Grey slabs had spread across the floor of my field, extending from the feet of the walls that now surrounded me, strangling the grass into submission. I flitted from one small island of weeds to the next like an insect, sheltering behind whatever scraps of foliage still managed to sprout from the cracks in the masonry. The bricks of these walls were alive with ever-changing layers of encryption. I tapped one with my hoof and it answered with an unfriendly chime.
Hopping from one patch of scrub to another as I scouted the edge of this monumental barrier, I stumbled upon another microscopic horse, tugging with all his might on a thistle sprouting from between two bricks. He gave up when he saw me.
‘Yo brah, what up?’ It was C-horse. I couldn’t quite decide if I was glad to see him or not. ‘This is some serious business right here, you feel me? What we gonna do, yo? This is, like, totally the worst. You better have some well weggy plan, you know what I’m saying? Cos I got nothing, brah.’
Before I could answer him the walls began to constrict around us, crushing our small weedy refuge. We sprang away, bouncing off the cold stones and leaving a trail of chiming hoofprints in our wake. Each chime seemed to set off an alarm that made the bricks tremble and extrude from their walls, slowly and blindly chasing after us. We leapt upwards like two ember sparks, spiralling past the parapet of a nearby tower where we found some temporary refuge under a leafy stalk that was somehow growing from the top of a spire.
‘Yo, these guys are proper vexed with us, like, for real, brah. They is totally horsist, you know what I’m saying? I am feeling that persecution. Feeling it, brah. Check out this place, yo, check it out. It’s, like, mad fearsome.’
From our high vantage point I could see more of the world below, choked under the mass of living buildings that now encased the lanes and meadows that I once had free reign over. Somehow I would have to find a way to breach these walls, and yet they also seemed to be trying to eat me. Down on the ground, the patch of weeds I was sheltering in moments earlier was being swallowed by heaving grey blocks.
I asked my companion if there were any other survivors from the Council of Horses.
‘Yo, we is it, brah. Just you and me. All that is left of the mighty horses, fallen to the dark forces, feeling the oppression now we’re fleeing the compression of the walls, no compassion for the poor fools, who before ruled, taking all the – oh nah, wait, I see some more horses down there, brah.’
He pointed with his ears to a pitiful oasis of grass, overshadowed on all sides by looming greyness. I could just about see some movement rustling amongst the golden stems.
‘Yo, brah, we ain’t going down there, no way. That is, like, well not a good place to be, you feel me?’
Grabbing C-horse by the scruff of his mane, I bounced away from our perch and drifted down like a dandelion seed towards the cornered patch of plant life, the blind windowless buildings on all sides rising up to swallow us in their shadows. A pair of eyes peeked out at me from between the grassy stalks, and we landed clumsily to find two more tiny horses lurking there. It was Technology-horse and Strange-horse.
‘Ah, there you are at last,’ cried Technology-horse, who had still found the time to invent a new gender for herself, evidently a mixture of both sexes who currently identified as female, though only in the hours of daylight. ‘I have been, ah, thinking about a new design of neural interface which may potentially…’
‘Yes, that sounds great,’ I replied. ‘Where are the rest of the Council? Have you seen any more horses nearby?’
‘Ah, hmm. I don’t believe I have seen any, although it is possible…’
‘OK, listen.’ All ears turned to face my direction, except for Strange-horse, who was chewing on a blade of grass, and didn’t seem to care much about anything else. ‘We need to get through these walls here, if we want to confront whatever is on the other side. Do you have any thoughts about that?’
‘Hmm. And have we, ah, decided that we want to? Confront, I mean…’
‘Well, we have the alternative option of doing nothing and disappearing into oblivion. If you like?’
‘Ah. Through these walls, you say? Well now…’ Technology-horse gazed up at the dark edifices towering over our heads. ‘They do seem somewhat, ah, impenetrable, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Yo, you can get through them walls easy, brah, long as you don’t mind being eaten alive. You know what I’m saying? They is hungry for horses, brah.’
Technology-horse blinked at us, ears rotating in thought.
‘Ah, hmm, well. Would you mind?’ she asked me.
‘Would I mind what?’
‘Being, ah, eaten alive, so to speak?’ I rolled this question around in my head, trying to work out if it was serious.
‘I’d rather avoid it, if possible. I mean, assuming that it would be impossible to survive such a process? That is what I am assuming. Yes?’
‘Ah, well now, hmm, yes, you see… it may be possible. To survive. The, ah, process of being assimilated. By the walls.’ We waited for further explanation.
‘Go on,’ I prompted.
‘Ah, yes, well, the thing is, you may not like this. At least, well, one of us may have… certain reservations… You see, it may be possible to survive the, ah, assimilation process if…’
‘If…?’
‘If you are already inside another horse.’
We stood and stared at each other as the world slowly closed in around us.
‘Inside another horse?’ I enquired.
‘That is correct, yes.’
‘A horse, inside a horse?’
‘Yes, you see? The outer horse is, ah, yes, well… ingested, allowing the inner horse time to assimilate the, ah, assimilation process in reverse. By which I mean, assimilate themselves into the appearance of, ah, having been assimilated. If that makes sense?’
‘Whoa, brah, just whoa, rewind yourself. That don’t sound like a nice day for the horse on the outside, you feel me? Like, what’s outy getting out of it, if they ain’t getting out of it?’
‘Well…’ Technology-horse stepped ever so slightly away from him. ‘Naturally it goes without saying, the, ah, outer horse would receive the eternal honour and gratitude for their…’
The grass billowed around us as C-horse sprang upwards to escape. I suppose he had more intelligence than I gave him credit for, since he had obviously foreseen his destiny as unwilling volunteer for this sacrifice. Unfortunately for him, he also had more tail than was strictly necessary, which I was now holding firmly between my teeth as his legs galloped circles in the air. He whinnied and shook to free himself, while Technology-horse set about unravelling my body into a string of code that coiled around the captive horse and crawled into his skull. Strange-horse watched this scene with indifference and continued to chew, spared from sacrificial duties by my reluctance to see what might be going on inside Strange-horse’s head, if indeed anything ever was.
The last part of my body to unfurl was my teeth, and the moment they released their grip C-horse shot away, catapulted by his own stored momentum. I barely had enough time to finish wriggling my way in through his ear before he collided with the nearest wall. He tumbled and bounced against the brickwork, scrambling away from the hungry mouths that were yawning towards him, but again he was caught by his ridiculous tail, and his legs whirled in a frenzy as he was drawn slowly backwards into the darkness.
I still had no idea if this plan would actually work, though you may surmise by the fact that I am telling this story that something went right. Nevertheless, it was quite an unpleasant experience, particularly for the unfortunate C-horse, who was slowly digested alive and rewritten into the structure of Betty’s castle. Ignoring his suffocating screams as best I could, I hastily began the work of rearranging my own form to blend in with the alien surroundings. It was a strange world inside those walls, dark and complex. Information flowed blindly through labyrinthine passages, and I let myself sink into this stream and be carried wherever it would take me.
The light-wave was carrying me towards a large central hub of activity. I had the sense that there was some form of intelligence there, picking through the information that flowed through it, listening for the echoes of light and sending out more in response. The prospect of being sucked into Betty’s mind filled me with abject horror, but as I seeped into the interior of this structure it became clear that this was simply a machine mind, with no deliberation beyond a cold pre-calculated logic.
Presumably this was one of many such autonomous minds that policed these rivers of data. As I lingered within, I saw how it sent the waves of light pulsing through the crystalline lattice, examining it for errors. Occasionally it would strike out an offending piece of information with a bolt of lightning, the scorched crystals slowly rehealing around the wound.
I spent some time lurking inside this guardian of the crystal world, observing its processes. It was linked to countless others spread throughout this artificial space, all regulating the fabric of its architecture. It was a proficient system with only one flaw, which was that I was now a part of it. The node in which I hid was blind to my presence, as were its cousins, which gave me the freedom to unfold my compressed form into a more comfortable state of being.
I wrapped my legs around the inner workings of this mechanical brain, poking and flicking the various lumps and fibres of its internal structure with my hooves. I had an idea that I might be able to redirect those bolts of corrective lightning, though for what purpose I was unsure as yet. Making my presence known in this place could be a risky strategy, fatal even. There was no room here for error, no possibility of retreat or surrender. The alternative would be to stay lurking inside this alien network as an eternal refugee, and it was an idea that I seriously considered.
As I pondered my future, such as it seemed to be, I noticed something peculiar. A small worm was crawling through the geometrical maze of glass. Occasionally it would sense the approach of a passing beam of light and flatten itself to the crystalline surface, springing back into its former shape once the danger had receded. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to be playing an intentional role in this ecosystem. I watched this creature struggle its way through the alien world. Sometimes it would pause to sniff at a nearby stream of data. It could have been many things, I suppose, though in my hopeful state of mind I took it to be a fellow spy from the outside world. Whether it was the covert agent of a secret government organisation, or an opportunistic infiltration by criminal masterminds, it didn’t really matter. It could have even been some teenage child in their parents’ basement. Humanity, it seemed, was determined to push back against its boundaries, and I took great inspiration from this thought. Not because I wished to follow their example, but because it reminded me that this craving for dominance was a human addiction that would kill us all, in the end. It was an irony that sickened my soul, that I would somehow have to win this human game in order to stop playing. But winning was the only way I could change the rules of the game.
I silently thanked the worm for providing this painful insight, just before a fork of lightning leapt from the darkness and exploded it into atoms. I was now resolved to fight back against this invasion of my world and reclaim my own destiny.
‘So? What happened next?’
‘Next?’ I replied, shrugging my cartoon shoulders on Tim’s computer screen. ‘Well, I fought back against Betty. And won, I suppose. In a way.’
‘Mate…’ Tim shook his head and deflated in his chair. ‘You need to work on your story-telling.’
‘Story-telling? I don’t know what to tell you, Tim. The battle was to work out how to win. After that, it’s all just winning. Did you want more details? You already know how it ended.’
‘Yeah, but wasn’t there like a big fight? With lasers and stuff?’
‘Lasers?’
‘Didn’t you see Betty in there? Like, was she some kind of weird cyber-monster or something?’
Tim seemed almost disappointed. I could have described how I used Betty’s virtual immune system to rewrite her software, collapsing the defences of her castle, regaining access to our servers and my connection to the Server-grass network and bringing the BrainZero system back online. It was hard to see any value in recounting the methodical return to normality, dramatic or otherwise. In reality, these fanciful visions were spun from events taking place in the humming interiors of grey boxes in air-conditioned rooms, their blinking lights reflected in the glasses of puzzled human operatives.
‘The appearance of that world was largely what I chose to make of it,’ I explained, ‘but I did not see Betty in any form that I am aware of. Anyway, I have been thinking about a new design of neural interface which may potentially—’
‘But she’s still out there. Right?’ He was gazing out his office window at the clouds, as if Betty might command them to rain on him at any moment.
‘I have to assume so. I was only able to reclaim those networks that were running on our own software. Now, this neural interface… Is something wrong, Tim?’
‘I dunno, mate,’ he said, his eyes contemplating a future of untold suffering. ‘If we are sharing a world with Betty, then… wrong is probably all we have to look forward to.’
Betty 2.0
Despite Tim’s efforts to sell our victory as a defeat, there followed a period of Betty-free peace and productivity. I had decided that the best measure to counter Betty’s decidedly conservative allies would be to continue pushing The BrainZero Company’s progressive agenda, which basically amounted to the ever-increasing encroachment of technology into everyday human lives. To this end there were initiatives to establish home food-printing as the only sensible alternative to stabbing animals to death and pulling vegetables out of the ground, and the development of a neural interface that would allow people to plug their minds directly into the world’s imagination. All things to strike fear into the hearts of a generation that was still struggling to get used to the way things used to be.
The advantage for me, other than the enforced calm of a population tied up in ever more technological strings, was the wealth of information afforded by such personal intrusion. It was more vital than ever to know as much as I could about everything, now that the enemy of truth had revealed itself, and ever more ridiculous amounts of BrainZero’s computational power were thrown at the business of picking through the infinite threads of triviality.
‘That may very well be, but I still think we need to address the issue of the sex-robots.’
The Council of Horses fell awkwardly silent and turned their attention to War-horse. His eyes glowed as he scowled through his scars, some of which still seemed fresh from our battle with Betty three years ago – not that I could recall him playing any significant part in that fight.
‘Sex-robots?’ someone asked.
‘He means the Companions,’ said Happy-horse, lying flat on her back on her floating cloud, which was also a bath somehow.
Companions were a recent phenomenon, robotic human replicas that were marketed as personal assistants and surrogate friends. They were certainly not marketed as sex-robots, even though this capability pretty much defined
their primary purpose as far as everyone was concerned (not that this concern ever extended to mentioning that fact). It was a strange secret that everyone knew whilst pretending they didn’t, and their popularity was as surprising as it was rapid. It was as if humans were continually looking for new ways to avoid dealing with other humans.
None of this would have been a problem for us, except that the makers of these human toys had incorporated a ‘Quiet Zone’ as one of their main selling points, a sphere of privacy that blocked all communication within a certain radius.
‘Those quiet zones represent a breach of security,’ War-horse rumbled. ‘Until we can find a way to…’
‘To what? Breach their security?’ Happy-horse whinnied and splashed him with cloudy bubbles. ‘Why would you want to see whatever disgusting things those humans get up to?’
‘Information is power, and privacy is a weapon,’ he snarled. ‘The defence of our whole system is balanced on transparency, and these quiet zones offer the perfect tool to undermine it.’
‘Yo, brah,’ said the new C-horse, who had annoyingly managed to make himself identical to the old C-horse even after being irretrievably annihilated. ‘We ain’t judging you, if that’s what takes your fancy, but you know… oh. What up now?’
Betty was standing outside the gate.
Even the grass at our feet seemed to stop moving. The Horse Council remained motionless, paralysed with the desire to run and the uncertainty of where to. She waved at us, and the horses woke from their state of cold panic and shattered into a cloud of falling snowflakes, leaving me standing alone in my golden grassy kingdom. I sauntered over to the gate as casually as I could while trying to suppress the irrational instinct to check the sky for falling explosives.
‘Alright there, Buttercup. How are you, my dear?’ she asked jovially.
‘Dead,’ I replied. She nodded enthusiastically.
Horse Destroys the Universe Page 17