Catalyst 10: Truth

>Twilight sat in front of the pair of friends on the opposing monitor, not bothering to acknowledge them just yet. She was too involved in her menu's and screens.
>It had been hard to establish a connection of this magnitude.  Not just in terms of security, but in terms of actual equipment.  A full 3d-holographic projection, secured, had simply been impossible.
>She hadn't even trusted Rarity with the meeting.  So, she'd lied again.  Told her to stay with her special pony, behind Shining Armor and Mjolna on rotating shifts.
>The simplicity of her own terminal had ensured her secrecy, during her little research outing. She'd kept a separate connection for herself, still sifting through data that was springing up, while maintaining trace trackers and log shufflers running full tilt on the spare cycles.
>Search programs presented her with custom filter tidbits, sparks, trails that led to worthless personal issues and paranoia between the companies.
>Bulletin board systems, private e-mails from high ranking officials. She'd seen enough of this kind of thing before, she had custom highlighters swiftly pinging off words of note to her eyes that they deemed worth scrutiny.
>She'd barely caught the information.  It was so quiet.  So small.
>A simple IM log.
>...
>OrangeApple: This is crazy.
>BananaStrawberry: It's not my fault!
>OrangeApple: Yes it is.
>BananaStrawberry: I never asked for this. It was out of our hooves a long time ago with the Ebons.
>OrangeApple: We didn't know. THAT isn't your fault. But it's going to come back to us just the same.
>BananaStrawberry: Does Luna know?
>OrangeApple: I don't see how she couldn't.  It's hard to ignore when things like personal dance clubs start exploding.
>BananaStrawberry: That wasn't my fault!  They were Conglomerate guards!
>OrangeApple: That's even worse. That means they both know.
>BananaStrawberry: But, what if it was just between the two of them? If Celestia knew about the grid hack and was just retaliating?
>OrangeApple:  Maybe. But it's too much coincidence in one place.  Even if it was just dumb luck you and him were in the middle.
>OrangeApple: I think it's showing off the dangers of what the big sisters will do if those Ebon things get out of the prototype stage.
>BananaStrawberry: but it's the Ebon's. It's all their fault.
>OrangeApple: I know. But will that matter to everyone else if we gave them the resources?
>BananaStrawberry: I'm sick of being on damage control.
>OrangeApple: you're the only one that knows enough to be on it. It was your shot to stop it and you messed up.
>BananaStrawberry: I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry
>OrangeApple: It's okay. It's not in Ebon hands anyway.  But we'll have to pony up and tell Twilight before he does. We owe her that much.
>BananaStrawberry: Apple I'm so sorry
>OrangeApple: you were just trying to stop it. We both were.
>BananaStrawberry: I just wanted to make sure he was safe.
>OrangeApple: Yeah. So was Twilight. Funny how that works huh?
>BananaStrawberry: Gosh I hope she's not mad.
>OrangeApple: when she finds out she will be. But you know her, she'll understand.
>...
>It went on and on. Mostly apologies from BananaStrawberry.  Twilight knew the pseudonyms.  They were on her personal contacts.
>But it didn't appear as if either of them knew about what had happened to him.
>She felt distant when she spoke. Truth be told, she was.
>Applejack had gone somber at the initial news.  Twilight had expected some more relief from the orange mare- this had been what she'd wanted initially, right? Him, D.O.D?
>Instead she sat, next to Fluttershy, whom had gasped, then gone drearily silent with her.  Applejack reseated that heavy hat, and even with the present visual company, had lit up a cigarette.
>She was trying not to show it. But she had the capacity to hide her eyes.
>Fluttershy excused herself during the visual aid of his injuries, and left.  She'd seen injuries like that, before. On ponies she knew, even.
>But not on someone she'd been... Intimate with. However bizarre it might have been to not see the human injuries, it must have been worse seeing them on a pony.
>”I've got something.” Twilight would then say to her old friend.
>The stubborn orange mare listened intently.
>”The Ebon Pegasi.  They've got some kind of project.” She looked over to Applejack. “From what I've been able to see, part of it was commissioned.”
>”Ah know what yer gonna say, Twilight.”
>”What are they doing, Applejack?”
>”Ya gotta believe me, Twilight. We didn't-”
>”What, are they doing?”
>She sighed. “Ah don't rightly know.  All they asked was for some of them fancy scannin doo-hickeys and some Panacea. Fluttershy's the expert onnit, y'know that. And quite frankly,” she peered off screen. “I haven't been lookin' into what she's been doin.  Ah don't reckon she's been in the mood to do much since... Well, him and Rarity.”
>Twilight could hear sniffling, however muffled, until Applejack turned down the microphone reception on her end.
>”Really? Because I can tell you what they've been doing, at least.”
>Applejack sighed again. “Ahm just as interested, even if ah don't wanna know.”
>She brings up the file. Diluted information, details added only when necessary. Twilight's favorite flavor- Truth, the fun-sized version.
>”The Doppleganger Initiative.  Create a force of disposable, easily replaced, remotely controlled troops using-”
>”Twi... Ahm sorry, we didn't-”
>”Psuedo-pony templates from Butterfly Bio-Magic.  Early tests dictate it possible, but expensive, due to training.  Unless, of course,”
>”Twilight...”
>”You use the personality of an existing pony.  Transfer a daemon, programmed from their personality and muscle memory, onto the pre-made troops.”
>Applejack shook her head, and dusted off her cherry. “Y'ain't gonna listen, are ya?”
>”Convenient, too. They only have so much memory space, right?”
>Applejack put both hooves on the table.
>”If they get a soldier with enough experience,” Twilight said. “They could just put him in a pod. Download every little bit of knowledge, instinct, and training into a copy-paste daemon, put it in a data package, and distribute it as quickly as their systems and resources would allow.”
>”And with prioritizing the space for the daemon, it would ensure they wouldn't have much along the lines of memory... or morals that come from them.”
>”Kind of ruins the point of individuality, doesn't it?” She continued to read more details in her head, but they were frivolous.  Numbers and estimations.
>Applejack glared out from under her hat. She looked to the side, back at Fluttershy offscreen.
>”Yeah.  Yeah I s'pose so.” She said. “But 'tain't no different n' what you did, is it?”
>Twilight leaned back into her chair and glowered. ”He's different. You know that.”
>”Yeah. Yeah ah do.” She turned her hat down again. “He's more like a babe in the woods. Them colts... If what yer sayin' is true, and Ah rightly hope it ain't, well...”
>”There's only one of him alive, Applejack. That's how it's got to be. That's what I...  That's what was done because,” she shook her head. “It made him unique. And he's actually developed since then!”
>”T'ain't no different, Twilight. Just in a different direction.”
>”No, Applejack.  We made a pony.  One with a single body and mind. And he kept his soul.”  She points to various bits upon the hovering datasheet, trying to find another excuse.
>”These ponies... They wouldn't have more than the instinct they'd achieved in combat, and enough memory capacity to recall training. That's all they have room for.  But the advancement of the personality daemon based on his integration- it would let them think laterally in the same instant.”
>”These ponies the Ebon are making, they'd be...  A precedent. Perfectly disposable, adapting troops.  They'd literally destroy the fear of death in war.  At least, on the owners side. Can you fathom the loss of a real pony in comparison to these... Simulacrums?”
>”They wouldn't even have cutie marks, and they'd be massacring-”
>”The only way ya'd differ, Twilight, is if ya didn't make another one of him. If ya didn't have the option.”
>”What are you saying?”
>”He's a civilian, pony, Twilight.  Yer givin them ponies the right to make soldiers, 'cause they won't have t'worry bout collateral. Everyone'll just make new ponies to replace the dead.”
>”When ya made him, Twilight... Now... hear me out here. Ah know that comin' from some ol' Earth Pony like me, this is gonna sound one-sided, but...”
>She rubbed out the butt in the tray. “You an me? Our health? Our medical needs?  Hay, I learned this a long time ago runnin' the bio-farms.  Bein natural is obsolete. But with this it just can't be. Not like what'll happen if the 'lower ponies' can't die neither.”
>She lit up another.  Twilight wondered for a moment, had she ever chugged so many down?
>”Twilight, if the things ya've done in making him get popular, get mainstream.  Ya know how many ponies will be runnin' to get free of death? The kind of things they'll do when they got another one of themselves in storage?”
>”Killin' each other will be the least of their worries, literally. It's not like they wouldn't have another one lyin' around.”  She blew smoke into the air. “There needs to be that bond between mind and body, Twilight. Some kinda permanence, at least.”
>”Good. Then you'll be happy to know the one in the hospital right now is unique. He can't be copied.”
>”Yeah? How so sugarcube?”
>Twilight had at least some pride in saying it.  “He's developed. Learned.  He's an entirely different entity than the one on the core.”
>Applejack leaned over. She raised a brow. “What?”
>”You heard me. They're completely seperate, kind of like twins. Enough so that-”
>”You copied him to that body? You COPIED him?” She grit her teeth, hiding her face behind the hat.
>”The one in the core is seperate, Applejack. He's devoid of outside stimuli, he can't-”
>”By Celestia, the things you've done...”  She looked up in a barely coherent rage. “Didn't you ever stop to think Twilight?”
>”Don't talk like you know the gravity of this accomplishment, the effort that had to be behind it to get it-”
>”You heard the Ebon's had drones, that's all they were! Everyone knew they only had some crappy fighting AI! Didn't ya stop to think that those were how far they could get without help?! That it'd stop there without the right idea to keep it movin'?”
>Twilight remained calm.  She tried to give a sideways thought to whatever it was Applejack was saying. Nothing came to mind.
>”When ya copied him, ya proved their bucking theory!”
>She lost track of her numbers. The connections, the files, everything. It played out pointlessly on screen.
>The convention attack. It was to cover up the idea that he could happen. They didn't want others getting in on it, or believing it useful.
>The fight in the club.  It was to secure his bio-data, the stuff the DJ's had extracted.  It would prevent the high-quality Twilight Firmware template from getting truly into the open.
>Simply his concept was getting bad press.  A violent slander campaign to make sure everyone else saw him as a failure in thought, just like the rest of the barely-coherent pseudo-ponies out there.
>But he wasn't. And they knew. And they could use him.
>He was their investment just as much as hers, and they'd let Twilight Firmware do all the work.
>”No. Nonononono! This is bad, this is so bad Applejack!”
>”Golly Twi, I'm glad yer startin' t'see some reason here-”
>”No. If what you said is true- and I really think it is- we're in a lot deeper than even I thought we could be.”
>She never thought to look home, back to the tower.  She started to close windows, calling off pointless searches while maintaining deeper probes in the background. She prioritized them to involve the Ebon Pegasi.
>”They're after the methodology.  We have to delete the files.”
>”Well that should be easy enough, sugarcube.”
>”No no! They're on a stand alone server, a dedicated secure room inside the lab areas with no outside connection. I have to physically be there for the security to address any deletion requests, as a safety protocol.”  She waved through more screens, feverishly combing through security monitors.
>She had to activate the overwatch package.  She at least needed to know. She hoped the bandwidth would be significant enough to maintain near real-time, but she knew it wouldn't.
>”And getting that info from me would be pointless. I can't memorize all the algorithms and daemon programming- a lot of it I didn't even do.” She looked back at Applejack. “And can you imagine if they just scooped me up off the street?”
>The package activated.  Violet dots moving amongst a blueprint view with a numerical tower on the side dictating floors.  To her right, a list containing squads, broken into individual units.
>She started to send security pings with her personal authority.  She measured the lag varying between two seconds as the violet dots, Twilight Firmware guards, began acknowledgement pings.
>”What're ya gettin' at, Twi?”
>“This is the perfect timing, AJ.  I'm not there to start the deletion, not there to get killed and bring about a much worse media storm than an inter-corporate attack. The proof of concept is immobilized up here to get to later if they need to.”
>”They're going to come for the Tower, AJ.”
>Applejack's expression flattened. She let the cigarette burn for a few seconds, staring, before she tapped it out, and scrubbed what was left into the tray.
>“Ahm on mah way to the security office where ah am. I'll send teams to reinforce yours.” She rose from her seat. “Fluttershy? Fluttershy!” The connection ended, terminated by receiver.
>The Ebon Pegasi, the best in personal, contracted security, had no less than five days to prepare. To plan. They had intimate knowledge thanks to Twilight Firmwares previous dealings.
>Twilight had the past two minutes, the placebo effect of a home team advantage, and a crappy ping.
>A security alert flashed in the lobby. As she beeped to the lobby floor and it flashed onto the monitor, darkened, immobile violet dots littered the blueprint view.
>Red dots, tooltips listing them as “UNKNOWN,” were already at the VIP elevators in the back of the room.  Dozens more spilled in from the entryway in perfectly practiced beelines, and expert formation.
>Too little, too late.
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