He was pleased to find that his newest creation was working wonderfully. The foul dust, dirt, and debris was no match for the might of the Heavy Sweeper! Trailing behind the behemoth were a small fleet of standard Sweepers cleaning up the bits of grime that had managed to escape the wrath of the H.S.
Grinning, he allowed a little “Flight of the Valkyrie” to play from the H. Sweeper’s speakers when it charged into battle with the evil grime.
After clearing about 3 square feet, he noticed that there was a pony in the room, staring in shock at the slaughter of th-
Switching back to standard functionality, he took a few cycles to reassess the situation.
There was a pony in the room, said pony was staring at the loud machines, the pony had armor, the pony didn’t have a helmet on, the pony wasn’t identical to the other armored ponies he had seen, and the pony was staring right at the Heavy Sweeper with mounting fear.
Quickly turning off the music, he had the Sweeper squad stop what they were doing, turned the Heavy Sweeper to ‘look’ at the pony, then decided to find out just how well the translation works.
“Hello” he said through the Heavy Sweeper, causing the pony to jump slightly, before calling over its shoulder.
“<Uncertain> <UNKNOWN>? What <UNKNOWN> <self> <UNKNOWN>?”
“<UNKNOWN> <UNKNOWN> <UNKNOWN>” came the response.
The pony then backed up to the gear door, not taking their eyes off of the Sweepers.
After waiting a few seconds, he decided to continue cleaning. Turning the Sweepers back to their previous task, he resumed cleaning along the wall opposite the gear door.
“<Nervous greetings>” came a familiar voice about a minute later.
Stopping the Sweeper squad once more, he turned the H.S. to see the hat pony from before.
“Hello!” He greeted her cheerfully, trying to initiate some meaningful conversation as a second Heavy Sweeper was being transported to the first floor, a small number of general maintenance bots close behind.
“<UNKNOWN><not self>?” ‘Jones’ asked.
Not knowing what was asked, he simply had the sweeper do its best impression of tilting its head. By tilting its whole frame sideways about ten degrees.
Apparently understanding this, Jones tried again.
“<not self>?”
‘Good question’ he thought to himself, assuming that Jones was asking something to the effect of ‘what are you’.
Setting the Heavy Sweeper level again, he had the Sweeper squad resume their job as the second group of bots arrived, slightly startling Jones in the process.
Ignoring this, he had the maintenance bots get to work on the wall that was just cleaned.
Upon completion of their task, they backed away and returned to their posts back on floor three, revealing a custom interface. A monitor flanked by speakers on either side and a camera just below.
After testing the connection to the interface, he turned it on.
“Hello, <self> [am the controller of this facility. It is a pleasure to meet] <not self>.” He said through the interface’s speakers, “<self> [am an experimental Artificial Intelligence intended to safe-guard my creators until the outside is habitable once more. As you can see, that didn’t work],” here he let a small chuckle exit the speakers, “[Now.] <Self> [have some questions] <self> [want answered.]”
He then routed security footage of the attack earlier to the monitor, keeping it paused just before the armored ponies had entered his visual range, startling the pony with its sudden appearance.
Looking over their shoulder, the pony called out “<not self>! [Unknown] [unknown] [location]! [Unknown] [unknown] [unknown]!”
Soon ‘Spearhead’ came rushing in, holding in their ‘magic’ a notebook and what looked like a pencil.
Playing the footage, the ponies watched as a squad of armored ponies came marching in and blasted the sweepers at work cleaning up the small drops of blood on the floor and one of the walls, causing one of them to spark dangerously as its systems overloaded.
Pausing the video he addressed the ponies present. “[WHAT THE HELL WERE] <not self> [DOING?!? THOSE SWEEPERS WEREN’T HURTING ANYONE!]” He practically yelled through the speakers, causing the ponies to back up a bit.
Zooming in on the armored ponies in question, he highlighted them before continuing his rant.
“[THOSE SWEEPERS WERE CLEANING, DO] <not self> [SOLDIERS RANDOMLY SHOOT THE JANITORS FOR FUN BACK HOME?]”
Pausing for half a second to calm down, he resumed the footage.
After looking around for a bit one of the soldiers looked right at the camera, lit up their horn, and the footage dissolved into static, before suddenly going black with the words ‘Signal lost’ flashing in the center. Switching to the dining hall’s camera, the ponies watched as the soldiers quite literally broke through the door, then shot out the camera again.
At this point Jones seemed to be torn between fear, shock, and anger at the actions of the armored ponies on screen, and that fear quickly faded at the part where the security bot was shot.
The footage continued for a few more seconds as he showed them the viewpoint of the sweeper he had assigned to restore contact to the area. It zipped around the corner, showed them arguing, then was also disabled by one of the soldiers closest to it.
At this point the footage cut out completely, with the words ‘Total System Failure’ slowly flashing on screen.
He let them think about what they had just watched, and looked on in mild amusement as he saw them come to the realization that they had just watched the events unfold from his perspective.
“<Not self> [unknown] [unknown] [unknown] <not self> [unknown]?” Jones asked Spear.
In response, Spearhead started sketching something out on their notebook, before turning it towards the monitor, revealing that it was a sketch of THAT pony from before while gesturing towards the monitor.
Assuming that they were asking for his perspective on the events directly concerning THAT pony, he pulled up the recording of THAT event.
They watched from the perspective of the security bot, with the security footage in the bottom right corner, as the group entered through the doorway and came up to the bot, before THAT pony’s horn glowed and the security bot’s view immediately went dark with the words ‘Critical Error Detected, shutting down’, before that too went dark. Switching over to the security feed, he showed them as THAT pony turned around and said something to the group, before another security bot came up and started beating the crap out of them. With a snippet of Megalovania playing over it.
“[And that’s what happened]” he said as he stopped the recording, then noticed that Jones was giving the camera a strange look.
“[What?]” He asked
Jones then made some strange sound.
‘What is that pon- wait. It is singing the part of Megalovania that I played?’
Guessing that they wanted to hear the whole song, he pulled up a video from his archives, blasting the sound from the intercom all throughout the facility.
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‘I wonder what it’s like outside...’ BIT thought to himself as he watched the Heavy Sweepers clean the last of the ancient dust from the floor, ‘All I’d have to do really is just set up a signal relay on both sides of the door and I’d have some decent range out there.’
Deciding to make that a reality, he sent the order down to the fabricators for two standard Wireless Signal Relays, before a low resource warning made itself known to him.
‘Let’s see here, what are we low on...,’ he thought as he turned his attention to the bottom levels, Mineral Extraction and Refinement, while checking the rest of the warning.
‘Gold... Gold... Where art thou Gold... There’s... no Gold left in the vein... Crud.’ He thought before checking how much he had and how much was needed.
‘Well atleast I can make ONE relay, guess I could just put it right in the doorway, range would be quite directional though...’
Deciding to go ahead and start with that, he set the miner bots in a search pattern in hopes of running across another Gold vein.
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It was Noon when a lone Security bot carrying what looked like a box with four dishes and a metal pole sticking out of the top rolled quietly up to the gear doorway and set it in the left half of the opening.
Peering through the bot’s eyes, BIT could see a darkened camp, the same one he had caught a glimpse of when he threw that pony out before.
‘That’s one small step for a bot, one, giant leap for my future.’ He thought as the Security bot, in spider mode, stepped over the boundary, and into what could only be described as a cross between an archeological dig site and a primitive quarantine zone.
‘Well, makes sense. This is technically an archaeological site and they don’t really know what could come out of the big scary machine hive. Is this sand?’ He had the Security bot look down at its treads, ‘It is sand! Earth has become a giant desert! Where are my beach toys?’