A/N – BoneSatellite pointed out that I slipped up in the last chapter with a questionable word. I'm very sorry, and hope nobody took offense. I edited the text, and reposted it.
Whack to the Future
A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic
Chapter Eight – Robot Roundup
The five hundred people in the bleachers politely clapped, as the mayor of Centerville finished his speech to open up the First Annual Robot Roundup. The gymnasium had been transformed into a kind of geek carnival, with innovative and fantastic robot designs sitting side by side with amateurish and bizarre contraptions. Some students stood calmly in front of the tournament board, evaluating their seeding and deciding whether or not they'd gotten a good draw. Some students were frantically putting in last-minute work on their robots, trying to repair the last-minute glitches that always seemed to come up at times like these. Others simply rocked back and forth in place, trying to settle gut-wrenching nerves.
Brooke Krust may have been the only one who was doing her nails. She wasn't paying attention to the mechanical melee taking place in the competition arena. Four awkward metallic contrivances were whirring about in apparent chaos, chasing after dozens of small yellow sponge balls. They were inside an "arena" made from a thirty-by-thirty foot pen, fenced off with walls three feet high. Each robot had its own "goal", a two-foot wide circular basket about two feet deep. The rules were pretty simple: the robot that had the most sponge balls in its basket at the end of five minutes won the match.
Sidney Wakeman's robot was a crude and simple design. It looked like a small octagon on ball bearings, with a scoop blade on its front, like a miniature bulldozer. All it did was maneuver around the arena, scooping up as many sponge balls as fast as it could. But what it lacked in engineering, it made up for in smarts; Sidney was an expert computer programmer, and his robot sported a fairly impressive artificial intelligence. It quickly scanned the arena and sped to the area with the densest concentration of sponge balls, getting there while its opponents stumbled around in random directions.
Sidney's ScoopBot whirred back to its goal, and raised its scoop to dump the balls in his basket. Only a little over half of the balls actually went in; the rest missed the basket and rolled away. But Sidney's strategy was to use overwhelming numbers. His robot scooped up so many sponge balls that the other competitors hardly had any left for themselves. When the five minutes were up, Sidney's robot had won, and advanced to the second round.
"Not too shabby," said Sherman, as he looked on from the far corner of the arena. "You'd swear that Sidney's robot can see as well as a human. That guy can sure write a mean computer program."
"Yes, and his partner there can't figure out how the recharger cord plugs into the wall," hissed Nora, not trying to hide her disgust. Her first match was coming up next, and the judges directed her to move her robotic entry to the assigned starting position. "Well, I've done as much as I can do for the little rascal. It's all up to her now. Good luck, XJ-Zero!"
Each robot started off the match sitting directly in front of its goal. A buzzer sounded, and yellow sponge balls were launched into the arena from two tennis ball machines. As the balls bounced and rolled around, the student robots lurched into action. XJ-Zero's twin cameras twisted back and forth, giving her excellent vision; its four wheels turned independently for high mobility. She whizzed back and forth between the playing surface and her goal, plucking sponge balls with her manipulator arms, filling her basket with one or two balls at a time. Another robot with a pair of lobster claws pushed a bunch of sponge balls at once, like Sidney's robot; but it wasn't very good at it. A third robot, which had a catapult device, hadn't collected a single ball yet. The crowd assumed that it must have suffered a malfunction.
Then, to everyone's surprise, the catapult triggered, launching a net towards XJ-Zero. The net snagged on the aft corner of her chassis, and with a powerful motor, the catapult robot reeled it in. Nora looked on in anguish as XJ-Zero's wheels spun in vain. Finally, with one last tug, the attacker robot knocked XJ-Zero on her side, motionless and helpless. It was all within the rules; you didn't win by attacking your opponents, but it certainly was a legitimate strategy. The catapult robot launched its net again, snagging half a dozen sponge balls, and dragged them in the direction of its basket.
But XJ-Zero had some clever programming of her own, thanks to Nora and Sherman. The square little robot planted her arms firmly against the floor, and pushed itself upright. Then it went back to the job of collecting sponge balls. Dodging between its three opponents like a water bug, it quickly build up an insurmountable score. When the ending buzzer sounded, XJ-Zero had recorded the victory.
Nora heaved a sigh of relief, and guided her robot out of the arena as the next match quickly started up. She flipped open the cover to do a systems check. "Looks like everything's okay, Sherman. I'm glad I thought to put that self-correcting subroutine in her software. It worked like a charm! That's one down and two to go." By which she meant that two more victories meant winning the championship.
"That's pretty impressive, Nora," grinned Sherman. "I think you've got a pretty good shot at the title!"
"Well, we'll see. Say … have you seen Jenny anywhere? I haven't seen her since I signed in."
Sherman tugged nervously at the collar of his T-shirt. "Um … she said that she had to go take care of some business, and she'd show up … later. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we'll see her later." And how, he gulped.
"Well, I hope everything's okay … Sweet Einstein's Mustache! What is that thing?!?"
Heads turned as Vinnie Mogg's robot made its way towards the arena, preparing for the next match. It was a two-foot tall tank, painted black with red trim. It had a rotating turret on top with a two-foot long gun barrel. Its powerful electrical motor filled the air with an oscillating growl. Strange banks of lighted panels lined the bottom of the turret. The Mogg Masher had better vision, and was much smarter, than it had been only a week ago – thanks to a little help from the future version of Phinneas Mogg.
The buzzer sounded, and three robots lunged forward to chase after the yellow balls. The Mogg Masher sat still for a few seconds, however, to the disappointment of the crowd. It was definitely one of the more interesting-looking entries in the Roundup so far. But it wasn't doing anything at the moment …
That changed in the blink of an eye. The turret spun towards a cube-shaped robot, and shot a pair of wire leads from its gun barrel. The wires struck the target's metal skin, and the Mogg Masher discharged an electric shock into it, like a taser gun. The cube shuddered, began to smoke, and then wheezed to stop. The wires retracted back into the barrel. Next, the Masher turned towards a pyramid-shaped machine that was busily scooping up sponge balls. It circled around to come up next to the pyramid, and deployed a two-foot metal baton from the end of its barrel. With a high-pitched whine, the turret began to rotate, pummeling the pyramid robot with its metal baton. After ten seconds, the top of the pyramid ripped completely off. Two robots had been deactivated, only forty seconds into the match.
The only remaining opponent was a squat, round robot that pushed sponge balls towards its goal like a little snowplow. The Mogg Masher came at it from behind, and rolled right over it like a steamroller. Then it backed up and did it again, and again, crushing the snowplow into a heap of debris. With a casual pace, the Masher rolled over a single sponge ball, scooping it up with an apparatus on its underside. It rolled up to its goal, and spat the ball into its basket. With all the other robots reduced to smoldering heaps, that single ball was good enough to win. It was almost as if the Mogg Masher was being arrogant.
Young Vinnie glanced to old Dr. Mogg in the bleachers and gave him a thumbs-up. Then he looked over at Nora, with a superior look on his face. "Well, that was almost interesting," he grinned. "Looking forward to playing the Masher against your little toy, Nora."
Nora folded her arms with a huff, and shot back a smile – then turned around to Sherman, showing the true concern on her face. "How in blazes did a slacker like Vinnie build a robot like that!?! That little tank is ruthless and cunning – and I swear it's almost behaving as if it were intelligent! Criminy, I have to admit, I'm impressed."
Yeah, amazing what a little illegal future technology can do, Sherman grumbled to himself. "Yup, Vinnie's got a pretty vicious little beast there. But I think I've got something that can give him a run for his money. Excuse me, Nora … I've got to go get my entry ready."
Nora blinked in surprise. "Your entry? You're entered in the Roundup? But you've been working with me for the past three days! I didn't even know you'd been working on a robot!"
"Oh, it's just a little something I've been tinkering with on the side," he grinned. Then Sherman excused himself again, and once Nora's head was turned, he bolted for the double doors to the hallway, heading for the student washrooms.
Four more preliminary-round contests went on, as clever little homemade robots wobbled around the arena scooping up yellow sponge balls. The students and spectators were amazed with the variety of robots on display, and even the engineers visiting from a pair of Silicon Valley startup companies had to admit they were impressed. But the general agreement among everyone in the gym was that the best robot so far had been Vinnie's. Dr. Mogg listened to the buzz in the stands, noting with glee that the visiting businessmen and college professors were all talking about the Mogg Masher. Those people would be the contacts that young Vinnie would use to start his amazing career … and take his rightful place as the greatest scientist of the 21st century.
Then a few gasps rippled across the floor, as the double doors swung open. Sherman Lee strolled in, with a pimpled smirk on his face – accompanied by one of the strangest robots that anybody had ever seen.
Jenny had collapsed her robot body into a compact form, close to the floor. She had slid her hips and torso together, and folded her blue leg housings flush on either side of her body. Her arms pivoted to telescope up and out in front of her, and she had folded her pigtails back against the side of her head, which was disguised beneath a set of shielded plates. Lying on her belly, in her transformed state, she had the appearance of a three-foot-long blue ladybug. A very confident blue ladybug.
"Now remember, Jenny," Sherman whispered to her, "in order to win, you've got to get the most yellow sponge balls in your goal basket. Other than that, just about anything goes."
"Oh, please … this is going to be a piece of cake," she whispered back, as they moved towards the arena. "I fight aliens and destroy doomsday meteors for a living!"
"Well, just don't use a death ray or a tractor beam, okay? It might look a bit suspicious."
Nora walked over to Sherman and Jenny, immensely curious, and knelt down to inspect Sherman's "homemade robot". Jenny rotated a shutter down over her eyes, nervously hoping that her mother wouldn't see through her disguise. She didn't, but she was very impressed by her advanced design. "Sherman, you've been holding out on me! The welding and gear-work on this robot is some of the most advanced stuff I've ever seen! What do you call it?"
What had he said last night? A robot needs an intimidating name. "I call it … the Sherminator."
Oh, brother, Jenny groaned to herself, as she wheeled into the arena to face off against her three opponents. Sherman knelt down, and pretended to perform pre-match work on his robot. Neither he nor Jenny expected much of a challenge from the competition. Three high school projects against a world-saving super-powered robot girl from seventy years in the future. Not very sportsmanlike, to be sure. But there was too much at stake to worry about that.
The buzzer sounded, and the arena filled with bouncing yellow sponge balls. Jenny quickly rolled out into the middle of the square, grabbed a pair of balls, and lobbed them back towards her basket. Plunk. Plunk. While the other robots stumbled about, with primitive electronics trying to identify just what was a ball and what wasn't, Jenny kept nabbing sponge balls and tossing them into her goal basket. Just like gym class, she grinned to herself. She made one-handed shots. She made underhanded shots. She wheeled over to the far corner of the arena, and launched a thirty-foot shot that plopped down right in the middle of her goal with a shoomp. Nothin' but net.
By now a couple of the other robots had managed to grab onto their first sponge balls; Jenny rolled past them and plucked the yellow balls right out of their claws. And it's Jenny, at half court, with the double steal! Another pair of shots arced towards her goal, landing dead center. The third robot lowered a wide pusher bar, and began to herd a group of sponge balls towards its own goal. Jenny snuck up behind it and lifted the bar, letting the balls roll free. She grabbed one and bounced it with one hand, dribbling it in circles around the confused pusher robot. Finally she came to a stop, and shot the sponge ball off the side of the dizzy robot's head. It ricocheted fifteen feet through the air and came down into her goal, which was now overflowing with sponge balls.
The match was never in doubt. The clock counted down the five minutes, and with the ending buzzer, Jenny advanced to the second round. She snuck a smile at Sherman, as he re-entered the arena with the other three students to tend to their robots.
Sherman gave her a sarcastic look. "What's the matter? Didn't feel like doing a slam dunk?"
"I was just trying to have a little fun," she whispered back. "Everything's totally under control." She glanced over towards the elder Dr. Phinneas Mogg, sitting in the bleachers. He was ripping a program in half with shaking hands, his face beet-red with fury. Turnabout is fair play, she smiled to herself.
The remaining preliminary matches played out, reducing a field of sixty-four to sixteen. This eliminated the casual hobbyists, leaving only the most serious competitors to face off against each other in the second round. These games were more exciting, with interesting strategies, complex behaviors, offense and defense, and closer scores. But four of the entries stood out from all the rest, and it was those four who advanced to the final match: Sidney Wakeman's ScoopBot, Vinnie Mogg's Mogg Masher, Nora Smegglewyck's XJ-Zero, and Sherman Lee's "Sherminator". The names were posted to the large tournament board, and the judge gave notice that the championship match would begin in five minutes.
Sidney came over to shake hands with Nora and Sherman, and wish everyone good luck; Brooke Krust was lounging over by the vending machines, sipping a bottled water and giggling into a cell phone. Nora returned the sentiment, but nothing more … to her frustration, she still found herself tongue-tied around Sidney. Young Vinnie stood off to one side, sneering confidently. He nodded to his older self in the bleachers. One more win, and both of them would enjoy a bright and shiny future. Not to mention a wealthy one.
Sherman got down on his hands and knees, pretending to adjust something on Jenny's body with a screwdriver. "Well, it looks like this is the moment of truth," he sighed nervously. "This is the final match. Now, according to what you told me, Nora has to win this in order to set the future back to the way it's supposed to be. That means you need to make sure Vinnie doesn't win – but it also means you can't win, either. That would be just as bad."
"I gotcha," she whispered back. "I've got an idea. Vinnie's tank has won all of its matches by attacking the other robots first. So when the buzzer sounds, I'll draw its attention and we'll 'fight' each other to a standoff while XJ-Zero zips around and collects all of the yellow sponge balls. Then I'll just put a hurtin' on his robot and crush it like a tin can … the little creep …"
"Hey, remember," he said, "homemade robots aren't supposed to have particle cannons. Be sneaky and be careful. And good luck."
The crowd rose to its feet as the four competitors entered the arena for the championship match. Jenny rolled past the menacing black-and-red robot tank, taking note of the future electronics that Mogg had grafted onto it. That would definitely make it more of a challenge – but come on, she grinned to herself. I shoot Cluster starships out of orbit. I think I can handle one little toy tank. Sidney's ScoopBot stood ready at the far corner of the square pen. It was fast and intelligent, and she needed to make sure that it didn't scoop up all the balls first. Finally she drove past XJ-Zero, who was looking spry and limber in her fresh blue paint job. Not quite a pale-teal blue, but the family resemblance was there. "Good luck, sis," Jenny smiled towards her camera-eyes. "I know you can do it!" For mom's sake – and for my sake too.
The judge began a countdown to the starting buzzer, trying to build a little drama for the audience. Camera bulbs flashed as the horn sounded, yellow sponge balls were launched, and a large digital clock began to count down from five minutes. The four finalists rushed out from their starting positions …
And Jenny screeched to a halt. And her motors began to spasm.
A warbling disorientation flowed through Jenny's metal body, catching her completely by surprise. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at all, and it was like nothing she'd ever experienced before in her life. It felt like her metal body was being squashed and stretched from the inside out. The sensation combined with the noise of the crowd and the chaos of the arena to overwhelm her senses for a few moments. She even felt a change in the programming inside of her electronic brain. Jenny blinked her eyes, struggling to regain her focus. What in the world was that!?! Was that some kind of attack from Mogg's little tank?
Gradually, she realized that she was the only robot that was still stationary. Sidney's ScoopBot once again began its strategy of hoarding up all the sponge balls before any of the other competitors could grab them. The little octagon scanned the arena and sped towards a grouping of yellow balls, collecting them in its curved scoop as it zipped along. But Mogg's robot was hot on its tail. Whether by design or simply by luck, the Mogg Masher had picked the ScoopBot as its first target. The ScoopBot didn't have much in the way of attack capability, but it was fast and intelligent. It zigzagged away from the Masher in a series of evasive maneuvers, trying to get back towards its goal basket.
But as the ScoopBot focused its camera on the Masher, it wasn't watching where it was going. XJ-Zero was rolling back towards its goal at top speed, holding onto a pair of sponge balls. The two robots collided broadside, sending them rolling end over end. Nora and Sidney, leaning over the wall of the arena, both gasped in horror at the fluke accident that threatened to ruin their chances. Their robots lay motionless, giving the Mogg Masher all the time it needed to close in on the ScoopBot. Sidney winced in sympathetic pain as the Masher ground its treads over the top of his robot, leaving a huge gouge in its chassis. The little black tank deployed its metal baton from its gun barrel, and proceeded to smash the electronics package of the ScoopBot. Only sixty seconds into the competition, Sidney Wakeman was out of the running. It was down to three, now.
Jenny couldn't believe how so much had gone so wrong in such a short amount of time. She ran a self diagnostic, and was stunned to find that many of her weapons systems were off line. More confusing, her power levels were lower – a lot lower. She no longer had the strength of a million and seventy men. At her current power levels, she'd be lucky to beat Sherman in an arm wrestling competition. But there was no time to figure out what went wrong. She grimaced at the sight of her poor little sister, XJ-Zero, slowly righting itself with its manipulator arms. The Mogg Masher had turned its attention towards her. Jenny could almost hear an animalistic growl coming from the electronics on the nasty little tank robot. The Masher turned its gun barrel towards XJ-Zero …
And was knocked two feet sideways, as Jenny lowered her head and slammed herself into its side. She was amazed at how durable the tank felt; it was almost like running into a brick wall. It suffered no damage from her onslaught, and backed off into a defensive mode, evaluating its attacker. Fortunately, XJ-Zero made good use of her escape opportunity, and scampered off to resume the collection of sponge balls. She was actually the only robot that had scored any points at all so far; the ScoopBot had been crushed before putting a single ball in its basket, and Jenny and the Mogg Masher were circling each other in combat.
The crowd roared its approval at what was proving to be the most entertaining battle between two robots so far in the Roundup. The Mogg Masher and Jenny circled each other like a pair of prize fighters, performing ramming attacks in an attempt to flip each other over. Jenny grit her teeth and tried to refocus her attention on the black-and-red tank. At least I'm using up the clock, giving XJ-Zero a chance to win. But I don't understand it – I should have knocked that stupid tank into the middle of next week! Looks like it's time to take off the gloves.
She held out her arm in an attack position. I'll just deploy one of my Shiva Swords …
Jenny gasped in horror. A wave of laughter roared from the crowd. Sherman clutched at his hair and chewed on his fingernails.
Instead of a steel sword blade, Jenny had deployed … a mop.
She desperately tried to access the rest of her arsenal. Deploy laser limb! Click-snap-click. Pushbroom. Deploy saw blade! Click-snap-click. Toilet brush. Deploy Thor's Hammer! Click-snap-click. Feather duster.
Now she realized what the wave of disorientation had been – it was another set of changes rippling back through altered history. Her transformation into a Mogg Robotics domestic housecleaning robot – a maid robot – was almost complete. She had no weapons or superpowers any more. And she had the most irritating but pervasive urge – to clean something.
Mogg's tank seemed to be momentarily confused by the variety of janitorial tools springing out of Jenny's body; but it recovered, and swung itself into position for another attack. The turret rotated to take aim. While Jenny tried to make sense of what had happened, the gun barrel of the Mogg Masher drew a bead on her. With a pneumatic shoomp of compressed air, a pair of taser wires launched out of the Masher's gun tube, and struck Jenny in the middle of her forehead. Before she could react, a scorching pulse of high voltage electricity rocked through her metallic body. Her arms vibrated wildly, and her servo motors smoked and spurted with short circuits. Finally, the agony ended – but only momentarily. Jenny blinked through the haze of bright colors and foggy shapes just in time to see the Mogg Masher charging towards her like a rampaging rhino. This time, the impact cartwheeled her spectacularly into the air, and she performed four barrel rolls before coming to rest, upside-down, in the corner of the arena.
She was astounded. She was embarrassed. But most of all, she was mortified. In desperation, she activated her self-repair mechanisms; but the painful truth was that she was out of the match. She managed to rotate her head just enough to see the insidious form of the Mogg Masher turn around, and lock onto Nora's robot, which had been busily filling its goal with a dozen yellow sponge balls. But there was still two minutes left in the contest – plenty of time for a comeback.
The Mogg Masher reeled in its taser wires and rotated its turret. With a high-pitched electrical whine, it launched itself on a collision course with XJ-Zero.
Continued in Chapter Nine