Brobdingnagian
\ brob-ding-NAG-ee-uhn \ , adjective;
1. of huge size; gigantic; tremendous.
1. an inhabitant of Brobdingnag.
2. a being of tremendous size; giant.
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Don craned his neck to take in the large mish-mash of metal
and plastic that had been roughly formed into a roughly human shape. It was blocky, clunky looking, and had a few
too many small pieces sticking out of it, but it was still recognizable as a
man.
“It’s
kinda…big.” Don said. It was all he could think to say about the twenty
foot structure.
“Well,
yeah. Of course it is.” Adam said.
“Couldn’t
you make it, you know, smaller?”
“If I
did that, it wouldn’t be a giant robot, now would it?” He said it like it was the most obvious thing
in the world. Adam had to admit he had a
point, even if it was kind of stupid.
“Well,
why does it have to be a giant robot?”
He asked. “I mean, couldn’t you
make a smaller robot?”
“Why
would I do that?” Adam asked. “I mean, why make a normal robot when you can
make a giant one?”
“Because
it’s easier?”
“Pff,
lamer is more like it. I mean, I guess a
normal sized robot is cool, but giant robots are just awesome in every single
way.”
Don
wished he could argue with his friend’s logic.
But he had to admit Adam had something not unlike a point. Still, this one was somewhat less than
awesome. In fact, it looked silly to
Don. He just couldn’t bring himself to
tell Adam that though. He would leave it
to others in their social circle.
“Wasn’t
it expensive though?”
“Oh
yeah, definitely. It cost most of my
life savings. Not to mention the better
part of a year to put it together. But
it was so worth it.”
Don didn’t
know what the worst thing about his friend’s words was. He did suppose there could be some merit to
the large mechanical monstrosity, but he couldn’t think of any.
“So,
does it do anything?” Don asked.
“Of
course it does. You didn’t think I spent
that much on a building a big statue, did you?
Hang on, I’ll show you.”
Adam
ran off and returned a few minutes later with a small tablet computer in his
hands. He messed around on the screen
for a minute or so,, then the robot came to life. Sort of, anyway.
A loud
mechanical whir issued out of the chest of the giant robot and it raised its
right arm. The movement was painfully
slow, and took almost two minutes to do just that one task. The forearm curled up at a snail’s pace and
started to move back and forth. Don sighed
as he watched the robot wave to him with all the speed of a moving
glacier.
“Pretty
cool, huh?” Adam asked. He was clearly very proud of himself.
“It’s a
bit slow, isn’t it?” Don asked.
“Oh that. Yeah, I guess I couldn’t really afford parts
that would let it move faster. But hey,
at least it moves. That’s a huge
achievement right there. I mean, have
you ever heard of anything this big having this level of articulation?”
Adam emphasized
his point by having the robot open and close its fingers, even moving one at a
time. Then he had it lift its leg and
move its foot back and forth. None of
the movements were fast, but Don did have to admit it was impressive in its own
way. That something that big could move
at all was probably quite the feat of engineering, particularly because it was
able to balance on one foot for a decent length of time.
“Ok,
yeah, I guess that’s pretty good.” Don
admitted. “But still. It’s not really good for anything is it?”
“Not a
damn thing. But that’s not really the
point.”
“Than
what is the point?”
“The
point is I now have my own working giant robot.
Now I just have to work on a functional laser sword and flight systems
for it.” Adam was clearly very excited
about the prospects of all that.
“Right,
you get on that.” Don said
skeptically. He was somewhat less happy
about the idea of Adam having a twenty foot robot that could fly and had
weapons. He did take quite a bit of solace
in the fact that such a thing would probably never happen. At least, not in his lifetime.
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Someday, giant robots will be a reality, and it will be glorious. Life will be like those giant robot animes, of that, I have no doubt. Maybe not exactly, but close enough. They may even watch those shows and think of it like we do with other sci-fi shows (I'm looking at you Star Trek).
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