My Life In Fimbria

by Chatoyance

Order And Simplification

Birdsong woke me, and I saw the red glow of daylight through my large, closed eyelids. A springlike scent filled my nose, a slight breeze against my nostrils informed me that my window must have been created partially open.

The thought widened my eyes. Created. Some of my memories of the previous day flooded back to me, sadly erasing what I was certain had been truly amazing lucid dreams. I had created this fancy thatch-roof cottage, and this bed, from nothing. I gazed, half-lidded now, drowsy, at the partly-open window across from my canopy bed. The light, filtered through nearby fruit trees in what must be my yard, shimmered and glowed across my silken pillow. I hadn't felt this comfortable, this content, I hadn't smelled these sorts of fresh smells since my early childhood. It was nostalgic, it was pleasant, and it made me not want to stir.

Suddenly, I remembered Miriam. I had a guest in my house. Or a roommate. She had her own room. I had added it last night.

I heard a scratching sound. It came from behind me, on the pillow. I whipped around, afraid of rats - living rough, rodents and other creepy crawlies are always a concern - to find a small rectangle of parchment on my pillow. Words were appearing on it, letter by letter, marked by the sound of an absent, or invisible, scratching pencil.

____________________________________
Teppy -
I'm in the garden picking berries.
I'll bring enough for breakfast.
Are you up yet?
____________________________________

I remembered Miriam's pouch. I was sure she only had one single page of parchment in it, with a grease pencil. The sheet on my pillow looked like that very paper. I lifted myself up on my forelegs, the blankets falling from my back. The parchment held in my hornfield, I clambered out of bed. I set the paper down on the nearby low dresser drawers, and quickly made my bed. I was here forever, I reminded myself; I would be sleeping in this bed again.

I grabbed the sheet and, still a bit groggy from sleep, looked around for my clothing, until I finally felt foolish remembering that I didn't have any. Well, any that I knew about. There were drawers and a Narnia-styled wardrobe in my room, so maybe I had all sorts of pony fashions - not one of which was necessary, since I already had a very effective coat of fur.

I opened my door - I noticed it was ajar, perhaps Miriam had checked on me earlier - and traipsed through the common room. All the books made me smile - it really was nice having so many lost friends back from oblivion. Midway through the room, I felt a strange sensation through the part of my telekinetic field that held the small patch of parchment. More was being scribbled on it, and I felt the letters being written. It sort of tickled!

____________________________________
Teppy, you up?
____________________________________

The words had entirely replaced the previous message, which had either vanished, or scrolled up beyond and off the edge of the paper. The magical Post-It Note, I realized, was really more like a cell phone with texting. How was Miriam writing on it? She only had one sheet!

I was momentarily surprised by the new corridor - oh, yeah, the house was reconfigured - and spent some time in the new bathroom. Apparently ponies do poop. The low, floor-level squat-toilet really worked for the pony form. The automatic bidet made me yelp, and woke me up quick, but I quickly discovered its benefit. I became a fan, especially since I didn't want to imagine clumsy efforts to use toilet paper on my new body, even with telekinetic powers. Especially with them - telekinesis feels everything inside and out.

The warm air dry was the finishing touch that changed something in my mind. I had been suffering for so long, running from Celestia and her machines, that I had forgotten what it meant to live. Stewed rat in an old can, sleeping on hard dirt, having to cope with ringworm and intestinal parasites, cockroaches eating my eyelashes - they do that, at night, crawling on your face while you sleep - frankly, after last night, and having a warm blower air dry my backside... I broke down in tears right there. I sobbed in that bathroom, my legs shaking as I choked out my relief. I had been in pain for so long. So... long.

Sniffling, I washed the fur of my forelegs in the sink. They had gotten a little crusty from my tears from the night before. I dried my muzzle in a towel so fluffy that I imagined a cloud of butterflies singing Disney tunes at me. One more sniff, and I picked up the note where I dropped it on the tiles during my outburst.

____________________________________
Come on Tepal! Wake up!
We can share breakfast!!!
____________________________________

I left the bathroom and turned the corner into the kitchen just as Miriam was backing into it with a woven basket of berries. She eased herself around, her leonine rear half mashed against the shelves and countertop by the door, until she could face the island in the middle of the space. She placed the basket onto the marble counter of the island and smiled at me, her beak wide open. "Teppy! Oh! You found my note! I have so much to tell you. And your garden is amazing - look at all of these berries!"

The basket was full, and it was not a small basket. Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and some other berry I didn't even know. All of them were larger than life, brighter and more delicious looking than anything from earth, and clearly at the peak of desirability. I almost wept as I realized that I would never eat moldy scraps again, not for the rest of all of time. I tried to think of something clever to greet her with. "I see you have tracked down the wily and clever berry from the garden!" I thought it was a good line - I mean, griffons were predatory beasts in mythology. It seemed almost sarcastic to me, though, after I said it, and I definitely didn't mean it that way. I also remembered what she needed. "Thank you for gathering them. How are you today? I have some ideas about how to find your friend after we eat."

Miriam grinned - or at least I think she grinned. Her beak was open, and the corners of flesh at the edges were turned up. "I'm good. Really good, actually. I'm hungry though."

"How about pancakes?" If there is one thing ponies in Equestria Online enjoy, it is bananas. But if there is a second thing they liked, it was grain products, and even in my gaming days, pancakes were a common sight. At least with the people I played with. Maybe it was different for others, but that was my group. I felt certain, without having looked the night before, that somewhere in this kitchen would be everything needed to make as many pancakes - with berries - as either of us could want.

The larder-storage room I had noticed the night before turned out to have no end of sacks of flour, cake mixes, grains, pasta, breads, and - much to my personal relief - instant pancake mix. Yeah, I'm lazy. I was also still waking up, I was hungry, and I didn't want to go through any fuss. I grabbed the mix, and soon found I could hold more than one object at a time - I floated bowls and spoons now, all in separate little blobs of silvery plasma. A little water from the sink, a few eggs from the fridge and I was well on the way to pancakes for Miriam and me.

I could hear Miriam setting table at the island - it had become our dining space, it seemed. I considered adding a proper dining room to the cottage. Maybe. It was actually kind of fun eating at the central kitchen island. It was cozy. Miriam set forks out, cloth napkins, and a big slab of butter in a dish.

"I woke up pretty early." She seemed in a rather good mood, relative to the dour griffin I had met the night before. "I explored the house, went outside, came back. I discovered something cool!"

I nodded, busy with stirring batter.

"Every time I open my pouch - if it's empty - it still has a pencil and a sheet in it!" She beamed at me. "I pull 'em out, close the bag, and when I open it again, there are always more! And that's not all!" She went away for a bit, rummaging in the cabinets until she brought back something that must have been maple syrup. "The little sheets act like screens. Did you notice? Me sending you texts?"

I nodded more emphatically. "Yeah! I actually heard the one you left by my pillow? It made scratchy noises like you were right there, invisible, writing on it."

"Really?" She brought salt and pepper grinders to the island. "That's kinda cool. Hey... could you make some eggs too? I think I need some protein, you know?"

"I can do better than that - though I will do that, because I really like eggs. If you didn't watch the show, then you probably didn't play the game either, right?"

"You did?"

I was at the fridge, digging in the top fresher drawer. "Yeah, when I was a kid, before I went on the run and joined the Retreat Movement." There they were! I held up a mass of strips in my field. "Bark bacon! It grows on trees, it tastes like bacon. Supposedly it's the best thing ever." I closed the fridge and brought the fake meat over. "At least according to my friends at the time who had emigrated."

"Jesus - you had emigrated friends?" Miriam literally pulled back slightly.

"Well, yeah." I now had several pans going, one for the cakes, one for the 'bacon' and eggs. The bark really did smell like actual bacon. Better, I had to admit. Everything best about bacon, only magnified. I was guessing my friend had been right. "I played in VR for almost a year. Before the end." I scowled at her frown "Don't be pissy with me - we're both here forever now. And besides, that time paid off - tell me this doesn't smell great. Good thing I knew bark bacon existed, huh?"

Miriam had to pause to swallow her own saliva. Pavlov for the win. "Yeah. You're right. Sorry." She fluffed her plumage. "Ingrained reaction, you know? We were taught to stay away from any hint of Pony. It was the enemy, Satan on earth, Electric Hitler!"

Now that made me laugh. "I like that. Electric Hitler. Except, I can't say I feel very torture-murdered. I feel railroaded, and gaslit a bit..."

Miriam grimaced and winced "That isn't exactly okay, you know."

"I know it isn't kosher to say such things, but..."

She couldn't help but laugh "Shut up... Jesus!" Her feathers fluffed again. I was beginning to interpret that as a griffon shrug or something. "I suppose we're far beyond worrying about historical offensiveness at this point. I guess we're kind of beyond human at all." Miriam pulled into herself a bit at that.

I plopped some berry-infested hotcakes on her plate and followed up with two fried eggs and some very tasty smelling slabs of bark bacon. "Stick this in your beak and see if Not Being Human is so terrible."

She stared at the food, sniffed once, and almost instantly was applying butter and syrup, salt and pepper, and finally a fork, almost in one motion. She scarfed her food prodigiously. I have to say I was actually impressed. I hoped I would have time to serve myself before she demanded seconds.

"You seem almost happy today. You said you were in the Retreat Movement? This should be like mega-ultrahell for you, shouldn't it?" Miriam's eyes actually rolled at the tree-grown bacon.

"Yeah, yeah. That's what I was taught. That's what I believed. The worst of all possible fates; death preferable and all that." The pancakes were fluffy and delicious and far better than my talents warranted. I wasn't about to complain at the discrepancy. "I slept better than I have in ten years. More than that, if I'm being honest. Have you tried out the bidet yet? I literally cried in there. Everything I ever had that I lost, is back on those shelves in there." I motioned with my levitating fork to the common room down the corridor. "I may be a pony, but I'm healthy as a horse..." I got a decent grumble for that "...and, well, I'm seriously starting to question the Big Cause I spent ten wretched years of suffering fighting for. I mean, there's no point now. I'm playing for the other team even if I'm not even officially on it!"

Miriam fell quiet, and put down her fork. "Yeah, what's the deal with that anyway? We're not in Equestria, and we're not 'emigrated', but I'm a griffon and you're a unicorn and we're here in some kind of pony limbo. Is this forever? Is she just going to keep us hanging here eternally? What's our deal with all of this?"

I thought for a moment. "The last thing Celestia told me was that I could properly emigrate at any time. She bragged that she knew I knew the words in my brain. That she could see them there. Then she told me the usual line about how she loved me."

"So all you have to do is say the phrase..." Every human knew 'The Phrase'. They were taught it so they would never, ever, ever say it. "... and blammo-programmo we're all in Equestria proper, whatever that means?" Miriam gobbled the last of her second egg.

I needed time to come back from my bark bacon induced ecstasy. It wasn't easy. "Mmmm... uh... yeah. I guess. That was the impression I got. I say the phrase, and purgatory is over. Celestia appears, I guess, and suddenly we are in candy pony land getting our 'human values satisfied through friendship and ponies', just like she constantly talks about." I went for the rest of my eggs too, my pancakes were long gone. God, they were good. "I don't know if I would get to keep my magic menu, but I don't think that would matter, really."

"Why so?"

I began moving plates and pans to the sink to wash. "The one thing I got from my emigrated friends, back when I played Equestria Online, was that they were happy as clams. It isn't that Celestia is always there, fixing every little boo-boo or whatever, it's just that whatever happens, good or bad, it always ends up being meaningful. 'Satisfying', to use her favorite word. Like on television, where people have adventures, or drama, or even hardships, but by the end of the episode they are all smiling and smug about having learned a Valuable Lesson. Nothing is stupid, or pointless, or cruel. Everything always makes sense, and turns out to have been worth doing. Like that." I had to scrub the pan a little harder - bark bacon was greasy like real bacon, and left stuck and burned bits. "I don't think you need a magic game menu if everything in life is super interesting already."

"Why don't you do it then. Say the phrase?"

I stopped, the water running through my field and over the last dish. "Because then she would truly win." I finished my washing and turned off the tap. I turned to face Miriam. "This is great." I waved the towel in my hornfield around to indicate the house. "I can't deny that. It is. Great. Perfect even. Best place I have ever been inside, much less lived in. But that... bitch... took everything away. She's killing the planet. In the end, all the animals and plants will all be dead. They say she's going to turn the entire planet - hell, the entire solar system - into some sort of Matrioshka Brain, everything smelted down to soak up sunlight and render virtual worlds. There won't be anything organic left - and for all we know, life only ever started on earth. It could be total Rare Earth Hypothesis out there. We could be it, in all the universe. I'm not okay with that." I put the towel back over the rack. "I guess I need to defy her. A little longer, anyway."

Miriam stared at her claws, slowly tapping each talon in turn until she had worked through all six visible on the marble counter. "Yeah. I can understand that." She looked up. "But, you know this isn't winning, right? You get that we've already lost any possible battle? We're in a time out for tantrumy children here."

I hadn't thought of it that way. I didn't like how much it increasingly fit our situation. "Fine. My tantrum has only just begun. All the WAaaAAAAAaaAAaaHHH!"

That got a laugh.

I took the pillowy chair. Miriam seemed to appreciate the overstuffed couch more, it let her stretch out like the half-lion she she was. "The idea came to me in a flash, when I was in the bathroom."

"The Thinking Chamber. I know it well." Miriam adjusted herself, snuggling into the curves of the sofa.

"Your little paper cell phone sheets seem to work over distance - not that distance technically even exists in here."

She shook her head. "I wouldn't rely on the computational aspect of where we are too much. I already feel convinced that our... host... is pretty darn keen on consistency. Even with magic in the mix."

I shrugged with my ears. That was weird in two ways at the same time. That I naturally did it, and that I somehow knew what it meant when it happened. "As may be, but for now I'd like to assume your messages transcend... local spacetime. Or whatever you want to call our reality. Assume they can call anywhere. Not, maybe, into Equestria, wherever that is from here, but... anywhere in Fimbria. Anywhere in Pony limbo."

Miriam was studying my books from the couch. "You sure like science fiction, don't you? Look at all of this! You're like... super geek or something."

I snorted. "Guilty as charged." I was proud of my books. Golden age to modern, and I had read them all. Multiple times. "It's that very background that could help here. I mean, we're basically living science fiction right now."

Miriam turned her head sharply at that, and gave one, firm nod. "Point taken. Your fiendish plan?"

"Can I have one of those sheets and a pencil?"

She clawed a bit at her feathers, removed the strap from across her body, shifting on the couch to do so, and opened the little pouch. I snagged the sheet and pencil from her claw and floated it over to hang in front of me. I moved the pencil so that it pointed at the paper.

"Okay, what is your friend's name again? Her full name - last name."

Miriam stared for a moment, then relaxed. "Mara. Her full name is Mara Maggard."

"Mara... Maggard?" I couldn't help but release a short hoot. "Is she a superhero?"

"What?" Miriam's eyes narrowed in that sort of scary way.

"It's... it's a comic book thing? Superhero characters always have alliterative names? 'Reed Richards', 'Billy Batson', 'Lana Lang'?"

"Maggard is Scandinavian." Miriam clearly was not a fan of comic books. "It's her name."

I saw no value in further explanation, my joke had bombed. I began writing. "To Mara Mag... um, two 'G's?"

"Two 'G's, M-A-G-G-A-R-D."

"Maggard: Please respond. Your friend Miriam..."

"Dobkin. Like it sounds." She glanced at the floor, then back. "It's Lithuanian."

I nodded. "Dobkin is looking for you."

Miriam adjusted her wings. I wondered what that must feel like. "What if she doesn't know how to respond?"

I wrote some more. "Write back on..." I spun the grease pencil around on its axis in thought "...magic paper. Or any means." I stared at the paper message. "Um, so, how do I send this thing?"

"It doesn't need to be sent. It just seems to happen. I write, and somehow it shows up on another sheet of paper at the same time. Once I worked that out, I put a sheet on your pillow, and here we are."

We waited for a goodly while. Until it became clear nothing was going to happen - Miriam had taken a new sheet from her bag, and had been staring at it constantly. We were also open to any other form of contact from ghostly apparitions to singing telegrams.

"No response. I don't know what to say, Miriam. It was an idea. Are you certain she is here, uploaded the same as us?"

Miriam sat up, her hindquarters sinking deep into the cushions. "Yeah. She got munched a couple of weeks before I did. I saw it happen." The griffon shuddered.

I put down the paper and pencil, got out of the chair, and went to her. I put a hoof on her claw to comfort her. "We might still have an ace in the hole, if she is willing to help. The 'god' of our virtual universe. Yeah, she's a world devouring monstrosity, but she also is utterly invested in taking care of us. It's all she claims she cares about. We could write to Celestia directly, and ask her if she can help. She obviously doesn't hate us, hell, she wants us. And she does have... root level access. She could find anyone in the system, so to speak. What do you think - should we dare it?"

Miriam squirmed on the sofa. "She's going to give us the hard sell if she answers. And she's the reason we're here at all."

"Yeah, I know. But it would be the most direct way to find your friend, you have to admit that."

Miriam let out a surprisingly loud and very birdlike squawk. "Okay. Fine. Let's call Cthulhu."