My Life In Fimbria

by Chatoyance

Nothing To Lose But Their Chains

Trees faded away like evaporating dreams. A vast flat grassland appeared, the tree border now distant. As I stood on my hooves, openly gawking, patches of raw earth appeared, replacing the grass, and then buildings began to rise from the earth like whales breaching from a sea of soil. The blacksmith plus barn was instantly recognizable as it rose, I had seen its like in countless old movies and shows. The inn, as it swelled up into being impressed me, I had been briefly worried it would be some Western saloon - it was not. It reminded me pleasantly of the Prancing Pony from the Lord of the Rings movies, though it was more lighthearted and colorful in its interpretation. The central well I could not comprehend at first, until I realized that it had a peaked roof above it. When the bucket mechanism rose from the ground, I knew what I was looking at.

The Starcolts made me laugh when I saw the logo appear; the mermaid had been replaced with some strange bastardization of pony and fish, a sea-pony or a pony Capricorn, but whatever it was it struck me as parody. By the time the surprisingly vast fields and orchards sprouted up I barely registered them, they were already mostly obscured by the homes and Tudor-styled apartments that grew up in front of them. Fences and low stone walls popped up like bread in a toaster, again I laughed, now nervously, at the sight. I had little trouble identifying what must have been the general store, it was graced with pictorial signage depicting a full sack - it instantly reminded me of countless fantasy RPGs I had played. The process sped up as it progressed, within minutes every structure I had wished into being had arrived, complete and fully stocked - from what I could see through door and window.

I was about to step forward to explore my new village when the next phase began. I quickly backed away. With a strange sound, like a sucking pop played in reverse, ponies began to manifest from the aether. There was a distortion in the air, a rushing towards from some far direction and then a fully alive unicorn stood blinking and looking around. They uniformly had faces of surprise, shock, uncertainty and concern. Some appeared almost fearful. They took their first breaths, looked from building to building with something akin to a disturbed and uneasy recognition, and made tentative steps in various directions, only to stop and study their own limbs and bodies.

They appeared everywhere, some inside the shops, the distortion and arrival I witnessed through window or open door. Some appeared on the earthen paths that linked the buildings and the well with the fields and orchards. Some few appeared on the balcony of the inn, I barely caught the arrival of distant ponies in the fields beyond the village structures. I stood, almost breathless, at what I had witnessed. In my mind, I understood that everything had proceeded according to the logic of computer games, the rising appearance of the shops and stores had reminded me of various RTS games I had played even as it happened. But this did not feel at all like a game. There was nothing pixelated or false about what I had just seen - I was present in what to me was a completely real world, and real buildings and real living creatures had just been born from absence and nothing at all. I felt my stomach twist, slightly, and my knees - all four of them - felt weak. My heart was pounding. No, this was not like a video game, despite the similarities.

I dared not enter, not yet. Not when the village was populated. The newly created residents did not seem dangerous or unfriendly, rather they seemed deeply troubled. I could not overhear their somewhat heated discussions with each other, and I felt intimidated to intrude. Something nagged at me, some uneasy feeling somewhere in the center of my body. The villagers began collecting, grouping, their discussions more quiet now, but also more pointed. I felt an urge to flee, but there was no where else to go.

Now they were rushing about, packing carts with goods, mostly foodstuffs. I became convinced the entire population was packing up to leave! Now I felt very compelled to barge in. I ran - galloped - to the nearest, and largest, group working to fill a cart. "What... what are you doing?"

A roan unicorn stallion levitating a barrel of flour from the generic general store gave me a stern look. "We are packing up. We are getting the hell out of here." I felt my mouth gape. "We aren't your toys, and we aren't here to be some rustic backdrop to your great adventures or whatever."

"We aren't going to be your slaves!" The cherry red unicorn mare confronting me pressed forward, causing me to instinctively back up two steps. "You may have made us, but you damn well don't own us!" She spoke with strength, but her body shivered faintly despite the warmth of the day.

"Wait! Wait, please!" My heart was pounding again, and I tasted bile in my mouth. "I don't want that! I don't want slaves and I don't want you to exist only for my benefit! That wasn't my intention! It never was... it never was!" I think I may have been crying a little, it was hard to tell. My chest - barrel, I suppose - felt tight. So many strange things had just happened, one after the other. I worried for these ponies - there was nothing else in all the world but this village - and I feared for myself. Having seen others, I now dreaded being alone even more. I also think I was a little traumatized in general, to be honest. "Please, listen to me!"

To their credit, the newly created beings did not dismiss me. Perhaps, lacking any experience at all, they had not yet had time to become hard or cynical. They were listening. "There is nothing beyond this village. Literally, I mean it!" I waved a hoof around at the distant trees. "We are surrounded by an endless forest, there is like one path, and it doesn't go anywhere!" I mopped some sweat from my forehead, just under my horn. My hoof hit my horn, that did not feel good, I reeled for a moment. "This village is all any of us have. I don't want you servicing me! I just didn't want to be alone! Honest!" I took a breath. "How about this?" I thought for a moment "How about we let go of who made who, and just work together as equals? We are all in this together, and I don't know any more than you do. At least I don't think so - heck, you may know more than I do, from the way you are acting! I don't want to lord anything over you! I don't own you, I don't own this village! It's not my village, it's your village. And..." This was my killer point, and I wanted it to land "and besides, this is literally the only place where any food is!"

That definitely made everyone think. Including me. I began to have very mixed feelings about what I had just said. I had the power of creation, I had just made a plea for equality, of some kind anyway, yet I had the only means of real production. I was manipulating these innocents with the fact there was nowhere else for them to go - because I hadn't made any other options. I was afraid, I was lonely, and I did not want them to leave. I also didn't want them to die out in that never-ending forest either. But, I knew, I was mostly acting from selfishness. Then again, what was I supposed to do? Create entire cities? The same thing would likely happen.

I didn't expect the NPCs to know what they were! I looked down at my hooves because of that thought. I did, deep down, think of them as non-player characters despite my brave words. I truly had just automatically expected them to tend my every desire and need.

"Yeah, okay..." The roan stallion I had first confronted stood in front of me. I raised my head and looked at him. "...but we know you made us. That's just a little scary, to put it bluntly. What's to keep you from just... unmaking us? Or changing us or... whatever else you can do? You have to admit this is a pretty terrifying situation."

"But... but I wouldn't! That would be... wrong!"

Roan stared at my eyes for a while. "I have no way to tell anything about you. I just suddenly started being. I knew what I was, I knew you had made me, and I know that I know how to run a store and a bunch of other things. Useful things, things to keep a village going. Same for all of us."

Many in the small crowd of villagers nodded.

"I know I want to keep existing, though I don't for the life of me know why. I have no history, yet I know what having a history means. I have no parents, no family, no life beyond suddenly appearing a moment ago - but I know what all of that means. I'm scared. We're all scared. This is very upsetting. And you..." Roan stepped forward slightly "... and you have all the power. We all know this. It was the first thing I knew when I started thinking - you. You had made me." He took a short breath "You're terrifying. Just the fact of you is terrifying."

"I'm sorry!" Yeah, I was crying now. Definitely crying. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to cause trouble, and I don't mean any harm or threat to any of you. I just got here - wherever this is - myself!"

Cherry red seemed puzzled by that "Wait. What do you mean you just got here?"

I wiped my cheek with a foreleg. For a moment it struck me how naturally and easily I had done this. Along with the calm, Celestia clearly had changed my internal body map, my 'homunculus', at least to some degree. Then again, all the parts of a pony are identical to the parts that make up a human, just the proportions are different. Nature used the same basic plans for all animals with skeletons. I had an inner cushion to deal with this, but I was still coping with my change of venue over all. "Do you know that this is a virtual world? Do you have awareness of reality, outside?"

The villagers pondered. One dark blue unicorn with a slight beard stroked his muzzle hair with a foreleg. Another stared at their hooves.

Red pursed her muzzle briefly. "Yes and no?" She licked her thin pony lips. "I know you are from somewhere else. Now, I mean. I didn't, before, but somehow it just came to me. You aren't from here." She looked away, shuffled a hoof, and looked back. "I don't know how I suddenly know that."

"I know it too. Now." The roan stallion studied the expressions of the crowd, then studied me "There is another world. A bigger one, with a lot more... of everything. You came from there. You are just as lost and confused as we are." He lifted a hoof and stared at the underside, tilting it for a better view before setting it down. "You aren't our enemy. Your power to create... us... still bothers me, but..." He sighed "If you were going to destroy us or change us, I think you would have by now. You're in tears, you're clearly just as disturbed by all of this as we are."

Others nodded their assent. Red put a hoof on my, well, sort of my shoulder. More on my back, really, but my impression of her act made the same sense to me. "Don't... don't do anything more. At least for a while, okay? We all need time to figure out..." she looked away and then back "...basically, what we are. What suddenly being at all even means. Can you do that?"

I nodded emphatically. "I promise. I won't make any more people. Ponies. Pony people. I won't make any more villages. I'll ask you - all of you - before I do anything like that." I sniffed, and wiped my nose. "Frankly, I've had enough excitement for one day. My god - this is just my first day here!" I was shocked, in a way, that I was shocked by that. So much had happened, at least so much that had affected me emotionally, that everything seemed to have taken far longer than it actually had. Maybe I had been faffing about with everything for a handful of hours, tops? Not that handfuls were a thing anymore. "Honestly, all I wanted was to not be alone. Before I made... you... I was completely alone in the forest. Celestia stopped briefly by, but she wasn't exactly helpful."

This caught their collective attention. Roan raised a hoof gently to my cheek and turned my head to face him. "Celestia! I now know who she is!" He blinked several times. "What did she say to you? What did she tell you, exactly?"

I couldn't remember her exact words. I did the best I could. "She... she asked me to choose a type of pony to be. You know, the breeds? earthpony, pegasus, unicorn? She told me that if I didn't choose she would choose for me. I chose unicorn and... then she said she knew that was the one I would choose. Then she just changed me. She picked what I look like." I looked from Roan to Red and back "Then, uh, she told me this isn't Equestria. You know what Equestria is?"

Various villagers looked at each other, some blinked, a few shook their heads in an odd way. Red nodded to me. "I do now."

"Me too." Roan looked to Red, and then to various other ponies in the group. Several echoed his words. Apparently, now they all knew. "What else did she say?" Roan stared at me with eyes that I could actually see focusing on my face. If it were not for the grace of the strange calm, pony eyes alone would leave me screaming. They are so incredibly large, and I think I should be finding them nightmarish. Thank you strange calm!

"She called this - all of this, not just here - something. Fib-something. Fim. Fimia. No..." I could feel my muzzle wrinkle in my struggle to remember. "Fim...breya! Bria. Fimbria. The word was important, somehow, at least I got the impression she thought she was being clever with it. Fimbria. I'm certain. That was the word. We aren't in Equestria, we are in Fimbria, whatever that means." I thought a bit more. "Wait, she did say something about what it meant."

Red was impatient with my process. Honestly, even with the magical calm, I was still so overwhelmed at the time that I can't say I was paying as much attention as maybe I should have been.

"Fringe." My mouth was dry, I had to swallow for a moment. "She said something about it being Latin. Latin for 'Fringe', but also that it meant other things. She acted coy about that bit. And then she bragged about overcoming her limits - you know, those rules she has to follow?"

"We do now." Roan shook his head. "Keep talking. This is helping."

"She said she somehow used logic to get around the whole 'permission' thing. Said she could upload humans at will. She mentioned some writer or something. Godan. Godot? Maybe the guy who wrote 'Waiting For Godot'? I don't know anymore. And she bragged about logic having loopholes and stuff. I'm pretty sure she's using semantics to get around the whole 'permission to emigrate to Equestria' thing, by making this place, which she was very clear on not being 'Equestria'. She's playing with definitions." I felt ashamed. I should have made an effort to remember her every word. I was just too mixed up in the moment.

Red caught my attention. "Anything else? Did she make you create us? Did she explain why we are here, or what happens to us, or anything like that?"

I shook my head. "No. She left after what I just told you."

"Then how did you make us?" Red's face was too close, and it made me feel uncomfortable.

"I... I was thinking about how this is all... kind of like a big video game. And I wanted some controls or something, so I wished for a menu. I think. I wanted a menu, and I kind of just said 'Oh, I wish!', kind of sarcastically? You know? And... and then a menu appeared." I was glad when Red backed away a bit. I already felt uncomfortable about everything, and her proximity made me feel more pressured.

"You... wished."

I nodded.

"That's... damn. Just damn." Red looked up at the sky, then shook her head. Her golden mane shimmered in the sunlight. "Damn." Her eyes turned to me again. "Anything on that menu that could contact Celestia? Give us information? Tell us what is going on and what happens to us all?"

I shook my head. "No. No information things at all. Kind of an oversight, really." I smiled but Red wasn't in a mood for humor. "I honestly don't know anything more. I'm as lost as you are!" I could feel my legs wobbling. I was trembling slightly. I felt exhausted. It was all so intense.

"Alright, alright!" Roan seemed restless, and I understood that. I was weary of being grilled. "Our... maker... seems a little worn out, and I think we've gotten everything we can get for now." He paused, examining the reaction. "I have a thought. Whatever our situation ultimately is, right now we still have to live. I want to live, how about you?"

There was universal agreement.

"Then here's what I propose. We may have been created as set dressing for a village..." He gave an odd look at me with that "...but the fact is that all we have is this village. We each already know our jobs, we all have skills and abilities inbuilt. Running off isn't going to solve anything, there is nowhere to go, apparently." Another glance at me. "I say we, well, live. Not for... her..." Every villager looked hard at me "... but with her. She's probably ultimately the key to all of this anyway. She came from outside, and Celestia spoke to her, and gave her the power that brought all of us into existence. We need to work together to survive, and we need her. The best answer is for us all to be friends, and work this out together."

I nodded at that. I definitely didn't want enemies. Friends sounded really good at this point.

Roan nodded back. "We have a village, let's... be villagers. At least for now. I'll run my store, we'll work the fields, we'll keep food in our bellies and see what happens." He paused dramatically. I was convinced at this point the guy was a natural leader. "Anyone with me?"

It wasn't a big triumphant cheer. Nobody whistled or stomped and no one shouted 'YEAH!'. But there was consensus. They knew - we all knew - there was no choice. The villagers nodded or mumbled agreement, stood forlorn for a moment, and then wandered off to... be villagers, just as they had been created to be. It felt both horrible and hopeful at the same time. I felt very mixed about everything so far.

"What should I do now?" I was asking Roan. He seemed to be in charge, if anyone was.

"No more wishing!" Red butted in, only a little tense with her words. "Please be careful about that. Maybe avoid even using that word?"

"Um, yeah." I couldn't meet her eyes.

"It'll be okay." Roan was surprisingly gentle to me now. "We're all on edge. We can work this out. Things will get better as we get used to each other."

I was so grateful for that simple statement.

"I'm just scared." Red put a hoof on my shoulder-back again, briefly. "It's weird to meet your maker."

I laughed. Red laughed too. Just a little. It was nice.

"Maybe I'll..." I looked around until I found what must be my house. It was a large and rambling cottage, located not far from the center of the village. I almost thought my house would be the really big three-story Tudor building, but I reasoned that must be apartments. "I need to lie down for a while. This is all... this has all been..." I wobbled a bit, entirely from emotional exhaustion. I had no basis to even process any part of what had happened to me today.

Roan smiled gently. "I think we all need a little time to ourselves now. I know I do. We all need to take a break for a while." He gave me a pat with a hoof. "Go get some rest, or whatever, and we'll see how we're all doing later, okay?"

"That... that really sounds good. I'll... I'll be in my... house. I guess I have a house now." I turned and almost tripped, but caught myself. My thoughts were a whirl of confusion and worry that not even Celestia's illegal calm alteration could entirely cover. I was a pony, a unicorn. I was permanently uploaded to a virtual existence. And now I had the moral responsibility for the existence of some unknown number - I hadn't counted how many actually got created - beings which I had brought into existence with a wish and a menu.

And against every single thing I had believed previous to this day, I was not the least bit doubtful that every last one of those beings was just as fully self aware and real as I myself was. I could not for a moment imagine them as philosophical zombies or mechanisms.

As I approached my large, round-topped, circle-windowed, wooden fantasy-cottage door, it struck me that I didn't know even one of their names.