Rising Power ~ p. parker

Friends Will Be Friends

Two nine year olds slammed the door shut to the younger's bedroom door. Taylor excitedly threw her backpack onto Peter's bed and ripped the zipper open. Inside, there was an old VCR player they found in the trash outside.

While Taylor placed the player on his desk, Peter dug around under his bed to find his small bag of tools he received from Uncle Ben on his last birthday. He slid the tools over to Taylor, who immediately started rummaging through it. He sat in his desk chair and examined the VCR player.

"Do you think it has the right parts to finish our robot?" Peter asked, flipping the player upside down and running his fingers over the small screws.

Taylor glanced over to the shelf where a few of the pieces to their latest project sat. "Hopefully. Scoot over."

He let her have the chair to have a better look at it. She lowered her head to be eye level with the device. With a sudden nod of her head, she knew what she had to do.

"Screwdriver."

Peter reached his hand into the tool bag and pulled out her request. She quickly undid the screws with ease.

"Tweezers."

She poked around the inside, tapping wires and thin pieces of metal.

"Bigger tweezers."

He handed her the pliers and she continued scavenging for usable parts.

"Scalpel."

"Scalpel?"

"Yeah."

"What's that?"

"I don't know. It was on one of those doctor shows May watches."

Peter raised an eyebrow and looked at Taylor curiously as Ben opened the bedroom door. Both of the nine year olds' faces lit up at the sight of their uncle.

"What are you two doing?" He glanced at the project on the desk. "Are Gadget and Gizmo back at it?"

They giggled at the use of the nickname he gave them when they first started the robot. Peter dragged his uncle by the wrist to show him what they were doing.

Although Ben listened to the in depth explanation the two were giving, he didn't understand any of it. He still nodded his head as they talked, supporting the two kids he considered to be geniuses.

"I'll leave you two to it. Let me know when you install laser eyes."

Peter and Taylor stared at each other with wide eyes and dropped jaws. They felt slightly embarrassed they hadn't thought of that before.

Taylor declared it was time to get back to work as she hopped into the desk chair again. She rubbed her palms together and picked up the tweezers.

"Juice box."

Peter ran to her side holding some apple juice and stuck the straw into her mouth.