Habeas Corpus - Part 1
The
CONVERSION
►Bureau
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Shattered Worlds
Habeas Corpus
Part 1
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An MLP:FiM Fanfiction by Midnight Shadow
The computer dinged sweetly until Joss Hayes sat up in bed. It was obnoxiously polite, one of those new semi-sentient AI units and he was quite, quite sure it existed to make his life hell.
"Good morning sir! My sensors tell me you have slept for the recommended daily allowance of eight hours precisely. What would you like for breakfast?" The voice was chirpy, happy, curiously genderless and very, very irritating.
"Any chance of eggs and bacon?" Joss asked, yawning and stretching.
"I'm sorry, sir, eggs and bacon are on the restricted list today." It seemed, to Joss, to ooze a perverse delight as it mimicked his words back at him. It had no reason to use his voice, since it understood perfectly well what he was asking for. He guessed it was making a point. He couldn't have eggs and bacon.
"Well?" Joss sighed, waiting.
"Please rephrase the question sir!" Definitely being irritating.
"Computer, will you tell me what is on the allowed list of breakfast consumables?"
"Protein bars."
"And?"
There was another obnoxiously perky ding and Joss face-palmed. That was it. Protein bars, otherwise known as nanobars.
"Please, please tell me there is at least a chocolate protein shake as an alternative?"
"We at Yatami-Tech are pleased to provide you, the consumer, with nutritious protein bars for any meal!"
"I hate you."
The computer dinged again, and a very chirpy voice spoke up, "Your negative emotional response has been logged. Today your happiness score has dropped to thirty eight percent. You may be suffering from: depression. Seasonally affective disorder. Suicidal anxiety. Paranoia. Repressed sexual urges. Would you like me to book you a session with the Happiness Clinic?"
"No." Joss got up, disrobing in his bedroom and moving over to the shower. "Shower on."
The water cascaded down his body, easing the stress of the night away. He was just soaping up his hair when the water went abruptly cold. "Shit fuck arse tits cock bastard!"
Ding! "Your happiness quotient has dropped to thirty seven percent. Shall I book you a session with the Happiness Clinic?"
"Fuck you. What happened to the water?"
Ding! "Your happiness-"
"Can it, circuit breath. What happened to the hot water?"
"We at Fujitama Mass Housing would like to report our great successes in increasing hot water availability to almost a full five minutes at thirty degrees centigrade!"
"I fucking hate you. Give me hot water."
Ding! "Your happiness quotient has dropped to thirty four percent. You may be suffering from-"
"Yeah, yeah. Bastard son of a toaster and a tazer-whore." Joss ceased listening as he hastened to clean the soap from his body in the now near-freezing water. As he stepped out of the shower unit, he caught the tail end of the computer's litany of recommended remedies for his apparently unhappy outlook on life.
"-atisfaction with a course of: drug therapy. Hug therapy. Ponification."
"Ponification?" He stopped, looking up, "are you fucking kidding me?"
Ding!
"Fuck, ignore that, just answer the question."
Ding! "Ponification has many proven benefits, including but not limited to: perfect health. Perfect vision. Excellent memory. Happiness quotient well above eighty percent-"
"All for the low low price of a lobotomy."
"Incorrect, sir! Lobotomies cost at least ten times the price of a vial of ponification! Would you like to apply for-"
"Fuck off."
Ding! "Sir, your happiness quotient has now dropped to thirty percent. I am initiating an emergency round of Tell-Me Teddy Bear therapy. The 'tell me' bear will be delivered during today's business hours at-"
"Oh, fuck me."
Ding!
***
Joss trudged out of his apartment, dressed in his cleaned yellow-section clothing. Shirt, tie, trousers, shoes. He was relatively lucky, not elite by any stretch of the imagination, but he was better than those orange-section schmucks. He had a whole four-person nuclear family unit to himself on the upper floors of the mandatory housing block. As the shop steward for Integrity Waste Reclamation, his pay was a whole grade above the oranges, and lightyears beyond the reds. red sector twopers were grease-monkeys, hired to wash floors, windows, ceilings, scrape out the reclamation tunnels and do every dirty job that no right-minded orange, and certainly never a yellow, would ever think of doing.
Joss worked for Integrity Reclamaction. Integrity made two things, toilet paper and nano-bars. They dealt with only one thing that supplied the raw materials for both. Human waste. The joke in the office-complex was that the goods coming out looked pretty much the same as the goods coming in, only wrapped a bit better. Tasted the same, too.
Come to think of it, Joss thought angrily to himself as he fished an errant piece of simul-nut out from behind a tooth, it wasn't much of a joke. He finished getting dried and dressed, and left his apartment for the bus complex.
The bus was crowded, as usual. It was old, ratty, broken. It had to have been made last century, and only hope, ductape and sheer bloody-mindedness kept it moving. The engine was biodeisel and roared loudly, belching black smoke as it pulled away from his mandatory housing unit.
He had been briefly tempted to get the orange bus, but that was even more crowded; he would have been assured a good seat due to his elevated status, but it wouldn't be done to be seen cavorting with lowers unless on official business. Well, crowded or not, at least the yellow sector busses had air-con. The red bus didn't even have an engine, it was horse-drawn, for fuck's sake! Well, pony drawn. Those filthy ponies were everywhere, it seemed, doing even harder work for even less pay. For no pay, truth be told. They were paid in food and lodgings and little else. Lodgings? Hah! A stable is hardly lodgings. They were fed and housed and mucked out by reds, made to work at all hours, and still they were deliriously happy; always polite, always so oh thank you, you're so kind. He would have spat, if he wasn't so thirsty. His little mistake with the shower had cost him his water rations for the morning.
The bus sucked, but then lots of things sucked for twopers like him. At least this morning, Joss thought to himself, he'd got a seat. A whole seat! All to himself, and near the window to boot! Ever since he'd taken the shop steward job, with the accompanying lift from orange to yellow, things had been looking up. Eighty percent uptime for his electricity. Per day! He never would have believed it! And a curfew that started at only ten o'clock at night rather than six. He was living the life now, that was for sure. Corporate ladder, here we come!
Joss knew where he was on the corporate ladder. Right near the bottom, true, but... he was there. He even stood a good chance of getting an actual pension! If he worked until seventy five, sure, but it was there.
The bus ride even sucked, Joss thought to himself, as it passed through what used to be Big Rapids towards Wyoming. He lived near Lake Cadillac, which was upper class amongst yellow, orange and red sectors. He even got to see the waters of lake Michigan occasionally, and if he listened real hard on a summer's night, he could hear the rich folk in their gated community swimming and partying, and he could even sometimes make himself believe he could smell their cooking. With every mile, he got further from it as he and the other workers wended their way down to Manufacture City, a town that had apparently been called Wyoming before Equestria. Now, it was a single massive industrial megaplex, and working there sucked harder.
If Joss was going to be honest, then even out here in the relatively untouched Eastern Amerizone, everything sucked. When Equestria had gone down back beneath the waves, it had taken a whole lot of everything with it. Nevada, Arizona, Phoenix, Tucson - all these places were just history lessons now, if they were mentioned at all. It was creepy, in a way; a huge bite had been taken out of the United States, not that they were supposed to call it that any more. Implying Eastern Amerizone was anything to do with Western Amerizone was tantamount to treason. Waitan-Yatami Megacorp ruled this section of the E.A. In contrast, Maitland Global Industrial, those scurvy W.A. traitors, were just across the other side of Lake Michigan. The two competing companies were forced to work together in herding their alloted Newfoals, but everybody knew Maitland rustled workers from Yatami. This meant extra precautions were taken on Yellow Sector buses to protect against potion bombs and tranq bullets. This meant the buses were few, crowded, smelly and uncomfortable.
Yellow sector workers were valuable, after all. Orange, not so much. Red were worthless, pretty much just scum from the favela, anxious to scurry about for a few creds, taking what they could and stealing the rest. Yellow sector workers could read. Red could barely walk and chew nicogum at the same time. Joss chuckled to himself - silverbacks, they were often called. Gorillas, animals. Only a few steps above newfoals. Once again, Joss would have spat.
The newfoals were out there working the fields, he watched them as they passed by his window. They really were disgustingly happy, now that he thought about it. Thousands of them, trit-trotting gaily with feed-bags on their noses and ploughs on their backs. Regulations said the windows of the bus had to be closed, but they often weren't, so he could hear them singing. He didn't know what they were singing about - it was in Equestrian, after all - but it was absurd. They were animals, everybody knew they were animals, what could they possibly have to sing about? What true human being could give up two legs and two thumbs? They were dumb, pliable and weak - and as perfect little slaves, they were exceedingly useful, he had to admit that. Far more useful than what they had been before they'd agreed to be ponified, which was nothing but criminals, malcontents and the disabled. All in all, he had to admit he was also glad they couldn't breed, not at least after they were properly dealt with, even if it did mean their only 'natural' method of population increase wasn't procreation, but creation. It didn't matter, there was always a surplus of the useless segments of population waiting to become a resource to be taken advantage of.
Joss dimly remembered the short 'breach war' that happened after the shield went down. He'd been small when it had happened, but he remembered how the unicorns' magic had failed, and the pegasi had fallen from the skies. The ponies had fought back, eventually, but to no avail. Mankind ever was the superior species. Those that hadn't submitted had been put down. Now there were no more pegasi, no more unicorns, just earth ponies. True, some had scars on their flanks or heads, but none of them had those cutie-mark things. They'd all faded. Still, to keep them docile, the stallions were gelded and the mares fed the pill. It didn't really do any good to have workers off sick or looking after foals, after all, even if they were animals. Maybe if they weren't, it wouldn't be necessary.
The bus sped on past the fields full of ponies towards the industrial megaplex, Joss silently cursing that the people stuffed into the rickety old coach all had armpits, and that most of them had had as much trouble bathing as he had.
***
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I feel for Joss, I really do... perpetually cheerful AIs would get annoying after about five seconds
MOAR
That there is one brutal, and engaging, synopsis Mids. Hope you're well mate, cheers.
Interesting, very interesting, I give it a track!
From the synopsis alone I'm going to give this a pass. Sorry dude.
Well, this is disquietingly dystopian. Especially the on-Earth ponies' reactions to the disappearance of Equestria. I'm thinking of doing something with this universe myself, and this is exactly what I needed to get from vague concept to fine detail. Thanks!
528995 Sorry to see you go!
529026 Yeah, this is one that's been rattling around in my brain for a while - I'm writing it as a way to blow off steam from my more serious and other less-serious pieces. You will see a resolution to this part of the tale, but I aim for this to be a collection of maybe one-shots or two to three parters - no real timeframe for them, but they'll come.
528947 I'm doing okay, yup. The synopsis is as brutal as the world it is about - even though I'm playing with some pretty black humour in places, and it's not all doom and gloom. This is one for those who like to say they hate how mankind never wins in the other TCB worlds, so keep that in mind...
529055 You can find it here. It's from Chatoyance's "brand new universe" collection, and I've decided to run with it a little bit. It gives me a different take to play with, and it tickles my fancy.
I.... I don't think I like this....
I don't like the way this chapter is making me feel. The misathropic feeling Joss generates from me is too much for comfort. I'm still interested to see what you do but... the last two paragraphs...bleh
thank you. you have finally fulfilled my wish... in the most fucked up way possible.
looking good. i was wondering when you would catch the NU bug.
529113 Misanthropic? But... humans are triumphant! And those bloody useless newfoals, pfeh! They're animals, they're no longer human. How can this be "misanthropic" ?
Meh, I'll stick to Jonathan Swift for my daily dose of misanthropy. Still, I found the writing more tolerable than most of the CB stories I have tried to read, so I might check back later to see how it progresses.
529177 Ah, my dear sir, the classics. I'm glad to hear your modest proposal of a repeat visit later.
I think I like this! (Mainly because finally, humans weren´t xenocided)
Duct tape, you are to humans what magic is to ponies.
529138
Sarcasm aside, I think I figured out why I hate Joss so much already. His narration reveals that ignorant, unquestioning hate that comes with real nitty-gritty racism. And it gets to me.
that synopsis... err i'll pass.
529294 Nothing cures racism like being forced to look in a mirror, amirite?
This is funny, dark, fun, and wonderful. You Crusade me tenderly with your prose, and my Happiness Quotient just goes up by 73 percent.
I laugh at those claiming this is misanthropic - have they bothered to look at the real world, outside their happy little consumer paradise for even a second? Replace 'ponies' with Foxconn workers, and Nanobars with Ipads and Cellphones and you have written about now, today, in Real Life.
Misanthropic - it can't be misanthropy unless telling the truth is itself a misanthropic act.
But then again, in a world where denial and lies are accepted as reality, truth becomes a revolutionary act, doesn't it?
'Misanthropic' - the empty complaint of the ostrich with their head in the ground... and their ass in the air, open and waiting.
Thank non-existent god for the clear and honest vision of... well, YOU.
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All you need and all you need to know.
It's really nice to see some pro-human stories.
The highest clearance I got was Indigo in Paranoia before my clones ran out. This Joss would fit good in that game I played.
Love it, faving it, reading it. A good story to depict our disgusting race. See, this is why I hope that never in my lifetime will I see or hear of us making contact with extraterrestrials. Because this? This is a pretty good representation of the outcome. God I wish I was something other than a human. Then again, anything better than us would have to be sickeningly devoted to another past time other than simply free thinking. Hive minds, religious extremists, etc. This is why we can't have nice things, we simply can't. Nothing is nor ever will be perfect. I'm ranting again aren't I? And being pretty depressing to eh? Eh, oh well. All of that aside, can't wait to see where this goes so I can begin ripping out my hair and lusting for the ability to gut, skin, and bathe in flame every damned being on that/this rock. Anyone up for criticizing this post?
3620566
The next mass shooter, ladies and gentleman.