When Mike was frozen, the producer and the director both alerted the authorities. The local police were called, and they, in turn notified the FBI. The FBI agents combed the area for clues, but Amnesio had been wearing gloves when he had activated the controls to the cryogenic equipment, so there were no fingerprints.
Sally didn't cry. She still held onto the hope that Mike could and would be revived. The southern California branch of the Federal Bureau of Investigation took the hibernation capsule Mike was contained in, and made sure it was constantly hooked up to a power supply. Their best engineers tried to access the software inside. When they succeeded, they were baffled to find out the technical schematics and diagrams specific to the unfreezing process seemed to be based on solid scientific ground. One of the engineers notified the director.
"So it seems," the engineer began, "that the nanobots are programmed to begin thawing him out 60 days from the day he was frozen!"
The director was puzzled. "So you're telling me this Mike Roman guy might survive?"
"I'm telling you that he will definitely survive!" the engineer informed him.
"Why would somebody freeze someone, effectively killing him, then bother to figure out a way to rescusitate him afterwards?" the director asked.
"I don't know," the engineer answered, "but phase two, the unfreezing process will begin automatically in less than two months. All we have to do is keep that hibernation capsule hooked up to a power supply!"
While this was going on, Sally secured a house for herself in the Hollywood Hills. With her vast wealth, it was no problem coming up with the money, and because Mike had gotten her legally emancipated when she turned fifteen, she didn't need her parents' permission. She made it her mission to track down Amnesio. She took a course through the mail that taught her how to be a private investigator, and bought a home computer and got it hooked up to the Internet.
She spent twelve hours a day on the Internet, tracking down leads that led to dead-ends.
"I found a front company owned by Amnesio!" said Sally to herself. Sally took a bus to the neighborhood where the company was located, and snuck in through a back door. She hid in a closet next to the main office, and listened to a conversation through an air vent.
"All we need to do is get my mind control device on that satellite today," said Amnesio, "and we'll be able to control the minds of millions of people simultaneosuly!"
"You're a genius, Amnesio!" said Solstice. "It gives me goosebumps being involved in this master plan!"
"Yeah," said May, "you're gonna go down in history!"
"Help me load the mind control device in the van," said Amnesio.
Sally waited until the coast was clear, then she got out and climbed into the van and hid in a storage compartment. Solstice drove the van to the company that was manufacturing the satellite. Two vans were driven, and all five of Amnesio's female assistants were onboard. When they unloaded the equipment and went inside, Sally climbed out of the storage compartment and followed them inside.
When she peaked around the corner of the open door, she saw that Amnesio had taken aim with one of his mind control devices, and the workers at the factory were under mind control.
"You will install this device in your satellite!" said Amnesio.
Sally could only watch helplessly as the workers did as Amnesio instructed. The mind control device was installed, and hooked up to the satellite's power source. Sally was tapped on the shoulder. When she turned to look, it was April, one of Amnesio's assistants.
"Amnesio!" shouted April. "I've captured Awesome-Girl!"
Amnesio turned to look, and walked over toward Sally. "Chloroform her!"
"Yes sir!" said April, and she reached into a backpack and pulled out a bottle of chloroform. She dumped some in a rag, and tried to hold the rag over Sally's mouth. Sally struggled, so April shouted for May to help her, and the two of them were able to successfully hold Sally down long enough to hold the rag over her mouth, causing Sally to lose consciousness.
When Sally woke up, she was in a motel room. There was a note on a DVD player that said 'play.' Sally pushed the button, and Amnesio appeared on the TV screen.
"Awesome-Girl, you were injected with a powerful sedative that knocked you out for several days. By the time you watch this, you will have been asleep long enough so that the satellite is already on its way to Vandenberg Air Force Base to be launched aboard an Ariane Titan rocket! There is absolutely nothing you can do to change things! With my mind control device in space, I will be able to control the minds of millions! This August during the Teen Choice awards I will activate the mind control device and control people through a TV broadcast! This message will self-destruct, so don't bother trying to turn over this DVD to the authorities!"
The recording ended with Amnesio's maniacal laughter, then the DVD player exploded, frightening Sally momentarily. Sally unhooked her small bottle of fire extinguisher from her utility belt and sprayed it on the fire, then she got out her cell phone and dialed a number.
"I need a taxi!" said Sally.
Sally waited outside for the taxi. When it arrived, she instructed the driver that she wanted to go to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc.
"That's over a hundred miles from here!" said the driver. Sally pulled out twenty one-hundred dollar bills.
"I've got it covered!"
Sally jumped into the back seat of the taxi and closed the door. "Is it still Monday?" Sally asked.
"It's Thursday!" said the driver.
"Amnesio was right about that sedative!" said Sally.
"Who" the driver asked.
"Nothing, just drive to Vandenberg!"
Two hours later, the taxi dropped Sally off in front of the Air Force Base. She approached the guard in the control room in fromt of the base.
"You've got to warn them!" said Sally. "They can't launch that rocket! It has renegade technology attached to it!"
"They're about to launch the rocket right now!" the man said. "It's too late!"
Sally looked toward the ocean and saw the Ariane Titan rocket hurtling toward space.
"Darn!" said Sally.
Days turned into weeks, and eventually a month and a half passed. Sally celebrated her nineteenth birthday alone. The Micromage & Awesome-Girl movie opened in theaters, but Mike was still a popsicle. It had almost the same kind of success as any blockbuster of recent years aimed at kids and teenagers. Kids were lined up around the block with their parents, and teenagers went and saw the movie again and again. Sally paid little attention to this, however. She finally found a clue that she felt might lead her to Amnesio.
There was a Micromage & Awesome-Girl comic book. Mike had authorized the producer to hire a small comic publishing company to create fictional adventures for Mike and Sally. Because of the success of the film, issue one of the first Micromage & Awesome-Girl comic book was hard to find. Ironically, there was a company that was offering mint condition copies of the first issue at half of what they were now worth, which was about $300. It made sense to Sally that this company was counterfeiting the comic books.
Sally looked up at her Micromage & Awesome-Girl calendar and sighed. "The Teen Choice awards are in a week" she said to herself, "me and Mike have been nominated, but he's still frozen!"
She pulled out her cell phone and used speed dial to call the director of the FBI, as she had been doing several times a week for nearly the past six months, ever since Mike had been frozen. Someone answered.
"Hello?" Sally said.
"Sally," the director said, "I think you'd better get down here! Something's happening with your friend!"
Sally hung up the phone and caught a taxi-cab. In less than an hour, she was at the FBI headquarters, and she was let in by a receptionist who recognized her. By the time she got to the chamber where they had been keeping Mike, he was already unfrozen and awake.
Somebody handed Mike a glass of water, and he greedily guzzled it down like a man who hadn't drank water for several days.
"Hi, Mike!" Sally said. "I've got a place now. We can stay there!"
"Doc," Mike said, "when am I clear to go home?"
"From our test results, it seems that you can go home today. The nanobots that repaired the cellular damage will come out in your stool over the next week or so, after they've completed their work!"
About an hour later, Sally and Mike were sitting in the back of a taxi-cab heading for Sally's new house.
"So you're sixteen now, huh?" Mike said. "It was just a month before your sixteenth birthday when I got frozen."
After being dropped off by the cab, Sally and Mike headed into the house. There were boxes piled up all over the living room. Some of them were piled nearly to the ceiling.
"What's all this stuff?" Mike asked.
"It's a new compound called Gak. I found it on the Internet. It has the same properties as ipecac syrup, but it doesn't have the dangerous side effects!"
Mike opened a box and took out a plastic bottle of the stuff. The liquid inside was a translucent purple. "What's it taste like?" Mike asked.
"I don't know yet," Sally replied. "I was waiting for you to get unfrozen so we could try it out!"
"Just like old times, huh, Sally?" Mike said.
"We've got more important things to go over right now, "Sally said, as she took the bottle out of Mike's hand and set it back in the box it came from. Sally sauntered over to the computer and got on the Internet.
"I tracked down a comic book publishing company that I think is counterfeiting copies of the first issue of the Micromage & Awesome-Girl comic book! That comic is worth three-hundred dollars, but he's only charging one-fifty. I think Amnesio's behind it!"
Mike tilted his head back with his hands on his gut and let out a loud laugh that lasted a good ten seconds or so. "Sally, Amnesio is a big-time hood! What would he be doing messing around with comic books?"
"I know it sounds weird, but I've checked out almost a dozen companies he was behind. Amnesio was always one step ahead of me, and terminated the company and destroyed the records if I snooped too close. This time, I didn't make the mistake of pushing too hard... he doesn't know I'm onto him!"
"I'll tell you what," Mike said, "I'll drive us over there if you write down the address and find it on a map! I'll prove it to you that Amnesio isn't behind this!"
Soon, they were on the road. After driving past the business they were looking for, Mike parked a couple of blocks away, and they walked to the side of the building of the business in question. Mike was wearing his Micromage costume, because Sally had demanded it. There was an air vent with a grill that had square holes about two inches in diameter, both vertically and horizontally. Mike activated the neutrino dissimilator on his wristband, and keyed the sizing scope to shrink down to one inch tall.
Sally picked Mike up in her hand, and said: "Good luck, Micromage!" before placing him on the air vent. They still had their two-way radios to communicate with. Mike's was built into his wristband and Sally, who was also wearing her space-age Awesome-Girl costume, had one built into the gauntlet of her right wrist, also.
Mike made his way through the vent. There was a circular fan blade, but it wasn't moving.
"So far, so good!" Mike said to Sally through his two-way. When he got to the other side of the vent, Mike was surprised to see that although machinery was active, there were no workers hustling around. Upon closer inspection, Mike saw that robots were doing all the work, much like an automobile manufacturing plant in Detroit. Mike jumped down from his perch and investigated further.
There was a light on in an office down the hall. The best way to look through the office of the window would be to climb on top of one of the robots. This would kill two birds with one stone, because Mike could survey what the robots were working on, as well as seeing who was in the office.
Mike climbed a power cord and found himself on top of one of the printers. Sure enough, hundreds of copies of issue one of the Micromage & Awesome-Girl comic book were being printed!
"Sally!" Mike said into his two-way radio. "Everything is just as you said it was! They're printing counterfeit copies of our comic book in here!"
"Okay Mike," Sally replied, "you've done your job, now come back to me! I don't want you getting hurt!"
"I'm going to see who's in the office!" Mike replied. "I want to see if it's really Amnesio!"
"Mike!" Sally said angrily. "I command you to return to me at once! You've got almost a whole hour before you can re-enlarge, and as such, you now dwell under my dominion! So return to me at once!"
Mike turned off his radio. Sally's wrath he could endure; it was his insatiable curiosity he couldn't avoid. Looking into the office, he saw a woman in her early twenties. She appeared to have brown hair and large breasts. She was obviously Amnesio's type. As he struggled to get a better view, to see who she was talking to, Mike fell downward, toward the printer.
He landed on top of a comic book cover that was on it's way to the saddle stitching device. Mike tried to roll out of the way, but before he could, a laser scanner picked up his image, and the printer stopped imediately, and an alarm began to sound.
Two women with long light-brown hair cut in the same style ran out of the office. They were wearing tee-shirts and ultra-short mini-skirts. They knew a foreign object had landed in the printer, but at the moment, they didn't know it was Mike.
"Amnesio is going to have our livers attached to a pole if we don't meet his daily quota!" one woman said to the other.
Mike quickly scurried down into the equipment as the two women tried to assess what was wrong. When he hit the tile floor, he saw where their shoes were pointing, and ran in another direction. A curtain hung over the air vent he had entered through, and a power cord to a fan touched the floor before coiling up to where the curtain began. Mike climbed the cord, then grabbed onto the curtain and made his way toward the vent. Once there, he grabbed onto what to him was a metal bar (it was really one of the wires composing the air vent), and he climbed into the vent and ran to the outside.
Sally was waiting or him, and she cupped her left palm and Mike jumped in. "They're working for Amnesio!" Mike told her.
"I told you so!" Sally said. "You kept trying to shine me on, but I knew what I was doing! But right now, we've got something else to deal with!"
"What?" Mike asked.
"You defied me and turned off your two-way!" Sally said. "For that, you have to be punished!"
"Sally, you can't swallow me now! We've got the Micromobile here, and how are you going to get home?"
"I can call a cab." Sally replied.
"But if Amnesio's assistants find the Micromobile, they'll know we're on to them!"
"Yeah," Sally replied, "I guess you're right, Mike! Well, you're off the hook for now, but the next time you shrink, you're heading straight down my gullet!"
Sally cupped Mike in her hand and stood up, and walked back to the Micromobile. The two of them waited for an hour to go by, so Mike could re-enlarge. After returning to normal size, Mike drove them home. Once inside, Sally started lining up jars of Gak on a shelf, and threw away some of the boxes they had been inside of.
"You really invested in that stuff, huh Sally?" Mike asked.
"Yeah! I could swallow you a thousand times, and puke you up a thousand times, and I'd never have to worry about damaging my esophagus! With ipecac, there's side effects like that, and it damages the internal organs. Do you want me to try it out?"
Mike knew he had brought up the wrong subject. "No, Sally, some other time!"
"I still have to punish you!"
Sally was still wearing her costume, and reached into a pouch attached to her belt and pulled out the remote control that she could use to control Mike's size changing.
"Now, Sally," Mike began, but it was too late! Sally keyed in the access code to the remote control and hit the button, and Mike was shrunk down to an inch tall instantly. Sally held a transparent plastic jar of the purple Gak, and knelt down to pick Mike up. He started to run toward a couch, but Sally bolted up and beat him to it.
"You're just making it harder on yourself, Mike! Now you know I have to punish you for disobeying me! Now surrender to my hand, immediately!"
Mike ran toward another piece of furniture, but he mis-gauged the distance of Sally's reach, so she reached out and snagged him in her fist. She lifted her fist to her open mouth, and released Mike from her grip, and he fell onto her pink tongue. Her jaw snapped shut, and Mike was locked in the darkness of her mouth. He struggled to the row of teeth in front of him, but they were clenched shut. Her tongue forced him back toward her throat, and he was too small and weak to resist. Try as he might, Mike fell back and surrendered to the force of Sally's throat muscles, and fell down her esophagus, toward her stomach.
Sally set the jar of Gak down on the desk her computer was on, and turned on the computer. She ignored Mike's plight as she checked her e-mail. Suddenly, she saw something she had never seen before on her computer. An e-mail from Amnesio! Was this a trick? Was someone posing as Amnesio? She opened the e-mail and read it. When she had read it, she keyed her wristband radio and called Mike.
"Mike! You're never going to believe this!"
"When are you going to puke me up?" Mike asked.
"Oh, shut up about that!" Sally answered. "You probably like being swallowed by me, and you just play it off like you don't because you don't want me to know you're turned on by it! Listen to this! Amnesio sent me an e-mail!"
"What does it say?" Mike asked from deep within Sally's belly.
"He says he has a plan for attacking the Teen Choice awards show! Mike, you and I have been nominated! He's targeting that awards show because we're both going to be there! He's challenging us!"
"Then we'll be ready for him!" Mike replied.
To Be Continued!