Twelve: Recombinant 22
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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U
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RECOMBINANT 63
By Chatoyance
Chapter Twelve: Recombinant 22
Project Bucephalus - Laboratory 012
April 16th
We are up to R-22 now. My diddling with the instruction set and the biomolecular manipulators was helpful, so I feel good about that, but, sadly, not one of my designs survived intact. By the time my work got back from the review and reiteration teams, it was difficult to find anything I had personally done. Still, I solved the problem of the mitochondrial issue, so I can take some pride in that. Sadly, though, I will never get an actual credit for it, that will go to the team that finally made it all work right. But, hey, my idea at least was valid.
It was pretty simple, really, I thought. Animal cells are actually two cells coexisting. Sometime back in the primeval soup, one cell ate another and couldn't digest the poor thing, so they set up housekeeping. Over time, the devoured cell lost parts of its genome that accomplished what the larger cell did, and the larger cell lost the parts of its genome that covered the job its houseguest did. They both kept their own reproduction separate, though, and that was the problem.
My solution was to append the mitochondrial DNA to the human genome, thus eliminating the old alliance entirely. So, one of the first steps in conversion is to betray the ancient deal with the mitochondria and make them superfluous. That makes human cells vastly more similar to Equestrian cells, and solves the problem of the nano's choking on the double workload. It also makes the tissues vastly more compatible with each other.
I guess the best way to put it would be to say that my solution was to make human cells look more like how they should look if humanity had indeed had some intelligent creator designing it, instead of the haphazard mess that evolution made. With that done, the reconstruction of the body becomes much simpler and smoother.
The NorthEurozone group furthered this by streamlining the human genome to a basic, functional minimum as well, getting rid of all the little inclusions. Human DNA is littered with bits of ancient viruses, bacteria, and temporary fixes for countless problems. There is no malaria in Equestria, for example, so we can just dump the hemoglobin variant Hb S with extreme prejudice. The same goes for countless little memorabilia of the human passage through time.
They used a linked group of quantum machines to work out the ideal human genome, and it is small. I am shocked at how small the thing is. We picked up a LOT of garbage over the eons. Of course, our new Ideal Genome, if we made a baby out of it, would be a marvel that would last about three days before dying of something - anything - in the world. Perfection can't survive the thousand slings and arrows of uncaring Nature.
Fortunately, once a human subject has had a DNA oil-change, they only have to stay alive for about a half an hour. The EastAsiaZone group thinks we can bring conversion down to fifteen minutes. I will believe it when I see it.
We started calling the iterative steps R steps. Recombinant Steps. The first five were pretty pathetic. Back then, we were nowhere close to converting a whole human being, of course. But we could convert sections.
They've adapted a nanofabrication plant somewhere in the Eurozone, I think in what used to be Belgium, but I don't know for sure, where they build us living, part-humans. Last week we got a torso, nearly complete. Legs and arms are easy to come by, heads take forever, and of course the brain inside is simple, unwrinkled, and silent. Thankfully, of course. R-11 through R-14 were golden moments - we nearly successfully converted several of those heads right then, and we found we could easily get 100% conversion on the limbs. Forget kidneys, like when we started - nothing beats seeing a leg convert, or the best of all, a head.
Converting the head has been the toughest issue. The basic structure of Equestrian and hominid physiology is close enough that most of conversion, once the cells are altered, is basically rearrangement. The parts are all the same, eerily so. These Equestrians are not alien. Not in the way you would expect from a creature from another universe.
I am robustly convinced now that Celestia and Luna constructed their biosphere based on examinations of ours, and that they based the Equestrian form on a weird blend between primate and equine. I cannot explain what we are seeing any other way. I've tried to get some confirmation of this - I've even sent a message directly to the Equestrian embassy and another to Celestia herself - but there has been no response. I am not alone in my conclusion. It is blatant, I think, when one is dealing with things at this scale.
I have heard a story. It came from Buttercream, one of our resident ambassadors to Lab 12. She told us about Equestrian history. I am not sure she was supposed to tell us what she did - she disappeared for a week after telling us, recalled to the embassy, and seemed shaken when she returned. She has been a great deal less forthcoming since.
According to her, Equestria has only existed as it currently is for a thousand years. We are unsure if this is factual - some cultures, like the ancient Chinese, used to magnify or shrink values by a factor of ten for political reasons when recounting history, so it may have been more like ten thousand years. We didn't press the point, but there were aspects that made us wonder. In any case, at least a thousand years ago, there was no Equestria.
And by no Equestria, I mean literally that there was no physical land, no sky, no world, no place. According to Buttercream, there was a terrible age where reality itself was swirling chaos. The princesses were the playthings of a creature that sounds like an elder god from the tales of H.P. Lovecraft, though a trickster god, rather than an overtly malevolent one. The princesses beat this creature, and were then faced with a cosmos devoid of order.
Now here is where it all feeds into our theories in Lab 12 about the nature of Equestrian biology. Buttercream claimed that the princesses looked into other worlds and drew order from them to make Equestria. My mind instantly leapt to the idea that they must have been peeking at our world, if any of this is true, and built themselves a version of what they saw or perceived.
I seriously think that this may be the only rational explanation for how our nearest neighbor in the multiverse has so very much in common with us. And, despite the different construction of matter, it has almost everything in common with us. It is just too overwhelmingly close to be otherwise. Equestria is a copy of earth. Improved, fixed, artistically reinterpreted, but without any doubt in my mind, cribbed from our universe.
This assumption explains everything we are seeing, the fact conversion is possible at all, and perhaps even why Equestria is here to save our bacon. Maybe the princesses feel they owe us.
And they are saving our bacon. I found out just how close to the brink we are, here on earth. In short, most of the economically accessible energy and manufacturing resources of the planet have been depleted. Oh, there is tons of stuff down there, we just don't have the energy or resources to go get it. And space is out for the same reason - we don't have the resources to begin any real push in that direction. The biosphere is shot. It's far worse than I imagined. If the public knew just how bad things really are, they would panic. It would be chaos. Earth is on life support. If Equestria had not arrived, the best estimates are that humanity would live for possibly two more generations before extinction. Humanity is grandchildren away from the end of the road.
Finding this out has spurred my drive to work harder to make conversion succeed. It is literally our last chance. If we fail this, humanity fails life itself. Nature only has pass-fail grading, so - we need to win.
By the time we got to R-18, we were beginning to sweat. We had reached stagnation. We could mostly convert heads - the secret was to build a great deal of temporary scaffolding and support structures inside the cranial mass. But then things just failed. The nanobots became lost in the complexity, and we couldn't get them to finish the job. Basically, we failed, because the eye problem was too hard, and the neurological integrity issue seemed hopeless. So, in desperation, we decided to beg the ancient unicorns on level three for help.
Three days later we got what we needed, the majority of it woven into the etherial program that lives inside the nanomachines - the machine geists. Here's the interesting part. The grouchy unicorns claimed that the solution had been designed and created by the other princess, princess Luna herself. The way they treated the issue, it was as if they expected us to bow down in humble supplication for this special grace.
I know very little about the other princess. But if she is at all the equal of Celestia, then I think my teammates do not fully grasp what just happened there. Later, I went down to level three on my own. They are creepy, I cannot stress that enough. They are old, the oldest Equestrians any of us have been allowed to see, and quite large and imposing too. They are not little cute unicorns. Some of them have little tufts of hair on their chins, and all of them are shades of white or gray. I begged entry, and they allowed it.
I was not very erudite. I think I annoyed them with my stuttering and rambling, but I tried to put across something of what I have learned about what Celestia and Luna are, what they represent, and that I was grateful for their help - and that above all I understood what a profound thing such direct assistance was. That actually got me a nod of approval from the older female that seems to lead the group. I looked her up, her name translates out to Comet Tail, and she is apparently the head of whatever team in Equestria studies P-Tec. Spells, basically. I guess she is the grand sorcerer or wizard of Equestria, something like that.
That nod made my day. Nobody else has gotten any acknowledgement out of the ancient creatures to my knowledge. I don't think Comet Tail and I will be sharing lunch any century soon, but - basically I felt better after that minor connection.
So with the apparent help of Luna herself, we got past the block we had at R-18 and moved to our great success. The R-20 attempt.
R-20 was our first effort to convert an entire, cohesive body. Truth be told, the body in question was a chimera, built up of separate components from the biofab center essentially woven together. 'Patchwork Bob' was quite a sight when he was delivered. Every limb was a different skin color, and the head lacked teeth. But it was alive, if you can call cells respirating life, and Bob had every organ except the appendix and testes, and he even could breath on his own. It was a true Frankenstein moment.
It took ten ounces of nanofluid pumped through old Patchwork, along with nutrients and support chemicals, but he changed from a human-ish body into a proper earthpony mare. That's the new official name for the ground-types. They walk on soil and deal with agriculture, so the label is 'earthpony'. It's a little confusing, I thought, because it almost sounds like they are Earth ponies, that is to say native terrestrial equines, but I am not in charge of the names here.
The result was a brain-silent, bright pink earthpony with long, flat, bright pink hair. Mane. Tail. We didn't expect the result to be conscious, and a good thing it wasn't too, because we made an error in the routine that handles removing the temporary scaffolding and so the creature died within hours. But it worked. It looked like a native pony, with every component intact and in place. Oh, we whooped and cheered over that, though we all felt sad when the thing finally perished. Not that there was any other better end for it - there wasn't any awareness in it, it was just a mass of cells. Still, it's easy to anthropomorphize things, and we had given the result a name - 'Pink Lady'. We shouldn't have done that, really, that just made everything harder.
We also lost our medical unicorn - I never knew his name - over this. He was brought in to verify that Pink Lady was a complete pony. He started doing whatever it is he does - his horn glows, and little patches of light appear on the body, as if scanning it - and suddenly he just stopped. He walked up to Pink Lady and placed a hoof on its barrel and said some words in his native language. He then announced that he was quit with the project, and that he wanted to go home. He seemed visibly shaken, almost as if he was going to cry.
I talked with him while he was waiting on the old unicorns on level three. They come and go as they please, and they can take others with them. I tried to comfort the stallion - I felt someone, at the very least, should - and asked him what he had said over Pink Lady.
He told me that it was a thing they say when a pony dies. He tried to translate it for me, because I think he could tell that it bothered me too. I admit I kind of got attached to the R-20 attempt because we made the mistake of giving it a name. Big error that. The basic jist was something like "I will run with you, I will run beside you, and if you should stumble, I will wait for you, and together we will find the greenest fields, and eat the greenest grasses, and be together, loved by the sun." I think that was it, as best as I can remember. It made me tear up, and I didn't really know why. He seemed to appreciate that it affected me, and gave me a hug - my first hug from an Equestrian.
And then he went in, because the old unicorns were ready, and the door shut. We were informed in a memo that we will get a new unicorn medic on Monday. Judging from his reaction to the kidneys, I can only guess that Pink Lady had a lot more of that strange 'thickness' he was talking about. Maybe too much.
We still do not know why the result was female. Patchwork Bob was male, the nanofluid should have built a stallion. We have six Equestrian genomes sequenced now, so we have a wide variety, and we have incorporated the unique elements of all six to cover every variation. It should have made a stallion. That said, it was still a success.
I would NOT want to have the current serum used on me, mind you, but we are really advancing at an incredible speed here. Of course, we are getting constant help from the other side, from Equestria, and they have knowledge and powers way beyond us. I am not sure how much of our conversion in R-20, 21, and the latest, R-22, is our technology or Equestrian spell weaving - I cannot think of it otherwise, 'P-TEC' just sounds stupid now - but at least the process shows promise.
R-20 produced a pink mare. We tried with Patchwork Bob-2, 'the Re-Bobbening' as Mayoss called it, and got a purple unicorn mare. It too, lived only a few hours, for the same reason. According to the autopsy, the temporary scaffolding failed to deconstruct. R-21, on Bob-3 resulted in a yellow pegasus mare. Always mares. However, an analysis on sections of R-21's brain finally revealed the problem. The nanobots were struggling to keep the brain alive, but the brain did not have any astrocytes or glial cells. Nobody noticed until R-21. We had no reason to think that was the problem, we trusted the nanofab group.
Astrocytes and glial cells work to keep neurons alive - they remove wastes, clean up excess neurotransmitters, and generally do support and grooming work. Without them, neurons perish, poisoned in their own wastes. The nanomachines were not removing the biomechanical scaffolding, because the artificial vasculature was trying to compensate for the missing astrocytes.
The nanofab guys got a raking over the coals, and the next chimeric body we got had everything intact. Even testes. It was complete, so we called it 'Total Bob'. This became Recombinant-22 in the series.
We inserted tubes and began conversion, late in the evening, almost midnight. Total Bob had a fully loaded brain, scans showed it even had a few wrinkles in it! We started the flow, and conversion began. The limbs became pony legs, the tail extended from the spine without a hitch. So-yeon had added some additional code just hours before Total Bob arrived to correct a problem with cervical fusion, so she was ecstatic that the tail was coming in correctly now. The head went pony smoothly, and we even got correct eyes with no irregularities. But the best part was the scaffolding entirely dissolved and reabsorbed, leaving a perfectly formed, though mindless, pony body. It was another pegasus mare, blue this time, with the most colorful and wild mane we had ever seen. It was quite a sight.
The body lived until the higher-ups decided to terminate it for dissection, and I personally think it could have been kept alive indefinitely, not that anyone would want to do such a thing, of course - but the result was solid. This conversion worked. It was indistinguishable from a native Equestrian, it breathed on its own, and it did not self-terminate. R-22, our golden moment. This was it. This was the attempt that has finally shown that project Bucephalus is going to work. It did work. Though, again, we ended up with a mare, brain dead, but breathing.
After this, I got a strange bit of mail. It was from General Ridgway, my mysterious supporter. It simply said 'Keep it up. Knew you were the one.'
I have no idea what the hell Ridgway is thinking. I helped a very small amount with a few tiny issues. I'm nothing here. Insignificant. He's been helpful - I would never have seen the truth about Celestia, never have seen her raise the sun without his help - but there is a creepy aspect that I just can't define here.
Chawla thinks we are really close. I agree. But we will have to wait for the results of our parallel team to see which approach is better. There are five teams doing the same thing we are, 'Bob' bodies and all. Each has a slightly different take on things, but from what I hear, we are in the lead.
Who knows, maybe my silly solution to the mitochondria problem really did give us the edge. That would be one hell of a thing, if so.
Paige carried the plate with the last of the pepper loaf to the compost bin and carefully dumped the scraps in. The vegetable loaf had become a favorite over the past three weeks, and the three tended to make it on Wednesdays. The recipe came from a neighbor down the hall, Mrs. Creamsoda (don't ask - Newfoals and their names) who seemed to have a decent grasp of interesting vegetarian dishes. The loaf used oats and other grains as a base, with many varieties of sweet peppers and succulents to provide a rich flavor. Even Paige liked it, though secretly she craved a nice slab of replicated meat protein after. Late at night, sometimes she would fry up an egg or three as compensation, and sometimes Pet and Inks would join her. Ponies liked their eggs.
"Hey! I have an idea!" Petrichor had just brought the stack of bowls to the sink, Inkwell was levitating and washing them. Having a unicorn in the family had turned out to be very useful, and Inkwell, for her part, enjoyed dishwashing for the first time in her life. Levitating anything was intrinsically fun, because magic itself was fun, and being able to stack bowls in the air, then tilt them to create hovering fountains, was basically beyond cool.
"Inks! Careful!" Paige had almost slipped - some of the impromptu floating fountain had splashed on the floor.
"Sorry!" Inkwell lowered the bowls and reached out with her glowing field and grabbed the mop from the corner. The mop raced out and weaved between Petrichor and Paige and began wiping the floor. Several little blobs of light held it as it worked, they were Inkwell's magic 'hands'. "Wait..."
Inkwell moved the mop to the side, and lay it against the wall. Paige and Petrichor stepped back, curious as to what Inkwell was up to.
The blobs of light vanished from the mop handle, and reappeared on the floor as one large puddle of light, covering the spill of wash water. The glowing field pulled together into a hollow ball, filled now with water from the floor. Inkwell lifted the small sphere of water to the sink, and let it hover over the drain.
Paige moved forward to see. On the way she checked the floor with a finger and noted it dry. Pet moved in too, all three clustered around the sink.
"That's kinda cool, Inkwell." Pet, at least seemed impressed.
"Is that a new thing you learned or?" Paige marveled at the floating, glowing ball of dirty water.
"No, I just... I just thought 'why can't I pick up water like anything else', right? I mean, water is a thing, and magic doesn't just have to sit on the outside, it can go inside things too. I reckoned that if I put my glow into the water, I could lift it all up and just leave the floor dry, and it worked!" Inkwell felt a thrill of awe and wonder at what she had just done. She was holding a ball of water in the air, with her mind. The ball of water spun lazily, the tiny particles in it drifting as it did so. It was mesmerizing.
"Maybe you should... let it go now?" There was no doubt that floating balls of water were unusual, but the blush had worn off the rose fairly quickly. In a world of Newfoals and Equestria approaching, magic was an everyday thing. Paige often marveled at how easily her human mind could adapt to such wonders.
"Sorry! It was just kinda neat, you know?" Inkwell let her field collapse, the glow departing her horn, and the ball of water splattered into the sink and slipped down the drain. "I'll get the dishes done now. But it was neat, wasn't it?"
"I thought it was really neat, Inkwell!" Pet gave the ivory unicorn a smooch and went to take the mop back.
Paige kissed Inkwell on her poll, careful not to get an eyeful of horn, and scratched the unicorn's ear. "I'm sorry, if I spoiled the moment. It's just that I like to get things cleaned up so I don't have to fuss, you know?" Paige tended to have a bit of an efficiency bug, sometimes, and she liked to get work done quickly, rather than to linger at a job. Petrichor had once suggested to Inkwell that this was a new development, that had happened since Pet's conversion. Pet's theory was that Paige was always a little on edge, waiting for her own turn to go pony.
When the dishes were washed, and dried and put away, and the table had been cleaned (Pet was an eager eater, and there were always little bits to clean up) Petrichor finally got to describe her idea for the evening. "OK, OK, why don't we play a board game? Seriously? It would be fun! I know we've got Carcassone in there, and Catan, too. They're a little old and beat up, I admit, but they are great games from way back, and now that we've got a unicorn in the family, little pieces won't be a problem, right?"
Inkwell was game, and Paige, while underwhelmed, was willing to give it a go. Just as Pet ran for the storage closet, a pounding sounded at the front door.
"Visitors!" Petrichor was always excited by company. "Maybe they'll want to play too!"
Pet had the door open in an instant, but the pony behind it was new.
"Hey, can I come in, it's urgent." The brown stallion was unusually pudgy, and his darker brown mane seemed unkempt. He wore saddlebags, but the smell of them was odd - they didn't smell like kelp leather. "I have a gift for ya, too." He had a strange look in his eyes, oddly flat, yet overly friendly.
The stallion waddled in, a little unsure on his hooves. He kicked the door shut and smiled broadly at the three mares. "Ah... nice digs. Comfy. I like that. Not ostentatious. Lived in, that warm, homey feel."
Petrichor backed up, and stood next to Inkwell. "What the...?"
"Can... we help you, mister..." Paige was keenly aware of the old aluminum baseball bat she had stashed behind the couch. She moved casually towards it. There was something off about this pony, and she didn't like the way he had invited himself in, and closed the door. That wasn't how ponies acted. Something was wrong.
"Actually, I'm here to help you. You're Paige, aren't ya? They told me the human in the group would be named Paige. Howya, doin' there Paige? I don't know what you got behind that sofa, but I assure you, it isn't necessary. I'm not here to cause trouble, I just need to be discrete. That's why the bargin' in and all." The brown pony sat down on the floor, and offered innocent eyes and a gentle, if crooked, smile.
"Sorry." Paige felt embarrassed. "Old habit. Before Equestria... you know how it is." There was no question the brown stallion was a Newfoal. Fairly new, for a Newfoal too, from the way he moved. He had not yet settled into his pony body. "... You seem to know my name. Who are you?"
The brown stallion shifted awkwardly on the floor, trying to free his tail. First he leaned one way, and then another. Finally he had to partially stand up on all fours again, before lifting his tail up and sitting down. This caused a yelp of pain as his tail was bent backward. "God friggin'..." Eventually he managed to sit mostly on one flank, his tail curving around the other.
"Oh! Excuse my manners. Please let me introduce myself." The plump, unkempt stallion grinned at Paige. "You've been trying, apparently for some time now, or so I'm told, to get in touch with the PER - The Ponification for the Earth's Renewal. Not so easy to do, is it, in this town, and you probably know why - the place is crawling with those lousy-ass HLF freaks, am I right?" The stallion nodded at Inkwell and Petrichor, and shifted his clearly uncomfortable posterior once again. "Well, it so happens that I just got assigned to bring the PER goodness to you. That's why I didn't want anyone seeing me scoot in here back there, capiche? I certainly don't want any trouble from those HLF bastards, and I'm sure you don't neither. So, my name is, ah, Cloudypuff Moonypants, right? and I've got something..."
Petrichor practically gagged. "Cloudy... puff..." She tried to hold back laughter "M-Mooneypants?"
"Yeah, that's my name. Friends call me, ah... Cloudy. Or Moony. Take your pick. You got a problem with my name?"
"No. No, not at all." Petrichor felt ashamed, in a sort of vague, unsure way. "I... it's just... it's a very colorful name, that's all!"
"Yeah, well, I'm a colorful guy." Cloudypuff stared at Petrichor for a moment, then continued. "So, what I am trying to say is that we got a call - at the PER headquarters, see - that somebody needed some potion. And guess what?" Cloudypuff Moonypants dug about with his muzzle inside his left saddlebag. "...goddamn fuckin' sons a whore lack 'a hands..." Petrichor looked at Paige, who shrugged, nodded at the couch - indicating the availability of the baseball bat - and then motioned towards Inkwell who seemed to be studying the strange stallion intently.
"HRERE!" Cloudypuff said around the black carbofiber container he held in his mouth. It was instantly recognizable. It was a standard emergency ponification kit, like the one that had been used to save Inkwell's life. The very same kind that Blackmesh medics carried, or that the Taikonauts on the International Friendship Station possessed.
Cloudypuff Mooneypants spat the impact-proof package down on the floor. "Courtesy of the Ponification for the Earth's Restoration, one dose of primo-quality pony juice. For you, Paige, and for the rest of your fine family here. You can all be together now, happy ponies romping in ponyland. Don't say the PER isn't there for you when you need us! It may take a while, but... " Mooneypants winked at them "... we get there in the end. Viva la P-E-R, am I right? Hey? Right?"
"Uh... right." Petrichor looked at Paige, then leaned her head down to take the sealed, emergency ponification kit.
Instantly a heavy, brown hoof came down on the small, rounded black case with a clomp. "Of course... it wasn't easy getting this to you, what with the HLF everywhere, constantly buggering our operations, trying to destroy us, and generally causing all manner of troubles. I'm sure you hate those guys as much as we do, and so am I right in thinking you would want to help us, if you could? You know, for all the help and support we provide, doin' Celestia's work for her and all?" The smile on Cloudypuff's muzzle might be considered sweet, if it didn't seem like the poor stallion was unsure how to smile in the first place.
Paige did not seem surprised in the least. "OK, I've seen this game before. What is it you want in exchange for the potion, Cloudy-ass? Credits? We don't got any. Bits? OK, that we can do, we got bits - Pet! Get the family purse." Paige waved her hand at the bedroom and Petrichor started off in that direction.
"Wait, wait, WAIT! - you got me all wrong!" Mooneypants looked personally devastated, insulted to the core. "I don't want your bits, I don't want any credits, I'm not here to take anything that belongs to you at all. Scout's honor."
Paige was not impressed. "The Scouts were disbanded during the Collapse, Moonpants. So what is it that you do want from us? It isn't going to be tail, I can promise you that right..."
"JESUS! Come on lady... Christ on a biscuit... man... just... oh, that isn't..." Cloudypuff looked positively ill. "... no, no, no... I mean... " the stallion did his best to put on a contrite face "... I'm sure you are all lovely as can be, and it is not my intent to intimate otherwise, but I am NOT interested in any... favors... not of that nature anyway." Cloudypuff swallowed and grimaced.
"The PER did a raid on the Worldgovernment archives, perhaps you heard?" Moonypants looked, hopefully, from one face to the next "No? Well, it was a hell of a great raid. We got a big pile of goods on the elite. Seems a lot of them have been working with the HLF. We intend to do something about that. And more. But there was a problem. Our group was intercepted by those bastard-ass HLF sons-a-bitches and well, they up and took our stuff."
Inkwell gave a worried glance at Paige.
"So, like I said, all that great stuff was taken, only, get this, the HLF is a bunch of dumb-fuckers, right? They drop off our package of goodies at the wrong warehouse. And that's where you found it, isn't it, miss Inkwell. Or should I say, 'Gwen'."
Inkwell jerked at the sound of her old name. Paige walked directly to the couch and reached behind it, bringing out a shining silver bat with one smooth motion. Petrichor moved to block and protect Paige with her body, as if they had practiced the move. "You want to be backing up there, mister moon-ass?" Paige did not have a happy, pony-like expression on her human face. She wore a hard, streetwise expression that brooked no foolishness at all.
"Hold on, what, you'd hit a defenseless little pony? Jesus, Paige, I'm shocked at you. What am I gonna do here, nuzzle you to death? Flick my ears at you until you croak? What? I'm a goddamn pony. Christ!" Cloudypuff looked utterly horrified and personally offended.
"You don't act or talk like any pony I've ever met, mister moonpants, and I don't have a good feeling about your sorry pony ass at all. How about you explain how you know about Inkwell, and I keep 'Lil Slugger' here from getting any ideas, capishe?" Paige stood like an avenging angel, her silver sword ready for smiting.
"Man, if I knew how hostile the reception would be..." Cloudypuff shook his head. "We've been desperately trying to get our package back, that's all there is to it! I swear on my mother's grave - god rest her soul - that I mean the lovely miss Inkwell no harm, nor you, nor your little pegasus here. I mean no harm to any of youse. None. I've brought you potion, Paige, think about that. Potion. You could be a pony tonight, and on your way, as a family, to Equestria tomorrow. I'll even help you get there, if you want. Or not. I don't care. You can stay here if you want.
"I'm not going to give you away to anyone, why would I even care? I'm a pony, you're all ponies, or will be, soon enough, and all I ask, the only thing I am asking is that you give me one little item. Potion, right here, sealed by the Worldgov, and it could be yours. The item isn't yours, you know that. And what - you want it to fall into the stinking human hands of the HLF? No, nobody wants that, right? And the PER - all we want is to expose the HLF bastards among the elite. It's in there, all the evidence, it's a little hidden, but we know how to get it out. Hell, when we're done, you can even have the notebook back. Seriously. I'll bring it back in three days. We don't even need to keep it. Just three days.
"So whaddya say, huh?" The fat brown stallion shrugged with his forehooves, waving them like hands. He lost his balance doing that and fell forward slightly, but caught himself. Immediately he slammed one hoof back down on the potion kit. "Three days, ladies, three days, the HLF get what's coming to them, and we'll even give the notebook back to you, if you even want it. Support your local PER, right?"
Petrichor and Inkwell glared at Cloudypuff. Paige had a look on her face like she had just smelled something unpleasant. She stepped forward, brandishing the bat.
"I don't have a clue what the hell you are, puffy-ass, but you are NOT a pony. That kit looks legit, though, so you can let it be while you get your fat ass out of my home." Paige made another step forward, 'Lil Slugger' gleaming in the light.
"OK, I'll level with ya - you are makin' a big mistake here... a big mistake. I'm not alone here, not on HLF turf! You think I'd come here alone? You don't want to mess with the PER, they don't kid around..." Cloudypuff Moonypants was on all fours, backing toward the door. The potion kit had been left on the floor, Paige kicked it to Inkwell and motioned at Petrichor who galloped to open the door.
"Now I know you're lying. I haven't seen a pony lie before, mister poopy-pants." Paige used 'Lil Slugger' to jab at Cloudypuff, forcing him through the door. "You aren't PER. If you weren't a pony, I'd say you smell like HLF. There are rumors, Poopypants, of gene-tampered ponies, and I'm thinking that's what you are. Because you..." WHAM! 'Lil Slugger' slammed against the doorframe, making Cloudypuff leap and fall back into the hall. "...are not...." WHAM! Cloudypuff scrambled to his hooves and began to run "... a PONY!"
The fat brown stallion galloped down the hall, headed toward the stairs. Doors opened and pony heads popped out to see what the ruckus was. "What's going on? What's happening?" It was Perriwinkle, the sweet, but easily spooked pegasus from the diagonal apartment on the right.
Paige stood in the hall, Lil Slugger in hand, Pet and Inkwell peeking around the corner of their doorway. She slowly turned to face Perriwinkle, who cowered in her door at the sight of a human holding a metal bat. "Change, my dear, and it seems not a moment too soon."
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For those of you who are wondering, close those tabs to Know Your Meme. The potion names (EDIT) IN THIS CHAPTER (/EDIT) don't have any significance besides sequence. There's no hidden messages in the 'Rules of the Internet'. Or at least there doesn't seem to be, anyhow.
I'm suprised by the lack of backup for Ralph. If this was his plan it certainly wasn't great. I wouldn't touch that particular potion with a ten foot pole though.
1968853
Well, 63 is obviously a reference to that, and I think 22 can be made to fit as well. "Copy and paste ruins everything."
1968853
Well, that's not quite true.
When I wrote A Twist in the Tail, I jokingly created potion version R63 which turned a male human into a female pony. Writing that into the mythos, the original potion - the beta version that finally worked - had one minor drawback of always creating a mare whenever it converted anybody. Its characteristics are that instead of tasting of fake grape, it tastes of cherries and is bright red instead of purple.
I knew exactly what I was doing, and that was precisely why it's called version R63.
In terms of this story, it's called Recombinant 63 because it's at least partially about that first, working batch of potion. It's a whole lot darker than my original silly notion.
1968897 1968924 ...I fixed my comment to be more context-specific, you ankle-biters!
You know, people in Real Life get annoyed with how detailed and specific I get when giving instructions and directions. I wondered where I picked up that habit, because it seems to ebb and fade with time. Now I think I understand what's causing it: talking to people on the Internet.
Oh, dear. Ralph's first job looks like a bust. Hmmm......it's a marvel he survived as long as he did, come to think of it. A 'pony' like him would certainly attract inconvenient attention
owing to his off-putting behavior. Hmmm...I wonder if these three have help getting away from him.
Don't drink the potion, Paige! It'll only sustain your evil strife within you after conversion!
Also, Cloudypuff Mooneypants is the pony the HLF converted to be ponified with sustained evil strife, which will also be an aftermath for Paige (either by force or Paige's temptation) after they finally get their hands on the book.
Just had a scary thought, if a pony's telekinesis became sufficiently advanced, they could pull off some Carrie-esque telekinesis techniques such as sabotaging gas lines or messing with someones vital fluids/internal organs. Not that a ponies mind would be capable of such violence or anything.
"bright pink earthpony with long, flat, bright pink hair."
"yellow pegasus mare."
"purple unicorn mare."
"another pegasus mare, blue this time, with the most colorful and wild mane we had ever seen."
"We have six Equestrian genomes sequenced now,"
I see what you did there....
>mfw this updates
)
i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/6974940928/h78216B98/
(in case it's not obvious, I'm bouncy like Twilight
Anywho, another great chapter, definitely curious to see the fallout from this, and what further role our good friend Ralph has to play
I like Senor Cloudyass, he's fun.
This was like a checklist of How Not to Perform an Exchange, which is in itself suspicious. Ralph is supposedly top-shelf talent for the HLF, a fixer, a guy you dial after you've gone through the yellow pages. I'm calling this a deliberate move on his part, the benefits of which are yet to be revealed. It was just too boneheaded not to be a feint. Tipping off Inkwell to the fact that an unknown party knows both who she is and where she lives is a huge deal, not to mention the free dose of Potion, so in giving it up it must buy him and the HLF something significant. I mean, Ralph could have just reported back to the HLF, who then could have just kicked the door in and turned the place over, or slipped in quiet-like during the night, but he didn't. I'm quite interested to see why not, because I can only see this making it more difficult for the HLF in the long run.
Inkwell and company are now proper spooked and should bolt to Equestria with the notebook. Ralph did such a great job of coming off as untrustworthy that they probably wouldn't want to touch the potion he gave them. Even if the HLF anticipates this, I'm not seeing how it helps them. A stationary target is easier than a moving target, especially when you have its exact location.
"Mr. Reich, now that we have our pony sleeper agent which cost us a lot of money and effort, do you think we should train him in how to act like a pony so he blends in? Remind him not to swear, make sure he know how to sit right and handle the thing he's got to give them, maybe just tell him to be polite?"
"Nah, I think we'll be good."
Oh cool, I really love these backstory parts. Hopefully Buttercream didn't get in too much trouble for letting the narrator in on that, at least not enough to deter other ponies from filling in the gaps. I really hope this all gets explored further, maybe in some kind of Chatoverse equivalent of "The Silmarillion."
And ohhh dang, there was "someone home" in Pink Lady after all, wasn't there? That must have been a rather impoverished existence... Let's hope s/he gets another go-around. There didn't seem to be an "original" Bob to be granted a soul, though, so maybe it was more like the unicorn was witnessing a miscarriage or something. I wonder: Was its ensoulment a function of it being a complete body, with a brain, or was it giving it a "searchable" name that was the real mistake, beyond just making attachment easier? Magic always seems to have a stick up its butt about names.
Man, how 'bout that Ralph, huh? I thought his apparent recklessness in having no backup worked in terms of showing his burning resentment and shame at having been ponified, and how that fed into disdain and contempt for regular ponies and allied humans. He's supposed to be a professional, sure, and he made a mistake by tipping them off, but those are exactly the kinds of turmoil that cloud the judgement of professionals so that they make mistakes - I doubt he's at his best right now, either: how perfectly 100% effective could that agony-erasing memory chemical really be, right? Plus the HLF still has that massive sensor network, a kind of "backup" on its own, and now Ralph has confirmed that it really is Gwen and she really does have the notebook, so it's not as big a failure for them as it seems on the surface. Maybe it's a ruse to make the trio themselves desperate and reckless.
Now that they're mitochondrialess, I wonder what'll be powering all the newfoals now instead of ATP... I guess whatever it is, it's just made in a distributed manner throughout all the cells, and I certainly wouldn't have to be gulping down ribose anymore to make enough of it. ...Probably something like whatever the plants over there use instead of chloroplasts ("green dye #7 - Applejack's special blend"). Actually - and maybe this could be fodder for speculation in a future chapter or story - our having cells in the first place is actually pretty contingent. Not only because they're more likely to appear first, and are modular to allow for evolutionary tinkering, but because we need their tiny volume/surface area ratios to allow water and chemicals to properly diffuse everywhere. But if water and chemicals themselves and the physics of osmosis were different, those barriers could perhaps be dispensed with, resulting in the undifferentiated, elemental "flesh and blood" of our ancient myths and intuitions - The same ones that make it look like the sun and moon rise over a flat earth
It's kind of interesting that ponies in this setting must have that "blueprint" genome biologists spitball about sometimes, starting from an image and working backwards, since otherwise they'd end up just as full of certain types of the endogenous viruses mentioned mentioned in this chapter as anything else, because Von Neumann. They probably have something a little more direct than mRNA, though, so without that to be another wheel-within-a-wheel of replicators and "farm" the genome to copy-paste its own codons everywhere, it's probably a lot easier to keep things simple, and they wouldn't have any use for introns as superstructure or raw material for new genes, either...
But more importantly, it dovetails with the core idea of "magic" in general, and of a magical environment, in that thoughts and images are fundamental, and corresponding patterns of matter and energy are contingent on them, arranging themselves like a halftime marching band to spell out whatever you describe. I've never read "The Golden Bough" or any of its successors, so it's probably a lot more sophisticated than that, but it seems like that's the defining idea. So some mentality is conceiving of a specific new pony, and magic steps in as a kind of word processor or Photoshop, converting the imagined final product into the metaphorical 1s and 0s of a genome. Even if this mentality did that all in its head, it would still have to have a mental dictionary or model for the knowledge of how to properly translate one to the other, and what is software but a model for translating human intentions into hardware operations? ...Or technology but for translating them into patterns of matter and energy, or magic but for doing the same without "showing its work"?
Or maybe not.
Anyway, I'm loving this so far, and can't wait for more Notebook and more Inkwell.
why is it that the "successful ponifications of bob" all seem like.. oh certain main charicters of a pony show?
1970109
Capital!
Is that related to sickle cell anemia?
Do you mean "...was done with the project," ?
And recombinant 22... and they've got to get to 63.
Oh and I thought the stuff you brought up with Dr. Pastern was bad. This is going to turn body horror up to 11 isn't it? 
... Man... I forgot, while Ralph is astoundingly ruthless... he's also AMAZINGLY stupid. I do wish Paige had cracked his skull though. It's fascinating to see her go so full-bore on Ralph, knowing that he ISN'T what he looks like.
Am I correct in that Paige is actually INCREDIBLY insulted that someone like Ralph exists, without Celestia's kindness within him?
1971062
We can only hope!
1971117
In the scene where Ralph is dragged kicking and (literally) screaming through the transformation process, I do like to imagine that Celestia was playing a tug-of-war of sorts with the HLF technicians over Ralph's soul (or ensoulment, seeing as how it's the Chatoverse). If Celestia had won, Ralph would never have woken up. The HLF would have killed him, if the process itself didn't. I wonder how that conversion dream would've gone.
"Hello, Ralph. I am Celestia, and this is my sister Luna. Now, I've got some good news, and some bad news..."
1972493
I would PAY to see that... Reich would suffice.
No. Ralph was brilliant, and I feel shamed to admit that the straw-man HUMANZ BADZZORX character was...
He provoked Paige into a violent act against a pony, to make local PER to force conversion so that he has the ability to pull his schtick from the 800 Year Promise.
And the unicorns appr-
Somewhere out there in the wide world of Equestria...
Our ancestors probably had many organisms for forming compound cells:
A large prokaryots (we know not whether it was a bacterium or an archæon) probably lived by phagocytosis probably had a mutation preventing it from digesting. The resultant compound cells where more fit and prospered, but almost certainly consumed huge numbers of bacteria and archæa going into diminishing returns of fitness before a mutation disabled, the now maladaptive phocytosis. The result probably was a compound cell with scores, maybe even hundreds of different types of prokaryots in it. A little streamlinging probably reduced it to 4 components:
* The HostCell.
* The Nucleus which probably started as one of the engulfed prokaryot into which the host DNA, and the DNA of many engulfed prokaryots migrated, thus protecting the DNA inside a membrane-bound organelle.
* Chloroplasts
* Mitochondria
Thus, about 2*10^9 years ago, Eukaryota came to be. Our ancestors, the common ancestors of all Metazoans and Fungi, lost the chloroplasts about 10^9 years ago.
The R-20s are deformed Mane 6. It seems likely that the Mane 6 donated the equivalent of DNA, which is probably why the first attempts generated only mares.
I understand why the medical unicorn quit and do not blame him. The Pink Lady must have been extremely disturbing. Princess Luna probably has nightmares to quiet now.
1968853 I don't get it. What memes?
"And space is out for the same reason - we don't have the resources to begin any real push in that direction."
Gee, it sure would be nice if you'd gone out to space back when you could afford it, wouldn't it?
Seriously, it's 2014; we were supposed to have moon colonies by now.
"It was a true Frankenstein moment."
I wonder, are there any AU fanfictions where Adam wasn't shunned, maybe even where Victor did build him a mate? There are surely some interesting futures extending from such points of diversion.
"It made me tear up"
It made my eyes more moist, which is more than most things.
Interesting stuff in general in the journal.
…Interesting…
"Ponification for the Earth's Restoration"
…Isn't it "Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth"?
Such… astonishing acting, this. What are you up to…
…Well. That… happened. Oh dear.
I found an old typo and thought I'd report it to you.
According to Buttercreme,
In all other instances I've read so far, you spelled it Buttercream.
6143213
Thank you! FIXED. Wow, there are always bugs in the code, huh?
It's a little strange because the second I read the name periwinkle my mind IMMEDIATELY went to doctor who
10770082
Do you mean 'Perpugilliam Brown', played by Nicola Bryant, often called 'Peri'?
I am a big Dr. Who nerd. Such a fucking nerd. Seriously. Total nerd. I love the Doctor.
So, you're probably right. My unconscious - even it likes Dr. Who!
No. Oh hell no. Buck it all, I saw that motherbucker die and he still won't go away!
Huzzah for Paige! She even uses my weapon of choice.