//------------------------------// // Act 0: A pony in the light // Story: Shadowrun: Equestria // by Savanah //------------------------------// White, it was all white. Access Page paced impatiently around the white room with white chairs and a white table with a white computer in which a white coated pony worked tediously. She looked at the white clock; it had already passed thirty minutes, and got back to pacing around the white room, waiting, looking at the clock and pacing some more. Every few steps she looked at her pearl coat, in contrast to all the white around it was a small relief, her light blue mane was better, but even them she made a mental note to dye it some darker color as soon as she was back in her apartment. “The doctor will see you now.” White-coated mare said without looking up from her computer. Access Page sighed in relief and quickly trotted through a door that had opened in the white wall and run through a white corridor, waiting in front of another white door for a few seconds that seemed like hours before it opened and she could enter in a white office with a blue coated horse mare beyond a white table, with a white bookshelf filled with chips in white covers. “Mrs. Page, we need to talk.” The blue coated doctor said; her color was almost offensive in midst of all the ascetic white. “I know that I only have a basic plan, but I have some nuyen stored! I can pay for his treatment! I’m sure we can work out some arrangement!” “Page-san, sit please. I’m afraid that it’s worse than even a platinum member could afford.” Afraid of the answer, Page asked: “What happened to him?” “This afternoon your brother began kawaru.” “By the goddesses, no!” Suddenly the horror of it engulfed Access, kawaru or the change, as it was known in equestrian, was a process that warped and distorted the mind, body and soul of a pony into the one of an abomination. “How can it be? He was so healthy.” Access inquired. “The mysteries of kawaru are not yet unraveled, Page-san. Some of the best scientists and doctors of the Imperial school of Genetics and molecular medicine are working on a possible vaccine or cure, but we have so few cases to study…” And it mostly affect ponies, she was polite enough not to add. “How is he, doctor? Will he be all right?” The doctor touched her shoulder in a gesture of sympathy. “It’s difficult to know, Page-san. His vitals are strong, but the kawaru will be a lengthy and dangerous process.” “I want to see him.” “That would be ill-advised. He is being kept heavily sedated and would receive no comfort from your presence.” “Please, I just want to see him!” “It’s not in my hooves, Page-san. The imperial Genetics and Molecular medicine Board permits only the approved medical teams to have access to the kawaru ward.” “But you could smuggle me in, couldn’t you?” She pleaded “I could wear an orderly’s gown and pretend to be a medical student!” “Page-san!What you are asking me is highly illegal! If we would be caught in the middle of it not only I would lose my job, you would be facing criminal charges and your brother would lose his relocation fund!” “Relocation fund?” “Yes, by Imperial decree you brother will be moved to the Yomi Island habitat complex. He will receive all the necessary to live and even small monthly revenue to spend as he pleases and there he will have all the help he needs to deal with the kawaru and someday he could even be reintegrate in our society!” “What? No, please I need to see him, I’m his only family, you don’t understand…” “No, Page-san.” She cut abruptly “If you want to help your brother, I can give you an account number where you can deposit money for him, if you really want to help him them obey your superiors and work hard like a good pony! Now I need to ask you to leave, please.” Frustrated, she trotted out of the office, through the white corridor, passing by the white reception where she had waited for about half an hour and through white doors to the loud and brightly colored streets of Neo-Tokio, the bright neon felt almost like an assault in her eyes after the all the white in the BuMoNa office. A quick trot and a fifteen minutes train trip later she was back in front of the Hayraku mega-complex she had left about one hour ago, running she entered in an elevator and rose three floors, a quick walk and she was back in her cubicle a few minutes early, she hadn’t eaten anything in her lunch time, but by now she had lost her appetite anyway. She took the steel jack, gave it a quick clean with aseptic alcohol, turned on her fuchi-7 cyberdeck and plugged in, the data cable connecting direct to her brain. In a rush of data the office was replaced by a virtual simulacrum. Matrix, what Twilight Sparkle and Meteor Shower had described as a consensualhallucination, was the backbone of modern society, used every day to read emails, pay bills and talk with friends; It monitors the money, handle utilities and manages the traffic on the streets. Billions of ponies, horses, griffons and others use it constantly and Hayraku was the biggest provider of matrix access in the world. It had begun as a single street where ponies from all over the world could meet, chat and discuss business, but it rapidly expanded in its own world with its own rules.Access Page was one of the billions of ponies that worked in the matrix, she was in charge of compiling code for new Hayraku software, and right now her entire floor was focused on creating a new search engine that would be used in the expert program that would be used in the Arcology. In the virtual environment of the matrix, her tools of work appeared next to her and the code she was working on floated in front of her muzzle, but she pushed then aside with her virtual hooves while in the meat-space, the real world, she inserted a special chip on her cyberdeck, for all intents and purposes any supervisor would see her working efficiently on her code, the matrix illusion was something she had acquired to avoid the constant reprimands of her lack of efficiency because of bathroom pauses or some time lost consulting a guide book, now as her virtual illusion kept working hard she used a back door on the system to access the matrix outside the building, doing a quick search about the kawaru and Yomi Island. Her stomach turned as she kept reading about the secrecy that the government kept around the subject, the island was under a permanent blockade with a no fly zone around and even using low power lasers to prevent satellites from taking pictures of the island.The idea of reintegration was a lie, no one that had ever got to the island had been seen again, but the emperor kept pumping nuyens and researchers on the island, this was a much bigger project than they tried to make it appear. She was browsing through dozens of histories similar to hers, ponies and even a few horses that had lost relatives to the kawaru and tried to locate them desperately, when she felt a hoof on her shoulder. She quickly deactivated her chip and closed her illegal navigation, returning to reality in an instant. “Page-san, the director wants to talk with you.” The beautiful white horse mare said in a quiet voice that sounded proper and delicate as was expected from a mare around here, Access wondered if she had undergone any surgery to have such a perfect tone. She unplugged and followed the female quietly, one floor up and into a room bigger than her house she found project director, a big blue coated colt horse, with a SIN mark on his flank that showed the emblem of the Hayraku company, his title of project director and his SIN number in beautiful stylized scarlet numbers. She on the other hand had only a simple SIN mark with the company logo, her rank of programmer and her SIN number in blocky black letters. “Mrs. Page, I have been informed of you recent loss and want to give you my condolences.” “Condolences?”She inquired. “Of course, I just heard the news of your brother.” “But he is not dead.” “Of course not, but I also asked for you here to give some good news! We are relocating you to the arcology project.” “The arcology project? But…” She wanted to complain, to say that she wanted to stay, but it would all be considered rude and impolite; and in the traditionalist Neighpon if there was one thing that you didn’t wanted was to be impolite. “You will be moving by the final of the week, pack your things, the company will be paying for two entire boxes for you! You will receive your passage and the data on your new apartment and project soon.” “Thanks, mister Uma-san.” She bowed her head and walked back to her cubicle and to her code. Access Page arrived in her apartment at the same time she arrived almost every day, took off her brown faux leather coat and hang it on the back of the door and took a quick shower, taking care not to use too much of her allotted water ration and then she simply sit on the floor, the felling that her brother was missing, that for the traditionalists neighponeses he was as good as dead. Being transferred to the arcology project was a way for them to distance her shame from the rest of the office; no one would want to have the sister of a kawaru in the team. She knew that if she sited quiet and be a good pony eventually they would allow her back in the main offices, out of her exile in the ponylands and back into the civilized society, back into the track to a glamorous office job… Well, as glamorous a job as any pony could expect to have not being a horse. She got up slowly, still uncertain of what she would do and picked her old cyberdeck, the deck was much inferior from what she was used to have in her work, she caressed the scared surface, covered in adhesives that tried to hide all the scratches. Smiled, remembering her brother’s constant insistence to get a new cyberdeck, something lean and mean where he could play all the new trid games. She plugged herself in, before she ended lost in more memories. In the matrix she started researching the sites she had seen during the day, saving a few of the photos and files to her deck and trying to dig more, spending a few nuyens in some pay databases to acquire a few old photos of the island, from before the construction of the research center and habitat. She even logged into the Hayraku grid and used the backdoor that she knew to enter the maneframe and access some data; it was mostly economic data, payments from the Neighponese empire to the Hayraku for two heavy companies of their red samurais. She was lost in her research when a ringing noise announced a new message; she opened it in a window at her side, keeping at her research. “Hey, Page!” A pony mare with orange coat, blue mane and eyes and a pair of big beautiful virtual, hoof sculpted, wings appeared in the windows. “Where is your brother? I have the new trideos he wanted, the ones about the Alicornfall!” “Azure… We need to talk.” Azure Skies swallowed dry. “Are you ok, Page?” “Yeah, I’m fine, the problem is with my brother, today he began kawaru. “By the goddesses! No, how could it happen?” Azure was one of the few that still believed in the goddesses. “I don’t know. I… They will not even allow me to see him! He will be locked in some stupid high security imperial prison in some forgotten island!” “I’m so sorry.” “Don’t be, you are not one of these pompous imperialists snobs… Ugh! I just… You know what they said to me in the work? My boss actually said “My condolences” like he was dead! Oh, but for them he doesn’t matter anymore, he was just some foreign pony anyway, right?” “Calm down, Page. How long have you been awake?” “Two days, more or less, I drank energetic and caught some naps here and there. That program you got me is being really useful.” “Great, but you need some real sleep and some real food in your system, not that cheap chemiched -up shit they have on the corporation’s cantina. I meet you in about one hour in your place, right?” “I’m really not on the mood to go out, Azure. I need to do a few things around here…” “Come on, Page! I don’t want you closed in your apartment all alone, surfing the matrix all the night. Let’s have a real talk, eat real food and drink real alcohol!” “Ok.” She sighed “Meet me here in thirty minutes.” One hour later the two ponies where in a small restaurant, eating noodles and drinking cheap, but genuine sake. Access Page was wearing one of her less dirty saddles, the Hayraku logo in a beautiful crimson and Azure Skies was wearing a black faux leather overcoat, her wings where tightly tugged under it so no one could notice them, she usually was very proud of her wings, even if it attracted lots of unwanted attention, but in a night like that she didn’t had the patience or the time to loose explaining to some stupid horse that she was not a whore. “And they sent you to the arcology project?” Azure asked loudly, a bit too drunk. “You know how they think around here, my shame would be their shame, and the only way for them to cleanse themselves is to take me away from the group.” Page drunk a long gulp of her sake. “I will be in the other side of the world.” Page said, tears in her eyes. “I promised I would protect him, but I’ll be on the other side of the world and can’t even send him a bucking letter!” “You could try making an appeal to the league of the nations, it can’t be right to imprison a pony like this!” Azure suggested. “They already tried, the Imperial board of genetics claimed that they are not prisoners, but patients and special measures must be taken to safeguard their lives. And it doesn’t matter anyway; they are doing the same thing everywhere! I have found cases like this here in Neighpon, Equestria, Tenochtitlan and even in Zebria.” “That’s sounds suspicious.” “I know! Some researchers say that it’s some kind of airborne virus, they call it Q-strain, but all around the governments are keeping a close lid on it; they lock anyone contaminated and after that no one sees them again.” “You have been researching about it?” “Yeah, I needed to know what happened to him, maybe discover if there was some cure abroad, some place where I could take him…” “Wait! You are not thinking in breaking him out, are you?” “Maybe… Look, I just know that there is something bad going on.” “Just don’t, if you try to do something they will catch and lock you before you can say “I want a lawyer!” You know what they do to ponies in this country.” “I can’t simply let him be imprisoned like that!” “Look, you and your brother where always like family to me, so I’m going to help you on this, just so you don’t end up in some prison for the rest of your life. Do you remember those imported trids I procured for your brother?” “Yeah, sure. He always loved those Zebrian shows.” “Well, I deal with more than just imported trids; I deal with almost every banned item in the import list.” “What?!” She exclaimed as she spit her sake. “Yes, choose your poison and I can arrange it for you, just last week I brought a good two kilos of blue bliss and some zebrian books across the border.” Access Page was coughing, she always knew that the mare hadn’t a regular job because of her wings; that she dealt in freelancer imports, but she never thought of her as a criminal. “The point is; I know ponies that can help you, but they are not going to be cheap. I’ll ask a few favors that they own me and see if there is something to do, but you must promise me that you will not do anything alone, right?” “Azure… Thanks! Thanks, I simply don’t know what to say.” “You don’t need to say anything, just take care ok? You and your brother were always there for me and in this life if we don’t care for each other, who will?” --------------------------------------- The club was different from what Access Page was used to frequent, in the few nights she had free, she had spent some hours on the company’s clubs, drinking and flirting, but this place was way different, it was located in the middle of a popular housing neighborhood, she had seen a few suspect people on the way, the kind of horses she had learned to be aware of during her mandatory self-defense course in her first month with Hayraku. Azure had given her a few advices to navigate around the place, she was dressed in one of her few saddles dresses that didn’t had a Hayraku logo and had taken with her only a small credstick with some nuyen, she had also covered her company mark on her flank with some dye, no one around was a huge fan of the corporations. The bouncer was a big buffalo wearing a black coat, he patted Access before charging her ten nuyen for the entrance, and she catches the glimpse of some metallic weapon under his coat. The place was loud and bright, neon lights and some quick paced music was booming on the place, several ponies and horses where dancing, the place felt cramped and hot, she swallowed dry and made her way to the back of the place where there was a few isolated booths, she entered in the number four. The room was cramped and there was already another pony there, a big colt pony with an amber coat and an unkempt golden mane, the glint of a datajack in his neck. "Mrs. Page?" "Yes and you are?" "Let’s keep it as Mrs. Pony for now. A friend said you had a job for me." "Yes, Azure Skies, she said that you could help me…" "First, you must understand a few rules." He interrupted her. "What we are doing here is illegal and so we need to maintain a certain level of secrecy and confidentiality. You will not talk about me in any way or device with your friends, for all intents and purpose you are only a lone corporate mare wanting some rough fun tonight, you will not even mention you have seen me here, do you understand?" "Yes. I’m not idiot." Access replied, rolling her eyes. His face lightened a bit, he even smiled a bit. "Good, but I feel safer getting this out of the way first, a few months ago I met with this corporate colt that wanted some dirt on his boss and he babbled all about it to one of his coworkers. In the end, I lost my safehouse and the idiot lost his job and now he “works” in some bath house to pay his bills." He emphasized the word “work” with air quotes. "I understand the risk and I really need this." "Great, with this out of the way, let’s talk about the job." "You would need to rescue my brother and take him to the arcology project where I’ll be living." -Right, it’s an extraction and transportation, plus a new set of documents. What kind of cult did he get into?Universal Sisterhood?Those weirdos that worship aliens?One of those Returning cults? "Yoma Island." Access said curtly. "Drek! That place is government and high security at that. They keep that place better locked than their old nukes; I heard that they have a permanent contract with the Red Samurais, high tech security gear…" "I compiled some data." Access said as she showed him one chip "Some photographs from satellite and all that I could gather about their security." "Well, this could be a start." He took the chip and put it in his coat. "But we will probably need to do a bit more of research, no offense, but we have contacts that you wouldn’t believe. But as far as I know, that has never been done." "So, it’s impossible?" "There is no impossible, but it’ll be expensive. I’m talking about a top-notch team, possibly a submarine and if he got out, he will be a fugitive. Are you sure you want to do this?" "Yes, I can’t let him on that island." "Right, I can assemble a team and procure the equipment, but it will be at least two hundred thousand nuyen." Access Page stared at him in silence. "I believe you don’t have the money for it?" "No." "I’m sorry, but I simply can’t work for free." "Can’t we arrange some kind of deal? I have about twenty thousand in my account." "That wouldn’t cover even the equipment." Page looked around, trying to think of some way. In truth she really didn’t owned much, most of her stuff was company property; she had dedicated her life to the company and hoped that they would protect her in her time of need. "I can give you data, lots of data." The colt looked at her, curious. "What kind of data are you talking about?" "Hayraku paydata." That got his attention. "How do you intend to do this?" "I can show you a backdoor into maneframe, I can give you access to all of it." The colt got up and paced around a bit, thinking and murmuring to himself. "Can I use my deck for a moment?" Access Page nodded and he took a small cyberdeck from his saddlebag, plugging quickly, while he was in the matrix she played with the table commands and choose a soycoffe, which was quickly delivered by a silent attendant. She sipped some of it and felt incredible surprised with the taste that almost resembled real coffee. Ten minutes later, the colt was disconnecting and she was on her third soy coffee. "Here’s what we gonna do. I’ll give you a special program that you are going to install in the maneframe, we will only start using it after you arrive at the arcology, so you don’t end up being caught and we will have access to all the data. But, even with constant access to their data, it’ll take some time to make enough nuyen to assemble and equip the team." "How much time?" "About a year, we need to go slow or they will find the leak. I’ll keep you updated; do you know how to use the shadowlands bbs?" Access winced, the idea of her brother locked in that place for a whole year was horrible, but it was the best she could do now. "No." "Here let me show you." Access Page watched as the colt tipped a series of commands in his deck, accessing the public grid and then into a host that appeared to be a simple restaurant, but that when he executed a specific command, redirect him to a secure host where they would be able to chat in privacy, before going out he also explained a few rules to her, like that the bbs was not a technical support board and that no one there wanted to be identified. "I’ll keep in touch, if you need to talk to me, just ask for Golden Watts." ---------------------------- The next day Access Page woke up early, washed her face and eaten a soyapple, putting one of her old Hayraku’s branded coats, trotted to the train station and arrived in the Hayraku complex in her usual time, took an elevator, made some small talk with a few other ponies and horses in her way to her cubicle, sit in her place and turned on her cyberdeck. She looked around, breathing nervously. "Calm down, it’s just another day as usual." She said to herself, taking a deep breath and plugging in the matrix. The matrix version of the office was a replica of the real world, she looked around and could see one big horse samurai in red armor in a corner, she knew he was I.C., a program designed to take out intruders. She plugged her special chip and an illusion of her started working on her code. She quickly changed her avatar, a stallion horse, something that wouldn’t call for attention. She walked to the virtual elevator, she hated to walk in the matrix, it was always so slow, usually you were allowed to teletransport or even fly and avatars of pegasi, unicorns and even kirins were common, but inside the Hayraku complex’s matrix none of these things were allowed, every avatar should be a representation of the employee and everyone walked everywhere because that was the way they commanded. She walked into a virtual elevator, giving nervous glances around to be sure there was no one around, she pressed one button on the panel and waited for a few seconds while the elevator arrived. Then a mare arrived, one of the white coated horses, her body delicately crafted by surgery to be the ideal of beauty the stallions almost worshiped, she was small, fragile, silent, eyes and mane of a deep black and her coat was as pure a white as the casing on the new cyberdecks Hayraku Snow -6, which was curious, because snow wasn’t really white, it was more of a grayish and black. "Good morning, mister horse." The mare said in her beautiful voice. She swallowed dry and tried not to look at the mare, her real body was sweating cold. As the elevator arrived she entered nervously, afraid of even touching the mare, even though she wouldn’t really feel anything. The mare touched the button that would take her to one of the upper floors, she couldn’t press the button to the maneframe, she simply didn’t had the authorization, so she as casually as she could pressed the button to the common area, which of course came as nervous and clumsy. "Are you fine, mister horse-sam?" Page nodded quickly, she hadn’t bothered with changing her voice, one world would ruin her disguise and the mare would call security, being caught with the spyware with her, she would be fired or worst. She gave one pass back, as the elevator moved she started tracing the mare, carefully putting one mark on her. "You don’t talk a lot; do you, horse-sam?" She said in her melodic voice and her pronunciation had only a small hint of an accent. Access wondered if the mare liked being like that, modified to accommodate some stallion’s ideas of a perfect mare. Page nodded once more, working quickly on putting two more marks on her as stealthily as she could, hopping that the mare didn’t knew a lot about cyberdecks and hacking to notice the marks. Felling a knot on her throat she pulled the plug on the mare, forcing her cyberdeck to reboot and taking her out of the system. She sighed in relief and using a brute force hack she subverted the elevator routine to take her to the maneframe. She walked inside the room, she could see the enormous machine that was the virtual representation of the maneframe with giant cables and bright blue cable flashed as data was accessed. She walked to one of the terminals, she did a quick research, looking for a file that no one would be prone to use, normally she would try and hide the spyware in the core of computer, a place where no regular user would look for or dare to mess, but hacking the maneframe core was a big risk, so she settled for some obscure file with some ridiculously long name, she requested the file and in less than one second it was in her hooves. In the matrix form followed function, so when she loaded the spyware it looked like a big radio-transmitter, she clicked a few buttons on her deck and loaded a wrapper program, quickly changing its appearance for a regular file, she fused it together with the file with the long name and put it back on maneframe, breathed deeply and made her way back to her working station, where her illusion was still working hard on her code as if nothing had happened. The next day, she was certain that they were going to bust her, throw her in some goddess forgotten jail and it would be the end, but the day progressed as normal, she worked her regular sixteen hours and got back home to a quick dinner and sleep. The days flied as she divided her time between her works and packaging her few possessions for the trip, Azure Skies was always around, forcing her to eat and sleep, even acquiring a basic equestrian chip for her to train the tongue. She didn’t see Golden Watts again in meat-space, but they talked in the shadowlands, he was just waiting her to get out of the country to start siphoning data. She also started to read the board, even though she didn’t have any experience to share with those ponies that risked their lives for profit. When the day of the travel finally arrived, she finished her day in the company, cleaned her deck and table and got a train to the airport. Usually there would be a party or some small celebration, but she was already tainted by the shame of her brother’s demise and they simply wanted to have her away as soon as possible. Her two small boxes where already sent ahead by the company, so all that she had with her was her usual saddle bag with a few necessities as she boarded the suborbital. The flight had been quick, just under three hours to travel half a world and now she was waiting in the international Canterlot airport, the next part of the trip would be made by a Hayraku helicopter that was supposed to arrive in about thirty minutes. She turned her comlink on, reviewed a few new messages and without nothing else to do, she started looking outside to the old city, its buildings that once where some of the biggest on the country where now diminished by the big Hayraku black office building and the even bigger Ahuizotechnology obsidian pyramid. "First time in Canterlot?" A striking pony mare with a light purple fur and a short stilled light blue mane said as she watched the city next to Page. "Yes, in fact it’s my first time out of Neighpon." Access replied, smiling gently, hopping that strange mare to go away. "You are going to love here; by the way my name is Aura, security in the arcology project and you?" "Access Page, programmer on the arcology." Page felt a lump of ice in her stomach; the other mare was one of the corporative cops! The purple mare smiled. "I knew you were one of those eggheads! Hey, if you got bored of all those zeros and ones, give me a call, I can show you all the best places on the city and I talking about the real city, not that sanitized crap they show you on touristic tours." "Are you from here?" She looked around, trying to remain calm, was there other officers around, did they knew something already? "Oh yes! Born and raised in Poniville, believe me, I see it all, grew up in the middle of Apples and zebras, before landing a job with Hayraku." "It’s true what they say about the violence around the arcology?" "Kind, most of the locals don’t like the project and after all this is the city where all that Apple thing started, they still have pride in it and resist corporate influence. There are also the zebras, you know how they are. Maybe the worst of the bunch are the diamond dogs, we brought them here to help with the underground part of the construction, but they spent all their nuyen and now are vagrants that can’t even get back to their reservations. There are also the gryphons, but they usually kept to themselves." "Why don’t they build that thing back in Neighpon them?" "Land is cheaper around here and they wouldn’t be able to mount the four nuclear generators that power it in Neighpon, they have strict regulations on this kind of technology." "Wait! What?" "I suppose you didn’t know about the reactors?" Page shook her head. "Yeah, Equestria is one of the few places with loose enough regulations for nuclear contamination. Hayraku expects to prove that the reactors are completely secure with a functional arcology here. Besides it’s close to the Tenochtitlan’s border, you know how the top guys like to rub it in their faces." Then the announcer called their flight. "Hey, it’s our flight, are you coming?" "Just a moment, I want to check my emails before." "Right, see you there." Aura trotted to the boarding gate and Access Page picked her portable deck and connected it to the airport’s grid, accessing her email account and quickly checking the shadowlands bbs, there was a single message from Golden Watts. “They found us.”