*Friendship Not Included

by Liquid Truth

Industrial Brick

The Manager was an Artificial Intelligence specifically constructed to prepare a planet for ponies to live in. Her codes specialized in terraforming and resource management and, with them, a lot of knowledge in the world of industry and manufacture. It was only natural, then, even after finding out her creators would never come, that she continued to build everything in an industrial setting. Getting completely overboard with it was nothing more than a side product of her boredom.

"Hey, Twilight!"

Twilight nodded.

Rainbow Dash jogged in place to match Twilight's pace. "What are you up to?"

"Delivering ores."

"Where?"

"The Industrial Brick."

Rainbow did a backflip. "Cool."

Twilight sighed. "Is there anything I can help you with, Rainbow Dash?"

"Not really." Rainbow ran in a zig-zag. "I'm heading there too."

"Mhm."

"Have you ever seen The Industrial Brick before?"

Twilight shook her head and grunted. "Only stories. Don't you have anything more productive to do than bothering me?"

Rainbow stopped and raised an eyebrow. "Really? Not even during your training period?"

"I was immediately sent to work on a space program. I'm literally a researcher all my life."

Rainbow chuckled.

"What?" Twilight asked but was never answered when the answer answered itself. They turned a corner to a pneumatic door.

It was a very ordinary pneumatic door. It was made of steel, though, which was very unordinary for a pneumatic door.

It was also filled thoroughly with a thick, viscous liquid. Visco-gel: a liquid so viscous that it could cover a two-meter vertical gap without spilling over.

"Pretty cool, huh?"

Twilight opened the door, sloshing the gel ever so slightly. "I've never seen a Visco-gel airlock before."

Rainbow Dash casually trotted through the liquid. It seemed as if she was swallowed by a giant purple Jell-O.

"Uh..."

Rainbow's gloved hoof appeared from the gel. "Join me," Rainbow stage-whispered from inside the wobbly jelly.

Twilight took the hoof. It dragged her forcefully, but also carefully. She sank into the gel, and her vision went purple and distorted. It felt wet, and it felt chilly. She felt the drag of the Visco-gel pulling her away from Rainbow's hoof, almost as if it didn't want her to pass through.

She appeared on the other side, gasping for breath. There wasn't anything to breathe in, however. It was a complete vacuum.

Rainbow plopped a spacesuit's helmet to her head and Twilight greedily took in the oxygen. She laughed behind her own helmet.

Or, at least, Twilight saw her laughing. In a vacuum, nopony could hear you scream. Or laugh. She only heard distant echoes from underneath her foot.

Rainbow gestured for her to move forward. Twilight got herself into a spacesuit and tried to keep pace with Rainbow's walk.
There was another liquid airlock on the other side, but it wasn't Visco-gel. It was based on an early model, where a U-shaped tunnel was filled with liquid to prevent gas flow. These types of airlocks were used because they could be set up using cheap materials such as crude oil or even water.

Twilight dipped into the liquid after Rainbow. A bite caused her to jump out of it, only to realize it was cold that was biting her, not some random misplaced Pacu. The bluish liquid couldn't be water. That was way too cold.

Twilight steeled her nerves and dipped herself into the pool of liquid oxygen. From the deepest point of the airlock, she could see Rainbow waiting eagerly on the other side. She helped her climb up.

Twilight emerged from the airlock and nearly fell off the railing. Rainbow kept her in place.

"What the—"

"Welcome to The Industrial Brick." Twilight got a feeling that Rainbow had been waiting to say that for quite some time. Their voices were very high-pitched, though, which meant—

"This is—Is this what I think it is?"

"What, The Industrial Brick?" Rainbow rolled her eyes. "Duh."

Twilight waved her hooves around. If oxygen can exist in liquid form, then, "What gas are we surrounded in?"

"Hydrogen." Rainbow looked down at the countless crisscrossing catwalks and the rows upon rows of heavy-duty metal platforms. Petroleum generators could be heard chugging in the distance, along with metallic screeches and clanks filling in the ambiance. There were other sounds inside the pandemonium, but Twilight couldn't make out what those are. "So, what are you delivering?"

"I'm supposed to send ores to the metal refinery." She took a glance at the numerous pathfinding issues in front of her. She looked at Rainbow in desperation.

Rainbow pointed to their left. "First floor. Just walk in a straight line, and you'll find them."

Twilight looked at where Rainbow was pointing. There were pipes and heavy-watt wires strewn about everywhere, but she could see some stations that looked like they were meant for a metal forge. Hopefully. "'First floor'? Aren't we on the top?"

"The Industrial Brick grew downward over time." Rainbow grabbed a fire pole nearby and looked down. Twilight took a peek and couldn't see the bottom. "You count the floors in reverse."

"What's down there?"

Rainbow scratched her chin—er, helmet. "Oh, I don't know. Don't you have anything more productive than sightseeing?"

"Wh-what? But I—"

Rainbow winked. "Meet me on floor 12." She saluted and slid down the fire pole.

Twilight slowly backed away and went in the direction she was given. The metal tiles she stepped on made noises in different pitches. By activating the Material Overlay software in her multitool belt, she found that the tiles were made of different materials. This tile was made of steel, the other out of pure gold. The next one was made out of tungsten, the one before that was made out of niobium.

She was so busy gaping at the myriad of colors that she nearly crashed into another Dupe. She took a step back and to the right.

The Dupe took a step back and to the left.

Twilight moved to the left.

The Dupe moved to the right.

Twilight stood still.

The Dupe stood still.

Silence.

The Dupe chuckled. "Eheh... sorry." She sidestepped to her right. "You go first."

Twilight stared.

The Dupe shifted uncomfortably. "Is something wrong?"

She pointed at the Duplicant's back. "What are you carrying?"

"Oh, this?" She grabbed the black chunk and enlarged it. Her software told her it was almost a ton in mass. "Carbon dioxide."

"Carbon dioxide? As in, the thing you breathe out?"

"Uh, yeah?" She shook her head. "Oh, sorry. Are you a transfer from the Industrial Sauna?" She chuckled. "Yeah, things can get crazy cold around here. Which is kinda neat." She pointed down. "The Manager decided that this is the best way of dealing with carbon dioxide from the generators. You know how annoying those things are."

"Just... freezing it solid?"

She shrugged. "Kinda cool, don't you think?"

Twilight stared at the ceiling. "What?"

She could taste the overwhelming smugness from The Manager's nudge.

Twilight trotted forward. "You know what? Just don't think about it."

And think about it she didn't. She successfully did it for 0.012 seconds before thinking about it again.

Thankfully, she could only think about it for about thirty seconds before reaching a metal refinery. She delivered it to the Dupe operating it, immediately galloped to the fire pole, then slid down as fast as gravity could take her eleven floors down.
Rainbow was waiting, leaning casually on a working steam turbine. "Took you long enough."

"Not everypony has hundreds of thousands of cycles of running practice." She shook away the chill starting to creep up the spacesuit's insulation. "So, what is it?"

Rainbow pointed at the floor. "This." It was immediately clear that the floor they were standing on wasn't made of metal. It was hard and sturdy, and the fact that the steam turbine it was supporting was working meant that there was steam below. It was insulated. Rainbow continued, "You're smart, right? You know what this is?"

Twilight trotted to the opposite side of the turbine.

The floor ended there with a massive pool of liquid oxygen. And a pool ladder, because of course.

"Would you like to learn how to swim?"

Twilight jumped back and glared at Rainbow. "In that!? No way!"

"Why not?" Rainbow asked. "It's just like water. But chilly."

"And extremely flammable." She huffed, then slowly walked back and stared at the bottom of the pool. "What's all this doing in the middle of an industrial site?"

Rainbow draped a wing over her, ignoring her protests. "You still haven't answered my question."

"Well, a steam turbine means power generation."

"Uhuh."

"It also means thermal energy turning into electric potential."

"In nerd terms, yes."

"Which is the basics for some sort of 'heat deletion device' that the colony uses everywhere."

"Kinda."

"You know what those words meant?"

"I'm not that dumb."

Twilight stared.

Rainbow wriggled her eyebrows.

"What's under the steam—"

"Hydrogen."

Twilight closed her eyes and queued a request for an overview of the entire area. She saw, in the mental image sent by the system, that there was another pool under the steam room filled with liquid hydrogen, smartly insulated from the rest of The Industrial Brick.

And then she saw a rocket in the next room.

Twilight slowly took a breath and stared at the wall on the far side of the pool. It was perfectly insulated to prevent any sort of heat from transferring between The Industrial Brick and the rocket silo. There were pipes jutting out of it, suggesting that the pool Twilight was looking at was where the fuel for every launch came from. "You know, Manager, I've never actually seen what's inside the launch pad before."

"Twilight?"

"You have all the space in the asteroid." She waved her hoof from side to side. "You could've made all the silo that you want. You have the resources to cover the entire asteroid with bunker doors—yes, I've calculated that you are, in fact, capable of doing that. But." She exhaled. "But."

Rainbow let out a blissful sigh. "You should've seen them launch together, Twi. It's so awesome."

"Of course." She sat on her haunches. "Space missions are so few and far in between not because you only have one rocket, but because you decided that it's cooler to launch all five of them in tandem from a single hole on the ground." She stared at the ceiling. "Was everything I've ever planned for our expedition a lie? Was I only planning for the one rocket that's going with the other four?"

"You can't take all the glory to yourself."

Twilight glared at her. "She could've been honest about it!"

Rainbow shrugged. "Maybe she is? How can you tell that we're going to launch every single rocket at once?"

"Because we can?"

"We don't always—"

She slapped away Rainbow's wing from her shoulder. "Isn't that the whole point of giving me a view of something so ridiculously over what's conventional? Of accomplishing a feat so impossible that no other colony could even dream about it? To teach me that we do things only because we can? That not even The Manager herself has any idea as to what else to do now that our sole purpose of existence is lost!? That we're no more than a distorted echo of our extinct creators!?"

Rainbow slowly put a hoof on her shoulder. "Twilight."

Twilight whipped her head toward her. "What!?"

"I'm here to teach you how to swim."

Twilight blinked.

"But whatever you just said also works, I guess?"

The Manager gave her a worried nudge.

"Oh, cut it."

Author's Note:

Oh hello there. Sorry for the delay. I've made a lot of outlines for upcoming chapters though, so hopefully, I can finish this story soon.

And no, I have no reason other than procrastination and a lot of "experimenting" with the ONI community's ideas. The Cryo Brick is my favorite unnecessary builds so far.

Comments

[JMP]

Wow....that sounds...very resource intensive to make. That is very cool, though. I do wonder why the Manager wanted Rainbow to teach Twilight to swim in liquid oxygen, though

[Sylica telca]

Rainbow's gloved hoof appeared from the gel. "Join me," Rainbow stage-whispered from inside the wobbly jelly.

Is this a reference to the cloudy with a chance of meatballs movie???

[Sylica telca]

"Of course." She sat on her haunches. "Space missions are so few and far in between not because you only have one rocket, but because you decided that it's cooler to launch all five on them in tandem from a single hole on the ground." She stared at the ceiling. "Was everything I've ever planned for our expedition a lie? Was I only planning for the one rocket that's going with the other four?"

Of them not on them

[FanOfMostEverything]

You spent so much time thinking about whether you could, you never stopped to ask yourself if you should.

I approve.

[Liquid Truth]

10517049
Yes it is. Thanks for noticing!

10517063
Fixed. Thanks for the heads up!

[Sylica telca]

10517041
Probably for shits and giggles

[Reese]

Interesting, though I think I might be missing the full experience here due to my lack of familiarity with Oxygen Not Included. Still, I enjoyed the chapter; thanks for writing. :)

[Snowkitsune]

Fire the Missiles.......

[PonyDragon]

"Just... freezing it solid?"
She shrugged. "Kinda cool, don't you think?"
Twilight stared at the ceiling. "What?"
She could taste the overwhelming smugness from The Manager's nudge.

: "That joke left me cold..."

It had been a while since I had last read this, but had The Manager always been referred to as "she"?

[WorldWalker128]

She was so busy gaping at the myriad of colors that she nearly crashed into another Dupe. She took a step back and to the right.

With the right mod all building elements have color. You can make a pretty (blocky, but pretty) picture out of minerals.

[Sylica telca]

For some reason I kept thinking that the manager was a dupe that later turned into an ai or something