Ponies can be more than one thing. They were almost never simple creatures, and Applejack knew that. Ponies had looked at her and saw a farmer, and those ponies were right. But they weren't completely right. They certainly weren't right now. She had been a farmer once, but she had also been a sister and a caretaker and an organizer. She had been a builder and breaker, an athlete, a hero, a frustrating obstacle, an honest friend, an obstinate sumbitch.
Twilight Sparkle had been a lot of things as well.
The age of technology had come swiftly and with fanfare fit for an age's worth of kings. The World was Changing, so said all the signs and all the papers. The world was changing, whispered the outlaws over watered-down beer and the socialites between sips of cognac. The world is changing, moaned the farmers in their dustbowls and the fishing trawler crews in the oil spills.
She'd gotten tractors. Ponyville had grown into a town, and then into a city. Suddenly the open land wasn't open. Suddenly the commons weren't common. Suddenly. Suddenly. She'd been rich. She'd been deliriously rich, rich beyond the wildest dreams of any of her kin since the herds had settled in the now frigid north. Gold bits had fallen from the sky like rain. Disaster could not touch those who could buy entire villages, and life had become easier. The whole world knew about Sweet Apple Acres, and Applejack's cutie mark was a household brand. The world changed.
If she'd seen the collapse coming... well, she hadn't.
And who had, really? Those on the margins. The louts in late night dives. The youths kicking patched up balls in the alleys. They might have seen it. The crazy pony she'd passed sometimes on the corner of Sparkle and Yakkistan Avenue, the one in rags with the mouth-written sign that said that the end was nigh, the one with the cracked horn and the bloodshot eyes. Truth from the mouths of foals and psychos.
It'd be nice to say that the fate of the wild preacher had been a mystery, but Applejack had seen him roasting on a Godspeaker fire a year ago, which wasn't fitting or unfitting. It was just a thing that happened.
Twilight Sparkle. Had she seen it? Who knew? Who cared, for that matter? Applejack cared, but in a half-ways sort of caring, the kind where she could only care in bursts of fury and then was exhausted and let it go.
That was more or less how their visits went. Applejack would be brought to Twilight and do and say nothing as a general rule. Twilight would try to talk sometimes, but as days went on she lapsed into silence. "Days" was an only passably useful term here. The industrial sprawl's fumes and the cloud cover often made telling what time it was difficult, and Applejack could only guess. The tower had few other windows, so it wasn't as if she could tell from the room they had given her.
Servants and servitors would wander outside of her cell, and she would hear them. But she only saw the ones that moved her occasionally.
Sometimes she didn't even see those. Sometimes there was a chime, and her door would swing open and there would just be an elevator waiting, the inside ugly and looking hastily-assembled. Functional but forbidding, and Applejack couldn't even be bothered to worry if her skin would catch on the uneven, jagged edges.
She stopped counting days after five. They weren't really days.
"So, Twilight, tell me about all the lights," she said one time when she was brought to the empty room.
She had laid out on the floor to try and take a nap, but found the room far too cold for that and the floor far too hard. Nothing better to do was forthcoming, and she could only manage a helpless stoicism for so long.
Twilight seemed startled and cautious. For all the world, even with the horror of her new state, she looked like a kicked puppy offered a treat.
"Starlight and Sunset were the ones who managed to complete some of my old work," she said softly. The distorted echo of her voice was still grating. "I had played with the idea of using magitech to restart brain function, but had abandoned it. I just didn't... I didn't know enough." The last bit came out strangled.
"Looks like a theme."
"Yes. I didn't want to go to the lengths of testing something so dangerous. My students didn't share my opinion." She smiled wistfully. "They didn't share a lot of my opinions. After I died, Starlight found my body in the Grotto."
"Carted your decaying ass all the way here. That's a pleasin' image, there."
"Yes. I was the last project they worked on together."
Applejack blinked. That was news to her. "So they ain't working together up there?"
Twilight shook her head, and Applejack shuddered at the sounds of servos. "No. They were able to restore brain function, but my body was mostly a lost cause. I hadn't had enough time to rot, not as long as I'd hoped. The screaming and crying got to Sunset. Starlight added more sedatives because the sound grated on her ears. Sunset left after I was coherent."
Applejack whistled. "Perfect. Now she's out wandering. That's wonderful."
"I don't know where she is. Starlight doesn't know either. She won't talk about Sunset. She only asks me questions."
Applejack shifted till she was laying on her side. "What sort of questions?"
Twilight hummed. The sound was like a synthesizer. It was ridiculous and it poked at Applejack's anger.
"Technical ones, mostly. The last three visits she's been focused on my research with soul gems and power systems. Metallurgy, early on. Alchemy, but that was brief. Once a week we play chess. She doesn't ask me questions when we play. We just play."
"Sounds nice."
"It's okay," Twilight said. She avoided looking at Applejack.
"So you just sit here."
"All the time," Twilight replied flatly. "I look at the windows sometimes. She gave me a video feed. I asked and then the next day I just had one. It's streamed into my eye. I can see the town if I want."
"That garbage heap ain't a town," Applejack said. She rolled over.
"It's, uh. It's technically a town."
"Whatever."
Another day.
"So, brain dead and then not. How was the other side?"
Twilight's servos whirred again. "I don't remember anything. I died, and then I woke up screaming."
"Right peachy. No hellfire, no Tartarus? No happy fields? No friends and loved ones?"
"No."
"Figures."
"She tell you about anything that's happening?"
Twilight sighed. "Yes. Bits and pieces. I know about all of our friends."
Applejack snorted. "Funny way of puttin' that."
Twilight blinked. "What do you mean?"
"What's a friend, anyhow? And who says that they're mine? Or yours, for that matter? You think they'd greet you?"
"But..." Twilight hesitated far longer than she should have, as if she were trying to read something written by a drunk.
"We friends?" Applejack pressed.
"I... I thought we were," Twilight said quietly, and then she refused to say another word for the rest of the day until the servitors came for Applejack. She said something sounded like, "goodbye" as the door shut.