Dinner with the family wasn’t much better. His brother and sister both had their own horror stories about school.
“We’ve got to make arrangements,” his father declared. “I’ve been looking into the price of farmland. We should think about relocating before the end of the year.”
“We will relocate,” his mother argued, just a little of her anger returning. “But we don’t have to be on the run for the rest of our lives. We should emigrate like everyone else is doing.”
“You can’t be safe if you’re dead,” his father argued, raising his voice. Their canned chicken and rice were forgotten. “It’s not even worth discussing—we can’t go somewhere that doesn’t exist. Those people are dead, just like the people who used to live in this house.”
Only two of them emigrated, Ashton thought. But he didn’t want to actually get involved in the argument. He didn’t want to take a side.
“It’s not,” Mom said, matching his tone. “I’ve still got the studies, dear. And the process is much improved from the slicing they did four years ago. It’s not even invasive.”
It was the same argument he’d been overhearing for six months now, ever since the Wallaces next door had emigrated. Ashton already knew what side both of his parents were on, but after spending the last hour with Violet, he found himself suddenly curious to see what his brother and sister thought.
Parker was fourteen, and Gwen was sixteen. After less than a minute, it was clear both of them were on Mom’s side. “Equestria isn’t going to try to take my friends away,” Gwen said. “It’s wrong.”
“It’s wrong, but you don’t have to gamble on surviving some kind of… impossible surgery from an evil AI.”
And on and on. Ashton tuned it out for a bit, letting the noise ring around him. But after a few minutes of shouting, he realized they were all looking at him.
“What do you think, Ashton?” Mom asked. “You’ve had friends go there already, haven’t you?”
“Of course he has, dear, that’s how we’re living in this house. It’s going to make it impossible for him to be objective, just like the rest of—”
“I don’t want to emigrate,” he said flatly, silencing them. “I know… quite a bit about how it works. I don’t think it’s much of a gamble, I don’t think it kills you. But I don’t know why I should have to leave the real world before I’m done living here.”
Whatever they were expecting, it wasn’t that. He took advantage of their silence and went on. “I wouldn’t mind emigrating when I’m old, or if I got sick or hurt or whatever. But I’m perfectly healthy. So many people are already gone, shouldn’t we… stay? Who’s going to run the world if we all leave?”
“Celestia,” Gwen answered simply. “She’s better at it anyway.”
Can’t say you’re wrong.
“Besides, Equestria is more fun,” Parker added. “What do we do over here—eat old apples and get hungry? Wintercrest has…”
Ashton felt like his brain was turning to fuzz. That’s got to be a coincidence. But he knew it wasn’t, even as he wished that. It was his stupid name, there wasn’t anywhere else in Equestria like it.
Parker took away any chance he might’ve had to doubt. “There’s always awesome stuff going on. Just two days ago, an evil cult was trying to awaken an old earthquake goddess and crush the city, but we—”
You were part of that too? “It’s a video game,” Dad said. “Your brother has some sense, Parker. I think I could agree to that. Waiting until we’re old, that’s one thing. But dying now.”
“We won’t get to be old,” Mom said, and the argument was back on. Every one of them relied on Equestria to some extent or another, even Dad. They’d all heard what Ashton had heard from Emmet—the world was running out of time.
The family dinner ended without resolution, and without much food eaten. Ashton stalked away before he could be used as more ammunition against his mom and siblings. He did agree they should stay, but it was a near decision even for him. Today had been a wakeup call.
He wandered into his bedroom without thinking much about the circumstances he’d left. “Get the lights, Domino,” he instructed absently. The lights came on, and he flopped down into the computer chair, grinning up at the screen.
Emmet looked like he’d had a busy night. He was still wearing the pony equivalent of a tuxedo, which meant white shirt and jacket that didn’t actually cover anything important. Or it wouldn’t have, if Ashton had even a slight desire to see that kind of thing. His game, like so many, showed the characters without the finer points of anatomy.
“Ashton,” he said, looking out through the camera in the control room. Arcane Word hadn’t returned. If she had, the system usually restricted Emmet from seeing the real him. It really didn’t like two of the same people in one place.
“Hey Emmet.” He flipped through his backpack, removing the Ponypad and locking it into place on the charger. He didn’t actually switch it on. “How’d your sister’s thing go?”
“Great,” he answered. “Except she wanted you to be there. It was really sweet of you to help her like that.”
He shrugged as casually as he could. “I have a little sister too.” They’d never been far enough apart in age that anything like that had ever happened between them.
“I should’ve known what she was missing,” Emmet said, his voice distant. “I’ve been trying to take care of her. But I can’t do… that.”
“You can,” Ashton said, cutting him off. “It’s not as complicated as it looks. There’s a website called color-hex that can help find colors that work well together.”
“Not that.” Emmet waved him away, then tugged on his bow tie to loosen it. He did look adorable all dressed up that way, but ponies always did when they wore costumes. “I mean a positive role model. One her own sex.”
Ashton laughed. It was the only thing he could do, under the circumstances. “I, uh… I’ve got some bad news about that.”
“Yeah yeah, I know. But it doesn’t matter if it’s real. We don’t see out there, we see in here. Violet was talking about you all night. I haven’t seen her this happy in… a long time.”
Ashton shrugged, though he was still blushing bright red and didn’t expect that to change anytime soon. He would probably look bright red for several hours at this rate. Though part of that would just be the left-over frustration from the meal. “I’m glad she’s happy.”
“So how are you planning to survive this, Ashton? Whatever’s happening… maybe you stay in the old world, I guess maybe that’s your solution. Whatever it is, I want to help you survive, somehow.”
“I finished your drone,” he said weakly. “It doesn’t do much, just a camera with some propellers. I still have to design a control interface.” He trailed off. “Hold on, you were going to show me a report from a… Verifier, weren’t you?”
He nodded, holding it up in one wing. It was a sliver of crystal, just like the last one. “She wants to talk to you, that’s the summary. I wasn’t going to tell her you were busy, you do that yourself.” He reached into his pocket, revealing another sliver of a different color.
This one glowed powerfully, much brighter than the flickering electrical sockets in Ashton’s castle. An active spell, something with power invested in it that Ashton had rarely seen before. “Something… pretty crazy happened while I was at the ball. I wasn’t sure if I should even bring it up, but… it’s about someone else. Not somepony who can defend herself. You’ll be good to her, right? You won’t use her for a character just because she’s digital.”
“I assume if you’re so worked up about it that she must be… emigrated,” Ashton said, leaning to one side and opening the lid to his laptop. There he could get a broader view of the castle, and see what he’d missed in the last few hours. “You don’t need to worry. You’re people to me, just… less physical. Just tell me what happened.”
This was exactly what Ashton needed right now: a distraction from his awful day. Equestria always had something interesting going on, even if the real world could be full of disappointments.
Emmet explained the encounter in a rush, how he’d met a SMILE agent at dinner, and she had a delivery of information for Ashton, conditional on caring for the pony who brought the message. “So she’s set up in the castle right now,” Emmet finished. “I gave her the guest wing to herself… you don’t need it, right? Just don’t promise it to anypony else while she’s using it.”
Ashton waved a dismissive hand across the screen. “Of course. It sounds like she needs the help, and I don’t really… think I’ll have the time to play out the Dragon Diplomacy chapter of Wintercrest’s story right now.”
His other hand was already working, profiling the little sliver of crystal with Arcane’s pony magic. It was a spell alright, the kind used by members of the scene. Nopony from inside Equestria could’ve cast it. He began fumbling in his drawers, drawing out a breadboard covered with wires terminating in a jury-rigged version of the Ponypad’s charging cable. “You said she. What’s this girl like?”
“She’s the first bat I’ve ever seen in Equestria. Adorable little pony, only a little taller than Violet, though she’s grown up. I guess you didn’t think to put them in Wintercrest, or… maybe something happened?”
“Canon requirements used to be stricter,” Ashton answered, pretending to be barely listening.. “They were only in a few episodes of the show, and it wasn’t really clear if they were their own tribe or an illusion Luna used for her guards, or…”
“Well, she hates being a pony,” Emmet finished. “I think she wanted to die after delivering your message, but obviously Celetia wouldn’t let her. So she’s stuck, and doesn’t really want to be here.”
Ashton shook aside the plan forming in his mind, dismissing it like the stupid idea it was. Some desperate refugee didn’t deserve his ire just for taking Emmet’s time. Emmet was still a perfectly capable assistant. With the way Equestria compressed time, he’d probably never notice. Maybe he’d feel a little less guilty about Emmet’s first bad experience in his private server. And thinking of it…
“While I was away from Equestria Online, I was tinkering with some of the stuff the scene came up with. Remember that Equestria Girls module we saw…” When he saw no recognition, he just blazed ahead. “Well, I forked it. My attempt at an Equestria Girls shard has some issues, but it should be enough for someone who wants to pretend they’re human for a bit.”
Emmet’s face lit up. “You’d let her use it?”
“Sure. Just look for the horseshoe mirror, like from the special? Also don’t go far from the school, or you’ll get disconnected.” Ashton settled the cable into his ponypad. With the click of 3D-printed plastic, a large satchel appeared on the ground in front of Arcane.
Emmet jumped, mouth hanging open. “You didn’t use your horn?”
“No, just my soldering gun and about two weeks of tinkering.” He slipped the crystal shard inside, the one with the active glow. The one sent by the verifier was just data, and wouldn’t need anything outside of Equestria to read. Arcane zipped up the bag, yanking it closed with her teeth. “And done. Any idea what the message is?”
Emmet winced as the bag vanished, shaking his head. “All she said was that people could die if it didn’t get delivered.”
Ashton yanked the connector free, spinning the breadboard around in his hand and plugging the USB on the other end into his laptop. A few LED lights came on, and the drive popped up on his desktop. A single, heavily encrypted file named “When you fight the fae, use”.
Cold Iron? You really think I’m going to help you? He tried using the hacker’s pony name, and of course it didn’t work. This was just a signature—the real key was going to be far more complex. Something that a random stranger with a passing fondness for mythology wouldn’t be able to guess.
His mind started spinning on the puzzle, but of course he couldn’t forget that Emmet was still here. His friend deserved more respect than just being abandoned to solve some interesting riddle. And apparently save some lives.
“You know, I think that messenger has a point coming here,” Emmet said. “I don’t know her secret, but I do know that you aren’t going to get any safer out there. I think if… you really won’t think about emigrating, you should start making plans. You know, like those crazy preppers used to have? For when things fall apart. Once you’ve sent whatever help they need… you should get to safety.”
“Things aren’t that bad,” Ashton said dismissively. “The population is tanking so fast that right now we’re in this, like… bubble, almost. Factories don’t take that many people, and we don’t need that many farmers. We probably wouldn’t be rationing at all if they weren’t pulling so many people to try and… stop Celestia, I guess?”
“But…” Emmet supplied for him, gesturing with a hoof. “You’re not suggesting that things are getting better instead of worse.”
“Bubbles pop,” he said. “Sure, we can keep factories running, but we can’t train the people who design new machines. We can’t train the ones who explore for more oil, we can’t train new doctors and programmers and everything else an advanced, global economy needs. So we’re coasting on what we built for a little while longer. The faster the drop-in population, the longer we can coast. Until we cross some threshold… one I’m sure Celestia can measure down to the fucking day…”
“You have thought about this,” Emmet said. He sounded almost surprised. “You haven’t been coasting yourself.”
“No.” He twisted away from the Ponypad, unclipping the drone from the alligator-teeth holding it up. “It’s not that I don’t know what’s coming, it’s that I can’t stop it. My family is… torn, over whether to emigrate or just flee inland. Most of them seem like they’ll go to Equestria. Oh, by the way, did you know my brother is in Wintercrest somewhere? I think he’s… honestly I have no idea who he is, but I intend to find out. He helped with the earthquake, so that should narrow things down.”
“Acanthus,” Emmet supplied, voice flat. “You seriously didn’t know Acanthus was here? He talks exactly like you… or like you did, when you were younger. He’s my age, which is a little weird. Deployed here with the Solar Corps of Engineers three weeks ago.”
Emmet didn’t want to care about what was going on in Equestria while he wasn’t there. But it was hard not to. Hard not to feel like Celestia was closing the walls around him, and there was absolutely nothing he could do.
Something is going to pull the trigger here before I’m ready. She’s trying to pressure me into emigrating. And the rest of his family too, though that didn’t feel like it would sting as much. Ashton really wasn’t afraid of the process—he just resented being forced.
“Remember when all we cared about was our grades?” he asked, settling the drone down on his desk again, eyes glazing over.
“I remember when all I cared about was my grades,” Emmet countered. “I’m not sure you ever cared.”
“Yeah.” He still didn’t. There was probably homework assigned tonight, but he had a far more important mission now. He had a message to decrypt.
To say Emmet was worried about his best friend’s safety was more than an understatement.
That was part of why he’d chosen to leave the dwindling family fortune with Ashton, instead of some charitable cause that might’ve made “better” use of it. From his earliest days, he’d known that money meant security and that his family had more than enough of both.
While Ashton vanished off to school, he paced the castle walls, wondering how he could help in a war he couldn’t even see. Part of him waited for Princess Celestia or somepony else wise and all-knowing to visit and give advice, but it seemed even Luna was busy today. He stared over Wintercrest, with its densely-packed cobble streets and garbled roofs.
Nowhere else in Equestria looked quite like this. If he stood by and did nothing, maybe nowhere else would again. He could’ve used the control room to look around the old house, maybe search for answers there. But the thought of flying the drone through empty hallways just didn’t appeal to him right now.
Then, down by the castle gates, the first sign of motion. It was Acanthus, the one that Arcane Word didn’t even know was her own brother. He’d never seen the pony anywhere near the castle before. And shouldn’t he be at school?
“Excuse me!” The pony waved energetically with one leg. He was an earth pony, so no wings to fly up to the wall, or horn to teleport up. “Could you let me in? I have to, uh… I have something!”
Emmet had never quite made the transition to working the retail space—or even seen it, for that matter. But dealing with city business didn’t bother him. It felt more useful than anything he’d ever done on Earth. “One minute! Guards are”—clockwork robots that only respond to Arcane and just sit around when she isn’t here—“busy. I’ll be right down!”
He ran, clambering down the narrow spiral staircase and into the gatehouse. He probably should’ve glided down for the flying practice, but old habits were hard to break.
He didn’t have nearly the same strength to lift the portcullis as he used to. But after a minute or two of straining, he got it high enough that he guessed a pony could fit underneath, and locked it into place.
He emerged from the gatehouse sweating, to find that Acanthus had already slipped under the spiked edge.
He was dressed for a long journey, with his Corps of Engineers’ uniform and saddlebags all formally dressed. He straightened as Emmet approached, saluting. “You must be the steward of the house. Apologies for, uh… not sending ahead. That’s what you do in the old times, right? You… ‘send ahead’.”
“Don’t do that for me.” Emmet touched his shoulder with a wing, grinning ruefully. “I guess I’m the steward, but I was human too.”
He relaxed, though his ears flattened in embarrassment. “It was… that obvious?”
Emmet gestured towards the house, not wanting to answer. “We could speak inside. I’m afraid the Lady isn’t here, but I can take whatever business you have for her.” And you shouldn’t be here either. Don’t you ride the same bus?
“No time,” he said, shuffling around with his saddlebags. He removed something—a letter, thickly folded, made of several different sheets. “I, uh… Celestia told me that important deliveries to the Outer Realm can go through her local nobility. That means the Lady, I suppose. And she runs Wintercrest well, so I trust she can get this done for me.” He extended the envelope in a hoof.
Emmet took it, glancing down at the writing across the top. “To the Family of Parker and Gwen Miller.” Emmet looked back up. “What about your older brother?”
If the pony thought it was strange for Emmet to know personal details, he didn’t stop long enough to mention it. Instead he looked away, avoiding his eyes. “I, uh… we heard him last night. He wants to stay on Earth. Doesn’t surprise me, I’ve never seen him play here in Equestria before. I figure he hates it because the horses are too girly, or… you don’t care about this. I’m sorry.”
Emmet shrugged. “I’m just, uh… trying to make my delivery as complete as possible. So he… so the Lady of Wintercrest can make sure this arrives where it’s going.” And why you didn’t tell them yourself, or write it yourself…
But somehow, Emmet couldn’t bring himself to be angry at them for it. Maybe they didn’t want to risk telling their father, and the possibility he would say no, or try and stop them. It was impossible not to sympathize with the desire to get to safety.
“Don’t be too worried,” Acanthus said. “If there’s some detail missing, I can tell her myself next time she’s around. The problems here in Wintercrest might take months to resolve, and I like it here. Oh, but about that. My sister Gwen, err… my sister Cashmere would like to stay here for the next few weeks, while we’re sorting things out. She’s young, and… I think there’s some kind of… official… dispensation for that. Is that the right word? Do I sound in period?”
Emmet nodded hastily. He’d never heard anything like it, but he did know what parts of the city Ashton owned. “There are several properties downtown the Lady has been meaning to lease. I’ll send you a scroll with the address.” He noted the cutie mark, then tucked the letter under his wing. “I’ll make sure she gets the message. And she should be here in a few hours, if you have anything to tell her yourself. I’m sure she’ll keep her schedule open.”
“I…” He hesitated, then turned away. “I don’t know how long emigration takes these days. It’s fast… I know it’s fast. So maybe. I just had to… do that. Now you have it, and we’re committed. You see, Gwen? He’s got our letter. We can go.” Before Emmet could react, Acanthus turned and slipped under the portcullis, vanishing into Wintercrest.
Emmet stood there, staring at the letter for a long time.
His first thought was also the stupidest, that now Ashton wouldn’t be able to ask his brother about the game. Except it wasn’t true, because he wasn’t even leaving the city. Somehow, Celestia had brought them all here. Like another few puzzle-pieces falling into place. There was only Ashton himself to worry about.
But Emmet couldn’t sit around with this letter until Ashton logged in. Maybe he’d already be panicking, not knowing his siblings were gone. He’s not against emigration. He just doesn’t want to do it himself.
Emmet hurried up into the castle, past his sister’s dark room and to the strange control room.
He hadn’t needed it yet, but one of these was bound to be a printer. He bent down, reading little labels in turn. Lights, sprinklers, doorbell, various sets of speakers and screens. He bumped a few, turned them off again. Hopefully no one was around to notice.
He’d just about given up finding it when he saw something tucked under the desk, where he never would’ve thought to look for more buttons. It wasn’t a button, but a little metal door, with a label over it in the same writing as all the others.
“VNC Tunnel 148.193.102.65”
Curious, Emmet tucked the letter under his wing again, and opened the door with his mouth. It swung down, revealing—a tunnel, made of strangely glowing plastic sections. A breath of warm air passed him, as though the tunnel itself was a living thing, waking up after a long sleep.
He stuck his hoof through, pulled it back again. Nothing. Yet something magical was certainly going on, since this desk was up against the wall, and there was a hallway on the other side.
He took another glance up at the room, and its row of clocks. It showed Equestria and time in the Outer Realm—or his part of it, anyway. Currently, they were in line, showing Ashton should already be on the bus home from school by now.
Not long to find the printer. But he’d already searched the control room and hadn’t found it there. Might as well broaden his search a bit.
Emmet lowered his head and climbed into the VNC tunnel. The passage was cramped, and more than once it seemed to squeeze up against him. He coughed and spluttered in the dust, yet hurried on. He could dip in the pool before Arcane got back. He wouldn’t want her to see him all dirty.
The tunnel was thin enough that he wasn’t sure he could turn around if he didn’t reach the end—but there was an end, and eventually he came up against it. Another tiny door, exactly matching the one on the other side.
Emmet pushed, and it swung open. Light blazed in from the other side, the light of captured sun from their local beach. I recognize this.
Emmet stuck his hoof through the opening. This time there was a little resistance, a pressure that he remembered clearly from the time he’d visited Ashton’s “sandbox.” This was some external system, one he probably shouldn’t be visiting, unless he wanted to invoke Ashton’s wrath.
He poked his head out anyway, looking around. It was a massive flat wall, like a widescreen movie theater, though beyond it there was only a concrete floor in the other direction.
The wall glowed with its own light, like a gigantic projection was shining through it from the other side. Emmet recognized the photo instantly, since he’d been there to take it. It was the middle school band beach trip, with everybody all lined up in front of the water with their silly band tee-shirts on over their swimsuits. Unsurprisingly, there were no instruments.
Emmet hopped through the window, spreading his wings as he glided down to the floor. As he passed through, he felt a brief weight against his foreleg. He lifted it up a moment, just enough to see the sun bracelet there. Just like last time. She’s giving me a way out.
He walked along the bottom of the massive image, stopping in front of the center without casting a shadow. There was Ashton, his younger face poking out from the other woodwinds. He kept going, past flutes and clarinets out to the strings, and his own photo.
The face looking out at him wasn’t just younger, it also seemed… strange. Not like a reflection anymore. Emmet took the letter in his mouth so he could hover, flying high enough to meet his own eyes.
You aren’t me anymore. But you were. He nearly turned back, but then he noticed the first of many invisible shelves. It was about his size, facing out from the old photo. Emmet flew up to it, landing on the thin sheet of glass without bending it.
A huge scroll of paper rested on it, held in place by a faint glow of magic. A massive blue “W” was printed across the front, along with a few lines.
Where the buck is this? Emmet leaned down, and found another massive shelf right below the one he was on. He fluttered down, landing beside the waste bin and poking his head inside. There was a single crumpled sheet of paper labeled “out.txt.”
Dear Mom and Dad, I’m not sure how to tell you this
Whatever Ashton wasn’t sure how to say, Emmet would never know. He tossed it back where he found it. This is his computer. Somehow, a “VNC tunnel” must be a way to control the computer. And this is how I’m doing it.
Emmet lifted back up to the “W”, and pressed one hoof up against it. Would that be enough to make it do what he wanted?
The massive wall at his right started to rumble. Emmet took off, backing away from what he guessed must be a program icon as something massive rolled in from above. A huge slab of metal and cement, with various interlocking gray parts along its sides and little stone boxes on top.
Emmet flew further and further back, hovering in the air with increasing difficulty. There was nothing out there, the void just continued an arbitrary distance.
When looked at from a good twenty or thirty feet away, he could see exactly what he thought he would—the desktop of a computer, now with Microsoft Word running atop it.
I’m not really in here, obviously. Did Ashton bother making a spell to give everything texture and weight and sound, or was that Celestia? He almost wondered if there might be other ponies locked up around here, maybe characters from one of Ashton’s stories that he’d been unsatisfied with. But he didn’t see any icons for “pony jail.”
Instead he flew up towards the Word interface. When he got close, he took the letter in one hoof and tossed it at the window as hard as he could. Most programs these days would let you just drag things to open them, did this one?
Yes. The letter expanded in front of him, opening and stretching, with its pages spreading downward past the floor. They were still down there, each waiting to be visible.
The letter began simply enough, though it swiftly melted into text that was too personal for him to read without feeling like he was intruding. Emmet couldn’t help but see the first page anyway—worries over the worlds being separated, worry over having enough food, and knowing somewhere safe. It looked like the next page would be begging the rest of the family to emigrate too.
Emmet flew up to the printer icon, which was a flat square of stone the size of his face.
Then something changed. The distant void off to one side was suddenly another source of light, a flat square window.
There was a bedroom on the other side, one Emmet had seen many times. The view was right up from the top of the laptop screen, exactly where he’d expected it to be.
Ashton slid the chair up to the screen, tossing his bookbag onto the floor and sighing deeply. “How is this logged in already…” he muttered, frowning at the screen.
Then he stopped, and his eyes fixed pointedly at Emmet. “I never installed a desktop pony. Certainly not Domino. What the hell is…” A few loud thumping sounds shook the massive room, and the world flashed momentarily blue. Then another image appeared not far from Emmet, hovering in the air.
He could see through this one, as though it were one of Ashton’s magical illusions.
Task Manager
“Nothing but Word running, bullshit.”
“Wait!” Emmet tried to land on the top of the task manager, but his hooves passed uselessly through it. He had to settle for hovering there in the air, staring out at the image of Ashton. “Nothing’s installed! I was just trying to use your printer!”
Ashton leaned in close, frowning at the screen. “No way. You didn’t just… Domino?”
“One and only.” He couldn’t stay in the air any longer. Emmet glided back down to the featureless concrete floor, settling there and waving a wing up at Ashton’s oversized face. Not really like looking up at his human friend, more like looking at his photo on a jumbotron at a sports game. “It’s really me! I was just trying to deliver that note! Your brother visited the castle while you were at school.”
“Parker?” he repeated, looking over Emmet’s head and staring at the text. “Damn. I do not want to deliver this.” He skimmed down to the next page, sinking back into his seat a little. “I’ll just, uh… print this downstairs and wait for them to find it. Don’t tell my parents I saw this, I don’t want to be part of it. Don’t make fun of my acting.”
Something flew through the air past Emmet, a huge chunk of white metal painted black along the rim. It navigated through a few printing menus, then faded away as quickly as it appeared.
Ashton closed down Word, and the picture of the orchestra beach trip returned, filling that small rectangular room with the same warm glow of coastal sun.
“That was all I wanted to do,” Emmet said, turning toward the little window. “I’m sorry for bothering you, I can just…”
Something lifted him by the collar, jerking him up into the air. He flew halfway up the room, his legs and wings dangling like a cat grabbed by the neck. “Hold up, Emmet. This is new, I have to see what’s going on. You just stay there.”
He thought about using the bracelet. Maybe he would’ve, except that he could see the distress on Ashton’s face. His voice cracked, and he wiped tears from his eyes with the back of his arm. He hadn’t just been able to brush it aside, no matter how much he wanted to act like he had.
“We could… talk about it,” Emmet said. “If you came to Equestria, it would be easiest. You’re so far away…”
Ashton ignored him. The rumble that Emmet guessed was a keyboard went from a few buttons to a constant roar of thunder, like the worst thunderstorm without the eventual flash. Several other slabs flew down into the space behind Emmet, one like a screen itself with scrolling green text. “What’s iftop”
“Me trying to... Hah! You’re a VNC client, really? But why do you look like you’re actually in here, instead of using a remote desktop?”
“I’m, uh…” He swallowed. “I’m really—”
The room went suddenly dark, as the cursor yanked him further forward. He kicked and struggled, and a few seconds later his hooves finally settled on solid ground again.
A grid, stretching back into infinity. He crossed over blue lines, towards a flat yellow circle. “What’s this?”
“Unreal,” Ashton said. There was a rush of air, a thump, and suddenly brilliant light blasted past him from up ahead, casting a pony-shaped shadow behind him. He turned, and Ashton had gone. There was only the strange grid with its repeating texture, and his own shadow. “Ashton, stop it! I don’t like this!”
The distant rumble faded, and Ashton appeared there. “You’re actually interacting with the elements of my editor, Emmet. This is the most… I had no idea Celestia could do this in real time.”
“I don’t know.” Emmet looked up. “Ashton, I’m not using a computer back in Equestria, it feels like I’m in here. Can I go now, please?”
His friend’s eyes were red, and after a few seconds he nodded. “P-probably for the best. Mom will be home in a few. Dad… an hour after that. Not sure… what they’ll do.”
He clicked a few buttons, and the ground dropped out from under Emmet again. He fell just a few inches, back onto the flat concrete surface of Ashton’s desktop. He walked around a huge metal disk with a valve on the front, then hopped up onto an oversized speaker. “Ashton, we can talk about this. If you need someone to talk to.”
Ashton shook his head. “N-no. It’s… what would I say? Of course they were going to emigrate. Everybody should.” He spun the chair around in slow circles, no longer touching the computer anymore. “We might not have all this… hardware, soon. I bet we’ll go to Utah.”
Emmet didn’t invite Ashton to Equestria, as much as a part of him wanted to. It just felt too crass.
“I hope you’ll come back to the castle sometime today,” Emmet said, as gently as he could. “And your, uh… your brother and sister. They’ll be in Wintercrest. If you want to talk to them. I don’t know when they’ll finish emigrating, but…”
“Talk to them,” Ashton repeated, sitting up again. “Right, of course. I can visit…” He blushed, taking his hand off the mouse. “You knew who they were. Do they know me?”
Emmet chuckled. “Your brother came to the Lady of Wintercrest because Celestia said it was the nobility’s job to deliver important messages. He didn’t have a clue.”
“Don’t tell him,” Aston said weakly. “I’ll… I’ll do that, when I’m ready. I’m not going to cut them off, I just… need some time to think.” He looked to one side, and the illusion of scrolling text puffed away just like magic. “I need to be ready to act. ‘Why the fuck didn’t you ask them where they were going? You shouldn’t have let them walk off the bus. This is your fault, Ashton.’ If I get that I’m fucking running away too, don’t think I won’t.”
The view jerked, and for one nauseating second the image on the far end slammed down. Then it went black.
The huge projection behind Emmet faded to a dull black-and-white, then vanished. The invisible shelves and their contents puffed away a moment later, leaving Emmet alone with the VNC tunnel.
He sighed, pushed the door open, and climbed in. At least Equestria was waiting on the other side.