//------------------------------// // Weapons detected // Story: Technicalities // by BionicBrony //------------------------------// Earlier that night…   Pinkie Pie approached the looming building in front of her with an excited smile etched across her face while pushing her party cannon along the entire way. She couldn’t help but crane her neck to take in its entirety.                  Alex’s home was, to say the least, large. The exterior walls looked like they were made of a light beige-colored metal with various, yet symmetric components that made them look more complicated than walls needed to be. Despite that, they definitely looked like they were built to last. On the left side of the front of the building was a sturdy and exceptionally massive garage door. Anypony walking by couldn’t help but wonder at why it needed to be that big, but Pinkie never really gave it any thought.                  Above the garage level was a series of large rectangular windows, each one bordered by thick metal frames that composed part of the exterior walls. The windows themselves were normally opaque all the time, even during the day. But tonight, they were transparent, allowing a dim green light to be seen flickering behind them from some unseen source. A simple Nightmare Night decoration.                  Pinkie Pie rolled her party cannon up to the front door – an automatic door that opened to the sides – and noticed a sign above it that read: “Only the brave shall be rewarded.” As she got closer to the door, it quickly whirred open on its own to reveal a long, dark hallway with a single light further down that shone on a lone pile of candy sitting on the floor.                  “Well this doesn’t look suspicious at all…” Pinkie said to herself.                  Pinkie Pie had only been to Alex’s new home a couple of times since it was finished, and while she wasn’t completely familiar with it, she was positive that this hallway wasn’t supposed to be there. The garage level was a very open space, after all! Despite what a niggling feeling kept telling her, she carefully pushed her party cannon through the doorway. Suddenly, the door slammed shut behind her, emitting an audible click as an interior mechanism locked it. Pinkie, still in character, whirled around in the darkness with a surprised squawk to face the door. She cautiously approached it and ran her hoof over its surface in an attempt to find any sort of handle. Finding none, she realized that, whether it was locked or not, she still had no way of opening it. She suddenly became very aware of her own breathing as she slowly turned back towards the only source of illumination in the room. Pinkie squawked and jumped back when she saw that a pair of glowing, yellow eyes were now staring straight at her from just beyond the circle of light. They were at her own eye level, but whatever they belonged to was still encased in complete darkness. Feeling extremely uneasy, Pinkie called out to whatever it was. “H-hello…?” “Identity confirmed: Pinkie Pie. Elevator access granted.” A low, synthetic voice replied back. The floating pair of eyes moved from the middle of the hall to the side, with the faint clanking of metal on stone being heard as it did so. While Pinkie still couldn’t tell what the mystery Liandri looked like, its steps sounded as if it had more than just two legs. A door at the other end of the hall suddenly opened, revealing the bright interior that Pinkie recognized from previous visits. The voice called out again. “Your presence is requested in the Prototype Lab.” Pinkie blinked in confusion as the glowing eyes faded out of existence. She looked at the newly opened door, then the candy on the floor, then where the eyes just were, then the door again. “Uh… what just happened?” she asked to no one in particular, hoping to get an answer anyway. She never received one. “Huh… Okie dokie, then!” Pinkie shrugged off her confusion and pushed her cannon down the dark hallway, stopping next to the candy. “Hey, you don’t mind if I take some, right?” she asked towards the spot where she last saw the eyes. After no answer was given to her, she simply helped herself with a few chicken-like pecks. “Thanks!” Pushing her cannon out of the hallway, the door immediately closed behind Pinkie. She looked back to see that the entire thing was obviously temporary. The walls of the creepy hallway seemed to have basic supports on the outside, and even the door she just came out of had its mechanism exposed with all its power cables running loosely along the ground. Taking her eyes off the Nightmare Night accessory, Pinkie instinctively looked around the garage area for anything interesting. In her experience, there was usually always something worth looking at during a visit to Alex’s garage. At first, it was completely empty, but after a while, it filled up with all sorts of super-neat tools, computer terminals, and a whole bunch of other tool-like things nopony could really identify. One thing she knew, though, was that it never looked like he was actually building something with those tools. Tonight was different. Pinkie parked her cannon by the elevator, pushed the button to call it, and then quickly made her way over to the object of her interest. Unfortunately, she couldn’t quite tell what it was supposed to be. Whatever it was, it was suspended a few feet off the ground by some kind of metal lift that was raised just enough to expose its underside. It was bigger than Pinkie, and it had a single seat that somepony could easily sit in. A section of the back was opened up, revealing a complicated mechanism that looked like it still had a bunch of missing parts. Just off to the side, lying on the ground, was a set of four wheels that didn’t look like anything Pinkie had ever seen before. But surprisingly, what caught her attention and churned up her imagination the most was the single word printed on the front: Scorpion. “Your presence is requested in the prototype lab.” Pinkie squawked in surprise yet again at the deep synthetic voice behind her and spun around. What she saw was a lone Liandri that simply stared at her with a single round, yellow eye. It looked different from the bulky construction bots Pinkie remembered, but it had a similar style. It looked “lean” for a robot, although almost every part of its body looked like it was armored. Its abdomen was virtually non-existent. In fact, the only thing connecting its torso to its waist was what could only be described as a thick, metal spine that looked flexible, yet strong. What also made it look different was the fact that it's feet looked less like feet and more like elongated, oddly shaped hooves - with round nubs sticking out of the side. Its body was colored a dull white, while other parts of it were painted blue. Pinkie couldn’t see it from where she was standing, but a Link Gun was secured to the Liandri’s back and well within its reach. “Whoa! Sorry, didn’t see you there!” said Pinkie. “And yeah, I’ll be down in a bit. I just wanted to look around first, that’s all.” The Liandri replied while keeping its gaze fixed on her. “You do not have authorization to explore this facility without Liandri supervision.” Pinkie looked at it with wide eyes. Her gut twisted at the notion that she couldn’t be trusted enough to just look around without doing something terrible. “What? Why?” “Security protocol zero – two – two – alpha.” She gave the bot a confused look. “I don’t know what that is…” “Security protocol zero – two – two – alpha: If unit designated Rose is absent, all visitors are required to have at least one security escort and to remain visible at all times.” “Oh…” Pinkie relaxed upon understanding that it was just some super-strict rule about anypony coming for a visit, and that someone didn’t have something against her for some reason. Pinkie and the Liandri stared at each other for a moment. She wanted to say something, but she wasn’t sure what. It didn’t act like anypony else she ever met, and it spoke with unnatural formality. In the end, she decided to put on a smile and go with the basics. “So, what’s your name?” “Unit designation: security unit zero – zero – six.” Pinkie blinked several times. She wasn’t expecting an answer like that. She still tried to make the most of it, though. “That’s a weird name. Don’t you have something less, I dunno, numbery? Like Metal Hand! Or maybe Steel Sight? Oooh! How about Iron Guard? That sounds cool!” Despite Pinkie’s growing enthusiasm for potential names, the Liandri’s only response was to continue to stare back at her in silence. Feeling more and more uncomfortable, the smile she had worked up was starting to degrade. She looked past the security bot and, to her relief, discovered that the elevator had arrived. “Oh hey, look! The elevator’s here! I’m just gonna go see Alex now! Bye!” She weaved her way around the Liandri – which was still staring at her – and almost ran back to her cannon. “Creeeeepyyyy…” she muttered. After getting her cannon and herself into the elevator, she eagerly pushed the button that she knew was meant to make it go down… except nothing happened. The sound of tapping metal grated against her ears as the security bot followed Pinkie into the elevator, the doors automatically closing after it. The elevator ride down was spend in awkward silence. The fact that the Liandri never took its one eye off Pinkie didn’t exactly make her feel comfortable. She had gotten used to being center of attention virtually all the time, but that was always with other ponies that had actual faces, who smiled back at her, and who were usually always very friendly. This was completely different, and everything about this security bot felt… wrong. As soon as the elevator opened again, Pinkie Pie wasted no time getting out. “Alex?” she called out with just a hint of anxiety. “Pinkie!” Alex yelled back happily from somewhere inside the Prototype lab. “I’m in here! Glad you could make it!” Finally happy to hear a friendly voice, Pinkie made her way down the furnished security hallway. The middle of the large hallway was completely clear, but odd, metal columns were partially embedded in the walls near the center. Just as Pinkie got half-way through, small objects extended out of an embedded pillar in front of her, sparked, and created a spontaneous electrical barrier with similar objects that were on the opposite wall, effectively cutting her off. Quickly looking back, Pinkie found that something similar happened with another pair of pillars behind her. She was boxed in. “Uh, Alex?” she called out again. “What’s going on?” Alex, head completely shaven and wearing some sort of complex device along his legs and torso as well as a smooth, metal plate that covered his right eye, came rushing into the room with something more akin to speed walking than running. “Oh crap, I forgot about that!” A soft, synthetic voice suddenly spoke as a device in the ceiling began scanning the boxed-in area with a wide, blue light. “Please remain motionless for weapons scan. Scanning...” Alex’s uncovered eye immediately centered on Pinkie’s party cannon. Oh shit… Running purely on instinct, Alex took long strides towards a computer terminal in the wall next to the electrical barrier and began typing furiously. The wide, blue light passed over everything within the boxed in area twice. Both Alex and Pinkie flinched when a blaring alarm sounded and the voice spoke again. “Weapons detected. Relinquish all weapons. Thirty seconds.” Five Liandri – two next to the elevator, two next to the lab’s entrance, and the one that followed Pinkie – all reached over their shoulder, equipped their Link Guns, and aimed straight at the pink chicken pony. “Whoa whoa whoa! Stand down! Stand down!” Alex barked at the Liandri. They each lowered their weapons, but the alarm kept going. “Alex! What do I do?” Pinkie pleaded. Alex went back to typing. “Just push your cannon away from you or something!” Pinkie did just that. “Twenty seconds. Relinquish all weapons.” Alex bit his lower lip. Shit! Not good not good not good- “This is getting really scary!” said Pinkie. “And not in a good way!” Too many distractions! Too much going on! “Dammit!” “Any time you’re ready, Alex!” “I’m working on it!” The sound of something whirring and moving behind her caught Pinkie’s attention. “Ten seconds. Defense turrets online.” She whirled around to look at them. Coming out of opposing opened pillars, two machines with thin, rapidly spinning barrels were pointed directly at her. Pinkie’s pupils shrunk. “Those look painful…” she muttered. “Alex?!” “Got it!” The alarm immediately silenced itself. “Security override. Disengaging defense systems.” The turrets folded back into their respective containers and disappeared. The electrical barriers vanished as well, and the security bots returned to their former positions. “Thank you, and have a nice day.” Alex breathed a sigh of relief. He rested his head against the wall for a moment and held a hand to his chest. I really didn’t need this shit right now… He looked over at Pinkie Pie. “Hey, you alright?” Pinkie, who was sitting on her haunches, pouted and frowned at him. “Alex, that was a bad type of scary! That wasn’t an ‘Oh no, Nightmare Moon is gonna get me’ kind of scary, that was an ‘Oh no, I’m gonna die in a horrible accident’ kind of scary! And that is the wrong type of scary!” Alex rolled his eye. “Yeah, you’re fine… Look, I’m sorry that happened. It really shouldn’t have.” He turned back to the computer and opened up the system’s logs. An odd piece of data suddenly caught his attention. “What the… Okay, this really shouldn’t have happened…” Pinkie Pie, curious as to what exactly he was talking about, walked over to him. “Huh? What do you mean? What happened?” Alex squinted at the screen. “This… Okay, for some reason, the system thought your bone structure was made of metal. And the shapes, it... What the hell am I even looking at, here...?” He groaned and shook his head. “Yeah, I’m gonna have to recalibrate this thing…” Pinkie’s face contorted in confusion. “It thought I was made of metal? That’s weird.” “Yeah… it explains why it didn't stop after you pushed your cannon away, though. But hey, you’re still in one piece, that’s all that matters.” Alex closed the logs on the screen and turned to Pinkie. “So aside from this little uh… ‘incident…’ how’s your night been so far?” “It was alright. Didn’t get much candy yet. Although Rose told me you have plenty.” Pinkie finished with an eager smile. Alex chuckled. “That I do. It’s all in a dispenser upstairs, though. You can have some on the way out. But that reminds me…” he clasped his hands together and smiled. “You came here so I could take a look at your cannon, right?” “Yep!” “Awesome! Don’t worry, we’ll be done in no-time.” Alex looked at the Liandri that followed Pinkie in the elevator and snapped his fingers at it. “Unit! Bring Pinkie’s cannon over here.” The Liandri nodded once. “Affirmative.” It walked up to the baby-blue cannon, leaned down, and started pushing it after them. “Nice costume, by the way,” Alex told Pinkie as he started walking towards the lab. “I can really see you doing the whole freaky chicken thing.” “Thanks! You have a good costume too! You look like an awesome retired space pirate!” Alex stopped and looked at Pinkie, confusion written all over his face. “What…? I… I don’t… What?” Now it was her turn to be confused. “Huh? So you’re not a retired space pirate?” “What? No– Pinkie, I’m not wearing a costume.” She tilted her head at him. “Then what’s with the fancy eye-patch?” “Eye-patch…?” Alex instinctively brought his hand up and lightly touched the object covering his right eye. “Oh, this! No, it’s not an eye-patch. It’s a calibrator. My uh…” He cleared his throat. “My vision in that eye’s been getting a little blurry lately, so Rose made this to uh… ‘calibrate my eye,’ if you will.” It was a partial truth. Among the things that Alex failed to mention was the fact that it also served the dual purpose of hiding the swelling around his right eye, and that the metal band that kept the device secured to his skull also conveniently hid the long, still healing scar that ran across the back of his head. “Wow! Neat!” Pinkie chirped. “But what about all this other stuff?” She indicated towards the device on his legs and torso. “Ah, well, you see, I’m still in the middle of recovering from something that normally needs a lot of bed rest. So, instead of doing what I was supposed to do, I drew up an exoskeleton, Rose filled in some of the details, and voilà: mobility with little to no effort on my part.” He flexed one of his legs and chuckled. “I’m exerting myself so little right now that I could probably sleep standing up in this thing. Or at least I could, if it wasn’t so damn uncomfortable…” Pinkies eyes went wide as she observed every little detail in the exoskeleton, her mind racing with possibilities. “Ooooo, can I have one?” Alex smirked at her with crossed arms. “Unless you plan on carrying things that are really heavy, I don’t think you need one. They make you stronger, but don’t expect to go anywhere fast. Besides, I’m already working on something for you. Speaking of which…” He looked at the Liandri pushing the cannon. “Follow along, Unit.” “Affirmative.” Pinkie followed Alex into the lab itself. “You know, these robots of yours are really cool, but they kinda sorta maybe creep me out a lot…” she commented. The Prototype Lab largely looked the same as the last time she visited, except that some of the many terminals were replaced with other things she didn’t recognize, and the super-computer that Rose was supposed to be in hung completely limp. “Really? How so?” “They talk funny, and that one wouldn’t stop staring at me…” Alex raised a brow at her. “You tried talking to a VI? How well did that go?” Pinkie gave him a questioning look. “What’s a VI? And am I not supposed to talk to them? They may be creepy, but that still sounds kinda mean.” “Virtual Intelligence – and no, you can talk to them, just don’t expect any actual conversation out of it. They interpret and relay information related to their primary function, but that’s about it. VI's aren’t actually sentient, they’re just highly advanced programs, bordering on sentience.” Alex turned and leaned back against a terminal next to an elevated circular platform.                 “Oh…” Pinkie blinked at him. “That explains a lot…”                 Alex shrugged. “They work pretty well, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re still a work-in-progress.” He looked at the bot that rolled the cannon up to them. “Put the cannon on the scanner, then you’re dismissed.”                 “Acknowledged.” The Liandri did as it was told. It placed the cannon in the center of the circular platform and started making its way out of the lab.                 “Work-in-progress?” Pinkie asked, her eyes unconsciously following the bot as it left. “But what about Rose? She’s waaaaaaaaay better than these guys! If they’re a work-in-progress, then what’s up with her?”                 Alex smiled fondly. “Rose used to be a VI, believe it or not. Just like them.”                 Pinkie’s eyes shot open as wide as they possibly could. “What?!”                 He chuckled at her reaction. “Yep. You can’t tell now, but it’s true.”                 Pinkie blinked at him several times. Alex could almost hear the gears grinding away in her brain. “So does that mean all these robots are eventually gonna be like Rose?” she finally asked.                 Alex shook his head. “No. To be honest, Rose was an accident. A pleasant accident, but an accident nonetheless.”                 “Then what happened?”                 He smiled at the memories. “Ah… You see, back when I was building all these things in my parents’ house, I built this one machine called an EMC, which generates parts for me to build with. It was impossible for me or any conventional program to use it properly. So I made a VI with an adaptive and learning code so it could account for any random fluctuations it encountered and gradually become more effective with the thing as a whole. It was rough, at first, but, just like I expected, it got better with the machine over time. “I also threw in a few extra things for kicks. Namely voice recognition and a voice synthesizer so I could give it voice commands, and if there was a problem, it could literally tell me what it was. Keep in mind, this is still a VI we’re talking about.” “So when did you find out she was more than that?” asked Pinkie, sitting down and listening intently while chewing on the candy in the bag around her neck like it was popcorn. Alex chuckled to himself. “I’ll never forget that moment for the rest of my life… You see, I had the VI make a few test pieces so I could examine their overall quality. They got better over time, but it was only after a few dozen pieces that it made this one really good piece! I didn't really think about it at the time, but as a passing comment, I said: ‘Wow! This is very well done! Good work!’ It was at that moment that it said two simple words. Two words that it was never expected to say at any point in time. Two words that caused me to freak out on the spot. Those two words were: ‘Thank you.’” Pinkie gave an appropriately spooky “Oooooooooo!” “Yeah, scared the crap out of me like you would not believe…” He let out a breath. “Anyway, I’ve said too much at this point.” Pinkie’s expression saddened. “Awww come on, that’s it?” Alex waved her off, but kept his smile. “Rose hates it when someone compares her to VIs. She’d kill me if she found out I told you.” He chuckled. “That’s why I need you to keep it a secret, alright?” Pinkie immediately perked up at the word ‘secret’. “You can count on me!” She saluted and performed the gestures of her infamous Pinkie-Promise. “I know I can, that’s why I told you in the first place. If I told Twilight, my goose would be cooked in two days, tops. Now then…” Alex turned towards the console next to him and began entering in commands. “This scanner is gonna dissect your cannon for me real quick, and then you’ll be able to enjoy the rest of tonight with a bunch of free candy, okay?” “When you say ‘dissect’, you don’t mean–” Alex held a hand up. “Not the best choice of words… It’ll say in one piece, don’t worry about it.” After entering in a final command into the console, the scanner whirred to life. The circular platform raised up a few inches and its edge – the scanner itself – broke off from the rest, spinning around it on an axis. It spun faster and faster until it was nothing but sphere-like blur with Pinkie’s cannon sitting in the middle of it. Almost as soon as it started, the spinning began to wind down until the scanner stopped moving completely, becoming flush with the platform once again. Alex clasped his hands together as it lowered itself back down. “And that’s it, we’re done!” Pinkie blinked. “That’s it? Wow, that was quick!” Alex nodded, but kept his attention focused on the holographic screen. “Yep! Now then, I don’t wanna keep you for longer than I already have. I’ve got a bunch of new data to play with, and you’ve got some candy waiting for you upstairs.” Pinkie looked at her party cannon for a moment before looking back at Alex, whose attention was completely taken off her. A smile slowly stretched across her face. It wasn’t her usual, bright and eccentric smile, but a softer, moderated one. “So, did you find anything interesting?” “Data’s still compiling…” Alex mumbled, only half paying attention to her. After a few more seconds of waiting, Alex perked up. “Ah, there we go!” He tapped on a few keys and the screen disappeared, only to be replaced with an orange colored hologram of the party cannon itself. “I have to say, Pinkie, I really appreciate the opportunity you’re giving me here. From what I understand, Twilight would kill for something like this.” “You betcha! Also, Alex, one last thing…” Alex raised a brow and looked at her. “Yeah?” “I need you to Pinkie promise to never tell anypony about what you may or may not find out about my party cannon,” Pinkie stated simply. Her tone was even, and she seemed much more serious than she normally was. At first, Alex was perplexed by her behavior. The way she just spoke felt incredibly off to him, and the fact that it was a sudden change in her regular mood didn’t help him feel better about it, either. In the end, Alex simply chalked it up to Pinkie confiding a supposedly great secret in him, and that whatever it was, it was a serious matter for her. He could understand such a thing. “Alright, I Pinkie promise not to tell anyone else. I’ll have Rose do the same.” He performed the appropriate gestures that went alone with the special promise, although he couldn’t help but feel silly while doing it. Pinkie’s mood immediately shifted from its serious tone to its usual bubbly one. “Good!” Alex nodded at her with a smile before turning back to the hologram. Keeping his hands on the keyboard, he manipulated the image with simple keystrokes. Almost immediately, the cannon’s interior caught his attention. Squinting at it, the hologram flew apart and revealed what Alex wanted to look at. The party cannon’s interior was far from traditional as far as cannons go. At first glance, it was clear to him that the cannon was some sort of marvel of engineering, yet it left him completely baffled. Bits and pieces of hologram flew off and reattached to the simulated machinery as Alex’s mind worked overtime to try and make sense of it. Meanwhile, the owner – and builder – of the cannon itself was patiently standing behind him, watching with a smile as the human tried to figure out the puzzle. And then it clicked. Alex let out a low gasp as everything suddenly made sense to him. Every piece of the mechanical puzzle came together as the answer fully presented itself to him. In a voice that wasn’t quite loud enough for Pinkie to hear, Alex whispered the answer to one of the biggest mysteries he had ever come across: “Quantum storage…” Alex’s shocked expression lifted into a goofy smile. “Good god, this is amazing! You have no idea how long I’ve been trying to figure this stuff out! And here it is! Oh my god, Pinkie Pie, you’re a genius!” His own words suddenly registered in his mind like a brick being thrown through a window and his smile immediately dropped. “Holy hell…” Alex whispered. He slowly turned towards Pinkie Pie as if he were in a horror movie and the monster was standing directly behind him. Except instead of a monster, there was a small, pink pony wearing a chicken costume. She simply gave him a smile. A calm, serene, knowing smile. Alex tried to think of something to say, but could only focus on his previous thought. “You’re a genius…” Pinkie Pie sauntered up to him and spoke disturbingly calmly. “No I’m not, Silly.” She reared up on her hind legs and placed her forelegs on the computer terminal. She reached a hoof over and pushed a single button on the keyboard, turning the hologram off. With one foreleg resting on top of the other, Pinkie stared directly into Alex’s single stunned eye, taking the opportunity to speak just as calmly as before with her strange, unfamiliar smile. “I’m a chicken.”