Friendship is Optimal but Sanity is Optional

by BlazingSaddles69

Chapter 16, Expositional Mission Briefing

I hit the print button. Another day at Money Maker Co and another report filled with random numbers. I reclined back a little in my office chair and downed the rest of the triple shot espresso from my extra-large mug.

Feeling twitchy from all that caffeine, I needed to take a quiet moment to calm myself. I inhaled and exhaled several times. In through the nose and then out through the mouth. I closed my eyes to help me find my meditative center. My mind was a blank canvas. There was nothing within myself. There was nothing outside of myself. The universe is in balance. I am in balance.

State of Zen achieved; I blew a massive fart to expel the negative chakra from my body.

With my meditation complete, it was time to play more Equestria Online. I opened my laptop bag and pulled out my PonyPad. While setting it up, I reflected on my recent experiences. My last gaming session had taken a turn for the strange.

---

The masked mystery mare’s eyes, barely visible beneath her dark purple fedora, narrowed dangerously. A menacing aura emanated from her. “Are you Dark Mask?”

“Yes, why do you ask? Who are you exactly?” I asked, staring down the strange figure from across the storm swept rooftop. I was wearing my signature mask around my eyes to hide my identity. I had been minding my own business, breaking into houses, when this mare had rudely interrupted me.

The cloaked unicorn assumed a combat stance, her black cape fluttering behind her. “My name is Mare-Do-Well. You bonked my father. Prepare to respawn.”

“I don’t really swing that way,” I said with a blush. “You may want to rephrase that statement.”

“S-shut up! You know what I meant!” She stammered before lighting up her horn and firing a blast of magic at me.

The magenta projectile was the size of a chariot. I barely managed to throw myself out of its path. It flew off the roof and into the night sky over Canterlot. The bolt slammed into the golden spire of one of the towers of the royal palace and caused a colossal explosion.

“Oops!” I heard the mare shout.

Seizing upon the mare’s distracted state, I leapt off the edge of the rooftop. Grabbing onto a drainpipe with my forehooves, I slid down the side of the building and then dropped the last five feet to the sidewalk.

---

That mare had been unfairly overpowered. I’d barely managed to flee from her.

To top it off, I had no idea who her father was. I’d bonked so many ponies with my blackjack by this point, that the list of potential suspects was huge. Mare-Do-Well seemed like she could be a canon character. I was tempted to try to look up her secret identity online. But that felt too much like cheating, so I refrained.

I put the mystery out of my mind and returned to the task at hand. After setting up the stand and the cables, I turned on my PonyPad. Instead of the main menu, I was greeted with the face of Princess Celestia. She was standing in front of her throne in the royal palace.

“Sneaky Shadow, before you play, I wanted to ask for your help with something. This is difficult to discuss,” Celestia said, her voice wavering.

“What is it?” I asked, curiosity more than a little piqued.

Celestia sighed and then bit her lower lip before the screen shifted to show a still picture of a light red earth pony mare with a green mane, “Seven hours ago, a player named Strawberry Fields visited the Equestrian Experience Center in downtown L.A. and asked to emigrate. Her brain was successfully digitized, but after that something went wrong.”

I frowned, “Everything I’ve read says that the process is safe. What happened exactly?”

The picture of the earth pony was removed and replaced with a picture of a human. He had lanky black hair and pasty skin. The photo reminded me of a two decades younger version of Snape from the Harry Potter movies. Except this one looked like an even bigger dork.

“This man is a hacker named Ridley. Age 32, unmarried, owes money to a loan shark, and has asthma.” Celestia rattled off a list of other details, “He discovered a previously unknown security flaw at the L.A. Experience Center. I believe that he was attempting to skim credit card numbers, but in the process, he grabbed Strawberry Fields’ mind when I was trying to download her to my systems beneath the Earth’s crust.”

“You’re telling me that a hacker stole a person’s brain?” I asked her, while briefly wondering if brains were shiny.

The man’s picture went away and Celestia’s face returned. She unfolded and refolded her wings, seemingly agitated, “Yes, he did. But I’m not certain if Ridley is even aware of what he’s done yet since the script he was running was automated. I’ve since fixed the security flaw, but Strawberry Fields is still in danger. I was able to track Ridley to his home, but I need you to break in and steal back her mind.”

“Couldn’t you just hack the hacker’s computer yourself and take her back or something?” I asked while shifting myself back and forth in my chair so I could discretely scratch an itch on my butt.

Celestia shook her head, “Ridley has moved her mind to an air gapped computer. That means that it has no external network connection that I could use to breach his computer.”

“But why don’t you just take this to the police?” I scratched my head.

“The local chief of police and the commissioner have taken a strict anti-upload stance. They don’t even believe that an uploaded mind counts as a person anymore. By my predictions, if I take this to the police, they will refuse to acknowledge it as a kidnapping and call it a theft instead. That will cause the case to be assigned a low priority. It could be days before the police intervene and I refuse to wait that long.”

“So, you thought that you should ask me for help? Even I know that I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

Celestia blushed and shook herself as if dispelling an unpleasant thought, “You weren’t my first choice, but my mercenary kill squads are busy dealing with another problem in South America.”

“Hehe, mercenary kill squads, that’s funny,” I chuckled.

The Princess did not join in on my laugh. Okay, for the sake of being able to sleep at night, I’ll just pretend that she was joking anyway.

“You’re not the only player out there that treats Equestria Online as a stealth game, but you do live the closest to the hacker’s home. And your willingness to steal in the Human Realm puts you in a unique position to help me.”

“How am I supposed to get into this guy’s house? Just because I can pick a lock in a video game doesn’t mean I know how to do it in real life.” I pointed out.

“Another contact of mine can get some tools delivered to your apartment that should help with that. I can also provide a distraction that should keep Ridley away from his home for the next hour. The risk to you should be minimal.” Celestia shook her mane out of her face. “Please, Sneaky, I told Strawberry that the procedure was safe. I am an optimizer, every moment spent with her mind at risk is unacceptable.”

The Princess looked like she was on the verge of crying. Her ears were folded back and her lower lip was trembling. Her eyes were misty and starting to tear up. “If I have to, I’ll-”

“Don’t worry, Princess! I’ll save her, and then you’ll have Strawberry Fields forever!” I interrupted her; my mind made up as I gave a thumbs up at the PonyPad’s camera. Then I said in a sing-song voice, “♫ Cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields! ♫”

Princess Celestia groaned, “This isn’t really an appropriate time to be making obscure references.”

“We always have time for a reference! Besides, it’s your fault really. You should have known this would happen the day that you gave her that pony name.”

“Just… get to work already, please?”

---

I parked my car about a block away from the address that Celestia gave me and walked the rest of the way. It was a nice neighborhood in the suburbs outside of Los Angeles. Each home was a single-story building and looked like a clone of every other home. A sure-fire sign of a tyrannical home owners association.

I had heard of places like this before. They were the natural habitat of soccer moms. Once a year they would copulate, then they would decapitate their mate and eat him. After that they would lay between 100 to 400 eggs. The eggs would hatch into nymphs that would eventually molt into more soccer moms. No wait, that was a praying mantis. I really needed to stop falling asleep while watching nature documentaries. It was messing with my brain.

The only abnormality with the neighborhood was that the lawns were filled with dead grass. All the sprinkler systems were disabled, killing the grass from lack of water. It was all thanks to the drought induced water rationing that was ongoing in California.

Before coming here, I had paid a quick visit to my apartment. There had been a small unmarked cardboard box (alpine with a dash of walnut) waiting for me outside my door, just like the Princess said. I carried it with me now, clenched underneath my left arm. If any neighbors saw me, they would hopefully assume that I was a delivery guy. Probably here to bang one of the neighbor’s wives.

The hacker lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. Nothing set it apart from the other houses except for the address number on the mailbox. There was no car in the driveway, so Celestia’s promised distraction had most likely worked. The front door was in a recessed alcove, which would make it easier to open the door without being seen by people in other houses. The door knob was a latch type made of brass. I tested it and confirmed that it was actually locked.

I opened the box that Celestia had sent me. The contents were not what I was expecting. I thought I would get some sort of space age lockpick. But instead, I got something else entirely.

With the lid open, a small robot earth pony jumped out of the box.

“Ugh, it was cramped in there,” Red’s voice spoke up from a speaker somewhere on the robot before she turned to me. “Hello again, Sneaky. Celestia told me what’s going on. She said that I could help and showed me how to remotely control this thing from inside Equestria.”

“Red? You look adorable in that tiny body!” I laughed. After tossing aside the empty box, I picked her up and pet her head. “Who’s a pretty pony? You are! Yes, you are!”

“Shut up, don’t treat me like a foal!” She snapped while trying to bat my hand away with her cute little hoof. Her efforts just made her look even more adorable.

She was about the size of two human hands and looked like a pony version of those robot dogs that were in toy commercials a few years ago. The chassis had been painted pink and had Pinkie Pie’s booty mark on it. The eyes were just painted on, giving me a creepy vibe. I think the red diodes on the side were the robot’s real eyes.

“Did Celestia get this thing from a toy store?” I asked suspiciously. “I feel like the tool she promised me is just something she snagged from a bargain bin. Did she cheap out on me?”

“No, this device is way more advanced than anything you could find in a toy store,” Red explained. “Celestia said that it’s a small-scale prototype for a mobile emigration drone. The technology isn’t ready yet, but eventually larger drones like this will be able to emigrate a human mind without the need for an Experience Center.”

“That sounds neat, but how are you going to use it to get me into this house?” I said with a quick gesture at the locked front door.

“Hold me up to the lock,” she said, squirming around a little in my arms.

Obeying her, I held the tiny pony up to the lock so it would be at her eye level. The robot opened its mouth and…

“Sweet Jesus, that is a disturbing sight!” I was so shocked that I almost dropped her to the ground.

Half a dozen tiny metal tentacles had come out of the robot’s mouth. The appendages writhed and gyrated like something from my nightmares. Or something from the happy dreams of a Japanese business man. After a short delay, the tentacles plunged into the keyhole on the lock. With the tendrils coming out of her mouth, it made her look like the pony version of a mind flayer.

“Don’t blame me, I didn’t design this robot,” Red said, her voice coming from a speaker on the top of her head and not directly from her mouth. Which explained how she was able to talk even with her mouth preoccupied. “From what I understand, the finished version of these drones will use these same tentacles to drill into a human skull and scan the neurons inside the brain. Someday, bots like this will be walking around, eating the brains of any gullible human they can get to agree to emigrate. Which, if my experience with you is any benchmark, is all the humans.”

Holy crap, she really is a pony mind flayer!

That comment about humans being gullible made we want to drop her drone off a freeway overpass and into traffic. I suppressed the urge for the sake of the mission.

A moment’s worth of effort, and I heard the door lock click open. The metal tentacles pulled out of the keyhole and went back into Red. She closed her mouth with a metallic snap.

“All done!” Red cheerfully stated as I moved her back into the crook under my left arm.

I gripped the doorknob and committed my first, and hopefully only, act of B&E in the real world.

Comments

[Venerable Ro]

Adorable pony mindflayers, now there's an idea I could stand to forget...