Tetsuwan April Challenge

[Uran-chama]

Inspector Gadg- I mean- Tawashi!

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

I could see Gadget as Tawashi with Don Adam's voice!

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Professor Ochanomizu took his backpack off and placed it on the ground to serve as a makeshift stool. He sat down and pulled a handkerchief from his vest pocket to wipe the sweat from his face.

“I have to rest a while, this climb is killing me!” he called out to Astro and Uran who were already many paces ahead of him on the trail.

“Do you want us to wait up for you, Hakase?” Uran asked.

The professor examined a map that he had removed from his other pocket. “It's not very much further ahead to the lodge,” he replied. “You two go on ahead and I'll catch up.”

“Are you sure, Hakase?” Astro asked.

“Yes, it's quite alright,” the professor said, “I won't get lost, this trail leads straight up to our chalet.”

“Very well, Hakase,” Astro agreed. “But if you don't meet us there soon after we arrive, I going to have to fly back and find you!”

“I'll be fine!” the professor insisted. He waited until the two robot children had turned a bend in the trail before getting back to his feet. He then removed his mobile phone from his pocket and smiled to see that he was close enough to a cell tower to get a good signal. Ochanomizu pressed a memory call button and waited for the answer from the other end.

“Hello,” he said. “Astro and Uran have gone up ahead as we've planned. I'm waiting at the spot we agreed to for you to pick me up.” The professor hung up his phone and pocketed it. Several minutes later a hover car settled to the ground a few hundred feet from where he stood. The professor picked up his backpack and got into the passenger seat, and the car lifted off again and flew away.


Astro and Uran made their way up the snowy mountain trail. After they had been walking for some thirty minutes, they both began to feel a bit worried. “I don't get it,” Uran complained, “Hakase said we were almost to the chalet, but we've been walking too long. Maybe we're lost.”

“I agree,” Astro sighed, “but we never once left the trail, I didn't see any path leading off in another direction. I think maybe we need to look from the air.”

Uran nodded in agreement, grabbing hold of her brother around his waist. Astro leaped skyward, following the path that they had been on. It didn't take long to reach the summit of the mountain, and he landed in a large clearing in the middle of the forest, but the promised cottage was nowhere in sight. “Something is very wrong here,” Uran sighed.

“Atomu!” Astro turned about to see who had just addressed him in a loud deep voice. It was a robot at least twice his height with spiked hair, carrying a large ax.

“Who are you?” Astro asked.

“I am Mont Blanc!” the large robot replied. “I serve as a guide to visitors in these mountains, and I am a guardian of the forest. I was told to expect the two of you.”

“By whom?” Astro asked.

“By my creator, Dr. Lindqvist.” Mont Blanc explained.

“But we were supposed to meet Professor Ochanomizu at a chalet up here,” Uran sobbed, “and there isn't any, and Hakase seems to be lost!”

“Do not worry,” Mont Blanc laughed. “Your friend is safe. He is currently a guest of Lindqvist Sensei. Come with me and I will take you to him.”

The large robot secured his ax onto a holster around his waist and then picked both Astro and Uran up, one in each of his large hands and set them onto his shoulders. He then headed off into the forest, following a rough trail down the other side of the mountain. After some twenty minutes passed, they came to another clearing filled with the stumps of recently felled trees. A rough hewn log framed building stood in the middle of the area. Mont Blanc set his two guests down on the ground in front of the taller end of the building. He opened the door and stepped inside. Astro and Uran followed him.

There were two men seated in front of a fireplace. One of them was an aged man with long blond hair and blue eyes. Seated across from him was the missing professor.

“Hakase!” Uran yelled as she ran towards Ochanomizu.

“Ah, I see Mont Blanc has found you!” the professor said in a relieved tone of voice. “I'm sorry I had to leave you like that, but it was necessary.”

The other man got out of his seat and turned to face the three robots. “Thank you for bringing our guests, Mont Blanc. You may leave now, I will call for you soon.”

“Yes, master,” the large robot said, “I will be in the forest just behind the property clearing out the dead wood.”

“Mont Blanc,” the professor asked, “Would you be so kind as to keep Uran occupied? We need to talk with Astro, without his sister getting in our way.”

“It will be my pleasure, Ochanomizu Hakase,” the large robot said cheerfully.”

“Humph!” Uran said. “I wanna hear what's going on!”

“Please Uran,” Mont Blanc said, “I want to show you the bird life in my forest.”
Uran's face suddenly did a turn about in expression. “OK, I'd like that!”
Mont Blanc and Uran left the way they had come in, Uran followed the large robot with skipping steps.

“Astro, I'd like you to meet Dr. Gustaf Lindqvist,” Ochanomizu said. “He picked me up in his aerocar shortly after the two of you headed off on your own. I'm sorry I had to deceive you back there, but it was important that I met with Lindqvist quickly.”

“And you didn't want Uran to get in the way,” Astro replied.

“Yes,” Ochanomizu said sheepishly. “I knew I could count on you to take care of her, and while the two of you made your way up the mountain I was able to conduct my business with Dr. Lindqvist without interruption. He sent his robot on ahead to make sure that you'd get here safely.”

“First of all,” Dr. Lindqvist said, “Welcome to Sweden, Astro. I'm sorry I had to insist on meeting with Ochanomizu Hakase before you arrived, but I had to feel him out first on a delicate matter. Now that the two of us have come to an understanding, I need to ask for your help.”

Astro looked at Lindqvist, carefully studying his face, and then looked at his guardian. “Sure, what can I do to help.”

Professor Ochanomizu sighed with relief. He realized that Astro had just used his ability to analyze a person's expression to tell if he was good or evil, and Dr. Lindqvist had just passed the test. “Why don't you show Astro, what you showed me about an hour ago?”

The doctor nodded and led the way to the other side of the building. “This is the laboratory where I built Mont Blanc several years ago,” he said. “It was just after the village at the base of this mountain suffered a devastating avalanche. Mont Blanc helped to rebuild the town, and since then he's also served as a guide for travelers visiting the majestic mountain range in this area.”

“So why do you need my help?” Astro asked.

“As good a robot as Mont Blanc is,” the professor explained, “He's not even close to you in his abilities.”

“That's right,” Dr. Lindqvist said. “Professor Ochanomizu has agreed to let me examine you, so I can figure out how to increase Mont Blanc's power.”

“Why?” Astro asked.

“You and your sister saw the mountain from the air. You must have noticed the problem.”

“Yes,” Astro replied. “The snow cover is very heavy and it is concentrated near the top of the slope. The probably of another avalanche is very high right now.”

“Exactly.” The doctor nodded. “Even you couldn't stop an avalanche of such a magnitude by yourself. But if I doubled Mont Blanc's horsepower, and you assisted him, it would be possible.”

“In a few weeks time the spring thaw will begin. Just before that happens the danger will be at its greatest. After that, we will be in the clear,” Lindqvist explained. “So I only have a short time to do this.”

“Then let's get started.” Astro agreed.

Uran looked worried. Both Mont Blanc and Astro were lying side by side on facing operating tables. “What are you doing to them?” she asked.

“Don't worry child,” Dr. Lindqvist explained. “Your Professor Ochanomizu and Astro have allowed me to examine him so I could learn the secret of how so much power was squeezed into such a small body. Your Dr. Tenma was a genius.”

“That he was,” the professor sighed, “But he was also quite mad in the end.”

“So I've heard,” the doctor replied. “Well, I think I can duplicate the essential systems. Even so, I could never approach the power to weight ratio that Astro has! Mont Blanc is many times his size, but I'll be lucky to increase his horsepower to as much as 135,000, only a bit better than Astro's and he is a fraction of Mont Blanc's size and weight!”

Uran watched nervously as the doctor worked. Finally, his exam of Astro was finished and the boy robot sat up on the operating table and closed his chest panel. “Thank's for your assistance, Astro.” Lindqvist said. “Now I have a few more hours of work to install the modifications into Mont Blanc.”


Uran ran towards Mont Blanc as the large robot walked back into the great room. “You're back!” she smiled, running towards him. “You never did get to show me the bird life around here.”

“Yes I did promise you that,” Mont Blanc said, turning to look back at Dr. Lindqvist.

“Sure, go ahead!,” Gustaf said. “Just be careful, it will take you awhile to get used to your new power levels.”

“I will, Sensei.” Mont Blanc promised, as he and Uran left to go down the path leading through the forest.

Dr. Lindqvist walked out onto the patio and aimed a small tripod mounted telescope at the side of the mountain. “That snow cover is the heaviest it's ever been in recent memory. We really need to get a closer look at it from the air to access the danger.”

“Astro, would you mind?” Professor Ochanomizu asked.

Astro opened his chest panel and looked at his power gauges. “I have plenty of energy left, what should I do?”

Dr, Lindqvist pointed towards the visible slope of the mountain. “Can you get a good view of the snow pack on that side of the mountain? We need to know just how stable it is, I'm fearful that a terrible avalanche is on the verge of happening.”
“Sure thing,” Astro replied, leaping skyward.


Uran and the mountain robot carefully made their way along the trail leading towards the slope of the mountain. Not far in the distance she could see the tall towers supporting the ski lifts, they were in full operation carrying a happy crowd of skiers to the summit of the mountain. High up above her head she could hear the gentle tweeting of a bird, but she couldn't locate where the creature was hiding.

“Can you pick me up, Mont Blanc?” Uran asked. “I want to see where that bird is.”

“Sure thing!” The large robot lifted Uran onto his shoulder where she stood up, holding onto his spiked hair. She scanned the branches above her head and spotted the nightingale. The bird noticed her, and swooped down to alight on her shoulder.
Suddenly the small avian began to tweet rapidly. It then took off quickly, and disappeared into the distance. Uran cupped her hands over her ears, mimicking the way her brother increased his hearing up to 1000 times.

“Anything wrong, Uran?” Mont Blanc asked.

“The bird told me that it sensed the mountain was going to fall down.” Uran said. “It ran away in fear. I tried to hear what the bird told me it heard, but I didn't detect anything out of the ordinary. Then again, my hearing isn't as good as Astro's.”

“You can understand bird talk?” Mont Blanc asked.

“Sometimes.” Uran laughed. “Though I don't understand how a mountain could fall down.”

“I think I do,” the large robot said. “We'd better get back to the chalet and tell my master.”


They got back to the dwelling about the same time that Astro did.

“So, did you see anything?” Professor Ochanomizu asked.

“Yes,” Astro replied. “There is a huge outcropping of packed snow up there, and the ground just in front of it is very soft. It might not take very much to cause that large mass of snow to start moving down the mountain, and my electronic brain calculated that the mass of snow beneath that point would also accelerate downward once the first one starts moving.”

“We could have an avalanche any moment,” Dr. Lindqvist sighed. “Just what I was afraid of!”

“What's an avalanche?” Uran asked. “Is that anything like a mountain falling down?”

“That's a strange way to put it,” Ochanomizu said, “I suppose that's what a child might say.”

“Or a bird.” Uran replied. “A nightingale told me that the mountain was going to fall down.”

Astro pointed towards the mountain. “If we could somehow erect a large fence just below that first mass of packed snow, I bet we could break up the avalanche before it got started.”

“How could you make such a fence?” Ochanomizu asked.

“There is a large growth of trees on the other side of the mountain that I need to thin out to reduce the danger of a fire,” Mont Blanc said. “Maybe they would provide enough lumber to do the job.”

“Yes I think they might,” Dr. Lindqvist nodded.

“If you do the cutting, I'll transport the lumber from one side of the mountain to the other,” Astro said. “I can build the fence.”


They started at once. Mont Blanc swung his huge ax back and forth felling giant trees with a single swing, making Paul Bunyan look like a girl scout!

Astro scooped up huge piles of the felled trees and flew then over to the other side of the mountain. He pile drived them into the ground one after the other. Very quickly the outline of the giant fence began to appear.

Dr. Lindqvist watched the progress from the porch of the chalet. “Absolutely amazing!” he said. “With his energy now more than doubled, Mont Blanc is making quick work of those trees, and Astro is building that fence at rocket pace. They should be done before nightfall.”

Astro returned to the forest area where the mountain robot was lumber jacking to pick up another load. As he landed he felt a strange vibration under his feet. Astro cupped his hands by his ears to crank his hearing up 1000 times. “I think it's started!” he told Mont Blanc. “We don't have enough of the fence in place yet!”

“Get me over to the other side of the mountain!” Mont Blanc said.

Astro grabbed the large robot by his waist band and took off. He momentary groaned under the large robot's weight, but quickly had them both airborne.

“We've got to divert that snow slide around the town below!” Mount Blanc yelled. “Your fence will do part of the job, but it isn't high enough yet to prevent some of the avalanche from reaching the bottom of the mountain.”

“What can we do?” Astro asked.

“Maybe carving a deep ravine in the path of the avalanche to divert it, like a river bed.”

“Might work.” Astro said, “but how.”

“You push me along the ground, I'll swing my ax and act like a plow!” Mont Blanc suggested.

“We're going to get real dirty,” Astro laughed. He aimed for the slope below the rampaging snow slide. They hit the ground and started channel across the slope. Mont Blanc's huge ax tore into the ground like a tunnel boring machine leaving a large, deep scar in the surface of the mountain. Astro looked over his shoulder and saw a rapidly moving glacier of snow catching up with them. He increased the thrust of his leg rockets trying to keep the white maelstrom from overtaking them.


From their vantage point at the chalet, Dr. Lindqvist, Professor Ochanomizu, and Uran watched in horror as the avalanche roared down the mountain. “They didn't finish that fence in time!” Uran cried.

“What are they trying to do?” Dr. Lindqvist asked.

“I think Astro is trying to divert the flow of the avalanche by digging a trench. “But it looks like he's not going to be fast enough!”


They were almost past the edge of the town now. Only a few hundred yards further and they'd be in the clear. Suddenly Astro's vision went white, and then black as tons of white frozen water slammed into him. He was slammed against Mont Blanc, and the two of them were suddenly in an out of control slide, rolling down the side of the mountain. The Avalanche had them!

Astro's electronic brain rapidly analyzed the data from his gyro and inertia sensors and calculated which way was up. He grabbed hold of Mont Blanc and blasted upwards. For several seconds his vision was still obscured, but suddenly he found himself above the maelstrom. He got his bearings and looked to see if the town below the mountain was still there.

“Look Astro!” Mont Blanc yelled. “We did it!”

Sure enough, they had managed to carve out enough of a trench to divert the nearly supersonic glacier from slamming into the village.

“Yeah, I guess we did!” Astro laughed.


The view from the chalet didn't look promising. “Where is Ani?” Uran sobbed. “He disappeared into the avalanche! Mont Blanc is gone also!”

Suddenly, Astro and the mountain robot appeared. Mont Blanc slowly marched up the slope of the mountain, with Astro sitting on his shoulder. He stood in front of the chalet and smiled.

“How did you get out of the avalanche?” Uran asked.

“I flew us out of it.” Astro said. “But it was close, very close. A few seconds later and we would have been smashed against the rocks at the base of the mountain.”

“You both could use an oil bath.” Dr. Lindqvist said. “I'll see to it at once.!”

“Make it a hot oil bath.” Astro suggested. “I ache all over from that wild roller coaster ride!”

“You got it.” the doctor laughed.

[Earthshine]

I always headcanoned that Tawashi never had any children, that he was a cop that had seen too many terrible things, had witnessed too many of his coworkers fall in the line of duty to want to put any child through the same sort of grief. He had a deep understanding with his wife about his decision to not pursue children and she was in agreement and also did not desire children, their marriage was satisfactory and fulfilling and all the better without.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

For the “Free day” I present a Chi-Tan story. This one is extracted from my Fan Fiction story, “Who Mourns for Methuselah” In this story, our four robotic siblings have all grown up into adults. Note that the grown up version of Chi-tan now calls himself "Titan", which is sorta kinda the same thing.

The action takes place on Mars where Cobalt is in charge of the space base located there. In this part of the story a long lost spacecraft has been recovered and Atom and Cobalt are about to discover what is inside the craft....


A large cargo ship took off for orbit and caught up with the derelict. The 'super tanker' had been designed to carry even larger ships into orbit in pieces to be assembled in space. The space merchant marines attached tow lines onto the 70 year old piece of history and brought it on board. Once secured inside, the cargo ship returned to Mars base where Atom and Cobalt were waiting.

Cobalt and Atom entered the cargo hold of the ship. Sitting in the middle of it, with just enough room on all sides, was the charred remains of the front section of a much larger research vessel. There were no recognizable markings to indicate what ship it had been, but Cobalt continued his close examination looking for anything that might help. He seemed to find some tiny numbers embossed into the metal, and busied himself taking photographs and uploading them to his computer.

Atom couldn't find a way inside, but he did locate where the hatch to the missing next compartment of the ship had been. He used his finger laser to cut a hole through the bashed in metal and entered the wreckage. The rear compartment of this section was badly damaged with cables and hoses hanging from the ceiling, and sticking out of the walls. The bodies of two robots were lying on the floor, both had been badly burned. They were humanoid robots, but with extra limbs. They had two sets of arms allowing them to hold onto the external surfaces of the ship during EVA, and still have two hands free to operate tools.

Atom pulled open the door to the front section. It was jammed stuck and required some brute force to open. Inside he saw that this section was in much better shape. All of the instrumentation was intact and it should be possible to download data from the on board computer once it could be powered up.

The robot sitting in the right hand seat was a navigator series. It had several extra sets of eyes so it could read multiple gauges at once. Otherwise it was also basically humanoid in appearance.

Cobalt had found enough markings and was able to cross reference them. They were serial numbers for the external parts of the ship. The computer searched the database and came up with the identification of the mission that it was part of. He couldn't believe his eyes.

“COBALT! GET IN HERE!” Atom yelled. Cobalt already knew what Atom had just seen. He entered the forward section to find his brother in a trance staring at the cockpit area.
Sitting in the left hand seat was the commander of the mission. He was a humanoid robot about Atom's size. Except for being in a deactivated state, he appeared to be in good shape. It was obvious that he must have ran out of energy decades ago. He resembled Atom almost exactly, except for having a single cowlick on the top of his head sticking back.



He floated in the vacuum of non-existence for a very long time. He saw nothing. He felt nothing, not cold, nor heat, nor pain, nor the slightest bit of pressure on his skin. He heard nothing, not even a slight ringing in his ears. His olfactory senses detected nothing, the gyroscopes in his inner ears didn't detect any acceleration or movement. The magnetic sensors in his head provided no information of direction. Not a single neuron in his brain fired. All was in a state of minimum entropy. Every once in a long while however, a short pulse of awareness was somehow triggered. There was no sensation, no thought. He kinda knew that he was. That was it.

Then something changed. The balance shifted and entropy increased as some external energy source entered the picture. Gradually, the temperature of the background seemed to rise above the absolute zero that it had been at for so long. Brownian motion of his synaptic particles began to set in and the background noise level increased from zero to something almost measurable. It was like a hissing noise in his ears, but not exactly. It might be described as a weak acidic taste on his tongue, but that wouldn't have been very scientific either. The background was no longer the inky black, perfect non-radiating surface it had been, but neither did it seem illuminated. It exhibited just the kind of noise you see against your retinas when your eyes are shut, and you have a headache.

He thought he heard his name being called, if that was his name, as he wasn't sure he remembered it anymore. The voice calling to him, if it really was a voice, reverberated in a long period echo. He also thought he felt the pressure of an appendage being squeezed. It wasn't pain, in fact it felt almost reassuring. There was also the sensation of something cool and moist now, just above his eyes, if that was where it was? The slight sensations that had began to pour into his brain became more intense and were quickly overloading him. He had been in a senseless void for too long, and he needed time to adjust. As even more impulses started to invade his senses, panic began to set in. Movement was as yet impossible, he still couldn't feel his body, and he was still disconnected from his muscles. Faster and faster and with greater intensity came new sensory inputs from all sources. He felt like he was spinning as his gyroscopic senses falsely informed him of movement causing the sensation of vertigo to set in. It was all coming together in a sudden rush. He felt the need to cry out for help, his lungs suddenly found the air, and the panic state he was in triggered a primal reaction.

“WAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!”

The windows of the hospital room shattered and blew outward from the 200db blast of the siren like cry emitted by Titan's vocal cords. Atom and Uran jumped back quickly, Uran releasing her grip from her younger brother's hand. The ceiling tiles fell out of their frames, and the lights exploded, burning out and sending forth sparks of electricity. Doors blew open all down the hallway. The medical instruments connected to the patient threw sparks, blinked, and went dark.

Two doctors ran into the room to find the place in a shambles. It was obvious that the electrical stimulation had been successful, maybe a bit TOO much so. Titan was sitting up in the bed staring out into space. The cool washcloth that had been on his forehead was now sitting in his lap. He slowly turned his head and looked around trying to make sense of his surroundings. The two humanoids closest to him looked vaguely familiar, but nothing else did. He took a deep breath, and slowly let it out (much to the relief of Atom, Uran, and the doctors!).

“Where am I?” Titan asked.

“You're not going to cry out again, are you?” Uran asked.

“Did I do that?” Titan questioned.

“Take a look at this room!” Atom laughed. “I had forgotten about that sonic disruptor of yours.”

“Sorry!” he whispered.

Cobalt now entered the hospital room, carefully stepping over the debris on the floor.
“Don't tell me, he woke up screaming, didn't he?” the eldest brother asked, rhetorically.
Titan's memory had recovered a little bit and he finally figured out who he was looking at.

“Cobalt?, Astro?, Uran!” he said, pointing to each of them in turn.

“Close enough.” Cobalt said. “I guess you want to know what's happened. I've been trying to piece that together for the past few weeks. Right now, you are in a hospital on Mars. I'm now in charge of the base here.” Cobalt waited a few seconds for that to sink in.
“Now here's the hard part. You've been in deep space for over 70 years. You haven't aged much, but the three of us have a good 60 years on you right now.”

“Wow!” Titan said. “An Einstein twin paradox.”

“Do you remember anything?” Cobalt asked. “I've been trying to download the memory core from the computers on your spacecraft. So far all I've got are bits and pieces. The history books tell me what the mission was supposed to be, but as for what happened six months after you launched, well that is a mystery.”

“I'm in a bit of a fog myself.” Titan said. “I think I need a little time to let things settle down inside my head. By the way, how long have I been here?”

“We recovered the remains of your spacecraft three weeks ago. You've been lying in that bed since then slowly being spoon feed energy to reactivate you. The doctors started the electrical stimulation of your nervous system about a week and a half ago.” Cobalt said, as his younger brother lifted his rear end up and slid into a more erect sitting posture.

Titan carefully swung his legs over the side of the bed, one at a time. One of the doctors walked up to the bed and started to carefully disconnect the various cables from Titan's inner test points. Once all of the wiring had been removed, Titan closed his chest panel. He now tried putting his right foot onto the floor. He felt the coolness of the ceramic tiles on his bare foot. After transferring some weight onto the leg, he slowly lowered the left foot, and still holding onto the bed with both hands, tried to stand.

Titan manged to take three steps before stumbling, falling into Uran's grip. She grabbed her younger brother in a bear hug and eased him back to the bed.
“I think you're still a little weak there, Chi-Tan” she said.

Cobalt pushed a wheelchair over to the bed.
“If you'd like a little tour of the place, I think this might be a bit safer.” Cobalt suggested.

“I guess so.” Titan agreed.

The doctors cast a look of concern at Cobalt.
“I'll bring him right back here shortly.” Cobalt said. “We're just going to the lounge. We need to talk.”



When they got back to the room where Titan had been, they found that the hospital maintenance staff were at work repairing the damage.
“We've moved your brother into another room, three doors down the hall.” an attractive nurse told Cobalt. She led them to another room and opened the door for them. Cobalt pushed his brother in and noticed that Titan wasn't quite that tired, as he followed the shapely blond with his eyes as she walked away. Atom helped his younger brother out of the wheelchair and back into the bed.

“Would you like us to leave and let you get some more rest?” Uran asked.

“First, I could use something to eat.” Titan said. “I haven't had any solid food for about three decades.”

Dr. Smyth took that moment to walk in. Ulysses Smyth was the foremost expert on humanoid robots on Mars. He had been stationed on the planet the past twenty years. Smyth had studied under Reno Ochanomizu, one of Atom's best childhood friends. Reno had taught robot medicine up until his retirement, and many of the best robot doctors had studied under him.

“I think the reason that Titan here is so lethargic, is that his systems are not responding well to being reactivated after being dormant for so long.” Dr. Smyth explained. “He'd be doing a lot better if his nanites were up to the task. Robot nanites are like human blood cells in a way. They help keep the various systems in repair, especially after an injury. It looks like all of Titan's nanites are down for the count. He needs a transfusion of fresh ones. Once we give him that, they will regenerate themselves and start tuning up his systems. Until then, he can't stay at a full power level.”

“So give me a shot then doc!” Titan said.

“Well, we don't have any compatible nanites in the hospital spares for you. No offense, but you are sort of out dated hardware, if you know what I mean.” Smyth said.

“Well then give him some of mine!” Atom laughed. “I can spare some, I think.”

Atom sat down in a chair next to his brother's bed. Dr. Smyth opened Atom's chest panel, and looking inside, located his nanite reservoir. He used two syringes to extract a quantity of the tiny robotic particles from Atom, and then injected one syringe into Titan.

“You'll need to be a bit careful for the next 48 hours while your body replaces the nanites I removed from you, Atom. You'll be fine so long as you don't injure yourself.” Smyth said as he picked up the other syringe and put it into his bag. “I'm going to use this other one to help the navigator robot that's still in the ICU. I think this will help him pull out of the coma he's in.”

Cobalt turned to Atom and smirked. “You heard the doctor didn't you bro? No field work for you for a day or two. That will give you time to stay in the office and finish up that pile of paper work you've been neglecting!”

As the doctor left, an older man wearing a hospital staff uniform, and mirrored sunglasses wheeled in a food cart. Atom recognized him at once, despite his effort to disguise himself.

“Hello Herbert!” Atom said. “What are you doing here?”

Herbert Ketchup pulled the hat and glasses off. “Darn! Be quiet will you, I had to bribe some people to sneak this in here!”

Uran sniffed the air and made a face. “What the heck is on that tray?” she asked pointing to large covered pot on the food cart.

“Only the best Chili ever made. My recipe is infamous on three worlds. Only you best not mention my name on Venus, unless you want to start an interplanetary incident.” Ketchup said. “Astro, I heard you had a younger brother back from the dead and I just had to come by with something to get him kick started again, if you get my drift.”

Ketchup unfolded a bed tray and set it on Titan's bed in front of him. He then unfolded a large square of cloth and tied it as a bib in front of Titan. “We need to hid the evidence” he laughed as he scooped a generous helping of the steaming red delicacy into a large bowl and set it in front of the younger brother. Titan was then handed a spoon, and he took his first taste of the contraband food item.

“Wow! I haven't tasted anything like this in … well ever!” Titan said as he started shoveling more of Ketchup's famous into his mouth.

“Here, give it a try!” Ketchup said handing a bowl to Atom and Cobalt. He tried to pass some to Uran, but she just pushed it back at him with a polite “No thanks!”

“Wow, what's in this stuff?” Atom asked. Cobalt picked at it as if he were trying to run a chemical analysis test on it. Eventually he'd eaten enough to satisfy his curiosity and set his bowl back on the cart.

“Only the best ingredients!” Ketchup said proudly. “I used to be be quite the chili chef back on Earth. I never thought I'd be able to cook my famous red here on Mars, but thanks to the Terraforming operation, and Uran bringing some wild life here, we now have the fresh meat I need. Of course I had to substitute Jack rabbits for beef, but at least we are now growing the chili peppers and beans in the hydroponics section.”

Titan was really going to town on the chili. He was eating like he hadn't had any food in years, which he hadn't. Ketchup saw his bowl was getting empty so he slopped another ladle full into it.

“Well you're lucky that a bunch of the male rabbits got loose and found the female's cages.” Uran laughed. “We had a small rabbit population explosion and needed to prune the herd.”

“Yes, and I thank you for that!” Ketchup said.

“Wait a second, did you say beans?” Uran asked.

“Sure. No decent chili doesn't have at least two different kinds of beans in it.” Ketchup said. “We now have kidney, pinto, and black beans growing in the hydroponics section. Just what my masterpiece needed.”

Titan finished off his bowl of chili. He now had a big smile from being totally satiated.
Uran looked at her younger brother and said “oops”.
Cobalt saw the look on his sister's face and asked “whats wrong, Uran?”
“I guess you don't remember Chi-tan's reaction to beans?”

“RRRRRUUUMMMMBBBBLLLLEEEE”

“I think my stomach is growling.” Titan said, holding a hand over his mouth to suppress a burp.
Uran covered her ears. Cobalt, Atom and Herbert played monkey see, monkey do just in time.

“PPPPHHHHHHAAAAAARRRRRTTTTTTTTTT!!!!”

Titan suddenly erupted like Mount St. Helens. The windows blew out from the blast of his anal trumpeting, which was a good thing because the room had suddenly filled with a dense toxic gas cloud. Ketchup ran for the door, and barely made out of the room without passing out from the lack of breathable air.

“Excuse Me!” Titan said, meekly.

Atom and Cobalt lay on the floor, laughing uncontrollably. Uran face palmed. For the first time in a long while, she was simply speechless.

Now feeling a bit of relief, Titan reached over to the cart, and grabbed for the half empty bowl of chili that Cobalt had left over.
“Might as well not let this go to waste” he said under his breath and started to finish it off. Before he could get another spoonful in his mouth, Uran grabbed the bowl from him, and threw it out of one of the now open windows.

“You've had quite enough of that!” she yelled at him.

[YJ_Doodle]

Some Jetter Mars doodles I did today since it was Free Choice
I haven't watched any of the episodes of JM but I thought it'd kinda be funny if Mars could turn his spike/ear thingamabobs upside down and impersonate Dr. Yamanoue and his drooping sideburns(?)

[Little Brown Fox]

sCREECHES MY SON

You draw a very cute Mars ;v; Also I love the idea of him mocking his father; I'm pretty sure that he's canonically mischievous in a very similar vein to this. :3c

[Uran-chama]

Day late with this one. My job has proved more draining than I thought it would so I will probably have more late submissions. But tada! Mont Blanc! I took little bits from several of his designs.

Also, YJ_Doodle, those Jetter Mars drawings are too cute!

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Posting the Tuesday entry a bit early.
My short tale for Ochanomizu is based on one of the Manga stories that was never made into an Anime episode.


Dr. Ochanomizu faced the mob of reporters and tried to keep calm. Yuko had warned him about the news media wanting an interview, but he hadn't been prepared for the sheer number of media crew members that showed up.

“Professor, several years ago when you first presented Astro to the news media, you claimed that he was your creation,” one of the press representatives exclaimed. “Yet now we know that he was actually the creation of Dr. Tenma.”

“You're misquoting me,” the professor blurted out, with some anger. “At the time I said that Astro was a creation of the Ministry of Science. Since Dr. Tenma was the head of this organization when he originally built Astro, my statement was not false. Also I was the person in charge of reanimating Astro after he had been discovered in the storage facility where Dr. Tenma had left him.”

“But why the deception, Hakase?”, another reporter asked. “You could have come out and mentioned Dr. Tenma at the start.”

“I think the answer to that is obvious,” Ochanomizu replied. “Considering the way that Tenma Sensei departed the Ministry and later almost started a robot revolution, it would have been unwise of me to associate a robot as powerful as Astro with Dr. Tenma. That would have led to quite an outburst from the news media. I wanted to give Astro a fair chance of proving himself, which he has done many times over.”

A young female reporter pushed her way through the crowd. She stepped on a few toes with her high heeled shoes while moving towards the front of the room, and managed to get the professor's attention. “Ochanomizu Hakase,” she asked in a loud voice that carried above the rest of the mob. “You were mostly unknown in the science community until you replaced Dr. Tenma as the head of the Ministry. You are now respected as perhaps the second most expert person in the field of robotics, but little is known of your previous background. Can you fill us in on how you came to succeed Dr. Tenma?”

“Now that is a very interesting question, young lady,” the professor laughed. “And it's something no one has asked me until now. The truth is that I had been Dr. Tenma's assistant for several years before the tragic events in his life drove him mad, so I was simply in the right place at the right time to be recommended to take his place.”

“Yes Hakase, but how long have you been working with AI and robots?”

“Ah, so you want to know my full back story don't you?” the professor laughed. “Perhaps I should write an autobiography on the subject, for it would take too long to properly tell it right now.”

The professor took a few more questions, and then left the room. Yuko escorted the Forth Estate from the building, and then returned to Ochanomizu's office to find him deep in though. “Something wrong, Hakase?” she asked him.

“Oh nothing, Yuko.” He then removed the portable radio link he kept in his pocket and activated it. “Astro, would you mind coming over to my office?” he spoke into the device.

In a few minutes Astro arrived, entering the room via the window. “What's up Hakase?” he asked.

“Astro, have we ever met before?” the professor asked.

“Before when?” Astro asked.

“Before I reactivated you, I suppose.” Ochanomizu voiced.

“That's a strange thing to ask,” Yuko laughed.

“I don't understand,” Astro replied. “No, I don't have any memory of you before the day I was first activated here. I don't think we ever met while I was living with Dr. Tenma, if that's what you mean.”

“No, I meant many years earlier than that.” the professor said. “Yuko, when that young girl reporter asked me about my past, it sparked a memory that I hadn't recalled for many years. Not only that, but the image of Astro's face has now triggered a weird feeling of Deja Vu.”

“Care to explain?” Yuko asked.

“I'll try.” the professor replied.
“I was a graduate student back in the late 20th century when computers were still a rather new thing. I had always been a science fiction addict, especially for the robot novels written by the American author, Isaac Asimov. Back then I was working at the University in Tokyo where I became an assistant physics teacher and a part time researcher. I must have been one of the first scientists fooling around with robots. My first creations were very primitive, they were built out of junk that I'd found discarded in the dumpsters around the university campus. None of them actually worked very well, if they moved at all I would get very excited.”

“Gosh Hakase,” Astro said, “I didn't know you had been building robots that long ago. I thought robots like me were a new thing.”

“They are, Astro.” the professor laughed. “I didn't meet Dr. Tenma until many years later, and I was amazed at how quickly he advanced the robot state of art. But his story comes much later.

Anyway, after many months of painstaking work, I had finally built what I thought at the time was my ultimate robot. He was a big guy, larger than myself and he weighed several hundred pounds. He also had a rather primitive brain, really just a bunch of relays, vacuum tubes, and some transistors. That's all I had to work with in those days. I hoped he'd be able to move about, and avoid obstacles, but he just kept falling over. Nobody knew how to make a machine that could walk on two legs like a human back then, in hindsight I should have put tank tracks on him.
After I failed to get that robot to work properly, I got very mad at myself, and I just left that robot standing in my office. I actually ran outside into a bar and ordered a very large bottle of Sake. I wanted to get very drunk.”

“Wow, I never thought of you getting that depressed!” Astro said.

“Humans are like that sometimes, Astro.” Yuko replied.

“Then what happened?” Astro asked.

“An earthquake struck.” The professor sighed. “It was only a small quake, but several buildings under construction shook apart and some workers were buried under a pile of steel beams. Suddenly, I saw the robot that I'd built barge out of my office building and run over to the site where the building had fallen down. The robot grabbed at the steel beams and rescued several of the workers. It then disappeared.”

“So your robot wasn't a failure after all, Hakase!” Astro said.

“Oh it was an utter failure, Astro.” Ochanomizu laughed. “I hadn't thought about what happened next for over 50 years now. When I got back to my office my robot was there. I knew there was no way that it could have rescued those workers. Those steel beams weighed tons! My creation didn't even have a fraction of the 100,000 horsepower that I calculated it would have taken to lift them.”

“Then how??” Astro started to ask.

The professor looked strangely at Astro. “I quickly yanked the head off of my robot to look inside of it. There was something hiding inside of my robot, using its body shell as a disguise.”

Astro made eye contact with the professor and his mind activated the truth telling program. “It was me hiding inside of that robot, wasn't it?”

“That isn't possible!” Yuko cried out.

“It's been 50 years since that happened,” the professor said. “That memory has been hiding deep within my brain until just now. Yes it was you Astro. You told me you were a robot from the future, and you then flew though the ceiling of my office and disappeared. That was a traumatic moment for me. I forgot the details, but I continued to work building robots, because then I knew it was possible.”

“But how could I have gone backwards in time?” Astro asked.

“I suspect that you haven't yet done so,” the professor replied. “That's why you don't remember it, for you it hasn't yet happened!”

[Earthshine]

Day late with this one. My job has proved more draining than I thought it would so I will probably have more late submissions. But tada! Mont Blanc! I took little bits from several of his designs.

Also, YJ_Doodle, those Jetter Mars drawings are too cute!

Clever design. I love it.