The reason I love Peter Walter VI is because he tries so hard to be cool, all gangstah and stuff but he just fails miserably and its like the most adorable awkwardness, you know like:
Hello Fellow Internauts!
and
Stay Fresh Robut Enthusiasts and See You at WRX,
Your Pal,
Your Friend,
Your Bro,
But Not Your Brah,
With hardly a day’s notice, Jon was gone. Just like that. He was still my best friend, and I knew he would be back eventually, but his departure left a gaping hole in our touring act, which we needed to keep us afloat. We would have to find a replacement. Consulting with the remaining family members, we scoured the old vaults full of spare robots, all out of commission from the days when the manor was lively and bustling. The Walter Robotics industry had been strong and healthy back then, the leader in the field with many backers and investors. After the Becile lawsuits stripped the family dry, they’d had to decommission all but the most essential crew.
We checked in on the conditions of several inactive bots, but most were in a fairly poor state of disrepair, too far gone for our limited resources to restore. After a pause of hesitation, Wanda nominated an old robot with an advanced portal technology which had never been quite perfected. He’d served in WWI, but had been locked away in a partially-conscious state shortly thereafter when his Bluematter began to spiral out of control.
I consulted our materials and budget, and took a peek at the bronze bot to assess his condition. He peered back with dim optics, flickering in the light of day. Rust was minimal, joints seemed good, and with just a little bit of upgrading, he seemed like he could serve our purpose well enough. The repair of his core-and-portal setup into a state of stability, on my own with no guidance, that would be my true coming of age. This would be my most daunting challenge yet.
Things were going well as I pulled the old robot, who seemed to call himself Hatchworth, into the workshop to study with the more highly-advanced Bluematter machinery. The problem was a complicated one; it would need better connections and routing into the main processing unit to give Hatchworth more direct control over the portal and its activity. Many of his wires were out of date and would also need updated to our new mixture of nickel-cobalt wiring for better efficiency. With careful rerouting of power and monitoring of the unstable portal, I slowly began the conversion and integration.
As is wont to do in this Manor, the situation quickly spiraled out of control. One stupid mistake on my part sent the powerful Bluematter running on a feedback loop through Hatchworth’s circuits, and before I’d even realized completely what had happened, the workshop was once again consumed in an enormous explosion. Reality was rent in two, the fabric of it stretching around me until I could see the very threads of existence and the spaces between them, and how they bent and curved and coiled around each other and around everything. My body was no more, lost to the incredible power of the void between the dimensions, and I almost swore I could see Jon’s hot dog and koi on the other side. As I dissolved from toe to head, losing my grip on the fabric of the universe, the process reached the edges of the Bluematter integrated in my face and pulled me back from the brink. Rending searing pain through my skin, it slowly evened out into the rest of my body, past my shoulders and hips and shins until my feet touched down on solid ground and the rest of the Manor materialized around me.
