[Horse and Cherry present the final reveal]
[Horse's star blaster is one of the original Alien weapons recovered during the Human Era. "I know a pony..." was cover.]
[REVERSE STORYTELLING, TELL IT STARTING FROM RECENT EVENTS INTO THE PAST, HORSE TO HOUSE]
"Let us dispense with this charade, shall we?" The smiling equine face began to dissolve, shifting, and I allowed myself a smile of my own.
Machines. Programming and wires, nothing but secrets and lies -
And then the image resolved into a monster. Instinctively I reared, backing up several steps before I managed to get hold of myself.
The head was round, with a flattened face ending above in a dapper (if criminally short) black mane and below in a sharp chin. Its muzzle was a wedge-like stub of skin over cartilage, barely noticeable except in that it broke up the flatness between mouth and eyes. The latter held a penetrating, sharply intelligent aspect, dominated by cornea and iris and with almost no whites to speak of. How could such a creature display emotions with such a fixed, immobile stare?
Though the display revealed little below the neck, it was clearly wearing a suit jacket with necktie in the classic pre-War style. There was no flank, tail or anything else showing behind, suggesting a bipedal build similar to that of a Diamond Dog.
What the hell was this supposed to be? What was Horse playing at? My mind raced as I failed to suppress a shudder, taken aback at this sudden immersion into the unknown.
Horse's revised visage responded by curling its broad-lipped mouth into an unmistakable smirk which somehow managed to reach those diminuitive pools of root-beer brown. "Surely I'm not that hideous, am I? After all, we're much more alike than you might want to know."
It took a moment to quash the quaver in my voice. "Q-Quit playing around, Horse. I didn't come here for some elaborate haunted-casino Nightmare Night prank -"
One side of the abomination's mouth turned down, switching from smirk to frown with a thorough economy of motion. "Really, Mister Pie. I'd have thought you more capable, by now at least, of seeing beyond the obvious. Of using a bit of... imagination." The expression softened slightly. "But then again, how could you know what I actually am, when all you can see are the trappings of silicone and steel? For all you know, my face is nothing more than mere artistry, no more real than a dream. Am I right?"
I forced a nod. A moment later, a section of wall opened and slid aside with a hydraulic hiss.
"Then step into my parlor, Mister Fly --- I beg your pardon. I meant 'Pie', of course."
Of course you did, Mister Spider.
[face-to-face meeting w/House, references to Princess Bride "mostly dead" situation... House went to
brain-machine, then machine-mind, then reversed the process once magic was discovered --- still stuck
in the memory computer referenced in Chapter 1 though]
[Conversation with House]
A section of floor slid open to admit a wide red pillow-seat on a shallow dais, rising up from below
and settling into position with an audible clank. The alien image on the screen, playing the
part of gracious host, nodded towards it.
"Please, Mister Pie, take a seat. If you will allow me, I shall tell you how Equestria was made."
Figured I might as well take a load off, so I copped a squat on the soft plush and perked my ears
attentively. I could certainly do worse than play the part of honored guest, after all.
House started in with the air of a professor who'd been rehearsing his speech for a long, long time.
"In the beginning, the only people were my people. No other animals spoke, wrote, or built
civilizations. Only we humans, homo sapien, did that, and we did it very well.
"But when we invented civilizations, we also created the notion that conflict could be between whole
groups of people, instead of just individuals. We invented the concept of war.
"The Romans waged war to gather slaves and wealth. Spain built an empire from its lust for gold and
territory. Hitler shaped a battered Germany into an economic superpower, built on the annexation of
its neighbors. These, and hundreds of other nations, fought and killed and bled over the course of
millenia to advance their civilizations, in one way or another.
"But war, my little pony? War, itself, never changes.
"Even after more than five thousand years of recorded human history, war was still primarily waged
over the acquisition of resources. But in the final decades leading up to our fall from glory, the
spoils of war were also its weapons... petroleum to fuel our industry and our armored combat vehicles,
uranium to provide power for our luxury home appliances and warheads for our nuclear missiles.
"China invaded my home, the United States of America, to seize our last oil reserves. We, in turn,
annexed Canada to obtain its vast forests as an alternate fuel supply. The European Commonwealth,
after exhausting itself fighting over the oilfields of the Middle East, collapsed entirely into
bickering, quarrelling nation-states once those fields ran dry.
"Eventually, someone somewhere decided that they had had enough. A button was pressed, missiles began
flying, and everyone else retaliated in kind. Within two hours, most of the planet was blown to
glowing, radioactive cinders.
"From a world population close to ten billion --- assuming you haven't received the equivalent of a
human high-school education in mathematics, that's a one followed by ten zeros --- less than a million
survived, scattered across the world in tiny groups which immediately began to prey on one another for
the scraps left behind. And that was the beginning of humanity's end.
I cocked my head to one side. "Assuming you haven't spit your bit here, what's any of this got to do
with anything, Mister Hor... er, House?"
If anything, the flat-faced expression became even more smug. "Because without the looming reality of
our own extinction, Mister Pie, there would have been no reason to create surrogate species --- yours,
for example."
I stared unblinkingly at the screen. "Brahmin crap."
"Not at all, Mister Pie. Not a bit of it. You're clearly something of a student of history --- don't
you wonder how it is that ponykind industrialized so rapidly in the decades before balefire fell, when
prior to that it had been largely placid and medieval for millenia? Haven't you ever thought about
why so much weaponry, ostensibly built by and for ponies, is much more easily wielded by species with
extra digits such as griffins?"
The screen flickered, switching cleanly to an exploded-anatomy medical diagram. The image vaguely
resembled a claw of some kind, but without any talons --- or knobbling or feathers, for that matter.
From a central squarish palm extended five, um... five...
"...they look like penises."
There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Then:
"Er... I suppose I can understand how someone, who has no functioning experience with
fingers," said House, extending and stressing the word for additional emphasis, "might arrive
at that conclusion. Now that you mention it, I recall a human doctor of my former acquaintance who
made the same mistake after living as a brain in a jar for an extended period..."
Whatever. I could at least see what he was getting at, and I could also put two and two together.
"So you're saying..." But House was much too keen on telling his mariner's tale to let me finish the
equation.
"...that the basis of equine industry and manufacturing is derived directly from human technology,
yes. In fact, it was primarily through my personal efforts that the planet was reseeded and talking
ponies came to exist in the first place."
In for a bit, in for a bushel... I arched one eyebrow in what I hoped was a dramatic offer for
my host to continue. It was pretty clear at this point that, whatever else he might be, Edwin Robert
Horse had thoroughly flipped his haybale. But at least he was an interesting lunatic.
"This city you walk in? It was, and is, my city... I built it, after all, with the wealth and
power I acquired through my industrial and financial acumen. Although no one believed in magic during
the human era, the technology I created was so advanced that many said it might as well have
been magic to start with.
"This very tower? I designed it as an anti-missile laser battery and control center, wrapped in a
casino to keep others from guessing its purpose. From here I defended my city when the final day of
humanity's reckoning came, though it still wasn't enough in the final equation. Six warheads got
through, creating an untenable situation which took decades to even begin to stabilize.
"Had I not been working with inefficient beta software, I would have dealt with all of the missiles
handily, but the finished version was scheduled for delivery the very day after the bombs fell.
It had been encoded into a special token --- the very Chip you carry right now.
"I spent millions of caps and two centuries searching for that Chip --- only to enlist the
services of a fool for the final leg of its journey. That special individual
allowed the Chip to be stolen by a larcenous associate of mine, then spent weeks meandering about the
desert doing every petty job other than honoring my contract, which required pursuit and
recovery in event of theft. Then, after finally doing what I was paying him for, that courier
walked right out of the very lion's den holding my Chip... and threw it into the Grand Canyon.
"Not long after, a barrage of nuclear weapons launched from a hidden pre-War base. Without any
warning, it was all I could do to protect the Las Vegas area from the sudden strike, but I could do
nothing to prevent the complete destruction of the New California Republic and a semi-nomadic military
organization calling itself 'Caesar's Legion'...the only major examples of recovering civilization.
"This second wave of destruction effectively wiped out any chance humanity had of recovering. From
that point forward, our numbers slowly declined, as though we had simply given up on survival at some
level... genetic, perhaps. It was clear that our time had come and gone. But if I could not save my
species, at the least I could try to save my world.
"Long ago, in the far-away land of Norway, we built a 'Doomsday Vault' which contained samples of
every seed and genetic strain humanity could catalogue. Its function was simple: to allow for
replanting the planet in the event of a nuclear war. But it took much longer than anyone expected for
the war's residual radiation to fade away; by that time, no one remembered the Vault had ever existed.
No one but me.
"Locked away in this great machine, I yet possessed control of my robots, as well as the servitude of
those humans which had survived beneath my anti-missile aegis. I therefore bent them towards
recovering the contents of that final Vault, an odyssey of epic proportions which I shan't bore you
with just now, as the details are quite irrelevant. What is important is that we recovered the
genetic materials --- well, most of it. Quite a bit had spoiled while other samples were lost during
the return journey. Including, as our continuing bad luck would have it, humanity's.
"Nonetheless, humanity had not been idle in pursuing technological goals, even in the aftermath of two
nuclear bombardments. The machine-minds of the Big Mountain Science Complex had developed functional
gene-splicing systems and cloning vats, which we used to grow and breed the initial strains prior to
their release into the wild. In particular, we aimed to create as many sentient species as possible,
leavening their gene's with those related to humanity's intellect.
"And remember what I said about technology advancing to the point where it became magic? As it turned
out, that was actually a truism. We learned so much about the nature of the universe's natural laws,
that we discovered how to break them in a variety of --- shall we say, 'interesting' --- ways. Doctor
Bouros was quite enthralled with the opportunity to create the first manticore, as it allowed him to
splice his damnable scorpion DNA into something without everyone yelling at him.
"All of this, of course, was a long and slow process of trial and mostly error. There were more than
a few mistakes, some intelligent and others not, many being horrific and others entirely sadistic. A
lot of that was because we were searching for a species mix suitable enough to become a 'client race'
--- humanity's replacement species.
[DESCRIPTION: 1st THROUGH 4th GEN]
"Which brings us to you and yours, my little pony.
"Meanwhile, what human society there was outside of the Vegas area devolved to feudalism, with tiny kingdoms and principalities providing the shelter of castle fortifications in exchange for food and servitude. By the time the first independent generation of ponies began to thrive on its own in the wild, there were more 'goblinoid' mutants running around than recognizable humans. And yet, even that first generation of ponies would have died out, much earlier than they did... if not for a teenage human girl, her little brother, and her even littler sister."
The image sighed, long and deeply.
"Equines were the only species which seemed capable of our two central requirements: developing human levels of intellect, and sticking together as a coherent society. Ponies took to it even better than the larger horses. Nonetheless, it took multiple 'generations' and, shall we say, 'total wipeouts', to create bodies and brains that didn't just submit to the first major threats that came along. The third generation, in particular, and the, ahem, 'hotfix' intended to correct the problem of extremely low intelligence combined with high levels of magical acuity..."
The screen visibly, audibly, shuddered.
"...forgive me. Let us not speak of such abominations."
[FINAL THEME: ELO's "Yours Truly, 2095" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtfjzmYZvTw ]
[FINISH TO NEW PEGAS: Ending Lyrics to "In the Year 2525"]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKQfxi8V5FA
Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew...
Now Man's reign is through...
But through eternal Night
The twinkling of Star-light
So very far away...
Maybe it's only Yesterday...
[ALTERNATIVE "STAR-MEN" PLOT THREAD]
[mention arms-race between House (supporting Equestria) and Star-Men (supporting the Zebras)]
[Star-Men are a surviving Enclave splinter-faction which seized Mothership Zeta and from there the remnants of orbiting stations. They kept pure-strain humanity alive with the ultimate intent of returning to repopulate the Earth once the mutants were all done away with. With the Lone Wanderer having deployed the F.E.V. in the D.C. Wasteland, and the Courier nuking both NCR and Legion in the West, it was believed that planetary sterility would be achieved within a century. However, House then sent his robots to the Norwegian Doomsday Vault and started the re-seeding early. This was further complicated by surviving independent biogrowth projects and incidents which were now expanding to the point of cross-pollination: Vault 22 and Big M/T's botanical lab in the New Vegas area, Harold's Oasis near Washington, D.C., and others.
There were not enough Enclave left to risk any of them in direct conflict without also risking the remaining genetic pool dropping to extinction levels (less than a thousand). Despondent and desperate, with the chance to remake the planet for a pure-strain humanity stolen away, the Star-Men were infiltrated and co-opted to act as agents for the Elder Gods. This allowed the return of the Black Book, through which the Star-Men attempted repeatedly to destroy the mutants on Earth.
Project Horizon's asteroid impact (being an Elder God), the rise of the Witches (corrupted mutant humans), and the Smooze attack all resulted from Black Book projects.]