//------------------------------// // Act 1: Liberte Corporelle Scene 1: Reveille // Story: Flower Child // by master_derek118 //------------------------------// Act 1: Liberte Corporelle Scene 1: Reveille “Sometimes you dream. Sometimes there’s nothing. Sometimes you remember.” A Shrill alarm blared through a darkened industrial corridor. The regular darkness of this industrial facility was now a dull red as the emergency lights flashed on. Metallic banging sounded through the hall, against the metal grates that made up the floor, getting closer to the stored contents of this facility. Lining the halls were illuminated liquid-filled glass tanks. Each of these tanks were filled with creatures of various shapes and sizes, suspended and floating inside of them. The banging on the floor got closer as a strange, hairy, three-legged creature, almost like a three-legged gorilla, was illuminated by the red lights glaring from the ceiling. The rampaging monster smashed one of its three muscled appendages against one of the glowing, translucent containers and left a splintering crack across it. The glass tank slowly splintered, cracked, and finally shattered and exploded outward, spilling its living contents onto the grated floor in front of it. The glass tank was in front of a computer terminal that flashed various alert warnings across its glassy screen. A single figure disconnected from the wires and devices that held her in place. The creature inside the tank flopped to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Luckily, the tripod monsters had already carried on their rampage down the hall and deeper into the facility. The figure remained motionless until she slowly opened her large olive green eyes and looked ahead to her yellow hooves. She was a short, dark yellow coated, unicorn pony with a short yellow mane and tail. She wore a green jumpsuit and a black utility belt. On the collar of her jumpsuit was a patch logo of double helix. On her neck was a barcode that was seemingly etched directly into her coat. On her hoof was a silver gauntlet with a glassy synthetic screen on it. The pony tried to stand to her hooves, but her ears were ringing and her vision was blurred. She stumbled on her hooves to get off of the floor; they were still slick with the fluid she was suspended in. She had sustained a few cuts on her hooves from the broken glass, but she carefully walked around the shattered remnants that still littered the floor. Her head turned to the distant echoing of the creatures that had prematurely freed her from her glassy prison. They were rampaging and screaming through whatever facility she was within. This caused her vision to stabilize and her ears to twitch attentively as adrenaline started pumping through her body. She looked around and saw nothing but a long metal hall with nothing but a trail of dull red lights illuminating it. She also noted the other glass tubes of beings and the direction that the howling creatures went. Deciding it was best not to run towards a herd of wild beasts, she stepped over the remaining glass and walked in the direction from where the beasts had come from. On the ceiling was a rail system that seemed to be able to move the glass pods around the facility. She peered down the darkened corridor and it looked as though she was looking through a metal straw. She saw a pin-prick of light at the end of a long abyss of darkness, only illuminated by the thick red light that blended with the darkness to create the visual equivalent of a thick liquid of light. The pony stumbled on her hooves, her muscles barely responding to her movements at first, but they eventually listened to her commands and began moving her through the industrial hallway. At the end of the hall, she finally came across a metal sliding door that was stuck partially open. She squeezed through the damaged door and into a larger open room. She shielded her eyes as they adjusted to the space. It was a lot brighter than the cramped corridor. It was tiled with cobalt blue tiles. There was a large atrium with a large rounded glass overview of outside the facility. Outside were a few other buildings, each on connected by a white, concrete path. The entire compound was inside of a clearing surrounded by tall, scraggly, jungle trees. To her left and right were stairwells also paneled cobalt. The sun was starting to set and the pony put her hoof between the sun and her own eyes. She could barely adjust to the sunlight. She squinted could see that the windows were shattered in piles of glass and muddied footprints led a trail from the glass shards towards the broken door that she just walked out of. The pony turned around and looked above the broken door. Despite the fact she didn’t remember a single thing before this moment, she could still read the words ‘Deep Storage’ on a square, illuminated sign above the door. She walked around the piles of broken glass on the floor and over the broken window. The facility was enclosed inside of a large wire fence with several white squared buildings located around a concrete square that made up a courtyard. Several alarms were ringing, likely because of the creatures. The fence was bent open in one area and the footprints of the three legged beasts led across the once sterile courtyard with dark, slick mud. Outside of the fence was the dense jungle filled with green foliage. The sounds of strange wildlife called from within. She walked, tentatively, forward and looked up at the buildings. One was similar to a multi-layered cake with walkways on every floor. The one she walked outside of was more of a curved rectangle with much of the wall facing the courtyard made of glass, though it was now broken by the beasts. She could tell that there was more to the facility behind the building that she came from, but opted to walk towards the opening in the fence. She felt a deep feeling of unease about the sterile facility. In the courtyard was a sign on the ground, “O’Brian Biosynthetics Remote Research and Development Lab PROMETHEUS, Andromeda Galaxy.” The pony had a deep unease about everything that the sign was telling her, despite not knowing truly where she was or who O’Brian Biosynthetics was. Almost instinctively, everything in her body told her to make a run for it. The yellow pony broke into a full gallop directly towards the broken fence. Right before she was able to cross the line into the rainforest environment, a higher pitched alarm began blaring throughout Prometheus. This made the pony cover her ears and look behind her. There were quite a few people, somehow she knew that they were called people, running along the balconies on the buildings. They were dressed in black clothes and they carried small squared mechanisms. The pony automatically knew that these devices were firearms of some kind. The people used these devices to open fire on the behemoth, three-legged creatures that broke out of a window in the cake-like building. Another group spotted the pony making her escape. They pointed and called out to her, but instead of waiting around to get shot, the pony galloped into the thicket of vines and foliage of the surrounding rainforest. She bobbed and weaved through various branches of these trees. There wasn’t anything familiar about these plants, except that they were green and something in her mind knew that plants were supposed to be green. She didn’t remember anything before waking up on the floor of the laboratory. After a few minutes, she stopped running as she was sure that none of the people were following her. She climbed up one of the tall trees by hopping from branch to branch, starting with low hanging ones. She eventually got to a point where she could see the region around her. The Prometheus laboratory was in a remote area in the middle of a dense rainforest that went on for as far as she could see. There was a long strip of area that had no buildings or trees that had been paved over with sterile material. From what she could see, the people had taken care of the problem with the wild beasts that had rampaged through the facility. Now, they shined searchlights into the jungle looking for their missing quarry. She slumped back on the tree and sighed. The sun was almost set, but even the sun didn’t feel right to her. She shivered as the last of the strange sun disappeared over the alien horizon. She took a moment to take inventory of herself. She only had her green jumpsuit and the computerized hoof gauntlet in her possession. She moved her hoof across the smooth surface of the device. The thin metal material that wrapped her hoof glistened in the dusk light. Her hoof touched across the screen and the device burst to life, giving off a bright light that stunned the yellow pony for a moment before she concealed it to prevent the search parties, that were likely roaming the forests, from finding her position. The screen was emblazoned with the logo of ‘TransAtlas’ against a bright blue background. The ‘A’ was stylized like a circle with a pointed line looping away from the letter. After a few moments, the screen changed to pure white before presenting a rotating logo of a different organization, that of O’Brian Biosynthetics, stylized as a green double helix. A crawl of text went across the top of the screen. WARNING: PERSONALIZATION PREFERENCES NOT LOADED, BOOT SOFTWARE ANYWAY? Y or N. The pony selected Y and allowed the device to boot. The screen then became like three pages of digital paper atop each other. On top of the screen was biometric data on the pony. She could recognize blood pressure and heartbeat sensors. It showed an outlined diagram of her body from head to tail. The device was taking live scans of her body and could show both internal and external injuries. She swiped over to the next tab of digital paper which showed several different icons. She tapped one of them and it appeared to be an application for producing itemized lists. Another showed lists of files on the device, one of which was called ORIENT.hol. The last tab appeared to be a communications tab with various frequency scanners that she couldn’t access. She sighed and closed down the device, believing that any more light would attract unwanted attention. She laid her head against a branch and closed her eyes. Her body felt as though it were made of butter, even down to the slick and sticky exterior due to all the running she had done. She heard a soft buzzing in her ears as she drifted off to sleep. She was falling. A dark abyss surrounded her, almost as though she was being swallowed by the universe. When she closed her eyes she could see flashes of light dance around her darkened vision. When she opened her eyes again, humanoid figures, dressed in all white, surrounded her. Her ears buzzed like the sound of a circular saw cutting through wood. She couldn’t make out facial features. They were blurry and obscured by the light. She felt a sharp pain in the back of her head as the humanoids approached. The buzzing in her ears increased as she opened her eyes and screamed, then suddenly she was falling again, even deeper into the abyss. She could see faint balls of light around her that contrasted against the darkness. She reached out with her magic to pull one closer to her. When she gripped one, she could feel an urge to run or to eat, but couldn’t see. She reached out for another and could see numbers and mathematical flash before her eyes. Not only could she feel these urges, but they came with strong emotions like anger, joy, happiness, maybe even love. It was overwhelming to her senses. She suddenly hit the ground and landed in a bush beside an open meadow filled with yellow flowers. Everything was dark, but she could see a pony figure sitting between three objects. As the yellow pony approached, she could see the objects clearer. One was some kind of computer screen, one was a black cloak, and another was a tool belt. A humanoid figure gripped the pony, wrapped her in the cloak and tool belt before forcing her in front of the computer screen. As he did so, the pony’s featureless, white fur seemed to melt away into strands of yellow until the pony looked exactly as she did. The human pulled out a small featureless box and pressed it to the pony’s neck. The yellow pony yelled out a cry as the other pony did as well. It felt as though a red hot ember was pushed directly into her neck. Her vision blurred and slowly faded into darkness. She awoke in a cold sweat, breathing heavily. She felt the part of her neck where she was attacked in her dream. Her hoof grazed over the bar code etched into her neck. The dream was so vivid that she could almost still feel the painful sensations that it had left. She pondered for a moment on the dream. Was it real? She thought. Was it a memory? She resolved to search for answers by exploring the device on her foreleg again. It was daytime and the light would no longer give away her position to those creatures that sought her. She decided to play the ORIENT.hol file. When she tapped the file, a beam of light spung forth from the contraption and constructed a transparent, ghostly blue figure of one of the bipeds that stalked her. “Hello!” It spoke, “And please allow me to give you a warm welcome to the world, courtesy of O’Brian Biosynthetics.” The holographic being gave a bow. “You are a Biosynth, a lab-grown being that has have been brought into the world for a purpose, in order to-” Its voice abruptly changed. “Token not found.” The yellow pony cocked her head at the hologram before it continued, “You were created here at… Prometheus Labs, a remote facility in Andromeda, at the behest of… Token not found.” The hologram program fidgeted, “Error, invalid configuration options.” With that final message, the hologram dissipated back into the gauntlet. The pony pondered the new information, sitting back on her branch. A Biosynth. Something about that term seemed alien to her. She tried to wrap her brain around all the new information, but was interrupted by rustling below her. A single person came out of the brush, looking around. He carried one of the long metallic contraptions that the people at the base used to fight the creatures that broke in. He was adorned a thick black covering, almost like an exo-skeleton, but not as thick. He was a soldier or a security guard, the pony could make from the look of the man. “Roger, no sign of the escapee.” He said, putting two fingers on his helmet. The helmet had a visor that hid the upper half of the man’s face. “We have to find her soon, feds are coming in from off-planet today to inspect the facility and they’re going to be pissed if we don’t find the missing specimen.” The way he said ‘specimen’ made the pony’s face scrunch up. Fortunately for her, the soldier carried on in his search through the jungle, not bothering to look up the taller tree that she was in. It was then that she hatched her plan. Judging by what the soldier had said, someone was coming today from off-planet. That meant that they would have to come in a spaceship. That was her ticket off of Prometheus.