With the candles burning and the moon shining, Bastian finished pouring sugar into his coffee and chuckled to himself at the irony. The only person who didn’t need the caffeine, and he was still addicted to his coffee. Still, he thought, it was good stuff.
The Earth human who developed the new strain of coffee to go along with Arabica and Robusta had naturally called it Equestrica. The first few strains had been even worse than the instant coffees back on earth. But he’d worked at it and finally come up with a bean that tasted almost as good as it smelled. Bastian had been one of his first customers, and was still one of the steadiest.
Everyone’s finances had improved as their crops did. The silos of Humantown were stuffed with grain and vegetables, and finally the farmers were having the time to do something other than work the land and worry that their work wasn’t enough. Specialized offerings like the coffee had been developed, and specialized jobs as well.
For Bastian, of course, time was never a problem. Having an extra eight or nine hours every day had let him speed up when running the convention on Earth. Now it let him slow down. After he no longer had to settle disputes, he had settled into a job helping others plan. Several Earth humans had asked him to set up farming schedules, and pegasus people and magical bronies had frequently called to see what specialization was needed. Humantown now boasted a smithy, a candle-maker’s, and a grain mill, all of which had Bastian somewhere in the planning. In a year or two at the current rate of expansion, the town would be entirely self-sufficient. Even being cut off from Earth wouldn’t be enough to damage it.
He stepped outside onto his porch. Crickets and frogs were making their nightly sounds, and the leaves rustled in the breeze, but all else was quiet, as it had been every other night. Except it wasn’t. The din of activity came to his sensitive ears from across the edge of town. Was something going on in Ponyville? He put down the coffee and went to see.
When he reached the other town, he saw a few young foals running around playing with each other, but he couldn’t figure out what was going on. Cardboard boxes were stacked next to each of the houses and stores, and Bastian vainly tried to find somepony old enough to explain it all to him. He was on the verge of cracking open one of the boxes to take a peek, when a pony came up behind him.
“Well, hey! Have you come to help set up? That’s great. Do you want to start in the center of town and work your way out, or at one end and work across?”
Bastian knew the voice immediately. “Wait, Pinkie Pie, help with what? What’s going on?”
“What’s going on? Do you think that all the decorations get up by themselves? Do you think they just magically stick to the houses? Well, some of them do if the house is owned by a unicorn, but we still have to put them up.”
“Decorations for what?”
Pinkie ripped open the nearest box and pulled out a long line of bunting with cutouts of spiders on it. “For Nightmare Night, of course.”
“Is that coming up? I haven’t looked at a calendar. . . but wait, I’m sure that it’s past October by now. Halloween’s long over.”
“What’s ‘Halloween’?”
Bastian waved off the question. He had assumed that the holidays, being so similar, would be the same day on the calendar.
Pinkie was attaching the decorations to the roofs without benefit of a ladder, making impressive leaps and taping or nailing each end to the edge. “So,” she said, “grab a spider or a ghost and put it on something.”
Bastian shrugged and started helping. “Nightmare Night is tomorrow, then?”
“Of course! I’m hoping to get a bunch of humans there too. What are you going to dress up as?”
“Honestly, I don’t think any of us knew the day was coming. But even if we had, I don’t think we would have had the time and resources to get costumes.”
Pinkie wrinkled her nose. “Party-poopers!”
“At least we don’t have to worry about Nightmare Moon eating us. She only goes after ponies. We humans probably don’t taste very good.”
“I guess, but I do wish you were coming. I’ve been anticipating having so many new friends since we invited you here, but it seems that all you do is work, work, work, every day!”
“Well, we have to get by.” Bastian looked back toward the town, and thought about how to explain to Pinkie. “We can’t all be partiers. Some of us have to work the rock farms. But it’s getting better.”
“I suppose. Honestly, if it weren’t for Twilight--that is, if I’d been in charge--we’d probably just have you live here in town and help you with everything, and then you’d know everything and we’d all be getting ready for the party.”
“But then we wouldn’t have Humantown. It’s something that’s going to be better for us in the long-term.”
Pinkie finished making an origami-style sculpture of Nightmare Moon in cardboard and faced Bastian. “Speaking of long-term, and of showing up for fun, what about you?”
“Beg pardon?”
“You should certainly be around more. I know that you don’t sleep.”
“How did you know that?”
“It’s hard to explain. But before we brought you here, and we had humans under observation, everypony had certain people that we specifically focused on. You were mine.”
“Is that so? I’m not sure I like that. Kind of an invasion of privacy,” said Bastian.
“An invasion of privacy? Like, say, watching somepony go crazy and talk to lint because she thought her friends didn’t like her?”
“Touché.”
Pinkie mood-swung back from accusatory to happy. “So you should certainly be coming around to Ponyville more often. What’s holding you back?”
Bastian wanted to answer that his work kept him busy, but stopped himself because it wasn’t true. He had plenty of time. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, come tomorrow, at least. Maybe if you do have fun one night, you’ll figure out why you’re not having any the other nights.”
“All right, Pinkie. I’ll be there.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Pinkie promise?”
“Has anypony ever actually kept a Pinkie promise?”
Pinkie thought and waved her hoof. “It’s about fifty-fifty.”
“Well, how about I make firm plans to come and, if anything comes up that isn’t an emergency, I’ll tell whoever needs me that I’m busy?”
“Works for me! Now let’s get this inflatable goblin blown up!”
***
With the town decorated and the sun rising, Bastian made his way back to Humantown. On the way to his house, he saw someone flying above. He had gotten used to seeing people in the air, but still had his eye caught by someone else up so early. “Good morning!” he called.
“How d’you do?” The figure descended, and Bastian recognized Luke, the trader. “Up early like me?”
“You could say that. I was helping decorate Ponyville.”
“Right, tonight’s Nightmare Night.”
“You knew?” asked Bastian.
“Well, yeah. Everyone knows. We didn’t really have the time or resources for costumes, though I’ve got a few from Earth for those who don’t want to wear their street clothes. But most people are definitely going for the free candy.”
“How did I miss it? Am I really that out of it?”
Luke didn’t know what to say to that. He tried to change the subject. “Well, I’m going to go open up the store so I can close early. Have you ever been around? We’ve got the finest stuff from back home.”
“No, but I should go. I’d definitely like to see.”
They traveled to Luke’s store, where already some ponies were lined up to buy neckties and utensils. Bastian walked around the store, reminiscing about when it was necessary and useful to have electronics and hardware. He stopped in front of a display of cell phone cases.
“Is there really any market for this?”
“You’d be surprised. A few people still keep their phones with them, even though there’s no service. Maybe they just use them to play games, or maybe they just like the feel of them as a tie to Earth and home.”
Bastian thought about his desk at home, with the phone still secured inside. “I think I’ll buy one,” he said.
He left the store and went home. There were a few chores to be done around his garden plot and then meetings with other people who were running specialized businesses and wanted his advice. He had been looking forward to his usual quiet dinner and relaxing night, but now he felt a twin pull in the back of his mind. The concrete disruption would be the celebration he would attend. The vague disquiet was the feeling that he had nothing to celebrate.
***
There were indeed humans running around Ponyville that night, and Bastian was glad to get the contact high from seeing so many smiling faces. Even the foals were talking with the humans now. Although there weren’t many in Humantown, the word was spread that full families of humans had settled elsewhere, including young pegasus people with tiny wings. Bastian thought about traveling elsewhere to see them.
Desirous of getting some candy himself, he had joined Pinkie Pie’s group and was going from house to house taking his share. Half of it he redistributed to the foals accompanying them. If nothing else he was winning friends.
The time soon came for the candy offering, which went off without incident. Everypony pretended to be scared, and Princess Luna made her appearance disguised as her one-time alter ego. When the event ended, she reverted to her normal form and indicated to Bastian that he should come aside.
“Happy Nightmare Night, Princess,” he said.
“Thank you, fellow night-dweller. I have often seen you out of doors as I patrolled the night sky.”
“I didn’t know you came out to Humantown that often.”
“Oh, yes. Celestia has asked that I be sure to keep an eye on the immigrants.” Luna realized that he might take that the wrong way. “For your protection, I mean. There are dangerous creatures in Equestria, you know.”
“I see. Thank you.”
“You need not keep watch yourself. All may sleep soundly under my watch.”
Bastian explained to the princess why he was up and about at night.
“I see. I wonder. . .” She trailed off.
“Yes, your highness?”
“There’s no need for the title. But it was just an idle thought. Perhaps, if I possessed your skill, I could have remained to see the day and not been consumed by the spirit of jealousy that made me into the monster they celebrate tonight. There were so many ways that could have been avoided.”
“I suppose.” Bastian was in little mood to give Luna advice or comfort, being occupied with his own issues.
“If you are not overly occupied, would you accompany me on my journey?”
“Journey?”
Luna smiled. “Surely you do not think that I give particular favor to this village on Nightmare Night? There are celebrations in every city and town in Equestria.”
Bastian was a little unnerved at the thought of spending more time with Luna, but with everyone else wrapping up their celebration, there was little else to do but go home and not sleep. He agreed to go.
“Excellent. Then I will summon the chariot.”
Luna addressed her guard ponies, and Bastian wondered if they didn’t need to correct for the added weight. He thought of asking some pegasus person he knew, perhaps that fellow Luke who he had talked to that morning. It stabbed at him to think that, while many of them came to him for help, there was none that he could single out as a best friend to ask a simple question of.
They flew to all the cities of Equestria. Bastian got to see Hoofington, Baltimare, Los Pegasus, and in each was a crowd waiting to cheer and fear Princess Luna. At each stop, she levitated the candy they offered into the chariot.
“Princess, do you really eat all that candy?”
“Of course I do,” she said, but then couldn’t keep a straight face. “No, I give most of it away to the underprivileged foals of Canterlot, who don’t normally get sweets. They don’t go through with the running and screaming there. Back in Canterlot I’m much more approachable, but since everypony else likes the scarier Nightmare Moon, at least tonight, I’m happy to give them what they want.”
“Give them what they want,” Bastian repeated. “Yes, I can understand that.”
As they sailed through the sky, Luna looked off into the distance. With her eyes focused on Canterlot Castle, she spoke.
“When I was exiled, I had a lot of time to think. Mostly about revenge, but a thousand years is a long time. There was another idea that started to come into my head, slowly, and always drowned out by my anger and hatred. But it grew and persisted, and, once I returned and the evil was drained from me, I took it out and thought about it. You would probably not prefer to wait a thousand years, though.”
“No, ma’am. I mean, no, your majesty. I mean, no, Princess Luna.”
“All the years that I watched Equestria, both when I crafted its night and when I viewed it from my lofty perch, I saw a land of beauty and joy and plenty, a land populated by ponies who grew and loved and played. What I realized was that it was more than a land. Equestria became a living thing unto itself. No, not even a living thing. A thing beyond living. That which lives can die, but what Equestria has become can never die. Say rather that it is a force, or an entity, or a continuum.
“If I am right in that judgment, then a second realization follows. It is not enough to live in Equestria in order to have that force. One must give of one’s self if one is to achieve it. I raised the moon and filled the sky with stars and watched over Equestria, but what, in many years, had I done to earn Equestria?”
Bastian had been listening in rapt attention. “Are you saying that I too need to earn Equestria?”
“I am not saying anything like that. Merely recounting my own thoughts. You must decide for yourself whether they have any relevance to your own position. We are approaching your village. I will have the charioteers bring us to your house.”
How Luna signaled to her drivers was not made clear to Bastian. Perhaps she did so by magic, or by a visual sign from one of her wings. In any case, they descended and landed gently, and he stepped out.
“Good night, Bastian,” the princess said. “I am sure we will speak again.” She flew off into the waning night.
Bastian looked around his house. It was neat and well organized, and he found it a good place to think. He sat down, looked at the room, and thought. By the afternoon, he knew what he had to do.
Again he had the feeling of needing someone to explain to. Princess Luna was far off in Canterlot. He thought of Olivia, but that would only be an official notification, not a personal notification. It was Hobson’s choice. He walked back to the trading post.
“Hi, Luke.”
“Bastian.”
“Forgive me for imposing, but I’m going back to Earth.”
“Planning a visit? Thanks, but I go often enough that—you mean for good?”
Bastian nodded.
“But why? The people who went back, they’re the ones that we didn’t want around anyway, who weren’t willing to work or who made trouble. Everyone here likes you.”
“Well, maybe that’s part of the reason. If we are going to send back people, it shouldn’t just be our castoffs. But it’s more personal. Always I’m looking back to see what I should do next, because I just feel, deep down, that there’s something I’ve missed. It happened during that convention, when I was able to watch an early season-one episode of the show again, and I almost recaptured the sense of wonder I had before I started running a convention. I got that feeling back in the early days of building Humantown and living with the ponies. But I lost it again. So now I have to go back to where it all started, and try again. I know I’m on the right path, but I just can’t seem to find the end of it.”
Luke was a little overwhelmed, and wished that Julie were there. She was better at handling this sort of thing. But since a fellow brony needed him to listen, he did, and shook Bastian’s hand. “Well, if you ever need anything from Equestria, you know where to turn. We’ll all be waiting for you, whether you’re here or not.”
“Thanks for understanding.”
Bastian put in an appearance at Olivia’s home-office. She was disappointed, and thought briefly of guilt-tripping him by saying that she couldn’t do the job without him, but she had been doing just that, so she didn’t say anything. He went home, packed what he needed, and headed for the Gate.
It was nighttime when he reached it, and the moon was rising. He looked up at it and said, “Well, Princess, I guess you were wrong. We’re not going to speak again. Unless I make it back. Good luck to you all, and good-bye. I will miss you.”
He stepped through.
***
A month later, Bastian was immersed in his new routine. He had found several houses for rent that were impressive, but had settled for a simpler two-bedroom cottage that he could take a mortgage on, since he wanted as much connection to Earth as possible, lest he be tempted to go back to Equestria. He had chuckled at the irony of an Earth human lacking connection to the Earth. But he chastised himself for feeling the temptation. Take the lesser house, he told himself, because you don’t deserve a better one.
The job he had found was at the tail end of the full-employment bubble. The supermarket had taken him on as the assistant night manager. Between the rank and the night differential, he was making decent money and had relative security in a downturn that even he could see was coming.
The crew that worked under him were nice people for the most part, but they were night workers, and had a mentality that Bastian had seldom encountered. There was a fishy-eyed, lanky man who couldn’t find anything better, an ex-bouncer who viewed everything cynically having seen a thousand brawls, and a woman who salivated over every paycheck and lamented her lack of money on every day that wasn’t payday. All of them constantly carried a look of hopelessness on their faces.
If they had a reason for it, it was the manager of the night shift, a beer-bellied, balding forty-five-year old with ulcers. He was a stickler for the rules, except where sucking up was involved. Above all else was the constant pessimism. Every night he predicted that deliveries would be late, people would be calling in sick, and the work wouldn’t get done. When he was proven wrong, there was always shock. The manager’s one redeeming factor was that his own frequent absenteeism, which put Bastian in charge. Those nights were better.
Deal with it, Bastian told himself. Who are you to deserve a better job? You have to work through this if you want to get back.
During the day, he did his shopping at the store and tried to make tasty meals out of ingredients inferior to what he got back in Humantown. He particularly lamented going back to traditional coffee, but always told himself that he would put off writing to Luke for a supply until the next week. When the next week arrived, he put it back one more week.
He spent the rest of his time on the internet, on a half joke of a project he had assigned himself. He had said that, since the tide of My Little Pony-related fan content had finally been stemmed, it was theoretically possible for one person to read every story, look at every picture, listen to every piece of music, and watch every video on Earth. It would be nice for him to be that one person.
He wished that he had someone to tell his joke to.
For the most part, he avoided the news and the media outside of the former pony fandom. It depressed him. Watch it anyway, he told himself. Learn to look at it without being depressed. If you can integrate it in without feeling it, maybe. . .
Even at night, when the boss was gone and he gave tacit permission for the others to play a radio during their shifts, he asked them to keep it to music stations instead of talk. But of course he was listening, and was watching the news, during The Longest Sunday.
***
The US Congress had again extended daylight saving time so that it now ended on the weekend after Thanksgiving, and many other countries had followed suit, so it happened that The Longest Sunday was in fact the longest of the year by one hour. It began with the blackouts on the west coast and the communication line failures in the Midwest. One region had data transmission, but no power; the other had power, but no way to talk to anyone. The problems were soon found and corrected, and preliminary investigations were begun immediately. The investigators at the power plant in California called the network technicians in St. Louis and compared notes. The transcripts of interviews were similar in both cases, and gave the investigators a dull, cold fear.
Investigator: Didn’t you know that failing to institute the procedure would result in loss of service?
Respondent: I guess.
Investigator: Then why didn’t you begin the procedure?
Respondent: Dunno. Didn’t really care.
Investigator: You do realize that this could mean your job?
Respondent: Whatever.
By the time the night shift wrapped up and Bastian was heading for home, he had heard the reports from France that an alliance of the major unions was announcing a general strike for the next week. No demands were issued, no negotiations were planned. They had simply said that they were going to stop working, and revisit the issue next week.
During the Sunday morning chat shows, Bastian watched the talking heads discuss the “open door” policy announced in Brazil and in Hungary, where anyone could basically walk into a business, start working, and get paid in cash. There were plans to spread the policy to other countries.
He went to the internet, where he found the story of the weekend’s movie box office numbers. Barring a late surge that day that no one expected, the movie industry would see only fifty million dollars on the second week of a multi-million-dollar action blockbuster and the opening of a big romantic comedy. The heads of two studios had already been fired.
An announcement was made by a group called “Cancel Christmas” of partial success. It was set opposite a story of retailers announcing a 45% drop in sales from the same weekend in the previous year. On the highways, toll collectors were waving drivers through without taking the money. At a hospital, a man was brought in who had walked out of a second floor window. When asked why, he responded, “I wondered what it would feel like.”
Bastian went back to the TV and turned on the football game. At halftime, it was announced that neither team wanted to return to the field. The game would be declared a tie. The fans shrugged and left the stadium.
When he went to work, he found that the crew was refusing to do anything. Bastian asked one of them why, and they said that they didn’t care for the boss. It was nothing he didn’t know, and no different from any other day, but just then they refused to work. When he asked them about the change, they just shrugged. He explained to the manager, he shrugged and walked off the job. The crew returned to work. The news continued to come in. All over the world, people were stopping their routines. They were just doing nothing.
***
President Steuben sat in the Oval Office and read the reports. He had talked to several economists and psychologists who claimed to know what was going on, or at least how to stop it. The day after The Longest Sunday, most of the people had gone back to normal, but the stock market still dropped by five percent. Steuben had called on the leading psychologist who hadn’t come to him voluntarily, and was asking again for answers.
“Mr. President,” the scientist said, “why does anyone go to work in the morning?”
“For the money?”
“No, not really. In fact, there are other ways to get money, many of which are easier. He could sell possessions, or rob people, or just wait for others to give him some, which we have a structure for through the government. No, a person goes to work because of emotional connection. To the job, to the people he works with, to the customers, to something he creates. There’s an emotional, not a practical or economic, end in sight for the worker.”
“What’s the emotion involved?”
“Satisfaction. Or happiness, if you prefer. Now, all that’s in the textbooks, but what I believe is that there has to be a certain per capita happiness beyond which a society can’t fall. If it does, the most sensitive, the least happy people start realizing, on an emotional level, that there’s no sense at all in moving forward.”
The president put down his drink. “Then we make people happier.”
“You could try, but that’s just treating the symptom. Where are there people who have happiness in abundance, who’ve taken it away from us? That’s right,” he said, seeing recognition in the president’s eyes. “Why do you think they were chosen?”
“But they’re gone now. We’ll recover.”
The psychologist shook his head. “What happened yesterday will happen again. It’ll become more frequent and it’ll get worse. The economy has still suffered a blow, and that’s going to work its grind on people’s psyches as well.”
“What do you recommend?”
“I don’t recommend anything, sir. That’s not my job. But there’s a historical precedent for jump-starting an economy, and we do need back the people we’ve lost.”
“I see.” The president stood up and let the man out. He returned to his desk and pressed the button on the intercom. As always, a voice was waiting for his order.
“Find General Wallace and have him report to me.”