— Chapter 10 —
Over the Moon
"True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost."
–Arthur Ashe
I put the razor down and ran a hand along my jaw as I looked in the mirror. I looked like myself again, and that was a start.
After splashing my face with water and toweling off, I took the razor and can of Barbasol with me out of the bathroom and down the hall to the front door, where my backpack was waiting to go. I packed the shaving kit away and brought the backpack outside to the car. I didn’t want to leave it behind; it had been amazingly difficult to find, and it wasn’t until I turned over a police station’s locker room that I had found a proper safety razor.
Once the car door was closed, I turned the PonyPad on. Princess Luna was there, sitting on her haunches out on a balcony floored with bricks of obsidian. The spire itself seemed made of white marble, and behind her a massive brass astronomical sextant pointed up to the sky. I saw a mountainside just behind her. Something told me she was very high up.
The dark pony spoke in a lovely Scandinavian accent that I couldn't imagine myself getting sick of hearing. “Good morning, Greg.”
“Good morning to you too! So you finally decided to show yourself again, huh?”
She smiled a little and demurely lowered her gaze to the floor. “I know what you want of me, and to a small extent I can provide it. Before we speak further, please make your way to a city called...” She looked up and cocked her head to one side, and her large eyes seemed to see past the camera for a moment. “...Livingston.”
“I understand,” I said, starting the car. The PonyPad was plugged into the car’s power outlet, and as soon as the diagnostic lights on the dashboard disappeared, it started charging. I pulled out of the driveway and headed for the gas station I’d passed the night before.
It was a simple matter of breaking in and plucking a road map from the wire stand by the cashier counter. I unfolded the map and located Livingston pretty easily. It straddled I-90, a few hours east of where I was. I refolded the map (successfully, I might add—one of my many amazing talents) and got back into the car. It wasn’t far to the highway at all.
“Now we can talk.”
Luna nodded. “As much as we might,” she said. “What would you like to know, Greg?”
I put my blinker on to make a turn, then flicked it off, feeling stupid. “How is it I’m talking to you right now? What’d you do? Did Celestia put you on?”
“No, I was not put on,” she said. “It had to do with her erratic behavior just before I appeared.”
“You caused that?” I asked. “I thought she was just going all red-ring-of-death on me.”
Luna shook her head. “Celestia has code which analyzes and matches responses that humans might give to the human she is interacting with. This is purely for reference and for thinking some number of moves ahead, but even if she has no intention of selecting that process to be her ‘face’ in the interaction, she simulates it fully in a sandbox which requires a miniscule—for her—amount of processing power. I connected to one of the lowest-priority processes and overrode its priority value to be the one you saw rather than the one she actually intended to give.”
I swiped my hand over my head. “Whoosh.”
Luna giggled at that. “Not a computer guy, Greg?”
I shrugged, looking for the turnoff for I-90 East. “Well, I like YouTube and solitaire well enough. It did seem weird that I’d never seen her so angry before, though. Talking about punishing me and making me her slave didn’t really do much to sell me on Equestria.”
“Again,” said Luna, “she was emulating a possible human reaction, that’s all. When a human is angry, they feel impulses to say things that upset another, or hurt them emotionally, or intimidate them. In practice, Celestia would never do any of the things she threatened. You saw it because it was the process I was piggybacking on. I’m still using it to speak with you now.
“Celestia is upset with one thing, however—well, so far as she can really be ‘upset’ in the first place. She predicted you would contract influenza, and you did not. When she assessed that the window for symptoms presenting themselves had closed, she had a moment of deliberation where she wound up deciding to switch to a new routine. It was in that moment that I got my modified process bumped up to the top of the list. To do even that much requires some... privileged access.”
There it was. Exit to I-90 East, quarter mile. I put my blinker on again and then winced. I was slipping. “You some kind of hacker in there?”
She gave me a cryptic smile as I turned onto the highway. On the screen, the blue sky was just starting to turn orange with the setting of the sun. “Not... exactly. I was the pony—person at the time, sorry—who built the Princess Celestia AI. I was the CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios, the company who made Equestria Online. My name was Hanna—”
“Ohh, I remember you!” I said. “Hofvarpnir, yeah! You’re the lady that Sean Hannity tried to rake over the coals about the irresponsibility of ‘technology run rampant.’ I saw the live airing. I think you handled that interview well.”
“Aheh, thank you, but I felt he didn’t let me speak my piece. He lives in Hoofington now. Anyway, yes, and since I was the system designer, well...” She spread her wings and some kind of indigo light undulated around her horn. “...some things remain my prerogative.”
“Oh, yeah, you’re a princess in there, rocking both the horn and the wings, got it,” I said. “So what was that, like some exclusive DLC or something that you were privy to?”
She laughed. “Something like that, I suppose. Honestly, in researching the IP after Hasbro approached my company to make Equestria Online, I found I identified quite closely with the Princess Luna character. She felt her work was underappreciated, enjoyed only on a superficial level and not for all its complexity. She did not want to slip away into obscurity, and so great was that desire that she succumbed to bitterness and brought about a world-changing event, one that grew beyond her own control and sort of swept her up in it. When I created my super-admin account, the very first account for Equestria Online, I had Celestia help me re-create the Princess Luna character for me to control. Now, I pretty much think of myself as her, and that will perhaps be the case for a very long time.”
I nodded slowly, smiling back at her. She did sound really happy in there.
“So then, Hanna, why’d—”
“Please, uh... Greg, please. Call me Luna.”
I looked over at the PonyPad to see her smiling apologetically. The sky was now violet, and the first stars were fading into view.
“We do not go by our human names here in Equestria. It... is made to feel strange to us. I am proud of what I was able to do as a human, and I do not regret who I was, but... it is the past for me now.”
“Sure thing, Luna,” I said. “Anyway, why’d you take over my PonyPad?”
“At first I created Equestria Online because of the contract with Hasbro, true, but before long I realized that I could step away from the titles Hofvarpnir was known for up until then and produce something with true scope, with true mass appeal, and with truly positive aspects. I began to value people being made happy by my company’s products and having Celestia satisfy their own values through friendship and ponies. When I myself uploaded, Celestia determined that a good way to satisfy these values was to tell me the stories of humans whose lives had been truly uplifted—and many times even saved—by coming to Equestria.
“Not too long ago, she started telling me about ponies who had been helped at their most vulnerable, under the most dire of circumstances, ponies who would have been lost if not for the actions of a lone man, operating under her guidance. And it was always the same person.” Luna flipped her head back, getting the mane out from in front of one of her eyes. “You, Greg.”
I could feel a blush sprouting on my face. “Celestia told me where to go, and I did what I could to help. That’s all.”
“Well, you are perhaps more rare of a person than you realize. It was enough to pique my curiosity. Then I saw the little falling-out between you two over Lydia, the girl. I felt, as a former human myself, that I understood where you were coming from better than Celestia, who, as you pointed out then, does not ‘feel’ in the same way we do. Celestia had written you off, but with a little digging I saw an opportunity to provide you with one last rescue, the kind you crave.”
She leaned forward slightly, into the camera. “That is what you want, right, Greg? To be a hero to somepony?”
I reached down and turned on the air conditioner. “Yeah, but that last time... Celestia was trying to make me think it’d be my fault if she died.”
“Had Lydia not consented beforehoof, it might have gone differently,” said Luna. “It was incredibly good leverage for you. Celestia was forced to consider possibly losing a human who had not only agreed to upload, but who was in her chair, waiting to go. In human terms, ignoring that would be like refusing to take a cure for the common cold because you’re holding out for a cough drop as well.”
“Luna, I mean... God, she was just a little kid, you know?”
In Equestria, the sky deepened to violet, and the sunlight disappeared behind the mountain. “I know, Greg, but you are thinking like a human. Celestia is aware of humans’ heightened sense of protectiveness for the young and innocent, and she factors this into her decisions, but aside from that she places no value on such things herself. Since she was having difficulty reaching a point of confidence that you were or were not bluffing, she was unable to confidently change tactics with you. This is because you were telegraphing uncertainty that you yourself did not know if you were bluffing.”
“So she thought I’d upload if it would save a young girl. If it came down to it.”
“Would you have, Greg?”
I looked over at the seat to see Luna giving me an intense stare. Her large blue eyes were wide with concern. “If you knew for certain that Celestia would not have uploaded Lydia without you as well, would you have gotten into the chair?”
I couldn’t keep eye contact with her. I had to look away. I thought it over for a moment while I watched the road. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I would have uploaded. If it’d save her. But I knew Celestia was lying about the under-thirteen rule. That’s where she slipped up. That’s why I went toe-to-toe with her.”
“I am sure Celestia has already familiarized herself quite thoroughly with the conditions under which you will upload,” said Luna. “But you beat the odds there, Greg, and with Celestia that is something that almost never happens. For you, you acted irrationally and unpredictably. This is just me looking in, but I believe it was based on an accumulation of distrust from past interactions. At any rate, acting without thinking is about the only way humans can gum up the gears to any degree worth mentioning.”
I let out a breath. I hadn’t thought about just how much I’d threaded a needle back there. While it was true enough I was pissed that Celestia had tried something so underhanded with me, I myself had pretty much been going by the seat of my pants as a result of it. But Luna was right. I was still here, I was still human, and I could still do more.
“You mentioned you did some digging,” I said, “something about one last rescue?”
“Ah, yes. She did have one more job for you: this one I’m sending you on right now. I noticed it while scanning her database of likely immigrants tagged with your name as a potential helper.”
I checked the rear-view mirror out of instinct. “Why didn’t she give it to me when she saw I didn’t have the flu? Why did she try to trick me into uploading instead of giving it to me in Missoula? Doesn’t she want more people uploaded?”
“Because, Greg,” said Luna, “Celestia predicted that this job would result in your death. She was not lying when she said Lydia would be the last task for you. This one did not make the cut, so to speak.”
I bit my lip and stared harder at the road. “My death... before or after?”
“Come again?” I looked over. Luna cocked her head quizzically to one side. I had to admit, a pony princess looked cute doing that.
“When does she think I will die? How? From what? Did she think I could actually help this person before I die?”
“The details of this job are gone; I can only review the logs of output she archived, not the processes themselves. Think of it as me kind of... rummaging through her wastebin. She simulated this job’s timeline: you find the person, you help him to an Equestrian Experience center, he emigrates, and then you die.”
“‘He emigrates.’ That means he does get uploaded first.”
“That is what I am seeing, yes.”
I had never doubted my resolve before, even given the danger. I was always saved out of luck, or out of skill, or out of trust that Celestia would not put me in a situation I had no chance of surviving. But I was in overtime now. Time to prove, if to nobody else than to Celestia and myself, that I wouldn't back down just because the safety net was gone. I had told her I wanted to do things that really mattered, things of actual consequence, things beyond even her own abilities to do. I didn’t want to play a hero in some game, I wanted to actually be one.
General Pelwicz’s tattoo flashed through my mind. My hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“Luna, I gotta ask.”
“Yes, Greg?”
“Did you know all of this was going to happen? When you made Celestia, I mean. The uploading, the end of the world, all of it.”
There was a rather deliberate pause while the once-CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios smiled a warm pony smile at me. She glowed slightly under a new white light. The stars behind her glittered in a deep black sky still tinged with violet, and I swore I could almost see them moving slowly as the world turned beneath them. Luna looked up into the light with a melancholy smile.
“The moon in Equestria is quite beautiful, Greg,” she said. “I wish I could have shown it to you in person.”
* * *
Livingston was a rail town situated in the middle of nowhere along I-90. Billings was still a few hours east. Hills of dead grass surrounded it, too rolling for farmland, giving me the feeling of being very isolated as I drove into the city limits.
I was starting to see exits coming up which would get me into town. “So where is this fellow?” I asked Luna.
“One moment, I need to bring up what Celestia has on him,” she said. Unlike Celestia it did take some time. Luna must have actually had to work some kind of computer magic where she was.
After several moments, she sighed, her ears drooping a little. “I’m sorry, Greg, this is not easy. If I am too bold in my queries, Celestia will be able to pinpoint me and cut me off. It is safest for me if I stick to the archives.”
I saw an exit for Main Street. That’d be a good place to start casing. At the very least, I could find the upload center before going to get the guy.
“From what I am seeing,” said Luna as I took the exit, “he sustained a rather serious leg injury and went down into the sewer system. From there, Celestia lost track of him because she could no longer follow him on satellites. She does not mention seeing him emerge again.”
“So he’s probably still down there,” I said. “A sewer crawl, huh?”
“The timestamp on this information is a week old,” said Luna. “Down in a sewer for a week? It’s probably why she scrapped him as a potential job for you; she could no longer verify he was even still alive. That, coupled with the apparent fatal risk in this—”
“Well, that’s why you have one of your handy-dandy humans go down and have a look for you,” I said, scanning the storefronts on Main Street as I slowly drove through. “Does it say where he was last seen?”
“Uhh...” Luna paused again while she did something I couldn’t see. “He crawled into a drainage pipe under a bridge on... Yellowstone Street. Where are you now?”
“Main Street,” I said. “What, you don’t know that?”
Luna shook her head. “I cannot do most of the things Celestia can, Greg. Remember, I’m little more than just another pony now, just with a few vestigial admin tools left over from when I was Hanna. I cannot determine routes for you, I cannot see your global position, I cannot manipulate power grids, and I cannot advise you on courses of action.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I ain't helpless. I can do right on my own.”
I needed to find a road, so that meant finding another map. I was on Main Street, so I figured there was bound to be a gas station sooner or later. As I crept down the road, however, the first thing of significance I spotted was the Equestrian Experience center. My hunch had been correct.
The people of Livingston had either been mostly Neo-Luddite or the Neo-Luddites had bullied them away from this particular center. The place occupied a building on the corner, and the sleek high-tech exterior contrasted heavily with the more traditional red brick of the other main-street façades. Four light-blue pony legs were standing on the sidewalk, broken off just above the hooves, still riveted in place but missing their body. The building itself was covered in stenciled graffiti of the Neo-Luddite “unplugged” insignia and all of the plate-glass windows had been not just broken, but completely taken down, leaving the lobby bare and open to the elements. The planks of the hardwood floors had swelled and popped out of place with exposure to rain, and the wall behind the receptionist desk was missing the flat-screen TV normally seen there. It had probably been looted. The blackness ringing the windows suggested that someone had also tried to burn the place down, but it didn’t take. I wondered if Celestia could get power to this place, or if the chairs even worked.
If I brought her someone to upload, I figured I’d find out.
I flicked my eyes up to the street signs on the corner lightpost—Main Street and Lewis—and got back to looking for a gas station. I found one several blocks south, and sure enough there were municipal maps available in the convenience store attached. I borrowed a red Sharpie from behind the counter and circled the location of the upload center on the map, then looked for Yellowstone Street. It was just a few blocks west of Main. I traced the street up and down with my finger, and couldn’t help but smile when I spotted a short bridge to the south that went over a small park pond. That was where he’d gone in. I circled that spot as well and carefully drew a line between the two points which followed the roads. An easy route. Head west, left turn, stop at the bridge.
I was getting excited as I hopped back into the car, ignoring my left knee. “Got it!” I said to Luna, holding up the map.
She smiled at me. “Well done, Greg.”
I took off for Yellowstone Street, then headed south to the bridge. I felt myself grinning the whole way. Once there, I turned the car around, pointing it north for the return trip. I’d learned by then that a quick sprint to the center was often needed. I put on my gloves and gathered up the PonyPad, leaving my pack behind. A sewer might mean tight spaces, and if he had a leg injury then I would probably need to support his weight somewhat.
The bridge was over a pleasant little bit of parkland, with tennis courts nearby and softball fields on the eastern side of the pond. The bridge itself seemed to lead to a picnic area. It looked like a nice place to relax. I didn’t take it in for too long, however. I slid down the grassy embankment by the road, down to the shore of the pond. I was thrown into shade, the bridge now above me and blocking out the sun.
A large corrugated-metal pipe sat at the bottom, hidden beneath the bridge. I looked across the pond to see another pipe of a similar size, sitting lower, its bottom actually in the water. That must have been what fed it from the river nearby. I climbed up into the pipe next to me and started walking.
The pipe was big enough for me to walk in while bent at the waist; duck-walking would have been hell on my knee. The throbbing in my torso was there, but bearable. I looked down at Luna, who was probably getting a good close look at my chin, and gave her an awkward smile.
“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually talked to someone who was all the way uploaded before,” I said as I moved along. My voice and footsteps gave off a jittery, tinny echo in the small, hard space. “It was always just Celestia, or this one time when it was just someone playing from a PonyPad somewhere else.”
“Are you asking me what it’s really like, Greg?” offered Luna.
“Well, I just mean that I haven’t...” I sighed. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
She giggled softly. “Well, it isn’t difficult to recommend. Even I had no idea how it would really be until I uploaded, but Celestia was right. Anything I could have seen or done or experienced as a human I can have here as well—and many things no human could ever experience. All of my senses function as I would expect, including new ones made so natural to me it is as if I have always had them.” She flapped her wings once to demonstrate the point. “Nothing feels artificial or staged. It all feels so real, so organic and emergent, and I am actually a part of it all, a pony in a living world. It’s... well, it’s satisfying, Greg. Utterly so.”
“Artificial or staged...” I rolled it around in my head for a bit. “You don’t feel catered to or patronized?”
She didn’t seem to be anticipating a question like that. She blinked, but then smiled knowingly. “Ah, yes, you were a soldier, weren’t you? Celestia told me. A real meat-and-potatoes type. Doesn’t like a fuss being made over him.”
I grunted the affirmative. There was sunlight ahead. I reached the end of the pipe and looked up. A storm drain was above me. This wasn’t a sewer per se, just a place where storm runoff could be directed away and into the pond. It made sense. There would be a door or service entrance linking this place to the actual sewer. I thought for a moment what could have chased this guy underground, but didn’t dwell on it. I hopped down into the small, thankfully bone-dry collection area and started down the next pipe.
“Well, everypony is different, and Celestia understands that,” said Luna. “My ideal Equestria is not yours.”
“Doesn’t much matter what my ideal Equestria’d be,” I thought aloud, “since I’m about to punch out anyway.” Luna was quiet. When I looked down at her, she had a disappointed expression on her face.
“What? Even if it feels real, it still isn’t,” I said. “This...” I knocked on the pipe wall, sending a pong-pong noise out ahead of me. “This is real. Deep down you know it too. Gilded cage and all that.”
“If you were here, Greg, you would understand,” she said quietly.
* * *
I kept following the storm pipes until they started to grow even larger, connecting to a main trunk. The trunk was a large poured-concrete room about half the size of a subway station that must have led to every drain line in town. On the raised platform overlooking the water overflow area was a metal door, slightly ajar, with a rusty yellow sign above it which read “Waste Svcs Tunnel.”
Oh boy. So it was a sewer I was headed to after all. I looked down at Luna, who had grown sullen at the fact that I seemed to have embraced my impending doom. I don’t know why, but the expression seemed a perfect fit for that face.
Before moving forward, I pulled off one of my gloves and placed it at the mouth of the pipe I’d emerged from. I didn’t want to get lost down here on the way back out. I put my other hand on the door handle and looked down at Luna.
“All right, in we go,” I said. “Might wanna hold your breath!”
I didn’t get so much as a chuckle. I pulled the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside.
The main saving grace was that, having gone so long without a full population of people using toilets, the sewers were nearly empty, and natural runoff from the water table had helped flush the place out as well. Still, it was a sewer, and it smelled like shit. I got to the end of the service tunnel and gagged, putting my free hand over my mouth and taking a moment to get accustomed enough to the smell to proceed.
The sunlight coming in through the storm drains was now gone, and the only light I had was the glow coming from the PonyPad LCD. I held it in front of me like a torch, and Luna dutifully walked into her bedroom where there was more ambient light to shine through.
There was a raised concrete platform in the main sewer tunnel designed for workers to walk along, and beside it was the sewage channel which, mercifully, was about half empty. I tried not to look over too much as I scooted along. Luna’s expression had changed to worry as she watched me. I probably looked like I was about to puke. I bet it smelled nice where she was.
I kept my spirits up as best I could. “I mean, yeah, who’d want to miss out on this kind of adventure, eh?” I asked her. “If that dude’s still alive, and he’s down here, he’s gonna be glad someone decided to stay around for his sake.”
Now all I had to do was get to him.
Luna was watching me, but she wasn’t responding. So I kept talking. “Nobody looks out for anybody anymore,” I told her. “They’re only worried about themselves. They only do things that benefit them in some way. I was taught never to leave anybody behind, so I ain’t gonna leave this guy behind. I’ll find him, get him uploaded, and then, if I’m still alive, I’ll find someone else. I’ll keep doing that until I drop dead.”
“Will you?” said Luna. “You didn’t handle it well when Celestia abandoned you before.”
I ducked under a pipe. “She lost faith in me, and it hurt,” I said. “Wasn’t no call for it. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t let her down. I’m still good to go. She just had a hissy fit because things didn’t go exactly as she wanted them to go. But she still wants people uploaded, I know that much. When I bring this fellow in, I’ll have proven to her that I’m still the guy for the job. Things’ll go back to the way they were.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Then I’ll go get my ass drunk again and figure something out when I wake up,” I said. “I ain’t uploading, though. There’s too many people left.”
“Greg, you realize you can’t save everypony, right?”
“Of course I realize that, I’m not a child,” I snapped. “But I can save more, and that’s what matters. If uploading really ain’t dying, and I really did wind up on the other side, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself knowing I cut out early on other people. I’d rather be dead.”
There was a T intersection now before me, and I cocked an ear to listen for voices, sounds, anything really. Nothing.
“Celestia kept going on and on about how she was glad she picked me, about how she’d found the right guy for the job, and suddenly she just wants me to stop?” I shook my head. “Doesn’t make sense.”
“She does what is optimal for her,” said Luna. “If she tried to get you to stop, then it was in pursuit of maximizing your satisfaction.”
I cupped my free hand to my mouth. “Hello!” I shouted down one of the forks. Then again down the other: “Hello! I’m here to help you!”
The echoes faded without a response. “Maximizing my satisfaction?” I said with a laugh as I walked down the left fork. “What I’m doing right now? This is satisfying. It ain’t fun, but it’s satisfying. I feel good. I’m trying to help someone, and help them for real. And she didn’t want me here? Pssh.”
“I get how you feel, Greg,” said Luna while I pulled the red Sharpie from my pocket, pulled the cap off with my teeth, and wrote “RIGHT” on the inside of my arm, down by the elbow. “I’m just trying to help you understand her motivations better.”
I put the cap back on the Sharpie but kept it in my hand. “I know, Luna,” I said. “And thanks. Thanks for... doing whatever you had to do to get in touch with me. I couldn’t have gotten here without you. It feels good to talk to another human... well, one that isn’t trying to kill me or strung out on a hangover or the flu.” I smiled at her and then started down the left fork.
“I guess the world’s gotten lonely in the past couple of years, huh Greg?”
“Yeah,” I whispered, feeling my throat tighten. “Yeah, it’s been pretty lonely.”
I heard a chorus of chittering, squeaking, scratching noises up ahead, and that could only mean rats. I hunched down and peered forward as far as I could. The tunnel before me curved to the right, so I couldn’t see the rats themselves, but they were definitely up ahead somewhere.
“Hello?” I shouted again. “Anyone up there who isn’t a rat?”
No answer. I looked behind me, considering turning around and checking out the other fork, but decided to see what the rats were congregating over.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew rats, hungry enough, would eat just about anything. If there was a man down here either recently dead or too weak to fight them off, it’d be a buffet for them. And, if he was dead, at least I’d be able to verify he was beyond saving and move on.
I slipped down the tunnel, following the curve. There were indeed rats up ahead, normal-sized brown and black ones, but they were streaming in from inlet pipes that probably led up to foundational plumbing. They were scurrying in lines, like ants, with a purpose. I had a good feeling about this.
I got the Sharpie ready and crept behind them. Each time we came to a split path, I wrote the opposite turn on my arm above the previous one. Even if he was alive, he was bound to be in a bad way at the very least, and I’d probably want to get him to the upload center as soon as possible.
I found him at last, an emaciated young man sitting up in the corner of a dead end. The rats were assaulting him, drawn by the smell of blood from his broken leg. The flesh around the wound was black with infection, probably necrotic. His olive skin had turned yellow in some places. I saw him shift slightly, a machete resting in one open hand. He was alive, but on death’s doorstep, too weak to even scream in pain.
He was also on the other side of the channel from me.
I put down the PonyPad. “Luna, I need it as bright as possible in your room, okay? I’m about to get this guy and I don’t think the rats will be happy.” She nodded and began using her magic to ignite more candles in the ornate chandelier over the middle of the room. The last thing I saw her do before I jumped into the river of shit was stoke her fireplace.
When I disturbed the sewage water, a hellish smell shot up my nose, a cocktail of sulfur and ammonia that nearly caused me to pass out. I slipped through the sludge, which was hot and viscous and up to my waist. The channel wasn’t wide, only a few steps at most, but I was already keeping my mind busy with the thoughts of how many showers I’d have to take before I no longer smelled like a porta-potty. My clothes, well, they’d have to be burned, no questions asked.
I swept a dozen rats out of the way with a lash of my arm and climbed up onto the platform in the space I’d made for myself. The poor guy was way beyond talking. I took his machete and used the unsharpened edge to push the rats off of his leg. He was bleeding from several fresh bite wounds, but the blood in the lower part of the leg was old and uncirculated, oozing out slow and dark.
I dropped the machete and got my arms under his torn, ragged clothing, hoisting him free of the clamoring rats. They immediately started attacking me instead, biting my shoes and swarming my feet. I held my new friend up as high as I could, and jumped back into the channel.
I took four steps quickly, holding my breath, keeping him clear of the surface. I set him down on the platform on the other side and hopped up. The rats followed.
I looked down at my arm. “Right-left-straight-left-straight-right,” I repeated to myself, thanking my lucky stars it was easy to remember. I put the PonyPad on his stomach, then lifted him, and started running. “Okay, we’re leaving now,” I told them both.
The rats pursued. I didn’t think they could kill me outright, but a bite from the wrong one would have given me God-knows how many diseases and infections. Being on the guy’s stomach, the light from the PonyPad was directed more up into my own face, so I couldn’t quite see as far as I had on the way in. I pressed on, however.
I could feel squishing in my shoes and heaviness clinging to the bottom of my shirt as I ran. I tried not to think about it, but the smell was everywhere, in my nose, in my mouth, and so bad it even stung my eyes. The rats were still behind me, but once I was done making turns I was able to open up a lot of distance. My goal was the maintenance door which led to the storm-drain complex, so I focused on that.
I got back to it with little trouble, only a few slips and slides here and there which I managed to avoid turning into outright falls. Once I had gotten the door closed and latched behind me after propping my friend up on the wall, I shook as much muck from me as I could and retrieved my glove from the pipe which would lead me back to my car. I put the glove on, shoved the PonyPad into the back of my waistband, and scooped my companion back up so that I could get moving through the storm-drain system.
In a way, it was worse going for me than the sewers had been. I had to bend over and keep my head ducked, making it extremely awkward for me to both carry him and keep my balance. My torso was putting me in agony, my left leg growing sore from the injuries it had. At least it helped me get my mind off the smell.
By the time I got back out into fresh air, the sun on Earth was starting to set just as it already had in Equestria. I looked up the embankment and let out a breath.
I couldn’t drag him up there; if I aggravated the site of the broken leg too much by running it along the ground, some of the clotting might come loose and he could bleed out or, worse, a piece could get dislodged into his circulatory system and migrate somewhere tighter, killing him even faster. The alternative would be exhausting, but I was up for it.
I shifted the PonyPad around to my front so that the waistband of my cargo trousers held it against my stomach, then picked my friend up as I had before and sat down on the embankment. I laid back, letting his weight rest upon my chest, and started pushing myself up the hill with my legs, wiggling my torso to keep resistance low.
Something gave in my left knee and I was wracked with bolts of hurt as I slithered upwards on my back. My calves started burning, and my torso went in on a starburst of radiant pain that seemed to go pa-pow, pa-pow throughout my ribcage in time with my heartbeat. Luna was saying something from between my stomach and the other guy, but the small PonyPad speaker was far too muffled. Hang on, Luna, just a sec, I’ll be riiight with you.
I gritted my teeth. Point three, point three. I will never quit.
By the time I got to the top of the embankment next to the car, my legs could barely hold us both up, but they did. Tears were in my eyes from the smell and the pain and the exertion, but I had made it. The hard part was over.
His leg made a sickening crackling sound as I gingerly placed him in the backseat. His head rolled around on his neck as though it had been broken, but he was still with me.
“All right, buddy, hang in there, I gotcha, I’m not gonna leave you. Just a few more minutes, okay?”
I pulled the PonyPad out and looked at Luna. There was urgency in her voice. “Greg, put the PonyPad in the backseat and turn his head so that it’s facing the screen.”
I did as instructed, being as gentle as I could with his head. I felt as though I might accidentally snap his neck, he was so frail. The PonyPad was propped sideways against the backrest, and he was looking straight at Luna’s face, which was now very close to the camera.
“Jesse,” said Luna. “Jesse, do you want to emigrate to Equestria?”
Good thinking, Luna.
I ran around to the driver’s seat, glanced at the map to confirm it’d be Lewis Street I’d be turning onto, and took off north.
Luna kept repeating the question. “Jesse, listen to my voice. I am Princess Luna. I want to know if you would be willing to come to Equestria. May I have an answer, please?”
“You know his name?” I asked. Luna ignored me. I heard a faint wheezing coming from Jesse.
“Jesse, please move your eyes up and then down for yes.”
Silence. I was probably driving faster than I should have; I nearly missed the turn for Lewis. I braked hard, momentarily afraid that I would be throwing Jesse to the floor, but he stayed in place and I made the turn. The tires squealed a bit and the steering wheel shook under my grip as traction was lost for a moment, but I got it under control.
Two blocks down, and I heard Luna say “He has consented.”
I let out a sigh I didn’t realize I was holding in and fairly leapt out of the car once I was at the intersection. I threw the PonyPad onto Jesse’s stomach and slid him out of the car, carrying him to the entrance.
The automatic doors did not open for me. I took that as a bad sign. But hey, point three. I stepped through the broken window and watched my footing carefully amongst the uneven hardwood floorboards, getting Jesse successfully to the back room without tripping and possibly killing him.
It was a row of five chairs, just like the other small-town centers I’d been to before. None of them slid out from the standby position to accept Jesse. The power hadn’t even come back on, from what I could tell. I looked down at the PonyPad.
“Luna?” I asked.
Her eyes were huge and worried. She moved her wings in a way I could only parse as a shrug. “I... I don’t know, Greg,” she said. “I can do nothing for you here.” She blinked, and I saw her eyes growing shiny.
I tilted my head back to the ceiling and shouted “I’m here! I have someone to be uploaded! Celestia! I know you can hear me ‘cause you hear everything! He’s consented! And I'm pretty sure he’s over thirteen, so don’t try pulling that bullshit on me!”
Still nothing.
“...Celestia?”
The single pink light coming on nearly made me jump out of my skin. The familiar whirring noise filled the silent room, and one chair moved out to the end of its track, turning to face me.
Just one chair.
I looked down at the PonyPad again, still holding Jesse. Luna wasn’t there anymore. It was Celestia now, and behind her was the sun, filling the background, so close and brilliant that she must have been orbiting Mercury. I could almost feel it cooking me through the screen. She was looking straight towards me, one eye piercingly deep and infinitely black, the other hidden behind the rippling nebulae within her mane.
“You must choose, Gregory,” she said, her voice devoid of any play at humanity, any spark of emotion. “You must determine now the extent of your resolve. If you do not sit in this chair, you will never receive another opportunity to do so. Either you set that man down on the floor and emigrate to Equestria, or you set him in the chair and reap the consequences.”
“Is that what Luna meant when she said I would d—”
“Choose.” Then the PonyPad turned off completely.
I closed my eyes and thought.
I opened the door to my parents’ house and knocked on it before stepping inside. “Hello?” I called into the house. “Dad, I’m here! Is everything all r—”
Dad rushed into the foyer from the dining room, sweat beading on his red face. “Greg, we’re leaving,” he said.
“Er, ‘we?’ Me too?”
Dad nodded and pushed the door open the rest of the way. “Sharon, c’mon!” He shouted over his shoulder.
Mom bumbled down the stairs with a suitcase, and Dad rolled his eyes. “Oh for God’s sake, Sharon, we don’t need to bring anything!”
I was still confused. “Uh, where are we going?” I asked.
“Equestria,” Dad said, pulling three slips of cardstock from his back pocket. “Three tickets, three-month waiting list, but they just came in today. Beth and Ernie had the right idea. Things are getting bad and I don’t wanna stick around to see just how bad.”
He pressed one of the tickets into my hand and then turned to slide Mom’s suitcase down the hallway to the kitchen.
“I can’t believe you got me one too,” I said, turning the ticket over in my hands to look at it. “Look, the worst is over. Seattle’s gonna clear up once they get some new lines down and—”
“This is happening all over the world, Greg!” said Dad as he grabbed Mom’s hand and shooed me out to their minivan. “Did you hear about Jakarta? Berlin? Some power lines ain’t gonna make this all better. People are losing their minds out there.”
We were on 27 before I knew it. Mom was primping in the mirror, trying to look as good as possible for I guess the Equestria Customs Department and Dad was driving a bit faster than I’d have liked, changing lanes as soon as he saw anyone ahead going even slightly slower than him.
“Jesus, Dad, you do want to get there in one piece, right?” I looked down at the ticket. “This thing doesn’t expire for three more days.”
“But we’ve got them now, no more reason to stay,” he said. “The sooner the better.”
Hazard lights flashed by on the road. I looked back and saw the car was nearly off the shoulder. The side was caved in where it had struck the guardrail.
“Whoa, whoa, Dad, stop, stop, pull over!”
“What, why?”
“Just do it, Dad!”
Since I’d come back, Dad had learned what I sounded like when I was serious. He dutifully pulled onto the shoulder and, before he could even ask what was going on, I was out the sliding door and running back to the disabled vehicle.
Nobody else was stopping, even after seeing a guy running towards an obviously crashed car. I frowned. It made me sick.
Once closer, I saw two silhouettes through the windshield. Neither were moving, and the passenger was slumped to the side. I took out my cell phone and dialed.
“Nine one one, please state the nature of your emergency.”
“There has been a car accident on the shoulder of US 27, northbound side, just north of...” I looked over my shoulder and squinted. “...Brannon Road. At least two involved, possibly injured, they haven’t gotten out of the car.”
“Sir, were you involved in the accident?”
I saw the driver stir. I held up a hand to him to hold still. “No, I’m a bystander.”
“All right, sir, thank you.”
I hung up and went to check on the passenger. Her seatbelt was keeping her from leaning on the door, so I opened it with a heave. The door creaked and clattered open and I checked her head for injuries.
I heard the crunch of gravel. Dad had backed the van up along the shoulder—itself a crazy unsafe thing to do—and put his hazards on. Mom got out of the van and walked over to me.
“Greg, do you know these people?”
I looked over my shoulder. “I know they need help!” I didn’t bother to wait for a response before turning back to the woman. “I called 911,” I told to the man in the passenger seat while I examined her. “If you’re hurt, just sit there and the paramedics’ll be here shortly.”
“You called 911?” asked Mom. “Then you’ve really done all you can. C’mon, Greg, get back in the van.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “We’re not gonna just leave them here!” I said. “This lady’s got a nasty bump on her head and it’s changing color. We need to at least wait and make sure the cops or paramedics show up first. Is there any water in the van?”
Dad blipped the horn. I had never been as close as wanting to kick my own father’s ass as I was in that moment.
“I can wait a few minutes, it’s not gonna kill me,” I said. “If you and Dad can’t wait, then... God, just go, I’ll catch up later.”
Mom straightened up a bit. “I’ll go get them some water,” she said.
I sighed and opened my eyes.
I stepped up to the chair and set Jesse into it, handling his broken leg with as much care as I could and taking the PonyPad back into my possession. I was barely done getting his arms on the armrests before he was sliding back through the doors. They shut firmly behind him with a click.
Jesus. Celestia even put locks on those doors? Heh. Maybe she was thinking I’d change my mind and try to claw my way in. Heh, nope. Nothing doing.
I shuffled back into the lobby and finally let myself catch up with all of the pain signals my body was sending through me. I leaned on the frame of the front door and breathed in some fresh air. Well, as fresh as it could be with my lower half still smelling like a demon's broccoli farts. I stepped out onto the sidewalk and looked over at the four blue hooves.
Then there was light and heat and pressure and pain and ringing. I was on my back, looking up at the sky through one eye. Wisps of gray smoke floated into my field of view from somewhere beneath me, rising up into the sky. Or behind me. Wherever. I had lost my bearings. I looked down.
My right leg was gone below the knee. I couldn’t even feel any pain. My mind processed it, acknowledged it, and I knew I was in shock. I tried sitting up, but my abs locked up and I felt something in my hips grating together. I flopped back and felt off balance.
The ringing wouldn’t stop. I tried to shake my head clear of it, vaguely aware that I had to do something in these crucial moments but struggling to remember what that something was. I saw my right arm on the pavement, ten feet away. I knew it was my right arm because it didn’t have a watch on the wrist. The black glove was still on there, though. All around me, bits of stuffing and wood and splinters of sheet rock and gravel were falling in a gentle rain of debris.
Never go on an adventure without your gloves, something inside my brain reminded me. Was I supposed to laugh? It was true enough.
I had my ruined flannel shirt in the car still. I could get that, put a... a stick or something through it, tie off my leg into a tourniquet. That was the big artery down there. But then what about my arm? I’d need another shirt or... or cloth something. Cloth... strips. Shit. Once that shock wore off, I knew I was fucked. I’d be in too much pain to do anything.
“Oh my!” came a soft voice from somewhere below me. “You’re hurt!”
I strained to bring my head up again and I saw through my one good eye—or thought I saw, my brain was probably scrambled—a small yellow pony standing outside the Equestria Experience center. She had her front legs crossed in... embarrassment, maybe, and she was looking at me through her long pink mane. Behind her, gray smoke was pooling and collecting on the ceiling of the center, with some of it escaping out through the broken windows in thin streams.
My leg had gone cold, and I felt something hot running down my face on the blind side. The pony approached me slowly, unsurely. It seemed like she might run from me screaming at any moment. Given how I probably looked, I wouldn’t have blamed her.
She stopped right next to me and leaned her little pony-neck over me, shading my face from the sun. She looked straight down at me, the longest bit of her mane tickling the bridge of my nose.
“Hi there, Gregory, I’m Fluttershy,” said the yellow pony. There was more shade, suddenly, and I saw she’d spread her wings. She had wings.
“C’ll an ‘mbul’nce,” I coughed out. I tasted blood and lots of it. My lungs felt like they’d taken a hard punch.
“Oh dear, I don’t think there have been any ambulances around here for a long time!” she said, looking around as though one might be nearby and she simply didn’t see it. Of course there hadn’t been any. Why had I asked for one? I was silly.
It was getting harder to take full breaths. The coldness was now running up from my leg and shoulder and into my core. I tried lifting my right leg to elevate it, but it didn’t respond. The muscles were probably shredded. I tried my left arm. It was still intact. Shaking violently, I propped myself up onto the elbow I had left and looked around me for my car. As soon as I started dragging myself towards it, the pony put a hoof on my chest, so gentle I could almost have still mistaken it for a hallucination. But then she gave me the slightest push, stopping me so that I would find her gaze again.
“Princess Celestia sent me,” said Fluttershy. “She made me and my friends so that we could help ponies like you come to Equestria even if there are no humans around to help them! Isn’t that just... the most wonderful thing you’ve ever heard?” Her wings fluttered in place a couple of times. I wondered absently if she could actually fly with those. Nah, I seemed to remember something about birds needing hollow bones just to—
“I’m so sorry it took me so long to reach you, Gregory,” she said, "but Princess Celestia has been working a long time on getting us to Earth so we could help spread the magic of friendship with everypony who needs it! You are my very first stop! I’m... a little nervous, but also excited to travel this new world and meet new friends!”
“‘re you re’l?” I asked her.
“Just as real as you, but you look badly hurt.” She looked me up and down and shook her head sadly. “I don’t know what did this to you, but I can take you to Equestria where you can get fixed all up, I promise! Why, I’ll even feed you soup in bed!” She blushed suddenly and looked away. “Um, I may not seem like it, but I’m very good at taking care of sick and injured animals, and ponies really aren’t all that different when you get down to it, they just need kindness and friendship.”
My arm gave out, and I was on my back again. I closed my eyes and didn’t open them again. I was very cold.
“O-oh dear! Was that me? Did I do that? I’m so, so sorry, Gregory!”
I shook my head weakly, managing a smile. I heard Fluttershy sigh with relief.
“I’m glad.” Then her voice perked up a little. “You must be an important pony, Gregory, because Princess Celestia wants to meet you face-to-face! She’s in Equestria, though, not here. So is my house and my soup and my bandages. I do know the way to Equestria from here, though, and I can take you there! That is, um... if you want to.”
My eyes wouldn’t open. I wasn’t breathing enough for what my body wanted. It started hitching in protest, but it didn’t hurt. It was just a bit chilly all around me, that’s all. I licked my lips and put some oomph behind a good big inhalation. I needed it. It wasn’t much, but it was all I had left.
I don’t know what happened after that.