The next morning at the Smith household began with an odd calm. Summer still referred to Kaelen as "Creepy Uncle" and refused to look directly at him. Jerry tried to calculate his homeowner's insurance value in case of "interdimensional accidents." Morty simply tried to become invisible.
Padmé, however, was not willing to accept the new, cold version of her husband. She found Rick in the kitchen, trying to microwave a strange alien egg.
"Rick," she said, her voice not that of a Senator, but of a woman defending her family. "You broke him. Whatever you did to him, you took his soul."
Rick looked at her over his glasses, annoyed by the interruption to his experimental breakfast. "Ugh, relax, space queen! He's not broken, he was just... defragmenting. His emotional processor had a critical error yesterday. Too much 'massacre' and 'existential fear' data all at once."
He opened the fridge and pulled out a carton of milk. "So, while you were asleep, I installed a little extra. I call it the 'C-137 Empathy Regulator.' It's a sub-cerebral chip that acts like a firewall. It allows him to access my genius, the template data, without the cosmic nihilism and the need to drink himself to death frying his synapses." He drank directly from the carton. "Basically, I separated his OS from mine. Now he should be... ugh... himself again. How fucking boring."
Just then, Kaelen walked into the kitchen. He paused and looked at his new metal arm, flexing the chrome fingers with an expression not of calculation, but of childlike wonder. Then, his eyes landed on Padmé, and a genuine smile, the first since the Geonosis battle, lit up his face.
"Good morning, my favorite Senator," he said, his voice regaining its old warmth and slightly flirtatious tone.
Padmé rushed towards him. "Kaelen? How... how do you feel?"
He took her hand (the flesh-and-blood one) and kissed it gently. "Well, for one, I can now open impossibly tight pickle jars and probably win a punching contest with a Wookiee. For another, I think I just voided my body's warranty." He winked, his blue cybernetic eye glinting playfully. "But overall, I feel... like myself. And I'm incredibly happy to see you."
Padmé hugged him with a strength that surprised him. He was back. Her Kaelen.
"Oh, how sweet, love has bloomed again!" Rick said sarcastically. "Now that we're done with the sentimental bullshit, can we start planning how to avoid annihilation from two separate superpowers?"
Paradox-Flavored Toast
They gathered around the kitchen table. It was an absurd image: an alcoholic super-scientist, a queen/senator from another galaxy, a cybernetic engineer from another universe, and Earth's most dysfunctional family.
"Alright, interdimensional misfit team," Kaelen began, taking control with his old charisma. "Here's the plan. I call it 'Operation: How to Save Your Ass in Multiple Realities at Once.'"
He picked up Jerry's toaster. "Point one: We need to warn the Jedi in a way Emperor Palpatine can't intercept. Jerry, your toaster has a surprisingly decent nichrome coil. With this and Beth's car battery, I can build a one-shot tachyon transmitter. We'll send a message through time, a few seconds into the past, directly into Yoda's mind. It'll leave no trace."
Jerry looked at his toaster in horror. "My toaster?! But it makes the perfect golden brown!"
"Jerry, your toaster is about to become a hero of the Republic. It's a promotion," Kaelen retorted. "Point two: We need a trap for my 'relatives.'" He turned to Summer. "Summer, your encyclopedic knowledge of social media trends and viral memes is now our greatest strategic weapon."
Summer looked up from her phone for the first time, intrigued.
"We're going to create the ultimate bait for a fragile, narcissistic ego," Kaelen continued. "We'll create a false leak on the interdimensional network about an 'infinite power crystal' that can only be found by 'the true Rick.' We'll make it look like a stupid viral challenge. All the Ricks from the Citadel will go hunting for it like idiots, which will buy us time."
"Using my social media clout for multiversal warfare..." Summer said, a slow smile forming on her face. "I like it."
"And point three," Kaelen said, his gaze meeting Padmé's. "The war in your galaxy. We can't win it with brute force. So we'll do it with politics, but my way." He looked at Padmé. "We're going to leak the entire truth: Palpatine is a Sith, the clone army is a trap, everything. But we'll leak it through the craziest conspiracy theory channels on the HoloNet. We'll mix it with stories about lizards controlling banks and how the Force is caused by microbes in the water. Nobody in power will take it seriously, but the idea will be planted. We'll create a disinformation chaos that will make people question everything, weakening Palpatine's control from the ground up."
Rick burst into laughter. "Holy shit, kid! Create a galactic QAnon to take down an empire! That's the most diabolical, smartest shit I've heard in weeks! I'm in!"
Kaelen smiled, filled with an energy and confidence he hadn't felt in a long time. He was back. He had the brain of a mad god, but the heart of a loving prankster. He was more powerful, more dangerous, but he was still himself.
He picked up a slice of bread and popped it into the half-disassembled toaster.
"Perfect," he said, as the toaster emitted a strange hum and the slice of bread began to vibrate and turn slightly transparent. "Now, who wants some paradox-flavored toast?"