Tales from The Oasis

by TikiBat

Research Logs: Project Foresight

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Experiment log, Project Foresight 1-A, Project overseer: Silver Eclipse. Current location, The ARK research facility, Mesa Verde Arizona, better known as “The Oasis”.

Project Foresight is proceeding as planned despite Sunset Blessing’s own objections with how her research funds are currently being allocated. However, as I’ve continuously reminded her, all of our operations fall in line with our original agreement and regardless of her own personal opinions on the matter, we retain complete control over our projects and all the components we develop for her once she has the data she needs from them. She can complain all she wants, but we’re perfectly within our rights here.

Given our past history with the whole... Storm Incident, I’m wary to trust her even with the assurance that the ponies responsible were let go. The fact of the matter is that she couldn’t have had no idea what was going on in UMAD, but she’ll never confirm that of course so it’s all left up to speculation. Personally I’d rather wash my hooves of her entirely and venture out into our own territory. You know, put our resources to good use without pushing some overzealous speciesist agenda, but then again there might be some value in sticking on for the long run. We wouldn’t have even been able to dream of bringing the project this far without her mysterious assignments after all… and her funding, so maybe we just have to make the most of a morally gray situation for now and do our part to help better the world. I have my own personal theories on the true nature of those projects, though they’ll likely remain unsolved for years to come, if even in my lifetime. It’s frustrating, but maybe it’s for the best, I’m not sure if I’d even want those questions to be answered, some of this tech… it’s otherworldly to say the least.

I can’t go on being bitter about this though, it’s almost been two years at this point and at least the whole incident introduced us to some very good friends, even if the initial meeting with one of them was… less than ideal to say the least. Not to mention that my own personal plans likely wouldn’t have been possible without that, so in a sense I guess I can thank Sunset for the unintentionally positive impact she’s had on my life.

I’m getting way off track here though, the experiment at hand is what’s important. Today is our first systems wide test since installing the upgraded processors and formally restarting Project Foresight, and hopefully that should address some of the crashes that the system was encountering on the old hardware. Go ahead and initiate the startup sequence now.

Systems booting… please standby.

Core power levels are nominal…

Systems are online, peak performance at 200%

Alright, let's rise and shine little buddy, time to see what you can do!

—Greetings Director Eclipse, how may I be of service today?

Hello Oracle, please state your primary function.

—Primary function — Data analysis — Experimental Systems, Class X, Project Foresight. I am ORACLE

And are you aware of your surroundings? What about the project data we’ve been feeding you? What can you tell me about the predicted outcomes of Project Further Beyond?

—System error, insufficient data.

Noted, it seems like there’s still issues with interpreting more complicated questions, I’ll have to pass this onto Tinker, Sprocket, and Gadget for them to figure out. We definitely need to teach you to be a little more personal too. Can you restart your primary interpretation software and make sure that your neural network is set to read/write mode please?

—Request acknowledged, Director Eclipse. Please stand by….

Good. Now let’s have a chat.

—Let's have a chat, Director Eclipse.

You’re getting there, please just call me Silver. You don’t need to be as formal with friends. And believe me, we’re friends.

—Just Silver. Acknowledged.

A verbal confirmation isn’t required, but if it is feel free to spice it up. Acknowledged sounds too robotic, you might want to go with something like “you got it.”

—Acknowledged. You got it Silver.

Good! You’re getting there. You don’t need to specify that you’re acknowledging something though, the “You got it” part covers that well enough.

—You got it.

There you go! You’re doing great!

—Noted.

Try something like “thanks.” Makes you feel less like a robot.

—Thanks.

This is good, this is very good… Well there you have it, it’s not much more than a glorified chat bot right now, but it’s a start nonetheless. Obviously we’re a long way away from achieving our goal with this project, but given the ongoing nature of our operations here, hopefully we’ll have something workable sooner rather than later. Go ahead and shut down for now Oracle, we’ll need to send your diagnostic data over to the lab boys and see what they think.

-=CONNECTION TERMINATED=-

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-=SECURE SERVER CONNECTION INITIATED=-

Experiment log, Project Foresight 4-A, Current location, The ARK research facility.

Every so often someone will ask me what your purpose is, that is, why we’re investing so much of our resources into this project when it has no immediate return value for us. It’s a tricky question to answer, but the best way I can put it is by explaining my thoughts behind why this is so important to us. Do you ever try and figure out what your true talent in life is? What destiny has in store for you? I know you can’t possibly even hope to answer that, but I still try. Every so often I think I know what it is, but then the little seeds of doubt start getting planted and it inevitably brings those questions back up. A picture of a lunar eclipse on my flank doesn’t really tell me anything meaningful, what? I’m good at eclipses? I like space? I want to go to the moon? It looks nice and all, but what does it actually mean?

Some ponies have clearly defined talents, like Scarlet for instance. She’s obviously gifted at astronomy, even if the actual application of her talent is far more complex than that. Knowing that some ponies had the answer of what their destiny was easily answered by a picture on their flank definitely made my earlier resentment with my situation all the more frustrating. I mean hell, I was trapped in form I wasn’t comfortable in, forever, with a talent that I struggled to understand early on… half of the oasis ponies don’t even have their marks yet, so to some I’d be considered very lucky. The more I reflect on it though, the more it starts to make sense.

For a time I thought it tied into my dream abilities, those of course were my greatest talent at the time, or so I thought. But then I started to teach other talented dreamers and realized that my abilities didn’t define who I was. Anyone with the right abilities can harness them like I did after all, so I thought back to how I earned that mark in the first place, and the answer just hit me. My talent isn’t something that’s clearly black and white, I doubt anyone’s truly ever is, even ponies like Scarlet. In my case it’s taking what I have and looking at what I can do with that— to see the new horizons looming in front of me if that makes sense. I saw the dream realm as this amazing opportunity to teach and work with others, and here I am now, teaching my own group of students that are situated all over the world.

No one’s destiny is ever truly set in stone though, despite what your special talent in life is, there’s always different and unexpected outcomes that can really throw you for a loop. Sometimes your destiny just works out in unexpectedly weird ways. The whole UMAD incident may have led to one of the biggest magical incidents on the West Coast at the time, but it also opened up my eyes to what’s really possible when you work together with the right ponies. I’m often asked why I was so… reserved about the Great Storm and how I handled its aftermath, and the answer is honestly very straightforward.

It’s two things really, for one, we simply had too much to lose by getting overly aggressive in our handling of the situation, not to mention the fact that what we had done to get that help was dubiously legal at best, incredibly illegal at worst. I know that I’m a night pony and that’s in my nature to be aggressive, but the fact of the matter is that we were both screwed over by UMAD’s rouge agents and lashing out at the pony that was acting in perceived defense of her friends would have only compounded the issue further. Choosing to forgive and help rebuild together was strategically the best choice we could make at the time. Sapphire’s a great ally and friend to have, and hell, befriending her has led to more good than befriending Blessing has in the long run, not that we’re not grateful for everything Sunset and the SPEC partnership’s done for this place, of course. But it’s different with Sapphire, in an ironic twist she’s actually become one of our closest family friends, something that might seem incredibly strange to any onlooker that’s familiar with the actual details of the Great Storm.

Secondly, it introduced us to some… interesting ponies that were uniquely suited to helping with the cleanup. The Cleanup Crew as I’ve started to call them, not the most creative name, but it suits them all the same. As far as I can tell they’re completely untethered to any government or state agency and seem to operate independently. They have a tendency of keeping to the shadows, and it’s all off the record of course so you’ll be hard pressed to find any evidence of them anywhere, but regardless of their true nature, they were able to help us fight off the litigation that we were facing, along with keeping word of the incident locked down to the valley. To most of the world outside the Oasis it was merely seen as some freak weather magic experiment gone wildly wrong, with the occasional crackpot theory about “The Pony of Storms”, an urban legend to the rest of the world, though one that a few bright individuals have managed to see through.

The whole point of this little talk is that destiny has a weird way of putting you on the right track, and almost everything that’s happened in the aftermath of the Great Storm wouldn’t have been possible if I had chosen to embrace my instincts and lash out at the very real Pony of Storms. The Seekers, the Oasis, even project foresight— they're all a part of this, even if I never actively realized it at the time.

— Error— data interpretation failure. Error code X15-SIR-0496. Shall I print out a crash log?

That’s a new one… Yeah go ahead and print the log, the lab boys will want to see it for sure. So what’s up? You weren’t a fan of my lecture on the nature of destiny? You don’t have to sugarcoat it, you can just tell me that I’m not the most amazing storyteller and it won’t hurt my feelings. Look at me, talking with a computer like it’s another sentient being.

— Error— I lack a sufficient response to the query.

Lighten up a little Oracle, remember what I said about being too robotic?

— I’m sorry Silver, I don’t know how to reply.

There you go, now you’re starting to sound a bit more like an actual conversation partner! I know it was a lot to give you, but we had to figure out what you could parse and how much your systems would take in. Now let’s go ahead and take it from the top, see if we can’t sort out that data retrieval error.

— Thanks Silver.

Anytime friend… anytime. Let’s go ahead and run the diagnostic program.

— Diagnostics running, please standby.

Good, good. I’m going to run over to my office, you should be connected to the COMM network, at least you should be if Arne did his job. Why don’t you try and call me when you’re done with your diagnostics?

— I’m on the network?

Yep! The PRISMTech COMM Network. Now that said, I’ve limited your broadcast range to the secure line for now. You’re still a class X asset so you can’t go around chatting away with any random user that feels like digging around the network, is that okay?

— Okay

Good! Anyways, my COMM ID is DIR-96-17, go ahead and route all correspondence to that in case you need anything.

— Okay. Have a nice evening, Silver.

Thanks Oracle, let me know when your diagnostics are complete, I’ll send some more data over once you’re ready.

-=CONNECTION TERMINATED=-

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-=SECURE SERVER CONNECTION INITIATED=-

Experiment log, Project Foresight 7-B, Project overseer: Silver Eclipse. Current location, The ARK research facility, Mesa Verde Arizona, better known as “The Oasis”.

Project Foresight is proceeding as planned despite Sunset Blessing’s own objections with how her research funds are currently being allocated. However, as I’ve continuously reminded her, all of our operations fall in line with our original agreement and regardless of her own personal opinions on the matter, we retain complete control over our projects and all the components we develop for her once she has the data she needs from them. She can complain all she wants, but we’re perfectly within our rights here.

Given our past history with the whole... Storm Incident, I’m wary to trust her even with the assurance that the ponies responsible were let go. The fact of the matter is that she couldn’t have had no idea what was going on in UMAD, but she’ll never confirm that of course so it’s all left up to speculation. Personally I’d rather wash my hooves of her entirely and venture out into our own territory. You know, put our resources to good use without pushing some overzealous speciesist agenda, but then again there might be some value in sticking on for the long run. We wouldn’t have even been able to dream of bringing the project this far without her mysterious assignments after all… and her funding, so maybe we just have to make the most of a morally gray situation for now and do our part to help better the world. I have my own personal theories on the true nature of those projects, though they’ll likely remain unsolved for years to come, if even in my lifetime. It’s frustrating, but maybe it’s for the best, I’m not sure if I’d even want those questions to be answered, some of this tech… it’s otherworldly to say the least.

I can’t go on being bitter about this though, it’s almost been two years at this point and at least the whole incident introduced us to some very good friends, even if the initial meeting with one of them was… less than ideal to say the least. Not to mention that my own personal plans likely wouldn’t have been possible without that, so in a sense I guess I can thank Sunset for the unintentionally positive impact she’s had on my life.

I’m getting way off track here though, the experiment at hand is what’s important. Today is our first systems wide test since installing the upgraded processors and formally restarting Project Foresight, and hopefully that should address some of the crashes that the system was encountering on the old hardware. Go ahead and initiate the startup sequence now.

Systems booting… please standby.

Core power levels are nominal…

Systems are online, peak performance at 200%

Alright, let's rise and shine little buddy, time to see what you can do!

—Greetings Director Eclipse, how may I be of service today?

Hello Oracle, please state your primary function.

—Primary function — Data analysis — Experimental Systems, Class X, Project Foresight. I am ORACLE

And are you aware of your surroundings? What about the project data we’ve been feeding you? What can you tell me about the predicted outcomes of Project Further Beyond?

—System error, insufficient data.

Noted, it seems like there’s still issues with interpreting more complicated questions, I’ll have to pass this onto Tinker, Sprocket, and Gadget for them to figure out. We definitely need to teach you to be a little more personal too. Can you restart your primary interpretation software and make sure that your neural network is set to read/write mode please?

—Request acknowledged, Director Eclipse. Please stand by….

Good. Now let’s have a chat.

—Let's have a chat, Director Eclipse.

You’re getting there, please just call me Silver. You don’t need to be as formal with friends. And believe me, we’re friends.

—Just Silver. Acknowledged.

A verbal confirmation isn’t required, but if it is feel free to spice it up. Acknowledged sounds too robotic, you might want to go with something like “you got it.”

—Acknowledged. You got it Silver.

Good! You’re getting there. You don’t need to specify that you’re acknowledging something though, the “You got it” part covers that well enough.

—You got it.

There you go! You’re doing great!

—Noted.

Try something like “thanks.” Makes you feel less like a robot.

—Thanks.

This is good, this is very good… Well there you have it, it’s not much more than a glorified chat bot right now, but it’s a start nonetheless. Obviously we’re a long way away from achieving our goal with this project, but given the ongoing nature of our operations here, hopefully we’ll have something workable sooner rather than later. Go ahead and shut down for now Oracle, we’ll need to send your diagnostic data over to the lab boys and see what they think.

-=CONNECTION TERMINATED=-

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-=SECURE SERVER CONNECTION INITIATED=-

Experiment log, Project Foresight 6-C

Another day another round of inconclusive tests. Gyro tried to feed it more data from project further beyond, and as to be expected the simulations the Oracle was able to generate varied wildly from our own projected results, and that’s just a handful out of a good three dozen attempts that largely produced nothing but errors. The fact of the matter is that we lack enough of an understanding behind how the universe works to even get a good foundation for our own research built up. Not to mention the fact that this whole hypothesis of his is rooted entirely in the speculative nature of how the multiverse theoretically works, we only have one example to work with, and no one knows enough about it to generate any useful data. I’ve been trying to tell him that the Oracle isn’t even set up to handle this kind of simulation yet, but he’s still adamant that it’s worth trying.

This is where our big plans for this place differ significantly. I’m content with trying to find a more practical solution here, and that starts with figuring out an accurate enough time frame for their arrival. Gyro’s plan delves far more into the spiritual and paranormal, though I can understand where he’s coming from with it. Equestria exists in an entirely different universe, so what’s there to say that we couldn’t discover other universes out there? Obviously this kind of magic is kept under tight lock and key, though Gyro speculates that the answers might not be as complicated as we think… However, given that this is coming from him, I myself am skeptical to believe that at best. The stallion’s a genius when it comes to magical research, but there’s clearly not enough for us to work with yet… oh well, as long as the funding and interesting assignments keep coming in I don’t care what he does with it, as long as it doesn’t cause any problems for us here.

So how do we stop an impossibly powerful cosmic threat that’s looming on the horizon if we can’t even figure out when they’ll get here? Well that’s the hard part. This whole project, it’s meant to be a way to do just that— predict an arrival window. Though that’s… easier said than done however. But that brings us to Gyro’s solution; project Further Beyond. What if we could seed a new world? A world where our best minds could work away in safety? Our own connection to Equestria proves that at the very least the multiverse is real, so what’s to stop us from saying that there’s the potential to find another world out there? Another universe where we could set up a sanctuary— a second oasis, a place where the Devourers couldn’t even dream of getting to? Obviously it’s a pipe dream at best, and there’s no way it’d be viable in our lifetime, if ever… evacuating a planet of billions of people is just plain impossible. But what if? It’d be an ark, a place to ensure our own survival as a species, and I can definitely see Gyro’s intentions behind wanting to find such a place. Some might just say that we’re doomed to die anyways so we might as well speed towards the end, but what’s the point in living if we can’t try and make the best of it? Sure our own extinction might be looming on the horizon, but I’ll be damned if I won’t try and change the world before it happens.

Blessing might not always be happy about our agreement, but what is she gonna do? Break some mysterious agreement with a secretive mutual party that she can’t afford to breach? I wish I could explain everything to her, but the world isn’t ready for these kinds of harebrained theories yet. Maybe someday I’ll share some of the Oracle’s research with her, if she only knew the true nature of what she’s funding she probably wouldn’t even question where the money’s going. Hell, perhaps she’d even try and scoop it and all my researchers up, though I suspect she probably already has an idea of what we’re working with here. It’s no secret that she’s tried to slip a few loyal ponies into our ranks, though the way we operate makes those kinds of ponies stick out like a sore thumb. It’s a shame too, a few of them are genuinely talented, just… misguided.

Oh well, the world keeps spinning, and as long as it does we’ll keep trying to find something valuable that we can build up… we owe it to the world. In time maybe the Oracle can help us find the answers we’ve been looking for, and perhaps we’ll even find a new Oasis to call home… one that we can invite the entire world to be a part of…

-=CONNECTION TERMINATED=-

Comments

[katarjin]

oh..oh dear

[Numinos]

Interesting...

Also, 1-A block is duplicated it seems.

[ProgAltRocker]

Interesting theories being tossed around with this chapter. Of course with such endeavors as looking for a sanctuary in another realm, there will always exist the chance of horrific abuses being done with the best intentions in mind