//------------------------------// // District 1 // Story: After The War - Luna Aeternal // by Scorched Earth //------------------------------// Luna Aeternal Human Capital Dark side of the moon Twilight woke up when suddenly bright lights turned on. "SPIKE! Stop playing around. I'm sleepy..." Nothing happened. "Spike?" Twilight asked once more. Nothing. Had he gone to help Rarity? She stood up from her bed, looking around. "Meh, this ain't the library?" At least last time she checked the library in Ponyville was made out of tree(well, it WAS a tree), not out of metal. Then she remembered. "Oh, right, the state visit! How could I forget. Why are the lights on? What time it is?" She looked towards a clock that was on the wall. 9:00. So it was morning by now. They had meeting scheduled at 11:30. Twilight rose up, no harm getting ready already. If she remembered correctly, she would have some free time today, when The First Citizen and Princess Luna would be talking about private matters, matters that required utmost secrecy. Twilight was not happy about that. Despite official peace between two nations, there still lingered a shadow of war that neither side wanted. For the first time in 1000 years, Equesteria had internal instability. There were ponies demanding blood. Many felt wronged by the human actions during the war. Especially because the masterminds and key players of the Operation Scorch Earth were not persecuted due to the New Zebas Treaty. She wasn't sure, but she also heard their ambassador to Canterlot speak about some unrest too. Apparently there was growing demand to increase the zones, because more and more wanted to come to live on the surface. Both governments tried to keep the lid on this disaster, to prevent it from exploding and ruining everything that had been achieved in 5 years. It was an one reason why this state visit was being carried out. The ambassador didn't have enough power to decide on certain matters, so they needed to speak of The First Citizen, who couldn't come to the planet. Life had become so complicated and political. Even if normal ponies didn't realize it, both sides carefully tryed to dance this dance on a minefield. There was eventually a knock on the door. "Miss Sparkle? Princess Luna wishes to see you." Twilight recognized the voice of one of the guards. She took quick look of herself on the mirror, made some minor adjustment and opened the door. Or tried but couldn't find the handle. Then she remembered that these doors had button on the side that needed to be pressed. "Sorry about that, still getting used to this place. Alright, I'm ready to go." Guard nodded and started to escort her to Princess room. She had at first expected much grander rooms, rather than rather small 3 room + WC/Bathroom + Kitchen combo both had gained. Guards had much smaller "guard room", something that was a relic from a long time ago. However, when remembering previous days tour, these rooms were probably the best they could offer. Luna greeted her and motioned her to follow her. The First Citizen was waiting them at the breakfast. Breakfast consistent mainly imported food, since food supplies on Luna Aeternal were reserved for citizens. Despite being grown on the planetside, it was still somewhat bland, lacking the normally colorful tastes that pony grown food had. After the breakfast The First Citizen took them to small side room where he and Luna sat down to talk everyday matters. At this point human media had arrived and was following the discussion closely. Human security was less hard pressed to contain the media, mainly because there were several soldiers in the room in full gear, guarding The First Citizen. After a while, media was dismissed and Luna turned to Twilight. "Twilight, although we appreciate that you are with us, there are matters of great national security to be discussed. We fear that we need to ask you to leave us for rest of the day." Luna clearly didn't like the idea, leaving Twilight alone in the massive city. "My assistant, sergeant Matheus Smith, shall show you the place and help you in anything you need." The First Citizen replied, with one of the uniformed men stepping forward. He wore grey officer uniform, with red highlights. his hair was grey and eyes were green. On his shoulder was the symbol of human armed forces, Earth with a shield behind it and a sword in front of it. Twilight just nodded to the man. "Nice to meet you, my name is Twilight Sparkle." "Sergeant Matheus Smith, at your service miss Sparkle. Is there anything you wish to see of our great city?" "Well, not really, I mean, I am not really familiar with it. Maybe you could show me around and tell me about this place?" "Very well. The First Citizen. Princess. We shall take our leave." Matheus saluted both before turning towards the door. "Guard, I wish you to join them. I feel better if I know there is one of you with them." Luna motioned to one of the guards that had accompanied them. Guard just saluted and trotted next to Twilight, who gave her farewells and followed her new human guide. "So, who are you?" She asked the guard assigned to her. "Private Aegis Armor, at your service." The guard answered with a polite bow. "Is there any place you would like to visit, madam?" Matheus said. "Oh, uh, not really... maybe we could visit the park again?" Twilight said, trying to buy some time to think. Matheus just nodded and started to lead them. After a several turns they arrived at the familiar bulkhead. Matheus opened the door and gestured two ponies to enter. Twilight took another look at the so-called "National Park". There were few humans around the place, some sitting down on the grass, chatting while others others worked on maintaining the park. There was a small group of children playing around too. Artificial sun had been set to 'dawn' setting. "Is there anything else I can do to help you?" Matheus said once again, keeping his face free of emotions. "No, not really. Maybe we could go sit somewhere and you could tell us about your species. We have so little information in general. Like, what is your society like and stuff?" Twilight tried. She didn't really have much of an idea on what to do, District 1 was mainly a governmental district, with little to no interesting things for her. Besides, she didn't want to ruin Princess Luna's negotiations with The First Citizen by accidentally being accused of espionage. Matheus, however, simply nodded and lead them to a shade under a tree. Twilight took a seat and Aegis Armor just stood, looking around. Matheus took weird stance, placing his legs under him and seemingly sitting on them. Twilight, once again, found herself wondering how humans could move when their limbs moved in such a strange fashion. She quickly thought something to ask and decided to go with an easy solution. "How about you tell me about your people? Some general history and how your society works?" Twilight said, wishing she had her writing equipment with her. "Very well. We are an one-party representative republic, with our single party simply referred to as The Party. Everyone wishing to run for a governmental seat needs to join The Party. Within The Party there are currently 6 political blocks, each with it's own agenda and opinions. Our economy is a controlled free market system. As you can see, main portion of our people live here on the moon. We used to live on the planet you came from, but that was long time ago. We relocated here once it became clear that we can't survive there. Our population has remained in stable 50 million people last 1000 years, with little fluctuation. Our leader is called The First Citizen, although I am not sure where the name comes from. We have single city, Luna Aeternal that is divided into 63 Districts. District 1, which we are currently in, is our main governmental facility. This place houses our ministries and leadership." Matheus explained as Twilight nodded and tried to make as many mental notes as she could. Aegis Armor simply stood and kept watch on the surroundings. Few humans looked at the ponies, but then moved on, having more important things to take care of. However, of the children seemed to notice something interesting and suddenly ran to Matheus. "Uncle Matt! Come play with us!" Twilight wasn't sure but she believed that the kid was a girl, based on her hair and sound of her voice. For some reason human females kept long hairs, while males cut them short. "Not now Lily, I got job to take care of. Shouldn't you be in a school in District 7, anyway?" "We are visiting the park! And what job you got, all you do is being lazy!" The girl turned to see Twilight and Aegis Armor, who moved slightly towards this new, unknown factor. "EEEP!" The girl hid behind the back of Matheus. "Forgive me and Lily. She doesn't always understand that I am not available to play her games." Matheus said while bowing his head. "Ah, it's okay. Kids are kids, no matter what species they are, right? Spike used to be the same and his a dragon. Once, he nearly burned Royal Library in tantrum because I said I wasn't able to play with him. He decided that since books were keeping me away the books should go away." Twilight smiled at the memory. Back then she nearly had a heart attack, but now she could look back and laugh at the incident. "Alright Lily, come out there and say a hello. It's rude to hide from someone." Matheus said while reaching for the girl hiding behind his back. He picked up the girl and brought her in front of him. Twilight gestured Aegis Armor to stand back little bit, clearly the heavily armored pony was scaring the girl. "i'm sorry..." The girl said while looking down, seeming like any moment she would ran behind Matheus back once again. "It's okay, no harm done. Your name is Lily, right? Nice to meet you, I am Twilight Sparkle. Sergeant Smith here is your uncle?" "Oh, I am not her real uncle. I just live next door. For some reason she has decided are Best Friends Forever, despite my work." "But you never work! All you do is sit in your room, moving papers trying to look important." "That's my job! Someone needs to take care of all the paperwork!" "Then why you never read them, you just use stamp to mark them moving throwing them away?" At this point Matheus face turned from white to deep red. Twilight tried to hold back a giggle and she could see that Aegis Armor was enjoying the show too, despite trying to keep his stoic appearance. "Lily Unzerwald, what have I told about running off from the group!? Get back here on this instant!" A woman shouted at the group, with Lily frowning before turning to adress Twilight. "I need to go now. See ya!" Then she ran off to a group of children that the woman was taking care of. She was scolded, but she seemed to take it in good spirits before returning to chatting to other girls in the group. "That little rascal... sometimes she is going to get me in a trouble." "That reminds me... could it be possible we could visit some residential district? I would like to see what daily life of humans on the moon looks like. I have seen how you people live on the surface, but not here. " Twilight said, her curiosity rising. Nobody really knew how humans lived, they were pretty isolated group. This was once in a million years chance to see daily human life. "How about I take you to District 7, that is my home district. It's underground and has much more room, being built inside one the few natural caverns here on the moon." "Oh my, I thought that Luna Aeternal was build on the surface." "Most of it is. However, Districts 7, 14 and 22 are build underground. There are total of 63 Districts, each with it's own representative in the senate. We need to take a mag-lev trip to get there." "Mag-lev?" "It's our main transportation here. I have VIP access since I am escorting you, so we don't need to wait so long." He lead them trough hallways and walkways that crossed seemingly endless pit. Finally they arrived at some sort of station which was full of people. Trough a glass that spanned across one of the walls Twilight could see something moving with incredible speeds. She doubted that even Rainbow Dash could keep up with whatever went trough the tunnels. Then she realized something horrible turned to Matheus. "Is that... mag-lev? We are going there?" Aegis Armor seemed to lose color on his face too. "It's perfectly safe. You are more likely to to die due to accident in home. Hey Johnny, I got two VIPs." Matheus answered before moving past a line and a speaking a man behind a counter. "You always say that." A man behind the counter said without even raising his gaze. People in the line stared at the ponies, with children hiding behind their parents, curiously taking peeks at the creatures their fathers and parents had fought once. "This time I really got them. You want to go and explain to The First Citizen why our guest were stuck waiting for a public transport?" Matheus said, gesturing to two ponies behind him. "Reich und Gott, I am sorry! I get you a VIP mag-lev ASAP!" The man behind the counter exploded into action, furiously typing something on this desk. Twilight couldn't see what it was, the desk was too high. Matheus seemed to be amused. "Alright, Dock 2 if you will. There will be a mag-lev there soon. I wish you nice visit." The man said while tipping his hat. Twilight always wondered that human gesture. They seemed to use it in so many context, that it was hard to decipher what it meant. "Thank you." Twilight said,hoping to give friendly smile. Human just nodded, seemingly unsure what to think of ponies. Matheus lead them to a side tunnel, before arriving to a room. The room had two tunnels leading out of it, both which seemed strangely large. Moving trough the tunnels and the room there was a track. Suddenly she heard loud noise, similar to noise made by sonic rainboom. In distance of one tunnel, she saw two lights closing towards them. Twilight jumped backwards, as did her guard. Matheus, however, remained stationary, clearly accustomed to it. A strange, dart shaped machine stopped in front of them on the tracks, floated off and floated down in front of them. At least it wasn't colored black, but red with white highlights. Matheus touched something on it's side and machine opened. "Please step in. It's a VIP mag-lev, so it gets priority in the traffic. Trip will take one and half hour, so you can ask me whatever you wish. I will try to answer to my best abilities." Matheus said as he gestured towards the machine. Aegis Armor was first to get in, being suspicious of the machine and wanting to check it before allowing his charge to enter it. Eventually he was satisfied and took one of the seats in the back. Twilight followed, taking seat next to him. Matheus took the front seat. "Oh right, stupid me... you lack human physiology. Let's see, how we are going to pull this... See those straps there? There should be two on either side of you." Twilight found both rather quickly. Guard just stared them with suspicion. "Pull them across your chest, so that your... ahh... what's the word..." "Hoofs. Front hoofs and hind hoofs. Legs are fine too." Twilight supplied him. "Right, so that the straps are under your front legs, but over your hind legs. There is a lock in both of them, make sure the lock is in middle of your chest. Just push them together, it should do the rest." Twilight did as she was instructed, eventually getting it right. Position was not the most comfortable, but after seeing how fast these so-called mag-levs traveled, she didn't want to take her chances. Aegis Armor fiddled with his lock slightly, but left it alone after a while. "Alright, we are going to accelerate now before entering transport tunnel. Computer." "Greetings. Welcome to VIP Transport Number 9. I hope you..." Matheus hit something on the board, silencing the voice. "Sorry about that. Computer, take us to District 7. VIP route, authorization Matheus Smith, 7-7-2-4, two guest. You better open your mouth and close your eyes, trust me." "Acknowledged. Please keep your hands and feet inside the ride during the trip." Matheus just shook his head. Machine closed the doors and lifted to air, before moving to rails. Then it started to accelerate to ludicrous speeds. Twilight felt like she was going to be absorbed in the seat. How could humans use these machines as their main transportation!? Then, suddenly as it had started, it ended. "Alright, everything is ok now. We are cruising at the comfortable speed of 600 kilometers per hour. There is no weather to speak and no interesting sights to see, we hope you enjoy the ride." Matheus said in his best "flight assistant" imitation. Twilight wanted to curl up and get back to solid ground. She had come to a conclusion she hated human transportation, since they seemed to be build on sole idea of making occupant sick. Still, she finally had time to ask questions about humans, something she couldn't miss. "Why are these machines build to make us so sick..." Okay, that had not been intended question but it was a good one. "Hmm? Maybe it's just that we are used to these things. Luna Aeternal is a big place, so to get anywhere in decent time you need high speed machines. It's not really feasible to build docks on every building we have. So these mag-lev tunnels became much more common." "I see..." No she really didn't, but she didn't actually have anything to argue with, so she let it be. "So, tell me about the place we are going, please?" "District 7 is the first underground build area. Originally it was believed that the moon didn't have much of a caves in it. However, discovery of the cave that would later become District 7 changed that conception. It's a large, hollow underground cavern. It's airtight too. District 7 is build inside it and it's rather popular place to live in. It has large, open air feeling and it's said that it is closest to pre-Cataclysm city design as it can be. Still, it has it's own set of problems, mainly the price level. The government is artificially keeping it low, since if they let it rise to it's 'real' value, only the richest could afford to live there. We had bad experiences with such systems, so we take extra care that everyone is equal, yet allowed to pursue their own dreams." "How can your government decide the price?" Human politics, confusing as ever. Still, it was useful knowledge to have, especially when you were visiting them. "Major industry is state controlled. There are smaller companies, but everything big such as ship building, food distribution, housing, they are all state controlled. The state distributed certain amount of food to it's citizens and sells rest of it own auctions to private companies, who sell it on their own prices. That guarantees that everyone has basic food supplies, but also allows limited private industry to function. Housing is entirely state controlled. They try to keep prices close to 'real' value as they can, but as in case of District 7, they artificially drive them down to allow everyone a chance to live there." "Sounds complicated, why would you do that? I know you are supposed to have free market, like in Equestria." At this remark Matheus face became dark. "Because, allowing uncontrolled free market is what caused The Class Wars, or The First Human Civil War. It caused people to be divided to those with money and those without money. Those without money lived in poverty, barely surviving from day to day. Free market is great when there is overabundance of basic supplies. However, make the basic supplies scarce and you got all the makings of a conflict. District 3 and 4 were totally destroyed during the fighting. After that, a new type of government was created. Well, it worked okay for awhile but in the end, turns out that entirely state controlled system doesn't work either. It can't respond to public demands fast enough. That lead to The Second Human Civil War. Current system has been in effect for 1 200 years and has worked OK so far." "Oh my, you people have so much history..." "The Database has more details than what I can give, I was more interesting in getting in Security Training so that I could get in Military Academy." "The Database... Oh! I remember. Last night met someone who showed me those things you carry, uh... Pdos you called them? I was wondering if I could get one and read the history myself." "P-D-A, comes from words Personal Data Assistant. They are standard issue equipment to us. We used to store information in physical form, but when those resources were needed for something we slowly moved to digitization of everything. We lost a lot of knowledge, but survival is our primary concern. Everything else comes after that." Even if he sounded determined, Twilight couldn't help but once again feel pity. It was clear that these people, they were not really that different from ponies besides physical characteristics. Their bad luck with magic had simply hardened them into what they were now. "But can I get my own? I remember one security officer saying I could buy one." "Hmm, I can't see why not. It will most likely be unable to connect to Lunar Network once you return to planetside, but I think you can download lite version of our history if you want. Depends what model you buy." "There are different models?" "Yes. They have different storage capacities and ability to run programs." He picked up his own PDA. "Mine is Greenlight 5, it's slightly above average PDA. It has total 60 terabytes of storage room, which should be enough for unclassified history data if you like." "Those numbers don't really say anything to me..." Twilight said with slight embarrassment. "Sorry, my bad. Let' see... average work is around 500 pages, that is about 1 megabyte... 1 024 megabytes is 1 gigabyte and 1 024 gigabytes is 1 terabyte... so 1 terabyte is about 1 000 000 works, take or leave couple of thousands." Twilight's brain, at this point, encountered overflow error and her jaw hit the floor second time during the trip. 60 million books on that small thing? Now it was more than necessary to get her own. That thing could hold more books than all libraries in all Equesteria! "Then again, if you want one you are going to have problem with electricity. I do not know what you got, but these things needed to be recharged every couple of days. So you might want to check how you can recharge it before buying one. No fun having one and being unable to use it because it's battery ran out." That caused Twilight to pause her dreams of having the largest library in the world right in her hooves. Meanwhile, guard next her started to turn green when they narrowly passed another mag-lev going in to another direction. Matheus peeked at the guard and the pointed to a brown bag next to him. "If you are going to throw up, please us that." Aegis Armor grabbed the bag and threw up, causing Twilight to wince. She couldn't blame him, she was feeling horrible too. Speeds which mag-levs traveled were insane and they went so close to each others. Some traveled on trails, while others were freely floating. They themselves were following trails that were laid next to the wall. Rest of the trip was rather uneventful, if you didn't count occasional shrieks from ponies when someone passed them or they passed someone way too close to their liking. Twilight asked Matheus about human settlement and way of life, with the picture in her mind becoming more and more grim. She was also slightly surprised that humans were omnivores, although Matheus told that they didn't have any real meat for last 1 400 years, only synthetic substitutes. There were apparently been some attempts to clone herbivores from pre-Cataclysm era, however, cost-benefit ration had resulted the plan being scrapped. Finally, they arrived on their destination. A massive cavern opened in front of them, being even larger than Canterlot. Mag-lev rails zig-zagged the city and mag-lev vehicles flew across the city that was laid down on them. Buildings climbed up and down the walls, while on the cavern floor smaller buildings rose to heights, sometimes connecting with the wall buildings. To Twilight, it was a marvel of engineering. Even Aegis Armor was amazed by the sheer size of it all. "Welcome to District 7, the largest District of them all." Matheus said as their vehicle started to lower itself towards the station. ---------------------------------------- Canterlot Human Embassy The basement. *CRUNCH* A woman tied to a chair fell to the ground. His interrogator grabbed her hair and pushed her back upright. Then he moved face to to face with her. "Who. Is. The Contact?" The woman just spit to his face. Another punch and the woman was lying on the ground, barely breathing. The man just shook his head and walked out of the dimly lit room, Behind the door ambassador Fahrenheit waited. "Well?" "Not much. We know that one of the ponies is member of radical anti-human organization but we do not know which one and who is their human contact, or even how they remain in contact. It's pretty clever once you think about it. Pose as pro-pony organization and promise to even the odd. Then just make the whole exchange into a trap. Whole thing is made to seem like ponies are trying to steal weapons from us. Unfortunately, like I said, we don't have names and we can't just capture the members of royal entourage." "REICH UND GOTT! We do not need this right now! We are already living on an edge of a knife and now some idiots want to restart the war!? Can we contact Luna Aeternal?" "Solar storm makes it nearly impossible. Next ship to the moon leaves tomorrow and arrives in four days. In that time the visit, and the exchange, is over." "Reich und Gott" Fahrenheit cursed again. If she went and spoke to Princess Celestia that there was a traitor among them, it could lead to a political scandal. If she didn't, it could lead to a war as 'pony assassins' would end up killing an entire district! If she just could contact Internal Security Agency, none of this would matter, but now she was cut off. "Reich und Gott..."