Chapter 4
Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom
by Midnight Shadow
Chapter 4
The combined living room and dining area, where we'd just eaten breakfast, was finally clean. I'd thrown almost all my cups, plates and even cutlery into the disposal hopper; they didn't really suit a pony. After a few queries regarding permission to decompile, it had all been swallowed up by the mechanism. It had attracted a maker fee as being above my staple requirements, but the bits Celestia had spoken of the day before would more than cover it. I would also be able to remodel slightly, so with Rogers' help, a second and then third sweep of my flat led to a number of annotations regarding what to and what not to have the house nanites goo for recombination.
The sofa would stay, for guests, but the two matching padded chairs would have to go. They'd be replaced by a single, wide seat better suited for my new quadrupedal frame. Similarly, the bed would be replaced by what was essentially a thicker, harder mattress set on a raised, reinforced platform. It would take up more room in terms of floorspace, but would now sport permanent, wide stairs up and storage boxes below. All my old clothes had been recycled; they would be substituted by some utilitarian yet stylish waistcoats, some smart tack for formal occasions and a couple of practical yet stylish pairs of saddlebags. It would take a while for them to extrude, but Rogers promised to help with the fitting. The next time my food-dispenser fired up, my fridge would be restocked with pony-appropriate feed, and the next time I took a shower it would be in a Japanese-style tub with easy-access steps and a shower screen that sported hoof-friendly handles. The continental-style squat-toilet and bidet that was planned was going to take some getting used to, however, but the less said about that the better.
Finally, my apartment was ready to be recompiled and I was ready to begin the last of Celestia's three tasks – to go out and have fun with the assistance of Mint Julep. I found myself standing in front of my hall vidscreen, silently contemplating my next steps. It currently showed my reflection: an incredibly nervous-looking black and white gypsy vanner stallion. Muddy brown wasn't fun enough, according to Julep, so she'd traited in some pinto. I'd demanded the brown eyes remain, though. She'd wanted dichromatic blue and brown for effect.
"Are you ready?" Rogers asked.
"Gimme a minute," I grumped. I was having a moment of existential dishabillement; the day before I'd been a modestly dressed human – most of the time I'd been awake, at least. Today I'd been a naked stallion since I'd opened my eyes. My frame was mostly show-accurate, so there wasn't much in the way of lewdness for the modesty luddites to complain about in terms of undercarriage, but today I felt... naked, and exposed. I had the standard male pony equipment, which was under conscious control and remained unobtrusive until needed – another perk of ponyform – but that didn't mean I wasn't going extreme commando. Despite modesty bylaws accepting both fur as well as body-paint for clothing, it still felt weird to me that from now on I'd trot around almost exclusively without trousers on. A single day of being a pony couldn't erase decades of memories of putting my clothes on every morning. The dissonance was easily overcoming my behavioural mods. I took a deep breath and puffed out my chest; it would be something I'd have to get used to. I'd had all morning so far to get used to the idea, and there's only so many times you can pace around your living room pretending to take inventory.
As a final act, I brought up my personal HUD, initiated the recompile and opened my front door. When we had both stepped out, the door closed and sealed itself behind us. It wouldn't open now until the nanites had finished, and in turn been decompiled for my hoover to sweep up. A fully automated hoover had been a worthy upgrade. Ponies still aren't very good at holding things, despite what the show would have you believe.
"I'm proud of you, partner. Taking your first steps to a real new you." Rogers patted me on my head and tousled my mane as he pulled alongside me in the softly lit corridor. I flicked my ears happily, then realized what I'd done… and then felt good about myself. This is part and parcel of taking ponytraits, Julep's eigenshadow whispered, accept it.
It's probably something to do with the Uncanny Valley, but actual animal-form traits are somehow more approachable than humanoform for a good many people. It probably explains why so many go little pony or care bear, despite the physical limitations that both entail and the side-effect of having everyone pet you or feed you carrots or hugs, or whatever it was those bears ate. Not that that's a bad thing, mind, but it can spoil your appetite and, despite advanced metabolisms, make you fat. Which of course makes people love you more when you're 'cuddly', and feed you more carrots. A vicious circle if ever there was one. A vicious, delicious, carrot-filled circle. My stomach grumbled at the thought, almost loud enough to echo as we stepped into the elevator; I realized I had pretty much skimped on breakfast, at least now I was a pony. A double helping hadn't been quite enough.
"I heard that." Rogers stretched and tugged on his trousers as he smartened his clothes in the vidscreen-mirror. "How about we get a little something extra to eat – at least for you – whilst I backup?" he asked. "We can continue our chat after." Various local options for brunch offered themselves, but Rogers dismissed them with a wave of his hand.
"If you want to backup, how about an ancestor cafe?" I asked him, cocking my head to one side as I took another look at myself.
He nodded as the doors opened and we exited into the lobby. "Ancestor cafe. Got a relative I'd like to chat with."
I could see the street outside was busy as we neared the front doors. I found myself uncommonly excitable, dearly wanting to fraternize. Rogers put a hand on my neck, patting solidly.
"Calm down, girl," he said, grinning.
"Girl?" I whined, flattening my ears out to the sides.
"You're expressing Julep," he whispered. "Have a word with her if that's not what you intended. I told you, it's not healthy."
I looked at myself through House's sensors; ghostly wings seemed to adorn my flanks. Excitability was her thing. I shook myself and snorted. My personatraits were off; I'd never properly internalized my brainhacking and they'd been reset by the ponytrait nanobots and subsequent behavioural package upgrade. A whole lot of things were out of whack, actually. Or maybe they were in-whack since I was running au naturelle. Screw it. Why act like someone else when I can act like myself, huh?
"Come on, Julep, let's merge for a while, okay?" I asked my avvy, nervously.
"Sure!" her voice said, reverberating in my skull. Her avvy briefly appeared from where she'd been hiding in my secure compute layer and exploded into a mass of sparkles. The tiny little motes of light were absorbed into my body, and I felt our consciousnesses merge. As things settled in, I found myself missing my wings. It was quite a strange feeling, all said and done, taking up space in Oats' head for real, not least of all downstairs. I gave a little wiggle of my hips as I took another look at myself in House's sensors; ponies had the best butts and I knew it, and mine was pretty awesome. Even as a stallion.
Rogers smirked. "Glad you had that little talk, partners. Excuse me, let me get that for you." He tipped his hat, then exited the lobby of the apartment complex to hold open the door so I could pass through.
"Thank you!" I called as I trotted past him. "Oh this is going to be so much fun," I said. "I haven't been out questing like this in quite a while!"
My crow, which appeared sitting on Rogers' shoulder when I summoned her, took off to lead us to the nearest ancestor cafe. I turned down the street to follow them both.
"You haven't?" Rogers asked as I caught up, blinking in surprise.
"Well, I've mostly… stuck to sensorums," I said. Admitting that hurt. I'd not wanted to hurt Julep, and whilst she had had fun, and had regularly been out and about in Equestria, I hadn't given her the chance to be what she was supposed to be – me – like this. "And I'm sorry for it. And that's all changing now. Or I'm trying to."
"Best foot – er, hoof – forwards?" replied Rogers, smiling. I nodded, perking up.
The city of Ford Newton was loud, heavily populated and bustling with life. I took a deep breath and shook out my wings as our trek continued. With the sun rising in the clear blue sky and the weather trackers promising the good spell would continue, I was having an uncommonly good 'all is right with the world' moment. The Julep in me apparently felt like this all the time. It was, now I admitted it to myself, what I'd gone pony for.
As we walked, I pinged the city's datasphere for news, subconsciously running a filter for information from the shooting. Oddly enough, there didn't seem to be any. I mentally shrugged and moved on – when had news services focused on the bad? The momentary shadow overhead of a comms blimp caused a slight chill and the datasphere lagged a moment as something heavy tried to download itself to my secure compute layer. Interrogation programs isolated it and examined the datadump before discarding it, almost before I was aware of it – it had been some sort of memetic infospike. Probably advertising. Ugh. I shook it off, and caught up with Rogers.
***
The ancestor cafe was a friendly backup place that had once been a library. It still held books on the upper three floors, but now also featured the fattest of datapipes and the most juiciest of wifi connections. And it sold coffee on the ground floor. What's not to like?
"Coffee, black," said Rogers as he walked in through the diamond front doors. He relaxed into one of the big, comfortable chairs as his avvy Kojak finally caught up with him, and his dataghost took up residence in the cafe's datasphere.
"Mocha for me," I whispered, "and some of that honeyed porridge. Does it come in buckets?" I'd never felt self-conscious ordering food before, and had never had it eaten it off the floor either. New experiences all round, then!
The barista set about his wonderfully archaic machine with gay abandon, and I found myself caught up in the complexity of it all. The guy had several 'droids slaved to various avvy's, and I wasn't sure how much of his original body was left. He had to be running some serious upgrades.
"It's a family business," the nearest avvy stated, winking and smiling, as she noticed my interest. That explained it; a multiple. I blushed – I'd been staring.
"What's it like?" I whispered, giving an inquisitive tail-swish.
The bionic avvy tousled my mane gently as she seamlessly moved around her partners to pick up my order. She had kind eyes, and I liked her immediately. "Kind of like it is for you, hon, only we share backups. It's a line family, so we incorporate according to a schedule. We've got several ponies, actually. They make good servers. If you ever want to herd up, we've got room."
"N-no, thanks," I replied.
The lady smiled wider. "Good thing you said no," she said, leaning forwards and lifting the cup onto a spiderbot and nudging the creature towards me. "A line family's not something you just jump into. Not like ponytraits." She winked. "It's a mental commitment you can't just easily walk away from."
Another avvy swatted her with a rolled up menu. "Stop scaring the customers, Gene. Especially the ponies."
"Yes'm," said my server, curtseying. She rolled her eyes at me then vanished up the other end of the bar.
I laughed softly, then sent a short follow command ping to the 'bot with my mocha. Heading back over to Rogers, I saw an older lady sitting in a chair next to him. She was old in a way that people simply aren't these days; her skin was yellowed and thin, almost see-through, and her hair was a dull burnt silver. She was bent forwards almost double, hunched over into herself as if permanently falling. It took me a few seconds before I recognized the odd square box she held in one had as a packet of cigarettes. She fiddled nervously with them, a lit fag dangling between the first two fingers of the other hand.
"Ooh, hello, love!" the old lady crowed. She staggered to her feet and hobbled over to me. Reaching out a ghostly hand, she patted me on the head.
"Say hello to my grandmother," said Rogers, softly.
I studied the phantasm for a few seconds before saying anything. "Hello, er…?"
"Her name was Pat, but you can call her Nana. I always did."
"A partial?" I asked softly.
He nodded, expression unreadable. "She missed out on all this by a good few decades, and these echoes are all I have. Sometimes I think it was a kindness, these times are… different. Very different."
"Hello Nana," I said.
The old lady beamed. "We had a pony like you when I was a girl. She didn't speak, though we'd often pretend we could understand her. Maybe we did. Rosy was her name. We'd spend hours brushing her and putting little bows in her hair and tail." The partial smiled again, through yellowed teeth. Suddenly the little old lady turned to Rogers, seemingly earnest. "It's all in the memories, you know," she said.
"What?" Rogers asked, mystified.
"If you'd remember me younger like your mother does, I'd have a lot more to say," the old lady said, patting Rogers' hand absentmindedly. "I'd be a damn sight prettier too. Age isn't kind to a face like mine. Never get old, love."
"Oh Nana, you're perfect just the way you are."
"Sweet talker. Like your father. You're just like him, you know. Oh, don't cry, sweetheart, everything's fine. Nana's here." The little old lady hobbled over to the sheriff – he seemed huge in comparison – and took his hand, patting it. "You're growing up big and strong. I always said you would." She took a long puff from her cigarette.
I turned off the fragrance, which wasn't something I liked very much. Rogers had it pegged at 'aromatic', though his juvenile memories couldn't have used that word. It had that intriguing smell that I remembered being repulsed by when it was worn like aftershave, but intrigued by when being inhaled. To my sensitive pony nose – despite the smell entering directly through my brain – it was too much. I tuned out Nana Pat and snagged my mocha from the spiderbot as I collapsed onto a comfortably large seating cushion. Ancestor Cafes were… often for kind of bizarrely private meetings.
Pony cups were broad, with little indents on opposite sides to help with grip, but my porridge, when it arrived, was in a large, black, plastic bucket. The Julep in me prodded that I should get some buckets for myself, at least for when not entertaining. I signalled for some water when I realised I was thirsty, and another bucket was delivered. I guess it's hard to improve on a perfect design. The porridge was thick, with what appeared to be carrots and apples in it. It steamed. I was so hungry I was almost drooling, and had to slurp my saliva.
"If you want some more to go," offered the barista from before, "we can do a nosebag if you'd like?"
I shook my head, smiling with my ears flicking happily, and dug right in.
'Nana' lasted until Rogers' backup was complete. As the deep scan withdrew, the old lady became more and more wooden in her actions and responses, until her pattern just broke down and she stopped, fading away.
"You know, Celestia can—" I began.
"No!" replied Rogers, swiftly. "No. It's… important that she is what she is. I don't need somebody else with my memories of her. It's not like when somebody I know gets a refresh, she's… gone. She should stay gone. Anything else isn't my memory of her, and I just don't need new memories of her."
I nodded slowly. "I understand. She's a Partial, and… she'll always be a Partial."
"Yeah. I need to… I just need to Integrate." Rogers closed his eyes, and he went into a diagnostic cycle as both Kojak and his eigenghost downloaded their separate experiences into his long term memory, and the relevant case data files were merged. I decided to take a datadump of my own, and slunk off to the facilities. With Julep's mastery of pony anatomy bolstering my own abilities, the duty went smoothly enough, but there's rarely much good you can say about tepid water meeting intimate parts of your body. By the time I returned, Rogers was up to date with his activities.
"Ready to get a move on?" he asked me.
"I guess," I replied. "What do I have to do? Where are we going? I know I said I'd be your steed, but—"
Rogers stood up and paced around me. "Well, you'll need a saddle. Even if I don't ride you all the time, having one is useful. Especially for carrying things. If you'll be wearing your fur in black and white, I'll get you some with silver trim… let's see: a western saddle and breastgirth. A crupper – don't worry. They go under the tail, but I'm told they're very comfortable – and either hackamores or a bitless bridle. I don't think you're into bits; you don't strike me as the type. And you'll be wanting a facemask for any tough situations – that, and they provide hardened comms and have an integrated polarized light filter."
"But… what do I do?" I asked, shuffling my hooves plaintively, as virtual representations of my new sheriff's steed attire manifested around my body. I shrugged myself into the semi-familiar virtual tack attire, trying it on for size and sending minor fitting improvements to the makerblocks that Rogers was spinning up. He had an eye for colour coordination and ensemble that I hadn't expected.
"Crowd control at events, standing guard, comms deck, hauling freight…" listed Rogers, counting on his fingers. "Basically you help people. Don't worry, I'm your partner. I'll teach you." He smiled soothingly.
"So serve the public trust, protect the innocent and uphold the law, huh?" I quipped. Rogers snorted derisively. "Talking of helping people, though," I asked. "What happened with Steven and Teresa? That was… what Julep wanted to know."
"Oh, Teresa is doing fine. She's recovering from bodyloss in a sim. She'll incarnate when they've got her a body ready."
"And Steven?"
Rogers cocked his head to one side and blinked. "That's odd."
"What?"
"Wait, I'm… no, no… wait…" Rogers gestured, and brought up a shared window with stats on the incident. "Information on Steven Mercer is sequestrated."
"Sequestrated?"
"I… can't get any more information on him. Hang on." Rogers glared darkly at the window hanging in space, then uploaded a small, subsentient crawler. A few seconds later, it came back with an increase in privileges, and the window changed. New data scrolled past: the apparent perpetrator, Steven Mercer, had been released and the whole case had been closed. Further requests for access were denied almost before they'd been sent. "Everything looks fine. The record says he served a year relative on probation, and is now out. In Equestria."
I looked at the data before me in confusion. "He's gone pony?"
"Looks like it. This says his memory was swiss-cheesed. He woke up in the detention sim and couldn't remember more than going to bed a couple days before. It says scans confirmed— dammit!" Rogers swore as the window closed on him, slamming his fist into a nearby table so hard that the cups on it rattled. Whatever loophole the crawler had been exploiting had just been patched, and we were locked out.
"A-are you going to get in trouble?" I asked, scrunching down into my seat as big red 'AUTHORIZATION: DENIED' signs blinked on and off in the space between us. Butterflies danced in my belly as I spoke.
Rogers shook his head and merely dismissed the alerts. "The authorities don't care about something so minor. Exploit something major like the bitbank or makerblock authority chains and you'll have hell to pay, but not for taking a peek at something which should be public; the powers that be would have to explain why it wasn't in the first place." He narrowed his eyes. "Which of course begs the question of why it isn't public."
I stuck out my lower jaw. "I think we're supposed to be serving the public trust, so I think we need to look into this."
Rogers nodded, scratching thoughtfully at his chin as he narrowed his eyes. "I think you're right."
***
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What the hell is a whuffiebank?! Also, makerblock authority chains sound intriguing, kind of gives me a feeling related to how bitcoin mining operates. How do they work?
This world is even better than FiO. This is like a geek wet dream. Jesus. If I could favorite this twice... I'd have favorited it five hundred times.
Also, I'm declaring this mystery-related.
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(okay, it's essentially where the computations surrounding whuffie exchange are carried out. Crack one open, and you can give yourself free money. That's pretty bad news for the system).
well a whuffiebank is where you keep whuffies! duh
And the makerblock authority chain is the system which keeps the physical side of the post-scarcity system in check. Basically, anyone can get most things for free... up to a point. If you can override the authority chain, though, you can give yourself unlimited (or at least less limited) free stuff... which if you haven't "paid" for it in whuffies could lead to a serious problem with at the very least raw materials and mass-exchange.
Oh, you bastard! I sit down on a quiet evening to finally push back my unread chapters number, and you go and release another one!
*readreadread*
Hm. Well, okay. You're forgiven.
Woah. Talk about aggressive advertizing
First step in messing up a cover-up: actually covering it up so people see something has been covered up
The remarks and corrections:
> Or maybe they were in-whack since I was running au naturelle.
Has to be "au naturel". Trust me, I know French :3
> "Stop scaring the customers Gene.
Comma before addressing term! :p
3839101
Not to mention, producing things that should never be cooked up by hackers in their basement
3839101 Everyone can have their own apartment and furniture, but not everyone can have their own flying aircraft carrier?
Why do I think the data dump you briefly mention as a memetic option is either a massive red herring, or a brick joke you are going to throw later down the line? But glad to see this updated.
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Pretty much this - when you can create nuclear reactors in your basement for fun and profit, then things have ways of going strange on you. Also, there's only so many small islands that can fit in the south pacific before it's suburbia all over again...
Redecorating with house nanites, I love it.
Fascinating. Vaguely reminds me of some of the alternate family structures Heinlein would write about.
Celestia...
Another awesome chapter - I continue to love the future mash you've got going. Neat reference to Heinlein; I've often found some of his ideas on relationships and families to be pretty fascinating.
Mechanically, only one bit jumped out at me:
Just doesn't want to parse.
Some interesting shades of plot you've got going. Methinks the 'big data spike' is more than just an ad. I sense a long game afoot, and Celestia definitely has her hooves in it.
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I'll find a better way to explain that it's a public place, but the meeting is a personal one for Rogers...
3839932
And yes, it's a Heinlein reference, with a twist :)
This chapter raised a few new questions for me' but I'm too tired — and a little too tipsy — to ask them intelligently right now. I'll be back later. For now I'll just say it feels profoundly unjust that I can't give this story more than one thumbs-up.
Oh, and I can't help but be reminded in passing of this short series of 4 very silly comics.
Augmented reality gives me a headache. I keep trying to develop an intuition of which layers are material, augmented, and full-virtual, and you keep ruining it.
Also, before we even start in on the underlying conspiracy stopping our new buddy-cops from doing their jobs: it was these guys.
I do like the generalization of a brand name into a blanket term for the product (reminds me of the fifth layer of Cloud Atlas,) but I figured smart vacuum cleaners would be called roombas. I suppose when they aren't all automated, "hoover" makes more sense.
Ancestor cafes kind of creep me out... in a good way. Come for the buckets of porridge, stay for the holographic ghosts. Or possibly the other way around.
In any case, a very intriguing step in the story. Especially if I'm correct in thinking that "the powers that be" are CelestAI and her peers. Going up against the cyberpantheon should be quite the adventure.
Also, "hackamore" sounds like some kind of post-singularity vagabond or virtual hobo. I know it isn't, but it does.
But I ramble. Great chapter. I look forward to more.
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That comic series actually provided some of the push to write this story! I've been kind of itching to write it for a while, but could never come up with a plot I cared about. Then I did.
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Oh now you've spoiled the massive car chase and gunfight through the peaceful equestrian village that I had planned
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You would be right in that assumption! And yes, trying to actually outsmart the pantheon, as you put it, is going to be tricky. One could say impossible, but that would make for a very short story, eh?
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We need a name for this version of Celestia that differentiates her from the Manipulative Evil Bastard AI version. This one seems to be basically good. Not safe, because Virtue isn't always safe, but good.
>implying comparison with the Bright Powers
Yep.
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I suspect that that virtue rests in her having genuine competition. With actual peers, she's got to compromise, lest she alienate everyone, lose them to the other corporate overminds, and be unable to SVTFaP.
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She went FOOM before the other AIs and didn't forcibly upload everyone or kill all other AIs. I think that's a damn sight Friendlier than Optimalverse's CelestAI, and her behavior as shown in-story (very little, but still) has been closer to canon!Celestia: immensely powerful, but caring and benevolent, and a little trickstery.
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This reminds me more of the shared personalities called multiples in the fiction of Peter F. Hamilton.
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I was thinking more of personal banking than investment banking, but I don't know if that'll be a thing post-scarcity.
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At least in my setting, for the majority of people, it's not really needed. Money "went up in smoke" when it became essentially meaningless and outmoded, and what stocks and shares are still held by human-level intelligences are better managed by super-human-level intelligences anyhow...
The only thing I dislike about this story is the idea we'll still be on oil right up until the singularity. It's going to happen in 20 years, damnit!
I love this story to bits.
Read this a few days ago and I can't stop thinking about it. Looking forward to the next chapter.
Oh! I Will Fear No Evil! Eunice Bradshaw Lives! Thank you, that made me happy!
Error:
Oh, now we've got a proper mystery going on, with a memory corrupted perp. The Ancestor Cafe was chilling, as was Nana the Partial. This is just Total Imagination Fun for me.
I want to live then. Goddess, but I want to live then.
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*headtilt* I think I know what I was writing there, but I have no idea what the hell it came out as. How odd. I'll fix it.
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Drat... another brainfart.
I'm quite enjoying this so far. How interesting a world this is you're painting.
Huh. Oats is the one suggesting that here? How peculiar. I sort of got the impression he wasn't too comfortable being around partials.
Woah. Switching, nay, merging characters inside a first-person point of view. I don't think I've ever seen that done before!
Looks like merging with Julep has no impact on that, then, despite the fact she prefers tea
This whole story continues to be awesome, but I had to single out this blurring of narrators as especially excellent.
That should be “raises the question”.
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Tell it to Rogers
This sounds ominous and makes me think of Snow Crash.
Well, that advice sounds a lot more sincere and less sarcastic in this setting.
First this sounded like a toilet pun, and then I realized it wasn't, and then I realized it was.
""So serve the public trust, protect the innocent and uphold the law"
*Robocop music plays