To learn but not to understand. To be but not to become.
It had been a hundred days since Charelz starting wishing on the piece of paper with the purple unicorn on it. There was no reason for Charelz to do some sort of ritualistic action as many other scientists she knew, regardless of their specific scientific area of expertise, didn't believe in such things, disregarding them as 'superstition'. However, Charelz was neutral about the idea, noticing miracles happening on a 'wish' every now and then. She was just curious to see of there really were 'outside' forces that interacted with humans' 'plane of existence' or if it was all a bunch of hooey. The woman pitted everything to it all being made up, but what else could she do with her spare time? And it was fun, anyways. Just the idea of it working was good enough to make her all giddy inside.
Today, she looked outside before wishing. Some planets were supposed to appear in the sky during the day, prompting an idea that ancient cultures took these as signs of their gods. Charelz shrugged and started wishing really hard. She worked in a specially designed facility built into the mountains. The facility she was in possessed many windows along the frontal wall to ensure its employees don't go crazy from feeling locked inside, and its appearance would pull back like steps every new floor, creating the appearance of a rounded stairway up the mountain.
The lab Charelz was working in was fit with large, white tables and its walls were lined with enclosed shelves and cupboards. The wall adjacent the corridor outside was lined with reinforced windows, letting anyone see inside the lab in-case an issue occurred...or if the scientists were too lazy. On one of the lengthy tables was a drawing of a lavender unicorn Charelz printed from the internet. It was part of her little experiment that became more of a hobby over time. It always remained stationary on its resting surface and the woman wondered whether she should take another piece of art from the internet and see if anything would happen with that.
Given the time, the scientist had researched information on the character she chose and printed what she could just in-case. She was extremely bored but liked to explore every scientific area she could, even IF this one scraped along the edges of even quantum possibilities, but today, that work payed off.
After wishing, Charelz was drinking a cup of coffee and gazing outside of the windows to the distant hills, wondering what it would be like to camp there, when her thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of paper ruffling. She brushed it off as one of her colleagues straightening out a stack of paper in the hallway and returned to her day dreaming. She was interrupted a second time and started to become suspicious. By the third time, she knew something was up and spun around.
"Who's making that sound?" she yelled out.
No one was present. When she heard the sound again, she noticed a shape move in the corner of her eye and looked towards it. The paper on her table was moving on its own and a large bulge was protruding from it. Cautiously, she crept closer just to flinch when she saw it bounce again and the bulge get bigger. It was the back of a head, judging by the dark blue follicles and the two magenta and purple stripes going through it vertically. Charelz could feel her heart pumping and a weight forming in her throat. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. It was both terrifying and exciting, so she simply observed. She couldn't think of anything else at that moment.
The figure took about fifteen minutes to climb out of the piece of paper and finally rest on the table. The paper itself slid off its surface and floated gently to Charelz feet. All that was left was a dark outline of where the character should have been. The scientist couldn't understand what happened, but she was extremely excited. How did the wishes do something like this? How did they break the laws of reality? Will this 'Twilight' help her understand? After all, her noted indicated that this character quite liked her science and thought rationally as such, but would she eventually come to question her own existence despite being there in the flesh?
The scientist's joyful smile slowly faded when she started to notice that the pony had not moved from its spot. It was slumped in place like a stuffed animal. Still unsure of what to make of it, Charlez extended her hand out, occasionally pulling back, but finally poking the pony on the back. She was very soft and clearly not made from paper. This already implied many a theorem but that wasn't important right now.
"Hey. Are you...okay? Are you alive? Hello?"
Charelz walked around to see the face of this character and her face bore the look of pure confusion. She bent over to get a better look at the creature. 'Twilight', as the pony was called, was showing no signs of life. In fact, her eyes were half-closed and looking off the side to the floor. Her head was tilted onto her right shoulder as well. In fact, her legs weren't even their hooves, haphazardly folding over each other and just remaining in place, folded and twisted in a painful manner without rhyme or reason. The scientist leaned close to see if she wasn't just hallucinating or drank too much coffee, because logic. She jumped back almost ten feet and clenched her chest in panic when Twilight's eyes jolted towards her and opened fully.
"GAH!" Charelz shouted. Once she regained her composure and relaxed, she walked towards Twilight and smiled. She needed to start with an interaction first then note everything going through her mind after. "Hello, Twilight Sparkle, I"m Charelz; a scientist!" Twilight continued to stare, making Charelz start to feel uncomfortable. "Uhm...I saw that you were extremely fond of scientific studies and observation and I thought that, maybe, I could introduce you to some we have over here and see what you think."
The pony remained immobile, disturbing the scientist. It was like looking at a doll from a horror movie biding its time before going in for the final strike.
"Do you...Do you even know where you are? Can you even talk?"
Twilight did not react at all. Charelz started thinking on how to get through to the pony. Was she too shocked to react or was there something the scientist was missing?
"I am CHARELZ. Can you say that? CHARELZ?"
Twilight watched the scientist's lips as she moved them to form the required says with as much exaggeration as possible. The pony imitated the lip shapes but not the sounds.
"Something isn't right, here," Charelz thought to herself. "Um, maybe if we had you move around? Get the blood flowing in your body."
She picked up Twilight in her arms and came to the realization that she was soft and smushy, forcing her to hug Twilight tightly and squee like a little girl at how cute and soft the tiny pony was. She was happy no one was around to see that little moment of weakness. Twilight was about as big as a golden retriever but quite light for her size, strangely enough. The woman was in no way super strong, but she had no problem holding the pony and directing her to the ground.
Twilight let her legs go limp and flop about like purple sausages and gave no resistance whatsoever, and when placed on the ground, she flopped over onto her head then tilted onto her side.
"Ugh. Looks like I have to start teaching her everything. Maybe the pass over was too much of a shock to her system? Reteaching her should be enough to incite her memories to return," Charelz noted. She stood upright and punched her palm. "Right! Let's start with movement."
Some time later, another scientist came walking through the halls to witness his 'esteemed' colleague teaching a strangely colored equine creature how to walk, and it seemed to be bearing fruit, but there was another thing going through his mind at the moment.
He burst through the door and pointed at the pony. "WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!"
"HOW DID YOU BREAK THROUGH THE DOOR, MARK?!" Charelz shouted in response.
Mark was something akin to a bodybuilder despite being a biologist, proving that brawn and brain can work in tandem within the same entity. He never kept his brown hair in good condition, although he did keep it short. He was extremely against the creation of new creatures or anything resembling 'playing god'. He simply detested that.
"What is this thing?!" Mark angrily picked up the pony by its neck, and it only looked at him with no expression on its face. "It better be a robot?"
"It's not! It...um..."
"Yes?!"
"Came through a piece of paper."
Mark's eyebrow twitched and he calmly placed the pony back on the floor. "Really? You're trying to pass off your 'I was wishing' thing off?"
"Well...It's true. The paper she came out of is on the table."
Mark was completely skeptic, so Charelz spent about an hour explaining all the details, several of the words being imitated rather primitively by Twilight. The pony's actions and behavior were enough to convince Mark, but he didn't like the implications.
"Well, I know that you don't have the knowledge for proper robotics and even less so for biological creations, so, despite everything my being tells me, I'm..." He rested his elbow in one hand and used the other to hold his face. "forced to believe you, but I will get to the bottom of this. This isn't possible." He looked back at the pony who stared at him blankly. "Are you even sure it's alive?"
"Yes. She breathes, she blinks, she walks, and she even learns."
"But she acts like a blank robot that doesn't even have basic programming."
"I know, but I surmise whatever trip she went through must have shocked her, so I'm doing what I can to teach her the basics and even more if I have to. It might--"
"Induce her to recover memories by performing familiar tasks. Just like with amnesiacs!" Mark ran towards the door but turned around before forgetting. "Keep teaching her. I'll bring some of the food we give to the livestock here."
Charelz turned back to face Twilight who stared at her blankly. Twilight could walk on her own now and only time would allow her to do it properly, but what else was there to teach? Well, there was the more 'private' matters, but that came later. Speech! That was the one thing Twilight needed to do and actively attempted to perform, so it was logical to help her by using basic words first and having her repeat them, so Charelz took a piece of paper, a pencil, and started to write down everything she could think of.
She held a piece of paper up to her face and said "'Charelz'. Can you say Charelz?" Twilight imitated the lip movements and only exhaled some air. "Come on. Ch-a-relz."
"...lz."
The scientist scratched her neck and sighed. "Well, it's a start."
About an hour later, Mark came back with a wheelbarrow full of hay and vegetables. He dumped the contents on the floor in front of his colleague and wiped his forehead of sweat.
"So how are we going to do this? The others will be interested as well."
"Well, we can start a week where only we know about her, at least until we teach her how to...live?"
Mark stared at Charelz with shock. "She's that blank?"
"Yes, but she learns quite fast. It's strange."
"Hello," Twilight waved at the man.
"Huh...Where will she sleep?"
"Here."
"Where will she...Do her thing?"
"The bathroom down the corrid-oh. Well, I guess we can train her to hold it in until lunch time or sneak her through?" Charelz smiled sheepishly.
"She's the size of a dog. You can't just tuck her under your coat and move on."
"We'll find something."
Mark shook his head in disappointment. "We'll have to reveal her to everyone here, anyways. There's rarely a moment where this place is empty, you know. Most of us kind of live here."
Charelz lifted a finger to protest but quickly lowered it when nothing came to mind."You're right. Shoot. Fine. We'll reveal her to everyone later on. She could become a mascot of sorts if we play our cards right, but go trying to explain that she came from a piece of paper."
The entire week was to be devoted to teaching Twilight the basics of language skills and 'potty training' as some would call it. The activities of the two scientists didn't exactly go unnoticed by the rest of their colleagues nor by security, but these two never really did anything wrong to date, so it was thought that they were performing a joint experiment. Still, they were closely watched when leaving the lab.
Twilight was extremely 'absorbent' when it came to learning new things, and she learned them quickly. Charelz noted that this was a part of the pony's description on her papers and thought it meant she was 'becoming herself' again. However, the unicorn could not perform magics nor could she 'remember' her life, but it was a start, or so Charelz hoped. When not instructing her project, the scientist would perform various experiments as demanded by other labs and noted the results. There were times when the woman would use a dead specimen for experimentation and dissection while other times, much to the disgust of many groups in the world, she would use a live creature like a rabbit, and Twilight seemed to be getting a growing interest and fascination for experimentation. She used to only read the books brought to her by Charelz and try and learn, on her own, how to read when Mark wasn't there or Charelz was too busy.
Barely three days later that Twilight became known to everyone in the facility who took Charelz explanation with a grain of salt. Their reactions were practically identical to Mark's. They were all in disbelief, but many of them conducted basic tests on the unicorn: Blood samples, follicles, skin cells, and other less interesting things. She was indeed real and made of flesh and blood. Since then, as expected, she became somewhat of a mascot at the facility and only slept with Charelz for many reasons.
"What are you doing?" Twilight asked the scientist. She was too small to look over the tables so she would sit up on her hind legs and use her hooves to stand up and look over the edge of the table.
"I'm trying to get this pig skin to become a pale white, but I can't seem to get the compounds correct. It would help us sterilize bacteria on some meats of we could at least see it remove the coloring from the epidermis. That would at least indicate it gets down to the needed levels, although it would still be a bit too strong."
Charelz went back to her notes kept near a sink and started to mumble to herself. Twilight, however, was starting to find an interest in the experiment and looked at the contents of the beaker. The contents were slightly pink tinged and very smelly. The pony scrunched her muzzle at the scent of the product and started to think to herself. The scientist snapped her fingers and ran off to get whatever it was she needed, leaving Twilight with the notes. Pushing a box towards the sink allowed the little pony to hoist herself over the edge and look at her goal. She tapped her chin slightly then went towards one of the cabinets and took a few items in her mouth. These were clean containers, of course. She couldn't risk getting anything in her mouth. That was dangerous. Luckily, at least three of the compounds needed were clean and contained as were a few others Twilight needed.
Charelz came running back and saw Twilight pouring the beaker's contents back on the meat. She didn't see this with joy however, and rushed forward to pull the instrument from the pony's mouth.
"What are you doing?! I told you that was dangerous! Chemistry i EXTREMELY dangerous when you don't have the right protective gear, an your mouth i certainly not protected!" she scolded.
Twilight winced slightly and pulled herself slowly away. The scientist's gaze went to the meat. It was covered in whatever Twilight had made, and she noticed that the product was no longer pink-tinged; it was clear. The meat started to simmer slightly but turned white in the process. Charelz extracted a small piece and placed it under a microscope, noting that most of the bacteria on the meat had disappeared...as did many of the coloring agents laced into it.
"That's...that's amazing, Twilight!"
Twilight's ears perked up and her tail started to waggle ever-so slightly.
"What did you do?"
The lavender unicorn rubbed the back of her head. "Well, I just added more of this into the solution. It was too acidic and didn't mesh with the pork's composition."
Charelz's praise and Twilight's joy were all seemingly well placed. After a while, the scientist started bringing her new 'pupil' some books and basic sciences, then advanced chemistry, biology, and so forth. They were things that amazed the young pony. After all, she was but a week old. However, Twilight's quick upbringing and teachings weren't exactly helping her enthusiasm when her whole world was naught but the thirty-seventh floor of an isolated facility, and when you start to want to explore more and are trapped, well, the second law of thermodynamics can be applied to one's mind.
Three weeks and several experiments later, Twilight was left to her own devices in the lab. She wore a white coat clearly too big for her and dragged along the ground, safety goggles that were also too big for her face, and a special arm used to grab things from afar. It was quite useful for a pony with a...limitation of dexterity. Charelz was with a group of scientists working on a project Twilight didn't know about or understand. Either way, Twilight was becoming increasingly interested in the concepts of 'evolution' and 'adaptation'. Biology seemed to have become her 'point fort' and she was trying to figure out every conceivable way to improve upon the body and its survival. Regeneration was but a start, and the products worked well on plants and the occasional lab animal when properly modified. She just needed something else, but what? Charelz did seem to get more and more excited the bigger the object the substance worked on, but what was bigger than a live rat?
"Oh. I'm bored. I don't know what to do!" Twilight leaned against a giant table and slouched onto her back. "I've got nothing left to test and no new solutions I can think of." She started to think to herself. "What would Charelz do? What would be the best solution to this conundrum? This...lack of resources?"
While she thought, Twilight noticed one of the specialized cleaning crew coming into the lab for weekly disinfection and thorough cleansing. The man was about average height for a human, as far as Twilight knew. He was wearing a yellow bio-hazard suit for a reason that eluded Twilight, yet he still carried basic cleaning utensils and products. The tiny pony hid behind a corner of her table and watched the janitor clean the marble surface of her hiding spot.
"Huh. They've all been trying to help the human body improve itself...I know what I can use now!" The unicorn poked out of from the corner and garnered the cleaner's attention. "Hello, human."
"Hm?" The man looked over his shoulder. "Oh. It's you. Hello, Twilight."
"Guess what!"
The janitor sighed. Twilight was known to be extremely energetic and bit too enthusiastic with her work, even for the scientists at the facility.
"What?"
"I found a new specimen to try the various concoctions we've made."
"Oh?"
"Yes! I'll use you!"
"WHAT?!" The janitor shouted.
"Yeah. It's perfect!" Twilight cheered. "Charelz always liked to get onto bigger subjects when testing her chemicals to see how they work, and I bet that, thanks to your help, I'll be able to test her theories and improve on human physiology. You'll be the first to 'evolve' faster than anyone else!" Twilight sat on her rear and gleefully put her fore hooves together and smiled at the panicking janitor.
"I don't want you to experiment on me!" the janitor swung their arm at Twilight. "Get away from me!"
"But...Charelz, Mark, and the others always said to look towards the future and the betterment of mankind." Twilight pouted and her eyes widened. "You're going to embody that!"
"I don't care!"
Twilight looked down in sadness, then perked up when a realization hit her. "Oh, you're just testing me! We're all going to be better off for this. Plus, you won't be hurt anyways."
"No!"
The janitor tried to punch the pony away from them, but Twilight dodged and kicked the janitor in the stomach, punching out all the air in their lungs. The unicorn was certain that it was all just a way to teach her how to acquire her own subjects when let into the rest of the facility. She tied the human down onto a table and clapped her hooves proudly together.
"Who wouldn't want to do this for science?" She thought. "The others do it all teh time, and some have experimented on human cells. They'll be so happy when they see I've used a real human and fixed everything that wouldn't work!"
Several hours later, Charelz returned to her lab to take her things and return to her dorm, but what she saw shocked her. There was a man on the table, littered with needles and, seemingly dead. On closer observation, he was breathing, but barely.
"TWILIGHT! WHAT DID YOU DO?!"
"Oh, hi, Charelz! Look! I'm doing science and using your creations on a person. I can safely say that..." Twilight's gleeful demeanor degraded to an embarrassed one. "Only two of them had partial success."
"Why did you do this?!"
"Because you and the others always did that. You went further than what was asked so you could get breakthroughs."
"But we don't--" Charelz passed her hands through her hair and groaned. "We have to get him to the Red Filter."
"Red Filter?" Twilight wondered.
The scientist placed the janitor on a trailer and ran out of the lab. Twilight, intent on knowing what the machine Charelz mentioned was, started going through all the cabinets where books, notes, and documents were held. Finally, one of them had the answer. The 'Red Filter' was an experimental medical device developed in this facility as a means of extracting the blood of a subject and temporarily injecting their veins with a synthetic substitute. The blood would then be scanned by the gigantic filtering machine which would extract any 'alien' substitutes present in the blood which shouldn't have been there to begin with. The blood is then returned into the body while the substitute is extracted in an identical manner to the blood. It would also be a way to clean the blood of unhealthy patients and would usually last a few minutes under anesthesia.
While Twilight learned about the marvelous creation, Charelz, Mark, and many of the other scientists of the floor came stomping into the lab, glaring at her. The pony lowered her books and looked at them all cheerfully through the tiny hole she made in her book fort.
"What?" she asked.
"What you did was of an act of unspeakable atrocity?" Charelz said.
"Huh? Why?" Twilight tilted her head curiously.
"Wh...Because you don't do that to people, that's why!" Mark scolded.
"I don't see why. I've watched you all and you've always said that you liked to go one step further to better humanity. I thought you wanted to do that anyways."
Mark shaped his mouth in a sad attempt to say 'what', but took Charelz out of the room instead and aggressively whispered to her.
"What the hell is this? It has no conscious!"
"I don't understand. The world it's supposed to come from is happy and has lots of boundaries concerning that. It should be implemented into her sub-consciousness! I don't understand what happened!"
"What happened is that whatever world she came from is fucked up, that's what! Maybe it's also because she secretly doesn't care about us as we're humans. She's the only...'thing' of her kind in our world, maybe even our universe."
"I...I can't fathom..."
Charelz's mind went back to the first week Twilight started to walk properly. She seemed so curious and happy to go sniffing around the room and would often grunt like a baby while pushing on something she wanted to know more about. At first, she seemed more interested in the magazines about paintings. She would even try to paint with what little equipment Charelz had with her and would present it to the scientist, holding her 'creation' in her mouth. Some had been placed on the personal mini-fridge in Charelz apartment, but something changed. Not for the worse, mind, but Twilight became more...there was no real term to use. She started tossing away the artistic creations she had made and been making and instead focused more on the human biology as well as the concepts and theories of evolution. Perhaps that was a sign of what was to come? The two returned to their little 'anomaly', intent on making her understand.
"Twilight, we never taught you to do things like that," Charelz calmly spoke.
"But you've done it on other living things and always brought other subjects for testing. Rocks, plants, animals. You've been wanting to use these on humans. What better way to test the finalized product?"
"We test them using human cells or willing test subjects," Mark added.
Twilight looked in Mark's face in a way that implied she was 'right'. This angered the man.
"Don't give me that look! Would you like to be riddled with needles and dangerous products that could kill you or worse?"
Twilight didn't even wait to answer. "Yes!" She shouted. "It's all for science! I know how it works. Don't worry!" She waved a hoof. "I know what I'm doing."
Charelz grabbed the mare and lifted her up. "Never do this on a person again, or you're not getting to do anymore science. EVER. Do I make myself clear?!"
"But--"
Charelz glare was enough to make the pony stopped talking.
"Now go home and stay there."
Getting rid of the mess was no easy affair, but Charelz would think about that tomorrow. For now, everyone was tired. First the lengthy project, then that pony thing going rampant with their products. Perhaps it was a bad idea to give Twilight any thoughts about science, but any way she thought of it, the outcome was inevitable. Once she entered her dorm, the scientist looked near the wall to her immediate right to see Twilight sleeping on her mattress and under the blankets. She seemed really disappointed rather than bad about what she did. Why wasn't she like the Twilight from the source?
Sleep. That's what everyone was doing in the facility. Nary a sound resonated aside from air vents and the occasional air moisturizer. It was...a subtle and comfy night to forget your troubles, to say the least, but not all was quiet, and Charelz was awoken suddenly by a hoof to her mouth and Twilight standing in front of the woman with a syringe in the pony's mouth and wide, sparkling eyes of joy on her face.
All for science. All for progress. All for what she loves and what she knows, because this is how she grew.
"One may clone themselves or even clone another being. One may attempt to recreate them artificially through robotics, programming, or even bio-engineering if the future permits it. However, you'll never clone what makes the individual unique.
What makes it unique, you ask? Well, some say it is their memories and experiences. Others say it is the soul. Whatever the case is, looking at twins is sufficient to know that identical beings can be tremendously different and never the same."
Author's Note
If it seems rushed, it's mainly because I didn't want to repeat scenes with other characters and was going along with the main theme of the story rather than pad it out unnecessarily. Still, I apologize. I MIGHT actually make a full-fledged series like it, but don't get your hopes up.
