Down
The door slid shut behind me - or, rather, the doorframe. Every single piece of glass in the irregularly-shaped building had shattered, including the floor-to-ceiling windows lining the ground floor. I wondered how much glass had broken when the megaspells hit, and how much had broken as the result of vandalism since. I felt strangely hurt by the thought, as if the windows in my old place of work being smashed was somehow an attack on me personally.
I kept my eyes down, watching my hooves. Once I made it past the worst of the shards, I glanced back over my shoulder. From where she was stood in the parking lot outside, Spiral gave me what might've been intended as an encouraging smile. The Steel Rangers only stared at me impassively. At least, I assumed they were staring impassively - I couldn't see their faces. Truthfully, I learned nothing from that glance.
Getting to the Pendulum building had proven challenging. The Rangers had escorted us past their barricades and fended off the never-ending trickle of ghouls, relying on the enhanced strength of their armour to kill them rather than their weaponry - gunshots would just draw even more of them to us. Suffice to say, seeing more of those creatures had proven... disquieting for me.
I swallowed and approached the elevators. The heavy doors, once polished mirrors - I'd hated that, seeing my reflection each morning right after the commute - were now scarred and blackened. They'd opened in eerie silence whenever a pony got close enough - now they opened with a screech, like hooves on a chalkboard. I glanced over my shoulder again before stepping into the elevator.
The moment the doors finished screeching shut, the voice spoke.
"Hello Backlight."
It was a flat tone, and I was already on edge, so it didn't exactly startle me. It did, however, really creep me out. "Uhhh... who's there?" I asked, looking first at the speaker the voice had come from, then around the elevator. Mirrors on all four sides, and the roof. I still hadn't pressed a button - although, to be fair, I hadn't exactly worked out which floor I needed to visit first.
"Guess," the voice replied after a moment.
"Uhh..." I didn't know. How was I supposed to know? "Do I... know you?"
Another moment of silence. "You don't know me. You know of me. I know of you. At least now I do. I've been expecting you. I wasn't sure if you would make it. But you did. And now we can talk." The voice was male, faltering, slightly distorted. It spoke like it kept forgetting how words sounded mid-sentence.
"...Are you trying to be creepy?"
Pause. "That's funny." Pause. "No. I'm not. This is the best I can do."
"Okay. Can we, uh, not- not talk like this? I mean, can we talk face-to-face?"
I didn't like how I'd worded the sentiment. I was starting to get an idea of the shape, if not the identity, of this pony I supposedly already knew of. "I'm afraid that won't be possible," came the most ominous response possible.
"...Riiight." There were a lot of buttons on the keypad, and I didn't know where to start. "Listen, I guess I need your help. You know the Steel Rangers outside?"
"Yes. I have access to most of the government's security cameras in this city. It did not seem as if you wanted to be with them. Likewise for the mare. But she used to be one of them."
"Right." There must've been a camera in the elevator, but I had no idea where. There wasn't any point facing the speaker, so I found myself looking at my own reflection.
It was intimidating that he'd gleaned so much information from camera feeds. I was pretty sure that security cameras didn't pick up audio, so... unless he could lip-read...
It seemed to imply that he'd seen Spiral before I'd even woken up, with the Rangers, and was recognising her from then. Granted, I wasn't sure what the living population of Skyward was... but that level of attention to detail bordered on omniscient, at least to me, and the disembodied voice sold that effect.
"Look..." I started. "They want to get in here. They've... threatened us, and I need to get them into this building. Turn off the security."
"I can help you. But you need to do something for me in return." Of course I did. "There's some maintenance required in the sub-basement. It won't take more than a few minutes."
"Sub-basement?" I'd never heard of any sub-basement.
The speaker was silent for a moment. "Yes."
I sighed, adjusted my saddlebags, and hovered a hoof over the button labelled 'B'. "This one?"
"Yes."
I pressed the button. My chest tightened as the floor lurched downwards. It seemed that the intervening centuries since I'd last used the elevator had caused it to degrade, because it was moving at a snail's pace.
As I descended, I looked up at the roof, at the version of myself standing on the ceiling. "So, are you going to tell me who you are, or not?"
"Yes. I used to be Noteworthy."
"Oh," I said. "So you're my boss, in a way."
"Your contract has unfortunately expired." The voice pauses, and I wonder if there's a joke there, obscured by the mechanical intonation.
"So if you used to be in charge of Pendulum - does that mean you know about Site Two?"
"Yes. It was an independent project. Separate from our Ministry contracts. It was designed to place a cohort of trusted individuals into suspended animation."
"Something went wrong," I said. "Everyone was dead. And I think I woke up with amnesia."
"It was impossible to test the system for long-term use. Firewall and I were trying to outlast the inevitable. The fact that you are here at all is a testament to our success."
"No," I frowned. "That's- that's not right. The pony across from me was dead. Most of the facility was buried. That's not a success."
"You would be dead if not for Site Two. Immeasurable resources were expended on the project. You were the result. Be glad of it. Most ponies were killed by the very same megaspells that caused Site Two's collapse in the first place."
"I don't understand. If you knew about the megaspells, you should've built the place to survive them!"
"We did not learn of the megaspells until the rest of Equestria did. We had predicted that the war would escalate towards cataclysmic losses. We did not know the exact mechanism by which this would occur. We anticipated a biological weapon as the most likely candidate."
"Why didn't you try and work it out?" I asked, but the question felt hollow, like I already knew the answer. "Why didn't you do anything?"
"You speak as though you played no part in what happened. We were all complicit in Equestria's destruction. We thought we were entitled to this world. We had a vision for our world. We changed the world. The world is no more."
"No, it's still out there," I shrugged. "Different, but it's still there."
"It is not. You should know this better than almost anyone. We wanted the world the way we wanted it. None of us wanted this."
His way of speaking made him hard to listen to. Before I could reply, the elevator screeched to a stop and the doors opened.
Before me, beyond the faint circle of light cast from the elevator, was pitch darkness. "Can we get the lights on?" I asked, heart thudding in my chest, wishing Spiral was there with me. She had a flashlight spell. I didn't like being alone.
"I did not realise the lights were not already on. The cameras-"
The rest of the-thing-that-was-once-Noteworthy's words were drowned out by a screech of metal, as the space before me was illuminated in blood red light. I raised a hoof to shield my eyes from the beam, stepping to the back of the elevator.
I caught a glimpse of a wide, open concrete space, not unlike the testing tracks where I used to work. I saw black lumps on the floor, sitting in the middle of dark patches of concrete. In the middle of the room, I saw a hulking monster. I slammed one of the elevator buttons without looking, and the thing shining the light at me started whirring. The doors closed and the floor began to rise, and then I heard gunfire. A hole was punched clean through the very bottom of the door.
"-so sorry," I heard the voice saying. "I hope you are not hurt. I believed the Sentinel to have been deactivated by the Ministry of Morale operatives who breached the headquarters on the day the megaspells fired."
The doors slid open again, and I jumped. "Gah!" I stared out into the empty hallway, and collapsed onto my hindquarters.
"You have undoubtedly ascertained that the scope of my awareness over the facility is limited. This is what I am hoping you can fix for me."
I ignored the voice, instead tipping out my saddlebags. Out rolled all the tins of food, and out fell the lightning gun, but I ignored those, instead going for my shiny new canteen of clean water. The Steel Rangers had given it to me, and it was just like Spiral's. I took a long swig.
"It appears you have something of mine," said Noteworthy.
It took me a second to connect the statement to what I'd just done. "The lightning gun? It's yours?"
"It is a prototype EMP weapon. It was stolen from me by a factory owner. I assume that is where you found it. I am not sure why he wanted it. We paid for his services anyway. Factories in the area were in short supply. I regret this."
"Right," I said. Pieces were falling into place - the terminal, back at the office. That was the gun's doing. "It can kill the Sentinel," I realised aloud.
"This fascinates me. A wayward creation of mine has returned at precisely the moment when it is most needed. A symptom of Pendulum's failure will be its saviour."
"It doesn't have cells," I said, vaguely irritated by the voice's ramblings for reasons I couldn't quite put my hoof on. "There'll be some around here, probably, but that thing had a minigun on it. It'll kill me. I'm not going anywhere near it."
"You and I both know that you will. You believe in Pendulum Labs. You saw the good we did for Equestria firsthand. We can do good again. You have a chance here to change the world for the better. I also know that you are not as scared as you say. You have already survived multiple life-or-death situations. You will do this for me. You will do this for her."
"What makes you think you know me?" I said, thoroughly ticked off and wishing the voice had a face I could glare at. "We never met. Yeah, okay, you've got cameras, you've seen the stuff that's gone down. You haven't seen in my head. You don't know what I'm thinking."
Noteworthy was silent for a while. Eventually, he spoke again. "Please. I need you to do this for me. I have spent the last two centuries watching unfathomable tragedy unfold. I spent them knowing I could put it all right. I know you can do it."
I didn't reply, instead taking another drink from the canteen. I sat and thought about my situation, but all I could think about was Spiral. I hated that Noteworthy was right. Spiral had saved my life, multiple times, and I wasn't going to die for her - but even if she hadn't saved my life, I was beginning to suspect that I'd take significant risks for her. The kind of risks where, rationally, you know you stand a good chance of dying, but where your brain can't quite conceptualise the threat, can't quite internalise it. After all, I'd never died before.
I got up. "Where can I find some cells?" I asked.
Noteworthy gave me another floor number, and the elevator doors opened into a fairly large lobby. The main lights were off, but there were some other lamps dotted around the room which I supposed came on during emergencies, so I could see a couple of large turrets crouched on either side of a reception desk, and charging stations for sprite-bots positioned high on the walls. Using speakers in the room, Noteworthy directed me through the hallways to one of countless indistinguishable storecupboards, which had a shelf stocked full of boxes of the cells. I loaded the gun, discarding the spent cell, then dumped a few of the boxes into my saddlebags, wishing I could carry more. Then I walked back to the elevator, levitating the gun beside me. I pressed the button for the basement, and as the elevator descended I stared at the bullet hole in the door.
"Thank you," said Noteworthy.
The doors opened. It was dark again, but I ran out anyway, the dim light of my levitation spell creating a faint outline around the robot in the centre of the room. I pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, but there was no lightning, only the red light of the machine coming to life. It swivelled towards me, shining its spotlight at me, and to my horror I realised I was too far from the elevator to make it back in time.
So, acting on instinct, I rushed the thing, heading right for its wheeled legs as the minigun whirred up. There was a boom and a flash, and something whooshed through the air above my head, and it was only when I heard the explosion that I realised it was a missile. Then, suddenly, I was under it, and it was turning on the spot, trying to return me to its firing range. I realised there was a mount for a gun on the bottom of its metal body, right above me, and saw that it was torn and blackened. In fact, much of the machine was like that; clearly, it'd sustained a fair bit of damage in the fight Noteworthy had mentioned. If not for that, I would've been dead.
While doing my best to avoid being run over by the robot, I tried to work out what was wrong with the gun. I should've tested it before coming down, but the imminent danger meant I didn't have time to feel stupid. I swapped the cell for another from my saddlebags, spilling several on the floor in my haste, and tried to fire the gun again. Still nothing. It was only then that I saw a wire, flailing loose from the gun's casing. I split my telekinesis two ways, holding the wire separate from the gun, and took a closer look. In the guts of the gun, there was a contact which had solder on it, but nothing connected. The other end of the wire looked like it was connected to the trigger mechanism.
Testing the limits of my magical dexterity, I fed the wire back into the gun, pressing the end of it against the solder, twisting it around the contact, before pulling the trigger.
A bolt of lightning arced up towards the robot's casing, crackling over the metal, briefly blinding me. The thing went haywire, spinning in a circle around me and firing off missiles in all direction. The roar of the minigun was deafening, and it was all I could do to hunker down, screwing my eyes shut and pulling the trigger repeatedly.
Eventually, the flashes and the noise both stopped. The air was filled with dust and smoke and ozone. My ears rang. Slowly, I crawled out from under the machine, and I realised that its metal body was the only thing that had shielded me from being crushed beneath concrete.
I heard Noteworthy's voice, indistinct, and made my way towards it, picking my way over the rubble, seeing by the light of my horn. Was it brighter than before? My eyes stung.
"-did it. You did it." Even when I was right next to the tannoy, the voice was muted. "The door is through here. There is another hallway."
My heart sank at the thought of more obstacles. I tried to say something in reply, but my throat was raw.
"No more robots," said Noteworthy, as if he'd read my mind. "This has been surprisingly validating. Our upgraded Sentinel turned out to have survived an extremely dangerous altercation. The EMP gun was similarly more powerful than I knew. Think about this. It can be mass-produced. The wasteland is filled with old buildings guarded by robots. By Sentinels. They can be safely deactivated and reprogrammed. They can be used to protect ponies instead of ruins."
While he talked, I retrieved the canteen from my saddlebags and drank. Putting it away, I said, "Is that what you meant, when you talked about changing the world for the better?"
"No," said Noteworthy. "This is a stepping stone. The end goal is to achieve immortality for as many living ponies as possible."
"You know how to do that?" I asked. I'd been largely rolling with the fact that I was talking to somebody who claimed to be Noteworthy, because after all, I'd survived centuries beyond my expiry date. It seemed increasingly likely that he'd been conscious the entire time. "Have you just been stuck down here? You're immortal?"
"I am immortal in a sense. However my span of consciousness is finite. You will understand this shortly. We achieved immortality just once. I am the product of that. What I am describing will not have the same drawbacks."
"How?" I got up, and headed towards the door.
"My own knowledge of magic is limited. Ideally ponykind will devote its collective efforts towards discovering a more consistent version of the ghoulification process."
My blood ran cold as memories fought for space in my head. "You want to turn everyone into ghouls?"
"Yes and no. Not the feral ghouls you have encountered. Ghouls are usually perfectly sane. What you have witnessed is simply the effect of time upon them. I believe that this degradation can be prevented in the first place. Wear of the body can be mitigated using cybernetic enhancements. Wear of the mind can be mitigated using memory magic."
"But what if it doesn't work?" I press. "What if you make people into ghouls, and they... go feral?"
"I am confident that the solutions I have just described will work in the long term for the majority of ponies. Feral ghouls are not the threat you believe them to be. They are possessed of only rudimentary intelligence. I know of wartime research which may allow for the pacification of ghouls. Perhaps even control. Such research may be applied in the immediate future to neutralise the threat of the herds filling the city and beyond. The key point is that we have an ethical responsibility to prolong the lives of as many ponies as possible for as long as possible."
To say the least, I was sceptical that a pony who had by his own admission spent two centuries locked up in an abandoned lab with seemingly limited agency had cracked the secret of immortality. That didn't seem like the kind of doubt that was worth expressing, so I just trotted along the corridor in silence.
There was a desiccated corpse there - more than a skeleton, but it didn't particularly smell. I hadn't gotten close enough to any of the corpses in the main room to get a good look at them, but the corridor forced me to pass right by. Maybe it was just the lingering adrenaline in my system, but I felt nothing about it.
At the end of the corridor was a heavy metal door with a keypad next to it. At a glance I could see that it was a much more secure device than the one I'd bypassed at the factory, and for a second I was worried I'd have to hack it, but Noteworthy began reeling off a long combination. I struggled to keep up with him, but once the number had been entered, a light on the keypad flashed green, and the door slid open with a screech.
The room beyond was also dark, but hundreds of bright pinpricks teemed in the shadow. "The light switch is on your left," said Noteworthy. "This room operates on an uninterruptible power supply."
I found the switch - a heavy thing, more like a lever - and pulled it, and with a loud thunk the lights began flickering on.
The room was dominated by a very large machine. It consisted mostly of maneframes wired together, stacked atop one another, but there were a good number of components I didn't recognise in the slightest. At the base of the thing was a corpse, much like the one in the corridor, except wearing a lab coat. A unicorn. At the very summit of the pile of devices there was another corpse - one with the wing structures of a pegasus.
Behind the machine, filling several banks of shelves, was a kaleidoscope of colourful glass spheres. Memory orbs.
"What am I looking at, exactly?" I asked.
"You are looking at me. An exceptionally powerful maneframe running some bespoke spell matrices. The design was inspired by documents leaked from the Ministries. It is my understanding that the original design was intended to provide continuity of consciousness across the uploading process. That was decidedly not the case with our version. I am a copy of the dead pony you see atop the dais."
I stared up at the corpse. "What do you want me to do?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"The other body belonged to Firewall. We designed the machine together. We had hoped to mass-produce it. That quickly became impossible. We did not maintain sufficient documentation to replicate the design. It is one-of-a-kind. This is what drove us apart. Only one of us could use the machine. I positioned the dais beyond a unicorn's reach and he built a staircase. Each of us plotted to kill the other. We both died. I survived. I had not anticipated that he would install a countermeasure designed to cripple me. There is a hard drive in the pocket of his lab coat which contains authentication codes. I need you to plug that hard drive into the terminal at the base of the machine. This will allow me to access many more systems throughout Skyward and beyond."
"You said you'd help me, before. Me and Spiral," I said, stalling for time. "How?"
"I am unable to help you with my current level of access. I need to temporarily disable the biometric security system. You can then invite the Steel Rangers into the building. You will then need to get Spiral clear. Then I will reactivate the security system."
In the silence that followed his explanation, I cast my mind back over our conversation. Here was a pony - or, well, a copy of a pony - whose idea of a solution to my predicament was simply a matter of luring a bunch of ponies to their deaths. For all his talk of immortality, of betterment, he'd said little to convince me he actually cared for ponies at all. Spiral seemed to have no love for her former family, but somehow I didn't think she'd thank me for killing them.
"This is wrong," I said.
"This is the only way. This is survival. The Steel Rangers are responsible for a great deal of misery in this wasteland. This is justice."
"No," I said. "No. You want your access? Fine. But we do this my way. Seal off this room again. I saw the door, there's no way the Rangers can get through. Give them the rest of the facility. Let us go.
Noteworthy was silent for a few long moments. Then, he said, "It was foolish of me to expect better of you than this. But very well. You have the heart of a good pony. We will do this your way. This facility is full of nothing but relics anyway. Let them come."
I took a deep breath, then nodded at the empty air. "Right. Thank you."
A little tentatively, I approached the corpse on the floor. There was a weird looking gun lying on the floor next to it. The lab coat clung to the desiccated flesh, and I was glad that my telekinesis meant I didn't have to actually touch it. I found the hard drive and plugged it into the computer. The screen came to life, random green characters flashing up it faster than I could follow. And then, just like that, it was done, and the screen flashed off again.
"At last," said Noteworthy. "I'm free. I can fix everything. I can bring a close to this sorry chapter in Equestria's history."
I stared at the pyramid made from machines for a moment, before saying, "I'm going to go now."
"Very well. I cannot begin to express my gratitude."
Nodding again, I turned around and walked back out into the hallway. The door slid shut behind me.
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