Chapter 7: Tree
Dakota had to admit that Cinnabar had been right about her preferences: she did enjoy traveling.
Of course, it was stranger than she remembered. Security had once involved a physical nightmare of waiting in line and often an embarrassing pat-down if she so much as looked at the TSA the wrong way. All that was gone, replaced with a privacy nightmare instead. A single line, a single scanner with ponies working it and inspecting literally everything that passed through with perfect precision.
Well, some of them were ponies. There were still humans working for the TSA, just not behind the scanner anymore. “Australia,” said a bored-looking woman, while her Synth unicorn went through the better part of her files. “Vacation, huh?”
“Vacation,” she repeated, as expressionless as she could. “Almost died a few weeks ago. Now that I’m alive, I want to enjoy it while I can.”
The woman laughed, waving the virtual ticket away. “And you have nothing to declare. No restricted substances, no firearms, weapons of mass destruction, or prohibited files.”
“Nothing like that. I do have some brand-new implants, but they’re all in my brain. If I took any of them out I’d die instantly, so…”
She laughed again, with the exact same mechanical tone as before. “Looks like your bags are done. Enjoy your trip.”
By the time she had collected her bags, Dakota saw Cinnabar hurrying towards her from an adjacent hallway. From the look of it, ponies had their own security to pass through, staffed entirely by ponies and with an entrance too low for humans to use. Of course, she didn’t doubt that it was also a solid wall, and if she turned off all her overlays that was what she’d see. But just now she had no desire to turn any of it off. She wanted to travel the way that travelers did.
“Any trouble?”
Cinnabar made an unhappy grumbling sound. “I think they’re onto me. Going down for… well, we wouldn’t exactly be encouraged to get involved. Even if regular people don’t have a clue about what’s going on.”
“I need to sit down,” Dakota muttered, a little embarrassed. “Flight’s not for another hour. Where can I go that I won’t have to move until boarding?”
“There’s the pods! That’s where most people wait in places like this.”
“You mean, like… the thing Rhodes vanished from?”
Cinnabar didn’t answer right away, which was all the response she needed. “I’ll just get a coffee.”
And so she did, huddled in a corner of the shop with her single “simulated” book as her only accessory. Most people were wearing at least the glasses, though from the strange glittering look in many eyes it seemed that contact-lenses were taking over the job for many of the younger people.
Guess I skipped that particular innovation. Straight from glasses to wires in my brain. There was more to review in the casefile, but mostly she was just killing time. As much as she would’ve never admitted it, it did seem unlikely that there would be any secrets hidden in the same information that everypony in the world had known for two decades.
To her surprise, Cinnabar didn’t take the seat beside her. “I’m going to check on something,” he announced, as soon as she’d taken a seat with her overpriced coffee. “Make sure we’re still going to the right place.”
“You have to…” She hesitated, glancing around. Would she look like a crazy person, talking to open air?
No, she wouldn’t. Almost everyone in this shop was doing it. Her ears were keeping the sound down, the same way that whole crowds could be vanished away by her eyes. Their headphones would be doing the same for her, albeit less effectively.
“Can’t you check from here?”
“Nope.” Cinnabar didn’t even look apologetic. “This isn’t public information, Dakota. I’ll catch up before you take off. Don’t go anywhere without service while I’m gone.” And he vanished.
That was an interesting question in itself—did he always live in her head, or transfer back and forth? If the latter, did that mean leaving network service would bring him back? Even ponies must take up a lot of space, right? Is there enough storage space in my brain for a whole person?
The prevailing theory of pony intelligence was that Synths were really just incredibly advanced iterations of the last generation of personal assistant programs, and were incapable of any real emotion. The ponies who never left Equestria, the ones who ran Bodhisattva Telecommunications were more disputed.
But Dakota could prove them both wrong just by getting on a plane. How smart would Cinnabar be once they were out of the range of all but the most tenuous connections? How do other people survive twenty hours without their Synth?
To her surprise, she wasn’t left alone in the back corner for long. A single pony broke away from the thick crowd passing outside the coffee shop, cut right past the long line and an overworked barista-bot, and stopped in front of the empty chair across from her. “Is this seat taken?”
Dakota looked up from the book with her collected case notes, frowning slightly. The pony looked vaguely familiar to her, though she couldn’t place why. A unicorn wearing an oversized coat and a trilby, with a pressed look about her. Whoever she was, she didn’t seem to enjoy being here. “Sure.”
“Excellent.” The pony settled down atop the seat, which adjusted with various cushions to put her at Dakota’s head-height while they spoke. “These airports don’t ever improve much, do they? Always so crowded, everypony in such a rush they can’t even stop to talk to one another.”
Dakota shrugged. “They’re rushing to be somewhere, so they don’t have to rush when they get there.” She sipped at her coffee, restraining the instinct to ask the stranger what the hell she wanted. Whose Synth are you, I wonder? What are you doing out by yourself? Then again, Cinnabar was off on his own, so maybe this was something similar?
“I suppose you might be right.” The pony sighed, removing her hat in a glow of unicorn magic and adjusting the mane underneath. “What about you, Dakota? You seem in a terrible hurry. To get back into this. Not three days out of the hospital and you’ve already been noticed by two superpowers. I see you’re still walking with a cane.”
She froze, one hand tightening around the paper cup. Some part of her wished that she could vanish too. Maybe not a pony at all. Someone’s avatar, throwing me off. Equestria’s network permitted only two classes of beings—ponies and humans. But that didn’t mean one couldn’t pretend to be the other.
Who are you, then? FBI? “I’m doing something important,” she said. It was the only thing she could think of. “Something no one else did.”
“Charity, really?” The unicorn raised a pair of pale eyebrows. “The 19 million bits that found their way into your account were charity too, I expect.”
She said nothing then. Cinnabar did seem in a hurry to go. Maybe he knew this was going to happen… didn’t want both of us to be arrested at the same time or something. Her old self had known how to deal with cops. There was a line—she could act with respect without doing what they wanted, or admitting to any wrongdoing. There was no reason to make them into enemies, but she couldn’t let them ruin her work either.
Trouble was, she didn’t remember how to be that person anymore. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The pony actually laughed. Where she’d gotten a coffee, Dakota couldn’t say, but she sipped at it as though she’d been trained in an English grammar school. “I’m certain you’re not foolish enough to think that we don’t know. Certainly not a sum that would be noticed by Bodhisattva, or any of the human nations. But significant enough in terms of minor transactions.”
“What do you want?” she interrupted, folding her arms. “I’m not breaking any laws, whoever you are. I’ve done nothing wrong. If you know what I was hired for, great. You know it’s not illegal.”
The pony’s face scrunched a little in distaste, and she zapped the coffee with her horn. It transformed into a delicate china glass, complete with brown steaming tea inside. Waste of time putting on a show for me. Even I can’t eat pony food, and my brain is half circuits.
“No need for such hostility, darling. If I was your enemy, you wouldn’t have seen me. I’m here only…” She frowned, thinking. “To give you a warning. Not from me, but for you.”
I’m not sure what the difference is. But she didn’t say that, even if she formed the words on her lips. Maybe she still had a little of those old instincts. No reason to piss off a cop. “You don’t want me to meddle in something you’re doing,” she supplied. “There’s something going on in Australia, and you don’t want me to expose it by accident.”
It was the most she dared say—how much could she reveal without implicating Bodhisattva? And that’s assuming the US isn’t actively part of it. If Equestria fell, it would set us all back into the nuclear age.
This time the pony didn’t laugh. “Oh, there’s a great deal going on in Australia. But no—nothing you could do there except get yourself into terrible danger. I suggest you don’t do that either, but…” She lowered her voice, glancing around.
As though they could be overheard. Dakota didn’t doubt for a second that this was an entirely private conversation. Even regular people could keep their Synths invisible most of the time. A shady government agent playing pony certainly could.
“You don’t understand the sea you’re swimming in, dear. Equestria… isn’t what you think. It isn’t the human nations you need to fear—it’s the mind behind them all. Look the other way, and you can live your life without an issue. Threaten it—and you’ll find everything turning against you. Your entire world relies on the infrastructure network of which Equestria and all its ponies are but the smallest part. The Chinese understand this—you should too.” She leaned in close across the table, her voice barely a whisper. “Don’t look too hard for Kayla Rhodes, Dakota. Some things should stay hidden.”
Then she sat up, grinning as though there had been no interruption. The sound of various passersby in their casual conversations returned without interruption. She hadn’t even noticed they’d been faded to silence for the conversation.
“But I can see your flight will be boarding soon. If I may make a recommendation—” She passed something across the table. It was a digital ticket, with the image of a little boat on the corner. She couldn’t read what it said so quickly. “Enjoy your vacation, and that’s it. Enjoy living in this world while you can. Don’t rush headlong into leaving it behind before you even understand what you have.”
Dakota was left speechless, watching as the strange pony finished her tea, settled her trillby firmly on her head, then vanished into the crowd from where she had come.
If Dakota had expected a different sort of nation than the one she’d left when she landed in Australia, she was disappointed. The departure gate was as packed with people wearing glasses, goggles, and headphones as Chicago had been, albeit with lighter clothes and more people wearing boots.
But even seeing that required her to strip away all but the required emergency overlay, since clothing was one of those things that could be easily enhanced and seemed to be in every case. And if you can do clothes, how many people enhance their own appearances too?
The more of her world Dakota saw, the less she could trust.
At least the autocar looked similar. Stripped of the illusion of fantasy carriages or spacecraft or whatever other fantastical sublayer, it was just another bland, rounded vehicle with no obvious engine compartment or controls.
Once they were securely inside, Dakota finally dared to speak. I should really learn to send messages silently. People do it without implants, I have all kinds of advantages over them. “So now it’s… to the hotel?” She summoned the virtual ticket in her fingers, the one the strange pony had given her. Cinnabar had not mentioned a visitor or even acknowledged he knew she’d spoken to one, so she did nothing to call attention to what was missing.
“Yeah.” Cinnabar watched her from the opposite seat, apparently curious. “What’s that?”
“I have no idea. Didn’t want to search it while we were still in the States.” She held it up, tapping the little logo that would expand the booking information.
It was a single seat on a three-day barrier reef dive cruise. “Best preserved reef in the southern hemisphere!” proclaimed the website, along with a “reef cam” of coral and fish.
“That’s weird…” Cinnabar stared at it. “I’ve always wanted to try being a seapony, but… that didn’t seem like your thing. You think swimming will be easier than walking with a cane?”
“Probably,” she muttered. “But I don’t want to…” She banished it. The dive cruise wouldn’t start for another two days. “Met someone in the airport, while you were gone. She gave me this.”
Cinnabar’s eyes narrowed. “Was getting hit by a truck some kind of… RNG manipulation of your universe or something? First it’s a million-bit investigation, and now ponies just give us free stuff?”
She laughed, staring out through the glass as they passed onto an Australian highway. As before the reality of what was outside was frightening—there were no lines, and every vehicle moved exactly as fast as was optimal. Much faster than she’d trust any person to drive. What would happen if the Chinese got their way at this exact moment? We’d crash, wouldn’t we?
“I think they’re connected. Someone who doesn’t want us investigating Rhodes. Said we’d be better off… well, doing anything I guess.”
“Except… can I see that?”
She tossed him the ticket, watching as Cinnabar scrutinized it. He was probably searching the internet, cross-referencing the trip details with all kinds of hidden information. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. This company just happens to dive really close to one of Bodhisattva’s offshore processing nodes. I think every town south of Appleloosa is hosted on it.”
“You’re kidding. Bodhisattva lets people just… visit its secret bases?”
“Not secret, Dakota. They pay taxes and everything. More important, the Australian undersea hub had to help rehabilitate like a hundred miles of reef. The base itself is pretty boring, but all the structures around it are covered in some pretty healthy growth at this point.” He summoned a few pictures into the air around them, of concrete pylons and superstructure covered in a thickening crust of coral. It was thin enough she could still see the buildings underneath, but that was only a matter of time.
“Pointing all this out… you don’t think it’s a coincidence. How often do humans visit the consensus nodes?”
He frowned, no doubt skimming through more of his collected resources. Dakota wondered to herself how much of that information was legal. “There’s a human staff of… ten to twenty, based on past Australian job-board postings in the last decade. Serve three-month terms thanks to the decompression. Apparently the entrance is about a hundred feet down. Schematics aren’t public, so I can’t tell you how deep into the seafloor it goes.”
“It could still be a coincidence. The woman who I talked to…”
“You don’t have to be so cryptic, I’ll just watch.” Cinnabar twitched, then his eyes widened. “Segfault! There’s a six-minute hole in your memory.”
“There isn’t!” she protested, hands tightening into fists in her lap. “I remember everything! She was a white pony in a trenchcoat and gray fedora, blue eyes, maybe… grammar school accent. The ticket’s right here!”
“I know…” He shuddered. “The implant doesn’t have any record of it. Someone… looks like someone doctored the timestamps. There’s a looped recording here. Your memory must be… completely in the meat, Dakota.”
Which meant, essentially, that someone could manipulate her implants. They had completely stopped an entire conversation from being recorded. She couldn’t even begin to imagine how something like that could be done—the implants were the only way she’d been able to see the pony to start with, so they couldn’t just be told to ignore her.
Nothing the unicorn had said had frightened Dakota, no matter how menacing the threats. She wasn’t intimidated by the casual display of wealth. But this—this was something else.
She said nothing else during the drive, just stared out the window as the coast went by and her hotel eventually came into view. She didn’t switch through the local overlays, as curious as she was about what part of Equestria they’d decided to blend into, or maybe which local creations had been chosen instead. Any curiosity she’d had about those things had vanished.
But she was pleased to see that the hotel she’d chosen was not merely virtual luxury. Those had been offered, for far fewer bits too, empty rooms whose only features were AR integration and a skilled cooking staff. But this place was real, or close to it. The one waiting at the curb to help her unload was a pony pushing a robotic concierge cart, but at least the floor was real wood and the smell of alcohol off the poolside bar seemed authentic.
For a few hours, Dakota let herself drown in the luxury of it, trying to ignore the urgency of her situation. Cinnabar was more than willing to go along with her desire, saying that “if we’re going to die anyway, might as well have fun first.” Needless to say, she didn’t have as much luck attracting interesting partners at the bar—not with disgusting scars running up and down her legs, and a cane she had to lean on when she walked.
It’s okay, Dakota. You’re still being treated. In six months you’ll look better than you did when this started. She would look better, because they’d been reconstructing so much anyway that they might as well make it look good.
At least the pool was relaxing, the sound of the ocean calmed her nerves, and the food reminded her of why she worked so hard.
If anything, Cinnabar seemed to be subtly encouraging her to spend more time relaxing and less time thinking about the case. He didn’t bring it up once, didn’t suggest where they would need to go to meet up with their Equestrian contact, or when.
Not until later that night, when her mixed drinks had cleared from her brain enough for her to think clearly. “So… we’re here,” she said, from within the bubbling comfort of her room’s spa-tub. She was even using overlay again, making it look like she was inches away from the waves, just barely stopping before they poured in. There was no one else there, no civilization at all to make her feel self-conscious about being naked. “Made it through security, through customs. No bombs in the room or people sent to kill us. I assume this means we’re ready to find our missing Rhodes.”
Cinnabar himself showed no sign of embarrassment, and she didn’t feel any. Why should she feel embarrassed about nudity in front of an equine who didn’t even understand what modesty meant? That didn’t mean she invited him into the tub with her, and he sat on the beach nearby, in what she was fairly sure was empty air above the vanity. But she couldn’t know for sure with the overlay active. “If you want to. The China thing will probably take another few weeks at least. If you want to relax some more, I could forward your medical information to a local doctor. They’ve got a really great healthcare system here, and contract with Omnistem that—”
She fixed him with a glare harsh enough to communicate exactly what she thought of that suggestion. “I’m enjoying it so far,” she said. “I’m not sure if it’s the way I used to be, but I remember… you work hard, then you play hard. Isn’t that the expression? How about we find Rhodes, then we can enjoy those bits however we want.” She blushed, closing her eyes and leaning back in the tub. “I’m… beginning to remember why I was always running out.”
“Because you have no self-control and no sense of when you’ve made a mistake?” Cinnabar asked, though his tone remained friendly and cheerful.
Dakota splashed out at him with one hand, glaring. “I didn’t have to put you in my head, you know.”
Cinnabar rolled his eyes, staring up and and around at the virtual beach. But he didn’t argue. “So now we’re on the Australian sharded version of Equestria,” he said, resuming from where they’d started. “Theoretically, we could go looking for them right now. Of course there’s… a lot of ground to cover. We could search for your entire month and still not get any closer.”
“We could…” she began. “Or you could impress me with whatever clever plan you’ve been holding in the back of your head this whole time, so you could show off. And I’ll be appropriately impressed.”
He chuckled, rising to his hooves and circling her. “Every human nation has its underground. Not what you’re thinking—so you don’t have to say it. I don’t mean helping terrorists or murderers or anything like that. Think more… black-hats. Information refugees. Basically they’re you, except they pissed the government off one too many times and had their EI revoked.”
“You think they’re part of the… war? Against the CCP? I thought the government were the ones who wanted to protect Equestria the most. Sounds like these sort of people might be working with the Chinese.”
Cinnabar didn’t laugh at her this time—he only nodded. “Exactly.” He gestured, and a single image appeared in the air in front of her. It was a simple design, something that had been graffitied on the side of a building. A fire on one side of the diagram, and a horse on the other. “This is the Cave. If the name sounds symbolic, that’s because it is. You won’t find humans who hate ponies more anywhere in the anglosphere.”
Dakota extended a hand, flicking through until she could disable the simulated beach and scramble out of the tub. “Cinnabar, I’m closer to Equestria than almost anyone. I’d die without you.”
“Forget all that.” Cinnabar waved a hoof dismissively, and the spray-painted logo vanished as well. He didn’t look away from her as she dried, nor did he stare. He was a pony, not a human. “You’re investigating the biggest anti-Equestrian case there ever was. Kayla is ‘Equestria’s first murder’, remember? She’s the proof that ponies are really a secret army enslaving humanity without them knowing it.” He spoke with obvious annoyance and mocking, but Dakota didn’t smile. She had to sleep on a special pillow every night to keep her head charged. She’d just flown here on an aircraft run by ponies after passing through pony security.
“I think I see what you’re suggesting,” she said, once she was dry enough to wrap the towel around herself and stumble out of the resort bathroom. “I don’t have to seem like I agree with everything they’re doing so long as I’m fighting against Equestria. They’ll help me because they think we’re on the same side.” And maybe we are. She wasn’t sure about that, yet.
Dakota’s memory might hold the key to whether Equestria could be trusted, but that had been pulled away. “Exactly. Word was already spreading around Chicago about crazy Dakota and her insane case. All I’d have to do is put out a few feelers, and they could do the rest of the research themselves. They’ll come to us.”
“Do it.” She didn’t even hesitate. “The Cave, huh? Sounds like a regular bunch of philosophers.”
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You know, personally, I'd be more inclined to think well of someone who didn't insist on badly impersonating a menacing spy, and who didn't try to re-shuffle my suspiciously convenient digital mind. After that conversation? I'd do my best to interfere with their objectives out of sheer cussedness.
Did Rarity of all ponies just try to help her under the guise of warning her off?
Was that Rarity of all ponies, in a fudging Trilby and trench?
9400474
static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rarity_investigates6.png
I'm surprised that they would let her fly so soon after major surgery...or serve her alcoholic drinks.
"Trillby" is a typo for "trilby", unless it's also a musical hat!
You'd think that, given they were already looking into the link between Rhodes and Twilight, they'd have looked up people/ponies associated with that pair, including the rest of the original Six and their own partners.
I'm just waiting for Spike to turn up completely unexpectedly. Or his hitherto-unknown partner, because Cinnamon and Dakota didn't bother finding out who that was, because no-one ever thinks that Spike might be plot-relevant.
And really, Cinnamon should be asking Dakota to describe her mystery pony in sufficient detail to replicate visually; if she still has the same violet spiral hair, that along with the coat, eyes, and accent should be enough to match her to a known associate of Twilight Sparkle. Assuming, of course, that it's the original Rarity and not just someone deliberately manifesting as her.
Kind of amusing, though, that if it was Rarity, she effectively just put a tuck in the fabric of Dakota's memories, so as to make them a better fit for an alternative narrative.
And here is the introduction of our friend, the unreliable narrator.
But you did also provide an interesting side note here. The fact of dakota being a shard unto herself.
You can interact, but it doesnt change what lies underneath.
And now the fun times begin, as both 'sides' try and play dakota for their own ends, such that we've been given.
From trojan horse, to message and herald. Ought to be interesting how they play around her.
Did you play Prey (2017)? I'm getting vibes of that.
Oh. Oh. This really does go all the way to the top. Assuming that that's the real Rarity.
"Autocar" amuses me on an etymological level. It's an auto-automobile!
"I don't think God is that merciful a GM."
"Segfault" is a fantastic curse for an AI.
And so the intrigue truly begins. This is going to be a very tricky balance indeed.
9402915
Not many people think about it, but car is actually short for carriage. So autocar would be basically another way to say automobile. Although idiomatially you're right.
9400963
Hmm ... Just saw episode 200.
You know I find it a bit suspicious that the person with the huge amount of cryptocurrency shows up right after Dakota gets back to her house from the horsepital(sorry not sorry😸😹) I think her getting hit was intentional also starscribe you make really interesting SciFi stories
10153760
That pun is so bad that I think I'll leave in a hoof.
oh, this made me think of one of the "dream park" novels, where some people were making their BREASTS look MUCH bigger!