A couple screw turns. A twist of the wrench. The clink of nuts and bolts as they rattled against each other in a toolbox.

That was my life now.

I looked down at the absolutely wrecked jackhammer he had to repair, and sighed. Besides me, a pale white robot with a vaguely futuristic visor and several deep scratches in its outer shell stretched out its hand with a soldering device. Unable to hold the pen and solder stably, I had to rely on the robot to do the operation.

"I'm just eight years old." I grumbled. "Why the hell am I working in a labor camp built to mine fantasy resources?"

College was fun. Well, not really. Dealing with cockroaches and mice in my dorms was not fun. The actual engineering? It was pretty fun.

But…

Paying for college debt? Working in a nine to five job repairing production machines? Having everybody around you strike for better wages while you continue to work solo, desperate to pay off said college loans? The subsequent robbing and accidental murder due to living in a bad neighborhood to save money?

That. Was not fun. In the least.

Now, I was on some alternate earth after I was brought over to a camp field with miners that were probably aliens and offered food only because I repaired machines, while having an Atlesian knight robot droid (whatever that was) constantly follow me because apparently an "escort mission was not yet complete".

Additionally, because I was on an alternate earth, of course there was some race of other people that viewed me antagonistically because of my humanity. Death by pickaxes was something I had to seriously try to prevent via barricading the doors whenever I slept. I even had to board up the windows of the shed I lived in because stray rocks would frequently become uninvited guests breaking through the glass.

I was considered part of the staff, but they weren't exactly great people either. They basically encouraged slavery in a labor camp that was reminiscent of the Gulags back on earth. I felt quite insulted being grouped with people like them, but to continue getting food and free metal parts, I honestly had no choice.

Not-confusing-at-all circumstances aside, I had to get back to fixing this jackhammer. On its tip, I brushed away some dubiously colored dust into a small, glass vial. I looked left and right, before stowing it away in a frayed jacket pocket.

What was that dust? Well, it certainly wasn't… illegal substances. It was the fantasy resource that this entire world apparently ran on. It came in several colors and tasted vaguely like cinnamon, though.

"Charging at fifty percent." the robot said dully. "Ready for basic functions."

"Okay." I said, "Let's go outside to get our rations."

Slowly, I shook my thin and small legs until they woke up, before standing up and dusting myself off. Heavy metals cascaded down to the floor, settling there in a silver sheen. I adjusted my mask, not wanting to inhale those things and get some sort of disorder.

"Clean that up, please."

"I can only move on the x-y plane when you have unplugged me." the robot said monotonously.

I looked at the robot's head, once dented by a metal pickaxe after being identified by the faunus miners as a "symbol of oppression", and looked back at the robot with weird speaking patterns.

"One day…" I muttered. "One day, I'm going to find a circuit board and a computer, and program a neural network into you."

"I am three years, ten days, two hours, and eighty eight seconds past my required software update times." the robot said.

"I don't mean that." I said, scratching my head. "Whatever software they put into you to limit your functionality, I'm going to get rid of. You're a living, breathing-wait, not breathing- robot with limited artificial intelligence capabilities and a fully operational navigation software with four limbed movement capabilities! Think about the things you could accomplish!"

"My processors are limited to following orders."

I sighed, before dragging the robot out of the door and loosening my cloth mask. Doing so really made me feel like a space scavenger, but realistically, there wasn't going to be anything I found except servos, wires and motors. I couldn't really fix the broken robot and its occasionally glitchy brain.

Outside, the miners gave me a wide berth, looking at the robot that had broken some of their jaws when they tried to attack me. I waved at the aliens with ears and tails warily, before heading to the staff canteens.

"Hey there, Yun. How's it going, kid?" one of the mine guards said, ruffling my hair. "Any of those faunus fuckers give you any trouble?"

"Language, John." one of the cooks shouted from inside the kitchen. "He's just eight."

"Fine, fine." John said, laughing. "But seriously, you remember when they tried to bludgeon you with pickaxes, right?"

"Yeah…" I sighed. "I mean, they did say that it was a symbol of oppression or whatever.

"Listen to me, Yun." a grizzled veteran said, sipping coffee out of a metal mug. "Those faunus rebelled against us fifty years ago. Tried to kill us all. It's only fair that we keep making them mine our shit."

"Yeah, yeah." I said in a monotone voice. I had heard them try to fill my head with this kind of talk way too many times, but there was a timeless truth to statements going towards the extreme.

If an authority figure is saying it, they're almost definitely lying. Just look at my headmaster talking about the scholarship policies. The CCP saying stuff about the US when I hadn't left for the states to go to college. The politicians talking about the CCP when I was in the US.

Of course there was an ulterior motive, but I couldn't exactly ask the faunus about it, on account of them trying to put me six feet under whenever I went even remotely near them. Which was awkward.

I walked up to the lady who always served the food, and was surprised with less watery soup instead of the usual greenish water that they gave us.

"Do you know what day it is today?" the server said, a rather strange smile stretching over her lips.

"What?" I said, some suspicion coming over my eyes. I looked at a dark case at the foot of a table. Some people's hands reach for their pockets to get out vaguely rod-like objects. A match being struck and hands reaching for bags.

Was my acceptance of their ideology not sincere enough? Did my nonchalance spell my doom?

I dropped my tray, clambering up my robot and preparing to escape this mining camp. Opening my mouth, I readied myself to issue the command of running, but-

A blast of confetti went off.

The men in the canteen laughed, before holding up their own confetti shooters.

"This is your fourth year here in the mine!" the lady shouted, getting out a confetti shooter herself.

"Not in the kitchen, Marge!" the head chef Courtney shouted, bringing out a piece of bread with an unlit candle stuck in it. The guy holding the match walked over and lit the candle, causing orange to splash against the colorless walls.

"Even though we don't know where you came from-"

"Probably Mistral." the server coughed.

"-or why the Atlesian Knight has you marked for an escort mission-"

"Rich heir being escorted through Atlas to inherit the family business." the server coughed again. I glared at her, and her mutterings ceased. If only my status in this world was as wealthy as that!

"-we do appreciate how much you've done for Mine Site 27!" John said, cheerfully. "Management has saved thousands on extra jackhammers and excavators! And because of this…"

John pulled out the same, suspicious black case, before opening the clasp. The hinges swung open, to reveal…

A second hand computer.

Its screen was slightly cracked on the corner, and the case looked like it had been dropped somewhere. Still, it was a computer. I dropped down from my vantage point on the robot and walked up to the

"We pooled all of this together with our wages, and management even decided to contribute a couple Lien!"

I looked at the device, and slowly walked up to it. Despite being in what was probably an alternate universe, the computer looked blissfully similar. The same lettered keyboards and ports on the side almost brought tears to my eyes.

"Thank you so much, guys!" I said, lifting up the computer and looking at the surprisingly pristine charger also in the case.

"...Also, some of the security cameras are glitching up, and management does not want to hire a software engineer. So, since you mentioned you could actually code… We went ahead and assigned the task to you."

I sighed. Now there was the corporate machine. And I almost thought they were people with empathy.

"Well, it's back off to work for us! Happy introduction to the mine or whatever." John said nonchalantly, picking up the holster he left beside his now eaten plate of pancakes.

"How did you guys get the confetti poppers?" I asked.

"They were leftovers from Martin's birthday." John said, shrugging. "Fucking waste of space. Courtney over there insisted."

"Don't you have a wall to stand on until noon?" Courtney glared, her hands tightening over the metal tray that had my 'cake' on it.

"Sure, sure, whatever. Have some of that meatloaf ready for lunch, woman." John said, swaggering off into the distance, kicking at some miners carrying baskets of crystals as he turned a corner.

"Now, don't you learn from them soldiers, Yun." Courtney said sternly, placing down the tray of 'cake'. With a fork, she split open the loaf of bread, only to reveal… actual frosting inside the bread, along with what looked like some slightly undercooked sponge cake.

"They're filled with a lot of resentment. A lot of their parents were caught up in The Great War. It's very personal for them."

"I get it." I said, sighing tiredly. "If only I could get out of this place…"

"There isn't a way out." Courtney said. "Only the officers even get to go home for the holidays. We're out here in the middle of nowhere, with the cargo ships that carry dust as our only way to the outside world."

"Why are you here, then?" I said, taking the fork from Courtney and eating some of the disguised cake.

Courtney sighed. "Someday, kid, you'll realize that you don't actually have a choice. You have to do what you have to do to live. Besides, being on the mine may be depressing and we're surrounded by bigots. But at least it beats being in the slums at Mantle."

"Is it really all that bad out there?" I asked, still curious. I never really got any information about the outside world, on account of not having access to whatever internet equivalent existed.

"If you're rich enough, then sure." Courtney said cynically. "You can live like the Schnees that run this dust mine."

I slowly nodded, and Courtney walked back into the kitchen. The birthday-like ritual had been abrupt and materialistic, considering the fact that me getting a computer was just the management trying to embezzle the money needed to hire a software engineer.

Still, now I had a computer. And with this, everything would change.

"Okay, bot, this is it." I said excitedly.

I cautiously connected to the internet. The signal symbol that also carried its meaning through dimensions lit up, and the pale blue of the generic background greeted my eyes.

"This world takes blue light a little too seriously, huh?"

"Talk of different worlds is usually grounds for admittance into mental institutions, client." the robot said.

"Anyways, do you mind if I give you a little… uh… software update?"

"I am three years, ten days, four hours, and-"

"Yes, yes." I said, impatiently. "I'll take that as a yes.

With a screwdriver, I pried open the robot's head.

"Do you all have to detach your head for software updates? Because doing it like this is a little… inconvenient."

"Field upgrades must be done with a power source in case of emergency shutdown." a monotonous voice said.

"That's a lot of requirements. Is there a port anywhere?"

"Field upgrades must be done with a-"

"Fine, fine." I muttered, plugging in the robot. The robot fell silent, and a port opened on the side of its head. After prying open a storage compartment on the robot, I found a dusty cord that had slightly stiff plastic. After warming it up with my hand, I wiggled it into the port, then plugged it into my computer.

A software module popped up on my screen that looked very… militaristic. Why was there a shield and spear thing on this robot? I took a screenshot of it, before moving onto the module.

"Video files… Memory recovery… Intelligence wipe… Where's the AI?"

At last, I clicked into its operating system, and to my surprise, there was an entire AI system already. However, it was just tens of thousands of identification protocols that kept a bare minimum human interaction interface running.

I was hit by an access denied when I tried to copy out the code, however.

"So what I have here… is military hardware?" I said, scratching my head. "I guess I'm not going to be able to hack into this."

I unplugged the robot, and the interface closed after giving me an error of "device not found". I kept the robot charging as I logged into the security camera system with the credentials that came on a text document.

The order was to "Find the anomaly in the footage."

I sighed. I guess I would have to monitor a week's worth of footage. I had to at least find some sort of thing to look for though, right? To be perfectly honest, I had no idea. But to keep the computer, I would have to do this job.

"I guess it's never too late to learn…" I muttered, opening up a website and returning to reading coding instructions for the first time in four years.

Two weeks later…

Nestled in my blankets, I idly swiped through the video footage that I had retrieved out of the robot's memory storage. Despite never even trying to keep a diary, I guess the robot had kept one for me. Out of very fuzzy footage, I could watch my arduous journey into the mines, and all the times that I messed up welding.

Very fun.

On a small, separate tab on the computer, the footage was playing. Occasionally, the vision flickered and glitched on the corners, but it was still mostly watchable.

Why was I watching the footage of the robot carrying me in from the outside? Well, the answer was simple.

I wanted to know whether or not there were any structures other than the mines that I could have gone to. Here, the cold of the tundra ate into my skin. The shed, despite the many pieces of my sheet metal I had welded to it, still welcomed the cold inside like unemployed graduates welcomed interview opportunities.

"Watching this footage does bring back memories, doesn't it?" I said, laughing lightly. I switched my small tab to play one of the scenes I had documented. The soldering gun accidentally slipped out of my hands and stabbed the robot in the thigh. Thankfully, all that resulted from that was a scuffed paint job.

"My processors are still analyzing security footage." the robot said, killing my nostalgic mood instantly. "Please do not interrupt the calculations."

"Be monotonous all you want." I muttered, adjusting my blankets and shivering. "I know you're irritated."

"Irritation is an emotion. Emotions are not one of my ten thousand nine hundred eighty one processing packages."

"Damn." I muttered. "You're right. Then why did you save me?"

"I was instructed to do so." the robot said, pausing the security footage. "Earlier memories were destroyed by what this unit hypothesizes to be an electric shock to the memory bank, but the application and mission objective was preserved."

"Do you… have footage of what happened before?"

"No. But I have footage after the incident."

"Play it, then."

I remembered the journey from the crash site to the mine.

There was an intense heat. A tumble as I fell out of arms that I didn't remember. But as the robot stood up and found my heat signature distinct from the fires surrounding the landship, lines of code and processing ran past its vision.

At least it remembered its mission objective.

The robot holding his clothes had cold and hard hands that I could feel through my relatively thin clothes, and an unwaveringly stable step, walking forward aimlessly in the endless tundra.

I remembered thinking about what the experimental automaton was, or even where I was, where I was going, and how I was. It was hard to determine age with hand size.

Well, at least I had answers to one of those questions.

The robot walked all the way to a speck on the horizon. It seemed far away, but rationally, the horizon that humans could see was just a couple miles further than where they were now. The only problem? The robot wasn't doing that great. It was either a battery issue or something else.

Eventually, the clanking footsteps stopped, and my four year old body was jostled from its slumber by a stiff breeze.

And outside of the camp, the robot stood, a stark white against the gray of the frozen ground and the black of the gates.

I have wondered many times about who I was before the crash. Who I had stolen a body from. What the robot was doing there. Why I was being 'escorted', according to the robot.

That didn't matter now, in the next chapter of my life. I flipped to footage of me frantically trying to negotiate my usefulness.

I flipped to a particularly important video clip, one that contained events which saved my life.

"No, no, no, don't throw me in with the aliens!" I shouted from behind the robot, which was taking up an unarmed combat stance against the soldiers running the camp. "I can be useful! I can… I can… I can fix that crane!"

"You? Your weak ass? You had to get carried in by the robot!"

"I'm four years old… I think…" I muttered. "Anyways, can somebody get me a toolbox?"

"Wait, he's serious?"

"I mean, it's already broken."

In the video, I saw the robot lift me up precariously as I looked at the "alien" miners looking at my small figure in confusion and astonishment. I looked at the crowd, determined to never join their ranks, and applied my six years of college and graduate school combined to solve… a simple problem with the lubrication.

Of course, I pretended that there was some big problem that I had to fix to exaggerate my usefulness,but in the end, I was given a shed.

The next clip was more… of a compilation. It was logged under "dangerous incidents" in the robot's friend or foe protocol.

The miners and I held a… very different worldview. I understood their laboring ways, considering my parents in my original dimension were farmers. However, what I didn't understand was the murderous rage in their eyes when they saw me, in particular.

But then, I understood.

I was not replaceable to the staff. They were replaceable. Viewed somehow inferior.

Why did a random child that arrived at camp have more value than them? Was able to be treated better? Was it just because I was a human and they were a faunus?

This probably amplified the conflict. And it made me realize something.

If the faunus had won the war, they would probably be doing the same thing to humans. Enslaving them and putting them into the mines. Everybody in this world was evil and utilitarian, no matter which side they were on. Everybody was the same, no matter which side of the line they stood on.

If they could hit another on the back of the head with a pickaxe for food, or attack a child out of mere jealousy, then did that really make them… humane?

Using that word in that context made me a bit confused, given the fact that none of them were human in the first place.

I stared blankly at the ambush attempts, the infamous jackhammer bomb attempt that gave me an unstable dust bomb instead of a broken jackhammer to fix, and the many, many times rocks were thrown at me.

"I really need to get out of this place…" I muttered.

The robot was tapping me on the shoulder, driving me out of my musings.

"Client. An anomaly has been detected on the footage you have ordered me to scan."

"Really?" I said, shaking myself from that very strange dream. I took a sip of hot water, tried not to spit out the usually brackish water that we were all given by management, and looked at the computer.

"The anomaly is located right about then. There is a flash of gray that repeats itself every five minutes. My pattern recognition software installed by you, the client, has indicated that this is a computer glitch and not a natural occurance.

"So… it isn't a glitch…" I muttered. "Management told me that there was a glitch where the cameras wouldn't record new information… but it's just looping footage, I guess."

"Looping footage has not been defined in my database. Would you like to add the term to my dictionary, client?"

"I don't think those movies exist here." I muttered. "But if some people really are getting out of this camp and evading the security cameras… Then maybe I can leave this place too!"

Suddenly, this whole 'security camera' deal just got a lot more personal.

Hey there, SpiritOfErebus here, returning from the crossover lands and back with another new fic nobody asked for! If you liked this rewrite of an OC fic, then leave a follow or something to show your support! Reviews are also very welcome!

Discord link: discord . gg / 9t9MK3jHmV

Thank you for reading, and see you next time, which will hopefully be soon.

-SpiritOfErebus