CHAPTER 2

You know, sir... I've never really done an operation of this scale before.

Confidence, my boy. That's the key. If you've got confidence you can do anything.

Well, I would consider myself a general optimist, but I really don't think

ANYTHING, my boy.

"Beep whoop beep," said Luigi groggily. He opened his perpetually open eyes and attempted to yawn (which produced a blank sheet of printing paper from where his mouth would have been). As he gazed around the room, he noticed that he was not, nor had he ever been, in Kansas. An old man wearing swirled goggles loomed over him.

"Hello there, my boy! I must say that for a couple hours we weren't sure if you'd pull through. My student was really sweating it up as he sliced you open. The poor boy dropped a few sponges in you and just about fainted trying to pull them out again. You wouldn't believe how much blood there was!"

"Beep boop!" demanded Luigi at the top of his voice.

"What's that? Oh, silly me. Here's a pencil and a piece of paper." The man handed Luigi the aforementioned pencil and yanked out a piece of printer paper from Luigi's mouth. Luigi began trying to write with his left hand when he realized that it was a laser cannon. So, he put the pencil in his right hand (which looked as though it came from a claw-grabber machine) and began scribbling out precisely what he intended to say. Unfortunately, he hadn't quite grasped the sheer power of his claw and cleaved through the pencil in seconds.

The old man handed Luigi a box of pencils and stepped out of the room.

"How's he doing, professor?" A little toad was hovering over Luigi's sliced-open corpse.

"Oh he's fine. How's his body?"

"Well, I'll admit that I had my doubts at first. But now, this really is starting to seem like a hopeful operation. I'm not sure why we had to remove his brain and put it in a robot, though."

"Theatrics, my boy. That's the key. If you've got theatrics you can do anything."

"I thought it was confid-"

"ANYTHING, my boy. And anyway, I bet people would pay good money to be turned into a robot. Can you picture it? 'Robot for a day!' There are people into that kind of thing, you know? Fetishists."

At about this time, Luigi finally began to scribble out something halfway legible (though he also started running out of pencils).

y m i a rodot robot?

The old man walked back in. "Well, glad to see you're starting to get a bit accustomed to this new... mainFRAME of mind." He chuckled.

"Beep!" Shouted Luigi indignantly.

"You could say that now you're a computer CHIP off the old block!"

Luigi angrily shoved the note in the man's face. He grasped it and glanced at it.

"Oh, you poor thing. I guess I understand your confusion. Here, just lay down again and we'll take your brain out of that robot and put it right back where it belongs."

Luigi reluctantly obeyed.

"Now I hate to make you the BOT of a bad joke, but..."

The good professor just managed to cut off the power before Luigi's claw strangulated him.