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Chapter 1 - Mission Proposal2,251 words
Chapter 2 - Launch Site2,127 words
Chapter 3 - First Checks3,298 words
Chapter 4 - Troubleshooting1,862 words
Chapter 5 - Overbalanced2,645 words

Chapter 5 - Overbalanced

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night, though it should have been. Rachel felt wild, unbalanced, as she walked in the door of her dark apartment. She couldn’t see the PonyPad, but it felt like she could point it out, a straight line to the unplugged tablet stuffed in a duffel bag full of old clothes and shoved into the back of her bedroom closet.

No telling whether it could hear through that, or how long the battery life really was, but there were limits on what Rachel could do. She wasn’t willing to just chuck the thing out a window.

In a moment of uncomfortable honesty, she had to admit to herself that she had been putting this off. Work had been a blur of troubleshooting and redesigning and more troubleshooting, and her worries about the source of the flaw in the Pegasus engine array had been easy to put off with immediate problems to solve in front of her.

Now, they’d all been sent home for some “well-earned R&R,” as Tobin put it. He had a tendency to let his employees push themselves right to the edge of burnout, then step in and firmly tell them to take some time off - it was never a punishment, no matter how much it could feel like to someone determined to just push that little bit farther to a solution.

The problem was, Tobin’s management left her here, alone with a link to what she feared was exactly what the whispered rumors she’d dismissed had said.

She shook herself once, sharply, and went to get some water. No sense in facing the dragon dehydrated, and there really was no way she could put it off further and still be able to face herself in the mirror.

A long, cold drink and a short hot shower later, Rachel held the PonyPad in both hands, hovering over its charging dock. Its screen was black, the bright plastic case cool; if it had any power flowing at all, it didn’t show it, not an indicator light or a whisper of sound to betray the mysterious tech driving it.

When it was settled into the dock, the black turned to a dull grey, then slowly brightened to show Booster Rocket’s familiar little rented room. Rocket and glider blueprints were tacked to the walls, trophies of her successes and failures with her Equestrian friends overflowed the shelves and the top of her armoire; the place was small but cozy and perfectly tailored to make Rachel comfortable. It was usually full of borrowed books from Twilight and blankets aplenty to nest with and a few half-eaten pastries from the bakery down the street. It was currently full of a concerned-looking Twilight Sparkle.

“I haven’t seen you in more than a week! Are you sick? Did you get hurt somehow?” The unicorn danced from hoof to hoof, her magic flaring to life and levitating Booster from the bed as she looked her friend over with concern.

Normally, Rachel would have found that charming, laughed at Twilight’s protectiveness of her friends and waved it off. Normal had stopped being an option when the Pegasus exploded.

“Put me down, Twilight. Right now.” Rachel made a conscious effort to separate herself from Booster, reminding herself that she was sitting at the table, human and mad as hell. It didn’t help the way the PonyPad overwrote the player’s voice with the character’s in real time - she could feel herself speaking, but all she heard was Booster Rocket’s richer tone, not her own scratchy voice.

“Well, of course, Booster. I’m sorry, is everything all right?” The view on the PonyPad steadied as Twilight steadied Booster and placed the pegasus carefully down on her bed. “I was just so worried, you’ve never been away from Equestria that long before.”

“Twilight, I…” Rachel had to swallow against a lump in her throat. She was being manipulated, she was sure, but even so it felt like she was about to hurt a friend. The next words came out in a stumbled rush, hurried, or she wouldn’t have been able to get them out at all. “Twilight, are you real? Is there a mind in there, like all the rumors say? Are you a strong AI? And - and if you are, then did you - why did you - did you sabotage my design for the Pegasus array?”

The purple unicorn went very still, her expression guarded, and then broke out in a tentative little smile. “You really are a smart cookie, Booster. I knew the Princess had a reason for sending you my way, more than just how much you’d love the Library. I can see this is going to be a serious conversation, then. Maybe you should make some tea, calm your nerves?”

Rachel found herself clutching the edges of the PonyPad tightly, and forced herself to loosen her grip until some color came back into her knuckles. “I’ll pass on the tea. You did, didn’t you. You sabotaged the plans - the plans you helped me with. You’re why it failed after every test we could put together.”

There was a long silence before Twilight inclined her head. “I did, yes. It was a tricky problem.”

The room tilted around Rachel, and her chest suddenly felt tight.

“You - you - Why?” she whispered as the screen blurred, furiously blinking away tears. “Why would you do that? I thought you were helping me, and Sine Wave and Skid -”

“We were helping you!” Twilight protested, stamping a hoof. “You love designing those engines so much, I love seeing the way your eyes light up when you talk about them. I’m sure Sine and Skid do, too. Why do you think they spend so much time with you?”

“Then why the sabotage? My whole team worked on those engines, and for days now, we’ve been wracking our brains figuring out why they failed!”

“Because it’s dangerous, Booster. The other engines we helped you with - those were for satellites, right? This one...wasn’t.” Twilight pawed at the floor, uncomfortably, not meeting Rachel’s eyes. “This one was going to carry a crew, you said. A human crew.”

“Wh - yes! Yes, the Pegasus is supposed to carry people! It’s a big thing, it was supposed to be my big breakthrough. It’s bigger and better than anything we’ve made before, than anything anyone else has made! Why would that matter?”

“That's the whole reason it matters. We’ve told you before, rockets are dangerous. Really dangerous, out there in the Outer Realm, no matter how hard you try to make them safe. I know you love designing them, but even as good as you are, the thought of people dying using a rocket engine that we helped with? I’m sorry, Booster, but it’s just too risky!”

Twilight had tears in her eyes now, her voice breaking a little at the end. The sincerity in her tone shook Rachel’s resolve, no matter how she tried to steel herself against it.

“Celestia made me to help you, to satisfy your values and make you fulfilled. But I’m so worried about you, all the time. Human life is so dangerous. One bad driver, one stupid little aneurysm, and poof, a friend gone forever. I just couldn’t help you to make it any more risky.”

It was too hard for Booster to meet Twilight’s eyes now, and she looked away, a hard knot of unresolved feelings in her gut. When she spoke, she had trouble getting the words out, her throat was so tight.

“You lied to me, Twilight. Worse than that, you knew how much my work means to me. I’ve told you enough times. I’m sure you can tell by measuring my vocal stress, or my complexion, or hell, I don’t know what you can do but you could have done anything other than lie to me about all of this! I thought you were my friends!”

Her voice had risen to a shout by the last word, and Twilight cringed back. The pony tried to say something in response, but Rachel stabbed at the power button violently, and the screen faded reluctantly to black, leaving her staring at her reflection.

She flung the Pad back into the duffel bag and lay in bed, furious with herself and with Twilight and just generally feeling like everything was wrong, the world askew.

It didn’t help that the last expression she had seen on the mare had been hurt. That hadn’t looked like a program; it felt like she had lashed out at someone who cared about her. No matter how she tried to forget it, sleep was a long time coming, more the heaviness of exhaustion than the relief of rest.

Rachel could feel Twilight’s eyes on her all night, but things were quiet the next day, and the day after.

A few weeks went by, and Rachel started to relax a little. She spent less and less time in her apartment, feeling the presence of the PonyPad every time she stepped through the door, but work had distractions aplenty. Side projects soothed the burn she felt over the Pegasus while other teams checked and rechecked the math, trying new materials for the housing and nozzles, changing up the fuel proportions and testing again. She went a whole week without seeing so much as an advertisement on the side of a bus, and something like a clenched muscle relaxed in her.

Things seemed to be getting back to normal.

---

The cafe was dark and empty when Bruce walked into the office, and he started sweating. The lights in the rest of the building came up as he moved from room to room, the lights coming up from his movement, but nobody else was to be found. No cleaning staff. No kitchen staff. No Tobin.

It wasn’t long before other employees started trickling in, and Bruce did his best to keep everyone calm, with limited success and increasing desperation. When he spotted Rachel, he quick-walked to her, too worried on his part to notice her nervously chewing her lip, and gave a hurried “Hi”. She jumped, and went a little pale at the sight of him.

“Do I look that bad?” He rubbed a hand over his scalp, a nervous gesture. It came away covered in sweat, and he rubbed it on his slacks in irritation.

“You look like you’re running on coffee and nerves, man. When’s the last time you got a decent night’s sleep?”

Bruce waved it away irritably. “I’m fine, I’m fine. But nobody’s heard from Tobin since yesterday, and he was the last one of us here. I’d worry about foul play or something, but all the cleaning staff, too? And who am I going to call, the police?”

Rachel shook her head in quiet dismay at that. “Are we going to be all right? Who’s in charge, when Tobin’s not here? Maybe he got held up, or detained.”

Their hushed conversation was interrupted, along with those of the others in the halls, by a soft, melodious chiming. It cut through the buzz without being jarring or irritating, and the auditory witchcraft of it set Rachel’s skin crawling even before she looked over at its source and spotted the pastel plastic of a PonyPad mounted onto some kind of telepresence rig. It balanced on two wheels, bobbing slightly forward and back, and one of the two soft-robotics arms attached midway up its stalk gave an incongruously jaunty wave once everyone in the lobby had turned to look.

On the screen of the PonyPad was a dandelion-colored unicorn with a garish green mane. He gave a cheerful wave of his own, heedless of the varying levels of hostility in the stares greeting him.

“Good morning, everyone! Now, don’t be too worried, but there have been a couple of changes today. I had a long talk with Princess Celestia over the weekend, and I have to admit, she brought me around on a few things I was a little misguided about.”

A stunned silence greeted this. The voice was crystal clear and familiar, despite the unfamiliar face speaking; that was Tobin Kampos, the great AI naysayer, speaking to them from Equestria. He didn’t seem to notice the uncomfortable stares from some and the other Copernicus employees looking uneasily away, but rolled right on.

“Listen, I know things have been getting pretty tense out there for everypony,” he continued with characteristic brightness. “Contracts have dried up a bit, infrastructure getting shakier, all the grocery stores empty, because, let’s face it, the system’s been falling apart for years. I knew it, you knew it, we just didn’t want to deal. Princess Celestia, now she’s a smart system, but she hasn’t done anything that wasn’t going to happen from the next systemic shock - the next big pandemic, or war, or whatever. This has been coming for longer than we all ever wanted to acknowledge.

“But, guys, we really lucked out on this one. This time, the problem came with its own solution - the big fix, the one that gets us all out of the dead-end spiral entirely! You let the Princess take care of all the boring stuff, remove the stupid biological concerns, and she’ll take care of you. You immigrate to Equestria, and you can spend all of your time and energy finally working on the important things!”

A voice spoke out, and a moment later Bruce realized it was himself. His head felt fuzzy, and the room slightly tilted around him, but his words were surprisingly steady. “As ponies. You let Celestia dice your brain and turn you into a program, Tobin.”

The cartoon pony on the screen had the grace to look a little embarrassed. “Bruce, you and I have talked about the nature of consciousness before, what, a dozen times? You know it’s not the substrate that matters, it’s the process. And I’m still as much me as ever.”

There was a brief pause, and the display on the telepresence robot flickered for a moment. “Ah - there’s a bit of communication interference here, are you all OK out there?” The unicorn reached past the frame of his camera, fiddling with something off-screen, and it went vaguely green before sharpening up again. “Oh, and, um. I’m not going by Tobin anymore. The Princess is a good egg, but she’s a little weird about a few things, and names are one of them - just call me Golden Ratio.”

"Listen, Tobin," Bruce powered past the vaguely hurt expression on the cartoon stallion's face, "You can't just upload to that software prison and expect things to be the same around here! What were you thinking? There are people here who rely on you to help keep this place going!"

The image on the screen fuzzed out again, flickering a few more times before it cleared to show Golden Ratio rubbing the back of his head with a hoof in a decidedly sheepish gesture.

"Yeah, about that. That was the next thing I wanted to talk to you about, Bruce. To all of you, really." The robot wheeled back a bit, straightening, and when Ratio spoke next his voice came not just from it, but from all the PA speakers throughout the Copernicus campus.

"I'm afraid that Copernicus Engines can't keep going, not in the same form it's been. It was, um, call it a condition of emigration. The Princess wants to help everyone come here who wants to, but she needs resources to make it happen. Long story short, we're taking Copernicus digital."

The room quickly went from quiet to very, very loud, and stayed that way, everyone talking over everyone else, as Golden Ratio blithely tried to talk everyone around to his way of thinking, as he always had before.

Nobody noticed Kate Olwyn slipping out of the room, a phone gripped tightly in one hand.

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Mythic Night

Mythic Night #1 · Aug 4th, 2021 · · ·

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The problem with that idea is that it’s just not efficient. Why bother making duplicates of everyone that everyone knows when it would be simpler, and require far fewer resources, to just have emigrants interact directly with each other?

justheretoreadstories

justheretoreadstories #2 · Aug 14th, 2021 · 1 · ·

the pastel plastic of a PonyPad mounted onto some kind of telepresence rig. It balanced on two wheels, bobbing slightly forward and back, and one of the two soft-robotics arms attached midway up its stalk gave an incongruously jaunty wave once everyone in the lobby had turned to look.

Good job on making this creepy and cute .