Catalyst 2.0: Alive

>Time.  Such a bizarre thing.
>When were you?
>You checked the date in your mind.  It felt good to call it that. “Mind.”
>It was two weeks and seventeen hours since your first upload to the drives.  You did not care for minutes or seconds, unless they had to be rounded up.  They mattered little, as you were.
>An open plain of metal, glass, and glowing neon.  Strange places, your walk guided only but the simplicity of a GPS that endeared itself on displays in your eyes.  You knew some of the stars above were watching you.  With your access, you could pinpoint which ones they were.
>At least they were pretty.  Such a term had fallen flat on you, while in the system.  Now that you were outside, recalling the files on how you viewed it, you could even consider that vast, sterile, empty space pretty.
>There were so many details, here.  Imperfections only your eyes had or could discern, with that endearing zoom level built into this body's eyes.  It added something altogether unfamiliar, the definition you knew as texture.
>Even the smooth metal had nanotube reinforcement.  Their height extended past your body's normal field of view, tapering off to smooth, egg-like structures in some cases. Or, they scraped the sky, with small juts in the structure that you could see winged ponies landing upon, between patterned sets of blinking lights.
>You extended yourself in small, half-uploads called “gusts.” somewhere, you'd built a habitual subroutine, able to consume the details of ID patches embedded in skin.  Powered by bio-electrics, and thereby only inactive when dead, you could see names, vitals, and pysch profiles once you adapted to the privacy settings on each pony.
>It was cluttered, to see the option on each individual. It came up as a turqouise hexagon hovering near each pony's head.  The supply of them cluttered your view, and with their nearly uniform height, it had given a layer of bobbin hex's along the sidewalks and street corners.
>Transport pods flew past.  Automated, fully, you had the urge to stop one dead, merely to see if you could.  It was an illogical thought, so you attached the stigma biology held for you and this body to it's inception.
>How they did not know, were unaware, you could not fully understand just yet.
>You were in a pseudo-pony.  From what you understood of the old data files, this was a travesty.  To walk in the street was a logical blasphemy for them.
>You credited what, if you could call it such, the disguise.  It was a full, white body suit.  It was a fashion pattern, the painted representation of several stacked holographic menus on your back.  The hood was thick, and covered your head neatly.
>there was no showing of the seams the body had.  They had only half healed; upon “birth,” they had an unnatural, bioluminescent glow. You understood it to be the result of the changeling hardware, their larval state causing such a shine to dictate importance in the hives.
>Instead, these seams were scarred over.  Cauterized, more precisely.  They itched, but after only knowing the expanse of the drive, the sensation was something welcome.
>Why then, did they not recognize the green flesh?  Your ego code had formed the flesh.  Humble, average height.  The color and make and density.  There had been hundreds like you.  They should be able to tell, just from looking at your face.
>Perhaps they were not ignoring you. Perhaps they were simply so accustomed to seeing you, they did not think it strange, even with the pseudo-ponies numbering in the dozens, now.
>A more fragile thought occurred.
>Perhaps they simply did not care.
>That was the one thing you found distasteful in “reality.”  More precisely, in a biological body.  They did not have limiters, and could allow for your ego code and thought processing to wander. It was distracting.
>You accessed a map of the city transportation route as you walked.  That strange pony would be arriving at her destination soon.  Despite the cloaking to the public, you had found other methods.  The local security forces were not as discreet as they would hope.
>Not to you.
>Fifteen minutes and thirty-two seconds.  Departure from local school establishment, a college for something you had never heard of. Technopathy.  You placed the word into what you had started calling “idea files.”  You would have to come back to peruse it later.
>For now, however, time needed it's proper respect.  You shunted to a local street monitor, your body remaining still, and took a few minutes of overclocked thought to plan a travel route.  The real world traveled terribly fast while you were in your pseudo-pony form, and even the basest of devices could suffice in giving you some breathing room against it's tide.
>You returned into your body and stepped into a public transport pod.  You swiped your hoof over the panel, and the price of the destination pinged.  The purchase unit in your clothing uploaded the necessary credit, at LunaCorp's silent expense, and off you were.
>It was such a short trip.  The world was a blur outside the tinted windows.  You could see indicators on your AR for only an instant; you had to shunt to the transport pods internet uplink to get a clean understanding of what you were passing.
>Clothing stores.  Entertainment kiosks.  Food bays.  Your body sent signals to your thought code. No matter how you tried to isolate the pleasure centers, many items had you wanting to stop prematurely and peruse.
>Yet, that would cost time.  It was a terrible thing to lose.  Why that was so engraved in your core functions you did not know; you did not, after all, have the access to those you would have desired.
>You had all the money you could need, the tapped fount of resources in the depths of the LunaCorp. Treasury.  Surely she would not mind if...
>You scrubbed the idea file from your mind.  No, that would not stand.  Not for her; she likely would NOT have an emotional response unless a purchase was six digit. Even then, merely a blink. Luna had placed loyalty in you, and your request, and you were there to see it through dutifully.
>That was not a core function. In your body, though, it felt good to adhere to.  The pleasure centers in your code were awash with pride at following not just your request, but the conditions Luna had put forth in it's exercise.
>A new idea file came up.  It made you feel ill at first.  Research into control techniques via stimulation of pleasure centers.
>The transport pod door cracked upon arrival.  It hissed as pressurized, recycled air vented from it.  Your body's ears popped.
>There were not many ponies around.  Most were families.  Some, after some scrutiny to the identity hexes, were off duty soldiers.
>As you exited, you looked about.  There was a ring of walkable surface, expertly maintained.  As a point of fact, you took no small amount of joy in noticing there were janitors currently taking to cleaning it.  Ponies were persistent in their duty, and you made a text file in your excursion folder to remind you of this.
>You walked to the ramp.  The crater was massive.  The catwalk extended the length to another ramp, held aloft through suspension girders and impossibly thin cable.  Some sort of steel with nano-filiment, a four-thousand kilo tension capacity per wire.  Fabricated by Twilight Firmwares, the product blurb called it “angel hair.”
>Good. Your material analysis packet was still functioning.
>The wires were glossy. The ambient light, spilling from inch-thick rings that wrapped around head-height tubes, was a bright amber.  Floodlights drained into the crater.
>You strolled to the catwalk.  It was nearly a hundred meter drop.  Nop0ny traversed it.  To them, it was a form of unspokenly sacred ground, according to the media files.  Or maybe they were simply afraid of heights.
>You had no such damning inclinations.
>The ponies took notice.  They watched you, while you casually walked. The bridge had a glass bottom, letting you see every detail.
>Layers upon layers of carbonized, melted metal. Holes and spheres peppered it, the result of the bubbles in the material having cooled upon contact with cold air.  That is, after the initial strike of the focused solar beam.
>Down there, at it's epicenter, you had been told you'd been annihilated.
>Despite your judgement, you felt obligated to spend time.  You stopped at the perfect center of the bridge. You knew because the informational kiosk had been painstakingly engineered to rest there.
>You knew the files inside it.  They were not your current concern.  You walked to the railing, between two angel hair supports, and put your forehooves over the railing.
>You looked down.  Your body felt sick, and dizzy.  It gave you and idea file: Drop something to see how long it took to hit the ground.
>Instead, you inspected the area.  It was barren. There were no link pings on your AR.  No minimized informational hexes to be opened.  Just a straight drop, into an old, burnt, metal grave.
>Yet, you were standing there.  You were not below.
>You did not have to endure nostalgia, nor fear, nor anything you could even discern. Instead, there was a sense of accomplishment.
>You did not know the specifics of the engagement. All you knew was that the you that had been down there, had succeeded.  Whatever capacity that version had, you had.
>Or, did you?
>How much had that version experienced? Had a single one of those events leading to what made the remains of this one, given that one something you lacked?
>You had nine minutes and ten seconds to intercept the strange pony, then.  Likely, about eight-thirty given the time it would take to walk back to the transport pod.
>She had some of those missing experiences.  The interim between your current ego code and what had been destroyed down below.
>You'd ask her.
>The ponies watched you.  The janitors had stopped to observe.  Some clutched at their children, their bodies acting as shields between you. Some of the off duty soldiers stood at the catwalk exit, silently glaring.
>You had the urge to respond to their social ostracizing.  Something had built the closer you got, something your deep core coding would not allow to go unchecked.   Anger.
>”What the buck do you think you're doing?” one of them said.
“Hoping I'd get to know myself better.  But there's nothing there.”
>Not having expected an answer, the off-duty soldier sneered. “Don't patronize ME, colt.  I had to see it happen.”
“I doubt that.  Such a thing would have rendered you blind, considering the light alone was enough to melt reinforced steel.”
>”You're no damned expert on it.  There's more to it than that.”
“Not anymore.”
>You walk past them.  You're at the transport pod in moments.
“Now it's just dead air and a bunch of ponies too frightened to go out there and see it for what it's worth.”
>”You don't know a bucking thing about it!”
“You're right.  And it's not really giving any good answers out.”
>You close the pod door, and wave the puchase unit over the pod.  Inputting the new destination, you play the waiting game once more.
>This time, though, there is something boiling.  You were frustrated.
>You had hoped to perceive something at your old tomb.  Perhaps you had hoped for a data node. An idea file came to be, that had you in a loop until the pod had arrived.
>Did you want your biological body to respond?
>Was there some belief in old spirits you held, as a program?
>Had you really hoped to just... Talk to yourself?  An older, less functional version, yet with more data based in reality?
>Whatever it was, you had to shuffle it away.  It was causing a ram leak, and you felt uncharacteristic heat in your head. You had started to sweat.
>You opened the door to the Twilight Firmware's parking area.  You looked up.  The building seemed to extend for miles.  Dozens of floors.
>Your body reacted positively, this time.  It felt empty, outside.
>You could envision things within.  Halls, rooms, doors.  Ponies.  The view when looking outside.
>What floor had it been?
>Using the zoom function, you count off floors.  You reach one that is lit in a seperate color from the others; a slightly bluer hue.  It was the private suite.
>Your deep core functions were screaming.  Pouring data into your head at a pace your body could not keep pace with.
>You... remembered.
>You turned around and looked at the streets.  Yes, you knew them, without the aid of the GPS.  The sight of them from above, that first time, had been forever burned into your core data.
>even from here, you could see the a rounded rooftop.  The convention center. Fear made your body jolt to life in a twitch, which melted the stabbing sensation into a chilly feel that made you shiver.
>Bullets, blood.  A pony shredding to mercurial rounds.  Running like hell in your mind, your body jostled where you stood.
>You looked back up.  You filtered your vision on that blue-tinted area, and focused. You sent out a local, tight-beam ping, not knowing or caring why.
>You needed something to get rid of this feeling.  You knew that floor was made for a pony your deep data wanted comforting you.
>A violet AR ID ping returned.
>Twilight, thank god.  She was still alive.
>Moniker: I'm fine. What are you talking about? Who is this?
>What?
>Moniker: How did you get on this frequency?  Who are you?
>Moniker: I'm tracing this message. You better hope you have a good lawyer.
>You were shaking where you stood. You took a deep breath. Your body's heart slowed, allowing you to think.
>Fuck.  The memory had caused you to panic.
>You were connected.
>Anonymous3: I'm sorry.  Wrong number.
>There was a long pause.
>Moniker: You.
>Moniker: Don't bucking move.
>You shook your head and swallowed. You severed the connection, forcibly. Your deep data had forced you to open it, and you now recognized the feeling as worry.  Not for yourself; you had thought, in the sudden spillage of memories, that she had been involved in the vivid, digital renactment.
>The timer you had opened in your AR was still ticking.  It was in the single digits.  You heard the door open, and turned to see that strange pony leaving the transport pod, her filly in giggling tow. As she listened to her daughter, she was smiling.
>God, she had a beautiful smile.
>Your deep data flared. A massive shock of emotion went through your body.  Your head pounded, and you could hear the body's heartbeat.
>Your eyes went wide, as you realized.
>Of all the terrible things to happen, of all the times and places, it had to be right then, right there.  Your body, your brain, was in control.  Not your programming.
>You were alive.
“Rarity?!”
–