Chapter 2: Sapling
Every day was the same—an undignified washing by hospital staff, followed by a ride in the back of a one-seat autocar down to physical therapy. Despite everything they told her about the value of her implants—despite the plastic access port that proved the surgery had taken place, Dakota didn’t feel much like she was getting her money’s worth.
Every day was six hours of agony, moving from partial-submersion in thin tubs to friction beds and straps. Eventually she was walking again on a slow treadmill—but not just for a few seconds, she had to keep going for hours.
“You’re getting there!” Cinnabar called to her, jogging backwards effortlessly in front of her, floating a little off the ground. The hospital had its own sublayer, but that was mostly for the doctors, orderlies, and staff. Dakota wanted no part of it, and so the two of them existed in isolation. “Just another… thirty-six minutes to go.”
“Thirty-six… minutes…” At least she had her own clothes back now, though at the moment she was only wearing a tight top and some plain gray leggings. Both were nearly soaked with sweat, and the skin on her face and arms had gone red with the strain. But she kept running anyway. On the days she failed to meet her goals, they always gave her electrostimulation to make up for it, and that was worse.
“Look, I’ll distract you! We’ll just…” Cinnabar clicked his hooves together twice, like he was a lost Kansas farmgirl wanting to go home. But instead of returning to a world of black and white, the physical therapy gym faded into the background. The standard VR cordon appeared around her, advising her of the area that was safe to traverse with a dim white grid that appeared when she neared it and faded into the background otherwise. In this case, the cordon was restricted to the area of the treadmill.
And around them was Equestria. In here she didn’t tower over ponies, but was about the same height. Where the cities lacked any kind of overlay or sublayer, where carts still had ponies to pull them and the land itself was alive.
This was Cinnabar’s hometown of Port Jouster, a fairly minor settlement on the coast. Despite her aversion to Equestria, Dakota had grown close enough to Cinnabar over the years to occasionally indulge him in trips home, and see the place in bits and pieces. The village’s humble cluster of buildings were barely visible over the rocks and crags. The sky went dark and gray, with a pleasant spray of moisture and sea foam. Instead of walking in place in a white hospital room by herself, Dakota was now limping along a shoreside path, with a sheer drop on one side and the village on the other. In the distance, she was sure about thirty-eight minutes away, the path leveled out onto a welcoming beach, where the sun cut through the clouds.
Instead of floating ahead of her, Cinnabar now ran alongside, or rather trotted. Despite Dakota’s incredible exertion, she was not moving terribly fast. “You can tell me you don’t want to be here all you want,” he said, smiling with satisfaction. “But your heartbeat has slowed and your breathing is more even. I think you were bucking sick of that hospital.”
“I… yeah,” she admitted. “I am. How long until I can go to outpatient?”
“End of the week,” Cinnabar responded. He reached behind him, where he was wearing a pair of saddlebags. There was a bright symbol on the side, which glowed slightly against the overcast sky—Dakota’s own EI, Equestrian Identifier. If she were a pony, it would be her cutie mark, but… humans didn’t get those. Except for the ones that used their identifiers for the exact same purpose as ponies did, getting them sewn into their clothing and choosing accessories and even their vehicles based on a pony avatar.
Dakota was not a person like that, though she had friends who were. She hadn’t even created a pony avatar, so when she was in Equestria proper would display as a generic background character different to every observer. Well, that was fine by her—it meant most humans mistook her for static, and her Synth as on assignment for a human who wasn’t there. Easier to do her job that way.
“Four more days, Christ.” She wanted to give up and stop—but slowing even for a second made the treadmill beep painfully at her, cutting through the illusion of Equestria. The rubber supports holding her wouldn’t let her get thrown backwards off of it, but they wouldn’t stop the electrostimulation therapy either.
“I wasn’t finished distracting you,” Cinnabar said. “I’ve got lots more interesting stuff I found while you were asleep. Some space headlines.”
Okay, so maybe there were some things that could interest her. Her breathing was hard, but as soon as she caught her breath enough, Dakota squeaked. “Alright… shoot.”
“Let’s see. Lunar Horizons broke foundation on their second site—lava tubes this time. They’re taking initial applications. Says here they’re mostly interested in… geologists, engineers, and analysts. Telepresent applications also accepted, no qualifications required.”
“Telepresent,” she repeated. “The time lag has to suck balls that far away. Not sure how much sense that makes.”
“Probably cheating,” Cinnabar said. “Got a node here on Earth, maybe? Then… relays commands back for any hardware they let the telepresent ponies play with.”
“I’m not going, don’t ask.” But that was a lie, probably. If she were feeling better, Dakota would’ve loved to go telepresent on the Moon. Hike through some lava tubes, watch the constructor drones assemble another factory or two. But Cinnabar knew that too, and he didn’t call her out.
“Anything… else?”
“You’re fishing.” Cinnabar snapped the portfolio closed, tossing it into his saddlebags with usual pony coordination. How he could manipulate all that with his mouth was a testament to just how digital everything was.
“Hell… yeah… I am.”
“You think you wouldn’t have heard if someone had gotten into the monolith?” He slowed down, falling behind a bit. “I don’t like how obsessed you get about that sometimes.”
She wanted to stop and yell at him—but of course, she was in public, and the elastic straps holding her into place on the treadmill wouldn’t let her just stop wherever she wanted. If she did that, it would be electrotherapy again. “You just don’t like people talking about it because it’s where you live.”
That did it—Cinnabar ran to catch up, his hooves smacking loudly against the stony path for a few steps. There were a few other ponies heading the opposate way—vacationers apparently, with a rolling cart filled with towels and a cooler. Bad weather for it, but Dakota was just glad they didn’t try to stop them. “You really think I live in…” He reached into his saddlebags again, lifting out another printout. The rules of what he was carrying when it came to helping her were a bit fuzzy—Synths held all her files, though if they’d all been printed at any given time the volume of paper would surely have crushed him, earth pony strength notwithstanding.
This image was taken of the Moon, its perspective a high, distant satellite. Except the image was zoomed near to the surface, focusing sharply on the single band of metal holding there.
The “monolith” was a shaft of unknown black metal, scarcely four feet wide, but nearly fifty kilometers long. It was perfect, atomically straight. It had been holding its exact position over Plinius Crater since before Dakota was born—the year that Equestria became more than a game. The year that Synths woke up and the whole world changed forever.
“Obviously,” Dakota said. “You… and all the others. Nobody ever heard of… a real AI… until the monolith came around. You built it, it’s your… server. It’s where Equestria really is.”
“You always say that,” Cinnabar muttered. He no longer sounded angry, only frustrated. “But it didn’t build us. I’ve never been there, and I’ve never met anypony who has. And if I came from that…” He tossed the printout over the edge of the path. The wind carried it down, where it vanished over the cliff and out of sight. “There’d be lag, Dakota. I don’t care how smart you think we are… I’m flattered, really. It’s great you think we’re amazing and perfect and—”
He caught her glare, and trailed off with a squeak, ears flattening. “But we can’t break the speed of light. If my brain was on that, there’d be lag. We couldn’t… play ping pong! Or League, or… anything that takes split-second responses.”
“Unless you can,” she said. The timer hadn’t gone off, but Dakota just couldn’t walk anymore. Her whole body felt like she’d gone swimming in sweat, and her legs wanted to tear right off. She let the straps catch her, picking her legs up off the treadmill floor.
A harsh siren beeped into her face, trying to prompt her to start moving again, but she ignored it. A few more beeps, and a bright red light lit up on the treadmill. The floor beneath her stopped rolling. “We’ve been trying to open the monolith for decades, and no one gets closer than a hundred kilometers. Not governments, not corporations, no one can get in. I think whatever tech you really invented is indistinguishable from magic.”
Cinnabar shook his head again. “I think our consensus nodes are where I say they are. I think you can visit and see the servers yourself. And if you knew what kinda shielding was in this building, you’d know I’m running in your head, just like you are. Well… you’re on meat, I’m on graphene, but… you get the idea.”
The illusion shattered as a medical orderly appeared beside her treadmill, trailed by a watchful Synth. Like most physical therapy people, he was infuriatingly attractive, perfectly muscled and square-jawed. It was just like this place to surround her with the attractive people when she was most helpless and vulnerable. “Couldn’t keep it up, eh Dakota?”
She nodded, wiping away sweat from her face and snatching her water bottle from the treadmill. She took a few struggling sips, and nearly forgot to breathe as she did so.
“Sure you wouldn’t like me to switch it back on?” He dangled a plastic card in front of her. “I know you don’t like the alternative.”
“I don’t,” she agreed, clutching at her chest. “But… maybe could you slow it down. There’s this stitch in my side…”
“Sure,” he said. “But you’re not escaping. Ten minutes cool down, and we’re doing the chair.”
She muttered something obscene under her breath, but there was no real spite or anger in it. Toby really just wanted her to be healthy as quickly as possible—she might remember nothing but pain while in his domain, but it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t hit her with a truck.
“To answer your original question, there were a few more private probes. SpaceX this time, and Virgin Galactic. Neither one got any closer than last time. More trash for the debris field.”
He hadn’t wanted to tell her—because Cinnabar knew too well how she would react. The way she tensed, got visibly angry and frustrated. At least this wasn’t a manned mission. The “debris field” held half a dozen bodies, impossible to retrieve for the same reasons their missions had failed in the first place. “We’ll get in one day, you know,” she said. “Whatever that thing uses to stop our shuttles… they’ll figure it out.”
“Pardon, miss?” Toby asked, perking up from her other side, where he’d been working to remove her restraints. “Did you say something?”
“Sorry, my Synth,” she explained. And that was all the apology he needed. But he can’t see you, Cinnabar? Why?
If Cinnabar could still hear her thoughts, he didn’t answer the unspoken question. “Dakota… there are other ponies who want to get in as much as you do. You think that Musk guy doesn’t have a Synth helping him, and probably everypony in his company too… you’re wrong. You could pop over right now and see for yourself. But I know you won’t.”
And Cinnabar was right. She wouldn’t.
Chicago hadn’t looked like this the last time she saw it. Dakota leaned back in the seat of the autocar, staring out the tinted glass windows and trying to take everything in.
It looked a little like someone had tossed the old city into a blender with Equestria, and this was the result. Buildings were too tall, with boring concrete replaced with polished marble and swirling granite. Crystal spires rose up and between many of the buildings, with huge glowing billboards hovering in many places independent of structural support. Instead of the grimy, dirty sidewalks she remembered, Dakota saw only pristine walkways, with planter boxes and bright blooming flowers on either side. There were almost as many ponies as humans out there, and anyone that noticed her glance always turned to wave.
“What overlay is this?”
“Chicago local,” Cinnabar said, from the seat beside her.
Dakota checked the little speed indicator in the bottom of the autocar’s massive window. Well over a hundred kilometers, yet she hardly felt the acceleration. This isn’t real driving. This doesn’t count. It wasn’t just the ponies who cheated these days. Yet there were barely any cars on the road with them, only an occasional horse drawn cart. “Local? The local overlay has so much… you guys? I don’t remember…”
“You don’t remember because you didn’t use it,” Cinnabar said, voice sympathetic. “You said that living in a sublayer was for cowards and escapists. The world wouldn’t get any better because we looked away from the unpleasant parts.”
It sounded right. It sounded like something she might think. “How do I turn it off?”
He showed her, making a gesture with a hoof that Dakota imitated with a hand. A glowing interface appeared around her wrist, one that she could navigate by twisting and moving up and down. There was no “off” on her overlays, but she could go so far as “emergency messages only.” Good enough.
A roar of sound smacked her in the face, and she clutched the paper bag in her lap with both hands, gripping it for support against what was outside. Literally thousands of near-identical vehicles, with most only meaningfully different in how many passengers they had. Unlike the manual roads Dakota could remember, the cars outside were packed so close she couldn’t see the road in places. They zoomed towards a huge multi-level intersection without slowing even a little, directly into a stream of traffic the other direction moving just as quickly.
“Stop stop stop! Oh god wai—” and they were through, with only the whir of wind on either side as they went.
Cinnabar crawled up beside her, propping his hooves on her leg. She could still feel it, somehow, though if she looked quite carefully she could see her skirt never moved. But look away for a second, and it was ruffled again, exactly as she expected. “Do you actually want to stop, Dakota? I can pull over the cab if you want.”
“You’re driving this?” she asked, horrified. “You’re a horse! You don’t know how to drive!”
“I don’t,” he agreed, grinning ruefully. “I think this is… yeah, the Lyft servers are driving it, not me. But if you wanted it to stop, I can talk to it for you. Or you could…” He gestured, and the interface appeared against the glass. Touchscreens were antiquated things, but vital infrastructure generally had backup in place for the truly determined luddite. “Tell it yourself. If you don’t trust me now, either.”
“I trust you.” She slumped back into the chair, clutching at her chest. “I dunno if I was ready to leave the hospital after all, Cinnabar. I don’t remember… all this. That is a fucking nightmare.”
“You’ll feel better when you get home,” he promised. “I hired out for housekeeping before we get there, so it should be perfect. Cleaner than we ever kept it, anyway. Don’t worry, I know everything you wanted to keep.”
“Yeah.” She closed her eyes, just wishing everything would go away. Her old self would’ve stayed like that until they arrived, but… she’d almost died now. She wasn’t going to live her life in fear because of embarrassment. “Is there some middle ground between that hell and playing horse pretend?”
“Uh… yeah,” he said. “Are you thinking a franchise? Do you want Marvel Cinematic Universe, or Wizarding World, or—”
“No,” she cut him off. “I want real, just not all the real at once.”
“Oh.” Cinnabar crawled off her leg, summoning a thick book out of his saddlebags and opening it in the air in front of her. “There’s, uh… oh! We could use one of the civil overlays. You got us permission into Chicago municipal after that thing with the doberman in city hall… and you don’t remember that either.”
She folded her arms, glaring. “You try getting your brain pieced back together and see how much you remember.”
“Sorry.” He winced. “Switching over.” And he did—without getting her permission, or moving in any other visual way. She heard the wave of vehicles suddenly vanish from around them. She opened her eyes, and saw the empty streets again—this time they were filled only with floating hazard signals, with bold print reading “TRAFFIC CORRIDOR, DO NOT ENTER.” Below the street there was more—blue lines, red ones, and green, with scrolling numbers beside them. Utilities.
The buildings weren’t fanciful anymore, and it was mostly plain concrete and glass. The kind of thing that most people wore overlays not to see. But boring was fine with Dakota just now, after her brief glimpse into nightmare. “This is good,” she said, relieved. “I assume most of this is for city workers. Not… stuff regular people can see.”
“Yeah,” Cinnabar agreed. “But we’ve used it for a few jobs now.”
Yes, she remembered that. Her work was clearer than most of the other things she’d done. She was some kind of… investigator. Her mind conjured pictures of rainy nights and trench coats, but that obviously wasn’t right. “What do I do, exactly?” she asked. She never would’ve braved a question like that in the hospital, where she might be overheard by a telepresent visitor or even one of the hospital staff. But now, when she could be sure they were alone… “What’s my job title? Who do I work for?”
“You, work for someone else?” He laughed, apparently considering it an absurd proposition. But she didn’t laugh, and at her expression he nodded, coughing and looking away. “Well, uh… I don’t know if there’s really an official title for what you do. Online they call you a Decker. It’s, uh… named after some game, or…” But she wasn’t interested in that either. “Right, sorry. You’re like… a combination of a private eye, data analyst, hacker… a private consultant for people who need information and don’t want to dig into the sublayers or visit Equestria to get it themselves. Lots of rich clients who work through representatives to representatives… that kinda stuff.”
“Are we… rich?”
He laughed again, not even pretending to sound neutral about it this time. “We’re rich for a few hours after each job. But you’ve never been very good about your money, Dakota. Granted your last impulse buy was the immortality contract with Omnistem, so… I won’t make fun of you for it.”
Maybe she had been a private eye, because Dakota’s skepticism was lighting up like a Christmas tree. She ignored their driving, though they were slowing down and passing into denser streets now, instead of the wide multilane highways. All the buildings were the same multitier housing blocks, but the people surrounding them looked real enough. They walked along the streets, gathered in little groups, played games she couldn’t see. There were little floating Equestrian Identifier codes beside each one, but they were driving much too fast for her to read any of them. She didn’t see a single Synth—not outside the car.
“Hold on,” she said. “You talked about my insurance before. This ‘immortality contract,’ I’m guessing that’s the same thing. Are you saying I bought some kinda… super expensive insurance… then got into a life-destroying accident that needed the best kinda care right after it?”
Cinnabar nodded. “Well, when you put it that way… I guess you could say Celestia’s looking out for you.”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t believe in God, Cinnabar. But I believe in assholes—and maybe something… I don’t know. I was working when we got into the accident, wasn’t I?”
“Yep! We were on a case for Bodhisattva Telecommunications. Well… we were on a case for Daniel Harriot, congressman of your district, who we know was bought by a super PAC owned by—” At her glare, he cleared his throat. “R-right. Point is, he knows what happened, and he’s not mad. Probably won’t be getting any work from Bodhisattva for a few years, but… at least he didn’t blacklist you. Little blessings.”
“Cool it with the religious talk,” she said, mostly to say something. Their autocar came to a stop under the awning of one identical building among many, and the door slid open automatically.
Dakota winced, then went for the cane across her lap. She took it in both hands, clutching her paper bag of medicine between two fingers as she shambled out onto the sidewalk. She just stood there for a minute, leaning on the cane and catching her breath in the cool night air.
There was no blur of traffic zooming by under the building awning. She stood in place, watching the delivery drones landing on nearby pads with takeout orders, and felt the air wash over her. Despite everything, she had made it. She was out of the hospital, on her way home. She’d only be back there twice a week for the next few months. She could live with that.
“Looking at something?” Cinnabar asked from beside her, lifting briefly up onto his hind legs alone so that he was almost as tall as she was. “Nope, I don’t see it.”
“All these… people,” she whispered, staring at the crowds moving along the street. It was hard to say how many of them were really here, and how many were visiting only virtually. But basically all of them were speaking to people she couldn’t see, or responding to things that were invisible. “Why don’t they bump into each other?” All of them had glasses, goggles, or old-fashioned headsets. She didn’t see a single person whose face was as naked as hers, at least not without the flashing eyes that suggested connected contacts.
Cinnabar landed on all fours again, looking up at her with confusion. “You want to ask about… overlay pathing? Since when do you care about that?”
“I was just wondering,” she muttered, blushing. But she didn’t give up the question. “They’re all zooming around each other, like the autocars.”
As she said it, the car that had taken them finally zoomed out of the awning and onto the street, fading into the warning rectangle and out of sight.
“I can look it up for you,” Cinnabar said. “But I’m guessing it’s boundary nets, same as an AR. The overlays are all connected, so… they coordinate with each other about what space is open and what isn’t. If you’re fully immersed and the predictive thinks someone is going to enter your space, they’ll appear.”
“And if I go… stand right in front of the doors there… they’ll go around me?”
“Yep.” He didn’t hesitate. “You could try it… but I know you’re hungry. I think you want me to order Chinese for us and… I dunno. Maybe you want to go back to Port Jouster.”
Dakota hobbled towards her building, right into the flow of people on the sidewalk. She would’ve crossed the distance in moments before, but she couldn’t now, and several people were coming right towards her. At least until they swerved out of the way, or turned completely. Not one so much as lifted their glasses.
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Chapter 1: Seed
Chapter 2: Sapling
I know it's probably just symbolic of Dakota's growth into her new circumstances, but the programmer in me immediately thought of the tree data structure (which isn't entirely unfitting in context).
Also, "white hat private eye" is a neat job mashup.
You mean to tell me that in this future, which must be at least a century off, people still play League of Legends?
9351094
Assuming Synths act in the best interests of their human companions, you kind of have to be a hacker to get dirt on someone with a Synth covering for them.
Wait Elon is still alive?
9351264
I'm not getting century vibes, more like 20-40 years from now. Also, could be League of [x], a different game.
I was more surprised by the idea of Lyft not only surviving into the future, but developing and maintaining a fleet of self-driving cars. But I guess you could justify it as it being bought out by a company that eventually reused the names on self-driving cars. It's a good, descriptive name, and wouldn't be the first time something like that occurred.
9351264, 9351302
It was mentioned in the first chapter that Dakota's new implant was "copyright Omnistem 2042", making that the earliest year this could happen. From what Cinnabar said, it sounded new and state-of-the-art, but could easily be an older high-end insanely future-proofed model.
Personally, I'm not surprised brands can survive that long. Nintendo was founded in 1889, after all.
9351094
Decker is a shadowrun term. Someone on the other side of the law proper, whom often dealt with megacorps. They are very much network data jockeys and those that fight the good fight against the actual evils of the net.
Okay, so this is a dead man's switch scenario, If she did or did not she actually paid for this insurance, that's up for debate. Albeit her being 'taken out' as is a real case for many a decker. Usually with a firearm round to the dome, but automated vehicle works here nicely. Especially with a 'manual driver' .
We get glimpses of her as she was in description. And that look is one that does not trust, And who avoided any of the ARG as remotely possible. She was as analogue to digital consciousness as could be humanly possible.
Okay. You've painted a rather good picture of whats really happened. Curious on when the reveal is for cinnabar, but otherwise. its a side step on most tropes on this. So nicely done.
Is the monolith 2001 inspired?
Starscribe, you really are one of, if not THE best sci-fi writer on this site. Im really looking forward to more.
This, plus Cinnabar trying to get her to spend more time in Equestria really does make it seem like this is in fact a FiO/TCB story and Celestia is trying get her to become a pony. Please, please don't take the story that way, its just not entertaining to read them.
Huh... I thought it sounded familiar.
9351762
The long description of the story has this at the bottom:
I'm pretty sure in this case that was just a pony using Celestia as a stand-in reference to a divine power, like you see them do in other stories. Dakota's reply that she doesn't believe in God is a strong indicator that is how it should be taken as opposed to the idea of a CelestAI manipulating everything.
9351302
I am horrible at judging time. I keep telling myself that world war 2 ended 70 years ago because if I don't I'll forget.
9351329
I need to pay attention better.
9351403
I think the story start kinda confused the issue because Cinnabar has direct access to Dakota's nervous system, if not actually running on the same hardware that keeps her brain functioning in the first place. In short, a more direct connection probably hasn't existed before. I bet most other Synths have much less information and direct interaction with their partners.
Considering the situation, that may be a good or bad thing depending on how it develops. So far we've observed Cinnabar making a few unilateral changes without verbal confirmation from Dakota, which appears to be a damn big line to cross, but she doesn't fault him for it because ultimately she would have agreed and if he has direct access to her brain he probably knew she'd agree before she finished the thought (there are studies that show this to be true of people in real life, their brain acting in such a way that predictive models based on active brain scans can predict what people will decide before they are even aware of it, sometimes by as much as a dozen seconds in advance). And, ultimately, with her suffering memory and personality gaps, he probably has a better grasp of her likes and dislikes than she does.
Don't have to. It's called quantum entanglement, and it's a fine answer for FTL communications.
9351403
There really multiple stories that use that concept. Golden Compass comes to mind. Having a guiding animal linked just to yourself is quite common.
Oh wow. This is attention grabbing. Shadow run meets dick Tracy perhaps.
... and of course now I can’t stop thinking about happytime murders...
This is a very interesting start! I have so many questions about the legal status of synths. It sounds an awful lot like they're sapient, but I wonder if they're considered full people. The discussion about Cinnabar heading back to Equestria if Dakota had died makes me think they're considered more than just property (your toaster doesn't get a retirement plan), but I wonder how far that goes. If synths "waking up" only happened in the last few decades, I imagine there are more than a few ethics committee discussing this very issue.
In most stories involving human-pony interactions, it's always ponies telling humans about how Equestria works or humans telling ponies about how Earth works. I've never come across one, like this story, where a pony tells a human about how Earth works. It's a refreshingly new dynamic.
Black metal in space?
Annnnd, I am hooked. Nice. I was unsure about the premise at first, but this cinched it. I am invested.
I don't think the monolith is the source of the servers, I do think they 'run' on the servers and their human's wetware(and hardware add-ons), but it might be the source of sapience. The point of turnover from a even an advanced ai to somthing you could qualify as a fellow person
9351302
Well, I dunno about Lyft but Uber is working on a fleet of self-driving cars in the real world now, so the prediction of ride-sharing service going auto-car seems pretty on point.