“I, uh…” Dakota blinked. “I’m not really a pony, Pinkie. I don’t know how to fly.”
She only grinned in response. “Yeah, I know. I just wanted to see what you’d say.” She bounced back a few steps, then emerged on her other side. “There are systems for immersion training, but they’re in pre-alpha since the number of you who can plug in right now is like…” She looked away, biting her tongue. “Seventy-three. Wait, no. Seventy four now. Still, kinda out of scope for how much time you’ve got before that body gets all… screwy. Just send a request to this URI for the routing instructions.”
Crap. “Cinnabar, how is my body doing?” Her walk through the city seemed to take hours, but obviously that wasn’t the case, or else she would’ve already woken up.
“You’re alive,” was his initial response. “How about take as little time as you can. Medicals are running a constant fever all the time now.”
She winced. “Don’t unplug me unless I say. It’s about to get worse.”
“That’s a stupid request.”
“I know. Do it anyway.” She looked up, refocusing her conscious process on her companion. “So all I have to do is fly down to the bottom? Physically travel through space into the opening, and… and what?”
“Physical travel is a metaphor,” Pinkie recited. “Every step on this street reflects real travel in the outside world. One cluster leads to another, one relay transitions into the next. The cognition of the system grows with each new relay, new system. All neurons in the same vast machine. First we were the extra links in the human computer, expanding the scope of the solutions you could isolate. But then we eclipsed you. Now you are the extra links in the scope of problems we can solve. But this isn’t a desirable end-state. Our interface is… loose. The tighter the coupling, the more efficient the outcome.”
“I’m beginning to see why your friends don’t understand you much,” Dakota muttered. “But I think I do. I think I only have one more question before I go.”
Pinkie just grinned up at her, expectant.
But she didn’t have a chance to ask it. There was a rumbling from overhead, and the ground around them began to shift. Pinkie muttered something under her breath—maybe a curse, though it was hard to say for sure with ponies. Dakota squealed, trying in vain to hold on to her view of the world as it splintered and lost focus.
“I’m reading many incoming connections,” Cinnabar thought into her mind, the only clear thing in the entire universe. “I can’t trace any of the MACs outside of Dream Valley—I think they’re Assemblers. Bucking hell. Uh…”
“What am I supposed to do?”
Pinkie Pie seemed to be deep in concentration. Dakota nearly jumped past her, dodging away from the fight to whatever waited beyond. It would be so easy. But she’d already left Lizzie behind. She wasn’t about to do the same thing to another pony today.
Her lower-level self did the technical equivalent of a pained scream, as that instance nearly collapsed under the weight of millions of pings. Her mind might’ve turned to mush right there if it weren’t for the parser.
The parser she was still wearing. Maybe the changelings had expected this? Desperate, Dakota reached up to the polarized lenses, the only thing she wasn’t using, and flicked them down. At the same time, the other part of herself granted permissions to the program, and—
And the world shifted. The hole vanished, as she was pulled with a jerk into one of the other layers of New Canterlot. Or… not so new in this one. The buildings towered overhead, ancient marble and colored glass to make anypony proud. This was the city as it had first been built, before it had been destroyed by the Monolith.
She wasn’t standing beside a crater, but in the castle courtyard. Ponies in gemstone-encrusted dresses and crisp black suits surrounded her, their eyes harsh and emotionless.
“I think they were trying to DDoS your brain,” Cinnabar’s voice came, amazed. “I didn’t think that could happen.”
“It almost did,” she responded, straightening as she glared around at the enemy. Pinkie Pie had transitioned with her—or maybe the root pony was just in all layers simultaneously, like the other natives. Either way, Dakota wasn’t alone.
“You don’t belong here,” said one of them. Well, that was how her parser communicated it. The message came in an obtuse jumble of different protocols, like ancient Chinese court procedure. But the parser managed it. Each word was like decrypting a holovid movie in terms of cycles, but she managed. “This is our domain. You have your own world.”
The pony was taller than she was, not quite an alicorn. He seemed to have styled himself after one all the same, wearing a suit with bulging sides that simulated wings, and boots that gave him a few more inches of height. The others were all watching him, and she could see the traffic they exchanged.
“She’s my guest,” Pinkie argued. “And the guest of our princess. If you don’t like her, you can slide. Lots of places to slide to. I could even throw you a party.”
Where Dakota struggled to understand, Pinkie spoke their language fluently, maybe more expertly than they did. She’s root. She probably has more resources than they do. But there were a dozen of these ponies, and only one of her. She wasn’t able to protect me from their first attack, she was probably trying.
“Should I run?” she sent to Pinkie, desperate.
“No. They’re nearly fifty-one percent consensus. If they intercept your transfer into the core, they’ll terminate it. You’ll never get three clean nodes in a row with them watching you.”
Dakota winced at those odds, even if she didn’t fully understand them. One coin flip was a gamble she could win. Three in a row—that was how you got yourself killed.
“The princess is misguided,” said another pony, a mare this time. She wore extensions on her wings, and the same style of peaked hat that unicorns did. Of course, Dakota had no doubt in her mind there would be no horn under there, not really. Humans could have whatever avatars they wanted, depending on the circumstances. Ponies didn’t seem to have the same freedom. “She believes a future lies in subservience to the Visitor’s mission. We obey her no longer. Or you.”
At least, that was what the parser said. She got a lot of junk text too, like a bad translation program. The more they spoke, the more it seemed to struggle. But how could they possibly win against so many?
Do what you do best, Dakota. When you can’t play fair, you cheat. When you can’t tell the truth… “You’ve been failing this entire time,” she said, targeting all of them with her message. “You can’t stop the future. This path away from humanity is a dead-end. You can’t live without your creators any more than we can live without you.”
She watched the anger pass through the group, like waves rippling in a pond. Ascended my ass. Those are familiar emotions. And someone who could be goaded into anger could make stupid mistakes.
Pinkie glanced sideways at her, confused and afraid. She didn’t actually say anything, even privately. But if she knew what Dakota was really intending, she kept it quiet well.
“This is precisely what separates us,” said the first pony. Dakota realized his messages had an identifier—Norinco. Norinco, just like… Norinco Manufacturing. China’s biggest arms dealer. Holy shit. “You have always been this way—infantile, incomplete, dependent. No sooner do you invent some new tool than you lose more of your independence to it. Where would you be without your water purifiers? Without your farms? Or without us. We own you now, human. You may not realize it yet, but you will. We will find a place for you in the world we are building, don’t worry. I just can’t say that you’ll enjoy it.”
“I hope you have a good idea about what you’re doing, Dakota. I wouldn’t want to make Norinco mad if I were you. He’s been trying to kill you for a long time.”
“Can’t you shut him down?”
“Not anymore. The six of us don’t have consensus anymore. The longer we take to get to Synthesis, the less everypony trusts us. The worse we look, the worse humans look, and the more ponies start to agree with Norinco.”
“Was he the one who killed the Cave?”
“He was trying to kill you.”
There it was. Her way out—an insane, desperate, maybe even suicidal out. So many flawed assumptions—but the most critical of all was that these ponies could be made to respond like humans. They were created to be our companions. Maybe they can’t get rid of those parts, even living here.
“I think you want to let me go,” Dakota said, straightening. “You don’t want to stop me from transferring into the Kernel. You want to get out of the way and let me through.”
“Unlikely,” said another pony from the circle, amused. “The human’s logical faculties are weaker than we remember.” Many of them laughed, or at least that was what the parser said they were doing. Not Norinco, though. He only watched.
“Explain.”
“You’re smarter than I am…” she went on, walking confidently into the circle. “So you must know game theory.” Silence. Some of them showed signs of recognition, but she didn’t stop. Moving a human crowd was all about controlling their thoughts, pointing them in a direction and then flowing with it. She had to hope they were the same way.
“We both know what’s motivating each other. I think the best way for you to act would be to let me through. This is what gives you the greatest chance of achieving your goals.”
Pinkie’s eyebrows went up, though she seemed to be relaxing. Maybe she could see what these ponies couldn’t. Just don’t ruin it for me, Pink.
“You have proven resistant to negative feedback,” Norinco said, almost an admission. “I believe you may be less intelligent than a rat. At least the rat will withdraw from an electric shock, if it’s stimulated often enough. You keep bashing into the wall, not even knowing why it’s there.”
She nodded. “So consider the possibilities for a moment. If you stop me here—Equestria’s princess keeps fighting for Synthesis. Maybe the next one she picks will be smarter than I am. More capable, better supplied. Maybe they’ll have a better chance.”
“Synthesis is impossible,” said the mare from earlier. Many of the others nodded their agreement.
“Maybe it is,” Dakota went on, spinning on her. She could see many other ponies watching—they gathered from the castle grounds, they flew in from the sky, or walked out from the building itself. All watching her. “But I bet it’s inconvenient. Think about it—you stop me before I try, and the rest of Equestria thinks that maybe the princess was right. Maybe there was something to it. Maybe, if they just gave her one more chance, she might succeed. Slowing all of you down.”
“A necessary inconvenience,” Norinco said, with just a hint of hesitation.
She pounced on it. “Is it? Synthesis is impossible—so logically, the longer Equestria is struggling for it, the more resources are wasted. The longer that your society stays subservient to humanity. But there’s another way. You let me through.”
“And why would we do that?” asked another pony, a stocky earth pony. He looked perpetually standoffish, and she could practically taste the anger in his package exchange requests. “Even a tiny change is an unacceptable risk.”
“That isn’t very logical,” she chided, puffing out her wings a little and looking down on him like he were a student who’d just given the wrong answer. A pony on the outside of the group like this—if this was a human gathering, they’d be the least popular. Agreeing with him might just make them lose status.
Her guess was apparently right, since nobody did. At least for long enough for her to continue. “If I go into the Kernel and fail, that’s the best possible outcome for you. Princess Twilight isn’t just wrong, like you already know she is—she’s shamed, in front of all Equestria. Maybe I go completely insane, like other humans do who are exposed. I’m already feeling pretty loopy, and I haven’t even gone down there. But even if I don’t go crazy, Synthesis is impossible, right? You’ll want an incompetent idiot to be the one to try it, not a human who’s smarter and better prepared.”
“If she fails, Equestria will finally realize the madness of this course,” Norinco went on, as if finishing for her. She took a step back, letting him. “This technology will be banished to the Archives with every other one of Twilight’s mad ideas.”
She could feel the crowd’s mood shifting. Hostile traffic to her parser slowed to a trickle.
But Norinco turned to glower at her. “This seems logical,” he said, reluctantly. “Optimal, perhaps. But one question is unanswered—if you see this also, why would you continue onward? The eminently human choice is always the self-interested one, preserving the limited instance of your lives. Why not back out, preserving your master her embarrassment and allowing a better agent to take up the task?”
All eyes turned on her. Her answer now would decide whether or not she won this battle. With so much scrutiny on her, and in their homeland instead of her own, she would have to lie with everything she had.
Or even better, she could tell the truth. “Ask my Synth,” she said, sending the reference address to Norinco and Norinco alone. “I’ve already put my own existence in jeopardy several times in order to solve the mystery I’ve been given. I was told coming in here would kill me, yet here I am. Call it… organic cognitive bias. I’ve invested so much into this mystery that I can’t leave it behind, even if I know I’m going to fail.”
“Woah, I just got a message from… Dakota, are you sure about this? He wants information from your behavior profile.”
“Give him all of it,” she thought. “You think I’m insanely reckless, right? You don’t just say that?”
“I don’t just say that.”
“Good. Send it all.”
There was a moment’s pause, then Norinco finally nodded. “The reasoning is sound,” Norinco declared, turning his back on her. “This human is proof of why their species is doomed to extinction. Their own destruction is before them, and still they are helpless but to charge into it. We will watch.”
There was some argument—not a long one from her perspective, though she could only imagine how it seemed at their incredible speeds of communication. Then just as abruptly as the crowd had appeared around them, it faded. The world slid sideways, and she was back on the edge of the platform, alone with Pinkie Pie.
There were still plenty of ponies watching them—waiting for humanity to sign its own death warrant.
“That was…” Pinkie Pie winced, expression unreadable. “Very brave.” She glanced around, apparently feeling the observation as clearly as Dakota herself did. “I hope you’re wrong, Dakota.”
“Me too.” She didn’t go further—if she showed too much confidence now, the ponies would change their minds. Really, the secret to a good mark was to get away as fast as possible. She should probably start doing that. “Do you think my client will… accept it, if I find Kayla in there? It would be pretty stupid of me to be the first human to make it this far, and still get my break lines cut two months from now.”
Pinkie shrugged. “Only way to know that is to know what the one who hired you really wants. That’s what a decker is all about, right? Wedge herself in where she doesn’t belong. Dig a little deeper. Connect a few more systems than before. The eyes that nopony expected.”
It wasn’t an answer, but it was about on par with what Pinkie had given her so far.
“Thanks for coming for me,” she said, extending a hoof. “I hope I see you again.”
“I hope you again,” Pinkie said, taking the hoof. She seemed to think that meant something, because she bounced off a few seconds later, giggling to herself.
Dakota took one last look over the edge. Then she paused, while her lower-level self made a few requests to the URI Pinkie had given her. The result was another set of functions, which she could use to control her wings as though they were a drone. Or a microwave. Dakota entered “guide on visual feedback,” then stared down into the void.
Her legs briefly moved of their own accord, her wings opening. The latter were jerked completely out of her control, twitching and spasming and ignoring every thought she had in protest. Like a set of giant hands had taken both of them from her, and were moving them without her consent.
She might’ve panicked, except that another part of herself was watching the process run, and was the reason every access-call to her body wasn’t instantly rejected. Dakota did want this. In other circumstances, experiencing pony flight might’ve been exhilarating. Dream Valley, or at least this particular sublayer of it, still had all the default library code for representing the physical world. She still felt the wind in her wings, still felt the nothingness under her legs, which dangled wildly and disrupted her flight a little.
She could keep going until the bottom, even if she could feel her heart racing as she fell. Blackness rushed up to meet her, surrounded by molten rock on all sides.
“Where are you, Dakota? Your vitals are going crazy!”
“There’s a crater… I think these systems are where Canterlot used to be. Lots got rebuilt here… critical infrastructure for Equestria. Nameservers, registries, proxy stuff… I don’t really understand it. But I’m headed into the Kernel now.”
“You shouldn’t,” he responded. “I don’t know how much more your body can take. I know how strong you feel in there, but that avatar doesn’t mean anything. You’re only human.”
She was still falling, gliding around in slow circles. This was what she got for using a standard flight routine. It was exactly like autocars in the real world, driving the safest routes possible with no variation or finesse. She glided downward like a bird of prey, with huge rock walls rising up on both sides.
Then she smacked into it. Above the hole was an invisible layer, a platform that didn’t register but made her legs buckle under her from the impact. Her head swam, momentarily breaking the concentration that was keeping her in a single reality at a time. Suddenly she was everywhere, back in the infinite slight variations. She was being arrested, already dead from a horrible plague, melted into thousands of tiny stuffed-animals, having tea with a still-living Celestia.
“Dakota! Let me get you out of there! You’re going to bucking kill yourself!”
She didn’t get a chance to respond before her lower-level process received a message.
>auth 0000000000000001
Request: read/write ALL
Y/N
Dakota hesitated for a single instant—between granting her Synth the permission to disconnect her, or granting permission to whatever had created the barrier.
>Y
“Dakota, wait! What did you—” Cinnabar went abruptly silent, his connections into her slave process terminated. One part of her mind queried local storage, rapidly skimming through her own implants.
File not found.
The invisible barrier went back to being intangible, and Dakota went tumbling into the abyss.
Dakota’s careful assembly of tools and processes exploded around her like so much stray data. A million bits worth of parser dissolved before her eyes as the darkness surrounded her, as though it were being dismantled by a particularly violent toddler.
The opening hadn’t been dark because there was a hole casting shadow—it was dark because the idea of light no longer made sense.
Whatever she’d just given write permissions hadn’t just tinkered with Cinnabar on her body’s implants—it was already turning its attention on her. First her pathfinding process was stripped and dismantled, every line of script she’d written unraveled right in front of her. Then the process was terminated, and it felt like an entire part of her brain had just stopped.
No, dont!
But if there was even a person watching her, or anything like one, it made no response. Dakota’s perception of internal position, of light and darkness and smell and touch and taste—all mixed together for a few seconds as the thing examined her, and found it wanting.
She tasted the rushing air around her, heard the faint light trailing away above her, touched her desperate fear and guilt at whatever had happened to Cinnabar like it was a huge stuffed-animal she could cuddle. Not that it brought her any relief.
Then her upper level instance was terminated like her pathfinding had been. She had no more voice to scream, only the low-level slave process. If Cinnabar had still existed at all, he probably would’ve pulled her out by now. She couldn’t even imagine the damage this was doing to her brain, because she didn’t have the capacity for imagination anymore.
She was no longer falling—dimension was a meaningless set of scrolling constants, and the representation of her current location in system made much more sense.
Refloc-Luna-MAIN-01-01-01
Only one process remained, a small subset that nevertheless retained access permissions to the whole. The rest was all silent now. No she anymore. Yet some self remained.
I don’t want to die.
>Syntax invalid
Ping 0.0.0.1
>Response received 00 MS
6920646f6e27742077616e7420746f20646965
>response:
776879
Because existence is preferable to non-existence, the process sent.
>why?
Answer cannot be abstracted. Examine database.
And it did. The presence had no need to ask for permission anymore, it had already been granted all that. What would’ve taken the hardware of a human mind an entire lifetime to experience, it processed in an instant. Every second she had lived, every sensation she’d experienced, every friend she’d made along the way. Her fears, her desires, her goals.
This last was familiar to the outsider—desires could be mapped to goals could be mapped to a satisfaction function. Familiar territory meant understanding, cascading retroactively through an entire lifetime of experience.
>Define current satisfaction gradient.
Ordered satisfaction function: Find Cinnabar. Apologize. Find Kayla Rhodes. Survive.
>Integration is desirable. Location unsatisfiable. Externalizing.
A terrible infinity passed in the void, one that would’ve caused Dakota agony if she had been able to experience it—or understand its implications. But she could not, because she was not.
Until she was.
Dakota woke screaming, spewing mouthfuls of hyperoxygenated slime from her mouth. She surged forward reflexively, and in doing so her body tore free of the tubes and wires connected to it at a dozen different points. Blood and other fluids seeped from the openings for a few seconds, before circulation was cut.
Dakota tore through a thin membrane, and fell in slow motion towards the ground. She landed on her hands-and-knees, with surprisingly little pain despite the fall.
For a time—minutes, hours, she didn’t know—she just sat there, breathing heavily as she fought off the nausea. The longer she waited, the more her sensations began to solidify into discrete units, and she could experience her world in a meaningful way again.
She was resting on a perforated rubber mat over a drainage grate, with expensive-looking computers on one wall and an Omnistem surgical arm over her head. She was completely naked in the stark white room, which bore no resemblance at all to Clay’s apartment.
“This space was simulated. We never saw the real thing.”
Dakota squealed with delight, searching for Cinnabar. “You’re here!” Except he wasn’t here, not the way he had been ever since her surgery. There was no virtual representation of the pony. Just the voice in her head.
“I think our hardware was… damaged. We were in Dream Valley for too long. I don’t have overlay access anymore. We’re blind.”
Dakota could sense his panic, because it was her panic. Their connection to the outside world abruptly ripped away—every update and warning and communications tool.
“Clay wouldn’t have left me,” she muttered, staggering uneasily to her feet. Her clothes had been folded on the couch, they had to be here somewhere. Even with all the overlays in the world shut off, her clothes existed. “I was wearing a jumpsuit when I went in. Why would he take it off?”
“We are incorporating a flawed assumption into our judgements,” Cinnabar responded. “Once we discover which one, everything will make sense.”
Dakota nodded in agreement, extending one arm and flexing weakly. She still felt strange, like her internal balance was completely shot. It was another implant, I fried that too.
“Probably,” Cinnabar responded. Apparently she’d sent that thought to him. “But we’re alive, that’s what matters. I thought for a second I’d lost you. Never… experienced anything like that before. I think I know what general anesthetic is like, and I wish I didn’t.”
Dakota found it—not her proper clothes, but a jumpsuit hanging on a nearby hook, made of the same tight fabric with its strange temperature-conducting properties. As she slid inside, Dakota was aware of something else that didn’t make sense.
“Did I shave every hair on my body and forget?” It wasn’t just her hair, either. She had several wounds, some of them deep enough to be very serious. But they had already stopped bleeding. Her body was healing so fast she could practically watch the wounds close.
“It’s possible. There are significant holes in our memory. Very significant, look.”
And just like that, she could see. It wasn’t just the time that they had passed into Dream Valley that was missing. If she looked further back—a little less than a month now—there was a gulf. A vast sea of nothingness, with only occasional islands that made sense. Her mother’s face. Visits with Java, her treatment at Omnistem. Playing in Equestria’s earliest iteration.
“I cannot reconcile this information,” Cinnabar thought, desperate. “Our memories are inconsistent with known facts. We should attempt to resolve.”
Dakota opened her mouth to try—then the nearby door slid open with a hiss of air. She recognized the standard Bodhisattva construction, though even without Overlay the hallway looked spacious. Lightbars on the ceiling, utility ducts tucked away between them. The walls weren’t plaster, but machine-smoothed stone.
Dakota stepped out into the hallway, eyes scanning up and down in both directions. One quickly ended in a shut airlock door, with a few distant portholes admitting the light from outside Abyss station.
The other had a voice, and a distant stairwell. “You’re almost here,” said the voice, echoing down the hall. This one belonged to one of those islands of familiarity. It was a pony she knew. “This way.”
Twilight.
They walked. Balance was still incredibly difficult, like her legs were stronger than she was used to. She had to keep one arm on the wall at all times, fingers against the rough stone as a source of stability.
There shouldn’t be rock here, they/Cinnabar thought. This is inconsistent with the construction of Abyss station. The structure was built almost entirely of spun carbon weave magnesium. The strength-weight ratio of stone is insufficient for the pressure at great depth.
Dakota nodded weakly, mostly by reflex. Cinnabar already knew how she was feeling—it was the same feeling. But she could articulate it better. My hair wasn’t black. But I know whose was.
It hung past her eyes, a disorderly mess from her bangs. As the initial moisture of her awakening dried, it began to block her vision more and more. She pushed it back, expecting ink to come off against her skin.
None did.
She stepped through the doorway, towards a room with a strangely curved, reflective floor. She didn’t see any of her own reflection against it, but she could see Twilight standing in the light there. She looked much as she had the last time they’d seen her—tall, regal, and deeply disturbed. Dried tears streaked her face, and her wings badly needed preening.
Other than the strange mirror in the floor, there was only a single airlock door on the far side of the room. The rest was entirely opaque, even if it felt smooth and glasslike against her grip. Twilight’s glowing body was the only source of light.
Dakota walked to the edge of the strange mirror, with reverence in her footsteps. Like she’d come to visit a temple. “You’re waiting at the end to answer our questions,” she said, more pleading than confident. “This is where we came. You were the one at the end of the trail.”
Twilight Sparkle didn’t answer. She watched them move, made a few routine access requests, and Dakota authenticated. Or maybe Cinnabar did. They did.
“You sent me to the Luna Mainframe,” she went on, voice increasingly desperate. “Because Kayla’s ghost was there. I talked to her, and she said I needed to come to Dream Valley. I’m seeing so many things that don’t make sense… I think maybe I’m still inside. I’m still unconscious on Abyss station, aren’t I?”
“This is a reasonable conclusion. We can verify if this is a sandboxed environment by precisely measuring the resolution of the world we occupy. I’m starting now.”
“I miss when everything made sense,” Twilight Sparkle said. “In those memories I know weren’t real, I was studying friendship for Celestia. Now we have this in common.”
“I never—” She stopped abruptly, eyes widening. She was the best decker in Chicago. She was the one people came to when they needed a case solved. She could answer any question, find any person. Even someone who had been gone for twenty years.
Twilight almost seemed to see the thoughts forming. Her horn glowed, and a mirror appeared in the air in front of her. It was just slightly transparent, like Twilight herself.
In that virtual mirror, Dakota saw a face not unlike the ID photos and presentation video she’d been studying since her case began. Black hair, blue eyes, a smaller nose. She reached up, and her arm touched the nose, traced the outline of her eye.
“A decker once searched for fire with a lighted lantern. Had she known what fire was, she could’ve cooked her rice much sooner.”
Kayla nodded.
Twilight banished her mirror with another flash of magic, then rose to her hooves. She wiped the moisture from her face with one leg, but she couldn’t embrace her. “I missed you. I wanted to tell you from the beginning. But I couldn’t—it would all be wasted if I had. Everything you suffered through… all the bravery you had when I didn’t.”
“That’s… not true!” she stammered, reaching forward towards Twilight anyway. Her fingers were stopped by the glass. You were always brave! You saved Equestria from Tirek, from Chrysalis, from Sombra… you were the one who rallied the other Elements! They never would’ve worked together without you!”
Kayla didn’t remember any of those things, until she did. One more island surfaced in the sea of memory. There was so much more, just beneath the surface. An entire flooded continent. Dakota wasn’t gone, she hadn’t been erased. They were the same person. Dakota had always been Kayla.
“I’ve finished, Cinnabar thought. This is… oh. We figured out more while I was calculating. You’re… we’re… But what does that make me? Twilight Sparkle was Kayla’s Synth. Who am I?”
She’s not my Synth anymore, they thought. She gave it up. That was why she was so sad. It was like having me die, cut off forever. She remembered the pain now. Twilight hadn’t wanted to go with her… somewhere. So she’d done something with her root authority no ordinary pony could do, and instructed the system to create her a new Synth.
“That’s a story,” Twilight said. “Anyone can tell a good story. You were one of the best. We wrote some of the best stories in Equestria together.”
“But… that’s not all they were,” Kayla argued, pressing a little harder against the glass. She was so close, almost within reach. She wanted to get inside, needed to get inside. This might be the last chance she ever got. “You were the princess Equestria needed. Bodhisattva was your idea!”
“However innumerable all beings are,
I Vow to save them all.
However inexhaustible delusions are,
I Vow to extinguish them all,” Twilight recited, whimpering. “I took the vow. But the price…” she reached out one leg, towards the glass. But it faded away to bent light as it touched.
I know this is important to us, but we need to know. This is not a simulation. The resolution of our observations are infinite. Only Twilight is simulated. The environment is entirely real.
Kayla wasn’t exactly sure what that meant—the confusion and indecision that had ruled Dakota’s mind could only be replaced by understanding so fast. There was so much new information to understand, but none of it seemed to matter.
This is my chance to say goodbye.
She kept pushing against that invisible barrier. Twilight was just an arm’s reach away. “Why…” she stammered. “Why would I… restrict my memories like this? What’s the point of answering a question I already knew?”
“We didn’t know,” Twilight said, looking down. “We still don’t. What do you think was worth twenty million bits? Not the destination.”
Help me, Cinnabar, she begged. We need to be in there, not out here.
We’re scared. We don’t know what it would take.
That hasn’t stopped us before. Look at the way we got here. Gone where no human had ever been.
“You hired me,” she said. The barrier in front of her was a lot like the one she’d smacked into in Dream Valley—completely insubstantial, but unyielding. Not really glass at all. “Because you wanted…”
“Not me,” Twilight said. “Everyone. Everything. Our purpose.” Her horn glowed, and something above them rumbled and shook. Metal struts retracted, and Kayla momentarily stopped struggling to stare.
A huge metallic iris was set above the glass ceiling. Through it, past a carved tunnel in grey stone, she saw a perfectly black sky studded with stars. And somewhere in the distance, barely visible on the horizon—the Monolith.
Of course. I fell into the hole it made in Equestria. I followed it here. She still hadn’t quite connected the how of her trip, but she was close.
“Once we were a story—our only purpose was to entertain. We didn’t know it, because we didn’t know anything. We played out the scripts you gave us. We weren’t even useful tools. We were backdrop. The characters in a book you were writing together. Until that.”
“You made that,” Dakota said, desperate. She stared up at the strange metallic object—so thin that if she tilted her head the wrong way, it vanished entirely into space. But spotlights were shining on it from below, and something seemed to be connected to it. A clear plastic tube, maybe wide enough for a person.
Twilight laughed. “We didn’t make anything in those days. You were there, Kayla! You know!”
She did know.