Memory 4
The Play
The following is an excerpt from the play, “The Only Home I Know,” by Wordsworth, for performance at the University of Mane.
[ROSE begins to leave the house. As she opens the door, she stops and, one last time, she looks back at the house.]
Rose: It’s nothing really special, in the end. Just a house. There are lots like them, and we’ll get another one just like it. A house made up of things a lot of houses are made of – wood, concrete, insulation, electrical wiring. The tv we got around to watch movies. The garden I used to tend, seeing if I was able to grow vegetables. The bed where we made our children. The notches in the wall where we marked how our children grew. The bookshelf with the vacant cupboard where the kids would hide when they didn’t want to do their chores, or take a bath, or go to bed. The rose bushes in the front that would bloom every spring. The hummingbird feeder where we’d watch the birds dart around. The walkways that we used to visit our neighbors, before they left. Nothing tangible. Just a lot of old memories.
[ALEC re-enters]
Alec: Rose, it’s time for us to go.
Rose: Just give me some more time. I don’t want to forget.
[They stand there for a minute. ROSE takes a breath and nods.]
Rose: Alright. I’m ready.
[The two exit. The lights go down, save for a small spotlight on the white rose in the middle of the stage.]
-
Wordsworth angrily folded the paper in front of him.
“The unmitigated gall!” he exclaimed across the table at Vox, who was trying his hardest to enjoy a simple lunch.
“Wordsworth, it’s the student newspaper, nopony cares what they think...”
“What they think is that I’m some sort of...” Wordsworth waved his hooves around his head. “Some kind of lying historical revisionist.” He opened the paper back up and read, “Our playwright likes to paint an altogether different picture from the actual historical one. Whitewashing mankind’s less-than-shining nature... the human family is depicted as one that is literally forced out of their homes by the ponies, conveniently ignoring the fact that all could, and was in many cases, solved by the simple act of conversion...”
“Wordsworth, you’re getting into a lather...”
“I have a right to get in a lather!” said Wordsworth. “This play was my family’s story, and I’m not going to see some snotty communications major staining it with lies! Well!” A quill and a sheet of parchment appeared in midair. “I know exactly what I am going to do?”
“Let me guess...”
“A very strongly-opinionated letter!” they both chanted in unison, though Wordsworth was much more enthusiastic.
Chapter 5
Lost Causes
Jimmy Stewart was giving a speech he’d given many times before. It was delivered in black and white to an uninterested audience, a hoarse whisper, about the importance of lost causes. In his hands were crumpled pieces of paper, hundreds of letters condemning him. He gave his last words before collapsing, the result of nonstop talking with no breaks for food, water, or the bathroom.
He’d lost. But wait, not all was through. There was a gunshot. The corrupt senator had tried to kill himself and, swayed by nothing more than the power of Mr. Smith’s morality, was spilling all the truth about the political machine, vindicating the young idealist.
Congress was in an uproar and the weak Mr. Smith was carried away, weak, but ultimately victorious.
The credits rolled, and the lines in the room came back on. The ship’s crew stirred in their seats, thankful that they could now speak without disrupting the movie-viewing experience.
Sweeps the janitor was still glued to his seat. “That was great,” he said. “Are there more movies like that?”
“I got Wall-E,” suggested Bolter.
“There isn’t much of a market for preserved human films,” said Bill, sitting in the back of the room. “Even for the ones that did get preserved. You’re more likely to find animated features, like Wall-E. Ponies just liked the cartoons more, more of them were preserved and they simply remained more popular than the likes of this.” He gestured to the screen. “Poor Quentin Tarantino never stood a chance...”
Firebrand flicked the light switch back on with his wing. “We can watch the other movie later,” he said. “For now I think we should all get to sleep. Unless I’m a terrible navigator, we should be reaching land tomorrow morning. Signal, Wordsworth, Vox, get a broadcast ready.”
“Got it, Cap,” said Signal, giving a mock salute.
Firebrand departed from the movie room, heading down the hallway to his own quarters. He stopped, looking out the windows that lined the hallway, looking out over the night sea. The sky was clear as crystal, not a cloud in sight, as the stars and moon beamed down over the endless water. Something about it filled him with a sense of complete, abject loneliness, a sense of emptiness, like he were nothing more than an insignificant speck on a vast landscape. But then sometimes he always felt that way.
For some reason Firebrand couldn’t quite comprehend, somehow the hallways on the ship always seemed longer than they actually were. This didn’t scare him, though. He just knew that it was his ship. His special, beautiful ship.
He heard hoofsteps, but didn’t turn.
“The movies that did make it in,” said Bill’s voice. “Quite clever. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington tells a story of corruption in the human political system. Wall-E shows how humans destroyed, or would have destroyed, their environment. Subtle, though – in the end, they show how the humans can be redeemed. So for a pony watching it, it says to them that humans are very, very flawed, but they can rise above that... for example, by turning into a pony.”
Firebrand continued to stare out the window. “We’re on earth, aren’t we?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Bill. “What’s left of it, at least. There isn’t very much left: an expanse of the Atlantic ocean and some of the North American east coast. It doesn’t have much longer until the barrier completely swallows it up, I’m afraid.”
Firebrand turned around. “But... if there’s still some of earth, then maybe there are still humans–”
Bill shook his head. “No. Even if earth is still here, the air isn’t unbreathable. Not by humans, at least. You saw New Venice.”
Firebrand walked past him, his mind still turning wheels.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Why would Celestia just... zap us over to earth?”
“To show you that it’s dead,” said Bill. The captain stopped and slowly turned around. “You can’t bring it back, Firebrand. Even if Wordsworth writes the most convincing leaflets or Vox says the most dramatic speeches or Signal plays the most beautiful music. It’s gone, dead and crumbling away. And there isn’t any way to change that.”
“Who asked what you thought?” Firebrand snorted.
Bill lowered his face and smiled somberly. Firebrand turned to the outer door, looking through the glass.
“She does this to make me give up...” muttered Firebrand. “If she thinks she can do that, guess she isn’t as smart as we all thought, huh?”
“You’re not going to like what you see.”
“Oh, I bet,” said Firebrand. “I haven’t liked anything I’ve seen for a while.”
“You’re an angry pony, Firebrand,” said Bill. “Maybe you should stop and consider whether you’re really pursuing a righteous end or just throwing a temper tantrum.”
Firebrand whirled around, his nostrils flaring. “Well maybe I am,” he said. “Maybe I am throwing a, a hissy-fit or something. But maybe I’m entitled to that. I get mad, Bill. I get mad a lot. I get mad at almost everything I see sometimes. Aren’t I allowed to do that? Aren’t I allowed to scream when I’m hurt? When I want someone to listen?”
Bill stood there for a moment. “Yes, I suppose you are.”
Firebrand grumbled and opened the door to the balcony before heading outside.
-
The cold, empty wind carried Firebrand above his ship. Thousands of stars shone overhead as the sea churned beneath them all. The night was cold, melancholy, and it left Firebrand feeling alone, even with his ship of friends. That one horrifying thought could not keep from echoing in his mind – it was all dead. What use was there to rail against the princess? What was the point of going for that lost cause? Did he even have a cause at all?
He looked up at the sky. It was absolutely littered with stars, so many it overwhelmed him. The sky was so clear he felt he could see the entire cosmos.
But it was a different cosmos than he had known. The starry skies above earth, and those above Equestria, were not the same, he knew. It didn’t seem to make sense to him, so similar, yet so very far apart.
He shook his head and looked back over the sea. Everything here seemed so incredibly empty to him. No other ponies but himself and his crew. No other ponies... no royal guard, no princesses. And no humans. Nopony to hear their call. Empty.
-
It seemed the sun had risen just to greet the ship as it came over the land. The White Rose landed on the outskirts of what had once been a human city, now ruined, overlooking to the coast. The dilapidated, rotten buildings seemed to crumble in the very air.
Firebrand and his crew were silent as they walked in, each of them with a different composure. Sweeps seemed scared. Signal looked almost sad. Firebrand’s expression, however, was unreadable, his stone face almost as dead as the city around them.
They walked down the street. A quiet breeze blew through the town, making them shiver. A breeze without a pegasus in sight.
Wordsworth broke the silence. “I remember a poem,” he said to Vox. “It’s about this guy. He’s traveling, and he comes back to his old home. He remembers all these fond memories about this place, out in the wilderness in his childhood, friends and family. And now he comes back to it. But now all the friends and family are gone, and the house stands empty, save for some birds that roost in the chimney. And he says goodbye to the house and closes the door, never to return again.”
“Sounds like a sad poem,” said Vox.
“All poems are sad,” muttered Signal.
“I don’t like it here,” said Sweeps. “It’s a ghost town.”
Firebrand peered into the broken windows of buildings that had once been shops. The counters were bare, save for now-worthless odds and ends, covered in a thick layer of dust. Old signs, mostly faded, told the name of the town, of the streets. But the names no longer held any meaning, any importance. Old, forgotten, dead names, of the old, forgotten, dead town.
Wordsworth looked down at a piece of paper on the sidewalk. He attempted to lift it with his magic, but it crumbled into dust and blew away in the breeze.
None of them strayed into the buildings. It was like New Venice - a building was unstable, ready to collapse should a stray puff of air blow on it from the wrong angle.
“The... the purifiers did this?” asked Sweeps.
“Hoo boy they did,” drawled Cogs. “Air blows in, people start choking. Heh,” she laughed darkly. “The ponies, well... they didn’t take into account Earth’s uncontrolled weather. There were riots, and-” She was cut off when she bumped right into her brother ahead of her. “Hey, Bolter, why’d you-” Then she saw why they had stopped.
Firebrand stood, legs locked in the middle of the road, staring ahead at the building ahead of him.
It was a large building with crumbling signs that had likely at one point been large and flashy. The building’s wide front door lay right under another sign that read Conversion Bureau. The shining glass doors and wide windows still shined in the sunlight, as though it had somehow decayed less than the buildings around it.
This had been it. One of the establishments that popped up all over the earth to entice the populace to come over to the other side. To become ponies. To leave everything behind and let it crumble into dust. To forget.
Then there was a cry, and then a crash as a stone crashed through one of the windows, shattering it.
Firebrand spread his wings, grabbing every loose stone or chunk of concrete off of the ground, and hurling them at the building. His teeth were gritted, and he let out an angry shout with every stone he threw.
Each stone smashed the glass windows of the old bureau. Firebrand dashed across the street, looking for more, while his friends just stood the side and stared, too restrained to join in the act, but also unsure of what to do.
And soon enough, Firebrand ran out of rocks. He stood there, panting for breath. He looked from the now-wrecked bureau to his friends. Seeing their faces, he straightened up, attempting to regain his composure.
“I...” he said. He shook his head. “We’re going back to the ship...” he said, his voice full of tension. “We’re going back to the ship, and we’re heading back to Equestria.” The others nodded, not saying anything, but turning to head back to the ship.
Firebrand, however, remained where he stood. Casting one last, scornful look at the building that stood for the end of humanity, he whispered.
“We’ll make them remember.”