Fandom High School

Today, Ben's class was meeting on the roof of the dorms. Ben had brought up a few dozen raw eggs, and materials--balsa wood, cardboard, packing material, parachute silk and other moddable objects--and was wearing a smirk on his face.

"As you learned last week, an important part of any mechanical object that you'd want to ride in is making sure the landing won't kill you. Rather than jumping off the building to determine gravity's still working--and it is--we're going to fix up landing gear for these eggs, then toss them off the roof and see how well you did."

Mmm, splattered eggs everywhere. Lucky you, people walking into the dorms.

"To make this sporting, you need to make three: one in fifteen minutes, one in thirty, and the final can take you a full hour." He held up a stopwatch. "Ready...go!"

Ben's workshop was meeting in the Danger Shop because he'd met mechanics at Fandom before and a little extra fire protection never hurt anthing, okay?

"Hey," he said with an easy smile. "I'm Ben Skywalker, and this is Popular Mechanics." He tilted his head at Barry. "And that's Barry, he's my TA and will man the fire extinguisher if any of your projects get a little too exciting."

He gestured to the tiny herd of Roombas at his feet. "When I was a student here, I wasn't much of a sleeper. I'd make droids--robots--AI--whatever your term is--instead. Thought my roommate would kill me for all of the little friends I ended up making the first six months. Tinkering helped cleared my mind, which some of you might be familiar with."

He handed a Roomba to each student. "Poke at this and see what you can turn it into before our time's over. There's a book of ideas if you need one. For now, talk among yourselves--I always got better ideas when I shot them off of other mechanics. I'll wander around and get your names. Tell me about the last project you've been working on, okay?"

"Sorry I missed last week, guys," Ben said from the front of the room, smiling apologetically. "There was a suddden attack of...cat. Fandom, right? Anyway, today we're going to do some really basic practical mechanics today: stuff you probably either do already or need to know in the dorms. We're going program a DVR, work a Blu-Ray player, and troubleshoot a wonky laptop. Just as a reminder, if any of your real stuff gets to be broken beyond your ability to fix it, you can either stop by my office during the week or wander down to Stark's in town. I worked there when I was a student here."

Today the class was meeting in the Danger Shop because Ben needed the space--some for the class activity but mostly so he could zoom around in his amazing Swedish meatball-powered rocket propelled desk chair.

And if you didn't understand why this chair was awesome, Ben was very, very sorry for you.

"Right," he said as he zipped by. "It totally blows when your mode of transportation breaks down in the middle of nowhere and you don't know how to fix it. Since you're all from such different time periods and situations, I've come up with three different scenarios for you to work on: your horse has thrown a shoe and you need to reshoe it; your car has stalled and you need to jump it; and your hyperdrive has stopped working because someone's sabatogued it and also they're shooting at you."

Guess which one was drawn from Ben's personal experience. Go on, guess.

"You can try one, two or all three scenarios. There are instructions at each station or you can try via trial and error if you don't mind getting kicked and/or electrocuted."

Helpful, Ben.

A redheaded young man with a neatly trimmed beard, dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, sat on the desk in the front of the classroom and let his legs swing as he waited for the class to arrive.

"Hey," he said with a slightly nervous smile. "I'm Ben Skywalker and this is Practical Mechanics. I graduated from Fandom two years ago, so I know that the experience in this class can range from 'we use carts and oxen at home, what's a car?' to 'I accidentally blew up a small moon and that's why I got sent to this stupid school', so I'm only going to base my critiques of your stuff on your own level of skill, not anyone else's." He glanced around the room. "Please don't use this class to try to blow up a moon. I've seen that sort of device before, so I'll recognize it and trust me when I say that you don't want to go to this particular principal or dean to explain."

He chewed on his lower lip. "I worked for two years at Stark's while I was here, I build droids--tiny and not so tiny robots--in my spare time when I'm not working on schematics for my own spaceship. I've also been stranded on a world where I had to use spare parts of a couple crashed ships to escape, so trust me when I say I know the value of practical mechanics. We'll get to the good stuff in a few weeks--there will be explosions, just not planet destroying ones--but today we're gonna start out small." He pointed to the first student on his left. "Okay, let's do the introduction thing: name, age, and the coolest thing you ever built."

He waved his hand at the piles of cardboard, compasses, exacto knives, pencils, wooden skewers, tape and mousetraps in the center of the room. "Today we're gonna build a better mousetrap...car. These are powered soley by the snap of power you get when the trap releases, so those of you who aren't familiar with how electricity works aren't at a disadvantage. You have a half-hour to conceptualize and build your cars, and then we'll race 'em against each other." He grinned. "It'll be astral."