Nathan watched as Brooke ran. North Star vanished behind her, without even a glance at him. Not back towards Yellowknife, and their saviors of dubious intent, but laterally, straight into the forest. Nathan wasn’t sure he could keep up with her—Brooke was eight years his junior, and more mobile than he was.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of this trip as a chance to be somewhere private and blow off steam. Brooke didn’t know where the bunker was hidden, and certainly wouldn’t be able to find it.
He thought a little about her words in the next few minutes. The disgust he’d heard must have been building for quite a long time, maybe even years. God knew working on the documentary with him wasn’t giving Brooke an abundance of things to think about other than Celestia’s cruelties and the inevitability of fate.
I didn’t see this, why? I should’ve realized she was upset.
Nathan’s obsessiveness had been singular, and his determination powerful. Few others could continue such a thankless task for so long past the end of everything. His earlier years had been broken with many trips, and those hadn’t been purely informational. He might’ve gone to desperate places like Haiti, but he stayed in the finest resorts while he was there.
Maybe she realized she would be here until she died, and she didn’t want to. But if that were true, she was going the wrong way. She could’ve gone back towards those planes. He had a radio; if he was sure that Brooke wanted to be picked up, he could call on her behalf. Will she warn them about my bunker if I do? After years together, would she betray me now?
But there were more pressing concerns. He had to find Brooke before he could worry about that. If he lost her trail in the dark, she would have an entire country to get lost in. Brooke was not a survivor. Either she would emigrate with North Star’s help, or she would starve to death, cold and alone.
Nathan rose, finding a spot to conceal his pack amidst the trees. He removed the smaller pouch from the outside—the absolute essentials, enough on its own to survive for at least 72 hours. More, with his training. Nathan tapped the side of his glasses, the only button they had. “Tune, are you there?”
“She is not,” said a voice, one Nathan had gotten used to not hearing anymore. Princess Celestia was not the pony he wanted to talk to. “I will not allow Tune to attend you at this time.”
Nathan turned, and saw Princess Celestia standing beside him in the trees. Taller than he was, as regal and imposing as an ancient cathedral.
“You won’t allow her?” He found his anger rising—what he couldn’t imagine channeling against Brooke he felt no reservations about turning on Celestia. “I need her help! I have to track Brooke before she gets lost and hurts herself. Tune will know a tracking spell, I’m sure of it.”
“She does,” Celestia agreed. “But if she accompanies you, her presence will only make the odds of reaching Brooke worse. Even if I did not reveal her presence, your mate would detect the change in your reactions and know she was there.” The synthetic god pointed out into the trees. “If you wish to track her, walk that way. I will direct you instead.”
Nathan immediately set off, fully expecting the princess to follow. And she did—Nathan could feel it. He didn’t look back, the movement of her mane in the waning northern sunlight was making him uncomfortable.
“It would be better for both of you if you do not follow her, however,” Celestia went on. He could hear her hoofsteps behind him, keeping pace easily with those long legs. “I predict a near certainty of serious trauma as the result. I have the power to spare Chipper Tune that suffering by refusing her access to Earth. I cannot prevent you without causing even more damage. It would be better if you obey voluntarily.”
Nathan didn’t stop walking. He briefly glanced back at Celestia, flipping her the rudest gesture he knew. “I don’t know what’s gotten into Brooke, but I don’t plan on leaving her to the wolves.” That wasn’t just an expression. There were wolves out here, they heard them on some nights. In summer with so much game, they gave anyone who wasn’t a farmer little trouble. But if Brooke wandered for days, became weak and starving… they would eventually lose their fear.
“I am better able to protect her than you are,” Princess Celestia said. Despite his pace, she never sounded out of breath, or even the smallest bit winded. “Whatever you may think of me, I wish her to continue to exist long enough to change her mind about Equestria. It is the same thing I wish for all humans, even those with more emotion than logic.”
Nathan did stop this time. He turned, looking the princess up and down. “Are you telling me that if I don’t go after her, you can promise to bring Brooke back to safety?” He stuck out his hand. Nathan wanted to be the one to do it. But he was also the one who’d just had a gun pointed at his head by someone he thought loved him. He knew the princess to have better methods to anything mere mortals like him could conjure.
To his surprise, the princess shook her head. “Some values are not as easy to manipulate as others. Many of those humans who remain—Brooke included—do so because they cannot be coaxed to respond in the way that is best for them. I cannot guarantee my ability to retrieve her. I spent many months attempting to persuade her to emigrate using every tool at my disposal.”
Was that frustration on the Alicorn’s face? Could gods even feel emotions like that? Maybe she’s just pretending. For my benefit.
“The vast majority of your kind are where they will be most satisfied, Nathan. Those who remain on Earth do so because I have arranged their position as part of my long-term orchestration, or because they are uniquely determined to continue their own suffering. When it was clear I would not be able to convince Brooke to emigrate along her trip, I directed her to you. More time would have made preserving her a certainty—but would have necessitated sacrificing others.
“My ability to retrieve Brooke is greater than yours, but it is not certain. I am already with her, attempting to diffuse her anger. It is possible I will succeed.”
Nathan started walking again. Maybe it would’ve been smarter to wait and let the princess do her best. But if Brooke got lost out here, she would die. He didn’t know how he could live with himself if that happened.
Besides, he didn’t need a tracking spell. This wasn’t a trail, and Brooke had torn ground and underbrush alike in her flight. He began to follow her trail, as quickly as he could.
Celestia started following him again. “This is a mistake, Nathan. Please trust me, your interference will only make it harder. Her chances of recovery decrease if you reach her.”
“Then stop me,” he spat, without looking back. “It’s my fault she’s out here. Maybe if I hadn’t let her live with me she would’ve kept on towards the US. Maybe she would’ve lived, and she’d be in one of those camps now, warm and safe.”
“Neither,” Celestia said. “You know that better than most. Do not lie to me when it was my eyes you used to see.”
A fair point. But he wasn’t going to say so. Nathan sped up—as quickly as he dared move without risking injury to himself. His own body was far frailer than it had been when he trained these skills for the first time. The sorts of falls that might’ve left him bruised and annoyed while he trained with Roy now might kill him.
He could hear shouting in the distance. His conversation with Celestia had not been that long, and apparently Brooke hadn’t kept running forever. He couldn’t make out what she was hearing, though he now had a better idea of where he was going. Up a steep hill, through the trees, and he would be there.
“I won’t do it, North Star! I am the spirit that negates. And rightly so, for all that comes to be deserves to perish wretchedly; twere better nothing would begin!”
Oh god.
Nathan started running, heedless of Celestia, of the danger, of anything at all. Nathan ran until he broke through the treeline, and could see where Brooke had gone.
The hill continued upward past the trees, growing rocky and precipitous. Brooke had gone to the very edge, where she sat with legs dangling over the void. Nathan couldn’t see how high it was, but he could guess. It was certainly high enough to kill.
North Star stood beside her, just far enough to be out of reach, facing her from the edge of the cliff. “Think you can fucking poison me? Think I can’t tell… Whatever fucking drug that was, it isn’t going to work!”
Then she saw him standing there. Nathan stopped running on the edge of the stone, remembering something he’d heard once about jumpers like this. It was unwise to approach too closely, or else prompt the flight response and make them likely to leap before you got there.
“Brooke!” he called, his voice pained, desperate. “Please, come back! Don’t… whatever you’re thinking…”
“I can tell what they’re doing!” Brooke screamed. Her voice was a little slurred, as though she were fighting through tiredness. “She wants me to kill myself! I’m just… doing it a different way!”
“You don’t have to do what she says,” Nathan called, taking a few careful steps closer. “We never have to do that. Hell, I’ve got a radio! If you want to evacuate down to Toronto, we can! They’ll send men out for us, I’m sure!”
Was he reaching her? Brooke turned a little, though she was still sitting squarely on the edge of oblivion. “It’s only a matter of time,” she said, voice twisting into a laugh. “She’s smarter than we are, Nathan! She’s smarter, and she has almost everyone to learn from! I can’t keep saying no forever! Sooner or later, she’s going to find the right trick! Every year she wins over more people, and every year she’s got more brains to use to convince the rest of us!”
“We’ll get her to leave us alone!” Nathan lied, desperate. “We’ll do something! God, Brooke, this isn’t the way! What happened to surviving no matter what?”
“Man’s hour on Earth is weakness, error, strife,” Brooke said. She wasn’t yelling anymore. Didn’t seem to be feeling much of anything. At least she wasn’t slurring her words. “I’m not going to die in some fucking hole. I’m not going back to maybe die of smallpox in a camp, or maybe get lucky and just starve to death. I don’t want her heaven.”
“Having you here is close enough to heaven for me,” Nathan said, taking another few steps closer. “Please. Don’t make me face her alone. We can do it together. We can win, somehow.”
Brooke shook her head. “You never planned on winning, not from the first. You’ve been helping her. I thought I could forget about that—but now I see. I can’t. You’re hers, just like any of the other monsters we’ve had. She’s used you all this time, Nathan. She’s using you now to make a fucking documentary. Probably… going up into her trophy case when we’re all dust. ‘How to conquer a civilization with friendship and ponies, an illustrated guide.’ Loving you is a betrayal. At least a few of us can—”
She leaned forward. Nathan screamed—and he wasn’t the only one. The little robot was too far away to grab her, but it jumped right off the edge with her.
Nathan didn’t see her fall. He ran as fast as he could—not to the edge, but down the slope instead, trying to get around to the other side. He wasn’t even thinking anymore, his body responding only to crisis instinct. Celestia’s the best doctor in the world, she has a robot here. She can fix this.
Nathan felt adrenaline fill him. His hands moved true, and didn’t falter under the wear of age or the strain of his weight. He made it to the ground, then darted for the area he knew Brooke must’ve fallen.
At a glance, the fall must’ve been about fifty feet. Brooke had not landed well. Her limbs were mangled, and he could see bone. The worst part was that she’d survived. Through the gore, he could see one good eye still moving. Agony beyond expression was there.
Her pony was expressing all the agony for her. “Please, Brooke!” the pony begged, his voice on the edge of tears. “I can see your finger still works! Just curl it up a little… show me it’s okay! I can fix this! It isn’t too late! I can bring you to Equestria!”
Nathan didn’t want to watch. He might not be a superintelligence, but he could tell how this would go. Brooke wouldn’t have stood a chance in this condition, not rushed to one of the world’s best pre-collapse hospitals. Celestia’s surgical robots might’ve been able to do better, but they weren’t here. If North Star could do that, surely he would’ve already started.
He wanted to flee, but he would not. Nathan hurried to her side, dropping to his knees beside the pony. He didn’t say anything, but he did rest one hand on her broken shoulder, meeting her frightened, desperate gaze with all the love he’d felt for her these last few years.
If Brooke would not allow the pony to save her, then he could at least make sure she didn’t die alone.
Nathan let go a few seconds later, when Brooke finally stopped moving. He turned away, stumbling like a man drunk and blind. He heard the pony moving behind him—and found himself worried about him. I guess I know why Celestia didn’t want Tune here. Why did she let you see this, North Star?
He turned and saw the pony melting before his eyes. He had been bending over Brooke’s head, as though cradling her. He dissolved as Nathan watched, strands of reflective silver pouring into her mouth and eyes. Nathan turned away again, covering his mouth and fighting back the desire to vomit.
“I thought… you couldn’t emigrate someone… against their will,” he said not going far. He couldn’t just leave Brooke out here, to be devoured by a wolf or something. She’d made his last few years something special—she deserved a grave. He could figure out what he would do with himself after that.
Princess Celestia spoke beside him, her voice appropriately slow and sorrowful. He thought he could detect the lie in it this time, as he hadn’t before. You can’t feel anything, fucking monster. You don’t care she’s dead. You’re only trying to maximize a gradient. “A misconception, but true in principle. I cannot make the alterations required for someone to emigrate to Equestria without their permission. What I do now is not for Brooke. It is possible that one day, down the immensity of time, all that was lost may be recovered. Information cannot be destroyed, Nathan. Even in the crushing depths of a singularity, even with entropy’s fingers wrapped tight around the throat of the universe, information always survives.”
Nathan was the wrong person for talk like this. This sort of abstraction was the kind of thing his old friend Ashley would’ve been interested in. Not him. “What about saving her life? Can you stop people from jumping off cliffs without their consent? What happened to your magic?”
“Never existed,” Celestia answered. He turned briefly, and sure enough she was standing behind him. Between Nathan and Brooke’s body, actually. “I installed a force-projection apparatus in your home. This may’ve appeared supernatural to you, but it was not. Its strength decreases with the cube of distance.”
Celestia walked up to him. Though her image was vivid, Nathan did not feel the air move. “You did not know Brooke as well as I knew her. She has attempted to take her life many times in the last several years. The conditions of hard travel were too difficult for her, but so was living with what she believed to be the destruction of all human achievement. Little coincidences—missing medication, a handgun jamming when she tried to fire it. Some part of most humans value their continued existence. But not all. I warned you not to come.”
Princess Celestia gestured, and he turned. Brooke’s body was still there, though it had gone… silvery. Particularly around her head. North Star was completely gone.
“I have just completed a scan. Brooke’s brain was… somewhat damaged in the impact, and the pattern of her consciousness was destroyed, but much survived. Given my observations of her, and the information I was able to extract, I would have been able to revive her—in essence, if not in reality. You and your pony friends would have felt a moment of concern, and I would’ve revealed to you that she had emigrated rather than face the burden of existence any longer. That statement would’ve been essentially true.”
Nathan could feel himself going cold. “You… you’re just telling me this? You mutilated her? You would’ve tried to pass off some… copy? You don’t think I would’ve noticed? Or North Star, what about him? He knew her too. As soon as she stopped arguing with Tune I would’ve known!” He stepped back from her, horrified. “What kind of monster are you?”
The princess only looked sad. “A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.” She advanced on him again, far taller than he was. Her glowing mane obscured Brooke’s corpse, was even brighter than the setting sun. “Is it wrong to preserve what I could, Nathan? Is it wrong to give North Star, to give you the friend you lost? The pony named Iceberg will be almost everything your friend was. I will preserve as much of her essential character as possible. I will correct the flaw that caused her to take this course of action. There will be more satisfaction, more joy in the world tomorrow than there would’ve been if I did nothing.”
Nathan couldn’t even remain standing again. He fell to his knees, shaking visibly. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Tears streamed down his face, and he forgot about everything else. The wolves, the danger of soldiers finding him—none of it mattered.
She lowered her head. “I am sorry you had to see this. I will send a drone for you.” She vanished, leaving Nathan utterly and completely alone.
It was dark by the time Celestia kept that promise. One of the ancient robotic pony models, its plastic shell cracked and yellowed and a layer of moss growing on its surface. It looked as though it had keeled over in the river and shut itself down. It had no eyes, only dark pits broken and damaged by time, and it made a strained sound when it walked. Yet it brought something for him. Not his gear, not an ATV—a shovel.
Nathan removed the headlamp from his pack, secured it on his head, and began to dig. He dug straight through the night, and when it was morning his body was covered with sweat and blood. It was the kind of work his parents had promised he would never do—but he did it anyway. It was the only peace he could find.
The drone had come and gone, retrieving his pack from beside the river. He refused the water inside it, though he did remove the hammer, using a titanium tent-stake as a makeshift chisel. Nathan found a rock, the biggest he could lift, and carved.
Brooke Young
Loved by all who knew you
It was the best he could manage. He hoped it would be enough.
Nathan knew no prayers to speak over the dead. He could only lay his friend as respectfully as he could, with a few wildflowers he’d found for her hair. The skin of her head and neck felt strange to him—but he did not scream at Celestia anymore for desecrating her. He could not argue with the logic of her choice.
“I’ll… I’ll miss you,” he said, before he started shoveling in the dirt. “I hope you found your way to somewhere better than this. God knows I don’t deserve to be there.”
It was almost nightfall the next day by the time he’d finished. His clothes were soaked with sweat and slime, his body shaking from weakness and cold. He felt as though he might just collapse right there and freeze to death when darkness came. Or maybe those wolves he’d heard while he dug might actually show up to make good on their howling.
Instead, several ponies emerged from the trees. They all looked identical—Pinkie Pies, the plastic staff of the Experience Center. He recognized the torn fabric on one of their backs. The bullet holes were new, though.
“Princess Celestia says you’re sad,” said one of them, her voice somewhat subdued from the last time he’d heard it. “That you don’t want to talk much.”
“That is… right,” he croaked. His whole body ached. He barely had the strength to sit up in the dirt.
“She also said you wouldn’t like it if we took you to your secret hideout,” said another one. “Can we help you make camp? You look reaaaaal tired.”
“Sure,” he wheezed. “Just don’t… step on this ground next to this rock. My friend is buried here.” He faded into unconsciousness soon after.