West of Nothing

13. Jiminy Cricket

"So when is this pterodactyl thing of yours going to be ready?" Corny asked.

"If I stop getting interrupted, another hour," Doogie replied.

"That's the same answer you gave over an hour ago."

"I had to make some modifications to its control routines. The swing radius was too wide and the gravity offsets were all wrong."

"I thought you said this was a universal manipulator," Corny said. "Isn't it supposed to just snap on?"

"It's relatively universal, yes," Doogie replied. "As in it was designed to mount onto any flat surface like a workbench or a horizontal chassis. Dangling vertically in a confined space wasn't in the original design specs."

"Shit. Typical engineering over-optimism. The real job always takes ten times longer than in theory. Will it even be ready tonight? Don't answer that. So how about while you dink around with your universal grabby-thingy, the rest of us get to work on a new experiment. Who's in?"

"I'll have to sit this one out," Skunkworks said. "I'm helping Doogie with the mounting and cabling."

"Gabby and Shouter then."

I'm a bit busy debugging the pterodactyl's software, Gabby said. It needs a touch of Gabby's good ole TLC.

"The code can't be that bad," Doogie said defensively. "We had our best programmers working on it."

Let me guess. Right out of college?

"Top of their class."

I thought so, Gabby wrote. It looks like it was pulled straight from a textbook. The real world is never that clean.

"Looks like it's up to us then, Shouter," Corny said.

Shouter looked uneasy. "Gabby needs me for the differential equations. The motion routines take a lot of physics."

"I could pitch in," Mason offered, slightly wounded at having not being called on. "I'm not working on anything too important."

"I'm sure you're not. But what I could really use are some bright ideas? You got any?"

Mason blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "We could send in a drone."

Corny snorted in derision. "You mean drop a mini-drone in there with it?"

"Exactly. It would be pretty interesting, right? I wonder if it would attack it."

"A fucking mini-done!" Shouter burst out laughing. "Ha, that's just what I'd expect from you, Peeper!"

"It would certainly stir up the pot," Doogie said. "Isn't that what you wanted, Corny?"

"I wanted a controlled experiment, not robot wars."

It may be unorthodox but it would provide some new data points, wrote Gabby.

"For the first ten seconds," Corny countered. "Until it crashes into a wall. You know how hard it is to pilot a mini-drone in an enclosed space like that?"

"Maybe we don't use a flying drone," Mason suggested. "Maybe we use a crawly one instead. Unless you've got something better?"

Corny's eyes flashed daggers, but then a sly grin spread across her face. "Yeah, maybe I do," she said mysteriously and began to type.