//------------------------------// // Waking Up // Story: My Little Cyborg // by Ignimbrite //------------------------------// Shadowpiercer was certainly tired. Of course, it was a good type, the type you get from a good day's work, and it did produce a few bits he could use to find lodging. Oh, right... lodging. He looked around. Nothing would be open for checking in at this time. He walked around checking for places that he could at least hunker down for the night. Perhaps the forest would provide some protection. The place seemed harmless enough. Upon seeing a tree with a particularly interesting set of branches, he got a stupidly amusing idea. It was also amusingly stupid, but then, it seemed he rarely got the chance to act on such ideas, and it would make a good field test for his virtual model anyway. He closed his eyes for a moment: {SETMODE: PREDICTIVE {ALGORITHM: PATHFINDER He opened his eyes and saw everything. He saw targets on various branches and trunks, he saw paths leading from one to the next, he saw the arcs and trails that compensated for gravity, the cones that compensated for error. He smiled for a moment. There was always a certain beauty in the arcs and lines that no one else would ever see. Of course, in his mind, the simple fact that the entire design of the world could be summed up in a few equations was beautiful in and of itself. He galloped up to the first tree on the left and took a step up the side before kicking off towards the tree on the right. He slipped a little, but was just enough within the margin of error to catch a low branch. He climbed up onto it and jumped to a branch on the first tree. He then adjusted the calibration of his model and jumped up to a different set of limbs. He continued this process a few more times before landing on the collection of branches he had seen. The path turned out to be lot longer than he had initially calculated. There were too many slips and incorrect strikes, often leaving him on whatever branch he could catch to keep from falling. Evidently the strange body would take more getting used to than he had thought. The final collection of branches was a nice spot really. They spread out just right to lay down on, and the view was quite pleasant. Okay, maybe it was just a little hard and bumpy, but it was at least better than stowing away on a garbage barge. Pretty much anything was an improvement after that experience. He blinked a moment. The memory, while not completely pleasant, was reassuring nonetheless. With that, he smiled, shut down his processor, and laid down to rest. The next day, he was gently awakened a bird poking at his head. "AAAAGH!" Fine, he was startled awake, but don't tell anyone. "Hello? Who's there?" Well, so much for no one else finding out. He looked down and saw a pegasus looking back up at him. "What are you doing up there?" "Just enjoying the view of the town." "From a tree?" "It seemed like a good idea at the time." "How did you get up there?" He pointed with his hoof. "I jumped up to that branch, then to that one, and... I jumped back and forth a lot." "How are you going to get down?" That one had him stumped. He remembered the path he took last night, of course, but following it in reverse might be difficult. He tried turning his processor back on: {BATTERY: 69% He turned it back off and scolded himself for being a bit too careless using it yesterday. He looked around. Maybe there was an easier path, one he could find without using the algorithm. He looked down again and got an idea. He jumped down into a lower branch. This might work... From there he jumped towards the other tree and kicked off the trunk back towards the first one. So far so good... He bounced off the first one towards the ground. Uh-oh... He tried to crumple into a roll to reduce the impact energy, but his momentum carried him a bit too far, landing him upside-down in a thorn bush. Ouch... The pegasus meeped at his less than graceful climb down. Shadowpiercer, meanwhile, poked his head up out of the bush and looked around. "Well, that was a thorny landing." "Are you okay?" "I think so." He extricated himself from the bush and stood up. "My name's Shadowpiercer, by the way. What's yours?" "Fluttershy. I was just going to check on Applejack's animals. "Oh, I was going that way too. She hired me to help harvesting." "Oh... She did say there was a bigger crop than usual this year. ... Are you sure you're okay?" They continued on to the farm. When they got there, they saw that Applejack had recruited some others from around the town as well. It looked like there was enough ponies now to harvest the whole place within a day. The others certainly had unconventional ways of handling things. A couple were apparently telekinetic. That skill certainly must have made everyday tasks easier. A blue pegasus was flying around everywhere, and Fluttershy had apparently decided to stare at a tree. He couldn't figure out whether it was stranger that she did that or that it actually worked. "HIIIEEEEEE!!!!!" Shadowpiercer's ears drooped. Slowly, he turned around. Sure enough, behind him stood Pinkie Pie. "I never did get your name by the way. Were any of my guesses right?" He looked back and forth between her and the others. My boss... is friends... with a reality warper. All things considered, she at least seemed friendly. "Weeeeeell?" Pinkie asked, standing an inch from his nose. Excessively friendly... "Shadowpiercer," he finally replied, "the people here call me Shadowpiercer." "Okie dokie loki!" She pronked off. Shadowpiercer moved over to one of the trees that hadn't been harvested yet and set to work. He very deliberately chose the farthest section possible from the strange mare.