Speaker 1: Hello, friends from across the nation and around the world.
I'm Martin, and you are listening to Dad's Bedtime Stories,
the podcast that takes listener ideas and turns them into
bedtime stories. Today's idea is a standalone story that comes
to us from Charlie, who I'm thinking was maybe listening
to the Grandpa robones series over the weekend there and
maybe thought of it as a result, or possibly it
was just a coincidence. Let's check out the idea and
you can see what you think.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 3: My name is Charlie and I'm nine years old. I've
recently broke my arm, and I like listening to your
stories because they helped me get to sleep. I would
like my story to be one day I wake up
and my aunt is a robotic arm that has lots
of superpowers and I hope saved the world from criminals.
Speaker 1: Well, Charlie, I think you have an excellent idea there.
And again, I don't know if it was because you
listen to Grandpa Robonese on the weekend, but I'm kind
of thinking the whole premise for Grandpa Robonese makes the
perfect premise for this particular idea.
Speaker 2: You know, a.
Speaker 1: Spaceship and his dragonling friend who like to help people
in need and you know, turn them into robots or
partial robots. I guess before we get started, I just
have a couple things I want to do. First of all,
I want to give a big shout out to some
of my latest Patreon sponsors. Thank you to Kaya and
Millie for signing up on Patreon and supporting the podcast.
I really really appreciate it. They will now be enjoying
some ad free episodes of the show and financially helping
us stay in existence. So thank you, thank you, thank you.
Last I just want to talk to you guys about
something I'm thinking of.
Speaker 2: As you know, I often.
Speaker 1: Create a logo for the show using artificial intelligence. I
sort of have it read my transcript after I create
the episode and come up with some artwork or a
way of changing my own logo to advertise for the show,
and some people out there really don't like that I
use a HI for it. I, on the other hand,
am of the opinion that in this case it's not
actually replacing a human, as I would not be able
to afford paying a human to do it at this point.
Hopefully I can in the future. But at the same time,
I don't want to discourage real humans like my listeners
from doing real artwork, because I think it's really important
to write stories and to draw pictures. So for the
month of May, I'm gonna do a couple different contests,
all right. The first one is a story writing contest.
I know I have a ton of people out there
who have been inspired to write stories. They might take
place in some of the universes from Dad's Bedtime Stories,
which is totally cool. They might be a completely standalone
episode or standalone story that you come up with, which
is also really cool. But whatever it is, if you've
written a story, I'm asking that you submit it to
me by email if you want to at dadt Bedtime
Stories at gmail dot com. I am going to pick
a couple of them to read on social media and
share with people, with the permission of the writer, of course,
and I will pick one this month to turn into
a full episode of Dad's Bedtime Stories with the help
of the writer, which could mean meeting up to kind
of flush out the story in a little more detail
to make it a full episode that sort of thing.
And second, I want to see your pictures, so if
you have pictures that you've drawn or colored in or
sort of anything from the podcast, please send them to
me at the same email address, Dad Bedtime Stories at
gmail dot com. And I would love to put some
of those up on social media as well. And again,
I think I'll pick my favorite one with the help
of my family, and we could do an episode for
that person as well. So if you want to join again,
just send them to me by email. But now that's
probably long enough for the beginning of a podcast and
I should get on with the story. This story is
about a boy named Charlie. He'd broke in his arm
and it was making a miserable. How he broke it
exactly doesn't really matter, because well, he didn't share that
information with me. But what was important was it was broke,
and it edged, and it felt heavier than normal, and
he couldn't play and do the things he wanted to do.
Everyone just kept telling him it'll heal eventually, but eventually
he felt very far away. To Charlie, he wanted it
to heal now. In fact, he wanted it to heal
better than it ever had. Sometimes he would imagine his
cast arm as a robotic arm instead a robotic arm
with really cool powers that allowed him to fight enemies
and vanquish evil and eh, you know that sort of thing.
One night, before settling into bed and putting on his
favorite podcast, Dad's Bed Time Stories for Kids.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if you've.
Speaker 1: Heard of it, Charlie wished and wished that that robotic
arm would come true. Luckily for Charlie, there happened to
be a very special spaceship that was created for the
sole purpose of well wish fulfillment and adventure. Somehow, Charlie's
mental distress signal, his adamant request to become a superhuman
half robot person reached that spaceship. Human distress signal detected.
Spaceship said to well no one in particular, because on
this particular day, Spaceship was hanging out by himself. Emergency
protocols initiated. A portal folded up from the base of
the ship. It lit up a bright blue color, and
soon afterward, a little black dragonling with lava like veins
popped through.
Speaker 2: Ah. Alloo, ah, did.
Speaker 1: You send this portal for me? The creature asked, as
the portal shut off and folded back down into the
floor of the Ship, Yes, I did. I believe I
need your help once more. Magnus Spaceship said, ah, what
exactly is going on? A listener of our favorite podcast
is in some distress and discomfort. He is wishing heavily
to have a robotic arm instead of his current broken one. Now, well,
all right, you want to go fix his broken arm? Yes, however,
I believe we should enhance it beyond all reason. At
that moment, Spaceship's display changed to a picture of a
robotic arm. I have designed the perfect replacement, a robotic
arm that will both enhance and protect the wearer. We
will add both offensive and defensive capabilities, the power of flight,
a holographic projector, and other interesting and useful features. I
was hoping that you might be able to add some
other enhanced capabilities as well. What do you mean, like
a card or something? I mean, look at what I have.
Magnus reached down and pulled out a deck of cards
from well, Spaceship didn't know exactly where. The dragonling didn't
seem to have pockets, but it produced a deck of cards. Nonetheless,
all right, here we got some flight powers, some magical creatures,
and oh, this might be perfect a vigilante enhancement card
and a kind of card that will end grease your
overall strength, speed, and of course your battle reflexes, you know,
giving you the ability to fight better and that sort
of thing that sounds perfect. The kid in question was
hoping for enhancements that would allow him to fight crime.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Are you sure it's a good idea to give a
kid this much power? That is an interesting question, particularly
from a creature who exists in a universe where parents
allowed their children to have magical cards then go into
the forest and battle magical creatures with little to no supervision. Yeah,
I guess you're right. I don't want to be a
hypocrite or anything. Let's go enhance this kid understood, and so,
under the cover of darkness, Spaceship and his friend Magnus
the fire dragonling made their way back to Earth. They
entered the atmosphere, dropped down below the clouds, activated their
invisibility field, and floated over Charlie's house, activating sleep ray.
Now we must ensure that no one wakes up. A
strange blue light shot out of the bottom of the
ship and sort of enveloped the entire house. Then a
team of little medical robots were dispatched out the back
of the ship carrying a little stretcher. They made their
way through Charlie's window, carefully put the kid with the
broken arm onto a little stretcher and flew him outside
and into the back of the ship, where the medical
procedures began. A team of robots equipped with high tech
three D printing software began to reconstruct Charlie's entire arm,
replacing its parts atom by atom with metal and high
powered electronics. At the same time, Magnus pulled out the
Vigilante card and placed it on Charlie's chest. The card activated,
glowed blue, and shot into the boy. Charlie didn't have
a card Corps, but that didn't mean that a card
couldn't be fully absorbed by him. It became one with
Charlie's essence. It made him stronger, faster, and even enhanced
his reflexes and his sense for battle. I believe we
have completed the operation. Ah looks really cool too, Magnus said,
looking down at the sleeping boy with the robotic arm.
The same team of robots carefully flew him out of
the ship through the window and placed him gently back
in his bed before disappearing once more. The next morning,
Charlie woke up and the first thing he noticed was
that the strange, dull pain sensation was completely gone. He
looked down at his arm, expecting to see the cast
that had been on it, but instead seeing a robot arm.
His arm was now made entirely out of metal. For
a moment, he panicked, and then he tried to move
his fingers. To his surprise, they still moved just like
they always had. He bent his arm up and down,
he turned his wrist, and generally speaking, despite being a
robot arm, it worked just like it had other than
the fact that his wrist could now turn a full
three hundred and sixty degrees around without any kind of pain,
something he found weird, but for some reason wasn't particularly
panicked about, because at the end of the day Charlie
had wished for this. Had his wish really come true,
he felt a whole bunch of new sensations too, almost
like parts of his hand that well weren't there before,
reflexes that he instinctively knew he could activate, even though
that made no sense. He reached out to that first
sensation that first knew part on his arm that he
could now feel. It felt sort of like clenching the
muscles in your wrist. Only when he activated this one,
an energy shield began to grow out of the side
of the mechanical arm. The more he clenched, the larger
it grew, until it covered his entire body in a
protective force field like bubble cool, he said, before releasing
the muscle and the shield at the same time. Then
he activated another previously non existing part of his own,
and a little ray gun looking thing with a glowing
blue light at the end unfolded from the center of
his wrist. Maybe I should take this outside for some trials,
Charlie said, releasing that particular muscle and allowing the ray
gun to fold back into his arm. He got dressed
and decided to head outside. Though, uh wait, should he
show his parents he had a mechanical arm. He imagined
them panicking just a little bit, perhaps calling an ambulance
or forcing him to go to the hospital to get
things checked out. He would need to find a way
that they wouldn't see it to cover it up, maybe,
And with that thought, a strange sort of shimmer appeared
around the outside side of the arm. It glowed for
a second and then disappeared, leaving behind the image of
a normal human broken arm, just like it had looked
the day before. He could tell it was still mechanical,
but to his eyes it looked normal, cool, some sort
of holographic projection or something. He said out loud, turning
his wrist over left and right. I ain't wonder what
else that particular feature can do. Charlie made his way
out of the house, passed his parents, sent into a
small part of the yard that he thought would be
open enough yet secluded enough to try out his new powers.
Deciding that it probably wasn't the right place to try
out a ray gun, he reached for one of the
other sensations. His hand folded inside his wrist, and a
long pole extended outwards, a long pole with four long propellers.
The propellers popped up and well. Charlie now had a
medium sized helicopter propeller sticking directly out of his mechanical wrist.
He lifted the propeller up in the air and activated
it using his muscles. It instantly began to spin around
faster and faster and faster, until it slowly started to
lift Charlie up off of the ground, higher and higher
and higher into the air. Whoa, Charlie said, this is amazing.
Charlie tilted his arm forward, flew forward. He tilted it
back and flew backward. He could adjust the speed in
his height with a simple thought. This was the coolest
thing ever. In an instant, he launched himself up towards
the sky at incredible speed. The propeller pulled him along
through the air, almost as fast as a jet. He
blasted through the clouds and high above the world below.
It was honestly a pretty awesome time. Though Eventually Charlie
decided that it was probably time to come down for
a landing. He slowed down into more of a hover mode,
hanging from the propeller once again, and thought for the
first time that, eh, he wasn't even really feeling tired.
He was holding his entire body up by a single arm,
and normally that would exhaust a person, but Charlie's muscles
felt fine. They felt like he could do this all day.
That was another change that couldn't be explained by the
robotic arm alone. He slowly lowered himself down through the
clouds and realized that he was above some kind of
town center below. He wasn't sure exactly where, but there
were clearly a lot of people around, people who could
see him and report him and well possibly call the
army about him or whatever. In his worry, the same strange,
distorted energy that had covered up his mechanical alarm for
his parents started to spread over his arm and across
his entire body. It shimmered for a second, kind of
like air does when it's extremely hot over top of pavement,
and then his arms disappeared, and his legs disappeared. Everything
about him well was no longer visible invisibility. Maybe the
same holographic field can well give the illusion that I'm
not here, Charlie realized, as he slowly and invisibly lowered
himself down to the top of a fairly tall building
in the area. This should be an easy place to
test things out, he said, though he was kind of disoriented,
not being able to see his feet and where they
touched the ground. He could still feel them in everything,
but it's weird to not be able to see them.
He focused for a second, trying out something that he
hoped might work. He focused on that field that was
directly surrounding his limbs to expand outward into more of
a bubble. The air shimmered again as the glowing energy
moved away from his body and into a large bubble
form around him. It shimmered once more, and he could
see his arms and legs again. Looking out through the bubble,
everything was a little bit distorted. A quick look over
at a near by reflective door surface told him that
he was still invisible, at least from the outside of
the bubble, and this was probably a better place to
test some of the other equipment that came with the arm.
He once again focused on that sensation that had caused
the blue ray gun to pop up and had folded
out of his arm. Once again, he pointed it over
to a large mechanical box looking thing on the top
of the roof, squeezed his muscles, and a pulse of
blue energy shot out, hit the metal box and started
building ice up all around it. An ice ray perfect,
he said, Now what else have you got? He let
go of that muscle, folding the ice ray in, and
activated another. This one also looked like a ray gun
of some kind, though it was sparking on the end
with bits of electricity something about had told him that
he probably shouldn't point it at the metal box, so
instead he pointed it straight up in the air, squeezed
his muscles, and a bolt of electricity shot directly upward.
Speaker 2: Wow. Cool.
Speaker 1: This one came with a sense of power too, one
that he could turn up or down instinctively. He knew
that well. He knew there was a level that would
simply shock things it touched, and a level that would
do more. He said it to the first one. Charlie
didn't want to do anyone any real harm after all.
Then he released the muscle, allowing the electric blaster to
fold back into his arm, and activated the last one.
He could sense. A somewhat larger cannon like thing folded
out of his arm, with strange green good dripping from
the end of it. He pointed it at the same
mechanical box, squeezed his muscles, and fired a stream of sticky, bicky,
goopy goo blasted out and covered the mechanical box. It
looked like that would be really annoying to clean up
and very hard to escape from if you were hit
with it. Cool, he said, I think I might be
a superhero. Just then, his wrist started to beep. He
lifted it up to look at the side of it,
allowing the goo cannon to fold back in, and something
else unfolded from the side, a little screen with a
picture of a radio signal or something like that. The
numbers changed as the radio tuned itself into the right frequency,
and Charlie heard at tension, all units, we have a
bank robbery in progress. All available units should head to
the corner of First Street and Fifth Street immediately again,
bank robbery in progress, First and Fifth. The screen then
changed to a picture of a map. A blue dot
was blinking at the top of a building, clearly Charlie.
The map then zoomed out and pinged another dot, a
red one at the corner of First and Fifth Street.
Charlie oriented himself so he was pointing directly at the
red dot. Then he lifted his arm up in the air.
He activated flight mode. His hand folded inside his wrist
and was replaced by a medium sized helicopter propeller or
something like it, still invisible, Charlie blasted up into the
air and straight towards the coordinates on his wrist, coordinates
that were honestly somewhat hard to see when it was
his wrist holding him up, but he knew he was
going in the right direction. Scanning the streets below, he
soon came across what he assumed was the right street.
A bunch of police cars surrounded a large glass bank building.
At that instant, a team of people, while wearing black,
burst out of the bank and onto the streets. Put
your hands up and put the money down, a police
officer standing beside his car announced. In response, one of
the robbers pointed what looked like a ray gun straight
at the police car and blasted a red band of
energy straight at the thing. The car exploded. As the
police officer jumped out of the way to safety, the
robbers began to run. Charlie looked at where they were running,
to a car or a van that looked suspiciously like
an escape vehicle. He headed directly for it and dropped
down out of the air in front of it, Still
entirely invisible. He activated his freeze ray, pointed it at
one of the robbers, and squeezed his wrist. Blue energy
shot out of what seemed like nowhere to the robbers
and instantly froze one of them into a gigantic ice cube.
But who did that? The others said. Slowly, they backed
into each other back to back, pointing their ray guns
outward in a sort of protective circle formation. Charlie moved
to the side so he wouldn't be in exactly the
same place, switched to his goo cannon and blasted it
straight at another two of the perpetrators. A stream of
gooey green goop blasted out, hit the two individuals and
almost instantly stuck them to the floor. It's coming from
over there, the other two announced, pointing directly at Charlie. Instinctively,
Charlie activated his force field just in time for two
beams of red energy to bash directly into it. It
seemed that his invisibility had disappeared at that point. Maybe
he couldn't have both of them activated all at once.
Luckily for him, the energy shield seemed to be completely
unaffected by the blasts of energy. Charlie slowly began to
walk towards the two blasts. Hey, it's not working. Why
isn't it working. They continued to fire their blasters until
eventually they both became too hot. They dropped them as
if they'd just touched something straight out of the oven.
Ah I think it overheated, one of them yelled, and
in that instant Charlie activated his shock wave or lightning
device or whatever it was, and pointed it at one
of the robbers. A blast of non lethal electrical energy
shot out, hit the robber, and then changed to the
other one. Oh is he doing, they said, as they
clinched every muscle in their body. He allowed the shockwave
weapon to turn off, and the two robbers fell to
the ground. At the same time, sirens from almost every
direction started to appear. The police were coming. Charlie had
done the right thing, but he didn't really want to
answer questions about it right now. He instantly focused on
his invisibility field reappearing. The air shimmered around him, and
well it did just that. He lifted his arm up
in the air, folded his hand in and produced the little,
medium sized helicopter rotor. Once again, it began to spin
and Charlie lifted up into the air. He watched for
a minute from eye above the scene as the police
arrested the two shocked individuals, and well endeavored to free
the other three from the goo and ice, looking particularly
puzzled as they did so. Then Charlie blasted off into
the air once again. He flew high above the clouds
until the landscape below started to look a little more familiar.
He slowly lowered down and came to a hover as
he saw his very own house. He gently lowered himself
down to the ground, landing in front of his door
and deactivating his flight propeller as he moved toward it,
Keeping his field of invisibility activated, he slipped inside the house,
hoping no one would notice he'd gone. He tiptoed back
to his bedroom and deactivated the whole thing when he
was safely inside, His bed looked particularly comfortable right now,
and well he'd earned a good sleep after a day
of work as a robotic superhero. He climbed into his bed,
pulled the covers up to his chin, and closed his eyes.
With every breath, Charlie sank down into the mattress. He
released his shoulders, his arms, his legs, and with each
breath he sank a little deeper and his mind began
to wander off to thoughts of new dreams, new adventures,
and new robotic soup Your powers to come.
Speaker 2: Good night everyone.
Speaker 4: Name never in New York Union, No more.
Speaker 3: In m.
Speaker 4: One on many Things never assas