Illustration by NukeChaser24
I had to bite my tongue to keep from hyperventilating, and let me tell you, biting your tongue isn’t something you want to do when you have fangs. My eyes darted from right to left, up and down, all over my current visible spectrum without any too obvious neck-jerks or head-swivels. The bounties for my arrest by three of the Big Four megacorporations were still blaring out of every holo-commercial projector, tele-billboard, and radio.
And I was standing in the midst of it all. I had no way of knowing if it was just this stretch of street or the entire city (though with my luck I highly suspected the latter), but every inch of electronic surface space was screaming for my arrest. The screens in the Joe’s Internet Cafe behind me, the holograms between the skyscrapers above and around me, and even the smart glass of the skyscraper windows themselves were broadcasting my image with an ever-rising number of bounty bits as each megacorporation tried to outbid the other.
Maybe nopony’s noticed yet, I thought desperately, my mind racing a mile a moment.
Mostly, the passing ponies were too preoccupied by the images and sounds shouting for their attention—more so than normal—all around them. I reasoned that I had about five seconds or so before some of the shiftier pedestrians began glancing around in equal parts nervousness and opportunistic hope.
I had to get out of here. Had to get anywhere that wasn’t here, but where the hell could I possibly go? My apartment was off limits. If Zero One had found me in the Internet cafe, then Unreality, Inc. was certainly keeping tabs on every single iota of space in the immediate vicinity, and probably my apartment most of all.
“Hey…” I heard somepony say off to my right. In my peripheral vision, I could see a rather gruff pegasus stallion in the herd of pedestrians. I also noticed that he was staring right at me, as was everypony else. For the first time I can remember, the omnipresent sidewalk crowds had stopped moving, and even more worryingly, they had formed a sort of clearing around me. Most of the ponies were looking at me with nervous eyes—if the megacorporations wanted me this badly, I very well may be more dangerous than they could imagine—or more valuable. That second possibility was shining in the eyes of the pegasus as he lunged towards me.
I spread my wings and leapt into the air, flapping furiously as I headed—somewhere. Anywhere. For now, ‘anywhere’ meant up and over the street.
I heard a scrabbling behind me and risked a glance backwards. The pegasus stallion was spreading his wings, crouched and ready to spring after me.
“Hey!” he shouted, taking wing after me.
He was drawing something from his coat. Whether it was a gun or a knife or worse, I did not want to find out.
I snapped my wings to my sides and plummeted, allowing the pegasus to overshoot me. Dropping to the acid rain-slicked asphalt of the street, I darted towards the sidewalk opposite the cafe. At the same time, a lumbering land vehicle screeching to a halt in order to avoid hitting me and not, I assume, out of the goodness of its driver’s heart.
I barely had a chance to glance at the massive automobile before I made a break for it, and what I saw did not bode well. Unlike the jury-rigged old jalopies of recycled solar cells and cobbled-together metal, this behemoth on wheels was the modern equivalent of what the ponies of old might have referred to as a tank. The modern pony, however, called it an ‘ARC,’ an ‘Anti-Riot Car,’ and judging from the lack of megacorporate logos, this ARC was piloted by a very militant civilian.
“Get back here!” the pegasus shouted. He hadn’t fired yet, so I had to assume he didn’t have a gun. If he got desperate, though, I wasn’t about to rule out him throwing his knife.
I reached the other sidewalk and leapt into the crowd of ponies. Some shouted, others grabbed for me, and quite a few others were ruffling in their pockets for their own means to take advantage of the situation. Thankfully, though, most of the ponies were simply dashing away in a frenzy, not wanting anything to do with danger and the Big Four. I silently thanked them, but even more, I thanked the fact that even somepony as freakish as I am can disappear in a large enough crowd.
Have to get away, have to get away! I thought, but I had no idea where I was actually going. My apartment building was right in front of me, on this side of the street, but I knew running into its lobby would be tantamount to suicide. All I could do was weave my way through the throng of bodies and rush down the sidewalk, my heart racing a mile a minute, away from what might be my last temporary home.
Gunshot cracked the air. Somepony screamed. I didn’t feel anything burning through my flesh, so I assumed whoever had shot had missed. Either that, or they had shot somepony else before that other somepony could reach me first. More screams and a huge grumbling signaled something else entirely.
I glanced back to see ponies rushing out of the way of the very ARC that had almost run me over. It was a huge six-wheeler, twice as wide as most automobiles in the slums and an almost featureless brick of thick metal. It was capped with a gun turret and a few reinforced cameras, all of which were swivelling in my direction. Thank the Goddesses it didn’t fire, although I quickly realized it simply didn’t want to obliterate my valuable ass, damn the rest of the ponies.
The ARC was accelerating. I heard a few screams from ponies who had probably been too unfortunate to get out of the way in time. My eyes widened, my blood running cold. My limbs nearly froze up, almost sending me tumbling over on myself.
Gunshots were one thing. Ponies were mugged in the streets all the time. I hated it, but it was an undeniable fact of life in modern Canterlot, particularly out here in the slums. But for poor, hapless souls to be ground under the massive wheels of an ARC simply because the driver wanted me?
“Activate amulet voice commands,” I whispered as I ran. I only had a few moments before the ARC was upon me. Either I leapt into the air and opened myself up to other flying ponies, or I remained in the quickly dispersing crowd until the ARC inevitably caught up to me, turning many more poor souls into red smears on the concrete in the process. “Display local hackables.”
A highly transparent feed of my computer flared to life in my contact lenses. Things I could easily hack sped through in a list, counting everything from traffic lights to smartphones to augmented ponies’ Net-connected cybernetics.
“Hack ARC, serial number #432910,” I whispered. I glanced back. The ARC was a few yards behind me. I could feel the heat of its engines pumping into the surrounding atmosphere. “Shutdown!”
The ARC’s lights immediately shut off, the engine’s rumbling died down, and the wheels slowed to a crawl until the whole thing skidded to a stop.
I breathed a quick gulp of relief, but I wasn’t done just yet.
“Hack ARC 432910 registered owner, deploy homewrecker virus,” I said, not without a hint of satisfaction. Normally, I could never make use of my stock of high-profile viruses. They were too big, too cumbersome. They were powerful, but that made them easily spotted, and there were far better coders in the Big Four than little old me outside the inner circle. I’d do a lot of damage in a short time before the police AIs located me and shut me down for good.
Now, however, none of that mattered. My back was metaphorically against a wall, and I was not going down without a fight.
“Enjoy your new life,” I muttered under my breath. When that driver finally reactivated his technology, he’d find his bank accounts dry, his home sold, and whatever private files he’d had locked away now public knowledge. Essentially, I’d brought him down to around my level on the social ladder.
I felt good, sort of, for about a second or two. I got to play Robin Pony one last time.
“There she is!” shouted a new voice. I looked up to see a young, scrappy-looking pegasus mare pointing at me, somehow having been able to find me in the crowd. Or rather, I must have left myself wide open when shutting down the ARC. A quick glance around showed that the crowd had run on.
The pegasus mare was probably just a few years younger than I was. She didn’t have a weapon on her, but her friend must have.
I heard somepony scream as the ground rose up to meet me, and it took a me a moment or so to realize the scream had come from me. Numbness in my hoof quickly subsided into fiery, all-encompassing agony. I glanced back to see one of my rear legs with a clean shot through it, a brief splatter of red on the concrete.
Struggling, I rose as best I could into a sort of sitting position to watch a gang of youths approaching me cautiously.
“Careful,” said the mare in front, apparently the one who had shot me. She still had her smoking gun drawn, a model so incredibly old it looked like it might be a family heirloom. “Turn off your electronics, don’t let her hack you.”
I could have tried, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I did anything at this point. Any damage I did the corporation they sold me to could easily undo. They’d live like gods, just for nicking a single pony on the street.
“Who’s got the highest bounty?” the mare asked, pressing her gun to my head. It was a foreleg-mounted apparatus, designed for earth ponies like herself. A little robotic arm would swivel the gun in whatever direction she pointed while leveling it when she needed to use all four hooves.
“It keeps changing,” said another of the little group, a scrawny stallion youth. Who were all these kids to be hanging out with a mare who could have been their mother? Come to think of it, maybe she was their mother. Maybe this gang was just a family.
“I say we keep her alive, for now,” said the pegasus mare, still hovering above, keeping a lookout for anypony who might swoop in and take me from them. “Only one of the Big Four wants her dead, and I think we’d get more if we let the ones who want her alive fight it out for us.”
“Or fight you for me,” I said, wincing in pain.
“Quiet!” the older mare said, shoving the barrel of the gun against my head. I closed my eyes, shuddering. I could practically feel my lip quivering. I wasn’t sure if the wetness on my face was from spattered blood or tears. I suppose didn’t really matter.
I had two options, and I really, really wanted to save the second option only for an absolute last resort.
Taking a deep breath, I said, “You really think they’ll pay you anything?”
“I said quiet!” the mare snapped, raising the butt of the gun and smacking me across the head. I gasped, the shock from the smack seeming to amplify my already screaming leg. I breathed haggardly for a few moments and spat out some blood.
“What’s she talking about, ma?” asked the scrawny stallion. So it seemed they were a family after all.
“Nothing, Artichoke,” the mare said, keeping her eyes trained on me. “Now run along and find a phone booth and call the Corporate Alliance. Tell them we have the prize.”
“They already know,” I said. “They have cameras everywhere. They’re sending ponies right now. They’ll take me from you, and you’ll get nothing. What’s to stop them? All you did was find me and stop me for them.”
“She’s not right, is she, ma?” the stallion, apparently Artichoke, said with a strained look.
“Of course not, Artie,” the mother said. “Now go make the call, before somepony else takes her!”
“They’ll kill your family if you protest, Artichoke,” I spoke, my voice cracking. “Is getting rich really worth letting your family die?”
“Shut up!” the mother shouted, hitting me with the gun again. “Don’t listen to her, Artie.”
She turned to me, fire in her eyes, and leaned down close.
“Don’t you be planting lies in his head,” she said. “We don’t need to be rich. We just need to not starve! You’re some fancy criminal, you must be richer than we’ll ever be. How could you understand what we need?”
I… Hadn’t thought of that. They were really so desperate that they were willing to kill to save themselves from a slow, painful death. I took a second look at their ragged clothes. These poor souls very well may live on the street, braving the acid chocolate milk rain with only flimsy cardboard boxes and collecting scrapped tech for the auto-recyclers to get enough credits to get by, and even then, just barely.
“You don’t need to do this,” I whispered, flinching as she raised her gun again. “I’m not some rich criminal. I’m just a hacker. I barely make enough to eat, too.”
“What if she’s telling the truth, ma?” asked the pegasus, overhead. I noticed that Artichoke had also not moved any closer to the nearby payphone.
“Look, I could send you some credits,” I pleaded. “No viruses, no tricks. I steal bits and pieces from the corporations all the time. I’d pay you. They wouldn’t.”
The mother looked hesitant. She didn’t want to believe me, to think that her promise of more money than she’d ever imagined, a better life for her family than she could ever provide on her own, could be worth less than whatever I might promise. But I saw the doubt in her eyes. If I was right, and the corporations were just spinning lies, then I was the best she was going to get.
Her warring expressions of fear and hope and doubt were clear. It wasn’t fair, and I agreed with her. But, then again, nothing in this world was fair. Fairness died out a long, long time ago, ages before the Crash, before even the Corporate War. Maybe even before the end of the First Age, back when the Goddesses supposedly ruled the world in an era of peace and harmony.
I wanted to believe something like that could happen again. However, it didn’t do me much good if I wasn’t around to see it happen.
“The corporations thrive on the system that keeps ponies like you on the streets,” I said. “If you help them, you’ll just keep the system going. I’m trying to bring that system down. I can’t do that if I’m dead.”
The mother faltered for a moment, half-lowered her gun. She didn’t drop it, didn’t click the safety back on, but it was no longer aimed at me.
“I think—” she started to say.
It took me a few moments to regain my bearings, or at least, any semblance remotely related to even marginally having control over the situation. One moment, the mother was trying to say something. Before that moment had properly ended, my world had gone red. I screamed, or I think I did. My throat felt raw from it, but it may have been Artichoke and his sister, or any combination of our little standoff group. I furiously wiped the red from my face as I heard something hitting the ground, and backed away hastily from the fallen, headless corpse of the mother.
I stopped when the back of my head bumped up against what felt like the barrel of a much larger, much more modern firearm. I shakily turned around to see a towering unicorn stallion in a specially-padded trench coat. His horn was aglow, levitating a twin-pronged weapon that crackled with magical energy. It was an Icarus Industries product, of course, but a lot of it looked customized.
“I have the bounty,” he said, looking directly at me, although he had to have been speaking to whomever was on the other side of his earpiece. “I’ll take my credits now.”
He must have not liked the response, because he furrowed his brow, eyelids lowering.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll keep the bounty alive until you collect her.”
“You shot her,” I whimpered.
He said nothing. His eyes never left me, but his weapon also never swayed from my position. At such a close range, it would probably do to my entire body what it had done to the mother’s head.
I couldn’t stop it. I felt the bile surging up, and it came out.
The unicorn—he must have been a professional bounty hunter—took a single step backwards, all that was required to stop my vomit from spattering his coat. Eyes forward, gun aimed. No blinking, primed to fire.
“I really didn’t want to do this,” I said. He didn’t tell me to be quiet. I wagered he was listening to my every word, just in case a single speck of it became useful information later, but he was not about to interact directly. I wasn’t a pony, I was prey. I wasn’t even his prey, just some he was holding for a bigger, badder beast.
There was a rumbling in the air. A big, dark shape was slowly turning into view from between two skyscrapers, making its way down this stretch of urban canyon. In the olden days, it would have been called an airship or a zeppelin, but this large, dense construct was definitely not powered or kept airborne by magically-manipulated gases. Rings of fire swirled around the bottom, and spurts of flame randomly billowed from the towering, miniature city of smokestacks on its back.
A golden, stylized sun was emblazoned on its side, as well as the corporation’s name: Icarus Industries. Compartments in the sides were popping out, raising into turrets with extendable cannons. Laser-sites, harmless red dots that signalled something far, far worse, appeared all over the streets, dancing across the sides of skyscrapers and roving down the street and sidewalks. Most of the crowd had fled the area by now, and the sites certainly weren’t directed at my captor or myself, so I assumed the ship was warning any would-be corporate competitors in the area.
Like I said, I really didn’t want to do what I was going to do next, but I was out of options. At the top of my lungs (not that that was saying much), I shouted, “Zero One, I accept your job offer!”
The bounty hunter continued to say nothing. If not for the floating beam weapon, he might as well not have been there at all.
“What?” he said suddenly. For the first time since he’d appeared, he looked confused rather than stoic and menacing. “Repeat?”
The ship’s lasers zoomed all about the place, much more quickly, almost erratically. The ship emitted some sort of siren at irregular intervals. The bounty hunter flinched, almost glanced back at the ship, but stopped at the last second.
“Yes, I understand,” he said, though he was frowning, his brow furrowed all the more.
The Icarus Industries airship emitted fervent spurts of flame. Huge billows of industrial grumbles shook the air, rattling the windows of the surrounding buildings. The ship was speeding up. All of the laser sites were converging, speeding along the streets and towers and the undersides of the sickly-pink cotton candy clouds, merging into one huge dot that illuminated the bounty hunter in a crimson wash of light.
“Command?” the bounty hunter said. “Call off the crosshairs. Command? Command!”
He lowered his beam weapon for the first time. I dared not move; he could still whip it up and blow me to wet smithereens in an instant. But still, I could see his attention was no longer solely focused on me.
“You’re not command,” he murmured, barely audible to me under the thunderous foghorn bellow of the Icarus Industries ship. “Who are you? How’d you access this signal?”
The bounty hunter winced, and even I could hear the piercing whine of sharp static that blared from his earpiece. His horn’s glow flickered, his beam weapon momentarily dropping unsteadily in his telekinetic glow.
I took a tentative step forward, but it wasn’t fast enough. He’d righted himself and steadied the weapon’s aim, pointing it right between my eyes. I quickly froze. The Icarus Industries ship’s laser sites moved off of the bounty hunter and once more began sweeping the surrounding environs.
Whatever you have planned, Zero One, do it now! I thought.
As if on cue, the air shimmered, all throughout the urban canyon, and not just from the fire-induced heat-haze of the imposing ship. There was a brilliant flash of white, a crack of thunder, a mighty whoosh of air, and suddenly a looming shadow had appeared over the bounty hunter and I.
The bounty hunter looked up, and for the first time, fully took his aim away from me. He pointed his beam weapon at the sky, the weapon crackling with magical energy as he switched it from low power to high. I looked up as well.
The oddest airship I had ever seen had appeared out of the ether and slipped into reality immediately above us. It was a ramshackle amalgamation of every sort of transportational machine imaginable, from every era, all bolted, welded, and duct taped together with seemingly no clear planning whatsoever. A steamship was nestled between a space shuttle and a cruise ship, with an old-fashioned ironclad naval vessel and a winged air vehicle tacked on for good measure. The whole thing was covered in robotic arms and a hodgepodge of random weaponry, everything from an anti-particle cannon to a popgun. The whole thing was held aloft by spinning propellers, whirring jet turbines, hot air balloons, and even a collection of regular-sized party balloons in a great, numerous cluster of colors. A giant mast of sails seemed to vaguely, somehow, steer the unwieldy contraption.
Illustration by NukeChaser24
I smiled. Unreality, Inc. engineering, at its finest. The only unifying principle of their technology seemed to be that it worked simply to spite the fact that it shouldn’t.
Hatches opened in the side of the colossal jigsaw puzzle of an airship, and out poured hordes of equine-shaped robots. Each was just as ramshackle as the ship from which they had originated.
“The bounty’s not worth this,” the bounty hunter snorted. He turned to me with a wry smile and gave a slight nod of his head. “Whatever you did to make them want you, you either really impressed them, or you really, really fucked up.”
I half-smiled in response and nodded. His horn sparked and then he, and his beam weapon, vanished in a flash of light.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I had no idea what Unreality, Inc. really wanted with me, but at the same time, I knew less of what the other corporations wanted. Better the devil you sort of kind of knew rather than the one you didn’t, or so I hoped.
The Icarus Industries ship was swinging its laser sites to the incoming horde of robots and their ship, shooting out blindingly brilliant fireballs. Many collided with the robots, incinerating them instantly and leaving barely anything other than a fine mist of liquefied and then vaporized metal.
The thing about Unreality, Inc., though, was that it wasn’t about to let this battle pan out in any sort of logical fashion. More spare-parts robots were pouring from the ship than could have feasibly fit inside of it, and those that made it past the fireballs of the Icarus Industries ship landed on it. They sprouted wires and mechanical tubes and tentacles, burrowing into the dark metal of the ship. The blasts of fire came slower and more erratically, until the fireballs stopped exiting their cannons at all and simply blew up within the ship. The airship listed, the flames spurting from its smokestacks turning a multitude of colors as the ship slowly, but with increasing speed, fell to the ground.
It crashed into the street, sending a rumbling shake throughout the urban canyon, sending me sprawling. Land vehicle alarms went off, tele-billboards and holo-commercial projectors shorted and displayed glitched images. The force of the impact shattered several countless floors of windows in the surrounding buildings.
“Greetings and salutations,” said a familiar voice behind and above me.
Picking myself up from the broken asphalt of the ruined street and wincing from the pain in my leg, I saw one of the many ramshackle robots flying down to land a few meters in front of me. It was oddly more uniform than the others, with only a few random inconsistencies in metal and era of technology.
“Zero One?” I asked.
The robot made an exaggerated bow.
“It is nice to meet you in the relative realms of reality,” Zero One said. “My dataform has been authorized to operate this robotic body for the duration of this mission. Will you accompany us to the headquarters of your new employers?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“As you have accepted our job offer, no.”
“I figured as much,” I sighed. “Lead on.”
Zero One leapt into the air, multicolored flames propelling him from jetpack-like rockets on his sides. I spread my wings and followed him up, noting that several of the robots that had remained around the ship were flying relatively close to me, probably ensuring I didn’t try to make a break for it. I certainly wasn’t planning on doing so; even if they wouldn’t have blasted me with Unreality, Inc.’s infamous brand of chaotic magical energy, the fact remained that I’d been shot. If I didn’t seek medical attention soon, I’d bleed out, or at the very least lose a leg. No hospital or automated med pod in the city would be able to keep me safe with the whole of the Big Four after me. As it was, my shot leg hung painfully as I struggled to keep my wings flapping despite my irregular angle, finally taking me through the provided opening in the side of the ship…
...And into a mad pony’s fever dream.
The inside of the Unreality, Inc.’s aircraft was easily far larger than its exterior should have allowed, as the sheer quantity of Unreal bots attested. That alone, though, would have at least made sense. Lots of important establishments or the like used powerful magic to shove extra space where there shouldn’t be any. Canterlot was a crowded place, and space was a precious commodity.
The inside of the ship, however, seemed to be a void. A violet sky with no discernable ground below stretched out before me. The door to the outside closed behind me as soon as I entered, and I turned to see that the irising portal was simply a hunk of metal floating in the air. Much like the Net, the interior of the void seemed to be filled with tiny floating islands, and on each island there was some sort of mechanical apparatus, each just as bonkers and nonsensical as everything Unreality, Inc. engineered.
One island had a large yet very old-fashioned computer embedded in its side, vacuum tubes sticking out of its top. I could even see spinning reels of magnetic tape behind its glass casing. Tubes ran out from this islet to numerous nearby floating rocks. One held a large series of monitors displaying every conceivable angle of the outside world around the ship, where an Unreal bot was piloting the craft with a video game joystick controller. Other tubes led to things that must be engines (albeit a cross between a fusion reactor and a potbellied stove), repair stations for damaged Unreal bots, and a hotdog stand. I was about to ask what the inorganic, mouthless Unreal bots would want with a hotdog stand, but thought better of it.
Zero One led me to a floating island further from the control console, where a med pod was waiting. It was the finest piece of medical technology I’d ever seen outside of Net pictures, something only the richest of the megacorporate elite could ever afford to use. Whatever these bots wanted me to do for them, it must be very, very important indeed.
The pod opened for me and I hastily landed inside, settling into the padded interior. Zero One stood outside while the pod doors closed.
“I’ve never been in one of these things,” I spoke aloud, not sure if I would be answered by Zero One or whatever AI must be running the med pod itself. “How do I work it?”
The pod opened before I’d finished speaking, and it took me a moment to realize that it had already healed my leg in the split second the doors were closed. I quickly climbed out, looking back at my leg. There wasn’t so much as a hint of a scar; I couldn’t tell where the bullet had actually gone through.
“It’s that easy?” I gasped.
“Unreality, Inc. takes pride in ensuring the health of all of its employees,” Zero One said. Given his robotic voice, I couldn’t tell if there was a hint of pride or irony in his voice, if either.
“If it’s that easy, why isn’t there a free med pod this advanced on every street corner?” I asked quietly, though I could feel a hot pang in my chest. Years of acid chocolate milk rain exposure, common diseases, anything that street family must have lived through daily could have been cured by one of these in an instant. If I’d known these higher-end pods were that advanced, I would have focused all of my hacks on medical engineering firms from the get-go.
“That would not be economically feasible,” Zero One said.
“Because your company can make more money by charging more for these than most ponies will ever make?” I spat.
“Because we would not have the resources to do so,” Zero One said. “This med pod can only work for one pony, the pony whose DNA it has been hard-coded to reconstruct. This pod has been constructed exclusively for your use, and producing these en masse would both bankrupt Unreality, Inc. as well as produce less than one-one hundredth of the amount necessary to supply all of Canterlot. This also does not account for the inevitable need for maintenance and power supply, much less the threat of thievery and vandalism.
“Furthermore,” Zero One said, speaking much lower this time, to the point I could hardly hear him. “It’s not my company.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, for a moment, at least.
“Then why not make lower-end med pods more affordable and available?” I spoke.
There was a moment of static in his speech before he said, “I do not know.”
Zero One led me to a small passenger area with a few seats. I sat down, him standing guard beside me, silent for the rest of the trip. The other Unreal bots continued to fly about the purple void, performing maintenance on themselves or the exposed parts of the ship, plugging into computers for some inane tasks, and buying hotdogs. I still never figured out what they did with them, but they bought them all the same.
After a few moments of travel (or what I assumed was travel, as there was no sensation of movement in the void), Zero One announced that we had arrived.
The metal door hanging in space irised open, and he fled through it with me close behind. In just a few short moments, it seemed the ship had flown—or more likely, teleported—to the other side of Canterlot.
“Welcome to Unreality, Inc.’s headquarters,” Zero One said. “More commonly known as the ‘Freak Factory’ and the ‘Twisted Tower.’”
To say that it was a lot to take in was like saying that it hurt a bit to look at the sun through a telescope.
The headquarters complex took the form of two sections. One was a colossal tower that bent and twisted and looped and knotted over and back and through itself. How it remained standing despite the obvious affront to gravity and architecture it presented was anypony’s guess. Much like virtually everything related to Unreality, Inc., it was covered in a hodge podge of windows and made of every sort of building material and style imaginable, from the stained glass of a Harmonist temple to ship portholes, medieval castle towers poking out from the side of Art Deco murals, and gothic flying buttresses beside wooden scaffolding.
The second component of the structure, however, was much more interesting, solely because in every way the tower conformed to the company’s bizarre standards, this section did not. A humongous rectangular box-like structure was loosely connected to the tower by a series of skybridges. The box was almost entirely featureless, smooth gray metal without windows, smokestacks, or seemingly any exterior doors. It was also far larger than the tower; the tower may have been taller, just barely, but this huge second facility was easily more voluminous.
This second section must have been the Freak Factory, Unreality, Inc.’s original stronghold from before the Crash. Legend had that its automated defenses and hidden secrets from the Corporate War were still largely active, tantalizing yet keeping everypony out but the bravest and most skilled of Tech Hunters. Even Unreality, Inc.’s highest CEOs and shareholders couldn’t gain access without being threatened by… Whatever was in there.
I sincerely hoped that when Zero One said I would be working as a Tech Hunter, I wouldn’t be venturing into places like that. I was a hacker; surely they’d have me on some remote detail rather than going into the field.
I gulped and tried in vain to convince myself this must be true.
Even if I got the comfiest job in the world, though, I remembered I’d still be working for one of the Big Four, the very entities I’d sworn to oppose when I first set out on my own.
The first opportunity I have, I’m making a break for it, I thought.
Zero One led me to one of the exterior landing pads jutting out from the side of the topsy-turvy Twisted Tower. There were a few hodgepodge aircraft floating lazily about the facility, much like the one that had brought me here, but most of the skyways were clear. Non-megacorporate aircraft were forbidden here. Looking beyond the boundaries of the facility’s airspace, I could see the skyscrapers and other businesses of the inner city, the heart of Canterlot. Countless aerial vehicles flew about the airspace, creating a sort of bubble.
As we trotted through the hangar beyond the landing pad, I noticed that nopony was here but the Unreal bots. Many in the hangar were maintenance models, repairing docked aircraft and combat bots, but there wasn’t a single flesh-and-blood pony in sight.
“Where are all the flesh-ponies?” I asked wryly, remembering what Zero One had called me when we’d first met.
“The CEOs and chief stockholders and elite employees all work on the top floor,” Zero One informed me. “The majority of the workforce here at Unreality, Inc. is composed of Unreals, such as myself.”
“One of the largest businesses in Canterlot doesn’t offer jobs to the masses?” I asked.
“Ever since the Crash, the company has decided it wishes to maintain a tighter control over its employees,” Zero One said. There another burst of static in his voice, and he stopped for a moment, nearly stumbling. He shook his robotic head before resuming his normal walk. “Sorry about that. I must be experiencing a bug; I’ll have to drop by maintenance after I introduce you to the boss.”
I nearly choked.
“The boss?” I asked. “As in, the head of the entire company?”
“Yes.”
My blood ran cold, my heart quickening as I followed Zero One into an elevator. It was a much smaller model than the clunky car from my apartment, which I supposed I may never see again. That didn’t bother me so much; I’d only lived there a week, but I would have liked to get some of my belongings. That also didn’t matter quite so much, though, as what Zero One was implying.
The absolute heads of the Big Four were essentially the modern equivalent of gods. Nopony who wasn’t in their inner circle, even the most elite of Tech Hunters, ever met with them. Nopony in the general public even knew who they were. They were simply the shadowy figures pulling the strings behind the curtains, the puppeteers whose flick of a hoof could raise skyscrapers or flood the streets with megacorporate police. They held such mythic status that some even doubted they existed, believing the companies were more of an oligarchy of the top shareholders and such.
I knew the truth, though. I’d been hacking long enough to hear things from the darkest corners of the Net, coincidences too convenient to be anything but hints at a much, much bigger truth. The heads of the Big Four were very much singular for their respective megacorporations, despite how impossible it seemed for one pony to wield and maintain that sort of power.
The elevator dinged as it reached the very top of the Twisted Tower. The doors slid open, and I hesitantly walked out alongside Zero One.
The penthouse office was surprisingly simple, by both CEO and Unreality, Inc. standards. It was a large hallway-like space with fountains and a small artificial stream lining the sides. The floor was tiled with marble, light-orbs hovered in the air like the breezies of ancient myth, and a desk rested at the far end. Beyond it, a wall-to-ceiling window displayed the Canterlot skyline, albeit inverted. Whether that was because the image was enchanted to be upside-down or because the entire office was upside-down due to some sort of gravitational trickery, I couldn’t say.
The desk, however, was empty. Nopony sat in a huge swivel chair behind it. There wasn’t even a computer or any paperwork on the desk, just a simple hologram projector gem.
There was, however, an earth pony mare half-lying down in front of the desk. She had her rear end stuck up in the air, and a hulking earth pony stallion dressed in black cloth like some sort of cultist executioner was smacking her repeatedly in the rear with a paddle.
The mare didn’t cry out each time she was smacked. She laughed uproariously, as if the pain were the funniest joke she’d ever heard.
“What the fuck?” I blurted.
“Greetings, Madam President,” Zero One said. “I have brought you the hacker known as Neverwas.”
This is the President?! I thought, screaming in my mind.
“Call me Full Tilt,” I said. It wasn’t like they didn’t already know my real name.
The earth pony spoke between thwacks and bouts of laughter.
“I’ll stick with-” Thwack “-Neverwas for now-” Thwack “-you can call me-” Thwack “-Everlast,” she said. “Okay, big guy, that’s enough for now. I’ll see you later.”
She winked at the earth pony with the paddle, who nodded at her and winked out of existence. The President, Everlast, stood up and turned to face us, a giddy smile on her face. I noticed before she turned that her backside wasn’t the slightest bit reddened from her little… Whatever the hell that had been. Had he really just been a hologram? I mean, I didn’t understand the point of sadomasochism in the first place—ponies were free to do whatever they wanted, just preferably not in front of me after blackmailing me to work for them—but why put on a show at all if the spanks had been virtual?
“I’m ever so honored you accepted my friend request,” Everlast said, trotting over to us and extending a hoof. “Or was that a magazine subscription? Timeshare? Whatever the case may be, or even April-be or June-be, I’m the opposite of negatively gracious you chose Unreality, Inc. for all your forced-employment needs!”
I chuckled nervously and extended my hoof to meet hers, only for it to phase through mine. Her whole body flickered like a…
“You’re a hologram,” I realized.
“No, I’m Everlast,” she laughed. “I’m just careful not to meet anypony in the flesh, blood, bones, and internal organs. I’m safe and sound and sight and smell in my own little slice of pie-radise.”
“You… Don’t meet with ponies in person...” I tried to make sense of her speech. “...To keep yourself safe from potential attackers?”
“And don’t forget to remember germs and dirt and viruses, the nasty little bits and pieces and feces of the world we could all do without,” she chuckled.
Oh, I thought, trying to reason this all out, with hopefully moderate success. She’s a germaphobe.
“Shall I leave you be, Madam President?” Zero One asked. How was it that an AI designed by the most nonsensical company in Canterlot was easier to understand than the mare in charge of it all?
“Feel and taste free and inexpensive to remain lacking inertia,” Everlast said. “I have much to discuss with little miss Neverwas, and you’ll be a not-small particulate of the whole he-bang. Some would say ‘she-bang,’ but I don’t want to be sexist with the turn-of-phrase.”
She vanished and reappeared sitting on her desk. I sat where I was and rubbed my temples.
“What exactly did you ‘hire’ me to do for you?” I asked, not sure I’d be able to understand a lick of her explanation. Two-year-old foals who could barely speak Equestrian made more sense than this.
“Didn’t Zero One tell you all about the details and retails?” Everlast said, frowning. Zero One emitted another burst of static. “Oh, I see he did do that. How wonder-fool. We conspired and hired you to be a Tech Hunter for our organization station.”
“I get the Tech Hunter part, I think,” I muttered, certain she could hear me. “But, and forgive my language—”
“I will be most forgiving of your Equestrian tongue,” Everlast interrupted. “But go on.”
“—What the hell are you talking about?” I continued. “I’m just a hacker, and not a very good one, if you were able to find me. What could I possibly do that your own hackers and AIs and robots and army of megacorporate personnel couldn’t do for you? There are mercenaries, bounty hunters, hell, you could even bribe a dragon with gold and jewels to be a better Tech Hunter for you than I could ever be. I’d be torn to shreds in two seconds out beyond the city, or even in the Crash-locked parts of Canterlot.
“What makes me so damn valuable?” I finished.
“Your lack of melanin, for one or two or three things,” she said.
“My what?”
“You’re pale,” she said. “You have no pigment. You’re a whitey, a ghostface, a blank-flanked overgrown mare-child whiter than a basement-dwelling jar of mayonnaise.”
“Huh?”
“You’re not like other ponies, Neverwas,” she whispered conspiratorially. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you lack a mark that is cute on your butt that can toot?”
I knew I shouldn’t be getting angry at her, much less showing any signs of anger. Pissing off one of the most powerful mares in Equestrian history would not go well for me, no matter how much she needed me.
But damn it, if she didn’t start speaking plainly—
“Your lack of a cutie mark marks you as a magical anomaly,” she spoke bluntly, shooting me a withering look. “Come on, Neverwas, it’s no fun if you don’t even try to keep up.”
“Wait,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “The whole weird speech thing is just to mess with ponies?”
She grinned mischievously. I supposed when you were as rich and powerful as she was, and not even physically present, you could afford to be eccentric.
“Back to the matter at hoof and tentacle and wing and horn and pseudopod and sandwich condiment,” she said. “We need you because you’re a magical anomaly, one of the few in recorded history. As I’m sure you know, the largest and most influential magical anomaly in history was the Crash.”
“You think I’m somehow connected to the Crash?” I asked, dumbfounded. “That happened decades before I was born!”
“I’m not going to go too much into it now,” Everlast said. “The big brains down in the think tank stumbled upon something they think may be big, something that may be… Revolutionary. They can explain it better than I can. But first, Neverwas, tell me what you know about the Crash.”
“I know about as much as anypony else,” I said, still not quite comprehending what she was getting at. “It was a major catastrophic event that ended the Corporate War. None of the Big Four claim responsibility for it, and nopony knows what caused it. Some think it was an anti-megacorporate faction, like the Unionists, or just a genius inventor who accidentally stumbled upon something too big for them to control. Some think it was the wrath of the Goddesses.”
“That last theory was always my favorite,” Everlast said.
“You believe it?” I asked, surprised.
“Not in the least,” she laughed. “I find it hilarious.”
“Don’t believe in the Goddesses?” I said. “I was never really certain about where I stood in the Harmonist faith. I was raised in a Harmonist orphanage, but—”
“Oh, no, I believe in the Goddesses plenty,” Everlast spoke.
We stood in silence for a moment. When I was sure she wasn’t going to elaborate, I continued.
“And that’s all I know,” I said. “That’s all the nuns taught us in history class.”
“They didn’t tell you what the Crash actually was?”
“Didn’t I just say what it was?” I asked, frowning.
“You said what it did,” Everlast corrected. “Subtle distinction. “Not what it was. Did the nuns ever tell you the scientific explanation?”
“Have you ever met a Harmonist nun?” I scoffed. “They ‘don’t believe’ in science. They think all magic is the will of the Goddesses, and they think it should only be used in a raw form, not in conjunction with technology. They told us that when the Crash happened, the Goddesses took their magic away from technology and messed it all up. Obviously, that didn’t happen, because we still have working magical technology today, but something caused a lot of the tech from the Corporate War to lock up.”
“That explanation may be truer than you think, sort of, maybe, kind of,” Everlast chuckled. “Though the Goddesses didn’t ‘take away’ magic from technology. In fact, no magic was involved at all, and that’s what caused the problem.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Come on, Neverwas,” Everlast groaned, leaning forward and phasing her holographic hoof through my forehead in an imitation of tapping it. “Use that big hacker brain of yours! Code yourself a solution, or at least steal it from somepony else!”
I looked at her warily.
“The Crash wasn’t a magical problem,” Everlast sighed at last. “It was the most un-magical event in the history of the known world. It was an instantaneous and total cessation of all magic.”
I raised an eyebrow, trying to hide a smile.
“That’s impossible,” I snorted when she merely raised an eyebrow back at me and grinned all the wider. “Whether the Goddesses are real or not, magic is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Even scientists agree on that.”
“For one moment, that law was repealed,” she said. “It was an anomaly, much like yourself. We think the two anomalies might be connected. Trust me when I say we’ve researched this long and hard. We think you could find the one thing no other Tech Hunter could ever locate. We think you could bring us and allow us to control the cause of the Crash.”