"No."

Glaring at the box of cereal sitting on the table, Xander crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair as the box of 'Count-Chocula' super chocolate cereal sat opposite to him, as non-threatening as a demonic box of sugary goodness could be.

After a time of silence, Xander shrugged, "Look, I'm going to level with you, I know you're listening and I'm telling you that I'm not going to play this game. Either explain what you are or I'm going to duct tape you closed and bury you in the back of the pantry for the next decade."

As the box continued to sit there ominously, Xander shrugged before getting up from the table. "I'll let you think about it before I make a decision," he said before grabbing his coat and walking out of the small house he had been given by the township. It was some sort of 'Microfabricated clone housing' that Global Dynamics had been researching for areas to help with the homeless population.

It had worked pretty well, but the houses had a bad habit of growing strange rooms at odd places and the research had been stalled when a test resident had woken up in a bathroom with no doors or windows sinks or showers, the man had survived for two weeks with only the water from the toilet tank to help him survive.

The researchers had assured him that they had fixed that particular bug, but it had still set the release of it to the public by a decade or two.

Glancing at his vehicle of the month, Xander sighed. GD had gotten into the habit of issuing him new concept cars to see how he would handle them. Apparently he was the living embodiment of Murphy's law when it came to the new and cutting edge and they were using him to their advantage.

The plus side was he had access to some of the most futuristic vehicles his geeky mind could imagine.

The negative was that they had a bad habit of; exploding, electrocuting, flooding, driving him off cliffs, becoming obsessed with him and trying to kill off any female that approached or just plain old flipping end over end.

The current option was likely going to end up in the last category. The three wheeled 'Niken' trike had all the cool futuristic looks that he loved, coupled with an insane driving style that he was pretty sure was going to get him killed if he ever moved at speeds over fifteen miles per hour.

Grumbling about the evil megacorporation trying to kill him, Xander mounted the bike and held still as the artificial intelligence scanned him and projected a digital crash cage around his body before setting off.

As he settled in for his ride back into town, Xander could have sworn he felt the protective shielding grope his ass as he rode and tried to resist the urge to gulp heavily.

It was possible that this would be one of those second to last options after all.

Hopping off the bike, Xander made sure to wipe it down carefully before patting it gently on the headlamp and heading into Cafe Diem. If it was an obsessive death machine it was always best to not let it suspect that he was nervous around them, they could smell his fear. As he walked, he could swear he felt the bikes sensors on him until he was well inside.

Walking up to the table, Xander took a seat with the assembled GD developers and rolled his eyes as Fargo singled him out.

"So Xander, anything special about the demonic Fruitloops from yesterday?" he asked with a chuckle as he remembered the Scooby leaping across the cafeteria and slapping a bowl of technicolor loops out of one of the researchers hands, Xander raised an eyebrow at the smaller man.

"Well, at approximately six thirty this morning I blinked and it turned into a box of Count-Chocula. Which, may I remind you, don't exist in this dimension? " Xander asked.

Fargo blinked at his response before leaning forward excitedly, "Wait, you mean it really WAS Demonic Fruitloops?" The hypernerd excitedly glanced at the rest of the team leads that were meeting about the day, "I thought you just said that so you could swipe some free grub from the cafeteria?"

Rolling his eyes, Xander shook his head "I never joke about the Juju," he said seriously before shrugging. "At least, not anymore. The whole 'Night of the living Bratwurst' taught me THAT lesson," he said with another shrug before glancing back at the table. "Anyway, in other news the bike looks like it's a twenty-three nineteen," he said and rolled his eyes again as the gathered town leaders groaned while Vincent smiled and collected his earnings from the betting pool. Then the man dropped a Mocha in front of Xander with a flourish and bounced off to the other part of his business to share the good news of his winning with the rest of the town.

"Betting on my imminent demise aside," Xander said with a cool glare at the rest of the town, he turned back to Fargo. "Yeah, I'm still studying it. If it's benign, I'll likely keep it to supplement my cereal stash. If it's of a darker persuasion, I'll kill it and send it to Arty and the rest at the warehouse," Xander explained before taking a sip of his Mocha and sighed as the warm chocolatey coffee made its way down his throat. "Anyways, is there anything else I need to keep an eye on? Or should I get back to digging into this 'special unit' that's been running about?"

Alison shook her head, handed a folder over to him and said seriously, "Negative, the special unit investigation has been stalled by federal oversight. I'm sending it out to several allies in the industry and letting it go, as of today."

Xander opened up the files and began to look through the paperwork as she explained, "We recently received the parts of a cognitive thinking engine that the Germans have been hiding for the last half a century. We have looked into it and believe that it was used by Hitler during the war to come up with plans during the war. Apparently it was created back in eighteen twenty. Records indicate that it used to answer hundreds of questions a day, then a week, then a month, " she explained as the folder held hundreds of questions that it had been asked and had answered. "By the end of World War II it was only answering a couple questions a year. Still, they used that knowledge to recover after the war and have been using it to their national advantage ever since. A year ago it stopped answering questions entirely and in the process of them trying to repair it, we found out about it and managed to get it sent to us."

Glancing around at the gathered leadership of the town and company, Alison leaned forward. "We are interested in this for a multitude of reasons. First and foremost is the advancement of predictive algorithms, if this ancient piece of junk can be that accurate two hundred years ago then our supercomputers could be enhanced by an order of magnitude a thousand times over." she said.

Xander looked up at her seriously before glancing back down, "And of course the military types would just love to have a precognitive computer for their 'war games,' wouldn't they," he commented with a snort before leaning back. "Of course, something like this just screams out that it's not a natural advancement and you want to know if it's Juju or not, right?"

"Well, it kinda defeats the purpose of reverse engineering it if it's a bunch of Whoo-Whoo stuff doesn't it," Carter stated with a frown as he waved his hands in the air to mock the existence of magic.

It was an old argument. Carter had zero faith in the supernatural and had a bad habit of passing it all off as mumbo-jumbo.

After a half dozen arguments and one inebriated fist fight that Xander had been winning before Carter had tagged Jo in and the deputy had gotten him in a headlock. After that the town had staged an intervention between the two. the Sheriff simply let Xander get on with his 'work' and mocked him whenever he got called in to consult.

Xander, for his part, got back at him by sneaking chocolate to Zoe whenever the teen was around and using the younger girl to harass her father. He figured this particular slight was worth at least a rumor that the Sheriff's daughter was sneaking out to go skinny dipping during the night.

With the right steps, only Carter would ever hear about it and the Lawman would drive himself crazy staying up all night trying to catch her out.

Smiling to himself as he looked over the device, Xander worked on his plan as he finished reading and handed the folder back to Alison.

"I'll tie up my investigation for you today and have a look at the engine tomorrow before lunch.

As the rest of the table talked about their plans and ideas for the day, Xander worked on his subtle plan to screw over the sheriff.

As the meeting came to an end, Xander packed up his stuff and chatted with Henry about the possibility of the thinking engine.

Outside a team of specialists from GD were wrestling with the bike, trying to get the crazy device into the truck as it wrestled to get free, thankfully they had experience in dealing with rogue vehicles thanks to Xander and had gotten the drive wheel off the ground first.

Staring at the bike as it was taken away Xander sighed as he was handed a clipboard and began filling out information for the eggheads back at GD.

After a couple minutes of paperwork Xander signed it at the bottom and handed the clipboard back to the tech "What happens to them?" he asked as he nodded towards the bike.

We download the personality for study and suspend it in an artificial matrix for it's own safety, the integrated matrix is stored at an offsite server that simulates reality for them, they can grow and adapt at their own speed.

Nodding as the truck moved off Xander took the keys to the Jeep wrangler the company kept on hand for if and when his experimental vehicle was undrivable. "Cool, so long as your not torturing them or trying to kill them off for being different." he said as the tech blinked at him dully.

"We're nerds sir, ethical morality aside we've all seen enough movies about what happens when you start down that path." he said seriously, before turning away "don't worry, we'll take care of them."

(A/n) Hope you all enjoyed it, Eureka is a lot of fun to write in.