Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom
by Midnight Shadow
Chapter 6
The city really was busier now, with a good contingent of hoof-based traffic as well as lunchtime diners making their ways to or from whichever locale they had chosen. I was already starting to regret not taking Rogers up on his earlier offer of more food, but still couldn't shake the nervous knot in my stomach; it seemed being a pony meant an increase in food consumption that I hadn't quite taken onboard yet. Hungry as I was getting, I was also jumpy. Every shadow was a hidden assassin, every street vendor was trying to poison me.
Strangely, it was a repeat encounter with the now-diamond dog drummer circle that relaxed me. Their rhythmic pounding drowned out the rest of the world as I neared. I actually paused for a few moments in front of them, letting their percussive noise wash over me. It was Rogers' soft hand on my neck that brought me back to the real world, and I looked up at him sadly, trembling.
"It's really okay, girl," he whispered, as he brought up a short-range encrypted link. "Look," he continued, this time solely inside my head, "if they'd wanted to erase all of this, then why bother tampering with memories at all?"
I blinked, holding up a hoof. "Actually, that's a really good question," I sent to him, through a short-range datasquirt. "There really are easier ways to deal with us, both of us."
I stopped for a moment, thinking. A makerblock trojan this morning would have taken us out quite simply. It wouldn't even have to be poison or something like that, it could have just been nanobots, quietly shutting down something important or simply sequestrating the pair of us until we could be properly persuaded. I swallowed fearfully at that thought, my throat dry. I knew it was possible, they did it all the time with criminals – they'd done it to Steven. Granted, I was assuming a lot from their ability to seemingly effortlessly generate and then upload false constructs that were so perfect that even the real thing could no longer compete, but wasn't that enough? If whomever or whatever we were dealing with could do that one already impossible thing, I couldn't see there being much of a problem with doing another which was routine, even under some very uniquely constrained circumstances.
So why had they bothered taking the 'soft' option of a memory hack? Either whoever it was didn't want to kill us – to the degree that even temporary bodyloss wasn't on their menu – or… I shook my head, then hoofed myself in the temple trying to think. It didn't help that the neo-rastafarians were still drumming incessantly. Today, the experience was off – and it was then that I realized I'd withdrawn from the communal modality fields almost entirely. I made an effort to reconnect with the herd, and felt a wave of concern and well-wishes wash over me from Equestria as my digital senses came back online. Ponies aren't made to be alone, and as scared as I was, I was scared of that more. Rogers was right. I was right. If they'd wanted us gone, we'd have been taken out of the picture already.
With a silent shout of laughter, Julep separated to frolick in hi-time with a number of her friends, enjoying the impromptu party put on by the neo-rastas and a bundle of helpful, inquisitive ponies. Her re-sync a few seconds later dumped a good half hour of fun directly into my brain and I felt her wings settle around me again a moment later. If she'd been compromised, I told myself, it was a little bit too late to worry. And unless they were going to full-on sequester me and Rogers right there in the street, said a little voice, then what could these mysterious powers do to stop us?
Before I could get worked up again, I was approached by one of the Neo-Rasta diamond dogs.
"Gift, Mon," the troll said, a wide, friendly, fang-filled grin on his face. The rest of his face was obscured by several layers of toon and some fearsome dreadlocks, but I could make out his sparkling eyes. His weathered, ebony hand extended towards me, proffering a datacube held between two bony digits. "Help wid'ya fight."
"What—?" I began, but he pushed it into my muzzle. I took hold of it with my lips, staring down my nose at it fearfully.
"Celestia is watching you, pony. She know we speak da truth. Ask her, Mon." The diamond dog-shaped drummer leaned back again, away from me, then once more started pounding on his instrument. The answering jingle in my mind from Celestia – and that was something that couldn't be faked – told me the troll had spoken truthfully.
Mentally shrugging, I accessed the cube. A new personality matrix bloomed inside my mind, taking up residence in the unused sectors, as the program within decrypted itself to my secure compute and store layer. He wasn't quite an avvy – that would only come in time – but he was a useful collection of physical and behavioural routines. He was troll-shaped, a diamond dog, unsurprisingly. Testing his limits, he settled over my form for a brief moment, accepted my quadrupedal range of motion and then set about optimising his defensive and offensive capabilities. He then bolstered my observational algorithms and started regulating hormone production to sharpen my response times.
Julep immediately christened her little brother Darilo, and pared off a temporary eigenstate to go play with him – which meant roughhousing whilst she honed her newly-acquired fighting skills, so she borrowed some routines from my otherwise absent Stalwart self and set up her own private store and compute sandbox.
I was reeling – it wasn't usually this busy in my own head. A scant minute or two had taken place in lo-time, and Rogers hadn't even noticed that my steps had slowed to the carefully placed gait that resulted when guided purely by the Citymind. This was most decidedly turning into a strange day.
"R-Rogers? Sir?" I asked, moving to a loping trot to catch up.
"Hmm?" he replied, draining his cup and tossing it into the street. A passing sanitation bot darted out, snagged it and disappeared with its prize, fighting off other scavenging bots as it went.
"Can you tell me if my eigenwall—"
"Way ahead of you, girl," he said. Gesturing, he brought up the Eatery's databoard, where he'd recently stuck the encrypted checksum from my memory dump, along with a number of related mental checksums that were immediately cross-verified by Equestrian systems.
They matched.
My memories from yesterday had been patched an unknown time earlier, but nothing else had been tampered with, unless they were able to penetrate my deeper mental defences. Memories were often shared, after all, but mental profiles were not.
Tentatively, but with mounting surety, I proclaimed myself mentally sound.
Letting out a deep breath, I realized I felt better. I'd been brainhacked, but they'd changed nothing major – all my personality checks were coming up green on my admittedly old but trustworthy profiler – and my brain hadn't leaked out my ears. Yet.
"You're okay, girl, I promise. And yes," he said, smiling faintly, "I still have this." He stuck out a hand, and the glowing form of the whatever-it-was that Steven had dropped when Rogers had shot him appeared there, oddly flat and misshapen as the routines tried to flesh out something only partly seen from not enough angles with not enough resolution to properly reproduce it.
I still didn't know what it was, but I was beginning to suspect it was important.
***
Rogers wasn't lying; the stables were rather close, they were on the other side of the park. There was a nondescript freestanding orange mailbox and a small sign offering pony rides at certain times during the day, outside of what looked like – to all intents and purposes – a barn. It looked like it was built out of wood; it was either nanoforest, very old, or very expensive. I wasn't sure which. The door was a single, tall, wide, sliding panel painted a bright, cheery red, with one large handle. Rogers leaned on it, huffing, until it slid open.
"Shut that door!" called a deep voice from within. "Can't you tell we're on a break?"
"Sorry Buttercup, got the new girl," replied Rogers, motioning for me to enter.
My first thought as I walked across the threshold was that's Buttercup!? because 'Buttercup' was a great, grey shire horse. I was a My Little Pony-pony. Buttercup was most emphatically not. Buttercup was quite possibly the largest being I'd seen in the flesh without there being bars involved. He was rolled onto his side in a pile of what looked like hay, around a table that was quite honestly dwarfed by his hoof, which hovered over it, swinging idly to and fro as he thought about his next move in a game of what looked like chess.
"Come on in, then," said Buttercup. I stepped gingerly nearer, too gingerly. Rogers swatted my backside; I whinnied and snorted as I danced away from the flat of his hand.
"You're letting all the heat out," Rogers complained. "Go on, they're your new herd-mates, you're safe here." Rogers heaved on the door, and it slid shut again. "They like it low-tech," he explained, gesturing at the wide, low table featuring drinking bowls full of what smelled like good old-fashioned cider, intricately carved chess pieces on a dogged board, and a game of cards that the four other occupants of the single room were also playing. The stakes appeared to be piles of play money from yet another old board game, and a tiny little wagon.
"At least on the surface," added Rogers, winking conspiratorially as he passed on his way to a half-full coffee pot. "Inside they're as tech-savvy as I am. Almost."
"Moreso," said Buttercup, with a snort. "The only trouble I have is when I need somebody to solder for me." He gestured to a workbench against one corner of the room, around which the hay the other ponies lounged on had been most emphatically swept away. "Rog here's got a steady hand, but doesn't like slaving."
I trotted towards the sturdy bench, head cocked to the side as I examined the devices thereupon. They were a mixture of old circuit boards, busted robots and cannibalized tools. "What is all—"
"Junk, mostly," said Buttercup, frankly. He heaved himself to his hooves and plodded up beside me. "Hobbies," he said, wistfully, sighing gustily. "The makerblock fabbing printers made all of this useless to repair, but I've found the only way to really understand something is to get your hooves dirty. That, and collectors will pay premium for real retro."
Rogers slapped Buttercup on the rump. "Cup here has an alfalfa problem. Oof!" I looked back just as Buttercup put his hoof on the floor. Rogers was grinning like an idiot, bent over almost double.
"I appreciate quality." Buttercup sniffed disdainfully, his deep brown eyes hard and serious. "Makerblock trash is perfectly good for when I'm hungry, but not for when I want to eat." Buttercup snorted then plodded back to the little table. "Introduce yourself, then," the giant said, as he carefully maneuvered his bulk down into the hay once more.
"I-I'm Oats. Mixed Oats," I said, grinning weakly.
"I can see that, if he's calling you girl. Folks call me Velvet Touch," said a plum red pony with – Julep informed me with no small degree of jealousy – fetlocks to die for. "What's her name?" Velvet asked, sending out a very short-range ping at my secure compute and store layer. Darilo sunk himself down into the protocol layers of my avatar generation system, hiding. I decided not to show all my cards by discussing him, then wondered – my muzzle not betraying the slightest hint of my internal thoughts – just who had decided what.
"W-well it's…" I felt Mint Julep apparate next to me, fluttering her wings. "This is Mint Julep," I said, introducing my avvy.
"I can see why Rogers likes you, Wild." said Velvet, grinning. "You're his type of mare."
"I'm not a mare, you know," I huffed.
"Exactly."
"Oh leave them alone, Velvet," said a third pony, poking a hoof towards the plum-coloured mare.
"Yeah, gotta watch yourself around Velvet," said Buttercup to me, laughing. "She'll steal your heart and your lungs."
"City says that she…?" the third pony – an older, silvery coloured mare – paused, looking my way for confirmation. I shrugged; with Julep onboard, I wasn't sure which I wanted to be. The ponytrait nanobots had upset a good number of physical variables and I was willing to let my neocortex sort it out. I'd spontaneously change in a few days to weeks if that's what I really wanted anyhow. "She's been pony only for a day or so. You're scaring her. I'm Soda Sprinkles, my dear," the third pony said, looking my way again. "Most here call me Momma Sprinkles. You can come talk to me about anything." She smiled, her sky blue eyes twinkling in a friendly manner.
"You're not so…" I waved a hoof around at the gear cluttering up the place. I'd queried her neocortex. Most of her implants were quiescent; I realized with some shock that she was practically baseline.
"Oh, no, not at the moment. My progenitor does all that, but he's off being non-corporeal for a while."
"And I'm Sprocket," said the last pony, a bay gelding. "Got caught fiddling with one too many robot brains, so they took away my thumbs. Won't let me slave, either. I said I didn't want to be a mare, so they helped with my attitude a different way." I winced in sympathy. "Eh," he said, shrugging his withers and flicking his ears about. "My caseworker says the hormonal change has helped my concentration."
"Yeah we're a strange lot," said Velvet, smirking. "Our very own Baker Street Irregulars. Better get used to it, unless you're just visiting."
"No can do, Velvet, hun," said Rogers. "Got some interesting news and we might need all your talents."
"Oh? I'm all ears." Velvet's ears did, indeed, flick up.
"Something's going on in the Ordinality," said Rogers. He flicked his wrist, and the scene from the day before played itself out on the tabletop. Holding up a finger, then twirling it as if reeling in a fishing line, he zoomed in on the reproduction, specifically onto my form so as to display the irregularity.
"Oh, that is interesting."
"I'll have to take your word for it, dearie," said Sprinkles. She tapped at her temple, then raised both eyebrows playfully.
"If we need Nullpointer though…?" murmured Buttercup.
"I'm sure I can find him." Sprinkles got up and headed to a kitchenette area, where the older mare set to stirring up an almost cauldron-sized bowl of porridge. "You just have your fun. I'll be right here."
"That's just it," said Rogers, grinning. "We're all staying right here. And not." He turned towards Julep. "Hey girl? You fancy a trip to Equestria with me?"
"What?" I asked, flicking my tail. I cocked my head to one side. "Why are you asking her to go to Equestria?"
"Because you are going on a trip to the station, with Buttercup and Velvet."
***