McMillan Tech Industries, basement lab complex, main general tech lab
Samantha looked Ryan right in the eye. She didn't know where Ryan had been for the last hour. She assumed he must have been hiding, and she didn't blame him seeing how out of control everything had become.
"The Transformation Guns." she said, clarifying her previous statement. "They're everywhere. All over the world."
"What? How?" Ryan said.
"It started right after you got away." Samantha said. "After that punk woman clobbered Jeffries, I wanted to help him. He may be crazy now, but it's the Random Gun that's doing it. He's still our friend. But after I helped him up..."
Flashback, an hour ago, the basement lab, main general tech lab
Samantha Duncan stared in shock and dismay as the two robots Jeffries had co-opted barred her path to their master.
"You can't do this!" Samantha shouted.
"Oh, I can and I will!" Jeffries exclaimed. "I'm sending TWO batches of the Transformation Guns to MTI's other branch in Pittsburgh and no one is going to stop me! Mr. McMillan and all those fools at the Board of Directors will learn soon enough that WE are the real reason for MTI's success."
He went on. "Those idiots use us, they exploit us, they spit us out. We make their computers, their tablets, their machines. We imagine them into existence. But they're the ones who make the money off it. Who gets the lion's share of the money? Not us, not the hard-working tech geeks!"
He continued his rant, getting more worked up as he went on. "Well, no more! That's going to change! They'll be crawling to us begging for us to bring out the Restoration Guns so they don't have to go home all Fat or looking like a Goth or forced to act like a mime! And if they ask very nicely, maybe, just maybe, we'll show a little mercy on them."
"Jeffries, I get it. You're right - they are screwing us over. But this isn't the way." Samantha pleaded. "You're better than this. Please, stop and think about --"
"La-la, not listening!" Jeffries interrupted. "I'm doing this and no way are you talking me out of it!"
As Jeffries began preparing the two batches of Transformation Guns for their impending teleportation, removing them from their respective boxes, Samantha noticed something. One of the batches Jeffries was using was the one Samantha herself had tampered with back when Jeffries was locking up all the Restoration Guns. While Jeffries wasn't looking, she had secretly switched one of the Restoration Guns with a Random Gun, meaning that Jeffries had locked up eleven Restoration Guns and one Random Gun. The twelfth Restoration Gun was now in one of the two batches Jeffries was now preparing.
Maybe if she kept creating distractions, Jeffries wouldn't notice. But she needed to act quick. He wasn't listening to reason, and she needed to get past the robots. There were a few Transformation Guns lying on the floor, having been knocked to the ground during the earlier fight with Jerri. Samantha reached for the nearest one.
Clown Gun? No, it wouldn't make Jeffries any less crazy and might make things worse. Geek Gun? Jeffries was already a Geek and the Random Gun hadn't really changed that - instead it had only turned him into a darker, crazier version of one.
Jock Gun? Wait ... that could work. But not if she used it on Jeffries.
Quickly, she grabbed the Jock Gun and zapped herself with it. Samantha felt herself change, becoming more muscular, fit, and full of energy. She felt like she could run a marathon race, or hit a home run, or fight with a strong opponent. And this was precisely what she needed to get past the two robots, who were not affected by Transformation Guns.
She quickly grabbed a fire extinguisher, and sprayed both robots with it. Then she swung it down on the left robot's head with strength that surprised her. She brought it down repeatedly until the robot was motionless and emitting sparks. She then wrenched the robot's arm loose from its socket, and swung it like a baseball bat at the other robot, knocking it to the ground. She grabbed the fire extinguisher again and smashed at the robot until it was still.
Jeffries was only momentarily stunned by this sudden display of destructive force by Samantha Duncan. However, he quickly got over it and tossed both batches of Transformation Guns into the Cargo Teleportation Chamber. He wasn't paying attention any more to which guns he had, or which would be teleported to what parts of the building miles away in Pittsburgh. He needed to activate the chamber as soon as possible.
Samantha rushed over and grabbed him as he was about to press the button. The two fought and struggled for the next minute, Samantha briefly distracted by looking into the Chamber. She reached in and grabbed what she recognized as a Random Gun, and tossed it to the floor. Jeffries charged at her in anger, and instinctively she pushed him back.
He fell to the floor near the Chamber's activation button, and to Samantha's horror, pressed it a second before she could stop him.
What happened next, however, shocked both of them. They were expecting to see the Transformation Guns instantly vanish through briefly opening warp portals, as had happened during Jeffries' previous two uses of the Cargo Teleportation Chamber. Instead, there was a series of flashing lights that indicated something was very, very wrong.
The Transformation Guns scattered hastily within the Chamber shimmered, and glowed a bright white. A high-pitched mechanical whining issued from the Chamber. Samantha instinctively grabbed Jeffries and dragged him to safety behind an overturned lab table.
There was a flash of light, and an explosion, as the Chamber's power source overloaded. Samantha felt ripples, like a tiny hint of an earthquake. When the light faded, the Chamber was ablaze with fire and smoke was billowing from it. Samantha quickly grabbed the fire extinguisher and sprayed it until the fire had been extinguished.
But she knew already that the real damage had already been done. She would not know just how bad it was until after she tied up Jeffries with duct tape, and then took a pause to check the latest news feed on one of the nearby laptops.
It was not until much later that anyone would figure out what had happened. When the Cargo Teleportation Chamber overloaded, the magic powering it mixed with the magic powering the Transformation Guns to create a wave of magical energy. This wave spread outward from McMillan Tech Industries: Lake Point Branch, to the rest of Lake Point, to the rest of the country, and to the rest of the entire planet.
Within seconds of the wave's release, the wave worked its magic. Based on the contents of the Chamber, and its stored data regarding the two previous uses of the chamber, the wave used the templates of the Transformation Guns to transform any object even remotely similar into a Transformation Gun. All guns everywhere in the entire world changed, each one into a different type of Transformation Gun. And it was entirely random which Transformation Gun each normal gun would change into.
In addition, all ammunition sources were changed into magical energy to power all the new Transformation Guns worldwide. There were no regular guns left on Earth. Only Transformation Guns of one type or another.
As a result of the Chamber having been used to teleport only two Random Guns and only one Restoration Gun, however, those particular types of Transformation Guns would be rarer than all the other types, with the Restoration Gun being the rarest of the two.
The Present: McMillan Tech Industries, basement lab complex, main general tech lab
Samantha finished telling Ryan her story. "We failed, Ryan. Now the Transformation Guns are everywhere. Whatever happened with the Chamber .. it changed everything."
She pointed at the laptops in the area, which were showing either news feeds or streaming news channels telling stories of Transformation Guns all over the world. "Even Jeffries didn't want this. He just wanted to get back at Mr. McMillan and the board."
Ryan stared at the news, speechless. Neither of them had any words for a moment. What started out as a shared fantasy had not only become real, but it had now gotten loose into the rest of the world. How were they going to deal with the consequences?
