Fallout: Equestria - Common Ground

by FireOfTheNorth

Chapter 22: The Consortium

“Doc, do you know why you’ve been called before the Executive Panel?” asked an elderly mare in a close-fitting cerulean uniform and a cap of matching color pulled down tightly over her white mane.

She was in the center of a line of five pegasi, all of similar appearance, seated behind a polished wooden table in what had once been a cozy conference room for a captain and her officers aboard the Zephyrus. The plaque on the table in front of her read Col. Fairweather, as did the tag on her uniform. I had been given a quite uncomfortable chair to sit in while I faced these five high-ranking officers of the Dashite Enclave, isolated in the open side of the room apart from the guards stationed near the exits.

“No, I don’t,” I replied honestly, and some of the Panel members frowned at me.

After the chaotic evening that had been dubbed the Night of the Boiling Pot by the powers-that-be in New Pegasus, I’d been arrested … again. I’d been imprisoned in the Zephyrus’s brig for a night, a day, and a night, and questioned before being brought before the Executive Panel. I had no idea why these ponies would want to speak to me when I’d already answered all their interrogators’ questions. From looking at the city constitution in Skyscout’s museum, I knew that New Pegasus was a multi-layered republic; the legislature consisted of the Senate and the High Assembly, with the former’s members elected by citizens of New Pegasus and the latter elected by members of the Senate. The High Assembly then elected the Executive Board, which elected the president (though this had been a moot point for decades since Snowmane seemed fated with endless reelections) and the two together comprised the executive branch of the New Pegasus government. Short of President Snowmane, these pegasi were the most powerful ponies in New Pegasus.

“Allow me to enlighten you,” Colonel Fairweather said brusquely. “Just prior to the terrorist attacks, you were seen speaking with the synthetic equine we’ve identified as Subject 1. Then, during the cleanup as synthetic equines were identified and terminated, you called out after her. Do you deny this?”

“No, but that’s not exactly what I meant,” I said, and the guards shifted as I leaned forward in my chair. “That’s all true, and as I explained to your interrogators yesterday, she looked identical to a friend I knew in Equestria. You know her as Subject 1, but I knew her as P-8CH, or Ache. Yes, she was a pondroid—er, synthetic equine—and I know how that must look, but I thought she was the Ache I knew and not just some copy wearing her appearance. You’ve got all that in those reports under your hooves, so why am I here? I don’t understand why I’m standing trial before New Pegasus’s Executive Panel and not before a tribunal or the like.”

When I’d been questioned, at least I’d been able to get some answers myself as to what was happening with the pondroids here in the Commonwealth. Whoever was making them was apparently limited in what they could do, so identical pondroids popped up again and again. It was actually what had first tipped New Pegasus off to the fact that there were pondroids at all, when they’d slipped up and two had appeared in the same place at the same time. Whenever somepony was discovered to be a pondroid, their appearance was logged away and they were given a number so they could be identified again in the future. Ache was Subject 1, which made sense if the RoBronco scientists from Vanhoover had rebuilt her first, since she was their only truly successful creation. The Ache I’d seen disintegrated wasn’t my Ache, but the memory still haunted me.

“Well, you’re not here entirely to be questioned,” another member of the Panel spoke up, a powder blue -coated mare whose mane was still more gray than white, whose nameplate read Col. Flitter. “We needed to reaffirm your story and your loyalties before we continue. Regarding your former relationship with a syntheq in Equestria, what is your opinion of those in the Iron Valley?”

“Well, I must admit I still don’t have the whole picture—and maybe you can help enlighten me on that—but their attack certainly doesn’t reflect favorably upon them.”

“Unthinkable that they would attack New Pegasus itself,” a stallion named Colonel Cloudwake fumed. “We pulled the outlying citizens in to protect them, so they attack them here!”

“That’s something else I don’t understand,” I said, “How did so many of them get into New Pegasus? I thought everypony was screened before they could enter.”

The Panel shared conspiratorial glances before Fairweather spoke.

“There is something we could share with you. But we must know that we can trust you first.”

“What’s the reason for this conflict with the sytheqs?” I asked. “Why are they attacking?”

“Something else for which we must know we can trust you before sharing any details,” Fairweather sighed. “But, in short, if you’re concerned that they’re attacking us because we exterminate them on sight, know that the opposite relationship is the case. From the moment we discovered them among us, they have struck at us and sabotaged us at every opportunity. It was what they were built for, to take down New Pegasus and the Dashite Enclave. Attempts at communication or brokering a ceasefire have all failed; now we don’t wait for them to strike, we merely cut them down before they can become a threat.”

“Well, if all that is true, I see why you do it,” I said after some thought.

“I trust you will find that it is true,” Fairweather said testily.

“I have to side with you then, if it comes down to it.”

“It most assuredly will if you intend to stay at this end of the Iron Valley for any length of time,” a stallion with a close-cropped beard named Colonel Highflier said. “To answer your original question, the reason you are before the Executive Panel is because we did some investigation into who you are. Both from your griffin companion’s testimony and the hearsay that’s filtered in about your exploits to the north and the west, we’ve concluded that you’re a pony who gets involved in whatever big events are going on around you. We thought it best to bring you in now, before things get any more out-of-hoof, if you’re willing to keep secret the confidential information that we wish to share with you.”

“Can I share it with Rael?” I asked.

“Not very secret then, is it?” Fairweather harrumphed, and Cloudwake looked affronted.

“If there’s something you want me to do, I may not be able to keep him in the dark about it entirely. He’s following and observing me, so keeping everything secret would be impossible,” I explained.

“Will he keep any secret that you tell him to?” Flitter asked.

“Yes, I’m sure of that,” I replied.

“Very well, but only share what is necessary,” Highflier said begrudgingly.

“Then I swear to keep secret what you’re about to tell me,” I said.

“Your first inquiry, then. How did so many syntheqs make it into New Pegasus without being caught?” Flitter said. “On the Night of the Boiling Pot, we discovered a syntheq among us, a pegasus posing as a member of the Dashite Enclave. We’re still investigating how long she managed to remain hidden, but we believe that she was able to let the others through on her fabricated authority, declaring known syntheqs to be clear to enter. When we discovered the deception, we dispatched all available forces to seek and kill the syntheqs in the city. Unfortunately, we were too late.”

“I trust you understand the implication of the discovery of a pegasus syntheq and why we wish to keep this information under wraps for the time being,” said the final member of the Panel, a stallion called Colonel Ravine, who appeared the youngest of the five, despite easily having a decade on me. “Through our struggle against the syntheqs, the one comfort the citizens of New Pegasus have had is that they could trust the Dashite Enclave to be uncompromised. Never has there been a syntheq with convincing artificial feathers, but now they’ve done it. We can expect to see more synthetic pegasi in the future, and maybe even synthetic griffins if they’ve managed to figure out beaks and talons as well. That’s why it’s more important than ever that we act now to end this.”

“You want me to help you with this?” I asked.

“We’ve been on the back hoof for too long,” Fairweather said. “The stream of syntheqs is seemingly endless, and we cannot keep only on the defense if we hope to win this. We need to find the source of the threat and eliminate it. That brings us to the other confidential information, the little we know about our adversaries, our true adversaries—the ones building the syntheqs. From a brief amount of time, we considered spying an acceptable precursor to apprehension or elimination, but we discontinued it due to the danger allowing syntheqs to remain active posed. However, it did furnish us with some information about our opponents. The syntheqs are not autonomous; they have organic masters known as the Consortium. Somewhere in the Iron Valley, this Consortium is building syntheqs for a single purpose: to wipe out New Pegasus and the Dashite Enclave.”

“Do you have any idea why they’d want to target you specifically?” I asked, expecting some vague answer relating to taking down a rising power or that they didn’t really know. Instead Colonel Ravine produced a bulky briefcase from behind his chair and placed it on the table.

“Do you know what this is?” Ravine asked as he unlocked the case and opened it toward me.

“It’s a starscatter gun,” I said as I got up to look, and the guards made no moves to stop me. “I have one just like it.”

“Do you?” Ravine asked. “Look closer.”

“There’s no trigger!” I exclaimed upon another inspection. It was missing even the mechanisms to connect it to a battle saddle.

“No external trigger,” Ravine clarified. “It can be fired using short range ultra-high frequency radio signals, which is how we believe the syntheq we found this on was able to fire it.”

“So, the Consortium has reverse-engineered your technology,” I said.

“Unlikely,” Fairweather said. “When this was discovered, we hadn’t yet begun to make the starscatter gun available for sale. No, the reason they have the same technology as us is not because they’re copying from us; it’s because they are us.”

“More accurately, they were us,” Colonel Cloudwake cut in. “When the Dashite Enclave was just beginning to establish itself here in New Pegasus, there was disagreement between the High Command and most of the scientists who had fled here with us. The scientists wished to continue the unrestrained research they’d been allowed in the Grand Pegasus Enclave, but without the bureaucratic oversight. The High Command felt that moral arguments outweighed pragmatic ones and denied many of their proposed experiments, not least because they could easily turn the residents of the Commonwealth against us. After this decision, most of our scientists parted ways with us and left the Dashite Enclave. We believe it is they who are building these synthetic equines and sending them against us in order to tear down what we’ve built and allow them to take our place.”

“So, what is it that you want from me?” I asked.

“Mainly your help, however you can provide it. Given your record, I have no doubt that you’ll find a way,” Colonel Fairweather said. “Most importantly, though, we need to find where the Consortium is located. We’re stretched thin with our patrols both searching for them and their synthetics and protecting our citizens. We pulled the settlements we thought to be in danger into New Pegasus to help alleviate the problem, but as you’ve seen, even that was not enough. They need to be located and stopped.”

“I’ll do my best,” I promised.

“What do you intend to do if you find the Consortium?” Rael asked as I picked my way through the rocky scree and he hovered overhead.

I’d shared with him most of what the Executive Panel had told me, but left out the recent revelation of synthetic pegasi and the suspected origin of the Consortium. They would both probably come up in time, especially if we did actually find the Consortium. For the moment, I wanted to honor the Panel’s wishes, at least in spirit. The Executive Panel had let me go and returned my belongings following our audience; and after reuniting with Rael and finally dropping off the things we’d retrieved from the Iapyx with Skyscout, we left New Pegasus and headed back west into the Iron Valley. Though the Executive Panel was convinced that former Enclave scientists were behind the pondroids, I was still sure that the RoBronco scientists from Vanhoover had some hoof in things. Rael and I resumed our original journey before we’d been picked up by Mereskimmer and made our way to RoBronco Site Dahlia.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Talk to them, if I can. Their dispute is with New Pegasus, so hopefully they won’t see me as an enemy.”

“And then you’ll tell the Dashite Enclave where they are so they can come and kill them.”

“If it comes to that,” I said. “They’re sending pondroids to kill ponies and griffins just because they accepted New Pegasus’s protection. You were there when they set off those bombs. I need to know why, and if there’s still no good reason, then yes, the right thing to do is to turn them over.”

“Killing some to protect others,” Rael said introspectively.

“I do it all the time,” I said, though I’d become more contemplative about it since Rael had started tagging along. “Tell me I’m just blinded from seeing the truth again and you see something that looks like a RoBronco installation,” I said, mostly to change the subject, but also out of frustration.

We’d been back and forth over the area surrounding the coordinates I’d gotten for RoBronco Site Dahlia, but there was no sign of it. No railroad tracks or roads reached the site, and there were no signs of any buildings. I was beginning to think that Site Dahlia was a lie and there had never been anything here at all. Were that was the case, though, I had no leads. If the RoBronco scientists had arrived here and found nothing, there was no way to know where they’d gone next.

“All remnants of Orthros’s technology were removed,” Rael assured me. “But no, I don’t see anything either, just rocks.”

“Maybe an avalanche buried it,” I said as I eyed the field of rocks.

It certainly did appear that, at some time in the past, a portion of the mountain’s side had slid down over where we were standing. Maybe RoBronco Site Dahlia was beneath my hooves, but if it was and the Consortium was still using it, that didn’t explain how the pondroids were leaving the facility. I was puzzling over if, where, and how I should start digging to see if I could find Site Dahlia when a pony stepped out from behind a large rock ahead of us.

“Hey!” I called, but got no response.

Instead, I found a pair of grenades landing at my hooves, thrown from behind. They began to emit a thick cloud of mist before I could throw them back, and I found myself growing incredibly tired. As I slumped down, I could distantly hear someone struggling to get Rael down into the cloud before I blacked out.

When I awoke, I was in a cell … again. It was different from the prison cell in Brinkfall or the brig of the Zephyrus, but it was still clearly a room I was not meant to leave of my own volition. The walls were a smooth, pearlescent white and they curved as they met the floor, ceiling and each other so that there were no sharp corners. The ceiling was a similar color to the walls but translucent, and the dim light emanating from it increased in brilliance as I sat up. The floor was a dark gray with a grid pattern where lines alternated perpendicularly, and the surface gave slightly as I stepped out of the bed I’d been lying in. The bed’s mattress seemed to be composed of a strange springy material I’d never seen before, similar to the floor but softer and with more give, and had something I’d seldom encountered since leaving Stable 85: clean sheets. One corner of the room had a privacy screen in front of a shower and toilet, with a desk and chair on the other side. There was the thin outline of a door in the center of one wall, but it otherwise blended seamlessly with its surroundings, and there was no obvious way to open it. It was the nicest cell I’d ever been in, but still undeniably a cell. I’d been left my clothes, but my weapons were all missing, and the saddlebags on the desk had unmistakably been rifled through and any dangerous objects within confiscated.

As I explored the room, the door slid down into the floor to reveal somepony standing outside. The earth pony mare had a dark blue coat and a long salmon-colored mane that she’d braided neatly and draped over one shoulder. Over her form was draped a blue dress made of a sheer, vaguely shiny material.

“Good morning, Doc,” she said, and I checked my PipBeak to confirm she was right (about the morning part at least, if not it being “good”).

“Seltzer?” I asked hesitantly, for she was the spitting image of the pony Rael and I had encountered in the Minty-Fresh Toothpaste Factory, although she was much cleaner now.

“Oh dear, have we already met?” the mare said with concern, “My apologies, they were supposed to assign somepony you didn’t already know was synthetic. I was meant to introduce myself as Highland Brook, but since the cat is out of the bag, as they say, you may address me as Unit Thirty-Seven-Dash-Eight, or Three-Seven-Eight if that’s easier.”

“Why are you here?” I asked 37-8, before realizing the more important question. “Why am I here?”

“You are a guest of the Consortium,” 37-8 said as she stepped out of the doorway and into my cell, and the door slid back up behind her. “I am here to give you a tour of the facility.”

“And then what? You turn me loose?” I asked suspiciously.

“That is up to the Trustees,” 37-8 said. “They intend to meet with you on the fifth day.”

“The fifth day?” I asked incredulously. “How long is this tour?”

“The schedule allows for one day for each research department of the Consortium, as well as time to explore and experience life here,” 37-8 replied.

“For what purpose?” I asked.

“To help you to understand what it is we do here and who we are. Information is the bedrock of understanding, and we intend to provide you with all the information you need to know the proper attitude to take toward the Consortium when you return to the Iron Valley,” 37-8 explained. “You tend to have an outsized effect on everything and everypony around you. Thus, it’s important you not get the wrong impression about the Consortium, its goals, and the reasons behind these goals.”

“I see,” I said, still suspicious, but willing to go along for the time being.

“Excellent!” 37-8 said with a chipper smile. “Shall we be off, then?”

“Is Rael here, too?” I asked as 37-8 trotted toward the room’s door and it slid away automatically.

“Your griffin friend? Yes, of course,” 37-8 said, but added nothing else as she led me out into the hallway.

There wasn’t much to see outside of my cell, at least not in the aesthetic sense. The hallway was the same style as the cell had been, with rounded edges and a glowing ceiling, though the floor was firmer here and unpatterned. There was nopony to be seen other than 37-8. Apparently they weren’t very worried about breakouts.

“Will he be coming along on the tour as well?” I asked as we began to trot down the hallway, which curved to the left and had outlines of doors only on the right.

“He is not included,” 37-8 said matter-of-factly.

“Well, I’d like him to be,” I said as I stopped walking.

“Just a moment,” 37-8 said, and her eyes went distant for a good thirty seconds, making me start to wonder if something had gone wrong with her software, before refocusing. “Very well.”

Trotting ahead, a door opened as she passed and I spotted Rael within a cell identical to the one I’d been in, reading the Book of Rok while seated on the bed. After I explained what was going on, he joined 37-8 and me in the hallway, and we continued along. Just in case things went dicey, I tried to keep my eyes peeled for ways to escape, but there wasn’t much to see in the hallway. We eventually came to a door on the left wall, and 37-8 led us through into a straight hallway with no other doors. Standing in the hall was a pony wearing shiny security barding that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Stable, complete with bubble helmet. He didn’t say anything as we passed, and I wondered if he was a pondroid as well.

At the end of hall was a semicircular room with a circular, glass-sided elevator car protruding halfway into it. 37-8 led us into the elevator, and though the buttons near the door lit up as though they were being pressed, she made no moves to do so. It didn’t seem to matter as the elevator began to descend, cutting off our view of the bright white chambers and replacing it with the softer glow of overhead lights and their diffusion through the white ceiling. There wasn’t much to illuminate outside of the glass walls, just dark metal with the occasional dull light marking emergency exits. That all changed in an instant as the car dropped into a large open space, descending through a transparent tube to allow a 360-degree view of the Consortium.

The large open space we were passing through was vaguely egg-shaped, round but taller than it was wide and broader at the base with a gentle taper upwards to the point the elevator had emerged from. Along the walls nearly to the top of the space were windows and balconies, and at several points near the bottom stretched covered walkways that led to the center, allowing one to enter the elevator. The base of the space was styled as a garden, and I was astonished to see plants growing vibrantly without sunlight, something even the orchards of the Stables had only managed to create a shadow of. Between the beds of ferns, trees, grasses, and artificially created streams and waterfalls, the space ascended in tiers with stairways, ramps, and buildings stacked alongside each other. Here, the walls were not the harsh, absolute white of above, but a more tolerable pale gray, though the aversion to sharp angles persisted.

“Today’s scheduled tour is of the Agricultural Department,” 37-8 announced as the elevator came a halt at the bottom of the cavern, alongside other elevators that traveled only downward, and led the way out into the garden space.

Rael and I followed, both of us soaking in the sights around us. Everything appeared so alien, as if the War had never touched the Consortium and pony society had continued to advance in strange ways during the last one hundred-fifty years. Several ponies were about and eyed us curiously (and with some small measure of haughty disdain) as we walked by, looking cleaner and better nourished than the vast majority of those I’d seen in the Equestrian Wasteland. They were attired in strange pieces of clothing derived from Wartime Equestrian fashions, but of different materials and styles. There was also life among the gardens in the form of squirrels, rabbits, and birds, appearing as they did in Wartime media and not how I’d typically encountered them.

“Are they real?” I asked as a trio of red-feathered birds flitted over us.

“Of course not,” 37-8 said definitively. “They are synthetic, like me, but are still capable of performing most of the same functions and filling the same environmental niches as their organic counterparts. The Consortium failed to acquire living, unmutated specimens before the megaspells fell, and none of the current samples are viable. Thus, we build new versions of extinct species.”

“I don’t know how much research you get to do outside of the Consortium, but you may want to consider that the environment isn’t the same as it once was, nor is it likely to ever be so again. The environment you’re designing for is long gone, except for maybe down here in your private gardens,” I said as I continued to eye the thriving plants.

“Doctor Cabbage will be able to explain when you meet him,” 37-8 said with a knowing smile as she led us up a curved, gently sloping ramp that took us to a doorway on the outer wall of the cavern.

The doors here were different from those in the cell block, composed of an opaque glass and clearly inset so that it was no surprise how they slid into the walls. On the other side of the doors was a short but wide hallway with chairs and low table along one wall. Along the other was a large bank of glass, behind which were several workstations, all but one covered in tarpaulins. The uncovered station had a pony lounging behind it with his hooves up, the set of sunglasses over his eyes incongruous in the darkened room.

“Hello, Clover,” 37-8 addressed the earth pony without stopping or slowing her canter.

“Hello … Unit 37,” Clover said, his voice projected through an overhead intercom, after flipping up his sunglasses so he could see her. “These the Outsiders?”

“Yes, they are,” she replied as she continued on.

“Hold up,” Clover said as we neared the large set of doors at the end of the hall. “Doctor Cabbage sent me here to make sure you take them through proper decontamination procedures.”

“They were decontaminated when they entered the Consortium,” 37-8 said as she halted before the doors and waited for Clover to unlock them.

“Yes, but who knows what kind of taint they might be carrying from the outside still. Bet~ter safe than sor~ry,” Clover said, the last bit in a sing-song voice.

“Fine,” 37-8 said, her tone betraying frustration, though her face showed none of it.

Instead of continuing through the large doors in front of us, 37-8 led us through a smaller door to the side. Lights flickered on as she trotted into a short, narrow hallway, and Rael and I followed after her. After disrobing, we were bombarded with disinfecting mists and high-intensity lights. Not that they did anything to clean off the grime of travel—that was what the shower in my cell was for—but we were apparently cleansed of anything that Clover was worried about contaminating the Agricultural Department with. He was waiting for us on the other side of the far door when it opened after decontamination was complete, his green and white jumpsuit fully zipped up and his sunglasses still on his face.

“Doctor Cabbage is in Field 3A today,” Clover said as he turned about. “Right this way.”

37-8 looked irked at Clover taking over her tour duties, but obediently followed him as he led us down identical gray hallways. Some sections, usually those around doors, had long windows, but the glass was opaque so that what existed on the other side was a mystery. Field 3A turned out to be just what it sounded like, but I was still surprised when Clover led us through a door to a large, enclosed space filled with soil and long, precisely planted rows of greenery. Bright lights burned overhead, simulating sunlight, and the plants swayed slightly in the wind from the air vents along a wall. Among the crops walked ponies in white and green lab coats examining them with instruments mounted to their backs or held in magical grips.

“Doctor Cabbage!” 37-8 called out as we approached a tall, gangly earth pony with a yellow coat and leafy green mane.

“Yes, hello?” he said as he moved a pair of magnifying lenses up to his forehead and replaced them with a set of spectacles, “Ah, our visitors! How are you finding the Consortium?”

“Well, we are prisoners,” I said bluntly, “But so far, quite impressive. You have enough space down here to rival a Stable. Is it all underground?”

“Yes, we have quite a lot of space,” Doctor Cabbage laughed, though I didn’t get the joke. “We closed off the surface years ago, long before my time, I can tell you.”

“Doctor Cabbage is one of our top scientists in the Agricultural Department,” 37-8 said, and Cabbage scoffed at ‘one of’. “Perhaps you can share with our visitors what the Agricultural Department does and show them the sights.”

“Of course! Clover, keep an eye on things here, and take off those ridiculous sunglasses.”

“Yes, doctor,” Clover said melancholically as he removed his shades and squinted in the ceiling lights.

“The Agricultural Department’s theater is everything plant related that goes on here at the Consortium,” Doctor Cabbage said as he trotted past us, carefully avoiding harming the plants, and back toward the exit. “The most mundane part is producing foodstuffs for ourselves, but the really important work is preserving and improving crops to be introduced into the Outside.”

As Cabbage led us out into the hallway, I saw that the windows were now transparent, and I could see similar scenes through them as Field 3A. Diverse fields of crops grew in abundance, tended to by scientific types in almost every case. Tending was perhaps not the right word, as examination seemed to be the primary focus. Any of the manual care for the plants was done by ponies in gray jumpsuits that, after spotting a few duplicates, I realized were pondroids.

“I head up the Wasteland Revitalization Project,” Doctor Cabbage said proudly, “Which is the effort to create a way to introduce viable, high-yield, unmutated crops into the Commonwealth, and one day the Equestrian Wasteland. Of course, that also means we do research into soil, water, and air purification methods, to remove megaspell and viral taint.”

As we were given the tour, I realized that we were wrapping around the central space we’d first descended into. I was beginning to think the fields would circle the entirety of the bottom level as a disk, but Doctor Cabbage led us down some stairs and into a level where plants were far less numerous through the windows. They were still undeniably present, but usually only a few were planted, or they were sprouting from hydroponic tubes. Lab equipment was prevalent, and we passed scientists busy experimenting on smaller scales than what we’d seen above, often wearing protective suits. The vast majority of the scientists and their assistants were earth ponies, though I did notice a few unicorns and pegasi among them. One room was filled entirely with unicorns seated at a table and arguing over what was shown on a large screen that dominated one wall, the charts and figures on it completely indecipherable to me.

“Of course, that does mean I have to deal with plenty of magic types,” Doctor Cabbage said with a sigh as he too noticed the kerfuffle and hurried past before anypony saw him and tried to pull him in. “At least I’ve got them on the right track now, unlike my predecessor. Just because our forerunners managed to steal Twilight Sparkle’s plans for a ‘Garden of Equestria’ from the Ministry of Arcane Sciences doesn’t mean we have to use them. I don’t know what the Ministry Mare was thinking, or how she intended to make such a system capable of cleansing the entirety of Equestria with a single spellcasting. I’m no unicorn, but even I can tell from the diagrams that the magical power required would be more immense than a thousand microspark reactors put together!”

“I’m surprised by how many non-pegasi are here,” I commented, fishing for information. “You’re not from the Enclave, are you?”

“Do you see wings on my back?” Doctor Cabbage said indignantly, and 37-8 gave me a suspicious look. “No, I’m descended from the Old Guard, the original RoBronco researchers who were here before the megaspells fell. I haven’t forgotten our original mandate from Robert Horse himself, to research how to bring life back to a land blighted by megaspells.”

Cabbage continued to rant on for several minutes about things I quickly found myself unable to follow, but I was sure they would make more sense if I better understood the Consortium’s politics and history. (Until, that is, he got into the portion of his speech about different crop varieties and experiments, which I was sure I wouldn’t be able to understand unless I’d devoted my entire life to such research as he and his family had.) Through it all, he led Rael and me past the different labs doing research into new forms of crops and how to protect them from radiation and disease.

When 37-8 seemed to think we’d seen everything important, she managed to excuse us from Cabbage’s monologue and invited him to return to his research. We went out of the Agricultural Department the same way we’d come in, though this time we were able to exit through the main doors and didn’t have to submit to decontamination again.

The rest of the day was free, or as free as it could be with a pondroid minder keeping an eye on us. Rael and I were allowed to explore the Consortium anywhere that 37-8 didn’t turn us away from, which allowed us to explore the open space and gardens as well as many of the offices that climbed the walls. Private residential spaces were naturally off-limits, but we were allowed to walk the hallways and meet with the inhabitants as they came and went at their daily tasks. I suspected the random encounters weren’t truly random. They were probably carefully calculated by the Consortium to show me the most favorable slice of life, but I couldn’t really prove that, at least not with 37-8 along. Most of the ponies I met worked in the Agricultural Department or were part of a family that worked in said department. The rest either worked in the Engineering Department to maintain the facility or were part of the staff that provided food, goods, and entertainment to the rest of the residents.

Life in the Consortium was vastly different from most other places, with no fear of harm or scarcity apparent. Even the Stables hadn’t seemed this squeaky-clean, and it put me on edge. What I’d been shown was just too perfect, which made me want to trust the Executive Panel’s assertions even more in spite of what I was seeing. Perhaps 37-8 was picking up on my growing uneasiness, or perhaps the time scheduled for the tour was simply up, but she led us back to the elevator and returned us to our cells, promising to return the next day for the second part of the tour.

I spent some time that night trying to find ways to escape, but however the Consortium had built the cell, they’d done it with great precision; there were no evident gaps I could pry open to get at anything behind the walls. Not even the air circulation system was vulnerable, and it took me a while to discover the vents for it were thousands of tiny holes scattered across the ceiling, invisible without standing atop the desk and examining them closely. In the end, I decided to give up on breaking out of the cell and put my efforts toward thinking of another way to escape. In the meantime, I took advantage of the amenities afforded to me as a prisoner that I’d rarely had access to as a free pony, showering and scrubbing myself thoroughly. My clothing still smelled a little mangy, but I was as clean as I’d been since leaving Stable 85 a decade ago.

In the morning, 37-8 returned and gathered Rael and me to continue the tour of the Consortium. We began by retreading the same path as the day before, but as the elevator neared the bottom of the cavern and I prepared to depart, it kept descending. Once beneath the base of the Consortium, we traveled in a cylindrical tunnel with other elevator tubes clustered around us, plunging deeper into the earth.

“Where are we going?” I asked 37-8 as lights flashed by in the darkness.

“Today you will be touring the Advanced Systems Department,” 37-8 announced as we plunged back into the light. I stared dumbstruck at another large cavern nearly identical to the one we’d just passed through. There were more gardens below, more pathways and tiered buildings, and more windows and balconies along the curved walls. I thought I’d seen the extent of the Consortium, but I now had some reevaluating to do.

“How many of these spaces are there?” I asked as the elevator pulled to a stop and the door opened.

“The Consortium houses four concourses, one for each of the research departments. Most ponies live on the level they also work on to minimize commute times and congestion of the elevator system,” 37-8 replied straightforwardly.

“Of course,” I said, still taking in the scale of the Consortium as we exited the elevator and proceeded through the concourse, getting curious looks from new ponies.

“What does Advanced Systems research?” Rael asked. “It seems like a vague descriptor.”

“You shall see,” 37-8 said in a way I found unsatisfactory.

We were led to a set of doors identical to those that had led to the Agricultural Department above, apart from the colored markers around the edge which were blue instead of green. The hallway on the other side of the doors was also similar, with the far doors open instead of closed. As 37-8 led us into the hallways beyond, I saw that most of the windows here were clear instead of opaque, allowing me a glimpse of the laboratories where the department’s scientists were at work. 37-8 kept us moving, so I wasn’t able to see much, but I did spot unicorns channeling magic into batteries, earth ponies tweaking robots, and pegasi with jets strapped to their backs.

At the end of the journey was a small office with a large opaque window next to the open door. As 37-8 led us through the entrance, I spied the nameplate next to it: Dr. Tourmaline / Advanced Systems Department Head. Within the office was a desk with a terminal in the rounded edge style typical of everything in the Consortium, as well as many bookcases and filing cabinets. Upon every available surface were clustered models of every conceivable device, likely scale mockups of the Consortium’s prototypes over the years, though I did notice a few empty spots here and there among them. Seated behind the desk was a willowy earth pony mare with an orange coat and cherry-red mane that was piled into a bun atop her head. Like most of the ponies I’d seen in the Advanced Systems Department, she was wearing a white and blue lab coat, though hers had considerably more blue than the others.

“Doctor Tourmaline,” 37-8 introduced us, “These are our visitors: Doc and Rael.”

“Ah, of course. Come to see the wonders of the Consortium, have you?” Tourmaline said as she rose. “It’s almost mind-bogglingly incredible, isn’t it? I know I was certainly wowed when I first arrived.”

“Doctor Tourmaline originally lived in Castoway before she was recruited by the Consortium,” 37-8 explained. “Now she is a department head.”

“Yes, I’ve devoted my life to the Consortium and research,” Tourmaline said proudly as she led the way out of the office, pressing a pad on the wall as she left, which changed the window from opaque to transparent.

“Researching … Advanced Systems?” I asked dubiously.

“Yes, it’s a title we’ve never truly been able to shake,” Tourmaline said as she led us down the hall. “Not for lack of trying, mind you. However, nothing else has been able to stick and encompass what the department does. Most of our research is toward applied physics and arcane technologies, as well as the remainder of the Robotics Department that was disbanded and folded into us once the Synthetic Life Department superseded it. We innovate in a broad area, so I’m going to show you some of the things we’re working on that may be of interest to you.”

The first lab we were led to contained researchers wearing heavy armor and masks in addition to their lab attire, but Tourmaline seemed unworried to lead us in completely unprotected. The researchers, most of them unicorns, were gathered around a mechanical cylinder no larger than a paint can, several points of which glowed with an orange light tinted by the magical shield erected around it.

“The Consortium has been researching new energy sources ever since they began to expand underground,” Tourmaline explained, “With the addition of the Ex-Enclave scientists fifty years ago, we were able to gain their experience with novasurge technology and applied it to replacing our lagging microspark reactors. Now we’re working to miniaturize the novasurge reactor technology. Even a reactor of this size contains the capacity to provide a small-to-medium town with all the power they’d ever need.”

Leaving the Consortium scientists to study the miniature reactor, we moved on to the next lab on Tourmaline’s tour. This one was filled with gently humming maneframes and mostly staffed by earth pony researchers. At the center of the space was an auspicious-looking maneframe different from all the rest and covered in ports, screens, and banks of blinking lights.

“This … is a crucial centerpiece of our research,” Tourmaline said as she gestured toward the maneframe, “Part of the original mandate when the Consortium began as a RoBronco research site was to create ways to rebuild civilization in the aftermath of a megaspell holocaust, as you no doubt heard in the Agricultural Department. Our hope is that we can create a maneframe containing all the information needed to rebuild and with a sophisticated-enough program to manage that process. Provided to towns in the Commonwealth or Equestria, and coupled with a novasurge reactor, this would allow civilization to spread and the municipalities centered around them to remain in contact with the Consortium.”

“I’ve seen something similar before,” I said, and Doctor Tourmaline and 37-8 looked very surprised. “Not as advanced, but in the Equestrian Wasteland there was a … warlord who found a cache of microspark reactors and transmission equipment and distributed them to settlements. They were welcomed at first, but they were also used to surveil the towns and enforce the warlord’s will to the harm of the townsponies who had succumbed to the desire for free energy and contact at a moment’s notice with an overlord that turned out not to have their best interests at heart.”

“Well, we’ll certainly need to have some oversight to ensure the technology is used properly by those we give it to, but I certainly don’t expect anything like that to happen here,” Tourmaline chuckled uncomfortably as she side-eyed the maneframe.

She seemed in a hurry to leave after that awkward revelation, and we were quickly on our way to the next stop on the tour. It wasn’t a stop, per se, as Doctor Tourmaline continued to trot along even after we reached our destination, taking us past several related labs where ponies tinkered on foreleg- or neck-mounted devices or wore them as they cast spells on test ranges. I didn’t notice at first, but once I did, it was impossible to miss: those casting the spells were invariably earth ponies. I’d been thrown off initially since they were wearing artificial horns upon their heads which they used to focus their spells.

“Here we’re working on instruments that would allow anypony, regardless of magical ability or affinity, to cast spells,” Tourmaline said as we marched past the labs, Rael’s and my eyes fixed on the displays of levitation, shield conjuration, illumination, and the like.

“Like PipBucks or PipBeaks,” I commented.

“Yes,” Tourmaline admitted reluctantly, “But with the focus entirely on spellcasting. One specific subset of that is teleportation, which we’ve already perfected on a small scale but are working on improving the range of. Since the Consortium cut itself off entirely from the surface using an avalanche to bury the old facility, teleportation is the only way in or out. One day, perhaps, we’ll be able to teleport across the Commonwealth, or even across the sea, but for now the technology has its limits.”

“Not to derail the tour,” I said, “But I have a question.”

“Yes?” Tourmaline asked as she turned to face us.

“The researchers we’ve seen so far have all been unicorns or earth ponies, but earlier you mentioned the Ex-Enclave contribution to the department. Could we see something worked on by pegasi?” I asked.

“Something flight-related, perhaps?” Rael asked, taking my hint as I looked at him to back me up.

“Pegasi,” Tourmaline repeated somewhat nervously, “Yes, well, let’s see …”

“I think that should be fine, doctor,” 37-8 said, and Tourmaline visibly relaxed. “Perhaps our visitors would like to see the research being done on cloud control technology.”

“Of course! I can’t believe it slipped my mind!” said Tourmaline, rather too excitedly, I thought.

Doctor Tourmaline led us on a route that circled back around through areas we’d already been, then proceeded on to a new segment of the labs surrounding the central concourse and down two flights of stairs. I noticed that the farther we went, the more windows were blacked out, barring us from seeing inside. Whether that was because the labs were not in use or because there were things going on within that the Consortium didn’t want us to see, there was no telling without deviating from the tour. Whichever the case, it seemed suspicious to me.

The lab we arrived at was filled with ponies who seemed surprised to see us (even more so than most we’d passed). I saw at once why we’d descended to visit this lab; its ceiling was far higher than others we’d seen, and several clouds floated near the lights. On the ground were a gaggle of ponies in lab coats and jumpsuits, most of them pegasi, though it was an earth pony that held the device they were testing. Strapped to a battle saddle was a chunky rifle-like device with most of its innards visible where they weren’t covered with rounded white casings, a cable running across the pony’s back to a battery on the other side. The barrel ended with a bell-shaped nozzle, and rather than a single firing bit, there was an array of controls in front of the pony wearing the contraption.

“As you well know, only pegasi—and griffins,” Tourmaline said, nodding to Rael, “Can physically interact with clouds. We’re working here on technology to allow anypony to control the movement of clouds. A demonstration of the cloud direction device, please.”

The researchers hopped to their stations, grabbing devices for the measuring the success of the test as the pony wearing the contraption squared her shoulders and looked up at the clouds. At a signal from a pegasus in a lab coat, she turned several dials in front of her, altering the angle of the cloud direction device, and then clamped her jaw around the firing bit. A visible beam of faintly purple light emerged from the device’s barrel, stretching up to and stopping at one of the clouds overhead. Keeping her eyes upward, the mare took several cautious steps, and the cloud moved with her. Manipulating the firing bit with her tongue, the cloud direction device changed its angle and the cloud slowly descended. As she released the bit, the assembled gave a quick round of applause, stomping their hooves on the floor, before assembling to compare their measurements and record the outcome of the test.

“What do you think?” Tourmaline asked as she turned to face us.

“It’s interesting,” Rael spoke, “Though I’m not sure of the need, at least until it’s improved enough to move larger clouds more quickly.”

“We have so few pegasi, and many of them are needed elsewhere, and we cannot rely on the Commonwealth Weather Corps to always—” Tourmaline explained, but was cut off by a loud crashing sound that reverberated through the walls.

Alarms began blaring almost immediately, and portions of the walls lit up with warning lights.

“Wait here,” Doctor Tourmaline ordered before hurrying out into the hallway, dashing in the direction indicated by the lights on the hall’s wall. I trotted to the door and poked my head out, looking down the hall to see what was happening, but I saw only Tourmaline running past researchers who’d stopped in the hall and other ponies curiously poking their heads out to see what the commotion was about. Down the hall, one of the ponies that stepped out to peek at the hubbub was another copy of Ache. Apart from the white and silver Consortium jumpsuit she was wearing, she was identical to the pondroid I’d known in Equestria and the one I’d recently seen obliterated in New Pegasus.

“Where are you going?” 37-8 asked as I stepped out into the hall, intending to trot over and speak the Ache copy.

“I just want to talk to—” I said, but stopped as the Ache pondroid headed after Doctor Tourmaline.

I hurried out into the hallway myself and followed after her, not sure what to call out to get her attention. She wouldn’t recognize the name Ache had adopted in Equestria, or probably even the model code from which it’d been adapted. The Dashite Enclave called her Subject 1, but I doubted that she’d respond to that, either. Like 37-8, she doubtlessly had a numerical designation, but there was no way to know what it was. It probably started with 1, but that too was uncertain; even though the Dashites called her Subject 1, they’d also known the copy of 37-8 as Subject 33. I had to find some other way to get her attention, and that meant I had to be close to her.

I didn’t catch up to the Ache copy until she was at the point that the moving lights in the hallway converged upon, an open lab door that I followed her and Doctor Tourmaline through. The source of the crash and alarm was immediately apparent, for there was a vaguely star-shaped hole in the wall, exposing badly damaged pipes and mechanicals. What made the hole more impressive was that whatever had created it had done something similar to a stack of cement blocks and the thick metal wall placed in front of it. Tracing the blast back, my eyes landed on the source: a weapon about the size of a minigun, but looking nothing like one.

Its shape was similar to that of a magical energy rifle, but much longer; and the barrel, though blocky, was broken up by several gaps along its length. Through the gaps, I could see a smaller barrel that was surrounded by the blocks, which continued to glow a dull blue that faded as the weapon cooled down. Inserted on one side was a microspark pack—a larger version of microspark cells that I’d only ever seen used to power heavy machinery before—but there was also an ammunition drum mounted on top, making it difficult to tell whether it was a magical energy weapon or a ballistic one. In theory, a single pony could carry it, and it had the mechanisms necessary to mount it to a battle saddle. In reality, however, it could only really be wielded by a pony in a suit of power armor. For the purposes of testing, it was mounted on an adjustable arm bolted to the floor.

Scattered around the lab were pegasus, earth pony, and unicorn researchers, though the numbers were weighted toward the former. One pegasus, a stallion with a gray coat and frizzy orange mane, was getting chewed out by Doctor Tourmaline as I entered the room.

“—you think this was a good idea?” the department head said just shy of a shout. “We have facilities for testing these things that don’t endanger the Consortium’s infrastructure!”

“We were under strict orders not to leave the lab today due to …” the pegasus replied, frowning as his eyes lit upon Rael and me.

“Our visitors,” Tourmaline said in surprise as she too spotted us before regaining her composure. “What are you doing here? I thought I told you to wait.”

“I just wanted to speak to …” I said, gesturing toward the Ache duplicate as she examined the damage left by the prototype weapon.

“Unit One,” Tourmaline said, blanching as she noticed the pondroid’s presence.

“Dash Six,” 1-6 finished for her. “Impressive progress, Doctor Thundering Tempest, but Doctor Tourmaline is right. You should have waited to test until you had the appropriate facilities to do so.”

“Thank you, One-dash-six,” the pegasus said with a bow.

“Now, let’s not leave our guests wondering what it is they are looking at,” 1-6 said to Tourmaline and 37-8 as she left, giving me a brief but curious glance before trotting out of the lab.

“Of course. The Advanced Systems Department also contains our weapons division,” Tourmaline said, and a note of contrition seemed to creep into her voice. “Doctor Thundering Tempest, perhaps you’d like to explain what you’re doing here with the MEIRPAL.”

“Mare pal?” I asked, unfamiliar with the term.

“The Magical Energy Induction Rapid Projectile Accelerator Lance, or MEIRPAL for short, is our latest innovation in weapons technology,” Thundering Tempest said proudly as he trotted over to the weapon in the center of the room. “We’ve combined the power output of magical energy weapons with the impact potential of ballistic weapons to create something new and unique. By driving magical energy through the coils around the barrel, we can propel the slug within at many times what would be possible with gunpowder, to devastating effect—as you can see.”

“I can see,” I said, looking at the hole while Thundering Tempest crooned. “It’s awfully big, isn’t it? Just what would it be useful for?”

“This is merely the first prototype,” Thundering Tempest said. “We would want to reduce the size and weight before putting it into production. Something of this scale could be useful against dragons, should any appear, or against some of the nastier, larger robots left behind by the old RoBronco sites. The ones our synthetic agents could be given to defend themselves would be much smaller.”

“Uh-huh,” I said as I looked at the metal slab the MEIRPAL had been used to target, and I thought about how similar it appeared to the hull plates of the Zephyrus or the Eurus.

The weapons division had clearly not been on the schedule, and we weren’t shown any more of the Consortium’s military experiments before leaving the Advanced Systems Department. The rest of the day was spent much the same as the one before, wandering around the concourse, speaking to Consortium members, and observing their lives. After the MEIRPAL, I couldn’t help but wonder what else in the Consortium was being hidden from us.

Mercifully, that mystery wasn’t the only thing on my mind (or I might’ve gone crazy); the other topic that plagued my thoughts was Ache’s duplicate. My interaction with another of her copies in New Pegasus hadn’t gone well, and the one here in the Consortium seemed to have no more inclination to speak to me. Why would she, and why had it become such a big deal to me that she did? She wasn’t the same Ache I’d known, but I still wanted to share what I knew about the pondroid she’d been modeled on. It was to my great surprise, therefore, that the next morning I was greeted at the door not by 37-8, but by 1-6.

“Good morning, Doc,” she said as I stood frozen in shock. “I will be leading the tour today.”

“Is there a reason?” I asked, finding my voice. “Did something happen to Thirty-seven-dash-eight?”

“Thirty-seven-dash-eight is fine. Please, come with me,” 1-6 said as she trotted off down the hall in the direction of Rael’s cell before I’d left my own.

Once Rael joined us, we followed the same path as we had on the days before, to the elevator that took us deeper into the Consortium.

“You are One-dash-six?” I asked as we descended beneath the Advanced Systems Department’s concourse, confirming that this was the same pondroid we’d encountered the day before.

“Correct,” 1-6 replied, then raised a hoof to forestall the further questions I was about to ask. “There will be time to talk later. First, I am to show you the Longevity Department.”

The setup for the Longevity Department was much the same as the previous two departments we’d visited. Labs ringed a concourse, though I noticed this time that the walls seemed whiter, fresher, newer. We were also submitted to another decontamination, though this time it seemed to be the normal procedure, and the security booth was staffed by more than just a single pony in sunglasses. In keeping with the theme of the rest of the Consortium, the door highlights and lab coat/jumpsuit accents here were yellow. As the most medical of the departments we’d seen so far, it only made sense.

“Our work here is part of the original mandate,” Doctor Nightingale, head of the Longevity Department, said as she led us around, with the almost reverential air that the others who’d mentioned the mandate had spoken of it as well. “Robert Horse charged us to find a way to extend ponies’ lives, indefinitely if possible. Unfortunately, he was unable to leave Equestria in time to avoid the dropping of the megaspells, and so could not benefit himself from our research.”

“You succeeded, then?” Rael asked.

“In achieving immortality? No, at least not in any way that you could call the existence that follows treatment an acceptable extension of your life. The Ex-Enclave scientists brought their ideas for preservation, which could extend your life, certainly, but such preservation would be imperfect. You’d become a shell of what you once were, of which their President Snowmane is a fine example,” Nightingale said as she levitated a mask and goggles onto her face and tucked her long violet mane under a paper cap. After checking that we were likewise attired, she lead us through an operation room so we could witness up close ponies using mechanical arms and lasers to perform a surgery. “There are some who still think Ministry Mare Twilight Sparkle’s dream to turn us all into alicorns could be the way, but the data we have on the Impelled Metamorphosis Potion proves it was only ever a pipe dream. Any chance of success would wipe away the characteristics that define you.”

I kept my mouth shut about what I’d seen in Equestria, where much of what Nightingale said was true. Even so, the alicorns of Stable 137 had managed to regain some of their old memories and personalities back. There was also what they’d told me about the growing power of the Goddess in the south of Equestria attempting to take over their minds, and I’d rather not give the scientists of the Consortium the idea of creating alicorns only to have them succumb to the Goddess.

“We continue our quest for immortality,” Doctor Nightingale continued, “And in the process we’ve discovered many ways to heal the body and prevent untimely death. We have new medicines, potions, and procedures. We’ve cured many illnesses that were previously thought to be incurable. Every step takes us closer, bit by bit, to extending pony life indefinitely, and yet we always have further to reach in order to fulfill our mandate.”

“And what do you do with these breakthroughs?” I asked as Nightingale led us out of the operations theater.

“Why, we use them to improve the lives of everypony in the Consortium,” she said as she removed her protective gear, revealing her black coat again. “We have here the healthiest population since pre-War Equestria.”

“What about the rest of the Commonwealth?” Rael asked.

“Ah, yes, of course,” Nightingale stumbled, “Well, for one thing, our studies have been focused on pony physiology, and as the Griffin Commonwealth is mostly—well—griffins … Also, we haven’t yet received approval from the Trustees to begin releasing our research to the public, but one day …”

What followed was a series of excuses, many of which Doctor Nightingale didn’t seem to believe herself. She quickly got back on track and led us through the rest of the tour of the Longevity Department, which was impressive, but most of what she said went over my head. My medical training had mostly been in how to treat sick foals and address injuries incurred in the Stable, and my experience since then had been largely exclusive to battlefield wounds. I didn’t have the education necessary to comprehend the nuances of disease treatments and rejuvenation therapies (even if my name did suggest medical expertise and I still wore some scraps of my yellow doctor’s coat), so I just nodded along. It certainly sounded good.

Once Doctor Nightingale had taken us through everything she wanted to demonstrate, we were turned loose again to explore the concourse at the core of the Longevity Department. I played along at first, meeting with and observing the residents, but it was quickly becoming repetitive. After a while, I decided to forgo continued “spontaneous” meetings and sat in the gardens instead, looking at the carefully manicured park the Consortium had created to give its residents a simulacrum of the outside world. Well, not the outside world I knew; the one that had existed before the megaspells and what they claimed to be working to build again.

“Why did you wish to speak with me yesterday?” 1-6 asked without preamble after I’d been sitting on a bench for half an hour without moving, other than to change my view of the surroundings.

Up in the tree that stretched its boughs over me, Rael cracked an eyelid to observe the conversation. The three of us were alone in a secluded part of the gardens, the sound of other ponies conversing a faint mumble through the greenery and often overwhelmed by the sound of an artificial waterfall. I turned to look at 1-6, who stood beside the bench and a bit back in order to remain unobtrusive.

“You remind me of another pony I knew in Equestria,” I replied, “Actually, another pondroid—”

“Synthetic lifeform,” 1-6 corrected me, though it seemed more out of habit than that she’d taken offense.

“Sure, synthetic lifeform,” I conceded. “In appearance, she was identical to you, so I can only assume that you were based off of her in that, or in other ways. I wanted to find out if you knew anything about her.”

1-6 said something, but she said it so softly that it was drowned out by the hum of the lawnmower another pondroid pushed past as he trimmed the grass.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” I asked.

“What was her name?” 1-6 asked.

“Her designation was P-8CH, but her friends knew her as Ache,” I said.

“What was she like?”

“She had a kind heart,” I replied, “There was another … synthetic lifeform—”

“Identical?” 1-6 asked quickly.

“No, a unicorn stallion. Mister Bucke, he called himself. He had nothing but hatred for organic life, and he raised the rebellion that forced the RoBronco researchers to flee Vanhoover. He betrayed Ache and turned her over to the earlier models, who also hated ponykind, and they made her do terrible things before wiping her memories. It didn’t break her, though. I didn’t think anything could.”

“You knew her well,” 1-6 said, appearing uneasy.

“Yes,” I replied without hesitation.

“Tell me about her, about your time together,” 1-6 said.

When it was time for Rael and me to return to our cells, 1-6 led us out of the gardens. I hadn’t been able to tell her everything about Ache, but I’d relayed most of the story of when she was my companion in the Equestrian Wasteland. One thing I hadn’t told her was what had eventually become of Ache, and she didn’t want to talk about it anymore as we made our way back up to the detention level, so I held my tongue. Though she’d done well to hide it, I could tell she’d been enraptured by the story of Ache and was certain she’d want to hear the rest, so I was surprised when she didn’t come to take us on the next day’s tour. Instead, 37-8 had returned, and I began to wonder if the day before had been a fluke and we wouldn’t see 1-6 again.

The final day of the tour took us the deepest we’d been yet, to the Synthetic Life Department. The fourth department was as shiny and new as the detention level, the stark white walls seeming unnatural. Orange was the color here that marked members of the department and their environs, which I found odd given that 1-6 had been wearing a white and silver jumpsuit; I assumed she was part of the Synthetic Life Department. Red I’d seen plenty of as a sign for the Engineering Department, so I had no idea what silver was supposed to symbolize.

The pony we were introduced to who would show us around was Doctor Fulcrum, an earth pony stallion with a coat of dappled gray and white, a silvery mane, and a very colorful taste in bowties. Though each of the ponies we’d met so far had been proud of their departments, Fulcrum seemed especially certain that his was the shining star of the Consortium and superior to all the others, even if it wasn’t part of the original mandate—something he scoffed at when I mentioned it.

“Now, this is where the magic happens,” Fulcrum announced as he led us to a wide observation window. “Not literally, of course. All magical parts of this procedure were completed early in the process. This isn’t an arcane ritual, it’s fabrication.”

Down below, Rael and I observed the ongoing construction of a pondroid. The adamantine skeleton had already been constructed and was splayed out within a hoop. Organs had also been added, looking bizarre due to the lack of blood (or whatever synthetic equivalent pondroids had) within them. Mechanical arms slowly passed over the body, extruding muscle material and stretching it across the surface.

“Unfortunately, none of the SLs currently being fabricated are ready for activation today, or you’d be in for a real treat,” Fulcrum said. “I know it may not be as glamorous as the creation of new models, but our work here in Synthetic Lifeform Production is every bit as important. It’s because of us that we’re able to continue sending new SLs into the Commonwealth in spite of the Dashite Enclave persisting in terminating every one they come across. We now have over forty models in constant production to replace our losses.”

“If I may ask, why are you making synthetics in the first place?” I said.

“Even the finest mechanical marvel cannot match the perfection and complexity of a living being,” Fulcrum replied with what seemed to be a prepared speech. “It’s the natural end state of robotics to create synthetic lifeforms that can accomplish all we can, but without all of our limitations.”

“I can understand that, but why create an army of them, and most identical copies? I fail to see the scientific merit of creating them en masse.”

“We created them because we could. We produce them because of what they are,” Fulcrum expounded. “Lifeforms with perfect loyalty and limits beyond we of flesh and bone. Who wouldn’t want that? You, a pony who experienced the horrors of the Equestrian Wasteland, must surely understand the value of pony life. After the megaspells, we’ve become an endangered species living in a world that wants nothing more than to make us an extinct species. We cannot afford to risk pony lives—they must be protected—but there are risky and dangerous tasks that must be done in order to restore civilization and return us to a safe position once again. Far better that those risks be placed upon the shoulders of synthetics who can bear them than us who are more likely to be crushed beneath the weight.”

I was about to give a retort, calling out Fulcrum for using the pondroids as slaves and ask him how blowing up crowds in New Pegasus protected pony life; but before I opened my mouth, 1-6 stepped around a corner and everypony’s attention turned to her.

“Sorry to interrupt the tour,” she said, “But I need to borrow Doc.”

“Ah, One-dash-six, the oldest synthetic lifeform still in service,” Doctor Fulcrum said to me. “After the Dashites terminated the first five instances of her model, it was decided to keep her here in the safety of the Consortium, the closest to the original we could get.”

“Of course you can take Doc with you,” he said to 1-6. “The whims of the Trustees are as inscrutable as ever, but I expect him to be returned to me once you’ve finished with him.”

“Of course,” 1-6 said with a slight bow before motioning for me to follow her.

With slight trepidation, I did so. Fulcrum’s mention of the Trustees made me wonder if they had decided to meet with me early, perhaps having concluded that releasing me back into the Commonwealth wasn’t worth the risk of me telling others about what I’d seen. I held out hope that 1-6 just wanted to hear more about Ache and hadn’t been able to swing being my tour guide for a second day in a row, but I kept myself alert. She led me through the pristine halls of the Synthetic Life Department at a brisk pace, and after passing through the maze of hallways and down a flight of stairs, she ushered me into a room. As I stepped inside, I saw that the room was empty apart from the monitors and displays of lights along the walls and two egg-shaped chairs in the center of the floor that faced each other. 1-6 placed her hoof against a panel beside the door as she entered and a chime sounded.

“What is this?” I asked as I kept my distance without making it obvious I was doing so.

“It was discovered that a synthetic lifeform is more stable if they are able to experience the memories of the organic lifeform they were modeled on,” 1-6 said as she trotted around behind one of the egg chairs. “This is one of the rooms used by the scientists to share their memories with the synthetics they create.”

“Okay,” I said, “But why are we here?”

“I have a confession to make, Doc, but you must not share it without my consent,” 1-6 said as she stared into my eyes.

“I promise,” I said, choosing to trust her. She didn’t seem to have anything sinister planned, and she looked so genuine (and so much like Ache) that I couldn’t resist.

“When I saw you two days ago, I recognized you,” 1-6 said. “Some of us have discovered how to share memories remotely, so long as we are of the same model. I saw what One-dash-thirty-nine saw when you thought she was your friend, and when you came here, I experienced it for myself. She meant a lot to you. I want to know everything you know about Unit Zero—about Ache. I want to experience your memories with her, to understand our Mother.”

“So you did know about her,” I said.

“Only what the scientists told us, which wasn’t much. Besides, they only ever knew her in the lab before they had to flee Equestria,” 1-6 replied. “There’s something in all of us that knows her, though. Maybe something left in our programming. She was the first and we’re all based upon her; in many ways, she’s a Mother to all synthetic equines. You understand how important she is to us?”

“I understand,” I said, and examined the chairs. “I’ll still have my memories, won’t I? I’ve already lost too much of my life to memory extraction.”

“The chairs only share memories, they don’t remove them from the host.”

“Let’s do this, then,” I said, steeling myself.

I laid down in the thickly padded chair that 1-6 directed me to, and she took the other. In the dome above my head was a wired helmet that descended onto my skull once I was settled in.

“Just think about Ache, and the memories will come,” 1-6 said once there was a helmet atop her head as well.

I thought back seven years, to my time in Vanhoover and Stalliongrad and the barely two months I’d known Ache. Memories came flooding back from when we’d first met at Harmony Tower to when she’d been shot at Prophet Square, memories of all the time we’d traveled together and fought against the Northern Lights Coalition. Flashes of sight, sound, and smell existed just beyond my conscious senses, and I tried to remain where I was and not be seduced into falling into a world of my recollections. I looked across from me at 1-6, a rapturous expression on her face as her synthetic eyes twitched rapidly beneath their lids, experiencing months of memories in a matter of minutes. The memories abated on their own, after a while, and 1-6 pushed the cap gently up from her head.

“Thank you, Doc,” she said reverently as I removed my own cap and rose from the chair. “I have something else to ask you.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“I believe based on your memories that I can trust you with this,” she said as she looked up and fixed me in place with her eyes. “Do not tell the Trustees about this, and do not tell the Dashites about this place. Not yet. With this new revelation about Unit Zero, we have much to think about.”

“Of course,” I said. “But if I have to keep any more secrets, I’ll be liable to burst.”

“We will speak again,” 1-6 said sincerely. “That I can promise you.”

What is it about us that makes us want to fight? It’s not universally rational nor is it isolated to psychopaths. All griffins—and ponies and zebras, clearly—seem to have an innate desire for conflict within them. How else can one explain why so many griffins have chosen to turn raider when the Commonwealth did not even bear the brunt of the megaspells? Why did so many griffins gladly sign up to be mercenaries in the zebra-pony war? Why did we tear apart the ancient griffin kingdom with infighting? When we see another, we want to fight them, but it’s not an immutable fact that we will fight them. We can be different. We must be different. I’ve tried to live my life as peacefully as I could, at least when it comes to other griffins and to ponies. How then am I to react to a threat leveled not only against me, but against those I care for; those I am responsible for? With what violence can I answer such a threat? Do I do nothing and become a martyr or merely another dead griffin? Do I fly out to meet them (metaphorically, of course), and so tempt myself to become the same? How can I walk the line when survival is at stake if I make the wrong decision on one side, and my conscience if I make the wrong decision on the other side? Let my actions speak for my character as it is, and my words for what I wish it to be must come after.

1-6 spoke no more of our discussion and the act of sharing memories after we left the room, and she returned me to Doctor Fulcrum. Nothing of much interest happened the rest of that day. I saw more of the Synthetic Life Department and the concourse it was built around, but even more so than in the Advanced Systems Department, I felt that something was being hidden from me; or at least that I was directed away from something. The fact that 1-6 had revealed there were things the scientists of the Consortium didn’t know about their own pondroids was a hint that everything was not as it seemed. Exactly what that would mean, I didn’t yet know.

Another night was spent in my cell, but nopony arrived when morning came. To occupy myself, I flipped through my two copies of the Book of Rok. The previous night, I’d read the last passage that Rok had written before the raider attack on Dawn that had taken his life. Though I hadn’t read everything before it, I’d read enough to feel I’d completed the book. Much like with the Consortium, I felt there was more to the Book of Rok than just the surface. Yes, it was the journal of a flightless griffin trying to survive in a degenerating Commonwealth as well as a religious text for the Rokkists, but there was something else to it, especially in the later sections of the book—something important that would reveal itself if I could only manage to fit all the pieces together.

When the door to my cell did finally open in the late morning, it was not 1-6 or 37-8 that greeted me, but a unicorn who introduced himself as Grotto Grail and replied in the negative when I asked if he was synthetic. Much like 1-6, he wore a jumpsuit with silver markings. Rael was not allowed to accompany me this time; for my meeting with the Trustees, I was alone with Grotto Grail in the elevator. The cylindrical lift plunged deeper than ever before, and I began to suspect with annoyance that I’d been misled again and there was a fifth concourse I hadn’t been told about. If there was, the elevator never reached it, for it stopped shortly after leaving the Synthetic Life level. Grotto Grail led me out and down brilliantly white hallways to an audience chamber.

The chamber, in keeping with the Consortium’s architectural style, was circular. Ahead of me, the center sloped downwards, while the floor on the edge of the room sloped upward, creating a recession in the middle of the room into which was thrust a peninsula where the floor remained level, at the end of which was a single chair and podium. Upon the wall at the far end of the recession formed by the differing slopes was the symbol of the Consortium, a circle that featured a spread-eagled pony with half a unicorn horn and a single pegasus wing, half the body mechanical and half flesh, with the Consortium’s motto around the outside of the circle: Preserve - Innovate - Redefine.

I took a seat at the end of the peninsula and looked slightly upward at the long, curved table that gradually rose from the elevated level, behind which three ponies were seated. On the left was a stocky earth pony stallion with a gray coat and a maroon mane and tail, a neatly-trimmed beard adorning his blocky face. On the wall behind him was the symbol of the Old Guard: half a cog with a dahlia in the center. In the middle was a slender unicorn mare with a yellow coat and a sweeping silvery-blue mane. The symbol on the wall behind her—a compass whose points touched the edges of a mechanical pony skull with glowing eyes—marked her out as the representative of the Synthesists, the descendants of those who had come from Vanhoover. The final pony was a pegasus mare with blue-green coat and orange mane, the symbol behind her that of the Ex-Enclave: a cloud with two lightning bolts surrounded by a ring of ten stars. All of them were wearing lab coats similar to those of the department heads, but with silver markings and a substantial amount of silver around the collar.

“Doc, you sit before the Triumvirate of Trustees,” the mare in the middle said. “As you’ve no doubt gathered over the past four days, we represent the factions that the Consortium divides itself into based on lineage, research area, and philosophy. Together, we govern and give the Consortium direction. I am Emerald Wake, and my colleagues are Rosecrest and Spectral Dervish.” She motioned to the ponies at her right and left respectively as she introduced them. “After seeing what the Consortium has to offer, what do you think?”

“It’s certainly … impressive,” I answered hesitantly, mindful of the ponies wearing armor with faceless helmets standing at the edge of the room, ostensibly to protect the Trustees.

“But?” Emerald Wake asked, prompting me for what I’d left unsaid.

“You’re very isolated,” I said, “It’s much like with Stables and Lockboxes I’ve seen before, though many in those cases had an excuse to be secured because they had limited resources to support themselves. From what I’ve seen here, the Consortium has no lack of resources and possesses many things that could benefit the griffins and ponies of the Commonwealth. Yet you choose not to interact with them, at least not in any helpful way.”

“We will emerge one day,” Rosecrest said. “It’s part of the original mandate that in the case of societal collapse, we are responsible for returning civilization to the resulting wasteland. There will be a time when we emerge to restore the wasteland, but it has not come yet.” As he finished, the stallion gave a pointed look to his two colleagues.

“I retract my comparison,” I said. “You’re not like a Stable, you’re more like the Grand Pegasus Enclave. You have the resources and technology to help those who struggle to live in a post-megaspell world, but you choose to stay aloof and look after yourselves while finding comfort in the idea that ‘someday’ you’ll do some good. Why did you ever leave the Enclave if you’re just going to act the same way?”

“Perhaps our predecessors shouldn’t have left,” retorted Spectral Dervish, who I’d addressed my last question to. “After all, what changed for any of their descendants? How different is New Pegasus from the Enclave, really?”

“They haven’t hidden themselves above the clouds. They interact with and help others in the Iron Valley.”

“Only because it is necessary for their survival,” Spectral Dervish said cynically. “They need the fruits of those in their little empire more than their followers need them. And how much do they really share? Have you ever seen a griffin in cerulean power armor? Are their cloudship reactors used to power more than just their own city? The reason you’re here, why you sought the Consortium, isn’t because of the technology we haven’t shared with the Commonwealth. So let’s have it out: what is your real accusation?”

“I witnessed an attack by your pondroids on New Pegasus, and I’ve been given to understand it’s not an isolated incident. Why?” I asked.

“New Pegasus is a threat, not only to the Consortium, but to the resumption of civilization,” Emerald Wake said. “It is the reason we decided to use the breakthroughs we made in synthetic life for so banal a task as infiltration and intimidation, and a major reason for why we are not yet ready to emerge and share our discoveries with the wider world. New Pegasus, like the Grand Pegasus Enclave before it, and Equestria before that, is a military dictatorship. It may have the appearance of democracy, but just like with the Enclave and old Equestria, it's a facade. Are you familiar with New Pegasus’s governmental structure?”

“I know the basics,” I replied.

“Who do you think the Executive Panel are? They are the high-ranking officers of the Dashite Enclave. The military runs New Pegasus, with the Senate and the Assemblies only serving as sideshows to convince the masses they’re represented fairly. The only civilian with any power in the government is President Snowmane, and he’s far from an impartial actor.”

“The very same President Snowmane who once led the Grand Pegasus Enclave now leads New Pegasus,” Spectral Dervish added. “He’s nothing more than an actor who had to choose a smaller stage because his popularity in Equestria’s Enclave declined. And, mark my words, one day the Executive Panel will finally have enough of him and off him to place one of their own in the presidency.”

“The Trustees decided that we cannot begin rebuilding civilization while New Pegasus remains a powerful force in the Iron Valley,” Rosecrest said, “Lest they co-opt our efforts through force and our technology is used to ill effect.”

“Through the actions of our synthetic lifeforms, we have attempted to curb New Pegasus’s spreading power and force it to dissolve, but our efforts have been inadequate thus far. New Pegasus continues to spread across the Iron Valley, until now we have little choice but to go to war with them,” Emerald Wake concluded.

“I can’t accept that,” I said. “Maybe some of what you say about New Pegasus is true, but your synthetics attack innocents.”

“There are no innocents in a tyrannical regime,” Spectral Dervish said firmly.

“It was a strategic decision to try chipping away at ponies’ and griffins’ confidence in New Pegasus’s protection, but as I said, it hasn’t been effective,” Emerald Wake added. “A new plan is required, but before we progress, we must be certain that we’ve exhausted all other avenues. The Dashites terminate our SLs on sight, but they would not do so with you. That is why we wished to speak to you. We need you to deliver a message to New Pegasus.”

“What kind of message?” I asked suspiciously.

“An ultimatum,” Rosecrest said morosely, his face twisted in a sour expression.

“New Pegasus must disband within a week, and the Dashite Enclave must give up its power and abandon the cloudships which they’ve built their settlement around. If they don’t, a state of active conflict will exist between them and the Consortium,” Emerald Wake said.

“Just what do you hope to accomplish with this?” I asked incredulously. “They’re never going to agree to those terms.”

“At least we will have tried,” Emerald Wake said imperiously. “And if they do surrender, then there will be no more bloodshed, and we can begin our work of resurrecting civilization aboveground. You know what we are capable of now that you have seen what the Consortium has to offer.”

I had a sinking feeling that her last statement was referring to both the potential the Consortium had to better the Commonwealth and the threat they could pose if they mustered all their weapons and their pondroid army. Little more of any consequence was said after that. They knew I would deliver their ultimatum, because if New Pegasus didn’t comply, they would strike whether or not I’d warned them of the consequences.

Grotto Grail led me back up through the Consortium and past the detention level, to a room where I was reunited with Rael. A ring of thrumming, slightly glowing trapezoids suspended from the ceiling and emerging from the floor awaited us, and after Rael and I stepped inside, we were teleported back to the surface, into the rubble field where we’d been ambushed days earlier. My weapons and saddlebags were waiting for me atop a mostly level boulder. I retrieved them before setting off back the way we’d come, to tell New Pegasus what we’d learned about the Consortium.

[Max Level Reached]
New Quest: Don’t Disintegrate the Messenger – Deliver the Consortium’s ultimatum to New Pegasus.
Small Guns +1 (143)
Speech +4 (119)
Survival +4 (89)