My eyes flung open as I gasped for air, grabbing at the air in front of me with my hooves and trying to get some air into my lungs. My mind was in a state of shock as I gasped a few more times for oxygen, twisting my head from side to side to see who had tried to drown me. My heart raced and I closed my eyes, rubbing them as I slowed down my breathing. Opening them again, I was greeted by the same blackness that I had seen when I first regained consciousness. Putting a hoof directly in front of me, I slowly advanced it closer and closer to my face until I could feel the warmth irradiating from it. I still couldn’t see anything. Had I gone blind? I didn’t remember going blind at all. In fact, I didn’t remember anything!
I didn’t know who I was or where I was. I didn’t know how I got here, and I certainly didn’t know how I was getting out. The room was silent and pitch-black, so I figured I must be in some abandoned place, but I wasn’t sure how the place could be so dark. Trying to think, I scratched my head and made a small discovery. I had a horn atop my forehead. I was a unicorn. Most unicorns could do magic, so I figured that I may as well at least try. Shutting my eyes, I concentrated on light. Bright light. I wanted to make nothing more than a spark, and I willed with every fiber for there to be light. I felt some sort of power grow in my head and I switched my concentration to it, willing it to increase and grow. Finally, I channeled it to my horn and thought of light again.
I opened my eyes and in an instant, the floor around me was flooded with a yellow glow. The ground was reflective and mirror-like, but the walls were nowhere to be found. Looking down, I saw a slightly blurrier version of myself staring back up at me, her yellow eyes piercing into mine. I noticed my green fur along with my green and white mane, frazzled beyond belief. I had more important things than hair to worry about right now though, so I looked at the surface of the ground itself. It was very reflective of the faint yellow light I was producing, and felt warm and hard to the touch. Testing its strength, I stamped a hoof down as hard as I could manage. It produced a sound close to that of hitting a piece of metal. The sound rang out and echoed off of the unseen walls and ceiling.
A few seconds after the echo died down, my ears picked up a faint ringing seemed to come from the distance. Perking my ears up and concentrating on the sound, I could distinguish that there was definitely a sound, and it seemed to be getting slowly louder. Trotting towards the ringing, I tried to figure out what would be making a noise so high pitched and so steady. Now the ringing was clearly audible, and I stopped, figuring that I had gotten close enough to it to hear it clearly. The sound hurt my ears a bit, so I started to back off in an attempt to quiet it down.
Every step backwards only seemed to cause the sound to amplify and I started to sprint away from the ear-piercing noise, blindly running into the dark abyss. I couldn’t concentrate on producing light with my horn anymore, so I just prayed that nothing was in front of me. In my attempt to run, I stumbled and collapsed onto the floor, smashing my head against the hard surface of the ground beneath me. My brain howled in pain, not only from the newly acquired headache from hitting the ground, but also from the sound, increased to the point where I swore my ears were bleeding. Putting my hooves on my ears, I shouted in pain, wishing that my life would end soon so that the horrible sound would end.
Then I went deaf, or at least it seemed to be that way because the sound instantly stopped barraging my ears. My heavy breathing slowed and my head throbbed as blood rushed towards the bruised spot on my head. Opening my clenched eyes, I saw I was still trapped in the black room, but at least I hadn’t collided with anything during my frenzied sprinting. I probably wouldn’t be conscious if I had. Willing light back into my horn, I clenched as a surge of pain ran through my head. It was too painful to keep the light going, so I sat down and closed my eyes, trying to think of what to do next.
“Lyra’s awake,” A voice suddenly sounded in the distance. It sounded masculine, but it didn’t sound like he was shouting. It was almost as if he were just on the other side of the wall because his words were audible, but muffled by something. “It looks like her mind is still in limbo though. She’s not sleeping anymore, but she’s fully conscious now.”
Disregarding what he was saying, I gathered all of my strength and shouted, “Hello? Can anypony hear me?” I waited a few seconds, but there was no response from the male voice.
“That means that we need to act fast if we expect to pull her out alone,” another female voice said to what must have been the male. “We don’t want to reset her again, because I’m not putting her back for another week. If we do she may never wake again.”
“What do you mean, ‘wake up again?’” I shouted to the female, suddenly panicking. They were talking about me. I recognized the name Lyra as soon as I heard it. It was my name, but what did the voice mean when it said I may never wake up again? I was awake right now, wasn’t I?
My heart started pounding in my chest as I tried to decipher what not waking up meant. Suddenly, a wave of paranoia overcame me as I felt as if something was watching me. I willed my light to extend as far as it could, but my eyes didn’t catch any shadows or deformities in the ground. Lurching around, I thought I caught something out of the corner of my eye. Getting the feeling that somepony was still behind me, I twisted my head to catch the flick of a shadow.
“Hello?” I called to the void, sweat starting to form on top of my head. “Is there somepony else here?” I didn’t like the tension in the air around me. It felt as if something was just outside my line of vision. I fixed my eyes on a point in the distance and looked for even the slightest movement…
“Doctor, she’s shown up on the scanner!” the female voice shouted in my ears, making me jump back a few feet. “You need to get her out, now!”
“Who?” I called to the voice, not expecting an answer back. “Who’s on the scanner?”
Before I could get a reply, my ears picked up on a low rumbling sound in the distance. Instinctively, I crouched down on the floor and covered my ears with my hooves. I didn’t want another sound piercing my eardrums that day. This noise, however, grew to the point where I could feel the ground shaking. Uncovering my ears, I stood up and stared into the distance, trying to discern what was making the noise.
My feet were knocked out from under me in less than a second as a massive wave of green liquid swept past me. In mere moments my body was overcome by the slick, green substance. I tried to paddle to keep my head above the rushing surface, but it felt as if my hooves were flailing around in nothing. A few seconds later the current was pulling me down under the surface longer and longer, almost to the point where I couldn’t get back up in time to catch my breath. The liquid itself tasted like mouthwash, and every time I opened my mouth to snag a breath of fresh air, some of it got in and burned my tongue and the back of my throat.
My eyes burned and tears were streaming out when I heard a muffled voice shout, “Get that paralyzer out of her mouth! If she ingests any of it, she could go into cardiac arrest, and we could very easily lose her!” the words hit my ears, but I was in so much pain that at the time their meaning was lost to me.
“Stay with us Lyra,” the voice commanded as my heart started to slow down. I was on the edge of consciousness when the hazy voice whispered, “Clear!”
A jolt of energy surged through my body as I coughed up a bit of the green liquid, looking around in the black nothingness. I was lying on the floor, breathing heavily with my heart pounding. Willing the light back into my horn, I looked at the ground again, noticing that it was no longer covered in that green liquid. In fact, it looked as if the stuff had never come through. I rubbed a hoof through my fur and mane to see if any of it had stuck, but I was dry as ever, not counting the perspiration from the ordeal that just happened.
“She’s getting close,” the female voice shouted off to my right, “pull her out!”
“I’m not done with the calibrations and back-ups,” the male voice responded. “If I pull her out now and something goes wrong, there’s no chance that I’ll be able to recover her mind. She’ll die.”
I agreed with the male voice, even though I don’t see how I could have been asleep. I already felt many different types of pain, and the mere shocks alone should have startled me enough to wake up gasping for air. That’s how I found myself in this place though…
“Odd, isn’t it?” a new voice suddenly whispered in my ear. It sound snake-like and menacing, and I couldn’t tell who or what could produce that kind of hissing sound. “You find yourself in a room full of voices, and yet they all lay a deaf ear on your troubles.”
“Hello?” I managed, starting to nervously glance from side to side. “Who is that? Who’s speaking?”
“It’s me, Lyra,” the voice replied, seeming to come from every direction, “your savior.”
“What do you mean, ‘savior?’ What are you saving me from?”
“Those voices, Lyra. The voices want you to leave here. They want to experiment on you, test you, and know what makes you…tick.” The last word sent a chill down my spine, and my gut was telling me to run. To hide. To do anything I could to get away from this new voice. I took off towards the direction I was facing, hoping that whatever was in the dark couldn’t follow me too far. I ran for about ten minutes when suddenly I saw something just at the edge of my light.
There was a wall in front of me.
Turning to the left I ran for a few seconds until I was met with another wall. Both were made of the same shiny and hard material as the floor, and both were in pristine condition, not having any kind of scratches of scuffs on them at all. They weren’t faded or dilapidated in any way, but they also blocked me from going any further away from that voice. Turning around, I decided to see if the other direction would have been a better choice.
There was a wall blocking my path.
“But that’s impossible…” I muttered, slowly backing up. I had just run for over a minute from that direction. There was no way that one could exist there.
“Is it now?” the demonic voice hissed in my ear, “Were you running for ten minutes, or ten seconds? Do you remember?”
My heart was racing as I tried to run the only direction that was left. A few seconds later I was met with a wall. Turning around I haphazardly started running again, but before I could take a few steps, the light from my horn cascaded on the dark black wall. Suddenly, my endless void had become a black box, and I was trapped inside.
“Help!” I cried out, starting to panic. I had hoped that the voices could hear me, but they didn’t respond.
“Come now, Lyra,” the voice responded after my cry.” Nopony can hear you, and there’s nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. So why don’t you rest your hooves and let me help you out a bit.”
I started to panic, the walls suddenly seeming closer than they had been before. My light was reflecting off of three of the four, and I was staring towards the direction of the fourth, watching for any kind of movement. I started to back up, but almost instantly, my back leg bumped into the wall, stopping me from moving. Sliding down, I waited in fear for something to happen to me.
“Just rest,” the voice hissed as I saw something materialize just outside the edge of my light, “and let me take over for a while. Come now and give me a great big…” the voice paused, as a pair of glowing red eyes appeared in the gloom and a massive smile appeared under then, dripping with what only could have been blood, “…smile!”
My heart skipped a beat as my throat suddenly tightened up, constricting my breathing. I was wheezing as my light distinguished. I couldn’t pay attention as I felt the glowing eyes piercing into my soul. I wanted to run, but the walls were blocking me in, and even if they weren’t, I couldn’t move a muscle. My vision started to blur as the thing came closer and closer to me. I felt glued to the floor. My muscles gave out and I slumped to the floor, accepting that I was going to die.
My eyes started to droop as the voice whispered into my ear once more, “Sleep, Lyra. It’s my turn now.” I started to close them as the figure started to fade away.
ZAP!
I gasped as a shock ran through my body, and I opened my eyes to a blinding white light and muffled sounds of ponies talking. Blinking a few times, the intensity of the light became more bearable and I glanced around. I was lying on my back in some sort of shiny pod-like structure, but the high walls around me prevented me from seeing any of the voices without leaning up in a sitting position, which I couldn’t do because I couldn’t feel my limbs.
Turning my head to the side, I saw my distorted reflection in the warped metal. The same two yellow eyes I had seen in that black void were looking lazily back at me, but my hair was covered in the green substance I had nearly drowned in. The light above me seemed to be attached to a brown ceiling by a hook, and I couldn’t tell whether it was a gas lamp or a type of electrical powered device.
The muffled pony voices seemed to be arguing about something, but my hearing was still recovering from the jolt. My entire body felt like it was made out of stone, and it was a challenge just to swivel my head back and forth. Looking down at the bottom of the pod, I saw a few wired openings that seemed to be large enough to let a liquid through. I tried to lift my head to examine it a bit more, but a sudden sharp pain in my neck stopped me and forced a small whimper from my lips.
Suddenly, the bickering voices stopped and above the shiny silver walls, a head appeared looking down at me. It belonged to a brown stallion with blue eyes and a slicked-back brown mane. The pony smiled before exclaiming, “Lyra! It is a pleasure to see you awake again. How are you feeling?”
The best answer I could give was a slight shake of my head, as I found that I couldn’t feel my tongue or lips at all. I knew trying to speak would only result in a plethora of meaningless sounds that would convey nothing. He replied to this movement by telling me, “That’s usually how ponies feel after being under for a few days. Give it a few minutes and you should start to regain some feeling in your body. Call or…well…grunt if you need me.”
He disappeared behind the walls of my pod, and I pondered on what he meant by being under for a few days. I must have been put to sleep in this chamber, but that doesn’t explain why I don’t remember how I got here. Did I have brain damage while I was sedated? I needed to know, but I could only begin to feel the tips of my hooves, and my lips were tingling from the draft that was going through. I could feel warm air blowing slowly across my body, seeming to come from my back hooves. I assumed that they were trying to make my recovery comfortable, and were venting warm air into the chamber for me.
The voices started up again, and I lay there for a minute with my eyes closed, regaining strength while my hearing slowly came back to me. Every few seconds I could make out a phrase or two of what they were saying to each other. The male voice would say something along the lines of, “We’re lucky that she was pulled out in time, or that virus could have taken over her…” while the female would respond with phrases like “scanned her mind,” and “can’t figure out why the wipe occurred.”
After a while, I put a hoof onto the surface of the metal, and summoning all of my strength, pushed myself up into a sitting position. Nearly exhausting my legs, I managed to grab the side and pull myself the rest of the way up, finally getting a look at my surroundings. I was in a room painted white with a brown ceiling. Multi-colored tiles lined the floor and the two voices I had heard were still talking while looking at a screen embedded into the wall. The screen was hooked up to a machine with a number pad and a bunch of different levers and dials. That machine was also attached to the silver pod I had until now been lying in.
The room started to sway, and I felt as if I was going to vomit. The dizziness overcame me and I leaned over the edge and wretched. Not too much left my stomach, but the sound was enough to turn the heads of the bickering ponies from the screen that they were looking at. I couldn’t do much to change my position besides to roll on my side and take a few deep breaths on the side of the pod. I felt as if somepony was lifting my head, and looking down, I saw a blue aura surrounding my upper body. The pony casting the magic to cause this lifting was light blue with a blue and white striped mane, almost resembling toothpaste. Her face had a look of sternness and worry plastered all over it.
“I know you’re excited to stand on your own four hooves again Lyra,” the mare told me as she laid me back down in the vented pod and the warm air, “but you need to lay down until we can safely give you another dose of the revival spell.”
I tried to apologize, but all I could muster was a meaningless mumble, and the blue mare left the pod, probably to go back to whatever machine they were both working at. I could feel my lips now, but the feeling of a massive headache also accompanied it. My stomach and head felt as if there was acid going through them. I groaned and the brown stallion peaked his head over the side again asking kindly, “Anything for the lovely lady?”
Through all the pain, I managed to half say, “Where...am...I?” I knew I was in a nice room with some sort of massive machine, but I couldn’t remember how I got there. I deserved to at least know where “here” was.
“So you have no clue where you are, do you?” the stallion asked giving a sigh and a slight frown. Without wanting to speak more, as I swore my vocal chord were being strangled, I just shook my head no and raised my eyebrows to indicate that I wanted him to tell me.
He took a deep breath in and threw his two front hooves over the side and leant on them. He paused a second and looked off to the side, seeming to consider what to say, and began, “You are in the official Canterlot Research Facilities in underground Canterlot.” He paused and gave me a look before elaborating, “To be exact, you’re in a room with MeRMIE: the Memory Remodeling Machine for Intellectual Equines. I came up with the name myself!” He finished with a triumphant smile.
I gave him a confused look and strained my voice to say one word, “How?”
“Right,” he incompletely answered, the triumphant smile replaced by a frown and a cast-aside of his eyes, “that...” He trailed off one more time and nodded a bit, trying to think of what to say. Finally he began by telling me, “You are the reason you’re here.” I gave him a confused look and he explained further what he meant, softly pronouncing, “You came to us and told us to put you in this program. This is a research facility as I said, and we put a notice in the local papers to try and get a few subjects who were willing to let us do a bit of...controversial...experimentation.”
“Contro...huh?” I mumbled, starting to be able to speak a little more clearer. What he was saying didn’t make any sense to me. I would never sign up for experimentation, but was that gut feeling part of whatever the experiment was did?
“This experimentation wasn’t allowed to be practiced on animals due to their nature. They’d only apply to a Pony or other intelligent creature. Therefore we needed somepony’s permission to carry out these experiments on them. That’s when you showed up to our offices asking what position you could apply for. We did, and still will, offer to pay you for your services. This wasn’t what we thought would happened however...”
He looked back toward the machine and paused a moment. I was even more curious now that I had come here probably for the money, but I still wanted to know why I couldn’t remember any of it. Finding that my vocal chords no longer hurt into my throat, I gathered my strength and inquired “Why don’t I remember any of it, though Mr....?” I found that he had never told me his name.
“Whooves,” he finished for me chuckling a bit, “Dr. Whooves to be exact Miss Heartstrings. That was what we didn’t think would happen. We never expected the memory loss and the virus...”
“Virus?” I worried, almost shouting. The strain on my vocal chords hurt me and I let out a strained sigh and shut my eyes tight, remembering the red eyes that had trapped me in in that makeshift corner. That must have been the “virus” he was talking about.
“Lyra,” he calmly laid a hoof on my leg, rubbing it lightly. “You need to stay calm. Your body is still waking itself up after your time in the machine, and straining it like this will just delay the healing. There is a virus that the machine was infected with, and we believe that it has also been accidentally inserted into your mind. In an attempt to destroy it we wiped your mind of everything after backing it up.”
“What?” I almost cried, utterly confused at how this could be and what it even meant.
“The actual science behind all of this is complicated and confusing even to most scientists of this nature, so I’ll give you a watered down version of what this machine here does.Think of your mind as a place full of scrolls and books full of memories and basic knowledge. We take those scrolls and books and such and copy them over to this machine. Are you following me?”
I nodded my head and he continued on with, “Now when we were copying all these things over, something occurred and what we refer to as a ‘virus’ was written into these books of knowledge. When we noticed that something was awry, we tried to go for broke and reset your brain back to when it was when we started experimenting. However the machine malfunctioned and wiped your mind clean of all unnecessary functions. Basically what happened is we accidentally cleared your mind of all your memories and infected your ‘knowledge books’ with the anomaly. We now need to go in manually and see which memories have been affected by this virus.”
I was confused still, but before I could ask for a simpler explanation, the blue pony appeared over the side and bluntly said, “We fucked up and wiped your mind. Now the only way to fix it is to relive your memories in that machine to see which ones don’t seem right to you.”
“Well that’s a bit more straightforward than what I was trying to go for,” Dr. Whooves asserted, adding in with a mumble, “as well as a lot more vulgar.”
“Oh calm down, Whooves,” the blue unicorn retorted before turning to me. “You deserve the truth after all, Lyra. And you deserve it in a way that normal ponies can understand”
“It isn’t my fault that some aren’t as learned as I am,” The brown stallion replied raising his head in fake dignity.
The unicorn rolled her eyes and looked back at me, and with a serious tone stated, “We’re ready to give you another ‘wake-up’ spell if you’re ready for it. I won’t lie, Lyra. It may hurt a good bit for the first few seconds, but all the pain should be gone within a few minutes. Would you like to be treated now, or do you want to rest a bit more?”
I nodded my head and mouthed the word “treat” to her and she caught on instantly what I wanted. I didn’t want to keep staring at this brown ceiling any longer, not knowing anything about myself at all. I wanted to get out of this pod and keep a conversation going so I could figure out how I had ended up here exactly, as well as try to fix it.
“Lie still now Lyra,”I heard the blue mares voice call from across the room. “It’ll be much easier if you don’t squirm around too much.” A pause ensued and a whirring sound filled the room with the sound of electricity charging up. A few seconds of this passed before I thought the high pitched charging sound was going to go into an unhearable range when Lyra shouted, “Clear?”
Dr Whooves glanced down at me and stepped back from the edge. Suddenly I was regretting this decision, as it sounded like it was going to hurt. I tensed up getting ready for anything to hit me when the stallion shouted “All clear!”
I heard a surge of power, and at first my body went numb once more. My hearing blew out and my vision was suddenly blinded by an unseen light. Slowly everything seemed to fade back in as the sounds of the machine grew by the second and the brown ceiling became clearer. My hooves started to tingle, and soon the rest of my body followed suit, feeling like I was being stuck by thousands of pins and needles. My ears were starting to ring and the light was starting to decrease in intensity again.
Soon the pins and needles stopped and I felt as if electricity was running through my body. I wanted to jump up and stretch my muscles and get out of this metal pod I was trapped in. Quickly enough the feeling was gone and replaced by a that of indifference. My hearing was back to normal and I could see again, not to mention that the pains in my throat and the headache were now only slightly sore. Putting my hooves on the sides, I easily lifted myself into a sitting position, taking another look around the room now that I wasn’t nauseated by the angle my head was resting.
The machine was still powering down, giving a low hum as it continued to spew numbers on the screen attached to it. Other than the machine, the only other things in the room were a desk full of scrolls and a poster advertising safety goggles. The title showed a cartoon of a pegasus with batwings running into a wall with the message, “Don’t be as blind as a Batpony! Safety goggles aren’t bologna!”
The blue unicorn turned around and saw that I was sitting up once again. She hurried over to the pod next to me and asked, “Are you feeling well? No more headaches or nausea?”
“I’m fine, thanks,”I responded, noticing that my voice sounded much better than it did earlier. The act of speaking no longer burned my throat. I continued by telling her, “I never caught your name. I know that that’s Doctor Whooves over there, but who are you?”
“I’m Doctor Colgate. I’m the HEAD of this experiment, and I’m partially at fault for your memory loss. I can assure you we’re going to set everything right.”
“Ok,” I began taking a deep breath and calming myself down, “What you’re saying is that the basic problem is I’ve had my memory wiped and I don’t remember any of my past.”
“Yes,”she sighed before adding in, “however you have a permanent memory bank still stored somewhere in your brain. We unfortunately can’t access it with this machine. That part of your mind only exists in the subconscious, like with breathing and blinking.”
“So why can’t I remember anything if I have the memories stored in there?”
“Because you’re being blocked by your own mind to that section,” Whooves added from over at the machine before sarcastically asking, “Isn’t the mind such a simple and wonderful thing?”
“We may be able to access them if we get your mind to remember something, so we called one of your friends to come down and see you,” Colgate told me before turning to her side and shouted at the door, “It’s safe to let her in guys!”
“Remember Bon Bon?” Whooves asked with a smile.
“Bon Bon?” I questioned. The name rang a bell, but I couldn’t remember anything about it. Then the door across from the pod I was in opened up and a tan pony with dark blue and pink swirled hair took a step in. Instantly I recognized her face.
“Bon Bon!”
