keep on rolling

The holographic eye darted around on the small metallic sphere.

"What! What happened! Hey! Anyone there!!!! Help! I have fallen and I can't get up??!..... Anyone? My name is Al?... Help?"

A small wind blew past the sphere as if the sphere seemed to be waiting for a response. The eye was slowing down it's frantic looking around, now focusing on its surroundings.

"How... Did I end up in a dump..."

The eye looked at the nearby wall of junk, the eye slid along the surface of the sphere, looking upwards, the never-ending steep inclining hill of rock, cement, junk, and metal reaching endlessly upwards, till a dense fog made it impossible to look any further up.

"... When did the city block junkyard get this full?... Urh! never mind now AL! Focus!... Wait... My arms?!! Where are my arms!!!" Al frantically tried to lift his arms and look at his fingers in a panic, the eye growing in size on the sphere as it darted around in a flurry.

As Al thought that, four of the larger shutters on the sphere suddenly flew open and from each of them, tiny thin shiny metal tendrils, burst out and lay flat on the ground not moving. The eyefroze and then looked back and forth over the mess of tendrils splayed out before it.

"....."

A shrill mechanical shriek that sounded a lot like a girl, rang through the massive canyons of the junkyard hills.

The holographic eye had increased in size and looked panicky again darting around looking at each tiny tendril exiting the sphere, the sphere actually beginning to jostle around from the tendrils flapping about as if trying to escape them.

"My hands!! My beautiful hands! How will I ever build my mech figures without my hands!!... Gasp... No, wait... How will I ever stroke my mighty tool to give praise to the moe girls of the Mecha Dorm High school Series!!!!..... Wait... Where is my mighty tool!!!"

The sphere seemed to be lifting the tendrils as it spoke, looking at its poor excuse of mighty tool stroking tendrils, when it worried about its mighty tools location, One of the large shutters flew open and a much larger thicker tendrils burst out, flipping the sphere over from the force of its ejection and rolling the sphere onto its side. The larger tendrils resting on top of the eye, that began blinking as if it got dizzy from the sudden violent jostle.

"...What...What is this?!.... No.. Not my mighty tool!!!!"

Another shrill mechanical shriek was send out through the canyons.

Al calmed down after flailing out of control for a while, the tendril flopped away from its surface as it tried to move them away. The eye slowly pulsing and the sound of breathing coming from the sphere, as Al slowly tried to calm himself down, after a short while he focused and tried to examine what he was seeing.

The smaller tendrils were alternating black and white-colored of small coils incredibly thin and intertwined much like muscles, that gave them the ability to move, each tendril seemed to have small glowing lights every so often pulsing between the coils down along the length of them, and they were extremely flexible, they could wrap up into tight little balls if Al willed it.

The larger one was covered in interlocking plates that covered its length much like scales, the same pulsating lights being visible on occasion from beneath them, it was more rigid and sturdy. As Al was examining it he noticed the end a lot of flexible variously shaped bits that Al could wiggle about, when he focused on one of the bits that seemed to have a glowing covering, it turned around on the tip until it was the central one and then it suddenly gave an extremely bright glow, his holographic eye suddenly turned into a welding mask on its own.

The tendril moved away from him in shock from the extreme light, the tip of the tendril came to a rest against a piece of metal jutting out of the ground, a red sizzling line came across the metal piece, the metal having been heated up by it.

The tip stopped glowing as Al focused on it.

".. Is that a plasma cutter??"

[Power at 99.95%]

The thin tendrils all suddenly flew back inside the shutters that snapped shut quickly, causing the sphere to roll briefly from the sudden force, the eye vanishing the sphere becoming completely inert. With only the large tendril staying outside with the glowing light at its tip.

The eye once more slowly appeared and carefully looked around, the eye now had a picture of a drop of liquid at the side of it, making it look as if nervous.

"Hello?! Who was that?! Help?! I was not exposing myself!" The large tendril slowly pulled back inside after the tip rotating back into place after shutting down.

[Power at 99.92%]

"... Oh... " The drop beside the eye vanished and was replaced with two gentle red glowing lights at either side of it.

Al could "hear" the voice, but he could also tell now that it was not an audible sound somehow, it spoke and appeared in front of him. He finally began to look at himself properly.

"... I am... A .. robot?.. A drone?.. Did i forget to take off my VR gear before i went to bed?! I do not own a drone-like this!... In fact, I have never seen one like this before" The eye moving around on the sphere after flipping around, as if looking - inwardly - onto itself.

Al knew that people could use both their VR gear to take control of physical drones and robots in order to send them out to do shopping or go to work even, or instead play the online games and go to work in the online network. He himself had a basic full size maid robot he had made sure to resemble Alice from Mecha Dorm High school, his favorite anime character. He did not take full control of it though as that felt wrong, instead of that doing his best to program it with more autonomy. It did his basic chores while he reveled in his NEET lifestyle.

He never needed to leave home thanks to her, so he could focus on his hobbies and the occasional horrible job request he could handle on his computer designing software, robotics, and engineering designs. He had now calmed down sufficiently, the thin tendrils he dubbed Grippers, were extremely flexible but strong enough to lift his own body up with three of them working together. Each shutter had three tendrils, for a total of 12 tendrils, each of them could shoot out to 1-meter distance from his sphere or his body.

The grippers were able to stick to surfaces at will, incredibly tiny filament "hairs" would spread out to increase surface area and snag onto every tiny surface that could be gripped. The tendrils were also covered in a holographic projection skin that the body was cover in when Al tried he could move the eye out to the end of one of the tendrils, absorbing light through the holograph like a real eye, and moving his perspective to that location.

His new body was 50 centimeters in diameter, he could also tell he was able to roll from some internal mechanism. His holographic eye was kept leveled when he did so in whatever direction he decided to go, though he only did small circles around where he was.

The sphere was covered in the same tiny unseen holographic projection system, it worked as both a projection and capture system. Light being transmitted along the holograph both ways. Giving his eye complete freedom to appear on any side of his skin.

"Right then... Console!"

Al tried a standard command with the VR gear he had, but nothing happened. Normally that would have brought up his Gear interface with all the options like logging out or information on the game or drone he was in.

"Open Console?, Console Open?!, Open Menu?! Open System.."

With that, he could now see before him a booting system that showed him options much like the VR gear but not quite, the keyboard interface was not there.

[Sphere System Level 1 access granted]

[Ai Core]

[Tools]

[Blueprints]

[Status]

[Power]

[*Locked*]

[*Locked*]

[*Locked*]

[*Locked*]

---

---

"Ok.. that's a lot of locked options... Right, let's see what we got to work with here..."

But Al did not get further than that thought before he noticed something jump out from behind some metal pipes, he turned to focus on it and recoiled in horror. The eye shrinking back almost to a small dot, but still wide opened.

A Rat the size of a large dog, with green pustule wounds here and there on its body that only had two-thirds of its body covered in fur. Its jaw was mutated and wrong, large teeth and its eyes were not even on its head.

It noticed the moving sphere and its tendrils and hissed at him, green spittle flying out of its mouth.

".... Shiiit!!!!"

Al yelled and began rolling full speed away from the rat that took chase right away.