Cmdr. Smegg - "11 days till Armageddon"
>One of the shuttle landing bays was chosen to be the arena, as it had high-up windows which looked down on the bay floor, >ideal for competitors to control their robots from by remote control.
>As usual, it was Chief Engineer Lt. Cmdr Smegg who arranged a team to transform the Landing bay into a battlefield worthy or >the mechanical killers that had been constructed.
The site of the competition had been moved from the squash court to the landing bay; this was to be a full-scale production just like the old TV show, and the ship's squash courts were actually not up to regulation size, not that that was very big anyway. The weapon limit had apparently been removed by Captain Niples, who had fortunately taken over the administration aspects of the thing; rumors were that there were some pretty freaky robots being constructed. Another rule change was that there was only to be one competition; there weren't enough entries for multiple tiers, and the whole competition had been shaped by the persuasion of all the Brits on the ship into something more resembling the original Robot Wars.
So that meant lights, cameras, mikes, announcers obstacle courses of death, Robot Masters (or whatever they called their house robots) the whole shebang. And it was going to be some hard work... a few of the most ardent fans (including Niples) insisted that everything be EXACTLY as on the show, so the DVD's were dug out and carefully scanned through, and then Engineering had to reconstruct the entire Robot Wars set inside the landing bay. Which was quite a task, considering that many of the materials used in the set's construction were now either no longer produced or banned by the EPA. ("No," one fan had said, "I don't CARE if it's been deemed poisonous, we HAVE to fasten the Spikes of Eternal Damnation down with 30% lead solder." "But magnetized duridium clamps would be much easier." "No! It HAS to be 30% lead solder! On the video it clearly shows that it's slightly grayer than wet concrete but not as light as the command buttons on Windows 2098, which can only mean 30% lead solder!") Why did the picky ones always have to be engineers? Guess it's in our nature. But it's not like there are Thermians from the Klaatu Nebula waiting for us! (Or worse, Trekkies.) Geez!
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OOC - Speaking of Robot Masters, if there are any Mega Man fans out there... some snippets from my goofy "Kiloman : Genesis" story...
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Dr. Wong: Now I can execute my secret plan to take ofer ze vorld!
Beta Man: Why, Dr. Wong?
Dr. Wong: Don't you see, Beta Man? You should know, being ze brother of Block! He geets all ze fame end glory, vhile you, you get locked up een zees storage compartment! Now as for me, vell, here I am, a much better scienteest zen zees Dr. Vhite, but vhat do people haf to say about me? Zey seenk I talk funny, because I em an Asian veet an outrageous French-Transylvanian accent! Zey are prejudiced! Prejudiced! End I vant revenge! Now come here so I can deesable your ethics protocol...
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Dr. White: As a matter of fact, we have developed a number of slightly less sophisticated robots, similar to Block but less intelligent, which are specialized for a number of tasks. I don't have them quite ready to demonstrate, but I can tell you about them. The first is Righthand Man. He has a strong, sure grip and is very well suited for construction or mining. The second is Post Man. He is very dexterous and is an expert at handling bombs. The third is Police Man. He is tough and is suited for breaking up riots. The fourth is Yes Man. He is designed to be a robotic public speaker for presidential candidates with unintelligible accents. The fifth is Milk Man. He is designed specifically to quickly and efficiently milk free-range cattle so that both animal rights activists and agriculturalists will be satisfied. And the last is Meter Man. He is equipped with laser micrometers, balances, barometers, and other measuring equipment in order to perform tedious lab measurements when there are no graduate students around. And I'm sure we'll develop other uses for our new sentient robots as time goes on.
Scientist: That sounds excellent!
(Just then someone busts down the door to the convention hall. It's Righthand Man, one of White & Wong's robots! Following are Dr. Wong, Beta Man, and the other five robots. Everyone gapes.)
Dr. White: Dr. Wong! What on earth did you do that for?! Those robots aren't ready for exhibition!
Dr. Wong: Zey veren't before, but now... zey are!
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----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Red: "Welcome to the antique roadkill portion of the show we call --"Mike: "Yeah yeah can you go ahead and appraise this, I've got to meet with my parole officer in 15 minutes!"Red: "Okay, let me take a look at this... Mike, that's JUNK."Dalton: "Not to mention, it's MY junk!"