Dear Diary,
Today was the official founding of our colony! It’s gonna be a bumpy next few years, but there’s no reason at all we shouldn’t be able to make it. We’ve got lots of talented ponies, and no reason we couldn’t start attracting more.
Today was inventmediaory day. If we were going to live here for the rest of forever and transform this place into a city, we would need to know exactly what we have to work with. Separated our little group into parties of two, and we each went out in a different direction. Came together for lunch courtesy of Cloudy Skies (I'm getting sick of canned veggies), then went back out with our clipboards. In the end, we put together as much as we could from what we could learn in one day.
What do we know? Well, Paris was a small town, population about 8,500 (before the Event). It existed primarily because of farming, and because of a few machine shops. The biggest one, NAL, made headlight covers or something. Also has some local construction employing the few other people. This is good, since we're going to need metalworking and construction materials in the months to come. Plenty of housing, including some of that "projects" style houses made of concrete that you hate to live in but will probably outlast more comfortable houses.
The town also has its own modest hospital, a primary and secondary school, and NO POWER PLANTS! Looks like all the electricity in town came in from elsewhere. We'll have to do something about that, but we can't exactly loot a whole power plant from a nearby city. Wonder what we'd have to do for the HPI to give us one of those reactors...
Went through town looking for solar systems, and you know how many we found? Very, very few. I guess the green revolution never reached here. Which is why we’d intended to come after a year of preparations, when we could come with truckloads full so that our setup would be effortless. As it stands we’re probably going to be burning diesel to keep things running for some time to come. Already planned an expedition to St. Louis for a few days from now to knock over a commercial solar warehouse, plus let any ponies down there know we’re here. One problem at a time.
There’s still water in the tower! No way to know how much just now; probably places all over the town where the water was left running. We’ll want to figure out how to shut it off to all but the parts we want in time, then maybe it will be worth it to pump water up into those towers again. Not right now, though.
So we picked one of the nicest little houses we could find for our new home-base. The town has a little lake, where the really nicest houses are, though they don’t build mansions here like in Cali. No self-contained cistern systems either… damn do I miss hippies. But that’s okay! We’ll figure it out! Might end up resorting to RVs like the other survivors Adrian found. Plenty of space to park them on the grass and empty fields. Having the lake is nice; and it doesn’t seem to be drying up the way everything in California was. Real climate, yay!
Just down the street from the first fields, too. Close enough to drive tractors, once we start doing that sort of thing. Probably won’t be doing too much for the first little while: we’ve got limited time when transportation is easy and a world full of supplies. Already talked about it; we’re going to use the local high school gym as our warehouse, since it has climate control (we could use if we had electricity). The goal? Four trucks, each with “living” cabs. Three pull empty storage trailers, one a fuel tank. We caravan into a city, grab what we need, refill the fuel tanker with more diesel, then make our way back. Regular caravan rotations, for as long as we can keep the trucks on the road.
We’ve got enough fuel to keep the medicine cold for the time being. Found a gasoline generator, and we’re using that. Gas is pretty much on its last legs, so we figure might as well get what we can out of it while it lasts. We’ll switch back to just letting the truck idle all the time if we see the gasoline giving us any trouble, but hopefully we’ve brought truckloads worth of solar panels and golf-cart batteries here by then. Deep-cycle, baby.
So we had ourselves a little meeting. Wouldn’t really call it a government or anything like that. But we are the founders of a new community, and that means coming up with a name. Many ideas circulated. My favorite was the one I proposed, the perhaps unimaginative “Nueva Angeles.” Honestly I’m not sure if I even conjugated that right (I haven’t taken any Spanish classes since high school). Whatever, it didn’t win anyway.
Against my objections, our little community will now be known as Alexandria (Groan). Yeah, it’s going to be a center of learning. Yeah, it’s going to house the world’s only inter-universal library. So maybe the name is fitting. Still feels pretty unfair they’re naming something after me like this. I’ve done less than plenty of them for our survival.
They wouldn’t hear it, though. Even Moriah supported the vote, when nobody came up with anything better. Guess I can hold out hope that somebody comes up with a really genius idea and we change it. Otherwise, future generations are going to be reading this journal and ask me why the heck I named a place after myself.
I’m setting the record straight, right here! It wasn’t my idea! I tried to stop them, you hear me? You… read me? Whatever.
I think there might be wolves out there, or at least a big pack of brave dogs. I’ve never heard a real wolf-howl, so I’m not sure I’d be able to tell it apart from dogs. They’re pretty similar, right? Genetically or whatever?
Guess genetics probably didn’t survive the Event, or the “Collapse”, as those HPI folk call it. Wonder which of those names is gonna stick, a thousand years from now. Or ten thousand, when every last human has finally returned?
Will we have figured out how to make humans who can live in magic, by then? All these big, universal questions are kinda over my head I guess. I’m just a little earth pony. I want to make sure there’s heat in pony’s homes come winter and food on their tables.
I tried to help with the big questions, and it turned out there wasn’t much we could do. Luna and the other ponies weren’t responsible for what happened to Earth, except for saving everybody’s lives. Maybe they hadn’t done so in the most ideal way. Maybe there was a better way I didn’t know about.
Maybe they purposefully ignored it in order to make our world like theirs. I don’t think we’ll ever know. A single encounter made me think they were upright, honest, and compassionate. But that may’ve been a lie. I don’t know. Maybe my body was lying and making me want to trust them.
I doubt we’ll ever know. Well, maybe I will. But my friends, they probably won't. Tempus fugit.
Life isn’t going to be easy, here in “Alexandria.” We’ve got a whole civilization’s worth of technology to preserve/rediscover. A reboot.
Adrian’s staying on in the short term, until we’re established. He says he always leaves a satellite phone in every community he visits. Even if we’ve already got them, he says he can’t leave one here until we’re a community. So that’s neat.
Maybe he’ll fall for Sky. Maybe she’ll keep pining for Joseph, or maybe she’ll move on.
I’m not sure about me. I feel a little young to be thinking about this, but I’m also kinda the de facto leader of this group. I should probably set an example or whatever. I dunno. Maybe when there are more ponies here to set an example for. My friends already know me. They know my word’s good. That I care about them.
We’re a long way from having a real government. Probably we’ll end up reusing most of what the country already had going… if we ever get that big, I mean. Joseph ran the numbers, and they’re not good. Regular growth rate for humanity? Two percent. Unless we really do live longer, like Sunset Shimmer suggested, it’s going to be a really long time before we hit numbers enough to support an industrial nation.
We’ve got a key principle: we’ve got to minimize farm labor. If we can keep just a few feeding the whole population, then we’ve got the recipe for civilization. For innovation, invention, and change.
With any luck, being the sole depository of Equestrian knowledge on Earth will draw some of that talent here, and some of them will want to stay.
Guess we’ll find out.
After more than three months of effort (almost four) Cloudy Skies flew today. I guess she got bored of waiting to show me, because she just took off, flapping her wings less than I’d expect for something her size. Stayed low, not more than three hundred feet up, in this awkward glide without turning. Ended up coming right back down about the length of main street.
But that doesn’t matter. Her glide ended in tears because we know she can do it. She knows she can do it. Apparently she figured it out while I was in Equestria, and has been eager to show me ever since I got back. She got impatient.
Bumped into Oliver during the walk back. Almost asked him if he wanted to watch the moon later. I didn’t. Next time I guess. He just sorta shrugged and kept going. Pretty patient guy. Or maybe he doesn’t care. I dunno. Those doctor types.
Good thing we have those. God knows I wouldn’t know how to deliver a foal without him, and Cloudy Skies hardly counted.
We ended our night with a big party, to celebrate our arrival and commemorate our future here. Raided the Walmart for lots of the non-perishable, shelf-stable celebration supplies. That carbonated Martinelli's cider was as delicious as I remember it.
To my chagrin (and everyone else’s amusement), Oliver wouldn’t let me have any of the alcohol. Horsecrap, it’s not like I’m not the one who picked it out, mixed what Joseph called my “girly drinks.” He said I’d thank him later, but I tried to take it in good humor. Everybody else was in good humor. I’ve never seen a pony drink as much as that Adrian, let me tell you.
Cloudy didn’t really have much and she was already starting to sway, so it’s clearly not a genetic thing. Took her back to the truck trailer, since we haven’t actually cleaned out any of the houses for our use yet. She’s still asleep on the other side of this divider. Dreaming pegasus dreams.
So yeah, diary. Things haven’t been easy these last months. Surviving on our own, fighting off predators, learning what really happened (according to the Princesses of Equestria). Traveling to another world, and coming back with Equestria’s reboot kit.
Learned how to be a pony. Learned how to be a mare. Learned how to convert trucks so hooves could reach or use a wheel. Learned how to eat grass and brush and flowers and enjoy it.
Maybe learned is the wrong word. We lived. And we live still, carrying the legacy of what we were along with us. We’ll be building from the wreckage of mankind’s great civilization. We’ll make sure humanity’s greatest creations aren’t just preserved in some secret, magically shielded bunker.
We’ll take them and make them part of our culture. We’ll use the inventions to keep our lives going. We’ll teach our foals that once we walked on two legs and ate meat. The HPI can do many things, but not any of those. It’s a time capsule. Without our work out here, humanity would, in effect, have died, with only a faint memory surviving, like a dream. A dream that might end and be forgotten with a single power failure.
Not out here, in the real world. The world of oil and tears. The world of iron and blood. Of unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies. Of the other breeds I haven’t met yet. A world where I can be friends with a whole city at once.
Life could be worse. I’m not going to call things great. We might all freeze to death in the winter, or die of some weird horse-disease. We might get the gout or malnutrition. But we might not. Maybe Alexandria will grow to be a great city, known in all the world. Maybe our foals will grow up strong, hybrid offspring of two worlds. Maybe the disappearing “humans” will return to a world that’s as strong and stable as the one they left.
Maybe we’ll forgive Equestria for what they did to us, enough to thank them for what they gave.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
—Lonely Day
My friends (and me)