The future is always defined, at least in part, by its beginnings.
For living things, those beginnings were the primordial soup, way, way back before there weren’t even multicellular organisms. But times change, an’ circumstances change to fit them, an’ now the beginnings of ponykind could be found in its soil. Soil, host of nutrients so desperately needed by even the smallest strands of plant life. Plants, so absolutely vital to the continued existence of ponies. Soil was where it began, and where all things returned to after they expired.
Applejack’s group knew that. An’ they knew how to work the soil, too. It weren’t without effort, unlocking its secrets, an’ it weren’t without effort t’see ‘em put to work, either. But you put in that work, an’ suddenly the roots of life — heck, that which came even before the roots — start t’form the fundamental buildin’ blocks for all livin’ things to come into bein’.
Such as it was on Mars: subtly alterin’ the ground t’make it more amenable t’all the algae an’ fungus on th’ planet. Such as it was on Venus, too: breakin’ down all that nastiness on th’ planet’s crust t’make it into somethin’ livable. It all came back to the soil: a soil that Applejack an’ her big ol’ corporation knew how to work, knew how to use t’make the beginnings tha’ would shape th’ future.
*******************************************
Rarity sighed. “Well, it started out lovely, I’ll give you that much.”
“I’unno what came over me tha’ made me want t’speak fancy, for th’ record.” Applejack set her cards down. “I mean, I say the words as they come, y’know? I jes’ figured that the words wouldn’t be so, y’know…”
Rarity arched an eyebrow. “Rarity-like?”
“Yeah.” Applejack paused. “Not that it’s a bad thing, y’know. Not all the time.”
“Well, I…” Rarity faltered. “...Thank you, Applejack.”
“Welcome.” Applejack nodded. “Anyways, that’s it for me. Rainbow Dash?”
*******************************************
Energy was the purest form of a fundamental building block of life to expand in a vacuum. Plant life was a form considerably more specialized and complex form, but no less vital. There were, however, in-betweens to those apparent extremes.
Air molecules, for one. Inside a contained environment, such as a planet with a sufficiently intense magnetic field, the molecules would spread throughout its constraints. Without the field, air molecules were all too easily carried away by solar winds, lost to the vast gulf of the universe. Perhaps it seemed unkind to constrain things that wished to be free — but in this case, in a matter of literal life and literal death, some constraints were perhaps necessary.
It had started as a whim, to see if wind turbines could eventually recapture some of the energy flowing through the planet. And this vast scheme ended with the groundwork of laying cable, uncountable yards of cable, with the hope of eventually creating a strong enough magnetic field to let the atmosphere exist.
And with the atmosphere, much less radiation. With the atmosphere, air pressure. With this atmosphere, wind, and rain, and the foundations of a planet which might seem less like it was strong-legged into becoming habitable and more like habitability was an inevitability.
Meanwhile, populations continued to grow and emigrate; more bubble-domes would be necessary to sustain them. The Noctis Labyrinthus, thankfully, was not entirely filled with lichen farms; on the less cultivable grounds, there was room, or rooms, to establish more living space. Hopefully, the ponies of Mars would find chasmic surroundings and a perpetual grey mist to be acceptable trade-offs to their continued existence.
*******************************************
Applejack whistled. “Good gravy, Rainbow Dash. Didn’t figure you had the funds in you to pull that sort of thing off!”
“I mean, it’s still a work in progress, you know?” Rainbow Dash scratched the back of her head, looking more than a little sheepish. “But when I realized that was still, y’know, kind of a thing that we needed to do...and that Fluttershy’s cloud-seeding program didn’t really look, y’know, like clouds...I figured that we probably wouldn’t be able to get much serious life established here unless somepony pulled that particular trigger. And this won’t hurt my chances of getting more funding, right?”
“I’m pretty sure that it’ll be a steady enough source, actually, so long as you keep at it.” Starlight Glimmer pointed at the board. “Though unless you’re going to deliberately start seeding life around Tithonium Chasma, and…” Starlight trailed off. “Uh. Does your immigrant city actually have a name?”
“What? Oh! Oh, crud.” Rainbow Dash peered at the board, looking a bit flustered. “How about, uh, um…”
“Dashville?” Fluttershy suggested.
“Dashcester?” Rarity said.
“...Nah. This city isn’t about me. I mean, I founded the city, but...I dunno. It’d feel weird doing…” Rainbow Dash trailed off.
Inspiration struck, with all the force of a precision-guided asteroid strike.
“New Manehattan.”
Silence.
“Unless that’s dumb. Or pretentious.”
Fluttershy shook her head. “I, um. Actually, I think that’s really neat.”
“Agreed. Given its origins and original purpose, it’s likely quite the fitting name,” Rarity added. “...I suppose I’ll have to think somewhat carefully if and when I decide to found a city of my own. It would need to be referential, of course, but there were plenty of cities in Equestria that could lend their names to fitting successor.”
“Huh?” Rainbow Dash replied.
“As in, if I founded a Martian city, depending on where it is — ”
“Nonono, back up a bit.” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “You said ‘were.’ ”
Rarity paused. “...Pardon?”
“You said ‘were.’’ There were plenty of cities in Equestria. Not are.”
Silence.
Rarity’s face went even whiter. “No. No, that can’t…”
“Hold on,” Starlight Glimmer cut in. “Maybe it was an accident! It could have just been a slip of the tongue. It doesn’t necessarily mean something awful.”
“It doesn’t, um. It doesn’t not mean it, either.” Fluttershy’s eyes went a bit wider. “M-maybe this was one of the things that we were supposed to notice. That…”
“Okay, but if something did happen, can anypony remember what it was?” Starlight Glimmer interrupted. “Sorry about cutting you off, Fluttershy, but before we start panicking...does anypony remember what we should be panicking about? Anypony at all?”
Silence.
Starlight sighed. “See? Accidents happen. I vote that we don’t start pulling out our manes over this until we get a better idea of a bigger picture. It’s like Rainbow Dash said: maybe if we keep playing, we’ll be able to put everything together.”
“...we could learn that things really are that bad…” Fluttershy mumbled.
“And if they are, I’ll help you ponies get through it,” Rainbow Dash said. “I promise. Okay?”
Fluttershy didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Finally, she nodded. “...Okay. I trust you, Rainbow Dash.”
“I trust you, too.” Rainbow Dash grinned. “We’re a team, y’know? As long as we’re not being brain-bonked into forgetting it or something, we’ve got each other’s backs. That’s what being an Element of Harmony is about, right?”
Applejack, Fluttershy and Rarity nodded in unison. After a second, Starlight nodded her head, looked down at her cards and started her turn.
*******************************************
It seemed more and more that Thorgate had turned away from the enterprise of Mars and turned solely towards the enterprise of money.
Which was an unkind sentiment to level against them, but perhaps not an inaccurate one. Certainly, their endeavors had turned from Mars to minerals, from safety to space - but with Thorgate’s troubles being as they were, it was difficult to see a different course of action.
Triton was, of course, always exploitable. And there was still plenty to exploit there, so exploiting is what Thorgate would have to do. It was expensive, but not too difficult to expand their mining operations on Triton, nor was it infeasible to do it elsewhere. And when the asteroids of the solar system were so mineral-rich, and so ripe for the taking, it seemed almost a crime to not exploit them where Thorgate could.
*******************************************
“Out of money already.” Starlight Glimmer chuckled, laying down her cards. “That’s it for me.”
“Geez.” Rainbow Dash winced sympathetically. “Game’s not going your way, huh?”
“It could be going better. Ah, well.” Starlight sighed. “You win some, you lose some. And this appears to be a ‘losing some.’ Rarity?”
*******************************************
Before grander plans came the little things: the improvements already established, improvements that would prove necessary despite their lack of panache or innovation. Venus’ atmosphere needed more clearing, and Mars, particularly the Fesenkov basin, needed more water. And, thanks to forthright arrangements and clever planning, Aphrodite was capable of doing both. Simple, yet powerful: a beautiful thing in its own right.
*******************************************
“Nothing else?” Applejack plied.
Rarity shook her head. “Nothing else I can do this turn. It will have to come later. Fluttershy?”
*******************************************
All of the space traffic meant the Flutterport needed to grow, and all of the growth meant that more of everything was necessary. There wasn’t enough space to go around, that much was true. But they needed more workers, even if there was no space to house them! And they needed more energy, even if there was barely any space to create it!
But Ecoline knew that create was the wrong thing to do with energy, in confines as small as theirs; collecting it would be necessary. For if they had a large enough mirror in space to beam it down to a collector near Flutterport, that would provide them with more than enough energy. And if they supplemented their workforce not with more ponies, but with robotic automatons tailor-made for industrial purposes, they would be able to get all the workers that they needed!
It wasn’t a plan that was best for the planet right now. But it was a plan that helped everypony else, and that would help Mars in the long run.
*******************************************
Fluttershy hummed happily as she set her cards down. “I-I’m done for this turn, too. I should be getting more money soon, but, um.”
“Nothing else right now?” Rarity chuckled. “That’s fine, dear. That was still quite the clever play on your part.”
Fluttershy blushed. “Th-thank you…”
“No worries, sugarcube.” Applejack leaned forward. “Now, lessee what all else I can do…”
*******************************************
Power. Mars needed more power, in all its shapes an’ sizes. Power on th’ outside, an’ power on th’ inside - both were good t’have around.
So Applejack’s company put power to work. Power from th’ outside came first, since there was a big ol’ opportunity t’make it work. They grabbed a big ol’ asteroid that was floating close enough t’be of use for ‘em at th’ moment, an’ sent it down to mars; not just for th’ minerals, but for th’ ...kin-eh-tic?...energy as well. For best impact they had to, ah…
*******************************************
“Ah, shucks.” Applejack sighed. “I got to put this down near the Hebes Chasma. Didn’t mean t’ruin your plants, Fluttershy. Sorry.”
Fluttershy shook her head. “It’s okay, Applejack. I know you didn’t try to hurt me on purpose.”
“Dang straight I didn’t. Jes’ trying t’help out in whatever ways I can. So...yeah. Guess it’s back to Rarity, then.”
*******************************************
Clearly, every megacorporation had things to learn. Not that this was inherently a bad thing — learning was an inherent, and beneficial, process of living and evolving. But the potential for learning would certainly be put to waste if there was no way to properly bring it into being.
Mars would need a center for higher education, even among its cramped domes and haggard workers. It would need instruction on the sciences and the arts, for every individual and every possibility; all were needed, from technicians to painters, if the colonies were truly to feel like Equestria had.
*******************************************
Rarity froze. Blinked. Four sets of eyes turned to stare at Rarity as her lip trembled, and for several seconds she was unable to speak. And when she opened her mouth again, it was with with all the smoothness and grace of a thoroughly battered wind-up doll.
*******************************************
But.
Space.
Aphrodite needed more space for it in order to make its dream come true.
This was where Rarity’s newest...newest city came in. Stratopolis, in Venus, the floating city amidst the —
The clouds that had been most substantially cleared of their toxins. And from there came the University of Aphrodite-Stratopolis came in. The first of its kind, to uplift the affluent and those who served under them, in...in the unceasing quest for intellect, self-actualization and ultimate beauty.
*******************************************
Rarity fell silent, hooves trembling. Several seconds passed as the miasma of silence spread to the four other ponies in the train car.
Applejack played some other cards and moved some of her other pieces, then set her cards down. Rarity played some of her cards, moved her pieces and set her cards down in return.
Silence.
The starting player token was passed clockwise. The game, inexorably, continued.