//Log Date: 2281-10-24 10:36//

<<UserID:Webb>> My old ma would be so proud, may she rest in peace: I made a new friend this morning.

I’m not being figurative, either -- I’ve literally built the little fella myself, or at least patched it back together.

I was up early again this morning, so, with Nash’s leave, I strolled over to the Mojave Express office again to take a closer look at the orb-like robot, now that I can do so without the immediate risk of being shot in the back by escaped convicts.

The thing is in pretty bad shape, its hull scuffed, dented, and punctured, but the innards and, perhaps more importantly, the hover thrusters seemed salvageable. It’s been patched up a few times already, and it looks like it’s come a long way. 

One particularly bad hull puncture near the exhaust is actually just covered by some sort of sticker from the “Roosevelt Academy” -- whatever and wherever that is -- and two armor plates are welded together with a Pre-War car license plate bridging the gaps.

The plate reads “2ED-E59”, by the way -- although the numbers are so worn down as to be almost illegible, possibly on purpose.

Heh, like a name tag, almost. ED-E it is.

The ‘bot has a huge rig of antennae, transmitters, and receivers, so it must be primarily designed as some sort of field communications platform. I bet the NCR would love to field some of these, but I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Maybe I can sell it to OSI for a tidy pile of caps. 

There’s also some sort of laser array attached to the thing’s underside, but I can’t imagine it’s functional -- even if it wasn’t damaged, I don’t see how it could possibly pull enough power from the fission batteries to fire a laser AND remain hovering. Still, if I can get it working, at least I can use it to carry my trade goods.

Like a pack brahmin, except with two fewer mouths to feed.

At first, I almost gave up on the job before I’d begun. One of the main circuit boards in the ‘bot was utterly fried, and part of it actually looked to have been punched through by a bullet or some other projectile. Some of its vacuum tubes and conductors were scrap, too, but I was relatively confident I’d be able to turn up replacements for those in the computers and electronics in the Bison Steve. With something as tailor-made as a circuit board, though, I didn’t have much hope of finding a replacement.

With a little poking around, though, I realized that I probably could reroute most of the interior circuitry around that board entirely, so I pulled the whole thing out and put in a few patch wires in its place. With that done, the rest of the repairs were fairly straightforward, with just a few dips into my own salvage supplies. 

From an engineering perspective -- in which field, admittedly, I’m no expert -- I’m sure it’s far from perfect, but... well, what is, these days? I’ve scrubbed all of the connectors with alcohol as best I could, and I’ve replaced his interior fission batteries with new ones -- or at least newER ones -- I found back in Goodsprings.

And... I think that’s everything. Fingers crossed. Here we go!

*Click.*

Damn. Nothing. Ah well, I suppose that’s that...

Wait. Webb, you’re an idiot. I forgot to reattach the connector to the interior transformer after replacing the fission batteries.

Let’s give that another try...

*Another click, followed by metal scraping and a growing hum.*

Jackpot!

<<Unidentified Synthetic>> 0100010101111001011001010110001001101111011101000010000000101000010001000111010101110010011000010110011001110010011000010110110101100101001010010010000010010110001000000101001101110101011000100110101001100101011000110111010000100000010001010010000001100010011000010110001101101011001000000110111101101110011011000110100101101110011001010010111000100000010001010111011001100001011011000111010101100001011101000110100101101110011001110010000001110011011010010111010001110101011000010111010001101001011011110110111000101110

<<UserID:Webb>> Ha! Welcome back, little fella!

<<Unidentified Synthetic>> 0100000101101110011000010110110001111001011110100110100101101110011001110010111000100000010010010110010001100101011011100111010001101001011101000111100100100000011100010111010101100101011100100111100100101110

<<UserID:Webb>> Hmm. Okay, never had my own robot before. Let’s see... Acquire new ownership profile?

<<Unidentified Synthetic>> 010100100110010101110001011101010110010101110011011101000010000001100001011000110110001101100101011100000111010001100101011001000010111000100000010100100110010101110011011001010111010001110100011010010110111001100111001000000110111101110000011001010111001001100001011101000110111101110010001000000111000001110010011011110110011001101001011011000110010100101110

<<UserID:Webb>> I’ll... take that as a good sign. Here, hold still. I’m going to add it to the PIP-Boy registry so I can keep track of the bloody thing. 

*Typing.*

Okay, ED-E, say something.

<<UserID:ED-E>> 01010011011011110110110101100101011101000110100001101001011011100110011100101110

<<UserID:Webb>> And just let me check the log... Perfect. 

All right, eyeball. We’re headed back to the Bison Steve and clearing the place out for salvage.

<<UserID:ED-E>> 0101001101110100011011110111001001100001011001110110010100100000011000110110111101101101011100000110000101110010011101000110110101100101011011100111010000100000011100000111001001100101011100000110000101110010011001010110010000101110

<<UserID:Webb>> ...Sure. Signing off.

//Recording Ends//