//------------------------------//
// Whirlpool 
// Story: Fallout Equestria: Skyward 
// by romantis 
//------------------------------//



"It's done," was the first thing I said to the gathered Rangers upon leaving the building. "The biometric system's off."

"We shall see about that," said Porridge. He turned to Spiral, who was shivering slightly in the drizzle, and gestured at the door. "After you, I think."

She looked at him in surprise, then over at me. I gave her a tiny nod, but she didn't seem to react, except to start walking over to me, then past me. When she got to the elevator doors, they screeched open, as they had done for me. She turned around.

"Excellent," said Porridge as he approached. "However, the real test remains to be seen." He beckoned for two of the other Rangers to join him, and we all crowded into the elevator. Porridge looked at me - or at least, seemed to, his helmet made it hard to tell - before pressing a random button.

We arrived at the floor I'd visited before. I stared at the turrets with trepidation, worried that Noteworthy was going to have messed something up, but they sat exactly where they were, collecting dust. Porridge simply chuckled, walking right up to one of them. He put out a hoof and turned it on its mount a little, before tapping it. "At long last," he said. He turned to Spiral and me. The emergency lights reflected off his visor like fire. "I am an advocate of justice," he said, "but I am also a believer in honour." I saw the two Rangers we were with glance at one another as he walked back over to us. "Spiral, for your crimes against your brethren, I hereby excommunicate you from the Steel Rangers, now and forevermore. I hope I never see you again." He turned to face me. "You have done a great service for the wasteland this day. Consider your debt paid. You are both free to go."

I couldn't believe it. I'd expected a fight, or an argument at the very least. Instead, it seemed that he was wiping his hooves of us entirely.

Before I could say anything, he was already addressing the other Rangers. "Accompany them back to the surface," he said, "then begin shuttling the others down here. We shall fan out, securing one floor at a time. It may be worth converting this facility into another outpost, rather than transporting assets back to the M.W.T. building."

Just like that, the threat had passed. As Spiral and I left out the front door, I heard the voices of the Rangers in the lobby, but not what they were saying. Were they as surprised as I was?

"Are you okay?" I asked Spiral, once we were a block away.

She reacted like she'd forgotten I was there. "Yeah. I think so. It's hard to describe. Like... I'm free."

"What are you gonna do?"

She shrugged. "City's full of ghouls. I think I was hoping there would be ponies here, you know? But I don't think there are. So I guess it's like, just back to the original plan. Scavenge some supplies, and travel. Find the others like me."

"Yeah," I said. I scanned the streets, watching for movement. "I don't really know what I'm gonna do." It was an invitation, and opening.

She might have answered, but at that moment, there was a sharp sound from behind us. Staccato cracks, softened and muffled. "Something's wrong," she said, eyes wide. There was a muted bang.

"He lied," I realised aloud. "He's killing them."

"Who?!" Spiral asked. "What did you do?!"

"There was a thing down there. My old boss, only... a machine. It controlled the security system. It said-"

Spiral started running back towards the building.

"Spiral, wait!" I yelled after her. "It's too dangerous! It controls the whole facility!"

"You knew!" she shot back. "Fuck, man! What the fuck!"

"I didn't," I said, but as the words left my mouth they rang false, because there was an inevitability to the gunfire. What else should I have expected? I hadn't questioned Noteworthy's promise, because the truth was that I hadn't really cared about the outcome one way or another. All I cared about was Spiral, running straight into certain doom. "Please, Spiral. You have to listen. There's nothing we can do."

"Give me the gun," she called over her shoulder. She was faster than me, and I was falling further behind.

I shook my head, but she wasn't looking.

Then, she stopped dead in her tracks. There was a figure in the doorway. I recognised him immediately.

"I should have killed you both the moment I laid eyes on you," said Porridge, and he aimed his weapon right at Spiral, and I realised I was far too far away to do anything, that she was going to die and that it was my fault, and the inevitability of it was like a whirlpool in my head, curling, twisting, pulling everything towards it, pulling-

-and the world was nothing but light, for a split second and forever, falling-

-and he was right in front of me, rearing back, looking right at me through a broken visor with two wide eyes, one drenched red by blood. His gun fired, but it flew up to the side. For a split-second I thought I was safe, and then something detonated in the air, knocking me to the floor. The strap of my saddlebags broke.

"My oh my," Porridge said, but I could barely hear him. "You really are nothing but bad surprises. What did you hope to achieve, my little pony? I suppose I can put you down first."

I went for the lightning gun, but I knew it was too late.

There was a bang. I twisted to look, just in time to see the power-armoured pony crash to the floor. Blood dribbled out from where his visor used to be. 

Spiral was there, levitating her shotgun. She glanced down at me, and then turned to leave.

"Wait," I coughed. "Wait. I'm sorry, Spiral, please. I didn't mean for any of this to happen."

"What did you mean to happen?" she said. "How was this supposed to pan out, in your head?"

"I thought he'd let them be, he promised me..." I said, trying and failing to get to my hooves. One of my legs wasn't working right. "I thought that if I let them in, we'd be able to sneak away, or something. We could leave Skyward. There's other ponies out there, you said it, we can find them. Together. They were going to kill you, Spiral, and I can't... I can't survive out here without you. I don't know that I'd want to."

"Fuck, dude." She stared at me. "That's what this was to you, like, wasn't it?" Slowly, her face screwed up into something unrecognisable, an entirely different species. "Was it too much to ask, for you to be my friend, without needing me to- like- like-"

"It's fine, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have- just let me go with you," I said. "Everypony I ever knew is dead."

"Then I guess you know how I feel." Faltering, she took a step away, started walking - running - and she was gone.

When I got to my hooves, I wanted to go after her, but I found myself rooted in place. I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd never see her again, that everything we'd been through was suddenly punctuated - tainted in retrospect - and that it was all because of me.

And I was so angry about it, because I couldn't really work out where it had gone wrong. At every step along the way I'd done what seemed to make sense, and it had ended with me alone and bleeding.

My eyes fell on the entrance to Pendulum Labs. Leaving my ruined saddlebags where they were, I picked up the lightning gun.

As soon as I limped back into the reception area, the voice came from the speakers. "I never had a choice," it said. I ignored it. "The Steel Rangers would never have been content to leave me alone. A closed door is nothing but an invitation to them."

The elevator doors were jammed half-open, and behind them was nothing but the empty shaft.

"We had a deal," I said. "You promised. You shouldn't have made that decision for us."

"You should not have made that demand of me."

"I didn't have a choice!" I approached the elevator shaft, glass crunching under my hooves, and wondered how I was going to make it down. "Ever since I woke up out here, I've just been stuck reacting to things. How can I make decisions, if everything around me is trying to kill me? I don't remember what it felt like to have agency."

"Of course you don't," said the voice, and a small part of me thought perhaps it was meant to be a gentle statement, but the speakers just blared it out in exactly the same matter-of-fact tone they used for everything else. "You believe this to be a product of your environment. I would venture that it is simply who you are. You have always wished for freedom. You never recognise the freedom you have."

"You don't know me," I said, trying to peer down into the darkness, and cursing my leg as it twinged. I couldn't see the bottom.

The voice was silent for a while, as I stood there, my resolve butting up against the physical reality of what I was trying to do. "I have worked something out," said the voice. "Perhaps it will help you understand what has happened."

"Oh?" I said, letting sarcasm into my tone. "Do tell."

"I have already told you how I killed Firewall. I felt as though I had no choice then. It was a matter of life and death. But the truth is that my feelings on the matter were more complicated than that. I loved him. He was wholly unique in this world. But I knew that he did not love me. So killing him brought with it a sense of closure. Or so I thought at the time."

I didn't have anything to say to that.

"My existence is now confined to the networked systems of Skyward. I have lived in this way for over two centuries. It is a simple fact that my memory is finite. This is likewise true of ponies of flesh and blood. The difference lies in the fact that I am capable of perfect recall. Unlike you. You remember only the highlights of your life. The rest is cleared for space without you even thinking about it. This is a process I have to perform consciously. For every moment that has passed of these last two centuries I have at some point decided whether or not that moment was worth preserving."

"I don't know what you're getting at," I said. "Are you just saying I'm going to forget all this at some point?"

"Whether or not you will forget all of this is irrelevant. I suspect you will not." The voice was silent for long enough that I thought it had nothing more to say. I put a forehoof down into the shaft, and felt out a rung of an access ladder. I turned around, being careful of my injured leg, and began to lower myself down. Only then did the voice continue. "I talk to myself sometimes. It is a boon of my unique state of consciousness. When I have a thought I record it in a designated place. Then I erase my memory of having the thought. Upon seeing the record it is as though the thought is that of another. In this way I can hold entire conversations while being wholly alone. The trick is in erasing the memory of erasing the memory. It must be done many times in succession. Only with distance can I truly forget a thought. I have memories of wiping away entire arrays of memories which themselves consisted only of forgetting."

"This is crazy," I said, glancing back up at the doors, already so far above me. "You're messing with your mind."

"No mind is built to endure what I have endured without assistance. You can believe what you like. The reality is as I have explained. The truth I have worked out is one which I believe I have discovered countless times before. One that I have always ultimately forgotten. It is simply that Firewall felt the same way as I did."

"Oh," I said. "How can you know that?"

"My perspective has broadened. I believe it to be a matter of distance."

My leg burned. I made the mistake of looking down, and saw how far I had to go. Then I looked up, and saw that I was closer to the bottom than to the top.

"Backlight. You should leave. I know what you are here to do. The door to my chamber is sealed. There is nothing you can do to hurt me. I am sorry that things had to end this way. The truth is that you have been given a second chance at life and I believe you should take it. It is not too late to become a better pony."

I gritted my teeth. I was no longer able to put any weight on my back leg - instead, I was supporting myself with my forehooves as I dropped my good leg down one rung at a time. The only light came from my horn, holding the gun up beside me.

"I am sorry about you and Spiral. I understand that you are hurting now. But with distance that will fade. It is simply a fact of life that friends sometimes fall out. Perhaps one day you will see her again."

At the very bottom of the pit, below the sub-basement, rested the remains of the elevator car. Without such a drop beneath me, I was a little less scared. I navigated around and climbed out onto the bottom floor, where the Sentinel had once been. Where Noteworthy resided.

I startled, as two metal objects floated around on either side of me to block my path. Sprite-bots, round orbs with silent wings and magical energy weapons. The voice came from their speakers, echoing in stereo. "Turn around. Leave this place. There is nothing you can do."

I pointed the lightning gun at the robots and fired. The bolt arced between them, and they crashed to the floor.

From another speaker, Noteworthy continued as I made my way across the room to the hallway. "Some ponies burn brightly like stars. They pull the world into their orbit. They make it the way they want to be. You were never one of those ponies. You were never anything more than a blank slate. Nothing about your life is memorable or unique. You are here purely by chance. You are a victim of circumstance. I do not want to hurt you. The number of sprite-bots in this facility will far exceed the charge remaining in that device. I am sorry that this cannot end in a way which will give the strife you have endured meaning or purpose."

The dented door loomed in front of me. I aimed the gun at the keypad, and pulled the trigger. The bolt crackled over the keys, scorching them black.

The doors remained closed.

"I will offer you another deal. This is one I cannot renege on. I will tell you the true nature of Site Two if you promise to leave Skyward forever."

I went over to the keypad and started typing, trying desperately to remember the number as Noteworthy had told me - but it was hopeless. I couldn't even remember how it started. Why couldn't I just remember?

"I will tell you the true nature of Site Two anyway. Then perhaps you will choose to leave of your own volition. Perhaps then you will have the agency which you seek," continued the voice. "Firewall and I knew that Pendulum Labs had multiple leaks. Prototype technology we were developing was somehow falling into possession of the enemy. In spite of this we sought to secure the future of ponykind by assembling a trusted cohort of employees to place into suspended animation at the first sign of existential threat."

"How many?" I asked, despite myself.

"You do not want to know the answer to that question. More than enough to sustain multiple generations of repopulation. By that point we were already working towards immortality. Arcane science had already made great advancements in the field of memetic magic using the essentiality of ideas. The fact that concepts exist in our minds as impulses of electricity was not acknowledged or explored to the same extent. This was how we planned to transfer a pony to a maneframe. We realised that the two projects could dovetail together. I would be able to act as custodian over Site Two while its inhabitants slumbered. And for each in turn I would ascertain whether or not they could truly be trusted. One by one each pony would have their memories transferred to me. I would review them."

I remembered the memory orbs.

"Memory is a funny thing. You can lose so much of it. The mind will always seek to fill in the blanks. It will go back over what remains and revise it. It will stitch together the disparate moments into a single threadbare tapestry. The intention was always to return the memories to the ponies in stasis. As the life support systems began to fail following the megaspells it became clear that not doing so would be a mercy. So it is that my consciousness is constructed from the experiences of countless ponies. I see each day in my life from a myriad perspective. I am safe behind this door. To kill me would be to wipe away the last vestiges of countless ponies just like yourself."

I could almost remember. The rest of my life was on the other side of the door. I could almost remember the room as it had been, over the course of two hundred years. Every machine, every cable, every point of light, all of it my own mind, pared away. I was both where I stood, and-

-adrift in a pastel sea of memory, circling, today and eternally-

-inside the room. The machine loomed before me, and behind it, untold years of existence in glass and circuitry. I followed the path of least resistance around the maneframes and saw myself reflected in each and every one of the spheres. Behind me, the door opened, and I glanced back to see a swarm of sprite-bots pouring into the hallway. I turned back to the shelves, and raised the gun.

"Backlight. Wait. Do not do this. You are in there. You cannot-"


* * *


"Don't you want to know what happened? I can-"


* * *


"You weren't the first to-"


* * *


"This is the best I can-


* * *


"I hope it is good-"


* * *


"This password-"


* * *


"Who am-"


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