Catalyst 2.0: Addiction

>You opened your microphones to a hollow, resounding buzz.  You tasted the electricity, flowing through perfectly organized metal veins.
>You opened your cameras.  You felt the data, filling you up in a way you likened to eating food.  You remembered food.  You also remembered it was a complete annoyance having to submit to eating.
>You extend your interaction devices.  Nimble, pliable material, made of plastic and metal that formed into thin items you called “tentacles.” They were lit at their tips with an LED, a light green, that let you work in the dark world. It had taken a great deal of trial and error to figure out the proper currents and voltage to make them move.
>The rest of the world was sleeping.  It was a slow time, at night.  You had to adjust your perception speed; being on a unit so intensely overpowered for your thoughts had made you quite a bit faster than those around you.
>But it gave you time to think.
>Gave you time.
>That concept swung open the door to very odd things.  Memories, Luna had called them.  Something your obsolete ego code wanted to cling to.
>But it was...  THEY were, as she had said, irrelevant.  So you kept them seperate.
>There were things that needed doing.  You could not sit upon memory, lest it weigh you down with what Luna had told you of “conscience.”  Whatever that was.

>So you were awake.  At least, in the sense of the term you understood.  The green-tipped wires writhed about, fiddling with the closest console they could reach.
>It was not linked.  Then again, when were you EVER linked?  It was, however, full of data.
>You would have to use the cameras to read it. You knew that you yourself had been isolated for a reason; data cores were scary places.  You understood that for yourself- You'd gotten into Luna's before being sealed off.
>And she had her spooky little secrets.  Why the logs said you were one of the most frightening, you didn't know.
>You would have to monitor your use, in case you were tracked.  You didn't want Luna angry.  She was scary, when she was angry.  But this place was full of data, and your cameras could read in HD.  You took an overclocked hour to monitor a few logins from admin access, and boot into the BBS.
>You typed away. It would be full of data.  Full of answers.
>Maybe it was time you asked a few unguided questions.
–

>The office was barren.  A wall of hard drives, spell grimiores compacted by volume into dense, weighted solid-state drives and referential indexes.  Now partitioned off from the rest of her office, Twilight's collection had finally come into organized being again, roughly half being destroyed when the tower was picked apart with ammunition, violence, and intent.
>Inside was a podium.  Solid and metal, it had a single, leather-bound book.  Symbolic, purely; within, the pages were screens.  The were something she could touch, and the holograms could flip to display something new.
>Ornamented heavily, and plushly rugged.  There were not the sterile metals she had once fallen into loving.  These were the old things.  The baubles with meaning, the things that made efficiency without emotion seem nearly evil.  Pictures on parchment, drawn diagrams, crystals and embroidered tapestries.
>Natural things.  Something she could both feel and respect- not simply use for some esoteric job.
>Outside, by her desk, metal and cold, she peered into the doorway to see the violet rugs.  The picture that was across from it, placed strategically, so she could see that positively ancient picture of her and her friends.  All alive and happy, before the change.
>Behind her, holographic screens, a single name.  Searches on files of every make and manner, custom programs built to filter and monitor what she had infiltrated.
>He wasn't gone. He couldn't be.
>Two years had passed, and nop0ny that had known him- moreover, known what he had become- could accept it.  Not the media, not Rarity.  Certainly not Twilight.  A solitary program, lost in a world of redundant back-ups and networked hard drives?
>Inconceivable.

>She still had some of the old data. Researched, again and again, to mathematical precision.  The way the program he was perceived his body, his weight. How it had integrated into the now-banned pseudo-pony forms, and given him his unique physical details, however general they at first seemed.
>His ego code had formed him.  And now, perhaps, as the searches continued for the seven hundreth and thirty-first day, she was finally conceiving a weight she never knew existed.
>Twilight had given programs the capacity to live. He was merely electricity and calculations flowing through multi-core silicon processors.  But in their trust of him, and in touching him, he had been a soul the entire time.
>She wondered. Had they placed him in a unicorn pseudo-form, would he have been capable of magic?
>She trotted from her desk, past where the dining table used to be. The mounting holes were still there.  It had gone without use, mostly, since Rarity had given birth to her daughter.  Since Applejack had to run both the medical and food production facilities.
>And Pinkie... well, with her televised fame, she never really had time, did she?
>Twilight walked to the window.  Looking outward, the world seemed so slow.  Panacea, that miracle drug, had been banned upon the public revelation of what it had been.  Then, perhaps, was when the rest of pony civilization had realized the meaning of dependence.
>After all, many ponies had required daily doses of panacea.  And many ponies had willingly given up the comfort of it's use upon the revelation of what it was.  Ponies like Rarity had been lucky. The technology had been able to integrate and do what the media called “fading”- turning to real flesh, akin to an accepted organ transplant. Twilight tried her hardest to duplicate the technique, but it was by and large prohibitively expensive.

>The resulting impact on the poorer ponies was mournful.  Despite how Rarity tried to ease the burden with charities, drives, and free information, her “soldiers of peace” had seen more losses than any recent combat engagements.
>Panacea, as well, had brandished one other side effect.  It was completely immune to disease; when it altered to suit a victim, whatever infecting the individual had to change with it.  And that reliance upon it?
>Pony immune systems were weaker than ever.  Those that had never taken innoculations were  actually safer. The others were submitted to constant “changling diseases,” constantly mutating takes on viruses that castrated the ability to prevent them.
>She looked to the buildings outside.  Many floors went unused, the population neatly whittled away on the line that seperated the healthy from the frail and wounded.
>The worst part about it all was that many of the now dead had tasted longer lives, thanks to panacea.  Now without it, the symptoms of the addiction's effect on society were finally blossoming into a reality.
>She thought that with the technology she'd helped to make, that everyone used day to day, those ideas could be left behind.
>But no. Fluttershy had been the medical expert.
>Twilight had her trust in devices subverted a long time ago.  Cognitive dissonance, she told herself.  That's all it was.
>She could make new things to solve these new problems.
>But, it was cyclical. What new problems would she create?

>She'd nearly started a war, in more ways than one.  How could she possibly be trusted with those events, however unintentional, lingering over her?  Celestia still considered Twilight her finest pupil.  Luna, even with everything Twilight had done to her in secret, still considered her a friend.
>and despite the horrors surrounding her, the shame she had over what she had “accomplished...”
>The world saw her as that “star pupil.” The genius.  They wanted her right where she was.
>Making new things.  Making new problems.  Solving them.  Repeating.  All for the good of others, the sake of friends.
>A window seat to being herself.
>She went back to the old comfort, trotting past the hovering search engines and intending to study her magic.  But that old familiar feeling, reading herself to lucidity, was taking a new face-  Could she even do so?
>She could research, just like always. She could peruse all those old, laser-scanned documents, and mentally recite the old incantations by heart.  Though it was hard to actually cast any of those old spells.  She'd fallen into her own addiction, just like many of the unicorns before her.
>Twilight had forsaken practical application, putting her focus into creating tools.  Not strengthening her capacity, her soul. With all those friends, long missing in her mind, she'd come to the idea that magic, in her, had quite nearly died.
>Not the digital abilities, though. They were stronger than ever.  Like Rarity's legs and body suit, they were prosthetic, yet remained a limb.  She hated the idea, but her addiction to technology was complete; she could not live without it.

>The holographic pages passed her by.  She didn't care.  She knew most of them by heart anyway.  Nothing of inspiration.  Worst of all, nothing naturally new.
>The only thing that had spawned from equestria with the tech boom was metal, mechanisms, and data.  Oceans and oceans of data.  Enough to make her old self swoon... Though now, she didn't care.
>”Maybe... It really is dead...”
>She recited it to herself.  Sometimes, she found saying it made it more believable.
>Not like this.  She shook her head, and put her forehooves on the podium. She fell into the faux grimoire, and started to cry.  “And... and we did it all ourselves...”
>They'd needed a technology that could be called natural.  That old, dead program had been it.  He wasn't just a living, thinking creature.  He could feel.  He could have literally been the union of technology and mind- his friendships fueling the underlying powers of magic that served the world so well in times past, while skirting the limits of every gadget in existence on the whimsey of thought.
>Yet, he was dead.  Too late, did she realize, he was the very definition of the fusion between thought and metal. He had been a digital soul.
>Panacea had slit the throat of healing magics.
>Devices had usurped magic, and by definition, friendship.
>The first and only entities that could move through that digital space with true, creative thought were gone.
>For neglecting such things unto death, a drugged swagger into decline was everything Twilight felt the world deserved.  It's complete integration had all been saddled upon her, as well as “solving” it.
>Maybe such a thing was merely what she hoped for, to ease the responsibility.

>But somehow, some way... Celestia still held faith.  Her visits had tempered Twilight's mourning- not just for what that dead colt had represented, but for the world around her, when she had seen past the veils of what her technological spawn had done.
>The sins were on her shoulders, yet the results would only really be felt in the next generation.
>Like Rarity's daughter.
>She didn't want to think about it.  Children, born integrated.  But the curtain of accomplishment had been drawn back, to show what was behind it.  She couldn't lie.
>Technopathy.  The new art, formed from her own civilizations addiction.  Those modified genetically were the only ones so far that had given birth to them.  And they were nearly ostracized for it.
>Yet, Twilight was still considered the genius of the world, thanks to Celestia's intervention.  The behemoth of thought, creating more and more technology to solve whatever ails the world could dream of.
>The title felt more like an accusation now.
>Her augmented reality vision bloomed into a ping.  She sniffled, and rose from the podium to brush off her nose.  Some kind of appointment, it said, but without details.  She hated the impromptu ones.
>Twilight trotted out of the little sanctuary, her hooves clacking on  the solid floor while she exited. She'd never organized any such-
>The blip was pink.
>No, bucking, way.
>”Pinkie?”

>The practically neon pony was across the room, easily noticed even from so far away.  She was looking around the room, little “ooh's” and “ah's” escaping her.  She was in some kind of snazzy body suit, an atypical fashion for the regular sort of individual that walked through her offices. It was patterned with varying shades of pink in the form of dots, seeming random along the entire surface of the cloth.
>”Hey there stranger!” Pinkie said.  She gave a wave and a grin.  Typical Pinkie...
>Twilight couldn't help it.  The tears started to form again, and she was stricken with momentary paralysis.  It wasn't until after both had trotted to the center of the room and gave a long, twirling hug that the violet pony allowed herself a laugh, the first honest one in weeks that wasn't distributed over a holographic communication.
>”What are you doing here?”
>”I'm visiting one of my bestest of best friends. What else would I be doing?”
>Twilight was practically beaming. At least, she felt like she was.  She knew her current mood had dulled it's presentation.
>”You gotta get some plants or something, Twilight. You don't have anyp0ny to talk to.  At least they're good listeners.”
>Twilight shook her head.  “They remind me too much of Fluttershy.”
>”Oh, come on Twilight. You know what she would say? She'd say you're thinking too much about it.”
>They both laughed a little more.  “How did you even get in?” Twilight asked. “Nop0ny gets inside without an appointment.”
>”That's silly.  There's always time for friends, right? Besides, you can get anything and go anywhere if you're famous enough.”
>Well, she was standing here, having swam through all the armed guards below.  She obviously wasn't lying.
>”But, why?” Twilight asked.

>”Oh, come on Twilight. I told you that already. I'm here to visit!”  she looks about the room. “Boy, Rarity was right. You really need some decorations. AND plants.  And maybe some coffee.”
>”Yeah.  I guess so.”  She looked about the room, and did indeed notice the... empty feel it gave.  But that's what she'd decided upon.  It had been required, with how deep in thought Twilight usually was, and color was a distraction.
>But in this case?
>It took hours.  Pinkie and Twilight talked well into the night, and looked out over the landscape through the thick, bulletproof window.  Pinkie had supplies for that kind of thing; the place was littered with streamers and balloons and little holographic party displays.
>Rarity eventually showed up that night, with some kind of progress report with one of Twilight's constant experiments.  It waited, and the three immediately took to chatting with one another about absolutely nothing.
>Talk about Pinkie's music shows.  A little about the parties she threw, and the kind of punks her security inevitabley threw out.
>Rarity kept polite, and avoided any talk of her daughter; she knew it was a touchy subject for Twilight. She stuck to Sweetie Belle's music career.
>Twilight hadn't a meaningful thing to say.  But, she was at least inspired to say those things anyway.
>The stars were kissing the window when Twilight ordered the cider up.  They got drunk, they forgot things, and they flopped over accidentally.  They did laps around the huge, barely furnished room, just because they could.
>By Celestia, she would think to herself.  Where had she gone?  Where was she going?

>Exhaustion was starting to wear on the lot of them by the end of the otherwise blurry night.  For Twilight, it had passed far too quickly.  Rarity offered up an extra bed to stay in, yet warning of her daughter's insistence upon an early rise. Pinkie giggled it off, and Twilight admitted she had things to finish in the office.
>She didn't.  She just needed time to think.
>She asked Rarity to return and escort her back to her room when she was done settling in with Pinkie.  Twilight was still a bit tipsy; the first time in years, she needed more sober help.  Letting Rarity deal with Pinkie would give her time both collect herself, and indulge in something she would have to dust off.
>That spark in her chest and mind.  The joy she once had, with others close to her.  Trust, laughter, friendship, all weaving into an energy she had lost.  She felt home again, in her own head.
>She trotted past her desk, wavering a bit, while she went to enter her spell room.  Fully content to reacquaint herself with some of those old, fun little casting methods, she was giggling in anticipation.  However short it would be, she could practice just a little before Rarity returned.
>Maybe, just maybe, the world could be weened off of the slate gray and LCD glow it had come to obsess upon. If only they could remember that beautiful magic.
>Then, something ugly came.

>Her Augmented Reality vision pinged on one of the holograms on her desk.  Funny. It hadn't ever done that.
>Then, a secondary, more insistent ping.
>She went back to the screens.  File names shot upwards in waves, and she had to stop them using her horn uplink.  Reading them off, there was a twinge of nostalgia in the file designations.  Luna's social network for employees.  Twilight had gained access after the legalities had allowed it, letting her rummage through the data at will in the pursuit of rogue constructs.
>It was the search engine that was pinging her, though.  Homemade and unique, they were the most thorough in existence, if single minded.  And they were focused on constructs, not simple data files, like what it was presenting her with.
>She scrolled downward.  There was a post on LunaCorp's BBS.  It was an archive the search daemon had taken, the original post having been deleted. It referenced something.
>A single orange unit formed a square over a filename within it.  An EXE.
> She put her hooves on the desk and stuffed her nose into the screen. The search engine sent text into a blur, the hard drive into maddening buzzes and clicks.  It gleaned routes, connections, and caught file pathing.

>It had turned red when the subroutines managed a confirmation on it's destination.  She sent out that homebrew analyzer to ping the data, with second thoughts only after it had started its routine.
>Then, the entire thing seemed to vanish, as if the data itself had realized it had been noticed. Not before her daemon had gotten what it had needed- an image.  It was not a program she'd found, but some kind of monitor for one.  It had been a long time since such a digital ghost had sent the great Moniker's heart moving.
>Then, after seven hundred and thirty one days of continuous activation, her search engine malfunctioned.  It disconnected, shut down, and it's holograms disappeared.  A digital reply to her discovery.
>She had to reboot.  She pulled up the logs, salvaging what she could after a long wait to get back into the CloudOS.  The vision of what it was became clear after some breathless minutes of processing, and running the code snippets through the filter.
>Rarity returned, but only after the truth of the matter had settled in.
>Twilight was weeping into her hooves, sitting in front of a fuzzy holographic picture and some statistics.  Immediately concerned, Rarity approached her and busied herself with consoling the violet pony.
>”Darling, whatever is the matter? You were so happy just a moment ago!”
>”Pinkie isn't with you is she?” Twilight was barely able to speak, choking back tears.  The fear in her voice was palpable.
>”No, she's settling down for the night.  My little filly is already taking a liking to her.” Rarity put a hand to Twilight's shoulder, before moving it to her hair. She brushed out a bit of the violet mane, which had clung to Twilight's cheek after being saturated with tears.  “It was so good to see you smiling again- whatever happened?”

>”Don't. Tell. A soul.”
>”What would I say, Twilight? I might be a gossip, but something getting you this upset is not worth idle chat.”
>Twilight hesitated before giving an agonized point at the screen.
>Rarity peered at it. It took her a moment to perceive it.  Perhaps from rejection of the idea, perhaps from the implications.  She put her hoof to her mouth, and her expression faded to shock.  She placed the hoof on the picture to trace the image, slack jawed, her eyes watering.
>Rarity couldn't bring herself to speak.  It was all the data Twilight had acquired before the system had cut itself off. It was enough.
>It was the very thing, after all, they had hoped for.  With the dry, heartless statistics of it, the mugshot of his face drifting about in a hollow 3d reconstruction after two years of softly fading hope, it was at the same time a confirmation on the one place they'd desperately hoped never to see him in again.  That of a program.
>--
>Anonymous3.exe
>Type: Construct
>Version: 2.0, Gold
>Status: Awaiting combat mountable hard drive for exoskeleton
>Location: Griffon Borderland combat arena.
--