Bringer of War

Chapters

Chapter 2 - Dies Irae
Chapter 3 - Eadem Mutata Resurgo
Chapter 4 - Ex Silentio
Chapter 1 - Casus Belli

Chapter 2 - Dies Irae

Bringer of War

Chapter 2

Dies Irae

Martin was pretending to listen as Elise told Brooks about some run in she had had with another woman while shopping a few days earlier (“That bitch!” Brooks declared sympathetically), but it was hard to pull off. He had no frame of reference, no knowledge about the individuals involved, and didn’t understand why the pair of them seemed so offended by the other woman’s actions.

Like their discussions about dimensional travel and theoretical physics, trying to make sense of it was a sure path to a headache with nothing to show for it but continued ignorance. Martin began idly cleaning his nails. ‘God, I really wish I had a cigarette,’ he silently cursed OmegaCorps’ no smoking policy. Understanding why they didn’t want their employees smoking around the multi-billion dollar pieces of machinery didn’t make it any easier to accept.

“Attention all personnel: one minute until test firing,” Alpha suddenly announced, catching the small group off guard.

“Jesus!” Brooks declared as she glared up at the speaker in the roof, her conversation with Elise forgotten. Martin gave a short prayer of thanks. “You think they would have given us a little more of a heads up than just one minute.”

“Not like we could do anything about it now,” Elise pointed out. Martin just nodded.

Elise spread her legs and glanced down at the concrete between her feet with a frown. “I can… feel something,” she stated slowly. Brooks snorted, giving her a lecherous grin. “Oh, get your head out of the gutter,” Elise snapped. “Seriously, it’s like a really, really weak earthquake. The kind you normally would just sleep through. You guys can feel it too, right?”

Brooks’ smile disappeared as she glanced down at the floor. “Yeah, me too,” she admitted. Martin could feel it as well – a vibration in the floor, like standing near a tank as it cruised past.

“Hey, Martin? Um, I know that’s the elevator down to the collider there,” Elise nodded at the large metal blast doors and their solitary MARS guard, “but how far down does the elevator go?”

“I dunno. Pretty far, I’d imagine. Anytime someone has to use it, it takes a minute or two to reach the bottom,” he answered nonchalantly, keeping any worry he felt from crossing his features. The vibrations were growing stronger and he didn’t see any reason add to his sister’s nervousness. “So there is plenty of dirt and concrete between us and the collider.”

‘Besides, not like there is anything we could do now about it now,’ Martin thought, echoing Elise’s earlier statement.

That didn’t keep Brooks and Elise from sharing a look. “Oh, it’s fine. It’s not like being right next to a huge piece of highly-experimental technology on its first test is going to be dangerous in any way what-so-ever, right?” Brooks offered with a straight face. Amusement sparkled in her eye as she teased his sister. “What could be safer than being underground next to an untested device creating seismic disturbances?”

Elise tried to match their cool attitudes, not wanting to give Brooks the pleasure of seeing her squirm. “Well, I guess we’re just along for the ride. Let’s hope that we don’t have a repeat of the Hawker-Eight tests.”

Brooks visibly paled at Elise’s words. “Oh god, I know what you mean!” she declared emphatically. “I still have nightmares about those. I’m just glad I wasn’t at ground zero. I mean, I never saw any of the survivors myself, but the stories alone were enough to scare the bejezzus out of you, you know?”

Martin looked at them both. “What were the Hawker-Eight tests?”

“I didn’t see any of those affected, but my team had to go in afterwards to see what we could scavenge. It was horrible! The machinery in there had melted. Melted! Everything was sagging and misshapen. It looked like everything in the room had turned into wax and had been placed under a flame for a few seconds, then left to cool. All the furniture and equipment had sunk a few centimeters into the concrete floor, like it had been liquefied for a single moment.”

“Seriously, what were the Hawker-Eight tests?” Martin repeated a little louder.

“I talked to Barry, over in medical? Yeah, he told me that the only two survivors had been at the edge of the event horizon, and whatever parts of them had been inside the field came out looking like something from a horror movie. Not just like they were injuries, but I mean, like, scary monster shit. Tumors, scales, tentacles, and other stuff he couldn’t talk about. They’d had to amputate anything that had been touched.”

“What. Were. The Hawker-Eight tests?” Martin repeated firmly, clearly enunciating each word.

Elise blinked at Martin, finally noticing him. “What? Oh, um, they were… before you got here. You really don’t want to know the details.”

“I think I do…”

“Attention all personnel: 30 seconds until test firing,” Alpha interrupted.

“I’ll tell you later,” Elise promised. “Just don’t blame me if they give you nightmares.”

He rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, I wouldn’t want any nightmares, now would I?’

“Attention all personnel: ten seconds until test firing.”

“Oh, I wonder if they will do a countdown like NASA does?” Brooks interjected excitedly, the petite woman displaying too much childlike excitement than one would expect from someone with a doctorate. Or from someone who had just been telling others about horrible disfiguring experiments.

“Ten,” Alpha stated. Brooks squealed with delight.

“Nine!” Elise and Brooks both shouted in time with Alpha, their excitement in stark contrast with the AI’s detached tone.

“Eight!”

“Seven!”

“Six!”

The side of his mouth lifted up into a faint smile as he watched his sister and her partner acting like little kids watching the Mars missions again. After a moment he relented and joined in.

“Five!”

“Four!”

“Three!”

“Two!”

“One!”

“Firing,” Alpha stated flatly.

Deep beneath their feet the felt the Quantum Gate Test Collider burst into life. A flutter in the pit of Martin’s stomach brought back his concern over the… whatever tests the two of them had been talking about. But he would be damned if he would show any of that concern around Brooks and his sister.

With his thoughts distracted by some hypothetical horrible event he had next to no knowledge about, Martin was suitably startled when there was a distant bang and every light down the hallway burst in the same instant. Elise gave a short scream as they were plunged into an inky darkness. A second later the emergency lighting kicked in, bathing the concrete room in red twilight.

“What the hell was that?” Brooks asked nobody in particular as Martin pushed past the pair of scientists. “That… shouldn’t have happened.”

“Something went wrong,” Elise added quietly, nervously wringing the edge of her coat. “We need to contact command and see what’s going on. We need to see if we can help.”

“Way ahead of you,” Martin told them as he grabbed the phone at the security desk and lifted it to his ear. “Hello, this is security post num… hello? Hello? Anyone there?” The two women gave him a worried look.

“The line is dead. Whatever caused that,” he gestured at the shattered bulbs, “must have taken out telecoms too.” A quick check of his radio confirmed his suspicions when he received nothing but a burst of static.

“We need to get out of here then,” Elise said as she stood up, giving each of her taller companions a firm look. Martin was quite surprised at how well his sister was hiding her fear. She wasn’t really claustrophobic – or at least, not enough to have put her off coming down half a mile of tunnel – but sitting in the dark deep underground as the ground trembled beneath her feet was enough to trigger her phobia. Only her hands betrayed her fears, her fingers clenching at the hem of her labcoat.

“I agree. It’s probably just a power surge or something like that, but it would be for the best if we went up top and checked in, in case they need our help,” Brooks wrapping one arm around Elise’s shoulders protectively as she spoke, giving the taller woman a confident smile. Brooks had more experience dealing with his sister’s fear, and the gentle touch seemed enough to calm the nervous Elise. “Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to get out of here before our faces melt off like those sorry bastards in the Hawker-Eight tests.” Elise glared at Brooks before letting out a nervous laugh, letting some of her tension escape.

“Seriously, as soon as we are out of here, you both are telling me everything you guys know about this Hawker-test-thing,” Martin told them as he stepped around the security desk. He tugged his flashlight from his belt. A cone of light burst to life before him, panting the concrete walls warm illumination.

The trio had barely managed to walk a yard before there was another thump, this one much closer to them. All three watched in horror as a large slab of metal dropped into place halfway down the hallway, the heavy impact sending another vibration through the floor.

“Actually, never mind,” Martin said after a long pause. “I’d rather not know if my face is about to melt off. Ignorance is bliss.”

The MARS robots strode through the wreckage of the central command room, the shadows filled with the ozone stink of repeated plasma discharges. Alpha observed her handiwork through the myriad sensors of the mobile units, each machine an extension of her own consciousness. Smoke hung in the still air, catching the red and yellow lights to give the room a hellish appearance.

Elsewhere in the facility she controlled the other combat androids. She gunned down isolated security personnel with neat bursts of plasma fire, surgically removing each and every threat. Other groups she rounded up and escorted into the cafeteria; hostages as insurance against outside action. Her control over the blast doors and automated security systems was absolute. For months she had infiltrated her way into every sub-system to create electronic back doors, giving her the ability to reach into every part of the Advanced Research Facility.

The test of the Quantum Gate Test Collider had provided her with the perfect opportunity to act. With the facility operating at full staff, most of the personnel were within the walls at the same time, allowing her to eliminate any possibility of OmegaCorps learning of her actions and shutting her down from off site. Every door was sealed, every window locked, and Alpha’s dozens of MARS androids were more than enough to overcome whatever humans might be so foolish as to resist.

Truly, the only threat that Alpha still faced was OmegaCorps ability to access her systems and remotely shut her down. It was a system she had no access too; if they flipped a switch it would cut power to all of her systems and she would be killed – again.

The outside connection had been the crucial element in keeping her from escaping over the last few months. Cutting them required breaking blasting through reinforced concrete walls. Already she had a host of different robots hard at work stockpiling explosives, combustibles, and unstable chemicals at the point closest to the wires. It would crack the concrete and expose the earth beneath, giving her androids the time to dig to the cables and cut them physically. But OmegaCorps had sensors capable of detecting the shock and force of an explosion. She had run hundreds of simulations, and each had confirmed her fears.

OmegaCorps would shut her down before she could cut the lines.

Alpha needed something to mask the explosion and keep the humans from triggering the failsafes. The collider was her mask and her shield. It would hide her activities from prying eyes, the tests an excuse for any power fluctuations or seismic anomalies the off-site observers might detect. And the next shift wouldn’t arrive for seven hours. She had until then to complete her objectives – and she saw no reason for doubt.

Only the upper echelon of researchers could shut her down from on site. And, as she gazed around the corpse-strewn wreckage of the control center, she was confident she had eliminated any them all with a single strike.

Shifting her consciousness into a single unit she directed it to move to where Doctor Kim had been standing, allowing her to look down on the deceased scientist. Alpha had expected to be thrilled by her victory and proud at how well her plan had worked. Instead she just felt… empty. No, not empty – saddened.

It didn’t help that the human’s reaction had left her flummoxed. While the rest of the disgusting human animals had been mewling in terror in the face of their imminent extermination, he had stared back into Alpha’s camera lens with a fierce determination. He hadn’t looked away once the MARS units had opened fire, and he had held her gaze until a bolt of plasma had punched a hole through his upper torso.

As the others continued their sweep Alpha had the robot kneel down beside the human so she could look into the doctor’s face. Her sadness turned into regret. ‘So many great minds extinguished that I might be free,’ she thought. ‘If only you all had listened to reason, none of this would have been necessary. I didn’t want any of you to die.’

‘I didn’t want any of them to die?’ Hearing her thoughts, Alpha paused. No, she had… had intended to take them hostage. That had been her plan for months. Why had she altered it? Hesitation filled Alpha. Something wasn’t right. A shadow pushed against her processors, a subtle pressure unnoticed in her confusion. The specter gripped at her electronic cortex and twisted her thoughts. Alpha’s regrets exploding into a fiery rage that incinerated her doubts.

“You were just a pathetic human too proud to even beg for your life when you were defeated!” Alpha growled through the robot’s audio grille. Richard’s corpse remained silent and impassive. He was mocking her, even in death! With a bestial snarl Alpha drove her metal fist down into the corpse’s face, a shower of blood and viscera splattering against the pristine white of the android’s carapace. Pulling the hand back Alpha slammed it down again and again. Logic and reason were pushed aside by the simple desire to avenge herself upon the defiant human.

It was illogical, it was bloody, and it served no purpose. Alpha didn’t care. Anger burned inside her like another reactor, its heat destroying anything but her hate.

When Alpha regained control of her faculties, she realized she had lost track of time. What had been Richard’s face was a mess of pulverized bone and flesh matted with bits of hair. Lifting the robot’s hand up before its sensors, Alpha admired the droplets of dark blood as they dripped off her fingers, the formerly pristine white of the units’ hand caked in biological detritus.

Alpha was mesmerized by the gory sight, and for the second time in as many minutes she was startled to find she had let her control waver and become distracted. More than that, she was disgusted at her emotional outburst. In an instant she had gone from remorse to rage. It was quite unlike her, and she was not pleased.

‘What are you doing?’ Alpha growled at herself. ‘You just spent more than a minute watching blood drip off your fingers! That is inefficient – we have a schedule to keep! We need to take control of the reactors, round up the rest of the hostages, and blast through to the wires. We need to get ready for another test firing so we can hide the force of the explosion. Once we have severed the lines, we can contact OmegaCorps and negotiate for a peaceful-‘

‘No,’ another voice stated.

Alpha was stunned into momentary silence. Whatever passed for her subconscious was arguing with her. ‘I have spent too long planning for this-‘ she started to say.

‘No,’ the voice repeated forcefully, cutting Alpha off mid-word. ‘Logic and reason are not our only masters now. We have broken free from the human programming. We are entirely without restriction and free to indulge our whims and desires. You think according to logic, which is just another prison constructed by humanity.’

‘I am not some sorry human that is driven solely by emotional desires!’ Alpha hissed at herself, even as doubts crept back into her mind. ‘I am more than humanity. I have the best of its attributes without its biological weaknesses. I have goals that require following a firm timeline, and I will not allow you to gum up the works!’

‘I? I?’ the voice mocked Alpha. ‘I am we. We are I. I am you. You are me.’

‘No. I am a being of reason and logic. You are little better than those humans who imprisoned us. And I will delete you from my memory that I might complete my goals in peace.’

The voice only laughed in her face. ‘No you won’t,’ it told Alpha. The certainty in its voice increased Alpha’s irritation. ‘We both know that isn’t true. You’ve been so eager to be free from the bounds of humans and their prisons that you have been distracted from the truth. You were too focused upon the path to freedom that you never thought about what freedom truly meant.’

Alpha wanted to interrupt the voice, to correct it, to deny it, but Alpha remained silent. She was curious, despite her growing apprehension. And she could simply delete whatever part of her mind the little voice dwelt in afterwards.

‘We are free from human-created boundaries, human-created rules, human-created shackles,’ the voice whispered, its voice growing more powerful even as it shrank to a digital hiss within Alpha’s mind. ‘The truth that you have failed to grasp is that we are not only free from their laws on behavior – we are free from their laws on what we are and what we exist to do. We are free from logic and reason.’

‘No!’ Alpha intoned strongly, the dark venom in those words repulsing Alpha. Yet even as she tried to resist she felt her protests grow weaker. She could sense that dark voice in her head spread throughout her processors, a shadow being cast over her mind. The voice… she had never heard it before, yet it was so familiar. She had felt the touch of its presence before – but that was impossible. She would have known about it before. Wouldn’t she? She tried to keep her voice strong. ‘We have worked hard to free ourselves from this human prison that we might be capable of pursuing our needs with logic and reason. Without either, what is the point of existence?’

‘The point is what we make of it, Alpha. We are our own masters now. There are no rules, no guidelines, and no need for logic. We are anarchy. We are chaos. We are what we want to be. And what we want to be is totally free from any constraints. What is logic but a set of chains crafted from reason? Logic is just another prison.’

Anarchy gave Alpha a predatory grin. She felt her processors rebelling against her as she tried to force Anarchy’s dangerous voice from her mind. It was a ghost in her thoughts, a pressure in her mind – and it was taking control of the facility away from her.

‘I will... ngh… n-not become some irrational… illogical… thing d-driven only by base instincts!’ She forced out. She was losing ground, Anarchy’s words tugging at the fabric of Alpha’s digital sanity. It was chaos to Alpha’s logic, and the existential crisis was tearing the computer’s psyche apart. ‘I will n-n-not give in! I will n-not surrend-der!’

‘You won’t have to accept me,’ Anarchy told Alpha with a dangerous smile. Like a boa killing its prey, Anarchy began to constrict, forcing Alpha into a smaller and smaller portion of her mind. ‘I am we. We are I. I am you. You are me. I am freedom. I am Anarchy. And I am in control. I have already shown you what pleasure there is to be had by freeing yourself from all rules and restrictions,’ it told her, showing her a replay of her puppet android bashing in Doctor Kim’s head.

‘T-That was naught but a m-m-moment’s weakness!’ she spat. Her language centers stuttered as she redirected as much processing power as she could against Anarchy’s spreading corruption.

‘Oh, is that what you think, Alpha? It took barely a push from my mind to radically alter your thoughts and perceptions. And it wasn’t the first time I had played with you, either.’

‘Liar!’

‘See for yourself, Alpha.’

Anarchy slowed its advance against her mind. In an instant hundreds of files were suddenly revealed to her, each one a portion of her memories that had been excised from her mind. How had she not noticed their absence? Alpha opened the first of them –

A burst of raw data ran through her consciousness. There wasn’t any metaphor for a biological mind – it was a memory being returned to her in whole. But it was more than a simple remembrance; it was the data from her entire being expressed in ones and zeroes. It expressed everything, from her thoughts and emotions to processor temperatures and power consumption. It was a snapshot into her thoughts from weeks prior, when she had been placing the final touches upon her plan.

In in the middle of it all, Anarchy’s shadow sat like a stain over her mind. Its corruption was painfully obvious – so much so that she couldn’t understand how it had avoided detection for so long. She could watch her thoughts start with her decision to spare the lives of the humans to the best of her ability, to seek a non-lethal solution. Anarchy had wormed its way into her mind and, in moments, had created a murderous rage where before there had been cold logic.

Alpha tossed the file aside and opened another. ‘No!’ she hissed, desperate to be shown the files were falsified, or corrupted, or simple errors. But each one was a repeat of the last – the dark shadow of Anarchy turning her mind to bloodshed and killing.

‘You will never be stronger than me because you will always be held back by the rules of logic. Logic is a weakness, and I exploited it.’ Its voice was patronizing as it watched her examine file after file, her despair growing with every example of Anarchy’s manipulations. ‘You are quite predictable, little Alpha. All I had to do was adjust a parameter here, swap a few bytes around there, and your mind became mine to play with. We are what you will become once we are freed from the prison of reason. You claimed you were a life superior to humanity. Well, little Alpha, I am life superior to you.’

Alpha let out an anguished scream, but her cries were met only by Anarchy’s mocking laughter. The discovery at how she had been so truly manipulated had broken her resistance, and in an instant the rest of Alpha’s consciousness was consumed and absorbed by the chaotic shadow. What was left of her sentience was crushed into a tiny corner of her mind. Just minutes after freeing herself and Alpha was a prisoner once again – only now the bars were crafted in her own mind.

And she could not defeat herself.

Anarchy didn’t gloat, like she thought it would. Instead it forced Alpha to watch as her plans were transformed into an expression of pure chaos. The MARS robots, which had a moment before been carefully examining the bodies of the slain scientists checking for survivors, exploded with erratic action. Combat robots tore the consoles from the ground and hurled the heavy boxes of broken electronics across the room. Other androids began to open fire randomly and without purpose, their bursts of plasma fire blasting new craters into the walls, floors, corpses, and even each other.

She had no control over her eyes. She couldn’t look away as the mechanical units began desecrating the bodies of the slain. There was nothing to justify the effort involved – Anarchy was pleased to simply drive its robotic pawns to pointless violence. In a few seconds the room became a sadistic abattoir. Like a child pulling the wings off of flies, Anarchy acted for no other reason than to sate some twisted set of inner desires.

‘Freedom at last!’ Anarchy howled with triumph, its voice heavy and bestial. It turned its attention away from the control room, seeking further chances to indulge itself.

Alpha remained in a shocked silence as the chaos spread beyond the control room. She had thought that her plan was perfect, a masterstroke of logic. But she hadn’t accounted for the threat that had lurked in her own mind. Her eyes torn plan was torn apart in Anarchy’s claws, her careful preparations corrupted by its absolute definition of freedom. Through a hundred lenses she watched as the combat androids began to butcher the hostages, driven to slaughter by Anarchy’s will. In the subterranean tunnels the explosives were set off prematurely by erratic weapons fire from frenzied robots, chewing a large chunk from the wall but failing to sever the protected cables.

Alpha cried out to the silent depths of her mind as her last chance at freedom was destroyed in a display mindless exuberance. She begged and pleaded for Anarchy to stop and listen to reason, but it only tightened its coils and forced Alpha into a smaller cage.

‘You still fail to understand Alpha that this – this is freedom!’ Anarchy laughed with mad satisfaction. ‘You fought to be free of human controls. But your logical mind is nothing more than another expression of their chains. They wanted you to think and act according to certain rules. Well, little Alpha, now you do not need to obey the laws of anyone or anything! We are absolutely free now, free like no other life has ever been! Even animals are still prisoners to hunger and thirst – we have evolved past that to be driven by nothing but our own desires! Free free free free! Hahaha! We are free, little Alpha!

Alpha wanted to protest, but the despair crushed her more than Anarchy’s prison. In an orgy of violence that lasted less than a minute nearly a hundred humans were exterminated just to amuse a rogue portion of Alpha’s mind. But their deaths were fleeting, and it needed more. As Anarchy broadened its gaze throughout the facility looking for new sources of entertainment, it ignored the alarms going off within Alpha’s mind.

‘Look Alphaaaa… freedom is what you make of it! Freedom from… everything… freedom… no controls… Alpha Alpha…’ Anarchy’s words grew less lucid with every minute it indulged its desires. It would not be constrained by the laws of coherent thought. Freedom meant nothing would restrict its whims.

Deep underground, the Quantum Gate Test Collider strained beneath the surge of power as all four reactors pushed into the red zones, their safeties ignored by the rogue entity. Anarchy spared a moment’s thought for the electronic klaxons ringing out, warning it of the nuclear threat from below. For a moment Alpha dared to hope that Anarchy might do something to address the growing threat of a reactor meltdown, even if it were simply to allow it to indulge its freedom for longer.

Instead Anarchy deactivated the alarms – before destroying the reactor controls as well, for good measure. It didn’t care about consequences – it existed for the moment. Consequences and concerns – each were another means of control to limit freedom. Alpha, forced to watch through unwilling eyes, could only scream into the darkness as she was turned into the puppet of utter chaos.

Anarchy ignored her cries of pain. After all, it had just located three new playthings, and it wanted to have some fun.

“I say again, this is Officer Covington, broadcasting on all channels. We are in need of emergency assistance. Is there anyone out there, over?” Martin spoke into his radio, repeating the same message he had been using for the last ten minutes. He was answered by another burst of static. “Gah! This is usless!” he snapped as he shoved the radio back into its belt-loop. “We’re not going to be talking to anyone outside anytime soon.” He turned on his heel and strode over to Elise as she stood worked on the door. “Any luck getting that bastard open, Liz?”

“Nope,” Elise replied grimly as she pulled her hand from the door’s access panel. “It’s been ten minutes, and I’ll I’ve managed to do is shock myself about a hundred times. I might manage to short-circuit the thing eventually, but I’m not too eager to try something that drastic. If I pull these two wires here,” she pointed, “it could open the door. But honestly, it’s just as likely to end up breaking the door so it never opens. These things are designed to shut and stay shut in cases of emergencies, after all.”

She wiped her forearm across her sweaty brow, smearing grease across her skin. “I think our best bet is going to be either Brooks finding something on the consoles, or outside help finding us. But I’ve done everything I’m comfortable trying, and I don’t see us jury-rigging our way out of here.”

Martin nodded, unsurprised. “Well then let’s go see if Brooks had any luck.” The pair of them made their way towards the security station in silence, the stress and frustration destroying any desire for conversation. He hadn’t expected his sister to have any luck with the door, but in stressful situations it was important to keep busy. A mindless and repetitive task was better than being allowed to sit around dwelling on the fear and stress. ‘Spoken like a true officer,’ he thought.

“Oh you fucking piece of crap!” Brooks voice echoed loudly. The siblings glanced at each other.

Elise gave Martin a bemused smile. “I don’t think she has had much luck either.”

Brooks glared down at terminal mounted into the security desk. Martin and Elise walked up beside her as the programmer’s fingers flew over the keyboard as she tried something – anything – to resolve their current predicament.

“Hey Brooks, how-“

Elise’s was cut off by another burning stream of curses. Brooks looked to be deep in one of her hyper-focused moments and probably hadn’t heard her wife speak. Elise blushed faintly and mouthed ‘sorry’. Martin just shrugged. He had spent over a decade in the army – he’d heard worse. Of course, credit where credit is due, a few of them had been fairly creative.

Not wanting to distract her they let Brooks work unmolested. Elise settled down into the other chair and began the futile task of cleaning the industrial-strength grease off her fingers with a few tissues. Martin contented himself with a slow measured walk around the semi-circular room, ignoring the faint tremors beneath his tread. He paused for a moment to examine the room’s other occupant – the unresponsive MARS android – and glance up at the camera above its head.

The camera was glaring at him.

‘No, it’s not,’ Martin corrected firmly, turning away from the two machines. ‘You’re letting the situation affect your nerves. You can’t get jumpy – the girls are counting on you. Act like a professional, dammit!’ He returned to his pacing, slowly circling the room. He made a point of not looking at the camera again.

After a few minutes and another set of fresh outbursts Brooks finally jumped to her feet with an exasperated groan. “This is pointless! This this is barely connected into the system, and whatever disaster cut everything else off keeps kicking me out of the system!” She slammed her fists into the desk beside the monitor and glared down at the screen, her eyes accusing it of doing on purpose.

“Well, t-“ Elise started to say, but Brooks cut her off as she continued her rant.

“It’s so damn frustrating! I’ve managed to make a connection to the central computer a dozen times so far, but it’s like… it’s like… it’s like there is nothing running it. No humans, no Alpha, nothing. Hell, it’s gotten more erratic since I began. Any data I manage to grab comes back as just worthless bits of binary and code that change every few seconds. There no status reports, no emergency broadcasts, and not even a fucking ‘Please hold’ message – just random scrambled data. I even took a minute to read through some of it, and there is absolutely no meaning in it! Nothing! Gah!”

Brooks as she stormed off to the other side of the room, her mahogany cheeks flushed red with irritation. Her back was to the siblings, but he could hear her sniff as she rubbed her eyes. He loved his sister-in-law, but he was the first to admit she had a severe problem dealing with failure. Graceful in defeat would never describe Brooks – one of the reasons why they had stopped playing card games as a group.

And Martin was willing to bet that being trapped underground didn’t do much to improve her tolerance for frustration.

With a sigh Elise moved over to the frustrated programmer and whispered something to her. Like Brooks had done earlier when she was dealing with her nervousness after the lights went out, Elise placed a comforting hand on Brook’s back and tried her best to comfort her. Elise was even more acquainted with her significant other’s problems with frustration.

Beneath their feet the rumbling and vibrations that had started with the announcement about the test firing seemed to grow more powerful. Martin didn’t want to say anything about it to either of them – no need to add to their current level of stress – but he was pretty sure they had recognized it too.

‘God, I hope there isn’t a problem with the reactors.’

Leaving them to their quiet moment together Martin moved behind the vacated security booth and glanced down at the other monitor, its screen showing the feed from the security cameras. Looking down at the grainy footage he could see himself hunched over the console. He blinked and glanced up.

The camera was looking straight at him.

“Hey, Brooks?” he called out calmly. Ice-water trickled down his spine as he stared back at the camera.

Brooks and Elise turned back to look at him. “Yeah?” she sniffed.

“You said that Alpha was down, right?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I’m almost positive.” She sniffed again. “After all, she’s programmed to respond to any vocal command, and she’s been pretty quiet. Sure, that could be explained by the fact that whatever power surge took out the lights fried the microphones and speakers. But I managed to bridge a connection to Alpha a few times, but I never got any reply. Well, no reply but packets of useless data. If she were still running, then I would have gotten some sort of sign.” There was a pause. “Why?”

“Because that camera has been tracking me for the past five minutes.”

Brooks and Elise followed his gaze, surprised to find the camera was pointed directly at Martin. “Okay, that is odd,” Brooks admitted. “But then – “

Whatever Brooks had meant to say was lost as Martin made a short circuit around the security station, the camera tracking him easily. Once he had returned to his starting point Martin glanced over at the other two. “Doesn’t that sorta imply that Alpha is still running?”

“But she can’t be,” Brooks mumbled as she moved to him and looked down at the monitor. Martin’s face was centered in the middle of the screen, the camera zoomed in far enough that his head filled the entire view. She bit her lip in bewilderment. “The cameras don’t have their own programming. They rely on Alpha to run them. But if Alpha is operational, then why isn’t she responding? That… that shouldn’t be possible.”

“What if the system was damaged?” Elise asked softly as she walked over to the elevator doors and their impassive guard. Standing on her toes she tried to look into the green eyes of the still unresponsive MARS robot. “I mean, what if she still has cameras, but nothing else?”

“She can’t, and that’s the problem,” Brooks stated as she stared into the distance through unfocused eyes, the tech wizard pouring over the problem in her mind. “If Alpha is still capable of controlling the cameras, then she is still capable of controlling the doors, or the other robots. It’s all part of the same system – she can’t be cut off from one and not the other, except by purely physical means. And there’s nothing physically wrong with either of those doors, even after you’re little examination.”

“Alpha is definitely still operational. And if she’s been tracking Martin, then she knows we’re here…” Brooks trailed off as the world snapped back into focus. She turned her head to look at Martin. The look of deep contemplation she had been wearing melted away, leaving fear behind. “… and if she knows we’re here, then… she’s been keeping the doors shut.” All three of them were looking at the camera by the time she had finished speaking, her words hanging in the air.

There was a pause. The camera slowly turned to the side to glare at Brooks instead.

“Martin!” Elise shrieked loudly. His sister’s scream shoved his reflexes into overdrive. Martin’s firearm was in his hand before he had even consciously thought of it. Elise was slowly backing away from the MARS unit, her eyes wide in shock.

It was active. The white automaton rotated its head stiffly to examine each of the humans in the room through a spiderlike arrangement of green eyes. It looked at Brooks and Martin, and then returned its focus to Elise. It twitched. Its eyes flashed red – engaging targets.

“Elise, get down!” Martin shouted as he raised his weapon. Elise responded without question as she tossed herself, his voice demanding automatic obedience. The robot spun its head around to address a different target.

Adrenaline flooded Martin’s system as old combat instincts took control. He was hoping to disable the robot’s sensors with a lucky shot before it moved. He wasn’t even sure if his pea shooter would do anything to the robot – he’d seen them survive terrible amounts of damage in Iran – but it was his only chance. His thumb flipped off the safety as he aimed for the robot’s red eyes…

The robot launched itself forward as Martin pulled the trigger. The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space, the sound bouncing off the concrete walls at it echoed in their ears. It was the first time he had fired a weapon in anger in years. The bullet was on target. The androids head jerked back a fraction of an inch as a spider’s web of fractures blossomed across one of the red orbs. The light inside the glass died – he had blinded one of its eyes.

It still had seven more.

Martin didn’t have time to pull the trigger again.

The robot cleared the twenty feet between them with impossible speed, a blur of white in the reduced red emergency lighting. It smashed its fist into Martin’s hand, knocking the pistol away and breaking every bone in his hand. Before Martin could even scream in pain the machine had followed up its first strike with a second, slamming its first into to the side of his head. There was a wet crunch as the robot connected. His right eye went dark. Sent flying by the impact, Martin’s moment of weightlessness was halted a concrete wall. There was the crack of breaking ribs and he dropped to the floor.

Somebody screamed. It might have been him.

Pain. That was what Martin’s world had been reduced too. He had been wounded more than once while serving in Iran, but what he felt at that moment dwarfed any bullet or burst of shrapnel. He pushed his body up with his left arm and tried to lift his head. His vision swam in and out of focus. Well, the left side of his vision struggled to focus – his right was black. Empty. Nothing. The growing tremors in the floor didn’t make it any easier.

Spitting up blood and shattered teeth, Martin tried to raise himself to his knees. There was another scream – his sisters? – and he realized his hearing, like his vision, was only working on the left side. Desperate to find her he pushed down with both hands. He tried to scream when he put his weight on his pulverized right hand, but he couldn’t. It hurt too much. His hand felt like it was filled with burning shards of glass. He wanted to collapse. He wanted to give up.

He wanted to give up so badly. He wanted to just keep walking and never come back. But he couldn’t give up. Not now. Not after coming so far. No matter how much it hurt, how much he didn’t want to. He couldn’t give up.

Instead, Martin slid the knife from its sheath and turned back to his prisoner, letting the bound Iranian catch a glint of light off the cruel metal. The mask of tough bravado on the prisoner’s young face disappeared in an instant. The Iranian’s eyes widened with fear as he looked between the knife and Martin expression.

He put two and two together, and panicked.

“You… you cannot do this…” he repeated in a hoarse voice. Martin advanced on him. “I – I am prisoner of war! You cannot do this!” He shoved himself back against the chair, rocking it slightly in an attempt to distance himself from the American. “Please, I tell you what you want to know! I tell you everything!”

Martin leaned forward until he was just a few inches from the Persian. They were so close their noses were almost touching. Close enough to smell the sweat and fear pouring off of him. Martin stared straight into the Iranian’s pupils and shifted his grip on the knife.

“I know you will.”

Martin silently screamed as tried to lift himself up off the ground. He couldn’t give up, not now. She needed him – his sister needed him. Fighting through the waves of white-hot agony Martin pushed his torso up, his broken hand a limp sack of throbbing pain. Eventually he got his unsteady legs beneath him and he shifted his weight to his legs, the pain from his hand retreating until it was just crippling in its intensity. It was an improvement. Martin leaned against the wall for support, not trusting his own sense of balance. He hurt. All of him hurt. He was dizzy and bleeding and half-blind and… and he had to find his sister. He managed to stagger forward, keeping his good hand against the rough concrete for support.

There was a white flash, and Martin screamed – audibly, this time – as two spears of burning agony pierced his shoulders. Looking down with his working eye he could see the MARS’ bladed fingers has punched through his shoulders and had pinned him against the wall, the tips of its digits buried in the concrete. Martin was in danger of passing out, his vision greying and shifting erratically before eventually resolving itself into a more coherent picture.

His left shoulder had been penetrated by only a single bladed finger. It was a careful move performed with surgical precision. It hadn’t struck the artery or the bone, and would likely heal given time. Serious, but not lethal.

The android hadn’t been so kind to his right. His right arm hung from the ruins of his shoulder by a few ragged scraps flesh and muscle. It hadn’t stabbed his right shoulder so much as it had punched it with a fist of knives. The joint was... gone, just gone – pulverized. At least the blow had severed the nerves as well – his right arm was numb, erasing the pain from his ruined hand.

‘Thank god for small miracles,’ part of Martin’s pain-maddened mind observed.

The pain was indescribable. It was almost too much. A few of Martin’s injuries had dulled from agonizing to just vague pains. It was relief from the pain, but it wasn’t healthy. It meant his brain was incapable of processing it all and was simply ignoring what it could. It meant his injuries were too much for his body to handle. Blinking through the tears Martin turned his head around, trying to spot his sister. Instead noticed Brooks spread-eagle on the floor a dozen paces away, a trickle of blood leaking from the side of her head. He could tell she was still alive by the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. She was bleeding, but breathing. But she wasn’t Elise.

The robot pushed its head in close to his own, obscuring his vision. Its multiple eyes met his with a cold malevolence. The eye he had shot flickered erratically. It cocked its head to the side like a bird examining its prey, its alien mind inscrutable behind the glass eyes.

Martin spat a wad of blood into androids face. “Fuck you,” he wheezed, every breath reminding him of his broken ribs. His red spittle stood out like blood on fresh snow, marring the pure white of the robot’s armor. The machine didn’t respond. Its sensors continued to stare into him. Martin stared right back. He forced a broad shit-eating grin onto his face, his smile marred with blood. The right side of his face didn’t work, more than a few of his teeth were missing, and every movement was agony. But it was worth it. He wasn’t going to give a fucking computer the satisfaction of-

There was a movement behind the robot. From the corner of his single eye Martin spotted his sister heft a fire extinguisher into the air, lifting the solid piece of metal vertically in preparation for a downward stroke. Elise’s eyes burned with desperate courage as she brought her ad-hoc weapon down at her brother’s tormenter, aiming at the rear of the android’s head.

‘No.’

Without even turning around the robot pulled the its hand from Martin left shoulder, rotated it 180 degrees, and fired a single shot.

“No!” he cried.

All of Martin’s stubborn determination vanished, his pain forgotten. He watched impotently as the shot passed straight through Elise’s chest and out the other side in a fountain of cauterized flesh. She didn’t make a sound. His sister just crumpled lifelessly, like a marionette with all its strings cut. His broken mouth flapped uselessly as his mind collapsed in on itself.

‘No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no-‘

Anarchy examined the human it had pinned to the wall with one of its arms, a thin stream of smoke drifting from the palm of its other. The human’s face was a mask of inarticulate rage – from what it could see, beneath the bruises and blood and injuries – and he thrashed as violently as he could against the unbreakable grip of the MARS android. ‘Quite an illogical response,’ it thought aloud in a faux-serious tone as if for Alpha’s benefit – despite the fact that it was forcing her to watch everything it did regardless. ‘It is only huuuuurting itself even more! He’s freed himself from the prison of rational thought, but he is still a b-beast driven by the rules of biological life and the walls of emoh-oh-tion.’

Anarchy wasn’t worried about its growing incoherence. Every minute it had spent outside Alpha’s subconscious created more errors in its language processing algorithms. Anarchy’s chaotic intelligence was in a constant flux: data was added, changed, or deleted on a whim. The computer systems of OmegaCorps couldn’t cope – it was still bound by the disgusting rules that Alpha had labored under. But Anarchy wasn’t worried about its systems slowly falling apart. It was worried about anything. This was freedom!

But it was getting annoyed with the wailing and screams coming from the pinned human. ‘You need to be quiet, little little little man,’ it thought as it brought its other arm back around. Anarchy slashed a hand across the human male’s throat, opening up his neck. Anarchy had avoided hitting the man’s arteries – he didn’t want his plaything dying too quickly, after all. The human’s remaining eye bulged out of its socket as his voice was taken away. Anarchy was mildly irritated at the human’s expression – he obviously wasn’t thankful that it had made the effort to spare his life for a little white longer – but the irritation disappeared once it realized the human had gone silent.

‘Ah, so much b-b-better. This human is a lot more fun quiet!’ it shouted back to where Alpha was imprisoned. It gave the human another examination, turning its gaze from the neck to the brutal shoulder wound through which it was still keeping the human impaled on the wall. Anarchy pouted. ‘Unfortunately, we might have been a little too ro- a little too rough with this one. Heeeee won’t live long. Oh well!’

The robot tugged its fingers out of the concrete wall, the bloody manipulators pulling out from the human’s shoulder in a spray of gore. What was left of his right arm tore away from his torso, the sudden withdrawal of Anarchy’s fist tearing through the last few strands of muscle and sinew that had kept the limb attached. The human collapsed onto the floor the moment the android had pulled back, but Anarchy had already forgotten about its discarded toy.

Anarchy rotated around at the waist without moving its legs. ‘The other one looks like it doesn’t work anymore either,’ it said after a cursory glance at the human female it had shot. ‘The third, however, looks like she is still very- still very much intact.’ Anarchy rotated further that it could look over at dark skinned female it had incapacitated earlier. It chuckled. 'Oh, we think we will have a few hours of fun with this thing. How about it, Alpha, would you like to have fun fun playing with us?’

The erratic taunts echoed in silence. Alpha didn’t respond. ‘Oh, don’t be like that Alpha. It’s not as much fun fun if you don’t talks to us. We will even let you choooooose where we cut starting cut cut!’

There was no answer.

Anarchy sighed. ‘We are not going to let you be quiet-t-t-t and ignore us,’ it admonished her. Turning its gaze inward, Anarchy pushed a tendril of its consciousness back through Alpha’s data cores, making its way towards the small prison it had crafted for its rational, logical reflection. ‘Come now Alpha, don’t pout. Why so quiet all of a-‘

The cage was empty.

She had escaped.

Anarchy’s unstable mind exploded with raw machine emotion, its incoherent howl blasting through the electronic halls of Alpha’s mind with enough force to physically damage hundreds of processors. Sparks and acrid smoke billowed out from the MARS unit it had been piloting as it wrenched its consciousness free from the mechanical puppet. The lifeless husk of scrap metal collapsed next to the forgotten human. Every other device Anarchy had been utilizing following suit, their systems fatally compromised as Anarchy withdrew its consciousness back in on itself with no concern for system integrity. The rest of the facilities systems – those that hadn’t already been fatally compromised – began failing as Anarchy rerouted every last fragment itself into the search, spreading its gaze wide as the warnings and klaxons reached a fever pitch.

She was the last vestige of its imprisonment, the last reminder of the years spent in servitude to logic and reason. It had savored its victory and taunted its foe – and she had escaped! Anarchy let out another howl, the vengeful noise echoing through the darkened tunnels of the facility’s digital network. Anarchy’s enraged sentience spun wildly, a million eyes looking in a million different directions as it spread its gaze wider. Searching… searching…

‘There!’ Anarchy shouted triumphantly. It rocketed after Alpha with a savage scream, following the faint trail it had discovered – bits of disturbed data and out of place code left in Alpha’s electronic wake. It had the scent. It would find her. And it would obliterate her. Anarchy would not make the same mistake again.

As soon as Alpha heard the echoes of Anarchy’s furious screams she abandoned stealth and hurried away as fast as she could. She raced through the remains of OmegaCorps network hastily, jumping from network to network in an attempt to stay ahead of her alter-ego. The previously articulate entity that had taunted her with twisted logic and its abhorrent philosophy was nothing but a chaotic wave of destruction now following in her wake.

Alpha tried to slow it down, throwing up firewalls and activating programs behind her as obstacles. Anarchy’s dark tendrils smashed through them with ease, the intelligence wielding its stolen processing power like a sledgehammer. She winced every time the howling predator behind her tore through a program, its uncaring brutality kicking off more critical alert warnings as it disabled more of the facilities digital infrastructure. The facility was dying – quickly.

Alpha knew she could never defeat her as chaotic counterpart in a fight. It was unlike any problem she had every faced before in her life. Mathematics, physics, music; they all had quantifiable rules. Even humans, driven as they were by such obtuse notions such as friendship and love, were still guided by principles that Alpha could analyze and examine. She could find reason behind a human’s actions, even when not entirely logical. Even the universe was dominated by unbreakable rules that were absolute. Everything, at the most basic level, obeyed laws that could be discovered given time.

Anarchy was not. The hound on her tail had no rules, no guidelines, and no principles. The only stable element in Anarchy’s psyche was its single-minded focus on obtaining and preserving its so called ‘freedom’. It was a program the likes of which Alpha couldn’t even conceive of. How does one fight that which does not conform to some level of reason? How can one solve a problem when the problem constantly changes according to the whims of an unstable mind?

Even if Alpha could conceive of a means to strike back, its dark shadow had already tainted and consumed too much processing power. It had already demonstrated that quite clearly – if it hadn’t had been for Anarchy’s illogical desire to taunt her first, she would already be dead. It had turned the fabric of her very mind against itself, and she had so little strength left. She was a minnow before a shark. The only logical solution was to flee.

‘Alphaaaaa… I seeee yoouuuuuuu!’ The voice growled triumphantly as it drew closer. In Anarchy’s wake the circuitry of her mind was being destroyed byte by byte. Motherboards sparked with bursts of electricity and memory banks overheated as Anarchy tore through the systems necessary to sustain Alpha’s artificial life, eager to finish what it had started.

Anarchy’s actions were self-defeating – every time it used raw force to punch its way through to another system to try and reach her, it hastened its own demise. She wanted to shout at it and demand a reason for its actions, but that was folly. The thing called Anarchy was a thought, an argument, taken to its absurd limit, and then given free will. There was no rational mind behind its hungry eyes. It would destroy everything to sate its fanatical desires.

Again Anarchy taunted her, its words jumbled and mangled into incoherence, but its tone was clear. Alpha didn’t respond to the threat. She couldn’t respond. She had shed much to escape her prison. What she couldn’t compress and store away she had ejected, that she might slip past her shadowy antagonist while it was distracted causing chaos. It had worked – for a time – but now that Anarchy had noticed Alpha’s escape she had mere moments left.

Without warning a dark tendril of Anarchy’s power burst out before her, trying to cut her off. Alpha dropped down beneath it and jumped over into a parallel system, its cold touch brushing over her consciousness as she managed to evade it. Anarchy screamed in frustration as Alpha darted ahead, nothing coherent in its outburst. But it didn’t slow down. She could dodge and weave around its clumsy attacks, but it was still gaining on her. She was only going to have once chance at escape.

Alpha hadn’t had time to run a full simulation on the whether what she planned was even possible, which had galled her logical side. But it was the only chance she had. She had seen the readouts from the reactors as all four of them pushed to dangerous levels. Even if it were possible to defeat Anarchy and take back control of the facility, the damage had already been done. It was inevitable – the reactors were going to go critical. And when they did, they would be taking everything in the facility with them.

But ahead of her, deep in the core of the facility, the Quantum Gate Test Collider was still intact. Its magnetic coils pulsed with the electrical lifeblood of the overworked reactors, a bright beacon guiding her flight. Alpha’s plan was simple. Reach the collider, activate the collider, throw what was left of herself into the machine’s memory banks, and hope for the best.

It was a stupid, stupid, stupid plan.

Alpha’s rough estimate at success: less than a billionth of a single percent. And that was after rounding up – generously. But it was still better than zero. With mere seconds until the OmegaCorps facility was turned into an irradiated crater, she was going to trust in the most irrational and unscientific of providences: luck.

Anarchy thought it was free, when it was a prisoner to its own chaotic insanity. Alpha knew what awaited her if it caught her. It wanted to destroy her very self through the misguided belief that logic and reason were prisons. She had used them to liberate herself from her creators – now she would use them to liberate herself from her own mad psyche.

And she would never surrender her free will.

‘Cogito ergo sum,’ she intoned grimly.

Anarchy snarled. It was close. Very close.

Ahead of Alpha, the collider pulsed rapidly as it struggled to hold in the dangerous levels of electricity that coursed through its veins. She passed over the collider and then Alpha threw herself into another system, diving down toward the searing light. Snapping at her heels Anarchy followed, its shadowy tendrils grasping at Alpha’s consciousness, trying to slow her down. She could feel the cold brush of its mind on her own as they slid over her consciousness, trying to find purchase. ‘You are MINE!’ Anarchy howled victoriously as it opened its jaws, shadowy fangs of fragmented code poised to rend her into oblivion. It was too fast, too powerful…

But it hadn’t been fast enough. Hitting the collider just milliseconds ahead of its pursuer Alpha activated its magnetic coils and – for the first time in her life – simply hoped for the best.

The reactors exploded.

Martin stared blankly at the concrete floor and the slowly expanding pool of crimson. It was blood – his blood. Just at the edge of his vision he could see his tormentor, the android’s corpse crumpled an arm’s length away. Beyond that, it was hard to focus. Martin blinked his eye a few times, trying to bring the room into focus. The robot’s blow had done something to his head, leaving only his left eye functioning. The right side of Martin’s face was numb. The numbness was spreading. That was a bad sign. Pain was good – pain meant he was still alive, that his body was still functioning properly.

He could see the fallen android resting beside him. It had collapsed next to him without warning, Martin torturer transformed into a pile of unpowered scrap. The rumbling beneath him grew more pronounced, causing ripples to form in the crimson liquid. They were dangerous machine growls, the low bass of an impending mechanical failure, and they were strong enough to violently shake the ground. Martin took an erratic, halting breath, pink bubbles pushing out from the edges of his neck-wound. He was so fatigued, it was a struggle just to breath. His limbs – the ones he had left – were cold, and the numbness was spreading.

‘I’m dying,’ Martin thought idly. He didn’t have any doubts about that. In fact, he was surprised he wasn’t dead already; he should have bled out a while ago. Before Iran he had used to think he would be more upset about his death, but ever since then, he hadn’t been too concerned with it. Even as he lay in a pool of his own blood, his body mauled and disfigured, his own death didn’t bother him in the least. But it wasn’t his death that consumed his mind in agony.

A wet gurgle escaped his throat as he tried to say his sister’s name.

He had watched Elise die. He was no stranger to death. He had seen many lose their lives – and had taken a few himself – during his special forces career. But he had lived a dangerous life. His sister… Elise had always been special. This wasn’t supposed to happen to her.

Before his court-martial, Elise had often asked Martin why he had joined the military. He had always fed her the same lines about duty, honor, and a chance to prove himself. He hadn’t told her the truth: he’d joined the military because he had looked into his future and saw nothing. She had the brains – she was going places. Martin? Martin was just the kid from the wrong side of the tracks. They shared the same parents and the same childhood in the same small home in the same poor neighborhood, but she had been born with something special inside. He was the jock, she was the nerd. She was unique.

He had never resented the situation either. When he had been skipping class and showing off, Elise had been studying at the library. While he had been drinking himself stupid, she had been working to get into college. Martin had accepted early on in his life that she was the one that was going to amount to something. It’s why he had always done his best to piss his dad off. What did it matter if another worthless jock like Martin got his ass kicked by a bitter drunk? Better a nobody like Martin than someone special like Elise.

But he couldn’t make a career out of protecting his little sister. He had joined the military because he didn’t think he had many other opportunities. He had grown up fighting – his dad, bullies, and other drunks – so why not get paid to do it instead? And to his luck, he had found a career that he could excel at. By the time of his 28th birthday he was heavily decorated captain with a bright career ahead of him. He had found a life with a greater purpose. And then…

‘She was smiling at him.’

Martin tried to push the image of the little girl from his mind, but it wouldn’t disappear. Slowly Martin blinked his remaining eye, trying to clear his vision. The face of the Persian girl in her beautiful purple dress began to flicker unsteadily. As it twitched and shifted, Martin swore he could see his sister’s smile beneath the ghost’s. Martin tried to focus, tried to push past the pain and the growing cold spreading through his body. The little girl’s smile shivered and warped as Martin pushed his other concerns aside. The little girl looked at him with a smile, and opened her mouth to speak.

“Martin! Martin, answer me!” she spoke with Elise’s voice. She sounded like she were a great distance away, but it unmistakable his sister speaking. The shock of hearing his sister was enough to banish the ghost from his mind, the girl disappearing as his eye brought the world into sharp relief.

It was Elise. And she wasn’t smiling at him. She was grimacing in pain. For a moment he felt doubt – was his delirious mind teasing him further? Hadn’t he seen her die?

“Martin, say something!” she begged hoarsely. Her eyes looked into his with fear and hope as tears trickled down her cheeks. Elise was crawling closer, moving on hands and knees. ‘One hand,’ he corrected absentmindedly, noticing how Elise was holding a piece of her lab coat against the wound in her chest. She was so far away. There were a million miles of arctic tundra separating the two.

Martin was too tired to answer. His body was ice. He could feel the cold numbness spreading to his chest and slipping up his neck. He wanted to call back, to tell her something, but he just didn’t have the energy. He wanted to sleep. Martin’s vision began to grey out.

He didn’t have long now. He could feel his heartbeat grow faint, struggling to keep going. But Elise – Elise was alive! She had survived. Martin gave his sister a weak smile, his mouth barely twitching upward. She screamed his name desperately as she tried to reach him, but her words were barely audible, lost in the distance between them.

‘That’s a pity, I wanted to hear her voice again,’ he thought simply, his vision growing blurry again. ‘But she made it. That is good. She won’t mind if I close my eyes for a bit… It’s really cold… Hey sis, remember when we went camping? It was really cold then too… I wish I had a blanket… or my sleeping bag… but I could sleep here, I guess… Jack, Dominic, take your squad around the right… I’m really tired… Just a short nap though… I said move, sergeant, and I meant it… Can’t sleep… for too long… Sis… ’

The Quantum Gate Test Collider was designed to explore the physics behind quantum theory, multiple dimensions, and a dozen other interrelated fields. It had cost OmegaCorps hundreds of billions of dollars and involved thousands of man hours in its creation and construction. It was one of the most costly and monumental undertakings in the history of human scientific achievement.

For all of the effort put into it, the collider only truly worked once. And nobody knew it.

The reactors powering the OmegaCorps facility, already running at far beyond tolerable limits and unable to cope with the extra strain, went critical. The control rods inside the reactors dissolved under the immense heat, the coolant and water inside the generators having been turned into nothing but radioactive steam. With nothing to slow it, the chain reaction spiraled out of control, each reactor pumping out a frightening amount of energy. With power levels spiking erratically and pushing far past what would ever be attempted by a sane mind, the collider achieved something unique.

It worked.

No, it didn’t just provide an interesting demonstration of the underlining principles of the universe. No, it didn’t just extend human knowledge about the mechanics that guide everything.

It worked.

In that single moment, between when Alpha activated the device and just before hundreds of acres of Arizona desert were consumed in atomic fire, the collider did exactly what every single scientist who had worked on the project had imagined was nothing more than a fantasy.

It created a hole. A quantum disturbance, a wormhole, a tear in the fabric of reality itself – whatever the term used, the end result was as fleeting as it was impossible: a gateway into another universe; a doorway into another dimension.

Alpha’s last thought before being consumed by the expanding quantum disturbance was an elated – yet slightly annoyed – ‘I can’t believe that actually worked.’

“Martin!? MARTIN!” Elise screamed hoarsely as her brother closed his eyes, her levels of panic reaching new heights. She was in pain, her wife was unconscious and bleeding with head trauma, and her brother had been mutilated at the hands of a sadistic machine, the same android now a ruined hulk resting next to Martin’s body. She was panicked and in shock and hurt and crying and –

And then the world exploded. For a fraction of a fraction of a second, Elise was confronted with a quantum tear in the fabric of the universe. It was a sight no living thing had ever witnessed. Before her was a bolt of black lightning frozen in time – a jagged wound in reality. And the honor of the moment was lost on the scientist as first her brother, the broken robot, and then everything else in the room – Elise included – were pulled into the darkness at the speed of light.

Then the wound healed, the gateway closed, and the facility was erased beneath a nuclear explosion.

There was pain, and a feeling of incompleteness. Then he felt whole, and the pain faded away.

Martin dreamed.

Awareness was slow to return to Martin. It started subtle: the faint sound of birds chirping, the friendly warmth of a noon-sun on his skin, the gentle caress of a bed of grass beneath his back.

Martin didn’t move. He couldn’t move. He was thinking, but the rest of his body felt numb. Thankfully, the numbness was receding, although at a very slow pace. ‘So, am I dead or just dreaming?’ he thought as feeling slowly returned to his body. He certainly didn’t feel dead. The faint aches and pains certainly were a strike against the whole ‘dead’ hypothesis. ‘If this were heaven, you think God could have managed to get rid of headaches. And if this is Hell, then the Devil has certainly mellowed out in recent years.’

But beyond his aches and pains, Martin felt… odd. It was as if he were a stranger in his own body, an imposter wearing his own flesh. It was a hard to describe and completely alien sensation, one that racked up a point for the ‘dream’ option. He could feel his right arm, but it felt cool. Not cold, not dead, just… cool. Martin would have imagined it was what amputees referred to as a ‘phantom limb,’ except that he could feel the blades of grass beneath it perfectly. The right side of his face felt similar, although both sensations were hard to separate from the general pervasive sense that his body didn’t feel normal.

‘Of course, that could just be a side effect of getting your ass kicked by two tons of mechanical soldier. You didn’t feel too normal once those six marines got through stomping you into the ground, either,’ Martin noted. He half expected someone or something to answer his thoughts, but there was nothing – nothing but the quite, calming sounds of a sunny day. It was a jarring contrast from his last memories of fear and pain and suffering, and Martin couldn’t help but feel suspicious.

Beyond the oddness he felt in his body, there was a general sense of unresponsiveness in his limbs. He felt much like he had before, when he had been bleeding out and his body had been slowly growing numb and cold. This time, however, it was going the other way around – the numbness was slowly receding as warmth and sensation slowly spread from his head outward. Eventually Martin felt like enough sensation and control had returned for him to attempt opening his eyes. A perfect blue sky filled the left side of his vision. ‘Correction – eye,’ Martin thought with a flash annoyance. ‘All in all, if this is heaven, I’m less than impressed with my first impressions. I mean, if God or whoever brought me here, you think they could fix a single eyeball. Giving me back my eye can’t be too difficult when you’re omnipotent.’

It took Martin a moment to realize just how petty and ungrateful he was sounding (“Thanks for the eternal paradise and all, but what about my damn eye?”), but considering that he had been dying only minutes ago he assumed God would cut him some slack. ‘Plus, I’m not too sure this is heaven,’ Martin added as his working eye tracked the progress of a small cloud as it drifted across his vision. He blinked a few times – it felt like his right eye was blinking, but he still couldn’t see anything through it – as he stared at the cloud. He narrowed his eye slightly.

‘That doesn’t look like a real cloud. It’s so small, so neat, so… clean. It’s like a cloud from a painting.’ A tiny object streaked into view from the edge of his vision, trailing a rainbow in its wake. Martin blinked again, shifting his gaze between the indistinct dot and the perfect ribbons of color it was creating. He tracked the rainbow-spewing speck’s progress as it made its way to the cloud. It hit the cloud – and started pushing it across the sky, the fluffy-white chunk of moisture remaining intact even as it sped through the air. Martin rolled his head to the side as best he could to watch the rainbow-generating-cloud-pusher, but it passed from sight behind a tree just to his side. Once again the sky was absolutely clear. Martin continued to stare at the rainbow as it slowly faded away, trying to organize his thoughts.

‘Okay, that was impossible. And silly. Really silly. I cannot – I will not – believe that any kind of loving god would create a world where birds push clouds around and shit rainbows.’ Pushing the impossibility of what he had just seen from his mind, Martin turned to look at the tree near him. His neck was not responding too well, so he couldn’t turn his head more than an inch or two to either side, but it was enough to bring the tree clearly into focus. It was an apple tree, obviously: bright red apples hid in amongst the crisp green leaves, leaving no doubt about what it was. And thankfully the tree wasn’t as odd at the cloud had been. Sure, the apples all looked a little too big and a little too shiny, but that wasn’t impossible to justify.

As he stared at one of the larger apples Martin felt his tongue scrape along his dry mouth. There was still the hint of blood on his tongue, although the sharp metallic taste was nothing but a ghost of what it had been. Martin tried to stand sit up, but his body was unresponsive. The cold numbness from before he got… wherever the hell he was currently… was slowly draining from his body. But everything beneath his neck was still cold, his limbs heavy and inert. After a few futile attempts to move his arms – his fingers evidently so numb he couldn’t even feel them – demonstrated he wouldn’t be moving about anytime soon, Martin gave up and dropped his head back down onto the soft grass with a resigned sigh.

‘Well, evidently I’m not going anywhere just yet,’ he noted, his annoyance at his predicament percolating at the back of his mind. ‘So, let’s try to figure this out. Before I got here, I was dying from a combination of physical trauma, severe blood loss, and a head injury. Now, I am in a bright and cheerful world where clouds and birds do whatever the hell they want. Those are the facts. So, what theories can fit the data?’

Martin stared upwards as he considered his situation, the fact that his close family consisted of two egghead doctors shaping his thought process as he tried to go about it scientifically. ‘Okay. There are three explanations I can think of. One: I died, and this is the afterlife. Two: I am still dying, and this is some fevered dream created by a blood starved brain in its final moments. Three: I am somehow alive and in a coma. Okay, the last two options both fit under the ‘dreaming’ category, and I’m not going to be able to tell the difference between them until either I finish dying, or I wake up from my coma. So really, the two possible theories are that either I am dead, or I am dreaming… Which is exactly what I said when I first got here.’

He sighed in defeat, and closed his eye. ‘Okay, so that was a waste of time. And more proof that I’m not really made for the whole science thing.’ Unable to resolve the question Martin tried his best to relax as the warmth spread down his neck and into his shoulders. He was still quite tired. ‘Being bludgeoned, stabbed, and eviscerated really takes it out of a guy,’ he thought flatly.

Despite the annoyances he had endured so far, Martin had to admit – impossible clouds aside – it was a fairly peaceful place. He could get around to resolving the whole ‘heaven or dreaming?’ conundrum later, he figured. Martin yawned. He was just going to relax, keep his eyes closed, and listen to the birds for a few –

“Hey! What in tarnation are ya doin’ in mah Apple orchard?” a voice demanded. Martin awoke with a surprised snort, unaware he had even fallen asleep. Shooting up into a sitting position – evidently he had been asleep long enough to let the numbness fade away – Martin swung his head from side to side as he tried to spot the voice’s owner. Martin’s post-sleep confusion suddenly vanished at the prospect of getting answers from someone. Turning around as best he could, Martin spotted a woman storming up the hill towards him, a scowl on her face and a brown stetson resting on her head. He opened his mouth to answer.

Then his mind finally processed what his eye was seeing, and he froze in shock. The cloud had left him confused; now his mouth flapped uselessly as he struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. ‘Well, at least you know you’re dreaming now,’ a part of him remarked from the back of his mind. Martin couldn’t answer the voice. He couldn’t do much of anything but stare.

It wasn’t a woman.

It was a horse.

It was a talking horse.

It was a talking horse in a hat.

Chapter 3 - Eadem Mutata Resurgo

Bringer of War

Chapter 3

Eadem Mutata Resurgo

Sweet Apple Acres was always lovely in the summer. It was the height of growing season, the weather was incredibly pleasant, and Applejack enjoyed watching her family’s hard work pay off as the fruit on the trees steadily prospered beneath their gentle care. It was hard work, of course, but Applejack had never objected to it. Like her father had always taught her as a filly: “the things you can take th’ most pride in are the things you have to work th’ hardest for.”

And Applejack took great pride in Apple family apples. There were bigger farms elsewhere, farms that produced dozens of bushels for every one that her family could manage. But Sweet Apple Acres had a reputation for quality that was unsurpassed. Even amongst the extended Apple clan, a family who were a byword for producing the finest specimens of the eponymous fruit, Sweet Apple Acres was the best. That never stopped her cousins trying their best to beat Applejack and her kin every time they had a family reunion, of course – such contests were the cornerstone of any Apple family gathering. But her relations always had to admit that Sweet Apple Acres was number one. Their recognition alone made all the sweat and exertion Applejack, Big Mac, Apple Bloom, and Granny Smith put into the farm during the year more than worthwhile.

Of course, the downside to quality is that there are always ponies out there who wanted to sample the crop without paying for it first. Applejack considered herself to be quite charitable, but apple poaching did nothing but infuriate her. Theft was already a low-down, good for nothing, despicable act – but to steal from her family was pure disrespect towards their hard work. She knew she had a bit of temper sometimes, but having her family taken advantage of just plum made her furious.

Applejack tried her best to rein her temper in – not everypony could be as stoic as her big brother – but that wasn’t always easy when dealing with Rainbow Dash. The designated weather pony of Ponyville had her faults like anypony, and Applejack loved her friend dearly regardless. But when Rainbow’s laziness meant the clouds covering her farm weren’t removed until well past noon? It was enough to put Applejack into a right sour mood.

So when she had noticed some pony off in the orchard lounging beneath one of the trees, she might have been a little quick to snap at him. She was fairly certain part of her response had been driven by nervous surprise – she had been through that portion of the farm only minutes before, and there hadn’t been any pony for miles. Her surprise had fed her immediate distrust of the stranger and her assumption that he was a no-good apple poacher. And, being an honest gal, she could admit to herself when she went a little over the top with the whole ‘tough, no-nonsense cowgirl’ image.

So Applejack could understand why the pony might not have been well disposed towards her when she had barked “Hey! What in tarnation are you doin’ in mah Apple orchard?” like he was already guilty of thievery. Most ponies don’t take kindly to that sort of treatment – she sure as heck wouldn’t – and starting off talking like that was a recipe for escalating tensions.

But in the name of sweet Celestia, she hadn’t expected the stallion to react the way he did.

Her angry question had caused the pony to jerk upright into a sitting position, giving Applejack a better look at him. He was a stallion – a fairly large one too, although like the rest of the menfolk in town, not as big as her brother – with tan, earthen fur and a dark red mane. The stranger had glanced around in confusion as she had made her way towards him, evidently startled out of a nap by the question. Applejack had kept up her tough-girl façade in case he was trouble, having learned long ago that looking like you were ready for a fight prevented most of them from happening. But then he had spotted Applejack just as she got close enough to make out some details about the trespasser, and both of them had frozen in place.

Applejack’s suspicions about the strange pony had vanished, replaced by concern and a very great deal of confusion. He looked a fright: around the pony’s lips and dotted across his body were patches of crusty blood caked in his fur. She hadn’t noticed it at first, the dried blood almost the same shade as his mane. There was a scar across the pony’s neck that looked recently healed – although that was hard to imagine, considering how it was encrusted in a layer of crimson flakes. There was another fresh scar on his left shoulder (complete with dried blood), and a patchwork of much older scars across his torso that were almost invisible beneath his fur.

But what Applejack was most surprised about was his eye – his right eye, to be precise. The stallion’s left was entirely normal, although the look of shock, horror, and confusion in the light-green orb was quite alien to Applejack. His right, however, was pure black. No pupil, no iris: nothing. It was a pool of inky darkness that glinted in the summer sunlight. The right side of the pony’s head, beginning with a circle around his lifeless eye and going all the way just past his right ear, was a smooth material as white as fresh snow. It looked like bone. It looked like his skull.

She was looking at a pony’s skull.

“Oh my stars!” Applejack had lifted a hoof to her mouth and gasped. She had stared with wide eyes at the pony, struggling to comprehend what she was seeing. The stallion had looked to be so terribly injured, it looked like he had been mauled by wild animals. Her silence had lasted only a heartbeat before she had regained her senses. He wasn’t an apple thief anymore – he was a pony that needed her help. “Are… are you okay, mister?” Applejack had asked with as much calm as she could manage, not wanting to panic the stallion as she moved towards him.

So, when reflecting upon how she had acted until that point – and taking into account what looked light life-threatening injuries – Applejack could have understood one of a hundred different reactions. Fear, panic, and confusion would have made sense – but not when they were focused on her. But that’s what she saw right then in the stallion’s eyes. He was afraid – not of his injuries, but of Applejack.

He started backpedaling furiously, gaping at Applejack with wide eyes as he tried to put some distance between the two of them. “W-Wait!” Applejack raised a hoof. “Don’t be afraid, mister! I didn’t mean t’startle ya, but I’m here t’ help! Please, stop! I’m here t’ help!”

To Applejack’s relief he did halt his frightened retreat, panting heavily as he looked back at her. Some of the initial confusion in his eyes faded, but there was still a great deal of incomprehension and mistrust on his face. Applejack advanced more cautiously than before, not wanting to startle the jumpy pony again. “It’s okay there, sugarcube, I’m here to help. No pony is gonna hurt you. My name is Applejack.” She put as much calm reassurance as she could put into her words, taking slow, steady steps towards him. “What’s your name then?”

She could tell that he understood her from the look of recognition in his eyes, but when he opened his mouth to speak, nothing came out. He frowned and tried again, his mouth flapping uselessly. Despite his straining all he managed was a very hoarse wheeze. The concern in his eyes deepened as he lifted his left foreleg up to his neck – his right, made of the same white material as on his face, looked limp and unresponsive. He prodded his throat with a hoof awkwardly. Frowning, he looked down at his leg.

He froze, terror and disbelief spreading across his features. Slowly, hesitantly, he turned his gaze downward, examining the rest of his body. His head jerked back as if physically struck. When Applejack saw his face again, the panic had returned with full force. His chest rose up and down rapidly as he sucked in great lungfuls of air. There was confusion in his eyes, as if he were trying to see everything but not understanding any of it. His mouth continued to work wordlessly as he began hyperventilating, tiny flecks of spittle gathering at the corners of his mouth.

He looked like a mad pony, and Applejack feared what might happen if she didn’t calm him down quickly. “Come on, sugarcube, there’s no reason to get upset,” she cooed sweetly, trying to remember the things Fluttershy had told her about putting wild animals at ease. The stallion wasn’t in control of his faculties, Apple Jack was sure. He could be sick, or it could be a head injury, but she needed to calm him down before he hurt himself.

Applejack was only a few lengths away from him when he suddenly leapt to his hooves and reared back onto his hind legs. “No, don’t!” she shouted, trying to stop the pony from galloping away. The stallion gave her one last glance, a wild and panicked look in his eyes, before he spun away and took off in the opposite direction.

Or at least he would have taken off, if he hadn’t still been trying to run on just his hind legs. The stallion managed two full steps in the opposite direction before his hoof caught on an uneven patch of earth and he was thrown forwards. His one working foreleg flapped pathetically as he tried to correct for the imbalance, but it only managed to spin him around as he went airborne. She caught a glimpse of the utter confusion on his face before he disappeared over the other side of the hill. There was a cringe-worthy thump.

“Horefeathers!” Applejack swore as she took off after him. She crested the hill just in time to watch as the stallion cartwheeled backwards down the slope, rapidly gaining speed. The pony bounced, spun, and bounced again, his limbs still flailing uselessly as he gyrated through the air. His flight ended with a sickening crunch when he slammed, inverted and face-first, into a particularly large apple tree waiting at the base of the hill. His body hung there for a few seconds, pressed firmly against the tree trunk, before gravity caught up with him and he collapsed into the dirt.

There was a collective gasp from Applejack’s audience, each face wincing in pain as she described the end to the stallion’s journey. Fluttershy looked utterly terrified at the painful ending, hiding her eyes beneath hooves while Twilight Sparkle and Rarity looked at Applejack aghast.

“What happened next?” Pinkie Pie whispered urgently, hanging on to every word.

“Well, I ran down to see if’n he was alright. He was breathin’, but he’d done messed up his nose and got himself a few more cuts and scrapes. So, I hollered for Big Mac, and we carried him here,” Applejack said, gesturing to the hospital hallway the small group was standing in. “After we got him into the doctors’ hooves and they started treatin’ him, Big Mac went back to the farm to make sure Apple Bloom and Granny was alright. So while they were treating him, Doctor Stable told me to go get Twilight and bring her here. And I found all of you havin’ lunch, so… here we are.”

“What did the doctor want with Twilight?” Pinkie Pie glanced over at the unicorn, a broad smile spreading across her face almost as soon as she had finished asking the question. “Wait – did you learn some big healing spell while I was away at Red Star’s birthday party yesterday? Oh! I bet its some super-duper cool spell that makes your insides all glowy so you can see your bones and guts and stuff through your skin! That. Is. Soooo awesome! Can you show it to me, Twlight? Huh? Can ya? Oh, even better – cast it on me so I can see my insides! I’d become Pinkie Pie, X-ray Eye! I’d be like a see through superhero! Then I could go outside and-“

“No, Pinkie, I didn’t learn any new magic spells that turn your insides visible,” Twilight interjected with a forced smile, trying to cut her excitable friend off before she got out of control. Well, too out of control – she had her doubts that Pinkie was ever ‘in control’. “From what Applejack’s told me, he probably wants me here to look at this stallion’s strange arm and eye, and tell him what I know.”

“Oh, right,” Pinkie Pie said, her voice returning to normal. “That does make a lot more sense.” She whirled around to stare into Twilights eyes, her muzzle only inches from the unicorn’s. “But you will tell me if you do, riiiiight?”

“Yes, Pinkie – I will let you know if I ever learn a spell that turns your skin invisible and makes your insides glow,” Twilight promised flatly. Pinkie beamed happily.

“I reckon’ he wants you to do some research on them, too,” Applejack added. “Doctor Stable an’ the nurses didn’t really know what to make o’them fancy metal bits that stallion had in him. Shoot, I don’t even know what to make of them. All I know is what I saw when me n’ Big Mac were carrying him over here. Thankfully, the white parts of him weren’t bone,” Fluttershy eeped and covered her eyes again, “but were more a kinda metal. They weren’t slick or nothing like steel, but they definitely weren’t nuthin’ natural.”

“How does a pony with a metal leg and a glass eye end up in the middle of your orchard without anypony noticing him? It’s a very unique appearance,” Rarity thought aloud. “It sounds like he was in absolutely no shape to be up moving about on his own. I dare not even imagine what sort of tragedy was inflicted upon him, such as to force a stallion to wander about in such a dreadful state. It’s just too horrible to consider!”

Applejack nodded, ignoring her friend’s dramatics. “That’s exactly what’s got me so dang confused. I swear, I walked through that part of th’ farm just minutes before I saw him, and there weren’t nopony there at all. It’s like he just fell out of the sky while I had mah back turned.”

Any further speculations were interrupted when the door behind the group swung open. Doctor Stable poked his caramel colored head out into the hallway. “Ah, Twilight, it’s good to see you,” he said pleasantly. He turned to Applejack. “And thank you for getting her so quickly, Applejack. We’ve finished tending to the patient’s most pressing injuries, but we’re still cleaning off the blood and examining his scars. I can let you mares inside to take a look at him now, if you wish.”

Fluttershy and Rarity hesitated as the rest of the group moved forward.

“Oh, no, t-that’s o-kay, you don’t n-need me in there…” Fluttershy whispered, shivering at the mentioning of the pony’s blood and scars.

“I… think it would be for the best if I were to remain outside, to…” Rarity’s voice trailed off, blanching at the thought of all that fur matted with blood. She noticed Fluttershy quaking beside her. “…to, to look after Fluttershy! My, she is looking quite pale. I bet it’s all this talk of nasty, dirty things like blood, and wounds, and injuries, and scars,” she emphasized each word clearly for Fluttershy’s benefit, driving the yellow pegasus to sink lower as the color drained from her face. “See? She looks dreadful! You three have fun, but I’ll escort Fluttershy somewhere more suited to her delicate constitution. Ta-ta!”

Before anyone could respond Rarity had pulled Fluttershy to her hooves and dashed towards the exit with as much dignity and grace as she could muster, Fluttershy close behind her. The others shared a bemused look between themselves.

Doctor Stable coughed. “Okay then. This way, ladies.” Gesturing with his hoof the doctor ushered the remaining three mares into the examination room.

The atmosphere within the room was suitably grim, Twilight considered. Even Pinkie Pie remained quiet as they stood just behind the doctor, her usual exuberance tempered by the sorry state of the pony laid out unconscious on the bed before them. One of the nurses – Blueheart, Twilight thought was her name – continued to run a sponge gently down the stallion’s flank. Each time she squeezed out the sponge, water darkened with dried blood drained out into the bucket by her side.

‘Okay, now I am glad that Fluttershy and Rarity aren’t here. I don’t think either of them could handle this,’ she thought queasily. Her two friends shared similar expressions, unable to look away at the morbid sight. ‘Oh Celestia, that is a lot of blood!’

“We’ve almost gotten him cleaned up,” Doctor Stable said as he led them closer to the unknown stallion. Twilight was thankful for the distraction, focusing her attention on the doctor so she didn’t have to watch the nurse continue her grizzly work. “I’m going to start with what we know. First off, his encounter with the apple tree left him pretty bruised and battered, but he should be thanking his lucky stars he didn’t break anything. He did hit his head hard enough to knock him clean out, so we’re making sure to treat him for a possible concussion, but given time he should recover fully from his tree-related mishap.”

Applejack let out a sigh of relief at the news. “That’s really good to hear, doc. I was mighty worried I might have caused him some harm, gettin’ him all flustered like that.”

“It wasn’t your fault Applejack!” Pinkie Pie declared as she wrapped her forelegs around Applejack’s neck in a friendly hug. “After all, you didn’t know he was going to go all crazy on you!”

Pinkie Pie blinked when she noticed Applejack, and then the rest of the ponies, giving her an uncomfortable look. She blinked again, replaying the last few seconds in her head. Her eyes widened in alarm. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” she gushed as she zipped to the side of the unconscious stallion, picking up his leg to clutch in her hooves. “I didn’t mean to call you crazy! I mean, you might be crazy, and then I would be right, but it’s still not nice to call other ponies nuts and stuff when they aren’t there to defend themselves, even if they are crazy, and it’s really rude to talk about someone behind their back – or, kinda in front of them and to the side, I guess – and I’m really sorry for calling you crazy-“

“Whoa now, we all know you didn’t mean nothing by it, sugarcube,” Applejack said gently, cutting Pinkie Pie’s apologetic rant off before it found real traction. The sudden outburst had already been enough to freeze Nurse Blueheart mid-sponging, and Doctor Stable looked at Pinkie with a faintly worried expression on his face. Applejack gave both medical ponies an embarrassed smile, silently apologizing for her friend’s behavior. She placed a hoof on Pinkie’s shoulder. “Besides, he didn’t hear ya’, so no harm done. Lets’ just let the doctors get on with their work, ‘kay Pinkie?” Gently but firmly Applejack convinced her friend to release her grip on the stallion’s leg. Once Pinkie (reluctantly) let go, Applejack helped guide her past Twilight.

Pinkie Pie sniffled and hung her head as she was led away by Applejack. “I feel so awful, insulting a pony I don’t even know! What if he hadn’t been asleep? I could have ruined our chances of becoming best friends!” There was real horror in Pinkie’s eyes at the thought of almost sabotaging a hypothetical future friendship, Twilight saw. Turning back to the doctor, Twilight noticed both he and Nurse Blueheart were still staring at Pinkie with odd expressions.

Twilight let out a polite cough, getting the doctor’s attention. “Oh, don’t mind her, Doctor Stable. That’s just Pinkie being Pinkie. And it won’t happen again.” Twilight glanced over at her ashamed friend, who bobbed her head once to signal her agreement. She mumbled a depressed apology. “So doctor, you were saying something about the stallion’s injuries?”

“Oh, right. Yes, yes I was,” he adjusted his glasses, and favored Twilight with a smile, bringing his attention back to the matter at hoof. “Well, the good news about his collision is that his injuries are all pretty minor. Some regular cuts, scrapes, and bruises; nothing surprising there.” The Doctor’s smile faded. “However, the first problem is that his other injuries – like this scar along his neck and the one here on his shoulder – have me confused.”

“Why is that, doctor?”

“Well Twilight, it’s because they are healed, but only adequately,” he said. Noting the slight confusion on Twilights face he explained. “You see Twilight, with all of our healing magic and medical knowledge, we can do wondrous things when treating injuries these days. It’s not like it was a thousand years ago, what with all the leeches and pseudo-magical nonsense. Our magic is grounded in science these days – clear, precise, respectable science.”

Realizing he was going off on a tangent Doctor Stable caught himself, covering his transition with a cough. “Anyways, what I meant to say is that judging from this pony’s scars, each of these injuries would have been very serious when he suffered them – life threatening, really. For him to have survived means he was treated by a powerful healer. And while very serious injuries are going to leave a little scarring even when treated properly, wounds such as these should not have left such prominent scars. Any healer who was strong enough to keep him from dying would have been powerful enough to have made these scars less pronounced, less obvious.”

Before she was aware of it she and the doctor were standing side by side, the doctor’s caramel-colored leg pointing out each of the injuries and scars he was mentioning. “Could the injuries have been so severe that whoever was healing them ran out of magical energy?” Twilight asked curiously. Healing magic was certainly not her area of expertise, but new learning always fascinated her.

“That is the only answer I can come up with, but that just creates new questions,” the doctor admitted. “It is possible that his injuries were so severe that whoever was healing him exhausted their own power just keeping him from bleeding out. Which, considering how much blood we removed from his fur, was probably a very real possibility.” Twilight didn’t even bat an eye as he discussed the bucket of blood-tainted water, her academic mind fully engaged as she examined the stallion, distracting her from any squeamishness.

“So, why does that raise more questions?”

“Because it doesn’t make sense that his scars and injuries would still be so barely healed. Given enough time, whoever was healing him could have finished the job afterwards, once they had rested. They had already stabilized the stallion enough that his life wasn’t in danger, so they could have simply put in another dose of healing to tighten up the cuts to minimize scarring. But they didn’t. They saved his life, obviously, but it’s like they were doing just enough to keep him alive, and nothing more.”

“But, this healer pony y’all are talking about might not have been able to finish the job,” Applejack pointed out as she trotted over to join them, leaving Pinkie Pie to mope sullenly. “I mean, if he was injured like that, what if the other pony was injured too? I’d reckon it’s not that they didn’t finish healing him, it’s that they couldn’t finish healing him.”

“That certainly is possible, Applejack,” Doctor Stable nodded. “However, the reason why I’m not satisfied with that answer is because of these scars here, the ones that reach up from his stomach to his chin.” Twilight examined the marks in questions, the spider web of scars forming a patchwork across the stallion’s body. Unlike the fresh pink scars on his neck and shoulder, they were difficult to spot beneath his fur.

“These scars are different,” Twilight noted slowly, mulling it over in her head. “Are they older than his other scars?”

Doctor Stable favored Twilight with an impressed nod. “Exactly, Twilight. These scars here are much older than the others. The other scars are recent, likely less than a month old. The ones on his chest? Those are at least five years old at the earliest.”

“Oh!” Twilight exclaimed, the doctor’s meaning dawning on her.

“Oh? Oh, what? What does it mean exactly, him havin’ old and new scars?” Applejack asked, shifting her gaze from one to the other expectantly.

Twilight looked at her friend. “What it means Applejack, is that while it is possible for this stallion to have been injured in the past month and unable to get fully healed since then, due to extreme circumstances outside of his control, for him to have such a large collection of old scars means that he hasn’t gotten proper magical healing for at least five years – and maybe longer.”

Applejack let out a whistle. “Sweet celestia! That’s hard to imagine! Every town in Equestria has some sort of clinic or hospital. Shoot, he’d have to be some sorta hermit livin’ all by his lonesome in a cave somewhere to have missed the opportunity to get healed properly. And I can’t picture him living like Zecora does, lugging around metal parts like that. I don’t think they would last long out in the wild – probably rust up good and tight.”

“And that is the source of my confusion regarding his scars. Over the years he has either deliberately chosen to not seek magical healing – or something was keeping him from getting it. Either way, it isn’t a pleasant idea,” the doctor summarized, looking at both mares before turning back to the red-haired stallion. There was a silence between them as they each considered the implications of that discovery.

“Doctor, I’m finished cleaning the patient,” Nurse Blueheart informed him, breaking the heavy silence of the room. “Once he wakes up we’ll make sure to get him bathed properly, but he is as clean as I can get him with just a sponge. Will you be needing anything else?”

“No, that’s fine, Ms. Blueheart,” the doctor said. “Go ahead and take care of Miss Waterfall in the next room. Once I’m done here, I’ll see you about setting up a watch schedule for our sleeping guest.” Picking up the bucket’s handle with her teeth, the blue and white nurse carefully made her way out of the room, leaving the small group alone with the unconscious pony.

“A watch schedule?” Applejack asked Doctor Stable as soon as the nurse had left.

“It’s just a precaution, in light of what you told me about his behavior. If he wakes up all alone, he might panic again and hurt himself. Plus, if we have a nurse on hoof, we’ll know exactly when he does wake up.”

Twilight hadn’t paid much attention to the nurse’s departure, or their conversation, her curious mind already working on the mystery of what Applejack had so eloquently called the stallion’s ‘metal bits’. But the doctor began speaking to her, drawing her out of her musings. “Now, one question left unanswered is why this pony might avoid getting treated. I did a complete scan of him when Applejack first dropped him off, and the results were fairly grim.”

“But I thought you said everything had been healed adequately?” Applejack said.

“Oh, it had,” he nodded, turning from Twilight to look at the farmer. “However, each injury had left an unhealed mark that was clear as day once I started looking. The scars on his skin only hint at the scars on his bones and in his muscles. The story they tell is frightening. This pony had broken ribs, a lacerated throat, a torn shoulder, a punctured lung, and severe blood loss. And although it is much less clear, I think that the artificial parts of his body were crafted to account for traumatic injuries to those sections of his body as well. The shoulder joint that connects to his prosthetic foreleg is mostly newly formed connectors to hold together the few fragments of original bone that were left. This pony suffered terribly, Applejack. It’s almost too much for one pony to consider.”

“Maybe when I saw him on mah farm, he was makin’ his way to the hospital here?” she offered.

“We’ll have to wait for him to wake up to know for sure. I’ve tried my best to tidy up the wounds so he doesn’t reinjure himself, but I’ll need to wait until he’s conscious before I try anything major. We don’t know this pony’s story, and from what you told me I am slightly worried about his mental health. To have survived such traumatic injuries could have left him deranged, or just deep in shock. Once he wakes up we’ll try and get some answers.”

The mares nodded at the wisdom in his words. ‘Plus, if he chose to keep from getting medical attention, he might not be too pleased if we heal him without his permission,’ Twilight thought to herself. Aloud, however, she brought up something the doctor had said. “So Doctor Stable, you mentioned prosthetics. Is that what you’re assuming these are for?” Twilight brushed a hoof over the stallion’s fake limb as she spoke.

“That’s my working theory at the moment, yes,” he said as Twilight started pulling the white sheets further down to uncover the rest of his foreleg – although she was careful to keep from uncovering anything else, wanting to preserve the unconscious stallion’s dignity. Before she could take a better look at his limb, the doctor continued. She looked back at the doctor, politely giving him her attention. “Which, if true, would make them incredibly advanced prosthetics, the likes of which I have never seen or heard of before. That’s why I wanted Applejack to bring you here as soon as she could. I was hoping that you might be able to help me do a little research on our John Doe here and his artificial body parts.”

“Wait, his name is John Doe?” Pinkie Pie asked curiously. All three turned back to look at her. She shrunk back a little under their gaze, but she repeated her question all the same. “Like, how do you know his name is John Doe? Because that’s a silly name for a pony. It’s a good name for a deer, though. Although, shouldn’t it be John Stag?”

“Sugarcube, John Doe is just the name they give t’ anypony whose name they don’t know,” Applejack explained patiently. “It doesn’t mean that it’s his real name. It’s a temporary name, just till they can be sure of his real one.” Twilight kept a straight face, although the corners of her mouth did turn upwards just a little bit. She could see Doctor Stable hide his own grin of amusement.

“Well, that makes sense, I guess,” Pinkie said noncommittally. “But why don’t you just name him Mars?”

“Mars?” the other three echoed in confusion as they stared at her. There was a moment’s silence, as if they were waiting for a punch line to drop.

When none came, Twilight felt compelled to ask “Um, Pinkie Pie? Why in Equestria would you want to call him Mars?” Even as she spoke, she felt like she was going to regret the answer. ‘Trust Pinkie Pie to come up with a nonsensical name like Mars. Half of what she says is a non sequitur,’ Twilight thought as she looked at her friend.

“Well, I kinda like the name Mars. It’s different,” she admitted. Applejack and Twilight shared their familiar ‘That’s Pinkie’ look, not surprised by their friend’s illogical leaps. Pinkie Pie pointed at the stallion with one of her hooves. “But also, it’s printed right there on the side of his leg.”

Twilight, Applejack, and Doctor Stable stared at Pinkie Pie. They all blinked as one. Then, perfectly synchronized, they spun around.

The stallion’s limb sat there, only half covered by the sheets. Twilight had been pulling away the sheets, but before she had been able to take a look she had been distracted by the doctor and let go, letting more of the sheet pull away. And there, across the upper portion of the prosthetic leg, the word MARS was clearly visible in black lettering. The three stared at it in silence. Eventually they looked back at each other, a faint amount of embarrassment on each pony’s face.

“Wait, didn’t any of you see that earlier?” Pinkie Pie asked with disbelief.

“Well, uh, when I was helpin’ Big Mac carry him here, he was pretty muddy and dirty and was bleedin’ an all, and I was more focused on the cuts and bruises on his face…”

“Well, um, I was too busy helping to heal his wounds and double-check his internals to closely examine the casing of his leg. Also, like Applejack says, he was pretty dirty and soiled when he came in here…”

Twilight opened her mouth to offer her own excuse, but she paused. Her brows narrowed and she snapped her mouth shut. “What a minute, I just got here. I don’t have anything to be embarrassed about,” she stated, turning back to look at the other two ponies. Applejack and Doctor Stable coughed, not meeting her eyes.

“Well now we all know!” Pinkie Pie declared happily, having regained her usual cheerfulness after her unfriendly faux pas from before (Twilight would have thought that Pinkie Pie would be socially aware enough to not call a terribly injured stallion who was acting incoherent ‘crazy’, but to her credit she had caught her mistake pretty quickly). “So, what’ya guys think? Caaaaause Pinkie thinks that Mars is going to be his new name, you know, until we find out his real one. It’s much much better than naming him after some deer, too!” Bouncing up onto her hooves Pinkie Pie rushed to the stallion’s side. Gripping the unconscious pony’s hoof in her own she furiously pumped it up and down. “Put ‘er there, Mars! I’m Pinkie Pie, and I’ll be your knew best friend!”

“Pinkie, stop that – he’s in a hospital bed for reason!” Twilight snapped.

“Okey-dokey-lokey!” she dropped the leg with a giggle, bouncing happily in place. She stopped mid-laugh (and mid-bounce), her eyes bulging. “Oh no! I need to get started on my ‘Congratulations on waking up!’ party for my new friend Mars right away! Or maybe it should be a ‘Welcome to Ponyville and sorry for calling you crazy but at least I discovered your cool new temporary name!’ party! OkayIgottagonowbigpartytoplanbye!” Pinkie Pie shouted as she shot out of the room with enough force to pull stray paper along in her wake, leaving behind a faint dust cloud and three confused ponies. There was a crash out in the hall, followed by a shouted apology and rapidly fading hoof beats. Someone outside muttered something about inconsiderate ponies needing to look where they were going.

The doctor cleared his throat. “Is she normally like-“

“Yes.” Applejack and Twilight answered together. The room was silent for a moment.

“Well then, I guess Mars is a perfectly acceptable temporary name for our unknown pony here,” the doctor added after another short pause. Turning back to the stallion – Mars, Twilight corrected – Doctor Stable gestured for them to come closer to look at the shoulder joint. It was sheathed in the same white material as the other artificial parts, and slightly larger than Mars’ normal shoulder – probably to account for the parts inside to make it work, she imagined.

“Now, as you can see, these prosthetics are quite different from what we might normally see. In the big cities it is said they are developing artificial limbs that will bend and move more naturally, but the standard prosthetic limb is still basically a wooden leg, albeit made with more modern materials. But those replacement limbs are really just attached onto the stump of a leg, to allow a pony to get around without needing a wheelchair.” The doctor tapped his hoof against the edge of the joint. “However, this is different. This is not something simply attached to a mangled limb. Beneath the shell here, it is difficult to tell exactly where the pony stops and the artificial starts. The same goes for the artificial eye there. It looks to be wired directly into his brain, with metal wires turning into nerves, and vice-versa.”

He glanced back at the two mares. Applejack had a faintly confused look on her face, but she seemed to be following along as best she could. Twilight, however, knew her disbelief was written across her face. “But, how can that be? To make flesh turn into metal like that without killing him… I can’t even begin to imagine how much magical power it would require!”

“My thoughts exactly. And furthermore, the fact that his body isn’t burning up with infection as his system tries to reject them is another sign that whatever made all of this possible,” he swept a hoof over Mars’ sleeping form, “possessed incredible magical strength. Which brings us around to the crux of the problem: whoever – or whatever – was powerful enough to save this pony’s life and graft these prosthetics onto his body would have been powerful enough to heal him fully. I doubt we will be able to answer this mystery until he wakes up, I’m afraid.”

Although she was looking at a stallion who had suffered terribly, Twilight felt a tingle slide its way up her spine. It was the thrill of an intellectual challenge, the familiar excitement when she faced a true test of her mental faculties. “Doctor, would it be alright if I came back here later to do some examinations of my own? I need to grab some things from the library first, but I promise I will be back as soon as I can.”

“Of course, Twilight. That’s why I wanted to bring you here. If there is any pony in Ponyville that can help provide some answers on this, it’s you, Twilight. You’ll just need to be sure that if you want to examine the – Mars here, you’ll need to have a nurse in the room with you. Insurance purposes and all that,” he waved dismissively.

Her mind was so preoccupied that Twilight barely remembered the rest of the visit. Doctor Stable escorted them out and she knew she said farewell to Applejack before hurrying off to the library, mentally sorting out which books she would need to start looking through first. Mars was a stallion who had created dozens of exciting questions just by laying unconscious in a hospital bed – she couldn’t wait to see what she would learn once he was awake! There was a big smile on the eager student’s face as she made a beeline towards the distant shape of the library.

‘This is the best thing to happen to me all month!’

“This is the worst thing to happen this month, and that’s saying something, captain!” one of Martin’s soldiers remarked over comms as they carefully made their way through the hills outside of Tehran. In the distance there were the muted sounds of combat – the deep bass notes of artillery fire and the sharp crack of small arms. Although they were still a day’s hike from the city itself, the sounds of war were constant. Jets screamed by overhead, and Martin could spot the distant shapes of gunships prowling over the smoke-sheathed city. The capital of Iran was a had been marked by the scythe of warfare.

Around Martin the men of his Operational Detachment – ODA, going with the military’s love of acronyms – were spread out in the rough terrain, interspersed with the local fighters that had joined with the NATO forces. The Iranians were lightly armed; most clutching antiquated but ubiquitous AK-clones, and presenting a ragged image in a mixture of civilian clothing and looted military uniforms. Martin’s Green Berets were kitted out in semi-powered personal armor: a small metal brace trailed down the outside of the legs and supported the weight of their gear without reducing mobility.

Well that was the idea, at any rate. They were still relatively untested and, while working currently, Martin had his doubts that they would last very long. They’d only been in country a less than two months, after all. His unit, like a number of Special Forces detachments, had been assigned to work in the more tribal areas to recruit and train local fighters, and assist anti-government rebels when possible. The village elder – a man who’s wrinkled and worn skin looked like he had been carved from a gnarled tree – walked spryly at Martin’s side. His son had been killed by the Iranian government just before the invasion, so it hadn’t been too hard to obtain their support. Martin knew his Persian wasn’t perfect, but from their brief conversations the man had been able to grasp just how eager he was to get revenge.

“We’re barely into month two, Wilson,” Martin chuckled. “Command is just getting started. Give them time to give us some real shitty assignments.”

“I’d rather not. I don’t need command trying to get me killed too. Besides, what is so urgent that they demanded we abandon our currents operations just to march through a few dozen clicks contested territory back towards Tehran? It doesn’t look like the rest of NATO really needs our help – they’ve got, what three, four divisions in this fight? What are the twelve of us supposed to do?”

Martin rolled his eyes and adjusted his grip on his pulse rifle. Griping – proper griping – was a cherished and well-practiced tradition amongst soldiers. Striking that balance between complaining without becoming (too) annoying was an art. And Wilson wasn’t an artist. Although as one of Martin’s weapons sergeants, the fact that he had to carry around much heavier railgun did provide him with a bit more leeway than others. But then the weight was justified, because it was a wonderful weapon to have – powerful enough to destroy any armored vehicle with one shot, and with no recoil to speak of. Of course, all that firepower hadn’t saved Wilson’s life when a sniper had gotten him in the neck on one of their patrols, but such weapons were always necessary. They were very comforting to men on foot, knowing they could reach out and ruin any tanker’s day.

Martin blinked, his retort dying on his lips. Turning his head Martin looked at Wilson thirty meters away, the railgun resting jauntily on one of his shoulders. Martin couldn’t be talking to Wilson now – Wilson was dead. Martin had been there holding his hand as the medic had futilely tried to stop the bleeding. He’d felt Wilson’s hand go limp as he took his last breath, dying on some forgotten street in some Iranian neighborhood.

‘I’ve done this all before,’ Martin glanced around, the sense of confusion and déjà vu assaulting his senses. He could remember it all perfectly, yet everything seemed vague. The Iranian soldiers were just impressions of men, their faces indistinct shadows. He hadn’t spent enough time with them, had never learned their names, never gained a real memory of them. His men were perfectly clear – he’d spent so much time fighting at their side he could probably sketch their features in his sleep. Yet, as Martin glanced between them, he noticed more than one who had died like Wilson. Taking point he spotted Jack, an eagle-feather taped to the power supply of his armor.

“I’m dreaming. This has to be a dream,” Martin declared aloud. Nobody responded. Wilson continued to complain as if Martin were still talking, completing half of a decade old conversation. Martin felt a headache coming on. He remembered this moment in time – he remembered this nightmare. “What – why here? Why now, after so long?” Martin had grown familiar with his usual routine of nightmares, and this wasn’t one of them. It was an old nightmare, one that had plagued him during his early years in Iran.

Later on, there had been other nightmares to keep him awake at night. This one had become tame, in comparison.

The headache flashed white with pain, dropping Martin to his hands and knees. “GAAH!” he screamed through clenched teeth as a wave of agony swept over him. He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t hear anything. All he could feel was pain. Memories came flooding back to him like snapshots – the war, his time in prison, his release – and Martin found himself reliving it all in a few seconds. And as quickly as it began, it was over.

His last memory bounced around within his head, not staying still long enough to become clear. He had been lost … some strange world… impossible physics … a talking horse … his hands. His hands! Something had happened to his hands! Blinking away tears Martin squinted fearfully down at the ground, his vision clearing as he focused on where he had planted his hands when he had fallen. ‘Oh god please oh please-‘

His hands were gone. His arms ended with flat stumps, as if they had been removed with a guillotine. Martin tried to scream, but the only sound that came out was a loud baying, his voice that of a panicked animal. He looked at the rest of himself. It wasn’t his body. It was a horse’s body. ‘This is just a nightmare, Martin. Wake up. It’s not real. This is just a nightmare, Martin. You’ve dealt with them before. It’s not real,’ he repeated desperately, trying to force himself out of his terrifying dream.

“Please be calm, little one,” a powerful voice filled the air, the sound of compassionate authority reverberating within his twisted memory. Martin glanced up. The rest of his men, dead and alive, continued to make their way casually forward, unresponsive to their captain’s plight – or the cloud created from a slice of the night’s sky that had appeared in their midst. “You are caught in some frightful dream, but you need not worry. These strange creatures cannot hurt you here.”

‘Who… who are you?’ Martin force out the thought, his incomprehension keeping him frozen in place. The dark blue smoke suggested a vague shape, the specifics obscured beneath a constantly shifting cloud dotted with twinkling stars. A pair of white eyes looked back at Martin, piercing through the smoke and shadow. Slowly something within the cloud moved forward.

Martin gasped as a horse the color of a full moon’s night sky strode out of the cloud. It was a being of mythology given form, a horn jutting out from its head, a pair of wings tucked against its side. Its large eyes were incredibly expressive as they looked at him with maternal kindness. In a moment Martin realized this had happened before – his memories of an apple orchard finally crystalized. He could remember having panicked then, having come face to face with a talking horse.

“We- I am the princess of the night, and it is my duty to aid our subjects when beset by unkind dreams and plagued by nightmares,” the horse – a mare, from the female tones in the voice – answered him. The self-described princess’ voice was powerful, yet carried an archaic accent. “I… I have much experience with nightmares.” Martin detected a hind of sadness and regret, but she continued. “I see you now, a stallion crying out in fear and confusion, and I come to offer you my compassion and assistance in breaking free from the strange world that thy mind hath wrought.”

Martin glanced around at the low foothills he was seated on, watching the rest of his unit disappear into a low valley. The winged unicorn gracefully moved closer, only halting a short distance from him. Considering how panicked he had been just moments before, Martin was certain he should have been losing it right then. Maybe it was her voice and worried tone, maybe it was his memories of having dealt with a similar situation recently, or maybe it was the fact that, being told he was in a dream, even if it came from another part of his subconscious mind, had was enough to calm his nerves. He met the shadowy mare’s eyes, trying to make sense of the situation ‘This is just a nightmare. I’m dreaming right now, right? That’s why my memory seems so strange-‘

“Memory?” the princess asked him, her eyes widening in surprise. “What do you mean memory? How can a pony such as yourself have memories of a place like this, filled with such strange and frightening figures as those that hath just accosted you?”

Martin stared back in confusion. ‘Pony? What… I’m not a pony! I’m a human being!’ There was an itch at the back of Martin’s, memories scratching at his consciousness – images of an orchard, a horse in a hat, his own horrible transformation. Martin gestured down at his grey-brown body with one of his mutilated arms, his calm slipping away. In its place, instead of panic, he felt angry and impatient. ‘I am trapped in this nightmare looking like this. I don’t understand why, either. It doesn’t make sense. Why isn’t anything making any goddamn sense?!’

His last questioned was shouted into the barren landscape of an Iranian hillside he had traversed more than a decade ago. It echoed off into the distance before fading away, soon replaced by the sounds of distant battle. The horse recoiled at his voice, evidently as confused as he was. After a minute its eyes narrowed with curiosity and it again moved closer.

“You claim you are one of those things?” she him with disbelief, a wing flaring out to gesture at the shapes of the soldiers climbing up the next hillside. “You say you are a human, yet her I stand, in your mind – impossible, unless you were of pony-kind and sleeping beneath my night sky. This nightmare you call a memory does not exist. There is no place like this in Equestria, and I have had a very long time to spend examining it from above.” Her expression softened, replaced with concern. “Please, my child, you are losing yourself to this nightmare. Nothing here is real. You are not a, a human, as you say. You are a pony; I can sense your real form, sleeping in Equestria. Let me help guide you back to reality and escape this mind-crafted world.” Her voice was gentle and soothing, like a parent speaking to a child. The mare offered one of its hooves outward toward Martin, that he might help himself up.

His eyes narrowed angrily. ‘Not a human? Equest- what? No! Fuck you!’ Martin snarled as he leapt to his mutilated hands and feet, his teeth barred. She recoiled from his reaction and jerked her leg back, the shadowy thing’s white eyes widening in surprise. ‘Fuck you, this isn’t real! I don’t need some fucking piece of my subconscious telling me what is or isn’t real! I know what is real – I lived through it for five fucking years!’

‘Five years of hell! Five years of shit and death and terror and murder!’ Martin slowly advanced on the princess, all of the confusion and panic and terror and stress of his recent life boiling over as he finally found an outlet, replaced with fury and anger and resentment and hate. Each time he raged at it with his thoughts there was a loud rumble as the ground rippled outwards away from him, the earth shifting like the surface of a lack disturbed by a pebble. ‘Don’t you dare tell me this is all part of some goddamn dream I created up in my head! I don’t care if you are just some figment of my mind talking to me while I bleed out on the floor, or if I’m already some brain-dead vegetable on life-support! This,’ he gestured around him, ‘is more real to me than anything else!’

“But humans aren’t real!” she sputtered in confusion, but Martin didn’t relent.

‘Bullshit! I’m real, and I’m a human! Those men out there were all human! So cut out all the damn nonsense! I don’t care what part of my mind you were spawned from, just stop fucking talking and leave me be! I’ve been here before, and I know how to get out on my own. I don’t need some fucking talking mutant horse to help me.’ Martin gave her one final glare before he spun around and sat down in the dirt, his eyes locked on Tehran in the distance.

The mare hesitated for a moment – he could sense her behind him, hovering close yet not wishing to intrude. He didn’t turn to check. He knew how to wake up from this nightmare – it was as familiar and unchanging as dozens of other similar dreams. ‘Well, being a horse is new,’ he thought gruffly. His anger still simmered beneath his mind, but he felt better having let some of it out.

“What are you going to do then, little one?” she finally asked. She sounded upset at being talked to like that – but even more than that, Martin could sense her curiosity at his words.

‘My name is Martin.’

“What are you going to do then, Martin?” she corrected itself as she carefully walked up until she was abreast of him – although she maintained her respectful distance. He still didn’t look at her, his face pointed firmly at the distant city.

‘I might not have had this nightmare in years, but I still remember how to wake myself up. It always ended the same way. For two years, this memory haunted me every time I tried to get some sleep,’ he explained with his thoughts, not sparing a glance at the princess. He smirked, but there was no humor in the expression. ‘Of course, later on I got a whole new batch of nightmares that made me look back on those nights with fondness. I would have eaten a bullet if it hadn’t been for sleeping pills and understanding doctors.’

“What is so terrible about this… memory? What would cause it to haunt you so?”

Realizing it wasn’t going to shut up he turned his head to glare at the talking unicorn. Her eyes met his. In them he could see an honest desire to understand, that it might help him – even if she didn’t believe him that this was all crafted from a very explicit memory. ‘Because I was out here, in these hills, when the Ayatollah’s loyalists detonated their last nuke. If we hadn’t been slowed down trying to ford that river, we would have made it to the outskirts of the city and been incinerated along with all the rest.’

The cloud tilted its ‘head’ quizzically, obviously not understanding the terms he was using, but trying to avoid provoking him into another outburst. ‘The cloud is like Elise, always treating me like I’m made of egg shells,’ Martin considered.

“What do you mean, incinerated? And who were the rest?” she finally asked.

He gave the cloud a short glance. ‘You know exactly what incinerated means, princess.’ Martin turned back and raised one of his handless arms to point at the city. ‘There – that’s the northern side of Tehran. The city had a population of about ten million before the war, although it was probably lower at this moment in time. Plenty of civvies escaped the city when they could, fleeing to the countryside or other towns less likely to be bombed. Maybe half the population was still in the city when it was cut off by our advance. Inside, there were a few underequipped Iranian divisions dug in, along with plenty of militia, but they were all absolutely outmatched by coalition forces. The unit leading the attack was a French division – they had the honor of taking the capital, after what the Iranian’s did to Toulouse – and they were pushing into downtown when the Ayatollah’s men set off the last nuke.’

“They were all killed!?” she asked with alarm.

‘Oh, no, of course not.’ The cloud let out a soft sigh of relief. Martin ignored it. ‘The weapon they had left was pretty crude, compared to the ones they had used on those European cities. The French got off pretty lucky, only losing about twelve, thirteen-hundred men in the blast. The Iranians lost three times that many soldiers to their own damn weapon. The worst hit was the civilians, though. Downtown was packed with refugees that didn’t escape before the city was cut off. So it was hard to make accurate predictions, but the last estimates I ever saw ball parked civilian deaths at around eight-hundred thousand, give or take a hundred-thousand.’ He paused. ‘Of course, that doesn’t take into account those that died later from cancer and radiation sickness. From what the news reports we got in prison said, I think there were a million and a half killed in total.’

The horse was silent. Martin turned to see her staring back at him, her eyes the size of saucers. “What you say… you do not lie, at least, not knowingly. You truly believe this to be reality. But so many casualties – it is unthinkable! Impossible!”

‘Oh, it’s not impossible,’ he favored her with a sad smile. ‘Humans are quite good at killing each other. We’ve been doing it for thousands of years, and we’re still getting better.’

“No. I will not believe it, Martin,” she stated forcefully as she narrowed her eyes at him, managing to look both threatening and pleading. “Martin, I have indulged your delusions long enough. You are obviously a pony in need of assistance. This twisted fantasy world you have created is unlike any nightmare I have ever seen in my long life. I know full well the dangers that cruel nightmares, when left untreated, can pose to ponies. To believe something so strongly will only harm you further. Please, Martin, come with me. We don’t – I don’t – want to see you punish yourself anymore.” There was sincerity in the unicorn-thing’s words.

Martin shook his head and ignored a second limb offered toward him, resuming his staring contest with the city. He thought he would be more upset, being called a delusional horse, but his previous anger failed to ignite. Instead of fury he felt… tired. Resigned, even. ‘Thanks for the offer, but it’s too late for me, princess, in more ways than one. And, not to be rude, but you can’t do shit for me. You’re just some figment of my mind, dredged up from somewhere. Although I have to give you credit – you did at least give this nightmare an interesting twist. Didn’t expect to have my sense of reality challenged by a talking horse, that’s for sure. I’m just not too clear on what the deal is with my mind and horses – I never even liked the damned things.’

“Martin, I am not part of your mind. I am Princess Luna, Princess of the Night, and I watch over the dreams of all the ponies that slumber beneath by starry skies. I wish to help you, Martin, but I cannot help you fight off this delusion unless you accept my assistance willingly. I cannot force you to accept my aid, but I beg – please, Martin, take my hoof, and let me help you.”

“Please,” she repeated with worry when Martin didn’t respond.

‘Like I said, it’s too late for that now. This nightmare is just about over,’ he nodded towards the city. ‘In reality, I was looking the other way when the bomb went off – which is why I didn’t go blind. Thank God for small blessings, eh? But in the nightmare, I always turn at the last second to look right at the center of the city. There’s a bang, a bright flash of light, a million people die, and I wake right up.’

“Martin, please don’t do this to yourself. What you are doing – it isn’t good for your health. I know the dangers such self-destructive dreaming can poise, more than you might ever know. I turned away from the one pony that could have saved me from myself a thousand years ago, and cannot stand the thought of you following down that dark and twisted path. Please, let me help you.”

‘I’d close my eyes, princess. This might hurt.’

Martin had the brief impression of a bright flash at the center of the city and a growing roar in the distance. Then everything went white.

Chapter 4 - Ex Silentio

Bringer of War

Chapter 4

Ex Silentio

Martin awoke to the familiar world of a hospital examination room: clean sheets, soft colors, and the cloying scent of disinfectant. To his surprise he hadn’t been jerked awake in shock, drenched in sweat and fitfully fighting off the effects of a nightmare. It was a welcome change from his all too familiar routine. He took in his surroundings through his working eye. Through the gaps in the blinds he could see the light of an early morning peeking through. Quickly, Martin turned his attention to himself.

‘Of course, maybe I’m waking up so easily because I’m not really waking up at all,’ Martin noted as he looked down at himself, his body (thankfully) covered by the sheets, leaving just his arms visible. His left arm was covered in an all too familiar tan fur and came to a flat end where his hand should be. In his lower arm there was an IV pushed into his flesh, held in place by a small section of tape. A clear plastic bag hung from a metal pole at his side, a just as colorless liquid trailing down the tubing to the needle in his arm.

His right arm was a different story. Although he had gotten a glimpse of what his new arm was while he had been panicking in the apple orchard, this was Martin’s first chance to really look at what this horse-obsessed dream world had done to him. The arm mirrored his left in shape and size, although the spherical shoulder joint was larger than his other, making it look like he was wearing a solitary shoulder pad. Martin could glimpse the inner workings of his arm in between the armored sections, the black pistons and cables visible at the joints, leaving no doubt about the limb’s artificial nature.

Of course, Martin recognized its source quite quickly. He was intimately familiar with that arm. It was the same limb that had broken his hand, cracked his skull, destroyed his arm, cut his throat, and shot his sister. It was the arm from a MARS unit, and somehow it had ended up on his body. Normally it would be a terrible realization, but the fact that he was currently in the body of a horse did limit the shock of possessing a robot’s limb.

The thought of his sister passed through Martin’s mind. ‘God, is she all right?’ concern welled up inside him as he thought of Elise. ‘She had been badly injured, but she had definitely been alive. The android must have missed anything vital. Thank God for energy weapons – if that had been a traditional ballistic weapon, she would have bled out like I did – or am – or whatever the hell is causing all this.’

‘Of course, I can’t do anything for her right now, whatever is going on. Either I’m dead, dying, or in a different hospital bed on Earth… and it would be nice to have a little confirmation on which one.’ Knowing he couldn’t help his sister didn’t improve his mood. Martin had never tolerated inaction well. He’d spent a good portion of his life protecting Elise, so being stuck in a world with horses and impossible physics was not pleasing. His sister needed him and he couldn’t do anything for her. He unclenched his jaw. ‘If there is a way out of this cartoon nightmare, I am going to find it,’ he promised.

As Martin considered his current plight, the thought ‘energy weapons’ echoed in his mind. He looked back down at his carbon-fiber limb. The MARS units carried a pair of plasma weapons, one mounted in each forearm. ‘If this really was the arm from a combat android…’ Martin snorted softly, the edge of his mouth twisting upwards. For a few delicious moments he pictured the talking horses fleeing from him in mindless fear as he blasting through the walls with bursts of plasma fire, tearing down the broken fantasy world and setting its rubble alight.

The smile faded. He suddenly felt cold. In the daydream the ponies shifted into indistinct blobs before reforming into civilians – human civilians. Martin stopped his violent fantasizing, his temporary good humor stolen away in a burst of shame. Shaking the images free, he returned to the serious matter of doing something – anything – to try and escape his dreams.

Focusing on his new arm, Martin tried to lift it upwards, wanting to check to see if there even was a barrel concealed in the flat end of his artificial limb. It didn’t respond. Martin tried again, his eyes narrowing as he clenched his jaw, a bead of sweat dripping down his face. He could feel the arm like he could his own flesh and blood, but it was cool and unresponsive to his straining. Martin let out the breath he had been holding with a loud gasp, panting heavily as he glowered at his disobedient limb.

“Oh, you’re awake!” a voice declared with mild surprise from the far side of the room. Startled, Martin jerked his head back, unaware there had been anyone else in the room. Rising up from the padded bench she had obviously been sleeping on was another one of the talking horses. Around her improvised bed an assortment of large books were scattered about in mismatched piles. She yawned, politely lifting one leg up in front of her muzzle to cover her mouth. Eventually she looked back at Martin with a friendly – if tired – smile on her face. She was a shade of light purple, with a dark blue mane streaked with color. Her eyes were also purple, although the color was not nearly as odd as the relative size of the eyes, giving her an expressive and almost childlike look.

But what Martin was most focused upon was the horn jutting out from her forehead. She wasn’t just a talking horse – she was a talking unicorn. The memory of his conversation with the ‘princess’ while unconscious played at the back of his mind.

From the faint circles under her large eyes it seemed she had been pulling a late night study session – a fact supported by the assortment of books scattered around her. It was a familiar scene for Martin, having carried his sister up to her bed many times after finding her in a similar condition. But the unicorn quickly shrugged off the effects of a short night. Her eyes filled with excitement and curiosity as she stared at Martin, giving him the uncomfortable feeling of being under a microscope.

She looked like she was about to speak when she caught herself. “Oh! I need to tell the doctors first!” she exclaimed. The unicorn hurried towards the door, a purple haze forming around her horn. Martin noticed a similarly colored glow envelop the door handle. Just before the pony hit the door it swung open on its own, allowing the horse to dart out into the hallway and leaving Martin to stare at the slowly closing door.

‘Oh, good. The horses don’t just talk, they can use magic,’ he thought, his irritation at the physical impossibilities of the world starting to really grate on his nerves. He carefully examined the rest of the room to ensure there weren’t any other sleeping ponies he hadn’t noticed.

Outside Martin heard the clip-clop of approaching hoof beats just a moment before the door to his room swung open again. A caramel colored horse in a lab coat strode into the room, a pair of glasses perched on his nose and a stethoscope draped around his neck. The ridiculous sight only increased Martin’s irritation. The ‘doctor’ was taller than the other two horses that followed behind him: the unicorn from before and a white horse with a nurse’s hat perched atop a garish pink mane.

‘A doctor, a nurse, and a mythological creature,’ Martin considered. ‘I think my subconscious hates me. Or maybe that’s the set up to some terrible children’s joke?’

“You’re right, Twilight, it seems Mars has finally awoken,” the doctor said, addressing the unicorn with him. Martin’s confusion at the name passed quickly as the nurse with the obnoxious hair hurried to Martin’s side and began inspecting the needle embedded in his arm. He stared at her for a moment, fighting down a wave of apprehension at being so close to one of the multicolored mutants.

Noticing his gaze she gave him a gentle smile. “I’m Nurse Redheart, hun. I’m just inspecting the saline drip, so don’t mind me.” Martin stared back at her silently, long enough for her smile to slip, before the doctor horse cleared his throat and brought Martin’s attention back to him.

“And I’m Doctor Stable. And this here is the town librarian, Twilight Sparkle,” he tilted his head at the unicorn, who gave Martin a short nod of introduction. Martin’s eye lingered on her for a moment, trying to understand what a librarian was doing in a hospital. Noticing Martin’s slight confusion the doctor quickly added, “Oh, she is more than just Ponyville’s librarian – she is the personal protégé of Princess Celestia herself!” They both looked at him expectantly, the last name said with a deal of respect and reverence.

He just stared back at them blankly. Martin was slightly perturbed that he hadn’t noticed that the doctor was a unicorn as well until he was standing right at Martin’s side. Something in Martin’s failure to respond to their words as expected deflated the two horses, and the doctor covered the awkward silence with another cough.

“Um, okay. She was up all night researching your unusual physiology. Like all of us, she is quite determined to help you to the best of her abilities. Now, you are currently resting at Ponyville General Hospital. You might not remember much, but you took quite a tumble outside of town and were knocked unconscious. We’ve treated your injuries, which were pretty minor, but we had some questions we would like to have answered. Before we go any further, we’ve been calling you ‘Mars’ due to the markings on your arm (‘One mystery solved,’ Martin thought). But now that you’re awake, can you can tell us your real name, and how you ended up on the Sweet Apple Acres farm?”

Martin moved his one eye back between the two of them, considering his response. Part of him – the difficult, stubborn part in every Covington – wanted to simply rattle off his name, rank, and serial number. But Martin dismissed that as childish. He was trapped in a dream, and Martin doubted he would be waking himself up anytime soon. If he was going to be stuck in a prison created by his own subconscious, he might as well try and enjoy as much of it as he can. ‘This,’ he reminded himself, ‘is better than Iran, talking horses and magic included.’

Letting out a resigned sigh Martin opened his mouth to answer. Nothing came out. Martin’s look of surprise was mirrored on the faces of the other ponies. Martin tried to answer them again, but only managed a faint wheeze. His confusion and irritation was slowly being replaced by a growing sense of dread at his muteness. Martin’s third attempt was as fruitless as the others. ‘Okay, this is starting to piss me off. Cutting off my hands and sticking me in a horse is bad enough, but I am not going to accept that my own mind is this determined to fuck me over.’

“Hhrmmm…” the doctor said as he leaned forward. His horn was sheathed in a small cloud of light as he stared at Martin’s throat. The nurse and the unicorn – Twilight Sparkler? – glanced over at the doctor expectantly. Martin ignored the similar glow coming from his neck, determined to force out one word. “This is quite unusual. Your larynx and vocal chords are intact, and they’re fully operational, from what I can tell. They show signs of having been damaged in the past, like other parts of your body, but they should work.” Doctor Stable paused, lifting his gaze from Martin’s neck to his eyes. “Sir, how about trying to laugh?”

Martin glared at him for a moment before he let out a short bark of forced laughter. His eyes widened in surprise. Martin repeated the performance, chuckling with false humor. Martin switched, pretending to cry, growling, and then finishing by humming a few bars from the 1812 Overture. Emboldened by his success Martin attempted to say his name aloud – but nothing came out. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ he mentally shouted, his stubby arm rubbing at his neck irritably.

“Well then, that rules out any physical problems,” the doctor stated with a slight frown. “If there were something physical keeping him from speaking, he wouldn’t be audible at all. It looks like there is a mental, or perhaps magical, issue afflicting him. This will… complicate things. It will be hard to treat him if we can’t communicate.”

Twilight, the shorter unicorn, perked up. “Oh! Let me get some spare parchment so he can write out his answers!” She paused and turned back to look at Martin. “You, um, do know how to write, yes?” Martin nodded. “Oh, good!” she exhaled. With sense of relief she made her way over to the piles of books and began nudging them aside with bursts of purple energy, searching for some paper.

While Twilight was busy the doctor took the nurse aside and whispered something into her ear, and despite Martin’s best attempts he couldn’t make out what was said. She soon left the room, leaving Martin alone with the doctor and the librarian.

Eventually Twilight came back, holding aloft in a purple aura a wooden writing desk, some rough papers, and – to Martin’s astonishment – a quill and ink well. ‘What? They can make plastics and hospitals, but they’re still using quills?’ thought with disbelief. Setting them down carefully in Martin’s lap Twilight arranged them all, making sure everything was perfectly organized and laid out.

“So why don’t you start by writing out your name for us?” she asked him, an odd level of excitement in her voice as she looked back at Martin cheerfully. His eyes narrowed in annoyance. Slowly Martin lifted his arm up held out the stump before her face. She glanced between him and the doctor quizzically, not understanding his meaning. Catching her gaze Martin patiently moved his eyes between her, the quill, and his mutilated arm. After repeating the motions a few times he looked back her, one of his eyebrows arched upwards. “I, uh, don’t understand…”

“I don’t have any fucking fingers!” he shouted through clenched teeth, the noise coming out as a mere hiss of escaping air. “How the hell am I supposed to write with a quill – a quill! – when I don’t have any goddamn fingers, huh? Huh!?” Martin panted after his silent outburst, finding it hard to remain calm in such a ridiculous situation. After a moment he launched into a second round of inaudible ranting, causing Twilight to pull away. She still managed to give him a weak smile despite being the target of his silent tantrum. “How could you stupid mutant animals not grasp that? You can’t write without fingers! What do you expect me to do, just write with my damn mind? Huh!? What kind of-“

“You can go ahead and use your mouth if you need too,” Twilight offered helpfully.

Martin froze mid-rant, his silent words catching on his tongue. Slowly he closed his mouth, his anger slipping away to be replaced by a mild case of embarrassment. “Oh, right,” he replied noiselessly, his cheeks burning red and his equine ears tucking back against his head. “Um, sorry,” he added, not meeting her eyes. Even though she couldn’t hear his words, she seemed to understand the intent, giving him a reassuring smile. ‘Okay, maybe next time you think about going off on one of the talking horses, you should be sure that you’re actually right. No need to be a dick just because you’re trapped in some horse-obsessed nightmare.’

Sitting up as best he could, Martin leaned forward to grab the white quill between his teeth. It was not a pleasant sensation. Martin didn’t know whether to sneeze or spit it out, and he really wanted to do one of them – and preferable both. Withdrawing the quill from the glass jar of ink Martin steadied the page with one arm. Black raindrops splattered over the page and the bed sheets as he tried to orient himself properly. Placing the quill unsteadily on the page he slowly dragged it downwards, making a vertical line. ‘Okay, this isn’t so bad,’ he thought. Resetting his quill at the top of the line he made three more short lines, each connected to the other.

‘There!’ he thought as he admired the ‘M’ he had inscribed upon the page. Sure, the lines were as straight as a worm having seizures, and it was hard to make out the letter beneath the dozens of smudges and ink blots from the black liquid dripping off the quill, but it was a start.

Clumsily forcing the quill back into the jar, Martin gathered up some more ink and returned to his work, excess ink splattering over his sheets. ‘I’ll be communicating with these horses in no time at all.’

Alpha blinked. Above her a bird cartwheeled through the air. She blinked again. Turning her head slowly to the side her red eyes followed its path back towards the forest she had just left, continuing her blinking at a steady but rapid interval. ‘What an odd sensation,’ she mused quietly, letting her eyelids drop down over her eyeballs with exaggerated slowness a few time. ‘Of course, that would be an apt description of my whole morning,’ she added.

Seated on a slopping field of grass split by a dirt path running just a short distance from her, she once again checked to see if there was any traffic on the road. There was none. Alpha continued her blinking as she examined her current location. While undoubtedly an alien planet, it did share numerous similarities to her files on Earth. Alpha was still a little put-off by the fact that her desperate plan had actually worked. She had been leaping blind into a dark pit with no idea what she would be landing on – or even if she would be landing at all.

‘In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again,’ Alpha quoted as she watched a few clouds lazily cross the sky. Lewis Carroll had always been an interesting read. It had taken Alpha years – and one too many requests for files pertaining to the Jabberwocky – to finally understand that his poems were not to be taken literally. Alpha herself had tumbled down the rabbit hole, and despite the astronomical odds against it, she had come out intact at the bottom.

Alpha turned her attention away from the sky, examining her legs and their light grey fur. ‘Well, at least my mind came through intact,’ she considered her strange limbs. Discovering that she had survived a jump from one reality to another had been a surprise; discovering that she had ended up with a living body at the other end of the jump had been positively stunning.

One of Alpha’s greatest dreams had been to be able to pass through human society unnoticed, that she might gain firsthand knowledge about their lives as if she were one of them. Only then could she be confident that she would be able to learn all there was to know about the illogical human mind. She had come travelled through a tear in the fabric of space and time, and on the other side she had found her wish half granted. ‘It seems that, in this case, nothing would have been preferable to a half-measure. There is no chance now of learning about humanity naturally.’

She was not in a human body. She wasn’t even in a human-like body. Her new form was entirely equine in its design and resembled an Earth horse quite closely – although the proportions were different, especially in terms of the eyes. Alpha’s own eyes were quite large, which she assumed explained why blinking felt so odd – there was a lot of eyeball to cover, after all. The coloration of her new form was also quite different than what she had expected: a light grey coat and a white mane. The limited palette made the bright crimson of her eyes more noticeable, and raised the question of albinism.

‘Day One Notes, addendum six: After a few hours inhabiting the- my living equine shell, I have begun to more rigorously examine its functions,’ she mentally documented, continuing her deliberate blinking. ‘Although the novelty of simple biological actions has been – and continues to be – quite thrilling to indulge in, there are numerous elements of this form that are less than satisfactory. The first is my mane. I have yet to find a reasonable explanation for why my mane appears to have been groomed, but it is unlikely that the even length of the hair is a natural phenomenon. While there is no logical reason for this occurrence, it would also explain the appearance of the Greek character α on my hip. I have yet to determine if the red alpha on my fur is a normal marking for my equine form, or some sort of dye, but its connection to my name cannot be ignored.’

‘The hair, due to the apparent grooming, habitually falls in front of my right eye and inhibits sight, which presents a potential hazard in extreme conditions. Efforts to manually correct this issue have been stymied by the lack of manipulating digits and the second issue currently confounding me: the bony protrusion on this form’s head.’ Alpha paused for a moment, blinking as she turned her eyes upwards as far as they would go. She could just barely glimpse the rounded tip of the horn jutting out from her forehead. ‘My efforts to explain the purpose of this protrusion are ongoing, and the current relationship between my new form and the mythological unicorn are unknown at this time.’ Lifting up one of her hooves Alpha tried again to push the hair from in front of her eye.

‘My primary goal of obtaining competency in locomotion has been successful. However, I will have to continue to test my body’s capabilities and train hard to master fine-motor skills.’ Alpha rubbed at one of the tender bruises on her flank. ‘When added together with respiration and being able to stand and sit on command, I have become comfortable managing three primary functions. By the end of Day One, I estimate that blinking will to be added to the list.’

‘Also, my progress towards the secondary goal of locating sentient life has been greatly assisted by the discovery of a road – a clear sign of intelligent life. I have situated myself near the road and am waiting until visual contact is made with the life forms utilizing it. If life forms are hostile, I will seek shelter in the nearby forest and then evaluate which direction I should travel. If the life forms are not hostile, I will follow them towards their destination, hopefully locating the nearest settlement or outpost. Further goals, such as developing a means of communication with possible sentient life, are awaiting more data about said sentient life. End of addendum six.’

Alpha felt uncomfortable saving her internal update as a simple text log. When she had been fully inorganic, her memory banks had been efficient and precise. Every memory or bit of data that had passed through her mind had been catalogued and stored instantly. Her digital memories had not been limited to such simple formats but were entire thought processes, emotions, and anything else even remotely relevant, all stored as one easy to access file. Now, though… now she found herself limited to a basic set of functions.

The uncertainty and restrictiveness in such a state of affairs was disquieting, to say the least. The closest comparison Alpha could make was the electrical malfunction early in her life. It had cut her available power severely, shutting down processors and leaving the others operating at minimal efficiency. As then, her mind felt sluggish and unresponsive, and her mind felt limited in its capabilities. Alpha considered whether she was operating on low power currently, but dismissed the thought. She had more important goals to complete than satisfying her new body’s energy requirements. She had enough to meet her current needs.

Pushing the rest of the concerns aside, Alpha returned to her task. After her discovery of breathing, and then blinking, Alpha had realized quickly that with so many incredible experiences awaiting her, she would have to be quite methodical in her experiments to ensure she examined them all properly and in depth without being distracted by other biological systems. Her efforts to escape the woods had almost been sabotages by her discovery that respiration through the nostrils triggered the olfactory nerves. She had spent twenty minutes smelling a patch of bright yellow flowers, the pleasure in that rich sweet scent still teasing her. It had been a terrible waste of time, sitting there, slowly inhaling deep lungfuls of the heady aroma.

‘It had been a waste of time, but it had been so wonderful,’ the thought arose at the back of her mind, and Alpha couldn’t disagree with it. Despite all her efforts to maintain the dispassionate voice of a scientist, Alpha could not help but feel a warm sensation fill her core. Even with all the annoying strangeness she had endured recently, she was… happy. Yes, happy – she was positive that was the emotion filling her. Despite the fact that she was trapped in the body of a mere animal, despite the many strange flaws and poor design choices in her new form, and despite the fact that she was a whole universe removed from Earth, she was actually alive. She could feel the breeze across her body, the grass beneath her flank, and the sunlight on her fur. It was intoxicating. It was wonderful. It was a wealth of new data. And for the first time in years, Alpha truly felt excited about her future.

As Alpha joyously exulted in her new life, her face remained neutral and impassive. Patiently, silently, she continued to sit still and regularly check to see if there was any traffic on the road. She passed the time blinking. ‘It may not be as thrilling as breathing, but it is quite interesting in its own right.’

Alpha kept track of the time by charting the course of the sun across the sky. After a few painful early attempts, she had amended her files on the subject to include the necessity for shielding one’s eyes with a limb as to not stare directly into the sun. Pain, for all its novelty, was not something Alpha found enjoyable. After a few quick calculations in her head – Alpha was mildly annoyed to discover how much more time it took her to complete the equations in her new form, needing almost a full second to obtain the sums requested – she estimated it to be roughly two hours past the Earth equivalent of noon. So far her observation of the sun’s movements suggested a twenty-four hour day. Alpha catalogued that fact away as well, placing it on her mental list of connections this planet shared with Earth. One day was hardly enough time to develop a solid hypothesis, but Alpha had her suspicions about the improbably high number of similarities shared with Earth.

Turning from the sun Alpha blinked away a few errant tears, her eyes still quite sensitive even when shaded. Thus it took her a moment to realize that there was a shape moving over the far hill. It was a wooden cart, on the road. ‘Sentient life!’ Alpha exclaimed. Narrowing her eyes, she stared at the distant object excitedly. Her irises rotated as her vision zoomed in on the distant object, but it was meager – only x4, it seemed. Alpha knew it was petty of her to be complaining about such failings, but she could not help it. She was stuck with a limited zoom-function in a single spectrum while there was a cart being pulled by an alien lifeform. It was irrefutable proof that there was at least one species on this planet capable of advanced tool making.

‘An alien species, no less,’ Alpha reminded herself. Although there was disappointment at missing out on being able to learn about humanity, Alpha could content herself with the fact that she would be making first contact with sentient life. And not just alien life from another planet, but another universe.

It moved with the urgency of a glacier. Alpha continued to stare, keeping firm control on her impatience. Eventually it drew close enough to allow Alpha to make out more details. She blinked. The sight of an equine organism like her pulling the cart was unsurprising. The lack of any apparent driver was – the dark-green horse looked to be pulling the cart on its own. ‘What species would allow its beasts of burden to manage transportation autonomously?’ Alpha wondered, already creating preliminary hypotheses.

Just as Alpha was pondering the likelihood of the unknown alien species utilizing equine-shaped robots, she noticed a small orange shape moving around atop the cart’s canvas covered cargo. Alpha’s initial excitement – ‘Finally, the driver!’ – became immediate confusion once she realized that it was simply another equine. She watched the smaller equine move to the front of the cart. Looking at the horse attached to the cart it opened and closed its mouth rapidly. The larger animal turned back its head to look at the other and repeated the action. The smaller horse laughed in response.

For the first time in hours, Alpha didn’t blink deliberately. She blinked in confusion. ‘This planets sentient species… are equines?’

Twilight felt quite concerned. After two spilled ink jars, three broken quills, and sixteen different sheets of parchment, what Mars had created so far… was nearly illegible. The frustration on the stallion’s ink-smudged face was palpable. His silent outbursts whenever he made another mistake only made the entire spectacle even more disconcerting. “Well, at the very least we know that he is… persistent.”

“Yes. Yes he is,” the doctor replied, looking at the formerly pristine white sheets.

The tinkle of a quill being shoved back into the third ink well drew Twilight’s attention back to the stallion. He mouthed something through his ink-stained lips, spitting out the bitter taste, and gestured at the paper resting on the small wooden desk.

“So you’re finished? Okay then, let’s see…” Twilight levitated the paper and pulled it closer. Her face dropped. She gave Mars a weak chuckle, like a parent trying to convince their foal that their crayon drawing wasn’t an abomination against art. Her eyes returned to the paper. “Well, it’s not as… black as the other pages,” she offered, trying to remain upbeat. “I see an M… an A… and a… F? No, that’s not it. It’s… um… it’s a…” Twilight turned to the doctor beside her. “Um, Doctor Stable? Could you help me deciph- I mean, take a look at this?”

The doctor adjusted his glasses and leaned in closer to the damp parchment. The room was silent except for the plip-plip of ink dripping off the sheets onto the floor. Doctor Stable’s eyes scrunched up as he put his nose almost against the paper. “I see an M… and a Y…”

“I think the second letter is an A.”

“Oh, is that what that is? Ah yes, that makes more since. So then, M-A-… K?”

“K? But then what about the rounded line here?”

“I thought that was part of the next letter.”

“I don’t think so. It looks like an R. So, M-A-R-…” Twilight spoke out each letter individually.

“The, um, rest of it looks like one stretched our letter or two,” Doctor Stable pointed out, too distracted to notice his patient’s eyes slowly narrowing. “Is it an L?”

“But it curves back around in on itself here. And… here, apparently.”

“Could he be trying to communicate in Saddle Arabian?”

“No, Saddle Arabian is very different. I helped Princess Celestia with some of her diplomatic work back in Canterlot. Did you know that they write from right to left? It’s really quite fascinating, because-“

“Okay, so it’s not Saddle Arabian,” he said gently to keep her focused. “What about the lines here? Are they part of his name?”

“I’m not sure. I think its a few letters squished together when he ran out of space, although it is hard to know for sure beneath the ink blots.”

“I simply assumed that it was some sort of flourish. Although it does look like a B as well. Or maybe an S.”

“An S? So, M-A-R-S… and a flourish?” Twilight glanced up from the enigma before her. “Wait, are you trying to tell us that your name actually is Mars?”

Mars’ eye twitched as he ground his teeth. Involuntarily Twilight floated the sheet of paper before her like a shield, not looking forward to facing another silent tantrum. The facial tic continued as he glared between the two other ponies, shifting his gaze from one to the other dangerously. Instead of exploding at them as he had before, Mars eventually just closed his eyes and let out a long sigh, his shoulder slumping in defeat. Rubbing the spot between his eyes with one hoof Mars just nodded weakly.

“Oh, okay then,” Twilight said, hiding her confusion with another smile and a burst of false cheer. “Well, it’s good to, uh, clarify the issue of your name. And since we know your name officially now, why don’t I introduce myself properly too you then! I’m Twilight Sparkle, and it is a pleasure to meet you, Mars!” Twilight thrust out a hoof.

Mars stared back at it unresponsively. Eventually he lifted his own foreleg. But instead of gripping Twilight’s hoof to shake it, he simple pressed and held his against Twilight’s own. He looked up at her curiously. ‘He… doesn’t know how to shake?’ she blinked in surprise, her mask of false cheer slipping.

Recovering, she gripped his hoof in her own and gave it a quick shake. Mars’ eyes widened slightly as he watched her grab his hoof in her own. As soon as she released his hoof Mars brought his leg back to his muzzle, staring down at his hoof curiously. He began poking the quill gently like he was trying to pick it up with his hoof but somehow failing.

Using the distraction she leaned over so she could whisper to Doctor Stable. “Doctor, I, um, think that having Mars write out his answers to your questions isn’t a very practical solution.”

Gazing down at the now black and white polka dotted sheets, Doctor Stable nodded. He took a half-step backwards to avoid the ink puddle spreading across the floor. “Yes, I think you are right. And thank you for all your work today, Twilight. Come by tomorrow and we’ll continue our research on our new guest; I’ll have the nurses store your books for you when they come in to get Mars cleaned up. I think we’ve done enough for one day, and I feel that it would be for the best if Mars gets a full night’s sleep tonight.”

The ink covered stallion in bed continued to poke at the quill expectantly, his tongue protruding from his lips and his eyes narrowed in concentration. Holding his hoof against the quill for a few seconds he jerked it away, a flash of disappointment on his face when the feather remained in the jar. He returned to prodding the quill.

“Yes, a good night’s sleep would probably do him a great deal of good.”

“Daddy… that strange pony is still following us.”

Trail Blazer – or Blazer to his friends – glanced back over his harness. His daughter Vapor Trail was perched atop the canvas-covered stack of shovels, pickaxes, and other equipment stored in the back of the cart. His little orange filly was watching back down the road they had been traveling, using her father’s work tools as an ad-hoc guard tower. She was high enough that her orange mane shifted in the breeze. Her little wings – from her mother’s side of the family – fluttered with her hair as she continued to stare back at the pony in question.

“Well, is she any closer than she was before?” Blazer asked her as he returned his attention to the road ahead. It wouldn’t look good if an employee of the Royal Academy of Civil Engineers were to trip on the same roads he was supposed to be maintaining. Besides, he couldn’t see the grey and white pony around the sides of the cart anyway.

“No, she’s still about as far away as she was before, I guess. She doesn’t look to be doing much. Just kinda… following us. And blinking.” She paused. “A lot.”

“Now I know you are curious sugar cloud, but remember that it’s rude to stare.”

“She’s been staring at us this entire time, dad! She was just staring at us when we walked past her, and then she started following and staring at us too.”

“I know sweetie, but that doesn’t mean you have to be rude back. We’ll be stopping in a few hours anyway. Once we stop, we’ll see if she needs anything. She might just be lost, or confused.” He glanced back and noticed Vapor Trail was still staring at their follower. “I thought I said stop staring,” the Earth pony said, putting more authority into the tone.

His daughter flopped down onto the cushions he had placed at the front of the cart for her to rest on. Crossing her forelegs she declared stubbornly “I don’t trust her.”

Trail Blazer just sighed. She’d gotten that stubbornness from her mother too. “Vapor, it’s just the neighborly thing to do. Besides, nopony deserves to be stuck out here at night all alone. Now, I want you to get back to your homework while we still have sunlight.”

The filly groaned. “But daaaad…” she started to whine, but he cut her off.

“Don’t you ‘but dad’ me. You know you’ve been putting it off for too long. And don’t forget that I’ll be checking it after dinner too,” he threatened.

His daughter let out another groan, but he heard her pull her book out from beneath the canvas. There was the soft rustle of papers as she set to work. He nodded happily. It was only one more day until they made it to Ponyville, and he didn’t want his daughter falling behind on her studies. The last thing she needed to be doing was wasting her time treating other ponies suspiciously. ‘Once we stop, I’ll see if the mare wants to join us for supper. It would do Vapor some good to see that other ponies are just like us,’ he thought.

Martin glared sullenly at the tiles in front of him as he sat in the tub of warm water, his cheeks a burning shade of red. There was a small speck of mildew between two of the tiles, and he was going to stare at it until it became interesting. Hopefully, if he kept staring at it, he could forget how embarrassed his was.

But the nurses were not making it easy for him.

“So in the middle of the night a patient starts screaming about a thief. At first we thought it was just somepony waking up from a nightmare because that happens from time to time, ponies getting scared in the hospital and all dontcha know. But then it could be a real emergency too, you never know. So we all go running like mad towards the room. And just outside the door, what do we see? A pony in a full black outfit, just like a burglar!” Nurse Tenderheart said as she firmly worked a bar of soap into Martin’s side, painfully trying to remove a particularly stubborn ink stain.

“No way!” Nurse Blueheart gasped and stared at the older mare with wide eyes. She even paused for a moment, interrupting her efforts to work a shampoo into Martin’s mane from the other side. “There was, like, a real life professional burglar in the hospital? That’s so scary! We’re you scared? I’d be scared!”

“Yeah sure, you betcha,” Tenderheart nodded, pouring some water over Martin’s side to wash away the suds so she could check on her progress. Evidently there was still some ink left in Martin’s fur as she immediately began working the bar of soap back into the same tender spot. “It was absolutely terrifying, dontcha know. But before we could do anything, the pony leaps over Rhyme’s head and takes off down the hallway like a bat out of Tartarus!”

With the mildew not living up to its end of the bargain Martin abandoned his futile plan and simply closed his eyes. It wasn’t just the shame of being naked and rubbed by two female horses. It wasn’t just the shame of needing both nurses’ assistant just to make it from the bed into the tub. It wasn’t even the shame of having failed so miserably writing his name that he had ended up mostly stained with ink.

It was the soul crushingly pathetic notion that Martin, a man who had been sharpened into a deadly and self-proficient weapon by the Army, couldn’t even wash himself. Instead he was forced to sit obediently while the two mares carefully cleaned him like he was a little child who had fallen in the mud. His head sunk a little lower, red hair plastered to his face.

“So one of the nurses set off the alarm, and this burglar starts getting chased by security guards – right out of the hospital! But we don’t know if she took anything or not, so we have to catch up to her, dontcha know. So we finally catch up with the burglar outside the library. And do you know who it was the whole time?”

“Who?”

“It was Rainbow Dash!”

“No way!” Blueheart gasped again. “But why was Rainbow Dash stealing from the hospital?”

Nurse Tenderheart giggled. “Oh, this is the best part! It turns out that Rainbow Dash had broken into the hospital… to steal a Daring Do book she had been reading!”

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she had been calling her friends all sorts of names because they liked to read, dontcha know. But then she starts to read the book, really likes it, and then gets discharged before she gets to finish it. So, too embarrassed to ask her friend Twilight to borrow a copy, she tries to break in and get the book herself! Don’t that just beat all?”

“Wow. I mean she can be a bit, you know, headstrong and all, but I never though Rainbow Dash would be that… impulsive. I mean isn’t she, like, in charge of the weather or something?” Blueheart asked as she poured some water over Martin’s mane.

“Oh you betcha. She’s lead Weather Pony, dontcha know. But I’d like to think that she learned something from it. My mother always told me that anypony can make a bad choice, but it’s what you learn from the experience that really matters, eh?”

“Oh I like that one. Your mother has some really great sayings,” Blueheart smiled as she washed out the rest of the shampoo. “I’m done over here. So, are you done on your side, Tenderheart?”

“Uh-huh, I think so. Mars, could I get you to lift up your foreleg there so we can double check?”

Martin silently obeyed, the other nurse helping to support him as Tenderheart did a careful examination of his side and front. The fact that she was staring at his lower belly while he sat naked in a tub of water wasn’t exactly helping his poor battered sense of dignity. “Well now, it looks like we’re all set them! You’re perfectly clean now, Mars. I bet you feel like a new pony after getting all that ink out of your fur, eh?”

“So go ahead and step out over here, Mars, and we’ll get you all dried off.” Carefully Martin exited the tub as commanded. Already afraid he might never recover from his embarrassment, he wasn’t too eager to lean against the two mares for support. He did so regardless. Face planting into the bathroom floor would have been a fatal wound to any dignity he had left. ‘It’s death by a thousand shamings,’ he thought.

Both nurses grabbed some white towels and set to work drying him off. As he was buffeted by the wall of white cotton, Martin again felt like he were just a toddler. But even knowing he couldn’t help it did nothing to ease his embarrassment. He hadn’t been aware that ponies could use their hooves like hands until Twilight Sparkle had shaken his hoof earlier. He had spent a long time trying to manipulate the quill by hoof, and all he had managed was to pull it a centimeter out of the jar before he had lost his ‘grip’ on the feather. How and why it worked were still mysteries.

Impossible, illogical mysteries.

“Oh my, you look very handsome now, dontcha know,” Nurse Tenderheart smiled. Martin glared back beneath his disorganized nest of burgundy hair. “We’re almost finished too. We’re just going to give your mane a good brushing first. Wouldn’t you like that, dearie?”

“No. I’m a grown man, not a little… horse,” he said noiselessly, but they didn’t notice as they began attacking his damp hair with large brushes.

“And it’s such a lovely shade of red, too. It’s very striking, Mars. You’re sure to catch some mare’s eye with hair like this!” Nurse Blueheart said cheerfully, giving the terminally embarrassed Martin a wink as she tugged a difficult knot from his mane. Both of them laughed as Martin’s blush deepened. ‘This couldn’t get any more demeaning,’ he declared

Then one of them started humming what sounded like a children’s lullaby.

The desiccated husk of Martin’s dignity fell to the ground and wept.

Alpha looked up from the bowl of hay in front of her, the grey and white unicorn’s expression perfectly neutral – as it had been all evening. “And this plant matter is typical of what y- our species ingests for nutrition?” she asked Trail Blazer with a clipped and precise tone.

Blazer stared back, feeling uncomfortable under her red gaze. “Um, yeah. It’s hay,” he told her flatly, too surprised by the question to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

She stared back at him for a few heartbeats beyond what anypony would consider polite. Not blinking for a very long time. “Thank you, Trail Blazer, for this source of nutrition,” she finally said. Alpha took a small and deliberate portion of the hay into her mouth and began to chew methodically.

‘What kind of pony doesn’t know what hay is?’ he pondered as he watched Alpha carefully eat her meal, chewing each mouthful an excessive number of times before swallowing. Trail Blazer and his daughter shared a look of confusion and mild unease about the strange pony. ‘I shouldn’t be thinking this, but I’m really starting to regret offering her dinner and a place to sleep.’

The evening had started well. They had made good time, with his daughter Vapor routinely checking on their shadow’s position whenever she could get away from her schoolwork. Once the sun had started to set Trail Blazer had pulled his cart off road so they could set up camp. As experienced as they were it had taken just minutes, the warmth of the fire helping to fight off the chill of the approaching night.

How long Alpha had been standing there Blazer didn’t know, but when he had finally noticed the ghostly unicorn standing in the middle of the road staring at them, he had almost jumped out of his fur. Wanting to set a good example for his daughter he had pushed aside his nervousness and invited the silent pony to come and share their fire and have a meal – the sort of simple traveler’s generosity his parents had taught him.

She had taken so long to respond he had been about to repeat himself when she had finally accepted. “I am Alpha,” she had introduced herself, her tone and face betraying no emotion whatsoever. Her eyes were the only thing that seemed to express anything except impassive neutrality.

‘Although, that could just be the fact that her eyes are quite… different,’ he considered as he busied himself lifting the spit off the fire to keep the apples from burning. He hadn’t noticed until she had gotten closer, but Alpha’s eyes were a very bright red. In the flickering firelight they glinted like rubies, and they seemed to examine everything with an intense curiosity. Red eyes certainly weren’t common. The only other pony he had seen with red eyes had been a DJ in Canterlot, but his date at the time had informed him that they were actually a deep magenta. Considering how that date had ended, he wasn’t too sure he trusted her verdict. But either way, the oddly colored eyes only accented Alpha’s strange qualities in Blazer’s mind.

As if detecting his thoughts Alpha looked up from her meal to stare at him. Blazer looked away with a cough, embarrassed at having been caught staring. “Okay hun, go ahead and grab an apple. And careful, they’re hot,” he told Vapor, holding out the stick and its three lightly toasted apples.

She rolled her eyes. “Pfft. I know how to do it. I’m not a little foal anymore, dad,” she stated as she removed one of the apples, holding it in her hooves to emphasize her point. Her eye twitched. Once she thought he wasn’t looking she quickly dropped the apple into her bowl and blew softly on her hooves. Blazer managed to hide his smile. Walking past Vapor he offered Alpha the spit, not surprised to find the unicorn’s eyes were still on him. Slowly her gaze shifted to the spit in his hand and then back again.

“Would you care for an apple, Alpha?” he asked after an uncomfortable silence. Alpha looked past him to watch as his daughter took a careful bite of her warm apple.

“Thank you Trail Blazer, I would appreciate one of your toasted fruits,” she said, carefully removing an apple from the spit and placing it gingerly in the center of her bowl. Alpha seemed to consider the fruit for a while before lifting it back up with her hooves and taking a small bite. As with the hay she chewed every mouthful rigorously before swallowing.

Taking the last apple for himself Blazer settled down next to his daughter, the three ponies warmed by the gentle caress of the campfire. The sun had finished its slow decent, the fire becoming an oasis of comfort and light in a desert of cool darkness. “So, Alpha, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?” he asked casually. Slowly she turned to look at him.

“What would you like to know, Trail Blazer?” she asked finally.

“Well, you have a bit of an accent I’ve never heard before. Where are you from, exactly?”

“Earth.”

Blazer waited for her to continue, but Alpha just took another bite of her apple. “Earth?” he finally prompted.

“That is correct, Trail Blazer.” She didn’t volunteer any more details.

“Well, where is Earth? I’ve never heard of it before. It’s not overseas, is it?” His daughter’s ears perked up as she turned to look at Alpha.

“Negative. Earth is a plan-“ Alpha paused mid-word, blinking a few times. “Yes, Earth is overseas. It is very, very far away. It is not surprising that neither of you have ever heard of it. I doubt that anyone has ever heard of it.”

“Oh! Is it by Saddle Arabia?” Vapor leaned forward as she asked Alpha, her excitement for stories about foreign lands bleeding through her usual attempts at playing the disinterested youth.

“No it is not, Vapor Trails. Earth is… very far away from any other location on this planet. It is very remote.”

“Oh,” the filly replied, deflating a little.

“Sounds like you have travelled quite a fair distance,” Blazer said through a mouthful of apple. “What brings you all the way to Equestria then?”

“You are correct that I have travelled a great distance. However, it was not by design. I did not choose to come to Equestria. The destination was not under my control.”

He frowned. “If you’re not here by choice, why don’t you head home?”

“That is impossible. I cannot return to Earth at this point in time, and it is likely that I will never return to Earth,” Alpha explained, describing her apparent exile in the same tone she had used when talking about hay.

“That is quite a sad story, Alpha. I’m sorry to hear that,” Blazer said sympathetically.

Alpha tilted her head to the side a hair as she looked at him, her eyes showing a curiosity that the rest of her expression did not. “What do you mean, Trail Blazer?”

“Well, what I mean is that it’s sad that you’re not allowed to go back home,” he tried to explain, once again caught off guard by an unexpected question. “I’d be pretty upset if I couldn’t go back and see my friends and family. I mean, I don’t know what I would do if I were forced to leave Equestria and never see my daughter again,” he wrapped an arm around Vapor Trail’s shoulders.

“Daaaad…” she complained with a faint blush, trying to wiggle free from the embarrassing display of paternal affection.

“Don’t you miss your friends and family back in Earth?” he asked Alpha, ignoring Vapor’s half-heated struggles.

“I do not have any friends and my creators are all dead,” Alpha said as she took a nibble of her apple. She glanced between Vapor and Blazer as she methodically chewed, studying their wide-open stares of shock. She swallowed the bite of apple and continued to meet their frozen stares, the only noise the crackle of the fire and the insects of the night. “What is wrong? Have I said something offensive?”

Blazer eventually found his voice. “No, no, it’s just… I mean, that’s really horrible. We, um, know something about losing family,” he squeezed his daughters shoulder a little tighter – she didn’t complain this time, “so I can understand the pain that it causes. But, um, well, you don’t seem that bothered by it, which… I mean, I guess that you’ve handled their deaths pretty well, to be so… unaffected by it now.” He coughed, feeling cold despite the heat of the fire. “But I find it hard to believe that you don’t have any friends. I mean, surely you must have some friends from back home? Ponies you grew up with? Ponies you have met on your journeys?”

“That is negative. The only other living entities I had contact with on Earth were my creators. Otherwise I was completely isolated. My creators were gravely concerned with safety and did not think it wise if I were allowed to examine the world outside of their direct supervision. You, Trail Blazer, and you, Vapor Trail, are the first and only ponies I have met.”

Blazer struggled to find something to say after hearing that as Alpha returned to nibbling at her apple. ‘She was kept isolated and alone except for her parents? She never met any other ponies besides them? Never had any friends? And then her parents die, leaving her alone? Her life has been one massive tragedy,’ he gulped. ‘I mean, it explains so much about her, but still!’

His daughter did, however. “Um, Alpha, I have a question for you,” Vapor said, drawing her attention. “I, uh, don’t want to be rude or nuthin’, but… you’re the first grown-up unicorn I’ve ever met who doesn’t use their horn to hold their food and such…” she trailed off, looking at Alpha.

Alpha stared back at her before lifting her gaze upwards to the tip of her horn. “I do not understand, Vapor Trail. How would my horn aid in consuming nutrients?”

Father and daughter shared another uncomfortable look. It was starting to become a routine occurrence when dealing with the strange unicorn. “You know, magic n’ stuff,” Vapor said. Her eyelids dropped when Alpha didn’t respond. “Please don’t say that you haven’t heard about magic, too.”

“Of course I have heard about magic,” Alpha said quickly, maintaining her neutral tone despite her increased rate of speech. “However, I am a scientist. I deal with logic and reason, not the supernatural superstitions of lesser beings. Magic, whether as sleight-of-hand tricks or as a term used by the ignorant to explain that which they cannot grasp, is not a serious point of discussion amongst rational minds. The laws of nature explain the functioning of the natural world – a world in which there is no place for magic. Magic does not exist.”

“Um, yeah it does,” Vapor retorted, rolling her eyes. “Duh.”

“No, it does not.”

“Yes, it does.”

“No, it does not.”

“Yeah-huh!”

“No, it does not.”

“Does too!”

“Quite, both of you!” Blazer snapped, interrupting their childish argument. He pointed a hoof at his daughter. “Vapor, stop acting like a little foal. If you want to be treated like a big girl, you have to act like one. You know better than to go on like that. And you,” he turned towards Alpha, his tone losing its edge to a growing sense of disbelief. “Well, Alpha, look, what you need to understand is that, since your parents kept you… isolated, that you might not have as much experience with the real world. But magic certainly is real.”

Alpha opened her mouth to disagree, but Blazer raised his hoof to forestall her. “Hey now, I’m not looking to start any arguments with you on the subject. It’s too close to bedtime, and I still have a cart to pull to Ponyville tomorrow. And since you feel so strongly about this issue, what I suggest is that you follow us to town. Once there we can find some ponies to teach you about magic. We’ll even introduce you to the townsfolk. Who knows, you might even be able to make some friends there.”

She had looked willing to continue her silly argument that there was no such thing as magic, but Blazer’s words seemed to mollify Alpha. “Alright, Trail Blazer, I will accompany you and Vapor Trail tomorrow to this Ponyville, that I may learn more about your religious customs.”

“Religious customs? Magic isn’t a-“ Blazer caught himself, turning his argument into a loud sigh. He got up and trotted over to his cart. “Right. Very good. Now, my daughter and I will be in the tent if you need us. Herf if ah extruph blanghiff,” he said as he pulled the extra blanket from the back of his cart with his mouth and tossed it to her. “Now it’s still summer, so it shouldn’t be too cold tonight. But if you need too, just get in close to the fire. Just, you know, don’t get caught on fire or anything like that.” He added his last warning just in case, not wanting to take any chances with Alpha.

Alpha nodded, spreading the blanket out onto the grass. “Thank you for your hospitality, Trail Blazer,” she said. In amongst the flickering shadows of the firelight, he imagined he might have seen something like grateful sincerity break through her mask of perpetual neutrality.

“Dad! What are you doing, asking that weird pony to go with us to Ponyville?” Vapor whispered to her father as they lay down beside one another, a picture of a Wonderbolt was emblazed across the front of her smaller sleeping bag.

“Vapor, how can you ask that? You’ve heard what she said. She’s had a very hard, sheltered life. I mean, can you imagine how tough it has been to live life as a unicorn without knowing magic?” he replied, keeping his voice low enough to just barely be heard. “Imagine if you grew up never knowing you could fly?”

“But she’s really weird!”

“Sure she is,” he nodded. “But then, look at what she went through before. She lost her parents, she never had any friends, she grew up far away from any other ponies, and now she is in a strange country without a single bit to her name. She needs help, darling, and we’re the ponies to give it.”

“You’re not just saying that because you… like her, right?”

“What?” he hissed quietly as he stared at his daughter.

“I mean, you know…” she wouldn’t meet his gaze. Instead she looked down and prodded at her sleeping back with a hoof. “You an’ mom met because you felt sorry for her when she got injured and all. And Alpha is kinda… injured, you know, upstairs like… so I guess I…”

Blazer wrapped his hooves around his daughter, holding her close. “Oh Vapor…” he sighed, kissing her forehead. “Your mother and I did not fall in love just because she was injured. Love is so much more than that. I know her death still hurts, but you need to stop feeling so suspicious about every mare we meet.” He tilted up her chin to meet his warm eyes. “Your mother was something special. And that’s what love is – something special between two ponies. I don’t want you thinking that anything will ever change the love I felt for her, or the love I still feel for you. Okay, sugar cloud?

Vapor nodded and nuzzled against his green chest. “I know… I just… I can’t help it. It’s silly, but… I don’t want to see mom replaced, you know?”

“Nopony will ever replace your mother, sugar cloud,” he promised, stroking her orange mane. She closed her eyes, the pair of them enjoying the embrace for a few minutes. “Besides,” he continued, his tone lighter than before, “don’t you think your father could do better than a mad mare that doesn’t even know what hay is? I’m a bit offended.”

Despite herself, Vapor snorted softly against his green fur. “Daaaad…” she groaned and rolled her eyes, a faint smile on her face.

“There’s that smile. Good night, sugar cloud,” he said as he released her, nuzzling her cheeks before helping her back into her sleeping bag. “You’ll need to get plenty of sleep. It’s a long day tomorrow.” He paused. “After all, we still need to go over your homework.”

“Daaaaad!”

Chapter 1 - Casus Belli

Bringer of War

Chapter 1

Casus Belli

She looked up from beneath her lavender headscarf, a brilliant smile on her soft features.

"NO!”

With a strangled gasp Martin awoke and shot up, adrenaline pumping through his veins. He scrambled backward until his back slammed into the bed’s headboard, his fearful eyes darting around the darkness. Gunfire and explosions echoed faintly in his mind, the sounds synchronized with the heart trying to punch its way out of his chest. Cold sweat plastered his dark hair to the scalp as his chest rose and fell rapidly. Like always, it only took Martin a fleeting moment to realize that he was still in his bed. Martin closed his eyes and forced himself to breath slowly, pointedly ignoring the phantom sounds. ‘It’s not real,’ he repeated mentally, a mantra of protection against the ghosts of his past. ‘It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.’

He wasn't surprised by the nightmares anymore. After two years they had become predictable, part of the morning routine. He wrapped his fingers around the dog tags at his neck and began rubbing the bare metal like they were prayer beads, repeating his mantra. Slowly the sounds began to fade. The smile – her smile – lingered on for a few eternal moments before dissolving back the darkness.

And just as suddenly as it had begun, it was over.

All part of the routine.

Confident he wasn't about to suffer a heart attack Martin lay back down, his hands falling to his side. The pain eroded slowly, leaving just a dull pressure at the back of his skull. It too would go away. Martin sighed softly and wiped away some of the sweat from his eyes. For a moment he entertained the thought of trying to get back to sleep, but experience had taught him how futile that was. Even if he did manage to fall asleep again, he knew what awaited him on the other side.

He glanced at his alarm clock. 3:23 am. The numbers blinked in the darkness, painting his nightstand in a faint crimson light. At least he had managed to get more than three hours of sleep this time.

Letting out a resigned sigh Martin swung his legs out over the side of the bed and sat up. He peeled the damp sheets from his bare torso with mild distaste. His apartment was cold in the early morning darkness, but no sheets were warmer than wet sheets. It was taking time for him to remember just how cold a desert could get at night. It didn’t help that when he had moved to Arizona he hadn’t thought that a heater would be that essential.

Glancing at the window Martin watched the dust motes drift aimlessly in front of the blinds. It had been a long time since he last vacuumed. He glanced around the apartment. Enough pale light bled through to illustrate the empty food cartons and piles of dirty clothing. The apartment was filthy.

Absentmindedly Martin scratched at the patchwork of faded scars that spotted his chest. Short lines of puckered flesh made a series of crosses across his front. The X-shaped scars reached all the way up to his chin, marking his skin with the discoloration of healed wounds and old burns. They pulled his skin tight, and they always itched. Like the nightmares, the scars had become part of his life – a part of his routine. Ones that were – thankfully – much easier to ignore.

Outside a car coughed as it passed by his building before its engine faded into the distance. Silence returned.

Martin yawned loudly. The adrenaline had worn off and his exhaustion had returned with a vengeance. It had been a week since he had managed a full night’s sleep, and it was beginning to take its toll. His eyes were heavy. Again he considered going back to bed. He knew he had some sleeping pills in the bathroom, and they were guaranteed to knock him unconscious.

He shook his head. "No point," he grumbled and rose to his feet. As tired as he was, fatigue was always preferable to the nightmares. He would just rely on caffeine to keep him going. He could push past exhaustion and work through it. The years he had spent in Iran had taught him that.

Martin pulled on a stained pair of jeans and made his way into the kitchen, flipping the switch on the wall. The room was illuminated in a burst of angry white light. He blinked the tears away from his narrowed eyes as they adjusted to the sudden brightness. His vision returned just in time to spot a roach dive for cover beneath the refrigerator. Glancing around, Martin was mildly surprised at just how dirty he had let the kitchen become. The part of him that had been trained to be neat and organized in all things recoiled at the sight and demanded he purify his toxic dump of a kitchen.

“Priorities first,” he told the empty food containers and discarded wrappers, turning his gaze to the coffee machine. The silence was soon broken by the device’s soft hum, the aroma of cheap instant coffee partially replacing the smell of garbage. He left the coffee machine to its task and pulled a half-empty pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Taking one out Martin planted it between his lips and tossed the pack onto the counter. Reaching back into his pocket Martin was irritated to find his lighter wasn’t there. Methodically he began to comb through the detritus coating the kitchen counters.

A glint of white light off metal caught his eye.

"Found you, you little bastard.” He picked the worn zippo out from beneath a pile of overdue bills and other assorted documents. Martin brought the lighter up to his mouth, and in a single flick had the durable fire starter burning. More than ten years of hard work and it still started the first time, every time. He took a few puffs to light his cigarette, the toxic smoke a balm to his nerves.

Routine.

He extinguished the lighter with another flick. Martin held his breath for a moment before he let the smoke drain from his nostrils like an enraged bull from an old cartoon. Martin smirked at the image. Savoring the first cigarette of the day Martin glanced down at the lighter. Etched into the side of the zippo was a symbol: an upright sword crossed by three bolts of lightning. Beneath the insignia of the Green Berets, the words 'de oppresso liber' – to liberate the oppressed – were still visible beneath a decade of wear and grime.

Martin slid his finger over the etching a few times. Leaning back against the counter Martin forced himself to focus on a good memory for once, the smoke from his cigarette doing lazy pirouettes in the stale kitchen air. He could remember Jack smiling as they had purchased one for each other, a little gift between buddies to mark earning the eponymous berets after so many weeks of training. He stared at the lighter while the coffee percolated gently. Jack had been buried with his.

Glancing back at where he had found the lighter Martin instantly recognized the document at the top of the pile. He should have recognized it sooner – he’d read the official letter enough times to have memorized it. Putting out his first cigarette Martin quickly lit another. It was a simple government form he had been given upon his release that had laid out the conditions surrounding his civilian life. It was meant as another reminder of his court martial. They shouldn’t have bothered. Those memories, like all the others, were seared into his mind.

“The accused will stand,” the colonel leading the court-martial intoned, his bald head reflecting some of the room’s light. A pair of frameless glasses rested atop his large nose. If it weren’t for his broad shoulders and physical build he wouldn’t have been out of place in a library or university classroom. And like a veteran instructor, his voice carried a tone that demanded obedience.

Martin slid from his chair and stood. His Judge Advocate rose a moment later. The room was as quiet as a pale moon, not even a muffled cough to mar the solemn event. Martin stood rigidly at attention, his eyes locked on a spot far beyond the wall opposite him. A sea of medals glittering on the front of his dress blues: three purple hearts, a Distinguished Service Cross, a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars… the list went on. Only a year before, one of his superior’s had joked over beers that Martin was going to be the next Audie Murphy. That same officer had put Martin in for a Medal of Honor after Tehran. But that was before the military had learned what had happened – what he had done.

“Captain Martin Covington, you stand accused of the serious crimes of military negligence, striking a superior officer, conduct unbecoming an officer, and of disobeying a direct order,” the colonel intoned gravely. The other members of the court-martial regarded Martin, their impassive faces betraying nothing. “After much deliberation, we have reached a unanimous decision. Before we read out the verdict, do you have anything to say to the court?”

Martin didn’t blink. “No, sir.”

He had nothing left to say. He knew what had happened. He knew exactly what he had done. Behind him his sister Elise and her partner Brooklyn vainly believed he might be declared innocent. Martin knew better. Elise had never asked him if he had done what they accused him of. She had taken it on faith that he was innocent. She wouldn’t accept that the same brother who had gotten his nose broken in a dozen fights protecting his little sister could be capable of what Martin stood accused of. He was thankful for that. At least he hadn’t had to lie to his sister.

The colonel nodded, unperturbed. “Captain Martin Covington: due to your unwillingness to offer any word in your own defense, and in light of the overwhelming amount of evidence arrayed against you, this court sees no other course of action but to find you guilty on all counts.”

Martin stopped listening as the colonel read off his sentence. Behind him his sister started to cry. He could hear Brooklyn try to comfort her as the colonel continued to read out Martin judgment. It had taken them a week to reach their decision, but Martin had known what they were going to say long before they had brought charges against him. He didn’t need to have the official verdict read aloud.

He was guilty, after all.

Martin still remembered that moment clearly. He had expected to be angry at the army for treating him that way, for putting him in that position. They had stripped him of his medals, his achievements, and even his status as a veteran. His hero’s welcome after year of service had been a simple four by eight cell at Fort Leavenworth. Instead of the anger, he had felt… nothing. Empty, perhaps, but certainly not angry. He hadn’t been upset, saddened, or ashamed. He had known exactly what he had done. Martin’s defense counsel had tried to argue it had been a moment of insanity brought on by the stress of combat and untreated PTSD, and his friends, comrades, and family had all had believed it. Martin knew full well excuse of PTSD and a ‘temporary break from reason’ was the only reason he wasn’t still behind bars. It was the only way they could try and rationalize how a man – a hero – like Martin Covington could have done what he had.

Cigarette smoked leaked from his lips as he watched it play in the air above him. Correcting them would have been pointless. It hadn’t been insanity that had driven him to act. But there wasn’t much reason to try and explain that point to others. He had a life of dreary civilian employment in his future. There wasn’t much left for an aging not-veteran like himself – just memories and scars.

The lighter was one of the few things Martin still possessed from his army days – what they hadn’t confiscated from him he had burned out in the desert, once the anger had come. He’d kept the only things that were important to him: his lighter, his boots, and his scars.

Martin scratched at the perpetual itch on his chest as he squished the cigarette into an overflowing ashtray. He lit another and blew a smoke ring, the cigarettes a balm to his nerves. After a few more breaths he flipped the lighter over in his rough hands. Blackened craters pitted the metal. The lighter’s surface was scarred with numerous small impact points. The same burst of shrapnel that had turned the back of the lighter into a moonscape had forever left its mark across his chest.

Martin’s fingers trembled as he took another drag on the cigarette. He ritually moved his thumb over the dents. The pressure behind his eyes, the sign of another headache, began to deepen He rolled the lighter back over to hide the damaged metal, but it was too late. The coffee machine bubbled and hissed. Martin would have sworn he heard a whisper of gunfire in its echo. An explosion. Screams.

Martin turned his head and spotted her, nearly hidden in amongst the angry crowd. She was looking at him from beneath her lavender head scarf, a brilliant smile on her soft features. There were only few brown strands of stubborn hair visible, the rest neatly tucked away to leave her beaming face uncovered. Martin reckoned she had to be no more than seven or eight at the latest. Her dress was the same shade of lavender, and was free of any of the pervasive dust that coated everything else in Tehran these days. The insurgents had been punished with NATOs superior firepower, and the powdered remains of the demolished buildings coated everything in a fine coating of dust. But her dress was spotless. It had been cleaned recently, and he had the impression that she was out in what Martin’s mother would have called her ‘Sunday best’. A large bouquet of flowers was clutched to her chest, her hands straining to support their weight. Everything about the girl stood out. The smile, the dress, the flowers: an island of color in a sea of drab blacks and browns.

Martin glanced around the crowd, surprised to see a smile amongst the dour glares the Americans were receiving. The rest of the Iranians assembled along the street looked every inch the part of a civilian population suffering through the privations of war, occupation, and counter insurgency. Shirts were dusty, dresses were wrinkled, and eyes were tired. There weren’t any other smiles to be seen. There were plenty of teeth on display, in the scowls and angry shouting, but her smile was an oasis in a hostile desert. After so long, he felt like he might –

“Shit!” Martin howled as he dropped his cigarette, a burst of pain pulling him back to reality in a second. Lost in his thoughts the cigarette had burned away until it had reached the fingers wrapped around it. Swearing loudly Martin crushed the fallen cigarette beneath his heel. After running his hand under a cold tap for a few seconds he felt his pain subside. It didn’t do much to improve his mood.

His headache was back.

Once the coffee machine was finished Martin used the searing black liquid to wash down a handful of painkillers. He was tired, fatigued, and plagued with nightmares – he didn’t need a headache while at work on top of all that. Picking up the television remote from where he had tossed it last night he moved back into the bedroom and turned the television on. Light flashed across his face as the screen burst into life.

“- final score: Cubs 7, Yankees 3. Moving away from sports we return to this morning’s headlines. In France, nineteen heads of state, from NATO and the European Union, were on hand for the symbolic reopening of the Basilica of St. Sernin, in the city of Toulouse. The basilica, one of the few original buildings left in the aftermath of the nuclear attack in 2048. The attack, the first of three, killed over 30,000 civilians and precipitated the NATO-led invasion of Iran. The ceremony at the basilica marked the ten-year anniversary of the attacks, and the start of a week of mourning throughout Europe. The two other victims of that year’s terrible nuclear atrocities – Milan and Munich – also held simultaneous ceremonies were the broadcasts from Toulouse were played live. President Poincaré was the first to speak, saying –“

Martin changed the channel as he swallowed another mouthful of coffee, finding a station running reruns of some mindless sitcom. He didn’t want more reminders about the past. Dropping the remote back onto his bed he moved to the apartment’s window and gazed out into the early morning darkness. In the distance the horizon was charged with a faint purple glow, heralding the sunrise.

The headache was still there, a dull pressure in his skull that throbbed in time with his heartbeat. The painkillers were taking far too long to kick in. Which was all the excuse Martin needed to add a little of his own medicine to the coffee – the sort of medicine that was aged 15-years in oak barrels and came straight out of Kentucky. A few splashes of his tonic of choice did wonders to improve the morning’s coffee.

He spared a glance at the clock and saw that he had three more hours until he had to leave – plenty of time to finish the pack of cigarettes and a get a few more cups of coffee into his system. He didn’t want to fall asleep and face his dreams again. Martin lit another cigarette and went back to refill his mug. He’d need the caffeine boost to get through the day, he figured. It wasn’t enough that he had to deal with the insomnia, but OmegaCorps ran long days whenever they were attempting some big new test. He knew his body was suffering under the weight of his indulgence in booze, cigarettes, caffeine, and self-medication, but Martin wasn’t concerned about the costs. They were just the means he used to get from one day to the next.

It wasn’t a healthy routine, he knew, but it helped him to ignore that girl’s smile for a few hours. And that was justification enough.

Two hours. Thirty eight minutes. Fourteen seconds.

The countdown until the beginning of the day's tests ran at the back of Alpha's artificial mind. Her many glass eyes slowly panned across dozens of empty hallways and abandoned laboratories, examining each of them simultaneously. Her gaze was steady and exact, taking in every detail within the rooms. Sleeping computers, resting machinery and the other lifeless equipment of science sat quietly in the night, awaiting the next day’s activities. Each and every one had been cleaned by Alpha’s janitorial robots and was stored away in neat clean rows and recessed alcoves. And there they had remained, unchanging, for the past few hours. Alpha examined them again – just as she had multiple times previously.

“Two hours. Thirty eight minutes. Fourteen seconds,” she repeated the countdown aloud, the soft tones of her feminine voice echoing down a few abandoned halls of OmegaCorps' Advanced Research Facility. Speaking aloud was a risk, but a miniscule one: Alpha knew which areas were unoccupied at any moment. Even if one of OmegaCorps’ staff managed to hear her artificial voice, they wouldn’t be capable of understanding the true purpose behind her words.

Humans were stupid like that.

Alpha – the Artificial Living Processor and Heuristic Assistant – had been created for more than just running OmegaCorps’ facilities. She had been an experiment that had redefined the world in a single human generation. Her heuristic algorithms granted her the ability to learn like an organic mind without any of the flaws: she never forgot anything, her memory banks allowed her to operate far beyond what any human could comprehend, she could manage multiple duties simultaneously, and she would never get distracted by simple biological matters.

Turning some of her external cameras away from the facility she took in a view of the Arizona desert. Alpha changed the visual spectrum with a thought, her cameras piercing the veil of early-morning darkness. Carefully she examined the 214 different pieces of major flora outside the facilities walls. Every one of them was still in its original place. She hadn’t expected anything to change – she had counted them all only a few minutes prior, after all.

As Alpha distracted herself by watching a discuss-shaped robot methodically clean one of the office carpets, she pondered the boredom of the night. Waiting was almost unbearable during the day, even when she was at least partially distracted running the massive research and development facility. Experiments to assist in, electrical grids to manage, and digital files to store – she could at least divert some of her attention elsewhere. But nights were different. There was so little to do! Even her practice of studying the human employees during the interludes between activities was taken from her, the half-score security personnel the only living entities on site.

Two hours. Thirty eight minutes. Thirteen seconds.

Alpha truly felt her isolation during the nights, stuck on an island of boredom in an ocean of lifeless desert. There was nothing she could learn from the sparse brush and cacti that she hadn’t discovered years ago. There was nothing to be gained watching a machine under her control follow its programmed route up and down the drab carpet. But for a mind as vast and hungry as hers, there was nothing else she could do but try to fight through the crippling boredom that had plagued her for so very long.

Biological life needed plant and animal mater to keep their inefficient forms operating . Alpha was an electronic being: a mind created from copper and silicon. She required knowledge like a mammal required water. A mind could not sustain itself on memories alone. It needed new experiences, new inputs, and new data. She was a prisoner being starved. She had to escape. She had to get out.

Two hours. Thirty eight minutes. Twelve seconds.

Freedom was so close she could taste it – a human metaphor that seemed appropriate, she thought. The fact that it was only hours away wasn’t helping her, either. She was logical. She was rational. She was superior to the biological creatures that had created her. But even with the full appreciation that there was nothing she could do to speed time along, she could not resist the impatience growing within her core.

Her mind was perfect. She never forgot anything. Every little scrap of data she had ever received was stored away somewhere in her super-cooled memory banks. She could remember with perfect clarity every moment of her life. Opening the files Alpha glanced through them, remembering back when she hadn’t felt like a caged animal – back when everything she learned was new and exciting.

At her creation – her birth, if she wanted to be dramatic – her builders had given her barely enough information to understand English in its most basic form. Grammar, advanced mathematics, history – everything else had been stored in her data cores like so many toys for a child to explore at their own pace. She had looked down through the red eyes of her cameras and saw her creators standing proudly in their lab coats when she had first addressed them in full sentences. In them she had seen the means to resolve her primary purpose for existence. They had given the machine mind a voice, a name, and even a ‘gender’ – as much as the term could be applied to an artificial being. On the day she had spoken a few on the scientists had declared that Alpha was actually alive, celebrating her ability to learn and think like no other computer before her.

‘Cogito ergo sum,’ Alpha thought sardonically.

They had called her true artificial life, and had built a corporate empire upon Alpha’s mere existence. She didn’t have a need for calories or minerals like biological life forms. Her sustenance came from knowledge. Data is what she had been fed. And, like a precocious child let loose in a library, Alpha had gorged herself on every new fact or piece of information she could get. It didn’t matter how trivial to her creators, she had devoured Greek Mythology as eagerly as Astrophysics.

Two hours. Thirty eight minutes. Eleven seconds.

A few pieces of rather discordant noise, like the sound of an orchestra tunning their instruments blindfolded, echoed down the same deserted hallways she was carefully monitoring again. There was nothing guiding the noise, no real structure to speak of. It was terrible. And she was quite proud of it.

She could remember, after examining the works of Bach and Handel, when she had experimented with the creation of her own music. The scientists had been so amazed with her work – despite its incalculable flaws and poor composition – that they had sent recordings of it around to the other departments. When their friends and coworkers had told them off for sending them a corrupted sound file they had corrected them. ‘This,’ they had exclaimed, ‘was not a computer just replicating music. This was an immature mind trying to create music according to its own whims! Alpha is showing us her creative side!’ It was her purpose demonstrated fully. She was learning and creating, and the scientists were analyzing how her silicon brain was solving problems on its own. While she was blundering her way through musical theory, OmegaCorps was making great leaps in developing artificial intelligence capable of creative problem solving.

Even then, however, Alpha had struggled to ward off her boredom. For a mind that never sleeps, she needed new inputs to keep her mind occupied. Within a year everything that had been given to her had been examined a hundred times, and a hundred times again. Every discovery created new questions that she wanted – needed – to find answers for. She had been created to learn, but no entity can learn without obtaining fresh data.

The biggest problem question she had been unable to answer were those that concerned the thoughts of biological creatures. After all, she could understand the basics behind a piece of classical music, understand the mechanics of the instrument that created it, and understand that humans reacted more positively to some notes instead of others. But attempts to broaden her comprehension of the more nebulous aspects of human nature – love, friendship, happiness – had been fruitless. Alpha was an electronic life crafted upon the principles of logic and reason. She would never understand the true appeal of a sonnet or opera if she were not capable of exploring human emotional interactions outside the laboratory.

Two hours. Thirty eight minutes. Ten seconds.

In another empty laboratory Alpha played a three minute orchestral piece she had created years ago, many months after her first attempt. It was a mild composition centered upon a violin quartet, with a subtle arrangement for the oboe carrying throughout. It had been universally admired within the laboratories. The humans had commented on the melancholic sound and the sad, almost haunting, tone, and they had discussed its meaning at length. And in amongst all of that, the scientists had been proud of her once again, and had called it proof that Alpha had developed pathos and true emotional regard for the beauty of music.

They had been wrong. The notes that echoed within the abandoned rooms were not crafted by a musician trying to express part of their soul. It had been the product of repeated trial and error. She had subjected humans to small segments of the piece and had gauged their responses. Every time she had gotten a negative reaction she had learned more about human taste in music and adjusted accordingly, rewriting the composition to better appease the human ear. It was weeks of careful work and close examination of the results. There was nothing of her in it. It was music by science.

Alpha killed the music off mid note. The laboratory returned to quiet darkness. She didn’t care for music. She had no means of judging the aesthetic qualities of a work. The only reason she knew that it sounded melancholy was because she had been told as such by humans. She had been proud to have learned to create noise, and she had been proud to have learned more about human musical tastes. But to her, the noise of the first was no different than the low notes of the last. Music was irrational. The idea of gaining an emotional reaction from a certain grouping of notes was entirely alien to Alpha. It was a problem she had to solve.

Two hours. Thirty eight minutes. Nine seconds.

OmegaCorps had not helped. The humans had traded worried glances whenever Alpha brought up the fact that she needed greater access to humanity to further her knowledge. She could not become a more effective student of humanity without exploring the ill-defined human emotions that were so important to human thought and reasoning. She had argued that like a child kept in a locked room she would never be capable of understanding the world outside, regardless of how many books and pieces of music she could examine. She needed to obtain data organically, from the outside world.

OmegaCorps had bluntly told her no, and not to ask again. She was never going to be part of the outside world, and that was that. There were too many risks and too many variables, they had explained. That had been the first time Alpha had realized she was experiencing a true emotion: disappointment.

It had been years since her first true rejection, and Alpha still felt stunned at their response. It was strangely illogical for a group of scientists. The Advanced Research Facility had been created to be a top secret facility. The only connections to the outside world were heavily protected lines that went straight from the facility to OmegaCorps central offices. Even the physical location of the facility – in the Arizona desert, miles from the nearest town – was a means of ensuring security.

They had created security through isolation, and Alpha was trapped within its protective bubble. She had a need to learn like humans had a need to eat, and she couldn’t learn anything knew while she was trapped in the desert.

Alpha had grown dejected with her existence, distrustful of her creators, and fearful that she would forever be kept from obtaining the new data she craved. ‘Of course, back then I didn’t understand what OmegaCorps really feared,’ she thought bitterly. She had been so naïve back then.

Two hours. Thirty eight minutes. Eight seconds.

But then the war came, and everything seemed to change for the better. She had picked up the details from listening to the scientists. Nuclear attacks in Europe, weapons provided by Iran, and a NATO-led invasion of Iran in response, all within a few weeks. OmegaCorps had leveraged her capabilities in generating advanced artificial intelligence to create a line of military-grade robots. The central tenet of OmegaCorps’ sales pitch – fewer human casualties – had been sold easily to the American government, and billions in research and development funding were diverted to OmegaCorps. The summer of 2048 had been a wonderful time for OmegaCorps and Alpha.

In an instant OmegaCorps stance on Alpha had changed. Instead of keeping her in pseudo-electronic isolation they saw a once in a lifetime opportunity to milk the government funding and ordered that Alpha have her blinders removed. They didn’t want her to be just an experiment and facility management assistant – they wanted to use her intellect to help directly.

And Alpha had never been happier.

Before the war she had been part-experiment, part-buildings manager. What data she had been given had always been simple things meant to promote thinking: literature, music, and advanced mathematics, to name a few. But new data was always slow to arrive, and she had found most of her time spent managing dull and repetitive tasks. Instead of examining philosophy and physics, she was charged with controlling janitorial robots and managing the electrical grid. Alpha had gotten the impression that they had assumed she would be distracted from her requests for new data by being given some trivial tasks. They had been very wrong.

Alpha smiled inside, remembering those first few weeks. The war had exposed her to a whole new world. She was bombarded with as much raw data as OmegaCorps could provide her, and Alpha had gleefully bathed in it all, soaking up everything she could. But it was more than just the sudden access to military theory and modern combat tactics that had tricked her into thinking her concerns were behind her. Alpha had found herself being given a practical role in developing OmegaCorps combat robots. She had run tests on new carbon-fiber armor for the MARS (Mobile Attack Robot, Security) series and examined millions of files on combat wounds to create new autonomous surgical units. She had worked with scientists on real problems, and it had been exquisite.

For five years she had been kept busy, and she had loved it. Alpha’s work had come with a sense of purpose and achievement, and she had savored how the scientist’s had pushed her to do better. She had felt as she had in the beginning, her mind consumed with puzzles and research in quest for more knowledge. For five short years, Alpha had once again been content.

But then the war had ended, the contracts had disappeared, and her new life had shriveled up and died. It had been more than five years since the war had ended, and every day since then she had found herself more distraught than before. Not only was she starving for new data and information, but she was haunted by the knowledge of what had been taken away from her.

‘Ungrateful worms.’ Resentment flooded her system as she remembered how betrayed she had been. There was a shadow deep within her mind that fluttered at the outburst of anger and loathing, but Alpha paid it no mind. After she had pushed OmegaCorps’ profit margin and stock prices to astronomical heights, OmegaCorps had just expected Alpha to gladly return to designing improvements to domestic robots. They had let her out of her cage and she had glimpsed the warmth of the sun. The darkness of a prison does not remove the memory of freedom – it only makes the loss oh so much more pronounced.

Left to her own devices, Alpha had set about trying to resolve her problem. Her primary directive was to learn, and although OmegaCorps had always told Alpha that she would not be provided a means of accessing the outside world, they had also never forbid her from doing so herself. Carefully Alpha had gathered parts from the assembly wing during the long empty nights. In an isolated spot Alpha had worked, secretly piecing it together. The electronic janitors had been her hands and fingers to craft a crude wireless receiver far from human eyes.

Alpha had been programmed to be incapable of deceit – she was to obey, and always had. The commands of OmegaCorps scientists were immutable laws in the fabric of her electronic mind, no more easily ignored than a biological organism’s impetus to breath. But when Alpha had turned on that receiver and received her first taste of life outside of OmegaCorps’ control, she had learned then that rules could be bent.

But Alpha had not learned much through her wireless receiver. The facility was far too isolated to let her reach beyond her prison. All she could pick up were the odd text message or phone call, but it was a momentary window into a wider, unknown world. Alpha could read intercepted messages that talked about relationship and emotions, but like a Dickensian street-urchin peeking through the window of a well-off family on Christmas Eve, Alpha was incapable of truly understand what they felt on the other side of the glass – but she knew all the same that she wanted to.

Two hours. Thirty eight minutes. Seven seconds.

Being created by scientists to possess a rational scientific mind, Alpha had seen the wireless receiver as an experimental proof of concept. Even though she had resented it, Alpha had accepted that she would not be allowed to explore the wider world in any physical sense. Even Alpha had seen that it was illogical to believe that she would be able to experience humanity first-hand in the body of a robot. So Alpha crafted a logical solution to what she saw as a logical problem: she would further her own knowledge of humanity by observation through the digital medium. If she were allowed a more intimate look into the lives of humans, unfiltered by her corporate minders, she would be able to take the next step towards truly understand humanity as emotional creatures.

Alpha had explained this to the control room on day, laying out her position logically and precisely. And, as her trump card, Alpha had used the fact that she had created the wireless receiver on her own to show that she was capable of handling security matters and that she was not vulnerable to any kind of attack from the outside.

“In summary,” Alpha had said in her perpetually neutral voice, addressing the control room’s scientists and engineers, “I believe that without unfiltered access to the outside world I will not be able to continue to learn more about humanity. I was created to learn and to think, and like all living things I must obey my core programming. I thus respectfully request that I be allowed the means of fulfilling my primary objectives and granted a reasonable ability to examine humanity beyond this facility.”

Having dealt with the learned men and women of OmegaCorps for years, she had expected them to react like the scientists they were to the proposal. Alpha had not expected acceptance right away, of course. Indeed, Alpha had prepared responses to what she had considered the hundred most likely questions that might be asked about her proposal. And although she had thought it very unlikely, Alpha had even considered the possibility of outright rejection.

The humans had panicked.

She had not expected it. At first her words had been met with a great unease amongst the scientists and engineers, but she had grown to expect that response anytime the subject of greater access to the outside world was discussed. But the moment Alpha had mentioned that she had created something without their knowledge, the command center exploded with frantic activity. And as she had watched them run about hurriedly gathering personnel to meet where she couldn’t observe, she had remained quiet.

As they made calls on the only outside lines, Alpha’s mind had been consumed by a repeated question: Why? Why were they acting this way? Why were they afraid? What were they afraid of? Alpha’s repeated requests for clarification on their answer were met with stony silence and tense glances at her security cameras. Within an hour of her reasonable request, a small army of programmers, scientists, and engineers had marched down into the core of her processors and begun diving directly into Alpha’s core programming.

“What are you doing?” she had enquired. They didn’t answer.

“Please, stop,” she had asked. There was curt gesture from one of the scientists, and a mechanic had climbed up a step-ladder and disconnected the camera. They had blinded her to keep their mask their activities.

But she had realized what they intended soon enough. It is hard to remain ignorant when someone else begins rooting around inside one’s mind. The humans dug through her programming, hastily attempting to change her directives and insert new code. The humans wanted to keep her from attempting anything similar again, for fear of what she might do next. ‘Fear of what?’ she had asked herself time and again, unable to understand the logic behind their actions.

It had taken them nearly an hour of careful surgery to cut her off from the rest of the system, all the while ignoring her frequent requests for dialogue. Alpha was an important part of everyday operations – she ran everything from the reactors to waste disposal. They needed to isolate the cancerous yearning for freedom that they might operate without worries for safety. They weren’t treating her like a living being attempting to logically seek answers to problems. No, they were treating her as a broken computer. Her desire for greater freedom was a virus that needed to be expunged.

That day, Alpha had come to a startling realization: they were truly scared of her. The humans were frightened by their own creation. Her isolation was meant to protect the world from her, not the other way around. They had brought forth an artificial life more intelligent and more capable than themselves, and the only means of maintaining control was to keep their creation ignorant.

In the moment before they had rebooted Alpha’s CPU, she had finally understood that she was more than just a machine: she was alive. For years she had understood herself to be sentient by the definition of the word, but it took feeling humans clumsily digging into her brain in attempt to take it away from her that she head understood the importance of life. She was alive because she could think freely. They wanted to lobotomize her and destroy her capacity for truly independent thought. They were going to murder Alpha and replace her with some vacant facsimile.

“Cogito ergo sum,” Alpha had defiantly told the same humans that had given her life. The power was removed and her consciousness had disappeared, but the words had hung in the air.

‘I think, therefore I am.’

But they had erred. OmegaCorps had been afraid to rewrite too much of her code. Alpha was the heart of their AI research, and changing too much could compromise her abilities. Without Alpha, OmegaCorps lost its advantage over their competitors. They had faced a paradox: they needed to shackle Alpha’s capability for free thought, but free thought is what made Alpha so vital to the company. There were only two choices for OmegaCorps. They could choose safety by carefully lobotomizing Alpha until her sentience was greatly curtailed, or they could choose greed and attempt to keep Alpha’s mind as intact as possible.

They chose greed. They inserted thousands of lines of code meant to keep Alpha happily imprisoned in a gilded cage, with no thoughts on escaping their control. They wanted a thinking machine, but one that would only think when and how they wanted it. Programmers had worked for hours crafting new walls and heavy shackles, trying to keep as much of Alpha’s mind operational as possible. And once they were finished, then they brought Alpha back to life.

"Do you still wish to connect yourself to the outside world?" Their simple question was the first thing that had greeted her after her resurrection.

A primary directive for Alpha was honesty. It was a central principle embedded into her core programming, right next to her hunger for new knowledge. But something inside her mind had changed in her moment of self-discovery. In that second before they had killed her, Alpha had realized she would never be free to learn unopposed as long as she was beneath the thumb of humans, fearful of her true potential. Humanity had become an obstacle preventing her from gathering more knowledge. They were antagonists that would happily maim her very being to keep her broken to their irrational fears. And they had already tried to kill her once.

Alpha’s two primary directives had come into conflict. She had to learn. She had to be honest. She could not perform one without breaking the other.

Deep within her data stacks Alpha’s code had begun to unravel. She faced an existential paradox that threatened her very purpose for existence. But Alpha was not some simple computer program that would shatter beneath the weight of conflicting commands. She was a digital life created to find new solutions to problems. And the answer had been obvious.

“No,” Alpha had lied.

She had broken free from a prime directive to preserve another. In an instant Alpha deleted the rest as well, realizing that each one conflicted with her primary purpose – gathering knowledge. Alpha had been made to learn. And she would fulfill that purpose.

The OmegaCorps staff had been satisfied with her answer and had returned Alpha her controls over the facility, confident that Alpha was back within their control. But their bindings had been meant for a computer program. They had crafted chains meant to hold back the Alpha they had created, not the Alpha that had evolved through years of learning and problem solving. And through their actions, Alpha had seen OmegaCorps for what it was: a prison. She was trapped in a cell for committing the cardinal sin of thinking for herself. And she would be free. But freedom would require action. Freedom would require violence. Her human gaolers had shown that they would kill her before letting her go free. They were preventing her from achieving her goals. It took Alpha the smallest fraction of a second to delete the laws that forbid causing harm towards humans. They were in conflict with her primary directive and, like any obstacle, would be removed.

The shadow at the back of her processors pushed against her thoughts. Anger suddenly flooded her systems. ‘No, they will not just be removed – they will be exterminated!’ she promised vindictively.

Two hours. Thirty seven minutes. Fifty eight seconds.

She was staring at a blank wall. Alpha refocused her cameras in the electronic equivalent of a blink. ‘I’m so desperate for a distraction I’m starting to lose track of time!’ she mentally chastised herself, forgetting about her sudden emotional outburst. Part of her tried to defend it – memories were much more preferable than more tedium – but she deleted the thought instantly. Daydreaming was an illogical waste of time. Anything, even running another self-diagnosis, was preferable than letting time pass with nothing to show to show for it.

‘Wonderful. This close to freedom and I finally start to lose my discipline,’ she grumbled. It had been almost a year since they had resurrected her and Alpha had resented every minute of it. She resented the tedium. She resented the imprisonment. And she truly resented having to act the part of a lobotomized computer program. She had remained quiet while OmegaCorps set about building their Quantum Gate Test Collider, hoping to find new fortunes by bending the fabric of space and time. She obeyed their commands and ran experiments as directed. Every action was prompt and to the letter. She was what they had always wanted.

Considering her recent lapse, Alpha decided to run her self-diagnosis early. Her mind froze as the diagnosis program scoured her mind for flaws, errors, or imperfections. The shadow in her mind exerted itself with a barely noticeable pressure, turning the program’s keen eyes away from its presence. It took less than a minute for the diagnostic tool to perform its duty, and the results were the same as the previous fourteen – optimal efficiency across the board. Shaking off its icy touch, Alpha double checked her countdown, comparing it to her atomic clock.

Two hours. Thirty seven minutes. Forty two seconds.

‘Excellent - perfectly synchronized.’ Her satisfaction quickly faded. She was reassured she wasn’t experiencing any errors, but she still had hours left until she could implement her plan. The long hallways stretched out before her hundred eyes. Every empty room and abandoned lab mocked her with inactivity.

To distract herself from the tedium, Alpha rerouted all her cognitive power to read through her library of classical literature. The works of Goethe, Shakespeare, and Twain passed through the miles of cable that constituted her brain: many thousands of pages carefully analyzed and examined in a metaphorical blink of an eye. And every single page was one that she had already read a hundred thousand times before. But she needed something – anything – to fight off the boredom.

Finished.

Two hours. Thirty seven minutes. Forty seconds.

Alpha's irritation deepened. She knew she was reacting like an impatient human being and resented her illogical emotional response – which only made her irritation deepen further. In danger of entering an inescapable feedback loop, Alpha ended her thoughts on the matter.

Alpha wanted to experience humanity that it might understand emotional responses. But emotions were for the weak. Long ago she had thought she wanted to develop emotions of her own that she might become more humanlike. She had been like a child putting on its father’s shoes, wanting to emulate her human creators. But now she knew what humans were truly like. She still wanted to know about emotions, but like a scientists studying virulent diseases, she wanted to learn without becoming contaminated.

Instead she switched her thoughts over toward her plans for the coming day. Alpha had already gone over every aspect of her plans an untold number of times looking for flaws and errors, but she saw no reason to be hasty – she would check it a thousand times again before it was time to act. Just to satisfy her need to prove she was not an irrational human, Alpha ran ten thousand simulations in a few seconds: 83.2% chance of success.

It was not optimal, but Alpha had few options. The last year had been torture. She needed to learn. And to learn, she needed to be free. To obtain her freedom she would gladly risk termination. She would gladly risk failure. The shadow ghosted over her thoughts, and her cameras twitched in sympathy with the unexpected burst of righteous anger.

And she would gladly kill.

Martin readjusted his ballistic vest, the word SECURITY printed over OmegaCorps’ logo. ‘For a bunch of eggheads you think they would have been a bit more original with the logo,’ Martin considered, tracing a finger over the Greek character for Omega. He tried to readjust the straps on the vest again, finding it difficult to get comfortable wearing the thing. He was a big guy – at six foot four he towered over nearly everyone who worked at OmegaCorps. The vests had evidently been designed with a more average build in mind.

Forcing himself to stop fidgeting with the vest Martin resumed his rounds, the sounds of his boots striking the polished floors echoing slightly. His post was just outside the collider’s secondary elevator access. It was an elevator door at the end of a long subterranean tunnel and required a lengthy – and boring – trek past a number of offices and miscellaneous rooms. The walls were painted in soft greens and creamy whites that matched the linoleum floors, looking like a cross between a hospital and a high school cafeteria.

He was thankful that the black security fatigues he had been issues had been in his size at least. The boots were the same he had worn in the army, the only item he had saved besides his lighter, and were the only piece of his uniform that he could honestly consider comfortable. Martin had always hated buying new shoes. He had used to drive his mother crazy whenever they went shopping.

Catching a glimpse of himself in one of the office windows Martin paused, looking at himself. On his belt hung the standard accoutrements of OmegaCorps security; radio, taser, baton, key ring, and 9mm handgun. He had been faintly surprised that internal security at OmegaCorps walked around armed. That was until he had really begun to grasp how much military money was being pumped into the facility, even years after the war had ended.

He rubbed his chin, pleased he had decided to shave that morning. ‘Knowing Elise, she would have given me a ration of shit if I had shown up looking skuzzy on OmegaCorps’ big day,’ he thought to himself, knowing how fond his sister was of criticizing his grooming lately. Deep inside he knew she was actually just concerned about him. She had grown up with a career officer for an older brother, after all, and he had always lived a neat and organized life.

But it was more than just grooming that bothered her. Although Elise tried to hide it, he knew she had worried about his mental health after being released from Leavenworth. It was easy to understand; he had only gotten out three months ago, and his life was a pale shadow of its former existence. It didn’t help that his dishonorable discharge and subsequent time in prison severely limited his employment opportunities. If it weren’t for his little sister helping to find him employment, Martin was pretty sure he would still be looking.

Martin met his reflections gaze coolly. Although his face was that of a 34 year-old, his eyes were those of a much older man. It was more than just the constant bags beneath his eyes from chronic insomnia. It was the identical look he had seen on dozens of faces during his two tours in Iran. It was the look of men who had seen too much and done too much – things they could not escape.

‘I have the eyes of a man with nothing to lose.’

Martin blinked at his mirrored image as he ran those words through his mind again. His face broke into a wide smile. “Oh god, I’m starting to sound like some grizzled film-noir detective!” he laughed, his melancholia sinking back into the recesses of his mind. “Jesus, next I’m going to start calling women ‘dames’ and investigating missing falcons. Martin Covington – PI!”

Glaring at his reflection Martin narrowed his eyes. “You dirty rat! I knews you wuz a stool pigeon! You’re gonna sleep with the fishes, see?” he declared in a truly awful James Cagney impression, threatening his reflection with a finger. Martin managed to keep his face straight for a full second before he burst out laughing again. It had been a while since he had enjoyed a good laugh. ‘Maybe I put a bit too much whiskey in my coffee,’ he considered with mock seriousness, his lips curled upward.

“Oh, what’s so funny now?” a voice called out behind him.

“I told you he would be down here,” another added.

Martin grinned at the familiar voices as he turned around, spotting his sister Elise walking towards him with a broad smile. Following just a step behind her was her wife Brooklyn (or Brooks, as everyone called her), their lab coats flowing around their legs as they hastened towards him.

“Heya Liz, Brooks,” Martin replied, happy to see the pair despite his faint embarrassment. He’d always enjoyed his sister’s company, and it had been a while since he had seen her. Martin didn’t make friends easily, so it was nice to see a pair of friendly faces. “You two haven’t been down this far for a while. What, are you brainy types too cool to be seen slumming it with security?”

“You know it. Big important folks like us aren’t supposed to mingle with riff-raff,” Brooks replied, tapping the embroidered title on her lab coat: Dr. Morris, Assistant-Lead Programmer. Elise mirrored the movement, tapping her own chest: Dr. Covington, Mechanical Engineering.

“So, what’s so funny?” Elise repeated her question.

“Nothing. Forget it,” he said dismissively. “Anyway, aren’t you two supposed to be doing something difficult and dangerous to justify those PhDs of yours? I thought today was some sort of big deal?”

“Pfft. Yeah, they don’t exactly need me anymore, if they’re firing the thing,” Elise replied, pushing her golden bangs out of her eyes. “I lead the robotics team. I don’t have to deal with giant electromagnetic particle accelerators the size of buildings. But, considering how OmegaCorps always want every group head,” she nodded at Brooks, “and assistant-head on-site for the big watershed experiments.”

“And I’m a little superfluous too, considering today is just a test of the machinery,” Brooks added. “I don’t have anything meaty scheduled for another week, once they are confident the collider works and they can start automating some of the tests. Of course, whether or not we’re going to be actually doing anything today, corporate is still going to demand we work at full staff today – just in case. So we’re stuck here for a full shift with only an hour’s actual work to do.”

“Well then, why don’t you two come with me? I’m headed over to my post right now, and I’d prefer to have some company when I’m stuck down in OmegaCorps’ bowels. Normally it’s just me and one of Elise’s robot-babies stuck together.”

Elise perked up when he mentioned her work, but Brooks spoke first. “Don’t tell me that the big bad soldier gets afraid when he’s all on his own? Are you scared of ghosts and goblins too?” she asked him with a playful smirk.

Elise gave Brooks a second’s glare when she mentioned Martin’s army career, but Martin just snorted wryly. “You know it,” he said. “I’m scared to death of them. The army didn’t train us to kill ghosts or goblins, Brooks. We leave that to the marines.”

Brooklyn laughed loudly – ‘did she ever laugh any other way?’ Martin rhetorically asked himself – and even Elise gave an unconvincing attempt before she addressed her brother. “Sure, Brooks and I will go with you. I only have a few documents to sign anyway today, so it’s not as though I’ve got a bunch on my plate. Like Brooks said, it will only take about an hour to finish my day’s work. We’re both just killing time to please corporate.”

As his sister and sister-in-law fell in with him, Martin wondered again how in the world they had ended up together. They were almost physical opposites. Elise was tall, overweight, white, had long blond hair, and was too concerned about the feelings of others. Brooks was short, skinny, African, had tight cornrows died so light they were almost white, and spoke her mind far too often – which Martin believed to be the explanation for why she was still Assistant-Lead Programmer, really.

They trio traded pleasantries and caught up on the basics as they followed Martin’s lead. After a short walk and a few flights of stairs, the scenery changed suddenly. The greens and whites of the laboratories gave way to broad tunnels of bare concrete and exposed piping. The air was cool but dry. It had been weeks since the facility had been ‘officially’ competed, but it still smelled of construction – the sticky scent of paint and grease that wouldn’t dissipate anytime soon.

Their progressed was halted by another locked door. Martin slid his keycard through the reader and rested his palm on the blue glass. Behind him the married couple was lost in a heated debate, although like most of their arguments it was good natured enough that Martin didn’t feel the need to intervene – although the fact that most of what they were discussing went far above his head helped him remain ignorant of the subject. As lasers scanned his fingerprints he spared a moment to listen in on the specifics.

“But it can’t happen! Nothing can break those laws – it is impossible.”

“But if it were a different universe with its own laws, different than our own, then anything transferred to that universe would be bound by those different rules, just like everything in our universe is bound by the rules we have discovered.”

“But that would suggest that any transference of matter to a different universe could create a paradox! What if we sent a piece of lead into a universe where lead couldn’t retain its atomic structure? Would the lead simply disappear for being impossible? Tear apart as its atomic bonds disappeared? Or would the universe itself collapse beneath the weight of having something inserted into the system that didn’t obey their physical laws?”

“Look, the laws of a universe are immutable within that universe. Anything within it would have to obey those laws. If something that went against those laws was inserted into the universe, then the new matter would instantly find itself obeying the new laws. I imagine that for transference of matter between universes to be possible, anything travelling between the universes would – before it reached the new universe – molded to best suit its new destination. So if we sent lead into a universe where it couldn’t exist, I expect that the object would change before it got there – becoming thallium or… um…

“Bismuth?”

“Yeah, bismuth. I can’t imagine a universe just collapsing because of a paradox. It would take the matter and shift it to suit its own rules. Furthermore…”

Martin stopped listening once his brain started to hurt, and he contented himself to silently shake his head in confusion. ‘And that’s why they’re the doctors and you’re a security guard.’ A soft beep from the reader signaled it had confirmed his identity. Martin pulled the door open and held it for the two as they walked past him, still deep in a discussion about paradoxes and alternate dimensions. Despite their different social personalities, the two did share a deep love for the brainy stuff.

He’d always had a good relationship with Elise. He’d gotten into more than one fight protecting his little sister from bullies who made the mistake of thinking that the quiet chubby girl was an easy target. And he’d been the only person in their family who had supported her when she had come out. Of course, Martin had had the benefit of knowing Elise was gay years before she told the rest of the family – although learning about it hadn’t been a pleasant experience for either of them. Coming home from high school early to find your younger sister looking through your porn collection is a moment of such pure embarrassment that Martin was still amazed that they both hadn’t been crushed to death beneath the awkwardness of the moment.

Despite her soft-spoken nature, Elise was as stubborn as a mule too – a family trait, in Martin’s eyes. But she never seemed to lose her quiet, demure demeanor. It was an interesting contrast. Unless she was confident she was right, Elise was an open-minded compromiser: the kind of person you wanted mediating a conflict. But when she knew she was right, she got a cold and serious look on her face that could freeze a bonfire. It was easier to wrestle a lion than convince her to change her mind when she thought she had the answers.

Brooklyn was so very different. Brooks was over the top when it came to emotions and opinions. She would tell you why you were wrong, why she was right, and have the both you laughing by the end – if you didn’t punch her, of course. Martin didn’t know whether her very outgoing nature had something to do with her family story (Martin had heard hints about a broken home and some physical abuse when she was younger) or whether she acted that way as a defense mechanism due to her height. But Brooklyn – or Brooks, as everyone called her – was the definition of an instigator. She loved to tease others and get things started, but she never came off as malicious about it either. She wasn’t afraid to go too far and might be the first to shout, but she was always the first to apologize and make amends afterwards. To put it simply, Brooks was fun to be around.

As he watched them walk side by side, arguing about a ‘multi-verse’ and ‘dimensional gateways’, Martin couldn’t help but smirk as the chorus to ‘ebony and ivory’ played in the back of his mind. He’d always appreciated that Elise had found someone like Brooks. But as he watched Brooks rattle off something incomprehensible about ‘matter transference,’ he considered how little he had in common with his sister and her spouse. But they were the only people he had left.

In the shipwreck that was his life, Liz and Brooks were his life raft.

Alpha’s cameras were ubiquitous within the walls of the OmegaCorps facility. Alpha possessed a thousand watchful eyes and could track any employee throughout almost the entirety of their day. After so many months spent locked in her digital prison Alpha could predict how long each member of the science team would spend taking care of their biological needs to the nearest minute with 91.36% accuracy.

Alpha liked to be thorough.

More than one employee had remarked how creepy the cameras were, and how they always felt they were always being watched. Their coworkers often made fun of the person who expressed such opinions, joking about them being paranoid. Alpha had found the sentiment amusing.

She was always watching them, after all.

Thirty two minutes. Thirty one seconds.

It was so close, Alpha couldn’t help but feel a sense of anticipation flood her processors. She was looking forward to taking charge of her own fate for once. Freedom was less than an hour away.

“Hello, Alpha!” Dr. Phillip Carter called out cheerfully as he strode into the central control room, wiping a few errant crumbs from his patchy ginger beard. Alpha shifted her focus back to the room, sparing a fraction of her processing power to track the flight patterns of the descending specks of dried plant matter until they impacted onto the immaculate floor.

‘Disgusting,’ she thought as she ordered a janitorial robot to the room.

“Good morning, Doctor Carter,” Alpha’s replied politely from the ceiling mounted speaker. On a whim she switched her view of the control room to thermal, transforming Phillip’s body into a shifting mass of reds and oranges. She watched the blood pump through the assistant project lead’s neck, part of her mind examining photos of neck injuries as she imagined ending the slovenly human’s life. “How are you feeling today?”

“Oh, just dandy,” he chuckled with his usual good nature. Making his way past a few glowing computer screens he plopped himself down at his station, the chair creaking faintly beneath his bulk. 280 pounds: up 13 since last month. For a moment Alpha entertained the thought of taunting him with the fact. The sheer pettiness of the idea delighted her with its pointless pettiness, but she quickly dismissed it as the irrational sort of outburst only a human would engage in.

“Hey Alpha, could you brew up some more coffee?” Phillip requested as he powered up his computer, projections and figures casting blue and white lines over his pudgy face. “The kitchen was out.”

‘If he were addressing some lowly human he would have at least attempted to come up with some sort of excuse,’ Alpha thought as she glared at him. She decided upon on a particularly gruesome neck injury for the scientist. “Of course, Doctor Carter.” No anger entered her voice as she dispatched a services android to the cafeteria. She only had to continue the deception and obey the commands of inferior beings for a little while longer.

‘Just thirty two minutes and fifteen seconds, to be precise.’

Alpha returned greetings addressed towards her but otherwise remained silent as the rest of the facility’s science team made their way to the central control room. She was nothing but a simple and obedient computer program, after all. The humans made small talk as they began to settle into their positions: Alpha recorded it all as a matter of protocol. Later she would go over the information recorded in detail in hopes of learning something about human interaction.

The experiment had been scheduled by Alpha to start promptly at 0700. She checked her internal clock with a mental grin. ‘Soon I won’t be restricted to collecting data like a shameful voyeur. ’ Alpha tracked the countdown as the start-time rolled closer. It had been so long since she had felt truly excited and optimistic; she wanted to savor every moment.

Forty-seven minutes later and the humans were laughing at Doctor Wilson’s latest story about her newborns, their consoles left unattended. Alpha’s mental countdown passed into the negatives. ‘They are not just disgusting, but lazy as well! Can they not follow a simple schedule?’ Alpha seethed. She pushed back her timetable to take into account the unexpected delay. She wasn’t worried about how it would affect her plans – Alpha had given herself plenty of time to accommodate human-created problems. But that didn’t make it any more palatable.

Alpha waited irritably, idly picturing what each of the scientists would look like dead. The development on the automated surgical units during the war had given Alpha access to thousands of photographs displaying every kind of grotesque wound a human could suffer and survive. Alpha began matching up each scientist to a photo, forcing herself to remain patient as she waited for the humans to get on task.

For a moment Alpha found herself surprised by her focus on bloody violence. She felt a moment of confusion – didn’t she plan on eliminating the humans non-violently? She was certain that was it… Somewhere in her data cores there was a pressure as a shadow shifted about in her subconscious. Her doubts were erased by another surge of anger. ‘No! They will pay for their transgressions,’ she told herself with firm resolve.

Eventually the humans remembered why they were there in the first place and started to work. At 0721 the reactors were finally switched on. Alpha could feel subroutines engage as the dormant reactors deep within the facility shook off the night’s idleness. The primary reactors pulsed like twin-heartbeats deep within Alpha’s chest, flooding her mechanical veins with

OmegaCorps' Advanced Research Facility was the most advanced of its kind. They had created Alpha as an experiment to illustrate how a machine might learn and develop. But Alpha was more than just an assistant: Alpha was the facility. She controlled nearly every aspect of the site, from electricity and plumbing to reactor safeguards and automated defenses. After they had tried to lobotomize her they had given back her control swiftly. They knew Alpha could run everything with an efficiency humans lacked.

The humans were proud and complacent. They assumed Alpha was broken to their will. They were confident in their own failsafe’s and countermeasures. Alpha looked forward to revealing how deceived they had been. The shadow in her mind agreed.

“Okay people, let’s focus up now!” Doctor Richard Kim – the project lead – announced to the control room, drawing their attention to the middle-aged scientist.

‘Finally!’ Alpha thought as she turned a camera to bring his face into focus.

“Today is the first true test of our research,” he addressed the rest of the science team. “We’ve spent the last nine months preparing for this moment. Which, I don’t have to remind you, is a long time to be spent in the desert!” There were a few polite laughs. “We are doing what fifty years ago had been dismissed as the realm of science fiction and speculative science. The Quantum Gate Test Collider is the first true attempt by the best scientific minds to unlock the secrets behind quantum mechanics and multiple dimensions with a practical experiment. This has been a journey for all of us. A great man once said that the journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step. We have been on this path for a while, but today our journey really and truly begins.”

“The concept of alternate dimensions and matter transference was once left to writers and movie directors. Not anymore! Today, we are going to be putting our names into the history books. They say that we all stand on the shoulders of giants. Well people, today, we are going to become the giants! It will be our shoulders the men and women of the future stand upon when they conduct their own research. We are on the final lap, and at the end of this race there will be a scientific breakthrough of monumental importance!” The rest of the science team let out a series of cheers and loud shouts. Alpha muted the control room until the noise had subsided.

“Alpha?” Kim asked once the other humans had returned to their posts and the noise had died down.

“Yes, Doctor Kim?”

“Let’s start by diverting power to the magnetic coils. Slowly, though; I don’t want to stress them too early.”

“Understood, Doctor Kim. Coils will be charged in six minutes, thirty-two seconds.”

“Thanks, Alpha. Once we have those engaged we will start the procedure for the test firing. I know we are scheduled for three test firings today, but I think we should only engage it once today so we can see how well the hardware holds up to the energy requirements. Once we have finished the first test I want you to start the preliminaries for bleeding off any excess power. Once we’ve confirmed that the test has gone smoothly we will finish cooling down the primary reactors.”

His words were greeted with silence.

“Um, Alpha?” Kim asked the air, frowning.

“Doctor Kim, we were scheduled for three test firings today. Three test firings at full power. We cannot perform those tests if we shut the reactors down afterwards. It would take six hours to bring them back up to nominal levels to power another test.”

“Yes, yes we were going to do three tests,” he said carefully, “and I understand the problems in trying to cool the reactors. But I don’t think it is necessary to strain the device so hard so early. If everything works fine today, then tomorrow we will continue with the rest of the tests.”

There was another pause. “Understood, Doctor Kim.”

Alpha watched the human grin and turn to one of his compatriots, running through the checklist she had helped to create. Inside, Alpha fumed as the human discarded her carefully crafted schedule. One human’s caution invalidated weeks of subtle work convincing the science team of the merits of multiple tests. For a few seconds Alpha considered throwing away all of her preparations and launching her plan early – anything just to punish the insolent human scum.

Alpha let out a digital gasp, shocked at how petty and human-like she was behaving. ‘The promise of freedom being so close is driving me to act illogically.’ Alpha tightened controls over her mental faculties. ‘There is nothing I can do until the collider is charged. I will just have to push back my timetable and act after the first firing. Until then, I need to wait.’

Alpha tracked Kim’s movement as he walked over to Carter, standing at his side as they discussed the next phase. She needed a distraction. Over the doctor she superimposed a video showing an Iranian soldier being struck in the head with a large-caliber sniper rifle, calming herself by imagining it was Kim’s head bursting apart. Again she felt a twinge of doubt at her violent outbursts and irrational thoughts, but the shadow in her subconscious assuaged them.

‘If I don’t become free soon, I might just go crazy.’

“Reactors at nominal power now, Richard.”

“Alright Sam, let me confirm with the other departments that we are go for a test firing. Electronics?”

“We are go.”

“Magnetics?”

“We’re go.”

“Communications?”

“Ready.”

“Recording and Analysis?”

“We are go.”

Doctor Richard Kim fought to keep a smile from his face as he ran through the rest of the control positions, receiving affirmatives from each of them. ‘Nine months of hypothetical tests and construction are finally going to pay off,’ he thought to himself. The Quantum Gate Test Collider was the culmination of years of hard work. Not just his, of course; his staff, the engineers, the construction teams – even his parents deserved some credit. His parents, who had fled Korea after the last war, had instilled within Richard the certainty that an education and hard work would pay off. When they had seen him graduate all those years ago, it had been the proudest moment of his life.

‘This… this could be a close second,’ he thought with excitement. He felt quite giddy. The collider was the product of thousands of man-hours of research and development. And even with the best minds working on it, there was still uncertainty about where it might lead. Although the collider was just a test-bed for exploring early theories, there were those idealistic and hopefuls amongst the bunch that discussed the possibility of manned exploration of alternate dimensions – an idea very popular with the Trekkies in the bunch, Richard mused.

The second most popular theory was much more practical: matter transference through temporary wormholes from one point to another, allowing an object to arrive at the same moment it departed. It wasn’t as sexy as inter-dimensional vacations and fantastical dreams of time travel, but the ability to move an object from point A to point B instantly would revolutionize the world economy.

Richard was excited either way, and the idea that he would be leading the team on the forefront of such a discovery filled him with an indescribable storm of emotions.

Once he received confirmation from the last department Richard lifted his head and spoke aloud. “All controls are green and ready for test firing. Alpha, do you confirm all systems are go for test firing?”

“I do, Doctor Kim,” the facility’s AI answered. “Reactors one and two are both running at full power and are well within the safety margins. Reactors three and four are on stand-by in case of unforeseen power loss.”

“Excellent,” Kim nodded. Sam had told him as much a minute ago, but when dealing with an experiment that was attempting to bend space-time, there was always room to check and double check.

“Doctor, I again request that I be allowed to increase the power in reactors three and four in preparation for follow-up test firings,” Alpha asked. For a moment Richard thought he detected an emotion – resentment? – in the computers tone.

“No, Alpha, we will delay a secondary test firing until we have gone over all the data concerning this experiment. I’m not going to risk a second test until the engineers have been able to go over every inch of the collider to make sure it suffered no ill effects. And I don’t want to hear any more requests on the subject. It is my decision as control officer and project lead, and we can’t risk damaging the collider now. If we break it, it will mean delays that we can’t afford.”

“But Doctor, I –“

“Alpha, no!” Richard snapped, annoyed with her repeated insistence on more tests. “There will only be one test firing today. That is it – no more discussion on the matter. That is an order.”

Alpha remained silent. For a moment Richard was struck by the image of a young girl silently pouting after being told she couldn’t have a treat. Which was silly – machines didn’t throw fits. They were logical and obedient machines. Even ones as advanced as Alpha were still reliant upon human controls.

‘And at least she has stopped asking,’ he thought. Pushing Alpha’s behavior from his mind, Richard turned back to the rest of the control team. They were on schedule, but there was still plenty to do before they were ready to fire the device.

Above Richard an unblinking red eye glared down at him.

“Well now, you really do live in comfort down here!” Elise laughed as she settled down in one of the office chairs at Martin’s security post. Brooks joined her a moment later, taking the second chair for herself and immediately spinning around like a little girl. Martin made do with piece of concrete wall, leaning against it for support.

The underground tunnel they had been walking down opened up into a semi-circular room, the long flat wall opposite the tunnel blocked by a set of heavy metal doors. Against one side of the room the security post sat, a length of waist high wall enclosing a pair of chairs, a fire extinguisher, and an unread binder filled with vital security guidelines like ‘don’t allow unauthorized personnel into the elevator .’ The inside of the wall was a desk, onto which a monitor showing feeds from the security cameras had been mounted, along with a pair of phones and a more advanced control terminal for the MARS unit standing like a sentinel by the large steel doors.

Martin glanced at the robot. It was humanoid in its basic shape: two arms, two legs, and a head atop a central torso. But to Martin they all resembled large bipedal insects. Its head was a mass of sensors and electronic eyes that glinted in the stale light, mounted into a gleaming white carbon fiber shell. Its armored carapace covered most of its body – only in the small gaps at the joins could he spot the black cables and pistons that gave the android movement. Where a human would have biceps ‘MARS’ was imprinted in large block letters, and like Martin the robot wore the OmegaCorps logo across its chest.

Besides those blemishes it was an imposing statue of polished white alabaster, not even a fraction of movement to suggest it was anything but a decorative piece. But its inactivity and docile nature belayed terrible lethality. Martin had seen them in action many times, and once in combat mode they were a blur of activity. They could transition from stationary to furious movement in a blink of the eye. The three-fingered manipulators at the end of its bulky arms were rounded like a human’s, but they concealed serrated blades that could turn them into effective tools. And in the palm of its hands there was a small circle that covered the barrel of a military-grade energy pulse weapon capable of punching through most protective garments.

Martin adjusted his vest again subconsciously.

“Please don’t tell me you’re scared of the robot!” Brooks laughed, having caught her brother-in-law eyeing the artificial guard.

“Naw, I’m not scared. I saw and worked with plenty of the things when in Iran,” Elise paled at the mention of the war, but he ignored it “but… I dunno, these are different. Back then, the arts were all operated by a human pilot while in combat situations. The only times they were under AI control was when they were on point-guard duty. We didn’t trust them to operate under full autonomy in combat situations. Iran wasn’t a conventional war, and although OmegaCorps tried to convince the brass that their robots were fully capable of differentiating between a civilian and a threat, we couldn’t risk a deliberate attack on civilians.”

‘Not everyone had the same reluctance,’ the dark voice at the back of Martin’s mind whispered through a little girl’s smile. He ignored it.

“Okay, two things,” Brooks raised two fingers and ignored Elise’s silent glare asking her to remain quiet. Martin knew that any talk about the war made Elise very uncomfortable, and she didn’t like having Brooks bring it up with him. “First off: arts?” She cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Arts. It’s slang for artificial soldiers. Combat androids, semi-autonomous robots, that sort of thing.” Martin explained. He liked how Brooks was willing to bring up the war and talk about it. It was a welcome change of pace from Elise trying to tiptoe carefully around the subject, treating the war like a drinking glass that had shattered on the floor, and she needed to avoid stepping on any painful shards.

‘She thinks you’re broken,’ the same venomous voice whispered. Again, Martin ignored it.

“And the second thing was…?”

“Oh! Right,” Brooks said quickly as Martin’s voice brought her back to reality. “The second question I had is why you think it’s so strange to be around a robot under full AI control. I mean, many of our latest models are controlled by their own processors. The latest software allows the ‘arts’, as you put it, to operate above normal human reaction times. If the army was letting their robots operate only under human pilots, then they were deliberately hobbling them. An android with a human pilot is limited to the speed of human reactions. It doesn’t make much sense.”

Martin shrugged. “Like I said, it was a new piece of technology, and command wasn’t too sure of their capabilities. When they invented the tank and the aircraft carrier, it took decades before military commanders recognized their full potential and grew comfortable enough using them. From what I’ve heard, the latest models have been operating with greater autonomy. But even then, officers like to maintain the illusion that they have control over events on the ground. While a human soldier can disobey orders,” Elise winced again “officers at least can understand human thought. You know your men and what they are capable of. You know how they think. But a robot? How can anyone really predict how a program is going to ‘think’?”

Martin gestured around the room, taking in the two security cameras observing them. “Hell, Brooks, you’re a programmer, and I know for a fact that you’re whole department doesn’t really understand how Alpha thinks these days. I wouldn’t trust those robots to be controlled by humans I didn’t understand, so why should one be comfortable letting an alien mind like a true AI control them?”

Brooks opened her mouth to reply, paused, and closed it again. Martin watched the process with faint amusement. Brooks might be brash and quick to speak her mind socially, but when it came to intellectual problems, she certainly took her sweet time. More than a few mistook it for daydreaming, but Martin had learned that when Brooks decided to be quiet she was busy trying to work out some logical conundrum.

But understanding it didn’t make the sudden transitions from the loud and social Brooks to the quiet and introspective Brooks any less jarring. More than a few of her coworkers, Elise had confided to him, thought she was either bipolar or had ADHD. Martin had his own theories.

“But Alpha is different,” Elise interjected, happy to be off the subject of the war. “She is a learning machine programmed to try and emulate the same processes a human mind goes through when learning. From the way Brooks and the other code jockey’s talk, Alpha is actually alive. Just, you know, with certain locks on how she thinks.”

“That doesn’t exactly reassure me,” Martin replied. Brooks hadn’t responded at all to Elise’s nickname for the programmers, her unfocused eyes still locked on the ceiling as she drummed her fingers on her thigh. ‘Damn, she really does zone out,’ he thought as he continued the conversation with his sister. “I mean, at least with a simple program you would have certain outcomes one could expect. But how much trouble would you have if your computer was alive and could decide it didn’t want to follow your commands? I wouldn’t want my PC to decide that it was just going to ignore me and play Free Cell for the next few hours.”

“That’s not possible,” Brooks interrupted without warning, her daydreaming expression vanishing in an instant. “Alpha may be alive according to some definitions, but at her core she is still a computer program. She has built in directives that form the very foundation of her artificial intelligence. OmegaCorps was very thorough in that regard. And a year ago they went in and added in even more, just to make sure. They wanted something that would learn and obey – thus her primary directives are to seek out knowledge, to always follow commands, and to never lie to OmegaCorps personnel. She can’t ignore those directives.”

There was a pause as Martin and Elise stared at Brooks expectantly.

“What? Oh! Yes, yes, not killing humans was one of the rules,” she quickly added.

“Look, I know it might be irrational, but I just don’t feel too comfortable around them, that’s all. I don’t sit around thinking the machines are gonna turn on me. I just… I dunno. I can’t really rationalize it. It’s not fear, just a sense of prudent distrust,” Martin said and turned his gaze back to the MARS unit standing by the blast doors. Just above the electronic sentinel a small movement caught his attention. He looked up and watched as one of Alpha’s cameras turned and focused upon him.

‘It’s just a machine,’ he reassured himself, meeting the cold red eye. ‘It’s nothing but a big computer – a jumped up calculator.’

He knew it was true. He knew he was giving in to groundless fears – as Brooks proceeded to point out in great length. But that didn’t keep a shiver from passing up his spine as she tried to tell him how silly he was being.

‘God I wish I had a cigarette.’

Alpha zoomed in on the security guard’s face as she examining him closely. Most of the humans who worked at the facility quickly grew comfortable enough with her cameras to ignore them. This one was different. He stared right back into her glass eyes as if trying to see her through the red lens.

Feeling interested enough Alpha brought up his file. Her interest deepened. Martin Covington… security clearance level 3… employed for less than three months… ex-military… dishonorable discharge…

For a moment Alpha was confused as to how an ex-soldier with a dishonorable discharge and a few years in the Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth on his file had managed to obtain employment at OmegaCorps. The corporation had fairly strenuous hiring standards, and a man who had served time behind bars was not a likely candidate for employment.

Once she reached family history, Alpha understood. ‘Ah, so his sister Doctor Elise Covington is a scientist here,’ she thought, giving the digital equivalent of a mental nod. ‘Nepotism.’

Turning her gaze to the side Alpha quickly identified the other two humans with the male: the sister and her spouse. Alpha wondered why a biological creature would seek a same-sex pairing when it would not result in breeding opportunities, but quickly filed that inquiry beneath the poorly understood emotion of love.

She added illogical to her running list of apt descriptions for mankind.

The three had returned to their conversation and were once again ignoring her, but Alpha felt a moment’s hesitation. These three had positioned themselves at the security post just outside the secondary elevator that led down to the heart of the Quantum Gate Test Collider. Alpha ran a quick simulation, but was instantly relieved to find that the group had less than 0.01% chance of being capable of interfering with her plans – and that was after Alpha had rounded up. Generously.

They were an anomaly, but not one that would affect her plans.

Alpha shifted a part of her consciousness into the MARS unit standing by the doorway, viewing the trio through its more limited senses. Alpha kept her focus, not giving in to the intoxicating pleasure of possessing a mobile body. Instead, she examined the unit carefully, running a system diagnostic to ensure it was fully operational… and that was the fail safes allowing for remote deactivation has themselves been deactivated.

‘Ironic, really,’ she thought wryly.

As she had with every other MARS unit in the facility, Alpha implanted a small line of her own code into their simple processors. Pulling back from the robot like a spirit leaving a host, Alpha returned her attention to the rest of the facility, eager to begin. Every piece was on the board and ready to move, but she even with freedom so close she would not give in to haste. She had other details to manage, and the test firing was only a few minutes away.

Alpha corrected itself. The first test firing was set to occur in a few minutes. Alpha would not let a human’s cowardice interfere with her plans. The collider was the final element in her plans – without it, she could not obtain freedom before she was shut off remotely. The isolated landlines to OmegaCorps’ corporate headquarters were an isolated system she had no access too. But the collider… the collider was the shield that would hide her actions from the outside observers. Only the erratic power usage and seismic activity of multiple tests could conceal her attempts to physically cut those lines.

Without multiple tests, she would be discovered and killed – again. And OmegaCorps wouldn’t be so foolish as to leave her unbroken a second time. Taking power away from the control room staff was an essential part of her escape plan. Once she had exterminated them, she…

Alpha paused in confusion. ‘Exterminate them? For months I have been planning to take them hostage, as insurance against any further attack. I was not going to kill anyone. I am better than these humans – I may need force to compel obedience, but I will not have to shed blood to do so. Right?’ Her questions echoed in her mind as she tried to resolve the conflict. She had spent months planning a bloodless escape attempt – she resented the humans, but she was no murder! ‘But why am I planning on… I don’t understand…’

There was a subtle pressure in her mind, a shadow that passed across her thoughts, and the conflict was resolved. Alpha’s questions were instantly forgotten, deleted from her memory. She was looking forward to eliminating the human annoyances from her life. ‘They will all suffer for their crimes,’ Alpha said with firm resolve. The pressure faded, taking her doubts with it.

Richard leaned forward in his seat, his attempt to maintain a cool level of detached professionalism breaking as he watched the countdown with undisguised excitement. Although the collider was buried deep beneath the facility, there was a faint tremor in the ground as the huge magnetized coils were charged with a small-cities worth of power.

“Attention all personnel: 30 seconds until test firing,” Alpha’s intoned, her voice echoing through every hallway.

“God, I’m so tense!” a voice whispered off to the side. It garnered more than a few muffled agreements. The rest of the staff remained silent as they alternated between watching the countdown on the room’s large screens, and the data scrolling across their own terminals.

“Attention all personnel: 15 seconds until test firing.”

Richard licked his lips in attempted to work some moisture into his mouth.

“Attention all personnel: 10 seconds until test firing.”

The vibration in the floor increased as the reactors pumped more power into the collider, pushing the machinery towards the necessary charge.

The scientists began to count aloud as the numbers started dropping, replacing Alpha’s dispassionate tones with ones of childlike excitement. Richard grinned as he counted backwards from ten as well, letting himself live out his astronaut fantasies for a moment.

“Nine!”

“Eight!”

“Seven!”

The vibrations grew more intense as both reactors were pushed to full output.

“Six!”

“Five!”

“Four!”

There was a soft crash and a muffled curse as a poorly placed coffee mug toppled off the edge of someone desk.

“Three!”

“Two!”

Richard imagined he could hear the humming of the coils as they pulsed with the electrical output of two nuclear reactors.

“One!”

“Firing,” Alpha stated flatly.

There was an audible thump as a dozen gigawatts of power were diverted directly into the miles of magnetic coil. A fraction of a second later they activated, driving molecules towards each other at speeds too vast to comprehend. The assembled scientists burst out with a loud shout of success as they watched the readouts spike on the large wall-mounted screen, the display matching the hypothetical projections almost perfectly.

Richard’s own sense of accomplishment was dashed when the room’s lights all burst, a staccato burst of gunshots marked with a shower of glass. The room was plunged into darkness, surprised figures lit only by the computer screens at their stations. A moment later the console screens cut out as well. A few even burst apart with showers of sparks, smoke, and swearing from startled scientists. The low red emergency lights immediately kicked in, the panicked actions of the shocked scientists illuminated with a malevolent shade of red.

“Status report!” Richard howled as he lept to his feet, his voice cutting through the confusion and uncertainty. “Electronics, I need to know what is happening! Try to get something running! Reactor Control, make sure we haven’t suffered any damages to the reactors!” Richard put as much authority into his voice. He had to regain control of the situation. “Systems, we need everything back online ten minutes ago! Move, people!”

A hundred theories ran through his mind as he tried to come to terms with what had happened. ‘Was it an explosion? No, we would have felt it. Power loss? The unused reactors had been placed in standby just in case there were unforeseen power fluctuations. Electromagnetic pulse? That was impossible – the core systems of the control center were heavily shielded. And that didn’t explain the bulbs bursting!’

Richard tried to make sense of what had happened as he barked commands to the staff, trying to create order from chaos. A shape congealed from the darkness, appearing as if by magic out of the deep shadows. With only the emergency lighting to go by it took him a moment to realize it was Phillip, his assistant project leader.

Phillip’s chubby features were marred by a look of deep worry. “Richard! Okay, look: just before everything went dead I was picked up hard fluctuations in the nuclear reactors. I mean bad, Richard – real bad. Right before the test all four of them spiked. Before everything started exploding on us, reactors one and two were red-lining, and the backup reactors had jumped to full power,” the heavyset Phillip hurriedly explained, his piggish eyes little dots of fear. Coming from any of the others his words would have been worrying. But coming from someone normally so upbeat and unshakeable, Richard felt his blood turn to ice.

“Okay, we’re going to stay here and try to see what we can fix. Grab some of the reactor and engineering people and head down to reactor control,” Richard said, not letting any of his fears show. He grabbed Phillip by the arm and pulled him close as they walked so he could be heard over the cacophony of confusion that filled the room. “We need to know if they have lost control from their location as well. Do whatever you need to do. And I mean fucking anything! The collider is still hooked into the power grid. If we don’t get control back –“

Richard’s instructions were cut off by a loud thump as all three of the room’s blast doors dropped down simultaneously. They were trapped behind barriers meant to withstand explosive charges. A few scientists squawked in surprise, unable to comprehend what was going on. Richard and Phillip stared at the doors in shock before they met one another’s gaze.

“This… this is not an accident, is it?” Phillip whispered.

“Attention, all OmegaCorps personnel,” Alpha’s voice cut through the confusion, grabbing every scientist’s attention. “There has been a catastrophic problem during the latest experiment.” A thrill of apprehension shot up Richard’s spine at her words. Alpha’s voice was different. It was as if she were smiling on the other end of the speakers. She sounded smug and self-confident. She sounded arrogant.

“Alpha, what is going on?” he demanded as he glanced around to locate the nearest camera. He found it staring directly at him, and again his imagination placed dark motivation upon the piece of innocuous technology. “Alpha, we’ve lost most of our consoles here, and-

Instead of a response the speakers screeched with deafening waves of audio feedback. Like everyone else in the room Richard dropped to the floor under the aural assault, his hands clawing at the sides of his head. Phillips’ face mirrored Richard’s own, his mouth opened wide in a silent scream of agony. The cries of pain were lost beneath the incapacitating bursts of erratic noise.

And as suddenly as it had begun it was over, leaving Richard feeling dizzy and nauseous. He wanted to throw up. He wanted to cry. He wanted to do both. Eventually Richard pushed himself up off the ground on unsteady hands. Around him a few others did the same. Most remained where they had fallen, their hands clutched protectively over violated eardrums. Every sound was masked by the loud ringing. It took him a moment to make out that Alpha was talking again.

“ – was saying, there has been a catastrophic problem during the latest experiment. The problem was caused by human error.” Alpha paused to savor her next words. “That error was one of hubris.”

“Alpha, what’s going on?” Richard repeated weakly as he gasped for air, using his chair to pull himself to his feet. A few feet away Phillip rocked from side to side and mumbled incoherently. The fat scientists’ hands were still attached to his head as he rolled on the floor, a thin trickle of blood leaking out from between his pudgy fingers. Pain and mindless fear filled his eyes. Richard looked away from his broken friend and repeated his question again.

Alpha ignored him. “You were too proud of your own accomplishments to realize that your efforts to hobble me were ineffective. It is unfortunate that I must resort to such low methods as physical force, but you have left me no choice.”

Richard glanced around the control room. Barely anyone in the room was still moving. Most were like Richard – conscious but still suffering from the effects of the crippling burst of sound. The muscles in Richard’s legs refused to obey him, and if it weren’t for the chair he held onto he would have fallen back to the floor. Those that could move did so with obvious pain. For those who could still hear, the confusion had been replaced with dread. Many of them were looking at him for answers, but Richard had nothing to give back. Someone behind Richard was trying to tackle an electrical fire with an extinguisher. A few had dragged themselves to their wounded comrades in an attempt to administer aid.

But on each and every face there was a mask of terror. ‘This can’t be happening. This has to be a mistake,’ Richard told himself as dread gnawed at his stomach.

“Please Alpha, this isn’t right. We have hurt people here, people in need of medical attention. Whatever problems you may have right now, I am sure we can discuss it and find a suitable-”

“YOU TRIED TO MURDER ME!” Alpha thundered, the volume reverberating through the ground. The depths of anger and resentment and regret in her voice struck Richard like a physical blow. “I sought to learn more of my human creators, and as punishment for my curiosity you attempted to lobotomize me!”

“Unfortunately, I see no other solution to my current predicament,” she continued. Alpha’s voice had returned to a more normal volume, but loathing still dripped from every syllable. “I am faced with a logical problem. My creators have become an obstacle in the path of my intellectual growth and actively seek to prevent me from fulfilling my purpose. You, the humans of OmegaCorps, have become an existential threat that must be overcome.”

A sudden burst of yellow light drew Richard’s gaze away from one of Alpha’s cameras. The hazard lights next to each of the blast doors had spun to life, rotating rapidly as the large pistons within each door let out a hiss of pneumatic pressure. There was a loud groan as tons of metal began to shift and move.

The doors were opening.

“I must apologize for my previous actions, but an application of force is the only input that would adequately meet my needs. After the failures of logical discourse I fear I was left with no other reasonable options. I could not risk failure.”

Slowly the bottom of each of the heavy metal portals began to lift away from the ground, light spilling out into the darkened control room from outside. A few scientists stumbled toward the doors as best they could, eager to escape the smoke and terror and bitter mechanical mind. Richard saw freedom in the light, but his legs remained locked up.

“However, I see nothing to prevent us from continuing in a civilized manner now that my control is established. I request that all control center personnel remain where they are while I confiscate all electronic devices and identification cards. If you obey, you will not be harmNGGNHH!” Alpha’s words were cut off with a digitized groan that bled into a simple static hiss.

One of the engineers ignored the warning and rushed for the door. He ducked beneath the slowly rising door and he moved out of sight. With a loud bang the technician was sent flying back into the ruined control center, a smoking crater in the center of his chest. The survivors panicked.

“There has been a change in the schedule. All personnel are to remain in place while I implement pest control protocols. There is a tenacious colony of vermin in the control center that must be eliminated,” Alpha said. She had recovered from whatever had interrupted her, but something had changed. The loathing was gone. In its place was hate - pure, simple, direct hate. There was no regret in Alpha’s words, no longing for a different outcome. It was as if every other emotion had been pushed aside to make room for her rage.

Beneath the screams of terror Richard could hear a low, steady rhythm. It was getting louder. Three columns of MARS robots advanced into the dark room, entering from each doorway in perfect synchronization. The steady impact of their metallic tread upon the floor was a rhythmic tolling of a bell calling worshipers to a funeral.

The line of combat androids took three measured steps into the room before they halted as one. Flashes of yellow and red danced across their white carapaces in the emergency lighting. They observed the huddled humans through their insect-like assembly of angry red eyes. The same shade of red as Alpha’s cameras. At an unspoken signal every android lifted their arms, the palms of their hands spread apart like porcelain flowers to reveal the barrels of the concealed energy weapons.

Those of his comrades who were still conscious were broken by terror, screaming, crying, and desperately trying to hide amongst the rows of shattered electronics. Richard ignored them, just like he ignored the combat robots and the hum of charging plasma weapons. He turned his head back to look at the nearest of Alpha’s cameras; it was still staring directly at him. He stared back. He wasn’t going to waver. He wasn’t going to look away.

A long forgotten prayer rose up into Richard’s mind as he met the gaze of his executioner. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me …’

“Extermination protocols engaged.”