Sunset shifted.
The feeling had no correlation with anything she had ever experienced before. The world seemed to sweep out from under her, and for a moment it was as though she couldn’t think. Her mind was frozen, detached from her body and anything other than the strange numbness.
The horrible moment passed, and the world came into focus around her. She spent several seconds standing in place and panting, overwhelmed. It was the worst teleport she could remember. Worse than the first one she’d ever performed, by far. As she looked down, she could find no frost condensing on her limbs. She didn’t feel like her lungs had been ripped out, or any other physical pain for that matter.
Let’s hope I don’t have to do that often. These Builders could learn a thing or two about making a smooth teleport.
Sunset looked up and around her, relaxing as the painful memory of what had been waiting outside the door began to fade from her perception. She was standing somewhere bright, in a towering entryway with large glass shelves. Glittering metal objects rested inside, with plaques beside each one. She was too far away to read them.
Colored flags hung from the ceiling in an attractive way, filling the high space in a way that made it seem more comfortable. Behind her, the door she’d just used no longer looked anything like the one from the hospital. This one was metal, taller than she was, with no window and a metal bar to open it.
The towering space looked like it could accommodate hundreds of Builders, with plenty of room behind them in hallways that stretched backward into even more space. For all its size, the space was almost empty. She didn’t see a single other Builder in all the area. Could it be that nobody new has come in so long that there were no more assessments to be performed?
Sunset had read such theories about what could become of advanced societies, grown so powerful that they became complacent. Ponies seemed to behave that way in modern times, no longer needing to struggle for food or survival so not caring to improve their ability to do either. If the Builders are the same way, how am I supposed to find a way to save Equestria?
She wouldn’t let it bother her, not right now. There was plenty of evidence to suggest her theories might be wrong.
For one thing, there was no sign of damage or decay. The vast space had clean glass, pristine walls, swept floors. She saw no dust on anything, not the trophies in the cases, not the lights on the ceiling, not the windowsills above her. A degenerate society would not maintain such a facility. Could they send each pony to a different place for assessment? Maybe they don’t want our scores interfering with each other.
That was a horrifying thought if ever she’d considered one. Would she be spending weeks here all alone?
I’m being graded; she reminded herself. Just because I can’t see the ponies doing the grading doesn’t mean they aren’t there. She walked with poise down the center of the hall, striding meaningfully each time like someone who knew they belonged and expected respect.
The hallway gave way to a fork which opened into a hallway with metal lockers down the walls, each of which had a tiny knob ringed in numbers. The ceiling here was far lower, though nowhere near low enough to make her uncomfortable. Sunset’s feet continued to echo in the space, sounding eerie as they returned to her from the other end of the hallway.
There were numerous doors along the way, each of which was shut. Writing beside each door listed a subject or discipline. “Basic Arithmetic,” read the text beside one of the doors. “Data Structures,” said another.
Sunset tried one of the doors and wasn’t entirely surprised to find it locked. Each of the doors had a little window, positioned at eye level, and she could look inside.
The “Data Structures” class had a double row of desks inside, each of which had a strange machine sitting in the center. The far end of the class had one of the Builders, a male she guessed from the growth on his face, sitting at his desk and staring forward at the wall.
Sunset considered whether to get his attention. Couldn’t he see her? He didn’t turn to look when she tried the knob with her thin paw, didn’t even twitch. If he wanted to talk, he would have. She wouldn’t upset anything by trying to bypass the usual instruction methods here. Nothing could keep her from finding this king.
She turned away from the classroom and started walking down the hall again, looking for a door she could open. Each one had a different Builder inside, and each one refused to open no matter how long she worked at it. There must be some secret to this. If only I could use my magic.
What was worse, the hallways seemed to go on forever. No matter how far Sunset walked along the gentle curve of the room, there were always more classrooms. Some were larger, some were smaller, some had multiple Builders inside standing as still as mannequins. Or Golems. Clover’s writing did say something about magical constructs. Could these be the ones? Constructs would make sense if you wanted to keep your school open forever.
Then she heard something. The sound came from close by, so close she nearly jumped right out of her skin. Sunset spun around rapidly, searching the area around her until she found what she was looking for emerging from one of the tiny metal lockers. It wasn’t wide enough to permit a Builder to fit inside, yet… one seemed to be emerging anyway.
She was shorter than Sunset by a full head, with darker skin, brown eyes, and slightly blueish hair. Her clothing was dark and plain, though she had bright silver jewelry around one wrist. Her expression was urgent, and she glanced over her shoulder into the metal room behind her.
Then she saw Sunset. Her eyes widened, nearly as surprised as Sunset, pointing at her. “Excuse me…” she said, taking a few steps closer. “You’re aware this simulation is closed, right?”
“Closed?” Sunset shook her head, though she hoped she sounded non-committal. “I don’t think it is. I was sent here from a… hospital? It looked like a hospital. The one there said I needed to be assessed.”
Something about this Builder didn’t look official. Maybe it was the way she kept glancing back at the way she’d come, or her nervous expression, or that too-wide grin. Sunset knew this feeling well, because she’d worn it plenty of times.
“No shit.” The woman took another step toward her, looking her over. “From the outside? After…” She glanced down at the jewelry on her wrist. Sunset saw then that there was tiny writing on it, seeming to hover just above it. It changed when the girl’s paws moved through the air near it. “Twenty-one years? What bunker did you crawl out of?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sunset said, folding her arms. “But I don’t think you’re supposed to be here, whoever you are. I don’t think I should be answering any more of your questions.”
The girl grinned, putting out her paws. It was strange to see the gesture from an alien species, yet recognize it at once. “Guilty as charged, sweetie. I thought I’d test some new code up here, where it couldn’t get a Knight sniffing after my ass. Well, another Knight.” She glanced back at the shut metal door. “I’ll find another dead world to play in.”
She picked a direction and started walking again, fiddling with her jewelry with one of her paws as she walked.
The girl was very fast, faster than Sunset could walk without risking falling. As she moved away, Sunset felt a brief pang of panic and the smallest flicker of loneliness. Whoever this person was, she was obviously no construct. Genuine emotions like guilt and amusement and urgent fear were hard to fake.
She might be the first real Builder Sunset had met, and she was already leaving. “Wait!” Sunset hurried to catch up with her, chasing after her along the endless curve of the hallway. “What are you talking about? There are windows everywhere… the world doesn’t look dead. Why would you joke about that?”
“You mean that world?” The girl stopped abruptly, in front of one of the large windows that sometimes broke up the identical classrooms.
Outside it, Sunset could see a town, a town of charming little buildings, wide black streets with vehicles moving up and down them, bright green trees and tastefully arranged shrubs. It was far smaller than the city around the hospital but small enough that there wasn’t much noise.
The one thing Sunset didn’t see outside were people. “Empty cells, sweetie. Infinite Realm has lots of those, left over from the early days. Guess you wouldn’t catch onto that, still reeling from the meatbrain and all.” She tapped on the side of her head with one finger. “Welcome to the silicon. Live forever, live perfect.” She shook her head, disdain in her expression. “Guess this place hasn’t gone quite as shit as the one you’re from, though.”
“I understand your words,” Sunset said, after a long pause. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m Sunset. Sunset Shimmer.” She stuck out one of her paws, hoping the gesture might mean the same thing as it would’ve if she still had hooves. “I could use a new friend.”
“You’re fucking joking,” the girl said, staring down at her hand. Again Sunset flinched at the strange word, somehow able to tell from her inflection that it was meant to be obscene. Even so, the girl took her paw. It was a very strange gesture, far more intimate than touching hooves. These limbs were incredibly sensitive along each side, with so much independent movement.
It was a disorienting wave of emotion for someone who’d never tried shape-changing magic before. A good thing the girl didn’t hold onto her long. “Just call me Jackie, newbie. I don’t give out sys-ID on the first date.”
She twisted to one side, then pushed Sunset gently in the small of her back, forcing her to start walking. “First pro tip for your time in the Infinite Realm…” She pulled at one of the garments Sunset was wearing over her top, the one with faint purple and white stripes. “I don’t know what kind of backward-ass shit you dirtborn get up to, but here the bra goes under your blouse. Where it’s useful for something.”
Sunset blushed in embarrassment, glancing down. She had thought it a little strange that the smaller clothing items hadn’t been pictured in the catalog when she’d selected her outfit. “There’s a bathroom every… there.” she pointed with one paw. “You go on in and get your shit together, ‘kay? I’ll check to make sure I’m not going to get company. Don’t want you riding the bytes out to unformatted space on my behalf.”
Sunset did as instructed, marveling at the sophisticated plumbing and clean surfaces within. By the time she emerged, feeling far more confident about her appearance, she half-expected this “Jackie” to be gone.
She wasn’t, though she’d changed a great deal. Her appearance had grown far more subdued, black clothing replaced with a drab dress, a plaid top, and long socks that went all the way up her legs. She’d also acquired a bag of some kind, and her hair had changed shades to black. She wore it in a ponytail down her back.
Most extreme of all, she seemed as though she’d gotten younger. Smaller anyway— she was at least two heads shorter than Sunset now, her chest somehow flatter than it was before. Without cutie marks, Sunset didn’t know if there would be any other obvious ways to judge age among the Builders. Their males and females looked so similar as it was.
Apparently, Jackie caught her staring. “Yeah, like it? It’s my ‘please don’t delete my ass, I’m just an innocent little schoolgirl, won’t you teach me about algorithms’ look.”
“B-but how…” Sunset stammered. “Age magic is… Alicorn level.” She stared openly. Maybe her luck was turning around. The very first real Builder she’d met, and it seemed like she had already found someone who knew some of the magic Celestia refused to teach.
“Yeah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The much smaller Jackie grabbed her by the arm, yanking her down the hall in the opposite direction. “But first thing’s first, you haven’t had your entry interview. You got no GIO-COM, and without one you might as well be naked.” She held up the bracket for Sunset to see, which had shrunk down to her size. “Which I’m not saying wouldn’t be interesting, with that wicked hair of yours. Is it that red all the way down, by the way? Kindof ballsy for a dirtborn.”
Sunset blushed again, pulling her hand away. This Builder was her only source of information, so she didn’t want to alienate her, but she also wasn’t going to let herself get walked all over. Jackie didn’t belong here. “Why don’t you start by talking to me like a regular pony,” she said. “You’re talking in circles… Where are we going? Start there.”
“Pony?” Jackie repeated, a grin spreading across her face. “You’re about, err… twenty years too old for that, princess. Now if you’d like to ditch this empty sim, I can show you quite a few with ‘ponies.’ The median age in most of them is like ten, though.”
She took a breath, pointing down the hall. “Office is down there. I remember…” Her expression soured a little. “Long time ago. Had to do this same shit. Back when there were a few hundred more people.” She glanced over her shoulder again, but still there was nothing. “Anyway, we get you to the nurse for your entry interview. Then you’ll get your first GIO… pretty shit one, but you wouldn’t know how to do more with it anyway. We can go from there.”
Could this be part of the test somehow? I can’t let her trick me into doing anything bad. “Okay. That sounds good. Where is this office? We won’t have to break in, will we?”
“Break in?” Jackie repeated, chuckling. “What kind of design would this place have if newcomers had to fight their way in to get evaluated? We’d have been tripping over ourselves back in the day. Guess… you probably don’t remember that, though. You’re too young to remember the war.”
Sunset didn’t get another chance to respond, because at that moment the girl shoved her in the back again, pushing her through an open door beside her.
Sunset stumbled in through the opening and nearly fell, but a desk inside let her catch herself and prevent that bit of awkward performance.
The room was fairly ordinary. A long, high desk separated her side of the chamber from the other side, which was filled with empty desks. A shelf on the far wall held lots of the same packages. There was also a single individual in the room, who sat up immediately when Sunset entered.
It was like the hospital all over again. The woman barely seemed to see her, even as she asked her basic questions about various things. Sunset discovered to her dismay that she knew very few of the answers—she didn’t even know the name of the subjects.
Eventually, the questions finished. “Congratulations,” said the figure, without a hint of emotion. “Your intelligence rating has been calculated at an 8.7. Unfortunately, your knowledge evaluation places you at the freshman level. If you follow the accelerated track, you should be able to graduate within twelve years of perceived local time.”
She turned, walking back past the empty desks to the far wall, returning with one of the boxes and setting it down on the counter in front of Sunset. “This is your first GIO device. Every citizen of the Steel Tower makes daily use of their GIO device, in whatever form appropriate to the sim they choose to make their permanent home. If you lose this one, please return to this office to be issued a replacement. Your GIO will point you to your next class. It will also provide you with appropriate resources as you advance.”
Sunset opened the box with only a little difficulty and found only a single object inside. It looked like Jackie’s bracelet, except that it was made from something white and bulky, not the sleek silvery thing she wore. An artificial horn, Sunset found herself thinking. Or close enough. Maybe I’ll get my magic back.
Sunset slipped her hand inside and felt the whole world lurch. She very nearly fell over again, her head spinning. When she finally looked up, she found the counter was nearly at eye level. What had just happened? She looked down, expecting to see the evidence of a shrinking spell, yet her clothes still fit. They were smaller too, changing to match a smaller form. “What just happened?”
“You are now ready to begin your first year of instruction,” said the automaton. “Your apparent age has been temporarily reduced to that of your classmates. Note: until you gain citizenship, the ability to make alterations to your avatar is restricted. You will earn this privilege once you graduate. You have three advancements remaining until your graduation.”