View source for Painful, Circuitous Logic



{{adventuretop|image=mechaclub.gif|name=Painful, Circuitous Logic|num=357}}

You finally find the particular back alley referenced on your Mecha Mayhem Club card. You knock on a huge iron door and tell the eyes that appear in the slit that Self-Decapitating Nick sent you. The door opens, and a huge slab of muscle with a rudimentary head tears up your card and ushers you in.

There are rows of seats surrounding a pit strewn with shards of metal, gears, wire-trailing circuit boards (doo dah, doo dah) -- looks like you've found an underground robot fighting club. You take your seat, and the guy next to you addresses you.

"Excuse me, good sir," he says, "I wonder if you could help me. My robot is fighting in the next match, and I've forgotten to disable his pain circuits. I would go do it myself, but my left leg, as you can see, is missing. It's a robotic leg, and it caught a virus and hopped off by itself. It's probably halfway to The Mysterious Undersea City of Mystery by now."

"Yeah, about that," you say, "why do you give robots pain circuits to begin with?"

"Why, so we can use pain to control them."

"But you program the robots yourself. That's how you control them. So why the pain circuits?"

"So we can program them to disobey, then use the pain to punish them when they do."

"Wow," you say, shaking your head, "you're a real piece of work."

"Well, if you're so concerned about robots feeling pain, maybe you should get down there and switch off his circuits for me!"

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{{button|Switch the Circuits}}
"All right, I'll go," you sigh. "What does your robot look like?"

"He's a gold-plated android. Kind of prissy, got two flashlights for eyes. He's called --"

"Yeah, I know what he's called." You excuse-me, pardon-me out of the aisle and sneak backstage. You find the gold android and flip the big "PAIN CIRCUITS: ON/OFF" switch on his back.

"I say, pardon me, but did you just turn off my pain circuits?" the robot says.

"Yeah, sorry. Hope that wasn't, you know, a robot bad touch or something."

"So no one can punish me for wrongdoing, eh? Well, in that case, you all can BITE MY SHINY METAL FUNDAMENT!"

The golden robot takes off running, and of course just then the curtain comes up, and you're obligated to fight in the android's place.

Fortunately, your opponent is a little trash-can-looking, tripodal thing, and all you have to do is keep tipping it over until it stops getting up. Still, the little bastard's heavier than it looks, and you get quite the workout before you finally win the fight.

{{stat|mus=gain 0.8-1.2*mainstat, up to 200}}
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{{button|Keep Your Seat}}

"I really don't want to get involved," you say, and settle back to watch the show.

An incredibly huge man comes wheezing up the aisle toward you, intent on taking the not-at-all huge seat next to you. Before you can say the seat's saved, he sits down, flab spilling over and under your shared armrest. As his flesh flows toward you, something sharp pokes you in the thigh.

"Yeeowch!" you say. The big guy digs into his pocket and pulls out an empty syringe.

"Oh, no," he says, "my nano --" then he drops his voice to a whisper -- "my nano-steroids! Now my 'bot will never win! Oh, um, you'll probably be fine."

"Nano-steroids? They're robots, for god's sake! You want them to be stronger, you build them stronger! Nano-steroids? You people are insa --"

You suddenly choke on your words, due to a large bouncer choking on your windpipe. "Nano-steroids are illegal," he says, and drags you to the exit. He tosses you in the alley where, after a few seconds of agonizing, full-body pain, you feel considerably harder, better, faster, stronger.

{{acquireEffect|effect=Nano-juiced|duration=20}}

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Occurs at [[Seaside Megalopolis]] with a [[Mecha Mayhem Club Card]] in your inventory, as a result of choosing the "The Metal" option in [[A Diseased Procurer]].

==References==
*The concept of "pain circuits" and a virus infecting them refers to the ''[[Wikipedia:Mega Man X|Mega Man X]]'' video game series, which feature "suffering circuits" that are similarly infected.
*The gold-plated robot is [[Wikipedia:C3PO|C3PO]], of ''[[Wikipedia:Star Wars|Star Wars]]'' fame.
*The gold-plated robot's exclamation, however, belongs to ''[[Wikipedia:Futurama|Futurama]]'''s [[Wikipedia:Bender (Futurama)#Bender Bending Rodríguez|Bender]].
*The little trash-can-looking, tripodal thing is [[Wikipedia:R2-D2|R2-D2]], also of ''[[Wikipedia:Star Wars|Star Wars]]'' fame.
*Feeling "harder, better, faster, stronger" is a reference to the [[Wikipedia:Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger|Daft Punk song]] of the same name, which is itself a reference to ''[[Wikipedia:The Six Million Dollar Man|The Six Million Dollar Man]]'' 70s TV show.