Author's Note

This prologue was originally uploaded as 'Bonus Chapter' in Pegasus Device.

There have been some minor editing changes, but if you have already read it, nothing significant has been altered.

Prologue

Contrail wandered slowly down the winding corridor, taking in his surroundings. The ancient walkway creaked and groaned as he stepped, its complaints left on deaf ears. He wasn't worried about it. He wouldn't have been even before the deep clean of the facility, but he especially didn't worry about it now all the fasteners and security wires had been replaced.

It was hard to worry about anything in the old factory anymore. Most of it had been cleaned, replaced, and reinforced after the Royal Inspection. Contrail's eyes followed a series of bright, coloured plastic pipes as they hugged the wall. Clean, parallel, clearly marked with their contents. Always overrated for their transported materials and pressures. He stopped walking, soaking in the view in front of him.

Some things were familiar. The walkway, save for the new safety rails. The cramped walls, save for the bright, organized plumbing. The endless void beneath him, save for the change from pitch black to pure white. The whole thing was just so damn clean. It was a nice environment to work in, but part of him hated it. He had liked the old chaos; the webway of pipes and wires, tubing and venting, the darkness. These new lights always gave him a headache.

He rubbed a hoof on his eyes before carrying on, his mind absent save for a simple feeling of nostalgia. He kept his eyes closed while he walked, staving off the inevitable pain behind his temples for a while longer. Despite all the changes, he knew his way. He had walked these hallways for decades and a little bit of safety tape wasn't about to throw him for a loop.

A communicator clipped to a toolbelt around his shoulders crackled and he stopped, listening as Gentle's voice spoke to him.

"Where are you headed, Contrail? Maintenance isn't due in this corridor for..." there was a pause, and Contrail could imagine the green mare leaning over from the computer console to a heavy binder, full of charts and numbers. "Tartarus, a few months. If you're done, you can check out for the night."

Contrail cocked his head sideways and activated his communicator. "I am checked out. Dash asked for a personal favor. Something broken that needs fixing."

There was no reply. He didn't expect one for about a minute, as Gentle dealt with what he just said. That's an awful shame, he thought, An engineer as good as her who can't handle the words 'broken' or 'fix'. Well, maybe with a bit more time. He thought back to the mandated therapy for all CWC staff. It had helped them deal with a lot of things; their actions of the past; their years of overworking and not enough sleep; their years of holding back a terrible secret. Gentle was saved the pleasure of dealing with actually processing a failure before the whole system was stopped. But, her mind hadn’t been strong enough to deal with the nightmare she was thrust into. Three days in the Upper Factory, and she snapped like a twig.

"Something missed in the cleanup? I didn't think there were any rooms left that haven't been overhauled. Hold on, they're purging a liquid thunder line on the second floor, I need to check this-" She trailed off.

At least they were able to save her mind. She can't physically do the work but she coordinates the whole factory as if she had built it. A smile touched the pastel-blue pegasus' lips. He glanced again at all the new plumbing on the walls. The safety changes had been mandated by the Royal Inspection, but it was Gentle's head that had planned it all out. His disgust at the shiny plastic dimmed a little. She basically did build it.

"I'm back. What room was missed?"

"Well, the room was cleaned up. There's just a bit of tarped machinery that was ignored." He said it casually, but there was a heaviness in his voice he hoped carried over the radio. Stop asking, he pleaded to himself. For the love of Luna, stop. Asking.

"Oh, yes, right, the uh. The old transfer piping, right? Those lines are dead now," the reply came back, unconvincing to Contrail but good enough for the chat logs that would be printed. "I think I remember her discussing a repurposing project about those. Just be careful in the MTR, would you? The cameras never work no matter how often we replace them."

"Just listen for my voice and I'll be fine, got it?"

"Understood Contrail. I'll leave you to it."

The communication device gave one last crackle, and silence rushed back around Contrail. He breathed deeply, glad Gentle had understood his message. He carried on, letting his hoofsteps echo around him. Here and there as he walked he spotted more familiar signs. A rusted and unreadable sign left up where pipes no longer ran. Cloud walls stained with years of age and dirt hidden just out of reach. A dark stain that wouldn't come out of the old grating, no matter how much they scrubbed. And of course, there was the hum. The ever present thrum of the factory, a symphony of resonating pipes and machines, of workers on assembly lines, of chemists in labs, of refrigerators and condensers, of two thousand years of constant operation. Of a million souls trapped in the crypt of clouds and channels.

He stopped again and opened his eyes. Before him was a large, nondescript door sealed not with a lock but with a strip of warning tape. A clear message was displayed on the neon tape: 'This room not to be maintained'. Contrail peeled the tape off and dropped it into the bright abyss below him, and then waited, and took a deep breath.

I hate this part, he thought with a cringe, before reaching out to the handle and resting his hoof on it.

The howl of a hundred, a thousand, a million dying foals filled the hallway--or appeared to, at least. Contrail stood steadfast as his very being was assaulted by the wailing. It went on for a minute with clear voices appearing out of the muddy sound of pain and anguish. Young voices, of colts, of fillies. Of failures, Contrail affirmed. He recognized some of those screams, picturing the faces of the ponies as they made them. Eventually the hellish chorus died out, leaving Contrail with only his budding headache and a single tear running down his muzzle.

"Whatever," he snapped, shaking his head and walking fully into the Main Theatre Room. "I didn't throw any of you in this damned Device. Don't yell at me," he went on, dropping his voice to a disdainful mutter. "I'm just the stallion they hired to keep it running."

It had been a long time since Contrail had been in the Theatre Room. He had shut the original Pegasus Device down after the failure's rebellion on Dash's orders. He never saw the weird mangy thing that Dash had kept chained up in here for 20 years, only knowing of it through whispers and breakroom rumors. Dead workers and failures alike had been left to rot in this jail along with the prisoner. It must have driven her insane, he thought, to be left abandoned amongst all that death.

He mused for a moment.

Good. He spat on the floor in the center of the room. Looking around, he wondered how Dash had managed to keep the Pegasus Device hidden despite the cleanup. This room wasn't spared the assault of bleaches, plastics, and scrubs. Even the catwalks above, useless now for almost twenty-five years, had been replaced with brand new safety-compliant versions. One would never know the carnage that had occurred in this room in such a small time. He settled his vision on the large tarped mass at the back wall. The faded, oil-stained fabric stood out amongst the bright cloud floor and brilliant lighting, and if he hadn't known the purpose of the blocky edges showing through the tarp, he would say it was all perfectly ominous to him.

Well, maybe it is all perfectly ominous to me. His whole life was spent as part of a conspiracy, a cog in the machine of misery and death and rainbows, yet even now he felt a shiver run down his back and to his flanks. He had been delirious for most of that life. Maybe his clarity now let it finally get to him.

"Now, now, Contrail," he sighed, "Now is not the time to contemplate the purity of your soul. Now is the time for work." He grabbed a corner of the tarp with his mouth and walked back, slowly revealing the monster beneath. It wasn't anything pretty, he admitted to himself, staring at the boring design before him. It was mostly cubic, with a huge hopper on top, and four massive clear tubes extending from each side like some sort of mechanical spider designed by a filly with a crayon. The tubes were speckled with black splotches; aged and dried spectra from a generation ago. The hopper was also speckled with black splotches; this Contrail knew was not spectra. Not yet, anyways. It would have been after going through the device. Now it was just a reminder of the old way.

A reminder of purity, he figured. He walked up to the base and kicked open a panel and thought of how this glorious machine gave Cloudsdale rainbows. It could take a mass of flesh and blood and bone and squeeze out every ounce of gorgeous rainbow that could be mustered. At the same time, it would take the chaff of the city and remove them from sight and mind forever. For the sake of Cloudsdale, and the sake of their image, and the sake of the parents of failures. For the Flock.

Sentiment hadn't changed in Cloudsdale. Earth ponies and Unicorns were horrified and had protested and petitioned and complained and then forgot the next time some world-ending event was narrowly averted by some saccharine act of friendship. But Pegasi, they didn't care. There was talk and play of change, of improving society. At the end of the day though, the flight tests still went on. Those who failed their tests were disowned by their parents, refused every job, ignored by guards and civilians alike. As part of the reparations, Dash and the Corporation had founded a foster system and orphanage for failures. There were no foster homes, though, despite them desperately advertising for volunteers. There were, however, orphanages--filling up fast, beyond their limit of capacity--of the barest minimum quality of life. Well, Dash had a plan, and the best part of it was that the orphanages were not regulated like the factory was. The quality of life was ensured in random inspections.

But population counts were never taken.

Contrail walked around behind the Device, skimming it with his eyes. He calculated, noted, planned. Those casters are seized, I'll need to replace those. The blades'll need to be sharpened, though just enough that they're effective again. That cable has been completely eaten away... by what? Pigeons, probably. Sky rats, he thought, sighing. And those leads will need to be replaced, of course, and... Is the motherboard...

He stuck his head straight into the guts of the machine, looking up towards where the hopper connected to the main body. Finding his mark, he swore. There was a flat, gold module about a foot square next to a large duct past the blades, with a dozen tubes and wires running out of it. Or rather, there was most of it - It had clearly become unattached from the duct and was somehow bent. It would need to be replaced, and the only way to do it was through the hopper.

He swore again and backed out. "First thing's first," he said aloud to himself, keeping him on track, "Is to make sure the whole thing is off."

He reached the wall where a massive cable ran into a fuse box and nudged it open to reveal where the cable ran into the power supply and a dozen fuses. Carefully, he pulled each fuse out and placed it on the ground in the same order he removed them. When he finished he pressed the release latch for the cable and watched the power cord drop heavily to the floor. Not taking any chances, he kicked it over back to the machine, away from the plug. He took off then, flapping his wings with a weariness that came with his age and landed near the control panel. After a brief moment of consideration he pulled the large power switch down onto the on position. He struggled as the corroded lever resisted being moved from its slumber but with a snap, it latched into place, and he turned to the beast behind him.

The Pegasus Device lay dark and silent.

"Good." He flipped the lever back to the Off position with just as much effort as before and moved an 'off' catch over it, keeping it from moving. He pulled out two more fuses next to the lever and set them down as before, then hovered back down to the open machine. "No danger to me now." He looked down to his right to see a small filly, yellow with a dark green mane. Her eyes were wide and wet, with tears running down her cheeks, and oozing stumps where wings should have been. Contrail made eye contact with her and then looked back to the machine nonchalantly. He started to get to work, pulling various bits and pieces and tools out of the pockets on his belt. He picked up a screwdriver with his mouth and glanced down to his right briefly. Reassured that there was no filly there, he got to work twisting his head and opening up various modules within the Device.

The room was quiet as he worked and it took Contrail about an hour before he froze, his body twisted deep in the internal wiring, and he listened intently. It was not a sound that had caught his attention but a lack of one. The deep hum that ran through the whole facility was absent here. He felt a brief moment of panic. Had the whole thing shut down? This room was no more soundproof than any other, and even if the factory operations had ended suddenly there would have been intense pandemonium. He shifted and jerked his way out and onto the floor, his ears perked. Still nothing. He flew to the door and opened it. Still, nothing. He stepped out of the Theatre Room as his heart pounded and then he stopped. The hum had returned the moment he crossed the threshold.

"What in..." He trailed off as he stepped back into the room. The hum was immediately gone, despite the door still being open. He tried a couple more times, listening to the comfortable resonance appear and vanish with his movements, before shrugging his shoulders. He wrote it off as another mystery of the old factory and closed the door. Turning around he gasped and backed up, his haunches pressing against the door.

The room was dirty, dark, and destroyed. Scaffolding hung precariously in some places and collapsed in others. All along the floor were half-decomposed piles of bone and colourful fur, dark spatters of blood, and tools. Hanging in the middle of the room by two chains, wrapped in twine and upside down, was what Contrail thought might be a mare. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again and found the same scene before him.

He tilted his head, annoyed. "Shoo," he admonished, and the room was clean and new again.

"I'm gonna have to tell Dash to demand a refund from that therapist she got me," he sighed as he walked back to his mess before the Pegasus Device.

His work had progressed slowly but one by one his remaining tasks dwindled. He had replaced all the fasteners that had worn out, all the moving parts that didn't move anymore, most of the wires that had frayed or been eaten, and even cleared out a pigeon nest with much cursing and pain. He was down to two modules that had to be replaced and the sharpening of the blades. The shortened list had given Contrail renewed vigor but his eyes grew tired as his day went long. He had worked for multiple days at a time-- his record was a week, as far as he could tell-- but the change in schedule to a legally mandated 12 hour shift before 12 hours off had, by his accounts, wrecked him. His therapist was happy that Contrail was back to a normal sleep schedule but on the rare emergencies or seasonal swap-outs, he found it difficult to stay up like he used to. He tapped his communicator with his chin as he tried to maneuver a heavy gearbox into place.

"Gentle?"

"You're still up? By Luna, Contrail, you've been at that as long as you'd been on shift."

"Well then why are you still on Control?"

"The- well, never mind why." There was a hint of embarrassment in her voice. Contrail smirked as he entertained the thought that she had worked late to make sure he was okay. "My shift switch is here and taking care of most things. I was just wasting time thinking of the best layout for the cyclone pipe expansion."

"Gentle, that expansion is still in committee. Overachiever much?" He grunted and shifted the weight of the gearbox around. "I'm glad you're still on though."

"Thanks. What's wrong?" The voice came back to Contrail's receiver tinted with worry. Contrail looked up and out of the mess of wires around him. There was a stallion standing there, upside down to Contrail's twisted position. His coat was battleship grey and scarred in multiple places. His muzzle was lumpy and unaligned as if it had been broken and never set. He stared at Contrail. Or, he appeared to. One eye was focused directly on the light blue stallion's. The other was hanging out, pressed out of its cavity by a wrinkly pink mass that poured blood.

"Hand me that screwdriver, Pipe," Contrail said to the apparition. It leaned down silently and came back up with the tool before reaching its head forward to him. Contrail grabbed the screwdriver with his mouth, ignoring the sharp iron taste that overwhelmed his tastebuds, and uttered a muffled "phnks" before returning to the gearbox. Fixing it in place he looked up again and spat the screwdriver out onto the vacant cloud floor. He lay there in the wiring and practiced his breathing.

"Contrail?"

"I'm just getting tired, I think, but I'm almost done. It's quiet in here."

Gentle's relieved voice came back and echoed in the box Contrail lay in. "It's quiet here too. Let's talk, buddy."

"I like that idea. About what?"

"The challenges of cyclone piping and air-fluid dynamics?"

"Tartarus, no, Gentle, I'm trying to stay awake." He looked at where his old friend had stood moments ago, still seeing nothing. "Hey, uh... you ever see things down here?"

"Things?" The voice came across confused. "There's a lot of things in Old Factory, Contrail. And if you mean in the MTR, I've never been in."

"How'd you redirect the pipes here?"

"We didn't, those are all just one-for-one replacements. The whole room is basically bypassed by anything built after the Incident, and the few divisions of Lower Factory that are still using those lines are all non-essential."

"Ah." He gulped. "I mean uh, things. Weird things. Maybe anywhere. Or heard things?"

"I've heard talk of things. Some of the workers from there mentioned stuff when we did the debrief group therapy sessions. Things like timberwolves baying, bloody walls. Some kind of screaming by a door. Did something happen to you?"

"No, not particularly. I've been hallucinating, I think. Seeing old friends and enemies. Hearing uh. Screams. By the door. But that's always happened, really..." He trailed off.

"What?"

"Whenever I... or Pipe Wrench or Gauge or anyone who worked in Old Factory... touched the door handle here, there was screaming. Like lots of screaming. I could write it off as PTSD if it was just myself, but we all talked about it. It was only who was opening the door. Sounds like it's coming from every pipe, every vent, every crack in the clouds, but you'd only hear it if you were touching or about to head into the MTR. I wrote it off a long time ago in my fog. Just another part of this divine comedy we lived in, eh?" He chuckled into the receiver. Elsewhere, far above him, Gentle's feathers horripilated at the distantly familiar laugh. "We used to think it was some security thing Dash put in place to keep us out, but it happened again, today."

"I've... read of stuff like mass hallucinations. Ponies under great stress that share the same fantasy or fear. It's probably something like that."

Contrail shuffled out of his mess of wires and boxes and stood up on the clean floor. He started bolting the panels back onto the Pegasus Device while he spoke. "Sure, that makes sense. I think I've heard of it too," he lied, "but maybe say it's not? You think this place is haunted?"

As he asked the question, he felt a tug on his fetlocks of his hindleg. He turned, looking down. Another foal had appeared and was pulling gently on his leg. It was a colt--not one that Contrail recognized--with seemingly nothing wrong with him. He had a pastel blue coat and a navy mane not unlike Contrail's own. It spoke to him, its mouth forming soundless words. It was not pleading, or crying, or screaming. It was calm, and continued repeating its movements. Contrail strained, listening, and finally thought he could make it out.

"Why did I become this?"

In an instant he realized who this little colt was, one he had not seen in decades, one he last saw before he even knew he would be good at engineering. With eyes wide he kicked hard and the colt vanished. "At least I know that you're just psychiatric issues," he muttered before realizing Gentle was talking.

"...Through vibrations of old transfer systems, it triggers your pineal gland and makes you feel dread and fear. So that's what I think is happening. Just some weird biological stuff combined with years of psychological trauma and lack of sleep. Honestly, how did anyone survive this place before?"

"I think most did what I did, but in different ways. We just kind of shut our rational selves off and locked them in a corner and let some sort of primitive consciousness rule the show. Something that couldn't comprehend the weight of what was going on. You know the saying about this place right?"

"There's a lot of sayings about this place. Do you mean one that the citizens say? Not to be rude but how would you know what's current in the Flock's lexicon?"

"Ouch, thanks. Ponies like you that got promoted over the years brought outside information in. We still get newspapers, you know," he added, hurt.

"Sorry. But which one?"

Contrail hummed a little tune, harking back to days he and his friends would play hopscotch on the streets of Cloudsdale, singing old nursery rhymes that were cute sounding yet held a darker meaning. "In the Rainbow Factory, where not a single soul gets through... You know that one?"

A laugh came over the comms. "That old tune we used to skip rope to as foals? Yeah, I know it. Not much of a saying, though. What about it?"

"I think there's some truth to that, Gentle. I think souls don't make it through this factory. I think something about it traps them here, or steals them away. I said that we hid those rational parts of our minds. I think our souls were stolen by the energy of this place. Think about it. Every pony who still works here after the Inspection has their wits about them now, mostly, right?"

"Sure, I'll entertain you. Most of my coworkers aren't nut-jobs anymore." Her voice was teasing and playful.

Contrail rolled his eyes. "I should actually say, think about those who left. Those who didn't volunteer to continue working, who retired or quit when they were able to. Think about them. How many of them do you remember that were right in the head, even after all the help and all the therapy and all the medication? Even partially?"

There was no immediate response. He moved on, throwing the replacement motherboard module and a couple tools into his belt before equipping it and flying up to the catwalk over the hopper. Gentle's response came as he double checked the disconnected power lines and locked switch.

"Alright, so, none that I can think of. So fair enough, something about working for a corrupt corporate executive in hellish conditions for years under secrecy doing an evil deed addles the mind when you're relieved of the pressure of it. I'm not going to be too quick to say that that's some sort of soul being sucked out of you."

"This place sucked a lot of things from a lot of ponies, so who's to say a soul isn't part of it? That there isn't some sort of machine left plugged in and buzzing away, turning spirits into snowfall?"

"Since when have you been so philosophical?"

He stopped and drooped his head. "Since a failure cracked my friend's head in with a pipe wrench. I just don't let it out that much. But you're dodging the question," he teased as he moved to hover over the hopper. In its inactive state, the blades were back in guards and away from the complex machinery that processed spectra. Contrail laid a plastic board over the inner intake and landed on it. He groaned as he knelt down to his side and craned his neck through an access panel. Before him lay the damaged module.

"Right. I don't know if I can get behind a soul being some physical entity which can be removed, or even contained, though. So I don't really believe that one could exist, much less confine itself to a replicant image of its former host in a single location, or be confined."

Contrail replied while disconnecting all the old lines from the module. "Alright, well, I won't try to convince you. But something is seriously messed up here anyways. I thought I was making great progress and now a bunch of images have been plaguing me all day. Say," he interjected, "Humour me one more thing."

"Shoot."

"Could you try to reconnect the cameras in this room? They've never been physically damaged right? Just weird electrical glitches. Could be worth a shot. Maybe we'll capture a ghost on film," he added.

"Sure, whatever. Give me five minutes." The radio fell silent again.

He tapped his communicator again, turning off his mic. Glancing up from his makeshift workstation he could see a distant security camera trained towards him. A red light had been blinking fast on it but it turned off as he looked. Murphy's Mercy, he thought. Tell someone something is broken and it fixes itself before you can prove it. He finished with the old module and tossed it over the edge of the hopper. After hearing it clatter on the cloud below he fished out the new module and inspected it. It was soaked in blood. He swore and wiped it off on his hide before making sure there wasn't any fluid in the connections. Satisfied, he started meticulously reattaching the module to the Pegasus Device.

He would be glad to get out of here and to get some sleep. In the morning, or whenever it was when he woke up, he would contact management to arrange a new psychiatrist appointment. He was tired. Tired of working ridiculous hours. Tired of these dreadful visions and sounds. Tired of old aches and new ones that were settling in to stay. Maybe he could get out, he thought. Maybe he could retire. There was a great pension set up for him, some Employee Victim Union fund he qualified for. Even with the new freedom allowed to him, he hadn't left his dormitory room in the New Factory. Perhaps it was time to actually venture forth into the city of Cloudsdale, that metropolis he had spent his whole life fighting for without ever enjoying. As he worked, the decision set itself harder and harder in his head. He would retire, and be the first Pegasus to get through the factory with his soul--fractured though it may be.

With his decision made, he tightened the last lug nut on the module and returned the wrench to his belt. Before he could get up however, a sudden lurch rolled him on to his back.

Of course, he thought. That was a mistake to think.

Violent rumblings below him shook him to the bone. Lights dimmed as a great noise emanated from the Pegasus Device. Contrail couldn't remember the last time he had heard it: a deep klaxon that quivered his insides. More noise followed after, evolving quickly as various machinations and systems whirred to life, adding their haunting instrument to the symphony around him. He heard the revving of a dozen motors as they turned newly oiled gears. He heard hollow pulses as the spectra pumps warmed up to speed. Pistons gave a time signature to it all: a cold and metal heartbeat that immediately began to race. Or was that his heartbeat?

With a burst of energy he had not felt since he was much, much younger, he leapt to his hooves and bent his legs, ready to take off. He had a good fifteen seconds to escape, yet at the same time he planned to get out he was silently accepting what he knew to be his fate. As he kicked off, he didn't lift. The plastic board beneath him vanished entirely, and Contrail dropped instead, his flanks jamming in the intake. He started flapping his wings furiously, but all he could do was laugh. Around him on the catwalk were a hundred, a thousand, a million, he couldn't tell, colts and fillies. They stared at him-- some bloody, some mangled, some sunken, some bloated, all deformed in their own way-- and he laughed. He let himself laugh just like he did when his mind was shattered.

"Oh, you bastards," he choked between guffaws.

"Contrail, the camera actually turned on! I hope that relieves you. Wait, where are..."

Look away, Gentle, and maybe you can get out. But for the love of Luna, don't tell them. Don't let them know. Maybe you'll be spared.

The camera light turned a bright green as the blades extended from their guards, dull and rusted, and they descended into Contrail. He felt his body wracked with pain as the slabs of metal half cut into him, half pummeled him. Over and over the myriad of blades fell into him, eventually dragging him up out of the intake and fully enveloping him. He felt a leg rip from its socket and the Device started vibrating, humming that same tune that had brought him so much comfort, as his flesh and blood funneled into the labyrinth of machine below. Still he laughed. He laughed as his body was twisted and cracked like dough in a mixer. He laughed as corroded metal ripped away his stomach and intestines. He laughed as his ragdoll head finally fell between two dull blades and was crushed. With that--finally--there were no more laughs. Only a single, tinny scream, coming from a radio, lost somewhere in the last Pegasus Device.