A Different Kind of Magic
“I just need the right command. No, ok… hold on…”
Cowsey’s brow furrowed, her hooves poised over the keyboard. Her face was lit by the glow of an ancient terminal screen, miraculously intact after nearly two hundred years. The light softened her features, hiding the dust and grime that caked her face. Her eyes were alive though, filled with the sparkling green reflections of the characters cast by the screen. In the shifting light her dappled coat seemed more vibrant than usual.
Behind her, Fortune shifted slightly. A low creaking noise came from his armor as he moved, metal plates rubbing against the aged leather. The stallion made Cowsey nervous, but she supposed that was the whole point. Fortune would make anypony nervous. And if they ran into something that wasn’t suitably impressed, well, that’s what Fortune’s pistol was for. That pistol was out now, tracking back and forth to cover them.
“Did you need something?” Fortune asked, without looking at Cowsey. He peered into the darkness instead, searching for targets.
“No, no. Just talking to myself. Helps me think.” Cowsey shook her head, tried to focus on the screen in front of her. Let Fortune cover her back. She was no good in a fight, so the sooner she finished her job the sooner they could leave.
Fortune moved to the other side of the platform and glanced over the railing. There was nothing to see, of course. The darkness was nearly complete, staved off only by the light of the terminal and the glow from Fortune’s horn. The pair could only see a few dozen feet in any direction. Ancient metal catwalks stretched away from the platform into the gloom. The metal surfaces were surprisingly clean of rust and corrosion.
Although some outlying areas had collapsed, the bunker was still sturdy enough. But even in the structurally sound areas almost nothing worked. It had taken the better part of two days for Cowsey to find a terminal with the network access she needed. The terminal was unpowered, of course - but Cowsey had brought a bank of spark batteries with her. They sat to the right of the terminal itself, crudely spliced in. The low hum from the batteries and terminal spilled into the darkness without so much as an echo.
Fortune grunted. “Alright, fine. I think we’re safe enough up here.” The stallion’s pistol made another slow sweep; right to left, left to right. “But I don’t want to stay down here any longer than we need to.”
Cowsey shivered, imagining the tons of earth and concrete above them. Even if there weren’t creatures lurking in the dark - and she was sure there were - she had seen too many rooms with collapsed ceilings as they moved through the bunker. She didn’t want to trust the venerable architecture any longer than she had to. Turning her head, she caught Fortune’s eye.
“Mind if I talk? It helps.”
Fortune met her gaze for a moment, then resumed his slow sweeps of the surrounding area.
“Sure, go ahead. Just try to keep it down. I want to know if something’s coming.”
Cowsey entered another series of commands. The terminal spat out some text, none of it promising. Although segments of the network were still intact, they weren’t currently connected to one another. She modified a command, ran it again. As the results came in, she scanned through them.
“Yeeessssss, I can make them talk to one another… and I can see the resources we need to access! Uhh… but there may be too many dead sections of network between here and there.”
Fortune paused his relentless sweeping for a moment. “You mean we’re going to have to go deeper? I thought you said this terminal would work.”
“I think it will… let’s see, emm tee arr… no, that route is down. Damn Fortune, this network is really hurting.”
“You act like it’s alive.”
“Well, it sort of is, in a way. All the little bits of the network talk to one another. If too many of them are missing or damaged, the system slows down, parts of it become inaccessible from other parts, that sort of thing.”
Fortune nodded. “Like ripping somepony’s leg off. If you do that, they can’t feel the leg, and they slow down. Ok, I get it.”
Cowsey winced, momentarily distracted. “That’s awful! But, uh…” Cowsey went silent for a moment, hooves dancing across the keyboard. “Oh, I think I have something! Let’s see, this diagnostic connection goes here, but if I elevate privileges from this end I can push through to this BMS… hoofshake, bam, I’m in!” The dappled mare looked smugly at Fortune for a moment.
“If you say so. I can’t decide if you sound more like a stage magician or a mystic. Maybe a little of each. None of what you’re saying makes any sense to me. Seems like you’re just trying to upsell your own abilities.”
Cowsey turned back to the keyboard, a little stung. For a few minutes, the clicking of her hooves on the keyboard echoed through the darkness. The text on the terminal flowed past silently, green motes of light on a black field. Cowsey considered the text in front of her for a moment, pressed a few keys.
Suddenly, a loud metallic clunk echoed up from underneath the pair. Cowsey took a step back from the terminal, but Fortune was already in motion. The stallion pulled her down to the ground, landing on his stomach next to her. His pistol was still floating high in the air, a bright and obvious target. In the dim glow of the terminal, Cowsey saw him press a hoof to his mouth. His meaning was clear.
Quiet.
Beneath their platform, a low whirring noise started up. The two ponies remained frozen, listening to the noise as it filled the space around them. Fortune kept the pistol high above them, sweeping back and forth.
After a few minutes, the whirring noise tapered off. Cowsey tried to rise to her hooves, but Fortune gestured at her again. The only sound in the room was the muted hum of the terminal and batteries. Cowsey’s shoulder started to ache where it was pressed into the metal catwalk. Fortune’s eyes were closed, his ears standing straight up.
They lay prone for another few minutes before Fortune was satisfied. He stood up, and extended a hoof to help Cowsey off the floor. She rose, rubbing her shoulder.
“What the hell was that?” Fortune asked, keeping his voice low.
“It sounded like a fairly large motor." replied Cowsey. She followed Fortune’s lead, speaking in a low voice. “Too big to be a door... maybe an elevator or hoist of some kind?”
“Something you did?”
Cowset moved back to the terminal and read over the most recent lines of text. After a moment, she nodded. “Yeah. Looks like there are several linked service lifts in this room. I just extended all of them.” She paused for a moment. “Strange, though. Why would anypony want to link together a bunch of service lifts? You’d have to raise or lower them all simultaneously in that configuration.”
Fortune shrugged. “Who knows what they were thinking. Let’s just finish this up so we can get out of here. I’m getting tired of watching you fool around on that computer.”
“Ha, thanks.” Cowsey replied drily. She moved back to the terminal. Her hooves moved across the ancient keyboard. Lines of text and symbols scrolled across the screen.
“You know... going back to what you said earlier. I don’t think there’s much difference between working with one of these old computers and working with magic.”
Fortune snorted. “Yeah? How do you figure?”
“Well, I mean there’s so many parallels. Think about it. You have magic spells that do various things, and I have various commands. Some of them are simple, and so easy to remember that you use them almost without thinking. Others you have to learn, and it might take months or years to learn properly.”
“Sure, I guess.”
Cowsey pressed on. “There’s other similarities too. You might need special reagents for a spell, or maybe it only works in a certain place or under certain conditions. Things like that apply here too. Some spells work in conjunction with one another – programs are like that too, sometimes. Oh, and vocabulary, of course. Unicorns have all this special language that sounds like gibberish to an outsider. It’s the same way with computers. You can instantly tell who has experience based on whether they can talk the talk.”
Fortune nodded. “Alright, I guess I can see that. But it still seems like a pretty flimsy comparison. You could say the same thing about...”
Cowsey cut the unicorn off, her excitement growing. “Wait, I have more! Computers and magic are both based off of natural systems. But they involve modifying those systems through unnatural means. You can pick stuff up and make it float through the air. I can move electricity through a conductor, or disable a sentry bot, or broadcast a radio signal. And both systems require intent. That rock or door won’t move by itself, not without outside input from somepony.”
“Fine, fine.” Fortune was losing interest in the conversation. He glanced around the room again. A convenient distraction utterly failed to appear.
“Ok, what about this? The better you are at either, the easier it looks to an outsider. And you have to have a talent for both. Any unicorn can use some basic magic, and any pony can run some simple commands on a terminal. But you have to be gifted to figure out how to do certain types of magic, just like you have to be gifted to do things like… this!”
With a flourish, Cowsey stabbed a single key. Harsh white light burst from banks of long disused bulbs… and just as suddenly, the bulbs went out. Both ponies were left with watering eyes, afterimages dancing across their vision.
“Do what, damn it? Blind us? Announce our presence to the entire world?” Fortune had his pistol raised again, trying to cover every angle simultaneously. His ears were laid back flat against his skull. The pistol jerked back and forth unevenly.
“Owowowwww, no. Hang on, I know what I did wrong… There. Alright, just need to get a feel for this program. Uhm... We don’t have enough backup power to run those lights, but I think I can get at least one of the reserve turbines going again. I just hope we have enough power to engage the shunt from here…”
Cowsey worked in silence for a few minutes, embarrassed. Her hooves moved across the keyboard deftly, keying in commands one after another. She paused for a moment to study her work. “There we go. Shunt’s engaged. According to this, it should cycle up in about 90 seconds. You know, I thought of one more similarity.”
Fortune sighed. “More? Fine, go ahead.”
Cowsey’s voice was soft. “Well… nopony is making any new computers. And nopony is making any new magic, either. We lost so much of both when the megaspells fell. There used to be ponies who could control the moon and sun and stars, and there used to be computers that could run entire cities. Ponies were coming up with new applications for magic and computers every day. These days we’re just fighting over scraps. Nothing new is being created – the best we can do is stumble across something leftover from a brighter time. We thought we needed a different kind of magic, something to supplant the magic we already had maybe. Now we’re sifting through the ashes of both.”
Fortune opened his mouth, paused, closed it again. He shook his head. “Alright. You’ve convinced me. They’re damn close to one another after all.”
Cowsey smiled wanly. “Thanks, Fortune.” She glanced back down at the screen, where columns of text updated themselves rapidly. “Alright, I have one turbine running at nearly 50% capacity. Not bad for an antique, huh? Let me know when you’re ready, I’ll give the lights another go.”
Fortune slid his pistol into the holster strapped to his side. He slitted his eyes, nodded. “Ready.”
Cowsey typed out another command, closed her eyes, and pressed the execute key. Another wave of light poured over the two ponies. Unlike the previous burst of light, this wave spread away from their little platform, gaining momentum as row after row of bulbs flickered into life. Some of the bulbs were dead, but those that were left lit the huge room with a harsh white glow.
Cowsey forced her eyes open slowly, trying to give them time to adjust, but eager to see the room exposed before them. Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them away. As her vision cleared, the room came into focus. It was immense; even with the lighting she had trouble making out the details on the far end of the room. However, she could make out the objects near her easily enough.
They were missiles.
Row upon row of missiles stood in the cavernous space. The glaring light from the reawakened fixtures glinted and sparkled from flawless metal fairings. The missles looked as new as they had when they were built two hundred years ago. Each missile was strapped into a simple metal cradle. The cradles actually rested on the floor, suspending the missiles a few inches above the cradle bases. From their vantage point, the missiles seemed to be floating.
Cowsey’s eyes drifted downwards, towards a row of small structures beneath their platform. Each structure was built like a miniature bunker, sloped metal walls with heavier bands of metal reinforcing key points. There were six of the structures, surrounded by a wide section of floor marked with faded red and yellow paint. She could see where they had risen out of the floor of the room. That’s the noise I heard earlier. The doors on all six bunkers were still sealed with flaking caution tape, which only partially covered the ministry decals on the bunker doors.
“Balefire bombs.” Cowsey breathed. “Oh Fortune, they’re unfired megaspells. Six of them.” She turned toward the stallion, a look of horror on her face. “Enough to destroy the world-”
Fortune’s pistol barked once. The bullet crashed through Cowsey’s eye, exiting through the base of her skull. A fountain of blood and bone fragments splattered the terminal. The gunshot was enough to finally generate an echo - it bounced and twisted and snarled through the huge space. Cowsey’s body slumped backward, her remaining eye staring up at Fortune. Her look of horror had been replaced by one of mild confusion.
Fortune holstered his pistol. “Sorry, kid. But our employers needed access to this place, and they needed to make sure you weren’t tempted to lock them out once you realized what they were after.” The stallion turned away, then paused.
“I guess they’re looking for a different kind of magic.”
Author's Note
Thanks to my awesome pre-readers, Hyreia and Cro! Also thanks to Handmantoot for the cover art.
