Charlie pondered onward towards the main gates, slowed significantly by his heavy load. The man at the forge, whose name turned out to be Willis, had been kind enough to provide Charlie with a wagon for his ample ingots and scrap. He had bought a lot more than he had thought he'd be able to, but he wouldn't complain. He would take everything he could get. If anything, this just meant he wouldn't have to spend as long digging through the piles of trash outside the gate.

After asking around for a bit, Charlie had found out that the piles in front of the main gates to town were completely free real estate, set out there to be picked up by some designated junkers from the larger cities down south. This meant he was free to try and find whatever supplementary materials he could within them, making his job a whole lot easier. He wanted to avoid running around town asking every shopkeeper about every little scrap of material he might need.

Continuing his plodding pace, Charlie looked behind him into the wagon. Penny was sitting back there on a little ingot throne of her own design, gladly obliterating a pastry he had grabbed for her from a street vendor. Not only had Willis apparently sold to them at an apparently really good price, something the man had gladly boasted about, but he had also provided change for Charlie's final remaining Sarmalis. According to the old man, a shop such as his had much more use for high-value coins than other, smaller industries. It had simply worked out for both parties. Returning his gaze forward so as not to run anybody over, he called out to Penny, looking to go over the coming plans with her.

"Hey, Penny," he said, "Did you wanna hear about robots? We're gonna be working on one soon."

"Holf om ah hechom."

"Huh?"

Charlie heard the girl choke, beat her chest, hack, swallow, and then clear her throat before speaking again.

"You almost killed me!" she shouted.

"Me? Almost kill you? You did that yourself. Eat slower; it's better for you."

"Well, that's hard to do when the food is this good! Maybe consider not giving me delectable bread things!"

"Ok."

"Waitwaitwaitwaitwait, no, don't do that. You're not supposed to agree! Buy me more bread things!"

"Penny. Robots."

"Oh, yeah. What's a robot?"

"Well," Charlie began, "By definition, a robot is "a machine resembling a human being and able to replicate certain human movements and functions automatically." This, of course, probably makes no sense to you."

Penny sat in silence for a moment before responding.

"What's a machine?"

"A machine is, uh," Charlie searched for the right words. "It's like a really advanced tool."

"Sooo," Penny drawled, "you make tools that look like people?"

"Not exactly, but yes, kind of. It doesn't have to look like a person or really look like anything; it just performs an action or several actions that I build it to do without me having to move it myself."

"Oh. That kinda sounds like a summoned golem. What's the difference?"

Charlie paused, but only for a second. They were getting close to the gate.

"I don't really know much about golems, but I'm sure there's a huge difference. Nothing can really compare with a robot, after all. Plus, as far as I can tell, you can't make a golem out of metal. Robots are almost exclusively made out of metal."

"Huh. Well, how do you make a robot?"

"I... also don't really know. There's a long process of where I come from, but here, I should be able to do it with magic. It's my Memorandum, you see."

Penny hopped out of the wagon and jogged up to walk next to Charlie. She was much more capable of keeping up with him now that he was pulling that wagon. She looked up at him and asked a question that she had no doubt been thinking about for a while now.

"So, you have a Memorandum, but you're not a Freehand? Why?"

"I'm not from around here, so I wasn't aware what one of those was."

"Oh yeah. You didn't know what a Freehand was, which is crazy. Will you become a freehand now?"

"Not really sure. And I couldn't have been a Freehand, I just manifested my Memorandum yesterday."

Penny stopped in place, staring at Charlie, mouth agape.

"You manifested it yesterday? In that abandoned church? Are you stupid?"

"Probably."

Penny continued standing in place for a few more seconds before shaking her head and rushing to catch up; Charlie had never stopped moving.

"Well," she whispered conspiratorially, "Which angel sponsored you? Was it a minor angel? Or a major one? I bet it was a major one. These robot things sound strong. They better be, with how much it's takin to make one."

"It was an Archangel, I believe."

Penny burst out laughing. She couldn't help it; she hadn't expected Charlie to say something so funny there. She wiped away tears and continued giggling to herself as she followed along.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Charlie looked at Penny quizzically, confused as to what he could have said that was so funny. He thought that an Archangel sponsor would be considered impressive, but he could have been wrong, he guessed. He looked away from the girl and up at the gates they were now passing through. He hadn't really had any time to look at them before, but they were admirable, to be sure. They were huge and dense, made of some kind of iron or steel, and they depicted a very artistic tradition of some battle he would probably never know the history of. They were attached to equally thick, if not thicker, stone walls that stood maybe 10 feet high, circling the settlement. A settlement that he was just now realizing stood in the center of a much larger, abandoned city. Huh. Something to get more information on later.

Charlie pulled his wagon up next to the closest pile to the gate and slowed, allowing it to come to a stop. Penny stopped with him, still calming from the laughing fit she'd just gone through. He looked down at the pile of junk, considering what would come next. He had all the metal he would need, so he wasn't worried about that. What he needed were insulators. Plastic, rubber, that kind of thing. He also needed glass, but he was already seeing plenty of bottles strewn about that would work perfectly fine. His most limiting factor currently would be time. He looked up at the sun, blazing high in the sky. It was about midday, as far as he could tell, meaning he had maybe between six and eight hours to find what he needed and figure out how to build this thing. Getting down on his knees, he began to search, excited for work for the first time in two decades.

----------------------------------------

Charlie chugged along as fast as he could, pulling his cart, which was chock full of junk. Penny had gotten upset with him partway through his search, seeing as he'd covered up her throne, but she'd gotten over it quickly when he'd told her he'd get her one pastry for every eligible piece of rubber she could find. She'd found an astonishing 14 individual pieces. There were only about 3 hours left in the day now, the sun descending towards the horizon. He figured he would need to hurry if he was to figure this out today.

Charlie pulled off into a side road, figuring it as good a place as any to get started. He had pulled away from the city in an effort to ensure some privacy; he never really liked it when people watched him work. He'd just have to deal with Penny watching him. Hell, maybe it would be a boon in disguise, and he could teach her a thing or two about robotics. That would be glorious.

Roughly, Charlie began tossing things out of the wagon into loose piles, keeping similar substances bunched together. This included glasses in one pile, plastics and rubbers in a pile, steel in a pile, and brass and copper in another. It was a very basic setup that he hoped would do. He was happy with his haul. The metals he really couldn't have done better on, and the glasses would do just fine. He was most concerned about the rubber and plastics. Try as he might, he couldn't find any sort of modern synthetic rubber, though he could find something similar in the form of some sort of natural rubber that the public seemed to be using. Plastics were even worse. He'd just taken some sort of substance that seemed to be used in some kitchenware and toys that seemed close to plastic. He hoped they would work.

Charlie turned and looked at Penny, who was currently standing off to the side, half of a baguette sticking out of her mouth. She had decided to start her winnings with something unsweetened to make the rest of it taste even better, she had said. He could tell she was still loving the fresh bread. He cleared his throat and spoke aloud, both for himself and for her.

"Alright. Robot time."

"Hmmph harfor hmmah!"

Charlie raised his arms into the air and held them out over the materials, closing his eyes. He brought the blueprint for the Zeta-class wonder he had mentally made to the forefront of his mind and focused intently on it, willing the magic to make his dreams come true. He stood there like this for about a minute, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. He opened his eyes and stared down balefully at the ingredients scattered about, confused as to why it hadn't worked. Had he not collected everything he needed?

"Where's your Memorandum?" Penny asked, pulling the baguette out of her mouth.

"Oh."

Feeling slightly embarrassed, Charlie reached into his pocket and pulled out the strange stone, staring into it as he did. It was pulsing quickly, in tandem with his rapid heart rate. It creeped him out. Putting those thoughts aside, Charlie gripped the stone tight and tried again. He immediately felt something click in the back of his mind, as well as somewhere deep in his chest, and his vision expanded. Suddenly, he could see his blueprint in front of his very eyes as if it had always existed there. It wasn't perfect, semi-transparent, with some random blotches that didn't make sense here and there, but he could still see it regardless. He tried to reach out and touch it, but he couldn't reach it, almost like some sort of issue with his depth perception.

In front of him, behind the blueprint, he could see a ghostly figure of a robot before him. It was unfinished and blurry, with some parts of it in extreme detail and others as foggy as clouds in the sky. He looked down at the blueprint and realized the issue. The blueprints were just conceptual, unfinished, and vague. He would need to put some work into it to make it fit the image he had in his mind's eye. So, he got to work.

First, he focused on the arms. They were the easiest to configure. They were slightly too large and bulbous, so he toned them down a little and made them a bit more proportionate. It still had a sort of Popeye thing going on, but that was ok. He used the added size to build in some storage space, as well as a small keyboard and screen, giving it some communication and coding capabilities. There were also a few tools built in to give it some versatility. He thickened up the steel armor in the arms and then beefed up the joints to make sure it could carry its own load. He gave it mighty fists, capable of packing a punch, but fingers with wide ranges of movement, with small rubber pads on the ends of each finger and palm.

Next, he worked on the legs, which received a similar treatment to the arms. Larger calves than thighs, with storage space built in. He gave it sizable kneepads to help armor it and big feet for big kicking.

Then Charlie worked his way up to the body, where he thinned down the waist and beefed up the chest. He lessened the shoulder width a little bit, realizing the waste of materials he would be allowing by including those massive shoulders. They weren't necessary for the final product. The retractable shoulder cannons, however, were. Even while making them in the blueprint, he could feel the massive power drain they would be on the robot to use, but he didn't care. They would pack way too much of a punch not to include. They would also be so fucking cool it was ridiculous. He found that no matter the effort, he couldn't figure out the mechanics related to the chest, so he decided he would come back to it.

With the head, Charlie really just packed it with as much processing power as he could manage. He filled the thing with sensors and processors galore, assisted by the magic of his memorandum. It ended up with a look similar to a sort of paintball mask sort of look, with a massive vent where the mouth would be to help cool the head.

Finished and happy with everything else, Charlie came back to the chest, the only part of the robot still fuzzy to him. He stared and stared at it, trying to figure out what he was missing. He glanced over at Penny and realized. He'd never included any sort of power supply! Smacking himself on the forehead for the slight, he considered what he would do. He couldn't power it with coal or anything; that would be unrealistic. But he also didn't have any way to plug the thing in. He needed to figure out the most efficient method of power. He pressed his mind for whatever information he had on energy before something clicked, and his mind turned toward atomic fusion. He didn't really understand it completely; he had been a robotic engineer, not a nuclear physicist after all, but still. Aleph had told him that as long as he thought it would work, the magic would make it so. So he thought about his basic understanding of theoretical physics and tried to apply it. He felt some resistance but forced the issue. Slowly, he felt the magic take over and begin developing something using both his basic understanding and the magic in the world around him, creating something new. Slowly, the haze around the robot's chest faded away, allowing him to see what he had sort of created.

It was smaller than expected, allowing for a more compact chest than predicted. He could feel that it would generate massive amounts of power. He could also feel, however, that the massive triangular hole that had appeared on its chest would be a massive weakness. Oh well. You win some, and you lose some. He could feel that something was off, however. As he tried to focus on the fusion engine on the blueprint, he found that it was still blurry to him, but on the robot, it was not. Again, oh well. He could feel that he could still build the thing, and he had all the materials he needed, so he would still go through with it.

Charlie prepared himself and smiled, speaking for the first time in two hours, mostly to himself.

"You ready?"

"Fwumph."