Being of Two Minds

by cosmofur

Anima Artificio

Red Wood's body bled out slowly, while the cult leader looked down at his handiwork. If the Pony felt any remorse for his homicidal act, it didn't show on his face. The three burly earth ponies that had been holding Red Wood down looked side to side as if daring each other to say a word of protest but none could muster the courage. After a seemingly long wait Red Wood’s eyes, which had been tiny in shock, relaxed in huge blank dead holes. The leader had been waiting for this as a sign and turned to his companions.

"The traveler has departed. The shell is ready for the visitor." The leader nodded towards the pool of light, "The Oracle’s message was clear, we are not worthy of witnessing the coming miracle, untie the ropes and let us depart. We’ll return when the Visitor has arrived."

Silently the four cultists left the clearing, only the leader did not look back in pity at the mangled body they were leaving behind.

After there hoof steps had faded into silence, one of the nearby bushes move. Nervously a small body slipped out of the darkness and crept towards Red Wood. Banyan had not seen most of what happened, but he had heard it through the bushes from his hiding place. He wasn't sure he understood much, if any, of what he heard but he did know not to try coming out of hiding until the cultists were gone.

"Daddy?" A small pitiful voice whispered. Banyan moved closer to the pile of flesh and blood that had been his father. "Daddy!" He called again, his voice growing louder.

"Get up daddy, we have to go!" The little unicorn cried.

"Daddy! Please! Daddy!" Banyan wailed at the un-moving form of his father, "please Daddy, I'll .. I'll get help!"

In a class of terror far greater than any ghost or bogeyman could inspire, Banyan turned and ran, away in the opposite direction the cultists had gone crying "Help! Help!" His voice swallowed up by the darkness.

For several minutes, Red Woods body was alone in the clearing. It's only company the equally dead body of the Inkanyamba and the un-moving pool of light. Then Banyan far off in the woods crossed an invisible line, six hundred and fifty meters from the center of the light pool. By chance without knowing its significant, he stopped then and not seeing any help in that direction, turned back to the clearing.

Six hundred and fifty meters was an arbitrary number made up by a planning committee while sitting around a table and drinking coffee, they didn't see it as magic number or a something of great importance, they just wrote on a mission guide "probe is not to start boot up procedures until life sensors report no sentient life within safety range." Sometimes even bureaucrats can stumble on something profound, because had they chosen a larger number Banyan would not have run far enough away, and a smaller distance and the cultists who had their own mystic insight into this rule, might have been close enough to intervene.

Regardless of the coincidences of the situation, once Banyan was far enough away, the pool of light started to wake up. It wasn't really a pool of magical photons, rather it was the visual result of thousands of trillions of particles, machines in fact, if not form, too small to be seen even with an optical microscope. Individually they were not much larger or much more complex than simple viruses. But in numbers they were powerful and many times more complex than any simple biological life form. In seconds they started to organize, to boot up, to awaken.

First to start was dumb time sequencers and sensors, working on logic circuits no more complicated than a digital watch, these first systems sensed the environment, recognized they met the programs requirements for being alone and started to organize into ad-hock networks to uncompress and sort the massive data packets needed to run the main medical module, a functional if somewhat restrained Artificial Intelligence or the Doctor as it was internally identified as.

Like a glowing ghost, the mass of nano devices, formed a cloud like structure, lifting themselves out of the depression and started to survey the area. It drifted first over to the body of the Inkanyamba, dropping pseudo-pods of foggy light on the body, probing it, after a few seconds the Doctor classified the monster as ‘uninteresting’ and moved on to the other body in the clearing.

The cloud of nanites, hovered over Red Wood’s form, and was briefly confused.

Organic Intelligence like Humans and Ponies, frequently would hold in their minds an internal dialog or stream of consciousness as the way to clarify their own understanding of a situation. Most people just called this the simple act of ‘thinking.’ The Doctor did something similar, while most of the its internal thought mechanisms were multidimensional and resembled statistics tables, at the top of its logic processes, it would record an internal log of its observations and conclusions.

In that internal log the Doctor recorded,

Observation:

Location: arrival location.

No living sentients detected in safe zone.

Two dead bodies in arrival location.

Unexpected.

Identify as Subject 1 and Subject 2

Initial observation is both subjects died from blood loss.

Subject 1 is unknown race, has only 43% resemblance to target species. Death occurred between 30 and 50 minutes previous. Does not meet minimal requirements as outline by requirement lists. Decision discard Subject 1.

Subject 2 is identified as ‘Pony’ subclass ‘Unicorn’. Death occurred between 4 and 9 minutes previous. Meets all minimum requirement as outline by requirement lists. Decision, tentative to proceed with Subject 2.

Contrary Notice:

I was not expecting to find suitable subjects so close to arrival point. Mission guide indicates an expectation to have to travel to local cities, hospitals and morgues for possible subjects, not expecting to find suitable match for a period of weeks.

Internal conflict: 18% rational cores vote I should skip this Subject and proceed with Mission guide. 34% vote I should gather more data. 38% vote to proceed as a way to expedite overall mission. Remaining votes are mixed, with note worthy concerns over ethical issues.

Conclusion I will proceed with the expedited mission.

Plan process:

a: Start un-compressing Subject ‘Parker’ from data store.

b: Stabilized and repair suitable body.

c: Engage neural scan to determine compatibility points.

d: Start re-configuring higher functions to be compatible with Subject ‘Parker’ data set.

e: Retain reflexes and common physical skill sets as recorded by original ‘Subject 2’s host brain.

f: Wire compatible translation nodes as required.

g: Upload Subject ‘Parker’ to Subject 2’s body.

h: Await further instructions from authorized master.

All this internal dialog and mental discussion the Doctor was having with itself was silent and took only a few seconds. During that time Bayan had run full speed back into the clearing.

The young colt stood at the edge of clearing, from his point of view, he saw a ghostly cloud resting over his fathers clearly injured body. He lived in a world of magic, one where supernatural creatures were a reality, and not simply things of stories. His quick mind immediately classified the glowing creating.

“Daddy?” Banyan’s eyes was fixed on the glowing from rather than the mangled body.

His next reaction may not have been what Red Wood would have expected, had the adult been able to hear it.

“Awesome! Daddy you’re a ghost!!”