//------------------------------// // Conversation // Story: What Now? // by Q-22 //------------------------------// conversation n.The exchange of thoughts and feelings by means of speech or sign language. That was the result Ghost had come up with when The Guardian had idly wondered aloud what it really meant. And, yes, he had to speak to get this result. As "in sync" as the two were, neither or them could actually "read" the other's mind. Ghost had explained that to him way back when "Nightmare Daddy Oryx" was causing sterile-neutrino related problems, in a rusty elevator going up to the desiccated passenger pods of a dead colony ship. Fun times. Anyway, the word was hot on his mind at the moment. Any official hullabaloo was out of the way (for now) and the "official meeting" still had half an hour left on the royal schedule. The Princesses were understandably quite eager to squeeze in as much idle small talk as they could, and The Guardian was picking up on it. The current topic was about a certain warm beverage. "Ignoring a plethora of other related anomalous similarities, I find it rather intriguing that both our 'worlds' have tea," Celestia noted with a hint of bemusement, just before taking a sip from her chamomile. "The specific similarities of all these coincidences may hint at the nature of your displacement here, but we can fuss about that later. What's tea like in The City?" Well, shit, he didn't know. He never really stopped to get any for himself. Or much of anything, really. He shifted about under the big, heavy blanket atop his withers, taking another sip of his mind-fuzzifying hot cocoa before giving his most eloquent of answers: "I dunno." Amazing. He took another sip before elaborating. He could practically sense the coming questions. "I've never had much in the way of food or drink. There are plenty of Guardians who do, but most Guardians live for longer periods than I and a few others do. Resurrections bring us back either completely fine, or just at the brink of starving if resources are unavailable. Lord Shaxx, the Guardian who handles Guardian-on-Guardian training, would know a thing or two. He's been yelling quite a bit these last couple of years, and sometimes loses his voice. Takes the Vanguard's entire private stock just to get it back. Heh." The inquisitive looks on their faces told him he may have forgotten to explain something. The two looked at each other, then back at him. That was all the confirmation he needed. "Right, what wasn't covered?" he asked with a dejected little sigh. Celestia spoke first, her eyes narrowing by the slightest degree. "Your eating habits, 'resurrections', and this 'Vanguard'. I don't believe I've heard about any of those from your Ghost or Luna." She seemed a little more on edge. Maybe it was her stiffened neck, or the way she lowered her teacup, or, some other cue he might've been subconsciously picking up on. Whatever the case, he had already explained most of the important details to Luna back in their little dream-talk, but figured repeating some of it would be fine. He wasn't used to doing this much talking, and it was beginning to grow uncomfortable. Regardless, he'd soon be alone with Ghost in a nice little cabin somewhere, hopefully undisturbed, so- "The eating and the rez' thing tie into each other, though they might need some background. Ghost tells this story better than I do, but I don't want to bother him. He's got enough going on in his head right now. I think." He took another sip, about halfway done the steaming cup. The hot liquid tingled slightly as it went down, not feeling TOO hot, despite what his eyes told him about the wavering wisps drifting upward from the rim of the mug between his hooves. "So! Uh...where to begin?" He smiled a little, awkwardly, and shifted under the blanket. "I was dead for two hundred years before Ghost found me. Roughly. I have no memory of who I was prior to being initially resurrected, but Ghost and I have deduced I was, like millions of others at the time, trying to flee the planet during an invasion of what I can really only describe as great tetrahedral ships that caused intense existential collapse in most of my species across maybe, I don't know...Slightly less than a dozen planets? We were rather spread out at the time, and larger populations only existed on a few planets close to home, but still. "From records I've found, and I'll spare you the details, it wasn't pretty. Long story short, the spherical god-entity responsible for the creation of the Ghosts managed to spare a good amount of life on our home planet by retreating there and making a 'final stand'. We call it the Traveler, though due to some discoveries I've begun addressing it as the Gardener. I wont bore you with why right now, it's an entirely different story that I'm sure you'd love to hear later, but it is...rather long. The point is, just as it spent the last of it's power, it created small mechanical bodies for the 'Ghosts', who then set out to find those among Humanity's dead who had...preferable traits for the purpose of ensuring human survival, societal recovery, and eventually natural recovery of the Traveler itself. Purposes weren't entirely clear in the years following the Collapse, and a lot of troublesome characters with dangerous abilities and immortality were pitted against those who weren't assholes. It was messy, from what I've heard. A friend of mine's managed to survive from close to the beginning and, well, he didn't have a lot of happy stories." "And so," Celestia interjected, starting to understand, "-you were brought back much later then. I'd ask how such a feat is possible, but from what I understand, our realities work on entirely different sets of 'rules'. No form of resurrection 'here' could ever result in a specimen such as yourself, no offense intended. Most of the time, one would get either soul or body to come back to life, not both at the same time." Luna smiled, jumping at a chance to calmly tease her sister. "Been fiddling with necromancy, have you Celestia?" That made the solar diarch twitch. "It would be horrid of me to do so! I would often the effects firsthoof of such magical blasphemy centuries ago, when ponies were foalish enough to commonly meddle in such dark arts. It never ended well for anypony, alive or passed." A few sipping-filled moments passed before The Guardian continued. "Right, so. Food. Every resurrection brings me back in a state that I exist in in at least several other possible timelines. I've figured that you know what these are, at least on a conceptual scale, so I'll skip that part and jump to the current theory on how Guardians come back so perfectly fine each time. Since the number of branching timelines splits at what is presumably an exponential rate, there are presumably a lot of other 'me's and 'you's existing in mostly parallel timelines. The running theory is that when a Ghost goes to resurrect a Guardian, they're combing through similar timelines to recreate us using preexisting mental information and copied physical information to construct an entirely 'new' body while maintaining the same mind. "The reason why some of us used to come back starving is because, in an overwhelmingly large amount of timelines, starvation was the most common trend. Recently, with the existence of the city, that's less of an issue. Presumably, most of the other 'me's have the common sense to feed themselves, so, when I get revived I'm not immediately stricken with hunger pains." There were a few more seconds as the information processed. Celestia was running the logic through in her head, and most of it seemed to work out, barring a few flaws here and there. Then again, he wasn't talking about Equestria's special type of time-flow, so, anything was possible. Different dimensions and all. "And this 'Vanguard' you mentioned?" Celestia prompted. "Oh! I almost forgot. Yes, that's fairly simple. It's just the title for the main gathering of Guardians who operate our of The City. There are a few other prominent groups, but the Vanguard is one of the only one most heavily populated with Guardians." The conversation lapsed into less informative and more casual talk after that. Sometimes the sisters would slip into their own branching tangents that The Guardian didn't understand a word of, and he'd simply work on slowly finishing his hot chocolate until he was either addressed or had something to say. Much to his comfort, this didn't happen often. It was odd how easily perturbed he was by talking. Sure, he could speak just fine, and he never had any problems with stuttering or the like, he just preferred not to talk. Ghost had always done most of the talking, even when he wanted to say something. It just...was. Ghost had mentioned this before, but the topic only ever came up once. Years of staring certain death and existence deletion in the face had turned his visible reactions into one constant stoic expression, so, it was never really clear when he was uncomfortable. As such, he sort of just said whatever came to mind to try ending his part of the conversation as fast as possible. Most of the time, in his experience, the only things being said were both related to the current world-ending events and typically weren't said by him. He just showed up, tried not to die, and did the killing. Most of what he did was all the same. What was he supposed to talk about? Himself? His thoughts about what he did? How could he even try when he wasn't sure himself? How many senseless sprees of slaughter had he gone on during patrols simply out of routine? Distantly, he could feel something knocking in his chest. His head felt fuzzy and something dripped down from his left eye socket. What kind of "Guardian" was he really? One out of countless iterations all doing more or less the same thing to the same end with- "Guardian! Snap out of it!" A solid thunk dinked him on the horn as metal bonked whatever-the-hell horns were made of. Ghost was out, the Princesses were staring at him concerned, and there was hot chocolate spilled all over his forehooves, the mug shattered into chunks and grains. A previously unnoticed egg-timer on the table dinged. Official meeting time was spent.