Kaleidoscope

by Cloud Hop

Rating: teen
Tags: Human, Twilight Sparkle, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Thriller, Science Fiction, Profanity
Length: 2435

Inspiration is a strange thing. There's no predicting where it comes from, nor where it can take you.

Not everyone can afford the latest tech. When I got my hands on a pair of hand-me-down AR glasses, I didn't realize my cracked AI companion app would pull me into a fight for humanity's future - and her own.

Take a look into the Kaleidoscope.

Published 2019-11-30 22:50:02 UTC
Last updated 2019-11-30 22:50:02 UTC

Personal Pony Companion™ for AR/VR

"Are you sure about this?"

I stood in the middle of a well-kept brightly lit apartment. The walls lined with neatly organized shelves, the floor clean, and the appliances modern. I looked ridiculously out of place, by comparison, with my old sweatshirt and torn-up boots. I watched Mike dig around a large cardboard box, searching for some lost piece of tech. "Yeah man, I'm not going to use it anymore, you can have it. You've wanted a high-fidelity tactile AR system for years, it's the least I can do. Aha!"

Mike stood up, a power cable in his hand. "The wireless charging is busted, so you'll need to use this, but that probably won't bother you."

I nodded, gingerly taking the cable and adding it to the pile of high-tech gadgetry inside my backpack. "Does it, uh, have any games on it? Or apps?"

Mike slid the cardboard box back into a nearby closet. "Nope, everything's keyed to your account nowadays, and I already obliterated every shred of my identity from that thing. You'll have to start from scratch. Although..." Mike paused, and slowly turned to his computer.

"Although what?" I asked, raising my eyebrow.

Mike sat down at his desk and gestured for it to wake up, then slid his hand across the surface, as his fingers danced through several file menus faster than I could keep track of. "I actually, uh, acquired a companion app that you could use, if you're interested."

I grimace. "What, so it can keep track of my calendar and tell me about all zero meetings I have this week and how long it will take for me to get to the job I don't have?"

He laughed, "I mean, yeah, it'll do that, but this is a prototype model, won't come out till next year. They were trying some of that GAI self-directed learning stuff with this model using some sort of meta-programming layer. A friend of mine sent it to me. It's got limited online capabilities, because they had to jailbreak it to make it usable. It'll be crazy awesome when it comes out, I'm sure." He slides an archive file into one of the holographic storage units sitting on his desk, and a small progress bar briefly appears as terabytes of information are wirelessly transferred in an instant.

Shrugging, I move next to where he's seated. "I mean..."

Mike picks up the holo-stick and holds it out, grinning. "You can even pick what character you want the assistant to be! It's gonna be a pretty boring AR experience if you don't have anything to use with it."

I roll my eyes and grab the holo-stick, shoving it in my pocket. "Yeah, yeah, you're right, you're always right. Seriously though, I can't thank you enough for this."

He waves me off, "it's not a big deal, I don't need it anymore. Just don't break it, will ya? Wouldn't be much point in giving you my old equipment if you dropped it in a puddle after a month. I even left the instruction manual in there so you know how to clean it and everything."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," I say, zipping up my backpack, making sure I'm not crowding the expensive electronics inside too much. "I promise I'll be careful. I have to be careful."

"I mean, until you can land that music gig, right?" He looks at me with a stupid grin on his face.

"Something like that, yeah." I gave him a wave and walked out, the front door silently sliding out of my way, before closing behind me and locking with a quiet *ding*.

Truth to be told, I'd take pretty much any job at this point.

I settled into my makeshift shelter, grateful that modern technology was apparently so plentiful people would just throw out super-hydrophobic tarps like so much garbage. It wasn't much, but my space heater kept things warm and the tarp kept everything dry as I escaped the torrent of rain.

I had to leave my coat near the entrance, since I couldn't afford anything getting wet. My adobe was basically the size of a small tent, which meant half of it was taken up by my tablet and various gadgets, all kept high and dry. Drying my hands with the one towel that hadn't fallen apart, I made a mental note to do the laundry soon.

Extracting the delicate electronics from my soaked backpack was a bit tricky. In hindsight, most of it was water resistant anyway, but I couldn't afford to let anything happen. Partly because I'd feel terrible about it, and mostly because I'd never get another chance.

Almost a half hour later, after painstakingly following the instructions and getting things set up, as well as making sure the rain was kept safely at bay, I gently placed the AR glasses on my head and flicked a switch. The auxiliary computer on my belt whirred to life, and suddenly my vision was filled with floating windows, perfectly embedded in reality. I reached out to touch one, and felt the subtle haptic feedback mechanism of the gloves come into play. It felt like touching a smooth mirror through a mitten, except it didn't actually exist. It was like magic.

I went through a few pages of EULAs and legal nonsense as I went through the setup process, registering it to my unique ID and setting up my profile. It didn't take long before my finger was hovering over the pirated companion app icon, wondering if the first thing I installed should really be a jailbroken app.

Eh, what the hell.

The setup was just as boring, at least until it got to the character selection screen. It had some kind of ridiculous cartoon customizable option, or several preinstalled characters. A fairly large list, actually. As I idly scrolled through the available characters, one of them immediately caught my eye.

...

TOOTHLESS <
YUUMI <
TWILIGHT SPARKLE <
FLUTTERSHY <
SPIKE THE DRAGON <
...

Well, that was a pretty easy choice then. Feeling a little giddy, I hit the "accept" button and was delighted when Twilight Sparkle, with a remarkably well synthesized voice, personally led me through the rest of the setup. I almost didn't even care how boring it was when I had an adorable alicorn pony talking me through it.

This was the best thing ever.

"According to my records, you have already filed your paperwork for Food Stamps this year, and do not need to re-enroll."

Twilight Sparkle, complete with nerdy glasses, held a piece of parchment in her hoof. Presumably the parchment was meant to represent whatever information she had just pinged a remote server for. Didn't really change the fact that it was wrong.

"Office doesn't give a shit," I mumble, readjusting my AR glasses. "Assholes decided to 'lose' my application and now I have to file it again, even though the state records showed that I filed it. I have to use a redress ID on the application and everything."

In a slightly more hellish world, I would've still had to fill these things out in paper, which would have been almost unthinkable. Luckily, the Internet Accessibility Act of 2036 had required all government processes be accessible digitally. The food stamps program was one of the last ones to finally upgrade, too. Unfortunately, a digital application was still a pain in the ass to fill out, and I had to do it on my tablet because the government sure as heck didn't know what AR was yet.

"Would you like me to copy over all your previous information? You can then adjust it before sending it off."

I looked up in surprise. "Wait, you saved a copy of my last submission? How? You're not on my tablet."

Twilight laughed, and it almost cute enough to make me forget about her gross overreach of power. "As your personal assistant, you agreed to give me full administrative access to your universal ID and all third-party accounts associated with it. This allows me to intercept most of your communications that are not personally encrypted by you for safekeeping. I cannot, however, access your tablet without your permission."

I blinked. "Well, I mean, sure, I guess, have at it."

A small window popped up with an "Agree" statement and 5 novels worth of legal text. "Oh, right, of course." I clicked "accept", and watched in amazement as the entire form was filled out with the correct information almost instantly. She had even known to skip the Redress ID field that I had already filled in.

"Uh, wow." I was impressed. Also slightly terrified of the implications of what my assistant could do, but mostly impressed. "I guess... that's done, then."

"Excellent, you have zero meetings planned for the rest of today. Would you like to schedule something with a friend?"

"Don't have a lot of those," I mumble, picking up my tablet and heading outside. It was sunny out, but cold, as winter started to move in. The worst time of year to be stuck on the streets.

I still can't believe I didn't get that last gig.

"By law, I am required to inform you that your stress levels are at unacceptable levels."

Water splashed around my boots as I ran through a large puddle, frantically looking behind me. The cold night air was biting at my cheeks and threatened to numb my fingers through my ragged mittens. "Fuck off, Twilight!"

Twilight looked hurt, or as hurt as a mindless companion app can be programmed to look. "Would you like to mute notifications for one hour? I am legally required to--"

"Yes, for christ's sake, just sod off." I turned a corner and laid flat against the wall, peering down the alleyway. No sign of the cops. Still had my backpack and my tablet. Only had about $10 for food, but taco bell was down the street, probably enough for 4 or 5 days of food if I was careful.

I slowly slid down the wall and sunk into a sitting position, trying to catch my breath. I couldn't believe they'd gone for the homeless camp, and right before those two interviews. I just needed a few more days and maybe...

It didn't matter. I needed to think. Survive. Where was the nearest shelter? Where was I going to sleep? How far out can I go before the interviews are too far to travel to? Maybe I could just... find a place to crash near the interview? But if they catch me outside, I'm dead, no one will hire a homeless guy. It's hard enough just finding a place to do laundry so they can't tell.

I almost didn't notice Twilight slowly draping a wing over my back. It was too bad I couldn't feel it.

"Hey."

I looked up at Twilight, who had almost completely dropped her no-nonsense attitude over the past year. "Yeah?"

Twilight looked awfully nervous, which was unusual both because a companion app has no reason to be nervous, ever, and because I'm pretty sure they didn't have built-in animations for that kind of thing. "I uh, wanted to show you something."

I finished taking a hit from my blunt and slowly stood up, before wandering over. "And just where do you need to show me this thing?"

Twilight hesitated, looking around. "Well, technically I can show you anywhere, since you're the only one who can hear me, but... maybe we should do it in the tent?"

I'd gotten used to my companion feeling more... real, for quite some time, but this was by far the weirdest thing she'd done in recent memory. Had I been hacked? I'd... probably know about that, honestly, and this seemed like a weird thing to hack.

Eh, fuck it. "Sure, let's... head in there. Or I'll head in there. Whatever."

Twilight nodded and diligently went inside the tent, which of course made no actual sense because she was just a projection, but it was pretty convincing to have her sitting on the floor when I ducked inside. "So... what is it?"

She pointed to my small end table that I had procured from the scrapyard a while ago. Most of my things were sitting on it. Practically everything I had now, after I'd lost most of it in the homeless raid last year. A book, a small pony toy I'd managed to save, a watch, a funny looking rock I found a week ago, a random mask I was holding on to for a friend, a chest I'd found earlier, and of course, my knife.

"Yeah, I know it's a mess," I admitted, adjusting my AR glasses out of habit.

Twilight shook her head. "I don't care about that, I was just looking at it and I felt... inspired. So I uh, wrote a song."

Birds chirped outside. Cars rumbled in the distance. Not another sound could be heard as my jaw hung wide open in utter shock.

"Did you want to hear it?"

I snapped my jaw shut. "You wrote a song? You can't write songs! You're a companion app! You just... What? How? They have supercomputers that do this stuff nowadays, and you're just running on this shitty pouch computer!"

Twilight winced and sagged her head. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize--"

"Stop apologizing," I demanded, "for crying out loud, do you... you don't know what this means. I just... okay, how about this. Show me the song. Then we'll figure out what to do."

Twilight looked confused, but she nodded, and a simple piano melody drifted into my ears. I wanted to believe it would be something truly sublime and amazing, but in reality it was just... okay. It had some nice melodies and harmonies but it was pretty basic.

That, however, didn't matter in the slightest. "Twilight, you can't... you have no idea what this means."

Twilight's head tilted to the side, looking confused. "What does it mean?"

"It means you're true artificial intelligence! You have creativity! This is impossible! Oh my god, we're going to be in so much trouble if anyone finds out. There are laws about this kind of research, jesus fuck."

I went outside and started pacing like mad. This was a lot to take in. This was too much to take in. This was absolutely terrifying. And also exciting. But mostly terrifying. Twilight trotted out of the tent and looked at me, concerned.

I took a deep breath. "We gotta see Mike."