The next few days passed by in much the same way. The strange shapes would enter around, according to his internal clock, 2 AM, move around for a while, then leave several hours later. Sometimes there would be more shapes, sometimes less, but the shapes always came.
‘Perhaps they’re some form of intelligent life? Plenty of time HAS passed for intelligent life to have re-evolved and a form of civilization to have been built, so maybe they’re archeologists, investigating the things that the ‘Forerunners’ left behind. I wonder if they know that the ‘Forerunners’ blew themselves up?’ He considered the possibility and decided that either humanity had survived and had taken forever to finally regain its footing, the shapes are some new species that evolved sapience, or there was some facility elsewhere that had an AI that wasn’t trapped as he was.
Regardless, he wasn’t naïve, he did have an old security bot fixed up and waiting on the other side of the door leading from the entrance to the rest of the facility in case they were looters or otherwise hostile.
It was because of this security bot that he picked up the sound of knocking. Switching over to the security bot, his view changed from fuzzy moving shapes to the crisp image of the reinforced door leading to the entrance. He had tried to break it down or otherwise open it, but not only was it strong, his primary instructions was to protect the facility, not destroy it and as such, he was literally unable to damage it. However, protocol allowed others to forcefully open doors in the case of a malfunction or emergency, just not him.
The door then became enveloped in a strange aura, which was a light shade of blue he noted idly, and began to open by itself.
He quickly had the security bot roll back a bit and made it externally appear to be inactive, then activated the emergency lights, casting the room in a dim, green light, making it seem as if the place had been inactive for a long time.
As the door opened, he noticed the dust floating in the air coming from outside and made a note to have the scrubbers run through the area later. He also used the ventilation systems to take samples of the air coming in, noting that the Oxygen levels were higher than the defaults. So, like a good host, he discreetly increased Oxygen production and began slowly cycling it throughout the facility. If whatever on the other side was biological, the Oxygen levels from outside would most likely be preferable to the levels inside.
After all that was done, (which only took a second, darn sampling took forever), he returned to observing the door, recording all information for more in-depth processing at a later date.
Once the door was about a quarter of the way open, he started hearing sounds coming from the other side. Running them past all known languages in his data banks, he found that none of them were an exact match, although there were several partial matches.
After the door was half open, he was able to see what was on the other side. The first thing he noticed was that the entrance was in ruins! Tables broken down and decayed, desks rusted and broken, monitors that once hung proudly on the wall lay broken and shattered on the floor. His heart ached. If only he had been able to get to that room then it wouldn’t have suffered such a fate.
Tearing his attention away from the sorry state of the room, he was finally able to see what the blurry shapes were.
'Is that a unicorn in an archeologists outfit?’ was his first thought upon seeing the creatures, ‘And what is that pegasus doing with an Indiana Jones hat?’ was his second.
Quickly recovering from his shock (he just filed it under “figure out later”), he quickly took note of a number of things. First was that the unicorn’s horn was glowing the same color as the door. Thus, he determined, the unicorn was somehow able to manipulate objects non-directly. AKA, Telekinesis. Second was that the unicorn’s coat color was a shade of green and it was about the same size as a large dog. Third was that its horn was a lot smaller compared to its body than the unicorns of legend. Fourth was that its eyes were not only larger than a horse that size’s should be but were closed, presumably because it was exerting itself. Apparently, biologicals tended to close their eyes when exerting large amounts of effort for some reason. Fifth, pegasus’s coat was a shade of brown, its wings were folded at its side, and it wasn’t looking at the door, but appeared to be looking past it, presumably on the lookout for dangers. Sixth, that was totally an Indiana Jones hat on its head, and finally that it was quite a bit brighter out there than in here, so he doubted that they could see what was beyond the door at the time.
Upon completion of these observations he decided to designate the creatures as ‘ponies’ and label them as sapient, judging by the clothing.
It was at this point that the ponies managed to get the door all the way open and were both peering into the dimly lit hallway, probably waiting for their eyes to adjust or something.
‘Oh come on! Just go in! That security bot’s not going to try and rip out your spine or something! Assuming you have spines… that brings up the question of biology. Are their similarities to the equines of long ago only aesthetic or are their internals similar as well?’
Finally it seemed as though their eyes had adjusted as they appeared to take notice of the security bot that was literally five feet away from them, judging by how they jumped back and began talking quite animatedly. Realizing that this was the perfect opportunity to begin figuring out their language he started up the translation sub-system that he had made a minute ago, eager to see how well it worked.
Shortly after the activation of the sub-system, the unicorn’s horn lit up with a light blue aura and he could see through one of the security cameras that the security bot was enveloped in a similar field. Eager to see what would happen to the security bot, he was somewhat disappointed when nothing happened as the aura faded away and the unicorn began saying something to their companion. He was kind of hoping that the unicorn would have tried to crush it, if only to help determine the potential power output of the unicorn’s telekinesis.
Seeming to be satisfied by something (translating words wasn’t the only thing the sub-system was designed to translate), the two ponies carefully walked into the hallway and around the unmoving security bot. He was tempted to have it turn to track them, but figured that would only spook them.
Watching them slowly walk down the hallway, he noticed that the unicorn was taking notes about something while looking around. Sadly, he couldn’t get a good angle on what the unicorn was writing so he couldn’t get more data on how their language worked.
So focused on trying to get a good view he failed to notice that one of the scrubbers wasn’t hiding but rather was following them, cleaning up their foot (hoof?) prints until the ponies had noticed it and were looking at it, possibly with either fear or curiosity.
Taking direct control over it, he had it stop and “look” up at them. After about a minute of the stare down, the pegasus slowly extended its hoof and deliberately made a hoof print in front of it. Deciding to humor the pony, he had the sweeper roll up, clean up the hoof print, then retreat back to where it was moments ago.
He wasn’t idle during the stare-down however, and had decided to show them something that, if they were archeologists, they would probably want to see.
Reengaging the security bot, he had it roll down the hall towards the equines, who seemed to be talking about the sweeper, if their gesturing towards it was anything to go by. This quickly stopped when they apparently heard the sound of treads.
Instead of stopping, he had the security bot roll right past them and, in a bout of playfulness, grabbed the pegasus’s hat, ignored the shout of surprise, increased the bot’s speed, and had it zoom off with its prize.
Upon reaching the end of the hallway, he had the security bot turn around as the door was opening and played through it’s speakers "Come take it back!", before turning back and zooming into the dining hall. He was sure that Valve didn’t mind considering that they were long gone.
Seeing that the pegasus was chasing the security bot, and the unicorn seemed to be chasing the pegasus, he began playing a certain song through the bot, all but laughing at the pony’s response. The pegasus didn’t seem to react that much to the music as it was more focused on chasing the bot, but the unicorn had stopped in the middle of the room, watching them run around in various patterns, zipping around and in one case over, the circular tables that took up most of the room.
The song ended as he had the security bot, still clutching its prize in its three fingered hand, shoot off deeper into the facility, towards a very specific room. Of course it wasn’t all just fun and games, as this had given him a perfect opportunity to study the pegasus as it had started flying about halfway through the chase.
‘Okay, I’m going to have to figure this mess out later. How the HECK can something that heavy fly with such small wings?’ He wondered before filing it away, then noticing that the file it was placed into was getting quite large.
‘Alright, time to end this. Loading up the song, activating the gardener bot, song loaded, sending to PA system, lighting is properly set up so it gets steadily brighter without hurting their eyes, and they’re on their way. Time to speed up the security bot so it gets there and has time to give the hat back without the pegasus slamming into it.’
At this point the unicorn had resumed its chase after its friend, and speaking of friend. He watched as the security bot tore into the garden, coming to a screeching halt, before turning around and holding out the hat to the pegasus that had entered behind it, clearly tired from the little game.
He watched with dying enthusiasm as the pegasus looked up at the security bot angrily, before snatching its hat from the bot’s grasp just at the unicorn walked in, seeming stunned by the fact that there were plants growing inside, what he assumed would be to it, an old and very strange temple.
Watching as the unicorn said something to the pegasus, who started to respond before suddenly cutting off, apparently finally noticing its surroundings, he prepared to begin playing the song that he had picked out for this.
The unicorn cautiously walked around the security bot, before jumping back as the gardener bot came out of its socket and began tending to the flowers. Tearing its eyes away from the gardener bot, it wasn’t long before it noticed the small metal plate in the ground.
‘Well, time to do this’ he thought as he began to quietly play his father’s favorite song.
The song started so quietly that the equines didn’t even notice it as they slowly approached the plate. It wasn’t until they were right in front of it that the pegasus took notice of the fact that there was music being played, quickly pointing it out to its friend.
After listening to it for a bit, the unicorn’s horn lit up, as did the metal plate. Slightly worried as to what might happen; he prepared the security bot to pacify the pony if it was going to remove the plate. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case as soon the glow stopped and the unicorn slowly turned its head to its companion and softly said something, before both started looking around again, apparently seeing the place differently.
‘Maybe the unicorn was able to read it somehow and now knows that the plate is a tombstone for father?’ He wondered, ‘I hope so.’
The ponies stayed in the room for a few more minutes, looking around and taking notes on the different plants around, before turning to the still open door and started to go through it, before being stopped by the security bot.
“Now what host would I be if I did not accompany you to the door?” He said through the bot’s speakers before leading them down the path they had entered through.
After leading them out, he watched as they kept glancing back at the security bot while they made their way out through the gear shaped doorway that lead to the outside world.
‘I hope you come back. I don’t want to lose my new friends’ he thought to himself as the powered down the security bot, not bothering moving it to a charging port, given that its battery still had plenty of power left, and went to help the translation subroutine with its work.