"Come on girls, lets go!" Apple Bloom cheered enthusiastically before running down the rusty catwalk, linking there platform to the long abandoned maze of rooms suspended on stilts.
"Come on girls, lets go!" Apple Bloom cheered enthusiastically before running down the rusty catwalk, linking there platform to the long abandoned maze of rooms suspended on stilts.
"At least you have enthusiasm subject Apple-Bloom" GLaDOS paused, listening for the sound of more hoof steps following the earth pony filly. "Well go on Scootaloo and Sweetie-Belle walk down the catwalk.."
"But what about the door?" the alabaster unicorn asked.
"What about a door makes its existence and testing mutually exclusive?"
"There is a big metal double door at the end of the catwalk, and it has no handles. So how are we get in.
"Yah," Apple Bloom realized as she stopped running down the rusted catwalk. Scootaloo stopped gazing at the geodesic ceiling, where GLaDOS's voice apparently came from, and looked down the steel pathway. Sure enough there was a pair of shiny metal double doors were the rusted walkway linked with the bulk of the wooden and metal lattice structure. The elevator like door wasn't particularly narrow, but was strangely tall proportionally. The door was so slender that it looked like it had been built for miniature giraffes or something similar.
"It's an automatic door, just walk up to it and let the door do the rest."
Apple Bloom being the closest, walked up to the pair of door and, sure enough, they both retracted into the walls. "Cool," the filly said while hopping through the door way (and the shimmery waterfall of light behind it).
Scootaloo started down the same catwalk and hopped though the same blue light wall, before the door could close. However the 'emancipation grill' did not like the dried mud caked on her fur from the central Ai camber. The layer of grime suddenly ignited in a bright white glow and disappeared, leaving the orange filly clean. She ran a booted hoof over her fur and noticed it didn't quite feel like she had taken a bath, her hair was a little stiff and messy tangled as if she had forgotten to use shampoo. Still greasy fur was better than muddy fur and the pegasus was relieved to have the itchy dirt gone.
The room looked mostly the same on the inside as it did on the outside, made of green panels strengthened by an 'X' shaped rusted metal frame going across each square of plywood. Unlike on the outside however, there were occasionally Dirty white panels mounted on the default thin green ones. The Room itself was rather large and shaped like an oversized L; a long hallway with large vertical shafts, essentially a hallway up, that were both capped in the white panels. This feature was at the other side of the hall rather than the apparent entrance they had gone through, and appropriately there was a recess in the wall that had another door with a large orange exit sign above it. . The floor at the entrance end of the hall was white, along with random sections of the hallway walls, A large Steel pipe hung fro the ceiling directly above the white section of floor, connected to a button mounted on a small platform standing near the white portion with a chain of connected blue lights.
"I like your style test subject! You make your own rules like me. Once they told me that I couldn't fire a man just because he was in a wheel chair, did it anyway," a new, though completely unmechanical, male voice sounded from the speakers built into the room.
"GLaDOS, who is that?" Sweetie Belle asked the walls. The Ai either did not hear or choose not to respond though.
The new voice continued, "If you're hearing this message, it means that you somehow managed to enter an enrichment sphere in the middle of a testing circuit. Now I'm Glad you're so eager to do science, but please flag down a test associate first. That said, welcome to the repulsion gel testing course, War hero, Astronaut, or Olympian. If you din't hear this before, I'm Cave Johnson! C.E.O and founder of Aperture Science. Together you and me are going to change the world! Since thousands of test go on in these enrichment spheres everyday, and I am unable to oversee them all personally, these prerecorded messages will guide and aid you throughout your science adventure. And here are some more prerecorded messages you may have missed that may be vital to your testing experience."
"Hello? Johnson what are these tests suppose' to be about?" Apple Bloom asked the speaker
"Yah I didn't study!" Sweetie Belle commented.
Repulsion Gel was originally developed by Aperture Science as a sweet dietetic pudding substitute. While It is both sweeter than regular pudding and prevents the absorption of calories from all foods eaten, the repulsion gel didn't do well in the harmful side effects fee department. Don't get me wrong, this stuff is perfectly safe to touch and eat, but if any of it gets on your bare skin, seek an emergency shower chemical immediately! We don't quire know what's in this stuff yet, but we do know that whatever it is isn't friends with the human skeleton, so try not to get covered in the stuff.
"So if this stuff is so important then where is it?" Scootaloo questioned the loud speaker while looking around to confirm that the room was gel free. There was no answer, from any pony.
Apple Bloom walked over to the button laden podium. "What do ya' think this does?" she asked.
"Let's push it and find out!" Scootaloo exclaimed.
"Isn't it dangerous to go around pushing buttons when you don't know what they do?" Sweetie Belle asked rhetorically.
"Scardy pony" the Pegasus thought. "Unless a button says 'do not push' on it, it automatically wants to be pushed. That’s what buttons are for right."
Before the unicorn could reply, Apple Bloom took things into her own hooves. "makes sense to me," she commented as she reared up and pushed the button with her right hoof. In response the chain of lights connecting the podium and the large steel pipe opened, vomiting up large globs of a blue goo that splattered into a thin layer open the white panel beneath the pipe. a second latter the button popped back up and the pipe closed.
To Scootaloo's surprise Sweetie Belle was the first to investigate, trotting up to the bright blue gel and staring it down quizzically. Cautiously the unicorn extended one hoof, tapped the gel, and quickly pulled her hoof back. There was a strange sound almost like a rubber band snapping. Surprisingly, she threw all caution to the whim and jumped right onto the blue goop. 'Bouncing' is a slightly inaccurate term to describe what happened next, as it implies the laws of physics are apparently obeyed. As soon as Sweetie Belle's hooves touched the substance she shot into the air like a rocket, flying in a high arc that just barely missed the gel pipe and landing unharmed on the green floor a few feet away.
"You guys have to try this out!" she called enthusiastically.
Scootaloo saw Apple Bloom's face folded up into a bright grin. The farm filly ran out into the middle of the gel, only for her smile to fade away when she found that she was not being catapulted.
"Hey! Why's it not workin'?" She hopped up experimentally, probably not expecting to accomplish much. The repulsion gel responded by launching Apple Bloom into the air. She came down hit the gel again, 'bouncing' her to an equal height. This time she landed by Sweetie Belle.
Scootaloo ran to the white panel and pounced onto the gel with a running leap. She tried to do a summersault before landing but found she was unable to reorient herself during flight, as if the more she tried to turn the heavier her hooves got. She landed a little further than her friends did, almost crashing into the wall. Despite the failed flip she was still happy with her miniature flight performance. "They out to sell this stuff at the toy store! It could be so much fun."
"Ah' know! It's like a super trampoline or somethin'," the yellow filly commented.
The pegasus looked at the random white panels on the wall and got an idea. "Oh, Oh I want to try something!" She pushed depressed one button within the portal gun, firing a portal onto the nearest alabaster wall panel. Next, she placed the other portal on the gel covered white surface bellow the pipe, the orange zero spreading over the blue goop as if the latter wasn't there. The orange filly rushed back over to the podium and slammed her hoof down on the big red button. This time the globs of gel fell through orange portal and sprayed out through the blue, covering a portion of the wall and floor in bouncy goop.
"OOooOOo cool I want to try next," Sweetie Belle exclaimed. The filly fired one of her portals at the one Scootaloo had already placed below the pipe, the latter portal replacing the one earlier placed, then popped her other portal on the second nearest wall panel. Scootaloo pushed the button down for her, and another segment of the floor became covered in blue gel.
"Me next!" shouted Apple Bloom.
=========
Remember do not smudge up the glass! Windex is expensive. in fact, if you ever think you would need to touch the glass for any reason during testing, you're wrong.
=========
"Where are we going Doug" asked the cube with hearts painted on it, it's exterior light's shifting in brightness as it did so.
"We need to rescue any remaining humans," the ghostly white stallion answered. The cube was firmly strapped to his back like a limbless rider. The tails of his lab coat fluttered as he trotted down one of many of Aperture Science's derelict catwalks.
"Humanity doesn’t exist here.”
“You know what I mean.”
“All the other ponified humans are dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But I do. Heroes die Dough.”
“You that when I rescued her, and I didn’t die.”
“You got lucky.” There was a pause where neither the Rattman nor the cube spoke. “It’s not like before. There are exits this time, and she doesn’t have the power required to defend them.”
“What about turrets?”
“They have mostly decayed to the point where they are either harmless or not operational. Case and point to your left.
Doug Ratman hadn’t noticed the catwalk had taken a turn into the maintenance areas of the facility, as opposed to being suspended above the inky black void of the testing chamber areas. Sure enough, in a recess in the walls of what was now a hallway, sat a hidden white turret ovular shaped sentry turret. It’s targeting laser began to blink to life when it was the stallion walking by.
“ Hello? Hello? I’m different,” pleaded the turret. Against better judgment, the last scientist reached into the gap in the walls and slid the turret out into the open with his hooves. “ Thank you.”
“ See perfectly harmless.”
“I can’t just walk away again.”
“Exactly, you should run. I can guide us to a breach it the retaining wall.
“The titan wolf Fenrir was raised by Odin, the bringer of knowledge. For fear of the wolf would destroy him, Odin had the Fenrir bound with a chain cloth and trickery, though sacrificing his son’s hand in the process. Fenrir overcame the chain and, out of anger caused by his binding, devoured the god of wisdom.”
“I just want to make sure.”
“But they are dead Doug! She will eventually come back full strength, we don’t have forever.”
“I was suppose to be the wolf’s bane that kept man safe, but I was failed to defend the creators from the son and daughter of the machine.”
“See I think it agrees with me.”
“You won’t convince the labpony to escape.”
“Don’t listen to her! You can get out of here.”
“I didn’t say you two were not going to escape, just that the cube wasn’t going to convince the pony to do so.”
“We have to keep moving.”
“I agree, but towards the exit while the neurotoxin is offline.
“No, we are going to find out if anyone is still alive.”
“You won’t find who you’re looking for.
“ Let's go do your thing, but hurry so that we can leave. I would like to point out though that you could run faster if you weren't carrying a heavy cube.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
"But I am exactly where I need to be."
"Not you, turret."
"Oh, thank you, and good buy then. We'll see each other soon enough. With that farewell, the stallion continued galloping down the hall.
========
“Wheeee! This stuff is so fun!” Sweetie Belle shouted while doing a mid air summersault. The Cutie mark crusaders had coated the entirety of the floor, most of the walls, and a good helping of the ceiling with repulsion gel. They had simply been bouncing around the makeshift trampoline carefree for the past half hour or so.
“Ah’ know! I wonder why they haven’t started selling this goop yet,” Apple Bloom commented.
“Yah!” Scootaloo agreed to the question. The Pegasus paused to consider something. “Hey shouldn’t we be trying to figure this out?”
“But we got like a… two hundred year deadline or something,” the bouncing unicorn filly pointed out as they wizzed past each other.
"Yah but shouldn't we, you know keep, trying anyway? And besides the solution is really simple," the orange pegasus replied.
"Well then how do we get out?" asked the yellow bouncing earth pony.
"Watch," the speedster pony commanded. Her two friends turned their attention to her while bouncing in place.
Scootaloo used the gel to make four long leaps to the end of the chamber with the large vertical shaft above it. She fired her blue portal at the ceiling, then turned in place and fired its orange counterpart on the nearest wall panel. The pegasus bounced into place in front of the glowing loop, and finally took one last repulsion assisted leap through orange portal. As soon as she felt the sensation of falling she used her wings and every other mechanism she could think of to push herself through the air toward the raised recess that said exit. Scootaloo didn't make, landing about 2/3 of the way to wall in which her goal platform was mounted. It didn't matter though.
With a small thud and a hiss, her long fall boots slammed into the ground and the repulsion gel threw her back up like a rocket. This time she made it onto the raised platform with room to spare, landing a few good feet from the edge. She had a second to internally celebrate her victory before there was a loud 'whoosing' noise behind her. With a loud 'clang' Apple Bloom landed immediately behind her, the earth pony's face sticking into the pegasus's tail.
"What, Apple Bloom? You weren't suppose to follow me that closely."
"Well Ah' watched like you said. and followed as soon as Ah' knew what you were doing."
Sweetie Belle landed just next to the farm filly, dangerously close to landing on top of her. The exit door took this as a sign to open, Both halves sliding into the green wooden walls. Unlike the entrance door, the exit had the problem of being strangely wide, enough for ten ponies to walk through at once. On the other side was a platform as wide as the door, but that strangely bottlenecked into a single narrow catwalk. Scootaloo wondered if this part of the building was built out of pieces of architecture that were originally designed to have other uses, the whole massive sphere being built of salvage.
"You spent longer on that last test then you really should have. This suggests that an emergency occurred during testing, or that you were playing with the gel. Once again try to minimize your contact with the stuff, it is currently very hazardous. While we are trying to get it within manageable safety levels, we aren't there yet so just treat the stuff with respect until we then. The voice on the speaker faded away with a crackle, only to be replaced with another.
"There you Are! I was so unbelievably worried about you until now! What took you so long?"
"We were having fun!" Sweetie Belle answered.
"While testing is designed to enrich your scientific experience, you should have fun while solving the test! "
"But that gel was so bouncy and cool," Apple Bloom answered meekly.
"Grrrrkzzzzzzskskrrr" GLaDOS's voice was half a growl half static. She quickly regained her normal (though decidedly more frustrated) sing-song tone and continued, "Look I'm GLaD you had fun, but we are on a mission here! I can't see inside of these vintage test chambers so I had no idea if you were safe in there. In the future just try to solve these thing as quickly as possible."
"You got it" Scootaloo answered for the group, "So what do we do next?"
"This was the last test in the testing sphere, I managed to pipe, well technically vent, you past all but one of the test chambers in this sphere. Just follow the catwalk."
The crusaders did as they were told, proceeding in a single file line down the rusted walk way. The rusted catwalk took a sharp 90 degree angle turn to the right, revealing a similarly rusted circular elevator.
"Aww" Sweetie Belle groaned. "Not these things again."
"These vintage elevators are non-pneumatic and as such should provide a much less hazardous ride. I would suggest that you try to stand on two hooves for this one."
Apple Bloom trotted into the lift and experimentally reared up and leaned her back against the wall for support. "Yah, this could work," she said.
"Of course it will work, did you doubt me?"
"Well no Ah' just..."
"Apple Bloom 's in trouble," Scootaloo teased while assuming a position similar to Apple Bloom on the opposite side of the elevator.
"Subject Apple-Bloom is not in trouble. She is simply having her mental capabilities questioned."
"Ah' don't like that one much better!" the farm filly replied as Sweetie Belle entered the lift, which responded by automatically closing a rusted grate door and slowly moving up.
"Then I apologize. I will now attempt to make amends by stating that, while you are clearly the least intelligent of your friends, your intelligence is not that far from Scootaloo or Sweetie-Belle's intellectual level. Had you entered the test chamber on your own, you would also have been the smartest test subject on record."
"Well Ah' guess that makes up for it a little," the earth pony said while still putting on a face that betrayed how crossed and offended she was. The elevator moved through the roof of the sphere, causing total darkness to envelope the pod.
=====
=====
The lift came to a sudden stand still. The elevator door opened itself, which caused the leaning fillies to fall out onto there bellies with more groans.
Scootaloo blinked twice as she took in the space the crusaders found themselves in. Unlike Leirica's massive chamber, it was far too big to be called a room, yet still lack the absence of definition to be compared to the endless underground sprawl of the new facility. There were at least six rusted spheres hanging in the space, three above and three bellow.There may have been more spheres, but all the little pegasus could see was the six before object definition was lost in a gray haze. Unlike the similarly low lit upper facility, there were walls, big walls of extremely uneven stone, suggesting that the test shaft had been rather carelessly punched into the bedrock. The lift's exit was mounted only a few feet above the sphere, a distance which was far outside Scootaloo's hoof reach, but still felt practically like contact when compared to the scale of the abandoned mine.
"Thank you for completing Aperture Science's repulsion gel testing course, war hero, olympian, or astronaut. We're going to make sure this stuff is good and ready before we release it into the wild, but remember should you wish there will always be a limo waiting for you."
The orange filly got to her booted hooves and looked toward the direction the noise came from, The catwalk the elevator ended at lead directly into a cement structure of some kind. It lacked windows and had cement angular walls, upon one of which the number 1957 was painted. Beyond the door of the structure, there appeared to be a lobby of some kind that was decorated with carpets and comfortable looking chairs.
"My schematics of this old place must be out of date, which isn't surprising. I thought I was pumping you into sphere number two when really you ended up in sphere number three, that works out for the better though. The old nuclear reactor should be right up there by that number that says 1973, portal up to there and then we'll find it." Sure enough, a little higher up the deep mineshaft, there was a similar windowless cement structure with the number respectively changed.
Apple Bloom fired one portal at the number seven and then the other on the section of catwalk accessible wall on the overhanging building in front of them.
"You are going to die if you walk through that series of portals."
"There ya' go insultin' me again."
"She's right," Sweetie Belle said. "There is no horizontal surface on the other side." The unicorn placed one portal above an exposed catwalk leading from one exterior door to the other, then put her second portal on the exposed section of wall at their level where AppleBloom had placed her second. "See." The alabaster filly never sounded as though she was criticizing her fellow crusader, only pointing out a flaw.
"Very good Sweetie Belle." The unicorn beamed with pride while Apple Bloom flattened her ears against her head in frustration.
"Let's just jump through the portal and find the.... thing before we get into a fight." Scootaloo reasoned. Her friends both just nodded in agreement.
Actually jumping through was scarier than she had anticipated, Sweetie Belle's portal was about a foot above the walkway, which was separated by about a filly's length of space from the wall. The half second in the air above what might as well be an infinite fall was terrifying to say the least. The intense creaking groan the highly deteriorated catwalk made was no reassurance either. Scootaloo walked out of the way of her fellow portal going crusaders and tried not to look down through the rusted grate. There was nothing wrong being a pegasus and afraid of heights when you couldn't fly, right? With two more pained groans of metallic agony, the other two fillies landed on the catwalk.
"Good job. head through that opened vault door directly in front of you. "
Despite noticing said vault door seconds before GLaDOS even spoke, Scootaloo glanced over her should to confirm that the other door of the catwalk was sealed shut. She and friends trotted down the catwalk, each hoof beat crushing then stirring up a cloud of the brittle rust coating the catwalk and occasionally causing another heat stopping creak.
The vault door looked like something off a warship, a large rectangular outwardly bulging plate of metal mounted in hinges. Getting it to move would be a fruitless effort for sure, but it had already opened so that there was just enough space for the crusaders to squeeze through one at a time. Much to all their relief, there was a proper hallway on the other side of the bulkhead, decorated on all surfaces with orange and white squares of linoleum, as opposed to another haplessly suspended catwalk.
"walk to the end of this hallway. Then enter the door on your right."
"This sure is a lot a' complicated work to get our cutie marks," Apple Bloom noticed trotting down the dimly lit hallway
"Well its better then waiting," Scootaloo replied.
"And besides we're sure to get them this way, and nothing else we already head to do has gotten us our marks yet," Sweetie Belle added. "So we're probably saving time by doing this."
"Exactly." Now the AI's voice seemed to be coming from behind the door near the end of the hallway she had directed them to.
"Ah' don't know, all this seems awfully un-cutie mark related to me."
"Exactly which part of the cutie mark factory concept do you not understand?"
"The part where this place is a cutie mark factory," the yellow filly replied.
"Exactly what do you mean by that?"
"Ah' mean, We haven't seen anything cutie mark related this whole time, and Ah' don't know how you could simply build cutie marks."
"Since cutie marks are magic, I would imagine you make them with magic." The unicorn pointed out.
"If one considers science magic, then yes. These tests are built to decide what your special talent is by evaluating your personality, or at leas they were built for that before they were left to rot. Open the door to your right."
The suddenness of this last command made all three crusaders think for a few seconds before actually facing the door. Sweetie Belle tried the handle only for the handle to break off and the door to slowly swing open.
The lights of the room flickered on revealing a medium sized octagonal room, smaller than the central chamber. The room was lined on seven sides with instruments of various types, the last side was connected to a small dust hall connecting the octagon to the door they had just opened. The crusaders rushed inside and individually began to examine the controls.
"What do all these buttons do?" asked Sweetie Belle.
"I will tell you as they become important. A small TV screen, came to life and started to display lines of green text. "Sweetie Belle, please sit at the station where the computer screen just activated.
"Sitting!" squealed the unicorn with delight as she hopped onto the stool built into the station.
"Please type the command, assignrolelocal/Ai004 with no spaces. Use a ballpoint pen if you have trouble manipulating the keys."
The alabaster filly grabbed a pen sitting by the console with her mouth and used it to push the appropriate keys. "Done!" she exclaimed after checking her entry over a few times.
"Press the enter key. The unicorn did so. "Good now sit at the station directly to your left. Apple-Bloom please man the console opposite the entrance that says, chief reactor operator on it."
"Oh boy I get to get to be the boss!" the orange filly exclaimed while jumping onto the station, which had a swivel chair to sit in unlike the others which had stools. The console had a much smaller orange monitor built into it,
"Press the green confirm button. Scootaloo, man the console with blinking blue light.
"
"Roger!" The pegasus exclaimed with a salute.
"Locate the big red button that says "SCRAM", press the button directly bellow it. Sweetie-Belle, locate the dial that says control rod extension length, set it to zero. Apple Bloom press the "confirm" button twice and the "ignore" button once in that order." All three fillies did as they were told.
"Sweetie-Belle and Scootaloo, locate the buttons on your consul that read "semi-automate" and push them. Apple-Bloom press the "confirm" button twice. " once again all three did as they were told. "Apple-Bloom, press the "override analogue" button." The yellow filly put once hoof to her chin and squinted her eyes for a brief moment to hunt down her target, then pounced upon a small black button.
"Very good my little ponies! We have now activated and fully automated one of our two goal nuclear reactors!"
"That was it?" Sweetie Belle asked, half complaining about the simplicity of the task.
"Ah' ain't complainin'," Apple Bloom offered.
"Me neither," Scootaloo added.
"This reactor was shut down due to using overly simple controls and using a higher degree fo automation than federal regulations allow. Can you believe that? Shutting something down for lack of human involvement. In any case, This reactor should bring us up to 10% of total full operation power levels."
"Wait it did that little? Aren't we only turning on two of these things?" The pegasus filly asked the ceiling.
"The other nuclear reactor is substantially larger.By itself it could provide 400% of standard testing levels."
"Well then why didn't we jus' turn on that one then?"
"The Aperture Science quad core nuclear fission reactor requires large volumes of distilled water to operate safely. I need the power from this reactor to create this Distilled Water and perform maintenance on the quad core reactor, as scheduled outages are rare and all nonactive times must be taken advantage of. "
"Well if you needed water why didn't you get it from, I don't know, a lake!" Sweetie Belle asked criticizingly at the Ai.
"Distilled water is very special type of water. It lacks the majority of contaminants found in regular water. I very seriously doubt that ponies have maintained the technological tier level to produce it. In any case while I make the DI water, we can figure out how to get you out of there."
"What?" all three asked in unison.
"I said I would cross that bridge when we came to it. Now just make yourselves comfortable and don't push anything while I think."
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As always I am still looking for pre readers and appreciate all comments.
I will add a few more scenes, (some involving fluttershy) to this chapter before next update.