Obsolescence
Chapter 1.0
My brain felt like a computer after somepony had taken a magnet to it. I was quite convinced that my eyes had been replaced with static snow, and whatever moan might have escaped my lips must have been a crackling white noise. The low, muffled bass drops of a demonic dubstep beat buzzed about my ears, evidence of another all-nighter. Furthering this evidence were the scattered, crumpled remains of several cans of Chaos Cola, ‘guaranteed to give you just the kind of temporary insanity you need to stay sane.’ Too bad I was pretty sure that last part was faulty advertising.
I stretched my short little legs and let out a yawn that, on a bigger pony, would've put a manticore's roar to shame. Coming from me, it was more like the yowl of an agitated house cat.
"Good morning, Neverwas," I greeted myself. "Better get up before you miss another day full of sunshine and rainbows in the greatest city in Equestria.”
I snorted.
The world was slowly swimming into focus. My dimly-lit, 'economy'-sized apartment began to light up as the glowsprites realized I was awake. Fluttering their tiny, transparent wings, the genetically engineered parasprites drifted lazily down from their perch on the ceiling roosts. Their bioluminescence chased away a few of the weaker shadows, but the deeper folds of darkness merely retreated to the corners, biding their time till nightfall.
When I'd first bought them, the pair of glowsprites had been able to light up the whole room with ease. Either I wasn't feeding them enough or they were reaching the end of their short lifespans. Probably both.
“Morning,” I mumbled to the only pets hardy enough not to die on me of anything other than planned obsolescence. Truth be told, it probably came out more as a grumbled “Mmrgnphm.”
I shook my head to clear the fog from my mind as I dropped from where I’d been hanging from the ceiling. I trudged to the bathroom, the glowsprites cheeping and chittering impatiently as I passed by their food dish.
"You'll get your breakfast after I lose last night's drinks," I snapped at them. They refused to follow me inside, prompting a sigh. Perhaps a bribe would work? "Fine, have it your way, but I guess that means there'll be no extra treat for you come dinnertime."
They turned to face each other and chirped amongst themselves. Finally, they faced me again, and both promptly stuck out their glowing tongues and blew two big, wet razzberries at me.
Bucking smartflanks, I mentally chuckled. They knew me too well. I suppose even a pair of spliced parasprites could recognize that I didn't have the bits to pay for my own food, let alone an extra dose of theirs. Looks like I'll have to try an alternative tactic.
"Fine..." I scoffed with mock exasperation, unable to hide my smile at what was coming next. "How about if I played your favorite song?"
The winged light bulbs' faces literally lit up as their tiny bodies split with an all-encompassing grin. Their chirrups and cheers turned into excited squeaks.
"Listen up, 'cause if you weren't so damn cute I'd never touch that horrid song," I laughed. I whistled the all-too-familiar polka tune as I trotted to the toilet and went about my business. According to the local Harmonist temple, the song was a hymn to Pinkie Pie, Goddess of Laughter, and had been used to soothe a savage swarm of hungry parasprites before they could eat the world.
Looking at these little suckers, I couldn't imagine they'd be able to hurt anypony, much less threaten to eat the world. How much worse could their natural-born ancestors have been?
Finished with relieving myself, I washed my hooves and trotted back into the apartment's main room, finally awake enough to check the progress of last night's work. I plopped down on an old second-hoof beanbag chair and pressed the touchscreen amulet around my neck. As the charm chip inside sent a connection spell to the Net, a holographic screen popped out into the air in front of me.
The screen produced its own light, being literally made of nothing but light, so the glowsprites dimmed and resumed their perches. I air-typed through a few sequences, scrolling through my browser pages until I found the Enforcer's local Rim-based communications network. There was a loading bar in the bottom right-hoof corner, nearly full. The caption read 'Upload 92% complete, 8.4 hours remaining.'
"Eight hours?" I stated, scowling. "I needed that file uploaded by this morning! What the Tartarus am I supposed to do for eight hours?!"
A chirping from my left alerted me to the glowsprites again, hovering around the nearly-empty bag of their food. At least I knew what they hoped I would spend the beginning of the day doing.
Sighing, but grinning in spite of myself, I trotted over and extended one of my leathery wings. As a lunar pegasus, my wings were more like those of a bat than those of a bird. Though this meant I wasn’t as fast as a feathery-winged ‘normal’ pegasus, it also meant I had claws on the arches of my wings. Just like those of actual bats, these hooked, thumb-like appendages were infinitely useful, almost on par with a unicorn’s ability to telekinetically manipulate objects. Catching the tip of the bag in the one of my claws, I flipped the bag of SpriteBits over and poured the remaining synthesized foodstuffs into the bowl.
As the glowsprites dug hungrily into their breakfast, I sat back on my beanbag chair and contemplated what to do until my latest, uh, project was uploaded. When it was finished, I could buy the glowsprites (and myself, for that matter) all the food they wanted... At least until the accounts ran dry again and I had to upload another project. Before that happened, though, I might have to relocate. I'd been in this apartment for two weeks already, and I had the sneaking suspicion the Enforcers in this subsector were beginning to realize not all of their recent computer problems were, strictly speaking, glitches. Especially after that last one, where I had impersonated the Enforcer's Chief and instructed a whole squad to hoof over their own food stamps to an orphanage... And a few to me, of course.
Despite it all, though, I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that my little projects weren't big enough. Sure, the bigger the way I messed with the Rim's local law enforcement, the more risk I had of being caught. Even out here on the Rim of Canterlot Proper, you did not want to be caught by the Enforcers, especially for cyber crimes. Never mind that I was doing a public service that the so-called 'servants of the populace, protectors of peace' should have been doing themselves. All that mattered to them was that I was lessening their iron grip on the citizens, citizens the Enforcers saw as stepping stones.
I shuddered as my mind drifted to what the Enforcers would do if they did catch me. I'd heard stories from the few online circles I deemed safe enough to frequent. Torture was putting it lightly; it was no secret the Enforcers used mind-reading technology for information extraction. Pain of the flesh was one thing. It was quite another to literally rape your brain with dark magic.
Yeah, as soon as this project was over, I was definitely moving. Maybe a nice spot at the other end of Canterlot Proper, still on the Rim, but far enough from this branch of the Enforcers that they wouldn't recognize my tactics. It'd be a longer journey, even by subway, but skirting the Rim would be better than taking the direct route through the Center of the district.
If I thought it was bad here, I didn't even want to know what it was like where the Enforcers had even more power. Twitchy Tails, one of my correspondents from online, had been there once. He'd been lucky to escape with his sanity intact. Then again, whether he actually had kept his sanity was always up for debate...
I shook my head again, jamming the unpleasant thoughts in a filing cabinet at the back of my mind. I then proceeded to reduce that cabinet to ash with a heavy-duty flamethrower.
But enough about the Enforcers. I'd have to think about them plenty when my latest file uploaded into their local server. For now, I had eight hours to kill.
What to do, what to do...
My stomach grumbled. Ah, yes, breakfast would be nice. Trotting over to the small kitchenette, I opened the cupboards one-by-one with my wing-claws. Unsurprisingly, there was little to be found besides crumpled, empty plastic bags and dry soda cans. Oh, and a few roaches. Scowling in disgust, I closed the cupboards and flipped the recycling switch. The familiar hum of mechanical plates crushing the trash, and the satisfying crunch of the crushed bugs, told me that my cupboards were once again ready to be filled.
The only problem was, how exactly would I do that? I’d already used the last of my food stamps last night. I wouldn’t have enough credits in my account to purchase more until my latest project was uploaded. Forging food stamps was out of the question; I was a hacker, not an artist.
Though I did know somepony who was...
No, not her, I mentally moaned. Not again.
I didn't really need to eat today, right? It wouldn't exactly be the first time I'd gone hungry, though willingly giving up the possibility of food in Canterlot Proper was unheard of. Rations were low enough as it was ever since the last trade agreement with New Everfree went south.
You'd never believe it if you heard the newscasts the Council pumped out regularly over the Net for all obedient citizens of Canterlot Proper. According to the impossibly happy (and most likely computer-generated) news hosts on the government channel, the other District was 'selfishly hoarding an over-abundance of food the Council had already paid for with the taxes of honest citizens.'
One, I knew for a fact that the Council never paid for anything. All taxes went to fund the very way taxes were collected—through the brute force of the Enforcers, the Council's personal army. Thus, I also knew that New Everfree had simply refused to give into the Council's demands, and for once they had gotten away with it. The Enforcers may have been the most lethal law enforcement in Equestria before the Crash, but that didn't mean they could win every fight with our next-door neighbors. If I wasn't so hungry, I'd toast to New Everfree's good health for standing up to those brutal bastards. Then again, in order to do that I'd also need wine, which I'd never been able to afford even with stolen food stamps.
Oh, well. Maybe some day I'd help overthrow the Council in a glorious revolution of the people, or at the very least figure out how to hop the border to New Everfree or one of the other Districts without getting killed by either side. Yeah, right. If there was one rule everypony in Canterlot Proper knew, it was that nopony leaves Canterlot Proper.
My stomach grumbled again.
"Fine, you win!" I sighed, putting my hooves up in defeat, knowing I would regret this. "If it'll shut you up I'll go see her."
I said goodbye to the still-feasting glowsprites, promising them that mama would be home with tasty treats soon. They simply snorted at me. They may have been bucking smartflanks, but they were my bucking smartflanks.
Slipping out the door, I cantered down the dimly-lit hallway. I tried my best to tell myself I was in a hurry so that I could get this over with quickly, not so that I wouldn't have time to come to my senses and return to the relative safety of my apartment. I wasn't any more at risk for getting on the Enforcer's bad side than anypony else in the Rim, mind you, so long as my hacks remained untraceable. No, that wasn't the problem here. This was one of those rare instances where it wasn't the Enforcers that frightened me. Even they were more than a little reluctant to go where I was going.
Normally I wouldn't even dare to venture to my current destination, so don't think I'm risking my neck just to get some breakfast. I hadn't eaten all day yesterday— or the day before that—and I knew all too well that even hackers can't go on without food indefinitely. All my recent stock of food stamps were able to buy me was a steady supply of Chaos Cola. That, and some pirated music, was all that had kept me going these past few days. The last meal I'd eaten (if you could even call it that) had been a hoof-full of synthesized food chips a few days ago, and I hadn't had much before that either. Such was the life of a lower-class resident of Canterlot Proper.
I needed to get some food, and I wasn't sure I could wait till my project was done uploading to get it. If I encountered any undesirable attention, I wouldn’t exactly be the best at fleeing in my current state.
I rode the elevator down to the lobby of the apartment complex in silence with about thirty other ponies, all jam-packed into the tiny room. It would've been rather awkward, all of us stuffed in there with nothing to say, if I wasn't too preoccupied with how uncomfortable my seat was. The synthesized fabrics covering the foamy seat of my chair hadn't been replaced in who knew how many years, and the seatbelts had all but rotted away. We literally fell a little bit above our chairs when the elevator descended. And don't get my started on the smell.
I hadn't taken a shower myself that morning, but that was only because I hadn't been able to pay my water bill that month. The water would still flow, but it wouldn't be treated to rid it of all the toxic pollutants that generally poisoned our District's water supply. At best, I would get sick. At worst, acid would melt my skin off.
For obvious reasons, I wasn't that much in the mood for gambling. The toilet only continued to work because it took organic waste and recycled it. It was a necessary process. When Canterlot Proper was this sequestered from the world, we had to make do with what we'd already thrown away. Cleaning my hooves was water-free, consisting only of basic sanitizer.
When the elevator touched down at the ground floor, nearly sending me through the floor in the process, I rode the wave of other ponies as they shuffled out into the lobby. Every pony scurried away as swiftly as possible, not even making eye contact. The other tenants of my apartment complex were almost as untrusting as I was, and I knew they had reason to be.
I had to live in such a run-down and poorly maintained section of Canterlot Proper because here I was less likely to be detected. This close to the Outer Wall, all the magical interference from the other Districts made it all the more difficult to track hackers through the Net. At least, that’s what I tried to convince myself was the case, and not that I only lived here because this was the best I could afford.
I sighed, looking up through the lobby windows at the other drenched skyscrapers of the Rim. As towering as they were, they were nothing compared to the monoliths in the Center. Even so, the penthouses topping these arcane structures were far better than anything I’d ever been used to enjoying. What’s more, those who lived there had more than just the credits to afford such places; they had the power to ensure they stayed there. They had the power to control their own lives, craft their own destinies, not squirm under the iron horseshoe of the Council...or at least, less so than the rest of us.
But I knew I would never live in such a place myself. I looked down at my petite body (and petite was putting it lightly), noting how utterly small it was compared to literally anypony else roaming the lobby. Only the best of the best could make it to the top, and they usually looked like they deserved it. I looked like I belonged in school.
Shaking my head to dispel such thoughts, I wove my way through the crowd and stopped just short of the front doors. It was raining again, and hard. Chocolate milk, poisoned by magical pollutants and toxins, rained from sickly-pink cotton candy clouds high above even the tallest buildings. Steam sizzled from the sidewalks and asphalt where the weighty drops struck.
As much as this was going to hurt my unprotected skin, at least with all this free liquid, the District’s water management division would be able to lower the price of water rations. That didn’t mean they would lower the prices, just that they could afford to do so. All in all, it was better than nothing.
Taking a deep breath and squinting my eyes, I dashed out into the street. The acid chocolate milk rain stung my skin with every drop, the wind blowing it into my eyes. I clenched my teeth; already I could feel the industrial waste caught in the raindrops penetrating my hide. I felt like I was about to vomit up whatever Chaos Cola I hadn’t already lost.
I prayed to whatever Goddess I favored at the moment that nopony else would be using the Transmutation Booth. I supposed I should have been praying to Rainbow Dash, Goddess of weather, but as far as I was concerned she’d never really shown much in the way of actually doing her job. I’d read about other types of weather just like everypony else; in the olden days before the Crash, it hadn’t always been cloudy, and it hadn’t rained nearly ninety percent of the time. What good was a Goddess if she didn’t clear the clouds away every once and a while and give us some sunlight?
I’d never even seen the Sun outside of historical pictures on the Net. We knew it was still there, warming Equestria from high above the omnipresent cotton candy clouds that constantly smothered Canterlot, but I’d never once caught so much as a glimpse of it. The only way to tell if it was day or night was the intensity of the gloom.
With a CLANG, I ran straight into the Transmutation Booth. Looking up at the rusty old cylindrical pod, I praised all the Goddesses at once that the booth was unoccupied. I slammed my hoof onto the button to open the pod’s doors and all but threw myself inside. I flung the acidic chocolate milk off my hide with a vigorous shake and simply stood there for a few moments, trying to regain my composure. Some days it was worse than others, but on a day like today, standing out in that torrent for too long could be lethal. The short gallop from the lobby to the booth right outside had been painful and sickening enough on its own; I couldn’t imagine what a prolonged exposure would be like. I knew the hospitals were always full of ponies who had been soaked too thoroughly, but I had no plan of joining them.
As the worst of the burns finally began to cool, or at least feel somewhat numb, I began typing away at the booth’s control panel. Most ponies who used the Transmutation Booths, technology ‘imported’ from New Everfree, had an actual account with the proxy company that oversaw the foreign tech. This proxy company, GeneTech, was privatized by the Council, and thus was basically just another branch of the government. This meant that though their public goal was to ‘provide the citizens of Canterlot Proper with organic technology,’ their private mission was always to further the Council’s control over the populace.
However, the Council had made one rather noticeable mistake in their subsidizing of GeneTech; it received no federal funding. All of the proxy company’s funds had to come from what they made off of the public, and in this regard it acted very much like any other company. They cut corners, going out of their way to make as much money as possible at the cost of absolute control over their clients. Sure, they tried their best to have just that, but even if a client refused to cooperate with their policies, they still wanted that client’s money. Because of this, I didn’t have to have an account to use the booth.
After the booth’s monitor’s initial startup sequence led me to the menu screen, I signed in as a guest. Hackers like myself never used our real identities if we could help it, and we cheated to make sure we could always help it. At least, that’s how I assumed every other hacker worked—I’d never met another one, and I also assumed that’s because most of us were smart enough to keep our heads down in public. I say 'most' because the newscast always had at least one hacker arrested on the latest crime report. Poor bastards.
No use worrying about them now, though. At least there was a positive side; the steady flow of hackers arrested was evidence that there was always somepony out there who didn't ask "How high?" when the Council ordered "Jump." Additionally, the arrests gave me further motivation to not join those poor souls.
This is what brought me to the Transmutation Booth. The guests at these things were given fewer options, just enough to whet your appetite and encourage you to upgrade to membership. The prices were also higher than normal... if you weren't a hacker.
I infiltrated federal law enforcement maneframes for a living; hacking corporate code, even if it was privatized, was a piece of cake.
Tapping my touchscreen amulet once more, I brought up the 'settings' page and scrolled through the options till I reached 'connect with local device.' Selecting that option, I waited for my amulet's preprogrammed viruses to eat their way through the other machine's firewalls. With how low-quality the security of these mass-produced booths were, it only took a few seconds for me to gain control. I even had a program customized just for this booth, though I was confident I could hack most of the booths in Canterlot Proper. Well, at least the other booths on the Rim, if I had time...
Ping.
I looked up at the screen, scowling slightly that I had to look up just to interface with a monitor set at the average pony's height.
'Welcome to GeneTech Transmutation Booth #342,' the screen read. 'Thank you for purchasing a Gold Level Premium Master Membership for 0.00 credits.'
I grinned mischievously. I always loved this, the thrill of sifting through the mind of a machine and turning it from the side of my enemies into my ally. It was almost like making a new friend. Or at least, it's what I imagined making a new friend would be like. The life of a hacker might have been exciting (and dangerous), but it was also a lonely one.
'What designer genes would you like to purchase today?' the machine inquired. A list of options appeared, all with prices reduced to '0.00:'
-coat recoloration
-eye recoloration/adjustment
-height alteration
-weight alteration
-mane/tail recoloration/styling
-body type alteration
-gender reversal
-pheromone adjustment/sex appeal
-exotic options
I eyed the 'height alteration' option greedily, but decided against it. I'd gone as a tall mare far too many times lately. When you were in disguise, even if that disguise was your own skin, it paid to be random. For once, I decided to stick with my original height and body-type. Heck, I could even keep my white coat—but I was definitely doing something about my mane and tail.
Normally I kept them both shaggy and short, which was as good a style as any in my opinion. However, the fact that both my mane and tail were as white as my coat definitely made me stick out in a crowd. Oh, and my white irises. And hooves. And wings. Aw, screw it; everything about me was white, okay? Don't ask why. If I knew, I'd get it fixed.
Sometimes, when I was feeling more religious, I'd curse the Goddesses for making me whiter than an albino (even they had color in their eyes). When I wasn't, I'd blame genetics, or maybe wonder if my mother had taken some harmful product when pregnant with me. If that was the case, and it was a rather likely possibility, then I was lucky to be alive. Still, not having any sort of definitive characteristic other than my raw undefined-ness didn't exactly make me feel very normal. Don't get me wrong, in a world where 'normal' was fearful conformity, being abnormal was exactly what I strived to be as a hacker. Being nonconformist in a society and being a freak to your own species are two different things, though.
Thus, I selected the mane and tail option and chose a shade of leaf-green, with a few streaks of darker emerald. To match this, I went for a jade eye hue.
Next, I looked back at my blank flank and bit my lip. Not even genetic engineering could alter somepony's cutie mark, but I had never had a cutie mark to alter. Sure, it had bothered me as a kid—okay, it still bothered me—but I'd long ago given up on the hope that my flank would ever be anything other than a bright white. It was just the way I was, and as much as I hated it even more than my all-white appearance, I had come to the conclusion that I could let it bother me endlessly or ignore it and live my life. I still scowled whenever somepony took my slight stature and featureless butt to mean I was just a filly. Then again, playing as one had gotten me out of a tight jam on more than once, so I figured I shouldn't complain. Or, I should only complain when and only when it really, really irked me.
Nevertheless, I wasn't concerned with getting a false cutie mark, even if such a thing were possible. I just had to figure out how I was going to hide the fact that I didn't have one. My wings hid some of my flank, but not all of it, and I couldn't afford any fancy clothes to cover up. I'd hidden my blankness with a holographic glamour a few times, but a keen eye could see through the weak spells I could afford.
As you can see with all the trouble it took just to go out, I didn't go outside much.
Hmm... Perhaps I could lengthen my wings? No, that'd make flying too awkward, and I might need to book it if things went south, which they very likely could. Maybe if I did something special to another part of myself, nobody would even bother noticing my blank flank?
Feeling a little guilty yet curious at the same time, I selected ‘Pheromone Adjustment/Sex Appeal.’ After scrolling through the options there, it became apparent that most of them dealt with my flanks anyway. Exiting that, my eye caught ‘Exotic Options.’
It couldn’t hurt to look, right?
Entering the submenu, I beheld what I could add to the pony body that didn't, strictly speaking, belong on a pony. Everything from gills to beaks was on here. I’d almost always strayed away from such options because I sought to attract as little attention as possible. You mostly just saw articles like these on counterculture enthusiasts and the occasional streetpunk. But why not go as one, at least for the day? Now that I thought about it, there were enough in Canterlot Proper, even out in the Rim, that one more probably wouldn’t be too noticeable.
I selected a faint dusting of purple scales that would really only be apparent in certain patches, namely my flanks. In addition to disguising me, the natural plating should protect me from the brunt of the acid rain. Furthermore, if I was going for the punkish look, why not give myself dragon eyes to boot? I even restyled my mane and tail option into a spiky mohawk and a jagged zig-zag.
All I’d need now is a leather jacket to complete the look, I mentally chuckled. Who knew? Maybe I could start my own gang and we could call ourselves the Spikers.
Satisfied with how the pony on the monitor looked—essentially a more draconic version of myself—I hit the ‘Apply Changes’ button. A vent at the top of the booth opened, and a gaseous cloud began hissing out of it.
I breathed in deeply, intaking the cloud through my nostrils, already feeling the tingling as the transmutation magic went to work.