Welcome Home Pt 4: Radicals

“I thought I had more time.” My girl guides my steps, she keeps what’s left of my brain focused. “Sweets, cut Jackie from the network.”

“Don’t you dare little filly!” Jackie’s screen flashes her scowliest face before she turns to me. “We are in this together. I don’t want to even hear that kind of talk out of you. You have all the time you need!”

“I’m feral, girl. You a good friend, but we both know it. You’ve been in my brain. Sweet’s is barely holding me together.” I know what’s past those doors. I know what I have to do. I have lots of debts to pay. I ain’t gonna make it to Checkers. I slide my badge across the floor. “My number don’t die with me, Jackie. The last duty of any courier is to pass on his duty. You’re Courier Six. Tell the Post Master I paid my debts till the end. Tell Princess… tell her that her father was proud.”

“I’m just a robot.” She’s a little too humble. It’s just not honest.

“Honestly, are you going to do this right now?” The overly cheerful voice of the mainframe sounds exasperated. But really, we’re having a moment here. “Sorry, but I am still here. Big doors. All the answers.”

“Talking out loud again…” I know where I am. “Sweets…”

“You survived me.” I don’t know if her voice is in my head or in my ears. “I am yours, and you are mine. I am never going to give you back. I am always here.”

“Blueberry?” Not her… anyone else. Any other voice.

“Surprise?” I can’t think, even as I walk through the doors.

“It really is heaven. I always knew you’d make it.” The thing that rolls forward is not my wife.

“I’m not a bad pony.” The voice that demanded her death sounds desperate. “They only see a better world. I never killed anypony.”

“The sacrices… it wasn’t what we thought, Blueberry.” It’s her voice, playing through the tinny speakers of the tracked robot. All thats left of my wife on proud display beneath the glass dome. “We’re all in heaven, every day is a party with Pinkie Pie… forever.”

“Six!” I hear Jackie’s voice as the chamber doors slam behind me and the red kroovy gathers in my eyes as more of those disembodied machines that used to be ponies roll forward.

“Don’t be afraid!” “Nopony ever dies in heaven!” “You didn’t do anything wrong, we’re all happy here!” The voices, all their voices. All trapped in a happy little nightmare.

“Sound system engaged,” Sweets voice echos in my head and across my SATS display, even as the grinding beats echo through the hollow halls of “heaven”, and more robots, powered by the surgically removed brains of my fellow stable dwellers…. My fellow ponies.

“You know the lines are overdrawn.” I rip an electrical conduit pipe bearing a sign, ‘High Voltage’, from the wall as a makeshift club. “Between the life and death there ain’t no wrong.”

“Blueberry! What are you doing?” That voice I once loved sounds terrified.

“What’s the reason? What’s the reason?” Sweets answers cheerfully. “The walls are high we know they gotta come down!”

“Please Blueberry,” The brain of the mare I loved pleads. “This isn’t you! This isn’t us!”

That was the wrong thing to say. “We’ve been crossing the line since twenty one sixty nine!” A casual swing of my cudgel free’s a pony from his happy nightmare. “We’re moving the world because our power is a shining. Sick, cruel, with bucking magic to prove that the radicals are here to stay!”

The brain-bot's pleading hits my ears as garbled noise, but something in my circuits translates: [Emotional distress detected. 78% probability of genuine fear.] My head swings without conscious thought. I adjust the trajectory by 0.03 degrees. Perfect impact.

“Blueberry, please stop!” That same voice, that same plea as they lead her to those doors. She walked in on her own, they all did. One life for many, the choice any good pony would make. The glass dome of another good pony’s brain shatters. I was never a good pony.

“We’re living hard core and radical!” The terrible song won’t stop. “We’ll always be maniacal and animal!”

“You’re mad!” “I don’t want to die!” “Save us!” Their voices die in their speakers, one brain at a time.

“You fear us because we’re physical and rational.” My girl croons as her laser cuts out this cancer on the face of self determination.

“Our Radi-cult of killer cult destruction!” Their voices fade into static, the mainframes voice becomes a wordless scream, but the terrible song plays on.

“Kill a cult, let’s kill a killer cult, yeah.” Sweets’ readiness is infectious.

“Subdivided everything that we see. Feal the reason of the music, what will be.” My targeting data only excludes one target as we descend into the belly of the beast. False paradise explodes into spattlers and sparks and very real death. My deep voice echoes through the halls of slaughter. “You gave us reason, then took it away, and now the boundaries are coming down!”

“You, you’re not him.” I should feel a lot of things. I should feel something. But her synthesized voice… those vacant floating eyes. “You’re a monster!”

“While you live and breathe, you're just nasty machines.” I can feel Sweets’s contempt, like my own sins crawling down my spine. I can feel our ire target the enemy below. Our target is in range. Non-combatant is interfering with target acquisition. “Taking out targets, as we do what we please.”

“You must stop!” The mechanical bitch pleads to our deaf auditory recievers. “These ponies are happy! I’ve given them the heaven they always deserved”

“I’ve been gone, now they scream like it’s never the same.” All the years I questioned if coming back the first time was a mistake. I was only wrong to ever leave. “Because I’m tearing up the radikult! A beast stomping because we’re animals, insatiable!”

“”Blueberry… please stop…” Emotional distractions are ditected and filtered. We can’t shoot her… only her. Everything else is easy to break. “We’re happy here!”

It was always all a lie.

“Our radical disruption!” Is it my voice? Is it her’s? One voice. Enough is too much! “A beat down! One step closer, to the fiery end that was always getting closer! It’s our insane world, and it only get’s better! Just feel next to nothing till it all drops again!”

The last glass dome is shattered. The last voice that could stand in my my way is gone. There is nothing between me and what I asked for. “It’s radical! Never what you wanted, unpredictable! The fear’s real because it’s rational and animal.”

And the music become a dirge. My girl croons, and our target knows we’re coming. “Power… power…”

“I fulfilled my programing…” That hated voice… does she regret? Does it matter?
“Power whore!” Her circuits can can be removed as easily as any organic meat drive. I don’t understand why this was so hard for us. And it’s quiet. His brain has gone quiet. We access the exit. The way he escaped the first time.

Author's Note

I've finally finished act I. Six is Brain Dead, and on we go. I hope you've enjoyed this. Propps to the KKat and Somber. I love Fallout Equestria. I hope you do too.