The Cog That Wouldn’t Let Go
“Ah… mechanical precision, careful planning, and just a touch of overconfidence. This should go wonderfully.”
Our tale begins, as so many do, with order.
A proper start.
Robots aligned.
Programs carefully chosen.
Everything proceeding exactly as intended.
For a time.
Then came the cog.
One of the factory’s ever-turning cogs—one hazard among many, but no less troublesome for it.
A deceptively simple tile with a singular purpose:
To remind everyone that control is, at best, temporary.
Our intrepid pilot—Fried Rice—guided their robot onto it with confidence.
A reasonable move.
A calculated step.
A decision that, at the time, seemed perfectly harmless.
It was not.
The cog turned.
Then turned again.
And with each rotation, something subtle but critical began to unravel:
Direction… became a suggestion.
Programming adjustments were made.
Careful corrections attempted.
But no matter the plan, no matter the intent—
the robot refused to cooperate.
For several turns, our hero remained trapped in a mechanical dance, spinning just enough to ensure that escape remained… just out of reach.
Now, at this point, one might hope for a bit of solidarity.
A fellow competitor making a similar mistake.
A shared moment of misfortune.
And indeed—
Along came Scott.
Scott, with admirable consistency, managed to land himself in precisely the same predicament.
Two robots.
Two seperate spinning cogs.
A shared fate.
Surely, this would even the playing field?
Surely, this would allow for a dramatic comeback?
No.
Because while eventully Scott managed to recover…
Fried Rice did not.
The turns slipped by.
The checkpoints remained distant.
And elsewhere on the board, another player—mercifully free from rotational chaos—claimed victory.
“A race, darlings, is not always won by speed… but it is very often lost by standing still.”
And so, the outcome was sealed:
Glorious Failure
As for responsibility?
Well.
Our official report indicates:
Scott. As always.
“A convenient conclusion… and one I’m sure will be vigorously defended.”
Lady Bea’s Final Word
A spinning cog.
A stubborn machine.
And the quiet realization that sometimes…
no amount of planning can outmaneuver a well-placed bit of chaos.