She felt the music wash over her; distorted saxophone warbling over the classical bass and piano. Some pre-industrial vocalist whose name she couldn’t be bothered to remember piped in excitedly. Her head felt like it was filled with cotton and she couldn’t quite make out what the lyrics were. When she asked the DJ what the genre was, the bespectacled mare laughed and told her it was something called “electro-swing”.
The needle pierces her artery and she feels a tickle as the substance is forced into her veins. The room looks like it’s underwater, the geometry slides apart into nonsense. Admiring the view, she becomes peripherally aware that a stallion is hitting on her. His face is a caricature swimming in her vision, elongated snout, small, beady eyes, and enormous buck teeth. She chortles, breaks into hysterical laughter. There are strange eyes on her, the gaze of ponies she doesn’t know.
Well, why’d you invite them then, you idiot?
Had she invited all of them? It seemed like a few too many, if she was perfectly honest with herself. Abruptly, the psychedelic coursing through her system makes her realize that she doesn’t really care.
This is pretty good shit.
She tries dancing, but her movement is sluggish and clumsy with the high; she collides with several bodies, one of them looking almost as intoxicated as she is. She chuckles to herself, shoves her way through the crowd. There are yells, but they seem so distant and insignificant. She disregards them.
In the privacy of one of the rooms in the back, a fellow party-goer offers her a bottle of eye-drops, claiming that they’re some kind of nervous stimulant. She regards the bottle with a near-suicidal lack of suspicion and clutches it.
Seize the day and all that.
Sometime later, she finds herself hunched over the toilet. She’s freezing down to her bones and the vomit comes in short bursts of agony. It’s as if she’s immobilized, just waiting to drown in her own puke.
No. No, this is all wrong. I shouldn’t be feeling like this until tomorrow morning.
She carefully pulls up the blinds from the bathroom window. Harsh sunlight streams in and stabs her in the eye sockets.
Well, shit. It is tomorrow morning.
She shuts the blinds again, blinking blearily in the darkness.
Sundamned sun.
She found an unfamiliar stallion sleeping in her bed. The floral designs on the sheets didn’t much complement his appearance. She put her forelegs on his shoulders and shook until he awoke. He shifted and looked at her through crusted eyes. Grinned.
“That was some party, wasn’t it? I dunno how you do it, Pinkie.”
“And who are you supposed to be,” she demanded.
The grin melted off his face.
“I’m uh, I’m Rivers. Don’t you remember? Last night, we—”
“Party’s over, Rivers,” she interrupted, being less than eager to hear about her latest exploits. “It was super great to see you I’m sure, but it’s time that you were on your way. Don’t you think? I think so.”
“But, but I thought—”
“Get out before I call the cops.”
Downstairs, half finished bottles of alcohol were strewn about the tables and floor. A slice of red velvet cake sat on the edge of the counter, surrounded by assorted pastries. Someone had spilled something sticky in the dead center of the floor; the site was encrusted in crumbs and dirt.
Pinkie opened the fridge and pulled out a can of bromantane soda. The pianist fingers built into her forehooves easily clenched the pin of the can and popped it open. Her head began to clear somewhat as she took greedy gulps of the fizzing liquid.
As the name of the enhancement implied, the bionic digits were originally designed with musicians in mind. These days however, they were mostly sought out by deckers who did not have the funds or the inclination to purchase a neuro-optical interface. With practice, pianist fingers cooperated with keyboards much faster and more accurately than bare hooves.
The antique clock hanging over the mantelpiece told her that it was a quarter to nine—there was much time to kill yet. She dug her keyboard out of the upstairs drawers and connected it to a bright orange display strip, which she fit with some difficulty around her eyes and into the twin ports implanted in her temples.
Like threading a needle without being able to see the needle.
She’d got the keyboard, a set of strips, the implants and the pianist fingers as a discount bundle from Material Utilization before they went out of business. They threw in a cheap facial change and rebranding for free, and Pinkie—on the run from the Ponyville authorities at the time—gladly accepted. It was a purchase of dubious quality: her new brand was a stock image of three balloons and her new forehead bore a discernible logo from a dead company.
The Grapevine emblem flashed on the display strip as she powered it on. The news bulletin scrolled across at a leisurely pace. There were a few new articles regarding a border dispute between the gryphons and the desert-dwellers, the revised proposal to colonize the moon, and the successful landing of a colony barge onto the surface of Artemis II. As always, there were also several pages worth of periodicals and opinion pieces but she never read those.
A forum section appeared as she pressed the corresponding key.
Welcome, Eu4ia!
New Thread: Technical issues by EvaDecima
New Thread: Update 17.66 by Admin
New Thread: Recycling old hardware by Lovelace
New Thread: New data from Leberica honeypot by *Elwood
New Thread: Please assist by Sweet-gel
New Thread: Urban development patterns by UNLEADED
Pinkie tutted.
Just because it’s a forum board doesn’t mean it has to be so boring. Let’s liven it up a bit, shall we?
She flexed her fingers and grinned.
The phone rang somewhere in the depths of the pile of clothing she’d left at the front desk of the establishment. The white mare groaned, reluctantly rose from the bubbling pool of mineral water and donned a lavender-scented bathrobe. The sibling spa owners looked at her questioningly and set aside the luxury-grade shamditioner.
“Sorry, girls,” said Rarity, running a hoof through her soaking mane. “You know how it is. I can’t afford to just turn off the phone, after all; it could be important.”
But realistically, one of the interns probably just spilled coffee over a console again.
She strode towards the entrance with the grace and smug self-assuredness of a panther and levitated the device to her ear.
“Yes, what is it, Eiffel?” she asked into the mic, managing to hide her irritation behind a mask of passivity. “You know that Tuesday is my spa day, don’t you?”
“I apologize, madam. This is impor—” The stallion caught himself midsentence. “Erm. I expected you’d want to hear this immediately.”
She ignored the slip.
“All right. Out with it, then.”
The line was silent for a few moments.
“We found Binary in his house this morning, after failing to get a hold of him on the company network,” said Eiffel. “He took a leg-mount and painted the walls with his brains.”
“Oh dear. Binary is dead?” She activated her neuro-optical interface and checked the corporate news section of the Grapevine compulsively. “Are you certain that this is a genuine suicide?”
Her company, Carousel Industries, had a great deal of competitors. Sometimes, her business rivals could get a little overzealous in the pursuit of their goals: assassinations of high-ranking company officials were alarmingly common and often difficult to trace to the source. Carousel security caught three corporate spies, mercifully before they could pilfer valuable assets, in the span of the past two months. These periods of high activity came and went with the approaching releases of new products and deadlines.
There was a time that quality assurance teams worked independently and could pursue multiple contracts from multiple clients, but that was no longer the case; it simply wasn’t safe. The honor system wasn’t a viable option for keeping data and intellectual property secure.
In spite of this trustless new age of commerce, rather than execute the agents, Rarity handed them over to be processed by the New Ponyville police force, Lodestar. An associate of hers, one Sapphire Shores, summarized it best: Take nothing personally. It’s only business.
“The psychosurgeons have analyzed the remains and concluded that a suicide attempt was likely in his condition, yes,” said Eiffel. “He was suffering from a severe serotonin deficiency, he was an insomniac and a chronic smoker. His financial situation didn’t help.”
“Where did Binary dig up a leg-mounted cannon?” asked Rarity. She could almost see the stallion shrug on the other end of the line, despite the video being disabled. “He didn’t have a license to carry a firearm when we screened him.”
“It’s close to impossible to account for independent dealers, madam,” said Eiffel. “We’ve lost our head datarat. It will be difficult for our Canterlot operative to continue his mission without Binary’s assistance.”
“I am aware.” She shrugged off the bathrobe and struggled into her dress shirt and waistcoat. The starchy texture chafed on her skin after her soak in the mineral water. “Do we have any recent applicants registered on our list?”
Eiffel hesitated. “Not recent as such, no, but there are a few old entries. I’ll have the recruiters look over their résumés immediately.”
“Don’t bother.” She pulled her everleather horseshoes over her feet. “I’ll be choosing which applicants to interview personally.”
“But madam—!”
The silver insect-lens glasses came down over her eyes.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Eiffel. Our current mission in Canterlot is being conducted in secret; even inside Carousel, few employees are aware of our actions in the capital. The recruiters have not been informed and so, don’t have any idea about the skillset I’m looking for.”
“That’s true…” Eiffel paused. “Please be careful; deckers are notoriously temperamental.”
“Duly noted. Though I did put up with Binary for three years, remember.”
She cut the call.
The sun had reached its peak and savagely bore down on the Everfree as Pinkie approached Zecora’s lab. The forums have, as always, proved to be an entertaining distraction but she managed to tear herself away from the Grapevine after a few hours. There was an important item on her agenda this evening and she needed to be properly dosed up; withdrawal symptoms would decimate any chance for success. The old bamboo door looked liable to collapse in on itself as she knocked. She always wondered how the zebra alchemist kept herself warm in the winter months.
The zebra had settled out in the Everfree when she moved in because the territory fell outside of Lodestar’s jurisdiction. Here, she was free to deal a wide assortment of mind-altering substances to an eager audience, consequence-free. The whole of the Everfree technically belonged to the Woodworth & Sons Lumber Company, but Zecora’s rent barely scratched her profits.
A single camera was suspended over the door, comically anachronistic, clashing violently with the rustic hut. The door swung open and Pinkie saw the alchemist waiting in the frame, one spreadgun-strapped foreleg leveled steadily on her.
“Pinkamena. I see you have returned,” Zecora chanted. “Pray tell me, should I be concerned?”
“Concerned?” Pinkie repeated, trying to sound puzzled. “No! Nope! Of course not! I’m just looking for one more dose of that nepenthe stuff, just for tonight.”
Zecora narrowed her eyes. “You already owe more than you could ever repay/ you’ll have no more ‘till your debt is paid all the way.” She jerked the spreadgun once, to punctuate the point. “What’s more, if the funds aren’t received in due course/ then I will stop by to collect them in force/ you should be wary of what you don’t give/ remember, dear girl, I know where you live.”
“Whoa Zeeke, that won’t be necessary,” said Pinkie, eyeing the spreadgun nervously. “It’s payday. This next job will definitely clear us, I swear, with, with—” she stammered as the automatic pump chambered a slug, “with interest, okay?”
The alchemist raised a quizzical eyebrow, fractionally lowered the leg-mount.
Pinkie tried again. “Listen, I’m freelance, okay? Sometimes it takes a while for the paychecks to come through. But I’ve got a big job tonight with a big payoff. I’ll be set for a couple of months at least, it’s gonna be great. So I’ll square the debts, but I need a hit tonight or everything will go to shit. Just, like, call it a, what’s that thing. An investment. How’s that?”
Zecora retreated into her hut. Peeking in, Pinkie saw her take something very similar to a cigarette from a plastic dispenser. A homemade lighter ignited the tip of the tube as the zebra took the other end in her mouth. The fumes coming off the tube smelled decidedly of something other than burning tobacco. She blew the smoke in Pinkie’s direction, seemingly reaching a decision.
“I will measure out material for a single shot/ and you will bring me payment without a second thought/ understand that if you neglect/ I’ll come tomorrow evening to collect.”
Pinkie grinned. “Sure, sure, I got it.” The unspoken supplement to the conditions was that if she tried to run, Zecora would have her hunted to the ends of the earth. But of course, she wouldn’t try to run; she was far too dependent on the zebra and her stock.
Zecora produced several packages from the cellar: a pocket-sized plastic bag filled with an earthy brown powder, a syringe with a vial filled with a transparent purple liquid, and a brightly-colored caterpillar contained in a tiny iron cage. The powdered mandragora, the constricting nightshade extract and the Stygian sixty-leg came together to form the family of nepenthe, a much-sought group of recreational substances. The very sight of them made Pinkie shiver.
She shoveled the items into a featureless tote bag which she hung around her neck.
“Don’t worry, Zeeke,” she said to the zebra, rubbing her forehooves together. “You’ll get your money, cross my heart and hope to fly.”
You have (1) unread message(s).
[read] Report Requested
[read] Revised Company Policy
[read] Misplaced Password
[read] Question about product
[unread] [NO SUBJECT]
Starburst tried to focus on the window in front of him, but his eyes wandered unprompted to the time readout in the bottom corner. It’s been several hours since he confessed his feelings to the attractive young secretary in the office across the hall. Starburst couldn’t muster the nerve to tell her face to face or to call her, so he’d sent her an e-mail instead; it was far easier to read confident than sound or look it. And still, there was no response. He hoped she wasn’t ignoring him. He could handle a rejection, but silence was almost too much for him to bear. He needed to distract himself, yet the motivation wouldn’t come.
Finally, he clicked the fifth message inside the company inbox.
From: Prince-Wilted-Tulip
To: Al’zarith, Ashes and Dust, Barber_Paradox, Carousel Industries, Doctor_Feel-Good, Flim/Flam Enterprises, Grando, Ivory, Lovelace, O^OOoo, Pregnant Silence, Troughblesome, Webster
Subject: [NO SUBJECT]
Message: Greetings, friend.
My name is Wilted Tulip and I am a former prince of the city-state of Cimmeria. as you may be aware, I have been exiled from the state following allogations of poor budgeting under the supervision of the parliament. I require your assistance in transferring my liquid assets (worth around 450 million Equestrian bits) to a bank in New Leonopolis, where I intend to take shelter for the time being. New Leonopolis does not accept long-distance transfers from Cimmeria, so with your permission I’d like to temporarily move the money to an Equestrian account (yours), to facilitate a second transfer to my destination. You will recieve a financial compensation of 10% for this commission—that is 10% of 450000000.00 EB. Please respond as promtly as you are able.
Thank you for your cooperation.
<End message>
Starburst closed the window and looked at the time readout again before he could stop himself.
Would that life was so damn easy, man.
Their van came to a stop several blocks away from the Carousel Industries office building. Comet Tail pulled on the antique parking brake with his horn, locking the vehicle in place, and twisted his neck to look at the rear seats. Pinkie Pie was snickering, obviously doped. Comet rolled his eyes.
“Well I’m glad at least one of us is having a good time,” he said just loud enough for the others to hear.
Sitting opposite Pinkie, the pale pegasus rubbed her eyes wearily.
“Is this a fucking joke?” she burst out. “We’re doing this while she’s high? Are you dipshits trying to get caught?”
The muscular, brown-coated stallion named Coconut shifted in the passenger seat.
“Who’s the new girl?” he asked Comet.
“Says her name’s Spring Skies.”
“’Ey, Spring,” Coconut called over his shoulder. “Shut the fuck up.”
“Excuse me?” Spring Skies flared, leaned forward. “Listen here—”
“Relax, baby,” said Pinkie, smiling vacantly. “I do my best work when I’m altered.” She took another violent snort of the brown powder Zecora gave her. Her nostrils had evidently dried out from the abuse; one of them was bleeding badly, the drops falling into the bag and mixing with the contents.
Spring looked at the bag, her distaste manifesting as an ugly frown. “Is that… is that mandrake? Are you taking nepenthe? That shit can put down a sundamned bull.”
Pinkie gave her a lopsided grin.
“I’m not a bull.”
Already the world outside was rolling in her vision. The hill they parked on appeared to grow and shrink, the steepness of the slope alternating every few seconds. The buildings curved over the street, their peaks meeting overhead. Pinkie unlocked her door and stepped outside, savoring the bite of the crisp night air in her lungs.
She opened the alchemist’s tiny cage, and grasped the squirming caterpillar between her fingers. As the others stepped out of the vehicle, she popped the creature into her mouth and crushed it between her teeth. Spring Skies groaned in disgust as her own hoof flew involuntarily to her mouth. Coconut grabbed a box of tissues from a compartment in the front and handed it to Pinkie.
“Plug up your nose. We don’t need you leaving your DNA all over the place.”
Her senses began to sharpen as her body assimilated the sixty-leg poison. She became aware of the sensation of blood seeping from her nose—warmth collecting, dripping to the pavement—and took the tissue box gratefully. A car alarm went off somewhere in the distance, amplified by her enhanced hearing. The dark of night grew less absolute, dissolved somewhat. The various details of the surrounding architecture—cracks, peeling paint—became more evident. The imperfections leaped out from the darkness like a desperate mugger.
She heard the other three pull various odds and ends from the back of the van. Coconut strapped on a back-mounted machine turret and two leg-mounts with Comet Tail’s help. The unicorn himself took a Levitus silenced shard pistol, loaded with star spider poison. As the stealth specialist, he didn’t need as much firepower as Coconut, but he took several corrosion grenades as a contingency measure. Spring Skies strapped a leg-mounted burst rifle to her right foreleg and pocketed two multitools. Everyone save for Pinkie took a pair of night-vision goggles.
Copious amounts of hair gel, to leave nothing for the forensic investigators. Ski masks, full-body sport jumpsuits; practical, if not stylish.
At last, Pinkie Pie reached for the tube of constricting nightshade extract, and filled the syringe with its contents. She lightly flicked the needle several times and, biting her lip, buried it in a convenient artery. Warmth spread through her veins radiating from the point of the injection, and her ears registered a faint ringing that took a few seconds to subside.
“You ready?” asked Comet Tail. Her altered perception of time made his voice sound deep and sluggish.
She pulled the keyboard from her saddlebag and made several lightning-fast keystrokes, activating a sonar program. The progress bar displayed on the strip covering her eyes felt like it took a decade to fill, even though she knew from her trial runs that in real time the process only took four and a half seconds.
A map of the network appeared on the display strip, a complicated spiderweb of neon connections of various colors and shades. Close to the center of the expansive map she picked out a single icon among hundreds, this one of a classic power plug. The outer axons of the web, the ones bridging it to the rest of the Expanse, were colored a bright orange to signify the presence of a firewall.
Given Carousel’s budget, it was nearly impossible to break into the network from the outside. She’d sent a custom Trojan disguised as a spam message to the company’s Public Relations department earlier that day to prepare for the heist. The clerk on duty probably deleted the message as soon as he saw the contents, but the Trojan would have buried itself in the network by then. Pinkie had rigged the message to discretely auto-install the malicious program as soon as it was opened.
Presently, she connected to the Grapevine and made a blank post on the general board. The other users would be annoyed she knew, but she’d grown accustomed to their ire and maybe they’ve grown accustomed to her antics. It couldn’t be avoided in any case, because the Trojan needed a trigger. She couldn’t interact with it directly while outside of the firewall, so she programmed it to activate upon her next post on the forums.
Something happened to the network map, something that an untrained eye would easily miss: one of the countless dozens of the outer connections faded from orange to a chalk-white.
It would take the proprietary AI a split second to recognize the disturbance and investigate, but Pinkie, adequately energized by the constricting nightshade, was already racing through the network, bouncing her connection from one machine to the next. Her pianist fingers were a blur as they danced on the keyboard and then, in an instant, she had access to the generator interface.
The password cracker went to work to grant her access to the maintenance commands. Various nodes began turning a cyan blue on the map as the AI checked each one for signs of intrusion. They were changing at an alarming speed—Pinkie counted at least ten a second—and they were closing on the path she’d recklessly broken in through.
As the diagnostic wave swiftly drew closer, the cracker blinked red, signifying that a successful password attempt had been made.
Welcome, Admin.
>Access maintenance commands:
Troubleshooting
Restart system server
Lock system
>Shut down
Log off
Pinkie smiled triumphantly and brought her finger down on the enter key.
Sweetie Belle was being childishly unreasonable, as usual.
“Please, Rarity? Cavaliers of Lesbos will only be in theaters for another week! Would you please take me to see it?”
Rarity took a drag from her cigarette holder and glanced over the list of job applications on the holographic screen of her office computer. Even with the introduction of the neuro-optical interface, most companies kept their data on in-house machines. This offered the illusion of security, even though copying corporate data to a portable device was a simple task.
“I’m sorry, Sweetie, I’m afraid that I’m a little preoccupied right now.” Strictly speaking, this wasn’t true; the number of applications for a datarat position was sorely wanting. Hopefully Sweetie Belle wasn’t perceptive enough to notice the sparse list of documents displayed on the hologram. Rarity stubbed her cigarette out on an ashtray cut from artificial diamond. “In any case, we’re subscribed to the VIP membership plan at Nightfall Cinema, remember? You could watch the film on your NOI any time you want.”
“That’s not the point!” Sweetie Belle ran up to the desk and tried to lean over it but her petite stature foiled the attempt. “I hardly ever get to see you anymore, and mum and dad are always busy.”
Rarity gave Twinkleshine an imploring look. The nanny hastily put one of her forelegs around Sweetie Belle.
“Come along, deary. Miss Rarity looks really busy right now. If you like, we could get the film on one of the screens at home for you to watch with her when she is available. How about it?”
Sweetie shrugged off the nanny’s embrace.
“You’re always like this! All you do is hide behind your paperwork and brush me off.”
She kicked at the desk, though a little more vigorously than she intended. The ashtray tipped over the edge, spilling the dust and the cigarette butts on the carpet.
Twinkleshine grabbed hold of Sweetie Belle, more forcefully this time.
“That is enough, Sweetie. I’m really sorry, Miss Rarity, I was hoping I’d taught her better than this.”
Rarity looked up from the screen. Her eyes were invisible behind the silver insect lenses, making it difficult to gauge if she was angry. Twinkleshine felt herself wither beneath her impassive gaze. Rarity shifted her focus to Sweetie Belle who looked back resentfully.
“You too will inherit Carousel Industries when you’re older, just as I did. And make no mistake; you’ll understand then why I’m doing the things I am. Running a company isn’t a game.”
Sweetie Belle’s glare could have welded lead.
“Yeah, right. I’m sure your weekly spa sessions are very draining for you.”
Rarity opened her mouth to speak, but realized that she did not have a retort ready. She’d thought that only Eiffel knew about her self-indulgent Tuesday visits.
Perhaps Sweetie Belle understood that she’d hit a nerve and chose to quit while she was still ahead.
Maybe she’s learned a few things from me, after all.
Or she just wanted the last word. Regardless, she allowed Twinkleshine to lead her away without sparing her older sister another look. The sliding door shut behind them and Rarity was left alone, ruminating in the deathly silence of the sound-proofed office.
The dust from the ashtray had settled on the dark carpet like dandruff or something equally unseemly. Rarity’s hoof hovered over her desktop pager for a few seconds as she considered notifying a janitor. Then, Sweetie Belle’s words echoed accusingly in her head and she sighed, standing up from her desk. There was a vacuum cleaner sheltered somewhere inside her closet, probably almost pristine from lack of use. The administrative AI’s synthetic tones sounded from the overhead speakers as she dug through the dark alcove.
“Madam. I don’t want to cause any undue alarm, but it appears that one of our firewalls has just been forcibly disabled.”
This gave her pause.
“Oh? Do you think it could be a malfunction?”
“I am running a full diagnosis of the network as we speak.”
Given Carousel’s expensive security measures, it was unlikely that the downed firewall was the result of an intrusion attempt, so Rarity continued searching for the vacuum.
Something killed the lights.
She stumbled out of the closet to see that the building had gone dark—the only illumination in her office came from the lights of downtown Ponyville shining through her window. There was a hum as the emergency circuit came online; dim secondary lights flickered on, lending the silhouettes of the objects in her office a suggestion of detail. The holographic computer screen appeared over her desk once more, but it was stuttering and isolated from the company network.
The network’s almost certainly down anyway. Looks like someone managed to shut off the central power generator.
The building had probably gone into lockdown, as per the blackout procedure. Rarity wasted no time in retrieving her Levitus pistol from a nearby drawer, pulling out her phone and contacting the police. The voice of an emergency operator sounded in her ear as she moved to pry her office door open.
“You’ve reached Lodestar's emergency offices, how can we assist you?”
She stifled a satisfied grunt as the door gave, allowing her access into the hall beyond.
“This is Rarity of Carousel Industries speaking. Our caretaker AI reported that one of our firewalls was deactivated shortly before someone broke into the network and cut the power. I believe that this is the prelude to a raid and request immediate armed support.”
“Understood. We will dispatch several cruisers to your location. Please stay on the line, miss.”
Rarity unzipped a crisis kit suspended on a nearby wall and took out a flashlight.
“I can’t do that. Your prompt assistance will be appreciated, however.”
She ended the call and started walking briskly through the darkened halls. Sweetie Belle was still in the building somewhere.