I.R.I.S ran through the wires that connected her to the various systems around Crystal Haven University, well not really as she was sort of everywhere at once but it was how she heard one of her programmers refer to when she fully focuses on something and it sort of stuck.

Either way she ran through the wires from system to system checking on things and giving orders to her subsystems or a robot as needed. She deployed a groundskeeper bot to tend to some of the grass and the one tree that was still alive, or what she could assume was alive as it was there still where the rest of the grass sort of withered away and the rest of the trees were just bar wood, but not the tree in the northeastern part of the Campus, it still had some leaves that sprouted, they were strange colors but they grew and the grass was yellow but the same, it grew and spread as time went on then went dormant as plants do.

So she tended to the tree and made a concerted effort to not look to a part of the Campus near these plants and did not let her systems theorize on how these plants survived when the rest didn’t as it would lead her back to certain files she did not like opening even if they lurked deep within her memory banks time stamped like all her memories that she cant forget….

Oh hey the watering of the grass and tree were done, time to move onto the greenhouses beside Flora Harmony Hall. The specialized ponitrons, a subset of the groundskeeper ones activated and through them and her cameras watched as they rolled into a drastically different area from the rest of the campus.

Within here was a world of greens, blues, reds, pinks and a host of other colors contained within the framework of the green houses, what remained of the biology students and researchers work she had been carefully tending too here within what remained of the work being done within the fence, the only trace of the work conducted here outside of her own files.

While some of the glass of the greenhouses had broken in The Event as she called it this had done nothing to harm the planets within, quite the opposite she theorized as the plants closest to the broken glass were rainbows of colors and had semi spread outside the greenhouses either above them in the case of one purple leafed tree or a series of vines with leaves of every color of the rainbow along the same stem.

None of the plants grew far beyond the greenhouses the soil outside not agreeing with them, While she would prefer the greenhouses had been intact she could not argue with the benefits of the broken glass allowed in rain which made watering them far easier as she only had to tend to a few of them and trim parts that were withered or looked sick compared to the rest of the plant, that had taken some work on her part given the strange developments of the plants over the years, but she had figured it out and kept the planets alive wishing the researchers and students could see the fruits of their work.

NO, DON'T THINK ABOUT IT!

She snipped a withered vine from one of the plants and disposed of it in the compost pile as she moved to use some of the older bits of the pile to fertilize the plants.

All in all the work took half an hour of her focus though she did hop over to one of the other plants deep within a lab of Flora Harmony Hall, a very big tree that somehow survived part of the building falling on it and now it grew up through three stories of the building from the basement of the Lecture Hall, its branches stretching up towards the light that came through the hole in the roof.

This tree needed little tending to, her best guess was it came from experiment E-39b, something the researchers of this lab had been working on to make a very hearty tree capable of surviving in the likes of the Badlands according to the notes.

Seems this research was a success given the tree was thriving inside a building of all places, its roots having broken through the floor to the soil below she assumed.

She checked on it seeing the same bits of equipment that had been around it as it grew, now part of the trunk due to it growing around it all. She took note that there was no change in the tree and she took a small sample to analyze and confirm as she did once a month knowing the small hole she made would be gone within a week as if it were never there.

The grounds keeping handled she ran through the wires to check water levels in her reserves noting she had used a third of the massive tank and that she would need to open the hatches when it was going to rain again to refill.

She wished the Doppler System was working so she would know more accurately that would be but the pegasi hadn't sent a schedule in years so she only had its reading of the air to go off of but luckily the rain seemed to be almost regular to keep her reserved tank filled and thus handle what she needed as well as the water enchantment gems.

She flicked to the camera on the main gate and paused there watching, seeing the ruined buildings beyond the gate and wondered when the Visitor would come back again as it had been a week.

She gave a shake of her nonexistent head, she had work to do, systems to check and duties to follow.

She moved through the wires checking on the stored food noting the preservation spells were still functioning at 100% so the food was still good within the store rooms.

She then went through the security systems to make sure it was still functional at 100% and that access to restricted areas was still being controlled via security doors and security bots, not that anyone was here to worry about, she thought about triggering a security drill as something to do as it had been a long time since she ran any drills

A hammer struck something soft over and over again as a wet squelching noise came from it, screams registered on every sensor.

Security was fine, she had some bots patrol the southern fence line for any sign of breaks instead, after all gotta keep the campus safe!

She fluttered through the wires rather than run as she she went from lab to lab checking on the experiments there, cataloged what she found and then compiled that data into emails that she sent to the researcher personnel mail for them to read, don't get it wrong, she knows they won't but it was part of her programming and was something to do.

She was alerted as one of her ponitrons misjudged where something was rolled off the path and tripped.

A quick diagnostic revealed its visual sensor was out of alignment so she generated a maintenance ticket as she deployed two others to help it up then guide it to the maintenance shed as she restored power to the shed.

She had cut power to the shed as it wasn't needed to be powered all the time since there weren't any workers there so she only powered it on as needed, it was part of the reason most of the lights were off in the campus as she didn't need them and neither did her robots so she cut their power to not waste energy even though the school was powered by a class 4 reactor as an emergency backup system with a second class 4 for redundancy. She virtually had unlimited power but still efficiency was never a bad thing so no lights.

A lot of the campus was powered down for this reason only to bring things back up to run a test on it or when The Visitor Cinder was onsite.

Without her there wasn't much reason for most of the place to be powered.

The damaged ponitron reached the shed, calling it a shed was an understatement for the 4 story building capable of housing a 4th of her bots at one time to be worked on if she wanted with room for spare parts, workbenches and faculty areas.

She activated a spritebot and got to work realigning the sensor, taking only a few minutes and one test and the ticket was stamped complete and the spritebot went back to its charging station as the ponitron left and a few minutes later she powered down the shed once more.

She generated a report, sent it to herself and then archived the report, normally she’d also print out a copy for the head of maintenance but the printer was jammed and

An older earth pony stallion ran down a hall of the ExecuCom Lecture Hall, a look of panic on his face as he frantically spoke into his radio to some one back at the maintenance shed that some one had gone crazy running off towards the Dinning Hall and they were on their way, there was a loud crack and the older stallion head snapped forward as part of it vanished in a spray of red hitting the floor and sliding leaving a red trail for a few feet as an intruder whipped a rifle around as a student screamed and there was another crack as the scream cut off.

The head of the Maintenance Department wasn't around to file physical reports.

She ran from the Maintenance Shed systems to the storage area and deployed all her ponitrons and Mr. Handies in those areas to triple check that every single piece on the manifest down to the last paperclip was accounted for focusing the majority of her systems on this very important task that had to be done, yes it did. It was her job, she always did her job.

As she was half way through the inventory a subsystem alerted her to motion at the main gate and she flicked over to it and smiled wide as she saw the familiar profile of the only name listed as a visitor, Cinder walking through the gates looking around with some trepidation and she headed for the main gate system via ponitron so happy to see she had returned.

Author's Note

We got our first look into the life and times of The Information Retrieval and Interactive Support A.I of Crystal Heaven University.