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// Chapter 13: Adorable Ponies 
// Story: Equestria 485,000 
// by Unwhole Hole 
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The machines had quieted. They were still running- -still alive, and despite Twilight’s assertion still functional and operational- -but they had gone back to their normal function. The lights had returned, and the growth of the fungoid machines had surely continued outward into whatever reaches- -and depths- -this facility reached.

            Twilight had departed, returning to the upper city to search for resources. This meant that Silken had been left alone with the small ponies. This situation was tense, but not uncomfortable. Silken was not capable of discomfort. At the same time, she was also not trained to deal with primitives. She could deal with children- -she had spent a great time doing it- -but these were not children. They were little semi-evolved creatures that despite their size were fully adult.

            Unlike Silken- -and actually unlike Twilight to an extent- -these ponies had basic needs. The first was shelter, and possibly water. Silken knew where water was- -it was coming down from above, and probably only mildly radioactive- -and there were many rooms to store the small ponies.

            While leading them through the facility, they moved in silence. It was clearly uncomfortable for the ponies, and they were quite clearly afraid of Silken. Some of them looked as though they were about to bolt.

            After a few moments, Silken decided that she needed to do something. She was not sure if ponies got sick if they were stressed like modern alicorns did. “How about names?” she said, cheerfully, rotating her eyes to look backward at them. That apparently had the opposite effect, as the white one nearly fainted and the yellow one screamed.

            “Oops,” she said, stopping and actually turning to face them. “Your eyes are very small, I did not immediately realize that is not something you do. But my name is Silken Dream. I would like to know your names as well.”

            “Why?” asked the blue Pegasus suspiciously.

            “So I know what to call you, of course!”

            Silken stared at them, but they did not respond. This was not going well.

            “I’m Pinkie Pie!” said the pink pony, the only one that was apparently happy to be there. “Although technically Pinkamena, if you want to get technical. You look like to get technical. You got that face.”

            “I do have a face,” admitted Silken.

            “And this is Applejack,” said Pinkie. “She and I might be cousins, but I sure hope not because my sister kiiiiind of has a thing for her brother. And that could get real awkward real fast. Say hi, Applejack!”

            “Howdy,” said Applejack, hesitantly. Pinkie Pie looked to the others.

            “Rainbow Dash,” said the blue Pegasus.

            “Rarity,” said the white unicorn.

            The yellow Pegasus just mumbled.

            “She means- -” started Rainbow Dash.

            “Fluttershy,” said Silken. “My hearing is quite good.”

            “And you…work with Twilight?” asked Rarity, stepping forward gingerly.

            “I was assigned to assist her, yes.”

            “Well, you’re not doing it right now,” said Rainbow Dash.

            “No. That is because she went to the upper levels. I am not able to fly with my current configuration, and the journey upward is nearly two miles.”

            “Two…two miles?” Fluttershy nearly swooned.

            “Now, Fluttershy,” said Rarity, “we’ve been in caves before. This one is…” She paused, trying to find something positive to say. “Less dirty?”

            “Rarity, when have you ever been two miles deep?” asked Applejack.

            “Well…I haven’t been QUITE that deep…”

            “We are actually almost forty miles below the surface,” said Silken. “Not including the ice layer.”

            “Forty…forty…miles?” This time Fluttershy did collapse. Nopony bothered to catch her.

            “In addition,” said Silken, addressing Rainbow Dash, “she is not in a pleasant mood right now. When ponies spend time alone with remni, they tend to develop psychological strain. It is well documented. We remind them of death.”

            “I could not fathom why,” said Rarity, quietly. It was sarcasm, but Silken did not recognize it as so because it was not annotated as such.

            “Yeah,” said Applejack. She turned to the others. “We kind of have to address the elephant in the room there.”

            “There’s an elephant in the room?” said Pinkie, looking around. “Where? And how did it get to this deep, crushing, inescapable, dark, tight, claustrophobic cave- -”

            Fluttershy, who was just starting to stand up, swooned again. This time Silken caught her.

            “Thank you,” said Fluttershy at a barely audible level.

            “I do not know what an ‘elephant’ is.”

            “It is a large, gray herbivore with a long prehensile nose,” whispered Fluttershy.

            “That sounds ridiculous,” said Silken. “But thank you for telling me. Now I know.”

            “There is no elephant,” said Applejack. “You all saw it. The way Twilight acted. Something’s wrong. Really, really wrong.”

            “She was a bit harsh,” admitted Rarity. “Testy, even.”

            “Testy?!” said Rainbow Dash, taking flight and hovering. This was endlessly amusing to Silken; she had never witnessed a pony apart from Twilight flying. “She was downright mean!” Fluttershy gasped, and Pinkie joined her in gasping. “What? She was! She was acting like she didn’t even remember us!”

            “There is no reason why she would remember you,” said Silken. “She has never met you before.”

            They all looked at her, mostly in shock. Applejack, though, seemed angry. She stepped forward toward Silken, and she had to crane her neck greatly to see Silken’s head considering the fact that Silken was at least six times taller than her.

            “Doesn’t know us? What do YOU know? She’s our friend! We’ve known her for years! But we DON’T know you. And I’m starting to think that you might have something to do with the fact that she can’t seem to remember us.”

            Silken stared for a moment. “As a remnus, I would not be able to take volition to perform that action,” she said. This only seemed to confuse them more. There was a strong possibility, she realized, that they did not know what a remnus even was. “I will explain my logic, then. Is that acceptable to you?”

            “No,” said Pinkie Pie. “That sounds realllllly boring. How about dancing.”

            “Dancing?”

            “With those legs, I’d bed all the money in my mane that you’d be a great dancer!” Pinkie Pie reached into her mane and rooted around, only to look very surprised when she found absolutely nothing.

            “Go ahead,” said Applejack. “But if you lie, I’ll know.”

            “No you wouldn’t. I’m an excellent liar.” She paused. That was probably not the correct thing to say. “Twilight could not know you. Your species- -earth-ponies, unicorns, and Pegasi- -are extinct. They have not existed in a long time. Our records indicate that your lifespans were profoundly short. There is no way you could have lived long enough since your extinction.”

            “In addition to the fact that we’re extinct,” said Pinkie Pie. “I mean, that’s kind of final.”

            “Pinkie! Nopony is extinct!”

            “No. You all are,” said Silken. “That is my point. For you to have known Twilight Sparkle, you would have to be immensely old.”

            “That doesn’t make any sense!” said Applejack. “I think you’re full of ROAD APPLES!”

            “Applejack!” gasped Rarity. “I know the situation is stressful, but that’s no reason to use such vulgar language!” She stepped forward. She was graceful for a stocky little proto-pony. “What she means is, we just saw Twilight. I went to lunch with her yesterday at that new restaurant in downtown Ponyville. It was VERY overrated, by the way. But Twilight seemed to like it.”

            “And then her and I went to visit the sick animals at the veterinary hospital,” said Fluttershy.

            “And then we went to the spa!” said Rainbow Dash. Everypony looked at her and her face scrunched. “I mean…we went flying together? Quickly?”

            “There is an inconsistency,” said Silken. “I was with Twilight yesterday. I have been with her for the past ten weeks, and on the Prodijila with her before that for four days of preparation and one day of travel.”

            The ponies stared at her, and Silken at them.

            “Okay,” said Applejack. “You’re right. That’s one MIGHTY ‘inconsistency’. Because I’ve never seen you once in my life. I’ve never even seen any sort of pony even reminiscent of…whatever you are.”

            “I am not a pony. I am a remnus.”

            “I think you’re lying.”

            Silken was surprised. “No. I am a remnus. I am at least sure of that.”

            “That’s not what I meant! I have no idea where we are, what’s going on, why Twilight is suddenly acting like Trixie used to!”

            “Worse than Trixie, even,” suggested Pinkie Pie. “At least five percent worse!”

            “Twenty percent more worse,” grumbled Rainbow Dash.

            “I think we can resolve this,” said Silken, an idea occurring to her. “What date did we last see Twilight?”

            “Well,” said Applejack, “it was getting near September, because the apples were almost ready to be bucked.”

            “And she looooves bucking,” said Pinkie Pie, “apples.”

            “It must have been the tenth,” said Rarity.

            “What year?”

            “One thousand eleven.”

            Silken would have blinked if she had eyelids. “One thousand eleven from what? What are you reckoning from?”

            “Reckoning?” Applejack looked confused.

            “Ooh! Ooh! Applejack LOVES reckoning! She does it all the time! ‘Ahm reckoning this’, ‘Ah recon you’re gonna get her head stuck in that there mailbox’, ‘Ah reckon that’, ‘Ah reckon you ought to put some butter if you want to get yer head out of that there mailbox’.”

            “I do not talk like that!”

            “It means what event your basing your counting on,” said Rainbow Dash. All of the others fell silent and turned to her. “What?” said Rainbow Dash. “It’s from ‘Alicorn of the Rings’!” They were still silent. Rainbow Dash crossed her front legs. “Is it illegal for me to read things other than Daring Do? I do read other things, you know.”

            “The calendar counts from when Celestia had to banish poor Luna to the moon,” said Fluttershy.

            “I am not familiar with that event,” said Silken.

            “Wha- -how can you not be familiar with that?!” cried Applejack. “EVERYPONY knows that! Even I know that!”

            Silken paused. “Okay. I have an idea. We will use the birth of the Goddess as our point of reckoning. How old was Twilight Sparkle when you last met her?”

            “Thirty four,” said Rarity, without even momentary hesitation. “And not developing a single wrinkle, even without ever putting on proper sunscreen. Alicorn luck…”

            Silken stared at Rarity. “Oh my,” she said. “We may have a problem.”

            “Why…?” asked Applejack, slowly.

            “Because that is not Twilight Sparkle’s current age. You may have missed…a few years.”

            “Years?” gasped Rainbow Dash. “I- -I have work! I have Wonderbolts training! I can’t miss years!”

            “How many?” said Applejack. She was starting to sweat.

            “Twilight Sparkle’s exact age is a matter of intense scholarly debate. And the cause of one holy war. Well, technically two, although one was actually an insurrection.”

            “I do love a good insurrection,” said Pinkie Pie.

            “What is her age?” said Applejack, more harshly.

            “The prevailing model states her age at four hundred eighty five thousand six hundred seventy eight years, ten months, two weeks, three days, five hours, eight minutes, thirty seven seconds…thirty eight. Thirty nine. Forty…” Silken trailed off when she saw the looks on their faces. “So. Yes. A few years.”

            The room fell silent. Silken was not sure of why they were having this reaction, or why their eyes had grown so wide. The silence lasted for a long time before it was punctuated by a scream.

            “I’m OLLLLD!” cried Rarity, dropping to her knees. Tears poured form her eyes. “Four hundred thousand years- -I can’t- -I CAN’T be that old! I just can’t be!”

            “Well, look on the bright side,” said Pinkie, although her tone of happiness and cheerfulness was faltering badly. “You look pretty good for that age.”

            “We’re not old,” said Applejack. She stepped forward and pointed at Silken. “You’re lying! That’s impossible!”

            Without a word, Silken raised her pointed hoof toward Applejack’s face. Applejack stood her ground, but Silken could see the panic in her eyes. Silken, of course, was not a violent being, and held the pointed tip of her leg a few inches from Applejack’s nose.

            Then she engaged the repair access sequence. Her morphiplasm skin was stripped back, and the hard carapace below peeled back and opened, revealing the secondary superstructure below. The internal portions of that then moved, retracting and separating within a fraction of a second and pulling apart to reveal the glowing channels beneath the surface and the primary superstructure. The morphoplasm continued to retract as Silken exposed more and more surfaces.

            Applejack cried out. “Witchcraft!”

            The others did not respond. They stared with an equal mixture of horror and fascination.

            “It is not witchcraft. My body is not currently optimized for the use of technomagic. I am a remnus. I am an artificial being whose body was created to serve ponies in their endeavors.” Silken shifted her let, and the pieces reconfigured as it snapped close in a second. She lowered it, running a brief diagnostic to ensure that it was still fully operational. It was, and she lowered the leg to her normal standing position. “The systems that make remni like myself possible did not exist in the era where you claim to have been last alive.”

            “We were alive! We were just- -”

            Silken leaned down close, causing the ponies to visibly recoil. “I just witnessed you all being born.”

            They were silent again, but now the air was thick with sadness and disbelief. Of all of them, Fluttershy was the first to speak. “That…that does explain it, though, doesn’t it?”

            “Fluttershy- -”

            “She doesn’t remember us,” said Rainbow Dash. She dropped back to the ground and seemed almost deflated.

            “Rainbow Dash, don’t be silly,” said Rarity.

            “No!” She pointed at Silken. “That’s a ROBOT! Like, a real robot!”

            “Remus. We are not robots.”

            “Whatever! She’s RIGHT! And if Twilight’s been alive all that time, what if…what if…” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “That much time. Come on, guys, you can see it too. Why she didn’t recognize us. How could she remember us after all that time?”

            “We’re here best friends!” said Applejack. “There’s no way she could forget us!”

            “Do you have any idea how long that is?!”

            “She is correct,” said Silken. “Her conclusion is valid. Current theories indicate that even pure alicorns have a limited capacity for memory. And the amount of time she has lived is immense, longer than any other pony outside of the Tribunal.”

            They were silent again. “It…it can’t be,” said Applejack. “I refuse to believe it!”

            “You can speak to Twilight when she gets back, if you want,” said Silken. “I do not understand what is going on here. I do not think Twilight does either. What you are, how you got here. But do so carefully.” Silken’s eyes rotated toward where Twilight had gone. “She does not normally behave like that. She may not recognize you, but I think the situation may be affecting her more deeply than she will be willing to admit.”