It wasn't hard to arrange a private meeting with Alex. She's not the mayor anymore, even if she remains active in public life. I sent ahead and she set aside the entire afternoon to talk to me. It wasn't difficult, since she lives just across the street from my mother's house. Even after all these years, the founders have remained close together.
We chat for over an hour before I bring up the subject of my investigations. I want an accurate history of Alexandria, one ponies will be able to read and know how we got started. After some persuasion, she agrees to share with me. She starts by giving me a copy of some of her journals, and explaining what I shouldn't share. Then we move on to my questions.
"So you got to Alexandria. It's overgrown, it's empty. You're tired from your long journey across the country. What do you do?"
We built it.
"What does that mean? Cities don't just come from nowhere, Miss Alex. There's got to be more to it than that."
Oh, well obviously. I didn't see the point in writing it all down a second time. If anyone wanted to see how we built a city, they could just read my journal. Well... those parts. I don't think I'll publish the whole thing. Maybe when I'm gone—but until then, ponies can just ask.
I ruffled my papers, looking over everything we'd gone over so far. I had whole sections of Alex's journal here, with the relevant sections highlighted as I went. Most of what she had to say wasn't relevant to the story of the early settlers. Some was, though, and even more hadn't been included. "Why don't you give me the highlights? Ponies might be curious what happened next. The first wave of settlers didn't show up right away, did they?"
No, they didn't. But that was the way we wanted, really. Maybe it was selfish, but we thought we had the best ideas about how to build a city. The first ones to lay down bricks set the foundation for others to follow. We waited until we had the foundations before we put the word out for settlers. But I thought you wanted to talk about earlier. You didn't want to get into—
"No, I didn't," I agreed. "That's a different story. Just tell me about what life was like before that. You said you built it, what does that mean?"
She pauses for a moment to think. She stares out the window of her house, looking out at the street. A car passes by, with ponies inside. It looks like it's made from salvaged parts, just like every vehicle in Alexandria. I can practically smell the biofuel burning from here. Eventually, she goes back to explaining. Priorities are always the same, Amy. They were the same then as they are now, just with the resources a little different.
"You didn't have to grow food," I suggest.
We didn't! The way things used to be, before the Event, most people didn't know the first thing about growing food. Nobody had their own herb-gardens, and most people had never even met a farmer. We knew growing food would be important, but we didn't make it a priority that year. We didn't get hurt that often, so Oliver had a lot of free time. He spent it growing things, because that's what he likes to do.
"Instead of growing ponies, you mean?" I ask, grinning at her.
She glares at me in response, though she doesn't look as embarrassed as her diaries sound. Food wasn't a priority in the same way. The old grocery store had more than we would ever eat, even throwing out anything with meat in it. Which we didn't do, because we already knew about griffons from Equestria's books, and I knew we could probably use the cans and stuff for trade. Getting power came first, then water, along with a lot of cleaning things up.
"Why would there be anything to clean? Nopony was living there before you arrived."
Not like that. Like the lives of the people who used to live there. The family pictures hanging in our stolen houses, the nameplates, the desks, the decorated yards. We couldn't do the whole town—there were homes for eight thousand people after all. But the parts we usually visited, those we cleaned up. Some other little things to make the town lived in. Mowing the grass in the town square, taking down old flyers, cleaning the litter out of the streets. I spent two whole days fixing a street sweeper so we could clear the roads. And of course, there was setting up the library. That was going to be part of the reason ponies came to Alexandria in the first place. Come for the books, stay for the company!
"The security, you mean. You knew ponies would try and steal it?"
Duh! That's the way people work—anything rare has value, and anything with value people want. It didn't matter we let them read as much as they wanted, it didn't matter we'd help them copy the stuff they needed…
"Maybe they have a point. Maybe we're hoarding information, and we should just let everypony have as much as they want."
Alex's expression grows sour at this point. She takes a long time to answer. It's not fair. But that isn't our fault. Equestria gave us an impossible prospect: human society is predicated upon thousands of people all specializing. No, not thousands... millions. Equestria saw that we only had one way to live, and they took that away from us. What the world really needed was for us to gather everybody up into one place and force people to live together. Like it was at the first—let us spread out and grow naturally as we repopulate. Since going around kidnapping ponies would be wrong, we... found another way. Let them come to us.
"Some of them still resent it," I say, though I don't want to push this line of reasoning too far. "They think it isn't fair we have so many ponies and they have so few. Gives us all the advantages."
This time she smiles at me. That's the idea, Amy. We just can't breed fast enough. Our western attitudes about family size just don't match the world we live in anymore. I wonder if ponies are doing better somewhere families are bigger, like the Middle East. Maybe they'll grow better than we do.
"What about relationships in your group? With so few ponies around, it must've been difficult."
Yeah, I guess. It didn't feel that way back then. Most of us were from the city, we'd been used to being around people. More people than you can imagine, Amy. More people than you could fit in the whole city if they all stood close together. Going from that to just a few, well... I think we were glad to have anybody. Most of us had spent some time alone. Everybody but Moriah knew what it was like to wonder if you were the last pony on earth, wonder if you'd ever see another soul again. Even Joe was relieved to have us around, even if it was just to show us what exciting things he'd done that we didn't need. Like that whole software system he wrote for the library. A whole operating system just to stream PDFs from Raven, when we could've just used a room with locks on it. Or coming up with a wideband protocol for the Kimballnet, he was real proud of that. But before I found him, he just sat alone in a room playing video games and eating breakfast. Having friends is what gives us purpose. Now that we knew what had happened, we knew we probably wouldn’t see our families again.
"Except you," I point out. "You don’t have to worry about that."
She looks uncomfortable again. I didn't know that at the time, none of us did. It was just about being friends then, and we were. Well... more than friends, some of us. But that's how ponies are.
"You don't sound upset about that."
Why should I be? Who cares what my old self would've thought! Who cares what any of us used to be—that world is gone forever. Equestria killed it, and we didn't get a choice. We do get to choose what we do with the new world. My friends chose to move on. Some faster than others, but... we all moved on. And anyway, we knew we needed the next generation. Nobody wanted to admit it back then, but we all knew. Two children each is the minimum if all you want to do is tread water, and we wanted more than that. Still do.
"I want to get back to something you said earlier. Moving on—what do you mean by that? Are you talking about the ponies trying to resurrect human religions? Or the ones who change their names and don't wear clothes? The ones who live like this is Equestria?"
I don't think it's my place to decide how ponies live. You can see I gave up on trying to wear clothes all the time myself, eventually. For ponies who live somewhere warm, I think it's an objectively superior choice. Think of how much harder it is to hide a weapon, for instance. How much less a pony needs to survive when there's no expectation they'll be dressed? How much more convenient it is to pack your bags for travel. The rest of that stuff... I think you've gone in different directions by accident. Trying to hold onto our religions seems like the opposite of the ponies changing themselves to resemble Equestria. The names... they're stupid, but so what? To some people, Equestria saved us. It's natural to want to be like the ones who saved you.
"But that wasn't how you were then?"
No, we weren't. I'd say I'd never guessed it would've happened... but maybe I should've. Cloudy Skies already did it, before we even left LA. If there was one, there'd be more. More ponies who'd rather just wipe the slate clean and start over. She looks down at her hooves, blushing. Some of us didn't really have a choice. Our old selves were as gone as the world we came from. So maybe this is the natural process. It's always been that way, with the new generation finding a slightly different way of doing things than the old one. Everything gets washed away eventually. But it hadn't really started back then. I think this is too far for your story.
"Right, we should get back on topic. What about safety? Were wolves as much of a problem then as they are now? Did you ever have to fight them?"
Fight a wolf? God, I hope not, I'm sure I'd lose. Sure, we heard them. We thought about building a wall all the way back then, but we just didn't have the time with everything else that was going on. But we didn't go out at night alone, and that helped. I think Oliver has some stories to tell about that, you should ask him.
"Don't you remember?"
Alex only shrugs, smiling again. Sure I do, but it's his story. Important thing was that we weren't really worried about safety. There's no reason to be scared about raiders when the world is so big and there are so few ponies living in it. Food was everywhere back then, and luxury items even moreso. Why would anyone come out to the ass of nowhere when they could go to a big city and steal a Van Gogh? We saw deer all the time back then, they figured out real early on the city was safe, but that didn't matter. They always left us alone. The cows needed protection, and so did the chickens. Not so much us.
"But you were just talking about the library."
Alex waves me off. I guess Joseph was right about the security measures after all. But those ponies weren't raiders. We got a few of those too—I'll never know if they were after what we had, or maybe they just thought since everything was gone they could do what they want. Guess I'll never know.
"I guess that's about what I wanted to know, then. You... selected somewhere to live, cleaned out the remnants of what had been there before, got the infrastructure working, and started building the library. That's a lot for just a few months."
It was enough. Enough that we felt ready to start putting out the call. We wanted to present a united front to newcomers, since there would only be a few of us. I think that worked out well, considering what happened afterwards.
"Would the others agree? You should be honest, I'm going to interview them too."
Alex laughs again. Moriah will probably tell you she hated it, but she'd tell you that about anything. Adrian's gone, so... I think Joseph and Cloudy would. Cloudy in particular—she was so happy back then. Building a new home out in the countryside, exactly how she wanted. Knowing all about ponies, learning how to fly…
"Mom's happy about everything. That doesn't say much."
It did back then. She was one of the happiest to have a new start, and I think she used it the most. Didn't sit around longing after her old family when she could start a new one here. That seems like the smart way to do things. Joseph might not have understood that back then, but I think he'd see it now. Assuming you can get him to leave that school for five minutes to talk to you.
"I guess we'll see." We rise, exchange farewells. Alex tells me she'll be expecting me for dinner tonight. I promise to come, but I probably won't. It's going to be a long night putting all of this together. It's already been such a long time, but I feel like somepony should get all of this down. Ponies deserve to know what happened.