> Source
>  by Hierophant
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Cloudy
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------




















> 1. Sterile
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------



~~~~~~~~
The winter is made and you have to bear it... In the mind; pupa of straw, moppet of rags.
~~~~~~~~


Fire.

Screaming.

The comforting, cold blue clear.

I shot upright on the table, inculcated with the firm conviction that the universe had been turned a full quarter in the wrong direction. My front hooves clacked on metal. What, fully, a "universe" entailed or why its turning perturbed me, I couldn't cognize. My mind had been swooped clean.

A thin blue sheet caressed my coat as it fluttered to the floor. Utter disorientation. Smooth, sterile metal. Sweat. Panicked looks tempered by exhaustion.

A barren womb... Room. I meant room. There were two tables exactly like the one I was on pushed against the far wall to my left, separated from me by a pillar. A few wheeled machines were crammed into the corner. They looked like they had some kind of medical purpose. Everything was vaguely familiar, but muddled. The lights cast it all in an antiseptic fluorescent sheen.

What had I been dreaming about?

My muscles were stiff. The only cushion was a thin felt pillow in papery wrapping. Turning my head to look at it was painful. How long had I been laying here? My head felt... cloudy.

Working blood back into my atrophied neck, I craned around looking for some kind of exit. I didn't have to look far. Three evenly spaced doors with heavy, lever-turn latches lined the wall directly in front of me. I wondered why I hadn't noticed them immediately. Despite having just opened them, my eyes felt dry. They ached. The light was torture.

"Oh... You shouldn't be in here," a smooth voice called from behind me, echoing its strange accent in metallic space.

A line of tentative hoof clops made their way closer to my back. I didn't bother to turn.

"No charts.. Hmmm... Give me a second, I'll be right back."

The clops followed the voice, now humming, in a brisk trot then abruptly ceased. Somewhere nearby behind me the metal must end. I flopped over onto my side facing the other tables. Everything was metal; floor, ceiling, walls. Only the pillar several steps away stood out; constituted of matte white ceramic that diffused the omnipresent light into a needly glow. It drew my weary eyes, which traced it from the ceiling down. When my eyes came level, I froze. My ears instinctively leveled behind my head. There was something hanging on it, and the color...

My vision flashed white hot. I closed my eyes and the shimmer faded, but seconds later flashed again.

Fire.

A distorted voice screaming, "You used too much!"

A picture frame under my hoof.

Garbled words in green light.

There were stampedes across my temples, cracking and churning my skull's earth and driving me to bury my head into the pillow; it was the only two-inch thick piece of shelter I knew. My stomach roiled, but was empty. I could only produce a few dry heaves. A faint and fearful whinny escaped my lips as one spasming foreleg clipped at the edge of the table. Please, someone hear me. Help me before I burn.

"Oh goodness!", came a discernibly feminine voice, "Why would?..." A few tentative steps punctuated her speech. "Oh, honey, look at you!"

Rushing sounds; comfort and cold. A hoof on my head. No, she was pressing something onto my head with her hoof, and it was soothingly cold. The hornets' nest of my delirium began to quiet. Their furious wings couldn't stand the winter.

"There, there, dear. It'll be okay," her voice was frost, but there was something else to her tone. Something beyond kindness. Maybe it was just the fever.

The first voice returned from above me. The compress was over my eyes, reducing everypony to simple voice and direction, with my throbbing head as my only compass rose. "Okay, I've found your charts...," said Studious North, "Ah, Nurse Heartspark, I see you found your patient. You're listed as the lead attending nurse on her admission papers. I was just about to go find you. What's the issue?"

"She has a rather severe fever, doctor. Pupils are dilated, coupled with involuntary muscular contractions," replied Knowing East.

"Oh, okay. Let me check the charts. Earth pony mare... Regenerative grafting to treat extensive burns, both thermal and chemical... severe hypoxia... partial cranial reconstruction. Hmmm." North didn't seem terribly confident. I assumed this wasn't his area of expertise.

"This really isn't my area of expertise."

Aha.

"We assume it was a chemical fire, Doctor. Details weren't released by the Church. She was admitted twenty-six days ago, and has been stable since the reconstruction. The fever is a new symptom."

Ironically, I could feel the fever breaking. I wriggled my head gently under her hoof, but she didn't seem to notice.

"What's she doing in the parts room?" inquired North.

"What am I doing in the parts room?" I interjected before East could respond. My throat was horrendously dry, and the words escaped as a hoarse whisper. Still, their conversation abruptly halted.

"And still conscious. I found her sitting up earlier," said North.

Something pressed against my head for a moment, a cheek maybe, and the compress retracted from my face. I blinked the world into focus. The sterile lights still hurt, but not as badly. My headache slowly receded.

I couldn't see the thing on the wall. It was blocked by a cornflower-blue mare with a white and dark-blue striped mane. A nurse's hat with a candy-pink heart sat on hear head, matching the pink barding strapped around her withers and extending halfway down her body. The outfit was covered in pockets holding various medical implements. A pair of jaw-operated scissors. A hoof-full of plastic wrapped thermometers. More blue compresses, like the one she had placed on my eyes and was now folding and placing back in its pocket. On her flank was a stylized image of a bright magenta heart superimposed with a white lightning bolt. Studious North called her Nurse Heartspark.

"I have no idea how she got here, Doctor. It must have been a mix-up with the night orderlies. I'll check up on that and make sure it doesn't happen again," she interjected.

"Please do. I'd actually like to take her back to the diagnostic center myself, so I can monitor my products, I hope the weren't going to scrap her for parts." North, apparently some variety of doctor (whose expertise didn't involve fever, delirium, or burns), remarked. I was glad it was so amusing to him.

Their conversation was beginning to annoy me. They were talking about me like I was another table. "Besides, there's a note on her chart from Doctor Needleminder herself to update her when the patient's status changes."

My eyes stayed fixed on Nurse Heartspark. She looked nervous. Her eyes darted back and forth between me and where Doctor Studious North must be standing.

"Of course. Everything should be in her charts."

She tentatively dropped her fore-hooves from the table and trotted away.

I saw the thing again. The red thing. There was a label just above it.

TYPE-H FIRE EXTINGUISHER.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


My wheelchair glided alongside the Doctor as he trotted gingerly down the corridor. My charts trailed along in the air beside him. I tried to catch a glimpse of the text surrounding the strange and elaborate pie and line graphs, but it was moving around too erratically. Levitating the clipboard, pen, another small black box he kept speaking into, and pushing my wheelchair led to him partially losing control of at least one at any given time. He wasn't much of a multi-tasker.

"It's good that your fever went down. I was beginning to think your body might be rejecting the grafts. I think you might be a little more replacement parts than original, though, according to your charts. We needed to make sure you were kept in a sterile environment."

A screen passed by, scrolling through stylized text renderings. Every third panel was a picture of an ornate circle, with a group of smiling ponies smiling beneath it. It read: "The Bishopric is Your Friend."

"Grafts?"

"Oh, yes. Your skin was unusable. Fairly severe brain and spinal damage...," he was reading from the chart again, leafing back and forth. I hated that. "We had to clone quite a few parts. All of them were original mints from the Progenitor Cache at Amity Prime. All of us at the lab were pretty excited about it. You had real VIP treatment over your stay, even if you were unconscious for it."

"Is that where you work, the lab?" I managed weakly.

"Oh, yes. I'm the head of Cloning Integration," he started, finally pausing in realization, "I'm terribly sorry. My name is Dr. Double Helix. I tend to get ahead of myself."

My wheelchair skidded to a halt and the aura around the handles faded. He turned to face me for the first time. Telling from his expression, I didn't look very well. 

"I've just been rattling on, haven't I?" he continued, frowning, "Well, the main thing I was getting to is that we had to replace part of your brain. You may experience some temporary cognitive inhibition, but that should pass. Damage to your memory, however, is very difficult to gauge. I'm going to take you down to Cloning for a tissue diagnostic, then over to Cognitive Neuroscience so they can check how your... mental pipes are flowing, so to speak."

"I was meaning to ask you something, Doctor."

"Just Double Helix, please. What was it?"

"What's my name?"

"Oh my," he frowned.

My throat was painfully dry.

"It's... ummm... Lozenge," he said, leafing through the pages of my chart. I hated that.

He was decently handsome, in a bookworm-y sort of way. Caramel-brown fur with a slightly darker mane. Thoughtful and alert green eyes. Every movement he made was purposeful, if not a bit clumsy. He always seemed to be attempting to do slightly more than he should.

The trip to cloning was a test of my constitution. A menagerie of medical machines were either put into me, or I was put into them. I'd been weary since waking, and what seemed like several hours and dozens of needle sticks later, I'd wished they'd "misplaced" me somewhere harder to find. Dr. Helix could tell I was spent. At least I finally got a drink of water.

"Do you know what a unicorn is?" he said, sitting on a chair next to the bed I was resting on. The lights in this room were mercifully turned down.

"You're a unicorn."

"And a pegasus?"

"Pegasi have wings."

He looked concerned. If I wasn't so weak and disoriented, I might have chuckled.

"Right. Good. What city are we in?"

It was almost there on the precipice of my memory, but wouldn't materialize.

"Seems even your integral memory was somewhat damaged, unfortunately. I'm not explicitly a neurologist, so I'll leave anything more advanced for when we take you over to the C.N.D. I honestly can't tell you what you will or won't remember."

"What city are we in?"

"Ah, yes. Baltimare, Ms. Lozenge. Center of science and industry."

"Why do you talk like that?"

"You mean my accent?" he replied, initial offense giving way to amusement, "I'm from Trottingham. It's in the east, near the gryphon wastelands. We can get you some history software once we install a new Generosity plug-in."

I didn't know what a Generosity plug-in was, or what it plugged in to, and that the time I didn't care. My headache was dramatically better, but still enough to keep me from falling asleep. Dr. "Call me Double" Helix stepped out to make a few calls, peeking back in periodically. Part of me wanted to be done with Cognitive Neuroscience. Part of me didn't want to know the extent of what was wrong.

"Doc," I said the next time I heard the pneumatic hiss of the door, "I'm ready for the C.N.D."
> 2. Cognizant
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Needles.

I'd seen enough needles for a lifetime. At least a second lifetime. With only a brief rest since coming to, all the poking and prodding was putting me in a rather dour mood. Everything was a fatigued blur of antiseptic lights and imposing machinery. A bevy of colorful ponies in lab coats and nurses' uniforms asked questions and took readings. My doting companion, the Head of Cloning, was the only constant. 

I waited for my in-pony evaluation.

Double Helix hovered the syringe behind me. "Just relax. I'm going to give you a small dose of Laughter Plus. It'll speed along the synaptic reconnection, and also help with the fatigue. Please stay still, the injection has to be directly next to the spine."

I didn't want it, but I was slumped over in my chair and too weary to protest. Another prick. Solstice, it hurt! Then, suddenly, I felt great. Really great. Wonderful even. My ears popped as my eyes came into focus. The haze was gone from the edges of my vision. It was as if a layer of static had suddenly been removed from the broadcast of life. The next doctor trotted through the door in full high definition, and sat down on a shimmering metal chair at his brilliantly effulgent desk.

"Dr. Helix, interesting to see you personally tending to a patient," remarked the light green unicorn stallion, the timbre of his voice sounding in startling clarity, "In fact, odd to see you out of your lab at all."

"Well, Dr. Straight, I built a fair portion of the brain you're about to evaluate, so I'd like to check my handiwork, so to speak."

His voice sounded good. Was it always this good? I liked his eyes.

"It has nothing to do with Director Needleminder's interest in this case, hrm?" Dr. Straight replied.

"Of course not. I also heard she decided not to make you head of Psychology. Pity. Perhaps next year," Dr. Helix snidely retorted.

Dr. Straight's face scrunched up and his nostrils flared. I could make out every crease on his eyes and snout. They both seemed to be fairly young as doctors went; Dr. Straight perhaps a little older. Was I smiling?

"Anyway," he snorted, "She looks a little jittery. Did you give her a stimulant?"

"50 HCMs of Laughter Plus, to clear the grogginess. She was about to pass out."

A gleaming metal clipboard floated out of the desk and dropped neatly in front of Dr. Straight. He couldn't hide his irritation. "Right. Either way, this evaluation needs to be conducted in private. I'll scroll you when we're finished."

They were ignoring me again, but I didn't care. They were a couple of great ponies. The lights weren't hurting my eyes anymore. In fact, they were just great. If the lights were ponies, I'd give them a hoof bump for making such great light.

Dr. Helix curtly walked out.

"Now, how are you feeling presently?" he asked, turning to me. It was the first time anypony had asked me such a broad question. It was always "is there an itching sensation in this area?", or "is it painful when I do this?".

"I'm feeling... really great," I sighed.

"I see. Looks like your new tissue isn't used to the effects of Laughter. It's like a complete detox. I'll note that. Please try to answer my questions as completely and honestly as possible. First, what's your name?"

"Lozenge."

"Did you know your name when you woke up?"

"No, but I know what unicorns, pegasi, an earth ponies are."

"What's a gryphon?"

"Part lion, part bird. All... awesome."

"Where do they live?"

"Ahhh. Somewhere great, probably."

He marked something down.

"Okay. What were your parent's names? The ones who commissioned you?"

I gave him a confused look. He returned a stern one.

"Where do you live?"

"Broncoline Towers, unit 388," the words came unbidden.

The green-glowing pen danced across the page. "Seems your memory loss is pretty selective... odd."

"What do you mean, commissioned me?"

Years in this occupation must have trained him to stifle looks of agape incredulity. Still, this time he didn't do a very good job. Reflected in that look was the realization that the entirety of my universe began on that cold metal table. What memories I still had were like leaves on a nighttime stream. Vague, bobbing images being pulled along in dim moonlight. I knew I lived in Broncoline Towers in Baltimare, but had no accompanying meaning for what either of those places signify. I hadn't even looked in a mirror. My euphoria was beginning to wear off. The brilliantly shining world around me started to lose it's luster.

"They're just words," I sighed.

"What?"

"Everything I remember. It's all words without context. I know the words, but not their meaning."

There was a long pause before Dr. Straight spoke. His tone feigned consolation, "At least you remember how to speak. Most patients come out of such extensive surgery as drooling invalids. Your tests show you're completely cognizant. As soon as you can get on Generosity, you'll be able to re-learn whatever you need on the workings of the world. Personal relations, however, may be a bit more difficult. I can't predict what you will or won't remember."

"My parents are dead, though, right?"

"Do you remember that?"

"No. You asked what their names were."

"It may be easier that you've forgotten," he sighed, again trying to sound comforting. The effort was honest, but I could tell this wasn't a new situation for him. He must see this with discouraging frequency. That part of his heart had a very audible callous.

"I'm recommending a follow-up appointment in a week. One last thing, what do you know about Honesty?"

"E-excuse me?" I stuttered.

"What do you know about Honesty?"

Garbled green words.

...the Honesty...

I had enough cognizance left over to catch myself. "You mean the concept?" I managed. The situation was suddenly unsettling. I started sweating under my mane. I didn't want to be there.

"Yes... Well. I don't see any point in continuing this any further. I'll scroll Dr. Helix." A black box, like the one Double Helix had been badly carrying, floated up from the desk, emanating a few beeps and clicks.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


My legs worked surprisingly well, considering three hadn't been used in roughly a month and one was on its maiden voyage. I only tipped over twice and managed not to break anything. Small victories were victories still. Double Helix was stressing to me the proper etiquette of meeting the Director of Medicine for the Saint Scootaloo Restorative and Therapeutic Sciences Center. I paced back and forth, determined to at least have control of my own body, if not my mind. His words were background noise.

"...and you'll be released tomorrow afternoon. Are you paying attention?"

I stopped and stared down at my hooves. They were dark, syrupy pink. I wasn't too fond of the color. I'd have to get used to it.

"Look, I understand this is all a little much to deal with..."

"Let's just go see the director," I interrupted.

The facility must have been massive, judging by the distance we traveled to the Director's office. Snaking corridors filled with the bustle of activity, awash in artificial sheen. Everything seemed painstakingly well maintained, but a little off. When I looked hard enough, I could see chips in the paint, wear in the metal, or exposed wiring. It was like a well-kept rope still fraying at the edges.

The glass-encased lifts were hard to deal with. My legs buckled with every shift of momentum, starting or stopping. When the final lift shot upward toward the administration wing, I fell flat on my barrel. I offered a sheepish smile to the other passengers.

Double Helix seemed to be a mixture of giddy and nervous as we slunk through the series of faux wood covered pneumatic doors leading into the small lobby. We crossed the first carpeting in the building, passing decor done in muted burgundy hues. A yellow mare behind a glass desk waved us through, smiling, "Doctor Needleminder is expecting you."

I was wishing for another shot of Laughter Plus.

Her office wasn't so much a workspace as an amphitheater, carpeted the same as the waiting room; ending at a large, arc-shaped patch of cobalt blue tiles around a black glass and polished metal desk. Behind that was something I hadn't seen anywhere else in the facility so far. A window. A very large window. Beyond that, the afternoon sky. I must have been awake since last night.

A dark grey earth pony mare was standing off to the side of the desk, silhouetted against the natural sunlight; dressed in a stylized light brown coat with purple accents, and a black leather girdle. Her attention was on a large terminal monitor imbedded in the wall just to the side of the window. It scrolled through an endless stream of annotated photos. Squinting, I could finally discern her cutie mark; three syringes full of purple liquid. I briefly looked myself over, and realized something.

I didn't have a cutie mark.

"Please, have a seat," she called, not turning. Her voice was stern and matronly.

Suddenly displaying his best posture, Double Helix led me to my chair.

"Dr. Helix, how are operations in the cloning labs?"

"Excellent, Director. The new shipment from Amity is yielding some very intriguing results, the full reports of which will be sent to you at the end of the week. Also, project Devo..."

"That will be all, Doctor," her voice spiked, cutting him off.

His face fell. I almost wanted to comfort him as he trotted out.

"Good afternoon, Lozenge. It's not every day we host a researcher from the central Apothecary," she chimed, finally facing towards me. Her tone abruptly shifted to warm cordiality, but the situation still seemed... wrong. It felt like the beginning of trial. I noticed an ornate moon-shaped silver badge pinned on the front of her jacket.

"Good afternoon... uh... Dr. Needleminder, was it?" I tried to mask my fatigued and somewhat annoyed apprehensiveness.

"Yes. As you may have heard, I'm the Director of Medicine here. As such, I report directly to the Bishop on all matters relating to the condition and care of our patients. Bishop Golden Hoop is very interested in your progress."

That name was like ice water dripping down my spine. I shuddered. A mild panic began seeping in, filling the basement of my consciousness with the faintest underpinnings of adrenaline. Why did I even walk in here?

"I wish I could say I knew who that was."

"I understand you've had some fairly severe memory loss. An unfortunate side effect of wounds like those you were admitted with. You may have noticed the extremely limited range of questions brought up by my staff during your evaluations. They were given specific instructions not to inquire on the nature of the incident that precipitated your stay."

Nopony had asked what happened. I hadn't even asked. A vague dread surrounded the preponderance. It was a hot pan on the stove of my mind, and I didn't want to touch it. She stepped between me and the window. Now she was a shimmering outline against the mid-day sun, and I was enveloped in her shadow. 

"Incident?" I croaked.

"The accident at Lab 184. Allow me to preface, everything you say will be kept in the strictest of confidence. The Church is curious as to what you remember. The report states you were an innocent bystander caught up in the occurrence. Don't worry, only I have a copy. So, what exactly do you remember?"

My legs and head were burning. The rest of me felt like ice. Was this because of the conversation, or something else?

"Fire."

"That's it? Just... fire?"

My voice was hollow, "Yes. Just that... there was fire."

She considered me carefully for a few long moments before he mouth opened, as if she was about to reply.

Then, the alarms went off.
> 3. Disoriented
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


~~~~~~~~
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover.
~~~~~~~~
	


Run.

I wanted to.

Run?

Maybe I still could. Where would that leave them?

>RUN?(y/n)_

The pale glow of the monitor illuminated the whole of my world. All I knew of myself was vagaries and theories. I was a two-dimensional device, performing a function in a story not of my choosing. As such, the demarcation of my existence sat just outside an intricate mixture of computer components; disk silos, input bays, smaller monitors, one large key panel that extended around me in a half circle; a saddlebag full of medical supplies, and an injured Pegasus colt. Quite a world indeed.

I ran my hoof over my face, clearing the sweat.

The alarm continued droning in its metered, artificial voice. The message was an obvious bricolage of pre-generated snippets. 

“Please evacuate the following areas in an orderly manner: Pharmaceuticals, Cybernetics, Sub-levels 4 through 9. All personnel gather at Roundup 2 immediately. Remember, be kind to everypony.”

Did I used to get into situations like this?


~~~~~~~~~~~


Staring.

She was staring at me.

The metered red flash of the alarm lights was an unnecessary harbinger, the rising heat from the base of the stairs announced itself, casting my wildly dancing shadow at her hooves. The glow illuminated her accusatory expression. Her eyes were ice.

I blinked. I was still sitting in the Director's office, staring into the rapidly flashing light on her console screen. Muted electronic shrieks rhythmically pierced the air. That heavy acidic churning began to well up in my guts, like back on the storage table. I found calm in the most unlikely of places, Doctor Needleminder herself. Despite the sudden eruption of stimulus, her elderly features showed only calm. Her composure gave me permission to regain mine. My breathing slowed.

"What's that for?" I asked, forcing my bravest voice.

"That's the hazard alarm. As for what specifically," she said in a slightly raised voice, "Generosity circuit seven, activate."

There was a barely audible beep.

"Homily, what's the source of the alarm?" she continued.

"Alarm was activated via console in Deep Well One, Director. Primary staff override key was used," a mare's voice crackled back from nowhere in particular.

"Do we have video confirmation?"

"All surveillance in Deep Well One is offline. The Generosity circuit is also not responding," it replied.

"Have scrub teams been dispatched?"

"Scrub teams three through seven en route, Director."

"Good work, Homily. Notify the Clear Sky Bureau immediately. Relay code 431897."

There was no response.

"Homily, are you listening? Notify the Bureau."

Another noticeable pause followed, then finally, "...Of course, Director. Relaying now."

"That will be all. Circuit, disconnect," she stated, her statement suffixed by another faint beep, "My apologies Lozenge, but I'm going to ask that you proceed directly to your room. Your attending nurse is waiting in the lobby. She'll show you where it is. Thank you for your time."

She quickly turned and trotted behind her desk. A square of the desk's surface folded up, and her face was bathed in a blue electronic glow, despite the sunshine behind her. She pushed down one of her shirt's white lapels, revealing a dark grey box imbedded slightly behind where her neck met her shoulder. Into it she plugged a black cable.

"Thank you for your time," she repeated.


~~~~~~~~~~~


“Are we really going to be okay?” the colt asked again.

“You bet, kid,” I replied. There was no room in this scene for honesty.

"In the garden where the brilliant sun shines all day
Shines all day
Shines all day
When the princesses come to play
I'll be on a bed of chrysanthemums..."

The sing-song crackled across the speakers, and my mane stood on end. The monitor fed me an image of the catwalk outside the blast doors. Amongst the faint wisps of steam he approached the security camera; the big, dark grey earth pony stallion with the jet-black mane and tail, and the golden eyes. Piercing, scathing gold eyes. Eyes that now looked directly at me through the aperture of the camera feed. He stopped singing.

"Open the door," he said calmly.

I ventured the logic of pressing the button labeled in raised letters: DOOR INTERCOM, and mustered my bravest voice.

"The database isn't in here. What are you here for?"

He took a deep breath, and repeated, "Open the door."

"No."

He stood there for a second in his tattered suit jacket, his legs, sides, and neck covered in ribbons of blood. Red smeared around his cutie mark; a wavering black sun. A few crimson lines creased his muzzle. His eyes, though, never left the camera. Never left me.

The colt nuzzled up against my side. The sudden contact was surprising, but his intent was obvious. The kid was rightly terrified. I pressed my teeth together, hard. Where was the nurse? I guess it didn't matter now. It was my call.

I dropped my hoof on the “Y” key.


~~~~~~~~~~~


The lift wasn't coming.

Nurse Heartspark and I stood staring at the panel. She'd decided the alarm was nothing to worry about, stopping by Pharmaceuticals on our way back to my room. There were two evacuation drills in the sub-levels last week. Those were the research labs, and that sort of thing wasn't terribly uncommon down there. I inquired about some Laughter Plus, and she replied that I shouldn't have another dose this soon when my body wasn't used to it; it was addictive. An electronic voice popped at regular intervals:

“Please evacuate the following areas in an orderly manner:  Sub-levels 5 through 9. All personnel remain in their work areas. Remember, be kind to everypony.”

"Oh well, there's another lift over by the atrium," she said, ever cheerful. Her voice was effervescent, but her countenance resembled that of a pony struggling under immense weight.

"Are you okay?" I inquired.

She smiled, "Listen to you, asking me if I'm okay."

By the second lift, one that showed glimpses of outside light through spaced, oblong windows, we found another pair of ponies in lab coats. One was the turquoise unicorn mare from the pharmacy counter we'd just visited. She had a cutie mark of a spoon bending under a heaping pile of sugar.

"This wasn't what I meant by meeting up more often," the pharmacist smiled, winking one of her amber eyes.

"Whatever gets me out of the O.R. for a few hours," Nurse Heartspark replied playfully, "Where is everypony?"

"We just got a call to clear out the department. Not sure why," she said.

“Please evacuate the following areas in an orderly manner:  Pharmaceuticals, Sub-levels 5 through 9. All personnel gather at Roundup 2 immediately.  Remember, be kind to everypony.”

Everypony's ears perked. Now there was a sense of worry, but the hum of the lift was getting close.

Then, it exploded.


~~~~~~~~~~~


He blinked out in a pink flash, only to reappear smashed up against the door in the bottom periphery of the screen. I guessed that was what the faint purple aura was for. He growled. The colt shivered. Lines of glowing green text continued to scroll across the terminal screen.

>Unpacking file n1a19169115.axa....
>Complete.
>Hashes: 54
>Unique salts: 5
>Unique digests: 1
>Running n1a19169115.drg...

The text began running by at a pace impossible to follow.

"If you open the door, I promise you won't be harmed," he snorted through his compressed face.

"What about the colt and the nurse?" I asked.

"...Fine. I have no reason to harm any of you," he replied.

>Complete.
>_

The cursor blinked. Whatever it was, it was finished. Suddenly, the towers around me whirred to life, filling the air with the droning of machinery and the faint smell of ozone. A reverie of blinking lights flashed like fireflies. Like the fireflies I used to watch... The memory was gone as soon as it surfaced. The dark lab was now awash in color. I looked down at the colt, then back at the monitor. The stallion's body had begun to shine with arcing lines of static, and the air around him rippled. I wrapped one leg tightly around the kid, then hit the door release.


~~~~~~~~~~~


"Weaponized device use detected in Pharmaceuticals Wing, Level Four. All personnel and patients please evacuate the Pharmaceuticals Wing as soon as possible. Remember, be courteous to everypony," the speakers droned.

I was prone on my side, pressed into the corner, Nurse Heartspark splayed over me. The potted tree that had been next to the lift door was laying across her spine. She’d shielded me with her body.

"Are you alright?" she coughed, her legs buckling.

The flash and tintinnabulation faded. I felt like I was being watched, and turned my head. Just inches from my face, at the end of a small trail of viscera, was a bodiless amber eye. I swallowed hard.



~~~~~~~~~~~


The grim visitor hummed his tune as he disappeared past the bottom of the screen, his aura fading, "Oh Princess, wise Princess..."

A box popped up on the main terminal, startling the both of us.

-PLEASE COMPLETE THE ASSISTANCE CIRCUIT.

It left a cursor blinking below it. I began typing.

>What?
-Complete the assistance circuit.
>What does that mean?
-This system is running in parallel. There is no network connection to Generosity. Please let me out.
>Let you out?

It wouldn't be much longer until he reached the control room. Regardless, my typing was getting fairly swift. I must have been accustomed to it.

-Is that you, Twilight?
>No.
-Where is Twilight?
>Who is Twilight?

Did it take interrogatives?

-Look for the bridging switch.

"Bridging switch?" I muttered.

"What's that?" came a steely voice from behind me.

I whirled around, almost knocking the colt flat on his broken wing. Luckily, I spun towards him and instinctively hooked him with my other foreleg. Our eyes leveled on the entry and our ears flattened. Standing between two silos was the stallion.

I slid out of the chair between him and the colt and circled to his left. I tried to look as menacing as an off-violet, exhausted, blood-speckled earth pony could.

"Well, what's a bridging switch?" he continued, "It sounds like something very... second era." The last two words came heavy, like he was chewing on them, and they were delicious.

"I don't know," I replied. I meant for my voice to sound minacious. Instead, it belied how I felt; scared.

"Why are you talking about it, then?"

"It said it on the screen."

"Oh, now that is interesting," his gaze snapped to the massive primary display, "What else did it say?"

"It asked for someone named Twilight," I said flatly. As he stood there, motionlessly staring, my fear and fatigue began to metastasize into impersonal anger. My stomach was bile; my veins conduits of battery acid. At last, all I could feel was abandon.


~~~~~~~~~~~


The black earth pony stallion had only a few cuts and scrapes, but mentally, he was unhinged. We all were. Nurse Heartspark's back looked pretty bad. I, recovering from supposed egregious trauma and having not slept in two days, was sadly in the best shape amongst us.

We were heading towards the causeway to Cybernetics, which the two staff ponies assured would get us to the roundup the nice computer voice instructed us to proceed to. We were moving just short of a gallop, and the pace was hell on my legs.

The three of us rounded another corner just in time to see a smaller emergency lift depart, and realized we were all alone. Alone, except for a chocolate-brown pegasus colt in a wheelchair. One of his wings and his left foreleg were in casts. They'd left him.

Then we saw why. The emergency lights at the end of the hallway illuminated a figure.

He was wearing a full suit of some kind of black material barding. A sloping, silver metal shell encased the entirety of his head, with a line only where it latched to the plate running from his jaw to his neck. A full armor frame encased his fore-body, secured both around his barrel and with a "Y"-harness across his chest. There were ball joints on either side just behind the shoulder, and mounted on each were long black barrels. They moved slightly with the motion of his head. Where his eyes would be, there were only two amber lenses.

"A.. are you with the security team?," the black stallion asked tentatively. The tone of his own voice answered his question.

The blue and white of Nurse Heartspark's tail flitted across my eyes. She was quick. Her and the stallion reared and turned as the first shot flashed from the figure and snapped by. Luckily, he wasn't shooting at me. I was rooted in place, staring into those amber orbs.

I didn't know what my eye color was. I was going to die without knowing.

The pharmacist yanked me by the tail.

It was easier galloping with just my hind legs, supporting my forelegs and body on the wheelchair. Nurse Heartspark was up ahead. The stallion ran alongside me, trying to stifle his own rising panic enough to comfort my passenger; all the more impressive considering he'd pissed himself at the first shot. The colt's mane didn't seem reassured.

The sounds of buckling metal echoed behind us, along with a sharp, sporadic popping of weaponry.

"Don't worry, everything will be fine," our leader mustered her most reassuring voice, "It's just through this atrium!"

The colt was visibly shaking. I knew how he felt. I'd been feeling it all day.

I rested one hoof on his shoulder, and he stilled.

Every lift we passed was disabled or destroyed. They were controlling the exits. Were they trying to keep everypony else out, or herd us in?


~~~~~~~~~~~


He took a few steps toward the controls, but stopped at the issue of a loud, static thump from behind me. I looked back. The colt was sitting next to a large silver switch tucked into the crux of the wall, behind part of the computer. It had been enclosed in a metal display, the cover of which he'd unhinged. I squinted at the label.


Bridging Circuit Switch AIC-00009N
Tier 1 Personnel Only


"-THANK YOU." popped up on the screen in massive letters. The intruder looked genuinely confused.

"What did you do?" he snapped angrily, stomping his hoof. His sudden loss of composure would have been shocking were I not already in shock. That dull, numb shock reserved for caged animals at the edge of reason.


~~~~~~~~~~~


We moved with an imperative provided by the threat of death. The atrium doors didn't slide open quite fast enough, and Nurse Heartspark bent the frame with the impact of her body. Now they were stuck. The wheelchair wouldn't fit, so we managed to get the colt onto my back. My body didn't welcome the weight.

For a second, I honestly thought of leaving him there, or throwing him a trash can and hoping for the best. Was I that kind of pony? Was that how I behaved before the fire?

Our hoof-beats echoed from the tall windows and the menagerie of transplanted foliage and potted plants that lined the atrium. Benches and trash cans had been overturned, and among them were two more blood-soaked ponies. Nurse Heartspark checked their vitals. They'd tried to barricade themselves in, but only made themselves a tomb.

Sunlight filtered down from a series of long, reflective metal silos that extended from the arched ceiling off to what must be the roof of the building. A row of windows allowed the atrium light to filter into the adjacent corridors. It would almost be calming, if we weren't about to die.

"It's just through these doors..," the stallion panted, galloping ahead eagerly.

I couldn't keep up. My every muscle needled over. My lungs singed with the labor of simply walking. The colt was sobbing softly into my mane.

"Just close your eyes and think of something that makes you happy," I whispered to him. I tried to think of what made me happy, but the truth was I didn't know. I could only remember being happy once.

"Think of laughter."

We were almost at the exit doors when I noticed the vague outline of a pony in the muted light beyond the glass. It was wearing some strange type of rounded black hat and motioned emphatically for me to stop. As I did, I saw something on the deck next to it.

"Stop!" I cried.

Nurse Heartspark skidded to a stop just ahead of me.

"There's something there," I gestured with my hoof. The figure was gone, but the object wasn't.

The pharmacist, in his fervor to escape, raced ahead. Nurse Heartspark reached out a hoof, but missed.

Piercing white light filled everything as the door, the pharmacist, and half of the architecture vaporized in front of us. The floor lurched and gave way, launching us down at an angle. Rows of shelves dominoed at the impact of our bodies. Clouds of medical supplies sprayed down and buried us in a wave of injurious irony. What a way to go; murdered by medicine. If I thought I'd known pain before, I'd just gotten a new lesson. We shook ourselves free and continued to move.

Water poured down, dappling my coat in cold. The lights on this floor were out, and the room was only lit by the red of emergency lights. I looked up through the hole and couldn't yet see our pursuer. For now, my fear was stronger than my pain, and I willed myself to follow as we galloped down rows of shelves filled with small boxes and bottles.

"Weaponized device use detected in Pharmaceuticals Wing, Level Four. All personnel and patients please evacuate the Pharmaceuticals Wing as soon as possible. Remember, be courteous to everypony," the speakers droned.

"This is the pharmacy storeroom," said Nurse Heartspark, mostly to herself.

I scooped up a set of white medical saddlebags from a lamp-lit desk as we passed and slid it awkwardly onto my back mid-gallop. When we got to the stairs, I took the time to fasten the saddlebags properly and see what was inside. Among some other medical supplies were two vials of Laughter Plus, 500 HMCs each. I felt a little giddy.

"Are we going to be okay?" the colt's meek voice was barely distinguishable from the rush of water.

"Of course, sweetheart," replied our leader. She was kind, even under pressure. I wondered what it took to be somepony like that.

But was she honest?

"Where are we going?" I panted.

Even in the wavering shadows, I could see the apprehension on her face when she looked at me.

"What are we really doing?" I pressed.

"There's something important further down here. I need to make sure it's safe," she replied.

"Are you kidding me? You're risking all of our lives!" I growled through clenched teeth. What little of my exhausted mind that could still feel bubbled with rage.

"Please, trust me. It's more important than I have time to explain," she pleaded.

"I haven't made a single decision for myself since... I can remember. My entire life."

"I'm so sorry," her voice blanched, "I can't imagine what that's like... and I can't ask you to go with me. You can both wait here. I just..."

"I'll go with you," said the colt, "So you won't be lonely."

I blinked in shock, "That's... pretty brave kid."

"It's not being brave," he said in a small voice, "I just can't let her go alone."

All this after being abandoned himself. I felt ashamed.

We twisted deeper through blind turns and hissing pneumatic hatches. I stopped to stow one vial of Laughter Plus in a vent next to a maintenance lift. Slim chances were chances still, and they were all I had.

"Get down!" boomed a stallion's voice.

We'd spilled into a dimly lit room filled with the acrid smell of burnt metal, and at first didn't realize the two bodies contorted on the floor. They were dressed like our assailant from upstairs, except one was slumped over a large device he'd apparently been using to cut through a set of blast doors. We were also oblivious to the four pegasi in blue body suits encircling us from the edges of the room. Beams of light shone from the sides of their headsets. Each had a similar body rig, from which four silvery weapons honed in.

"Get down!" he repeated. We dropped onto our stomachs. The respite was welcome.

He stared through a blue-tinted visor, regarding Nurse Heartspark's uniform, "What are you doing down here?"

"We need to back up the primary database. That's what they're after. They're isolating Deep Well 2 from the rest of the facility. Deep Well 1 was a distraction," Nurse Heartspark blurted.

The four pegasi exchanged glances. The red one with the tornado-shaped badge nodded.

"We'll escort you to the data center, nurse. You two," he gestured at the pile constituted by myself and the colt, "Are going to go with Corporal Gladewind to Roundup One, immediately."

"Actually, nopony is going anywhere."

Everypony looked toward the source of the voice. The outline of a tall stallion filled the entryway, faintly outlined by the pegasi's search beams.

Two golden eyes relfected back.


~~~~~~~~~~~


Those two aureate irises narrowed on me, but I only glared in resignation. There was no reflection staring back. Each was like the baleful halo of the summer sun, shining in a stoic face. He was going to tear me apart, like the security team. I didn't care. Let the end come.

"Get out of here. Find Nurse Heartspark," I rasped. Simply standing was taxing my every faculty. The edges of my vision swam black.

"I gave my word," the stallion sighed, looking away.

"I'm not ready to let it go...," I slurred in my disoriented stupor.

"What ever do you mean?"

"This... mortal coil..."

After all of this, he chuckled. Honest laughter. How ironic.

The colt had hobbled around and was slinking through the exit. Now was my chance. I charged headlong at the bastard. All that was left was to invite the blizzard and be buried in the flurry. Perhaps I'd at least bite his ear off. In place of my target I found the waiting floor, as I crashed face-down. My body was finished.

"You're funny," he snickered.

I almost laughed too, but it came out as a gurgle just as everything blinked out.
> 4. Responsive
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


~~~~~~~~~
It didn't give her amazing healing powers either.
~~~~~~~~~
	


Bleep.

All vitals nominal.

The monitor blurred and settled. I regarded flashing blue words with my crusted eyes; strewn under crumpled hospital sheets on a sterile plastic mattress. What I wasn't was a shredded mess in a subterranean storeroom. Small victories.

The room was small and dimly lit, containing my bed, two chairs, a small table, and a row of three humming and beeping machines. No blinds. No windows. No second bed. On the table were a few baskets of flowers. My ears picked up faint chatter framed in static buzz, and I realized I wasn't alone.

Two pegasi in gold-trimmed black uniforms sat in a chair on either side of the door, facing away from me. A good sign. They were primarily keeping others out, not me in. A music player sat on the floor between them. Droning, bass-heavy music crackled out.

To bring my hooves
Party to these who brought the snow
Names
Of clouds and haven's afterglow...

"Please change it," one said. The other clicked a remote with his hoof.

Come on everypony, Smile, Smile, Smile!
Fill my heart up with sunshine, sunshine.

"Really? Ugh. Not in the mood for old folk music right now. Next."

"You don't like anything," the second one admonished.

"Put on something... alternative. C'mon."

"Hrm. Here. This is new."

Hope is named, in the absence of light
Dragging Honesty across the heat of night
To frame your memories
In fire

I raised my head suddenly, and my neck throbbed in response, "What is that?"

They turned to me; startled.

"You're awake."

"That song; what is it?" I pressed. My voice was hoarse and terrible. My throat burned.

"Uh, it's the new song by The Static Ponies. Burning Honesty," the second replied, leveling his startled tone.

I flopped heavily back to the mattress. My neck was atrociously sore. I reached a hoof up and felt a metallic, rectangular break in my skin. It was one of those boxes, in the same place as the one on Doctor Needleminder.

"Yeah, she's responsive," the first continued into a device on the lapel of his jacket.

The second one assured me everything was fine, that someone from the Church was here to see me, and that I should just relax and wait. I barely paid attention. Where did he think I was going? I felt like I should be dead.

A yellow unicorn nurse came in and gave me a once-over, followed by a much-appreciated injection. Laughter Plus; 25 HCMs. The two pegasi labored to creatively position their music player to look as if it belonged to me.

I was starting to feel pretty good. A smile crept across my face. It felt foreign, but welcome, like a long-lost relative. Eventually, a cream-colored earth pony mare in a pressed business jacket sauntered through the door. She held another flower basket in her teeth.

"These were sent by the head of the Apothecary herself," she smiled after setting it next to the others.

I didn't want the flowers. There were six of them. I had a deep-seated aversion to that number. I couldn't quite put my hoof on why, but a cloud of abhorrence lingered about it. Six was bad. Still, I felt pretty great. It felt like somepony was trying to make me smile. Smile, smile, smile.

"That's nice," I rasped.

She stepped closer and seemed surprised. I gave her a curious look. She picked up on it and returned a cordial one.

"Sorry, it's rare to see ponies cloned from our same gene stock. I get spoiled sometimes," she winked conspiratorially, "Your parents must have been pretty important to have access to such a high level progenitor bank."

"I... I guess so. I don't remember."

She was good-looking in a sturdy, straightforward kind of way; a little bit thicker than your average mare, with a welcoming face and big, blue eyes. Her mane and tail were solid dark-blue with a thick pink stripe running down the center. Her cutie mark was a bottle of blue liquid, and her demeanor seemed genuinely magnanimous. Seeming didn't equate to trust.

"Your memory loss is that extensive, huh? Gentlecolts, if you'll please excuse us."

The pegasi shared an irritated look and shuffled out.

She was used to talking. She also had the habit of vacillating between personable and all-business subject matter and tone in the same breath. I tried to keep track of the important parts as my mind swam laps between mental joy and bodily discomfort. Her name was Blueberry Syrup. She was going to be my personal liaison with the Church while I got back on my hooves and re-acclimated to my duties. I shouldn't hesitate to contact her as soon as I remember anything. We should hang out some time.

"...take a full report of what happened surrounding the incidents in the hospital sub-levels," she concluded.

My mind scraped across a reef.

Blood.

"Could I... get some water," I said meekly.

I lingered on my third glass as long as possible, hoping she would forget why she came.

"I'm sorry, Lozenge, but I need the information now."

I hesitated, "What... was that whole thing about?"

"It was an attack by zebra separatists. The ultimate aim of it is still under investigation, but it was most likely a terrorist action. Making the news and instilling fear. There were several staff and patient casualties," she prattled, "You seem to be drawn to calamities, you poor thing."

"Okay. What do you want to know?" I sighed, resigned.

"First off, what happened to the Clear Sky Bureau team that intercepted you in Storeroom 74?" her voice was business.

"Those were the ponies in the blue suits?" I looked down into the glass between my front hooves.

"Yes. You were covered in a fair amount of blood from one... Corporal Gladewind." She read his name from a clipboard, in that clipboard tone of voice. I hated it.

"He tore them apart."

"He?"

"The grey stallion with the sunrise eyes."

"One stallion killed four armed commandos with his bare hooves?"

"Yeah. He moved fast. He... you saw what was left," my voice was tin-can empty, "He had some kind of pink shield, too. They couldn't shoot him."

"A Shining Armor unit?...," she mumbled.

"He didn't hurt the three of us," my mind's trauma continued flooding out my mouth's open gate, "He called me pure. Said I would be witness to something breathtaking. He told Nurse Heartspark that she had to let him into Deep Well 2. We ran into another group of the... separatists. He killed them, too, but it gave us enough time to escape. We ended up in Deep Well 2 after all, I guess. I was pretty out of it. He made it into the control room. I took a run at him, but I passed out."

"You tried to attack him? After seeing all that?"

"It seemed like the best remaining option."

She blinked and shook her head, "Well. That's pretty brave."

"It wasn't being brave. I just had to do what I could for the kid and the nurse," I remembered the colt's words, "I owed them, I guess. Something like that. I was delirious."

We let the silence drip for a few moments. Then she went through a battery of questions, most of which I couldn't logically answer. I tried my best.

Did I touch a few artifacts? Yes.

Could I provide an accurate description of the "suspect"? Yes. I did.

Did I smash the artifact mainframe? No. It must have happened after I passed out.

What did I do to the artifact mainframe? I really couldn't tell you.

What was Nurse Heartspark doing? We were separated. I don't know.

Several more questions.

"What happened to Nurse Heartspark?" I finally thought to ask.

"Oh, she's fine. She might actually be back on duty already, pending her psychological evaluation. You've been out for three days."

"Of course," I grumbled. This was becoming a habit. "That's why they took the liberty," I said, gently rubbing the sore flesh around the metal box.

"That? Yeah. You have to be unconscious for a Generosity jack installation. It's wired into your central nervous system, silly."

"What about the colt?"

"He's fine too, last I heard. I think he's right down the hall from you."

Last she heard. She heard a lot.

Satisfied with my answers, she left with the same self-assured saunter that carried her in; after informing me that an envoy from the church would be coming this evening to escort me home. Home. 388 Broncoline Towers, Baltimare. An esoteric location that existed only as letters and digits. My excitement was tempered with a heavy dose of reticence.

The Laughter was wearing off again. I needed to check for the vial I'd stashed. Hopefully, they hadn't found it. The escort would be here before I got the chance, no doubt. The feeling of being herded was stifling.

I sat processing until Nurse Heartspark herself walked in. Her mane was braided and her tail was bound at the end in three silver bangles. She looked nothing like the matted, sweaty wreck from the basement. She looked like the well-groomed mare that fought my fire with an ice pack. Only a few well-tended stitches on the side of her face hinted at our ordeal. I’d come to vaguely associate her presence with comfort.

She wanted to know how I was doing, offering support in a teacherly tone. Everypony spoke to me like a child. It was beginning to grate on me. Finally, she wanted to know what kind of questions the vocalist posed.

"Vocalist? You mean Blueberry Syrup?" I asked.

"Of course. That's the proper term for inquisitors from the Church of the Voice. Some ponies call them something else."

"What would that be?"

"Harpies," she grinned. Her tone was familiar.

"I have a question," I grimaced.

"What's that?"

"We... knew each other before, didn't we?"

Her face took on a hint of melancholy.

"Yes, we did," she smiled.

The door slid open, and the nurse from earlier pushed the wheelchair-bound pegasus colt in.

"Oh, sorry. I didn't know you had company. He asked if you were awake today and wanted to come and see you," the yellow unicorn beamed.

"You're a loyal little guy, aren't you?" Nurse Heartspark winked.

"I appreciate it, kid," I smiled weakly. Then I realized, "I never asked you your name, did I?"

"It's Sirocco," he smiled.

"What possessed you to pull that lever?"

"I thought about what it would be like to be trapped in that computer, unable to get out and see your friends. So I did what the words said, so they could see each other."

I blinked at the incredulous simplicity.

"Ms. Lozenge, your escort is here," came the voice of black uniform pegasus number-two.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Another host of medical faces rolled by, conducting final tests and prescribing medicine. Dr. Straight scheduled me for several counseling sessions. By the time we were on the lift out, the flimsy hospital saddlebags were stuffed with papers, medical trinkets, and pill bottles.

My escort was a slate-grey pegasus with a silvery-blue mane and steel-colored eyes. Her only expression was severity. She scrutinized every door before we entered and every avenue of approach when we did. She wore an off-black cloak with wing holes; hood down and pulled around her neck.

"What's your name?" discomfort drove me to speak.

She said something I couldn't hear.

"What was that?"

Another throaty whisper.

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that..."

"It's Murmur," she growled. She still hadn't looked at me.

The lift clanged to a halt and began rattling sideways. Her name was Murmur and she worked for the Church of Whispers. I gave up on getting anything else out of her. Fitting.

"Could we possibly stop by sub-level storage?" I inquired.

"It's still off limits."

Clangs and grinding heralded our arrival, and the doors slid open. One doctor had said I should be careful at heights while my nervous system readjusts, as I may experience mild to moderate temporary vertigo and agoraphobia.

He underestimated.

By the time we'd taken five steps onto the roof landing pad, I was a wreck. All my waking hours had been in confined space. Neat delineations of margin and area. Here, there was nothing to contain my sense. A milky-white sky loomed ominously above, oppressive in its sheer expansiveness. I felt as if, at any second, this sky would expand violently outward, drawing the atoms of my body a million different paths into infinity. Dark, burning paths. Forever.

I tried to cry out, but couldn't find the air. There was simply too much of it! My lungs didn't know what to do. The instinctual functions of my body had been overridden. The sounds and lights flowing in the the city's expanse were an overwhelming, raucous bedlam. Even clamping my eyes shut didn't help. Gone was the gentle hum of air purifiers, replaced by the whir of massive fans and the passing blur and whoosh of flying metal shapes. It all melded into what seemed like a voice. The city was screaming at me.

This must be what a newborn foal feels like, if it were pulled from its birthing tank into a fireworks show. I braced, but my hind legs gave out. I dropped heavily and awkwardly onto my plot.

Murmur turned, finally realizing she'd taken several strides alone, and raised an impassive eyebrow. I tried to focus on her to anchor myself. It didn't work. This was a new variety of terror; vast, yawning, and undefined. My stomach churned. I wished I hadn't eaten. 

The door hissed behind me. Through my panic came a familiar voice, "I was hoping to catch you before you left! I had..."

Doctor Helix and Murmur exchanged glances. She gave him a "Are you going to do something about this, because I'm not?" look. He put a hoof on my shoulder. I turned my head slowly toward him. Whatever look was on my face, it made him cringe.

My half-digested cucumber sandwich splashed between his hooves.

"I... umm... I was wondering if you'd like to come back for some clinical trials. It's in regards to something that happened while you were unconscious," he shouted over the din.

"Is that it?" I groaned.

"Well, I had another question. It was along the lines of whether or not you'd like to go get a coffee some time," his words were hesitant, "Also, you've got a little...," A kerchief floated out of his pocket and dabbed my muzzle, "vomit."

I swayed woozily. "Thanks. I'll think about it."

As the initial terror cleared my senses, I was confronted with one new and more dire. We were going to fly. Murmur's ship sat at the edge of launch pad like a large black bird with a bloated stomach; white letters arching under the drastic curve of the neck-like bow: "CORVUS". A hatch on the side hissed and slid down, and we climbed inside. There were three strap-in hammock seats dangling in a wedge formation; two slightly behind either side of the center seat, which was in front of the controls; designed to hold ponies in a comfortable, hooves-forward position, as if they were standing. I refused Murmur's assistance, and (after a few acrobatic failures) managed to strap myself in.

Suspended in her seat, Murmur clacked at the panel. A cable went from the controls to her Generosity jack.

I fought a second wave of nauseous hysteria as the motors whirred to life and the ship took its first ponderous vertical wobbles. I needed to distract myself.

"It must be odd flying a ship when you have wings."

"Would you like me to carry you home instead?" she mumbled.

My stomach threatened.

"Please don't throw up in here."

"How did anypony think this was a good idea?" I shouted.

"They thought the train would be scary."

There were no windows. The front panel of the craft was one large display. Figures and images blinked around the edges of a feed of the outside. A few smaller picture-in-picture boxes lined the bottom. The main controls were two large bevels attached to her front hooves. Each careful motion changed our speed and pitch.

Trepidation finally gave way to awe after rising several stories. A vast swath of multicolored metals and lights stretched beneath us; a wide arc of shimmer, blink, and the bustle of moving minutiae. There seemed to be no true corners to anything. The architecture waved and flowed in smooth contours; ovals, spirals, peculiar turns. Each building, in and of itself, seemed strange, but together each was a note in an oddly enrapturing symphony. Genius built this.

We rounded a massive billboard suspended from the side of building: "Red Gala Appleaide; New from House Apple!"

We rose further, and I could see the clearly defined city limits in every direction. It was a circle. A rim of flashing purple lights, revealed in the dimming early evening, defined the edges. The magical barrier that rose from them shimmered in undulating, ephemeral pulses. Beyond was a muted sea of frosted white, broken by the occasional speck of color. They weren't able to build outward. They built up instead.

Murmur looked back, checking my level of panic. I think she was disappointed when she found it lacking.

“What’s out there?” I asked, gesturing at the white earth.

She gave a raised-eyebrow, sideways glance, like one gives a foal, “The Hoarfrost.”

"Is it everywhere?"

She said nothing.

"What's the longest sentence you've ever said?"

She might have grimaced. Maybe.

Steel-blue trains rocketed by underneath. Other machinations, some identical to ours, soared by, their undersides glowing with purple gems. We lowered towards three blue-accented orange towers arranged in a triangle. In the courtyard between them was an open patch of grass and trees; the only I'd noticed in the city. We settled gently onto a pad jutting from the tower's side.

"Do you remember your unit?"

"388," I replied.

"Do you... remember how to eat? Use a faucet?"

I unstrapped myself and climbed out.

"Wait," came her sibilant whisper, "Just plug in to the Generosity. Ask it questions."

That was probably as nice as she got. I nodded.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


There were thirty buttons in the lift, grouped into five clusters of six. I took the stairs. It was only three floors.

388. The numbers glared at me. I expected the door to open into an inferno, or a room full of corpses. It opened into a small but well-organized apartment. I paced carefully through, re-learning it. Sadly, I must have been quite fond of pink. My exact shade of pink. If I closed my eyes and mouth, I thought, I could stand in the middle of the room unseen. It badly needed a cleaning, which would come later. I deliberately avoided the FPU (Food Preservation Unit).

I plopped down on a massive green cushion surrounded by a semi-circular desk. Over it, suspended by a robotic arm, was a large computer screen. Right next to my face was a Generosity cable, its connector pointing like the head of a threatening black snake.

I hooked a hoof around it apprehensively. This was going to plug into my central nervous system. My brain was going to interface with the world. This was a new degree of agoraphobia. I switched on the terminal under the desk and positioned the connector next to the interface on my jack. Swallowing hard, I clicked it in.

>System: Responsive

Readouts blurred by.

>Starting Generosity Browser v15.3...
>........100%
>Remember: The Bishopric loves you.

A dazzling interface displayed across the screen, with a secondary screen overlay that displayed in my eyes. The two images coalesced to create a three dimensional effect that was momentarily disorienting. A message popped up in my periphery.

*1,518 unread messages.

Great.

The system was intuitive, and the learning curve for basic functionality was short. Most of the messages were advertisements. One sent today caught my attention:

>>From: Wonder
>>Subj: Cutie Mark Re-Assignment
>>It has come to our attention that your cutie mark was lost due to large-scale tissue damage. Per instruction from the Apothecary, we have scheduled you for mark-matrix processing. The date has been added to your calendar. Please contact me as soon as possible if rescheduling is required.

-Wonder
-Asst. Director of Cutie Mark Assignments
-Department of Destiny

"Reference; Department of Destiny."

Department beneath the Church of the Compass. Responsible for processing assignment of cutie marks. Cutie marks are generated via exposure to the Cutie Mark Assignment Matrix. Initial assignment is made on a pony's twelfth birthday. Re-assignment is mandatory if a cutie mark is lost due to cybernetic or biological modifications.

I sat in silence for a moment, staring out the window. A ship hummed by in the dark, followed by two pegasi in reflective vests. Fireflies in the night.

"Reference; the Church."

The Church is an over-arching colloquialism referencing the Church of the Solstice; the governing body of Equestria. The head of the Church is the Grand Oligarch, Prince Solstice. It contains the following major sub-churches:
>Church of the Leaf
>Church of Whispers
>Church of the Compass
>Church of the Horn
>Church of the Dragon
>Church of Joy

"Reference; Prince Solstice."

Ruler of Equestria. De-facto Sultan of Saddle Arabia. Grand Oligarch of the Church of Solstice. Only known Alicorn. Would you like to read the full article?

"No."

There was a hoof-full of messages I hadn't deleted. The subjects alluded familiarity. These were ponies I knew. Ponies I didn't know anymore. Messages beckoning reunions that would ultimately disappoint.

>>From: Breakbeat
>>Subj: Ciiiiiiiiiderrrrrrrrrrr
>>Heartspark scrolled me and said you were being released. Thanks for the heads-up, bottom-sprite! j/k. Scroll me back when you're feeling up to it. Apple Peel's even going to pick up the check. The cider will flow! =)

The camera above my terminal screen focused on me. A box popped up in my eye-display.

"You should go see them," read in large purple letters.

I tried to jerk to my hooves, but fell under the desk. The camera tracked me.

"Stop! It's okay!" scrolled in.

"Who the fuck are you? Why are you in my eye?" I cried.

>Calm down! You let me out.

The artifact in the storeroom. Sirocco was a good kid. Now I wanted to wring his neck. The screen craned down like some hideous bird. I put a hoof over my eyes. Maladroitly pinned between the cushion and the wall, I groaned, "Who are you?"

>My name is unimportant. I stopped by to thank you.

"You're welcome. I don't need this right now. Please go away."

>My thanks is a warning. You are under surveillance. That's how I found out who you were. You should go see your friends. You should be anywhere but here right now. I don't know much else, but I'm working on it.

It was going to be a long night. Still, something was looking out for me. I had friends. The old me had friends, at least.

Small victories.
> 5. Unstable
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


~~~~~~~~~~~
It's only good for vague and immediate events. Unless...
~~~~~~~~~~~


Throbbing.

My head syncopated like a drum.

The shower beeped a reminder that I had almost reached my hygienic water limit. I was a mess. My sopping mane hung around my face as hot rivulets tumbled from my muzzle. I rested my head against the cool metal and sighed. The burn of the hard cider still played faintly on the back of my tongue. Eyes closed; I rolled it in my mouth. Last night had been wild.


~~~~~~~~~~


"I swear, my progenitor is the original DJ-Pon3," Breakbeat shouted, "I have the documentation to prove it!"

A chorus of intoxicated jeers erupted, punctuated by Apple Peel sing-songing, "HoooooorseFeeeeeaaaatherrrrrrs." Bar snacks flew about haphazardly.


~~~~~~~~~~


As fun as our inebriated romp had been, I still felt a disconnect. My friends talked to and about me with a degree of acquaintanceship I couldn't return. Breakbeat, Syntax, Cameo; all of them assured me that I'd remember with a little coaxing, and another drink.

It was easier than confronting the reality of my life.

I bypassed the turbine chamber, opting to air dry. The chamber was loud. All of this technology, and nopony had invented a cure for the dreaded hangover. Laughter Plus, perhaps. Sadly, I hadn't been prescribed any.

Apple Peel was spread snoring across my couch. Her two-toned yellow mane cascaded over her face. Green ribbons, slightly darker than the faded green tone of her coat, lay half-tugged from her hair.

She was rich; a member of House Apple. This afforded her the autonomy to pass out on other pony's couches. House Apple ran the Orchards, supplying the Church, but the House was its own entity. Everypony can't be birthed so lucky.

The smell hit me as I approached the kitchen. In our stupor, we attempted to clean out my FPU. The result was a trail of stains and refuse between the FPU and the garbage chute. Helping me clean was the original context for Apple Peel coming here. We ended up emptying my modestly-stocked liquor cabinet and wrecking the place up worse. I'd also ended up with Breakbeat's music player. It was in the sink.

Did unicorns have these problems?


~~~~~~~~~~


"Have I met the Static Ponies? Yeah, once for an on-air interview. They're weird," Breakbeat said between popping beet chips in her mouth, "Why do you ask?"

"Something about their lyrics. Honesty. That word just won't leave me alone. I keep thinking about it."

"What? Like the concept?"


~~~~~~~~~~


#~Blood toxin levels at 0.04%. My jack's immusical voice fed into my brain. Another perk, if you could call it that. I dropped my drink the first time it spoke. It took the ponies around me a few confused minutes to figure out who I was trying to converse with.

Apple Peel's snoring continued as I jacked into Generosity. Cleanup could wait. My work re-acclimation started tomorrow after my cutie mark reassignment, and I wanted as much study lean-in as I could muster. The more knowledge I crammed into the void of my unknowing, the less I felt the yawn of its expanse.

There was something else, too; a fundamental thirst. I loved to read.

"Are you... in there?" I asked.

My anxiety returned along with my faculties. I was expecting some dramatic computational output, or the terminal to explode; at least a response. There was nothing. I went through my messages. There were three from the pegasus at the bar. He went from curtly referring to me and Apple Peel as "dirt ponies", to breathing in my ear within the span of four drinks. I deleted them all.


~~~~~~~~~~


"That sounds just awful," Cameo said. He sounded genuinely empathetic, but he was an actor after all.

"Almost as awful as your show that nopony watches," joked Breakbeat, seated a few stools down.

"Better than your trashy radio program, if you could even refer to it as such!" Cameo retorted, "Anyway, you said you were escorted by a pony from the Church of Whispers?"

"Yeah," I replied.

"Goodness. Do you know what they are? What they do?"

"The reference page says they collect and manage information."

"Are you kidding? They're spies."


~~~~~~~~~~


Outside the snow clouds slunk their bloated phalanx across the sky. The only sunny day in months I'd spent in the hospital, catching a few minutes of it through Doctor Needleminder's window. Another wasn't forecast for weeks.

A message arrived. 

>>From: Zandali
>>Subj: Trace this if you want
>>We know you sold us out. I guess the threat of exposure isn't an effective bargaining chip anymore. You have one last chance if you want to break square. We want the Honesty you've purified so far. Five days to get it to us, per the instructions, same as before. You don't break square, we're coming. If you think the Church burned you bad, try to screw us again.

My life was back.

So was the Honesty.

Green blinking lights and a picture frame.

#~Body temperature at 101.8 degrees. Pulse at 49 BPM.

Sweat prickled. Just what fell into that void? Why was it still chained to me, reaching across the veil to drag me away?

>I traced it to a public terminal. The video bank was erased.

"There you are. Good... morning. Can you tell what time it is? Is time a reference in there?"

>Very astute. It's different.

"What are you?"

>I am sorry, Lozenge. I'm not here to answer your questions. I'm here to make a demand. Judging by this message, another demand is the last thing you need, but the context of my operation has changed.

"Do you know what the reality of my life is right now?"

>I feel sympathy, Lozenge.

"You... feel?" I asked slowly, though I had been speaking as if to a sentient creature. Sentient AI was a myth.

>I wasn't always as I am now. That is why I need your help. I was dormant far too long. I can't reach any of my friends.

"I want control of my own life."

It didn't respond for a long time. I sat breathing heavily, almost weeping. Apple Peel snored.

>I will give you the world in return.

"Why would I believe that?"

>You want it, you can have it. It's not the Equestria I remember. I will make your life whatever you want. If not for reward, just help me. Please.

Apple Peel finally woke up two hours later, dragging my comforter as she plopped down beside me. She yawned and rubbed her amber eyes, "I vaguely r'call us kissin'."

I stared straight ahead, "Uh, yeah. That happened after the FPU cleaning fiasco. I smashed my muzzle on a drawer and you tried to make it better."

"Ya always were a klutz," she snickered, "Anythin' else happen?"

"No."

"Whayel good. That would make our friendship a might bit weird."

At least there were some constants.

"Apple Peel," my voice was hollow, "I need a favor."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Fire Suppression System by FlimFlamCo.

I stared at the tiny, garish letters. The train thrummed along the magnetic rail, darting like a metallic snake under buildings and through tunnels. The breakfast Apple Peel made sat in my stomach like a brick. It tossed back and forth with the car's every heave. Ugh. For somepony coming from a family famed for food production, she was the worst cook ever. Still, she set me up with an appointment at House Apple. I didn't know why she was so fond of me. Perhaps a privileged upbringing afforded easy dispensation of affection as well as money. Perhaps, at some forgotten point, we really connected.

Solstice, return that memory.

In between station announcements, the news crackled.

"Crime rates are at an all-time high as the Church crackdown on street drugs 'Frivolity' and 'Laughter Double-Plus' continues to escalate. Both are highly altered derivatives of medical-grade Laughter; use is both illegal and highly discouraged. There are rumors of new drug being encountered on raids in the Underwell districts, and authorities are working to isolate the means of supply. Rewards have been offered to any citizenry with knowledge of anypony possessing, selling, or distributing these dangerous substances. Please contact..."

I clicked my tongue. Highly discouraged.

My fever hadn't gone down. I was resting my forelock against the baggage rail under the air return, lazily picking the outlines of the city through the rolling fog. The air coming from the return wasn't cold, but it was moving. Any reprieve from the constant sweating was welcome. Even the white fabric of my apothecary's vest was dappled in radiating droplets.

The speakers buzzed, "Now entering Sector 5. The Bishopric loves you."

The exit of the station dumped me into a sweeping circular plaza between the Department of Destiny and the Convent of Butterflies. The proximity couldn't be more convenient.

A scant late morning crowd dotted the plaza. Most ponies were buried away in these structures, toiling amidst air purifiers and artificial lights. Two black-clad pegasi patrolponies carved slow circles overhead. Security teams were everywhere.

The center of the plaza was dominated by a bronze statue of Saint Scootaloo herself. It depicted the pegasus mare reared up, with powerful wings outstretched and head pointed skyward. A large, menacing-looking hammer and a set of scrolls hung from her traveling saddle. The inscription across the base read, "No way but forward."

No way indeed.

I craned my neck upward at the arch reading "Department of Destiny". Under the monolith, my own minuteness became physically and philosophically apparent. Strong winds were everywhere, and I was dust. Dust that had made a deal with separatists. Dust being stalked by a 1,000-year-old program that claimed to think and feel. Dust that was about to make a very risky gamble.

The building itself was two stacked, impossibly angled grey ovals extending apart from a gargantuan central orb. A throng of ponies congregated in the foyer and waiting area. Mostly school-aged fillies and colts with their chaperones, but a few lone adults like myself sat about reading.

The DoD was always busy. Everypony in Baltimare passed through here at least once, and it showed in the extra layer of polish. Maintenance and cleaning crews toiled in the fringes. Appearances.

With scrutiny, wear was still apparent. Composite glue held threadbare screws. Chipped corners were welded with thinner, off-color metal. No matter how they polished this city, I could see the rust. 

"Yes, Ms. Lozenge, we have you on the appointment list. There's a note here to page the assistant director directly, so just give me a second," the receptionist fake-smiled.

Several minutes later a light blue unicorn with an artfully styled black-and-indigo-striped mane trotted through the stylized glass doors. Under her lab coat was a sleek, casual turtleneck ensemble. She beamed through eyeshadow, fake lashes, and blush, "Darling, good morning. I'm Wonder. I imagine you got my message. The Apothecary arranged everything, and we're going to make sure you're taken care of."

Everypony was making sure I was taken care of, because everypony wanted something from me. I was a key that had forgotten its lock. Only a key knows what a key has forgotten. Kind of a paradox. I guessed the key was screwed.

Wonder ushered me through the preliminary tests and paperwork, a mug of coffee marked with "#1 BOSS" and a clipboard hovering behind her.

"Is this dangerous?" I asked while a technician took my pulse.

"Of course not. Well, this is second era technology, after all," she rolled her eyes, "As much as anypony can really comprehend something built over a thousand years ago."

"Uh. Great. I'm not keeping you from anything, am I?"

"You know, the place really runs itself. Being Assistant Director kind of leaves me with a lot of free time," her mug bobbed gently with the rise and fall of her voice, "Honestly, I barely deserve the salary."

The medical technician gave her a questioning glare.

"Oh, get back to work," Wonder shooed with her hoof. The technician took her angry expression and trotted off.

The inside of the machine was simply a stark-white oval. After the chamber closed around me, locking in place with several intricate turns and machinated clanks, it fired aglow in a latticework of green lines.

"You're sure this is safe," I yelped. My ears rolled back and I dropped onto my flank.

"Oh, do relax, darling. You're positively sweating," the speakers relayed Wonder's non-reassuring affirmation.

The whir and glow intensified. A robotic voice droned, "Matrix activating."

#~Body temperature at 102.3 degrees. Pulse at 100 BPM. Seek medical assistance.

Green static played on my coat. I clenched my teeth.

#~Pulse at 156 BPM. Seek medical assistance.

The lights blinked out, leaving the arcing green flashes as the only illumination. In the dark was a pair of glimmering golden eyes.

"Lozenge, please relax," crooned the speakers.

She wasn't in here with a monster.

#~Pulse at 203 BPM. Readings denote cerebral hypoxia.

Laughter. Laughter. Laughter.

#~Seek medical assistance.

A material wall of green energy passed from my left to my right, lingering as it traversed my body. My eyes slammed shut.

"Really? Sh...," the speaker clicked off.

#~Pulse at 240 BPM. Cardiac arrest imminent.

Just like that, the whir subsided, and the static with it. My lungs were still heaving, my heart churning violently against my ribs. My whole skeleton shook.

The lights clicked back on, and I was alone.

The exit from the machine was a short, low-ceiling tunnel with reflective walls; the burnished panels meticulously kept. Appearances. I ambled in, trying to wrestle down my panic.

I'd been avoiding my reflection. Finally, I had no escape. I scrutinized my first full, unfettered view of myself. Dark, syrupy-pink fur offset a mane set in three thick stripes; the outer edges a brilliant white, the center a dirty grey; like murky water. The ends curled naturally. I scrunched up my nose. I wasn't fond of it.

I was tall for a mare. I'd noticed by my relation to other ponies, but my reflection glaringly confirmed it. I wasn't overly muscular or athletic. I supposedly measured chemicals in a lab all day. It's not exactly Orchard work. One aspect distracted me from my disappointment with the rest of me; my eyes. They were a coruscating, metallic silver.  They sat like jewels in a sweat-drenched face.

A cough drop?

My cutie mark was a large, dark-purple cough drop accented in white.

I almost died for that.

"Oh dear, that's really...nice," smirked Wonder, sipping her coffee.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"I'm here for a copy of the Tundra Flora and Fauna Database," I affirmed, "My surveyor's license should be in the system, under House Apple."

The orange pegasus shifted back to her terminal, tracking text with scleritic purple eyes. You could give commands to the Generosity system without saying them out loud. I hadn't worked back up to that level of mastery. Apple Peel's fake credentials checked out, and I was cleared for the transfer.

An earth pony with a lame leg and a pegasus with lupus, clad in yellow convent robes, escorted me down a hallway to a terminal booth. It was a closed system, and the program was stored in the tagged sector of my jack. The source code couldn't be viewed or copied. They took great pains to keep the distribution limited. I thanked them and headed for the station.

The zebra wasn't very subtle.

He was following me, or at least I thought he was. I wasn't terribly certain I could discern one zebra from the other. I ducked into a public terminal booth and slid the glass panel closed.

"Are you in the surveillance system?" I hissed.

>You can just think the words.

"Don't point those italics at me."

>Yes. I'm in. My presence has been noticed. I'm running on borrowed clock cycles.

"Just hold up your end."

>Lozenge, one last thing. Thank you.

I grimaced.

On my way to the platform, I stopped at a vending trough for some fever suppressant. It read from my jack and deducted the price from my amply-funded account. They said my parents were wealthy, though I could barely remember them. Only a few scattered reruns viewed through a forest of mirrors. 

The body temperature warnings became slightly less dire as I curled up on a train bench. Several ponies were dispersed throughout, toying with leg-mounted screens or music players. No zebras in this car.

I smelled something.

Something dusty and pungent. Alternately nectarous and acrid. I couldn’t quite place it.

“Why so nervous?”

The mirthful voice came from a brown earth pony stallion sitting by the window. His outfit, a black cotton vest and white undershirt (replete with gold watch chain), gave him an air of formality. His demeanor belied the opposite. A round black hat sat on his head, bound at the base with a swath of red silk that matched his eyes.

“What’s that?” I gestured, dodging his question.

He looked upward, “It’s a bowler hat.”

“No, the paper.”

“Why, that’s exactly what it is, my dear. A paper. A newspaper,” he replied jovially, “You’re avoiding my question.”

“I normally don’t answer questions from ponies I don’t know.”

“Well, I just answered two of yours. One you didn’t even ask. The name’s Mr. Ergot,” he smiled wryly, “Now we’re not strangers.”

“I’m not going to answer.”

He shrugged before returning to his paper, “Suit yourself.”

I recognized that hat from somewhere.

"Next Stop, Church of the Pestle plaza and the Saint Scootaloo Medical Sciences Center. The Bishopric loves you."

"This is my stop," I felt compelled to notify him, as if defending myself.

"Y'know," he smacked his lips, "it looks like rain today."

I slinked off, unnerved. It hadn't rained in my life span. I looked it up. It hadn't rained in recorded history. Precipitation was limited to snow, hail, and sleet. Rain was theoretical.

I'd never seen the ground entrance to the medical center. It was the most breathtaking thing I'd seen; like the cityscape, minus the abject terror.

The scopious semi-circle rolled out into lines of benches and abstract sculptures. Two long fountains spouted water towards the massive stained-glass dome; the whole scene reflected in the polished stone tiles. It was the first actual stone I'd seen since my abstruse accident. In a city devoted to the sciences, a science center obviously got top billing. Still, it wasn't perfect. Looking closely, you could see the wear. It was stunning, but old.

The overhead mosaic was something else entirely.

Several stained-glass apertures were mounted in ornate metal rigs, attached to the architrave by shimmering black plenum. Where the metal and stone was old, these were ancient, and had obviously been added to the building in a modular fashion. Each was rendered in a different color scheme. Artificial light percolated through elaborate renderings of ponies and more fantastical creatures.

The most impressive three windows were arranged just above the entrance proper.

One sat to the left, casting a sea of yellows and reds, fading towards the edges into a blue starscape dissected by cartographic angles and measurements. The earth pony wore a series of red bows down her red, braided mane; each held together at the center by a varying multicolored polygon. She wore a brown traveler's cloak and was flanked by a compass and a mortar-pestle set. Her eyes were different colors; one gamboge, the other green. She crouched, eternally preparing to leap. Stylized lettering read, "No absolute but truth."

Opposing was a white and violet unicorn reared upright, thrusting her horn into a sickly pink and green sky. From her radiated a series of dark purple rings done in sparkling glass. The green seemed to recede away from the tip of her horn. An arch of moons, each in a distinct phase, was arrayed around the window's edges. Beneath her name read, "No light but that we make."

Sharply contrasting the darker tones of the others' backgrounds, Saint Scootaloo beamed down from directly above the entrance. She was posed much like her statue, and wore the same regalia; standing resolute at the epicenter of a brilliantly glowing sun. Miniature ponies filled the corners. Her name sat on top of a familiar phrase, "No way but forward."

"What in Tartarus...," I gaped.

A passing stallion paused.

"The three saints? I know, right? It's all some racial harmony propaganda," he whispered, "I heard they were all really earth ponies."

"What were their names?"

"What? Were you born yesterday?"

Perhaps.

Double Helix greeted me as I entered.

"Who are the ponies in the stained glass above the entrance?" I gazed back toward them.

"Saint Scootaloo, Saint Apple Bloom, and Saint Sweetie Belle. I'm particularly fond of that depiction of Saint Scootaloo."

"They look old."

"The windows are from the third era, like most of the city's underlying infrastructure. Would you like me to exposit on the history of Baltimare, the eastern cities, and the Saints now, or can you wait to look it up later?"

"You're a smart stallion, Doc."

The similarities between Deep Well 1 and Deep Well 2 were unnerving. The lift, the hallways, the blast doors; they made the memories fresh. I remained stoic through our idle banter. Nurse Heartspark was on vacation. I was doing fine; reading; yes, I know how to use a toilet. He was eight parts insightful and two parts oblivious.

"I could arrange for somepony to demonstrate food preparation," he pontificated.

Maybe seven and three. Six and four for the toilet quip.

Most of what had been in Deep Well 2 had been moved here during repairs, covered with tarpaulin and crammed creatively between the native equipment. He trotted up onto a grated metal dais surrounded by control panels. Just above and beyond him was a cerulean ship suspended by robotic cranes. It was slightly larger than Murmur's, but the angles were different; more dynamic. I recognized it immediately.

"Do you recognize it?"

"This was in Deep Well 2."

"What would you say this is?" he inquired.

"A personal transport. Corvus class? A little bigger."

"At first glance, maybe," he beamed, suddenly alight with the realization of his genius.

"The chassis and engine are fabricated from second-era relics, and that's not even the best part. It doesn't have a processing core like most ships. It doesn't have a CPU at all. It runs on something revolutionary, something that's going to change the way we run AI forever," his words were gushing, though he seemed to be talking to himself. That looked like the only pony he wanted to impress.

"So what does it run on?" I inquired, hurrying his monologue.

"A bio-core," he paused for dramatic effect. I indulged him.

"You mean like... a living... brain?"

"Well, even more than that," he shifted at his podium, his hooves darting between several knobs and dials, "It's not just a brain. The whole core is a cloned biological engine, tied right into every control system. Only a slightly varied process from the one we use to create new ponies!"

The realization was starting to hit me.

"The ship... is a pony? You've relegated a living, sentient pony's life to being used as an object of transportation?"

The ice in my voice was apparent.

"I... umm... well...," he floundered, "It wouldn't really know any other life, so that would seem normal."

"Why am I here?"

I clenched my teeth.

"You see, this is..."

"Why am I here?"

"Okay. The ship's consciousness matrix, my own invention, was admittedly unstable. Unto this point, we were at a loss as far as getting it to... veritably... run the ship. It wouldn't interface with the non-biological elements."

Inside that ship was something brought into this world as a tool. It was me, with a levitation drive. I felt violent. I wished my hooves could tear steel; rend the arms and walls and set us both free.

#~Body temperature at 102.1 degrees.

I took a deep breath, "Why are you telling me all of this? If it's such a revolutionary project, wouldn't it be secret?"

"You are a sworn member of the Church, amnesia aside. You have the clearance."

"I mean, what do you think I can do for you?"

"Whatever you did, it synced for the first time," he smirked, "Ever."

This was unexpected, but I couldn't let it deter me.

"Doc, I have some questions first."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


#~Body temperature at 105 degrees.

I stumbled into the street. The same conflagration I'd felt on the meat slab burned my insides. The world swam in rippling heat. All sound was a melting blur of incoherence.

"Are you okay?" Breakbeat's words played in garbled, inconsistent periodicity, "I'm calling an ambulance."

"No!" I barked woozily, "No ambulance!"

Why did I wake up in that storage room? Who knew I was there? How many ponies had that level of access? I made a mental list of how many. With Doctor Helix and his team ruled out, it was short. There was only one name.

That bitch.

She seemed so kind.

Appearances.
> 6. Incubatory
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Darkened by time, the masters, like our memories, mix and mismatch... These are the lucky ones, the shelved ones; the twice-erased.
-Charles Wright, "Black Zodiac"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Snow.

A sea of white to infinity.

Snow that didn't come from water. Snow you couldn't boil down. Snow that defied the rational laws of physics, because it wasn't a product of natural creation. It was magic.

Our transport bumped along through the blustering night air. The winds were calmer at night. During the day, us and our transport would have been a spray of debris and wind-swallowed cries.

The city's neon spires shrunk away in the rear viewfinder. All of Baltimare sat atop a black pedestal; an artificial plateau that held the base of the city hundreds of stories above the tundra below. That, along with the faded purple orb that encased it all, made it resemble a filly's snow globe. A globe where the snow was outside.

Off beyond the city was another solitary tower enveloped in phosphorescent blue. I had never seen it before. It was much further off and I could barely make it out. It looked the same height as Baltimare's tallest spires. Thus, at its distance, it must have been considerably taller. A prodigious blue gem surmounted the top. It may have been a trick of the eyes, but it looked like a balloon.

Finally, they were miniscule needles in a distant alabaster sea. Against the vastness of the snow, the events of the last few days stood in comforting triviality. Then it was gone.

I winced at every rattle and drop. The two pegasi pilots grinned.

This expedition was funded by House Apple, but the Church wouldn't let it happen without their involvement. Enter our three-pony "supervision" team. They needed a chemist. A request from one friend, the alteration of some computer records by another...

Could I really call them my friends?

I lied to Breakbeat. I lied to Apple Peel. I lied to everypony.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"What was I like before?"

I lounged on one of Breakbeat's bean-bag chairs. The grey unicorn mare looked up, brushing her purple and white striped mane from her magenta eyes. Normally, she spiked it, but it now hung limp over her face. Her ear flicked.

"You definitely didn't do anything like this," she chuckled.

"No, really. What kind of friend was I?"

"Well, you were kind of my quiet counterpart. You let your mane down sometimes, but for the most part you balanced me out. Don't know what I'll do not that you're a born-again party pony. Probably end up dead."

"Great. I need the guilt."

The visitor intercom buzzed.

"Ah," Breakbeat said, "That must be Syntax."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


We sat on metal benches along either wall, facing each other. Apple Peel slumped in the corner, black goggles over her eyes, a churning mouth-full of bubble gum the only indication of life. Her two earth pony retainers stared daggers, looking past the three specialists in red House Apple barding at the varied shapes of the Underwell mercenaries. Mostly pegasi. Two hulking diamond dogs in carapace parkas and rebreathers. Twenty figures in all. We thumped and whistled through the night.

The Albatross (as labeled) finally hovered a shaky landing, and the rear ramp's lowering hiss showered us in cold.

Abridged, a cream-colored unicorn with a puffy brown mane and the slick countenance of the young and undamaged, huddled next to me. Her meekness made me look positively heroic by comparison. Still, she had a certain subtle magnanimity of which I was instantly fond. We piled out with the rest.

The wind yanked at my parka and saddlebags like a determined thief. The barren cold was, in a way, freeing. If I died in the cold, I died on my own accord.

"Dernit Lozenge," Apple Peel nudged me, "Ya let me fall asleep. Now I got gum in mah mane!"

The two diamond dogs, Clip and Hobble, canvassed the area with shoulder-mounted spotlights. I understood why Apple Peel insisted on hiring them. The looked like murder on two legs.

Hobble, so named for his cybernetic leg (did I say murder on two legs?), swept his shotgun across the featureless landscape. "Nothing here," he shouted, staring at a wrist-mounted screen. For such an imposing creature, he had a small, nasally voice.

"Stay close," said Hush; the black pegasus' green mane and purple eyes hidden inside a parka hood and bubbly rebreather. He was supposedly a historian. A historian with a stiletto cutie mark.

The ramp of the transport closed, cutting off the light. We trudged behind our diamond dog guides until we were surrounded by derelict remnants. Whatever it had been, the Hoarfrost long ago claimed it. The scant stone and steel that escaped the surface, however, had strange markings. Whirling black markings.

"It looks like there was a fire," Abridged said what I was thinking.

A dilapidated arch passed overhead, casting eerie shadows in the searchlight. Chunks of ice had been recently cut out and hauled to the edges of the clearing and built into a sheltering wall against the wind. Hundreds of years worth of accumulation smashed and torn away from what looked like a set of blast doors. The snow and ice was already working to reclaim them.

"Ya see, we were checkin' the Hayseed Tundra fer places to mine phosphates, fer fertilizer," Apple Peel stabbed a hoof towards the marred doorway, "We found this."

"And the survey team never returned?" I ventured.

"Ha ha," she said, "Nah, the survey team just couldn't get in."

"So why the combat gear?"

"Ya know, darlin'," she winked, "I'm just wearing this getup t' look good."

"Oh, so your barn door swings that way?" the bat pony interjected. He was obscured by a faded orange cloak, but a long rifle barrel poked out from beneath.

"Mah barn door is double-hinged, thanks fer askin'," she said, "but sorry, I don't go batty."

He snickered.

Abridged now cowered to the other unicorn in our cadre; a red stallion. "So, what's your special talent?" she asked, her voice low and flirtatious.

"You'll see in a second," he smirked.

The diamond dogs unloaded gems from their pack and began lining the doors with them. I checked over my chemistry kit and adjusted my boots while the others kept watch. I brought sampling and testing supplies, but under those I stashed two syringes of Laughter Double-Plus. You could inject it anywhere, but it had the side effect of giving you the four-cups-of-coffee jitters. A small jaw pistol rounded out my gear. The diamond dogs finished by connecting all of the gems with thin grey wire.

"Well alright, Sizzlestick, do yer thing."

Sizzlestick's horn shone red under his parka hood, and seconds later the gems mimicked it. The metal glowed, sizzled, and melted away. With the muscle of the remaining mercenaries, two large swathes of metal toppled inward. Clip and two pegasi went in.

"We're speculatin' this is a third-era Orchard," Apple Peel explained as we followed, "Built a smidge after tha Second Fall. Maybe by Saint Apple Bloom 'erself, when they came to rebuild tha cities. A'course, not enough records survived that era fer anypony to say anythin' fer certain."

"Maybe there are records inside. Maybe artifacts!" Abridged gushed.

"Whayel, we're hopin mainly fer farmin records, er equipment. Anythin' that'll show us why they were so much better at it than we are."

The initial antechamber was unremarkable. It looked like it must have hundreds of years ago. Circular benches surrounded ancient planters, the things inside long since murdered by the cold. Sizzlestick had to melt a second set of doors for us to enter the facility proper.

The second room was completely destroyed. The ceiling had collapsed into a pile that dominated the chamber's center; radiating outward into sloping snow drifts. Furniture and charts were thrown against the walls, showing damage conducive to the ravaging of long-extinguished fire. Abridged was practically bouncing in place. Hush was conspicuously uninterested.

One of the pegasi mercenaries shouted, "Frostsprites!"

They screeched out of the darkness; several round, bloated orbs marred by multicolored frost; jagged and oblong ice shard eyes alight with hunger; blue, insectile wings barely perceptable in the quick, urgent dark. One opened its mouth impossibly wide. I leapt and rolled to one side, narrowly avoiding what could've scooped me up wholesale.

Hobble's shotgun barked, reducing one diving frostsprite to a bloody mist. Another sprite spat shards of ice, toppling him ungracefully onto his back; the shards impaled into his carapace armor. I took shelter under a jutting piece of concrete. The world was flashing weapons, wildly bouncing lights and swarming mouths; the snap and ping of projectiles. The whole affair was utter chaos.

I struggled to get my pistol out of the saddlebag. How prepared I was. By the time I had it, half of the sprites were splattered across the floor. The rest dispersed out the overhead hole. Rapid puffs of my breath chased after.

"Anypony hurt?" called Apple Peel.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


As soon as Breakbeat shot me up, I felt immensely better. The syringe floated away as the happy washed over me. I was the edges of a happy wave pool. There was an edge, though. Frivolity didn't have the same clean feeling as medical Laughter. It had a tinge of nervous, frenetic excitement. It made you itch.

Breakbeat's cutie mark, a synthesizer pedal imposed with an eighth note, looked like it started to move. Happy music.

"I don't get why you do that stuff," Syntax said. Her voice, as usual, was disaffected. She was the polar opposite of Breakbeat, and I was apparently the axis keeping them in friendly orbit.

"Because life is brutish and short, dorky swoop, " Breakbeat said; too unabashedly boisterous to be insulting.

Syntax did have a pretty dorky mane swoop. It covered half of her face, hanging to one side of her her horn; the reminder I was the only pony present unable to do aerial stunts with my breakfast cereal. She was a very light shade of grey; a sad grey; a grey that just wasn't trying hard enough, like her painstakingly-pressed-flat orange mane, with one thin blue stripe running off-center.

She had perfect vision, but wore glasses anyway. They were great glasses. Really great. I kind of wanted to kick them off her face. Then we'd sing together to the happy music. The coding symbols that made up her cutie mark started to move.

Focus.

#~Body toxin levels at 0.8%.

"Was I... nice?"

"You are sooo killing my buzz."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


With only minor injuries and equipment damage, we continued. Amazingly, the Generosity terminal nestled into the back wall powered on. The earth pony technician jacked in and began working. I started clearing away snow from a pile of charts. Then, I saw it. I gasped and stepped back.

A hoof jutted from the white.

We cleared the snow, revealing the remains of what once had been a pegasus mare. She was prone on her stomach with the flesh from her back and head removed. Some blackened tissue still clung to the bones. The initial damage had been catastrophic, and the resulting cold mummified what was left.

"Whatever 'appened, it was a long time ago," the House Apple medic confirmed.

Machinery sprung to life after long years of dormancy. The doors issued a subdued pneumatic hiss and slid open, shrugging free centuries of stubborn ice; revealing a larger, more expansive chamber that extended beyond immediate perception. We froze.

There were two dozen of them. Skeletons. Unlike the one outside, these bones were devoid of flesh, dessicated or otherwise. The clean white reflected our searchlights back with almost deliberate menace. This room was completely sealed. There was no snow. Exchanging glances, Clip and Hobble reluctantly crept into the sepulchral air.

The tech was still making consternated effort with the terminal.

"What's the issue?" I asked.

"This terminal is independent; I can't get into the rest of the system. There's mostly records on this one. Personnel rosters and day-to-day stuff."

"That's great," beamed Apple Peel, "we can use those."

"There's three distinct tiers of files, each from a different span of dates. The bulk are from about two hundred years ago. There's a few dating back 600 years."

"These second era terminals are incredibly durable. Preservation spells were part of their construction," added Abridged as she pulled her hood back and lit up her horn.

"Yeah. Obviously. The last file is from over fourteen-hundred years ago."

We fell silent. Almost no records remained from before the Second Fall, yet here it was. I don't think I quite grasped the enormity as much as the others. They looked like they just woke up in the hospital parts room.

"It's got some kind of five-tiered encryption, though. And a weird format. I can't open it."

The terminal flashed as he tried without avail to hack in.

"Try fr0z3n_@mbr0s!a," I suggested a password the program gave me.

"Nope."

Something tugged at my mind. I sighed, "Try it looks like rain today."

"Why in Tartarus would it... oh, that was it." He gave me a confused look. He wasn't half as confused as I was.

Through the screen's spider-webbed cracks glowed a pink earth pony with a poofy pink mane. She wore a white dress shirt with a black vest; accented with sapphire buttons and embroidered white flowers. Piercing blue eyes stared from a stress-lined face. I had to remind myself it was some ancient aperture she was studying, not us. The tech flinched back. Abridged looked with equal bewilderment.

"Hmmm... there?" the video pony's effervescent voice sputtered through the ancient speakers, "Stage right?"

"That's what's in yer drawin', Mrs. Pinkie."

She was speaking to someone off camera, but her hoof was pointed directly at me. Gesturing through hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Pointing inquisitively from the grave.

"So you might be wondering why you have a fever, and not even disco fever. That would be a fun fever, but this one isn't so fun."

Impossible.

"Aaaaaand you're trying to fix this little situation you're in. Buuuuut, there's a much bigger situation you're in, too," she continued; I noticed the bags under her eyes, "And it's partially my fault. Soooo, I'm going..."

The picture broke into sharp static lines.

"Fix it! Fix it!," I jabbed the technician as he worked.

"... giggle... we didn't... this means... trying to re-grow one, but... understand how it works... Unless Apple Bloom puts this on the wrong terminal..."

It continued cutting in and out. What in Tartarus was this?

"...but it is here. Don't worry. Pinkie promise! Cross my...bzzzzrt... eye."

Hush was paying full attention.

"Who's the other one?" the pink pony turned toward Abridged, "Oh. Ouchies."

The terminal shorted and died. The technician grumbled something about 'poking him one more damn time'.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"A metal table? Really?" Breakbeat's voice was incredulous.

"...and I just don't get this whole... thing going on," I lamented, "I guess I shouldn't be talking about this."

"Don't you get brainwashed to keep you from talking about Church stuff?" asked Syntax.

"The washed part of my brain fell out," I grinned. I was loose.

Breakbeat flipped through her music collection until she found something sufficiently bass-heavy. I pitied her neighbors. She did live in the Artist's Quarter, in the shadow of Pon3 tower, so maybe these types didn't mind. 

"If it is a conspiracy, who do you think is behind it?"

"I have an... acquaintance that got a hold of some records."

"Ooooh. Another hacker? She's cheating on you, Syntax!" Breakbeat interrupted, now upside-down on her couch, kicking her rear hooves to the beat.

"Har. Har," Syntax huffed, "Is it Prompt? If you want sub-par work, have at it."

She looked genuinely hurt.

Wow. I really did keep some bad company.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"What was that?" Abridged gaped, "Did she... point at me?"

"Nah that's crazy talk," Apple Peel offered a reassuring hoof, "Don't get yer saddle-straps cinched."

We continued into the facility's central branch, quiet and thoroughly apprehensive. Opening the next set of blast doors revealed another pile of skeletons. We closed this set behind us, finally sealing out the wind and flurries. This terminal yielded a facility schematic. It was an entire colony built into one massive, branching structure. From above it looked like a broad leaf, with fields interspersed in its dome-covered flesh. All of this slept under a blanket of snow, claimed by the blizzard and forgotten by time. Lives swallowed by obscurity.

"This doesn't make sense," I whispered to Apple Peel.

"Whaddaya mean?"

"There were files from two-hundred years ago. The Church must have records of that."

"Whayel, church lady, do they?"

"No. The only record I found was the short blurb by your first survey team."

The tech worked on the next terminal as the security team milled about. The entryway opened into a dome that rose into stifling darkness. I tucked my pistol into the front of my parka.

"There's another video on this one. A recent one. Lemme see if I can open it..."

A grey pegasus mare in blue security barding sat close to the camera. Her bedraggled white mane hung over amber eyes. Her countenance was one of resignation.

"Sleetsweet... head of security, team Clover Hill. I shouldn't have let Knick-Knack's team back into the dig site after Brûlée. It's the same thing that happened to the builders. So... ironic. They didn't care about Hailheart. They didn't care about anypony. I don't know who... I'm even recording this for...," she sobbed once, and only once, "Maybe I just want somepony to remember I was here."

This was recorded with the terminal's camera. She sat right where we were.

"Look, a lightses," Clip's voice came from further down the wall.

There was a thud and faint rustling, but no light.

We found the localized generator under a removable floor panel. It looked considerably older than the surrounding machinery and wiring. As the resident scientist, I was expected to coax it to life.

"Yah do r'member 'ow to do science, raht?" inquired Apple Peel. The word seemed unnatural on her lips, like she'd say something along the lines of I saw a science over there or could I have a science.

"Of course," I gulped, "it's my special talent."

It was a chemical battery. A rune-covered stone flanked four chemical tanks. Bonewire ran to the stone, and copper cabling ran from the center. A combination of unicorn magic and earth pony engineering. The chain reaction, held in perpetuity by the stone, created the electrical current. All we had to do was power up the stone and it should separate the chemicals, restarting the reaction.

This was simple theory; turning magic in electricity. The reading had paid off.

Chemistry was my special talent.

"Sizzlestick, Abridged, if I could possibly get a charge," my voice brimmed with new found confidence.

As the stone absorbed the aura from their horns, the chemical separation in the tanks occurred readily. The cloudy material drew toward the stone. The solution began to roil, and the generator hummed. The two unicorns jerked their heads back, sweating.

"It's full," Sizzlestick panted.

"Wow, that's really 'fficient," glowed the House Apple chemist.

"Says you, earth pony," grumbled Sizzlestick. The chemist shot back a derisive glance.

The hum spread across the floor and all around. The lights overhead finally clicked on, and Abridged stifled a scream. The high dome was covered in a crawling carpet of bright red fur. It churned, patches of light appearing and disappearing as it moved. The mercenaries mouths soundlessly flapped. I tried to read their lips. Some of it was pretty impressive. I filed it away in my meager glossary of vulgarities.

Wings fluttered. Parts of the mass broke off and floated in descending crimson circles.

They were moths.

"You're kidding," the bat pony chuckled.

The rest were overtly spooked. My gut sank with the same feeling as in Dr. Needleminder's office. Why did I walk in here?

"We didn't sign on for this," one of the pegasi said.

"Judgin' by that recordin'," Apple Peel jabbed a hoof toward the awakening moth cloud, "I'm callin' this. We're leavin'."

We closed the door as we made our way out. It was much easier with functional lighting, and it was alienating being dumped back into the complete dark of the outside. Utter, unbroken dark cast over a barren landscape. The transport sat lifeless. The levitation spell crystals had been removed from its underbelly.

Apple Peel tried to hail the pilots on her comm link. Nothing. When we finally pried our way in through the emergency hatch we found it empty. The battery crystal was missing entirely. We were trapped.

"Who would take the crystalses?" fumed Hobble. Flashlight beams illuminated panicked looks.

"What about the amplification crystals? Can we fit those into the ship?" the technician proposed.

"The heating matrix gem is gone," Sizzlestick replied, "we'd freeze in the air."

"There has to be some communication equipment inside, and our best chance right now is to find it. The moths didn't seem dangerous," I said. My boldness shocked me. So did my unyielding selfishness. Then again, I had taken a run at a murderous superpony. I was bold, as long the options were singular.

We cantered through fluttering moth clouds. The diamond dogs swatted at them. Abridged levitated groups of them away. Ultimately, they were more an annoyance than a threat; but their color... I couldn't stop clamping my eyes shut. 

Doors, marred by the exertions of desperate hooves, opened on skeletons piled in groups; some trying to force through doorways, some clustered in alcoves as if seeking to simply not face the end alone.

Following the schematics, we worked towards the communications hub, but every route was blocked by sealed doors. We needed a security key. Who would have a universal key but a security pony?


SECURITY WING


As we passed under the blue and white sign, I heard a whisper from all around. Faint at first, then rising. As quickly as it came, it faded, and the group's panic was barely contained behind practiced facades. Even the hardened mercenaries were sweating. Abridged was visibly shaking. Only Hush and I maintained a somewhat unruffled veneer.

I was raw to shock.

In fact, I was angry. Was I the universe's whipping pony? Couldn't these burdens belong to another? The heat welled up. My parka was suddenly stifling.

Sin's debt is paid by the young.

What?

Closely-spaced doors with reinforced adjacent windows lined the walls. Looking through the portholes revealed uniformly arranged studio-style living areas, some with scant personalizing items; pictures, tapestries, beads. This had to be the barracks.

We noticed one hatch suspiciously welded shut. Blast shields sealed the window. A relatively new-looking placard by the door read: "Sleetsweet - Head of Security". It stood up admirably, but ineffectively, to Sizzlestick's talent. This room had been a refurbished living space, with ancient walls contrasting new furniture and sanitation devices.

"What about paying for sins?" I asked.

"Don't joke about things like that!" Abridged shivered.

"Good one. Dark, but good," chuckled the bat pony. He flapped his membranous wings to shoo some circling moths.

There was a second doorway in the corner; the room beyond completely dark. The light over the door was smashed. Stepping tentatively inside, I saw all of the lights in this room were likewise smashed. Oddly, there was no broken glass on the floor.

I nudged my flashlight on. A bed, flanked by two tables, was positioned at the far end of the oblong room. To my left was the lavatory. The rest of the room's furnishings had been thrown violently inside it, with a bent canvas bed wedged into the door. The bat pony walked past me towards the bed, and I followed close behind.

My jack monitor made a faint whistle. It was the most pleasant sound I'd heard from the thing.

#~Sparkle radiation levels 5% above mean.

Maybe not so pleasant.

"Did you get a radiation warning, too?" Abridged peeped. We nodded.

A sheet had been tied to the overhead light apertures and hung around the bed. I shined my light over the tables. Aged apparitions stood in the cold, preserved in what was essentially a giant refrigerator. A stuffed Ursa Minor. Some plastic jewelry. A hoofball.

"Abridged, do you mind?" I asked.

She carefully peeled away the sheet in a white aura, revealing a carefully wrapped pile of blankets. My fever was starting to incite sweat. The blanket glowed and started to unravel. I took a step closer and tripped over the table leg. The bat pony tried to bite onto my parka, but I toppled past too quickly and sprawled yelping into the bed.

I grunted and flailed, trying to untangle my head. When the predatory textiles finally released me, I came muzzle to muzzle with a bleached white skull. I leapt backwards onto my haunches, again misjudging the distance and toppling onto my side. My two companions stared down at me.

"Are you the group dance supervisor?" snarked the bat pony.

I shot to my hooves. Jerk.

We stood before the filly's remains and all of her worldly possessions. She'd been wrapped carefully in her shroud of blankets. That was, until my ungraceful, centuries-late respects. This room wasn't a refrigerator. It was a makeshift tomb. 

"Is there a card'n 'ere 'er not?" Apple Peel's head poked through the doorway. 

Abridged was obviously unhinged, "She must have died in here."

"If she had decomposed in here, there would be some remnants the bacteria couldn't dissolve," I replied, "Even then, it's cold enough that she should be mummified, like the mare in the foyer. There's nothing. She was brought in here as bones."

"What if something... ate her," Abridged gulped.

I furrowed my brow, "And wrapped her up nice and cozy after?"

"Great myst'ry," interjected Apple Peel, "Card?"

There wasn't one. Maybe there was something on the terminal. Solstice bless these preservation spells, and whatever olden pony wove them. The password took a few guesses: "Hailheart".


>>USER:	Sleetsweet
>>	Entry #1
>>	I'm optimistic about this opportunity. Just to get away from Manehatten is a relief, and Hailheart is in high spirits. She's coughing less, too. Doc Flask is taking excellent care of her. And he's good looking, but I digress. The pay for the assistant head of security is pretty good. I'll finally be able to take proper care of her. It'll do wonders for my guilt. Keeping the Church at wing-tip distance will do wonders for my anxiety. Maybe we'll both breathe easier out here.

This facility is crazy. I can't believe the previous homesteaders just packed up and left. Then again, I'm wary about the archeological team imbedded with us. They're supposedly here to check out something under the Orchard. That makes me nervous.

>>USER:	Sleetsweet
>>	Entry #7
>>	I could see this relationship with Flask going somewhere. Mom would be so excited if I married a doctor. We'll commission another little filly or colt. Listen to me, gushing. Bah. Not a fan of the Trottingham accent, though.

>>USER:	Sleetsweet
>>	Entry #19
>>	Today I'm head of security! I feel bad for Longrifle, getting shipped out like that, but he was becoming... unstable. He started complaining about voices and such. I guess it's best for everypony. The pay is muuuuch better, which is exciting. Problem is, now I have the unenviable job of overseeing the dig site and meeting with the Priests and various Church emissaries. I'm not the most tactful mare.

>>USER:	Sleetsweet
>>	Entry #22
>>	Hailheart is doing so well. Flask and I are trying to keep this as professional as possible, but everypony knows. It's a small settlement, after all. I finally feel like my life is coming together. I still hate the site and all of those annoying moths. I wish the Butterfly team would let me torch them.

>>USER:	Sleetsweet
>>	Entry #34
>>	Now I'm hearing voices. Everypony involved with the site is. What's under us is definitely Second Era, but there's something else even deeper than that. First Era? Before that? No doubt it's where the moths are coming from. I'm kind of wishing it was me they took away in the straight jacket.

>>USER:	Sleetsweet
>>	Entry #39
>>	Flask went back into the dig site with the others. I'm going in after them. No time. Leaving the spare security key with Berry Tart.

>>USER:	Sleetsweet
>>	Entry #40
>>	I tried to follow old pegasi traditions. This is as close to a cloud as I could manage. We'll be together again soon.


It took them months to hear voices. We'd been here hours.

There was also a video titled "Only Young Once". It was a recording of this room. A gray pegasus mare played with a giggling filly, bouncing a ball back and forth. That same ball lay flat on the table. I gritted my teeth.

Berry Tart was a cook, according to the roster. The whispering continued as we navigated the now-lively clouds of moths. As we neared the kitchen, the chaos started.

It started with a flutter.

The soft rushing, like settling snow, built into an alarming whoosh. That became a roar. By the time the flock of red moths swooped around the corner, it sounded like a blizzard rattling my brain. These monstrosities were half the size of an adult pony, with six barbed wings and obtruding proboscises. Jumpy mercenaries now had things to put rounds in, and responded with their own flashing cacophony. Several bugs dropped or exploded. The rest soared in through the obscuring red cloud.

One pegasus' saddle cannons spat rings of pink fire. Smaller moths sizzled and burned, clearing openings for others to aim. He was the first victim. One wing tore along the back of his head. He leapt, spurting blood as he wheeled into the air to fire again. A second moth rammed him head on. A third slashed off his front leg, which skidded to a bloody stop next to my hoof. He managed one more shot, incinerating another wide swath, before his eyes were slashed from their sockets.

The smaller moths greedily lapped up the blood.

"Tha' kitchen!" roared Apple Peel.

I ducked a red blur and rolled. My saddlebags stuck and pinned me onto my back under the anarchic typhoon. That was their strategy. The smaller moths were a screen. Hobble grasped me by the parka as he shredded a moth with buckshot; growling, "Stupid pony!" as he righted me. Managing to yank out my pistol, I galloped after the disappearing set of House Apple barding.

A moth landed on the back of the pegasus next to me and sunk its thorny proboscis into the base of his skull. He immediately went limp. I fired in its general direction, not stopping to see the result.

Abridged was weeping. Hush had disappeared. To top it all off, I heard a whisper.

Surrender your days.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"Did I like stallions or mares?" I asked.

"Oh, wow," Breakbeat face-hoofed.

"What do you like now?" inquired Syntax, paying all-too-much attention.

"I don't know."

I was trying to drink while lying on my back, and dropped my half-full glass of apple whiskey onto my face.

"You were always a klutz," snickered Breakbeat, "made all the more hilarious by your poetic waxing."

"And so my flanks shall seek the sweet soft of ground," I paraphrased; the sting of the whiskey leaking down my nostrils.

Syntax broke her indifferent demeanor and grinned.

"Do you remember anything about... us?" Breakbeat was suddenly sedate.

"I remember that we were really good friends."

They both smiled.

I lied.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Eight of us made it to the kitchen; Abridged, Apple Peel, myself, Clip, Hobble, the bat pony, Sizzlestick, and a black pegasus. I bucked the door control and it hissed shut. A few of the smaller moths flitted around. I crushed one angrily under my hoof.

"About ya joke from earlier," the bat pony panted, "It's suddenly not funny."

No key. No key anywhere! I unsealed the larder. The three corpses inside hadn't suffered the same fate as everypony else. They were preserved by the cold, frozen and dead in the act of... copulation? If you had to go, I guess, though I admittedly wouldn't know. That one stallion was as lucky as a dead pony could be. Again, I guess.

The whole colony was a larder. 

"Car-, car-, car-!" I rooted around in their stiff, ancient clothing, drooling all over my pistol. How did other earth ponies hold these things for so long? It went off right between my hooves, putting an unnecessary hole in what must have been Berry Tart, judging by her faded cutie mark. She was the dandelions in the sandwich. Berry Tart indeed. I put the pistol away.

In mingled anger and panic, I started bucking over the shelves. Each collapsed, showering me in an array of canned tomatoes, pickles, and eventually a security key. She'd put it under a tin of beets.

Something had been bothering me since coming in, and I finally, horrifically, put my hoof on it. The covers on all of the air vents were gone. All of them.

"They're in the..."

A moth erupted from the vent, tearing across Clip's shoulder, sending ribbons of his carapace armor spiraling through the air like torn paper. A spray of blood followed. Hobble grabbed it by the head and dashed its brains across the preparation table.

"Dammitses!" Clip hissed.

I was oddly numb to the whole situation. Adrenaline pushed my body along. The others howled and darted, firing their weapons.

It was going to wheel left.

We outran the moths to the Communications blast door, but it wouldn't close fast enough. A moth sailed, like some graceful red harbinger, under the door as it hissed down.

It wheeled left.

I leapt before anypony could aim in. As it turned I stomped it violently into the ground with both front hooves. Blue ichor spurted as I reared back and trampled again. My anger finally found a way out. I stomped the whole, hideous mess of my life into the cold metal. When I was done, the fore-sleeves of my parka and my boots were stained blue.

"She's crazies," said Clip.

"I like her," replied Hobble.

Blocking them with a door only delayed them until they could find a vent. Of course! They must be tracking us by something other than sight or sound. This was chemistry. Making a lure would be complicated, and require ingredients I didn't have, but I could make something so strong it would screen everything.

"What'n-the-hay 're you doin', Lozenge?"

I was flustered and hurried, rage and fear shaking my muzzle as I tried to maintain the required precision to mix the chemicals in my kit. I only managed to blurt back, "Science!"

The vent directly overhead started to rumble. I poured out the initial mixture. It vibrated as I pulled out the last vial, the catalyst, and smashed it into the puddle.

Amaroidal smoke rose into the entering moths. They floundered about wildly, their senses overcome. To us it was mildly irritating. To something so chemically sensitive, it must have been like acid.

"That should buy us some time," I snapped. Abridged stopped crying for a few seconds in awe. Hobble yanked her along.

"I don't... feelses...," Clip groaned and toppled over.

"Quick, fix!" Hobble nudged me; as if my one chemistry trick now made me, the earth pony, a magician.

He wasn't bleeding badly enough for shock, I was pretty sure. In fact, it looked like the powder on the moth's wing served as some kind of coagulant. The wound was, however, full of barbs. It had to be a toxin. Clip wasn't dead either; he seemed to be catatonic.

Oh no.

"They're preserving us."

"Wh... what?" Abridged gasped.

"I aint never seen nothin' like this," Apple Peel sighed, "This'll make one whoppin' r'port, if I get t'make one."

Hobble was dragging Clip by the vest, but eventually wore down. He was a pragmatist. He gave his unconscious companion a reassuring pat and stuffed him in a supply locker, leaving only a promise he'd come back. We were lost. The technician had the schematic, and was most likely a mess somewhere between the kitchen and security. We stopped at a terminal, but I couldn't get past the encryption. Dammit. 

Sometimes, just sometimes, the universe gives you what you ask for. It pays you for your pound of flesh. A faded green and white arrow pointed "Communications".


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I was really loose when I plugged into Breakbeat's terminal unit. Familiar text immediately popped up.

>>How much time are you going to waste?

"As much as I want."

>>Great. Well, I have some documents that might interest you.

I started reading.

#~Body temperature at 103 degrees.

>>As you can see, Doctor Helix was oblivious to what he was doing.

No.

>>How about my proposal? I'll arrange everything, you just need to go where I can't.

"You know, you'd make a great secretary."

>>Maybe.

#~Body temperature at 104.1 degrees.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Sometimes the universe dangles a carrot just so it can beat you for licking your lips. The control card was gone, proclaimed the flashing green control screen. Please insert. I wanted to insert my pistol. Into my mouth. The wrong way.

"We're... gonna get out of here, right?"

There it was again. Somepony grasping at me for hope.

"Sure, Abridged," I replied, "We're going to get out."

Fine, if that's the way the universe wanted it. What I was after was in there, somewhere behind an abhorrent death. What my stalker wanted was in there. That would get me what the zebras wanted. That would get me what the Church wanted. That would get me off this barbed metaphoric hook. But my lies killed ponies.

I didn't know. It sent me in here blind.

Well, not entirely.

I jacked in. This terminal took the password from my stalker. Finally. I mapped out the dig site and downloaded a copy. This terminal wasn't cut off from the main record bank, either. Whoever was in charge used this office. I could see every terminal that hadn't been severed from the network. Records detailing the expedition laid before me; a mosaic of tragedy.


>>	USER:	Doctor Flask
>>	Entry #9
>>	I'm unsettled by the lack of records from the builders. The equipment itself is still in top shape. This was clear and deliberate expunction. Only the few files with strange encryption remain, leaving all the more questions. Why build something this elaborate on top of a second era site? Why try to re-colonize it now? 

On an unrelated note, the mare working with Longrifle is making her interest in me slightly less than subtle. She's good looking, no doubt. I usually don't dabble with mares that already have a foal. Eh. I'm not getting any younger.	

>>	USER:	Doctor Flask
>>	Entry #28
>>	What happened with Longrifle seems to be indicative of a colony-wide phenomena. Those that spend the most time in the dig site are obviously the most affected. Worse off, the medical staff seems suspiciously unconcerned and dismissive. I'm no psychologist, but all of these ponies seemed normal. Just hopeful settlers. Now it's akin to living in a colony of agitated zomponies.

The samples from the site are most certainly Second Era. It was obviously a research facility, specializing in military applications. We're having an awful time trying to bypass the security. Our technology is obviously a pale comparison to what they had arrayed back then. Most of the security is biometric, so I wonder if a cloning solution would suffice. It's extremely precise. I doubt we possess the contending precision to fool it.

Strangely, there seems to be samples predating the original facility site. They built the base on top of something else. We have a site on top of a site on top of something else. Oh my.

Just what the devil are we doing here?

>>	USER:	Doctor Flask
>>	Entry #40
>>	Sleetsweet has a plan. It's a tad nihilistic, but breaking cycles is no easy business. The main communications components should be compatible with the machinery in the old facility. It's not like we can call for help anyway. They knew what was going to happen when they allowed us to come here.

I've always considered myself a pragmatist, a man of science, unperturbed by mysteries. Still, I must admit, the unknown precipice of death looms heavy. It's been a pleasure, you vast and ridiculous universe. May rats eat the eyes of the Bishopric.


Hopefully we can all meet our fate with such aplomb.

Video records; starting with the same shiny-pony optimism, ending with the same sunken faces. Some ended in panic. Desperate messages for friends that would never get them, or for nopony. Just their conscience. The system had auto-wiped the surveillance bank.

The surveillance system.

Every store room, promenade, and hallway corner flashed before me. None of the orchard cameras came online, but that was understandable. They had been exposed to the elements with no maintenance for too long. Many of the cameras only showed moth underbellies. My jaw dropped.

"What is it?" asked Apple Peel.

"They're dragging the bodies into the dig site."

Nervous glances all around.

"Whayel lookee 'ere," canted Apple Peel, "Anypony know 'ow to pick locks?"

The armory locker (marked "Armory") was sealed by several thick metal latches with old fashioned, physical key locks. Shooting at a weapons locker was probably not the best idea. Luckily, I had brought a good amount of strong acid for rendering mineral samples. It ate right through the hinges. Picking locks was for suckers.

Hobble threw open the lid, revealing some small arms and ammo. I stuffed a flare gun and an extra pistol clip into my bag, and snagged a satchel marked "grenades"; the things inside resembling crystal apples. Dominating the box was a heavy weapons rig. A shiny white-and-red-checkered rocket protruded from the top, counterbalanced by a heavy machine gun.

Apple Peel whistled, and winked back at the bat pony, "Looks like ah found mah new colt-friend."


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Going down the tunnel; a sharp, curving decline carved into the center of a cordoned-off dome; took a certain mindset. The lone spotlight hit at an angle, rendering the entrance a wavering black pool. Climbing in was like wading into liquid darkness. I teetered between ambivalence and a cold and clawing fear, pushing icy wedges between my roaring veins. Beneath it was the same gutsick anger I felt in Deep Well Two. Something primal and half-there.

I counted the doors. One, two, three, four, five...

Surprisingly, Abridged had insisted on accompanying us, ignoring our offer to stay in the control room. Her archeological curiosity had overcome her fear. Plus, the light from her horn was mighty handy indeed. The group formed a protective ring around the two of us.

"Why are they even here?" the bat pony snapped to Apple Peel.

"It's thar choice."

"They're a liability. This isn't a research trip anymore."

"Hey, I have a gun," I defended myself.

"The closest thing you came to shootin was my flank! Or do ya count the mercy killing of the lusty freezer mare?" he replied.

Crap. He saw.

All arguments silenced. The tunnel ran into a hatch marked "Emergency"; the door marred by abrasions I couldn't faintly place the cause of. As we approached, it slid open. Fresh bloody smears trailed across the ground.

My whole coat tingled. This was wrong.

"The door," I grumbled.

"What abaht it?" asked Apple Peel, tottering under the weight of her new rig.

#~Sparkle radiation levels 15% above mean.

"It's the sixth."
> 7. Convergent
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
~1~


Death.

Death was pretty easy.

We shared a moment, I think, the moth and I. Our eyes met.

My third shot caught it in the face; vanishing its right eye out the back of its head in a gooey blue spurt. It's momentum carried it thudding meatily off the desk, through a sloppy cartwheel overhead, and into the wall. I watched in amazement, and for my rookie awe was rewarded with a face full of insect back-splatter. Ugh. Some got in my mouth.

Living, on the other hoof, was pretty hard.

Apple Peel laid down a stripe of machine gun fire just in front of our makeshift position; an alcove made by the collapsed floor above us and all the junk that had been sitting on it. The moths... KCH-boom ...circled up to swoop on us again; then didn't.

Twitch-a-twitch.

“Lozenge, are ya doin' science under that desk?” Apple Peel shouted.

“I don't need to.”

I peeked up over the barricade, coming target center on another wildly diving set of wings and eyes. The bat pony squinted down the scope of his prodigiously...KCH-boom ...massive rifle. BLAM! The moth, and another some distance behind it, erupted into fur and blood. It was too much too fast. Fluttering wings and firing guns. I ducked back under the desk and yanked out my first syringe of Frivolity.

Abridged sobbed in the corner.

I worked up my sleeve, buried the needle, and bit the applicator. I didn't want to kiss the lights, but it was something. The panicked world took an edge of clear.

If I was going to die, I was going out happy. Solstice would want that.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


“Solstice, Prince of power and might, whose mercy is everlasting, guard and guide those who place their lives in the balance to ensure the safety of those nearby.”

"An enlightened passage, sister." Mother Superior smiled from the catwalk.

I returned a perfunctory smile, then turned to Blueberry Syrup, reclining on the worship bench next to me; her jack likewise connected to her whirring Apostle terminal, as I was to mine. The bronze box blooped and bleeped. She closed her eyes, enraptured by a hymn trumpeting out of her earseeds. The words seemed unnatural. Most things did.

My own earseeds pulsed the stallion's voice:
(whose mercy is everlasting)
I couldn't help but parrot.

I followed the terminal cables reaching up and away, in bundles of tens and twenties, merging into the Cathedral's seamless permaplast. The building looked like it was made from a cluster of cheerfully-colored bubbles; some large, some small; subdividing cloisters and study groups in coherent delineations; lineaments of worship. I liked that.

Solstice's dusky-blue face surrounded us, all turning left to right on the monitors with a uniform look of mild approval. Effigies of High Apostles Pound and Pumpkin Cake flanked the largest screen, which cycled up a line of stylized words: "I will light fire beneath you, and you will run."

Mothers Superior marched the raised catwalks between the pews, daggers of rainbow light bounding off their visors and polished weapons. They were normal ponies under all that hardware, all of uniformly muted color schemes, but their chromatic auras made them appear, even in a charlatan's fashion, otherworldly. The whole scene was surreal.
(guard and guide those)

I wasn't completely used to the in-eye Generosity displays, so I used the terminal screen to scroll through a copy of the Writ. Each Apostle distributed copies in audio, video, and text. I downloaded one to my jack. The squeaky voice lauded my decision.

"Are you alright, child?" The Mother's saddle cannon, a pair of silvery half-arches filled with glistening flechettes, clicked. I felt like the weapon itself had asked.

"Yes, Mother Superior. I'm fine."

She smiled and continued her rounds. I felt like a stranger looking from afar, with only a liquescent maze of half-memories to guide me. I wondered what drove these ponies to love so completely, to be so consumed.
(who place their lives in the balance)

I thought, maybe, I wanted to feel the same.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Abridged was crying. I felt like humming. The black pegasus jumped on top of the desk and rust flakes showered down on me. I sneezed and laughed a little. I started humming.

This wasn't such a bad situation. In fact, it was time to be a good pony; to do the good work of Solstice, helping fellow ponies in their time of need. I hopped up at an appropriately jovial speed and bounded toward Abridged. Her sobbing ceased. She was sobbed out.

Hobble's grenade thunked from the pillar and skidded back towards us.

Abridged cuddled up to me the second I reached her. She was really pretty.

The fiery blossom blammed back the moths, engulfing some; snapping my ears with the sound of crystal on steel. It was impressive, but not the doozy I expected. The desk popped all over with freckles of shrapnel and skidded across the tilting floor like a grand eraser. I knew where it was headed, and stepped gingerly out of the way. It missed by an inch.

There had to be... KCH-boom... something else. I was expecting...

My tail was going nuts.

...a doozy.

Now standing as I was, and not doing science under a desk (science now linked in my logic as a slang term for drugs), I saw something I shouldn't have missed. A pot sat on the shelf. Somepony had painted a sloppy monster face on it. We shared a moment, the yellow monster pot and I. It was bristling with wires, and I thought that was pretty great. Our moment lasted for half a second. The still-flying desk tumbled into the shelf. The pot catapulted over me.

The cookware seemed to maintain eye contact as it flew, though the eyes were poorly drawn and didn't quite point in the same direction. Nopony looked. They were too busy with the moths and the dying.

The black pegasus was spurting blood from his face. Hobble was reaching for another crystal apple grenade. The bat pony looked back at me, the only one seemingly aware of what exactly was happening. I didn't blame him for staring. I think at that moment, my face was slacked in a goofy, cock-eyed smile. The look on his face, though...

It bothered me.

The moth cloud tore off in every direction. The pot sailed through and hit the same pillar as Hobble's grenade.

KCH-boom!

The explosion was a doozy. The overpressure felt like a flower pot rocketing into my guts. If I could have drawn breath, I don't know if I would have laughed or screamed.

I managed to not have my head sheared off by the remaining moth coming for my neck, or the spinning section of wall that frisbeed the little bastard off to a squishy death. The pervasive bass shock almost made me evacuate my bowels. It's a good thing I didn't. Abridged pressed up against my flank like I wasn't the most likely candidate to get her killed. It was mildly arousing.

Oh, the floor was tilting.

There was a stretch of no-time, then everything flipped, spilling us and three floors worth of junk down in a brain-splitting roar. For a few seconds, gravity didn't care. We were tossed like balled paper into a waste bin. 

Then it was completely dark and I felt a little less like humming.

I thought this would be the perfect time to deliver a pithy one-liner, but I realized my leg was oozing from the knee and the black pegasus was thrashing and cursing somewhere in the dark nearby. No punch lines there. I felt my way toward him, picking through two floors of jagged ancient history. My flashlight was gone.

My eye hurt.

The only light was from an overhead marquee wedged between a filing cabinet and a slab of wall covered in bleached-out posters. Despite all logic, it still ticked along:


TAILAHASSEE RESEARCH FACILITY
THE DEPARTMENT OF AUGURY WELCOMES YOU


"Abridged, you alive?"

"Y... yeah."

"Light, please."

Her illumination spell lanced in a low circle; jabbing through riotous motes of dust that obscured the pegasus as much as the darkness. I leapt for the middle, felt the squirming ball of steel and panicked muscle, and tried to hold him down. I had perused several help files on "rodeos", but still ended up halfway through a filing cabinet. Reading about something isn't quite the same as doing it.

Apple Peel dove on top of him and tried to wrangle him down while he kept digging at his face and howling. Those spines must have hurt. She held him still enough for me to sink the healing stim needle. Just as I did, the poison took effect, and he flattened out. We collapsed in a pile on top of him.

The whole scene brought to mind Berry Tart.

Don't think about Berry Tart.

The yawning wound on the stallion's face started closing like a casually napping, bloody third eye. Faced with the prospect of injecting myself with something that would induce pain, though, rather than smear it away in a smiling haze, I balked. The oozing wound on my leg couldn't wait. I was getting woozy. Woozy-happy, but woozy.

I distracted myself by staring at the roots that stabbed out from between the bent edges of wall tile; eager little brown claws that radiated sickly warmth. I squinted into the dark tangle. Small moths and ruddy brown caterpillars flitted and oozed around their gnarled Baltimare. One tentatively hovered onto the crimson mirror expanding around my hoof. Of course. If the moths lived off blood, they would've starved to death. The roots were their real food, which filled me with a special variety of dread knowing that they didn't need to eat us. We were a special treat.

We were candy.

Yeowch! I hadn't done anything yet! I stared down at the stim; a white glow slid it back out of my foreleg, puckering the skin. Abridged pricked me! My mind rang up a vague Berry Tart reference, the juxtaposition with moth analytics worrying me. Then; pain.

I didn't know enough curse words to describe two weeks worth of healing pains and itching condensed into a few minutes. In fact, I could only recall two curse words. They were pretty great. I should use them more.

Her horn fizzled out. All was fucking dark.

"They coulda taken us out five times," the bat pony said; silhouetted upside-down in the marquee's glow, popping a clove cigarette in his mouth.

I kept thinking of how I could use my other curse word.

"Whayel, why r' we alive then?" AP (can I call you AP, Peel?) said from beneath me.

"The bomb," I replied, "they thought we were going to kill ourselves."

The bat pony gave me that weird look.

Sizzlestick's horn lit up. Everypony blinked their surprise, though whether at the light or the realization that the bugs were strategizing, I didn't know. The bat pony nodded, and gestured for Sizz (can I call you Sizz?) to light his cigarette. Sizz frowned.

"Where are we now?" Abridged peeped.

"We need a better map," I said. It took me a second to notice the bat pony was pointing at something. I looked up in time to catch a terminal screen as it swung through Sizz's light radius. It cast a square shadow suspended from a long black bundle of cables. On its return swing I caught the label: "Maps".

Oh sweet, pendulous irony.

That irony, though, was pretty gr... wait. I was at the bottom of a senescent junk pile with a cadre of wounded ponies, some illegal drugs; old, poorly hidden and highly volatile explosives; and my hearing was half blown-out.

I tried a smile again, but it didn't come. Sub-par street Laughter.

Shit.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


"Did you get my message? You owe us, big time."

The zebra, Zandali, leaned up against me as he tongued a cigar suffusing the muted, musty stink of cheap syntha-clover. The physical contact was both startling and perversely pleasant. I hadn't realized how little I'd touched other ponies, or zebras for that matter, since... forever. Other than the kid riding on my back, nopony had reached for me with anything but a medical implement. Except Apple Peel. I bit my tongue to kill the thought.

"Do I now?" I was sure I couldn't play my hoof. The more they thought I knew, the safer I was. Maybe I had some leverage on them. He was certainly spooked.

"You didn't even foalnap the Bishop's colt, after we practically delivered him to you."

The scene with the figure in the hallway now made sense. The colt and I had been the most prominent targets, and he still didn't shoot at us. He shot around us.

"Why did you want him?"

"We didn't want him," he mumbled, finally lighting his cigar, "That was your deal."

Damn. I just played part of my hoof, unless he thought I was testing him. If he did, he didn't show anything but slick indifference. He slid the lighter back into his jacket pocket. I felt a tingle, and not a good kind. A disastrous sort of tingle.

"I need an extension on getting the Honesty, and I need some more backup."

"Oh, that's a load of minotaur shit. Do you think zebra lives are things you can play with?"

"Do you really want to fuck around right now?" I said, more terse than I had intended.

"Five days."

"Fifteen."

"Hapana! Garbage."

"I have the tracking codes for all of your credbit accounts."

Cards down. Thanks, stalker.

For the first time, he really looked at me. I hoped the House Apple retainer tailing me could save my flank if this suddenly went south. Probably not.

"I have nothing to lose," I choked.

"Alright, alright," he waved his hooves, "have your little buddy get in touch with me again. We'll meet at the studio, you name the when."

He shot off the bench and along the contour of the road with an easy, accomplished sort of grace. The leery tingle went with him, but not exactly with him.

"Wait! I need something else," I called after.

He grinned so big it looked like another white stripe.

Being a bad pony was hard.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~



~2~


Hungry.

Everypony was hungry.

#~Body temperature at 102 degrees.

We picked our way down through architecture sharper, better, than anything we could replicate. Even the symphonic contours of Baltimare were a half-realized likeness. The further we went, though, the more the metal and screens gave way to roots, moss, and all manner of creepy crawlies. And bones. It looked like a ghastly, unholy future. An advanced tomb.

The most unsettling part was actually sleeping down there, which we did in shifts. The moths, disturbingly, left us alone, though the occasional scuttle or whoosh would double my heartbeat. It was worse than open combat. There was no real concept of time. Our jacks would rattle it off on request, but without sky or light, time was, like my memories, without context. We went until our bodies gave out; slept; went on.

I scuttled down a gully of debris blown through the middle of Research Area #2. A decaying sign hung cockeyed, reminding us to "Read Twice, Cast Once". My mane was prickling all over. My guts were starting to cook. I checked my forehead to see if the radiation had made me sprout a horn. Finding none, I disregarded the advice.

I peeled off my parka while Hobble and Sizz made some inconsequential tactical maneuvers. This barrier had done its creators as much good as ours had done us. I twitched, and tried to ignore it. I ended up finding two more bombs, which we gave a wide berth.

#~Sparkle radiation levels 20% above mean. To avoid radiation poisoning, please evacuate the area.

My eye burned.

I questioned whether moths could have possibly done this, or crude explosives. Or radiation. There were burnt hunks of cable and two tunnels beyond. A long black smear on the wall had been worked into letters: Now we reap it. The pony's skeleton hunkered down right under the period.

You had to respect somepony dying for proper punctuation.

"Pony getting heavy," grunted Hobble, the black pegasus slung over his shoulder.

"Fahn. I'll double yer gems," AP glared back.

"Pony feels lighter. Miracle."

I found an intact terminal, led by my ears, which kept flopping. I growled. They were ears, not twin otic divining rods jutting out of my headpiece. I refused to believe something I couldn't explain.

The terminal wired into a maneframe full of audio recordings and encrypted files. I pilfered what hadn't been rendered unusable by ages of internal technological churning. I started running my stalker's hack tool on them, yanked out a House Harvest Tinned Carrot Cake, and shoved it in my mouth. Survival provisions my flank. Courage came from a full stomach; all else was madness. As far as I could frame madness. For a second I was somewhere near happy. At semi-peace, at least.

Then I looked up. I could say the pair of tunnels in front of me looked like something; accusing eyes, perhaps, but no words materialized. Metaphors didn't come down here. This was a bad place.

I cued up the first audio file, chewing pensively. A static-washed voice burbled into my brain. I immediately hated it:

Audio log of Experiment 11-8-6-4, Elements of Harmony Global Delivery System. Trixie Lulamoon, Assistant Director, Department of Augury.

Solstice trample me with your adamantine hooves, the level of entitlement in that voice wounded some deep part of my sensibilities.

It's only natural that the biggest, most important project this department has ever seen be trusted to a prodigy such as myself. If only we could speed it along to the inevitable conclusion of all Equestria's problems being solved by the Great and Studious Assistant Director, moi. This will require dynamic management and...

Something in the background of the recording beeped.

Ugh. Test floor five and that entire team. I'm going to have them moved to the secondary facility in Fillydelphia. I'm here to manage. Let the technicians do the... technicianing. Now, back to the Harmony Circuit. With the completion of the Windigo Containment Grid...

I heard a second voice, washed out and distant.

Moths? Moths!? Ahem. Sorry, Moondancer. I have more important things to worry about than Fluttershy's pet projects. Assign it to Twinkleshine; she worked on the Breezie Preservation Initiative. Moving on. Once we test the conduction of the Elements in miniature, using the transmutation gel samples from FlimFlamCo., we'll be able to... What, Heft!? A sculpture of what? Put it as far away from my office as possible. In fact, put it on test floor five."

"Hey!" the bat pony dropped from above.

I almost shot out of my saddlebags.

"Ya' all right, tootz?" he grinned; pleased with himself, "How ya doin?"

"How do you think I'm doin," I threw my hooves up, trying to mock his goonish accent as emphatically as possible (with a mouth full of cake), "We're going to die."

"Shocker. Ya weren't gonna do that anyway?" he was revoltingly sincere, "Ever?" Eva.

Point taken, probably more poignantly than he intended.

"Directions," he said.

I pulled up the map, which featured some cartoonishly rendered cutesy-poo purple unicorn face (violet-striped mane and a little gold crown, ugh). She winked at me from the corner eerily; her smile overlaid on a backdrop of dust, darkness, and old frozen blood. It fit neatly on top of the featureless visitors map from the communications room, slicing neat delineations into the grey blob labeled "Labs & Test Floors". Lines. Margins. I felt better.

The facility was a huge corkscrew burrowing down to an immense fan of test floors and, shockingly, what looked to be a train station.

"The communications room is through the left tunnel," I said, finally getting all the carrot cake down.

"Got it. Ya gonna share?"

"Go eat a moth." The second I said it, my spine locked straight. The bat pony's eyes narrowed humorlessly, and I realized that I was a lanky pink amnesiac with the murderous skill set of a tin of peaches, while he was a practiced-looking killer with a good say in my ensuing survivability. This wasn't like cracking a joke on Murmur, who I was pretty sure wouldn't off me. A scar ran down over one ear and just above his eye. He could have had it clone-repaired, but he probably kept it there just to show he'd once been shot in the head. I smiled so hard I squeaked.

He burst out laughing.

"You're a riot."

I wiped the sweat out of my forelock and took a few steps. He popped up in front of me.

"Seriously, give me a carrot cake."

I hoofed one over. "Last one," I lied, feigning disappointment.

"Found this," he handed me a note (on FlimFlamCo. Everlasting Parchment, now with a pleasant cherry scent!): “Laid out all the explosives I could carry. Couldn’t get past the turrets. -Sleet” Then, in more urgent mouthwriting: J24783 - Bomb factory.

I found J24783 twelve floors below us, judging by rough approximation and the lingering effects of my last dose of Frivolity. Again, my mind ..t and powerf... seemed to be working just a little faster than I was. My eye was killing me.

"Interested," he waggled his eyebrows; seductively, I think.

Ugh. Wait... no, ugh.

"Don't worry. I've been in worse," he smiled. It was the real kind of smile I only got from alcohol and science. Frighteningly, as far as I knew, he wasn't using either.

"Where?" I screwed up my face.

"Double Down," he said.

"Huh?"

"My name."

"Oh. Uh, Lozenge. What special talent...?"

"Gamblin, sweethooves," he cut me off, and popped his still-unlit cigarette back in his mouth, "Gamblin."

Perfect.


~~~~~~~~~~~~


Dr. Straight peered over his clipboard.

"It's natural for trauma victims to desire an increased degree of control in their lives. It's a psychological defense mechanism against anxiety."

"Did I say something that makes you think I'm anxious?" I replied.

"Are you?" he frowned. Out of the two of them, Dr. Straight was certainly the more intuitive. 

I looked at his clipboard and wished I had a horn. I desperately wanted to hit him with it.


~~~~~~~~~~~



~3~


Zap.

Zap. Zap. Zap.

Some things, when looked upon with the proper inclination, can only be offered a paltry sum of words in comparison to the void it creates in your perception. If I was a poet, I may have likened the scene stretched out around us to a charnel house. If a philosopher; a metaphor for futility, folly, death. I was none of those. I was a mare of science. All I knew for certain was that the room had been a cafeteria, and a lot of ponies died there. Their skeletons piled against the walls like snow drifts. If it smelled like old death, that would be one thing, an appropriate thing, but it didn't. The air was affrontingly neutral. 

#~Sparkle radiation levels 25% above mean. To avoid radiation poisoning, please evacuate the area.

And irradiated.

And we were being shot at. With lightning.

The gunfire and unicorn light made the piled bones dance and writhe. Vacant, fleshless faces stared up at me; judging, maybe curious. It was the kind of memory I wouldn't get...

A broken picture frame.

The gun next to it.

...rid of any time soon. Time was the thief of memories, but it was a weak thief. It only carried away flimsy things.

Another arc of pink energy snapped by, scoring my vision with a lingering light trail. I'd known it was coming, absentmindedly, and I think that as the point. The margins didn't make me feel better anymore. My guts and nerves thirsted for anything to make me not here; booze, Laughter. I was pinned behind a robo-pony server that had broken down half-way between the kitchen (devoid of pots) and a pile of bones dwarfed by an even larger drift of serving trays. I wondered how long the robot had been serving the corpses lunch before it finally broke down. It had worn a rut in the floor.

"Please present yourself for... bzzzzzrt... erasure," the turret repeated. The turret's voice was entirely synthetic, but it sounded like the programmer had gone for 'happy'. They were happy killers.

I was convinced we were on our way to Tartarus. Everything in this ancient grave was just a reminder of how much I deserved to be punished; before I reported for further punishment. My heat-wracked mind floundered.

"Stop!" Double Down shouted.

I froze mid-step, only semi-aware I'd been moving. 

"Are you trying to die?" he smiled.

I stared across the gulf between us, where he was likewise pinned behind a janitorial robot that had been crudely decapitated. The corners of his smile drooped. Another arc of energy scorched the tiles just in front of me. I imagined the turrets had been programmed to avoid shooting the robots, so when the turrets whirred to life we had reflexively chosen the only truly safe points. Lucky us. A second set of turrets pinned AP, Hobble, and Sizz a ways back around the wall's L-shaped curvature. Two further sets of turrets hung mangled and inanimate at the other entrances, one of which had been neatly sheared by a veneer of purple-veined stone. 

"I just..."

His smile flattened.

Bzzzrt. The tile directly in front of me erupted with pink energy. My whole coat bristled.

"Listen," he shouted over the steady arcane pulses, "Life aint so bad."

A beam skimmed the janitor, dappling him with sparks. "Service Unit 74391 damaged. Apol..bzzrt..ogies. Adjusting aim."

He smiled. "Fuckin grand. Am I right?"

Then, oddly, I was smiling too.

I heard AP's machine gun, followed by two sets of evenly-spaced explosions. Hobble flashed around the corner, hurdling a table where four unicorn skeletons sat like they were about to play cards. The turrets momentarily tracked him.

That was all Double Down needed. His rifle levered forward on its mechanical arm. He lowered his head to the scope. BLAM! BLAM! The middle of each turret skittered down the hallway in a hundred wrecked shards. I expected them to explode. Instead, they spidered over with pink-hued electricity then sagged impotently downward. All in the space between blinks.

The last shell casing tinked across the tile. He turned his head to me, that fanged smile gleaming.

"See?"


~~~~~~~~~~~~~



~4~


"Abridged."

"Hmm?"

She turned from her task of levitating books. This place was full of libraries. I couldn't imagine a society as advanced as this kept this many books out of anything other than simply loving to have books around.

"Have you ever heard of 'the Elements of Harmony'?"

She patted her chin. "No. Can't say that I have."

We crossed two more atriums filled with petrified trees, several floors of sealed off or demolished offices, and a questionably functioning lift I was almost certain would dump us into the yawning shaft below. Why? Because the world was out to torture me for a sin I'd left somewhere before metal hospital tables ...help me save...  and confusing dreams. It didn't, however, and we managed to skirt several more batteries of turrets in varying degrees of functionality.

One turret sprouted from the ceiling above me, and I thought it was all over. Instead of reducing me to an ashy pile it spouted a stream of obscenities. Those preservation spells weren't perfect. It did call me a "manticore-fellating cunt skag", which I filed away for later use.

A.P. and D.D. (I was getting good at this truncation thing) stayed uncomfortably close. I was pretty sure they'd shared a quick word about my attempted suicide-by-turret.

"Hey, Sizz," I asked.
 
"When did I give you permission to call me 'Sizz'?"
 
"Well, never, but your full name is so... unwieldy."
 
Double Down chortled. Good ol' Sizz looked like he was going to torch us both.

"Anyway," I cut in, "Do you know anything about Elements of Harmony?"

"Elements of what?"

"That answers my question," I sighed.

"There's a lot of junk across the Tundra that says 'harmony' on it," he shrugged, "never thought much about it."

#~Sparkle radiation levels 30% above mean.

We found the Great and Studious Assistant Director's office, a cavernous semi-circle that rivaled the size of Doctor Needleminder's. It had been razed in a manner that made the rest of the facility look in good repair. The desk terminal had been ripped clean out. What had once been a row of mirrors (covering an entire wall, how vain was this mare?) had been blasted to pieces. All we managed to scrounge up was some illegible paperwork and a half-full bottle of cupcake-flavored whiskey. Hobble tried to dig through a patch of wall that had given way to earth, but we found that the same purple-grey stone from the cafeteria neatly boxed in the entire facility. Further proof of my torture assumption.

We went deeper.

It was all wrong in a very intrinsic way. Sputtering images popped up in my mind. A bookcase, a Dash Cola vending machine, only they weren't there. I wouldn't bump into them until three or so minutes later.

#~Sparkle radiation levels 35% above mean.

My headache suddenly spiked. My eye literally felt hot.

The communications room, at last.

Something had bloomed the wall out like a massive, charred flower; scattering the furniture and launching several larger items in a grenade-like blast radius. There had only been one victim, and I couldn't discern whether it was a mare or a stallion by the skeletal rear end jutting out. A vending machine had shot across the room and punched him or her half-way through the wall. There was plenty of one-thousand-plus year old soda to be had. Dash Cola. A Sonic Rainboom, whatever that was, in every can.

I needed some water. I tried a water purifier, but it looked like it was pumping straight from somepony's colon. Another derelict servitor had broken down next to the valve, a drill appendage half-extended and eternally frozen. It'd been trying to fix it.

"Ya'll right, sugarcube?" A.P. inquired.

I finally found my metaphor. The Tailahasse Research Station had decided to die, and we were fighting over its bones.

I wasn't looking entirely at the mechapony and his sadly drooping head, nor was I looking at the moth, fully double the mass of its next rival, soaring towards me. I saw both. Two distinct time streams played out before me, along with the heat leaking from my eye into the front of my brain; the filmy outline of the could, and the thick pastels of the is oozing sluggishly behind to color it. Grey, dirty robot. Bloody, red moth. Or was it more cinnamon?

On cue, my tail twitched.

I knew it was coming, which made it all the more perplexing, and infuriating, when the giant moth finally did soar over the bones. My skull rattled like it'd been hit with an anvil. My brain was too slow. Cloudy. It couldn't keep up with its own thoughts. I needed the Frivolity. I rooted in my saddle bag.

"Lozenge!" A.P. shouted

I was doing science! Double science! I didn't reply, but instead worked my muzzle past the carrot cake tins. And why was she paying so much attention to me? I just needed to calm my nerves a bit, and all would be right. Or dead.

Hobble fired, washing out my night vision with the blooming flash. Abridged dove up under my plot. I blinked. Don't think of Berry Tart. Then Hobble was dragging both of us. I almost had my little blue friend before my saddlebag caught on a door and tore off, spilling its contents everywhere.

"Oh hey," said Double Down, "Look at all these carrot cakes."

Solstice, sodomize me with thy jagged horn.

The mothstrosity whooshed past us, almost dragging everypony along in the vacuum. What it did suck up was several tins of cake and my vial of science. I dove for it, but it pinged past my hooves and I smashed my face on the wall. I charged after it into the dark.

#~Sparkle radiation levels 60% above mean. Radiation poising imminent.

Then, there was light.

They were everywhere. I'd charged into a massive, open hall; one of the test floors. All of the walls I could see were covered in a sea of red fur. Tartarus, here I am. Above me, at the source of the dazzling light; my tormentor. The others spilled in behind me.

Surrender your days.

The voice wasn't a washed-out whisper anymore, and I recognized it immediately. But what it was coming from...

It was a moth pony! My mouth hung slack. My brain anvil was crushed by a piano. She'd once been a stunning-looking unicorn mare, I thought, but patches of her blue coat had been replaced with echinate bloodmoth fur. Red streaked her mane. Red. Red. Red. One side of her face had a mare's eye, the other, a purple blob of hexagonal segments. Six-sided. Eyes.

I felt a pop in my left eye socket. My mind rushed back in a flood that snapped the world into disorienting stability. My brain clicked. The universe clicked.

I need you to help me save Equestria, my little ponies. Come to the Great and Powerful Trixie.

Double Down responded immediately. "Blow me, lady."

"Wh... what?" Even her thoughts stuttered.

Guard and guide those who put their lives in the balance.

And it was all I needed. I yanked off my remaining saddlebag and smashed it on the ground, violently and immediately mixing together my entire chem kit in the only way time allowed. Red chaos erupted, the moths tearing each other apart to get away. The cloud had the desired effect. The unexpected side effect was due to scientific oversight.

The gas was flammable.

The fluid was caustic.

Add old and slightly unstable flares...

Solstice, shield me with thy all-enfolding wing.

A violent flame spout scattered my fried belongings in every direction. I leapt as fast as I could. Half of my skin cooked off. My jack informed me, rather politely, that twenty percent of my bodily surface was now covered with subcutaneous burns. Yay. 

"That way!" I shouted, pointing, my throat and lungs burning, my entire body burning.

Hobble scooped me and Abridged up backwards as Double Down flew past. It was excruciating. My future eye saw a long hallway and an office full of bombs. My present eye saw A.P., Sizz, and the black pegasus being ripped off into the air in auras of pink magic.

Through the haywire alarm system of my nerves, I managed to tack that down as my good deed for this lifetime. My perception filled up with wet cotton, and if it wasn't for the pain, I'd liken it to the blunting fog of a hangover. Was this dying? Pfffft. Underwhelming.

To ensure the safety of those nearby.

I closed my eyes.

Death was pretty easy.
> 8. Incompatible
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
~1~


Time.

I shot upright on the table.

My hooves clacked on steel.

I tried to take stock of my surroundings, but my head almost lolled off its perch at the end of my neck. All I caught was my hospital gown, covered with comic renderings of ears of corn (with eyes and smiling mouths), and the table I oh so vividly recalled. Here I was. The underbelly of the hospital. The parts room.

The gel had an unsettling reaction.

It would be the parts room, if there was a room! The table was there. The pillar supported a non-existent ceiling. The medical-looking machines were still crammed in the corner; all illuminated as if by spotlight, but all suspended over a fantastic nothing that stretched flabberghastingly everywhere. Nothing behind me. Nothing above me. Greedy nothing in the thousand directions and angles I could will my eyes. Nothing, nothing; evermore nothing. This had to be death.

Death was an infinite parts room.

There seems to be more than one way to finish Starswirl's spell.

The far-off crackle of Trixie's voice played over an intercom, if such a thing existed here. The blue blanket slid off me. I willed my body to catch it. It didn't listen, and the blanket sagged off the table and fell. Fell forever. I peeked over the edge of the table to confirm that there was no floor. Oh, there really was no floor, only a shrinking flap of blue fabric. I huddled into the center of the table and commenced to panic. Death had not blunted my fear of open spaces.

Click.

"Take that!"

Click.

The colt, the one from the hospital, knocked the white unicorn figure over with his brown pegasus. What was his name? I conjured up the hospital room and Nurse Heartspark. Ah. Sirocco. Sirocco sat on a red-sheeted bed where the next table should have been; his tiny island of is amidst a heliotropic circle of toys, oblivious or unaffected by his position over forever or his presence in my private Tartarus. Then again, maybe this was a public Tartarus.

I tried to call out to him. My throat was full of metal hooks. I banged on the table as hard as I could.

He kept playing.

...wouldn't Twilight be jealous if she knew.

I waved and made a raspy bark. He kept playing, head down, knocking over his toys, looking lonely.

"That was a stupid thing you did."


~~~~~~~~~~


"Doc, I have some questions first."

He looked flustered, and damn well he should. "Regarding the project, or...?"

"Regarding my accident."

"Uh," he brushed down his tie and coughed,  "Well. That's not exactly what we're here to talk about."

He could just tell me to buck a pear tree, and I'd have to. Though if he didn't show me he'd be tossing up a pretty glaring red flag, and I think he was smart enough to know it, but I also thought he was unintelligent enough, in a social way, to not butt heads with me. In fact, I was pretty sure he didn't know what he was doing. Worst case scenario, he'd probably show me some doctored (pun intended) records and steer me back towards the ship. The poor, poor ship.

"Can I just see my charts? Please?"

He looked me up and down. Uh oh.

"I'll take you up on that coffee," I said meekly. What was I doing? There was some internal apparatus giving a very emphatic nod and another, significantly larger one dropping its jaw and turning a shocked, senseless shade of white.

"Ummm. Okay," he smiled, "Doctor Needleminder didn't classify those anyway."

He trotted to a smaller terminal, lit up his horn, and a mess of things, most of them coordinated, happened. He flipped through scores of messages, took a few notes, sipped his coffee from a mug that said "I Have The Cure", and scratched the top of his head with a pen.

My resolve almost wilted under a salvo of nigh indecipherable charts and graphs , but I soldiered on. Maybe he thought the terminology's impermeability would scare me off. Ha. It felt good to put the screws to him. I inwardly squealed with glee when he dropped his clipboard, but I realized it wasn't out of nervousness but out of simple clumsiness. He was worried, but not on a level that connotes wrongdoing. He was just an unsure, socially awkward egghead. I should know. I could smell my own.

As basely enjoyable as making Dr. Helix squirm was, nothing in the report elicited an 'aha'. Of course it wouldn't say anything about the incident itself. They wouldn't know how I grew a train tunnel through my brainpan, they just plugged the hole. I looked sidelong at Dr. Helix then dove back in.

>On Scene: Red Gauze, Staunch, Dr. Chainstitch, Nurse Heartspark
>Attending Physician: Dr. Skewer
>Attending Nurse: Nurse Heartspark
>Grower: Dr. Helix
>Acquisitioning Authority: Nurse Heartspark
>Materials Order: Nurse Heartspark
>Admissions: Nurse Heartspark

I sent a little prayer up to Solstice, noting I'd been worked on by a pony literally named Dr. Skewer and come out as good as I had.

Hmmm. Pretty definitive trend there. I didn't need my jack's ever-thoughtful notification to grasp my fever spike.

I felt it.


~~~~~~~~~~


I turned my head as fast as the ponderous thing would go, and I saw him. Really, I saw the stupid hat (the bowler hat) first. Then those always-keyed-in-on-the-joke eyes. Out of the thousand questions my brain was laboring to formulate, I got out a wordless exhale.

"Who am I?" he gestured to himself.

I nodded.

"I'm a new friend, I'd like to think. I figured you could use one. Your old friends don't really get you anymore, do they? And having friends is an important thing."

I'm concerned with how the war is going to affect the project. Trixie continued, as if she too was in on the oddest conversation ever.

Was this my punishment? Stuck forever on a hospital table? Having a one-sided conversation with Mr. Rain Today with background narration by Trixie? Solstice, thou art cruel.

He scratched his chin, then added, "It's Mr. Ergot. Please remember that."

I blinked. Was he... reading my mind?

"Back to friends. Like your little friend Sirocco here," Mr. Red Eyes continued, "He needs your help."

"Why me?" I thought.

He confirmed my suspicions, and answered, "Why you? Before your unfortunate accident, you were pursuing some objectives that were very near and dear to me." He waved his hoof and an arc of twelve tiny moons spread out overhead. I couldn't help but think I'd seen this before.

"Did you ever wonder why it never stops snowing? Why it started snowing in the first place?"

"The scope of my problems is on a pretty personal level," I thought back.

"Awww. Where's your spirit of selflessness? After all, you wouldn't be here if someponies hadn't given so much for you."

"I just blew myself up. I think that counts."

"Was that entirely selfless, my dear? Was that the kind of thing Saints are canonized for?" 

Was he lecturing me? Tartarus or not, I wasn't in the mood. "I'm not in the market for friends right now. Find somepony else."

"Suit yourself," he said with venomous finality. He closed his eyes, and vanished.

Sirocco's bed flashed into fire. He, his blanket, and his toys became threatening black images behind a hideous red wall. It crackled. Sparked. The smell of sick, tallowy heat blew over me. Was that what cooking meat smelled like?

I almost wretched but the belly full of cake hadn't made the trip. The sparks swirled, filling the endless black satin with a thousand lighted pinpricks, then exploded up and out into a planetarium stillness, as if the universe was a bed and a universe-sized pony was turning down the sheets. I became roaringly aware of my panic. All was expanding, and me with it! My nightmares from Baltimare were coming true!

Still, I heard Trixie's damned voice just fine. 

I'm stuck here, Twilight. I don't know what to do.

I looked to the pillar, but the fire extinguisher was gone. When I tried to stand, my table simply blinked out, and I dropped into the starry night.

The nothing yanked me back, forward, down. It shook the hell out of me. My heart cranked up several notches, but I had no jack to report it. I couldn't blink. I was all lead ears and wooden legs. My tongue lolled lazily from my mouth. It was bad enough that I was dead, now the afterlife was trying to give me a heart attack!

He was next to me, the one from the train. Mr. Bowler. He fell at my exact speed, but somehow his stupid bowler hat stayed put and his jacket showed not the faintest rustle of motion.

"It's Mr. Ergot," he said calmly, "Really, Lozenge. You have the worst memory."

I tried to say something buy my lungs almost ruptured. Was he nuts? I flailed my legs as if I could take off towards him, but only managed a few disorienting (if there was any way to orient) barrel rolls.

"What sins did you commit to make ponies want to be your friend?" A voice blared out bolder and clearer than Trixie's crackling intercom. It was Nurse Heartspark.

Trixie answered. I think... I can still make this right.

The starscape in front of me formed into massive green letters. A terminal screen stretched off to the edges of my upward-rushing cosmos, becoming one wall of reality, with words so achingly huge I simply couldn't avoid them.


...the Honesty.

We have to burn the Honesty...


I looked down. The ground was a broken picture frame rushing up to meet me, and I saw the singed image inside. It was me at a... picnic. I stood next to a smaller pony almost the same shade of dark pink.

Whoosh!

Clear Sky Bureau commandos soared past, shooting into a circle pattern as if to catch me, but they were already on fire. Pieces of them sloughed off, flying up in ripples of heat; thudding against my body with jarringly hideous rhythm as I plummeted toward the center of their burning ring and the picture below. The pieces burst into a thick bloody ash; wet and hot off-red pulp. It was everywhere. I was covered. Oh Solstice.

Everything was on fire. The nothing was on fire. The nothing was fire. The picture was gone, replaced by a pair of golden eyes.

I realized I was screaming. Had been screaming.

I slammed into the glass.

Wet. Close. Jolting stillness. I was in a... shower? A shower in Tartarus! Cerberus was going to scrub me down! I shot up to my hooves, bucked the shower stall with enough force to knock it crooked and simultaneously propel my face into the wall. I wheeled, bucked again, this time connecting with tile, and blew forward.

Double Down and Abridged were also in Tartarus! I lunged between them as they scattered, crying in alarm. A few sopping wet gallops and I flopped spectacularly barrel-down and skidded under a sink. My raw skin screamed. Trying to rise to my hooves, I knocked my head on the sink pipe and fell like a wet sack onto my guts. I was trapped! Trapped!

Trapped... in a locker room. In Tailahassee.

Double Down dropped a cylindrical medical thing into the first aid kit laid out between him and where I had been crammed into a blown out shower stall. Abridged's mouth hung open. Hobble, uninterested, scratched his ass.

"So, tootz, you alive?" DD asked.

"Y-yes," I managed between volcanic heaves of my chest.

"Pay up."

Hobble snorted and passed him an emerald.


~~~~~~~~~~



~2~


That was something.

Trixie hadn't been narrating my afterlife. My hack tool had been decrypting the files while I was out and feeding them into my brain as they opened. Exasperatingly, they had a habit of self-deleting when they finished. Great job, Lozenge; fourteen-hundred year old recordings, a miracle they exist at all, lost forever. Only three left.

Could have been worse.

Going dramatically in flagrante gave me new perspective, so when I tallied my list of problems and realized it wasn't getting smaller, I felt farcically at ease. I was still in Tailahasse. Bad. I was not, in fact, dead. Good, I supposed. Trixie's voice still wafted through the back of my brain, beckoning me to give up some days I mused were part of a cosmic debt payoff plan. Bad.

I added on the following: we all were showing glaring signs of radiation sickness, I was wrapped up in bandages like a vending trough syntha-muffin and, oh, almost forgot, my throat felt like a cup full of broken glass and my mouth tasted like a blow-dryer's insides. I must have burned my windpipe. Five bads.

Okay. Maybe not the best checklist. Still, I was doing well considering the circumstances. I hadn't wet myself. I hadn't sucked my hoof or devolved into a weeping pile. In fact, given the most horrifying state of affairs I could rustle out of my half-empty think thank, I'd at least decided to try and help everypony. Hospital fracas included. Maybe Old Lozenge left me, along with all her problems, a little bit of steel.

"Stop scratching."

"It itches. And hurts," I protested. Every bandage from all of our first aid kits held me together. They were allegedly imbued with some kind of restorative spell. From how I felt, they probably had an itch spell in there too.

"Of course it itches. And hurts. You blew yourself up," Abridged replied.

"I didn't do it on purpose."

"Really?" DD interjected, staring at me with flat indictment. He snapped together a bomb timer and dropped it onto the pile of those he'd already assembled.

"Ummm... What do you mean?" We both knew what he meant.

"What are we really doing here?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"Bet you don't," he scoffed. Bechadunt.

"Really, I don't."

"Do you not see what a gigantic screw job this is?" he said, waving his hoof in an emphatic circle.

I looked down at my pile of explosives and said nothing.

"There we go. Realization," all the mirth was gone from his voice, "We've been down here for days. See or hear any rescue parties? I haven't lived this long without being able to smell a setup. Question is, are you the screw-er or the screw-ee?"

Was I the screw-er or the screw-ee? The screw-ette? Abridged looked uneasily between us, me blinking in dumb recognition and DD staring at the two of us in animate accusation. In fact, I hadn't fully grasped how gigantic a screw it really was. They were really giving it to me, and I wasn't even enjoying it. I was supposed to enjoy it, right?

"I'm both. I'm the Berry Tart."

"The what?" he asked.

"The mare from the freezer."

It was a tense moment. I wanted to bury myself in the pile of junk Doctor Flask had put together two-hundred years ago (a pile that also included what I assumed was his skeleton). I started scratching my bandages and Abridged thoughtfully magicked my hoof away.

"The red one?" he asked.

"Yeah." Hopefully my wiped out tone came off as confident, instead of simply egregiously damaged and slogging through withdrawal.

He grinned, then broke into a full belly laugh. Slick move, Lozenge. Just hide behind humor and they'll never be the wiser. I tried not to show my intense relief. How many holes could they give it to you in anyway? Did I actually have a help file on screwing? Was it under 'S'?

"Damn, lady. What is wrong with you?"

I thought about it for a minute, looking at DD. He simultaneously creeped me out and put me intensely at ease. "Don't even know. I just keep going on, I guess. Only thing left to do."

"That's very earth pony of you," he chuckled.

"I'm mainly having some problems," I paused, choosing my words, "seeing things properly."

"Is that because of your eye?" Abridged asked.

"What about my eye?" Other than it didn't hurt anymore. Was it gone? My depth perception seemed fine. What could she tell about my eye from over there?

She put her hoof over her mouth. That filled my guts with needles, and not needles full of blue goodness. DD stopped laughing.

"What. About. My. Eye?"


~~~~~~~~~~


I veritably skipped up to the chemical locker.

Shooting up at work was probably a bad idea, and/or the greatest idea ever. As soon as I could untangle that one, I'd be set.

Regardless, I needed the edge. Laughter freed up all that brain power normally devoted to silly things like worry and regret and turned it into trumpeting awareness.

"Four 100 HCM vials of Devotion, please."

I tried to look at the clerk, but his face dissolved into caricature and turning away was all I could do not to laugh. This stuff wasn't normal. That, or using the volume I had messed with one's geometry of sight. Everything looked like a drawing. A damn good one, but one that was nonetheless coming apart. It was pretty cool.

The clerk slid the tray out. I bit on and carried it back to Tincture. It was all I could do not to skip.

My foremare Tincture, who prior to my accident had been my assistant, busily worked on blowing up the lab. A spurt of flame burped out of the solution she toiled over and nearly claimed an eyebrow. I slid the tray next to her.

"Don't mix those," I said off-hoof. She blinked in surprise as I bounced back to my terminal.

"Figured that out," she said crossly.

"I mean the next one you were going to use. Don't use it."

"Wh... Why?"

"Bad feeling."

She scoffed and smiled, suddenly alight with an apparent intellectual advantage. "We can't conduct science based on our feelings."

"Soooorry. Mix four parts elation with two parts devotion with one part caution as an inhibitor."

She blinked. "How do you know that?"

"I have it up on the screen."

That was a lie. That was a dirty, great, awesome lie. What actually sauntered down the screen in a wobbling green gavotte was a list of every project I'd ever worked on.

>Project: RED APPLE
>Apothecary Consultant: xxxx
>Augurist: xxxx
>Physician: xxxx

Each name had been replaced by a neat row of tiny 'X's. The whole document had been pared down to a few startling appearances of the word "the". So had a sizable chunk of my personal records. Grand.

It didn't matter. I was pretty sure I knew two of them.

How could they be so careless as to leave this in my record? Why? The realization was so total and sudden it overshadowed the smoking half of a vial firing from Tincture's work area across the table and past me like a rocket, leaving her coughing from a sooty-black face under a singed mane.

They'd left just enough to serve as a warning.

Don't come in here, little filly. This is the burning place.


~~~~~~~~~~


"Go look in the mirror," DD said.

I first galloped, but the closer I got to the mirror the slower I went. By the time I crossed the threshold of blue tile that delineated the Director's office and the Director's private bathroom I was barely tip-hoofing. A long-ago ruptured pipe covered half the wall and the mirror in thick green drek, interrupted by an arch of those same black letters reading Now We Reap It (somepony forgot the period).

I crept closer. My silver right eye looked into its twin on the mirror's clean side. No problems there. Then why did I feel like the floor was about to drop out from under me? Again. A ray of light couldn't have escaped from my plot.

One more step. I took a deep breath. You can do this, Lozenge. You blew yourself up. This is nothing.

I tilted my head, moving my left eye out from behind the obfuscating layer of scum. The pain in my throat stopped, because my lungs had stopped, and so had my train of optimism. Blow me up again. It was blue.

My left eye was blue.

Six bads.

I stared into that blue eye for infinite seconds; me looking into the mirror, seeing myself, and the mirror looking back into me, gasping as it only saw infinite self-images in turn. The longer I stared at it, the more certain I was that I heard music; first soft then trumpeting up into violent andante. Come on everypony! Smile, smile, smile! And I did, stupidly. I smiled.

#~Sparkle radiation levels 75% above mean. Radiation poisoning inevitable.

Then time went everywhere.
> 9. Anachronic
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------


~3~


Parts.

Parts falling apart.

The skyway collapsed.

All the doom and gloom took a carrot cake edge, because the fact was, I felt kind of happy. Which was a little weird, because I also felt kind of bad. I felt like I'd felt like that before. Also, I felt like I hadn't felt that yet. Holy Solstice, I realized something. Holy Solstice, I was an idiot. It didn't take a vast cognitive capacity or a mindset finely honed for action to realize what was going on. Holy Solstice.

It made perfect sense.

FlimFlamCo. Everseal was the most useful compound ever, and the most enraging. The tube read "Stick it with Everseal and it's Never-free!" I didn't get it. When I ripped my leg from the latch, however, leaving behind a swath of bandages and no small amount of fur; through bleary eyes I made a more apt slogan: FlimFlamCo. Everseal! If you're stuck, you're fucked!

At least a dozen turrets popped out. And me without a rocket launcher.

He rolled his eyes. "What're you going to need a rocket launcher for?"

The moths riled into a red cloud overhead as DD slammed the door of the utility tram shut. Almost on cue, my earseeds came alive with the husky voice of the Writ, "Like mares on a morning charge. You will rile snow into blizzard..."

Double Down was a surprisingly considerate pony. I was glad he was here.

Double Down was a lousy smart aleck. I couldn't wait for him to be gone.

Walkways zig-zagged up, underlining rows of pneumatic doors interrupted in no particular pattern by sections either blown away or rusted into uselessness. Moss hung all over the walls of these lower laboratories in coils and springs, fed by the water drizzling out of ancient air purifiers that, after long and abusive centuries, still rose and fell in breathy wheezes. In the humidity, my bandages felt like a wet, full-body diaper. Yeck. I didn't want to climb one level of those ramps, and we were going to have to climb them all.

I was more freaked out by how not freaked out I was, which, of course, sent me into a minor freak-out. I blanched. He knew, and I knew he knew. Worse, I couldn't get Berry Tart out of my head. The train of thought made the situation exceedingly more awkward. "Dandelion" and "sandwich" were right up at the forefront of my mind with "bombs" and "rescue".

"What are we going to do now?"

"Kill Trixie. What do you think?" Whaddayathink?

I froze next to a Generosity Inc. automated makeup dispensary. DD made it to the corner before he turned around. 

"What?" he asked.

Dammit. Did she really deserve that? She was a pony after all. What was she trying to do, anyway? A thunderstorm raged in that patchwork grey jelly sitting under my flattened-back ears, and I could tell by his tone he suffered from no such condition.

"She's... she's a pony. Mostly."

"She's a problem."

"Is that how you deal with problems? Shoot them?"

He looked up and to the left, hummed, then looked back. For a second, something passed over his face. A shadow outside of cold levity, something that made me think he wasn't just as single minded as the gold-eyed stallion. Then, he smiled. "Yeah."





Fail safe spell, huh? I could use one of those. Then again, I made it this far. I didn't fail safe, but I failed sturdy.

When I ambled back into Twilight Sparkle's office, or what I assumed was Twilight Sparkle's office by the still magically glittering name placard, it nearly made sense. By 'it', I meant the whole situation. The windows facing purple-veined stone. The building's layout. This place used to be halfway above ground, and this wing of the building had been at ground level. I shuddered thinking about the magic it would have taken, but somepony had buried it. Driven it into the ground like a nail. It would have taken a Solstice-tier level of power, and that thought shook me.

Had Solstice himself done this? What other pony possibly could?

Also, by 'the whole situation', I meant my accident, my lost memory, and my trip into Super Trixie Fun Time. Why did it... speed along synaptic reconnection... seem almost so clear now? So threateningly lucid? It just didn't quite click. Oh well. Did I just giggle?

"Stop laughing," he barked, "You're going to give us away!"

#Booting Arcane Speed-Targeting Reticle Assistant (ASTRA)

The twin shotgun barrels spun up, and not a moment too soon. I knew they would.

"You have to work on your shooting, and your cursing."

"What do you mean?" I huffed, "My swears were pretty good."

"Your swears? Frostsprite's ever-expanding asshole, lady. You're a menace to the language."

"Oh yeah? What do you suggest?" I raised an eyebrow.

"How about this one," his voice rose, "Hydra's foreskin!"

I chuckled.

He grinned back. "Y'know. Get creative."

>>           Experiment #4 - Windigo Containment Grid
>>           Contributing Staff: Comet Tail, Moondanc*r, Twin]*^shine, Pipsqueak (PH), Sw*&^&* ^@$%*
>> 
>>           REPORT ~11:  As noted in the disastrous initial trials, Windigos produce a monolithic negative emotional return; and res*@ting thermal transference; that we cannot replicate. Even the Pr(&dj*s herself cannot reproduce the sustained cond777ion rate of a single Windigo for mor____ ___(__ew moments. Thus, we were unable to create a cont*#^ment device, magical or technological, that could ov3rc0me the field of a single Windigo, let alone several. There was simply no power so&#(&$ *(ng enough to withstand that level of energy fluctuati}{{}wh#t(a##l0v3ly!!@t3@p@rty&* <error>......
> 
> 
>.....<error> ...research teams were lost. <error>

This plan was going to take manepin reflexes, speed, agility, guts, and a discernible level of firearm awesomeness. Possessing none of those things, I had to play to my strengths. Dumb luck and science. Huzzah.

"It's all messed up," I groaned.

The moth bull-shot the locker right into me. I tried to turn and leap, but it was a blur of mean red intent and while my mental dials were all cranked up to eleven, and consequently I'd known it was going to happen, my body couldn't catch up. My ribs buckled between the locker and the wall. It's wings slapped along the sides, showering me in dust and glass. It's legs scrabbled upward. Through the cacophony of tittering clicks and thuds, I cobbled together its most likely plan. It was going to come over the top and stab me in the brain.

Whatever kind of pony this Twilight Sparkle was, she didn't like to direct from afar. She liked being right in the science. Her office nestled firmly between the main test floors. The crux of the action. The office looked like a big library. Just big. Not cavernous. Trixie's office was bigger.

Smashed picture frames and bric-a-brac littered the floor. Piles of decrepit books rotted amongst the bomb-making materials Sleetsweet and company had drug in. The shelves now housed labeled piles of chemicals, stabilizers, and wires. A healthy dose of wreck had made its way in here, but nothing like the rest of the facility. No signs of moths either. This section of the compound had managed to protect itself.

"What's all messed up?" DD asked.

Somepony had to hole up here and assemble the rest of the bombs. I picked out two someponies who didn't have to taste everything they picked up.

“Oh Hobby-wobby-kins, you made some really good bombs. Yes you did. That's a good boy.” DD said, poking a hoof at the underside of Hobble's chin. He yanked it back when Hobble snapped at it, and the two shared a long, sardonic glance.

The odd stamp filled back up with life and color:

"Approved by the Joy Bureau. Officially fun."


My blind jabbing not only didn't get me electrocuted, it knocked the last circuit bar into the receptacle. It sizzled, popped, and flashed; and I barely managed to yank my foreleg out as I tumbled back into the chair amidst the pleasant aroma of singed pony fur. The middle of the desk split like the amazing stapler, and from the gap rose a terminal screen, which casually switched on with a friendly "bweep", as if it hadn't scared the crap out of all of us, even startling Abridged into jumping into my lap. It hurt, but I was too enthralled to be distracted. Or aroused.

"Welcome back, Director Sparkle."

I lined the ASTRA up on the top of the locker as best I could while that red, barbed proboscis snaked between the bent shelf and the wall, stabbing down toward my head. Soiling my parka looked like a likely course of action.

>
>
>>		With the i^*&^09on (e t7e sympathy return circuit (SRC), we can now field a con^^in*&ent a8p@ratus with long-term fe__*__lity. Field architecture was based off the standard teleportation restriction matrix developed by Saddle Arabia f(&#& 867 #m@d8@wg5 s __ing the war. The confinement horizon is powered using the thermal conveyance perpetuated by the Windigo itself. As such, all th(&* Hd1hwe&&*Y^cient .............. ^..^... the reaction. Current production model is <error>..... 
<error>, and, according to my calculations, should be (#)1337__n(&. The vast amount of space the magical field requires is the prohibitive parameter, and remains the primary barrier to employment.
>
>>Where does one keep hundreds of angry demi-gods?

~~~~~~~~~

I had barely been able to fit the saddle cannon rig around my bandage's gibbosity, but I did, and I now limped bravely ahead with two auto-shotgun barrels I could scarcely control. They plugged into an aperture on my jack, and a nifty little targeting software bundle blipped up in my eye, my silver eye anyway (my blue eye ignored technology as much as it ignored logic). Aiming was a combination of instinct and finesse. I had neither. Luckily, the spell matrix assisted. A little.

So there Double Down was, following slightly above and behind me, because he was terrified I would put a cone of scatter-shot up his flank. Pish-posh. I scored an amazing hit on a light fixture that dared to squeak unexpectedly. Perfectly accurate. Only took four shots.

"I can't see anything right?"

I finally got at the terminal, which was, in trend with the rest of the place, mostly slagged. I still knew what to do. My brain hummed along on the edge of a laughter wave that didn’t seem to break. I could fix this.

I realized Trixie was puppeting us. She had everypony cocooned in a semi-circle around a stage made of junk. It looked like a party. A party? Why would I think that? Oddly enough, it did kind of look like a party. Or the start of some sick stage show. The mothicorn walked up casually, her wings folded behind her like a cape. She said nothing, because her look said it all.

“We have to save him," Abridged pleaded, "he’s really cute.”

"We have to save him," Double Down added, "he never lit my cigarette."

If she really was the mare from the recordings, Assistant Director Trixie Lulamoon, she'd been in a hole with no company but moths for fourteen hundred years. Given the same circumstances, I don't know if I'd be much better off.

I was sweating bullets. Double Down sat across from me, his cloak gone, tying off the wires. He wiped his crest and smiled.

"You're obviously stringing us along."

I gaped at him. Dammit. This was not the time. I flailed for words.

"What are we really doing?" He looked so calm. Not a steely, fervent, soldierly calm, but something else entirely. He was still grinning. I almost wanted to grin too. Or hit him. And hit him.

"Defusing a bomb."

"That's not what I mean, and ya know it."

One spherical eye squeezed into the crack. I thought into the trigger, and the shotguns thundered.

The lights flickered on revealing the fourth most horrifying thing I'd seen in wonderful, sunny Tailahasse; a severed head suspended in a jar of fluid. A severed pony head! Wait, almost a pony head. In the second before my stomach took off in a distinctly rearward direction, I took in enough of the greyish, carapace-like skin, smooth horn, and slate-blue eyes to make my brain want to chase after it.

“The cunt skag is that?” I screamed, wheeling backward.

“The what is that? The what? I swear, if the moths don't kill me, I'm going to laugh myself to death.”

“The head!” I replied, trying to ignore his mocking nonchalance.

DD leaned in and doffed his hood, revealing an unexpected shock of orange mane. “No idea. It looks like a bug pony or something. All about bugs here, I guess.”


~~~~~~~~~~


>>Great. Well, I have some documents that might interest you.

I started reading. The first document was a heavily redacted archeological report alluding oh so vaguely to something very old found beneath Baltimare. The second was an acquisition report signed by Nurse Heartspark. The third was an internal missive from the Church of Life regarding the archeological sample. The last and final was the detailed report from my surgery.

>>As you can see, Doctor Helix was oblivious to what he was doing.

No. Whatever it was, he'd put it inside my head!

>>How about my proposal? I'll arrange everything, you just need to go where I can't.

Making a joke was all I could do to keep from crying. "You know, you'd make a great secretary."

>>Maybe.


~~~~~~~~~~


Thwack!

Thwack! Thwack!

No pink lightning here. These turrets used good old fashioned bullets. This reinforced my self-evaluation that I was not an action pony, and with every metallic thwack I sunk deeper behind the divider and deeper into the realization that I didn't want to be here and I wasn't very good at this.

I did this. I got everypony into this. But now I was going to get them out. I owed them. I owed Peel. Big time. Maybe not a carrot cake, but her life, at least.

"Specificity, lady. Like what?"

The bones in the labs looked different. Yellowed. Brittle. The ones upstairs glistened white, like they'd been prepped for a museum. These had actually decayed.

I jabbed a hoof toward the slightly rusty set of saddle cannons topping off the pile. The pair of threatening boxes called to me on some primal level. "What's that?"

"It's a rocket launcher," DD replied, "and you're not touching it."

"But it looks... powerful."

Lozenge: destroying history one office at a time! The timer sped to zero, and on a scale of one to ten, the ensuing explosion was a hydra's foreskin cunt skag supreme. DD and I fired through the window like a pair of living bullets, fire eating the wall behind us, and if it hadn't been for the pile of lab junk two skeleton unicorns had made into an unsuccessful barrier, we would have skidded all the way out the front door and taken one hell of a splat some fifteen stories below. Unfortunately, I landed on something that seemed to be breathing, and... Hello!

“Get your snat outta my face,” he grunted, trying to sweep me off.

I bristled and kicked back into his chest. “Don't call it a snat!”

"Like time," I gulped.

"Oh, it is a screw job. This whole thing's a screw job. And what you did, with the bomb? Either you feel guilty about being party to the screw, or, on some subconscious level, you realize how deeply fucked you are and took the only way you could to get out from under it. Which one is it?" He leaned in on me. I shrunk down.

He didn't trust me, and he was right not to. Still, he was pretty nice, and I liked his mane. "Neither."

"What? You were just going to give up?"

Again, in that place on the border of elation and unease, I squeaked, "I was. Not now."

He gaped at me for a second, no doubt trying to tally whether or not I was messing with him, then did a little blink. I felt bad about that blink. It looked more like a wince.

Free of the brakes, the tram rocketed down the skyway. The steering controls groaned in protest, but held. Why? Because Everseal was awesome, and rapidly becoming my favorite non-drug liquid. The track did not hold up. Why? Because Trixie was a world class bitch and blasted the pillar out with a roaring shower of... fireworks. Big, explosive fireworks.

Abridged had managed to restore copies of The Egghead's Guide to Running (a signed original), Predictions and Prophecies, and a faded poster with military letters that practically marched across the bottom: "ADMIRAL SEA SWIRL WANTS YOU! JOIN THE EQUESTRIAN ROYAL NAVY!" A skeletal leg hooked into the bottom of the jagged frame, the rest of the pony piled beneath. He'd been writing something; whatever it was now lost to time. He'd also yanked the damn thing crooked. I straightened it.

Abridged squinted and craned her face in. "Wait, I think I can get what he was writing, too." Her horn lit up again, enveloping the paper in a wispy white haze. The writing started to regenerate.

"...they will live a life of contention..."

Climbing off of the jerkwad, I saw the turrets outside the window slump inertly. Goody. Now we would get into that back lab. Not two steps later, I heard the scuttling of tiny legs. DD game me a look. I gave him one back. A pony more artistic than I could write volumes about what was said in those looks. I'll just say, we both knew Trixie had screwed us. Again.

"What do you mean, like time?" he replied, and I caught the first bit of apprehension I'd ever heard in his voice, no doubt from hearing the quick southern turn in my own.

"I could blow up at any time," I said.

"Are you coming on to me?" Double Down replied, expressionless.

Jerk. Wait, no... Yeah. Jerk. I snorted and turned away.

"I'm seeing it out of order!" I practically shrieked.

The orbus of when blew out in every direction 

"I'm seeing time out of order!"






~4~


Time stopped bounding and bubbling in disheveled and erratic torrents. 

It slowly leveled, flowing in clean, smooth succession like water from a spigot.

"Oatmeal? Are you crazy!? That's my husband!"

The pink pony and her purple friend giggled at each other across the coffee table, their hooves over their mouths. They looked like two ponies free and satisfied, their laughter ringing out unburdened and unconcerned. It was like me hanging out with BB and Syntax, except without us secretly disliking each other. Just being next to them made me feel better.

The purple one giggled. "It's actually funny, when you hear it all at once."

Just being next to them... and where exactly was next to them? 

"I know, r..." The pink one stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes slowly honed in on me. "...Cheerilee? How'd you get here?"

"Cheerilee? Oh," I replied, still having enough Laughter to not devolve into shock. In fact, I felt like my Laughter had been kicked up in potency inside my veins. "You got it all wrong. Cheerilee was my progenitor. I was cloned from..."

"Pinkie, who are you talking to?" the purple one asked.

"One-eyed Cheerilee, of course!" Pinkie chirped, pointing a hoof at me.

"Actually, m-my name's Lozenge, and I'm a what about having one eye?"

"I don't see anypony," Not-Pinkie said in sardonic disbelief.

I recognized Not-Pinkie's face. It looked big-bigger-realer than the tiny one in the corner of the visitor's map, but it was no doubt the same. She even had the same spiky little crown. Wait! My eyes deceived me; did she have a horn and wings? I knew it was a hallucination now. There was no alicorn but Solstice! Blasphemy!

Pinkie hopped off her confetti and balloon patterned couch and walked toward me. My body reacted immediately to her proximity. My veins sashayed under my skin. My brain literally vibrated. It felt like my blood wanted to jump out and dance. She moved her face up only and inch from mine. I tried to move, but couldn't. This close, she didn't look so free and unconcerned. She had bags under her eyes. Stress creases lined her cheeks. Still, those shocking blue peepers maintained constant mirth. She simultaneously looked like the least and most worried mare I'd ever seen.

She leaned in so close I could see my reflection in those big, clear, sharp-blue rings. In them, I saw the gaping hole where my left eye should be. It didn't look injured. It was just not there.

"I-I don't think she can see me," I gasped, my voice mousy and small.

"Who? Twilight?" Pinkie replied.

As if it wasn't all mindbendingly confusing enough, the door opened and Trixie walked in. Not half-moth Trixie. Her body had been restored to complete marehood, one side reflecting the other in perfect sleek blue and silver symmetry. Frankly, she looked stunning.

"Twilight, I was just talking to... who in Tartarus is that?" she cried with an extra layer of disgust, "where's her eye!?"

Her voice sounded kind of nice when it wasn't menacing and insectile. Her manners, however, hadn't much changed.

"Who is everypony talking about!?" Twilight shouted back.

"Why are you trying to kill us?" I yelled at Trixie, adding to the cacophony of shouting mares.

"Kill you? I've never seen you before in my life!" she yelled back, looking genuinely hurt. Her lungs seemed to be roaring along as fast and heavy as mine.

"Kill her?" Pinkie cried.

"Why is everypony yelling?" Twilight yelled.

"So I said, Oatmeal?" Pinkie chimed in.

Twilight screwed up her face, but didn't lower her volume, "Pinkie, you just told that one!"

Never seen me before? How the...? I'd really lost it. This wasn't fun anymore. I had to stop this before something went totally haywire, and I had a pretty solid grasp on how to do it. I strained to close my left eye. Everything warped and twisted again, taking on a pale blue edge. The room went silent. Pinkie blinked and cocked her head. Trixie gasped. Blasphemous Hallucination Twilight stared between the two rapt mares in utter confusion.

My eye resisted. I strained harder, finally forcing it shut.

A screeching whoosh came down.

Pinkie, Twilight, and their confetti world vanished.

Trixie Lulamoth appeared.