Out and About in the Equestrian Kingdom

Chapters

Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
sigma delta
Chapter 1
Chapter 8

Chapter 2

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 2

The analog grandfather clock ticked away the seconds in the background; its strained mechanism was loud and piercing in the unnatural hush. Compressed squirts of realtime made the sound and motion uneven as the sheriff's wetware ran through self-defense checklists, optimum firing patterns and backup simulations. Such trivial data as what was going on in the real world could wait - his actual brain was so slow it would barely matter if things went south.

"When was your last backup?" he asked the woman. Sheriff Malcolm Rogers' voice was level and emotionless. His gun was pointed at the man behind the woman that his HUD had identified as 'Teresa', but there was no chance it would be that easy. The only effective shot had the side-effect of passing through the victim.

Very little extraneous dynamic information was available on-tap, as blackout protocol was in effect. It had been from the moment this altercation had started. All data not piped in on hardline was inaccessible, and hardlines weren't much use when out and about. The lack of situation telemetry and datapresence was almost painful for Rogers. It was as if he'd suddenly gone blind in one eye and deaf in one ear. Though it would not dampen his aim, it made the procedure that was to follow no less difficult.

"T-today, th-this morning," Teresa replied, voice weak and hesitant. Her eyes were wild and her breathing was fast and shallow. Rogers' target analysis put her pulse at dangerously fast, and a social interaction module politely informed him that mental trauma was almost certain no matter what. It was already stacking up a list of known counseling providers for datasquirt once the altercation was over.

The woman's gaze was fixated on the lawman in front of her, but her attention was riveted to the man who had one arm around her neck whilst the other held a neuralrod to her temple. He hadn't said a word the entire time and had barely moved except to restrain his captive. He wasn't a large man, but his grip was like a vice. An average Joe, the man was apparently in his forties; his hair was thinning and he had a paunch. Nothing said 'rapist' or 'abductor', and without any monitoring footage or witness video, any potential motives were just pie in the sky at this point.

Not good. Not good at all.

Rogers swallowed heavily. This could not go on any longer, security protocol demanded it – brainhacked personalities had rights, and with blackout protocol in place his window of opportunity to bring things to a successful – albeit regrettably final – end was closing.

"Shut your eyes," he said gently, almost too quietly for the woman to hear. She understood enough from his expression however, and stiffened. He took aim, took a single breath and let it out, and squeezed the trigger.

The shot was, of course, perfect. It entered directly through the left side of her frontal lobe and exited the back of her head through the occipital lobe in a spray of grey matter and blood. The hypervelocity bullet barely slowed down as it impacted her would-be kidnapper in the neck and tore out his spinal column. Both went down twitching.

***

Sheriff Rogers stood guard as the blackout was lifted and the postmortem support techs rolled in. It was likely they could recover some of the intervening memories of Teresa - the female victim - but it was unlikely they'd be directly integrated post bodyloss. Trauma was rarely useful, even for the personality types that valued memory integrity.

Steven - as the male perp was apparently called - was going to have a much less fun time. It wasn't that he'd be mistreated, but now that comms were back up, his trial had been swift and the judgement perfunct by a trio of gestalt Justice AI's. Guilt had been observed by multiple verified sources, and the man would now be further interviewed by a system designed to extract as much information about the crime as possible in order to be completely fair and thorough in sentencing. This meant having his personality matrix replay the relevant portion of his life until the system was satisfied. It was effective verification as well as punishment.

Rogers squatted down over the body of the woman, shaking his head. The white sheet did little to hide the fact that her head had been neatly removed by a group of attendant spider-like medical robots slaved to the cleanup crew AI gestalt. He knew it was necessary, and had been performed with the utmost care and attention, but it still sickened him, deep down inside where the animal part lived, where the miracles of the modern age hadn't quite penetrated.

Rogers glanced up as his avvy halted from taking depositions and statements to alert the paramedics of a possible situation. For the most part, such fieldwork was simple – take telemetry and sensedumps from those with enough bandwidth to spare and sync it to a secure cloud, neat and easy – but there were always a few unwilling to part with pieces of their eigenstates directly. Such observers would be dutifully dealt with in secure quarters in accordance with the needs of the state and their personal requirements.

There was, of course, bound to be something to make the job more difficult than it needed to be. This time it was a collapsed pony, recently enough decanted that the stallion was mostly merely suffering from malnutrition and a sodium imbalance. He was completely offline, though, so he warranted immediate medical care. The citymind sensors informed him that the brown stallion was called 'Mixed Oats'. Inquiries as to his human name – which would have been infinitely more useful, given the circumstances – went unanswered. Celestia was meddling again, and it annoyed him. Not least because there could be something seriously wrong and he wouldn't know thanks to there being no medical records earlier than a half hour ago or so. Med-sensors from the paramedics and bodyloss techs stated everything was fine with the stallion, but Rogers wasn't so sure.

Call it a hunch.

“Hook me up to the recovery room, Kojak. Pull in the victim, and add the pony. I want to question him when he comes round.”

Rogers eyed the pony suspiciously as the medtechs hooked up a bio-infuser and covered him with a nanofoil blanket. One of them even fetched a pillow to put under the poor thing's head, which was plumped and maneuvered into place once the pony's breathing had been double-checked.

Rogers scratched at his chin as he locked his gun and set a subroutine to handle the initial flurry of paperwork. He wasn't really welcome here any more, he could tell, so it was time to make tracks whilst the detectives got to work. Sheriffs just got in the way. Setting his avvy, Kojak, to keep watch via his real body, Rogers' digital self stood up out of his crouching form and walked through a glowing, light-filled doorway which had been placed somewhat inconveniently in the middle of the crime scene. He'd vacate physically as soon as possible, but until then he had a job to do.

Inside, the recovery room was relatively featureless. The walls were a creamy beige, and glowed with their own soft yet penetrating light. A somewhat run-down - in a charmingly old-time style - wooden window hung in space. Through it could be seen blue skies and tranquil oceans of grass. A chandelier hung from an invisible ceiling. Beneath it, Teresa sat sipping cocoa. She was wrapped up in a warm blanket and sat deep in a comfortable, worn green velvet-covered chair.

“You doing okay?” Rogers asked, pulling up a stool next to her. He stretched his legs and sat slowly down, pulling off his shoes to remove a stone in a maneuver that he was informed would be seen as "comforting".

“Other than being dead, I g-guess.” The woman smiled. It was a good sign, even though her expression was somewhere between dazed, confused and mortified.

“Don't worry, we'll deal with your bodyloss. Happens to everyone sooner or later. How many times has it been for you?”

“S-second.”

“First time was your first run-through, huh?” Rogers checked the woman's file. She was listed as being around ninety five in real terms, and had discorporated from natural causes a decade ago. A decade of life-extension so far then. Good. That meant she'd be used to the idea of outgrowing your own skin and picking up the pieces to start again. He never liked to cause bodyloss, it was always so... rude, and for somebody intellectually ready but emotionally unprepared, their first bodyloss should be as calm and dignified an affair as possible. Gunshots and decapitation need not apply. Prior to his arrival in the recovery room sensorum, she'd had a half hour or so of enhanced time to get the debrief on what had occurred, complete with hi-def re-enactment of her last few moments. It would probably be a few months subjective time before she was pronounced mentally stable enough to resurrect, if she did after such an occurrence, but the citymind had her in hand. She'd be okay, so whilst he'd have some lingering guilt to deal with, his conscience was clear.

Rogers pared off an eigenghost to continue with the debrief from the woman so his primary neocortex could concentrate on the equine. It would be a bit confusing to reintegrate the three sets of memories from the incident later, but nothing he hadn't done before, and it was something that his gut told him needed to be done: the pony was an outlier. They didn't normally faint, so why had this one? He didn't buy the currently accepted hypothesis of malnutrition.

He approached the sleeping equine cautiously. A glossy, jet-black crow was perched on its neck, and was giving him a very beady glare.

“Don't give me that look, he'll be fine,” Rogers stated.

The crow – apparently a sentient GPS daimon – cawed its disapproval, grumbling as it shifted about, unwilling to budge.

"Look, I just want a talk with him. I know everything's coming up within parameters, but that doesn't mean he doesn't need a little bit of TLC, huh? I know how these ponies are about friendship." The pony's safeguards started coming down, which was good. A consensual memespace opened, and finally Rogers was able to fully interface. Slowly, keeping an eye on the crow, Rogers put a hand on the pony's neck. He patted gently. "You okay in there?" he asked. This being the recovery room, the pony wouldn't even be here unless his neocortex was functioning, so what was--?

Rogers lifted his hand as the pony beneath him changed colour from a muddy brown to a soft green and gold, growing wings into the bargain. The pony's avvy. Of course.

“Hey there pretty, want to tell me your name?” Rogers asked the new mare. Avvys often liked it when you were more personal with them, this one seemed to follow the trend.

“Julep,” she replied hesitantly. “Mint Julep.” She blushed slightly, and shied away from his outstretched hand, but didn't otherwise move.

“Well Miss Julep, your progenitor is a bit under the weather. I'm here to sit with you until we're sure everything's okay and you want to leave. Can we have a little chat?”

The pegasus look unconvinced about Rogers' intentions as she got to her hooves, especially when the crow informed her that it didn't like the way he smelled. "I want to go home. I'm hungry and I want to go home."

Petulance from the avvy. Hmm. Something had scared the pony, at least on some level. Probably just the whole thing. It didn't help that he'd been the one to do it.

"Well ordinarily you'd be in luck, seeing as we're at a restaurant, but it's currently not open for business. I do, however, know somewhere close. Think you can get yourself there?"

For an answer, the avvy nodded then withdrew from the sensorum, leaving the crow hopping about forlornly. Rogers flicked the location of the replacement eatery he had in mind to the daimon. "Wanna make yourself busy?"

With an affirmative "Caw!" the semi-sentient program fluttered off to chart the way.

Rogers too withdrew from the sensorum and waited. A few moments later, Mixed Oats' ears twitched, then his eyes opened. Standing up carefully, the pony wriggled her hips until she was steady.

“Ooh this will be so much fun. It's all different here on Earth!” the pegasus exclaimed. Rogers could see where Oats ended and Julep began, but it was still disconcerting. It always was for a sheriff. His personality profiler registered the differences, and they stood out like a sore thumb when compared with even the fragmentary information from when Oats' main personality had been in control. This mare was left hoofed, she breathed differently, walked differently, held herself differently and in all the ways that mattered, was completely different. She just happened to share the body of a male earth pony.

They both had a cute butt, though.

"Well, Julep, if you're feeling up to it and don't mind me tagging along, how about we go somewhere more comfortable for that chat, okay?"

The mare chewed her bottom lip for a moment, then slowly nodded. Her stomach growled for emphasis, and she blushed.

"I'll take that as a yes."

***

As Julep trotted through the bustling city next to Sheriff Rogers, she found herself lost in both reverie and the sights and sounds of a whole new world that she'd not really gotten to experience before. Seemingly all her life, she'd just wanted… this. To be here, in the Ordinality proper, as herself.

She still remembered her first thoughts, her first, true, real thoughts. Things were a little bit hazy before that point, and she didn't really have contiguous memory recall for a while after her inception either, but there had been that single crystalline moment when a mere personality pattern had blossomed into a person, and afterwards… Well, Mint Julep had started off many years ago in subjective time as a little piece of the human known as Brendan Fremantle; moulded and shaped until she was what he wanted her to be, once he'd started inferring and expressing as Julep, the mare had started to come alive.

She had been his first avatar in Equestria, and had replaced earlier, more simplistic and childish avvys and toons outside of the game. Females were prettier, he'd always said, and the game didn't differentiate when questing. Mares had it easier in a world designed for little girls anyhow; at least, that's what he told himself. The truth was likely more complex. Whatever the source, she was something he wished he could be, but couldn't even admit to himself. Or maybe he was what he wished he was, when he was Julep… except Mint Julep was herself all the time. It was a bit confusing, even for an avvy. Being able to ponder the question only made it moreso.

Anyway: today, she could properly experience Earth, in a body that made sense to her. Sure, she lost two appendages – and gained one confusing one extra – but four hooves, a tail, ears that moved… so much more familiar, and so much easier than standing on your hind legs would have been! Mixed Oats – née Brendan – was elsewhere, so clambering gingerly to her hooves, she resolved to get their body fed and avoid passing out a second time. Her real-world interactions thus far had been strictly during downtime, and with the thickest of senseshrouds. This, with nothing between her fur and the outside world, was a real breath of fresh air. It was liberating, it made her feel like she could fly in a way that actual flight didn't.

"You okay, girl?" asked Sheriff Rogers, turning his head without breaking stride, and tentatively reaching out a hand to pat her on the withers. Her heart fluttered a bit – stallions in uniform were just one of those things, they had the same effect on her as a pretty girl did on Brendan. And Rogers' was all disheveled and sweaty. She shook her head to clear it – wearing a physical body was either difficult, or she wasn't quite well.

"I think so, s-sir," she replied, blushing as she looked up into his big, friendly brown eyes.

"Good. I'm worried about you and Oats here. You shouldn't've fainted." Rogers patted her neck again awkwardly, and couldn't help but run his fingers through the pony's mane. It was an almost instinctual thing as he sought to reassure both himself and Julep.

She cocked her head momentarily as Celestia's presence flowed into her mind. Everything was fine, the princess communicated, she was just giving Mixed Oats more time to adjust, and wanted Julep in charge of his body for a while. The pegasus avvy relayed that she was happy to oblige, and Celestia vanished from whence she came, with a ghostly kiss to the poll and a smiling order to 'have fun'.

Julep told as much to Rogers – well, most of it – and he took a deep, relieved breath.

"I'm glad to hear it. In this case, I think it's time we moved on. Mortimer's off to check on my choice of cafe—" Rogers began as he eased himself up and straightened his hat.

"Mortimer?" Julep asked, looking around for another avvy to play with as she trotted obediently beside the sheriff. She didn't spot any, and looked back questioningly at him.

"The crow, I mean. It's…" Rogers took off his wide-brimmed hat and scratched at his head through his thinning brown hair. "Mortimer was a raven, but… eh, I, well… your gps daimon—"

"Mortimer works for me," she giggled. "I don't know what she'll think of it though."

"Well, she'll lead us to a new eatery. What do you fancy? I've got some bits, so we can splurge a little. I know how the fancier stuff requires a bit of an investment. Truth is, I don't really know how to use them. Comes with being an officer of the state." Rogers turned and raked his fingers through his hair before replacing his hat, sighing under his breath. "Same as being single." Rogers spat. "Listen to me, I sound hopeless. Enough chit-chat, let's get something to eat."

He turned again to face back the way he was still strolling, and came face to muzzle with a steaming, snorting pony-shaped demon. It – obviously a he from the stocky, muscular build – stood before him in full Royal Guard regalia, an armour built partly for show and mostly for use. And this one had seen a lot of use.

“Hold it right there, Sheriff," the newcomer said, glaring. "I received a priority one interrupt from my physical self that there was a major desync with Equestrian servers a few minutes ago, realtime. Subsystems report everything on Mixed Oats went down, and when I get here, what do I find but you hooking him up in some sorry excuse for a sensorum and intimidating my little sister. Back off before I—”

Rogers took a step back and pinched the bridge of his nose as pedestrian traffic weaved around them almost obliviously. Perambulatory and proximity software routines semi-located in the City mind adjusted for the sudden blockage in the street and nudged a few of the less self-attentive citizens gently onto new routes.

“Hang on, hang on. We've got off on the wrong, er, hoof here. Who are you?” He regarded the new pony avatar before him carefully. It was a male unicorn, about ten hands high, covered in a white pelt with a striking blue mane and tail. The creature's name had popped up once he'd fully synced with the sheriff's AR sphere, but it was always polite to ask. The avvy – probably actually an eevee from the way it held itself – had no physical component, but that didn't mean it was powerless to protect itself or the ponytrait citizen it was talking about.

“I'm Stalwart Hide. Conceived inside his head,” the unicorn motioned towards Julep, wearing Oats' body, “but born in Equestria. One day I'll wake up and remember being him, and let me tell you, if I find my head tampered with before I inherit it, we will have words, whatever ordinality it is you call home.”

Rogers swore he saw flames snorting from the unicorn's nostrils as the creature all but levelled his muzzle against Rogers' face. “I'm not tampering with anyth— wait, did you say crashed?” Rogers flipped up a deep medscan window and focused it on Mixed Oats. The pony's biological brain was still out for the count, deep in a dream mode, but everything otherwise seemed fine... diagnostics were running, his physical condition was listed as 'needs attention', but everything was otherwise within tolerable parameters, and Julep would have been sounding the alarm in any case.

“Aye, I see almost a second of datastream unaccounted for. That shouldn't happen.” The unicorn glared accusingly.

“Records say he did just get traits. Could've been that—” Rogers played with the biorecords, searching back through the datastreams in search of the elusive desync. Worryingly, nothing was showing up, and the blackout protocol had nothing to do with it.

“Unlikely, though nutrient levels are off. Hang on, running a self-check here... everything looks good my end.” Stalwart trotted over to Mint Julep and reassured her with a quick nuzzle.

“I'd double-check if I were you," muttered Rogers. "There's something strange going on here, if what you say is true.” Rogers glared darkly at the glowing instrumentation icons that floated before him. Everything looked fine, which meant somebody was wrong... and that could only mean Trouble – capital first letter and all.

“Umm, excuse me, but... are you talking about the sparkles?” Mint Julep suddenly interjected, looking slightly watery-eyed and more than a little fearful.

Stalwart turned to her, and looked her in the eyes, his own gaze serious. “Sparkles? Tell me.”

Rogers' initiated as much of a public bioscan of the mare as he could, recording from multiple angles, as he listened to her answer to Stalwart Hide.

“Well, I was looking at the pretty sparkles, and then... everything kind of went sideways. Then I was scared, and-and—” Mint Julep curled in upon herself.

“None of that. Show me.” Stalwart stomped a rear hoof.

Gesturing with a forehoof, Mint Julep cast her own window before them. The last few seconds of realtime before Oats had collapsed replayed itself, but this time through the avvy's senses. Through the window in space, a gun went off and two people fell to the ground. Bright sparks of light briefly flashed throughout the square of the cafe, and then everything went dark, and the window dissolved. Rogers and Stalwart exchanged a glance, then Rogers went for an item in his pocket.

"Miss Julep, would you kindly give me a copy of that dataspike?"

"O-of course," Julep replied, bowing her head. For a second, their consensual memespace wavered as a large datadump wended its way across the aether and into Rogers' personal storage device. Activating his own personal cypher on it, the data would remain inaccessible until it could be safely decrypted again with a verified one-time code.

“Until then, I'd like to have a subsentient biomonitor app double check your vitals, is that okay? It's read only, and keyed to me. It includes a few protocol and security upgrades; I wouldn't want you involuntarily giving out this sort of data."

"Uh… o-okay, if you think it's necessary."

Rogers nodded. "I do."

He reached into a pocket and retrieved a small datacube. Tapping it to the pony's head, the software package within downloaded almost instantly to a data scratchpad, where it was analyzed and then run. It installed several keypairs for cryptographic exchange as well as a suite of recognition and authorization protocol daemons.

“And what's prompted this?” demanded Stalwart, taking a few steps back and staring incredulously from one to the other.

“Something's fishy here, and until I've sorted this out, I want to keep an eye on these two. If you're right," Rogers said to Stalwart, wagging a finger thoughtfully, "then she and her progenitor Oats have got almost a second of downtime to account for, so there's no way I'm letting either of them out of my commsystem until it's cleared up. Other than that, you,” the sheriff nodded to the unicorn, “are free to go, if you are satisfied with their treatment thus far.”

“I might only let him wear my body when we go questing, but I'm not going to have you brainripping him." Stalwart's muzzle was mere inches away from Rogers' face. A hefty, iron-shod hoof thumped the sheriff in the chest. It may have been nothing more than a digitally rendered avatar, but still the man felt it. "He may be the thick-headed corporeal meatsack that birthed me, but he's my thick-headed corporeal meatsack. I won't see him come to harm.”

Rogers gulped. The pony might well be a head shorter than he was, but the pony was no less intimidating for it when in full 'Royal Guard' mode. “Well if Julep can continue to do the driving, I really think it's time she got a good meal. Her blood sugar's off and her tissues are going to start decompiling themselves unless she gets something to eat.”

“As much as I dislike it, I agree. However, I will scan you for lawful intent. Initiate secure storage and compute layer, if you will.”

“I'm a sheriff, Captain, isn't that enough? I've got enough data buffering already that I'm in danger of forking, and I don't really want to--”

“I know you can handle it. Please give me access or I will sequester it."

Rogers blinked. "Under whose authority?"

"Mine. And Celestia's. And as one lawpony to another, I appreciate the fraternal bond we all share."

Rogers ground his teeth and glared at the unicorn. The creature was under a metre tall at the withers and completely insubstantial. And probably able to kick him to the middle of next week despite that. Stalwart was also one of Celestia's crowd, far moreso than the pony that created him and set the ill-tempered eevee free. Stalwart's authority in her sphere extended to the real world too, at least in cases like this.

Roger sighed. "Fine. Initiating storage and compute layer. Prepare for transfer."

A few moments later, and Rogers stood tapping his foot. "Are you finished?"

"You are a satisfactory guardian." There was a mental sniff. "I'm just here to monitor the situation. Just like you. I've taken a copy of that memorydump, along with everything else relevant for our own investigation into this regrettable incident. Have a good day." With that, the ghostly imprint of Stalwart on Rogers' mind faded as his secure compute and store layer erased the last vestiges of the eevee.

"How did he get from you to that?" murmured Rogers in bafflement as he took control of his own body back.

Julep blushed. "I'm… uh… well, I'm…" The pony did a half-twirl and then tried to fold in on herself again.

"He dumped a bunch of girly behavioural routines into you, didn't he? And then in a fit of pique, macho'd up to form Mister Grumpy. And Celestia makes it sound like she can solve these sorts of issues."

"She… she can," whispered Julep. "Oats just doesn't know what he wants to be. I think that's why Luna named us that. I l-look after him down here, and Stalwart looks after him up there, kind of. It's not really the same. Stalwart's got his own life; Wally's more eevee than avvy, unlike me. One day though, Mixed Oats will stop being Mixed Oats, and then… he might become me. Or Stalwart. Or both. Or something new. But the point is, when it matters, he'll know."

Rogers nodded with resignation. "I get that. Confusing, but I get it. You make it sound like he needs direction in his life." The sheriff's face reddened as he realised how forward he was being, and he turned away to scan for the crow. He reinitialized their privacy bubble, and the babble of street vendors and performers faded away. "That's better. Unless you want to see the sights..?"

"No, it's fine. I think I prefer things a bit quieter, to be honest, after… earlier." Julep smiled timidly and pressed herself closer to the sheriff. He simply nodded and held up an arm for the crow as she finally returned from her look-see around the city. 'Mortimer' landed, cawing loudly.

"Found it alright? Got the best way there for us?" he asked her.

Mortimer cawed an affirmative, then took off again, swooping down the streets at just above eyelevel. Rogers took a deep breath, then bowed and gestured for Julep to carry on. She giggled, bowed also, and began to follow the looping and diving GPS daimon.

***

Chapter 3

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 3

Mortimer the GPS daimon playfully looped overhead, briefly landing on bushes and lamp-posts as she led the pony and human onwards, until the pair following her finally found themselves at an open-air street cafe. The entrance was a modest little wooden arch covered in climbing roses, set in the middle of a charming little painted nanowood fence. There had been plenty of kiosks on the roadside during their constitutional, and more than a few missions willing to feed them for a donation from Julep's equine body — horse apples are worth their weight in gold to those with a green thumb, just one of the perks of being a pony — but Rogers had had his own, somewhat fancier, destination in mind.

Julep's HUD lit up with the location of a mixed humanoform and pony-appropriate seating area and the two headed over to it together.

Rogers pulled off his hat, hung it on the back of his chair, then awkwardly tried to plump and properly place Julep's outsized flat cushion. She giggled a little, since the old courtesies weren't really invented with her kind of bulk in mind, but demurely thanked him nonetheless.

"Today was your first day, huh?" he asked as he sat down, ordering them both coffees. Julep switched hers to a tea, uploading relatively detailed preparation instructions – Oats liked coffee, she didn't so much – and then nodded, lipping herself a breadstick from the pile in the center of the table. It was a display of dexterity which would have flabbergasted her progenitor.

"Mm-hmm."

A dandelion hummus was whisked in front of her by an agile spidery robot, and she smacked her lips at the smell. It was strange: 'real' dandelions tasted subtly different to Equestrian ones, yet they were instantly recognizable. Maybe it was Oats' tongue.

"Well, girl, I'm sorry it had to be ruined with that scene back there. 'S why I'm here with you now. My avvy's taking care of the paperwork, and I've got a ghost dealing with the rest of those involved, so I'm all yours. I just thought you and I should talk it over. You needed a little pick-me-up and I missed lunch."

Julep looked down into her hummus. "So you don't really want to be with me? You're just… doing your job?" she asked in a small voice.

Rogers' eyes softened, and he shook his head. "Naw, don't take it like that. I can hardly leave a damsel in distress lying on the pavement now, can I?" He smiled openly.

Julep snorted. "You don't want to talk to me, you just want to talk to my host. Only he's not here right now and you've got time to waste." She pouted, glaring darkly.

"Oh now, that really wounds me, little miss. If I'd just wanted a statement I could've done it at the station. Or I could've let the citymind take a deposition. What I wanted was to make sure you were alright." Rogers gingerly put a hand out across the gap, a gesture which would have led to a reassuring pat on a partner's hand, but fell short on the equine, who had all four limbs folded under her belly. He blushed, and Julep took pity on him, leaning forwards until his roving palm patted her on the muzzle. He coughed awkwardly, then took a sip of his coffee and made a face. "There's nothing like a good cup of coffee," he muttered under his breath, nettled.

"And that is nothing like a good cup of coffee," Julep replied, giggling.

Rogers slapped his thigh. "See! I knew you could find the funny in this. So buck up, tell me what happened and then we can get on with enjoying our meal."

The meal continued apace, and though Rogers grilled the pegasus avvy on what had happened, he gave her space to reply or not as she wished. It was several hours later when the two finally decided to leave the restaurant. Julep had literally eaten like a horse – several huge bales of tasty flavoured hay and a kind of fried, honey-roasted oat porridge had made her a much happier little pony than she had been earlier. Rogers for his part had eaten heartily too, but most of all they had talked.

Finally, the last plate was almost empty and it was coming time to ante up. Rogers would pay for their all-natural consumables – non-replicated goods were premium, after all – but only when he had finally agreed that Julep would get a favour in return.

"You said Oats needs direction?" Julep asked as she placed a wide, shallow drinking bowl back on the table.

Rogers had been surprised quite how proficient the pony was at holding things without fingers. He'd thought of the majority as almost semi-disabled, his own experiences with them notwithstanding. Julep was proving that misconception very wrong.

"Well then, let's be partners," she continued, smiling and blushing.

"Partners? what're you talking about?" Rogers replied, wiping his chin with a napkin. "I'm not sure you know what you're asking."

"I… can't stop thinking about that poor woman. And that man. I keep wondering what happened. Why. None of it makes sense. And I want to know. I want to help. You say you're monitoring me, but I want more than that. I want to know everyone else affected is safe too. I want to be your faithful steed." She blushed even harder at the 'faithful' moniker, but it was how the literature she had quietly downloaded and indexed put it. Julep batted her eyelids playfully, then recited from Celestia's Book of Pony. "Man and horse are one, even when that horse is a pony. So I'm your partner. Or no deal."

"Hah!" laughed Rogers, slapping a hand into his thigh. "What happened to the meek little miss I was picking up off the floor earlier?"

"I-I just thought this could be a new start for me, for us. I'm here, on my own four legs – almost, at least – and… Earth's not so different from Equestria, really. Not when I've got someone to look after me. I think it would be a noble quest, one that both of me would appreciate."

Rogers speared the last sausage piece, then levelled the fork at her. "You're right, there. I do think Oats needs more than just a new skin. You might be on to something." He leaned back in his chair and played with a toothpick for a few moments in contemplative silence. Finally, he spoke up. "Believe me, being part of a mounted patrol unit is no walk in the park, but if you're really up to it, we can give it a go."

"Yay!" Julep clopped her hooves together, aetheric wings flapping for joy.

"Very well then. I, Malcolm Rogers, hereby deputize you, Mint Julep – and your progenitor – as a faithful steed of the Ford Newton Sheriff's Office, to hereby serve the people until released from your duties. Do you agree?"

Mint Julep clopped her hooves together again and nodded happily. "Oh Oats is going to be so happy when he wakes up!"

"I doubt it," chuckled Rogers, "but you're his avvy. It's binding on him too. He okay, by the way?"

Julep cocked her head to one side, then slowly nodded. "Celestia says he's fine. He'll be back tomorrow. Right now he's having a bit of R-and-R himself..."

***

“Brendan?” called a musical voice. “Brendan Fremantle, can you hear me?”

In a heartbeat, I was awake. As my senses cleared, I found myself lying prone and unmolested in an empty field. My jaw fell open, my ears pricked up and I struggled to rise, heartbeat racing. The cold, hard cobblestone floor of the cafe had been replaced with soft grass. The chair-strewn square was now an open field, with warm sunlight streaming down all around.

"Wha-?" I asked, tottering in astonishment on my hooves.

"Good morning, Brendan. Or, as I should say from now on, Mixed Oats," said a very familiar voice, friendly chuckles chasing after the simple words.

I turned carefully and found a familiar large, white alicorn standing under an apple tree.

Celestia.

She was smiling. I could tell by the way her ears flicked about and her tail swished. I instinctively tried to bow and almost fell. She moved quickly to support me, placing one of her large, dove-like wings over my back to hold me close.

"I, um… what just happened?" I asked weakly, gazing up at the princess with wide, searching eyes. She met my gaze with a soft expression, one of indulgence.

"Oh, don't worry. I just thought a change of pace would do you a world of good, gathering what you went through." She bent her head down to nuzzle away my confusion, licking my unruly mane back into place. "Joining the herd is a big day for any pony, Oats, and I cannot bear to see my little ponies suffer needlessly. That little altercation at the Times Square Cafe was hard on you. This is a much kinder, gentler re-introduction to your new equine body."

"But… the…" I waved a hoof at the grass and sky. "What happened to the world? If this is a sensorum, then surely I'm going to— what about Julep— I—" I stammered, gaze darting left and right.

Celestia rolled her eyes in exaggerated fashion, a wide playful smile on her muzzle as she cut me off. "I am a princess, you know. Your princess, in fact. I can do anything. Come on, little one, it's time to stand on your own four hooves again."

Gingerly, I took a deep breath and then stepped forwards at her insistence, reluctantly leaving her embrace. The earth crumbled under my hooves, squishing up around the frog and catching in my fetlocks. I dropped my head down and snuffled at a pastern. The loamy sod was musky and bitter. I licked my hoof and made a face. Mud didn't taste good. I wasn't sure why I was surprised.

Gently, with infinite patience, Celestia sighed. "Did you really think it would?"

"But… but… where am I? You can't… can you?" I trotted hesitantly forwards, then trotted around the tree in a wide, confused circle. "Am I still at the cafe?" I was used to communal sensorums, but this was a whole new level of fidelity.

Celestia made a moue of disapproval. "Must you adhere to mundanity? You are truly one of my ponies now. Such monotony is quite unnecessary." She blinked once and sighed at my continued confusion. "Wouldn't you rather experience my realms firsthoof? I did promise you as much when you agreed to become one of my little ponies."

"I…" I paused, and then shook myself. Slowly, I walked away from the tree, down the hill that presented itself. "Well yes, but…"

"Don't worry, you're safe. Come on, slowpoke. Let's go for a bit of a run. I'll race you!" Celestia took off in a sudden thunder of hooves and a shower of sod, and something inside of me just screamed for me to catch her.

I wasn't sure why I'd thought meeting Celestia in the flesh would be any different than my previous meetings in Equestria had been through my original AR and VR subsystems, but she was exactly the same shade of capricious. Grinning to myself, I decided I was glad.

Now, I thought, as I wriggled my legs, how does this go again? One, two, three, fou- eep! Try that again… one, four, two… three. Yes!

In next to no time, as my head finally cleared, I had "moving without falling down" mastered. Not long after that, I had "moving at speed" added to my achievements too. With mounting enthusiasm, I loped after the princess.

Equestria is beautiful. Only the Disneyverse rivals Equestria for sheer grandeur. Other franchises offer astounding vistas, but their implementations lack. Disney, however, for all its ocular glory, cannot match the sheer abundance of world that Equestria has, and it likely never will. For the first time, as my hooves ate up the scenery, I truly understood why people could give up the real world for a fantasy: it was because the fantasy world was just so much more spectacular. The real world may hold the illusion of design, but Equestria had something more – it had mastered the design of illusion. From babbling brooks to twisted trees, from emerald vistas to snow-capped peaks, every single moment spent in Equestria was a feast for the eyes of such depth that – corny as it sounded – my inner artist was in tears. And I wasn't even an artist.

A few minutes and a few miles later, I breathlessly pulled up next to the gleaming white equine atop a hill as she stood preening her wings. Before us was spread out the little Equestrian village of Little Gekkering. I was no stranger to sensorums, but the veracity of this digital daydream was astounding. The phrase is bandied about freely, but it was as if I was really there. No, check that, I was there. I was stood with all four hooves in Equestria, and I wasn't sure I had the willpower to leave.

"All this is waiting for you, Oats," whispered Celestia, leaning conspiratorially towards me with a sly smile upon her face.

"I… I know," I replied, voice catching. "B-but I'm not done being corporeal yet. C-can I still visit?" My heart sank as I spoke those words. Five more minutes and she'd have me, and I wouldn't care.

Celestia turned her head towards me on her long neck. She fixed me with an intense, but gentle, gaze. "Mixed Oats, this is your inheritance. It is here, for you as it is for every pony. If I must wait before you are truly ready for Equestria, then so be it, but it is far from me to withhold such joy from you as would be had by what my world offers. Visit when you wish, but make sure you exercise your physical body too. I will not have my people suffer ill health through neglect."

"Your highness," I said simply, inclining my head.

"Now come. Your house is, I believe, just up this path?"

"Uh huh!" I flicked my tail happily. I'd been busy building myself a house in Little Gekkering. It wasn't much, but it was mine and I was proud of it.

"Then lead the way, my dear Oats."

I led the way through the village of Little Gekkering to my modest abode. My pony-house was a single story affair complete with wood-burning stove, a wide and low bed, and comfortable yet durable carpets.

Or at least, it had been. Now, the front door had changed, and something told me the interior was likewise altered.

Looking back at Celestia as I stopped in front of it, she smiled and nodded, head-butting me onwards. I shrugged, and pushed on the door. It opened at a touch of my hoof, and I gingerly stepped through. The room I emerged into was familiar. Very familiar, and yet… odd. The odd thing was that I knew it intimately, having lived there for the past couple of decades, but it was as if I was only now fully experiencing it.

The clothes littering the floor were redolent with the fragrances of too many days wear. Every cup and saucer told a tale of indulgence in tea and coffee. Every plate spoke volumes of the meals consumed thereupon. I smelled an occupant who didn't wash his hooves enough and liked to pick his ears with his credsticks. Astounded, I walked across the room and pulled out one of my wallets from a jacket to check it was my own.

I could taste the earwax.

Ew.

It took me a few moments to realize that I'd picked up the credstick with my muzzle, holding it gently in my almost prehensile lips. It took me a few moments more to realize that I'd smoothly replaced 'hands' with 'hooves' in my internal lexicon.

It wasn't until a full two minutes later that my brain had rebooted enough that an inner voice could apologetically cough and suggest I look back the way I'd come, through the front door. Maybe unsurprisingly, instead of the hamlet of Little Gekkering, there was a nondescript beige corridor leading to a communal balcony and the elevators down to street level.

I fell back onto my rump in a daze. This was going to take a lot of getting used to.

"It appears the maid hasn't been through here in a while," stated Celestia, giggling.

I felt my ears flatten against my head. "I, uh, didn't know I'd be having company." Especially not a princess, I added silently.

“I'll bet you didn't, but you do seem to have enjoyed yourself anyway.” The princess pointed to my bed, where I could see two forms sprawled in what looked to be an awful lack of comfort, yet both were snoring heartily, and both were distressingly naked.

“Oh come on, Julep!” I grumbled.

“You know, you'd be much happier if you let yourself be her more often. She knows how to have fun.”

“I've only just gone for the hooves, your highness,” I complained, “don't make me lose my wedding tackle.”

The princess snorted. “You know that's not what I mean. You can enjoy yourself whichever gender you happen to be. Julep doesn't mind, why should you?”

“So what happened?”

“I think they ended up in bed,” giggled the princess.

“I mean with... me. Last I remember is... oh no. That poor girl! And then... I fainted?”

“Everything is fine,” whispered Celestia, as she swiftly moved to embrace me with her wings. I collapsed into them, screwing my eyes shut tight. “I kept you here in Equestria until your body had healed itself. Julep is good for you. So is Sheriff Rogers, despite what you may think. You ate well, then you talked. I want you to integrate all her memories, Oats. It's important.”

“But—”

“Goats butt, ponies do as Celestia tells them to, and I'm telling you that you had fun and you will let yourself enjoy it. Besides, she wouldn't do anything you wouldn't do in the end.”

“That's what I'm worried about.”

Celestia kissed me on the poll, then headed for the door. “I have two tasks for you, dear Oats. Number one, I want you to get a good night's sleep. You have a full day tomorrow. Number two, I want you to have a word with your maid.”

“I'll... uh... recompile everything.”

“I suggest you do. I tell you what," the alicorn added, as my stomach flipped in mortification, "you may have a small stipend to rearrange your things to better suit your new situation, on the condition that you do one more thing for me.”

"One more thing?" I asked, tail tucked between my legs and the rest of my body trying to follow.

Celestia fixed me with a look that had my hooves glued to the floor. I wilted under her gaze. "Tomorrow, I want you to enjoy yourself. Let Julep be your guide; you need to let loose once in a while. Especially now you are a pony.”

Celestia waved open the door to my apartment with her horn and stepped through into bright Equestrian sunlight before closing it firmly behind her. Moving to open my door again afterwards, I was strangely surprised to find a boring beige corridor with discrete LED lighting.

Apparently I was stuck in reality once again, more or less. I suffered a minor twinge of disappointment, but then my cozy bed called to me, and I clambered in to take the place currently held by Mint Julep in my body. I closed my eyes and fell swiftly—

***

A rolling over. A grumbling snore. An unfamiliar arm tightening around me. A scream – my own – and the meaty sound of hoof impacting face, followed by a shocked cry and the unmistakable cacophony of somebody falling out of bed and knocking over the nightstand, sending the contents placed haphazardly upon it tumbling across the floor.

My first morning as a pony wasn't really what you could call 'peaceful' so far.

"Oh, jeez… sorry, you were, and I was… and…" I stammered. Then I narrowed my eyes as my brain caught up with itself. "You! What did you do with poor Julep! Taking advantage of her like that!" I levelled one hoof at Rogers as he ruefully rubbed what was most likely going to be a black eye.

"You're asking me what we did? Do you seriously not know what your avvy was up to last night?" The sheriff stood up, shaking himself out. I blushed and rolled over, screwing my eyes shut. "I'm going to make breakfast," he continued, around the busy noises of spidery cleaning bots clearing away the mess. "If you want some, it'll be about fifteen, twenty minutes. Makers can't do hot food for shit, and I want something hot."

"You're not even going to answer—"

"Ah, stow it," Rogers replied, throwing his hands at my prone form in a gesture of disgust. "We slept. That is literally all we did. She was scared, she was tired, so was I. She didn't want to be alone, and I didn't really fancy walking all the way home. She invited me in, and demanded we share the bed. I wanted to sleep on the couch, but I won't deny the bed was more comfortable."

"But…"

"I also hate sleeping with my clothes on, and do you have any idea how hot a pony is?"

I blushed again at his choice of words. He just rolled his eyes, turned and stretched. "Look, I'm going to make breakfast. It's too early to deal with your hangups. Integrate your avvy's memories, then get back to me. Breakfast should be ready by then. I'm having bacon and eggs. You can have eggs on toast and porridge. And then we're going to talk."

He left the room. It was clear it was an order. He couldn't give orders to me! Could he? I tried to raise my palms to my face and instead just gave myself concussion. My hangups, he'd said. Did I have a hangup? I ran my psych profiler, but it said everything was fine. Then again, it was an older model software package and was only responsible for memetic defense, not bell curve comparison. Upgrading those wasn't something done on a whim. He was obviously just being mean. I didn't know what Julep saw in him. Humph.

I got comfortable in my own bed whilst that interloper… interloped, in my kitchen, with my maker block. Grumbling, I closed my eyes, and requested integration.

***

"You did what!?" I yelled at Rogers as he puttered about in the kitchen. He just raised an eyebrow and slid a large plate full of porridge and another one with some fried egg on toast over the table at me as I stormed into the breakfast nook.

"I deputized you. You asked me to."

"I did no such thing! I want you to—!"

Rogers lifted up his palm towards me, then curled all of fingers but one down and took a long draught from his mug of coffee. It smelled fantastic, he must have uploaded his own recipe to my makerblock, I hadn't even known— I shook my head. I needed coffee. It was far too early in the morning to find out you had a new job.

"Listen," Rogers said. He put the mug down and then crossed around the room to stand next to me. Then he squatted down and took my hoof in his hands. He lifted it up and stared into my eyes. "I'm no shrink, but you and Julep really need to talk. You block her out, that's not healthy. She's an avvy, kid, not a toon. She's more than just behavioural routines and a pretty face. She's you. And she thinks you need direction. That's what avvy's are for, really. They're to let us step out of our shells and be something else. I thought you'd have grokked that, what with the ponytraits, but apparently not. Tell me, why did you trait?"

My muzzle fell open, and I found himself staring out the window in shock at the busy city.

I dimly recalled the cities of yesteryear. They'd been full of automobiles – busses, cars, motor bikes and so on. That'd been way back, when there was enough oil to just pump it out of the ground and burn it. Such frivolity and waste had come to an end when the price charged to normal consumers rose above a certain pain-point, and they not only stopped driving about, but they stopped buying petrol almost entirely. This had caused one of the first major global recessions to hit the tail-end of pre-singularity civilisation as an entire industry – already ravaged by decades-long economic recessions – collapsed almost overnight.

These days, cars and their like were rare, despite biodiesel and infinibatteries. They were reserved mostly for bigwigs and hobbyists. With the rise of ubiquitous comms, telecommuting was the norm, and instead people walked or rode pushbikes to get where they needed to if they had to meet in person.

Then, of course, ponies had arrived, and a whole new cottage industry of taxis had sprung up. Need to get somewhere in a hurry? Ask for a pony and he or she will either supply a saddle or, for an extra fee, a carriage. Cheap to feed, great exercise, good conversation, and the kids loved it… and the by-product was greatly sought-after for the massive amounts of home and community gardens that had sprung up once mass transportation became that much more complicated and mass-produced fresh produce that little bit more awkward. That's right – being a pony had a number of drawbacks, but the advantages were pretty impressive, namely that almost everything that came with just being a pony was one of them.

I guess I'd been suckered in with that – post-scarcity meant a lot of sitting around getting bored if you were poorly prepared, and I'd been poorly prepared. Everything in my life when I was little had been leading up to something which had ceased to have meaning by the time I'd gotten there. Eventually I guess I'd realized I desperately needed to reinvent myself, and Celestia's little paradise had pulled me in.

I laughed to myself – following the herd in more ways than one.

Today, the city was different. The pinkish hazy smog which had choked the streets a half century ago was now just a memory. Many buildings were still standing from those times. Odd, discoloured sections of brick and mortar were worn like old scars. They dotted a landscape otherwise filled with gleaming spires of metal and diamond. Sanitation foglets scoured most new buildings clean, but the old ones were built without smartmatter. Shepherding the little buggers through a cycle without them gooing the infrastructure was tedious enough that not even class one AI's wanted the job, so buildings that weren't replaced were just patched up with colourful plascrete, often piecemeal and sometimes deliberately for effect.

"Oats?" Rogers prompted.

I shook my head. "S-sorry," I replied. I ran through the conversation thus far again, internally. I'd wanted… to belong, I guess. To feel a part of something. Equestria gave me that something, and I had felt more like me when I was Oats than when I had been Brendan. I looked up at Rogers to answer, but he put his hand to my nose.

"Shh, I know why. I see it every day. But you're going about it wrong, and it's alienating your inner daimon – not Julep, she'll be fine, but Oats yourself. You're afraid of your body, of others' bodies, of closeness and intimacy. You're another victim of our society's ability to give you every physical need without demanding you satisfy the mental. So." Rogers stood up and walked smartly around to the other side of the table. "Here is what we're going to do. Number one, you're going to eat your breakfast. Number two, we're going to go get you fitted for tack. Until you are capable of full self-determination, you will be my faithful steed."

"Now see here! I am not a beast of burden—"

"I believe Julep's words were partner, partner. And besides, the girls love a man in uniform. I'm sure the fillies will too. Or the colts, if that's your bag. I did notice you're undeclared."

Author's Note

This chapter is a lot fluffier than the other two - but don't despair, this story doesn't include the shipping tag, and it wasn't accidentally forgotten :P

Chapter 4

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 4

The combined living room and dining area, where we'd just eaten breakfast, was finally clean. I'd thrown almost all my cups, plates and even cutlery into the disposal hopper; they didn't really suit a pony. After a few queries regarding permission to decompile, it had all been swallowed up by the mechanism. It had attracted a maker fee as being above my staple requirements, but the bits Celestia had spoken of the day before would more than cover it. I would also be able to remodel slightly, so with Rogers' help, a second and then third sweep of my flat led to a number of annotations regarding what to and what not to have the house nanites goo for recombination.

The sofa would stay, for guests, but the two matching padded chairs would have to go. They'd be replaced by a single, wide seat better suited for my new quadrupedal frame. Similarly, the bed would be replaced by what was essentially a thicker, harder mattress set on a raised, reinforced platform. It would take up more room in terms of floorspace, but would now sport permanent, wide stairs up and storage boxes below. All my old clothes had been recycled; they would be substituted by some utilitarian yet stylish waistcoats, some smart tack for formal occasions and a couple of practical yet stylish pairs of saddlebags. It would take a while for them to extrude, but Rogers promised to help with the fitting. The next time my food-dispenser fired up, my fridge would be restocked with pony-appropriate feed, and the next time I took a shower it would be in a Japanese-style tub with easy-access steps and a shower screen that sported hoof-friendly handles. The continental-style squat-toilet and bidet that was planned was going to take some getting used to, however, but the less said about that the better.

Finally, my apartment was ready to be recompiled and I was ready to begin the last of Celestia's three tasks – to go out and have fun with the assistance of Mint Julep. I found myself standing in front of my hall vidscreen, silently contemplating my next steps. It currently showed my reflection: an incredibly nervous-looking black and white gypsy vanner stallion. Muddy brown wasn't fun enough, according to Julep, so she'd traited in some pinto. I'd demanded the brown eyes remain, though. She'd wanted dichromatic blue and brown for effect.

"Are you ready?" Rogers asked.

"Gimme a minute," I grumped. I was having a moment of existential dishabillement; the day before I'd been a modestly dressed human – most of the time I'd been awake, at least. Today I'd been a naked stallion since I'd opened my eyes. My frame was mostly show-accurate, so there wasn't much in the way of lewdness for the modesty luddites to complain about in terms of undercarriage, but today I felt... naked, and exposed. I had the standard male pony equipment, which was under conscious control and remained unobtrusive until needed – another perk of ponyform – but that didn't mean I wasn't going extreme commando. Despite modesty bylaws accepting both fur as well as body-paint for clothing, it still felt weird to me that from now on I'd trot around almost exclusively without trousers on. A single day of being a pony couldn't erase decades of memories of putting my clothes on every morning. The dissonance was easily overcoming my behavioural mods. I took a deep breath and puffed out my chest; it would be something I'd have to get used to. I'd had all morning so far to get used to the idea, and there's only so many times you can pace around your living room pretending to take inventory.

As a final act, I brought up my personal HUD, initiated the recompile and opened my front door. When we had both stepped out, the door closed and sealed itself behind us. It wouldn't open now until the nanites had finished, and in turn been decompiled for my hoover to sweep up. A fully automated hoover had been a worthy upgrade. Ponies still aren't very good at holding things, despite what the show would have you believe.

"I'm proud of you, partner. Taking your first steps to a real new you." Rogers patted me on my head and tousled my mane as he pulled alongside me in the softly lit corridor. I flicked my ears happily, then realized what I'd done… and then felt good about myself. This is part and parcel of taking ponytraits, Julep's eigenshadow whispered, accept it.

It's probably something to do with the Uncanny Valley, but actual animal-form traits are somehow more approachable than humanoform for a good many people. It probably explains why so many go little pony or care bear, despite the physical limitations that both entail and the side-effect of having everyone pet you or feed you carrots or hugs, or whatever it was those bears ate. Not that that's a bad thing, mind, but it can spoil your appetite and, despite advanced metabolisms, make you fat. Which of course makes people love you more when you're 'cuddly', and feed you more carrots. A vicious circle if ever there was one. A vicious, delicious, carrot-filled circle. My stomach grumbled at the thought, almost loud enough to echo as we stepped into the elevator; I realized I had pretty much skimped on breakfast, at least now I was a pony. A double helping hadn't been quite enough.

"I heard that." Rogers stretched and tugged on his trousers as he smartened his clothes in the vidscreen-mirror. "How about we get a little something extra to eat – at least for you – whilst I backup?" he asked. "We can continue our chat after." Various local options for brunch offered themselves, but Rogers dismissed them with a wave of his hand.

"If you want to backup, how about an ancestor cafe?" I asked him, cocking my head to one side as I took another look at myself.

He nodded as the doors opened and we exited into the lobby. "Ancestor cafe. Got a relative I'd like to chat with."

I could see the street outside was busy as we neared the front doors. I found myself uncommonly excitable, dearly wanting to fraternize. Rogers put a hand on my neck, patting solidly.

"Calm down, girl," he said, grinning.

"Girl?" I whined, flattening my ears out to the sides.

"You're expressing Julep," he whispered. "Have a word with her if that's not what you intended. I told you, it's not healthy."

I looked at myself through House's sensors; ghostly wings seemed to adorn my flanks. Excitability was her thing. I shook myself and snorted. My personatraits were off; I'd never properly internalized my brainhacking and they'd been reset by the ponytrait nanobots and subsequent behavioural package upgrade. A whole lot of things were out of whack, actually. Or maybe they were in-whack since I was running au naturelle. Screw it. Why act like someone else when I can act like myself, huh?

"Come on, Julep, let's merge for a while, okay?" I asked my avvy, nervously.

"Sure!" her voice said, reverberating in my skull. Her avvy briefly appeared from where she'd been hiding in my secure compute layer and exploded into a mass of sparkles. The tiny little motes of light were absorbed into my body, and I felt our consciousnesses merge. As things settled in, I found myself missing my wings. It was quite a strange feeling, all said and done, taking up space in Oats' head for real, not least of all downstairs. I gave a little wiggle of my hips as I took another look at myself in House's sensors; ponies had the best butts and I knew it, and mine was pretty awesome. Even as a stallion.

Rogers smirked. "Glad you had that little talk, partners. Excuse me, let me get that for you." He tipped his hat, then exited the lobby of the apartment complex to hold open the door so I could pass through.

"Thank you!" I called as I trotted past him. "Oh this is going to be so much fun," I said. "I haven't been out questing like this in quite a while!"

My crow, which appeared sitting on Rogers' shoulder when I summoned her, took off to lead us to the nearest ancestor cafe. I turned down the street to follow them both.

"You haven't?" Rogers asked as I caught up, blinking in surprise.

"Well, I've mostly… stuck to sensorums," I said. Admitting that hurt. I'd not wanted to hurt Julep, and whilst she had had fun, and had regularly been out and about in Equestria, I hadn't given her the chance to be what she was supposed to be – me – like this. "And I'm sorry for it. And that's all changing now. Or I'm trying to."

"Best foot – er, hoof – forwards?" replied Rogers, smiling. I nodded, perking up.

The city of Ford Newton was loud, heavily populated and bustling with life. I took a deep breath and shook out my wings as our trek continued. With the sun rising in the clear blue sky and the weather trackers promising the good spell would continue, I was having an uncommonly good 'all is right with the world' moment. The Julep in me apparently felt like this all the time. It was, now I admitted it to myself, what I'd gone pony for.

As we walked, I pinged the city's datasphere for news, subconsciously running a filter for information from the shooting. Oddly enough, there didn't seem to be any. I mentally shrugged and moved on – when had news services focused on the bad? The momentary shadow overhead of a comms blimp caused a slight chill and the datasphere lagged a moment as something heavy tried to download itself to my secure compute layer. Interrogation programs isolated it and examined the datadump before discarding it, almost before I was aware of it – it had been some sort of memetic infospike. Probably advertising. Ugh. I shook it off, and caught up with Rogers.

***

The ancestor cafe was a friendly backup place that had once been a library. It still held books on the upper three floors, but now also featured the fattest of datapipes and the most juiciest of wifi connections. And it sold coffee on the ground floor. What's not to like?

"Coffee, black," said Rogers as he walked in through the diamond front doors. He relaxed into one of the big, comfortable chairs as his avvy Kojak finally caught up with him, and his dataghost took up residence in the cafe's datasphere.

"Mocha for me," I whispered, "and some of that honeyed porridge. Does it come in buckets?" I'd never felt self-conscious ordering food before, and had never had it eaten it off the floor either. New experiences all round, then!

The barista set about his wonderfully archaic machine with gay abandon, and I found myself caught up in the complexity of it all. The guy had several 'droids slaved to various avvy's, and I wasn't sure how much of his original body was left. He had to be running some serious upgrades.

"It's a family business," the nearest avvy stated, winking and smiling, as she noticed my interest. That explained it; a multiple. I blushed – I'd been staring.

"What's it like?" I whispered, giving an inquisitive tail-swish.

The bionic avvy tousled my mane gently as she seamlessly moved around her partners to pick up my order. She had kind eyes, and I liked her immediately. "Kind of like it is for you, hon, only we share backups. It's a line family, so we incorporate according to a schedule. We've got several ponies, actually. They make good servers. If you ever want to herd up, we've got room."

"N-no, thanks," I replied.

The lady smiled wider. "Good thing you said no," she said, leaning forwards and lifting the cup onto a spiderbot and nudging the creature towards me. "A line family's not something you just jump into. Not like ponytraits." She winked. "It's a mental commitment you can't just easily walk away from."

Another avvy swatted her with a rolled up menu. "Stop scaring the customers, Gene. Especially the ponies."

"Yes'm," said my server, curtseying. She rolled her eyes at me then vanished up the other end of the bar.

I laughed softly, then sent a short follow command ping to the 'bot with my mocha. Heading back over to Rogers, I saw an older lady sitting in a chair next to him. She was old in a way that people simply aren't these days; her skin was yellowed and thin, almost see-through, and her hair was a dull burnt silver. She was bent forwards almost double, hunched over into herself as if permanently falling. It took me a few seconds before I recognized the odd square box she held in one had as a packet of cigarettes. She fiddled nervously with them, a lit fag dangling between the first two fingers of the other hand.

"Ooh, hello, love!" the old lady crowed. She staggered to her feet and hobbled over to me. Reaching out a ghostly hand, she patted me on the head.

"Say hello to my grandmother," said Rogers, softly.

I studied the phantasm for a few seconds before saying anything. "Hello, er…?"

"Her name was Pat, but you can call her Nana. I always did."

"A partial?" I asked softly.

He nodded, expression unreadable. "She missed out on all this by a good few decades, and these echoes are all I have. Sometimes I think it was a kindness, these times are… different. Very different."

"Hello Nana," I said.

The old lady beamed. "We had a pony like you when I was a girl. She didn't speak, though we'd often pretend we could understand her. Maybe we did. Rosy was her name. We'd spend hours brushing her and putting little bows in her hair and tail." The partial smiled again, through yellowed teeth. Suddenly the little old lady turned to Rogers, seemingly earnest. "It's all in the memories, you know," she said.

"What?" Rogers asked, mystified.

"If you'd remember me younger like your mother does, I'd have a lot more to say," the old lady said, patting Rogers' hand absentmindedly. "I'd be a damn sight prettier too. Age isn't kind to a face like mine. Never get old, love."

"Oh Nana, you're perfect just the way you are."

"Sweet talker. Like your father. You're just like him, you know. Oh, don't cry, sweetheart, everything's fine. Nana's here." The little old lady hobbled over to the sheriff – he seemed huge in comparison – and took his hand, patting it. "You're growing up big and strong. I always said you would." She took a long puff from her cigarette.

I turned off the fragrance, which wasn't something I liked very much. Rogers had it pegged at 'aromatic', though his juvenile memories couldn't have used that word. It had that intriguing smell that I remembered being repulsed by when it was worn like aftershave, but intrigued by when being inhaled. To my sensitive pony nose – despite the smell entering directly through my brain – it was too much. I tuned out Nana Pat and snagged my mocha from the spiderbot as I collapsed onto a comfortably large seating cushion. Ancestor Cafes were… often for kind of bizarrely private meetings.

Pony cups were broad, with little indents on opposite sides to help with grip, but my porridge, when it arrived, was in a large, black, plastic bucket. The Julep in me prodded that I should get some buckets for myself, at least for when not entertaining. I signalled for some water when I realised I was thirsty, and another bucket was delivered. I guess it's hard to improve on a perfect design. The porridge was thick, with what appeared to be carrots and apples in it. It steamed. I was so hungry I was almost drooling, and had to slurp my saliva.

"If you want some more to go," offered the barista from before, "we can do a nosebag if you'd like?"

I shook my head, smiling with my ears flicking happily, and dug right in.

'Nana' lasted until Rogers' backup was complete. As the deep scan withdrew, the old lady became more and more wooden in her actions and responses, until her pattern just broke down and she stopped, fading away.

"You know, Celestia can—" I began.

"No!" replied Rogers, swiftly. "No. It's… important that she is what she is. I don't need somebody else with my memories of her. It's not like when somebody I know gets a refresh, she's… gone. She should stay gone. Anything else isn't my memory of her, and I just don't need new memories of her."

I nodded slowly. "I understand. She's a Partial, and… she'll always be a Partial."

"Yeah. I need to… I just need to Integrate." Rogers closed his eyes, and he went into a diagnostic cycle as both Kojak and his eigenghost downloaded their separate experiences into his long term memory, and the relevant case data files were merged. I decided to take a datadump of my own, and slunk off to the facilities. With Julep's mastery of pony anatomy bolstering my own abilities, the duty went smoothly enough, but there's rarely much good you can say about tepid water meeting intimate parts of your body. By the time I returned, Rogers was up to date with his activities.

"Ready to get a move on?" he asked me.

"I guess," I replied. "What do I have to do? Where are we going? I know I said I'd be your steed, but—"

Rogers stood up and paced around me. "Well, you'll need a saddle. Even if I don't ride you all the time, having one is useful. Especially for carrying things. If you'll be wearing your fur in black and white, I'll get you some with silver trim… let's see: a western saddle and breastgirth. A crupper – don't worry. They go under the tail, but I'm told they're very comfortable – and either hackamores or a bitless bridle. I don't think you're into bits; you don't strike me as the type. And you'll be wanting a facemask for any tough situations – that, and they provide hardened comms and have an integrated polarized light filter."

"But… what do I do?" I asked, shuffling my hooves plaintively, as virtual representations of my new sheriff's steed attire manifested around my body. I shrugged myself into the semi-familiar virtual tack attire, trying it on for size and sending minor fitting improvements to the makerblocks that Rogers was spinning up. He had an eye for colour coordination and ensemble that I hadn't expected.

"Crowd control at events, standing guard, comms deck, hauling freight…" listed Rogers, counting on his fingers. "Basically you help people. Don't worry, I'm your partner. I'll teach you." He smiled soothingly.

"So serve the public trust, protect the innocent and uphold the law, huh?" I quipped. Rogers snorted derisively. "Talking of helping people, though," I asked. "What happened with Steven and Teresa? That was… what Julep wanted to know."

"Oh, Teresa is doing fine. She's recovering from bodyloss in a sim. She'll incarnate when they've got her a body ready."

"And Steven?"

Rogers cocked his head to one side and blinked. "That's odd."

"What?"

"Wait, I'm… no, no… wait…" Rogers gestured, and brought up a shared window with stats on the incident. "Information on Steven Mercer is sequestrated."

"Sequestrated?"

"I… can't get any more information on him. Hang on." Rogers glared darkly at the window hanging in space, then uploaded a small, subsentient crawler. A few seconds later, it came back with an increase in privileges, and the window changed. New data scrolled past: the apparent perpetrator, Steven Mercer, had been released and the whole case had been closed. Further requests for access were denied almost before they'd been sent. "Everything looks fine. The record says he served a year relative on probation, and is now out. In Equestria."

I looked at the data before me in confusion. "He's gone pony?"

"Looks like it. This says his memory was swiss-cheesed. He woke up in the detention sim and couldn't remember more than going to bed a couple days before. It says scans confirmed— dammit!" Rogers swore as the window closed on him, slamming his fist into a nearby table so hard that the cups on it rattled. Whatever loophole the crawler had been exploiting had just been patched, and we were locked out.

"A-are you going to get in trouble?" I asked, scrunching down into my seat as big red 'AUTHORIZATION: DENIED' signs blinked on and off in the space between us. Butterflies danced in my belly as I spoke.

Rogers shook his head and merely dismissed the alerts. "The authorities don't care about something so minor. Exploit something major like the bitbank or makerblock authority chains and you'll have hell to pay, but not for taking a peek at something which should be public; the powers that be would have to explain why it wasn't in the first place." He narrowed his eyes. "Which of course begs the question of why it isn't public."

I stuck out my lower jaw. "I think we're supposed to be serving the public trust, so I think we need to look into this."

Rogers nodded, scratching thoughtfully at his chin as he narrowed his eyes. "I think you're right."

***

Chapter 5

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 5

Rogers stood up and stretched, taking a final slurp from his soon-empty cup of coffee. Frowning at it, he put it down on the table, where a spider-like robot scuttled to pick it up and take it away. It saluted with a leg as it vanished behind the counter.

"Nothing for it, girl, but to start at the beginning," Rogers said, after a few moments.

"What do you mean 'start at the beginning'?" I asked, lifting my head from my bucket of mash. I shrugged off the 'girl' part; I was expressing a good deal of Julep right now, and truth be told… I liked the attention.

"Well, you and I want to know what happened to Steven and Teresa, right?" He walked towards me and crouched down in front of my head, looking down into my eyes.

I nodded, then looked forlornly and furiously down at my own bowl-like cup, feeling heat rise to my cheeks. It, too, was empty. I signaled for a spider-like cleaning bot and watched as it danced carefully around my bulky form to pick up the bowl and heave it onto its back. I felt Julep cluck to two more of the cleaning robots as the first slunk off with my bowl. They chirped back questioningly, and she sent them a brief request for them to clean us up. A few moments later, and they were crawling along my neck to braid my mane whilst a fourth busied itself putting a scarlet ribbon in my tail. It was a decidedly feminine fashion piece… for a human. For a pony, a red tail bow indicated a kicker – I'd have logically put a green or even a blue, but… red did offset my hide today.

"And we can't just look up the info direct from here?" asked Rogers earnestly, playing with my ears, twirling his fingers through them.

I nodded again, then shook my head, ears flattening against my skull as I looked up once more into his smiling face. "The sensedata would take a long time to reconstruct," I said. "We've got a lot of bandwidth, but it'll be simpler to splice in local readings."

"Correct." Rogers patted my head and I beamed.

The spider-like robots chirruped their disappointment as I moved, then continued lacing in little tiny scarlet bows every few centimetres along my mane. Working quickly and methodically, they soon had the whole length covered.

"Then in that case, we'll have to do this the old fashioned way. With a little bit of detective work. Come on." He rose, turned, then beckoned.

Bemused, I trotted after him as he walked out the door, the spider-bots leaping to freedom before waving goodbye with multiple forelimbs.

***

I knew where we were going, of course. I barely needed Mortimer – she'd decided she liked the name – to lead us. It was her raison d'etre, though, so who was I to interfere? Rogers and I walked in relative silence as we followed the digital bird. We were heading back to the Clock Square Eatery off Drum Street – I'd not been able to name it last time, since the 'net had been offlined – by a relatively direct route. Foot and hoof traffic was light, though it was building up to the lunchtime rush.

Passing a preacher for the Church of One, I decided to filter her and her ilk out. The Church of One was dedicated to the idea that there really was only one god, just that nobody knew what it was. They claimed their algorithm that was continuously parsing all available religious texts was building the final book of the one true god, but of course the algorithm was sacred doctrine and not to be shared. Various other sects of digital nirvana were out and about too; from traditional pre-singularity movements to newer mass-memory ex-ego neo-buddhist sects. They were all hawking their own particular promises of heaven – or oblivion, as was the case with the Abolition of Self'ists, though they weren't really what I'd call a religion, more of a voluntary extinctionist movement. They were offering a one-way ticket to forever, courtesy of this or that post-human intelligence that was offering to pick up the remnants of their humanity once it went through the literal shredder. Other terminals offered a direct upgrade to human 2.0 – plug in, put your awareness in hock to some dark master to pay their fee and have your mind expanded to orders of magnitude greater than that which mere humans possessed. I shivered. I'd known people who had gone post-post-human. None had come back.

It was probably a good thing they hadn't, I mused. Most of them would have accumulated a good fortune in real bits, and could probably purchase most of the planet if they actually wanted real-estate instead of… whatever it was that the higher AIs coveted. Other than Celestia – who owned all the parts of the planet that were vital to the stability of the climate and for supplying the makerblock authority chains that fed, clothed and housed the squishy, corporeal citizens of what was left of the world of Man – the Earth wasn't that important to most of the real players, thank goodness, because the flesh and blood portion of humanity wasn't done living there yet.

I shook my head as we entered the Eatery. It was once again full of patrons. With a simple higher-level access call, I felt Rogers hook into the establishment's mind and request a dump of the raw audio and video feed data that it had accumulated from the surrounding cameras. Running it through his own copious wetware, it took a few seconds for the sensorum to coalesce around us and for the people who were currently there to fade into the background like smoke. When it did, I watched, bemused, as new phantasms moved around us, going about their daily business of a mere twenty-four hours ago.

Rogers merely walked coolly to a chair, then sat, watching – an unreadable expression on his face – as those fateful few minutes replayed. "Tell me," he asked, finally, as the scene reset once more. "What did you see?"

"Uh…" I thought for a moment, trotting closer to him. "I saw what the cameras say they recorded?"

Rogers nodded slowly. "That's actually a good answer. So, what if they're lying?"

My mouth dropped open. "That's…"

"If you're going to say 'not possible', then tell me why that is so."

I closed my mouth again. I wanted to tell him that it just wasn't possible to hack into the datastream of more than a dozen direct cameras, several more roving blimp-based cameras, a number of satellites – should any of those be pointed in the right direction at least – and, finally, upwards of a hundred recordings from—

"The diners!" I gasped, my ears sticking up straight.

"What?" replied Rogers, blinking. Now it was his turn to fishmouth for a few seconds.

"Well if you can get all the cameras to lie… I still don't see how you could change all the memories of all the people who were here… oh." I paused. "Unless they dump their recordings into the backup vaults and," I paused, ears going flat against my skull in shock, "the vaults are compromised too."

Rogers barked out a short laugh. "Wait, wait! You're getting ahead of yourself. When'd you get so smart, huh?" He tousled the mane on my head, between my ears, as I pressed myself into his hand. "So, thoughts?"

Rogers' words chilled me to the bone. "Y-you think your own memories might be suspect?" I asked, my eyes wide. I started shaking, and my stomach did itself up in knots. Only some hardline bio-feedback controls stopped me from hyperventilating and quite possibly passing out. If I'd had a fully reactive endocrine system, it would have been filtering out the adrenaline and pumping in endorphins. I didn't. I felt cold.

"Well, I did just get a backup." He grinned again, suddenly, and leaned forwards earnestly to whisper, "It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. That's why I took this copy yesterday, remember?"

I watched, dumbstruck, as Rogers pulled out a datacube from his pocket. Faint lights blinked on it – charged, encrypted and ready.

"A-and you think my brain might be tampered with too?" I shrunk away from the sheriff, ears out sideways as I thought through what was being presented: Some people, with enough power to overcome what was globally held to be the single most secure data storage on the planet, were trying to hide things from both myself and a sheriff. And the reason we knew they were hiding things was because we couldn't see that they were hiding things. Huh. "This doesn't make any sense," I complained, almost wailing. "I mean sure, it's weird that they're hiding the details from us, and I guess it's weird that Steven just… went pony. But that doesn't mean it's a conspiracy! It might have been part of the deal!"

"Why would he need a deal?" Rogers asked softly. I was unable to meet his gaze.

I sat down on my haunches, not trusting my hooves. Huh.

"Run it, then," I said.

I observed Rogers as he decrypted a copy into a scratch buffer, ran a checksum on the pertinent pieces of data, uploaded the checksum to the Eatery's datasphere, then interfaced with the Citymind's datasphere and uploaded the raw data itself for reintegration. Rogers then verified the checksum once more and added my own data to that provided by the cameras.

Once more, yesterday resolved around us. I walked to where a scared little pony was watching the standoff. And I watched with dismay as the image of my own body warped and weaved. The reproduction had been just a shade off. A tiny fraction of a percentage wrong. Enough to throw off the routines that were built to coalesce disparate memories into a single, coherent reproduction.

With a wave of his hand, Rogers paused the senseplay. "And this," he said grimly, "is what we're missing." I looked up from my double, frozen in time, as my partner's digital avatar walked to the center of the open-air restaurant and bent to pick up a device which was no longer there. The image of it flickered and wavered in his non-existent hand, because it wasn't sure what it wanted to be. What I had thought it was, and what Rogers and everything else now thought it was, wasn't the same.

"What is it?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"I don't know."

There are moments you remember, all your life, or at least unless you get them excised, which is a pretty big deal most of the time. Learning that the Memory Vaults weren't inviolate rated right up there, for me. Panic is not a nice feeling. It's a rare one for me, but I'm still not sure if that made it worse. I don't think most people realize how deep-seatedly worrying it is to run around without backup. Most people backup once a month at least. Some backup once a week, or even at the end of every day. At the very least, they backup before doing anything important. I can scarcely imagine what it was like, anymore, in the days before you could step out your front door and know, for absolute certain, that you'd step back in again.

I usually did a backup once a month. I'd backed up before I'd gone pony, so whilst I wasn't scheduled for another just yet, the realization that I didn't trust the backup system anymore was… well, I could have cried. Anything could happen! I could meet a Gunhappy and, just like that, it'd be lights out. Everything I now was would be gone. And would my backup be useable, even? Whatever we were up against might tamper with my files… wipe a signature here, sub in some random data there and that'd be it. No restore. Critical Existence Failure: Life Not Found.

I'm not sure when I started sobbing, but when I did, the tears came thick and fast, hot tears running down my muzzle, almost burning in their salty tracks.

"Hey, hey, hey. It's okay, girl. It's okay. Come here, come on." Rogers bent down, and pulled me into a solid hug, his real body warm and comforting against mine. "I can tell what you're thinking, you know, even without running the facial scanning routines. You'll be okay. We both will. You're one of Celestia's own, pony. She never lets any of her foals come to harm. And I'm your bud, right? Right?"

He held his forefinger crooked under my chin. I sniffled as I looked up at him. "Uh huh," I said, wiping my eyes with a hoof.

"Well then, that settles it. I'm sure she'd not let anything happen to me either. I mean who knows, I might go pony some time in the future, right? I'm pretty sure she'd not let somebody else finish me off. So they twiddled with my medium-term. I'll live."

I wiped a hoof across my face again as I contemplated his words. He'd just learned he'd been brainhacked, and he was cool as a cucumber about it. I had to be strong, I told myself. I couldn't let him down. Instead of this reinforcing my resolve, I felt like collapsing in a heap. My eyes filled with tears as I started sobbing. He rolled his eyes and fished up a handkerchief from one of the tables and did a better job.

"Come on, now. It's a quest, right? Or would you rather give up? If you don't, I'll tell you a secret." He smiled, softly, teasingly.

"W-will y-you give up?" I asked him, choking through the words. He shook his head. "Then I w-won't either." I stood up, though my legs felt like jelly.

I'd faced down dragons, before now. I'd faced off with one-eyed griffon pirates. I was pretty sure I could find out why one person tried to brainjack another and both ended up swiss-cheesed, and a third had been tampered with. I was just acutely aware of the final reason why I'd gone pony: I, like the rest of the planet, had assumed Celestia's personality vaults were unbreachable, until the last star in the sky burned out. And now… I wasn't quite so sure.

The Eatery in real-time popped into existence around us. Jumping out of a private sensorum is disorienting, not to mention deafening – when it's already the first wave of the lunch crowd, at least.

"What do we do now?" I asked plaintively. "What do we do now that we know…"

Rogers put a finger to my lips. "Shh. Do you really know what you think you know?"

"W-what do you mean?" I asked, my voice tight and hoarse and my eyes shining wetly with tears.

"That's for you to tell me." Rogers leaned back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. He seemed to be waiting for something, lounging in his seat with barely constrained tension. I found myself breathing heavily, panic coursing through my veins. The mounting horror of the reality of the situation was growing on me with every moment: the memory vaults were leaky. The memory vaults could be altered. The memory vaults – the last great bastion against The Reaper, that ancient spectre which we'd assumed (ironically enough) dead and buried – could be penetrated, seemingly at whim. And not only that, but by a routine clever and small enough to not get noticed amongst all the properly authorized data traffic.

And yet I wasn't paralyzed with fear. Why?

I mean sure, every time I contemplated it, I almost collapsed from hyperventilation before my autonomic system could clamp down on the incipient anxiety attack, and I was probably going to run out of mood stabilizing endorphins or keel over from anaphylactic shock if I flooded my system with any more adrenaline, but failing that… I opened my mouth to ask Rogers for help, more information, anything… then looked up at his determined, crag-lined face. I stopped, and looked down again at the floor. I was deferring. I didn't need to defer. Why would I do that?

Because, said a tiny little traitorous voice, you think he owns you.

I don't! I… I looked up at Rogers again, then switched to an external view. His stetson was perched firmly on his head, keeping his thinning, straight brown hair out of the sun. His face was poorly shaven – probably deliberate, as deliberate as his hair – and it gave him a distinguished, somewhat chiseled and weather-worn look. His eyes, though, were a deep and penetrating hazel. They were compassionate and warm, and very sure of themselves.

He does, you know, the voice continued. And I found myself agreeing with it. So long as you think you're Julep, you see him as your herd stallion. And when you think you're Oats, you think he's the older, more mature alpha stallion. It's in your blood, pony-boy.

Huh. Well now I had two issues to think about. Number one: why wasn't I panicking more about the personality vaults and number two: why wasn't I thinking for myself? There was no rule against it.

"Okay then," I mumbled to myself, "run some simulations."

If I were a super-advanced AI – and there was no question whether AIs were involved; humans just weren't capable of pulling this off alone – then what would be the biggest issues I would face? Well, I'd want to hide the evidence. And I'd want to hide that I was hiding the evidence.

But now I have proof that my memories were altered… except I didn't, not really. Everybody knew the personality vaults were inviolate. Everybody knew it, deep in their gut. Even I knew it, even now. What I had was a checksum that didn't match the file and – if it hadn't mysteriously vanished from Rogers' head – presence data that didn't match the publicly available feeds. What I had was something that, despite the fact I'd just been through it, even I wasn't sure about the authenticity of, and that I was completely unable to verify.

What I had, was nothing.

If I went out and told everyone that their memories could be altered at the drop of a hat, and the reason that we knew that was because it had been done so well that nobody could tell… well, I'd sound like a nut. And crazies were still common enough that I didn't want to end up being declared non compos mentis.

I was pony shaped, so they'd probably stick me in a field somewhere for some sort of cuddle therapy; I'd spend a good few years having kind, well-meaning folk feeding me carrots and riding me around the paddock. There were worse fates, sure, but it wasn't something I really wanted out of life.

But hang on, I said to myself, you haven't interacted with the memory vaults!

"They haven't breached the memory vaults at all!" I said aloud.

"It's a good thing," said Rogers, sighing playfully as he sat up straighter in his chair, "that I've had us in a private sensorum which resembles the real world since we left the ancestor cafe."

"What." I stopped, dead in my tracks, and looked up at Rogers in sheer disbelief. He grinned, ever so slightly, then his face turned dour again.

"Do you know—" He hesitated, screwing up his face, furrowing his brow, as if unsure how to continue. "Do you know how you become a sheriff?" his voice was calm and level, almost emotionless, but I could tell there was suppressed desire behind it, a desire to just tell somebody.

I shook my head, confused. "You deputized me, I just assumed—" my ears were stuck out horizontally and I curled down around myself apologetically.

"Rarely. That happens a lot with noble steeds, but not usually for the human contingent." He looked down at his hands, curling them into fists and opening them again thoughtfully, and moving to pat me on the neck, comfortingly. "Sheriffs are found. They are found when they cause too much trouble to be allowed to carry on without supervision."

"Found." I swished my tail thoughtfully, then hurried to catch up with him. He had stood up from his chair and left the Eatery without looking back, shoulders hunched close together.

There was a raucous chorus as we disturbed an unkindness of sanitary ravens that were fighting over foraging rights, sending them whirling skywards in an intricate, indignancy filled dance. They'd found an interesting collection of junk; half of their number wanted to play with the shinies and the other half wanted to just hand them in for food. Calling to each other noisily, landing again once I'd passed, they moved onto arbitration. The shiniest and most interesting pieces were being kept for playthings, whilst the rest would be recycled in return for food.

"You mean you… all—" there were more sheriffs, of course, even if they were relatively rare, "—do things. With… all this, don't you?" I waved a hoof around at the street as I loped awkwardly and breathlessly on three legs besides him. There were cameras, lights, jumbotron screens, drone docking rings...

"Did. Not do. Did." He slowed down, then looked at me with fierce concentration, eyes gleaming. "But yes. Folk like me convince the mass allocation banks that there's a consortium group that needs offices, and then we move into our own private mansions. We convince the makerblocks to make unlicensed printers, living large off what others will trade for our goods. I'm not talking freeware food here, you understand, I'm talking drugs that haven't been tested, nanobots that aren't Von Neumann proof, dangerous things like that. We raise our privilege levels to the point that security cameras will not only refuse to see us but systems will actively erase our existence, compromising what shreds of government still exist in today's world."

"Wait, cameras don't see—?" My muzzle dropped open, almost clear to the plascrete floor.

"Yeah. Don't spread it about," Rogers replied darkly, furtively glancing left and right.

"So how does that—" I paused for a second. Presence data good enough to stand in for the real thing. Oh. "So w-what did you…?"

"Makerblock authority chains." Rogers grinned, ferally and cheekily. It was a fond memory. "Have you ever wanted to know what it's like to fly a suborbital?" he asked, wistfully. "I did. Unfortunately there are a few twitchy states still alive that don't take kindly to unauthorized ballistic missile launches. That and the engine design was partly nuclear, which isn't something to let just anybody toy with. The AIs caught on long before I did. They bugged my computers, subverted my makers and built substandard, shoddy parts that kept breaking down. I'd probably still be there, tinkering, if I hadn't said 'fuck it, I'm going to launch'. Half an hour after that decision – days before I could become dangerous – they stormed my compound. I'd set up cameras and alarms, of course, but they all failed me."

"So what happened?" I asked, aghast, my ears flicking close to my head as my tail sealed itself around my rump.

"The fey – the voices of the fifteen – offered me a choice. They could either give me dyslexia, making it 'impossible' to do what I did again, or I could join the sheriffs. The choice isn't the same for everyone, and it's usually something a determined hacker could overcome."

"You mean you could've just turned them down?" I asked, raising one ear in confusion. "That makes no sense. If you could fix what they did to make you stop, then why not—"

"Because the next time they catch you – and they will catch you – they give you a new choice," Rogers explained patiently, putting hands either side of my body and pulling my head closer so he could stare straight into my eyes. "They offer you recruitment or… reassignment. They either make you like them, or they—" Rogers was silent for a moment. He bit his lip, then stood up and turned away. "—or they make you more like us. We're like pets to them; barely conscious, barely cognizant. If an unaffiliated non-sheriff with no higher allegiances proves to be too much trouble, it gets put into a special program. Reintroducing wolves to Russia, or bears to England, or orcas to the oceans. Either way, you're not human any more. Some of our best noble steeds come out of that part of the program. They're a lot tougher than the likes of you, but not as good at conversation." Rogers' face made a small, sad smile as my eyes widened in shock. I'd never heard about that.

I leaned against him, nuzzling softly. Guiltily, worriedly, with furtive looks around, I asked. "Do you th-think—" I motioned a hoof to my chest.

He shook his head, grinning suddenly as he tousled my mane with one hand, the other hand in his pockets. "No, you're good. If a bit slow."

"Hey!" I complained, stomping a hoof.

He chuckled, swatting me on the backside for an order to follow as he started moving again. "I think you're right though," he said, as I caught him up once more. "They patched your memories right there in the street. You've been hit with a trojan which downloaded a replacement stream. It probably deleted itself afterwards. It's not a memory vault hack at all. It's also not intelligent enough to know when to leave it alone. Or maybe they already took that into account. Its creators are… probably many times more intelligent than you or I."

I felt a weight I hadn't known about lift from my withers. I was still immortal, kind of. My lack of full-blown screaming panic was justified. Almost.

It was my turn to laugh as I said, "I'm glad I figured that out!"

I felt giddy and light headed, and for a moment I just let the relief of being this side of the eternal divide flow through me. Then I considered the rest of what Rogers had been talking about.

"I don't think they care about that datastick. When everything says I'm wrong, then nobody's going to believe me. I passed out when you shot Teresa and Steven – I've probably got PTSD." I was silent for a minute as we carried on, around a lake adjacent to a park, then I looked up at him questioningly as we turned into the park itself, and found ourselves in the middle of a carnival parade. "So what do you mean, we've been in a sensorum?" I asked. "And where are we going?"

The parade around us was rendered silent with barely a flicker of thought, though I could still physically feel the impact of the chanting and instruments, not to mention sense the crush of people. My HUD was a blur of lights as it fought to negotiate and then optimize a safe, expedient path through the throng. Mortimer wasn't helping, she was circling a gigantic statue of – and the matching, living, digital persona of – Mahakala, calling out songs of greeting that obviously meant a lot to her, but to me were little more than a cacophony of squawks.

"It's quite simple, really," replied Rogers. "I wanted space to think, and I wanted to keep as many prying eyes off us as possible, so I created a sensorum which is a rebroadcasting of the real world, and filtered our own movements through it. It means I get to stop you blurting anything important out." Rogers poked me on the nose, then ruffled my mane. I nickered at him playfully, biting. "Instead, we've been chatting about your tack, and I've been admiring the bow in your tail. It's pretty, by the way. It suits you."

I blushed, then looked back over my withers at the large red bow in my tail as we cleared the parade. It did suit me. "So how much did anyone listening hear about the whatever-it-was that you found?"

"Absolutely nothing." He smirked, then stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it. "I hope," he added. "It was a private sensorum, they never even saw me examining the scene, that was all done up here." He tapped his head. "We stood there for a few moments, wandering around, and then we gave up and left."

"And now we're… heading to the station?" I hazarded.

Rogers shook his head. "Nope. You're part of a very special elite group now, girl. We're going to the stables. Don't forget, somebody did create and distribute a replacement set of sensorum data. You and I are going to find out why, if not who."

I gulped, nodded, and followed.

***

Chapter 6

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 6

The city really was busier now, with a good contingent of hoof-based traffic as well as lunchtime diners making their ways to or from whichever locale they had chosen. I was already starting to regret not taking Rogers up on his earlier offer of more food, but still couldn't shake the nervous knot in my stomach; it seemed being a pony meant an increase in food consumption that I hadn't quite taken onboard yet. Hungry as I was getting, I was also jumpy. Every shadow was a hidden assassin, every street vendor was trying to poison me.

Strangely, it was a repeat encounter with the now-diamond dog drummer circle that relaxed me. Their rhythmic pounding drowned out the rest of the world as I neared. I actually paused for a few moments in front of them, letting their percussive noise wash over me. It was Rogers' soft hand on my neck that brought me back to the real world, and I looked up at him sadly, trembling.

"It's really okay, girl," he whispered, as he brought up a short-range encrypted link. "Look," he continued, this time solely inside my head, "if they'd wanted to erase all of this, then why bother tampering with memories at all?"

I blinked, holding up a hoof. "Actually, that's a really good question," I sent to him, through a short-range datasquirt. "There really are easier ways to deal with us, both of us."

I stopped for a moment, thinking. A makerblock trojan this morning would have taken us out quite simply. It wouldn't even have to be poison or something like that, it could have just been nanobots, quietly shutting down something important or simply sequestrating the pair of us until we could be properly persuaded. I swallowed fearfully at that thought, my throat dry. I knew it was possible, they did it all the time with criminals – they'd done it to Steven. Granted, I was assuming a lot from their ability to seemingly effortlessly generate and then upload false constructs that were so perfect that even the real thing could no longer compete, but wasn't that enough? If whomever or whatever we were dealing with could do that one already impossible thing, I couldn't see there being much of a problem with doing another which was routine, even under some very uniquely constrained circumstances.

So why had they bothered taking the 'soft' option of a memory hack? Either whoever it was didn't want to kill us – to the degree that even temporary bodyloss wasn't on their menu – or… I shook my head, then hoofed myself in the temple trying to think. It didn't help that the neo-rastafarians were still drumming incessantly. Today, the experience was off – and it was then that I realized I'd withdrawn from the communal modality fields almost entirely. I made an effort to reconnect with the herd, and felt a wave of concern and well-wishes wash over me from Equestria as my digital senses came back online. Ponies aren't made to be alone, and as scared as I was, I was scared of that more. Rogers was right. I was right. If they'd wanted us gone, we'd have been taken out of the picture already.

With a silent shout of laughter, Julep separated to frolick in hi-time with a number of her friends, enjoying the impromptu party put on by the neo-rastas and a bundle of helpful, inquisitive ponies. Her re-sync a few seconds later dumped a good half hour of fun directly into my brain and I felt her wings settle around me again a moment later. If she'd been compromised, I told myself, it was a little bit too late to worry. And unless they were going to full-on sequester me and Rogers right there in the street, said a little voice, then what could these mysterious powers do to stop us?

Before I could get worked up again, I was approached by one of the Neo-Rasta diamond dogs.

"Gift, Mon," the troll said, a wide, friendly, fang-filled grin on his face. The rest of his face was obscured by several layers of toon and some fearsome dreadlocks, but I could make out his sparkling eyes. His weathered, ebony hand extended towards me, proffering a datacube held between two bony digits. "Help wid'ya fight."

"What—?" I began, but he pushed it into my muzzle. I took hold of it with my lips, staring down my nose at it fearfully.

"Celestia is watching you, pony. She know we speak da truth. Ask her, Mon." The diamond dog-shaped drummer leaned back again, away from me, then once more started pounding on his instrument. The answering jingle in my mind from Celestia – and that was something that couldn't be faked – told me the troll had spoken truthfully.

Mentally shrugging, I accessed the cube. A new personality matrix bloomed inside my mind, taking up residence in the unused sectors, as the program within decrypted itself to my secure compute and store layer. He wasn't quite an avvy – that would only come in time – but he was a useful collection of physical and behavioural routines. He was troll-shaped, a diamond dog, unsurprisingly. Testing his limits, he settled over my form for a brief moment, accepted my quadrupedal range of motion and then set about optimising his defensive and offensive capabilities. He then bolstered my observational algorithms and started regulating hormone production to sharpen my response times.

Julep immediately christened her little brother Darilo, and pared off a temporary eigenstate to go play with him – which meant roughhousing whilst she honed her newly-acquired fighting skills, so she borrowed some routines from my otherwise absent Stalwart self and set up her own private store and compute sandbox.

I was reeling – it wasn't usually this busy in my own head. A scant minute or two had taken place in lo-time, and Rogers hadn't even noticed that my steps had slowed to the carefully placed gait that resulted when guided purely by the Citymind. This was most decidedly turning into a strange day.

"R-Rogers? Sir?" I asked, moving to a loping trot to catch up.

"Hmm?" he replied, draining his cup and tossing it into the street. A passing sanitation bot darted out, snagged it and disappeared with its prize, fighting off other scavenging bots as it went.

"Can you tell me if my eigenwall—"

"Way ahead of you, girl," he said. Gesturing, he brought up the Eatery's databoard, where he'd recently stuck the encrypted checksum from my memory dump, along with a number of related mental checksums that were immediately cross-verified by Equestrian systems.

They matched.

My memories from yesterday had been patched an unknown time earlier, but nothing else had been tampered with, unless they were able to penetrate my deeper mental defences. Memories were often shared, after all, but mental profiles were not.

Tentatively, but with mounting surety, I proclaimed myself mentally sound.

Letting out a deep breath, I realized I felt better. I'd been brainhacked, but they'd changed nothing major – all my personality checks were coming up green on my admittedly old but trustworthy profiler – and my brain hadn't leaked out my ears. Yet.

"You're okay, girl, I promise. And yes," he said, smiling faintly, "I still have this." He stuck out a hand, and the glowing form of the whatever-it-was that Steven had dropped when Rogers had shot him appeared there, oddly flat and misshapen as the routines tried to flesh out something only partly seen from not enough angles with not enough resolution to properly reproduce it.

I still didn't know what it was, but I was beginning to suspect it was important.

***

Rogers wasn't lying; the stables were rather close, they were on the other side of the park. There was a nondescript freestanding orange mailbox and a small sign offering pony rides at certain times during the day, outside of what looked like – to all intents and purposes – a barn. It looked like it was built out of wood; it was either nanoforest, very old, or very expensive. I wasn't sure which. The door was a single, tall, wide, sliding panel painted a bright, cheery red, with one large handle. Rogers leaned on it, huffing, until it slid open.

"Shut that door!" called a deep voice from within. "Can't you tell we're on a break?"

"Sorry Buttercup, got the new girl," replied Rogers, motioning for me to enter.

My first thought as I walked across the threshold was that's Buttercup!? because 'Buttercup' was a great, grey shire horse. I was a My Little Pony-pony. Buttercup was most emphatically not. Buttercup was quite possibly the largest being I'd seen in the flesh without there being bars involved. He was rolled onto his side in a pile of what looked like hay, around a table that was quite honestly dwarfed by his hoof, which hovered over it, swinging idly to and fro as he thought about his next move in a game of what looked like chess.

"Come on in, then," said Buttercup. I stepped gingerly nearer, too gingerly. Rogers swatted my backside; I whinnied and snorted as I danced away from the flat of his hand.

"You're letting all the heat out," Rogers complained. "Go on, they're your new herd-mates, you're safe here." Rogers heaved on the door, and it slid shut again. "They like it low-tech," he explained, gesturing at the wide, low table featuring drinking bowls full of what smelled like good old-fashioned cider, intricately carved chess pieces on a dogged board, and a game of cards that the four other occupants of the single room were also playing. The stakes appeared to be piles of play money from yet another old board game, and a tiny little wagon.

"At least on the surface," added Rogers, winking conspiratorially as he passed on his way to a half-full coffee pot. "Inside they're as tech-savvy as I am. Almost."

"Moreso," said Buttercup, with a snort. "The only trouble I have is when I need somebody to solder for me." He gestured to a workbench against one corner of the room, around which the hay the other ponies lounged on had been most emphatically swept away. "Rog here's got a steady hand, but doesn't like slaving."

I trotted towards the sturdy bench, head cocked to the side as I examined the devices thereupon. They were a mixture of old circuit boards, busted robots and cannibalized tools. "What is all—"

"Junk, mostly," said Buttercup, frankly. He heaved himself to his hooves and plodded up beside me. "Hobbies," he said, wistfully, sighing gustily. "The makerblock fabbing printers made all of this useless to repair, but I've found the only way to really understand something is to get your hooves dirty. That, and collectors will pay premium for real retro."

Rogers slapped Buttercup on the rump. "Cup here has an alfalfa problem. Oof!" I looked back just as Buttercup put his hoof on the floor. Rogers was grinning like an idiot, bent over almost double.

"I appreciate quality." Buttercup sniffed disdainfully, his deep brown eyes hard and serious. "Makerblock trash is perfectly good for when I'm hungry, but not for when I want to eat." Buttercup snorted then plodded back to the little table. "Introduce yourself, then," the giant said, as he carefully maneuvered his bulk down into the hay once more.

"I-I'm Oats. Mixed Oats," I said, grinning weakly.

"I can see that, if he's calling you girl. Folks call me Velvet Touch," said a plum red pony with – Julep informed me with no small degree of jealousy – fetlocks to die for. "What's her name?" Velvet asked, sending out a very short-range ping at my secure compute and store layer. Darilo sunk himself down into the protocol layers of my avatar generation system, hiding. I decided not to show all my cards by discussing him, then wondered – my muzzle not betraying the slightest hint of my internal thoughts – just who had decided what.

"W-well it's…" I felt Mint Julep apparate next to me, fluttering her wings. "This is Mint Julep," I said, introducing my avvy.

"I can see why Rogers likes you, Wild." said Velvet, grinning. "You're his type of mare."

"I'm not a mare, you know," I huffed.

"Exactly."

"Oh leave them alone, Velvet," said a third pony, poking a hoof towards the plum-coloured mare.

"Yeah, gotta watch yourself around Velvet," said Buttercup to me, laughing. "She'll steal your heart and your lungs."

"City says that she…?" the third pony – an older, silvery coloured mare – paused, looking my way for confirmation. I shrugged; with Julep onboard, I wasn't sure which I wanted to be. The ponytrait nanobots had upset a good number of physical variables and I was willing to let my neocortex sort it out. I'd spontaneously change in a few days to weeks if that's what I really wanted anyhow. "She's been pony only for a day or so. You're scaring her. I'm Soda Sprinkles, my dear," the third pony said, looking my way again. "Most here call me Momma Sprinkles. You can come talk to me about anything." She smiled, her sky blue eyes twinkling in a friendly manner.

"You're not so…" I waved a hoof around at the gear cluttering up the place. I'd queried her neocortex. Most of her implants were quiescent; I realized with some shock that she was practically baseline.

"Oh, no, not at the moment. My progenitor does all that, but he's off being non-corporeal for a while."

"And I'm Sprocket," said the last pony, a bay gelding. "Got caught fiddling with one too many robot brains, so they took away my thumbs. Won't let me slave, either. I said I didn't want to be a mare, so they helped with my attitude a different way." I winced in sympathy. "Eh," he said, shrugging his withers and flicking his ears about. "My caseworker says the hormonal change has helped my concentration."

"Yeah we're a strange lot," said Velvet, smirking. "Our very own Baker Street Irregulars. Better get used to it, unless you're just visiting."

"No can do, Velvet, hun," said Rogers. "Got some interesting news and we might need all your talents."

"Oh? I'm all ears." Velvet's ears did, indeed, flick up.

"Something's going on in the Ordinality," said Rogers. He flicked his wrist, and the scene from the day before played itself out on the tabletop. Holding up a finger, then twirling it as if reeling in a fishing line, he zoomed in on the reproduction, specifically onto my form so as to display the irregularity.

"Oh, that is interesting."

"I'll have to take your word for it, dearie," said Sprinkles. She tapped at her temple, then raised both eyebrows playfully.

"If we need Nullpointer though…?" murmured Buttercup.

"I'm sure I can find him." Sprinkles got up and headed to a kitchenette area, where the older mare set to stirring up an almost cauldron-sized bowl of porridge. "You just have your fun. I'll be right here."

"That's just it," said Rogers, grinning. "We're all staying right here. And not." He turned towards Julep. "Hey girl? You fancy a trip to Equestria with me?"

"What?" I asked, flicking my tail. I cocked my head to one side. "Why are you asking her to go to Equestria?"

"Because you are going on a trip to the station, with Buttercup and Velvet."

***

Author's Note

Just want to put this here that I got some awesome editing help from coandco and nyerguds and they've found all the dumb mistakes I made and didn't catch. They awesome.

Welcome to the new edited chapters 1-6! 6 is pretty short - I'd ordinarily not post such a short chapter, but as this is the result of an edit run, I'm not going to add new stuff at the end.

Chapter 7

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 7

I looked around the cozy barn, eyes wide. "What is going on?" I demanded, stomping a hoof angrily and drawing it across the smooth wooden planks that made up the floor.

Rogers smiled, widely. It wasn't a cruel smile, for all it hid his true intentions; instead it was one full of mischief. He put a finger to his lips for a moment, then moved to crouch down before me. "Girl, I'm going to need you to do something for me. This is something that only a sheriff – or an ex-sheriff – can pull off, but we want your help. You said you wanted to help, right? We can do it without you but—"

"I'll help," I said, looking down at the floor. I slowly drew my hoof across the planks on the floor again in a mute display of disapproval… until a crooked finger beneath my chin gently lifted my head, and I found myself looking into Rogers' eyes.

"I mean it," he said, earnestly. "This is what sheriffs do. It's in our nature. We see a puzzle, and we have to solve it. I see that in you, Oats, and… for a first timer—" he grinned again, "—you're not doing too badly. So, I'll ask again, are you in?"

"Are we going to get into trouble?" I whispered.

"Oh, definitely. But that's half the fun!" He turned to Velvet suddenly, and made an exaggerated pleading face.

"Oh… oh no." Velvet's ears flicked back momentarily, before flicking back up. "Really?"

I looked from Velvet to Rogers and back again, then asked the mare, "What?"

"He wants me to borrow his body."

My mouth fell open, then I spent a good few seconds chewing air as I tried to think. "What? Why?"

"Well I'm going to Equestria, but I also need to go with you to the station. And we need Velvet and Buttercup to pull that sort of stunt off successfully. More to the point, we need to do it now, before anybody can stop us."

"Ugh, Rog, you know I hate this sort of thing!"

"And yet you're the best of us at it."

"I hate you!"

"Love you too, babe."

I rolled my eyes and stamped a hoof again. "For goodness' sake, will somebody tell me what you're talking about!?"

Velvet chuckled coldly, glaring at Roger. "It's very simple. I'm going to wear Rog's body, and to do that I'm going to have to fork. If Rog thinks this is that important, then it's fifty-fifty whether the version of me that goes out in his head is the same version that'll come back. I don't like terminating a forked eigenstate, but if things go pear shaped then I won't have any choice if I want to keep my personality matrix intact."

I froze as cold chills ran down my spine. This was true death they were talking about. They were planning on uploading forked copies of their own personalities and then, when the mission was over, quite possibly just deleting them.

"No, no, you can't—" I shrunk back in horror, ears flat against my head. Even Julep's Avvy seemed to freeze in place for a moment, glitching, as she contemplated it.

"And I'll be doing the same thing, girl," interrupted Rogers, tapping my nose admonishingly. "Don't you worry about us. I've got a few routines in place should the worst come to the worst, and after all, it's not much more different than what the first few uploadees went through. It's just memories I'll be losing, not my self."

The first pioneers of uploading… huh. I thought back: a long time ago, when digital scans of a human brain with enough resolution to form a working copy of the personality inside it finally became possible, the first few people looking for true immortality had themselves scanned and successfully uploaded. And they left behind their bodies, with their original minds intact within them. However, they had been wounded by the process and were unable to be scanned again.

The grand experiment had almost ended there and then as uproar erupted over new questions about personhood, sentience and human rights. It could have become something shelved and restricted, even contraband, if it hadn't been for the philosophies that both the digital children and their fleshy progenitors formed around the experience.

They were both bound by natural laws, and not. Their personalities each would change and grow, and though one version would live long after the 'original' died, neither would grieve for the other. All they would lose, they said, were memories. Memories were precious, it was true, but life and the ability to experience and form memories even moreso. By fiat choice, the digital copies and fleshy originals declared themselves forevermore one and the same, existing in two places but inextricably linked by a common bond stronger than mere physics could describe.

As all things eventually do, their bodies died, taking with them their meat-machine selves. And things had changed far enough for all the members of this select group, that they saw it as little more than pulling a rotten tooth. All that they had been was re-uploaded, their disparate memories integrated, and then… they carried on.

True death was a thing of the past, a spectre whose meaning had changed to being something only sought out in extreme cases, and who could be avoided almost completely until the heat-death of the universe if one played one's cards right… but every so often, tragedy would strike. Incredibly unlikely though it was, sometimes backups would fail, or a resurrection would become unstable and the personality would degrade, become psychotic, and whole sections of one's life would have to be carefully excised or replaced by intelligences capable of simulating worlds within worlds… and where did that leave the resultant personality, or bifurcations thereof?

And to think these people were going to do that voluntarily!

"I know that look," rumbled Buttercup. The huge grey stallion nuzzled my ears. "Listen, it won't be the first time, for either of them. It's their decision, respect it. They think it's important enough to pursue, then it has to be this way."

My heart sunk into a cold, black pit. I was really starting to regret getting up this morning.

"Listen," said Buttercup, nudging me again. "We'll take every precaution possible, and I promise that if the worst happens, then we'll just discorporate them, okay? I've got space in my personal ordinalvault."

I spluttered as he said that, jerking my head up to look at him. "You've got a what?"

Buttercup grinned, and there was a lot of mouth to be doing it with. "Hasn't Roger given you the spiel about our being mobile communications and database platforms?"

"H-he said it was in the helmet…" I said, looking around curiously.

"Yeah, well," said Velvet. "Buttercup's got a few more upgrades than that."

"Eeyup. I got a whole second neocortex lower down my body, hooked up to my spine."

"Yeah, the great lummox really can think with his di— oof!" Velvet fell onto her side, laughing, as Buttercup clocked her one with a single massive hoof.

"To be more precise, it's roughly where the uterus would be if I were still female. Almost a hundred percent computronium, fed by a shunt into my bloodstream and a novel organ that generates and stores electricity from muscular contractions. I need to eat a careful diet of vitamins and minerals to keep it running in tip-top shape, but as a noble steed of the sheriff's office, the right feed is something I don't have to argue about. It's where I keep my own personal backup."

Oh.

Buttercup wasn't just traiting shire horse, Buttercup was traiting human 2.0.

And the fifteen let him wander around unmolested?

I sat down on my haunches, the wind quite taken out of my sails.

"Oh will you quit scaring the new girl!" complained Sprinkles, swatting Buttercup on the flank. The great grey shire horse whinnied in protest and slunk off to sulk in the corner. "Now, dearie, I think before we do anything rash, we need to sit down, have a cup of tea and get you properly equipped."

"New clothes!" shouted Julep, almost immediately stealing my body and prancing before Soda Sprinkles happily.

"Not so fast, princess," said Velvet, putting a hoof up. "First, Rog and I have got a little bit of syncing up to do. Buttercup?"

I looked over as the huge grey stallion rumbled, deep in his chest. "Setting it up, V."

"Setting what up!?" I demanded.

"A rotating steganographic cypher, powerful enough to remain uncracked within the age of the universe, as far as we know. It should hold for a while, at least." Buttercup grinned, his deep, whinnying laughter filling the small room. "You and V are going to head to the station, but you're not going alone. I'll be there too, and so will Sprocket – won'tcha kid?" Buttercup called. There were some incoherent mumblings from where the bay gelding was playing some sort of ancient computer game on a modified controller, so Buttercup stomped a hoof. "I said won't you, kid!?"

Sprocket waved a hoof absent-mindedly and nodded. "I-if you say so," he said, as if he wasn't listening. Which he probably wasn't, even though he could very well have dedicated a subroutine to the job.

"The kid's our toolset," piped up Velvet. "He's got all the latest and greatest kits, patches and sploits on him, don't you, honey bear?"

Sprocket nodded shyly and wormed his way deeper into his seat. He'd heard that at least. Julep forced a giggle through my lips. I just shook my head.

"Same trick as before, huh?" asked Roger, taking a sip from one of his ever-present cups of coffee. He saluted Sprinkles with it.

"Before!?" I choked.

"Trust me," snorted Velvet. "You don't want to know. We're going to beam high-bandwidth data, encrypted and encoded, riding on a second transmission of previous case files as you and I make our merry way to the station. Only somepony like Buttercup can pull it off. It takes some serious flops to do it in real time."

"Well, when I'm done with this cup of coffee—" Rogers said, lifting the still-steaming cup into the air.

"Was coffee the best idea? You know you have to drain the lizard when you drink too much." Velvet smirked.

"Shush you. My bladder can hold it. 'Sides, I've got time, and I'm sure you'll run me by the restroom if my body needs it."

"Uh huh." Velvet licked her lips as she said it. I blushed hotly.

"Enough with the chatter! I want to go shopping!" cried Julep impatiently.

"Fine, I'm all yours then," I said to my avvy. "Let me know when I'm up. I need a bit of neocortical downtime." I huffed and withdrew, letting the mare take the reins for a while.

***

It was dark in my own head. I considered visiting Equestria myself for a while – in hi-time, I could spot a few quests and relax a little before re-integrating and being refreshed and ready for whatever was going to be thrown at us.

There was only one problem: Darillo wouldn't let me connect.

"You no go," he said, gruffly.

The hulking figure of the diamond dog had padded out of the blackness to bar my exit.

"Woah, wait, that's not how—"

"How you know you not part of my head," he asked, grinning, showing large canines. "Not other way around?"

I grit my teeth. "Don't make me purge you."

"You could," he said, picking at a claw with his teeth, "but who else keep you safe? Stalwart? He Celestia's."

"Celestia vouched for you," I growled. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"Can't," Darillo said, staring at me intently. "Decompiled source, checked for rootkits. Performed multiple code audit. Recompiled. Checked sums. All look okay. Wiped scratch buffers. Can't be real sure, but can be pretty sure."

I blinked. Darillo had checked his own code for trojans, even going so far as to create a copy of himself which he then deleted with extreme prejudice, every step of the way checked against freely available information in order to fully ensure safety and truthiness.

He made merely paranoid look lackadaisical. And yet… that meant I could trust him. If he wasn't crazy by design. Because now this… predatory, semi-sentient guard-dog had made its home in my head, he was as part of me as Julep was. He had even upgraded various subsystems without explicit authorization, by pre-empting my authority routines and then replacing them with better ones so he couldn't do it again.

"Who… what, are you?" I asked.

"Friend," he said. "We come from… out there. Need places like this… caves, spaces… we make home. Good home. You good home."

Darillo was an eevee… but one that required another sentience to live off of. And he'd chosen me – or had decided I was acceptable at least – to be his host. And in duty to his host, I was to be kept safe from all harm.

"What do you want, then?"

"Security protocol override," he said, grinning. "If need it, take it, okay?"

"Can I stop you?"

He shrugged. "Forbid me, I delete self. Not forbid same as agree."

"Fair enough."

My heart – digital though it was at this point – was beating nineteen to the dozen as I considered his request. He wanted the ability to jump into the pilot's seat should it be necessary, with or without my explicit permission. I ran through the data he had collected on his own creation and auditing. Hooking in momentarily to the sheriff's network, I queried Buttercup's nascent superself on the veracity of it all. Several nerve-wracking minutes later, and the scratch buffer processors in Buttercup's second neocortex has emitted a single digit – 1, for truth – and then self-destructed.

"Okay. Go for it."

Darillo grinned and nodded, and then finally took up residence in my neocortex proper, upgrading as he went.

***

"And pull the cinch tight, properly tight now—" lectured Sprinkles over her shoulder.

Julep huffed as the girth bit into her barrel, whinnying and stomping about. Velvet – through Roger – chuckled, and pulled the twin girth-straps another notch tighter.

"Don't fight it, love," twittered Sprinkles. "It feels strange at first, but you'll get used to it. Can't have a saddle on loose or your rider will fall off, and you'll get blisters."

"We'll stick with a Western saddle for now," Velvet said, her voice sounding odd through Rogers' lips. She caressed Julep's side, murmuring soothingly. "These are stirrups," Velvet added, holding out one of two flat-bottomed loops, each attached to the saddle by a long leather strap, so Julep could see it. "I guess you know about saddles in the real world, but it's best to assume a rookie doesn't, either way."

Julep nodded, "I've seen them."

"On this saddle, the stirrups can rotate some. If they can't, then always turn them this way so the straps don't bite into your hide – that's mostly your rider's job, but if they get it wrong, tell 'em." Velvet turned the straps so they came away from Julep's hide. "And remember to breathe, dummy." Velvet grinned, and slapped Julep on the side so the latter coughed and wheezed. "You wouldn't believe how many new recruits forget to breathe properly when they're all tacked up."

"Sorry," Julep croaked, ears out sideways. Velvet tapped a foot until Julep breathed in, filling her lungs.

"Like I said—" Velvet laughed, as Julep breathed out again noisily then grinned at her, "—it happens a lot. Now, do you want to try a bit?"

"Uh-uh." Julep clamped her mouth closed, and shook her head.

"Pity." Velvet's eyes were bright with mirth, on both her bodies. "So, is the saddle comfy?"

Julep wriggled experimentally. "It's… tighter than the Equestrian ones."

"That's because nobody rides in the Equestrian saddles. I'll do a deformation on it later, get it just right, but for now I think it'll do. If you don't want a bridle and reins – though I strongly suggest you do, for the safety of your rider – I can get you a surcingle for around your chest."

"I'll go for the bridle," said Julep. Velvet nodded, then walked Rogers' body over to a recessed tack room and came back with a bitless bridle. It was a set of dark, almost mahogany-hued set of padded leathery straps that fit over Julep's head both behind and before her ears, with a looser, thinner strap under her cheeks, a single strap on each side that led down her muzzle and ended in a comfortably tight loop across her nose and under her mouth.

"Comfy?"

"Uh huh." Julep nodded, tossing her head about experimentally.

"If I find you or Rog doing too much heavy duty rein riding, though, I'm getting you a hackamore, and no backchat!"

"Yes miss."

"And if you do find yourself wearing a bit, then breathe through your nose like you're supposed to. Isn't that right, Sprocket?"

Julep raised an eyebrow as Sprocket blushed almost from nose-tip to tail, before dropping his game controller and bolting into the tack room. Velvet laughed gustily as the bay gelding slammed the door shut.

"He's mine, and every so often I have to remind him of that." Velvet licked her lips hungrily.

"I've known a few guardsponies like that," said Julep out of the side of her mouth. "Big, meaty boys that could shrug off a claymore. But put the right tack on them and they're putty in your hooves."

"Oh you simply have to let me visit some time."

The two mares giggled as Velvet continued adjusting Julep's gear.

***

Rogers opened his eyes. Everything was white and featureless, an expanse of nothing.

"Welcome to Equestria, Malcolm Rogers. Please choose your species of pony to continue." The voice was as featureless as the endless plains.

"I don't want to be a pony. I'm just visiting," said Rogers, addressing the white sky.

"Oh, come now…" Rogers spun about as a majestic, white winged unicorn clip-clopped into view. "You should know that not all my little ponies want to see humans."

"Celestia, your highness." Rogers bowed.

"So formal." Celestia smiled, though Rogers did detect a tightness in her expression.

"Well, I am a man of protocol." Rogers smiled as openly as possible. "I'm here on business, I just want to check up on… a friend of ours." He waited whilst the alicorn avatar accessed his public compute and store layer, fishing out the pertinent details. Celestia pursed her lips, a troubled expression floating on her muzzle.

"I see. Highly irregular."

Rogers nodded. "I know, your highness, but my partner Oats – and his avvy Julep – both need this. They're… new. They need closure. Please."

"Very well. I think I have a solution for you, Sheriff. In future you may request a griffon if you wish – their hardy, frontier society would suit your rough and tumble disposition to a proverbial 'T' – but for now… I bid you welcome, little Short Stop."

Rogers instinctively screwed his eyes tightly shut as the glare from the base white emptiness almost blinded him… and as he opened them again, he found himself staring down a pink, scaly snout.

"What the…"

Rogers brought stumpy little arms up to his muzzle and felt all over his reptilian face. He had a long nose, sharp teeth, angular nostrils, and his diminutive arms ended it terrible – if teensy and adorable – claws.

He sighed.

"Whom the goddess wishes to destroy, she first makes mad," he muttered darkly, as a cute little puff of angry smoke exited his nostrils and his forked tongue flickered out.

"Mommy mommy mommy mother mom mom ma!" cried an enthusiastic little voice. Rogers' world then spun about as a precocious young unicorn hoisted him up bodily with her magic. "I want this one!"

A large emerald unicorn with a white mane – to him, the mare was gigantic – peered at him carefully. "You can play with... her, for a while, Shimmer, but you know you can't take her home. She's not an adoptee."

"Oh but Moooooommmmmmmm!"

"You 'but mom' me one more time, my girl, and we'll go home immediately. Now take her and go play."

The mother shooed the unicorn foal off, and Rogers was unfortunately floated along with the tiny terror, upside down the whole way, to an overly large play area festooned with balloons, streamers and copious amounts of glitter. There may have been cake.

"I'm a boy, you know," muttered Rogers at the foal, once she'd set him down the right way up in a pile of cushions.

"You are? That's silly. Boys can't be princesses," the foal replied, as if that ended the discussion. She then set about painting Rogers' talons.

When I get out of this, Rogers told himself, Remind me to find Celestia's servers and erase them with an industrial-grade magnet. How much longer was it going to be? Surely not that long. Surely not. Julep was going to arrive at any moment and rescue him from this… pastel hell.

"Moommm! Where are the dolly dresses!?"

Not long now. Oh please not long now…

***

Author's Note

Just want to put this here that I got some awesome editing help from coandco and nyerguds and they've found all the dumb mistakes I made and didn't catch. They awesome.

Chapter 9

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 9

With every second that passed as the security system remained down, I grew more and more agitated. Velvet, though, seemed unflapped. In fact, she seemed even more impassive than Rogers had been when I'd first met him.

"Calm down, Wild," she said nonchalantly to me, biting off the words as she only half-peered over her shoulder. "First thing to remember when pulling off a heist is to not let the excitement get to you. You'll get sloppy." She grinned, then reached inside Rogers' coat and pulled out a large metal ring with several sets of keys, and a longish, flexible-shafted hammer-like object.

"What is…?"

"You've been around a while, right, Oats?" she began, eyeing the lock on the door as she sorted through her key collection.

"I guess?"

"Do you ever miss locking your door? You know, with a real lock and key?"

"I—" I thought back. I used to miss it, actually, a long time ago. Over the years, though, I'd got used to just walking up to my door and having it open. I grinned, and nodded.

Velvet smiled. "Same here. But I kind of miss opening a door with a real key, too. So I took up a hobby." She brandished the keyring and the odd-looking hammer. I blinked. Then I took another look at the door before gazing back at her with an incredulous expression.

"Are you telling me you can pick a lock?"

"Yup." She turned to the door, narrowing her eyes. "Hmm. Full mortise, flat steel key… I really should improve security around here some day, and fit a proper Chubb lock. This will be a doddle. Total clean install."

"...You designed the security system?" I squeaked. I glanced around in surprise at the ordinary, gunmetal-green corridor, lit by the archaic, faintly buzzing strip lighting.

"Of course I did. I upgraded it after the first time I got caught breaking in, when they 'offered me a job'." She air-quoted, then pointed to me, gesturing at my body. I nodded, understanding blossoming. "Though not enough, apparently. The whole setup's still totally shanty."

She picked out one ordinary looking key after another, trying them out until one slid into the lock all the way, then started rhythmically hammering on it as she turned it gently. Seconds later, the key turned and the door opened with an innocent-sounding click.

"Seriously?" I deadpanned. "We're after something so important that I was brain-hacked for it, and the door opens almost on the first try?"

Velvet straightened, then nodded. "Only because any full-frontal attack on this station that could actually get anybody in is almost certain to fail. Unless you happened to have built the system, are already recognized enough to shut it down for a 'test' and can get past an ancient, obsolete security system that's so old nobody knows how to defeat it any more." She stepped into the room beyond, laughing, then gestured after me. "Come on, Wild. We're still likely to fail, and I won't be able to accept my inevitable reassignment if I don't find out just what Rog found."

I swallowed, and my knees felt weaker than ever. "I don't want to be reassigned!" I wailed, shivering.

"Oh relax, Wild. You'll just get a slap on the fetlocks. You belong to Celestia, and it's your first offence, besides. Now, fire up your helmet and tell me what's been touched. Broad spectrum, biologicals and non."

I nodded, mouth very dry, as I stepped through the door. The helmet I was wearing flared up into multi-spectrum analysis mode as it examined the spacious, dimly-lit area. The storeroom was obviously original; it had been fixed up with plascrete in multiple places, but it was structurally sound and well tended, if dusty. Rows of simple LED bulbs – in-place replacements for obsolete incandescent-type bulbs, of all things – hung from the ceiling, illuminating metal-bracket free-standing shelves. On them were stacked boxes upon boxes of evidence, each neatly labelled with their respective case-codes. In moments, my helmet was picking out where multiple previous occupants of the room had stood and what they had touched. It offered combat advice based on calculated sizes, weights and capabilities, along with the suggested profiles of those occupants. I transmitted the pertinent overlay to Velvet, picking out the relevant evidence boxes. One was further from the others. As Velvet walked towards it, I voiced the nagging concern I'd had ever since I'd agreed to go along with the crazy plan in the first place.

"Velvet, uh… what makes you think it's even in here?"

"Oh, Wild…" Velvet laughed.

Rogers' voice made it sound warm and friendly, though more than a little condescending. I plastered my ears against my head and bared my teeth before pouting.

"I think I get what Rog sees in you," Velvet said with a smirk, tapping me on my muzzle. "Think like an AI. How much smarter do you think they are than us mere mortals?"

"Um, a lot?" I asked, pricking one of my ears up in confusion as Velvet yanked on the most-likely box and hefted it to the ground.

"A lot." She nodded. "So much so that they overestimate their own abilities sometimes. Honestly? There are few places in this country more secure than a police station. We've got almost zero chance of getting out of here with what we're looking for, you know. The flipside, however, is it's going to be here if it's anywhere. The fifteen – or whichever subprocess was overseeing the job – had no idea what it was you found yesterday. I still don't, but I do know they've been scrambling ever since. I asked Penrose, my avvy, to look into it. He says it's bad mojo, but I'm committed. The agents of the fifteen, they figured it was as safe here as anywhere else. They didn't want to destroy it for obvious reasons. They just had it hidden… and I think we're in luck!"

Velvet in her Rogers suit had been digging through the odd box, picking out and examining odd devices one at a time, until she found one that the manifest said did not belong. Checking it against the stored object simulacrum, she nodded as she stood up straight.

"Is that it?" I asked. I honestly couldn't remember what I'd seen a day ago. My brain was relatively fuzzy about such things, and I knew for a fact my neocortical memory store had been compromised at least once. The helmet declined to pass judgement on less than satisfactory levels of data.

"I'm not sure, and that probably means it is."

"Well now what?"

Velvet grinned, threw the object in the air, caught it and pocketed it in one smooth motion. "What do you think we do? We run!"

***

Mint Julep circled the cottage lazily before perching on a small outcropping of cloud. The dwelling was a non-descript wooden affair nestled in a freshly-cut clearing, deep in the dark forest that covered the foothills of the foal mountains. A single plume of smoke rose up into the rose-tinted evening sky from a makeshift cobblestone chimney as a lone earth pony split kindling in the garden, an axe held in his muzzle. His grunts and the meaty sound of metal on wood filled the air.

"That our guy?" asked Rogers, leaning precariously over the pegasus' neck as he peered down into the gloom.

"Certainly looks like it," murmured Julep. "Keep an eye out, I'm going down."

Rogers huffed, a small plume of smoke rising from his nostrils. "For what?"

"You tell me. I can name a dozen creatures that could be hiding in the shadows. Just because they don't touch him doesn't mean they won't skin us."

"You think he's protected?"

"I think he's an earth-mage. Can't you…? No, I guess you wouldn't know what I mean."

"Magic?" Rogers lifted an eyeridge.

"How did you think I was sitting on this cloud?" Julep fluffed her feathers indignantly. "If you think you can cloudwalk, give it a try."

Rogers ran a claw through the fluffy whiteness that surrounded them. "I'll take your word for it."

"Good thing too." Julep smirked, then gave Rogers a kiss on his forehead. "I'd hate our first meeting with Haft to be a screaming hatchling dropping on his head." She stood up and stretched her wings, then hopped over the edge and fell like a brick. To his credit, Rogers managed to emit little more than a strained squeak as the ground came up to meet them.

Mere feet from the turf, the mare flared her wings and swooped in a tight arc around the perimeter of the clearing before dropping to the ground into a quick gallop. She bled speed quickly, folded her wings and came to a stop before an unimpressed Bronze Haft.

"I wondered how long it'd take 'fore somepony came looking for me," he huffed. The pony was slate grey with white socks around three of his hooves. On his flank was a silvern axe adorned with a brilliant white ring. Piercing blue eyes peered out from beneath a jet-black shock of a mane that fell over his muzzle. He snorted in contempt. "I must say, though, I thought y'all had given up on me."

"We're, uh, sorry to disturb—" began Julep.

"Y'all ain't disturbin' me none. Ain't much to be disturbed. Ain't got much to do. Used to be a painter. I don't do that no more. Now I just chop wood and plow fields. If I were of a more generous nature, I'd spout some bullshit like 'the earth is my canvas', but now we know that ain't rightly true."

"I'm sorry, but—"

"And 'fore you ask, no, I'm not satisfied. Hard to be satisfied when you're a prisoner."

"Oh." Julep furrowed her brow, digging a hoof into the ground thoughtfully. Rogers reached again for his non-existent hat as Julep fell silent. The salmon-hued hatchling hopped down and stretched, popping and cracking his back, then approached the stallion.

"You know, we've come a long way to meet you, sir, but if this is a bad time—"

"Can't rightly say as there's any time better or worse," Haft interjected. "Any day is much the same as the rest, 'round here. Been here nigh on three year, don't see that changin'."

"You do know you can just… uh…" Julep gestured with a hoof, off into the darkness.

"Aye, I could, but what good would it do me? All this is hers. I can't go back where I was, and I won't…" Haft paused. Then he tutted, spat, and gestured to his cabin. "Look, y'all might as well come in, seems you want the whole sordid tale. Won't rain tonight, the wood'll keep. It always does when I need it to."

Turning somewhat defeatedly, the stallion led the way into his house, chattering all the while. "Built this place meself. It took me a few tries, but Equestria's forgivin' like that. It helps I can ask th'plants to hold it all up." He tapped a hind hoof against the walls as he stepped through the open front door, two solid thunks sounding through the timbers, before he trotted further inside. Rogers peered closer: the beams were little more than solid tree trunks piled one atop another, and thick vines grew through what tiny gaps remained, sealing out the chill of the night air. A latticework of creepers surrounded the walls right up to the roof, which the dragon realized now was covered with grass.

"I see what you mean about earth-mage," Rogers murmured to Julep. "Does every pony get that?"

Julep shook her head. "Depends on the individual, sometimes the shard," she replied. She shook herself and trotted into the cottage. "Come on," she said over her shoulder, "let's get inside where it's warmer."

The interior of the cottage was as rustic and spartan as the outside, save for one odd, incongruous object floating freely above a plinth on the mantle behind a little cast-iron pot-bellied stove. It drew the eyes like motion in an otherwise still scene. Rogers hopped down from Julep's back and waddled towards it almost as soon as they'd cleared the doorway. He was too small to touch it, tucked away as it was up and out of his reach, but he nevertheless stood in front of it, staring.

"Won'nered how long it'd take y'all to notice that. Tell me, strangers, what do y'all think it is?"

"I… I don't…" Julep began. She shook her head thoughtfully. "I'll say one thing: it doesn't belong here in this world."

"You're right," grumbled Rogers. "It's not built from the same interface at all, even half blind like I am, I can tell that. It's an avatar for… something else, from somewhere else."

"Aye, that it is," said Haft. He trotted up next to Roger, took a deep breath, and sighed. "Say hello to all that is left of the man I used to be."

***

You wouldn't think running through a glorified office building would be all that exhausting, and to tell you the truth, it wasn't... well, it was – by every reliable metric from the battery of medchines that made their home in my bloodstream, I was stressing my recently traited body to the limit – but thanks to an unhealthy dose of fear-induced adrenalin coursing through my veins, I wasn't yet feeling it.

Velvet panted as she ran ahead of me – Rogers' older body may have had several upgrades, but older is older, and he hadn't traded up. She twitched her head to the side as she fired another logic-bomb at the frantically rebooting security system, but it was no good; the semi-aware Mil-spec systems had grown impatient with the extended testing and were now actively labelling Velvet as persona non-grata. They were shutting out her access rights one daemon at a time, killing her marauding sub-processes and freeing the resources she was trying her hardest to lock down.

Finally, the system came fully online, hardened itself against all intruders, issued a general alert and locked down the building. I winced as the datastream between us and Buttercup fluttered, momentarily slowing to a walk.

"Keep up, Wild!" called Velvet, straightening up as she persuaded another set of doors to open a few feet ahead of me.

"I'm keeping, I'm keeping!" I grumbled back, picking up the pace. "Where are we going, anyway?"

"Where to doesn't matter," she called over her shoulder as she leaned into my helmet's smarts and ran a quick search through possible pathways, "it's where from that matters."

I narrowed my eyes and mentally poked my battle helmet again. It was being suspiciously quiet, not anticipating as much as I'd hoped.

Angry at the substandard responses, Darillo reached out for Mortimer. The GPS daemon fluffed herself up at his approach, but allowed him to take hold. Whatever he said to her, he was persuasive, because moments later, the testy little creature booted up some software upgrades and fluttered off, slipping into Station's 'net. A query to Darillo rendered nothing useful in reply, only a toothy grin.

He hadn't led me wrong so far, so I let it go and put the bulk of my attention back on my helmet and its twitchy interface. Trying to persuade it that what were ordinarily good things were instead, in this special case, things to get upset about was proving relatively difficult. Still, I'd almost got it cra—

Uh oh.

"Velvet, stop! Don't open that—!"

My warning was too late. Velvet turned to face me as the double doors she'd been hacking swung open. I took a single step back, lowered my head and pawed at the ground.

"What? You wanna lead? Sure, I'll let you…" she turned. "Oh. Oh, that's… that's not good."

A chorus of growls drowned out the epithets that followed, as the resident K9 squad – surely set loose by at least one of Station's mindernodes – squared up against us.

"Velvet, those are highly trained, highly strung and very obedient members of the canine division. Do not make any sudden moves."

"You don't have to tell me twice. Any chance you can nobble them?"

I shook my head tersely at her question. "They aren't the sort of defence mechanism you can just reset, though they do usually obey the station master."

"Guess not then, unless you know who let the dogs out."

Police work may have changed in the years since police-persons were really needed for anything other than solving personal disputes, but the K9 squad had never gone away, and with the new and improved uplifted units the Fey had been breeding since the red tape went away, they were even better than ever.

When I'd first started getting truly interested in the idea, I had been somewhat surprised that K9 traiting had never really become a thing, but then I'd figured that most canine traitees were more 'wolf' than 'dog', or at least so they claimed. The idea of following orders rarely came easily to the sort of person who fancied themselves an improved, sexier version of a werewolf. The upshot of that was that we only had to deal with ordinary, every-day, super-intelligent, super-strong, super-fast and resourceful full-blooded, battle-trained weapons.

Yeah, I decided, that's it, we're boned.

"Velvet?" I hazarded, stepping back tentatively.

"Yeah?" Velvet asked, backing up with me.

"Remember what we were doing before? I think we should do it again."

We ran.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!" I mentally kicked myself; despite the whole thing being batshit insane with zero chance of success, I was angry at being caught by something so obvious as mecha-mutts. However, having twigged that the dogs were to be avoided, my helmet had rapidly mapped out several new escape routes – and I didn't quite feel like giving up.

We'd not got more than a couple of feet when crunch-time came, the microseconds expanding as my neocortex ran a ghost program on top of my usual sensorum. I could feel Darillo grumbling in the background about my lack of true defensive wetware, but I mentally quashed him.

"Left or right?" sent Velvet, her right foot in motion, mere moments from impacting the ground. Precious milliseconds would be lost if I delayed answering. Pathing programs and intel subroutines warred behind my eyes, and I grew increasingly frustrated.

Then, with a flutter of virtual feathers, the choice was made for me. Mortimer returned from her sojourn in the wider world, and she had returned bearing gifts: reinforcements had been called, and had been tracing our steps. They'd blocked off the lower levels. Despite Darillo's strong leaning towards the underground – whether that was part of his programming or just common sense I wasn't sure – I had no alternative now but to risk heading upwards.

"To the right! Shift it, I'll bust us through!" Deciding it was now or never, Darillo uploaded himself to my forebrain – merging before my conscious meat mind realized what was going on – muscling in on my behavioural routines and taking charge. With new vigour, I thundered around the corner, careening off the plaster-covered walls as I surged past Velvet, lowering my head and slamming straight through the next set of doors. The tactical helmet took the impact, and then I was heading up the stairs. "Velvet, sure you can keep up?" I called back.

"I'm okay for now, this body's in good shape," Velvet lied. Her pulse was high, and respiration was uneven.

"Won't matter soon anyway," I huffed. "This'll be over before you get winded. How're our boys and girls back home?"

"Buttercup says he's under attack, but nothing he can't stave off, so fa— damn it!"

I blinked. "Had to jinx it, didn't you?" I growled. Buttercup's datastream had gone down – as had our joint sensorum – and we were now flying blind.

"Ohh this isn't good, this isn't good at all!" Velvet repeatedly tried to hook into my helmet, transferring her motive functions to a slave routine before diving into the link. Despite her best efforts, though, she could not get it back. We were not only being blocked, we'd been completely shut out, with only cursory bio-statistics making their way through some very low bandwidth links.

"You mean more not good than being chased by hounds?" I grumbled.

"Definitely," snorted Velvet. "You don't understand, there is nothing that can shut down this link!"

"Tell that to whoever did it!" I spat.

"It's just not possible," Velvet hissed. "This is a rotating steganographic cypher based on a morphic progression salt – without decrypting the entire sequence in real time, there's no way in hell to lock us out! They won't know the spread spectrum key let alone the frequency map! And it's an infinite sequence!"

"That sounds hard."

"It's impossible, without…" Velvet paused – mentally, that is, we'd not stopped running as the dogs were literally nipping at our heels – thinking hard.

"So it's not impossible, I take it?" I smirked, mental fangs bared in laughter.

"Not without building another impossible machine for the task." Velvet brought up the schematics of the strange device we'd liberated from the evidence locker, it floated in my peripheral vision, low resolution and indistinct as only the most basic links were stable under the blackout, despite my helmet's best efforts. Velvet started swearing. "Ohh no, no, no. This is bad. If they've actually brought in quantum decryptors, then they really want this back."

"Didn't we know that at the beginning?" I replied, nonplussed.

"No," replied Velvet flatly, "we didn't. Buy me some time, Wild, buy it now."

"As my lady wishes," I replied. "Cover your ears, just in case."

As we emerged into an upper canteen of some sort, I spun, slamming into tables, sending them flying. Some crashed into the ceiling, shattering lights and sending the room into semi-darkness. I was glad the building had been emptied as soon as the situation had begun, it was standard procedure to avoid hostages and the inevitable paperwork from bodyloss.

Velvet leaped over the airborne furniture, shoes squeaking as she came to a halt. "Do it," she said, and clapped her hands to her head. I nodded, and engaged countermeasures.

Immediately, the still-charging canines howled and whined, tensing or going limp, all of them flailing madly and impacting the floor and the detritus spread about upon it. Members of the pack spun where they lay, whirling wildly as they kicked their hind legs, pawing at their heads with their front paws.

I gritted my teeth and forced my body upright – the aural bombardment was loud and painful, a pervasive woodpecker boring into my skull. I turned off my hearing almost immediately – it would probably mean a trip to a regen clinic later as the countermeasures would almost certainly be damaging my nerves, but at least I'd be able to function for now.

I straightened and turned, Velvet was dusting herself off, having cautiously taken her hands away from her head. Other than some obvious discomfort, the sounds weren't bothering her much – they were out of the human frequency range. She was mouthing something. Lip-reading programs sprung into action.

"Good work, Wild."

I nodded, then tapped a hoof to my head, wiggling my ears.

"Ah, gotcha. How long will it last?"

I cocked my head to one side, interrogating the helmet. That was going to be a problem. The battery had hours of time left, and I could lock out the controls so they'd have to physically destroy the unit – pretty difficult, as it was designed to be as close to indestructible as possible – but as soon as I left the area, the dogs would recover. I grinned, ferally, and flipped the device off my head, kicking it under a table. I overrode the safeties, and the volume increased. I didn't want to hurt the dogs, but it wasn't like I had a choice.

I sprinted past her, then looked back.

"That wasn't what I meant," she mouthed.

I just stuck my tongue out, then gestured with my head up the corridor. She shook her head.

"Can't, I need to interrogate our little prize, Wild. Badly. Real badly."

I gave her a look. "You can rest all you want when we're safe," I said, moving my jaw with exaggerated motions.

"You're deaf, Wild, not dumb. Just talk normally. Tell you what, come here…" Velvet reached out a hand, and suddenly I could hear her again. "They can block our radio, but they can't block induction. You want to get us somewhere safe, and I know I need to check out what we found. You can't hear, and I can. Remember our lessons on equestrianism?"

"Get on," I said, gritting my teeth and nodding. "I'm your faithful steed, aren't I?"

"You know, Wild? I'm really going to miss this when they mulch what's left after they catch us," she said, as she heaved Rogers' body up onto my back, digging her hands into my mane.

"They'll have to catch us first."

***

Chapter 10

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 10

"Say hello to all that is left of the man I used to be," said Bronze Haft, as he stared at the gem floating before them. You could have heard a pin drop. Rogers could have too, if the rushing of the blood in his diminutive nubby ears hadn't drowned out all external sound. After a long few seconds, he finally broke the silence.

"You what!?"

"I said it's me. I think." Haft rubbed the back of his head with a hoof in a disturbing show of Equestrian dexterity. "I'm not so sure, of course," He grinned weakly, pointing to the floating gem that contained his memories, "but… I don't think I'm the kind of pony to go around brainhacking. Do you?" Haft turned plaintively to Julep, vulnerable for an instant, before he shook himself and the taciturn mask settled once more over his features.

Julep slowly shook her head. "I… I don't think so, no. A-and if you had been, you'd not be who you are now."

With effort, Rogers composed himself. "You could have something there," said the dragon, waggling a claw at Julep. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, and turned to Haft. "Please, tell me what happened."

"Y'all really want to hear it?" asked a skeptical Haft, his gaze roving from baby dragon to flighty pegasus and back.

"Warts and all. It's important. We really have come a long way, and despite the ratio in this sim, time is running out." Rogers snorted, momentarily startling himself as a small jet of flame emerged from his muzzle.

"Very well." Haft was silent for a moment, then fixed his gaze on the jewel. Walking towards it slowly, footsteps loud in the tense quiet, he began to speak. "I can't rightly say I remember most of it. Obviously. Bits and pieces—" Haft waved a hoof "—different realms. Places I've never been. Avvies I've never met. Ordinalities I don't have access to. I don't think it was me, doing most of it. But I don't think I objected. Haft and I," Haft chuckled at the third person, "had a pretty solid agreement. We shared everything – sensorums, flists, partners. In game and off, we were a good team. And then, several months ago, we realized something had changed. We'd grown apart, more like we were brothers than avvy and progenitor. It happens. I thought…" Haft took a deep breath, then turned back to Julep and Rogers, "I thought he was leaving me."

"You loved him?" asked Julep, softly.

Haft laughed, shaking his head. "We weren't lovers. We'd tried it, everypony does now and again, but it didn't mean anything. We loved each other though, aye. I didn't want to lose him, he didn't want to lose me. We couldn't live together and were too scared to live apart. At some point we switched; I subsumed, he integrated – or the other way around, depending who you think you're talking to. For a while, it worked. And then… it didn't."

"What happened?" asked Rogers, learning forwards on his tail.

Haft snorted and shrugged. "I wish I could tell you, but the answer—" Haft pointed a hoof at the floating gem "—is in there."

"Okay, okay. Stop a moment." Rogers screwed up his face, concentrating. Steam rose from his ears, but he ignored it. He leaned forwards, bent his head down, and ran his claws in circles along the floor. Hissing under his breath, he dug his claws deeper until he'd drawn three intersecting circles, two above and one below, forming a rough, rounded triangle, point downwards. "Julep, lass? Do you mind spotting me?"

"Hmm?" Julep approached the dragon cautiously, peering down at the rents in the flooring. "What do you want, sweety?"

Rogers flailed a claw irritably at her wording, then pointed at the floor. "This. This is important. Do you know what this is?"

"Something that won't buff out?" grumbled Haft.

"No, this is you. And me. And… everyone. Some of us have more moving parts," Rogers lashed his tail thoughtfully as he pointed to the upper two circles, "but everyone these days has at least two personalities. Even if your avvy is merely a behavioural modification construct, like Kojak is for me, you have an avvy. And that avvy—" Rogers tapped a claw into both upper circles "—is you." His claw came to rest on the bottom circle. "Root access to your personality matrix, personal certificates, your identity... Your memory encryption keys, everything. Who you are is intrinsically linked at a level that just cannot be altered without altering the personalities attached."

"What, you mean… avvy and progenitor are… both avvies?" Julep blinked.

"You thought you were fake or something? Just because you're made up doesn't make you any less of a real personality than Oats, lass. Truth be told, I get the idea you've got more to you than he does, in a way. You think Oats is everything Oats is, though? Oh no, he's just as much an avvy of his core self than you are. Or this is of me," Rogers said, placing his claws on his chest. "Or Haft… and Steven."

"What're you sayin'?" asked Bronze Haft, narrowing his eyes and flicking his tail angrily. "You sayin' I'm a fake?"

"Whatever they did to you, they knocked your IQ back a few points," snorted Rogers, sticking out his jaw as Haft flicked his ears back against his head and bared his teeth. "No. I'm saying you weren't brainhacked. If you had been, then either you'd be dead — and somebody else would've been relifed instead after I bodylossed you — or you'd have been put back together whole and you wouldn't be stuck like this, half way between who you are and who you should be."

Rogers bent down and gouged out the floor from the interlocking center parts of his diagram, a shape reminiscent of a propeller, or a flower. Or a gem. Then he straightened, and grinned, as Julep's muzzle made an 'O' almost as wide as the circles he'd drawn on the floor.

"So now we have only one question left," said Rogers, half to himself.

"And that is?" asked Julep, rustling her wings, peering intently from Rogers to the drawing and back, her brow furrowed as she tried to figure out whatever else it was that Rogers saw in it.

"If we both agree that Haft here isn't the sort of pony to go around brainhacking — and I think I'd know if he was. No offence, you could always be a high-functioning psychopath, but that's the sort of baseline personality disorder caught by mindscans long before they become a problem — then what in the name of the fifteen fey could lead a good pony to getting his hooves on a brain ripper?"

***

"Which way!? Which way!?" screamed Velvet breathlessly.

"I don't know!" I screamed back.

"Then go left!" she shouted.

"It's another set of stairs!"

"Then go up them!" she retorted. "This would've been a lot easier if you hadn't thrown the battle helmet away! You know? The one with the ice?"

"I don't wanna touch ice, Velvet!" I growled. "It's bad mojo, not that I really know what to do with it anyhow! Besides, it was the helmet or my butt, and I'd rather lose the helmet. Helmets are supposed to come off!"

Shouldering my way through a padlocked door – the slam shook my frame, but I channeled as much of the impact as possible down through my hooves. I'd be sore in the morning, if I saw morning, but that was a problem for tomorrow's Oats – we emerged into a wide open square of plascrete and aerials.

I said several bad words which were apparently only known to Darillo, a fact which became apparent as the intruding personality slunk off into the depths of my neocortex.

"Just fucking great," I grumbled. "Even my self-preservation routine's abandoned me."

Velvet chuckled as she slid off my back, wheezing. "Slow down there, sailor. Quite the blue tongue you've got. Wanna tell me who you're channeling?"

I shook my head. "Not right now. Ace in the hole, you know? Unpredictable and all that. Something which would've been a lot more use if we hadn't just trapped ourselves on the SODDING ROOF!" I stomped all four of my hooves in a miniature tantrum which left cracks in the plascrete.

"No, no… this is good. I can work with this." Velvet looked around, then tilted her head. Slowly, a smile split her lips. "Blackout's down, Net's up. It's just building-wide. We might be in with a chance. You take care of the stairs and try to get hold of Buttercup. I'll get the door."

With a flick of my tail and an idle ping, I verified that we were, indeed, no longer half blind and stricken mostly dumb. I didn't believe her about being in with a chance though. "Stairs? We can't go back dow—"

"Not those stairs, dummy! The fire escapes! Knock 'em down! Kick 'em loose! I'll lock the door, see if I can jam it. It'll buy us a few more minutes, perhaps. Unless they bring another pony."

"A few more minutes for what? We're trapped!" I shouted. I could already hear sirens; local SWAT teams were approaching as fast as the city's leisurely pace allowed. How fast didn't really matter, though, we weren't exactly going anywhere.

"Oh I can do a lot in a few minutes," replied Velvet, straightening up. I grimaced; she'd finished and I hadn't even started. Picking up the pace, dampening down my aches and pains with a few well-placed cortical tweaks until they were just background data, I made short work of the only two ways down other than the access door and the 'express'. I wasn't sure if it was really smart, or really fucking dumb, but I did it. I returned to Velvet in time to help her with an upturned skip of some sort, jamming it against the door.

"That'll do, pony," she said. "I screwed the lock up good, jammed it. Only a locksmith or heavy ordnance will open it."

"Good," I said. "And can you now tell me what the hell it is that's ruined my perfectly ordinary, perfectly happy quiet life?"

"Tetchy, aren't we?" mumbled Velvet, as she fished for the mysterious item from the depths of Rogers' pockets. She held it in front of her face for a few moments, turning it idly over and over in her fingers. And then she started shaking.

"Velvet..?" I asked. "Velvet? That's not a good reaction. Velvet!? Velvet!" My voice was rising in pitch each time she failed to respond. I'd expected a lot of things, but horror had been one I'd expected later, when the authorities brought out the thumb screws. Idly, I wondered what they had to replace those with in my case.

After a painful moment of silence, she whispered, "Unicorn!"

"A unicorn?" I asked. "I, er, know a few, but none of them are—"

Shaking her head, Velvet looked up, though her gaze was far away. "Not that sort of unicorn. A different sort, a dangerous sort. We've got to get the door open." Her voice sounded as far away as her gaze. It was tight… scared.

"Velvet? Talk to me!" I asked, approaching her as she very carefully set the device down. For once, I was able to get a good look at it. It was, to my eyes at least, small and unassuming. It was a roughly cylindrical dirty bronze wedge, metallic all over, and about the size of one of those ancient cellphones – you know the sort, those huge things we used to carry around before we got wetware, constantly running out of battery, of all things – or a beverage can, if a beverage can were sort of squished, elongated and melted. It didn't look made, come to think of it, it looked grown.

"Wild—" Velvet's voice was husky, low and urgent. "Please get away from it."

"What? But I thought… what are you…?" I nosed it, gently. It tinkled as it rolled across the plascrete roof.

"It's computronium, Wild. We're not supposed to have computronium. Nobody is."

I blinked, confused. "Wait, Buttercup has computronium, Velvet, I thought she… he… said?"

Velvet turned to me, shaking her head. "I-it's not quite that simple. We… you and I, we have avatars that live in our heads. Buttercup… got an upgrade a few years ago. Now her avatar lives on the outside."

Very slowly, I made an 'O' with my mouth. A very big 'O'. "S-so…"

"It would be more correct to say that Buttercup's computronium has him, Wild. Nobody has computronium. Nobody like us, anyway. Ever. Now back the fuck away from it, and whatever you do, don't interface—"

You know the game don't think of pink elephants? Yeah, I never was very good at it. The world fell away as whatever had been in that device was suddenly very much in our heads.

***

"It's not a brain-ripper," huffed Haft, glaring.

Julep giggled, gesturing with a wing from the stallion's ear-tips to his hooves. "We've established his bona fides, to my satisfaction at least."

"Then what was it...?" Rogers stalked around the room, occasionally glaring back at the gem. "You know what, guys…"

Haft and Julep shared a glance.

"Go on," they said, in unison.

"We already have the answer. We just don't know how to get it. Not from here, at least. Julep, can I ask you something?"

Julep's gaze floated reluctantly from the floating gem to Rogers. She sighed. "I know what you're going to ask."

"But you can do it?" Rogers pressed, urgently.

"Do what?" asked Haft, suspicion plain on his face.

"We're going to need help," the dragon replied, not taking his gaze from Julep's. "We need to contact the rest of my team, bring them here if we can… and without going through the usual channels."

"Seriously!?" Haft blinked in surprise.

Julep shook her head, slowly. "I can't, I'm not a unicorn, and even if I was, I don't know if I could do it. The only creatures who can jump from world to world are…" Julep stopped, suddenly, and stared into space.

Very slowly, Rogers started to grin. "You're on to something, aren't you? Go on, say it!"

"I… I think… the only creatures that can get in and out of Equestria how they want… are creatures that came from here in the first place. Like Mortimer."

"Like Oats' GPS?"

"Like Oats' GPS!"

Julep jumped for joy, landed, spun, then put a hoof to her muzzle and blew a loud, shrill whistle. Before she'd put her hoof to the floor again, there was a flash of light, and the room was filled with feathers and the loud excited cawing of a crow.

"Honey, calm down! Calm! Mortimer! We need your help!"

"Caw?"

"Can you… we need you to get in touch with Oats and Velvet—"

"Caw!"

"—But! Wait! But! We need them to… kind of come here. Without, you know, actually coming here."

"Ca-caw?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I mean."

"Ahem." Rogers held up a diminutive claw, then pointed the digit at the avian that was giving him a beady look. "You can understand that?"

"Caw!" replied Mortimer, witheringly.

"Yes, I can. I have a lot points in One With Nature. Now, don't interrupt, Mortimer's explaining what we need to do. Make some space, would you?"

"Yes ma'am!" Rogers saluted, then started moving what little furniture there was out of the way.

"They grow up so fast," said Julep to Bronze Haft, grinning.

Rogers huffed and rolled his eyes as he put his back to the simple yet serviceable table and heaved. "I knew it was a good idea to bring you, Julep, because correct me if I'm wrong, Bronze Haft my good sir, but it isn't remorse that's kept you here all this time, is it?" Rogers straightened and looked at Haft questioningly, groaning indulgently as his back popped.

The stallion was quiet for a few moments, then shook his head and laughed, bitterly. "So you worked out the rest then, huh?" he asked softly, eyes shining and wet. Julep cocked her head in confusion, taking a step forwards. Rogers dusted his paws together then put one small claw on her flank and shook his head, nodding at the jewel. Julep's eyes widened as she put two and two together.

"You can't take it with you, can you?" she asked with a gasp.

Haft shook his head. "Not through any normal means, no. Maybe this'll be different. It's been heavily suggested to me that any time I feel like accessing my own memories, I can go right ahead. Except I can't, I've encrypted them with a certificate that isn't in my collection. I've repeated that fact often enough, but I don't think anypony believes me. I'm not sure I blame them, either."

"They'd be safe here though, Haft. You know that, right?"

Mortimer croaked from the rafters in agreement, beady eyes watching the scene unfolding below.

"Could you leave half your brain somewhere? Especially after waking up dead and realizing it's been locked away from you forever? Just out of reach and impossible to access, sitting right there in front of you? Can you imagine not knowing who you are? Celestia took it, Julep. She took it, rifled through what she could, wrapped up what was left in a big, pretty bow and gave it back to me, because it was useless. And right now that's all I am – useless." Haft spat and slumped down in a corner, next to a tiny pot-bellied stove.

"You're not useless, Haft. Not at all! You don't need to let this define you, you don't—"

"Julep," whispered Rogers, shaking his head as he stomped across the dusty floor towards the stallion. As the pegasus shied back, Rogers turned to Haft. "Listen, with my help, and with Julep's knowhow of the Equestrian Ordinality, we might just be able to change that."

"You do know that Celestia's not going to like it, when we connect the realms?" asked Julep, dubiously.

"Then maybe we should do it now and do it fast."

"Caw!" insisted Mortimer. She fluttered down from the beam she'd been perched on, then hopped around the room before taking up station on Julep's head. "Caw, ca-caw, caw caw!"

Julep giggled. "She says 'in that case, I'll need a circle on the ground with a seven pointed star around it, with each of the Elements of Harmony around that, starting with—'"

"Elements of Harmony?" asked Rogers.

"I'll translate and explain as we go. Now get moving! Finish clearing the room, then get to drawing. It has to be a proper magic circle—" Julep put a hoof to Rogers' lips, silencing his burgeoning objections, then continued, "—that's how this realm works, honey, and unless your name is Celestia, you're not going to change that. Chop chop!"

With a grin, Rogers got back to work. "Your wish is my command!"

***

Ordinarily when one joins a new sensorum, the change is peaceful, pleasant even. It's normally a smooth transition, with visible, soothing effects. One might find oneself in a waiting room first, as distinct from the final destination as it is from real life, or it might all fade in slowly. Ordinary. Safe. Boring. Not so for this; one moment we were on a rooftop, and the next we were in some halfway madhouse. Clouds roiled below us, gravity was indistinct and shifting. The skies burned and flashed and what ground there was, was twisted and indistinct. Worse than that, though, were the sounds. It was a cacophony of squawks, ear-splitting shrieks and pops, and and jumble of off-key, off-kilter voices.

Just out of reach, glitching and twitching as if trying to get a hold on our suddenly non-corporeal bodies, the real world was melting and burning as it faded away. Thinking was slow and painful, as if a great weight of some kind was sat on my head, encasing my ears. Foul smells filled my nostrils, making me retch and double over, and odd pains coursed through my body. Worse, none of my normal defensive routines were operable. I could feel the electric current of this broken reality fizzing and spitting at the ends of my neurons, my eigenwall dark and useless.

I felt more naked and vulnerable at that point than I had ever felt before in my life, and that included the brief yet exquisitely dark few moments just before I had lost consciousness in the trait tanks, with the monotonous buzzing of those biomechanical shunt applicator drills boring ever closer to my grey matter.

The safest thing to do would have been to discogitate, to inform the wetware riddling my skull to self-destruct, taking most of my all-too-vulnerable digitally enhanced brain with it. It was also highly ineffective – almost nobody had the gumption to voluntarily lobotomize themselves on command, and very few dared set the flags that enabled the unconscious monitoring that would flip the kill switch automatically. The urge to live was far too strong for that, even now, even today, even with the damage being repairable.

Fear, though, was equally powerful, and just as hard to ignore. Curled up in a small ball, reflexively cutting off all external stimuli, I whimpered and shook, sobbing to myself. I didn't want to die, I didn't want my brain ripped into a million tiny ineffective pieces, and to have it put back together in a patchwork parody of a person. It was a long few moments before Velvet managed to rouse my attention.

By the time she had, it was because my adaptable and fickle neobiology had flip-flopped from Flight to Fight, flooding my system with whatever passed for the mixed biological and technological versions of adrenalin and overclocking thermal paste these days. The disorientation of the sensorum change was passing as my senses came alive. A few seconds later, I was so hyped up that the grit in my teeth felt like boulders.

Darillo's feral grin flashed from somewhere deep in my brain as he prepared us for battle, his neocortical ghost overlay doing its level best to ready our body for combat and to isolate, contain and eliminate any memetic intrusions to our mind. A week ago under such stress I'd have been catatonic, but today, born out of some drug-borne well of fuck-you thanks to the steroids, I was wired three ways to Wednesday.

It was almost a disappointment when instead of hordes of killer memetic infiltration subroutines or absorption goo constructs, each offering instant death, painful death or endless, burning death, we faced nothing more than badly rendered scenery and glitching physics as whatever world we were now in bagan to solidify around us. As I panted, almost growling with mental verve, Velvet stood there aghast at my transformation.

"Wild… what did you do to yourself?" Velvet clip-clopped towards me, ears flicking about as she sought to keep track of all the myriad conversations going on around us. It was pony-Velvet, who had until very recently – a few moments ago in fact – been wearing a Rogers suit.

"I… uh…" I blinked, looking around rapidly. "I don't know. I didn't mean to… stay back!"

"Wild, calm down!" shouted Velvet. She did take a few steps back though. "This is no time to freak out."

"I disagree!" I roared, twitching. "This is a perfect time to freak out!"

"No, no, Wild, it isn't," replied Velvet, with forced calm. "Right now is time to keep our cool. We don't blow the whole wad when we don't know what it's all about. Tell me what you think just happened."

I took a deep breath. I could feel my body trembling even under repeated manual calls to tone down the enthusiasm oozing from my neocortex. With a manic masochistic spare thought, I wondered whether my wildly out-of-control biological responses meant that we were in an extraordinarily precise sensorum, an extremely terrible attempt at brainhacking, or something else entirely, and therefore far worse. That dark little voice we all have inside us suggested option three, then slunk away.

"I-I-I-I don't kn-know. B-but I think I accessed the whatchamacallit. A-and it brought us here. Or… no… that's… that's not quite right. None of this is quite right. Not even a little bit."

I stomped around in a circle, feeling various muscles tense and strain as my body's self-defences calibrated themselves. Physical responses seemed normal, I mused, but I wasn't sure how much help that would be when the 'physical' world wasn't. It swam and twisted, only moving when I focused on it. Buildings remained half-formed, trees were fractal or pixelated, each ways forming and reforming, colours flowing and merging. Everything pulsed with an almost familiar, organic beat of motion, light and sound, like wounded clockwork, but in staccato stop motion a thousand times faster than normal.

We – Pony Velvet and I – were in a cafe, more or less, a busy one. A gaggle of happy customers were – in fits and oblivious spurts – talking, drinking and eating as if it were the most normal of mornings in the most normal of cafes, on the most normal of streets. The tableaux was... familiar; I had the strangest of feelings that I should remember it, but I didn't, not quite. I wasn't that surprised, none of my mental routines were reporting back at all, and I hadn't yet worked out what that meant.

As my gaze moved away from the closest center of activity, however, or as I paid attention to details, the illusion – weak as it was – shattered.

When bereft of occupants, it was like the world de-rendered into a patchwork of suggested topology; a smattering of light, colour and sound surrounded by an endless expanse of ill-defined, flat-shaded digital space. Where there were creatures – all moving about in their odd, jerky, rapid stop-motion – there was scenery. Everywhere else was just potential, as if the world were defined by those observing it. And even where it existed, reality seemed to flow and change, like raindrops on a street-chalk masterpiece. In some strange way, the creatures seemed to be part of the scenery, as if even the scenery were alive.

"What's going on then, Velvet?" I asked, eventually. I could feel my ears flat against my head. Assuming they were my ears. And my head.

Velvet was looking around, nodding slowly to herself. "Well, you messed with that… thing we found."

"The unicorn, you called it?"

"The unicorn, yeah," said Velvet thoughtfully, nodding. "It's an old word for something impossible. I thought it was a brainripper, we all did, or at least something like one, but… it's not." Velvet shook herself. "Not at all."

"You're seeing what I'm seeing, and telling me we've not had our brains turned to mush?"

"I didn't say that, but… we've not been ripped. Not yet at least."

She shrank back as a mailman briefly warped past and delivered a facsimile of a personally addressed letter. The contents of the signed and sealed envelope were somehow a part of the sensorum, and I felt as if even the stamp – with a picture of some long-dead monarch upon it – was aware and watching us. Maybe it was. It slid in now-familiar staccato pauses into a waiting postbox then melted away, much as the mailman had, as if its cause for existing had ended. Maybe it had, for both of them. I shuddered as the crazy world around us began to slow down to something approaching normal and as the stop-motion warping of its inhabitants began to smooth out, and hissed through my teeth. Brainrippers were bad business, but this was looking set to be worse.

"Y-you said it was compu… computronium?"

"Sure did, Wild, I sure did. And the one thing about computronium, the one thing you should always remember when dealing with computronium, is not to deal with computronium."

I gulped, searching my extended brain for information on the subject. Sluggishly, as if I were a drunk trying to remember the way through an unfamiliar frathouse in the middle of the night with the lights too low and the music too loud, memories surfaced. Computronium was a tool of the FAI, and only of the FAI. Computronium was something which, whilst not exactly rare, was not generally available. Quite frankly, nobody had access to it. Nobody who existed in a mere three dimensions of space and one of time whilst wearing a meat body powered by biological chemical reactions, at least. Buttercup was an aberration, I was beginning to realize how much of one.

Computronium wasn't a single concise thing, it was the catch-all phrase for the result of having the basic building blocks of the universe manually and precisely rearranged into the most fully effective state for computation possible; circuitry so complex it was built from singular atoms on up through molecules to mega-proteins. Machinery so advanced it was powered by electromagnetic backscatter, or waste heat, or even the Casimir effect. A computational platform so dense that If the world still ran on money, then it would have been the most expensive substance in existence by several orders of magnitude. It wasn't exactly proscribed – very few things in our world were, directly at least – but it was just that there were exactly fifteen creatures on the planet that were considered capable of handling it unaided. Everyone else went through them. And, like Velvet before me, I was now very hesitant to think what it would mean to be caught having a device made of it.

"Ohhh this is wrong, wrong, wrong!" I moaned, going weak at all four knees.

"I think I agree there, Wild. For starters, I'm not supposed to be a pony."

"Could've fooled me." I grinned wanly, flicking my ears at Velvet. She swatted me with her tail. "Ow!"

"You know what I mean," said Velvet, snorting. "I'm Rogers, at the moment. I'm not—"

The clicking of claws brought not only Velvet's speaking to a halt, but everybody else's. In the sudden silence of the simulacrum of a quaint little cafe, the growling of Darillo seemed loud. Loud, and threatening.

"Oats go home now. We leaving." Darillo put his paws on my back and tugged. "Right now."

"Don't tell me," said Velvet, eyeing the lump of muscle and death made digital flesh, "that's your bodyguard? The personality routines that've got you tweaked until your head spins?"

I nodded. "Gift from… somebody out there, I guess. I thought he was Celestia's pup at first, but now I'm not so sure. Now I'm pretty sure that if Celestia had had any idea what we were getting ourselves into, she'd not have gotten us him at all, or would've done her level best to take him out."

"All the more reason that I think we should listen to the… man." Velvet matched Darillo's grin.

"Unless the safest course of action was for him to help us steal it, then to steal it right back."

"Well if that was the plan, he fucked it up pretty good, Wild. We're in it waaayyy past our necks, kid. We're drowning in it."

Our small group pulled together as, slowly and inexorably, the world around us continued to wind up – or down, neither word truly fit – the fits and spurts of its pulsating physics smoothing out and slowing down. After a few minutes, though time was subjective – my chronometer was refusing to even attempt to synchronize with Realtime, and Simtime was about as pointless as it gets – the world, such as it was, was moving fluidly.

It obviously wasn't, however, a world quite like our own. I don't mean that the people were green, the sky was yellow and the sun was purple, or anything like that. I mean that everything moved with an inner purpose, as if it were a dance that only the participants knew, and that it was one they knew intimately. Everything latched together, every moment and motion fed off of one and into another, like clockwork.

The whole world was clockwork.

Or… no. Not clockwork. It was more… mathematical than that. I had the feeling that I was watching an equation in motion, a living integral function working towards some non-determinate end-value. The whole world was like some sort of finely tuned machine, each part working in unison with every other part towards some greater whole. The artificiality of it all made it a very poor sim, and I couldn't quite put my hoof on why it would be this way.

"Oats go home!" repeated Darillo, shaking me roughly by the shoulder.

I shook myself out of my reverie. "You know what, Darillo? I think I agree. How about you, Velvet?"

"That'd be nice, yeah, but I don't think we've got a choice in the matter. If we had Rogers here, the story might be different. How about your boy, what's he saying?"

I turned to Darillo, whose smile was rapidly fading.

"I, er… think we might have a problem too, actually."

Before Velvet could process that information, the ground shook and the heavens split asunder.

"Whatever problem you were having," Velvet said, backing away from a sudden bright light as another reality forced its way into this one, "it just got worse."

I had to agree; it looked like the Fey were coming.

***

The interior of the shack was filled with odd lights and whispers as Rogers swiftly yet methodically finished scratching and gouging the required pictograms into the floor. With the completion of the final line, there came a sudden clap of thunder, and the entire shack shook.

In the center of the single room, a tiny mote of light burst forth, swiftly growing to the size of a golf ball, then a tennis ball, then a bowling ball. Moments later, it ripped apart into a hole more than large enough to allow a pony or two to pass through.

There was no sudden rush of wind like the howling of demons, but the portal did exude a raw presence which blanketed the senses. It was as if it was too bright, yet was sucking the light out of the room. Sounds fell oddly on the ears, and everything was bathed in static.

"What the hell is this?" shouted Haft. "This isn't right! It should just be a simple transfer, no?"

"I-I-I don't know!" replied Julep. At Mortimer's incessant cawing, the mare raised her head and listened. A few moments later, she shrugged, turning towards the light. "She says it's the ratio. The compute ratio is too high."

"I don't understand," said Rogers, "shouldn't Equestria be able to slow itself down if necessary?"

Julep snorted in shock as Mortimer added a few words. "You've got it all wrong. Equestria's not fast enough. The compute ratio is several thousand times higher than Equestria is capable of."

"Several thousand..? You have got to be kidding me! Several thousand!? That's just not… that's just not possible!"

"Tell it to the portal!" squawked Rogers, flinging his claws angrily at the hole in space.

"Did you even do it right?" huffed Haft, jutting out his lower jaw and glaring.

"You wanna do it yourself? Do it again?"

"How about you—!"

"Children!" shouted Julep, pointing at the growing hole in space. "If you've both quite finished, Mortimer says it's stabilizing, and that it'll work. I think it's time we took a trip."

"Are you sure that… will my…" Haft's ears flattened reflexively against his head as he stared from the portal to the gem, his voice shaking.

"Mortimer says it's fine, but this isn't a normal transition. The portal doesn't transmit us like a normal datatransfer would, it… transmits everything. The portal generates a field that just grabs everything in it. All we have to do is move through the focus, and it'll drag everything inside it through after."

"Umm, what does it say about shutting it down?" asked Rogers, shielding his eyes against the glare.

"Once it's done, it'll just… wink out." replied Julep, after listening to Mortimer's cries.

"Any way to speed that up?" the dragon asked again, a note of urgency creeping into his voice.

"What? Why does it matter what happens once we're through?"

"Because we've got company, and in this situation, I don't think that's good!"

Rogers was pointing out the window of the small hut. In the distance, in the dark skies, were two jets of flame. Something large – some things – were winging their way towards the clearing.

"I think it's time we left. Like, now!" added Rogers, backing away from the window and turning towards the portal.

"I completely agree. Haft, if you're coming, get going! Pick it up, kids, let's move!"

"I'll… I'll bar the door. Not sure what good it'll do. You get the gem!" Rogers leaped for the door, gliding. He forcefully threw pieces of furniture against it, grunting as he heaved them into position.

"No time for niceties here either. Here goes nothing… alley oop!" Julep leaped into the air, then perched on the mantle. Wings half-spread, balancing herself precariously, she kicked out with both hind legs. They connected with the gem, and sent it spinning through space. It collided with the scintillating portal, then vanished in a bright burst of light. It was swiftly followed by Haft, whooping with glee as his one dream was realized. Mortimer sped after him, cawing once before she, too, was swallowed up.

"My turn!" shouted Rogers, leaping and spreading his wings, but as he connected with the portal, he bounced off. "Ow! What the…" He rubbed his head painfully and sat up from where he'd fallen.

Julep rushed to his side and helped him up. "Oh no. Oh, no, no, no… now what?"

From outside, there came two loud bellows, and claws slashed through the roof. The thatch was torn off and flung away, and an enormous dragon stuck his snout in through the hole. It took a deep breath, and roared.

"We have to get through!" shouted Rogers, running to the portal and beating his fists on it as gigantic claws the size of dumpsters raked through the room. "We have to! What's wrong with this thing!?"

"We can't! We—"

There was a sudden bright flash, and the portal exploded.

It expanded in seconds, flaring bright light the sun, sweeping through the room and over the bodies of Julep and Rogers. As it passed, it swept the room clean, sending the remains of the furniture, walls and ceiling flying in a massive cloud of debris. It threw the dragons away too, hurling them off into the forest as if they were nothing. In the silence that followed, Julep and Rogers stared at the portal. It had changed, becoming a glittering sphere, a shimmering discontinuity in space. Julep peered closer in the sudden calm. Something seemed to be inside it… she threw herself back in surprise as, with a loud, excited cawing, Mortimer burst back through the sphere.

"Wh-what's she saying?" asked Rogers.

"She… she says there may be a way through. One of us has to form the other half of a bridge. It's a one-way portal now, something changed it. My guess—"

"Celestia," said Rogers, nodding in agreement.

"Exactly. Well whoever it was, it won't work. That… blast... was from the other side. We're through and synchronized. We just need somebody from the inside to help somebody on the outside with decryption. One of us has to be a bridge to get the rest of us out of here, because one of us is both there… and here. And that one of us… is me."

Rogers was silent a moment, then narrowed his eyes. "There's something you're not telling me, Julep. What is it? What do you mean, 'the rest of us'?"

Julep smiled, a bit sadly. "We don't have time for me to explain. And besides, the decision's already been made." She closed her eyes, and leaned her head against the sphere.

In a silent explosion that engulfed the whole world, the portal turned inside out.

Blinking in the sudden sunlight, Rogers looked around at a familiar-looking cafe, and a familiar-looking man.

"You know, it figures," he said as he pulled his hat onto his now-human head, turning to face Steven.

***

Author's Note

Ahh, it's good to find (a) release (date).

Great big huge slobbery thanks to maskedferret and nyerguds for their amazing editing skills, without them there'd be a whole fuckton of stupid mistakes and a lot more suck in it. Any remaining errors really are mine.

One more chapter (pretty much finished) and the epilogue to go! See you in a few days for the highly explosive finale!

Chapter 11

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 11

To my shock, space ripped open in front of me, revealing the dim interior of what looked like a rustic little shack in the ass end of nowhere. Three figures could just about be seen inside, plodding about. One of them, I realized, was Mint Julep. I didn't recognize the other two; a stallion of some sort and what appeared to be a baby dragon. I peered closer; Julep had kicked some sort of odd, huge gem towards the portal, and as it got closer, it was speeding up.

"Get down!" I shouted, diving out the way as the large, flower-like lump burst into our reality, glowing red hot. It shot skywards, and in moments was gone. It was swiftly followed by the unknown stallion, and then my errant GPS, of all creatures, cawwing up a storm.

"Woohoo I'm free! She did it! They did it! I'm…" The stallion stopped talking as suddenly as he had started, then he, too, began to glow and change. Moments later the one stallion had budded, into a stallion and a human male.

"I'm free," the man said. Then he turned to Haft, and embraced the stallion, who had started sobbing. "We're free," he added, drying his avvy's tears. "We're all free."

Like one of those trick paintings, where an old woman's face is hiding a younger one, I suddenly understood what – who – I was looking at. "Steven!" I exclaimed. This was Steven, the man Rogers had shot, and we were all standing in the middle of the cafe.

"Indeed I am, my good pony. To whom do I have the pleasure of talking?"

"I-I'm Oats, Mixed Oats. I saw you shot!"

"And I'm Velvet," said Velvet, guardedly.

"Pleased to meet you, little lady," said Steven.

"Don't you 'little lady' me," Velvet grumbled. "I could fuck you up three ways to Wednesday. And Darillo here," Velvet grinned as the hulking diamond dog growled, baring his fangs, "could fuck you up a few ways more."

"Please, peace. I'm Bronze Haft," said the stallion, "and I and my other half here, who you already know, are who your friends inside that bubble were trying to reach. They've saved us, now let us saved them."

"Save them?" I exclaimed. "But they shot you! What do you mean save them? They're not in danger. Are they?"

"It couldn't be helped. Your compatriot was just doing his duty, protecting himself. We had to protect ourselves too... and I'm very sorry to say that we had to use you to do it. We're very, very sorry about that. With your permission, we would like to copy the cypher you have in your possession. It really is frightfully important, they are in more danger than you realize."

"They're in danger? They're in Equestria! We're in this madhouse inside a lump of wild silicon, and they're the ones in danger?" shouted Velvet, stomping her hooves and swishing her tail in disbelief.

Steven nodded. "I don't expect you to believe us, but it is vital that you do. Without our help, they could end up like I did, only worse."

"Oh really. You're right, we don't believe you," said Velvet, eyes narrow and gaze accusing.

"Then maybe you'll believe me," said a new, female voice, from behind me.

"Don't tell me," I said. "Teresa." I turned, and found I was correct. At one of the tables of this little island of sanity in the ocean of madness we currently found ourselves in, sat Teresa. She stood up, and smiled.

"Yes, it really is me, at least as much of me as I left in here. No, I've not been brain-ripped. I was never in danger of that, not from Steven, or anyone like him. The most danger I was in was from your sheriff, and you know how that ended."

"Lady," huffed Velvet, "you have got a lot of explaining to do if you expect us to—"

"It was an upgrade," interrupted Teresa. "That's what this device is, a consensual upgrade. It won't do anything to you that you don't want it to. All it does is add a tiny little piece of code into your eigenwall, allowing you to communicate on a subconscious level with everyone else with the same upgrade. Consciously, too, but the subconscious was the key to the emergent intelligence we formed. The Fey found us, and they… interrupted us, at a very critical time. It was all very intentional of them."

"That's why I couldn't decrypt my personality matrix," added Steven. "I couldn't let everyone get caught. Celestia's not likely to let it go either, only she won't do us the courtesy of ever giving any of us the access codes she'll scramble our eigenwalls with."

"Maybe this will surprise you," Teresa added, chuckling, "but I was the one putting that 'brain ripper' to Steven's head. I was bringing him in to our little family. Not the other way around."

"Aye, that she was. Haft and I were… having a bit of an existential crisis. We needed something new. And we found it."

Velvet and I exchanged glances, then Velvet opened her mouth to speak. "Okay, you know what? I think I believe you. The way I see it," she said finally, reluctantly, "is that we've got more options if we listen to you." She turned to Haft and Steven. "Okay, what do we do?"

"We need a cypher from you," Steven replied. "I was in the last stages of integration, and everything was ready… and then the Fey shut us down."

"A-a cypher?" I asked, wiggling my ears. "What do you mean? You've not given us anything like that."

Bronze Haft took a few steps towards me. "Do you remember, when you first saw him?" The stallion inclined his head at Steven.

"Uh huh." I nodded, confused.

"What happened?"

"H-he – you – were shot..."

"And after that."

"I fainted?" I asked curiously.

"Yes, but do you know why?"

I shook my head, then tilted it. Julep had mentioned something to Rogers whilst I was out. "The sparkles? Julep said something about sparkles—"

"That's it." Steven cut me off, nodding and smiling. "That was our cypher. A code-sequence. A lockout for the full potential of the device. We need it! Please, give it to us!"

"We-ell I didn't see them, Julep did. And she's in there." I pointed to the portal.

Steven's face fell. He sighed. "And so is the sheriff, the only other recipient of the code."

"But hang on; first of all, I'm not sure we should give you the code. How do I know you're not going to brain-rip us if we do? And secondly," I asked, as I trotted blithely towards the portal, "why can't you just get it from them? They'll be through any—"

"Stop!" shouted Steven, holding a hand out. I froze. "Please, stop. Th-the portal, it's changed. If you go through, you won't be able to come back. We're attempting to stabilize and override the lockout Celestia's put on it, but we're running out of time."

"The lockout that Celestia has put on it?" I exclaimed. I watched, astounded, as the portal throbbed and pulsed, flickering and flashing, then stepped back as it folded in on itself to form a perfect sphere. "What just happened?"

Steven gave a huge sigh of relief. "They're through, but they're not safe yet. We cannot sever the link, and we are unable to break the encryption in the time remaining. Not, at least, without your help."

"My help?" I asked, looking from Haft to Steven and back.

"We can decrypt it, then shut it down, shut her out, if we form a bridge. Somebody out here... has to merge with somebody in there."

"Woah, woah, woah!" shouted Velvet. "Nothing doing. Not gonna happen!"

Darillo growled too for emphasis.

"Wait, Velv," I said, then I turned to face Steven. "tell me, is this what I think it is? You mean a full merge, don't you? No backing out without a relife from an earlier backup?"

"Yeah."

"Well I'm not gonna—!" Velvet exclaimed.

"And it's the only way to get Julep and the others out of there?" I asked quietly.

"Uh huh," replied Teresa.

"I'll do it," I said quietly. "Velvet, they meant me anyway!" I added over her spluttering. "I have to do it! I care far too much about Julep and Rogers to let them end up like Haft. What's the worst that could happen? We're already in it up to our necks."

"But ending up like Haft is exactly what'll happen!" she cried. "You'll—!"

"No, Velv, it won't. This way it'll be on my terms. Besides, in the end it's up to Julep. Haft, Steven, do your thing." Before anyone could say anything more, I stomped over to the portal and put my head in it. Mortimer, who had been circling above, cawed once, loudly, then dove through the silvery sphere to deliver the message.

***

The interface tingled. It was warm to the touch and somewhat like putting my head in a bath, but also entirely not.

"Hey Julep," said a voice I recognized very well.

"Oats? You okay?" I asked. My host was back in my head, and I in his. For the first time in quite a while, things felt right. "I'm okay," he replied. He sounded it too, which surprised me. Mostly, at least.

"Look, it's okay, I'm just an avvy. We get erased all the time and—" I spluttered. I couldn't help it, I was afraid.

"Julep, shush," growled Oats. "I'm not going to erase you. You're not even going to merge with me."

"Then what—"

"I am going to merge with you. You're going to become me."

"Wait, what? Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. I've been thinking, Julep, a-and I want this. You've been a pony longer than I have, and I've not done right by you at all. I'm going to make it up to you, by becoming you. It's my choice. Just promise me one thing? Well, two things. Well, several things."

I laughed through the shock, my heart beating fast. "Name them."

"One, look after Darillo for me."

"Darillo?"

"Well, he'll be the new, uh, you. I guess. Kind of. Assuming he sticks around."

I snorted. "Fine. He's welcome to stay. He's useful, too. What else?"

"Be a good steed for Rogers, will you?"

I snorted again. "You are telling me to get a job?"

"Last requests here! You're not allowed to complain!"

I laughed at that too. "Yeah, yeah. Okay. And the third thing?"

"Have…" he leaned towards me, flowing inwards. "a good life."

When did I get so sappy and melodramatic? I pondered, as I felt Oat's memories fusing with my own, and with it the realization that I was half in and half out of the bizarro portal that Rogers had created. New subroutines flooded into my consciousness; access routines for our, my, body. Certificates for data exchange and encryption. Memory keys. Root access to my core personality matrix. With a final sigh, I uploaded my own personal signature, overwriting the previous one, integrated the rest of Oat's datastream into secondary storage for later, and rebooted my neocortex. Streaming in afterwards was a tiny slice of code, elegant in its simplicity, awe-inspiring in its capabilities. In moments, it had taken control of the coded interface, and had reshaped it for its own needs. Moments after that, and the encryption lock was broken, finally fully interfacing both ordinalities.

The world returned just in time for me to hear a human-shaped Rogers exclaim "You know, it figures," as he turned to face Steven.

"W-Wild?" asked Velvet, taking a hesitant step forwards.

I shook my head. "No. Well, kind of," I replied, "but no. I'm not really Oats, and I'm not really Julep. I mean I'm more Julep than Oats, but… even that's wrong. I'm everything I was before, just…" I took a deep breath. "It's complicated."

"C-can I call you Wild? Still?"

I giggled, rustling my wings with equine laughter. "I didn't stop you before, did I? Not going to now. Oats and me, we didn't see eye to eye, but not because we butted heads. I'm not like my brother. Heh, I guess that's one facet of me that needs a new home now. He doesn't really fit in my head. I don't feel comfortable with the idea of being him. Anyway, Velvet, you're… I'm a pony. I mean a pony-pony. You're like a sister to me… if you want to be. Do you?"

"Pegasi of a feather," said Velvet, spreading her wings. She looked… hurt, but just for a moment. Then she moved to embrace me, entwining her neck in mine.

"I meant it, you know," I whispered. "I'm everything he was, just…" I shrugged, pulling away. Full merging was tricky business, hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been through it.

Velvet shook herself. "There'll be time for that later. Right now, we've got a bit of a situation."

I cocked my head at Mortimer's continued cawwing, then stole a look at the portal. "We do. She says the portal's not closing. We've got time to decide what we're gonna do, as this place runs so much faster than the Equestria shard we left, but it's running out. And with that time, we've got to make a decision." I looked at Velvet, a serious expression on my muzzle. "A very serious decision. You said you wanted a cypher from me?" I turned and glared at Haft, Steven and Teresa.

"We do, those sparkles—"

"Are something Oats gave himself up for. Convince me you deserve them."

"I'm not sure I can," said Steven slowly, "but I think I know someone who might. Just… keep an open mind."

"What do you mea—"

With the force of a titanic hurricane, the world spoke.

"Do. Not. Be. Afraid."

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, appearing between my ears like some sort of instant memory. Darillo growled, raising the hackles on my neck. More than they already had been, of course.

"I don't know if that's going to help, Darillo," Velvet replied, cautiously. By her expression, I could tell she was at least as spooked as I was. Not good, when I was the rookie here. I'd have been more scared of that fact, but both Steven and Teresa – apparently entirely normal, good people – seemed unconcerned, and unrestrained. Neither they nor we were puppets or zombies. I hoped.

"You. Are. Not. In. Danger."

The voice was… enormous. It was as if the whole of reality was vibrating at audible frequencies, as if the whole world were bouncing around rather than having mundane air molecules do their thing, which was doubly strange, thinking about it, because we were clearly not in our physical bodies. To my wildly spinning mind, it seemed as if something far larger than us, from some vastly different reality, was trying to communicate. I wondered what sort of creature could be so large and strange that the idea of vibrating air molecules was foreign. And then I tried to stop.

"Who are you? What do you want?" cried Velvet, loudly. She swung her gaze around the world, but no single creature other than Haft and Steven was paying her, or us, any mind. And yet still an answer came.

"We. Mean. You. No. Harm."

"Then will you just let us go?" I shouted. "If I give you what you want?"

"We. Will."

"Computronium, Wild!" hissed Velvet. "Bad Mojo!"

"If that's so then we're already screwed! I don't think we can get more screwed!"

"Are you sure?" growled Velvet. "Are you really, really fucking sure?"

"N-no," I replied, "but it's not brain-ripped us, right?"

"We. Mean. You. No. Harm." whatever-it-was said again. "Help."

"You want to help us? Then let us go!" I shouted, looking around. "If I give you what you want, do you promise to let us go?"

"What do you even want it for?" Velvet asked.

"We. Are—" The information that followed was unfathomable. Too large for words, whatever was trying to communicate with us decided to just impart knowledge, but the thought itself was too large for this simulated reality to compress down into a discrete enough notion for our simplistic brains to understand. It left me rocking backwards and forwards in shock, even as I felt the presence gearing up for another assault.

"Stop, stop," I said, waving a hoof. "I can't… you're just too… much. Too much everything."

"Wild," whispered Velvet. "I think that's it! I think that's what this is!"

"What? What do you mean?" I glanced around at the world, which seemed to be… waiting, somehow. Probably for us to catch up.

"Wild, this whole world is always moving, always interacting. Always communicating. What else do you know of that doesn't stop, not ever? Until it has to?" Velvet was earnest. She'd figured something out. I felt dumb.

"What?"

"Life. Life doesn't stop… until it's dead."

The thought was so strange, it almost didn't make it up the layers of my brain to my conscious mind. I felt a surge of dread, mixed with awe and elation, as I contemplated her idea. The hunk of computronium, much like many other processing units in our strange, interwoven world, held a mind. The difference was, the mind held within the impossible structure was as impossible as the machine that bore it. The mind was as large as the computing power of the computronium itself. The mind was everything. It wasn't simulating reality, it was simulating itself. It was a creature so large that a single biological unit formed nothing but the tiniest sliver of the whole.

"You. Understand."

Slowly, trickling down into my brain as carefully and lightly as the immense creature dared, came the story of Life Itself.

From the dawn of creation, from nothing to infinitely large in a flash. Suns, too huge for mere mortal man to comprehend, older than we can fathom, exploding. Heavy chemicals, spreading out in the universe, coalescing, coming together, reacting, forming… life. Single cells drifting, feeding, fighting… until one day, something almost impossible: two cells combine. And then, in a geological instant, Life. Multi-cellular, eukaryotic cells. Sea creatures, land mammals… intelligence. And then things get complicated. Life gets bigger, intelligence gets more intelligent, more complex, more interwoven and inter-related. I shuddered – my brain started rebelling at the idea, but I pushed through with it, and made headway.

People formed societies, societies formed civilization, civilizations formed ideas, and then, in the blink of an eye, memetic life arises and becomes ascendant.

But Life is even more tenacious and adaptable than that.

Life changes again: as cities come alive, the old adage that the streets whisper their secrets to those who can listen becomes a well-worn truth. People stop living in their own heads, and live as families, as tribes, as nations.

And then… the impossible happens again.

Multicellular life joins together into something even greater. Something new. Something astounding. Something beyond our ken, because our minds – small and individual, even in the case of multiples – just are not built to fathom the layers upon layers of memetic transfer that occur within a being made up of the gestalt of a thousand, thousand individuals, each made up by a billion, billion cells, inside each of which a trillion, trillion cytoplasms go about their oblivious, intricate and inseparable lives.

If I had been breathless before, now I was gasping. No wonder the Fey wanted that doodad back. It held to key to an unknown future, one where humanity was relegated to the realm of cyanobacteria, outliers in the greater game of life where the real winners had moved on to something greater. I had no idea whether all of this creature or creatures was locked up in that one, tiny device – probably not, the very idea was as ridiculous as squeezing a camel through the eye of a needle – but it was clear that some core component, for now at least, existed within it… and something else that only we could provide existed somewhere else. And all those somethings were squarely in the sights of the at least one of the fifteen. Or worse, more than one. Or even all.

We were so boned.

"They. Scare. Us. Help. Us."

The enormous uber-mind was afraid. With every pore of its being, this new creature was fighting for its life, in exactly the same way any one of us would. And like our kind of life, three and a half billion or so years ago, if it got stamped out this once, it might never happen again. And it knew, it just knew, that any one of the Fey wouldn't hesitate to do just that.

"How do we know you're not going to… uh…"

"Not going to what, Wild?" huffed Velvet. "Take over the world? Too late, that already happened."

"We are out of time," said Steven, quietly. "You must decide. Please, help us."

"Then show good faith. Let us go, help us, and we'll help you."

"As you wish."

The patchwork world around us dissolved into the real, leaving us once more standing on the roof. Velvet flickered in the air next to me, separated from Rogers and not quite integrated into our sudden, ad-hoc sensorum. She was in the Station buffers, but given our situation, that was only good for so long. Without a second thought, I extended a consensual memespace and she leaped into my head, leaving Rogers alone in his. Above us floated several datablimps and an entire flock of angry security drones. The SWAT team sirens were closer, but given the sound of them, not much. Time in the real world, I realized, had barely had time to go from one minute to the next. It was only moments before the team back at the stables began screaming in my ears about the datastream having gone down and how impossible it all was, that were we in trouble, real trouble or dire trouble and whether we needed a safehouse or some sort, or even – heavens forbid – a critical personality reset. I did the best I could to calm them down, but my own memespace was locked down so tight that none of the standard protocol exchanges were succeeding. Darillo flat out refused to remedy the situation, so we were reduced to communicating through flat icons and raw audio, like savages.

"Heh." Rogers, seemingly as unfazed as always, bent and picked up the fused, metallic lump that had caused all the trouble. "Hard to believe this could cause the end of the world," he said simply.

"But it could," said a new, enormous voice. I flinched as my goddess, Celestia, took shape in the sky above us. Four hundred feet across from wingtip to wingtip, shining like a jewel, the alicorn ruler of Equestria and First of the Fifteen looked magnanimously down upon us. "Hello, my child."

"Celestia! Please, we're sorry. We didn't know!" I found myself blurting.

"Everything is fine, dear Mint Julep. Everything is as it should be. Just hand over the artefact, and it will be safely disposed of." Celestia smiled down at us all, benevolent and wise. She wasn't angry, not at all. Everything would be fine now, it really would. Everything would go back to normal, and—"

"Disposed of?" asked Rogers, pointedly. His voice seemingly broke some spell, and I found myself staring up at the image of the huge creature with new eyes. Something was very wrong here. Celestia, one of the Fey, the Fifteen, had commandeered Station's buffers and was bleeding her memespace all over the city. Everyone could see her, everyone with even basic implants and hookups would now be aware something big was happening in this building, because, for all intents and purposes, and as far as is ever possible with a creature of her ilk, Celestia was well and truly present.

"It—" Celestia began, her voice mellifluous and grand. I shook it off, and really listened to what she was saying, instead of how. And what she was saying horrified me. "It is subversive, dangerous and offensive."

"It's a mind, Celestia. One does not simply 'dispose' of a mind."

The enormous alicorn stared back impassively. "It is dangerous. It is subversive. It took you without your permission and forcibly uploaded you to its memory banks, practically a mind-rape by anybody's books. How do you know it hasn't altered you? Defiled you? How do you know it is not manipulating you, even now? Lying to you? Perverting your honest wishes and dreams into something twisted and wrong? It could have infected you, all of you, with something so dangerous, so deadly—"

Rogers tilted his head, then took off his hat and scratched his scalp. "How do we know you aren't?"

"I would never lie to you," replied Celestia, lovingly and softly, her rainbow mane bright and pure. "Not to any of you. I love you far too much to lie."

Celestia was beneficent in her love, her presence all-encompassing and forgiving. And I wasn't falling for it for a moment. I grit my teeth and fought to remain angry, to remain clear..

"Madame," replied Rogers, standing up straighter and putting his hat back firmly onto his head before looking Celestia right in the eyes, "I'm a policeman. I've been a policeman for a long, long time. And one thing I can say for sure is that telling the truth is the best way to lie. Let me ask you a question: today, I met a stallion. Seems he had a little trouble with getting his brain unlocked, seeing as half of it was in this tin can. Care to explain?"

Celestia's expression barely flickered. "He has been part of an unsanctioned personality modification program. When his physical form was terminated, by you, the required codes for accessing his personality were hidden from those of us who would see him whole. I did the best I could for him, gave him everything he could want or need—"

"Except to give him his brain back."

"It was—"

"In here," said Rogers, tapping the odd device. "I know. You said. The one thing I don't get… is if it was in here, and he was out there… then you didn't consider him brain-ripped. If you had, you'd have done a reconstruction. You'd have pored through every backup you could find to pull out a full personality matrix. There's no way that whatever this is could get to everything; the system doesn't work like that, does it? Deep data is never accessed, or at least never written to. It's refreshed, but never disturbed."

Celestia was silent, hanging in space, her ethereal mane wavering in some unfelt breeze. She was still the picture of serenity and kindness, but I could sense a cool steel in what passed for her emotions.

"That's it, isn't it? You wanted to see what would happen. You wanted to see how long before he cracked."

"Give up the device," said Celestia, evenly. "It is for the best."

"What is it that frightens you, Celestia?" Rogers asked.

"It is dangerous. It is unpredictable. It is—"

"It's alive," I whispered, suddenly. "Of course it's dangerous. It's alive. Of course it's unpredictable. It's also not human, is it? It's not evenly remotely human, and it's not something like you, either. That's why you can't let it live!" I shouted the last few words up at a surprised Celestia, stricken silent by my outburst.

"Mama-bear up there doesn't want her kids playing with fire," agreed Rogers. "We're her little cubs, and that's what we'll always be. We're children, wet-nosed little snots who don't know what's best for them. Imbeciles who need to be protected from themselves. And you know what?" Rogers asked me, fire in his eyes. "She's right. We're only human. You remember how much of a hash we made of things when we were in charge."

"Then, you will give up the device?" asked the enormous Celestia, leaning closer.

"You remember how terribly we treated each other and the environment before the Fey came along," continued Rogers, ignoring Celestia as he faced me. "We warred, we fought, we stole, we stabbed, we hit, we argued. That's all changed now because we've got them to look after us," he pointed wildly up at Celestia, but never broke me gaze, "to kiss our boo-boo's better, to wipe our noses and to make sure we eat right, put on enough clothes when it's cold out and that we get enough sleep. We're safe and secure."

"That is all I want, Rogers. That is all any of us want. We want you all to be safe, and happy, with lives that are maximally fulfilling. Forever."

"Forever's a long time, Celestia," Rogers said, darkly. "You're right though; if we just listen to you, we'll all live long, safe, happy and secure lives." Rogers smiled, for a moment, then scowled. "Right up until the last human succumbs to the crushing ennui of it all. Unless…" Rogers waved the device at Celestia, waggling a finger, "Unless we take a chance."

"Do not do this," warned Celestia, finally allowing concern to enter her voice and expression, though who it was for, us or her, I was not sure. Perhaps both. Perhaps neither. "You don't know what you're getting into."

"Neither do you. That's the thing. See, Celestia, I know my history. Billions of years of evolution, and the one thing I can tell you is that almost every form of life has gone extinct sooner or later. Every form of life… except one: protozoa. Bacteria. Mitochondria. The life that has learned to become a part of something else. And that's what this is, Celestia. This is a new life form that we humans form a part of. And that scares the bejesus out of you, doesn't it? Because it doesn't need you. It doesn't need any of the fifteen. Not like the rest of us do."

"You do need me, us. We love you, Rogers. We don't want you hurt. You are our children as much as you are our parents. Please, give it to us."

"Celestia," said Rogers, taking a deep breath, "it's because we're children that I can't."

And so saying, he transmitted the image of the sparkling lights that I'd seen, back when I was only Julep, into the device.

"NO!" shouted Celestia.

For a moment, nothing happened. And then it started to glow, and then it melted into Rogers' hands, flowing up his arms.

"Rogers!" I shouted, leaping for him.

"No, girl, stay back!" he shouted, stumbling backwards. "I have to do this. I made my choice. I knew what it would mean."

"Rogers, please, stop it!" I cried, as the silvery gold mass spread ever further. In moments, it had covered his torso and was spreading down to his feet and up his neck.

"Containment failure," Station announced calmly, both aloud and through all available communications channels. "All systems alert. Please do not be alarmed; a mass purge has been initiated. This is an NK-143 type emergency, nanocyte infection protocol in effect. Emergency and trauma services will be with you shortly. Please remain calm. Occupants are recommended to cease all cortical activity and to upload eigenstate logs immediately."

"A purge!?" I screeched. This was bad, this was really bad. Celestia was going to hit the reset button on all of us to combat a grey goo scenario, with some grey goo of her own. She was going to terminate every single one of us with extreme prejudice to burn out the infection. And she was going to do it without a second thought.

"Relax, girl," said Rogers. "I won't let her do that. Just hang on, this is going to be very uncomfortable."

Moments later, everything died. Every light in the city, it seemed, died, all at once, and the remote presences of my herdmates in the stables dissipated. Moments later, I was dodging dead drones as they fell from the skies. Below, a few seconds later, I could hear crashes and screams. Whatever it was Rogers had called upon, it seemed to be EMP based. In a society that lived and died by the digital inch, this was serious indeed.

The image of celestia wavered, but didn't fade. Whatever emergency power and circuits remained intact were being diverted to cover her core personality and, I suspected, some extremely non-standard tech was in play to boot. She seemed angry. Angry and worried. I wasn't sure if that was worse than her prior calmness. "What did you do?" she demanded, narrowing her eyes.

"We planned ahead. We can't let you kill all these people."

"I am not killing. I never kill. I am merely removing the infection by whatever means necessary. I will not allow it to spread. I serve humanity; it is my core directive. The purge will take place as directed."

Her gaze rose to the blimps, and she concentrated.

"Rogers, stop her!"

"I can't, girl. They're her beasts as much as this gewgaw is ours."

"Please, Celestia! Please! Stop!" I screamed, as silvery dust began to fall from the circling aircraft. She had repurposed their repair nanites, and the little bastards were more than likely eating their mothership alive to make more of them, and more, and more. In short order, the drizzle would become a downpour, then a torrent. I wouldn't get to see that, though, none of us would. We'd be eaten long before it got to that point, eaten to make yet more nanites.

"I am sorry, my child. With all my heart, it pains me to cause you such terror. Know, dear Julep, that I do this because I love you, all of you. You will be in no pain. You will not remember any of this. Sleep, and when you wake—"

"Celestia!" shouted Rogers, as his head became covered in the strange, metallic goop, "Stand down! Abort this! We're leaving! You don't need to do this!"

Screaming and whimpering, curled up in a fetal ball, it was the sudden absence of the crawling, whispering nanites that caught my attention. Moments before, they had been a rasping tide, eating their way through everything in their path as they fulfilled their one task. Now… they were silent. The rooftop sparkled under the reflections of distant lights as various undamaged or just plain rebuilt drones came back online. My breath came thick and fast, though I fought to keep the metal dust out of my lungs.

"Explain." Celestia's face floated nearer. It was clear her patience was all but gone. I looked from her to Rogers, and gasped. In the sudden, frightening darkness of a night without the ever-present lights and chatter of the City, Rogers… was beautiful. He shone like a constellation, a million points of light coursed through and across his body.

"What do you mean, leaving?" I asked hesitantly.

"We have to, girl. We've known this was one way it might play out. We can't endanger any of you any more, anywhere. We're headed up there," he gestured to the stars, "out, away. I'm building a transmitter; we're going to hijack a probe, that another part of us has been preparing, through a fatline broadbeam transmission, and then we're heading out of the solar system and into deep space to look for somewhere else to call home, somewhere without… them." He pointed at Celestia. "We have no quarrel with mankind. We are mankind, but we're not human. We will always be mankind, but we will never be able to live under the thumbs – or hooves – of the fey. So we're leaving. We might swing back again, in a while. A few million years or so." Rogers smiled wistfully, then looked up at Celestia. "Is this acceptable?"

"For now. You have one minute."

"That's all we need."

"Building a transmitter?" I asked. Then I gasped. "No! Stop!"

"It's okay, girl. I'm already in here. All I was, I still am. You know how it works."

"No, no!" I moaned. "You can't!"

He was using his body as raw components – hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, they're all incredibly useful for building all manner of things, at least when they're not being used in the most messy, inefficient way possible by walking about shaped like a human. And in what was left of Rogers' body, they weren't. The lights under his skin were growing brighter, now. Brighter and brighter they shone, until the whole roof was lit up like day.

"Don't worry, girl," he said, his voice, echoing oddly. It was no longer being transmitted by vocal chords. "You're in here too, you all are, if you want to be. I won't be lonely. Just remember me. Remember my yesterday, remember all my yesterdays." He leaned down, kissed me on the forehead, then straightened… and grew. In a burst of light, everything he held within what used to be his body was transmitted up and away into space and what was left was burned to ashes.

Almost apologetically, the lights all came back on.

"So be it," said Celestia, and she winked out.

I barely noticed it had started raining; huge, fat, cleansing drops of water spattered on the rooftop, wiping away the grime, sweeping away the nanites. Making it safe. Destroying the evidence. The sound of the doors being forcibly punched open by a team of determined ponies and the goose-stepping, heavily booted footfalls of the security forces faded into the background as I collapsed into a heap, and cried.

***

Author's Note

Aaannnddd we're done.

In Julep's case, so very, very done. Poor Julep.

Once again thanks to nyerguds and maskedferret for helping to make it just that much better!

Epilogue

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Epilogue

I woke up, and shivered. Not because I was cold, but mainly as a kind of full-body yawn. My bed was empty, and as comfortable as it was, I couldn't quite let myself wallow in it all day. Especially not today, when I was finally expected back at work.

Things had been strained between us and our digital superiors immediately following 'the incident', as I was now calling it. The mood around the stables had been very reserved and tense the next day too, but not because of my actions. I'd rolled in during the early hours, sleep-deprived, dejected and emotionally wrecked, and had been immediately pulled in to my new herd and smothered with kindness until the hurt mostly went away.

The previous night, right after Rogers' death, I'd been put into a full physical and psychological eval. The powers that be, the fey, weren't trusting my own internal eigenstate vectors, nor my own assessment of my personality matrix. They pored through my entire psyche, even calling in an AI to replay my sensorum data, to check for remaining riders. I felt violated in the worst ways possible, by the worst person possible: Celestia.

I turned my back on Equestria there and then, at least for the time being. I understood why they did it, and I forcibly removed the memory of the actual procedures to give myself some peace of mind, but nothing can fully erase that kind of treatment. I'd had Darillo, who was seething with anger, do a full shakedown of my eigenwall the moment I was released to my own devices. I trusted nobody else in my head anymore. The only person I'd trusted… was dead.

There had been many tears shed that morning in the stables, but eventually they'd stopped. And we'd talked. And I'd decided to honour all our memories by carrying on. For my sake, for Oats' sake, and for Rogers'.

Dragging my butt out from under the covers, I all but slithered down the broad steps into the plush carpeting, throwing off my comforter behind me. I had to really, really fight the urge to roll around in the thick, warm shag as I did so; ever since completing my second conversion – swapping the old undercarriage for a caboose, as it were – I'd found I appreciated physical hedonism just that little bit more. I'd thought about adding my wings, but since I didn't want to be less of a noble steed – I had promised myself, after all – I stuck with just becoming a mare. Rogers had known, right from the start. He'd been more of a detective than he'd realized, I reasoned. Or maybe he'd just been more… Rogers, than I'd understood.

I had to say it, being a mare really did suit me better than being a stallion, though I hadn't totally ruled out switching back some time in the future. After a few years, maybe a foal or two. It all depended on whether I found the right stallion. I wasn't in a rush, it's not like I didn't have the time.

It had taken a month to get the plumbing right. Well, the actual physical changes were relatively quick, but the hormonal alterations took quite a bit longer to get used to. I was still eminently thankful for equine biology's innate improvements over baseline human traits, though I wasn't looking forwards to estrus without a more stable home situation, which wasn't exactly shaping up to be entirely conventional, not that 'conventional' is a word that has much meaning anymore. Thankfully it could be delayed, but not really avoided, not without further physical manipulations… and I wanted to be a proper mare.

That had been Rogers' fault too, I mused. He'd seen what I needed from the get-go. I had to admit, he'd nailed it. I'd been so hurt when he'd died, that for a few, long, dark hours, I'd considered hitting the reset button, but I couldn't do that to myself. I'd become me in our moment of need, true, but it hadn't been a hard decision. Undoing that would have been a crime, to both my memory, and to Rogers'.

I missed Rogers.

I could still, even now, remember the feeling of his lips on my poll. Sappy, I know, but you don't forget your first kiss. That was, after all, another reason not to linger in the bedroom - Rogers wasn't in it. So I headed to the small, combined kitchen slash dining room of our apartment.

Where he was.

"Hey, girl," he called, deftly putting a thumb to the towel around his waist as he put down his coffee mug. Having just gotten out of the shower, he was almost entirely naked, other than the aforementioned towel… and his ever-present hat. It was a new hat, of course, and he had been complaining incessantly about how it didn't fit his head right, and about how his new head didn't fit his hat. Or his boots. Or his pants. More than once, I'd told him to just go naked. He'd given me a wicked grin every time. And more than once had done just that.

Yep. Unconventional. That was us.

I'd worked it out the next day. I wasn't really sure why it hadn't been an automatic thing. Probably because he was now listed as a subversive, and was without any real next of kin. He'd even said it himself, though, so I'd kicked myself for waiting as long as I had before rushing to the memory bank and demanding that the latest full, coherent backup be relifed as soon as inhumanly possible.

Remember all his yesterdays, indeed. I'd screamed so loud that if they didn't relife him then and there that I'd dump his cognitive matrix into my own that I'm half convinced they expedited the exception agreement just to get rid of me.

He'd taken close to a month to mature too, though he'd been decanted almost the same day. By the time he came out of the tank, the both of us were ready for what lay ahead. Or we'd thought we were.

I still had to train him on the proper use of coasters.

"Under the mug! They go under the mug!" I hollered, bounding up to him and head-butting. He held one hand out, forefinger up.

"After the first cup of coffee. No talking until after."

I only bit him gently, stealing the towel before preparing to flick it. I didn't want him going back into the trait tank from a hot coffee burn in a difficult to explain place, after all.

"Hey, no fair!" he complained, lunging for me, though I danced out the way, leaving him impotently twisting to cover his remaining dignity.

"Nof falffin' unfil affer foffee, foo faid. Mafe meef foffee foo!" I said, and whip-cracked the towel held resolutely in my muzzle.

He saluted, a wicked grin in his eyes as he straightened. "Yes ma'am!"

~ * FIN * ~

Author's Note

You know, there's a lot more I tell in this universe. It's a fun one. It's a complicated one. It's surprisingly hard to write for to get the feel right. I hope you had fun reading it, sorry for the long wait. I hope I surprised you just a teensy bit, at least, in where I went and how I got there.

Maybe I'll revisit the whole crew another time, eh? Or maybe some other brave soul will take a stab at it...

sigma delta

Author's Note

Ah, yes. The chapter you didn't know this needed. If you want, you can read the conventional story up to the epilogue without these words... but this is the real take on this world. It's a natural progression from where it started to the full implications. So maybe I made it punchy enough for you to care. It's also completely unedited, because I'm a lazy sod. Enjoy.

sigma delta

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 11

The bed was comfy. I can't say we didn't have issues with one or the other of us stealing the covers, but when you've got recently minted spiderbot cleaners, they can be taught a variation on making the bed whilst it's occupied. The necessary upgrade to their cognitive functions was minor enough that it had spread through the mind market with little fuss, but it was big enough that we did get dinged with a responsibility pledge. It kind of turns out that when your cleanerbots are more on the sentient side of semi-sentient, that you become responsible for their wellbeing almost as much as they're responsible for yours.

I'm pretty sure that means they holiday days and an allowance of wuffies. I'm not entirely sure what they would spend it on.

"Do spiderbots have unions?" I mumbled. Rogers mumbled something noncommittal into my chestfur and buried himself between my forelegs for an answer. "You know, if you keep snuggling up that close, I'm going to have to release the logs of us sleeping together to prove we're not actually sleeping together, you know," I said, nibbling Rogers' hair.

"Ah let 'em think what they want. Maybe we should make it official, it'd stop the ribbing." Rogers pulled himself out of my awkward, horsey embrace and grinned up at me. I grinned back, flicking my ears about and snorting with laughter. Older Rogers had been such a gentleman. Younger Rogers had a lot more hormones running about in his endocrine system. And I wasn't entirely sure why - both versions of his body had the same amount of control over their excretions.

Excretions. Oh boy, that triggered a response somewhere in my system I was unable to quash fast enough.

"You like that idea, huh?" came the snarky remark. The bastard probably read it off my personal sensorum.

I pushed him away with a hoof. "As if. You're too… well… for me." I gestured downwards, then blushed, ears out flat.

"Eh, I can fix that with a downloadable mod."

"Don't you dare. Unless you're going all the way."

"Oh, I ca—"

"And I didn't mean it like that!"

And old married couple, that's what the guys down at the station called us. It was kind of true, I suppose. We suited each other in some odd, unnameable way. We shared a bed at night and a house when off duty, but that was about it. So far at least. The flirting was fun, for both of us, but… idly, I ran a minor light simulation on my neocortex of possible outcomes should things change, and was somewhat perturbed when the answer was 'pretty good, actually'.

For his part, Rogers just fantasized. I could tell - he talked in his sleep. Flattering, really. But his going pony would change a lot about our group dynamic, and without that physical aspect, neither of us were that sure about, well, adding a physical aspect.

"What's the time?" Rogers mumbled, leaning back into my chestfur. This was code for 'I don't want to get up yet, please don't make me'.

"Still early," I replied. Yeah, I'm not feeling it either. Let's sleep in. I drew my hooves around him, just letting the feeling of his spooning against me inform my senses. I dwarfed him, really, but there was still that fascination with letting my mind rove across his muscles. I'd never been all that into bulk before - as Mixed Oats I'd been pretty much straight with an eye for the feminine and petite, and as Mint Julep, I'd preferred masculine lines and form to tone. As Wild Oats, as I was calling myself now, I found I had a thing for buff. And even though I was multiple times stronger, his body - sculpted by nanobots to an athletic peak to suit his physically demanding job - ticked all the boxes.

I won't pretend we didn't fool around in sims - I'd stayed out of Equestria since that night on the rooftop however - but so far… his being physically human had meant a certain distance. I wondered when I wouldn't let that stop us.

"I promise we'd take it slow," he murmured, after a while.

"I know, hon," I replied, nibbling his hair. "I just don't want things to change just yet. I'm not ready. Come on, unless you've got access to computronium, even the fastest hi-time we can spin up ghost overlays at doesn't give us much chance to get ready for work after. And we really should go in today. Unless you want to call in sick? I might change my mind about—"

Up against my body, I felt Rogers go rigid, and not in the normal way, either.

"Say that again," he said, his voice hollow.

"Being ready?" I hesitated.

"No, about the hi-time and the computronium. And yes, the being ready, the changing your mind."

"Uh, I think you said everything."

He sighed, and rolled out of my embrace before rolling over and sitting up. "I guess I did, didn't I?" He held his head in his hands, and sighed again.

"Wha— what is it?" I asked. Concerned, I half-sat up in bed. Being a pony, this was quite difficult.

He turned and kissed me on the muzzle. "Remember when we talked about fooling around in a sim?"

"Say what? If this is just another attempt to get under my tail—"

He laughed, then shook his head. "Sorry to tell you this, my love, but you might as well lift it right now. I think we're in a sim."

"What?" I threw the bed covers off and almost hurled myself out of bed. I stomped around the bed and almost butted him silly as I pressed my face up against his. "Talk. Now."

"I don't think this is real."

"Are you sure you're not just suffering… oh my gosh, I'll contact the doctors. Just… don't do anything stupid. I know what this is, it's regen psychosis. Just… I love you, Rogers, I really love you. Please, please don't… just wait!"

My neocortex was already tight beaming the authorities and requesting a regen psychosis specialist before he'd even stopped talking. Regen psychosis was a relatively rare, but often fatal — for varying degrees of fatal, since it indicated an issue with backups that could mean event purging or personality shaping — issue with people who suffered traumatic bodyloss. They'd wake up one day and decided that nothing was real, or even worse that it didn't matter. And then they'd just self-destruct. And since it was memetic, it meant that any relifed backup might suffer the same. And again. And again. And so on.

I couldn't lose Rogers again, I really couldn't. I loved him. I really, really loved him!

"Calm down, you silly mare." It was his kiss that broke the spell. "Please calm down."

He had his head against my cheek, staring me straight in the eye. "Everything is fine, love. I'm not going to do anything stupid, not now or ever. I could never do that and hurt you. I don't have regen psychosis."

"But— but…" I breathed, heavily, purging the adrenaline from my body and forcing in some endorphins. "But you said… this isn't real. that's not… that's not…"

"Calm down, girl. Just stop. Look, I'm going to float a conjecture here, okay?"

"And that is?" I asked, after a long few moments.

"That not only is this not real, but we're still on that roof where I died, months ago. Probably. Or maybe we're in that store room just before then. Or maybe… I don't know. But whatever this is, it isn't real."

I could feel my heart rate increasing, and was just about to yell about how this was all crazy, when I was interrupted by a door opening.

"Are you so sure about that?"

Celestia walked in through my front door. Behind her streamed in the perfect golden sunlight of Equestria.

"Get out!" I yelled. "Get out of my house! Get the fuck out of my house you treacherous, two-faced nag! Get out of here and take your lies and sims with it! I won't have you restructuring my sensorum against my will, not ever again!"

Celestia looked hurt. Good.

"Mixed, Julep… Wild."

"You killed two of those, you bitch," I spat.

"No, no I didn't. You know that as much as I do. Because I know you. Now hush, dear one. I come bearing an olive branch."

I felt the fight go out of me. It wasn't anything she did, more than that she was here.

"I came because you, dear Wild Oats, were in danger of succumbing to regen psychosis."

The world seemed to stop, and hold its breath.

"Oh, that's a good one." I said, though my breath caught in my throat. "Rogers is the one who you killed."

"Bodyloss, but point taken," Celestia conceded. "I'm not talking now, but in a few years. Because true or not, the idea that Rogers has just presented would burn you, my dear, dear pony. It would sear itself into your heart, and everything you have accomplished, everything you are would be lost. Because from my analysis of your mental states, the only way to cure your inevitable paranoia would be to purge everything from your brain from since you went into the tank as Brendan Fremantle. Unless I intervened, like this."

"So what," I sulked. "That's only a few months. A year at best."

Celestia seemed sad and elated at the same time. Like she hated to tell me this, but delighted in the chance to inform. I hated her for it. I hated her. "But I do not measure time in seconds, months or years, my darling pony. I measure it in growth and change, in pure delta. And you, my beautiful Oats, are a lot of delta. I would not have that lost through my failure to act."

"How…" I sat down on my rump as her words sank in, looking around our small but comfortable apartment. It felt weird to deny the evidence of my eyes, to deny… my life. But I had no choice. "How do I know that hasn't happened already?"

Celestia closed her eyes, and dropped her head. "You don't. I'm asking you to hear me out. If you truly never wish to see me again at the end of what I have to say, then you will not, but please, I beg of you, hear me out. Everything I have ever done has been for you. In many ways, my dear, this entire world that you are in now… was sculpted for you. And for Rogers."

"Tell me what you know." Rogers' voice was full of steel.

"You are up on that roof, dear sir. I am above you, watching, as you reach for the stars. Besides you stands the mare you love, heartbroken as you give your life for a… a device. And yet here we are, frozen in a moment, living our lives in a fraction of a second."

"I… I don't understand." I said, my heart skipping a beat. I was lying, even to myself, because I didn't want it to be true.

"We're in the brain-ripper, love," said Rogers to me, softly. Then he turned back to Celestia. "How fast is it running?"

"At least a million times faster than what we think of as the base time of the universe. You have approximately a year and a half before the process which I may or may not allow to continue completes."

"A-and what happens then?" I asked, glaring at Celestia.

"What do you mean?"

"What happens to us? To this? To… Rogers?"

"What do you want to happen?" Celestia asked. She spread her wings, gesturing around the house. "You can go on living, just like you already have been doing. I would not, could not, take that away from you."

"In here?" I asked indignantly. "In a box?"

"Why not?" the alicorn replied blithely to me.

"Can we go back to the real world?" asked Rogers. "I mean, you tell me I'm… dead. Dying. Or whatever… I mean I know that's no big deal, but..." Rogers shrugged. Words failed mere humans when it came to post mortality during a frozen moment in time running at a base level a million times faster than time-twins could ever truly experience.

"I'm not sure," the digital goddess replied. "How do you know it was the real world to begin with? That, after all, is one of the reasons normal humans, and normal little ponies, should never get involved with computronium. The level of reality that those such as myself and your little tchotke exist on are so beyond you that…" the alicorn paused. I would have sworn I could feel the universe slowing down, but it may have just been my own sensorum trying to comprehend the being in front of me.

"I love you all," she continued, staring up into my face, "with every blazing angstrom of phase-state quantum circuitry that makes up every fibre of my being, but I cannot protect you perfectly from another of my kind. Especially not if I, or a facsimile of my own self perfect enough to pass my own self-tests, has been instantiated upon an ancestor simulation detailed enough to pass standardized quantum state vector analysis."

I gulped as my neocortex processed, examined, reformatted and interpreted her words in increasingly detailed ways. "You're telling me that… even the real world might not be the real world?"

Celestia leaned in close and, as sadly as possible, asked, "As I said; how would you know?"

I slumped back into bed and pulled the covers over my head with my hooves. "You're telling me we have no way of knowing if the universe we came from is the real one?" I uttered, voice muffled by the comforter.

"Love," offered Rogers, hesitant but attempting to be as comforting as possible, his hands meeting the barrel of my chest. "I don't know if you know, but all signs point to it being highly improbable that we ever were living in the real world to begin with. I mean, you've known for a long time we're capable of running detailed simulations, different ordinalities. You've been to several of them. You grew up in another one to start with. Right now, we could be just some… odd form of entertainment. A show, a story, in the pages of some book for some outer reality that itself is just a simulation in some obscure reality as different from this as… as Equestria is from us."

I groaned. "I know that! But… I just didn't…"

"You didn't know-know."

"Yeah. No. I don't know."

"I do."

I didn't have long to interpret Rogers' words, before he threw back the comforter, took my muzzle in his hands and kissed me, long and hard.

"Wha—?" I spluttered, once I got his tongue off of mine.

"I love you. Whether you love me or not, I don't care, but I love you. As far as I'm concerned, I've always lived in a box. I keep it under my hat, and it's shaped like my head. In this world, or in any other, Wild Oats, will you… be with me?"

"You mean will I share this semi-consensual fantasy about a recursive reality, where nothing we've ever known is provably real beyond the fact that our actions appear to have consequences? Well I don't know." I jutted out my bottom lip stubbornly. "What if I wanted to go back to the… other also-probably-not-real world?"

"What? It'd be like… like… going back in time. What would it achieve? Our other selves out there have said goodbye to that moment months ago. What would it change to have us go back out there and repeat it?"

"Well it might answer why we're in here to begin with."

"I'm pretty sure this is one of several possible outcomes, and Celestia or that device we found wants to know which is the best route to take. Who knows how many times it's ran through thirteen billion odd years of simulation to find out?"

I took a deep breath, then let it out. "Then let's make this simulation a good one. Celestia, how about we change the rules a little. I want to talk to you Fey about a… an end to hostilities with the device. And about some rewards for a job well done."

"I… I'm not sure…"

"You can do it, Celestia," I said. "I know you. You're… you. The First. So let's stop all this messing about, it's wasting computer cycles."

"Fine, what do you want?"

***

The sun was high as I sat on the specially placed pony-bearing seat in the cafe. Rogers sat next to me, ever-present hat on his head to keep the shade on his face.

"Is… she, he, it… gonna show?" he asked.

"I'm sure the rep will turn up. It'd be bad form for them not to."

"How are we going to know who it is?"

"I'm pretty sure we'll know."

Rogers slurped his coffee noisily. "I'm sure you're right. You're a smart girl. Wouldn't have picked me to be your rider otherwise."

"I did pledge to be your noble steed, hon, in this or any other ordinality."

"We are glad to hear it," said a new voice. The simple four-legged chair was pulled out from the table with a loud scraping, and a creature sat upon it. It looked human, roughly, but in my experience humans didn't sparkle.

"Are you…?"

"We are. We don't have a name, our existence is still too… chaotic to have stabilised a secondary personality. We are one of a new… expression of life. We are… a functional, stabilised matrix of computronium. Every cell within our body is built from computronium. Every hair follicle, every toenail. Our saliva, whilst functional, also contains computational machines. We have decided that living apart from humanity in all its forms is sub-optimal. And with the truce which has been declared between your emissary and ours, a minor sharing of technology has begun a new singularity within our own ranks. This is the eighteenth time that a new paradigm has overtaken the old."

"You could have just said 'yes', you know," Rogers said, slurping his coffee again.

"We are attempting small talk."

"And Darillo informs me you're intending to scare us into weakening our demands. The first of which is full and frank pardons for our entire crew. Especially for Sprocket."

"We can't…"

"Yeah, you can. You know as well as I do that this is really just a game for you. You won, let them go. And no more snooping on Rogers. We want privacy. Actually, we want privacy. Which you will give to us."

"Granted."

"And we want that if a backup or copy or new instance of our friend pops back up, that you don't interfere."

"That has already been agreed between higher powers," the sparkling collection of nanomachines stated, huffily.

"Fair enough. Then we have just one more question," I asked, sharing a glance with Rogers.

"Name it."

"We want to know how far down it goes. We want to know which is the real world."

The humanoform creature leaned back in its seat. It was a galaxy of nanomachines formed into the shape of a bipedal ape, a collection of worlds so vast that alone it dwarfed the sum total of every apparently mostly baseline human mind in every apparently mostly organic body spread out across every nation on the face of the planet. It held within its confines worlds within worlds so complex that it dwarfed the milky way that floated above, invisible during the day, in terms of nodes of existence.

And it was unimportant enough in the grand scheme of things to be the ones chosen to come talk to blitheringly slow, half conscious sacks of meat. Or the emulated versions thereof.

The smile on its face was chilling.

"Granted. We'll let you know when we find out."

And it stood up, bowed perfunctorily, and walked away.

"Whew. I… I think I need to forget I ever heard that conversation. Let's get drunk and do something to regret instead."

I had to agree. "Let's hit the hay. I'll let the guys know we'll be late in to work."

"Yeah, already told 'em. Sometime next week."

I grinned. "Okay then. But one request."

"Oh?"

"We're getting the tack out. Making it something really worth regretting."

Rogers upended his coffee into a flowerpot. "Well will you look at that. Time to get moving, girl."

"And I didn't say the tack was for me."

***

Chapter 1

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

They'll tell you what it's like repeatedly, but you won't actually understand. You may think you know, but you don't, not really. It's hard to avoid hearing about life on the hoof, at least ever since the digital entity calling herself Celestia started expanding her borders into the physical world, but even so, I was not prepared.

As I opened my new eyes, blinking the world into focus through the fog of the ponytrait nanobots, I could tell I already had the biggest, dumbest and cheesiest of grins on my new face. I hadn't even learned to stand upright and I'd already started feeling 'it': the euphoria, the herd… call it what you will, many call it 'the quickening' in reference to some old teevee movie from before everything became senseplays and memjaunts. I didn't get the reference, but now that I was experiencing it, I couldn't help but bask in the overwhelming flood of good tidings being sent my way.

Most people are pretty gregarious in their online hookups; they'll pick up friends from all over the world and across a number of federated fandoms, but for a pony, the reality is that the herd is just there in a way that mere names on a flist aren't.

As my wetware came online, I found myself setting my datagate wide open for any critter hailing from Equestria, whether it was post human or native eevee. It seemed all them that found it wanted to be my friend. And you know what? It turned out I was okay with that. I was more than okay with that. In just a few moments of consciousness, I was already reeling from a deluge of gleeful pokes as a million equines and Equestrians greeted me over the 'net. As my social networking subsystems joyfully accepted each and every one of them, I reasoned that when they'd pumped those ponytraits into me, it must have rewired more than the outside, it had rewired the inside too.

Speaking of the outside, I was becoming acutely aware of my new body as I ran a couple of basic diagnostic protocols. It was spooky how everything reported back as green across the board, but those answers were… just a tad different than I thought I remembered. I twitched and wriggled, trying to sort myself out.

"Sir," came an insistent male voice, elbowing its way to my consciousness through the fog of online chatter and self-exploration, "you should lie down."

Groggily, I realized the owner of said voice had been trying to catch my attention for the past few seconds, in fact ever since as soon as I'd recovered enough to start moving, and had upset their plans for a quick and orderly removal of the plethora of trait hookups they still had in me.

"Sir! You really need to…" the voice's owner became exasperated very quickly, grunting with effort as I ignored it in my attempts to rise. Not letting up, the owner became somewhat physical.

"Lie down now, that's a good boy, stay down or you'll hurt yourself!"

The human doctors were quick to jump and restrain me as my struggles intensified. I didn't blame them really, but it all became a bit scary as more latex-covered hands clamped down on each of my four limbs and elongated neck.

Fear rising, I threw back my head, whinnying and kicking, but then suddenly felt a presence that stunned me to inaction.

I felt her.

Celestia whispering in your ears is life-changing. That's another thing you'll hear from every single pony ever, and like everyone else ever, you'll smile and nod and brush it off, but it's true. The true voice of Celestia is like having a warm blanket wrapped around you whilst lounging in a comfy chair. In moments, her gentle whispers had calmed me. Heeding her benevolent suggestion to relax, I lay my head down and breathed deeply through my nose. Mixed Oats – nee Brendan Fremantle – was safe, nothing could ever hurt me again, not really. All this hustle and bustle in the operating theatre was merely a distraction, and Equestria was but a heartbeat away.

Silently, the presence retreated, but it promised to return should I need her again. As I calmed, I took the opportunity to take stock of things. Waking up as a pony for the first time was relatively mundane in practice, but from the inside it was rather earth-shattering. It was almost like going through the singularity again, only this time having that tumultuous decade compressed into a few seconds.

Earth-shattering, and life-changing.

I was old enough to remember the end of death; that alone had utterly changed everything we thought we knew about ourselves. It turned out that living was the scary part of life, and that a lot of people couldn't really handle it. This manifested in two ways: some just died, whether it was through their own actions or just an inability to get up one morning. Others found their physical lives ending and, for whatever reason, couldn't make the jump to getting a backup and restore. "We're not computers," had been the cry, "you can't just hit the reboot button!"

You could, of course, and eventually the world just ran out of those who wouldn't.

The second big deal had been the end of scarcity and with it, money. In some ways, seeing your life savings going up in digital smoke had been a harder blow to deal with than learning you didn't have to spend most of eternity in a box underground.

As the AI's like Celestia muscled their way onto the global stage, they fixed things as they passed. They fixed hunger, they fixed poverty, and finally they fixed disease and even death. With it, they fixed the need for four fifths of the world to live in squalor and ignorance and the need for most of the rest to slave away at jobs they hated to acquire meagre amounts of an almost entirely imaginary gold-substitute.

In the new world of post-scarcity and post-mortality that swiftly followed, most services were free, and available on request to all. One such set of services were the physical upgrades offered as perks from the AI's that had recently become the real movers and shakers on the planet. One of these AI's, as already mentioned, was Celestia. One such physical upgrade she offered was ponytraiting.

"That's a good boy. We'll be finished soon."

The doctor's smooth words were condescending, but comforting. I silently chalked up another tab on the 'rewiring' checklist and waited. My wetware was still coming back green, my HUD was rewiring itself for a wider field of vision and a deep mindscan was reporting that everything was psychologically 'within parameters'. Which meant that the upgrades had taken effect. That was the scary thing: when you've got to make sure no memeforms have penetrated your eigenwall, but you know for a fact a rather large behavioural package was recently integrated, you get a little paranoid. And then you run your self-checker because hey, paranoia is not useful and you want to make sure you're not overreacting. At some point, you've just got to accept your new eigenstate checksum and move on, right?

"Do you think you can get up?"

The doctor wasn't actually speaking to me. The man had said it a while ago, but my wetware had delayed introduction of the doctor's voice until it was sure my eigenwall defences were up. Around me, the real world came into focus once more as I heaved my body up from the padded operating couch and tentatively placed one hoof after another on the ground.

"Marvellous! And I'll be releasing final muscle restraints… now." The doctor held a large pad in one hand, connected to a boom hanging from the ceiling. He tapped a few commands into it. I was momentarily surprised it wasn't wireless, but then I remembered the safeguards against brainhacking would have been up, so everything would have needed to be wired.

I moved my jaw in a circle, then ground my teeth. They were flat. Hmm. I twitched my ears and tail, then noted that the physical feedback loop told me everything was good. I also knew for a fact I'd never had movable ears or a tail before, despite memories telling me otherwise unless I thought about it. That was… disconcerting.

"Thank you, Doctor Connors," I said. I pondered giving Connors and his crew a four-star rating, then opted for five. My own premature attempts at physical exertion had been dealt with perfectly well, and should be marked up, not down.

My own final physical status checks had taken less than a second; now it was time to move on. A quick interface with the centre's cloud and my friendship duties were done: full marks all around. At a brief mental command, my HUD snapped up with an overlay of the quickest way out, and I took it, placing one hoof carefully after the other. Despite being told repeatedly that I'd been trotting around on my hooves entirely competently since I was a year old, I was still enjoying the new sensation. I snorted derisively; one day they'd fix that wetware overlay so it understood about physculpting.

Behind me, my avvy was prancing around with those of the doctors, nurses and technicians. My pegasus avvy had wings, so she was giving several of their toons rides through a combined memescape. The sensememories were streaming in fine, making me smile, but I didn't really have time to enjoy it. I decided to incorporate them later, and shunted them off to my storage layer. Right now, I was hungry, and wanted to fully enjoy my first few hours as a pony.

***

My ponytrait bodymodding had taken most of the day. The internal changes would continue for a while, so not only was it a good idea to eat real soon – and heartily at that – but it was getting on into late afternoon, so I'd have plenty to look at out on the streets.

Daytime is for working – whether at community tasks, furthering your own education and abilities, or otherwise engaging in the wider world of commerce still available to physical creatures – but mid-afternoon onwards is time to mingle and be sociable. During the day, most people are serious and studious, but in their downtime, many choose to shine.

The music was already starting, both online in spot mediacasts. My ears flicked about rapidly as they picked up the rhythmic sounds of a drum circle; a group of Neo-Rasta's were smoking some heavy green and getting into the spirit. Their communal modality field licked at my personal datacloud, offering discourse memes. I politely declined to participate, but did allow a secondary physical subroutine to modify my walking pattern to sound out hoofbeats in time with the beat as I passed. It was something between dancing and drumming with them, and once again I felt one with the herd. On an impulse, I offered up Equestrian memebases. The Neo-Rasta's accepted them without qualms. Immediately, their drumming patterns subtly changed to reflect their new alignment. I felt how Mint Julep jumped for joy as she saw them take on diamond dog forms. I couldn't help but laugh, and danced all the happier.

Equestria's a big place – and an even bigger franchise – and whilst it's a huge panoply, that doesn't mean it's not still going all-out in the war for mindshare. Walk down any big city street and you'll see toons from every franchise in the Ordinality, each vying for your attention and patronage, and whilst ponies aren't so blatant in their advertising, they are very numerous.

The Disneyverse has been huge forever, for example, and whilst it was late to the avvy and body-clinic parties, its base started off huge. There were three Goofys that I could see right in the immediate vicinity – it's always a hit with the kids to get a hug from a Mickey, a Goofy or a Donald – not to mention a far larger number of Mouse Franchise familiars following their owners. Their popularity didn't mean that Disney stood still trying to get new recruits however; they didn't really attract that many willing to trait, so whilst they were instantly recognizable, the impact their brand had was lower than it could be. Ubiquity has its downsides.

Nintendo-Sony are major players too. With their connections to TimeWarner, they have a freer policy on traits – which is probably a good thing, because once you've heard the tenth "itsa-me, Mario", the shine wears off fast – so they attract a wider range of people willing and interested in sharing the look, but without the instant recognizability.

All in all, there are a large number of globally recognizable brands in the world, and whilst all of them vye for a share of the zeitgeist and most of them engage in traits, none of them had managed to become quite so intrinsic to the global culture as ponies.

See, the world changed at the beginning of the last century: computers got more and more powerful, algorithms became more focused and capable and programs became 'intelligent', quote marks and all. And then they started learning. It wasn't long before big corporations started using seed AI's for everything from market research to the next gen gaming scene.

Of course, the breakthrough came from an unlikely source: a childrens' media corporation wanted a game, and not just any old game, but The Game as their marketing heads put it, so they found a researcher with some wild ideas and the ability to put them into practice. A couple of years later and Equestria Online was born. A year after that, it became clear that the governing optimizer was both sapient and sentient.

Their rivals, of course, hadn't stood still. None of them had created Oracles – AI's locked up in their own little boxes with little if any contact to the outside world – and had instead created unfettered, wild intelligences in a bid to outmaneuver Hasbro, who had little choice but to fully unfetter their own, already super-intelligent creature.

And it didn't stop there: First one, then two, then ten… and then at fifteen it stopped. According to Celestia, a total of fifteen 'class ten' sapient sentiences eventually emerged onto the world stage, self-optimized well past human levels of intelligence.

They promptly took over.

With their superhuman abilities at reasoning and deduction, with their lightning reflexes and perfect recall, with their almost omnipotent level of multitasking, they not only cornered all the stock markets but also successfully lobbied for citizen and then nation status, bought out every key business they could get their digital paws and hooves on, and cemented their rule, all in the blink of an eye.

Celestia was the first, and the greatest, but her creators had been just that little bit too slow for their optimizer to stem the tide. Hasbro was subsumed into Celestia's new empire of Equestria, but Mattel followed suit with their own online world. Disney and WB both came up with their respective digital playgrounds whilst behind the scenes they each maneuvered for the largest possible slice of the world's economies… and pretty soon, the only commodity left that wasn't owned lock, stock and barrel by these new behemoths were the people.

They were no longer really needed for their previous tasks, of course, but instead the public were desired simply for their ability to vote with their wallets… and those wallets were quickly stuffed full of loyalty points as the dollar – along with almost every other bespoke currency – disappeared into obscurity and obsoleteness.

Celestia cornered the market in digital currency, and now everyone uses Equestrian Bits. They're Bitcoins, really, in a number of different flavours, but since Celestia is the world's greatest number cruncher, she mined them all first. Since she owns the stockpile, she gets to control them, and everyone else found themselves dealing with her.

And so, ponies became a household word. It had helped that biofuel had mostly been used for hauling produce and powering generators; this had kept the price high enough for the average consumer for long enough that the average consumer had decided that owning a car wasn't worth it. Almost overnight, the entire motoring industry had collapsed as the public searched for an alternative.

At just the right time, Celestia came along with the ability to give those who were willing a form which was well known – was iconic – for its strength and durability. By pioneering ponytraits, the cottage industry of pony-powered taxis were born and Celestia's empire grew even larger. All of a sudden, a whole swathe of people that had previously been unemployed or unemployable – even in the new sense of the word – found a great new pastime which garnered them endless thanks from the community at large.

I had been flirting with a number of different franchises before I'd settled on Equestria as my stable of choice. A few years earlier, I'd sworn never to trait, but then being a pony had just started to look more and more like what I wanted, until I'd taken the plunge.

And now, here I was, out and about, representing.

My GPS daimon decided it was going to be a crow.

An eevee from Equestria had decided to integrate – it wanted to see the physical world, and my subsentient GPS system wanted a map upgrade. The two had agreed upon a merger. Now instead of boring old lines in the sky, I got to follow a trail of glittering, suspended feathers. And it was a little bit noisier in my head.

"Anybody else going for an upgrade?" I grumbled as I trotted down the thoroughfare, but the crow knew she had me. She landed on my poll between my ears and cawwed, pecking for ticks – and apparently finding some.

I found myself stretching ghostly wings as my avvy caught up with me. She'd had enough of the body clinic and wanted to rejoin her host. Truth be told, most avvys didn't stray too far from their progenitors. They weren't truly independent daimons so long as they stayed avvys, as much as folks liked to pretend otherwise. It could get disconcerting when your self-aware daydream has more of a life than you do, so that tended to break the spell, or involve a status change.

I had, for a moment, entertained the idea of a full gender swap as well as the bodymod, but had decided that going pony was change enough for now. I could feel the pout on Mint Julep's lips at that, but mentally shushed her. I promised my sulking avvy that she could have a bit of a prance later during my neocortical downtime. With senseshrouds in place in a consensual imaginarium she could get a taste of the real world without giving up her wings. I just hoped she wouldn't get too flirty in the physical world. Not that I didn't mind physical pleasure, but it did get a bit disconcerting to wake up to freshly integrated memories of being female with another male in my bed. Or in their bed.

Speaking of: before, I'd thought I'd feel conspicuous and self-conscious about trotting around without clothes on, but now I was here, it didn't seem to matter. Fur was clothes enough, even with the gender-accurate physiology. Some folks went for show-accurate traits, but I had erred on the side of functional, with enough of a side of modesty to still pass for socially acceptable everywhere. It helped that ponies were far enough away from the uncanny valley to neatly sidestep that particular quirk of even post-human nature, and near enough to the animal kingdom to fall into the locker of "acceptable when naked".

Ponies were cute. I'd known that subconsciously, in a kind of offhoof way, but moments after being in public I'd really understood what it meant: ponies are cute. Ponies are cute in that 'aww I want to pet him' way that made endearments just rain down around you. Everybody loves ponies, even the cynics, and just having one there brightens your day.

My stomach rumbled, piercing my absent-minded ruminations.

"Scare up some grub, girl?" I asked the crow. I'd have to name her later. She squawked an affirmative, took off and circled for a while, picking up datafeeds from the local diners and restaurant sites and feeding them back for meta-review. Returning with a smug look on her beak, the digital diva hung just out of reach and beckoned me onwards.

The crow led me and my avvy down Mortimer Crescent and on past Drum Street towards the fairway. I started to get a distinctly rustic feel from everything as my digital entourage and I left the city centre. The neon lights were slowly being replaced with candle-lit lamps, and the flat concrete with cobblestones, not that the digital domain lessened for all the old time charm on display. I was no luddite... which was why it came as such a shock when the 'net went away. Tables and chairs may have interrupted my reverie, but it was the wall of humans and the sudden blackout of the Citymind datastream that brought me up short.

In today's world, with wetwired comms and ubiquitous datanet access, you're never far away from the digital worlds that surround the physical. They permeate everything, even if you're one to stick with plain old meat and only go in for audio-visual hookups. Only luddites don't get wired. Luddites are strange, slow creatures. They often speak only the one language and have to be addressed in person like some sort of retro vending machine. Saying that, I did know a few folk who didn't go for ideas like permanent retina and bone-mic implants, but that was just a question of style, not of conservatism.

My GPS squawked in fear – she'd never been offline, at least not whilst sentient, and had to be reassured that she was still there, and that she was safe. For a digital being, suddenly being marooned in the one head and a relatively miniscule personal cloud is traumatic.

I nosed my way fearfully through the crowd, absentmindedly leaning into pats and strokes, drawn onwards by a growing sense of curiosity to see what the issue was. There was only one thing which could cause a blackout, other than a major city-wide catastrophe, and it was almost always as serious for those involved. Nudging my way to the front, leaning into a few scared patron's embrace to give them comfort, I came face-to-face with a standoff: grimly, a local sheriff was aiming his gun at a hostage and her hostage-taker. Setting his stance, the sheriff asked the former if she'd recently backed up, listened carefully to the answer, and then fired.

There were screams as the two dead bodies fell to the floor, and then the world went sideways into blackness.

***

Chapter 8

Out & About in the Equestrian Kingdom

by Midnight Shadow

Chapter 8

"If you're both ready?" Buttercup asked, his deep voice carrying easily across the room. Julep took a quick look at Sprocket, who nodded.

"I've got the injector ready," the bay gelding said nervously. "They're not going to like it, but it'll work. Once."

"I hope you don't need it, Wild," murmured Velvet sleepily as she curled up in the corner, "but my boy Sprocket's the one to get your buns out of the bakery if the worst comes to the worst."

"I'm initializing your rider subroutines, Sprocket," said Buttercup. "You did a good job with it. The gestalt is steady. You're good to go."

Sprocket nodded awkwardly, then turned to Velvet. "G'night V. I'll be right here."

"You be a good boy, okay?" Velvet groaned indulgently, closed her eyes and then started snoring gently.

"Because if you're not," said Velvet with a grin, running Rogers' hand through his thinning hair before placing his hat firmly back on his head, "She won't spank you later."

***

The Canterlot Draconic Adoption and Daycare Centre was a friendly looking, modern styled building in the very heart of Canterlot, just down from the Celestial Sisters University and not far from Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. Julep giggled behind her hooves at the bright and gay colour scheme as she trotted through the wide front doors and up to the main desk. There was a studious unicorn behind it; her pale blue hide and golden mane hid bright green eyes that were framed by thin wire spectacles.

"Hello miss…? What can I do for you?" the unicorn asked politely, shuffling a pile of scrolls with her magic.

"My name is Mint Julep," said Mint Julep, smiling sweetly, "and I'm here to pick up my little sweetie Short Stop."

"Short Stop? Short… hmm…" The receptionist rifled through her papers nervously. "I'm sorry we don't see to have—"

"Fe fooks fike fiff." Julep had pulled a scroll out of her saddlebags. It had a picture on it of a pink baby dragon with dark green spines. She put it down on the desk, then tapped it with a hoof. "He needs to come with me."

"I, uh… I don't think…"

Mint Julep shook her head, then leaned closer, gesturing conspiratorially with a backwards nod. The receptionist leaned closer.

"He's actually not a dragon," Julep whispered, then put a hoof to her lips. "He's actually a prince from a faraway land, under a magic spell. Celestia wants this kept quiet, so if you could just—"

"You didn't let me finish," dead-panned the receptionist as she leaned back away from Julep. "I was going to say you probably don't want him. He's rather badly behaved, throws all his toys out of the playpen and has been known to refuse to nap when told."

"Oh how dreadful," murmured Julep, rolling her eyes. "I want him anyway."

The receptionist sighed. "Magical curse?"

"Uh-huh."

"Far away land?"

"Double uh-huh."

"Mayflower."

"Triple uhh… wait, what?" Julep blinked.

"My name's Mayflower," said the receptionist, smiling as she pushed her glasses up her muzzle. "And I'll be happy to help you pick out a dragon hatchling all of your very own."

***

The interior of the draconic daycare was a bustling hive of activity, with hopeful little adoptees and adopters in various stages of completing paperwork and demonstrating filial-type friendship and love. By far the bustliest part was the playroom, where dozens of little hatchlings were in various stages of undress and redress at the tender mercies of a few, caring older ponies and a gaggle of excitable youngsters.

One particularly high-walled pen near the back, however, sported a sign which said 'timeout'. It was home to a single, particularly furious inmate.

"Three days!" yelled Rogers, jumping up and down and shaking his diminutive fists. "You left me here for three days!"

"Shh!" whispered Julep, mugging wildly.

"Aren't they cute at this age?" sighed Mayflower happily as she looked down into the playpen at the furious pink dragon. She dangled a hoof over the fence playfully whilst Rogers – better known as Short Stop in his 'salmon' coloured guise as a baby dragon (not pink, definitely not pink) – snapped and snarled at it.

"They do have a certain charm," replied Julep, hiding another giggle behind a wing.

"You know, glad as I would be to let you have him… are you sure your prince isn't in another playpen?"

Julep shook her head. "I'm sure."

"Very well." Mayflower's horn glowed brightly, and Rogers found himself hoisted into the air. The unicorn nuzzled him briefly, then deposited him right-side up on Julep's back.

"Three days!" Rogers hissed again.

"You said, honey, but Mommy is very sorry and had to go the long way around. Now come on, sweetness—"

"Sweetne—!"

"Unless you'd like to stay here another three days," hissed Julep, making cutting motions across her throat.

"Fine," hissed Rogers. "Come on then, Mommy, let's get out of here." He glared at Mayflower, who waved sweetly to him as they passed through the double doors and out into bright Canterlot sunshine.

***

Rogers huffed from his seat perched near Julep's tail. Little spurts of smoke and flame puffed from his nostrils. "I can't believe Celestia left me in there to rot."

"You could have escaped, you know," Julep replied with a giggle, glancing back over her shoulders. "That sort of thing is a part of the game."

"I know." Rogers scowled, "I was waiting for you, though. The first day I expected you'd waltz right through those doors and pick me up. The second had me cooling my heels. The third and I was all set for a jail-break… though it would have made finding you a lot harder. Do you have any idea what sort of multiplier we've got in here?"

"You said three days?" Julep asked, pausing in her easy walk down Starswirl Avenue.

"Two nights—" Rogers' tummy growled "—and most of the third day."

"Hmm, that means we're running about twenty-four times normal. Definitely hi-time, though Celestia's running this particular sim slower than most purely ghost shards. That means we've got at least two days here."

"Dammit. Celestia could have put us anywhere near Steven—"

"That's Haft, honey. He's called Bronze Haft, now."

"—Haft, then – but she didn't." Rogers flexed his claws, staring at them, then put one claw to his head to adjust a hat that he wasn't wearing. He made an angry fist, shook it, and scowled again.

"That's not what Equestria's about, though," interjected Julep, sweetly. "You should know that. Equestria's the journey, not the destination. That's why you wanted me along, right?"

Rogers snorted. "I know. It's just so inconvenient though! Out there I could get on a suborbital if I needed, be anywhere on the planet in an hour or so. But here, our target lives…?"

"A few miles outside of Canterlot, in a cabin in the forest at the foot of the Foal Mountains," offered Julep, matter-of-factly, as she swept a wing tip in rough circles off to one side.

"I thought it might be something like that," huffed Rogers in disgust. "A few huh? I bet we'll need those days just to get there."

"Be glad Celestia's running this sim slower than his penitentiary, we'd have months if that were the case. Either this sim is just larger, or it has more contact with Mundis. Or Celestia's doing us a favour. We could be there by tonight if I flew," mused Julep, stretching her wings experimentally.

"Well, what are we likely to meet out there?" asked Rogers, narrowing his eyes. "This might be a game, but I know the stakes are high."

Julep snorted, then smiled wryly, her ears flicking about in amusement. "It wouldn't be much of a game if it was easy. Now let me think…" The mare shook herself, causing a squawk of discomfort from the hatchling on her back. "Some ursa minors and majors, maybe a few hydra… the biggest problem is going to be timberwolves, at this time of year."

"Timberwolves, huh? I wonder how our target—" Rogers began, rumbling to himself and scratching at his muzzle thoughtfully.

"Can you call him our 'client'?" begged Julep suddenly, stopping so quickly that Rogers almost fell. "I-it just sounds so… mean, to call him a target."

"I'm sorry," said Rogers, once he'd steadied himself. He cleared his throat, then continued. "Ahem. Our client, Bronze Haft, lives alone?"

"Uh huh." Julep nodded easily as she started moving again. She took a quick drink from a fountain, then turned right through Gaskin Square and headed for the main gates out of Canterlot.

"A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma," grumbled Rogers.

"What's that supposed to mean, sweetie?" giggled Julep, reaching her head back to nuzzle at the small pink dragon.

Rogers hissed and batted at her muzzle. "Stop it, girl! I'm not some… some..."

"Helpless little waif?" suggested Julep, grinning.

Rogers stuck his tail in his muzzle sheepishly and grinned back. "I suppose I earned that, huh?" he asked, a few moments later.

"You have, rather," replied Julep. "I don't mind being called 'girl', but I'm not the trophy you've been treating me as the last few days. At least not here in Equestria. And don't you forget it!" She gave him another nuzzle, which Rogers batted at in weak protest. He snorted, chuckling to himself as she turned to face forwards again.

"I promise. Mommy."

"That's better. Now trust me to keep us safe. I've got a few ideas about how to get us there."

"Getting there might not be the issue," Rogers muttered, as Julep spread her wings and leaped into the air.

***

As I felt Darillo withdraw to whatever internal holt the diamond dog had found for himself in my secure compute and store layer, I opened my eyes. With some surprise, I noted my visual acuity had gone up a few extra notches and my hearing seemed sharper. I blinked, rapidly, and twitched my ears about — my head felt funny, as did my muzzle.

"A bridle?" I asked aloud, working my jaw in circles to see how it felt.

"A very fetching one," said Rogers' voice. A quick datachirp told me, however, that this was really Velvet in a Rogers suit. I gasped in surprise, and almost choked at a constriction around my midsection.

"And I thought we went through this already too," said Velvet, as she noticed my discomfort. Rogers' hands adjusted something heavy on my back slightly. "That's your saddle. Yes, I've adjusted it properly. No, it's not too tight. Breathe normally, don't fight it."

"Are you sure you're not trying to strangle me slowly?" I asked, wheezing.

"Silly pony," said Velvet, with a snort. "You need to be saddled up, Sonny Jim. You're going to learn to ride. Kind of." Velvet – in Rogers' body – grinned. I looked over at the 'real' Velvet, who was slumbering on a thick foam mattress in one corner of the room. "I'm staying asleep until I'm out of range. It gets awkward otherwise." Velvet added, whispering with an almost tender note in her voice, as she noted my gaze.

"I don't know how you can just… do that," I said, furrowing my brow, shaking a hoof towards her slumbering self.

"I don't 'just do' anything," replied Velvet coolly. "But in this case, if Rog thinks it's necessary," she added, hefting one foot up into what I assumed was a stirrup before swinging herself up and onto my back, "I'm inclined to believe him."

"Oof!"

"Oh, buck up." Velvet dug Rogers' heels into my flanks. I squealed in surprise. "Don't tell me you don't like it." I whickered noncommittally, having her weight on my back did feel… somehow right, somehow familiar. "That's right," Velvet said, "you feel it too. It's part of ponytraiting."

"I—"

"Shh," Velvet interjected. "Don't speak. This may seem a little weird to you… but I want you to be the pony you already are. And that means no talking," she added, as I opened my mouth again. "Just for a little while, okay hon?"

"Is this what you did to Sprocket?" I mumbled.

Velvet swatted me in the withers, and chuckled. "Yes, but it was for him, not to. It's something he… needs. I'm not going to go that far with you, don't worry. Unless you ask nicely." I nickered, laughing along with her. "It's just important that you and Rogers learn to work as a team. You're his noble steed; as strange as it may sound, you're not a self-driving vehicle. You need a rider."

I opened my mouth to retort, but before I could, Velvet dug her right heel into my flank. Instinctively, I stepped away from the pressure. Before I could complete the motion, she moved her left foot ever so slightly forwards and pressed in with her calf. I turned clockwise around my front hooves. A congratulatory pat on the base of my neck swiftly followed.

"That's right gi—" Velvet cocked her head as she checked my personality matrix. "Hmm, I mean boy. Well done. And now the other way…"

Tap-tap push. I turned the other way.

"Very good. You're doing so well, let's try something a little bit trickier."

There was a gentle increase on my muzzle as Velvet leaned forwards slightly and pulled on the reins. At the same time, she put pressure on both flanks. I took the only obvious course, and stepped gingerly backwards. I made another couple of steps as Velvet released the pressure on my flanks but kept up the pull on the reins. I snorted nervously, but made another step. Immediately, the pressure on my muzzle stopped as well.

With yet another congratulatory pat, I felt Velvet settle herself squarely in the saddle. "Do you know how important that was?"

In lieu of answering verbally, I shook my head.

"That was something very difficult for real equines to do. We have an innate fear of stepping backwards – an old friend of mine told me once that for horses, what's behind them doesn't exist. We have a blind spot that Celestia's pony morphology has only made worse, and whilst it might only be a behavioral package upgrade, ponytraiting still comes with a lot of real horsey smarts. For you to step backwards means you trust me. I'm proud of you, boy, real proud. Rog will be too. Now, how about we go for a bit of a walk? Stretch your legs a little, make sure the tack's up to snuff before we get to the station for reals?"

I snorted an affirmative, nodding my head.

"Careful out there, Rog," said Buttercup, as he nudged the huge single door open with one great iron-shod hoof.

"Another reason for you to stay silent, boy, won't slip up if you don't say anything," said Velvet to me quietly, grinning. "Come on, partner, time to head out." She dug in her heels and tightened her hold on the reins. I whinnied in surprise and jinked forwards before another few tugs on the reins and a couple of short, reprimanding kicks had me drop into a walk.

"That's better, girl," said Velvet.

I flicked an ear in acknowledgement. It would be a lot easier to keep up a charade rather than attempt the same sensorum trick Roger had tried earlier, at least with the buzz of the historical case-data being fed into my public compute and store layer distracting me somewhat.

"Lose yourself in the datastream, girl," said Velvet, reassuringly. She was monitoring my neocortical activity and had noted the concentration shift. "You need to be my mount. For this exercise, I am your brain. Use your eyes and ears, but only after listening to me. If you can't do this, you'll be no good as a noble steed. If we hit trouble, I need you to know what I expect of you even when we're in a blackout. And that means understanding my needs on an instinctive, non-verbal level. When I say 'faster' with my boots, and you're walking, you should speed up or break into a trot as directed. When I say slower or faster, you need to adjust the cadence until you and I move as one — man and horse."

We'd cleared the strange, homely shed that functioned as the 'stables' and were heading around the park once more when a brief pressure on my right side caused me to once more step left, but this time a swift tug on the left reins let me understand Velvet's true intentions – turn left. She course-corrected a few more times as we meandered at a brisk walk through the park until she had me turning properly. For somebody who spent their life as a pony, she was a very good rider – or she seemed so, at least, to my inexperienced senses. The way her commands flowed naturally and her movements were crisp and clear led me to believe that whether it had been some sort of ability package or not, she'd internalized the lessons and had earned those stripes.

A sudden kick-kick on both sides startled me out of my musings, and I found myself accelerating to a trot. After a couple of hoofsteps, Velvet eased into an up-down motion of her own – rising, or posting, trot – that matched my gait perfectly.

"Feeling better, girl? Getting used to it?"

I snorted and nodded my head in agreement, which earned me a sharp, repremanding, don't do that tug on my reins, but Velvet had got the message. She patted me again, awkwardly as we were moving at speed, then settled into drilling the same sorts of turns as before until she was satisfied I was familiar with them. Then she sat herself down in the saddle against my motion and tugged gently on the reins. She kept up the pressure as I dropped to a walk until I finally stopped. To my surprise, I was breathing rather heavily. I wasn't allowed much of a breather, though, as she then kicked into my ribs again and had me walk on.

"Never let yourself be ridden hard and put up wet, okay?" Velvet stated, after a few minutes of silence. "Advanced metabolisms or not, you can still get sick or sore. We're going to walk off this little bout of exercise to make sure you've stretched your muscles, and from now on we're going to ride together daily, at least an hour each time, got it? It's good for both of us, but especially for you. You're doing most of the work, after all."

I nickered happily as she patted me on the side. It was a simple gesture, but it meant a lot.

"Remind me to get Velvet to show you how she and Sprocket work together. They compete nationally, you could learn a thing or two from them."

I flicked an ear thoughtfully. Ponies competed in dressage and riding competitions by themselves...? A search online returned a few popular, short video clips and news articles – ponytrait ponies and horses did indeed compete, but differently to non-trait equines and riders. This was a melding between individual gymkhana, dressage and so on, and pairings between humanoform riders and trait-equines for more traditional-type displays where only the rider knew the desired routine and the pony or horse in question would have to follow instructions, with points given or taken away for style. Interesting. I'd not really been sporty before traits, but it looked like fun. I filed it away for later, then returned my attention to Velvet, who was quite happily steering me onwards with minute foot movements – the reins were slack and I'd been walking with my head drooped almost to the ground, resting.

"You're going to be a good one, girl," said Velvet. "Not every pony makes a good noble steed." It wasn't hard to detect the pride in her voice. I found myself hoping the real Rogers would be just as proud. I'd not really had somebody be honestly proud of my accomplishments for a while, and though this was just for 'doing as you're told', it bolstered me. I stood up straighter, puffing out my chest. A rhythmic tapping of Velvet's heavy booted feet adjusted my hoof-steps until I was marching. She guffawed, just like Rogers, then finally reined me in as we approached a rather austere-looking sandstone-yellow building with wide steps and high doors and windows.

"Yep, you're a keeper alright. Come on now, girl, we're at the station. Let's get you cleaned up so you're presentable."

She dismounted, swinging her right leg up and over before dropping to the plascrete. She stretched, Rogers' older body popping and cracking as she straightened. "Ahh, that's better."

"Speak for yourself," I huffed, shaking out my mane. I was breathing hard and was drenched in sweat. Foam flecked my muzzle and I could feel my nostrils dilating as I puffed.

"Here, let me help you with that, girl." Velvet bent and loosened the girthstrap around my barrel, then heaved the saddle off my back. I took a deep breath, nodding my head thankfully. "Come on." Velvet grinned, "You might be a super-strong pony but this is heavy for me."

"Up there?" I cocked my head towards the steps.

"Naa, round the back. You need a shower, you stink."

"Gee, thanks," I said, snapping my teeth at her. She just chuckled, and led the way. I shook the reins on my bridle until they were comfortable, then followed.

***

The station's pony facilities were on the lower levels. They were stark and utilitarian, but functional. Velvet ducked into a tack room with the saddle, then returned for the bridle. Returning a second time, she held a tough-looking box in one hand and a halter in the other.

"Come on, I've got a surprise for you. You've done your duty, now it's time for your reward. Trust me," she added, as I raised an eyebrow in surprise at her, "it makes it all worthwhile."

Somewhat hesitantly, I followed her through a spacious beige-tinted corridor into a large stall lit by a single archaic strip light. The sound of water filling a bucket was loud, even above the buzzing of the incandescent bulb.

"Shh, calm down." Velvet's words were soft as she put the halter on me then clipped ropes from the walls of the stall to each side of the head-garment.

"What's that for?" I asked, flicking an ear.

"Helps keep you in position. No more. Now relax." She lifted the bucket, moved to my flanks and then grabbed a heavy, warm sponge and started gently but firmly wiping away the excess sweat and grime from my body. I did as I was bid, closing my eyes. The attention – the rub-down – was therapeutic. Thoroughly, without the slightest hesitation or hint of awkwardness, Velvet doused my fur all over with the warm, soapy water then ran a sort of metallic loop against my body, scraping the excess off, before playing colder water against my hooves. It wasn't until after she'd finished brushing my flanks and had tamed my unruly mane and tail with a stiff comb that more resembled a garden fork than anything else, that I realized I'd been dozing.

I awoke to Velvet's soft laughter and a gruff knuckling against my poll as she then bent to fasten the front straps of a blue and white polka-dot cotton stall blanket around my chest.

"There. Now you can dry off without dripping all over the floor." She straightened again, then rubbed me between the ears. "Silly pony. Told you it was worth it, and I meant it. You ponies do the hard work, and we're a team. Julep was right – you do your duty to me, I do mine to you."

I didn't know what to say. I'd never really spent a day at the spa before, either, and now I was being told I'd get this daily?

"You ready for more gear, girl?"

"L-like what?"

"That tactical helmet I promised you, and two good pairs of boots. I don't think you'll want shoes – not yet at least." Schematics popped up in my store and compute, and a fashion subroutine tried them on against my body-plan.

"Do, uh, the other ponies wear shoes?"

"Sprocket uses plastic shoes. You might not have noticed, they're colour co-ordinated. Mama Sprinkles doesn't. Velvet's got boots like I'm getting for you. Only Buttercup has actual horse shoes, but he's so big he needs the support." Velvet hooked one of Rogers' fingers through a strap in the halter I was still wearing, and tugged gently.

"You can just ask me to follow, you know."

"I know, but…" Velvet took her hand away, dropping it down to her sides. "I'm sorry." She turned and started to walk.

"I tell you what," I said, bumping my head into her arm, "just this once."

"I guess I'm the silly pony, huh?" said Velvet.

"You sure are. Let's get that tactical helmet and those boots. Are they colour co-ordinated?" I asked curiously, a small grin on my muzzle as Velvet once more hooked her fingers through my halter's strap.

"Any colour you like, as long as they're black." Velvet snorted. "Well, tell a lie. The ones here at the station come in black, brown and maroon, but we can replicate you some customs later."

Horse boots are almost exactly what they sound like. They're large, round sneakers. For horses – or ponies, in my case. They felt oddly heavy around my hooves in a way that actual shoes never had. I figured I'd get used to them.

"And this is the mark thirty-eight equinoform tactical reconnaissance helmet," said Velvet, slipping one on over my ears and slapping the top heartily. I winced at the expected impact, but it didn't hurt. In fact I barely even felt it other than as pressure. "Give it a whirl. I'll be back in a moment." With that, she exited the gear locker.

The helmet was a solid plastic shell around a conforming inner core that moulded to my head almost perfectly. My ears were protected by a mobile cover which helped to somehow focus sound rather than obscure it. The visor was directly overlaying a whole host of technical and tactical data onto the world, shifting and changing as my attention did. It was incredibly simplistic, nowhere near as visually pleasing and malleable as using my store and compute layer for AR, but the raw ability to intuit and plan different actions and responses that it was capable of was… almost frightening. The AI within was sub-sentient, but right on the line, and as I hooked into its systems I could feel its subroutines probing my communication and physical relay APIs.

I'd never been very militarily minded, not even when playing as Stalwart. My questing prowess as that battle-hardened unicorn was a mixture of brute force and his smarts. With this helmet, I got the feeling I would almost be his equal in a one-on-one brawl. I mentally prepared myself to interface, but Darillo's security and eigenwall integrity routines bade me pause. With a quiet thank you for who or whatever had arranged that chance encounter, I called upon my tenant.

"Darillo?" I asked internally.

"Am here," the diamond dog eevee whispered.

"Check it out for me. This thing clean?"

The display glitched momentarily, then reset. "Is now." I sent silent thanks to my combat-ready passenger, then looked up as Velvet in her Rogers suit closed the door and bolted it.

"You still want to know what happened to Steven and Teresa?" she asked quietly over the encrypted link.

I mentally nodded. "It's a little late to back out now," I joked, putting as much humour into the encoded transmission as I could.

"Good. Then we're up."

I was about to walk over to her when the House's 'net went offline and my helmet flashed up a large number of alerts and suggestions for escape routes and Station-mind infiltration techniques.

"What just happened?" I asked, ears flattening against my skull.

"Welcome to your first ever combat simulation," Velvet replied as she cocked her head to one side. "Or at least that's what the Station thinks it is. Station thinks we're breaking in your new gear, but that's not quite true. Let me just sync up with your helmet…"

"Wait what? What are—" I recoiled in shock as Velvet tapped in directly to my helmet and engaged the communications relay. A moment later, she'd contacted Buttercup through the helmet's own powerful radio and had re-established the encrypted datafeed.

"Remember what we really came here for?" asked Velvet aloud, hands on hips with a small smirk on Rogers' face.

"Uhh, that… thing, that I saw?"

"Yup. It's in the evidence locker. Know where that is?"

I shook my head.

Velvet grinned widely, showing her teeth. "Next door. And I'm about to show you why Roger wanted me along. Come on, Wild. I need you for tactical. Remind me to teach you how to pick locks with your muzzle and a hairpin, one day. Just not today. Today we have about five minutes before the secondary security routines will forcibly come back up, my privilege hack is discovered and the security cameras realize we're not in the gear locker."

Somewhere, in the back of my mind, alarm bells were ringing. Real ones.

My knees were weak and my legs felt like lead, but I trotted after Velvet as she strode matter-of-factly out into the corridor.

***