Alex had never felt happier than the day she opened the Museum of Human Achievements. It was by no means an accomplishment that was purely her own. She had elicited donations from hundreds of Alexandria's most prominent citizens. Granted, many of those had thought she was a filly-scout doing a charity project...
She couldn't describe her satisfaction on the day of the grand opening, when she stepped out onto the stage and saw their shocked faces. No, she wasn't representing Lonely Day. She was Lonely Day, founder and former mayor of their city.
She had commissioned Raven City engineers to design the structure. The construction, honest labor of an Alexandrian construction company.
She had invited everypony who had worked on the building, everypony who had supported the museum in a political way, and everypony who had donated. Perhaps the opening of a new museum in the world Alex had come from wouldn't have attracted the crowd that this event had. But this was a different world. There were no more smartphones, few computers, and no more internet. Leaving one's home and spending time out in the community was one of the best ways to stave off boredom.
Her speech was over now, along with the mayor's and every other important sponsor of the project. Great throngs of ponies now pressed down into the concrete entryway, even as a slow trickle made its way out the exit. Alex found herself swallowed by it, taken up by her friends and acquaintances in the slow press down beneath the earth.
She found herself standing beside Taylor, whom she could not fail to identify even in a crowd of thousands. Taylor was the HPI's official representative in the equine world now, and dressed the part. A pony-shaped uniform had been made for her, resembling the one her comrades wore beneath the surface. It had but one addition theirs lacked: her cutie mark was embroidered in the expected place.
On this particular occasion, she wore a vest with a laminated panoramic camera raised on a pole to be over her head, along with what Alex took to be a recorder. "Ho, Taylor!"
"Ho, Alex!" Taylor responded, embracing her as best she could in the crowd. It had been several decades now, but Taylor's appearance still seemed young and healthy. Other than getting larger and more mature-looking, time appeared to have been as kind to her as it was to Alex's other friends.
While it had been kind to them, it had ignored her, and she seemed just as much the young mare in comparison that she had ever been. "I'm surprised our mutual friends would be curious enough to have you record any of this."
Taylor looked sidelong at Alex, as though calling upon some secret only the two of them shared. "We're still a novelty down there, believe it or not." She jostled the camera on her back. "Anything we can do to demystify ourselves goes a long way."
Together they finally reached the edge of the building. The surface section was not large, a two story structure made from unreinforced concrete. That meant the walls had to be quite thick at the base, which she didn't mind. There only really had to be room for two sets of stairs, one for each direction, along with a lobby. Everything else was below.
Skylights served in the lobby, though as they moved with the crowd they were replaced with the steady glow of pony-made electric bulbs, flickering to the fickle whims of the electrical grid. "Plus, they did engineer this place. Complete with every silly thing you asked for." She gestured at the stairs, which after taking them down fifty feet, started moving up again. They passed into a second lobby like a sink trap, before passing into a spiral instead of a ramp. "People want to see how badly humans are going to be misrepresented by exhibits made by ponies."
"They think we don't remember? We made this place for our children's benefit, not our own."
Taylor shrugged. "Honestly, lots of them know less about what it was like to live on Earth than your ponies do. Didn't you say you got the help of the newest returns you could?" At Alex's nod, she continued. "We're on to the second and third generation in Raven these days. They didn't just come back from Old Earth, they've never seen it. Outside of the movies and TV shows, it's not real to them. They wouldn't know how to recognize if your museum got things right even if they saw it."
Alex sighed. "They're still the last biological humans we have. Do you think they'll visit?"
"Not today!" Taylor gestured around, at the space thick with ponies. "The magic in this building would barbeque them alive before they got down the stairs. Maybe if you closed the place down for an evening or something."
"I'd be happy to. It won't be open at nights anyway, so it wouldn't be hard. Not that I expect anyone in Raven to be impressed."
"They're impressed the whole thing hasn't collapsed and killed someone. They don't think much of non-automated construction crews."
Alex laughed. "As if that was the way people always built things."
"For them it is. Don't forget, just because ponies live longer doesn't mean humans do. The people who remember Old Earth are in their seventies and eighties. They don't keep anyone past when they can contribute somehow. The rest are either ponies in Bountiful or cremated."
"Do you feel eighty?"
"Do you?" Taylor returned her laugh. "Ask the old commander if he feels a hundred ten next time you see him."
They reached the bottom of the spiral staircase about then, stepping out into the museum proper. The complex was built quite deep underground, beneath a layer of impermeable clays and shales that would keep the water table at bay into perpetuity. Each room and chamber was a cylinder of one length or another, cast in concrete but with a flat deck of wood within. The largest room had a diameter of fifty feet, though most were far smaller. Even so, the museum had taken a fair fortune to build and the skills of many diamond-dog excavators.
The structure might be called the "Museum of Human Achievements", but only one of its wings was actually devoted to representing these. To be fair, it was the largest, populated with the greatest accomplishments of art and science. In every case she could, Alex had commissioned replicas in bronze rather than originals. Where bronze wouldn't serve she had settled for laminating in thick plastic.
The replicas of beautiful historical works filled that space. For many ponies who entered, it was their first time ever seeing the human form in full scale. They passed through the other two wings in turn, where the history of human civilization was summarized and a sketch of modern life before the Event was depicted. For this last they made use of a single HPI-built projector and computer, which could screen a few old movies.
She found Amy at the little theater, reading a book at the controls as she waited for another show to end. She looked up as they approached, grinning. "Alex, Taylor!" She put her book down. "Do you want me to let you in? I could clear out a few seats..."
"Nah." Alex spared one glance at the huge line waiting for the theater and she knew what result that would have. "We just wanted to say hi."
"Actually, do you think I could sit in the aisle?" Taylor gestured to her camera. "I think they'd want me to get a look at the theater. I won't stay in there for long."
"Be my guest." Amy gestured at the doors. "Just don't be in the way when the show ends. It's got another... eight minutes. If you stay in there and get trampled, it's not my fault."
"Noted." Taylor slipped inside, leaving the two of them relatively alone. So long as they kept their voices down low enough that they couldn't be overheard with the line so close.
"Is your mom upset you chose to work here?"
The mare shrugged. It was a little hard seeing a pony she remembered as a newborn end up so much larger than she was. "Sky hated her old life, she didn't hate the whole world. I do think she would rather I spent more time 'finding a good stallion.'"
"Don't let her pressure you into doing something you don't want. Sky's got enough foals that you can be perfect by averages even if you do your own thing." Unlike Alex herself, who still had just one.
"Don't I know it." She lowered her voice, leaning towards her. "Looks like number eighteen is on the way. I just got the news this morning."
"Eighteen," Alex repeated, unable to keep the wonder from her voice. "Why doesn't Adrian stop her?"
"Dad say no to Mom? Not a chance. Besides, it's not like it slows him down much. She never has two foals in the house at once, so he doesn't mind."
"Strange species we are where that works. Humans can't even have children for most of their lifetime." She reached back into her mind, finding the Equestrian childbirth text. She found the information she was looking for, then continued. "Somepony ought to warn her she's running out of time. The books all agree it's a bad idea to have foals after ninety."
"Somepony has, don't worry. Your mate doesn't let a patient leave his office uninformed."
Alex nodded, though the smile was a little bitter. They were more friends than mates these days. It wasn't like she blamed the stallion for drifting away from her. Didn't make it hurt less, even though few ponies knew.
"I've been meaning to ask you, Amy. I'm going out of town for the next few weeks. Taylor's been saving a month's leave, she's coming too. There's an open invitation for you to join us."
"I'm guessing that means you're offering me vacation time too." She glanced at the controls. "First day at my perfect job and you're asking me to leave." She frowned. "What would we be doing, anyway?"
"Unpaid manual labor. Well... I could make it paid vacation time. But it would still be manual labor."
The mare considered for a moment, then her eyes widened. "Wait a minute! You've done this before! I asked where you were going... must've been twenty years ago now... you wouldn't say!"
She nodded. "I still won't say. But you can come if you want to. I took your mother a few times, but we both know she's too busy and important to come on a vanity project."
"But I'm not, I see what you're saying."
She shrugged. "I know your boss. She'll make exceptions when she knows it's a project that will help you in your work."
"Really?" That got Amy's attention. "It's about humans, isn't it?"
She nodded. "It's gonna be buckin' hard work in the spring sun, and I'll swear you to secrecy when you're done."
"When would we leave?"
Taylor returned at that moment, eyes still wide from the darkness of the theater. "Recruiting more slave labor, eh?"
Alex only shoved her. "Tell me you didn't have fun last time!"
The mare's smile didn't falter. "Sure, whatever. Doesn't mean we aren't doing slave labor." She reached out, gripping Amy's shoulder. "It's hard work, bird-pony. You might not be sturdy enough."
"Is that so?"
* * *
Alex sat crammed into the hallway of the Swallow Supersonic Nuclear Transport, reading over Amy's shoulder and pretending she wasn't bored. Of course she was bored, all thanks to her perfect memory. Alex loved reading, but when you could finish even a meaty novel in a few minutes and never forget anything about it, your supply of good books was limited. So she saved some of the best, giving herself exactly one "pleasure" book a day.
Unfortunately, she had already read Amy's current selection "The Lost World" exactly eight years, four months and three days ago. "I don't get it," Amy declared, closing the book with one hoof and looking up.
"You don't get what?" Alex didn't have much free space to move away, but she did her best. A few feet further and she'd reach the cargo bay, packed with construction supplies. Cans of paint, lengths of wood in sheets and planks, plaster and drywall and bags of cement.
Amy gestured at the cover. "Have you... course you have, why wouldn't you. So, there's two different tribes on the plane, right? Humans and ape-men." At her nod, Amy continued. "Why are they fighting? Malone says there's been a terrible war since they got there together, and we even see some of the apes push..." she shivered as she spoke. "Push some humans off a cliff. But it doesn't make sense! They've both got their own languages, their own societies. They both have families, and they use tools and everything. Why do they fight? They're way closer together than ponies are to griffons, or diamond dogs or whatever. But you don't see any of us going to war over something that stupid!"
Yet, Lonely Day thought to herself. So far there had been no wars, or at least no armed conflicts large enough to be called wars. It seemed rather pointless to fight when there was so much open world to claim, and so many resources to do it with. But would it always remain so? She doubted it. Even the Equestrian history books had war, if you went back far enough. "It's fairer to call it a primitive reason to go to war. Many animals are this way, and it makes sense when you consider the perspective of survival."
"Think about it. If you're a wolf and there's lots of food, it might not matter that there are foxes living in your territory. You can eat the deer, they can eat the rabbits, and everything's great for both of you. But when winter comes and all the dear migrate north or whatever... then suddenly you're both eating the same rabbits. Every one a fox catches is one you can't use to feed your pups or give to your mate. Your family might die because of that other animal, even though it never tried to hurt you directly."
"The apes and the humans competed for the same resources. Every one of those stegosaurus the humans had in their herds was one the ape-men couldn't eat. So they fought."
The mare went quiet for a moment, thinking. Alex listened to the sound of the engines as they began to decelerate. They couldn't be far from the house now. "Does that mean when there are more ponies we'll start to fight again? Once we fill up all the farmland? Or once there are too many of us, and the humans can't make enough medicine to keep us from getting sick? We'll start pushing each other off cliffs and throwing spears at each other?"
"No." Alex shook her head. "It we started fighting each other, it would be far more terrible. Imagine if the pegasi who make sure our crops always have enough rain sent a storm on some other city? Or... what a unicorn's magic could do. And if anypony attacked the humans-" It was her turn to shiver at that. Somehow, she suspected that the HPI had indeed prepared for that eventuality. Like almost every problem the HPI attempted to solve, their answer was probably nuclear.
"But it doesn't have to come to that!" She nudged Amy on the shoulder, attracting her attention as best she could despite her small size. It worked. "We don't have to be primitive. People have lived together with groups that weren't like them before, and they aren't the only animals who ever did it either. If ponies want to be better than that, all we need are enough ponies who want to. Ponies who do everything they can to find a peaceful solution to their problems, even when violence seems easier. But... I'd relax."
She smiled bitterly, leaning back against the metal plating of the aircraft. "It will take hundreds of years before there's enough ponies for anything big. You won't ever have to see it."
"You will." She sniffed, looking away. "Mom was your best friend, but she got older and now you two don't see each other as much. Even though she knows better, she sometimes talks about you like a little filly. That's... probably why you don't spend as much time at our house as you used to."
Alex sat frozen, staring at the wall. She hardly even noticed Taylor's voice over the radio, or the fact they were now traveling vertically.
"So you made me your best friend. We spent so much time together when I was growing up! But... I'm getting older too." She kicked her book away, towards Alex. "In a few years I'll just be another one of these books to you. Just another memory."
It was all she could do to shake her head, which Amy ignored. At least by not arguing it couldn't get any worse.
It got worse. "You know why I haven't found a stallion yet?" She had a pretty good guess. "Cuz' if I do, then I'll change just like mom did! And all you have to do is hang around and act all nice, and you'll get yourself a perfect little replacement! Is that what you're gonna do, Archive? Just keep moving from one filly to another? Replacing us when we get old? I'm just Cloudy Skies number two!" She turned her flank towards Alex, shouting through her tears. "I'm so sorry, Princess Archive! Just a few more months, and I promise I'll pop you out my replacement! I'm sorry I've wanted to stay friends too much-"
Lonely Day could make no sense of the rest of it through her own tears, which had begun to flow freely by then. She backed away as far as she could, until her flank collided with a stacked pile of lumber. The world melted into a hundred blue rainbows, and she found herself unable to stop. After all, at least some of what Amy said was true.
"I... I..." She couldn't form words, couldn't force her mouth through the shapes that would lead to a reply. What was she supposed to say? "You're one of my best friends, Amy! Just 'cuz your mom... just ‘cuz Sky and I used to be this close doesn't... doesn't mean..." She couldn't even form a reply. Instead she melted into a weak little pile, whimpering and useless.
Time passed. Alex was conscious of little then, fleeing into the many-roomed mansion of her mind. Lonely Day had stood against the forces of hell and faced death without fear. That was nothing to hearing such awful things from her friends. There was no defense, nothing she could do but accept the truth and not argue the rest. She deserved every word of it, especially the parts that weren't true.
"Alex, I... I didn't mean all that." Amy nudged her with one of her wings. Alex couldn't even see her face through her own tears, though she tried. "It's not your fault mom's been so hard. It's not- It isn't right for me to take it out on you."
She shook her head. "You have every right to hate me, Amy. I'm a freak. If you don't wanna be my friend-"
She felt Amy lifting her into an embrace like a filly, and she didn't resist. "It's not your fault I'm scared."
Alex blinked. Over the next few minutes, she found herself recovering enough to speak. This was good, since their aircraft had nearly arrived. This would be bad enough without involving Taylor too. "It's... You were never your mom's replacement," she eventually said. "Sky always wanted to forget humans. But you... you're more interested than anypony I know. You like to read as much as I do... spent time with me at the library... Sky never would've done those things. You can both be my friend without you replacing her, or her replacing you, or... anything like that."
"Oh." The mare relaxed, releasing her.
Alex staggered for a few seconds, trying to force herself back into calmness. She had cried enough that she actually had a little success now. "If I wasn't your friend, I wouldn't have invited you." She walked past the mare, resting her side against her lumber in a way that was almost loving. "I don't show this place to just anypony. Oliver, Sky, Blacklight, Taylor... and now you. That's it. Nopony else in Alexandria."
"Not even Cody?"
She shook her head. "You kidding me? That stallion's like Joseph; his head is always too buried in some technical problem to see the point of a little honest work."
As she spoke, the pneumatic door to the cockpit hissed and Taylor emerged. She was still in her uniform, though she had traded the heavier version for a white tee-shirt and some shorts.
"Just what are we doing?" Amy looked between Taylor and the lumber and Alex's sincere expression and seemed to register only confusion from their synthesis.
Alex found herself smiling. "Let's go find out."
* * *
Somewhere in the bluffs of northern Oregon was a house.
The house was ordinary; two stories, modern picture windows, with a concrete drive and conservatively painted walls. What made the home strange was its surroundings. Its driveway held no automobile and connected only to forest, which spread around it in all directions. It seemed as though a single member of an identical housing track had been lifted through time and planted in the wilderness.
Yet it hadn't been moved. A careful investigation of the surrounding area would prove the house's neighbors were still there, so much as time had spared. Here and there a chimney rose from the soil, or a few half-rotten beams stuck out from the ground at the odd angles they had fallen. Glass and stainless steel survived more or less intact where they had fallen, though most of this more durable debris had been covered with a thick layer of plant detritus.
Thus was the fate of most of the country's residential structures, particularly in areas frequented by rain and snow. Careful maintenance by humans could keep a house intact for hundreds of years. A few decades of neglect was enough to decimate residential areas in wet climates.
Yet where all its neighbors were scarcely recognizable, this one home remained unchanged by the slow devastation of time around it. The cultivated little wood of pine trees, along with a layer of camouflage tarps surrounding the property, were enough to make it completely invisible at all but the closest distances.
The house had a large backyard, large enough that a Swallow could land without more than the standard automated coordination. Once on the ground, the ramp opened, and three ponies emerged from within.
"This is..." Amy stopped, frozen as she took in the structure. "A house? We came out here for a house?"
"My house," Alex agreed, dragging a cargo lifter in her teeth. With a few gestures the first pallet lifted on hydraulic pressure, and she wheeled it down the ramp. She only stopped when she had it on the ground, panting all the while. "More accurately, it's my mom's house, though my younger brother and older sister lived here too. I was the only one who actually made it on their own. Sister went to university and ended up getting dragged back, and my brother... I think he might've taken a little too much after my dad." She shivered once, then shook her head.
"Doesn't matter." She pushed the hydraulic lifter towards Amy. "You try. Just don't knock over the paint. I don't want to fly all the way back to Alexandria to buy more."
"What?" The pegasus mare spread her wings in confusion, pacing about on her hooves. "I don't... why..." She gestured up at the Swallow. "Alex, if the HPI still respects you enough to let us fly around in their fancy airplanes, why couldn't they spare any of their fancy drones to do manual labor?"
She shrugged. "They tried, but I said no." She turned away from her friends, walking closer along the manicured lawn. "When my family comes back and the house is still standing, I want it to be because I kept it here. Besides, I know I might not be able to count on the HPI forever. If I ever cease to be useful, I'll have to do everything myself. That's why we're using as much pony-made materials as we can. It might take ten millennia for them to come back. I can't count on the HPI to stick around to help me all that time."
"She's just sayin' that cuz she's a masochist." Taylor made her way down the ramp, dragging another pallet and setting it down beside the first. This one was full of nails and bags of concrete. "Look at this crap, not even letting us use robots to unload. Like she's out of ancient history or something."
"When men were men!" Alex agreed. "And mares were mares! Er- Maybe there are better expressions." She glanced towards the house, where smoke was already rising from the fireplace. "You think the old man is waiting for us?"
"With as often as he's been complaining about the floor this last week, you can bet your flank on it." She gestured. "Go on ahead if you like; I see him often enough. I can finish unloading while you introduce your latest victim."
Alex gestured, and Amy followed her towards the porch. "Old man? There are humans here?" Her whole body tensed with excitement at the idea, and she started bouncing as much as walking.
"After a fashion." She stopped at the door, knocking with a hoof. Not that the old man could've missed the sound of the Swallow landing, even with its much quieter drive-system. "Like Taylor."
"Oh." She deflated a little. "I guess that's cool too."
The door swung open with a faint glow of orangish magic. Within stood a unicorn, dressed from head-to-hoof in an HPI civilian uniform. He hardly looked old, except for a shock of gray in his otherwise lime-green mane. "Edward Clark." She saluted with one hoof, though the gesture was far more a casual greeting than anything that would've passed in the militia.
"No need for that, Alex. Who's this? Didn't feel like tearing out the floor on your own?" He looked at Amy. "You're kinder than I."
"Amy, this is Edward Clark, emeritus director of the Human Preservation Initiative. Mr. Clark, this is Amy."
Amy's hoof began to shake as she lifted it, though Clark was supposed to be the old one.
"Just Amy? No 'Running Stream' or 'Flogging Molly' or something like that?"
She found her voice. "Just Amy. That's enough name for me, Mr. Clark."
"Very good." He stepped out of the way, exposing the interior of the house. They followed him inside, into a space as authentically human as anything in the museum. It seemed like the house's owner was in the process of rebuilding every piece of furniture and accoutrement for ponies, one piece at a time. Some of the counters were absurdly tall, while others seemed to fit them perfectly. The kitchen table had chairs at their perfect level, while the one in the dining room seemed built for giants.
Little of the house seemed lived-in. The open door to the downstairs office revealed the entirety of Clark's living quarters, a tiny cot surrounded by various computer consoles and flexible displays that certainly couldn't have existed in the period the house had been built. "Only rations for me to offer you, I'm afraid." He opened the fridge, which was empty except for identical plastic bottles with different-colored caps. "No time for cooking, you know." He levitated a pair of green-capped bottles towards the two of them, twisting their tops off as he did so.
"What is this?" Amy took the bottle in one of her hooves, sniffing at it. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "You can't really eat this!"
Alex downed her own in a single long gulp. "It's what humans live on these days, Amy. Preparing food is a luxury for surface-dwellers." She tossed her empty bottle into the waste bin. "Which you are, Mr. Clark. I said I'm fine with you using the kitchen. Last time I was in Bountiful I saw plenty of real food."
Alex watched Amy take her first few sips, grinning at her reaction. Evidently the pressure to be polite and the hunger from the flight was greater than her disgust, because she got it all down.
"Most of them do. It never made sense to me, though. I spend twenty years getting used to this stuff, and now I'm food-independent. Why go back to wasting time? I can get more for my chits drinking this than I could buying produce in Bountiful."
"And now you see why we brought so much food with us."
Amy nodded, tossing her own empty bottle into the bin. "I've read about all the big cities... I've never heard of a place called Bountiful."
"Big cities." Clark looked Amy over then, as though he was seeing her for the first time. "Ponies all look young to me... you're second generation, aren't you?" Amy spluttered, but he just patted her on the shoulder and smiled like a grandfather. "Nobody who ever saw what cities are supposed to be would ever call anything that's on Earth now a city."
"Bountiful isn't on any maps, Amy. We won't even be allowed to go there unless you're sworn to secrecy."
"And you wouldn't want to live there." Taylor came in dragging a wheeled plastic crate that had all their perishables chilling inside. She nodded to Clark as she passed, plopping it down in front of the fridge and clicking it open.
"She could if she wanted to." Alex stepped forward to help, shoving Clark's sorted rows of Soylent one and all into the crisper drawers. "She doesn't have any children. I don't think you'd be happy there, Amy. You can judge for yourself I guess, but..."
"Nobody's told me what this place even is. Not that you told me where we are now. Stupid planes never having windows." Amy sat on her haunches, glaring around the room. "Why am I here, Alex? Is it to help you fix your house, or feel confused about secret places I've never heard of?"
Alex stopped unloading, hurrying over to embrace Amy from the side. "Hey, relax. You're so smart I forget you're actually a new recruit into this whole business." She glanced down at her communicator, then up at Edward. "Is my car still in the garage? I think I'll take Amy into town. The floor will still be here for us to tear out tomorrow." She nodded shyly towards Taylor. "If you're okay unloading without us."
She shrugged. "Your show. I can't bring it inside without you two helping, though. But if it doesn't rain we should be okay."
"None scheduled until tomorrow night," Edward cut in, moving over to Alex. He lowered his voice. "If you take her, you're responsible for her."
"She's honest." Alex didn't hesitate a second before she spoke. "I can't be everywhere at once, Clark. We need friends."
"I trust your judgement." He relaxed. "Don't scratch it. It's my car. Should be a blindfold in the glove compartment. Come and get me if there isn't, I'll find something."
"Got it. Come on Amy, I'll explain on the way."
She had to lift herself up onto her hind-legs to open the garage door, but Alex didn't have trouble with dexterity anymore.
A rugged little vehicle waited in the garage where some pre-Event hulk had doubtless been rusting before. Its closest analogue to human vehicles was a dune-buggy, its suspension high and thick wheels large enough to grip and roll over most obstructions. It was enclosed however, and the entire roof was covered with semitransparent solar cells.
Alex waved her wrist at the rear of the car, and both doors sprung open. There were only two seats inside, along with a large flat cargo area. She hopped into the driver's seat while Amy clambered in beside her, and both doors shut on their own.
"Welcome back, Alex," came a soothing female voice from the controls. Her seat adjusted automatically, moving as far forward as it would go. The controls consisted of a large projection screen on the huge windshield, which made the whole front of the vehicle appear to melt into the wall of the garage.
"It's alive?" Amy stared around her in wide-eyed wonder. The exact same expression she'd had the first time she rode a hummingbird. "I didn't know the HPI could make living machines!"
"They can't." Alex gestured to the glove-compartment, one of the few sections of plastic that wasn't part of the projection. "There's a blindfold in there, Amy. I have to make you put it on. Nopony's allowed to know where Bountiful is unless they're a citizen."
Amy nodded and began to comply, though she didn't look happy. "So you're a citizen?"
The garage door began to retract at her gesture. "No! They just couldn't hide it from me. It's a whole city of former humans. I can see where it is in my sleep."
She leaned forward. "Hey Athena, take us to Bountiful."
"Of course Alex," said the computer. "Designation set for 'Bountiful.' Your route will take forty-eight minutes to complete, is that okay?"
"Yes."
"Okay, I'm wearing your stupid blindfold." The vehicle began to move, though there was little engine noise. Only the occasional hiss of compressed hydrogen, and the whir of electric motors. "I think you can tell me where we're going now. I've had enough with secrets."
"It'll be easier to show you when we get there, but I can tell you some things." Alex rolled sideways, so she could look towards Amy. It wasn't as though she had to do anything to drive. "You know more than most ponies about humans. You already know they don't live as long as ponies do."
At her nod, she continued. "Well there's no room for humans to get old in the HPI's bunker. It would be positively stupid to let yourself get old and die over a century too early when there's another option. A few still do... but most don't. Problem is, ponies are dangerous. They concentrate magic, which makes an area more and more dangerous for humans."
"Bountiful is the solution. Think of it like the second half of the Raven City bunker, where all the elderly go instead of dying."
"That makes sense. What's the point of keeping it secret, then? Wouldn't they be better off if they worked together with the other colonies?"
"Yes, they could be. If their priority was having a prosperous settlement. That isn't their goal, though. It's hard for us to understand life in Raven – just realize they're completely dedicated to keeping humanity alive. Everything they do is about that – including making great personal sacrifices."
"They stay hidden for the same reason Raven stays hidden. They're afraid ponies will want to take what they have." She gestured at the car they were riding in. "Bountiful is an extension of Raven City; it's a technological, human city. Even if no humans live there."
"That sounds wonderful, Alex! Like a dream!" She reached out, running her hoof along the door, though she had not removed the blindfold.
"Maybe." She frowned. "It serves its purpose. I don't agree with all their policy decisions, but it's worked so far. Not everypony from Raven wants to live there. Some of them, like Taylor, want to live real lives of their own when they're done with their time in Raven. Lots of those are living in Alexandria now, and you wouldn't even know to look at them."
"I wouldn't mind working to save humanity." Amy sat back, leaning into the chair. "That sounds better than the museum."
"Wait until you've seen it."
Oh, this sounds exiting. And very neat that humanity doesn't have to live their whole lives in a bunker. Well, I guess they do, they just get a second one.
You're going with the same "Equestrian species are long-lived" motif as you did in MLA, then?
I really hope the return of Alex's family is going to come up in this or future stories. I would be very interested to see their reactions and how it changes the emotional tone of their reunion (not to mention what kind of ponies they come back as).
Whoa~ This is gonna be awesooooome!
The eternal youth thing is already starting to make relationships awkward for Alex. I hope that conversation with Amy isn't going to be a recurring one with future friends...
Bountiful sounds as though the inhabitants still spend literally all their lives working for the benefit of Raven, and that there's a rule against the folks there having children. On the basis that they couldn't be sure that any children would be happy spending their entire lives working themselves to death rather than wandering off to Alexandria (with the secret location in their heads), I guess?
Interesting point as well that the current inhabitants of Raven know less about the pre-apocalypse world than recent returnees. I wonder if future generations will pay less and less attention to their common origins?
That's an interesting choice - when Alex's family comes back, the human-dimensioned furniture won't likely be much good to them.
I don't know if it's the one ton bed I just had to move, or if it's this chapter, but my heart is POUNDING!
Funny how Lonely Day is kinda fading away from the collective conscious, just another filly nobody connects with the name anymore. Makes sense though. Was already half expecting her to return to her former home and make it hospitable for when her family members would return. Having Clark as sentry out there was a nice touch.
Bountiful. Funny name, seems like the exact opposite from the description... but it always depends on one's perspective. So I guess Sunset perfected the ponyfication spell and figured out how to embed it in a crystal matrix? That adds a lot of interesting story possibilities actually. Oh and I like Taylor. Really do. #2 after Blacklight.
Just one gripe: the scene with the immortality-despair felt a bit unconnected to the rest, at least for me. There was no hint in the direction up towards it and it disappeared from the chapter's atmosphere immediately after. Then of course I'm in the camp of those who don't think immortality is a terrible fate, might have something to do with that... Of course, in Alex' case it's a little different. Never growing up. Now that really sucks.
If she ever becomes an alicorn it'll be a funny sight.
And foreshadowing for the dark tag. Good good. Now I don't know the book Amy is reading but...
Wut?
I am curious if this is going to go like Seveneves with longer and longer time skips showing the reestablishment of new societies.
6586829 The eternal narrator is an interesting useful tie between any sequels - however far in the future they are.
Say, what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen Swallow Supersonic Nuclear Transport?
Geez, that rant kind of came out of nowhere. At least it passed quickly.
Considering that nobody seemed to recognize her when she was soliciting donations, I wonder if that was part of the reason LD retired as mayor fairly early on; To avoid letting her be in the public eye for long enough to be (semi) forgotten. Pretty clever way to delay the inevitable "I'm immortal" public discussion. Though I can only wonder if/when that is going to happen if it hasn't already. I would expect there to be a bevy of emotional reactions to that.
Then there is the fact that she seems much younger than I thought. Since she had Cody I didn't expect her to be young enough to be mistaken for a Scout, nor to be "... lifted like a filly...". Nobody has lifted up a growth chart for ponies compared to humans but I was under the impression she was at least (the equivalent of) a 16 year old. Considering her youthful appearance and earlier lack of respect of opinion in the council combined with her large knowledge base, I get the feeling that LD might end up playing Cassandra more than once if she doesn't want to reveal her full hand.
I can only wonder how horrifying it would be to see what appears to be a young kid die, then shrug it off like nothing happened. Most the deaths so far seem to have been acute deaths (crushing,falls,electrocutions, AKA fast ones) rather than chronic ones like illness or starvation. The closest to a slow death was from Odium, though that seemed like it almost worked. I wouldn't be surprised if her status confers some degree of immunity to at least illness.
I do find it a little amusing how often that 'boredom' has come up so far. I am reminded of the saying "I'd rather read about interesting times rather than live in them". Lots of foreshadowing for problems down the line. Namely "...Or once there are too many of us, and the humans can't make enough medicine to keep us from getting sick?". At some point, the ponies are going to have to wean themselves off the HPI...
...
Jeez. Looks like Sky's comfortable with every aspect of being a pony.
6586829 I'd be more interested in how the When affects that. They probably won't come back all at once. Purely by the numbers someone else ran, they would most likely come back after 8-9k years, but even then there is a good chance they would die without seeing each other. LD herself will outlive all of them most likely, and the sooner they come back the more bittersweet it will be.
The fact that LD has made plans to preserve the the family home until they come back speaks volumes to me about how optimistic LD is about seeing her family again and the future in general.
LD has the benefit of KNOWING she will be around when her family comes back, unlike every other human on Earth. If they come back early, then she looses one of the few upsides to immortality since she looses the one personal perks of immortality: seeing her family return. Sure when they do reunite it will be happy but afterwards... Immortality will entirely be for the benefit of her role as Archive. Then there is always the possibility that they come back when LD can't get to them for myriad reasons or the house is destroyed for a variety of outside reasons.
6587517
She is physically sixteen, but that's still sixteen for a pony rather than sixteen for a human. It was also mentioned in the previous chapter that Oliver continued growing after he became a pony, and that his age at the beginning of the story was twenty-five. Taken together with other stuff, I guess that makes her relatively less fully-grown than a sixteen-year-old human.
I get the feeling during the next timeskip we're going to see Alex burying Cody.
30 year jump... what's the next skip then, I wonder... 25? 50? iiiiinteresting.
I really thought having Clark out there was a VERY nice touch. Though, if Day and Oliver are growing apart (understandably) and Adrian and Sky are off doing their own thing, and Riley's got the changeling thing down, and Joseph's running the University... where's that leave Moirah? We haven't heard much about her in a while. ... Then again, they probably figured out how to adapt a plane for pony controls and she's out flying.
6587522
Well, they got a world to repopulate...
6587718 Makes sense. I was trying to figure that out, since I realized that there is no way that the age groupings mapped out to simply "scale an 80 year old human over 250+ pony years", since that would mean that a human in their 20's would be pre-pubecent as a pony. Still, an eternity of never being able to taken seriously as an adult...
6588476
Specially since she's the sole reason Lonely Day will stay a filly forever... talk about long time consequences.
You know, I want to read a story some generation 3 onward wrote, centering around humans. Specifically a fantasy story.
6588588
Well, Luna was kind of Alex-sized after being hit by the elements, but fairly quickly grew back to her current stature. Alex might end up growing as well after she figures out the alicorn thing.
6588860 When/if she figures it out. I would not be surprised if she does eventually get there, if only because of all the returning humans. Still, that's still a long stretch of people thinking you're a kid at first blush.
Alas, the clock has run out on the old satellite network. I can't imagine Joe is happy about that.
Ah, they did opt to convert old humans. Good to see.
Seems the species are segregating themselves. Not surprising, but this could bode poorly in the future. How many generations will it take to forget the common origin?
I'm not sure if maintaining the house is more admirable or sad. Alex doesn't have to let go; immortality is convenient like that. But this doesn't seem healthy. And if her family returns piecemeal, centuries or millennia apart...
Oh! They have scheduled weather. Good to see ongoing magical progress.
Bountiful clearly isn't going to be the utopia that Amy is imagining. I look forward to seeing what it's actually like.
6588682 I'm interested in seeing Moriah and LD talk. Going off of how she was 5 years after the fact, she has mellowed out a bit, but I would not be surprised to see some degree of bitterness born of jealousy. Both were in LA at the time of the event and both were gender flipped but Moriah is the one that had the one major feature of her new body crippled before she knew what was happening . That's not factoring in the Immortality angle. Both LD and Moriah have discussed their family in depth more than the others; Moriah has talked about how flying run in her family and LD has the cabin.
6590452
It strikes me as quixotic, and just setting herself up for sorrow. While I don't think that anyone will deliberately go after the house, there is no reason unless she turns it into some sort of base, I do imagine that at some point she is going to have to abandon it out of pure practicality. Homesteading in a world after the HPI strikes me as a full time deal. Unless she ends up establishing a living trust of confidants, she won't be able to keep the house up and monitor for her family AND do her job as Archive. Then there are factors such as simple Acts of God or the eventual redevelopment of the area.
Though the idealistic part of me still hopes everything turns out ok.
" all the dear migrate north or"
should be deer*
So, uh, what happens to Alex's family's neighbors when they reappear and their houses have disintegrated and been reclaimed by the forest? Or does the spell "know" to adjust their position enough to put them in a safe place?
See, I had an idea for a
storysceneparagraph where an industry developed around the concept of keeping things intact until the people who were scheduled to "come back" to that location were accounted for...6559534
Well, that does seem like the thing we'll get to find out over the course of the story...
6560929
Well, it'll still be there if you change your mind, and if not, well... this story is fifty years ahead now, and blasting on ahead further and further in ways that probably won't effect your story. Heck, even the second story is five years ahead...
6563269
Fixed!
6563307
Could happen! The story is still young!
6563382
Unless Alex figures out sooner how to make it work, which would certainly be beneficial. Not that Alex is guaranteed to succeed. Sad stories can be even more compelling than happy ones.
6563396
Hah, yeah. I'd be the first in line.
6563425
alpha centauri?
6563451
I think those list of thinsg were more awful things that Odium could've done, not things he actually did. So far as we can tell from the current evidence it seems clear he's gone for good still.
6564909
Fixed!
6564915
Taylor seems to need one.
6564974
Exploring the consequences of longer lifespans is one of the reasons I decided to side with that interpretation of the canon, even though there's no more evidence for it than for a human-length lifespan for ponies or even a horse-length lifespan. Well I suppose writing a horse-length lifespan would've been really interesting to write about too, but it would've also been super depressing.
6565062
It seemed like it was something she'd thought about beforehand, particularly when she'd learned about the HPI's continued survival. If it hadn't been for that, Taylor probably would've been blasted into the future. Unless she was just so ready for the change she didn't need to get sent forward.
6565074
As much as Luna and Celestia screwed up, it seems some judged their actions pretty harshly. When people are going to die if you don't act...
6565323
I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought about it that way. Alicorns are so neat in the show, but we mostly just have speculation to go on. I think this way is going to work out for the story.
6565672
Well you get to see somebody else go through all the pain of it without having to suffer any of it personally. Losing her dog is only the beginning for someone who lives as long as Alex.
6566790
I'm pretty amazed that typo made it through editing, but it's been fixed now.
6574551
It'll be pretty funny if humanity survives the Apocalypse only to be eaten alive by their own self-reproducing probes.
6575926
I think it's more that I'm trying to give a more supernatural "feel" to what the show gives us. Maybe I've just read too many fantasy books, but to me, I've always hated when "magic" felt "mundane." When something is magic, I want it to feel special. I like it when my magic feels mystical, interesting, hard to understand... particularly to a layman like Alex. We'll get to see her understanding grow over the course of the story, until her understanding of the "magic" has been boiled down to a cold science and there's nothing supernatural about it at all (like Twilight Sparkle's attitude).
Or she could die first.
6586797
I am, mostly because it gives some interesting themes to write about (like with the HPI stuff you just mentioned). If they lived the same lifetime (or shorter, which could also be very interesting), there just wouldn't have been those themes to explore, or any conflict about what happened to humans who got too old for Raven City.
6586829
If Alex gets her way, we're absolutely going to get to see her family's reactions. Probably at separate times, since they're unlikely to land back at the same time, but...
6586892
I'm not sure if it's a choice so much as Alex is in the process of replacing all the furniture in the house. She seems to be making all of it herself, which... making quality furniture is easier said than done. I'm sure over time she'll have made everything in the house pony-sized. Eventually.
6586934
I'm not sure if Alex hates being immortal so much as she thinks its unfair that she has to lose all the people she loves. As to the Stegosaurus, they were talking about a book, "The Lost World." They're just talking about the events of the book.
6586949
I don't think I've read that story, but that is exactly my plan. If I wrote about the 10,000 years with the same detail I wrote the original story, it would take me 10,000 years to write, and I would never finish. I plan on hitting the highlights mostly, both of Society's development and Alex's.
6587517
Alex isn't a filly, she's a teenager, or the equivalent. She was old enough to have at least one foal. I'm not sure anypony mistook her for being a filly, but... at least in the US, boy and girl scouts can stay in scouting until they're 18, or even older with some of the auxiliary organizations. It's often the older ones that choose the more ambitious service projects, like helping to fund a museum. She's not scootaloo.
It does seem like her retirement had to do with not wanting to attract public attention anymore. It's hard for me to imagine her lying to her friends, particularly when word about her immortality is known among at least some (most of the founders seemed to know). It'll get harder for her once she starts to surpass the regular pony lifespan.
6588476
She's a skilled pilot, though I suppose there's less and less of that to be done as time goes on. She seemed to be content with her relationship with Joseph, helping the college in her way, but... we'll have to wait and see when we next see her, see how she's doing.
6588719
HAH! That's such a good idea you might just see it later.
6590452
Won't have to wait long! Utopia often doesn't end up as great as we imagine.
6591774
Fixed! Thanks for pointing that out.
6598106
On paper, that sounds like a wonderfully kind effort. Actually accomplishing it, however, is an effort of utter futility. Consider first that, through sheer statistics, most people are likely to come back 7k years or more into the future.
Consider that number. To my knowledge, there isn't a single structure humans have ever built that has been continuously occupied for that long. The list of structures even to have survived that long is remarkably short, and is populated almost exclusively with solid stone structures. Consider the enormous effort it would take to keep a house intact that long. Even if ponies live 250 years say, you're asking them to keep working for thirty generations without seeing a return on their investment.
Even if it were possible, it would not be an industry, it would be a charity. Consider how much effort it takes to get people to donate to charities today. Now imagine that all your donations, even if they're gigantic, show no return at all in your whole life. It's not like donating to "research" and getting that warm fuzzy feeling that some scientist somewhere is curing cancer or something using money you gave them. You can see the house right in front of you, and see that nobody ever came back. You'd hear stories about other people miles and miles away that had somebody come back, but odds are good you never would. Also consider that in the early years (when preserving the homes might still be possible), ponies are going to be living at subsistence level. Their world is falling apart around them, and if their own harvests don't come in, their kids might not eat that winter.
The real kicker is the scale, though. Consider the sheer scope of housing in the world. In 50 years, the majority of that housing will have been swallowed by the land. In 200, more or less every home on earth that hasn't been maintained is permanently unlivable. The population after 200 years is still under a million. That means that every person on earth has to keep the homes of seven thousand people from rotting, assuming they do nothing else. What raw materials are they using? What are they eating?
Not that ponies won't try. Alex is trying, but... she doesn't think she can make a large-scale difference in the whole world about houses that are rotting. On the other hand, the practical argument for preserving stuff is to occupy it yourself. Many of the structures in Alexandria are probably all-right, since they've had ponies living in them keeping them intact. But what good does that do anyone who happens to come back, to have your house intact but have someone else's family living in it.
6600045
Whelp, welcome back!
CPNFG, if I remember right, stands for Charged Particle Neutralization Field Generator. It's the anti-magic device that keeps humans alive.
This explanation doesn't make any sense. Starscribe, what you seem to be trying to say here is that in order for a pony to become an alicorn, they first have to come to fully represent and understand some kind of unchanging, supernatural truth of the universe and even then, they'd get turned into an alicorn by the universe itself. This is an okay explanation for why Alex isn't an alicorn yet and I wouldn't complain except that Everything in canon completely contradicts this. On one hoof, according to the book 'The Journal of The Two Sisters', Celestia and Luna were born as alicorns and only began to get a general idea of their purpose at the same time they got their cutie marks. On the other hoof, while Cadence and Twilight technically found their own ways to alicornhood (Twilight through rewriting a spell and Cadence by defeating an evil witch named Prismia), it was ultimately Celestia who turned each one into alicorns. Just watch this clip and you'll see what I mean.
This isn't even taking into account that all throughout season four, Twilight had absolutely no clue what her role as an alicorn princess was. Everything we've seen in the show and other canon sources indicates that a pony can be an alicorn with only a vague understanding of their role (or none at all in Celestia and Luna's case) and that non-alicorns get turned into alicorns by other alicorns. Your explanation runs completely counter to canon.
6607030
Not exactly, no. That implies two things that Sunset didn't say. One is the implication that the universe has invested some kind of active will in the matter, which the universe itself of course has no such will. An easy mistake to make, since Alex and others rail at the universe several times for their fate.
I think it would be more true to say that a pony that comes to so closely resemble a thing that they practically represent it creates conditions which naturally result in them becoming an Alicorn. At least, that seems to be what Sunset is saying.
Second incorrect implication is that the pony themselves must fully understand their new role. This is not stated here, nor is it the case in canon. (Twilight Sparkle was made into a princess because of her understanding of friendship, Celestia tells her so, but it takes her a long time to understand that for herself.
I'll proceed with the assumption that you meant what Sunset was actually saying, namely the fact that a pony who fits a supernal truth will become an Alicorn on their own without the intervention of another pony. I think it will be self-evident that the only thing being contradicted here is your interpretation of the canon. Which is totally fine, since I write to my own.
I've said it before and I will say it again: I treat only the show as canon. Nothing in the books, nothing in the comics, nothing on trading cards and cereal boxes or the back packaging of toys. Anything presented on any medium besides the show might as well not exist. So if what I say contradicts something from the extended universe (unless that thing has also been verified on the show), don't be surprised. I neither know nor care what any of it says.
I can't speak for cadence, since her alicornhood is not presented on the show (and thus I would totally take free-reign with the canon if I actually wanted that aspect of her in the story, Twilight is very clearly not turned into an Alicorn by Celestia. Don't get me wrong, you're free to interpret it that way, but I absolutely do not. Why? One very key element:
Notice the color of Celestia's magic, which she is clearly doing in the same scene so we know the animators didn't just forget it:
vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/mlp/images/6/67/Princess_Celestia_brings_forth_book_S3E13.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/640?cb=20130221010513
Now look at the color of the "magic" that transforms Twilight:
images6.fanpop.com/image/articles/203000/my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic_203473_15.jpg?cache=1361347549
And Celestia's horn not glowing during the process:
images6.fanpop.com/image/articles/203000/my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic_203473_16.jpg?cache=1361347639
Perhaps in the comics or something Alicorns create Alicorns, but that is by no means a sure fact in the show. Celestia's explanation seems to cinch it for me, where she explains that it was Twilight who achieved and figured things out. Not that she'd "impressed her enough to be promoted" or something, but that she'd grown up on her own and was going to face her own destiny.
As if these words weren't enough, however, Celestia is not doing magic in the scene (unless you count a camera angle where there's light behind her (there's light behind everyone in this scene, spots floating around in the distance), or levitating a book). Not only is Celestia very much not doing magic to Twilight, but Twilight's magic appears to be active on its own. The spark of her color originates not from across the "room" with Celestia, but from her own body.
It is this very scene from which I derived my interpretation of the canon. Celestia was very much Twilight's guide in the process, and she loved her and tried to help her through her whole life. But ultimately she could not do it for her. This is just the show canon though, you may fully be right about other ones. I just treat the comics (and books, ect) exactly the same way the show does:
1.bp.blogspot.com/-6YfHre5G7K4/VOPXeHALYaI/AAAAAAACJ28/3I3ZqYlx5aU/s1600/Capture.PNG
Again, this is fine, and a matter for individual ponies. In my mind the only pony we can use for evidence is Twilight though, because she's the only one we've seen have to cope with the change (see above statement if you don't know why I say this). She's the only one we know how she responded. She was very clearly ignorant of her initial purpose, but that didn't matter. She'd already come to fit the mold for friendship, and nothing sunset said indicates the pony herself needs to know. She needs to be that thing, yes. But not know about it. Just as I don't have to know why my medicine works when I take it, so long as sound medical science invented and rigorously tested it, it's going to work with some high probability.
The show indicates the opposite in fact, see proof above.
Comic or book canon, perhaps. I don't know, and will never attempt to fit that canon. However, I think it's self-evident from a careful examination of the very scene you posted that the facts actually closely match the way Sunset explained them. I'm sorry if I contradicted your particular interpretation of the canon, but... I think that's true for many people. We all see the MLP show a little differently, though the fishbowl of our own eyes. I'm the author, and that means the lens everybody is going to see it is mine, but only on this story. Feel absolutely free to write from your own perspective in your own stories.
6607915
Beautiful and elegant. I'm going to screenshot this.
I've been shouting at people for years over "Celestia turned Twilight in to an alicorn"
If ?