Operation Home Front:Project Chicago,  Running Smoothly
  Author: Private Third Merengue, VRDET

   Not knowing what else to do with him, Ren locked the sponge in
  an unfurnished room upstairs with a bowl of corn candy and her
  own five gallon bucket of Legos. She had heard somewhere that
  Legos were a good way to despongify someone, and she did need
  his info. Fortunately she had the afternoon to herself: her
  biomom was working overtime and her biosis was over at dad's.

   She parked herself on the living room couch with a glass of
  Jolt and _To Ride Pegasus_, and settled in to wait until
  something happened. This method of despongification was supposed
  to take several hours, but she didn't have a kit and psionic
  songblasting was liable to damage his memory. Besides, she
  hadn't had time to read a Good Book (tm) in a while.

......................................................

   Four hours later, she was startled from the thrilling
  conclusion by a triumphant yell from the spare room. As there
  was no one else in the house, she shifted up the stairs instead
  of running, and unlocked the door.

   The sight that greeted her will take a bit to explain, but you
  must remember that she had only about two seconds to take it in.
  What had happened was this:

  The spongie had played with the Legos for a bit, gradually
  recovering more and more Functionality(tm). When he reached the
  breaking point, he stuck together about a hundred corn candies
  in the shape of the dreaded Hellwyrm. Then he created a Lego war
  machine and smashed it into corn candy shrapnel. This orange
  goop was now plastered all over the back wall, and the now
  restored man stood with a big grin on his face.

        "Hi," he said nonchalantly.

   "Hi," replied Ren, her grin one of relief. "You sure smashed
  Bar Knee up real good."

   He flinched when she said the name. Then he grinned even wider.
  "And didn't he deserve it. Oh, by the way, my name's Ed
  Jenkins."

   She shook the proferred hand. "Mine's Merengue, but my friends
  call me Ren. You've heard of the Jihad to Destroy... you know,
  him?" She gestured to the orange-splattered wall.

   Jenkins frowned for a minute. "I do recall something about
  being careful for 'nasty Jihaddi,' but it's all a bit of a blur.
  Why?"

   "When they said 'nasty Jihaddi,' they meant me and people like
  me." She paused, thinking how best to phrase her questions. "I
  can't tell you all the details, but I really need to know
  everything you can tell me about that device in the Grotto. How
  does it work? Who gave the orders for its installation? When
  does it go online? That sort of thing."

   "Hmmm..." said Jenkins with another thoughtful frown. "All I
  know is that I was supposed to sweep up. And they told me not to
  go near the terra- no, um, tetra-hedra thing. What is that,
  anyway?"

   Ren moaned softly and buried her head in her hands. She had
  forgotten that the school administration had turned the word
  "engineer" into a PC euphemism. Of all the lousy spongies in
  that building, she had to snag the janitor.

  ................................................................

   Finding Smithers' house wasn't too difficult: her address was
  in the school directory and with some judicious map usage Ren
  was able to find public transportation almost to her door. Ren's
  frustration level had not yet reached the point where she began
  teleporting indiscriminately.

   She went up the steps and rang the bell. No answer. Taking a
  deep breath, she tried the door. Unlocked. Inside there was a
  faint smell of boiled cabbage and an all-too familiar sound
  drifting down the hall. Treading softly so as not to tip the
  minion off, Ren poked her head around the door into the den.

   Sure enough, there was Smithers, curled up in a big chair,
  watching It Who Dances Badly frolic about on the cathode ray
  tube. An idiotic smile was frozen on her face. Her eyes had
  glazed over.

   Oh, well, thought Ren, all or nothing. She strode briskly
  across the carpet and snapped off the television.

   A wail arose from the comfy chair, followed by Smithers' usual
  brusque snap. "Nooo! What do you think you're doing here, young
  lady? What do you mean, breaking into my house?" A whimper.
  "You should be nice!"

   Ren turned on her heel and stared Smithers straight in the
  face. She didn't have time for this.

   Smithers' eyes unglazed and defocused. Her mind, if what she
  had could be called a mind, slithered open. No resistance,
  thought Ren smugly. The smugness turned to disgust as she got
  in further. No content either. How do they survive with this
  mush?

    ..nice nice happy...tetrahedron..device..What about it?..(an
  image of the Element in the cavern under Waller, nearing
  completion)..those nasty people will see...I luv you, you
  luv..Who told you to make that?..the order just came..Came from
  where?..(lack of knowledge about names, faces; only the
  awareness that a command had been given)...horrible cynical
  children...no..I luv..

  Ren backed out, questioning the wisdom of what she had just
  done. True, Smithers was a scab, but she was beginning to lose
  consciousness, and Ren still knew next to nothing about the
  Element or the Array. She smoothed out the spongie's
  consciousness as well as she could, feeling sorry for her. As an
  afterthought, she 'ported a bottle of Jolt from her own fridge,
  and pasted a sticker over the label so it read "Mineral Water"
  before shifting back home. Couldn't hurt. Might help.

To Be Continued....