ramshackle
adjective
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“No.”
The single word made Jill deflate like a balloon. She had been so sure her latest design would impress. To be shut down so firmly was not what she expected.
“What? Why not?” She asked.
“Why not? Why not?” Jack replied. “Look at the damn thing!”
He pointed at Jill’s latest attempt at making a combat bot. The thing was barely four feet tall, and looked like it had been thrown together by materials sourced from a scrap heap. Each panel was made of a different kind of metal, many of which were covered with rust. It walked on three legs with joints that were barely holding together. The head had optical receivers that were cracked in several places. The four arms had clumsy, heavy blunt weapons at the ends of them instead of something actually useful. And to top it all off, the thing was held together by screws and rivets instead of proper welds.
Jack was amazed that it was even standing upright instead of collapsing into a pile of scrap metal. The fact that it moved was a miracle itself. He figured it would fall apart with a good, solid kick.
“What’s wrong with it?” Jill asked.
“You’re joking, right? It’s a piece of junk. And I do mean that literally. I’d be amazed if it stays together for more than a week.”
Jill shuffled nervously. “It…it’s a prototype. It’s not finished. This is just to test the design.”
“You built a prototype out of junk? Jill, we’ve talked about this. Designs are to be tested on paper and in sims. Prototypes are for real world testing of the tech. You’re meant to use them for when you have something new you want to try and a computer can’t simulate it. This is not a prototype. This is scrap metal.”
“Come on, Jack, you know I can’t work like that. Sims don’t capture the real flow of the design. A computer just can’t get everything looking and acting like it will in the real world. I have to build it. It’s the only way to really see if the design works. I’ll make it nicer once we have an actually design to work with.”
Jack signed heavily. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Fine. You want to criticize the design? Lets do that. Legs. No. There’s a reason treads and wheels are standard on war machines. Legs, even a tripod design, are finicky, tough to balance and hard to use. Theoretically they’re better at rough terrain, but we’re not using this for a warzone, we’re using this for competition. Four arms. Damn near impossible to control and balance. Especially since we’d want a different weapon type in each arm to have something to use against most opponents. Plus, they’ll be weaker overall than two, since the power draw will have to be distributed among all of them. There’s no room for armor either, which will put us at a major disadvantage. I could go on.”
“Oh. Great. I get it. You don’t want me to innovate. You want a nice, safe design with a few stripes to make it unique.”
“I didn’t say that. I’m just pointing out a few obvious problems. You can’t just do whatever you think looks cool. It has to work in the arena.”
Jill huffed. “Fine! You want an arena bot with nothing new about it? That’s what I’ll give you.”
She stormed off, forgetting the rickety bot in the middle of the room. Jack groaned. He could go after her, but he did not. Doing that never worked out well for either of them. He would just have to wait until she cooled off and then they could have another conversation. Hopefully one that was more productive.
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