Memory Bank

by Pen and Paper

Chapter 1

WinterPetalBday6.vdo
I am her father and I am proud and tired as she blows out the candle on the cupcake that cost me two day’s wage in the dark of my coffin of an apartment. When I ask her what she wished for she only says “wings” and turns her back to me to show me the corroded remains of limbs that used to make me believe in angels now eaten by oxidization and poverty and my baby smiles a smile at me that breaks my heart into—

No. Next.

Stimstimstimfuckkya.vdo
Huffing red hot circuit-burning zazz and she’s grinding her flank on me and the music is drilling into my sensors and Chrome Horn is trying to call through InnerWave but fuck her for jacking up my compressors last week fuck that bitch she can come find me in the club if—

No. God, no.

LakeTime.vdo
The water is so still that it looks like it climbs through the smog directly to the clouds. It’s poetry, I tell you. The longer I stare at it, the more I can’t shake the feeling that I might be standing upside down. Pure poetry.

As much as I wish it were mine, it’s not. It doesn’t fit. Move on, move on. Keep searching because the fragments of the last six months mean more to me than everything else I’ve lost. I cannot go back to that loneliness.

FIFTYFIFTYGOODBYE.vdo
The balcony of the casino is 112 stories up and will surely kill me if I jump. My coin is a worthless artifact reminiscent of a time of castles and princes. Tonight, it is my arbiter, my god, and its decision will see me lay my head on pillow or pavement and when I toss him into the air he disappears briefly into the clouds that are fed poison from the factories, their smokestacks connecting like vile umbilical cords. I catch the glint once, twice before it falls back into my hoof with the cold clink of metal on metal.

I look at the answer and tilt my hoof to let my decider tumble through the air. There’s a lurch in my organ holder as I tilt forward to chase it and to the poor fuck at Cerebank who has to review this footage I’m sorry—

The lurching feeling follows me out of the VDO and ends up on the cracked tile floor of my living space, dribbling down the chrome on my chin. I want to close my eyes, but I know the images are going to remain for at least three minutes after ripping myself out of the net that fast.

So I stare at the floor and the pattern my stomach contents have made on it for three minutes, breathing shallow, hopeless breaths. Mute all notifications except Cerebank, try to find myself in a single beat of silence which, like always, is broken by sirens or nattering ad drones or the colts on the floor above crying to their overworked father who begs them to stop talking. The best I can do is take my eyes away from the floor, which means I will come face to face with the mirror to stare at a mare who has forgotten so much of herself.

I know my name is Twilight Sparkle, and that I am one of the lucky ones. I know I have a family, an old life to fall back on. I know I used to be comfortable being alone.

Back when I lived in the heart of New Canterlot, I spent my days scouring the Center of Hippology’s collection of ancient technology—SSDs, flash sticks, hard drives. I was content to cower in rooms that smelled like organized dust, sifting through archaic files of ponies who were alive long before this era of wastelands and neon sleeplessness. My life was dedicated to ghosts. The pain of solitude was anesthetized only by my ignorance.

These are the last solid memories I have before the erasure.

I check for anything from Cerebank. It’s the same as usual. Apologies, promises, discounts.

I need to get out of here, away from this room where the pain of seclusion echoes in the empty parts of me. I step over the pile of vomit and out the door, into the night of this city that I barely even remember.

***

I pass gutter clubs that are infested with dealers much in the way piles of dung are infested with flies. They offer krash and zazz and bluescreen and lie when they tell me that their strains help bypass self-system locks and extend battery life. One of them, a stallion with an ocular augmentation and a grafted beak, calls me a stiff bitch when I tell them they’re going to get someone killed.

Not like anyone's going to be at their funeral anyway, he says, and the rest of them laugh.

His lackadaisical attitude bothers me more than the illicit substances. Against my better judgment, I want to argue with him, but InnerWave rings in my head informing me my father is calling and that I don’t have a damn bit of progress to share with him to justify just what the hell I’m doing here. The stallion shouts another obscenity before I’m out of earshot.

Hi, dad.

Sweetheart, it looks dark. Are you outside?

I’m safe.

Okay. I found more pictures of the family. They’re in good condition. Do you want me to upload them?

Yes.

Look at your brother in this one. What a circuit!

He is, yeah. Where did you find these?

Old brainmask I backed up ages ago.

I didn’t know you still had one of those. I’m pretty sure we have one in the hippology museum wing.

Don’t go making me feel old.

Didn’t you just get new cooling fans last week? They’re probably better than mine.

They’re amazing. I wish you could be here to run your little tests.

I will next time I get over there.

When is next time going to be?

I don’t know.

Twilight.

I don’t know, dad.

Have you found anything yet? Anything at all?

No.

Twilight god dammit.

Stop.

Even you have to realize how insane this is. How long do you think you actually knew those girls? Things aren’t calming down over here. We’ve waited six months for the Cloudsdale backup and haven’t gotten a damn thing.

Dad, there is no backup.

You don’t know that.

I don’t need to know to be right.

Twilight, how much of you do you think they remember? A word? A laugh? They’d be lucky just to get the color of your chrome right.

Do you remember me being born?

What?

I said do you still have the original memory files from when I was born.

I—no. No, I don’t.

Some things are worth looking for.

I do want to look for them, but nobody’s crazy enough to bridge the net right now. Divers are getting fried left and right if they aren’t just scammers to begin with.

I heard.

Twilight, you aren’t bridging, are you?

I have to go. I love you.

Baby, it’s not worth it. Please don’t—

Mute signal. Keep walking. Stop in the middle of a street I should remember, but do not.

I remember there were six of us. One of them had laughter that pounced on you. One of them said she’d never had a dream in her entire life. One of them always fiddled with a small bit of pure iron that once belonged to her parents.

One of them loved me.

I have scraped through every corrupted data pack I have to piece together milliseconds of happiness. They make me cry more often than I smile now. Each passing month tips the scales from determination to torture.

What am I doing, God, what am I doing? Are they even looking for me? Are they wandering the streets now, too, chasing these embers of recollection? I’ve never been one to cling to a painful thing, but I have dug my hooves into this with a death grip. And for what?

So I can let these hollow nothings gnaw at my sanity for the next year? Five years? Decades? How could I even begin to calculate the probability of finding my own data packets among the petabytes scattered over the net?

I should let go. I should go home, back to my family, back to a safer place. Take these morsels of memory and release them into the aether. Demolish it all and build again. Count on a miracle to bring us all back together. Accept that it was apparently good while it lasted.

Open systems. Data finder. Users. Twilightsparkle_001. Cerabank. Corrupted. Select files. Delete.

The word is stamped in front of my eyes, tempting a thought out of me to follow through. Like this city, I am on the brink of either twisted freedom or morbid destruction, and I cannot tell anymore.

God dammit, God dammit, yes or no, yes or no?

I watch the VDOs over and over and over again until I’m sobbing half with nostalgia, half with hopelessness.

It asks if I’m sure I want to delete these files, and before I can answer the thick taste of smoke rolls over me, clogging my chest. It’s a different kind of smoke than the one from the factories and the safety protocol tankers that chug along the streets. It reeks of the burning of ordinary things—tires, clothes, junkyard rubbish. The sound of jeering and shouting pushes through the air, rivaling against megaphones screaming for compliance and submission. Sirens join the maddening choir. Two, then four, then so many I lose count.

Unmute notifications only to be bombarded with warnings and demands for rioters to cease their actions. Anyone outside within the proximity will be labeled as a co-conspirator and lose deniability rights. Another notification chirps to remind me not to respond suspiciously or with force should I run into an officer.

I’m rewinding my aimless trotting in my head to find the path back home when something rustles in the alleyway. I put my hooves up, prepared to surrender when two stallions stumble into the street, collapsing under the light of a flickering lamp. One of them, an earth pony with a blazing red hull and a shock of yellow mane lays there breathing hard. The other one, a green pegasus, does not move. The earth pony pushes himself to sit up, rocking the pegasus gently with a hoof. I push closer, cautious as he prods his partner.

Bud, you alright? Get up, man. Hey, hey, we’re out. Hey.

What happened to him?

Central police fucked us, that’s what fucking happened to him. They had M-wave units. Bud, get up.

I thought those were military-grade.

They are. They’re using Goddamn M-waves on ponies who just want a backup. Hey, bud, show me a light, man. Time to reboot. Get up.

He’s not moving. Who is he?

I don’t fucking know, just one of us. Help me dammit.

Open him for a scan. I’ll see if—

Don’t. He’s blank. Bud get up.

He had everything in Cerabank?

Yes, now help me God dammit, help me.

I watch this stallion laid out on the sidewalk, frozen by another wave of nausea that’s making my head spin. His wings are a beautiful, clean blue that catches the fluttering gold of the streetlight. His shape is molded perfectly to fit the aerodynamics needed for low-orbit flight and tight turns. An acrobat, most likely, but he doesn’t remember that. He was one of many who entrusted Cerabank with everything, too poor to back up their memories on a personal storage device and too scared of a brain ransom to risk keeping their own VDOs safe.

And now he’s here, dying more anonymously than livestock.

I’m sorry. I need to find them. I have to. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

Get back here and help me you—

I don’t hear what he says. I’m already galloping back home, back to my apartment that still smells of vomit. Back to the corner of my room where I will plug myself in and bridge to the net, move abstractly through the pollution of corrupted memories that have scattered themselves over the net, sift through them one by one until I either find the ones that feel like my own or waste away in my bed because I realize now that I’d rather be dead than forget the things that make me feel whole.

A metamorphosis only has one direction.

Move on, move on. Keep searching. Keep looking. Keep hope alive.

I will find them.

I have to.

Author's Note:

Written for the 2024 Science Fiction Contest.

Comments

[TheUrbanMoose]

I'm loving the vibe of this story! Keep up the good work, my brony!!

[Sparklight]

Brohoof, choom

[Mockingbirb]

Nice.

Also, is this 'good pony cyberpunk,' or 'really, really good pony cyberpunk?' Still deciding.

Sorry I'm not more articulate right now. Maybe when I have more free time.

[FoolAmongTheStars]

My only complaint is that this story is too short, otherwise everything is amazing. The setting is bleak, interesting, and begs to be explored, Twilight's plight makes me want to see how it ends. But for what it is, it's a solid short story, keep it up!

[Bandy]

A metamorphosis only has one direction.

What a line!!! There's a lot of great worldbuilding beneath the surface. This is the kind of multi-layered story I really enjoy returning to. It's got an engaging plot with a ton of meat beneath. Great job!

[semillon]

FUCKING PREEM

HOW ARE YOU ONE OF THE BEST WRITERS I'VE EVER MET WAIT I KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT IT'S BECAUSE YOU'RE FUCKING AWESOME

CONCEPT ON POINT, PROSE IS CREME OF THE FUCKING CROP, STRUCTURE UNDEFEATABLE

WinterPetalBday6.vdo I am her father and I am proud and tired as she blows out the candle on the cupcake that cost me two day’s wage in the dark of my coffin of an apartment. When I ask her what she wished for she only says “wings” and turns her back to me to show me the corroded remains of limbs that used to make me believe in angels now eaten by oxidization and poverty and my baby smiles a smile at me that breaks my heart into—

SUCH AN INSANE FIRST SENTENCE AND YOU DO THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS SO INCREDIBLY WELL

LOVE YA POOKIE GOOD LUCK WITH THE CONTEST

[The Hat Man]

Hey there, Papers!

Well, building off my private comments earlier, here's my public review!

What I like about this is how well it capitalizes on the concept introduced more in the description but is otherwise kept in the background. The story is strange and abstract, but the prose hits those good notes and creates some powerful emotions, particularly the sense of loss (and being lost). Folks are really digging the "cyberpunk" vibe, and I agree with them.

I'd say you've got a real gem here, Papers!

[GaPJaxie]

This is pure cyberpunk, chummer. Excellent minimalist worldbuilding, strikes the perfect tone of high tech, low life. I know you wrote this in a rush and would love to see a longer version, but what's there is great.