HC: Handyman | Ch. 253 - 0 0 1

The Pot-Bot recipe was by far the longest he’d ever seen.

Recipe for: [Pot-Bot]
Ingredients:
Pot
2x [Medium Axles]
4x [Medium Wheels]
1x [Large Gearbox]
4x [Conveyor Belts]
4x [Logic Gearboxes]
1x [Large Crank]
1x [Toy Claw]
10x [Gear Wheels]
18x [Spring Clamps]
…

He kept scrolling. And scrolling. And scrolling.

The recipe sprawled across sections. “Mechanics… Logic...”

But then came the part that made his heart skip a beat.

“Programming,” he read aloud. That part was further divided into subsections. He went through the first one.

Back Wheels — Pinned Barrel with three pins:
0 0 0 – Stop
0 0 1 – Forward Slow
0 1 0 – Forward Fast
0 1 1 – Backward Slow
1 0 0 – Backward Fast

This wasn’t a toy robot. This was a programmable machine—his own robot.

His thoughts leapt to Esther and Riku. The NPCs had tremendously lightened his load in the Breach. While they did the menial, repetitive tasks for him, he was free to his own devices. How he wished they were here with him. But maybe, just maybe, there was another way to have assistants.

His own robots.

His pulse quickened. Even if they weren’t as capable as Esther and Riku, if he could build one, he could build more. The potential was incredible.

For a moment, his imagination soared—an army of walking pots across the landscape, carrying out his every order. He even pictured himself lounging on a throne, two Pot-Bots at his side: one fanning him with a palm leaf, the other offering snacks.

He shook his head. No way that was possible. But… what if it was?

This all started, after all, because of a reward from a legendary chest. Legendary. Moreover, it came from a synergy triggered by his hidden class. Maybe it was fine to let his hopes climb sky-high.

Grinning, Jack shot to his feet. There was only one thing to do now: gather every last part on that list.

*

Jack stepped back into the house.

First, he cleared the space, stacking the circle of vases he’d used earlier to grind XP. Then he laid out the ingredients he had spent the last couple of hours procuring.

He took out one of the four massive pots he’d fired at the Pottery Association’s kilns. It had taken him a little longer than he would have liked, but with something this large, he had to use the coiling method. Waiting for the coils of clay to dry took time.

Now it stood before him: broad, sturdy, more barrel than vase. On a whim, he’d painted a face on the outside. This one was the angry Pot-Bot.

Next came the guts of the machine. Thankfully, everything he needed came prefabricated, courtesy of the recyclers.

There was a large cube with slits, just enough to glimpse the mess of gears and springs inside. It was the jumbo version of the small gearbox he’d used on the toy mice.

Alongside it was something called a Logic Gearbox. They were flat boxes with metal prongs sticking out. He didn’t know the difference between the two types, but at least it wasn’t too expensive—each cost him one silver.

He spread the rest across the floor. Metal rods of varying lengths clinked against each other. Sturdy discs of hammered iron, each the size of dinner plates.

A pair of slim, toothed bars and their companion gear, which converted rotational power into straight motion. He imagined a gearbox turning the wheel, the wheel catching the teeth of the metal rule, driving it forward and back. “Rack and pinion... this is also used in the chattering teeth recipe.”

Then came the odd pieces of hardware. There was a dust pan—flat, wide, and slightly curved. Its edge was reinforced with a band of tin so it wouldn’t bend the first time it scraped the ground. A toy claw, similar to the ones used in machines to fish out plush toys.

Thick, rubbery conveyor belts lay coiled like snakes across the floor, waiting to be stretched into place. Springs of different sizes. And finally, a pile of clamps—tight little jaws of steel that would prevent anything from sliding off the axles.

Jack knelt in the middle of it all, rubbing his hands together with a grin.

“All right,” he muttered. “Let’s see if I can turn this junk pile into a robot.”

He opened the recipe to the mechanical section. “Step one: mount the central gearbox.”

He hefted the cube in both hands, stepped toward the nearest pot, and stopped short.

“Wait.”

The cube had to go somewhere halfway up the height of the pot. But if he mounted it already, wouldn't that make it harder to reach whatever he had to mount beneath it?

A little voice in his head told him what his hands didn’t want to hear. If I just shove this in, I’ll end up with a jammed mess. I should probably... I don’t know... figure out how it works first.

He lowered the gearbox and set it carefully back on the floor. This wasn’t a wind-up mouse or a jack-in-the-box. It was complicated. Bigger than anything he’d tried.

Jack rubbed his temples, peering through the grooves at the nest of cogs and springs. “All right. Slow down. Look before you leap. How does this actually connect?”

He pulled the recipe window open again and read through each step carefully. He did it again—slower this time, and out loud.

“Okay. Once more.”

He scrolled back to the top and tried again. By the third read, he slapped the recipe closed with a groan. It was hard to visualize and see how the whole thing came together amidst all these sections and instructions.

Maybe I just have to see it working.

It was probably smarter to assemble the mechanics outside the pot first. That way, he could get a clear look at what was happening and how it all came together.

He positioned the large gearbox in the center of his workspace. He fished a vase out of his inventory, turned it upside down, and set it as a makeshift table.

“All right, big guy. Let’s see what you can do.”

He slotted the Large Crank into place with a satisfying clunk and gave it a twist.

“Ooof—” Jack’s wrist hurt with the effort. “Requires more strength than I thought!”

The spring inside caught, building tension. He gave it a few more cranks. Then he released.

Whirrrrr.

The gearbox hummed to life, cogs snapping into motion. The crank unwound slowly, as through the opposite opening, the output ran at a quick, steady rhythm.

Jack studied the motion, then nodded. “Okay. Easy enough so far. I wind it, and it converts the stored energy into steady motion. Just like with the toy mice.”

The biggest difference in this design was all the conveyor belts. When the gearbox turned, it should make the axles elsewhere turn too. With multiple axles at play, he’d have to use conveyor belts to convey the movement.

He mounted a small spindle at the output of the large gearbox.

Then he grabbed a second axle, added a gear wheel, and clamped it in place. He improvised a mount so it could turn freely without slipping off.

Next, he looped a conveyor belt from the gearbox’s output spindle down to the axle pulley.

The belt went taut as he cranked, whirring in rhythm. The axle spun.

“Nice! Now on to the next experiment.” 

He added a second axle, parallel to the first, rigged with a smaller pulley. It moved too. He nodded. With this technique, he could take the movement from that one spindle in the large gearbox to everywhere in the machine.

He tried a new setup: large gearbox to an axle that connected to a logic gearbox. As he cranked the gearbox and the motion was transmitted, the input spun, but the output of the logic gearbox did nothing but click.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Jack frowned. “You’ve got a heartbeat, huh?” But there was no movement on the output.

Curious, he pressed one of the prongs sticking out of the logic gearbox.

Click.

The ticking shifted, and the output started spinning at a slow pace. Jack flinched back, startled. A beat later, the prong snapped back, in time with the next click, and the output also stopped.

He tried again. This time, he held the prong through two ticks. The output kept rolling, smooth and steady, until he released it. Then—snap—it returned to neutral.

Jack’s eyes gleamed. “A timer. You only listen while the instruction carries through. Miss a beat, and you reset and stop.”

He flicked the recipe window open to the programming section:

Back Wheels. Pinned Barrel with three pins:
0 0 0 – Stop
0 0 1 – Forward Slow
0 1 0 – Forward Fast
0 1 1 – Backward Slow
1 0 0 – Backward Fast

He read the lines twice, then looked back at the gearbox. The image of how this whole thing would work was starting to come together. If he could mount a pinned barrel parallel to this logic gearbox...

“Each prong’s a bit. Barrel spins, pins press prongs, prongs tell the wheel what to do,” he said aloud, trying to work it all out—a little tip his father had given him on their one day on the job together. At the thought of his father, a quiet ache tugged at him, dimming his excitement. He shook it off. There was real potential here. He was on the right track to making a good buck.

He forced himself to turn to the next mystery. He reached for the toy claw, its painted tin pincers chipped and clumsy. “Let’s see how your arms work.”

*

It had taken hours of tinkering, two busted prototypes, a sore forehead from headbutting the wall, and more than a few rocks kicked down the street—but he’d done it.

His first Pot-Bot. This was Bot Three—the one with the grinning, happy face.

It stood tall on four sturdy wheels, a goofy red smiley face stretched wide across the pale clay. Here and there, fresh holes scarred the surface—access slots Jack had drilled and filed open with his bone-carving kit. 

The access panels would let him swap pinned barrels in and out later. Next time, he’d build them into the pottery design from the start and save himself the headache of carving into hardened clay.

A claw and scoop, stuck to ruled metal bars, hung at its sides, and the big crank jutted from its back like a pair of wings far too small to fly. Pot-Bot 3 was bulky but unmistakably filled with potential.

Jack peered inside, taking a moment to admire the finished build. The big gearbox sat mounted at the center, the machine’s heart. Conveyor belts stretched taut, logic gearboxes perched above the empty barrel slots, waiting for the machine’s brains.

Even with prefabricated parts from the recyclers, this wasn’t like playing with Lego. It required a lot more thought. He had to make sure every piece was precisely placed, properly aligned, and that the conveyor belts didn’t get in each other’s way. But now that it was all working, it was kind of beautiful.

He inspected the item:

Pot-Bot (Epic)  

Crafting grade: C  

An automata ahead of its time, capable of basic programmed functions.  

Durability: 32  

Functions: [Harvest], [Craft]

He still couldn’t believe it. These bots were considered epic items. He was still unsure about the [Functions] section.

Harvesting seemed simple enough. He pictured the scoop scraping at the dirt, the claw clumsily lifting whatever it managed to grab. But then what? Did the loot vanish into its own inventory? Did it even have one? Did things just magically appear in his inventory instead? Or would it need to haul items back to a crate and repeat the process?

And what about crafting? Could the bot follow any recipe mapped into a pinned barrel? Would it use Jack’s inventory? Or would he have to manually load each material into the claw and scoop like feeding a furnace?

Questions piled up faster than answers, but he forced himself to refocus.

He grabbed a logic gearbox still unused in his inventory. He had to bring this with him to the Pottery Association. If the barrels weren’t the right size, and the prongs didn’t match the pegs on the barrel, none of this would function at all.

Jack took one last look at the happy-looking Pot-Bot, pride and frustration mixing in his chest. Then he turned toward the door.

“Just you wait, Pot Bot 3. I’m going to go make your brain,” he muttered.

He left the bot behind, its red smile fixed in place, as if watching him go.

Ch. 252 - Jack In a Box

INDEX

Ch. 254 - Roth