Without #1 (of 4)

Exponentialized

Annah Harrington is a young woman who was simply trying to do a job, however unpleasant, to pay off the student loans that earned her the degree she didn't even want. That didn't stop her from being seized by a strange, bronze clockwork man and a voluptuous redhead in far too little leather clothing from strapping her to a table in their lab, and blasting her with a white-hot ray from a device of theirs!

(That should do for a 'cover', shouldn't it?)

Notice for the faint of heart: the following tale isn't precisely what one would consider G-rated in nature. It contains a plethora of excessive and unnecessary violence, not to mention a surplus of other content that might see it burned, were it in a printed form, by the more fanatical elements of various societies across the earth. In other words, if violence, robots, and mad science offend you, you've been warned.

(That should do for a 'disclaimer', shouldn't it?)

***

Annah groused as she drove towards the derelict factory.

Delivering foreclosure notices to delinquent property owners wasn't what she had in mind when she trudged her way through business school. But then, Annah had no intention of attending business school in the first place. No, Annah had her heart set on a career where she could create, whether works of art or things to improve peoples' lives. But her parents were footing the bill, so to business school she went.

Six months after receiving her degree, Annah still hadn't landed a job, and this was becoming something of a drag on her self-esteem. So much so, in fact, that when the seemingly shady real estate firm called her about interviewing for an open position, she leapt at the opportunity. And that's how she got the job of delivering foreclosure notices. In Detroit. Where just about everyone was in foreclosure.

Thus, for the majority of her work day, Annah found herself screamed at by those about to lose their homes or businesses. A lot of them were unfortunates who'd lost their jobs when Detroit went south, others were the previous owners of arrogant startups who thought they could exploit the real estate apocalypse in town, only to realize that they weren't savvy enough to actualize their harebrained ideas.

Presuming this last task of the day would be more of the latter, Annah continued to grumble as she pulled into the parking lot, which was completely empty save for one unnecessarily expensive-looking pickup truck. It was about as big as her apartment, this truck, with a shiny black paint job, a spectral cyan flame job, and more chrome than probably existed in some mines dedicated to the metal. She scowled as she parked next to it.

"Nice fruck."

Presuming the exorbitant cost of that ostentatious vehicle was why the owners of this property couldn't be bothered to pay off the mortgage for their factory, Annah suddenly didn't feel so bad about having to let them know they were about to be evicted by the bank. Mustering her indignation, she stepped out of her dilapidated beige Chevette (TM), and stomped towards the factory, notice and duct tape in hand.

Ripping two hunks of tape off the roll with her teeth, Annah adhered the foreclosure notice to the factory's employee entrance and began to return to her corroded ride, when she was startled by a loud, booming sound. Embarrassed that she'd leapt half a foot into the air due to the sound, Annah whirled around, only to see that the metal door she'd so recently left her notice on had fallen off of its hinges!

Having been barely missed by the rusted out thing, Annah jumped up and down on it in a moment of adrenaline-fueled rage, only to stop when she heard the snickering. Looking around, she heard nothing else in the night, the slow accumulation of falling snow having muffled the sounds of the surrounding city. Looking into the seemingly abandoned factory, Annah then thought she heard a frantic shushing going on.

"Hey!"

Now angry beyond reason, Annah stomped back to her car, grabbed a copy of the notice she'd left on the door, and barged her way into the dark structure. Popping on the flashlight feature of her smartphone, Annah looked about the area, seeing what looked like, after an initial security checkpoint, a break room. And though all the lights were out, the refrigerator there was still running.

Seeking out a light switch, Annah flipped it on only to find that the place appeared to have been vacated in a hurry. Beer cans littered the table, some of which were tipped sideways yet were still leaking fluid, not to mention a pizza that looked half-eaten... and whose cheese was still melty. Grumbling, Annah wandered out of the break room and further into the factory, which didn't seem so abandoned, all of a sudden.

"I don't know who's here, but y'all are out of luck. The bank is going to foreclose on your... your... your whatever it is that you've got going on here. The jig is up, et cetera, et cetera. That's what you get for buying stupid frucks instead of paying your bills. And for trying to squish the people trying to foreclose on you. Jerks."

Realizing that she was rambling, Annah decided that she was being an idiot in more ways than one, and scooted back into the break room. Taping her second foreclosure notice to the refrigerator door, since clearly someone was going to see it soon, she then made her way back to the employee entrance. Who cared who tried to squish her, really? They were still here, and might have worse in mind!

Just then, Annah heard shuffling coming towards her from down a nearby hallway. Ducking into a side door, she was flabbergasted when what could only be a robot trudged by, clearly looking like it was bored from its body language. She tried to tell herself it was just some weirdo in a robot costume, kind of like those furries, but with robo-bits. But no, no human being could fit within what she was seeing.

The robot was precisely six foot tall, and its body was comprised of various cylindrical components, held together by strange-looking ball joints. Possessing a cyan coloration to match the flame job of the truck outside, the mechanical contraption was clearly in league with it. That's what Annah's panicking mind was telling her, and there wasn't really any common sense to be had to correct that notion.

She was so intent on the shuffling robot before her, in fact, that she missed those in the room she'd ducked into. They were themselves momentarily startled when she crashed into their game room, but quickly recovered, and snuck up behind her to see what had terrified her so. Realizing that it was merely one of her compatriots, they settled in to watch the show. And then, after a few more moments, added to the fun.

"Man, Steve's such a jerk, isn't he? He just spent at least twice his break in the can."

Slowly pivoting on her heels, Annah looked behind her to see two more of the strange robots, and up close could make out the seeming computer monitors that comprised their faces. The two of them were clearly amused at her expense, but she had no smarmy retort to them. She didn't have much of any retort, in fact, because this whole situation was far, far outside her experience. She mostly just stammered in response.

"Buh. Buh. Buh bye!"

Collecting herself in mid-gibber, Annah fled the room and raced past Steve, the apparent lazy robot, as he was donning an orange vest emblazoned with SECURITY on the back, and ran out of the building. She was intent on reaching her car when, unhappily, she saw it wasn't where she left it. No, it was about a hundred yards away, and currently doing donuts in the snow-covered factory parking lot.

"Hey, that's my car!"

Hearing Annah scream, the two robots joyriding stopped making with the donuts, and looked like they were about to say something, when Steve clocked her in the back of the head with his oversized flashlight.

"Not anymore," Steve said.

***

Consciousness returned to Annah slowly, after having been dispensed a concussion by lazy security guard robot Steve. She heard voices all around her, but couldn't quite make out what they were saying at first. Deciding to play possum, she pretended to be out like a light, and soon enough the words registered properly. The first that made sense came from a man that sounded a bit too wound up for his own good.

"What's all this, then? Why have you brought this woman into my laboratory, and why have you cinched her to my target platform!?"

A second, female voice responded slowly, in much more measured tones. Her voice was as smooth as oil flowing over silk, the kind of sultry voice you'd expect a professional singer to possess. One who didn't need the benefit of autotune to sound particularly alluring, at that.

"This is Annah Harrington. According to her driver's license, she is five foot seven, one hundred twenty points, light brown hair, and lives at at blah blah blah. She was apparently delivering a foreclosure notice to your evil lair, dear. Did you forget to pay your bills, again?"

The sound of various metal objects suddenly banging about punctuated his reply.

"Of course not, my love! I delegated the bills to Jerry! He's one of my brightest children, as you know, but I think he's been absorbed in those massively multiplayer online games again. For, um, months? I haven't really seen Jerry since Labor Day. JERRY!"

The female voice then sighed, quite deliberately.

"Industrio. You can't keep leaving all of these essential tasks to your creations, for you've simply built them too well. They're as smart as an ordinary human, but they're neurotic and lack discipline. Which is why we now have to deal with Annah, here."

Feeling fingers running through her hair, Annah reflexively flinched, causing her to see stars.

"Ow."

Realizing she'd blown her act, Annah opened her eyes, though things didn't come into focus all that quickly. Concussion, you know. Looking at the woman, Annah saw that she was short, just over five foot tall, with a large mane of fiery orange hair. She wore a bright red leather ensemble, one which didn't leave that much to the imagination, but still seemed somehow refined. Or, at the very least, supremely expensive.

"What are you going to do to me?"

The woman returned her gaze to the driver's license she'd extracted from Annah's wallet after fishing it out of her light brown pantsuit, and smiled. It seemed at first a pleasant smile, but the words that came afterwards lent it a most sinister air.

"Well, it says here you're an organ donor. How fortuitous... for us."

Metal scraping sounds approached the table, and Annah reflexively attempted to scramble away, only to realize that this 'Industrio' wasn't joking about a cinching. She was rooted to the spot, her wrists and ankles bound to distressing, rusty metal hoops on what she could best identify, from her less than ideal vantage point, a similarly rusty table of some sort.

"Oh. Oh, Fascisma, I see! Ah hah hah hah! I have been needing a test subject for the Cosmological Compressor, now, haven't I?"

Turning her head, Annah finally saw Industrio. He appeared massive, well over eight foot tall, and looked like an oversized man built entirely from antiquated bronze mechanical components.

"Bwuh?"

Wheeling a similarly oversized energy emitter up to the table, Industrio giggled like a school child, explaining the situation as he fired up and calibrated the thing.

"I see you're rendered completely speechless at the mere mention of my Cosmological Compressor, Miss Harrington, so allow me to elucidate! The Cosmological Compressor will smash the entirety of space and time into a singular, one-dimensional point for the tiniest fraction of a second. Or an eternity, depending on your unique perception, to collect all the energy of existence during the time reality is, well, paused."

As Industrio rambled, Fascisma slowly wandered the laboratory, giving quick commands to various robots of Industrio's creation.

"Then, once collected, this energy is to be imbued within the target of the Cosmological Compressor's energy emitter, thus granting them unlimited power! The only problem is that even I, Industrio, am not sure this will make them invincible or merely disintegrate said target. Either way, a test subject that is not I, Industrio, is required. I'm not about to pointlessly vaporize myself, now, am I?"

Fascisma continued her work as Industrio did his Science Thing, waggling a finger angrily at the robot Annah presumed was Jerry.

Heh, Jerry the robot. She couldn't help but chuckle at that.

"So, the Cosmological Compressor may imbue you with unbridled might, or it may just kill you outright. Mind you, if it doesn't kill you outright, we'll have to kill you outright ourselves, since we can't have you running around mad at us with the sudden gift of infinite power, now, can we? So I suppose, either way, it really sucks to be you, Miss Harrington. In your next life, get a better job, perhaps?"

Annah stammered as she struggled angrily against her bindings, to no avail. Meanwhile, Fascisma finished excoriating robots who didn't seem all that fazed by being yelled at, and returned to her captive's side. Again playing with Annah's hair, Fascisma frowned.

"I'm really sorry about Industrio, my dear. He's quite the genius, you see, and between his robot armies and my mutant legion, we're competing to see who can conquer the world first. I'm all about doing so via the long game, but he is a bit less patient than I, thus schemes such as this. We really weren't quite ready to fire this particular experiment up yet, but you came trespassing into the hubby's base, so here we are.

"But rest assured, the Biplicity thanks you for your noble sacrifice. Ready, love?"

As Fascisma focused her gaze on Industro, Annah looked at him as well, and saw him gripping an oversized lever. Noting the expression on his strange, bronzed face, Annah saw that he was eager to pull that lever.

"Always!"

Industrio then threw the switch, leaving Annah to say only one thing, finally having recovered words after her tantrum.

"Wait -"

***

After Industrio pulled the massive lever on his Cosmological Compressor, everything went white. Annah was still aware, but seemed to be disembodied, after a fashion. But then, everything else appeared to have vanished alongside her body, leaving her as but a consciousness floating in a blank, washed-out void. Annah looked around in every direction, but the exercise seemed fruitless, as she saw the same thing everywhere.

Nothing.

***

After what seemed to her like hours, what with her mind literally existing outside space and time, Annah's consciousness was suddenly wrenched back to what passes for our reality. Inhaling sharply, suddenly having the need to breathe again, Annah's eyes rapidly darted back and forth, reacclimatizing to her corporeal existence. And, as details registered within her mind, she realized that none of this was simply an awful dream.

"Well, that was impressive," said Industrio, who, like everyone else in the entire universe, had also experienced a sustained disembodiment outside of our causality. "What do you know, Old Gruff's ludicrous invention actually seems to have done something impressive. And look! The power indicator is reading 'tilt'! Pull the other lever, Fascisma!"

Nodding, the unusually short Fascisma leapt up and grasped the lever on the Cosmological Compressor opposite of that manned by Industrio, and used the entirety of her body weight to maneuver it downwards. With that, the Cosmological Compressor's infinite energy pool, the stored power of a Planck time's worth of all space-time, dumped its charge in an instant. All into Annah's waiting, if unwilling, body.

"ARGH!"

For the second time in as many seconds, everything went white for Annah. This latter incident was due to the pain involved, however, as her every last atom was incinerated in an instant. Watching the afterglow of her former physicality fade, Industrio shrugged before powering down the Cosmological Compressor. He then absent-mindedly swept the target table, as though Annah had left a mess behind when she was disintegrated.

"Well, better her than me!"

"It's too bad the thing doesn't work, really," said Fascisma. "Just think what you could've done with all that power. I do believe that you'd have won our little contest, husband. You'd have been in charge!"

"Yes, wife, it is a sad end to this endeavor. After all, imagine what I could accomplish with the might the Compressor could have granted. The infinite ability to wield infinite abilities! The mind reels at the possibilities! Well, lesser minds reel - not that of I, Industrio! No, ma'am, I'd have whipped this pathetic world into shape in no time, and then the rest of the cosmos soon afterwards!"

As the duo prepared to leave Industrio's laboratory, however, something happened.

Hearing the faint hum, Industrio turned his gaze back to the table that Annah's body was so recently bound upon, and realized there was something there. Stepping closer, he could see what appeared to be a small whorl of energy, hovering a few inches above the table's metal surface. Extruding a few instruments from his mechanical suit, Industrio attempted to investigate, but couldn't make sense of what he was seeing.

***

All Annah was aware of was the buzzing sound. She couldn't hear anything else, or sense anything else for that matter. It was her constant and sole companion for as long as she could remember, but then her awareness had already been dislodged from the normal flow of time once this day. Assuming it was even the same day; she had no idea, really, and as far as she knew this state of affairs wasn't going to change.

But then, suddenly, it did.

It wasn't that the world around her changed so much as the immediate surroundings had. She found herself hearing additional sounds, supplemental to those comprising her universe. They were the words of Industrio, that cad, and he was yammering on about... about the Cosmological Compressor. And something regarding it granting infinite abilities. But yet, Annah was pretty sure that she was dead.

While pondering notions of life, death, and infinity, Annah wished she could see the world around her, and suddenly she could. Her vision immediately fixated upon Industrio, who was looming large over her, hundreds of times more massive than she. Eventually taking in the world all around her, Annah realized that he wasn't huge so much as she was tiny, and wished once more, this time that she possessed her former height.

***

Backing away as the whorl of power surged in size, Industro began waving to his robots, each of which who was present raced to collect whatever weapon they could. This being Industrio's laboratory, of course, meant that there were a whole lot of high tech implements of destruction to be had, assuming one knew what they were looking at. Or for. His creations are awfully eccentric, after all.

Perceiving herself to be naught but an oversized whirlpool of energy, Annah thought it would be great if she were simply human once more, and before she knew it that whorl took the shape of her old self. Still comprised of unknown energies, Annah's corporeal existence slowly began to reassert itself when, without even knowing how, her energetic form began to devolve into a material one, cell by cell, at an astonishing rate.

Looking at herself with a critical eye, as was her wont, Annah decided that her old self was welcome - though it could nonetheless use a few improvements, which she made there... and there... and there. Before she knew it, Annah was back again, and that buzzing sound, which had so recently been all she could possibly perceive, had died down to but a miniscule roar. Still there, if barely, yet no longer overwhelming.

"Well then."

Ignoring Industrio and his servitors as they slowly occupied the space around her, Annah circled the Cosmological Compressor. On one side of the large contraption, there was a laminated paper hanging loosely from a twist tie affixed to the thing. Pulling it off, she read its basic instructions, as well as a detailed description of what it would to do whoever was so lucky as to receive its attentions. If they lived, that is!

"Pardon me, madam, you look a bit put out. Perhaps we could get you something to wear?"

Annah looked at Industrio, and then down, realizing that she'd been prancing around his laboratory naked. Of course, her clothes had been annihilated along with the rest of her original matter, so in hindsight that was no surprise. Upon looking back up, however, she realized he was just stalling, for his minions had indeed positioned themselves around her, pointing numerous ominous implements her way.

Eyes darting around the lab, she desperately sought some sort of weapon with which to fight them off, at which point circumstances finally caught back up with her. 'Infinite abilities' resonated in the back of her mind once more. She seemingly built herself a new body from literal nothingness, didn't she? Couldn't she reverse the process, where they were concerned? Messy, perhaps, but it would serve them right.

No, time to make lemonade, she thought. The buzzing in her mind intensified.

"Stop."

With that, Industrio stopped. He wasn't dead, or even asleep, simply 'paused', as it were. Annah found that if she thought about what she wanted to do, even for a moment before trying, she could do it. It didn't seem to matter what it the task was, such as her attempt to take command of Industrio there, but it worked like a charm. However, this didn't sit well with Industrio's partner, Fascisma.

"What did you do?!"

She came running at Annah, a pair of steel knuckles suddenly manifesting in her hands, prompting Annah to repeat herself where Fascisma was concerned. As the villainess skidded to a halt immediately before her, Annah figured out the best way to handle all of this. She'd simply make everyone involved forget anything to do with her, or this whatsit that has so dramatically changed her.

"Okay. Industrio, After I leave, I want you to make sure all of your robots think nothing special happened tonight. A boring Monday evening, during the winter, where nothing eventful occurred. I want you to do the same where all of the security systems you have here are concerned, and I know you have a whole lot. Loop the footage from a previously uneventful day, whatever. Make it seamless, though.

"Then delete any information you have about this Cosmological Compressor hiding within your computers, or hard copies of blueprints of the thing, whatever."

Annah then looked at the device and squinted, kicking up her internal noise some more. The Cosmological Compressor then rose into the air, slowly crumpling as it did so. While painfully deliberate, the process didn't stop until the implement, which so recently imbued her with an unknowable amount of potential, was as small as a pea. A very heavy pea, truth be told, but it was utterly unrecognizable.

"After that, I want both you and Fascisma to think the same thing your robots will. The evening was boring, just the two of you having planned to enjoy yourselves somehow, yet you had to come here and deal with an eviction notice some bank jerk left on your factory door. If only that clown, uh, Jerry, had paid the bills on time, like he was supposed to. You both gave him what for for that, too.

"Sound good?"

Immediately after she stopped talking, both villains nodded.

"Perfect."

With that Annah collected her wallet from Fascisma and stepped out of Industrio's laboratory. As she left that portion of the factory, the villain called his robots in for some 'emergency maintenance', prompting Annah to sidestep several as they plodded their way towards whence she came. She then made her way to where those goons had abandoned her car, and collected her emergency key from under her bumper.

Unlocking the car, she then popped open the rear hatch, grabbed her box of suits which needed a dry cleaning, and put one on. She didn't require the clothes to stave off the cold, a feat she could now manage by riling up the buzzing in her mind just a bit, but she figured she shouldn't be driving around Detroit at night while naked. That would just attract police attention. And how would she explain tonight?

She couldn't. Not in any way that would keep her out of the drunk tank.

So with that, Annah started up her rusted-out beige Chevette (TM) and drove off, leaving all of these maliciously incompetent kooks to their own devices. As she headed home, Annah failed to notice the invisible man who was watching her every move, albeit from an extremely safe distance, suddenly turn visible again. Eyes still wide with abject terror, the Invisible Gangster slowly reached for his smartphone.

"Whoa."

***

Having made her escape from the Biplicity, Annah does her level best to return to her normal life, but unknowingly having left one witness to her exponentialization ultimately renders that an impossible task. Tune in next time, when Annah is faced with an all-out assault by the Mutant Legion, the gang Fascisma (barely) manages to rein in during her bid for world domination!

***

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