Upgrades and Info
“You ready?” I asked Twi. I had my camera laid out on a desk back at the lair, positioned so that it could capture as much of my image as possible. Twi buzzed her approval, and I started the scan. A thin wave of light projected from the camera, panning from my hooves to my head, down, and back up once more. Twi dinged again, and began to buzz in what I would describe as “concentration”.
“Projecting image,” she said. The air in front of me shimmered and shook for a second, and then the image came into focus. An Earth pony mare with a grey coat, and pale green eyes looked back at me. Her mane was a shade of lighter grey than her coat, and it was dreaded and bunched up into a untidy ponytail.
“Is my hair really that messy?” I asked, nudging my braids with a hoof.
“Yes, but I think it suits you,” said Twi. “It fits your personality, I find. It gives you character.” Twi beeped brightly, and I had another one of those moments when I realized that I could easily discern an emotion from this Artificial Intelligence. Twi had no face or mouth (yet), but if she did, she’d definitely be smiling.
“Let’s get you some character, then,” I said with a smirk. Twi dinged her agreement, and began to slowly morph the features of my projection.
“Altering default settings,” she said. Her hair morphed from my messy bunch of bike tire dreads into a mane of straight cut, neat hair, falling into a tidy little bang. Her tail straightened and grew in length, and her body thinned itself out a bit. A horn materialized itself from her forehead and, to my surprise, a pair of wings plumed from her back.
“ERROR! ERROR!” buzzed TW1 in her mechanical voice. “PHYSIOLOGICAL INCONSISTENCY. PLEASE TRY AGAIN.” The wings melted away into nothing, but the horn remained.
“Okay. Much better,” said Twi, back to normal. “Could you imagine how ridiculous I’d look with wings and a horn?”
“I dunno,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. “I think it’s kinda cool. An alicorn, like in the fairy tales my pops used to tell me.”
“Adjusting color,” said Twi. Her coat shifted from my bland grey to a soft lavender. Her mane darkened to dark blue, nearly black, and her tail followed suit. “Hue: 301, Saturation: 54, Lightness: 82 for coat. For mane/tail, Hue: 249, Saturation: 100, Lightness: 15.” She beeped for a while, seeming to mull it over. Her mane and tail lightened slightly, fading from navy to a sort of violet. “Adjusting settings. Hue: 278, Saturation: 94, Lightness: 78.”
“You look nice,” I said. “Hey, try a highlight in your mane. I think it’ll look good on you.” Twilight thought about it, and a bright pink streak appeared in her mane and tail.
“That does look nice, doesn’t it?” she said. “Thanks for the tip. Now, about these eyes.” Her eyes shifted dramatically from my pale green to a glowing, energetic violet. “Much better, I think. Finalizing settings… Locking as defaults… Saving Avatar… Avatar saved. Currently operating at 45% capacity.”
“Wow! That’s a big jump!” I exclaimed. “You’re almost at half!”
“I guess an image is a large part of being alive,” mused Twi. “Alrighty, I’m set for now. This is about all that can be done while I wait for my code to be repaired.” I wasn’t really expecting that. I grabbed the projector from the table and strapped it to my forehoof. Twi had to reorient herself a few times to stay consistent and relative to the location of the camera, but she got the hang of it pretty quickly.
“How long do you think that’ll take?” I asked. Twi, clearly enthralled with her new physical representation, shrugged as deliberately as possible without detaching her legs.
“Could take seconds or eons, for all I know,” she said. “If I were to guess, I’d say I’ll be up to 50% in a month.”
“And what do we do for a month?” I asked. “And, assuming that increase is constant, the next eleven months?”
“Well…” buzzed Twi. “You could introduce me to some of your friends! I’d love to meet them!”
“Here’s the thing…” I said. “I don’t actually have any friends. Unless you count Flim and Flam, who you’ve already met.” Twi buzzed in protest.
“That’s not possible,” said Twi, her lips moving just a little too fast for her words. “You must have some friends.”
“Your sound and image are out of synch,” I said. “I don’t know if you noticed or not, but I hack computers for a living. I have what the doctors would call ‘trust issues’. I don’t have any friends.”
“Except for me, of course,” said Twi. At some point, probably when I blinked, she fixed her voice problem.
“Yeah, well, AI don’t really count,” I pointed out. “You literally couldn’t dislike me if you wanted to.”
“Of course I could. But I do like you,” said Twi, looking me up and down. “But we can talk about that later. While we were talking, I’ve taken the liberty of discerning points of interest for you, and, as it turns out, there’s supposed to be an Aitselec press conference at five. Would you like me to add that to our schedule for today?”
“Definitely. How are we going to get in?” I asked. My Interface lit up, with bright black letters reading “PRESS” and a bar code beneath it.
“There you are. I made you a press pass,” said Twi. “It’ll convince them that you’re a reporter for a small e-news site based in Whinnyapolis called ‘The River City Press’.”
“Never heard of it,” I said.
“That’s because I made it up,” she said, beaming with pride. “It wasn’t too difficult. All I had to do was forge a loan, purchase a plot of land so that I would have the address, then fabricate credentials, a history, a website, a phone number, a fax, and an answering machine.”
This mare, this computer-generated unicorn, was amazing, and I think she knew that. Something about the way she grinned made me think that she knew how good she was, and she just didn’t like to brag.
“And you did all of that in the time it took for me to ask about getting in?” I asked, to make sure I was understanding correctly.
“Well, yes,” she said. “Although, I didn’t start making the records until I told you I made it up. I work fast, is all. I was programmed to do everything fast; Work, talk, think, read-”
“Read?”
“Oh, yes. I love to read!” she squealed shamelessly. “I kinda wish I didn’t have to read so fast, honestly. I mean, in the time it took for me to say that, I read every book ever written by a Saddle Arabian author, twice. Wait… Three times.”
“Well, read slower,” I said. Twilight buzzed uncomfortably, and it was clear that my friendly suggestion wouldn’t be enough for her. “TW1, I order you to read at whatever speed you want. Unless something comes up where I need you to read like lightning, and then I’ll let you know.”
Twi buzzed in thought, weighing my order against her list of directives. After a few seconds, she seemed to decide that my order was valid. She beeped, then let out a sigh of contentment.
“Thank you. It’ll be nice to savor the stories this time,” said Twi. “Assuming I can find a good one that I haven’t read yet.”
“I got a site for you, where thousands of people upload stories every day,” I said. The grin on her face was way too happy to be real, and it even made me smile a bit. “Later. First, I wanna know how Aitselec is having a conference, and I didn’t know about it.”
“Maybe you weren’t paying attention,” suggested Twi. I glared at her, and she seemed to shrink down a bit. Whether that was intentional or just a trick of my eyes remained to be seen.
“I’ve been trying to bring down CCiOS for over a year,” I said. “I watch Aitselec constantly. Their stocks, their business plans, their profits, everything. Public announcements are the first thing I’m alerted of.”
“Oh, well, that’s easily explained,” said Twi. “They didn’t announce it yet. Since I’m a part of CCiOS, I could see the memo before it went public. Give it two minutes, you’ll get the notification.”
I nodded, knowing better than to question her at this point. She already proved that she was a very useful thing to have around, and I had no reason to believe that would change anytime soon. She was definitely a keeper.
I shoved my way through the crowd, flashing my phony press pass to anyone who stopped to ID me. As to be expected, given her current track record, Twi’s false credentials were solid, and I never got found out.
The conference was held at City Hall, dubbed by the underground “Canterlot Castle”, for two reasons. One was obvious, and that was the building’s resemblance to a large castle, with several spire-like skyscrapers all connected to one massive “Throne Room”, where all the tourist went to sightsee, and where this conference was being held. Beneath this room was a large basement, which was variably called “The Bunker” and “The Armory”. This basement was were the main CCiOS servers were held; The very guts of the Aitselec Corporation.
The other reason it was called the Castle was because it was nearly impossible to get in and out when you weren’t supposed to. I know from experience. I tried to break in very early in my anarchist career, and I was in no hurry to try again. It was the first, and hopefully last, time I was ever shot at.
“What do you think they’re going to talk about?” asked Twi, safely hidden in the Interface. “From what I can tell, this conference was very spur-of-the-moment.”
“I dunno, but an impromptu conference as soon as I’ve unlocked you can’t be a coincidence,” I said. “Try to stay hidden.” She kept quiet after that. I later found out that she had taken that time to take her time through one of her favorite stories: The Mare in the Moon.
I finally pushed my way to the front row of the crowd, and was instantly baffled. The center of the room, which normally housed a large reception desk, instead had its space filled with a large stage, covered by curtains. Just in front of the blood-red drapes was a podium, holding several different microphones from a hoof-full of broadcasters. Floating a bit above the stage using their specialised electromagnets were six cameras, each looking down at the podium from a slightly different angle. Whatever was happening here had caught the attention of the largest news broadcasting stations in Equestria, which meant that this was big. I was just about to start interrogating Twi as to what she thought was happening when the curtains parted and she slowly walked out.
She was a unicorn who looked to be nearing fifty, but still had a deceptive youth to her. Everything about her felt bright and important. Her coat was a beautiful ivory, apparently glimmering when the light hit her in certain places. Her mane was long and neat, and it was a trio of green, teal, and pink. I couldn’t see her Cutie Mark, because it was covered by the elegant and lacey black dress she was wearing. She approached the podium and tapped the microphone lightly. Everypony in the room, myself included, leaned forward slightly, dying to see what this mystery mare had to say.
“Hello? Welcome, everypony,” she said, and it was quickly obvious that she had a natural knack for public speaking. “I’m glad to see so many of you here, all gathered by a common interest: The Canterlot City Internal Operating System. For such an integral part of daily life, in Canterlot and beyond, it is truly disturbing to some of you how little you know about it. Well, I hope to answer some of your questions by the end of our time together today. But first, I have a bit of a story to tell.
“Seventy years or so ago, CCiOS started out as a mad idea shared by a crazy young mare and her younger sister,” she continued. “It was never thought to go anywhere, rather, it was just a hobby. But, somehow, it became a huge part of Canterlot City, and, eventually, all of Equestria. It wasn’t easy. Many bumps were encountered along the way.”
“This is making me uncomfortable,” whispered Twi. “Something isn’t quite right…”
“The sisters managed to persevere, and their shared obsession soon became a reality,” said the mare. “They created a whole business around it, and Aitselec eventually became the most successful and influential corporation in recent years. However, until today, the identities of the creators of CCiOS have remained a mystery.”
You could hear a pin drop in that room. Everypony was on the edge of their seats, begging for more information. I could only imagine the chaos that would follow in the wake of the biggest revelation in recent history. The reporters would have a battle royale, each trying to get the story out first. The internet would probably explode.
“Well, let it be a mystery no more,” she said. “My name is Celestia Regal, the older of the sisters, and I created CCiOS. I’m ready to take your questions.”
The buzzards that were the press were on her in a flash, sticking out their Interfaces in her face to record her every word. There was a loud roar of questions, and I could barely pick up on any of them. Over the brouhaha that was happening around me, I heard a whisper that instantly grabbed my curiosity.
“Princess!” said Twilight, just barely heard over the loud buzz of the crowd. Celestia looked up, locking eyes with me for a short second. She smiled at me, then went back to answering questions. Her smirk scared me. It was the smile of somepony who just watched a plan go off without a hitch.
I ran, out of the crowd, out of the Castle. I didn’t look back, I just ran, with no direction in mind. I had to get away, I just had to, before Celestia broke free from her captors from the press.
“Twi? Twi!” I said, still running. The ponies in the street paid little mind to me, an apparently insane mare yelling to no one. Canterlot City was a strange place, and I probably wasn’t the first crazy bum they’d seen today.
“Y-yes,” she said slowly. “This… this is bizarre.”
“Why did you call her Princess? Why did she look at me like that?” I demanded, turning down into a side street. Hopefully, I wouldn’t be followed.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t explain it. When she said her name, some sort of override went off. I couldn’t stop myself from saying it.”
“Who is she? How has she been so well hidden? And why come out now?” I asked. Twi began to “hyperventilate”, making loud and rapid breathing noises as if she had no control over her lungs. I slowed to a stop, trying my best to calm her down.
“I don’t UnderStaNd. This doesn’t make s-s-s-sense,” she said, losing control of her voice. “This does NoT coMPutE! Emergency shut-down imminent…” My heart jolted in terror.
“Shut-down? No! Do not shut down!” I said. “That’s an order!”
“Shut-DowN r-r-r-required,” she stuttered, changing pitch at random points. “FailUre to shUt d-d-down may resuLT in lOSt d-d-data. Shut dOWN com-m-mencing…”
Slowly, her voice faded away, and the light from the Interface went out. I yelled to her, with no response. I tapped at the computer on my wrist, and the thing didn’t even flicker. I was freaking out, until I heard the sweet, near-quiet hum of my Interface booting up.
“Adjusting Avatar… Saving Avatar as Default 2,” said TW1. “Mixing… Mixing complete.” Her voice changed. It was brighter and more bubbly. “Personality saved. Now operating at 60% capacity.”
“Whoa! What the hell?” I pressed at my camera, turning on the projector. The air in front of me shimmered, and slowly into view faded a very pink Earth pony mare. She couldn’t look more different than she did before; She was sort of dumpy, and her mane was a wild, poofy mess. Her eyes, a shining bright blue, were filled with a happiness and amusement that I wish I could replicate for myself.
“Hiya, what’s up?” she said. “You’re Aiden, right? Of course you are, it’s not like anypony else found us in the past day.”
“Wait, us?” I asked. The hologram walked around me, pretending to drape her fore leg around me.
“Me and Twilight, duh!” she said with a small laugh in her voice. “So, what’re we doing? Don’t tell Twilight, but...” She dropped her voice into an exaggerated whisper that was louder than normal speech. “I wasn’t paying attention!”
“Stop! Who are you?!” I demanded.
“Pinkie Pie, silly, duh! Didn’t you read the manual?” asked the new AI. Her voice went slightly robotic for a moment. “I am designation 91-NK13, originally programmed to aid the TW1 Artificial Intelligence in controlling the Canterlot City Internal Operating System.”
“Another one?” I asked. She nodded, then inexplicably began to hop in a circle around me, for no other reason than her own enjoyment, it seemed.
In the span of twenty-four hours, I found a secret CCiOS AI, partly repaired her, discovered the creator of CCiOS, lost aforementioned AI, then gained a whole new one altogether. Oh, and that CCiOS creator smiled at me, as if she knew something I didn’t, which she probably did. I did the only thing I could think to do in that situation: The thing I should’ve done when I saw Twi’s first binary message.
I hit the goddamn road and ran at full-gallop to the next town I could find. There, I’d get some new equipment, and find out what the hell was going on.
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Huh... that's interesting. At the end of chapter one I figured that Twi had her mind "moved" into a computer for the purpose of more efficient ruling, and the possibility of being a close friend to everypony willing to accept her. Unfortunately the remaining princesses somehow lost control of the project (possibly due to being completely incapacitated or even killed) and Twi was terminated (or even never was "started" in the first place).
Second chapter... I'll have to revise my theory. What the heck is Celestia doing? Having Nightmare issues possibly? Or my first theory is actually mostly true and we're dealing with a CelestAI that has been modified with harmful intentions. Given the name of the company, I'm at least pretty sure that it was indeed the princesses that once founded it, and I think the story given at the conference is pretty much true, if lacking detail. There's definitely a lot of possibilities, I'm unable to make a good guess. Good work^^
6303289 Both of those are really solid theories. I really admire an analytical mind, especially in this day and age.
Glad you enjoyed, and I hope to see you again
6303537
Oh, you will^^
Here's another thing I've been thinking about. Celestia actually did lie in her story. I think. Stating that she's over 70 years old while looking young for 50 is somewhat suspicious, but I suppose still better than "Hey, I'm immortal!". What bothers me most with this is that I can't believe CCiOS has only been running for 70 years, assuming that before its start the alicorns still had their flesh and blood. 70 years is not enough time to let them fade into fairy tales, and I'm already working under the assumption that every little scrap of information available is heavily filtered by CCiOS. Certainly, those who actually remember their former rulers would be very old by now, but they must have told their children and grand children, so... the Alicorns have been gone for significantly longer than 70 years, and so far most things point towards CCiOS having taken over as soon as (or shortly after) the princesses had ben digitalized. However, it seems unimportant to know how much time has actually passed, regardless if it's 70 or 7000. Just... Celestia is lying, and in a strange way. Why cover up that the CCiOS is older than it is? If she has been digitalized, it would have been easier to say she's a descendant of the original founders. She could easily change her appearance to simulate a new generation taking over every few decades.
Well, so far I definitely lack possible motivations for all involved parties. Actually, I don't even know why CCiOS is so bad, I hope you'll explain that at some point.
6303656 Oh, I intend to explain. There are just some things to remember while reading this story: TW1 knows more than she's allowed to discuss, Aiden is incredibly biased, and I cannot be trusted. Always use your best judgement, even and especially if I seem to have proven you wrong.
Oh, this is going to be fun.
the questions become.
1: Why did the Princess hid their nature and stopped ruling?
2: WHere is the REAL Twilight?
This time, it was absolutely no shock to me who was going to be the leader, since Crime Pays exists, though if I hadn't read that, it would probably be a good surprise.
7826678 In fairness to
AI, this story was written ages before Crime Pays. So much long before that I forgot that I had already used that twist.Surprise! A new AI!
Mean mwhile, my Headcanon Generator is working on C1R-CU17.