The Core: The First Guest

29. Starting at the bottom

I fell into the upblast of the Prominence and was sent tumbling upwards. Since I didn't have a stomach or inner ear to make me sick all that happened was my view was sent spinning. I closed my eyes and actually found that it was possible in this digital form. It was really strange to do biological things, like blinking, without actually having eyelids. It was as if I willed a dark filter over my vision.

"Num! How do I stop this?" I asked as I briefly opened my eyes to find the spinning to have gotten far worse. I seemed to have broken the limited programming of the AI's tutorial by having control of the robot's cr. I wondered if there was a reason behind this like someone was skimping on spending the needed currency to have a functioning prison system. I briefly considered going back into the menu and clicking the "Skip Tutorial" button but after a second I decided to wait to see if it managed to get unstuck once I figured this roller coaster ride out myself.

I had complete control of the cr around me, so much so that I could wiggle each of the eight little arms independently. It honestly felt more like I was wiggling my fingers more than my arms. Moving them did nothing to alleviate my crazy spinning so I kept my eyes closed while I tried to feel what this little body of cr could do. I could reshape the legs, even the entire robot if I wanted to, but I didn't yet understand how to propel myself without a surface to move on.

There had to be a way to visually stabilize my vision so that even while my body was tumbling I would still be able to maintain a steady horizon. I focused on what I wanted and willed the cr around me to comply before tentatively peeking at my surroundings. "Yes! That is so much better!" I said as I found that I could finally look around without my vision being linked to the orientation of my harvester robot. It was still tumbling and spinning in a crazy and random pattern but at least I didn't have to try to orient myself through its crazy motions. There really wasn't an up or down side to my robot anyways since I could invert the legs on a whim.

I looked around and studied the area of the sun that I had been thrown down to. I could just make out some odd cargo container-looking satellites that slowly hovered at various strategic points around what little area that I could see. I tried to focus on one for a while, making my vision zoom in so I could get a better view of the slowly moving craft. It appeared to be a cargo vessel. Perhaps it was the turn-in location for any cr collected?

Sure enough, there were dozens of little robots moving up to the lip of the vessel, unloading something, before launching themselves back down towards the surface of the sun again. It was strange because the robots barely looked like my robot at all. Each that I managed to see was adorned with different attachments, coloring, and even shaped in various different ways compared to my bare-bones frame. They also seemed to be grouped together for some reason. Different groups would stay away from others. I really needed to get the AI working again so I could ask him what I was seeing.

My earlier explosive yet short-lived trajectory away from the sun was rapidly decaying and I was speedily falling down towards the chaotic surface of the sun. I knew that there had to be a way for me to fly, I just had yet to discover it.

When I was a child I always was amazed by how my grandfather could wiggle his ears independently and together. His ability was so fascinating to me because no one else that I knew could do it. They always seemed to have lame excuses like "only people with certain genetics can do that," or some such nonsense. It was similar to learning how to whistle or to juggle, someone always had a crazy reason why they couldn't learn how to do it.

One day after we had arrived home in the car I stayed sitting in the back seat while everyone else went inside. I honestly don't know how long I sat there for, touching my ears, lifting them up and pulling them down, trying to train my mind to learn which muscle would need to be pulled in order to raise each of them in turn. Eventually, I got it. I had learned a genuine useless ability and I was very proud of it.