Cause and Effect

by MoondustIsPoison

Fitting in.

Once I arrived in ponyville I was just about assaulted by the somewhat infamous Pinkie Pie, she was disturbing...and dangerous with a rolling pin, as learned by an unfortunate man I worked with by the name of Joseph, poor bastard was clubbed and dragged off before he could pull his gun. She immediately barraged me with herself when she jumped through the open window of the truck and sprawled out onto me and the rest of the front bench seat.

"Hiya! Im Pinkie! Who are you?! " She got comfortable on top of me as i attempted to answer the crazy pink thing that jad just assaulted me. She wore a pair of really short shorts which were pretty close to revealing everything, and a cut down T-shirt which didn't leave much to the imagination, on it were bright pink letters spelling out "LIFE OF THE PARTY!!"

"Uhhh, hi? Im Rusty.... Do you mind telling me why you're in my truck?

"I need to get to know you, silly... Are you moving here?"

"Uhhhh, yeah?"

"WOOOOOO!!!!...... I need to get a party ready!!!" she hugged me awkwardly and jumped back through the window. I recollected myself and continued driving until I got to the small house that Cirrus found, I was glad that during our extended planning session that Cirrus had done most of the complicated stuff and had found a relatively cheap flat only a few minutes from the giant eye sore of a castle... In the travel ads from before the war, the castle looked ugly, in person however, the feeling of distaste at the giant shiny thing in the middle of town was only multiplied by it's rediculous size. It was huge and hard to take seriously from any distance.

After a quick tour from the seller of the house, I bought it with the supplied money and moved in, and was amazed at what i got for the equivalent of 2000 US dollars, in ponyville houses were dirt cheap, probably because of the giant eye sore, or the social paradigm, or some other weird reason, which was rumored to be frequent disasters... but if I can buy a house for the cost of an old used car, that's always a win in my book, the house came with some basic stuff, mostly the crap the previous owner didn't bother to take or the stuff that was brought in to increase the sell value, aka; an old couch in the basement, a really heavy looking old safe, a few boxes of who knows what in the crawlspace beneath the stairs,an old bed frame which probably weighed as much as a battleship, an old fridge, a gas range-oven- thing, some kind of washing machine, and a dishwasher. Since the previous owners had provided me with most of the stuff i needed, all I needed was a TV, some chairs, and a good place to hide secret stuff.

The house lacked an attached garage, but it did have a large shed in the backyard, which would hopefully be large enough to put the truck in, I would have to wait till I got a mattress and some other furniture stuff to find out.
*****
It had been well over 5 hours since I moved in, I'd obtained a mattress for the immovable bedframe, along with some cheap chairs, a few equestrian burner phones, a coffee table, TV, a few bottles of something that looked like vodka, some cheap kitchen stuff, And some of what I can only assume was what college students would eat on this planet. I was exhausted and sore, but at least I would be able to begin the mission officially tomorrow.
*****
I had slept like a brick, and woke up at around 8-ish, I got up, and realised that I fell asleep in the clothes I wore yesterday, nothing new, considering that during some of my longer contracts back on earth I would basically live in my SUV. I stretched a bit and smoothed out my somewhat wrongly sized clothes as best I could, and had some cheap dollar store cereal for breakfast. My agenda for today would be simple....ish, I would kill a lot of birds with far fewer stones, aka. I would get some properly fitting clothes and possibly talk to Rarity, the seamstress, then I would go to Princess Twilight, or as the MHM refer to her, the Damsel of Damnation, and find some books on how to use the equestrian computer, and then Id do some plotting and scheming in the basement, pass out on the couch and hopefully wake up in the same place as I went to sleep.
****
"Impromotu agenda item 1...uhh... clothes" While I was running around yesterday, I had also obtained a map of ponyville from town hall, it wasnt the best of maps, but it served its purpose well enough to direct me to Rarity's boutique, because the only place I coud get clothes in this town was her, and it was convinient for me because I could get some information discretely.

I didn't bother with the truck and walked, it was pretty close so flying was not really worth the effort either, I walked up to the door and gave it a firm shove. The door swung in and rang a little bell above the frame, a few seconds later I heard some footsteps as the white mare known as Rarity walked up to greet me, she as one of the lowest ranked danger and reputation wise, Earth was glad enough to have one less pony out for blood or glory, in fact she was hardly ever seen on earth, pre or during the war. She wore a simple blouse and skirt, as well as some red framed glasses, she was a few inches taller than me and she semed to observe me with a scrutinising eye.

"Welcome to Carousel Boutique, I am Rarity, how may I assist you?"

"Hello, Im Rusty, I'm gonna need a few pairs of basic clothes, these don't fit all that well"

"Let me take a few measurements.... I don't think i've had the pleasure of meeting you before, While I work do tell me a little bit about yourself....Oh, I almost forgot, how many and what kind of clothes do you need, if you need prices, they are on this here" she handed me a piece of paper with the prices neatly written out.

---

~~>>0<<~~
Prices for basic clothing

Shirt. B 3 each
Jacket. B 4 each
Pants. B 4 each
Sleepwear/underwear B 2 each
Simple hat B 3

each

---

The prices went on into the more convoluted stuff but I decided to go simple and ask for a set of jeans, a hoodie, a t-shirt, a bandana, and a ballcap. I told rarity my request and she immediately got to work, the pace at which she did could give a factory machine a run for it's money, AND she could somehow keep up a concersation at the same time.

"So Darling, going back to what I said before, Please would you tell me about yourself darling?" I had to make up something that sounded plausible.... Saying that I just moved here from some random place wouldn't explain the clothes I were currently wearing, and I didn't know enough about this place either. So I decided to say that I was recently converted...that should explain enough.

"Not much to say really, I was converted about 2 weeks ago and I lived with a foster family for that time to get accustomed to life here, then I moved to this little town..." Not necessarily wrong but enough to sound plausible from her point of view.

"Interesting....Darling, do tell why you did you do it? It seems like most of your former kind simply resist and fight it, we haven't had many new arrivals lately..."

"Mostly out of nicessity, and to not be completely wiped clean... My neighborhood was very close to the barrier and I heard that the bureaus didn't completely wipe the memories of the ones they converted, so I left and hoped that It wouldn't get much worse." Again a lie but plausible enough, and the thing about they syrum is true, the bureau stuff only converts and partially brainwashes the recipient as to retain the original personality while convincing them subconciously that the humans are the enemy, the stuff their military uses is much more potent, it still does the obvious but it completely reprograms the victim's brain, it supresses or changes the memories and adjust's the personality to be complient and loyal to the ponies, and it works much faster. The only visible difference is the color, the bureaus use pink and the military uses blue.

"Well I personally think you made the right choice darling, that reminds me of another cli........" she started to ramble about other ponies or events, nothing was particularly helpful, so I just tuned it out and listen just enough to respond and sound like I'm actually listening to her gossip and random crap.

An hour later she finished my clothes and I paid her with some of the limited bits I was given to hold myself over until I got a job. The plan that the rest of the gang and i had come up with was for me to look inconspicuous and act normal while discretely gathering info and looking for anything out of the ordinary, such as weird habits or thd like, and communicating through the equestrian equivalent of the deep web to remain undetected.

"Thank's!" I left the boutiquenwith my new clothes and walked back home. I changed into the correctly sized clothes and put everything else in a cardboard box, as I didn't have a dresser. I went back out to get lunch an talk to Twilight and get a book on equestrian computers. The castle was farther away so I decided to fly. Flying without the aid of an aircraft Is a very strange experience, turning and maneuvering are pulled off in similar fashion to a plane but the quiet without an engine and the wind in the face makes the expirience almost unreal. I landed at Twilight's place and knocked, while I waited I wondered why she still used the lower levels as a library....I had come to the conclusion of extreme dedication to books when the door opened and revealed a large-ish lizard boy answering the door.

"Come on in, I'm afraid that Princess Twilight is a little buisy, if you needed to talk to her you'll have to wait" he seemed toleramt enough, although I did hear a somewhat stressed out note in his voice, as if something had recently caised him a great deal of emotional pain... I would investigate this later.

"Thanks... I'll just find the book I need to borrow" he nodded and quietly padded off up a staircase. If i needed to be stralthy here i was currently failing, with human legs and feet i could be extremely quiet on similar floors, but with the different leg geometry which was much better for speed than climbing or stealth, and a solid hoof, I was pretty noisy. At least the books were organized in an easy to understand manner and I found a book explaining the equestrian computer systems, a technical manual, and a book full of commands. I also found a book on magical electronics and how to construct them. I stacked up the books and waited at a small table in the middle of the room.
****
It had been about 30 minutes and I felt a tap on my shoulder, I looked up from the book I was reading and swung my head around to face the purple pony Princess patiently poking my shoulder.

"Sorry for the wait, I had buisiness to attend to, I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all, although I do have some things I would like to borrow"

"Let me just scan those and you can be on your way!" a purple beam hit the stack of books and waved over them several times before it ceased only a second later. "By the way, what do you need all of those books for? Ive only had a select few other ponies borrow so many books"

"I got a new computer and I need ot figure out how to use the thing, and how to maintenance It."

"Oohh, interesting, what model is it? I personally have a CEC mark 3 that I use for logging my research

"I thing it was an LEI model 47, but I got it used and it has been heavily modified, so i don't know the specs, It's being delivered today so i don't have any expirience either" Cirrus had given me one of her old rigs to use while undercover, it was a behemoth and delecate, so I decided against hauling it in the truck.

"Isn't that a server grade setup?"

"Yes but I think the modifications to it were to allow it to run the standard Home OS"

"I'd like to know your name, you seem like a mare I would want to get to know better"

"I'm Rusty, pleasure to meet you princess" Success, I got to know twilight a bit better

"Send me a message over the magi-net when you get your computer running, we can talk then"
****
The computer was huge, it was composed of 2 server cabinets, 3 giant screens, a ton of individual computing units to put in the cabinets, 2 keyboards, a weird helmet which I assumed was Virtual reality, And some kind of large and very complicated looking laser-ish thing which wasn't labeled with anything but MM CONVERT on the list. Everything was neatly boxed up in pieces with a parts list and hand written setup instructions taped to one of the crates. I began to carefully inch each one to the basement, and within 30 minutes and several pinched fingers and splinters, I had unpackaged the parts and laid them out near the old couch.

In 3 hours Id assembled and hooked up the computer itself and its normal-ish peripherals. I opened the cabinet doors and started flicking on the units within, each one revved up it's fans and by the time I turned all of them on it sounded like a muffled jet engine spooling up, not deafening but certainly loud, the large echoey cabinets didn't help with the noise either. I sat down in the chair I put in front of the behemoth and turned on the screens, Soon the screen flashed a picture of the manufacturer's logo. It depicted the words LUNAR ENGINEERING INCORPORATED, in large silvery letters, the fIrst letter of each word were much larger than the rest, and the whole backdrop was that of the night sky

Now I was going to move on to the large Tron-laser looking thing, I read the manual taped to it and almost immediately realised that it was in essence the opposite of the tron laser, rather than putting stuff in the computer, this thing was basically an extremely sophisticated 3d printer.... raw materials go in front of it and it reconfigures the molecules into the template... at least that's what the first few pages said.

I sent Twilight a message through the program which resembled an IRC chat room, the only minor difference being the ability to find and message anyone by name alone.

RC>I got the computer assembled<I sent the message off and waited...

TS>Excellent, Now I can get a hold of you. So how's the new computer?< she responded a couple minutes later...

RC>It's Great, albeit a bit noisy<

TS>That's good, What OS does it use?< I moved the page aside and pulled up the computer's spec card.

RC>LuLu P.7.7, it's pretty slick, what about your's?<

TS>Mine uses Solus OS version 3.5.7

RC>Cool. Anyway, changing the Subject, Id like to know some more about yourself, Ive heard rumors ane read news but im not sure if they're true.<
*****
I'd chatted with Twilight for about an hour before leaving the chatroom, I closed the window and opened the Changeling deep Magi-net browzer, Cirrus was nice enough to leave everything set up and to include instructions on how to use the browzer and it's features. After a bit of time fooling around with the program I sent an encrypted chat message to Cirrus's computer.

D.R.> Hey Cirrus, it's Rusty, I got the computer set up,<

C>cool, Just start digging around... anything helps, just be careful on any webservers operated out of canterlot<

D.R.> Alright... May as well check around the web for anyone else wanting revolution"

C> Good idea, im going to terminate the connection now, good luck<

Comments

[Battle154]

8051425 Ok