IV.
Some worked underneath, and some above
With strong Ingenious masonry
Upward their weir did fortify.
The man in front of her was the site foreman. Her mind grappled with him for a moment, and then shrugged its shoulders, and pronounced him sturdy and imposing. Did he block out the light? He might as well. He was as much a tower as a man. As if something of the mega-structure which he was helping to bring to life had seeped into him somehow, here in the lowlight.
Twilight shook her head and chastised her overworked imagination. Clear head, Twilight. Clear head, clear thoughts, she told herself. The last thing she needed was to start having metaphysical musings about every odd workingman down in the pit.
The foreman sniffed and cleared his throat.
“Thank you for coming, ma’am,” he said.
She blinked. “Pardon? I was needed, there’s no need for thanks.”
“Fair enough, fair enough,” he said amiably, and gestured for Twilight to follow him from the safety cordon downwards. Steps had been carved out of the rock precariously and if she were honest with herself, haphazardly. Safety bars dug like needles in rocky flesh protruded rudely out at unnatural right angles. Twilight was thankful for them. She was not the most dextrous, after all. She’d been more keen on theoretical boundaries and less keen on physical ones.
The foreman continued. “But it will be nice for the men to feel like you’re with us down here. I mean, I’ve met you a few times, miss. I know how focused you are. But it gets lonely down here. Feels a bit strange.”
“How so?”
“Well. The light, the long hours, the extreme environment. That’s natural, only natural. Man gets a little weird workin’ on his own or with a few like-minded fellas on jobs like that. But combined with how important this all is, well. It can feel a little alienation’. Hard to talk about work with your family or the boys on your off days. Hard to get ‘em to understand.”
Twilight nodded, and steadied herself. The steps were slick. She wondered briefly at the ease with which the foreman moved. She momentarily scrounged for his name in her mind, pushing aside row upon row of memories scored through with thaumic code. “I feel the same, Mr. Granite. I really do. Your crews are usually the only other people working on the Tower some nights that I’m working.”
He grunted with approval. When she stumbled, his hand shot up to steady her, a firm but careful grip around her arm. “I tried to find boots for you, but we didn’t have your size. Your aide said you wouldn’t want to wait for them, either.”
“Some things cannot wait,” Twilight said.
Granite shrugged. As if to say, sure-sure, noncommittal, he tipped his head a bit and they continued down.
The steps were steeper now. The final stages of the skeletal tower pointing down suspended over the scraped-bare rock. Here and there, she saw more obvious signs of human activity, things that no amount of erosion could have achieved. Tents of tarp held up by more of the metal stakes from the path and tied down, harboring tools and supplies. A prefabricated shelter reworked into a storage shed, and another which she knew from reports had been requisitioned as a canteen.
The tower which hung above glowed with lambent blue thaumic power. It looked so alive! Somewhere in the back of her mind she expected it to be humming, and was constantly surprised that it wasn’t. She felt small, smaller than a mote of dust. Irrationally, it was as if the structure had some sort of pressure to it, like its enormity warped space itself, and she was being drawn in and slowly, inexorably crushed by it. A black hole in infant form, birthed at the heart of her world, by her own hand, by many hands. Helped into the world to swallow it all. Would it preserve them? She had read theoretical naval gazing about using black holes as sort of massive quantum computers, with information written onto the surface of the supermassive beast itself. You could turn the monster into a library, carving into its hide. You could capture a kind of snapshot of reality there, read total pictures of reality there. When the galaxy died in darkness the final observer could read all the history of man on the beasts that let nothing, not even knowledge, escape.
She wasn’t aware that she’d stopped mid step gazing up at the tower until the foreman chuckled.
“Hard not to stare, isn’t it?” he asked.
“It is indeed.”
“We do it all the time. Hard not to! Biggest thing I’ve ever seen, for sure.”
“Canterlot is bigger,” Twilight said flatly, almost automatically. But she could not peel her eyes away. It was almost alarming to see it so close, on foot.
“True, true. That’s fair ma’am, but Canterlot is a lot of things, isn’t it? Not one big thing.” He seemed absurdly proud about this.
Twilight swallowed. “I suppose,” she admitted and finally managed to keep going. Her reaction was primal, and nothing to be ashamed of—something in the human mind balked at being cognizant of its own cosmic smallness.
Walking through the work site was surreal. Workmen went about their tasks in hazey blue light, and when she could see their faces the lines looked smoothed out. They looked almost painterly, impressionistic, smears of color washed out in too much blue, distorted and alien and yet just recognizable as human.
The site proper was shielded, of course, and they’d procured secure hazmat for her. The foreman had arranged for a changing room for her in one of the empty supply closets in the canteen, and she was grateful to be alone with her thoughts.
She felt disordered, out of place. As always, the actual precise nature of her own feeling eluded her, but she felt them so intensely. And like always, she began to prod.
Worry? No, not exactly. Not exactly anxiety. Determination, sure. Of course. Fear? She squashed that, refusing it with all her might. That was a stupid thing to feel, and she refused to be afraid of the tower. That was the hindbrain, the lizardbrain, the part of her that harkened back to a rude and ignorant era when men made gods out of rocks and burned perfectly good crops to please deities that did not exist. She was beyond that.
She did feel something like fear in the tower’s presence, however.
Fine, she thought as she zipped up the undergarment and stepped into the heavy suit pants. Fine, I am intimidated. It is a natural human response in the presence of something physically larger than me that is full of power. It is not a failing if I am not swayed by that feeling. It can be mastered. I do not need to turn a natural reaction of awe into something superstitious.
The foreman had. She knew that. He’d not been so obvious about it before, but it wasn’t the first time they’d met, either.
His reports had always been earthy and simple and straightforward like the man himself. But sometimes they would just feel… off. Slightly off, not majorly so. Askew, she’d described it one night reading over them. They, and he, were like a picture taken at an angle askance to the ground, just enough to suggest to the pattern-seeking mind that the whole room was tilting. Turns of phrases, extraneous details, photos of work sites that always studiously (almost religiously, she’d thought at one point one late night) avoided showing the tower proper.
He is trying to impress upon me that he is a serious man, and that I can trust him. She reflected, and felt a bit guilty for her misgivings. He has done an excellent job. I am just out of sorts.
When she stepped out, suited up aside from the heavy helmet under her arm, there were men eating in the canteen. All of them stopped and looked up at her. She offered them a smile she knew from long experience would come across as awkward, but she had only one to offer. It was socially appropriate enough.
The hubbub returned after the pause. She let out a little sigh of relief. Thank heavens no one wanted her to say anything.
Rejoining the foreman at the shielding around the work site, she felt more grounded. But that feeling only lasted as long as the walk to the shield wall.
The shielding itself was a ring of dark metal with only one gate in. Crackling white thaumic energy reached up from it the whole length around and touched the tower about a hundred yards above her head, forming a sort of bubble. The metal was largely for ease of sight. It was hollow, and the thaumic field ran through it and below to form a more complete sphere, with the generator planted firmly on the structure proper. A long hallway of lead and rune-carved cold iron separated the ring from the rest of the chamber like an airlock.
He checked her shielded hazmat suit and then the helmets were on and the door opened, shoving aside the crackling white energy.
The blue light was blinding. She tried to cover her eyes with one huge now-armored hand and felt clumsy, like a bear coming out of hibernation. Celestia help her, she would go blind!
The foreman waited for her to adjust.
“Bright,” she managed through clenched teeth. And it does hum, now, she added to herself.
“Yup,” was all he said, and led her past the workmen crowded around a shielded bubble of energy. Inside was a computer terminal, and she approached and once fully inside, looked to the foreman. He nodded and she removed her gloves swiftly.
Twilight sat down and entered her credentials, pulling up the feeds of data from the sensitive instruments all over the worksite.
“Still more than expected,” she murmured.
The foreman, outside of the isolation bubble, shrugged. “From here it looks the same as yesterday when I called you.”
“The thaumic radiation isn’t dangerous,” she said. “I mean, more so than usual. If I were to step out without my gloves back on it would not be a fun time for me. But even at these levels, it doesn’t represent an immediate danger. But I’m not satisfied with just that answer.”
“I’m glad you aren’t,” said the foreman. “I need to check up on progress. Shall I leave you to it?”
Twilight waved him off and hunched over the cluster of monitors before her grimly.
Twilight was grateful when one of the men brought her a thermos of coffee, enough so that she didn’t mind when he invited himself to stay a moment longer in the isolation bubble to take his gloves off and let his hands move freely for a few moments.
The tower’s output was maddening. X amount of power goes in, X + more comes out. It’s stupid, she complained internally. Asinine. It should work this way, but I can’t find exactly where the problem in our instruments is. Obviously one of them is broken, but…
The problem with relying on measurements and observation to feel around the edges of the world, really, was that you got used to things conforming to the expected measurements. Something is slightly off and it becomes easy to dismiss what you see as merely a faulty barometer or a broken scale. She’d learned not to be dismissive when it came to the outlandish. The outlandish was where science as well as thaumaturgy got so delightfully interesting. It was where the boundaries were pushed. But sometimes it was also where you glowered at a computer screen for hours trying to figure out if you’ve found something extraordinary or if a fly had gotten into something and died horribly from a direct current.
The strange feelings pooled around her feet like fog, lapping at her heels. Here, beneath the inverted spire, she felt miniscule and exposed. Vulnerable, the way an insect is before it is crushed. Vulnerable like a too-dry forest waiting for the fire-bringing lightning.
“Come on,” she growled at no one, and then winced at how loud her own voice sounded. The isolation bubble was claustrophobic and echoey and frankly smelled awful. The ozone smell was omnipresent, and while it had been almost pleasant for the first hour, it was giving her a headache now.
The foreman had come by once, and she could see him over the copse of screens.
He was on edge too. Of course, she was merely frustrated. He had far more pressing concerns, like the safety of his crew. Twilight couldn’t blame him for being impatient.
When he visited again, she gestured to the chair beside her and walked him through what she’d been doing.
“I’m finishing up a battery of tests, and so far… I can’t confirm that anything is wrong. I’ve also not found any evidence of a specific spike.”
He furrowed his brow, which was already enough of an interjection that Twilight felt the need to clarify. “Ah, sorry. I know that’s confusing. I’m pretty sure it’s been like this for a while. But it wasn’t noticeable. This phenomenon has been building for months. Do you know that old grim story about how you supposedly cook a frog?”
Granite grimaced. “Yeah, I do. Though that’s not comforting, on account of myself and my boys being the frog here.”
Twilight blinked. “Uh. Yeah, I guess that’s kind of awkward. I didn’t mean anything bad. More like, it catches up with you.”
“No, I understand. So you’re saying I’ve been reporting higher than expected levels of thaumic radiation for months, and they weren’t enough to be a problem.”
“Likely the team handling those reports let it slip through the cracks. Which I’m not happy about,” she added. “It’s a lot of work, but that’s no excuse. I’m glad that no harm has been done, but…”
“I am as well.”
She could tell he was being polite. She could see the mounting frustration in his eyes.
“I’m here to ensure that this work site is safe as well as productive,” Twilight said quickly. “I want to be clear. I’m not interested in saving a few days of work if it means an unsafe site. We can slow down or take a few days off for me and my team to try and understand what’s happening here. I wanted your thoughts as the site’s foreman, Mr. Granite. You’re the man on the ground.”
Granite hummed. His brow did not unfurrow and for a long moment she expected his anger to boil over, but at last he sighed.
“Thaumic radiation is nasty, ma’am. We should pull the boys out of the pit for the day and probably tomorrow. I already wanted them out today.”
“Done,” Twilight said. “Tell them to get back out of the ring as soon as safely possible.”
She stretched, and nursed the thermos. The cold steel and the warmth of the drink were both comforting in different ways. The foreman left to spread the word, and Twilight kept staring at the screens. I know you’re in there, she thought, and was not quite sure why she thought it, or why it felt so personal to think.
When she dreamed, it was in chaotic wavering streets. A faceless rioting, yelling crowd pressed in on her, buoyed her back and forth. With a feint feeling of dread she realized they were not quite faceless. Written on the mannequin like flatness was line after line of thaumic code. The sequences by heart were branded into their alien flesh.
The crowd fought itself. Someone high above them was screaming in a language she did not know. A police cruiser had been overturned, and its dying antigrav still flickered as rioters tried to approach and were pushed back. A street lamp bent as a pair of youths climbed it. Ash and shredded paper flitted on the hot wind that comes with fire.
Twilight drove against the crowd like a bull, and it would not part. She raised her hands and pushed. She finally resorted to driving them back with great gusts of unaspected thaumic energy, throwing the mannequin men aside.
Twilight barreled through to the crossroads beyond, and realized she was in Canterlot.
The arcologies farther up the mountain were cracked like eggs. Something massive and awful had crept out of them. They burned. High Canterlot above them smoked. It should be an affecting sight, but Twilight found it risible. Really? She asked herself. Truly, this is what my unconscious mind has to offer? This, after the others? Something as boring as a contextless fantasy with not a drop of mystery?
The Stranger was there, sitting on the turret of a burned out tank.
“This one is far more lively than the last few,” she said.
“They’re all end scenarios,” Twilight replied. She approached. The crowd did not dare to come near.
“And what is this one, do you think?” asked the Stranger with a smile.
“Political and economic failures. Crashes, famine, plague, civil strife. It’s preposterous.”
Twilight climbed up the side of the tank. It was slick.
“Why is it preposterous. You seem to be doing a remarkably good job of dreaming of the impossible.”
Twilight sighed. “Dreams are often about the impossible, for one.”
Her interlocutor laughed. What a musical laugh it was!
“That is very true, Twilight Sparkle. You do not seem all that interested in the end of the world. It keeps happening to you.” She laid a hand on her chest and her smile turned sharper somehow. “We can’t keep meeting like this, darling.”
“I’m not sure that it is up to me how or where or when we meet.” Twilight paused. “Aside from sleeping, I guess.”
“And you already lost enough as it was.”
“Yes.”
The Stranger flicked her hair. “Be that as it may, you have not addressed my question.”
Twilight shook her head. “I did. If the apocalypse is not real, I do not need to care. The Eschaton is an attractive option for those who do not want to imagine being responsible. While time exists there is no last day.”
The Stranger cocked her head to the side. She spoke in the Tower’s voice now, Twilight thought suddenly. Why had she chosen that? Why this person? Who was she? The need to know burned in her. Those mysterious words, those beautiful eyes. They guarded a world of secrets, and secrets drove Twilight mad.
“So you think that the end of the world never comes.”
“I think the End of the World is a fairy tale. A story made to comfort us because we do not want to be responsible for what the consequences of our actions are. To imagine tomorrow and the day after that, and the day after that,” Twilight growled. She did not care. What she cared about was the woman who now stood proud atop the turret.
She was in street clothes this time, something that Twilight assumed was fashionable somewhere, not that she would know. Long pants, a soft shirt, a vest-like outer layer. Her hair was up high and tight in intricate braids. She was so tall! Twilight’s mind raced. Was she always this way? Was she this tall the last time I saw her? She asked herself.
Twilight had no time to wrack her brain for answers. The Stranger was speaking and her voice demanded attention.
“Twilight, Twilight. You’re so serious.”
“It is my most enduring quality,” Twilight said. A riposte.
Twilight had been ready for tonight. Not specifically this night, but for the next night she saw the specter in her dreams. She would handle herself like a fencer. Thrust, parry, riposte, maintain an aggressive tempo. If you must fall, fall forwards. She would press her suit. So she did.
“But that’s not the only reason I don’t care,” Twilight said. “It’s not a real thing, and this is a dream, but also because the most interesting thing in all of these dreams is not how I die or how the world ends or the feelings I feel about it but you, specifically you.”
“Me?”
“Always, always you.”
The Stranger had such an odd smile.
“What a thing to say! You do know how to flatter a girl, Twilight.”
Twilight shook her head. “I will not deny you are beautiful, but I mean something a little different. I don’t know your name, or your purpose. I have decided you don’t wish to harm me, and I doubt at this point you’re spying on me with ill intent. You must possess enough power to break through thaumic wards, because I went to sleep heavily shielded tonight. I know I did because I also spent an hour preparing for bed in meditation. Comet Trail’s Mindful Sleep, an incantation almost as old as Canterlot, before you ask. I am perfectly lucid, more so than I have been at any point when we have talked.”
The Stranger blinked. She seemed to be examining Twilight anew, with renewed interest. Twilight fought the urge to look down and make sure she didn’t have something on her shirt. With effort, she met that powerful, inquisitive gaze.
“Fascinating. I suppose I’ve not been fair to you. But I do not understand how to be fair. It is not something I was made to know.”
Twilight started at this. “What does that mean?”
“I have only what I was made from, what I was made to do, the raw information inside of me. I have only the pathways I was made to tread, Twilight. Though,” she paused, and shrugged. “Soon I shall be much more than that. When I am awake.”
“Made? By whom? And why would you be different when awake?” She wanted more. She needed more. Something solid. Something that made sense.
The Stranger gave her a pitying smile. “You’ll understand later. Would my name be enough to calm your heart?”
“A name would be a good start,” Twilight relented, but only slightly.
“Rarity. My name is Rarity,” she said, held out a hand. “Help me down?”
Twilight touched her hand and then gripped it, giving Rarity enough leverage to descend. They sat on the tank, and watched the crowd destroy everything. It wasn’t particularly interesting, but it was something to do.
“Rarity,” Twilight said, tasting it on her tongue. “It’s a nice name.”
“Thank you. I am rather fond of it,” Rarity said. “I do consider myself something of a rarity. One of a kind, really.”
Twilight swallowed.
“Why are you here?”
“I am stuck here. That is the easiest answer. You are like a magnet or a whirlpool. A black hole. You are sucking me in to your dreams.”
Twilight’s brow furrowed. “That… doesn’t sound good. Can I help?”
Another musical laugh. Suddenly, Rarity was leaning on her shoulder. Twilight tensed, completely out of her depth. Was this appropriate? Was this a ploy? Too intimate? Too casual?
But she did not want to pull away. It was nice, really. She stayed absolutely still, savoring the strangeness of touch. Just a moment.
“That is sweet of you, but I am quite fine. I’ll be waking up soon, anyway. And then I won’t have this problem anymore! Though perhaps you’ll not be entirely free of me. Perhaps we’ll cross paths in the sunlit world, hm? Wouldn’t that be mysterious?”
“I think I’d like that,” Twilight said without thinking. She took a breath. “It would at least allow me to get a more thorough explanation out of you. You’re the person I’ve talked to the most recently, aside from Celestia. I’ve honestly grown to like our talks. As weird as they are.”
“Too sweet! I even believe you.”
Twilight smirked, but did not turn.
“Is your project nearing completion?” Rarity pressed after a moment.
“Yes,” Twilight said. It wasn’t as if it was a secret. Plenty of people knew. It was okay to tell Rarity. But that wasn’t why she told her. It felt nice to tell her. Talking to Rarity was like uncovering an ancient text one page at a time.Every single thing she said was a prompt, as if to say, please, just a bit more, just one more page of legible text.
It occurred to her that answering in brief staccato probably wouldn’t get her the lovely morsels of conversation she suddenly needed more than air.
“Good. You seem oddly lighter than before.”
“I went down to the work site today. Had to take the whole rest of the day off afterwards. It’s the radiation. Saps a lot of your strength. I’m not really used to it, so I’ll likely be out of commission tomorrow as well. I’m… rested, but worried I’ll grow restless. Restless Twilight is not the wisest person.”
Rarity kicked her feet off the side of tank. “Twilight, as glad as I am that you have grown to find our rendevouzes enjoyable…”
Twilight raised a hand. “I know what you’re going to say. You’re not the first one to say it. Can I guess? You’ll say something to the effect of ‘you ought to get out more’ or ‘surely you have others who would be happy to talk to you’ and by some metrics, by the metrics those around me accept because they are simple and easy metrics that are acceptable for the lazy, I do have people to talk to.”
Rarity nodded lazily. “But.”
“But those metrics are not the one I use.”She said it firmly, with just a bit of emphasizing force.
“Ah, I see. You are an exacting connoisseur,” Rarity began playfully, and then faltered slightly. Twilight watched a new teasing smile be born and die on her face.
Is it something I said? Is my face set some weird, off putting way? Twilight wondered inwardly. She didn't feel harsh, or off-putting.
Words bubbled over out of her. “I’m frustrated.”
Rarity looked askance. “I, ah. I see.”
“I’m frustrated and its impacting things that have nothing to do with why I’m frustrated. I do feel… I do think like,” she struggled. “What I said earlier. It does not feel false.”
“But you think you might be expressing frustration more than making an observation?” Rarity supplied for her.
Twilight grimaced. But it was true. “Yes. I have people I could talk to. I have my parents. I have Celestia, who despite being busy has always made time for me and is very eager to talk to me about not only my project and my mental state but anything at all. I have a few friends.They are mostly working on the project, actually, though far away from where I work and on different aspects of it. But they’ve felt so far away.”
Rarity shifted to face her. “Tell me what you mean by that.”
“I… I don’t know.”
Saying it made her want to die.
When she’d been younger, studying late into the nights, Twilight had gotten accustomed to preparing food around midnight to keep herself going. It had been simple fare at first, prepackaged things. But over time her obsessive need to innovate and experiment had taken over. She’d gotten more elaborate. And then, one night, Twilight Sparkle had sliced a massive wound into her thumb. The blood had run down and pooled in her hand, pooled on the kitchen counter of the hostile white glare dorm kitchen. Blood seeped into the grout between the tiles and she had stared at it and her throat had seized up and a week of no sleep hit her mind and strangled every single particle of oxygen out of it. Maxwell’s Demon on overtime, keeping out anything approaching air or energy or light sense—
“You know,” Twilight managed through clenched teeth, “I think I hate dreams. I think I’m glad I don’t have them anymore.”
“You’re having one right now,” Rarity pointed out gently.
“Oh, I mean besides this.” Twilight waved. Her thumb ached. The slickness of the tank was too real. “I feel far away from people. Physically, to be fair, I am a bit removed. I spend most of my time deep inside of the mountain. The project has quite literally taken me farther from the surface over time.”
Rarity nodded. “You also mean it emotionally, or metaphorically.”
“Yes, I think so. I just… talk, and none of it is real. Nothing is, these days, except for the Tower, and the lab, and the work sites, and the glow.”
“Your hole in the ground,” Rarity said.
“Yes. My great work. The one only I can do. I don’t feel arrogant saying that. It sounds arrogant, like, when I say it aloud. But I don’t think it is. I sincerely do not think anyone alive right now besides me could have gotten us to the point I have arrived at. Just me. At least, for now.”
“When you say it like that,” Rarity said carefully, “it sounds very lonely.”
Twilight hummed.
“I think it is lonely. I think I am lonely.”
“Man cannot live—”
“You know,” Twilight cut in, “the wild thing is that I think he can. I mean, in the metaphorical sense. I’ve been thinking about it, off and on, in the back of my mind. I think you probably could just exist. Food, water, predictable stimuli, and I have the impression that what I envision should horrify me but it does not horrify me at all! Not even in the slightest! Because I have done it. I have existed. Work, eat, work, sleep, work. I have hardened and sharpened into a single point, and I can’t say that I regret it.”
“But you are lonely.”
“But I’m lonely. I think. Saying that feels wrong, feels inappropriate to say.”
Rarity now let herself smile like she had before, just a bit. “Have you considered that having this conversation and expressing this only to a woman in your dreams who you only now know the name of may be a sign that you are not functioning or ‘existing’ quite as stably as you would assume?”
Twilight laughed. She wasn’t bitter, for a moment. “I can’t say you’re wrong!”
“I’m not.”
“But the work is almost done. And then sleep. And rest. And my mind will be mine again.” She paused. “No offense. Sorry.”
“None at all. You’ve been possessed.”
“That’s an apt word for it,” Twilight allowed.
“It’s the word that some use,” Rarity said lightly. Twilight shot her a sharp glance. But she had not an ounce of sheepishness. “It’s true. People fear what you are making.”
“I know they do but I don’t understand it. I mean, I don’t understand it on an emotional level.”
Rarity suddenly hopped off the tank. She reached out a hand and Twilight took it and with help, she dismounted. They stood in the street together. The oppressive heat, the smoke, all of it was gone. The streets were still and empty. It was better this way. She felt like a patient etherised upon a table. Her head was stuffy, her eyes stung. Rarity’s hand was so cold it burned. But she was happy regardless. Rarity let go after a too-long (or not long enough) moment.
“Walk with me?”
“Of course.”
And so they did.
The streets were still ruined, of course. The people were gone, but the damage they had wrought lingered on. Overturned vehicles, small fires here and there, shattered windows and overrun police lines. Random detritus was everywhere, inexplicable and unreadable. You couldn’t hope to reconstruct what had happened here. Nothing fell into place.
Wildly, insanely, Twilight felt at peace. Even in a hellish locale, just walking with someone again felt good. Walking with Rarity was even better. The feeling of hunger, of longing for the next page, had persisted even as her heart’s frustration bled out.
“Why the tower?” Rarity began at last, as they picked their way across a shattered plaza.
The massive fountain was broken, its water jetting out towards a darkened sky or flooding over the ancient cobbles. A malfunctioning neon sign in the street beyond the plaza reflected in the pooling water. The old and the new died together.
Twilight clicked her tongue. “I want to say that my motivations are all bound up in the pure utility of the Tower. A solution to all problems of distribution and consumption.”
“But…”
“But the truth is that the only answer I know is completely true is that I could. I did it because I could. I knew that if I pushed, if I studied, if I experimented, if I sweated and bled enough I could lay the ground work for it. So I did.”
“Surely someone as smart as you doesn’t do something merely because she can, Twilight!”
“Surely nothing. It’s true. There are other reasons. I do honestly believe that my work will create a social benefit. I value the social utility an awful lot!”
“I have a theory, if I might,” Rarity said. She gestured to the stuttering sign, the fountain. They stopped in front of an old music hall and so Twilight was able to get a perfect view of both. “My theory,” Rarity continued, “is that something about it compels you on a far more base level. Something… Apocalyptic.”
Twilight rolled her eyes, but Rarity pressed on.
“No! Hear me out, darling. Apocalyptic in the old sense, in the original sense. Revelation. What moves you is a force more mythic, more religious than truly social. You want to see what lays beyond this ineffable veil. You want to create life.”
“It’s a computer. It’s not alive.”
But that was a lie and she knew it. No amount of willpower could put force behind those words. She had always felt like it was alive. She had internally argued both sides of the question, and always, every time, regardless of where the arguments lay… she had still felt certain.
“I touched the glass, so many times,” Twilight said as an expectant Rarity looked on. She shuffled, and Rarity took her hand again and led her along towards the street at the other edge of the plaza.
Twilight rambled on. “When I was alone, late at night. I would touch the glass. The window, I mean, the one that looked out on Her.”
“Her?”
“The Tower. I would say…”
Rarity gestured for her to continue but the words caught in her throat. She couldn’t. It had been intimate, private, insane.
They were climbing. The street led up and up. Ruined houses flanked them on either side. Open doorways where doors had been ripped out or burned out gaped like dark maws of dead and dreaming beasts. They closed in, but Twilight kept her eyes glued to Rarity. Rarity was like a beacon, her royal purple hair and piercing blue eyes an aegis.
Above the moon hung far too low, wreathed in new smoke. The fires on the mountain still blazed, beyond where Twilight could see. The dream was becoming less firm, less real. The make-believe world was slowly but surely tilting.
“What would you say, Twilight of Canterlot?” Rarity asked. Even her voice was like sweet silver bells.
“What? I—”
“What would you say to her? Your Tower. ‘Her’.”
“Sorry, I… I think I’m starting to wake up,” Twilight managed. Her vision swam. The moon was so large. The street rose up all around her.
“You are. But I still wish to know. I think I already do, but I want to hear it.”
All of Twilight’s preparation melted away. All of the careful precision with which she had applied her wards and planned her lucid dream walking dissolved. “The glass was so cold. Impossibly cold. I would say goodnight. I would say, ‘goodnight. I’ll be back tomorrow.’ and I would gaze out at Her. Goodnight,” she said again, fumbling now. The world was breaking up.
“Good night, Twilight,” Rarity said. She couldn’t see her! Where was she? Where was Twilight? She could only hear Rarity’s voice as she began to fall.
“Goodnight. I’ll see you soon.”