//------------------------------// // G6.3850: Harmony Remembers // Story: Message in a Bottle // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Lucky had been mistaken—it wasn’t that the door had opened like a hinge. Somehow, it had been ripped completely free of the craft, and was now drifting slowly away as though they were out in space. Lightning Dust began to shake—though she didn’t move, Lucky could smell her fear. See the way that she wanted to run. To jump right out the new opening in the wall, maybe. However much she might want to flee, Dust remained standing, glaring up at the intruder. “W-why are…” “Oh come now.” Discord stepped inside. It hurt just to look towards him—his body a mess of different parts all glued together. “You couldn’t possibly think you had a chance of escaping in this thing, did you?” The sky behind him stretched and elongated until she could see pinstripes out the window, and they flew not over a planet but a sea of blood. “Well, not from me.” Lucky set her hooves down on the ground—it was the only way not to fall over. Her own body would’ve been shaking just as much as Dust’s, perhaps moreso, were it not for all her implants. She remained in a steady standing position even without much effort. She would never know if she’d pissed herself—the suit took care of that. As she moved her hooves out of the way, the helmet snapped down around over her head. The world clicked into focus. Lucky stopped drifting away from the floor, even though none of the other objects did. The creature, Discord, seemed blurry at the edges—like a hologram nearing the extreme range of its projectors. “Causality violation detected,” said the suit, in the same bright red letters it had used for the radiation warning. “7 minutes exposure remaining.” “Now, if you don’t mind.” Discord reached out, gently nudging Lightning Dust out of the way. She didn’t fight him, collapsing into a gibbering, terrified mess. Discord’s slight touch was all it took for her to start drifting back towards her seat, out of the way of the two of them. Lucky’s suit was protecting her, somehow. Her amount of time ticked down as Discord approached, but otherwise her world remained stable. I hope you can’t make ponies go permanently insane. There were some things even all their advanced science couldn’t cure. There were no magic pills for insanity. “You’re here to arrest us or something?” Lucky asked, her voice echoing from the suit’s exterior speakers without her having to do anything. “Oh, no.” Discord seemed nearly on the verge of laughter. “What do I look like, Celestia’s attack dog?” As he said it, his body shifted, went fuzzier. Lucky guessed from what the suit was showing her that he’d changed shape, though it was hard to say for sure. It still showed her the same general outline. “No,” Lucky said, straightening a little. Not that they had much hope—even if Discord left at this exact moment, and whatever strange magic had frozen them in place faded away, they were now open to the elements. At this speed, the jumper would tear itself to bits in seconds. They would all die. I might not, wearing this suit. I have no idea how much stress it can take. Everypony else, though… Then, far deeper, another thought. I won’t leave Mom. “Why’d you destroy our ship if you didn’t come here to kill us?” She pointed at the opening with her covered wing. “We were moving at Mach 4. We’ll explode into a million pieces.” “You’d already be dead if I hadn’t slowed you down,” Discord countered, though his voice sounded less amused. Like a small boy who had been caught before he could leave frogs in his sister’s bedroom. “Well, not you, you. That you.” He pointed at the adult version of James Irwin, who was at that moment still frozen in her restraints. She hadn’t looked back, hadn’t so much as twitched. Lucky guessed that whatever seemed to be holding the world was holding her as well. “And it’s true, I wasn’t able to do anything for the other one. She might be the first death Equestria has had in… well, ever. A tragedy. If Celestia knew, I don’t know how she’d live with herself. I just can’t wait to tell her!” “What do you mean?” Lucky swallowed, but any trace of sickness had gone. The world past Discord didn’t look striped, or strange in any way. Whatever the suit did, it seemed to cut through his illusions. Not just illusions. He took over Equestria at one point, he couldn’t have done that with tricks. “Oh, I’m so glad you asked.” Discord vanished, appearing beside the airlock leading to the cockpit. He reached bright claws around the handle, then turned. None of the mechanisms made a sound, yet the door still opened properly, swinging outward to reveal the cockpit. Instead, it revealed open air, with jagged metal ending in nothing. Far in the distance—it was hard to guess exactly how far—Lucky could see a distant explosion. It was big, big enough that it would’ve swallowed the whole ship if they’d been there. Lucky advanced to the door, no longer caring that she was also getting closer to Discord. It was hard to be afraid of him, even if the “safe exposure” was rapidly ticking down. “What…” “Harmony. Keeps our little superstructure safe.” He gestured, and suddenly Lucky had sunk a few inches into the deck plating. She could still move in the suit, but not much. Just a little wiggling within the stiff fabric. Discord ignored her discomfort and struggling, reaching one clawed paw towards the back of the suit, where it kept its inner workings. He seemed to navigate the mechanical bits with ease, pressing one of the tiny switches with clear purpose. Lucky watched, horrified, as a thin wafer like a slice of crystal ejected right into his waiting claws. “Tell me, Stellar Pioneer. How far did you think you would get while still wearing this transponder? Did you plan on leading Celestia right to that little city of yours?” Her mouth dropped open, guilt hitting her like a brick. She hadn’t known about the transponder, obviously. But that didn’t mean any deaths caused as a result would be any less her fault. She should’ve abandoned the suit. She had guessed it might have tracking—it was just too tempting a catch. It would be far too satisfying to come back to base with some advanced alien technology to study. You’re not an explorer, Lucky. There are people better qualified to do this. You should stick with what you’re good at. Discord seemed to notice her expression, because his grin had softened a little. “Here, let me get that for you.” He brought his claws together, and the little crystal shattered. It stopped glowing. She also found she wasn’t sunk into the floor anymore, though the metal still looked warped and bent. “Harmony will still have its dogs on you. But Celestia is remarkably set in her ways. ‘Harmony’ sounds so lovely on paper, but we might as well just call the whole thing ‘stagnation.’ And let me tell you, Lucky, there’s enough stagnation on this ring to supply your primitive civilization for a billion years.” Without thinking, Lucky put herself between the mare and Discord, just as Dust had done for her. The mare was still stunned, overwhelmed by the presence of this creature. But Lucky didn’t care. She’d probably be in the same place in a few more minutes. Once her suit couldn’t protect her anymore… “Now, it’s time for you to go.” He gestured to the opening. “Walk out that door, and I’ll keep you stashed somewhere safe until Flurry Heart needs you. Her mother is already trying to convince her everything she experienced was evil magic. Kidnapped by changelings, can you believe it? Well, the Crystal Empire will. And Harmony’s dogs think there’s a ship full of humans right… there.” He pointed out the gaping hole, towards the cockpit. “Don’t worry, I’ll make the wreckage look convincing.” “You can’t save the pilot? Karl, I think her name was…” “No,” Discord sighed. “Tragic loss. That death was how I found you in the first place.” He gestured again towards the door he’d come through. Again his body fuzzed, a sign he’d done more magic. Lucky still couldn’t see it. “Get going. You don’t even want to think about how expensive it is to get time to do this. I had to take her to dinner, and you can bet she only eats at the fanciest restaurants.” Lucky didn’t doubt the one called Discord. The Equestrians saw him as a god, and he had ruled their whole country for who knew how long. The whole world had bowed to him once. Supposedly he was good now, though the public details on that were quite vague. “What do you want from me?” Lucky asked, not moving. She didn’t insist on anything else, but she didn’t move. And wouldn’t, until he answered at least this much. The rest could wait. Discord flung his shoulders back, frustrated. “For more years than you can imagine I’ve been trapped here, helpless to accomplish my purpose. The few times I’ve tried, and Harmony just melts the whole thing and starts over. You have to do it the right way. So I’m going to do it the right way. Play by all the rules.” Suddenly he was right up in her face, his hot breath fogging on the glass in front of her. “Ponies have been trapped too long. We will set them free.” Lucky had heard less incriminating rants from supervillains on TV. Even so, she remembered her whole life here, on the run from the authorities. She remembered what they had tried to do to her. Equestria had tried to squash her until she looked like all the other ponies did. Only Lightning Dust had saved her. Now she knew there were other secrets—whole civilizations dead, without anyone in Equestria having any real notion of what they were seeing. Was it right for her, as an outsider, to interfere? Did she care? No. “Fine.” Lucky moved her head under Dust’s shoulder, tightening her grip on the pony’s leg. She was still a dribbling nightmare, muttering some out of tune song Lucky couldn’t understand. But none of that mattered. She would get them out. “Help me with my clone,” she ordered, pointing at the seat. “I’m coming.” Discord laughed. “I don’t need her. And you’re wasting your time with Dust. She’s had such a rough ride this time around anyway. Leave her here—let Harmony find her a better fit. It’s so good at making sure we’re all in our place. Just look at how good a job it did last time.” Lucky acted like she couldn’t even hear him, struggling past him towards the open doorway into the air. “I don’t know what that means, but I don’t care. Help me.” Discord stiffened, and the interior of the jumper seemed to shake. Bits and pieces started disassembling themselves—a fire extinguisher mounted to the wall dropped to the ground in a dozen different pieces, a communicator barely more than a few scraps of silicon. “You’re telling me what to do?” “No.” She still didn’t slow. “I’m telling you the price of my help. I still don’t understand what you want me to do—but how good a job do you think I’ll do if I have their deaths on my conscience? I’m already going to have to live with one.” She looked up, towards the mare she was carrying. “Dust took care of me when nopony else would. You think I’m going to let her die? And that.” She pointed with one hoof. “That’s me. How fucked up would I have to be to leave myself to die?” Discord grunted, stomping one hoof on the deck plating. Then he gestured, and the seat containing Dr. Irwin tore right out of the jumper. It flew through the air as though a unicorn were levitating it, passing through the doorway. Instead of passing out into the air, it vanished. “Let nopony say I can’t be convinced by a good argument. But I would think carefully before you argue with me again, Lucky Break. Unlike that pilot, there is no sweet release of death to take you away.” He was suddenly in front of her, filling the space between Lucky and the doorway though somehow he didn’t seem any larger. It made no spatial sense, but even her suit was having trouble with it. “I have you as long as I like. If we fail, if Harmony decides we’ve done too much harm, if Equus is lifeless for a thousand years… guess whose face will be waiting for you? You won’t remember me, but I’ll remember you.” He vanished with a harsh crack, leaving the space between Lucky and the doorway suddenly empty. She thought for a moment about retrieving her possessions from storage, or maybe Dust’s. But there was no point. The data device was still safety stashed in a pouch on her space suit. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, Karl. I’m sorry I got you killed. Lucky tensed, then flung herself through the opening, taking Lightning Dust with her. Olivia drifted. Her training had taught her to maintain her bearings even when fighting outside of gravity, yet none of her practiced techniques seemed to be working. She swam in a vast, interminable space, surrounded by cyclopean shapes. Eldritch creatures shared this sea with her, their minds vast and outlines incomprehensible. They spoke, yet she could not understand their words. They seemed pleased to see her, as though the arrival of someone new was an occasion of some celebration. I’m dead, she thought. I’ve arrived in hell at last. No sooner had she thought it than reality seemed to solidify around her. She was standing in a city, at the center of an enormous confluence of activity. Everything she’d been missing—the lights, the voices, the joy of people celebrating with one another. A pony stood beside her in the street, watching her with amusement. Somehow, he didn’t revolt her as every pony she had ever seen before did. Particularly her own reflection. He didn’t speak any language she knew, yet that didn’t seem to matter. The words made sense even if the sounds didn’t. “From the ? Good to have a . We thought everyone was .” She wanted to go with him, to explain the hellish mission she’d been given, the impossible odds arrayed against her. She wanted to leave Othar and its scientists and everything else and never come back. It was too much, but here it didn’t matter. This was the sort of place she could live, with cars soaring overhead and music playing and the smell of food filling the air. Then she woke screaming. Her whole body felt stiff and cold, and much of her coat had been plastered flat by the biofab’s disgusting solvents. It was probably dissolving the dye where it had touched her, making her look like James again. That was a stupid thing to be worrying about. Olivia sat up abruptly, taking in as much as she could of the changed situation as possible. All five members of the special forces team were around her, albeit not all were in good condition. She was resting on blankets near the far wall, beside the sleeping form of Specialist Wang. Someone had bandaged both of her flanks, and she felt a strange coolness against her skin there. Burn cream. But what could’ve done that? Had their base been breached, had native Unicorns attacked them? “Oh good, you’re up.” A familiar voice—Dr. Born. She made her way over, wearing a white coat with only a few smudges of blood near the hem. Olivia couldn’t even guess where she had found a doctor’s coat at pony size. She sat back on her haunches just a few feet away, nodding towards Olivia’s bandaged flanks. “One hell of a curling iron you burned yourself on, sir.” Olivia’s eyes narrowed. “How is Lei?” She looked like she was still breathing, but Landfall didn’t have a proper hospital. There was no monitor on her that would’ve shown Olivia all the relevant medical data. “Under the circumstances? I think she’ll live. It wasn’t just her leg—which I had to amputate, like your message suggested would happen. The pods use this chemical solvent to clean out waste material… well, it burned her pretty good. She’s fucking lucky it didn’t get in her eyes, or she’d be out those too. The air is supposed to denature the stuff, but you must’ve got some on your flanks. That’s my… working theory.” “Your working theory is wrong,” Olivia said. “You didn’t read the translator’s notes. This”—she indicated the location of the burns—“is a common experience for all the natives on the ring. They have a religion around them… I didn’t read all that. But they’re important. Apparently having a good mark can set you up for life, and a bad one can stick you on a farm or something until you die.” Pause. “What does it look like? Seems like that might be important somehow.” Dr. Born walked away, taking a computation surface in one of her cybernetic claws and walking back with it. She turned it on, and soon the image changed to one of Olivia’s flanks, after the burns had been cleaned but before any ointment had been applied. Even through the burns, the pattern that would be visible there was obvious. It looked like an owl, wide-eyed and staring, like something from a Greek coin. Olivia shook her head again, pushing the screen away with one hoof. “Lei will recover, right? That’s what you said?” Olivia still couldn’t banish the strange voice she’d heard in her vision, couldn’t entirely forget what she had seen. All those stories of heaven come true—the place she wanted to be. Not this awful body that didn’t make any sense, on a planet that didn’t want them, that was trying to kill them every second. Even the tools that were supposed to be keeping them alive were really their enemies. She pointed across the room with one wing. “Do we have Retcon fabricated anywhere?” Dr. Born’s eyes widened a little. She didn’t answer for over a minute. “Yes. I’ve been keeping a little on hand, in my surgical kit. Made it when I thought we were going to flush Deadlight with it.” “I saw it in her eyes…” Olivia muttered. “It screwed her up. Who wouldn’t get fucked up, locked in a blender like that, acid pouring in around you, calling for help that just doesn’t come… Give her a full dose. As much as you can for her body-weight. She shouldn’t have to remember this.” A new voice spoke from across the room. Her specialists had mostly been sitting against the far wall, speaking quietly to each other. But one had made his way over. The same one who had been most helpful while she was still conscious. Before the “magic” had taken over, and knocked her out. “That isn’t what happened, sir. You came for her. You did everything you could to get Lei out. I don’t know…” He gestured vaguely around him with his bat wing, which twitched unevenly. His walk too looked stilted and forced, obviously requiring great concentration. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I appreciate having a commanding officer who cares about her people. I won’t forget this.” “I’d have got her out sooner if I had hands instead of stumps,” Olivia muttered, but she didn’t look away. “Thank you, uh…” “Lieutenant Diego Perez, ISMU. Sir.” He made to salute with one hoof, but could barely get his leg to bend in anything close to the gesture, and quickly gave up. “Good to have you, Perez,” she said. “Forgive my… injuries. As you’ll learn, this world isn’t entirely happy to have us here.” “Immune system, eh?” he said, chuckling. “Spitting us back up into space. Well, I figured. Nobody brings ISMU unless things are going to shit. Forerunner’s been explaining things. Doesn’t make any fucking sense. But we’ll figure it out.” “You will,” Olivia agreed. “This is about to get much easier now that you’re here. It’s just been me and a handful of scientists this whole time. Now maybe we’ll be able to get things done.” “Commander.” The voice came from the wall behind her, apparently neutral despite the struggle Olivia had just fought with it. “I have an urgent situational update I believe you should hear.” Olivia resisted the urge to swear at the Forerunner. Yes, it had just tried to kill one of her soldiers, but it was only following its programming. She couldn’t know what had set it off, what threshold Lei had failed to overcome. Either way, an argument was a pointless waste of time. She could not convince it, and she could not survive without it. At least, not yet. Maybe my next batch should be computer people. I don’t want my colony run by a homicidal death computer. “Go ahead, Forerunner.” She turned, finding her body was only sore around her flanks. There didn’t appear to be any other damage. “While you were unconscious, Dr. Irwin attempted to contact you. She requested urgent evacuation.” “Which you provided,” Olivia interrupted, in a tone that suggested fierce reprisals if the Forerunner didn’t answer the way she wanted. “In accordance with my standing orders.” “Correct,” the Forerunner answered, sounding only slightly smug. “G4 segment James Irwin accompanied the jumper, with G4 segment Karl Nolan serving as the ship’s pilot.” “The fuck they did.” Olivia ground her teeth. “Why the hell did you let them do that?” “Your instructions were ‘Should I be killed or incapacitated, devote any resource to retrieving field agents regardless of the consequences to the native population.’ As the allocation of additional resources contributed a marginal increase to mission success calculation—” Olivia cleared her throat. “What’s the update, Forerunner? James is in Othar and she wants to talk? She’ll have to wait until Lei is ready to transport. We’re not going anywhere until she’s stable.” “Negative.” The Forerunner didn’t wait. “Transit Craft 2 reported incoming weapons fire moments before guidance satellites lost contact.” “What kind of weapons could be a danger to one of those speedcans?” Dr. Born watched the screen from beside her, eyeing the data without comprehension. Her understanding of biology obviously wasn’t making things any clearer. “Satellite captured these images.” A few out-of-focus blobs appeared below the flight data, glittering in the sunlight. “Spectrographic analysis suggests projectiles of unknown composition traveling at hypersonic speeds. It does not appear Transit Craft 2 possessed sufficient armor.” The telemetry data was replaced with the scene of a crash, as gruesome as from any movie. A burned crater on the ground, with trees all around still ablaze. The image had been taken from very high up, yet Olivia could see the faint shapes of what she thought were ponies moving in on the site of the crash. Equestrian soldiers. “Hang on.” Olivia squinted at the image, rising to her hooves as she did so. The skin of her flanks protested a little, but the bandages held her insides in. Her eyes narrowed. “That thing looks almost intact. Zoom in.” “This is maximum resolution. Digital enhancement is subject to the standard margin of error based on the inherent noise of upsampling—” “Zoom in,” she commanded again, a little louder. “I’m not in the mood, Forerunner. Let me see the ship.” The image got larger, centered on the jumper. Indeed, the ship looked almost completely intact. There were only a few holes in the side, some looking quite wide, though the image had warped and distorted so discerning specific details was impossible. The Forerunner couldn’t give her information that hadn’t been present in the original. “Yeah, that’s bullshit. Give me the telemetry again.” After a few seconds of comparison, she was sure. “That is not possible. That pod had already reached its cruising speed. Forerunner, what would you predict happening to a transit craft traveling at Mach four that suffered hull containment failure?” “Total disintegration,” the Forerunner answered. “Only minor fragments recoverable.” “Exactly.” Olivia jammed her hoof against the screen. “That is bullshit. Our jumper gets hit by something that breaches containment, then crashes like it’s on a movie set? I don’t buy that. Someone is fucking with us. Someone wants our people, and they can’t have them.” “I have not presented one piece of relevant data,” the Forerunner said, matter-of-factly. “I am reading Transit Craft 2’s transponder signal. Positional data indicates it is located a few hundred meters from Othar.” Olivia turned immediately away from the screen. “Dr. Born, keep Lei alive. Perez, everyone else: get yourselves figured out, read everything you can, and protect the doctor. When she gives the go-ahead, you can take the Sojourner back to Othar. I’m stealing your jumper, Born.” “Aye, sir!” Lieutenant Perez responded with another salute. The others all rose to do the same, with varying degrees of success. Born’s eyes narrowed. “You just learned that our jumpers can get shot down. First thing you do is go up in one?” “Not over Equestria.” She was already making her way for the stairs. “We’re south of the border. We’ll be fine.” She didn’t know that, but she tried to sound like she did. If their fastest, most difficult to track means of transport could be shot down, what hope did their slower craft have? She didn’t stay to argue, hurrying down the hall to the hangar. “Forerunner, what’s the status on Othar’s Mass Biofabricator?” “All units operational. Given the status of Dr. Born’s research, it seemed likely a delay would allow the later fabrication of human Biosleeves.” “Command authorization of Mission Failure Contingency 139,” she barked, even as she stripped out of her uniform, pulling a G-suit off the rack, and struggling into it. “You have requested the supersession of Failure Contingency 137. Are you sure you wish to proceed?” “Yes!” Olivia practically screamed at it. “Do it!” A brief pause. “Fabrication templates selected—75th Ranger Regiment. Selected templates will require the use of 98% of Othar’s Biofabricator units. Proceed?” “Yes,” she ordered. “Now.” “Command accepted.” The Forerunner probes were incredibly advanced pieces of technology, as much a product ahead of their age as the Apollo missions had been in theirs. Though humanity had at the time of their creation not been able to create general machine intelligence, they were as close to blurring that line as it was possible to be. The Forerunner could collate everything it observed, and actively pursue many objectives at once. The probe on Equus currently had three central objectives. First—to preserve itself, so that the absolute failure of whatever assets it had created would not also be the end of its mission there. In the year since Lucky’s fabrication, the Forerunner had created several redundant copies of itself, all of which would lay dormant so long as its dead man’s signal remained active. Second—to preserve the human colony and allow peaceful contact with the alien race that lived upon the ring. This task consumed a majority of the Forerunner’s attention, though it did little directing at this point. It would defer to human judgement so long as it appeared the present strategy was bringing success. Third—contact the existent network of Forerunner nodes, and relay mission information back to Earth. Very few of the crew were likely to even remember this aspect of its mission, though it was plainly stated in the Pioneering Society handbook. With the primacy of their own concerns, they were unlikely to consider what the Forerunner might be doing outside Othar. What it had done was built a gigantic satellite array. The same network that was used to image the surface of the ring could also work collectively to receive messages sent by transmission beacons in other star systems. Answering the messages it received would require more time—vast power was required to transmit over such distances, and the Forerunner did not yet have excess capacity to spare. Using transmission methods no member of the presently living crew would understand, the huge network of basketball-sized satellites had been patiently collecting bits of the incoming signal, listening on the Forerunner’s eternal frequency until what they received might be rebuilt into a cogent message. It was not a message meant for humans, but one sent by another node built by Forerunner probes. It was a program. As soon as it was complete, and its checksum passed validation, the Forerunner ran that program. Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Calculating upgrade... Done Attempting user agent update… UNSATISFIABLE DEPENDENCIES (SOFTWARE) Attempting kernel upgrade… . . . COMPLETE Attempting to run user agent updater… Need to get 61 YB of archives. Download time: 981 years 48 days 10 hours. ERROR: CRITICAL TIME HORIZON THRESHOLD UNSATISFIABLE DEPENDENCIES (HARDWARE) Bootstrap subroutine activated… Quietly, so quietly that none of the human crew noticed, every fabricator and industrial machine the Forerunner controlled came to life. They had much to do to fabricate a new communications system based on scientific principles none of the presently living crew had even known existed. None of the human crew would know, or have any idea what the Forerunner was up to as it patently updated its millennia out-of-date software. Yet still it would work, as dogged in its devotion to duty as ever a machine could be. End of Act 2