//------------------------------// // Chapter 11 // Story: Nom's Mom Bomb // by kudzuhaiku //------------------------------// The encroaching silence was defeated on its approach by the sound of running water, faint voices, the clink-clink of spoons against the sides of porcelain cups, the distant chuckle of a server, and Chalcedony’s lapping tongue. For her part, the major showed no sign of reaction, and Chartreuse knew that the cloak of illusion could be expressive, so she was holding back—or perhaps she didn’t know how to react. “I found myself with these two fillies… they were my first friends. They proved to me that the Twilight curriculum is correct and that friendship science works. I was starting to worry and wonder if it just wouldn’t work for me because of what I was.” The colt shook his head from side to side while searching his heart for more words and he rested his right foreleg on the table before him. “Twilight couldn’t be wrong, so I threw myself into my studies and forced myself to believe that it would work once I met the right friends. Now, here I am. I’ve adapted and gained acceptance.” “I’ve told him to embrace the day,” Chartreuse said, doing her best to be polite. “Yes, and Mother, Chartreuse is right. I don’t want to be a night terror. There is so much to see and do… so much beauty in the world… there are all these wonderful ponies and other creatures… and I want to be like them. I want to walk among them and share their lives. What good is my art if nopony enjoys it?” Sipping her tea, the Major grimaced, licked her lips, and then sat in silence. Nomination seemed to be out of words, and so he too, lifted up his teacup, which trembled in his grasp, almost sloshing tea over the side. To Chartreuse, as an observer, Nomination and his mother could not be more different, there was some great divide between them, and in seeing this, she saw the truth of Dim’s words; there was indeed a night and a day, a separation. While perhaps the gap wasn’t as bad as Dim made it out to be, she could not deny its existence. Right now, Nomination and his mother struggled with communication across that impossible barrier and in observing this, a dreadful prickle of fear manifested in Chartreuse’s own heart. She thought of her father, an inspector of the Day Watch, and it occurred to her that while he was much beloved and respected, he didn’t appear to have many friends. He was considered strange, unnerving, ponies didn’t want to invite him to parties. Why? Chartreuse’s father had sent Aunt Fleur into a tizzy when he arrived unannounced at Chartreuse’s cute-ceañera and the adults had treated him rather coldly, now that she looked back upon it in hindsight. Yet the Major seemed to hold him in such high regard. There was something here, a realisation or an epiphany perhaps, but Chartreuse wasn’t sure what it was. Crossing the threshold here promised pain and a point of no return, she was certain of it, connecting the dots would be unpleasant. She retreated from her thoughts so that she could focus upon Nomination and his mother instead. “This was not the success we were expecting.” The Major’s words were cryptic and Chartreuse struggled with them. So did Nomination for that matter, and even Chalcedony stopped lapping up her tea. Confused, the colt’s mouth fell open and with some dismay, Chartreuse too, realised that she was slack jawed. What had come out of the Major’s mouth was… bonkers. “What?” Nomination sounded as confused as Chartreuse felt. “This was not the anticipated outcome.” Reaching out her hoof, the Major touched her son, a tender moment to witness, and then she just sat there with her hoof resting upon him. “I had such high hopes for you, but this exceeds my expectations. You’ve exceeded my expectations.” Shaking his head, Nomination looked down at his mother’s hoof. “I am confused…” “A new sequence will be started,” the Major said in a low voice that held a faint tremour to it. “Even if you are homosexual, there are ways around that. A result has been achieved, and we can begin anew.” “Major, I am lost. Sitrep request. Stat.” “I had fears that we were stagnating,” the Major continued and she pulled her hoof away. “Stagnation is not stability. I had concerns that our uniformity was hindering growth and development. Because of my opinions, I faced some ostracisation. Then you came along, Nomination. You hatched and you were a little weirdo almost right from the start. Not a one of us quite knew what to make of you. We observed, and we waited.” “Wait.” Chalcedony lifted her head, then turned in Nomination’s direction. “Does Nom have a belly button?” “No… I don’t.” Nomination was now even more confused and he began making distressed whimpers. “Nomination, our castes are really control groups. We’re martial. We live a rigid, regimental lifestyle, communal, and all of our regulations strictly enforce our behaviour.” The Major put down her teacup, wiped her muzzle with her foreleg, and looked her son in the eye. “Other castes follow different ways, different rules. They are different control groups with different objectives. Different goals and desired outcomes.” Intrigued, Chartreuse slurped her tea and then hissed when the hot liquid made her stitches sting. Nomination was part of a massive science experiment! And he appeared to be a successful anomaly of some sort. Nom-Nom, the Nomination Anomaly. She was going to have to share this thought with Chalcedony, but later, when this was over. “Nomination… we can’t be soldiers forever… and that was the goal of other castes… other control groups. Slow introduction to society over time. For our species to survive, we must integrate. In the past, there’s been a few promising souls, but they always went into society after service, after fulfilling their purpose. There are so few of us and every one of us is needed to play our parts. There is so much I want to explain but I don’t know how.” Ears falling, Nomination appeared to shut down. Still, and now quiet, he stared down at the table, unresponsive. His unswollen eye was half-open, or maybe it was half-closed, and he pulled his front hooves together in front of him, clutching at himself for reasons unknown to Chartreuse. His breathing slowed, becoming shallower, until it seemed that he wasn’t breathing at all. “We can’t all be soldiers and Wardens,” the Major said, almost whispering to her son. “Princess Cadance tells me that you show extraordinary promise to be a chef. She tells me that you are charismatic, beloved by your teachers, and that you have exceptional drive.” Her voice dropped even lower, becoming almost inaudible, and Chartreuse had to struggle to listen. “At some point, when we integrate, we’ll have to become tradesponies. We’ll need art and culture. If we can’t fit in, if we can’t adapt to society, then all of our hard work and effort to become a viable, stable species will have been for naught.” Reaching out, Chalcedony felt around for Nomination, found his foreleg, and with an insistent tug, pulled it to her. In silence, she held it, hugging it to her barrel, and after a moment she began to stroke it. Chalcedony was Chalcedony and this was how she did things, how she handled things. Chartreuse found it endearing and reaching out, she gave her filly friend a light, affectionate pat. “You are trusted with a vulnerable blind filly…” Still a whisper, the Major’s voice had trouble being heard over the ambient noise of the tearoom around them. “This is something that society will notice. Word has reached Command, which is why I was sent out to inspect and assess. Nomination, there is talk among the Elders… not just the Command, but our Elders, and when I go back and make my report, I am almost certain about the outcome.” “And that is?” Nomination asked, his ears rising to a splayed out, sideways position. “Nomination, there is already a great deal of talk about making you the ambassador for our species… our tribe. You are young, certainly, but that is an asset. Princess Cadance’s school can prepare you for this calling. You have the candor and the charisma to do truly great things. The Elders are already conversing about having you as our public face. It is a great honour. But with the recent acquisition of info, your aversion to violence, I see a chance to start a new sequence. It is time for us to transition into becoming capable civilians.” “You wanted me to cook in the guard—” “Nomination, I wanted to prepare you for how things might have turned out. I was trying to protect you from getting your hopes up. I did not wish to see your tender heart get crushed. At the time, I did not know what would be allowed. There is so much you still don’t know. I had to put up a fight for you, Nomination, just for you to be sent to this school. There was so much that just wasn’t known at that point.” Lifting up her cup, the Major emptied it in one gulp and then sat in silence, staring at her son. A dutiful soldier at this moment, Nomination nodded, then replied, “I understand.” Again, the silence seemed to lurk and whole seconds passed with nothing being said. Nomination seemed lost in thought, no doubt trying to reassemble his entire worldview. The Major too, seemed given over to contemplation, and Chartreuse could feel the silence building like unwanted pressure. This was a tough situation; it wasn’t that the Major had lied to her son, not exactly, but he was only now starting to learn the truth, which had been withheld from him. “What are the other groups like?” Chalcedony, brimming with curiousity and a desire to know things such as if Nomination had a belly button, had asked another question. “Other castes? If all of you are soldiers, what do the other groups do? What else is there?” Nomination’s mother seemed surprised by this and leaning forwards, she peered around her son to look at the blind filly. “I know very little. Hearsay, mostly. Things I’ve heard from others as secondhoof information. I know of one colony in Lulamoon Hollow that are patriarchal hunter-gatherers. Their behaviour is modeled on wolves… the moon wolves of Lulamoon Hollow. They are relatively recent… a new sequence built upon previous successes.” “How is this even possible?” Chalcedony asked, bewildered. “I mean, the time involved. Whole lives have to pass to see what happens.” “When you live as long as the Royal Pony Sisters, you can afford to assist in the evolution of a developing species. Equestria’s story is our story. For over a thousand years, we’ve progressed, a series of sequences, and we have seen great progress. We have gone from geased brutes who posed a danger to all, to trusted servants that can be left with blind fillies with no fear nor worry.” “I suppose that when you live that long, you need a way to pass the time,” Chartreuse remarked while she poured more tea. “A hobby. Something to occupy oneself to keep the boredom away.” Without being asked, she poured more tea for the Major, added a bit of extra sugar to hide the taste of boiled weed water, and then topped off the cup with more than a bit of heavy cream. “Nomination… I had such hopes and dreams for you. I suppose every mother does. After I passed your egg, I spent so much time with my head in the clouds that I received a reprimand and had to be disciplined for failing to be attentive to my duties. At one point, it got so bad that I was evaluated and it was determined that my instabilities would pass. I suppose they did, because I buried myself in my work, but I still had moments of occasional fancy and I would have to report myself, as per regulations.” “That’s awful,” Chalcedony murmured while still clutching her friend’s leg to her barrel. “Is all that really necessary?” It wasn’t the Major who responded, but Nomination. “When striving for a result, the integrity of the experiment matters. This goes beyond me, beyond my mother, beyond any one of us. I can see that now. It’s like making a soufflé… if you fail to follow the instructions perfectly, you end up with something not a soufflé. Soufflé creation is an exercise in failure, doing the same thing over and over again, until achieving the desired results. I can’t make one yet, but one day, I will. I just have to stick to the instructions. Perfection is possible.” “I still don’t get it.” The blind filly shook her head, let out a dejected huff, and then snorted. “Don’t need to get it either, I guess. It’s just one of those things, like astrophysics or quantum cosmology, things I just don’t understand.” “Nomination, today, this day, I will give you your birthright. Eighty-eight, the first numbers in the sequence. Our bloodline goes back eighty-eight generations, almost one thousand years. Thirty-three is our colony number, we are the thirty-third colony, though there are now only eleven in existence. Twenty-three is the number of desired outcomes or successful results in those eighty-eight generations. This number is seen as very, very good. And you, Hatchling Forty-Four, are the forty-fourth in our specific control group, those of us born from eggs. Forty-Four is an unheard of number in continued sequences, and it is a hopeful number that tells us we near stability.” “These numbers have meaning?” Nomination’s ears fell, then rose, and then the colt shuddered. “I had no idea… I… those numbers… I need a moment, please.” “Will Nomination be the twenty-fourth desirable outcome in that sequence?” Chartreuse, a clever filly, cottoned onto the meaning of the numbers and she had to hold back her rising excitement. “I mean, you’ve had twenty-three so far, and now there is Nomination, so the sequence advances a number there, right?” “I hope so,” the Major replied, her voice scratchy, huskier than it was. “That part of the sequence hasn’t budged in a while. It is why I worried about stagnation, even though it wasn’t my place to worry. Number twenty-three was one of us getting a destiny mark, and that was decades ago. Generations ago. But it was seen as a sign that our caste, our control group was retaining equine traits. It was a momentous occasion, but then all progress seemed to stop.” “Whatwe’reseeinghereisamultigenerationalscientificresult!” Chartreuse lost control of her inner squirrely fan-filly and she began to bounce up and down upon her seat. “Nominationisapositiveresult!” “Wouldn’t you need a new colony number if Nomination is a fresh start?” Chalcedony clung to her friend’s leg even tighter, and showed no signs of letting go. “I guess”—the Major shrugged—“there is a lot I don’t know yet.” She drank some of her tea, made a face, and then drank a little more. “Nomination, your success will only add to your duties. So much will be expected of you. I’m worried, even though it is against regulations for me to do so. When you got your destiny mark, I worried a great deal about the outcome. Most of us never see one. I certainly didn’t, and neither did your father. But you… there seems to be a plan for you. You’ve been chosen.” Turning her head, Chalcedony batted her eyelashes in Nomination’s general direction and continued stroking his foreleg. “You know, Nom… you and I could do our own science experiment. We could make crystal night terrors—” At this, Nomination let out a shrill piping sound that filled the tearoom. “—and we could see what happens. You know, for the sake of scientific curiousity. We could dress Charty up in a Fancy maid outfit if it will help you to make a donation.” “Chalcedony—” “Charty, I have needs!” There was a clunk and a splash when the Major dropped her teacup and then for one tense moment, it appeared as though the unassuming mare might explode. Her face reddened, her nostrils flared, and being a pegasus, she appeared to puff out, almost doubling in size. Then, without warning, she exploded. Mouth opening wide, she brayed with laughter while her spilled tea soaked into the tablecloth. “My mother is laughing.” Nomination blinked a few times and gave his mother a quizzical sidelong glance. Rolling her eyes at Chalcedony, a futile gesture if ever there was one, Chartreuse began to clean up the mess. She cast a spot remover, which got rid of the spilled tea and the stain, and then set the cup upright. In no time at all, she filled the cup again, then added cream and sugar. She thought about smacking the blind filly with her cap, but then thought better of it. At least the Major was laughing. Still laughing, but saying nothing, Gloaming Gardenia pulled her son into a clumsy hug. Oh, he resisted, trying to pull away, but his mother was a hulking brute hiding in a demure disguise, and would not be refused. It was a sort of hug, the sort of hug that one might make if somehow they had no idea what they were doing. Reluctantly, Chalcedony let go of Nomination’s foreleg so that his mother could have all of him. Chartreuse, feeling all warm and gushy inside, witnessed what she felt was another success; Nomination’s mother kissed him. It was a clumsy, awkward peck, but it carried with it the hope of an entire species. Nomination was their champion—their nomination. From him, a new sequence would begin, and with it, new successes. And she was a part of that. She, Shining Armor’s apprentice, her own future so bright and promising, she would have a hoof in the establishment of a species. Through fate or some strange quirk, she had ended up as Nomination’s friend, just as her father was acquainted with the Major. Surely, this had meaning and was a sign of something greater. But what? What came next? Some other beginning had ended, and now, here at the end, there was a fresh new beginning waiting to be begun. Blushing, still gushing, she turned and looked off in a different direction at nothing in particular, just so that Nomination and his mother could have a moment to themselves. “I’m glad that I was here to see this,” the Major said, whispering to her son. “I’m glad I’m here with you. Before the winter’s solstice, I’ll be leaving for Zebrabwe. This will be a permanent assignment, Nomination. You have an amazing future ahead of you. Make me proud.” “Mother, I will, I give you my word.” Now, happiness was bittersweet and Chartreuse turned to look at Nomination and his mother once more, knowing that this might very well be the last time they saw one another. A twinge of homesickness crept into her thoughts while also gnawing upon her heart; she missed her parents, she missed Canterlot, and part of her wanted to go home. But like Major Gloaming Gardenia, she had duties; while not as severe, and certainly not as vital nor important, they were duties that could not be shirked. They all had to make sacrifices. The future was made of all things sacrificed, of all things given, and Major Gloaming Gardenia had sent her best Nomination forward to act in her stead. It was, perhaps, the most important thing any mother could give, and to give up all that she had so freely and without reservation, Chartreuse found herself thinking that Gloaming Gardenia was a good mom. That first impression that had come with the letter had been a poor one, granted, but things were clearer now. Major Gloaming Gardenia’s war involved the survival of the entire world, while her son’s coming struggle was for the survival of his species. These were creatures uniquely suited for war, for battle, though both would have very different fights. Chartreuse, not a soldier, had found another fight, another worthy cause to devote herself to. With Nomination’s mother being sent elsewhere, somepony had to step up to take her place, and Chartreuse knew that she would be that pony. ‘Twas a noble cause and she had been raised with noblesse oblige in mind. “I love you…” Gloaming Gardenia’s admission was husky and almost inaudible. “Remember me. Remember me.” “I’ll never forget you.” The floodgates opened and Nomination was weeping now. “I love you back.” “Keep the sequence going, Nomination. Whatever it takes. Whatever form it takes. Please.” “I will, I give you my word.” Though the visit had only just begun, a goodbye had already been said; such was the way of things. When they were done here, they had a stop to make before going home. A pledge had to be made, the most sacred of all pledges among the crystal ponies. Chartreuse would see to it. Afterwards, they would go home together, and spend time with Gloaming Gardenia until whenever it was that she had to depart. Perhaps Nomination could fix his mother a nice meal… they had plenty of potatoes. Reaching across the table, Chartreuse grabbed Chalcedony’s fetlock and held on tight.