//------------------------------// // Unhealing // Story: Iron Mountain // by computerneek //------------------------------// Princess Twilight Sparkle awakens swiftly, lying on her side in a metal box.  It takes her only half a second to remember what the box is- Zeus had called it a ‘medical na-no-vat’.  The pain from the magic surge is completely gone, and a quick glance at her side informs her that she’s no longer full of holes.  More interesting, perhaps, is that her horn is tingling- the way it usually does when she uses up all of her power in a single spell.  Not that she does that very often.  The most interesting part of that is that she’s fully charged…  More than that, actually- she’s got about twice as much power floating around in her horn than she normally does, even when she tops off.  As she stands up and hops out of the box, the top having slid off while she analyzed her situation, she remembers what had happened. Right.  She’d scanned that capsule.  Must be where the extra power came from- but why the tingle?  She hadn’t been anywhere close to that when she stepped into the vat!  Perhaps- Twilight freezes, and performs a double-take at her own glossy coat.  “Oh, is that what they did?” “Negative,” she hears Zeus say.  “Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash both used the seats in Passenger Seven, as you did; unlike yourself, they also stayed long enough, after medical repairs, for the deep cleaning.  Such cleaning is a luxury service from those seats, but sanitation is standard procedure in the Medbay.” “Uhh…?” Sigh.  “The cleaning- and thence glossy coat- is the last thing those seats do.  You left before they got to it, but after everything important was done.  Here in the medbay, cleaning and sanitation is one of the first things done, after emergency services- meaning you really had no choice but to get the ‘glossy coat treatment’ here.  Don’t worry- Rarity stopped by earlier, for her own little cleaning.” Twilight stands stone still for about a second, then brushes a hoof dramatically across her forehead, just below her horn.  “Whew.”  She repeats her search of the room, finding nopony- but there’s a lavender box on the floor right in front of her.  “Where is everypony?” “They left earlier; it’s now early evening.  If you would like, that box is a gift, from me to you.” Twilight looks at it, hoisting it into the air and popping it open with her magic.  Next, she stares at it for a second.  “What…?” “That’s a comset, engineered to blend in with your coat.  At this point, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Princesses Celestia and Luna each have one.” The instruction passes quickly. “So, once on, twice off, thrice to talk to somepony other than you?  Won’t the first two be triggered before the third?” “Negative.  The system is adaptive, and will adjust over time to your particular patterns, for better interpretation.  Neither of the first two functions will activate without sufficient delay to ensure it is not an invocation of the third.  At any time, if an interpretation is found to be inaccurate, such is corrected immediately- and no, taps made by anypony- or anything- else are completely ignored.” “What if I’m wearing shoes or something?” “Depends.  Some footwear may impede the signal too much for recognition; if ever you’re unsure, you can touch it- while wearing the footwear in question- and ask me.” “So, I can now talk to my friends anywhere I go?”  She had put them on while he spoke. “To anypony with a comset, yes.” “Woah.  Only one ear…  The comset, no?” “Yes.  Nopony else will be able to hear me when I speak to you through it.” Of all ponies, Twilight is the one to have trouble with this.  “Why wouldn’t they, though?” It’s almost a sigh.  “The way sound works.  Since it rests inside your ear, it takes a very, very low volume for you to hear.  This same volume is too low for anypony else to hear- though they might catch a mumble if they were to press their ear to yours.” “You’re sure he’s in there?” Applejack asks.  “Seems mighty close to that hole to me.”  She indicates the wide open accessway into the Everfree alongside this hill. Fluttershy looks over towards the woods, as if only just realizing this.  “Um, yes.  Twilight is…”  Her head tilts slightly, her eyes unfocusing for a second.  The next second, she draws in a breath while her face shows both relief and excitement.  “She’s okay?” she asks the rock in front of her- and, after another second of standing still, darts into the cave. A fairly confused Applejack canters after her.  She would gallop, but it hurts too much to do that right now; besides, it’s not like this cave has any forks in it, nor like a single pony with weird magic spells will be hard to find. Unfortunately for her, her normally slow friend is long gone when she reaches the end of the tunnel- the odd metal doorway that slid open when she walked up, letting her into a large room…  With no pegasi, two other doors, and a voice in the air. “Good evening,” it greets. “Uh, good evenin’, wherever you are,” she replies, ears and eyes alike questing for the stallion. “I’m afraid you won’t find me there, as a pony,” he replies.  “I’m Fluttershy’s not-a-pony somebolo.” “Somebolo?” “Yes, I am a Bolo.” “Do you have a name?” “I am called ‘Zeus’.” “So…  Those percentages you gave Fluttershy.  What’s the last half a percent?” “Permanent injury.  Fear not, she has made a complete recovery.” “Nice to hear…  Where-”  She pauses, considering.  “You know anything about all these pains we been getting?” “Yes.” Her question has made me think.  I gave the affirmative immediately; sonar is enough to detect some large tumors in her body.  Past that, I correlated all my medical records to identify a trend. Interesting.  Daring Do was essentially healthy, except for immediate injuries- broken bones and cut flesh, past and present.  My Commander had some developing health problems, and all of her friends- including Applejack- had major health problems, including at least one cancer.  In fact, each one I look at seems worse than the one before.  What’s going on? One simulation comes up to a 97.41% match to the developments I’ve seen.  My exposed drone bay hatches slam open, spitting out twenty stealthed drones for Everfree overflights.  I contact Rainbow, and request to see at least one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders for confirmation. That night, as Fluttershy settles down in her bed, in Twilight’s castle, she taps her bracelet three times.  Now she knows Twilight is okay, the mind function isn’t nearly so frightening- and it’s been a long day.  Besides, she has this bad feeling she can’t figure out. It is still unsettling when it comes on.  She blinks once or twice as her mind adjusts to the pace- and she begins processing her memories of the day, trying to locate the cause of her bad feeling.  One advantage it offers is its perfect recall- once it hears about something, unless she tells it to forget, it remembers it clearly, forever.  While this could be somewhat creepy, she knows her memories are hers alone, even with it- and it’s incredibly useful for her processing tasks. For example, once she finishes sifting through her memories of the day, it has no qualms with cataloging them, marking exactly what happened when with who.  Interesting, she notices Pinkie seems to have disappeared after the rumble in the ground?  Further analysis allows her to pick out some background details she hadn’t noticed before.  Sugarcube Corner had closed early too, right about that same time. Another detail she notices.  Her headset-provided self-health sense is giving her a different reading from earlier:  She’s no longer in perfect health.  Rather, she’s somewhat far from it.  As an extra bonus, all of the little keep-her-healthy ‘nanites’ that had been in her body are all spent; she’s getting these readings from the more passive stopgapper nanites…  None of which are doing anything right now, but they do report the neutralization of a single cancerous tumor following the rest of her nanites’ exhaustion this evening. So she reaches out to Twilight’s ‘nanites’.  Different story; Twilight’s stay-healthy nanites are still present, though in a vastly reduced quantity from earlier.  Huh.  After a minute’s consideration, she reaches out to Rainbow’s…  Alas, she’s out of range for nanite communication.  However, her comset is more than willing to relay the signal to her.  She catches hardly a glimpse of Rainbow’s nanite situation- no stay-healthies, stopgappers haven’t done anything just yet- before she feels something using the very same function on everypony’s communicators, including her own, to pull nanite data.  She allows it; this something had instantly been identified as Zeus.  As soon as this happens, he requests a communication channel to her- and, after a moment’s consideration, she accepts it. In that tiny moment, so short even her accelerated mind failed to perceive it, Zeus had correlated all of the current nanite data with his previously collected medical data.  He’s also pulled the records from the nanites, correlating those as well.  All in all, he has come to a startling conclusion, which he drops into her set as soon as the channel is opened, alongside much of the supporting information. Fluttershy spends almost half a second just understanding his conclusions and where they came from.  When she airs her observations about Pinkie Pie and the bakery, Zeus produces a certainty- 98.85%- that whatever has been inflicting injuries on them whenever any were healed has included Pinkie too, resulting in her debilitation.  He follows with another massive chunk of data. Almost three seconds are taken in understanding this information.  He’s correlated all of these medical observations with where each pony had been at the time of any given event, his own defensive barrier activities, and so on.  It seems that, whenever one pony was healed, no matter where, the un-health was instantly reproduced, spread across everypony else…  But only the ponies that were outside his magic shields, and the damage done by the free magic flowing into Twilight didn’t count.  The pattern he’s discovered suggests that only the six Elements are involved in this- and that the total amount of medical damage is gradually increasing- which will, eventually, lead to everypony’s death.  He’s run some simulations; theoretically, if they get all six inside his shields, he can restore them all to perfect health and keep them that way.  However, a single step outside of the barrier then would likely result in some kind of medical disaster, possibly including death, until the cause can be traced and eliminated. Once she finishes processing this, she practically- no, literally- flies out of her bed, racing for Sugarcube Corner.  In the process, she reaches out to all four communicator-equipped friends- thank Celestia none have taken them off just yet- to call their attention to the situation.  Her own neural link- she still doesn’t understand that completely- makes it easy for her to alert them all individually.  Zeus helps her out, somehow guessing at what each pony knows already or can deduce on their own- and using these guesses to determine, with amazing accuracy, how best to get each pony into motion.  Not that anypony needs any more than her voice making the request. In any case, Rainbow reaches the bakery first.  The Cakes are still awake, and inform her that Pinkie had been taken to the hospital some hours earlier- a timeframe Zeus notes places her collapse at right about the middle of Applejack’s repairs.  Fluttershy relays this information to everypony, and reaches the hospital doors at the same time as both Twilight and Rainbow.  Rarity can be seen galloping closer as they rush inside, but Applejack is still outside the town limits. The receptionist is more than willing to tell them where Pinkie is, and summon the doctor for them to speak to.  When Twilight asks why they hadn’t heard of it earlier, the kind receptionist flips through some pages for a few seconds before she facehooves; apparently, Pinkie had come in right on a shift change, and this notification had been overlooked in the resulting confusion.  The five friends trot up to Pinkie’s room to check on their comless friend while they wait for the doctor. When they enter the room, they do so to find a nurse doing a quick checkup- and stand out of her way for the few seconds she requires to finish.  She informs them nothing has changed in the last two hours, before telling them what she knows of Pinkie’s situation- and total paralysis. Zeus refuses to stop picking additional information out of everything- from the color of Pinkie’s fur (which, apparently, is slightly off) to the tone of the nurse’s voice- and indicates to Fluttershy that, if Twilight touches Pinkie for a few seconds, he can transfer enough medical nanites to formulate his own, more complete diagnosis.  Furthermore, those same nanites should be enough to furnish some repairs- including, on a 83.71% chance, at least some of her paralysis.  He does note that she and Rainbow could expect to experience some pain from the rebound, but Pinkie should be able to talk and, most likely, move. Fluttershy tells Twilight about this through the communicators, without moving her own mouth.  They make eye contact briefly, before Twilight rests a hoof on Pinkie’s.  When she does so, she uses such words that everypony else steps forwards to join in, using their touch to be there for their friend. Ten seconds later, everypony is simply smiling at their friend, all hooves connected, when Fluttershy catches her breath.  Pinkie’s diagnosis has come through- and does not look pretty. About as pretty as Zeus had predicted, as a matter of fact.  Thirty-seven different kinds of cancer, three different heart diseases, six ruptured disks in her spine, eighty-nine disintegrating bones, an inhibited immune system, low red blood count…  The list goes on- and Fluttershy grasps that just a few of these problems could easily kill their friend.  All put together, only Pinkie could survive- and that only for as long as her ‘magic gland’ remains intact- it’s caught between two tumors right now.  Zeus transfers not only regular medical nanites but also stopgap nanites, using the former to disintegrate the tumors in her heart and the latter to restore function to her nervous system, allowing her to move once again.  The doctor walks into the room in time for Pinkie to do what only Pinkie can do- and spring out of the bed with total disregard for her ailments. One hour later, Pinkie has been officially discharged from the hospital, and everypony- with Zeus’ able help- has convinced Pinkie to come with them to his hill.  Pinkie, of course, draws attention to Fluttershy’s oddly instantaneous response times; the other four are already wondering what is going on.  She has used the coms to deliver information silently while in the presence of others, but is now speaking, rather than using the coms, as they approach the cave.  A fourth one, as a matter of fact, that opens as she approaches it.  When everypony else asks why this one, Zeus responds through the coms- and Fluttershy matches his words perfectly, for Pinkie’s benefit. “Because there’s monsters in the other three.” They end up cantering down the tunnel, passing through the door- into Passenger Four- only twenty meters in front of another monster.  Only, Fluttershy is the last one through- and her hoof refuses to cross the threshhold.  First, it’s one of her hind hooves, but when she turns around to push away any invisible claws, it comes right across as soon as her forehoof crosses the threshhold.  The monster is only ten meters away when Zeus solves the problem, flexing his antimagic screen inwards, allowing her to pull her hoof in…  Then closing the door in front of her and returning the screen to its original position, forcing her hoof through the barrier.  She is then able to pull away from the door with ease, to join the others in the passenger bay. Pinkie, who had been about to rush outside to buck the monster and push her friend in, stops as Fluttershy pulls in, and asks the obvious question.  Fluttershy had shown a mild irritation at her hoof sticking, but absolutely no fear as the monster approached- or the door closed in front of her, her hoof sticking to it momentarily. Fluttershy’s answer involves no hesitation, despite her attempt to shrink away from the question.  “I knew what was going to happen,” she answers softly. In the meantime, Fluttershy had realized she’s the only one to have experienced the neural link thing just yet, and asked Zeus about it.  As is his way, he answered her almost before she finished asking, even at her accelerated speeds; she disagrees with his reasoning, though.  Why not give it to all of them?  It should vastly simplify communication next time they get into an emergency situation!  Halfway through her muttered response to Pinkie’s inquiry, she had asked him if there was something they could use for the purpose before he gets it installed in their coms.  The answer comes back instantly- yes, the seats have neural headsets built into their headrests.  He cautions her that they are more powerful than one he can pack into a comset, but notes they’re not as powerful as the one on his command deck.  She elects to stay here, with her friends, rather than taking his offer to the command deck. “So, what now?” Rainbow asks. Zeus answers this question.  “Take a seat.  The headrests are capable of enabling direct communication with your minds, far faster than the eyes or ears.  With this system, called a ‘neural link’, we should be able to trace- and solve- the problem far faster than without.” “Uh, what?” “The headrests in the seats double as ‘neural link headsets’, allowing a ‘neural link’ to be employed through them.  This link will, while active, accelerate the pony’s thoughts and connect them to me- and each other.  With this, we can put our minds and knowledge together- yours as well as mine- and identify our enemy far faster and easier.  Additionally, the seats themselves can provide any and all desired healing.” Pinkie leaps into the air, landing in one of the seats with a solid thump.  “Sounds good!” Five minutes later, Everypony is seated in the front row, and Fluttershy’s comset link releases just in time for all six headrests to activate simultaneously.