Rapture

Episode 6

15 Rapture
The Nightmare Chronicles
Chapter XV
Bonzi

The first waypoint on the automap was room I woke up in. An objective appeared on my command screen.

Complete operation: install repair talisman.

A belly hatch slid open revealing an empty octagonal recess with a golden holographic glow around it. Another similar glow surrounded an identically shaped talisman sitting on the work bench. I reared onto my hindlegs to reach the talisman and gripped it in my teeth. I slid the cold cobalt and crystal octagon carefully into the slot designed for it.

Regeneration talisman damaged: find replacement talisman or healing talisman.

The next objective softly glowing blue in my surgically augmented eyes. With a newfound presence of mind I carefully searched the operating room. I downed a energy potion and devoured some very stale tasting carbon wafers. I supposed that if I could eat metal...
My room was the only one so far that had a IV drip within a stasis field. I flew up to it and deactivated the stasis, to my horror the IV bag was full of blood! Man I was so thirsty though, it was my blood right? I shuddered, still way too weird for me. I set the blood down and fluttered up to the higher cabinets. Inside were several bottles of various liquids and whole shelves of pills. Somehow my iPip assigned, categorized and knew the value, the uses and named all of the medications and liquids. Most were worthless, degraded or stale but a few, like alcohol or WD40, were assigned a good value or were categorized as very useful. I flew those down and raked them into an empty trash can along with some healing bandages and assorted medical supplies. There was nopony here to use them, so I might as well take them, no?
Holding the rim of the metal can in my mouth I flew out into the hall, I was too short to carry the can while walking, taking it with me forced me to take flight. Flying was a fairly new experience for me, and with the can weighing me down and tipping me off balance... I smashed face first into the hard linoleum floor of the hall just out side my room. I facehoofed while staring back at the doorway, trying to remember another, easier way of transporting the goods.
Usually I ignored the digital spectra lines that darted across my vision to outline objects and inform me of their identity and function, the could be anoyingly distracting. But the moment I paused at the doorway the lines went crazy focusing on the turqoise-green plack on the wall just right of the door.
"Combat Technologies Research
Cybernetic Enhancement Wing
Project Bonzi
Subject Echo-55 Alpha"

"

I instinctively asked the iPip in my head. Not even consciously realizing I could do so till halfway through the answer.

Project Bonzi is clasified. Delta level security clearance is required to access the Project Bonzi file from a primary server. There is no further information available. I will Cross-reference the uncorrupted archives for any related files.

A iPip referring to itself in the first person? Why would it do that? For that matter how would I even know that iPip's don't normally do such things!?!! Everything is WAY too weird right now, getting away time!
Blasts of energy flew overhead as I dove beneath the security drones approaching from my right. Leaving the trash can and supplies behind cuz I couldn't carry them at all while on the ground, I raced past the hovering drones. Escaping past them was really my only option, I couldn't hide In my room, and the bulkhead to my back and left was fuzed shut. Neither option really conducive to escape or evasion. So I sprinted and dodged past the pack of drones, hopefully I could out maneuver them while on the ground. The faceplant having shaken my confidence in my flying ability, I didn't have the guts to risk another painful at this critical juncture.
Somehow my body instinctually knew how to use my wings as air brakes and as a steering aid, unsurpassed drone dodging ability was mine! Haha!
/)(\
I was quite smugly satisfied with
myself as I reached the bulkhead door. Those silly drones are so stupid, I trapped all of them in a small auditorium located at the apex of the hallways curve, in otherwords, halfway between the two bulkhead doors. How I knew all this fancy gibber-jabber was beyond me, but I knew it and it was fun!
To my nauseating horror the bulkhead seal was surrounded by half a dozen mummified skeletons both of ponies and the bipedal doctor creatures. After crumpling to the floor and dry heaving several times, I calmed down enough to gingerly approached:
'Master Surgeon Andrew Nelson's'
broken bones and swiped his golden access card. Delta level access, maybe I could find out about project, assuming I could get to a primary server. But right now I was really annoyed that his card COULDN'T open the sealed bulkhead, I hate lockdowns.
Thankfully my iPip had a contingency plan.

Destroy seven security drones and ingest their power crystals.
Upgrade combat claws with energy sheaths.
Cut your way through the bulkhead.

Three new objectives glowing on my eyes. Smugness gone, I was furiously thinking of a way to destroy seven security drones without dying, and failing. I couldn't just go in there and rip them apart with my claws, and I couldn't let them out without being mobbed. I needed a bomb or something.
Wandering aimlessly through the halls I figured out the principal behind Project Bonzi. Starring at myself in the mirror, my most shocking feature wasn't that half my body was covered in ceramic/cobalt armor plates... I was fully grown, not a foal anymore at all. I was the size of a school aged little foal, but my body was that of a fully grown pony. What is this I don't even!?!! Seriously, what in- I give up. Somehow I'm going to make sense of all of what is happening me, but right now there is ventilation system with my name on it.
/)(\
I slipped into the ventilation duct with practiced ease. Practiced, right... Because freezing to death locked in a freezer only to wake up Celestia knows how long later fully grown and covered in a robotic exoskeleton; results in me slipping into the ventilation system with "practiced ease." I have no idea how to explain it, flying up to the grate, twisting out the screws out with a claw tip, removing the grate and setting it silently onto the floor; all felt natural, as if I'd done it a hundred times. Weird, weirder and now freaky, thats my life.
The duct was thickly coated in eons of grime and dust, now so was I. Icky, icky, icky! I do not like cobwebs, thick clouds of dust or sticky, oily black sludge. I do not like the creaking and groaning of rusted duct joints, or the cavernous echoing of even the tiniest sound, I do like that I have a bajilion vision options to improve low light visibility. Awesomely, one of the options supposedly allowed me to see inside of and through things! But to use that ability I had to upgrade to echolocation level three and get an acoustics talisman. The only option I Could upgrade to was Ultra-Violet level one. Wtf was the upgrade system? Wtf were EXP points, how did I get them and how did they work? For that matter wtf did wtf even mean? It was becoming painfully clear that I knew all sorts of things I shouldn't and could do all sorts of things I didn't know how to. Right now being me is waayyyy too confusing and crazy!
/)(\
I navigated my way through the ventilation by walking towards the urgent cries for help. I was so ridiculously small that I could walk through the ventilation shafts! Granted, I had to duck my head and bend my knees a tad, but I was definitely not crawling. I popped open the floor grate and pulled myself through the narrow gap and into a spherical chamber.
What th- my entire field of vision was plastered with holographic spectral lines, gold, green, red and blue lines racing around my screen chasing glowing glyphs on the spherical walls. Hundreds of images of these symbols went flashing across my command screen, it was like a wave of glyphs being shot at my head, I tried to duck out of the way but the holograms weren't from the sphere but generated by my visual augmentation. Dizzily, I fell to my haunches as massless intangible shapes continued to bombard me. As suddenly as the blitz of glyphs began they stopped. I shook my head to clear out my babbling confusion and surveyed my surroundings.
In the center of the room a narrow catwalk reached out towards a raised podium or dias supporting an advanced and very complex looking terminal interface. The cries for help stopped, I had been so sure they came from this room. Bother. Flying onto the catwalk I went for the door, it didn't budge.

"Oh no you don't."

The child's voice chided me from both the room and inside my head.

"I woke you out of stasis when Ekleipsa reactivated all the security systems on this ship. Now that you've found me you don't get to just runaway and hide. I saved your life by engaging those drones for you. It is your turn to save mine by pulling me out of the network before the AI comes online and erases me."

That's why it was referring to itself in the first person, Clearly a self aware virus hacked into the system and got trapped here when the bombs fell and everything got scrambled. I also intuitively knew all this, now I have a headache. Of course the virus didn't really give me a choice in the matter, because within moments a cable attached to a mechanical arm reached out and plugged directly into my forehead. My screen went crazy again, this time line after line of computer code raced over my screen. The voice began to speak again, this time only in my head without echoing throughout the chamber.

"I took the liberty of replacing your iPip matrix with a modified prototyp- damn it! The systems rebooting, get out of here! Run!"

"What? I... What did you do-"

"No time! Run! The AI on the primary server is waking up, if we don't get out of here fast it will kill both of us."

My automap updated with a new destination and route, also marking nearby security drones with red dots. The door at the far end of the catwalk opened moments before I charged headlong through it. The chamber I just left was at the end of a T-junction, and with drones approaching from either side I went sprinting down the lengthy hall in front of me. With all the delicate finesse of a Russian ballerina I tripped over my own hooves face planting with refined grace as the drones chasing me opened fire.
Thank you to whom ever designed my exoskeleton with high palmier ceramic plates to compliment and protect the Tungsten and Twilitanium* reinforced Cobalt-Chromium alloyed load bearing structure. The ceramics refused to melt or deform even when blasted with weaponized lasers, instead they dissipated the heat evenly across their entire surface effectively shielding me from otherwise deadly searing bolts of energy. Claws now extended I scrambled into a fighting position, turning to face my flock of murderous mechanical pursuers.
Time slowed to a crawl as the combat menu appeared on my command screen, glowing holographic crosshairs lining up with the nearest drone. I selected auto-combat from the close-quarters menu and waited as time sped back up to normal. The following moments were a continuous blur of motion interspersed with jabs of burning pain and the jarring clash of my claws tearing through metal.
Upon exiting auto combat I was surrounded by the sparking remains of three security drones scatter across the floor. Auto combat was awesome! Without it I probably would have died twice already. But then again, having a body that could move on its own volition and without my conscious control was pretty scary none the less. Volition, another word to add to my growing list of how the hell do I know that!?!!

16 Rapture
The Nightmare Chronicles
Chapter XVI
Reboot

Apparently power crystals taste like chicken, or at least that's what my iPip told me they taste like. Personally I think that particular function is broken since it also says scrap metal and energy potions also taste like chicken, and none of these things taste anything close to the same. Speaking of which, I wonder what chicken really taste like? I'd imagine something with wings that's purple and orange but can't fly. Yup, chickens are definitely purple and orange.
I felt like a leaden slug when the levitation talisman deactivated to allow my exoskeleton to divert power to repair itself. With repairs underway after I vanished into the forest, my prompt and objective queue's were both asking me to make a hard reboot. I absentmindedly selected my way through the prompt menu till everything went blank, unaugmented vision isn't all that its been cracked up to be. Coming down from my energy potion induced high I was too drained to even worry about my entire exobody just shutting down.
Then a prompt began to flash in front of me.

Reboot in progress, please select iOS kernel/
inMac Ketteh
iPrism

I don't know how I knew but I did know that inMac was the default operating system for the iPip. The prompt for iPrism was so shiny and had so many pretty colors, how could I not push it?
A helpful sounding and cheery voice tutorial began to speak to me as the new iOS loaded.

"Welcome to the holographic iPrism interactive display. We didn't get payed for designing this so you don't get a tutorial, go tell the director he can suck it."

As soon as the voice finished speaking the waves of glyph images flip sideways across my field of vision, cover flow style. The glyphs had to be some kind of programs or files or something else important and computery. Maybe they had something to do with viral AI that downloaded itself into my iPip? Who knows. From the icon and animated avatar that had just appeared in the lower right corner of my vision, I was about to find out. With a demur but decidedly english accent my computerized companion calmly spoke.

"Hello, you may call me Chloe. I am not a computer virus as you may have been lead to believe instead I am a sentient digital being. I am not exactly a self aware artificial intelligence, but you may think of me as such. I'm sorry about all the inconvenience I've put you through, but in order to ensure my survival it was rather unavoidable. For the time being it looks like we are stuck with each other. I hope we can be friends, what is your name?"

Trying to collect my thoughts and failing miserably I stammered raggedly. Waves of exhaustion robbing my brain of coordinated coherent thought.

"II-I don't remember-I mean I don't actually know. I-I'm not actually sure I have."

"Then I rather expect we shall need to improvise, in this facility your designation was Echo-55 Alpha. I presume this to be an undesirable form of identification. However, unless there is a different name you desire to go by, I suggest we use it until you get your cutie mark. Miss Echoes."

Direct is good, I like direct. But this; Chloe person, is a tad on the too direct side of things. While going by the designation given to me by whoever owned this starship and ran this facility isn't the most elegant or assertive solution to my identity crisis, it's the simplest and easiest. Along with direct I do simple and easy, especially when I'm brain dead and nearly comatose from energy potion withdrawals. Given my extremely petite figure, I should really watch my intake of highly addictive substances, withdrawals suck.

"Ok, Echoes it is, for now. Whatever, just just. I think I'm just gonna take a nap now..."

The world slowly faded to black as I began to loose consciousness. Now I had an AI in my head, as if there wasn't already enough things that I didn't have a clue about floating around inside my chaotic head. Especially all the experience I had no memory of learning or going through. Speaking of memory, since when was I a filly? Of all the embarrassing things not to have any memory of what so ever, gender has to be the worst possible thing.
I thought loosing consciousness meant not being conscious Implying that I wouldn't be thinking. So why am I still thinking? Scratch that, why aren't I awake? Why can't I hear or see or even feel my body? Wait, I'm clearly clueless and I have another something that can talk in my head who knows a lot about me. It's time for twenty questions!