Being of Two Minds

by cosmofur

On the other side of the mirror.

On the other side of the mirror...

Parker watched in horror.

Parker kept watching in horror, because that was all he could do. If he had he any other option, he would have taken it, even sweet unconsciousness would have been preferable to this.

He watched as Red Wood fell into the trap the previous day.

He watched helplessly and remained aware as Red Wood was knocked out, ending his visual senses but continued to feed to Parker all his other senses.

Parker watched helplessly as he discovered that when Red Wood was awake, they shared mainly vision and hearing, but when Red Wood’s mind was taking a lunch break it enhanced the senses to including touch and smell. This did not make Parker’s vigil any easier to take. He still couldn’t control anything.

Parker watched helplessly as Red Wood awoke and finally responded to his desperately written notes, giving them hope for escape.

Parker watched helplessly as those hopes were dashed, and once again and Red Wood was dragged off captured by cultists.

Parker watched helplessly as the cultists forced Red Wood to drink a dose of potion.

Parker watched helplessly as he realized the nature of the potion was both familiar and terrifying in its implications.

He had assumed when the potion was first mentioned and presented that it was some native Equestrian magic that the cultists were using to mind control their victims. He had seen enough magic now to have a sense on how dangerous it could be. But when the potion dissolved in Red Wood’s mouth and Parker sensed he could also taste it, he realized he was dealing with something from his own world.

And this very familiarity was more terrifying than any cotton candy colored ponies magic. It was much more real to Parker and he knew just how many ways nano based drugs could go wrong.

He quickly wrote to Red Wood a note on his fears, “It’s nano probes! It can’t be! Ponies don’t know how to make them! There’s no telling what damage they’ll do if they try to rewire our head. The work the Doctor did to make us fit together is completely non standard. They’ll try to repair us and instead kill one or both of us!”

As Parker wrote this down, he was mostly concerned on the ‘what’ the nano drug would do to them, it was several moments later that the ‘how’ the cultest got their hoofs on this sort of Earth technology moved to the front of his mind.

He turned away from the viewing mirror and looked around the white room that had been his virtual home for the majority of the last three months. Sitting on one of the crude tables he had crafted from elementary 3d primes was the book shaped tool the Doctor had left him. It wasn’t a real book anymore than Parker was a ‘real’ pony. It was just the representation of the Doctors notes and data logs, thrown together with an elementary word processor and macro editor. The whole thing, the white room, the book even Parkers virtual body was just an afterthought by the AI in the last few seconds of its existence.

Parker had, up to this moment, no doubt that the Doctor was destroyed by its efforts to merge Red Wood’s and his mind into a functioning whole. The Doctor had written so much in that very book’s end notes. Still Parker had asked the Princess to have one of her guards search the field he arrived at. It had been a faint hope, but if any of the Doctor’s nanites still functioned they would have seen as a dull glowing ash. Nothing like that had been found.

Parker’s further musing on this was halted, when the book started to set off sparks and glowed.

He galloped over to the book and to Parker’s surprise, it was quickly growing thicker. He opened it to the end pages and saw new log entries were being added. Many new entries. The last functions the Doctor had programmed into the book, had been to record his logs in the hope that Parker would one day take its notes back to earth. That function had continued to run in the background, even after the Doctor’s original nanites had stopped broadcasting logs. Now it was picking up again, syncing up with the ad-hoc network datastores of the nanties these cultists poison was using.

There was no doubt about it, the nanites in the cults potion came directly from the Doctor, they even used the same security encryption keys that the books log reader used.

Parker had no time to read any of the logs now, and it wouldn’t have made much sense anyways, it was mostly debug codes and timestamps, but the very existence of new log entries ment the Doctor was continuing to function, somewhere.

Parker turned to look at the display mirror and saw Red Wood eyelids were starting to droop and the view of the cultists kneeling around his body were getting blurry. Red Wood was starting to drift off to sleep due to the drugs effects.

Parker wasted no more time with the book and galloped to the mirror to write in as bold a text as he could “NO STAY AWAKE”

It seemed to help, Red Wood’s eyes opened wider and he mumbled something, Parker didn’t listen, instead he ran back to the book but this time flipping it to the pages which held the control menus for the primitive word processor.

There had to be some way to send a message to the nanites, there wasn’t enough of them in that potion to be independently functioning AI’s at the Doctor’s level. Still if the potion nanites recognized the Doctor’s previous work, they might respond to some of the control messages. Not that the doctor had left him much in the way of tools for this. Quickly Parker paged through the word processors macro editor’s help menus, looking for libraries and macros related to the nanites.

Then even as Parker franticly paged through the book, the pain started.

It was phantom pain, caused by the nanites probing for familiar brain structures and due to the Doctor’s modifications, they could not find any. Parker had an idea what was coming, and yelled out to Red Wood, not expecting the pony to hear him, “I’m Sorry!”

As he yelled out he realized some of the barrier between their two minds was breaking. Even though Red Wood was definitely still conscious, he was now able to phantom feel and smell the outside world. Parker shook at the assault of strange feelings. It took a major effort to keep reading the log box and not turn to look at the display. What the cultists were doing to Red Wood’s body was very distracting and in very different circumstances might have been even pleasant.

But even unwanted pony feelings was better than what was next on the nanites list of functions. Not able to find matches with expected pony brain structures, they had started to probes to find the differences, with active probes and stimulation of the synapses.

Parker fell to the ground, his virtual body convulsing as electrical noise momentarily overwhelmed his control.

On the screen, Red Wood was screaming. Parker tried to look, but could only see static and blurred colors.

Parker realized that despite how violated he felt, he was the lucky one, with Red Wood in the control seat, the wood worker’s mind was taking the brunt of the nanites assault, the majority of what Parker was feeling was faint phantom effects caused by the barrier between their minds weakening. What ever compressed data store that Parker’s mind was shunted off into when stuck in the white room was not on the nanites hit list.

With this in mind, Parker used whatever will power he had to get on his hoofs and work his way back to his only hope for controlling the nanties. The macro editors in the control book. Like old fashion productivity software, the editor had backdoor access to the same API codes the Doctor had used to create this virtual environment. There were thousands of calls, but the Doctor hadn’t had time to write real documentation, Parker was lucky that the AI had even bothered to list all the API calls in his report logs and used semi human readable method names. Not that names like DSet:Talairach.Anterior(commissure,HIGH,MiD,Low)<-Mapping(Vset||Dset*(Mx)) where more than just faintly human readable.

It seemed hopeless to Parker, but he pressed on, periodically he would feel a phantom touch and hear concerned voices. The weird junior cult members had been shocked and surprised by Red Wood’s pain and had laid him down on a mat while one of the stallions had ran off saying he would look for an elder Virgulino. Parker had no idea what a Virgulino was but noticed that the remaining mares were still caressing Red Wood’s body, but not in the same offensive ways. They seem honestly concerned for his well being.

Parker thought to himself as he continued his frantic searching. “I guess the brainwashing doesn’t automaticly turn a good pony into an evil zombie. They really don’t realize what they are doing is wrong.” It gave him a sense of hope.

He needed it, because the phantom feelings he had from Red Wood suddenly changed. There was no more pain.

The Nanites had found their neural targets and were no longer randomly probing.

Parker turned to look at the display, and realized that Red Wood was no longer fighting the Mares, laying easily in one of their laps and was actually relaxing. They weren’t doing anything really strange or uncouth, just laying next to each other, brushing their hoofs together while Red Wood seemed mildly dazed.

In the quiet now, he could hear an echo of a voice, it did not come from Red Wood’s ears, and it tone and sound was darker richer more assured version of Red Wood’s own voice. It was as if Red Wood was having an inner monolog with himself, but never before had Parker been able to directly hear Red Wood’s thoughts.

The words Parker could make out said, “Why are you fighting? They’re just trying to help. Together with them, we’ll make the world a better place. The Princess was deceived by the Pegasus! The Stone Heart is not evil! It’s a way to take back Unicorn Pride from the flighty Pegasus. We’ll help our fellows Earth Ponies and Unicorns, marching on into a bright and hopeful future. And once the Pegasus know their place, they’ll humbly be allowed to join us as well. The world can be made so much better. We’ll do good, if I help. I'll be accepted in the Stone Heart. Why deny pleasure? I have a responsibility to the Princess to show them how evil the Pegasus are. Give in, give in to the Stone Heart and I’ll be smart and respected and be given a place of honor with them. Is this so bad? Let the Mares show me how nice the world could be. This is all my due.” Phrases and ideas of this sort kept repeating. Parker wondered, was these sounds the nanties feeding words into Red Wood’s auditory nerves, or worse, where the nanties manipulating Red Wood’s higher functions to really ‘think’ these thoughts?

Parker knew the voice was fake, but he also could feel Red Wood’s reaction, the ponies body was really now relaxing, barely conscious and yet not sleeping. Parker could ‘feel’ Red Wood smile and snuggle into the soft belly on of the mares he was laying against. Parker knew that Red Wood was hearing these alien thoughts, not as an intruders but as if they were his own ideas. Parker was starting to get a sense on just how effective this powerful form of mind control could be, there was no sign of Red Wood trying to fight it anymore. Parker was humbled by the power of the technology enhanced spell, if the nanties had found his storage space, he was sure he would have fared no better.

Parker moved to the display and wrote on it, “Red Wood! Snap out of it! Those are not your real thoughts! The cult is planting ideas in your mind. Fight it!”

Parker wasn’t sure Red Wood was able to read his message, the pony just blinked a few times, but didn’t move. He did stop snuggling in and seemed hesitant.

That is, until one of the mares, apparently sensing that Red Wood was not getting into the program, switched from the nearly platonic gentle hugs they had been using, to much more aggressive kissing. Rolling onto Red Wood, so they were muzzle to muzzle, belly to belly.

Parker wasn’t sure what Red Wood was going to do. The woodworker seemed seemed to be willing to give into the temptation, returning some of the kisses with light ones of his own. This encouraged the mare to get even more aggressive and she started to rub her body on Red Wood’s.

But Red Wood seemed to have some hidden reserve of self control and when the mare started getting more aggressive, he turned his head and body to the side, knocking her off of him.

Parker cheered when he felt that and saw the concerned frown on the mare. He quickly wrote to Red Wood, “Good going! Keep it up. We got to fight them!”

Red Wood blinked several times, Parker was pretty certain that was Red Wood trying to acknowledge his message and he smiled, hoping he could take a few minutes to return to the book.

Maybe there would be enough time for the Princess Twilight to get re-enforcements and come back to rescue them? But Parker knew she wouldn’t be back today, teleportation was only good for short range. Only Twilight had wings. The other surviving guards were unicorns and unless Twilight abandoned them in the woods, something Parker doubted she would do, they would have to walk to the nearest city or town. Then contact the other princesses and it wasn't like she could return with only an additional handful of guards, no the princess would need to bring enough guards to handle hundreds of cultists.

Rescue was not going to happen soon.

Parker was just starting to read through the control book’s new log entries when he heard and felt the approach of some new ponies.

The Stallion who had run off before was back and he told the cultists, “Sorry I took so long, the village is mostly on fire now, but I found one of the elders.”

Red Wood curious had turned towards the voice and Parker could see on the display a strange pony approach.

Parker noticed the pony was probably in her mid to late thirties but was really odd was the way her hair, tail and mane were all shaved short. Tattoos and some sort of glued on jems made patterns and lines on her naked skin and another oddity was her forehead that had a flat hard plate where a unicorn horn once sat.

Parker noticed that Red Wood’s eyes kept focusing on her face and eyes, which were blue, then towards her flanks, which due to the angle she was approaching were hard to see. Parker saw a flash of color where her cutti mark was, but couldn’t see it clearly until she turned to talk to one of the cult mares. Then with her side turned towards them, both Parker and Red Wood could see her mark, even on shaved skin it was clearly leaves blowing in a breeze.

Then Parker could hear Red Wood cry out, half in pain and half in something else, “Gentle Breeze!”

The Virgulino did a double take, then fell to the ground next to Red Wood her legs having given out. “Red Wood!” She cried. “They said you were dead!” She held Red Wood’s face in her hoofs and the image became blurry for Parker, as Red Wood’s eyes filled with tears. “Gentle Breeze!” he kept saying over and over again. Then Parker recognized the name, and felt the phantom emotions from Red Wood overwhelm their connection. This was Red Wood long lost wife, presumed dead, killed by the cult’s pet monsters more than a decade ago.

Suddenly they were kissing, long forgotten emotions overwhelmed the ponies and even Parker was knocked over by the effect. The flood of hormones and endorphins in Red Wood’s body affected both of them, making it hard to think clearly. He wasn’t sure if he should be happy for Red Wood or terrified that the cult had someone who meant so much to him in their thrall. Could they use her a hostage over Red Wood?

Parker raised his hoof to write to Red Wood, he was going congratulate the pony on finding his lost wife, but also remind him that they needed to keep fighting the effects of the brain washing.

But even as he started to compose his message, Parker started connecting the dots.

He reasoned to himself, “Those cultists, after they fed Red Wood the mind control drug, started rubbing and touching him. Touching is very important to ponies, maybe even more than for humans because they evolved from herd creatures. But that touching was not just herd members bumping sides, they were stroking him like lovers.”

Parker looked up at the display, and felt as well as saw that Red Wood and Gentle Breeze had moved from simple kissing to intense body grinding. Their thinning barrier allowed Parker to feel Gentle Breeze’s tongue inside his own virtual mouth, as a ghost of Red Wood physical sensations. Through the display, Parker could mostly see just Gentle Breezes eyes and muzzle, but at the edge of the image he could see the other cultists backing away.

Parker’s eyes drifted to the bottom of the display, though Gentle Breezes body mostly blocked the view, she was moving enough that every few seconds Parker could see down the full length of Red Woods body. The two ponies grinding bodies hadn’t yet merged together, but that would change any second now.

Blinking Parker continued his previous thoughts, “Sex! The nanites create false ideas and memories that the unaware ponies will believe are their own, and the positive feedback and pleasure they feel from the cult fucking them fixes the memories and overwhelms any personal doubts and….”

Parker eyes opened wide, even as he realized the consequences of this madness, he rushed forward and frantically wrote to Red Wood.

“Stop! Don’t!” he scratched the words onto the display, his muzzle pressed against the mirror, unable to look away, and unable to ignore the phantom sensations he had no wish to feel.

Parker watched helplessly as Red Wood passionately kissed his wife.

Parker watched helplessly as Red Wood rolled in the grass with his wife, their bodies intertwined.

Parker watched helplessly as Red Wood mounted Gentle Breeze.

Parker watched helplessly as Red Wood was led to embrace one of the other nameless mares. Gentle Breeze guiding and leading him from one partner to another.

Parker watched helplessly, feeling each stroke, touch and kiss as if it was an assault his own body, from a crowd of faceless mares and stallions. He had not influence over Red Wood who was now lost in the daze of an orgy.

Parker watched helplessly as more fire destroyed the homes and shops of an entire village and all its former residents danced and partied like shadows against the flames.

Parker watched helplessly as smoke and ash drifted down pile of ponies with Red Wood in its center, him smiling blindly as he embraced Gentle Breeze. For hours Parker watched the destruction of not just the village, but his friends spirit as everything he had believed in, was snatched away.

Parker watched helplessly as Red Wood stood proudly in front of the other cult members, his new family, and was joyfully welcomed by the cultists as Red Wood declared undying loyalty to the Stone Heart.

Stuck in a white chamber, cut off from the rest of the world, but able to feel way too much, Parker was helplessly stuck, on the other side of the mirror.