"Computer... simulation..." Sunset Shimmer repeated, her mouth working but no more words coming out. Thanks to her English class, she now knew each of those words. But to hear them put together, to combine them with everything she had just seen... "Then we need to end it," she said. "I want to be out in the real world. How can I leave?"
Jackie laughed, but there was no amusement in her voice. Nothing but bitterness and an old anger gone cold. "Leave? How would we do that? Someone turns off the Infinite Realm, there's no more us. We don't exist without it. We're just simulations too, everyone is. You want to hear the theoretical types talking about it, you'll hear things like 'ultimate destiny of all intelligent species' and 'maximally extended lifespan.' Maybe I wouldn't call bullshit on all that if they hadn't been forcing people to come here." Jackie looked up, yanking on Sunset's arm, her hand gripping her shoulder so hard her fingers went white. It hurt, but not as much as it looked like it should.
Nothing here had ever hurt the way it should—not sitting in chairs for months at a time, not falling over and bashing her head on the floor, nothing. Because none of it's real. Not even me.
"I dunno what you're so upset about, Sunny. You weren't kidnapped like I was. You weren't dragged off and chopped to pieces by some Tower Army because you were a tourist in the wrong place at the wrong time. Y-you..." She sniffed, but didn't seem to notice she was crying. "You don't have to spend the rest of your life wondering what happened to your family. Wondering if your little sister thinks you killed yourself because you didn't love her enough to stay alive."
Jackie jerked Sunset closer, holding her just a few inches away. There was nothing even slightly sensual about it. "What made you run from the real world, I wonder. Who did you have to betray to get the machines to make you forget? Was it just about the steak, Cypher?"
Sunset whimpered, yanking her way free from Jackie with an intense tug. Jackie's hand came away with several strands of her hair wrapped in her fingers. "I don't know what you're talking about!" She'd been crying before, but Sunset wasn't crying now. Anger was powerfully contagious. "I didn't betray Equestria, I came here so I could learn how to save it! All this... computer..." She waved one hand around them, so harshly she might've been about to strike Jackie in the face. "I didn't know it would be fake... But everypony says the Builders had the kind of magic to make even the Alicorns look weak! I just wanted to learn so I could protect Equestria one day!"
Jackie's expression got darker. "Is that it then, Sunny? You'll hide behind your invented words and nonexistent countries so you don't have the face the reality of what you've given up? I've got some sad news for you: it doesn't work. There's no escaping from this. Only two types of people ever get to leave the Infinite Realm, Technocrats and Knights. I'm sure as hell never signing up with either of them, and if you've got half the brain you think you do, you won't either. So, you'll be stuck here with the rest of us, doomed to know as much about 'Equestria' as we do about our home." She spun around once in the rain, then touched her GIO with one finger. The rain abruptly switched off, as suddenly as it had come on, leaving Sunset dripping wet in the darkness.
She didn't stop to find out what Jackie might do next, because at that moment she was already running away. Running as fast as these elongated, lengthy bodies could move, with a confidence to her step she couldn't possibly have managed when she had first arrived. The ground dried around her in a matter of seconds. Jackie didn't seem to be chasing her, or if she was, she had footsteps that were so silent there was no hearing them in the accelerated time. She didn't look over her shoulder to find out which it would be.
There was no arguing with evidence as powerful as this. Somehow, through means she couldn't remember or understand, the Builders had transported her inside... a pocket reality. One that used computers to keep it running instead of the battery of spells she had read theorized to accomplish the same purpose. If Jackie was telling her the truth, there was no easy escape from this world, none except... joining one of two organizations that Jackie hated.
Could she be lying to me? Could this be a test of loyalty? But what culture as enlightened as the Builders would subject their citizens to such emotional manipulation and literal physical pain? Pain for teaching might be useful for foals of such an early age that reason was ineffective, but no adult citizen would be subjected to that. They did say in the hospital that I wasn't a full citizen until I graduated. Was there anyone she could ask?
Sunset Shimmer stopped running right about the place where the houses came back. She picked one at random, one that looked dark and empty, and approached it. Small lights set around the sidewalk came on as she walked, illuminating her way to the front door. She knocked in a panicked rush, worried that at any moment Jackie might come upon her and her escape would be ruined.
But nothing happened. No one came to the door, and Jackie didn't walk past her on the street behind. A few seconds later, and Sunset tried the doorknob. It wasn't locked—obviously an enlightened society like the Builders would have no need for locks—and the door swung open. "I'm sorry, whoever's house this is..." she said, wiping some of the moisture from her face as she stepped inside.
The house looked at a glance to have all the accoutrements of a family living here—paintings on the walls, cozy furniture selected in a color-coordinated way, attractive carpets. Yet there was none of the wear to suggest anyone visited the place. It seemed like the inside of a museum used to demonstrate the living conditions of ponies in ages past, except of course the luxury of even the most modest Builder home surpassed anything short of Canterlot's nobility. Who cares how luxurious an illusion is? Even a talentless unicorn can make an illusion with enough practice.
Sunset didn't care that she was tracking water onto the nice carpet, didn't care that she might very well have broken in uninvited into the home of some builders gone away. She slammed the door shut behind her, slumped wetly against it, and cried herself to sleep.
Sunset woke to bright light shining through the window, lighting up the whole house with an early morning glow. She sat up at once, the dullness of sleep instantly gone, and found that her strange position did not leave her sore. Her clothes weren't stiff and dirty either, as she would've expected given the rain the day before.
I always thought they were enchanted. Guess not being real is kinda like an enchantment. Sunset rose, wandering through the house. Despite the months she'd spent in the Builder school, with its suppressed physical needs, Sunset still remembered what it had been like back in Equestria.
So, she found a shower, which even had soap despite having no sign of anyone living here. She searched the kitchen, and found milk and eggs waiting in an icebox with no ice. She ate, even though she felt no hunger, and found the food as delicious as she remembered. Yet she didn't need it.
When she was done, Sunset felt a little better. At least going through the ordinary routine of being alive let her mind drift to consider other subjects. In this case, what she would do. Jackie and her crew had seemed nice enough before, but... after being attacked, Sunset wasn't sure if she would ever want to be around her again. Certainly not for a long time. She sounded like she thinks she has good reasons to hate the ones in charge.
Sunset was trapped in a pocket reality. Worse, the ones running it might very well be despots, at least if what Jackie said was true. She didn't have enough information to make a judgement yet. Nothing she'd learned in any of her classes suggested her ideas about the Builders had been wrong. Clover the Clever had spoken of a perfect society... even a pocket reality might be a perfect society, though it seemed like considerably less of an accomplishment if it was.
Sunset stared down at her GIO, playing with some of its functions. She played back images from some of the textbooks, the ones she'd thought were particularly interesting. There had been some images of King Richard, though none of them suggested he was a despot. Even Emperor Sombra looked handsome in his statues.
Eventually she wandered her way back to the class list, reading over all the courses she'd thought were irrelevant. Subjective years had passed, and still she hadn't learned anything like the magic she had come for. It might not exist. If the builders brought Clover into a pocket-reality and never told her, she might have seen all the incredible things they did, like Jackie had done for Sunset, and projected her understanding of Equestrian magic onto their powers. Everything they can do might be a lie.
One of her fingers lingered on the next class on her list, one of those she'd been the least interested in taking as part of whatever "Sophomore" was. "History of Civilization, Hammurabi to Modern Era." History was always written by the victor, but a sanitized political history had its own flavor. Sunset had read dozens of them in Canterlot's library, and grew more disgusted with the increasingly blatant lies written about Luna over the course of history, until (as in the most modern volumes) she had been entirely erased.
Sunset Shimmer set out from the stolen house, not the least bit surprised that no builders had ever come for it. Jackie said that nobody lived in this part of the world. Guess she was telling the truth about that. She could only hope that Jackie hadn't been telling the truth about the rest of the world, or else had been exaggerating it enough that things might not be so bleak as things had initially sounded. What will I do if everything about the Builders was a lie? What if Celestia was right?
Sunset banished that possibility from her mind as judiciously as Celestia had banished her sister. She would not allow herself to think it unless the reality proved as bleak as Jackie suggested.
The gang of builder criminals was not waiting in front of the school when she finally returned. They hadn't left any trace of their makeshift seating either, not even the holes the chairs had made in the grass. She hurried up the steps into the school proper, and found the familiar smells of polish and cleaner assaulting her nose. She didn't bother going back to the last class she'd been taking, instead wandering around the halls until she found the door marked for "History of Civilization."
There was no sense jumping rashly to conclusions, no sense deciding to take any action until she had access to a greater subsection of the facts. She could wait through a few more subjective years for that. Besides... as Jackie had correctly pointed out, it wasn't like she had anywhere else to go.
The doors opened easily for her, as they always did. If there was a system in place to force her to take the classes in a specific order, she didn't encounter it. She'd always followed the order printed in her schedule before, but just now she didn't care.
She found the history teacher looked exactly like the math teacher, the same red hair and blank face. "Welcome to History of Civilization, Hammurabi to Modern Era," she said, even as the door clicked locked. "This class is expected to take two subjective years. Upon its completion, you should be familiar with the general outline of history going back to our earliest civilized era. The material in this course has been weighted to put a greater emphasis on contemporary events, particularly leading up to and including the Great War." A mountain of textbooks appeared on the desk in front of Sunset, a single thin volume already open within reach of her hands. "Please open to page one, and we can begin."