Beneath Water and Rock...

Track 2: Drugger's End Lane by Mistabishi

Gamma Beam was a typical Pinnae, a 21 year old robotics engineer working in the Department of Dilling and Excavation, one of the tens of thousands that designed and developed the various complex devices sent in the monthly shipments to the Below. Like many, she logged into the system in the morning, and coded till evening, day in day out, 6 days a week. In the machine that was the drilling station, routine engulfed the life of it's inhabitants.

Her job was to sift through the chunk of automated malfunction reports sent to her each day, decipher each one, and diagnose and refer them all to the correct places. Compared to most, it was not a boring task. The technical code in each was a puzzle in itself to understand, and to use it to deduce the fault in the system was a skilled job. She worked from her apartment, a 3 room dwelling near to Dome 27 in the North-East side, with all the nice comforts, from faux-daylight landscape display windows, to her wing-gym. It was a nice place, away from the cramped Saxi slums, and free from the strict police-state atmosphere of the Unicorn areas.

<=>

It had been a hell of a night the day before, out late with rest of the ponies in her team, at a local nightclub until past 1. Her ears were still ringing. There was a real variety of ponies that worked on the malfunction reports, in her group she had reclusive technical nerd stallions, work-obsessed mares, and all those in between that had the right brains for the job. They would help each other out, give tips and offload excess work onto each other. Even if they weren't all in the same room, they still were a tight knit bunch.

She tried to remember exactly had gone on before she had staggered back to her apartment. She knew that some of the party-loving stallions had organised a night out, and they'd had a fair share of drinks at a bar, until one of the computer geeks had led them down an innocuous service passage into a bass and strobe light filled nightclub. Things went blurry from then on in. The copious alcohol and computer music had smashed her mind into the next century.

Looking at her clock, she arose from her bed, blinking her tired eyes. It was 7:53, time to start thinking about getting up for the day ahead. Thankfully she could work when she wanted, mornings like this made concentration hard. A shower improved things immensely.

Towelling herself off, she idly logged on, thinking more about the upcoming political elections than her work. The two main parties, Azedia and Voljor were set to have a close race to appoint their candidate as Master of Station. The posters plastered the walls everywhere .The atmosphere throughout the station was electric, the ponies (Eques was such an old-fashioned term) were buzzing with anticipation and tensions forming between the two parties. As she sifted through the error reports, she weighed up the two choices. To be honest, she knew it was barely worth voting. All of the true struggles for power went on behind closed doors, in dark rooms, away from the public eye. The popular vote was almost a formality; it was obvious that it bore almost no weight.

Two of the specific reports from one caught her eye. The basic sorting program had labeled the second as having 'No Data'. Why it said that, she had no idea. All reports came with a signal line at the start to identify the item and model, followed by individual readouts for all the main systems. She tapped for it to open.

// HELLO WORLD

IS ANYONE THERE? //

She almost jumped out of her chair. What would send a pointless message like through the system, as a malfunction report? She hastily closed the file, erasing all records of the creepy message, leaving it be for now. She looked to the first report. It listed all sorts of damage to both the external casing and the internal servomotors, electronics and nuclear battery system. It had been sent about 19 hours prior to the second, mysterious message. Perturbed, she left the two oddities and continued her work, thinking back to them at every turn. Hours passed as she worked her way through the exhaustive list, as the imitation sunlight from her windows glowed a rich orange, and slowly began to fade. The clock on her screen showed 21:06. I was getting late. She dimmed the screen, wandering through back to her bed. She needed a long sleep after that rave last night. Some minutes later another nameless message arrived among the slow trickle of reports that filtered through to her computer.

// NO REPLY, OH WELL.

IF YOU CAN'T,

THERE'S A NUMBER: 003601-048679, WITH “ICS ADDRESS” NEXT TO IT

MAYBE THAT HELPS? //

<=>

Enei screwed the plates back onto the servitor, and wheeled it into the storage space. He was taking a massive risk keeping it in his hab, let alone hooking it up to his bootleg CPU system, and broadcasting through one of it's closed comms channels. If any security servitors found it or any of his kit here, the consequences didn't bear thinking about. In the brutality of these mines, it probably involved being nailed to something and left to rot. At least he had something to show the others. One small step closer to the truth about their robotic overlords.

Tales of the older miners told of how throughout all of their history, they had been enslaved by the robots, made to work for minerals in the depths of the stone. They were bred in vats, created from cloned stem-cells, given names and stamped with serial numbers and ID codes on the back of their skull, and distributed as infants to the labour colonies, all at the behest of the overlords. Each colony spread tunnels far and wide, searching for one particular mineral group. He belonged to Coal.

Any resistance had always been met with the cold brutal efficiency of the machines. Dissidents did not last long. Yet never had there been any evidence of a puppet master, a being in control. The dominance seemed to stem from the robots' very programming. Still, he aimed to crack the mystery. Never before had they probed the memory banks and processes of the servitors. Simply making a basic CPU machine to readout the data had been a project that had lasted decades, and it was under his efforts that it had reached fruition.

He had been an expert in technology almost since his creation day, and through all his childhood he had surpassed everyone in all matters of machines. Those early years were backbreaking, as they were for all. Ten years of hard labour learning the way of the mines the hard way from just a handful of years old to post-adolescence turned all those who reached the end into resourceful men, skilled with the drill, the pick, the laser cutter and all the subtle ways of the rocks that made up the tunnels of their home.

After that he'd been taken in by the old techmaster, a wizened old man called Lenzman, appointed by the men to look over their tools, fix their problems and most importantly, be the authority on their servitor overlords. It was no surprise that after spending years learning the ways of the machine with him, he was made Lenzman's successor after his death. He had succeeded where all before him had failed however. No one before had managed to send data beyond the mines, nor hack the code of the machines, nor even set up a working CPU system with a monitor and a proper hardware memory storage system.

But now, after all his efforts and trials, he was at the will of fate, sending his message into the unknown.

<=>

Gamma Beam padded through her local geodesic, Dome 27, one of the nicer huge glass domes that covered the top of the station like gems encrusted into a shell. She was lucky to live by it, just walking in the vibrant groves of greenery that covered it filled her heart with joy at the open space, letting Pinnae like her fly freely among the branches and leaves of the self-contained jungle.

Passing the small shops and stalls that were dotted around it, she picked up food and sundries, everything she usually needed for the week, taking in the dome's marvelous natural splendor. 27 was the right mix for her. Being primarily a rainforest-biome based dome, it didn't have the imposing steel and glass retail buildings of the upper-class prairie domes, nor the overabundance of bars that filled the tropical biome domes, and most importantly, not the bleak, spartan nature of the pine forest domes. Even better, the sheer amount of plant matter in here meant the air just tasted fresher, more moist, more pure. It invigourated her.

Work could wait till later. She wasn't too inundated with reports and documents to puzzle through. Being a Pinnae, the simple openness of the space filled her with joy. Unfurling her wings, stretching and flexing them after a few days of disuse, she leapt into the sky, propelling the ground away from her. The rush of cool, clean air past her was exhilarating, twisting through her mane and tail, skating over her feathers, caressing and ruffling her coat. It felt so... right. Past towering trees, through branches, under vines she soared, watching the vibrant little world from above. Below, ponies went about their everyday business, some flew around further down, flitting from place to place. As she drifted up, various Pinnae tending th plant life came and went, paying her no attention. Turning, she raced up, bursting through the canopy.

A different world met her eyes. Nopony else was up here. The swaying green heads of the trees jostled for space, yet above them was their anathema. The huge, geometric structure of the dome loomed above her, a vast lattice of cold steel and titanium. It dwarfed her, each of the criss-crossing beams were at least five meters thick, and six layers of tessalating triangles of increasing size supported the glass panes of the dome. Through those immense panes, the outside world was visible. Above her, the sky was grey and featureless, murky and cold, uniform and unforgiving. A light drizzle pattered on glass, sliding down it in thin sheets.

The stark difference between the natural, self contained world and it's container felt like a metaphor for life in the station. On the surface, life was harmonious and peaceful, everyone was treated fairly. But underneath, it felt off-kilter, slightly wrong at a fundamental level. You didn't do anything out of the ordinary, or, if you did, you didn't broadcast it. There was a nagging feeling that you were being monitored. You didn't hear about miscreants or anarchists. They just simply seemed to fade out of sight over time. The whole of society seemed to be spotless, as if all its colours, all it's chaotic disharmonious happiness had been coated in white painted, and forgotten. Life just felt... sanitized.

She flew back down, suddenly serious. Ponies weren't meant to go up there.

<=>

When she arrived back at her apartment, she dumped her stuff and logged on. 34 new files had come through that needed sorting. She planted her backside on the chair and opened the first one. A faulty radio transceiver, how enthralling...

Three hours later, she'd had enough. She was stuck. One of the reports listed a minor electrical fault in in the hydraulic systems of the machine, yet as she followed the malfunction through, it kept leading her back in circles, to the initial fault. There was nowhere visible in her digital 3D schematics program that it could have come from. After much debating and procrastination, she logged it unknown.

She nearly leapt out of her chair as the next one popped up. It was another message, bemoaning the lack of reply, giving her the ICS address for whatever it was the thing was broadcasting from. The model designation number, 003601, was for the same type of robot as the previous message came from. She began to sweat. The individual code matched as well. It was obvious that something was trying hard to get in contact with her.

The chilling thing was that it wasn't even too difficult to send a message back, the ICS
address system was used by all automated servitors, even the classified ones she worked on. She'd studied how it worked in her second year of her CCEE (Combined Computing and Electronic Engineering) Course. She knew how to code the basic communication protocols, she just needed an antennae to broadcast with. Reaching for her box of makeshift electronic bits, she paused. The robot was a classified mining robot, and was obviously located in the mines. She wouldn't be able to rig up anything here to penetrate several kilometers of steel, seawater and solid rock. She would have to piggyback on something.

Leaving her dangerous thoughts to one side, she resumed her work with a sigh.

<=>

Two messages sent. Still no reply. Even so, things were far from bad. Something might come through, but there was a more pressing matter than that coming towards him. Each of the nine mining colonies had a techmaster, each skilled in different areas, all servicing the needs of the men in their colony. Traveling in between the colonies was difficult, especially since every worker had a biometric tag to show their location. Still, a messenger had arrived through abandoned tunnels, with a message purely for him. A convocation was to happen in the coming weeks, a meeting of all the techmasters. They would all share their progress and developments. The last one had been when Lenzman was alive, decades ago.

Apprehension washed over him though. Even with the risky process of hiding his biometric signature, he had his entire hab's worth of kit to transport; all the complicated kit required to work his CPU unit, and the stolen servitor carcass. Even without all the bits, it would take days to arrive at the meeting place. Lots of planning was needed....