//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10. Recycled 
// Story: H'ven Sent 
// by otherunicorn 
//------------------------------//

I woke in the morning, feeling wonderfully refreshed. Actually, I had no idea what the bloody time was. It was just some time after I had fallen asleep, presumably a long 'some time'. It was also pitch black, so either the lights had switched off as I slept, or I had been captured and locked somewhere dark. It was too early to panic, so I tried stretching first, and found there were no straps or shackles on my legs. So far so good! I tried standing, which I managed with no problem at all, and in direct response to my movement, lights came back on, each a fair distance either side of me. Opposite me was the rusty colored wall of the giant tank, or whatever that isolated structure I had been circumnavigating was.

Okay, so it looked like I was still in the same place in which I had gone to sleep, which was pretty good. With recent events having me turning into a strange creature, being locked up, tied down, and vivisected while sleeping, I think it would be a while before I really trusted I could sleep safely.

That time had come, so I pulled the green food converter out of the saddlebags and placed it on the floor. After triple checking I was alone (of course I was bloody alone) I... err... deposited my waste biomass into the dish of the converter, then stepped away, turning to see what needed to be done to convert the foul into food. Lying there, in the bowl, was a selection of leaves, succulent and fresh. I was quite sure they were not what I had deposited there! So, the converter was programmed to work instantly, with no further input from the user? Perhaps. It hadn't converted me, or anything in my saddlebag into food, so it must have been programmed to either recognize pony waste for what it was, or to read intent. It must also have scanned my body to work out what nourishment was required as I did my business. I nibbled at a leaf. Nice! Tasty! This had more flavor than the usual fare. I tucked into it without further thought as to what it had been moments before.

Replenished, and ready to adventure again, I packed my bags. I really would have to have a closer look at the workings of the food generators. Logic said that to convert biomatter from waste to food, there had to be energy entering the conversion somewhere. That energy could not be getting drawn from the pony for who the food was being prepared, as that would be similar to not allowing that pony to eat at all. There had to be an energy source from elsewhere. That applied to the whole of H'ven too. Perhaps the systems of H'ven were able to capture and repurpose the energy from waste heat, but even that wouldn't be enough. I was pretty sure much of what I had been taught as a filly was nonsense. I had always had niggling doubts about some things that didn't quite add up. I didn't doubt that some of the teachers believed every word they told us. As far as I could figure, the conspiracy was limited to those within some departments of Central. Whatever the case, a truly closed system would either boil itself in its own waste heat as it consumed itself, or be cold and dead if it didn't.

Returning my attention to the immediate mystery, that of the multi storey, rust colored box, I decided to tackle it from where I had left off before I took my nap. I trotted along the corridor, the rust colored wall to my left, looking for clues, a way in, or anything that might give details as to its function. I found the corner before I found any answers, so I turned left, and followed the next wall along. It was easily big enough to qualify as a building in its own right, if not a city block. The second wall was as long as the first, and just as devoid of any information or entry points, so I turned the corner and trotted on. At least this time I could see something ahead that broke the monotony, projecting up from the floor. 

Arriving at the projection, I found I had been staring at a ladder, side on, and a safety barrier consisting of a couple of curved pipes, that circled a the hole in the floor through which the ladder passed. Following the ladder up with my eyes, I found it passed through the ceiling, and onto the floor above, and so on, for at least three levels, all the while attached to the side of the same structure. Yes, this was definitely a building within a building. It extended as many levels of below the current floor too. So, should I go up, down, or round and round? Bah, I'd finish my circumnavigation at this level first.

I trotted on, turned the corner again, and was greeted with... another wall that was devoid of any information or entry point. Oh, what a surprise. It was not long before I was back were I had started. Applying logic to the problem I realized that if this tank-like structure was in fact a tank, then any entry point would be at the top, lest gravity use the opening to drain the contents from the aforementioned vessel. So back to the ladder it was. It was a good thing I enjoyed running, wasn't it? Arriving at the ladder, I prepared myself for the climb by making sure that both of my saddlebags were secured around my midriff, and that all of the bag flaps were closed and buckled. That done, I tackled the ladder. 

Fingers made climbing the ladder easier than if I had hooves alone, but the lack of fingers on my rear hooves did not help. Several times I found my rear hooves slipping from one of the narrow bars that made the ladder rungs. Frustrated, I applied my newfound ability to my rear hooves, forming a notch large enough to catch the bars in them, thus giving me secure footing. That proved to be remarkably successful, and I was soon moving up the ladder quite rapidly. After passing through a fourth floor, I discovered I was at the top of the tank, and likewise, the end of the ladder. I stepped from it, and onto the floor.

Immediately to the left of the ladder was a hatch, the controls to open it, to one side. I reached up with a hoof and tapped the button marked 'open'. 

"Please wait while scanning for qualifications", the panel voiced, and after a few moments, it lit, green. "Qualifications accepted."

"Um... What?" I asked myself as the door servos lifted the hatch clear, allowing moisture laden and... umm... aromatic... air to escape. I couldn't say the smell was particularly pleasant, but it didn't make me reel back or anything. Did the systems of this tank know I was a structural engineer? Had it looked me up on Central's records or something? That couldn't be right. I was dead, according to any official records, so if it had, it should have rejected me. As soon as the hatch was out of the way, the interior illumination of tank came to life, presenting me with a walkway across a void. I stepped thought the opening, turned, and looked for any control that would allow me to open the door from inside, should it close behind me. There, much to my relief, was a large button simply labeled EXIT. 

Now sure that I wasn't about to become a permanent resident in another sealed sublevel facility, I turned myself, and my attention, to the mysteries of this tank. Ahead, on the left was an array of valves and outlets positioned over a trough. On the right, was an observation platform bearing a control panel and a computer terminal. I walked the few paces to the control panel, sat myself down in the provided seat, and extended my fingers. "Okay, panel, start talking," I said, not really expecting a response, despite the number of inanimate objects that seemed to talk to me on a regular basis. Actually, if they talked, they weren't really inanimate, where they?

The first answer I received from the panel was in the form of text, printed across the top of the aforementioned's metal surface: Biomass Processing and Reserve Facility No. 4. Well, that would explain the funky smell. So, this was where the initial processing of pony waste products and garbage was conducted. Its position this many sublevels down would be to make gravity feeding of the waste products of a large portion of the city to a single location much easier. It was, however, too high up the structure of H'ven to have been of much use when ponies were living in the sublevels.

I was starting to have a theory about that too. When ponies first retreated into the sphere of H'ven, they had materials, but had not yet had the time or resources to build the city itself. They lived down here, while they worked above, creating the new world in which they were going to live. Once it was completed, they abandoned the tunnels and corridors, and moved up to live under the sky dome, stripping out what they could from down below, and modifying what was left behind to serve the city above. And that left the question as to what was even lower down, in the unknown area below sublevel eighty. Was that a city occupied by Hellspawn? Was it reserved for whatever was generating the power this place used?

Looking out from the observation deck, I studied the pipes and machinery and so on that made up the workings of the place. The outer shell of the tank, as I was calling it, was there to contain any spills, and keep the less than pleasant air contained. As such it really wasn't a tank. However, covering much of the floor area, but inset by enough to allow easy access for repair, was an actual tank, also rectangular. I estimated it filled more than half of the volume of the outer shell. Presumably it contained the biomass reserves, or if I allowed myself to be crude, it was full of shit. Giant pumping machinery, the source of the deep throbbing I could feel through the walkway, was situated at one end of the main tank. Also above the main tank were smaller vessels, presumably containing filters, or severed unicorn horns to do some sort of processing prior to the gloop being diluted and pumped back up to the food generators of the city itself.

Much closer to where I was sitting was a stainless steel table that was positioned under all sorts of manipulators. It had all the appearance of a medical apparatus, and I wondered what it could possibly be doing here. My attention had been drawn to it when the manipulators began to move, pulling back, out of the way. I watched, wondering what it was going to do. I didn't have to wait long to find out.

A mechanism unfolded from above, lowering a brightly colored bundle onto the table before retracting again. A beep from in front of me caused me to glance at the computer screen, as various messages scrolled across it. My eyes picked out "subject confirmed deceased" from the screen full of text. What? I looked back up at the colorful bundle as the manipulators reached for it, spreading it out, untangling it into a form I recognized. My heart felt like it skipped a beat when I realized I was staring at a pony, a dead pony. The pony was elderly, and had probably died of natural causes. I had never given too much thought to where ponies went after their funerals, but it made sense that their bodies would be recycled like everything else in this closed environment.

Before I had a chance to think any more on the subject, and just what that meant, in the immediate sense, the manipulators descended on the body again, flaying it. I was too stunned to look away, and watched as muscles and organs were stripped away, and fed down one chute, and as bones were separated, and dropped down another, where, by the sounds that issued forth immediately, they were ground to powder. Finally all that was left was the skull, which was cut apart with precision, the bones again going down the chute. The brain itself was lifted, then placed onto a small platform to one side of the table, where it was rapidly wrapped in a mass of fine, writhing black tendrils.

Another beep from the computer drew my attention to the screen again. The message it displayed was "Analyzing", and an increasing percentage as a symbolic bar progressed across the screen. Why would a dead brain be analyzed? Were they checking for unnatural death? Were they checking to see if the pony had died of a stroke or aneurysm? "Analysis complete," the screen displayed. "Brain functionality is severely compromised. Brain is unsuitable for computer or system automation applications."

My last meal nearly joined the stored biomass.

The computer continued. "Memory capacity severely degraded. Brain is suitable only for low priority, short term storage applications. Checking stock. Reserves full. Disposing of brain."

I glanced up in time to see the brain plucked from the nest of black tendrils and unceremoniously dumped down the chute into which all of the pony's other flesh had been placed. My insides heaved again, but again the contents of my stomach stayed put. No wonder our history kept getting lost! H'ven was using dead ponies as part of its systems. I already knew unicorn horns were being used as the scanners and converters in food generators. This little show had just revealed to me that so called "computers" and their storage arrays were the brains of dead ponies repurposed to serve the living. So, was that how we paid for our life in H'ven; work until we die, then work until our dead brain completely fails? 

As I was pondering the horrors of this, a flurry of steam swept the operating table clean, sterilizing it in the process. The mechanism unfolded again, placing a more petite corpse on the operating table. This one had died young, a pretty mare, with a great hole ripped in her side. What in H'ven could have caused that? She must have taken quite a tumble. The shock of seeing what happened to the dead lessened with a repeat performance, so I remained, sitting there, watching as the machine went through the whole process again. This time, the screen declared the brain to be a prime candidate for use as a computer, so it was carefully removed from the nest of tendrils, and placed into a little cart that whisked it away, presumably to where they stored or converted the salvaged brains. I wondered if the brain would be aware of its new purpose, whether it would enjoy it, or find it to be a personal hell. Perhaps what made a pony be a pony had left the body, and the meat that remained didn't care one way or another.

And I was sitting at one of those computers right now. I tapped the screen. "Hey, you in there. Can you hear me? Are you even aware of me being here?" I asked.

"Your presence at this terminal has been noted," came the reply. That surprised me. I really hadn't expected any response, especially as it had ignored me the previous time I had addressed it, albeit flippantly.

"How do you feel?" I asked. "What is life like as a computer?"

"I am interpreting your first question to be a status check. I remain at ninety eight percent functionality. All interfaces are functioning correctly," it answered, it response devoid of anything that could be considered a personality. "Please rephrase your second question in a manner that can be answered."

So much for that. This computer seemed to be nothing more than a machine, be it organic or mechanical in nature. Perhaps the brains were treated with modifiers before use. After all, something had to stop them from decaying.

"What is your name?" I asked. "What was your name?"

"I... I do not know," it responded.

That was something! It had fully understood the question, not dismissed me by requesting that I rephrase the question. I decided not to press the issue. If the poor pony within was clueless as to its origins, that would be for the best.

"Goodbye," I said as I stepped from the seat, turned, and walked to the array of valves that was behind me.