//------------------------------// // 4. When Walls Fall Down // Story: Awakening // by solocitizen //------------------------------// Awakening Solocitizen 4. When Walls Come Down Present Day Lumina lied curled up in a ball on the floor, with the metal grating digging into her side. She had set every LED and bulb in the AI core as bright as they would burn. Electric pulses ebbed and flowed in waves through Lumina’s body, starting at her horn, and running down to the tips of her hooves. She repeated the words “it’s not real, it’s just in your head” as a mantra and clung to it. She stroked her tail with her hooves and tried to shut out the odd sensations coursing through her. “It’s not real, it’s just in your head,” she said. “It’s not real.” But it was real, she produced light from her horn, and now something electric raced down her spine. Lumina, we need to talk, said the voice in her head. “No we don’t,” she replied. “There’s nothing to talk about, and if I just ignore you, you’ll go away, just like Silver Prickle said.” Lumina pressed her hooves over ears, shut her eyes, and yelled out her mantra. After a few minutes, and no reply from the voice, her beating heart slowed and her fears abated. When she had calmed down enough to get on her hooves, Lumina breathed in deep, and laughed the whole thing off as nothing more than her overactive imagination. She didn’t do magic just then, because magic wasn’t real, and she certainly didn’t need anymore therapy. “See, Lumina, no voices,” she told herself, “you out grew that phase long ago.” I’m still here. Lumina jumped and shrieked and bolted out of the AI core. There was a sickbay just two decks down, and the Interstellar Express kept it stocked with pharmaceuticals of every variety to keep ponies safe, sane, and delivering their shipments on time. A crazed pony could easily turn a one point two kilometer long FTL ferry into a flying lawsuit. Hopefully, one of the sickbays would have something to make the voice go away, if not, she always had tranquillizers. Ugh, would you just listen to me for one minute? “Sorry, too busy trying to get you out of my head to stop and chat.” Lumina rushed down the stairs to sickbay. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to try to science you away.” The doors to sick bay parted and water surged out into the stairwell. Lumina mentally noted to fix it, but didn’t pause any longer than to curse. She splashed her way across the sickbay to a supply room in the back. The flooding was much worse in there, maybe about half a meter high with pill bottles bobbing up and down. Lumina placed her hoof on the door scanner and braced herself against the frame. Water cascaded out of the supply room and rolled over her legs, but she held her footing, and after the water drained, she darted inside. You have to listen to me, the voice said. You’ve wasted enough time as it is. You need to start studying and teaching yourself how to use magic. Am I going to have to lecture you? Lumina flung every drawer and cabinet open and ripped the neatly ordered bottles from the shelves; she checked one, but didn’t find what she was searching for, so she dropped it, and continued until she checked every last bottle. No nulamine. She stomped her hooves in the water. Okay, you’ve asked for it now. I’m going to lecture at you! And if that doesn’t work, I might have to sing a song. Lumina searched through the discarded bottles until she found a tranquillizer that would knock her out for the next twelve hours. She ripped off the cap with her mouth and dumped three pills onto her hoof. She raised the pills to her lips, and her heart dropped into a pit below her stomach. Something was wrong. Lumina checked the warning labels on the side of the bottle, put a pill back, and tried again. Just as before, the pit beneath her heart stopped her from shoving them into her mouth. Listen, I know what you’re going through right now. The voice in her head changed its tone. The hardest lesson I ever had to learn was that sometimes you just have to trust something, even if it doesn’t make any sense. “Did your parents ever make you take pills that made you dizzy and impossible to think straight?” Lumina spun around and slammed her hoof on the counter. “I did, I had to do it for three years. Every week I had therapy sessions with a stallion that, to this day, I want to kick in the face. He put me under hypnosis, attached electrodes to my head, psychoanalyzed everything I said. Did you have to deal with that?” Not exactly. It was more like my friend Pinkie Pie said she could predict the future with tail twitches and eye flutters. “Alright, enough, time to shut you up.” Lumina put the pills under her tongue just as the label advised. “Eye flutters and twitchy tails, I think I’ll just go back to therapy. I’m clearly insane, I have a voice in my head that talks to me on occasion, and it said I should start believing in twitchy tails that can predict the future.” It wasn’t about believing in some twitchy prediction thingy. Yes, it didn’t make any sense and I never fully accepted it. But the lesson wasn’t about believing in something completely irrational. It was about believing in her. Sometimes you just have to believe in your friends even if you don’t understand why. The same can be said about yourself. You can’t tell me that you believe that taking all those pills is a good idea. “No,” Lumina said. “In all honesty, the idea of taking them makes me sick.” Then why don’t you trust yourself and do what you believe is right? The image of Silver Prickle, her mother and father fighting, and all those therapy sessions and late nights filled with nausea flooded back to her, but something else much deeper than the voice in her head or those painful memories said no. Something was wrong and it clenched into a rock right above her heart. As a filly, Lumina used to listen to that part of her all the time, but as an adult she had conditioned herself to ignore it. She conditioned herself not to. Lumina put a hoof to her forehead, clenched her eyes shut, and gave in to the part of her just above her heart. She spat the pills out. “I really hope you know what you’re doing, Twilight Sparkle.” Actually, my best plans haven’t worked so far. The only pony you should trust is yourself. I’m just here to help you along. That tingling in her head and spine, it got stronger, and the sensation of a vice clamping around her head followed. Lumina bit her lower lip and winced, and in a few short seconds the sensations blossomed into pain. It pushed, and fought, and battered against her skull. Her horn burned. At the other end of sickbay was a medi-pod, complete with a scanner, diagnosis AI, and surgical equipment. She climbed inside and let the plexi-glass doors close over her. The inside of the medi-pod held a chemical tang. She never used the machine before, but the holographic menus that spawned in front of her were simple to navigate. In a few short minutes she ordered and completed a scan of her head. Nothing unusual with her, at least according to the diagnosis AI. Lumina elbowed the release switch, rolled out of the pod, and hit the floor with a splash. “Twilight Sparkle, why does my head feel like it’s about to explode?” Lumina picked herself up and exited the sickbay. Water dripped from her mane and coat, and pinged against the floor. “I thought you said I could trust myself, and I took your advice, and look where your words of wisdom got me.” You’ve been disconnected from your magical self pretty much your entire life. Ponies in my time never tried deny this part of themselves like you have. I guess the best analogy for what’s happening is that you’re using muscles you’ve never used, and it hurts. That tingling feeling in your horn is magic flowing into you. Putting one hoof in front of the other, Lumina ascended the staircase back up to the AI core. She collapsed on the bedding she spread out earlier that day and buried her head in her pillow. The water sapped the heat right out her her, so she pulled her blankets over her for warmth. “What if I just try to shut it all out?” Lumina shouted into her pillow. “I let this in, so there must be a way to stop it, right?” She picked up her head, watched her vision blur, and then rolled over on her back. No, that would only cause you more pain. This is happening because you tried to lock magic out just as you were starting to use your horn. It’s not going to let you shut it out again. Once this door is open, you can’t close it. The electric vibrations flowing in her horn, and building in her head, reached a peak, and pushed down, past her neck and down into her heart. From there they surged outward and broke past those tight lumps above her heart and down in her stomach. There was bitter fruit inside her, memories that she stashed away, and simply left to rot and ferment. When the magical flood swept through Lumina, it kicked down every locked door and smashed the fruit, and their juices ran wild. She arched her back, rolled over on her stomach, and grasped her head. Lumina kicked in rage and cried out in sadness. All the pent up emotions from her agonizing years of therapy, the separation of her parents, the loss of her mother, not being strong enough to deal with the ship that attacked Luna Dream or the centipede beneath the ice, the fact that she was responsible for the jump that fried Animus, rushed through her. The wave passed, and when it did, Lumina’s tears stopped. Something told her she’d shed no more tears on these subjects. She forgave her parents, Silver Prickle, Animus, and even the ship that attacked her. Magic pulsed down her spine, out to the tip of her tail, and to the end of each of her limbs. Where it flowed it brought that same vibration that filled her horn. It ignited her bones, warmed her skin, and healed her tortured soul. Then it hit resistance, but instead of forcing its way through, the pressure in Lumina’s heart subsided. The magic continued to flow into her, but it left that pain alone. For a long time Lumina just lied on her back and stared up at the ceiling in an ecstatic trance. The lights above her burned a little brighter than they had before, and the colors surrounding her popped. Magic flowed in through her horn and raced down the river of her spine; her limbs were streams along that mighty river. “Twilight Sparkle.” What is it, Lumina? “How is it that I can talk to you if you’ve been dead for tens of thousands of years?” I think you’ve had enough mind-blowing revelations for one day. Besides, somepony else wants to explain that to you. By the way, you might want to check out your ship’s proximity thing, it’s about to go off. “What are you talking about?” Lumina propped herself up on her front legs. “We’re all alone out here, nothing’s going to trip the proximity screen.” An alarm sounded and red lights flashed along the ceiling. Sure enough, it was the proximity alarm. Whenever an unauthorized object larger than a clump of lint got close to the ship an alarm sounded. “Alert! Alert! Collision detected!” Animus’s voice rang out of the room’s speakers. “Identify object and endangered ship sections.” She shook her head and chased away the last vestiges of the trance state. “Object unknown. Impact to deck four, section-D in approximately five minutes eleven seconds. Adjusting for new velocity. Impact in approximately five minutes thirty seconds.” Section-D, that was near the AI core. Lumina hopped to her hooves and galloped toward the exterior hull. She found a set of windows facing out into the frozen nightmare. Between the shadows cast by the Luna Dream’s running lights, and the mounds in the ice, slithered metal. It moved with the fluidity of quicksilver, and was as black as obsidian. Thousands of little feet left pin-pricks in the ice. Lumina gasped. She backed away from the window without taking her eyes off the monster. Hot fear surged through her. It was the centipede from the alien ruin, and it was closing in on the Luna Dream.