It was Star Swirl the Bearded no doubt. In the room, they found the remains of his bags containing inkwells, quills, scientific instruments of a bygone era, and a journal that belonged to Star Swirl.
“What do you supposed have happened to him?” Crawl Space asked. “I thought he was one of the most powerful unicorns in history.”
Daring Do turned her attention to the other skeleton in the room. Nearby the creature, there was a metal pipe. “Maybe this thing caught him completely off guard.” Daring thought aloud, “But why did it stay?”
Crawl Space turned his flashlight over to another part of the room, where he could make out was a piece of a large broken glass with a series of complex keyboards. He noted that all of them have a letter from the Prench alphabet, and what really caught his eye was a button that says “sur,” the Prench word for “on.”
Curiosity had gotten ahold of him and pressed the button. There were sparks and loud but low chime that rang in the silent underground.
“Gah! What was that?!” Daring asked.
“Détecter la langue, se il vous plaît patienter un instant.” A voice sounded out from the machine. This startled both Daring and Crawl Space since neither of them expected anything to come out from it.
“What is that thing?” Daring asked.
“Langue détecté.” The machine said, “Anglais. Apporter des changements à programmer. Juste un moment.” Daring turned to Crawl Space. “What did it say?”
“I think it said that it’s making adjustments or something.”
“Hello.” The machine said in plain Equestrian, “My name is Alex R2941. Please state your names.”
Darning and Crawl looked at each other for a moment.
“Daring Do.”
“Crawl Space. And Monsieur, what are you?”
“I am Alex R2941, a fifth generation computer possessing artificial intelligence for Shelter number two of Paris France. At your service.”
“Artificial intelligence?” Crawl Space asked.
“Yes. A machine that is programmed to receive and respond to given information similar to that of humans.”
“Hu-man?” Daring asked, “So is that what these creatures were? Humans?”
“I’m afraid I do not understand the meaning behind those questions Daring Do.”
“Well, sorry to tell you this, except for the three of us, everything in here is dead.”
“Please wait for me to scan the shelter… Just a moment… I’m afraid I cannot make a conclusion since all my monitors and cameras have been damaged. I cannot say that I’m not surprised by that fact.”
“Why is that?” Crawl asked.
“If my calculations are correct, the last time I have been turned on, was nine-hundred eighty-six years, four months and nineteen days.”
“That’s… That’s not possible.” Daring stated.
“How so?”
“There was nothing this advanced nearly a thousand years ago. Wait, Alex, how old is this place?”
“Eight-thousand, two-hundred and fourteen years, nine months and three days.”
“Eight-thousand!” Daring cried. “But… But that’s not possible. The earliest civilization to exist was at least seven-thousand years ago.”
“Please excuse me, Daring Do, but I cannot find any information in my data banks to confirm that.”
“Okay, could you at least explain what this place is and what it was used for?”
“If that is what you wish. Shelter number two is one of the four nuclear bomb shelters underneath Paris. Their purpose is in case of a nuclear war, these would provide survivors protection against the radiation from a nuclear winter. There are many shelters like this one that are scattered throughout the world in various cities. These shelters also provide as time capsules to preserve human culture, history, literature, music, science, and medical knowledge underground. The shelters also house artifacts from human history, for example, this shelter has Fredrick Chopin’s piano and the Crown Jewels from King Louis the fourteenth, just to name a few. These shelters have also had a network so that one shelter can communicate with another from across the globe.
“When war broke out in the year 2076, survivors were escorted into the shelters while the nuclear bombs went off, supposedly have destroyed all life on earth for the next ten thousand years. Humanity still went on living, looking into the past to learn its past mistakes and trying to make treaties to the other shelters for the future.
“The humans forced themselves to keep their population under control to prevent from overcrowding since the food source could yield up only so much. Some of them looking into the vault and library as a muse for creativity to pass the time. Others focused on advancing technology to perform better than the last. To which, I was created.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” Crawl Space interrupted. “But if these hu-mans were doing so well, how come they all died?”
“I still have the recordings of the last few entries, unfortunately, my monitor has been destroyed, and I can however still play the audio if you like.”
Both Daring and Crawl have made an agreement to this, only if Daring has the machine stop once in a while to write this down. The machine played another voice who once again spoke in Prench so Crawl had to translate.
This is what was said: “May 3rd, 10,290. This morning, the most extraordinary thing has happened! At around ten o’clock in the morning, we heard a surprised knock on the emergency door leading towards the catacombs. When we approached, we could hear a voice was indeed coming from the other side. Well, imagine our surprise when we found a unicorn from behind that door! We were so shocked. Since the war, we’d expected that there should be nothing on the surface. And yet, here was the unicorn who has wandered down from above! It was living proof that there is life that’s still going. We have checked the unicorn out for any possible radiation, it seems that this creature does have some but doesn't appear to be life-threatening, so we allowed it in.”
“May 4th, 10290. It has been exactly one day since we've let the unicorn in. To all of our surprise, it does have intelligence and has the ability to talk. And what made it all the more surprising was the fact that this creature, who goes by the name of “Star Swirl” speaks in the English tongue. Thanks to the help of Alex, the translation wasn't much of a problem. As far as we could gather, he tells us that he has been sent by a royal to search the world to collect information of unknown creatures throughout the world. In my opinion, this Star Swirl seemed to be similar to the story of Merlin. And how much like him he is! Not just by the appearance that he has a white beard, but this unicorn has done some tricks that none of our scientists could explain! Such as making tables levitate in the air and teleporting from one side of the shelter to the other. We’re still puzzled by this. Apparently, he said that its ‘magic’ but some of us are not quite convinced. A further investigation is needed. Oh, and it should be noted that every time he performs these magic trick, our radiation detectors go off. Should have those detectors checked.”
“June 9th, 102(Cough)90. It has been about a month since Star Swirled has left the shelter, promising to return. And ever since he left, things have been getting increasingly worse. Everyone in the shelter has been diagnosed with some degree of radiation poisoning. The scientists got it more than the rest of us. (Gasp, cough, cough,) Sorry about that. The scientist, what is left of them now, came to the conclusion that the unicorn was not only proof that there are creatures that not only have adapted to the radiation but somehow used it to their advantage. (Cough!) Some of us think that we've most likely got it when he was doing all those magic tricks. Star Swirl said he will come back to bring more instruments to study us. (Cough,) I’m not exactly sure if they’ll be anyone left by the time he comes back.”
The last recording from another voice that seemed younger than the one who spoke previously. “(Unknown date.) Everyone is dead. My sister had died two days ago and now I’m the only one whose one left. (Cough!) And now, thanks to that scum, I’m dying as well. We haven’t heard anything back from the other shelters at all. Maybe it’s because all the things we talk to them with are broken and nobody is alive to fix any of it. I just had my last piece of food a few hours ago, and all the pipes are broken. I wish that filthy unicorn never found us. I wish we should have pushed him into the crematorium when we had the chance. (Cough, cough, cough!) There are too many bodies that there’s no way of taking care of all of them. And it stinks in here. I wish that-”
“Hello?” This time, it was the voice of an elderly stallion that’s heard, presumably to be Star Swirl’s voice.
“He’s here! That monster has come back!”
“Hello? Somepony?”
“Oh, now this time, all of you will be avenged.” There was a cough and the sound of some piece of metal being picked up from the ground.
“Ugh! What is that smell?” Star Swirl said. “Hello! Where are you? What’s going on here? Hello? Hello?”
The sound of hoofsteps grew louder.
“Is somepony in-” There was a loud ‘WHACK’ sound followed quickly by a cry. The rest was Star Swirl screaming, begging for the creature to stop while it mercilessly beat him over and over until everything went quiet.
“End of recording,” Alex said.