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// Canterlot Query 
// Story: Equestrian Mewsings 
// by Void Runner 
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Chapter 3: Canterlot Query

-o-o-o-o-o-

I flitted from tree to tree along Canterlot's main boulevard, observing the city and ponies around me. I could count the number of the ponies below who even gave me a second glance on my paws, and those that did were more curious than genuinely startled. All of them just assumed I was an escaped experiment from Celestia's School, or something called "The Summoner's Circle", but I dedicated their names and the feeling of their minds to memory anyway.

After all, it wasn't just anyone who could ignore a meme-based notice-me-not psionic projection without even realizing what they were doing, even if it was a weak one. Interestingly, the idea to conceal myself with one was borne from my life as a human, rather than what Arcius gave me. The SCP Foundation website had been an on-again off-again wiki-walk-sink of mine, and the concepts behind memetic and cognito hazards were always particularly fascinating. It had been fairly easy to combine my new psychic powers with my human knowledge, and while the overall results could still use some refining, I was still happy with what I had accomplished. I was actually more worried about any ponies who could see me that I hadn't noticed, but not enough to allow paranoia to settle in today. 

I'd woken up with the dawn, and set out to explore almost immediately. If Canterlot was going to be my home for the foreseeable future, I wanted to get the lay of the land. I'd already guessed that the city was much larger than anything we'd seen in the My Little Pony TV show, and Celestia had given me a brief verbal rundown of the city's districts yesterday, but there is a difference between knowing something and seeing it for yourself.

It turns out, Canterlot is a metropolis just as grand and sprawling as Manhattan or San Francisco. It just tended to spread its building footprint vertically, rather than horizontally, and it was impossible to see the whole city unless you flew a few miles away from the Canterhorn. The bulk of the city was built atop a series of platforms constructed along the side of the mountain, and due to the mountain's curve, it was impossible to see from one end of the city to the other. Beyond those, there were also several districts built directly into the side of the mountain connected to the rest of the City through a series of tunnels and covered walkways, as well as a cloud district that was originally for Pegasus inhabitants. 'Originally', because according to Celestia, the clouds themselves had been permanently enchanted less than a century ago by an industrious student of her School to allow for cloud-walking of non-winged species. Cloudsdale had obstinately refused similar enchantment due to their proud heritage as a Pegasus-only city.

The building styles of the city also varied greatly as you went from district to district, sometimes with a single platform being home to two or three different styles. The Palatial District was the main face of the city, and by far the largest, with its iconic tall white spires, sweeping curves and colorful domed roofs that were so familiar from the show taking up half a dozen of the large bowl-like platforms by themselves. Contrary to what I had thought, though, most of the district was actually located on the southern face of the mountain, rather than the western, in order to allow Celestia and Luna to better see the Sun and Moon rise and set. The illusion  that it was on the west was created by a combination of the Palace itself being positioned so far away from the mountain on the very edge of its platform, and the plateau leading up to the main gate that provided access for where all of the external road and rail connections linked the city to the nation's network of ground transportation. The plateau led around the peak of a shorter mountain called The Pommel Horn, and the first section of the district was situated in the small valley between it and The Canterhorn.

That was the district everyone was familiar with from TV, and was home to not only the Palace, Celestia's School, and the Canterlot University, but also the bulk of Equestria's auxiliary governmental offices that couldn't fit within the Palace itself. Further on in the city, though, the districts ran the full gamut from classical far-east-Asian, medieval European, Colonial US and even a decidedly modern looking district with glass, steel and concrete construction springing up on the far tip of the city. Multiple dockyards for zeppelins and other airships lined the edges of the city, creating a hub of commerce that made Canterlot not only the cultural center of Equestria, but an economic power at least as influential as Manehatten or San Fransiscolt, according to Princess Celestia.

But now, the sun was nearing the horizon. I had been able to glide (mostly) unnoticed through nearly all of the city, identifying important landmarks, figuring out where the seedier neighborhoods were located, and occasionally rough-housing with some wild orange glowing racoon golems made of rusty bits of metal and discarded wire that reminded me of timberwolves when I ran into them in the alleyways. They were actually sort of cute, in a weird way, and more afraid of the ponies than the animated wood wolves. Honestly I think the only reason the first group I ran into were so aggressive towards me was because I was flying over a dumpster in their territory and they thought I was encroaching.

I had spent the last hour or so simply pony watching at the main gate. The impressions left behind in the Psychic Field by days long gone mingled with possibilities of the future overlapped by the True-Hearts of the beings going past was truly breathtaking in a way that's indescribable to those who can't see it too. It was also great practice for getting my psychic powers under more control while steadily opening myself up more to the world around me. I was still acclimatizing, but while still a strain to block out the minds of so many sapient beings and the impressions they left behind, I was confident I wouldn't go to bed with a migraine tonight like I had yesterday.

The Castle Gate came into view ahead of me as I rounded a corner, and I left the trees to fly just above the heads of the ponies below. The Castle itself was warded by a subtle alarm spell that would alert the guards if anything crossed the boundary above the perimeter walls, and would send them into lockdown if the intruder wasn't authorized. Keeping my memetic camouflage up, I glided unnoticed through the gates and hung a right across the grounds rather than entering the main doors straight ahead. The psychic impressions here were much more ingrained than those at the gates, with the lives of the staff and dignitaries that inhabited it marking this place with their presence day after day. Occasionally I would catch glimpses of an impression of Celestia, but much like her psychic presence in the field, these seemed to be impressions left by the ponies who surrounded her rather than the mare herself. Having lived here for a thousand years, though, a few were obviously personal experiences of the princess that had had major personal impacts on her, and I tried to leave them alone. It did let me know that there were occasions where she dropped her guard, however, which was reassuring and worrying at the same time given the intensity of the memories.

Flying through the trees of the garden, I simply meandered, trying to keep my thoughts from what I had been trying to distract myself from all day. I briefly helped a family of squirrels collect acorns for the winter, and they thanked me by offering to share some of their stash, but I declined and flew off again. Going up now, I tried to escape my thoughts with altitude. 

I let my meme drop as I flew up. Higher and higher I went until the air was cold and thin and it would have been difficult to breath if I hadn't been substituting my muscles' and brain's needs for oxygen with pure psychic power. Reaching the altitude limit, I simply stopped, hovering at the crown of the world with the planet stretched out below me. 

From all the way up here, I could see the entirety of Equestria from coast to coast, the great Frozen North past where the Crystal Empire would be, and all the way to the sprawling jungles to the south. Spinning in place I took it all in, a part of me in total awe at the sight before me before I closed my eyes and concentrated.

Even were I in total control of my powers, sending my mind out across the entirety of the world was impossible. I was powerful, but even Arceus would struggle with that sort of omniscience, and I was nowhere near his level. 

But I could send out a Ping.

Like radar, my emission would ripple across the psychic field of the world where it would impact with other minds. Other impressions. And reflect back and return to me. Even then, though, if I didn't have some way to filter out "Garbage Data", all that would return to me would be the signals of every mind on the planet below me all jumbled together. My afternoon of pony-watching had been spent getting a feel for the types of minds I wanted to filter out of this Ping. Each sapient species had a certain "Feel" to it that subtly distinguished it from the others, and I had crossed paths with quite a few of the natives of this world. Enough where I also now knew that, when compared to the minds in my gifted memories, they also had certain similarities that I could use to distinguish them from anything that "shouldn't be" in this world.

I sent out my Ping and waited at the top of the world. Slowly, it returned. In its raw form, it was a torrent of jumbled, confusing information, but I was able to filter through that to find what I was looking for.

There were... a lot more alien minds than I had expected. Pinpointing them was also difficult to impossible through the rest of the noise around them and most of them seemed to be in close proximity to and held a strong enough attachment for a native mind nearby for the information to be returned in my Ping. Strangely, there seemed to be a large concentration of such minds directly below me in Canterlot. I would have to investigate that later, but more curiously were the pockets scattered across the world that I could swear were the collective gestalt consciousness of large concentrations of UnOwN if my memories weren't playing tricks on me. Their exact locations were hidden and muddled behind the sort of obscuring fields which were typical of UnOwN, but most of them seemed to be located either under or in the vicinity of most of the major cities on the continent below me.

It was a mystery. One I was sure had something to do with the real reasons I suspected Arceus had for sending me here. All he'd explicitly told me to do was "Keep an Eye on Things". I had told Celestia that I was here to keep an eye out for others, which I included in keeping an eye on things, because Arceus had mentioned that Discord had brought others here, but he hadn't actually told me to help them. That had all been my invention, and while if I ran across others I would help them if they needed it, I was sure that wasn't the real purpose behind my being here. I was too much of a free agent for things to be that simple, and the presence of UnOwN in the world and too many alien minds to effectively track sufficiently complicated things to make that all but a certainty...

With a shake of my head, I cleared my mind of these revelations. I let go of my flight and dropped, returning to Canterlot below with the wind whooshing past me as I gained velocity.

I could worry about all of this later. For now, I just wanted to watch the sunset with a nice cup of hot chocolate from the kitchens.