Nighttide Star [Rewrite Draft]

Prologue - The Incident

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Most ponies would think at the age of eighteen, there would be nothing better than having everyone’s attention. To be in the spotlight is the dream of many these days, ponies whose value seems weighed only by how much others notice their presence. I suppose by that rule, I must have been the most popular mare around, cantering down a fluorescent-lit hall with the eyes of several locked onto me. But it wasn’t as if these ponies were my age, let alone my peers. These were officials of a corporation – older ponies dressed in black uniforms with a full moon emblazoned on their suits. And the reason their eyes were fixed on me wasn’t any I had created with my own hooves.

Rather, they had created me. In a sense, at least.

My ears flicked at the sound of hushed dialogue and whirring electronics. Several of the ponies flanking the hall dictated notes to tablets, while others stood with large metal equipment aimed along my path – no doubt to take some reading or another. The attention was something I was used to; having random pieces of shiny metal pointed at me was routine at this point. What I wasn’t used to was the sheer number of ponies gathered here at once, standing at each side as if I were walking down some red carpet of the synthetic world. It was something I could have easily buckled under only a couple of years ago when the project first began – crowds weren’t exactly my favorite thing back then. But now, it wasn’t as if I had much choice. Either I could hang my head and limp my way to fate, or I could give them something worth talking about.

So, I strode forward with my head held proud. Today was my big day, after all. Might as well enjoy it.

I glanced to my left. Behind the suits stretched a wall of glass, revealing a wet skyline. A blanket of grey hung over the city like every day before, pouring sheets of rain upon the world. Shifting my focus, I could just make out the sheen of my alloy suit, reflecting the lights above. My mane held its usual layered look: green highlights against jet black, which matched the ghostly hue that shone from the three domes along my flank. I smirked a little at the sight, just as a pony entered my field of vision – a stallion, probably just a few years my senior, whose glasses mirrored my violet eyes. I held my smirk and gave him a wink before returning my attention forward.

That’s when I noticed a brown mare standing down the hall. My smirk quickly faded.

Coming to a stop, I watched the mare stride my way between the suits, her short brunette mane flouncing with her casual gait as she gazed upon the city beside us. “You would think with all the technology we have, we could do something about this rain,” she said, her voice light. In her words I heard a sort of nuance – a touch of hope that her idle observation would break the ice between us. It didn’t.

Out of all the suits assigned to this project, she was one of the few I knew by name: Nephilim, program coordinator. The title represented something on paper I never saw lived out in real life; she, like many here, was tasked with overseeing the progress of the corporation’s experiments in cybernetics. Unlike most though, she alone held the responsibility of ensuring project members’ “contentment and satisfaction throughout the course of assigned projects.” How exactly higher-ups expected one pony alone to accomplish such a task was beyond me, but I can tell you she was the one pony whom I could do without seeing.

After a moment, Nephilim cleared her throat and met my gaze, putting on her business voice. “Nighttide. It’s time.”

I flicked my ears to the side, away from the mare. “Understood,” I spoke with a straight, professional tone – no hesitation, no emotion. “I will meet you and the others at the complex.”

She gave a nod before turning to face the glass. Standing silent, she stared out at the city with hazel eyes, contemplative as ever. She glanced my way after a bit with half-hearted smile, hoping to grab my attention. When that failed, her smile faded, and she turned to trot down the remaining length of hall.

I watched her walk a few paces before turning to look out the window. If it hadn’t been for the occasional break in the clouds once every few weeks, it would be easy to grow up believing the sky itself was the color grey, and the rain was just a part of everyday life. It was something I loathed. But as much as I hated the rain, this was one time I would have preferred to watch it than have to do what came next.

I drew a long, deep breath of recycled air and exhaled slowly. Already, I could hear some of the ponies around me clearing their throats hesitantly. That was my cue to get a move on. After all, the stage was set. Several important ponies awaited my arrival, like an audience waiting for the curtain to rise. But they weren’t waiting for an actor – not in the normal sense. They were waiting for a puppet, and they were the puppeteers.

If I could have burned the damn stage to the ground, I would have.

Dismissing my melodramatic musings with a smirk, I turned for the corridor ahead of me and strode forward, putting the rest of the world to my back.

__________

An hour later, I stood between four grey walls of solid graphite. A set of mechanical armatures sat clamped over my suit – smooth metallic rods with tethered joints that reached from various points in the walls. There were no windows, and the one door that once led into this space had already been sealed off with molten graphite, superheated to cement seconds after I entered. The only supply of oxygen now available to me came from a black hose, attached to a mask strapped over my muzzle, and a few valves along the walls, circulating the stale air.

I glanced up at the ceiling, playing with the lifeline running from my snout with a hoof. A single camera loomed overhead in a corner, pointed straight at me.

I wondered who was watching. I had met most of the staff assigned to the project, but there were few I knew by name, and fewer still I felt I could ever talk with beyond work. It made me wonder if the staff were friends with each other. Given how everyone had been shut inside this facility over the last two years, I couldn’t imagine how it would be possible to keep from befriending a colleague.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. It was actually pretty easy to imagine. For myself, at least.

A green dot blipped to life in the corner of my vision. I turned my head to follow it, only to find it stayed in the same place. Blinking a couple of times, I realized it came from my retinal vision – a piece of equipment built within me that had only recently been activated. This is one reason why I don’t understand some ponies’ fascination with cybernetics: until you know what it’s like to have colored lights randomly appear in your line of sight, you have no place to talk.

I closed my eyes, praying for the little light to disappear. Instead, it blinked three times and followed with a line of green text across the bottom of my vision: ‘LAB-1032 - Ready.’ I sighed into my mask.

Focusing my mind, I ordered the computer within me to turn on a microphone built into my muzzle. When the crackle of an analog signal sounded from somewhere within my skull, I opened my eyes and straightened my head. “This is L-A-B ten thirty-two, Nighttide Star, reporting.”

“Hey, kid,” drawled the deep voice of one pony I did know well. “How do you feel?”

I angled my head toward the camera. “I’m ready to begin testing, Colonel Rubedo.”

The Colonel exhaled loud enough for me to hear just a hint of a chuckle. “Stage One is already underway. We’ll ping your system with the jump coordinates in a sec. Try not to cause too much of a scene down there, alright?”

“Understood,” I replied flatly, returning my attention forward. I was thankful the mask hid my grin.

Colonel Rubedo was one of only a hoofful of ponies I knew from before the project. Our history’s a bit long, but suffice it to say he’s the closest thing I have to a father figure. On down time, I can hang with him without having to worry about all the formalities. But when it comes to work, the Colonel has to be shown respect – address by title and all that jazz. Doesn’t mean he has to show me any respect, of course, which he makes clear all the time. Still, I love having him around, especially in this sterile laboratory.

Over the Colonel’s mic, I heard the distant buzzing of keys pressed and orders exchanged. One particular voice carried just clearly enough for me to recognize – Nephilim’s voice. She seemed to have a habit of wiping clean any grin of mine.

But then a different mare spoke over the line. “This is Crewleader. Stage One is complete. We’re green-lit across the board. Shall we continue?”

The Colonel shuffled somewhere behind his mic. I could imagine the burly black stallion adjusting the collar around his even blacker suit, standing upright to address his crew. “Continue to Stage Two. Release all safety locks and proceed.”

Not a second later, several red lights flashed overhead as an alarm blared from a speaker unseen. Slowly, the armatures lifted off my suit, pulling their hoses taut before coming to a stop. Beneath the sound of it all, I heard the echo of a different alarm coming through the Colonel’s mic, along with the murmuring of a dozen suits. The cacophony threatened to tear through my brain, so I focused all of my attention on the slab of graphite in front of me until the next phase was ready.

Sure enough, another green dot lit in my vision above a line of green script: ‘LAB-1032 – Pylon 1 jump coord. set’

I pitched my head slightly toward my chest. “LAB-1032, coordinates received. Initiating jump presequence.”

Instead of getting an audible or visual confirmation, I received a rather strange tactile one – a tingling sensation, coursing over my flanks. With a steamy flourish, the oxygen mask over my muzzle ejected, allowing me to get a better glimpse of what was going on.

I turned my head to see a faint purplish-orange glow forming around the domes on my flank, flowing toward my chest like a growing tide. The sensation followed its travel, slithering through my barrel, almost as if half my body was falling asleep. Nopony had warned me this was supposed to happen, but then again, I was the first pony to test the device built within my suit. Plenty of tests had been done on inanimate objects over the months, but I was the first living thing to make use of the equipment. Today, I would get to fulfill the role for which I was built.

Today, I would be the first pony in history to take a warp drive for a spin.

I turned my head forward once more and closed my eyes, soaking in the prickling of the warp drive breaking down my body. While the warp drive did its thing, I ran over the event list to see what would happen next. Four bullet points of green text lit to one side of my vision: transmit to P1; rematerialization; health / safety check; transmit to P2. The only point I was a little nervous about was the second; the idea of being rebuilt atom for atom sounded both painful and dangerous. I had been assured time and again – without prompting, no less – that things should “theoretically” go swimmingly. But theory and fact are two very different things, and until the experiment was finished, words meant little.

Still, I had grown used to being a guinea pig over the past couple of years. Experiment days like these were the few times I felt like I was the one being waited on – when all the numbers and figures had been tallied together, the suits would come find me or one of the others to put their hard work into practice, and all we have to do is follow their lead. Every other day, recruits of the cybernetic division were expected to fulfill “compulsory lab functions” – which is fancy speak for going to class, cleaning up messes, and doing a bunch of exercises. I was glad that within the next couple of months, I would graduate from the program and finally get out of this facility. But of course, they still found time to run one last experiment on me.

Gradually, the alarms and noises faded from hearing. A cool wave traveled past my neck and over my muzzle, and the light beyond my eyelids faded. A dark, soundless world of nothing enveloped me, claiming both my body and my mind as I let my thoughts surrender to the emptiness surrounding me. For a moment, just as the last of my body was broken down, I felt at peace. The absence of everything – of sight, of sound, of every natural sense – it was as if I ceased to exist. Every thought, every memory, anything that had happened or could happen in my life… suddenly, none of it mattered. And for a fleeting moment, that thought was like a lifetime of healing I never even knew I needed.

But no sooner had the lights faded from my eyes, than a searing white light pierced right through them.