//------------------------------// // Episode 3.3: Contact // Story: Earth Without Us // by Starscribe //------------------------------// She walked. Archive couldn't have said how far she traveled, or how long she was on her hooves; only that she spent most of her time moving. It was a slow process. She had only an empty plastic bottle for water, so she had to be constantly on the alert for new streams and ponds, so as to refill. There was only one mercy: the land around Paradise Crater had never been developed. She had seen the natural wilderness, and even if the trees and streams could move, the location of the hills and boulders usually didn't. She would not get lost at least on this short trip. She didn't explore the dream again yet, though she did try some more physical practice. Flight was a complex skill, but she had memorized every Equestrian book on the subject. Unfortunately, flying was a skill best learned by practice and repetition, not just memorizing the most advanced techniques from textbooks. The most she ever managed to do was hover for a few seconds before inevitably crashing back to earth to be sore all over again. This was discouraging, but no more than anything else. Alex had already lost her world once, and she had been on her own before. Besides, she had all the time she needed to learn. Well, she would. Most of her "free" time was spent grazing the sparse prairie plants, which were equal parts unappetizing and nutritionally empty. She had probably lost five pounds by the time she arrived in Salt Lick City. Well, where Salt Lick City had been. Last time she had seen it, Salt Lick had been a thriving western settlement, the last bastion of civilization before the inhospitable wasteland of Nevada. Alex had visited on several occasions as part of her work with the HPI, and found the ponies to be enormously friendly, if a little eccentric in their beliefs. Whatever else might be said of the place, the city's many regular buildings had been a testament to the resourcefulness of its population, and the many farms that fed it always seemed to be prospering. That was not the city she arrived in. Alex found herself uneasy as she made her way through the countryside that had once been filled with thriving farmland. None of the wooden farmhouses were still standing, and the prairie had reclaimed the fields. As she got within a few miles the fields returned, but they weren't the fields she remembered. Uneven wooden fences separated drooping wheat and pale corn in uneven rows. The irrigation pipes were gone, the primitive tractors were gone. In fact, the only machinery she saw was a wooden plough, pulled by a lean-looking earth pony who stared openly at her as she passed. Alex waited patiently until he was at the end of a row, walking over to the edge of the fence and waving one hoof in a friendly way. "Afternoon, friend!" she called, trying to imitate the friendliness she remembered. "How are the crops doing?” He went from suspicious to hostile in an eye-blink. The brown earth pony muttered under his breath, hurrying away down the next row of the field. "Excuse me? Hello! I didn't mean..." He didn't stop. What language was that? She hadn't caught more than a few sounds, but they hadn't seemed familiar. Alex hurried on, hoping the farmer had just been in a bad mood. She saw a few more farmers along the road, and her attempts to communicate with each one were similarly unsuccessful. With each failed conversation Alex became more sure that the ponies were not speaking any language she knew—as impressive as it was horrifying. It had taken 500 years for English to change enough that most students had trouble reading Shakespeare. Another 500 years earlier, the English that Beowulf had been written in would be utterly indecipherable by speakers of Modern English. Modernization prior to the Event and the resulting standardization of English had retarded the drift, and minimized the dialectic fracturing that might have otherwise led to the birth of new tongues. Then the Event happened. Towns only a few hundred miles apart, previously united by road and internet and telephone, became as far in their way as cities on other continents had been before the Event. New dialects had already been forming, branching into new tongues. Only the HPI was spared—its original population had been microscopic, and its second generation had learned English as a rule. Old recordings, dated language-learning tools and pre-Event dictionaries had still been the definitive references before Archive died. If they had survived, as Isaac's dream led her to suspect, she guessed she would have no trouble talking to them. Unfortunately, she wasn't visiting the HPI. Alex had memorized books on linguistics, and reviewed a few of them in her mind as she walked. She also remembered the curses the farmers had used, though she doubted those would win her many friends in Salt Lick. The town itself came upon her so fast that she almost didn't notice. The terrain was very hilly, and so as she ascended the next of many hills, she could see the town beneath her very suddenly. It wasn't so much a town anymore as it was a collection of ramshackle buildings squatting in the ruins of a city greater than itself. Massive crumbled piles of stone and metal quietly rotted away, far too large to be moved without technology. She couldn't doubt that the city's inhabitants lacked technology. Their buildings were all either wood or brick, and none so far as she could see were taller than a few stories. Most of the roofs were thatched and covered with tar, though there was at least one building with sturdy tile instead. There were no streetlights, no paved roads, no power lines, not even any windmills. Like a Roman provincial village, she thought. Not a city, since Roman cities had often displayed remarkable understanding of mathematics and clever use of concrete and stone. Piles of rock and crumbling cement sat abandoned, the wreckage of a dead city that lorded over the infection festering in its corpse. She could hear voices near the front of the town, and a dense cluster of stalls packed with various fruits and vegetables, and filled with shouting voices. A marketplace was probably her best chance to find a refugee. She didn't run, since that might be seen as threatening. Even if she was a single pony, it wouldn't do to seem dangerous to a city whose people couldn't understand her. She attracted stares as she made it onto the town's main thoroughfare, and they only got worse when an elderly-looking earth pony mare extended a hoof towards her and said something in an obviously questioning manner. Alex took a second to take her in—coat pale with age, face wrinkled, even her cutie mark faded. Like most of the ponies here, she was completely naked, though she did have a cloth bag hanging from her neck. "I can't understand that language. Do you know any English?" The whole crowd fell silent. Ponies backed away from her, doors shut, windows slammed closed. The pony herself clutched at her purse, and hurried away as fast as her aging hooves could carry her. Whispers followed Alex all the way into the marketplace, along with a slowly growing crowd. They kept their distance—none got closer than twenty meters or so. "Seriously!" She turned around, surveying the crowd. Close to a hundred ponies in all had found their way around her by the time she neared the marketplace. They were packed in so close that she doubted she could've gotten away. "One of you must be a refugee! Someone has to understand me!" If any of them did, they showed no sign. That was when a guard stepped forward. She could tell he was a guard from the sturdy-looking armor on his breast, as well as the mace he levitated in the air beside him. He said something to her, but of course she didn't understand. Alex might not know their language, but she did know ponies. She lowered herself a little, spreading her back legs and flattening her ears, then held still. She spoke very quietly, not looking up at the guard. "I don't want to fight. I just want to find someone to talk to. That's all." The first guard was soon joined by several others. Only one was a unicorn—the rest were all earth ponies, with only a red-cloth vest to mark their position. A sword had been crudely stitched onto the vest. They surrounded her, six sturdy-looking males with closely-cut manes and similarly harsh expressions. They whispered to one another, but of course Alex couldn't understand them. The crowd continued to watch, at least a hundred ponies all taking a break from their day to stare at Alex. She held still and every now and then she asked, "Does anyone understand me? Just nod if you do—I'll see it. None of these others will know." A little pegasus in a brown robe landed in the crowd, cantering up to the unicorn with something in its mouth. A scroll? Alex watched, though she kept herself still. The young pegasus circled around her once, her voice obviously curious. One of the guards responded sternly, and she retreated out of their circle, though not so far as the watching crowd. The unicorn, meanwhile, had unrolled the scroll and was holding it up as he advanced toward her. His horn started glowing a little brighter, and every few seconds he would look up from the scroll and stare at her. Magic built around him, the magic of a spell. His words were suddenly familiar—Equestrian! He was reading a combat spell—something to put her to sleep, by the sound of it. She didn't wait long enough to analyze. "Wait!" High Unicorn was not a conversational language, not even in Equestria. In her whole time there, Alex had never heard a pony speak it who wasn't casting a spell. That didn't mean the words were magic themselves—after all, if that were true then unicorns wouldn't have been Equestria's primary spellcasters. The unicorn jerked to a halt, staring at her in shock. His nearest companion, a black earth pony with rusting chain-mail around him instead of cloth, said something harsh. Constructing sentences in High Unicorn was a difficult affair. There was no human language equivalent Alex had ever encountered—it wasn't just tonal, but melodic. It relied on the perfect pitch that seemed almost universal to ponies, along with a rhythm and rhyming scheme and who knew how many other rules. Alex did her best to string words together, according to the proper form. "This nightflyer wishes a friendship to last a thousand years. She lowers her head in respect to Celestia and honors the law. No banishment waits for one with her heart in harmony." The unicorn dropped his scroll. His mouth opened, but he only stammered. "Confusion... impossible... time..." He said each word as though it were part of a spell, and indeed his horn seemed to glow a little differently with each one. The guards retreated from her, fear and awe on their faces. They formed up together about twenty feet away, still well-within the watching crowd. Equestria had translation spells, spells that could be worked into physical runes. They had to be powered by a unicorn, of course, or else she would need to get the assistance of a power beyond herself. Are you there, Keeper? Her hooves were on the ground. I'm a bat now, and bats live in caves. Can you hear me, mother? No response. As the guards deliberated, Alex cleared a single patch of dirt with one hoof, wiping away the smudges and smears of traffic. She picked up a twig from the ground nearby and started to draw, tracing into the ground. Translation was mind magic, incredibly complex and delicate. She couldn't make any mistakes, or she might very well melt her own brain. Could she come back to life from a spell like that? The little pegasus took off again, flying away between the buildings. The unicorn and the guard with real armor remained close, while the others set about dispersing the crowd. She ignored them, only pausing in her work to clear off more ground to draw. The unicorn continued to stare. He didn't ask her anything else, and she didn't stop to volunteer. Whatever they had been planning, Alex had disrupted. But where had the pegasus gone to do? She learned about an hour later, around the time she was finishing her spell. The crowd was gone by then, the marketplace practically deserted. The vendors had gathered and shut their stalls, giving her dirty looks until they were out of sight. What citizens there were kept their distance from the nearly-empty place, either by choice or with a little encouragement from the guards. Eventually a new pony approached—another unicorn, though she had a very different look about her than the guard. She towered over Alex, tall and lean and mature, with wide cloth wrapped a little way around her almost like a sash, though it was green instead of red like the guards’. She wasn't alone either, but flanked by four more guards ponies, though all four were pegasi with lances mounted to metal armor. It was a mismatched sort of armor, no two pieces alike. The soldiers that had been watching Alex all bowed in respect as she approached, even the armored one. On reflex Alex did the same, though she didn't have the posture right so much as she just flattened herself to the dirt. The pony chuckled at her reaction, one corner of her mouth turning up in a smile. Alex couldn't know what she was saying, so she waited until the guards stood up again to do the same. She held relatively still as she spoke to the unicorn and the earth pony with his chain mail, listening to every word and watching their gestures. Even without a translation spell, she would eventually memorize each of their sounds, and be able to associate them with actions and real objects. The unicorn approached, gazing down at the diagram with an expression of confusion, then surprise. She said something to Alex, but of course she couldn't understand. "To empower my spell is to open the door of friendship between our nations," she said, gesturing down at the diagram. "Open in your magic the doorway of the mind, and I will freely share my wisdom with anypony." The tall pony's expression transformed again, and briefly she seemed almost awed. She was also far more competent than the guard, because she soon responded in kind. "Though the diamond dog burrows, it hoards only out of greed. It doesn't understand the beauty of the gems it discovers." Alex didn't miss a beat. "The beaver knows where to find a home. She builds not just for herself, but in changing the river she makes homes for other animals too. In her skill is the engineering of nature." For a moment as she sang, Alex pictured Sunset's face. What would the Alicorn think of her attempt at speaking this particular language? "How comprehend unassailable sight forbidden?" She shook her head. Of course, there was no easy way to explain the problems with that sentence, not while actually using the esoteric language herself. Alex pointed down at the diagram, then up to the unicorn. "Your magic leads the way to where all storms become still and all stars show the path." The unicorn said something to the guard, then lowered her horn towards the diagram. As clumsy as her language might be, she seemed to know where to touch the diagram, providing the little surge of power the spell needed. Mind magic was quite inexpensive—brains were relatively small organs, and used only tiny amounts of chemical energy in their operation. Of course, it was also terribly easy to permanently destroy one with even a minor miscalculation. The diagram began to glow, taking on the same pale greenish light that the mare had manifested. It swelled around them both, fading from the dirt even as it wrapped around them. The guards retreated out of the way, watching with obvious fear. Alex was not destroyed. She felt the connection the instant it formed, the bond of symbiotic exchange between herself and the noble unicorn mare. The language-centers in their minds became entwined, and would remain so as long as the spell lasted. The whole world seemed to come into focus. Alex heard the same sounds, but suddenly they were associated with meaning. One of the guards was yelling. "Lady Governor, are you alright? Should I have this pony killed for deceiving you? I would happily do it myself." It was the armored pony, the one with a single vest. "No deception," Alex said, using the words the spell gave her instead of the language of unicorn magic. "A translation spell. No harm." "Indeed." The voice had not changed, yet now the sounds were recognizable by their meaning. "What are you, stranger? The city watch reported an outcast had arrived, and you dress like one. Wearing their strange clothing as the outcast often do." She was looking at the exploration harness. Alex didn't correct her, just as she didn't directly meet her eyes. The deference all these other ponies showed seemed practically religious, and she wasn't about to test it. The term outcast had other meaning, meaning the spell communicated. It meant someone cast adrift along the ocean of time, someone with a strange language and strange customs. Someone to be hated and feared who would be a prisoner in their own body unable to use their powers effectively. It meant the same thing she had always meant when she said "refugee," but with an underlying hatred instead of pity. "Well? Did your spell fail already?" "No." She looked away briefly, deliberating. She could lie to these ponies, manipulate their ignorance and her Equestrian knowledge to fool them into thinking she wasn't a refugee. After a few days of repeating the translation spell, she would probably have heard and used enough of this language to get away with its conversational form. Long ago... who even knew how many years now, Archive had impersonated a refugee to find out what happened to the most vulnerable. She had discovered horrifying abuse as a result, which she never would've found in any other way. "I am an outcast," she said. "But I learned the way of magic before I was... sent." "Are you certain of that?" The unicorn narrowed her eyes, glaring intently at her. "I am not aware of any outcast with knowledge like yours. You speak as one formally educated. How many years did you spend at the Academia?" "What would I have to gain by pretending? I was born into another world, a world far away. I have only recently been reborn—I'm a different species now, I don't understand my new powers very well and I don't know what happened to my family." She spoke with complete conviction, because she spoke the truth. She didn't mention that the species and world she had left behind probably weren't the ones the noble mare was imagining. "Captain, could you and your men give us some space? I wish to have a private word with this pony." He saluted to her with one hoof, and the guards spread out, moving off about a hundred feet in every direction and keeping everypony away from them. The unicorn advanced on her, looming over head. "Listen very carefully pony, for I will not repeat myself. An outcast is exactly what you do not wish to be. I know you only misspoke, that given a truer chance to examine your memories you will remember differently. The life waiting for an outcast is a brutal and short one." She leaned in closer, her head inches from Alex’s oversized bat ears. "The Nameless Power demands the blood of every outcast. In times past you would have been loaded into a slave caravan, and probably starved during your trip far to the north to the place of offering, where you would be given to his Nameless City to be consumed." "The King in his great wisdom has bequeathed a Bloodgate unto Avenio, so if you are an outcast you will skip the journey. Instead of months to escape, you will walk less than a mile to the top of the mountain where you will be sent directly to the Nameless City. Your kind do not last long there, I can assure you. Young, defenseless mare like you..." She shook her head. "Do not think your fellow outcasts would show you mercy. You would be used, as well as dead. The city itself would suck the life from you, and leave you a corpse by next spring. That is the way of things." "Or," Alex supplied. "You are about to tell me there's another option." Her expression returned to a smile. "My guards are the only ponies who heard your profession of identity, and they are loyal to me. You will explain to them that you were delirious from long travel. You will act appropriately confused, and I will graciously take you under the protection of my wings. I have a skilled doctor, and he will swear a testimony to that effect. I assume you can recreate that language spell?" She nodded, retreating a step or so and stretching each of her wings in turn. "Why... would you do this for me? I don't know what damn stupid reason you people have for murdering refugees, but why would I be exempt?" The unicorn only smiled. "In exchange, you will tutor my son. He is young now—but another few springs and he will be mature enough to learn. I apprenticed to an Archmagus ten years in the Academia, and his mightiest spells would seem mere cantrips compared to what you did with a stick on the ground. Translation, mind to mind... an incredible feat..." Archive squared her shoulders. "Do your primitive rituals, throw me into your Bloodgate, whatever else this backward society of yours does to worship its pretend gods. When I have set the prisoners free and ended this abominable practice, I will return and tutor your son." The mare's smile vanished, her expression going rigid with anger. "If you knew the depth of my mercy, you would restrain your mockery. You will not survive the Nameless City. It is a demon place—it devours ponies alive! The Ruinous Power will only be sated with an offering of outcasts. A flightless bat will not survive what waits for you there! I offer you a place in my house. Plenty of time to learn our language, a position of prestige." "Who knows—I have some of the finest scholars on retainer, and the gold to send them as far as the Great Library. I am certain they could discover your lost noble lineage, given enough time. Plenty of Lords have second sons, strong and wealthy stallions with good holdings. Would you trade that for..." she gestured with one of her hooves, obvious frustration in her movement. "It is madness, pony! Who do you think you are to refuse me my generosity, Governess Noble Calling of all the western holds?" Alex looked away, out at the marketplace. "I hold no ill will to you, Noble Calling. I understand you're a product of this time and place. You didn't invent a false religion to sacrifice innocent ponies to an imaginary god." She turned around, and for the first time met the unicorn's face with absolute defiance. "I will happily tutor your son, but I must end this custom first. I will not live in luxury while my children are slaughtered." The unicorn turned her back on her, flicking her elegantly styled tail of pink and white in a definitive sort of way. "I won't wait long on your return, Outcast. None has ever escaped the Nameless City—you will not be the first." She raised her voice. "Captain! Clasp this outcast in irons!" The guards rushed forward towards her, but even so she could see the unicorn turn back. "When you freeze in the winter nights, when some stallion mounts you or some monster bears down on you, remember the life you could've had. Most did not have your freedom." One of the guards produced a sturdy set of shackles, and they held her down while the clasps were slammed shut over each of her hooves. They didn't even bother with her saddlebags, or the gun-harness. They didn't care, only tugging her back to her hooves when she was fully chained. Archive switched back to the unicorn tongue—the Governess would still understand her, but she doubted very much anypony else would. "Celestia forgives eternally, even the betrayal of her own sister. Remember my promises and know I honor them all."