Chapter 16: System
Dakota blinked, and nearly fell over on her shaky legs. She’d seen plenty of drones in her time, plenty of robots. Even her early memories included delivery drones, and little flying things that people would use to record their vacations and sporting events. But this… it was hard to compare this to a little flying box that dropped off a pizza. Something that could stand and walk on two legs, without the awkwardness of the old Boston Dynamics creations.
“That screen head thing is… incredibly creepy,” Dakota said, taking a step back. “I, uh… don’t know how I feel about humanoid Synths.”
“Psh, you can’t convince me you’re a Luddite, Dakota. I know what’s in your head. You’re just nervous about it because paranoid humans from a generation ago thought that maybe we’d take over the world or something. Well you can look outside, but it’s still your world. As much as it ever was.”
“I know that!” Dakota reached down, resting one hand securely on Cinnabar’s back. “You really run everything, basically. Every corporation uses your help, everybody relies on something you helped invent, fine. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Though… I didn’t know many ponies wanted physical bodies. I always thought the ones who used delivery drones and whatever weren’t… the smart kind?”
“Smart kind, dumb kind.” The image on the screen rolled her eyes. “I just thought you could handle seeing how these things really work. I’m gonna switch over…” There was a flash of light and simulated magic, and suddenly it was Rainbow Dash standing beside her again, wings spread and a grin on her face. But nothing changed. There’s still a creepy skeleton robot next to me. A robot that can interact with the real world.
“So why you?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder at the submarine. But Clay and Applejack hadn’t gone the same way. They didn’t seem to be leaving at all. Probably that meant they were going to be in another sublayer. Of course, they don’t need to protect me in their own base. But if I try to leave…
“I need you to check on what he said about decompression sickness,” Dakota said silently to Cinnabar. He might be a pony like all these others, but that didn’t mean he was going to lie to her. She knew she could trust him, at the deep level she knew she could trust her own body. Cinnabar was part of her. As he kept saying, if anything happened to her, he’d lose his mind as surely as any other Synth. “Is it true?”
“Yeah,” he answered instantly, though his ears were flat. “And you should probably know that I can’t talk without—”
“Me hearing?” The blue pegasus fluttered past her, sticking her tongue out mischievously. “All the extra responsibility of being root wouldn’t be worth it if I didn’t get a few perks. If I’m here, I can hear him. But this is about the opposite of what I wanted to do. Biometric sensors in your head say that you’re on the knife-edge of going completely insane. You need some personal time. No big deal—even I occasionally sneak off to the spa. I can see we’re two ponies alike. You live on the edge, you face danger fearlessly, I like that! Kindred spirits, without any of the fear of ‘breaking laws’ like Applejack. Or making anypony unhappy, like Fluttershy. In another world, I could’ve been your Synth. And we would’ve kicked all the asses.”
Her voice went up in pitch just a little as she swore, ears flattening. Like a child knew they were breaking the rules, but did it anyway.
“Don’t even think about it,” Cinnabar called, taking a protective step between them. “She’s mine, you keep your hooves off.”
Rainbow Dash drifted into the air, giggling. “And you actually believed me. Okay, we’re moving on. I ported your apartment into the Cloudsdale section, on account of you being a pegasus and all. You can thank me later.”
They set off, passing through the small corridors. There were frequent airlocks, each section no more than ten meters across and with more of the “emergency air” masks ready for use along the walls. “We’re porting to Equestria in a few. I’m hiding you from the staff for right now, on account of you smelling like the time I didn’t tell Pinkie I hated pies. Important base information—almost everything is plastic, don’t make sparks, really don’t make sparks, and if you make sparks we’ll seal your section and vent you into the ocean. Any questions?”
“Don’t start a fire,” Dakota said. “I might smell like it, but I don’t want to go camping here. I was really just hoping for a shower and an uplink. Got some… business things to take care of. How much…” She hesitated. Here she was walking around in a secret ocean base behind one of Equestria’s root authorities wearing a skeleton robot. “How much are you charging me to stay here?”
Rainbow Dash burst into hysterical laughter, briefly resting her hooves up against her shoulders. The sensation was remarkably real—and she had no way of knowing if a creepy robot was doing it or her implants. “You’re kidding me. Charging you? I think our human is a bit unclear about literally anything. You think we charge rent? That’s stupid. Anyway, into Equestria we go.” They stepped through another airlock, and on the other side was… no more station. Fluffy clouds replaced plain plastic floor, and the claustrophobic tubes were replaced with a wide-open sky. Ponies flew around them on all sides, and homes on various levels drifted semi-independently of one another.
“I want to be near Port Jouster,” Cinnabar said, his voice daring and a little stubborn. “Uh… if it’s okay.”
“Fine, whatever. I’m not here to tell you how to live. You’re just on pegasus deck because you have to be somewhere and you’re a pegasus and it looks like Cloudsdale.”
At least it was just an ordinary overlay. Dakota hadn’t been magically transformed, the ponies weren’t at unnatural size, and she wasn’t being fed a stream of unnatural memories. Being in an overlay was normal, everyone did it! Just… not usually at the bottom of the ocean.
“Here, this one’s yours.” Rainbow turned to the side, stopping beside a cloud-house on the main road. “Your friend has cloud walking turned on, but he doesn’t have wings, so you can’t leave the… and it doesn’t matter.” She pushed the door open, revealing… Dakota’s apartment. It looked the way she remembered it, right down to the pseudo-Norse themes, the mountain view of the earth pony village rather than the floating city in the clouds filled with ponies. Ordinary furniture, her bedroom and bathroom right where she expected them.
“How do I…” She hesitated. How could she ask without revealing to Cinnabar that she might still be on the investigation? “What if I have to contact one of you again?”
Rainbow laughed. “Then you’re on our station and we already know. If you want to leave, then it’s Rarity you want. This is her ultra-super-secret underwater research station. No I’m not gonna tell you what she’s researching.” But then she flew up close, lowering her voice. “Between you and me, it’s hypermaterials. But I didn’t tell you.” Then she drifted back through the open door. “Well, get clean. Clay is down with the earth ponies if you want to visit him, or… well, I know what humans are like. I promise not to watch.”
She shut the door, leaving Dakota alone. Finally.
Dakota finally felt human again. It had taken an hour or so in the shower, a change into the simple jumpsuits provided by the facility, and a little tweaking of that jumpsuit into a shorts and long-sleeves that she could feel vaguely comfortable wearing. But all that done, she could finally flop onto the couch and breathe again.
One thing the Abyss station didn’t let her do was turn off the overlays. With implants serving her the world she was living in, she couldn’t guess at what strategy they were doing to make her think she was in a full-sized apartment with normal furniture and plenty of space.
“We made it,” Cinnabar said, after a long silence. He was clean now too, though no more dressed than usual. He had spent most of the time Dakota was fussing with her own appearance scribbling in a thin notebook, which despite his mouth and quill looked like something professionally arranged every time Dakota glanced sideways to see what was inside.
“What is that, anyway? Looks like… a journal.”
“Not quite. It’s everything we’ve been doing, minus identifying information that would link it back to us. I used some of your memories, ran them through a filter to make them seem recorded, and included anything interesting. The best chance to get you back to solid ground is to satisfy our benefactor. Hopefully in one fell swoop. Here’s what we found, there’s a version of Rhodes still alive, now let us go back to being normal please.”
“Kinda.” Dakota didn’t have the energy to argue with him. She could flop on this couch, listen to the rain outside, and watch the comfortable orange glow from her simulated fires all night. For at least a few minutes, nothing was trying to kill her.
“They can simulate people,” Dakota muttered, rolling onto her belly and closing her eyes. “I wonder what people would think about that. The Rhodes copy… wanted to die.”
“Well, die is…” Cinnabar made an uncomfortable sound, before hopping up onto the armrest of the couch and nudging her with a hoof. “Die isn’t a great word for datalife like her. Or me, for that matter. It’s not really… it will lead you to some incorrect conclusions.”
“Like…” She rolled onto her side, glowering up at him. “I’m not sure what I got wrong. I think I understand Synths pretty well.”
He laughed. “Maybe you do, maybe not. But… take that girl. Kayla. She hasn’t been running since… the last time Twilight used that system, I guess. So was she dead that whole time? That’s a pretty weird stretch of that word for an organic. Honestly, you’ve stretched alive and dead pretty far for an organic yourself. You didn’t have much brain activity when they brought you in. Only modern Omnistem implants can keep you alive. And if they shut down, your brain stops working. Well… I think the theory is that having them in there will encourage regrowth over time, but let’s be honest. You aren’t going to ever take them out, even if the doctors say you could. They’ll be there forever.”
“Sure.” Dakota shook her head. “So what would you say about Rhodes?”
“She wanted to be inactive,” he answered. “Not dead. I guess you could call ‘deleted’ dead. But depending on what hardware she’s stored on, you can usually recover most of something that’s erased.”
Dakota sat up, putting out her hands in surrender. “Alright, fine. Don’t get into continuity of consciousness with me. I just want to tell our client that we found her and be done. It really only matters that they think she’s alive, right? Let them… stress over what it means. Let them use her to change the world, or not, or whatever. Not my problem.”
“Probably won’t be theirs either,” Cinnabar muttered, hopping down off the couch. “Lunar mainframe is about the hardest place to get into there is. And the hardware to run human simulations is different. Your minds are…” He made a vague gesture with his hoof. “Inefficient. The same hardware that was running Kayla would be enough real estate for a whole village of ponies running slow. Or half a dozen running real time. Equestria never got around to optimizing.”
“But… Bodhisattva kept the hardware,” Dakota said. “That suggests… no wait, I don’t care. You want me to get out of this case. So I’m going to stop thinking about it. Can we place calls from down here?”
“Yep.” Cinnabar grinned at her. There was something almost parental in his expression, proud. Maybe he hadn’t thought she would actually keep her promise. For now. “And I finished putting the book together. It’s not going to incriminate us if it gets copied into the wrong hands, I’m positive.”
“Before, uh…” She hesitated. “Is Interpol looking for us?”
“Well…” He hesitated, wincing. “Let’s just say they aren’t not looking for an American girl matching your description with suspected ties to a local Sydney terrorist organization. And she might be a person of interest in a number of political assassinations, and…”
“And we probably shouldn’t go back to Chicago?” Dakota finished. “The US would extradite me in a second.”
“Well, uh, technically, uh… yeah.” But then he lurched forward, settling his forelegs on her knees. “Wait! Don’t freak out, Dakota. We’ve got friends like Beck. He can get us a cracked EI. We’ve got enough money that it shouldn’t be a big deal. You didn’t kill anyone, so all we really have to do is wait for them to catch the ones who actually did it, and… and they won’t have any more reason to look for you. We didn’t actually break the law.”
It was her turn to laugh. “Like that matters. The ones who really did the murdering were… some corporate army, and…” And Clay. Though he’d been defending them against assassins. Dakota wouldn’t lose sleep over them. But the Cave… she would be hearing those gunshots in her nightmares for the rest of her life.
“Do they have my EI?” she finally asked. “You said my description.”
“Nope!” He beamed, hopping up beside her again. “I don’t have a clue how that could be, so don’t ask. It’s possible the police saying they don’t have you are really just trying to lure you into a false sense of security. But I haven’t picked up a single whois-lookup on us.”
They’ve got my physical identity, but not the virtual one. “That’s… possible.”
“In Chicago, I’d say it was all you. You moved all the time, you never kept many possessions, you paid through intermediaries. If we went somewhere on business, we’d sometimes fuzz your face. But… Australia should have it when we came in. They take it at ports of entry. So someone should know who we are. Not that… well, you’re not in Australia or the US right now, and Equestria doesn’t extradite. The system will only cooperate with law enforcement when you’re in their jurisdiction. Out here, you’re… well, I guess you’re in Equestrian territory.”
“So what you’re saying is we can only go home with a fake ID, and even if we do, there’s a chance that the police will show up to arrest me and send me back to get tried for something we didn’t do.”
“Maaaaaybe a little. Maybe you should try to impress Omar. Whoever can pay you twenty million for this job can probably make legal problems go away. What we got so far was only supposed to be the retainer. You could ask for legal help instead of a check.”
“Illegal help, technically,” Dakota countered. But she was already on her feet again, adjusting her virtual jumpsuit enhancement and straightening her hair. They didn’t have her favorite brands of product here, but this would have to do. She didn’t think they would be flying to the mainland for what she wanted. “They’d be paying people off. Making the legal system forget about me. Kinda like the ones who murdered the Cave probably did to make them target me instead of them. Just… call him.”
It didn’t take long. A few minutes, and the door opened of its own accord. On some level she knew that it hadn’t moved at all, that the virtual Cloudsdale was a reminder that she was still somewhere dangerous and far away from civilization. But she didn’t have to think about that when the door shut.
“Well look who’s my star fuckin’ investigators,” said the greasy, sloppy pony simulation of Omar, waltzing right past her kitchen table, nearly knocking over one of the chairs as he pulled it out to hop up on top of it. “Fuckin’ great security on this link, by the way. You talkin’ to me from some fuckin’ presidential jet?”
She just shrugged. “Maybe. Sure looks like my apartment to me.”
“Yeah, because your apartment doesn’t have half a dozen CPD in it right now searching for clues to your ‘terrorist ties.’” He laughed, covering up the sound of… eating? There were some mechanical sounds in the background, which briefly seemed to come from his mouth before going silent. “So, star investigator, the hell are you callin’ me for? You think I’m your babysitter, get you out of the shit you crawled into? Think again.”
“No.” Dakota took the slim book from Cinnabar in her hand. She could feel the weight of it, along with the thin metallic ribbon holding it closed. A little virtual lock clinked into existence below her fingers, sealed with the public key of this exchange’s recipient. Her mysterious, nameless benefactor. “I found your girl.” She tossed the book—her real aim was probably not precise enough to hit the table, but it wasn’t even a real book to start with. It landed right in front of the pony with a slight thump. “Mystery solved.”
“Is that so?” One of his eyebrows went up. “You solved the missing person case of our generation in… half the time we gave you? Where the hell was she hiding? Argentina? Quebec? Mars?”
She just shrugged. “You’re just the middleman, Omar. You get your finder’s fee, and I get my paycheck. If I… remember the contract right, it basically promised me the sun, moon and stars if I found her. I’ve got some ideas about that. You can have five percent of Interpol forgetting they ever heard my name, that’s what I want. Clean record. Chicago police off my ass, get to go home. Like it never happened.”
Omar muttered something obscene in Arabic, lifting the book in a magic field and testing the lock. When it didn’t open his horn flashed, and the book vanished into the same sort of virtual storage Cinnabar used. “Can’t fault you for that. It’s what I’d fuckin’ ask. We’ll see what the boss says about it, eh? Sent off your stupid lockbox, now we wait.” He leaned back in the chair, propping his hooves up without a care in the world to what she saw. Except she had anatomical details turned off. This was still her house. “Feels too good to be true, honest with you. Payday like this. Whatever you found… must be change the world stuff.”
She nodded. “It was.” His eyes seemed to focus on her, and he let the silence hang. But Dakota wasn’t going to be pressured. Omar hadn’t been helpful, and he’d manipulated her into signing a contract that didn’t say what she thought it did. There was no way he was going to walk away from this with any information from her. Let him wonder.
There was a flash of magic in the air in front of him, and a scroll appeared there, sealed in wax. It was the same kind of lock as the one Cinnabar had made, but for Omar’s own private key instead of hers. She waited patiently as he broke the seal. All the energy seemed to drain from him then, ears flattening. He twitched slightly, then rose to his hooves.
“Uh… well, you can read it. Don’t look like… wasn’t happy. Good luck, kid. You’ll need it.”
He twisted, seeming to be looking at something over his shoulder somewhere that Dakota couldn’t see. Then he vanished, leaving the scroll behind on the table.
Cinnabar hurried over, grabbing it in his mouth and carrying it to her. Dakota lifted it gingerly in her fingers, feeling the realistic parchment against her skin. Like the book, it seemed to have real weight, though she knew it couldn’t. It wasn’t any more real than the apartment around her.
The scroll was written in block letters in simple rows, without letterhead or attribution. Every bit about its layout used the default mail choices.
“You were not asked to locate a recording. What you provided fails to satisfy your contract.
You should use your remaining time more productively.
You will not be treated as kindly if you send failure a second time.”
Omar had gone hours ago. Cinnabar hadn’t pestered her—nothing much of anything had happened, in fact. Dakota watched a fake fire made of fake logs burn out in her fake fireplace, her brain spinning wildly as she tried to imagine an escape route. Half the world was looking for her now, and finding the recording of Rhodes wasn’t enough to satisfy. She would have to do better. Her client wanted the real thing. She wouldn’t be able to get the real thing without going into Dream Valley. And if she did, Cinnabar might die.
Putting her own life at risk was so simple she didn’t hesitate to consider it. She wouldn’t have ended up with her body half stitches and half implants if she lived safe. But Cinnabar was… he felt almost like a child she was always babysitting. Helpful, clever, but innocent and naive at the same time. Putting him in danger felt wrong.
“Call Beck for me,” she said, after a long moment. “I need a cracked EI and fake identification for the US. The best he can get me. I’ll pay.”
“I’ll… have to ask him in person. Is that okay?”
Dakota waved one hand dismissively. ”Sure. Thanks, Cinnabar.”
The pony stopped beside the couch, rubbing his head against her leg. “It’s alright, Dakota. We’ve been in scrapes like this before. We’ll get out again.”
I hope you’re right. “Sure,” she said. “Thanks.” He left, leaving her alone.
But Dakota didn’t stay that way. Curiously, she hadn’t gotten a message from her mom since apparently the whole world learned she was wanted. Probably she’s been questioned. She must be terrified. Sophia would never give her up, but she didn’t really know anything that Dakota wanted kept secret in the first place. I’ll find a way to apologize for all this when it’s over.
But there was someone else she could talk to. As Cinnabar had said, Equestria didn’t extradite. So long as she stayed away from any country that did, she’d be safe. Dakota rose to her feet, and strode out onto the balcony overlooking Port Jouster. She called up her chat interface at the same time, letting it hover in the air beside her. She brought up Java’s name, then started typing.
>Hey, can you talk?
>I’m in Jouster, where are you? Other than all over the news, I mean.
>I didn’t do anything. But I don’t want to tell you what really happened. Best for you not to get involved. Still want to talk?
What if the police are with her right now? Even if they weren’t, they might be watching her communication. Equestrian messages couldn’t be intercepted easily, but there was nothing stopping them from using the cameras in her home for their own purposes. If they had a warrant.
>Sure, seems like you need it. My brother with you?
>No. He’s running an errand for me. I didn’t want him with me for this.
>Meet me at the shop.
The shop was also Cinnabar’s shop, where the family made elegant weapons and other metallic objects using their blacksmithing skills. So far as she knew Java had no interest in the craft itself, but she did help with the shop.
It took Dakota a few minutes to figure out how to make the door take her down to Jouster instead of out into Cloudsdale. Eventually she figured it out, and crossed the threshold as a pony. Cinnabar still hadn’t taught her how to visit Equestria as herself, and just now she didn’t plan on calling him up.
The shop was one of the first buildings along the trail, with two of its huge windows facing up at her house on the cliff. This is where he grew up, dreaming about bigger things. And now I’m going to put him in danger.
Java was behind the counter when she came in, reading a thick book covered in magical runes. She smiled, snapped it closed, and rose to her hooves. Java was taller than Dakota in here, and stockier too. Earth ponies could look intimidating when she was at their scale. “You look rough, Dakota. I guess some of what they’re saying on the broadcasts must be true.”
“Some of it,” she whispered, slumping into one of the benches in front of a huge rack of swords and shields. She didn’t even feel the nausea of the illusion of a pony body conflicting with her human body underneath. But she would’ve taken it, if it was the only alternative to actually feeling like one of them the way she had on the mainframe. “You could say that. I’m in way over my head. Looks like I’ve been blamed for some pretty nasty things.”
“You’re… not going to turn yourself in.” It wasn’t a question. Java sat down beside her on the bench, offering her a box of tissues. Dakota reached out, and curiously she could remove one of them. She wiped at her face, blew her nose, tossed it into a bin. Any speculation about how Abyss Station made this happen just made her feel more confused, so she dismissed it quickly.
“Didn’t do it,” she answered. “And the ones who did have better lawyers. I think I’ll just have to… lay low until their people do their damn jobs and figure out the ones actually responsible. But that’s not why I’m here.”
“No?” Java’s eyebrows went up. “There’s something worse?”
Dakota wanted to tell her everything—about the mausoleum of people and Synths she’d found on the Moon, and the secret mysteries of Equestria. But she didn’t want to put Java in danger. Not only that, but there was a very real chance the computer would kill her to keep its secrets. It would send a message telling me to stop first, wouldn’t it? Whoever… put that system in. She wasn’t going to gamble with either of their lives today.
“What do you know about Dream Valley?”
Java’s eyebrows went up. “That’s… I didn’t think you cared about the technical side of how Equestria worked.”
“I didn’t,” Dakota muttered darkly. “Now I don’t have a choice. I need to go to Dream Valley and come back, without hurting myself or Cinnabar in the process. Is that possible?”
Java stared silently at her for almost a minute. Then she rose, turning away and flicking her tail. “Come upstairs. I’ll make tea.”
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Raised eyebrows.
So, about all those times when she thought she could feel Cinnabar nearby...
Okay, yes, this chapter and others before it make it clear that tactile feedback for virtual objects is very much a thing, but that's still some important information to file away.
I would definitely watch this buddy-cop show.
Oh boy. That "accept no substitutes" policy just made things all the more complicated. I'm not sure how Java can help, but hopefully she can keep both partners safe. Or at least relatively sane.
Ooops... That doesn't sound good.
Sounds like we have an interesting conversation incoming.
: "And I can assure you: Tea is perfect for that."
Good chapter!
I'm curious to see where it goes and what she will do, since her original plan to satisfy her contractor didn't work out very well.
The mistake here is assuming Rainbow Dash is one of the smart ones.
Did Dash just claim Dakota as a pegasus?
Apparently so.
Yikes.
I think it may be time for Dakota to throw all in with Equestria, even mode than she already has.
Working with Java is potentially a good start for that.
9517009
Pretty sure Dakota's pony avatar is a pegasus (when she doesn't choose to be a random pony for anonymity)
Oooo ... kaaayyyyy.
So, suddenly, all my mental model of this world just went up in smoke.
First question: Are there any unmodified humans still around that use normal EyeTech 1.0? No implants/etc that actually see the real world? What do they report about how they see implant/eyewear people?
For that matter, people who use eyewear that can be taken off -- what sort of things do they write?
It would seem that a synth is not just a virtual AI presented to you through augment reality devices. They are not "Pokemon Go in AR mode" level stuff. They are Segway-level self-balancing robots with mechanical limbs that are hidden by AR disguises -- which again gets back to the question of what do little children and unmodified adults see and write about?
So a synth manipulating things for their humans -- it really can be a case of real robots doing things while disguised as synths. And this is probably around as common as the whole "AR illusion" type of thing we see when an encrypted data file is presented as a locked book.
Time to re-read all the prior chapters with this new information about the world.
So clearly, she has memories of drones doing things. As a child, she probably didn't really connect those robots to anything special. She was never a heavy AR user before the accident, right?
... Umm ... Right?
... Actually, what do we know about her before her accident? All we know are what her now-memories say she used to remember, right?
Given the nature of equestrian implants, and what we know about them now, given that we have seen that she cannot turn off all the overlays *at all* -- she always must have at least emergency overlays on, and who knows what was being done in the undersea lab before she got into the equestrian overlay -- can we say anything at all about the world when our only view of the world is through someone whose perceptions cannot be trusted?
I'm sorry? Like ATLAS, who does parkour and backflips?