Meliora

by Starscribe

Chapter 10: Leibii

Jackie dreamed of forests. Of alien trees from primordial ages, when the Earth was young and the strong had ruled. She met Voeskender in those trees, alone except for his influence.

“I’m done!” she proclaimed, tossing imaginary chains at his massive hooves. “My debt is returned to you. I gave you my word and I kept it.”

The deer, of course, did not speak to her. She saw the slow erosion of distant mountains, the gentle lapping of the waves. Jackie interpreted these images to mean the god wasn’t happy, but he was admitting she was correct. The strongest fetter tying her to this universe was undone from her hooves again. She was free.

But she didn’t leave. She dreamed of leaving many times, and perhaps she had. But there was so much left to do. So many of her own kind still suffered. Jackie hadn’t given a shit about Alex’s utopia city, but Ezri had, and now Athena had turned it into an undead parody of its creator’s vision. She couldn’t leave the world behind like this.

It’s always one more day. One more mission. One more injustice. One day Jackie would walk away from this place and never come back. She’d go out there, find the one she lost. There were so many worlds. One of them had to have her.

And it wasn’t as though, now that her debt was paid, she could slowly reverse everything she had done in service to Voeskender. That was not forbidden based on the terms of their agreement—but it would certainly anger him. Jackie hadn’t lived this long by angering gods. She would do her best to keep this society along its general trajectory if she could, though now there were new technical options open to her.

But when her scouts discovered a tribe of feral deer living a few miles beyond their border, she thought back to the vision she had seen—with ponies living in the trees, and deer living on the ground. Instead of leaving them alone, she sent out a few skilled anthropologists and translators to try and learn their language, and to announce their arrival.

She had very little involvement with that project beyond that—but a few weeks later and a treaty was signed. The deer might be primitive, but they didn’t want to stay that way. So that was another part of Voeskender’s vision come true.

Jackie did her best to keep up with the other aspects of their plan—there was plenty of propaganda to examine, basically just pictures and video of their most complete structures and the way bats lived. Though there were plenty on the city council who wanted to promise something like Mundi, or maybe even better, Jackie vetoed that plan.

“We’re not recruiting for the rebels,” she said, stomping one hoof at the end of a particularly frustrating meeting. “We want every citizen to love it here. We want ponies who know what they’re getting themselves into.”

“We’ll get there,” insisted Fry, the city’s leading engineer. And the one who was most insistent on their dishonesty. “It’s not really a lie. It’s just a different time horizon. We’re getting closer to life like that every day. Eventually we’ll reach it. Not in three months, but…”

“No,” she said again. “When we get more advanced, we can promise that. For now, we’re sticking with what we have. No slavery, plenty of food, warm beds. That’s more than half the bats in Mundi have.”

There was more to do than prepare the propaganda. They gathered information on the condition of Mundi, and in the process bats all across Thestralia learned what horrors had befallen those they left behind.

It was much as they’d expected. Princess “Alex” had imposed all kinds of new laws and restrictions on bats, and all the other lower-caste of workers at the bottom. What had been only informal understanding became codified in law, with lots of new security and checkpoints in Mundi’s various sections to prevent the large movements of ponies. There had been some deaths, a few riots, but not very many. Evidently those most willing to put their own necks on the line for change had been the ones to flee.

Unfortunately for them, that posed a serious problem to any kind of large-scale evacuation. Jackie considered the idea for a few weeks, toyed with the idea of making another pact with one of the gods she knew, but eventually dismissed that possibility in favor of something a little more reasonable.

She went to see an Alicorn instead.

Eureka had moved his workshop to the top of Devil’s Rock, surrounded by a near-impenetrable shield that passably resembled what the rock had once looked like. He hadn’t told Jackie this, but she didn’t need to be told. Even Alicorns needed to sleep.

So it was that she slipped her way into his sanctum. She waited until he wasn’t doing something delicate—she found him in the kitchen. Even Alicorns had to eat.

The kitchen looked like it had been stolen from one of Mundi’s luxury suites, with automatic equipment and little hydroponics boxes that automagically grew whatever you most enjoyed. Jackie walked right past the stunned Alicorn, slipped a mango out of the fridge, and tore it open with her teeth. “Hey princess. Long time no see.”

It took the Alicorn almost an entire minute to collect himself. Eureka was renowned for many things, but his coolness under pressure was not one of them.

Finally he flashed across the room, horn glowing as he pointed it at her. “I am sending you out of my house.”

“Bad idea,” she said. “Or you’re not going to know which of your experiments I sabotaged. Man that would be inconvenient, wouldn’t it? I promise you won’t figure it out before something goes really wrong.”

“You know I could kill you.”

“Maybe.” She smiled ruefully at him. “Alicorns have thought that before. I’m sure some of them could. But then you really won’t get to it in time.”

Eureka’s horn glowed menacingly for a few more seconds—then it went out, and he slumped into a sitting position. “The hell do you want, Knife?”

“Oh, nothing much.” She didn’t answer for several long moments, finishing her mango. She would’ve got another, but she’d already seen into the fridge. Eureka didn’t eat enough for it to stock two. “Just one of your inventions. Not a big deal, really. I would’ve just called you, but you won’t give me your damn number.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he said, tone agitated. “What numbers do you want? If it’s math—”

She laughed. “That’s… forget it. Look, I need you to make something for me. We’re moving onto the next stage in Thestralia. We’ve been spreading information about our survival all over Axis Mundi for a few months now, but we can’t just walk people out. Damn AI has done everything she could to make leaving impossible. Lots of sections that seal themselves off, whole housing areas rigged to fill with knockout gas, that kind of shit. I need to shut the whole thing down. I figure a bit of Imperium ought to do it.”

She said it as casually as she could, though of course she realized the magnitude of what she was asking.

But just presenting as though it was easy didn’t mean it actually was. Eureka stiffened visibly, rising to his hooves and backing up a step. “Just a little bit of impossible magic, no big deal. Why don’t you do it? Being an alicorn isn’t that hard.”

She didn’t even try to explain that one to Eureka. In Jackie’s experience, the more specialized these creatures became the less normal they were. Alex had understood people because that was her domain, but Eureka was a creature of machines. She just shook her head. “I’ll help you get whatever raw materials you need. I know… everyone. But I need it in like a week so you’ll probably have to get started right away.”

The Alicorn seemed to consider that for a long time. Eventually he rose, lunch forgotten. “I considered… action. Before, when I saw conditions in Mundi. Something I could do without getting personally involved or revealing myself to Athena. She might just be a machine, but she could make my work very difficult if she wanted.”

“Would it disable the security so I can get people out?” Jackie asked. “If it does that, it’s perfect. “

“Yes. But there would be other consequences, and you would be the one to set this off. Whatever shit goes down after you flip the switch is your responsibility. I’m not going to sleep with any more deaths on my conscience.”

Jackie followed him eagerly, conscious that he still might be leading her into a trap. This was his workshop, after all. But her prediction had been right: the promise of a new technical challenge to solve was more interesting to him than getting revenge for her interference. “That’s fine. What are we doing? And what do you need me to bring?”

“Nothing,” Eureka answered, stopping in front of a vault door. The steel was thicker than a pony, and only a little rusty along the edges. There were powerful spells here too—Jackie never could’ve got through it if she was on her own. “I made the spell already, I just didn’t use it. See…” The door began to retract with a groan of ancient hydraulic equipment.

I bet this place dates back to old Thestralia. He probably had dozens of lab-assistants working with him, doing his bidding. Every Alicorn wants to be a princess.

But he wasn’t a princess anymore. As they stepped inside, Jackie recognized the sturdy archways reminiscent of decay-resistant architecture, made from solid concrete without steel reinforcement. That greatly limited what the structure could do—everything was arches and buttresses, ten times thicker than they would’ve been with steel. But without metal cores, there was nothing to rust, nothing to seed cracks. Like the ancient roman monuments before it, this was a structure made to last a thousand years.

There were lots of little cubbies, each one with active stasis spells and screens to darken their interior. Jackie wasn’t sure what most of them were, though she was positive that she could see pony-shaped outlines behind some. Considering the importance of her mission here, she didn’t pester Eureka and ask. That could wait.

Eventually they reached one near the back, and he retracted the screen with an old mechanical button. He smeared the line of a stasis spell with a hoof, and there was a little crack of air as it rushed in to fill the gap. There on a pedestal was a little metal sphere, with two separate vials protruding from the outside. One looked a little like mercury, the other a thick red blood.

Eureka levitated the object off the pedestal, passing it to her. “Athena’s network is too complex for me to explain. But her fundamental design relies on modular parts we can exploit. She uses the same high-bandwidth transmission for all tasks. Every drone, every security system, every human or pony body she controls. That network is vulnerable to feedback… once. I discovered a security flaw in a number of her drones I captured and studied. When activated, everything Athena built for fifty miles around is going to lose its shit… one time.”

“Because then she’ll know about it,” Jackie finished.

“Because Athena has never faced a technical enemy before,” Eureka said. “The HPI were dependent on her, and the Enduring Ones still give her deference. Charybdis couldn’t have hacked a graphing calculator. Fundamentally, Athena is still an AI. She spends as little resources accomplishing every task as she can. Security measures for her network would be computationally and hardware expensive. So she makes due with simple systems designed to ward off aspiring young hackers. But once her program realizes that there are others who will exploit her weakness, she will devote resources to preventing it.”

“So this only works once,” Jackie said, catching the device in her wings. “Fine, fine. We don’t actually need to be able to do it again to make her look incompetent.”

“Not just her,” Eureka said. “My original reason for this particular method of attack was discovering that the other Alicorns are being impersonated. Their bodies are as vulnerable to this as any other system. I planned on revealing her fraud to the world.”

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Oh. Oh. Now that's what I call a weapon of mass defamation. Well, single-target defamation, but a lot of it... assuming all of Eureka's assumptions hold. It's been a long time, after all. No telling if Athena patched that hole at some point, or even deliberately made him think it was there in the first place. I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

[Halira]

9037359
I was under the impression that there were plenty of sea ponies where she was at previously, she was just unhappy she was perpetually stuck in a child's body, and she was having to live close with her sister who was responsible for her circumstances.

[minibox]

Oh crap.

OH CRAP.

That spell will truly throw a wrench into Athena's plan. A serious "two birds with one stone" weapon.
Get the bats. Unveil the mask.

9037425
I forgot about that. Can't connect with anyone if they age right in front of you. Don't know if this colony would help her. If anything, it's a new experience.

9037265
She wouldn't have patched it because the patch would be resource-intensive and an attack of that magnitude hasn't been done before. It might be a trap though. I don't know what her relationship is to other alicorns. I was under the impression that, like Alex, they also gave their blessing. A dissatisfied alicorn like Eureka might sneak through without suspicion. Especially if Athena never learned the concept of betrayal.

[Midknight Defender]

Eureka!

Brilliant!

Although I suddenly have the strangest urge to shout "mycorrhiza" too... how odd.

[KMCA]

God I hope that by "everything Athena built for fifty miles around is going to lose its shit"
He means peacefully shut down. I can't imagine the chaos of every. single. thing. in a city like that going off like a grand mal seizure.

Discord might even show up to see this before he gave Archive the little change.

[Yami Vizzini]

Wow, Jackie’s paid off her debt already? It felt like things were rushing a bit again, but we’ll have to see if and how those deer affect things....

“We’re not recruiting for the rebels,” she said, stomping one hoof at the end of a particularly frustrating meeting. “We want every citizen to love it here. We want ponies who know what they’re getting themselves into.”
“We’ll get there,” insisted Fry, the city’s leading engineer. And the one who was most insistent on their dishonesty.

Well, Jackie, you get what you pay for.
i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/006/026/NOTSUREIF.jpg

She didn’t answer for several long moments, finishing her mango. She would’ve got another, but she’d already seen into the fridge. Eureka didn’t eat enough for it to stock two.

Well, I can relate to Eureka already.

Yipe. Athena’s really playing for keeps.

[Von Snootingham]

I forget. WHY is Athena being all Friend Computer again?

[minibox]

9043634
Jackie plans to reverse the deer's vision.

Defying a god probably isnt good for your long term health, even if you have no obligation to it anymore.

[Condray]

9045350
As far as controlling everything and such? There's not much she's let slip, but remember she wanted Mundi and whatever city the rebels ended up building to be enemies; basically a cold war arms race so that both cities would advance substantially further faster.

Which to be fair, Mundi itself seemed to be stagnating hardcore, it's just that Athena only cares about the optimal result, not what breakage reaching that result requires.