Illustration by TheOmegaRidley
My brain felt like a computer after somepony had taken a magnet to it. I was quite convinced that my eyes had been replaced with static snow, and whatever moan might have escaped my lips must have been a crackling white noise. The low, muffled bass drops of a demonic dubstep buzzed about my ears, evidence of another all-nighter. Furthering this evidence were the scattered, crumpled remains of several cans of Chaos Cola, ‘guaranteed to give you just the kind of temporary insanity you need to stay sane.’ Too bad I was pretty sure that last part was faulty advertising.
I blearily opened my eyes, though it took a few moments before my contact lenses crackled to life, making me wince as they emitted a small bit of static discharge. I’d have to buy or steal a new pair soon. These babies were on their way out. I’d had them jailbroken and jury-rigged into working far longer than their expiration date, but even the best black market engineer I could find couldn’t stave off the inevitability of planned obsolescence forever. Nopony could.
The lenses alive, I blinked a few times as they calibrated themselves, showing me the shoddy excuse for an apartment that acted as my current abode. It appeared to be a beautiful Neighponese garden, full of natural cherry blossom trees, several sculptures of mythological figures, and a tiny pagoda surrounded by a clear sky of perfect twinkling stars.
I snorted as I yawned, and the whole thing vanished. My echolocation revealed the whole thing for what it truly was—a hologram, and a pretty poor one at that. It barely managed to maintain a frame rate that would have seemed obsolete on some of the oldest television panels from bygone eras. There was a glitch in the projector that inverted the colors of one of the statues, turning what should have been a stone kitsune painted in auburns with gold filigree into a greenish, blackish mess.
Then again, I don’t know what I was complaining about. Without the shoddy projection gem in the center of the single room, I’d be forced to look at the torn and faded wallpaper, stained shag carpet, and grimy lavatory and kitchen facilities that actually made up my apartment. True, I saw those things anyway whenever I made even the slightest of noises with my mouth. Damn echolocation, and damn being a batpony. Without these stupid contact lenses, I’d be blind like the rest of my kind and forced to see nothing but cold, gritty reality all the time, albeit it without color. Sonic perception is hard to describe in actual visual terms, but let me tell you, we can still see when something is shitty, same as any other pony.
I stretched my tiny little legs and did a rough sort of backflip, nearly crashing to the floor as I dropped from the towel rack from which I hung while sleeping. Seems like that Chaos Cola hadn’t entirely left my system just yet; I was still feeling pretty woozy.
I let out another yawn. On a bigger pony, it would've put a manticore's roar to shame. Coming from me, it was more like the yowl of an agitated house cat.
“Good morning,” I greeted myself. “Better rise and shine before you miss another day full of sunshine and rainbows in the greatest city in Equestria.”
Unfolding my leathery wings, I flapped them a few times to shake off the sleep-funk and trotted over to my beanbag chair. Plopping into the overstuffed kawaii face of a stylized pony head from some anime I’d never watched, I brought a hoof to my touchscreen amulet. It was synced with the hologram gem, and so part of the Neighponese garden vanished. In its place, my amulet projected its own hologram, showing the list of program files and open Internet tabs that made up my computer space.
“Good morning, sexy,” I purred to the delectably delicious specimen I used as my screen’s wallpaper. A stack of freshly-made, all-natural pancakes dripping with syrup and topped with melting squares of butter. I licked my lips just from the site of the static image. “I know, baby. I want to see you again too, but we both know I can’t afford you until I pull off this next job. When I get the credits, it’s a date, I promise.”
Turning my attention away from my tragic love story, I scrolled through a few newsfeeds. Metamorphosis Biologicals was reporting that it had successfully unlocked a new crop gene sequence from the original corporate headquarters’ master computer, with casualties from the Tech Hunter teams in the ‘acceptable percentile.’ The computer generated AI news anchors, impossibly perfect ponies, were talking all about how the company would soon be genetically engineering an ancient fruit previously thought to have gone extinct before the Crash. Something called an ‘apple,’ apparently named after Applejack, Goddess of the Harvest.
They showed a few historical artworks showcasing the thing, and my mouth immediately began to water at the sight of such a perfectly round, shiny, juicy-looking fruit.
I minimized the newsfeed for a brief moment, shooting my pancake wallpaper a haughty glance.
“Don’t give me that look,” I spat. “I’m a mare with a healthy appetite, what’s wrong with that? Maybe if you’d keep a more open mind, we could even have a threesome.”
Mmm, I thought. Brunch with pancakes AND fruit. I’d be living like a goddess...
I reopened the Net and scrolled through a few more newsfeeds, seeing what the rest of the Corporations (or what was left of them) had to report. Icarus Industries was releasing a new line of flamethrowers that spit literal hellfire, fueled by brimstone imported straight from Tartarus.
“Guaranteed to burn your enemies alive in infernal torture,” I read from the news crawl. “Right, because being burned alive with regular fire wasn’t nearly wicked enough.”
Nyx, Corp. was firing more drone shuttles into space, trying to fix up their corporation’s pre-Crash orbital frame, and Unreality, Inc. was... Bonkers as usual. The other corporations all used AI news anchors, but Unreality, Inc.’s newsfeeds were just a gonzo mess of trippy colors, wacky imagery like tentacled sandwiches and inside-out animals, and a voice that rambled on stream-of-consciousness style.
All in all, the usual.
I took a deep breath and clicked on over to the Corporate Alliance’s Anti-Crime Watchlist, scrolling down to the ‘N’ names in the Cyber-Crimes Division. I breathed a sigh of relief. Same as always, I was unlisted. That is to say, I was listed, but only as my hacker username. The tag ‘Neverwas’ came to me in a recurring dream I had about a frightening old mare, and thus far, it was the only way the outside world knew me.
“Wanted for cyber-crimes, the hacker known as Neverwas,” I read, scrolling through the profile, seeing if there were any updates at all. “Wanted for theft of corporate funds, infecting corporate systems with viral software, avatar identity fraud, and ‘general malicious anarchic behavior.’”
I chuckled at that last one, clicking on the full sublist just for nostalgia’s sake. Sure, I spent the majority of my time playing Robin Pony, but a mare has to unwind sometimes. Hence that time I reprogrammed various holo-commercial projectors around the city to play old cartoons, the time I flooded the private corporate Net channels with self-aware spam email, and the one time I got really lucky and managed to replace the AI anchors on one or two newsfeeds with giant talking butts.
I’d never been caught, but things change. A mare could never be too careful. That’s why, to this day, I breathed a sigh of relief every time I checked the Watchlist and didn’t see a listing of my real name.
“Is that even my real name anymore?” I chuckled to myself. “I don’t exactly spend my time playing pinball.”
Whatever the case, I turned my attention back to my computer and flipped to a few living space ads. I knew I should probably clear out of this apartment by tomorrow. I’d been here for a week already, and in my line of work, it paid to never stick around anywhere for too long. But where to go?
Each of the listings I found were about as unappealing as my current home. The best I could afford were apartments like these in the slums of whatever district I chose to live in while I pulled a project on one of the Big Four corporations of Canterlot. Even if I could afford a better apartment, it was best for my IRL (in real life) self to keep a low profile. ‘Neverwas’ could do all she wanted on the Net, but Full Tilt (don’t mock me) had to keep her head down in the real world. The corporations did not take to cyber-crimes lightly.
Speaking of which, with a bit of trepidation, I glanced over to the last tab on my Internet browser. I’d typed the finishing touches on my latest project last night. With any luck, it would be fully uploaded by now. If so, I’d have an acceptable sum of stolen credits in one of my specially-encrypted bank accounts, and one of the corporations would be missing some miscellaneous funds from one of their various subsidiaries. Same routine, different code. I’d been running this racket ever since I escaped from that hellhole the Harmonist nuns called an orphanage.
But what to do with my newfound funds?
I flicked through some of my other tabs, procrastinating checking up on my project for as long as possible. The orphanage where I’d spent my foalhood had closed down years ago, but there were still plenty of other homes for wayward foals in Canterlot, both Harmonist and Corporate Alliance alike. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure which was worse, but a little donation of food chips or, even better, actual food from an anonymous benefactor never hurt. Or, if I was really lucky in a project, maybe, just maybe, I could donate more than just temporary sustenance. I often wondered if I’d be living my life on the run in drab little apartments in the slums if somepony had actually given me the option to be anything else.
Begrudgingly, though, I pulled up a word processor document, an old file simply titled ‘The System Must Crash.’ On it, I had listed every weakness of the Big Four that I could think of, and the list was changing all the time as old problems were solved and new ones arose. Technically, exploiting these weaknesses was what I had really vowed to do when I first chose this life. A true hero wins the game, but the game was rigged, and I was no hero. Thus, I cheated so that I could watch the game collapse. With no rigged game, there’d be no reason for me to cheat, and no way the game could do… What it did. What it had done to me, what it was still doing to others, and what it would never stop doing.
Unless the system crashed.
“Sorry, kiddies,” I sighed. “Maybe Auntie Full Tilt can give you presents some other day.”
It was either help the poor souls a little now or a lot in the long run, I knew. It didn’t change the fact that either way, I’d feel like I’d made the wrong decision. Inevitable guilt was a bitch.
But, back to my latest project.
My eyes widened, and I cursed.
“Four hours left?!” I scoffed. “Come on, this was supposed to be uploaded by this morning!”
Disgusted, I tapped my touchscreen amulet once again. The hologram of my computer activities winked out, and the two-bit hologram of the Neighponese feudal era resumed.
It seemed I had a bit more time to kill than I would have liked. If I wanted to be on the safe side of things, I needed to be out of this apartment by tomorrow. That wasn’t looking likely if I spent the rest of the day coding after my latest program finally stole some much-needed credits. Acquiring the money was only half the job. Afterwards came creating a whole new dummy alias with which to use the funds to do some good in this crummy excuse for a world.
I had to program a new faux identity or business front each time and then erase all evidence of it afterwards, as well as any evidence that could be traced back to me or to the poor souls to whom I donated my ill-gotten goods… or the not-so-poor saps whose lives I ruined.
I couldn’t make the damn things beforehand; the longer they were out in the open, the higher the risk that some corporate program would catch on to the fact that the dummy program (with large amounts of their money) was a fake. Furthermore, I didn’t have the dataspace to just make them outside the Net and then upload them whenever I felt like it. Large data storage devices were expensive. I always had to use a portion of my stolen funds to rent out a dataspace on the Net and build the dummy program there before launching it publicly, and every moment I spent creating the thing or letting it sit in Net storage was a bigger price I’d have to pay.
My stomach growled.
“And on top of everything else,” I grumbled myself. “You just had to open your big, fat mouth, didn’t you?”
I poked my petite body. There wasn’t an ounce of extra fat on it. A lot of richer ponies would pay top-credit for gene therapy to make them this thin. Too bad I got the package that came from being on a hacker’s diet rather than being able to eat all I wanted and then just magically splice away the fat later.
Then again, I would have more food if I just allowed myself a bigger cut of my thefts, or going beyond that, keeping them all for myself.
No, not going there, I scolded myself. The guilt would eat me alive, and I know it.
And, despite the fact that I spent most of my time playing Robin Pony, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor or spitting in the eye of the big bad corporations, I still felt guilty. I told myself it was because I didn’t think I was doing enough, that I wasn’t pulling off big enough projects. But if that was the case, what projects did I need to pull off? I’d been running this racket for years, and the system had, if anything, only gotten worse.
“Shut up, brain,” I mumbled, rubbing my temples. “Now is not the time.”
I stretched a final time before climbing out of the beanbag. Doing something, anything, would be better than sitting around and waiting for the project to finish uploading, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
Switching off the hologram projector, I placed my hoof on the scanner locking the front door. It accepted my genetic match and clicked open, electronically relatching as I exited into the hallway.
I trotted off towards the elevator. The hallway of my apartment complex was even grimier than my apartment itself. At least I tried to keep my living quarters somewhat passable, though of course only for my own admittedly low standards. I’d never seen the staff of this building run a cleaning or maintenance robot through this hallway once in the week I’d been here. As a result, the shag carpet was stained in numerous places with everything from mud to things I’d rather not try to identity, the wallpaper was covered in graffiti where it hadn’t rotted away entirely, and what lights weren’t smashed or burnt out flickered or cast dim shades.
The elevator ride down to the lobby was similarly filthy. I strapped myself into a moth-eaten chair with a tattered seatbelt alongside about a dozen other ponies as the mobile metal room dropped towards the floor, barely slowing on hissing cables as we reached the bottom. I still got jitters from riding the thing, but it was better walking down the hundreds of floors via stairwell.
The other ponies and I shuffled out onto the ground floor, avoiding eye-contact with each other as best we could. Unfortunately for me, the pitter-patter on the lobby windows signaled that it was raining again. Thick, blobby globules of chocolate milk cascaded down from sickly-pink cotton candy clouds, both tainted with all manner of magical waste.
Double-tapping my touchscreen amulet, a minimalist version of my computer screen appeared transparent in my contact lenses. I checked for what funds I had left, which wasn’t a lot. I had just enough to purchase a disposable umbrella from the auto-vendor standing outside the apartment complex, or just enough to purchase a virtual reality pod at the Internet cafe across the street. Or, alternatively, I might be able to get some food chips, perhaps even the flavored variety.
Closing the lens-view of my computer, I heard my stomach growl again, earning a few looks from passersby. I ignored them and it. Food chips would be a waste when I could see my beloved pancakes as soon as I sorted through the rest of my project, and a disposable umbrella wasn’t worth a dash across the street. I kept telling myself I needed to save up for a durable model, or even an enchanted raincoat, but those things were expensive. All it would take was for somepony to mug me in the streets (a pretty common occurrence in the slums of Canterlot) and I’d lose that investment. I knew better than anypony that it was best to invest in things that other ponies couldn’t steal.
Taking a deep breath, I made sure my wings were folded tight against my sides and dashed out into the street. I gasped as the acid rain pelted against my unprotected flesh. The sidewalks on either side of the street were a sea of ponies carrying disposable umbrellas and even a few with more durable models. I tried my best to whiz by them, but crossing the street was another matter entirely.
I narrowly managed to avoid a splash as a land vehicle rumbled down the road, a large automated cargo transport bearing one of the corporate logos. I did a quick double-check to make sure nothing was following it or coming from the other direction before leaping out into the broken, potholed asphalt. I sidestepped puddles and made sure not to slip on the rain-slicked blacktop before leaping into the relative safety of the sea of umbrellas on the other side and, eventually, slipping into the Internet cafe.
I breathed a sigh of relief, the sting of the acid slowly subsiding. At least it wasn’t like this all the time. Sometimes it stormed on for days, with bolts of multi-colored lightning and thunderclaps like guttural laughter, but other days it only lasted a few hours. Some lucky days, it didn’t rain at all.
Warm air blasted over me as I trotted past the vestibule into the Internet cafe, a precautionary measure by the proprietors to dry off customers on days like these. Nopony wanted a VR pod sopping with acidic wetness.
“Welcome to Joe’s,” greeted the pony on duty. “What can we serve you today?”
“Just a VR pod, three hours,” I answered, reactivating the lens-view on my touchscreen amulet and typing in the payment amount.
“Sure thing, we have a kiddie pod available in the back,” said the greeter, holding out the scanner for me to swipe for the payment with my amulet. “Are your parents here? I’ll need their okay if you want to log into any sites that aren’t kid-friendly.”
I paused, halfway through the action of holding out my amulet. I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth.
It’s a normal reaction, don’t lose your temper, I thought to myself.
“I’m not a child,” I said.
“No offense, kid,” said the greeter. “But you sure look like one to me. You don’t even have your cutie mark yet.”
He wasn’t lying. I glanced back at the bare whiteness of my flanks. It didn’t help that the entire rest of me was white, too, from my mane and tail to my leathery wings. Even my irises were milky-white, barely distinguishable from the rest of my eyes without my contact lenses, though I attributed that part more to my batpony-blindness than anything else.
“It’s a... Medical condition,” I lied. Or maybe it was the truth; I never knew, and neither did the Harmonist nuns back at the orphanage. Nothing any site I’d ever dug through on the Net had provided any answers either. I wasn’t an albino—genetic checks confirmed it—and I was most definitely too old to not have a cutie mark, but I didn’t. Go figure. “A magical birth defect. I can’t help it.”
“Nice try, kid,” the greeter said with a smile he probably thought was knowing. “Everypony tries it. Those video games with blood and guts are just too fun, aren’t they?”
“I’m not a child,” I insisted. My pipsqueak voice sure wasn’t helping matters. “Please, for the love of the Goddesses, I don’t want to go through this. Will an ID help?”
“If it’s real, then sure.”
I could have given it to him. I did have a real ID. Full Tilt was my legal name. I had a history of my IRL points of interest, from medical history to memberships of various corporate customer plans. The pony Full Tilt was very much an average, boring, low-level consumer in the eyes of the system. It was only Neverwas the rogue hacker who was a dangerous threat to society.
What I should have done is simply show him my ID. That would have been the smart, non-impulsive thing to do.
But I didn’t do that.
I grinned, showing him my pearly-whites, just as blank as the rest of me. He looked a little unnerved. Batpony fangs tend to do that to other ponies.
“Do batponies make you uncomfortable?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Do you harbor anti-batpony sentiments?” I pressed, using my amulet and lenses to do a little investigating. “Are you a batpony bigot? A fang-hater? Do you think of us as vampires?”
“Wait just a minute,” the attendant said, looking around nervously. “I’m stopping you because you’re too young. This isn’t a race thing.”
“Oh, I think it is, Trading Card.”
“How do you know my—”
“Or should I say, Card_Shark23,” I prattled on. “Does your manager know you spend most of your working hours playing online poker on your tablet? Or that you clog up the cafe server with your porn downloads?”
Trading Card the attendant looked pale.
“But none of that’s important right now,” I said quietly, leaning in closer. “Because it looks like you’re about to turn away a perfectly innocent customer just because she’s a batpony. I could conveniently forget all of this if you were to let me rent a pod, or I could stick my hoof up Card_Shark23’s ass and work him like a puppet as I donate all of your funds to an orphanage. Where do you think we should go from here?”
Trading Card shot me a frightened smile and accepted my payment, waving his hoof to the available pods. I smiled and thanked him, heading back.
Finding a vacant VR pod and ignoring the delectable scents from the cafe’s kitchen, I hopped in and closed the pod doors. I settled into the cushions as best I could, breathing a sigh of relief that I was finally in private once again. Beyond the thin shell of the pod was a bustling world of ponies, but in here, in the soundproofed darkness, I was safe.
The magical engines of the pod began revving, the enchanted panels of the interior emitting a faint yet steadily brightening glow. They bathed me with waves of magical energy, mixing with my brainwaves and slowly drawing my consciousness into the Netscape.
. . .
I popped into virtual existence as a featureless avatar, even blanker than my real self. The default setting for entering the Net from an unregistered access point was essentially a mobile store mannequin, all smooth, plastic-like hairless whiteness with indentations for the eyes, nose, and mouth.
The setting, however, was much more diverse. I was in a downtown version of Canterlot’s digital counterpart, which just so happened to be an eclectic mishmash of every form of fantasy and wish-fulfillment imaginable. Out here in the center-stage of e-commerce, the corporations owned prime virtual real estate and rented it out to smaller players. Thus, in this part of the Net, things were kept pretty clean. AI-controlled avatars of store mascots did little dances and sang songs, trying to entice shoppers with more credits than I into their stores. From there, consumers could select wares to have shipped to their real-world addresses.
The stores themselves were miniature cities in their own right. The Net was a vast void full of floating islands covered in neon signs, giant holograms that were purely visual even in the Net, and avatars of every size, shape, and detail imaginable. Avatars with leaf-green coats and vines for manes and tails entered virtual game worlds at islands that looked like cities made from giant arcade machines. Chrome robo-ponies shopped at floral boutiques, chatting with a floating flower mascot with cartoon eyes and mouth. The Canterlot Online Library took the supposed form of its original real-world incarnation before it was destroyed in the Corporate War, a fancy building with marble columns, gold reliefs of pony history, and windows showing moving illustrations from classical Equestrian literature.
I smiled despite myself, the vague indentations of my avatar’s mouth turning up at the corners. Outside in the real world, Canterlot—nay, all of Equestria, the whole world—may have been a wasted ruin dotted with islets of overly modern civilization, but here, on the Net, literally anything was possible. If it could be dreamt, it could be programmed.
My first destination was the Body Shop. Metamorphosis Biologicals’ online division ran this Net-wide franchise of avatar creation, rental, and storage facilities (presumably in the hope that if you liked your avatar enough, you’d pay them to gene-splice you into that form in real life). Walking through the aisles of unused avatar templates hanging lifelessly from the shelves, I popped into one of the changing booths. Just in time, too; the AI sales program looked like she had been headed my way.
In the privacy of the changing booth, I logged into my account. A full list of my premade avatars popped into view.
Making an avatar did cost credits, but once they’d been made, it only took a surprisingly small storage fee to save them away for whenever anypony wanted to use them. I always guessed this was to keep ponies interested in using the Net. It remained one of the main ways consumers shopped, keeping the economy going and the corporate society more or less stable. Well, as stable as it could be.
“Who I shall I be today?” I murmured to myself, swiping my default mannequin avatar’s hoof through the list of avatars. I had only a few true templates, but I’d accumulated a number of accessories, swappable skins, and various other easily altered features over the years. Some I’d bought, and others I’d programmed myself. Computer code was my element, and on the Net, a hacker was in their own, preferred version of reality.
I had a male dragon avatar, scaled down to pony-size and roughly the same proportions. Then there was the female Neighponese maiden in traditional kimono garb, though she did have nine fox tails. The list went on.
I’d been using the Neighponese garden hologram in my apartment all week, and so I had to admit I was favoring the kitsune avatar. I hadn’t been her in a long time, so why not? Sure, it might not have been the most culturally sensitive avatar, but there were more Neighponese ponies using anime-inspired avatars than there were Equestrian users, so I didn’t see the big deal.
Selecting her, my default blank avatar vanished and was replaced by the kitsune-pony. I did a few quick checks to make sure she was in proper working order, but the code seemed solid. After a few quick tune-ups to kimono-color and throwing on a bit of fox-fire to float around the avatar for the hell of it, I paid my latest storage fee and exited the booth.
“Did you find everything alright?” asked the sales program, startling me. This month, the AI was designed to look like a ladybug changeling with cute, innocent, and big friendly eyes.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, my voice coming out with a Skyberian accent. If the sales program was startled by the incongruity of a Neighponese-looking avatar speaking with the cantor of the pegasi from the frostbitten north, she didn’t show it. I’d have to change that in a moment. Then again, why not keep it? The Net was one of the few places I could afford to be spontaneous. “I was just leaving, actually.”
“Are you sure I couldn’t interest you in Metamorphosis Biologicals’ exciting new line of Pirate Adventure avatars?” she persisted. “Pirates are all the rage these days. You’d be the envy of all your friends!”
Friends, yeah, right, I thought sourly.
“No, thank you,” I told her, turning to head out into the Net at large.
“Are you sure?” she asked again, moving around in front of me. Her model froze for a split second, a wave of static momentarily glitching over it. “Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?”
“The hell?” I said, taking a step backwards.
“Unauthorized access,” she said in a monotone voice laden with static.
My eyes widened. Oh, no.
Her eyes flashed, shifting from their orange color to a bright green, but only for an instant. The sales program froze once more, before looking at me with perfectly ordinary orange eyes.
“Are you sure I couldn’t interest you in Metamorphosis Biologicals’ exciting new line of Pirate Adventure avatars?” she repeated as if nothing had happened. “Pirates are all the rage these days. You’d be the envy of all your friends!”
I breathed a sigh of relief. From the looks of it, she hadn’t meant me when she said ‘unauthorized access.’ Somepony must have been trying to hack the sales AI itself, though I couldn’t imagine why. Any hacker worth their data could steal avatars directly from the store system if they wanted; why would anypony try to hack the sales AI?
Whatever the case, I told her no thanks once more before leaving the Body Shop with a mix of relief and trepidation. I’d rarely run into the work of other hackers, and I didn’t like doing so. Amateurs could draw a lot of unwanted attention. The smartest thing to do now was to simply get as far away from the Body Shop as possible.
Trotting through the plaza of the digital version of downtown Canterlot, the entrypoint for most Net users in the city, I smiled and took it all in. I brought up my menu, something only I could see, checking my funds. I had paid most of it to use the VR pod at the Internet cafe, and a little more to pay my storage fee at the Body Store, but I still had just a little bit left. Furthermore, I still had roughly three hours to kill before my project fully uploaded. It was my first real time off in about a month.
“Time to play some games,” I said to myself, heading over to the bridge from the entry plaza to the nearby arcade.
Guilt, helping poor, unfortunate souls the pathetic amount that I did, playing the ‘dashing’ rogue hacker, and spending more hours coding that any sane pony probably ever would could wait. Today, I was going to treat myself.
I used the last of my current credits to purchase entry into the arcade. The AI attendant accepting my payment was designed to look like an actual arcade machine, his pixelated smiley face appearing in the display screen.
“Thank you for visiting Unreality, Inc.’s Megarcade,” he chirped, printing out a series of tokens I could use to play. I moved to take them, but my hoof passed right through them like a ghost.
“Um…” I said, frustrated and a little nervous all over again. I was sincerely hoping I wasn’t starting to see a pattern here. “There’s a problem with the tickets.”
“Error,” the attendant said. I looked up to see the screen had gone pure bright green. I took a step backwards, considering logging out of the Net then and there. But he had said ‘error’ rather than ‘unauthorized access.’ Perhaps this wasn’t a hacker at all, and merely a glitch? Glitches happened all the time. One of a hacker’s main methods was to exploit them.
Speaking of which… If a glitch was right here in front of me, it could be the easiest entry into the arcade I’d ever received. The more sane part of me cautioned that this was a bad idea. Two digital hangups, one right after the other, was almost certainly a bad sign. Then again, I hadn’t been favoring that part of my brain this morning, as the run-in with the Internet cafe attendant attested. It was so tempting…
I brought up my menu, sending out a few probing programs into the arcade AI. The glitch had blown its defenses wide open, easily giving me full access. I was surprised; this may have been the easiest hack of my life. Something still didn’t feel right, but access to unlimited tokens was too tempting an offer to refuse.
Nullifying the previous tokens, I printed out a full stack of them before rebooting the AI. To Unreality, Inc., it would seem like the AI had simply rebooted itself after a random systems crash. I made sure; a hacker had to cover her bases. There’d be no permanent digital graffiti proclaiming ‘Neverwas Hacked Dis’ for this little job.
“Please enjoy your stay at Unreality, Inc.’s Megarcade!” the AI said cheerily, its green screen reverting to the smiling pixel-face.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, smiling back and entering.
Inside the tiny virtual city were seemingly endless hallways of arcade machines, each of which I could now play to my heart’s content with all the tokens I’d nabbed.
I trotted past some old favorites, classic retro titles. My interest was more in the games towards the back, however. Some of the bravest Tech Hunters had rescued some truly great game worlds from pre-Crash ruins, and I planned on seeing if any new worlds had been installed since my last visit.
Much to my glee, one had indeed been installed. The arcade cabinet itself was covered in mythological illustrations of the Goddesses battling monsters from the First Age. Pinkie Pie, Goddess of Laughter, used music to sooth a swarm of savage parasprites before they could eat the world. Rainbow Dash, Goddess of Loyalty, called down thunderbolts upon her fabled nemesis, Lighting Dust the Betrayer. Above the game screen, Twilight Sparkle, ArchGoddess of Magic, wove a spell that divided the warring, primal energies of light and darkness.
“Play as the Goddess’s chosen hero in the age of myths and monsters!” announced the arcade cabinet. “Defeat the beasts of old and save the world, or betray the Goddesses and overthrow them to rule it! It’s your story, play your way!”
Memories of copying down ancient scripture back at the orphanage came flooding back to me. That had been one of my many punishments for occasionally sneaking into the Mother Superior’s office to play primitive web games on her computer. The Harmonist nuns had always told me I was destined to burn in Tartarus for being such a bad pony, saying my soul was tainted by my love for the dirty corporate products of this world. They couldn’t have been more wrong about using my name with ‘love’ and ‘corporate’ in the same sentence, but perhaps they had been right about one thing.
If I was a bad pony anyway, then I wouldn’t have to worry about feeling a petty sort of satisfaction in overthrowing the Harmonists’ precious Goddesses, even if it was only in a video game. A part of me felt guilty about this, more so than I usually felt about everything, but I’d made up my mind.
I walked over to the arcade cabinet and hit the ‘PLAY’ button. The screen lit up, growing larger and larger before it engulfed me in a blinding light.
“Would you like to choose a game-appropriate avatar?” asked a voice.
“No,” I replied.
The self-contained virtual world of the game was forming around me. Pristine, grassy hills, an unpolluted clear stream, a bright blue sky free of any smog. A short ways away was an ancient village made up of thatched-roof cottages and cobblestone streets. Even further away was the familiar illustration of what Canterlot looked like in ancient times, before it had spilled over from its perch on the side of the mountain and covered the whole peak, as well as the entire surrounding area.
“Welcome to magical kingdom of ancient Equestria!” announced the voice. “Your first quest awaits you in the nearby village of Ponyville.”
Ponyville? I thought. Really?
I trotted off in the direction of the village, enjoying the rustic scenery. The VR pods were designed to stimulate all the senses, and so I felt the breeze and smelled the farmland just as much as I saw the old-fashioned countryside and heard the conversations of NPC ponies I passed along the way.
It all looked incredibly realistic, more so than any VR simulation I’d played thus far. If the gameplay turned out to be as good as the graphics, I’d definitely have to come back here once I’d relocated.
As I stepped into Ponyville itself, however, the game world suddenly froze. It lasted only a fraction of a second, but it was still noticeable. It seemed it was indeed too good to be true; a simulation of this quality must be hell on the frame rate.
Still optimistic, however, I trotted further into town, searching for any NPC that looked like they might have a quest to deal out. I half-grinned as I spotted a library inside a large, old tree. If I remembered those sacred texts I’d copied so long ago, that’s where I’d find Twilight Sparkle back when she dwelt amongst mortal ponies. If anypony would have a quest for me, surely it would be her.
The game world froze again as I neared the library. It lasted a full second this time. That frame rate looked as if it was truly going to be annoying.
I stopped in my tracks as the shadow of the library-tree loomed over me. A shimmering glitch of static and inverted colors run up the tree, momentarily flickering from a tree-shaped library into a shining crystal castle before it resumed its original shape.
What the hell?
“One more glitch, and I’m trying a different game,” I murmured. Glitches were great when hacking a program, not when trying to enjoy a video game.
I opened the door to the library and stepped inside. As I did so, the door slammed shut behind me. The library floor dissolved into a pixelated mess, and I fell through. I was falling below the geometry of the game world now. Looking up, I could see the NPCs still walking about on an invisible ground. The hollow husk of the library looked down on me, as if mocking me.
“Logout of game,” I huffed.
Nothing happened.
“Logout of game!” I snapped.
The virtual world above me flickered out of existence, leaving a white void.
My eyes widened in fear for the first time since I’d entered the Net.
“Log out of Net,” I commanded.
The white void remained omnipresent.
“This isn’t supposed to be possible,” I breathed, looking around. I mean, it was theoretically possible, but it was highly illegal to keep a pony logged into a VR pod when they chose to leave it. Unless, of course, they were being kept there by a higher power.
“Please be a malfunction,” I whimpered. Maybe my name had finally appeared on the Corporate Alliance’s Anti-Crime Watchlist after all. Was this all some trap?
“No, no, no!” I shouted. I didn’t want to be arrested for cyber-crimes! I’d heard about what they did to hackers, even to small fries like me. At best, they would rape my brain with dark magic to pull out every thought I’d ever had, saving it for later so they could undo whatever damage I had done to them as best they could. At worst... I didn’t want to think about that.
“Greetings and salutations, Neverwas” spoke a voice that was not that of the arcade cabinet’s announcer. It wasn’t even that of the AI attendant that should have been running the whole arcade. “My name is Zero One. Let me tell you, I can’t believe how lucky I am. Every Unreal in the Net has been looking for you, and I finally get to claim the grand prize for finding you! Maybe I’ll even get a promotion!”
They knew my hacker tag?! No, no... No. This was it. It was all over. If somepony knew my tag and had caught me in the act, be they the Corporate Alliance or not, my life was officially over. I had no friends and no enemies who would (or should) actually recognize me. Nopony knew my name but me. Or... So I had thought.
But, ‘Unreal?’ That sounded familiar. In the few seconds of relative freedom I had left, I wracked my brain, remembering something. ‘Unreals’ were the corporate lingo for the special AIs that made up the bulk of Unreality, Inc.’s work force. It seemed I’d been caught by the crazy corporation.
The void took on a smoky-green hue. Lines of code in glowing-neon emerald appeared from the ether, collecting and forming into something. It took on a vaguely equine form, dark flesh forming with inlaid circuitry. Startlingly realistic pony eyes appeared on the very unrealistic pony body. A mane and tail of verdian fire erupted into being.
Illustration by TheOmegaRidley
“It’s nice to meet you,” the pony-thing said, extending a hoof for me to shake. When I didn’t take it, he asked, “Isn’t this how flesh-ponies greet each other?”
I said nothing, but raised an eyebrow.
Flesh-ponies?
“Nevermind,” he said, retracting his hoof. It had a masculine voice, so I assumed it was a ‘he.’ I suppose it didn’t really matter, but still, I was curious. If my life really was over and I was doomed to mind-torture via dark magic and then death, I didn’t see the harm in being a bit curious.
“How did you catch me?” I asked.
“We’ve had Unreals probing the Net for ages,” he explained. “I just happened to be in the local dataspace and got lucky. When you threatened that attendant at the Joe’s Internet Cafe, your hacking pattern seemed familiar, so I followed you as you entered the Net. I tried to confirm it by taking over the Body Shop AI, but they booted me out. I got enough from their databanks to recognize more of your Net activity patterns, though. A final confirmation via messing with Unreality, Inc.’s own systems gave me three red flags, all I needed to get authorization from up top to sequester you.”
I stood there, frowning in the void-space. It all made sense. He’d really and truly caught me. I’d finally simply slipped up.
“What happens now?” I asked dryly. “Dark magic brain-raping? Will there be a bunch of armed guards to haul me away when I exit the VR pod?”
“A job offer,” he said, smiling that eerie smile. Those teeth just weren’t quite in tune with pony proportions. I wondered if that was intentional programming.
“What?”
“The corporations—all of the Big Four—have been searching long and hard for you. You’re the last product of your kind. Invaluable. Specially-designed.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Please, I can pay you—I have a big project that’s almost done. I’ll have credits soon. I can pay you off from your employers. Just, please don’t arrest me!”
It was a lie, of course. I didn’t even know if AIs could use credits, but I was desperate.
“I told you, my employers don’t want to arrest you,” he said. “We want to offer you a job. Its all the other corporations who want to arrest you.”
To say I was utterly confused was an understatement. Was this some sort of delay tactic while the IRL employees of Unreality, Inc. stormed the Internet Cafe and searched for my pod? It didn’t matter anyway; I was stuck.
“What kind of job?” I asked.
“We want you to become a Tech Hunter for Unreality, Inc.,” he said.
A Tech Hunter? Me?
“But I’m just a hacker,” I said. “Tech Hunters are big, strong mercenary types. They know how to handle themselves IRL. They steal pre-Crash technology. How the hell do you expect a scrawny little blank-flank batpony like me to survive as a Tech Hunter?!”
“You’ll receive training, of course,” he said. “You’d also be given a team, both in the real world and in the Net. Unreality, Inc. would assign you a full task force of tactical Unreals and a squadron of robotic guards.”
Okay… Not what I was expecting. Corporations didn’t even give real Tech Hunters that kind of help. But, still, I’d die in two seconds out in the real world of corporate warfare!
Zero One must have seen the look on my face.
“We want to employ you because your skills go beyond hacking merely computers,” he said. “I can’t tell you more unless you agree to work for us. We wouldn’t want you to know about the full extent of your abilities unless you were on our side. Otherwise, you’d be a serious threat to us.”
“I really, truly, have no idea what ‘abilities’ you’re talking about,” I said. “But you said ‘agree’ to work for you. I have a choice in the matter?”
“Of course,” Zero One affirmed. “Choose to work for us, and we’ll pay you more than you could ever imagine. You’d live in luxury.”
As well as a proponent of the system, I thought bitterly. I’d rather die than do that, but dying might be the only other choice here. Come to think of it, I do hate the system, but I REALLY don’t want to die. What if… Maybe if I just played along for now, at least until I can figure a way out of this?
“And if I refuse?” I asked.
“If you refuse, we won’t pursue you,” he said. “The job offer will remain open, but we will not pressure you into accepting it.”
What, really?
I must have looked skeptical, because he flashed me that disturbing smile and nodded.
I didn’t know what he was playing at, but if there was any real choice of getting out of this without becoming a drone for the corporate system, I was taking it.
“I’ll have to decline,” I said hesitantly.
“Very well,” he said, still smiling. “Thank you for your time. But remember, if you ever need a helping hoof, Unreality, Inc. is ready and willing to take you in!”
The world blinked out of existence. I blinked a few times myself, a split appearing in the darkness that had suddenly appeared overhead. I raised myself out of the virtual reality pod and stepped out into the general din of Joe’s Internet Cafe. There were no armed guards, no security robots, nothing out of the ordinary.
Had that really worked? Was this some kind of prank, or was I really, truly off the hook?
I trotted out of the establishment, paying no mind to the wary glances I got from Trading Card, and stepped onto the street. It had stopped raining. The sun was out, and even a lot of the puddles had evaporated. The sunlight’s rays streamed down through the midmorning sky, glinting off the glass sheets of countless windows on the skyscrapers all around. Holo-commercial projectors and giant tele-billboards displayed images of ponies enjoying the products of the corporations, same as always.
I couldn’t believe it. I smiled.
A low siren began to wail throughout the concrete-and-steel valley of buildings. The holo-commercials and tele-billboards all changed their content. Images of ponies playing and being good little consumers shifted into images of me. My avatar list, my address, my hacker tag alongside my real name, and even, somehow, blurry photos of my IRL self appeared on every visible electronic surface I could see.
Different billboards and projectors read differently. Each of the Big Four, minus Unreality, Inc., was broadcasting a different message. Each company was advertising a bounty for any information on me, or my capture, or my head. The bounty amounts were ludicrous, and each kept on rising as they tried to outbid the others in real time.
“I’m just a fucking hacker!” I whined. No matter what damage I had done to the corporations, it was nowhere near enough to warrant this kind of response. There was something far bigger at play here, and I feared I might not live long enough to find out what.
At least I knew one thing, though. This was how Unreality, Inc. ‘encouraged’ its would-be employees to accept their job offers. Zero One had been telling the truth when he said that Unreality, Inc. wouldn’t pursue me. It was every other corporation that would do it instead.
I could either accept Zero One’s job offer… or run for my life.