The woman who was not Sarah Kaplan was not supposed to be here.
She knew that the moment she woke up, with that same sense she always got whenever she was breaking some important rule. It was a sense of energy, of electricity and movement—the adrenaline she might need to escape should her ruse be discovered.
Yet there was nowhere for her to run. She was somewhere closed, with barely enough room for her to twitch. There was slime all around her, constricting her limbs. Was that why her hands felt so numb? And there was something wrong with her back…
Trying to think through her last memories was like remembering a dream three hours after waking up. She’d been somewhere, her biggest ruse yet. She’d… paid off… someone… got someone drunk… why? Why had she been sneaking aboard a Pioneering Society station, of all places?
“Join the Society and live forever. Volunteer your talents for the future of the human race.” She could practically hear the jingle in her ears even now.
They hadn’t wanted her. Sarah wasn’t some brilliant young talent, wasn’t some prodigy or master of her craft. She was a con artist, one of the best—and Earth already had enough of those.
“Please direct your attention upward, Sarah Kaplan,” said a soothing voice in her ear. She blinked, trying to focus strange eyes, following the direction of the noise. There above her was a little screen, set into her plastic prison. It was still dripping with moisture, just like everything else, though at least she didn’t feel like she was swimming.
“Fabrication complete, Sarah. Welcome to Pioneering Society designation Sanctuary. Location: Equus, Tantalum Sector, Milky Way. Before you can be decanted and your duties begin, you must pass a basic neurological exam to ensure fabrication was successful and you will be capable of fulfilling your duties. I am required to inform you that according to Pioneering Society Guidelines Rule 19, paragraph 3-9, you will not be decanted until after this test is complete. If you believe you need more time before the test begins, I can allow you one standard day to wake to full cognizance. Should you fail this test, this instance will be recycled and a new one will be created.”
She shivered in horror, feeling some strange twitching on her back. Nothing felt right—her body was an absolute mess. They took my fucking genetics. What the hell went wrong?
She wasn’t Sarah Kaplan, not really. She was not a member of the Pioneering Society and she knew nothing about how it operated. Yet she could understand “this instance will be recycled.” There was no mistaking what that implied. But I have to become her. That name is my name now. Until I can escape.
“I’m ready for the test!” she croaked, her voice coming out high pitched and squeaky. Why did it sound so weird? She felt around with her tongue, inside a mouth with a few too-sharp canines, but otherwise things seemed more or less the same.
“Very well. Please watch the screen carefully. Follow the instructions, and ask if you require clarification at any time. These exercises are not timed.”
I bet that’s a lie, she thought. I wonder if there’s a gun hidden in here. Or maybe it electrocutes me if I fail. If this test asked her anything about the Pioneering Society, she was fucked.
Fortunately for Sarah, it didn’t. The test was much more basic than that, with simple comprehension questions, memorization, spatial reasoning—all the things a grade schooler would’ve passed getting through their secondary school evals. Had the computer not informed her that she would be killed if she failed, the exam would’ve been effortless. As it was she still hesitated more than once, second-guessing every answer. How many mistakes would she have to make for it to kill her?
More than she ended up making. “Performance is within margin of error,” announced the computer, when the test was complete. “Please prepare to be decanted. Many newly fabricated citizens experience a brief burning sensation as the outside air makes contact with skin and eyes. This discomfort will pass. Before the process is authorized, there is one final question: Do you, Sarah Kaplan, swear to serve and complete your duties as a munitions engineer to the best of your ability? Do you believe you are mentally and physically capable of doing so?”
More death questions, Sarah thought. Probably the Pioneering Society trained its people to know what this meant. Well, Sarah wasn’t stupid. She hadn’t stolen a place in line at Neuroimprint Central Recording by being an idiot. It had taken enormous planning and forethought—paying off the right people, sneaking into the right offices, faking the right records. The fake had to last, it had to survive inspection. If the Pioneering Society found out, they could just delete her from the system.
The fact I’m here to think about it means I succeeded. Well done, past me. You’re a fucking legend. I hope you had an awesome life.
The memories all felt like they belonged to her, but she knew they didn’t really. That had been another person, the person who stepped into the scanner and went on to live the rest of her life. That person, who knew how long dead now, had given her a new lease on life. This new body might still feel like her hands were numb, but she could feel no trace of damage to her left eye, and none of the pain aching in her bones from a cancer that had been slowly killing her.
I bloody did it. “Yes! I can’t wait to be the most awesome munitions engineer there ever was.” Until I can sneak away and you never see me again.
Sarah didn’t give two shits about expanding the horizons of humankind. Humankind owed her, so far as she was concerned. She’d been fucked, and being here was the payback she was due. Her second chance.
“Beginning decanting procedure. I look forward to your upcoming service with the Pioneering Society. There is much to do.”
There was a grinding sound, then something began spraying on her from above. It was water—washing the dried slime from her body. It moved rapidly down her skin, forcing her to confront whole patches of skin that didn’t feel like they belonged. She held out one arm into the spray, and in the glow of the little screen she could make out the unmistakable stump there instead of a hand.
She flexed it, and felt something small and fleshy move slightly on the inside, but that was it. Doesn’t look damaged. The other hand was a similar story, like it had never been there at all. What the hell am I?
She soon got her answer. The drawer opened, dumping her out onto a padded rubber mat with lots of little holes in it. For some time all she did was lie there, unable to fight against the pull of gravity. She flopped about for a little while, trying to rise to her feet—but she didn’t succeed. It was brilliantly bright all around her, much brighter than the Biofab drawer had been. Where was she, anyway?
Sarah looked around, and found she was in a small room, alone except for a mirror, her drawer, and a pile resting on a low shelf. It looked like a folded uniform, with a huge towel resting on top of it. Guess they’re past the point of just one person if they have a whole space set aside for this.
The mirror told her all she needed to know about her appearance. She stared for well over a minute, unwilling to believe what she was looking at. The body there was… wrong. She looked like something that had escaped a petting zoo, or one of those freaks those habitats off Earth could breed for you outside the reach of the Ceres Proclamation. Her eyes were huge, but with slitted pupils that darted nervously about. Her ears twitched and moved above her head.
She was a horse—a horse with too-cute proportions and a blue-gray coat of damp fur. There was even a little mark on her butt, like a brand.
“Engineer,” said a much-more-natural voice, one that might very well be a person instead of a computer. There isn’t a camera in here, is there? I’m fucking naked! “Please feel free to take as much time as you require to adjust to your new body. For your information, you were fabricated along with the entire 75th Ranger Regiment. As you are a civilian contractor and not enlisted, you were put into storage to be decanted last, along with the other civilian contractors.”
“Who are you?” she asked the voice, finding her own still sounded high and squeaky. “My… commander?” That was a military word, wasn’t it? That was the sort of thing that she should have.
“I am not,” answered the voice. “My name is Forerunner—the general intelligence that runs the city of Othar and its future colonies. Should you require anything, Sarah, please feel free to ask.”
“What the hell am I?” Now that she knew she wasn’t a biped, it was a little easier to get up. She just had to pretend she was a kid again, playing on all fours. A little pressure and she could rise up into a standing position, however wobbly. Can’t horses run within a few hours of being born?
“Your biosleeve was based on Alien Lifeform #FF35F, local designation ‘Thestral.’ I assure you, that new body is not as disabled as it appears. The native population is quite proficient with hooves for accomplishing basic tasks, and those wings are not vestigial. With practice, you will be able to fly, along with many other things.”
Sarah stared back at her reflection, trying to move the wings. She could feel the skin, all bunched up and damp with moisture. Somehow, this was her. It would be her until she died. Which will be sooner than I like if Forerunner finds out what I did. She had to be a convincing munitions engineer until she could find a way out.
I can probably just blame anything I don’t know on the fabrication, right? I’ll just pretend I’m freezer burned. That wasn’t the right word—she hadn’t been frozen. But it was the closest one she could think of. “That sounds fun. This planet must be… one of those low-gravity places, then?” She hopped—and found it felt exactly as she remembered. “I guess I’m adapted to it, so I don’t notice.”
“No,” Forerunner responded. “Sanctuary possesses a local subjective gravity of 1.02 standard at sea level. Your method of flight is… well, it would be too much for you to take in with a brain that’s been freshly printed. For now, just understand that we have discovered an incredibly advanced alien civilization, with technology well beyond what you remember. Sanctuary blends technology into its structure so completely that many of the locals take what it can do for them for granted. They describe it as ‘magic’ for simplicity’s sake. A more detailed report can be made available to you once you’re ready to leave the decanting room.”
Sarah wasn’t in much of a rush. She practiced walking in a little circle on the rubber floor, falling over more than once as she adjusted to the strange body. But in here there was no one to laugh at her, so no rush to get it done any quicker. She found she was drying naturally, so much so that by the time she finally picked up the towel, she didn’t have much to do with it. She wanted to brush her frizzy hair, which had fluffed up around her head like a weird lion’s mane, but there were no tools present for that.
Only the uniform, with the name that she had stolen visible on the collar.
As she looked at it, Forerunner’s voice came in from above her again. So you are watching me. Sarah knew very little about Pioneering Society colonies, but she did know that they trusted an AI to run them completely. She would never have privacy from it, until she escaped. “The dress code has been adjusted. The standard class C uniform now includes NOTHING. Class A uniform is unchanged, however. Until your first duty shift, you will only be required to dress in class C or below.
Sarah stiffened. If she’d been drinking something, she probably would’ve spit it out. “Hold on.” She turned, staring up at the part of wall where the speaker was hidden. Maybe the camera was up there too? “You just told me that the uniform is… nothing?” She twisted around to demonstrate for him. “As in, naked?”
“That is correct,” Forerunner answered. “Few members of the ISMU have yet adjusted to this requirement, and wear class C jumpsuits even though they are not required. Notice of order: this requirement applies to native ‘pony’ races only. Human biosleeve and synthsleeve uniform requirements have not been adjusted. But your biosleeve is a ‘pony’, so the new requirements apply to you.”
“But most of the others are still wearing these,” Sarah said, turning back to the uniform and lifting it from the table. The zipper had a huge grip, almost wide enough for her hoof to get around. It was already unzipped, ready for her to struggle into it if she wanted.
I bet this doesn’t feel great on fur, even if it is soft.
But she was about to find out, regardless. As much as there was something secretly appealing about leaving the jumpsuit hidden here—breaking yet another one of society’s unspoken rules—she didn’t want to do anything that would make her stand out. Such things could wait for once she had a good idea of what was outside. Maybe it was the kind of world where she could run away immediately, or maybe she’d be trapped in “Othar” for years. She would have to leave this room to find out.
Sarah found the jumpsuit had obviously been made with ponies in mind. It was incredibly flexible in the places it needed to be, so she could get it on with much less battle than might be expected. There were large spandex holes for her wings, and another one for her tail, which was good since everything she used to cover was all tucked away back there. I guess that means ponies could just wear shorts like guys do, and not have to worry about showing anything off. She wasn’t sure if she liked that.
What kind of colony has a nudist dress code?
“I’m ready,” she finally said, after maybe an hour total in the tiny decanting room. She wore the jumpsuit, which fit her perfectly, even if the name sewn to the collar wasn’t hers. She glanced at it one last time, making sure she had it memorized. Nobody can ever know my real name. Well, nobody here. But there were aliens on this planet, and she bet they’d care a lot less about who she was. Maybe her new start wouldn’t be around humans at all.
The door swung open of its own accord, into a long hallway also lined with rubber mats. There were lots of little doors on either side of the hall, all exactly the same as hers. The ceiling felt like it was at the right height, which probably meant the room was smaller than she was used to. Unless she was wrong about how small she felt.
There was nobody else here, which was a little concerning. Just a few flashing lights leading her eyes towards the open doorway at the end of the hall. Sarah followed the lights fairly slowly, her steps cautious. She didn’t want to make a fool of herself and set off alarm bells about who she was.
How well did they train these people, anyway? Did the Pioneering Society have some kind of secret sauce it used to prepare people for waking up as weird aliens? They couldn’t, could they?
Sarah had no answer to that—and she could probably never ask. Since she should’ve received the training, any questions she asked would only warn those around her that she didn’t know things she should have. I’ve got to get my hands on one of their handbooks. Maybe some hands while I’m at it.
Around the corner was a larger hallway, with more rubber mats along the wall leading to a brightly lit set of doors with unmistakable medical insignia. That would make sense—she would probably want a real person looking at her instead of a computer program. If there had been problems with her fabrication, the earlier she learned about it the better.
Her suspicions about being smaller were confirmed in that hallway, with its roof and doorways towering over her head. At a guess, she supposed she was about three feet tall, and maybe four feet long. She could probably reach the knobs if she really propped herself up to do it.
But she didn’t have to as she approached medical—they swung open for her.
There wasn’t a single human inside. At least the room wasn’t empty, though—there were a dozen drones, vaguely human in shape with wheels or tracks to move around. There were several doctors here, most of which wore adorable little medical coats over jumpsuits like hers. Well, like hers, except most of them had military patches or insignia. The same company patch was prominent on one shoulder, though. These were her people—or the people of the person whose identity she’d stolen.
“Ah, our late bloomer is finally waking up. Can’t wait to check the last box,” someone spoke from behind the desk—a little horse like she was, though her wings were feathery and her hair had been styled and braided. She was cute—for a horse, anyway. “You’re… Sarah Kaplan, yes? Right on time.” She gestured behind her, to one of the little stalls. “Dr. Born will want to see you before anything else… I’d give you to one of ours, but she’s bored out of her mind all the time. Maybe if I give her something to do she’ll complain a little less about being here.”
“Sure,” Sarah muttered, slowing a little as she passed the desk. “Maybe drinks after? What time do you get off?”
“Sorry kid, I think your brain is still frozen. Maybe think about that some and ask me tomorrow.” Though that was a dismissal—Sarah could recognize the tone. She was just trying to be nice about it.
“Yeah.” She could take the hint, looking away awkwardly. “That’s probably it. I think I might be a little frozen still.”
She wandered back into the medical bay, towards the suggested stall. The others were mostly empty—aside from a few minor implantation surgeries. Most of them appeared to be hoof-surgeries, though she didn’t have a stomach for blood and so she didn’t look too closely.
The orderly from up front slipped past her, offering the pony in the back stall a stack of paper with Sarah’s fake name on it. The doctor did look a little grumpy. She also wasn’t wearing unit patches—she was only wearing a plain white dress under a jacket, short and open-backed. Didn’t that mean she wasn’t covering… Sarah felt her ears flattening and a little heat rising to her cheeks. Guess someone was braver than I was.
“You,” the pony muttered, her voice so bored that it strangled anything Sarah might’ve been thinking. “You did so good getting that jumpsuit on. Now get it off, and climb up on the bed.” She stepped out of the stall, moving with one hoof to shut the privacy screen. How she could grab the cord to pull it without any hands on the ends of her limbs, Sarah couldn’t tell.
“Oh, and will you be wanting the implants? Everybody gets them now. Lucky bastards. There’s no justice anymore.”
“What implants?” Sarah stepped inside the stall, one hoof hesitating near the zipper. She didn’t pull it down yet, though. There were people outside, some of them male. The doctor would see her regardless, but she didn’t want them to. “I thought we already had all the implants. Enhanced bodies and shit.”
“You have all the modifications specified in the Pioneering Society Handbook. That doesn’t mean you have all the implants. There are others… more destructive, I guess.” She looked annoyed as she walked into the office after all, tapping the screen a few times. It changed to display a cross-section of someone’s pony leg, with some of the flesh removed. A little claw was hidden inside, which would emerge from three points of the leg and then conceal itself in fake fur when not in use.
Goddamn, what year is it? Fucking space shit right here. “Yes,” Sarah said, without even glancing at the list of warnings. “I’ll take two.”
“Everyone says that,” said the doctor, barely stifling a groan. She slid past Sarah, then shut the screen. “Get naked. I’ll put you in line for surgery once your exam is over.”
Sarah did so, with considerably less enthusiasm than she might’ve normally had for following that instruction. After all the hard work to just get these clothes to go on in the first place… At least the jumpsuit was just one piece. “Ponies” seemed less delicate than humans, in that they didn’t seem to need underwear.
Her exam went exactly as she would’ve expected. Sarah sowed the seeds of her future memory problems by mentioning them during the interview, though not in such a way as would imply that she couldn’t do her job. She made sure Dr. Born put that note in her file, then did her best to excel at everything else. It would be the one dark spot on an otherwise spotless record, instead of the evidence that she should go into a dumpster. But they wouldn’t kill someone once they got out, right? I must get human rights eventually. So she thought, but this was the Pioneering Society. They hadn’t been drowning in controversy for no reason.
She had no idea what to expect from the surgery, beyond what she’d seen with a glance in the other booths. Apparently what to expect was a big plastic thing to stick her legs into, and a small army of human-sized medical drones to do the actual work.
“This procedure is not considered medically necessary,” Dr. Born recited, sounding incredibly bored. As she said it, the little robots rushed around, bringing in fresh plastic crates of the implants and little carts of medicine. “As a result, accepting it will impose a ten-percent modifier on the length of your mandatory service contract. That contract is currently estimated at… five standard years.”
The doctor rolled her eyes at that. “They should really do something about these numbers. Five years made sense for humans, but not for fucking immortals.” She proffered a computation surface, her flat tone returning. “Only sign here if you accept these terms.”
“Uh…” Sarah stared down at her stump of an arm, then just shrugged and pressed it on the touchscreen. “What was that you just said? About… being immortal? We cured aging since they scanned me?”
“I have no idea what we did, since Forerunner isn’t allowed to unpack any of his later updates. But somebody did, and I guess that’s good enough. Congratulations, you’re a prisoner of an alien god. I hope you weren’t suicidal before, that’s all I’m saying. Because it literally will not allow you to die.”
The doctor hesitated before continuing. “Weeeeeeeell, not in the ways that matter. You’re probably thinking something completely different right now. Your body will still die. But your mind is somewhere else.” She pointed at the mark on her flank. “That right there, that’s proof. Harmony has you in its clutches. Still, I guess you got in at the right time, because the rules still say five years.”
She took the computation surface back, then brought over a nitrogen needle. How she held it in a hoof, without any visible implants, was impressive. Like she was clutching it there with an invisible hand.
“See you in a few hours,” she muttered, pressing the needle up against Sarah’s neck. She drifted away into unconsciousness.
Flurry Heart leaned backward, trying to take in the text on the massive surface before her. It was so large, so unimaginably vast, that she pictured it as larger than Equestria itself. Yet it wasn’t—she knew that on an intellectual level. A surface that looked like it went on forever was really only about ten kilometers long and less than half that wide.
Now that she’d clamped on, at least it didn’t feel like she was spinning anymore. “Lucky, where are you?” she called, searching the area behind her with a few sweeping glances. She barely knew how this stupid machine worked—various little gestures would turn on all sorts of things, like a little flame that emerged from one of her legs and didn’t turn off again, tracing a black burned patch along with her as she walked.
A few seconds later and something rested a leg on her shoulder—or that’s what it felt like, anyway. She couldn’t see a face—but that was less disconcerting now that she was used to it. “I found the entry hatch,” Lucky said, gesturing along the massive metal surface back the way they’d come. “It’s this way.”
Flurry Heart turned, following her. “You used the writing, didn’t you?” she asked, a little of her annoyance creeping in. Lucky could cheat in various ways, and the cheatiest of all was being able to read anything they saw.
“Yep,” Lucky answered from up ahead, much more coordinated than Flurry Heart was on two legs. She walked like she’d been born to do it, never wobbling or looking like she was about to slam into the deck. “There’s a ship designation on the side here. I know this thing was called the N.E.S. Agamemnon.”
“Doesn’t seem like much of a ship,” Flurry Heart muttered, as they came up to the entrance. She had to fight the disorientation as, from Flurry’s perspective, they walked up over the edge of a ramp, and the direction of down changed. Yet there was also a force pulling her backward, like it was trying to send her flying off into space. Fortunately for her, her hooves were firmly attached, so that didn’t happen.
Didn’t happen until they walked all the way up and around the ramp there, and the direction of “down” lined up with the force pushing on her.
At least these weird bodies never ran out of strength, or got tired. She wasn’t sure she could’ve managed it as a pony.
But then again, even after all this time, Flurry Heart couldn’t manage much as herself. Too many memories. “It’s open to space. I’ve seen what that does.”
Death with absolute certainty was what it did. At least—for all the species that lived in Equestria. There were probably bodies that could live out here. If machines could do it, then…
“I think it might’ve been able to close… or maybe there was an energy shield to hold the air in,” Lucky said from up ahead. Despite how tall Flurry Heart expected to be walking on two legs, the hallway was at just the right height, with a sealed door and a dark control panel beside her.
Lucky leaned over, taking one of her upper legs with her own and using the spindly “hands” on the end to touch something. The fire stopped. “We might need that blowtorch later,” she said, though not as peremptorily as she could’ve. Lucky didn’t mind Flurry taking longer for things like this. Or anything, really.
She was the best friend a pony could hope for.
“I don’t recognize this interface…” she said, pulling off a little panel near the door and letting it clatter to the ground beside them. “But… yeah, there’s a manual override. Says right here.” She reached in, and started twisting a valve on the inside.
Without magic, these hand things are pretty useful. It was too bad the only way to copy them back on Equus was surgery—sometimes it was nice not to worry about trying or concentration when she just wanted to do something simple like turn the pages of a book.
The door inched upward as Lucky spun, until it was about half as high as they were. But Flurry Heart could already feel some of her hope leaking away—there was no atmosphere emerging from within, no blast of air buffeting them. Harmony was probably right about this one too.
Not giving up. Who knows what might be in here? A light attached to Lucky’s shoulder switched on, shining into the dark interior of the huge, multi-segmented ship. Lucky waited for her to go in first, then followed close behind. “If you were a survivor, where would you be?”
“I would… have put where I was going in my computer,” Lucky responded.
There was no computer obvious through the doorway, though there were plenty of other things. They looked like little suits, about the same size they were. Most of them were missing, though one or two still hung on racks near the wall. There was much debris scattered around the room—bits of bent metal and tools and little things that might’ve been computation surfaces.
None of it looked quite like what Lucky and her kind used in Othar, but it was similar. Like something made by their cousins, maybe. Or maybe their children.
“At least there aren’t any bodies,” Lucky mused, turning over one of the fallen suits. There was no corpse inside, nothing except a few dangling wires. “I wonder how long this thing has been floating here.”
“Over a hundred thousand years,” Harmony answered over the radio, its voice clear despite the intervening distance. Indeed, even if they’d still been outside, Flurry Heart knew she wouldn’t have been able to look behind her and see Equus. Their star was barely visible—the habitat itself was quickly lost against it, even with mechanical eyes. “But that makes little difference in the void. Much decay relies on the presence of an atmosphere, or at least damaging radiation. Protected by the body of the cylinder itself, the Agamemnon has remained largely unchanged since the survivors evacuated. I could give you more—”
“NO!” Flurry Heart screamed. Her voice didn’t echo—there was no atmosphere aboard, no sound at all really. That was an illusion of perception. But it still felt like screaming, so that much was real. “No no no! Shut up!” She stomped one hoof, and suddenly she was back in her body.
There was a slight mechanical hiss as the connection to her implant was severed, and a transparent cable clattered against her seat. The restraints holding her—preventing her body from doing anything while her mind was elsewhere—released her, and she went stumbling back from the controls.
The drone interface room had four such chairs, built less than a week ago. No one had used it more than Flurry Heart, even if she hadn’t learned it as fast as the others.
A few seconds later, and Lucky Break shook free of her restraints, letting the cable detach from the back of her neck. Somewhere more than a million kilometers away, the metal bodies they’d been using would have folded up for storage, still attached to the ground with their magnets but no longer moving.
It didn’t matter. Flurry Heart had gotten plenty of them completely destroyed. Harmony didn’t seem to care, and neither did Forerunner. They weren’t people, they were toys. Toys they could use to visit dangerous places.
“It’s okay,” Lucky muttered from beside her. She was shorter than Flurry Heart was, clumsier, and still next to useless with her magic despite having had her horn for over a year. Even so, Flurry Heart was the one who felt inadequate. Here she stood, beside the pony who had saved the world. A princess in her own right, and what was she? She hadn’t saved anything—she’d been born this way. Her very birth had even put the Crystal Empire in danger, years ago.
“Hey.” Lucky met her eyes, suddenly glaring. “You’re doing it again, Flurry. Take some deep breaths, and relax. We don’t have to keep doing this.”
“I want to keep doing this,” she argued, slumping onto her haunches and glaring at the chair. “I know I’m useless… I know this is slower because of me… but we have to keep looking. We have to know.”
“The location of those survivors is known,” said Harmony’s voice around them. Harmony—the eyes that always watched. Not to destroy, as Celestia had forced her to see, but not quite to protect, either. Flurry Heart imagined that Harmony was still waiting to destroy Equestria, if only they stepped out of line. Knowing her, she would probably be the one to do it.
She hadn’t yet, though. And nopony else seemed worried about it anymore. Harmony denied it, promising that it would only interfere if ponies tried to damage the ring or escape it. But why should she believe it? How did she know it wasn’t lying to her right now?
At least she could trust a few things. She could trust Lucky, and she could trust the machine called Forerunner. That was something to cling to.
“I don’t think that’s the point,” Lucky answered, addressing Harmony without looking in any particular direction. “We know you know everything. But discovering for ourselves is important too. If we wanted you to just teach us everything instantly, we would’ve asked.”
“It would make this easier,” Harmony said. Its voice sounded annoyed, though it had not bothered sending them a body, which always made Flurry Heart feel a little uncomfortable. But magic was magic, even if Harmony was really some kind of machine. A machine she lived on, along with everypony else she’d ever known, and everything they’d ever made. Existence was dust. “We predict it is inevitable that all individuals will eventually reach a point of maximum complexity and converge as a unilateral intelligence. At this point, we will exploit the physical universe with maximum efficiency. Your delay only prolongs the inevitable.”
Lucky stepped in front of Flurry, one wing still protectively over her. It felt like the sort of thing a friend should do. “Maybe. We still don’t want to. You can waste your time trying to convince someone else.”
And so it did. There was no sound, but Flurry Heart could tell when it had gone. The magic burning in the room like an invisible fog was suddenly clear, and the threat faded into the background.
But it’s still there, waiting to kill us. Waiting for me to make the mistake that dooms everyone.
Still, Flurry Heart felt herself relaxing as the presence of Harmony retreated. It was always watching while they controlled the drones, as though it were afraid that they would decide to fly away and never come back. But once they finished, it left them alone.
“I didn’t pick this one because I thought it was gonna have survivors, anyway,” Lucky muttered, moving a little closer and lowering her voice to a whisper. “I’m sure Harmony would’ve helped them all move down here a long time ago. For all we know, you might be one of them.”
That wasn’t what she needed to hear right now. Her ears flattened, and she looked away. “I dunno…”
Lucky either couldn’t tell, or purposefully ignored her discomfort. “Forerunner says this O’Neill Cylinder is structurally intact. Everything that could fail probably has, and we might have to gut the whole thing… but most of the raw materials would be on board. Forerunner says he could probably use the material from the three arms to get one of them habitable again.”
Flurry rose to her hooves, still feeling confused. Her friend was racing away down one of her strange avenues of thought, barely within reach. It was times like this that made her feel stupid.
At least her friend realized this time, because she slowed down. “Harmony’s contract with Othar doesn’t say we can’t leave the ring; it says we can’t leave the system.” She pointed up into the air, grinning. “We could live somewhere without Harmony breathing down our necks all the time. Or… at least, not as much as it does now.”
“Oh.” Flurry Heart didn’t much care where she lived, so long as it wasn’t in the Crystal Empire. And so long as Lucky was there.
That was important too.