In a suburban garage in Seattle, Kaelen and Rick aimed a strange device, fashioned from a toaster and the soul of a sedan, at the sky. With a click, they sent a pulse of impossible information through time and space, a whispered warning destined for a small green Jedi master light-years away.
At the same time, in a million different universes, Summer's "Cosmic Crystal Challenge" went viral. Ricks of all shapes and sizes, from bodybuilder Ricks to lizard Ricks, saw the stupid meme. Their arrogance was triggered. Each of them, convinced he was the only Rick smart enough to see through the "joke" and find the "real" prize, abandoned their posts at the Citadel and launched into a meaningless cosmic treasure hunt. The interdimensional government of the Ricks had, effectively, closed for vacation.
The plan was in motion. They had time.
Arcade Adventure
Later that morning, as Kaelen and Padmé sipped coffee in the kitchen (real Earth coffee that Padmé found fascinating and Kaelen found disappointingly lacking in alien stimulants), Morty entered the room, fidgeting nervously.
"Uh, K-Kaelen..." he stammered. "I... I was wondering. Do you... do you have any plans today?"
Kaelen arched an eyebrow. "Well, my agenda includes 'avoiding annihilation by a galactic empire' and 'not being erased from existence by a council of my genetic fathers,' but I do have a free slot this afternoon. Why?"
"It's just... well, it's Saturday," Morty said. "And my friends and I always go to the arcade. And, um, I kinda told them about you. A little bit. I said my uncle from... out of town... was visiting. Maybe... maybe you'd like to come?"
Padmé looked at Kaelen, a warm smile on her face. It was an olive branch, an attempt at normalcy from the boy who had been terrified of him the day before.
Kaelen looked down at his metal arm. The thought of explaining it at an arcade seemed... complicated.
"Can you...?" Padmé began to ask softly.
Kaelen cut her off, a mischievous grin forming on his face. "Don't worry. Rick installed something for these situations." He closed his eyes for an instant. The skin on his left arm seemed to ripple, and the metallic sheen was replaced by the appearance of normal flesh and blood. The glow in his cybernetic eye dimmed. It was a holographic near-field projection, a perfect camouflage.
"Sure, Morty," Kaelen said, his voice filled with a genuine enthusiasm that surprised the boy. "I'd love to. But on one condition: you teach me how to play those primitive video games, and I teach you the physics behind why they all explode."
The arcade was an assault on the senses: flickering neon lights, the cacophonous clangor of dozens of machines, and the smell of cheap pizza. Morty's friends, a group of normal-looking teenagers, looked at Kaelen with curiosity.
"Guys, this is my uncle... Kaelen," Morty introduced them.
Kaelen smiled and shook their hands. "Pleasure. Morty's told me a lot about your... exploits."
What followed was, for Kaelen, a fascinating cultural experience. He played a fighting game, where his mind instantly calculated the opponent's attack patterns, allowing him to win with a series of perfect combos that left Morty's friends wide-eyed.
"Dude, your uncle's a machine!" one of them exclaimed.
If only you knew how literal that is, Kaelen thought.
Next, he played a racing game. His understanding of physics allowed him to take turns with impossible precision. He broke the machine's record on his first attempt.
But his favorite moment was at air hockey. He played against Brad, the jock of the group. Instead of merely reacting, Kaelen's cybernetic eye (hidden under the hologram) calculated the puck's trajectory, the bounce angles, and Brad's reaction speed. Kaelen didn't move much. He simply placed his mallet at the exact spot where he knew the puck would be, returning it with perfectly calculated force again and again. He won 7-0 without breaking a sweat.
"How... how do you do that?" Brad gasped, utterly baffled.
"It's all in the wrist," Kaelen replied with a wink.
By the end of the day, they sat at a table with sodas and greasy pizza. Kaelen was relaxed, laughing, telling highly edited stories of his "travels." For the first time, he wasn't an engineer, or a weapon, or a fugitive. He was just "Morty's cool uncle." He watched Morty laugh, free from the anxiety that always surrounded him when he was with Rick. And Kaelen felt a pang of something he hadn't felt in a long time: a simple, normal family connection.
When they returned home that night, Morty turned to him before going inside.
"Hey, uh... thanks for coming," he said, genuinely. "My friends think you're cool."
"Your friends are right," Kaelen joked. "And you're not so bad at 'Street Fighter,' for a bundle of nerves."
Morty smiled, a real smile. In that moment, the gap between the scared Jedi and the interdimensional genius closed a little. They became, for an instant, nephew and uncle.
Kaelen walked into the house and found Padmé waiting for him.
"How was your cultural adventure?" she asked.
He hugged her, the smell of cheap pizza still on his clothes. "I discovered I'm surprisingly good at video games. And that having a family, even one as broken as this, isn't so bad."
He looked down at his arm, knowing that beneath the holographic disguise lay a weapon. The war was still out there. The threats were still real. But for one day, he had been able to forget. For one day, he had simply been Kaelen Ror, someone's uncle. And he realized that was a future worth fighting for too.