Chapter 3c: Skills of the Common Man
The next time Jerrod, Ephraim, and Blizz searched for Eli, they found themselves deep in the heart of the city, in the I/O business district. As they went, a short-tempered little robot stole a bunch of scrap from Jerrod when he wasn’t looking.
“Hey! Get back here! That’s mine!” Jerrod yelled. But the little robot was gone.
Jerrod, Ephraim, and Blizz searched high and low for the robot to get back Jerrod’s scrap. Eventually, they found the robot on top of the tallest tower in the whole city, asleep in a makeshift hideout.
“Do you think he knows where Eli went?” Ephraim asked.
“I’m an Engineer! I can plug into his head and find out!” said Jerrod.
So he did. But he didn’t find anything out about Eli’s whereabouts.
Instead, he saw memories. The short-tempered robot grew up in the village. The robot had tried to be a farmer, but wasn’t very good at growing food for the livestock. He tried to take care of the village’s creatures, but they didn’t like him very much. He tried to be an artist, but he wasn’t very creative. He tried to be a creature engineer, but his creations always backfired. He tried to be a builder, then a fighter, but wasn’t very strong. He tried to be an explorer, but kept getting lost.
He was an orphan, alone, with no friend but a teddy bear he took around with him. And he thought he was useless. He just wanted to start over and find where he fit into it all.
It was clear to Jerrod that he only stole the scrap because he didn’t know how else to survive.
“Should we help him?” Blizz asked.
Jerrod really wanted his scrap back. It was his, after all! And he wanted to fix his ship, escape, and start over again…
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