//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: The Resurrectionists // by Captain_Hairball //------------------------------// “Do I just look into the camera, or…” “No, genius. Start licking the lens and we’ll go from there.” Ether Brew reached hesitantly for Skanky’s little digital camera. She batted away his hooves. She readjusted the tripod it to get him framed properly again, then sat down in the folding chair across from him. They were in the same lab as they’d done the griffon roulette experiment in. The ETG had been joined by a pony-sized glass tank and a cart-like medical device that Skanky was pretty sure was a heart and lung machine. “Can you introduce yourself, please?” Skanky floated up her pad and pen, glancing through her list of questions. “I’m Ether Brew, a Masters student in the Thanatology program at Smart Cookie University. I’m working with Eternal Enigma on a…” Ether hesitated. “A very special project. “And what is that?” “We’re trying to find out what happens after death.” “And why would you want to do that? It seems like something that might be better left alone.” Ether smiled. “Haven’t you read your Princess Luna? ‘In this darkness dreams continue, even after a heart is stilled’. We know there’s an afterlife, but Luna wasn’t willing to tell us much about it. But I think it’s something we all want to know. Something we all need to know. I certainly do.” “I have a Luna quote, too. ’Death is jealous, and does not give up her secrets lightly.” “I think Luna had an interest in keeping others out of her domain. Our preliminary experiments have indicated that upon death, the soul enters a state similar to REM sleep for an undetermined period of time. But nopony actually dies in our experiments — we just trick the soul into going off on its own for a little while.” Ether hopped out of his chair onto his four hooves. “Would you like to see our setup? I’ll explain to you how it works.” Skanky sighed. Ether was already going off script. She detached her camera from the tripod and levitated it after him. A dolly would have been preferable — shaky cam was so over. She’d have to try and address it in editing. Ether ran his hooves lovingly over the edge of the tank. “We call this baby Persephone. Or Sefie, for short.” “No clever acronyms?” “It's based on a setup doctors call DHCA -- Deep Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest, also known as the "standstill procedure". The subject is anesthetized and lowered into freezing water, inducing hypothermia. This allows her to be 'dead' for up to an hour without causing brain damage. We then stop her heart. Brain activity ceases, causing the subject's soul to leave her body.” Skanky raised an eyebrow. “And this is safe?” Ether laughed. “Well, Eternal and I got through it okay. I wouldn’t try it at home, though.” He patted the ETG machine. “This baby keeps track of brain activity, but of course once the soul is gone there isn’t any. So we’re thrown back on anecdotal evidence. Which is what we need you for.” “Right.” she turned off the camera. “Actually I really like this shot; let me get my tripod.” “Do I just stand here?” said Ether. “Yes. This will literally take a second! Okay. So. Filming again. Have you been in Sefie? What did you see?” “Hey, does my mane look okay?” said Ether. “It looks fine will you answer the question?” “All right. Well. It wasn’t really that big of a deal, to be honest. It was like a dream. I was in an observatory with many other scientists. Way, way more than you’d need for anything. The telescope was a huge, old-fashioned one, all purple with gold dials, like something Twilight Sparkle would have used when she was young. Neighton was looking through the telescope and calling out co-ordinates, and Great Explainer and Imitation Game were charting them on a whiteboard.” “Star-studded,” said Skanky. Ether raised an eyebrow. “You recognize the names? Also, I see what you did there.” “I’m not a total ignoramus,” said Skanky. “So what happened then?” “Great Explainer noticed that the stars locations and parallax were consistent with them being located on a dome-shaped screen, rather than arranged in three-dimensional space. Everypony took it pretty well, considering what utter bullshit that is.” Skanky had a sudden feeling of deja vu. She’d been spending a lot of quality time in the vicinity of Firmament’s cutie mark, over the past couple of days. That was an odd coincidence. Ether continued. “Imitation Game suggested they needed to gather more data before they came to a conclusion, and so they cleared the whiteboard and started again. They went through the exact same process again three times before Eternal and Firmament brought me out. It was like they just kept forgetting.” ✭☆✭☆✭☆✭ Eternal and Ether cranked Hearth's body out of Sefie. Icy water dripped down her sides. They lowered her onto a waiting gurney, and Firmament pressed the defibrillator paddles against her soaked chest. “CLEAR!” Hearth’s eyes snapped open. ✭☆✭☆✭☆✭ “Why did you do it, Hearthie?” Hearth and Home was draped in a blanket, and holding a mug of hot coffee between her hooves. “I wanted to find my mom.” “Zacherle, Hearthie, I’ve met your mom. She lives in Saddleton. You could have just driven there.” Hearth rolled her eyes. “Wing Dings is my stepmom. My real mother died before I was born.” Skanky gasped. “Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry! I didn’t even… wait, that’s impossible.” "Gotcha." The corner of Hearth’s mouth twitched. “But I’m not just messing with you, it’s actually true. Car accident in the third trimester. They cut me out of her dead body. Everyone said it was a miracle. Except I never got to know my real mom, so I don't know, that seems like a pretty sucky miracle to me.” Skanky’s horn glowed. The green light on the camera turned red. She hugged Hearth, then started the camera again. “So. Tell me what you saw.” Hearth took a sip of her coffee. “Okay. So. Everything went black, right? And there was a tunnel of white light.” “Pretty boilerplate.” “This is hard to remember, Skanky. Please shut the fuck up before I forget it all, okay? Anyway, I felt it calling me. I went through, and I was in an office full of cubicles. Everything was gray. I mean, everything. The floors, the walls the windows, the ceiling, they were all gray. Even the light was gray. Everypony was sitting in from of screens, just typing and typing. And I was pulling this cart full of paperwork, and dropping piles and piles of it off at every cube. And no matter how many piles I drop off the load on my cart never gets any smaller. After I’d been doing this for a while, a gray pony…” “I thought they were all gray ponies,” said Skanky. “This one was especially gray. Anyway, she came and told me it was time for my weekly face to face. Though she didn't really have a face, so that was an interesting way of putting it. So the next thing I know, I’m in an office. A pretty normal upper management office, you know, motivational posters, drinky bird, Neighton’s balls, the whole deal. And naturally…” “Gray?” “Really gray. And there’s a mare at the desk. She’s hard to look at because she’s just blindingly gray. Like, gray light radiates off of her and makes everything around her that much more gray. And where the gray light hits, things get dry and flaky. Including me. She tells me that my work just isn’t getting done, which I have to admit it wasn’t. She holds out her hoof to me, and suggests a performance improvement program. I feel… like, compelled to reach out and touch hooves with her, but when I do, I see cracks start to form on the wall of my hoof, and it starts, just, flaking away. So I say I have to use the little fillies’ room. I get there, and I start washing my hoof, but the more I wash, the more of it comes away. Then I look up in the mirror, and my face is caving in. It’s gray on the outside, but the cheeks and most my forehead are gone, and there are… like… millions of little worms, or veins underneath.” Hearth stopped to take a sip of coffee. “What happened then?” asked Skanky. “Then I felt a pain in my chest, and I was soaking wet and lying on a gurney.” She shrugged. “It was an awful dream, but I’ve had worse. And I’m already starting to forget it all.” “So no mom.” Hearth leaned forward, her eyes gleaming. “But that’s just the thing! Skanky, what am I studying?” Skanky blinked. “What is this, a friend test? You’re in social work.” “Exactly!” Hearth thumped Skanky in the thigh with her coffee cup. “A cube farm’s not the type of work environment I ever expect to find myself in. But my mom, my real mom? She was a clinical data manager! That would have been her life!” Skanky wiped coffee off her leg. “Hearth, you’re getting out of frame.” “Sorry.” Hearth sat back and adjusted her blanket. “But I think I might’ve been in my mother’s afterlife! I’m going in again as soon as Eternal with let me. I think I can find her.” “Is it okay if I’m skeptical?” said Skanky. Hearth grinned and took a sip of coffee. “I wouldn’t expect any less of you, honey.” ✭☆✭☆✭☆✭ Skanky took a walk around the Bunker to clear her head — it didn’t work. She saw Ether and Firmament coming out the stallion’s room together. Ether just grinned at her. Firmament wouldn’t meet her eyes. That little whore. Skanky wriggled out of doing any more interviews that night, packed up her things, texted Smooth Operator, and headed for the closest bar. Is this a booty call? wrote Smooth. No. Bring your girlfriend if you want. Three way. I like it. Fuck you. All my friends have gone crazy. I need to talk. Or get drunk. Or both. Skanky was well into her fourth cider when the others got there. “Hey, Skanky. This is Wild Oats. Oats, Skanky.” “You… you can… I saved you seats.” It might’ve just been the alcohol, but Skanky instantly coveted the round little brown mare, who had ‘earth pony party planner’ written all over her in neon magic marker. Metaphorically. Skanky wanted to write other things on her in real magic marker. “I see you got started without us,” bubbled Oats, scrambling up onto the bar stool. “Don’t worry about us, though. We’ll catch up. Barkeep! Bring me something with an umbrella in it!” “So what’s this about your friends being crazy?” said Smooth, climbing up unto the stool next to Oats. He put a tender but possessive hoof on her jiggly croup. “I can’t… hic I can’t even tell you. I signed an NDA.” Skanky waved her hoof. “They’re doing experiments.” Oats bounced up and down on her stool. “Oh, that’s exciting. What kind?” Skanky snorted. “Science. They’re doing science.” “Neat!” Oats took a sip of the brightly colored cocktail the bartender had just slid over to her. "But I meant more specifically what kind of science. Skanky shook her head. “Weird science. Disturbing. Maybe even unfriendly.” She took a long gulp of her cider. Smooth ordered a cider and laughed. “What are they doing? Trying to raise the dead?” Skanky sprayed her cider across the bar top. “Wow. First, guess,” said Oats. She bumped hooves with Smooth. Skanky sighed, avoiding eye contact with the bartender as they swooped in to clean up the mess. “Not exactly. They’re like resurrection ponies from an old novel, stealing knowledge from the grave.” That was good. She should write that down. She waited until the bartender had gone, then looked around, and leaned towards the other two, eyes darting around. Wild Oats smelled like frosting. “Promise not to tell?” “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a jello shot in my eye,” said Oats. Smooth nodded in agreement. So Skanky told them. “Whoa,” said Smooth. “Oh, gosh, I always wondered about will happen to me after I die!” said Oats. “Where do we sign up?” said Smooth. Skanky’s left lower eyelid twitched. “Are you two serious?” Wild Oats nodded. “Oh yeah, it sounds like a trip! I mean, I guess I couldn’t talk about it right away. That would suck. But oh my Harmony, once I could? I’d be telling that one for the rest of my life!” “Yeah,” said Smooth. “How often do you get a chance like that? I mean, death is what everypony’s afraid of, right? But if we could go and see what it’s like… I mean, even if it’s not that great, at least we’d know?” “Yeah, exactly!” said Oats. Skanky wished she hadn’t wasted all that cider on her spit take. She waved down the barkeep for another. Oats and Smooth turned to whisper to each other. “Do you want to?” “Do you want to ask her?” “You ask her. You know her better.” “I can hear you!” Skanky rubbed at her temples. “Listen, I’m sure they can use more subjects. I’ll ask, but for fuck’s sake keep the secret better than I did, okay?” Smooth and Oats hoof hugged each other and kissed. Skanky sighed and looked away. Everypony around her was going insane.