The Case of The Missing Robot Cart

Chapter 1: Lunatecs HQ

It's about that time again here at Lunatec HQ, that time when the leaves change color on the trees, off-season events are happening all over, the smell of a new competition season is in the air, and sprites are high at Lunatec HQ about a project that they've been working tirelessly on. The first people to arrive are Mica, Seth, and Ben who carpooled with them. Mica steps out of the driver's side his eyes glued to his iPhone watching the last 18 minutes before the newest rocket launch that SpaceX is doing. Seth pops out of the passenger side, "Bro that was crazy, I can't believe you almost crashed into Jeep pulling up here." Mica pulls his eyes away from the phone to reply to Seth "Honestly, I should have hit them for just owning a Jeep!" Adjusting his eyes back to his phone Ben gets out of the car grabbing his stuff from the back. They all head into the college, Mica unlocks the door to the shop, turning on the light with ben and Seth following right behind. This was a few days after Duel on Delaware and boxes of leftover food and drinks are still laying about, waiting to be organized. Still having time before the rest of the team arrives they chilled out for a bit, Ben took a seat by one of the CAD computers while Seth started working on any unfinished CAD projects and Mica pulled up the SpaceX launch onto the big screen to watch. A good 6 minutes go by before another person enters the shop, it was Wyatt. Walking into the same room as the other three "Hey guys," he says, the rest greets him also, Wyatt was about to step out of the room out to the workshop, but before he does he turns around and says "The craziest thing just happened to me while coming up here." This peaks Seth and Ben's attention "While pulling up here I realized that I didn't have the keys to the toolbox so I was trying to turn around so quickly to head back home. A car almost hit me on my way out!" Mica whispers under his breath "shouldn't have gotten a Jeep....," "Oh, I hope you're ok," Ben says pulling out his stylus for his tablet, "Oh yeah I'm fine, just people being crazy nowadays." 

  Turning back around Wyatt steps out to the workshop just to yell out to the three "Um guys, did Mike take the robot cart to his house?" The three look at each other in confusion, Seth gives Mica a deep shrug. "Uh, I don't know let me text him," Mica says pulling out his phone and clicking on Mike's name in his contacts. As Wyatt is walking around the workshop a nearby door is heard opening and what enters is a wave of yelling and bantering. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY'RE MID," one voice shouts, "BECAUSE YOU LISTEN TO THEM," the other shouts, "DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE," the first voice says, "COPE, COPE." As the voice drew closer Wyatt turns around and sees Matt arguing with Connor as Sujay and Sujit follow behind unphased by the shouting. "Woah Woah, guys why are you yelling," Wyatt says walking up to the four of them. "Matt said that the Duck Song is mid while in fact it is  peak," Matt says looking up at Wyatt, but Matt cuts in "The Duck Song came out like 13 years ago and no one listens to it, but Jukebox Hero came out 41 years ago and still peaks." The twins just walk into the other room where the other three are still sitting there. They all exchange hello's and the twins start setting up the laptop to work on swerve drive. As they open the laptop and open the project folder they silently weep to themselves because they remember its swerve drive. Soon everyone arrives with Mike coming in last because of a last-minute job he had to do for work. "Mike," Wyatt exclaims happily walking up to Mike "Did you bring the robot cart?" Mike gives Wyatt a very confused stare, "Isn't the cart here, why would I take it home," Mike asks. Kirsten takes a moment to stop working on 2023 impact award and says "No, we looked all over the workshop and couldn't find it. So we kinda assumed you took it home to work on it." Micam,  walking out from the workshop turns to Mike "Didn't you get my text," he says. Mike pulls out his phone to see seven missed text messages from Micah with the messages saying "Hey Mike do you have the robot cart?", "Do you have the roboryt cart?", "robot*", "Did you steal the robot cart?", etc. Mike puts his phone back in his pocket "Um....noooo....." Sujay turns around, his eyes having dark circles under them from working on swerve "How could something so big go missing like that?" Everyone stands there pondering that same question. But then like a shining beam of hope Mr.Will walks into the shop asking "Hey if no one is doing anything right now can you go to the building where we had Duel the cart we think it might have ended up there." Two hands raise, Maria and Steph who were working on the button machines and getting them ready for the next event "We can go and check it out, Steph and I got a lot of buttons," she says. Steph agrees to that and they both give each other the thumbs up and start heading over to the other building. Over by the whiteboard, Matt is writing all over it, writing down every single suspect he could think of.   The whiteboard shows a table of names and right next to them is his reason. The table as Matt is writing reads "Connor: Wanted to be top g", "Programmers: History of stealing code", "Nikhil: Freshmen.", and "Mica and Seth: They both thought it would have been funny." As Matt is frantically writing names down Maria and Steph are already outside walking to the other building "I wonder who could have taken the robot cart," Steph says while thinking out loud, "I don't really know, I don't know why they would steal an unfinished robot cart but who knows." After the couple-minute walk, the two make it to the other building of the college where Duel was taking place at.