//------------------------------// // Revived // Story: Trapped in my Mind // by MasterFrasca //------------------------------// I gasped as a shock ran through my body, and I opened my eyes to a blinding white light and muffled sounds of ponies talking. Blinking a few times, the intensity of the light became more bearable and I glanced around. I was lying on my back in some sort of shiny pod-like structure, but the high walls around me prevented me from seeing any of the voices without leaning up in a sitting position, which I couldn’t do because I couldn’t feel my limbs. Turning my head to the side, I saw my distorted reflection in the warped metal. The same two yellow eyes I had seen in that black void were looking lazily back at me, but my hair was covered in the green substance I had nearly drowned in. The light above me seemed to be attached to a brown ceiling by a hook, and I couldn’t tell whether it was a gas lamp or a type of electrical powered device. The muffled pony voices seemed to be arguing about something, but my hearing was still recovering from the jolt. My entire body felt like it was made out of stone, and it was a challenge just to swivel my head back and forth. Looking down at the bottom of the pod, I saw a few wired openings that seemed to be large enough to let a liquid through. I tried to lift my head to examine it a bit more, but a sudden sharp pain in my neck stopped me and forced a small whimper from my lips. Suddenly, the bickering voices stopped and above the shiny silver walls, a head appeared looking down at me. It belonged to a brown stallion with blue eyes and a slicked-back brown mane. The pony smiled before exclaiming, “Lyra! It is a pleasure to see you awake again. How are you feeling?” The best answer I could give was a slight shake of my head, as I found that I couldn’t feel my tongue or lips at all. I knew trying to speak would only result in a plethora of meaningless sounds that would convey nothing. He replied to this movement by telling me, “That’s usually how ponies feel after being under for a few days. Give it a few minutes and you should start to regain some feeling in your body. Call or…well…grunt if you need me.” He disappeared behind the walls of my pod, and I pondered on what he meant by being under for a few days. I must have been put to sleep in this chamber, but that doesn’t explain why I don’t remember how I got here. Did I have brain damage while I was sedated? I needed to know, but I could only begin to feel the tips of my hooves, and my lips were tingling from the draft that was going through. I could feel warm air blowing slowly across my body, seeming to come from my back hooves. I assumed that they were trying to make my recovery comfortable, and were venting warm air into the chamber for me. The voices started up again, and I lay there for a minute with my eyes closed, regaining strength while my hearing slowly came back to me. Every few seconds I could make out a phrase or two of what they were saying to each other. The male voice would say something along the lines of, “We’re lucky that she was pulled out in time, or that virus could have taken over her…” while the female would respond with phrases like “scanned her mind,” and “can’t figure out why the wipe occurred.” After a while, I put a hoof onto the surface of the metal, and summoning all of my strength, pushed myself up into a sitting position. Nearly exhausting my legs, I managed to grab the side and pull myself the rest of the way up, finally getting a look at my surroundings. I was in a room painted white with a brown ceiling. Multi-colored tiles lined the floor and the two voices I had heard were still talking while looking at a screen embedded into the wall. The screen was hooked up to a machine with a number pad and a bunch of different levers and dials. That machine was also attached to the silver pod I had until now been lying in. The room started to sway, and I felt as if I was going to vomit. The dizziness overcame me and I leaned over the edge and wretched. Not too much left my stomach, but the sound was enough to turn the heads of the bickering ponies from the screen that they were looking at. I couldn’t do much to change my position besides to roll on my side and take a few deep breaths on the side of the pod. I felt as if somepony was lifting my head, and looking down, I saw a blue aura surrounding my upper body. The pony casting the magic to cause this lifting was light blue with a blue and white striped mane, almost resembling toothpaste. Her face had a look of sternness and worry plastered all over it. “I know you’re excited to stand on your own four hooves again Lyra,” the mare told me as she laid me back down in the vented pod and the warm air, “but you need to lay down until we can safely give you another dose of the revival spell.” I tried to apologize, but all I could muster was a meaningless mumble, and the blue mare left the pod, probably to go back to whatever machine they were both working at. I could feel my lips now, but the feeling of a massive headache also accompanied it. My stomach and head felt as if there was acid going through them. I groaned and the brown stallion peaked his head over the side again asking kindly, “Anything for the lovely lady?” Through all the pain, I managed to half say, “Where...am...I?” I knew I was in a nice room with some sort of massive machine, but I couldn’t remember how I got there. I deserved to at least know where “here” was. “So you have no clue where you are, do you?” the stallion asked giving a sigh and a slight frown. Without wanting to speak more, as I swore my vocal chord were being strangled, I just shook my head no and raised my eyebrows to indicate that I wanted him to tell me. He took a deep breath in and threw his two front hooves over the side and leant on them. He paused a second and looked off to the side, seeming to consider what to say, and began, “You are in the official Canterlot Research Facilities in underground Canterlot.” He paused and gave me a look before elaborating, “To be exact, you’re in a room with MeRMIE: the Memory Remodeling Machine for Intellectual Equines. I came up with the name myself!” He finished with a triumphant smile. I gave him a confused look and strained my voice to say one word, “How?” “Right,” he incompletely answered, the triumphant smile replaced by a frown and a cast-aside of his eyes, “that...” He trailed off one more time and nodded a bit, trying to think of what to say. Finally he began by telling me, “You are the reason you’re here.” I gave him a confused look and he explained further what he meant, softly pronouncing, “You came to us and told us to put you in this program. This is a research facility as I said, and we put a notice in the local papers to try and get a few subjects who were willing to let us do a bit of...controversial...experimentation.” “Contro...huh?” I mumbled, starting to be able to speak a little more clearer. What he was saying didn’t make any sense to me. I would never sign up for experimentation, but was that gut feeling part of whatever the experiment was did? “This experimentation wasn’t allowed to be practiced on animals due to their nature. They’d only apply to a Pony or other intelligent creature. Therefore we needed somepony’s permission to carry out these experiments on them. That’s when you showed up to our offices asking what position you could apply for. We did, and still will, offer to pay you for your services. This wasn’t what we thought would happened however...” He looked back toward the machine and paused a moment. I was even more curious now that I had come here probably for the money, but I still wanted to know why I couldn’t remember any of it. Finding that my vocal chords no longer hurt into my throat, I gathered my strength and inquired “Why don’t I remember any of it, though Mr....?” I found that he had never told me his name. “Whooves,” he finished for me chuckling a bit, “Dr. Whooves to be exact Miss Heartstrings. That was what we didn’t think would happen. We never expected the memory loss and the virus...” “Virus?” I worried, almost shouting. The strain on my vocal chords hurt me and I let out a strained sigh and shut my eyes tight, remembering the red eyes that had trapped me in in that makeshift corner. That must have been the “virus” he was talking about. “Lyra,” he calmly laid a hoof on my leg, rubbing it lightly. “You need to stay calm. Your body is still waking itself up after your time in the machine, and straining it like this will just delay the healing. There is a virus that the machine was infected with, and we believe that it has also been accidentally inserted into your mind. In an attempt to destroy it we wiped your mind of everything after backing it up.” “What?” I almost cried, utterly confused at how this could be and what it even meant. “The actual science behind all of this is complicated and confusing even to most scientists of this nature, so I’ll give you a watered down version of what this machine here does.Think of your mind as a place full of scrolls and books full of memories and basic knowledge. We take those scrolls and books and such and copy them over to this machine. Are you following me?” I nodded my head and he continued on with, “Now when we were copying all these things over, something occurred and what we refer to as a ‘virus’ was written into these books of knowledge. When we noticed that something was awry, we tried to go for broke and reset your brain back to when it was when we started experimenting. However the machine malfunctioned and wiped your mind clean of all unnecessary functions. Basically what happened is we accidentally cleared your mind of all your memories and infected your ‘knowledge books’ with the anomaly. We now need to go in manually and see which memories have been affected by this virus.” I was confused still, but before I could ask for a simpler explanation, the blue pony appeared over the side and bluntly said, “We fucked up and wiped your mind. Now the only way to fix it is to relive your memories in that machine to see which ones don’t seem right to you.” “Well that’s a bit more straightforward than what I was trying to go for,” Dr. Whooves asserted, adding in with a mumble, “as well as a lot more vulgar.” “Oh calm down, Whooves,” the blue unicorn retorted before turning to me. “You deserve the truth after all, Lyra. And you deserve it in a way that normal ponies can understand” “It isn’t my fault that some aren’t as learned as I am,” The brown stallion replied raising his head in fake dignity. The unicorn rolled her eyes and looked back at me, and with a serious tone stated, “We’re ready to give you another ‘wake-up’ spell if you’re ready for it. I won’t lie, Lyra. It may hurt a good bit for the first few seconds, but all the pain should be gone within a few minutes. Would you like to be treated now, or do you want to rest a bit more?” I nodded my head and mouthed the word “treat” to her and she caught on instantly what I wanted. I didn’t want to keep staring at this brown ceiling any longer, not knowing anything about myself at all. I wanted to get out of this pod and keep a conversation going so I could figure out how I had ended up here exactly, as well as try to fix it. “Lie still now Lyra,”I heard the blue mares voice call from across the room. “It’ll be much easier if you don’t squirm around too much.” A pause ensued and a whirring sound filled the room with the sound of electricity charging up. A few seconds of this passed before I thought the high pitched charging sound was going to go into an unhearable range when Lyra shouted, “Clear?” Dr Whooves glanced down at me and stepped back from the edge. Suddenly I was regretting this decision, as it sounded like it was going to hurt. I tensed up getting ready for anything to hit me when the stallion shouted “All clear!” I heard a surge of power, and at first my body went numb once more. My hearing blew out and my vision was suddenly blinded by an unseen light. Slowly everything seemed to fade back in as the sounds of the machine grew by the second and the brown ceiling became clearer. My hooves started to tingle, and soon the rest of my body followed suit, feeling like I was being stuck by thousands of pins and needles. My ears were starting to ring and the light was starting to decrease in intensity again. Soon the pins and needles stopped and I felt as if electricity was running through my body. I wanted to jump up and stretch my muscles and get out of this metal pod I was trapped in. Quickly enough the feeling was gone and replaced by a that of indifference. My hearing was back to normal and I could see again, not to mention that the pains in my throat and the headache were now only slightly sore. Putting my hooves on the sides, I easily lifted myself into a sitting position, taking another look around the room now that I wasn’t nauseated by the angle my head was resting. The machine was still powering down, giving a low hum as it continued to spew numbers on the screen attached to it. Other than the machine, the only other things in the room were a desk full of scrolls and a poster advertising safety goggles. The title showed a cartoon of a pegasus with batwings running into a wall with the message, “Don’t be as blind as a Batpony! Safety goggles aren’t bologna!” The blue unicorn turned around and saw that I was sitting up once again. She hurried over to the pod next to me and asked, “Are you feeling well? No more headaches or nausea?” “I’m fine, thanks,”I responded, noticing that my voice sounded much better than it did earlier. The act of speaking no longer burned my throat. I continued by telling her, “I never caught your name. I know that that’s Doctor Whooves over there, but who are you?” “I’m Doctor Colgate. I’m the HEAD of this experiment, and I’m partially at fault for your memory loss. I can assure you we’re going to set everything right.” “Ok,” I began taking a deep breath and calming myself down, “What you’re saying is that the basic problem is I’ve had my memory wiped and I don’t remember any of my past.” “Yes,”she sighed before adding in, “however you have a permanent memory bank still stored somewhere in your brain. We unfortunately can’t access it with this machine. That part of your mind only exists in the subconscious, like with breathing and blinking.” “So why can’t I remember anything if I have the memories stored in there?” “Because you’re being blocked by your own mind to that section,” Whooves added from over at the machine before sarcastically asking, “Isn’t the mind such a simple and wonderful thing?” “We may be able to access them if we get your mind to remember something, so we called one of your friends to come down and see you,” Colgate told me before turning to her side and shouted at the door, “It’s safe to let her in guys!” “Remember Bon Bon?” Whooves asked with a smile. “Bon Bon?” I questioned. The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t remember anything about it. Then the door across from the pod I was in opened up and a tan pony with dark blue and pink swirled hair took a step in. Instantly I recognized her face. “Bon Bon!”