a total loss - being electrocuted like that basically wiped out all of the robot’s memory, and Zane only got useless fragments of the code in the erasable-programmable memory chip.

But Jo got the original chip from Dr. Connery, and Zane quickly copied the programming on that chip. Jo left them to surreptitiously return the chip (she volunteered to bring dinner to the roboticist).

While they waited for Jo to come back, Zane went through the code he copied from the chip.

“The chip seems to contain primary commands,” Zane said.

“Primary commands?” Jack asked.

“In layman terms, these are the main functions of a robot. Like for Andy, it’s protect the people of Eureka, follow the instructions of his superior, observe all traffic laws, et cetera.”

“Okay. What are Ross’s primary commands?”

“It’s not that simple,” Henry said. “It’s symbolic. Meaning to say, it depends on how the robot’s AI is designed. The instructions would be meaningless to anyone unless it uses a symbolic codec that can translate common-speech statements into equivalent code that the robot can understand. And the only robot that we know of that does this is Andy.”

“Well,” Zane said, “this one does.”

“What!”

“Yep. As best as I can tell, Ross uses a lot of the AI code that’s used in Andy.”

“Well...” Henry said a little red-faced, “Dr. Connery was one of the designers of the original Andy, after all...”

“Does that help us?” Jack asked.

“Hold on,” Zane said. He looked back and forth from the program he copied and the program fragments he recovered from Ross.

“Donovan?” Jack said, unable to wait anymore.

“I couldn’t fully understand the code I recovered since they’re just pieces. But since I know how it’s interpreted now, I can give you an educated guess. Sort of like trying to understand bits of conversation from context.”

“That’s good. When can you get us something usable?”

“A week? Four days at best.”

“Okay. In the meantime?”

“In the meantime,” Henry said, “we keep her in the isolation room, and we keep the robot locked down while my guys do some tests on it.”

“Four days, Henry?” Allison said. “Isn’t that a bit, you know, ‘cruel and unusual?’”

“Allison’s right,” Jack said. “We can’t hold her against her will. Unless we charge her with something.”

“Why don’t we,” Zane said.

“Zane!” everyone reacted.

“Sorry, sorry! It was just a thought.”

“We can’t do that,” Jack said. “We have no proof she did anything wrong. We only suspect she did.”

“But –“

“No – these are just theories at best. They aren’t definitive.”

“Not definitive yet,” Zane corrected.

“You’ll get us more information?” Jack said.

He nodded. “A week. Maybe five days. We can make it shorter if we had Fargo here to help me.”

“I can give Fargo a call. Or maybe Dr. Grant. I hear the two of them regularly keep in touch.”

“You have their numbers?”

“They gave them to me, but I’m only supposed to use them for emergencies.”

“Great, Jack,” Henry said. “You call them.”

“Okay. And, for now, I can legally hold Dr. Connery for forty-eight hours. But if we don’t get proof she deliberately caused that robot to do what it did, we have to let her go. Henry?”

Henry nodded. “Right. If we don’t have anything by then, I’ll declare the robot impounded, and we can continue checking out the robot, and Dr. Connery won’t be able to work on it for the duration.”

“Won’t the DoD complain?” Donovan asked. “Won’t they cancel the contract and demand the robot back?”

“That’s the weird thing, Zane,” Jo said as she came back. “They’re essentially ignoring what’s happening. I tried to get more information on the project, but I haven’t gotten anything more than what we already know now. Betcha after we update them again, they’ll just say ‘thank you.’”

“We need more information.” Henry said.

Jack nodded. “I’ll talk to Judge Harper and get her to issue a warrant so we can search her stuff. Maybe we can find something there.” Judge Harper was the county court judge for the town and county of Eureka. She was also the former pastor of the First Church of Eureka, but was now the judge of Eureka’s only court district. Good thing that Eureka had very few cases, which was because of the nature of the town itself, and because Jack was usually there to fix things before it got to the courts.

“That doesn’t make me feel too good,” Henry said, shaking his head, ”that we need to do that.”

“What choice do we have, Henry?”

Henry sighed. “You’re right. Anyway, let’s get this meeting over with so Zane and I can do our work.” Henry said.

So the meeting broke up. Henry and Donovan went back to Section Ten and the robot, and Jack and Allison decided to go home while Jo decided to stay and do some more research into the background of Dr. Connery’s project and wait up for Zane.

- - - - -

“That was a downer,” Jack said as they went to GD’s main parking structure.

“What do you mean?” Allison responded.

“I took your suggestion,” he said.

“Yeah?”

He nodded. “Yes. I basically hung around town.”

“Yeah? How was it?”

“It was nice. People found it intriguing - you know, my morphing - but they were accepting of it.”

Allison chuckled. “Being in Eureka does that to people,” she said, and Jack understood. Impossible things happened too often that a man changing into a woman was a reasonable idea.

“Thanks for today, Allison,” he said and kissed her on the cheek.

Allison blushed at that. It felt just like the old Jack. But just different enough to be, well, better. How could it be better? Jack wasn’t Jack right now. He was more like a Jackie.

But it was still Jack, and it counterintuitively didn’t hurt that Jack was one of the better-looking women on Main Street now.

For whatever reason, his morphs weren’t exact duplicates, and, for whatever reason, the tweaks to the donor DNA just upped Jack’s looks.

Allison understood why Jack’s morphs were so fascinating to people – fashion model-type good looks coupled with the fact that it was Jack, dependable, brave and indispensable Jack, underneath it - the three recent events just proved to the chauvinists and misogynists (which, thankfully were very few in Eureka) that Jack was still Jack despite his new physical form. Allison mused that, maybe, this aspect gave him that kind of mystery or whatever exotic quality he now had that made him fascinating to her and many people.

Still, Allison couldn’t wait to get her Jack Carter back. But, if they didn’t get him back, Allison found that she didn’t worry as much as she thought she should.

She looked at this woman walking with her, her arm around her. Looking inside herself, she wasn’t finding it weird at all.

“Hey,” Jack said suddenly, “guess what?”

“What?”

“Kevin came to the office this afternoon.”

This afternoon!” Allison exclaimed, “Dammit! I thought we were done with him cutting classes!”

“I think we are,” Jack said. “I think this is about something else.”

“Well, what?”

“I think Kev has a crush.”

Allison didn’t understand. If Kevin had his eye on some girl in school, then why the class cutting?

“Who?” Allison asked.

“Me.”

Allison looked at Jack with round eyes. “What!”

Jack shrugged. “I’m afraid so.”

to be continued in Episode 6: “Rampage!” Jan. 17, Thursday 8PM Eastern On the BTTV Network