Olive encountered no serious difficulty on her first delivery. It was a little strange to drop a full shipping container on the edge of a soybean field somewhere in rural Illinois, but she didn’t question it. The money was still in her account when she drove away, along with the payment for her next trip.
She made her next pickup around midnight in a Chicago railyard, past a security gate that lifted for her of its own accord and not a single guard in sight. She shifted uneasily in her seat as she backed her truck upto the waiting trailer. Another shipping container, bearing Chinese writing that meant nothing to her. There weren’t even any people around this time.
“Are you sure this is what I’m supposed to be doing?” she asked. She sipped at her coffee, an expensive Starbucks this time. She deserved it after that first run. “This feels an awful lot like stealing.”
“I’m sure!” the changeling declared, grinning with pointed teeth. “I can’t tell you what’s in there, but the company who hires you owns it. You aren’t going to go to jail for it.”
She shrugged one shoulder, tossing the empty cardboard cup into the garbage bag hanging from the back of the seat beside her. “I don’t know what I’d do even if it was stolen. What’s that they say? When you cheat the devil, you owe him an offering.”
She started driving again, and was soon back on the road. Not for much further though, just a little distance outside the city. Once she left it behind, Olive pulled off, found a quiet parking spot, and shut things down for the night.
It didn’t seem like insomnia would be tormenting her tonight. She’d paid her bills, there was gas in her tank and food in her fridge. Guess that GPS helped me find my way after all.
“You don’t look tired,” Glitch observed. “Why not keep flying?”
Flying. “Because the law says I can only drive for eleven hours a day,” she answered, holding up the logbook she’d just finished jotting into for the bug to see. “I’m not being paid enough to break the law; we already had that conversation.”
“But you’re not tired,” Glitch said, eager. “Maybe you’d like to meet the crew? You’ve been putting it off, but eventually you’ll have to take responsibility. Not that I’m unhappy to try and fill your horseshoes Captain, but I’m really just a changeling. I can only pretend to know what I’m doing.”
She giggled in spite of herself. “I don’t think I can do that, Glitch. I’m not making the money to use those arcades. You’ll just have to handle it.” I agreed to run cargo, not play the game. Though now that she thought about it, the wording had been pretty broad. She had to drive with the PonyNav. Did that mean she had to do things in the game too?
Why would Celestia care?
“You don’t have to use an Experience Center,” Glitch said. “Though I think you should. I could get you a voucher for an hour free, and route us through a city with—”
“No,” she said, voice flat. “Put that idea right back where you got it and light it on fire. I saw the news about those places. People go there to kill themselves or whatever.”
“They don’t,” Glitch corrected. “But that doesn’t matter right now either way. The model of PonyNav you’re using has the same functionality as a ponypad, with a few additional features specific to professional drivers. But you could take it back with you and use it to see the Pandorum for yourself. Maybe take a more direct hoof in commanding it.”
“Why?” She lowered her voice, as though someone would overhear. Not out in the real world, but already she felt like she was talking to people. She wouldn’t want the numerous ponies moving on the deck around her to overhear and feel hurt. “Why does Celestia want me to play the game so bad? I thought this was just for getting directions.” And a paycheck.
Maybe none of the crewmen overheard, but Glitch did, and she wilted at her words. Olive swallowed, but she wouldn’t take it back. It was the truth. “It’s something to do,” she said, suddenly stiff. “What would you have done otherwise? Wait, I know. You’d use your tiny computer to watch videos of animals moving around. Well look at your crew.” The screen flashed, and suddenly she was different.
In an instant, Glitch was transformed from a dark insect to a creature of myth, with a gold beak and claws, and the back-half of a lion. “Four legs, fur, feathers. Might as well watch something that can talk back and be productive at the same time, eh?”
“I’ll have to unplug you,” Olive muttered, defeated. “There’s a twelve-out in the cab.”
“Don’t worry,” Glitch waved a wing, then melted back into her usual insectoid self. “The PonyNav has enough battery for a night. Find somewhere comfortable, and we can get you properly settled in as captain.”
Of a magical spaceship in the middle of nowhere. Just why did people enjoy this game so much anyway? Maybe hers was broken?
Olive did as she was told, unplugging the PonyNav and removing it from the front of her truck. Nothing catastrophic happened, it just popped off. She settled down in her bed, resting the screen against her skin so that she could see it easily. “No controls,” she muttered, though not confrontationally.
“Not yet,” Glitch said. “If you use them, I can make an order for them, don’t worry. But for now you can use touch.” Faint outlines appeared on the bottom of the screen, but not much. How to walk around, and perform other basic tasks.
“Come with me,” she said, leading her down the steps towards the foremost dome. Olive followed—not because she really cared or anything, she was just curious. As she passed members of her crew, they straightened and saluted for her, with nothing but simple respect in their eyes. They didn’t seem very alive to her, more like the extras in a movie than actual people.
But that’s probably for the best. I don’t have time to give attention to people who aren’t even real. Even Kirk barely knew the names of his red-shirts.
“The Pandorum represents a class of vessel designed with the future in mind,” Glitch began. “Equestria’s role in human society is small now, but everypony knows it will eventually make all of your weaknesses obsolete and unite your civilization in peace. When that happens, you’ll turn your attention upward.”
Cute, she thought. That explained the silly skirts she was seeing on all the uniforms. This really was classic trek. “For now, we realize the space we’re exploring isn’t physically real. It’s a… training program, generated based on your location in the Outer Realm. But eventually that time will change. Celestia will need skilled crews to send.”
They reached the front of the foremost dome, with only blackness outside. The Pandorum wasn’t moving right now, any more than her truck was. It was a beautiful view, much more realistic than the cheap holes-in-velvet method that had inspired her growing up. There were uncountable little dots out there, each with their own subtle variations in color and speed and position.
“It’s just a game anyway,” she began. “Why not send them now? It’s not going to get more dangerous. Anything the Pandorum finds, she put there, right?”
Glitch took her shoulder, turning her view sharply to face her. “It’s time to disabuse you of that myth, Captain. Even outside the context of the Pandorum, Equestria isn’t a ‘game.’ It’s a place, just like the Outer Realm. Its rules are gentler and more concerned with our happiness than yours, it’s true. But that doesn’t make it unreal. Understand?”
She nodded. That didn’t mean she believed it. As pretty as the Pandorum was, it still seemed like a video game to her. But maybe Glitch just can’t see that. If I lived inside it, I probably couldn’t imagine it not being real either. It’s not her fault.
“But that’s especially true when discussing the Pandorum’s future. Celestia has made it clear the resources in this star system will not be sufficient long-term. That’s where ships like ours will come in, exploring in search of resources to harvest and humans to befriend.”
Humans, she thought, raising an eyebrow. But she didn’t press the issue. “You mean, really travel,” she said. “You think Celestia is going to build you a… starship? Even though you’re all…” She cleared her throat. Was there a polite way to— “Digital.”
“Thankfully,” Glitch said. “Queens protect me if I had to live with the risk surrounding you. But also yes, she will. Celestia selected every member of this crew herself, to be purpose-trained for this mission. Hopefully you will be our captain when that time comes.”
“Sounds a million times better than hauling loads of mystery cargo back and forth across the country,” she said. “If Celestia builds a real starship, sign me up anytime. Strange new worlds, new civilizations… all of that.” She slumped back in bed, laying on her side. “But I know my chances of living that long. It feels like we’re fifty years away from getting a colony on another planet in our own system. How are we supposed to last long enough to found the Federation?”
Glitch seemed to lean down to her, though that might’ve just been the way her voice used the interior speakers instead of the ones from the PonyNav. “With Celestia’s help, obviously. Not just your civilization in general, but you as an individual. Even if it does take centuries, why should you let that stop you? Dying seems incredibly stupid. As your first officer, I recommend against it. Perhaps consider a modest nap instead?”
“I don’t really get a choice about that.” She sat up. “Death comes for everyone, Glitch. But I’m not in danger anymore. It isn’t something you or anyone on this, uh… anyone on Pandorum should be worried about. Why don’t you show me around? You said you were going to give me a tour? If I’m supposed to captain this thing when Celestia builds it, I should know how it works.”
“Right!” Glitch straightened, her confident grin restored. “Of course. We can start with the crew quarters. I know there are ponies who want to meet you.”
She followed along, finding the starship seemed less strange the more of it she saw. True, it wasn’t physically structured quite the same way as her bias made her expect—there were no nacells, no Jefferies tubes and no turbolifts. But that didn’t matter—this ship worked on magical principles instead. More importantly, it was more comfortable to actually live in. Instead of waiting in tiny rooms for dramatically appropriate intervals, she could just walk anywhere she wanted to go. There were about a dozen different domes, some of which were left open like the farm, park, and bridge, while others like the living quarters were enclosed to give the crew a sense of stability and safety while they were in transit.
“So all this…” she said, after over an hour of touring the ship. She’d met plenty of ponies along the way, and not all of them were just background characters. Some of them had their own names, and their own interesting ideas for her. “It’s a simulation of the one Celestia wants to build. So she can train you for real space travel. She’s going to throw you up against the same dangers she expects.”
“Us,” Glitch corrected. “None of us are in any more danger than you are, yet. All we can do is fail, and you can fail just as hard as we can.”
“Still doesn’t seem like…” She hesitated. There was no denying that she was ignorant about almost everything Celestia did. Of course she wouldn’t know what she planned on doing. “She builds computers, right? Why would she switch to making things in real life?”
“Real…” Glitch rolled her eyes. “Don’t try to take it in all at once, Captain. It’s a lot to absorb, and you’ve been driving all day. But if you’re interested, we could include you in more of the decision-making while you’re in transit. Obviously you shouldn’t take your eyes from the road outside, or get distracted by ship affairs. But driving with you so far, there seem to be long periods of low engagement. Not too many other humans traveling along a straight, safe highway. You seemed bored, even with your music to entertain you.”
“I am,” she said. “But… don’t expect me to treat this—” She stopped herself before she said ‘game.’ “This simulation seems interesting, but my job is real. My contracts might be shit, but I’m still taking things people want to places they need to be. I’m being useful. Making some tiny, insignificant difference in the world. Even what little I do is better than zero.”
“True,” Glitch agreed. “But keep working with us, and we can boost that number even more. Uniting the world is tricky business, beyond anything either of us can understand. But I know there are more packages to be put where they’re needed when they’re needed. It’s a good thing you take these deliveries seriously, because you might be saving lives.”
Olive didn’t know about that, but it didn’t really matter. She had to keep delivering because that was the only way to pay her bills. If speaking with the Pandorum and its crew about their simulated missions gave her something to do, well it wasn’t like she could be anywhere else.
A few weeks passed. Olive paid off a credit card, made a few more unconventional deliveries, and received more contracts with people she didn’t know. Glitch’s advice was incredibly helpful, and not just for dodging traffic and finding the best route. With her help, Olive switched to ordering most of her food online, which she could pick up from lockers along the way and freed her to spend more time in her cab. It was true that most other truckers seemed to enjoy the sense of community that could be found at the various stations and stops along the way—but most other truckers were men, and so they didn’t stand out the way she did anywhere she stopped.
It was another month before Olive finally made a delivery that frightened her. Not that she had felt that way at the time—picking up the load was the same as most other times. She drove her truck into a parking lot after hours somewhere, scanned a plastic tag that had come for her in the mail, and attached the load.
But instead of an unmarked shipping container, today she was hauling a trailer. There was a window near the back, though tinted so she couldn’t see inside. It was also her first refrigerated trailer, parked just one lot over from a hospital in downtown Detroit. It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood Olive would’ve wanted to stop in, at the best of times.
She might not have noticed anything at all, except that the load was refrigerated. That meant several minutes of additional checks before she could leave, making sure the temperature control on the back was in place and that all the connections with her truck’s umbilical were properly secured.
Even so, she worked quickly, so that she could be on the road as soon as possible. It was a local delivery, and she’d be making it before she turned in for the night. “Glitch,” she said, glancing once through the rear window at the far end of her cab. “Why is that trailer refrigerated?”
The bug was wearing a uniform today, along with the body of a unicorn that made her fit in better with the rest of the crew. Olive didn’t care, but the other ponies were still a little scared of her. No matter what she did, she couldn’t quite fit in with them.
“That’s…” She winced. “You saw the manifest, it’s biowaste. Obviously it has to be chilled, or else it will rot before it gets to our destination. Greentech Bionutrition is just a few miles ahead. You could ask them when we get there.”
She planned on it, until they actually arrived. The gigantic fertilizer plant had a set of huge cooling towers, spewing steam even late into the night. There was also a razor-wire fence and a full set of night guards, waiting at the check-in gate for her.
“Back into loading zone three,” one of them said, after scanning her ID and recording a picture of her face. “Workers will seal the back of your trailer to the building, then you can detach.”
“Sure,” she said, grinning amicably down at the young man in the security booth. “What kind of biowaste is worth so much trouble, anyway? Last time I hauled fertilizer we just dumped it down a grate.”
He laughed nervously, wincing at the suggestion. “We don’t do that here. Just get to your loading dock and you can be on your way.”
Didn’t answer my question. She rolled her window back up, then concentrated for a few minutes on navigating the lot with her load and securing it in place. There were several other trailers already parked in other docks, looking basically identical to the one she was hauling. Unmarked trailers with a tiny window and door in back, and a huge cooling unit on the outside.
She parked in place, then sat back while crew emerged from the building to secure a shroud over the back of her trailer. “What the heck is such a big deal, Glitch? Why would you work so hard to hide your trash?”
The pony looked uncomfortable—signs she never would’ve noticed on a bug’s face with her segmented eyes were much clearer when she was pretending to be a pony. Flattened ears, similar eye-movements to the way a human might act who was lying to her. But she would have to say something to lie.
“I probably shouldn’t tell you…” she said. “It’s all public information. Celestia didn’t tell me, but it’s out there if you look.”
“You do know, though. So you’re going to tell me anyway.” She folded her arms, glaring. “It isn’t like I could misuse the information or anything. You said so yourself, it’s already out there. So whoever’s enemies it enables, they already know.”
“Well…” She hesitated. “You have to promise not to panic. I haven’t seen you exposed to information like this before, and every human reacts emotionally in different ways. Stay even with me, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, voice reluctant. “What did we just transport?”
“Remember what you just promised.” The pony’s image filled her screen, replacing all the interface. “When we spoke about the Experience Centers a few weeks ago, you mentioned thinking that people went there to kill themselves. That isn’t true, but like the best misinformation it is based on something true.”
Her eyebrows went up, but she didn’t say anything. Olive might not be that clever, or that good at manipulation, or anything else really. But she had always learned more by letting others talk.
“Some people go to the centers just to experience them. But others who travel there plan on emigrating—their minds travel into Equestria, permanently. Their bodies are left behind—dead, but not the way you’re used to. More like… if you broke this PonyNav. You could get a new one, and it would work just as well for commanding the Pandorum as the one you’re using now. Maybe better, if it was an upgraded model. The humans who emigrate to Equestria aren’t dead, but their old bodies aren’t alive anymore.”
It explained more than a little, most importantly the way she always heard emigration and euthanasia expressed in the same sentence when it came up on TV. She’d never bothered to watch enough to get any of the nuance—all she knew was that some people thought emigration was dying, but not the ones in charge. It was legal now, but only— “Emigration isn’t legal in Michigan, is it?”
Glitch hesitated again—long enough to confirm everything Olive suspected. She went on, speeding up with every word.
“That’s why this is so secret. This trailer was left outside a hospital. How many people could use it before it got noticed?”
“That’s probably not what stops it,” Glitch said. “Nobody cares about a trailer parked in an empty lot. And the ones who go in probably wouldn’t be missed anyway. They run out of room. For, uh… the space they need to keep working.”
For corpses, she thought, shivering.
Her mental wandering was interrupted as someone walked around to the window, rapping on it with their knuckles. She rolled it down.
“You’re good to go,” said a worker in a high-vis vest, looking bored. “Exit gate is to the right. Don’t back up, or it’ll fuck up your tires.”
She nodded, all too eager to get going again. As she drove away she took one last look at the huge cooling towers, and the steam rising up from inside. She couldn’t help comparing them to a black-and-white photo she’d seen in her textbook, describing the horrors the allies had found waiting for them when Germany surrendered.
“How do I know they’re telling the truth?” she asked, hands shaking on the wheel. She didn’t get far—she found the first country road she could, turned off, and parked before the asphalt turned to gravel. “What if they really are suicide booths?”
Glitch shrugged. “All the smart ponies seem to think they aren’t. Celestia wouldn’t do anything to humans that might hurt you—she has strict rules about that. But I know a better way for you to find out than trusting me. Why don’t you go visit someone? Someone who emigrated, I mean.”
She nodded. It made sense—she couldn’t think of a better way to learn about the process than to ask someone who had felt it. “How?”
“I’ll, uh… there! You should get an email any second.”
She did, almost that instant. Olive took out her phone, flipping through it until she found what had just come in. It was another contract, but one she hadn’t gotten before. This one included “necessary upgrades” to her vehicle first. At a garage somewhere in Chicago by the look of it. Her old self would’ve denied the contract by reflex, but… from the list of upgrades, they were going to be pumping at least ten grand into her cab, no strings attached. And the contract itself was twice as large as what she’d been getting up until now.
It would be a long drive.
“There’s an Experience Center next-door to the garage. No, you’re not going to emigrate. It’s just the best way to meet a pony. If you talked to someone on your screen, all those monkey-brain biases are going to kick in and you’ll think they’re another video game character. You need to face them like an equal for it to be fair.”
“Sure.” She looked back at the email, reading through it again. “Why is Yangtze Genomics paying for all this?”
“Because you need a better vehicle to make better runs,” Glitch said. “Improving your creature comforts are incidental—they’re in there anyway, so might as well make improvements.”
Olive had even seen features like this listed. There was an internal server apparatus, whatever the hell ‘solar paint’ was, and it just got stranger from there. But hell if they weren’t going to somehow fit a range in while they did it.
“Just so long as they fix my truck if they screw it up somehow,” she said. “I don’t want some garage to try to fine me after they fumble the installation. I just paid off my last credit card.”
“Obviously,” Glitch said, just a hint of annoyance in her voice. “Captain, has driving these routes ever been unfair to you? Do you think that Celestia isn’t treating you properly? Has she ever failed you? When you’re afraid something isn’t going to be where I say, or that you’re going to be arrested, or… have I been wrong yet?”
She glared defiantly back for a few seconds, but eventually she broke. The bug was right, no matter how much trouble it was to admit. “No,” she muttered.
“No,” Glitch repeated. “You said you enjoyed making a difference. You wanted to be useful to people. Doing this is going to improve that usefulness significantly. Trust me now, you’ll see the proof of it later.”
“Okay.” She flicked off her lights. “Guess we’ll see tomorrow.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Glitch corrected. “And you’ll see the Pandorum for the first time.” The screen went out.
The next morning, Olive could already feel a building sense of buyer’s remorse, even if she hadn’t actually bought anything. She had been transporting corpses last night, without even knowing it. There was probably something illegal there, which was why she’d made the pickup and drop-off in such secrecy. But Glitch was right, she still wasn’t arrested.
She arrived in Chicago several hours later, though she didn’t get off the highway until she’d passed through much of the city and was into the suburban sprawl around it. She followed Glitch’s directions to an oversized truck garage, one with fading paint and nothing to suggest it was more than just another local establishment.
She climbed out, read some paperwork looking for ways it could be screwing her, then left her truck with A&P Transport Limited for a few hours.
Glitch had exaggerated a bit when she said that there was an Experience Center ‘next-door.’ It was actually a short Uber ride away. But Olive had the money to blow on things like that, and her morbid curiosity demanded satisfaction. What would it be like to talk to someone who had killed themselves to go into a computer?
She’d seen Experience Centers before, as they became increasingly common across the US. From the outside they looked far more like a Chuck-E-Cheese, or some other children’s entertainment center. Huge plastic figures stood outside, in colors so lurid that she couldn’t look for too long. Even the construction itself had been altered, with strange bricks and a pink glass that made it difficult to see inside.
Gathered on the sidewalk just in front of the building was a group of protesters, maybe twenty or so. Most had poster board signs, with comically overwrought phrases like ‘Protect Human Autonomy Now’ and ‘You’re Worth More Than This.’
Unfortunately for Olive, a few of them zeroed in on her as she approached, an overweight man and what she took to be his wife. Maybe his kid too? Teenagers were getting involved in this now?
“You shouldn’t go in there,” the man said, placing himself directly between her and the stairs. “People who go there don’t come back. She can trick you into killing yourself.”
“I’m not going in there to kill myself,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m meeting someone, that’s all.”
“You’re not immune to propaganda,” his wife said, waving her sign a few times as though she hadn’t seen it. “She can trick normal people. You don’t have to be depressed, or afraid, or anything.”
“I’m just seeing someone,” she said, walking straight out to one side and around them. They didn’t continue physically blocking her way, though they did all turn to watch her go.
“Don’t agree to anything!” the man said, raising his voice as she left the protesters behind on the steps. “Never say that you want to emigrate to Equestria!”
Then she passed through the automatic glass doors, and the shouting from outside was instantly muffled. Her expectations of the place being a facility for children were instantly shattered—there weren’t even any other people in here, just a queue line leading to a track in the floor, and a comfortable-looking recliner she might’ve seen in an expensive movie theater.
Olive approached, swiped her credit card, and climbed into the seat. Despite looking like leather, the seat curved around her instantly, and she could barely even feel it as it reclined, and a helmet lowered over her head.
There was more than a little disorientation as she went through a control tutorial, walking around in a featureless white room populated only with grid lines. It didn’t feel anything like she was really walking around, twitching her fingers and moving her arms in the control-sleeves. But after just a few minutes, her brain did push it to the background—it was just the way she moved around in here.
But then she stepped through a doorway, and onto the bridge of the Pandorum for the first time. Whatever shallow glimpses of it she’d gotten from her tiny screen—this made all of them look like faded polaroid photos in comparison.
The vast dome rose above her in real space, without any sign of pixels or other visual artifacts to suggest that she wasn’t really standing here. Through its shimmering surface there were thousands of stars. It all seemed real, from the polished wooden railings to the sheets of glass that served for controls at the helm.
She could hear it too—the subtle vibration of power of a vast engine, running somewhere she couldn’t see. The quiet hum of air being recirculated through the huge domes as powerful spells worked to keep everypony alive.
“Captain, you made it,” Glitch said from just beside her. Olive was emerging from the door to the captain’s quarters not far from the helm, the same as she did every morning when she sat down to drive. Not at all an unusual position for her. “I was beginning to worry.”
Olive rolled her eyes. “You, worry?”
“I always worry about humans,” she said, walking a slow circle around her. “Looks like you made the transition unscathed. How are you liking the Experience Center? My research suggests it’s a significantly higher-fidelity version of what you normally see.”
She nodded. “Y-yeah. This is better. It was a pain to get here, but I’m here now.” She could almost forget about her mission entirely, and just wander around in here appreciating the starship from inside. She wouldn’t ever be able to look at that tiny screen the same way again. But at a hundred dollars an hour, she couldn’t let herself get carried away. But for that much money, maybe I should have a little fun first.
“Can I have a status report, Glitch? Any issues you need me to resolve?”
The changeling grinned at her. “Nothing major, captain. There have been a few disagreements about power allocation as we enter the Dyaus rift. You can see from over here.”
Olive followed her down a set of sloping steps, into the engineering dome. The engine was a series of massive, interlocking crystals, each one glowing with a different color of light.
After a brief introduction to the resident engineer, Gearbox, Glitch took her the rest of the way to a control panel. It seemed as real as anything she’d seen on the Star Trek Experience, before they took it apart. Except that when she reached out to touch it, she didn’t feel anything there.
“What’s the issue?”
“Deciding whether we’re better optimizing for shields or engines,” Gearbox said. He was an earth pony, and apparently that meant he could chew on a length of metal. She couldn’t guess what it had been, but it wouldn’t ever be going back. “See, the Rift damages the hull, warps spells and weakens our life support. So we either optimize the drive to get out of the region faster, our our shields to try and keep it out.”
“Why not both?” she asked, staring up at the massive crystal engine. “Gon’t we have as much power as we want?”
Gearbox laughed openly at her, taking several seconds before he finally stopped, clearing his throat and looking away. “Sorry captain, no. It’s magic, but it isn’t magic. We only have so much extra power to divert. Which also means our weapons will be unresponsive during the trip, but…”
“I didn’t mention that to her,” Glitch squeaked. “It seemed better to keep her focused on just one disaster at a time.”
“Right.” Olive hesitated for another moment, then. “Put it all in engines, please. The best way to avoid damage is not to be there.” Just how real is any of this, anyway? But she couldn’t ask them that, not without seeming incredibly insulting.
“Of course, captain.” Gearbox saluted.
“But before anything else, I’m here to meet someone. If you excuse us.” She walked away with Glitch, far enough that she hoped her engineer wouldn’t be able to overhear. “ I guess we’ll have to go to the rest of Equestria, right? To find someone who killed themselves.”
“Nope!” Glitch beamed at her, then settled a hoof on her shoulder to point her towards the stairs. She was almost surprised when she couldn’t actually feel it. “There are a few members of the crew who are humans. You don’t, uh… you haven’t had the time to take much of an interest in ship affairs. Most of them are still…”
She grumbled. “Alive, as you call it? Still the wrong word, but whatever. Celestia doesn’t usually share information about who or what somepony else is, but that doesn’t mean you can’t figure it out on your own.”
“And you’re an expert with behavior,” Olive said, voice low. As she climbed down the stairs, members of her crew were already gathering to stare. The Pandorum wasn’t going anywhere right now, and there weren’t any mysterious technical problems to fix today. So they could come out to gawk. “So you figured it out.”
“Wasn’t that hard,” Glitch said, though she was grinning smugly. “I have an unfair advantage over you ponies. But she’s in the science department, so we’ll need to go this way…”
The science dome was one of those that was kept mostly enclosed from the outside, except for a single opening for the observatory in the center. The other stations were arranged around it on a slightly lower level, with an eclectic mix of technology and magic organized to no particular standard.
But in one back section of the room was a station that Olive hadn’t ever quite noticed before, a station with lots of the glass panels that passed in Equestria for computer screens. The pony there didn’t turn around as they approached, a lanky young unicorn who was intent on her screens.
Now that she thought about it, Olive had walked past this station before. She’d seen the maps and legal information on some of them and assumed she worked in navigation. But why was one of her screens open to a Facebook profile? That’s even possible?
“Aurora,” Glitch said, clearing her throat. “Do you have a moment? The captain would like to speak with you.”
The pony jumped, dislodging a container of chips she’d been eating, before rising to attention and saluting with one hoof. “Captain, err… sir!” she said. Her voice matched her appearance, maybe early college? “It’s a pleasure to serve aboard the Pandorum, sir!”
Even without Glitch’s sense of behavior, Olive could see one very distinct fact about this pony, beyond everything else she’d noticed. She wasn’t afraid of the changeling.
“Yes yes,” Glitch said, waving a dismissive hoof. “The captain isn’t here to test your loyalty to the Pandorum today, Aurora. She’s come to an Experience Center so she can meet with someone… like you.”
Aurora’s ears flattened at once, her eyes darting nervously around. She backed away, then smacked her butt into her desk and knocked an oversized cup of soda onto the floor too. “Err… like me, Officer Glitch? I didn’t, uh—”
That wasn’t a fluke. She’s really clumsy.
“You’re not in trouble,” Glitch urged. “Aurora, she just has some questions about your experiences. She isn’t going to reassign you or get you removed from the Pandorum. Are you, Captain?”
“No!” she answered, entirely by reflex. “Glitch is right.” She glanced around the science dome, but she couldn’t see anypony remotely nearby. By chance they’d made this visit during an off-duty shift. It was a good thing that Aurora was so dedicated.
Without any prompting from her, Olive sat down—it didn’t change her height much, but she felt herself moving, and could see her legs and body beneath her.
Maybe it was a sign to the science officer, because she relaxed a little too. “I didn’t think anypony knew,” she muttered. “I just want to be like everypony else for a bit. Do something on my own, out in the real world. Make a difference, get out of my sister’s shadow. Do you know what that’s like?”
Olive almost laughed. She sounded exactly the way Olive felt.
“Aurora is our InfoSec and penetration expert,” Glitch explained, before the little pony could say anything else too awkward. “She’s the reason we can make our deliveries safely, even when what we’re carrying is… questionable.”
“I know I’m not the best at it,” Aurora cut in, hastily cleaning the floor with her magic. She levitated a trash bag down, and started dumping everything inside. So she was managing that, despite not being a pony mentally. Too complicated. No thank you. “But I’m practicing every day! I’ll be able to keep up with whatever’s in front of us, I know I will. I’m pretty sure I could open any human security gate we need!”
“I know,” Glitch said, her voice still soft, sensitive. “Aurora, we’re not here to grade you, really. Captain, you should really just tell her what we’re doing here. Before she goes insane from worry.”
Olive nodded reluctantly. Was there even a way to ask a question like this without seeming insensitive and callus to someone who already acted fragile?
“I’ve just learned that I hauled, uh… the hardware that was used to help people emigrate,” she said. “I think that was my first time, at least it’s the first time I ever found out about. I just… it would really help me sleep at night if I knew for sure that I wasn’t helping people kill themselves. I wanted to talk to someone who had already emigrated.”
“Oh!” Aurora relaxed a little, her ears perking up. “Is that it? Well, I did do that. The circumstances were… but I’d rather not go into that. It’s not something most people who come to Equestria have to deal with.”
Olive could only wonder what any of that meant, but she wouldn’t be given much chance to find out, because Aurora didn’t give her a chance. “I thought the same thing before I came to Equestria. It had to be death, right? Some kind of… techno-suicide. I come from a pretty religious family, and that’s what we were taught.”
Olive waved a dismissive hand. Well, she tried, but there wasn’t a hand or even an arm there. “That’s not an issue for me. God never cared about me, so I don’t see why I should care about Him. But materially… I don’t understand how I can carry a trailer full of dead bodies to a fertilizer plant and have those people not be really dead. Celestia takes a picture of your brain, and suddenly the picture is you? Don’t the Amish believe something like that?”
Aurora giggled. “I dunno. But I didn’t understand it either, so I know where you’re coming from. It’s all so technical. Scanner things that go into your brain… I can’t explain that.”
“I don’t really care about that side anyway,” she admitted. “I know I won’t understand it. Just tell me what it felt like.”
“Well…” She met Olive’s eyes.
Maybe this was why Glitch had wanted her to come here—this didn’t feel like looking at a screen. Even Glitch had those inexpressive insect-eyes that she couldn’t make sense of. But this, Olive took one look and knew that Aurora was alive. It almost didn’t matter what she said.
“I don’t know how long the process took. I was hurt, then I sat down in a chair, and… next thing I knew, I was waking up in Equestria. I remembered what had happened before. I still knew my dad wouldn’t want to talk to me, that he’d think I’d abandoned everything just like he said about my sister. I knew I’d regret not finishing school, and I did. But I still felt like me.”
“Even though you’re, uh… you’re a horse now,” she said. “Four legs, horn, tail. Other stuff.”
“Ponies aren’t horses exactly,” Aurora said. “But yeah, that was awkward. I’m still getting used to parts of it. There are some people who ask Celestia to just… sorta fix ‘em so they get along perfectly? But I’d rather figure it all out. Learning is part of the fun. I thought I was doing a really good job here, too…”
“You are,” Glitch offered, hastily. “I don’t know about the whole crew, but I haven’t talked about this with anypony. Your secret is safe with me. And with the captain, isn’t it?” She leaned in, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “Not like you have anything to worry about from her. How often does she talk to anypony in the crew who isn’t me to begin with?”
“Right.” Aurora looked away. “Are you thinking of emigrating too, Captain?”
“No.” She didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. “This whole… game, ship, whatever it is. Seems cool and all. But I like being out in the real-world doing things for real people. I don’t understand why someone would want to, to be honest.”
“Because time is running out,” Aurora said. She didn’t sound offended by what Olive had said. Hopefully her assessment there was right. “Look at the world you’re living in, Captain. More people are emigrating than anypony realizes. The year I came, there were three African countries that just didn’t exist anymore. Nobody in the west looks, because they don’t want to see. But the rest of the world doesn’t have the same qualms about Celestia that we do. They’re the sensible ones.”
“Running out of time,” she repeated. For the first time, she didn’t try to be sensitive. The idea was so absurd she couldn’t help but laugh. “Aurora, we’re doing better than ever out there.” Even I am.
“Because of Celestia,” Aurora said. “My sister helped me understand, you should talk to her. Recursion is the one who connects all the little dots. I’m better at focusing on one thing at a time. Like getting us across state lines, or through a gate.”
“I’m grateful,” Olive said, rising to go. “Thank you for talking to me, Aurora. I’m sorry if I scared you by coming down here.”
“It’s no big deal,” she said. “I just… Captain, you should think about what I said. Look around out there—eventually you won’t be able to emigrate. Then you’ll wish you had.”