A Chance Meeting of Mad Scientists
part 1: An Improbable Beginning
Rated: G
by: Amanda Vaughan
I can be reached at MidnightNation@aol.com

Many thanks to my beta readers: Karen Walker, SL Watson, and Bodger 
A crossover between MST3k and the Tenchi Universe.

Disclaimers: I don't own the MST3k characters, Best Brains does.  I don't own 
anybody in the Tenchi Universe, either.  For that matter, I don't even own Dr. 
Smith.  They are owned by whoever it is that owns them.

MST3k in a nutshell: Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3k) was a television show 
about a man, named Joel, trapped in space and forced to watch horrible movies.  
The mad scientist who did this to him hoped to find a movie horrible that would 
make his captive insane. The scientist would release this movie upon the world, 
allowing him to take over the world.  Joel built robots to keep in company.  In 
later seasons, Joel was replaced by Mike. Now on with the show...



The whole mess started on a relatively normal day on the Satellite of Love.  
Mike was recovering from the robots' last prank, which involved plastic 
rattlesnakes, rattle recordings, and his underwear drawer.  Once Mike figured 
out what was going on, his scream of terror turned into that of a madman bent on 
revenge.  The robots, having anticipated this, were currently hiding under the 
table on the bridge, snickering quietly.  As they waited for Mike to calm down a 
bit (thus making it safe to laugh in his face as planned), a dust-covered box 
caught their eyes. 

"Hey, Crow. What's that?" Tom Servo whispered.
	
"I don't know," replied Crow as he grabbed the box and looked it over.  Beneath 
the dust, the box was gray and simple.  One of the sides had a red button in the 
center.  Crow had seen it before, but where?
	
"Oh, hey. I remember now.  Remember that time we slipped surge into Joel's 
coffee.  Isn't this that thing he made in a hyperactive bout of spastic 
inventing?" Servo asked.
	
"Yeah.  I think he built it to detect and destroy computer viruses in other 
dimensions.  That's what he said anyway," Crow replied.
	
"Then I pointed out that he would have no way of knowing if it was working.  And 
then you asked him why he would want to fix viruses in other dimensions anyway. 
Joel was so mad that he couldn't answer our questions," Servo chuckled at the 
memory of his creator's frustration.
	
"No, I think he was mad that he made such a stupid invention.  Why else would he 
have thrown it against the wall and kicked it under the table like he did?  Too 
much caffeine will do that to a human.  We never saw him so mad before. Didn't 
we switch him to decaff because of that?" Crow asked.
	
"Yep. Hey, wouldn't it be cool it we put surge in Mike's coffee?" Servo asked 
mischievously.
	
"Yeah. That would definitely be cool." Crow replied. Mike's angry shouting had 
subsided and the bots began to come out from under the table.  Crow carelessly 
tossed the little box over his shoulder, completely forgotten.  His mechanical 
mind was now entirely occupied with the next prank.  He would, of course, regret 
such a casual dismissal of the dusty invention.
	
Back when Joel had thrown and kicked the box, the red button had amazingly 
escaped getting hit.  Crow's toss was perfect.  The button hit the floor and the 
weight of the invention depressed it.  The box hummed for a few seconds.  Then a 
strange glow covered the floor beneath the table.
	
The bots turned around when they heard the noise.  Tom turned to Crow and asked 
in a timid voice, "What's happening?"
	
"I don't know," was all Crow could say before a newly formed hole in glowing 
floor swallowed them. 
	
In a laboratory down on earth, a scientist was brooding.  Things hadn't been 
going well.  Somehow the endless experiments were getting boring.  The 
impressive stream of data just wasn't pleasing the massive intellect.  The plans 
had been ruined; the experiments destroyed time and time again.  The lab rats 
just weren't performing as they expected to.  It had been a good long while 
since anything the least been interesting had happened.  The brilliant mind kept 
waiting for new inspiration.  Until then, the scientist would just keep redoing 
old experiments.  At this rate the little known scientist would die of old age 
long before the universe had been conquered.      
	
Professor Washu was getting bored. 
	
On top of simple boredom Washu had another problem. She recently checked her 
trans-dimensional e-mail - an impossible task at first.  She hadn't checked it 
in nearly a thousand years. As a result, it was jammed packed with get-rich 
quick schemes, miracle medication advertisements, conspiracy theories, and other 
forms of utterly useless spam mail.  She had to develop a new Spam eating virus 
to combat the overflow. Then she had to create another computer virus to combat 
the over-fed spam virus.  It didn't take her long though; she was a genius after 
all.
	
No, that wasn't the real problem either.  The real problem came from the Trans-
Dimensional Mad Scientist Organization.  The group sent a letter angrily 
berating her for not paying her dues. Then it invited her to the next Trans-
Dimensional Mad Scientist Convention.  Normal people would've thought it was odd 
that they were inviting her despite the unpaid dues, but Washu knew the reason: 
They were mad.  Mad people don't do things that make sense.   
	
Washu bitterly remembered the last such event.  That's where she'd met the 
sinister Dr. Smith.  He hadn't actually been a mad scientist; no one was quite 
sure what he really did for a living.  Smith called himself a doctor and seemed 
to have the brains to back the title up.  Still, he was evil and that's what 
really counted.  He'd flirted with Professor Washu at the last convention.  
She'd been fond of him--he was charming, he was debonair.  As it turned out, he 
was also a backstabber.
	
Washu was surprised how angry she was when she saw him in the arms of Dr. 
Frankenstein's blonde bimbo.  Washu hadn't been close to Smith, or anything like 
that.  She was just angry that she'd been dropped like she wasn't the most 
brilliant scientist in the multi-verse.  As far as she knew, he'd be there again 
with that reanimated corpse. 
	
Washu did want to attend this convention, but not alone; not with possibility of 
running into that jerk with a ditz on his arm. She needed someone to escort her; 
someone brilliant.
	
A loud beeping interrupted Washu's thoughts.  She looked up from the invitation 
to the other computer monitor.  The spam-eating virus had defeated her newer 
virus; moreover, the gluttonous beast had mutated and was now wreaking havoc on 
her dimensional gateway generator.  Washu's eyes widened in surprise and fear.  
She had to stop it before it destroyed anything important.  Her hands flew over 
the keyboard.  She was in the middle of writing a newer, better program to beat 
it when the pixilated monster suddenly . . . died. There was no better word for 
it.  'What happened?' she wondered as she began looking over data to figure out 
what happened.  The data was inconclusive so she tried a different approach.  
She asked the machine what happened.
	
The gateway generator was a fairly sophisticated device as all dimension 
bridging devices must be.  It had always strived to meet its creator's 
expectations.  This time it wasn't sure what to do. One minute it was under 
attack, the next minute a force from another dimension saved it.  The machine 
gave Washu all the data it had, but she still wasn't satisfied.  "I need more 
information.  Give me more data," commanded the vertically challenged scientist. 
	
The machine could only think of one way of getting more data.  It powered up and 
brought forth its saviors.  It tapped into the specific time-space continuum 
from which the saving force had come.  The machine couldn't pin-point the source 
exactly, but it was accurate within five feet.  It decided to bring everything 
within area through. A few feet in front of Washu and above her, a gateway 
opened and three metal things fell through.  After the metal things hit the 
ground, the portal closed. The generator put some letters on the computer 
monitor.  "The program that destroyed spam-eating virus probably came from one 
of these things." 
	
Washu was satisfied with the generator's answer and posed no further questions.  
In truth, she didn't want to ask it anything else.  Who knew what else might 
happen?  She walked slowly around the metal objects, looking them over, trying 
to figure out what they were.  Finally, something interesting had happened.  A 
smile spread across Washu's face.  Yes, these new things were definitely 
interesting.

To be continued...