Destiny's Hues

Destiny’s Hues

Orange

The scratching of the quill is an odd sound in the lab space. Everything is made of that same white metallic material, and it sends echoes bouncing around the room in odd ways. I adjust the crystal lamp casting the gentle blue glow onto my parchment. That’s another thing about the white surfaces. After almost every line I write, I have to adjust the lamp to keep the glare from making it impossible to see when I look away. Of course, all the other lights in the lab are off, and experience in the library back home under the same conditions tells me it’s really only my fault for working in half light. I guess I just expected even little problems like that to be non-existent in a place that can make hopping seeds. Who am I kidding?! The seeds don’t even compare.

I stop short of signing my name to look at the once again encased tank. I know that… thing is behind the barriers, but since I’m writing with my horn, I can feel it there. If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed since we got here, it’s the magical void it occupies. I lay my quill down just to cut myself off from my own magic, and by extension, sensing it. I breathe a heavy sigh of released tension. It’s not as strong as when I first felt the emptiness, but I’m guessing that’s only because I’m getting used to it. Still, even trying to stand conjures up the need to vomit, but when I grab the bucket, my instinct uses magic, and my nausea fades. I lean my face down inside the empty pail, making a careful note to keep my magic wrapped around something.

It has to be something to do with the paradox nature of the void. Not being able to feel it even though I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s there. I swallow and lift my head from the bucket and replace it under the table. I switch my magic from it to my quill and quickly scribble out my name at the bottom of the parchment. I curl it into the proper scroll shape, apply the seals the princess set along, and grasp it in a levitation spell as I slide out of the chair and around the table.

I try to keep as far away from the canister as possible as I walk to the door, but every table and workstation seems to have been set-up to force ponies to walk inches from it when entering or leaving the lab. I manage to get by without grinding my ribs on the corner of the nearest table though. I push open the lab entrance, and despite the lights around the catwalk still being dimmed for the night, the sheer number of blue twinklings forces me to blink several times to adjust. Once I do, I’m glad to see both the Guards still in their stalwart posts on either side of the door. “Team Leader,” I address the older pegasus. He turns to me, and when our gazes lock, I continue, “I have a letter to Princess Celestia explaining our delay and what might be going on here. Which of you will be faster in getting to her and back?”

“Lift, you take the letter,” he answers with the command to the younger Guard. “Make it back here by the next morning without any hiccups, and I’ll have no qualms about signing off on your Wonderbolts application.”

“Sir! Yes, sir!” Lift replies with a snappy salute before I offer him the letter. He snatches it from my magic and tucks in inside his armor before barreling off toward the pulley system across the catwalk. I keep my magic alive on my horn, doing my best to not end up focused on the void behind me.

Something, probably from all the false vomitting lurches, in my face must be off, because my remaining Guard grunts in an undertone, “Would you like to call it a night, Miss Shimmer?”

“Would I? Of course I would,” I almost spit in frustration. “But I unfortunately just spent the last two hours trying to figure out what to write to the princess about that… ugh, I don’t even know what to call it yet, and I spent the four hours before that trying not to lose my oats being so close to it.” I huff, staring off into nothing.

“We’d send you to a nurse in the Guard and force you to call it a night, Miss Shimmer,” he tells me. “You’d be better off starting fresh tomorrow.”

“That’s what you think,” I say, already turning back inside the lab before muttering to myself, “but if I let my head slow down, I know I’ll miss something.” I could activate the entire array of lighting crystals in the lab, but I don’t. I slam the door shut instead and decide to rely only on the illumination coming from my lone lamp and the light around bottom edge of the tank. I focus my wandering magic away from the tube and into a manipulative spell. I yank open every drawer and cabinet in the room with a fair bit of clattering and banging. The most recent stack of papers from each one finds it’s way into my magic, and I bring them all under the blue glow of the lamp.

I quickly sort out the day-to-day notes and fling them back into their places, leaving the thicker, bound documents for my brain to pick through. One is just pages and pages of medical jargon I don’t have time to decipher, and another turns out to just be the energy and chemicals required to maintain the tank’s static environment. But as much as I don’t like it, both of the files keep me glancing up at the shielded tank. And I can’t see the project they’re referring to. I groan and walk shudderingly close to the tank and press in on the tile in the floor. But I don’t bother watching the barriers fall, instead going right back to my seat.

The next file is the thickest and only labeled as “Halter Labs, Project 1.” And just cracking open the first page tells me I’ve found what I need. Diagrams of the pony skeleton from nearly every angle and in a plethora of extreme poses litter the first few pages. But unlike the medical folder, each skeleton has a detailed, highly accurate and complex casting circle beside it. This is my language. But as much as I recognize the method and even some of the parts involved, the arrangement of the runes in the circles is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I end up glaring at one in particular for at least thirty minutes by my estimate. I come away only knowing for sure that the spell loops on itself. In fact, I notice each and every one of the casting rings have a looping feature.

And the more pages I pass through, the more baffled and frustrated I become. Every muscle, nerve, organ, and even body fluid has been assigned a specific casting ring. It would be a feat in and of itself to create so many unique circles and rune orders, but I begin to see patterns, especially in areas around the brain and heart and lungs, where the spells repeat themselves. I can only assume I’m looking at assembly steps and instructions. It’s far too detailed to be anything else, and now that I think about it, explains the size of the cube compared to the lab itself. I know for a fact that for some of these rune patterns to work, there has to be a considerable bit of distance between them and some of the other circles.

After the hundreds of thousands of diagrams though, I find a set of pages which I think, personally, should have been in the front of the file. It’s hoof written as opposed to horn drawn like the rings and is in much plainer language. Bland, but understandable. There’s just no middle ground for these ponies, I fume before I begin running my eyes over the words. The beginning I don’t even bother with once I realize it’s essentially Halter Labs praising itself, and I skip the middle too. I’m young, but I grew up in Canterlot where sales pitches were born. Finally, near the end, is the information I’d been looking for.

Our most important project is the Advanced Defense Assistant Machine. It is an accomplishment of medicine, magic, and a comprehensive scientific understanding of pony psychology and biology. An ADAM is the ultimate defensive tool ever built and is impossible to detect. And the first ADAM ever constructed is the Active Universal Restraint Assistant, or A-type, as we like to call it. Using over one million consecutive casting rings, an A-type unit learns from everypony and everything around it until it becomes indistinguishable from a real pony. Utilizing this and it’s second feature, an enemy will never know you are defended or be able to attack.

Each A-type has, within those million layers of spell work, been given an ability no living being could ever have. It is the High Arcane Radius Manipulation, Oscillation, and Neutralization Effect. I re-read that several times just to be sure I’m seeing what I think I am, and when I can’t deny it, my lips curl in raw disdain. “HARMONE…” I breathe out in disbelief before rolling my eyes and saying a touch loudly, “Cheeky.” But the name aside, I have a vague wrinkle in my gut. I’m pretty sure I know what HARMONE is. Using a complex set of magical principles, this system allows an A-type to ‘mute’ the magical connection inside any living creature. This can range from unicorns to a blade of grass in a meadow. By doing this, the most common ways attacks are carried out by the creatures of our world are stopped before they even happen.

I fall back into my chair, and my eyes can’t help but be drawn to the A-type’s tank. A huff of shock escapes my chest and my head shakes back and forth. It’s a machine. A machine made of flesh and bone. And my mind is already starting to tickle me with those ‘complex magical principles.’ I’m already beginning to put the pieces together. But I shake my head to clear it and lean it back with a deep, shuddering intake of breath. I may have an idea of what the thing in the stasis liquid is now, but theory isn’t going to get me far. I dive back into the casting ring diagrams, now that I know exactly what they’re for and what they’re supposed to do. The glyphs start to align right in my head, even as I realize that most of them are new runes entirely. Or rather, they’re new runes cobbled together from existing ones. That makes them obviously more difficult to decode, but I wasn’t named Princess Celestia’s student for nothing.

The description was accurate in claiming over one million spells, but even clearing a single page, I see that nothing about pony anatomy has been left out. The rings I sorted out were all just designed to be sure blood flowed efficiently. And the HARMONE construction isn’t hard to locate once I know what the void exists to do. It’s surprisingly easier to unravel than the others, but there are almost infinitely more layers. I’m tempted to just keep following the code down until I’ve effectively worked out how to build my own magic vacuum, but I manage to avert my eyes. It’s the kind of spell that… honestly, scares me a little bit, despite how deliciously academic it is.

I want to keep my thoughts off diving fully into the spell’s construction, so I turn to the back of the file. More medical jargon for the most part, but if I hadn’t been strictly looking for other things to read, I would have missed it. It’s a small piece of what looks like scrap paper, but it’s filled with hastily scribbled horn writing listing off a variety of mental disorders. They fly from extreme to common with no clear order, and I can only think they must be a general checklist of things to build counterspells for.

But the list is hardly engaging enough to take my mind away from the idea of a void field. Until I find myself staring at the A-type again. I don’t know why, but I walk right up to the tank. I can even see myself in the glass. Granted, I’ve still got my magic active and gripping the file, but the sense of the void isn’t bothering me so much. A press my hoof noiselessly against the tank. It’s undeniable. She’s fascinating. Unbelievable even. I mean, I know what the file says and shows, but the thing in front of me… it’s… it’s not doing anything. Not since opening it’s eyes for me. Really, it could be dead for all I know.

I don’t know why I don’t go through the logical steps with the idea, but all I’m certain of is that I’m spontaneously searching for any signs of a switch to drain the tank. I… I want to see it move. Act like a real pony. There aren’t any more tiles that give to pressure or any kind of force for that matter, and even after turning on all the crystal lamps, I can’t find any switches or the like around the workstations. I suppose Dr. Wobble would know how to release her, but without him, I have turn to my talent. It’s difficult, being so precise with it like I’ve never done before, but I manage to weave my magic around the A-type’s void to manipulate the clamps. I grasp all four and with a strained grunt, and I snap them open.

The A-type floats up immediately, but a deep boom beneath me shakes the floor and unbalances me to the point of falling on my plot. A flurry of impressively sized bubbles shoot up from the bottom of the tank, and the fluid inside begins draining away. It clears out so quickly in fact, that I’m only just getting back up again by the time the machine is standing in rapidly falling inches of liquid. It’s rigid and the mane clings thickly to its body. The eyes still haven’t opened like that time before. I edge up to the glass and tap against it. It’s a dumb move, and just as well, because nothing changes. I sigh. I’m lucky nothing catastrophic happened. But just thinking that, my head darts to the door, waiting for the scientists to burst in with frantic worry plastered all over their faces. After several minutes pass, and nopony even hammers on the entrance, I let myself relax a little. Now I just have to figure out how to properly turn this A-type on.

I glance back up at its unmoving stance with what the princess has always called my ‘stubbornly perplexed look.’ I levitate the file full of the operating spell circles over and leaf through it once more to be sure I didn’t miss anything that might explain how to activate the machine. There’s nothing, as I thought, so I move onto the other files I had yet to discard. But when I look up at the A-type again, my heart skips, and my hooves clatter in place. My mouth tries to form words, but only ends up moving up and down like I’m having some sort of seizure. It’s eyes are open again and staring very clearly at me. At least they’re not an exact copy of my eye color, but it refuses to blink or even look away. Or, it does until I do. Only mere seconds after my eyes begin watering and force my lids to flutter shut and open, its do the same. But it’s still staring at me.

“Can… Can you speak?” I ask, finally managing to form a cohesive thought that makes it out my mouth. Nothing. It just keep staring at me. “Can you not hear?” I wait for several moments, but still, it doesn’t show any signs of having heard me. All it does is blink when I do. I tentatively place my hoof on the glass again, and somehow, it hits me. A simple examination with my horn proves me right. The glass is enchanted to be sound proof. I loose several transmutation bursts at it, and to my satisfaction, it falls into a perfect ring of sand. “So, can you hear me now?” I ask it.

“Yes,” it answers, and it even has a young voice like mine. But there’s something… wrong about it. It’s short and sharp, almost in a reprimanding way, but at the same time far too flat to be disapproving.

“And…?” I prod. “Don’t you have something to say after being in that tank for so long?”

“No,” she answers in the same way.

“Then… what? Nothing? You have absolutely nothing to tell me?” I ask, a little incredulously. It certainly isn’t living up to the description of being a seamless replication of a pony. She’s still standing in the same spot like a board, and one word answers aren’t something I hear many ponies use unless… “Are you angry?” I ask with a stroke of concern.

“No,” she says.

“Seriously?” I grumble aloud to nopony in particular. To think I was getting my hopes up over studying something like this. I looks like the only thing they got right was the HARMONE attribute. But I’ll bet I can even call that into question if she can’t project it. Still, it doesn’t hurt to double check just to be sure your experiment is a disaster. “Do you feel anything at all right now?” I round on her.

“No,” comes the answer I expect, and I wheel around with an audible growl in my throat except… “What is your… name?”

I feel like a merry-go-round, the way I’m turning first to the door, then back to the A-type. But I do it anyway, with my brain trying to sort out my raw confusion from the fading disappointment and frustration. “What did you just ask me?” I think I might have whispered.

“What is your name?” she replies, now with a bare hint of sounding like she’s actually asking a question.

“I’m Sunset. Sunset Shimmer,” I say. “Um… your’s?”

“Mine?” she repeats, and my confusion from earlier is echoed back at me perfectly. Nothing short a direct match.

“Your… your name. What’s your name?” I ask and point my hoof at her.

“I’m an Advanced Defense Assistant Machine, classified Active Universal Restraint Assistant, X00,” she rattles off in an even more rote tone that before.

“That’s not a real name,” I sigh and drag my hoof down my face. “Don’t you have something easier I can call you?”

“There are a variety of words you can use to describe me,” she tells me, and all of my surety in the success or failure of this endeavor proceeds to jump off the peak of my metaphorical mountain. Her words were almost natural. The volume was wrong, and I can’t help hear myself in her tone, but it was already less artificial than at first. Never mind that she used words other than ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ “Would you like me to list them for you, Sunset Shimmer?” She sits down when she says it. It’s not exactly a plop. It’s too purposeful.

“No, no, I’m fine,” I wave her off.

“I did not ask if you were hurt, Sunset Shimmer,” she follows up before I’ve even take a breath. “Are you at all injured?”

“Ugh, no. I meant you didn’t have to run through a list of words,” I say, and I end up staring at her again. I can’t see what her real eye color is in the half-glow of the room, and she continues to blink only when I do. I keep half-thinking she’ll say something to me at some point, but she seems perfectly content stare at me as much as I am at her. I’m not sure if she’s examining me, but I know I’m not thinking about her so much as I’m trying to understand how her brain works. Or even if she has a brain for that matter. At least, in the way I would normally think about somepony having a brain.

I’m pretty sure the spells that govern her behavior are reactive, so without having to worry about her surprising me unless I ask her a question first, I slide the main file over and start searching for any signs of how they constructed her thought processes. I’m leafing through the fifth page with no luck when my ears catch a rattling sound, and I look up to see her shivering all over. Her face hasn’t changed a whit, but her entire body is shaking from cold. “Oh horeseapples!” I swear and clamber to my hooves in search of a blanket or towel of some kind. There’s no sign of anything, not even any spare lab coats, so I canter over to her with a heating spell at the ready. “Why didn’t you say you were cold from being wet?” I ask her, trying to keep my own irritation from not noticing out of my voice.

“It is a normal phenomenon,” she answers even while I have to delicately warm her dry and keep my magic from making contact with the void inside her. “There was no need to state the obvious.”

“But you were shaking and uncomfortable,” I say, bewildered. “You should’ve told me sooner.” I finish wringing out her mane, and I have to admit it’s very nice and silky. “See, doesn’t that feel better?”

“Is my current state the definition of comfortable?” she asks me. I can only shake my head. How in Equestria can she not know if she’s sore? Or hungry? Or tired? Never mind not knowing what it’s like to be angry or emotional at all, even trees know when they need food.

“Well…” I try to start, thinking of the order of things I need before I’m content to enjoy a nap or something else relaxing. “Are you thirsty? I’m pretty sure they didn’t have you surrounded by water in that tank.”

“Being thirsty is a need for fluids, correct?” she asks, and I nod. “My throat does hurt when I swallow. Is that -”

“Hush.” I push my hoof to her lips to silence her. It works, thankfully, and I search for a water fountain or sink. Sink. There. On the wall. A twitch of my magic later and the faucet is flowing freely and the water is being levitated in a sphere to the… she needs a name. “Drink from this. Not too fast though. Feeling bloated is worse than being thirsty.” She dips her head to the sphere and slurps it noisily. And she doesn’t stop drinking except to breathe until the sphere is gone. “Better?”

“Yes,” she says with a smack, and I can’t tell if it was unintentional or not. “I will be sure to mention it to Doctor Wobble the next time I am taken out of the tank.”

“Wait. They’ve taken you out before?” I ask and take a seat beside her.

“Yes,” she says. “I am woken. Nopony speaks. I am pinched by needles. I am put to sleep again.”

“Why?!” I ask. “Why wouldn’t they feed you, or…” I glance back at where the tank I powdered used to be, and it becomes pretty plain. That liquid must have been some kind of preservation formula. It kept her body from decaying without the need for actual food or water.

“It was the same procedure every time I woke up. I infer I was being tested,” she says plainly.

“But… but… No. There’s no way…” I stutter out, my thoughts still trying to arrange themselves and my head still attempting to act. To do something. “Princess Celestia. Princess Celestia will know what to do. You know how to walk, right?”

“I do,” she answers.

“Okay. Princess Celestia needs to see you, so I want you to - !” I’m pulling her hoof up to hold onto it when the door to the lab bursts open to a cascade of voices. My head jerks back and my hoof drops her’s.

“Enough! That’s far enough Miss Shimmer!” Doctor Wobble is at the front of a group of other ponies, and he’s wearing some kind of lance saddle. I let my eyes slip past them to catch a glimpse of my Guard, but he makes it so I don’t need to be subtle about it.

He strides in after Wobble’s ponies and booms out, “Doctor! You promised my charge uninterrupted access!”

“To study our research documents!” Wobble shouts, even though it’s pitiful by comparison. “I did not say she could activate the ADAM unit!”

“I cannot leave the laboratory, Sunset Shimmer,” she says but doesn’t bother to lower or raise her voice, which somehow makes it all that more prominent and sends a spike of worry into my gut. “It is against the rules.”

“Yeah? And what other rules do you have, Wobble?” I sneer at him. “She was thirsty and is probably hungry too!”

“The ADAM unit was supposed to be a clean slate!” Wobble shouts, and with a shrug of his shoulders, the lance whines. Before I can register exactly what he’s about to do, he jabs it forward and into her. It doesn’t pierce her skin, but red sparks and lanes of electricity fly up and down her body. And she screams. Her legs buckle, her head flies back, and she screams like any pony would. It’s almost like my life is forced into a time warping spell. It all happens so slowly, and her cry lingers in my ears.

And the world only returns to it’s right pace when I see her falling, unconscious. My hooves push me forward, and I manage to catch her before she crumples on the floor. “Hopefully, you haven’t damaged her too much, Miss Shimmer,” Wobble says, but I can barely hear him. I’m looking down on a filly my own age… but, she’s not really. She’s… she’s a machine. But she was hurting. There was no way spells could fake a scream like that. I don’t… It doesn’t make any sense. She’s not alive the way I know I am…

There’s frantic yelling around me, and when I look up, my Guard’s forehoof is reeled back. I realize what’s about to happen just in time for me to duck my head and throw myself over her. The yelling turns into screams, and I hear hoof connect to bone… twice. It’s followed by the sound of somepony crashing head over hooves across the lab’s workstations.

My eyes split open to see one of the scientists rushing at me with a smaller lance, and the world slows again. Only this time, there’s a distinct clarity to everything. And the world vanishes into a swirling mass of searing white light.