Attn: Unauthorized presence detected near storage cache in grid 1457.34η.
The message flashes red, disrupting vision in my left eye. For the fifth time today, I revisit my decision to go with the ocular implant. The constant wash of messages often seems more trouble than it's worth—and ductive saccading does odd things to your appearance. Then again, given the alternative... For the fifth time today, I decide the ocular implant is just fine, thank you very much.
Attn: Unauthorized presence detected near storage cache in grid 1457.34η.
The pony at the flower cart is giving me a worried look. My eye must have slipped out of alignment again. I give her a practiced smile and shrug my shoulders. "I guess I must have forgotten my bits at home. I just don't know what went wrong." I laugh and turn to go. The flower vendor says nothing. One advantage, I suppose, of having a reputation for instability—no one looks twice if you occasionally act a little... well...
Attn: Unauthorized presence detected near storage cache in grid 1457.34η.
Of course, the downside to the ocular implant is that you've got no way of shutting it off until Leshe-Marbian decides to do so itself.
The message continues to blink incessantly as I wing my way south into the woods outside of town. Not the place the locals call the Everfree, mind. We thought about leaving the cache out there, but for all its reputation, you'd never believe how often these ponies seem to find themselves stumbling around this Everfree Forest. No, the southern woods have been a much better choice.
Tense correction: had been.
I take a moment to circle overhead, looking for movement beneath the canopy. The afternoon sun is low on the horizon, a blazing orange that interferes with my vision. After four passes, I finally spot a flash of pink. As I begin to dive, I also catch a hint of mint green. Good. My partner probably has the situation under control already. I ease off the dive and glide down the last twenty meters, settling quietly into a nearby clearing. Then I backtrack to where I thought I saw the two figures. Before long, I can hear voices.
"—kie Pie! Fancy meeting you here!" A nervous laugh.
"Ooh, are you looking for skellenic hadropods too, Lyra? I always like to have some on hand for my Vargeban Day parties!"
Processing. Please wait for translation.
I ignore the readout. Experience has taught me that Leshe-Marbian understands Pinkie Pie no better than anyone else. My theory is that she just invents new words to suit her needs. Leshe-Marbian doesn't buy it, but among us three, the drone has the least field experience with uncontacted sapients.
Lyra thinks Pinkie's on to us, and that she's just trying to mess with the drone's language processors. But Lyra's judgment can be questionable at times.
Anyway, if anybody’s on to us, it’s Twilight Sparkle. Now there’s a pony worth worrying about.
"Skellenic... hadropods?" Lyra doesn't wait for the drone's translation; we both know it's not coming. She swallows. "Yeah! I don't think there are any left around here, but Bon-Bon told me there might be some over by Sweet Apple Acres. Do you want to help me look for 'em?"
Pinkie pronks in a circle, clearly pleased by the idea. "That sounds superriffic! And you've got to tell me all about what you and Bon-Bon have planned for Vargeban Day!"
Lyra shoots me a nervous look—Leshe-Marbian has relayed my location into her cortex by now—and waits for my nod before following Pinkie Pie. Neither of us like dealing with Pinkie, but it's hard to avoid her. This is the third time she's set off the proximity alarm this month. We've already moved the cache once, but it doesn't seem to help. Pinkie is everywhere.
Warning: Unauthorized access to storage cache in grid 1457.34η.
Repeat: Unauthorized access to storage cache in grid 1457.34η.
I stare at the flashing red letters in horror. My eyes slip out of focus, and I feel the full weight of this planet's gravity crushing the air from my lungs. My brain churns sluggishly, like some enormous cetacean trapped in a shrinking tidepool.
But Lyra dealt with Pinkie!
Doesn't change facts.
We solved the problem!
No, you didn't.
But how can anyone else have—
And then it hits. Pinkie didn't set off the alarm. Someone else did. My breath catches, and an image of Twilight scouring the cache flashes through my mind. I look around quickly, for once paying attention to the constant stream of metadata my implant provides.
grid 1457.33α
"Love is going to kill me for this," I mutter. Me, or the whole goddamned planet. It takes seven tenths of a second for me to orient myself to the grid, and then I'm galloping like I've got Special Circumstances riding on my tail.
Which, come to think of it, I may.
We call it the storage cache, but it's more of a storage multichambered metal vault.
Okay, it's a ship. But we did a pretty good job hiding it. Lyra... appropriated it, during our last assignment. I have no idea why Love let her keep it, but Love seems to have a soft spot for Lyra.
I'm out of breath when I arrive. The drone, Leshe-Marbian, is waiting for me in the entryway. It's only about half a meter tall, but it hovers off the ground at eye height for my present body. If a machine can be said to look upset, it's throwing a tantrum.
Where were you!? I told you there was trouble!
The words blink across my visual cortex in painful variegations of color. I don't regret the ocular implant—but the decision to remove Leshe-Marbian's vocal effector before we left Love? That, I regret. Even Love agreed that it was a reasonable precaution, but Love doesn't have to put up with the drone and its wounded pride every damn day of the year.
"You know where we were. You've got an uplink to Lyra's cortex. Speaking of which, where is she?"
Still with Pinkie Pie. The drone gyrates in a way I've come to associate with the idea of sighing. The last thing we need is her snooping around, however big a mess we've got on our hands.
"Hooves," I correct instinctively. "Okay, how bad is it? Did they get inside?"
Yes. The word blinks once. Twice. Fades. No text appears to replace it.
I frown. "Drone, I can't fix this unless you tell me what happened."
I scared them away. They were only inside for a minute. Maybe less.
It's worried. There's something it doesn't want to tell me. "Okay, who was it? Did you identify the intruder at least?" I hold my breath.
Leshe-Marbian hangs in the air, hardly moving. Three. Apple Bloom. Sweetie Belle. Scootaloo.
Not Twilight. For the first time in fifteen minutes, a smile flashes across my face. It’s those three. Even if they talk about the cache, nobody's likely to believe them. The whole town knows what their imaginations are like. Then I look back to the drone, and notice that it's still hanging deathly still in the grip of its gravity effector.
"Drone..."
Cybernetic Unit AFX-7 is missing.
"They took the goddamn dog!?"
Cybernetic Unit AFX-7 feels its processor click on. It checks the date, makes the necessary adjustments to its software, and engages its sensory input systems. Because the unit has been inactive for more than three years, it reserves a large amount of processing power for fast execution of its pattern detection algorithms.
It takes 0.28s for AFX-7 to recognize that it is inside a room of some sort. An additional 4.90s allows it to identify that room—by size, contents, and position—as a treehouse. It has never been in a treehouse before. By this time, AFX-7 has begun to resolve three independent organics sharing its space. Two are stationary, one is moving. They share basic similarities, but do not conform to any archetype in AFX-7's memory. The closest match it can find is 'horse, miniature', but the pattern compatibility doesn't even reach 70%.
The three not-miniature-horses exhibit transient repetitive sound formation. This is not uncommon in organics, but certain features of the sound formation (modulation, degree of repetition, speed of production) trip a series of programming contingencies that have been hardwired into the unit. It continues to gather data.
At 14.41s, AFX-7 decides that pattern recognition will require additional processor power and shuts down all non-essential systems. Then it begins to record the three not-miniature-horses for linguistic analysis.
"You just had to bring the dog along, didn't you?"
"Will you let it go, already? What's done is done. We just need to make sure we get it back before... y'know... it decides to do something."
The moon hangs low over the orchard at Sweet Apple Acres, leaving everything in shadow but the Cutie Mark Crusaders' clubhouse. Golden lantern light pours out of its windows, and I can hear high-pitched voices arguing inside. Leshe-Marbian is forwarding the dog's positioning data to my implant, and the implant says AFX-7 is up in that clubhouse with them.
Meanwhile, Lyra and I are about thirty meters away, hiding in the trees. We need a plan.
"We could just blow it up," Lyra suggests, fumbling in her saddlebags for a small device that looks like a double-ended hammer.
I glare at her. "Because in the three years we've been here, we've seen so many explosions. Shit, Lyra, hardly anybody even dies on this damned planet, and you want to blow up three little girls? Yeah, that's not going to attract any attention."
"Can't we..." She twiddles the hammer thing. "Maybe just a little?"
"No! No effing explosions! I don't want Twilight bloody Sparkle deciding she wants to know more about whatever the hell we do tonight."
"I wish you wouldn't talk like that," she mutters. "Why do you have to be so angry? That last assignment changed you, Ditzy."
My jaw drops. That last assignment changed me? From Lyra "I want hands again", "how do ponies sit", "can we blow up that treehouse like they do in the movies" Heartstrings?
It's a good thing I don't have hands right now. I don't know if I could stop myself from strangling her, if I did.
Ms. Sma, your partner's idea may have some merit, if adapted. You need to isolate AFX-7 from its captors. A suitable distraction might remove them from the area.
Love,
LCU Love and Tolerate, Scree class
Great. Now Love wants a piece of the action, too.
At 1953.48s, AFX-7 estimates its language processing algorithm is 87.5% complete.
The not-miniature-horse called Scootaloo says: "This is *****."
The not-miniature-horse called Apple Bloom answers: "*****! I think it's doin' something!"
In fact, AFX-7 is doing many things. It is finalizing formal rules for grammar, adding the 443rd word to its initial working dictionary, and beginning to program a subroutine for re-processing its recorded data, now that it has determined that the not-miniature-horse called Apple Bloom is speaking a dialect and not an entirely different language.
The not-miniature-horse called Scootaloo says: "No it's not. It's just ***** those *****. It's been doing that for, like, thirty ***** now."
The not-miniature-horse called Sweetie Belle says: "I think we should tell somepony about this. Rarity and I were supposed to ***** ***** together tonight, for Pinkie's big party tomorrow. She's gonna be ***** about me."
AFX-7 recognizes many of the words and structures used by the not-miniature-horse called Sweetie Belle, but seems to lack context for understanding any of it. Is Rarity some sort of deity for the denizens of this planet?
The not-miniature-horse called Apple Bloom says: "Will you ***** stop ***** so much? This is some ***** of crazy ***** *****. This could be the ***** to gettin' our cutiemarks!"
The not-miniature-horse called Scootaloo says: "I don't know, Apple Bloom. Don't you think it would have done something by now? Anyway, do we really want a cutiemark for... what, metal dog *****?"
All three not-miniature-horses have used the word 'cutiemark' many times. It is a noun, and it seems to hold much importance for them. AFX-7 does not understand the word from context yet, but perhaps this noun will provide an avenue for inquiry and communication once AFX-7's language processing algorithm is complete.
The not-miniature-horse called Sweetie Belle says: "I'm gonna go talk to Rarity."
The not-miniature-horses called Apple Bloom and Scootaloo say: "No!"
The Limited Contact Unit Love and Tolerate, in geosynchronous orbit above Ponyville, decides that this is the most fun it's had in at least a year. It has carefully arranged its crew of five to observe the various cultures of this world, but three of them make for unforgivably dull watching. Only Diziet Sma and Liera Kwandon, the two Contact agents tasked with observing pony culture, ever seem to get up to anything exciting. Then again, given their performance with the stage-three civilization discovered by the GCU Arbitrary four years ago, Love and Tolerate does not find this fact surprising.
Both of them believe their current assignment is disciplinary. The ship finds this particularly amusing.
On the planet, Diziet and Liera resume talking as they prepare their distraction. Love and Tolerate has its limited sensor package focused in a narrow beam on Sweet Apple Acres, both to oversee its agents and to obtain a detailed recording for its superiors.
"Do you think they're going to send in Special Circumstances if we screw this up?" Liera asks.
"Who the hell knows," Diziet replies. "Equestria's a stage two-three. Maybe they'll let it slide. Or maybe they'll find an asteroid to drop on us and call it another 'experiment'."
Love and Tolerate finds Diziet Sma's dislike for Special Circumstances pleasantly ironic. She views them with a mix of terror and veneration. She claims to be disgusted by their methods—even while she demonstrates, time and again, an exceptional talent for exactly the sort of problem-solving they value.
"Let's just get the damn dog back," Diziet says. "Love probably won't tell SC about this, unless we eff this up even more than we already have."
Of course, all information on Diziet and Liera's performace is already being relayed to Special Circumstances. This is, after all, a job interview.
Applejack is going to hate this.
"You ready, Ditzy?"
I like Applejack. If I were prone to going native the way Lyra always does—finding somebody like Bon Bon and shacking up—well, let's just say Applejack would be very high on my list of people to go native with. And she's really, really going to hate this.
"Diziet! C'mon!"
I sigh and hop down into the ditch where Lyra's already taking shelter. She’s got that two-ended hammer thing half-buried in the ground now. I don’t actually know what it is—some other device from the cache, I guess.
"Okay, let's do this." I hunker down and plug my ears with my hooves.
A no-longer-explosion-free Equestria in three. Two. One.
I can still hear the roar, and a shower of dirt and pebbles cascades over the lip of the ditch, covering my coat. Trying to shake it off, I stand and look at the damage we've caused. At least thirty trees are bent, broken, or uprooted, and a number of small fires are beginning to kindle. Thankfully, the pegasi should be able to deal with that before it gets out of control. But all those dead trees...
Thankfully, the storage cache contained a couple meteorites we'd picked up from the Las Pegasus area. I can't see Leshe-Marbian, but the drone will be planting one of them at the center of the blast and heating it to the appropriate temperature before anyone has time to arrive on the scene. That should, hopefully, deal with Twilight's curiosity.
There's still work for Lyra and I to do, though.
We gallop toward the clubhouse, careful to stay hidden. We hear three high-pitched voices screaming in excitement, heading the other direction.
The clubhouse is dark when we arrive; the Cutie Mark Crusaders must have taken their lantern when they ran off. We hurry up the ramp, just in time to see the dog switch on its primary systems, fire up its gravity effector, and levitate into the air.
"HELLO NOT-MINIATURE-HORSES. MY NAME IS AFX-7. PLEASE TEACH ME ABOUT TALKING TO RARITY AND HOW I CAN GET CUTIEMARKS."
Repositioning the cache is a pain, as always, and takes most of the night. We have to be particularly careful not to attract attention after the fiasco at Sweet Apple Acres. Fortunately, Love can monitor surface activity and help us avoid discovery. Of course it’s idiotic for us to have the cache down here on the planet anyway, but every time I suggest sending it back up to the ship, Love starts claiming it doesn’t have the hangar space. Like hell it doesn’t. The ship’s lying—I just wish I knew why.
“Do we really have to wipe its memory banks?” Lyra sits in the back of the cache with the dog on a workbench in front of her. “It’s gonna forget about me and I’m gonna have to train it all over again.”
“Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you let a bunch of schoolfillies kidnap the damned thing and teach it their language.”
“It’s not my fault! I thought the alarm meant Pinkie! How was I supposed to know those three were sneaking around in the woods?”
“You could have asked Leshe-Marbian. You do have a mindlink with the thing, you know.”
“I—” Lyra pauses, frowning. “Oh, yeah. I guess I… Why didn’t I think of that?”
I roll my eyes and sing-song back at her. “I just don’t know what went wrong!”
The cache is silent for half a minute. When Lyra responds, her voice is quiet. “That’s not very nice, Diziet. I did my best. I’m sorry I screwed up.”
And she’s right. I’m just in a bad mood, and blowing up all those trees didn’t help. I sigh. “No, I’m sorry. It’s not like I knew any better, either. It would have been nice if Leshe-Marbian were a little clearer with those warning messages. Anyway, we got it fixed, right?”
“Right.” Lyra smiles.
“But you still have to wipe the dog’s memory.”
Another morning in Ponyville. I sit beside the window in Sugarcube Corner, watching the sun crest the treetops of the southern woods. Half of a buttered blueberry muffin lays on my plate, surrounded by crumbs.
Twilight Sparkle steps through the door to the shop, and a shock of cold dread crackles down my spine. She glances around, sees me, trots over.
“Hi, um, Ditzy.”
I bury my anxiety and give her my most welcoming smile. “Hi, Princess!”
She sits down across the table from me. “Say… I was talking to Pinkie last night. She said she and Lyra went hunting for… well, that doesn’t matter… anyway, she thought she saw you flying around south of Sweet Apple Acres yesterday afternoon. And what with the fire last night and everything, I was wondering if you might have seen—”
“Oh my gosh! There was a fire at Sweet Apple Acres!? Is everypony okay?”
“Ah. Yeah.” She gives me a small smile. “It just brought down a few trees. Nothing really important.”
Inside, I wince. Nothing important? Applejack loves those trees.
Tense correction: loved.
“Well, that’s good.” I sigh. “How’d it happen, though? I mean, a fire in Applejack’s orchard?”
“More of an explosion, really. It looked like a meteorite impact, but Luna and I keep very good track of near-Epona objects, and there shouldn’t have been any such event last night.”
I shrug my shoulders, doing my best to look confused.
“I was hoping you might be able to tell me some more about what happened, since Pinkie said you were in the vicinity.” She pauses, staring at me with too-knowing eyes. “Maybe you... saw something?”
This calls for my best wide-eyed-and-innocent look. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I was in such a rush; I forgot all my bits at home, but the flower cart lady was really nice. I flew home to get them, but I must have gotten turned around after I delivered that big, heavy box to the mayor’s office, so I went south instead of left, and then I got lost, and then I thought I saw Rainbow Dash, so I went to say hi, only it turned out it was Cloudchaser, so I turned back around and I came home and I forgot all about the flowers. But there was a meteorite? That’s so cool!”
She’s not buying it. I can tell from the expression on her face. “No, I’m pretty sure there was no meteorite. Somepony just wanted it to look like there was one. We found a lump of metal, but the temperature and the angle of impact were all wrong.”
Damn it.
Then she drops the bombshell. “We also found… something… half-buried in a ditch a quarter-mile from the site of the explosion. Something I’ve never seen before, like a little hammer. It was smouldering hot last night, but it should have cooled off by now. I was just about to head back over to Sweet Apple Acres and fetch it.” A slow smile spreads across her face. “Maybe you’d like to come with me?”
Before I have time to panic, elegant golden letters scroll across my vision.
Ms. Sma, I believe I can handle this one. Have a pleasant morning.
Love,
LCU Love and Tolerate, Scree class
I give Twilight three good blinks, like I’ve got no idea what she’s talking about. “Are you worried you won’t be able to get it alone? Is it heavy? I mean, I thought you could just…” I wave a hoof in the air. “Unicorn it out. Can’t you do that?”
She stares at me. Clearly not the answer she was expecting. “No, I think I can manage just fine, Ditzy. I just thought—”
“Oh, good!” I smile. “‘Cause I’m not very comfortable around hammers. Or any kind of tools, really. Rainbow Dash says they shouldn’t even let me look at them.”
“It’s not that kind of hammer, Ditzy. It’s a—”
“Well, you know what my mother always said. ‘Better safe than sorry.’ Or maybe it was, ‘You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.’ That’s true, you know. I tried it once. Colgate got really mad at me. She said it wasn’t something you’re supposed to actually try to do, and that I had to clean up the mess myself. And then Time Turner came in and said he could do it, but Colgate didn’t believe him either, but then I had to go.”
Twilight opens her mouth to respond, but she can’t seem to find any words. She frowns at me a little, narrowing her eyes. I smile back and shrug my shoulders.
Twilight Sparkle: 0. Diziet Sma: 14.
Finally, she leaves, disappointment plain on her face. I relax a little, take another bite of my blueberry muffin, and turn back to the window. I sit there for a minute, just enjoying the view. Two ponies walk along the road in front of the shop, talking quietly.
Ms. Sma, my sensors register a surge in your oxytocin levels. Is everything alright?
Love,
LCU Love and Tolerate, Scree class
The message flashes through my optic nerve, and my left eye slides out of alignment again. I don’t care. Love is intrusive enough with just the ocular implant. I can’t imagine what it’s like for Lyra—a machine sharing her brain, peeking into every corner of her thoughts. I could never do that. Sometimes, I like to keep my thoughts to myself.
Applejack and Rarity pass the window, heading toward the Ponyville market.
A de-natured drone screams upward through the atmosphere, carrying the localized grid trigger away from Sweet Apple Acres and the prying eyes of Equestria’s nobility. Love and Tolerate directs the drone to its hangar bay.
Below, Twilight Sparkle arrives at the site of the explosion and begins to search for her hammer-like object. Love and Tolerate continues recording. This is always the best part—watching mystified organics poke around their habitat, like they know what ought to be there and will continue looking until the universe reorders itself to give them back their toys.
For the next fifteen minutes, Twilight becomes increasingly agitated. Eventually, she sits herself down in the middle of the blast cavity, plucks a pair of apples from one of the fallen trees with that wonderful built-in field effector these unicorns have, and performs a passable impression of a linear particle accelerator. She does this six times in total, and by the end her coat is liberally splashed with bits of half-ripe apple. Then she stands, some of her calm restored, and marches back toward Ponyville.
Satisfied that its recording is complete, Love and Tolerate dispatches the signal package antispinward to the GCU Friendship Is Skillful Misdirection and begins to plan out its next test for Diziet and Liera.