Five days later, my previously empty workshop began to fill up as the first shipments of Perfected Steel arrived. I placed the crates in the storage area of the workshop and immediately began construction. I hadn’t wasted the five days. With expensive materials coming in, I finally ordered an upgrade for the security system of my workshop and then I studied.
Classic Knight Private Limited had send me a program detailing the construction of the Steambot and X-S Cable Punch. In truth, this wasn’t really necessary. For such old antiques, I could easily find the info via the web but it was a nice gesture from them and I studied their official guide extensively during this five days period. I did the same for the SH-3 Legs. During these five days, my 3D Printer was constantly in operation as I made the internals of the Jumpbot-S. Wires, cables and tubes of various description were ready and just waiting for the materials and once the Perfected Steel arrive, I was ready to go.
I followed the guide and begin with the steam engine. Victor Sage used the standard steam engine of his time for the Steambot and I kept the engine. The engine was tough, durable and not prone to breakdowns. As they say; if it works, keep it. The only difference I made was that I use Perfected Steel instead of carbon steel, and modern plastic wiring instead of plastic materials a century old. After that came the hydraulics.
Hydraulics is vitally important for Steam technology and the Steambot was no different. Fortunately for me, Steam technology has been replaced by a bevy of other technologies so Steam technology has remain relatively stagnant so it was easy for me to make the parts. It was however very time consuming. The process of making all the parts from scratch and then make sure all the components were of the correct size took over three weeks. I took special care in the new components and parts I either put it or rearranged. I wasn’t that worried about the X-S Cable Punch and SH-3 Legs, but I had rearranged the exhaust system of the Steambot and I made sure the vents were made according to specifications.
The rigging system came next and this was one area where I had made massive changes. I had kept the design of the rig but made it bigger. The operator of the Steambot had to be strapped to a rig within the Battlesuit to use it and it was always a tight fit due to space constraint. That was the reason why the operator had to be either a child or teenager. However this was not possible now. Not only were there child labor laws to consider, better diet and nutrients has made the modern human bigger. Lucky I had cleared a lot of space within the suit by using modern materials and circuitry so my rig can now let a normal sized adult operate the Jumpbot.
From there, it was a matter of connecting the parts together. I found that connecting the different parts to the operating rig to be both easy and hard. With my experience in the Dive Designer, I knew where all the cables had to go but manually connecting them was another matter. The cabling allow the operator in the operating rig to provided instructions to the Jumpbot so I had to be extra careful that everything was connected correctly. This is especially the case with the SH-3 Legs. The new pathways I created for it required a new connection to the rig and not only must I make sure the new connection works, I wanted to push the relatability of the Clockwork Technology to over ninety percentage. I was able to do so in the Dive with my tinkering skill, now I have to see if I can transfer that theory into action. It took longer than expected as I made several mistakes but in the end I was able to finish the installation. Once the connections were finished, it meant that the internals of the Jumpbot was done. Now came the outer shell.
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At three meter tall, the Steambot is a big Battlesuit and my Jumpbot was the same size. Despite this, I began work on the outer shell with a good degree of confidence. The bulky suit may be big but it was a relatively simple design. A hundred years of technological progress meant that making it should have been easy…that was if my Metallic Fabricator hadn’t broke down!
Maintenance was never really my thing and I had been using the Metallic Fabricator heavily for the past few days. So it didn’t come as a totally shock when the old secondhand Fabricator finally gave up. It was however a waste of time as I had to get the technician to come fix it. It was another four days down the drain but it wasn’t a total loss as someone in the audience decided to use this time to approach me with an offer.
The workshop I inherited had a huge double door that took up one side of the building. This was common in workshops as some machines were huge and there must be a big opening for them to enter the workshop. Like most workshops, I usually leave the doors open. Not only was this better for ventilation, it was also an indication that my workshop was open for business. Not that I had done anything even after a month of opening up the workshop but once the crates of Perfected Steel began arriving, people in the area began speculating that I had a big project on my hand. I noticed that people began passing by my workshop more often and with my Holographic Projector constantly showing off my Jumpbot, passersby knew the project I was undertaking. I had also bought a small sign for my workshop and after a quick check on Dive for ‘The Fat Tinkerer’, people immediately knew what I was doing. The people passing by my workshop slowly increased and while I was waiting for my Metallic Fabricator to be repaired, a man approached me with an interesting proposal.
“Mr. Wong, my name is Latiff Ibrahim. I am from the League Chronicles.”
I shook his hand in surprise. “The Chronicles? The newspaper?”
“That’s right. I must say I am surprised by your workshop. It’s pretty well equipped.”
I let that obvious lie slid and asked. “Thanks. What can I do for you?”
“I’m hoping to do an article on the Jumpbot.”
“My Jumpbot? What does the Chronicles want with my Jumpbot?”
“It’s famous! We were surprised to hear someone in Singapore was trying to build a variant of the Steambot so imagine our shock when we found out that not only was it a valid design; it is famous in LoW! You really caught us with our pants down man so I’m here to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Despite the words, Latiff was wearing a smile and sounded jovial. I didn’t know if he’s really happy to be here or if this was some sort of reverse psychology, but instead focused on the important part of his words.
“My Jumpbot is famous?”
“Oh yes! If you look at the forum of LoW, there’s like ten different threads on your Jumpbot. Everything from it’s performance, how to counter it in battle, to how easy it was to operate. There’s even a new one on the Jumpbot-S, even though that suit can’t be used in LoW due to it’s modern materials.”
All these information was news to me. I knew that my Jumpbots had been selling but I had never checked the LoW forums. “What article do you want to do?”
”Alamak! That should be obvious. The testing of course! We want to write an article on how well your Jumpbot do during testing.”