One day, Mike the minotaur has to guide yet another caravan through the depth of one of the deepest and largest artificial cave systems humanity had ever made.
Provides a bit of in-depth view on one of the locations mentioned in Fimbulvetr.
Happens in Ponies After People setting.
A short story for Ponies After People Third Anniversary Contest. Second place winner, woohoo!
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Hey, Khovrino is completed now
8945397
Yes, but in PaP the Event happened in 2015.
Very enjoyable - thanks!
8946433
A nice addition to the PaP lore.
Well, that was a thing.
A good thing, but still a somewhat confusing thing.
8947459
Confusing? What was confusing?
8947664
There was some stuff I'm not sure if I understood correctly. I'll PM you the story as I understand it, so that I'm not summarising the whole story in the comments. You tell me if there's anything I missed or got wrong.
8947884
Ah, ok.
Wonderful!
8957139
Your story is very enjoyable, especially for a railway enthusiast like me. I’m a member of my city’s transportation club, wrote articles about trains that were published in newsstand magazines, and ride trains whenever I can. Was the safety lecture a dry list of rules written up by safety experts, or was it more like Johnny T's Subway Tips?
Johnny T's Subway Tips
8967379
Imagine that someone decided to make Ten Commandments out of subway safety rules. That's basically what the Holy Technical Safety Rules are. Some might find them humorous (since at least half of them are about behaviour on a train they don't use), if the punishment for breaking most of them wasn't "to be fed to the dragon".
It was a nice read
Will any future continuations of your story include your characters working and living in the Metro-2 structures and subways?
In 1991, the United States Department of Defense published a report entitled Military forces in transition, which devoted several pages to a secret government underground in Moscow. It also included a diagram of the system superimposed on a map of the city.
"The Soviets have constructed deep-underground both in urban Moscow and outside the city. These facilities are interconnected by a network of deep interconnected subway lines that provide a quick and secure means of evacuation for the leadership. The leadership can move from their peacetime offices through concealed entryways in protective quarters beneath the city. There are important deep-underground command posts in the Moscow area, one located at the Kremlin. Soviet press has noted the presence of an enormous underground leadership bunker adjacent to Moscow State University. These facilities are intended for the national command authority in wartime. They are estimated to be between 200 m (660 ft) and 300 m (980 ft) deep, and can accommodate an estimated 10,000 people. A special subway line runs from some points in Moscow and possibly to the VIP terminal at Vnukovo Airfield 27 kilometers southwest of the Kremlin."
Military forces in transition, 1991, p. 40
9339595
I don't plan on doing sequels to it, but if I ever do, of course, they will. They are using all the underground capacity they can get their hands on, and that includes the emergency bunkers and government lines that survived the lack of maintenance in the years right after the Event. Those are very valuable since they are guaranteed to be empty of returning trains and in many cases are already made to be lived in.
One more place for your Moscow characters to work and live in is the Cold War Museum of Moscow. I’ve provided one link to more information about the museum. For special interest to you, “One entrance to the bunker leads to the Taganskaya metro (underground) station, the personnel used to communicate to the complex on special metro trains that ran at night.” Also, if this bunker was named “42” I could assume that there are at least 41 more bunkers yet to be made known to the public.
The Cold War Museum – Bunker 42 Moscow
The Cold War Museum – Bunker 42 Moscow
Last modified on 29 Oct 2017
For adventurous visitors, especially thrill-seekers Moscow has a really unique museum – the Secret Soviet Bunker 42, also known as the Cold War Museum Moscow. You can book the Bunker 42 Tour that is available at our NEW site!
A nondescript neoclassical building on a quiet street in the centre of the city looks very ordinary. This building was just a shell and served as an entry to the 7000 sq-meter space – one of the main secret objects of the USSR. The underground complex was built here in the 1950s in connection with an early threat of nuclear war. It is a museum now.
Each visitor gets “a secret pass” with his own photo on it (though in a gas mask) and proceeds by elevator to the depth of 18th floor (65 meters) beneath Moscow. The facility you are going to explore operated as an emergency Command Post Headquarters and long-range aviation communications. The Bunker 42 was fully equipped with everything needed for a nuclear attack: air recycling system, diesel generators, stocks of food, fuel, artesian wells to provide clean drinking water. Up to 30000 people could live and work there for 90 days without assistance from the outside world. One entrance to the bunker leads to the Taganskaya metro station, the personnel used to communicate to the complex on special metro trains that ran at night.
The tours of the Cold War Museum Moscow are conducted in English by the museum staff guides. Wearing the Soviet KGB uniforms they are surprisingly friendly and fully involved. They do their best to make you feel as agents in charge of communication and other special tasks. After quite an impressive 20-minute film on the history of nuclear tests during Cold War the guides walk you through the underground “blocks”, the secured tunnels where you might here raid sirens. The exhibits are very hands-on. Pictures in the Soviet military jackets as well as “playing” with weapons are also welcomed. You are awaited of mysterious entourage of the object which helps you to feel the atmosphere of the Cold War, environment of those days.
Decommissioned in 2006 and sold off at the auction this ex-military communication post is now not only a museum but a big entertainment centre. Some of the former KGB rooms are used as the rehearsal space and concert halls for heavy-metal bands. It is available to hire for functions, be there conferences or team-building role play games with lasers and paint-balling. It also possesses a restaurant, conference rooms, a banquet hall. Some couples even enjoy weddings here.
Step by step guide to getting to the Bunker 42 from the center of Moscow
9393587
You've found the heart of the Labyrinth. A team of trained minotaur infiltrators is dispatched to patch the leak.
The novel Metro 2033 is a post-apocalyptic fiction novel by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It is set in the Moscow Metro, where the last survivors hide after a global nuclear holocaust. It was first published in Russia in 2005, with more than 500,000 copies sold in Russia. Therefore, I’m surprised that your protagonists have never talked about that book, or the 2010 game based on it.
9459103
Well, while you can see the influence of that novel right in the title of this story, that's basically all the influence there is. The life of the Labyrinth is completely different from that series, and (yes, I remember that this is a story with talking camels and a minotaur protagonist), a bit closer to what's possible in reality.
As to why Mike doesn't mention it, well, it's a book that was slightly popular in Russia, and he's from London. He only moved to Moscow several years after he had returned, and it's more than half a thousand years after the Event, so I doubt many there even remember it. It's unlikely that any printed copy had managed to survive that long. Mike wasn't a shooter fan in his human days, so it is unlikely he knows about the game. And, truth to be told, even if he was a rabid fan of it, there's no place in this story to ever mention it anyway.
Well, anything post apocalyptic, especially if it may have been inspired by Gluhovski is all I need to make this a must read.
9543644
It might require some basic familiarity with Ponies After People setting since it wasn't ever planned as a standalone story.
9545171
About to read. Guess we'll find out.
To take a quote from you: that... was pretty much the worst butchering of English language I've ever seen.
Now, I liked the story. I lived in Moscow for a year so it was deeply nostalgic. I was sad they didn't go to Universitet or Yugo-Zapadnaya, but they weren't on the journey, and they'd've meant going through surface Sportivnaya, assuming the bridge is even there. I was expecting to hear a ghost voice say "Ostorozhno, dveri zakryvayutsya. Sleduyuschaya stantsiya: Park Culturi" for example.
The plot was a little hard to understand and I think it may have needed another 300 words. Anyway, this story is so Russian my tea magically got berries in it and my Bruno Mars palylist mysteriously turned into Arkady Severny. I fear if I go for a Coke I'll find kvas instead.
I liked reading this story, you're good at narration. Have my fave.
9552020
You flatter me, I've seen worse.
Glad you liked it, it was fun to write (though, I had to cut it a bit short to fit the contest requirements). Unfortunately, that gave me zero space to fit more of the details of the setting, but then again, it really was never meant as a standalone.
This is a fun read! I was idly wondering what would become of this place, among so many others, as I read the first few stories of this universe, and I find this all too fitting.
There's something about the style of writing here I can't quite place, but it almost felt like I was following a trail of candy. It kept me engaged, always leaving a detail waiting for me, so I would keep reading because I knew it would be revealed soon, only to reveal the next event.
As a result, I've stayed up way too late reading this the same way so many video games leave a gamer going "Oh just one more game" until it's far too late.
Thank you, Alkarasu, for writing and sharing this with us.
9599835
Glad you liked it.
I was wondering if Mike has encountered members of the evolved Akhal-Teke a rare horse breed native to Central Asia. Sometime referred to as metallic horses, a travelling merchant group of Akhal-Teke horses would be a very cool encounter for Mike and his friends.
Akhal Teke
The Akhal-Teke Horses Of Turkmenistan Look Like They’re From A Dream