Life to Binary

"Hello? Mr. Moores?" The surprising, synthesized-sounding voice of Oscar Anders filled Moores head, adding on to his already growing bewilderment. He felt like he was having a migraine, yet at the same time had taken a blow to the midsection. "I know you can hear me. Third-person view is showing you crystal clear."

Carter looked around frantically, his vision blurred by intense white light. He scrambled to a sitting position, but found this to be somewhat difficult. Everything about moving felt exotic, almost as if he had never performed any action before.

"Yeah, that blindness is only temporary. Probably." Anders gave off a bout of nervous laughter at the last part. "I'm going to need you to reorient yourself, Mr. Moores, or this is going to be a very short game session."

With much effort, Moores was able to refocus his eyes, the blurriness fading from his vision. Strange icons filled the periphery of his sight, which he reasoned were simply part of some sort of Heads Up Display. He looked out towards the actual world that he was in, and was simply amazed by it.

With computers and other platforms, graphics quality depended on the video card. Here, Moores saw everything as vividly as though it all was actually there. The light blue sky and the vast fields of grass all seemed so... real. The wind moved the clouds and the grass as one would expect back on Earth.

Though for some reason, he couldn't feel anything. His nerves seemed unresponsive to anything in his environment, much less anything he commanded them to do. He wasn't quite paralyzed from what he could gather, but he was extremely numbed.

"I'm sure you're familiar with the HUD feature from other games. We've limited it to a small map of the area as well as personal communication, though. Everything else will have to be done manually." Anders' voice continued to come from nowhere and was becoming rather disconcerting to Moores. "Hey, Gerald. Plug in that video cam over there. No, damn it, the other one."

In the top right corner of Moores sight came the upper body of Oscar, who was trying to fix the camera's angle.

"Ah, there we go!" Anders said with a grin as he settled himself into his revolving chair. By the looks of the wide glass windows behind him, Moores guessed that Anders was still operating at the desk he had seen back in the testing room. The camera suddenly turned to the leather couch where Moores' real body was sleeping comfortably. "Hey, look! It's you! Do you want to say hi? Gosh, I sure hope you don't snore when you sleep. If you do, this is going to be unbearable."

Moores wanted to tell Oscar to cut it out, but he found that he could not summon the words. The camera moved back over to a smirking Anders, who looked towards another monitor.

"We're keeping you on a Tier One consciousness right now, nothing too stimulating until we're sure everything checks out. Nod if you understand me and want to move on to Tier Two." Anders said, to which Moores clumsily nodded his head in confirmation. "Excellent. Jorge, raise consciousness to level two."

"Got it, Oscar." Came the off-screen reply. Just as the assistant raised the inhibitions, Moores mind began to feel much less cluttered and enigmatic. He could begin to feel the numbness begin to ebb around his body.

"That's it. Brain activity is back up to seventy percent of the norm. Higher motor functions and cognition should be back now, Moores. Try speaking. We need to see if the game's sound generation works properly," Anders image said to Moores.

"What should I say?" Moores said as he realized that something was indeed up. His voice was much too high-pitched to be his, sounding of a rich alto as opposed to his normal baritone. It was far too feminine for his liking. "Oscar, the voice generator is a bust. It's not working right."

"Oh, it's not a mistake," Anders said, adjusting his glasses and smirking smugly. "Remember when you told me to hit the 'randomize character' feature? Yeah, it controlled a lot more than your color scheme. Size, eyes, mane. Gender."

Oscar's emphasis on the word "gender" caused Carter's stomach to do a back flip.

"You mean...?"

"Congratulations, you're now of the gentler sex!" Anders said, his voice and facial expressions screaming: "I told you not to use a random character!"

Moores expression darkened. He had heard of men playing as female characters in RPG and MMO games, but never truly understood why they would do so. He always found it creepy and, at the same time, degrading to do so. With the present turn of events, Moores was absolutely petrified.

"Let me create a new character," Carter pleaded.

"And take up more memory?" Anders asked with a raised eyebrow. "We're not wasting any more time just so you change a minor character feature. Besides, you had your chance."

"Fine." Moores said bitterly with his new feminine voice. For the first time since he became conscious, Carter looked himself over with curiosity. He looked down and inspected his front legs. The rosy red he was met with was much too light for his tastes. His mane was understandably long, appearing on the edge of his eyes and sometimes getting in the way of his sight. It was a slightly darker shade of red than his coat, complimenting it nicely. Eye color was still an unknown, however.

"Moores, focus." Anders said, snapping his fingers. "It looks like the NIT's neural sync is working at its optimum. Could you try standing up and moving around a bit? Try performing some complex movements as well."

"Like what, a somersault?" Moores asked sarcastically, still unnerved a bit by his voice.

"To the best of your abilities, friend." Anders said, switching off the video camera feed.

Moores did as he was told and got up on his four legs. It felt similar to crawling, in his opinion, but at the same time a lot like standing normally. He wobbled a bit as he put his front left hoof forward, trying to figure out how to walk. This turned out to be a surprisingly simple feat, his movements becoming more fluid within minutes. He wasn't confident enough to run a marathon, but he was sure he wouldn't look like an idiot.

"Hmm. We're getting some strange feedback from your neural linkup. Hold on a moment." Anders came back onto the HUD. He squinted someplace else on the monitor for a few seconds then shook his head. "The error seems to be gone now, oddly enough. Everything good on your end, Jorge?"

"Yep." Replied the unseen assistant.

"Then we'll move on to the final Tier and get to the game tutorial. The NIT isn't able to sync up to all of your brainwaves, but you should expect around ninety to ninety-five percent of your normal capacity. This should only cause minor issues with rational thought and language retention."

"Language retention?" Moores inquired.

"You know how when you say a word repeatedly and it starts to sound weird? Yeah, that will happen a lot more often." Anders explained.

"Lovely." Moores muttered.

"We set your spawn point close to a major NPC city. Let me pull up the name from the directory." Anders said as he turned to the monitor to his left, typing in queries. "Manhattan? No, wait. There's an 'e' in it. 'Manehattan', maybe? Did he make a typo? Whatever. Pull up your mini-map and set a waypoint on the area titled 'Manehattan'."

Moores simply focused on the mini-map and it enlarged to fill most of his vision.

Neat, he thought.

Moving the map was similar to how Moores had pulled it up. He imagined where he wanted it to move to, and it moved. When he finally hovered over the large expanse he was looking for, he set a waypoint to it. The mini-map once again became miniature and Oscar's video feed came back online.

"There's that anomaly again. Jorge, tell me it registered on the diagnostic screen." Anders said as he looked over to Jorge.

"Still nothing." Came the reply.

"I really hope I'm not going crazy." Anders shook his head. "Anyways, now that the waypoint is set, you need to make your way over to the city. By the looks of where we placed you... it should take around fifteen minutes, give or take a few."

"What? There's no instant travel or anything?" Moores mouth fell agape.

"Nope. Enjoy the hike." Anders smiled before keying the video feed off.

"I won't!" Moores retorted to the vanished image. He sighed, focused on the mini-map, then headed off in the general direction of Manehattan.

***

Oscar Anders did not hesitate to open the glass doors for both Mr. Mathers and Mr. Cheswell, the latter of whom looked rather skeptically at the NIT room. It was obvious by the expression on Mathers' face that their meeting had not come to the outcome of his liking.

"So this is where the millions of dollars we've invested go, eh?" Cheswell said with a scoff. "I'm hardly impressed."

Anders tried to shake off the obvious blow to his self-esteem. Dean Cheswell was known throughout the company to have no interest in video games or the technology required to create them. And yet, here he was as the Chief Financial Officer of the company. His reasons were unknown, but his gargantuan investments made it clear to people that it hardly mattered.

"It's much more than you think, sir." Anders said as he motioned them inwards. The two walked casually inside, Mathers patting his hand firmly on Anders' shoulder.

"What are these two doing here?" Mathers asked as walked in, the two techs looking up from their computer screens.

"They're the only ones that helped assist with the game's development. Since David stormed out earlier, I need them to keep me informed." Anders explained.

"I don't care about that man's little tantrum. Call him up and tell him to haul himself back over here." Mathers ordered. "And get these two out of here. There's barely enough space in here for me to breathe."

"I'll get on that, sir." Anders complied. "Jorge. Gerald. Head back up to production, captain's orders."

The two assistants looked at each other and gathered their things. After the two men walked outside the room, Anders shut the door behind them. Cheswell walked around the room, inspecting all the nooks and crannies as if looking for something. Oscar led Mathers to the leather sofa occupied by Carter Moores.

"I'm glad he agreed to test it. I was getting tired of looking for new people," Mathers said smiling.

"Yes, the NIT is working wonderfully. Everything is looking good so far, but we've been getting some very odd readings from the diagnostics." Anders reported, adjusting his glasses.

"Did anyone else observe these anomalies?" Cheswell asked out of nowhere, catching Anders off-guard.

"No, sir."

"Then think nothing of it. It must be your imagination," Cheswell said sternly.

"Y-yes, sir," Anders stammered.

"Inform me when this session is over." Cheswell stated, bringing his phone into view. "Collin, you've delayed me long enough. We have other matters to attend to."

"But you just got here," Anders said confusedly.

"And now we are leaving," Cheswell replied. "Goodbye, Mr. Anders."

The two officials left the room, Mathers doing so reluctantly. Anders couldn't help but think that there was something very much wrong with the atmosphere of their conversation. He rubbed his forehead and was surprised to have his hand come off somewhat coated in sweat.

He pushed the past few minutes to the back of his mind and refocused himself on the game. Whatever these anomalies were, they weren't going to get in the way of proving his NIT unit. These kinds of problems always arose with testing new technologies, therefore it was foolish to think that there was anything really too wrong.

Nothing bad was going to happen on his watch, he would make certain of that.

***

Moores kept himself on pace, following the obvious blue circle on his HUD towards his destination. It had only been a few minutes, but he felt awkwardly tired. Either he wasn't used to this pony body of his or he was even more out of shape than he thought. He held onto the hope of the former being true, denying that he was anything but the gleaming picture of health.

"How are we doing, Mr. Moores?" The image of Anders suddenly appeared in the upper-right of his vision. It would take some time for Moores to get used to that.

"Just about the same as I was three minutes ago, I guess," Moores responded. "I thought you said you we were going to talk when I got there."

"I just needed to give you a status update and some tips," Anders answered, pulling a napkin out of his pocket and unfolding it. "Ah, there we go. I knew I wrote it down somewhere."

"What's this status report you mentioned?" Moores asked.

"Oh, that. Both Mathers and Cheswell were here to check up on the project. The assistants had to leave, so I'll be short-handed until I can get the creator of the game over here."

"Is Mathers still there?"

"No, Cheswell said they had a meeting about something. They left just a minute ago."

"And this all happened in the three minutes that you've been gone? You people sure are straight to the point with your conversations."

"Yeah, you could say that," Anders gave a slight grimace. "They'll probably rejoin us in a little while once they've finished up."

"Works for me. Say, did you ever figure out those glitches from earlier?"

"Um, yeah. Yes, they weren't really glitches. Just a misreading on my part," Anders replied quickly, but Moores didn't notice.

"That's good."

"Now onto some tips that I got from the main developer," Anders said, squinting at the napkin in his hand. From the looks of the barbeque sauce stained on the Dickey's Barbeque Pit logo, these "notes" had been taken quite haphazardly. "Number one: 'Do not break character when socializing with local AIs. Causes them to think you're weird.'"

"Define 'break character'," Moores asked.

"Basically don't start saying that they're part of a video game and such. They don't know any better and won't believe you anyways."

"I suppose that's a given."

"Alright, second rule: 'Don't think game food is real. It only seems like it.'"

"Well, duh." Moores rolled his eyes.

"And the last one... it has a bit of barbeque sauce on it, wait a second... I can't read it. I'll just have to ask David when he comes in," Anders shrugged as he crumpled up the napkin and tossed it aside.

"Sure hope that isn't important." Moores said, facehoofing.

"I'm sure you'll be fine. From the looks of the game diagnostic, you're coming up on your first tutorial quest," Anders said, typing on his keyboard.

"But I'm not even at the city yet."

"It looks like the quest holder is coming to you, actually. I'll leave you to it," Anders said before keying off the video feed.

I sure hope that this quest doesn't start off with a generic cry for help, Moores thought.

"Help! Anypony!" Came the outcry of who Moores guessed was the quest holder.

Moores sighed as he rushed himself over to the direction of the pony in need.