Archive of Our Own

Jack stretched as he began to wake up, then opened his eyes as he wondered why his head wasn’t on his pillow. He wasn’t one to fidget very much in his sleep, so it was unusual for him to have wormed his way down the bed. Come to think of it, his feet would be over the edge if he had done and they weren’t. He snapped his eyes open and stared at the ceiling in confusion.

“How did you get so far away?” he asked it.

“Good morning Sheriff Carter,” replied the house, SARAH. “The dimensions of your bedroom have not changed.”

At that, Jack sat up and had a proper look around him. The edge of the bed, usually just a leg swing away, seemed much further than normal. He crawled over to it, a sinking feeling in his stomach. The sight, as he peered over the edge, would have been very nearly terrifying if he was someone afraid of heights; which he wasn’t...much. There was nothing for it, he would have to jump off so that he could investigate this further. He shut his eyes, swung himself into a sitting position over the edge of the bed and, sending a prayer to anyone that might be listening, jumped off.

The fall was taking longer than he expected and he made the mistake of opening his eyes. The floor was actually rapidly approaching and he did what anyone would do. He put his hands out to brace his fall.

“Why am I wearing mittens?” he wondered out loud. “Oooomph.”

The landing had been a lot softer than he expected, although it did still knock the breath out of him, because he bounced instead of broke. He didn’t even feel as though he had been bruised. He got up and looked down at his hands, then along his arms, then down his body to his feet. Jack thought he did very well not to scream. He stumbled, more than walked to the full length mirror on his wardrobe, not being able to quite get used to walking with this new frame he had woken up with. The mirror proved that what he had seen when looking down had actually been him.

He stood there for a long time just staring at the image as he tried to come to terms with the fact that he seemed to have been turned into a fifteen inch knitted toy. He had short strands of brown wool sticking out of his head where he would normally have had a decent short haircut. He was going to be ribbed about that. His eyes were French knots and his nose was non-existent, which perturbed him greatly and he couldn't stop poking the space where it should be. His mouth could open and close but seemed to have no throat or tongue, however he could talk as perfectly as if he were still in human form. He wasn’t wearing mittens, his hands were just missing fingers. He wiggled his thumbs energetically as if to make up for the fact that his fingers were gone.

Luckily, whatever had turned him knitted had also been thoughtful enough to keep him clothed. The t-shirt he had been wearing in bed was also knitted and further examination showed him that he could actually take it off too. Curiosity then got the better of him and he took it off to look at what had happened to his chest.

It was non-existent. No pecs, no belly button, just flesh coloured wool and a bit of fluff sticking through one of the stitches. He put the t-shirt back on as fast as he could, what with the lack of fingers, and decided to try not to think about what that had looked like ever again. He was definitely not going to think about what the rest of him looked like. He didn't care if his, now knitted pyjama pants, were also removable; they were staying right where they were. He didn’t think he’d be able to cope with seeing that. It was bad enough that his hands were like mittens and his feet were just slightly rounded off - which, of course, explained the trouble he had had with walking around.

His balance was all out of kilter and he’d have to work on that before going to see anyone else.

“Oh, crap!” he exclaimed.

He was going to have to go out like this.

Zoe had stayed round a friend’s house, which was lucky. He didn’t think he would cope with her seeing him looking like this. Or him seeing his daughter turned into a knitted toy. That would just be far too much, even for this town.

He headed out of the bedroom and towards the stairs, wondering if it was just him that had been affected. On one hand, he hoped not because he wanted to be able to share the ridicule that he just knew he was going to be faced with. But on the other hand, it would be good if it was just him because then the geniuses would all be in a better position to work out how to fix this. Knowing Eureka, though, that would just be far too easy.

He reached the stairs and proceeded to climb down them as if he were descending a mountain. If SARAH were patched into the bunkers camera’s she would have been able to see him arms on one step, legs dangling above the next as he prepared himself for the fall, often landing on his soft tush and bouncing a little towards the edge. He was glad when he finally reached the bottom.

“SARAH,” he addressed the house.

“Yes, Sheriff Carter?” SARAH replied.

“Are you still able to run that car of yours?” Jack tried to cross his fingers whilst asking this and gave what could only be called a growl of annoyance when the effort reminded him that his hands were pretty much just mittens.

“Yes I can. Would you like me to access it now and bring it to the bunker?”

“Yes, please. But before you go, please open the front door for me.” Jack stared across the expanse of floor that he would have to cross before reaching the front door and almost despaired as he remembered the stairs that he would have to climb to actually get outside. This was going to be a long day.

By the time Jack had made it across to the front door, with quite a few stumbles when he tried to run as he still hadn’t got used to not having normal feet, and up the stairs to the outside world, SARAH was ready and waiting for him with the smart car. He was grateful to see that the car was a normal car and not a knitted one. The trees and surrounding fields and road also remained unaffected just as the bunker was.

He set off from the door of the bunker and started towards the car. If he had found walking difficult on a flat surface, he found it nigh on impossible over all the gravel and loose stones. It wasn’t long before he was flat on his face. He picked himself up, dusted himself off and kept on going. Twice more he face planted before he reached the car and he was getting so annoyed with it that he didn’t once stop to think how he was going to get into the car. He was a knitted doll, with no knees to speak of, attempting to get into the driver side of a car that’s base, at minimum, was higher off the ground than he was. Add to that the height of the base of the seat and he was really going to have fun getting in.

He started by trying to reach his now stubby arms up and pull himself onto the base that way. His arms length didn’t reach and his ability to jump was quite simply abysmal. The only thing for it was a running jump to try and leap straight onto the base and then haul himself up onto the chair. Jack growled in frustration. This wasn’t going to be easy, especially considering his complete lack of ability to run in this form. There was nothing for it, he was just going to have to try.

“At least no-one can see me,” he mused as he backed up a little way took a deep breath and then psyched himself out because how the hell could he take a deep breath when he didn’t actually have lungs anymore?

“Don’t unravel now, gotta keep it together so it can be fixed!” With that he ran towards the car, knitted body twisting from side to side, tiny arms pumping uselessly back and forth as he attempted to go faster. When he was close to the car he attempted his running jump and got high enough to bounce off the side of the seat and land a little way away on his back, staring up at the bright blue sky.

There was no way he was going to give up. All he needed to do this time was the same thing, but remember to actually grab hold of the seat instead of bouncing off it.

It took three more attempts for him to time it right so that he jumped from the right place and managed to grab hold of the seat and use the momentum from the leap to get him up onto it and safely in the car.

“So much for third time lucky,” he grumbled to himself. “SARAH door.”

The door swung shut and SARAH replied, “Where would you like to go, Sheriff Carter?”

That stumped him for a moment. Then he figured the best thing to do would be to go to work like normal and see whether Jo was affected. “My office please, SARAH.”

The car jolted forwards and threw him face down on the seat. He pushed himself up grumbling to himself about the amount of time he was spending falling flat on his face and then discovered that the sensation of being the only occupant of a moving car and only being able to see upwards out of the window was worse than being in the driver’s seat and not being the driver.

“SARAH are you able to make the chair go higher?”

“Based on the calculations of your overall height, leg length, back length and width, the chair is at its optimum position for you to be comfortable in the car.”

"What?" Jack asked incredulously. "Wait a second, are you telling me that the chair is at the best position for my height right now? Have you not noticed that it's different to what it normally is?"

There was a long moment of silence then. "Perhaps you are feeling a little unwell, Sheriff."

"No! Well, yes but not unwelll exactly..." Jack rubbed the back of his neck, which wasn't as satisfying without fingers. "Your sensors really aren't picking up anything different about me today?"

"You appear to be going into work in your pyjamas, however, I have looked on the internet and discovered that this is a common form of fundraising activity. I was unaware that there was a fundraising event happening today but perhaps you just forgot to inform me." SARAH's voice was scarily like Jack's ex-wife's when she was at her most passive aggressive.

"There's not...I didn't..." Jack tried but then he sighed. He didn't really feel up to arguing about a non-existent slight against his overly sensitive AI and he'd get the scientists to figure out why she couldn't tell he wasn't human when he found them. "Will the chair go higher, SARAH?"

“Yes, Sheriff Carter, it will.”

“Please will you make it go higher?” he asked, finding the whole conversation a little harder than he thought it really should be.

“Are my calculations not correct, Sheriff Carter?”

“On this particular day, no, they are not. Could you raise the seat for today?”

SARAH started raising the seat without answering, obviously piqued by the inference that her calculations had been wrong on top of her belief that Jack was keeping things from her. When it reached a height where the sheriff could see out the window (whilst standing up on the seat) he thought that it would stop, but then remembered that she didn't actually know when to stop.

“That’s enough!” he cried out, “You can stop now!”

The seat halted and the car continued to drive along the road without his assistance but SARAH stayed ominously quiet. Jack rolled his eyes. All he needed was an annoyed artificial intelligence that was his only means of getting around. Luckily, SARAH gave him no further trouble on the journey and soon he was heading through the town. There was no-one about, which was really unusual, and SARAH pulled the car into the Sheriff’s parking space and opened the door.

“SARAH, please lower the seat again,” Jack asked slightly apprehensive of what answer he might get.

“Certainly, Sheriff Carter,” replied SARAH in an overly polite tone and the seat began to lower.

Jack was grateful he didn’t have to go through all the rigmarole of SARAH arguing with him about how her calculations must have been right.

He had her open the door and then peered over the edge. There was nothing for it, he was going to have to jump off the seat. He sighed and threw himself off the seat, aiming for the pavement and trying to turn himself so he landed face up for once. He didn’t. He landed on his side which caused him to fall onto his face. He was beginning to see a pattern with this day.

His next problem was getting into his office; that door handle looked impossibly far away. He stood staring up at it for a few moments before the bush near the sidewalk rustled and drew his attention away. At first glance he couldn’t see anyone or anything. But he did see the bush rustle again.

“Who’s there?” he asked with barely concealed fear.

The thought had just crossed his mind that he wouldn’t want to meet someone’s pet cat whilst in this state. They might just think he was a toy.

“Me!” Jo loudly whispered as she poked her knitted head out from behind a branch.

“Jo! It got you too!” Jack practically yelled with relief.

“Shhhh!” Jo pointed her gun at him. “No-one can see me like this!”

“You have a knitted gun?!” exclaimed the Sheriff, completely ignoring Jo’s request and wobbling over to have a look at her gun.

“I have two, thank you very much. Hey! Hands off!”

Jack wrestled a bit with Jo to try and get a look at the gun she was holding. In the process, they unbalanced and the gun went off.

“What the hell is that!” she exclaimed.

“Awesome!!” Jack replied as he wrestled the gun free from Jo’s slack hand whilst she stared in shock at the woollen pom pom that had exited the gun in place of a real bullet.

It didn’t take Jo long to explode at Jack, shouting at him to stop playing with her gun. He was shooting the tiny little pom poms all over the place, laughing uncontrollably as he did so.

"It's a bobble gun!" He snickered.

It was a strange sight. Even more so to Jo. “I can’t believe my guns don’t work!”

“Ah, come on Jo, you’ve got to admit there’s a certain attraction to knitted bobble guns,” said Jack, promptly shooting Jo in the stomach.

The idea had been to cheer her up and make her see the funny side. It didn’t. It just made her more mad. She spent the next ten minutes properly ranting at Jack about how her important the guns were and how she might as well have a stick as a weapon they were that useless to her now. She even picked up a sturdy stick to demonstrate, at which point Jack put his hands up in the surrender position and managed to talk her down off her rant by posing the question of how to get into their office.

“I could stand on your shoulders and see if that helps us reach the handle?” Jo asked.

“Let’s try it!” said Jack enthusiastically, not wanting to set her off ranting again by telling her that thirty inches wouldn’t be enough.

Jo peered out the other sides of the bush and Jack realised that she was looking to see who was watching them. “There’s no-one about, Jo.”

“It’s always best to double check,” she replied sticking her tongue out at him, although she didn’t really have a tongue as a knitted toy so it just ended up looking like she pouted at him, which made Jack crack up all over again.

They made their way to the door, Jack shoving Jo’s gun into his pyjama bottoms. He was going to have some fun with that today; he was sure of it. When they reached the door, he bent down as best he could and Jo clambered onto his back and then onto his shoulders and then reached up as far as possible. As Jack had thought, it wasn’t enough. However Jo wasn’t to be deterred, she attempted jumping off his shoulders to reach the handle and was soon lying flat on her back on the sidewalk.

"So, this isn't working," she said as she picked herself up and brushed herself down, as if to brush away the embarrassment.

"We could try Vincent's. His is a push door," replied Jack.

"Why would we do that?" Said Jo, "Someone might see us!"

"Well, we need to see how widespread this knitted issue is and the amount of time we've been out here its highly likely we've already been seen!" Came Jack's reply.

Jo begrudgingly agreed, so they set off across the road to Vincent's.

On arrival they found that the door was unlocked. Jack was able to push it a little way, but not far enough for Jo to get through. It took both of them to push it all the way open and then they wedged it open with the stick Jo had picked up earlier. They entered the restaurant looking around to see who was there. It seemed to be completely empty.

"Hello?" Called Jack.

There was a kind of wail in response.

"It’s coming from the kitchen area, come on!" Said Jo, tugging on Jack as she set off in the direction the sound came from.

It took them a while to get from the door to the kitchen entrance behind the counter. Which frustrated Jo. She then started ranting again about her guns not working.

"You're going to pop a stitch if you keep on like you are," joked Jack.

Any response that might have been on Jo's lips was quashed by the sight of a knitted Vincent, apron and all, sat under his pasta machine holding strings of yellow wool which was coming out of it and surrounding him on the floor.

"Knitted!" He sobbed. "All my food is knitted! I dread to even think what the store room cupboards look like!"

Jo awkwardly crouched down next to him, patting his shoulder as he started to wail again, whilst Jack picked up some woollen spaghetti and put it in his mouth.

"That's hardly going to help, Sheriff," Jo said with a meaningful look and a nod towards the upset Vincent.

"I can eat it!" Exclaimed Jack ecstatically, grabbing another handful. "It’s really quite tasty!"

That stopped Vincent's wailing.

"Really?" He asked with a hiccough.

"Yes! Really! Go on, try it!"

Both Jo and Vincent stared at Jack; Jo with scepticism and Vincent with hope. Then they both tentatively reached out and picked up a handful of spaghetti each, stuffing it into their mouths. Their stares changed, Jo's from scepticism to shock at the sheriff being right and Vincent's from hope to delight. His food was still edible.

"So what's caused all this then?" Vincent asked as he pulled himself together.

"That's what we'd like to know," replied Jack.

"Now that there's three of us," said Jo thoughtfully, "we should be able to get ourselves sorted enough to reach that phone."

"What do we want the phone for?" asked Jack, not really paying attention to much beyond the fact that he hadn't eaten yet today and the woollen spaghetti really did taste good.

"Well, Mastermind," replied Jo, "we could use it to ring Global Dynamics and see if a) they're affected and b) they can solve the problem. Or did you have a better idea?"

Jo had attempted to tick her fingers off with each suggestion and Jack could have sworn she was nearly tapping her foot by the time she'd finished speaking.

"Alright then, Smarty Pants," he jibed at her, "Exactly how are we supposed to do that? Stand on each other’s shoulders?"

"Actually," Jo replied thoughtfully, "that's not a bad idea! We won't reach the phone by doing just that, but if we can push a chair against the wall under it we can then climb on each other’s shoulders to get on the chair and then again to reach the phone!"

This caused a long winded argument over who got to use the phone, it being Jo's idea but Jack being the Sheriff. In the end, they both turned to Vincent to choose.

"Me!" He exclaimed, "Because both of you are behaving like children so neither of you should get to use the phone!"

Jo blatantly attempted to stick her tongue out at him and Jack went to carry on arguing and then decided against it. It would hardly help their cause if they spent all day bickering. He went to the nearest chair and grabbed a leg, giving it a pull. It didn’t budge at all.

Turning to the other two, he flexed his arms and said, “I am man! Hear me roar!” then burst out laughing.

It broke the previous argumentative tension and had the other two laughing as well. They then ran over and took up a leg each so that Jo and Vincent were attempting to push the chair and Jack was trying to pull it. After a few minutes and lots of grunting and groaning, the chair only moved a couple of centimetres. Jo pointed out to Jack that he could push his chair leg from the other side and maybe that would work better than him trying to pull it, constantly losing his grip and falling flat on his back.

“Well, at least I was falling on my back for once. I spent most the morning falling on my face,” he replied purposefully not telling her she’d had another good idea so as not to give her the satisfaction of hearing it, but instead inadvertently giving her more material to laugh at and tease him with.

He moved around to the other side of the chair leg and, with all three of them pushing, they were able to get the chair moving a bit better and soon had it up against the wall. Climbing onto it was easy. Vincent climbed onto Jack’s shoulders and then Jo clambered up both of them getting a grip on the seat edge and then swinging her leg up onto the chair to an ominous tearing sound.

“Jo! You ok?” called Jack.

“Yes, it was just my gun belt catching on a bit of wood sticking out from the edge of the chair,” she replied and then her head popped over the edge of the seat and she leant down to hoist Vincent up. Once she had pulled Vincent up, he took hold of her legs and lowered her over the edge more so that Jack could jump up and grab her arms. Then, with Vincent pulling them up and Jack trying to push off from the chair leg to give him some help, they finally managed to get all three of them on the chair top.

This was where they then realised that Vincent wouldn’t be able to be the one to use the phone. It was going to have to be hooked off the base and then rested on the chair before being used. They were struggling to hold each other up (not having bones to help) so there wasn’t any way that they’d be able to stand on top of each other and hold up a phone that was twice the size of all three of them put together.

Jack hoisted Vincent onto his shoulders and then Jo scrambled up them again. It was easier this time, with the wall there for extra support. She steadied herself on Vincent’s shoulders and he, in turn, steadied himself against the wall with one arm and held onto one of Jo's legs to help support her with the other. (Jack was employing his own unique style of support whereby he was holding on to both of Vincent's legs with his hands and supporting himself against the wall with his head). Jo pushed the handset with both her hands and managed to knock it off with her first attempt.

The action and the rush off air that resulted from the handset falling past them resulted in flailing arms and legs and all of them landing in an entangled heap on the seat. The phone was dangling precariously over the edge and all three of them had to jump on it to swivel it round so that it stayed on the seat. With that accomplished, Jo hopped up onto it and started jumping on the numbers trying to dial Global Dynamics.

"It's not working! I'm too fluffy and light!" She exclaimed in frustration.

Looking at himself and then over at Jack, Vincent said, "I'm the biggest, I'd better help."

With that he left Jack on the seat and climbed up to join Jo. They started with both jumping up and down, but as they weren’t quite co-ordinating properly it didn’t work. They then grabbed hands and with a "One! Two! Three!" simultaneously jumped on the first number and all three finally heard the most welcome sound of the number beeping. They followed the same process with all the other numbers and were all relieved to hear the phone dialling, connecting and then ringing the other end.

"Now all we need is for someone to answer it. Preferably Allison," said Jack.

"What if they don't answer? Like if they can't answer because they’re like us and can't reach?" Vincent asked as he just worried in general, unable to take the suspense.

"They're the brightest minds and the cleverest scientists of this day and age, they'll work it out," replied Jack.

"And if they don't answer first time we'll just keep redialling until they do!" Jo added.

The ringing cut off and the phone returned to the buzzing sound of its dial tone.

"Come on Vincent," said Jo as she grabbed him and they made their way back onto the handset.

They did their one, two, three, jump on the redial button and the phone happily did the rest of the work for them. The ringing went on and on like it had last time then, just when they were all starting to think it would cut off again, someone answered.

"G.. Good Morning, G.. Global Dynamics?" Came the unsure stuttering of a male's voice.

Jo frowned. "Fargo? Is that you?"

"Yes!" He replied, sounding relieved.

"Oh great, Fargo," Jack said pretty much thinking out loud.

Jo hit him then, ignoring Fargo's squeak of protest, said, "Are you the only one there, Fargo?"

"No, only, everyone else is otherwise engaged at the moment with an important project." Fargo replied in a shifty tone of voice.

"So important you're not involved?" Jack couldn't help saying.

"I am, only I was told to come answer the phone," Fargo retorted.

"What's the project, Fargo? What does it entail?" asked Jo.

"Does it have anything to do with turning the town into little knitted toys?!" Jack butted in.

There was a sharp intake of breath.

"Right! We're coming over!" Jack said decisively as he went to the edge of the chair and jumped off, bouncing on his backside when he hit the floor.

Jo and Vincent followed him, Jo pulling her gun out, ready for action.

"You're not going to need that!" exclaimed Jack.

"It’s always best to be prepared rather than caught out," replied Jo, smartly.

"You're still not going to need them," Jack repeated heading out of the diner and straight into, what seemed to be, the entire town fighting.

Jo was immediately in full blown deputy mode, gun out (with a knowing smirk sent Jack's way) and yelling, whilst Jack waded in to the melee trying to work out what was going on. They got the various fighters apart quickly enough; the whole people being knitted toys thing making it so much easier than normal, then asked why they seemed to have forgotten how to behave like normal human beings.

There was immediately so much shouting that Jack could barely make out what the individuals were saying but he heard enough to know that everyone was just scared and angry; of what they’d woken up to. Pretty soon the tone of the shouting changed; now that they had authority figures to yell at they were making the most of it. Demanding that Jack and Jo do something to get them changed back to normal.

In order to try and calm them down, Jo pointed her gun in the air and fired it a few times. This did work to stop the crowd yelling at them, but it wasn't the shock of the noise (as there wasn't any); it was more the sight of the little bobbles that came out and then rained down on Jo and Jack.

The crowd all burst out into slightly hysterical laughter and Jack used the opportunity to get a word in edge ways. He told them that Global Dynamics were working on the problem and that that's where Jack and Jo were headed to. In the meantime Jack told everyone that they should go wait in Vincent's diner where he would be happy to provide them with food and drink which he promised they would be able to consume.

The crowd moved off some still laughing and some still adamantly berating the situation, leaving Jack with Jo and Taggart. Jo was fuming; way more angry than Jack had ever seen her. She was so angry, in fact, about her gun not working, having bobbles instead of bullets and everyone laughing at her, that she was actually starting to unravel!

“Woah! Jo! Calm down!” Jack exclaimed worriedly, “You’re unravelling! I don’t know how to deal with that!”

Jo turned her attention to herself. She checked her hands then patted her face. Then she looked down the front of her body and at her legs. But it wasn’t until she twisted herself around to look at her behind that she could see where the wool was unwinding.

She looked at Jack, horrified. “My ass? I have an unravelling ass?! Can this day get any worse?!”

Jack wasn’t able to reply because he wanted to laugh so much. He managed to bite his tongue to stop himself, as that would have broken Jo completely, and simply shook his head in a roundabout way neither committing to a yes or a no. Then a knitted, half naked Taggart jumped between them brandishing knitting needles and saving him from answering at all.

“Don’t move! You’ll only make it worse!” said Taggart as he approached a shell-shocked Jo.

Jack was staring at him with his mouth hanging open.” You have knitting needles? Well, I gotta see this!”

He folded his arms across his chest then immediately unfolded them, the effect not being the same with his arms this stubby and elbow-less.

Taggart continued to come to Jo’s rescue, pulling out some matching wool from the bag he’d been carrying around with him and put a knot onto the first needle. He then carefully approached Jo.

“This won’t hurt,” he told her.

“How on earth do you know that?!” Jo nearly screeched. “Have you ever been knitted before?!”

“Of course not!” Taggart replied, amused at Jo’s reaction. “But falling over doesn’t hurt does it?”

“Well....” Jo tailed off as she thought, but wasn’t able to say anything more on the matter as Jack butted in.

“No! It doesn’t! And I’ve fallen over loads today!”

“There, see? It won’t hurt,” said Taggart.

Jo looked like she was going to continue arguing, so Taggart went with a different tactic. “Look, we could leave it and then see what state you’re in when GD solve this problem and we’re all human again. You could have a massive hole in your butt cheek.”

That worked.

Taggart signalled Jo to turn around and closed the gap between them. He then used the needles to pick up stitches on one side of the gap that had appeared on Jo’s behind and, pulling some wool loose from the ball he got out, he slowly knitted his way across the stitches. At this point he realised that he either needed to stand on his head to knit back along the other side or he’d need Jo to.

“Right, next row needs to go the other way, so you’re going to have to turn around,” he told Jo.

Jo turned to face him.

He looked at her for a moment. “No, I mean turn around,” he said whilst indicating with his arms that he meant her to go upside down.

This was not met with laughter as he thought it might, the image to him being quite a hilarious one. Jo put her hand on her hips and glared at him with as much venom as a cute little toy could. The effect was not at all scary.

Jack, once he had stopped laughing uncontrollably, was able to come up with a slightly better suggestion. He suggested that Jo lie flat on her front and Taggart straddle her one way or the other, depending on which way he needed to knit to fix her up. Jo wasn’t too impressed with this idea either, but her need to be stitched up turned out to be greater than her embarrassment of exactly how she was being stitched up. However hard Jack laughed.

“Jack shut it, it’s bad enough as it is without having to listen to you too,” said Jo angrily.

Jack had the courtesy to curtail his laughter at his deputy’s request; it wouldn’t be useful to him to completely alienate her today. There were others watching this bizarre show, most from the safety of the diner, and the majority of them were laughing too.

“Okay, People! You’ve had your fun, time to leave her alone! It could be you having your butt sewn up by Taggart!” That sobered a lot of them up and they all made an effort to stop laughing, even if the brave ones still continued to watch with a grin on their face.

Taggart looked up from his work on Jo’s butt (a thing he probably would have preferred to have been looking at in its natural form) and said pointedly, “I’m knitting, not sewing, Jack.”

“Same thing isn’t it?” replied Jack.

“Not at all! For starters, you don’t sew with two needles!” retorted Taggart.

“Hey, calm down Dr Knit!” Jo butted in, “Concentrate on not breaking me further!”

“Actually, I don’t need to concentrate that much to do this; I’m an extremely good knitter.”

“How did that come about?” asked Jack, intrigued now that he’d got over the initial hilarity of it all.

It turned out that Taggart had been very close to his mother, and even closer to his grandmother. Both had often sat with him (when he had been grounded and unable to leave the house) and taught him patience by teaching him to knit and crochet. The crochet part stalled Jack for a moment while he processed that. Then his incredulous “Crochet? With the hammers and balls?” got him an entire lesson on how to crochet (which apparently wasn’t the game; that was croquet), down to what the stitches were called and what the needle was called.

Taggart felt it very important to then lecture them both on the difference between knitting and crochet and the importance of both. Apparently his ability to hunt had vastly improved as his ability to sit still knitting or crocheting had improved. The patience the craft work had taught him helping him in his other pursuit.

“I just can’t get over the picture of a young Taggart sat making granny squares with his grandmother!” Jack laughed.

“I still can’t get used to the idea that Taggart is a proficient knitter,” replied Jo incredulously.

“You better believe it, baby,” replied Taggart as he finished the knitting and produced a darning needle and scissors from his bag.

“What are those for?” asked Jo as she looked over her shoulder to see what he was up to.

“It’s for closing up the last little gap,” replied Taggart matter-of-factly.

He transferred the wool to the needle and completed his work of mastery by sewing the last bit up, tying the wool off tightly and then snipping the excess away. He then patted Jo’s behind and jumped off to let her get up, dust herself down and check out his handiwork.

Jo twisted herself around and checked her backside. “You can barely see where you’ve stitched!” she said, incredulousness seeping into every word.

“It’s a skill,” replied Taggart shrugging it off.

“It’s a skill we might need at GD with all those highly strung scientist types,” mused Jack.

“I agree, Taggart, you’ll have to come with us,” Jo said heading off towards SARAH and the Smart Car.

Jack and Taggart, with his bag of wool and needles and who knows what else he had in it, followed behind. Jack fully expecting another round of climbing on each other’s shoulders to get into the car and pleased that his initial trial of running and jumping and face-planting instead of making the leap into the car wasn’t needed. He underestimated the extent to which Taggart had prepared himself before leaving his house, however, because as they reached the car he pulled a knitted rope ladder out of his bag and, with a lasso like movement, flung it into the car. It caught around the seatbelt buckle and they were all able to climb up it and into the car with ease.

SARAH seemed confused about how the three of them were all sat on one seat, but she highered it at Jack’s request without complaining. Jo and Taggart then spent the entire drive to Global Dynamic attempting to explain to SARAH what it was that had happened to them. It was surprisingly difficult trying to tell an inanimate object that was basically a computer what it meant to have been turned from a human being into a knitted toy. But they had fun trying to explain it anyway.

On arrival at Global Dynamic SARAH parked the car directly on the pad for the automatic doors. This was so that they opened for them without all the problems of it not recognising that they were stood there. Taggart had come up with the idea after Jack had wondered aloud how they were actually going to get inside Global Dynamic. It was a brilliant idea; they could have spent a long time jumping up and down in front of the door trying to get it to open if it hadn’t been thought of.

There was a very long period of time between them getting out of the car, through the open automatic doors and up the stairs to Nathan Stark’s office. Whilst the stairs were close enough together for them to easily reach with their upper bodies and pull themselves up, it still took a lot of time and effort. With Taggart and Jo involved it did become a massive contest though so it didn’t take as long as it could have done. Jack simply blamed not being in the right clothes on him being last. He tried to pass it off as his joggers not staying up properly (plus he had been trying to keep the gun he’d procured off Jo stuck in the back of his waistband. He had plans for that so he wasn’t going to remind her about it!)

“Hello?” called out Jo as they walked down the corridor outside Stark’s office.

“Hello!” came the reply from Fargo, although they couldn’t see him anywhere.

“Where are you Fargo?” asked Jack, heading towards the counter.

“Nowhere! Definitely not behind the counter, no need to go there,” he rambled in reply.

“Come out and talk to us, Fargo. We’re all in the same boat, no need to hide!” said Jo.

“Ahh.... no, I’m good here,” he answered.

“What’s going on, Fargo?” Jack asked, losing his patience.

“No, no, I’m really alright here, I can hear you fine, you can hear me, there’s really no need for face to face interaction,” Fargo stammered desperately.

“Really, Fargo, there’s no need for this, Jo’s right we are all in the same boat...” Jack trailed off as he rounded the corner of the counter and saw Fargo.

Jo and Taggart rounded the corner after him as Jo said, “Come on Fargo, I want to see whether you got little plastic glasses or whether they got knitted on....Oh!”

With that, all three of them fell about laughing. The laughter was the proper, full blown, hysterical kind that really brightens your day and cleanses your soul. The sight they were greeted with was so fantastically funny that they just couldn’t help it! It was so hysterical that even Fargo got over some of his embarrassment and joined in with the laughter a little.

“What on earth did you do to end up like that?” Jack asked incredulously.

He waited for Fargo to answer and it wasn’t until he put his hands on his hips in a very parental like manner that Fargo finally answered. “I, well, I....” he sneaked a glance at Jo.

“Come on, spit it out!” said Jack.

“I thought I would clean up a bit, and had a shower. I’d got dirty walking over here and I didn’t want to be dirty so I lathered up some soap and then the bubbles surrounded me and by the time I got out I looked like this.”

“So you went in the shower made of wool and came out the shower made of felt!” said Jo, laughing fondly.

“It’s quite a sight,” Jack laughed.

“Don’t worry, Fargo, you’re not the only one to have crazier things than waking up knitted happen to you,” Jo said, and then proceeded to tell him her unravelling tale as they all made their way to the conference room currently being occupied by the Brains that Be and their crew.

They didn’t look too impressed at the raucous caused by the three of them turning up, so the hilarity had obviously not gone unheard. The giggle attacks still kept coming though, because the sight that greeted them in the conference room was just one that Jack, at least, wished he could photograph for prosperity. Instead of being sat in the chairs around the table, Nathan Stark and Allison Blake were sat at either end of the table, actually on the table! The rest of the brains were along either side, also sat on the table.

A group of toys sat in the Global Dynamic conference room. It just didn’t get any better than this.

They’d made a makeshift set of stairs to get up to the table top so Jack, Jo, Taggart and Fargo all clambered up to join them. The sight of Fargo made the others realise what all the hilarity had been about.

“Fargo what have you done to yourself?” Nathan demanded.

This led to a embarrassed stuttering reply that didn’t really tell them what had happened but got the basics of “soap” and “water” out of him to a chorus of groans and “only Fargo” comments. He simply sat down and tried to make himself less conspicuous so that everyone would get on with the matter in hand and not pay attention to his mistake. Also, he wanted to concentrate on the matter in hand so that he could try and be the one that solves it. That would definitely put him in better stead with the bosses, who were currently alternating between glaring at him or completely ignoring him. What he didn’t realise was that the glares were being aimed everywhere because Nathan and Allison were simply mad at the whole situation, it being one of those days where they don’t get any of the work they wanted to get done because they had to deal with this issue first. Also both of them could see that this would take them all day, just simple tasks of going upstairs taking more than half an hour in some cases.

“This is enough!” Nathan finally lost his rag, but the hand hitting the table didn’t have its usual effect.

Everyone turned to look at him as he continued, “We have an epidemic on our hands that we don’t know how far spread it is or how well contained. We don’t know whether it is just in Eureka or whether it is the entire country or even the entire world! We have no idea why it has happened and we have NO IDEA.....”

As soon as he’d worked himself up to a shout Jack pulled the gun he’d procured from Jo out from the back of his trousers waistband and shot Nathan in the head with a bobble, causing him to stop his tirade mid-sentence. He stared, mouth open in surprise, as the bobble bounced from his forehead to the table and then rolled all the way down it, coming to a halt at Allison’s feet. He couldn’t believe that Jack had just shot him, but also couldn’t believe that a knitted gun produced a knitted bobble bullet which didn’t actually do any harm.

“Well I guess we can’t use force against it,” Nathan commented wryly, breaking the tension and causing everyone to laugh.

“Maybe we should turn the whole world knitted!” exclaimed Fargo, “No more hurt and no more death!”

“Oh, that won’t work,” Jo said. “I started to unravel and I’m pretty sure I won’t have survived if I’d completely unravelled and lost all my stuffing.”

Jo turned and presented the table with her butt pointing out where the unravelling and fixing had taken place. It led to a lot of them getting up to study Jo’s behind, which perturbed Taggart. Especially when some of the male members started patting her backside and exclaiming over it. This then led to them asking who had fixed her and when she told them that it was Taggart there was another round of shocked ‘you knit?’ questions and him having to tell them the entire story from beginning to end because no-one would leave it be until they knew how it was that Taggart of all people had come to be a proficient knitter. He didn’t have to be too embarrassed though, it was also widely exclaimed upon that he’d had the where with all to bring a bag of wool and his knitting needles out with him. They all commented on how they had barely managed to gather themselves together enough to get to Global Dynamic, thoughts of bringing extra stuff with them that they might need just in case just hadn’t crossed any of their minds.

Jo straightened up when they’d finished checking out her repair work and pointed at Fargo. “We’d need hospitals full of knitters to fix and holes and tonnes of stuffing to replace any lost. Plus, look at you! I don’t know what could be done to fix you!”

“Well, that is a conundrum for another day,” Nathan interrupted, “let’s carry on with working out how to turn this around and be human again.”

“Yes, while this is all very nice,” Allison added, “we do need to be working out what’s gone on and so far, we’ve got nothing.”

Nathan grimaced. “We need to be better than this. We need a list of what everyone in the building is working on. Officially and anything that might be unofficial.”

“You allow unofficial projects?” Jack asked him.

“Of course I don’t allow unofficial projects, Sheriff. But you can’t be everywhere at once.” He wasn’t happy admitting this, just as he wasn’t happy admitting that he didn’t know what had happened or why.

Jack patted him on the shoulder, “We’ll work it out, Stark. You’ve got the dream team here now!”

Nathan stared after him. “What, pray tell me, will you and your Dream Team be able to do that we haven’t already thought of?”

“Well, what have you thought of so far?” Jack asked.

Nathan motioned for Jack to come and sit next to him so that he could see his techno-pad. He showed him what they’d got so far , which covered such information as to when everyone could remember last being in their proper human form and then when they first discovered they were in the knitted form. He then added the information that Jack, Jo and Taggart could provide about themselves and about what they had seen in town.

“Have you tried ringing someone outside of Eureka to see whether there’s a problem elsewhere?” Jack asked.

Nathan looked at him in surprise.

“That’s a good idea, Jack,” said Allison.

She got up and approached the black pyramid to one side of the table. Jack had thought it was a paper weight or something but it turned out to be a new-fangled type of phone.

“We can’t just tell them we’re knitted and ask if they are too,” Fargo said.

“That’s true, Fargo,” replied Allison, “but we can call on a pretence and see what we can glean from them without mentioning our issues.”

With that she pressed the touch screen on the phone and dialled a scientist friend of hers in Boston. They chatted pleasantly for what seemed, to Jack, like an eternity until Allison hung up. They had all been able to hear the conversation but had kept quiet so as not to give the game away.

Once the call was terminated Allison turned around and said, “It’s not outside of Eureka.”

“You got that from that?” exclaimed Jack incredulously, earning himself a scornful look from Nathan.

“So, we can safely say that it is just Eureka that is affected by this,” said Nathan, “and from the information we’ve collated so far no-one was knitted before going to sleep and the latest any of us went to sleep is about eleven pm.”

“Last of the great party goers!” Jack joked, but received complete silence in return.

“The earliest one of us woke up this morning was six am, so that narrows it down to a seven hour window in which the event took place.” Nathan continued as if Jack hadn’t spoken.

“I can check the computer to see who was in Global Dynamics last night and see who was the last to leave and when?” Fargo suggested. “It might be that they were working on an experiment and it went wrong.”

“Good idea. That should narrow it down,” replied Nathan motioning at him to go ahead.

“How about looking at your computer and searching for ‘projects that could turn people knitted’?” Jack asked Stark.

Nathan simply stared at him. Jack was pretty sure that had he had his full facial movement for expressions his face would be telling him how stupid that question was. As it was, his attempt at such an expression merely made his mouth pucker and Jack wasn’t sure what was going on with the eyebrows.

“Okay, so it’s a stupid idea, but you do have the projects that are being worked on categorised? Don’t you?” Jack asked.

“We do, Sheriff, but they are categorised by Floor and by Scientist. The best way to search for this needle in the haystack is to find out who was working late and see what they were working on,” replied Nathan.

“But what if your late workers aren’t the ones responsible?”Jack continued, refusing to give up on his train of thought.

“You’re like a dog with a bone!” sighed Nathan in exasperation.

“He’s got a point, though,” Jo butted in.

Before Nathan could burst his stitches, Allison said, “We can have some of the others working on it whilst we look at the information Fargo comes up with. Each group can take a floor and compile a list of possible experiments. Just in case those working late last night aren’t the right answer.”

Allison then split the group of scientists sat around the table into groups to work on this whilst Fargo continued with his search. He was ever so happy to be doing this, especially as he had come up with the idea. He was positive that he’d find someone who had clocked into the building and then not clocked out. This, however, didn’t turn out to be the case. Fargo groaned in disappointment. He had had visions of him being the key person in solving the problem which would then make up for his felting idiocy and raise his profile in Jo’s eyes. Well, at least that’s what he hoped.

His groan attracted attention. “What’s the matter, Fargo?” Nathan asked.

“I had thought that there would be someone that hadn’t clocked out of the building, but that’s not the case,” he replied.

“When you wake up in this condition you can generally guarantee that it won’t be an easy resolution,” replied Nathan.

Jack laughed and Nathan slid a side-long glance at him before continuing, “Were there any that left the building after eleven pm last night?”

Fargo looked back at the list he had compiled. “There was no-one in the building after ten-thirty pm last night. The last two people to leave the building were the janitor and Dr. Berlinsky from Level Four.”

Jack clapped his hands together, then looked at them in confusion.

“Forgotten you’re too soft to make a noise when you clap?” asked Nathan, amusement dancing through his voice and across his face.

Jack didn’t answer, merely bobble shot him again and then ran to the edge of the table giggling, “Come on then, let’s go get him!”

“Do you really think it’s that simple?”

He looked back from the top of the makeshift staircase. “Isn’t it?”

Nathan sighed. “No, Sheriff. We must first look at what he was working on officially and then look at the lab to see whether he was working on anything unofficially. It’s not definite that it was Dr. Berlinsky that caused this...” he waved his arms around in general “whatever this is.”

“Dr. Stark, Dr. Nathan Stark unable to name something? Have we finally found your Achilles Heel?” Jack joked.

Nathan stared at him for a moment, then turned and spoke to Fargo. “Take us to Dr. Berlinsky’s lab.”

Fargo went across the table and joined Jack at the top of the staircase. “Lay on, MacDuff!” Jack quoted.

“Sheriff Carter, Sheriff Jack Carter able to quote Shakespeare? Correctly? The world really has gone mad!” Nathan joked as he joined them at the staircase.

Everyone laughed and Fargo made his way down the stairs with Nathan, Jack, Jo, Taggart and Allison. They were walking down the stairs quite easily until Jack tripped. He went flying down the stairs taking Nathan, Jo, Taggart and Fargo with him. The only reason Allison didn’t end up in a heap at the bottom of the stairs with them was because she had had the common sense to go last. Fargo got off lightest, having been almost to the bottom when Jack tripped. He was off to one side whilst Jo and Taggart had made split second avoidance moves to try and get out of the way. They hadn’t managed it but it had meant that they were off to the other side, laughing at each other. Nathan, however, had taken the full brunt of the fall and had somehow managed to end up flat on his back with Jack lying on top of him.

Jack groaned and pushed himself up and off Nathan. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to do that!”

“Well, at least we got to the bottom quicker,” Nathan replied, looking a little flustered.

Thinking nothing of it, Jack laughed and helped Nathan up. “Better keep going at speed so we can get back to our normal bodies.”

Nathan made a noise in agreement and Allison joined them. “Everyone ok?” she asked.

“Course we are, in this form, we bounce!” said Jack.

“Literally,” put in Nathan, making Jack laugh again.

Once everyone had untangled themselves and stopped laughing at each (or sulking, in Fargo’s case) they continued on their way to Level Four and Dr. Berlinsky’s laboratory. They reached the lift and Jack turned and raised an eyebrow at Nathan as if to say ‘come on then, brainbox, how’re we going to do this?!’ Nathan merely looked at Jack and then turned to the lift.

“Open doors,” he commanded it and the lift doors opened.

Nathan looked back at Jack, held his hand out and said smugly, “After you!”

Jack walked into the lift his head wobbling and mouth working away as he tried to work out a comeback for that one. The others followed, laughing. Once everyone was inside the lift, Nathan commanded the doors to shut and the lift to take them to Level Four. None of them had anticipated the jolt and sudden movement of the lift that first flattened them against the floor and then threw them into the air, giving them an experience similar to what it would be like to be an astronaut in space. The speed of the lift going downwards and the complete lack of weight in the wool and stuffing that they were all made up of meant that they all had a journey of weightlessness and floated around the space of the lift until it came to a halt at Level Four. It felt like an eternity but was actually only a couple of minutes. Jack and Nathan landed back on the floor next to each other again, but not in quite such a compromising position as the stair-fall had caused.

“We must stop meeting like this, Stark,” Jack joked as he got up.

Nathan merely smirked and said, “Doors, open.” Then he left the lift, expecting the others to follow him.

Jack stared after him, wondering what the smirk was about. He hadn’t been next to Nathan when they’d set off and everyone had been making the most of the sudden promotion to astronaut so everyone had been moving about. He shook off the feeling that their landing next to each other had been orchestrated by Stark and decided to concentrate on the problem in hand. He could see that it was getting noticed that rather than constant arguing they seemed to be teasing each other instead. He refused to think that there was any particular reason for that.

The group headed into Dr. Berlinsky’s lab and Jack’s immediate thought comes straight out of his mouth as per usual. “What the hell’s all of this?”

“This is science, Sheriff,” Nathan said sarcastically.

“Well, I know that, but it’s not anything I’ve ever seen. Even in this freaky town!” replied Jack.

“He’s working on a special project,” Allison said before the boys could start a full blown argument like they usually would. “Give me a lift up to his desk.”

Jack and Taggart both went to her, one on each side, and hoisted her up above their heads. This helped her onto the chair, but she couldn’t reach the desk from there.

“Any ideas?” she asked.

They all thought for a moment. Jack even pretending to be The Thinker, which looked hilarious when done by a toy with no knees or elbows.

“Stop trying to make out your clever, you’ve no chance of having a higher IQ than me,” Nathan teased.

“But I look cool, though, right?” Jack returned.

“Only in your own head, boss,” said Jo, punching him on the shoulder hard enough that he fell over.

“I’ve got it!” Taggart yelled, jumping up.

“What’s your idea, Taggart?” Allison asked as she peered back over the chair at them all.

“You’re too light for the chair to go down, which means you’re not too heavy for the chair to go up!” replied Taggart, excitedly.

“What do you mean?” asked Jack.

“That’s better, that’s the confused Sheriff I know...” Nathan nearly said something else, but petered off instead.

Jack almost missed Taggart’s answer, he was too busy looking at Nathan and thinking that maybe if he had his real body his heart would be racing right now.

Taggart, oblivious to any of this, said, “We need to push that lever and then the chair will go up and you should be able to get onto the desk!”

“Oh! Right! Come on then.” Jack immediately headed to the other side of the chair, Taggart following him.

Once he was stood under the lever Taggart climbed onto his shoulders and pushed at the lever. It didn’t budge.

“Can I get a hand here. I need something to brace against, or someone to hold me steady so that I can lift Taggart up with my hands.”

Jo, Nathan and Fargo all approached him. They ended up stood Jo in front, Nathan behind and Fargo to one side, all holding onto Jacks body to keep him steady. Taggart then stood on his hands and Jack held him up above his head, giving him the extra space he needed to get his shoulder under the lever and really push at it. It worked. The chair went up Taggart went down and they all ended up in a heap again. This time, though, Fargo didn’t have to sulk seeing as he ended up right next to Jo. Jack ended up flat on his back on top of Nathan, again.

“I’m starting to think you want to be this close to me, Sheriff,” said Nathan.

Jack laughed nervously, but didn’t respond. He was starting to wonder what was going on and he wasn’t sure that he was entirely grossed out by it, which meant that he might did actually want to be that close to him, and he didn’t want to think too closely about that just yet.

“Nathan!” Allison called down, “I’m sending down a sheet of paper that I think might be what we’re looking for.”

“A piece of paper did this?” Jack asked.

“No, Jack, the information on it alludes to what possibly did this,” Allison put him straight before anyone else could either ridicule him or make more jokes about it.

She sent the paperwork over the edge and they all watched it float down to the floor. Before any of them had a chance to move to it, Nathan was already there, looking over the writings, drawings and symbols sprawled across it.

“Guys? How do I get back down?” Allison asked, suddenly realising that she wouldn’t be able to get down completely the same way she had got up.

“Jump onto the chair and then jump off it onto the floor,” suggested Jo.

“Jump off the chair, that’s really far.” Allison looked from Jo to chair to floor then back to Jo again.

“Really, you should be able to jump straight to the floor from there, you won’t bruise and we’ve already proved we bounce,” Jo said.

“It’s still.... daunting,” Allison replied.

“How about if we all stand underneath and catch you?” Jack asked.

“That could work.”

“Shut your eyes and go for it, otherwise you’ll be stuck up there ‘til we sort this out. And you know it will take us longer with only one super intelligent scientist in our midst,” Jack winked at Nathan to stop him from protesting, then realised that might have been a bit much, what with all the teasing that had been going on. That wink turned it into full on flirting.

Jo elbowed Fargo to stop him from protesting that they hadn’t even included him and he was a scientist too. He swallowed his words, Jo’s look saying it all as if the mouthed ‘Felt boy’ wasn’t enough.

Jack’s comments had the desired effect on Allison. She shut her eyes, counted to three, then jumped a few moments after that. They caught her easily and she was soon back on her feet and looking at the paper with Nathan. Allison pointed at one of the drawings on the page. It was a sphere with antennae. Or legs. Jack couldn’t decide which.

“There’s a stand on the desk that I can only assume held that object,” Allison told him.

“What is that?” asked Jack, making Allison jump as she hadn’t realised that he was stood behind her.

“The title it has been given makes it an ‘Anthropormorphic Eikon Epistrepho’ ” said Nathan.

“AnEE for short,” added Allison.

“What is it with you people naming inanimate scientific objects?” Jack exclaimed.

“I don’t believe that AnEE is inanimate. From the work jotted underneath the picture, I believe he was attempting to give it independent thought,” Nathan told them.

“And there’s an empty stand on the desk? Anyone else thinking this Dr. Berlinsky was right on the cusp of getting a result and decided to take it home to work on it?” Jack was heading for the door as he spoke.

Allison looked at Nathan. “He’s probably right, you know.”

Nathan nodded and they turned to follow him. “Come on, everyone back to the lift. We’ve got to find AnEE.”

It was a different journey heading back up the building. They only had the astronaut floaty lightness for a couple of seconds as the lift jolted off and then they were flattened to the floor until they came to a stop in a similar way to how they’d set off. Nathan had taken them to the reception floor so all they had to do was walk across the great expanse of floor and out the doors (still open from SARAH parking on the sensor) and into the smart car.

“Don’t we need to know where we’re going first?” Jo pointed out as they set off across the foyer.

“Yes, we will have to use the computer at the reception desk to check his address.” Allison headed in that direction.

They had the same issues at the reception desk with regards to getting onto it. But that was old news to them now. They were like a well oiled machine getting Allison up onto that desk. She searched for his address, memorised it, then jumped off the desk onto the floor. Landing gracefully in her feet.

“I think I’m getting used to this form!” she laughed as she looked at the surprise in all their faces. “Come on.”

They left Global Dynamic, used Taggart’s knitted ladder to get into the smart car and then Nathan ordered SARAH to take them to Dr. Berlinsky’s home.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Stark,” SARAH replied as she set the car on its course.

She continued to be a lot less snarky with Nathan on the journey over to Dr. Berlinsky’s than she had been with Jack. He figured she was showing her dislike of their earlier argument by being completely different with anyone else that she spoke to. He rolled his eyes. It was typical of a computer generated Eurekan personality.

They arrived at Dr. Berlinsky’s and clambered out of the car. The curtains upstairs were still drawn, a sure sign that they were affected the same as everybody else. The walk from the sidewalk to the front door wasn’t difficult because the house had no front garden to speak of. Just as Jack was starting to wonder how to get in the front door, Taggart yelled at them from a window ledge next to an open window.

“How’d you get up there?” he asked him.

Taggart motioned to the knitted rope hanging from the window’s handle. “I thought that it’d come in handy! Up you come!”

Jack stepped onto the mud, which was dry and crumbly, balanced himself against the wall and made his way to where Taggart’s makeshift rope was hanging.

“Is it safe?” he called up.

Jo peered down at him. “Of course it is.”

“How did you get up there?”

“Same way you will, I climbed the rope,” she answered him matter-of-factly.

“Makes sense,” Jack muttered to himself, then he said, “I meant, is it tied onto something?”

“Yes, Sheriff, it’s lassoed around the window handle,” Taggart called.

By this time, the others were gathered behind him waiting to go up.

“Would you like me to go first, Sheriff?” Nathan asked, pointedly.

“No, no, I’m going.” Jack immediately grabbed hold of the rope and pulled himself up it.

When he looked down a few moments later, Nathan was looking up at him as he took hold of the rope. Jack looked away again. When he was two thirds of the way up he looked down again. Nathan was just behind him, pulling himself up, then there was Allison and then Fargo was clinging on with both hands at the bottom. It was like a little snake of toys working itself up the wall.

When he got into the front room, Jack found that Jo had spent the time waiting for them to catch up looking around.

“There’s no-one in here and I can’t find anyone in the room opposite and I can’t see anyone in the hallway,” she told him. “But I did find something interesting.”

“What?” asked Nathan, joining them and answering before Jack could.

Jack put his hands on his hips and said, “Who’s in charge here?”

“Me,” replied Nathan.

“I’m the Sheriff...”

“And I’m the ‘super intelligent scientist’,” Nathan said in response, ending the conversation.

Jack turned from Nathan, knowing he’d lost that one, and with his own words being used against him, and looked at Jo and Taggart. They were currently dragging a basket out from beside one of the chairs in the room.

Fargo gasped, “They’re dead!”

“No, Fargo,” Jo said, almost kindly. “This is an actual toy.”

“Look!” Taggart pulled the knitting needles free of the ball of wool and the knitting came out of the basket.

With it lying on the floor it became obvious that it was still in the process of being made. It only had a head, arms and body and these weren’t sewn into their proper shape yet.

“That’s really creepy,” Fargo said and Allison patted him on the arm.

“Looks like it’ll knit up somewhat similar to us, don’t you think?” asked Taggart.

Allison and Nathan both nodded.

“It might have something to do with it,” Nathan said, an idea forming in his mind.

“Let’s find Dr Berlinsky before we start voicing any ideas. We need to see the object and ask him what he’s been doing.” Allison headed purposefully for the door.

Everyone followed her and then, when they were in the hallway, Jack said, “We should split up. It will make covering the house easier otherwise this is going to take us forever.”

As everyone agreed, they split up into three pairs. Taggart and Jo immediately headed off for the kitchen and the basement whilst Allison and Fargo paired up and set off up the stairs with Nathan and Jack left to pair up and follow. When the four of them reached the top, Allison and Fargo went off to the right whilst Nathan and Jack went to the room in front of them.

The door was slightly ajar so they were able to slip in easily. There were no lights on so when Nathan stopped, Jack walked straight into him with an oomph.

“What are you doing?” Jack asked him.

“Waiting for my eyes to adjust,” Nathan told him.

“Who’s there?” came a male voice in the darkness.

“Dr. Berlinsky? It’s Nathan Stark.”

The response he got was a half strangled sounding noise.

“We’re here because we aren’t currently in our human bodies and we think your AnEE has something to do with it,” Nathan continued.

There was sobbing from above them and as Jacks eyes became used to the dark he started to be able to make out a double bed. There were shapes on top of it that he could only assume were Dr. Berlinsky and his wife and child.

“We’re not here to hurt you,” Jack put in. “We need you all to come downstairs.”

Nathan nodded in agreement. “And we need to see AnEE.”

With a lot of encouragement from his wife, the three on the bed started towards the edge, pushing something in-between them as they went.

“You’ll need to help catch it, I’m not sure if it will break from the fall,” Dr. Berlinsky said as they reached the edge.

Jack and Nathan positioned themselves directly underneath them and called up for him to make the last push. The sphere, AnEE, came flying down at them a lot faster than Jack had expected it to, and they struggled to catch it. It landed on the hardwood floor and rolled away from them, bumping to a halt against the skirting board. It didn’t seem broken, though. They may not have been able to catch it, but their efforts had slowed it down a little bit.

They rolled the sphere out onto the landing and called for Allison and Fargo. Jack then sent Fargo downstairs to tell Jo and Taggart that they could stop searching and come up and join them. They didn’t wait for him to come back. Allison and Nathan immediately got their heads together, discussing the paper they had seen and the sphere in front of them. Jack patted Mrs Berlinsky’s shoulder and ruffled the hair of their kid (he thought he could have been a boy, he was wearing superman pyjama’s, however he didn’t want to be sexist. Girls that kids age could be into superman too).

“It’ll be ok, don’t worry,” he told them.

“What’s going to happen to us, to my husband?” Mrs Berlinsky asked.

“I couldn’t honestly say, Mrs Berlinsky, but I’m sure Global Dynamic will handle the situation with the utmost of respect for you and your family.” Jack looked back over at Nathan and Allison. They were discussing something and pointing at the sphere a lot. Dr. Berlinsky was with them and he had the look of someone who had been given the answer to a crossword puzzle that they’d been trying to work out for hours.

“I think we might be close to solving the most immediate problem,” Jack said motioning at the three scientists.

He moved closer to them to try and catch what they were talking about and spent a good five minutes staring blankly from one to the other. When Fargo came back with Jo and Taggart he joined Jack.

“Any idea what they’re talking about?” Jack asked him.

“Hang on, I’ve only just got here!” Fargo replied.

After listening for a little while he thought for a moment and then turned what they were saying into something Jack might understand. “Dr. Berlinsky has managed to give the sphere a form of artificial intelligence along with the ability to turn things it concentrates on into something else. It seems he was working on it to have the ability to turn itself into other things but got the formula wrong.”

Jack looked at him, “So that’s how we became like this? Because of that sphere thingy? How?”

Nathan looked up at him. “We believe it fixated on Mrs Berlinsky’s knitting.”

“But, then how did it turn us all like this, surely we’d all be half made if it was looking at that?” Jack asked.

Mrs Berlinsky came forward at that. “I think I can help with that. I mentioned to my husband that it would be funny if we were all made out of wool and stuffing.”

“That could be the key,” Allison said excitedly.

“Yes, but how to reverse it,” Nathan said thoughtfully.

Dr. Berlinsky was looking at his wife. “If you said that and it turned us into this, then maybe we need to say something along the lines of wouldn’t it be nice to be human?”

They all looked at the sphere and then at themselves. It hadn’t worked.

“Is it switched on?” asked Jack.

“It’s always switched on, it’s artificial intelligence,” replied Dr. Berlinsky.

“There were two steps to the process. First it saw the knitting, then it heard the statement. Those two things together are what we believe to have caused our current state, yes?” Allison asked thoughtfully.

“Yes, which means that to reverse the process it needs to see human form and then hear us wanting to be that form,” replied Nathan.

“Where’re we going to get a human from?” asked Jack motioning to everyone in their stuffed form.

“We use a picture,” said Nathan and everyone exclaimed at the simplicity of it.

They all stared up at the walls. There were plenty of family pictures up there, but no way for them to get them down or AnEE up there. They all started discussing their options. Whether Taggart could do anything with his ropes and bits and bobs he was carrying around with him. Whether it would work long distance and so on and so forth.

“What are you doing, Daisy?” Mrs Berlinsky suddenly called out.

They all turned to follow Mrs Berlinsky’s eye line and see the Berlinsky’s daughter pulling at the bottom of a book on the bookshelf in the hallway.

“Getting the photo album,” replied Daisy as if to say ‘Durrr, what do you think I’m doing’.

There was silence for a moment and then everyone was running over to help her.

“To think, with all your genius, you’re outwitted by a little girl,” Jack said to Nathan laughing.

Nathan just pursed his lips in response.

They pulled the photo album from the shelf and it fell open in the middle. It was a good page for it to have fallen open, it was full of photo’s of Daisy and her parents together on a picnic in the summertime. Jack and Fargo rolled AnEE over to the album as Jo and Taggart hoisted the book up so that the sphere would be able to see the pictures. They allowed it a couple of minutes to see the photo’s, noticing this time that there was a glow emanating from it.

“That’s what it was doing when you brought it home, dear,” exclaimed Mrs Berlinsky.

“Looks like it’s working then,” said Nathan. “Here goes: wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were all human again.”

There was a blinding flash of light and then next thing they all knew was that they were tangled up around a photo album in what was actually a very small hallway in comparison to their previous impression of it being very large. There was a scramble as everyone moved away from each other and stood up, dusting themselves off, stretching and just generally being happy that they were back to normal.

“It worked!” Jack whooped grinning at everyone.

“It did,” Nathan said with a slight smile. “I’ll be taking this back to Global Dynamics,” he continued as he picked up AnEE.

Allison came out of the bedroom with a throw and wrapped it around the sphere. “To stop any other problems arising from it,” she told them.

“Dr. Berlinsky you will come to my office at nine am sharp tomorrow morning and we will discuss your future.”

Dr. Berlinsky, his wife and child, all hugged each other and followed the others down the stairs to watch them leave. Jo and Taggart headed off up the road together, walking back to Vincent’s whilst Jack got into the smart car with Allison, Fargo and Nathan. He asked SARAH to take Fargo home then, when they’d dropped him off, asked Allison and Nathan where they would like to go.

“Back to my office, please,” Nathan requested.

“I need to go to mine as well, please Jack,” answered Allison.

“Okay. SARAH, please take us to Global Dynamic,” Jack ordered.

Once there, Allison left to go to her office and sort out Dr. Berlinsky’s personal file in preparation for their meeting with him the next day. Nathan stood by the car looking at Jack.

“I have a fifteen year old malt whisky in my office. Would you care for a glass?” he asked Jack.

“That’s the best thing that’s been offered me all day,” Jack replied and followed Nathan to his office.

Nathan poured the amber liquid and handed Jack a glass.

“Cheers,” he said as they clinked glasses together.

Jack took a sip and sighed, eyes closed, happy to be back to normal and savouring the burning sensation he could feel going down his throat. When he opened his eyes, Nathan was looking at him.

“Jack...”he said, voice cracking slightly.

It stirred feelings in Jack that he was unable to hide from his face or even try to deny to himself that they were there. Nathan stepped forwards, hesitantly. Jack stayed put. He found himself not wanting to back off, but instead wanting Nathan to be closer. With that thought, he stepped forward slightly. It was all Nathan needed to confirm that Jack wanted this too and he closed the gap, smashing their lips together. Jack groaned, giving Nathan room to insert his tongue. The whisky glasses were forgotten, put down on the desk, Jack put his hand up into Nathan’s hair and Nathan put his hand around Jacks waist as he deepened the kiss. It was like nothing he had ever experienced before.

“Well,” he said breathlessly as they pulled apart for air.

“Well,” repeated Nathan with a smile.

“That was....” Jack was at a loss for words.

“Speechless? Jack, well that’s promising.” Nathan smirked. “There are many more things I could and want to do to you that will leave you speechless.”

Jack felt himself responding to that and could see that Nathan felt it too.

“I look forward to it,” he murmured huskily, leaning in for another taste of Nathan.