“You’re gonna what?” asked Spitfire flatly.
“Get the data we need outta the servers,” said Applejack. “The tapes themselves, I mean.” She, Trixie, and Spike had all agreed that telling Spitfire their next course of action was a good idea.
Spitfire sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I mean… we’ve never had any changelings come from that direction, so that’s something… Look, do you need to go there? I don’t want to lose any more ponies. I- My job is keeping the people on board safe, and nine out of ten people on board are dead. It’s- If you run off and get yourself killed-” Her voice caught in her throat. “Can I at least convince you to bring along another guard?”
Applejack shrugged. “Sure. Just in case, right?”
Spitfire nodded, then waved Applejack off. “Hang on, let me find somepony who isn’t half-dead from exhaustion.” She started loping around the cargo bay.
“Do we need them?” Trixie whispered. “We could be off already.”
“I’d rather have ’em and not need ’em than need ’em and not have ’em,” Applejack replied.
“Yeah, I’m with her,” Spike said. “You always want backup. Physical, emotional, and informational, for that matter.”
It wasn’t long before Spitfire returned, an orange pegasus in tow. “Say hello to Flash Sentry,” she said. “Probably the most energized pony in the entire station.”
“I ate half a quart of coffee beans!” Flash said cheerfully as he jogged in place.
“And if that doesn’t keep him up, nothing will,” said Spitfire. “Be safe. All of you.” She looked at each person in turn, then saluted.
Spike led the group out of the cargo bay and into the GUTS. He hooked onto the conveyor again, taking them back up, only to kick off and head down another tunnel before too long. They quickly came to a stop at another landing, similar to the cargo bay but much smaller: Deep Storage. The door was locked, but Trixie had it open in seconds.
“So,” Flash whispered to Applejack as they entered the dark room beyond, “what’s this about email?”
Spike began flipping switches and overhead lights came on, one by one. The room they revealed was small, mostly taken up by several floor-to-ceiling computers that were whirring away — probably the servers. He marched across the room to another door.
“Long story,” Applejack whispered back. “Twilight and I sent me a message sayin’ we had a plan. ’Cept I don’t remember sendin’ it and Twi ain’t here. Didn’t get a chance to read it all, so we’re gettin’ it outta storage.”
“Huh.” Flash flicked his ears. “I guess that makes as much sense as anything else does recently.”
The room beyond was nothing that special, a few computer banks like you’d find in any office. But one side was taken up by a massive window overlooking a veritable cavern the size of two or three houses. Structural pillars reached up and down and across it like stalagmites that had met their stalactites and small lights blinked from every wall. When Applejack looked closely, she could spot pieces of minor debris floating around. That room had zero gravity.
Trixie looked at it with big eyes. “Ooo,” she said quietly. “So zero-G does make the tapes last longer?”
“It’s looking like it, but not by much,” said Spike. “The extra lateral friction barely causes any wear at all.” He noticed Applejack’s puzzled look and clarified, “This is the central repository. It stores all the data in the station. The computers in there read the tapes and the computers in there-” He pointed at the room they’d just come from. “-process the data and send it out.”
“Big,” said Flash in an I-don’t-know-what-else-to-say tone of voice.
“We’re storing petabytes of data in there,” said Spike. “Of course it is. Everypony, look around. See if you can find some kind of… I don’t know, catalog. It might be on a computer. We don’t want to spend hours looking through there, trying to find the right tapes.”
Privately, Applejack would’ve preferred hours of tedious work to hours of waiting, but if it got them going, fine. Unfortunately, she didn’t know where to begin, knowing as little about computers as she did — and from the look on Flash’s face, neither did he. They exchanged glances and he shrugged helplessly before they both sort of meandered to opposite corners of the room.
And yet Applejack had only done some preliminary poking around when Trixie yelled, “Hey! Trixie thinks she’s found something!” They reconvened around her, at a computer that had a large, unfinished-looking hologram projector next to it. A progress bar was filling up on the screen and Trixie was sitting back in her chair, looking very pleased with herself. “I did some searching and found a program called ‘Catalog v1.2’,” she explained. “Aaaand…” The progress bar hit 100%; she pointed at the screen and smirked. “Go.”
Immediately, a hologram flickered to life above the projector: a smallish purple alicorn, only a tiny bit larger than most ponies. Lines of code ran across its body and through its mane, occasionally twisting into starlike nodes, and its eyes glowed softly. “Hi there, hello!” it chirped in a voice not dissimilar to Glimmer’s. “Thank you for using the Thaumaturgical Archive and Network Traversal, Access, and Browsing Utility System! As a state-of-the-art mixture of magic and computer technology, I allow for quick, easy, and — above all — intuitive access to any connected database! Simply ask me a question and I’ll do my best to find what you’re looking for!” The hologram sat on its haunches and smiled an endearing smile.
Already, Applejack found herself grinning, but to her surprise, all smugness drained from Trixie and she fell back into her chair. “Don’t believe it,” she said glumly. “AI hasn’t gotten that far yet. It’s probably just a prerecorded greeting.”
“I am not prerecorded!” spluttered the hologram. “I am a fully functioning, artificially intelligent user interface designed for maximum convenience!”
“Let’s give it a shot,” said Spike. “What’ve we got to lose?”
“ ’Less you wanna drift around a server room jugglin’ data tapes,” added Applejack.
“Mmmrrh,” said Trixie. “Can you bring up security footage, then? Any footage.” She asked the question reluctantly.
“Working on it!” The hologram tilted its head back and forth a few times, then frowned. “Hmm. I can’t seem to find what you’re looking for.”
Applejack and Spike exchanged glances as Trixie asked, “What error message did you get? Is it a permissions issue?”
“Sorry.” Shrug. “No data available.”
“Really.” Trixie’s skepticism was growing. “What about emails?”
“Working on it!” The hologram ran through the head-tilt-frown routine again. “Hmm. I can’t seem to find what you’re looking for.”
“Again? That sounded pretty prerecorded.”
“I am not prerecorded!” spluttered the hologram. “I am a fully functioning, artificially intelligent user interface designed for maximum convenience!”
“Okay, bad idea,” said Spike, a touch of disappointment in his words. “C’mon, let’s-”
“No, wait,” said Trixie. She peered at the hologram and said suspiciously, “Prerecorded.”
“I am not prerecorded!” spluttered the hologram. “I am a fully-”
“Prerecorded,” Trixie repeated.
“I am not prerecorded!” spluttered the hologram. “I am a fully functioning, artificially intelligent user interface designed for maximum convenience!”
“It’s a Winter Wrap-up treat,” Trixie sighed. “It’ll go through that speech every time we say ‘prerecorded’, even if-”
“I am not prerecorded!” spluttered the hologram. “I am-”
“MUTE!” screamed Trixie. With a flash of its horn, the hologram’s mouth vanished and it went silent, but it didn’t seem to notice, still moving and gesturing like it was speaking. “You two better go on in and look for yourselves,” Trixie said. “Working with this thing’ll be a nightmare. Or maybe… Unmute.” The hologram’s horn flashed again and its mouth reappeared. Squinting suspiciously at it, Trixie asked, “What’s your operational status?”
“Eh…” The hologram rubbed the back of its neck. “Placeholder,” it admitted. “I’m just a proof-of-concept at the moment. These animations and responses are all prebaked and prerecorded as the actual AI gets completed. Language processing is up and running, though! It’s why you can talk to me, even if my responses are limited.”
“Pre- Prebaked?” Trixie yelled. “You’re looking sheepish! That’s prebaked? Who in Tartarus makes placeholders that detailed?” she screeched.
The hologram’s voice suddenly turned male, high-pitched, and a little nasally. “Starlight Glimmer is an obsessive,” it said. “And if you’re finding this highly specific message, it means I, Sunburst, am vindicated in telling her to stop making placeholders so detailed!”
“Oh dear Celestia,” Trixie moaned, hanging her head in her hooves. “Nerd wars. Nerd wars.”
“Blame Glimmer,” said the hologram.
On a whim, Applejack stepped forward. “D’you at least know where the data’s stored?” she asked. “Like, physically. So we can get at it.”
“Oh, sure!” The hologram said, back in not-quite-Glimmer’s voice. (Trixie’s head snapped up and she grinned.) A 3D diagram of the central repository popped up next to it, a flashing dot near the top displaying where they were. “What are you looking for?”
“Ehm… my emails and security footage.”
Two lines immediately ran through the diagram from the dot. “Emails are in rack DB32S,” the hologram said promptly. “Which tape an individual user is stored on is marked on the rack. Let me know if it’s not and I can help you find it! Security footage is in racks LT5N, O, and P. Which tape a module’s footage is stored on is marked on the rack. Let me know if it’s not and I can help you find it!”
“And all tape cartridges are hot-swappable, right?” asked Trixie eagerly.
“Absolutely,” replied the hologram. “There’s an integrity check, to be sure the tape isn’t degrading, but that never takes more than a few seconds.”
Trixie rubbed her hooves together and cackled. “Yes…” she whispered. “Okay, maybe AI is a little bit further along than Trixie thought… Needs more speech synthesis, though.”
“E-excuse me.” Flash pushed his way forward and gawked at the hologram. “All of this got recorded beforehoof?” he asked. “All of this. Including that phrasing. Including that specific phrasing for that specific question.”
“Starlight Glimmer is an obsessive,” the hologram repeated.
“And that’s downright mild compared to Twilight,” said Spike as he looked out over the central repository again. “In projects like that, she wants to cover everything, no matter how pointless. Trixie, Flash, why don’t you two stay here and keep this place safe? Applejack, come with me.”
“Uh-” Applejack almost objected, but what the heck. She just wanted to find out what was in that message. She shrugged at Trixie and Flash, then followed Spike through a door into the central repository.
Entering the zero-G space of the repository made her head spin again, but after spending time outside Golden Oaks, it wasn’t as bad as it had once been. Thankfully, the walls were crisscrossed with runglike hoofholds so she didn’t even need to worry about using her maneuvering jets. She hooked herself onto the wall and said to Spike, “Which d’you want? Email or cameras? I really don’t care.”
Spike looked totally natural hovering in the air, small twitches of his wings keeping him in place. “I know we’re looking for you’re email,” he said, “but I didn’t hear which modules you wanted footage from. So you get the cameras and you can pick what you want without us yelling back and forth, okay?”
“Sounds good.”
“LT5N, O, and P, remember!”
Spike flew away as Applejack pulled herself along the wall. Simply having something firm she could latch onto was doing wonders for her zero-G anxiety. Outside was terrible, but this wasn’t so bad. She slowly but surely worked her way across the racks of tape reels, various lights winking at her. The whirring of tapes filled the air, thousands of unique strips echoing back across each other. Luckily, every column of reels was clearly labelled. LR… LS… LT, there. She was at LT1A, at the moment. She pushed herself down. LT1F, J, P…
As she drifted down, Applejack began noticing little… oil loogies. That was the best way to describe them; they were small globs of some black, oily substance, about the size of a pineapple, clinging to the racks. Not enough to be worried about, but definitely noticeable. On a whim, Applejack pulled out her wrench from her uniform and gave one of the larger globs a poke. It didn’t react. Applejack looked at the wrench. No damage, nothing sticking to it. Well, if it wasn’t going to hurt her, she wasn’t going to hurt it. Honestly, having something not hurt her was a novel experience, given recent events. She kept her wrench out, though, Just in Case.
LT4Y, LT5G, K… LT5N through LT5P. Sure enough, those racks were marked: Security Footage, then a list of modules. Neurothaumatics? Yes, she’d take that. Central Research? She’d take that, too. Even better, they were both on the same tape. There wasn’t any specialized deployment procedure that she could see, so she tapped the Eject button on the machine. Some high-pitched whirring, and a platter-size cassette, complete with a convenient handle, popped on out. She bit down on the handle.
And then the first glob hurled itself at her.
Applejack yelped and instinctively ducked; the motion nearly shook her off the ladder as the tape slipped from her grasp. The glob flew over her head, then somehow stopped in midair and flew back at her, rolling over and over. For the first time, Applejack spotted spikes across its surface. She wildly swung her wrench, hitting the glob like a baseball; it smashed against a wall and splattered to pieces.
She quickly looked up, down, side-to-side; two more balls were coming at her, one each above and below. Applejack bucked downward, crushing the lower blob in an instant, then aimed for the tumbling cassette and pushed off the wall.
“OI!” Spike yelled from across the room. “You little-!” A dull, wet squish of something fleshy getting crushed. “And that!” The hot roar and orange glow of a furnace.
Applejack reached the cassette and managed to snag the handle in her mouth. Luckily, it seemed untouched. She pivoted around in the air, scanning the area for- She twisted away and the second blob zipped past her by mere inches. It circled around and was ready to come back at her when a perfectly-aimed bolt of green fire jetted out from behind a pillar and vaporized it. “You okay, Applejack?” Spike yelled.
She let go of the cassette for a second to tell, “I’m good!” She snatched it back and quickly fired her maneuvering jets to get back to the main room. She wasn’t going to be in here any longer than she had to be, not anymore, regardless of how few blobs she saw. Another one threw itself from a dark corner, but a quick jet-propelled twist and solid hit from a wrench ended that.
She reached the “landing” at the same time as Spike, who was no worse for wear, as long as you ignored his smoking nostrils. “Got it.” He held up his unharmed cassette. “You?”
“Got it.” Applejack held up hers.
“Good. Let’s get going.”
Trixie and Flash didn’t seem to be having any problems. Trixie was working on something at her computer, while Flash was doing his best to look interested. She turned to the hologram and asked, “So, according to your patch notes, v0.5.0.23 was the first major language update. What were you like before then?”
“I’m sorry, my responses are currently limited,” the hologram replied. “I don’t have an answer suitable for that question.”
“Figures,” Trixie snorted. The hologram shrugged in response.
“Hey!” Spike yelled; Trixie and Flash both turned to him as he held up his cassette. “We got ’em.”
“Yesssss!” Trixie immediately snatched the tape from Spike’s grasp with her magic and pushed it into the slot. A pause, then she grinned. “Tape is intact. Aaaand… Looks like emails.” She stepped aside. “Would you do the honors, Applejack?”
Swallowing, Applejack stepped up to the computer, where a login screen flashed. She put in her credentials; up came the email screen. She clicked on the most recent one, the message from herself, waiting for some sort of error. None came; she brought up the video she’d opened all those hours ago. Still no error message.
“Hey, AJ,” her screen self said. “Sorry, but… y’ain’t gonna like what’s comin’ next.”
She still looked awful without her hat.
“I don’t know how much y’remember, Maybe everythin’. Maybe-”
She’d seen this before. Applejack fast-forwarded.
“That’s Princess Twilight!” Flash gasped. “What’s she doing there?”
“That’s what we’re findin’ out,” Applejack replied. She reached the right section and hit Play.
“-isten to yourself, right?” Screen Applejack continued. “You better. Anyway, we’re in the neuromod labs. Twi here thinks that, with the same stuff we use t’make those things, maybe we can teach ’em how t’be nice.”
Twilight lightly shoved Applejack aside. “It’s more complicated than THAT! Listen, I was lucky enough to get a look at some of the studies done on changelings before everything went to Tartarus. One of the things I found is that they don’t have mirror neurons. They’re incapable of empathy, and it’s not their fault. They LITERALLY can’t see us as anything other than food. Oh! And speaking of food, they eat mental energy. Emotions, thoughts, that sort of thing. They could actually kill a pony without leaving a physical mark on-”
Real Applejack and Screen Applejack coughed at the same time.
Twilight rolled her eyes. “And changelings ALSO have some sort of hive mind,” she huffed (only Twilight could huff educationally). “If one of them learns something, all of them do. So…” She grinned in a somewhat mad-scientist fashion. “What if we injected one of them with mirror neurons from a pony? It would stop seeing us as concentrations of foodstuff, or at least be able to not see us that way, and maybe we could reason with it! And then either it can communicate with the other changelings, or that understanding can propagate through the hive mind, and there we go!”
Applejack stared at the screen, her mind racing, and she could practically feel the emotions shift around her. This was their plan? It wasn’t much more than a wing and a prayer. They’d need to get some mirror neurons first. Okay, how? Then they’d need a changeling to inject those neurons into — somehow. Probably a drone; those little octopoid beach balls didn’t look like they had brains (and where would brains go when they shapeshifted?). And then all they could do was hope it caused the changelings to stop attacking them. This was what she’d risked life and limb for? This was what she’d traipsed across the station for? THIS was Princess Twilight’s grand plan?
As if she’d known what Applejack was thinking, Twilight’s grin slipped more than a little. “It’s not much, we know. But it’s probably worth a shot. If it works, that’s that. If not…” A brief pause. “I’m working on a Plan B. No idea if it’ll work or not.”
Screen Applejack leaned back into view. “I’m donatin’ the neuron thingamajigs,” she said. “Shouldn’t be no problem, but Twi thinks it MIGHT give me some amnesia.” (Trixie glanced at Applejack.) “That’s why we’re makin’ this video. Just so you don’t have to go on her word for it; y’also got mine! Ain’t much, but c’mon; y’came up here based on ‘ain’t much’ in the first place, y’gotta be able to trust Twi on this.”
“So,” said Twilight, “in case something goes wrong — which it… probably will, considering everything — we’re in the neuromod removal chamber. I’ve figured out how to repurpose it to safely extract mirror neurons, and holy sun that sounds awful, and if there’s a neuromod gun in there, it’s what you need. Well, and also a changeling, but…” A nervous laugh. “…we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, right?”
“Right,” Screen Applejack said. She pinched her mouth shut and nodded slowly. “So, uh… let’s get to it. AJ out.”
And the video ended.
You could hear a pin drop in the room. The only sound was the fans of the computer stacks behind them whirring away; Applejack swore she could feel their wind. Everyone was just letting it sink in. Not only was Twilight’s plan a long shot, it was based on something they didn’t even have: the neuromod that (if they were lucky) had Applejack’s mirror neurons. The neuromod that, at best, was way up in Neurothaumatics Maintenance.
Then: “Sun blast it,” Applejack muttered. She’d seen that neuromod, picked it up and put it aside when she’d first gone to the removal chamber, right after meeting Trixie. Just because it was in the way. If she’d kept it with her… She tried to tell herself she couldn’t have known, that lugging around (or injecting yourself with) an unknown neuromod was just asking for trouble, but that didn’t change the fact that doing that then would’ve saved her a lot of trouble now.
“Well. Uh…” Flash coughed. “That’s, that’s um… something.” Pause. “Now what?”
“Applejack,” Trixie said quietly, “I know this isn’t much, but… but Trixie is behind you, all the way.”
“Thanks,” Applejack muttered. Seriously, now what? Was she supposed to just walk up to Spitfire and say, “Guess what! Twilight’s plan ain’t gonna do jack squat!”? Explain just how much it relied on what-ifs? True, they could still wait, but… after all this time, being left with nothing was disheartening.
Spike, however, didn’t seem too put out. He gave everypony a confused look. “You, uh… do know, Twilight, right? She kinda… thinks sideways. But she’s hardly ever wrong. If she thinks this’ll work, I think it’ll work. I mean, Applejack. You saw what you were like in there.” He gestured at the computer and the last frame of video. “Do you think the you who knew everything was scared about it not working?”
Not really, Applejack had to admit. Her past self had seemed… confident enough. And Twilight was still Twilight. That had to mean something. She wasn’t one to half-bake her plans, no matter how out-there they seemed.
“Look,” said Spike. He flexed his wings. “I trust Twilight. She does not cut corners on things like this. I think this has a good chance of working. Don’t you trust her?”
“I dunno,” said Applejack. Her head was still spinning. “Let’s… Let’s check the cameras and get back to the cargo bay and decide then, alright?”
Spike shrugged. “Alright.”
Trixie swapped the email cassette with the security footage one, but was promptly stopped with a check for her credentials. Nevertheless, she smirked. “Finally.” She wobbled her neck back and forth, working on the kinks in it. “Let’s slice some-”
“Username is ‘ArkaneMaster’,” said Spike promptly. “Capital A, capital M, no spaces, K instead of a C. Password is ‘LookingGlass0451’. Capital L, capital G, no spaces.” In response to the looks, he said, “Twilight got admin privileges and shared her credentials with me.”
“Well, you’re no fun,” Trixie pouted as she typed everything in. She pouted even more when the archive opened, first try.
“Take a look at the labs,” Applejack said. “That was where-”
“The changelings were being kept, I know,” said Trixie. She began flicking through the different views. “I wonder if that particular lab even has cameras…”
It didn’t, as it turned out. Not that specific room, anyway. But with a lot of jumping about and a little discussion, Applejack and Trixie soon found the larger lab it was attached to. This particular camera was mounted above the entrance to changeling containment. Trixie skipped to the end of the tape and began jumping back from freeze frame to freeze frame, minutes at a time.
One particular grainy shot made Applejack jump. “Hey, it’s you!” Flash said. Indeed, she was backing up, pointing a gun at a changeling at one side while keeping an eye on one on her other. “Wow, you two really messed that place up, didn’t you?”
“Eh. It happens.” Trixie shrugged and kept scrolling back.
And then they saw it: over a dozen of the tetrapoidal blobs scurrying out of the lab and into the station. Everyone gasped in surprise at the spectacle; Applejack had never seen so many changelings in one place before.
Immediately, Trixie got up close to the screen and began jumping back again. “C’mon, where are you,” she muttered. “Where are you…”
There it was: two ponies, visible only as silhouettes in the darkness of the labs. Trixie jabbed the Play button and the tape began creeping forward. There was no sound, but the ponies appeared to be arguing about something. They hung back from the entrance to the changeling containment rooms, making big, angry gestures at each other. Trixie’s hoof hovered over the Skip button, but never pressed it.
The ponies began walking towards the camera, still arguing. Even though it was still dark, their shadows slowly got sharper, more defined. They looked familiar to Applejack, but she couldn’t quite place them.
When the pair passed beneath the camera and the group saw who they were, silence fell like an anvil.
Blueblood and Lightning Dust had let the changelings out.