//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Carapaces in the Closet // Story: Resonance Change // by Macrophage //------------------------------// Chapter 8: Carapaces in the Closet Saturday 1:33AM: Mike’s House We’re sitting on the ‘couch’. Nobody saying or thinking much of anything. Just a lot of confusion and fear on my part as we both rock slowly back and forth. “How did you do that?” Pinea finally asks. “I told you twice, I just imagined turning the ‘hand’ of the telekinetic spell into a first that I throw, but I focused it down to a narrow point, like a spear or laser. I was really panicked, I should have known it might be too much.” “Mike, you just created a spell from scratch and cast it at a force that I’m not sure many could counter. It’s amazing, but also scary.” “Creating it isn’t my worry It’s the force. I know me. I don’t trust me with that kind of firepower.” “Why?” “I…I… well I guess I’ve always been a screwup. Screwed up my career. My life is mostly work and doing little here because I’m scared of screwing up more things. Someone like me should not have that kind of power on hand. I’m great at finding the worst decision and taking it. Giving me something as powerful as THIS is like giving a toddler a car with chainsaws strapped all over it and explosives in the back and telling them to ‘discover’ the road.” My avatar turns away. I need to tone down the interaction, I can’t stand him staring at me right now. “I suppose we could never use it, but I don’t even feel good with knowing that it’s a possibility.” “Mike, I don’t know. Maybe you screwed up some things before, but that’s not who I know. The Mike I know figured out the situation we were in. That Mike may have saved one of us from ceasing to exist. That Mike learned how to walk, shapeshift, cast magic and fly in a single day. Though he may have had a good teacher for some of that.” I turn to see him with a goofy smile with that last comment. I can’t help but smile a little. “And that Mike did something in that same day that I’ve always wanted to do. Cast a proper magic spell. Not just cast but create one.” I turn now fully as he nods his head. “Telekinesis is a spell,” I counter. “It’s the basic default of at least two species. It’s something that a grub or foal learns by accident. But all this said, I shouldn’t be trusted with that kind of power either.” “Pinea, you’re one of the kindest people I know. Granted I only know one changeling, but I feel pretty confident about that.” He shakes his head, slowly walking over. “I think you need to see something Mike. It still feels weird that we’re literally mind to mind here but there’s things you don’t know that you probably need to know about who you’re sharing this body with.” He puts his head to mine, “I want to see if I can share this with you through my eyes.” *** The world shifts. It’s the changeling hive, but it’s not the last image I saw of it. No plants around. The place looks like a termite or ant colony. The light is bioluminescent green provided by various insectoid-looking pods around the ceiling. The walls and floors of this place look like H.R.Geiger had been called in to decorate, looking almost like the hive itself was an organism, grown here rather than built. My mind fills in the fact surprisingly fast that that was the case in a way that creeps me out far more than the actual visuals. The most jarring thing though was that at some level this felt ‘normal’. I’m looking through the eyes of someone or something. I assume it Pinea though. I see what I know are changelings everywhere, but they’re black with much sharper features and holes in weird places like the legs and wings. Sharp incisors and long tongues fill their mouths. Again, this seems perfectly normal in way that is innately alien to me. Much like when I give Pinea the controls I’m an observer only. “Drones, we have a break-in storage chamber two. Escape in progress!” one of the warriors says as several of us immediately run for the room. When we’re most of the way there we break off into smaller and smaller groups, trying to cover as many possible exits as possible as more reinforcements try to get there. My route takes me through the storage chamber. The walls are lined floor to ceiling with cocoons. I try to focus in on them but I’m not looking directly at them. I’m not sure I want to know, but I feel I have to. I keep running but I’m feeling weak. There’s a gnawing hunger in the background as I move. We split off further, until it’s just me making for one of the smaller tunnels. My spot. I push into a corner off the side of the tunnel though, turning into a small resin stalagmite and sit still. Someone else can cover the tunnel I suppose. I hear voices coming my way, but not changeling ones. Two earth ponies, one a red young colt, maybe ten or so, an older mare that I figure is his mother. The two are with a unicorn with a couple packs on him. The first two look confused, and still covered in fluids from the cocoon. The hive is built with confusion in mind, being almost impossible to navigate to outsiders. “Get Wheatsheaf to the others at the next juncture Lilly. I’ll create a diversion. Keep the compass with you, it’s your only hope for getting out of here!” the unicorn says, rummaging with a hoof for several vials. They nod to him and run off as he turns in the opposite direction mixing chemicals together fast in a small lamp to create a blinding light that’s strong enough to hold off the incoming drones but his back is to me as I pounce. He’s sealed to the ground and incapacitated in a second, but the lamp is still active, preventing pursuit. I grab his backpack and assume his shape running after the others. I keep his compass. It’s a bright idea. Not totally precise, but the with the anit-magic field these were some ingenious workarounds. I now know the direction they will take and instinctively know a faster way to them. “Lilly! They’re interfering with the compasses somehow!” I shout to her, pretending to be out of breath. “I found an alternate route!” They nod and change course as I take them through several tunnels, each one closer to where they’ve just escaped from. They don’t even know they’re back in the storage chamber until they enter the room itself. By then it’s far too late for them. I drop the shape to cheers of my fellow drones. I watch as they’re sealed away in cocoons in a preserving sleep. There are easily a hundred in this room, preserved in a fashion like those in at least five other such chambers. The me that is watching this feels my non-existant skin creep at the process, watching as they pare put into a stasis. My mind fills in the details of their future as a source of food, being held in a trace like state. I had wondered why Pinea has struck up a conversation a couple times about unrelated things when we watched the Matrix, but now I knew why. This was why. Emotional batteries. I’m offered to feed off them. The recent fresh hope is sure to have made them more filling. Instead I opt to keep the books. Later I see the unicorn was a mage and alchemist. They’re useless in our home, but I will try to read both several times over the coming years. The next day I return to normal duties, but I keep thinking of the three that I stopped. I know some about the mage, but nothing other than a couple names of the others. I never learn of those they were to meet and there is little I can ask them sealed away as they most likely are. I can’t seem to shake them though. I invent lives for them in the absence of actual information. My work declines, as I move to more and more menial jobs. When the hive is breached again and falls, I feel as if a massive weight is lifted with the hunger. I want to run down to the chambers, where they are freeing the prisoners, my prisoners. I can’t though. I can’t bear them to see me again. I don’t look the same. There’s no way they could know, but I somehow know they will. I’ll know if nothing else. The years I took from them. *** The image fades and we are standing together again in the room of our mind. I hang my head in front of Mike whose staring at me without saying a thing. “Mike, if you’ve hurt anyone it’s only been you. I have lives of innocent ponies on my head. We can be nice and colorful now, but this is what we were. That doesn’t go away. It’s also why I… why we should never have anything near that power every again.” I can see him looking at me, mouth open, then it closes into an angry scowl. I don’t blame him “Pinea, take us back.” “What?” “It’s your memory, how well do you remember it?” “These years are seared into my mind.” “You just said you thought I knew what I was doing. Maybe I do or maybe I’m going to screw this up too. Take us back. There’s something I need to know. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t vital.” I nod and we travel back. *** Pinea gets us back in his memory. As it’s a memory I can’t look anywhere that isn’t a part of the events he saw. That’s okay though. That’s enough. We start with Pinea’s hiding spot, as I ask him to stop. “Why’d you pick this spot? It was out of the way with not the best view of the hall. All your hivemates pick tunnels, but you pick a small alcove off the side of yours. Why?” “Good hiding spot. It worked.” “For whom? Anyhow, let’s put a pin in that. Let’s go to after…” We next move to after Pinea’s first demotion. I decide to take a prosecutor’s tone with him for this. I think I may have to fight him on some things to come. “What do you remember from here?” “I was demoted. The first time at least. Inattention to details. I was mad that day.” “At who?” “Myself. There was no good reason for me to stop paying attention to my duties.” “Yup. Why did you lose that attention?” “I couldn’t concentrate on work, I just finished saying…” “You were thinking about them?” “Of course I was.” “Why’d you invent lives for them?” “I wanted to see how they’d live okay? How their lives would have gone on without…. “Now take me to when they were sealed away.” “Mike please….” “If you still want to do penance for this, consider this part of the price you’ve been extracting from yourself.” His opposition crumbles and we go further back, to the point where he takes the books. I’m now into full confrontation mode, partially to try and distract myself from this room. This storage of sentient ponies as food makes my skin crawl on so many levels. Do they feel this? What does the drain on them do? I don’t actually want any of the answers to these questions. I don’t want to be here for so very many reasons, but it’s important that we are. “I’ve been through this point twice now. Why does a hungry changeling turn down a meal?” “I…I wanted the books.” “Why?” I try to let that question hang in the air. “I was interested in magic but we didn’t….” “What was in those books?” “Books on magic and alchemy. I told you this.” “When did YOU know that?” “After I got…them…home….” He pauses, but I keep the pressure up. I was right. This is the one thing that made me force Pinea to drag us back here. This is the part that didn’t add up at all. Nowhere in the memory at this point had he opened one book, and if that were true… “So, famished, like your hivemates you turn down a huge meal for an item that you have no idea about other than it was on the ponies you captured.” “I still don’t see the point.” “A changeling finds an out of the way spot to watch for intruders, a place that reduces his chances of finding those intruders in his hallway. When that fails and he spots them he’s thrust into a position where he’s forced to do the ‘right thing’ and pursue and capture them according to hive rules. He captures them but he turns down the obviously optimal reward that would benefit him, settling for something to remind him of those he locked up, and then spent years trying to see lives for them to the continued detriment of himself. If it’s one thing I know, I sure know self-sabotage when I see it. You tried to sabotage your guard duty. You sabotaged yourself after succeeding, and the one chance for the most gain from it I’m going to guess part of you didn’t or couldn’t take that prize, so you went for the other thing with some possible value, but something that wouldn’t have you feeding off your victims. I’m sure you can point to having fed on others over the years, and you would have had to. THIS was different though because this was more personal! “And you know what? In a more bucked-up way THIS seems more like the Pinea I know. What he would do to himself if forced into this mistake. The changeling that when stuck in someplace frightening he didn’t know about, with an unknown fate still was concerned with helping a weird hairless ape. The changeling that always offered to help. The one that was willing to face non-existence rather than have someone pay the price for his life. THAT now makes so much sense to me now.” Pinea says nothing. “Maybe you believe me. Maybe you don’t. I will tell you this. You had a moment of weakness that even at the time, with hunger driving you on, you still regretted, and continued to do so. Only the truly evil have no care for who they hurt. The remorse is the price of newly found virtue. Maybe the you I know has always been you. Or maybe I’m all wrong and the you I know was forged in that mistake. Whatever the case that’s the you I’m with now. That’s the you here making decisions, and that’s the you I want with me!” *** The hive dissolves away leaving me looking at him as I put a hoof around him, and he around me as he starts crying. I do too. It’ll be a long night, but he’s worth it. ***