Sunset's human world origin

Canterlot county courthouse
Date: Nov 9th, time: 1:00 pm

*Anzhong’s perspective*

Despite the crime rates of Canterlot city, there was only one courthouse for criminal matters in the whole county. That meant that the courthouse staff was overworked and prisoners could be waiting over a month for their case to start. Anzhong was currently waiting for his case to be called. It was a simple battery case, and Anzhong was confident they would convict due to there being video of the whole thing.

Ki alerted Anzhong that he needed to relieve himself, and Anzhong took him outside. Going outside would mean that they would need to go back through security. That normally wouldn’t be a problem, but there was a new guard on staff that was a bit too big for his breeches. Strangely enough, his problem wasn’t with KI, it was with the cane. The guard tried to confiscate it, saying it was a weapon. He was correct in calling it a weapon but was also incorrect in his attempt to take it. Either way, Anzhong was long used to that kind of behavior, and another guard that worked there for longer stepped in and shut the newbie up.

Once Ki was done, Anzhong got in line to re-enter the building. He took Ki’s harness off and put it on the conveyor belt, along with his keys and phone. Once it was their turn, Anzhong instructed Ki to go through first then went through himself.

“Sir, you’re not allowed to take this with you. You can either take it back out to your car or surrender it. You will not get it back if you surrender it.” The same newbie guard from earlier said.

“Scott, we already had this talk today. You’ll be getting a write up for this.”, the senior guard from earlier said.

“I think I can handle this one.” Anzhong grabbed a pencil from his pocket and showed it to the newbie. Anzhong then threw the pencil into the far wall, in which it became embedded. “Yes, my cane can be used as a weapon, but so can a simple pencil. If you are so concerned with keeping all potential weapons out of this building, then you will need to keep everything out.”

Anzhong heard the newbie gaping like a fish and the senior guard laughing at the newbie. She was used to Anzhong so was not shocked by the display.

Anzhong went to go get his things but found Ki already had his harness on and his things were already being placed in his hand. “Something tells me he’s not going to make it through the month.”, the senior guard said.

“I am inclined to agree.” Anzhong placed his items back where they belonged and began walking back to his courtroom.

Canterlot Memorial park
Date: Nov 14th, time: 12: 30 pm

*Anzhong’s perspective*

Anzhong had decided to take his lunch in the nearby park. It was a nice place and, depending on how deep you were, quiet. Anzhong had let Ki take a break too. From the sounds of things, Ki was jumping around in the fallen leaves. Anzhong was enjoying his bento box. When he was about done, he heard what sounded like a young boy.

“Doggie!”, the boy shouted. Given that the only dog in the area was Ki, Anzhong paid close attention to the situation. The boy ran over to where Ki was and began making happy noises. Whatever the boy was doing apparently made Ki uncomfortable as he began running back to Anzhong. “Doggie?!” Anzhong could hear the boy running after Ki.

“I’m sorry young man, but Ki would like to be left alone.”, Anzhong said once the boy approached. Ki was now hiding behind Anzhong, and the boy was in front of Anhong.

“But I want to pet him.”, the boy whined.

“As much as you might want to pet a dog, they might not want to be petted, and their wishes need to be respected.”

“Aw”, the boy said in disappointment. “Hey mister, why do you have that stick?”

“It’s my cane. I use it to know what’s in front of me.”

“Why?”, the boy asked.

“I’m blind. That means that my eyes don’t work the way they are supposed to.”

“Why?”

“I was born this way. There’s a thing called an optical nerve that tells your brain what your eyes see. I was born without working optical nerves.”

“So, you can’t see me at all?”

“That is correct.”

“Can you still do normal stuff?”

“Mostly, I can’t drive a car, but I can still do most jobs and play most games. I just do it differently from how you might do it.”

“Cool”

Around then, Anzhong heard a woman call for someone. “Abayomi! Abayomi! It’s time to go!”

“I gotta go. Nice meeting you, mister.”

Anzhong waved to the boy as he ran off. Anzhong checked his watch and, finding that his break time was almost over, put Ki’s harness back on and began walking back to the office.

Minerva’s house
Date: Nov 14th, time: 6:30 pm

*Minerva’s perspective*

With Emi’s condition worsening, Minerva has been working on finding something to help her. Unfortunately, her remedies were not designed to deal with cancer. The best she could do was provide an immune boost. For the first time in her life, Minerva felt useless. It was her medicinal assistance that helped to bring Emi into the world in the first place, but now, she can’t find a way to keep her in this world. Anything Minerva gives Emi needs to be cleared by her doctor, Scylla Rojas, to ensure that there will be no negative interactions with her other treatments. Dr. Rojas had provided Minerva a list of compounds known to react badly, and that left Minerva with very few options.

Minerva had learned much about leukemia and cancer in general since the diagnosis, and she was surprised that more people don’t die from it. At this point, Minerva had conceded to the fact that the best she could do was make Emi more comfortable. However, this came with its own difficulties. Emi is, and has always been, as stubborn as her mother and has a ridiculously high pain tolerance, like her father. Emi onced smashed her finger in a door but wasn’t whaling in pain like other children would. She was crying but was otherwise coherent. This had led to Minerva frequently directly asking Emi if she was alright.

Minerva mulled over her current situation as she worked on her latest bit of code. Brigid and Minerva decided they wanted to have kids around the same time as each other fairly early on in their friendship. As mischievous as children can be, having two around the same age ment they could entertain each other while the two of them worked. Minerva managed to convince her employer to let her work from home and hence became the primary caregiver of the girls during the work day. Brigid would watch over the girls during the summer and take them to do things that Minerva’s war wounds make difficult for her to do. This plan saved them thousands that neither could really afford. They intended to nurture the girls through school and help them in any way they could until they became self-significant and successful, in whatever form that was. The girls certainly had the genetic advantage. That was something Minerva looked for when choosing a donor. Anura’s donor was smart, genetically healthy, and Minerva found him attractive, even if he wasn’t considered so back in the Philippines, where he was born, due to his dark skin. They still work to give Emi an education, but that’s been taking a back seat to keeping her alive.

An email notification pulled Minerva’s attention back to her computer. It was from her boss, Cypher Williamson.

Hey M, we need you to come into work in a couple days. There’s this uber-important meeting that the bigwigs want everyone to attend. I tried telling them that some of our team works remotely and could join us via video call, but they wouldn’t hear it. You would think that the higher-ups at a technology company would be more open to that sort of thing, but nooo, everything has to be done the way it was done before the invention of electricity.

The meeting’s at 9:30 on the 16th. I’m sure you and the rest of the ghosts can find a way to get to the office; you’re a smart bunch. I will be wearing my most dapper ringmaster getup. I’m sure you’ll find equally appropriate attire.

Senerly, your favorite little gremlin

“This is just great.” Minerva couldn’t bring Emi with her, the price for someone with the necessary training to take care of Emi was something that neither of them wanted to spend, and having to come in person to a meeting at a tech company was stupid. At least Minerva knew that she had the support of Cypher and her coworkers. “Dapper Victoria era getup” was code for malicious compliance. Cypher was an anarchist and prided himself on his ability to get under the skin of his superiors while staying perfectly within company guidelines. Him not wanting to be seen as just another higher-up had led to a rather relaxed office culture. For example, the office dress code simply states a requirement of clothes and a recommendation of a hoodie and sweatpants. The recommendation only existed because of the computer rooms being kept cold. Knowing Cypher, he’s already tried every trick in every book to get the higher-ups to see reason. That means that Minerva had no chance.

With no other choice, Minerva got up from her chair, climbed out of the dark basement, and walked over to the Katon house. Minerva had her own key to the place so just walked straight in. Seeing that Brigid wasn’t in the living room, Minerva went straight to her office. “You are very predictable.”, Minerva said as soon as she saw Brigid.

“How about regularly overworked?”

“Yeah, speaking of work. The bigwigs are requiring all of us lowly drones to come into the office on the sixteenth. I can’t get out of it.”

“Crud, Ah’ll find somethin’. Couldn’t dey have told ya soone’?”

“They’re glorified middle managers. They don’t care about us. I’m certain that they would do the same thing even if they knew our situations.”

Brigid muttered something that Minerva could only guess were Irish expletives and some rather rude names.

“I’ll let you get back to your work. I have ta find a good way to make those bigwigs actually need wigs.”

“See ya Minerva.”

BisonWorks Maine state office
Date: Nov 16th, time: 9:15 am

*Minerva’s perspective*

Minerva showed up to the BisonWorks office in her army best. Looking around, Minerva could see several people who worked from the building, but the majority were other ghosts, people who normally worked off site. This was beneficial for all those involved. The company didn’t need as much office space or to buy lunches for them. The reason why someone became a ghost varied, but just from looking around, you could see people with medical conditions that would make it difficult to leave their house and babies/young children.

“Hey, M. How are your legs?”, Cypher said.

Minerva turned around to see her boss. As he said, he was wearing his ringmaster suit. It consisted of a black and yellow tailcoat, white gloves, black pants, black boots, white button up shirt, cane, and top hat. The only thing that did change between his normal work wear of a hoodie and sweatpants was his eyepatch. He never told anyone what happened to his eye beyond that he lost it by being a stupid teen. He had a prosthetic eye under that patch, but he said that he hated the way it looked and only had it to keep his eye socket from collapsing. The patch was black with a yellow eye design he drew on there, making it a sort of inversion of his remaining yellow eye. His yellow and black hair was in its usual unkempt state.

“Hello, Cypher.” Minerva bent over and pulled up her pant legs, exposing her prosthetic legs. “They’re performing excellently.” One of BisonWorks biggest projects is the development of prosthetics and mobility aids. Because of that, Mr. Bison has his hiring managers actively search out people with disabilities to work for them. Minerva’s legs have automated joints to aid in providing more natural movement while still looking like a foot. “Any idea about what’s going on?”

“It turns out these are new people from the buyout. That’s why they are unfamiliar with the ghost program.”

“What buyout?”

“You haven’t heard?”, Cypher asked, surprised.

“I don’t keep up with stuff like that. They tell me what they need me to do, and I do it. That and coming here to get maintenance done on my legs is about the limit I interact with the company.”

“Well, this other company called Sandysoftwear- Hey, that’s the first time I was able to say the name without laughing. -Anyway, they were going under, so we bought them out. The bigwigs we’re dealing with are transfers from that company.”

Minerva nodded her understanding. The start of the meeting was called, and everyone walked into the room. As Minerva walked into the room, she saw the bigwigs gawking at what they saw. All of the ghosts did their best to play up their conditions or wore their old military uniforms. It was not twenty minutes into the meeting before the children started fussing. The parents began giving their kids snakes, and one of the mothers began breastfeeding her twins.

“Stop that, this instance!”, one of the bigwigs shouted.

“She needs to feed her girls. Do you not see how small they are?”, Cypher retorted. “Before you give us crap about having kids in the meeting, you only told us about the meeting at the end of the work day, two days ago. That’s not enough time to arrange child care.”

Cypher and the bigwigs continued going back and forth. Minerva was only half paying attention. The bigwigs were giving her a headache and she was tired. The bigwigs were eventually settled, and the meeting continued. What was so important that everyone needed to be present? Announcing the completion buyout and what the new structure will be. If any of them had gotten to participate or voice their concerns, it would’ve been acceptable, but they didn’t. The bigwigs just told them what was going to happen and then told them to leave. As annoyed as everyone was, they were willing to just get out of there and forget about it, but what the bigwigs said next sent everyone into a tizzy.

“We’ll see you here tomorrow.”

Everyone stopped in their tracks and turned to look at the bigwigs. Cypher stepped towards the bigwigs with a shit eating grin on his face. “Well in that case, we will need twenty-nine new offices and twenty-nine more lunches, which-” Cypher twisted around to count some of the ghosts. “-four of which will need to be soft and one needs to be a liquid. We’ll also need movers to bring their setups here because some of them are specially designed for their users. You’ll also need to file paperwork and go meet with Bill Bison himself to tell him the ghost program at this site is being terminated. Oh, this would all need to be done by tomorrow if you want everyone here by then.”

The bigwigs’ faces drained of color at the mention of Bill Bison. Mr. Bison was a ghost himself due to his own mobility issues. In short, they already fucked up and were just about to fuck up even more. “Well, um, chm chm, resume your normal duties. We are done where.”

“Good, that makes you smarter than the majority of your counterparts.”, Cypher said. “Next time, just make this an email. This little meeting cost the company one and a half hours of time that we were still paid for. That’s $1,507.50 just to let you know.”

They exited the conference room, leaving the bigwigs to wallow in their screw ups. The twenty regular workers walked deeper into the building, to their work stations, and twenty-eight of the ghosts and the occasional helpers made their way out to their transports. That left Cypher and Minerva alone in the lobby.

“Is everything okay? You look tired.”, Cypher asked Minerva.

“I’m fine. I just have a lot going on and need to get home.”

“Okay then, safe travels.”

Minerva nodded and left to go home.

Minerva’s house
Date: same day, time: 5:45

*Minerva’s perspective*

Ring Ring

“Mom! It’s Aunt Brigid!”, Anura called out.

Minerva pulled herself out of bed and worked her way down to the living room, where Brigid was.

“Ah figured yeah c’n use a drink n’ someone ta talk ta. Ah will neve’ know how ya c’n drink dis stuff.” Brigid handed Minerva a Beast Power drink. Brigid had a regular coffee in a thermos.

“Many more late nights than I’m proud of.” Minerva motioned for them to take a seat on the couch. Minerva told Brigid about the meeting and how the bigwigs didn’t do their research about the company. Brigid simply sat and listened while sipping her coffee. “Sigh, thank you for listening. Hff, we haven’t really talked in a while, haven’t we?”

“No, we haven’t. Every‘hin’ is jus’ so- crazy isn't the right word, but ya know what Ah mean.”

Minerva nodded in response.

“Let’s not talk ‘bout dat. Dat’s all dat we’ve talked ‘bout f’r months.”

“Yeah, what do you want to talk about then?”

“We’ve known each othe’ f’r nearly ten yea’s, but Ah jus’ realized dat we know very little ‘bout what each othe’ does f’r work. We almost neve’ talked about work. Da few exceptions bein’ gripin’ or when we couldn’t hang because a’ work.”

“Really?” Minerva thought they talked about work with each other. “How could work never come up as a subject?”

“Ah imagine it’s ‘cause our work is kinda boring. Aside from da occasional funny assignment or meltdown, me work is, f’r da most part, da same day-in n’ day-out. All da crazy stuff takes place in da dorms.”

Minerva nearly shot her drink from her nose when remembering some of the things they did while living in the dorms. Even though she and Brigid were not close back then, they lived on the same floor. That meant whatever chaos one experienced, the other would also experience. The paper thin walls did not help in that manner. Minerva could even remember a time where Brigid accidentally punched a hole straight through the wall. “Do you remember that time where one of the other girls had to give a safety presentation after burning her macaroni and setting off the fire alarm and gave a safety presentation about the health risks of macaroni instead of a fire safety presentation?”

“Hehe, yeah, Ah thought da RA’s head was goin’ ta explode. Now den, me job’s pretty cut n’ dry. Ah teach n’ research anthropology. Me main area a’ research concerns da uncanny valley n’ why it exists.”

“The uncanny valley?”

“Ya know when ya look at a doll n’ get creeped out? Dat’s da uncanny valley, when some‘hin’ looks human but not quite right. We react da same way ta dat as we do ta snakes. Dat tells us dat we evolved ta be afraid a’ some‘hin’ dat looks like us but isn’t us.”

Minerva sat up straight and a feeling of unease came over her. “That has some very disturbing implications.”

Brigid nodded sympathetically. “Ah agree. Ah think it has some‘hin’ ta do with detecting those with psychopathy, but many a’ me colleagues n’ myself believe dat dere is some‘hin’ more. - Now, what is your work like?”

“Well, BisonWorks mission statement is to ensure every human has the ability to move freely, but there are also many side projects to fund the mission. I make the codes that they can either sell or use themselves. I’m also a tester.” Minerva gestured to her legs. I tell them what I need and want and report how well their creation works.”

“How are ya doin’ with y’r legs?”

“I’m doing fine.” When Minerva first lost her legs, she was angry. She was supposed to be some sort of avenging spirit, a hero righting a horrific wrong done to her people. Minerva never once saw combat while over there. All she saw were landmines, sometimes too late. Minerva was angry about her legs but was furious about how. She’d rather have lost her legs in a battle or rescuing someone. Instead she stepped on a landmine when they were supposed to be removing them. She lost her legs by being a screw up. “I still don’t have my full range of motion with this model, but they think they’re getting close.”

“Ya still have dose athletic feet, right?”

“I do, but I don’t like the look of them, and they are harder to balance on.”

“Ah see.”

The two of them sat in silence together after that, simply enjoying the other’s company. Eventually, Brigid had to go back home, and Minerva got to work making dinner. Meanwhile, Minerva couldn’t stop thinking about what Brigid said about the uncanny valley. There are many creatures in mythologies around the world that take the form of humans in order to cause harm, and the way Brigid said “some‘hin’ more”, leads Minerva to think that Brigid is having a similar train of thought. Brigid had never really believed in the supernatural until that incident with the doll and her developing what she calls hyper-mumstincts; although she says that they can be explained by science, even if it’s a whole new field of science. She did always trust Minerva’s feelings but didn’t believe in a sixth sense. For Brigid to be considering a supernatural explanation is huge, but it also leaves Minerva with a feeling of unease. There might be something out there that hunts humans by taking their form.