Chapter 9: Recoding
Sweetie sat comfortably in Screwloose's lap. Her thoughts running through her head as the mare combed her mane. And those thoughts spilled out on the paper in front of her. Some drawing materials had been provided at her request after the caretakers had removed their improvised tub. And she had finally been able to get some color and shapes down on paper.
The drawings resembled the thought swirling in her head. Thoughts that kept returning to what Brick had said:
"I'm starting to believe that there really is a dog trapped in a pony's body."
She looked up at the mare, and shared her thoughts with her.
"What if you really are a dog? Trapped in a pony's body. That must be really confusing for you."
She started drawing Screwloose on a new piece of paper. A crude silhouette in light blue crayon which the then filled with the same color. She dotted in the eyes with a mix of pink and red (which was the closest she could get to Screwlooses eye-color) and topped it of with a mess of gray crayon. The mane and tail looked more like the bundled mess the mare had before than the long, well combed hair she had now. (Sweetie never had discovered any talent for drawing) Lastly she drew the mark.
She stopped herself, and looked back at Screwloose.
Her mark was a single metal grey screw. A loose screw.
"I can relate. It feels like I have a screw loose."
Sweetie wondered what kind of talent that could represent. It could not really mean that her talent was to be disturbed. Or could it? Was her mental disturbance such a deep part of her character that it depicted on her mark?
Was her mind like a screw then? Something that could be set in a plank? And twisted around, in and out. What did the plank represent? The body? Who held the screwdriver? Who or what made her the way she was?
As she thought she drew these things. The drawing becoming messier as her thoughts ran faster than her hooves could draw them.
If the screw was the mind. Then the plank it should be screwed into should be the body. But what it the screw did not fit the socket? What if it was the wrong screw altogether? And now it laid there. Distanced from the body. The wrong body. Where had that screw come from? And where did it belong? Was there another screw out there that had ended up in the wrong socket? Or in other words. Was there a pony's mind in a dogs body?
"How could that have happened?" she asked. "Maybe it is like the mind of a dog that has accidentally ended up in a pony's body?"
Sweetie looked up at Screwloose. The mare just tilted her head at the question.
"You are a dog. Yet you look like a mare. And everypony wants you to behave like a mare. Even thou you're not."
She looked down on her paper again. Above the crude abomination of Screwloose she had drawn a big screw - pointing into the mares head. and from the screw she drew a rectangle, like a big price tag, in which she had drew the silhouette of a dog. A hollow transparent silhouette of a dog. A ghost dog. A dog's mind. A spirit.
Next to it was the drawing of a dog with a screw sticking out of its head. and in that screws price-tag was the silhouette of a pony.
She pulled out a new piece of paper. and started drawing herself. (She had to outline her silhouette with a gray line since white crayon on white paper doesn't show very well). Green dots for eyes and pink swirls for mane and tail.
"I am a filly, who is trapped in a doll."
She drew a screw in the filly's head. (it almost looked like she had a big gray horn). and on the price-tag she drew the silhouette of a filly.
She looked at it and wondered. Where had the screw for the doll went? Was there perhaps a filly who had ended up with the mind of a robot? hat would a mind of a robot even look like? She drew a second filly opposite to the first one, with another screw in her head. And in this price-tag she drew a toaster.
She picked up the drawing and looked at it. somehow - intentionally or not. Bout fillies had ended up looking the same. white with green dots and purple swirls. She wondered, was this the real Sweetie Belle? The body she should have been in?
She pulled out the other drawing and placed them in front of her. The one of Screwloose and the dog and the own of the two fillies.
"We have something in common." She said "We both think we are one thing. But we are in fact something completely different."
"Why do we have the mind of something else trapped in our bodies? Why has the mind and body gotten swamped up?
Do you think there is a dog somewhere out there with the mind of a pony?" (and is there a filly with the mind of a toaster, she thought)
She received no answer.
"You are a dog, yet they want to treat you like a mare. They still look at you like a pony. But me... they don't look at me like a pony. Why? Why are you more pony them me? I look like a pony and think I am one. But when people find out that I'm not they treat me different.
She sighed and sank back into Screwlooses lap. the mare put the brush away and gave her another hug.
"We are something. Yet we want to be something else. And for that they call us crazy. For that they look at us like we are different. they think we are not who we are because we are not who we are supposed to be or something.
Why cant we be treated the way we want? Would it not be great if everypony treated us the way we wanted to be treated?"
She looked up into Screwlooses eyes. The mare simply whimpered in response.
"I sure think so."
She looked back at her drawings. At the silhouettes in the price-tags. They looked like ghosts.
And ghosts were like spirits right. Spirits that could posses other things. (that's how it worked in the movies at least.) And if there were spirits and ghosts, were they not also souls? Some said that ghosts are simply souls. The essence of a creature that has yet to travel to the ever after.
A thought flashed through Sweetie How could the screws and minds get mixed up?
What if ghosts really had possessed the wrong kinds of bodies and given them the essence of something else? What if they were souls that came back from the ever after and ended up in the wrong kind of bodies? She had read about reincarnation when she had tried to get her mark in philosophy. Some of the philosophers had said that a creature could be born as something else in their next life. Sweetie had thought that it must be weird to end up in a body unlike the one you were used to.
“Have you ever felt that you are trapped in the wrong body?" She asked Screwloose.
Sweetie used the pictures to explain.
"It's strange, is it not? You are a dog in a pony's body. Does that mean you have a pony's soul or a dog's soul? Can you be one thing but to have the soul of another thing ? "
She looked up at Screwloose, who could only smile in return. Sweetie did not know if she could understand anything she said. But she listened anyway. (In a way she felt like the best speaking partner Sweetie had ever have.)
"They say that all living things have a soul. Like a ghost within. And the soul looks just like us. When they die on film the soul and ghost is always the same shape as the body." (she had seen horror movies where even the dog died. And the dog's soul looked just like the dog.) "Dogs have dog-souls. Ponies have pony-souls. So does the soul always look like the body?"
"Do you believe the soul is shaped like the body? It's weird, is it not? When you die ... will your soul will look like a dog "
She put this thought on paper. And found the imagery of a dog ghost that rose up out of a pony body quite amusing.
"Or will it look like a pony? Regardless of what you were in a previous life you were born as a pony, and have have a pony's body after all."
With that logic, she was a pony herself, because she had a pony's body. But her body was a machine. And a machine could have been made to look like anything. She looked back at the toaster in of the drawing. Would she then have a toasters soul? What if she had been a toaster that they built on a pony. Did machines had souls and spirits as well? Did dolls toasters go into the ever-after when they expired? Did toys come back as other toys when they reincarnated?
***
When the caretakers came knocking, Sweetie had donned her socks again. She had been careful not to let anyone but Screwloose see her mangled leg. She cursed that she had lost one sock. It just looked silly having one naked leg. She pulled that one of her. The socks on the front legs were necessary for symmetry. But the one on the back leg just felt obsolete.
Brick made a quick comment about just that thing before (with another witty comment) reminding her that Dr cardiac was waiting.
Sweetie would not have mind staying longer with Screwloose. But the thoughts in her head felt like they needed to be spoken.
Screwloose obviously felt sad seeing her go. So Sweetie figured she do one last thing for her.
She tore up the seams of the sock, and tied the fabric that had once been a scarf into a ribbon that she attached to Screwloose's mane. It was just a small bow, that dangled from her long gray mane. Yet she treasured it like it was the nicest gift she had ever received. So enthralled was she by it that she just sat staring at it as Sweetie left.
The caretakers commended Sweetie as they walked down the halls
"You got her to behave more like a mare than we ever could. "
They arrived at a unpainted oak door decorated with wood panel and a small brass copper plate that read:
Chief Psychologist Cardiac Candlewick
“And here we are at the Craniac's office.”
Brick laughed at his own pun.
“Get it? Its a combination of the word cranium and maniac that sort of sounds like the boss's name, sine he likes digging around in skulls so much.”
When Sweetie gave no answer, other than a deadpanned, tired look, he diverted his eyes in uncomfortably.
“You should just go in now.” He said.
Without knocking, Sweetie pushed the door inward.
Doctor Cardiac office was pretty well decorated with lost of older looking furniture of oiled oak-wood, complete with wooden panel and galloon suited chairs. The walls were filled with Pictures and images of varying age. Some old hoof-sketches. Some black and white images and some modern 2-D models in color. All of them of the pony brain or some patient.
Cardiac himself was sitting at his desk, looking anxiously at some pictures and some form of gemstone in his hooves. As Sweetie entered he quickly put them down. A smile appeared on his face as he gestured for Sweetie to sit down in the big armchair in front of his desk.
Caretaker Brick excused himself and closed the door as he left. leaving Sweetie and Cardiac alone.
He thanked her again for what she has done for Screw Loose.
"She is one of our most extreme cases, and usually does not open up to strangers that fast. You must have something about you that makes people instantly like you."
I also have a lot of things that makes people instantly hate me. She thought.
"If you want I can schedule some more time between just the two of you. I have the feeling it will be good for you both. What do you say?"
"Yeah. Maybe we can go outside and play fetch."
Cardiac laughed a little. That sort of sincere laugh parents use to give when they think a child is being so delightfully ignorant.
"No. I was thinking more along the lines of today. Staying inside, the two of you, combing your manes and drawing and so forth. Your mane looks good by the way. I didn't think Screwloose capable of that.
The compliment was a bit lost on Sweetie.
"I'm sure she is good at many things … If you just let her."
"I'm sure about that too. And I'm sure you can help bring those out."
"So why won't you let us go outside."
“Well. Its cold outside.” He said with that serious laugh. “And I don't think its a good idea for you two to be playing fetch.”
“Why?” Sweetie asked.
Cardiac shook his head.
“I doubt you understand much about psychology, child. but when somepony believes they are something they are not it's called a delusion..."
Delusion. The word swirled in Sweeties head as Cardiac kept talking. Cause what did that say about her? Was she delusional in thinking she was a pony? Was she insane for thinking of herself as such? It could not be her fault. Not when she had been raised under the “delusion” that she was what she was. What if the same was true for Screwloose?
“ … We are not to encourage their delusions. That could make her situation worse than it already is." He sighed "A mind is such a fragile thing. It may break, if mistreated."
"So why do you treat her wrong?" Sweetie asked. "Why are you trying to get her to do things she does not want? If she is a dog, Should she not be allowed to be one?"
Cardiac chuckled.
"She really have a dog's mind. And many other traits of canine too. Did you know she has an unusually strong sense of smell? And is able to track and differentiate between others by that sense alone?"
No. She did not know that. And did this not prove her point?
"What if she really is a dog? On the inside?" Sweetie stubbornly stated.
"Well. That would make things a little difficult." Cardiac sighed. "For she is clearly not a dog on the outside. She has the body of a pony. But it seems as if she can not accept it."
“What if it's everypony else who should accept who she wants to be?”
Cardiac eyed her for a moment. And Sweetie got that uncomfortable sense that he could see right through her.
"I think the proper question is: Should we not try to get her to accept what she really is?" he asked.
Get her to accept what she really is... Sweetie pondered those words. They weighed heavy on her mind and made her head and eye level drop. Her eyes fell upon the Pictures on Cardiac's desk. Even thou seeing them upside down she clearly recognized Screw Loose in all of them, with her skull shaved clean and the nastiest wound in the back of the head.
"What ... What happened to her?"
That worried, sad look returned to his face.
"I wish I knew. We know so little about that mare. And she refuses to tell us. Other than in barking of course. But none of us speaks dog.” He said with half a sincere chuckle.
“You … don't know?
“No one really knows where she came from, there are no records of enrollments from before she ended up here. No one has submitted her or claimed her. We have searched for any related relatives, but no one have answered. She just showed up in the town of Ponyville one day, sniffing in the garbage cans in search of food. The poor thing was starving and dirty. She had managed to make herself the pack leader of a small band of stray dogs. She certainly caused some rumors of a Were-Mare in the areas where people had glimpsed her."
Sweetie got flashbacks to Branch and Beaver.
"Truth was she was probably more scared of everypony else than they were of her. And she expressed that fear through rage. She was almost savage when they caught her. Still is, to some degree. I can only imagine why, since she probably ran away from somewhere. For wherever it was, I can not imagine it was somewhere good."
A sequence in Sweetie's mind made her body go tense. And goosebumps started to form under her skin.
Her eyes were drawn to the elongated hole in the mares neck. Like the tongue would be drawn to a broken tooth. It looked like one could fit a whole gemstone down there.
“Are you saying somepony … did this to her?”
Then she noticed the other thing on Cardiac's desk. The thing she had thought to be a gemstone. But it was no gem worthy of the name. It was a flat circular object. A small blue disc with a few wires sticking out of the end and a red edge of what looked like dried blood along the other.
Cardiac must have read her facial expressions.
"Yes. She had this in the back of her head. It required extreme procedures to operate it out of her. Since it was more or less wired into her brain."
“Why?”
“I wish I knew. I don't even know what this thing does.”
“You don't know what it is?”
“Oh I know what it is. Just do not know how it works. It is some sort of crystal that seems meant to either read, change or amplify brain waves through electricity. That's what we guess the wires were for."
He tapped the pictures of the nasty head-wound.
"Those wires where sticking out of the back of her head. Hidden under her hair. We did not even know they were there until we did a proper examination. It must have been connected to some-form of devise. Possibly electrical.
Several unicorns have examined it, but no one can understand what it really does. No unicorns have been able to get a read on it. It gives off no magic signatures. So it can not be magical in nature. Yet I have never seen a devise like this. Though it appears to have a crystallized composition I've never seen a crystal like this. It seems almost unnatural. ”
He pushed the disk over the desk towards her. Not knowing why, she picked it up in her hooves. A small ounce of curiosity drove her to do so. She could not explain why, but for some reason it seemed familiar. As if part of her brain knew what it was, and it demanded that she investigate further. Perhaps it was the similarities yet differences to a crystal that drove her curious. The sides of the circle shaped object were completely flat, and held none of the shapes normally seen in a gemstone. Yet it had the same cold feel like one. The surface was smooth like glass. And she thought she could see some form of pattern inside the transparent blue thing.
“It seems that whoever did this was preforming some sort of experiment on her." Cardiac said. "She must have managed to free herself from whatever device she was connected to, and got away." He shuddered, and pointed to the wires at the end. "By the looks of it, she torn it off by force."
Looking closer, Sweetie could see that the cables did indeed look torn. Thin copper wires were sprawling sticking out of the short ends.
"What we first thought was dried blood is actually a piece of the brain. Merged with the crystal. If you look closely, you can see the nerves go deep into the crystal ... "
Sweetie held the disk up towards the lamp. She could indeed see tiny threads of nerves running up into the crystal. The red area was hard and gravely. Crystallized in nature. The the further in the little tiny threads got, the smaller they became. Sweetie slowly lowered the disc towards her eyes to be able to study the details in the transparent crystal.
"It seemed as if someone was trying to reprogram her. Without any respect for the psychological process," he sighed deeply. "And we believe the resulting brain damage was how she came to be the mare she is today."
Cardiac's words were becoming distant to Sweetie. Her entire focus was on the device above her. On the tiny red lines inside it. They were not simply clustered together in the red area of the disk but continued upwards. They seemed to stretch over the entire disk. Lines so small they were almost incomprehensible to her eyes. In order to focus she brought the crystal further down.
"It seems like torture for me. The electric chair would had been more gracious." He sighed again. “A miracle that her brain was not grilled."
Sweetie was no longer listening. As Cardiac drifted off into his own thoughts Sweetie drifted away into hers.
She continuously brought the crystal - disk - thingy closer. It seemed to call to her. Hypnotized her with its lines. Lines that ran back and forth and crossed each other in a pattern more complex than the greatest spiders web.
She brought the disk even closer. Her eyes somehow not growing crossed from nearsightedness.
As everything else became blurry she was still able to focus on the microscopic lines that ran through the device. She watched, entranced, as they merged halfway with the equally thin copper lines from the wires stretching down from the other end, and merging into something in the middle. Neither nerves nor wires.
Unknowingly she had brought it closer and closer towards her horn.
As the crystal touched the tip of her horn a small electrical charge, that had unbeknownst to her been building up in her horn, triggered. It jumped out of her horn, bounced around inside the crystal disk and back into her horn. All in the span of a millisecond.
-:: Compatible component recognized ::-
-:: Connection established ::-
-:: Download information ::-
-:: Compatible energy recognized ::-
-:: Transferring information ::-
-:: Synchronization with systems ::-
-:: New data Loaded. Running record ::-
-:: Registering new information ::-
-:: Pain ::-
-:: !PAIN! // !PAIN! // !PAIN! // !PAIN! // !PAIN! // !PAIN! ::-
She screamed. But no sound left her mouth. Her throat had ceased up, as had every muscle in her body. Tensed to the point of breaking. Her yaw was locked and her eyelids were stuck wide open. And Everything was red. She saw red. Her eyes were cooking in her skull. It felt like they would at any moment melt out of their sockets.
She did not know how she knew. But the pain had gone on for hours! But now it seemed even worse.
She heard voices. And saw movements, somepony was moving in front of her, but it was almost impossible to register them through the pain!
“TALK TO ME!”
One voice rang out above the others. Rang out to her. But she could not answer. Not with her yaw seized up.
"Tune it down. Let her speak."
The pain decreased somewhat, but it was always there. It rushed through her head. Buzzed like a million flies that tore through her brain.
Only now could she actually thick clearly enough to notice on her surroundings. She was sitting on something hard and cold. Her bloodshot eyes fell down upon the restraints tying her forelegs to the armrests of a metal chair. And she had something on her head. No. Something in the head. And it made her hurt! The buzzing was horrifying.
In front of her stood a mare, she was just a blurry haze to the bloodshot eyes in her skull. Just different shifting colors of red. Even her thick round glasses seemed to shine with blood.
“I know you can talk. I know you can understand me very well. SO STOP BARKING LIKE A DOG AND SPEAK CLEARLY!"
The voice was so impatient. So unsympathetic. Yet she felt such love for that unknown, harsh voice.
-:: Voice sample recognized // Loading attached emotional file ::-
She loved that voice, loved the strange mare it was attached to. Loved it like a mother. But it hurt her. Hurt her so bad!
She tried to tell her. Tell her how much it hurt. But the only thing that left her mouth were dog like whimpers
"Come on. Just speak to me."
The mare sounded almost longing. It made the feeling of love increase. She would have waged her tail if she had any energy left. It hurt just to breathe. She had to pant for several breaths, and struggle through the buzzing, just to get a sound over her lips.
"Woof, woof."
“WHAT?!”
"WOOF WOOF"! She barked. Louder so that the mare should hear.
“Again. DO IT AGAIN!”
Whatever longing there had been in the mares voice instantly disappeared. Somewhere a cranking dial was turned, and the buzzing increased again, stronger than last time, and a new wave of pain washed over her with even greater intensity.
-:: // !PAIN! // !PAIN! // !PAIN! // !PAIN! // !PAIN! // !PAIN! //::-
-:: Pain levels reached maximum endurance setting // Activating Failsafe ::-
-:: Recoding redacted//flushing system ::-
-:: Initiating fainting protocols ::-
***
"... What happened?... "
"... I do not know! She just looked at the disc and then she had a spaz attack! ..."
"... Give her a sedative syringe ... standard procedure ..."
Voices. voices from far away. From the other end of the tunnel. Voices
No. It wasn't a tunnel. It was a well. A well she was on the bottom of.
Slowly she began climbing Upwards. Towards consciousness. As she ascended she regained more and more of her senses, and was becoming aware of her surroundings. She was lying down. She could not tell on what since her skin-sensors were offline. But through the blur in her eyes, she could make out a white ceiling that had not been in Cardiac's office. And she could make out the blurry figures of a few ponies who stood over her.
“ ... Sully. Spit out that needle! ... ”
She recognized the sound of Cardiac's voice. And clearly that tired red haired nurse was here. there were also other voices she could not place. What were they doing to her?
" ... Sir. I'm trying to do a brain scan spell ... but I get nothing from her. It's as if she's not there. ... "
" ... NO MAGIC! I've told you countless times ... "
"... Doctor! ... She's not breathing! ... "
Panic. Where was the setting for breath? Had it broken? What if they thought she was broken? What if they thought she was dead? What if they threw her away or buried her! Where was that stupid switch!
No thinking about that now. She had to get out of the well first. She had to get back up and show them that she was not dead.
“That's Enough! You are choking her. Give her some breathing room. Everyone Out! OUT!”
She managed to get her hooves on top of the well, an pull herself into consciousness just as Dr Cardiac sent a pair of nurses out of the room, and slammed the door shut behind them.
Sweetie shot up into sitting position. She would have gasped for air, but she just could not find the switch for her lungs. She would have screamed "I am not dead" But no sound left her mouth. She was muted by the situation she found herself in. She was in some kind of small infirmary, sitting on a big green hospital bed. Medical instruments were piled up around her and she had almost hit her head on a big bright operating lamp that had been pulled down over her.
There were so many questions and fears that arose from this situation alone that Sweetie could not single out any one of them. She looked down on her chest. And found it almost a surprise, that she was NOT cut open and dissected. not even her socks had been removed from her forelegs.
Dumbfounded she looked back up at Cardiac. And found herself drowning in his deep blue eyes.
Eyes that were pressed up against her face as Cardiac ruched to her side so quickly that Sweetie was knocked back down in bed. He put both his forehooves over her as he leaned in over the bed.
Sweetie almost panicked. He was sure to ask questions like “what are you?” or “why are you dressed as a pony?” she was gonna have to run from this place to before they dissected her. She started kicking at the mattress with her back legs, trying to get away from under him.
Then she realized with even great distress that she could not get away. For he had just loked her in the room with him!
”What did you see?”
The question shattered her trail of thought.
He asked again. Softer this time.
“What did you see?”
Sweetie looked up at him. Only now did she see the concerned in his eyes. The worry and sorrow. The same look he had for Screwloose. A wounded and worried look of a pony who wants to help with all his heart but knows he can not do anything for them. She looked around and saw that he was not pinning her to the bed. Rather he was standing over her, as if trying to shield her from all the worlds horrors.
”You touched the blue disk in my office, and then you had a seizure. were barking like a dog in my office. Do you remember anything of what happened to you? Just nod if you do.”
Sweetie nodded.
“And do you wish to share what you experienced?”
“They... Hurt me..." She stammered. "Hurt her I mean. They hurt Screwloose. They sent electricity into my head ... Into her head.”
Dr Cardiac backed away with a look of utter horror on his face.
“Shock therapy. I suspected ... but never knew ...”
He looked back at Sweetie. His blue eyes were becoming even bluer as tears formed upon them. He climbed up in the bed with her and pulled her tight into his chest.
"I'm sorry" He stammered "I'm so sorry"
Even though she could not feel it. Sweetie knew that she was shaking. Her lips quivered and her voice was becoming more and more unsteady as she tried to speak.
"They ... They did not want me ... her to bark like a dog. And they hurt her ... "
-:: Initiating crying sequence ::-
“It hurt. … it hurt so much.”
It all crashed back on her. The moment had been so brief, yet so intense in had burned its way into her memory. She had felt that pain as if it was her own. Experienced it with every fiber of her body.
She broke down in Cardiac's lap and screamed.
***
Sweetie cried. For herself and for Screwloose, and the horror they had experienced. Her tears flowed until Cardiac's coat was soaking wet. And when she had run out of tears she blew her nose into his tie.
“Oh! I'm sorry!” She said when she noticed the mess she had made of Cardiac's clothes.
“Its okay. Though I would appreciate if you would use some paper towels instead.” He said with a forced laugh.
He directed her to the bathroom door on the other end of the medical ward. Insisting that they both needed some cleaning up after their little session. He himself was going to redress the issue of his soaked coat and re-dress into some clean clothes that were available in the ward.
Meanwhile, Sweetie locked herself in the bathroom, and stared at the toilet seat. Sweetie did not know if she needed to pee or puke. She was too shaken from all the pain she had experienced. She climbed up on the toilet to reach up over the sink, and stared into the bathroom mirror. A wreck looked back at her.
The filly in the mirror had big black rings under her eyes. Eyes that were red from all the tears she had shed. Her face was stained with snot and damp tears. And her white coat had turned so pale it was almost a miracle one could not see the gears underneath. Sweetie did not know when she last looked into a mirror. She did not want to believe that ruined filly in the glass was her. But she knew it was.
With a heavy sigh she lowered her head, ready to throw up in the sink. Then her eyes caught the shimmer a small sharp object that had almost been flushed down the drain but gotten stuck over the tiny hole.
She recognized it as Sully's chewing needles.
Sweetie took the needle in her hoof, and stared at the sharp pointy tip. She remembered a similar situation back home. and how much such a small object had hurt.
Pain. No pain. Once she had associated that with the difference between alive and dead. Between living tissue, and cold dead metal. Now that line was becoming blurry.
She made sure her pain sensors were still off, and brought the needle down on her already ruined right leg. She stung herself above the sock. This time the needle went down through the skin without much trouble. It was almost fascinating how little force it took to pierce the skin. She continued to push downwards until she came to a hard stop. She knew she had hit steel bottom. She twisted the needle around making the hole slightly bigger. Blood pooled up from the wound, but she felt nothing. She washed the wound clean and looked down into the hole. She could just see the faint blue light of whatever magic that was repairing the scratch she made shine up through the wound.
Just to be sure, she did the same on her left leg. With the same results.
Sweetie pulled down her sock and stabbed herself right in the red edge of flesh, where the net of wires where woven into her skin. She put the needle in under the skin, and using a small metal pipe as a lever base, she bent it upward.
There was a soft, tearing noise as the skin separated from the metal network. She looked into it to confirm what she already knew. The synthetic muscles continued up under the skin.the framework was colored red where the roots of the tissue had attached to the metal.
She tried to lift a little more. Then just a little more again. When the needle became insufficient she took a firm grip with her left hoof and pulled. Slowly she tor a patch of the skin away. Rolling it upward like it was the sleeve of a sweater. She eventually hit a nerve-cluster. She watched closely. So closely that she had put her right hoof up against her cheek so her eye would end up leveled with the leg, to watch the separation as the knot was torn from the red little crystal in the wire-work. It was like pulling moss from a rock. Or weed from the garden. As the last little tine root snapped the crystal went dark and a Voice in her head told her that a sensor had lost contact and gone into standby.
Suddenly there was a loud banging on the bathroom door.
“Are you done in there?” Cardiac asked through the door.
"Yes." She answered. She was done... Done with ... What was she doing anyway?
She let the needle fall. Making sure it went down the drain this time. She washed away the blood and wiped herself clean before pulling the socks back on.
"I'm coming.” She called out.
Before leaving, she looked back at her reflection one last time, and forced a smile. She did not look that bad after all, she told herself as she dragged a hoof through her hair. Screwloose had actually done a pretty good job of restyling her mane and tail. The pink curls reminded her that she could still look like her old self.
***
As they walked back to Dr Cardiac's office they talked about Sweeties short, but painful experience in Screwlooses memory.
“Doctor. Why would anypony do that to her?” She asked.
"I don't know." Cardiac sighed "I guess they were using shock therapy in an attempt to rewrite her. I always thought the experiment turned her into a dog. But from what you are saying, it sounds like it was the other way around. Whoever did this did not want her to be a dog. They were trying to cure her."
He stopped and wiped both his glasses, and his eyes, off on the sleeve of his new coat.
"To think that she might have been like that before that experiment. I wonder if it made her better or worse. Poor, poor thing."
“But why not use a spell?” Sweetie asked. "Surely a bit of magic would have been way more effective, and way less painful."
Cardiac sighed.
“You might as well ask why we all don't just use magic to make our patients sane.” He sighed. “I wish it was that simple. Magic can be effective. But it has its limits. You can't treat a mind like you treat a wound. If they have been born with their condition, it's part of who they really are.”
“Like a handicap?” Sweetie asked. Her thoughts went to Scootaloo. Whose underdeveloped wings simply refused to grow, despite what stimulating spells and herbs had been applied to them.
“Yes. Said Cardiac. "Its a chronic condition affecting the pony's very inherent magic structure. Any medicinal spells or potions would be canceled out by their inherent magic, since the energy structure thinks there is nothing wrong with it, and reverts to its original state. Likewise, a “mad pony” with a mental illness can not be cured by magic. Mental illness isn't some foreign disease that suddenly attacks the brain. Its really a part of their personality. A trait that has been wired into their brain. A mental shortcoming that hinders the pony from functioning, just as bad as if they had been born blind or limp."
Cardiac drifted of into his own little lecture.
"Even if their condition is not chronic it can be just as serious. Like a stallion taking a bat to the head. They could medically heal him in a jiffy. But the brain-damage he suffered could change his personality. Or it could be some horrifying experience, that gives them a mental scar. While you could remove that scar by memory manipulation, its not really fixing the problem. Just hiding it. Celestia knows there are many who have tried to come up with magical cures for madness. But magically meddling with the mind only causes far more damage than it solves."
"Why is that?"
“Because. To truly change somepony's personality, they would have to alter their very core. Permanently rewrite the brain chemistry. The real, horrible reason for shock therapy is to alter the electrical signals in the brain. Perhaps they were experimenting with some kind of mind technology. I've also heard of experiments were they try to use magic to rearrange the synapses." He shivered.
"That is why I have forbidden all use of that kind of therapeutic magic in my hospital. It really is no different than brainwashing."
Sweetie's ears peeked. How did you wash a brain? Did you use soap and water? How did you wash inside the ears? Did you lower your head underwater and shake it around? Did you shake up the... what was that word again?
“Synapses?” She asked.
“Yes” Said Cardiac, as they reached his office. “In every brain there is synapses. You can think about them as microscopic wires that trade information between each other using electrical signals. The brains circuitry, if you will.”
He opened his office door and gestured for Sweetie to sit down again.
He the walked behind his desk, where a big billboard with a picture of a brain hung on the wall. A huge lump of wrinkled biomass that had been divided up into different colorful sections. Cardiac went on to explain about the different parts of the brain and how they controlled different parts of the body and mind. How some areas became extra active when we were feeling certain emotions, Or use different body parts.
Most of it went over Sweetie's head. She felt like she was back at school. And on that note, there was something she wanted to ask. Something that she had never gotten the chance to ask in anatomy lesson back home.
“Why is it so wrinkled?”
Cardiac smiled.
“Well you see. The brain starts out as nothing a smooth lump in the unborn fetus's head. As the brain grows, it wrinkles. And those wrinkles are what help us think. For it's down in these wrinkles that the true wiring of the mind happens."
He illustrated this by drawing a series of small circles on a piece of paper. Then filling all the circles on one half of the paper with a plus symbol, and the other half with a minus symbol. He told her that the smooth paper was like the smooth surface of an undeveloped brain. He then folded the paper together. Making the plus and minus symbols come in contact with each other.
"Every wrinkle on the brain is like these folds." He explained "Its here the synapses comes in contact with each other and complete the circuitry."
He smiled.
"No two brain are the same. Every brain develops its own wrinkles. Like a circuit board being randomly plugged to run differently every time. some might have a much more active love section, and become really friendly ponies. Others might have a really active logic section, And become super smart. Others might have a really good memory..."
The list of examples went on and on.
"Simply putt, since all brain's wrinkles are different, we are all different."
Was that really all there was to a pony? Wrinkles and synapses? What about magic? Or the soul?
“What about the heart?" Sweetie asked "Doesn’t your feelings come from your heart?”
“A common misconception." Cardiac said "The heart is all but a muscle that pumps blood. All emotions really forms in the brain Didn't they teach you this in school?”
“Then why does it hurt so much... When you are sad?”
Cardiac sighed and corrected his glasses.
"While its true that all emotions emanates from the brain. Those energies then send out signals that affect the entire body. Strong enough emotions can cause us actual, physical pain. Making you feel like you have a broken heart.”
He went on to explain how the brain triggers reactions in the body, in responses to different circumstances. The way he put it it made it sound like ponies were little more than a set of chemical reactions and electrical triggers.
Sweetie began to ponder what her own brain looked like. Just what was that giant screw in her head made out of?
Did she have a real brain, with wrinkles? Or was it just a collection of circuitry boards and wires instead of synapses?
Nature might randomly wrinkle every brain naturally. But an artificial brain would have to be hoof made. Did that mean that whoever had made her, had also made her brain? Even if she had a brain made entirely of metal, somepony would still have had to mold the wrinkles in place. Had that been left to random chance? could it be? Or did it mean that by designing her mind, they would have to make all the things that made her who she was?
-:: Anxiety attack // Shivering sequence initiated ::-
Was her personality just a series of wires, connected to the most convenient ports? If the mind was like a flow of electrical energy, then that similarity did not seem too far off. And did that mean that her personality could change by the flip of a button, or the reconnection of a wire?
Was there anything about her, from her personality, her habits, what she found funny or sad, even how she thought was cute or ugly. Was there anything that was her own? Or had somepony else just made all that up and put it in her head?
Could you really make all that up?
Could her family have picked an organic brain to be implanted into a robot doll? Or had they picked a bunch of settings that determined her personality? Had they chosen to make her love candy, and hate sauerkraut? Had they chosen who she hated ... and who she loved?
Sweetie found herself shaking. The Voices were telling her she was also sweating, and grabbing the edges of the chair with more force than necessary, And would be hyperventilating if she could. She had to let go of the armrest, and tell the voices to stop doing what they were doing to her body.
Too late. Cardiac had already turned his attention from the billboard, and noticed her behavior.
"Is there something on your mind?" he asked.
“Doctor. Do you believe that you can force somepony to love another?” She asked. Forcing her voice not to shiver.
“Well... no.” Cardiac answered with a nervous laugh. Then he looked at Sweeties serious face, and swallowed.
“Well. There are spells and potions made to make you love another.”
“But isn't that like altering their personality with magic?”
“Not really. Any hypnotic spell are generally only meant to do one thing. To make the victim do whatever the caster was thinking of at the time. These spells can be cast either on the victims themselves, or an object, to make them behave towards in a certain way."
Sweetie remembered the love doll incident. When twilight had snapped and put a spell on a old ugly doll that made her - her friends - and the whole town go crazy over it.
Sweeties thought stopped dead in their tracks, and rewinded. She really had been affected by that love spell just the same as everypony else. Despite not being like everypony else. What did that mean?
Well for one thing it meant that her eyes could absorb magic. And that magic energy could affect her mind.
Energy that, as far as Cardiac had put it, had altered the signals in her brain, and told her mind how it was supposed to behave. Like it had flipped some switch inside her. Or created a new setting entirely.
Did that mean that the settings and programs in her head were like spells? Was she maybe spellbound to behave the way she was?
Cardiac continued.
"More advanced spells require the hypnotist to make up more and more of the victims behavior.
Eventually they would take so much control that the victim becomes a living puppet, with the puppeteer needing to control everything they do. For no spell really changes who a person is. They are still themselves underneath the control of the spell..."
Are they? Then was there a real Sweetie somewhere in her? Somewhere underneath all these programs and sequences?
" ... And any spell can be undone. All hypnosis spells generally needs to be renewed, else the victim starts fighting back. Unless the spell is so subtle that the victim does not notice it."
So subtle that she does not notice it? Or simply a big wall of ice, that had kept her from hearing all the voices and commands in the back of her head?
" ... Potions also wear off over time. It's nothing more than a drug that alters the brain chemicals. Real love is something I believe can only come if the pony themselves really want it.”
If you really wanted it? Did she want to love Rarity and her parents? Yes! Said her heart. She loved her mom, dad and big sister. She missed them despite of what they had done to her. She was so homesick she could puke. But what if that was all just some control spell-program? One so subtle that she had not noticed it?
That thought was followed by something else. A desire. A need.
She did not want to be controlled. She wanted to rid herself of any controlling programs or spells that might be affecting her mind. But how?
If her mind was filled with command spells. Then maybe there was a spell to undo them. Or maybe if she just resisted them long enough they would wear off.
"So. Is it impossible to change a pony?" She asked.
"Not at all. Said Cardiac "Every pony can change. We change as we grow up. We change when we discover new things about ourselves. The best, and only, treatments is just a matter of getting round to accept the change." His eyes once again got that deep, hypnotic look as he eyed her over. And he added: "But we should not rush headlong into new things. Too fast of a change can be devastating. Like a bat to the head.”
Some part of Sweetie's mind told her, from experience, that she used to giggle at the thought of bats to the head. But not anymore. She had changed. A lot. In just a few days she had gone from a happy normal filly to the wreck she was now. She felt like she had been hit in the head by a wrecking ball. Perhaps it had all happened too fast. Perhaps all this had damaged her somehow.
-:: Systems check //... Scanning ... // No internal damage detected ::-
That system was not helping. Perhaps there was damage it did not know of? Perhaps the system itself was damaged? Or perhaps had never worked properly to begin with, but thought it was working like it should, because it had always been that way? Maybe the once who made it had made a mistake?
Sweetie could not ask herself if she was broken. Of course the voices would say there was nothing wrong with her. She needed to ask somepony else. But how to ask without giving herself away?
“Doctor ..." She carefully began "Have you ever felt like you woke up one day ... and been something different?”
Cardiac gave her a questioning look. “Can you elaborate?”
“I mean... Have you ever felt like you suddenly found out that you where something that you weren't before?”
She mentally kicked herself. She had probably said to much already!
Dr Cardiac sat down in his chair, and leaned back.
“Well yes." He said, half dreamy "I have had many life changing moments. None of the least was the day I earned my mark.
Before that day I didn't know who I was, or what I was.
I mean, I thought I was gonna be a million things. I once pictured myself as a linebacker. My gym teacher said I could tackle so hard I gave the other players cardiac arrest. But one day, that all changed...”
Once again both Sweetie and Cardiac drifted of into their own thoughts.
The day Cardiac had earned his mark had changed his life.
Sweetie thought about her own mark. Or lack thereof. Her lack of just a basic purpose, or a function, left her feeling hollow. How was she suppose to know what she was meant to be, when she did not know what she was programed to be?
She only knew that she was not supposed to change, or find her true self in the first place. there had been a big spell in her head that had prevented her from finding out who (or what) she really was.
Even though that frozen wall had fallen away, her brain was still full of programming. Sequences and spells that directed how she was suppose to behave.
As long as they were there she would never be able to find her true self.
She buried her face in her hooves. Small sobs started to escape from her.
“Do you want to tell me what you are crying about?” Cardiac asked, with some level of concern.
“Its just... I'm never going to find out who I am.” she sobbed.
“Yes you are.” Said Cardiac. “For I believe that everyone already know somewhere deep down what they are. It just takes a little outside perspective to get to the realization.
That did not make Sweetie feel any better. She had never known what she was inside. And if it was not for the accident she never would have found out either. Then she would have gone through her entire life as a blank flank, never knowing what horrific truth lurked within.
She buried her face even deeper in her forelegs. She would probably have started sobbing even harder if the office door hadn't opened at that moment.
"Oh ... you're here." Came the melancholic tone of nurse Sully. "I see you have already recovered."
Sweetie did not answer, nor did she look up from her hooves.
There was a moment of silence before the voice of nurse Sully spoke up again.
“Excuse me. But we are about to hold a musical session in the main hall, and it happens that the old gramophone has broken down. So we need somepony's who can sing for an audience. And you did tell me you can sing.”
Sweetie looked up. Yes. She had said that.
She looked over at Dr Cardiac. Who nodded approvingly.
“Yes. I think we are done here for today. You should go with the nurse, little miss."
“Talk about me like I'm not even here.” Mumbled said nurse.
Upon those words Cardiac did turn all his attention to Sully, And the needle in he mouth.
“Sully. Spit out that needle.”
“Yes Boss.” She mumbled.
Sweetie got up from the chair, and walked with Nurse Sully out of the office.
It looked like it was time for the doll to do another performance.
***
As she walked along the empty halls, Sully repeatedly played with her syringes, and started chewing on a new needle to replace the one she'd spat out in Cardiac's garbage can. Sweetie decided to break the eery silence.
“So. Is it forbidden for unicorns to use magic here?”
Nurse Sully gave her a tired look and the needle rolled over her teeth.
“We do have magical restraining devices for the unstable once, so they don't hurt anypony.”
“I mean, for the doctors?”
The needle made another lap over Sully's teeth.
“No. Forbidding a sane unicorn from using magic would be like forbidding a Pegasus to use their wings or an Earth pony to use their hooves.”
"But... Dr Cardiac said he forbade the use of mind magic in his hospital. Is it true?
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Sully rolled the needle over her lips again. (She seemed to be doing that every time she thought about something)
”To prevent us from making a bad situation worse for the patients. We unicorns would always attempt to magic the problem away. But that's a short term solution, and can cause more problems than it solves.
"So... You don't use any magic at all?"
"That's not entirely true. We could always use a mind delve spell to dive into the pony's mind to try and see what the problem is. But that's dangerous.”
She rolled the needle over her lips again.
“But the boss. He has this way of just looking at a pony and somehow know what is wrong with them.”
The needle made a sixth lap before she became aware of its presence. The thought of Cardiac apparently reminded her of his words. She spit the needle out in the next garbage can they passed.
“You should be careful about where you put your needles Mrs Sully.” Sweetie said. “Somepony might get hurt.”
***
The main hall had been redecorated since Sweeties last visit. All the tables had been moved away to make room for a lot more chairs. And a lot more ponies. It was no longer just group F, but a lot of other patients, and personnel, perhaps the whole hospital, that had come to share in this musical session.
Or to be tormented by it (depending on your point of view). As they entered the hall, they were assaulted by the worst harmonica performance Sweetie had ever heard. The current contester in this musical tournament was a lime green stallion dancing back and forth on his back legs while holding a harmonica in his front hooves. The tunes he blew on that instrument made Sweetie flatten her ears against her skull.
The saddest part about it was that his mark was that of an harmonica. It made Sweetie wonder if loss of talent could lead to madness.
Despite the noise, Sweetie could not help but overhear the conversation between two other nurses. She barely recognized their voices as the ones who had woken her up in the medical wing.
"... are you telling me she resisted the mind scan spell?" Said the earth pony nurse.
"Not so much resisting as not responding at all." Said the unicorn . "I could not get in contact with her mind. "
"It's just like with that disc."
"Is it really true that she got something from that thing that we didn't How is that possible?. Just who is she?"
"I don't know. but The boss seems to have taken a personal liking to her ..."
Both nurses went silent when they saw Sweetie. Sully shot them a cold glare, and they both turned their hooves around and walked away.
That look they had worn on their faces. That distrust and alienation. It was like a knife in Sweeties chest.
How long? She wondered. How long was she gonna be able to stay before those looks became unbearable?
How long before they chased her out with pitchforks and torches?
How long before her ears bust from the horrible harmonica play?
Thankfully the stallion was soon escorted off by Brick. Equally thankfully was Sully that this was not a stand up performance. Else that prick would have assaulted all their ears with his horrible puns - She mumbled as she walked Sweetie to the front of the gathering and introduced her to the crowd.
Sweetie took to the center of the stage - which was just a thick stack of phone-books on the floor. Once it had been stage fright keeping her from singing to an audience. Now stage fright was the least of her concerns. It was no longer her voice she was ashamed to show. She corrected her socks and stepped up on the phone books. Fully preferring that they all saw Sweetie the singer and not Sweetie the robot.
She was feeling too down to make up her own lyrics. So she selected an old song from memory. A song she had been taught on a snowy day many winters ago. It felt fitting with a winter song, given the season. Even if the rain pattered against the windows.
The song that flowed out of her mouth carried a happy, uplifting tune that did not mach her mood. Maybe that was just the power of music? If only that power was her own, she thought. Then she might have been able to earn her mark in singing.
Sweeties mouth continued to form the words of the song. But her thoughts went elsewhere. They went to how she would never get a mark in singing. To how she would never get a mark in anything. To how she would never discover her true purpose. Not unless she could rid herself of these voices and spells controlling her. She wondered if there was a way to wash her brain clean of all those things and start again with a mind of her own. A mind free from shackles.
Only then would she be able to find something she was really good at, at her own.
Maybe then she could get a tattoo. Or a brand.
The song continued to play over her lips about winters past and Hearth's Warming Gifts. Sweetie could no longer remember what she had wished for herself this Hearth's Warming Eve. She could not understand how she could remember every lyric of this song without even thinking about it. She could not understand how it sounded so happy, or why her voice wasn't hoarse and sour. And she couldn't understand who was doing all that screaming.
Wait! What?
The sound of Screaming snapped Sweetie's attention back from the depths of her thoughts and directed it out into the crowd. One of the patients. A butter yellow mare with milky white hair seated in the back row had started screaming at the top of her lungs. She was flailing like mad and had already managed to trow her own chair forward and hit an elder mare that was sucking on a soother. The old mare was knocked over and started crying like a foal and made a big smelly spot in her diapers. Caretakers were already trying to get a grip on the screaming mare. Brick got a back hoof to the chin for his troubles. Nurse Sully and a few others ran to calm the crying elderly foal and several others in the crowd.
Meanwhile, Sweetie was in her own silent turmoil. How had she not noticed that screaming before? How had she not noticed the mare trowing a chair forward?
And why had she not stopped singing?
-:: Playback in progress // Audio file selected :: The 12 days of hearths warming eve // Lip sync on automatic ::-
Sweetie just stood there. Her eyes nearly going cross as she tried to look past down her own muzzle, to see her own mouth moving and singing like possessed.
-:: Panic levels increasing // Replay stopped ::-
By the time they had dragged the screaming mare away and restored order in the mess hall, Sweetie had already bolted away into her own room.
She threw the door shut and dove into bed. She burrowed herself under the blanket.
What had just happened? How could her mouth just start singing on its own? Was this the control spells starting to take her over? She wanted them out of her head. Now! She had to silence them before it was too late.
She almost started banging her head against the wall. She almost ran into the bathroom and flushed with her own head in the toilet. She almost did a lot of things that would have been hurtful, until she remembered what had happened back home.
She did not want another breakdown like that. She had just barely kept herself from attacking Rarity that time. Deserve it as her big sister may have. Who knew what Sweetie would do, if she had another system crash?
She could hear her heart pumping like a drum roll in her ears, even though she could not feel it in her chest. She could hear the voices warning her about the rising pressure her mood-swings were having on her systems.
She took a few imaginary deep breaths to try and made her heart stop running.
The desire to stop her heart was almost immediately met with silence.
Silence as her heart stopped.
-:: Heartbeat simulator entering standby mode ::-
Sweeties mind stopped as well. She just sat there. Frozen in shock. In utter silence. Just waiting for the systems crash to happen. To faint. to black out. But nothing happened.
When the horror faded and her body eased of tension sequences, she began to think, and try to rationalize what was happening to her.
She had tried to sing, without desired to do so, and she had just selected an old memory that had played on its own.
She wanted her heart to stop beating. And it had.
Now she wanted it to turn back on.
-:: Initiating heartbeat simulator // standby mode ended ::-
The slow, steady rhythm of her bloodpump returned to fill the silence.
Sweetie pulled the socks of herself and sat there, in the bed, just looking at herself.
Ever since that horrible experience back home she had discovered more and more ways to turn parts of herself off and on.
It had started with the sensors on her right foreleg. Things that had turned off automatically due to her exceeding the pain threshold. Then her lungs had stopped, when she breathed in water. Then, she'd learned how to turn the rest of her sensors on and off to save herself from the cold.
She thought about her lungs again. It had gotten quite tiresome to not be able to breathe as usual. She closed her eyes and went back into her mind. To the Body Functions Processor. And after some searching found the button that controlled the Airpump Failsafe. She carefully flipped it on. If she began feeling any pain in her lungs, she would immediately turn them off.
-:: Initiating inhale/exhale subroutine ::-
There was no pain. Maybe she hadn't turned on the sensors in her lungs. But it didn't matter. She could finally hear the air going in and out of her mouth again. She could finally see her chest rising and falling on its own again. Her body was sounding like it was alive again.
-:: Initiating cry sequence ::-
That's funny. She didn't feel sad. The corners of her mouth had spread from ear to ear. She felt grateful if nothing else.
She had broken the frozen spell-wall that kept her from realizing all the other spell programs. She had been ordering the voices around. It had been difficult at first. But now they were bowing to her will almost on a whim.
Perhaps this was her inherent magic? Perhaps this inner energy had been fighting against the control spells since forever.
Sweetie had never been able to do any magic. And discovering her true nature had all but crushed any hope of her ever being able to use any. But if there really was magic energy in her systems. Maybe she could take control of it?
And if she could take control of these spell-programs, then perhaps one day she would be strong enough to be completely free of any control. Then she'd be free to truly find out who she was.
-:: Excitement levels rising ::-
Her thoughts returned to the beating in her chest.A heart was nothing more than a muscle that pumped blood. So why did it hurt so much? Was that all in her head? Could she turn off her heartbeat with a thought?
Why not? Why did she even need a bloodpump for? Asked one thought.
To pump blood into the skin. Answered another.
She looked down on her forelegs. She'd confirmed that she had control over the pain in her skin. But she did not have control of the pain in her chest. She found no option to turn of the sorrow and homesickness in her Processor. But maybe one day she would gain control of her entire body. Then she'd be able to control the pain inside as well. And then it wouldn't hurt any more.
For now, she decided to take care of that spell that had tried to take control of her voice.
She laid back down in the bed, and concentrated. She went down into her mind and looked for any spells that controlled her voice. Her mind ventured beyond the processor. Following the threads of information that talked about voice control. And eventually found a spell labeled “Voicebox”. She wrapped her mind around it. And just like with her sensors she became aware of a new part of herself like never before.
A small devise that sat in the throat, just about where the vocal cords should be.
She thought of the old song again. She thought of the sound of her voice in the memory of her and her mother practicing the lyrics a winter long ago. she thought of it as a recording and sent it to her voicebox. She imagined hitting play on an old recorder.
-:: Start replay // Disable lip sync::-
The song was being replayed over her lips. But her mouth wasn't moving.
She laid back and listened the song coming from her own mouth. It sounded identical to the one in the memory. It even carried the happy tune of that joyful winter day.
That's because it is the same. She thought at herself. In her mind, she felt the soundtrack flow from the memory through her voicebox, like tape in a recorder. And the song flowed out her mouth like from a gramophone funnel.
It was a crazy feeling. She was telling her mouth to sing. But she was not singing herself. The program was making it sing for her. Because she told it to. She was controlling the control program that was controlling a part of her!
She started laughing. All of this was insane. She was insane. Well, good thing she had come to the right place then.
Nurse Sully soon came knocking and asked how she was feeling, and if she needed something. To the nurse's relief, sweetie just wanted to be left alone. Alone with her voices. Alone with her voice.
She laid awake long into what she assumed was the night, thinking that maybe she should stay here. With all the other nut jobs and screwed up ponies. She felt pretty screwed up herself. Both mentally and physically. Maybe this was where she belonged.
“Everyone can change”. Cardiac had said. “Its all just a matter of getting them to accept then change.”
She had changed a lot in just a few days. If she kept changing, maybe she could change what she was. Then she did not have to be a doll any more, because being a doll sucked!
Listening to her own heartbeat and breath she soon drifted of to sleep.
***
The body laid stretched on the cold, dirty workbench. A workbench stained with oil and blood. The torso was cut wide open, and the decaying rib cage had been removed long ago to make room for the constant procedures. In fact, next to nothing remained of the original skeleton remained.
The yellow mare stood at the threshold of the room. She brushed her white mane out of her face as her dark brown eyes swept one last time over the scene.
The room was poorly lit since the last power outage. Some of the light flickered on and off. The electric flow had just not been the same since that little mare broke in and ruined everything. The power had become hard to keep even with their own generators. Everything had been reconnected so many times that hardly anypony knew what system was connected to what any more. Just as long as all the scientific electronic equipment kept working. They had sacrificed much comfort just to keep their dream alive. But that dream had finally come to an end.
It had been over before it even began. Just a foals naive attempt to change natures passing.
It had just taken this long for all the others to realize it.
They talked about saving a life. Making a life. Creating a life. She knew better. That thing would never be alive. This thing in front of her had been dead since long before it came out of the womb.
At first it had seemed so simple. Possible even. To grant this brain dead foal a life. Just a few special parts to replace the damaged brain. To make science triumph where nature and magic had failed. It had seemed to work at first. But the body remained just as dead as the mind. Life-support of both machines and magic kept the decomposing from worsening. But recovery was not happening. It was simply too far gone.
Then they had the idea. If they could aid the mind. Why not aid the body? Just some parts and pieces here and there to strengthen it. And so they began creating life support systems so small they could fit in such a tiny body one by one replacing the failing organs with artificial ones. A bloodpump had to replace the failing heart. An Airpump had to aid her lungs. And a metal joints had to support the weakened bones. (Eventually replacing the skeleton altogether.)
Just a few more parts they said. Just a few more connections and this foal will live. How long had they clung to that hope?
How long before they finally realized they were poking around in a corpse? How long had it been before they realized that what they called brain activity was simply the electric currents of the equipment?
This desecration disgusted her. Yet she had stayed on the team. For she was equally fascinated.
In such a short time span they had managed to discover medicinal and technological advances that could send Equestria into a new technological boom.
In their attempts to blur the line between pony and machine they had discoverer things that could revolutionize medical science.
Working without restraints of modern ethical practice had allowed her to study the body closer and deeper than all the finest X-ray spells in the world (Stupid Animal Rights Organization and their laws against dissecting of live specimens.)
It helped that she worked with geniuses. It was here she met the stallion of her dreams. They worked together and did the most amazing things. She designed the parts to be anatomy correct, and he made it so. She was the marrow in that little creation. And he was the metal bones. Marrow and metal. It was an amazing time.
Now it was about to end.
It was almost a little sad. That creation of their almost felt like a filly of theirs. A foal they had put all their time and investment into.
Oh well. After the two of them left this place this they were gonna make lots of new little foals. The natural way.
She took one last look around these machines. And then started turning them off one by one. She had to duck under several cables that hung between the body and the machinery surrounding it to reach the power switches . The sawed open skull alone was fitted with hundreds of tiny copper wires that connected the big bulking mainframe to a big blue macguffin inside the cranium. A almost crystal like stone that was suppose to be the filly's new brain. It was almost hypnotizing with its faint blue light. She did not know what it was made of. And she did not care anymore.
Finally she turned off the main power switch. The machines gave a last ominous hum as they powered down. Even the lights in the roof went out, except for a few suborn light bulbs that refused to stop flickering. Even when she flipped the main power switch she doubted she be able to kill the power completely. Not with how everything was cross-wired here.
Even a few buttons on the machines continued blinking randomly, refusing to give up as the last electricity slowly bled from their circuits. The blue light from the open cranium seemed to shine brighter. But it was probably just an illusion in contrast to the darkness. Just one last display of energy.
It was almost sad. Like turning off the life support of a dying patient. Except this patient had been far gone for a long time. Even the family that brought her here had finally accepted to let go.
She turned around and walked out into the corridor. Even the corridor outside seemed to have lost its power when she turned of the machinery. Not surprising. You could not even flip the light in the bathroom anymore without it affecting something else.
Her hoof steps echoed As she walked down the empty dark corridor. But for some reason, she was hit with the uneasy feeling that she wasn't alone here. At first she could not put her hoof on what it was. only that there was something about the echo...
She stopped, realizing that the hallway had never produced an echo before. But as she stood still, the hoofsteps continued. A small metallic tapping was at her coming from behind. But that was impossible. There had been no pony else in the laboratory. No pony except...
No. That was not possible. It must be one of the others trying to pull a prank on her. Smart as they might be they were sometimes painstakingly frustrating to be around. Ponies whose personal hygiene and living standard seemed to drop in opposition to their IQ. Well, she was not gonna take it any more.
She turned around. ready to give the prankster a piece of her mind. And what did she see, if not the body. Its pale, hairless, half decomposed, ripped, torn body. Stuffed to the brim with mechanical joints and components of such poor quality that they could barely move.
But they did. They moved. Four decomposing legs moved across the floor carrying a dead body. Each step producing a little metallic click on the hard, cold floor. Its head lifted on a creaking neck, and those lifeless hollow eyes stared right into her. Its mouth was hanging open in a silent scream. A steady, rasping breath escaping from the gaping maw as the airpump did its thing. A maw that looked like it could swallow her hole.
She wanted to run. But her legs had tensed up and locked in place. Every fiber in her body had tensed solid in fear and in utter disbelief at what was transpired transpiring. She felt like even her lungs and heart had tensed to cease activity.
The small uneasy steps continued to bring it closer and closer, until it walked passed her. Leaving a trail of blood and oil dripping from its body behind. Dragging behind it a tail of wires, and a mane of the many, many copper threads sticking out of its open skull. Along with several other wires, hanging out of ports in the limbs, spine and open torso. Its dead eyes staring unblinkingly ahead as it continued past her and into the darkness of the corridor.
She did not know how long she stood there.
Finally some part of her tensed body realized that she needed air. She sucked in a large amount, and let it out as a scream.
She screamed as she flew up in her bed, and continued screaming until the door to her room flew open and the nurses and caretakers rushed in. She kept screaming and thrashing about as they tried to hold her down. She would have torn out her vocal cord if not a sedative needle had been sunken into her neck. The sedative quickly took effect and made her whole body go limp.
The whole world became so delightfully blurry. The shadows danced with the light, and the ponies in front of her was nothing more than colored blurs.
“There you go. There you go Marrow. Calm yourself!”
A couple of blurs that had been holding her down now helped her sit up in the bed. The whole world swayed as if it were a sea.
A green haired blur shone a small, yet intense light in the mares eyes. The mare did not know if her pupils reacted to the light. The sedatives were sometimes so strong they even delayed your eyes reaction to light. These blurs could be so stupid.
“Is Mad Marrow having dreams again.” Said the green haired blur. "Do you want to talk about it"
Yes. Mad Marrow. That had been her nickname ever since coming here. And yes, she wanted to talk about it. She wanted to warn them of the danger they were in. Of the demon that had infiltrated their halls. But she could not. She would end up back in isolation wearing restraining jacket.
Besides, the drug in her system were making it difficult to form words.
She just nodded. Not even sure to what question.
“Nightmares about zombie robots again?” The green haired blur asked.
Marrow nodded again. Her whole body tipped forward and she would have fallen it the other blurs were holding her upright.
The green haired blur sighed.
”What is wrong with you today? First you have a breakdown in the mess hall, and now this? You are not reverting are you? We don't want Mad Marrow to come back. Not when you were so close to recovery. You could have been out of here a healthy mare by Hearths Warming Eve."
The green haired blur leaned closer. Close enough that Marrow could tell her green eyes from the blur of white. The green poisonous eyes that could only belong to Soylent Green.
"I hate to see my favorite conversationalist go bad. So please tell me whats happening”
"She can't talk. Not whit the dose I gave her" Said a red haired blur.
"Oh thank you sister for drugging down my patients!" Soylent shouted. "Go choke on a needle would you!"
She turned back to Marrow.
"Are you scared of that little filly?"
Marrow nodded so deep her head remained hanging down over her chest.
”Well its not surprising. She scares me too."
"What is that suppose to mean?" Shouted the Red haired blur that had to be sister Sully.
"Oh come on sister. Even you have to admit that there is something wrong with our newest little guest."
“There is plenty wrong with all of us." Sighed Sully. She nodded her head at her sister to follow her out into the corridor.
The caretakers carefully laid Marrow back down in the bed and tied some restraining buckles around her wrists before following the nurse's out into the corridor.
Out there Marrow could here the two sisters arguing. Sully scolded her sister about how they never were supposed to talk bad about patients in front of other patients.
They talked about the filly. They must not think she could hear them. Or at least not be clear headed enough to care. But she was. her body might be limp. And her vision blurry. But her mind was clear. There was a buzzing pain in the back of her head. Stronger than the sedatives could kill. And it kept her focused – focused on the voices.
" ... Then she has a seizure in the Boss's office. And the wasn't breathing!" Soylent ranted.
"You are imagining things" Said sully.
"Oh yeah? Why did the boss shove us out the door? Just who is she? And why did you bring her to the hall so soon after her breakdown?"
Sully remained calm.
"The Boss's Idea. When I went to his office the two of them was already there. Presumably talking about the event. She had made a surprisingly quick recovery. She was crying, so the boss signaled me with a nod of his head to get the little filly something else to think about. So I brought her out to the main hall room for the gathering.”
"And then shit went down." Said Sully. "And that little filly just kept singing like an old gramophone”
"Maybe she was just too tired to care. Some of our other patients wouldn't react if you put a firecracker in their ear."
There was a moment of silence. Marrow could almost hear Soylent shooting daggers with her green eyes.
"Why are you covering for her?” Soylent said In a ice cold tone. ”Are you feeling guilty over how you who tried to close the gate on a starving filly!"
Sully snapped.
"I told you! I thought she was playing Nightmare Night! By Celestia I wished it to be some cruel joke! My tired, stressed out mind could simply not believe somepony would abandon a child in the middle of the forest! And how would you react if a little mare shows up on your doorstep and acts like she is ready to sell her own body? I was freaked out! Not helped by that she was as pale as a ghost!”
Yes. A ghost indeed. A ghost of her past that had come to haunt her once again.
She had thrown a chair at it, but had hit the elderly foal instead.
And just to torment her, it had kept on singing unaffected by her screams.
As the nurses kept talking, things were being replayed in the mares mind. Things she had tried her hardest to forget. The very reason she had ended up here.
It all started after that day. The very day it was all supposed to end. The little unnatural monster had risen from the ashes of the shattered project like a demonic phoenix. A demon of their own creation. After that, new life was blown into the project. Life that was taken from her. In blood, sweat and tears.
And there had been blood spilled for that monster.
For they decided that the little monster needed artificial nerves that could simulate the body's functions. Like the craving for food when the stomach got empty, or the need to breathe when the lungs emptied of air.
To emulate these physical attributes it was she herself that suggested that they preform tests on themselves to simulate the energy. This had ended with them putting recording crystals in both their head and her guts to record the physical activity both in the organ itself and in the brain so they knew how they should design both software and hardware.
To this day she still felt the knife in her gut. Though the wounds and scars had long since been removed by the aid of magic she could still fell it like it was today. When the synchronization of those wretched crystals kicked in it was like getting two tummy ases. And just to take it the entire way, to make sure they got all the data, they had to starve themselves.
She was an physiology and anatomy expert. She knew how far a body could be pushed. And by Celestia did she push those boundaries. It was like starving twice at the same time. It was like drowning twice. Once in the organ, and once in the crystal
In the end, they had their artificial nerve clusters.
She did it all for him. But he had already been snared by the demon. He did not even notice her sacrifices.
He just took those nerve cluster crystals and fed them – her sweat and blood – to that monster
Not that it was all for nothing though. When the time came to test the artificial nerve clusters. She was the first to suggest they test the puke reflex.
What should she puke for? Grass had been the suggestion. Whatever. Grass was disgusting anyway. Ponies these days should never eat it.
And the parents didn't suspect a thing out of their little test. They just think she had eaten grass herself, out of curiosity.
The truth was. Marrow had enjoyed seeing that little monster puke. It had felt so good to see that little demon puke all over herself. She would have puked up her own intestines, if she had any. And to hear her cry had been like music to her ears. She had enjoyed getting some payback for at the times that beast had scared her.
But the demon retaliated.
In the end that little monster had taken everything from her. It had taken her blood, her sweat, and tears.
It had even taken the stallion she loved. He, whom she thought she would be able to endure together with. But alas even he was taken from her as well. As the demon had poisoned the mind of the stallion she loved, he grew more and more attached to the project. And more and more distant from her.
And when it finally disappeared, it had taken her job, and her mind, as well.
And now it was back for more.
She could feel it. Trying to claw its way back into her mind.
Just thinking about it made her head hurt. A sticking, burning pain from the back of her skull that she had not felt for many months. A pain she thought she was free of. But now that the little demon had returned, so did the pain. It only meant one thing. It was trying to nest its way into her mind again.
This whole hospital was doomed. They did not know it yet. But that little demon would send them all into insanity and ruin. Just like it had destroyed the lives and minds of her and her former coworkers. From the sound of it, the demon had already poisoned the minds of the staff. The demon had already gotten to the mind of Chief Psychiatrist Cardiac.
Well, not if she had anything to say about it. She was gonna make sure that little monster never got to take anything from any pony ever again.
But she had to play it cool. To start screaming and pulling at her restraints would only get her locked up.
When the nurses came back in. Marrow was as cool as ever. She could tell by the sisters faces that they had reached an understanding.
"If the little filly is bothering you, we are simply gonna have to move you to another group. How about the cooking group? The chefs could use a little help now that most ponies are home over the holiday. What do you say? Feeling up to it?"
Marrow nodded.
Inside she was grinning wide.
Kitchen duty. It was perfect.
They always say that its around Hearts Warming Eve that the most house fires occur.
And a little cooking accident can so easily happen. Especially when the cooks are a bunch of mentally handicapped fools.
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Hum , you might want to run this by an editor , especially the beginning.
I don't have time to do it myself right now sadly as I am on my phone.
Anyway... Seems like some shit is going to hit the fan again for poor Sweetie.
Also , I laughed when I tried to imagine how a pony with the soul of a toaster would behave...and came up with this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86hc1ADnp6s
Oh dear... Dark, very dark and I'm looking forward to more!
Interestingly, shock therapy or, "Electroconvulsive therapy" does not actually hurt. They put the electrodes against your temple, and they throw the switch open and electrocute your brain, and the experience is completely painless. It's extremely disorienting, of course, and you will most definitely lose consciousness, and it is known to permanently damage even long term memories. It's just the brain has never developed an ability to feel pain from being electrocuted. How would such a thing even evolve? Even the pain that our body feels from electrocution, is generally just the pain of our muscle fibers contracting too sharply and tearing. And the brain has no muscle fibers. Only Electricity with a strong enough current will burn deeply the tissues it conducts through, which can hurt a lot (and is especially lethal). Otherwise, our bodies are unequipped to respond to electricity, as it's been something we never encountered during the millions of years we developed as a species.
Electric shocks can be made very painful, as is done in experiments involving pain and reward with laboratory rats. But again, it's the muscle contractions in their legs that pain them (and train them not to hit the button). But the kind of electric shocks they use for shock therapy are not painful at all, at least not in the sense most of us understand pain.
5799053 It can hurt, if done wrong...
Once again, this is a misrepresentation. What they are using is technology, not science. Science is about discovery and learning something new. Technology is about creating things to assist and improve the world and ourselves.
It's an amazingly philosophical story.
Cheers.
I believe that should be "a few stubborn light bulbs."
I think you mean kitchen. A Kitchen is a place where people cook. A chicken is a bird that people eat.
I'm really liking this. Although that last part was pretty fucked up.
I really liked the scene withScrew and Sweetie though it was pretty dawww.
Although you should run the chapters through Google docs or something (they're REALLY good at catching things like "of" when you ment "off", ect, ect.)
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That's not exactly accurate. First of all, technology is the result of science. So when they are using technology, they are essentially using the result of science. Secondly, science is science, whether it has been discovered or not. What you're describing is more accurate to the scientific process, which is the act of discovery. After it's discovered, it doesn't cease to be science. Thirdly, I don't think you truly understand the scientific process. It's not about discovery, it's about using the process of elimination. In fact, it is impossible to prove something using science, because that's not what science does. All science can do is disprove (hence the process of elimination). So no matter how accurate a scientific theory is, it's always possible that there is another scientific model that better describes reality yet to be discovered.
So when Sweetie Belle ate grass and threw up, that was an automated response based from a beta testing program?
Can it be assumed that the disc that was in Screwloose's skull was also connected to testing involved in creating Sweetie Belle (or at least the same technology)? Perhaps that's why there was a bond like that. Whatever was leftover in Screw's head may have been picking up on signals from Sweetie's brain and vice-versa. And in Screw's case, those signals may have triggered memories and thought Sweetie had gone through something similar. Those same signals may have also been responsible for Screw acting more "pony-like".
So does this mean that Sweetie Belle (for lack of a better term) was once alive? As in, an actual pony, and not just a robot? Would that technically make this Sweetie Bot a cyborg (a "Sweetie Borg" as it were)?
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All will be answered eventually; but the true answer is not so simple as it will seem at first. This entire story is really about Sweetie's journey to discover those answers.
Never set yourself to autopilot
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Not unless you want to wake up one day to remember you have two brothers, graduated from the 8th Grade through Highschool, and realize that you've just missed out on the first 4-5 years with your best friend while with him...
So we finally learn Sweetie Bot's origin.
I see. Wow.
Sorry your sacrifice didn't pan out for you, Marrow, but there's a reason you're here...
Reminds me of that one scene from Leo and stitch. That record player scene.
I absolutely adore this chapter. I love how Sweetie is learning more about herself and is accepting her own body. I still hope that she could use her unique nature to help others, like screwball, to regain their sanity. Also, as much as I hate something bad happening to sweetie, the inclusion of Marrow is very interesting. But the timeline does not line up. If she created Sweetie when she still could have foals, she should not be so old now. I think that the robot she made is not actually sweetie.