“Okay,” Lyra said, a few hours after they got back to the Mare Lair, or, officially, the Park Row Provisional SMILE Office. “So you were right. This is some really weird stuff.”
She put the device on the floor between them and tapped the main cylindrical body with her hoof.
“This part here? This is really simple. It’s an electric piston, just goes back and forth. The big bulges on the ends are just air pockets to create a pneumatic hammer effect.”
“A what now?” Loopy asked.
“In simple terms, it makes really powerful vibrations, and because the piston is electric, you can adjust the frequency from super low to super high. Watch.” Lyra pulled two wires from the underside of the device and touched them together.
The device sprang to life, shaking on the floor hard enough that Loopy and Bon-Bon could feel it all the way to their teeth. It made surprisingly little noise despite the vibration, the gentle rattling of glass panes and chairs easily eclipsing it.
“Like this, it’s not really very dangerous,” Lyra said. “It’s annoying and you can feel the vibrations from a block away, but it won’t do much else.”
She broke the connection and the vibration instantly stopped.
“So how did it break concrete?” Bon-Bon asked.
“That’s the real trick,” Lyra said. She opened a panel on the device. Inside was a blinking sheet of crystal and copper. “This is an advanced microcontroller. Whoever designed it is legitimately a genius. It ramps the frequency of the piston up and down and listens. If it detects resonance, it narrows the frequency down until it matches it.”
“And that does…?” Loopy asked.
“I had this turned off for the first run. Watch what happens when I loop the microcontroller in.”
She touched a wire to a port on the controller and turned the device back on. This time, when the shaking started, it didn’t level off. The vibrations got stronger and stronger until concrete dust started coming down from the ceiling overhead.
“Whoops!” Lyra tore the wire free, and it took time for the vibrations to stop, like a bell’s tone slowly winding down to silence.
“That can definitely do some damage,” Bon-Bon admitted. She looked up at the roof. “And we have a crack to patch. Great.”
“So who could have built the microcontroller?” Loopy asked. “Maybe the same kind of company that would make a supercomputer?”
“Maybe,” Lyra admitted.
“Were you able to get in touch with them?” Bon-Bon asked.
“Yes and no,” Lyra said. “I couldn’t get through to anyone who wasn’t in marketing, and they only really wanted to talk to me if I was willing to buy stock or write a story for the papers. They’re having an investor dinner and the public isn’t invited.”
“I don’t think I can expense a few million bits worth of stock,” Bon-Bon said. She walked over to a filing cabinet.
“When did we get filing cabinets?” Loopy asked.
“When I started needing to keep track of more than three cases at once,” Bon-Bon said. “Here we go…” she pulled out a folder and smiled. “How would you two like to be reporters for a night?”
“I can’t believe this,” Loopy whispered, as they walked inside. She’d adopted a new disguise for the occasion - no reason to blow her usual cover when she fully expected to get caught. Tonight she was wearing a fetching unicorn with emerald eyes and silver-blue everything else. “No sneaking through vents, no worrying about guards…”
“And they just let us carry in a camera and a voice recorder,” Lyra said. “That’s the great thing about having official press passes!”
“It just seems too easy,” Loopy said. They’d given their rain gear to the coat check and felt a little underdressed, even with the best the SMILE budget could manage, which was two suits that mostly fit, bought from the charity shop around the corner. Loopy would never admit it but she was actually very fond of the tweed jacket she’d found. It had a plaid lining and was a beautiful fashion crime. The way ponies looked away from her made it even better than an invisibility cloak.
“Let’s ask around and snap some photos so we don’t look suspicious,” Lyra suggested.
Loopy nodded, and they walked around, working the room and snapping photos. With the press passes, ponies were happy to talk to them, at least enough to give names and vague statements about how excited they were to be part of the venture. Most of them were the sort of rich but inexpert pony that made their fortune by owning the work others did.
“Take a look over there,” Loopy said, nodding. Lyra raised her camera and took a shot of the podium on one side of the room. It was set up in front of a bank of tape reels, blinking lights, and brightly colored buttons. “Is that the computer?”
“I’m not exactly an expert, but that looks more like a terminal,” Lyra said. “Horoscope is probably somewhere in back. It’s probably a temporary setup so they can show stuff off during the dinner.”
“Something’s happening,” Loopy said, looking around.
“I don’t hear anything?” Lyra frowned.
“I can feel it. I can’t tell where it’s coming from. Keep your eyes open. It could be anything.”
The doors to the back opened, and the lights in the room lowered. A well-dressed mare with far too much product in her mane stepped out. A spotlight snapped down on the pony as she walked up to the podium.
“Everypony, thank you for coming,” the pony in the suit said. She slicked back her mane with a hoof nervously. “I came out here with a speech about how the future was something to look forward to. I…” she sighed dramatically and closed her eyes for a moment. “A few moments ago, Horoscope gave us another prediction.”
A murmur worked its way around the darkened room.
The mare looked up. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Doctor Auspex, the lead designer of the Horoscope project. We’ve been ramping up towards full functionality, and over the last week we’ve made several predictions about local disasters, all of which were quickly proven correct. It’s only thanks to the efforts of our local heroes that they were able to act on these predictions in time and save the lives of dozens of innocents.”
“She went to Celestia’s School,” Lyra whispered. “We didn’t have any classes together, but she specialized in divination magic. She really does have the certifications for this.”
“While I was getting ready to come out here and explain how important the Horoscope could be for our future, it gave me terrible news. A disaster is going to strike Seasaddle, of unprecedented proportions.”
Gasps and whispers filled the shadows. Auspex held up her hoof for quiet.
“I know. But there is good news - we have time to avert it! If we do nothing, countless ponies will die! Horoscope wasn’t able to determine the exact cause of the disaster, but it assures me it will happen, within a matter of months.”
“What can we do to save ourselves? I have too much invested to pull out!” somepony shouted from the darkness.
“Unfortunately, with Horoscope’s current ability, it’s impossible to be more specific. We were planning on making some upgrades to the computer to enable exactly the kind of focus we need, but our funding is limited--”
“I’ll invest another million! I can’t just leave!” shouted that same voice. Loopy frowned and squinted into the dark.
“They can’t really be falling for this, can they?” she muttered.
“Scared ponies do a lot,” Lyra whispered. “Want to check out what they’ve got in back?”
“They seem busy,” Loopy said. “We’ll just have to go without a tour guide.”
With the lights off and most ponies staring at the stage, it was easy to sneak into the back. Lyra kept snapping pictures of anything that caught her eye.
“What are you doing?” Loopy asked.
“I’m trying to stay in character. I’m a newspaper photographer right now, remember?” She held up her press pass. “Besides, you never know what might be useful.”
“A close-up of a fire escape isn’t exactly breaking news,” Loopy said.
“Maybe it’s in violation of the fire code?”
Loopy held back a laugh and they made their way through into the next room. It was a massive warehouse space, the floor littered with thick cables and the hum of electricity. The storm outside rattled against the windows, and when lightning flashed, Loopy saw it. A massive, crouched shape like an ancient sphinx.
“I think we found Horoscope,” she whispered, like the computer was sleeping. A single red light blinked slowly from the front side of the huge collection of circuitry. Something about it gave Loopy a sense of being watched, as if there really was something there behind the steel panels and banks of transistors.
“That’s not the only thing,” Lyra said. She snapped a photo of papers sitting on a desk. “These are plans for the oscillators we found in the rubble after that road collapse! And there are plumbing diagrams for the area that flooded!”
“I bet if we look around we’ll find copies of the failed inspections for that tower block that caught on fire,” Loopy said.
Lyra put her camera down and started grabbing papers, bundling them together. “We’ll take this right to the police. It should be more than enough for them to--”
She turned and almost ran right into a humorless stallion wearing black, with enough pouches and pockets to be very tactical without actually being practical.
“Loopy,” Lyra hissed, pretending the stallion couldn’t hear her despite being right there. “I think we might have tripped an alarm.”
Loopy had her hooves up. Another stallion was walking up to her with a baton and without a single trace of humor.
“Seems like,” Loopy agreed. She looked up at the security pony. “Take us to your leader?”
“This isn’t the proper protocol for getting an interview, you know,” Doctor Auspex said.
“We had some problems getting through to your press office,” Loopy said. “You really need to hire a few more ponies.”
“Oh yes, because I’m sure you wanted to give a fair and balanced view of everything going on.” Auspex held up the bundle of papers Lyra had gathered. “You were going to run out of here with company secrets--”
“The police usually call it evidence of a crime,” Lyra countered. “And you weren’t doing a very good job of keeping it secret.”
Auspex blushed and she looked away. “It’s not our field of expertise. Any of this, I mean.” She tossed the papers to the side. “We’re here to build computers, not burn down buildings.”
“Interesting side project, then,” Loopy noted.
Auspex huffed. “You just don’t understand--”
“Then make me understand,” Loopy interrupted. “You’ve got a giant computer, right? Or is that thing just for show?”
“The Horoscope is not just for show!” Auspex snapped. “It works! It can make real predictions! The problem is exactly what I told everypony out there during the dinner! We have significant trouble actually refining the results and focusing it on anything useful. What’s the point of knowing the result of a minor-league buckball game when it could just as easily predict a change in stock prices, or if a line of research in medicine is correct?”
“Or if a disaster is about to happen?”
“Exactly. But what it gives us is…” Auspex walked up to the machine, looking up at its blinking red diode. “Why won’t you tell me what I want to know?” she whispered.
“And you’re just going to dupe investors and run with the money, huh?” Lyra asked. “Real classy.”
“I would never do that!” Doctor Auspex gasped, whirling on them and pointing an accusing hoof. “I am a scientist, not a con-artist! We’re just causing these disasters until we have the funding to actually predict them! It will be the real thing, once we make enough ponies believe in us!”
Loopy shook her head. “That’s not how it works.”
“It can work that way. Fake it until you make it!” Auspex grinned. “This little early difficulty in growth will just be a minor bump. We’re going to change the face of Equestria, once we’re not so deep in the red.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Loopy said. “I get what you’re trying to do. Trust me, I probably understand better than any pony you’ll ever meet. But if you want something to last, you have to be the real thing.”
“We--” Auspex started, but was cut off by beeping and a dot matrix printer chattering to life, motors whirring as it printed something onto accordion-folded sheets of lined paper. Auspex held up a hoof. “--One moment.”
“Is it about the lottery?” Lyra asked.
“If I could get lottery results I wouldn’t need to put on a show for those investors,” Auspex muttered. She picked up the paper and frowned, dropping it after glancing at the results.
“Well?” Lyra pressed.
“Take these two out back and deal with them,” Auspex said. “I don’t want to get any blood on the Horoscope. The cabling is enough of a mess without having to clean the contacts again.”
Auspex threw the papers into a trash can, a spark falling from her horn to set them on fire.
“I hate getting rid of documentation, but I suppose it’s too dangerous to keep,” she sighed.
“We’re pretty dangerous ourselves,” Lyra said. The two security ponies forced them to their hooves.
“We ain’t afraid of a couple of nosey reporters,” one of them growled.
Loopy met Lyra’s gaze and smiled.
“She should have--” Lyra started. Loopy put a hoof to her lips.
“Don’t you dare say she should have seen it coming,” she warned. It hadn’t even really been a fight. Two overpaid, undertrained security guards and one unicorn who had never thrown a punch in her entire life.
Doctor Auspex was nursing her very first black eye while she was being taken away in hoofcuffs. The guests were leaving, and most of them were already making appointments with their lawyers.
“I shouldn’t be surprised to find SMILE behind this mess,” Officer Beeswax said, walking up to them. “I hope you two realize how difficult it’s going to be to actually prosecute anypony. They’re all clamming up tighter than… oysters? I’m a cop, not a poet, don’t bucking judge me for my metaphors.”
“The good news is, we have plenty of that,” Lyra said. She held up her camera. “I took pictures of the papers and diagrams she destroyed.”
“Not bad,” Beeswax admitted. “But unless we can prove where you found them…”
“I took pictures the whole way through the search, including of the papers in situ,” Lyra noted. She smirked at Loopy. “Like I told you, you never know what’s going to be important, so photograph everything.”
“You say that like I didn’t get anything.” Loopy pulled the voice recorder out of her jacket. “I had this running the whole time. You’ll get to hear Doctor Auspex explaining everything in her own words. I think if you play this for her, she’ll confess to anything you want.”
“Nice,” Officer Beeswax nodded. “You know, I was a little annoyed with you ponies for showing up in the city and running rogue, but… can you pass along a message to Mare Do Well?”
Lyra glanced at Loopy. “Sure.”
“That foal she saved back when the roads collapsed? That was my niece. Tell her I owe her a big favor. She better not abuse it, but… I still owe her, okay? As long as she keeps her snout clean and plays by the rules, she’s in my good books.”
“I’ll let her know,” Loopy promised.
“Good.” Beeswax hesitated. “And double down on the part about her keeping her snout clean. I don’t want her thinking I’m a soft touch. Vigilantes still aren’t a good idea, even if a few are okay.”
She nodded sharply, then walked off to scream at a few ponies who weren’t moving quickly enough for her taste, leaving Lyra and Loopy alone with the Horoscope computer. They walked up to the mountain of metal, and Lyra put a hoof on it, looking melancholy.
“It’s too bad,” she said. “I bet this really could have worked, someday. Doctor Auspex was right that being able to see the future really would change everything.”
“Maybe,” Loopy agreed. She couldn’t shake something, a weird feeling like the computer was really alive. It tickled her emotional senses in a way she couldn’t describe even to other changelings.
Lyra sighed and stepped back, then spotted the paper Auspex had dropped, the last prediction the machine had made. She read it and started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Loopy asked.
Lyra passed it over, and Loopy snorted. A single line had been printed, in bold letters.
PREDICTION: MARE DO WELL SHUTS DOWN HOROSCOPE SCAM, SAVE COMPUTER FROM BEING USED TO HURT PONIES
Loopy looked up at the blinking light, and felt a tiny twinge of thankfulness from somewhere deep inside.