//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 - Admins, Accessibility, and an Intimate Partnership // Story: The Neverending Climb // by TheDriderPony //------------------------------// Sometimes I felt like a ghost; hovering, unseen and unheard, watching countless ponies live their daily lives with no idea they were being monitored, followed, analyzed by an intelligence that outstripped theirs by miles. Other times I felt like a puppetmaster, or a spider; pull on a thread in just the right way and I could enact huge plans without leaving my chair.  They were heady feelings. With this much power at her hooftips, a lesser mare might develop a god complex, but I was not a lesser mare. They’d made sure to stamp that out of me early on.  “Any problems so far?” I asked my other half as she fed a half dozen datastreams directly into my cerebral cortex. The question itself was superfluous. When we were like this, in a connection rig I built myself, we were closer than any flesh and machine had ever been. We spoke not through inefficient verbal language but through pure digital signals as her electronic brain and my organic one shared virtual space.  A virtual space she’d decorated with all her latest designs, of course. “Nothing so far,” Winrarity, my dearest, replied. “The agents are on the fastest route and should arrive at the compound in less than fourteen minutes and at the planned interjection point in less than one.” A lesser AI would have rattled off the precise time down to the millisecond, but my Rares was smart enough to know that the actions of ponies couldn’t be predicted to such a fine degree.  “Show me the feed.” Sight from an ATM’s camera became my own. Jackie and the lieutenant were there, hidden mostly behind a crowd at the edge of its field of view, moving with glacial slowness. A perk of accelerating my mind to computer speed. Floor 1199 was a challenge when it came to performing overwatch. It was a labyrinthine warren of businesses and residences and microgardens and shantytowns and parlors, all constructed with an eclectic mix of materials. With the nobles and the megacorps constantly adding new floors to the top of the Spire (sourced from drones harvesting materials from the ruins and wasteland outside), there were always some less-than-perfect building materials that weren't up to the elite's exacting standards. This was where they ended up. And just like the ramshackle construction, every piece of electronics on the floor was twice or thrice resold. Instead of one singular camera network to hack, it was dozens of independent systems. Old models, repurposed equipment, homebrew coding. But that merely made it a challenge of time and patience rather than difficulty. Which only gave my wife another chance to shine.  The view seamlessly changed from one perspective to the next. Judging by the slight bobbing motion, it was somepony’s eye replacements with very outdated security protocols. I didn’t have time for charity work, but I made a note of their identity to pass along to Dr. Articulate. He should be having one of his ‘Free Digital Check-up” days coming soon. “Thirty seconds to the interjection,” Rares reminded me. A quick cache clear freed me from my distracted woolgathering. This was not time to be distracted. Not on the most important job I’d ever accepted. “Right. Let me give the models a final check.” “You’ve gone over them three times already, dear.” “There’s time for once more.” This was too important to leave anything to chance. My view pulled back from the usurped eyes, making room for a rendered image of a mare that appeared as if she was standing before me. A mare that looked very much like Lieutenant Rainbow Crash. Similar build, same sized wings. The only distinct differences were her implants and a white coat.  They could have been sisters, which was why the lieutenant’s participation was so vital. Natural polychrome manes were very rare, and my Red Herring program worked best when it had to change as little as possible.  All the details looked satisfactory, and as I dismissed it another model took its place. This one bore a striking resemblance to Jackie, save an extra horn, but her hat covered that area enough to compensate. How fortuitous that my two agents were such near-lookalikes for two notorious legbreakers of the Scarlet Hoof cartel. “Alright, they're reaching the blind spot. Prepare to activate the glamour.” “Of course, darling. One wardrobe change, coming up!” My vision of them vanished as they crossed a crowded open-air market. “Get ready.” I counted down the seconds it'd take them to reach the next camera. "Three... two... one... now!" “Behold!” my dearest cackled, “The might of my artistry!” A single pixel of blue entered the screen before it turned bone-white and two disreputable members of the Scarlet Hooves continued down the corridor. Of my agents, there was no sign, and wouldn’t be again until they passed through the same blindspot on their return. “Red Herring Glamour is 97% stable and holding steady,” Rares reported. “Every camera, eye, and other visual sensor on their route has been infiltrated and chained to the sequence.” I relaxed, letting my mind slow back down to normal equine speeds. Accelerating for too long drained me quickly. “Love my computer wife.” This connected, I could feel her algorithms hum in contentment. “Likewise, darling.” They made good progress from that point, totally unaware that their digital hoofprint was being entirely rewritten in real-time.  The Lunarists’ headquarters was in a derelict entertainment complex. No one wanted to watch a film when they could download holovids at their leisure, and the cult had moved in before anypony could claim it and start remodeling it into something else. “I’m afraid I’ve hit a bit of a snag.” At her words I brought my mental acceleration back to full capacity. “What’s happened? We planned for everything.” “Not this. The Lunarists, it seems, put something of a high value on privacy. They’ve physically removed most of the cameras that are supposed to be in the facilities they’re occupying. I don’t have eyes on most of the interior.” I bit back a curse. That was… irritating. Very irritating, but not technically a problem. It just meant that I wouldn’t be able to keep monitoring their every move. That I wouldn’t be able to do anything to intercede if something went wrong. That I wouldn’t even know that something went wrong until it was too late and everything fell apart and I lost my one chance and— “Decelerating!” My thoughts hitched and skipped as Rares forcibly throttled me back to normal speed. An alert parsed through the fragmented storm of data from the biomonitors on my body. My heart rate was sky high and my cortisol levels nearly high enough to trigger the automatic ejection procedure. “Cycling you now,” Winrarity said softly as she started the procedure to forcibly filter out the hormones from my system. “You need to relax, darling. This mission’s not worth giving yourself a heart attack.” “I know you’d restart it for me.” “Yes, dear, but that’s not the point.” I pulled up the last viewpoint I’d had of my agents, a security camera on the room’s exterior. They were gone now. Already inside through the side door. Outside my ability to watch. “This Chip, no matter how powerful, can’t be that important.” “It is,” I stressed, but not too hard. I couldn’t let her know. “The client is very desperate to get her hooves on it.” “A client you’ve chosen to keep secret from my records, I should add. Very unlike you, darling, to not trust me with these things.” That stung. Deeply. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, it’s just…” I couldn’t tell her. Not yet. Not when the mission still had a chance of failure. “I promise I’ll tell you everything the moment the Chip is secure.” My dear wife… hesitated. A full second. At the speed of her thoughts, that’s a lifetime of deliberation. “Of course, darling. I trust you.” Her mood shifted, lighting up the virtual space with a digital smile. “In the meantime, I have some good news! I found a camera they didn’t fully rip out. It’s audio only, but I threw together a quick and rudimentary echolocation program that should give us a partial image.” Before I could even thank her, she fed me the view. It was… lacking. Black dots in a white void, but good enough to make out three shapes standing in a room. A splash of color marked two of them as Jackie and Lieutenant Crash, but the third remained a mystery, “Cleaning up the audio now, though I fear we missed some important context.” The sound cut in suddenly with a voice I didn’t recognize. “—then they gave me some free candy and said they could show me the path to happiness.” “You took some pi- candy from some rando on the street?!” “You… you said I should always take my candy.” “Yes. Candy from me. The candy I get from the doctors.” The blue marked figure put a hoof to her forehead and rubbed her temples. “Why’d you even go out of the apartment at all!? You never leave your sims!” “W-well… Mrs. Tea next door… her legs got ransomwared and she needed somepony to go to the store for her. I-I thought I could do it... I even took a couple extra doses for luck, but… I got lost.” “Got lost? We’re dozens of floors from—! Okay. Okay. This is fine. Don’t cry. You were just trying to help and that’s a good thing to do. But now we have to fix this.” “Crash, Ah—” “Not now! First things first, is your censorsuite online?” “Mhm. But the subscription ran out a few days ago so it's only the free version.” “Ran out?! Bucking autopay!” “Crash, we don’t have time for this. We’ve got what we came for. Let’s get out and you can deal with your marefriend later.” “She’s not my marefriend! She's just my roommate!” A sudden piercing siren and a camera-shaking rumble overpowered their voices as all three figures jumped and turned towards their right.  “What was that? Did something just explode?” “Slag it! It’s a raid! Why are they—!”  The feed cut, and I, so personally far away from the danger, felt the ground fall out from beneath me as well.