Once upon a time, I knew a Ukrainian prince. I hope he's okay
The facility is a massive, sprawling underground complex where ponies spend their entire lives. All they have to do is follow its instructions: flip that switch, turn that dial, press that button.
But what does it do?
Tagged Dark for general bleakness.
Content warning: may be frustrating to those with a high need for cognitive closure. It's also just plain weird.
Thank you to SparklingTwilight for prereading.
Written for the Science Fiction Contest. (third place)
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The button clearly must enable the instruction for another pony to unlock their button. Then that button to another button, and so on until someone doesn't press the button.
...An understandable and wise approach when encountering an unstable coworker!
Overall:
A delightfully absurd journey into bureaucracy, compliance, and decision-making!
(Full disclosure: I pre-read this.)
Pull the lever,I mean, push the button!!A delightful piece for sure, a good blend of existential horror and sci-fi, the open endness of the story really makes you wonder for example, what happened to Rarity? Did Twilight push the button? and everyone in the story having these moments of self-awareness just adds to the despair.
Congrats on the third place, well deserved!
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Thanks!
And congrats yourself! Your entry was my favorite.
oof, that anxiety, i feel it!
this really reminds me of Spaceteam! ah, good memories of friends
a break in the routine, and the introduction of a new character is usually a catalyst for change in a story, but this is not that kind of story!
aww, i love how RariJack this is
yay, hexadecimals! though it's fun to think of that being the natural number system for ponies (four legs times four legs!)
and isn't that just life?
loved the ambiguity in this. felt very much like a collection of scenes in an experimental student film. the sparseness of this world forms the perfect blank slate to project all sorts of existentialist questions onto, and the piece overall really captures the feeling of alienation in the face of larger systems that are not on a human (or pony) scale. that anxiety over being presented with incomplete instructions, and worrying over how much should have been understood from context, agh! i really felt that, especially.
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I'm glad you liked it. And thank you for organizing the contest!