//------------------------------// // Ch6: You Ever Wonder Why We're Here? // Story: Synthetic // by Not Luna //------------------------------// "Let's get down to business shall we?" The group turned their attention to the objects on the table once more, having the lengthy talk about magic sciences out of the way. Jacob never thought he could take in a magic lesson like that in one sitting, let alone understand it. It was almost as if he just heard everything, and then pushed it around in his skull, and it came out sounding perfectly understandable. Honesty it was a little creepy, and awesome at the same time. "Now since all of these are currently inside of you, I'll let you pick which one you want me to explain first." Solder waved a hoof over the metallic and silicone objects on the table. Instantly, Jacob's finger went to the large blade that was attached to a small electric motor at the end. "That one eh?" Solder raised an eyebrow at the quick suggestion. "Well it is the big nine inch blade standing among small metallic cubes and a tooth." he shrugged as he used that weird electro-magnetic force thing everypony has on their hooves: allows them to grip objects as if the had a hand to do it. Still, nothing came close to the dexterity of fingers, especially the long, slender ones of a human and not fat or sharp ones like a diamond dogs' or a dragons'. He brought the object over to Jacob and motioned for him to hold it. "This little piece of work is a nine inch, titanium alloy blade that can be mounted on almost everything: from traps, to rifles, and under the fore-legs of covert-ops agents. For this, we managed to mount it in the middle of your left arm. It's wired to your nerves, making it feel like an extra muscle. Just flex and out it comes, relax and it goes back in. The skin in the palm is designed to separate whenever the signal is sent for a flex, then fuse together when the blade it back in. Just feel around for it, you'll get it in time." Solder explained while Jacob was examining the blade in his hands. He was wondering where that blade had gone after he re-activated in the lobby with the changeling corpse. Feeling around the synthetic muscles in his arm he felt something... off. Like a foreign object had lodged itself into his arm but he felt no discomfort. It felt like it belonged there if that makes any sense. Finding what he was looking for he sent a flex signal to the new object and not a second later he heard a *shling* sound come from his left. Looking over he found the same blade in his right hand coming out of his left palm. He was getting a very Dead Space-ey feel from this thing. It was sleek, sharp, and looked deadly with that tapered point. It was designed as a killing instrument that was for sure. It made him wonder what that thing Celestia wanted him for was... "Alright, Jacob got first pick so one of you will choose the next." Solder pointed to the silent group off to the side. Well mostly silent, Twilight was making loud, mocking snoring sounds and her head was drooping comically. Cadence spoke out before the rest could open their mouths. "That one!" She pointed a hoof at the cylinder. "That one? Oooh that's a good pick." he praised while picking up the metallic tube. "This is one of my greatest feats of engineering. This beauty is a relay that is connected to a super-computer that would rival navigation systems on most modern star ships. The computer is in the basement of the Four Alicorns Market district and I managed to get a solid signal on in any climate, at any altitude, anywhere with this thing. Trust me it was not easy to get a civilian-grade relay to connect to a TS super-computer. I had to pack so much crap in here you'd think was meant for a bowel transplant. This is located in front of the base of your spine where it meets the pelvis. Twilight will show you how to tap into the network later. After all she's the author of the Operating System." Twilight had long since 'woken up' at the mention of her personal super-computer in the basement of the whole complex. "It's the latest version of SOS 7." she said proudly, despite Luna's faux shock. "Twilight you already bricked my phone with that crap! You want to brick Jacob too?" They all shared a good laugh at the jab at Twilight... except for Jacob who expressed a face of horror at the thought of being 'bricked'. Twilight seemed to notice this and quickly explained that it was just a friendly jab at her new operating system. Since it came out it had ruined quite a few devices updating from the old version. Lost music, deleted pictures, contacts erased, etc. 7.0.1 was supposed to fix that in the near future. With Jacob's fears knocked out with a large mental bat, the group continued to point a random object, to which Solder would explain its function. The four chips turned out to be the active-modules in his cerebral processor. One was a 'Banshee' cloaking mod that bends light around the user when activated. One was a 'Ghost' noise dampener, designed to magically produce an invisible 'Cone Of Silence' bubble around the wearer to block outgoing air distortions. The next was an old model of a 'Sombra' overdrive switch: made for use in juggernaut suits and mechs but adapted for use in Jacob's shell, diverting emergency power to the muscles and skeleton to make a quick getaway or win a losing battle. Prolonged use could result in torn muscles and skeletal servo damage. The last one was a decryption module aptly called 'The Pick-lock'. All these led up to Solder's rant about how Jacob is not a super soldier. He is not designed for frontal assault or multi-foe combat. His shell is an infiltrator, a spy, and an assassin designed for Intel-grabs, sabotage, and assassinations. Solder went on for about twenty minutes about that before diving back into the hardware. The white material was simple synthetic muscle used in muscle transplants and in other androids. The bones that make up his skeleton were made of a lightweight aluminum alloy covered in a carbon-fiber mesh for added strength and durability. The small ring was the most interesting out of them all, despite its size. It was what Twilight called an 'Artificial Magic Particle Shifter' or 'AMPS' for short. It could use mana taken from an external pool and utilize it for non-magic users in four ways: It could accelerate the movement of atoms around the hand, heating them up, then launching them for a superheated wave attack, slow down the atoms around the same hand and launch them in a freezing wave, collect a large amount of electrons in the surrounding area and release them in a controlled lightning bolt, or shift the polarization of atoms in an object, making the atoms around it repel them forming a sort of crude telekinesis. All in all a very useful tool and an even deadlier weapon only issued to the best of the best of the Special Forces. All of the above devices drained power from the fifteen-swirl mana battery, about the same mana capacity of the average unicorn. It could take in ambient magic at a rate of one swirl per-hour or supercharged with a unicorn's or alicorn's magic feeding it. This thing also powered the rest of his body, so he had to be careful with his new toys, lest he shut himself down due to a power shortage. The tooth was the only thing that didn't drain power at a rate of more than the recharge/time. It was just a simple comms relay, just bite down and it opens the network. When all was said and done, Solder stood back to gauge the humans' response to all the wonders he had installed inside him. Jacob felt... something. He wasn't sure what it was but it was at least something. It seemed to be a combination of awe, self-confidence, and a feeling of temporary invincibility. Could this be what most other described as power? Power. Yes... that's what he felt. It felt good. His primal human desire for power had overcome his natural dissent for having power over others. It usually made him sick to his stomach knowing that others out there were weaker than him and he could easily bend them to his will, knowing that somewhere out there, somepony was scared of him, terrified of the lone human and his royal status. Not this time though. This time he reveled in the increased power. He felt like he could take on the whole fucking world! Something inside him seemed to snap him back to reality in an instant. With his mind clear and focused he came back to the original thought he had before his human nature started to show. "Celestia? I think it's time we had that discussion about why I am a walking weapon." he said staring directly into his sister's' eyes. Celestia, without missing a beat, only nodded her head and jerked her head back slightly, motioning for him to follow her. "Girls, could you give us some space? This is something we need to discuss alone." she said looking toward the remaining group. They all nodded their heads in response, knowing that this was between Jacob and Celestia. "Let's walk and talk." she said as they both began the trek out the door to Celestia's' own building complex. Twilight, sensing that the little 'Show-and-Tell' session was over turned to Solder. "Solder, thank you for your time today, I really appreciate it." she smiled a small smile of thanks. "Anytime boss, if you'll excuse me however, I have to get back to watching my workers so they don't hurt themselves." he said returning the the gesture in full before a small explosion rocked the floor. "Damnit not again!" he exclaimed before running out to address the problem. Cadence turned to Twilight a few seconds after the explosion. "Twilight why don't we take our lunch early today, I need to talk to you about something important." She silently gave Twilight a look that conveyed the feeling of 'you don't have a choice'. Taking a little surprise from the pink mares' forwardness, Twilight could only nod her head and follow her out the door to the little hole-in-the-wall that was their favorite lunch spot. This left Luna with the role of being the sole occupant of the room. Sighing softly she slowly removed the wedding ring she held so dear from her horn. She cradled it gingerly with one hoof for a couple of minutes before bringing it close to her chest, as if to bring it closer to her heart, and closing her eyes. "Please be safe." With that simple request, she blinked out of the room, back to her own. The buildings' A.I., sensing the electronics room had no more life signatures, slowly, one-by-one, turned off the overhead lights until the last one –the spot where Luna had been standing previously– switched off as well, blanketing the room in a soft darkness. -------------------------------------------------------------- The sliding doors to the TS Cybernetics headquarters slid open as two figures strolled out of them: a white Alicorn mare and a slender human android. Together they walked amiably through the Four Alicorns Market District square to the Celestial Power and Light headquarters. It was truly a magnificent building: a large white dome with a space elevator going up to sub-orbital altitudes where the Solar Station for Terra was located. The whole thing was perpendicular to the planet as not to shroud any one place in darkness. "I think it's best if we start this off with a little bit of current events." Celestia offered as they got close to the dome. Jacob could see shapes moving up and down the long cord that seemed to stretch into the sky and beyond. He nodded his head as a sign for her to continue. "Let's start from the beginning then. Around seven years ago, a drug trafficking ring sprouted up on Jupiter's innermost moon Io. The group known as 'Nirvana' used the natural sulfur on Io along with imported sodium to create Sodium Sulfide, more commonly known by its street name 'Egg Salt', to sell on the black market." she began lecturing him as they cleared the security checkpoint into the building. They got into the normal elevator while Celestia spoke a command to take them to her office at the apex of the dome. "When the news of how fast Nirvana was spreading got out, an old, retired police chief named Intervention deemed the drug ring dangerous enough to band together a small army on the internet. It started out simple; with Distributed Denial of Service attacks on the ring's websites in the deep web, to protests outside my own doorstep to allow Terra to step in and prevent the impending war on Egg Salt. In the end, Intervention gathered his followers and resources to make a fighting force against Nirvana. These vigilantes call themselves 'The White Knights', after their leaders’ pure white coat. This action sprouted up what we call today 'The Egg Salt Gang Wars'. For five years the two groups have been at each others necks. The war had spread from planted to planet, moon to moon with our police forces doing everything they could to contain it. It had been this way up until recent developments." by the time she had reached that point, they were already in her office and they were getting comfortable to jump into the reason as to why he was made as a weapon. "Around two years ago, Terra had been minding its own business when, right out of the fucking blue, a firefight sprouts up in the middle of Manehatten! It seemed at that point, the gang war had reached the inner system. This was not too much of a problem. Terrain marines are some of the best in the system and can beat back any attacks from ill equipped gang members... except they weren't ill equipped." She punctuated her statement by slamming down two items on her desk: a medium sized module and a large, navy blue, machine gun. "They breezed right through our customs checkpoints and set up bases in my city. Battles are won for the streets every month or so and members are arrested on both sides but our citizens still live in fear of those hiding in the shadows." She really hates seeing her subjects in fear of something she can't control. "These items are what allowed this war to go on as long as it has, as well as where they had come from." She levitated the chip to eye level for examination. "This is a TS Military-grade Sombra overdrive switch found on a White Knight juggernaut. And this-" she put the mod down and picked up the MG. "- is a Lunar Munitions R260 LMG, found on the same juggernaut. I would like to emphasize that these items are not available to the general public and are only issued to military personnel. This leads us to why this is such a huge concern, enough to create a fully sentient android to tackle this problem." "But what is the concern? What would warrant such brash actions as creating... me?" Jacob spoke his first words since coming along with her and hearing the story. Celestia sighed as she looked out the window to her shining home city, knowing full well that underneath the chrome and silver, an evil lurked, waiting for its' next unsuspecting target. "The concern Jacob, is that the only way these could be used by the White Knights en masse, is because they were sold, which means... we have a mole." she turned toward him, the look in her eyes told of despair and weariness not seen since her sisters banishment all those years ago. "Jacob, there is a traitor among us." -------------------------------------------------------------- "Why did you lie to him?" Twilight sputtered and almost choked on her butternut squash soup as soon as the offending question left Cadence's mouth. "What?" *cough* *cough* "You know what. Why did you lie to him?" she repeated with the same neutral voice as the first time. While she was recovering from her soup-induced coughing fit she recalled all the times she had to lie in the past week. None came up that were too major except for– "You know I had to! What other choice was there?" She slammed her hoof on the table, drawing the attention of others trying to enjoy their lunch in peace. Cadence was not threatened by her friend's display and shot the patrons a cold look, not usually seen from the princess of love. "You could have told him the truth." "That wasn't an option!" She lowered her voice as not to give away any info to prying ears. "You can't just tell somepony 'Hey, we have complete and total control of you, but that's fine because we would never use it.'!" "You know he trusts us almost to the point of blind faith. He would accept anything you say as fact if you told him the truth. Or you could really put up that fire-wall you said you had." "Now even you have to admit that is not an option. We need that subtle power over him. You saw the look in his eye when Solder told him everything! His human instincts are coming back to him for some reason and we need to be able to keep an eye on him for further developments." "And Luna?" "She can't know. As soon as we tell her anything she is going to go blab to Jacob about it and that will drive a huge wedge in this family as well as ruin everything this project has built up. I don't want a repeat of last night.." Cadence seemed lost in thought while Twilight started silently panicking. "Cadence you can't tell him or Luna about this. I need you to promise me. Trust me please!" Her face scrunched up in concentration before grimacing, as if she just tasted something unpleasant. "Alright. I really don't like it, but I won't tell either of them." Twilight visibly relaxed. "Thank you Cadence, you have no idea what this means to me." *Brzzzzzt* "Oh, that's twelve-fifty, we need to get back before we're late again. Cadence nodded before managing to force a smile at her filly hood friend. They both paid the check and began to walk back to the FAMD to restart the day.