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Chapter 2

Whoo, almost finished! sighed Sheldon, wiping the sweat
from his brow with his sleeve. Sheldon loved tinkering with robotics, but it
could be hot work sometimes, especially in his poorly ventilated garage.
Ahem… workshop. Tightening his grip on his screwdriver, Sheldon carefully
reattached the faceplate of his greatest creation ever, the Silver Shell. The
Shell’s face looked back at him expressionlessly, little more then an overly
sophisticated statue at the moment. But that would soon change.

Excellent work Sheldon! praised Sheldon’s new mentor, Mrs.
Nora Wakeman. Those punks at the robotics expo won’t stand a chance against SS
here… The scholarship is as good as yours. Mrs. Wakeman climbed up the
ladder to join Sheldon on the scaffolding behind their project, and handed
Sheldon a small black electronic component about the size and shape of a deck
of cards trailing numerous wires out the edges. With care Sheldon pried open
the back of Silver Shell’s head and inserted the component, delicately
attaching all the wires to the necesary parts of Silver Shell’s motor control
portion of his electronic brain. A shame, really, that a fully self-aware
personality couldn’t be programmed in time. mused Mrs. Wakeman. But you can’t
rush something like that. And this remote control chip should serve just as well.
Well enough to stomp the competition, at least. Sheldon grinned at the
thought. Can you imagine if he was sentient? With all the modifications we
made, Shellhead here could probably even give Jenny a run for her money.
Sheldon mentally ran through a short list of the improvements Mrs. Wakeman had
helped him make… increased strength, an arsenal of close combat weapons and
tools, high-powered lasers connected to the eye sockets, and a much expanded
fuel supply. Mrs. Wakeman had even let him install a prototype of a personal
force field generator that she had been working on, though that one still had
some bugs in it. They were unable to install a compliment of missiles like XJ9
was equipped with (because of regulations of the robotics expo competition) but
it hardly mattered… Silver Shell would be fighting other garage constructed
robots, not space invaders.

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