//------------------------------// // Chapter 22: The Interface // Story: The Warp Core Conspiracy // by Unwhole Hole //------------------------------// Elsewhere in the world, Flim was attempting to breathe into a paper bag to control his outright panic. Despite his best efforts, though, the bag was refusing to inflate. This only caused him to panic more. Flam pushed past him. “Stop doing that, you know it won’t work!” “But I have to! Brother, you saw her! You saw her too, you had to have! The cat-girl from the party! She was in our base! In our base” They started walking together through the cold and windowless concrete tower. They moved in a near trot, although they had nowhere in particular to go. As much as he tried to hide it from his younger brother, Flam was just as nervous. That everything they worked for would soon come crumbling down around their ears. Fifteen years of continuous, careful effort, all about to be wasted. “She was from the Federation! And she was HERE!” “No. She wasn’t.” “Don’t gaslight me, brother, I have eyes--” “She was at our facility, but she wasn’t HERE. She never made it to the central tower, never found the ship, she saw NOTHING. What is she going to do? File an injunction?” “If she calls an investigation--” “She won’t call an investigation, because that would show Celestia that aliens tried to break into a top-secret research factory. They’re Federation. They’ll try expensive, costly diplomacy and make even more expensive concessions then leave feeling good about themselves. They won’t do something to sacrifice their image.” “Which begs the question,” said a third voice. As Flim and Flam walked, her body materialized in front of them, a translucent hologram of pink-violet light cast from holographic projectors placed at highly regular intervals down the hallway, connected by thin and glimmering fiberoptic conduits. Flim blinked. “What question?” The hologram of Twilight Sparkle turned to face him, its enormous and unblinking eyes seeming to stare into his very soul. He reached for his bag again, fumbling and dropping it. “I don’t know, nor do I care. Because it’s not my job to care. I don’t know what the Federation is, aside from the place where the cat-girls live and dance their cat-girl dances. It is not, in fact, my chair; and, consequently, not my problem.” “But it is ours. If they find us, if they find out what we’ve been doing, who we’ve been working for--” “They won’t,” snapped the elder, mustachioed brother. “Because that’s the question she’s asking. She wants to know what we want to do about the problem.” The hologram nodded and giggled. Her pace increased slightly, the holographic projectors that made her body flashing faster and faster. “I’m here to do the work. To make the machines, to do the science, to wallow in the math and shelve the books—SHELVE ALL OF THE BOOKS! SHELVE THEM SO VERY HARD! Ahem. With both vim and occasionally with vigor. Raw, musty vigor.” She shrugged. “Apart from not having eyes anymore, so I guess I can’t read the books. Oh well.” She giggled again. “You two were hired to manage the plant. To get the resources. To build the engines to my instructions. To paint the mares for some reason. Or pay someone to paint them, I guess it doesn’t really matter. But I like to imagine you both do it with paintbrushes in your filthy little organic mouths...” She shivered. “Oh yes, filthy heretics, paint those dirty, dirty mares...” “Brother, she’s making it weird again!” Flam ignored his brother, as usual. “And having the Federation here jeopardizes our possibility of getting paid. So we need to solve the problem. Immediately.” “Yes! Solve the problem! SOLVE IT! Your princess demands it!” Flam glared at her. “You are not a princess.” The hologram stopped. She rotated to face him. Then her back distorted and ruptured, expressing a pair of enormous holographic wings. “Behold my enormous, fluffy, and exceedingly ticklish wings! BEHOLD THEM! I am not functionally a god on this planet for some reasons that’s beyond me.” She sighed and the wings severed, falling to the ground and dispersing their photons, reduced to random muscles and holographic bone that crumbled to dust. “Except, one, I do't actually have wings and, two, in this state I am quite immortal regardless and, second two, I don’t actually have the capacity for volition. By definition. So I pay you to make orders, and you give me the orders so I can execute them. That’s how this relationship works. It's a give-and-take.” “We have a relationship?” asked Flim, blushing slightly. Flam shoved him. “Like I said. We need to eliminate the problem.” “By subterfuge!” “We don’t have the time for subterfuge. I was thinking a more direct approach.” Flim blanched. “Brother, I know we have done...terrible, terrible things...but that...that is beyond all of it. And to a Starfleet crew?” “Ah,” said the hologram, who had once again started walking, although she was not actually moving forward but rather floating in place, “you want to bump them off. Whack them. Rub them out. Buy them the farm. Kick their bucket. Squeeze out their juices. Feed them to the wolves. Let them sleep with the fish. And the fishes. Which is when there is more than one type of fish in the same place. A good-old myrtling. Sure. Go do that.” “We can’t.” “Why not? Organic life is fragile. Pinch them or something.” “What am I supposed to do, raise an army? Ponies don’t kill. They can’t. Not ever. I’m certainly not about to go there and do it, I’ll get phased. And phasing HURTS.” “When were you phased?” asked Flim. “When YOU were cleaning a PHASER that you DEFINITELY took the power-cell out of, dearest brother.” “I said I was sorry! We were five--” “I don’t even know where they are, how am I supposed to find them?” Flim blinked. “Oh. I know where they are.” Flam and the hologram—still walking—stared at him. “How would you possibly know that?” “It’s not hard. I scanned for Caitian lifesigns, and hoomin ones. They’re really close.” “Where?” “They went into the swamp.” “This whole place is swamp, that’s not helpful--” “I found the location, actually. At least where they dissipated.” “Dissipated? Did we check for transporter signals?” “I’m intercepting them,” said the hologram. "They go to a fun, fun place. For me. It rhymes with 'flender'." “Wait, you can do that?” “Mostly. Catching them is easy. Getting all the squiggly bits into something other than, well, sausage is harder. The transporter is a really dumb design. Why not just teleport? It’s so much easier.” “Then where did they go if they didn't transport?” “I looked into that. I scanned the area with the optic scope, and saw there were timberwolves--” “I do not care about wolves, timber or otherwise. We are looking for a CAT. Not a DOG.” “I’m getting to that! I was talking to one of the pretty florist girls in the village, and--” “Village? You were talking to the locals? We do NOT talk to the locals, we are businessmen! We are above them!” “Would you stop interrupting me?! Timberwolves aren’t mobile this time of year, they’re blooming and they don’t move much when they do that. We had a date to go pick a flower. So I did spectra analysis and the results indicated that they’re not wolves at all.” “Then what are they?” “Holograms. Like her.” They both looked at holo-Twilight. She was still walking in place, although she had now progressed to a dead sprint. “Meaning?” “Meaning there’s someone else here.” The two looked at each other, and Flim sighed. “Peace is good for business. Let’s handle this as quickly as possible.” “Why?” The hologram tilted her head. “I like the sounds of their screams.” “Quick. No screaming. No witnesses.” Her smile grew. She flickered slightly. “I have started preparing a warhead. Five hundred megatons ought to do the trick. I shall also load it with nuclear-grade confettii. Also cobalt.” “NO! We would be caught in the blast radius!” She tilted her head. “So?” “We’d die.” “Yes. But I wouldn’t.” “No warheads!” The hologram’s smile grew. “You’re no fun.” “Because we also have to deal with their ship.” Flim was at this point shaking. “Because they’ll find out, and then the rest of them will come, and--” “Not if it looks like an accident. This planet is very, very dangerous. Ponies get eaten all the time, or stole, or lost. So can cat-girls and hoomins.” He faced the Twilight hologram. “I was hoping our benefactors might have something that could assist? Other than nuclear weapons?” The hologram giggled and reversed quickly, almost at trotting speed. Flim and Flam followed until she passed into a vast and dark room. Flim almost stepped into the void, but his brother pulled him back as a pair of floating holo-drones separated from the wall, projecting both Twilight and the holographic catwalk she walked on to enter the darkness. The only light came from her body—and then the sparking blue glows of the enormous machines below as they began fabrication. “I think the Klingons would be glad to help. They aren’t like ponies at all. They sure do love killing things. And they don't have an personality shell that stops them whenever they try...” She then giggled, her giggle growing into a strange and mechanical sound that made both of the organics watching her shiver in atavistic horror at the sight of something that neither of them had ever had the foresight to attempt to comprehend.