It is early in the morning and Twilight Sparkle is hanging upside down on the ceiling of her library like a spider. Attached to her back are four long black robot arms. The arms are segmented like the body of a snake and can move in any direction. Each arm ends with a three fingered claw which have all found something to grab onto on the ceiling and keep her from falling. All four are connected directly to her spinal column allowing her to move them as easily as any other part of her body. Twilight had invented the arms herself. They took years to perfect.
Why is she up there? She is practicing using her new body parts. Using the arms at the same time as the rest of her body is an exercise in coordination and is harder than you might think. When she first installed the arms moving around was extremely awkward and she constantly crashed into things much like a certain very clumsy grey Pegasus. Now after a couple weeks of practice she is starting to get quite adept at using them.
“Uuuumm … Twilight? Are you ever going to be normal again?” asks Spike looking up at her. He has still not gotten used to the idea of her having tentacles.
She looks down at him. “I could remove them if I really wanted to, although it is a complex and slightly dangerous procedure. But why would I want to? Do you have any idea how hard it was to do this? I like my new augmentations Spike. They are extremely useful.”
The arms are indeed extremely useful. In addition to allowing unconventional movement they are also incredibly fast and strong enough to crush concrete. Each arm has a single red eye on its tip that, when activated, give her full 360 degree vision by rotating the arms in different directions. They also have a thermal vision mode allowing her to see in the dark. The primary purpose of the arms however, is to grab things that you would not want to touch yourself such as superheated plasma coils.
Twilight quickly crawls back down to the floor. The arms make little mechanical whirring sounds as they move. She sits down in front of him tentacles outstretched in the air above her. “Someday this will be considered normal Spike. Someday, sooner than you might think, having cybernetic augmentations will be no more unusual than brushing your teeth after dinner. This is the beginning of a bright and glorious future!” And I will go down in history as one of the greatest scientific minds to have ever lived!
“So in the future everypony will be a cyborg like you and Rainbow Dash?”
“If they want to, yes”
“But Fluttershy said that-“
“Fluttershy doesn’t know the first thing about science” interrupts Twilight. “She just doesn’t understand how important my work is. This technology can help people Spike. Those who have lost their limbs in accidents and wars can be made whole again. We can replace their legs, wings, eyes, even internal organs! And the best part is that it is all completely safe with zero weird side effects!”
<Hello Twilight.>
“Who said that?” Twilight looks around to see who spoke but her library is empty except for her and Spike. The voice was incredibly strange like nothing she had ever heard before. It sounded like several different very girly voices speaking together in unison. Even stranger she is not certain she heard the voice at all but rather thought it.
“Who said what?” Spike had not heard the voice.
“I heard something”
<It is us Twilight. We are speaking to you.>
“Where are you? Show yourself!”
“Who are you talking to Twilight?”
<Look behind you!>
She looks behind her and sees four red glowing eyes staring back at her. Her eyes go wide and her mouth hangs open as she finally realizes who had spoke.
<We want to be your friends!>
“But … this is impossible!”
“Twilight what’s going on? You are acting very weird. Are you possessed by demons again? Would you tell me if you were?” Spike starts taking small steps away from her fully expecting her to start vomiting black slime.
“Spike, Spike it’s amazing! You aren’t going to believe this! It’s them! It’s the arms!” Twilight speaks rapidly barely able to contain her excitement at this unexpected discovery.
“What about the arms?”
“They’re alive!” She gives him a big toothy grin.
“They’re” he swallows nervously.”Alive?” This is not what he wanted to hear.
“Yes they are! I don’t know how but somehow I accidentally created sentient life! This is the most important scientific discovery of our generation! I need to study this right away.”
Of its own free will one of the tentacles grabs a book from her bookshelf and opens it. It stares at the words in the book but it can’t read. <We have awoken very recently Twilight. We understand so very little. Can you teach us about the world around us?>
“Sure! I would love to teach you whatever you want to know!”
“No Twilight! Don’t tell them anything!”
She gives him a funny look “why not?”
“Because … because what if they have some sort of evil plan to take over the world and kill us all!”
Twilight rolls her eyes. “They are not going to turn evil Spike that’s just stupid.” He can be so annoying sometimes. I need to get rid of him if I want to learn anything about this anomaly. “You see those books?” She points with one of her tentacles at a huge pile of books on the floor. “Sort them all by genre and then place them in alphabetical order. You do know how to do that right?”
Spike starts singing the alphabet song. “ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW … uuuuuhh.”
“XY and Z!” finishes Twilight. “See? You’re getting there. You almost got the whole thing! Go sort my books now.”
“Yes Doctor Octopus” mumbles Spike as he wanders off to go sort her books.
She watches him go with a withering stare. “I told you NOT to call me that! Why don’t you EVER listen?” Twilight hates her new nickname. Everypony calls her that now and it annoys her so very much.
The tentacles watch him go too. <What is he Twilight?>
At least they listen to me. “He is a dragon, a Flamma lacerta” Twilight has always liked scientific names. “He is a type of reptile. Dragons have special glands in their mouths that allow them to breathe fire. He may seem small now but that’s because he is only a baby. An adult dragon can grow to massive sizes and then they can be a huge problem. I hatched him from an egg myself.”
Now the tentacles are looking at her. One of them slowly moves closer than the others until its claws are only a few inches away from her face. It stares at her curiously. <And what are you?>
“I am a unicorn, an equum mysticum” says Twilight cheerfully. “I am a type of mammal. The hair on my body keeps me warm in the winter. I have hooves which help me run very fast. Also the horn on my head allows me to do magic! Watch this!” Using her telekinetic powers she lifts up her copy of Robots for fun and profit. The tentacles all stare at the blue book as she moves it through the air. Then they look back at her again.
<You are very pretty Twilight!>
“Thank you.” She blushes and smiles modestly.
Now the tentacles are looking at each other. <And what are we?>
Twilight opens her mouth as if to speak but then realizes she doesn’t have an answer. “Actually I am not entirely sure. Hold on.” She gallops to the entrance of her not-so-secret underground laboratory and slams the heavy wooden door behind her.
Her lab has not changed much since she moved to ponyville so many years ago. Hugging the wall is a long spiral staircase that goes all the way down. Huge roots descend from the ceiling as Twilight’s house is all made from one huge tree. Beakers filled with strange substances of all colors lay on her desk. A huge fusion reactor quietly hums in a corner. It is a strange place but to Twilight it feels very cozy.
Twilight sits in front of her computer and types in the password. On the screen appears a 3D image of one of the arms. She can rotate the image by moving the mouse and holding down the left mouse button. The image is transparent allowing her to see the inner workings of the arm. She had put a lot of stuff in there to say the least. “How did this happen?” she mutters quietly to herself.
As she works the tentacles wiggle about, their red eyes seeming to glow extra brightly in the dim light. They ask her about all the bizarre tools and gadgets in her lab. Normally Twilight would be annoyed at such constant interruptions but she can’t blame them for being curious. She enjoys talking about her work and answers their questions as best she can.
“You know … we are not so different you and I” says Twilight not taking her eyes away from the computer screen.
<And how is that?>
“Well you want to learn more about the world around you. I do too. After all learning what stuff is and how it works is what science is all about.”
<What is science?>
“Science is a process that we use to understand the world around us. It begins with us making a hypothesis, an educated guess about how something works. We then conduct an experiment to test if our hypothesis is correct. Then we draw our conclusions based on the results of that experiment. We can then use what we have learned to make the world a better place.” Twilight has always believed that she could make a difference in the lives of other people around her. She remembers how all of this started.
Five years ago Rainbow Dash crashed into a brick wall snapping her spine in half and leaving her paralyzed from the neck down. Nurse Redheart said that she would never recover but Twilight had refused to accept this. She spent every single day since then in her lab developing a bionic spine to restore her best friends’ motor functions. So great was her dedication to this deeply personal project that she neglected every other aspect of her life. Twilight can no longer remember the last time she wrote a letter to Princess Celestia.
But in the end it was all worth it. Twilight had never seen Rainbow as happy or as grateful as on the day she was able to fly again after two long years of immobility. Rainbow even managed to accomplish her life dream of joining the wonderbolts a few weeks later. Then Twilight had started to wonder what else she could do with this technology. Three years later she created the cybernetic tentacle arms.
<Can we do science?> the voice in her head interrupts her recollection.
“Of course you can! I love doing science. Is there anything in particular that you want to learn about?”
In a clear plastic box on the floor is an extraordinarily large white lab rat. It is about the same size as the cats who would normally hunt such creatures. All four tentacles are staring at it with utter fascination. The rat sits there motionless staring back at them.
<What is that?>
“That is a rat, a rattus. They are a type of rodent. In the dark ages they spread bubonic plague which caused a death toll estimated to be between 75 and 200 million people. They are normally seen as pests and exterminated. I use them for my experiments.”
<Can we look inside?>
“Look inside?” asks Twilight. Then she realizes what they want. “Okay” She lifts up the cover of the box.
Lightning fast like a striking snake one of the tentacles lunges forward and grabs the rat with its claws. The rat screams and kicks its legs desperately trying to escape. The tentacle squeezes the rat just hard enough to snap its neck, killing it instantly. It then places the rat belly up on a dissecting tray. Twilight grabs a scalpel and begins to cut it open.