//------------------------------// // Chapter 53 // Story: Voyage of the Equinox // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Perseverance of Insight Twilight didn’t have to think long about her answer. Getting there was a little trickier, but made simpler by the map. That, and the fact that she’d already been to the surface once. There would no longer be any danger to the teleport when she had seen the destination once. So she took them back to the surface, with a single flash of magic from her horn. “I am… unhappy with that process,” Node said, as soon as they were back on the surface. “The way you fold space is… disconcerting. Organics are prone to errors, and lack objective verification. What if your calculations were incorrect?” “We would die,” Twilight answered, and didn’t take any perverse pride from imagining its shock. Nope, not even a little bit. “I’m told its agonizing. The process is nearly instant—but if stayed outside normal space, we would swiftly freeze to death. Though… your thinking parts are running inside one of our probes. I have no idea how well you run in Zipspace.” “Unhappily,” Node answered. “I will not be offering coordinates to Perseverance. We can navigate there routinely.” For a second I thought your Ponish was getting better. Twilight didn’t actually object—the structure hadn’t attacked them yet, and more importantly she had sensed nothing besides the heart that could interact with her magically. If anything goes badly wrong, I can just teleport back to the Prospector. She would face her crew’s wrath a little earlier that way, but it would be waiting either way. The ‘Perseverance’ proved to be up the sweeping ramp along the spun-glass ceiling. As they walked, voices began to speak from the sides of the room, each one coming with a little flash of light from the wall. It wasn’t magic—the colored lights were as mechanical as anything on the Prospector. Twilight kept to the inner railing anyway, mostly through force of habit. “What are they saying?” she asked, as they stood high on the transparent glass. Well, not glass as she knew it. It didn’t yield even a little under her hooves, despite being as visibly thin as paper. “The recording. What did your creators want to tell us?” “They are… welcoming you,” Starlight Glimmer’s voice said. “They hope you learn much from your experience here. These are the… testimonies of those who contributed to the knowledge stored here.” As they walked, Node added to the translation. “They wish for you to be certain of your intention. Perseverance before Insight.” Just climbing the glass took a kind of perseverance of its own. The shape was one she knew well from mathematics, the same golden-ratio spiral that she could find in shells and flowers and a thousand other places. Should I point that… no. Node will probably just say it was obvious and gloat about it. Eventually they reached the top, after climbing what felt like a kilometer of slippery glass. Twilight had to manipulate her gravity a little to make it to the top. Node didn’t slip, despite having only two legs and now claws to cut into the glass with. There was one last colored light, staining the top of the tower bright red, and Node spoke one last time. “A warning. Perseverance is change—the life of the one who endures for Insight will…” it hesitated for nearly three whole seconds. “Finality. Changes invoked cannot be reconsidered. Memories will linger. The visitor will… graduate.” Ominous. The ground leveled out, in the top of a tower that was perhaps five meters across. The walls were made of the same clear glass they’d been climbing, though this was entirely untinted. She could see the late afternoon sky through it, and the valley far below. There was only one other object in here with them—a chair. It wasn’t built for a pony, and would clearly have accommodated a creature even bigger than Node without much difficulty. Yet there were steps at the base, she could climb up and use it if she wanted. The chair was made of a dull red metal, with intricate mechanical parts visible through various openings and ports she could only guess at. “Made it,” Node said, sounding disappointed. “Was expecting more. So much fanfare, no finale.” You really don’t know how this works. Twilight did, or at least she had a guess. There was no magic up here, no active spells of any kind. Just this device, apparently active and full of energy. “I think it wants us to sit down in the chair,” she said. “That’s what the message coming up was. Sit down, learn things. Learn… Insight? That isn’t really something a pony can learn. In sight is really just the combination of subconscious heuristics.” “Insight is… an inaccurate translation,” Node supplied. “I don’t know how to summarize it better. Not knowledge, not memories… a way of thinking.” It paused, cameras fixed squarely at the chair. Twilight assumed there was more going on under the surface, Node linking with the system and trying to learn more about it, perhaps. Her guess was confirmed seconds later. “You’re right, pony creature. The machine is functional, and it requires physical proximity. Its interface hardware should work for either one of us. However…” It hesitated, then went on in a rush. “I’m not certain, but there seem to be security measures in place. It appears the machine will only function once. Whoever you choose to use it, that decision is final.” Twilight walked right up to the edge of the chair, running one hoof along its smooth, metallic length. It didn’t look like it had been much used. For all she knew, it had been built by the Signalers just for her. She had a decision to make… 1. Use the Perseverance of Insight. [dangerous] 2. Have Node use the Perseverance. [dangerous] 3. Have Applejack remove it for reverse-engineering and study once she has healed enough to travel here. [dangerous] 4. Leave the Perseverance and investigate the Altar of Perpetuity instead. 5. Leave the Perseverance and investigate the Infusion of Stability instead. (Certainty 210 required)