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* WELCOME TO CERBER/OS. *
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"Making clumps of metal smarter than you"
.\reboot.script activated...
\...
\loading Memory banks A01 - Z99..
cerb. / loading sensory drivers...
/audio - on.
“Candie! Help!” A panicked voice bellowed out, rattling my audio sensors and flaring through my processors. Nothing worse than ponies being loud while I reboot; I suppose it’s the equivalent of having an headache first thing in the morning.
“You wanna see your inside? I’d be glad to show you.” A male voice said in a dark sadistic tone, it intensity of his voice suggesting he was mid orgasm. Honestly, is somepony watching a sick porno? Then again, I wouldn’t mind seeing what's inside a pony. I do wonder how they work.
/vision - on.
It took several attempts to load my vision drivers, but eventually static filled my sight, stuttering of an instant before turning black. A flurry of orange code began, consisting of instances, variables and statements which poured down from the top. I noticed I was left in a pile of rubble and bathed in a dim light from the nearby shattered windows. The beams illuminated clouds of dust as they floated around carelessly.
A stallion stood over me. I could tell fashion wasn't his thing, as he was wearing battered, old, rusty metal around his chest held together by a fraying rope around his neck. His most notable feature was his mane; it was spiked up into a mohican, with a bandana wrapped around his forehead. He honestly looked like something out of the post apocalyptic stories you here on the radio in the early hours of the morning.
Seriously though, where the hell am I? Did I party too hard again? Last time, I booted up after a wild party and found myself in bed with the Mayor Mare’s toaster and kettle. She wasn’t pleased when my boss returned them with dents in them. They were kinky fucks.
/touch - on.
I felt a weight on top of me shift and sounds of struggling and scuffling behind me. Stones and pebbles were being flicked up and hitting my back.
“Candie!” A shriek came from behind me, followed by sobbing and crying. I looked up to the stallion who now had a rusty, old knife in his between his teeth. He grinned toothily around the blade. My fan clanked and ground into action, giving a few clicks and squeaks as it spun up. The small terminal screen tucked into my side blinked green light before illuminating the stallion with a green eerie glow. Normally my terminal is hidden behind my synthetic skin, as the terminals are for technician’s use only.
The stallion flinched back suddenly, noticing the light and the sounds of my fan whirring. I decided to politely move out of the way. Firstly, I haven't got a clue where I was and obviously these guys had some business to settle. I started to move my hind legs and sit up. The joints and gears gave out a grinding groan, as if yawning after a long slumber. As I moved, my circuits sparked and buzzed into life and my fan span frantically at maximum revolutions.
The rest of my electronics and mechanics manically burst in life as power surged and ripped through my circuitry and wires, awakening every capacitor, resistor and processor.
I looked down at my legs and chest to find much of my synthetic skin had melted off; only patches remained but they were all cracked and hairless, as well turning a faded brown. My metal chassis peered through the skin, all dented and rusted.
My joints continued to creak and moan as it turned my head to look back at the stallion, standing sans grin as he watched my awakening.
/speech - on.
As I opened my mouth to speak, I felt the speaker in my voice box buzz and crackle. I waited momentarily for the information of the sound byte sequence to flow through.
“So, where the hell am I? And who are you guys?” I croaked, my voice crackling like a old record. Having a good look around, I noticed that I was standing in some kind of reception hall, its floor covered in rubble and scorched debris. I scanned around the room to find an old sign slanted on the wall behind the reception desk reading ‘Welcome to Cerber/os Inc’. The sign had rust peering through the paintwork, and was decorated with a few holes. I remember being here before I was shut down by a technician; I was in for repairs that day due to ‘personality’ malfunctions. Then again, I would have sworn that I was up on the second floor.
I looked up and my question was answered. A gaping hole in the ceiling, with insulation and cables drooping down like vines from a tree, marked my path down to the ground floor.
“What happened? I bet it was SolOS...” I fired another few question. This time my voice becoming less croaky. I turned around to find a teal mare on her back with a confused, terrified look on her face, similar to the stallions. Her mane and tail were scruffy and covered in dust, but it appeared that they were considerably darker than her coat. Neither she nor the stallions answered. “Hah. I know. I'm in a bad snuff video with a post apocalyptic setting...” I looked at the teal mare to find she was shaking her head slowly. “Oh.”
“And what the fuck are you?” The stallion broke his silence after sheathing his knife into the makeshift scabbard tied haphazardly to his shoulder.
“I’m a Cybernetic Unit Network Transporter.” I replied, holding my head high, and feeding my ego as I announced my status. “And you are?”
“They call me Deathbringer” The stallion started to pluck up some courage.
I let out a chuckle and tilted my head sarcastically “Ok ‘Deathbringer.’ I’m Unit Five zero seven. But I prefer Soul.”
“Nopony laughs at my name. They only die once they hear it” He snarled and edged closer to me.
“What? Of laughter?”
Rage filled Deathbringer’s face like wildfire. He pulled his knife again and lunged.
Cerb./ Hostile detected.
// Weapon - Knife.
// Risk - Low.
// Enter S.A.T.S? Y/N
/ Y
I felt my circuits go into overdrive as S.A.T.S. took over. Sparks flew from my seams as my it kicked in. I watched the stallion slow down mid-air. I span around and bucked out my hind legs, hard as I could. The sound from the attack was drawn out, teeth crunching, a muzzle breaking and the ripping sound of the knife tearing backward through his cheeks. I ended the kick and reverse to watch the aftermath unfold. Deathbringer flew onto his back and slid into the rubble letting out a deep cry of pain.
Now I remember! I was being repairing because of my odd behavior and, more importantly, the ability to attack on my own will.
As my S.A.T.S. program ended, I watched ‘Deathbringer’ scream in dire pain, holding his hooves up to his face to stop the blood gushing out of his nose and mouth to form a red puddle around his head.
I heard trotting in the upper floors of the building, followed by shooting and yelling. Sprinkles of debris floated down from the ceiling, like snowflakes, while heavier clumps of concrete plummeted and crumbled on the floor.
“Oh no.” The teal mare said, scrambling to her hooves and darting deeper into the building, kicking up stones and dust as she sprinted.
“A thank you would be nice!” I shouted, but the only reply was my own echo. Then again, I do love my own voice.
More gunfire echoed through the building. With nothing better to do, I sat there and thought about my situation. It looked as if like the old Cerber/os offices had aged by a few hundred years. I went through my old memories and played them back. Every pony was laughing a joking with huge smiles on their faces. The second floor was filled with androids like me, being repaired or helping out the technicians. The images in my electronic mind faded, the building was eerily quiet apart of some sporadic scuffling.
A few moments later, a figure appeared at the back of the building carrying another pony draped over her...Its back. It was the teal mare.
“Help! please. She’s coming!” The mare was in tears, struggling to carry the other mare. Sounds of running and vile language came from behind her. “Oh crap!” She started to panis, stumbling into the room.
“Who’s she?” I asked. “A friend with that guy?” I turned and pointed at ‘Deathbringer,’ dying in a red sea of his own blood. The stallion led there motionless with his eyes wide, staring up to the ceiling and still clutching his mouth with his hooves.
Suddenly, it quieted again. I snapped my attention back to the mare to find her climbing under the old wooden reception desk. There she cowered with the other pony, who was tucked safely further back.
“Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on here?” I yelled out.
A loud bang rumbled through the reception area and rang through my chassis. I spotted something piercing the air as it flew right past my head, taking a chunk out of the wall behind me. A figure emerged from the darkness. I could make out her dress, similar to the knob head who tried to attack me earlier. A second mare appeared to join her, this one an unicorn.
The unicorn’s horn glowed a light purple, that same glow surrounding a smoking rifle levitating to her right. I could just make out the colour of her coat. It was... I should say ‘used to be’... yellow, but stains of filth and blood dominated.
“Where’s my brother?” She yelled, the sound echoing across the room. her voice quieted as she slowly approached me. “Also, did you see two mares come through here?”
I looked over to the teal pony who was retreating further back under the desk.
“What a teal pony? About this high?” I raised a hoof to estimated height. “Her mane slightly darker than her coat?” I was dodging the first question by answering the second. I had the nasty feeling, deep down in my processors, that that bone head was their brother. I looked back to the teal pony under the desk, only to find her miming ‘no’ frantically.
“Yes, that one. So have you seen him, or not?” The unicorn spoke again with anger creeping in her voice. As if to illustrate the ‘or not’, she cycled the bolt on her gun.
“Nope.”
“Don't fucking play games with me. I’ll ask ag...” She froze in her place and saw the corpse behind me. “What the fuck have you done!?” She screamed, beginning to cry. Fine, make me the fucking monster!
“Him? Oh, sorry, he ran into my hooves and then he died.” I tilted my head to side and continued. “Honestly, didn't your mother teach you not to run with knives in your mouth? Truthfully, you shouldn’t put knives in your mouth at all.”
The mare turned back to me in fury. I felt two more bullets whizzed past, missing as I dodged for cover, but the third hit a hydraulic cable in my front leg. Huh, she was definitely not in the mood for games. I quickly lost control of my leg, causing me to plummeted head first into the floor. I dragged my sorry flank away from the unicorn, leaving a thin trail of hydraulic fluid. More orange code flooded my vision, carrying warnings and limb pressure levels. At the end came a nice, big, red text saying ‘See Technician Immediately.’
The unicorn kept approaching as I tried to crawl away. Using SATS wasn't an option; it takes good while to load. It would come back too late. My sensors felt the rifle poke is way between the panels of my chassis. Gunfire erupted, and one by one my systems failed. My vision became pixelated, filling with artifacts caused by malfunctions. Soon enough, everything went black.
.\reboot.script activated...
After a long boot-up caused by installation of new hardware and software, I’ve seemed to have woken up in a dusty cramped room with a single light bulb hung in the centre of the ceiling bathing a wood worm infested crooked horribly aged table I was led on with an ambient light. The room walls was cluttered with shelving that held a ridiculous amount of cracked monitors, broken terminals and other technical scrap, with a few of them barely taking the strain of the weight as they bowed in the middle.
A small radio was chatting away in the corner that was interrupted by sporadic static. The familiar voice of DJ Pon Three nattered on about a toaster repair pony but also mentioning about the wasteland caused my circuits to throw up more illogical errors. I used to love listening the DJ late at night, half of the time I could’ve swore she was bolloxed half of the time when she was hosting. After a while of nonsense chattering the radio gave a blast of fuzzing static greeted by a old melody of an old mare signing.
“I tried booting him earlier, but he’s not loading and only the fan spins.” Another female familiar voice that came from behind the door that was almost hidden by clutter and shelving. I couldn't place the voice but I knew I heard it before, but it was different I suppose mature would be a better word to use.
“Maybe the gem batteries are dying?” A masculine voice replied.
“He has no batteries, I even tried using crystal cells but I couldn't find anywhere to place them. Hell, I even tried shoving it where the sun don't shine.” The familiar voice trailed off with a chuckling accompanied by hoofsteps. Upon hearing that a negative charge of violation surged through my body. I prayed to the great source code of the sky that wasn't correct; if it were true, the bitch would’ve found all her legs broken.
I lifted my head to look at my chassis to see if anything was different, as I’m not a great fan of surprise upgrades. I was surrounded by books, a few being Cerber/Os manuals, a Technicians weekly and Programmers weekly magazines. Broken appliances that has been harvested for parts also littered the table. I could've swore that one of the appliances was the remains of an old toaster, I pictured myself walking along and toast springing from my metal flank. This what the radio was talking about? A psychotic pony who travels around and turns innocent robots into a novelty kitchen appliances?
I shook my head to rid of the horrible pictures that was compiling in my head.
A shiny object caught my eye at the end of the table that gave out an electric blue aura of light. I couldn't believe my luck, a crystal cell. Some pony’s going down with a bad case of broken legs. I had to get out.
I shuffled up and along to the edge of the table and slowly rolled over off onto the floor trying not to knock anything off, I was hoping for an elegant landing but instead my metal ass gave a huge clunk as it hit the concrete floor followed by the tables contents as it flipped over. The room echoed with crashing and banging as the items hit the floor. I led there silently as I heard hoofs quickly trotting along behind the door.
Looking up, the door slowly creaked open and a teal mare poked her head in. As the mare creeped in, I suddenly placed my head on the ground and played possum.
I listened to the mare “hum” and “um” as she tried to figure out how the table had tipped over. A hoof was placed a few inches away from my face and slowly lifted as she stepped away.
“What the?” The mare did not finish her question. I noticed my fan was whirring away happily and I had a feeling deep down in my circuits that she noticed it too. “Buster! Have you been in here?”
She stood and waited for a reply but instead she was greeted with silence. Giving another hum the mare came back over and lowered her head to meet me at eye level. I stared right into her light blue eyes and dared not to flinch as she narrowed them with a smirk that grew across her face.
I knew that I recognized the mare, as I flipped through my memory banks to find that she is young mare in the Cerber/OS offices but she looked older. How long was I out?
The mare raised her hoof to her mouth and cleared her throat “Unit 507, please state your owner, operating system and status”
Suddenly I was possessed by coding that overridden my processes and my mouth started to move on its own. “Owner, Teal Linus. Operating system: Cerber OS. Status: Listening for commands from administrator.” As soon as I finished the possessive coding vanished from my processors and full control was given back.
A powerful surge of negative variables rushed through, as I watched my new ‘owner’ trotting happily across the room and started reading through old paperwork sat on the lower shelves.
“Heh, I don't know what the technicians at Cerber OS offices was on about.” She gloated to herself “Unit 507 cannot be re-programmed. Extremely dangerous. Caution, advised for decommissioning. I call bullshit”
I pushed myself up to all fours, I noticed that there was no grinds or creeks this time as my joint were freshly oiled. I quietly snuck up to the mare who was still reading through the paperwork and gave her a quick buck to the backside, forcing her head into the shelving and knocking of the old equipment onto the floor.
I watched the mare jolt backwards onto the floor and landed face up starting right back up at me in horror. Blood poured from her mouth and nose that dyed her chest red.
“How would you like it if I controlled your brain. Huh? Or tinker around inside you, change an organ or two?” I yelled at the mare so hard that the speaker in my voice box crackled as it couldn't cope with the volume.
“Unit 507. Activate shutdown sequ...” I didn’t give her time to finish her command as I jabbed a hoof into her ribs.
“Answer my question!” I yelled once more hovering my metal hoof above her head.
“I don’t know...”
I raised my hoof again but this time considerably higher.
“I...I had to make myself administrator to recode your broken modules and hardware. I’m sorry, please.I tried to rebuild you.” The mare whimpered as tears ran down her face and mixed with the blood.
“Remove it.” I lowered my voice and placed my hoof back on the ground.
The mare looked up with blank expression.
“Now!”
I took a step back as she rolled over and struggled to her hooves. Her whole body shook as he limped over to a terminal with a microphone attachment hanging from the side. I followed her across the room and sat next to her as she flicked on the terminal then started to whimper in voice commands. The hard drive clicked, scratched and ticked as it saved the data as she sobbed.
I couldn’t bare to watch the mare in that state, I ran through a few scenarios through my electronic mind. Putting the mare out of her misery is a possibility, but my coding screamed at me to fill in the gaps of data. How she managed to rebuild me using second hoof scrap was pretty impressive for a young mare. I think ‘curiosity’ is what the meat bags probably would've called it.
I watched the terminal flood with errors saying ‘command not recognized’ as she sobbed into the microphone. She couldn't even string together a few syllables yet alone a string of code.
“Stop,for Celestia's sake. Stop!” I yelled before she looked straight at me with big watery blue eyes that etched into my memory like a bad scar. “Please.” I raised a hoof gently. “Stop.”
If I was going to get this admin removed I had to calm her down first, and even apologize. I clenched my jaw upon thinking that I should.
I paused for a while and ran through a few processes on what I should say, a few if statements and a couple of senorio consequences just to be sure.
“I believe your name is Teal right?” I asked a simple question to start, in which I received a nod. “Good.” I slowly asked the next question. “Ok Teal, how did you know how to rebuild me?”
Teal’s eyes darted to the floor and back up at me and sobbed the answer “I tau..taught myself, I found some old books on cerb’ coding.”
“Old? Cerberos is only a few years old” I replied once a conflicting statement appeared in my vision. “How can there be old books on it?”
Teal gave me a confused look before dropping her jaw in realisation showing her blooded bottom teeth. “You don't know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“Those books are over two hundred years old.”
“Fuck me, did I really hit you that hard?”
Teal wiped her tears away from her eyes as well accidentally smearing the blood across her face and look at her stained hoof. “I..I think you should go outside.”
“No. Not until you removed yourself as administrator.” I replied sternly at her, slamming my hoof down.
“No honestly, you should take a look.” Teal limped out of the door and into the hallway still sniffing.
I followed the mare down the hallway, the grey paint of the walls was patchy as it was covered in black mold and where the paint flaked off. The hallway was long and narrow. We passed another room that contained two makeshift beds and a few empty cans of food that scattered the floor.
At the end of the hallway was an old rusty flight of stairs that led up in a beam of a dusky yellow light that lit up falling dust that floated and swirled in the air.
I followed her up the stairs and poked my head up to find there was no second floor but a big orange sky filled with thick clouds, with a wasteland that joined it at the horizon. A few silhouettes of broken buildings that stood the distance. It was dead quiet, only the sound of the wind was brave enough to travel through this hell hole.
“Equestria.” Teal stated as she point her hoof towards the wasteland.
As I looked over the land, statements filled my vision with illogical statements, and I could feel my processor starting to overload, trying to make files of all the data input that rushed through my microchips.
“Did we win?” I asked quietly, still trying to make sense of it all.
“No.” She replied with the answer that I was begging not here.
I looked down at the ground, and kicked a rock that was half buried in the dust.
“No one won.” She continued. “Both sides launched the megaspells.”
I continued to look at the ground, I couldn’t bare to take another look at what remained of my home.
“So...was you a robot soldier of some kind?”
I fell onto my hunches, “No.” I looked up at Teal and continued “I was created for a sick psyops for fooling our own kind.”
Teal tilted her head to one side with interest but with a hint of confusion. “So.. what did you do?”
“Many ponies was killed as the war raged on, in fact it started to cause a huge dent in the population. So to keep the public support for the war effort and boost moral, robots like me was created to fool the families of soldiers into thinking they returned home as they ‘Fulfilled their duty.’” I paused to fetch the memory files that I keep deep in my directories. “I was a exact copy of a fallen soldier. Hell, I was even programmed to even think I was him as his memories was imported into me, with a combination of memory orbs, fucked up magic, and out of this world technology.”
“You know you're not him. Right?”
“Yes. I’m aware that I’m an android.” I snapped back, slightly irked by the question. “ We was programmed to never become aware of our operation system. Until one day my synthetic skin ripped in an accident and I realised what horror laid beneath. Then the my own memories was unlocked being an android working in CerberOs”
Teal fired a hoof at me in objection. “Wait. Hang on, you said you was a Cybernetic Unit Network Transporter.”
“Yes. That was my original ‘job’ before I was dragged into the psyop. So many soldier died that they started to use other androids from different sectors.” I quickly scanned my memories back to what happened at the CerberOs building. “What happened to your other friend that got injured?”
Teal perked up as soon as I mentioned her “Oh, she’s out for a few days. But she’s my sister. She’ll return sometime soon.” She gave me a big grin “Ok, come back in and I’ll remove the myself as administrator” She quickly trotted back inside.
As I just about to stand up and follow her a voice spoke behind me.
“She worked for two years flat on rebuilding you. Just to say thank you.”
