//------------------------------// // Chapter 3: Kern // Story: FiO: Homebrew // by Starscribe //------------------------------// If Emmet expected to wake up the next morning feeling totally different, instantly aware of some magical solution to his problem—he was disappointed. Hoofhill seemed exactly the way he remembered it, so Celestia or her enigmatic sister hadn’t changed anything during the night. To his relief, digital clones of his parents did not arrive, and there were no missives from mysterious Equestrian relatives heretofore unknown. Emmet spent what felt like a few weeks slowly adjusting to life in the little village. Violet was more than happy to show him around, to introduce him to everyone of importance. And there were the Lumieres, inviting them over for dinner every other night. It wasn’t like they couldn’t eat what they wanted—as he’d said, this wasn’t a scarcity shard. But it felt nice to have a place to eat where they were already known and welcomed. It was a little like Ashton’s family, really.  Violet kept pestering him about wanting to move, or at least to visit other parts of Equestria. Finally he gave in and went on his first trip to Canterlot. But as amazing as that city was, and as refreshing as it was to be in somewhere as large and prosperous as that in Equestria—Emmet couldn’t be enticed with big cities and flashing lights. He’d just come from that, and he didn’t miss it like Violet did. We need a compromise. I guess this is why Celestia separates so many people. They don’t want exactly the same things, so they’re better off in their own little slices of the world. Some small part of him buried deep down worried that he wasn’t with the real Violet—that the whole thing had been a trick to get his mind into Equestria. But he didn’t let himself spin uselessly down that road for hours—if he was going to question Celestia’s integrity, than that would lead him along the path of madness. If I was going to disbelieve her, I should’ve done it before I got here. Violet had school in town, which she seemed to actually enjoy rather than merely tolerate. It was a primitive, dirt-floor schoolhouse, but she didn’t care. She was with other “ponies” her age, including the neighbors’ own daughter that she adored. They didn’t even mind that she wasn’t an earth pony like most of them. Emmet had no work waiting for him, though. He felt no desire to enroll in whatever the pony equivalent of high school was. He had no career to prepare for, no universities to attend. Why should he bother? But the trouble was, he didn’t know that any field of work actually interested him either. There were plenty of locals willing to let him apprentice with them, after Violet had made such a positive impression for him prior to his arrival. But construction and farming and cooking all failed to interest him. So he ended up wandering the streets, feeling the pain of missing things and waiting for his sister to get out of school. At least he could eat as much as he wanted without worry about his weight. It felt like Emmet had been in Equestria about a month when she finally stepped off the train. Emmet stopped what he was doing beside the platform, staring openly as a pony emerged from inside and stepped out into the sun. All this time in Equestria, and he’d never looked twice at these horse creatures. He looked twice now. Instead of the earthy colors of the Hoofhill locals, she was a pale cream with a soft pink mane. There were subtle differences in her compared to earth ponies as well—she was slimmer, taller, leaner. Without sacrificing anything in her back. God what am I thinking? He backed away in disgust, turning suddenly and hoping the stranger hadn’t seen him. He picked a street at random—Hoofhill only had the three of them—and hurried down it, not looking back. The unicorn had been dressed like a traveler, and an important one judging by the quality of her jacket. Or maybe not, that was just his old biases talking. Anyone could wear anything in Equestria, ponies lived the way they did because they wanted to. That was certainly true for him. Just walk away, Emmet. Walk away before you do anything stupid. Then he stopped, staring down at the gravel path beneath his hooves. Why should I?  There was human shame there, sure. But he’d asked for this process to be as simple as possible. If that didn’t mean sex as well, what did it mean? I didn’t come here for some hedonistic fantasy, or it would’ve already started. But I wouldn’t mind a girlfriend.  Emmet turned, and smacked right into the girl. He caught a brief hint of peach-smelling perfume, then he went down on top of her, all tangled legs and embarrassment.  “Sorry! Sorry! I…” He rolled away, rising quickly. Much smoother than she did. It didn’t matter how pretty she was, she was also clumsy. She struggled to her hooves, only managing to right herself with his help. Her eyes were like emeralds, expressive and colorful even by Equestrian standards. “Not quite what I expect from a stranger during our first meeting,” she said. Her voice was high and melodic, like she was about to start casting a spell right in front of him. Or on him, more likely. “I thought you earth ponies were supposed to be more…” She shrugged, then her horn flashed. Suddenly her robes were clean again, and so was his coat, the slime of the road replaced with a slight ozone scent. “Still getting used to it,” he admitted, not looking away from her this time. If this was Luna’s middle ground solution, he wasn’t going to throw it out before he even tried it. “I’m E—” Then he hesitated. Most ponies couldn’t make much sense of his human name anyway. “Domino, I know,” she interrupted. “I’ve been looking for you. This place is in the backwoods of nowhere like you wouldn’t believe. But it seems…” She stopped, spinning around once. “Nice. The kind of place you could get an expensive cabin in summer, maybe.” “I don’t think there are…” Something about this girl seemed familiar, even if nothing in her appearance or her voice actually was. His brain was grasping at it—but then she swished her tail around, and his brain just sorta melted. What were you supposed to do with a girl this pretty? He’d never had a chance with one back on Earth. Or maybe he’d just never applied himself to it. Either way—what did he have to lose now? It wasn’t like he’d ever see her again if it went badly. “You want to get lunch?” She laughed, her voice like chimes in his ears. Then her eyes met his. “Oh, you’re serious. I mean… yeah, sure. You know this place, go right ahead. You can tell me what it’s like to live here instead of just visiting.” He found them somewhere to eat. It didn’t have the sort of restaurants that he would’ve thought a unicorn like her would frequent, but it did have some variety of cozy little places. He picked one that specialized in “international” cuisine, which included “The Outer Realm.”  “It’s the only place to get a burger in town,” he explained, once they’d both been served. Well, he had a burger. Somehow he’d known a pony who looked like her would be ordering the smallest salad on the menu and not use any dressing. “Don’t worry, the meat isn’t real. It comes from a plant, and…” He stopped, settling the burger back down. His companion ate with a fork moving in the air in front of her, though there was something predictable about it. Like she barely cared what she was eating. Is she bored of the food, or bored of me? “I just realized I don’t even know your name. You know mine—did Luna tell you?” “The princess?” She raised an eyebrow. The other patrons all huddled closer to what they were doing—talking about Celestia and her sister wasn’t something they did casually. It was like having a casual conversation about God out in public. This unicorn didn’t seem embarrassed by his question so much as confused. “Oh, right. You didn’t play the game… ever, pretty much. In here everyone calls me Arcane Word.” And maybe she would’ve said something else, but then she seemed suddenly distracted by her food, picking off a few more stray croutons.  “Arcane Word,” he repeated. It seemed to fit her, in the sense that any pony name ever could. He’d taken longer to adjust to them than the nudity. Though in fairness, the last hour had opened up some old wounds there too. “How much did she tell you about me?” “Not much.” She set down her fork, pushing the empty plate away. “Said I had to see how you were doing myself. It was either sending letters or visiting in person. You can’t laugh at me for playing the game now that you live here. That’s like… a rule or something. Or it should be.” For the second time in their conversation, Emmet was struck with a profound sense of disorder, unable to reconcile the strangely familiar words to the pony in front of him. “You’re…” He lowered his voice to a whisper. He’d spent the last week without saying something dumb that made ponies stare, he wasn’t about to throw all that away now. “You’re from Earth? You’re not in Equestria?” “Uh…” Was that more of the same horror on her face, and a ruined opportunity with a girl possibly made for him? He looked away, ears flattening. But then she laughed again. “You don’t know who I am. You took me out to lunch, and you didn’t know who I was. I said not to call me, remember? Said I’d call you. Well here I am, calling on you. I thought it might go better if I just sorta ripped the band-aid off, you know? If I just texted you, I might pretend that everything was fine. But things aren’t fine. You—” Her words fuzzed for a moment. The only other couple at the restaurant turned to stare at her in horror, as though she’d just sworn like a sailor. They got up, muttering about the nerve of city ponies, and took their food to go. The hell was that? “You’re…” Even with all the facts in front of him, his mind didn’t want to put them all together. “You’re not Ashton. Can’t be. He’s…” “Playing a game?” she finished for him. In that same high, sweet voice. You never sounded like that a day in your life, Ashton. “I play girl characters in games, so what? You could fight me over it, but you probably shouldn’t. This place doesn’t have levels to look at, but I’ve been working on my magic since the bucking beta. Don’t step to me, Emmet.” Any doubt he might’ve had about Ashton’s identity evaporated in an instant, leaving him even more confused than he’d been before. “You don’t, uh… you don’t look or sound anything like yourself, Ashton,” he finally said. And here I was falling for someone who doesn’t even exist. Worst of all, it didn’t seem like Ashton even knew what he was doing. She? No, Arcane was a she, a remarkably convincing illusion of one. “I didn’t think you actually cared about…” Wait, you just admitted you did, didn’t you? He might’ve said something else, but his own embarrassment over what had just happened was far louder. Maybe letting Arcane slide would let him escape a little himself. “Buck, I need to pick up my sister. She’s getting out in a few minutes.” Arcand Word rose to follow, dropping a fistful of shiny metal bits onto the table with an apologetic glance at the cook. “I’ll come with you then, I guess. You still haven’t really told me anything. I wanted to ask how your whole… emigration thing went.” In spite of everything, Emmet actually stopped and stared at the table. “You know you… don’t have to worry about that. Ponies get their bits from Celestia, not from you.” “They can get their bits from Celestia,” Arcane corrected. “But being around me is unpleasant and anyone who does it deserves to be compensated accordingly. What’s the point of making all these stupid bits if I can’t spend them?” They left, with Smokey Grill the chef staring at Emmet instead of Arcane now. Deep breaths. You’ve been here a month, she’s been playing for two years. He. He’s been playing for two years. It was still a hostile pattern in his brain, one that couldn’t hold there for long without rejection. “Now you’re curious about how it went?” Emmet asked. He probably would’ve yelled it if Ashton was standing here himself. But he couldn’t look down at that soft, graceful costume without feeling guilty. His brain absolutely refused to allow him to yell at a girl like that, particularly one he’d just met, who had been so—Stop stop stop stop stop. “I wasn’t sure you’d ever call back.” “I’ve had time,” she answered weakly. “Did a little reading. Thought about what I would do if my only family was in here. I’d probably emigrate too.” They were already halfway to the schoolhouse. “Good. I hope we can… still be friends. All that fancy gear I bought. Are you living in the old house?” Arcane nodded. “My parents wanted to. It didn’t make sense not to let them have some of the… I don’t know what to do with that kind of money.” “Neither did I,” he answered. “But I didn’t have anyone else alive to give it to. Just don’t let them take it from you. If it isn’t my parachute, it should be yours.” Arcane laughed again. “I sold the car. Couldn’t drive it without thinking of… well, you still sound like you. It should be creepy, but it’s not. I’m glad I didn’t see you go into the machines or whatever. The way it works is…” “I didn’t feel anything,” he interrupted. “It wasn’t surgical like for my sister. Just… sit down in a chair, and wake up here.” The schoolhouse had its own hill, high enough to overlook the bay. There were two old ships moored there, ships that hadn’t left once since Emmet moved in. Nice view, though. “Don’t even think about it,” Arcane said. “I’m not emigrating. Not until I don’t have any other choice, anyway. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry. If anything, worry more. This place has been my home for years, and you’re just moving in.” She stuck out her tongue, pulling off adorable far more than menacing. She checked that no one else was within earshot before going on.  “I’ve got a way cooler shard than this to tinker with, too. The town is what it is, but the land next to it—we’re talking ten acres of sandbox. Structures, mechanics, NPCs… the bloody works, all hosted in my… okay, realistically I’m probably just hosting some shallow copy instruction set in Runescript or whatever, but still. You should check it out with me sometime.” Almost as though it had been timed for that moment, a bell started to ring, and foals poured out of the schoolhouse. Emmet watched, and it wasn’t hard to see which was the pony he cared about. His sister glided over the crowd rather than try to keep up with the otherwise faster earth ponies, not caring that ponies sometimes stared. If anything, she seemed to enjoy the attention even more. “Hey Emmet.” She stopped in front of him, then glanced at Arcane Word. “Who are you? Are you my brother’s girlfriend?” She laughed again, reaching out and patting Violet with gentle affection. Ashton had always been kind to his sister, whenever they had contact at all. Which, in fairness, was almost never. “If I am, it’s his fault. I didn’t make him narrow his field of view.” Violet stared up at her, trying to process that response for a few seconds. Then she shrugged, looking away. “Did you think about it today, big brother?” “No,” Emmet responded, cutting off whatever silly thing Arcane might do to confuse his sister next. “I said I wanted to enjoy Hoofhill for a little bit longer. But I will soon, I promise.” “Look into what, sweetie?” Arcane didn’t seem to care that they were standing out in the open. Emmet wasn’t the only pony who had been staring at her, but she didn’t so much as glance at the others.  “I keep telling my big brother than I want to be somewhere more exciting. We used to have this whole house to do anything we wanted in, but now that he’s back, he wants to live in three itty-bitty rooms. I don’t have my trampoline anymore, or my pool, or my stuffy collection… I’ve got my legs back, why can’t I use them?” “Well that sounds very serious,” Arcane said, turning on him. Emmet could predict what she would say even before she opened her mouth. “But what a coincidence. I have a castle about an hour’s train north of here that I was going to give to him. Since he dumped one on me so unexpectedly, it’s only fair.” “Really? A castle?” She lifted off into the air again, gliding right in front of Emmet. “We’re gonna go see it, right?” Emmet glared daggers at Arcane Word, or he tried to. But he couldn’t glare at her for long, not looking like that. You’re cheating. This whole thing is cheating and I’m not happy about it. “Yes,” he admitted. “We can go see it.” “Yay!” Violet circled around them once more, then glided off down the road, towards their apartment. He didn’t think twice about her safety, flying ahead alone. Equestria was the kind of place where you left your doors unlocked and your valuables sitting in the front yard without a second thought. At least, his part of it was. Only when she was out of earshot did he spin to glare at Arcane again, his voice low and dangerous. “Don’t you dare do anything to hurt my sister, Ashton. Maybe this is still a game to you, but it isn’t to her. Or me.” She retreated from him, putting up a defensive hoof. “Relax, Emmet. Domino, whatever. Relax. You two are like family. I really do have a castle up there. That’s what it looks like right now, anyway. Wintercrest is a bigger town than this, maybe she’d like living there a little more. A little more cosmopolitan. And I’m tied into the royal family through…” She made a vague gesture. “I’m nobility, okay? Like the mayor of the town. And what a coincidence, that castle is right on the border between Equestria and my sandbox. The whole castle is wired into that Loop gear you bought, in the real world. “You know…” She pushed up next to him as they walked, lowering her voice. “I’ve got a way more successful business going in Equestria than I’ll ever have IRL. I could use a pony on the ground.” No way you used that word. He shoved her away, though not with nearly the strength he could have. But what does it matter? She’s not real, or really here. “I haven’t found anything I like doing,” he admitted. “But what would I do for you? I… realize that I don’t actually know what you do here in Equestria.” “You’d be doing retail,” she admitted. “Sales, marketing, whatever. I assume you wouldn’t want to help me do the actual scripting, though having you around would be useful for testing. I’ve never had an emigrated pony to test permission boundaries on before. I’m guessing you’re type 3 users, like some native ponies. The smart ones, the ones that are actually smart.” “Stop.” He rested a hoof on her shoulder briefly, silencing her. But she can’t actually feel anything. He can’t feel anything. There’s no point doing anything but talk to him. “I don’t want to code. But running a store, that might be relaxing enough. Running a store that other people like you shop at, I assume.” She nodded. “Most of the exchange used to be outside the game. But when you sell a script out there in the real world, anyone can reverse engineer it, take it apart, sell your own code right back to you. But it turns out you can class it like spells if you’re a unicorn, and sell them in here. So I have a way of just giving someone access rights, and knowing for certain that they aren’t going to steal my ideas. The people who buy use rights like that are… individual users, mostly, who aren’t happy with the limits on Equestria. They want to edge out the boundaries as far as Celestia will let us. Which gets back to you, and the user types. One, two, three. Class one users are… most of the ponies you meet in a crowd, at least before you become friends with one. The chef, the gardener, the dozen other students your sister never talks to. They only have protection at all so far as they’re in somepony else’s life. Even then, you can fork…” “I don’t see how this should convince me to take my sister to your castle. Or work for you.” Mostly it didn’t make sense, except that it might explain why the ponies in Hoofhill seemed just slightly uncomfortable with Arcane Word around. It wasn’t just her looks, but her magic as well. “You said the hackers are all unicorns?” She nodded. “You’d have to swap if you wanted to help with any of the development yourself. How good is your calculus?” “Fine, but I’m not swapping. I don’t care about… magic. I care about people. Selling to people could be fun, though. I assume you must have a store in your… castle?” “In the sandbox next to it, yes. The castle itself follows Equestrian rules. I’m always changing things around, and it’s easier just to have the one than keeping a copy on my own hardware and one in Equestria. Getting ponies into the sandbox who aren’t Type 2 is a pain. That’s humans playing the game, by the way. We have more protection than Type 1, but less than you… Type 3, if I wanted to put my money down on anything. I bet all your guts are consent-bound and ethically locked. I hope so, anyway. It would be hella messed-up if someone could hack a real person.” As infuriating as Ashton could be—maybe even more so with the doublethink he had to do with this body—his friend could still accidentally be supportive sometimes. Without even bringing up the subject, Ashton confirmed that he did still think of Emmet—and Violet by extension—as real. They stepped into the apartment. Violet already had a duffel-bag of things packed. “Fine,” he said. “We’ll go see your shard. We’re just going to look though, Violet. We might not be staying.” “You’ll want to,” Arcane said casually, levitating the door shut behind her. She looked around, taking in the apartment in a glance. “I’ve been planning for… well, when Celestia ends the world and we all have to move down here. I could probably rearrange things for… you said you wanted a place for your stuffed animals, sweetheart? I’ll have something ready by the time we arrive.” You’re not playing fair, he thought furiously. His eyes skimmed briefly over Celestia’s cutie mark, framed on the wall. He could make all this go away, if he wanted. If he didn’t want Ashton to interfere, he could be gone. Then he saw the excitement on Violet’s face, and he kept his hoof down. “We’re just going to see,” he said again, defeated. “And we aren’t going to be your test subjects. You aren’t going to do anything to my sister.” “I’m not,” Arcane said. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t. You guys pack or whatever, I’m going to grab some Taco Bell. I’ll be back.” She vanished in a flash of light, without so much as an after-image left behind.