//------------------------------// // Over Troubled Waters // Story: Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me // by DataPacRat //------------------------------// Fortunately, while my plans hadn't specifically been prepared for being stranded by an idiotic Prince who sailed away on an airship with my equipment, my money, and my gofer, the general groundwork I had laid was now starting to bear its fruit. Appleoosa was one of the nexii of the Apple family, who had, if unknowingly, volunteered to become part of The Dairy's communication network. Braeburn was quite willing to spot me the cost of a train ticket, and to pass along one of the coded messages back to The Dairy's central node in Canterlot - which both updated the ponies working there on my current location, and released some funds to recompense Braeburn. Some of my gear was sent from Canterlot. I also got a letter from Red - she'd woken up halfway to Canterlot, and had made it there just fine, and had kept the impossible-to-over-insult Prince from making off with anything of mine. She also said that a half-hour after docking, there was an explosion aboard the Alicorn; nopony had been hurt, but Blueblood's cabin had been gutted. Given the dragons that had attacked us at an earlier scheduled point on our trip... I made an educated guess that somebody was extremely unhappy with either Blueblood or myself. He was the more obvious target, since he was so eminently dislikable; on the other hoof, arranging for a dragon attack and a bomb required at least a minimal amount of competence, and if anyone really was trying to stop me from doing my thing, they'd need to be at least minimally competent to even be aware of me. I decided that it might be healthiest to be a bit unpredictable about my location for a while. The tugs and pulls I'd been feeling to travel in various directions didn't seem to have any obvious pattern, so I decided to try following them, and see if anything happened, or if I arrived anywhere interesting. The next few days were... actually fairly dull. I took note of which direction I was feeling like traveling that day, checked the local travel arrangements to see how far that way I could get - most often stagecoach, train a few times, sometimes my own hooves. Half the time the tugging direction would change by noon, and I'd see if I could make new travel arrangements. I did take the opportunity to pass messages back and forth with Canterlot, checking the local connections in the Dairy's comm network, whether that was one of the local cattle herds, a member of the Apple family, someone who reported to the government bureaucracy, or a more subtly-connected pony. I investigated some rumors, checked a few sites with tales of unusual events - but didn't find anything relevant to any of my interests. Which left me a lot of time to think. Not that I'm complaining about having the opportunity to do so - running my mind over the evidence I have available to me is, after all, kind of my thing. And I certainly had plenty of grist available for my mental mill. For just one example - whether my experience with the buffalo had involved supernatural beings, figments of my own imagination, outpourings of a collective unconscious, or something even less describable, the coyote had been... well, he was being so blatant I couldn't even call it 'dropping hints'. He'd basically been outright calling me some sort of battery. After a bit of consideration, I concluded that that might have something to do with the thing that had happened to me at the Royal Dairy, when the other two cows had touched horns and my mind had gone kind of blank for a while. Before that moment, I hadn't been able to pick up anything with my hooves - after that time, I'd been almost as handy as any other pony. Something had happened then, maybe involving some sort of transfer of magical power... but given that my mind was very precious to me, and also given what had happened with that love potion, I was feeling rather reluctant to perform any experiments on the matter. But thinking can only take you so far, without the right sort of evidence to think about. Eventually, I decided that this directional impulse I was feeling was worthy of investigation in and of itself. I couldn't think of any reason for it myself - but perhaps someone more familiar with unusual Equestrian magic could. So I stopped my aimless wandering, and took the next train to Ponyville. Twilight and the rest of the Mane Six were still out chasing the Griffin Pirates - but my destination was just a little into the woods: Zecora's hut. Having a little better idea about some of the threats that could be found even on that fairly short excursion into the Everfree Forest, I went loaded for bear (or Ursa, as the case may be) - and just in case there was another cockatrice in the area, wore mirrored sunglasses. My practice with rhyming turned out to be all for nought - for I could not find the zebra I sought. (And that's enough of that.) While I was politely and non-invasively checking to see if Zecora might have left a note, the directional urge I'd been feeling changed direction again... and this time it got a lot stronger; I could barely resist the urge to walk right into the wall. In my recent wanderings, I'd noticed that the longer I followed such an urge, gradually, the stronger it got; I guessed that either something about it was cumulative, or it had something to do with range. With how strong it was right now, if it was range-based, it could be right nearby. I wanted to find out why I was some sort of malfunctioning homing pigeon-cow - but while that was true, it was probably mainly a rationalization to do what every part of my body was yelling at me to do anyway. Whatever self-justification I used, the result was that I left Zecora's hut behind and followed the pull. My path turned out to be straight down a clear, unobstructed path, heading in the direction of one of those oddly skinny mountains that were all around the Ponyville/Canterlot region. As I got closer, I got the feeling that even if I stopped walking, I'd simply slide along the ground, the way Rarity did when she was discovering her cutie mark. Every cow I'd seen had been a blank flank, so I was pretty sure that wasn't what was happening. What disturbed me the most wasn't the idea that I was going to go this way whether I wanted to or not - it was that I wanted to go this way, whether I wanted to want that or not. After a walk where the most ferocious critter I'd seen was an opossum, I finally arrived at... what appeared to be an ersatz Stonehenge - a circle of standing stones, worn from ages of being beaten by the weather. But what interested me much more than ancient architecture was the figure in the middle. The fact that the robed person was floating a few feet off the ground caught less of my attention than the fact that said figure was bipedal... and much larger than Spike. In fact, the last being I'd seen shaped anything like that... was the odd lady who'd drop-kicked me into this world and this body. So if I'd been feeling a pull towards her for... over a week, now?... and since there was a distinct lack of any other human-shaped species in Equestria... I placed a pretty high probability that this was the very same woman. Assuming that was right, there was little point in my re-introducing myself to her, so instead, I started by describing how I was feeling. “There’s an old parable, about a young monk who asked an old one what the point of monking was. The older one threw the younger into a river, and held him down until he was almost dead, and asked what the younger one wanted, who gave the obvious answer - ‘Air’. If that had happened to me - I’d have said that I wanted to understand why he’d did that.” The floating human-type figure threw off her hood... revealing an entirely different face than the one I was expecting. Not a classical Mediterranean beauty, but instead... more of a Gothy teenager. I blinked, then calmly commented, “I have absolutely no idea who you are.” She responded, “Of course you don’t, mortals never were good at seeing the truth.” 'Mortals'? Great - probably another coyote-type, here to deign to drop pearls of wisdom couched in obfuscating riddles for hidden purposes. Welp, one of the best ways to deal with incomprehensible mysticism is to stick straight to the forms of rationalism which can winnow out truths. I told her, “Seeing is over-rated. If I saw the sky was green, and multiply replicated independent scientific experiments said it was yellow, I’d have a strong suspicion it was yellow, no matter what my eyes said.” She rubbed her head, not seeming especially pleased with that, and changed the subject, "Don’t blame me for that, you brought me here." "That seems unlikely - I was just following the pull, which led me to you." "Your annoying psychic calling is interfering with my powers. I un-buried this entire temple from a rockslide, just so we could meet. “Um... Thank you?” Whatever intellectual repartee I might have been about to continue with was interrupted before I could say anything more coherent. There was a flash of light, and then there was a second human-type woman, standing near the first. This woman's face matched the stranger who had punted me here. Only this time she was wearing a white toga, a Greek helmet pushed up to reveal her face, and holding onto a spear. If I had to play mythological twenty questions... she seemed to be Greek or Roman; was too warlike for Hestia of the hearth or Demeter of spring; didn't ooze the raw sensuality of Aphrodite; didn't seem quite as maturely regal as Hera was supposed to be; and Artemis would more likely be carrying a bow and arrows. Of the major figures, that left... Athena. Or Minerva, if you prefer the Roman edition. Of course, there were plenty of minor figures in Greco-Roman myth, most of whom I'd never have a chance to identify - and there'd been a couple of millennia since those myths had been written down, which left plenty of room for further generations of godly-type folk. And, of course, that assumed this was a god at all - just because she could teleport was no reason to assume divinity. Twilight could teleport. I muttered, “What... ‘If Jesus, then aliens’?” Just because I'd been chucked into Equestria, I didn't have any particular reason to assume the existence of any other fictional and/or mythical entities as being real enough to interact with. I'd been busy playing Name That Deity because the two of them had started arguing as soon as the second one had appeared - and only partly in English. I did catch that the untanned one 'felt no attachment to this mortal', presumably meaning me, and 'didn't view her', meaning me again, 'as family'. This is probably a good moment for me to mention that I have an unusual perspective on the Greek gods. Before I got bovinified, I was a bit of a genealogy nut. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, I'd been able to trace one set of ancestors to various European noble families, eventually going all the way back to Emperor Charlemagne himself. I also discovered that, according to the genealogists of Charlie's time, he himself could trace his ancestry back through the kings of Troy, who traced their line all the way back to a mortal who'd been sired by Zeus himself. Putting it all together, then if all those records could be believed, then Zeus was my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great- grandfather. 120th-great grand-dad, for short. What was odd to me was that nobody else seemed to have bothered putting the same information together - as far as I'd been able to tell, I was about the only person who'd mentioned, even in jest, that the genealogical data indicated an actual relationship with the Olympians. Ever since I'd put all that together, I always had an extra layer of interpretation when reading about Zeus and his family, as I considered what it would be like if such beings really were my own multi-great aunts, uncles, and cousins. Not that I actually believed the Greek gods existed in the first place. By that point, I was well into my rationalist/atheist/humanist stage of development. Which was rather firmly derailed when I found myself with hooves, horns, and a mutually-trolling relationship with a pair of royal alicorns. And now... now, I was having to face the fact that much more was going on than my having once been on Earth and now being in Equestria. This same woman before me had been back on Earth, as well - and not only did that imply that there was a lot more of a connection between there and here than I'd thought, but... well, if this really was Athena, and she'd been back on Earth - then I might have been rather thoroughly and embarrassingly wrong about the lack of anything supernatural having been going on back there. The argument showed no sign of getting any less heated. Whatever the foundations of reality might be, people are still people, and I'm a firm believer in arranging for positive-sum games where everyone benefits - and keeping people talking to find out how they can benefit each other is just the sort of thing I'm happy to do. So, just a bit cautiously in case of thunderbolts or turn-the-mortal-into-a-snail magics that might be let loose, I stepped closer to the pair and cleared my throat. "Pardon me," I said as they stopped talking and looked at me, "but it sounds as if the two of you are disagreeing about something both fundamental and important. Perhaps the service of a neutral arbitrator might be of some assistance in keeping the peace?" Athena - I'll just call her that for short - smiled, and said something I couldn't understand to the floating goth - who quickly cut her off, finishing with an English, "Okay, okay." Said goth looked at me. "So what is it that you actually want?" I've worked out my long-term ethical goals to a reasonable degree of completion, so I didn't have to hesitate to answer, "Primarily, to ensure the long-term survival of at least some sapience. Secondarily, if I can help it, to live for some approximation of forever personally. And various lesser sub-goals, such as spreading such immortality as far and wide as possible, and trying to do all that through ethical means. Assuming some standard tropes, I'd really prefer to avoid achieving immortality through sacrificing innocent lives." She considered that for a brief moment, then said, "I do know a method to gain immortality that, while not easy, would require no sacrifices or unethical research." I wrinkled my forehead, considering what options she might mean - and thought of one of the more obvious ones. "I hope you're not referring to the proposed existence of a soul that survives after death." She seemed amused. "And what if I was?" I winced. "Souls are... bad science. If they existed, then why does damaging the physical brain alter personality, or remove actual cognitive capacities? Not to mention, if souls really existed - then why does anyone get sad at funerals? Sure, the person who died would be going far away, but you'd eventually be re-united, so it wouldn't be horrible - but that's not the way people actually act." She stated, “The soul is not something that can be explained, only understood. I will give you this wisdom: whether you believe in the afterlife or not, you’re right.” I sighed, and said, "With any and all due respect: bullcrap. So, if you don't mind my asking - do you know of some method other than an 'afterlife' for living forever?" She simply stated, "If immortality was easy, there would be no gods", then smiled, and added, "Besides - I would say that, right now, you, little cow, are quite unworthy of anything of the sort." I shrugged. “‘Worthiness’ is, like beauty and value, an entirely subjective valuation. Just because you say I’m unworthy of anything has no more intrinsic value than Paris giving the golden apple to Aphrodite." I glanced at the toga-clad woman I was still hesitantly identifying as Athena - who had been one of the failed contestants in that little contest, and added, "No offense.” She smiled instead of turning me into a bug, which I took as a good sign. The goth had been looking thoughtful, and then posed the question: "You seem to think if there was no death there would be no war, but you're wrong. I ask you this, could you live with yourself if you created a world where people were constantly maiming and mauling each other only to never experience the release of death? Would you have a choice?" I answered. “Where there’s life, there’s hope - including hope of a better life. When people die, they’re gone forever - and if things ever do improve, they would forever be denied that better world, and everyone in that world would be denied their joining in.” She whispered, almost too quiet to hear, “Death was never the end for me.” Athena coughed, and said something in a language I didn't know. Goth-chick sighed, held out a hand, frowned at it... and with a flash, she was holding onto a golden whistle on a chain of a similar material. She tossed it at me, and, a bit confused, I managed to catch it on one of my horns. She told me, "When blown, this will summon a group of Wardens to your aid." “... ‘Wardens’?” She smiled coldly, “Everything your parents ever warned you to be afraid of.” “Smoking strangers whose faces stuck like that and are now muggers?” “Hollywood really took the romance out of it, what happened to being afraid of the Boogey Man or zombies?” “We grew up. At least, some of us did. And started actually shining lights into the dark places to see what was really there." She sighed, then continued, "I warn you, however, that this whistle can be used by anyone. And the Wardens will not differentiate between who they kill." “... And just when will they stop killing?” I had visions about accidentally releasing an undead plague that emptied Equestria of all life. I didn’t want to offend someone with Greek-god-level power by refusing a present, if I could help it; but I’d rather face deific wrath then such a worse case scenario, and would seriously consider facing such wrath than have to handle a gizmo of destructive power on the order of a nuke. She just smiled at me. "Do you think she," hooking a thumb at Athena, "would let me give it to you if that would happen?" As I tried to think of a cogent reply, she added, "I'm about done here." I managed to pipe up, "Er - if you don't mind my asking, I've read a few stories, and... what is it that you might want in return for such a... ah, generous gift?" "I've already received my payment." With those suitably enigmatic words, there was another flash, and she wasn't there anymore. Which just left me and the world-crossing woman with the toga, helm, and spear. "Er... Athena?" "Yes?" she smiled at me. Looked like my guess had been right all along. Assuming she was telling the truth. And wasn't some other person with the same name and fashion sense. And so on. I opened my mouth to ask a question - but hesitated, given how many were crowding for my attention. So I settled on one that covered them all: "What, in the name of whatever holy items might be relevant, is going on?" Her smile disappeared. "A new Game has started." "... ooohh-kay?" "The last two such games were in Mu and Atlantis." "I thought - or used to think, anyway - that they don't exist." "They do not - anymore." "... I think that I don't like the sound of where this is going." "Few Players of such Games care what happens to the board after they're done playing with it." "I really don't like the sound of this." "I have no interest in this Game's Prize. But it gave me a rationale for placing a piece on the board, for my own purposes." I rubbed my forehead with a hoof. Out of all the people on Earth, she'd picked... me. Sure, I fell at the extreme end of the bell-curve for a number of metrics, but still... "Why me?" "By the Rules of the Game - I could only select from those who would agree to be sent here. Out of that small group, you... stood out, to me." I looked at my hoof, "Why re-enact what Zeus did to Io?" "I'm afraid my time here is about up." She stepped closer, placed one surprisingly small human-esque arm around my typically oversized bovine neck, and gave me a brief hug. "May both the Fates and Fortuna look kindly upon you, grand-niece." I shuddered briefly at that, and she was gone. ... I seriously considered joining a herd and letting my brain get zapped into oblivion, so I wouldn't have to try to figure out... well, everything. For a few seconds, I considered it, anyway. Then I sighed, tucked the whistle's cord around my neck and the whistle itself hidden under my shirt, and turned to start walking back towards Ponyville... (Authour's Note: This chapter is a crossover with Forevermore's story, Skeleton Jack.)