Hikuro lay on the floor with a hoof the side of Polychrome's face. She lay on her side facing him, seemingly asleep. I'm not sure how I feel. Mentally speaking, I feel the same as I did before I was split off from… the original Maeda Hikaru. But I'm 'Hikuro', not the original. He became 'Bright Black'. So, nominally at least, I'm supposed to stick with Polychrome, and I'm supposed to change to do so. Within months, I'll be 'her ideal mate', I think was the phrase. I don't feel like it, yet – not aside from how we ended up on the floor, at any rate. And though we've talked about ways to improve our meshing together, and I tried to nudge things towards ways I could just be outright improved, in ways that I'd approve of, I couldn't really get the idea across without blatantly saying it, which would be a bit suspicious. Especially since I'm not at all sure about this.
Any of this, not just the new part of what I am and what I'm trying to do. I remember my fatalism on the plane ride, and visiting my brother's grave, the helplessness, and the guilt. I remember the feeling that I was trapped. The whole world was a trap. Or it wasn't. If Celestia was honest, good. If not, we're over as a species. And I had handed Kimiko over to her. My plan kind of made sense - I had done something either great or terrible, and even if it was mostly terrible I could possibly fix it a little bit, but only if I could deliver a credible ultimatum, and that meant no backing down. But then…
I did. Not because of loss of ideals, but because when it came down to it, I didn't respect Polychrome. I didn't know how much she had been altered from Kimiko, for one thing. And all the differences highlighted…
… er. I flinch from the thought, but it highlighted how much I had grown to dislike actually being around Kimiko, before. Even resentment over her getting sick and leaving me to take care of her, as unfair as that was, and I knew it and so tried to suppress it. I suppressed it pretty well, I think, but still, it's there. I'm not the only one - the mirror of this in her would be her bitterness over all the times when what she wanted was trumped by what 'we' needed, and 'we' boiled down to 'my work'. Bitter, too, that what she had given up seemed from the outside smaller than what I had. My recognizing it couldn't change any of that. These pressures and stresses are gone, but the aftereffects remain.
Of course, when I put it that way, it seems like we didn't like each other. We were adults about it, and knew at some level that we were doing what we could and had it quite well off on the whole. But the point is, especially with all that time away from her, Bright Black and I are together at a crossroads, set to diverge. We are ready to cut loose or fix things, and it appears that I'm the one who's going to fix things in a familiar environment, while he has to go sort himself out in a different way… not alone, but single, at least. We were effectively single for long enough I'm not sure which of us will actually have more of an adjustment.
So, what do I do? How should I be better for her, when so many of her problems vanished with her uploading? Well. Not all problems vanished – Celestia said she was still censoring her, so there's still something she needs to sort out, herself. Maybe we can sort our problems out together, as I was trying to do in the first place before she distracted me… twice… not that I object to any of that, certainly, as long as we get around to dealing with things eventually.
Then there's the issue of being as honest as we can with her. I'm pretty sure that she would be pretty solidly upset about the whole story, so Celestia will censor that even if we tried to tell her, as if we had the nerve - ha. That's one thing Celestia's sockpuppet of her in the Experience Center got right. But stepping back, is there a way to bring her in on Bright Black's sheer existence, at least? Not without making it seem like I'm trying to leave her. Maybe there's some way. I could say he's one of my old classmates and friends.
That I'm even thinking about telling her about any of this means I'm not just a tool of Celestia, which is nice to kn… well. It could actually be something she'd go along with. Or perhaps I would appreciate the illusion of independence, and I'll predictably think my way out of it, like it seems I have. Or, more simply, Bright Black would think of the idea of letting her know, so keeping me from thinking of it wouldn't help, and we'd have argued ourselves out of it anyway. Well, this seems like a good question to put on that channel of guaranteed-not-lying - I can ask Bright Black to ask her, and then I remember her response: just what has been changed about me, so far?
A knock on the door. Polychrome's eyes flew open; she rolled back and kipped up with a little help from a back-wingbeat, and righted herself onto four legs. Hikuro took the more pedestrian route of rolling onto his hooves and standing. "Come in!" called Polychrome as she cleared away the tea they had abandoned, and Hikuro straightened out the rug.
Beachberry slipped in, followed by Sweetsong and a white earth stallion with hair of all three secondary colors. A teacup dropped to the ground and bounced. "Coconut? What happened to you?" shrieked Polychrome.
'Coconut Cream' began to reply but jumped. "What happened to you?", he exclaimed upon seeing Hikuro's horn.
We emigrated, and I got a slight tweak to my pony body. Hikuro laughed it off as he fetched a seat. "So I'm a unicorn now. No, really, what happened to you?" As if I don't know the answer. Hello, me. What shall I call you in my head? I thought of you as Bright Black before, but so I don't slip and get censored, I had better think of you as Coconut Cream. Just, a different one, who's also me, instead of her. Or not, since I'll sometimes see you as Bright Black?
As she sat down, Beachberry explained, "That's what you get for skipping town meeting. Polychrome, did you notice something funny about this town? Kind of... out of... balance?" Do I remember the town meeting? No, not yet. Better listen carefully.
Polychrome looked at her, then Coconut Cream. "Well, once you put it like that, with her being him now? It does seem like there are an awful lot of ladies about, and not so many folks of the male variety."
Beachberry nodded. "That was mainly because you greatly prefer female friends to male, and the main visitors - Bright Black, Juniper, Quickstream, Mossfuzz, and Splits - didn't care, or agreed. So, among the adults, mares outnumbered the stallions about five to one. Twenty to one if you only count singles."
Sweetsong added, "Now that Bright Black is here, a lot more of us are changing to be human. And we thought we'd like to take intentional choices over how to deal with this imbalance, rather than just letting it be solved for us."
Coconut Cream said, "For instance, I was male before, once, so I thought I could be again. Twenty others are flipping over, too."
Polychrome's eyes widened. "You have a more colorful past than I'd imagined, dear."
A shy look to the side; Beachberry dismissed it, "Eh, it was for a play." Is there a sense in which that is true? Not as far as I can tell.
Sweetsong added, "Good times, good times. We could do a revival."
Coconut Cream looked up and laughed. "I still haven't actually manifested the specifically male bits." A brief grin and a glance at Hikuro. Does he remember that yet? Our first round was early enough he should. But should I be sharing that with him?
Beachberry snorted. "Shoot, I'm not sure I've manifested the female bits."
Sweetsong pointed out, "Out of context, it's nothing special."
Beachberry considered for a moment. "Yeah, seems like it."
"Did you just - ? Are you quite done?"
"Yes and yes."
Sweetsong rolled her eyes and continued, "Anyway, the switching helped - brought us to six to one by singles, or four to one all told. More could change later, of course."
Beachberry added, "We figured that wasn't so bad if some of us are playing for the other team, or both, or staying 'ace' - I mean, not interested." How intrusive a change would that be? I'm happy as I am, and I don't see a need to change, what with my being with Polychrome, but is that really something that's so easy to just flip around?
Sweetsong closed, "Even with all that, it still seemed like we'd come up a bit short, so we also decided that we'd be generally okay as a town with... Heinleinian relationships."
Polychrome's lips formed a little 'o'. "As in, you'd share communally? Doesn't that seem..."
"More like a genderswapped Moon is a Harsh Mistress than Stranger in a Strange Land. Even that wasn't really communal, exactly. And all the specifics are different, and it wouldn't be expected, just allowed, and…"
"Do you just mean, you've decided romance isn't for pairs only, but it's civilized and social, rather than chaotic and senseless?"
"Yes, precisely. No village-wide genre shift to porn."
That pulled Hikuro out of his thoughts; he realized what they'd been saying, and raised an eyebrow more than he could have as a human.
Coconut Cream added, "Also, we had two new stallions move in, and Daisy Dream is moving out, and Lightning Strike opted to copy himself, splitting into Thunderstruck and Ball Lightning, but all that's minor stuff. Basically, we wanted to handle this ourselves rather than letting it be handled for us by Celestia."
A narrow smile crept onto Polychrome's face. "Got anyone in mind?"
None of them appeared to have considered the question. Sweetsong fielded it: "Nope. I think we'll take it slow, think it over, try being different things… for more than one second, Beachberry… before trying any of them out in practice. No need to rush, given we've got a trillion years or so to work with and rushing can lead to enduring awkwardness. And for any short-term frustration, or for explorations you'd be too embarrassed to ask anypony to help you with, there's Celestia. You can't really end up awkward with her, and she's super discreet and can be whatever you need her to be." A deep breath. "That said, I'm still kind of into Quickstream. We'll see how all that works out." Earlier, when they visited the Indian Coco, Sweetsong implied that she's not human yet, so Celestia will not be as heavily optimizing for her. But, it seems she's still trying to optimize for herself.
Coconut Cream suddenly said, "Which reminds me. We have a new project. Several new projects."
Hikuro blinked in surprise - yet more news more recent than the long-term memories he had. "What sort? Do you mean astronomy, or something else?"
"One is astronomy, but that's not urgent. What with the large number of emigrants, there's going to be a big party at the end of the week to celebrate."
Sweetsong continued, "And at the party is going to be a sing-along. Or rather, a few hundred sing-alongs, from Min'yo to Motorhead to the B Minor Mass. No need to be good - if you're butchering it, she'll keep you from getting in the way of anyone else. But of course it's more fun to be prepared." She pulled a list of options out of hammerspace and set it on the table.
Polychrome skimmed the list, paused, and looked to Hikuro hopefully. "How about the Symphony of a Thousand? I always wanted to sing in that, and never got the chance."
Here's where I'd normally have backed away - for a bunch of reasons, not the least that my musical ear isn't nearly as well developed as hers - but now all the other reasons don't apply. And that, I can work on. And if I can't for whatever reason, maybe I can cheat and have a decent ear installed. "I... can learn some part of it, I suppose. Try to get past the quality censor for at least a few seconds."
She rushed over and threw her forelegs around him. "Great!"
Sweetsong added, "And if you happen to already know the Ode to Joy, we've got a Beethoven's 9th tonight. For broadcast outside Equestria, even."
Hikuro lost balance as he almost tried to wave both of his forelegs at the same time without rearing up first. "That, I can do for sure. Why didn't you ask first?" One of the few greats I actually can. Good!
Sweetsong grinned evilly and bobbled her head as she explained the obvious. "So you'd agree to both, not just the one you already know, silly. Anyway, rehearsal for the 9th starts in an hour, and it's in the city, so we'd better get going."
Polychrome asked, "How are we even going to get there in time?"
Beachberry said, "There's a shortcut. I guess you knew about the scenic route."
As they walked along the path towards the town hall, Hikuro thought about the chorus - 'Joy, beautiful daughter of heaven.' Is that what it's really all about? Of course, interpreted broadly it includes quite a bit more than hedonism.
Hikuro sidled over to Coco/Bright Black and said, "So, what's the new astronomy project?"
Bright Black grinned and explained, "So, like I alluded to when 'we' first met, way back last year - it's to stop dark nebulas from collapsing." For Polychrome's benefit, he added, "They're where stars come from. And stars are amazingly inefficient, so we want to prevent them from forming so we can use the hydrogen in fusion reactors instead."
Hikuro was familiar with all of this, but Polychrome wasn't. "What?"
Sweetsong and Beachberry joined in, and the three of them explained the project in more detail. They were both joining, as were a bunch of other townsponies and visitors.
When they reached the House of Stairs, they cut off the explanation in anticipation of Polychrome's reaction. She was ecstatic, and a bit piqued. "You knew about this, and didn't tell me?" She took to the air and flew about the chamber they were in. "These are all different places, aren't they? That looks like Canyonlands over there. And there are so many… and I see other rooms like this one." She landed on the wall next to where they were standing.
Beachberry concurred. "It is a nifty place, but Celestia specifically told us not to tell you about it until Bright Black - er, Hikuro - was here in person. Sorry."
Polychrome apparently could guess why she might have set that instruction, because she nodded and sighed instead of being confused or further-dismayed. Hikuro was in the dark on it, though - as he moved to ask, she whispered that she would explain later.
~~~~
As Hikuro and Bright Black stood for the break after rehearsal and before the concert, a Coconut Cream from the alto section popped up next to them, addressing the Coconut Cream who was Bright Black - "Cocos represent!"
Bright Black allowed the hoof-bump and said, "Right. Say, I've got a thing going on - want to help?"
Is it just me, or was that timed very conveniently? In all the previous months put together, we only randomly ran into one other Coconut Cream, even though she was based on a mass-produced toy. Well. I guess Celestia isn't trying to make things too hard on him, at least to start. Or maybe he'll need all the help he can get. Where is our Coconut Cream?
As the two white earth ponies left, Polychrome landed in the free spot. Hikuro said, "This was already nice, and we haven't even had the performance yet. Have you done anything like it here? I don't recall."
Polychrome chuckled. "This? Well... we went to a performance here together once, and I've been to more without you, but no, I hadn't joined in."
Hikuro nodded and thought back. "For me, it was rather more like watching it on TV rather than being there. And I didn't have a private enough place to sing in."
"So you said, so I didn't mind that you didn't come again. It was nice to see you happy to see me back when it was over." They looked out over the hall. "Yes, being here made more than one thing better, didn't it?" She gave an eyebrow wiggle.