The last thing Daniella remembered was the sheer, unadulterated frustration of a low-battery notification.
She had been mid-marathon, a rare and glorious weekend where the stars aligned, her parents were out of town, and the streaming services hadn't yet cracked down on her password-sharing habits. She was deep into a rewatch of Kim Possible, specifically the "So the Drama" movie, while simultaneously cross-referencing a wiki for Danny Phantom on her tablet to see if the timeline of the "Ultimate Enemy" could theoretically overlap with the global reach of Global Justice.
Then, the remote died.
With a groan that suggested the weight of the world was on her teenage shoulders, Daniella had lunged for the basket of spare batteries on the coffee table. Her hand brushed against a half-empty can of soda, which tipped with agonizing slowness. The sugary liquid cascaded directly into the internal circuitry of a custom-modded, universal television remote she'd bought from a sketchy enthusiast site—one that promised "unlimited signal range."
There was a hum. Not a normal electronics hum, but a deep, vibrating thrum that felt like it was coming from the center of the Earth. A spark, a flash of violet light, and then—
BOOM.
Daniella blinked.
She didn't feel dead, per se. She felt... localized. As if her consciousness had been compressed into a very high-definition zip file and then extracted into a place that smelled faintly of lemon furniture polish and old vacuum tubes.
She wasn't in her living room. She was sitting in a lime-green, wingback armchair that felt suspiciously like polyester. Beneath her feet was a shag carpet of such an offensive shade of burnt orange that it could only exist in a time period before aesthetic standards were invented.
Facing her was a mahogany-veneer television set, the kind with the big knobs that went clack-clack-clack when you turned them. On top of the TV sat a pair of rabbit-ear antennas draped with a festive, yet confusing, amount of tinsel.
"Oh, you're awake," a voice boomed. It wasn't a scary boom. It was the kind of boom a game show host uses when they're about to tell you that you've won a lifetime supply of turtle wax. "Excellent. We were starting to think the remote blast had scrambled your eggs, so to speak."
Daniella looked to her left. Sitting on a matching lime-green sofa was a being that she could only describe as 'Aggressively Average.' He was a man in his late fifties, wearing a sweater vest that looked like it had been knitted by a grandmother who hated him, and a pair of spectacles so thick they made his eyes look like swirling galaxies. He was holding a clipboard and a very sharp pencil.
"You're a Random Omnipotent Being," Daniella said, her voice flat. She didn't scream. She didn't cry. She had read enough fanfiction to know the trope when it hit her in the face with a sweater vest. "And I'm dead because of a universal remote."
The man beamed, his eyes literally twinkling with the light of a thousand dying suns. "Call me Bob. Or R.O.B. Or 'Sir.' I'm not picky. And yes, the remote. Very tragic. A one-in-a-billion power surge triggered by a specific combination of Diet Cola and high-frequency infrared emissions. You actually managed to tune into a frequency that doesn't exist in your dimension. It quite literally blinked you out of existence."
Daniella leaned back, her mind already racing. She was a teenage girl obsessed with cartoons and live-action TV—not just for the plots, but for the mechanics. She loved the world-building, the "how-it-works" of bionic limbs in Lab Rats, the physics of the Ghost Zone, the genetics of Jumba's experiments. She wasn't just a fan; she was a student of the impossible.
"So, what's the pitch?" she asked, crossing her arms. "Rebirth? A quest? Am I being sent to a world where I have to save a princess? Because if it's a fantasy setting with no plumbing and a medieval feudal system, I'm going to pass and just take the 'eternal rest' option."
R.O.B. chuckled, the sound echoing like a laugh track from a 1950s sitcom. "I like you, Daniella. You're direct. And no, no dragons—well, maybe one or two American ones, but no medieval drudgery. I'm bored. Truly, cosmically bored. I've watched a thousand 'Chosen Ones' swing swords. I've watched ten thousand 'Villains' monologue. I want something... different. I want infrastructure."
"Infrastructure?" Daniella repeated, her eyes narrowing.
"Comedy," R.O.B. corrected. "The comedy of the absurd. The comedy of a girl who knows too much trying to organize a world that makes no sense. I want to see what happens when you drop a hyper-intelligent, TV-obsessed architect into a world where the laws of physics are more like 'suggestions' made by a storyboard artist."
He stood up and began pacing the shag carpet. As he moved, the walls of the "room" flickered, showing flashes of different worlds. She saw Kim Possible backflipping over a laser grid; she saw Danny Phantom phasing through a wall; she saw the Thundermans accidentally freezing their dinner; she saw Ben Tennyson slamming his hand onto a glowing watch.
"A crossover world," Daniella whispered, her heart rate accelerating. "A unified Disney-Nick-CN ecosystem."
"Exactly!" R.O.B. clapped his hands. "I've spent the last few eons merging timelines. I've anchored Middleton, Amity Park, and Metroville into a single geographic hub. I've smoothed out the wrinkles so that magic, ghosts, and super-science can coexist without the universe imploding—mostly. But it needs a manager. It needs someone to sit in the middle of it all and keep it... interesting."
Daniella stood up. This was it. The ultimate negotiation. She wasn't going to just walk into this as a "hero." She was going to walk into this as a Goddess of Industry.
"I'll do it," she said. "But I have conditions. If I'm going to be your 'entertainment,' I need the tools to actually build something worth watching."
R.O.B. pulled a pair of reading glasses from his sweater vest. "I'm listening. Standard packages include one superpower and a cool outfit."
"I don't want a superpower," Daniella countered. "I want intelligence. God-tier intelligence. I want the ability to understand, reverse-engineer, and improve upon every piece of technology and magic in that world. I want to look at a Ghost Portal and see the calculus. I want to look at a bionic chip and see the firmware flaws."
R.O.B. scribbled on his clipboard. "Cognitive uncapping. Check. High-end, but doable."
"Second," Daniella continued, stepping closer. "I want Perfect Detail Recall. Every show I've ever watched, even once. Every episode of Phil of the Future, every frame of Invader Zim, every line of dialogue from The Owl House. I need my memories to be a searchable, high-definition database. I need to know the villains' plans before they do."
"A bit meta, but it adds to the comedy," R.O.B. muttered. "Granted."
"Third," Daniella's voice grew more confident. "The Lab. I don't want a 'hideout.' I want a pre-made, subterranean megastructure that spans the entire Tri-City area—Middleton, Upperton, and Lowerton. I want it to have hundreds of millions of sublevels, dimensionally compressed. I want it stocked with everything: genetic bioengineering vats, cybernetic assembly lines, prehistoric flora domes, and a server core that can host a global network. And I want secret entrances everywhere—Bueno Nachos, schools, libraries, malls. All of it."
R.O.B. paused, his pencil hovering over the paper. "Hundreds of millions of sublevels? That's... quite a bit of real estate, Daniella. Even for an omnipotent being, that's a lot of digging."
"You're omnipotent, aren't you?" she challenged. "Think of the comedy, Bob. Imagine a girl who can't find her own dinosaur because she forgot which sublevel she put it on. Imagine the sheer bureaucratic nightmare of me trying to manage a million-level lab while making sure my twin sister doesn't find out."
R.O.B.'s eyes widened. "Twin sister?"
"I want to be Miriam 'Mim' Possible," Daniella said firmly. "Kim's twin. Not the 'hidden' twin, not the 'forgotten' one. Just the sister who is always there, always quiet, and always secretly running the world from the basement. I want to be part of the family, but I want my legal and academic life to be independent. I want PhDs, Bob. Public ones. I want to be the smartest person on Earth before I'm old enough to drive."
R.O.B. started laughing. It was a rich, booming sound that made the 1950s sitcom set shake. "Oh, this is going to be magnificent. A pint-sized doctor of everything, managing a subterranean empire while her sister fights guys in monkey suits. I can see the ratings now!"
"And wealth," Daniella added, pressing her advantage. "I want to be the richest person on Earth. Publicly, through companies I'll 'found' or 'turn around.' Privately, I want to be the richest person in the galaxy. If I'm going to build a 'Hero Network' and a 'Genius Coalition,' I need to be able to buy the moon if it gets in the way of my satellite reception."
R.O.B. stopped laughing and looked at her with genuine respect. "You aren't asking for a life, Daniella. You're asking for a job."
"In this economy?" she shrugged. "A job with multiversal benefits is the dream."
"Final condition?" R.O.B. asked, his pencil poised for the last stroke.
Daniella thought of the shows she loved. The chaos of Lilo & Stitch, the wonder of Ben 10, the heart of The Owl House. She thought of the loneliness of being a genius in a world that didn't understand you.
"I want a companion," she said. "But I'll build it myself. I just want the 'parts' to be available when the time comes. I want the world to follow the lore and rules of Danny Phantom for ghosts and American Dragon for magic. Consistency is the key to good infrastructure."
R.O.B. nodded, his form starting to glow with a blinding, static-white light. The 1950s living room began to dissolve into pixels.
"The contract is signed, Miriam Possible," R.O.B. announced, his voice no longer a game show host's, but the sound of reality itself shifting. "The Tri-City is waiting. The Lab is seeded. Your memories are indexed. Your brain is... well, it's going to be very, very fast. Go forth and entertain me. Build your Nexus. Organize the chaos. And try not to let your mother find the prehistoric wing before you have the permits in order."
"Wait!" Daniella shouted as her consciousness began to stretch and pull. "What about Monique? I need Monique to be—"
"Monique is already there, Mim!" R.O.B.'s voice echoed from the void. "She's the only one who can keep you from becoming a supervillain! Every genius needs a moral anchor, and hers is particularly strong. Good luck! You're going to need it once the first hundred experiments hatch!"
There was a sensation of falling—not through air, but through time and space. Daniella's mind felt like it was being flooded with a billion terabytes of data. She saw the blueprints of a lab that went down forever; she felt the chemical formulas for a thousand potions; she saw the faces of a hundred heroes she hadn't met yet.
She felt herself becoming smaller. Her limbs shortened, her skin softened, and the vast, infinite knowledge of a thousand TV shows settled into the back of her mind like a sleeping giant.
She opened her eyes.
The light was bright—harsh, hospital-grade fluorescent light. There was a rhythmic beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor nearby. She felt a weight beside her, a warm, squirming presence.
"Look, James," a tired, feminine voice whispered. A voice Daniella recognized instantly from a hundred episodes. Dr. Ann Possible. "They're perfect."
"They certainly are, Ann," a man replied—James Possible. "Kim's already trying to kick the blanket off. Energetic, that one. But Miriam... she's so quiet. Look at those eyes. It's like she's already counting the tiles on the ceiling."
Daniella—no, Mim—looked up. She wasn't counting the tiles. She was measuring the airflow of the ventilation system, calculating the structural load-bearing capacity of the hospital wing, and cross-referencing the nurse's ID badge with a database of Middleton citizens she hadn't even hacked yet.
Beside her, a tiny, red-headed infant let out a piercing wail. Kim. Her sister. Her future field agent.
Mim didn't cry. She reached out a tiny, uncoordinated hand and patted Kim's arm.
Hush, Kim, she thought, her god-tier intellect already mapping out the next fourteen years. Don't worry about the crying. I've already started the paperwork for our first lab. We're going to be very busy.
She closed her eyes, and in the darkness of her mind, a HUD (Heads-Up Display) flickered to life.
[NEXUS PROTOCOL: INITIALIZED]
[SUBLEVEL 1: CONSTRUCTION COMPLETE]
[CURRENT WEALTH: $0.00 (Projected Trillionaire by age 7)]
[STATUS: INFANT]
Mim Possible drifted off to sleep, already planning the most efficient way to crawl to the basement.