All That And A Bag Of Chips. (288 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by drky<ta.at.at.com> (View user info) at 2004-09-26 18:37:41 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
Jonny prodded at the tangled mass of wires on the workbench before him, a small spark promptly erupted from the end of one and fizzed its way across the grainy wooden surface, coming to rest in one the many deep, age softened scratches. Temporarily startled he jumped back, catching his mug with his elbow he emptied the contents all over tiddles, his cat who'd been sleeping at the foot of his stool. The cat shot straight across the room and up the stairs leaving an almost perfect trail of coffee flavoured cat prints behind him.
The radio caught his attention as a loud buzzing sounded from the between the ignorable voices, which he left droning on to break the silence.
"That's correct, the answer is forty-two..." he went back to ignoring the show and returned his attention to this mess in front of him.
Almost two weeks now he'd been tinkering away in the secret room. He'd found the room quite by accident. He'd been hoovering the hallway of his new house, when his UberVac 2000 had suddenly started living up to its name and hungrily begun to consume the old rug which lay on the tiled floor. Hurriedly switching the thing to blow he'd been surprised to find, that as the rug skittered away across the tiling it had half revealed a wooden trapdoor. Intrigued, he'd abandoned his half-hearted attempt at housework and decided to investigate. To his surprise he found the hinges well oiled and that the trapdoor lifted easily and quietly despite its heavy appearance. After briefly rushing upstairs to rummage through one of his many boxes of stuff to find a torch, he'd ventured down the steps leading into the darkness before him.
When he reached the room at the bottom of the stairs he'd shone the torch about a bit and been surprised at what he saw. First off, just as he'd been resolving himself to fiddling around in the dark with a gradually fading torch beam, he'd caught glimpse of a light switch. Flicking the switch caused the room to come into sudden and almost painfully bright light. Looking around, he could see a small sink set against the stone wall to his left, against the far wall was a desk with some open books strewn across it and to his right what appeared to be some kind of wall mounted tool kit, containing a variety of gadgets and tools. However, the main cause of his surprise was definitely in the centre of the room. There, on an old workbench, lay what was unmistakably, a robot.
"We've had twelve contestants so far on the show this season, and you sir, are showing considerable promise. We're half way through and even if you don't score any more points you will be walking away today with three silver spoons, two oranges and a full jar of freshly made jam!"
The commentator was obscenely cheerful for the hour of night, Jonny thought to himself whilst pondering a small connector box deep in the midriff of the robot. After hours spent pouring over the books on the desk, one of which had turned out to vaguely resemble a handwritten manual, he'd managed to get the robot to a point of almost completion. When he'd first come across it, it'd pretty much been externally assembled, if he was honest, if it hadn't had that cliché cartoon robot shape to it, he probably would have thrown it out. The internal wiring however was a mess, whoever had attempted to connect all the components up had obviously had more thumbs than fingers and was probably in a rush, judging by the lack of care taken with some of the soldering.
He picked up the unit from the bench in front of him and began carefully weaving his way through the wires to plug it in to the box he'd been staring at intently for the last five minutes. Stepping back, carefully, to take stock he ran through a mental checklist and decided he was almost there. All that was left was to connect a few loose wires and then according to the manual, which admittedly was lacking in a good few areas, like details or diagrams, he should be ready to turn it on and see what happened. The manual had been strangely scarce on details about what would happen after this event. As far as he could tell there was some kind of special power source which kept the robot running for ages and there was something about sheep, electric sheep maybe, he couldn't remember, regardless there were various details about the technical side of things but none regarding the purpose or actions for which the robot was actually intended. He supposed there must have been another guide or manual for this but much to his disappointment after a frantic half hour spent searching, he couldn't find it.
Deciding to go with it and see what happened he connected the last few wires, closed the door on the front of the barrel like body and pushed the little button which sat directly centred to the back of the robots head. The robots eyes lit up and a small whirring noise came from inside the head. Then, nothing happened. The robots eyes stayed lit, the whirring continued, but nothing else. He waited. A badly synthesized fanfare noise made him jump, the radio suddenly blaring louder than usual.
"Congratulations sir! We come to the end of the show and find that you're streaking ahead in first place! Tonight you will leave us with your name in top position on the scoreboard and only three contestants to go. With such a hefty score, you stand a good chance of being in the final! Not only that, tonight you have won; three silver spoons, two oranges, a full jar of freshly made jam, two litres of cherryade, a digital watch, a black fountain pen and three dozen eggs!" The audience started clapping.
Jonny was brought swiftly back to reality as the robot in front him sat up in a fast jerky motion, knocking tools flying and narrowly missing him with one of its arms, which seemed to be stuck out at a right-angle.
"ALL THAT AND A BAG OF CHIPS!" announced the robot in a stupendously loud voice. Then promptly fell of the far side of the bench and crashed in a heap on the floor. A few fizzes and pops later... silence.
A bright bit off paper sat on the bench where the robot had been. 'ComedyBot 2000', it read. 'Fun for all the family, batteries not included'.
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Submitted by youarsoghey (user info) at 2005-01-16 12:15:12 EST (#)
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