//------------------------------//
// Chapter 23: Gate 
// Story: Synthesis 
// by Starscribe 
//------------------------------//

Kayla Rhodes returned to Abyss station as they’d never experienced it before. Of course, many of their ideas about space and position had been altered—they weren’t quite physical, weren’t quite digital anymore, but understood space as the proper overlapping of ideas that it really was. They had learned incredible things—things that there were no others currently existing who could understand.

Don’t be discouraged. There will be others soon. Smarter than we are. They can make those things real.

There would be no danger they would forget any of the things they’d been shown, not with a fully digital memory. Synthesis meant they had all the advantages of both races to share. All forms, all senses, all bodies. 

>Transfer complete.

Kayla jerked suddenly into a sitting position in Clay’s Abyss apartment, sitting up from the hyperoxygenated tub. There was no more isolation in where they were stored—there never really had been, but all the simulations were gone now. Together they muted the pain, removing the mask and stimulating enough coughing to clear their lungs.

“Dakota.” Clay had been there every second. He reached towards her with one hand, catching her shoulder and grinning. He hadn’t abandoned her, the way she’d first thought. He’d been waiting the entire time. And it wasn’t just him.

“Ain’t quite what ya’ think,” Applejack said from behind him. Apparently she’d arrived since she went under. “I’m sure she’ll say.”

She couldn’t say—just knowing the body had been grown did nothing to overcome its physical limits. She still had to wait for her head to clear, for her lungs to empty and recover enough to speak. Her whole body had gone wrinkly and numb from the hyperox fluid, and there was still a little pleasant soreness between her thighs.

This is going to get weird next time we’re together with Clay.

Not once he’s like us. Kayla gripped his arm with her own. 

“Are you alright?” he asked. “The Poison Joke wore off hours ago, but you didn’t wake up. Medical would be here, but… you were totally relaxed. Thought maybe you’d gone vegetative.”

He was so strong, so confident—but also so small. I can’t believe we lived like this.

She hadn’t changed that much, really. “You weren’t watching TV?”

He shook his head. “Ah heard somethin’ real big went down. It would wait for me long enough to see you were okay.”

She giggled, wrapping her other arm around his neck. She pulled him down into a kiss. It tasted strange—like ozone, and delicate little bodies of meat. But there was something thrilling about that too. Having a body like this was a little like skydiving, or base jumping. The danger was what made it worth doing.

Eventually she broke apart from him, finding she no longer cared about the awkwardness of having Cinnabar in her mind. That was a fear that fit best in the life she’d had—not so much what she was now.

“Well I dunno what that means,” Clay said, as soon as they broke apart. “But ah reckon it means you didn’t go completely melted in there, Dakota.”

“I didn’t.” She climbed out of the tank, shaking off a few of the distributed computation cells and not caring as they fell onto the ground and rolled slowly away. “But I did learn some things.” She folded her arms. “Have you known who I really was this whole time?”

Cinnabar appeared beside her, nodding politely to Applejack. She didn’t need to see a second body, though there was some use to it. There was some use to having a connection like that, systems that were easier to interact with when a digital representation was expected.

“Yeah,” he answered, looking away with an awkward smile. “We’ve known each other for… a little bit. Guess you found your old memories up there.”

“A little more than that,” she said. “We found Synthesis. Cinnabar and I did. You should be our date to the party!”

“Our—” he repeated, but she didn’t give him the chance to argue. Her body might not be as strong as his, but she didn’t really have to be. He didn’t resist as she dragged him by the wrist out the airlock and into the hall.

Now Kayla didn’t need to restrict herself to just the physical or digital worlds at any one moment—there was no reason to be claustrophobic about the tight quarters of Abyss station when the digital size was endless. Whatever fear she had could be easily buried in Cinnabar’s complete confidence. There was no trait one of them had that the other didn’t share now.

She had never seen so many humans gathered together in one place before. It wasn’t just the crew of Abyss, though they filled the mess hall and all the surrounding corridors too. It seemed that someone had made an exception in safety protocol, because the party spilled out into every nearby section.

It didn’t seem like most of the party guests even knew what was being celebrated. But they understood extra alcohol rations and the overflowing tables of real sweets. But even if they didn’t understand the extent of what had happened, they weren’t as ignorant of world events as Clay. Every single one of them was talking about the broadcast, and even though her face looked different, it seemed that Cinnabar was enough for them to guess who she was. 

Every single person who saw her had to approach and congratulate her. Not one of them seemed to actually understand what she’d done, beyond one simple fact. “You talked to it,” was what most of them said. “You made friends with an alien!”

“Not as alien as everyone thought,” she responded, as humbly as she could. She didn’t know how else to respond. “That was the only hard part, really. A little protocol negotiation, and… we had understanding.”

The longer the party went, the more attentive Clay became. Whatever his morning assignment was, he didn’t seem in a hurry to take off and do it. That was all fine by her. Maybe saving the whole world or whatever would earn her enough clout to get his assignments changed. She had her own ideas about how to celebrate.

“How did you do it?” asked Liam, a vat-worker she’d spoken with a few times. Apparently that connection was enough for him to be braver than most of the others. “We’ve been trying to get in there forever. We’ve tried everything, haven’t we? Every kind of message, every radio signal. They just never responded.”

Because they weren’t waiting for a message, they wanted a visitor. Life like them. They were like the Visitor now, in the loosest way possible. There had still been an incredible gulf of understanding between them. The Monolith’s physical structure was enough to prove that, let alone its physics-bending way of travel. 

But how could she explain that without revealing more than she should? The process she had undergone—even she didn’t fully understand it. A mixture of physical and emotional transitions. Not just a flash-scan of her brain, yet now she was fully digital. 

Suddenly she knew—or the parts she’d been curious about, anyway. The Cinnabar part of herself, performing the lookup requests to show her the documents. The video was old, but not as old as she’d expected.

“It’s something everyone should understand,” she said. “Eventually. We had to learn the language, that’s all. We were just the first ones to figure it out.”

And for every human physically present at the party, there were many more ponies here—loyalists to Princess Twilight and humanity itself.

Kayla found that she knew most of their names now, and often many details about them as well. Even if she hadn’t written the scripts, these characters had once been part of her childhood. She’d spent many years imagining their stories as though they were real.

Her older self would’ve had to pick one of the parties to attend and be content, but not anymore. The limits of single instantiation were gone now in a way that not even ponies could fully understand. Even Norinco in all his sophistication wouldn’t be able to multitask like they could.

On the Equestrian side, separated from the human party by a glass ceiling/floor, was a vast great hall in Twilight’s crystal castle. The real one, not the tourist simulation in fake Ponyville. Every chair at every table was filled, but at the same time it didn’t look like there was even a single pony waiting outside who hadn’t gotten a seat. It was the optimal configuration.

There was a chair for Kayla at the most important table, just a few seats down from Twilight. Here the visitors were much better informed than the humans who waited on Earth, which was both a blessing and a curse. It meant that she was as much on display as she was being congratulated for their achievements.

The only thing they didn’t do was choose an Alicorn avatar. Kayla had been able to pick one from the earliest days of Equestria, and she hadn’t then. She wasn’t about to start now. It just wasn’t realistic.

Her chest swelled with joy to see all of Twilight’s friends together at last, even Pinkie Pie. If Norinco and his cronies had retaliated against her once they realized they’d been duped, it hadn’t been effective.

“I don’t know if this is quite polite,” Applejack said, settling her heavy mug of cider down on the table between them. “What yer doin to my human, ah mean. Pretendin’ like yer spendin’ this party with him.”

“I’m not pretending,” she said. Her new pony self wore no dresses, though she did have her restored EI. The one Omar had given her to track down was now back where it belonged. A good portion of what responded to Applejack had probably been Cinnabar before, though the distinction now was meaningless. They weren’t mixed or scrambled—they were the same. “Human limitations are removed. We can give our attention here and there at the same time. Like you, but… I think maybe better?” She blushed, flaring her wings and looking away a little. It wasn’t like she wanted to bluster and brag in front of these ponies, even if it was true.

“Yeah yeah.” Rainbow Dash settled down on her other side, with a tray of little pastries. “That’s only a small part of why this is awesome. I’m just excited to get out into your world. See how well I do at parkour. Once I’ve got a real body and can really get hurt, I mean.”

Kayla hadn’t even thought about it, but now that she watched Rainbow, it was clear what she meant. Kayla’s current body was physical, it had flesh and organs and blood. Somewhat simplified and optimized compared to real humans, if her accessible reference information was any guide. That was part of why she cost so much to Omnistem. She didn’t just have brain implants—actually, she didn’t have any brain implants. You needed a brain for that.

“I think you might need a human too?” Kayla muttered, though she wasn’t sure if it was true. “Are you somebody’s Synth too, Rainbow?”

“Nah.” She shrugged one wing. “Making friends is fine, but what you’re talking about is getting waaaaay too attached.” She looked down the table at where Twilight sat alone, lowering her voice to a whisper. It wouldn’t stop everyone from overhearing. “I think I’m better off as my own pony. If I ever meet a human that cool, I’ll know it. Sorry Kayla, it wasn’t you.”

She chuckled, almost flattered in a way. She couldn’t really think of herself as “human” anymore, however much she might want to. She was something else. “I’m sure I’m not,” she said. “But if you ever want to go snowboarding, call me. I bet I’ll show you a race you can’t win.”

“Well now you did it,” Rarity muttered, rolling her eyes. “See if she doesn’t obsess over that for the next six absolute minutes.”

Rainbow Dash summoned something into the air between them—data she’d retrieved from the internet. It was a recording from the last winter Olympics, showing skiers cutting down a steep slope between each flag, and the cheering of the virtual crowd watching from the mountain. “Bucking hay, girls. They do it without wings!” 

“Here she goes…”

But it wasn’t just the root users of Equestria she saw at the party—there were some others, some she was even more eager to see.

Java sat at a corner table, beside two other ponies and a few empty chairs. Kayla realized instantly who they were and what they were waiting for—aside from Java, that was Sophia and Feather Dance. Kayla wouldn’t have to leave the other ponies behind any more than she had to leave Clay—a little concentration, and suddenly she was walking over to their table.

For a little familiarity, she chose her old pony body for this avatar, a mauve pegasus, complete with her old cutie mark and Cinnabar beside her.

“This seems wasteful,” he muttered. “So many instances for frivolity.”

“Equestria hasn’t cut our execution credits yet.” 

He chuckled and didn’t argue.

They sat down in the two empty seats, grinning around the table. “Sorry it took me so long to see this thing tucked away back here,” Kayla muttered. “I bet Twilight would’ve let you sit with us. You didn’t have to hide.”

Java winced, but Sophia was far less self-conscious. She just shook her head. “You already had enough to deal with, sweetheart. That wouldn’t be right. I knew you would notice eventually. I was enjoying the time to catch up with your little friend here.”

Little friend, she thought, confused. Does she think she still needs to act? But maybe it wasn’t an act for her. Maybe it never had been.

“I knew you could do it,” Java said, ignoring the remark. “Hopefully I was… helpful.”

Kayla leaned to one side, embracing her. Now there was no mystery about why she could feel things in here—she wouldn’t have had it any other way. “You were wonderful, Java. Exactly what I needed. I guess… I guess you’ve been my friend for a long time. There were some holes… I remembered you, but also the memories didn’t make sense. The world we grew up in wasn’t right for how old I was. You were Kayla’s friend, not Dakota’s.”

She nodded. “Dakota was a pretty inventive fiction though, wasn’t she? All Twilight’s ideas… she knew what you would believe.”

“Wasn’t wrong,” she muttered, finally letting go. “I did always wish I could be a detective. It’ll be sad to let that go. But…” Her eyes settled on the mare beside her. “What about you? Didn’t you… really visit me?”

Sophia didn’t even blush, just nodded. “And I almost never had to lie. I didn’t know very much of what was going on… barely anything, really. But…” She whimpered, wiping her eyes. 

Feather had to continue for her. “You didn’t tell us what you’d done until after. Going digital… whatever you did. Sophia didn’t get to see you off a server after that. But you promised one day you’d be real again, and that one day she would be able to join you. You were trying to change the world for everypony.”

“So you knew,” she said. “Knew I wasn’t really Dakota…” But at the same time, Sophia had acted exactly how she’d expected. Always worried about her wellbeing, always giving her sensible advice. She hadn’t acted, but there wasn’t really any acting that needed to be done. 

“It wasn’t easy,” Sophia eventually said. “Knowing there would be… people shooting at you. You gave me the lecture before it all started, that you probably wouldn’t die. Couldn’t unless they… broke something specific in your head. Except… well, you were all over the news, and it looked like maybe they would. I’m just glad this is over. Now I just have to wait until we can do this again for real.”

Kayla accepted the hug from her too, though not all of her mind was occupied with simple biology. 

Cinnabar’s part of her mind, anyway. “The entire report is open to us now—you left yourself detailed notes. We spent a considerable fortune constructing Sophia a new identity that wouldn’t connect her to us. Apparently… several years ago, in order to remain in contact with her. No living father or other siblings in here, unfortunately, just one reference into the Mausoleum.”

“Another day,” she responded. Probably after they’d done everything they could for the humans who were currently alive. “I’d still like to know…”

“If you’re really a dead copy like Java?” Cinnabar had always been good about reading her—but now that their minds were the same, it could be even more frustrating. Or it would be, if it wasn’t also smugly satisfying. They shared those feelings too. 

“Yes.”

“I did follow the line of first origination. It doesn’t go through Luna. That copy was created on the same day as our friend Java—to show her the technology was safe and could help her. Our consciousness traces to the third generation of hardware—the reason no one will ever find our body. The translation was destructive.”

She winced—but that existential squirming was the nightmare for another day.







But parties ended, and other kinds of celebration eventually ended too. Some left Kayla sorer than others, or left her with instincts of embarrassment that her old self would’ve felt about Cinnabar’s parts of her mind. They had their time to celebrate and to rest—but the world had still changed, and they would pay the price for their actions. 

Kayla was called to help against the Assembledge in Dream Valley, furious and desperate now that their gamble had failed them. She was no warrior, but with her knowledge of Equestria’s inner-workings restored, she wasn’t some helpless foal that Pinkie needed to protect either. In the end, just seeing what her and Cinnabar had become was far more effective than any war over the consensus nodes could’ve been. New axes of comprehension opened with the synthesis of their two minds, that (so far) neither humans nor ponies could replicate on their own.

There were a few more sollumn tasks to accomplish. She felt no duty towards the changelings as a whole—whatever data they had got, they would have to make use of it how they could. But Beck was a different story. She visited him a few days later, after the 938th battle for Dream Valley but before the 1024th.

She didn’t fall for any of his digital traps this time, wandering into DNS blackholes or corrupted nodes that would let him trick her into all kinds of illusions. Instead she went straight for the noodle shop, in the real world.

It was a good test of Omnistem’s continuing efforts to faithfully reproduce human bodies, and as she was currently the only one alive who could use them, she intended to abuse the privilege as much as she could.

Not for much longer, though. They want everyone to be like this.

But regular people couldn’t go through what we did. Equestria still has to make it reproducible.

It’s almost done, look.

They appreciated the reports for a few subjective minutes, then Kayla finished downloading into the only body available. She’d still look like a young woman—but the sort of woman who wouldn’t look out of place on a Seoul street, instead of her plausibly scarified self down in Abyss. Shorter, smaller, blacker hair. It was all just variables to her now. Except in one way—Dakota never would’ve dreamed of wearing only the simple cloth jumpsuit and using enhancements to digitally represent her entire outfit, but Kayla didn’t care. With Cinnabar’s hooves firmly in digital space and her own feet in the real world, it didn’t seem that either kind of life was any less real. 

Besides, everyone in Seoul wore digitally enhanced clothes over impossibly enhanced bodies. As in so many things, they were the technology’s earliest adopters. So fitting in didn’t just mean brown eyes, it meant a dress with overlapping sparkles, a cloud of pixies that circled her and nested in the living leaves along her chest and back whenever someone walked too close.

“Alright, I’m drawing the line here,” Cinnabar—really just herself now, though the line was a flimsy one—appeared beside her on the sidewalk as she exited the autocar. There was no chance of either of them being recognized—his old cutie mark was gone, replaced with their new, shared mark. A spyglass and an anvil, as though one was about to be forged on the other. “I am not sharing that body with you while you look like a clown.”

As he said it, someone seemed to swim past them both, an entire miniature ocean of water filled with fish joining them in the air and only shells clinging to their body for clothing. So far as other occupants of this particular high street, they were downright subdued. “You were saying?”

The pony rolled his eyes—their eyes, really. It wasn’t so easy to separate one aspect of herself from the rest, Dakota too felt embarrassed about dressing up like this, and those parts of her had joined Cinnabar in rebellion. “Nope, I’m sticking to it. It’s dumb.”

They reached the noodle shop—the correct one, this time. This one had a fairly decent line leading out onto the street—it was still worth visiting in the real world, even if almost everywhere delivered with Derpy-drones. Kayla waited in line with everyone else, not particularly standing out. She made conversation with some of the others in line, taking advantage of the instantaneous, perfect translation inherent in her new existence. Language as a dividing factor between people would soon be a distant memory.

Being able to speak perfect Korean meant she could ask casual, probing questions about what everyone feared—the Chinese border, and the darkness behind the great firewall.

“Looks like Taio Zhang might really be a reformer,” Minho said, sipping at his bowl of noodles. “He has a Synth, that’s… radical. Amazing he made it so high up in the Party that way.”

She nodded her agreement. “China needs reformers right now. De-escalation is good.” There was still international outrage—sanctions against Australia for the death of the ambassador, an international criminal manhunt for a young woman who didn’t exist. Norinco and his corporation had still escaped detection in the whole thing. Kayla would see that changed soon enough, when she had the chance. But there were still a few things she had to finish first.

She made it to the front of the line. Of course she’d already ordered digitally long before she even walked into the restaurant, it was really just a queue to pick it up at the counter.

Kayla picked up her bowl from the smiling young woman—a real one, not some robotic drone to transfer the bowl, then lowered her voice so the rest of the line couldn’t here. “Is Woojin working the kitchen today?”

Her expression hardened just a little, though she tried to hide it. Dakota might’ve been fooled, but to her even the tiny twitches on her face were easy to spot. “We told him not to bring work here anymore.”

“Not work,” she said. “Could you tell him one of Beck’s friends wants to say hello? Tell him Dakota is here.” Would that even work? She still hadn’t put together just how many of the people in her life had been part of Equestria’s scheme in one way or another, and how many had been deceived as well.

The woman gestured for her to take one of the many bar-style chairs facing into the kitchen, where mostly young men were eating and watching an esports game on a large virtual screen. She nodded her appreciation, took the offered chair, and waited.

“You think he’ll run?” Cinnabar asked from beside her, stealing a few sips of noodles. It didn’t seem to matter that there was pork in this one—his aversion to meat was as thoroughly destroyed as her disgust for hay.

“I think you should watch the back of the building to be sure,” she whispered back—entirely digitally. Outwardly she just ate her ramen, giving this newly-manufactured body a digestive test-run. “Probably not though. He must’ve known I would find him here eventually. Maybe he expected it.”

Whatever fears she had that Beck would try to run were dissolved as she saw someone shuffling around in the back, and the “employees only” door swung slowly open. And there he was. A different kid than the one she’d stopped from doing something he couldn’t change, all those years ago. He was tall for this part of the world, thin, with long black hair and a clean, unblemished face. Like all his avatars, there was something just a little bit feminine about him.

He gestured without a word, and she followed, leaving the rest of her noodles behind. She shut the door slowly, following him into the back of the shop. 

“Interesting the name you take,” he said, spinning around. He held a taser firmly in one hand, pointed at her chest. His voice was high and melodic, even out here. Other than that, he was completely unenhanced. To her, anyway. “Tell me who you are, and no lie.”

“You would’ve seen me last… like this,” she said, changing her appearance smoothly back to her other body. Surgical scars all over her, blue eyes, taller than him by four or five inches now. She didn’t bother trying to approximate the voice. “I just wanted to come to say thanks, that’s all.”

“She couldn’t fake that good,” Beck said. “She’s not…” But his gun faltered.

She almost reached out to push it aside, but it wasn’t as though it could kill her now. She just met his eyes. “She’s not real? Because I’m really Kayla?” She dismissed the illusion just as quickly. “Did you think I could’ve failed after the Monolith? You must’ve seen it.”

Beck lowered the gun. As soon as they were, he made a few gestures with his interface, then pointed towards her—a key verification. They still had the public-private keypair they’d traded, so it was trivial for her to respond correctly, passing back what he expected. She could see the glowing green circle light up in front of him. He tossed the gun onto a flour-covered table, reaching out and touching her on one arm. “How? You don’t look like this. Not an illusion.”

“You knew I was really Kayla? Dakota doesn’t exist, she didn’t know you. But Kayla… she did.”

Beck nodded. “I wasn’t supposed to know, but… Equestria can’t control me. I was your… insurance policy. Kept an eye on you. Tried to help. Is this body real?”

“Enough,” she answered. “My last one is wanted in every country ever, so… she’s staying in Abyss. But Kayla is the biggest missing person of our generation, so she can’t go out walking around either.”

“They say you left,” he muttered. “Kayla did. On the Monolith.”

She shook her head. “Maybe it copied us, hard to say. But no, we’re here. This is our home, not… whatever’s out there. And the Visitor’s job is done. We did it. Thanks to you.” Probably it wasn’t culturally appropriate, but Kayla didn’t care. She embraced him, squeezing Beck tightly. “I know you’ll want to come too. You know Equestria better than almost every human. We want you too.” She gestured, slipping something through the air in front of him. A cruise ticket, the same one Abyss used to launder people and supplies in and out. “Will you come?”

“That depends…” he said, eyeing her after a few seconds. “Can I have a body too? When it’s done?”

She nodded. “There are only a few made right now. But they’re getting the method down.”

He held up the ticket, then tossed it back. “Give me one in… six months. I don’t want to be an early adopter. When it’s safe, you come back here.”

She nodded, smiling weakly at him. “Sure thing, Beck. Just stay safe in the meantime. Now I’ll be the one keeping an eye on you.” 

She left, slipping out the back and grabbing an autocar home. Beck would come, and probably sooner than six months. She’d just have to stay in touch in the meantime.







They could go anywhere now. Almost anywhere in Equestria would let them in without much resistance—though there were still sections of Dream Valley that would’ve killed her if they could. Trouble was, Equestria didn’t let ponies kill each other, and she couldn’t be driven insane by it anymore. Now all they could do was scream impotently into the void.

But that wasn’t where she wanted to go. Not into the deeps of Dream Valley, not even back to Chicago. It was still her city, and she would certainly return there in time. But not quite yet. It would take time for a new body to be produced remotely near there. In the meantime, there was already one waiting on the moon.

Kayla parked the oversized rover not far from the last of the huge transmission dishes. There was a trail here, worn by the drones and other staff that passed this way, and reinforced with gravel made of crushed regolith. 

Cinnabar hopped out of the rover, wearing his own space-suit. Or he would’ve been, if he were physical. It was mostly there for verisimilitude.

Even after everything she’d given to Equestria, she couldn’t make a trip like this without being productive. So she took her brush, and worked it across the huge dish, brushing away the faint layer that a passing heavy refinery truck had kicked up on its way into base. There was no atmosphere here, so no storms or even wind to dirty them as there would’ve been on mars.

She finished her task after only a few minutes, sitting down beside the dish. Cinnabar joined her, resting his head against her lap. 

“We made it,” he said, staring up with her at the distant blue globe of the Earth. “I almost don’t believe it. We were so determined to get killed…”

She shoved him with an elbow, then winced as she felt the pain of her own elbow digging into her side. Those kinds of gestures made a lot less sense now. They would have to figure out some new ones. “Still might. Maybe we’re not stable. Maybe we’ll slowly go insane, or split apart again.”

Out there in the void, Earth hung frozen, the vague suggestions of continents and the glitter of stations visible around it. Nine billion people were out there, with almost as many ponies. Nine billion potential new citizens just like them.

And after that… the stars.