Junebug - 11th of Harvestide, 4 EoH
Hackamore Valley Observatory - Evergreen Falls
June set down her pen and shook her cramping hoof. “Ugh… It will be cool when you and Vi finish that lab computer,” she said to Enox while looking at the stack of translations she’d finished. “At least I’m almost done.”
Enox huffed and flicked her ears as she lay on a plush dog bed she’d brought in to chill on while watching her marefriend work. “You already found one with readable text, so…”
“These can be translated several ways,” June reminded. “Yes, there’s only one valid cipher… Per possible encoded text. I need to check them all.”
“You haven’t even read the one you fully translated,” Enox objected.
“I mean, I got the gist from translating it. I’ll look it over seriously once I know if it’s the only one, or if it's part of a set that needs to be used together to solve another puzzle, or a fragment of a longer text, et cetera.”
Enox nodded, shuffling her weight slightly. “Why not take a break?”
June smirked and looked over her shoulder at Enox. “I’m still good from this morning.”
“Not that kind of break. Though I could totally go again,” Enox corrected, giggling mischievously. “I mean why not do something else? Work stuff. Just take an hour and work at… Whatever.”
June hummed and rested a hoof on her chin for a moment. “I guess I could check some of their documentation,” she mused, turning her chair around to look at the Astrolabe. “Yeah! That will be a nice break from this. Can you get me file two? I think I’ll see if the knobs do what they said they do.”
Enox levitated the file from the workbench across the room to the central table. June pushed her chair away from the wall, rolling into place next to the file just as it arrived.
“There you go.”
June nodded and opened the file, flipping to the tabbed section marked ‘controls’.
“Okay… First one. Center knob,” June began, referencing the document several times. “One click clockwise, no change.”
June grabbed the knob with a hoof and twisted it. It clicked loudly once, and the dials on the face immediately retracted, allowing the void within to be unobstructed as the centermost emerald filled the viewport, overlaid by the tourmaline June had concluded represented Equis… And then, a series of runes, lines, patterns, and most notably of all, Amilic runes reading ‘Comparison Mode’ on the bottom of the device’s viewport.
“Mmm. Mhm. Nothing. Suuuuuure!” June said, clenching her jaw irritably. “Okay, these files? Worthless. I’m calling it right now. These are totally fabricated. Raven said there was some corruption and cover ups, right?”
“Yeeeeep!” Enox agreed, having stood up on her rear hooves to see onto the table. “That’s true, and that’s something alright… Wait, those lines. They’re almost the same but a few are different. What’s the display saying?”
“Comparison mode,” June answered, noting Enox’s discovery and taking a closer look herself. “This… Kind of looks like one of those spot the difference puzzles. And the one poem I retrieved—”
“Poem?” Enox asked, tilting her head, making the fluid in her helmet slosh.
“It’s a whole-ass sonnet,” June said quickly. “It claimed this thing was a map of the multiverse. I wasn’t sure that was true. Aforementioned reasons. But… This could be a way to compare differences between realities.”
June nodded, certain of the discovery. “Thanks for noticing that, Enox. We need to report this. I’ll write up a report for him and—”
“And that report goes right to the Director of Research for this site,” Enox interrupted, giving June a sidelong glance. “Who is…”
She waved a hoof to prompt June.
June facehooved. “Cadence’s throbbing cunt!” June swore groaned into her hoof.
She took a few moments to process the stupid, then took a deep breath. “Okay. Why is it Doctor Grape Vine? How much does that guy do around here and why hasn’t he been replaced while he’s being investigated for corruption?”
“Starting to understand why Administrator Raven has moved in for the time being?”
“Yep.”
“Also, I’ve met Cadence. Her husband prefers kit like yours, but with a higher drop rate,” Enox clarified.
“TMI, Enox,” June mumbled under her breath.
“Just want to help you swear better,” Enox mumbled dejectedly. “Not my fault you swear by your demigod’s body parts. Which, presumably, you should be accurate about.”
June took another deep breath. And ignored Enox’s grumbling. “Okay. Cool. So… How about we just go report this right to Raven in person? Like, right now? Get that bucker kicked out soon as possible. He can’t stay in charge with a major project having clearly been total horseapples, right?”
Enox shrugged. “Maybe it doesn't work when a stallion turns the knob? We could find a dude and have them turn it.”
June rolled her eyes. “Says here they tested a male and female pony of each tribe with these controls. You know, standard protocol for determining if a relic is tribe or gender locked. And, since there’s no way it only works for transmares, we’re telling Raven this report is ‘bullshit’, as you’d say.”
Enox stretched up more to get a better look at the project folder open on the desk. “Oh shit, it does say that. Yeah. Okay. Raven time!”
⁜ ⁜ ⁜
Samhain - 11th of Harvestide, 4 EoH
Hackamore Valley Observatory - Evergreen Falls
Sam jolted upright from her nap. Her wings fluttered as she instinctively flapped up onto the couch’s back, looking for whatever had woken her up. Nothing? What? Maybe Dew dropped something heavy? I should see if she’s—
Four loud yet timid knocks of hoof on glass made Sam’s ear twitch. Her face fell slightly. Ah. That will be one of the SkyTech engineers with another random thing for me to help them with. On my last day of medical leave… Woo.
Sam flew down to the floor, stretched her hind legs out and walked towards the door. Once in the hallway and able to see the glass door, her annoyed look vanished. It was the postmare. The yellow pegasus who liked Violet.
Her name’s Fluttershy, right? Sam wondered as she trotted down the hall to open the door.
Fluttershy stood awkwardly on the step, clearly too hot given her glistening fur and flared nostrils.
Sam did her best to remain blank faced while walking despite shivering slightly at how thin and long legged the other mare was.
She looks like she spent time in The Hole, Sam thought, recalling how other PoWs looked after coming out of solitary confinement. Like she got to a medic and it's been a couple weeks since she was… You know what? I’m offering her a burger. She’s a pegasus. She can eat what I can eat. She’ll like meat.
Sam opened the door and waved her into the air conditioned space.
“You’re hot. Come in for a few minutes, I’ll get you some lemonade and something to eat before you head out…” Sam trailed off noticing the yellow mare was naked and didn’t even have saddlebags on. “Wait, it’s the afternoon. You’ve already delivered, right?”
Fluttershy nodded timidly. “Y— Yes. Can I still come in though?”
“Of course!” Sam said, gesturing again. “Violet mentioned you have a heat disorder. I’m not a monster.”
“Thank you,” she said, stepping inside as quickly as she could.
Sam closed the door to keep the cold in. “Are you looking for Violet? She—”
“Yes!” Fluttershy said with an eager smile, cutting Sam off unintentionally. “I was hoping to get to see what she does for work. We, um, we had lunch and talked and… Well, uh, you know she’s a robot, right?”
Sam giggled and grinned ear to ear. “Yes. It’s hard to miss.”
“Well, I didn’t,” Shy continued. “She asked me to think about things after telling me and… Well I did. I think she was trying to warn me off because she’s not a pony but… I mean, changelings can feed off her so she’s a person and I wanted to get to know her better… But um… I realized I don’t know what a Research Assistant even is… And if I don’t know what she thinks is important enough to do for a job—”
Sam nodded understandingly. “You don’t know a big part of her. Fair enough. I can give you a tour, show you what she’s been up to.”
Fluttershy’s ears drooped. “Oh. I was hoping Violet and I could do that together.”
“You can if you can wait for like, four, five hours,” Sam informed with a wing shrug. “She went into town with June and Enox to make a report, and I got a call like…”
Sam trailed off and glanced at the wall clock.
“... twenty minutes ago saying they were going to be back late because their report is serious, meeting with the Council, and blah blah blah,” Sam finished.
Fluttershy swished her tail timidly. “Oh. Um… I can’t wait that long. I have a meeting later. I’ll come back tomorrow.”
Sam raised an eyebrow and shook her head. “Don’t do that. I can tell you right now that while Violet is nothing like the robots you’ve read about she is still big into efficiency. You’ll be fatigued from walking up to the door through the heat till you have a full night’s sleep, right?”
Fluttershy timidly nodded. “Y— Yes. It’s not the heat… It’s sudden temperature changes.”
“Okay, but the point I’m making is if you come back later, since the telescope is set for a year-long mission, it will just be hot again. We don’t have downtime days scheduled.”
“Oh.”
“So, you’ll be exhausted for two days if you go home. Take it from me, minimize how long you spend exhausted. Your body will thank you for it.”
Fluttershy looked into Sam’s eyes, thoroughly confused. “Um, how could I…” She trailed off, biting her lip.
Sam sighed. Weird she didn’t understand me, but okay.
“I can give you a tour today. You can tell Vi that you went on it to learn about her. She’ll like you did that and didn’t waste your time and hurt yourself twice. She’ll be happy you’re interested in what she does and you two can plan from there,” Sam said, then nodded to the kitchen. “At any rate, lemonade?”
“Yes!” The overheating mare beg-answered, her eyes suddenly doing an excellent impression of a distressed kitten.
Several ice cold glasses of lemonade later, Fluttershy had her decision.
“I um… I’d like to take the tour,” she said, looking down at the table for a moment.
“Cool. It will be the second one I’ve done this month, and probably way more fun,” Sam said, smiling politely. “I’m Samhein, by the way. You can call me Sam if you like. Most ponies do.”
“Most ponies wind up calling me Shy,” Fluttershy replied.
Sam, still a little sleepy, blinked. “That’s… Rude. I’m sorry about that.”
Fluttershy laughed and flashed Sam a smile. “Good one.”
Oh poop… That’s just the end of her na— Wow, her parents were jerks! Sam cleared her throat. “Anyways, Shy, we’ll be going in and out of a few buildings, and it will be hot out there. Will you get more and more exhausted with repeated exposure?”
Shy nodded twice. “Yes.”
“Can we do anything about it?”
“W— Well, um, I could wrap a cold towel around my chest, but… I don’t want to get made fun of…” She said, looking at the table, her ears drooping with years and years of sadness.
Sam raised an eyebrow. “People have made fun of you for dealing with a disability?”
“Some people are mean.”
Sam’s raised eyebrow slowly became a furrowed brow. “Let's get you a nice cold towel, and I’ll punch anyone who laughs at you for it. I’m a vet, so, it’ll hurt ‘em more than they hurt you.”
Shy’s ears perked up. “You’re a veterinarian? Can you help me get a job—”
“No.” Sam raised a hoof to cut her off. “Vet as in retired soldier. Zebrican-Gryphon War.”
Fluttershy eeped, recoiling slightly. “Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry you were there. I heard it was awful.”
“You heard right,” Sam said as she stood up to go to the bathroom. “Have a snack, a few more drinks, anything you like. I’m going to soak a towel in cold water then toss it in the freezer. We can chat while it gets all cold, okay?”
“Okay!”
Ten minutes later and the two mares were back at the table, waiting for an egg timer to tick down and a soaked towel to be cold but not frozen. They were in the middle of a conversation mostly about each other. The simple questions everyone asks just to get to know people. Sam went first, and was grateful that Fluttershy asked about her military career just once and accepted a ‘I don’t like talking about it,’ then moved onto her current job.
Of course, it eventually came time for Sam to ask her questions. “So, you moved into the hive, right? Not town.”
Fluttershy nodded timidly. “Y— Yes.”
“Why?” Sam asked, quite reasonably. “Hate homes with windows?”
Fluttershy smiled for a moment at Sam’s joke then kicked her hooves gently. “A— Actually… I’m a changeling.”
Sam blinked. “Oh. Well that answers that then. What hive are you from? Might have been out their way,” she said with a friendly smile.
Fluttershy tilted her head, not remotely having expected a kind and polite response. The Ponyville area, being mostly full of uneducated farmers, had not taken well to Queen Chrysalis's invasion of Canterlot.
“I don’t know,” Fluttershy quietly replied. “I thought I was a pegasus my whole life, till the invasion. I got transformed by the… love… wave… thingie? You know when Cadence freed her husband?”
Sam nodded and Fluttershy continued. “I thought the magic turned me into a changeling for weeks. So did doctors because, I don’t know? They didn’t say it in a way I understood. I eventually changed back on my own… And that’s when I realized I’m just, you know… Not a pegasus.”
Sam nodded and gently took hold of Fluttershy’s hoof. “That’s rough. But lucky you, you can be anything you want!”
Shy shook her head. “Nope. I um… It’s kind of like a martial art. I can be me, or a bug. That’s it… and not even proper me. I’m too skinny and I think I look sick.”
Sam clapped her hoof against the table, making Shy jump. “That’s why I think you look too twiggy!” Sam announced, a little rudely.
Shy’s ears drooped. “T— Twiggy?”
“You’re a changeling Scout. Like, that’s your caste. You know how you guys have different castes, like ants?”
Shy nodded slowly. “Y—Yes?”
“You’re inexperienced at shapeshifting, and you’ve got a scout’s body proportions on a pegasus body. It looks a bit off,” Sam explained. “Now that I know you’re a changeling, it’s not setting off my ‘Call a doctor’ alarms.”
Shy blushed deeply. “O— Oh… I thought I was starving too… I used to be um, plump. So uh, I tried letting some stallions have fun with me to eat, but it didn’t work. Obviously. Also I didn’t feel like I do when a pony appreciates me, so…”
Sam winced. “Oh. Yeah. I have a few changeling friends. Eating lust is hard, apparently. More nutritious, but hard. I think it’s a skill they teach? Kind of like cooking.”
Shy nodded again and twitched her wings nervously. “Mhm. At least I know why I feel sick if people around me are angry now though.” She shuffled her hooves for a moment. “Am I a bad pony because I’m nice so I don’t starve?”
Sam gave her a flat look. “No. And if you’re going to use that level of overthought logic, then everypony is only really nice to not be disliked and altruism is a lie. Kindness is kindness, it doesn't matter why someone’s being kind… Unless they’re trying to trick you to hurt you. Which noling ever does.”
Sam frowned as she realized her point was muddied by many recent events. “Okay, some do. But you just want to live a normal life and not be hungry. Right?”
“Right.”
“Then there you go,” Sam said, smiling once more. “So, you moved into the hive to learn about your people then?”
“Yes. But I can’t move all the way in yet… Apparently because I don’t smell like the hive, and we work a lot like ants. Except my scent should change over time, so in a month or two I can be doing normal things there... Instead of being stuck in a small area on separate ventilation…”
“Then you don’t work for CARE?” Sam asked.
Fluttershy shook her head. “Um, no. Just the town post office.”
Sam nodded, paused, frowned, then asked. “Wait, if that’s the case… Some stuff here is classified. Do you have CARE Clearance?”
“Yes. Level 2, for access to buildings only. Because I deliver the mail,” Shy answered honestly. “I um, I have it while not on shift too, so I can pick up mail after hours on request.”
“Oh. Cool. I have a similar clearance. Nothing in here’s above a 3, so, we’re fine to go whenever—”
The egg timer buzzed, making both mares jump.
Sam cleared her throat and stood up to get the towel. “Okay. Violet spends most of her time working on the radio telescope and helping June in the lab. We’ll start with the scope.”
“Sounds good.”
⁜ ⁜ ⁜
After an hour Sam decided she preferred giving Fluttershy a tour over Pinkie. Sure, Pinkie was an old friend but she’d been there on business. Shy, on the other hoof, seemed genuinely interested in all kinds of things. While it was clear she was the outdoorsy type, she had some level of appreciation for gadgets and gizmos.
Fluttershy had excitedly pointed out how cool it was to see the observatory’s mainframe working because “Oh wow! Thermionic diode machines are rare!” But also, the maneframe’s many moving data-reels, servo actuated plugboards, and of course the humming and thrumming was “just like a tiger’s purr!” as she put it.
Sam recalled Violet mentioning she saw the observatory’s computers much like pets and passed the information on, which seemed to brighten poor Fluttershy’s day. Eager as she was for her tour, it was clear that even with the towel every time they had to go between buildings she was in distress.
“Why don’t you pick up one of those cooling vests?” Sam asked as she closed the laboratory door behind the two of them for the final stage of the tour.
Shy blushed and flicked her wings awkwardly. “Fillyhood bullying…”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Wow. Dicks.”
Shy blushed lightly. “Um, just between us girls… Isn’t it weird how we use dicks as a negative word when most of us rather like them?”
Sam paused to think for a moment, then nodded. I haven't seen her shapeshift, but that is absolutely a changeling thought. “I guess?”
“I should get one though,” Fluttershy mused. “A vest I mean. Ponies here seem much nicer. I um, probably could have had one in Ponyville too… But I didn’t need it. The weather ponies kept everything stable all the time. At least they did while Rainbow was in charge, but then she became an Element and the new pony in charge of the weather team was kind of a slacker and… um, nevermind.”
Sam nodded understandingly and trotted down the hall. “Labs just down here. Violet’s in the middle of building a better computer for June in here. Speaking of June, she’s studying a relic in the lab so, don’t touch anything. I don’t want to mess with her flow.”
“Okay,” Fluttershy said, flapping her wings to take off and slowly hover after Sam.
“You can touch the floor.”
“Oh.”
Sam smiled as she pushed on the locked lab door. “It’s okay, I’ve done that too,” she said while fetching her key ring from her saddlebags and making a mental note to lock the lab back up after leaving.
I can't wait for the SkyTech people to get their clearance so I can stop having to unlock every single door… Oh man they’re not going to rescind that order till they’re done and gone are they? Dang it!
Sam opened the door and held it open for Shy. She trotted forwards, only to stop next to Sam, cock her head and sniff the air briefly on reflex.
Sam sighed, bracing for the inevitable instinct-level rejection. “I know, I don’t smell like a—”
“Y— You smell great though?” Fluttershy said, frowning.
“Uh? Well, uh… no? I don’t have any personal pheromones. Registered disorder.”
“Right! So you smell like the places you go and things you do. It’s nice! Kinda like a scented candle that tells your story.”
Sam blinked. “Oh. Uh… Thanks?”
“You’re welcome!”
The two trotted inside. Their attention was drawn to the far wall where the lab’s old computer sat, whirring away as it ran some program or another. Next to it sat a newly added workbench where a pile of old computer parts and some strange silvery gem studded alien looking components lay in a neat and orderly arrangement.
“Oh that’s interesting,” Shy commented, trotting towards the computer in progress. “Those look a lot like the old tech relics you can find in those super-deep-down ruins sometimes. Is this what June’s studying?”
“No, that's the computer, Enox is helping her with it. I guess those are the parts she made?” Sam questioned, looking at the parts suspiciously. If that little green troll has access to her people’s tech, why do I only ever see her using our junk to do stuff?
Shy nodded and continued to inspect the parts, not touching anything. “I have no idea what I am looking at… Everypony says these will be used for everything soon. Should I learn how they work?”
Sam hesitated a moment, her old ranger training telling her this mare was pulling her tail. While Fluttershy did imply she had no idea what she was looking it, she’d said as much while looking at the parts Enox had brought. And she’d known the names of all the older components in the other machines.
Nopony that interested in old computers could be this naive about them, she decided, but I’ll play along. She probably wants to avoid being asked to do IT work.
Sam nodded slowly. “Yep! They’ve digitized the time card system for the CARE labs. Everypony should at least know how to use a computer, if not how they work,” she continued before turning to the central table. “June’s working on understanding this… Thing…”
Sam’s eyes widened slightly as she saw the astrolabe on its stand displaying something she’d never seen before. “Oh! That’s new.”
Fluttershy turned to look. “What’s new?”
“I’ve never seen it show what it’s showing right now,” Sam said, trotting towards it. “I hope June was here for this… Let me see if she took any notes.”
A quick glance at the table showed nothing. No note, no pad with an impression of a note which she may have run off to Raven with. Nothing.
“Well it’s a good thing we stopped by,” Sam commented. “June might not know about this. We should leave a note… And I should copy the runes it’s showing. Shame my hoof writing sucks for runes.”
Fluttershy trotted over to the table. “I have good penmanship, let me do it.”
Sam nodded in agreement and then carefully, without disturbing any other papers, picked up June’s notepad and a pen and passed them to Fluttershy. “Here… Uh, June. Hi, it’s Sam. I brought Fluttershy on a tour of the observatory to show her what Violet does. The astrolabe is showing a screen displaying some kind of new data overlaid with other… dat— is that us?”
Sam frowned and stared intently into the astrolabe’s small screen. A pair of silhouetted mares were outlined on its face, arranged in the same way she and Fluttershy were standing. Notably the taller thinner silhouette had a faint ghostly image of a changeling overlaid on it as well, along with some runes spelling out a short message.
Had either mare been able to read Amilic they would have known what the device was saying. Unfortunately, to them, the runes were just mysterious slightly sinister red glowing lights within an even more sinister device. Of course, ‘Unique divergences located’ is a fairly sinister sounding phrase in and of itself.
Fluttershy looked up at the astrolabe from the pad and gasped, she flapped her wings to move back from the relic showing an image of her, on instinct, and clipped the table edge with her wing. The jolt knocked the astrolabe off its stand, making the relic plop onto the table with a soft metallic thud.
Shy eeped and reached out to pick it back up, again on instinct. “Sorry, I—”
Sam’s eyes widened. She reached out to grab Fluttershy’s hoof, missed, and both mares touched the astrolabe at the same time. They yelped as a mild static shock struck both of them with enough force to make their fur go all poofy.
“Buck!” Sam shouted, waving her hoof in pain.
Fluttershy coughed awkwardly and waved her hoof, faking distress. “Um, ow…”
Sam side eyed Fluttershy. Is she faking that having hurt to seem like a pony? Poor thing. She needs to know she doesn't have to do that anymore.
“Changelings are shock proof? Lucky.” Sam grunted, putting her hoof back down with a slight hiss thanks to her still stinging frog.
Shy blushed and nodded. “Yeah...” She said in a way that very distinctly was covering up for a little white lie.
Oh! Sam blushed shyly and leaned into her own horseapples to prevent the other mare from being embarrassed further.
“Yep. Well believed fact…” She coughed into her good forehoof. “Right, so uh, now we need to go into town and tell the doc we got shocked by a relic and get a full check up. You know that, right?”
Fluttershy nodded. “Yes. Um, can we go do that like, now now? Just in case that’s a melt into goop curse?”
Sam had not considered that possability. “Yes. Yes we can.”
⁜ ⁜ ⁜
Later that night, Sam went to bed, happy to have been given a clean bill of health after an hour and a half of intensive scans. Fortunately for her, the shock was considered to be a discovery rather than a containment breach, and internal affairs’ quick investigation had decided she hadn’t done anything wrong by giving Fluttershy a tour in light of both mares’ clearance allowing for it, and the Astrolabe having been previously designated as entirely harmless.
They did give her a written warning to not go near active projects without the Researcher's knowledge again, though. A disciplinary measure Sam entirely agreed with.
Sam got to sleep far more easily than she did most nights. She laid down, pulled her blankets over herself to hide deep within their quilted folds, and was out like a light. No sooner than she was asleep, she found herself plunged into a vivid dream.
Vivid dreams had been something Sam had gotten used to over the last couple weeks thanks to Princess Luna’s blessings. She was entirely familiar with the hyper-reality of a well crafted dreamscape the princess had forged expressly for someone in need of quality rest and true relaxation. This dream was nothing like those.
It was too real.
Everything looked, felt, smelled, sounded, and tasted exactly like it was real. No imagination, no exaggeration, no fog from a half remembered sensation. It was as if Sam were plunged through a pool and emerged in another world entirely.
A world where her homeland didn’t exist, where it was just a province of a less prosperous but more expansive Zebrica. A world where she saw through eyes that were her own yet not her own. A world where she was a school teacher.
Then, as if the dream were a rubber band being stretched out, she snapped out of that world into another equally real-feeling time and place where she was an auto wagon mechanic.
Another change. She was a mother who stayed home to tend to her foals.
Another. This time Sam was a weather pony.
A warehouse clerk.
A drill instructor for an air force.
A priest in some weird purple cube religion.
A happy single mare in a utopian world where all work had been automated.
The dream opened windows into the lives of thousands of Sams, then it opened one final window. One Sam knew already. This window led to her life.
She was seven. She’d just flown for the first time on her own that day. She’d snuck out of the house to fly again, this time in the moonlight so the poor Mare in the Moon wouldn’t feel so bad that nopony did anything in her prettier-nicer-not-hard-on-the-eyes light.
Sam braced herself, ready to relive everything. The beam of light that engulfed her. The random slips in and out of consciousness while under an unknown entity’s knife. The feeling of the crystal being set into her bones.
It never came. Sam felt herself pulled out of her younger self’s body to watch from the sidelines. She saw herself reach the peak of the climb she’d been making when she’d been captured. An oily stain on reality Sam had never seen before oozed into existence from a crack in the world behind her younger self.
It bent, twisted, and moved the world to its liking. It did not create the ensnaring light, but it called out for it. It arranged her fate. The proof was staring her in the face. Somehow, Sam simply knew what the stain was doing.
The dream faded away. Not to blackness but to greenness. Sam found herself standing in a large featureless room. It was freezing, wet, and everything felt slightly too light. As if everything were under intangible water within a room lit by a dim green lamp.
She was not alone. A large brain floated at eye level before her, a long slender unicorn-like horn attached to it as Sam knew horns to be but had never, ever, wanted to see outside of an anatomy textbook.
The brain’s horn lit up with magic and it floated the Astrolabe into a place where it could have looked at its face, if it had eyes.
It spoke to her. “You’re free to choose your own fate. You could hurt that shadow if you wanted to. I recommend you do.”
Sam sat bolt upright in bed, sweat soaking her fur and blankets. The phone in her room was ringing.
Sam grit her teeth, took a deep breath to try and forget the nightmare, then picked up the phone, her voice shaky. “H— Hello?”
The sounds of a stand mixer whirring away reached Sam’s ears slightly before Fluttershy’s voice. “Um, h— Hi. Sorry for calling late. It’s Shy.”
Sam groaned and rubbed her eyes with her free hoof. “Did you also have a nightmare?”
“Oh, you did too,” Shy said with a worried tremor in her voice. “I um… I hoped you didn’t.”
“Did you…see a bunch of like, other lives you lived?” Sam asked wearily.
“Yeah… I’m something different every time. Sometimes a pony, sometimes a changeling, sometimes brave, a robot once.” Shy said timidly. “D— Did you see a… B— A br—”
“Yes, I saw it,” Sam said to spare the poor mare from having to relive it too much. “Did it talk to you? And uh, did it have the Astrolabe?”
“Yes. To both,” Shy said as the mixer stopped whirring. There was a long pause as Sam heard the sounds of her starting to scoop dough from the bowl.
“Are you making cookies?” Sam asked, frowning somewhat.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“W— Well what did it tell you?” Shy asked nervously.
Sam winced, hoping she hadn’t been woken up before that thing had time to give her some kind of instructions to avoid a terrible fate at the tendrils of that stain on the world.
“It showed me… That something made sure I got this crystal,” Sam answered slowly. “Told me it messed up. That I’m free to be… What I want. That I could hurt whatever that shadow thing is. If I wanted to. And that I should hurt it, probably. You?”
“I um,” Shy cleared her throat. “It showed me that I was supposed to be an Element of Harmony. That some… Oily thing changed my destiny. Then it told me I'm free to be anything I want to be… And that I make the best snickerdoodles in the whole multiverse and I should bring it some if I ever get the chance.”
Sam blinked twice. “Oh. So… You’re making snickerdoodles?”
“Yes, I’ve never made any before. So, um… Could you come over and tell me if they are good? S— So we can know if the dreams are true.”
“You know it’s true,” Sam countered instantly.
“Yes. But. I don’t want to be alone and I don't have Violet’s phone number and I’m about to have a bajillion snickerdoodles because I anxiety-baked. And robots don’t eat! Okay Vi does, but she hates like, food food because energy density, blah blah, superior gear oil and screws diet… Come help with cookies!”
Sam nodded once, facehooved as she remembered ponies couldn’t see you through a phone, and said, “I’ll be right over. I could use a friend too.”
Sam quickly flew to Violet’s training field and after explaining to the changeling standing look out at the hive entrance she wanted to visit Fluttershy was led into the hive. She’d been in the changeling city before, which made it nothing special to her. Just a series of organically shaped, smoothed stone, dross lined tunnels filled with many large chambers for socializing with fake stalactites and bioluminescent plants, and tunnels with row after row of doors leading to homes, businesses, shops, and everything else civilizations need.
In no time at all she found herself guided through an airlock, told that her guide wouldn’t be going further due to ‘pheromone changes’ and that Fluttershy was in the first room on the left.
Sam knocked on Shy’s door, and the mare opened the green resin slab immediately. While Shy’s thin frame filled the doorway, Sam could see she’d gathered some clouds to make her own furniture and painted the walls brown at the bottoms, green at the tops, and also painted the ceiling blue.
Huh. She likes the surface more than the sky… Of course she does. Actually a buggo.
Sam nodded and stepped inside. Fluttershy closed the door behind Sam, then wordlessly handed her a cookie. “R— Remember. I’ve never made these. Have you had one before?”
Sam nodded. “My country invented these. My mom owned a bakery, made the best snickerdoodles anypony ever had,” she said truthfully before taking a bite of the cookie.
Her eyes widened. Her pupils dilated. Her heart sped up as her sense of cookie quality instantly shifted forever. “Nevermind! Mom’s were crap! She’d agree.”
Fluttrshy bit her lip then, hesitantly, took a bite of her own cookie and gasped. “Oh my goodness!”
The two mares quickly ate another six cookies each before realizing, with some level of horror, that their dreams had been less dreams and more messages.
“We… We need to tell June or somepony else about this, right?” Fluttershy asked Sam.
Sam nodded. “Yeah… Also, I think we should probably, you know. Help her.”
“So we can understand what happened?”
Sam nodded again. “I want to… Pretty sure you want to.”
“Yes. I need to know,” Shy agreed. “W— What if we’re meant to stop that thing?”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “The brain or the stain?”
Shy paused, twitched her wings nervously, then swished her tail. “Um… The shadow thing. I think the brain’s just lonely and wants a snack.”
“Wait, it asked for cookies?”
Shy nodded once. “Y— Yes.”
I mean, it did ask her for cookies, Sam mused. Eldritch horrors from beyond the stars probably don’t care about some flour and sugar.
“Did… Did it tell you where to deliver them?”
“No,” Shy said, her ears drooping. “Which bothers me a lot.”
“Right so… Want to head over? June goes to sleep at like, two. She’s either at the lab, or at her marefriend’s. If she’s at her marefriend’s we wait for morning because. Uh… Well, she’s still a young mare and her marefriend’s species seems to default to horny.”
Shy blushed and squirmed a little. “Um… How about I just, stay with you? Like overnight. And we tell her in the morning. I don’t think I could get back to sleep anyways.”
Sam laughed and nodded. “Yea, me too. Come on, we can… I don’t know. Write down everything we remember, then watch whatever is on TV at this hour.”
⁜ ⁜ ⁜
Junebug - 12th of Harvestide, 4 EoH
Hackamore Valley Observatory - Evergreen Falls
June trotted across the compound to her lab. She’d spent the night at Enox’s since it was closer to town and the meeting had gone late as balls. It had gone well though.
Raven and the anonymous council all agreed that the reports were obviously falsified due to her discovery. And as falsifying data was a fireable offense, several of Grape Vine’s cronies could now be taken aside and interrogated. Unfortunately the kingpin remained untouchable, as it wasn’t technically his fault if a report turned out to be a lie.
June yawned and walked through the exterior door to her lab. Since the sun was coming up, it took her a few moments to realize the lab door wasn’t locked. Her eyes widened as she feared a break in. She sprinted to her lab, shouldering open the doors, eyes wide, searching for anything amiss—
A tired looking Sam and a yellow pegasus mare June didn’t remember the name of were hovering over the lab’s table next to the astrolabe making an arcane circle out of cookies.
“... What?” June demanded more of reality than the two mares.
“Eep!” Fluttershy squeaked.
“Why are you two drawing Meddowbrook’s Matrix in cookies on my table?” June demanded, this time of the ponies.
Sam cleared her throat. “Uh… Well, you see…we put a cookie on the astrolabe but nothing happened after it vanished, so—”
June took a deep breath, her wings flaring. “WHAT?!”
Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Well the floating brain in it asked for some snickerdoodles—”
“WHAT?!”