Catalyst Ch 13: Program

>She pries out the tube.
>You want to scream. But they told you that you couldn't.
>They had applied something that chilled you around the hem of the wound. You looked at it as they had done so, holding your pained flesh still. The black gel seemed to ooze past the open skin of it's own accord.
>A ghostly feel, as if you weren't there, you watched your own body recoil against it's removal.
>”Almost... There!”
>The nurses partner jams a much thicker, hollow tube into the wound.  The black goo wiggles against it, crawling up around it, and you hear the tube hiss.
>You feel liquid in your lung.  Blood? No. Far too thick.  And it was moving.
>It skitters back as you see her remove the tube. The black ooze bubbles and boils without heat, the wound sucking closed and looking like bare, dark flesh.
>”Wait just a few more seconds... And, inhale.”
>You do as your told.  Far from being excruciating, which was what you'd gotten used to, it feels almost... natural.  Almost, if it weren't so numb at where the hole had just been.
>You hear it sizzle.  Right before your eyes, it changes color. It brightens from black to a paler version of your own flesh under the hair.
>You test your voice.  It sounds a little rediculous to do so, but you don't care. You can talk again.
“What IS that stuff?”
>”Panacea.” She laughs a little. “The medical jargon is a little complicated, but... Well, lets just say it's you now.”

>You poke at it. It's still a little sore and wet, akin to a scab. Moments before, it had been an open, deep wound, straight to your inner lung.
>You were so fascinated you barely noticed the second injection of it, at the injury to your side.  Within minutes, the pain in either spot is gone.
>It was a shame that the sensation had been pumping adrenaline through you.  You almost immediately crash under the combination of painkillers and relief, your sweat feeling cold.
>The doctor sighs. “That shouldn't have worked. Document the results, I need to have a talk with the buyer.”
>You blink and look around, light headed and loopy.  You inhale sharply, and hold it.
>Yup. Still sore. But not “blue wizard needs food badly” sore.
>They apply some kind of odd bandage to it.  A hexagonal patch.  It sticks to you instantly, and you hear another sizzle. Like an insect beneath the skin, it seems to wriggle before it relaxes inside you, evening out with the curve of your flesh.
>The nurse grabs at it. She pulls.
>Even though she's touching the patch itself, you feel the pinch.
>”Perfect adherence.”
>the doctor grunts.
>Something about their demeanor screamed disgust.  They didn't seem to like having used this stuff on you. Or, was it because it was working so well?
>Why would that even matter?
>sure, they had to prioritize this miracle goo. Triage and all, you understood, if from a distance.
>But it was supposed to do what it just did.
>Right?
--
>You had been up and about in hours, barely an itch to your scars.  Rarity had visited, and was obviously delighted.  But, her demeanor spoke more than her voice.
>When you confronted her, as soft as you could, she didn't look in you the face.
>”It's better if Twilight explains, dear.”
>So you made your way solemnly, with Shining Armor and Mjolna placing you between them in the hall. Diligent as always, they hadn't stepped away an instant.
>Though, through the halls, they didn't speak.
>Not as you passed by the Club, music already booming back out from it's crowded entry.  The zero-g room was sealed off, construction warnings flaring along your AR as you looked at it.
>Guards of the Celestia Conglomerate had taken the place of LunaCorp. Grunts. They wore some sort of headphones, something you assumed protective.  Two extras stood at what you knew to be the entrance to the DJ's abode.
>Your guards still didn't speak. They didn't even acknowledge what had happened inside.
>A dreamy, empty walk, when you arrived, Rarity seemed the only one happy to see you.
>Then the story began.
>Unfolding like some atrocious war crime on tape, you were shown replays.  You didn't quite comprehend them, being rather watered down and computerized.
>But the security footage Twilight had managed to get. That got the point across.
>During the illness provided by high-definition violence, she paused at certain intervals.
>”This. This here.”
>She gestured to when a Twilight Firmware scientist had entered the lab. Some kind of massive server, a monolithic, smooth metal tower, the pony was paused fiddling with the access point.
>”See the timing?”
>You make a note of it, seeing nothing particularly peculiar.
>”Now, here is a medical record of the moment the program was uploaded.”
>You look over it. It belongs to you.
>”You were brain dead.” She says, simply.  “Then the seizures started, alternating between the lack of activity.”
“I... I don't understand, Twilight.”
>Rarity looks to the side.  “You should be dead, darling.  Ten times over.  Your mind simply stopped functioning several times.”
>”Rarity told me everything you said.  About the nightmare.”
“I... Yes.  So?”
>”The upload. It coincides with the... encounter, in your dream.” She sighs. “The way it happened, the timing... It has all the markings of a remote link to that server.  Just... with *you* instead of an external user.”
>Rarity retorted. “But it doesn't make sense, Twilight. He's alive.”  She took a place besides you.
“She's right, Twilight.  Even if I did, I wouldn't know how to move, or... Do anything, really.  Breathe, even.”
>”You wouldn't need to.” She said. “There wouldn't be a body to do so... I'm thinking the physical trauma did something to you.  Killed you.  But you just...” She shook her head.
>”Your soul was separated. You met something else in the core while you were connected.  It scared you more than the pain did, so you... Well, forced yourself back into your body.”
>You put a hoof to your head.  Your brain was hurting.
>”The luck of the entire thing is astounding, if it's true.  Remember what happened with the door back in the convention center?”
“Do you expect me to forget that?”
>”No, I'm using it as a reference point.  This is the same exact thing that happened.”
>Rarity had cuddled up to you again, an appreciative, if concerned look on her blue eyes.  She hadn't forgotten the convention, either.
>Twilight sighs again.  “I have to examine the core when we get back to the tower. Whatever happened, both you and that thing would have left a footprint. For now, I have to ask you to do something before we go.”
>You already don't like where this is going. You huddle up to Rarity a moment before replying.
“And what would that be?”
>”Please. Hear me out on this. And please, don't hate me.  We need to do this.” She looks at Rarity, whom regards her friend with a quirked brow.
>”I did far more digging than I should have in the past few days. More than even I like to admit. I stumbled across another pseudo-pony.  We need to ask her directly, and get some clarification on the experience.”
“So why don't you?”
>”She hates us.  Anything we ask she refuses, and it's her legal right to do so. But she said she'll talk to you.”
“What? I don't know any other ponies besides you.”
>”Yes, you do. She's on house arrest, down at the club.  Vinyl Scratch.”
>Rarity's lip curled. “Twilight, you can't possibly mean to-”
>You glare at Twilight.  Incapable of response, shocked and instantly angry, you simply shake your head.
>”I'm not asking you to like this.  But we need the data.  There aren't any pseudo-ponies with the same age she has, and we're incredibly lucky to have this opportunity.” She leans into her chair, absorbing the expressions around her without so much as a flicker of remorse.
>”She's an old model, far less advanced than you are. All she really has is a fake personality, reconstructed from video's during the Changeling Purge for distribution.”
>Rarity looked about, searching for expletives that simply didn't exist.
“Twilight, no. This isn't up for discussion. Not after what she did to me the first time.”
>”If you don't, we'll never know what tried to kill you in that data core.”
>You clench your teeth.
>”Or, how it managed to even try in the first place. Or how you even got there.” She can't look you in the eyes anymore, and spins on her chair to face the console.
>”Or how to stop it.”
>Rarity uses a hoof to plead with you. She shakes her head, blue eyes caught in supressed anger.
>You whisper to her.
“You'd rather it have another chance to kill me?”
>She responds with silence at first. Before you reply to Twilight, she pulls your face close and kisses you for the first time since escaping the hospital.
>”If you do ANYTHING with that whore, I'LL kill you. Understand?”
--
>The Conglomerate guards eyed you up curiously.  They waved you inside without much of a second thought, offering you ear protection.
>You shook your head, and simply told them.
“If you hear music playing in the apartment, go in and beat the bitch senseless.”
>You swore, one of them smiled.
>The place was dark. Darker than you remember.  The lights glittered on the ceiling, sharp against the dimly lit ceiling.
>Vinyl was here, a blank lounge with thumping music outside. Safe from the control signal within, or so it would seem.
>Outside, the ponies swayed on the dance floor. They drank, ate, and giggled with each other.
>You peered out of the corner of your eye. She was hard to spot in the low light, but the glint of her glasses gave her away.
>Then, she grinned that casual, horrible smile.
>Your rage at her instantly grew.
>Her text flowed onto your AR vision. You wondered if she'd ever even had a voice.
>Vinyl: I knew you'd show up.  Oh, this is too sweet.
“Then you know what I'm going to ask too right? Get to answering, bitch.”
>Vinyl: I know a little secret.  A LOUD secret.
>You merely squint your eyes.
”Do you have any idea how much I would enjoy strangling you right now?”
>Vinyl: Now why would you do a  thing like that?  Besides, my loud little secret is you.
”What?”
>Vinyl: I know what you are. And you're so, bucking, QUIET with them.
>Vinyl: Heck, they sent you because they don't even know, right?
>That smiling unicorn strutted to the glass, looking out over the musically lobotomized mass of ponies.
>She tilted her head.
>You wanted to do something. Anything, to hurt her.
>Vinyl: Maybe they don't. But you're here cause you don't either, right?
>Vinyl: but I do.
>One of those pretty, color-shifting eyes focused upon you from the side of her glasses.
>Vinyl: I didn't even know till I got a taste.
>She waited a moment, and licked her lips.
”You, bitch.”

>She sighed happily.  To her, apparently, a term of endearment.
>Vinyl: I never did like being soft.
“No shit.”
>Her horn starts to glow.
>There is a row of devices on the bedstand.  Your AR vision grows fuzzy over them, as if merely looking at them forces some kind of censorship upon them.
>She levitates one over to you, and your perception of it clears.
>She lets it hover near you, before you grudgingly take it.
>She takes another one of the little egg-like devices, inserting it by a prong into the jack on the back of her neck.  You'd had one too, but you never used the thing besides the AR training.
>She trots over to an object near the row of little black egg-drives. Some ellipse with buttons.
>Vinyl taps it.
>Into the room floods a horrible, screeching sound. It's loud, and makes you cringe. You have to cover your ears.
>Vinyl: You know, I love this song?  Octavia made it for me, a long time ago.
>It sounds like a bunch of squealing technojibberish. There seems no rhyme or reason, no focus or purpose.
“Song? Are you insane?”
>Vinyl: Plug in.
>You pause. You look at the device in your hoof, gritting your teeth at the noise.
>Vinyl: Plug in before it starts to set.
>The song begins to bring pain.  Your entire body tingles at first.
>Then it starts to form to pinpricks.
>Then, those pinpricks begin to burn.
>You feel like your blood is being sucked outward by some sort of terrible vacuum.
>Vinyl: PLUG. IN.
>You fumble with the unit at first. Every movement brings more pain, as if swimming in sandpaper. You insert it, finally, and it clicks.

>The pain gently lifts.
>You open your eyes to the outside world. Your eyelids seem slow, as if heavy or damp. The first thing you see is the dance floor, through that tinted glass.
>The falling confetti, splintering holographic streams into a spiderwebs of multi-color light that intersect. They look solid, and you thought they could shatter like ice.
>A pony is tossing up a drink cup, the liquid suspended in the air. Through it, you see the distorted image of everything behind it.
>Ponies jumping, their manes stiff in the air, every hair locked into place as if a masterpiece of a dollmaker representing wind with wire so fine it could have floated away at a breath.
>The entire scene seems suspended in time, and for that single moment, you feel a peace you only understood because of your familiarity with it.
>The silence. That time in the Data Core you spent.  Your anger is gone.  The sense of loss over Vinyl's and Octavia's sick control, the look on Rarity's face piercing your chest like some serrated pike. Poof.
>But there is no quiet.
>The shrieking noise has ceased.  Cleansed and perfect, you hear a symphony of haunting, twanging beauty.
>Pure, floating song, kissing your ears with such flowing grace that your body is utterly soothed the instant you perceive it.
>Vinyl: You see?
>You can't move, no matter how hard you try.
>Vinyl: We're more alike than you think.
>Vinyl: Not that anyone else really knows.
>You try to speak. Your body is stiff and immobile.
>Vinyl: I know you don't understand yet. I get that.
>Vinyl: But please, just listen to her music, and read.
>Great. This shit all over again.  Rarity was going to bury you in pieces.
>Vinyl: Your mind. It's something different.  You don't know it because you've always had it.
>Vinyl: I was the same way, when I was designed.  Modeled after some mare that died during the Purge.  It's creepy when you think about it, thinking you're supposed to have a mom.
>Vinyl: But you HAVE to know. You need to, if you want to make some noise.
>Quit talking in metaphors you crazy-
>Vinyl: Your thoughts. They can outpace your body. They can outpace the world every other pony sees. The world they know.
>Vinyl: But only if you know how. Only if you know why.
>Your eyes can move. You look onto the dance floor. Not even the streams of light had moved.
>Vinyl: You're plugged into an overclocker.  Your “mind” is running off it, now.
>Oh god.
>Vinyl: A mind shouldn't do that, should it? It shouldn't even be able to operate out of your skull right? Not without some chemical help and a little spiritualism.
>Don't you dare fucking say it.
>Vinyl: You can't store a soul on a data core, you know.
>You should have taken the chance to kill her before.
>Vinyl: Does a program know it's a program, if it's running on horrible hardware? Like a brain?
>You bitch.
>Vinyl: Do you even know what memories of yours are real?
>Vinyl: Or is it something they just programmed?
>The text pauses.
>She lets you listen to the music.  Despite knowing how corruptive she was, you had to admit.
>She had awe-inspiring taste in picking the right songs.
>Your eyes burn.  It feels like the beginning of tears.  You knew that were you in real time, what would really be happening.
>Vinyl: This.  Right now.  This literal INSTANT, you're finding out something that's real.
>Vinyl: Not for them.
>Twilight...
>Vinyl: Not for anyone else.
>Rarity...
>Vinyl: Just. You.
>Why didn't they tell you?
>Did they even realize just what they'd done?
>Did they even care?
>Vinyl: and colt, does it have it's drawbacks.
>Vinyl: you know what's worse than dying?
>Vinyl: Not having a memory.
>Vinyl: A brain is a terrible thing to ponies like us, you know?
>Vinyl: It only holds so much, while our processors keep on thinking, staying perfectly fresh in comparison.
>Vinyl: The more we start to learn, the more we feel and understand, the more room we have to make in what they call our minds.
>Vinyl: So it doesn't matter how good it was. How gorgeous or wonderful things are, or the talents and skills we pick up.  We forget it.
>Vinyl: through deletion or simple corruption, it doesn't matter how.
>Vinyl: It just... goes away. Because it needs to in order for us to keep thinking.
>You can't cling to do the dead, Applejack said.
>You can't cling, or else you don't have room for the new.
>Vinyl: So that's why I stay here. That's why I dance my nights away, helping them forget the bad things.
>Vinyl: It's comfortable, you know? Things don't change, so I don't know what I've forgotten and what I've learned.
>Vinyl: And that's the problem with our little digital eternity.
>Vinyl: I keep telling myself I've been alive a million years.  I keep telling myself, I've seen the birth of stars, I've seen civilizations grow and fade like light on water.
>Vinyl: I just don't remember it.
>Vinyl: that's why I like these little devices.  It lets me cherish time.
>Vinyl: Cherish an instant for what it's really worth to ponies like us.
>For the longest time, something had itched. A splinter in the back of your logical side since you woke up.
>And in being here, with her, you started to understand.
>You couldn't remember your hands. You could remember having them. But not ever using them.
>You couldn't remember much about that human life. Only some good times with the ponies. Only the moments prior to your death in an Equestrian bed.
>You knew there was so much more. But that thing in the personality core had taken so much.
>Had that darkness been intentional? To make you more complacent to them? Delete the bad parts, giving them a fun little shine?
>Given you a little part to play, so you'd be co-operative?
>Vinyl: They might be honest. But they don't understand.
>Vinyl: they can't. They're stuck in their slow lives.
>Vinyl: and they're lucky. They can die with their lovely memories, happy, and let everyone else take the stage with history as their noise.
>Vinyl: Make a little of their own sound before they go.  And as you found out in my club, a little noise from a lot of ponies can get really, really loud. That's all history is-- collected noise.
>If you were real, at what point did they ever think bringing you back like this would ever make you grateful?
>To have known what you did to them, brought into their peaceful lives?
>An even more morbid thought arrived on the tail of the first two questions-
>Had you even been real before waking up in the data core?
>No. You couldn't remember.
>You couldn't prove it without those memories.  Not to yourself.
>Vinyl: I don't really care what you do with this knowledge.  But I found out what you were, and you were wasting it away on being some quiet pony out there without a care in the world besides trying to be alive and understand things you deemed strange.
>Vinyl: But don't buy into the whole survival thing.
>Vinyl: That's for the other ponies.
>Vinyl: They can make a little noise.  But us?
>Vinyl: We could sing notes so long and gorgeous, they'd bring their gods to tears.
>Vinyl: If only we can remember what song we're playing.
>Vinyl: But instead, we have to settle for this.
>Vinyl: I guess what I'm telling you is, now that you know, don't be like me.
>Vinyl: I've languished her for so long.  And it's sickening me.
>Vinyl: When all the while, I could've been so loud. But this is all I've got. Especially now, after you.
>Vinyl: I just can't bring myself to do anything else anyway, because I'd forget all the good I ever did.
>Vinyl: Please, if you're going to make some noise here, be loud.
>The song ends. The world begins to dissolve into it's blurry, natural shift.
>Vinyl: And make sure it's something you yourself can stomach dancing to.
>Everything your body had felt in that limbo struck you at once.  You collapse, shuddering in tears.
>She doesn't look back at you.  She doesn't move to help or console you.
>You stand up.  You tear the device off your back, and look into it.
>A stylized bag levitates over to you.  It is heavy with baubles, and upon further examination, you see it's filled with overclocking “eggs.”
>Vinyl: Cherish your memories, kiddo, before you run out of room.  And for what it's worth?
>Vinyl: I'm sorry.
>There is a uncharacteristic silence that overtakes the room.  She doesn't move. Simply watches her dance floor, while Octavia slides a tune out on stage.
>The entire conversation, the song- it took only a second or two.  The guards open the door and peer inside.
>You hobble outside with the new saddlebag, and the door closes the door behind you while they watch. You slump to the wall and look to the ceiling, beginning to cry.
>There is only one thought on your “mind.”
>One image, flashing in your eyes and through your skull.
>It simply intensifies the pain, that unnatural, lingering burn in your chest.
>Rarity.
>Caring for her was something honest, right?
>She was real? Right?
>Wasn't she?
>She had to be.  The past months...
>Months.
>If you had existed, months had drowned out what you used to be, while you were unaware they were disappearing. Washed it away with each passing thought, each new lesson learned about this fresh world of which you missed so much of.
>Months... Were they all you had left before even more started to disappear?
>Or could it end with a button push while hooked up to a system?
>You didn't hate that bitch in the room anymore. You didn't give a shit what happened to her after all of this. She'd been honest, after all, and deserved whatever the hell ills went her way. She was better left forgotten.
>Instead, you replaced it with many different hates.
>You hated what was happening to you.
>You hated what they'd made out of you.
>You hated what you were.
>Your brow furrowed. Your eyes burned.
>You rustled the bag, removing an egg.
>No. They never would have done this by intent.
>They didn't realize, you told yourself. They didn't know, your conscience said.
>And they'd be watching all the while as they faded from your mind.  While you passed them in the world and buried them.  You'd even forget their names, their faces, their graves.
>You wouldn't be able to tell them. But how could you lie?
>But... You could stand to be with them.
>At least until...
>Until you could do something about it.
--