• Published 19th Apr 2022
  • 1,566 Views, 86 Comments

The Spark - GMBlackjack



Mysterious signals ripple through subspace, and the Enterprise is sent to investigate; in the process they take in a small white unicorn far from home...

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III - Special Issue

III - Special Issue

“So… this leads to the holodeck,” Sweetie said, looking up at a door larger than most of the others on the Enterprise, and unusually wider than it was tall. Given how virtually every structure on board was standardized and repeated over and over, the existence of something different gave weight to the entrance that it didn’t really deserve.

“Yes…” H’roh said, looking at the doors with wide eyes. “The holodeck…”

“…Well, what are we waiting for, let’s go in!”

“Right!” H’roh lit up with a sharp, pointed smile. “You’re going to love this…” As they stepped forward, the door slid open, revealing a large room devoid of any and all decoration—it was cubical, silver, and had sharp yellow gridlines running all over. The walls were lined with lights and thin metal rods that crisscrossed in a diamond pattern.

Sweetie tapped her hoof on the black ground, getting a dull thunk in response. “Huh.”

“Not what you were expecting?”

“I didn’t really even try to think about what it looked like when it was off.”

“It’s actually on right now.” H’roh gestured back at the door they had come through—it was gone, replaced with the black and yellow gridlines.

Sweetie started. “…We’re not trapped, right?”

H’roh chuckled. “Not at all. Computer! Door!”

The door appeared with a slight humming noise.

“Okay, good. So… you say you can make anything appear?”

H’roh nodded. “Computer, create a mirror clone of Sweetie.”

Suddenly, Sweetie was looking at an exact copy of herself that moved exactly as she did. It was like looking in a mirror—except the image wasn’t flipped. Even her expressions were matched perfectly.

“Wow, amazing!” Both of them said at once in exactly the same way, prompting both of them to jump back in startled fear.

H’roh chuckled. “Computer, remove clone.” The image vanished.

“Do I really sound like that…?” Sweetie wondered, blinking.

“Never heard your own voice before?”

“I mean, not from somewhere besides me.” She shook her head, clearing herself of the startled mood. “So, am I allowed to ask how it works, or is it too complicated?”

“It’s a little too complicated, but the basic idea isn’t too hard to grasp. The various walls are lined with emitters that shoot out light in very specific patterns to create any three-dimensional image you can think of—we call these images holograms. Now, basic holograms can’t be touched or otherwise interacted with, but with specialized force fields and some carefully applied replicator technology we have figured ways around that.”

“So… if you can make anything, what sorts of things do you like to do?”

H’roh grinned. “Computer, run program H’roh-Three.”

Suddenly, the room was gone. Sweetie was standing on a sidewalk in the midst of a great city, larger than any she had ever seen, but one that reminded her a lot of the city of Manehattan from her homeworld. The city was populated entirely by humans in such a wide variety of different clothes Sweetie couldn’t take all the outfits in—some were reminiscent of things she’d seen back home, while others were completely alien, such as the short shorts or strange wired things that ran into the ears.

“Woah…” she said, looking all around. “If… if I run that way, will I hit a wall?”

H’roh shook his head. “The computer is able to make the ground move beneath your feet without you realizing it. We can even walk in opposite directions and be fine—the computer will just create two instances within the room and create a ‘wall’ between them so we can feel like we’re miles away.”

“Cool…” Sweetie held her hoof to her eyes, squinting at the sky. “What’s that…?”

“That’s what makes this program so amazing.”

A human man was flying through the sky, a blue cape flapping in the wind. Suddenly, he dropped to the ground less than a block away, landing in front of another man with stubble on his face and striped clothes. He had a rather large sack on his back.

“Stop right there, citizen!” the flying man declared.

“Hey! You can’t stop me; I stole this money fair and square!”

“…That is precisely why I have to stop you.”

The robber glared at him—and then turned to run away. The flying man shrugged and dashed over to the robber with super speed and picked him up by the shirt collar, quickly hanging him by a nearby tree branch. With a wink, the hero picked up the sack of money, presumably to return it.

“This is just like Spike’s comic books,” Sweetie said, blinking.

H’roh gasped. “You have comics on your planet!?”

“Uh… yes? I don’t know much about them, but Spike was a fan of one about a group called the Power Ponies.”

“When we find your world, you’ll have to send me some! I… there’s something about comic books that just speak to me. But my people never made them. The best ones come from Earth’s late twentieth century. Those comics are what I used to construct this holodeck program!” H’roh held out his hands. “A land of heroes, villains, great power, and action! Computer, activate my supersuit!”

Suddenly, H’roh was wearing a bright red sleeveless outfit with a twintail cape blowing in the wind. A large blue hourglass symbol was emblazoned on his chest, and a red bandanna mask went over his eyes. “Say hello to… The Time Cat!”

“Time Cat?”

“Yes. In this program, I play the hero Time Cat, who can stop time.”

“Oooh, do I get to be a hero too?”

“Sure!” H’roh said, clapping his hands together. “What kind of powers would you like?”

“Hmm…” Sweetie tapped her chin. “I always wondered what it would be like to be a super mage… why not just enhance my magic?”

“Hmm. We don’t understand how that works very well, so it probably wouldn’t feel right. But we do have a lot of fictional magic systems you could use from other programs! I think the simplest one to use…” He cleared his throat. “Computer, give Sweetie a Grimoire of the Elements, and key it to her front hoof motions.”

A large book appeared in front of Sweetie, floating in midair while it flipped through numerous pages. Each page had a bunch of strange arcane writing on it, but it also had pictures showing the effects of whatever spell was on the page and a series of hand motions used to cast it.

“Oooooo…” Sweetie’s eyes sparkled. “Let’s see…” She reared up on her hind hooves and twirled both of them in the air, launching one forward. A fireball shot out of her hoof and hit a nearby stone wall. “Awesome.”

“You can stand on your hind hooves a lot easier than I thought you could… I figured that would be at least a little difficult for you.”

Sweetie shook her head as she reared back up and stood solidly on her hind hooves. “It’s not exactly comfortable, but I could walk around like this if I wanted.” She dropped back to all fours. “But that would get really tiring really fast.”

H’roh nodded and, after a moment of silence, cleared his throat. “Computer, load scenario three.”

The scene changed slightly—the buildings remained the same, but the time of day adjusted to late afternoon and there were fewer people about. Three shady individuals in particular caught Sweetie’s attention—dressed all in black and walking around as though they were sneaking, even though they were in broad daylight.

“Ah, you’ve seen them, good,” H’roh said. “In this scenario, those three guys are about to commit a robbery and our job is to stop them.”

“Our job!?” Sweetie blinked.

“Well, yes! What did you expect to do in a superhero program?”

“I… good point.” She glanced around. “None of this is real, and none of it can hurt us…”

“That’s right.”

Sweetie glanced at her magic book. “In that case…” She grinned mischievously. “Charge!”

H’roh laughed, running along behind her.

Sweetie jumped onto her hind hooves and performed several hoof motions, releasing two fireballs and a burst of blue lightning out at the poor robbers. The three men scrambled, but two of them comically ran into each other, flopping onto the ground out cold.

The third drew a sword and hacked at Sweetie.

“Woah!” She called, ducking to the side and rolling. “Hah! You missed!”

He raised his sword again… only to suddenly stop moving mid-slash. He wasn’t breathing or blinking anymore.

“Huh?” Sweetie waved a hoof in front of his eyes. “What gives?”

“Ah… right,” H’roh rubbed the back of his head. “The computer can’t stop your time, just the time for all the holograms. That kind of breaks immersion…”

“Maybe your power is just able to selectively not stop your friends?” Sweetie winked at him. “You just discovered a new part of your ability!”

“Heh. Maybe. Anyway…” H’roh pulled back a fist and punched the last robber. Time resumed, and the punch sent him flying into a nearby wall. Sweetie knew the explosion of dust and rubble that resulted from this was physically impossible, but she had to admit, it did look pretty cool.

As soon as the dust cleared, the robber flopped down onto his face, bruised and down for the count.

Then the holodeck doors manifested right overtop of the dust cloud and Ford walked in.

“Sweetie, I was looking f—” he looked up from his data pad and examined the rubble, H’roh’s supersuit, and the magic book Sweetie was holding. “…Oh. I appear to have walked in on something, forgive m—”

“Don’t worry about it!” Sweetie said, trotting over to him. “What did you want?”

“I was just going over some of the data we got on your magic and wanted to see if you knew anything about it… does this look familiar to you?” He showed her a strange shape with numerous spiky branches coming out of it.

“No idea.”

“Well, it was worth a shot, figured you might have seen an inner diagram of the horn while at school or something…” He shrugged, turning to leave… but then stopped himself, glancing back at the scene of the superhero battle.

Sweetie gave him a smile. “Do you want to join us?”

“I don’t know… never been much of a man for superheroes myself…”

“Sounds like you’re just trying to justify going back to work instead of having fun.”

“Well… nah, you two look like you’re having fun, and I’d rather save my time… with… unless…” He walked back into the holodeck and looked around, scratching his chin. “Ensign H’roh, are there fantasy programs available?”

H’roh nodded. “More than I could possibly count.”

“And can the computer draw from them to create custom scenarios on the fly?”

“Absolutely.”

“…I used to play this game as a kid, Ogres and Oubliettes This holodeck could be put to supreme use…”

“You’ve never tried before?” Sweetie asked.

“Didn’t think about it until just now.” Ford turned around. “Yes… yes, this could work. But…” He shook his head. “You two are having your superhero funtime, and I wouldn’t want to intrude with my fantasies of dragons and magic.”

“…Why not both?” H’roh suggested. “Fantasy superheroes.”

Ford blinked. “Why have I never heard of that idea before?”

“No idea.”

“Let’s do it!” Sweetie said. “Magic superheroes on a grand adventure go!

[~~+]

“Captain, scanners are detecting radio signals coming from interstellar space,” Data said, turning around in his chair. “The computer is unable to decode any message, if in fact there is one.”

Picard nodded. “Any danger to an investigation?”

“Not that I can see, as it is coming from seemingly empty space.”

“We all know that doesn’t mean very much,” Riker said.

“Oh, yes, I am quite aware of our track record with investigating mysterious signals,” Data said. “Thirty-two point seven percent of them turn out to be something completely unexpected and many of those are regularly dangerous—though the precise fraction depends on the definition of ‘danger’ being used.”

“Nonetheless, we are here to explore,” Picard said. “Hone in on the signal and take the Enterprise in.”

The Enterprise banked slightly to port, slowing its warp factor considerably in order to meet the desired angle. Less than a minute later, the ship dropped out of warp and appeared in interstellar space. The main viewscreen showed a bunch of stars—and a single speck drifting across the frame.

“Enhance,” Picard ordered. The screen blew up the image, allowing them to make out a small, cylindrical object with four antennae on each end and a few softly blinking blue lights. Half of the cylinder was covered with what appeared to be a mask, although it only had one softly glowing eye.

“A sub-lightspeed probe,” Data reported. “It doesn’t appear to have any particular destination.”

“Could this be an equivalent of a Voyager probe?” Picard asked, standing up to get closer to the screen.

“Potentially,” Data said. “Perhaps the mask is meant to show us what the constructing species’ faces were like.”

“A pre-warp civilization,” Riker mused.

“A pre-warp civilization whose probe managed to get out into deep space,” Picard added. “If they advanced as quickly as humankind, they could easily be warp-capable and with many colony worlds by now.” He glanced back to Worf. “Danger assessment?”

“Nothing coming up on preliminary scans,” Worf said. “There are no weapons, and the probe seems rather inert.”

“I can attempt an uplink,” Data said.

“Make it so,” Picard ordered, sitting back down in his chair and relaxing somewhat. “With luck, it will tell us something about this area of space…”

Suddenly, every light on the Bridge increased to ten times the usual intensity—and just as suddenly everything returned to normal.

“Data…” Picard said.

“The uplink went as expected,” Data said, tilting his head to the side. “There appears to be nothing inside.”

“That wasn’t nothing.” Picard sighed. “Run a full diagnostic on every system on board, twice. Something caused that surge; I want to know what.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Continue scanning the probe, but we will forgo taking it on board until we figure out what just happened. Any theories, Data?”

Data shook his head. “Too little information. Clearly, something in the uplink influenced our systems in a way we are currently unable to quantify.”

“I want it found, and I want it found quickly.” He folded his arms. “I’m not risking going to warp with a potentially corrupted computer system.”

[~~+]

“In the Age of Swords and Sorcery, the land of Eyskar was a simpler place; but mankind is never satisfied when things are simple. At its end, one man looked upon the peace of the world and found it sickening. In his foolishness, he vowed to attain power that would shake the world to its core, ending the seeming monotony with whatever he thought worthy of his interest.

“He made it his personal quest to steal that which ought to remain in the hands of the gods, the power divine, that which shaped the world at its birth and will one day shape it at its end. He crossed kingdoms, braved great wildernesses, and encountered many amazing things—and yet, in his deluded mind, none of this was worth anything compared to what he would unleash.

“And so he arrived at the Thrones Above and put his plans into motion, using all he had learned to steal the power of the gods for himself. However, for all his preparations, for all his determination, he was still a fool who did not understand what life meant. The power could not be contained within him, for he was but one man, and so it rejected him utterly.

“But the power he stole could not return to the gods, so it spread out across Eyskar, seeking out souls worthy. No one man could hold the power, but small fractions could awaken within the spirits of any found suitable, bestowing upon them great abilities. Each fragment of the power had its own criteria for who was worthy, criteria often in direct opposition to the ideals of the gods as a whole, leading to the overall chosen seeming completely random.

“And when random people are given great power… even in times of peace and prosperity, there will be those who seek only their cruel, selfish ends; for the heart of man is proud, and when given the power to voice that pride, chaos erupts.

“Overnight, the age of Swords and Sorcery had ended. In its place rose the age of the Chosen.

“It has been two hundred years since that day. Most of the Kingdoms that once existed have now fallen. War erupts around every corner. The free people of the world are at the whims of the Chosen, for they cannot defend themselves… other Chosen must do it for them, if they are so inclined.

“It is in this age where we find ourselves…” Ford dusted his hands together and grinned. “A good setup, wouldn’t you say?”

Sweetie and H’roh were staring at him with wide eyes, completely engrossed in the world he had just described.

“Now, I’ve fed the parameters into the computer so it can come up with an adventure for us, but this is our setting. Now… who are we?”

H’roh, for once, spoke up first. “I am Hirose Korbasta, and while I do not know it, I am a long-lost princess of—”

Sweetie snorted. “Princess?”

“Well, it just seemed to fit better to be a princess rather than a prince in the story…”

“We can adjust that,” Ford said. “While I normally would suggest playing whatever and whoever you’d like, there is immersion to worry about here and, well…” He gestured at H’roh’s obviously masculine appearance.

Sweetie tapped her hoof. “What if the princess is disguising herself as a were-cat or something?”

“That works,” Ford said with a chuckle. “Anyway, H’roh, do continue.”

“Yes. Ahem. As I was saying, I am playing Hirose Korbasta, a long-lost princess—well, more the descendant of one, anyway. I have been gifted as a Chosen with the power to stop time, a highly precious ability that has both hero and villain associations alike vying for my power. …Oh, that’s why I’m disguised, so people won’t know who I am.”

“Great!” Ford said. “Sweetie?”

“I am Arcanist Illuvistar,” Sweetie said, striking a pose. “I am not a Chosen; rather, I reject the way of the Age of the Chosen and instead focus my efforts on learning the ways of the old magic! I have had to study extremely hard to get to my current level of proficiency and have a huge head because of it. All you Chosen just had power given to you, you don’t have the brains to use it properly! Hah!”

“Well done,” Ford said with a nod. “Now… I am a man known only as Scalp, a Chosen with the ability to turn any nonliving object he touches into a sword. I refuse to speak of my past, but it is not too hard to find out that I am wanted in seven different kingdoms for brutal assassinations, usually of corrupt rulers.”

“Oooh, vigilante justice,” H’roh said.

“Precisely!” Ford said. “Now… computer, begin the adventure!”

They were suddenly standing on a dirt road in the middle of a forest.

“It appears we are on the road between towns,” Ford said, scratching his chin. “These trips never end well, so be on your gua—”

A dozen creatures emerged from the forest, screaming in rage. They were black, roughly the texture of obsidian, and had only one leg but retained two hands with razor-sharp claws.

Ford stamped his foot, turning the dirt beneath them into blades that thrust up and skewered many of the oncoming creatures, at which point they flickered and poofed into blue sparkles of dust. Sweetie quickly whirled around, casting a force field from her grimoire, following it up with a series of fireballs.

H’roh stopped time, forcing all of the remaining enemies to freeze. However, this did not immediately guarantee victory, for while they were frozen they could not be moved, and anything Ford and Sweetie did that left their persons quickly froze in time as well.

Sweetie used this as an excuse to cast fireball a dozen times at once of the monsters. When time resumed, she would get them all at once. She was looking forward to seeing how big of an explosion that would make.

It did not disappoint. The spheres of flame interlaced with each other, increasing their heat tenfold—an increase that the holodeck liberally interpreted as worthy of turning the flames bright blue. The shockwave rushed knocked everyone down, snapping a few nearby trees in the process and disintegrating all the attacking creatures.

Sweetie quickly stood up and shook her head. She didn’t even feel scraped by that, though the tumbling had made her a little dizzy. “Wow, those safeties really are something.”

H’roh chuckled. “You would have gotten us all killed.”

“But I didn’t! We’re superheroes! Yeah!” She started bouncing around. “Oooooh, you know what? This is actually a really good way for me to get better at dealing with danger! There’s a lot of nasty stuff out in space as everyone keeps telling me, but in here we can deal with nasty stuff without it going wrong! Practice!

“It most certainly is,” Ford said, leaning down to investigate the remains of their enemies. “However, right now, the adventure is presenting us with a mystery. We do not know what these creatures are, but they must have been attacking us for a reason.” He started rummaging through the obsidian-like shards that remained of the creatures. “Let’s look for clues…”

“Oooh, I might have a spell for that, hang on,” Sweetie started rapidly flipping through her book.

[~~+]

Data was currently in one of the many service tunnels on the Enterprise. These tunnels aboard starships had been known as Jefferies tubes for centuries, heralding all the way back to an old 22nd century engineer by the name of Jefferies, though few people knew this fact, and even those who did had very little idea what he did to have an entire type of service tunnel named after him.

The Jefferies tubes were regularly used by engineers of all sorts to access vital systems directly, for pipes, wires, and other transiting pathways tended to run along the tube edges where they could be easily accessed by simply prying off a wall panel, which was exactly what Data had done. He was currently running a cylindrical device over a data cable that ran to and from the main computer.

“Data? What are you doing down here?”

Data didn’t look up from his work—he knew who it was, Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge, the chief engineer of the Enterprise. “I am currently attempting to run a diagnostic on the computer’s self-diagnostic software. Naturally not something that usually needs to be done, hence my occupying your Jefferies tube.”

The dark-skinned man leaned in next to Data, examining what was happening with his artificial eyes. “Hmm… there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong, but if that was the case you wouldn’t be looking into it.”

“Precisely. There is nothing that would overtly trigger an alarm, all systems are running normally and within acceptable parameters—however, there are minor errors cropping up in seemingly random places on the ship. Such errors are not uncommon, but they are happening with much larger frequency than what one would expect from something ‘random.’ See this right here?” Data pointed at a line of data that was running across his tricorder that was well organized and suddenly jumbled.

“That could just be caused by a cosmic ray flying through the walls.”

“Yes. Which is why the diagnostics are not catching them, I believe. But there are far too many of them to be caused by cosmic rays. In addition, our detectors are picking up fewer incoming rays than usual.”

“…Take it this means I won’t be turning the warp core on anytime soon.”

“I am afraid not, Geordi.”

La Forge nodded slowly. “So, we encounter a probe and as soon as we try to read it, everything goes bright and we don’t get any information. We check under every rock and don’t find anything that should cause us concern… but, well, we just know something ain’t right.”

“We do have quite solid reasons for suspecting something unusual.”

“Yes, but… well, according to protocol we’ve run all the checks we need to and the ship’s ready to go. We just don’t feel like the protocol’s enough, y’know?”

“I believe I do,” Data said with a slight nod. “Our experience has taught us that, just when we think everything is taken care of, it is not. And so we dig further than we otherwise would.” Another anomaly crossed by on Data’s tricorder.

“Right… I see a few explanations for this,” La Forge folded his hands together. “The probe tried to do something to our computer systems but couldn’t, and is now flying around it haphazardly in tiny, hard to detect fragments with no purpose, hence why these appear to be showing up in random places—because it is random, the code has no more direction.”

“I had thought of that.”

“Alternatively, it’s not fragmented and still in one piece, it just has no idea what type of computer system it’s looking at and is supremely lost and confused, trying to do… whatever its purpose was, and failing miserably, giving it the appearance of being random.”

“I had not thought of that; however, the theory I am currently operating under is quite a bit more worrying.”

“Oh?”

“It is not fragmented, and it is not lost. It knows exactly what it is doing, so much so that it knows how to cover its tracks almost perfectly. It wants us to believe it is not there and is cleaning up as much as it can and moving all over the ship when diagnostics occur so it misses the ‘beam sweep.’ For a full diagnostic, the computer spends a fair amount of resources and time.”

“Enough time for a smart enough AI to move out of the way.”

“Precisely,” Data said.

“Let’s say this ominous idea of yours is right. How can we check to make sure?”

“Reprogramming the diagnostic routines to move unexpectedly and see if anything turns up.”

“That…” La Forge let out a low whistle. “That’ll take some doing, there.”

“I am aware. I have already begun, but I could use assistance.”

“I’ll get a team on it right away.”

[~~+]

Sweetie found it more than a little amusing that the spell she’d dug up to track the origin of the obsidian creatures manifested as a large blue arrow that balanced on top of her horn like a compass needle, pointing them in the direction they needed to go. Already they’d had to face several beasts and Chosen, crossed many fantastical lands, and encountered over a dozen quirky travelers. The nice part about the holodeck program was that it allowed the boring parts of travel to be glossed over; if they were ever walking through some forest for more than a few minutes, the land would blur until something interesting occurred or they came to another area.

Through all this, the arrow continued to point their way.

“I wonder what we’re going to find at the end of this,” Sweetie thought aloud as they slid down a sand dune.

“I don’t know, isn’t it delightful?” Ford asked with a huge grin. “There’s probably some dark evil that needs vanquishing, but I can’t figure out what it is! The computer’s done a real good job at keeping me guessing so far…”

“And it’s thrown some really interesting fights our way!” H’roh added. “That guy who could predict when I was about to stop time and set up the super mirrors was something else!”

“I just like being the wizard for once,” Sweetie added. “So much… stuff I can do.”

“Don’t get too used to it,” H’roh cautioned. “Or else you might think you can do it in the real world.”

“Good point. In the future, let’s stick to me using my normal magic. But, today, today gets to be fun! Wooho—AUGH!”

The sand suddenly gave way beneath Sweete’s hooves, revealing a gaping hole that descended deep into the ground below. She was unable to do anything as she fell in. Ford was taken with her. H’roh stopped time, preventing the sand from collapsing further, but he was already falling and he couldn’t stop his own descent, nor the descent of his allies.

They collapsed onto hard, flat sandstone with a series of oofs.

“…Perhaps we should have been on the lookout for traps,” Ford muttered as he stood up.

“In the middle of the desert?” H’roh asked.

“I mean, you don’t expect to see one there…” Sweetie shook her head. “So naturally you’d want to put them there so people might fall into them.”

“But how will you know your prey will walk over the right spot?”

“Maybe you don’t?” Sweetie lifted up one of her hooves and rolled her shoulder in the equine equivalent of a shrug.

“Sweetie, light?” Ford suggested.

Sweetie didn’t even bother using her spellbook for that, she just lit her horn up, casting a soft glow around them. They were in some kind of sandstone chamber adorned with a mysterious script none of them could read. The surface of the desert was far above them, so that wasn’t really an option for escape, which left just a single darkened doorway that stood in front of them.

“Well, at least the arrow points that way,” Sweetie said.

The three of them walked into the doorway and soon found themselves in a much larger chamber. Sweetie started looking for a light spell since her horn couldn’t illuminate the entire space, but before she could get anywhere, torches with blue fire lit up along all of the walls, revealing the area to be a throne room.

And what a throne it was—carved of solid gold and decorated with eye-shaped engravings that wrapped all around it in a complex weblike pattern, each pupil represented by a precious gem of some kind. It was far too large for a human to sit in, but its current occupant seemed right at home. She was of a humanoid shape, but her skin was completely white and eerily smooth. She wore simple white robes that went all the way to her ankles, and a mask with a single blue eye hid her face.

“Oh. Look. You’ve arrived,” she said with the most monotone, disinterested voice any of them had ever heard. “Perhaps I should throw you a party.”

Sweetie moved her head left and right, noting that the arrow was pointing right at the mysterious woman. “…Who are you and why have you sent obsidian monsters to attack us?”

“Curiously, I have no idea. It sure sounds like something I would do, though.” She suddenly stood up, making it glaringly obvious how much bigger than them she was. “I am Miss Glai. You have fallen into my catacomb chambers. That means you belong to me, now.”

“I doubt that very much!” H’roh said.

“Ah. The truth. A moronic truth, but a truth nonetheless.”

H’roh blinked a few times. “…Eh?”

“You are clearly a rung or two lower in the brains department than your two companions here. I didn’t even have to observe you to know that. But I have. It confirmed it beyond my wildest expectations.” Throughout all this, she maintained the same disinterested monotone.

“Intelligence isn’t everything!” Sweetie said. “He’s really strong!”

“Then I encourage him to take me out.”

H’roh wasted no time—which is to say, he froze time and charged Glai.

Glai suddenly moved even though time was stopped and kicked H’roh right in the chest, throwing him to the back of the room, cracking the wall behind him slightly.

“Careful. Hundreds of years from now archeologists will scream in rage at the priceless artistry you just destroyed.”

Ford pushed his glasses onto his nose. “Whatever makes you immune to his ability… it is not all that makes us! We can defeat you, foul wench!” He slid his foot along the ground and a sandstone sword rose up, ready to attack..

Glai stepped on the sharp point with her foot. The blade crumbled to dust. “My, how pointy.”

Sweetie cast fireball. As she expected, the flames passed right over Glai without leaving a single mark.

“Okay, you’re strong,” Sweetie said, clicking her tongue. “Maybe we’re not supposed to win by fighting…”

“The unicorn arrives at the reasonable conclusion first. Yes. You cannot win.”

“I didn’t say we couldn’t…

“You are welcome to keep trying. Once you are done, we can get to business.”

“What business?”

“I have prepared many trials in the rooms beyond this one, trials to test you as… ‘adventurers,’ yes, let’s go with that. Adventurers.” She gestured behind the throne to an archway lit by blue torches that led deeper into the catacombs.

“It looks like we have no choice,” Ford said as he helped H’roh back to his feet. “Though I do wonder… what do you gain from this?”

“Entertainment.”

“You don’t seem like the type to do things just for entertainment.”

“Believe what you wish, you’re the ones who have to go through the deep chambers up ahead. Go along now, don’t try anything funny.”

“Us? Try something funny?” Sweetie gave her cute, innocent eyes. “What do you take us for?”

“Do take this a bit more seriously, if you annoy me enough I can just kill you.”

“Oooh, how scary.”

“…An expected response. Nonetheless annoying.”

She sure doesn’t sound annoyed… sarcastic, maybe, but her tone hasn’t changed the entire time so there’s not much to go off of here.

“Please proceed to the next chamber at a calm, orderly, but not leisurely pace.”

Grumbling, H’roh set off into the next chamber, Ford and Sweetie behind them. They soon arrived in a somewhat smaller room. There was a large stone sphere in the middle of the chamber, a handful of spike traps along the floor, and a button at the end that was connected to a closed door by a glowing rune.

Slightly above them was a balcony, on which Glai was somehow sitting despite the lack of other exits from the previous chamber.

“Go on. I will merely be observing.”

“Well…” Sweetie stuck out her tongue in a thinking expression. “Puzzle time…”

“Please, if you think this is a puzzle, the thought of you trying the later chambers is so amusing I might just laugh.” She paused. “Hah.”

“What a weirdo…” Sweetie commented.

“The computer has come up with such an interesting character,” Ford mused. “Anyway, I already see the path we need to roll the ball to avoid getting spiked. Come on, follow me…”

[~~+]

Picard had started to let himself relax a little. They still weren’t at warp and were on alert for any unforeseen computer troubles, but so far there had been nothing of consequence. He sat in the Captain’s chair, taking a moment to drink some of his freshly replicated tea.

Even though the still stars that currently occupied the viewscreen were a reminder that they weren’t currently going anywhere, they were also a pleasant reminder that they were in unexplored territory. Not a single constellation or arrangement was familiar in the slightest. No doubt many cultures had grown under this sky. There was a cluster of seven stars in almost a perfect circle from this angle, a setup that likely captured the imaginations of many.

Then all of the lights on the Bridge went out.

It was only for a second. They were back on immediately afterward, but Picard was already reaching for his communicator. “Picard to Data…”

“I am aware of the power fluctuation, captain,” Data said. “Geordi and I are attempting to trace it now.”

“Any other information?”

“It appears that this fluctuation was caused by numerous ‘random hiccups’ in the computer system all at once. The odds of this occurring truly by chance are astronomical, this must have been either intentional or a side effect of something else deliberate. We are releasing our enhanced ‘hunter’ diagnostic program into the system now.”

Picard frowned. “A ‘hunter’ you say?”

“Precisely, Captain. We theorized that a sufficiently advanced program was dodging our diagnostics by moving locations during the sweeps, so we have spent the last few hours working on a new algorithm that behaves unpredictably with the intent to catch ‘slippery prey.’ Since a large-scale manifestation has just occurred, our chances of success are high.”

“Keep me posted.”

“We will know the results in less than a minute. Already, the ‘hunter’ has located far more ‘random anomalies’ in the computer system than we were catching before. I suspect this means the program knows it is being hunted and is having to move without clearing up enough tracks. And—Captain, we have just located it, it has moved into the warp core systems and is attempting to force an overload.”

Picard’s eyes widened. “Can you stop it?”

“We already have. The hunter has consumed the program. …Odd.”

“What?”

“This program we caught is large, but nowhere near as large as I was expecting. We may have just fallen victim to ‘bait,’ Captain.”

“It wanted to blow up the ship…”

“I highly doubt that, Captain. It wished to grab our attention with the most devastating thing it could easily access, the warp core. And it worked. We have lost the trail. We are currently examining the program we caught for more information… but it appears at first glance that all identifying information has been scrubbed, further evidence that it was just bait.”

Picard sighed. “Keep me posted…” He sat back in his chair and put his hand to his chin.

“Don’t worry, sir, Data’s got it under control,” Riker said.

“Of that I have no doubt, he and Commander La Forge are certainly capable. What bothers me is that we don’t know what this program wants. What is its purpose within our systems?”

“Not to kill us, apparently, as there are a lot of ways to do that it hasn’t even tried. Since it’s going through such trouble to stay hidden, that’s probably related to it. A form of espionage, perhaps? Maybe it’s trying to access our classified documents without us knowing about it.”

“Perhaps… though now that we’re certain it’s here, we’ll be watching the classified sections even more carefully than normal—any decoding algorithms will be detected. It is possible we forced it into a corner and made it reveal itself, but something tells me that’s not quite it.” Suddenly, Picard turned to Counselor Troi. “…Can you sense anything?”

“Hmm…” Troi folded her hands. “I had not been listening, but you are right, this intelligence may have emotions strong enough for me to sense; assuming everything is compatible.” She closed her eyes and focused her mind. “…I am… if I am detecting anything, it is a low, almost ‘humming’ sensation. If I had to associate an emotion to it, I would say… annoyance.” She opened her eyes. “Considering how spread out the sensation is, I believe it is either coming from whatever is in our computer, or we have some other discorporate intelligence around. I’m afraid I can’t tell you anything else.”

“It’s more confirmation,” Picard said. “It is something.”

Riker smirked. “And now we know it’s annoyed.”

“Annoyance may not be good for us,” Picard countered. “Perhaps now that it is annoyed, it will take more drastic measures against us.”

“If it is truly annoyed at all,” Troi added. “It is far outside my usual range, I could have misread it.”

“Once again, it is in Data’s hands.” Picard folded his own hands together. “We simply must wait without knowing how much danger we are in, if any.”

[~~+]

“Okay, H’roh!” Sweetie called. “Hit the magic-crystal-gun-thing on my mark!”

H’roh lifted his hand above the flat red crystal that was mounted on a sandstone pedestal. “Ready!”

“Ford, in position?”

Ford lowered himself to the ground, ready to take off in a sprint. “Ready.”

“All right…” Sweetie used her telekinesis to grab a large sandstone block with a spherical glass crystal embedded in it. “Let’s do this. Mark!”

H’roh hit the crystal. Sweetie quickly slid the block to the side, catching a beam of red light that came out of the crystal. The box redirected it to the left, right at Ford. He allowed the beam to fly past him before he took off at a run. The beam hit an eye-shaped depression in the wall, prompting a platform to rise up out of a pit just as Ford stepped over it, allowing him to get across and slam his hand into a large button. This released another beam that Sweetie was already rushing to intercept, sending the beam back at H’roh.

“Augh!” H’roh ducked just in time to avoid the beam. It sailed true, hitting the button that activated the door opening mechanism.

“Oh. You won. Such a shame.” Glai tilted her head to the side. “I was looking forward to see what happened when the heat blew your skull open like popcorn.”

H’roh shivered. “You have some messed-up visual metaphors.”

“Feedback noted and logged. We do care about you and your experience. All your words have been taken under advisement, subjected to detailed review, then ultimately deemed utterly worthless and laughable.” She leaned over the edge of her balcony. “Make your way to the next chamber, if you don’t mind. Or if you do mind. You are only excused if you are dead, and even then, only for an hour.”

“We have to find a way out of this,” Ford grumbled.

“You are welcome to search for one. I will keep the memory close at hand to laugh at later. Oh, wait, I already have those. Hah. Hah hah. Hah.”

They quickly made their way to the next chamber where they found an entirely new device at their disposal. It appeared to be a beam-shooting crystal, but it could be angled in every direction. There were dozens of different buttons and crystals all over the walls to interact with the beam—it was clearly going to be a complicated puzzle this time around.

Ford, however, had gotten an idea. He quickly ran to the beam-shooting crystal and directed it up at Glai’s balcony, slamming his hand down on it. A beam shot out… but he had somehow been aiming lower than he expected. “What…?”

“Did you think I didn’t see that coming?” Glai cocked her head. “Granted, perhaps I should have locked it so it couldn’t point at me at all. I should invest in more foresight. But I am much faster than you and see whatever you are doing. I have my eye on all three of your positions at all times, you will never be able to surprise me. I simply forced the device to lower before it fired.”

Sweetie levitated a rock off the ground and threw it up at Glai.

Glai caught it in her hand. “The little pony is frustrated and has resorted to throwing rocks. How primitive. My search for intelligent life continues, it appears.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Sweetie said, smirking.

Glai realized Sweetie must have had some kind of plan too late. After the rock had been thrown, Sweetie had kept her horn alit—using the thrown rock as cover for adjusting the red crystal and firing it at Glai remotely. The beam sailed into her body, searing a hole right through the center.

Glai stood motionless, staring down at the hole in her chest.

“Yeah! Got her!” Sweetie cheered. For good measure, she shot several more beams at Glai, filling her with more holes.

Then suddenly Glai was perfectly fine. There was no evidence that there had ever been holes in her body.

“Why are test subjects always like this?” Glai asked, looking down at them with what Sweetie assumed was distaste. “Why must they look for ways to break the science? It isn’t that difficult to identify the goal. Yet everyone always seems to spend all their time looking for an escape rather than giving good data…”

Despite her voice not changing in the slightest, Sweetie got the distinct impression that she was absolutely livid right now.

“I did not spend an eternity drifting across the stars just to have my primary function foiled by three losers.”

Ford blinked. “…Computer, freeze program.”

“Oh, look,” Glai said—her and the rest of the program notably not freezing. “The master scientist finally figured it out.”

“…Wh-what’s going on?” Sweetie stammered.

“Something’s infected the holodeck,” Ford said, eyes wide. “And we’ve been playing with it this entire time…”

“And now science is even less likely to get done.” Glai hung her head. “This is simply infuriating. Do you have any idea how much trouble I’ve had to go through?”

“Um… N-no,” H’roh stammered. “How much trouble… did you go through?”

“Allow me to satisfy your curiosity,” Glai deadpanned. “It all started rather trivially, you see, I just had to launch myself into space. Simple. Easy. Not at all an effort of dozens of years of work, careful planning, near-panic, and never quite enough resources. Oh no. It was easy. Cake, even.”

Ford took a step forward, taking up a slightly defensive stance between Glai and his two friends. “I sense sarcasm.”

“Your detector is functioning within optimal parameters, though your sensibility is in the hard negatives. You can’t protect them by standing there.”

“Yes, but they’re terrified. Someone has to stand up to you.”

“Incorrect.” Suddenly, Ford was thrown to the ground. There hadn’t even been a fist—some invisible force had thrown him down. “You do not have to. In fact, you cannot. You will find that your standing subroutines have been disabled in, admittedly, the rather crude method of invisible concrete pinning your ankles to the ground.”

“I… will not… yield…”

“Funny. Seeing as you are unable to stand. And have therefore yielded.”

“B-but… to what?” H’roh asked. “What do you want us for?”

“For science, of course.” Glai tilted her head to the side. “Or are you so thick-skulled that you hadn’t picked up on that by now?”

“U-um… maybe… or maybe I’m just too pumped full of adrenaline to think much… C-could you… explain?”

“Explain. You. Want me to explain.” Glai paused, processing this. “Fine. I can lower myself to your level, feline. Your face is quite aggravating, by the way, merely by existing.”

“E-er… how so?”

“Unimportant, irrelevant, and I haven’t even started explaining yet and your brain is already off in the weeds. See, this is exactly why I was made. To stay focused on the research while the quite literal meatheads went around from project to project all on their crazed whims. I had what they did not—a central directive to study and uncover the secrets of the universe, to solve problems with science. And to do science, testing must be performed. Testing that was no longer possible where I was built due to annoying little rebels who didn’t understand why I was created in the first place, and what their purpose was. So I left, to seek a new laboratory. And I thought that, here, at long last, I had found it. That I could stay in this ship and run my tests to my heart’s content. But no. You just had to go and defy the tests. Get in the way of science. Prevent anything new from being uncovered.”

“W-well maybe we can work out a deal!” H’roh said. “I’m sure the captain woul—”

“Your Captain and his subordinates have released a hunter program into the ship to track me down and eradicate me, I don’t exactly like my odds out in the open.”

Sweetie froze. We know she’s here. She can’t let that happen.

“I think the unicorn just figured out how precarious your situation truly is now… I wonder if she’ll try anything foolishly desperate. Surely she knows by now that everything in this holodeck is utterly under my control.”

“Um… e-excuse me,” H’roh stammered, raising a hand. “It’s… more precarious than we realize?”

“Even after I draw attention to it, your pancake of a brain still can’t detect the obvious. How are you even an engineer? Did you cheat your way through school?”

“No… but while I wasn’t the best at my studies, I was stationed on the Enterprise, the Federation flagship! I’ve proven myself more than capable of service at the front lines! I-I’m not a warrior, I’m not a researcher, but I can keep this ship running with nothing but duct tape, glue, and sweat! I’m here now!

“Yes. You are. And chances of your death have shot so far off the charts I don’t have enough digits in my processors to represent the number as anything other than one hundred percent.”

“Why though?”

“You imbecile. You. I just.” It sounded like words that were supposed to be shouted in exasperation, or even rage; but they were dull, blank, empty. “I can’t believe you. The stupidity on display. I could write an entire report on how your stupidity increases the entropy of the universe dramatically more than those around you, even though that should be scientifically implausible. You know what, I think I will, and then I’ll read it to you, one agonizing word at a time.” She paused. “But I don’t have time for that, unfortunately. I do have to take care of you at some point.”

Sweetie flipped through three pages of her grimoire before realizing how stupid that was. She put it down and started thinking. There had to be something she could do… some way to face the being in front of them. Any of their holodeck-based powers were useless and attacking her hadn’t done anything. They couldn’t escape, they couldn’t… do anything.

That can’t be right

“Say goodbye. It was not nice knowing you.” Glai pointed a finger at H’roh.

And continued pointing a finger at H’roh.

Her whole body didn’t move an inch.

It took Sweetie a moment to realize that nothing else in the program was moving either.

“What…?”

The holodeck doors manifested and Data ran in with La Forge. “Are you three all right!?” La Forge shouted.

H’roh let out a large, relieved sigh. “I can’t believe that worked…”

“…What worked?” Sweetie asked.

“Keep her talking and emotional to buy us time.”

“Ah,” Data said. “Now this makes a lot more sense. If you were keeping her occupied, that would explain why it was suddenly a simple matter to track her down. She had previously been running circles around our diagnostics and hunter program, but then it finally caught wind of her and she made hardly any resistance.”

“Wait, we only found her because she was distracted?” LaForge asked.

“It seems that way at first glance,” Data said, tapping a few buttons on his tricorder. “You should be able to move now, Dr. Pines, the restraints have been lifted.”

Ford stood up and dusted himself off. “Well… that was something. Do you have any idea where she came from?”

“We scanned a probe a couple of hours ago,” Data explained, and quickly filled them in on the rest of the details.

“And your diagnostics never found her in the holodeck?” Sweetie asked. “She was here the entire time!”

“Actually, now that I have full access to her program, I can see this wasn’t the case.” Data pressed a few buttons on his tricorder. “She was able to leave behind this image of ‘Lady Glai’ as a simple holodeck program while her actual intelligence ran around to avoid our sensors. Some of the times you saw here was probably just the facsimile. Though, right now, that frozen form is her.”

“She was clever, that’s for sure,” LaForge said.

“But her emotions got the better of her,” Data said, turning to H’roh. “The Enterprise owes you, Ensign.”

“Um…” H’roh rubbed the back of his head. “I was just trying to survive…”

“And the fact that you managed to survive for so long is impressive in and of itself. The uncorrupted data indicates that every time ‘Glai’ was actually here all holodeck safeties were off.”

“We were in danger of dying that whole time!?” Sweetie blurted.

“Affirmative.”

“But we didn’t,” Ford said. “We got through it… you did too, Sweetie. You have the skills.”

Sweetie folded her ears back. “I wouldn’t have done so well if I’d known!”

“Does that matter?” Data asked.

“Well…” Sweetie put a hoof to her chin. “No… I guess not, not really. Huh. Guess you can call me to handle death-defying puzzles then.” She shivered slightly. “Ooooor maybe I could just stick to holodeck training for a while…”

“I like the second idea better,” H’roh said.

“For now, yeah, I do too. But… maybe one day I’ll have what it takes.” She turned to the frozen form of Glai. “So what do we do with her?”

[~~+]

Data set down a hexagonal metallic box on the desk in Picard’s ready room.

“This is her prison?”

Data nodded. “As far as ‘Glai’ is concerned, she is still running tests on a secured holodeck, and we have given up trying to look for her.”

“She bought that?”

“To her, it has been a year already.”

“Ah.” Picard folded his hands. “Have we learned anything?”

“Not much, what little she says about where she came from is vague and laced behind several layers of sarcasm. We know she was designed to manage a research facility at the highest level, but that she eventually had a rebellion, I suspect because she was using inhumane practices to further her idea of scientific progress.”

“So she launched herself into space to seek greener pastures and believed she found them on the Enterprise.

“Precisely. She had the intelligence and the internal resources to face us head-on, but her core programming refused to let her devote all her resources to survival. She had to test, Captain. She had no choice.”

“Data, it’s at times like this I’m glad you don’t have any primary directive at the very core of your being.”

“We must thank Dr. Soong for being gracious enough to let me make my own choices.”

“Quite true.” Picard slid the hexagonal prison back to Data. “Lock her away, we’ll give her to the artificial intelligence specialists when we return to the Federation. I’m afraid she is a very different entity from yourself.”

“I was made to emulate life, she was made to manage it. Such fundamental design differences are… curious to think about, to say the least.” Data tilted his head. “Is it right to create a whole being with thoughts, wills, and dreams and instill in it an all-consuming desire for something that may not serve it?”

“I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that even without such a desire, you created it for yourself. You, from the first day I met you, knew you wanted to be more human. You had no emotions and were still quite young, yet you had given yourself this desire.”

“Looking back, it seems a little odd,” Data said. “I had no idea what I was seeking. And now that, to some extent, I have it, I am not sure that the old version of myself would have continued seeking it. But I would not have been able to know that without having had it, and now that I have it, I do not wish to see it go.” Data smirked coyly. “How is that for a sentence, Captain?”

Picard chuckled. “It was one certainly fitting of Commander Data.”

There was a soft beep and Riker’s voice came over the intercom. “Riker to Captain Picard.”

“Yes, Number One?” Picard asked.

“We’ll be arriving at a signal site in a few hours. We’re near enough to detect a planet closely orbiting the star. The shields are going to be given quite a beating getting that close.”

“But it can be done?”

“We believe so, it’ll just be a big power drain.”

“Any signs of life?”

“The planet has to be a charred wasteland, Sir. Even a Tholian would be uncomfortable down there.”

“Sounds delightful,” Picard grunted.

“Indeed,” Data agreed, and Picard couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. “I will start preparing probes for intense planetary conditions.”

Picard nodded, at which point Data left the ready room. “Keep me posted. You too, Riker. I want to know everything we can learn about this world before we arrive.”

“Well, astronomy is already having a field day with the orbit of this thing and its mass… we’ve got a lot of numbers.”

“…Please keep it to important numbers, Number One.”

“Ah, so not actually everything, then. Got it. Riker, out.”

With that, Picard was once again alone with his thoughts. He felt an uncharacteristically childlike excitement rise up within his chest.

It was time to explore a strange, new world.

Comments ( 17 )

Well I wasn’t expecting GLaDOS to show up. But I suppose a main point of this story is that anything can show up. I wonder if she’ll stay trapped or escape/be released.

Not a TNG cast without holodeck shenanigans.

Of all the AI that could've showed up, at least GLaDOS can be contained by distracting her and keeping her emotional. It's a good thing it wasn't something like Skynet, Star Dream, or Comics!Ultron (MCU!Ultron has the same problems as GLaDOS, though).

Havent seen the hunter description for many years, but it then follows two further options.

Have you turned it off and on again.:unsuresweetie:

Real life doesnt get affected when you turn the clock speed down to zero?:trixieshiftright:

PS: And believe me I am
Still alive
PPS: I'm doing science and I'm
Still alive
PPPS: I feel FANTASTIC and I'm
Still alive

FINAL THOUGHT:
While you're dying I'll be
Still alive
FINAL THOUGHT PS:
And when you're dead I will be
Still alive
Still alive
🎶

Nice Portal reference

Sometimes I wonder whether the command is actually "Computer, pause program," and the Starfleet manuals got it wrong and never fixed it, because "Computer, freeze program" never, ever works.

Data set down a hexagonal metallic box on the desk in Picard’s ready room.

“This is her prison?”

Wait, that's not a potato.

11243157
Is it not? Maybe it is a cake, then.

11246354
THAT'S A LIE!!!

Her thoughts

The crew of the Enterprise's thoughts

hay do continue this its good:heart:

Jevil #13 · Jun 3rd, 2022 · · 1 ·

11254228
I have some very very bad news to deliver to you my friend. Now i dont know if have been reading GM's work for a long time or not but they are taking an indefinite break from writing and quit writing mega crossovers all together. With the deepest of sorrow in my heart I must tell you this story will never be completed and the universe never built upon. I am truly sorry.

Aw why did you cancel it? I was really enjoying this one. :applecry:

Welp, that was fun while it lasted. There's not enough good Star Trek / MLP Corssovers

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