1 - Meatside
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Cybercloud

1 - Meatside

The first thing that always comes back to me is the pain.

It starts in my wingjoints, just embers, but that turns into a fire real quick. Flames race right out to the tips of my primaries and my wing shoulders almost faster than I can think, and my world is pain.

The first sense to come back is smell - mildew and water and unwashed pony and smoke and lightning and daisies - followed closely by the feel of the floor under me and the cable running to my neck. I don't notice, really, because shit fuck my wings are on fire.

The pain starts clawing up my neck and down my withers to my back and through my chest and I don't notice when the humming of electronics and the murmur of the street comes back, only that one moment there is nothing but the crackling of the fire and the next there is more.

I'm generally starting to writhe on the floor at this point. I'm only half conscious when the sight of my tiny apartment comes back, because the pain is down by back and up my forelegs and almost in my head and make it stop.

The more artificial bits start coming back then, and my feed pops up in the corner of my eyes with a dozen advertisements I can't focus enough to delete. My subvocal mic records [soundless screaming] - smartass parser - and my ears start flying through my playlists and my eye backlights start strobing and a dozen other things I barely ever think about are back but I don't care because finally, finally, my medic aug kicks in and starts pumping me full of pain meds. I surrender to the merciful embrace of medical grade local anesthetic, and the plug in my neck pops out.

Reboot complete. Elapsed time, 1.72 seconds. Welcome back to meatside.

The first thing I do when I unjack, always, no matter if I'm tired off my ass or in the middle of a job or Flutters wants to talk or anything, is to check my rig. Without my rig, I'm dead in the water, just another face in the slums. With eight four-gigacycle processors, the beefiest crystal-silicon graphics card I could steal, four different wireless ports, a data cable as wide my ankle, and a gold-palladium interface jack, the Total Experience 3000 HCFI Unit is a marvel of modern technology.

It's also a piece of shit, but hey, she's all I've got, and she's never let me down when it really matters. I call her Tank.

Anyway, wires are all tight and less than half are stripped, power's still powering, the fan is cooling the board well enough, and the chip's still got a good five hundred hours in it before it burns out again. Nopony's ever died from dropping a jump anyway, probably. That done, I turn and survey my domain.

A bare LED cluster hangs from the ceiling, and a shade made out of a thin cloth is hung around it. The walls were probably a color once, a couple decades or so ago, but what little can be seen under the water stains and mildew spots is a greyish sort of non-color. There are no windows. Every inch of walls have shelves, anyway, floor to ceiling, mostly a tangled mass of spare electronics and cans, although among them are an aborted attempt at botany, a simply framed photo of two fillies, a charred piece of wood in the corner, and probably several animal remains. The walls form a box about four by five lengths, and a thin curtain in the corner covers a bathroom barely big enough to turn around in. Tank sits on a tarp in the middle of the room to keep it off the partially organic carpet, and my hooves wish they had the same. A pile of blankets on a rubber cot marks where Flutters and I sleep, a cluttered table marks where we eat, and a tiny fridge marks where we keep anything we don't want the mold to make diplomatic passes at. A more conventional computer is in sleep mode in the corner, displaying the time (3:18 PM) in big bold numbers on a black screen.

Satisfied, I grab the rest of the tarp Tank is resting on and throw it over her, and turn her off. I unplug her for good measure. It's amazing the things that can be done remotely with even an 'unpowered' machine. I should know, I invented a few.

Flutters isn't here, probably out with whatsername, Meadowforth or something, so I take the opportunity to assess the condition of Fluttershy's stash.

Getting a bit low. Good thing I just finished a job, or she might run out and start withdrawing again, and that's never a good thing.

I'm itching to just boot Tank back up and jump right back in, get away from this joke of a life and back into the Cloud, but I used most of my proxies in that last job, and they'll all be hot for the next few hours. Best to wait 'til tomorrow. I sit by the table and light a smoke, and it's something, but it's nowhere near the same rush I get from jacking in.

I always hate this part. Meatside is so. Damn. Slow.

I reach for the only other thing I have to occupy myself when Flutters isn't here, and pull out my e-reader.

I used to be really embarrassed about how much I enjoy reading back when I was, like, ten. I thought it was egghead stuff and teased other fillies about it, and only ever read under the covers at night with the connection out. Then I grew up. The end.

I pull out Daring Do and the Gilded City and start where I left off.

Daring Do is just about to reach the Towers of Prospit when Fluttershy got home. She opened the door, called a 'good night' to whoever, Something Fields or something, and walked into our humble abode. She noticed that, surprise surprise, I'm not jacked in for once, looked taken aback for just a moment, and I took the initiative to call out, "Hey, Flutters, how was your hot date?"

Of course, she gets adorably embarrassed at that, every time, and gets all red-faced and stuttering. "What? W- well I-, that is-, I- I, um... It was a totally fine and completely platonic dinner together and nothing romantic happened whatsoever and how was your day Fyrefly?"

Now, stop right there, random stranger. I'd like to draw your attention to that last line, and to a little presentation Professor Rainbow's cooked up for the uninitiated. I call is "What the shit is a cloudname?"

So, anyway, Fyrefly is the name my parents, whoever they are, gave me. It sucks. So, what am I named after? A bug? Really? And it's sort of funny but mostly pathetic how they tried to make it 'cool' by adding an extra 'y' in the middle. And by cool I mean double lame.

Now, Fyrefly is the name I was born with, and all the records that DSI and all the other corps keep on ponies are attached to that name. For obvious reasons, jacking while using a name or face that a criminal record can be attached to is a really bad idea. So when online avatars went mainstream, all the crackers and jackers and modders and all the other black and grey users immediately started using fake names and faces to hide behind.

This was ages before my time, by the way, I've been doing this my whole life.

So any criminal charges and warrants and, if it gets really bad, hits get attached to a pony that literally doesn't exist meatside. Of course, you have to use safe proxies - or set up your own - to make sure the acts can't be traced to the jack you're using, or none of that matters. Real pros like me keep a half dozen backup avatars that log in to completely different proxies once a week - to maintain appearances - that we can use if we need to ditch our main cloudname or need a puppet in a cloudnet argument or something.

Ditching a cloudname is a last resort, though, because then I'd lose all my rep, and reputation is everything in this business.

Anyway, my cloudname is Rainbow Dash. It's sort of pointless to hide that when I'm gonna die soon, and I already told you it anyway. Fluttershy is my roomie's cloudname, and you don't get her meat name. I mean it. Taking revenge for anything I did out on Fluttershy would be really, seriously not cool, and I know some nutjob, somewhere, was seriously considering that just now. Don't.

That concludes this immensely tedious lecture by Professor Dash, PhNope.

Where was I? Oh yeah, embarrassing Fluttershy. Totally worth it.

So I said, "Naw, I was just joshin' ya, Flutters. I know you just discuss your freaky knitting or whatever it is you do when I'm jacked in and you're not doped. Over dinner."

"Cooking can be a pleasantly relaxing and time-consuming experience, I'll have you know, and cooking within, er, budget constraints is a stimulating mental exercise."

"Yeah, yeah, stimulating whatever blah blah blah. Hey, got any leftovers?"

She reached into her saddlebags and pulled out something in a plastic container. "We made a salad with some of the flowers Blossomforth's cousin Roseluck couldn't sell, and a goulash from those ripe vegetables I said we needed to use yesterday. Did you even eat tooday, by the way?" she called from over by the fridge. "You haven't touched anything I left earlier."

"Nah, I was working this morning, and then Daring Do met the Shelled People and that's pretty much my day gone." Now that she mentioned it, my stomach, tired of being ignored, gave out a pretty loud growl, and I noticed my HUD had been reading low blood glucose for a while. "Guess I just sorta lost track of time."

"Oh Fyre, I know you need to work, Sisters know I don't make much of anything, but you need to stop and eat something every once in a while, and sleep, too. You're going to kill yourself at this rate."

"Nah, only important thing in here is this." I tapped my head. "The rest is just meat. Besides, you know What jacking out feels like for me."

She glanced at my wings before she could help herself, before she 'eep!'ed and looked away. They looked fine on the outside, but we both knew what would happen as soon as I tried to open them, much less fly.

She started again, "A- anyway, how did the job go today. Any good news?" This time, she rather less subtly glanced towards where the Sunshine was stashed in the dead plant pot on the highest shelf, where only she could reach.

"Yeah, bigwig got the info he wanted. I get paid tomorrow, so don't worry, we'll restock soon."

"Oh, thank you thank you thank you, Fyrefly, you don't know how much this-"

I held up a hoof to stop her. "I told you this once, and I'll tell you every time, Flutters. Anything for a friend."

"Oh, yes, of course, as always Fyrefly, but still, thank you. D- do you mind if I-?"

I could tell she was getting that itch, just like I get when I'm jacked out for too long. "Nah, go ahead."

Faster than I've been able to go in years, she flew up to the pot, pulled out a grid of pills, popped out a blue one, and dry swallowed it. She was staring at nothing almost before I landed. I took the opportunity to light another smoke.

What a couple of fucked up little lives we lead.

But I'll always have her back, and I know she'll always have mine. I pick her up over my back, put her on the futon, and tuck her in.

I can't jack back in 'til tomorrow.

Bored.

I pull my reader back out and get back to where Daring Do was finally finding out what those lights were on top of the towers.

It's going to be a long night.