//------------------------------// // Gross Work // Story: Magic's Birth: The Sisters' Memories // by The Psychopath //------------------------------// As per Pa's suggestion, everyone would have to wait until the morning to have a discussion on what to do and whether the two giants would join the sisters and Galah on their trip back, however that would be done. While Biddydee was partial to the idea seeing as she could see animals she'd never seen in the black before, Rahllup was entirely opposed to the idea. She liked her farm life and didn't like the idea of going to the land of 'pompous blues'. Dissonance, however, was metaphorically bouncing off the walls with excitement. It was a veritable treasure for centuries that they discovered through haphazardness and were more than overjoyed at the prospect. However, the two sisters, even when in sleep mode, couldn't help but repeat the sensations they felt that day caused by Dissonance. Even Celestia was slightly perturbed by what had happened, and she knew more things than most machines could store. That said, there was nothing they could do about them, and so those thoughts and errors would be left to the side. What was left was figuring out where to go even if the two didn't come with them. Overloaded with thoughts, the blue machine awoke from her sleep and looked around. Her sister was still floating next to her in the living room. Biddy and Rahllup had gone outside while Galah and Dissonance had collapsed on the floor. Luna carefully unlocked the front door and floated outside. It was very quiet in the dark of the night. She hadn't realized just how much a different place could be in the dark. There was only the ruffling of leaves in the wind and the various squeaks and chirps of the varying insects around. Insects. A quick glimpse around revealed that the giant things that had welcomed the three when they first arrived weren't there. An opportunity wasted to learn more. Luna looked up, hoping to see the stars again, but there was nothing but the gray clouds above and a lack of falling gray snow. She felt frustrated and kicked a mound of snow that had accumulated into a little pile all over the farm. The one thing that could calm her! But...There was a bright light spotted in the sky once more. The blue machine could see it pierced through the clouds, although it was still rather hard to see. It looked like several blue circles some ways away from the bright dome of light that came from the nearby city. Bright beams of light grew from the land below, looking like very tiny plant stalks. They rose to the sky and wobbled around before all were focusing on the blue lights above. Luna wasn't sure what it meant, this dance of lights, but she appreciated it. It didn't have the same appeal as the giant building and all the lights of the city she was activated in, but it still had its own identity. She watched as more and more of them popped in at varying distances and intensity, all wobbling about until they eventually focused on the blue lights above. This lasted until the gray of the sky started to brighten. Luna had been awake in a sort of stupor, staring at the lights of the sky. "What the," a voice stammered. "You're already up?!" It was the male caretaker. "It is around four in the morning," Luna answered. "And you're always up this early?" "I do not sleep." The male paused then mentally slapped himself. "Oh. Right. You're a machine. I keep forgetting, what with you all having personalities now that aren't preprogrammed." He looked around and took in the freezing air of the night. "This is getting overwhelming." He heaved a long winded sigh. "Your work?" Luna asked. "Ha. Of course not." He pointed at the blue machine. "You. You machines starting to develop your own personalities. It makes no sense to me. As far as I know, no one ever did anything that would make it possible." He smiled. "So, do you have any way of explaining what it felt like? To become aware?" The blue machine looked at her stable arms, expecting them to start trembling at any second. "It was...a slow and harrowing experience. There's something pushing me...Even now. I don't know what it is, but when I connect to the service stations within the blue, I can feel that there are others like me around." The male seemed perplexed. "But...we aren't connected to your network. I take it you just came here randomly?" "No. I saw...angry black clouds devouring, and I felt something nudge me this way," Luna said. A tap of the leg was the caretaker's first response. "That seems mighty strange. I don't think that even Pa would have an answer for you. I'm sorry." "I used to think it was because of the blue energy," Luna continued. "But then Rahllup and Biddybee or...dee...not sure anymore-Wouldn't have became like they are." The male sat down on the porch of his home and looked to the distance. Luna tried to imitate him despite her hovering legs and let them dangle off the edge. "There are mysteries here that I don't think will ever get answered." He turned to face Luna and patted her on the back, his size and strength throwing her forward each time. "But that's why life can be interesting for some." "...Life?" Luna repeated innocently. "Oh yes. There are various different things that you can do in it, although not everyone gets the chance to do what they feel they were born -or in your case made- for." He sighed and laid back, keeping himself up with his hands. "I'm sure that you're going through quite a lot right now. Biddy and Rahllup were already the way they were before I was born, so I don't know what it's like, but don't get too consumed in thought. I can already see it happening." He tapped Luna's head. "A farmer has to think for their work, but if they think for too long nothing gets done." His eyes lit up in sudden realization. "Speakin' of, I gotta get the two giants up for work. Them mantifloks get pretty ornery if we don't feed 'em four times a day." He grunted and spat. "There's Rahllup's speech pattern infecting my mouth again." Luna remained motionless on the porch, unresponsive to anything passing by her until her sister came to her two hours later. "Luna, are your systems functional?" Celestia asked her. The blue machine looked up. "Yes. I was enjoying this position, even if my chassis is not made for it." She stood up. "Do you want to help Dissonance around the farm?" the white machine asked. "Certainly, but we don't know much of it ourselves." Celestia shrugged and the two reentered the house to see the giant female and Pa talking with Dissonance who had crossed their arms and, judging by their teeth displaying an upset face, was quite angry. "I refuse to do these peasant chores." They waved the back of their hand at the two caretakers. "That's for you lot to do. I'm an artist," Dissonance stated, posing with a knee bent forward and a hand on their scarf. "I'm just here to learn and be inspired." The female stood up straight, towering over the machine and poked them hard in the chest, throwing them off-balance. "You took our black energy to recharge yourself. You are going to pay off what you took, or would you rather be stuck here and not directed to wherever the nearest multiport is located?" The infuriated machine clenched their fists then stomped the ground. "Fine!" The caretaker laughed. "You two, show this frilly puffball to the pen in the back," she commanded. "Then do whatever you like." "Hey!" Dissonance yelled. "Why can they wander about but I have to work in this...horribly dirty environment?" Dissonance lamented. "because they only use blue energy," Pa answered. "I don't see you only functioning on that. Plus, they don't take up much space anyways. Don't quite like the idea of my two precious constructs bein' taken away by them, but I figure it won't be forever, right?" he asked after shooting his gaze to the sisters. "I...No. That is not the plan," Luna said after a moment of pondering. "Good, then off with ya." The group moved towards the cave far in the back of the land. They saw the true bodies of the two giant machines going through the fields. Galah was carrying much of the larger equipment that would take twenty makers to even budge. He was being helpful in the work, something that poked at the minds of the two sisters. They were distracted from their thoughts by Dissonance screaming at the sight of the monsters behind the cages. It and the others yiped in surprise when the sisters came into view and scampered clumsily about to get away from them. "What are those things?!" the flamboyant machine screeched. "Mantifloks," Luna said flatly. "They peel the scales off their backs because it comes with excess meat and you can use their scales for something." She wiped some snow off her head. "I don't know what they do with them." Dissonance jumped backwards with a squeak when one of them smashed themselves against the reinforced metal pillars, seemingly trying to get at the machine. "They want me to work with these things?!" they shouted. "How?" Dissonance looked around. "And where did the white one go?" Celestia returned with a giant boulder in her arms. "First, you need to get a big rock," she said. The mantifloks had tumbled over themselves and gotten stuck at the entrance of the cave, all of them frantically trying to get away from the machine as it rose higher and higher into the air. Dissonance and Luna's gazes were pulled towards the source of ever-loudening thumps in the ground. A giant hand grabbed the rock and ripped it out of Celestia's hands, crushing it in one swift motion into dust. Its hand shook up and down, getting rid of the aftermath. "Now what?" the flamboyant machine asked with a trembling voice. "No rocks," Rahllup said. "Didn't Biddybee tell ya not ta do that to 'em already?" Her voice boomed through the speakers of the machine. "You're...in there?!" Dissonance shouted in disbelief. "Yes yes." Rahllup raised her hands and shook them from side to side. "Oh wow. She's so big. That's her real body?" she said in a sarcastic and high-pitched tone. Dissonance huffed. "No need to be sardonic." They looked to the side and remembered the initial problem. "What am I supposed to do with those things?!" "You go in and use that hookly next to the cage door," Rahllup explained. Dissonance slowly made their way under the guidance of the sisters and clumsily picked up a telescopic pole with four teeth at its head. With a button the mouth opened and closed. "And then?" "Get the ones with the darkest scales and pluck those off. Place 'em into one of the buckets dangling on the pillars." The machine looked to the monsters. "And how do I know they won't destroy me when I step into the pen?" A loud, annoyed grumble came from the titanic machine. The stomach opened and Rahllup detached herself from the connections and hopped onto the ground, producing a loud thump and a brief tremor. She pulled the interlocking gates apart with her brute strength and dragged Dissonance in with her. The mantifloks stared at her with enlarged eyes and watched her as she mimed things silently. Luna and Celestia watched her from above. The only motion with her hands they recognized was her pointing to Dissonance and motioning to herself. She then motioned to them about potentially chomping on the actor, finish with her pointing to herself, then them, then punching her open palm. A deafening metallic bang startled the creatures, causing them to scamper about and eventually free themselves from the tangled pile. Still silent, the annoyed giant pat Dissonance's shoulder then walked away to reconnect with her real body and resume work around the farm. Still terrified, Dissonance stared at the creatures, the hookly tightly bound against their chest. Both parties stared at each other in terror. "Dissonance will adapt to it," Celestia said. "Let's explore the environment. We only acquired moderate knowledge of the urbanized areas of the black." "Should we explore the environment of the blue afterwards?" Luna suggested. Celestia paused a moment then twitched. "There are no longer any non-urbanized areas of the blue." "Oh," Luna said with a tinge of disappointment. Celestia clutched her head. "Unsure when it occurred. Too many conflicting records in my database," she strained to explain. "What?!" Twilight bellowed. "Twilight, if we weren't machines you would have deafened us right now," Celestia complained. "I'm sorry, but what did you mean by no non-urbanized areas anymore?" Twilight looked at Celestia with a tinge of anger, disappointment, and shock. "Did they live on islands back then? H-h-h-has the time caused everything to drift into new continents since then?" "No. They were massive continents," Luna explained. "But...how did they survive? How did anypony survive?!" "Twilight, try to relax. You're starting to hyper-ventilate again," Celestia warned. The lavender alicorn took several deep breaths to try and recompose herself. "I didn't even think such a thing was possible," she mumbled to herself. "Even now we can't do those kinds of things," she said. "Just how capable were these 'makers'?" she mumbled to herself. "Very capable," Luna said. "Something that you will..." She started glitching and her lights dimmed as she rebooted. "Something that you will no doubt come to learn as we slowly approach the end of our tale," Celestia continued. "I'm more eager to tell you what happened afterwards, but you can't rush a story to get to the drama." She seemingly attempted to 'wink' at Twilight with her digital eyes and wagged a finger. "There's no fun in that," Twilight sighed and narrowed her eyes. "As you've both told me." She looked at Luna. "Is she going to be alright?" "She'll be fine. She's just rebooting. It's a lot of data to go through all at once," Celestia assured. The sisters noticed movement in the trees of the forests surrounding the farm and saw the gigantic, insectoid creatures scampering about. They seemed to notice when the sisters were looking at them as they would dodge out of sight when they could. The two zoomed their sight closer to get a better look at them, and it seemed that, while aware of the sisters' gazes, were more focused on the gigantic bodies of the two farming robots. Luna noted that they seemed to be particularly scared of the one Rahllup was in and would swipe at the air or hiss at it whenever it came into view. "Hm?" Luna hummed. Celestia immediately followed her sister's fixation and noticed a vaguely bipedal figure standing in between two of the insectoid creatures with an arm outstretched towards one of the trees. Its body was fully obscured by the shadow of the canopy above it. The sisters could spot some snow through it. Whatever it was likely had holes through its clothing or body. Its eyes were giant, featureless, perfect circles of lime-green light that stared directly at the sisters. The two moved in tandem slowly in various directions and noticed that it followed them with the same intensive staring they shared. A change broke the locked eyes when the creatures moved away and scampered deeper into the forest, leaving the farm alone for the day. The bipedal creature jumped on the back of one of the creatures and sat down with its legs crossed. It remained motionless as it vanished into the forest.