Dear Journal,
We picked up the pieces. No, I don’t just mean cleaning up the damage to our house (that took a freakin’ long time though). I mean putting our lives back together after all the insanity that’s been taking place. Nice to get a day of respite from all that.
I spent last night alone in our base, a base covered in refuse on every floor. I heard the dogs barking at night and I was afraid they might get in and get me. Is that even a thing they do? Food has got to be getting scarce out there. They’ve already eaten each other, eaten rats and cats and roaches. How much longer will the rats and stuff last living off the refuse of my city?
God, please let everyone come back. I get it, you’re mad. We’ll repent. We’ll change. Whatever, just bring them back. Mom, Jennifer, I hope you’re okay. Wherever you are. I’m thinking about you. We’ll get through this together.
I missed having Huan with me, for sure. My buddy would’ve kept me safe. As it was I barely slept, even with all the doors locked. Dogs can’t open doors, right? My bedroom is on the third floor, the master at the highest level of the house, so I don’t think they could’ve got in even if they wanted.
Sleeping alone reminded me of just how awful it would be not to have all the other ponies to keep me company. It’s true that we aren’t really meant for a solitary existence. I still remember how awful that first week was. I’m not sure how long I would last on my own, even though I don’t think I’d ever starve.
The next morning, everyone came back. Sky and Moriah made it first, since they were so much closer. I wanted to stay and help Sky get the cattle herd back into pasture, but there was no time. I had to leave again. This time, for a better reason: getting our medical supplies.
Driving down to Bakersfield was a bit of an adventure. I don't think there was an airtight seal on the gas tank in this car, and unlike our trucks and things (which have been constantly cycling diesel for some time now, with no fuel left to sit around), this one just sat there. Yeah, I filled it with fresh fuel before I left town, but I was kinda in a hurry. Didn't drain the mostly empty tank or flush the lines or anything, like I would've if I'd still been working.
Why, you ask? Well, this probably doesn't matter anymore, since refining oil into gasoline is damn difficult, but fuel doesn't last forever. I had to look it up a few months back (MONTHS? MONTHS! Almost). Oxygen reacts with all those delicious hydrocarbons, lowers the octane and all sorts of other nasty stuff. Gasoline normally stores for about three months, if the temperature is moderate and there's not a lot of air. That should mean that the gas in most cars would still be perfectly fine to drive, right?
Well, the SUV I picked must've been open to the air or something, because I got halfway up the grapevine and the whole thing started shaking and sputtering. If I hadn't been in the middle of nowhere, I might've stopped it right there. God knows continuing to drive it was doing horrible things to that engine. I drove it anyway, praying to Vulcan and Hephaestus and all the other forge gods I knew of it wasn't going to break down (or worse, burst into flames and send me into an accident on one of the cliff sections of the road).
It appears the gods of the forge heard my prayers, because I made it to Bakersfield, rolling in at about twenty miles per hour with a car that was belching smoke by then. I walked most of the way from there. Huan found me, and I followed him back to some angry looking friends of mine.
Moral of the story? I've been making the right choice to use diesel for everything. It's not perfect (fungus can grow in it. FUNGUS!), but it seems to last longer than gasoline. Which is good, because we're gonna need the fuel for way more than three months. What an awful shame, really, that we've got a whole world full of fuel and it's all rotting away. Whatever. We talked about it later.
I didn't even tell them about my adventure getting there, just got back into the medicine truck, which still had a quarter tank (it'd used lots of the fuel keeping cold yesterday I guess. At least Oliver knew enough to keep the thing running so it would have power. He'd probably hate me forever if I'd been the reason all that medicine went bad). Drove back home at some safe highway speeds, and didn't feel like I was going to explode once the whole way.
New unicorn seems to be healing very well, considering. There are still thin patches of fur where we had to use stitches (really poor job we did, by the way. She’s gonna be rockin’ scars under her coat for the rest of forever). She can walk now, though not terribly stable. Still wearing bandages on her head (I’m glad, not excited about looking at that stump all day. Maybe we can make her a prosthetic horn?).
I think she was angrier about what happened to our base than anyone, and she hasn’t even done anything to help build it. Thought we should go after them, rough up the “HPI” for what they did to us. I told her that was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard and we sure as heck weren’t going to “rough up” a coordinated military force, even if it looked small. She could shut up and help us clean, or get out of the way.
To her credit, she did help us clean. Got to learn a little more about her then, which was nice. Apparently she was the oldest of three from some rich Northern California family. Her father was a commercial airline pilot, which was why she had wanted to go into the business. She hadn’t really taken life seriously up ‘til now, or else she probably could’ve been. Yeah, I think all of us fit that bill a little.
More than all that, I wanted to learn her skills. Not much there. She’s done metalshop and a little welding, but she insisted she “had never been very good at either”. Perfect.
Well, in all seriousness, having a pilot could be a huge advantage. We still have fuel (after a fashion), might as well use it to travel around. The “HPI” didn’t seem to be flying north again, so it might be safe for all of us. I want to see if I can find my mother, my sister. I know Cloudy Skies doesn’t, but… maybe Joseph has someone he would like to look for too. We should have plenty of selection for planes.
I suggested this, and Moriah seems enthusiastic about the idea, wanting to check on her own family. I’m not sure how we’ll handle it yet; but no matter what I don’t want Cloudy at home alone. Of all of us, she’s the least able to defend herself. Maybe we can go in pairs, Moriah and one other pony, until everyone who wants to has tried. Of course, a few failures might alleviate the need for future trips. Here's to hoping whatever tanks store plane fuel were more airtight than my SUV.
I hope you’re still around, Mom. Maybe you’d be a regular pony, like me. Maybe you’d have a horn. God knows Jennifer would have some of those wings, couldn’t ever stop her from flying away.
Joseph and Oliver were pretty miffed about the way I left them. I couldn’t really argue; it had been stupid and selfish and I knew that. I just didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let my friends put themselves at risk. They’re all more important than me. I’m the only one with skills we can afford to sacrifice. We don’t need a generalist, but we sure as hell need a doctor.
Had a trump card, though. I’d saved that moment to tell everyone about the letter and the package. Everybody together, read the note, dumped out the communications device. Freakout.
I’ll spare the gory (boring) details of every pony’s reactions. Cloudy Skies and Oliver were both in favor of contacting them, the former almost immediately so. Joseph was on the fence, and Moriah wanted us to smash the communicator to pieces and burn the note, then check ourselves for anthrax.
Anthrax, seriously? They could’ve just hidden a bomb in the house if they wanted to kill us. Anthrax might not even work on ponies, anyway. Just because some pain meds seem to doesn’t mean anything else will.
In the end, we gave Joe the communicator to go over and check for safety. I figure if there is a hidden bomb, it would go off when we use the thing, so we’ll make sure nobody’s anywhere near the base when we call. It would be horrible to lose our home, but… I’d rather find out it’d been boobytrapped when it was empty then while we were all sleeping some night.
Eventually Joseph and Moriah came around to the idea, but only after we promised to convert another RV and pack both with the supplies needed to make it on the road. If the call went south, we could be on the road and leave everything behind. Moriah didn’t seem to realize that neither Sky nor me would be willing to leave the flock behind, but I didn’t point that out and neither did Sky. At that point we just wanted her to shut up.
Oh, she’s got clothes now. Shorts, like me. Wants me to make her horseshoes, the “epoxy on kind”, because “she’s a horse anyway so it’s not like she would take them off”. Whatever.
Joseph, I’m sorry I ever complained about you, I am. You were actually quite a reasonable stallion. Deplorable standards of personal hygiene, but that’s something else entirely.
Moriah, I know how hard it is to go through what you’re going through. I’ve been through it. My first week was the pits. Thought about throwing myself off skyscrapers a few times. Pretty sure if I hadn’t been alone I would’ve taken the opportunity to be happier about life, though. Maybe embarrassed that I was in a permanent horse costume, but still happier. It’s good to have friends. Do you want to be ours or not?
It isn’t like her precautions weren’t good ones. Our meeting resolved, we got to work. The medical truck would just be parked outside the fence, adding to our barricade, and wired into the power system for the house. We had already planned on adding a few more kilowatts, and the generator can probably handle the slack in the meantime. We’ll put a canopy up over the truck, get it out of direct sunlight, but not now.
Of course, my problems with gasoline, even though I didn't tell anyone, have brought the life of our fuel rushing to the front of my mind. What would we do without the standby generators? The heat of summer without air conditioners would be the least of our worries when we're reliant on such technological absurdities as atmospheric water extractors. Mid-term we'll have to switch to electric vehicles and solar panels, for the five to ten years their batteries hold a charge. Maybe longer, if we can get a warehouse full of replacements insulated from temperature swings. Long term though, we're going to need to switch to biofuels. Reduce our electricity demand, and use those old-timey generators (or maybe even something wood-fired, the ultimate in low-tech renewable fuel).
What did I do? Drive around the city with a dog and a crowbar, opening up the holding tanks of gas stations. Pretty well sealed, these puppies, but I wanted one with some particular features. One with a full diesel tank, or as close to full as possible. One with one of those cone-drain things on the inside to get the water out without me having to interfere. Took me awhile, but this is Los Angeles and there are thousands of gas stations. Found one eventually. Topped it up with our fuel truck (basically draining it), and then in went my SECRET WEAPON (TM). Actually, the Department of Defense's secret weapon.
We found it during our adventure in that Air Force base, not too long ago. Fuel Stability Foam. According to the package, it says it'll preserve diesel for ten years. TEN YEARS! Given I didn't put this stuff in on day one, and we're in California here, I give a more reasonable estimate at maybe half that. Still, we don't even really need it to last that long. We're not staying in LA for five years.
So that was my adventure. The others put together the house, got the truck plugged in, all that. Just getting it into the system went a long way to keeping Oliver happy. Keeping those drugs intact has been almost an obsession for him over these last almost-two months. I wonder how much more gardening he’ll be able to do with that worry taken care-of.
Oliver’s pretty laid-back about most things. We don’t have any more bedrooms, but he doesn’t mind sharing with Joseph. It was a kid’s room anyway, and that unicorn never bothered removing the other twin-sized bed, so it’s already set up for two ponies. Human beds are so gigantic we could probably share even smaller ones, but we won’t push it. Having to “grid-up” another house would be an incredible pain, and split our resources in ways we probably don’t want to do.
Figure if we get many more ponies we’ll turn the master into a “dorm” of sorts, fill it with Ikea bunk-beds. Maybe turn part of the basement into more sleeping areas. We could probably do as many as 15 ponies in this house, though we wouldn’t be able to meet all their needs. Water, specifically. Composting toilets can’t handle that many people per day as it turns out, not to mention showers. I honestly don’t think we’d get more from atmospheric water even if we wanted to. Maybe if we lived in Florida or Missouri, but we don’t.
It’s a good thing this isn’t our long-term place. But if it’s not… where will we go? Is the country way less safe than we thought? Will our future colony be attacked by HPI jets and ransacked by mysterious beings? Not to mention… of all the ponies who stayed behind, there had to be a few that were crazy or criminal, right? Or… who might be driven to that, if they were in an area without much food. How long before ponies like that become a problem? Are there even enough ponies in the whole world for that to matter?
Right, the agenda. After our brief meeting I picked out another RV (also diesel, also an automatic transmission because proles), and put in the hand-pedal things while the others started loading supplies. It’s funny how many vehicles we’re gathering around our little compound. I wonder if the HPI can look at satellite cameras of all the stuff we’re doing. I wonder if they care to.
Tomorrow we’ll make the call, and see what these “HPI” ponies are really about. I’ll probably use my computer to record the whole thing, so we don’t miss anything that might be significant later. Our first chance to talk to a group that’s apparently this powerful should not be squandered, that’s for sure.
Assuming they’re even still a group. I haven’t ruled out sentient computer program. Maybe it has drones it can use to ransack a pony’s house and write notes "by hand." I wonder what it wanted with all that nuclear crap. Maybe it will tell us tomorrow.
—A
this chapter is my birthday in this story
Inb4 she gets a dial tone.
I feel that there should be a pubescent character in this story, to add a bit more noticeable diversity. And how younger generations perceive being different forms.
What does HPI mean?
Moriah sounds like she needs to be sat down and talked to with seriousness. Or maybe a thwap to the head with a rolled-up newspaper.
10 bits say Moriah is right. Go look for that important-thing-in-my-plane thingy first at least. Or not, I guess.
Well... or just hope for the best.
Well, that was interesting. Random side note, you're coming up on my birthday, July 15, considering some entries pack in multiple day at the rate this is going we'll probably be reading August entries by then.
Well, y'know, I was hooked for this which was probably the first world-building-story that would've made me stay, but... Nyeh, it's still good, even if it
ascendsdescendsgets slowly more adventure-y.Eitherway, I say; I stay. 'cause it's well written and highly enjoyable, even if it doesn't fits my own cravings. Mhh, or at least just fit's partially.
Gonna read it anyway.
6118164
This is really just a guess, but I can 't help but see it as "Human Pony institute"
So they're going to make contact? Excellent, I want to knooooow.
I asked this question a few chapters ago but never got an answer. What is Joseph's pony name (according to Sky I mean)???????
By the way, happy Fathers Day.
Urg, Cloudy again makes me feel weary of her, I don't know, I am inclined to trust this mysterious sixth sense from the same species of pony as Pinkie Pie, you know? I figure it might be an earth pony thing from how Cheese Sandwich also has it.
Look, I get it, she is socially malnourished, likes animals more, is very awkward with enforcing pony culture on things, but why the heck does she want to contact some weird group that very suspiciously come out of nowhere with super technology?
I don't see what part of her personality seems to lead up to the immediate support of such an idea.
Also, Moriah is kind of the opposite in terms of mild dislike, seems like a very emphatic individual to the point on being steaming mad and wanting to organize a raid on the enemy, hot blooded indeed...
She's certainly helpful at least, awesome.
6118679 "Sky thought I was brave"...
'Lonely Day (without Sky).'
First Friend Forever.
...Day wants to contact them - Sky wants to contact them. Doesn't really surprise me...
With you on Moriah. Need more Moriah. Tell us about Moriah!
I checked my French-English dictionnary, and "werehouse" wasn't listed. Did you mean "warehouse"?
Huh. Well, I've learned quite a bit about car fuels. (Fungus? Really? Neat.)
In any case, Moriah is spitting nails at just about everything. I wonder if some of that is instinctual distress over the broken horn and how much is just her continuing to come to grips with the situation.
Also, A really does underestimate her contributions to the group. Who else here could rebuild a power grid, ensure sustainable transportation, or even think to worry about such things? A is the team's logistician and utility pony. That isn't expendable. That's fundamental. Poor thing really needs a shot to her self-esteem, though running off half-cocked as she did definitely wasn't the way to go about getting one.
6118694
Yeah, I agree with that, I want her character to be fleshed out a little more, family sharing is good atleast.
I'm guessin' HPI stands for Humanities Preservation Institution.
6118218 Everyone learns from the newspaper, you get the message printed out for every being to see.
Wait a second. Are A's mom and Jennifer two separate people? If they are, who's Jennifer? Then again, A could just be in the habit of calling his mother by her first name..... but then again, he said Jennifer flew away. Ex girlfriend, maybe?
6119622 Sister?
6119702
Maybe, but in the first chapter, A tries to call his mother and brother. I thought that if he had a sister, he would have tried to call her too.
I started playing a game called This War of Mine. I just realized how much this story is like that game. A small group of civilians scavenging for food and supplies to fix up a home base. The biggest difference is of course the situation. In the game you're trapped in a city surrounded by war and conflict, here everyone's just gone.
Oh no the HPI found their base and... left a note, then got on a boat and left.
Humanity needs you, why does that make me feel like they want to stick a pin through you and put you up on the wall of their human collection?
6116170
Given the population distribution on earth, it's pretty unlikely that would be enough, particularly since not all of them are ponies. I'm not sure how many actually are... probably less than a third. There are tons of races on Equestria, after all...
6116295
Hah, will do! And we'll see. There's almost certainly going to be an epilogue, though it will probably be written as its own story. Third person prose instead of a journal. I've jonesen to actually portray characters instead of having them talk about themselves.
6117903
I thought my quote said sex/gender? The slash might mean either or both though, so I'm not really sure that's better actually.
6118115
Happy story birthday!
6118123
I actually wish I'd thought of adding one. The story's mostly finished, unfortunately, so it's a little too late (in my notebook it's almost finished, not on the site). Definitely got to have a child in any sequels/epilogue.
6118164
We don't actually know. Several theories have been proposed in the comments, though.
6118322
Happy almost story birthday!
6118329
It's still going to be more world-building, even if we have little adventures along the way. Even the HPI is far more another local hazard than something to travel out and fight. But yeah, still going to be a little adventure.
6118482
It hasn't been revealed in the story. It's not really a spoiler, though. Lonely Day doesn't really use the pony names, so it hasn't been written down. It's Mystic Rune. Hasn't actually appeared in the story, and I'm not sure if it will.
6118679
It's been said, but it seems like Cloudy Skies is just siding with Lonely Day to agree with Lonely Day. Not because she actually thinks it would be a good idea.
6118694
Okay. I will.
6118794
You're right, fixed! Thanks for pointing that out!
6118827
Yeah, I didn't know any of those things when I started either. Still, had to do a ton of research for this story. Contrary to what some readers have thought, when Lonely Day asked a question, it wasn't because the author didn't know, it was when the character didn't know. Generally I had to look them up even before A asked. X.x
6119411
This seems like something to be revealed once they contact them.
6119553
I am amazed that typo survived that long. With so many people reading and pointing out typos... I'm baffled. Fixed now.
6119622
So it hasn't actually been said, but Jenifier is A's sister, A hasn't named the mother, and A also has a younger brother. I believe the idea earlier was that A tried calling their mother, and when A failed to get an answer, didn't bother calling the sister because she was too young not to live at home, so went straight to the brother because he also has moved out of the house. This isn't going to be detailed in the story, so I thought I'd point that out.
6120044
Hah! My dad (a hobby pilot) was a little less graphic when I asked him about a landing like that, but he said basically the same thing. That's pretty funny.
6120083
Heard good things about that game. Maybe I should give it a chance. Grab it during the last few hours of the steam sale...
6120259
Eh! You don't know that!
Just saying, I imagine anthrax would work on ponies. From wikipedia:
6120680
Oh! Okay, thanks.
It's pretty clear that A is getting seriously depressed about his mother and sister. It's also clear that, the more ponies they collect, the more serious mental issues are being apparent (Moriah's paranoia being a good example - A is right; a motion detector-triggered bio-agent dispersant bomb in a fake 'phone casing would have been more efficient).
6120680
You sure? I wasn't exactly certain he did put his own opinion forward really...
Wait, of course your sure, it's your story.
If I get a dollar everytime A says "whatever"...
Why do I feel like whatever's in those boxes labled radiation are other ponified humans?
Man, this story has shifted into overdrive. :D Exciting!
Oooh, this is exciting!!
This chapters img tag is also wonks.
As someone who has used fuel treatment, gasoline truck still works with the same fuel for about 3 years now.