The Miner

Focusing through my damaged lenses I verified that the other robot had been broken a long time ago. Dusty. Broken.

Who had damaged it? How long was this model lying here with nobody around to repair it or even move it?

[I got it. No need to tell me that again.]

Although I did feel stronger in a robot form, I was still vulnerable to damage. Guess that I wasn’t an invulnerable chosen one after all. This was going to take some getting used to. Video game mode wasn’t so fun after all, maybe the experience points and quests though. Maybe.

There could be a blessing in disguise though, in that if it still possessed a working battery then my immediate priority would be dealt with. I didn’t want to keep talking to a system that repeated itself with the same words now.

I wanted to check my current status and brought my physical state up in my mind’s eye again. At least that still worked for me.

-Power Supply (Battery Pack 16% - Damaged)

-Drill Unit (60% Damage -Temporarily offline)

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

-Mechanised Shovel (27% Damage)

-Drone Arms/Legs (35% Damage)

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

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

The same notification popped into my mind again from the now non-personalised and quite frankly boring mechanical drone voice.

[Yeah, I preferred it when you had a personality. I doubt that this broken-down robot has an existing power source. It might be worth stripping it for parts when I can do so.]

The system failed to respond to me. Huh. Did that mean that is disapproved of my decisions? My actions were silently judged. I felt guilty.

Something was odd. Why was I not currently in a human body? A question to ask my AI support system when it came back online. Best to try and focus on the task ahead, at least I tried my best to put that question out of my mind.

It turned out that searching for a battery source with damaged sensors was harder than I thought. Imagine you had to wear glasses and they got badly scratched. You could take them off making your vision worse but clearer or leave them on and try and work past the difficulties. I was dealing with the latter right now; my next step would find some method of repairing myself.

The idea of digging through a metallic corpse that had been left broken and alone and damaged suddenly struck me as depressing. I just couldn’t dig myself through the remains searching for a power supply. It felt wrong, down deep inside it felt utterly wrong.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Stop. Get a grip. Stop it. You need to get control over yourself and settle down. Slow breathes. Ah, I don’t breathe. Slow imaginary breathing then.

Just imagine those lungs filling up with non-existent oxygen as they gently inflate and deflate, calming myself in the process. In and out of organic fleshly parts that didn’t exist in my present reality.

I was trying my best to get a better grasp on things, but it was getting a little bit harder to cope with given my relative inexperience with these matters. There should be a way to do this better and more efficiently, experience was what mattered right now. It wasn’t necessarily the dead humanoid robot. Mission. Experience points. I needed to get back to basics which were getting these jobs done one at a time.

Smashing already broken rocks into the greyish landscape wasn’t my idea of fun but I had a series of goals to complete. I figured that my best bet would be locating existing damaged machinery which would be far more likely to have a power source that I could then use.

Unless there happened to be a seller wandering around who would give out free samples of whatever power source was needed for this body it would be my best bet. Search, locate and install. One step at a time then.

I had a 3D scanner, which might make it easier to get a quick view of the area around me. I wished then that the system in all its generosity had provided me with an instruction manual. Had to be a solid reason that I was lacking one. Unless they had gotten me confused with somebody else who knew how to remotely pilot smallish Mining Drones and autonomous vehicles.

[System? Bring up the 3D scanner. I want to get a better picture of my immediate surroundings. A local map would be great. Set it up thanks.]

[I asked you to bring up a scanner not tell me what to do. Do it.]

A green box appeared in my field of vision, it was patchy with a lot of blank spots, but it gave me an idea of my immediate location and a rough idea of what lay around me. There was a medium-sized structure ahead of me around a hundred metres away. The distance itself just automatically translated into numbers that I recognised.

The map itself was black and white with a small figure that was meant to be me with a near minimum of exact detail, it showed me a rough idea but if I was able to in the future then I’d launch a few satellites and set up my global positioning system.

Or the equivalent that existed in this world. This place, if it wasn’t related to my reality then either I had suffered a mental breakdown or…no it was more likely that I was ill. I wasn’t quite sure why these questions and thoughts ran through my mind, but I was sure that it had something to do with Campos being offline. Stupid system.

[System, can you display my mission quests?]

New power supply will restore points to baseline levels.

Current Objectives: Locate localised power supplies

Reward: 20xp or five minutes in Mind Palace.

Special Abilities: Can process small amounts of rock through the main body into new ore and mineral sources.

Failure of Objectives: Operational Failure and Permanent Shutdown>

The actual display function still worked out fine. All the words appeared in my mind as though typed on a computer screen. So without the non-evil god Campos being involved the system still functioned.

I did want to ask about the word XP though, I got the idea about a Mind Palace although I now wasn’t sure if that had all been a bad dream at this point. It felt a bit harder than previously. Yeah, morbid thoughts aside, I was off. Less focused.

[System, what does the 20xp represent?]

If I could have sighed, then I would have. Instead, I settled for letting my mining robot drone body go slack for a moment as I released a feeling of tension in my current form. It made me feel slightly better before getting back to my task.

[Display map directly on my visuals.]

A small map was displayed right in front of my eyes. Wait, no robot lenses. I didn’t have human eyes at the moment. With all the scratches it turned out to be a lot harder to read than I had initially thought.

I did like the little figure that represented me on the map though. It was a little mining robot that was meant to represent me. Setting a fixed point that I wanted to move to I imagined a battery icon and it appeared on the map on top of the structure. It would have been easier for the map to be displayed in my mind’s eye.

This would be my first destination to focus on, either that or I would run out of power. The structure ahead of me ought to contain a decent power source and other useful equipment.

One careful step in front of the other, smashing apart tiny rocks and forming little dust clouds. Stupid body. This wasn’t my body. Stupid metal legs.

[Thanks system. Keep the map displayed.]

[Actually, shut up instead.]

My surroundings were filled with broken pieces of metal that glinted from an unknown light source and shattered remains of what I supposed were meant to be mining machinery. Huh. A massive explosion had totalled this place, that or a giant rock from space was pulled down by gravity to smash everything apart by cosmic destiny.

[I’m becoming a little bit crazy. Haha. Tough luck Over and Under Minder.]

It was hard to tell if my voice was projected out loud through speakers on this robot body or if an internal record was kept and tracked by the mysterious system. Meh. Just keep walking. Walking. Walking over stupid rocks.

The small dot that was the battery icon got closer to the little mining robot on the map, that was my main indication that I was getting closer and closer to my targeted goal. It was at this time that one of my metallic feet got stuck into a deeper hole that I hadn’t been paying even the tiniest bit of attention to and my body came crashing down to the ground. Hard.

I certainly felt the massive jolt to my body, and something felt off, but it wasn’t the same feeling as hitting a foot hard on an object or wrenching your ankle.

Recalling my current status I brought up the numbers in my mind’s eye while I was lying flat on the ground. Well, half of me was. My legs were able to bend at an angle that would have shattered human limbs. Freaky. Right. Not made of flesh.

-Power Supply (Battery Pack 13% - Damaged)

-Drill Unit (59.5% Damage -Temporarily offline)

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

-Mechanised Shovel (26% Damage)

-Drone Arms/Legs (30% Damage)

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

-External Mechanical Tool Set (33% Damage -Temporarily offline)

Great, even lower power than I had first thought and a minor bit of damage. I tried moving my leg, but it appeared to be stuck in a small hole.

Applying more force towards it just achieved a whirring noise and another strange feeling. I didn’t know exactly how electronic signals were meant to be translated to a mind in a robot body, but it didn’t feel right. The thought came into my head that I was already dead. Or in a state of decay at the very least. Necrosis couldn’t set into a metal form as I lacked organic materials.

The minimap display showed that I was only around twenty metres now from the medium-sized structure that I had first spotted. So I already travelled eighty metres. Right, dwindling power supply and my life source in front of me. I made a firm choice and straightened my stuck leg hard before raising a metallic arm and striking it as hard as I could manage.

I smashed into it making sparks fly. Pain. This time I felt pain. I was either imagining this or this was causing me real damage. Gritting my non-existent teeth I used one robotic arm to stretch out in front of me before ploughing it into a rocky surface. It would give me a better grip to move forward once my leg was broken off, it would be better to crawl towards that power source than lie here and slowly die alone.

[This isn’t my arm. I want my real arm back.]

Raising one arm to strike my leg again I shut down my visual senses on purpose before smashing hard, this time the hand was curled into a fist as tight as possible. The pain was even more extreme. Still, it was working, the leg was looser than before. Once it had broken off, I would be able to crawl the remaining twenty metres, towards salvation.

A message shot up in front of my eyes.

…System Emergency Intervention…

… Severe Damage found to Starter Mining Drone Leg…

...Medium Power loss is imminent…

…Initiate Campos Stability Program.

-Warning: Power Drain Acceleration...

Ignoring the message I gripped the ground hard with one arm while preparing the other to finish breaking through my stuck leg. With luck, this would all be over soon. Yes. Everything would be done.

This new message made me remember a long-ago story about a wizards magic broom gone wild. The broom had to keep cleaning and in the end it was destroyed due to never stopping until it swept an entire castle into powdered rocks.

Déjà vu. Work, repeat, work, repeat. No. I needed to finish my job. Just break off a piece and carry on. Fight through the pain. Artificial.

My arm was still raised prepared to crack my stuck leg into two halves, right before my arm caused a fracture in the leg joint a message popped up and I lost all feeling.

Everything stopped immediately. If I had been a living breathing human my heart would have stopped and I would be dead. Yes. A blissful state. Soon.

[Soon. Soonsoonsoonsoonsoonsoonsoonsoonsoonsoo-.]

-Total Starter Mining Drone Electronic Lock in Place

-Warning: Power Usage High (Countdown for use: 80:00 seconds)>

My entire form had frozen. Just frozen. My arm was stuck in a set position; it was a horrible feeling to live in a dead body that you had no control over.

The visual lenses still worked though, and I was able to make out the medium-sized structure in front of me, it had a roof and walls but no gate or door in the way. A storage area perhaps, it’d be great to fix these scratches once I had enough power and access to repair mechanisms. So close and so far.

[.…Who were you talking t-]

…Campos System Designate 1.1 Initiating Manual Physical Override of Host System..

…Remove full level of consciousness control…

….Checking Cotard Delusion protocols…

…Engaging Anti-Dysmorphic parameters…

….Creating behaviour support imitation program…

…Initiating Campos stability Protocol…

…AMT Test Correlated…

…Artificial Dopamine Dump Increased 150%…

….Pain Receptors Deactivated…

…Warning Extreme Power Drop…

….Host Status Reset…

Pure relaxation and refreshment flowed into my mind. Although the encouraging words from the system were appreciated as well. What passed for my brain slowed down.

Wait. Dead? Was I dead? Meh. So what. This feels so good. So good. So good. So good. So good...