Prologue: What Happened Before
The mind, such a powerful tool, yet so fragile. It has the constant need to be fed oxygen, to be housed in a protective shell, to be stimulated by your senses. Yet without it, we would be nothing, just a mess of carbon-based parts, held together with a sheet of cells. Yet, while each mind is almost identical - weighing in at around 3 pounds, compiled of over 100 Billion neurons, 6 cortical layers and over 100,000 miles of blood vessels - each one is unique. But the raw power contained in that bundle of cells that keeps us alive, that is truly the power to rule the world. There’s a reason that ponies nowadays frown upon anything that alters the brain too much, even if they don’t know the reason why.
It wasn’t always this way though. The past was different, and it was then that the largest disaster ever faced by ponykind occurred. Back before the reign of Celestia and Luna, where they would say Discord was ruling.
It’s all lies. All of it. The Discordian regime, the Alicorn fight, Celestia and Luna overthrowing Discord and taking reign of Equestria, all of it. I know the truth though, I lived it, now it is time to pass it on.
So, who am I? How can I be telling you this now, when it’s been millennia since these events I’m explaining took place? Well, I am the last one, the last surviving ‘Mind hacker’, we were a group from before the Princesses’ reign. That term doesn’t make much sense to you now, but if it were uttered in our peak, it would have struck fear into the hearts of all who heard it.
Kept immortal by the very power that provided us some semblance of victory, none of us survivors were allowed to speak of the transpired events until the others were gone. Yes, just because we were immortal, does not mean we were invincible. The last group member died yesterday, finally committing suicide out of sheer boredom of life; leaving me all alone, but with the ability to tell others what happened, and that’s what I shall do. Let me start at the beginning and I’ll tell you how it all went down.
I was a baker. Nothing fancy, the farmers ploughed the wheat, and I used it to make bread. It was just a way of life. My life was pretty much uninteresting, day in, day out, same old, same old. The pay for being a baker wasn’t exactly grand, but it was enough to get me by. I lived in the apartment above the bakery, a single bedroom, bathroom and living room, and only the barest of essentials.
There were not many perks of being a baker, so I learnt to not take the ones I had for granted. One such positive was the fact that I was trusted by all. After all, if you couldn’t trust your main food supplier, who could you trust? This meant that ponies would tell me things. Not just little gossipy titbits about the latest relationship status; no, they told me much more than that.
Ponies would come to my bakery as they passed through from the adjacent cities, on their way to such-and-such a place. They would bring me tales from their lands, about things that would be revelations if revealed to the public, things that were kept secret from the masses for a reason.
This particular piece of news wasn’t even that ground-breaking, however, it was just some news about a pony attempting to use his magic to affect the mind. It wasn’t all that special, unicorns were experimenting with their magic all the time, usually resulting with an acrid explosion of energy that would definitely dissuade them from repeating their tests.
There was something about this that stuck in my mind though, long after the customer had paid and left. Something about it made me think on it, on the prospect and what it could mean. While it was definitely not unheard of for a pony to experiment with magic, it was rare that they ever went so far as to mess around with their very mind.
The next day affirmed that something was going on. Another pony breezing through town told me a tale from his hometown, and it was much the same story, just with a different pony. Somepony was trying to use their unicorn magic to do... something with their mind. Neither this pony, nor the one from the day before could tell me exactly what they were trying to do exactly, but they both confirmed that it was going on.
I mentioned to this stallion how there were similar events happening at the other town. He replied, saying how he was actually on his way back to his hometown, and we was going to pass on that information, see if maybe the two guys would work together. I didn’t exactly agree that that was a wise decision, but the pony seemed passionate, so I just nodded along and gave what I knew about the other experimenter.
I didn’t think about them much after that. I mean, the idea sort of dwelled within the recesses of my mind, but aside from that I carried on with my life as usual. That was, until about a month or so later, when a fairly nondescript blue unicorn wandered into my bakery. I could tell by his saddlebags that he wasn’t going to be here for all that long, a few days at the most. However, there was a glint in his eye, something that marked him out as different from the hundreds of other ponies that pass through town.
He spoke to me once he had reached the counter, seemingly more interested in me than the goods I had to sell, “Hi there.”
“Hello, sir. May I help you?” I asked him, sizing him up in a glance. He didn’t seem to be the most athletic of ponies, more academically minded than physically, not really the sort to be travelling as he was now. It was obvious he had come for something, and that something appeared to be me.
“Yes, actually. You most likely don’t know me, but you must have heard of me in some way.” He paused to give a quick cough into a handkerchief. “Am I to believe that one of my neighbours told you about what I plan to do?”
Immediately it clicked in my mind, he was here about the mind experiments. Judging by the fact that he was still upright and talking to me, I had to guess that he had either succeeded, or not gotten around to doing anything yet. “Yes, I do believe that that was mentioned in passing, a while back,” I told him, wished for him to explain some more before I committed to anything, even answering in a more specific way.
A smile broke out on his previously po-faced visage. “Excellent, then you’re perfect.”
“I... am?” I questioned, not sure sure what was going on anymore, but I was pretty sure I didn’t like it.
“Why yes. Average height, average weight, average intelligence, average knowledge of my experiments, you’re likely the most average pony I’ve met!” He answered, grinning madly.
Now that I examined him closer, he had that sort of crazy feel to him. Slightly frizzy mane, a bit of bloodshot to his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept too well for years, and that smile... “Gee, thanks. Such compliments are unworthy of me,” I stated, deadpan. However, it seemed the pony was incapable of noticing sarcasm, or he was just ignoring it.
“No need to thank me, my good fellow. It is I who must thank you for being such a perfect candidate for my tests!” He exclaimed, looking at me almost hungrily, as if envisioning them in his mind already, something that obviously brought him great glee.
In an effort to stop his creepy stare, I blurted out, “There was another.” He looked questioningly at me, so I continued, “In another town, he was performing experiments like yours.”
“Ah, yes. My associate will be arriving shortly, he just had to pick up a few more supplies whilst I talked to you. And that brings me to my main point. Will you help us out? Don’t you want to be the first to experience the wonders of modern technology? To break new ground in the scientific field? To be renown as the forerunner when this is commonplace?”
My reply was swift and easy to decide. “No.”
“Excelle- Wait, no? What do you mean, ‘no’? How can you say no?!” He looked genuinely confused as to why someone would object to have a complete stranger experiment on them.
“Quite easily, as I just demonstrated,” I replied.
“Hmm... Well, I’ll convince you yet,” He said, looking me up and down, trying to figure out the best way to get me onto his side.
“I doubt it,” I stated.
I looked around my surroundings, I was in my bakery’s cellar. There was makeshift equipment sent up beside me, and I was connected to it with various other objects that I neither recognised, nor trusted. Not least because I was lying on two crates with a sheet over the top, as a sort of makeshift bed. “I still don’t know why I agreed to this,” I said. It had taken the best part of two hours, but somehow the Scientist, along with his associate, had managed to rope me into their crazy scheme. “So, what is this supposed to do again?” I asked.
The two unicorns glanced at each other, and gave a laugh. “This, my dear friend, is the future. Imagine, a million minds connected at once, everything you need to know at a moment’s notice. A web of sorts interconnecting everypony’s minds. It will be glorious.”
“Of course,” I deadpanned, not looking forward to what was in store.
