The Robotnik Complex
Chapter 14
Author's Note: So, you don't want me to kill my character, hmmmmm...? I bet you want to know what I'm thinking, don't you? Well, be prepared to kill me, because the next 10 chapters will be full of twist, loyality, swearing of allagence, death, and betrayal. So get ready, fasten your seatbelts, and hold on for what I hope to be the best writing so far in my young life.
With hope,
Brian Bloomfield
"...up, Brian!" was the first thing Brian heard as he began to open his eyes. "What..." Brian said groggly, half-asleep. Rotor, Chuck, and Tails were all standing by his bed. The clock on the wall read 11:03 AM. Brian rolled over so his face was toward the ceiling. "Come on, Come on! We've got work to do!" Brian slowly sat up, barely staying awake. "Coffee." He said slowly, standing up, wrapping the sheet around him, and truging toward the kitchen, the others in tow. He grabbed what was left of yesterday's coffee and poured it into a cup, chugging it down. "What the fucks this 'bout? I'm tired-" Chuck interrupted. "You should be! I mean, my god, if you keep it up, you might actully have a shot at this thing!" Chuck's voice was filled with enthusiam. Brian just stared at them blankly. "What the hell are you talking about?" Brian said while stifling a yawn. "The robotisizer! I should have noticed last night when I glanced at your notebook!" Tails said to Brian, in a voice of someone who is on the verge of laughing out of sheer joy. "Hold up a sec, I need cafination. Then we can talk." Brian reached over and pulled the used filter out of the coffee machine and loaded a new one. He pushed the power button and the coffee maker came alive. Brian yawned as he began to wake. "OK, now I need a shower and a fresh change of clothing. I don't smell too good. Uncle Chuck groaned in frustration. "We have to get to work now! Can't this wait?" Brian shot a look at the man that said 'Hey, I just overhauled your invention's main component in under 24 hours-Back off..." Brian sighed. "Those notebooks and the prototype of the main control board aren't going anywhere as far as I know. Can this wait? Yes, it can. But I really don't see any reason to drag myself over there after only a couple hours sleep." Chuck sighed. He realized he wasn't going to win. "Ok, but can you be there in a hour?" Chuck asked Brian as Brian poured himself a cup of coffee from the fresh pot. "I'll be there in 30 minutes. Want some coffee?" They all politely declined, saying they wanted to go back to the workshop. Brian finished his cup of coffee and walked over to the closet he had put his stuff in. He realized he only had a few pairs of clothes and that he needed to go light on these until he could get more. He pulled the cover off of the safe and dug around, after a minute producing a black pair of jeans, a black and green swirled T-shirt, and a pair of boxers and socks. He put the lid back in place and walked down to the bathrom, where he took his shower. He stepped out of the shower, shaved, dried himself, and dressed. 20 minutes after chuck left, he walked out of his hut and headed toward Rotor's workshop.
A minute later he walked in and saw Tails and Rotor hutched over one of the notebooks he had written last night, and Uncle Chuck was in the corner supply closet looking for something. He stepped over to the table and tapped Rotor on the shoulder. "Ahhh! Oh! Hello Brian, I didn't hear you come in." Rotor looked over to the wall and saw that he had arriver well under a hour. "Ok, now that your here, can you explain some of these system changes you made. Some things you talked about were unclear about how they effected the entire system or what they even did." Brian nodded his head, picking up the first notebook. "Ok, but we better start at the begining..."
An hour later they were getting nowhere. Uncle Chuck and Brian could not agree on one point of the changes he had made to the design. "OK, both of you hold up!" Tails yelled. They stopped arguing and turned to look at Tails. "You two have been here for a hour and have made no progress! An hour! Now, would both of you stop arguing and get some real progress made?" Brian sighed. He went to speak, but Chuck beat him to it. "Brian, this is your plan, I'll help you try. I'm sorry." Brian shook his head. "That's not needed. I'm just as much at blame here than you are, perhaps more, I'm sorry. Now, let's get back to-" "Brian! Brian! Are you in here?!" Brian turned around and spotted Amy coming into the lab. "What?" Brian asked, curious as to why Amy was looking for him. "There you are! Quack sent me to find you. Snively's awake!"
Brian, followed by Amy and Tails, walked into the Knothole Medical Center. Brian went to Dr. Quack's door, and knocked lightly. "Come in." Signaled the doctor. Brian walked in. "Sit." Brian did. "How is he?" Quack stood up and went over to the light box on the wall of his office. He flipped it on and Brian sat what appeared to be a outline of Ian's head. "There seems to be some sort of microchip embedded into his brain. It was transmitting a signal throughout Ian's brain, keeping him asleep, but I found the carrier signal and jammed it. He appears fully cognative. We did have to restrain him. He kept trying to escape. We also did a blod protosample, and found traces of nano-machinery" Brian slowly nodded. "That's almost proves he came to this planet in cryo-sleep. Your injected with a small amount of nanos to repair cells when you wake up. May I see him?" Dr. Quack nodded and led the way out of his office. Tails and Amy were sitting in the waiting room. They started to get up but Brian stopped them with a wave of his hand. "I have to do this alone." Tails nodded and sat back down, next to Amy. Brian followed the doctor through a set of double doors and walked down a short hallway. Quack stopped at the last door and looked at Brian. "This is it." Brian took a deep breath, grasp the cool door handle with his hand, and opened the door.
Brian saw Ian laying on his bed with his eyes closed. "Just leave, I have nothing to say doctor." Ian said with a air of finality in his voice. 'What's with the accent?' Brian wondered. "Hello, Ian." Brian said, still standing atn the doorway. Ian's eyes shot open a second later in recognition. "What kind of trick is this, you bastards!" Ian screamed in rage, while trying to thrash away from the restraints that held him tightly. "It's no trick, Ian. It's your brother, Brian." Ian just shook his head violent from side to side, refusing to believe. "Ian, our parents died when we were both children, we were split up and put into foster care, out home planet is earth! Listen to me!" Ian had tired of shaking his head. "They how did you get here, brother?" Ian said, soaking the last word in contempt. "All space-bound craft were banned from production and launching! Once our fate was sealed, even then did they didn't lift the restriction! The only way I got here...!" Brian looked at Ian in curosity. "How did you get here?" Ian shook his head. "I won't tell you!" Brian felt a slight chill over his eyes as they turned bright lime green. He had mentally turned on his WatchCom "There are many things you don't know about me, Ian." Ian's mouth dropped open. "You became a guardian?" Brian nodded his head. "You son of a BITCH!" Ian yelled as he lunged forward, with all his strength. The restraints held him back, but he still fought. "You dirty bastard! I'll kill you!!!" Ian continued to yell at the top of his lungs. Dr. Quack rushed in with a hypogun. He reached into his pocket and drew out a bottle marked SEDATIVE, 5 doses-50 cc/dose. Quack shoved the gun aganst Ian's arm and pulled the trigger. Ian continued to struggle aganst the restraint's for a second, then went limp. Quack turned around to look at Brian. "What in the blue FUCK was that about?" Quack asked as he put the Hypogun back into his lab coat. Brian just shook his head. "I don't know, Doc." Brian put his head into his hand. "...I really don't know..." Brian looked up toward Ian. "I know how to find out, though." Brian shut his eyes, letting himself drift. Finally, he heard a voice. "System Ready." Brian opened his eyes and looked around himself. He was sitting in a leather chair in the middle of a workstation. "I almost forgot I could do this..." He leaned back and looked around. He was in the middle of what seemed to be thousands of file drawers. He had let the WatchCom take over his body's functions and was now in a Virtual interface with the WatchCom. Everything he had ever seen, heard, smelled, tased, or touched was here, waiting for him to access. He cracked his knuckles- here he had both arms- and leaned forward to a keyboard. He began to type. "SEARCH:EXTERNAL:INTERFACE:ALL-FREQ.:RUN." Brian pressed the enter key and watched as the numbers began to scroll down the screen, and sighed. He knew that this would take a while.
Dr. Quack was snapping his fingers in front of Brian's face, but he would not come out of the trance like state he had been in for about 3 minutes now. It creeped the doctor out, as he had never seen anything like this. Brian appeared responsive, but was not responding to any outside stimuli other that momentum, gravity, anything that could send him toppling over. 'This is weird...' Quack thought to himself. He began to tap Brian on the face lightly, trying to bring him out of whatever state he was in.
Beeeeep! Brian sat up and looked at the screen. It had found what he had told it to, a computer with a transmitter so a human could hook it's nervous system up to it; in short, a cybernetic implant other than his. He looked at the screen, reading, for a moment before nodding his head. Exactly what he thought. He had found the reason Ian hated him so much, he was his opposite, a prep. And Brian knew from experience that Ian would not stop until Brian was dead. That's the way they had been brainwashed. 'Well, it really wasn't his fault. They never tell anyone what will happen to their mind once they join the-...' Beep! Beep! Beep! Brian looked at the screen again. 'The computer must have found something interesting about Ian's implants. He looked at the screen and gasped. In one column was all the information he had gathered in his internet battle with the Creation. In the other column was Ian's information. In each place for estimated physical information, the columns matched, but in the cybernetic part of the chart, they didn't even come close. Brian leaned back and sighed. "Well, I better go ask him." Brian leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. A few seconds later he faded from view.
Brian snapped open his eyes, just in time to see Rotor wind up for a slap. Brian reached out to grab his hand. "Hold!" Rotor jumped in suprise, as did Tails, Sonic, and Dr. Quack, who were in the room. Brian looked around. "What are you all doing here?" Sonic spoke up. "Dr. Quack told us you went into some kinda trance." Brian nodded his head. "I'm sorry for worrying you, I just had to check something out." Sonic nodded his head, waited for a few seconds, then asked a question. "And?" Brian stood up and walked over to the side of Ian's bed. Finally he looked up at them. "I don't know what to think. We need him awake so I can ask him a few questions. "The drug I used on him wears off in a few hours, you can question him then." Brian nodded his head. "Very well. I'll come back then. I'm going back to the lab." Brian turned and walked out the door, leaving the others standing there.
Brian was, a few minutes later, standing in front of the drawing board in Rotor's lab. He loked at the almost completed re-designed Robotisizer. He had left most of the systems intact, as few of them actually had flaws. But the systems that did... 'It's a wonder this thing didn't blow every fuse from here to infinity!' Brian was thinking to himself. 'It's really not bad...just needed a little tweeking here and there.' Brian started smiling. It was all simple, he was begining to think. When the original design was drafted, the designers tweeked the system for speed, not safety. To save time during the intial power-up, what Chuck did was have the computer switch from the regular circuits to the power-up circuits, which ran through no surge protectors, transformers, nothing. 'He shocked the system, even though the circuit pathways were switched back to the normal pathways, the damage was done. This thing is damn sensitive...' Brian looked down and sighed. 'All it took was for a few of the focusing chips and the neural-positronic converter to get knocked around and bingo, you got a mindless slave factory.' Brian turned around as Rotor and Charles entered the lab. "I'm done, and I must say..." He looked directly at Chuck. "...there is nothing wrong with the main design, you or someone working close to you were just careless." Chuck looked toward Brian with confusion. "What do you mean?" Brian pointed to the real problem with the Robotisizer, the Neural-Positronic Converter. "When a subject was Robotisized, one of the first parts to change, unlessed programmed not to, was the brain. The thing was, for concious thought, regular processors with on-off swiches were not enough. A positronic network changed all that. Instead of just on-off you can have many different selections per switch. Gather enough of these switches together and you have real thought, a positronic brain is born. When this was fryed by the start-up power surge, to Robotisizer got confused. So, it just made regular digital switches. The person became a robotic slave in almost a instant, and it could have been prevented." Brian looked at Chuck, waiting for a answer. "But what about the surge protectors I put in?" Brian just shook his head. They were overrode by the start-up circuits." Chuck shok his head furiously. "No! There was never enough power present! The robotisizer is designed to run on 115 Volts at 50 Amps!" Brian shook his head. "You have capacitors in the system to hold a charge along the way. There was a bleed-off as they were charged. By the time power reached the Converter, it was enough to kill it. You just didn't think of the effect the capacitors would have on the system. A standard Apollo 13 problem." Chuck looked at him in confusion. "What?" Brian chuckled. "When my planet was still exploring space, there was a spacecraft designed to land on our moon. there were 17 in all, all called Apollo. Well, in these spacecraft was a very limited space for fuel, water, oxygen, etc. Well, the oxygen was compressed and put into deep-freeze tanks. These tanks have to be stirred and heated or the oxygen won't flow through the lines. Halfway to the moon, during a stir and for no apparent reason, tank two blew up, crippling the main spacecraft by destroying it's fuel cells, it's other tank of oxygen, and the main engine. The three men survived by using the mon lander as a lifeboat. This thing was designed to carry 2 men for 4 days. It ended up carrying 3 men for 5 days. There were problems, but all 3 got home safe. When they tried to figure out what went wrong, they had to guess. The Main craft was dumped in space, along with the lander. They did eventully figure out what happened though. The Service module, with all the oxygen and fuel, was designed to run on 28 amps. When it was powered up before launch, it was powered at 56 amps. When they stirred the tank before launch, they turned on the heater. Well, the thermostat got fused and the heated didn't shut off when it should have. It raised the tempature of the tank to over 1,000 degrees. When that happened, it cooked most of the systems and halfway to the moon, the tank shorted out and exploded. A simple problem, but when overlooked, turned deadly." Brian sat down and sighed. "Either of these situations were anyone's fault. They both were just accidents." Chuck looked up to Brian. "No one is ever at fault, things just happen." Both Brian and Rotor, who had been sitting silently, nodded their heads. "Brian," Chuck said. "Are you ready to build this?" Brian nodded his head. Chuck smiled the best he could with his robotisized body. "Then let's do it."
Chapter 14
Author's Note: So, you don't want me to kill my character, hmmmmm...? I bet you want to know what I'm thinking, don't you? Well, be prepared to kill me, because the next 10 chapters will be full of twist, loyality, swearing of allagence, death, and betrayal. So get ready, fasten your seatbelts, and hold on for what I hope to be the best writing so far in my young life.
With hope,
Brian Bloomfield
"...up, Brian!" was the first thing Brian heard as he began to open his eyes. "What..." Brian said groggly, half-asleep. Rotor, Chuck, and Tails were all standing by his bed. The clock on the wall read 11:03 AM. Brian rolled over so his face was toward the ceiling. "Come on, Come on! We've got work to do!" Brian slowly sat up, barely staying awake. "Coffee." He said slowly, standing up, wrapping the sheet around him, and truging toward the kitchen, the others in tow. He grabbed what was left of yesterday's coffee and poured it into a cup, chugging it down. "What the fucks this 'bout? I'm tired-" Chuck interrupted. "You should be! I mean, my god, if you keep it up, you might actully have a shot at this thing!" Chuck's voice was filled with enthusiam. Brian just stared at them blankly. "What the hell are you talking about?" Brian said while stifling a yawn. "The robotisizer! I should have noticed last night when I glanced at your notebook!" Tails said to Brian, in a voice of someone who is on the verge of laughing out of sheer joy. "Hold up a sec, I need cafination. Then we can talk." Brian reached over and pulled the used filter out of the coffee machine and loaded a new one. He pushed the power button and the coffee maker came alive. Brian yawned as he began to wake. "OK, now I need a shower and a fresh change of clothing. I don't smell too good. Uncle Chuck groaned in frustration. "We have to get to work now! Can't this wait?" Brian shot a look at the man that said 'Hey, I just overhauled your invention's main component in under 24 hours-Back off..." Brian sighed. "Those notebooks and the prototype of the main control board aren't going anywhere as far as I know. Can this wait? Yes, it can. But I really don't see any reason to drag myself over there after only a couple hours sleep." Chuck sighed. He realized he wasn't going to win. "Ok, but can you be there in a hour?" Chuck asked Brian as Brian poured himself a cup of coffee from the fresh pot. "I'll be there in 30 minutes. Want some coffee?" They all politely declined, saying they wanted to go back to the workshop. Brian finished his cup of coffee and walked over to the closet he had put his stuff in. He realized he only had a few pairs of clothes and that he needed to go light on these until he could get more. He pulled the cover off of the safe and dug around, after a minute producing a black pair of jeans, a black and green swirled T-shirt, and a pair of boxers and socks. He put the lid back in place and walked down to the bathrom, where he took his shower. He stepped out of the shower, shaved, dried himself, and dressed. 20 minutes after chuck left, he walked out of his hut and headed toward Rotor's workshop.
A minute later he walked in and saw Tails and Rotor hutched over one of the notebooks he had written last night, and Uncle Chuck was in the corner supply closet looking for something. He stepped over to the table and tapped Rotor on the shoulder. "Ahhh! Oh! Hello Brian, I didn't hear you come in." Rotor looked over to the wall and saw that he had arriver well under a hour. "Ok, now that your here, can you explain some of these system changes you made. Some things you talked about were unclear about how they effected the entire system or what they even did." Brian nodded his head, picking up the first notebook. "Ok, but we better start at the begining..."
An hour later they were getting nowhere. Uncle Chuck and Brian could not agree on one point of the changes he had made to the design. "OK, both of you hold up!" Tails yelled. They stopped arguing and turned to look at Tails. "You two have been here for a hour and have made no progress! An hour! Now, would both of you stop arguing and get some real progress made?" Brian sighed. He went to speak, but Chuck beat him to it. "Brian, this is your plan, I'll help you try. I'm sorry." Brian shook his head. "That's not needed. I'm just as much at blame here than you are, perhaps more, I'm sorry. Now, let's get back to-" "Brian! Brian! Are you in here?!" Brian turned around and spotted Amy coming into the lab. "What?" Brian asked, curious as to why Amy was looking for him. "There you are! Quack sent me to find you. Snively's awake!"
Brian, followed by Amy and Tails, walked into the Knothole Medical Center. Brian went to Dr. Quack's door, and knocked lightly. "Come in." Signaled the doctor. Brian walked in. "Sit." Brian did. "How is he?" Quack stood up and went over to the light box on the wall of his office. He flipped it on and Brian sat what appeared to be a outline of Ian's head. "There seems to be some sort of microchip embedded into his brain. It was transmitting a signal throughout Ian's brain, keeping him asleep, but I found the carrier signal and jammed it. He appears fully cognative. We did have to restrain him. He kept trying to escape. We also did a blod protosample, and found traces of nano-machinery" Brian slowly nodded. "That's almost proves he came to this planet in cryo-sleep. Your injected with a small amount of nanos to repair cells when you wake up. May I see him?" Dr. Quack nodded and led the way out of his office. Tails and Amy were sitting in the waiting room. They started to get up but Brian stopped them with a wave of his hand. "I have to do this alone." Tails nodded and sat back down, next to Amy. Brian followed the doctor through a set of double doors and walked down a short hallway. Quack stopped at the last door and looked at Brian. "This is it." Brian took a deep breath, grasp the cool door handle with his hand, and opened the door.
Brian saw Ian laying on his bed with his eyes closed. "Just leave, I have nothing to say doctor." Ian said with a air of finality in his voice. 'What's with the accent?' Brian wondered. "Hello, Ian." Brian said, still standing atn the doorway. Ian's eyes shot open a second later in recognition. "What kind of trick is this, you bastards!" Ian screamed in rage, while trying to thrash away from the restraints that held him tightly. "It's no trick, Ian. It's your brother, Brian." Ian just shook his head violent from side to side, refusing to believe. "Ian, our parents died when we were both children, we were split up and put into foster care, out home planet is earth! Listen to me!" Ian had tired of shaking his head. "They how did you get here, brother?" Ian said, soaking the last word in contempt. "All space-bound craft were banned from production and launching! Once our fate was sealed, even then did they didn't lift the restriction! The only way I got here...!" Brian looked at Ian in curosity. "How did you get here?" Ian shook his head. "I won't tell you!" Brian felt a slight chill over his eyes as they turned bright lime green. He had mentally turned on his WatchCom "There are many things you don't know about me, Ian." Ian's mouth dropped open. "You became a guardian?" Brian nodded his head. "You son of a BITCH!" Ian yelled as he lunged forward, with all his strength. The restraints held him back, but he still fought. "You dirty bastard! I'll kill you!!!" Ian continued to yell at the top of his lungs. Dr. Quack rushed in with a hypogun. He reached into his pocket and drew out a bottle marked SEDATIVE, 5 doses-50 cc/dose. Quack shoved the gun aganst Ian's arm and pulled the trigger. Ian continued to struggle aganst the restraint's for a second, then went limp. Quack turned around to look at Brian. "What in the blue FUCK was that about?" Quack asked as he put the Hypogun back into his lab coat. Brian just shook his head. "I don't know, Doc." Brian put his head into his hand. "...I really don't know..." Brian looked up toward Ian. "I know how to find out, though." Brian shut his eyes, letting himself drift. Finally, he heard a voice. "System Ready." Brian opened his eyes and looked around himself. He was sitting in a leather chair in the middle of a workstation. "I almost forgot I could do this..." He leaned back and looked around. He was in the middle of what seemed to be thousands of file drawers. He had let the WatchCom take over his body's functions and was now in a Virtual interface with the WatchCom. Everything he had ever seen, heard, smelled, tased, or touched was here, waiting for him to access. He cracked his knuckles- here he had both arms- and leaned forward to a keyboard. He began to type. "SEARCH:EXTERNAL:INTERFACE:ALL-FREQ.:RUN." Brian pressed the enter key and watched as the numbers began to scroll down the screen, and sighed. He knew that this would take a while.
Dr. Quack was snapping his fingers in front of Brian's face, but he would not come out of the trance like state he had been in for about 3 minutes now. It creeped the doctor out, as he had never seen anything like this. Brian appeared responsive, but was not responding to any outside stimuli other that momentum, gravity, anything that could send him toppling over. 'This is weird...' Quack thought to himself. He began to tap Brian on the face lightly, trying to bring him out of whatever state he was in.
Beeeeep! Brian sat up and looked at the screen. It had found what he had told it to, a computer with a transmitter so a human could hook it's nervous system up to it; in short, a cybernetic implant other than his. He looked at the screen, reading, for a moment before nodding his head. Exactly what he thought. He had found the reason Ian hated him so much, he was his opposite, a prep. And Brian knew from experience that Ian would not stop until Brian was dead. That's the way they had been brainwashed. 'Well, it really wasn't his fault. They never tell anyone what will happen to their mind once they join the-...' Beep! Beep! Beep! Brian looked at the screen again. 'The computer must have found something interesting about Ian's implants. He looked at the screen and gasped. In one column was all the information he had gathered in his internet battle with the Creation. In the other column was Ian's information. In each place for estimated physical information, the columns matched, but in the cybernetic part of the chart, they didn't even come close. Brian leaned back and sighed. "Well, I better go ask him." Brian leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. A few seconds later he faded from view.
Brian snapped open his eyes, just in time to see Rotor wind up for a slap. Brian reached out to grab his hand. "Hold!" Rotor jumped in suprise, as did Tails, Sonic, and Dr. Quack, who were in the room. Brian looked around. "What are you all doing here?" Sonic spoke up. "Dr. Quack told us you went into some kinda trance." Brian nodded his head. "I'm sorry for worrying you, I just had to check something out." Sonic nodded his head, waited for a few seconds, then asked a question. "And?" Brian stood up and walked over to the side of Ian's bed. Finally he looked up at them. "I don't know what to think. We need him awake so I can ask him a few questions. "The drug I used on him wears off in a few hours, you can question him then." Brian nodded his head. "Very well. I'll come back then. I'm going back to the lab." Brian turned and walked out the door, leaving the others standing there.
Brian was, a few minutes later, standing in front of the drawing board in Rotor's lab. He loked at the almost completed re-designed Robotisizer. He had left most of the systems intact, as few of them actually had flaws. But the systems that did... 'It's a wonder this thing didn't blow every fuse from here to infinity!' Brian was thinking to himself. 'It's really not bad...just needed a little tweeking here and there.' Brian started smiling. It was all simple, he was begining to think. When the original design was drafted, the designers tweeked the system for speed, not safety. To save time during the intial power-up, what Chuck did was have the computer switch from the regular circuits to the power-up circuits, which ran through no surge protectors, transformers, nothing. 'He shocked the system, even though the circuit pathways were switched back to the normal pathways, the damage was done. This thing is damn sensitive...' Brian looked down and sighed. 'All it took was for a few of the focusing chips and the neural-positronic converter to get knocked around and bingo, you got a mindless slave factory.' Brian turned around as Rotor and Charles entered the lab. "I'm done, and I must say..." He looked directly at Chuck. "...there is nothing wrong with the main design, you or someone working close to you were just careless." Chuck looked toward Brian with confusion. "What do you mean?" Brian pointed to the real problem with the Robotisizer, the Neural-Positronic Converter. "When a subject was Robotisized, one of the first parts to change, unlessed programmed not to, was the brain. The thing was, for concious thought, regular processors with on-off swiches were not enough. A positronic network changed all that. Instead of just on-off you can have many different selections per switch. Gather enough of these switches together and you have real thought, a positronic brain is born. When this was fryed by the start-up power surge, to Robotisizer got confused. So, it just made regular digital switches. The person became a robotic slave in almost a instant, and it could have been prevented." Brian looked at Chuck, waiting for a answer. "But what about the surge protectors I put in?" Brian just shook his head. They were overrode by the start-up circuits." Chuck shok his head furiously. "No! There was never enough power present! The robotisizer is designed to run on 115 Volts at 50 Amps!" Brian shook his head. "You have capacitors in the system to hold a charge along the way. There was a bleed-off as they were charged. By the time power reached the Converter, it was enough to kill it. You just didn't think of the effect the capacitors would have on the system. A standard Apollo 13 problem." Chuck looked at him in confusion. "What?" Brian chuckled. "When my planet was still exploring space, there was a spacecraft designed to land on our moon. there were 17 in all, all called Apollo. Well, in these spacecraft was a very limited space for fuel, water, oxygen, etc. Well, the oxygen was compressed and put into deep-freeze tanks. These tanks have to be stirred and heated or the oxygen won't flow through the lines. Halfway to the moon, during a stir and for no apparent reason, tank two blew up, crippling the main spacecraft by destroying it's fuel cells, it's other tank of oxygen, and the main engine. The three men survived by using the mon lander as a lifeboat. This thing was designed to carry 2 men for 4 days. It ended up carrying 3 men for 5 days. There were problems, but all 3 got home safe. When they tried to figure out what went wrong, they had to guess. The Main craft was dumped in space, along with the lander. They did eventully figure out what happened though. The Service module, with all the oxygen and fuel, was designed to run on 28 amps. When it was powered up before launch, it was powered at 56 amps. When they stirred the tank before launch, they turned on the heater. Well, the thermostat got fused and the heated didn't shut off when it should have. It raised the tempature of the tank to over 1,000 degrees. When that happened, it cooked most of the systems and halfway to the moon, the tank shorted out and exploded. A simple problem, but when overlooked, turned deadly." Brian sat down and sighed. "Either of these situations were anyone's fault. They both were just accidents." Chuck looked up to Brian. "No one is ever at fault, things just happen." Both Brian and Rotor, who had been sitting silently, nodded their heads. "Brian," Chuck said. "Are you ready to build this?" Brian nodded his head. Chuck smiled the best he could with his robotisized body. "Then let's do it."