Yah! I probably did need it on the short hill up to the driveway, that being the stretch that stumped me the few times it snowed when 4WD wasn’t working.
LoM was greatly encouraged by the news and is now on her way to see the doctor.
That’s good! I hate to see anyone get sick.
“Five degrees right rotation..” the command was muffled by various other chatter over the comms.
Bots of all sizes and kinds were scuttling about, preparing, servicing equipment.
“Target in sight, LIDAR locked, RADAR locked, scanning surface.” one couldn’t tell from listening that the speakers were staring a violent vacuum purge in the face.
“Minor cratering and weathering, looks like we’ve got a chondrite. Spectrograph checks out.”
“Good, make ready.” tension mounted, spiderbots froze in place, maglocked to the surface of the ship, forelegs waving outward as they sensed what their brains told them was inevitable.
“On my mark... FIRE.”
There was the faintest hint of the lights dimming, an almost imperceptible bass rumble in the deck plating.
“Darken viewscreen.”
The viewscreen dimmed just in time as the stony asteroid brightened to sunlike brilliance, the victim of a defensive blast from the teleFRAG.
The screen cleared, and the scanners showed empty space where the chondrite had been.
The teleFRAG, an accidental byproduct of failed teleportation experiments, actually did teleport an object.
Albeit unstably.
The object would appear briefly before literally exploding into ninety nine percent pure energy, quite violently.
The volume of a cup of water could boil the oceans dry.
A bowling ball could annihilate asteroids.
The potential was staggering, mind bending.
And, absurd for what the group used it for.
“I got the next space rock.”
“Anyone seen my bowling ball?”
Several people paused.
“Uh, no. No we haven’t.”
And so it went in space traffic control at the Flying Castle.