The Miner

-Selecting Game Type and Style

-Loading Rules and Name

-Created System Psychological Support Scaffold…

-Experimental Artificial Intelligence Adaptability Suite Enabled: Campos System Engaged

….Checking stability of host mind….

…. Checking…Checking….Complete.…

….Campos Designate 1.1 Confirmed….

-Response Calibrated to Host Memory

Yeah. This one was pretty rude. I hesitated a little in how to respond. Usually when you had a boss like this you could either suck it up or kiss ass. Respect was appreciated when a worker showed initiative and a little background.

Pain. I felt a lack of pain or motion. Huh. No sense of breathing, just nothing aside from a visual screen in my mind. Odd. I’d need to get used to the lack of a human body with all its failings and parts.

Emotion was physical though right? Hormones and chemicals pumped through a body and brain which I no longer possessed.

Screw it, I’d had enough of being told what to do. There was something wrong but each time I tried to focus on it the answers became like smoke in my metallic hands.

[No. I’m going with no and go stuff yourself. How about an answer?]

Talking back to the boss. I had to do it to establish some ground rules. I wasn’t a slave after all. Even workers could ask questions.

[Right…my stats suck because I need repairs. Ah, damaged. Not feeling that though.]

[Yeah, what’s up with the special abilities and failure stuff?]

[Great news! I just need to use this robotic body to find a battery, slot it in and the problem is solved. Where’s another battery located on the base then?]

[All auditory stroke visual inputs are open. I’m all for it Mr Campos. Bring it on! I want that XP reward.]

[You have no idea where the mining base is….you have no clue. I’m not getting a good feeling about this. What’s my location then?]

[How can you die if you’re just a voice? Wait, are you shouting at me right now? Tone it down Vincent. I’m not going to be able to focus on you shouting at me right now. I don’t need it ok?]

[Ok. I’m getting ready. Got the arm working, now for the legs or what passes for legs on this thing. Robot-legs!]

[My body. Yeah, I’m getting the hang of it. Nice, it works pretty well so far.]

I felt a movement beneath my robotic body, a different type of whirring sound this time. Interesting. Perhaps the noise could be cancelled out.

Ignoring the voice that oddly sounded quite demanding I focused on taking the Starter Mining Drone to a powered-up mode. If this is my new body and I only transmigrated to this state then I should have a rundown on how damaged I was. Wait, was I a mind in a body or a body with a mind? Meh. Same difference. Transmigration? I forgot what the word meant.

Alright, body what do you have that still works. My mind began to fill up with various numbers and screens flashed inside my non-physical mind incessantly before they began to slow down and correlate into something that I could read. A list with words and numbers. Something that I was able to understand and fully process. This time no Vincent System was assisting me, this was more like a tacit understanding of my own body. The areas that showed damage didn’t hurt but I felt something from them, a smaller degree of control.

I opened my mind’s eyes and created a list:

-Power Supply (Battery Pack 18%)

-Drill Unit (60% Damage)

-3D Scanner/Detector Lenses (30% Damage)

-Mechanised Shovel (27% Damage)

-Drone Arms (25% Damage)

-Drone Legs (35% Damage)

-Internal Ore Processing Unit (20% Damage)

-External Mechanical Tool Set (34% Damage)

I saw that the battery was seriously low. The rest has suffered quite a bit of damage, but everything was still in working order. I ought to be thankful for that at least. The next thing that came to my mind was how to effect repairs. I had successfully turned on the Starter Mining Drone and its systems were familiar to me. This was my body, after all, it just translated differently into my mind. Damage to the drone was damaged to me. Nothing so mundane as physical pain.

Turning back on my lenses I now understood why my vision had first come across as being blurry. I was able to sharpen my focus but only for a limited time. Perhaps shutting down non-essential systems would allow me to further boost my battery power and give me a little bit more than an hour or whatever time was left.

[Hey System?]

[Not quite the right expression. It goes-]

[Vincent? Can I shut down the non-essential systems in this drone to save battery power? I got a rough feel for how this body works and the main equipped moving parts, but I can’t manage the small details. Overmind?]

[It sounds boring. Now, shut down all non-essential systems excluding yourself and I’ll check my battery status. I promise to get moving and grooving after that with my new drone legs. Now, you mentioned Overmind. Is that a code?]

[Ok. I promise Vincent the non-evil god.]

I should be feeling something about this. A sense of…no. This was fine. Everything was fine and I was great. I just-just-just needed to-.

-Attempting Power Override Emergency Mining Drone

-Warning: Memory Size of Machine at Risk

-Warning: Power Source Damaged

-Warning: Ignore at cost of subject sanity level

-Warning: Non-Essential Systems necessary for Campos Protocol.

-Warning: Imagination Limitation Will be Removed

-Warning: Psychological Scaffolding will be removed from personality upload

OVERRIDDEN DUE TO OVERMIND AUTONOMOUS ORDERS – DRONE SURVIVAL ACTIVE PRIORITY

-Warning: Emergency shutdown of all non-essential drone systems.

<…Fixed it, buddy. You should have more battery power. I’ll be in contact later. You need to be quick. Before the others turn up. Seriously, there isn’t enough spare energy to find a replacement and I need the strength to deal with them. Bye.>

[Now, what is that meant to mean? System?]

[Hello…?]

[Vincent? I wanted to ask what all that stuff about sanity level and the almighty Campos Protocol was but you’re offline.]

My current physical status appeared once again in my mind:

-Power Supply (Battery Pack 17% - Damaged)

-Drill Unit (60% Damage -Temporarily offline)

-3D Scanner/Detector Lenses (Screen - 30% Damage)

-Mechanised Shovel (27% Damage)

-Drone Arms (25% Damage)

-Drone Legs (35% Damage)

-Internal Ore Processing Unit (20% Damage -Temporarily offline)

-External Mechanical Tool Set (34% Damage -Temporarily offline)

Using my detector lenses, I was able to survey the surrounding environment that I had briefly viewed earlier previously. Rocks, dust, and craters. Big rocks, debris and a grey surface that was not asphalt.

[Where’s that metallic glint again, that could be a useful resource.]

I made my mining drone legs move forward, avoiding the larger craters and any rocks that were too large for me to traverse over without taking any more damage. Those large holes in the ground could be a direct threat, one misstep and I’d end up at the bottom of a crater with a dwindling power cell and a guilty feeling for having killed someone called system.

The glint reflected the lights coming from my sensor. I guessed I should be a bit smaller than a regular-sized human considering the toy model that I had picked up back in the escape room, didn’t have a total sense of scale at this point. This whole situation had happened so quickly. How exactly did I end up here in the first place? Was there a flash of light and my soul got transferred into a virtual reality escape room? The main thing that surprised me the entire time was how calm I felt about the whole experience.

[System, I’m having a few doubts here. Got any advice for that power source? This whole place feels like a meteorite smashed it.]

[Well, that’s the same response as before. What happened with all the chatting? You’re not the person that you used to be? C’mon robot body let’s move!]

I swung my legs, mechanical things that they were, across the rocky ground stomping up dust and crushing a few small rocks. Getting the hang of a robotic form was a bit tricky, but it was essentially the same way that I walked as a human.

Just a great deal slower with the worry that I’d step in the wrong place and end up in a deep hole. My movements were far slower than they should be, it was the equivalent of a human with an injured leg gradually limping along or with the support of crutches.

The glint was only a short distance ahead of me. With a few more steps forward my metal feet crunched into the rocky ground I found the source; it was a broken piece of machinery. Judging by the size of it the whole size was pretty bulky but had been thoroughly destroyed.

I reached down with one arm to brush any debris to the side, ignoring the whirring noises, clearing away rocks and other broken parts to give me a better idea of what this was.

When it was cleared, I felt both saddened and shocked. I didn’t know what I’d expected but it surely wasn’t this. It could have been me. So easily that could have been me and I wouldn’t even be aware of it.

Once I had cleared enough of it to get a clearer image of the machine, my scratched lenses tried their best to focus. It was another drone, missing its legs and only one broken arm remaining.

The same as me, except damaged beyond repair. A Starter Mining Drone with exactly the same design as mine. I knew the style of it, the build, part of me immediately recognised the model as I knew my own body.

The whole robot had been torn in half and then stamped on to near-death. That was a depressing thought. Why would a broken robot remind me of my mortality? I was a human, not a piece of machinery. Not a drone. Alive, I was alive. Not dead like that.

It felt similar to gazing at your corpse while you were still up and walking around. Surreal was the word. I felt something in my mind begin to crumble slightly at this sight, a part of my resolve had become weakened if that was going to be my fate.

Broken, discarded, and forgotten under a pile of rocks and metal debris.