And That's How Equestria Was Made...

by neighsmith

Anniversary

[Audio Entries Start]

Audio Log # 1

Is this thing on? Static is heard over the rest of the regular audio for a moment before quieting down. Yes, good, it’s recording.

This is Smith, 3rd Order of Arcane and Scientific Development, Magician’s Guild. I have found a recorder and intend on using it to chronicle these experiences.

I have just awoken in the tech wing of my lab, and it seems that I am trapped. All the exits are blocked, and the windows seemed to be reinforced. I have no idea how long I have been unconscious.I can’t find any visual hints of what time it is, as the clock is stopped and my vision out of the windows is obstructed by what seems like a dark forest. I don’t feel pained physically, and I’m not hungry so any guesses on my part would be totally arbitrary.

I am using this recorder so that if I can’t escape, someone will be able hear my last few moments. My significance is too great to be lost to the decay of time

Audio Log # 2

This is the second day of being trapped here.

I’m starting to worry; I haven’t been able to make any progress on getting out, and every exit and escape hatch has either been welded shut or is simply missing. It’s like some of them weren’t even there in the first place.

I have not seen any others, be them rescue workers or my fellow lab assistants. I fear I may starve before help arrives.

Worse yet, I fear for my work. It seems to be lost, and I do not know where it has gotten too. Who knows what could happen to it in the wrong hands?

Audio Log # 3

Day seven. I haven’t slept or eaten in the past week. I don’t know how this is possible. Unless he did it for me.

My mind is being put to the test. I am so restless. It seems I would have lost track of time if it was not for me scratching the days into the floor. Every marked second is monotonous without him.

By the Power of Sanctioned Magic, I pray that I will see him before I die. He is the culmination of decades of toil, and more than that, he is my friend. My only friend.

Audio Log # 4

Day thirty. The very word ‘time’ is losing its meaning. Seconds and days, hours and weeks, they fade together. I am becoming detached, almost removed to the point where I simply watch the ticks of my mental clock tock by maddeningly and endlessly.

I still seem to require no sleep and no food.

I have searched every cranny of this room many times. There is no way out. I am trapped. Despite my continued scraping at the fixed exits, neither my fingers, their nails, or the material of this room seems to be damaged. In fact, I am incapable of hurting anything inside of this room, myself included.

This normally would not bother me so, but with the absence of work or food, sleep or company, or anything to provoke feeling, be it pain or pleasure, I have literally resorted to counting the seconds in a day, and scratching my records into the floor.

I fear for my sanity.

Audio Log # 5

Today is the one year anniversary of my trapped existence. 365 days, roughly 52 weeks, 8760 hours, 525,600 minutes, 31,536,000 seconds, and oh so many marks upon my floor. I think that the world has deserted me. Left me for dead. But the thing is, I’m not dead.

But who needs them? Not me! I have all I ever needed right here in this room. I have time, a floor, magic, and most importantly, my genius mind. Everything I’ve ever needed, except for him that is. I miss his company so. I have forgotten how miserable my life was before him.

Every waking moment is torture. “Waking”, ha. That’s funny, I haven’t slept at all. Nothing to do, nothing to do but to sit here and think.

Audio Log # 6

Two years and no one has come looking for me! Why does the hours keep rolling? The stones are turning, the stars dying, and the reaper waits over me, taunting me with his prize of death, and yet I sit here alone! I fight against the darkness and I am alone. Does anyone care about me? Does anyone care that I am alone. Not even time can stand to be around me! It keeps passing and passing, seconds fleeing my company, marks burning from me into the ground Why?

Damn you all! I don’t need you! Not him, not the days, not my fellows! Not me! No one! A sound not unlike lightning is heard, crashes and incoherent yells and intermixed profanities are mixed into the storm of noise of the crackling speaker. The sounds eventually die down, replaced by the lone sounds of smoldering fire and heartbroken sobbing.

Audio Log # 7

I’m losing it. I woke from my sadness and a fire raged around me.
I tried to kill myself.
The fire simply parted in my path, and the smoke fled from my mouth, leaving me unharmed. I tried to cut myself, hang myself, bash in in my own head, but nothing worked. I dented the table and dulled every sharp edge, snapping every cord and nothing would yield me unto death.
I am alone.
They only thing that I counted as a blessing was my sanity, and now even it becomes a burden.
The day marks add up to a total of twenty-three years. It seems that I can’t stop myself from scratching these lines. It’s subconscious.

Audio Log # 8

This is year one-hundred twenty-one of isolation. My arcane core has run out of energy. I am now left with no power supply for light. I’m trapped alone in the darkness. No one will save me. I am alone.

This must be what hell is like.

What did I do to deserve this?

Audio Log # 9 [Overwritten]

Living, if you could call it that, in this hovel is almost all I can remember. The most prominent memory being scratching at the ground consistently.
I still faintly remember the other times, bits of working in a factory, sometimes talking to other people. There was this one person, he was my friend, but it was so long ago it seems as if it was a whole eternity separate now and then. A sigh comes from the speaker.

I know for sure I was a scientist, but I think few really thought of my work as science. But I was not to be neither contained nor limited by their ignorance! I kept myself cooped up in my lab, every waking hour enveloped in my abstract machinations and endless workings. When I emerged from my lab, I beheld my creation.

Yes, I remember now!

With my human hands, I had manifested a power greater than any other single person could ever have imagined!

I created a soul; a single unconfined spirit. It was uncontrollable and chaotic for a time after its birth, but it eventually calmed down and became remarkably friendly, although still mischievous. But when it comes to the creation of a living being, there was one much more important fact:

It was sentient.

Me and him, for it was definitely a him, were the best of friends.

Few realized the true potential of what I had done. Fewer still even cared. The world I lived in was troubled by war, and a new weapon threatened all of humanity. And one day, someone, I don’t recall who, called its bluff.

The weapon was initiated and began to destroy our world. Even my powers with magic did nothing trying to stop it. I lost all hope. We were all going to die. I went to my only friend, my brightest creation. He asked me what was wrong, what had caused my depression. He often could be naive. I told him that I was going away for a long time. He said that he would not allow that, that he wanted me to be with him forever. I almost cried then, but I held back. A choked back sob escapes the narrator. I told him that it was not possible, that we should cherish our last few minutes together. He was furious. He told me that I could not leave him, that I was never going to leave anyone. There was a bright burst of sporadic, multi-chromatic light, and I was knocked unconscious.

I do not know much of what happened next, for I woke in my lab, and well, the previous entries explain what happened from then on out.

As these endless years pass me by, I haven’t grown old. For decades I have resided here, and yet I don’t look a day over twenty-five. Or at least I didn’t, I don’t really know anymore, there isn’t enough light for me to get a proper reflection. After all the thousands of years, no noticeable aging on my part has taken place.

I have achieved an apotheosis, and this used to excite me to no end. However, as the millennium stretched on, and with nowhere to go but to sit miserably in my small two hundred foot-square room, I grew lonely, and angry, at the world, at myself, and at him, but I guess I owe my life to him. I try to be thankful, but it is hard to stay so.

By the feel of the markings around the room, it is exactly my ten-thousandth anniversary of incarceration. Normally, I would make a recording, and put little thought into it. Right now, however, it seems like I should do something different. Something special. For some odd reason, I’m compelled to record it carefully and commemorate it. Maybe ten thousand years of isolation has finally made me go crazy.

What do people normally do for anniversaries? Have parties? Eat cake?
I can’t even remember the taste of cake. Or the voices of other people chatting in the background. Oh ho-

A sharp intake of breath is heard, an appalled gasp coming from a new orator.

“Aghh! What in the-!”

“You’ve can’t remember what cake tastes like?! We need to get you to Sugarcube Corner as quickly as possible! And while we're there we can throw you a party! Ten thousand years old? That’s a whole lot of candles! Where would we even get that many candles? How big would the cake have to be to fit all of those candles? It would have to be huginormous! Another gasp escapes the second speaker. This is going to be the best party ever!”

“Bluh?”

The newcomer gasps for a third time.

“I’ve never seen you before! And if I’ve never seen you before, then that means you’ve new! And if you’re new, then that means you have no friends! You must be so lonely! Even the more reason for a party!”

“But you... the door was locked... and you don’t even have hands...

“What’s a hand? Is it a sweet? Oh! No, no, don’t tell me! Is it a cookie? Oh, I give up! What is it?”

“Are you a pony? But.. ponies don’t talk... do they?”

“Well, duh ponies talk! Silly! Come on, you have a party to attend!”

“But, where?”

“Sugarcube Corner!”

“I get to get out of here?” Surprisingly, the primary contributor to these logs sounds excited for the first time.

“Sure! It’s always my job to take people to my parties!”

“I’m... I’m leaving... After all these years...” Something, or someone, makes a sound like a bag of flour falling against the ground.

“Oh no! Now is not the time for a nap silly... whatever you are... Well I guess I can just carry you then.” This speaker hums gently, with no words being able to be made out. Soft steps fade away, leaving only silence.