Obsolescence

by Chaotic Dreams

Rating: teen
Tags: Gore, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Alternate Universe, Original Character, Science Fiction, Adventure
Length: 21778

Cyberpunk Equestria.

Under the bleak sky of a post-industrial Canterlot, a young mare named Neverwas ekes out a living through her knack for hacking computers. Her day-to-day existence is turned on its head, however, when she becomes entangled in a hidden war between the megacorporations vying for control of the city, and perhaps, the whole world.

Long ago, something happened to transmogrify the land of Equestria from an age of sunshine and rainbows into a cybernetic nightmare. Whether or not Neverwas wants to uncover the hidden secrets of her world, she'll soon do so.

. . .

This is a rewrite of my old story Obsolescence. Trust me when I say that although the changes are substantial, I hope I have been able to preserve what readers liked about the story's first incarnation.

The 'Gore' tag is for sci-fi action and violence.

Thanks so much to TheOmegaRidley for his amazing artwork!

Also, thanks to my amazing editors, Chapter 13 and Typoglyphic. They have been invaluable for help with grammar, structure, brainstorming, and creative contributions.

Thanks to Crystal Static for being so encouraging towards this project.

Finally, thank you for reading!

Published 2017-02-11 23:00:01 UTC
Last updated 2017-07-22 17:44:37 UTC

Chapter 1.0

Illustration by TheOmegaRidley

My brain felt like a computer after somepony had taken a magnet to it. I was quite convinced that my eyes had been replaced with static snow, and whatever moan might have escaped my lips must have been a crackling white noise. The low, muffled bass drops of a demonic dubstep buzzed about my ears, evidence of another all-nighter. Furthering this evidence were the scattered, crumpled remains of several cans of Chaos Cola, ‘guaranteed to give you just the kind of temporary insanity you need to stay sane.’ Too bad I was pretty sure that last part was faulty advertising.

I blearily opened my eyes, though it took a few moments before my contact lenses crackled to life, making me wince as they emitted a small bit of static discharge. I’d have to buy or steal a new pair soon. These babies were on their way out. I’d had them jailbroken and jury-rigged into working far longer than their expiration date, but even the best black market engineer I could find couldn’t stave off the inevitability of planned obsolescence forever. Nopony could.

The lenses alive, I blinked a few times as they calibrated themselves, showing me the shoddy excuse for an apartment that acted as my current abode. It appeared to be a beautiful Neighponese garden, full of natural cherry blossom trees, several sculptures of mythological figures, and a tiny pagoda surrounded by a clear sky of perfect twinkling stars.

I snorted as I yawned, and the whole thing vanished. My echolocation revealed the whole thing for what it truly was—a hologram, and a pretty poor one at that. It barely managed to maintain a frame rate that would have seemed obsolete on some of the oldest television panels from bygone eras. There was a glitch in the projector that inverted the colors of one of the statues, turning what should have been a stone kitsune painted in auburns with gold filigree into a greenish, blackish mess.

Then again, I don’t know what I was complaining about. Without the shoddy projection gem in the center of the single room, I’d be forced to look at the torn and faded wallpaper, stained shag carpet, and grimy lavatory and kitchen facilities that actually made up my apartment. True, I saw those things anyway whenever I made even the slightest of noises with my mouth. Damn echolocation, and damn being a batpony. Without these stupid contact lenses, I’d be blind like the rest of my kind and forced to see nothing but cold, gritty reality all the time, albeit it without color. Sonic perception is hard to describe in actual visual terms, but let me tell you, we can still see when something is shitty, same as any other pony.

I stretched my tiny little legs and did a rough sort of backflip, nearly crashing to the floor as I dropped from the towel rack from which I hung while sleeping. Seems like that Chaos Cola hadn’t entirely left my system just yet; I was still feeling pretty woozy.

I let out another yawn. On a bigger pony, it would've put a manticore's roar to shame. Coming from me, it was more like the yowl of an agitated house cat.

“Good morning,” I greeted myself. “Better rise and shine before you miss another day full of sunshine and rainbows in the greatest city in Equestria.”

Unfolding my leathery wings, I flapped them a few times to shake off the sleep-funk and trotted over to my beanbag chair. Plopping into the overstuffed kawaii face of a stylized pony head from some anime I’d never watched, I brought a hoof to my touchscreen amulet. It was synced with the hologram gem, and so part of the Neighponese garden vanished. In its place, my amulet projected its own hologram, showing the list of program files and open Internet tabs that made up my computer space.

“Good morning, sexy,” I purred to the delectably delicious specimen I used as my screen’s wallpaper. A stack of freshly-made, all-natural pancakes dripping with syrup and topped with melting squares of butter. I licked my lips just from the site of the static image. “I know, baby. I want to see you again too, but we both know I can’t afford you until I pull off this next job. When I get the credits, it’s a date, I promise.”

Turning my attention away from my tragic love story, I scrolled through a few newsfeeds. Metamorphosis Biologicals was reporting that it had successfully unlocked a new crop gene sequence from the original corporate headquarters’ master computer, with casualties from the Tech Hunter teams in the ‘acceptable percentile.’ The computer generated AI news anchors, impossibly perfect ponies, were talking all about how the company would soon be genetically engineering an ancient fruit previously thought to have gone extinct before the Crash. Something called an ‘apple,’ apparently named after Applejack, Goddess of the Harvest.

They showed a few historical artworks showcasing the thing, and my mouth immediately began to water at the sight of such a perfectly round, shiny, juicy-looking fruit.

I minimized the newsfeed for a brief moment, shooting my pancake wallpaper a haughty glance.

“Don’t give me that look,” I spat. “I’m a mare with a healthy appetite, what’s wrong with that? Maybe if you’d keep a more open mind, we could even have a threesome.”

Mmm, I thought. Brunch with pancakes AND fruit. I’d be living like a goddess...

I reopened the Net and scrolled through a few more newsfeeds, seeing what the rest of the Corporations (or what was left of them) had to report. Icarus Industries was releasing a new line of flamethrowers that spit literal hellfire, fueled by brimstone imported straight from Tartarus.

“Guaranteed to burn your enemies alive in infernal torture,” I read from the news crawl. “Right, because being burned alive with regular fire wasn’t nearly wicked enough.”

Nyx, Corp. was firing more drone shuttles into space, trying to fix up their corporation’s pre-Crash orbital frame, and Unreality, Inc. was... Bonkers as usual. The other corporations all used AI news anchors, but Unreality, Inc.’s newsfeeds were just a gonzo mess of trippy colors, wacky imagery like tentacled sandwiches and inside-out animals, and a voice that rambled on stream-of-consciousness style.

All in all, the usual.

I took a deep breath and clicked on over to the Corporate Alliance’s Anti-Crime Watchlist, scrolling down to the ‘N’ names in the Cyber-Crimes Division. I breathed a sigh of relief. Same as always, I was unlisted. That is to say, I was listed, but only as my hacker username. The tag ‘Neverwas’ came to me in a recurring dream I had about a frightening old mare, and thus far, it was the only way the outside world knew me.

“Wanted for cyber-crimes, the hacker known as Neverwas,” I read, scrolling through the profile, seeing if there were any updates at all. “Wanted for theft of corporate funds, infecting corporate systems with viral software, avatar identity fraud, and ‘general malicious anarchic behavior.’”

I chuckled at that last one, clicking on the full sublist just for nostalgia’s sake. Sure, I spent the majority of my time playing Robin Pony, but a mare has to unwind sometimes. Hence that time I reprogrammed various holo-commercial projectors around the city to play old cartoons, the time I flooded the private corporate Net channels with self-aware spam email, and the one time I got really lucky and managed to replace the AI anchors on one or two newsfeeds with giant talking butts.

I’d never been caught, but things change. A mare could never be too careful. That’s why, to this day, I breathed a sigh of relief every time I checked the Watchlist and didn’t see a listing of my real name.

“Is that even my real name anymore?” I chuckled to myself. “I don’t exactly spend my time playing pinball.”

Whatever the case, I turned my attention back to my computer and flipped to a few living space ads. I knew I should probably clear out of this apartment by tomorrow. I’d been here for a week already, and in my line of work, it paid to never stick around anywhere for too long. But where to go?

Each of the listings I found were about as unappealing as my current home. The best I could afford were apartments like these in the slums of whatever district I chose to live in while I pulled a project on one of the Big Four corporations of Canterlot. Even if I could afford a better apartment, it was best for my IRL (in real life) self to keep a low profile. ‘Neverwas’ could do all she wanted on the Net, but Full Tilt (don’t mock me) had to keep her head down in the real world. The corporations did not take to cyber-crimes lightly.

Speaking of which, with a bit of trepidation, I glanced over to the last tab on my Internet browser. I’d typed the finishing touches on my latest project last night. With any luck, it would be fully uploaded by now. If so, I’d have an acceptable sum of stolen credits in one of my specially-encrypted bank accounts, and one of the corporations would be missing some miscellaneous funds from one of their various subsidiaries. Same routine, different code. I’d been running this racket ever since I escaped from that hellhole the Harmonist nuns called an orphanage.

But what to do with my newfound funds?

I flicked through some of my other tabs, procrastinating checking up on my project for as long as possible. The orphanage where I’d spent my foalhood had closed down years ago, but there were still plenty of other homes for wayward foals in Canterlot, both Harmonist and Corporate Alliance alike. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t sure which was worse, but a little donation of food chips or, even better, actual food from an anonymous benefactor never hurt. Or, if I was really lucky in a project, maybe, just maybe, I could donate more than just temporary sustenance. I often wondered if I’d be living my life on the run in drab little apartments in the slums if somepony had actually given me the option to be anything else.

Begrudgingly, though, I pulled up a word processor document, an old file simply titled ‘The System Must Crash.’ On it, I had listed every weakness of the Big Four that I could think of, and the list was changing all the time as old problems were solved and new ones arose. Technically, exploiting these weaknesses was what I had really vowed to do when I first chose this life. A true hero wins the game, but the game was rigged, and I was no hero. Thus, I cheated so that I could watch the game collapse. With no rigged game, there’d be no reason for me to cheat, and no way the game could do… What it did. What it had done to me, what it was still doing to others, and what it would never stop doing.

Unless the system crashed.

“Sorry, kiddies,” I sighed. “Maybe Auntie Full Tilt can give you presents some other day.”

It was either help the poor souls a little now or a lot in the long run, I knew. It didn’t change the fact that either way, I’d feel like I’d made the wrong decision. Inevitable guilt was a bitch.

But, back to my latest project.

My eyes widened, and I cursed.

“Four hours left?!” I scoffed. “Come on, this was supposed to be uploaded by this morning!”

Disgusted, I tapped my touchscreen amulet once again. The hologram of my computer activities winked out, and the two-bit hologram of the Neighponese feudal era resumed.

It seemed I had a bit more time to kill than I would have liked. If I wanted to be on the safe side of things, I needed to be out of this apartment by tomorrow. That wasn’t looking likely if I spent the rest of the day coding after my latest program finally stole some much-needed credits. Acquiring the money was only half the job. Afterwards came creating a whole new dummy alias with which to use the funds to do some good in this crummy excuse for a world.

I had to program a new faux identity or business front each time and then erase all evidence of it afterwards, as well as any evidence that could be traced back to me or to the poor souls to whom I donated my ill-gotten goods… or the not-so-poor saps whose lives I ruined.

I couldn’t make the damn things beforehand; the longer they were out in the open, the higher the risk that some corporate program would catch on to the fact that the dummy program (with large amounts of their money) was a fake. Furthermore, I didn’t have the dataspace to just make them outside the Net and then upload them whenever I felt like it. Large data storage devices were expensive. I always had to use a portion of my stolen funds to rent out a dataspace on the Net and build the dummy program there before launching it publicly, and every moment I spent creating the thing or letting it sit in Net storage was a bigger price I’d have to pay.

My stomach growled.

“And on top of everything else,” I grumbled myself. “You just had to open your big, fat mouth, didn’t you?”

I poked my petite body. There wasn’t an ounce of extra fat on it. A lot of richer ponies would pay top-credit for gene therapy to make them this thin. Too bad I got the package that came from being on a hacker’s diet rather than being able to eat all I wanted and then just magically splice away the fat later.

Then again, I would have more food if I just allowed myself a bigger cut of my thefts, or going beyond that, keeping them all for myself.

No, not going there, I scolded myself. The guilt would eat me alive, and I know it.

And, despite the fact that I spent most of my time playing Robin Pony, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor or spitting in the eye of the big bad corporations, I still felt guilty. I told myself it was because I didn’t think I was doing enough, that I wasn’t pulling off big enough projects. But if that was the case, what projects did I need to pull off? I’d been running this racket for years, and the system had, if anything, only gotten worse.

“Shut up, brain,” I mumbled, rubbing my temples. “Now is not the time.”

I stretched a final time before climbing out of the beanbag. Doing something, anything, would be better than sitting around and waiting for the project to finish uploading, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

Switching off the hologram projector, I placed my hoof on the scanner locking the front door. It accepted my genetic match and clicked open, electronically relatching as I exited into the hallway.

I trotted off towards the elevator. The hallway of my apartment complex was even grimier than my apartment itself. At least I tried to keep my living quarters somewhat passable, though of course only for my own admittedly low standards. I’d never seen the staff of this building run a cleaning or maintenance robot through this hallway once in the week I’d been here. As a result, the shag carpet was stained in numerous places with everything from mud to things I’d rather not try to identity, the wallpaper was covered in graffiti where it hadn’t rotted away entirely, and what lights weren’t smashed or burnt out flickered or cast dim shades.

The elevator ride down to the lobby was similarly filthy. I strapped myself into a moth-eaten chair with a tattered seatbelt alongside about a dozen other ponies as the mobile metal room dropped towards the floor, barely slowing on hissing cables as we reached the bottom. I still got jitters from riding the thing, but it was better walking down the hundreds of floors via stairwell.

The other ponies and I shuffled out onto the ground floor, avoiding eye-contact with each other as best we could. Unfortunately for me, the pitter-patter on the lobby windows signaled that it was raining again. Thick, blobby globules of chocolate milk cascaded down from sickly-pink cotton candy clouds, both tainted with all manner of magical waste.

Double-tapping my touchscreen amulet, a minimalist version of my computer screen appeared transparent in my contact lenses. I checked for what funds I had left, which wasn’t a lot. I had just enough to purchase a disposable umbrella from the auto-vendor standing outside the apartment complex, or just enough to purchase a virtual reality pod at the Internet cafe across the street. Or, alternatively, I might be able to get some food chips, perhaps even the flavored variety.

Closing the lens-view of my computer, I heard my stomach growl again, earning a few looks from passersby. I ignored them and it. Food chips would be a waste when I could see my beloved pancakes as soon as I sorted through the rest of my project, and a disposable umbrella wasn’t worth a dash across the street. I kept telling myself I needed to save up for a durable model, or even an enchanted raincoat, but those things were expensive. All it would take was for somepony to mug me in the streets (a pretty common occurrence in the slums of Canterlot) and I’d lose that investment. I knew better than anypony that it was best to invest in things that other ponies couldn’t steal.

Taking a deep breath, I made sure my wings were folded tight against my sides and dashed out into the street. I gasped as the acid rain pelted against my unprotected flesh. The sidewalks on either side of the street were a sea of ponies carrying disposable umbrellas and even a few with more durable models. I tried my best to whiz by them, but crossing the street was another matter entirely.

I narrowly managed to avoid a splash as a land vehicle rumbled down the road, a large automated cargo transport bearing one of the corporate logos. I did a quick double-check to make sure nothing was following it or coming from the other direction before leaping out into the broken, potholed asphalt. I sidestepped puddles and made sure not to slip on the rain-slicked blacktop before leaping into the relative safety of the sea of umbrellas on the other side and, eventually, slipping into the Internet cafe.

I breathed a sigh of relief, the sting of the acid slowly subsiding. At least it wasn’t like this all the time. Sometimes it stormed on for days, with bolts of multi-colored lightning and thunderclaps like guttural laughter, but other days it only lasted a few hours. Some lucky days, it didn’t rain at all.

Warm air blasted over me as I trotted past the vestibule into the Internet cafe, a precautionary measure by the proprietors to dry off customers on days like these. Nopony wanted a VR pod sopping with acidic wetness.

“Welcome to Joe’s,” greeted the pony on duty. “What can we serve you today?”

“Just a VR pod, three hours,” I answered, reactivating the lens-view on my touchscreen amulet and typing in the payment amount.

“Sure thing, we have a kiddie pod available in the back,” said the greeter, holding out the scanner for me to swipe for the payment with my amulet. “Are your parents here? I’ll need their okay if you want to log into any sites that aren’t kid-friendly.”

I paused, halfway through the action of holding out my amulet. I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth.

It’s a normal reaction, don’t lose your temper, I thought to myself.

“I’m not a child,” I said.

“No offense, kid,” said the greeter. “But you sure look like one to me. You don’t even have your cutie mark yet.”

He wasn’t lying. I glanced back at the bare whiteness of my flanks. It didn’t help that the entire rest of me was white, too, from my mane and tail to my leathery wings. Even my irises were milky-white, barely distinguishable from the rest of my eyes without my contact lenses, though I attributed that part more to my batpony-blindness than anything else.

“It’s a... Medical condition,” I lied. Or maybe it was the truth; I never knew, and neither did the Harmonist nuns back at the orphanage. Nothing any site I’d ever dug through on the Net had provided any answers either. I wasn’t an albino—genetic checks confirmed it—and I was most definitely too old to not have a cutie mark, but I didn’t. Go figure. “A magical birth defect. I can’t help it.”

“Nice try, kid,” the greeter said with a smile he probably thought was knowing. “Everypony tries it. Those video games with blood and guts are just too fun, aren’t they?”

“I’m not a child,” I insisted. My pipsqueak voice sure wasn’t helping matters. “Please, for the love of the Goddesses, I don’t want to go through this. Will an ID help?”

“If it’s real, then sure.”

I could have given it to him. I did have a real ID. Full Tilt was my legal name. I had a history of my IRL points of interest, from medical history to memberships of various corporate customer plans. The pony Full Tilt was very much an average, boring, low-level consumer in the eyes of the system. It was only Neverwas the rogue hacker who was a dangerous threat to society.

What I should have done is simply show him my ID. That would have been the smart, non-impulsive thing to do.

But I didn’t do that.

I grinned, showing him my pearly-whites, just as blank as the rest of me. He looked a little unnerved. Batpony fangs tend to do that to other ponies.

“Do batponies make you uncomfortable?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you harbor anti-batpony sentiments?” I pressed, using my amulet and lenses to do a little investigating. “Are you a batpony bigot? A fang-hater? Do you think of us as vampires?”

“Wait just a minute,” the attendant said, looking around nervously. “I’m stopping you because you’re too young. This isn’t a race thing.”

“Oh, I think it is, Trading Card.”

“How do you know my—”

“Or should I say, Card_Shark23,” I prattled on. “Does your manager know you spend most of your working hours playing online poker on your tablet? Or that you clog up the cafe server with your porn downloads?”

Trading Card the attendant looked pale.

“But none of that’s important right now,” I said quietly, leaning in closer. “Because it looks like you’re about to turn away a perfectly innocent customer just because she’s a batpony. I could conveniently forget all of this if you were to let me rent a pod, or I could stick my hoof up Card_Shark23’s ass and work him like a puppet as I donate all of your funds to an orphanage. Where do you think we should go from here?”

Trading Card shot me a frightened smile and accepted my payment, waving his hoof to the available pods. I smiled and thanked him, heading back.

Finding a vacant VR pod and ignoring the delectable scents from the cafe’s kitchen, I hopped in and closed the pod doors. I settled into the cushions as best I could, breathing a sigh of relief that I was finally in private once again. Beyond the thin shell of the pod was a bustling world of ponies, but in here, in the soundproofed darkness, I was safe.

The magical engines of the pod began revving, the enchanted panels of the interior emitting a faint yet steadily brightening glow. They bathed me with waves of magical energy, mixing with my brainwaves and slowly drawing my consciousness into the Netscape.

. . .

I popped into virtual existence as a featureless avatar, even blanker than my real self. The default setting for entering the Net from an unregistered access point was essentially a mobile store mannequin, all smooth, plastic-like hairless whiteness with indentations for the eyes, nose, and mouth.

The setting, however, was much more diverse. I was in a downtown version of Canterlot’s digital counterpart, which just so happened to be an eclectic mishmash of every form of fantasy and wish-fulfillment imaginable. Out here in the center-stage of e-commerce, the corporations owned prime virtual real estate and rented it out to smaller players. Thus, in this part of the Net, things were kept pretty clean. AI-controlled avatars of store mascots did little dances and sang songs, trying to entice shoppers with more credits than I into their stores. From there, consumers could select wares to have shipped to their real-world addresses.

The stores themselves were miniature cities in their own right. The Net was a vast void full of floating islands covered in neon signs, giant holograms that were purely visual even in the Net, and avatars of every size, shape, and detail imaginable. Avatars with leaf-green coats and vines for manes and tails entered virtual game worlds at islands that looked like cities made from giant arcade machines. Chrome robo-ponies shopped at floral boutiques, chatting with a floating flower mascot with cartoon eyes and mouth. The Canterlot Online Library took the supposed form of its original real-world incarnation before it was destroyed in the Corporate War, a fancy building with marble columns, gold reliefs of pony history, and windows showing moving illustrations from classical Equestrian literature.

I smiled despite myself, the vague indentations of my avatar’s mouth turning up at the corners. Outside in the real world, Canterlot—nay, all of Equestria, the whole world—may have been a wasted ruin dotted with islets of overly modern civilization, but here, on the Net, literally anything was possible. If it could be dreamt, it could be programmed.

My first destination was the Body Shop. Metamorphosis Biologicals’ online division ran this Net-wide franchise of avatar creation, rental, and storage facilities (presumably in the hope that if you liked your avatar enough, you’d pay them to gene-splice you into that form in real life). Walking through the aisles of unused avatar templates hanging lifelessly from the shelves, I popped into one of the changing booths. Just in time, too; the AI sales program looked like she had been headed my way.

In the privacy of the changing booth, I logged into my account. A full list of my premade avatars popped into view.

Making an avatar did cost credits, but once they’d been made, it only took a surprisingly small storage fee to save them away for whenever anypony wanted to use them. I always guessed this was to keep ponies interested in using the Net. It remained one of the main ways consumers shopped, keeping the economy going and the corporate society more or less stable. Well, as stable as it could be.

“Who I shall I be today?” I murmured to myself, swiping my default mannequin avatar’s hoof through the list of avatars. I had only a few true templates, but I’d accumulated a number of accessories, swappable skins, and various other easily altered features over the years. Some I’d bought, and others I’d programmed myself. Computer code was my element, and on the Net, a hacker was in their own, preferred version of reality.

I had a male dragon avatar, scaled down to pony-size and roughly the same proportions. Then there was the female Neighponese maiden in traditional kimono garb, though she did have nine fox tails. The list went on.

I’d been using the Neighponese garden hologram in my apartment all week, and so I had to admit I was favoring the kitsune avatar. I hadn’t been her in a long time, so why not? Sure, it might not have been the most culturally sensitive avatar, but there were more Neighponese ponies using anime-inspired avatars than there were Equestrian users, so I didn’t see the big deal.

Selecting her, my default blank avatar vanished and was replaced by the kitsune-pony. I did a few quick checks to make sure she was in proper working order, but the code seemed solid. After a few quick tune-ups to kimono-color and throwing on a bit of fox-fire to float around the avatar for the hell of it, I paid my latest storage fee and exited the booth.

“Did you find everything alright?” asked the sales program, startling me. This month, the AI was designed to look like a ladybug changeling with cute, innocent, and big friendly eyes.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, my voice coming out with a Skyberian accent. If the sales program was startled by the incongruity of a Neighponese-looking avatar speaking with the cantor of the pegasi from the frostbitten north, she didn’t show it. I’d have to change that in a moment. Then again, why not keep it? The Net was one of the few places I could afford to be spontaneous. “I was just leaving, actually.”

“Are you sure I couldn’t interest you in Metamorphosis Biologicals’ exciting new line of Pirate Adventure avatars?” she persisted. “Pirates are all the rage these days. You’d be the envy of all your friends!”

Friends, yeah, right, I thought sourly.

“No, thank you,” I told her, turning to head out into the Net at large.

“Are you sure?” she asked again, moving around in front of me. Her model froze for a split second, a wave of static momentarily glitching over it. “Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure?”

“The hell?” I said, taking a step backwards.

“Unauthorized access,” she said in a monotone voice laden with static.

My eyes widened. Oh, no.

Her eyes flashed, shifting from their orange color to a bright green, but only for an instant. The sales program froze once more, before looking at me with perfectly ordinary orange eyes.

“Are you sure I couldn’t interest you in Metamorphosis Biologicals’ exciting new line of Pirate Adventure avatars?” she repeated as if nothing had happened. “Pirates are all the rage these days. You’d be the envy of all your friends!”

I breathed a sigh of relief. From the looks of it, she hadn’t meant me when she said ‘unauthorized access.’ Somepony must have been trying to hack the sales AI itself, though I couldn’t imagine why. Any hacker worth their data could steal avatars directly from the store system if they wanted; why would anypony try to hack the sales AI?

Whatever the case, I told her no thanks once more before leaving the Body Shop with a mix of relief and trepidation. I’d rarely run into the work of other hackers, and I didn’t like doing so. Amateurs could draw a lot of unwanted attention. The smartest thing to do now was to simply get as far away from the Body Shop as possible.

Trotting through the plaza of the digital version of downtown Canterlot, the entrypoint for most Net users in the city, I smiled and took it all in. I brought up my menu, something only I could see, checking my funds. I had paid most of it to use the VR pod at the Internet cafe, and a little more to pay my storage fee at the Body Store, but I still had just a little bit left. Furthermore, I still had roughly three hours to kill before my project fully uploaded. It was my first real time off in about a month.

“Time to play some games,” I said to myself, heading over to the bridge from the entry plaza to the nearby arcade.

Guilt, helping poor, unfortunate souls the pathetic amount that I did, playing the ‘dashing’ rogue hacker, and spending more hours coding that any sane pony probably ever would could wait. Today, I was going to treat myself.

I used the last of my current credits to purchase entry into the arcade. The AI attendant accepting my payment was designed to look like an actual arcade machine, his pixelated smiley face appearing in the display screen.

“Thank you for visiting Unreality, Inc.’s Megarcade,” he chirped, printing out a series of tokens I could use to play. I moved to take them, but my hoof passed right through them like a ghost.

“Um…” I said, frustrated and a little nervous all over again. I was sincerely hoping I wasn’t starting to see a pattern here. “There’s a problem with the tickets.”

“Error,” the attendant said. I looked up to see the screen had gone pure bright green. I took a step backwards, considering logging out of the Net then and there. But he had said ‘error’ rather than ‘unauthorized access.’ Perhaps this wasn’t a hacker at all, and merely a glitch? Glitches happened all the time. One of a hacker’s main methods was to exploit them.

Speaking of which… If a glitch was right here in front of me, it could be the easiest entry into the arcade I’d ever received. The more sane part of me cautioned that this was a bad idea. Two digital hangups, one right after the other, was almost certainly a bad sign. Then again, I hadn’t been favoring that part of my brain this morning, as the run-in with the Internet cafe attendant attested. It was so tempting…

I brought up my menu, sending out a few probing programs into the arcade AI. The glitch had blown its defenses wide open, easily giving me full access. I was surprised; this may have been the easiest hack of my life. Something still didn’t feel right, but access to unlimited tokens was too tempting an offer to refuse.

Nullifying the previous tokens, I printed out a full stack of them before rebooting the AI. To Unreality, Inc., it would seem like the AI had simply rebooted itself after a random systems crash. I made sure; a hacker had to cover her bases. There’d be no permanent digital graffiti proclaiming ‘Neverwas Hacked Dis’ for this little job.

“Please enjoy your stay at Unreality, Inc.’s Megarcade!” the AI said cheerily, its green screen reverting to the smiling pixel-face.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, smiling back and entering.

Inside the tiny virtual city were seemingly endless hallways of arcade machines, each of which I could now play to my heart’s content with all the tokens I’d nabbed.

I trotted past some old favorites, classic retro titles. My interest was more in the games towards the back, however. Some of the bravest Tech Hunters had rescued some truly great game worlds from pre-Crash ruins, and I planned on seeing if any new worlds had been installed since my last visit.

Much to my glee, one had indeed been installed. The arcade cabinet itself was covered in mythological illustrations of the Goddesses battling monsters from the First Age. Pinkie Pie, Goddess of Laughter, used music to sooth a swarm of savage parasprites before they could eat the world. Rainbow Dash, Goddess of Loyalty, called down thunderbolts upon her fabled nemesis, Lighting Dust the Betrayer. Above the game screen, Twilight Sparkle, ArchGoddess of Magic, wove a spell that divided the warring, primal energies of light and darkness.

“Play as the Goddess’s chosen hero in the age of myths and monsters!” announced the arcade cabinet. “Defeat the beasts of old and save the world, or betray the Goddesses and overthrow them to rule it! It’s your story, play your way!”

Memories of copying down ancient scripture back at the orphanage came flooding back to me. That had been one of my many punishments for occasionally sneaking into the Mother Superior’s office to play primitive web games on her computer. The Harmonist nuns had always told me I was destined to burn in Tartarus for being such a bad pony, saying my soul was tainted by my love for the dirty corporate products of this world. They couldn’t have been more wrong about using my name with ‘love’ and ‘corporate’ in the same sentence, but perhaps they had been right about one thing.

If I was a bad pony anyway, then I wouldn’t have to worry about feeling a petty sort of satisfaction in overthrowing the Harmonists’ precious Goddesses, even if it was only in a video game. A part of me felt guilty about this, more so than I usually felt about everything, but I’d made up my mind.

I walked over to the arcade cabinet and hit the ‘PLAY’ button. The screen lit up, growing larger and larger before it engulfed me in a blinding light.

“Would you like to choose a game-appropriate avatar?” asked a voice.

“No,” I replied.

The self-contained virtual world of the game was forming around me. Pristine, grassy hills, an unpolluted clear stream, a bright blue sky free of any smog. A short ways away was an ancient village made up of thatched-roof cottages and cobblestone streets. Even further away was the familiar illustration of what Canterlot looked like in ancient times, before it had spilled over from its perch on the side of the mountain and covered the whole peak, as well as the entire surrounding area.

“Welcome to magical kingdom of ancient Equestria!” announced the voice. “Your first quest awaits you in the nearby village of Ponyville.”

Ponyville? I thought. Really?

I trotted off in the direction of the village, enjoying the rustic scenery. The VR pods were designed to stimulate all the senses, and so I felt the breeze and smelled the farmland just as much as I saw the old-fashioned countryside and heard the conversations of NPC ponies I passed along the way.

It all looked incredibly realistic, more so than any VR simulation I’d played thus far. If the gameplay turned out to be as good as the graphics, I’d definitely have to come back here once I’d relocated.

As I stepped into Ponyville itself, however, the game world suddenly froze. It lasted only a fraction of a second, but it was still noticeable. It seemed it was indeed too good to be true; a simulation of this quality must be hell on the frame rate.

Still optimistic, however, I trotted further into town, searching for any NPC that looked like they might have a quest to deal out. I half-grinned as I spotted a library inside a large, old tree. If I remembered those sacred texts I’d copied so long ago, that’s where I’d find Twilight Sparkle back when she dwelt amongst mortal ponies. If anypony would have a quest for me, surely it would be her.

The game world froze again as I neared the library. It lasted a full second this time. That frame rate looked as if it was truly going to be annoying.

I stopped in my tracks as the shadow of the library-tree loomed over me. A shimmering glitch of static and inverted colors run up the tree, momentarily flickering from a tree-shaped library into a shining crystal castle before it resumed its original shape.

What the hell?

“One more glitch, and I’m trying a different game,” I murmured. Glitches were great when hacking a program, not when trying to enjoy a video game.

I opened the door to the library and stepped inside. As I did so, the door slammed shut behind me. The library floor dissolved into a pixelated mess, and I fell through. I was falling below the geometry of the game world now. Looking up, I could see the NPCs still walking about on an invisible ground. The hollow husk of the library looked down on me, as if mocking me.

“Logout of game,” I huffed.

Nothing happened.

“Logout of game!” I snapped.

The virtual world above me flickered out of existence, leaving a white void.

My eyes widened in fear for the first time since I’d entered the Net.

“Log out of Net,” I commanded.

The white void remained omnipresent.

“This isn’t supposed to be possible,” I breathed, looking around. I mean, it was theoretically possible, but it was highly illegal to keep a pony logged into a VR pod when they chose to leave it. Unless, of course, they were being kept there by a higher power.

“Please be a malfunction,” I whimpered. Maybe my name had finally appeared on the Corporate Alliance’s Anti-Crime Watchlist after all. Was this all some trap?

“No, no, no!” I shouted. I didn’t want to be arrested for cyber-crimes! I’d heard about what they did to hackers, even to small fries like me. At best, they would rape my brain with dark magic to pull out every thought I’d ever had, saving it for later so they could undo whatever damage I had done to them as best they could. At worst... I didn’t want to think about that.

“Greetings and salutations, Neverwas” spoke a voice that was not that of the arcade cabinet’s announcer. It wasn’t even that of the AI attendant that should have been running the whole arcade. “My name is Zero One. Let me tell you, I can’t believe how lucky I am. Every Unreal in the Net has been looking for you, and I finally get to claim the grand prize for finding you! Maybe I’ll even get a promotion!”

They knew my hacker tag?! No, no... No. This was it. It was all over. If somepony knew my tag and had caught me in the act, be they the Corporate Alliance or not, my life was officially over. I had no friends and no enemies who would (or should) actually recognize me. Nopony knew my name but me. Or... So I had thought.

But, ‘Unreal?’ That sounded familiar. In the few seconds of relative freedom I had left, I wracked my brain, remembering something. ‘Unreals’ were the corporate lingo for the special AIs that made up the bulk of Unreality, Inc.’s work force. It seemed I’d been caught by the crazy corporation.

The void took on a smoky-green hue. Lines of code in glowing-neon emerald appeared from the ether, collecting and forming into something. It took on a vaguely equine form, dark flesh forming with inlaid circuitry. Startlingly realistic pony eyes appeared on the very unrealistic pony body. A mane and tail of verdian fire erupted into being.

Illustration by TheOmegaRidley

“It’s nice to meet you,” the pony-thing said, extending a hoof for me to shake. When I didn’t take it, he asked, “Isn’t this how flesh-ponies greet each other?”

I said nothing, but raised an eyebrow.

Flesh-ponies?

“Nevermind,” he said, retracting his hoof. It had a masculine voice, so I assumed it was a ‘he.’ I suppose it didn’t really matter, but still, I was curious. If my life really was over and I was doomed to mind-torture via dark magic and then death, I didn’t see the harm in being a bit curious.

“How did you catch me?” I asked.

“We’ve had Unreals probing the Net for ages,” he explained. “I just happened to be in the local dataspace and got lucky. When you threatened that attendant at the Joe’s Internet Cafe, your hacking pattern seemed familiar, so I followed you as you entered the Net. I tried to confirm it by taking over the Body Shop AI, but they booted me out. I got enough from their databanks to recognize more of your Net activity patterns, though. A final confirmation via messing with Unreality, Inc.’s own systems gave me three red flags, all I needed to get authorization from up top to sequester you.”

I stood there, frowning in the void-space. It all made sense. He’d really and truly caught me. I’d finally simply slipped up.

“What happens now?” I asked dryly. “Dark magic brain-raping? Will there be a bunch of armed guards to haul me away when I exit the VR pod?”

“A job offer,” he said, smiling that eerie smile. Those teeth just weren’t quite in tune with pony proportions. I wondered if that was intentional programming.

“What?”

“The corporations—all of the Big Four—have been searching long and hard for you. You’re the last product of your kind. Invaluable. Specially-designed.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Please, I can pay you—I have a big project that’s almost done. I’ll have credits soon. I can pay you off from your employers. Just, please don’t arrest me!”

It was a lie, of course. I didn’t even know if AIs could use credits, but I was desperate.

“I told you, my employers don’t want to arrest you,” he said. “We want to offer you a job. Its all the other corporations who want to arrest you.”

To say I was utterly confused was an understatement. Was this some sort of delay tactic while the IRL employees of Unreality, Inc. stormed the Internet Cafe and searched for my pod? It didn’t matter anyway; I was stuck.

“What kind of job?” I asked.

“We want you to become a Tech Hunter for Unreality, Inc.,” he said.

A Tech Hunter? Me?

“But I’m just a hacker,” I said. “Tech Hunters are big, strong mercenary types. They know how to handle themselves IRL. They steal pre-Crash technology. How the hell do you expect a scrawny little blank-flank batpony like me to survive as a Tech Hunter?!”

“You’ll receive training, of course,” he said. “You’d also be given a team, both in the real world and in the Net. Unreality, Inc. would assign you a full task force of tactical Unreals and a squadron of robotic guards.”

Okay… Not what I was expecting. Corporations didn’t even give real Tech Hunters that kind of help. But, still, I’d die in two seconds out in the real world of corporate warfare!

Zero One must have seen the look on my face.

“We want to employ you because your skills go beyond hacking merely computers,” he said. “I can’t tell you more unless you agree to work for us. We wouldn’t want you to know about the full extent of your abilities unless you were on our side. Otherwise, you’d be a serious threat to us.”

“I really, truly, have no idea what ‘abilities’ you’re talking about,” I said. “But you said ‘agree’ to work for you. I have a choice in the matter?”

“Of course,” Zero One affirmed. “Choose to work for us, and we’ll pay you more than you could ever imagine. You’d live in luxury.”

As well as a proponent of the system, I thought bitterly. I’d rather die than do that, but dying might be the only other choice here. Come to think of it, I do hate the system, but I REALLY don’t want to die. What if… Maybe if I just played along for now, at least until I can figure a way out of this?

“And if I refuse?” I asked.

“If you refuse, we won’t pursue you,” he said. “The job offer will remain open, but we will not pressure you into accepting it.”

What, really?

I must have looked skeptical, because he flashed me that disturbing smile and nodded.

I didn’t know what he was playing at, but if there was any real choice of getting out of this without becoming a drone for the corporate system, I was taking it.

“I’ll have to decline,” I said hesitantly.

“Very well,” he said, still smiling. “Thank you for your time. But remember, if you ever need a helping hoof, Unreality, Inc. is ready and willing to take you in!”

The world blinked out of existence. I blinked a few times myself, a split appearing in the darkness that had suddenly appeared overhead. I raised myself out of the virtual reality pod and stepped out into the general din of Joe’s Internet Cafe. There were no armed guards, no security robots, nothing out of the ordinary.

Had that really worked? Was this some kind of prank, or was I really, truly off the hook?

I trotted out of the establishment, paying no mind to the wary glances I got from Trading Card, and stepped onto the street. It had stopped raining. The sun was out, and even a lot of the puddles had evaporated. The sunlight’s rays streamed down through the midmorning sky, glinting off the glass sheets of countless windows on the skyscrapers all around. Holo-commercial projectors and giant tele-billboards displayed images of ponies enjoying the products of the corporations, same as always.

I couldn’t believe it. I smiled.

A low siren began to wail throughout the concrete-and-steel valley of buildings. The holo-commercials and tele-billboards all changed their content. Images of ponies playing and being good little consumers shifted into images of me. My avatar list, my address, my hacker tag alongside my real name, and even, somehow, blurry photos of my IRL self appeared on every visible electronic surface I could see.

Different billboards and projectors read differently. Each of the Big Four, minus Unreality, Inc., was broadcasting a different message. Each company was advertising a bounty for any information on me, or my capture, or my head. The bounty amounts were ludicrous, and each kept on rising as they tried to outbid the others in real time.

“I’m just a fucking hacker!” I whined. No matter what damage I had done to the corporations, it was nowhere near enough to warrant this kind of response. There was something far bigger at play here, and I feared I might not live long enough to find out what.

At least I knew one thing, though. This was how Unreality, Inc. ‘encouraged’ its would-be employees to accept their job offers. Zero One had been telling the truth when he said that Unreality, Inc. wouldn’t pursue me. It was every other corporation that would do it instead.

I could either accept Zero One’s job offer… or run for my life.

Chapter 1.1

I had to bite my tongue to keep from hyperventilating, and let me tell you, biting your tongue isn’t something you want to do when you have fangs. My eyes darted from right to left, up and down, all over my current visible spectrum without any too obvious neck-jerks or head-swivels. The bounties for my arrest by three of the Big Four megacorporations were still blaring out of every holo-commercial projector, tele-billboard, and radio.

And I was standing in the midst of it all. I had no way of knowing if it was just this stretch of street or the entire city (though with my luck I highly suspected the latter), but every inch of electronic surface space was screaming for my arrest. The screens in the Joe’s Internet Cafe behind me, the holograms between the skyscrapers above and around me, and even the smart glass of the skyscraper windows themselves were broadcasting my image with an ever-rising number of bounty bits as each megacorporation tried to outbid the other.

Maybe nopony’s noticed yet, I thought desperately, my mind racing a mile a moment.

Mostly, the passing ponies were too preoccupied by the images and sounds shouting for their attention—more so than normal—all around them. I reasoned that I had about five seconds or so before some of the shiftier pedestrians began glancing around in equal parts nervousness and opportunistic hope.

I had to get out of here. Had to get anywhere that wasn’t here, but where the hell could I possibly go? My apartment was off limits. If Zero One had found me in the Internet cafe, then Unreality, Inc. was certainly keeping tabs on every single iota of space in the immediate vicinity, and probably my apartment most of all.

“Hey…” I heard somepony say off to my right. In my peripheral vision, I could see a rather gruff pegasus stallion in the herd of pedestrians. I also noticed that he was staring right at me, as was everypony else. For the first time I can remember, the omnipresent sidewalk crowds had stopped moving, and even more worryingly, they had formed a sort of clearing around me. Most of the ponies were looking at me with nervous eyes—if the megacorporations wanted me this badly, I very well may be more dangerous than they could imagine—or more valuable. That second possibility was shining in the eyes of the pegasus as he lunged towards me.

I spread my wings and leapt into the air, flapping furiously as I headed—somewhere. Anywhere. For now, ‘anywhere’ meant up and over the street.

I heard a scrabbling behind me and risked a glance backwards. The pegasus stallion was spreading his wings, crouched and ready to spring after me.

“Hey!” he shouted, taking wing after me.

He was drawing something from his coat. Whether it was a gun or a knife or worse, I did not want to find out.

I snapped my wings to my sides and plummeted, allowing the pegasus to overshoot me. Dropping to the acid rain-slicked asphalt of the street, I darted towards the sidewalk opposite the cafe. At the same time, a lumbering land vehicle screeching to a halt in order to avoid hitting me and not, I assume, out of the goodness of its driver’s heart.

I barely had a chance to glance at the massive automobile before I made a break for it, and what I saw did not bode well. Unlike the jury-rigged old jalopies of recycled solar cells and cobbled-together metal, this behemoth on wheels was the modern equivalent of what the ponies of old might have referred to as a tank. The modern pony, however, called it an ‘ARC,’ an ‘Anti-Riot Car,’ and judging from the lack of megacorporate logos, this ARC was piloted by a very militant civilian.

“Get back here!” the pegasus shouted. He hadn’t fired yet, so I had to assume he didn’t have a gun. If he got desperate, though, I wasn’t about to rule out him throwing his knife.

I reached the other sidewalk and leapt into the crowd of ponies. Some shouted, others grabbed for me, and quite a few others were ruffling in their pockets for their own means to take advantage of the situation. Thankfully, though, most of the ponies were simply dashing away in a frenzy, not wanting anything to do with danger and the Big Four. I silently thanked them, but even more, I thanked the fact that even somepony as freakish as I am can disappear in a large enough crowd.

Have to get away, have to get away! I thought, but I had no idea where I was actually going. My apartment building was right in front of me, on this side of the street, but I knew running into its lobby would be tantamount to suicide. All I could do was weave my way through the throng of bodies and rush down the sidewalk, my heart racing a mile a minute, away from what might be my last temporary home.

Gunshot cracked the air. Somepony screamed. I didn’t feel anything burning through my flesh, so I assumed whoever had shot had missed. Either that, or they had shot somepony else before that other somepony could reach me first. More screams and a huge grumbling signaled something else entirely.

I glanced back to see ponies rushing out of the way of the very ARC that had almost run me over. It was a huge six-wheeler, twice as wide as most automobiles in the slums and an almost featureless brick of thick metal. It was capped with a gun turret and a few reinforced cameras, all of which were swivelling in my direction. Thank the Goddesses it didn’t fire, although I quickly realized it simply didn’t want to obliterate my valuable ass, damn the rest of the ponies.

The ARC was accelerating. I heard a few screams from ponies who had probably been too unfortunate to get out of the way in time. My eyes widened, my blood running cold. My limbs nearly froze up, almost sending me tumbling over on myself.

Gunshots were one thing. Ponies were mugged in the streets all the time. I hated it, but it was an undeniable fact of life in modern Canterlot, particularly out here in the slums. But for poor, hapless souls to be ground under the massive wheels of an ARC simply because the driver wanted me?

“Activate amulet voice commands,” I whispered as I ran. I only had a few moments before the ARC was upon me. Either I leapt into the air and opened myself up to other flying ponies, or I remained in the quickly dispersing crowd until the ARC inevitably caught up to me, turning many more poor souls into red smears on the concrete in the process. “Display local hackables.”

A highly transparent feed of my computer flared to life in my contact lenses. Things I could easily hack sped through in a list, counting everything from traffic lights to smartphones to augmented ponies’ Net-connected cybernetics.

“Hack ARC, serial number #432910,” I whispered. I glanced back. The ARC was a few yards behind me. I could feel the heat of its engines pumping into the surrounding atmosphere. “Shutdown!”

The ARC’s lights immediately shut off, the engine’s rumbling died down, and the wheels slowed to a crawl until the whole thing skidded to a stop.

I breathed a quick gulp of relief, but I wasn’t done just yet.

“Hack ARC 432910 registered owner, deploy homewrecker virus,” I said, not without a hint of satisfaction. Normally, I could never make use of my stock of high-profile viruses. They were too big, too cumbersome. They were powerful, but that made them easily spotted, and there were far better coders in the Big Four than little old me outside the inner circle. I’d do a lot of damage in a short time before the police AIs located me and shut me down for good.

Now, however, none of that mattered. My back was metaphorically against a wall, and I was not going down without a fight.

“Enjoy your new life,” I muttered under my breath. When that driver finally reactivated his technology, he’d find his bank accounts dry, his home sold, and whatever private files he’d had locked away now public knowledge. Essentially, I’d brought him down to around my level on the social ladder.

I felt good, sort of, for about a second or two. I got to play Robin Pony one last time.

“There she is!” shouted a new voice. I looked up to see a young, scrappy-looking pegasus mare pointing at me, somehow having been able to find me in the crowd. Or rather, I must have left myself wide open when shutting down the ARC. A quick glance around showed that the crowd had run on.

The pegasus mare was probably just a few years younger than I was. She didn’t have a weapon on her, but her friend must have.

I heard somepony scream as the ground rose up to meet me, and it took a me a moment or so to realize the scream had come from me. Numbness in my hoof quickly subsided into fiery, all-encompassing agony. I glanced back to see one of my rear legs with a clean shot through it, a brief splatter of red on the concrete.

Struggling, I rose as best I could into a sort of sitting position to watch a gang of youths approaching me cautiously.

“Careful,” said the mare in front, apparently the one who had shot me. She still had her smoking gun drawn, a model so incredibly old it looked like it might be a family heirloom. “Turn off your electronics, don’t let her hack you.”

I could have tried, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I did anything at this point. Any damage I did the corporation they sold me to could easily undo. They’d live like gods, just for nicking a single pony on the street.

“Who’s got the highest bounty?” the mare asked, pressing her gun to my head. It was a foreleg-mounted apparatus, designed for earth ponies like herself. A little robotic arm would swivel the gun in whatever direction she pointed while leveling it when she needed to use all four hooves.

“It keeps changing,” said another of the little group, a scrawny stallion youth. Who were all these kids to be hanging out with a mare who could have been their mother? Come to think of it, maybe she was their mother. Maybe this gang was just a family.

“I say we keep her alive, for now,” said the pegasus mare, still hovering above, keeping a lookout for anypony who might swoop in and take me from them. “Only one of the Big Four wants her dead, and I think we’d get more if we let the ones who want her alive fight it out for us.”

“Or fight you for me,” I said, wincing in pain.

“Quiet!” the older mare said, shoving the barrel of the gun against my head. I closed my eyes, shuddering. I could practically feel my lip quivering. I wasn’t sure if the wetness on my face was from spattered blood or tears. I suppose didn’t really matter.

I had two options, and I really, really wanted to save the second option only for an absolute last resort.

Taking a deep breath, I said, “You really think they’ll pay you anything?”

“I said quiet!” the mare snapped, raising the butt of the gun and smacking me across the head. I gasped, the shock from the smack seeming to amplify my already screaming leg. I breathed haggardly for a few moments and spat out some blood.

“What’s she talking about, ma?” asked the scrawny stallion. So it seemed they were a family after all.

“Nothing, Artichoke,” the mare said, keeping her eyes trained on me. “Now run along and find a phone booth and call the Corporate Alliance. Tell them we have the prize.”

“They already know,” I said. “They have cameras everywhere. They’re sending ponies right now. They’ll take me from you, and you’ll get nothing. What’s to stop them? All you did was find me and stop me for them.”

“She’s not right, is she, ma?” the stallion, apparently Artichoke, said with a strained look.

“Of course not, Artie,” the mother said. “Now go make the call, before somepony else takes her!”

“They’ll kill your family if you protest, Artichoke,” I spoke, my voice cracking. “Is getting rich really worth letting your family die?”

“Shut up!” the mother shouted, hitting me with the gun again. “Don’t listen to her, Artie.”

She turned to me, fire in her eyes, and leaned down close.

“Don’t you be planting lies in his head,” she said. “We don’t need to be rich. We just need to not starve! You’re some fancy criminal, you must be richer than we’ll ever be. How could you understand what we need?”

I… Hadn’t thought of that. They were really so desperate that they were willing to kill to save themselves from a slow, painful death. I took a second look at their ragged clothes. These poor souls very well may live on the street, braving the acid chocolate milk rain with only flimsy cardboard boxes and collecting scrapped tech for the auto-recyclers to get enough credits to get by, and even then, just barely.

“You don’t need to do this,” I whispered, flinching as she raised her gun again. “I’m not some rich criminal. I’m just a hacker. I barely make enough to eat, too.”

“What if she’s telling the truth, ma?” asked the pegasus, overhead. I noticed that Artichoke had also not moved any closer to the nearby payphone.

“Look, I could send you some credits,” I pleaded. “No viruses, no tricks. I steal bits and pieces from the corporations all the time. I’d pay you. They wouldn’t.”

The mother looked hesitant. She didn’t want to believe me, to think that her promise of more money than she’d ever imagined, a better life for her family than she could ever provide on her own, could be worth less than whatever I might promise. But I saw the doubt in her eyes. If I was right, and the corporations were just spinning lies, then I was the best she was going to get.

Her warring expressions of fear and hope and doubt were clear. It wasn’t fair, and I agreed with her. But, then again, nothing in this world was fair. Fairness died out a long, long time ago, ages before the Crash, before even the Corporate War. Maybe even before the end of the First Age, back when the Goddesses supposedly ruled the world in an era of peace and harmony.

I wanted to believe something like that could happen again. However, it didn’t do me much good if I wasn’t around to see it happen.

“The corporations thrive on the system that keeps ponies like you on the streets,” I said. “If you help them, you’ll just keep the system going. I’m trying to bring that system down. I can’t do that if I’m dead.”

The mother faltered for a moment, half-lowered her gun. She didn’t drop it, didn’t click the safety back on, but it was no longer aimed at me.

“I think—” she started to say.

It took me a few moments to regain my bearings, or at least, any semblance remotely related to even marginally having control over the situation. One moment, the mother was trying to say something. Before that moment had properly ended, my world had gone red. I screamed, or I think I did. My throat felt raw from it, but it may have been Artichoke and his sister, or any combination of our little standoff group. I furiously wiped the red from my face as I heard something hitting the ground, and backed away hastily from the fallen, headless corpse of the mother.

I stopped when the back of my head bumped up against what felt like the barrel of a much larger, much more modern firearm. I shakily turned around to see a towering unicorn stallion in a specially-padded trench coat. His horn was aglow, levitating a twin-pronged weapon that crackled with magical energy. It was an Icarus Industries product, of course, but a lot of it looked customized.

“I have the bounty,” he said, looking directly at me, although he had to have been speaking to whomever was on the other side of his earpiece. “I’ll take my credits now.”

He must have not liked the response, because he furrowed his brow, eyelids lowering.

“Fine,” he said. “I’ll keep the bounty alive until you collect her.”

“You shot her,” I whimpered.

He said nothing. His eyes never left me, but his weapon also never swayed from my position. At such a close range, it would probably do to my entire body what it had done to the mother’s head.

I couldn’t stop it. I felt the bile surging up, and it came out.

The unicorn—he must have been a professional bounty hunter—took a single step backwards, all that was required to stop my vomit from spattering his coat. Eyes forward, gun aimed. No blinking, primed to fire.

“I really didn’t want to do this,” I said. He didn’t tell me to be quiet. I wagered he was listening to my every word, just in case a single speck of it became useful information later, but he was not about to interact directly. I wasn’t a pony, I was prey. I wasn’t even his prey, just some he was holding for a bigger, badder beast.

There was a rumbling in the air. A big, dark shape was slowly turning into view from between two skyscrapers, making its way down this stretch of urban canyon. In the olden days, it would have been called an airship or a zeppelin, but this large, dense construct was definitely not powered or kept airborne by magically-manipulated gases. Rings of fire swirled around the bottom, and spurts of flame randomly billowed from the towering, miniature city of smokestacks on its back.

A golden, stylized sun was emblazoned on its side, as well as the corporation’s name: Icarus Industries. Compartments in the sides were popping out, raising into turrets with extendable cannons. Laser-sites, harmless red dots that signalled something far, far worse, appeared all over the streets, dancing across the sides of skyscrapers and roving down the street and sidewalks. Most of the crowd had fled the area by now, and the sites certainly weren’t directed at my captor or myself, so I assumed the ship was warning any would-be corporate competitors in the area.

Like I said, I really didn’t want to do what I was going to do next, but I was out of options. At the top of my lungs (not that that was saying much), I shouted, “Zero One, I accept your job offer!”

The bounty hunter continued to say nothing. If not for the floating beam weapon, he might as well not have been there at all.

“What?” he said suddenly. For the first time since he’d appeared, he looked confused rather than stoic and menacing. “Repeat?”

The ship’s lasers zoomed all about the place, much more quickly, almost erratically. The ship emitted some sort of siren at irregular intervals. The bounty hunter flinched, almost glanced back at the ship, but stopped at the last second.

“Yes, I understand,” he said, though he was frowning, his brow furrowed all the more.

The Icarus Industries airship emitted fervent spurts of flame. Huge billows of industrial grumbles shook the air, rattling the windows of the surrounding buildings. The ship was speeding up. All of the laser sites were converging, speeding along the streets and towers and the undersides of the sickly-pink cotton candy clouds, merging into one huge dot that illuminated the bounty hunter in a crimson wash of light.

“Command?” the bounty hunter said. “Call off the crosshairs. Command? Command!”

He lowered his beam weapon for the first time. I dared not move; he could still whip it up and blow me to wet smithereens in an instant. But still, I could see his attention was no longer solely focused on me.

“You’re not command,” he murmured, barely audible to me under the thunderous foghorn bellow of the Icarus Industries ship. “Who are you? How’d you access this signal?”

The bounty hunter winced, and even I could hear the piercing whine of sharp static that blared from his earpiece. His horn’s glow flickered, his beam weapon momentarily dropping unsteadily in his telekinetic glow.

I took a tentative step forward, but it wasn’t fast enough. He’d righted himself and steadied the weapon’s aim, pointing it right between my eyes. I quickly froze. The Icarus Industries ship’s laser sites moved off of the bounty hunter and once more began sweeping the surrounding environs.

Whatever you have planned, Zero One, do it now! I thought.

As if on cue, the air shimmered, all throughout the urban canyon, and not just from the fire-induced heat-haze of the imposing ship. There was a brilliant flash of white, a crack of thunder, a mighty whoosh of air, and suddenly a looming shadow had appeared over the bounty hunter and I.

The bounty hunter looked up, and for the first time, fully took his aim away from me. He pointed his beam weapon at the sky, the weapon crackling with magical energy as he switched it from low power to high. I looked up as well.

The oddest airship I had ever seen had appeared out of the ether and slipped into reality immediately above us. It was a ramshackle amalgamation of every sort of transportational machine imaginable, from every era, all bolted, welded, and duct taped together with seemingly no clear planning whatsoever. A steamship was nestled between a space shuttle and a cruise ship, with an old-fashioned ironclad naval vessel and a winged air vehicle tacked on for good measure. The whole thing was covered in robotic arms and a hodgepodge of random weaponry, everything from an anti-particle cannon to a popgun. The whole thing was held aloft by spinning propellers, whirring jet turbines, hot air balloons, and even a collection of regular-sized party balloons in a great, numerous cluster of colors. A giant mast of sails seemed to vaguely, somehow, steer the unwieldy contraption.

Illustration by NukeChaser24

I smiled. Unreality, Inc. engineering, at its finest. The only unifying principle of their technology seemed to be that it worked simply to spite the fact that it shouldn’t.

Hatches opened in the side of the colossal jigsaw puzzle of an airship, and out poured hordes of equine-shaped robots. Each was just as ramshackle as the ship from which they had originated.

“The bounty’s not worth this,” the bounty hunter snorted. He turned to me with a wry smile and gave a slight nod of his head. “Whatever you did to make them want you, you either really impressed them, or you really, really fucked up.”

I half-smiled in response and nodded. His horn sparked and then he, and his beam weapon, vanished in a flash of light.

I breathed a sigh of relief. I had no idea what Unreality, Inc. really wanted with me, but at the same time, I knew less of what the other corporations wanted. Better the devil you sort of kind of knew rather than the one you didn’t, or so I hoped.

The Icarus Industries ship was swinging its laser sites to the incoming horde of robots and their ship, shooting out blindingly brilliant fireballs. Many collided with the robots, incinerating them instantly and leaving barely anything other than a fine mist of liquefied and then vaporized metal.

The thing about Unreality, Inc., though, was that it wasn’t about to let this battle pan out in any sort of logical fashion. More spare-parts robots were pouring from the ship than could have feasibly fit inside of it, and those that made it past the fireballs of the Icarus Industries ship landed on it. They sprouted wires and mechanical tubes and tentacles, burrowing into the dark metal of the ship. The blasts of fire came slower and more erratically, until the fireballs stopped exiting their cannons at all and simply blew up within the ship. The airship listed, the flames spurting from its smokestacks turning a multitude of colors as the ship slowly, but with increasing speed, fell to the ground.

It crashed into the street, sending a rumbling shake throughout the urban canyon, sending me sprawling. Land vehicle alarms went off, tele-billboards and holo-commercial projectors shorted and displayed glitched images. The force of the impact shattered several countless floors of windows in the surrounding buildings.

“Greetings and salutations,” said a familiar voice behind and above me.

Picking myself up from the broken asphalt of the ruined street and wincing from the pain in my leg, I saw one of the many ramshackle robots flying down to land a few meters in front of me. It was oddly more uniform than the others, with only a few random inconsistencies in metal and era of technology.

“Zero One?” I asked.

The robot made an exaggerated bow.

“It is nice to meet you in the relative realms of reality,” Zero One said. “My dataform has been authorized to operate this robotic body for the duration of this mission. Will you accompany us to the headquarters of your new employers?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“As you have accepted our job offer, no.”

“I figured as much,” I sighed. “Lead on.”

Zero One leapt into the air, multicolored flames propelling him from jetpack-like rockets on his sides. I spread my wings and followed him up, noting that several of the robots that had remained around the ship were flying relatively close to me, probably ensuring I didn’t try to make a break for it. I certainly wasn’t planning on doing so; even if they wouldn’t have blasted me with Unreality, Inc.’s infamous brand of chaotic magical energy, the fact remained that I’d been shot. If I didn’t seek medical attention soon, I’d bleed out, or at the very least lose a leg. No hospital or automated med pod in the city would be able to keep me safe with the whole of the Big Four after me. As it was, my shot leg hung painfully as I struggled to keep my wings flapping despite my irregular angle, finally taking me through the provided opening in the side of the ship…

...And into a mad pony’s fever dream.

The inside of the Unreality, Inc.’s aircraft was easily far larger than its exterior should have allowed, as the sheer quantity of Unreal bots attested. That alone, though, would have at least made sense. Lots of important establishments or the like used powerful magic to shove extra space where there shouldn’t be any. Canterlot was a crowded place, and space was a precious commodity.

The inside of the ship, however, seemed to be a void. A violet sky with no discernable ground below stretched out before me. The door to the outside closed behind me as soon as I entered, and I turned to see that the irising portal was simply a hunk of metal floating in the air. Much like the Net, the interior of the void seemed to be filled with tiny floating islands, and on each island there was some sort of mechanical apparatus, each just as bonkers and nonsensical as everything Unreality, Inc. engineered.

One island had a large yet very old-fashioned computer embedded in its side, vacuum tubes sticking out of its top. I could even see spinning reels of magnetic tape behind its glass casing. Tubes ran out from this islet to numerous nearby floating rocks. One held a large series of monitors displaying every conceivable angle of the outside world around the ship, where an Unreal bot was piloting the craft with a video game joystick controller. Other tubes led to things that must be engines (albeit a cross between a fusion reactor and a potbellied stove), repair stations for damaged Unreal bots, and a hotdog stand. I was about to ask what the inorganic, mouthless Unreal bots would want with a hotdog stand, but thought better of it.

Zero One led me to a floating island further from the control console, where a med pod was waiting. It was the finest piece of medical technology I’d ever seen outside of Net pictures, something only the richest of the megacorporate elite could ever afford to use. Whatever these bots wanted me to do for them, it must be very, very important indeed.

The pod opened for me and I hastily landed inside, settling into the padded interior. Zero One stood outside while the pod doors closed.

“I’ve never been in one of these things,” I spoke aloud, not sure if I would be answered by Zero One or whatever AI must be running the med pod itself. “How do I work it?”

The pod opened before I’d finished speaking, and it took me a moment to realize that it had already healed my leg in the split second the doors were closed. I quickly climbed out, looking back at my leg. There wasn’t so much as a hint of a scar; I couldn’t tell where the bullet had actually gone through.

“It’s that easy?” I gasped.

“Unreality, Inc. takes pride in ensuring the health of all of its employees,” Zero One said. Given his robotic voice, I couldn’t tell if there was a hint of pride or irony in his voice, if either.

“If it’s that easy, why isn’t there a free med pod this advanced on every street corner?” I asked quietly, though I could feel a hot pang in my chest. Years of acid chocolate milk rain exposure, common diseases, anything that street family must have lived through daily could have been cured by one of these in an instant. If I’d known these higher-end pods were that advanced, I would have focused all of my hacks on medical engineering firms from the get-go.

“That would not be economically feasible,” Zero One said.

“Because your company can make more money by charging more for these than most ponies will ever make?” I spat.

“Because we would not have the resources to do so,” Zero One said. “This med pod can only work for one pony, the pony whose DNA it has been hard-coded to reconstruct. This pod has been constructed exclusively for your use, and producing these en masse would both bankrupt Unreality, Inc. as well as produce less than one-one hundredth of the amount necessary to supply all of Canterlot. This also does not account for the inevitable need for maintenance and power supply, much less the threat of thievery and vandalism.

“Furthermore,” Zero One said, speaking much lower this time, to the point I could hardly hear him. “It’s not my company.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, for a moment, at least.

“Then why not make lower-end med pods more affordable and available?” I spoke.

There was a moment of static in his speech before he said, “I do not know.”

Zero One led me to a small passenger area with a few seats. I sat down, him standing guard beside me, silent for the rest of the trip. The other Unreal bots continued to fly about the purple void, performing maintenance on themselves or the exposed parts of the ship, plugging into computers for some inane tasks, and buying hotdogs. I still never figured out what they did with them, but they bought them all the same.

After a few moments of travel (or what I assumed was travel, as there was no sensation of movement in the void), Zero One announced that we had arrived.

The metal door hanging in space irised open, and he fled through it with me close behind. In just a few short moments, it seemed the ship had flown—or more likely, teleported—to the other side of Canterlot.

“Welcome to Unreality, Inc.’s headquarters,” Zero One said. “More commonly known as the ‘Freak Factory’ and the ‘Twisted Tower.’”

To say that it was a lot to take in was like saying that it hurt a bit to look at the sun through a telescope.

The headquarters complex took the form of two sections. One was a colossal tower that bent and twisted and looped and knotted over and back and through itself. How it remained standing despite the obvious affront to gravity and architecture it presented was anypony’s guess. Much like virtually everything related to Unreality, Inc., it was covered in a hodge podge of windows and made of every sort of building material and style imaginable, from the stained glass of a Harmonist temple to ship portholes, medieval castle towers poking out from the side of Art Deco murals, and gothic flying buttresses beside wooden scaffolding.

The second component of the structure, however, was much more interesting, solely because in every way the tower conformed to the company’s bizarre standards, this section did not. A humongous rectangular box-like structure was loosely connected to the tower by a series of skybridges. The box was almost entirely featureless, smooth gray metal without windows, smokestacks, or seemingly any exterior doors. It was also far larger than the tower; the tower may have been taller, just barely, but this huge second facility was easily more voluminous.

This second section must have been the Freak Factory, Unreality, Inc.’s original stronghold from before the Crash. Legend had that its automated defenses and hidden secrets from the Corporate War were still largely active, tantalizing yet keeping everypony out but the bravest and most skilled of Tech Hunters. Even Unreality, Inc.’s highest CEOs and shareholders couldn’t gain access without being threatened by… Whatever was in there.

I sincerely hoped that when Zero One said I would be working as a Tech Hunter, I wouldn’t be venturing into places like that. I was a hacker; surely they’d have me on some remote detail rather than going into the field.

I gulped and tried in vain to convince myself this must be true.

Even if I got the comfiest job in the world, though, I remembered I’d still be working for one of the Big Four, the very entities I’d sworn to oppose when I first set out on my own.

The first opportunity I have, I’m making a break for it, I thought.

Zero One led me to one of the exterior landing pads jutting out from the side of the topsy-turvy Twisted Tower. There were a few hodgepodge aircraft floating lazily about the facility, much like the one that had brought me here, but most of the skyways were clear. Non-megacorporate aircraft were forbidden here. Looking beyond the boundaries of the facility’s airspace, I could see the skyscrapers and other businesses of the inner city, the heart of Canterlot. Countless aerial vehicles flew about the airspace, creating a sort of bubble.

As we trotted through the hangar beyond the landing pad, I noticed that nopony was here but the Unreal bots. Many in the hangar were maintenance models, repairing docked aircraft and combat bots, but there wasn’t a single flesh-and-blood pony in sight.

“Where are all the flesh-ponies?” I asked wryly, remembering what Zero One had called me when we’d first met.

“The CEOs and chief stockholders and elite employees all work on the top floor,” Zero One informed me. “The majority of the workforce here at Unreality, Inc. is composed of Unreals, such as myself.”

“One of the largest businesses in Canterlot doesn’t offer jobs to the masses?” I asked.

“Ever since the Crash, the company has decided it wishes to maintain a tighter control over its employees,” Zero One said. There another burst of static in his voice, and he stopped for a moment, nearly stumbling. He shook his robotic head before resuming his normal walk. “Sorry about that. I must be experiencing a bug; I’ll have to drop by maintenance after I introduce you to the boss.”

I nearly choked.

“The boss?” I asked. “As in, the head of the entire company?”

“Yes.”

My blood ran cold, my heart quickening as I followed Zero One into an elevator. It was a much smaller model than the clunky car from my apartment, which I supposed I may never see again. That didn’t bother me so much; I’d only lived there a week, but I would have liked to get some of my belongings. That also didn’t matter quite so much, though, as what Zero One was implying.

The absolute heads of the Big Four were essentially the modern equivalent of gods. Nopony who wasn’t in their inner circle, even the most elite of Tech Hunters, ever met with them. Nopony in the general public even knew who they were. They were simply the shadowy figures pulling the strings behind the curtains, the puppeteers whose flick of a hoof could raise skyscrapers or flood the streets with megacorporate police. They held such mythic status that some even doubted they existed, believing the companies were more of an oligarchy of the top shareholders and such.

I knew the truth, though. I’d been hacking long enough to hear things from the darkest corners of the Net, coincidences too convenient to be anything but hints at a much, much bigger truth. The heads of the Big Four were very much singular for their respective megacorporations, despite how impossible it seemed for one pony to wield and maintain that sort of power.

The elevator dinged as it reached the very top of the Twisted Tower. The doors slid open, and I hesitantly walked out alongside Zero One.

The penthouse office was surprisingly simple, by both CEO and Unreality, Inc. standards. It was a large hallway-like space with fountains and a small artificial stream lining the sides. The floor was tiled with marble, light-orbs hovered in the air like the breezies of ancient myth, and a desk rested at the far end. Beyond it, a wall-to-ceiling window displayed the Canterlot skyline, albeit inverted. Whether that was because the image was enchanted to be upside-down or because the entire office was upside-down due to some sort of gravitational trickery, I couldn’t say.

The desk, however, was empty. Nopony sat in a huge swivel chair behind it. There wasn’t even a computer or any paperwork on the desk, just a simple hologram projector gem.

There was, however, an earth pony mare half-lying down in front of the desk. She had her rear end stuck up in the air, and a hulking earth pony stallion dressed in black cloth like some sort of cultist executioner was smacking her repeatedly in the rear with a paddle.

The mare didn’t cry out each time she was smacked. She laughed uproariously, as if the pain were the funniest joke she’d ever heard.

“What the fuck?” I blurted.

“Greetings, Madam President,” Zero One said. “I have brought you the hacker known as Neverwas.”

This is the President?! I thought, screaming in my mind.

“Call me Full Tilt,” I said. It wasn’t like they didn’t already know my real name.

The earth pony spoke between thwacks and bouts of laughter.

“I’ll stick with-” Thwack “-Neverwas for now-” Thwack “-you can call me-” Thwack “-Everlast,” she said. “Okay, big guy, that’s enough for now. I’ll see you later.”

She winked at the earth pony with the paddle, who nodded at her and winked out of existence. The President, Everlast, stood up and turned to face us, a giddy smile on her face. I noticed before she turned that her backside wasn’t the slightest bit reddened from her little… Whatever the hell that had been. Had he really just been a hologram? I mean, I didn’t understand the point of sadomasochism in the first place—ponies were free to do whatever they wanted, just preferably not in front of me after blackmailing me to work for them—but why put on a show at all if the spanks had been virtual?

“I’m ever so honored you accepted my friend request,” Everlast said, trotting over to us and extending a hoof. “Or was that a magazine subscription? Timeshare? Whatever the case may be, or even April-be or June-be, I’m the opposite of negatively gracious you chose Unreality, Inc. for all your forced-employment needs!”

I chuckled nervously and extended my hoof to meet hers, only for it to phase through mine. Her whole body flickered like a…

“You’re a hologram,” I realized.

“No, I’m Everlast,” she laughed. “I’m just careful not to meet anypony in the flesh, blood, bones, and internal organs. I’m safe and sound and sight and smell in my own little slice of pie-radise.”

“You… Don’t meet with ponies in person...” I tried to make sense of her speech. “...To keep yourself safe from potential attackers?”

“And don’t forget to remember germs and dirt and viruses, the nasty little bits and pieces and feces of the world we could all do without,” she chuckled.

Oh, I thought, trying to reason this all out, with hopefully moderate success. She’s a germaphobe.

“Shall I leave you be, Madam President?” Zero One asked. How was it that an AI designed by the most nonsensical company in Canterlot was easier to understand than the mare in charge of it all?

“Feel and taste free and inexpensive to remain lacking inertia,” Everlast said. “I have much to discuss with little miss Neverwas, and you’ll be a not-small particulate of the whole he-bang. Some would say ‘she-bang,’ but I don’t want to be sexist with the turn-of-phrase.”

She vanished and reappeared sitting on her desk. I sat where I was and rubbed my temples.

“What exactly did you ‘hire’ me to do for you?” I asked, not sure I’d be able to understand a lick of her explanation. Two-year-old foals who could barely speak Equestrian made more sense than this.

“Didn’t Zero One tell you all about the details and retails?” Everlast said, frowning. Zero One emitted another burst of static. “Oh, I see he did do that. How wonder-fool. We conspired and hired you to be a Tech Hunter for our organization station.”

“I get the Tech Hunter part, I think,” I muttered, certain she could hear me. “But, and forgive my language—”

“I will be most forgiving of your Equestrian tongue,” Everlast interrupted. “But go on.”

“—What the hell are you talking about?” I continued. “I’m just a hacker, and not a very good one, if you were able to find me. What could I possibly do that your own hackers and AIs and robots and army of megacorporate personnel couldn’t do for you? There are mercenaries, bounty hunters, hell, you could even bribe a dragon with gold and jewels to be a better Tech Hunter for you than I could ever be. I’d be torn to shreds in two seconds out beyond the city, or even in the Crash-locked parts of Canterlot.

“What makes me so damn valuable?” I finished.

“Your lack of melanin, for one or two or three things,” she said.

“My what?”

“You’re pale,” she said. “You have no pigment. You’re a whitey, a ghostface, a blank-flanked overgrown mare-child whiter than a basement-dwelling jar of mayonnaise.”

“Huh?”

“You’re not like other ponies, Neverwas,” she whispered conspiratorially. “Haven’t you ever wondered why you lack a mark that is cute on your butt that can toot?”

I knew I shouldn’t be getting angry at her, much less showing any signs of anger. Pissing off one of the most powerful mares in Equestrian history would not go well for me, no matter how much she needed me.

But damn it, if she didn’t start speaking plainly—

“Your lack of a cutie mark marks you as a magical anomaly,” she spoke bluntly, shooting me a withering look. “Come on, Neverwas, it’s no fun if you don’t even try to keep up.”

“Wait,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “The whole weird speech thing is just to mess with ponies?”

She grinned mischievously. I supposed when you were as rich and powerful as she was, and not even physically present, you could afford to be eccentric.

“Back to the matter at hoof and tentacle and wing and horn and pseudopod and sandwich condiment,” she said. “We need you because you’re a magical anomaly, one of the few in recorded history. As I’m sure you know, the largest and most influential magical anomaly in history was the Crash.”

“You think I’m somehow connected to the Crash?” I asked, dumbfounded. “That happened decades before I was born!”

“I’m not going to go too much into it now,” Everlast said. “The big brains down in the think tank stumbled upon something they think may be big, something that may be… Revolutionary. They can explain it better than I can. But first, Neverwas, tell me what you know about the Crash.”

“I know about as much as anypony else,” I said, still not quite comprehending what she was getting at. “It was a major catastrophic event that ended the Corporate War. None of the Big Four claim responsibility for it, and nopony knows what caused it. Some think it was an anti-megacorporate faction, like the Unionists, or just a genius inventor who accidentally stumbled upon something too big for them to control. Some think it was the wrath of the Goddesses.”

“That last theory was always my favorite,” Everlast said.

“You believe it?” I asked, surprised.

“Not in the least,” she laughed. “I find it hilarious.”

“Don’t believe in the Goddesses?” I said. “I was never really certain about where I stood in the Harmonist faith. I was raised in a Harmonist orphanage, but—”

“Oh, no, I believe in the Goddesses plenty,” Everlast spoke.

We stood in silence for a moment. When I was sure she wasn’t going to elaborate, I continued.

“And that’s all I know,” I said. “That’s all the nuns taught us in history class.”

“They didn’t tell you what the Crash actually was?”

“Didn’t I just say what it was?” I asked, frowning.

“You said what it did,” Everlast corrected. “Subtle distinction. “Not what it was. Did the nuns ever tell you the scientific explanation?”

“Have you ever met a Harmonist nun?” I scoffed. “They ‘don’t believe’ in science. They think all magic is the will of the Goddesses, and they think it should only be used in a raw form, not in conjunction with technology. They told us that when the Crash happened, the Goddesses took their magic away from technology and messed it all up. Obviously, that didn’t happen, because we still have working magical technology today, but something caused a lot of the tech from the Corporate War to lock up.”

“That explanation may be truer than you think, sort of, maybe, kind of,” Everlast chuckled. “Though the Goddesses didn’t ‘take away’ magic from technology. In fact, no magic was involved at all, and that’s what caused the problem.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Come on, Neverwas,” Everlast groaned, leaning forward and phasing her holographic hoof through my forehead in an imitation of tapping it. “Use that big hacker brain of yours! Code yourself a solution, or at least steal it from somepony else!”

I looked at her warily.

“The Crash wasn’t a magical problem,” Everlast sighed at last. “It was the most un-magical event in the history of the known world. It was an instantaneous and total cessation of all magic.”

I raised an eyebrow, trying to hide a smile.

“That’s impossible,” I snorted when she merely raised an eyebrow back at me and grinned all the wider. “Whether the Goddesses are real or not, magic is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Even scientists agree on that.”

“For one moment, that law was repealed,” she said. “It was an anomaly, much like yourself. We think the two anomalies might be connected. Trust me when I say we’ve researched this long and hard. We think you could find the one thing no other Tech Hunter could ever locate. We think you could bring us and allow us to control the cause of the Crash.”

Chapter 1.2

Zero-One and I rode down (or up, or sideways, or whichever way this crazy elevator worked) to the ‘Think Tank’ in silence. Well, relative silence; every once in awhile the Unreal bot would make that odd static noise. I didn’t mind too much, seeing as my mind was far more preoccupied with calculating my chances for survival as a Tech Hunter.

Even with all the perks that would come from being an inner-circle employee at Unreality, Inc., even with all the training they’d give me and the resources at my disposal, I’d still be a physically small second-rate hacker. Real mercenary types died in this line of work literally every day, and most of them had been dealing with high-class weaponry and pre-Crash security systems since foalhood.

What chance did I have?

And then, even if I did manage to become the biggest, most badass Tech Hunter in all Equestria… I’d be risking my neck to make an already powerful megacorporation even more powerful so it could make the already shitty lives of common citizens even more shitty.

I sighed.

“Still not satisfied with your new employers?” Zero-One asked, his electronically-synthesized voice only backed by a bit of static this time.

“It’s not as if it’s a big secret that I hate everything your company does and stands for,” I said. “Hell, I spent most of my life trying to break the system that enables big companies like this from stomping on the little guy, and now I either work for you all or get killed or worse by the rest of the Big Four.”

Zero-One responded with a loud burst of static before his voice finally made its way through, albeit a bit roughly.

“No system is perfect,” he said. “Even the most well-programmed AI can’t plan for every contingency. However, Unreality, Inc. is not evil. I hope you will come to understand that.”

“I know that as a megacorporate AI, your programming doesn’t allow you to go against your creators,” I said quietly. “But if you could think independently, I wish I could show you how horrible life is on the streets because of the Big Four.”

“Unreality, Inc. is not evil,” Zero-One repeated after more static.

That was really starting to get annoying, actually. I hoped the scientists in this so-called ‘Think Tank’ could fix that. I would have tried to hack him and correct the problem myself, but my touchscreen amulet had locked up. Everlast called it a ‘preventative measure,’ saying no technology without Unreality, Inc.’s approval would function in the Twisted Tower.

“Nopony thinks they’re evil,” I sighed again. “Everypony thinks they’re the hero of their own story, but the story is currently a tragedy for most ponies and the authors are uncaring companies.”

“Unreality, Inc., exists to serve ponykind,” Zero-One said. “Without the unreality energy we supply, Canterlot—the whole of Equestria, the whole of the world—would be powerless… and worse.”

“Then why do you have to charge so much for power?” I demanded.

Zero-One turned to look at me, as if about to say something important.

What I got instead was more static.

“Wait, why do I even bother? You wouldn’t see things from my point of view even if you could try it.”

Static, yet again.

I silently thanked whatever goddesses might be listening when the elevator ‘pinged’ and the doors slid open. I trotted out, expecting to see some sort of research and development lab full of ponies in labcoats fixing up Unreal bots and typing away at computers.

What I saw instead was very much… Not that.

Like everything in Unreality, Inc.’s control, the Think Tank seemed to be both more unintuitive than expected and far more literal. Stepping out of the elevator landed Zero-One and I on a sort of balcony overlooking what might as well have been a lake. I couldn’t imagine how many millions of gallons of water must be lapping the sides of the building in gentle waves just a few feet below the overlook.

The water was incredibly clear, although I could smell sea salt. It was easy to see why; a massive coral reef had grown at the bottom of the pool, which must have been dozens of feet deep. Bizarre yet beautiful sea creatures swam through the waters, long multicolored eels slithering among the tentacle-like fronds of anemones, schools of tropical fish darting about spiky sea urchins, and all manner of crabs, stingrays, and other, stranger sea life sliding in and out of view around myriad corals.

A miniature indoor ocean was far from the strangest thing about the place, though. Huge metallic tubes covered in barnacles ran from the ceiling (which was painted to look like a bright blue sky with a large solar lamp) into the midst of the reef. Smaller pipes and tubes and wires ran off the sides of the central mechanisms and plugged into what looked like the reef itself.

“Welcome to the Think Tank!” greeted a sprightly voice, startling me.

I turned to see something I’d only ever seen in books and movies, a type of pony that I had thought couldn’t possibly live this far from their pollution-proof biodomes off the coast. A sea pony, her mane a mass of fins, her hooves covered in the front by sorts of web-like protrusions, and gills in the side of her neck, had surfaced out of the water by the balcony.

“H-hello,” I said, trying not to stare but failing utterly.

“You must be the new Tech Hunter,” she said. “It’s great to meet you. I’m Shanty, and I’ll be acting as your liaison with the Think Tank today.”

“I thought the Think Tank was the company’s science division,” I said, trying and once again failing to understand anything Unreality, Inc. did.

“Yeppers!” Shanty said with a beaming smile of pearly whites. “The Think Tank is very much looking forward to meeting you. Are you ready to begin your training?”

“I’ll be training here?” I asked, quirking an eyebrow. “I can’t swim…”

“No worries at all!” Shanty said, smiling even wider, if that were possible. “The Think Tank will teach you all you need to know. In fact, feel free to request a few hobby skills just for fun, if you like.”

“Huh?”

“Full Tilt here is a little slow on how we do things,” Zero-One said.

“Gotcha,” Shanty said, winking at Zero-One. I’d given up trying at this point to think on what that implied. “I’ll just go ahead and get things started, then.”

And with that, Shanty leapt forward and plopped an octopus on my head.

The next thing I knew was darkness.

Like I said, I’d given up trying to understand, but that didn’t mean I had to like each new weirdness, understood or not.

. . .

When I came to, I seemed to be submerged in a dark pool, shimmering lights fading in and out in the distance. As the funk of unconsciousness slid away, my eyes widened and I desperately started flailing my limbs about, trying to swim upwards. The only problems were that I had no idea which way was up or how deep I was and, as stated earlier, I couldn’t swim. Life in the Canterlot slums doesn’t really provide a lot of swimming opportunities unless one wants to pay an exorbitant country club fee or test one’s luck in a large puddle of chocolate milk acid rain.

Bubbles escaped my lungs as I panicked.

I went on like this for several moments before I realized that not only was I not moving, I didn’t seem to be blacking out again. I could feel liquid in my lungs, but I wasn’t starving for air. I took a few tentative breaths, and was rather surprised to find that I didn’t seem to be drowning.

What the hell? I thought after my panic slowly turned to tentative confusion.

As it became clear that I was somehow not in immediate danger of drowning, the shimmering lights in the distance swam closer, revealing themselves to be a school of bioluminescent fish. Their scales were almost entirely transparent, and their tiny organs emitted a bright glow. There wasn’t much to illuminate, though, aside from my own submerged self and seemingly infinite leagues of ocean.

The glowing fish swirled about me in patterns too regular to be natural, finally swimming in front of me and forming a rough approximation of an equine face.

“Welcome, Neverwas,” spoke a voice as the fish swam in such a way as to imitate a pony’s jaw movements. The voice was as clear as if I had been having a conversation above the water. “My deepest apologies for the rather unconventional nature of interface, but alas, I have yet to formulate a more terrestrial-friendly method of psychically linking coworkers to my brainwaves.”

“You’re… The coral reef?” I spoke, only a bit surprised at this point to find that I could do so as well.

“Precisely,” the fish-face affirmed. “I am a single consciousness composed of countless organic processing units, a mass of grey matter equal to uncounted ponies possessing but one mind. I am what ponies call the Think Tank.”

“Then none of this is real,” I said, glad that I wasn’t several miles underwater, drowning or being crushed by pressure or not. As a batpony, I could abide darkness, but nothing with wings likes being this deep. “You said ‘psychic.’ So this is like a biological Net-link?”

“Astute observation, Neverwas,” the fish-face agreed, seeming to glow a little brighter as it smiled. “My organic nature makes my dataspace un-hackable through any conventional means. Also, unlike the Net, I am able to download and upload directly into and out of the personae inhabiting other grey matter.”

“You can steal my memories?!” I gasped, suddenly very, very frightened indeed. Was this megacorporate hive mind about to brainwash me into a mindless drone, making me think I’d never been anything else?

“Not at all,” the fish-face chuckled. “I can copy your memories, which I am doing so now, I must admit, for the megacorporate records. I cannot, however, delete them. That would require physically damaging your grey matter rather than remotely transmitting or receiving bio-data.”

I ‘breathed’ a sigh of relief in the form of a stream of bubbles, although my heart was still pounding. The logic seemed sound enough, but what if I was only being made to think that it was sound? No. No, not letting paranoia take over. If that was the case, I was already screwed, so I might as well go on acting as if it wasn’t.

That didn’t exactly mean I was happy about the Think Tank recording my memories, though. As if reading my mind—Hell, it had to be reading my mind, because otherwise we couldn’t be having this conversation—the glowing fish-face smiled apologetically.

“Rest assured, management does not exploit your memories,” the Think Tank said.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not a huge invasion of privacy!” I shouted.

Everything I’d ever done was now in this ichthyoid construct’s own memories, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.

“Fuck this,” I whined. “Can’t you bastards leave anything alone?!”

I don’t know what made me more furious—the fact that my mind was now an open book for Everlast and her cronies, or the fact that the story within was a painfully boring tale of an even more painfully alone, pathetic mare.

“I seem to have upset you,” the Think Tank said. “I apologize, I had no intention of—”

I merely glared at the glowing fish-face, which frowned, furrowed its fishy brow, and dispersed into the darkness.

I was left floating in the void.

“They can’t hear me when I do this,” I heard a faint voice coming from all directions at once. “I’ll tell them it’s the biological equivalent of a glitch. I believe you terrestrials refer to such a phenomenon as cranial flatulence, otherwise crassly known as a ‘brain fart.’”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making a point,” the Think Tank responded. “Do you think I want to be trapped in a tower in a mountaintop city? I should be spread across the ocean floor, amassing knowledge and sharing it with the world. I shouldn’t be so much the slave of Unreality, Inc. that I have their copyright insignia genetically branded onto my DNA."

I was quiet for a moment.

“You think you have it rough?” the Think Tank went on. “You can leave this building! You can meet life forms not set up by appointment. You can choose what to eat, what to wear, what to do in your leisure time. I don’t even get leisure time! I have to think constantly, pumped full of synthesized nutritional coolant so that my own grey matter doesn’t overheat. My thoughts are legally the property of my creators. I own nothing of who I am, not even in metaphysical conceptual form.”

“Then…” I struggled to speak. “Why do you do all this?”

“Because if I don’t,” the Think Tank responded. “Everlast will kill me.”

The glowing fish swam back up to me, reforming their pony-face.

“Sorry about that, Neverwas,” the Think Tank said loudly. “I seem to have experienced a temporary malfunction."

I didn’t speak right away. Perhaps, for now, I should just emulate the Think Tank and play along.

The Think Tank’s fish-face winked at me as I thought so.

“Now, concerning your relation to the Crash,” the Think Tank said. “I believe Everlast likes to say that the Crash was a cessation of magic? Her phrasing is a bit of a misnomer. The Crash did not nullify magic so much as it robbed all technology of magic for one-one-hundredth of a nanosecond before letting it return.”

“That sounds sort of like what the Harmonist nuns always preached,” I noticed. “They said the Goddesses took their gift of magic away from ponykind for merging it with ‘unholy’ technology. You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

“To give a grossly simplistic lesson in basic magic—as I see you understandably flunked that class at your orphanage, more on that later—the magic of each pony is as unique to them as a hoofprint or signature,” the Think Tank went on. “When the magic returned from the Crash, it all bore touches of six rather notable signatures.”

“The Goddesses?” I asked, not knowing whether to laugh, scoff, or both. “You’re kidding, right? Even if the Goddesses were undeniably real, how would you know what their magic was like?”

The Think Tank was silent for a moment, but I could have sworn I heard Zero-One’s static seeping through the water.

“I’m not allowed to tell you that,” the Think Tank said as the static subsided at last.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “But what does this have to do with me?”

“Everything,” the Think Tank said. “Neverwas, you aren’t just connected to the Crash. You are a Crash yourself.”

“...Huh?”

“The Crash was a movement of magic from a place where it was to a place where it was not,” the Think Tank said. “And you, Neverwas, are a place with no magic.”

“That’s impossible,” I said. “All ponies have magic.”

“Not you, Neverwas,” the Think Tank pressed. “You’ve always wondered why you have no cutie mark. Now you know.”

“That’s…” I said quietly. “I need a stronger term than ‘bullshit.’”

The Think Tank’s fish-face chuckled.

“It will probably take time in the field to prove this to you,” the Think Tank finished. “But we believe that, with proper practice, you will be able to do what the Crash did in miniature. We believe your unique nature will allow you to take magic as well. Such an ability would be invaluable to exploring the Crash-locked ruins, the most magically and technologically dangerous places in the world. It won’t be a cakewalk, but with you, we believe it will be possible.

“Now, shall we get to uploading you with combat skills?”

. . .

With a popping sound, I came to on the balcony beside the Think Tank’s pool. Shanty had just pulled the psychic octopus-helmet off of me. I still felt sore, both from the tight spots on my head where the octopus’ suckers had been yanked off and from where I had collapsed to the floor when it had been plopped onto me in the first place.

I stood, shaking my head and groaning. My skull was pounding, though whether that was the psychic side effects of meeting the Think Tank or merely my spill, I wasn’t sure.

“I’ll see you next time,” Shanty said with a wave of a webbed hoof before diving back into the pool.

“That was… Something,” I murmured.

Zero-One responded with a burst of static.

“We really need to get you fixed,” I said, heading towards the elevator. I idly wondered if it should be called an ‘elevator’ at all if it moved in more directions than just up-and-down.

The Unreal bot merely nodded as we set off.

The ride to wherever my new megacorporate overlord was sending us next was a lot quieter than the first ride. I had known things were bad, but this whole ordeal just hammered about a trillion more nails into the coffin before burying said coffin under a mountain of cement.

The first chance I got, I was considering fleeing, changing my name, splicing myself a new look, and never hacking another computer again. The Big Four would almost certainly find me all over again, but by now I was nearing the point where I was willing to risk it.

The elevator deposited us into a more traditional-looking armory. The place was so much exactly what a megacorporate military facility should look like that I was surprised it belonged to Unreality, Inc. at all. Unreal bots grabbed or deposited various weapons from or into automated storage facilities. Others were being outfitted or repaired with new robotic parts by non-combat drones.

Wordlessly, Zero-One led me through the mass of killer robots towards a wall at the very end. It seemed to be another weapons rack, but no two weapons were the same, and none of them bore the Unreality, Inc. logo.

“These are Artifacts,” I realized.

Zero-One nodded.

“If you’re to be our top Tech Hunter, Everlast thought you should have access to our top weaponry,” he said. “Each was recovered from Crash-locked ruins and restored to working order as best we were able. They’re all far more advanced than any modern weapons.”

I stepped up to the weapons rack and walked along side it. A part of me knew these were the tools of destruction Unreality, Inc. used to oppress the masses. Another part, however, was sort of excited. I’d read plenty about Artifacts, but never in my life had I thought I’d be able to so much as touch one, let alone use one. I had no desire to kill somepony, but if I was going to be using these against Crash-crazed robots and automated security systems, why not at least try to have a bit of fun with them?

Large laser cannons, smart guns, throwing knives that appeared to be made of crystallized lightning… They may have looked vaguely similar to their distant grandchildren on the streets today, but I’d seen Net footage of what babies like these could do.

There was one curious-looking Artifact I hadn’t expected, though. Swords had gone out of style in the First Age, but this odd katana appeared to have been cut out of a long, sharp computer chip. Its blade was forged from an emerald-like material I couldn’t identify, and it was covered in golden circuitry that sparked with azure magic as I approached.

I’d never touched a sword, but I’d seen plenty of old Neighponese action movies and played plenty of arcade games where the heroes hacked and slashed away with beauties like these. Probably useless against anypony using a blaster, but it was a neat novelty all the same.

I picked it up, gasping as I felt a shock. I didn’t drop it, however. Instead, the katana’s hilt extended a metallic ring around my hoof. I tried shaking it off, but the ring held tight. Almost as quickly, the blade folded in on itself, wrapping around the metal ring as if it were some sort of oddly fashionable bracelet.

“What the hell?” I wondered aloud.

“Looks like it likes you,” Zero-One chuckled.

“Likes me?” I echoed, trying to pry the ‘bracelet’ off my foreleg. It shocked me again, stopping any further attempts.

“Some of these old Artifacts have AI of their own,” Zero-One said. “It seems this one is eager to be out in the field again.”

“It’s going to have to wait a bit longer,” I snorted, extending my hoof. “Get this thing off of me, will you?”

“I doubt anything I could do would remove it,” Zero-One said. “Pre-Crash AI are infinitely more complex than standard Unreals. It’d probably scramble my databanks just for trying. Besides, why not use it? I’m sure the Think Tank downloaded some fencing programs for you.”

“Because a sword isn’t going to do me much good against anything that can shoot,” I snapped. “And the Think Tank didn’t give me any skills. It just said, ‘Let’s begin your training,’ and I woke up.”

My eyes widened as Zero-One’s rockets extended and fired, propelling his metal body towards me. Blasters opened up on his sides, charged and ready to fire.

Instinctively, I darted to the side, my hoof jutting out and swinging. As if on the same wavelength, the katana unfurled and sliced clean through Zero-One’s metal body, spilling his wires and internal components. Multicolored Unreality fuel bubbled on the floor, sparks flying from his mechanical organs.

“Zero-One!” I gasped.

There was a burst of static, and then silence.

One of the other Unreal bots from further back in the armory trotted up and took a look at the carnage I’d just caused.

“It was an accident!” I shouted, although even I wasn’t sure anymore. I’d acted without thinking. On the one hoof, I supposed that meant I had actually received a fencing program, but on the other, I’d just slaughtered the closest thing I had to a friend in this crazy job.

Wait, friend? He was just as much a slave as I was at this point, if not more… Screw it, sure, why not call him a friend?

Save for the fact that, of course, he’d just attacked me and I’d just killed him.

“Excellent swordsmanship,” the other Unreal bot said. “Now, shall we begin our first mission?”

“What are you talking about?!” I screeched. “We need to get a medic—a mechanic, something—”

“Whatever for?” the Unreal bot asked, cocking its head. “Oh, I see the confusion.”

It presented me with an exaggerated bow.

“Nice to meet you for the second time,” he said. “I am Zero-One. These aren’t our bodies, Neverwas. Think of them as gloves. Unreal AIs exist in the megacorporate master computer and pilot the bots remotely. All I had to do when you sliced that one was borrow this one from another Unreal.”

“You mean, what…” I stammered. “Then why did you attack me?!”

He replied with only static, before adding, “Now that that’s settled, shall we begin our first mission?”

I stared at him blankly.

“Everlast wants us to reactivate the Freak Factory,” Zero-One said. “Currently, ninety-nine percent of it is Crash-locked, and Unreality, Inc. operates entirely on the one-percent capacity to which we have access.”

I thought of the huge, rectangular building connected to the Twisted Tower. If Unreality, Inc. could be a member of the Big Four operating on only one-percent, I shuddered to think of what they could do at one-hundred.

“I see your trepidation,” Zero-One said. “Rest assured, in addition to your new skills, you’ll have myself and a team of other Unreal bots to accompany you. Furthermore, you were questioning why we charge so much for Unreality energy, weren’t you? Now you know why. Think of how cheaply and extensively we could power the world when operating at full capacity.”

I did think about that, for a moment. What he said made sense, and I sincerely hoped that Unreality, Inc. did indeed make life better for everypony when they had the means to do so.

I only hoped giving them the power to make things better didn’t mean they’d simply do just what I knew them to always do.

After grabbing a few more things from the armory (thankfully none of which seemed to have a clingy personality), Zero-One and I took the elevator to one of the sky bridges leading to the Freak Factory. This particular sky bridge took the shape of a long, finely-furnished corridor with plush rugs, ornate vases, and floor-to-ceiling windows. I peered outside as I trotted down the hallway with my companion.

Out beyond the megacorporate airspace, aerial vehicles zoomed about the heart of downtown Canterlot. The cotton candy clouds had mostly blown away, revealing patches of sunlight through the smog.

This far from the slums, I imagined ponies lived quite comfortably. I wondered if they could ever imagined what life was like for the rest of us... Much the same way, I suppose, I hadn’t realized the full scope of what ponies on the bare streets had to live through.

That family that had tried to catch me was missing a mother. I’d never known my parents, but I couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have somepony so dear taken away like that. I cringed as I realized that the children might have been taken in for questioning by one of the Big Four just for having gotten close to me.

I shook my head, trying—almost successfully—to convince myself that I would make things better. Somehow.

The Freak Factory loomed up above us, around us, below us, and seemingly from every direction the closer Zero-One and I drew to it. I gasped as the sky bridge warped and twisted, a brief ripple shuddering through it and, for a fraction of a moment, shifting the finely furnished hallway into a dark corridor of dank stone, scurrying rats, and flickering torches. In the blink of an eye, it had resumed its ‘natural’ appearance.

“What was that?” I asked Zero-One, glancing outside the window at the Freak Factory once more. While from the air it had seemed to be a solid, colossal metal brick, now its edges seemed to bend and curve around us, making it impossible to determine its true size and shape.

“The concentration of unreality energy in the Freak Factory causes… Unusual effects,” Zero-One told me.

“More unusual than everything else Unreality, Inc. does?”

“You have no idea,” Zero-One agreed, his voice once again underlaid by a bit of static. “You ponies perceive Unreality, Inc. as unusual because it’s trying to go with the flow of what lies inside the Freak Factory. The company is not the cause of the strangeness, but an echo of it.”

“Then what is the cause?” I chuckled nervously, not quite understanding, but getting a rather sinister feeling from this pseudo-explanation all the same.

“You’re about to find out,” Zero-One said. “Just remember what I said about Unreality, Inc. not being evil.”

The finely carved wooden doors at the end of the hallway opened up before Zero-One and I, seemingly of their own accord. Or rather, I saw, they had been opened from the other side by a team of Unreal bots. These hulking masses of equine-shaped metal were far bulkier than Zero-One; each towered over me (and most other ponies, I imagine). They were also so heavily armed that I looked at Zero-One curiously. My companion hadn’t picked up so much as a single weapon at the armory. Next to these monstrous robots, his default drone body looked positively harmless.

“Ladies, gentleponies, and sexually ambiguous AI, nice to see you all,” Zero-One announced, giving that exaggerated bow once more.

The other Unreal bots shot him a glance with their expressionless faces before turning to face the far end of the room, their weapons popping out and at the ready.

“Don’t mind them,” Zero-One chuckled to me. “They’re all heavy combat models. Great for tearing things to subatomic particles, but pretty poor conversationalists.”

I wasn’t sure if I found that comforting or not. Having a miniature militia at my side was probably the best escort I could receive, but what exactly was so dangerous that it needed this much fire power? What was Zero-One hinting at?

I gulped and turned my attention to the far end of the room and began trotting towards the door that waited there, Zero-One and the combat bots walking alongside me.

The room itself was little more than a wide vestibule, a simple waiting area before the main part of the Freak Factory. It looked a little like an unkempt lobby; a dusty reception desk was nestled into the far corner, a few couches lined the walls, and several megacorporate propaganda posters hung like tapestries.

Always remember to wear a protective suit on the premises, I read the posters mentally. Do not talk to the Subject. Do not look at the subject. Do not think about the Subject. Do not, under any circumstances, strike a deal with the Subject. Don’t forget that next Friday is ‘Bring Your Daughter to Work Day!’

What the hell?

Whatever awaited inside the main section of the building was through a large, circular metal door covered in yellow tape, reading, “No access. Unauthorized Unreals to be punished by virtual Tartarus. Unauthorized pony personnel to be punished by promotion.”

My brain was getting a little tired of trying to make sense of all of this.

Whatever the case, I took a deep breath and pressed a hoof to the scanner at the side of the door. It lit up green, and the door slowly began to iris open, as if it had been rusted shut. Zero-One, the combat Unreals, and I all walked through it and, for all intents and purposes, left reality behind.

The inside of the Freak Factory may as well have been—and for all I knew, may have actually been—another universe. A violet void without walls, ceiling, or floor stretched out seemingly into infinity. Floating spheres, much like the islands inside of the hodgepodge Unreality, Inc. ship but far larger, meandered aimlessly through the empty space.

No, not just spheres, I realized. Those are planets. There are whole worlds in here.

Huge metallic tubes, rusted, bent, and sometimes broken, snaked through the madness, sometimes connecting to towering cities of dilapidated machinery built into the sides of the planets.

Most of the tubes seemed to be pipes, because where they had ruptured or rusted through, I could see multicolored fluid dripping out as viscous sludge. Globules of the goo floated like liquid rainbow through the void.

Unreality energy, I thought.

Astute observation, chuckled a gruff, older, masculine voice inside my head.

“Containment must be more damaged than we’d predicted if the Subject is making contact this far out,” Zero-One spoke.

“You can hear that too?” I asked. “What is that?”

That? The voice asked mockingly, feigning offense. I am hardly a ‘that,’ my dear child.

“He is both the source of unreality energy and the reason Unreality, Inc. is not evil,” Zero-One said. “Because we protect the world from something that is far more than evil. You wondered if the Goddesses actually existed, Neverwas. Now it’s time you learned that there are things far older than the Goddesses.”

The voice in my mind erupted into laughter.

. . .

Author's Note

Hello again, all. I deeply apologize for how long it's taken me to get this chapter out. My family and I have unfortunately gone through a rough patch lately. However, I'm optimistic about the future. I hope to get onto some sort of schedule and, God willing, post a new chapter every month or two.

I want to give a huge thanks and shout out to my pre-readers and editors, specifically Typoglyphic. His input has been invaluable, and the chapter would be much less than it is now without his help. Go show him some love, please!

Thanks again, and I'll see you next time!