You call my master ''nerd''? Plasma cannons, fire!

Our coming war for survival against the murderous cyborg legions inched ever closer Saturday as the next generation of robot warriors invaded UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center.

Yet two teams of budding engineers from defending national champion Cimarron-Memorial and upstart Valley high schools proved that — even in the barren hell of a state whose wanna-be neocon governor refuses to spare a sputtering public education system from the budgetary carving knife — the human spirit can endure. The two-day competition pitted high-speed, remote-controlled robots designed by 42 high school teams from across America and eight other countries.

After the two-day FIRST Robotics Regional Competition and endless rounds of quarter-finals, semi-finals and a championship match, the Cimmaron-Memorial Highrollers continued their roll to a second national championship, taking both the Regional Championship and the Chairman’s Award, the highest honor a team can earn. The Valley Robotics 9000 squad, fielding a robot warrior in its first-ever competition, advanced to the quarter-finals and snagged the Highest Rookie Seed Award.

Surprisingly, the scores of geek squads seem to have evolved into a new nerdic species, which, as it turns out, is a helluva lot cooler than you remember from your days playing grab-ass at So-and-So-High. These little radsters mash techno music with light shows, screaming, salivating fans in a subculture that is both surreal and cute.

Look for the full story in the April 3 edition of CityLife, along with some crazy pix from our photo editor, Bill Hughes. Pix like these:

Korbin Bennett-Gold, foreground, a mentor with the Sonoran Science Academy

Part of the game involved moving balls around a track.