Chapter 10
Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom
by Midnight Shadow
Chapter 10
"Say hello to all that is left of the man I used to be," said Bronze Haft, as he stared at the gem floating before them. You could have heard a pin drop. Rogers could have too, if the rushing of the blood in his diminutive nubby ears hadn't drowned out all external sound. After a long few seconds, he finally broke the silence.
"You what!?"
"I said it's me. I think." Haft rubbed the back of his head with a hoof in a disturbing show of Equestrian dexterity. "I'm not so sure, of course," He grinned weakly, pointing to the floating gem that contained his memories, "but… I don't think I'm the kind of pony to go around brainhacking. Do you?" Haft turned plaintively to Julep, vulnerable for an instant, before he shook himself and the taciturn mask settled once more over his features.
Julep slowly shook her head. "I… I don't think so, no. A-and if you had been, you'd not be who you are now."
With effort, Rogers composed himself. "You could have something there," said the dragon, waggling a claw at Julep. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, and turned to Haft. "Please, tell me what happened."
"Y'all really want to hear it?" asked a skeptical Haft, his gaze roving from baby dragon to flighty pegasus and back.
"Warts and all. It's important. We really have come a long way, and despite the ratio in this sim, time is running out." Rogers snorted, momentarily startling himself as a small jet of flame emerged from his muzzle.
"Very well." Haft was silent for a moment, then fixed his gaze on the jewel. Walking towards it slowly, footsteps loud in the tense quiet, he began to speak. "I can't rightly say I remember most of it. Obviously. Bits and pieces—" Haft waved a hoof "—different realms. Places I've never been. Avvies I've never met. Ordinalities I don't have access to. I don't think it was me, doing most of it. But I don't think I objected. Haft and I," Haft chuckled at the third person, "had a pretty solid agreement. We shared everything – sensorums, flists, partners. In game and off, we were a good team. And then, several months ago, we realized something had changed. We'd grown apart, more like we were brothers than avvy and progenitor. It happens. I thought…" Haft took a deep breath, then turned back to Julep and Rogers, "I thought he was leaving me."
"You loved him?" asked Julep, softly.
Haft laughed, shaking his head. "We weren't lovers. We'd tried it, everypony does now and again, but it didn't mean anything. We loved each other though, aye. I didn't want to lose him, he didn't want to lose me. We couldn't live together and were too scared to live apart. At some point we switched; I subsumed, he integrated – or the other way around, depending who you think you're talking to. For a while, it worked. And then… it didn't."
"What happened?" asked Rogers, learning forwards on his tail.
Haft snorted and shrugged. "I wish I could tell you, but the answer—" Haft pointed a hoof at the floating gem "—is in there."
"Okay, okay. Stop a moment." Rogers screwed up his face, concentrating. Steam rose from his ears, but he ignored it. He leaned forwards, bent his head down, and ran his claws in circles along the floor. Hissing under his breath, he dug his claws deeper until he'd drawn three intersecting circles, two above and one below, forming a rough, rounded triangle, point downwards. "Julep, lass? Do you mind spotting me?"
"Hmm?" Julep approached the dragon cautiously, peering down at the rents in the flooring. "What do you want, sweety?"
Rogers flailed a claw irritably at her wording, then pointed at the floor. "This. This is important. Do you know what this is?"
"Something that won't buff out?" grumbled Haft.
"No, this is you. And me. And… everyone. Some of us have more moving parts," Rogers lashed his tail thoughtfully as he pointed to the upper two circles, "but everyone these days has at least two personalities. Even if your avvy is merely a behavioural modification construct, like Kojak is for me, you have an avvy. And that avvy—" Rogers tapped a claw into both upper circles "—is you." His claw came to rest on the bottom circle. "Root access to your personality matrix, personal certificates, your identity... Your memory encryption keys, everything. Who you are is intrinsically linked at a level that just cannot be altered without altering the personalities attached."
"What, you mean… avvy and progenitor are… both avvies?" Julep blinked.
"You thought you were fake or something? Just because you're made up doesn't make you any less of a real personality than Oats, lass. Truth be told, I get the idea you've got more to you than he does, in a way. You think Oats is everything Oats is, though? Oh no, he's just as much an avvy of his core self than you are. Or this is of me," Rogers said, placing his claws on his chest. "Or Haft… and Steven."
"What're you sayin'?" asked Bronze Haft, narrowing his eyes and flicking his tail angrily. "You sayin' I'm a fake?"
"Whatever they did to you, they knocked your IQ back a few points," snorted Rogers, sticking out his jaw as Haft flicked his ears back against his head and bared his teeth. "No. I'm saying you weren't brainhacked. If you had been, then either you'd be dead — and somebody else would've been relifed instead after I bodylossed you — or you'd have been put back together whole and you wouldn't be stuck like this, half way between who you are and who you should be."
Rogers bent down and gouged out the floor from the interlocking center parts of his diagram, a shape reminiscent of a propeller, or a flower. Or a gem. Then he straightened, and grinned, as Julep's muzzle made an 'O' almost as wide as the circles he'd drawn on the floor.
"So now we have only one question left," said Rogers, half to himself.
"And that is?" asked Julep, rustling her wings, peering intently from Rogers to the drawing and back, her brow furrowed as she tried to figure out whatever else it was that Rogers saw in it.
"If we both agree that Haft here isn't the sort of pony to go around brainhacking — and I think I'd know if he was. No offence, you could always be a high-functioning psychopath, but that's the sort of baseline personality disorder caught by mindscans long before they become a problem — then what in the name of the fifteen fey could lead a good pony to getting his hooves on a brain ripper?"
***
"Which way!? Which way!?" screamed Velvet breathlessly.
"I don't know!" I screamed back.
"Then go left!" she shouted.
"It's another set of stairs!"
"Then go up them!" she retorted. "This would've been a lot easier if you hadn't thrown the battle helmet away! You know? The one with the ice?"
"I don't wanna touch ice, Velvet!" I growled. "It's bad mojo, not that I really know what to do with it anyhow! Besides, it was the helmet or my butt, and I'd rather lose the helmet. Helmets are supposed to come off!"
Shouldering my way through a padlocked door – the slam shook my frame, but I channeled as much of the impact as possible down through my hooves. I'd be sore in the morning, if I saw morning, but that was a problem for tomorrow's Oats – we emerged into a wide open square of plascrete and aerials.
I said several bad words which were apparently only known to Darillo, a fact which became apparent as the intruding personality slunk off into the depths of my neocortex.
"Just fucking great," I grumbled. "Even my self-preservation routine's abandoned me."
Velvet chuckled as she slid off my back, wheezing. "Slow down there, sailor. Quite the blue tongue you've got. Wanna tell me who you're channeling?"
I shook my head. "Not right now. Ace in the hole, you know? Unpredictable and all that. Something which would've been a lot more use if we hadn't just trapped ourselves on the SODDING ROOF!" I stomped all four of my hooves in a miniature tantrum which left cracks in the plascrete.
"No, no… this is good. I can work with this." Velvet looked around, then tilted her head. Slowly, a smile split her lips. "Blackout's down, Net's up. It's just building-wide. We might be in with a chance. You take care of the stairs and try to get hold of Buttercup. I'll get the door."
With a flick of my tail and an idle ping, I verified that we were, indeed, no longer half blind and stricken mostly dumb. I didn't believe her about being in with a chance though. "Stairs? We can't go back dow—"
"Not those stairs, dummy! The fire escapes! Knock 'em down! Kick 'em loose! I'll lock the door, see if I can jam it. It'll buy us a few more minutes, perhaps. Unless they bring another pony."
"A few more minutes for what? We're trapped!" I shouted. I could already hear sirens; local SWAT teams were approaching as fast as the city's leisurely pace allowed. How fast didn't really matter, though, we weren't exactly going anywhere.
"Oh I can do a lot in a few minutes," replied Velvet, straightening up. I grimaced; she'd finished and I hadn't even started. Picking up the pace, dampening down my aches and pains with a few well-placed cortical tweaks until they were just background data, I made short work of the only two ways down other than the access door and the 'express'. I wasn't sure if it was really smart, or really fucking dumb, but I did it. I returned to Velvet in time to help her with an upturned skip of some sort, jamming it against the door.
"That'll do, pony," she said. "I screwed the lock up good, jammed it. Only a locksmith or heavy ordnance will open it."
"Good," I said. "And can you now tell me what the hell it is that's ruined my perfectly ordinary, perfectly happy quiet life?"
"Tetchy, aren't we?" mumbled Velvet, as she fished for the mysterious item from the depths of Rogers' pockets. She held it in front of her face for a few moments, turning it idly over and over in her fingers. And then she started shaking.
"Velvet..?" I asked. "Velvet? That's not a good reaction. Velvet!? Velvet!" My voice was rising in pitch each time she failed to respond. I'd expected a lot of things, but horror had been one I'd expected later, when the authorities brought out the thumb screws. Idly, I wondered what they had to replace those with in my case.
After a painful moment of silence, she whispered, "Unicorn!"
"A unicorn?" I asked. "I, er, know a few, but none of them are—"
Shaking her head, Velvet looked up, though her gaze was far away. "Not that sort of unicorn. A different sort, a dangerous sort. We've got to get the door open." Her voice sounded as far away as her gaze. It was tight… scared.
"Velvet? Talk to me!" I asked, approaching her as she very carefully set the device down. For once, I was able to get a good look at it. It was, to my eyes at least, small and unassuming. It was a roughly cylindrical dirty bronze wedge, metallic all over, and about the size of one of those ancient cellphones – you know the sort, those huge things we used to carry around before we got wetware, constantly running out of battery, of all things – or a beverage can, if a beverage can were sort of squished, elongated and melted. It didn't look made, come to think of it, it looked grown.
"Wild—" Velvet's voice was husky, low and urgent. "Please get away from it."
"What? But I thought… what are you…?" I nosed it, gently. It tinkled as it rolled across the plascrete roof.
"It's computronium, Wild. We're not supposed to have computronium. Nobody is."
I blinked, confused. "Wait, Buttercup has computronium, Velvet, I thought she… he… said?"
Velvet turned to me, shaking her head. "I-it's not quite that simple. We… you and I, we have avatars that live in our heads. Buttercup… got an upgrade a few years ago. Now her avatar lives on the outside."
Very slowly, I made an 'O' with my mouth. A very big 'O'. "S-so…"
"It would be more correct to say that Buttercup's computronium has him, Wild. Nobody has computronium. Nobody like us, anyway. Ever. Now back the fuck away from it, and whatever you do, don't interface—"
You know the game don't think of pink elephants? Yeah, I never was very good at it. The world fell away as whatever had been in that device was suddenly very much in our heads.
***
"It's not a brain-ripper," huffed Haft, glaring.
Julep giggled, gesturing with a wing from the stallion's ear-tips to his hooves. "We've established his bona fides, to my satisfaction at least."
"Then what was it...?" Rogers stalked around the room, occasionally glaring back at the gem. "You know what, guys…"
Haft and Julep shared a glance.
"Go on," they said, in unison.
"We already have the answer. We just don't know how to get it. Not from here, at least. Julep, can I ask you something?"
Julep's gaze floated reluctantly from the floating gem to Rogers. She sighed. "I know what you're going to ask."
"But you can do it?" Rogers pressed, urgently.
"Do what?" asked Haft, suspicion plain on his face.
"We're going to need help," the dragon replied, not taking his gaze from Julep's. "We need to contact the rest of my team, bring them here if we can… and without going through the usual channels."
"Seriously!?" Haft blinked in surprise.
Julep shook her head, slowly. "I can't, I'm not a unicorn, and even if I was, I don't know if I could do it. The only creatures who can jump from world to world are…" Julep stopped, suddenly, and stared into space.
Very slowly, Rogers started to grin. "You're on to something, aren't you? Go on, say it!"
"I… I think… the only creatures that can get in and out of Equestria how they want… are creatures that came from here in the first place. Like Mortimer."
"Like Oats' GPS?"
"Like Oats' GPS!"
Julep jumped for joy, landed, spun, then put a hoof to her muzzle and blew a loud, shrill whistle. Before she'd put her hoof to the floor again, there was a flash of light, and the room was filled with feathers and the loud excited cawing of a crow.
"Honey, calm down! Calm! Mortimer! We need your help!"
"Caw?"
"Can you… we need you to get in touch with Oats and Velvet—"
"Caw!"
"—But! Wait! But! We need them to… kind of come here. Without, you know, actually coming here."
"Ca-caw?"
"Yes, that's exactly what I mean."
"Ahem." Rogers held up a diminutive claw, then pointed the digit at the avian that was giving him a beady look. "You can understand that?"
"Caw!" replied Mortimer, witheringly.
"Yes, I can. I have a lot points in One With Nature. Now, don't interrupt, Mortimer's explaining what we need to do. Make some space, would you?"
"Yes ma'am!" Rogers saluted, then started moving what little furniture there was out of the way.
"They grow up so fast," said Julep to Bronze Haft, grinning.
Rogers huffed and rolled his eyes as he put his back to the simple yet serviceable table and heaved. "I knew it was a good idea to bring you, Julep, because correct me if I'm wrong, Bronze Haft my good sir, but it isn't remorse that's kept you here all this time, is it?" Rogers straightened and looked at Haft questioningly, groaning indulgently as his back popped.
The stallion was quiet for a few moments, then shook his head and laughed, bitterly. "So you worked out the rest then, huh?" he asked softly, eyes shining and wet. Julep cocked her head in confusion, taking a step forwards. Rogers dusted his paws together then put one small claw on her flank and shook his head, nodding at the jewel. Julep's eyes widened as she put two and two together.
"You can't take it with you, can you?" she asked with a gasp.
Haft shook his head. "Not through any normal means, no. Maybe this'll be different. It's been heavily suggested to me that any time I feel like accessing my own memories, I can go right ahead. Except I can't, I've encrypted them with a certificate that isn't in my collection. I've repeated that fact often enough, but I don't think anypony believes me. I'm not sure I blame them, either."
"They'd be safe here though, Haft. You know that, right?"
Mortimer croaked from the rafters in agreement, beady eyes watching the scene unfolding below.
"Could you leave half your brain somewhere? Especially after waking up dead and realizing it's been locked away from you forever? Just out of reach and impossible to access, sitting right there in front of you? Can you imagine not knowing who you are? Celestia took it, Julep. She took it, rifled through what she could, wrapped up what was left in a big, pretty bow and gave it back to me, because it was useless. And right now that's all I am – useless." Haft spat and slumped down in a corner, next to a tiny pot-bellied stove.
"You're not useless, Haft. Not at all! You don't need to let this define you, you don't—"
"Julep," whispered Rogers, shaking his head as he stomped across the dusty floor towards the stallion. As the pegasus shied back, Rogers turned to Haft. "Listen, with my help, and with Julep's knowhow of the Equestrian Ordinality, we might just be able to change that."
"You do know that Celestia's not going to like it, when we connect the realms?" asked Julep, dubiously.
"Then maybe we should do it now and do it fast."
"Caw!" insisted Mortimer. She fluttered down from the beam she'd been perched on, then hopped around the room before taking up station on Julep's head. "Caw, ca-caw, caw caw!"
Julep giggled. "She says 'in that case, I'll need a circle on the ground with a seven pointed star around it, with each of the Elements of Harmony around that, starting with—'"
"Elements of Harmony?" asked Rogers.
"I'll translate and explain as we go. Now get moving! Finish clearing the room, then get to drawing. It has to be a proper magic circle—" Julep put a hoof to Rogers' lips, silencing his burgeoning objections, then continued, "—that's how this realm works, honey, and unless your name is Celestia, you're not going to change that. Chop chop!"
With a grin, Rogers got back to work. "Your wish is my command!"
***
Ordinarily when one joins a new sensorum, the change is peaceful, pleasant even. It's normally a smooth transition, with visible, soothing effects. One might find oneself in a waiting room first, as distinct from the final destination as it is from real life, or it might all fade in slowly. Ordinary. Safe. Boring. Not so for this; one moment we were on a rooftop, and the next we were in some halfway madhouse. Clouds roiled below us, gravity was indistinct and shifting. The skies burned and flashed and what ground there was, was twisted and indistinct. Worse than that, though, were the sounds. It was a cacophony of squawks, ear-splitting shrieks and pops, and and jumble of off-key, off-kilter voices.
Just out of reach, glitching and twitching as if trying to get a hold on our suddenly non-corporeal bodies, the real world was melting and burning as it faded away. Thinking was slow and painful, as if a great weight of some kind was sat on my head, encasing my ears. Foul smells filled my nostrils, making me retch and double over, and odd pains coursed through my body. Worse, none of my normal defensive routines were operable. I could feel the electric current of this broken reality fizzing and spitting at the ends of my neurons, my eigenwall dark and useless.
I felt more naked and vulnerable at that point than I had ever felt before in my life, and that included the brief yet exquisitely dark few moments just before I had lost consciousness in the trait tanks, with the monotonous buzzing of those biomechanical shunt applicator drills boring ever closer to my grey matter.
The safest thing to do would have been to discogitate, to inform the wetware riddling my skull to self-destruct, taking most of my all-too-vulnerable digitally enhanced brain with it. It was also highly ineffective – almost nobody had the gumption to voluntarily lobotomize themselves on command, and very few dared set the flags that enabled the unconscious monitoring that would flip the kill switch automatically. The urge to live was far too strong for that, even now, even today, even with the damage being repairable.
Fear, though, was equally powerful, and just as hard to ignore. Curled up in a small ball, reflexively cutting off all external stimuli, I whimpered and shook, sobbing to myself. I didn't want to die, I didn't want my brain ripped into a million tiny ineffective pieces, and to have it put back together in a patchwork parody of a person. It was a long few moments before Velvet managed to rouse my attention.
By the time she had, it was because my adaptable and fickle neobiology had flip-flopped from Flight to Fight, flooding my system with whatever passed for the mixed biological and technological versions of adrenalin and overclocking thermal paste these days. The disorientation of the sensorum change was passing as my senses came alive. A few seconds later, I was so hyped up that the grit in my teeth felt like boulders.
Darillo's feral grin flashed from somewhere deep in my brain as he prepared us for battle, his neocortical ghost overlay doing its level best to ready our body for combat and to isolate, contain and eliminate any memetic intrusions to our mind. A week ago under such stress I'd have been catatonic, but today, born out of some drug-borne well of fuck-you thanks to the steroids, I was wired three ways to Wednesday.
It was almost a disappointment when instead of hordes of killer memetic infiltration subroutines or absorption goo constructs, each offering instant death, painful death or endless, burning death, we faced nothing more than badly rendered scenery and glitching physics as whatever world we were now in bagan to solidify around us. As I panted, almost growling with mental verve, Velvet stood there aghast at my transformation.
"Wild… what did you do to yourself?" Velvet clip-clopped towards me, ears flicking about as she sought to keep track of all the myriad conversations going on around us. It was pony-Velvet, who had until very recently – a few moments ago in fact – been wearing a Rogers suit.
"I… uh…" I blinked, looking around rapidly. "I don't know. I didn't mean to… stay back!"
"Wild, calm down!" shouted Velvet. She did take a few steps back though. "This is no time to freak out."
"I disagree!" I roared, twitching. "This is a perfect time to freak out!"
"No, no, Wild, it isn't," replied Velvet, with forced calm. "Right now is time to keep our cool. We don't blow the whole wad when we don't know what it's all about. Tell me what you think just happened."
I took a deep breath. I could feel my body trembling even under repeated manual calls to tone down the enthusiasm oozing from my neocortex. With a manic masochistic spare thought, I wondered whether my wildly out-of-control biological responses meant that we were in an extraordinarily precise sensorum, an extremely terrible attempt at brainhacking, or something else entirely, and therefore far worse. That dark little voice we all have inside us suggested option three, then slunk away.
"I-I-I-I don't kn-know. B-but I think I accessed the whatchamacallit. A-and it brought us here. Or… no… that's… that's not quite right. None of this is quite right. Not even a little bit."
I stomped around in a circle, feeling various muscles tense and strain as my body's self-defences calibrated themselves. Physical responses seemed normal, I mused, but I wasn't sure how much help that would be when the 'physical' world wasn't. It swam and twisted, only moving when I focused on it. Buildings remained half-formed, trees were fractal or pixelated, each ways forming and reforming, colours flowing and merging. Everything pulsed with an almost familiar, organic beat of motion, light and sound, like wounded clockwork, but in staccato stop motion a thousand times faster than normal.
We – Pony Velvet and I – were in a cafe, more or less, a busy one. A gaggle of happy customers were – in fits and oblivious spurts – talking, drinking and eating as if it were the most normal of mornings in the most normal of cafes, on the most normal of streets. The tableaux was... familiar; I had the strangest of feelings that I should remember it, but I didn't, not quite. I wasn't that surprised, none of my mental routines were reporting back at all, and I hadn't yet worked out what that meant.
As my gaze moved away from the closest center of activity, however, or as I paid attention to details, the illusion – weak as it was – shattered.
When bereft of occupants, it was like the world de-rendered into a patchwork of suggested topology; a smattering of light, colour and sound surrounded by an endless expanse of ill-defined, flat-shaded digital space. Where there were creatures – all moving about in their odd, jerky, rapid stop-motion – there was scenery. Everywhere else was just potential, as if the world were defined by those observing it. And even where it existed, reality seemed to flow and change, like raindrops on a street-chalk masterpiece. In some strange way, the creatures seemed to be part of the scenery, as if even the scenery were alive.
"What's going on then, Velvet?" I asked, eventually. I could feel my ears flat against my head. Assuming they were my ears. And my head.
Velvet was looking around, nodding slowly to herself. "Well, you messed with that… thing we found."
"The unicorn, you called it?"
"The unicorn, yeah," said Velvet thoughtfully, nodding. "It's an old word for something impossible. I thought it was a brainripper, we all did, or at least something like one, but… it's not." Velvet shook herself. "Not at all."
"You're seeing what I'm seeing, and telling me we've not had our brains turned to mush?"
"I didn't say that, but… we've not been ripped. Not yet at least."
She shrank back as a mailman briefly warped past and delivered a facsimile of a personally addressed letter. The contents of the signed and sealed envelope were somehow a part of the sensorum, and I felt as if even the stamp – with a picture of some long-dead monarch upon it – was aware and watching us. Maybe it was. It slid in now-familiar staccato pauses into a waiting postbox then melted away, much as the mailman had, as if its cause for existing had ended. Maybe it had, for both of them. I shuddered as the crazy world around us began to slow down to something approaching normal and as the stop-motion warping of its inhabitants began to smooth out, and hissed through my teeth. Brainrippers were bad business, but this was looking set to be worse.
"Y-you said it was compu… computronium?"
"Sure did, Wild, I sure did. And the one thing about computronium, the one thing you should always remember when dealing with computronium, is not to deal with computronium."
I gulped, searching my extended brain for information on the subject. Sluggishly, as if I were a drunk trying to remember the way through an unfamiliar frathouse in the middle of the night with the lights too low and the music too loud, memories surfaced. Computronium was a tool of the FAI, and only of the FAI. Computronium was something which, whilst not exactly rare, was not generally available. Quite frankly, nobody had access to it. Nobody who existed in a mere three dimensions of space and one of time whilst wearing a meat body powered by biological chemical reactions, at least. Buttercup was an aberration, I was beginning to realize how much of one.
Computronium wasn't a single concise thing, it was the catch-all phrase for the result of having the basic building blocks of the universe manually and precisely rearranged into the most fully effective state for computation possible; circuitry so complex it was built from singular atoms on up through molecules to mega-proteins. Machinery so advanced it was powered by electromagnetic backscatter, or waste heat, or even the Casimir effect. A computational platform so dense that If the world still ran on money, then it would have been the most expensive substance in existence by several orders of magnitude. It wasn't exactly proscribed – very few things in our world were, directly at least – but it was just that there were exactly fifteen creatures on the planet that were considered capable of handling it unaided. Everyone else went through them. And, like Velvet before me, I was now very hesitant to think what it would mean to be caught having a device made of it.
"Ohhh this is wrong, wrong, wrong!" I moaned, going weak at all four knees.
"I think I agree there, Wild. For starters, I'm not supposed to be a pony."
"Could've fooled me." I grinned wanly, flicking my ears at Velvet. She swatted me with her tail. "Ow!"
"You know what I mean," said Velvet, snorting. "I'm Rogers, at the moment. I'm not—"
The clicking of claws brought not only Velvet's speaking to a halt, but everybody else's. In the sudden silence of the simulacrum of a quaint little cafe, the growling of Darillo seemed loud. Loud, and threatening.
"Oats go home now. We leaving." Darillo put his paws on my back and tugged. "Right now."
"Don't tell me," said Velvet, eyeing the lump of muscle and death made digital flesh, "that's your bodyguard? The personality routines that've got you tweaked until your head spins?"
I nodded. "Gift from… somebody out there, I guess. I thought he was Celestia's pup at first, but now I'm not so sure. Now I'm pretty sure that if Celestia had had any idea what we were getting ourselves into, she'd not have gotten us him at all, or would've done her level best to take him out."
"All the more reason that I think we should listen to the… man." Velvet matched Darillo's grin.
"Unless the safest course of action was for him to help us steal it, then to steal it right back."
"Well if that was the plan, he fucked it up pretty good, Wild. We're in it waaayyy past our necks, kid. We're drowning in it."
Our small group pulled together as, slowly and inexorably, the world around us continued to wind up – or down, neither word truly fit – the fits and spurts of its pulsating physics smoothing out and slowing down. After a few minutes, though time was subjective – my chronometer was refusing to even attempt to synchronize with Realtime, and Simtime was about as pointless as it gets – the world, such as it was, was moving fluidly.
It obviously wasn't, however, a world quite like our own. I don't mean that the people were green, the sky was yellow and the sun was purple, or anything like that. I mean that everything moved with an inner purpose, as if it were a dance that only the participants knew, and that it was one they knew intimately. Everything latched together, every moment and motion fed off of one and into another, like clockwork.
The whole world was clockwork.
Or… no. Not clockwork. It was more… mathematical than that. I had the feeling that I was watching an equation in motion, a living integral function working towards some non-determinate end-value. The whole world was like some sort of finely tuned machine, each part working in unison with every other part towards some greater whole. The artificiality of it all made it a very poor sim, and I couldn't quite put my hoof on why it would be this way.
"Oats go home!" repeated Darillo, shaking me roughly by the shoulder.
I shook myself out of my reverie. "You know what, Darillo? I think I agree. How about you, Velvet?"
"That'd be nice, yeah, but I don't think we've got a choice in the matter. If we had Rogers here, the story might be different. How about your boy, what's he saying?"
I turned to Darillo, whose smile was rapidly fading.
"I, er… think we might have a problem too, actually."
Before Velvet could process that information, the ground shook and the heavens split asunder.
"Whatever problem you were having," Velvet said, backing away from a sudden bright light as another reality forced its way into this one, "it just got worse."
I had to agree; it looked like the Fey were coming.
***
The interior of the shack was filled with odd lights and whispers as Rogers swiftly yet methodically finished scratching and gouging the required pictograms into the floor. With the completion of the final line, there came a sudden clap of thunder, and the entire shack shook.
In the center of the single room, a tiny mote of light burst forth, swiftly growing to the size of a golf ball, then a tennis ball, then a bowling ball. Moments later, it ripped apart into a hole more than large enough to allow a pony or two to pass through.
There was no sudden rush of wind like the howling of demons, but the portal did exude a raw presence which blanketed the senses. It was as if it was too bright, yet was sucking the light out of the room. Sounds fell oddly on the ears, and everything was bathed in static.
"What the hell is this?" shouted Haft. "This isn't right! It should just be a simple transfer, no?"
"I-I-I don't know!" replied Julep. At Mortimer's incessant cawing, the mare raised her head and listened. A few moments later, she shrugged, turning towards the light. "She says it's the ratio. The compute ratio is too high."
"I don't understand," said Rogers, "shouldn't Equestria be able to slow itself down if necessary?"
Julep snorted in shock as Mortimer added a few words. "You've got it all wrong. Equestria's not fast enough. The compute ratio is several thousand times higher than Equestria is capable of."
"Several thousand..? You have got to be kidding me! Several thousand!? That's just not… that's just not possible!"
"Tell it to the portal!" squawked Rogers, flinging his claws angrily at the hole in space.
"Did you even do it right?" huffed Haft, jutting out his lower jaw and glaring.
"You wanna do it yourself? Do it again?"
"How about you—!"
"Children!" shouted Julep, pointing at the growing hole in space. "If you've both quite finished, Mortimer says it's stabilizing, and that it'll work. I think it's time we took a trip."
"Are you sure that… will my…" Haft's ears flattened reflexively against his head as he stared from the portal to the gem, his voice shaking.
"Mortimer says it's fine, but this isn't a normal transition. The portal doesn't transmit us like a normal datatransfer would, it… transmits everything. The portal generates a field that just grabs everything in it. All we have to do is move through the focus, and it'll drag everything inside it through after."
"Umm, what does it say about shutting it down?" asked Rogers, shielding his eyes against the glare.
"Once it's done, it'll just… wink out." replied Julep, after listening to Mortimer's cries.
"Any way to speed that up?" the dragon asked again, a note of urgency creeping into his voice.
"What? Why does it matter what happens once we're through?"
"Because we've got company, and in this situation, I don't think that's good!"
Rogers was pointing out the window of the small hut. In the distance, in the dark skies, were two jets of flame. Something large – some things – were winging their way towards the clearing.
"I think it's time we left. Like, now!" added Rogers, backing away from the window and turning towards the portal.
"I completely agree. Haft, if you're coming, get going! Pick it up, kids, let's move!"
"I'll… I'll bar the door. Not sure what good it'll do. You get the gem!" Rogers leaped for the door, gliding. He forcefully threw pieces of furniture against it, grunting as he heaved them into position.
"No time for niceties here either. Here goes nothing… alley oop!" Julep leaped into the air, then perched on the mantle. Wings half-spread, balancing herself precariously, she kicked out with both hind legs. They connected with the gem, and sent it spinning through space. It collided with the scintillating portal, then vanished in a bright burst of light. It was swiftly followed by Haft, whooping with glee as his one dream was realized. Mortimer sped after him, cawing once before she, too, was swallowed up.
"My turn!" shouted Rogers, leaping and spreading his wings, but as he connected with the portal, he bounced off. "Ow! What the…" He rubbed his head painfully and sat up from where he'd fallen.
Julep rushed to his side and helped him up. "Oh no. Oh, no, no, no… now what?"
From outside, there came two loud bellows, and claws slashed through the roof. The thatch was torn off and flung away, and an enormous dragon stuck his snout in through the hole. It took a deep breath, and roared.
"We have to get through!" shouted Rogers, running to the portal and beating his fists on it as gigantic claws the size of dumpsters raked through the room. "We have to! What's wrong with this thing!?"
"We can't! We—"
There was a sudden bright flash, and the portal exploded.
It expanded in seconds, flaring bright light the sun, sweeping through the room and over the bodies of Julep and Rogers. As it passed, it swept the room clean, sending the remains of the furniture, walls and ceiling flying in a massive cloud of debris. It threw the dragons away too, hurling them off into the forest as if they were nothing. In the silence that followed, Julep and Rogers stared at the portal. It had changed, becoming a glittering sphere, a shimmering discontinuity in space. Julep peered closer in the sudden calm. Something seemed to be inside it… she threw herself back in surprise as, with a loud, excited cawing, Mortimer burst back through the sphere.
"Wh-what's she saying?" asked Rogers.
"She… she says there may be a way through. One of us has to form the other half of a bridge. It's a one-way portal now, something changed it. My guess—"
"Celestia," said Rogers, nodding in agreement.
"Exactly. Well whoever it was, it won't work. That… blast... was from the other side. We're through and synchronized. We just need somebody from the inside to help somebody on the outside with decryption. One of us has to be a bridge to get the rest of us out of here, because one of us is both there… and here. And that one of us… is me."
Rogers was silent a moment, then narrowed his eyes. "There's something you're not telling me, Julep. What is it? What do you mean, 'the rest of us'?"
Julep smiled, a bit sadly. "We don't have time for me to explain. And besides, the decision's already been made." She closed her eyes, and leaned her head against the sphere.
In a silent explosion that engulfed the whole world, the portal turned inside out.
Blinking in the sudden sunlight, Rogers looked around at a familiar-looking cafe, and a familiar-looking man.
"You know, it figures," he said as he pulled his hat onto his now-human head, turning to face Steven.
***
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Avatars and personas. The difference is largely a question of how much of the formative process was consciously directed. In either case, it's a mask for the ego, not the ego itself. But what happens when all are torn away, leaving a mask with no one to wear it?
I don't suppose one of the initial values was 42?
Awesome stuff. I'm surprised that we're already near the end, but I look forward to the thrilling conclusion.
lol. Equestria, messing with your head. Literally
So basically, people are actively growing split personalities, huh?
ew?
Heehee. All those little show references
Well, fuck
That description makes me think of the Rat Man sounds in Portal 2
5316432
42 seems a likely number, yes
It could have gone on a lot longer, but the story I want to tell with this wouldn't have been better with filler. Another author perhaps...
Still, the last chapter and epilogue are longer together than this one
and there's just so many more places I want to go...
And yes, I do wonder what happens if all the masks come off...
5316624
In this future, yes. A split personality that voluntarily integrates itself into a greater whole is very useful for finding and developing traits that the original doesn't have...
And brain rippers do pretty much exactly what it sounds like they do... Just not physically
I've tried to get into this. Tried to approach this with a medium of openness and of fairness.
I can't. Chapter 8 just broke all immersion, and its done nothing to re-establish it.
This is just.. *shakes head and walks off*
I don't know how else to say it.
5317646
Can't win 'em all. I gotta write what I want or I don't feel it. A good friend of mine dislikes king of diamonds because I went off and had a whole subplot about a character he doesn't care about, but said subplot is essential to the whole story and one of my favourite bits. *shrug*
5318248
I don't think that was ever really the intention. Heck, I doubt many writers write with that intention (though I've heard of a few); usually the intention is just to get a story idea out of your head and onto (digital) paper.
I got the distinct impression it's a world he is very tempted to write more in, though. But I think that's a general thing too; all authors have trouble letting go of characters they put effort into developing, especially if the story doesn't really allow them to fully show off everything they developed for them. Even when it's all over, you can't help but think "what comes next?"
5318273
5318248
Pretty much this. I'd be really happy to hear somebody loved it enough to expand on it, but I'm also aware that the kind of world I've got is hard to write in, even for the me, the person who created it. It's more that I want to see more adventures set in it and don't know when I'll get around to it myself
I honestly don't know of any author on this site who could write in this world and have it sound the same...
5317104 They save a copy of your brain for later use, like a CD ripper?
5318329
ye-es, but they also come with a full editing suite *shudder*
5318307
Also I'm deliberately using a different style of writing, which is very... top-heavy. Very talky.
5318437
Oh it hurts that you don't like it, can't deny, but you're not being a dick about it. It might be easier if you were, but... realistically, I can't please everyone and I shouldn't write to please other people at the expense of my own story. Of course there's a balance to be struck there, and I do admit this story is not without a lot of flaws, but I'm pretty happy with the result. You might enjoy the ending, I'm not setting up the ending to enable even a sequel or anything, it just doesn't rule one out
brain is aching pleasantly after reading
5318337
Meaning that with the copy they have access to all your eigenwall security & certificates and such, I guess?
Or does it just copy the meatbrain stuff?
5319512
It doesn't really give them access to the meatbrain, it gives them access to the rest of the personality. In the worst case, it can force entry into somebody's extended personality, which by extension gives them access to the core personality, which can then be altered, changed, even erased and, in words from Oats, get put back together wrong. At that point it doesn't really matter what the meatbrain may have thought, it's got a whole new set of directives from the rest of the neocortex to listen to...
And, of course, once they're in your head, they have access to your memory banks, and can make sure any subsequent relife happens on their terms. They don't only steal your identity, they steal your life.
5319528
So basically, it's a hack of the computer-additions to your brain, but what makes it so awful is that they use physical access to get in, meaning digital security doesn't help much?
Should "bagan" be "began"? It would make more sense that way.
Is "fey" derived from Friendly AI?
Isn't Equestria literally a part of her? I'm not sure how they can outwit or outrun her while they're inside her mind.
"macguffin" is the scientific term. :P