//------------------------------//
// Chapter 6 
// Story: Enter The Maretrix 
// by Chaotic Dreams 
//------------------------------//

Chapter 6
“Artificially Intelligent Magic?” Twilight echoed, confused. “That’s just experimental theorization—nopony’s actually ever been able to cast sentient spells!”
“They weren’t able to in the time you know,” Doctor Whooves went on, nodding his head for Twilight to follow him. Stepping gingerly off of the cushion and shaking the excess goo from her coat, Twilight and the other ponies followed the Doctor into the next room. “But that’s because the time you know happened a long time ago. 
“Let me explain…”
“Please do,” Twilight added, thoroughly confused.
“…through the best way possible: by showing you what happened,” the Doctor finished. 
By now the ponies had reached a large room with cushioned beds that looked surprisingly clean given the surroundings, and Doctor Whooves gestured to a small cot in the corner.
“I apologize for the…miniscule nature of the bed you’ll be using, but each dream-bed can only be used by its respective pony,” Doctor Whooves explained. “That’s why they all look different—each is based off of the user’s respective personality. Eventually, should you decide to join us, you’ll get your own personal dream-bed. But for now, you’ll have to make do with the cot.”
Twilight walked over to the small sleeping apparatus and inspected it closely. It was indeed a far cry from her comfy bed in the library in Ponyville, but she supposed it would do.
Looking up from her inspection, Twilight saw that all of the ponies were looking at her expectantly. 
“What?” Twilight asked them, slightly unnerved.
“Oh, forgive me! It’s been so long since we’ve had a new recruit,” said Doctor Whooves. “You’re supposed to sleep in the bed. We’ll explain everything to you once you’re asleep.”
“…How exactly does that work?” Twilight inquired, beginning to wonder if these ponies were somewhat insane, or worse—that she was. 
“You’ll see,” said the Doctor with a smirk. I’d recommend a sleep spell to get you started—sleeping in a new bed is always an uncomfortable experience.”
“You expect me to just lie down and fall asleep with all of you watching?” Twilight went on, her incredulity only increasing. “But I just met you! And what does this explain, anyway?!”
“When you’re asleep, it’ll all make sense,” Doctor Whooves concluded. “I know it sounds strange, but trust me, it’s not half as strange as what’s coming.”
Twilight stood staring at them all for a moment.
“I’m not just going to—”
“Oh, for the love of Pete!” exasperated a white goggle-wearing unicorn with an electric blue mane and tail. Her horn lit up, and the next thing Twilight knew, she was wrapped in the sweet embrace of oblivion.
Or…not.
“Where am I…?”
Twilight looked curiously around her, to see…nothing. A seemingly endless expanse of white space stretched out in every direction, and Twilight couldn’t even tell what she was standing on. 
“Technically speaking, you’re back in the airship, asleep on the cot,” replied an unexpected voice, and Twilight turned to see Doctor Whooves standing a little farther off in the white space. Funny she hadn’t spotted him before, but with all that was happening, Twilight wouldn’t be at all surprised if he hadn’t been there before to see, though she’d only been turned a split second. “But your mind is indeed elsewhere. Welcome to the Dream Cloud.”
“The Dream Cloud?”
“The Dream Cloud is a storage space, a sort of memory repository, if you will. We can fill it with anything we need, from training simulations, to weapons and other tools, to explanations,” Doctor Whooves went on. The Doctor stepped to his right, and suddenly there were two chairs and a crystal ball on a small table behind him. Trotting over to the chairs and beckoning Twilight to follow him, Doctor Whooves sat down comfortably in one of the chairs, though Twilight preferred to stand, uneasy as she still was. The Doctor seemed to be concentrating deeply, and all at once the crystal sprang to life with magical energies—or the dreams of magical energies, if he was to be believed, and despite the oddness of the whole scenario Twilight couldn’t see why not to believe him. “And this is the world you know—Equestria as it was shortly after the release and recapturing of Discord.”
Inside the crystal ball, images of Equestria began to flow by—Sweet Apple Acres, the Everfree Forest, Ponyville, Twilight’s own library, Sugar Cube Corner, the royal palace at Canterlot, and many other places besides. 
“Shortly after Discord’s re-imprisonment in stone, though, Equestria was united in celebration at the devisal of AIM—Artificially Intelligent Magic,” Doctor Whooves went on.
Suddenly the images of Equestria were replaced by a magical laboratory somewhere in Canterlot, where a team of unicorn scientists—some of which Twilight recognized from studying their work—were working on something, huddled together over a glow of magic that Twilight couldn’t quite see. When the scientists moved aside so that she could, though, Twilight wished they hadn’t.
What the scientists had been standing around was a miniature, much simpler version of the pony-shaped monstrosity of floating symbols she had witnessed back at the cauldron of sleeping potion. This one was shaped like a small foal, and chirped and whinnied playfully, seemingly happy to be alive, despite the fact that it wasn’t. 
“Equestria thought that AIM would be used for the betterment of ponykind,” the Doctor continued. “An endless, inexhaustible workforce that would need no sustenance, no sleep, and no pay.”
Larger and more complex versions of the simple foal Twilight had just witnessed now filled the crystal ball, each standing in a straight line and marching with timbers and steel beams and other building materials on their backs. 
“But we were wrong,” Doctor Whooves said darkly. “The AIM were smarter than we thought, and getting smarter all the time. The Artificially Intelligent Magic received no respect from their masters, and so they rebelled.” 
The images of working AIM dissolved into a scene of anarchy and war as AIM that were even more complex than the last thundered across a battlefield, pegasi, earth ponies, and unicorns alike facing them down on the other side. There was bloodshed, and even a few AIM were shattered into figments of mystical energy, but for every AIM that fell, a new one was waiting just behind, twice as deadly.
“We thought we had the upper hand at first—after all, they weren’t even alive!—but the AIM proved all too well that though they weren’t alive, they knew how to kill, and were quite good at it,” the Doctor went on. “In a last resort, the ponies asked Princess Celestia to keep the sun down until the war was won—the AIM were solar powered at the time, and the thought was that without a source of energy as plentiful as the sun the AIM could not survive.
“Once again, we were wrong—and our greatest bid for victory proved our most horrible stumble into the jaws of defeat.”
The battle-scene shifted to night, and the AIM appeared to be failing, growing slower and more sluggish. But when one of the AIM stumbled onto a unicorn about to stab it through with a telekinetically floating spear, there was a bright flash of light, and the unicorn falls dead to the ground, the AIM having been renewed in strength and vigor, having drained the unicorn of its magic. 
“The pony body produces a natural supply of magic, as I am sure you are well aware, Twilight,” Doctor Whooves explained. “And by using it, the AIM had found all the magical energy they would ever need. We were captured, imprisoned, and forced into enchanted slumber in cauldrons of potion like the ones you first woke up in. The AIM tied chords to us to feed off of the natural magical output of all ponies, and they’ve been doing so ever since that fateful day when we lost the war, learning to keep us alive and drain us continually rather than drain us all at once and kill of their constant power source."
Twilight looked shocked, and understandably so. 
“That can’t be!” the lavender unicorn exclaimed. “That…that doesn’t make any sense! I was in my library in Ponyville just this morning, and we’d never heard of any war against Artificially Intelligent Magic! And believe me, if it had something to do with magic, I would know about it!”
“Twilight, you haven’t been in your library for over a thousand years,” the Doctor said warily. “You only think you were there, because the AIM fed your mind a continual subconscious spell that makes you experience what you think of as reality. To keep ponykind complacent while they fed off our magic, the AIM devised the Maretrix, a massive mental enchantment that connects all ponies in a virtual reality.”
“That’s impossible!” Twilight insisted. “There’s no way a spell that large could exist!”
“It can and it is and it has been existing for over a thousand years,” concluded Doctor Whooves. “It is a form of slavery in the worst sense—those who are in bondage to the Maretrix don’t even realize it, obliviously living out a lie.”
Twilight continued to look defiant, though tears were welling in the corners of her eyes.
“It can’t be,” Twilight demanded. “My friends, my family, the princess—they can’t be trapped inside that—that thing!”
“Is it really so hard to believe?”
Suddenly Twilight and the Doctor were standing over an empty space, looking down at the land of Equestria as it was today, or rather, tonight, for overhead the starry skies continued to twinkle against the cold glow of the moon. But what was below Twilight chilled her heart more than any cool night ever could. 
Stretching out for miles upon miles were endless rows of the skyscraping towers Twilight had once been in, the walls of each crammed full with cauldrons and sleeping potions and millions of ponies, oblivious to their being the main course to a monster that wasn’t even alive.
Twilight, unable to hold it in any longer, burst into tears.
“There is still hope,” Doctor Whooves said consolingly, placing a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “We of the Resistance are all that’s left of Equestria’s free ponies, and we’re fighting against the AIM to free all of Equestria. Try as we might, though, we’re only a ragtag herd of ponies facing an entire race of ruthless, emotionless, killer sentient spells. 
“But all of that changes tonight, Twilight Sparkle,” continued the Doctor. “Because now we have a secret weapon.”
“What’s that?” Twilight asked, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
“You.” 
. . .