//------------------------------//
// Chapter 40 REVISED 
// Story: A Journey Unthought Of 
// by Hustlin Tom 
//------------------------------//

I shook my head a little to dispel the last bits of pain that lingered in my entire left side.  I rolled my head over to take a look at my brand new appendage as I began to sit up.  It looked sleek, but wasn't flashy.  I could see the plates and the gaps between them, but there weren't any obvious screw holes that held it all together.  I was also amazed to see that there was no obvious seal or scars from the procedure or even a trickle of blood.  I reflexively twitched my fingers, drumming them midair, before closing my new hand into an experimental fist.  

"Come on," the Doctor said quietly as he gave me a hand, "Up you get!"  

I then began to notice some peculiar circular patterns  that were placed at the elbow, wrist, and second knuckle.  Each of them began to softly glow with a dim grey light before they went dark once again.  

"That augmentation was a prototype, the last device ever made by humanity," the Maiden said as Lyra drew close and also began to marvel at my strange new arm, "While other species do directly manipulate Tessaractal power through their metabolism we hadn't yet found a way to apply those benefits to ourselves.  This was a proof of concept to show that the mind and nervous system could stimulate those particles, even if humans couldn't do it organically."  Once again her voice filled with anger, "Discord put a stop to all that."  

Lyra's body began to move towards the exit even as she tried to keep looking over at the arm, "Hey, hold up!  Can't I still use my own legs for Celestia's sake?"  

"This was just the first step," the Maiden said as she walked to the med-bay doors, and we jogged after her, "The Dominion Gauntlet is going to help us produce the power source we need, and time is running short."  

Huh, I thought to myself, So there's the ulterior motive: not a negative one per se, but we could have at least talked it over a little more first.  

"So I can do magic now," I exclaimed as we lightly ran after the now cantering Maiden.  

"Absolutely," she replied, to which Lyra balked, "Woah, woah, woah!  Hold on.  Magic isn't just something you can wing, even for unicorns!  It takes years of practice and proper exercise to even understand the most basic of concepts and spells.  Whatever you think you're doing is bound to be way beyond anything he, I, or any other unicorn could possible hope to do!"  

"You are now both conduits," she replied, " 'Magic' is simply another form of energy: it's just a matter of applying the energy at the right place and time."  

Lyra began to mutter how much she disagreed when we arrived at what looked like a glass paneled overlook.  Beneath us I was amazed to see an enormous open area full of overgrown trees, almost a whole forest canopy surrounded by metal on all four sides.  

"How-" I tried to ask.  

"Oxygen factory," the Doctor said as we slid to a stop in front of an open elevator the right of the gigantic panel of protective glass, "Let's get back onto the more interesting subject: Maiden, what's your relationship with Discord and the Royal Sisters?" The panels slid open, and we stepped into the compartment.  Softly we began to descend, the box or whatever that was steadying our 'fall' produced zero sound.

"I was one of the junior geneticists in the equine species division.  I was one of the students of Dr. Zacherle, the original scientist who discovered their sapience.  It was under her tutelage that I truly came to see just how intelligent the various subspecies we humans had created were, and how the treatment they were receiving was unforgivable.  Inspired and convicted by her teachings, I did what I could to make their lives easier, but it simply wasn't enough to ease my conscience.  I was able to remove two infant fillies from experimentation without being noticed.  They were so young then, they inevitably imprinted on me, and they-" She stopped, and I saw tears form in Lyra's eyes, "And they became like my own children.  My little Dawn and Dusk."  Her voice returned to it's normal tone from the wavering state it had been in, "Around this time Scientist High Command began to push even further past the ethical boundaries we had already lain waste to.  They wanted to truly try something previously unachieved: the creation of life from pure Tessaractal energy.  I and several others were against it, but we were overruled, and out of that idea Discord was born."  

"So all that talk he gave about being the universe itself and all it's power was a load of horse apples," Lyra asked as we neared the tree canopy's top, to then drop below it into the darkness beyond.  Soft lights in the tube gave us some illumination, but only just enough.  

"I never liked him.  He seemed innocuous at first to some, but I never gave him the benefit of the doubt.  He was an insult to all true life; abominable.  It seemed random to most when he chose to rise up and tear us apart, but I felt he always hated us, even feared us.  We could make sense of his madness at any level with time; we had him quantified and understood, and that's why we had to go: because we could beat him at his own game, and he was a very sore loser.  I can't even explain it now, but I felt I acted in time only because some voice of intuition told me.  Even as Discord was exterminating everyone on board a colleague and I took Dawn and Dusk and gave them numerous mutations and an enormous dose of Tessaractal energy.  It changed them forever, gave them power unimaginable, but their entire bodies were rewritten, down to the cellular level."  The doors opened as we hit the 'ground' floor: the trees on our right, and a long hallway to our left.  Lyra's hoof came up to her eyes to remove the tears reappearing there, "When they looked at me...they didn't know me.  They'd forgotten."  

"They regenerated," the Doctor murmured.  When we looked at him to explain he spoke a little louder, "It makes sense: if they were changed on a cellular level it basically reformatted their brains, including long and short-term memory.  I've, ah, seen it before a few times."  

"I haven't thought of these things in over fourteen-hundred years," the Maiden said as Lyra sympathetically sniveled for her, "I'd almost forgotten how deep I'd buried them."  

"Fourteen-hundred years," I said in surprise before glancing at the Doctor, and then unconsciously leaned in to look down at her, "What year is it now?"  

"It's 3783 A.D."

I looked at the Doctor again, who just shrugged at me.  I too ended up shrugging and rolling my eyes, "Why should I even bother being surprised with any of this at this point?  Really though, you've been...'you' I guess for a millennia and a half?"  

"Millennium," she corrected, and then turned and galloped off, shouting over her shoulder, "and yes, I have.  Now let's not waste any more time!  We need to get to the Tessaractal Battery Chamber."  

"Magic batteries," I muttered as we ran after her, "Really, what else would it be at this point?"  

The room she eventually brought us to had a domed ceiling, massive amounts of cables running along the ceiling to route down into a hexagonal box.  Once again she brought Lyra's body over to a control panel near the container, and started bringing the ancient machine to life.  "Vanguard's standard power systems are run by a 6th generation Tokamak.  Aaaah, nuclear fusion generator," she added as she glanced at me, "While we could initially only store so much Tessaractal power from the source, eventually we discovered how to create receptacles for the exotic energy.  A good deal of our reserves have discharged into the nearby environment over the centuries, but we might just have enough to create a set with this Atom Forge."  She pointed to me for a moment and then looked back at the box, "Where you come in is that they need an initial surge of energy to become correctly imprinted."  

"Like when a rechargeable battery is made," the Doctor explained to me.  

"Is anyone here going to ask advice from the pony who has daily experience with magic," Lyra blurted in frustration to get all of our attention, "He's not going to be able to do this.  He has. No. Training!  He could hurt us or himself assuming he can do anything at all, and I probably can’t take what you want either; I don't have the reserves for it!  If we had someone powerful like Twilight or one of the Princesses maybe, but neither of us are good enough for this."  

I looked to the Maiden and the Doctor in turn, "She kind of has a point.  I get this is all for saving the world and that time is of the essence, but shouldn't we get someone more qualified?"  

Lyra stiffened as the Maiden's voice returned, "While more likely than not your kind has intuitively come to understand some of the principles of Tessaractal energy, we understand it as pure science.  Adam's Gauntlet acts as a conductive rod, absorbing the ambient energy around us.  There is no real caloric loss or threat of exhaustion: he will be fine."  

"Sure, I might be," I said as I lifted my left arm up and pointed at the metal, "but this is a prototype.  What if it backfires and hurts them like Lyra said?"  

"A prototype is perfectly functional in its form and execution," the Doctor offered, "It just means it might have needed a little tweaking to be just right.  It'll run fine, I'm sure."  

"Just a few hours ago you said you didn't want to use magic at all," I fired back in frustration.  

"That was because in my mind it was untested.  Now that it's been independently verified by a second source I have no problem with it at all.  The burden of choice is on you now, Adam."  

I looked to the Doctor, and then to the Maiden.  He seemed so sure of himself, and she was a scientist.  I looked into Lyra's eyes, ignoring the light shimmering haze around her coat.  She silently shook her head.  I wanted to trust them all in a sense, but I just wasn't ultimately sure of what to do.  It was killing me that I didn't know who to defer to.  With the few moments I had I made my choice.  

"I'll give it one try," I said firmly, "but if that doesn't work, I'm done: we get somepony else."  

"Adam, this isn't a good idea," Lyra said with a pleading tone in her voice as she began to take a step towards me, but her upraised hoof stopped in midair and then returned to the ground as her body turned back towards the console, "Hey!  Let go of me!  Give me back my legs!"  

"He has already made his decision," the Maiden replied, "We need to start now."  

I knew that I had ultimately agreed with her on this one chance, but I did not at all like how the Maiden was treating my friend.  I took a step forward and balled my fists, and something just sort of clicked.  The Dominion Gauntlet thrummed to life, each of the nodes glowing with a grey light.  A field with the same color surrounded Lyra's coat, vibrated intensely, and the Maiden's yellow-green points of light became visible once again.  The field grew out and away from Lyra's body, and bewildered she looked up at the light show above her with a turn of her head this way and that before looking at me.  The Doctor too also looked in surprise at the display.  Alarmed when I realized what I had done, whatever connection that keep the action going suddenly dropped, and the grey light disappeared in an instant.  The Maiden's particles fidgeted and flickered for a moment before they gathered together to form just her head above Lyra, and her expression was one of shock.  

With a quick exhale I pointed a finger on my new arm at her and she flinched a little, "Look.  You're smart and you're anxious.  I get that, but if you lay even one finger on her in a way she doesn't like, I will find a way to make this thing rip you apart," I then pointed to the hexagonal box, "Now let's get to work, alright?"  

The Maiden silently nodded before her image dispelled gently back over Lyra.  I glanced over at the Doctor, and saw him withdraw his empty hand from his suit coat pocket.  He seemed to be staring at me just as intently as I had at the Maiden.  When I realized what he had been moments away from doing, I gently let my palms fall open and my hands to my sides.  He gave a slight nod at my doing that.  

"I'm injecting the crystalline assemblers now," the Maiden said with the same calmness as I had heard when I'd met her yesterday, "Once the metallic structure turns to liquid, aim at the batteries and give them a quick pulse of energy.  I will give you a verbal signal."  

"Got it," I said as I took a step back and raised my left arm up a bit in preparation.  

"Clear your mind Adam," Lyra offered even as her hooves began to hunt and peck for buttons, "And really believe you can do this."  

"Talking out of both sides of your mouth, are we teacher," I said with a slight upturned smile.  

"Well it's not like you listened to me anyway," she said in exasperation, "So just pretend like what I said earlier doesn't count, not that you'd bother paying attention to what I tell you."  

Silvery metal began to slowly ooze out of the glass box's ceiling through a few holes that had opened there and then began to arch and grow towards the center like the roots of a tree almost.  

"Can you two leave your spat until after the procedure is done," the Doctor snapped as the metal began to organize itself into a six rectangular blocks, "This sort of requires his full attention if we're going to get this right!"  

The metal rectangles had taken their general shape, but we could also see that their shape had become irregular as random portions seemed to either reshape themselves throughout the basic area of the battery to be, or shuffle around, in, out, and inside of each other.  Segmented lines began to form through the shapes and bright lights shown through as the constructive material began to crack around the creations at their core.  The root-like structures began to slowly sink and dissolve to the box's bottom, their substance turning to liquid as the Maiden had warned me.  What remained were six immaculate crystals, pearlescent white in their sheen.  

"Wait a minute," Lyra said as she looked up in wonder, but the Maiden interrupted her, "Do it now!"  

I didn't catch what Lyra had said until I had already tried to cast again.  I didn't know if I could do it, but I had to try.  Would I really be able to though?  The nodes on my arm once again began to light up, but remained very dim by comparison to what they had been before.  "No, no, no," I said under my breath as I watched the light begin to die, and I unconsciously began to run to the glass chamber, thinking I could somehow toss the magic into the box by putting it close like throwing kindling into a firepit.  I thrust my left arm towards the gems, trying to get any flicker of the magic embers to pass through to them, get some, no ANY kind of charge.  It was just as my metal hand came in contact with the glass that I heard a chorus of different phrases telling me to stop, but it was only afterwards that I truly realized what I was doing.  It was too late.  My outstretched palm struck the glass, creating a spiderweb of cracks in the shielding surrounding the liquid metal and the pedestaled gems.  A solitary spark of magic was all that remained of what I had tried to create, and it traveled right through the crack, reflecting onto the goo below instead of the intended recipients above.  It began to sizzle, leaping into the air like it were grease leaping out of a fire, only to suddenly freeze midair, vibrate and tremble, and then fall back down into the mass.  

"Oooooh, nooooo," I said as I began to back away slowly.  

An alarm began to sound.  It was once we heard the grinding sound that we looked to the door, only to see it sliding closed.  The Doctor rushed over to it, grabbing onto the indented patterns in the door to try and keep it open.  He was able to slow it, but by the time we had bolted over to him the door had sealed shut anyway.  Several simultaneous thuds came from within it just after it had done so.  He quickly fetched his screwdriver from his coat pocket and pointed it at the door panel.  No response came from it at all.  

"Aaah," he yelled out in frustration, "Deadlocked, and the one time I would absolutely need to use the blasted thing!"  

"It's sealed shut," Lyra asked, "but you can't do anything?  I thought that was like your magic wand!"  

"It doesn't work on deadlocked devices or wood," he said in agitation as he looked around the rest of the chamber, "I wasn't too concerned about the wood until your fun with timberwolves, and now I get stuck because of human thickness!"  

"You told me I could do it," I yelled at him and then pointed to Lyra's chest, where I now saw the Maiden raising away from her body to return to her independent ghostly form, "And you said magic was no different than electricity or whatever!"  

"And I told all of you that this was a bad idea," Lyra shouted back, "but nobody wanted to listen to the unicorn, whose entire trick and trade is MAGIC."  

"Everyone quiet down," the Maiden interrupted our shouting and blaming match to point at the chamber, "We have a bigger problem to deal with."  The metal goo had begun to turn a sickly pale yellow and copper color in the glass box, but we began to see that it was now seeping underneath the glass itself, gently oozing its way to the floor, where it began pooling at the floor; the mass there was somehow larger than what had been in the box.  "The surge you let loose into the nanites must have accidentally activated their decomposition function," she said, "They're permanently haywire.  If we can't find a way out of here soon one of two things is going to kill all of us: the nanites melting us, or the nanite countermeasure; a room full of high frequency microwaves."  

The Doctor began to scan around the room with his screwdriver: the ceiling, floor, and everywhere, "How much time until that kicks in?"  

"The safety system is adaptive based on threat level, but I'd say at minimum twenty-five seconds now."  

"Grates or other access points," I heard the Doctor ask, but my attention was focused on Lyra.  She was unbelievably scared, her back to the wall.  

"I'm so sorry," I said with tears forming in my eyes, as I glanced back at the copper-like sludge drawing closer, "I'm sorry we're about to die because of my idiot mistake."  

The Maiden drew some energy from the air, light glowing at the center of her mass, and a small laser began to draw intricate trenches into which the nanites would flow, buying time from them but not the microwaves.  

Lyra looked up at me with a stern face, "If we get out of this, with what little time the world has left I'm making sure I teach you magic.  We should have just had one of the Princesses handle this."  

Suddenly another night's memories came back to me, and I realized there yet may be a way out of this nightmare.  With everything I had I began to scream out in my thoughts, Luna I need you!  Help me!  Please help!  We're all going to die!  PLEASE HELP US!  SOMEONE HELP US.  WE NEED YOU.  YOU PROMISED.  YOU PROMISED.  

"The magnetrons are cycling up," the Maiden said, "We have fifteen seconds."  

The Doctor looked back to us as he stood close to the wall now, "I don't know if there's a way out of this.  I...This doesn't happen."  

I banged my head on the wall, and then banged it a second time.  At the third time my eyes which had been shut flew open and I yelled to the ceiling, "LUNAAAAAAA!"  As I was about to bring back my head for a fourth and final pound against the wall, the Doctor's eyes were filled with horror.  A light filled the room, and we were all consumed by its brightness.