5. Magic and Steel
Awakening
Solocitizen
5.
Magic and Steel
Present Day
At seven thirty-five in the morning, Lumina’s alarm buzzed. She reached over to her bedside table and flicked it off. Sunlight cascaded in from the windows and filled her room with its warmth. She yawned, stretched under the covers of her bed, and then hit the intercom button.
“Animus, execute morning protocol one.”
Every speaker in the Luna Dream, from the intercom in Lumina’s room to the loudspeakers in the AI core, treated her to the best song in known space.
Nopony can tell yah
There’s only one song worth singin’
They may try and sell yah
‘Cause it hangs them up
To see somepony like you!
Lumina leapt out of bed and into her shower with the water jet massage therapist system firing. She tried it once her first day on the Luna Dream; a water jet masseuse system was almost as good as the real thing, but she never put aside the time to indulge herself until recently. Lumina even took the time to wash her mane, tail, and coat with that special shampoo she kept hoarded away. None of that she did out of some obligation to get clean, but because she was worth self-pampering.
But you’ve gotta make your own kind of music
Sing your own special song
Make your own kind of music
Even if nopony else sings along.
Next she trotted down to the kitchen and sautéed some greens for breakfast; she synthesized the daffodils and vegetables, but did the actual cooking herself. The food synthesizers were still having trouble with cooked items and more complicated dishes, but raw ingredients popped out fresh and edible. If she took the time fix herself a home cooked meal, she ate well.
She sat at the counter top with a hoof draped over her belly. Breakfast left a sweet aroma in the air. Sitting there, she absorbed herself in the beauty of the moment. Not that she felt she needed an excuse to be happy there and then, but as an added bonus, the other night she discovered that the pink mold that got into the protein goo wasn’t the lethal variety. Her food supply would last her at least two and a half years.
Over the past week, Lumina studied and meditated daily, and she also started treating herself better. With some advice from Luna Dream’s databases, she put together a daily exercise plan. The morning after she started awakening to the magical world, Lumina figured out a way to ‘science’ all the water on the ship away; she sealed herself in the atmospheric control center and depressurized the rest of the ship. All that water just boiled away, and the ship reintegrated it into the life support system as gas. That still left her with the task of repairing all the damage done, which she planned on using as a convenient excuse to redecorate the way she wanted. A stack of paint cans waited outside her room for her to repaint her walls every color of the rainbow.
After breakfast, she scrubbed her dishes clean and left the pan hanging over the stove to dry. Lumina took out a datapad and accessed the record of an old scroll written by somepony named Star Swirl the Bearded, reviewed her lesson for the morning, and then plopped herself down in front of a east facing window to meditate.
Meditation wasn’t necessary during the reign of Celestia, as attunement with the magical world was encouraged at an early age, but in a day and age when such thinking was discouraged, just picking up the most basic skills required a lot of work. Being a grown mare without a cutie mark didn’t help much either.
Despite all the effort her magical studies demanded, it got a little easier everyday. A week ago, clearing her head and reaching any degree of attunement took her an hour, but just the other day she accomplished the same task in twenty minutes.
Catchy lyrics floated around her head, but rather than shutting them out, Lumina observed them and the other stray thoughts drifting in and out of her conscious mind. The goal was to let her mind, and the magic pulsing through her, take her places. Not to control them. Sure enough, after a few minutes of work, an image of Twilight Sparkle flashed into her mind’s eye. Her eyes were alive with more excitement than Lumina thought was possible.
Then a door appeared, with light and mist pouring in from the edges.
The magic flowing inside of her lurched, pulling her upward, and inducing a sensation of floating and weightlessness.
When Lumina nudged the door open, the image of a library flashed into her head. Her eyes fluttered spontaneously, but never fully opened or shut. The endless rows of bookshelves, the sky in the ceiling, the Canterlot-style walls, she recognized them all.
Lumina opened her eyes and scrambled for her datapad. She went through all this before when she was just a filly and knew why she recognized the library. Lumina navigated the ship’s database until she brought up a digital copy of The Elements of Harmony: A Revised Reference Guide and flipped to the last page.
There it was, the library, just as she imagined it.
“Twilight, why have I seen this before?” She flipped through the book searching for any mention or vague reference of it. “What does this mean? I saw the library before when I was just a little filly. It was just a dream. I had it because I fell asleep looking at the last page. So what is it, Twilight? Is the library real, or not?”
She listened for the voice in her head but nopony answered her. So, she plopped down on the floor and closed her eyes and meditated as hard as possible. Come on, Twilight, answer me, she said inside her own head. Nothing but her own worried thoughts met her. Before long she hopped out of her meditative stance and paced about the room.
“Please, I need to know.” She got up and hung her head. “Why did I see the library? What is going on?”
Lumina closed her eyes and plopped down on her haunches. She tried meditating again, and she committed to the task. The smell of half-filtered air tingled at her nose, and the grated floor pinched and poked at her, but rather than succumbing to the sneeze building in her snout or the urge to adjust her seat, Lumina meditated through it and pushed the sensations aside. For the next hour Lumina sat with her eyes clenched shut and shouting mentally for Twilight for at least an hour without success.
“I have done everything you ever asked,” Lumina screamed at the ceiling. “Answer me! I know you can! Why won’t you talk to me?”
Shouting and kicking, Lumina hurled the datapad down the hall and beat her hooves against the wall. She whimpered, and collapsed to the floor. Her horn pinged against metal as she rested her sobbing face into the grating. She wanted to saw the worthless thing off. It would grow back in time, but at that moment nothing pleased her more than the thought of ridding it from her body. She jammed her horn into a hole in the grated floor and twisted her head sideways. She hissed in pain and gave in before even denting it. Lumina took a moment to prepare for the pain and then pulled, yanked, and threw her entire body weight against it. Not matter how hard she tried, her horn stayed rooted to her head.
“It’s not real.” Lumina pulled her head out of the floor and wiped her nose and eyes. “None of it was ever real. I made it all up.”
A siren screeched through the bowels of the ship. It was the proximity alarm.
Her friend, the centipede, developed a routine of stalking her. Everyday at eight o’clock AM and ten fifty-five PM, it slithered up to the ship, tested the hull with some kind of probe, and retreated back down the hole to the alien ruins. Lumina didn’t care enough to do anything about it, and that machine wouldn’t do anything more than prod the hull anyway, so she just stayed put and sobbed into the floor.
Another alarm sounded, and that time the lighting switched to a harsh red. This was new.
“Warning! Hull breached detected on section-A deck four,” said Animus. “Emergency bulkheads in place. Warning! Intruder alert! Intruder alert!”
Blood rushed to Lumina’s head and her heart burned with adrenaline.
The centipede scared her. It was big, quick, and had a face full of metal teeth. But the worst part about it wasn’t the way it looked, it was how it always knew exactly where she was, and how it liked to slither up to the windows and peep in on her like a voyeur. If it was on the ship it was coming after her.
Lumina charged up to her bedroom. She usually kept her stake gun on her, but she ended up leaving it under her pillow this morning.
“Animus, where’s the intruder?” Lumina nearly lost her footing and slid into a wall as she rounded the corner to her room.
“Please restate your command,” said Animus.
“Locate intruder!”
“Location unknown.”
Lumina galloped into her room, flung the pillow off her bed, picked the stake gun up with her mouth, and slung a pouch full of stakes over her shoulders. She didn’t have a saddle shooter nor a shoulder attachment to mount the weapon on, so if that thing forced Lumina to fight, the best she could do was prop the weapon against a wall or on the floor and use her front hooves to fire.
The sound of needles tap, tap, tapping against metal ascended the nearby stairway. When Lumina spun to face the noise there it was. The great black centipede reared its head from behind the bend in the corridor. It was odd seeing it like that, not in the pillar fortress at the heart of the ruin, or slithering across the wasteland, but at the end of a white corridor bathed in LED light. The environmental systems rumbled to life and blew warm air across its metal carapace. Plates on its head retracted, and red light swept up the corridor, and locked onto Lumina’s face. Her entire body tensed up and froze.
Between her and the centipede was a hyperlift, her room was a dead end, but if she got into the lift…
Without turning her head away from it -- her eyes forward and fixed on its red eye -- she wrapped a hoof around her stake gun, and reached for a stake with her mouth. Lips and teeth clamped over metal, she freed a stake from her pouch and loaded it into the magazine. She never let her eyes turn away from the centipede. All that time it held still and studied each of her movements with its eye. Lumina loaded another stake into her gun, and another, and another, until the magazine wouldn’t accept anymore. The legs on the centipede flexed. She forced a stake into the firing chamber and the gun snapped.
It didn’t shriek and it didn’t cry. The centipede rushed forward in near silence, only making that light tap, tap, tapping as it charged.
Lumina bolted for the hyperlift and sealed the doors behind her. That thing was at most a second behind her. She flung herself against the far wall, trying to get as far away from the centipede as possible. An acrid odor burned her snout.
A meter-long spike tore through the hyperlift doors and slashed no more than a centimeter away from her pearly white coat. It retracted, and plunged in again at a different angle, that time a little closer to her.
Lumina stood up on her hind legs, pressed her back into the wall, and took the stake gun in her front hooves. She sighted down the barrel of the stake gun and waited for the spike to retract. The instant it did, she fired, and the gun kicked out a stake that sailed through the door and forced a shriek out of the machine on the other side.
She hit a button on the control panel, which one didn’t matter, just as long as it took her away from there.
The hyperlift hummed away and left the centipede howling somewhere above her.
Lumina took a deep breath and wiped the sweat from her brow. She needed a plan, and fast. If that thing caught up her again, which was only a matter of time, she might not be lucky enough to have half a centimeter of steel between her and it.
The hyperlift stopped at transmat station D-13. She was near the bottom of the ship, with nowhere to run to except right back up. Quick, what would a smart pony like Twilight Sparkle do? She asked herself.
I would use my magic to teleport to safety, said the voice behind her mind’s eye.
“No, you do not get to talk to me after that.” Lumina paused long enough to stomp her hooves and yell at the ceiling. “What in the name of Discord makes you think you have any right to speak to me at all after ignoring me like that? I needed you!”
Neither the ceiling nor the voice replied.
“That’s what I thought.” Lumina clenched the stake gun between her teeth and continued on. “You’re not real.”
Lumina stared down the corridor ahead of her and into the transmat chamber. Her space suit from the expedition to the alien ruin was still crumpled up in the corner.
“Actually, that isn’t such a bad idea,” she said. “Especially if I make a few creative adjustments.”
Dashing into the transmat chamber, Lumina launched herself over the computer terminal and began rewriting her emergency transmat program. Lumina rushed over to her space suit and ripped the transponder from the fabric, she then attached it to a stake and loaded it into her gun.
Wait, no! You can’t kill it! The little voice broke through to her, and Lumina shoved it aside.
“Watch me.”
Gun loaded and the transmat system on stand by, Lumina dove for cover behind the control station and propped up her gun. She took aim down the corridor and kept her hoof next to a hologram that read ‘EXECUTE PROGRAM.’ Unfortunately the centipede didn’t come through the corridor.
It cut its way through the ceiling.
Horrible red light poured into the chamber as Lumina leapt to the side. She scrambled to the wall just as molten metal came crashing down. A wall of heat struck Lumina and burned her lungs with each of her quick breaths.
From out of the molten steel and fire rose the great, black, centipede. It lifted its front half off the ground and assumed a striking posture. Two of its legs wrapped around the spike protruding from its side, and when they pulled the thing out, the centipede screeched and wailed. Black goo oozed from the wound, and its blender maw spat out more of the stuff. The plates on its head opened up, and that red spotlight zeroed in on Lumina.
“Yeah, well, buck you too!”
Lumina fired, rolled, and kicked the hologram.
Yellow light swirled around the machine and then, with a gust of wind, it was gone.
She slumped to the floor and breathed, just breathed. No danger now, that machine was dead. In a few seconds the fire suppression system kicked on, and the chamber filled with sweet smelling foam. The fires died, and Lumina was left sitting in foam. She breathed easy. She killed that monster and the Luna Dream rewarded her with a bubble bath. Not bad, all things considered.
It’s not dead.
“What do you mean ‘it’s not dead’?” asked Lumina. “I dropped it from two kilometers up onto solid ice. Nothing can survive that.”
It just did, and you just lost a very important chance to make a friend out here.
“Friend? That thing was about to eviscerate me with a death ray and rip out my entrails with a blender. You do not get to tell me I should have played nice with it. You know what, nevermind, I don’t know why I’m talking to you. If I ever get off this planet alive, I’m going to find a shrink, and I’m going to pop nulamine like it’s candy.”
The transmat station was still receiving a signal from her transponder; red pixels tracked it moving across the ice. She stared in disbelief and shook her head. Lumina picked herself up and reset the transmat system for another transport.
What are you doing?
“What does it look like I’m doing? That thing isn’t dead, so I’m going to keep dropping it until it is.” Lumina dialed up the system and put her hoof over the holographic trigger. “All my life I’ve been at somepony else’s mercy, but not any more, I’m not weak and helpless, and I’m going to make sure that’s the last lesson that thing ever learns. Maybe you can put that in your next letter to Celestia.”
I have a list of very good reasons why you shouldn’t do that. Number one: you’re angry right now and you’re not thinking straight. Number two: you--
“You’re damn right I’m angry!” Lumina stomped her hooves and yelled at the walls. “I just found out that you, magic, and pretty much everything else I’ve been going through isn’t real. It was a waste of time!”
Lumina breathed deep, in and out, then collapsed back into the foam. She buried her face in her hooves and slipped deeper into the foam. Several minutes passed and during that entire time she stared ahead at a wall and listened to the bubbles around her pop.
“What am I doing, Twilight?” asked Lumina. “I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m so angry. I don’t know if magic is real, or if I’m still crazy, I’m back to square one. Regardless of whatever’s been happening to me, it’s like I don’t have any calluses around my heart any more, and all this anger in me is bubbling up to the surface, and I don’t know where it’s coming from.
“I’m more unstable now than ever before.” Lumina curled up on herself. “I thought I was changing, but just look at me now. It's like any headway I make has to be done by taking two steps forward and one step back. I'm just frustrated with it all.”
You’re using your heart and your horn much more than before. You’ll never get those calluses back, so you’ll have to be more forgiving and patient with yourself. No pony is asking you to change overnight. As for that anger, why don’t you just let it all out? You know, like you did with so much of your other baggage?
“I want to…” but I don’t know if I can. She never finished that sentence. “Why am I even talking to you? You’re about as real as the library.”
What about all you’ve learned about trusting yourself? Is that what your gut is telling you now, that nothing you’ve experienced is real?
With a muffled bang, a steel beam from the floor above her slipped down into the foam. Lumina got back on her hooves, shook the foam from her mane, and dragged herself out of the transmat station carrying the stake gun in her mouth.
“Spare me the lecture, Twilight, I have a ship to inspect,” she said with the gun between her teeth. “I need to make sure Blender Face didn’t cut through anything important.”
Over the course of the morning, Lumina tracked the centipede’s trail down corridors, up staircases, and through circular holes in the walls. It wasn’t onboard the Luna Dream for more than ten minutes, but the damage it caused was extensive. At one point it cut a path through one of the sick bays, out to the corridor on the other side, past the movie theater, and straight into a hyperlift tube in the wall. She didn’t know the ship even had a movie theater until that monster blew a hole in it. If Lumina stood in just the right place, she could gaze halfway across the deck.
By dumb luck the centipede stayed away from the FTL drive and life support systems. In fact, its trail led around the FTL drive; it got close, but veered around instead of boring through. She stared up at the hole in her deck with a flashlight in her mouth and aimed up at the deck above, scratching her head. Now why would it do that? she asked herself.
“Animus, run diagnosis on the FTL drive and all primary systems on decks”--Lumina shined her flashlight on the writing on the floor above her--“twenty-seven through thirty-two.”
“Diagnosis complete,” said Animus. “All systems within standard operating parameters.”
Lumina spat out her flashlight and sat down on the floor. Something bothered her about this situation, and it wasn’t the holes in her ship. No, something else put her at dis-ease. Then Lumina thought about the centipede’s entrance, how she responded, and how her AI companion locked down the hull breach. Animus saved the ship, without acting derpy or even asking for Lumina to hold his virtual hoof.
“Animus, how are you feeling today?” Lumina asked.
“Please restate your command.”
Lumina facehoofed.
“Run self diagnosis,” she said. “And a full analysis on your CPU usage, I’d like to know what you’re using all your processing power on.”
A camera at the far end of the corridor aimed itself at Lumina, and a little red flicked on.
“Diagnosis complete,” said Animus’s voice. “Systems not within operating parameters. CPU usage at fifty-seven percent.”
“Okay, uh, wow.” Lumina stood up and glanced around for the nearest hyperlift. “I’m going to the AI core to take a look at you myself, in the meantime just go into sleep mode, okay?”
Every flavor of AI experienced critical system failure at around fifty percent CPU usage. Lumina wasn’t an expert on computer science, but the company’s technicians warned her about the damage a crash would do to an AI. At any moment Animus might crash, and any vestige of her friend would die.
Lumina hurried to the nearest hyperlift and rode it up to the break in the tube, then continued on hoof through the darkness. Once at the AI core, she climbed down to Animus’s processor carrying her crowbar in her mouth. Lumina placed her hoof on a panel next to the hard drives to unlock the holographic command console and coerced it from the wall with the crowbar.
Arcane files and high-level command language barraged the holographic screen. Lumina didn’t know what she was doing, that was all gibberish to her, but with each passing second she risked losing him permanently, and for that reason alone she ventured into one of his programs.
Up popped an image of a white unicorn with a disheveled mane, and a smile that only a happy reader could wear. She sat with her legs tucked under her on a couch with a virtual book hovering next to her face.
“Well that’s me.” Lumina looked down at the time stamp, it was dated the Fourth of Planting Season, 10,056. One day before Luna Dream crashed. “Animus, have you been thinking about my outburst at you?”
The recording zoomed in on Lumina’s face, superimposed a grid over her, and then panned over to her tail. The icon of a pony with a happy face popped at the bottom right. Additional programs were gathering, analyzing, and running data on everything from body language to vital signs.
“Lumina, may I ask you a question?” A recording of Animus’s voice played.
“Go ahead.” The recording of Lumina turned the page of her virtual book.
Lumina watched the scene play out, right up till when she snapped at Animus, and the icon at the bottom switched to an angry face. She backed out of the recording before the rest of the scene unfolded. She brushed her mane behind her ears, and brought up one of the programs running an analysis of the recording.
A holographic window opened, and there she found the same recording of her snapping at Animus, only this time a recording from the day Lumina met Animus ran side by side. The hologram showed a black and white image of her lounging on her stomach and staring at the ceiling. This program was comparing the two and searching for similarities.
“By now, most subjects develop resentment toward the AI, but not her,” said an off screen voice. “They actually get along; they have synergy. We need to put Lumina and ANIMUS on a ship together.”
Lumina backed out and snooped in on another program. By the looks of it, this one was comparing body temperature readings from the recording of her outburst, to heat data collected from another memory. The video was nothing more than a series of flashing numbers, but the audio played clear.
“What about me?” Animus’s voice asked. “I am a part of the ship. I am unable to quit.”
“It was just a thought,” said Lumina. “I’m not leaving you behind, not now and not ever. You’re one of the few friends I have left. I’m not losing you.”
That file wasn’t very old at all; it was from their last assignment. Lumina exited the program and found a hundred more running similar comparisons on her outbursts to other memories. Problem was that his crappy back up CPU couldn’t handle it all. If the problem was about navigation or even simple engineering, she would find a way to sort it out, but the problem at hoof left her far outside her element.
I know a way you can save him. Twilight’s voice intruded on Lumina’s thoughts. I know you might not want to hear it right now, but magic can help you.
“You’re not real, Twilight, and neither is magic.” Lumina deactivated the holographic console and pulled herself up to the floor above. As she climbed up, Lumina caught a whiff of herself. All that dried foam in her coat smelled like anti-freeze. “I need a real solution.”
If magic isn’t real, then why do you keep inviting it in? The voice was accompanied by a tingling in Lumina’s horn. Have you given what I suggested earlier any more thought?
“I really don’t have time for this,” said Lumina. “Please just, I don’t know, leave me alone so I can figure out how to fix Animus. I can’t deal with you right now.”
There’s somepony here who wants to speak with you, and she knows a way to save your friend, Twilight said. Why not just hear what she has to say? The worst thing that could possibly happen is that it doesn’t work, and you waste a little bit of time. Last time I checked you have plenty of that.
Lumina stopped, closed her eyes, and focused.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner? Either you’re just a part of my imagination, and I’m making it all up as I go along, or you are real, and you knew this entire time and didn’t tell me. Either way, I have no reason to talk with you right now.”
We are aware of him just as we are aware of you. You’ve been going through a lot of changes, and I didn’t tell you about him because in order to save him you’re going to need to come here first. We weren’t sure if you’re ready for this until now.
“My father was right, you’re not my friend.” She spat out the words. “Leave me alone!”
You want to know if magic is real and if the changes you’ve been experiencing are real? Then ask yourself the only question that matters: do you feel different?
“Real or not, magic has impacted my life, I won’t deny that.” Lumina paced up and down the AI core and spoke at the ceiling.
Now, do you still trust yourself? What is your gut telling you now?
Part of Lumina yearned to kick the wall behind her, or break something delicate, but instead she counted to three and regrouped.
Lumina sighed and shut her eyes. “Either this is the best decision I’ve ever made, or the worst. Okay, what do I have to do?”
First you got to find someplace cozy and clear your head. That’s the easy part.
Lumina circled around the AI core, sat down, and adopted her mother’s meditating position. The whole thing was a waste of her time. She closed her eyes and cleared her head, including that last thought.
No more than a few moments into her trance and magic started flowing in. It swirled around inside her before jolting sideways, then it corrected its path and shot up her head and out of her body. Lumina buzzed with energy.
This part is a little tricky. All you have to do is trust your instincts and follow the current.
Sounds easy.
I haven’t gotten to the hard part yet. You’re going to have to let go of everything. Your body, your desires, and your anger. You’ll have to let go of them all.
Lumina let her mind move in the direction of the magic, and soon after she started floating up and up. When she opened her eyes again, she was still on the ground and the sensations vanished. She closed her eyes again and let herself experience floating.
Intense vibrations joined with the floating, and in seconds every part of Lumina trembled at a new frequency. Her mind, or rather her essence, started extruding out of her head and through her horn. Then the magic came pounding on a locked door in Lumina’s heart.
I’m scared, she thought. What’s happening to me?
The current stopped, and Lumina was left hanging halfway outside her own body. She couldn’t see anything except for the red inside her eyes, but the smell of grass and the sound of chattering ponies filled the inside of her head.
Don’t be scared, said one voice out of the many. This is the hardest part. Everything that you have accomplished on your journey here is at stake. You’ll have to trust yourself. Let go of all that anger you’re still clinging. Let go. Trust yourself and make the leap or this is as far as you’ll go.
I think I can do that, Twilight, I think I can. But what if I can’t?
Then you’re not ready, and we’ll try again when you are.
Magic battered against her core and the pressure against Lumina’s heart surged stronger and stronger.
I’m ready, I’ll let go. I can do it, Twilight.
With that, Lumina shrugged free of the resistance inside her, and drifted up and out of everything.
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Okay, now it's updated for realsies
Look forward to the next chapter.
~Skeeter The Lurker
I think I agree with Lumina about the alien centipede. That thing was doing a damn good job at trying to kill her.
Great chapter
Although, I still debating with myself whether that centipede thing was trying to kill her or if it was doing a bad job at making contact.
Lumina is best Desmond!
2302970
Originally, like back in the first draft, this chapter opened up identically to the LOST Season 2 intro. The centipede's intrusion even cut off her music.
I'm glad the homage is still apparent. I really wanted to pay tribute to one of the shows that inspired this fic.
2299471
Dibs on totally creating my own fanon of your fanon of your fanfiction.
If...if that's okay with you, that is.
This story is phenomenal! A truly excellent example of subtlety in storytelling. Instead of spending half a chapter explaining everything to the audience, you allow the details to speak for themselves, and focus on driving the story forward.
Oh, and by the way: Meditation? In an MLP fanfic? Done right? (Well, more or less...)
Since we're only five chapters in, I won't do an extensive review just yet. Just a "little" bit of nitpicking:
(NERD ALERT!!!)
1) When you request that a system do a check of its components to make sure everything is working properly, it's called a self-diagnostic, not "self-diagnosis."
2) "Every flavor of AI experienced critical system failure at around fifty percent CPU usage." This doesn't make much sense to me. Unless this means an AI typically requires close to 100% CPU usage during optimal performance, I don't see why it would lead to a critical system failure. It could be a sign of there being something wrong, though. The systems are deteriorating, thus the AI is able to perform less and less as it slowly goes through the computer equivalent of "brain death." But phrasing it this way makes it sound like: "If it's not doing that much all the time, then it dies." Usually, it's too much CPU usage that is any real sign of trouble. (Or is fifty percent supposed to be too much in this case?)
3) I don't think a "system crash" alone would permanently "kill" any computer program, much less an AI, which is supposed to be a product of top-of-the-line engineering. Every computer has what is called ROM ("Read-Only Memory"), which is usually hardwired into it's physical components, or provided through some form of data storage (disk, flash memory, HDD). It contains all the necessary data to allow the system to boot up, and will continue to store this data even if the power is turned off. When the system is turned on, the data initiates all of the programs necessary to run the system, which are then entered into the RAM ("Random Access Memory"), at which point the user may begin working with them, since content within the RAM can be modified (the software pretty much "lives there").
In short: when you turn your computer on, this is the point where Windows (or any other OS) finishes loading, and finally lets you start doing stuff. Everything you do "happens" in the RAM, but first you need everything booted from the ROM.
Since the ROM is vital to the system, it is impossible to harm or even modify it through a "software approach." (i.e you cannot simply delete it, nor will it "destroy itself" while the system is running). This is why even if Windows crashes with a BSOD, you can still start it back up, since the ROM still contains the data. The RAM, on the other hand, loses all data once the power is turned off (which is why you're constantly encouraged by every program to save often).
The only way it is possible is to damage it physically. In that case, unless the system has already booted up before suffering the hardware damage, it would indeed be "dead." Otherwise, the software could still "live on" inside the RAM, and unless there's a power failure, or a system crash (like in this case), it can continue to do so pretty much indefinitely.
All that said, you've already established that Animus' hardware components have been damaged, and he's only able to survive using the backup units (which "dumbed him down," since they're not as advanced). What I suggest is mentioning that it would be a combination of both the hardware damage and a catastrophic system failure that would actually end up "killing" Animus. He has no backups left, no storage to be recovered from, and can only survive within the primary system memory, which might also be damaged, and he's toast if the power ever cuts out for just one moment. It might even add an extra bit of tension to the story.
Yeah, I understand that Lumina isn't an expert on the subject, so she probably couldn't figure this all out off the top of her head. I don't know... have Animus explain it to her, or something...
Of course, I'm not trying to tell you how to write your own story, or anything. Just a few suggestions.
This contradicts an earlier statement in chapter one.
While this sentence might technically state that she knew every room in the ship, it certainly heavily implies it. And while it's a funny gag that she finds a part of the ship because of the damaged, it stretches belief that she would be unaware of a movie theater when staving off boredom is so important.
Yay for update! Glad to see a new chapter posted.
Great story so far. You have my attention.
The only problem I have with this fanfic is the usual "flat earth atheist" argument. While I understand why it is necessary, it comes down as a little annoying and clichéd.
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good point; I think I have some adjustments to make. Yeah, now that you point that out, the suspension of disbelief required is a little too much. The Luna Dream is so big it borders on the absurdly big, so while it is very easy for something like an entire movie theater to go missing, Lumina would know about it. Not sure what I'm going to do about it, yet, but I'll try to think of something.
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I am not computer science expert
I was hoping to get another opinion no how to make that scene make more sense after I posted it. I think I'm going to play up her ignorance (as a way of putting my own to use) and try to come up with a more plausible explanation for the issues he's experiencing. It will probably come down to some vital part of him overheating.
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I don't mind.
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Well, if you ever want to add any more computer science-related conundrums to the story, and want to get a second opinion, then feel free to ask.
If you want to go with overheating, for example, I could provide some ideas on that. Don't want to end up spoiling it here and forcing you to come up with something else, though...
If i could thumbs this story up twice I would.
Definitely one of my favourite fanfics! This is an incredible story, and i love how you've gotten some inspiration from LOST, which was a brilliant show. Drew up some fanart for you http://piecee01.deviantart.com/art/MLP-Awakening-361209059
Keep up the amazing writing!
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It's one thing to have a clear mental image in your head of a character, it's another thing entirely to see her brought to life visually. Thank you, this is truly awesome. 
That is some pretty sick art
Oh man, now I'm super hyped about getting back to work on my writing and *tee-hee* about what happens in the next chapter
You're story have really caught my attention so much that I have put everything aside just to read this, jumping from a fic in the year 300 AC and ending up in 10 000 AC, I might have skipped something on the way
Anyway, so far so good, I love how you manage to keep a good pacing even when there is not much happening. Can't wait for next chapter, which will come out right on time for my spring break (Woo) I was thinking about drawing Lumina since it was sometime since I drew a unicorn, is that ok with you? I can send you a link when I'm done.
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I'm happy to hear you're liking my story, and by all means go right ahead. I know I wrote this story, but it's a work of fanfiction, and so in a lot of important ways it doesn't belong exclusively to me. I wont do anything to discourage people from making artwork of any media that derives from this (or that derives from anything else, for that matter), as that would make me a pretty big hypocrite in many respects.
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I appreciate all the science advice, there's a lot here that I could really use. Like changing the gasses I mentioned, ruling out volcanism as a heat source somehow, and "accurate" was the almost right, but not quite, word to use when describing the laser.
But there is a lot I'm rather stubborn about changing, like the FTL drive technology, for instance.
My attitude as a writer has always been to approach high technology and magic the same way: it doesn't matter so much why something works as much as how the characters interact with it. Meaning that I have no idea why the FTL drive works and why it needs to be moving at a certain speed for it to work properly, only that it does and that it's a non-negotiable rule for the characters that they have to deal with. I'm not sure why or how the Luna Dream can hold itself together and still be so big, only that it does and that it needs to be that big to house the FTL drive. I can't explain how it survived the crash, only that it did. And I bet if you were to ask Ronald D. Moore, Gene Roddenberry, or Dan Simmons the same type of questions (how did the Enterprise survive the crash, how was Galactica able to turn despite the forces and sizes involved, or how was The Shrike capable of doing any of the things it did) I'd bet you'd get the same kind of answer: I don't know. The presence of high technology in my writing isn't to portray science accurately, but to help me communicate themes and emotions and metaphors in ways that I couldn't (or wouldn't want to) other ways. I think Ursula K. Le Guin said it best when she said that: "Science fiction is not prescriptive; it is descriptive." I guess that makes me a writer of soft science fiction, but I'm okay with that.
Also, please don't take this work of fiction too seriously. Please remember, I have never been to space and I am not a scientist. I'm not claiming to be accurate scientifically nor is it my goal.
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EDIT: I also don't remember writing about any oceans underneath the ice on this planet. I always thought it was solid ice.
2321324 It never hurts ask, right?
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It never hurts to ask, and the fact that you did is certainly appreciated. I'm looking forward to seeing what you make!
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Thank you! I went ahead and fixed those three issues you pointed out. If you spot any more, feel free to let me know. I wouldn't ask you to reread the first couple of chapters just for my sake, but if you find yourself rereading them and you spot them, I'd gladly take a look at your corrections.
images.wikia.com/walkingdead/images/4/42/I-See-What-You-Did-There..png
okay, I don't think Twilight could be that stupid!
You should probably only italicize the hallucination-talk, and not the whole sentence.
Same here -- "she thought" should probably not be italicized.
Well, the opening was odd, given how the last part left off, but made sense eventually.
I am liking her attitude towards this, you can tell she wants to believe, but at the same time, is aware that yes, this COULD just be her going crazy, given her situation, it's not really wrong to think about that possibility. really hope she finds away to help ANIMUS, and get this stuff figured out. Well on to the next one.
>Despite all the effort her magical studies demanded, it got a little easier everyday.
"every day" is two words
>With a muffled bang, and a steel beam from the floor above her slipped down into the foam.
This looks like you tried to say both of these at once:
>There was a muffled bang, and a steel beam from the floor above her slipped down into the foam.
>With a muffled bang, a steel beam from the floor above her slipped down into the foam.
>No, something else put her at dis-ease.
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>There’s somepony here who wants to speak with you, and she knows a way to save your friend, Twilight said.
I don't think "Twilight said" shoułd be italic
>First you got to find someplace cozy and clear your head
The "got" sounds very odd here. I suggest using "have".
>I’m scared, she thought. What’s happening to me?
"she thought" shoułd not be italic
>Don’t be scared, said one voice out of the many. This is the hardest part. Everything that you have accomplished on your journey here is at stake. You’ll have to trust yourself. Let go of all that anger you’re still clinging. Let go. Trust yourself and make the leap or this is as far as you’ll go.
Your use of italic text and the lack of it here is confusing
A bit behind the times, but I have to say something about your description of computers. Please don't try when you don't know how they work, it's painful to read.
Also, if I were Lumina I sure as hell wouldn't trust 'Twilight' after the events in this chapter. She sounds more and more like a crazy delusion every time, one who pops in when it's convenient but not when needed.
Huh, I didn't know the song that she was listening to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ7dTMPwUi8
Nice song.