"How can there be two me's? It's not scientifically possible.You are not scientifically possible!"
Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.
"But I just went to sleep, Mom," I muttered.
Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.
I rolled over to shut off my stupid alarm, but ended up falling off the side of my bed. I sat up sharply, rubbing the gunk out of my eyes, and managed to wobble myself onto my hooves and smack the button on my clock. I looked at the time. 10:45.
"Oi! Sister!"
I heard trotting in the hall outside my room, and a purple head with a bed-headed mat of pink and yellow mane peeked through the door. "What is it, my darling brother?" She fluttered her eyelashes at me.
I groaned. "You were supposed to wake me up two hours ago. You know I like getting an early start at the lab."
Amber Petal rolled her eyes at me, and pushed her way into my room, a cup of coffee curled in her wing. "I was cleaning the kitchen of that mess your friends caused last night, and reading the newspaper." She set the coffee on my bedside table.
"Hey, its not my fault my buddies get rowdy after a few drinks." I pushed my small spectacles onto my muzzle with a hoof.
Petal sighed, "Yes, but you don't get inebriated easily. You should try harder to keep them in line." She gave me a soft punch on my right foreleg.
"Uh-huh. Anywho, what was the news?" I took a sip of the coffee.
"Eh, apparently Her Highness The Great Marshmallow is having a bit of trouble with the zebras; something about withholding trade agreements." She pulled the newspaper under her other wing out with her wing, and plopped it on my desk. "Some of the aristocracy think its the rumblings of war," she said, trying not to scoff.
"Oh, but the ponies with the most bits stashed up their asses know everything, don't they?" I retorted with a smirk.
"Meh, Fuck those guys. Anyways, I'll meet you at the lab in a couple hours. Cocoa Pommel wanted to do some shopping with me, and I can never manage to turn her down." She gave me a quick and firm hug before walking out of my room. I heard the door to our flat open and close a minute later.
I yawned and stretched like a massive cat before trotting to the mirror and brushing my hair into a semblance of flatness. I grabbed my earring in my teeth and pushed it into my ear, before deeming myself presentable. A quick pat pat pat preluded a wet nuzzle to my hind legs, and I turned around to see our pretty little pet fox Muffins looking at me with her eyes chalk full of intelligence.
"Oh, you know who feeds you, don't ya, pretty girl?" I asked sweetly while petting her head. She gave me a slight smile and cocked her ear. "Alright, c'mon ya little bugger."
I trotted into our lightly furnished kitchen and scooped up a bowl in one wing and opened my freezer with the other. I pulled out a bag with a few dead rabbits I kept for her, and tossed one into the bowl with some hot water. I set the bowl on the counter and jumped onto a stool, folding out the paper Petal had given me earlier.
None of the headlines popped out at me, just boring stories like "Sapphire Shores: Legend or Liar?" and "Local Schools Push for Increase in Funding." I dropped the paper back onto the counter, and trotted over to the biggest window in our flat.
The floor-to-ceiling slab of lightly tinted glass gave a majestic and soaring view of Manehattan from close to the top of one of the newest towers in the city. I pressed my front hooves to the glass, and watched the tiny ponies and carts scurry along the streets far below like tiny ants working for their queen.
"Only in this city, their queen is a big fat pile of bits, demanding their every ounce of attention." Muffins looked up at me curiously. I sighed. "Oh, don't worry, I'm just talking to myself about the intricate nuances of life." I took one more glance at the movement below, and trotted back to the counter. I drained the water from the bowl, and set it on the floor so Muffins could pick over and munch on it as she pleased. "There you go, ya little furball." I turned back to the counter and tapped a small button on a control panel next to a terminal.
A bright purple light shone from a projector on the ceiling, then coalesced into the holographic form of my AI assistant, Violet. "You called, Amber?"
I turned to her and smiled. "Yeah. Can you tell me if my employees are complaining about my absence yet?"
She adopted a slight smirk and replied, "Oh, Bolts and Nuts were yelling about the lack of proper management, even though I can handle the lab when you're not there just fine; and Steel Measure drilled into a volatile metal; Half the Metallurgy wing is coated in a fine dust of iron filings and a weird silvery substance."
"Ugh, remind me to assign that idiot to a safer job," I snorted with a roll of my eyes. "Are Jackpot and Gambit still being assholes?"
Violet shimmered and sighed. "Yup. It always seems to be twins that cause the most trouble around there, you know what I mean?"
I waved a hoof. "Ugh, tell me about it. Anyways, try to keep order there for a little longer, stun ponies if you need to, I gotta eat something before I head out." She nodded and disappeared.
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A little later, I was trotting down a stairway to the metro station to get on a train to Hoofington Heights. I took a seat at one of the benches to wait, when a slightly oddly shaped pony in a trench coat and fedora sat down next to me. Their hat shadowed their face, and it made me slightly creeped out, so I said the first thing that came to mind.
"Funny getup you got there."
The pony- no, zebra- took off his fedora and looked at me with piercing eyes, not saying a word.
"Um, uh..." I racked my brain for the little amount of zebra language I knew. "Uh... Salve, comes, uh, is ok omnia?"
The zebra looked at me flatly. "Your accent is terrible."
I flushed slightly. "Eh, sorry, I didn't learn much about zebra culture when I was younger. So, what is an oddly-dressed zebra doing in the subways of Manehattan, anyways?"
The zebra looked less stoic and judge-y and replied in a thick accent, "I'm here to join with an ambassador from Roam. Your Princess has been... slightly less agreeable to our recent demands, and we wish to resolve this peacefully."
"Well, I wish you luck. I really hope that we don't descend into war or something similar." I scratched my head at the thought and frowned.
Then the zebra stallion laughed richly, and retorted, "Ha! you ponies would not know war if it was on the end of your muzzle. We zebras have had to deal with civil wars many times over, you would be destroyed if we came into conflict."
That wasn't a reassuring thought.
"Nevertheless, it would kill the mood of the more peace-loving tribes of ours, like the Carnilia and the Mendi, but would greatly please the Roamani and Achu, the greatest fighters of our kind. It may well create a civil war amongst our own."
I looked at him thoughtfully. "You laugh like it’s one big joke or something."
The zebra stallion looked even more smug. "Silly pony, life is a joke."
________________
Ten minutes later, I stepped hoof off the stairs to 14th Avenue into the slightly backwater neighborhood of Hoofington Heights. A perfect cover for a "secret" lab. I trotted up the sidewalk for a bit before looking to my right at the apartment building lining the street. It had two doors, like all of the buildings on this block, but one of them had a barely visible engraved omega symbol. I got out my key ring, looking like a normal pony returning home, and opened the door before slipping inside and locking it behind me.
Unlike the other buildings, the stairs inside went down instead of up. I trotted down the steel platforms, before ending in an antechamber with some old mining equipment on a wall. It opened up into a large cavern with tools strewn everywhere, as if the area was still under construction. A second layer of visual defense for the lab.
I trotted over to an inconspicuous rock by the far wall, and waved a small card over it. Violet's voice greeted me once more.
"Welcome back, Amber Storm."
A large block of dirt and rock pushed out and swung to the left, revealing a very pristine light gray and black hallway. I stepped inside, and the block hissed back into place. As I trotted down said hallway, a small projector swung in from the ceiling onto a rail set on the roof. It shone with purple light, and formed my holographic assistant.
Violet turned her shimmering eyes onto me. "You have two new messages, three appointments, and one urgent malfunction in the medical research bay."
"Why are you acting all receptionist-like?" I asked, somewhat confused of this change of routine.
We reached a door that led to my office. I swiped my card through a reader on the wall, and it hissed open. "Whatever do you mean? I'm only acting how I've been programmed to." I sat on my chair and swiveled it around to face her.
"Only how you've been programmed to, huh?" She nodded once. "Well, I think I have a clue about who is at fault here," I muttered. I pressed a button for the lab's intercom and bellowed, "ROD! GET YOUR ASS IN MY OFFICE, NOW!"
I heard a tiny "Oh hey, Amber's back," over the inter-department chat radio, and rolled my eyes.
A minute later, a young stallion walked through my open door. Rodnick Horse, Jr. was one of the youngest computer programmers at Omega. I had found him messing with the terminals around the lab several times before, but nothing as drastic as this.
“Y-you called, professor?”
I glowered down at him with my hooves folded under my chin, in a perfect imitation of my old grade school principal. “You’ve been busy in my absence, haven’t you, Rodnick?”
His hooves trembled as his eyes darted left and right, looking for a way out of this situation. “I-I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean, p-professor.”
I glared at him for a little longer, then facehoofed and sighed. “Cut the ‘professor’ crap out already, you know I don’t like being called that.” He started to speak up, but I interrupted him. “Ah-ah, not sir, either. Just Amber will do.”
He looked back up at me, and replied slowly, “Yes, Amber,” then looked away again.
“Look, I know you colts are eternally curious, but I don’t mind as much if you just keep it to simple things like pranks via the lab’s terminals. But reprogramming my AI assistant? That’s a little step to far, bud.” My gaze softened, and Rodnick calmed down a bit.
“I’m sorry, I just thought it would be funny.”
I sighed again. “I understand that. I guess I got a little commando over a simple prank. Next time, consult my sister so you can shift the blame.” He looked a bit confused. “Anywho, get back to the computer sciences department, I think one of the guys needed your help with some malware in the new line of armor.”
He nodded once, and I watched the mustard colored colt dash out my office door. I pushed a button on my desk, and it slid closed. I then turned back to Violet.
“Violet. Voice override command, user Amber storm, access code 45136.” The projector switched from her pony form and displayed a set of commands and a string of code. “Purge new data from-” I looked at the chronometer on my PipBuck, a generous contribution from Stable-Tech as help for their R&D, “-5:30 PM, yesterday.”
The lines of code started to scroll up as the command was initialized, then it re-formed back into Violet. She reached a hoof up and scratched her head. “You purged files again, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. Horse got into your program files and tried to prank me. Wasn’t his best attempt, to be honest,” I replied.
She frowned. “Can’t you just remove the bad programming without deleting my memory? I feel like I have a case of mild amnesia whenever you do.”
“I guess, but it might take a bit. Anyways, you mentioned messages?”
She looked thoughtful for a second, then responded, “Ah. Bolts just left his usual ‘Get the fuck in here,’ and Medical R&D were wanting some assistance with a malfunction in the cryogenics department.”
I shook my head. “Tell Bolts that the next time he leaves me a message saying that, I will personally see that he is on cleanup duty in the chemical research wing for a month. And tell Med to ask me tomorrow, I have some work to catch up on.”
She nodded, and said, “Do you want to know what appointments you have?” I nodded and perked my ears. “Stable-Tech is going to stop by for their hydraulic lift systems, and Hawkes Aircraft is coming for the new prototype Griffinchaser blades. Also, first thing tomorrow, Princess Celestia has made an appointment to check out our Weapons R&D; she wants to get new armament for the Royal Guard and Equestrian Military.”
My jaw dropped. “W-wait. Princess Celestia? Here?!”
She bobbed her head again, and her ears dropped. “Is that going to be a problem?”
“No, not at all,” I sighed. “Well, I know what we’re doing today, that's for sure.” I looked at my PipBuck once more, then said, “Start setting the wings into Tour mode, I gotta get everyone cleaning up.”
“Of course.” Violet disappeared.
I swiveled my chair around and got up, then stretched once more. I pushed the intercom button once more, and said, “Guess what, folks, we got some invités estimés coming. All of you need to finish up what you’re working on, or find a good place to stop; it’s spring cleaning time.” I released the button, and opened my door and trotted out.
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Author's Note
Whoo boy, first chapter done. Just one more to try to build up the characters, then we get to move on to the good stuff. I got a lot planned for this story.
Thanks to my editors TatlTael and Uhhmandaa for the grammar checks.
