Chapter 70
This body was obviously falling apart, Twilight could see that as he walked slowly around the workshop. Wires occasionally sparked where he moved, and other sections showed obvious signs of wear. The basic structure of the body was the same as the one node had built for itself in those ruins, but other than that, there was very little in common.
Iron Horse began by reciting many of the same details that Apple Bloom had. Their crew arriving on the ring, figuring out how to mate with its airlock, traveling inside. The horrors of what they had discovered. Iron Horse did have a different perspective on some of it than Apple Bloom had.
“It was a manufactory, beyond any doubt. The ones who built it didn’t try to build a ring because they wanted to surround the planet. There’s a hook that rapidly orbits, that can transport cargo up and down for almost no energy. Proximus B is unusually dense with useful metals, which is probably why they chose it. There are shipyards up there, hundreds of them. And billions of bodies like this, hanging in storage. Wish I had a few replacements now…”
“Why?” Pinkie asked. She’d been far less afraid than Twilight, and she bounced around the workshop without fear. She even approached the animal-thing that had once been Applejack’s leg, though she didn’t get close enough to touch. That was just fine with the polecat-like creature, which didn’t seem to want her to get much closer to it anyway.
“Because its body is barely functional,” Node responded. “It looks like it has been spending most of its time in there—” Node gestured at the single active screen on the far side of the room, with a few alien cables trailing out of the opening. “And only transferring into the body we see when it has to.”
“Yes,” Iron Horse admitted. “The simulation is much better than this thing. Barely functional, a new system crashes every few weeks… I couldn’t tell you how many times I thought about never leaving again. Almost did, except for Squip here.” He reached out, affectionately stroking the metal animal’s back with one claw. “She showed up in the system one day, basically dragged me back to work. Couldn’t say no to that face.”
Twilight bit back acid in her throat at just how disturbing that implication was. What kind of mentality motivated a severed limb, anyway? It’s probably the original programming in the virus. Without brain material.
“Your crewmate, Apple Bloom, told us that you were infected upon landing,” Twilight prompted. “She amputated, you developed an infection, and she buried you.”
“Apple Bloom is…” there were no expression to read, but its camera turned and focused suddenly on Twilight, unblinking. “I probably… no. First duty is to the fleet, and you’re an Alicorn. I don’t know why she would’ve lied to you, princess. But… her story wasn’t accurate.”
We never found the body. He’s probably telling the truth.
Twilight tensed, then gently levitated the dial of her radio until it clicked off. “Please explain. If you’re really… Iron Horse, like you say you are.”
“She removed my leg,” he explained. “Something followed us from orbit. But it seemed… determined to infect us. When it became clear that a mundane infection was going to kill me, I…” he looked down, ashamed. “I suppose that’s why Apple Bloom lied about me. More respect for the dead. Greater dignity. I should thank her.”
“You can tell us,” Pinkie said, front right in front of the working screen. She occasionally prodded at the strange controls, a flat panel of tiny squares much too small to operate with a hoof, covered with the alien language. “Twilight is a great listener! She’ll listen to you!”
“The… sludge… was waiting outside the building. I was barely breathing by then, I think the infection was in my blood. I knew I… probably only had hours. Asked Apple Boom to… try and make something useful out of my death. I told her to leave me outside, and watch. Maybe the… sludge wouldn’t kill me, like it killed the others. Or maybe there was some kind of life waiting on the other side. Anything was better than nothing.
“She waited, trying to save me until the end. When she couldn’t… she did what I asked. That thing came for us the instant we were outside. I swear it must’ve got onto her suit, but I didn’t see much after that…”
Iron Horse described a process very similar to the one that had afflicted Apple Bloom, with one notable exception.
“It didn’t make me a body. When the pain stopped, I was… still there, but not there. Alive, but… disembodied. I could feel something with me, like a… a helpful presence. Probably sentimental, but… I like to think it was the spirit of Bulwark, looking out for the crew even after his death. I couldn’t go into the building, something kept pushing me away. But I could feel… warmth, almost, not too far away. This computer,” he nodded towards it. “I found I could… climb inside, control all the systems here. Leave it again, into a body like this. Or the one I’m building.”
“Apple Bloom will be so happy you’re alive,” Pinkie said. “She was… really depressed about losing her whole crew. She felt like a failure.”
“She didn’t fail us, we failed her.”
Twilight hesitated. This could be a pony. The story Iron had presented to them did seem at least consistent with most of the facts they’d heard. But there was no way to verify it. It could be deception, maybe a way to infiltrate their ranks. And Apple Bloom had lied to her.
We have no guarantee that infection leaves anything of the original pony behind. What if it harvested the real Apple Bloom’s memories, and has been manipulating us with them ever since. It might still be trying to kill us.
She had to make a call.
1. Invite Iron Horse to return to the crew (+ Morale Apple Bloom, RISKS UNKNOWN)
2. Node suggests making another body like hers for the pony, also permitting them to return to the crew (+ Morale Apple Bloom and Iron Horse, RISKS UNKNOWN)
3. Detonate the power matrix intentionally, destroying the cavern. Teleport out with Pinkie before the blast.
(Certainty 230 required)
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Things are getting intense! I gonna grab the space popcorn!
Hey, just a fun fact: Pone is actually a word; "unleavened maize bread in the form of flat oval cakes or loaves, originally as prepared with water by North American Indians and cooked in hot ashes."
Gotta go with option 2. Sure, either COULD be lying to us, but there's little reason to particularly expect such other than pure paranoia for now.
I admi Iron Horse could be REALLY dangerous since it sounds like they can body hop easily, but they have access to things way better than our limited ship's computer right now. So doing something like ship jacking would be weird spite. It sounds like they want to be back among ponies and have a functional body pretty badly. It was already working on a pony body, so we would have something to work from material wise, while making multiple crew happy- maybe also Node, as we'd be going with their idea and state of being.
ALSO- this is totally the only way we'll get to recruit AJ's leg too and you know you all want the Squip.
If Iron Horse has been mucking around inside the computer, who knows how much useful intel he's got?
The cyber-virus is very obviously not malicious, it's a desperate measure against the HUNGER. Iron Horse is therefore still a pony in all the ways that counts, and needs help. I vote option 2.
Also IT CALLS TO HER!
I really can't imagine the Princess of Friendship actually making the decision to blow him up if there's a chance that he is actually a pony. Honestly what he's describing sounds a little like Iron Horse's soul is traveling around, but it could also be something like radio waves. Although that would require there be a source, a databank, where his 'mind' is stored. Interesting. Either way, I imagine if she did invite him back, she'd offer him a body, too, out of sympathy for the possibility that he's been without one or stuck using a falling-apart one for possibly hundreds of years.
The first pony penis they find in who knows how many light years and it's a robot. Go figure.
I wonder if he and AB will end up trying to make little robopones?
my threshold to resist this one was 10
rolled 7... not so lucky
I̠̰͓t̞͙̣͚͎͙ͅ ͈̪͉͙̞̖h̯̜ụ̜̼̘̕ͅn͓̘̲͖g̨͚̫͇̭̱̦e̜͉͇͉͖͈r͇̳̖̠̠̘̺s̲̲͔
There are risks with all three options but #2 has the highest payout. Let's go with that. And I super don't trust that secret option.
Option two is slightly darker. What does that mean? Computers taught me that's a sign the option is unavailable but I can clearly vote for it.
EDIT: Oh I get it, that's Node's "color" for her suggestions. Like how a yellow option is Fluttershy's suggestion.
....Secret workshop option? I am curious. Very curious...
And the wording suggests insanity which means the insanity check roll that I accidentally made popular... Rolled off a ledge and landed on Nat 1. Well.... in we go.
Good work, Squip. AJ is always the best support character, even in two pieces.
This is still the Pinkie Pie gambit, so definitely 2.
Gonna go with Straw Poll 4. Might as well grab all the drama we can while we are here. I knew going with the pink one would have a good pay off, we must see what happens when Sunset meets the new Iron Horse and Apple Bloom. I don't know what would be more dramatic, some type of a reunion, or finding out they are from two different crews?
Iron horse reminds me of mega man .exe. I'm also feeling he might be a reference to "iron horse: everything's better with robots" I'm going with option 2 it provides the biggest reward even if its the biggest risk. Go big or go home I guess
9522362
The fact he called out Applebloom's change in the story makes me trust both of them actually being themselves a little more. Aside from that remember how Applebloom went out of the way to get them to stop AJ being turned into a synth. I don't think these are conversion synths who want to convert the crew or lead them astray. We even got a whole lot more info about the planet from this guy.
I'm going to go with helping Iron Horse a new body.
It's a bit much just blowing him up at this point. The main things that concern me are the risk that come with him joining the crew. There's a risk? What are we being hinted at? Is Applejac's leg still infectious? I guess we've already heard about how persistent this nano-virus can be and how it can go bad with what happened with the other crew members that Applebloom lost.
There's also the door. Another chamber hiding a piece of that thing with the crystal heart? Or maybe something more sinister? The way it talks about it makes me think about something from a horror movie. But is it a monster that will try to eat Twilight and Pinkie's mind or something hiding a sinister nature about their new "Friends"?
Another terrifying thought may be that Twilight not taking initiative to take a look at the door might leave Pinkie to explore the door while not looking.
Iron Horse, astronaut. A pony barely alive. We can rebuild him. We have the technology.
I am definitely in favor of making the Six Million Bit Stallion. This may bite us in the rear down the line, but I'd much rather take the risk that could yield more and happier hooves on deck than an action that will definitely kill a potential ally and destroy a valuable piece of equipment.
And I'm not opening any doors that cannot be shut, thank you very much.
That said, note to self: Next time you recognize something in the atorh, go back and review why you recognize it. I'd completely forgotten about Apple Bloom saying she buried Iron.
So either kill it and traumatize Pinkie and then probably lie to the crew or trust it blindly. Well if we're gonna take the risk anyways, at least let's get all the morale we can get.
What the shit, I see an extra option in that same tone as all the other creepy insanity breaking times and a bunch of you actually went for it!?
9521997
If we had access to the technology that built the body we then had and a few centuries, why not?
I think it’s interesting that the blow up option doesn’t say anything about taking Node with them.
9522675
From what i can tell we have a small cult forming that always votes for these and we have a group of people rolling their own sanity checks when voting.
2.
Rolling dice. Threshold to resist is 10 out of 20...
....5....
iT HuNGeRs
So he lost track of time in the Ark, eh? Would explain his slothfulness.
His apparent incompatibility with communications protocols also I gives credence to complete systems override when piloting a body. This is somewhat less useful than an overlay...
9522751
Welp, lets see what happens then, theres a chance they might win this vote
In addition to all the other reasons that the BLOW SHIT UP option is terrible, there's the fact that teleportation now carries special risks for Twilight. In fact, these clearly batshit options are making me more and more sympathetic to the idea that we need to take the next available option to get Twilight some Insane-B-Gon unless it's up against some incredibly urgent priorities.
As for the two real options here, I'm not seeing an upside to leaving him in a falling-apart body, but if someone can think of one I'm all ears.
If we didn't have something so obviously good as Options 1 and 2, I'd be interested in the secret option... what is it with mysterious doors? But since Option 2 DOES exist, not choosing that is foolish. Assuming you don't think he's just a fake trying to infiltrate, but that feels paranoid even for the fails we've been through.
Not a lot of choice overlap, huh.
1: Take him with us.
2: Do a nice thing for him, and take him with us.
3: Kill him, his friend, and everything he's worked on since he gained a second chance, purely out of paranoia. Also risk falling to The Abyss cause of the whole teleporting thing.
Also, I'm going to go out on a whim and say maybe we avoid any doorways that we have an odd compulsion to walk through. Just a feeling.
9522595
If I'm remembering correctly, Applebloom wasn't fully converted at that point, so I'm not sure I'd take that observation as evidence for or against the sleeper agent hypothesis.
9523350 I wasn't sure so I double checked and it was complete.
9523391
Well nevermind then. Sleeper agent isn't looking terribly likely then, I suppose.
Rito plz nerf Arnold swarzapone. Srsly tho robopone is op. Either there allies (not JUST friendly but all the way) or there waiting to kill the ponies in one decisive strike. It's a mistake to waste resources planning around betrayal. Node has already done a fantastic job of not being thankful to the point of loyalty and if he alone will betray them then story is rip. Either we make them crew and family or we kill them we already have a suicide bomber we have executed yet. So commit. Either kill them or make them crew. I vote in for team up if we can make the robopones loyal and USEFULL then we'll be unstoppable. With twighlight, spike, and 2 high tech terminators there is no potential combat we couldn't overcome. Also we should ACTIVELY consider infecting sunset. There isn't a reality we're you wake up from that not suicidal, the mechits... May prevent this, if she isn't brain dead she will try to kill her self. Let's not beat around the bush , the robopones are best case scenario genetic clones. With cyber printing of the "conscience state" as it's known. apple bloom and iron horse are dead. It's a mistake to believe anything different without having invented this technology ourselves even then results can't REALLY be proven. So do we want a biologically suicidal sunset. It do we want a theoretically identical machine clone sunset who may be controllable by this unidentified machine conscience? I vote shiminator
Good debate this chapter. Lots of interesting words. For those of you actively trying to sate the hunger fuck off. Those of you who want squip the Adams family hoof Pokemon. Come to my house and I will start manufacturing planning.
There are so many different ways for our unknown enemies to potentially lay taps or deceive us that it would be the height of paranoia to blow up some ponies of of suspicion for this specific deception.
9522675
Someone whose name I can't remember made a comment in a previous chapter that I like: everyone who votes for the hunger option is another person who won't survive a horror movie.
9523671
Hey now! To be fair, I was hungry when I voted!
9522359
Yay! More robopones!
I voted for bringing Iron Horse back, but without the new robot body (yet).
If he is dangerous, he will have much less ability to do harm, but will still be able to give us information. If he proves to be save, we can stillbuild him a robot later.
But it seems the overwhelming majority disagrees (currently only 4% share my idea).
Hmmm... The fact that it says [RISKS UNKNOWN] makes me wonder if we're going to have to roll for that later. His story could be true, but who knows? Maybe something like: