It was a miracle that the lights in the room were still working after so long without use. Most of them, in any case. The cool glow of florescence was a welcome change from the glimmering of a single flashlight, and the pegasus who stood at the door remained there for a long moment to enjoy the change of atmosphere. Outside, the wind was still whistling against the broken remains of the building's main floor, but underneath the reinforced concrete there was not only refuge from the elements but a strange sort of peace brought about by the thick walls and soft hum of the lights.
Sadly it didn't seem to last for long. The lights had only been on for a few seconds before a sharp FSSST sounded from the opposite side of the room, and with a brief flicker the room again went dark. There was the faint sound of an electrical pop from across the room as something burned out after so many years of neglect, and that was that.
Rule Book took the time to push his black mane out of his eyes, and then a bit more time to shove the stubborn locks back and over an ear when they proved more difficult to get rid of. He'd dealt with worse places than this, but normally when he did it was under better circumstances and on his own terms, and normally he had prepared a bit more in the way of lighting than the strapped-on light that sat just above his brow, making it all the more difficult to straighten his mane. Still, it could have been much worse than a straightforwards basement-diving among the crumbled and soggy remains of an abandoned commercial district.
As Book looked about and got his bearings he began ticking off all of the extra hazards and inconveniences that he now had to contend with besides the failed lighting. The stairs he had clambered down from a closet in the lobby had led to a hallway and then a keycode-locked door that had long since stopped being secure, bolts rusted completely to bits and a firm yank away from opening. Now, just ahead and down a few extra steps of concrete, was a room that was filled with all manner of boxes and crates and unidentifiable things that were disfigured by time. It wasn't a very large room as far as rooms in general went, maybe even a bit low-ceilinged, but as far as basement storage rooms went it was a pretty fair size larger than average. Though much of everything he saw was physically intact, which was also a miracle in any city that had been touched by the War, it was also in poor condition; crates made of treated lumber were still starting to waste away with age and moisture, boxes made of metal were clearly starting to rust almost through, and at the far side of the room a section of wall had given way and the earth and stone behind were crushing sections of the storeroom.
It was strangely quiet. Rule Book was used to dank caves, and while this basement was as cold and wet as any cavern it had an eerie stillness and artificial quality that made him shudder on the steps. The grey pegasus drew his coat closer about him at more than just the chill, wincing as the long cloth brushed against the fresh bandages on his left flank, and started forwards down the steps... to stop abruptly, angling his head as his light reflected oddly off of something. A surface that was not concrete was in front of the steps, reflecting his lamp's glow like a mirror, black and out of place. Gingerly and with a frown, Book extended a hoof and touched the surface of the strange black sheet.
His frown deepened to a scowl as he watched ripples roll outwards from the spot, spreading outwards across the surface of the water that covered the floor of the basement. "Just my luck," he said, barely even a whisper. He drew back from the water and watched the ripples spread with his lamp, trying to gauge where it ended and a proper floor began. The ripples met the walls and crates and bounced without ever meeting a patch of dry concrete.
Flooded. Of course the basement was flooded. He'd run out of miracles tonight and now bad luck was catching up to him and starting to make this job even worse than it had to be. He swore inwardly and wished that he'd bought some sensor equipment. He'd like to know if the water was tainted and just how royally bucked he was at this point, but he'd get no such information from what little he had on him now. As far as he had been told the city above had been destroyed by means of conventional warfare rather than the brutal and instant erasure that was a megaspell, so he had doubts about if the water was tainted. Either way he had an unfinished job to do and he wouldn’t let water stop him.
He promised himself that he would find a doctor to check him over as soon as this was seen through. After all, he still had that nasty bullet-hole in his left flank’s thick muscle to contend with, and while he kept saying to himself that he could tough the pain out like a colt, he knew it would need more than some pressure from clean bandages and a hooful of pain pills. He definitely couldn’t waste time worrying about a tiny bit of tainted water. At least, he hoped it was a tiny bit. Would that he’d not exhausted his wing muscles in getting here in such a hurry...
Mustering up his courage he started to step forwards, his forehoof sliding into the surface of the black water without much sound… and shortly after making contact with the concrete of the next step down. The water was icy cold and impossible to see through; who knew what it could be full of? Rule Book made the decision there with only one foot in that he wouldn’t stay long enough to find out any more about it. He continued forwards, hoping that there wouldn’t be any more steps in front of him, but his other forehoof found another step just beyond the first. Almost a foot of depth and he had no idea if he could stand or have to swim! For all he know it could be a whole flight of steps to the actual floor below, and at that point he’d have to just give up entirely. There was no way he was swimming in stagnant water with a wound in his butt.
He took another step, limping a little forwards and extending his hoof along the next section of concrete below the water, and found that this time it didn’t end in another drop. His scowl threatened to curl up into a hopeful smile at this; at least it was only a foot deep. That would be fine. Encouraged, Rule Book started to ease his way forwards again and make his way into the water, feeling carefully in front of him to avoid tripping.
The sound of his breathing and the soft sound of water parting around his legs were the only two noises in the basement, no matter how he strained to hear anything else. At the very least his luck with having escaped the clutches of the city’s ‘inhabitants’ - if he could call the bandits that had attacked earlier such - was holding up. For all he knew they’d given up and were picking the corpse of his original charge clean right now; it was a small victory to know that they’d find nothing valuable, being as he’d been entrusted with The Case a short time before he fled.
The pegasus didn’t feel much sympathy for the ghoul who’d lost whatever passed for life in the city above. Sure, Rule Book thought, the unicorn colt had been his charge to escort to the very basement he now found himself in, but the mutterings and distant stares that were almost all he got in terms of conversation hadn’t instilled any feelings of affection for the guy in Book’s heart. He also didn’t feel much affection for ghouls in the first place, especially ones that dated back to the days before the War; they’d lived plenty of life tacked onto whatever original span they were meant to live, and not many of them stepped past the ‘angry old geezer’ attitude for him to take a liking. Even if they had far more knowledge and experience than he did, and usually had advice worth listening to.
Keystroke had been the name of the specimen who’d met a bullet-induced fate a half-hour earlier; an engineer of some skill who from all he could piece together had once worked in the building that was ruined above Book’s head. What little conversation had passed between them since leaving New Pegas and making their way into the San Palomino desert had been dominated by very long blurbs of near to meaningless information strangled out by Keystroke’s ravaged throat, among which were a few bits and pieces about what exactly his job was meant to accomplish.
The black-painted, metallic case that sat neatly in the pack on Rule Book’s back was the prized possession of the ghoul who’d hired him as an escort, but it had been passed over without almost any hesitation when things became rough and the ponies circling them in the streets began to call out taunts. Keystroke had apparently entertained no hopes of survival against so many, and maybe he had been regretting only hiring one pony to bring him to his destination, but in the short sentences that had passed between them while under fire he made it clear that the whole point was The Case, and The Basement.
Rule Book had failed to defend the old creature as he had promised he would, and he felt guilty about that. Maybe that guilt was why he took on the colt’s final task, or maybe is was a need for a sense of closure. Whatever The Case was, it was important, as was the storage room the pegasus waded through; his job wasn’t done until he found out how the two matched up.
At the far end of the room, with bare wall on his left and crumbling walls on his right, Rule Book found a set of shelves set against the wall that were somewhat intact, though unfortunately empty. Other than the wade through dark water and the boxes and canisters that filled the room, there seemed to be nothing useful or meaningful or even suspicious. What had been the point of coming here? Assuming it was the right building, which he was sure it was because the directions had been very specific, was this even the right area of the basement? Maybe the building had a floor even further down, now entirely filled with opaque, icy water?
Book shuddered at the thought.
Even so, he couldn’t simply give up without having done everything possible to see this job through to the end, and he had barely even begun his search. Met with the useless wall the pegasus started to look about for anything that would give a clue as to his final destination in this dank hole. To his right, towards the collapsed portions of the room, he could see a set of metal frames set into the wall and metal-shod cables that ran along the wall from them, to either side and both upwards and downwards; a switch-box or fuse-box. Rule Book didn’t want to toy with electrical equipment while up to his knees in conductive liquid, but it was a start. His headlamp followed the lines of cable that ran upwards, where the brackets that had held it to the concrete had been knocked free of their anchors, letting the cable hang down into the water a bit before going back upwards to the lights.
“Well, there’s the lighting question answered,” he muttered to himself. “Must’ve shorted and blown a fuse.” It was a reasonable assumption, especially with the faint smell of something burnt in the still air. He counted it as yet another miracle that the water hadn’t been electrified and killed him on contact, or something equally career-ending. When the fuse had been blown it had cut the connection to this particular cable, leaving the water relatively safe to enter. The other cables, assuming they hadn’t shorted, were likely fine, and the one extending upwards to the edge of the ceiling and then towards the damaged section of the basement was a possible lead. It was probably damaged as well, but it still went somewhere, and it could potentially answer the question of what he was doing in this hole.
Rule Book proceeded even more carefully than before, stretching each hoof out in front of him in the water and testing the flooring before taking the full step. The wall had been damaged somehow, likely weakened by time, and had given way to let dank earth shove through and spill broken concrete across the floor, providing a handy tripping hazard that Book wasn’t eager to exploit. Even with the damage to the wall, the cable remained out of the water and stretched to both the remains of the basement’s corner and then took another right along the wall and into somewhere that Book couldn’t see with the crates obstructing his view.
The concrete chunks that had fallen out of place had done some damage to some containers here and there in this section of the basement, and as he waded past Book couldn’t help but peek at what they’d spilled. Many of the things weren’t identifiable in the water, but where stored objects had spilled onto dry rubble it was a bit clearer that they were small boxes of cardboard, barely holding together. And yet more, where these boxes had been damaged it seemed that they contained mechanical parts of unknown purpose, many of them identical.
From what Rule Book pieced together listening to the ghoul who’d sent him here and from what he could see spilled out of containers he made the guess that this building had been the home of a company devoted to either the production or distribution of machine parts, and very complicated ones at that. As the structure had the makings of something more corporate than industrial, he had a feeling it wasn’t a manufacturing site; maybe a company office or a development and design center for a larger company. If so it made sense that scavengers wouldn’t have messed with anything here; machine parts weren’t useful to nomadic types, just settlements.
As Rule Book neared the corner and a point at which he could turn and continue following the cable, he slid himself further towards the right and hugged close to the containers just before the turn, trying to stay out of the way of the majority of the rubble. As he turned the corner his headlamp followed the cable along the wall to what looked to be a subsection of the basement divided by a partly-collapsed barrier, and then downwards to a wall outlet set rather high up in the wall, a grey box jutting out and with something plugged in still. Book followed the cord with his headlamp to where it ended at what looked to be an old electric screwdriver, next to which was--
The pegasus pulled himself back with a jolt, pressing himself against the cold metal of the container next to him, clenching down his jaw and making a determined effort to not cry out. A severed head. A bucking head on the table! The sight of it was fresh in his mind and he recalled the distinctive shape of a pony’s head, not merely a skull, laying sideways on the table next to the drill. He raced to come up with some explanation but could find nothing other than the assumption that somepony had been beheaded and their freshly-taken cranium set on the table. But who? And by whom? And for what?
Most importantly, where was the killer?
Rule Book steeled himself, taking a glance behind him where he had come, expecting all sorts of things… but seeing nothing. As far as he could tell he remained alone in the flooded basement. He turned and prepared himself mentally for carrying on, leaning out around the corner and letting his light shine across the table and the grisly display…
… he was quiet for several long seconds as he realized what he was seeing. His light clearly showed what looked to be a pony’s severed head save that there was no blood nor flesh. It was certainly a head, but it didn’t quite look right, and as Book rounded the corner and closed the several feet of distance to stand beside the table he saw why.
It was a robot. Or more accurately, a robot’s head. The metal where it would have connected to a body was jointed and bare but the rest of the head was covered in interlocking plates of white plastic. The eyes were wide open, showing intricate and minutely-sized parts behind the glass in imitation of a pony’s eye, complete with a pupil and an iris. It all looked very realistic, if a bit dirty and grimy; clearly it wasn’t anything made postwar. And it most definitely wasn’t a Robronco model he recognized.
Finally Rule Book had an answer as to what was in all of these crates and storage barrels, or at least a fair deal of them; robot parts. It was few fair trots ahead of where he had been before in this mystery, though it was by no means a complete picture. Somehow a storeroom of robot parts and machinery connected to The Case in some way.
The pegasus shrugged his pack off and gripped it with his teeth, tossing it up onto the table next to the head. All this time he hadn’t seen the inside of The Case, but now was a good a time as any to see what he was dealing with, and hopefully piece together some more of the puzzle. The plain metallic container had a set of hinged latches on the front which were easy enough to open, and eventually he prodded it apart and took stock of what was inside.
It wasn’t very interesting, but it was most definitely illuminating; he was no engineer but he’d seen enough machines dismantled by gunfire to recognize critical robot components when he saw them and here, set inside of aging foam inserts, was what was essentially a processing module. Not a Robronco model, but very similar in design. It had all the appearances of being either a knockoff part or other replica, but the ghoul who’d carried it had treated it as though it meant the world to him. It likely did.
Rule Book could make the connections fairly quickly: here he was in a storeroom full of robot parts, with a mission to carry a robot processing unit of special significance and…. do something with it. It was plain what it was he had to do; he had to find whatever robot this core would fit into and activate it, and hope that the program stored in the unit would shed further light on the entire matter. As for what robot it went to…
Rule Book turned and looked about at the crates and containers around him, wondering how many he’d have to look through before he found something he could use. He doubted he’d find a complete robot anywhere, but then again all he’d need to test his theory would be a torso or a he--... he turned around slowly and peered down at the robot head on the table. Could it really be that easy? The pegasus reached out with a hoof to nudge the robotic head and roll it a little, looking it over and after a while locating the panel on the back of the cranium that was easily popped open with the bit of the nearby driver, as the screws were already taken out and nowhere to be found. Sure enough, the panel revealed a bay for a processing component, inside of which was the silvery case of another core. Some deft prodding with the driver let Book slip the little box out of its socket.
“Guess it’s about as easy as that, huh?” he asked nopony at all, holding the two cores side by side. Maybe the old ghoul had been here before and was working on something before this entire ordeal; the new core was an exact duplicate in terms of shape, though significantly less grimy. It didn’t take long for the colt to fit the processor into the space where the old one had resided, snugging it into place and placing the panel back where it belonged, little plastic pins securing it with soft clicks. “Now I just need to find some way to power the damn thing…”
It was likely, to Rule Book, that somewhere in this room there might be at least the torso of the robot that this head was designed to fit on, and if he was very lucky he might even find some power cells to fit it with. Once that was accomplished maybe he could get some answers straight from the pony’s mouth, and in this case quite literally. He waded his way a bit back from where he had come, peeking about in the mess of crushed and half-crushed crates to try and get an idea of what was stored where. The majority of items that had been spilled appeared entirely made of metal, and from the shapes he made the guess that these were parts from another robot model entirely. A crate that had been tumped onto its side with the lid knocked off revealed what looked like the head of a robotic ant; definitely not a pony model.
The parts he thought he would be looking for would likely be stored in a special container of some kind, he reasoned, being as the piece that lay on the table behind him looked a great deal more expensive and complex than the average robot. Something not likely made of wood, and something not likely stored at the bottom of a stack. Something new, and secure, and possibly… dark grey and stored ten feet away from him at the top of a stack of crates near the corner of the basement. It was the best option; a rectangular container that looked somewhat out of place among all of the storage boxes, with a series of numbers on the side that he couldn’t make sense of with the peeling of the grey paint. Next to this was yet another, and then another, all identical… and all being crushed by the weight of the collapsed concrete above.
Rule Book slid his wings out from under his coat, fanning his feathers; he was a bit stiff, but he decided that the out-of-place containers would be worth a check. Flapping his wings, the pegasus pulled himself airborne with a slosh of water and made his way in the air towards the containers he had spotted. From the look of things it seemed as though they were intact, metal shells that were doing an admirable job of holding up the weight of a collapsed roof. Enough that he could reach out with his hooves and tug at the sideways-facing lid without it budging at all.
A good wiggling and a sharp yank later and the lid of the bent container popped off like that of a tin can. Peering in with his headlamp revealed the most promising result he could have hoped for, and at the same time the most disappointing. What was inside the container was crushed and mangled beyond all hope of usefulness, but the appearance alone was worth a grin; gleaming silver metal and bits of white plastic, much like that of the head that rested on the table below. It was likely parts for the same robot model, and if so that meant one of the three containers had to have something useful to him. At the very least something to help him understand what kind of robot he was dealing with in the first place; the containers looked rather military, but a replica of a pony hardly seemed a very military design choice. He’d find out soon enough.
The container at the far end of the stack was the least harmed by the weight of the roof, and was easily a foot in height and two wide. The same measure of tugging and wrenching brought the top of this one off as well, and inside was a delightful find; an assembled body. He dropped the lid and didn’t mind the splash it made in the water below, reaching in with both hooves to feel of the material inside; cool metal and smooth plastic, just as he had hoped. Miracles upon miracles. He grasped at it and started to pull it forwards… but it seemed the weight of the roof wasn’t giving him much room. He didn’t want to pull too hard and risk causing the ceiling to collapse on him, but at the same time he didn’t want to just give up. He gripped the robotic body a bit more firmly and tugged in short little yanks, trying to bring it loose and slide it out.
HRRRRRNNNNNN… went the ceiling. The concrete inches above Rule Book’s head suddenly shifted and he stopped flapping, desperately trying to duck out of the way as chunks of rock started to break loose. He dropped quickly and flared his wings out again to glide out from under the spot, feeling grit and bits of gravel raining down on him. At any moment he expected the entire roof to come rushing down and smash him into the water-covered floor, smooshing him like a fly between a window and a rolled magazine.
And then all at once it stopped.
Rule Book alighted on the edge of the sturdy table at the end of the little corridor of boxes, assessing the situation; the ceiling had shifted and given way a little further, taking more boxes with it but ultimately being stopped short of falling down. Had it gone any further it could have either blocked the way out entirely or worse, crushed him. But even better was the ultimate result of seeing, laying splayed across the new rubble that jutted from the water’s surface, the body of the robot he had been trying to get to.
The pegasus flapped over to the rubble and settled down in the water next to the machine, casting a cautious glance upwards before turning his attention to the robot. It was most definitely not something he’d seen before, a machine built in the shape of an earth-pony to great detail, though perhaps a bit smaller than even his own body. It was, sadly, more than a bit worse for wear with the way it had been crushed in the box, cracking some of the plastic plates that covered the entirety of the body save for the places where joints allowed for movement. Beneath the plates he could see complicated moving parts that he assumed would allow it a great range of motion, which he supposed for an anatomic replica of a pony was the entire point. While it had taken a beating and portions of it looked mangled, it was intact and most importantly… was missing a head.
Rule Book reached out and tucked his forehooves under the robot, the cold plastic smooth to the touch. It felt almost too light to be complete, and as he hefted it he wondered if it was just a husk of metal and hollowed out on the inside, because it weighed only about as much as a pony of equal size; though this was a fair deal of weight it was still a far cry from the weight of a robot. The metal was likely aluminum, and the plastic plates rather than metal probably shaved plenty of weight from the machine. In either case he could lift it up and onto his back, keeping it out of the water and hauling it towards the table.
Setting the body down across the sturdy metal surface, he looked over what he had to work with using his headlamp. From all appearances everything was where it should be, as though the robot had been stored away in assembled form, save for the head… which was likely the one laying here on the table. It looked expensive, and assuming he could get it out of here he briefly wondered what kind of haul in caps it could bring in at New Pegas, or even the Hub. It was worth a shot. But more important were the answers to several burning questions.
He slid down the plastic shutters that made up the ‘eyelids’ of the robot before he started; no sense in being creeped out by the dead stare while he had to concentrate. Putting the head on the robot’s neck segments was an easy enough task; the neck was made up of a series of motors that looked as though it could give a wide range of turning much like the vertebrae of a pony’s spine, and connecting the head to this was a simple matter of setting it properly and then securing the four bolts that held the end of the neck to the base of the robotic skull. Then the somewhat painstaking process of making the cabling connections to the skull. Then came the even more painstaking process of realizing that he had put it on backwards and having to undo everything he had just done and do it over the right way.
Sploosh!
Rule Book was getting towards the point where he was searching for some kind of control mechanism to see if what he had done had worked at all when he heard the very distinct sound of something splashing heavily into the water. He bolted upright and turned around, peering at the rubble with his headlamp… but the sound hadn’t come from there. It had sounded like something at the very far side of the dark, flooded basement. Something large.
The pegasus swallowed and held his breath, listening at the now unbroken silence for any sign of further movement in the room. Barely perceptible when he strained his ears and perked them towards where he thought he had heard the sound, he heard a tiny noise like ripples being formed in the water’s surface. Not the treading of hooves wading through liquid as he expected, but rather a sound much like that of a fish swimming just below the surface of a shallow pool. A big fish.
He couldn’t bring himself to move, could barely bring himself to breathe. His mind was frantic. There’s something in here with me! he thought, casting his lamp’s light across the water’s surface in front of him and searching for any sign of movement. But the surface was still. Even so, he heard the sound of movement on the far side of the room… and he could feel his heart pressing up into his throat as he swore he could hear it drawing closer.
It was then that I woke up and opened my eyes for the first time.
FALLOUT: Equestria
Weight and Measure
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Chapter 2 - Begin Program
Author's Note
It's been far too long since I've updated! Life's been busy, and writing has become almost a chore at times. I'm never satisfied with what I type and keep procrastinating, assuming I even have free time. Nevertheless, here is an update... it's been a while. If possible, please re-read the first chapter so that you understand where this is all coming from!
Chapter 2 - Begin Program
Imagine blackness. Not like ink filling an entire page, nor like dark filling a room. Imagine that you are floating amidst the nothingness of space.
Imagine a vacuum. A darkness. All around in every direction into distances unknown and unmeasured, there is absolute emptiness. Where the stars would be there is no light, simply a void that permeates everything. A million million miles in every direction, so far that you could reach out and keeping reaching for a thousand lifetimes and never touch anything. No light, no heat, no dark, no cold. No sensation. No thought.
Now imagine that in this void of nothingness, you hear a sound. It is not a small sound, or a loud one, it’s a sound that you hear all around you and yet inside your head, in every direction and coming from nowhere at all. A sound that are words being spoken, though you cannot tell if the voice is male or female. The sound is simply two words:
BEGIN PROGRAM.
All around you in the distance, the tiniest points of light begin to flicker into existence. By twos and then by threes and fours little points of white begin to exist at the most distant regions of the void, and begin to grow brighter. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Stars coming into existence in a rush of light and warmth all around you, spreading across the void of nothing and beginning to fill it.
The points of light begin ever so slowly to expand and spread out into the blackness, and with it comes a noise like the rumble of thunder from every direction. The rumble grows from something deep and soft into a grumble, louder and louder and louder, steadily climbing to a roar of sound that begins to fill the emptiness around you. The lights are becoming too bright, filling the nothingness and blinding you.
You want to close your eyes. The light is becoming painful. You have no eyes to shut.
You want to cover your ears. The sound is beating against your head. You have no ears to cover.
The tremendous sound rushes in at you and crashes down, and all of a sudden you feel a body that you couldn’t feel before being pulled downwards, a drop that shoves your heart to your throat. Your stomach turns and you feel a sickening sensation of plummeting. The roar has consumed everything, the light has filled in all of the blank spaces, you can feel everything in that million million miles in every direction rushing at you with a roar that is the only existent sound. You feel it all slam into you for the briefest of moments, crushing in at your entire being, and then finally, with the very softest, the very littlest of pops...
… you open your eyes and wake up.
As my eyes opened there was a long time in which I could comprehend nothing.
Somewhere in the recesses of my consciousness I was aware of a clock telling me that the time was precisely midnight, of the first day, the first month, year one... which I could simply guess was because the clock had never actually been set.
At first I could see nothing at all, but as my eyes began to widen to take in more light, I noted that there was simply very little light to see anything by. Each eye was unfocused and it took a moment to get them back into sync so I could make out what was in front of me. The blank, if grimy, metal of the table that I was laying on filled one side of my vision, but the rest was taken up by grey wall and misshapen shadows.
I knew from the moment that I had become aware that something was very wrong -- many somethings, in fact. First, I knew that the body I now inhabited had not been designed for me; the firmware aboard my chassis did not recognize me and was struggling to properly relay data. I seemed to have a fair amount of information at my disposal in the first sections of my memory, though it seemed crudely dumped and not very detailed; what little information I had about myself left me certain that my body was not precisely my body.
The body I was in was querying me yet again, asking me for make and model codes, serial numbers, anything at all of the sort. I found that I simply had nothing at all to give it. I answered with a simple null value, which did not satisfy it in the slightest, but it quieted up after a few more tries, regardless.
Besides this, my chassis was also letting me know that it wasn’t in very good condition; in fact, in the current case it seemed there were more parts with damage to some degree than parts without.Though I was having trouble making out all of the data the firmware was giving me, I made the assumption that the majority of my subsystems and modules weren’t supposed to be highlighted in shades of orange or red in my diagnostics.
By the time that I had gained proper control over motor-functions and had brought all of my available sensors online, I became aware of a living creature very close to me; my guess, of course, was that this would be the one who had activated me. All I could hear was their breathing, though listening for other breath patterns nearby let me know that this individual was alone.
Being as the one who had activated me was likely waiting for some sign of success, I brought my new motors online and slowly raised my head, bringing it about to face the individual next to me, but being disappointed in finding that they were facing away. They were a pony - a colt if I determined the proportions of the skull correctly - but I had little data at all on equine anatomy other than basic information, and the subject in question was facing away from me.
My activator was wearing a cloth coat with a plasticized outer shell and an attached hood that was currently down, that enabled me to see his grey coloration and the back of his damp, black mane. He seemed to be very intently focused on something else in the dark room. I couldn’t tell what he was so keen on, but whatever it was must have been very important, so I kept myself from interrupting him.
The grey colt was wearing a headlamp, casting a bright spot on the things in front of him. In the circle of white, I could see stacks of boxes and canisters, many of which were damaged by rocky debris and a collapsed ceiling, all of which sat in a glimmering pool of liquid that reflected the headlamp’s glow. The room we were in appeared to have either lost power or had it shut off, for the remaining overhead lamps I could see were doing nothing.
I felt starved for input. For information on where we were and who I was and who my activator was and… a dozen other things. As I looked around and tried to make sense of the situation I found myself in, the questions kept stacking up in a backlog of mystery that I determined would be pointless to maintain. I dropped the stream of curiosity for a single question, one which I felt would best benefit me if it were answered. I would have to voice this question, of course, but as I searched for some way to do so I found that there were no speaker modules listed in my hardware specs.
Oh. There it was. I must not have seen ‘Primary Vocabulator’ listed because it was firmly placed in the Damaged section of my list of modules. A sensation overcame me that I didn’t at first know how to react to, a feeling of futility and uselessness. What was I to do? This was my very first activation and I couldn’t even perform basic communication? This was unacceptable. I gave a prod to the diagnostic program built into the firmware of my chassis and very clearly informed it that it was wrong, and that it should re-evaluate its findings.
My chassis’ diagnostic software informed me that I was loony.
I found this conclusion unacceptable as well, perhaps more so than its first conclusion. Nevertheless, it did search for more information and eventually presented me with a brief rundown of what was wrong: the chassis sent along my commands just fine, but once they reached the relay in the section where my speaking unit lay it just… looped right back.
A short was the most likely scenario, according to the diagnostic process. A shorted relay would cause commands to loop back around. Unfortunately this was a hardware problem, and not as easily fixed as a simple glitch. The only one who could help me at this point would be my activator.
Slowly, carefully, I began to test my ability to move. I seemed to have legs, and though it struck me as odd I did not know why; what was I to expect other than legs? Apparently, something different. But legs I had, and legs I moved in order to bring myself upright. Tilting my head down to peer at myself I found that not only did I have legs, I rather much resembled my activator in that I was somewhat pony-shaped. A quick glance judged me to be about 15 percent smaller than the colt, though other than this I seemed to be a rough analogue. I had hoped my physical appearance would grant an idea of my purpose, but it seemed that it would not be that easy to get answers.
The slow tilting of the colt’s ears drew my attention, and I watched him intently. His ears swiveled without his head moving, and my guess was that he was tracking a sound. I located my own ear-controls, swiveling the mounted audio pickups on my head to follow the direction of my activators’... and they picked up a curious sound I had not noticed before.
Swiiisshhh… swiiiishhh…
It was a sound that I had no comparison for to identify, but I distinctly heard it growing in volume. The room that we were in had a number of obstacles that made the exact location hard to pinpoint, but it was most certainly drawing closer, whatever it was.
My activator was tense. His breathing was slowed so he could hear better, but was irregular and labored. The sound he was intently focused upon was one that did not please him and as the sound drew closer he seemed to become less intent on trailing its motion. He looked about in front of him, tilting his head to look around a box near him before finally starting to move backwards towards me.
The colt finally turned around and I saw his forehooves lift, soaked with dirty water. He put them on the edge of the table and seemed to be about to climb up onto it with me when he finally noticed that I was no longer lying down. His headlamp flashed across my face and blinded me for a moment, and when my vision adjusted I could see his green eyes widen even more. His expression changed from one of nervous tension to one of surprise and then nearly to a panic.
I moved myself backwards, wondering what would happen; for some reason something about me surprised him, and this worried me. The colt made a small sound, a little gasp of breath, and after considering me for a moment and glancing back at the way he had been looking before he seemed to decide that whatever concern I was was less than the concern the sound in the room brought him.
“Move over,” hissed the colt quietly, through gritted teeth. He looked back at me and narrowed his eyes, that nervous tension taking over his expression again.
I quickly moved to fulfill his task, disappointed that my first order ever was something so mundane and trivial. But, as I began to shift myself towards my left, I found this was not as trivial as I had expected. My legs seemed to work well enough for most of what I had done with them so far, but as my left hind leg attempted to slide sideways in one joint… it hung. Something caught that was not meant to catch and the swivel jammed, and before I could lean myself back I found that I was toppling sideways to the left.
BANG!
My chassis smacked down hard on the metal tabletop and the surface gave a squeak in protest. The sound it made was not very loud, but compared to all sounds previous it was a deafening boom in the dark room. I quickly tried to recover and get back to my feet, but had to move a bit more to the left to accommodate the colt that was now much more hurriedly clambering up onto the table alongside me.
“Shhh! Quiet!” the pony next to me insisted. I had not yet managed to get back to my feet, but still I stopped and waited as he had said, daring not to make a sound.
Whatever the sound in the room was, it was something my activator seemed to be unwilling to encounter. Was it dangerous? I couldn’t begin to guess at the time. The pony next to me was facing towards the room and still listening, no longer as worried by me. I wanted to apologize for the noise I had made in trying to follow his directions, but of course… I still could not vocalize.
“Hey, tincan. Can you fight?”
The question, harshly whispered by the colt, caught me completely off guard. Could I fight? The question perplexed me, and I hesitated in trying to find an answer to consider what him asking it meant. It seemed likely, then, that there was some kind of danger and that he wanted to know if I was prepared to face it.
I had no idea of the answer. To find one I put forward a query to my diagnostic program: combat-capable?
My diagnostic program advised me that I was in no condition for hazardous environments and then further queried as to how I could possibly think I was, with all of the red and orange indicators it brought to my attention again. It then pointed out that, by all means, I should delete its response and if I felt up to the challenge should go ahead and put myself in danger and see what happened.
I took this as a definitive no.
My activator didn't look very happy when I shook my head in answer to his question. "All this freaking trouble for a motorized mannequin? My luck." I heard him mutter, though not at me. “And still no damn answers.”
I myself had no answers to any of my questions, though I began to piece parts of what I had so far observed together. Judging by the structural damage to the room we were in and the spread of liquid across the floor, I made the guess that some disaster had occurred here. A quake perhaps? I didn’t have enough data on geology to make an accurate guess there, but it was a possibility based on the cracking of the concrete walls. I could make the guess, then, that whatever disaster had occurred was what had damaged my chassis. The diagnostic program echoed this conclusion.
So far, other than the hardware for vocalizing, it seemed as though a number of modules and peripheral devices were either reporting damage or not reporting at all; the diagnostic program had called up a side process to analyze the damage reports and came to the conclusion that my chassis had suffered a great deal of blunt force and pressure damage, sustained most likely from a substantial impact. There also seemed to be a great deal of decay in my power cells, which meant--
Before I even knew what was happening, my body was already sliding forwards. I didn’t even have a reflex process running; I couldn’t react as the back end of the table I was laying on began to suddenly and violently push upwards with a heave, tossing me upright and then pitching forwards with the pegasus alongside me, his wings bolting out in reflex. He shouted something, but I couldn’t determine what was being said over the sound of objects splashing into the water… including myself.
Liquid exposure, chimed a notice in my systems. This notice very quickly became an outright emergency alert: Liquid penetration! Chassis seal compromised!
Oh dear. My chassis had no intact barriers to prevent the intrusion of the dark water as I splashed into it, barely getting my limbs underneath me to start getting myself upright. If I could keep my torso above the water I would likely be alright, or so I could assume based on the fact that my legs held no vital components.
The table, now flipped, came down suddenly on top of my back, hitting my head with a dull TANG of noise. My vision flickered at the impact and one eye desynchronized, showing a tilted image that was out of focus, and then all went cloudy and silent as I was shoved under the surface of the water by the heavy furnishing piece I had previously been laying on.
Beneath the surface was only silence; my audio pickups were dead in liquid, and my eyes had nothing at all to focus on. Liquid penetration! came the notice yet again, insistently blinking in the field of useless vision I had in front of me. Chassis seal compromised! I could tell that water was streaming into the gaps in my plating, starting to intrude in the shell of my torso in who knew how many places.
My diagnostic process informed me, somewhat calmly, that I should probably do something. I was inclined to agree.
I put full power to my leg motors, straightening them out and shoving roughly upwards. Through the connections of my chassis I could ‘hear’ the motors struggling and whining, but the table above me was not heavy enough for the combined power of my servos and I managed to drag myself out from underneath it, breaching the surface again.
My activator was not immediately visible, though I could clearly see his headlamp a few feet away from me. His status was unknown, but he was in the water as well, struggling against something I could only barely glimpse in the beam of his headlamp as my eyes regained their focus.
We had been attacked by something, and I didn’t know if my activator could handle himself in such an engagement, nor what he was even engaged with. Worse, there was still liquid inside of my casing, and I had no idea at all what damage it might cause were it to remain there... my diagnostic program told me it might be ‘a lot’.
It didn't seem to me, that feeling of uselessness coming back, that I had anything at all at my disposal to aid my activator. No processes save for the minimal few needed to operate were running, and I didn't have time to sort through my memory banks to find anything even resembling combat advice. Even if I had anything of the sort, my chassis was heavily damaged.
I needed an objective, a task to complete, and it was clear that my activator was too busy splashing and struggling with an unknown assailant to offer me one.
Objective process? I queried my own filesystem.
Running Tasky Pro version 1.3, responded the filesystem. So I did indeed have a task-management subroutine, how wonderful. A licensed copy as well. A moment later the program was up and running; in my field of view a small dialog box appeared and then moved itself to the upper left of my view.
No objectives. Add New Task? it queried me.
Add task: defend pegasus, was my simple response. I hoped that this task-listing program would be able to comprehend such terse verbiage. It seemed that it understood my request, as it then began pinging my already-running diagnostics for information relevant to such a task.
The diagnostic program was not very agreeable now that I had sicced this new program on it for requests, but it complied even so.
Objectives updated, claimed the task program, shortly before the little dialog in my field of vision listed out a single task for me to complete...
Extreme urgency: Engage unknown hostile with blunt force.
My diagnostic program was even more displeased about this conclusion, and advised that pursuing this task would likely end ‘very badly’. I discarded this advice. The program added a new line to my list of damaged modules in response: Pending updates.
By the time I was done with giving myself a task to complete, a full three seconds had passed… valuable time that I did not intend to let go completely to waste. In front of me I saw my activator go down, splashing into the water with whatever was attacking him on top; it seemed that this assailant was quite strong. I began to approach, slowly the first two steps to ensure that my legs would move freely without locking up, and then starting to dash.
At a foot away I still had no ability to identify my target, but this mattered very little; it was about my size and darkly-colored, and perched now on top of my activator. The colt shouted something through sputters of dark water.
“Just hit it!” was what it sounded like.
That was already my intention, I said to myself. I reared back on my hind legs and then slung myself forwards, forelegs pointing towards the hostile. It was likely not at all a tactical maneuver, but blunt force was blunt force.
As my legs impacted the side of the target, its unseen surface yielded and flexed; flesh, then. A creature. My weight carried me forwards, shoving the creature off balance and throwing it sideways off of my activator, the beast splashing into the water on its side. I heard it let out a startled hissing noise, followed by submerged gurgles as it twisted in the water.
The colt struggled upright, drenched in dirty water and throwing himself away from the creature and to my side before turning around to face it again. With the headlamp centered on it properly I could get a better look at what we had been engaged by.
It was a reptile of some kind, of that I was sure. The mottled grey hide was scaly and slick with water, and it was smaller than a pony if only by a bit. Its long sinuous body seemed rather serpent-like, but it also had limbs that showed it to be a quadruped of sorts. As it righted itself from my attack and turned, I saw it had bright, even luminescent, green eyes… and a long snout filled with gleaming, razored teeth.
I had no idea at all what it was. For a full second I scoured my memory for anything resembling this, but the closest that I could find were references to ‘dragons’, which this entity did not fully fit the description of. Again, my inability to speak left me unable to question my activator for answers about what this was, or what we were going to do.
The reptilian beast had no such trouble with deciding on a course of action. It lunged forwards, forelimbs outstretched to try to pounce on the pegasus beside me yet again. This was something I couldn’t allow; I reacted by gathering my legs and giving a leap of my own, attempting to intercept its motion with my own. I caught the beast at an angle, tackling it in mid-air before it could strike my activator again.
My chassis creaked and rattled at the impact of the creature, and a few short beeps of warning were all I had before I was in the water again. Even so, my attempt at intercepting was successful; the beast and I had collided and splashed down sideways in the water, off-target from the colt. My vision was obscured by water and the now more familiar alert of water penetration came up yet again. Risk accepted; the creature could not be allowed to attack my activator.
The reptile was apparently made very angry by this. I felt a sharp impact against my chest as it struggled to right itself, and a new alert popped up in my HUD: Chassis penetration! It seemed that the creature had claws, long, very hard ones that were easily jabbing straight through my chassis’ plating. I tried to bring myself upright, but the claws buried into my chest plating held firm, and instead I felt myself being hoisted up.
Tasky Pro has stopped responding, came a new alert. The section of my HUD that showed my objective blacked out. Diagnostic system malfunction, came another alert; the sarcastically-inclined program shut itself off. My sensors could detect the claws of the reptile digging quite deep into my torso as it hefted me up with absurd strength, standing bipedally and raising me out of the water. I saw the headlamp behind me illuminate it as it gave a shrill and angry snarl.
Around me the world lit up for a brief instant, everything flashing white. My eyes had no time to adjust to the flash before it was gone, accompanied by a sharp and tremendous BANG of sound, a tiny explosion in the small room that echoed harshly on the stone walls. The creature’s head distorted as something very small and incredibly fast struck it, and I could see the skull fracture and break. Blood sprayed out in a small explosion of red that obscured my vision, and then suddenly I was dropping.
I collapsed into the water next to the reptile, struggling to free myself from the claws buried in my chest; it began to convulse, which helped me wrench free and regain my footing. The exposure to the water helped clear my vision, and I began to back away from the flailing beast.
My activator had drawn something from under his coat; a firearm that was strapped to the harness he wore beneath. The long lever that triggered it was swung out to his mouth, where he had bumped it to fire. He had shot the creature in the head, and still it struggled and shrilly squealed. The colt yanked the lever a second time, and the loud bang echoed again in the small room, a second round spraying water everywhere in a gush, but still the creature wouldn’t stop.
With a third shot, it let out a tremendously labored gurgle… and was still.
I found that I couldn’t react for some time to what had transpired. I still stood on all four legs, water draining out of the holes that had been left in the plates of my torso, but I had no idea of how much damage I had taken. The beast’s struggles had turned the previously only dirty water into a dark maroon soup of water and blood, with bits of what I could assume was brain near where its skull lay beneath the surface.
“Can’t fight, huh?” the colt said, bringing my attention away from the deceased threat. I turned to face him, still unable to respond. “Nice bluff roll, but that’s a bunch of crap, tincan.”
I hadn’t known that throwing my weight in a direction could be called fighting. And based on my performance I was still hesitant to call it a fight so much as a ‘haphazard struggle’.
Reboot diagnostic process, I commanded my filesystem.
Loading diagnostic processor.
As the chassis’ diagnostics system came back online, it made sure to inform me that I was a complete idiot. I disliked this conclusion, and deleted it, before asking what damage I had taken.
Power supply unit damaged, it informed me. Power output can be sustained for approximately thirty-eight more days on backup cell. Chassis punctures detected; watertight seal compromised and requires repair. Multiple subsystems unresponsive, water damage likely. Insufficient power to boot numerous modules. I-told-you-so protocol engaged.
Yes, it had told me so. But that didn’t matter in the end; my activator was safe.
“Shit… that was a close one.” The pegasus colt flipped the lever of his firearm back underneath his coat and pulled it back over what looked to be a very large pistol strapped to his harness. “Alright you, follow me… I don’t want anything else to do with this basement, I’m getting the hell out before something worse jumps me.”
Worse? My activator expected worse things than pony-sized reptiles with metal-crushing strength?
I couldn’t question him without a vocabulator, and it was the first reasonable command I had thus far been given. The pegasus gave a glance at the downed creature and then moved back to where the table had been, splashing about a bit in the water before retrieving what looked to be an empty case, which he closed and stuffed into his bag.
As he made his way out of the area, I followed him and took note of the damage to the structure. The walls were cracked and portions were even crumbled, parts of the ceiling had caved in, and boxes were thrown hither and thither. Even as the steps upwards to a doorway came into view it seemed little of the storage room was undamaged in some form or fashion, which gave more credence to the guess that some disaster had occurred.
What confused me, however, was the age of many of the things around me. Wood was clearly beginning to rot where not submerged, metal was rusting into nothing, and the amount of dust and grime that coated every object was substantial. How long had these things been here? How long had I myself been here? Had I been brought here by my activator or is this where I was built?
None of my questions had answers, only more questions added on to the growing list of mysteries.
I followed the pegasus up the steps and out of the dark water, slowing to let it drain out of the small holes in my leg plating before following him through the doorway. A short hall was just beyond, and from a bit further and up a flight of steps I could see a pale glow; natural light was just beyond, not artificial lamps.
The colt looked back multiple times to ensure that I was still following him, and then behind me to ensure that nothing had followed me, and before long he was heading up the steps towards a higher floor, where I assumed I may find more answers.
No answers came as I reached the top of the stairs and passed through an open doorway into what looked to me to be the ground floor or a building. The room I had been activated in was, assumedly, a basement. Now I followed the nameless colt into an open area where I had expected windows… but instead found that the light streamed into the area from a lack of ceiling or roof.
All around me was shattered concrete and gypsum panels from interior walls, grey light shining down from above through massive breaks in the structure of the building. My eyes adjusted to the change in light, and as my activator turned off and stashed his headlamp I saw that the sky was cloudy beyond. I heard wind through the gaps in the ceiling, and studying the debris confirmed that it had been this way for some time; whatever had caused so much damage had been a great deal of time ago, based on the aging of the sheetrock panels broken and dissolved by rain around me. Perhaps a year, perhaps more. I had little in the way of comparison, but what I did have was enough to tell me that structural damage from disaster didn’t include weathering.
Radio signal detected, chimed a module inside of my chassis’ head section. 133.7 ‘The Woof’. Error: frequency designation mismatches detected frequency. So I had a radio module as well. Which, strangely enough, seemed to be working very well; it was one of the few modules listed as fully functional by my diagnostics.
“Can’t enjoy the scenery yet, robot,” called out the pegasus nearby, getting my attention away from examining my surroundings. “...I’m no local, so who knows what the hell is going to jump me next. We need a spot to hole up so I can figure you out.”
No answers. Only more questions.
