Piper woke up in the middle of a strange conversation. There was one human voice and many more that weren’t. The other voices sounded tinny and scratchy, like the recorded voices from toys that had been left on store shelves for too long.

“Time of TS Capsule arrival?” said the human.

“Response: Eight minutes eighteen seconds.”

“Any unlocked doors on the house?”

“Response: No.”

“Verification: No.”

“Addendum: And there is a medium-sized boat filling the garage."

The human voice growled. “The house alarm is definitely on?”

“Response: Definitely.”

Human footsteps paced back and forth across the grass. “Have we found the remote phase decoder so we can turn the darn thing off?”

“Accusation: We believe Unit Dooley packed it in the TS Capsule.”

“Right next to that holographic projector we could have used, right?

“Apology: Unit Dooley is very, very sorry.”

“Remind me to replace your entire logic board, Unit Dooley.”

“Qualifier: Unit Dooley wishes to direct attention to the ‘very, very’ section of his apology.”

The human voice huffed in disgust. “We may have to risk the house alarm. Bad guys on TV shows get past them all the time, right? Did I program any of you for espionage? If we...”

“Observation: The girl is awake.”

Piper automatically shut her eyes tighter, but knew it was pointless. The human voice was Uncle Seven, the rest had to be the horrible doll things talking, and that was something she was in no rush to see.

A shuffle of clothes told her that Uncle Seven was now kneeling nearby. Piper was lying on cool grass. Someone must have moved her off of the road. She hoped it was Uncle Seven and not the nightmare babies. The thought of those little plastic hands on her skin... brrrrr!

“If only you’d add a snoring sound, the illusion of your unconsciousness would be complete,” said Uncle Seven. Piper could hear the sneer in his words.

“If I open my eyes,” she said coldly, “am I going to be surrounded by those ugly baby things?”

“Exclamation: Hey,” something droned.

“Units retract,” commanded Uncle Seven. There was a collection of whizzing, clattering noises all ending with the sound of plastic doors sliding shut.

Piper cautiously opened one eye. She was walled in by a multicolored collection of the plastic containers. Peering over the boxes was the pale face of Uncle Seven. “I thought all little girls loved baby dolls,” he said.

“Not when they’re walking around on their own,” replied Piper. “Hello, Uncle Seven.”

Uncle Seven’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, you’re a relative, are you? Not some nosy neighbor child?”

“You don’t recognize me?”

“I have six brothers who’ve all chosen to spawn an endless ocean of nieces and nephews for me. Forgive me if I can’t identify each one individually.”

“I’m Piper.”

“Charmed to meet you.”

“We’ve met at least three times!”

“If you were always this sweaty and smelly, I’m sure I would have remembered you.”

“I’ve been running,” Piper said defensively. Then she remembered why she had been running and realized that the intense feelings from the sky were gone. “Hey, it stopped!”

“What stopped?”

“The sky! It’s stopped staring at me. It’s not laughing at me any...” Piper looked at Uncle Seven, “Do you have any enemies who own satellites that shoot rays that make you feel queasy and tingly?”

Uncle Seven regarded her quizzically. “I definitely think I would have remembered you if I’d met you.”

Piper scowled. “I met you at Uncle Owen’s house, Uncle Townsend’s house, and Uncle Forbes’s house just before you blew it up!”

The scientist’s hands flew up in frustration. “Oh, for the last time, that one was not my fault! The idiot redesigns his home with substandard wiring and blames me when a fire breaks out in his attic -- his attic, mind you -- when I never climbed a step in that house above the first floor kitchen.”

He thumped an angry fist down on the closest tub. Instantly, the small door on its end slid open and a voice from the darkness droned, “Reminder: Sensitive circuitry inside. Do not hit.”

This served as an instant reminder to Piper that she was surrounded by electronic horrors. She sat up, still too weary to stand, and scooted away from the four plastic containers pressed in too closely along her body. Her back bumped into two more of the boxes. She had to ignore the chill in her spine and push against them until they moved aside on their own.

Piper counted six tubs once she’d gotten away from them. “So what are these--?”

“What are you doing home at this time?” Uncle Seven interrupted. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Part of it blew up. Shouldn’t you be at Uncle’s Quentin’s house?”

“Well...part of it blew up.”

Piper instantly shifted into defense mode. “Oh.”

Uncle Seven saw the resolve growing in his niece’s eyes and knew the next few minutes weren’t going to be easy. Apologetically, he smiled. The Disarming Thirtysomething Scientist Smile is nowhere near as powerful as The Disarming Cute Little Girl Smile. “Yes, um, so I’ve come to visit my dear brother Simon and his family, and maybe stay for a little--”

“No.” Piper stood up on wobbly legs and faced her uncle.

“Look, you’ve got to let me prove myself.”

“You’ve had five chances to prove yourself.”

“I told you: Forbes’ house was not my fault!”

“And the other four?”

“Um...learning experiences.”

“You’re not getting in my house!”

Uncle Seven took a step back from Piper’s venom. But before he could respond, something shrieked from the back of the moving truck -- some sort of animal. Piper jumped, Uncle Seven cringed. The shriek was followed by the clatter of metal as some beast moving fretfully in a cage.

Piper tried to peer around the front of the truck. “What was--?”

Uncle Seven stepped in front of her, hands raised to make a sad little wall. “Just... be a little quieter. Please.”

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

Across the lawn, amid a collection of cardboard boxes and curious devices, a small metal pole with a flashing light on top was beeping. Piper was surprised she hadn’t noticed the pole before -- it was floating two feet off the ground. Uncle Seven took a couple of steps to block her view of this new curiosity.

Piper glared. “So what’s that, then?”

Uncle Seven shook his head and laughed. “It’s...a magic trick.”

The little doors of all six plastic tubs slid open. Six mechanical voices said, “Correction: The alarm indicates that the TS Capsule will arrive in four min--”

“ZIP IT!” Uncle Seven yelled.

The tiny doors slammed shut, but the animal in the moving truck began shrieking again.

“MeowwAAAWWK! MeowwAAA-AAWWK!”

By blocking the floating pole, Uncle Seven had left the path to the truck clear. Piper shot him a defiant glare and quickly limped to the open back.

“No!” her uncle shouted. “Don’t look!! Stop!!”

The shrieking thing could be heard banging and fluttering in its cage. As Piper looked up into the open back of the truck, the first thing she saw was a medium-sized pet carrier sliding toward her off of a stack of crates. She instinctively reached up to catch it. Her hands stopped the carrier but not the creature inside, which hit hard against the bars of the carrier door with a loud clang. The plastic rim around the doorframe tore from the impact and the metal door burst open, leaving Piper staring straight into an impossible, shrieking face made of angry cat eyes and a large, open, screaming beak.

With a shriek of her own, Piper dropped the cage to the floor of the truck. The creature inside was shaken, but recovered quickly to clamber out of the open carrier door in a tangle of claws and feathers.

Uncle Seven grabbed Piper and pulled her away as the creature leaped from the truck and crashed into the garage door before landing on its feet on the driveway. Growling complaints, the feline beast adjusted its large brown wings and limped towards the lawn on mismatched feet -- one of the beast’s front legs ended in a regular cat paw, the other in a hawk’s foot with very sharp claws. The beast poked at the grass daintily with a bird talon before it aimed a long chirpy hiss at Piper and Uncle Seven and settled its gray tabby cat body down on its stomach in the grass. It then did nothing but purr as it stared contentedly at the man and the girl.

Piper turned wide-eyed to her Uncle.

“She hates to be left out of conversations,” Uncle Seven said quietly.

“You made a griffin?”

“Well, not in the classical sense,” said Uncle Seven. ”That would be a combination of a lion and an eagle. I combined cat and hawk DNA to make this little lady... much more portable.”

Piper looked back at the griffin. “That’s pretty cool,” she conceded, stunned.

Uncle Seven smiled. “Well, I almost got it right. She’s only got the one front hawk foot. The hybridization didn’t take on the other one.”

“Oh...missed a few million genome codes, did you?”

Uncle Seven looked at Piper, impressed. “They’re remarkably easy to misplace.”

Behind them, the floating metal pole beeped three times.

Piper looked at Uncle Seven expectantly.

“So...” said Uncle Seven, bending down to look Piper in the eyes, “If you can make a genome joke at the drop of a hat, then you obviously know a bit about science. And it seems you know enough about me to be afraid of me, yes?”

Piper thought for a moment. “It’s not you I’m afraid of. It’s what you do...with what you can do.”

Uncle Seven smiled stiffly. “‘Piper’ was it?”

“Still is.”

“Piper, I need to get in your house.”

“That’s not happening.”

“Would it help if I threatened you with my army of killer robots and my mutant hybrid monster?”

“Absolutely...if I hadn’t seen that your robots are baby dolls in boxes and your monster is a catbird.”

“Well, hear me out and I’ll tell you why...”

“Nope!” Piper had rested long enough. She dodged around Uncle Seven and made a run for her front door, the key already in her hand.

“Wait! Please!” yelled Uncle Seven.

Three of the plastic tub robots had moved to block the steps to her porch. The little doors were open and the cruddy dolls attached to laundry tubes were emerging. Piper let loose her fiercest roar as she ran at them: “GRAARR!!!”

The dolls were yanked back inside their tubs. Each one droned, “Reminder: Sensitive equipment inside.”

Piper leaped over the tubs onto the porch. She jammed the key in the front door lock.

“You asked if my enemies had satellites!” shouted Uncle Seven. “They do!”

Piper’s blood froze. She spun about and yelled, “Not one step closer!”

Uncle Seven stumbled to a halt three steps from the porch. “Listen, they’re watching us right now.”

“I knew it!” Piper gasped, glancing up at the sky. “And they’re armed with rays that cause people to have schizophrenic episodes, right?”

“No.”

Piper frowned. “How can you be sure?”

“Because I haven’t invented anything like that!”

The arrogance of the statement almost made Piper laugh. “What? Because you haven’t invented something, it can’t exist?”

“Correct. Now what those satellites do have is lots of cameras, many of them currently aimed right at this lovely Cape Cod-style house of yours.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m here.”

“Why should that make me want to let you in?”

Uncle Seven pointed to the metal rod. “Because in...“

BEEP BEEP!

“...two minutes some equipment of mine is going to arrive at this house, and if it’s seen arriving, armies of soldiers, mercenaries, and government agents are going to come swarming here and kill each other -- and us -- to get it. Well, kill you mostly, probably not me.”

Piper took as step back towards her door. “Me getting killed is not helping your case...and it doesn’t make any sense! My house can’t hide a delivery truck, or whatever you’ve got transporting this mystery equipment of yours.”

“It does make sense!” said Uncle Seven, a hint of panic creeping into his voice. “Because the transportation device is the equipment and it must appear inside your house.”
Piper’s brow furrowed. “What?”

“I don’t have time to explain,” fussed Uncle Seven. He ran back across the lawn, grabbed the metal rod that floated there, and pulled it through the air toward the house. He squinted at a small digital timer that hung from the rod’s top. “In about a minute and a half, something very big is going to appear around this rod. I need a fourteen-foot square area for it to materialize within and I need that area to be under at least two floors of living space to hide it from the satellites. I need you to let me in!”

“What do you mean ‘materialize?’” Piper asked. “It’s just going to appear out of thin air?”

“Yes. I can’t change when the TS Capsule will arrive. When we sent it off, we set it for now thinking we would get here earlier, but we couldn’t find the place. This will be the last time Unit Dooley gets GPS duty!”

The door in the red plastic container on the lawn popped open. “Apology: Unit Dooley repeats how very, very...”

“Later!” Uncle Seven turned back to face Piper and held out the rod. “All I’ve said is true. I need to get this into your basement in the next few seconds, or there’s going to be...big trouble.”

Piper scowled.

“Please,” begged Uncle Seven.

She made her uncle wait for several more precious seconds before she muttered, “Okay.”

“Thank you! Thank you!” said Uncle Seven as he ran up the steps, pulling the rod up with him. “This will save...”

“Not you,” said Piper. “I’ll take the rod inside.”

Uncle Seven fretted and huffed. “No, see, you’re not...I’m the only one who...”

“How much time?”

BEEP

“Here!” Uncle Seven pushed the rod at Piper, it rolled into her hand. “Your basement! Now!”

Piper opened her front door and slammed it in Uncle Seven’s face. She quickly typed in the code for the house alarm mounted on the wall. Then she pulled the rod to the basement door behind the main stairway. The timer on the rod began to beep constantly, getting faster as each second passed. As she descended the basement steps, she looked around and realized she’d forgotten something important: While her basement was indeed roomy it was also full of her family’s stuff. Loaded shelf units and piles of boxes were everywhere. She made it to the corner where they kept the Christmas decorations when the short metal pole’s beeping had become so fast it sounded like a steady “EEEEEE” noise. Piper shoved the rod toward the ugly plastic Santa her dad always insisted on putting on the roof and ran back toward the stairs.

She didn’t make it.

VVVWOOOORRRVVVVVVVV!!!

Something large hit her on her back and knocked her to the ground as a bright light and a windy roar filled the room. The shelving units were falling against each other like dominoes. Boxes of camping equipment and her childhood drawings spilled all over the floor.

The sounds of destruction, of things rolling across the floor and glass breaking, gave way to silence.

Piper turned over to find the ugly plastic Santa lying on top of her. She batted it away and sat up to see what had happened. “I knew it!” she hissed. Uncle Seven hadn’t even moved in and he’d already destroyed the basement.

But then she stared across the fallen shelves and crushed boxes and saw...it.

It was a red car, a round Volkswagen Beetle, that looked like it had been melted onto a giant metallic crab. Six segmented robot legs ending in spikes were attached where the wheels should be, two massive claws holding glass beach balls filled with sparkling clusters of circuitry jutted from the front, and sturdy-looking antennae and rivets formed patterns across its armor-enhanced hull. The thing hissed and sputtered like an old air conditioning system after it had been turned off.

It was ridiculous...and it was the most amazing thing Piper had ever seen. She couldn’t be angry. She tried, sitting there in the mess of her basement, but the anger wouldn’t come.

Uncle Seven said he had set this thing to arrive at a certain time. If he and all his stuff were here now, when had he sent it? And was it possible--was it just possible--it had traveled through time to get here?

This is what he can do she thought as she stared at the gleaming metal crab car that hadn’t been there a moment before. She considered the things in the front yard: the half-cat/half-hawk creature sitting in her grass pretending it could have a life beyond mythology; the ugly, walking, baby doll toys and the intricate technology they represented; the countless other boxes piled carelessly in the moving truck holding who-knows-how-many secrets that could redefine life and technology as the world knew it.

She thought of all these things, and she knew what she had to do.

* * *

When she opened the front door, Uncle Seven could see it in her eyes.

“Well?” he asked with a knowing smile.

“What did you put in my basement?”

“Nothing.”

“You call that...?”

“No, I’m saying I didn’t move the targeting rod down there, therefore I didn’t put anything in your basement.”

“What else have you got in that truck?”

Uncle Seven leaned forward. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Piper scowled, knowing she’d lost. “Promise me you won’t blow up my house,” she said.

“I’ll never blow up your house,” Uncle Seven replied earnestly. “I’d have nowhere left to go.”

Piper took a deep breath and let it puff through her lips, knowing her next words were going to change her life.

“Come in.”

Next Chapter: Chapter 4 - Bzzt!