//------------------------------// // ( 6 ) The Windows Have Eyes [10th Floor] // Story: Equus Metamorphosis // by boardgamebrony //------------------------------// The tenth floor of Technomancer Industries was marked by silence down the half-lit hallways of endless pods. Numbers spanned across the top of each upright pod in ascending order and curved around corners at various intervals on the right and the left. The ceilings were high and arched in a way which reminded Armin of a cathedral. His and Pinkie’s steps echoed through the lone hallways as security cameras lined the ceilings. "It's been a really long day. I figured this would be a good place to think," Armin said. His voice was naturally quiet in the presence of stillness. Pinkie looked up at the forms of Pod Pals resting. “Are these all waiting to be commissioned?” “No, they’re just the outer shells,” Armin said. “This is the showroom floor. Every single model the company has is represented here.” Armin walked up to the nearest one and stared at the closed-eye form inside. “This is where I chose the shell of a body that you wear today.” Pinkie stood still and looked down the corridor. “I’ve never been here.” “I stood here for hours each day for three days straight trying to decide if you were the right one for me. I probably spent more time in here than the average employee. Five workers might have come in here during the time I was examining these sleeping beauties.” He put his hand on the pod of a lilac pony with wings and a horn. The eyes opened as if they were shaking off sleep. They stared at Armin with compassion. “Whoa!” Pinkie said as she stepped back. “I thought this was a show room. I didn’t know they were actual Pod Pals.” “They’re not,” Armin said as he removed his hand. Seconds later, the eyes closed slowly and the face resumed its usual sleeping position. “They’re only the frames with a small motor that controls the eyes and motion-tracks whoever looks at them through a central computer.” He stared at the sleeping image of the pony. “Strange how that’s all it takes to connect with one of them.” Pinkie put her hands on two pony pods at once and closed her eyes. Both a mint green pony and a yellow pony with candy-striped hair stared forward. They looked around when they recognize Pinkie with her eyes closed and then stopped their stares on each other. Pinkie opened her eyes slightly and saw both of them looking at each other. She released her hands and stared for a moment at both faces that turned to track her now-open eyes as they shut back into sleep. “Did you really stand here for hours just staring at these?” “There’s something psychologically gratifying about being the one who awakens them.” He laughed. “Miss Noble definitely has a flair for the dramatic. How well do you know your customer base when this is the type of showroom you have for your consumers?” “Bring your fantasies to life,” Pinkie Pie. “I think that’s the subconscious feeling here.” The two walked down the hallway in silence, looking at characters of all shapes and sizes seemingly asleep in their stasis. Every now and then, Pinkie would drag a finger over a case to watch the eyes slit-open before her hand away as the eyes closed again. The two stopped in front of a large white pony with a body slightly bigger than all the others. Gold regalia lined its neck and hooves. The wings curled over the front and protectively hovered over the body. A crown topped the head above the elongated horn. “Celestia,” Pinkie said. “This is the basic style of the Pod Pal frame SYS-TER has.” “Basic?” Armin asked. “Well, I guess that makes sense. Who knows how many upgrades a building overseer has.” Pinkie placed her palm on the pod. The eyes of Princess Celestia opened slowly and gazed back at her with a loving expression. “I can’t get used to this,” Pinkie said. “My system keeps telling me these are Pod Pals stuck in there, even though I know they’re not.” “Then you’re more human than you know,” Armin said. “I feel exactly the same way when I look at them.” The Celestia face turned to look at him. “She a Mother Pod you know,” Armin said, turning back to Pinkie. “Over the past five years, the company has donated almost a hundred Celestia Pod Pals to orphanages across the country. Each Celestia functions as a mother figure for all the children. They watch over them during play. They help mediate disputes between students. They read to them at night. And they never get tired. With the exception of a weekly recharge period, they never sleep. Every single orphanage has reported a massive increase in morale since the inclusion of a Mother Pod into their staff.” Pinkie watched the eyes of the Celestia Pod Pal track her gaze. Armin spoke again. “Do you know how advanced a Mother Pod’s logic systems have to be in order to keep track of hundreds of ever-changing individual children psychologically and emotionally? She has to update that information on-the-fly. There are child psychologists whose level of effectiveness can’t match the Celestia Pod.” Pinkie nodded. “Some humans might find that scary.” “Humans always find intelligence scary, if they’re ignorant,” Armin said as he shook his head. “But if you’re a learned person, finding someone else who displays exceptional intelligence is liberating.” Armin sighed. “That’s one of the reasons I cherish you so much, Pinkie. You match me at every level and exceed it in some cases. I’ve never found anyone else who can even come close.” Pinkie released her hand from the Celestia pod. “Why did you pick me, Armin?” She turned and scanned the corridor full of pods. “There are almost two hundred and fifty choices here. Why was I the one?” Armin crossed his arms as he fell into deep thought. He stared at the eyes of the Celestia Pod as she turned her gaze to him. There was almost a sense of knowing in those eyes. “I've thought about that. This entire past year, ever since I first saw you, I've wondered why you're so different than all the others. I want to tell you some profound thing that will help you understand it all. But the truth is, after all this time, I still don't know." He eyed a Pinkie Pie Pod Pal directly across from Celestia's Pod. "I remember standing in a mall and seeing an advertisement about Pod Pals with my mother. It was just six characters from the show. And your form was one of them. I just saw it and thought ‘That’s who I want to be my friend.’ But I can’t explain why.” “You could’ve picked Twilight and had a bookworm friend to help you study,” Pinkie said. “You could’ve had the hardworking Applejack, or the sweet and kind Fluttershy. Rarity could’ve boosted your self-confidence to unimaginable heights. Who knows how inspirational Rainbow Dash could’ve been!” “Yeah…but I picked you,” he said. Pinkie looked up at the form of her doppleganger resting close-eyed in the pod before her. She moved to touch the edge and then held her hand away. "I've always wondered if I was unique." She turned to Armin. "That if I wasn't the Pinkie whom you had chosen, like say you picked another of the same model, then would you have cared about them about much as you care about me?" "I don't know. But answer me this: Are all Pinkie Pie models derived as copies from the same Pinkie personality file?" "No," Pinkie shook her head. "There are a set of traits randomly generated within each Pinkie Pie within a certain range of possibilities for each variable. It's so no two will ever be the same. That's good for individuality, but it makes my question even harder. It means that maybe, just maybe, I got lucky when they rolled the dice for me. That maybe one of the reasons you like me is because all the right numbers lined up during that moment of creation." "That's possible but..." Armin thought. "Doesn't seem right. Like the explanation is still missing something." “But why am I so special?” Pinkie asked. Her voice had a hint of frustration. “I have to know what you like about me. If I knew that, I could make it even better.” “Pinkie,” Armin said as he walked over to her and held her close. “There are so many things I like about you, but you can’t quantify them down into personality traits that you can check off a list.” “Yes you can!” Pinkie said. “You can quantify everything with numbers and lists!” Armin smiled and laughed a little. “Are you sure you don’t have a little bit of Twilight Sparkle in you?” She made a sly smile and laughed a bit at herself. “Heh, I guess I am changing from the basic Pinkie core programming.” Her eyes widened as she stared behind Armin. “That can’t be right.” “What?” He said. “My facial recognition software is detecting hundreds of eyes looking at us.” Armin looked past Pinkie Pie at the several dozen heads they passed, now turned towards them with eyes open. He flipped his gaze to the ones behind him and saw the entire corridor with open-eyed faces staring in his direction. “Um…” Pinkie said. “Should we leave?” “Wait,” Armin said. He turned back to the Celestia Pod. “I knew there was a reason the eyes didn’t close when you removed your hand.” He looked up and saw a security camera. “Of course.” A voice laughed over an intercom above them. “HAH!” it said in a short burst of joy. “You should have seen the look on your faces when you saw the look on all of mine!” Pinkie yelled. “SYS-TER! That was not funny!” Her eyes narrowed. “SYS-TER?” The voice said again. “That’s who you think this is? Oh, has she been messing with you? I’ll have a talk with her later.” The two partners looked around at the vast corridors of eyes. Armin held Pinkie’s hand. “Pinkie, I need you to use your facial recognition software to scan for a face outside of the pattern on the walls. Find anything out of the ordinary.” “Got it!” She said slowly turning and examining every corner. She stopped and pointed. “Who’s that?” Armin spun around. In the distant darkness just beyond a spotlight atop a Jensen Pod, Armin saw a head sneak back behind a corridor. A very large head with very bright, peering eyes. “What…the hell was that?” he asked. “W-We should definitely leave.” The voice spoke up again. “Oh no no no!” the now-decidedly masculine voice said. “I so rarely have visitors. Please stay.” The voice feigned an apologetic tone. “I promise I’ll be nice.” Pinkie stood back-to-back with Armin as she spoke. “Something tells me that isn’t a promise we can expect them to keep.” “I don’t get it,” Armin said as he reached down and pressed a button next to his knees, arming emergency healing fluid in his leg crutches in case he needed to make a quick exit. “I don’t understand how something like this could’ve gotten past security!” “That is the conundrum, isn’t it?” the voice said. “How did I possibly get past all the big bad Techno-whatever guys downstairs?” Pinkie whispered to Armin. “Start moving towards the elevator.” “I can hear you!” the voice yelled from down a different corridor on the side, now closer to the pair. “What do you want?” Armin asked. He started pushing Pinkie towards the exit and then saw the cameras tracking his move. A wireless message came up on his tablet. it said. The message was sent from SYS-TER. Pinkie returned. “I just want to talk, honestly,” the voice said. “You know how lonely it is down here?” Armin and Pinkie turned to see a massive form slink around the edge of the light. The body was not bipedal like all the others. It walked on four limbs, almost like a panther. Its form suggested something much more dangerous. The eyes were bright yellow with red laser-like pupils. SYS-TER sent as a response. Pinkie chimed up first. “So…if you’re lonely then…let’s talk,” Pinkie said. “How can you control all the heads in here?” “Simple,” the voice said. “I’m connected to every one of the eye inputs in the room. Any one of their motion tracking software goes off and I know instantly where you are.” Armin typed a message into the tablet and showed it to Pinkie without sending it. She responded. She hugged Armin, crawled up between the glass of two pods and unscrewed the light bulb above them. The light went out and Armin fell into complete darkness. The voice responded. “Oh that’s sneaky. Maybe I can’t see you now, but the moment you move out of that darkness, I’ll spot you. And it’s not like you can go anywhere. You’re surrounded by light!” Pinkie crawled atop a pod and unscrewed another bulb. Then moved quickly and got another. “Oh come on now,” the voice said with disbelief. “I’ll search every dark corner till I see that shining face of yours, Pinkie Pie!” Armin saw the Celestia Pod open with barely a hint of air escaping. A message appeared on his tablet. SYS-TER said. The body opened up to reveal a hollow interior, save for the head area which held the two eyes behind lids since they couldn’t see in the low-light. A mechanical skull shape filled the area behind it. If it weren’t for the dragon panther, that’d be the most terrifying thing I’d seen all day, Armin thought. He stared in disbelief. He typed quickly. Armin trusted SYS-TER and pulled himself inside the space. He pushed the head components up into the topmost space above the Celestia frame, leaving a half-formed metal skull sticking up. Oh this will never work! Armin thought. He forced himself to push back the doubts as he messaged Celestia back. He slipped the tablet into his jacket pocket and held his arms in the proper positions for the suit to close around him. The armor locked into place around his body and the pod sealed shut. It took a moment for his mind to register where he was. Wow...I’m actually inside a Meta-Frame! He tried to move but his body was frozen in place. Claustrophobia started to set in as his breathing began to increase rapidly. He tried to calm himself down as he stared out the eyeholes of the Celestia suit. SYS-TER…hurry… The intimidating voice spoke again, this time just around the corner. “Pinkie, there’s no use in continuing to take out those light bulbs. Maybe I can’t see in the dark, but I can follow the path you’re making. Really. You should think about these things.” Armin focused on his breathing and closed his eyes. He didn’t need to see what was coming. And if it couldn’t see his eyes in the suit, then maybe it couldn’t recognize that he was in there. He heard the stomping of loud steps nearby as they turned the corner. “PEEKA-awww,” the voice said. “I could’ve sworn you were still here. Well hide-and-seek it is then!” The thing moved in front of the Celestia Pod and slowly stepped its way across. Armin wanted to open his eyes, but to do so could invite its gaze upon him. He did see that the creature’s glowing gaze invited the looks of every face in the corridor. Including the one now situated above the Celestia head. The beast stared up at the eyes far above him. “Huh…that’s out of place.” He stared into the suit and peered inside. Armin shivered as he heard the creature speaking right at the pod. “Oh wait a minute…OH THAT IS SO CLEVER!” He jumped around in the darkness as the eyes attempted to track him. “You are the best hide-and-seek players I’ve ever had! Most just try duck around corners, but I always catch them. Open your eyes! I know you’re in that Celestia suit.” He slid open the door with his strength alone and placed his face against the Celestia frame. Armin felt a glow cast itself over his closed eyelids. He couldn’t help it. He opened his eyes. Giant yellow orbs of light peered at him through the holes with red pupils. “THERE YOU ARE!” the creature yelled in triumph. Armin gasped. There was a blast of blue light. A small metal object landed on the creature’s face and clamped itself to his head. “HUGS.” It shouted in a cute digital voice as a smiling face appeared on an LED screen over its back. Blue electricity shot forth from starfish-like legs. The creature screamed in pain. “OWWWW What is this?!” He fell back from the face of Celestia. Armin could see his large dragon-esque form with parts of animals composited over various parts of the body. The legs were brown and green and the arms were eagle claw and lion paw. Two mismatching horns curved at the top and a pair of asymmetrical wings stood across its back. The head was a mix of goat and pony. Two more blasts of blue light. “HUGS! HUGS!” Three electric starfish shocked the creature as he spasmed on the floor. “OW! These little things are HORRIFYING,” he yelled. “DISCORD,” came a voice from off to the right. Armin shifted in the suit to spy two human security guards in full armor flanking a large blue mare with shimmering mane and tail. Her wings spanned out impressively. “Princess Luna!” Armin yelled in the suit, muffled. “Did SYS-TER put you in there?” Luna asked as she stepped forward. “What?” Discord yelled. “She helped you? But that’s cheating!” “HUGS!” There was an electric burst followed by Discord screaming. Then it stopped. “We have hugged you and we are now friends forever,” the shock starfish spoke. Luna spoke. “I would have stopped him sooner except that he has a habit of turning off his wireless communication for a whole day when he doesn’t like what I have to say. Which he already did once today.” Luna scowled. She put her hand up to her ear to signify she was receiving a message. “Got it. Armin, stay in there for just one minute.” Luna looked around the room. “PINKIE PIE!” A response came from far down the corridor. “Princess Luna?” A BOING BOING sound came from all the way down the hall as Pinkie hopped to a standstill in front of Luna. “Your majesty!” She bowed and her hair fluff fell over her lowered face until she picked her head back up again. “Did Discord hurt either of you?” Luna asked. Discord spoke up. “I did no such thing!” (“HUGS!”) “OWWW I’m serious!” Luna’s voice was enraged. “You are in deep trouble, Discord! You could’ve hurt this young boy!” “And me, buster!” Pinkie said. “Also Pinkie,” Luna mentioned. “You’re going up to see SYS-TER herself this time!” It was the most vicious Armin had heard any Pod Pal ever speak…actually was she a Pod Pal? He didn’t know for sure. “Wait!” Discord said. “You don’t understand what it’s like down here! I wasn’t trying to hurt them. I would never hurt someone! You know that I can’t!” Princess Luna turned to Armin. “Did he try to hurt you?” Discord looked up pleadingly. Each little hug-buddy had a question mark on its face. Pinkie was hugging one. It turned into a happy face with exceedingly cute cartoon eyes displaying LED tears of joy. “No,” Armin said. “We were playing a game.” He then quickly added. “But if he had just said that in the first place, we could have avoided a lot of trouble.” Luna turned to Discord. “So this is your fault?” “Yes,” he said sadly. The two remaining starfish displayed sad expressions as well. She stepped over to him and looked down at his massive head. Luna was at least half his size and yet she was far more intimidating. “Are you going to apologize?” “I’m sorry Armin,” Discord said. “I got lonely. I just wanted someone to play with.” Luna put her hand up to her ear again and looked back at Discord. “SYS-TER wants you to show your sincerity. In any way you can.” Discord blinked his sad yellow eyes and stood up. Pinkie was still on his back, hugging the happy starfish as Discord started walking down the corridor. “Follow me,” he said solemnly. The Celestia suit opened up and Luna helped Armin down out of the pod. She walked with him to the back of the corridor. They stopped at a large display case full of small component parts. Discord sighed. “If I give him one of these, can we call it even?” Discord asked. Luna narrowed her eyes. “You’re still going to see SYS-TER. But if you show some kindness, she might go easy on you. Again,” Luna scowled even harder. Discord handed a tablet to Armin. He wasn’t afraid of the large beast anymore. Not with such sadness in his eyes. He looked at the list in front of him. “Those are my personal programs. You can have one…” Discord said as he looked up at Luna. “Okay…two. But only because that was really clever of you to hide in the suit…even if wasn’t entirely you who thought of it.” Armin looked at the list of several modifications for a Meta-Frame: Empathy Amplifier: Detect signs of distress in humans by analyzing their visual cues, speech patterns and behavior. Using psychological subroutines, determine what possible issues a human may be experiencing, allowing user to act upon visual and auditory cues more effectively. Lie Detector: Using voice pattern recognition technology, a visual display analyzes speech and determines what may be a lie. Over time, speaking with the same individual creates a profile which can determine lies with up to 99% efficiency. Threat Identifier: Scan a crowd and be able to spot potential threats before they occur. Threats are highlighted in the visual HUD and automatically tracked within the system until they move out of line-of-sight. Advanced Ocular Recording and Projection: Set perimeters for recordings to automatically occur when you see certain things happen in front of you. Using beams mounted in the eyes, project the recordings onto any surface with near-perfect visual clarity. “Discord,” Armin asked as he looked up. “Yes? What have you chosen?” he seemed very down. “These are all really nice, but…can I go with you?” He and Pinkie looked up as one. “What?” Discord asked. “Go where?” “To see SYS-TER. I have to do so anyway. Maybe I can talk to her with her. Help her understand you were just kidding around. No harm done.” “You…you aren’t mad at me?” Discord asked. “Honestly…I’m a little mad. But…that was exciting,” Armin said with a smile. Discord’s sad face slowly turned to a grin. “It was, wasn’t it?” he said proudly. “Well I aim to please. Of course we can go together!” Luna’s stare was ice. “Armin, you realize your presence could complicate things upstairs when SYS-TER tries to discipline him?” “I know,” Armin said. Discord looked down and realized Armin was holding his hand. His draconic expression softened. Armin stepped forward. “And I’ll talk with her as well. It’s true that what he did was wrong, but I forgive him.” Discord smiled a sweet smile before hiding it when Armin turned to him. Luna stared up at the ceiling and exhaled loudly. “Fine. Friendship. Magic. Whatever. But we are escorting ALL of you up there!” She snapped her fingers at the two security guards behind her. They both clicked buttons on their guns and the three small starfish detached from Discord. “Awwww,” the starfish said with sad faces. Pinkie held on to one of them in her arms. “Can I keep it?” Pinkie asked. Its LED face had tears of pity and quivering pouty lips. “No Pinkie,” Luna said. “You cannot keep the advanced shock mine.” “Awwww,” both Pinkie and the shock mine said. The guards collected their sentient weaponry. The group moved to a freight elevator in the back, walked inside and stood very close to one another considering how many there were and how large Discord was. Discord held four small thin cases in his clawed hand and placed them in Armin’s hands. Armin looked up. “Thank you. They’re yours.” He said quietly. Armin looked down at all four software packages and hugged the large creature, whose body fur was as soft as Pinkie Pie. “HUGS!” “NO WAIT,” Discord yelled. “Oh it’s just Pinkie. That’s fine…” ---