HUMAN in Equestria: A Conversion Bureau Story

by Chatoyance


17. Epilogue: What A Piece Of Work Is A Man!

The Conversion Bureau

HUMAN

in Equestria
By Chatoyance

17. Epilogue: What A Piece Of Work Is A Man!

Special thanks to my spouse Aedina for her assistance with historically accurate Elizabethan speech.



Perhaps sixty... no, seventy. Sixty-five. About sixty-five people, heading for the main gate. That was just about everyone. No, if he was honest with himself, it was everyone. Everyone except Liliane, and that old low-born pedo, Roman.

Stefan Albrecht Bettencourt stared out of his office window, in the corner of his magnificent Tudor-styled mansion, in the prime grounds to the left of the gate, right by the main cobblestone road that ran the length of the fortress. Below, the last of the inhabitants queued up to leave in small groups escorted by royal stallion guards in armor. Each group of humans would be placed on a pegasus-drawn carriage, to be taken to Canterlot, where, still under guard, they would be escorted to the princesses.

And then they would be changed.

This was always the problem with war - losing. They had tried. Their plan had been sound, their strategy solid. The ruling families of earth had retained their human bodies - and most importantly, their hands. Hands were the secret. Hands were the source of all power.

Celestia had known that, Stefan felt sure. She was wily, clever, the ultimate schemer. With hands, a human could work alone, build in secret, construct and make and manufacture in isolation. Hands made it possible for one man to craft bullets in a shack, or make explosives all by himself. Hands allowed a gun to be made by a single man in a single room if need be - or a sword, or a knife, or a bomb.

That was undoubtedly why she had chosen ponies out of all the creatures of the earth to duplicate. There was no way to know precisely what time periods that the solar monarch had seen through her little dimensional peep-holes. But there had been hints. Bettencourt had gotten a report that suggested that Celestia had likely first viewed the earth sometime during the Late Miocene. Dissections of pegasai had revealed elements that resembled that of Pilohippus, blended in with later earthly equines.

Celestia was a thief. She stole her universe from peeping at earth. She could have made humans, they existed, or at least their ancestors did, but she chose equines. There could be only one reason.

Hooves were clumsy. They had no thumbs, no opposing grasp. Equines lived in herds, they moved as one. Celestia had deliberately chosen a species to raise up and make intelligent that could not work alone. Her ponies were forced by necessity to work together to accomplish anything meaningful. Even the unicorns, with their telekinesis - a single horn was worth a dozen hands - were dependent on the pegasai and the earthponies. Unicorns were physically weak and couldn't pull or push or dig like earthponies. They couldn't transport materials long distances over difficult terrain like pegasai. But they could do fine detail work.

Three breeds, each utterly needing the other, and every pony always needing to be helped with any job by the hooves of others. Individually clumsy creatures that collectively could do anything. That was deliberate. That... was genius.

All rebellion starts with the individual, alone. It spreads like fire, consuming hearts and minds, until a new order is created, or the rebels are killed off. The rise and fall of empires, born of individual aspiration and secrecy and individual power.

But in Equestria, there was no hope for ambition. Secrecy was impossible in a world where no creature could go it alone, where entire communities were forced to do everything in the open. Celestia was crafty. Celestia was smart.

And Celestia had won.

Thirty. Thirty or so left. The rest had already passed through the gate. Stefan sipped his coffee. It was cold - Bertarelli made a terrible butler. He was weak and spoiled. Stefan didn't feel like chewing him out right at the moment. He needed to see the last one. He needed to see the last traitor to the human race pass through that gate.

Hooves and a mind bent towards peace. Towards harmony and total cooperation. Celestia was a communist. A socialist. These broken philosophies had failed on earth, because humans were naturally ambitious. They needed to have a sense of self-importance, of self-benefit. Humans could never work toward a collective, or toward a common good - not without incentives. Not without personal gain. Communism collapsed because every man wants to get his own piece of the pie.

Only natural. A hunter gatherer needs to hunt, to win, to achieve.

Celestia solved the problem by eliminating Nature. Ponies were designed, deliberately, to care about the common good. They were driven to collective solutions. There was no space in their passions for conquest. For domination. For rulership.

Alexander would have slit his own throat before going pony. Napoleon would have shot himself in the head. Those were men. Those were the flowers, the glories of humanity. They were remembered because they were worth remembering. They rose to power, as real men do, and sat alone upon their thrones.

Ponies never do anything alone.

"ROMAN!" There were only ten left at the gate, out the window. "ROMAN! Get your sorry ass in here, you baby-fucking bastard! ROMAAAAN!" Stefan had no time to go looking for his telescope. The mansion had come with one, built by some Royal Pony Telescope Maker or somesuch. It was primitive, a simple refractor, lenses and a tube. It looked pretty, gold and gems and exotic woods, but it had pissed Stefan off. Now he wished he knew where it had been put.

"ROOOMMMMAAAAANNN!" The last three traitors were starting to exit the Masada. Wait. That coat. That was the butler coat with the overly large sleeves, designed for diamond dogs. Stefan knew that coat. That was Bertarelli! Bertarelli was the last human out the gate! That filthy bastard had run off and joined the line!

Bettencourt sat down in a huff, his back turned to the window. He stared at the cold coffee in the cup in front of him. The last cup that would ever be served to him appropriately. There were no more servants now. Roman Bertarelli had gone off to join the ponies. It was just him and Liliane now. In the vast entirety of the Human Masada, it was just him... and Liliane. Alone, in a walled fortress of empty mansions.





Stefan Bettencourt walked the length of the enormous fortress. It had been built in a day, he had been informed. Magic. An army of royal unicorns and top-level spells. The side of a mountain had conveniently reformed itself into a hundred and one buildings and a massive, thick wall.

On day two, earthponies did all the gardening. Bettencourt stared up at a two-hundred foot tall tree that stood on a small island in the middle of the stone canal that divided the masada. Little bridges led to the decorative island, where pleasant benches stood among the flowers. It had all been grown in one, single day.

Stefan shook his head. Hands. Fingers. Technology.

This magic, this programmable thaumatic energy was a vastly superior technology to anything humanity had ever developed. Or ever would have developed. All the stuff had run out. That is what killed the earth. The stuff ran out. Fuel and metals and gasses increasingly difficult to extract, requiring more and more energy to dig or pump out than what was gained. A death spiral of ever increasing consumption, a planet more pit mine than flat land.

Entropy. Man had always been doomed by entropy, by stuff running out. Life, materials, time.

And along comes these ponies, these horrible aliens, and they have it all. A universe where nothing ever runs out, but is replenished over time. Where rocks grow from sand, where trees can be grown in a day, where even the life force itself cannot be lost. Extropy. Alien beings from a universe of extropy. A fairyland of neverending surplus. Post-scarcity was too pale a term.

And that is what Stefan Bettencourt hated the most. He kicked the magically grown tree. Not hard. He didn't want to have to beg some goddamn unicorn to mend a broken toe.

In the old universe, in Mundis, on earth, scarcity meant that a man could become a god by collecting and defending the biggest pile of stuff. That was earthly life, and the glory of Man defined. He who ruled was he with the most stuff. Or at least the most control over stuff, which amounted to the same thing. It took fire. It took a killer will and a predator's spirit.

On earth, you were poor if you cared more about people than power. The equation was simple, the truth absolute. Stuff was survival - it was a material world and there was never enough of anything to go around.

Stefan Albrecht Bettencourt had been born, bred and raised to be the ultimate human predator, and he was proud of it. He had risen to the highest position possible, above presidents and ministers, above kings, above emperors, above god - he had become the commander in chief, the chief executive officer of the corporation of Mankind itself.

And now it was gone.

Gone like the earth. Stefan moved away from the tree, shuffling along the too-perfect cobblestones. Gone like the old universe of struggle and never enough. Gone like all the old books and movies about tough men with guns and swords and bombs taking what was rightfully theirs through force of arms and strength of conviction.

There was nothing to conquer in Equestria. Stefan walked through the entrance of the Muleskinner Club. The door had been left open, already autumn leaves were scattered inside the empty, dark building. The season had just changed, and the pegasai were working extra hard to produce winds so that seeds could find new ground to fall on, and spores could drift and so alien leaves could invade a human space.

Bettencourt had lived to reach the top. In Equestria that spot was filled, forever and ever, by immortal goddesses. Trying to control material goods was pointless. Gold? Any earthpony could go out in the desert and begin growing gold ore into mountains of the stuff. Jewels? The same problem. Food? Pork bellies? - they were all vegetarian!

There had been only one path to rulership, one commodity that Man could control here that the ponies couldn't do better.

Life and death. Ponies could be hurt, ponies could be killed. They didn't die forever, apparently, but death still meant parting, and it still hurt. Man could inflict suffering, which was always the foundation of every empire, and every law. Orders and commands meant nothing without a man with a gun or a sword or a fist to insist on obedience. All power derives from suffering - whether through denial of stuff, or denial of life and limb.

It would have worked. That pony bitch had taken the power to kill and to hurt from Man in that damn Covenant, but... the diamond dogs were free. They had gotten in by themselves, they had sneaked into Equestria somehow, and Celestia hadn't been able to put governors on them. They learned quickly, and they ate meat. The dogs had loved using the guns. It made them feel powerful.

If things had worked out, Bettencourt had enjoyed visions of the dogs dressed in Napoleonic uniforms, parading around his castle. His palace. Lord Bettencourt of Humanestria.

It had all gone south the moment that bitch, that filth, Sloane, Sloane Cameron decided she wanted bacon now. It wasn't hers to have. All the bacon was his to give or withhold. Sloane had let a diamond dog kill a pig with a gun, because she refused to believe in animal souls. That betrayal had ended any hope of a human empire within Equestria.

Stefan searched the cabinet for liquor. Nothing, the bastards. They drank it all. Probably while making the decision to leave, to go pony. Rats leaving a sinking ship. Rats, not men, not ponies, the lot of them.

Adam and Eve. That was who he and Liliane were, now. The bible had gotten it wrong - actually, the bible had gotten everything wrong. Revelations had no pony paradise in it. But it had gotten its books out of order. Stefan laughed, leaning on the bar, in the dim light. The bible needed to be read in reverse. It didn't begin with Adam and Eve, it ended with them. In the garden. In the garden.

In the forest.

Stefan Bettencourt left the bar, and began to walk, then run, back to his mansion. Before he had exited the Muleskinner, he stopped to grab one of the scrolls from the little box over the mantle. Nobody had bothered to summon Celestia this year, or last year for that matter, so she contractually had to appear. Adam and Eve.

Stefan's heart beat fast as he ran, his eyes sparkling with the rush of decision and the triumph of Will.

"How canst YOU, who do profess to cherish life so, who doth cleave to law and reason above even thine own land and sun, countenance such as this?" Tiny flecks of foam, an uncommon sight, dotted Luna's muzzle.

Since her return, it was rare for the night princess to display open anger toward her sister. The lesson of centuries past weighed always upon her, and the knowledge of her own weakness of temper was a constant shame. Just as an obsessive clutching at order was her sister's wound from the time of Discord, so anger and impatient desperation was hers.

Luna turned away from her sister. She knew that look too well, the look on her sister's muzzle. "Madness and delirium be this, and the wail of spoiled foals!" The nocturnal diarch suddenly turned back to face Celestia. "No goodly parent thee, to encourage thy foals to gallop into the very throat of hungry doom!"

Celestia waited for the fire to lessen in her sibling's eyes before she finally spoke. "Luna... they are not foals. They are adults and more than this - they are peers. Their choice is not ours to take from them, whatever we may think."

"PEERS?" Luna was aghast. "Speak thou not such drivel, sister! These hoofless, churlish, dog-hearted, fustilarian, beslubbering, motley-minded, fen-sucked, loggerheaded, ill-nurtured, artless and errant, tardy-gaited, clapper-clawed, guts-griping, miscreant, pottle-deep onion-eyed jackanapes NAY ARE PEERS!"

Celestia dug a small furrow in the soil of the path. She kindly waited for her younger sister to regain herself. "I hear that you care, and that this bothers you deeply, I truly do hear you." The solar diarch raised her head and studied her sister's troubled expression. "You begged me not to keep my promise, to just once let something go. You warned me that the humans would be a greater danger than dragons, and more temperamental than griffons. You suffered for my determination to save these creatures. I know it has been so very hard on you."

Luna looked almost as if she might cry.

"Yet, when the time came, you were there for me, fully involved." Celestia looked down at her little furrow. "You became their champion, even more than I in some ways. Where I became weary of the humans, you seemed to find in them something sympathetic, something that clearly moved you deeply. I must always keep my promises, and so I have, but you truly had love for these strange beasts. I acknowledge this.

"But sister, Luna..." Celestia once again fixed her eyes on those of her quietly weeping sibling. "Stefan and Liliane were the royalty of their world. Their place in the weft of things was, in human terms, the same as ours. In that one respect, they are truly peers."

"You are sending them to their death. You know that. How can you do that?" Luna was crying now, and the loss of all pretense of royal speech made the night princess's quiet words seem louder than her previous outburst.

Celestia pressed close, and embraced her little sister with her neck and shoulder. "I could ponify them. I could change them, against their will, and they would be happy for it. They would awaken from their arrogance and madness, and they would weep with shame at their previous petulance and pride. They would thank us both for saving them from themselves, and rightfully too. What they are doing truly is nothing more than a fatal foal's tantrum."

Luna's head was tucked close, her cheek warm against her sister's barrel. "Then do it. Let me do it. Please, sister. Please."

Celestia sighed. "You know I cannot, because I am bound by agreement. I know you find that reason insufficient, and it is true that in this case it is discompassionate, even despicably cruel. But, Luna, if I do not honor their choice here, how am I different than our brother who took all choice away?"

"You are not Discord! You will never become Discord! It's not the same thing!" Luna was crying again.

"It is the same thing, to me." Celestia gently rubbed her head against her sister. "Either I honor the free will of my subjects, or I do not. Ponification must be a choice, and so we must accept when that choice is rejected. I have to live with this fact."

"Thou dost maketh me also to live with this choice of thine." Luna sniffed. "And that isn't fair."

"I... I know. I'm sorry."

Luna stepped back and stared at her older sister with intense, wounded eyes. "Wouldst thou call us rebel and traitor should we take our own conscience and save these humans from their own folly? Thy promise was to save humanity, yet here thou dost see fit to watch it perish without reason or hope of survival. What then, if we choose to fulfill thy promise for thee, if thy hoof be so truly bound? Wouldst thee make lunar aspect of us again for such?"

"LUNA!" Celestia was visibly hurt, and instantly the princess of the night felt shame for her words.

"Tia... I... I'm sorry... I..."

Celestia shook her head, her glowing mane of thaumatic force rippling like a flame. "No. No, Luna, shhh, shhh... It is I who should be sorry. I put you in this place, I'm the reason you have to even deal with it at all."

The two immortal sisters stood silently for a while.

"In answer..." Celestia studied her little furrow again. "...no. I would not do anything at all to you. Not ever again. I can never bear to make that choice again." Celestia looked up and tried to smile. "Which is why I have to depend on you to make whatever choice you think is right, even if I disagree with it, and trust in the good heart of my beloved sister."

The chariot was circling overhead. The pegasai pulling it followed the pointing hand of the human male. The chariot made a pass over the forest, over the Everfree, before arcing back towards where the princesses stood. Both regents watched in silence as the pegasus chariot came in for a landing, and finally to a stop.

"Come to see us off. Glad to be rid of us, I expect!" Stefan Bettencourt seemed to be in a jolly mood. If he was afraid, as he should be, he did not show it. Neither did his wife, Liliane.

"Greetings, chief executive officer Bettencourt, missus Bettencourt." Celestia gave a slight bow with her neck. "Welcome to the entrance of the Everfree forest."

"Oh, look, it's Luna!" Liliane Bettencourt held out her hand, unthinkingly, then withdrew it. "Sorry. It is very good to see you again, princess." Luna could not discern any falseness to the statement. Either it was true, or Liliane Bettencourt was astonishingly consummate at the art of diplomacy.

"So, ready for a little stroll, my dear?" Stefan took his wife's arm. Neither of them were dressed for survival in a dangerous chaotic zone of distressed reality. Stefan wore his finest suit, Liliane a dress appropriate to an ambassadorial gathering.

"Stefan Bettencourt! This we do say is madness on thy part!" Luna stared deeply into the human's small eyes. "Yon Everfree is no place for strolling, but rather for running, and if needful, hiding. Thou art not prepared for such excursion, neither art thee weighed down with sustenance and drink! We see not any shelter or bedding in thy keeping, nor tool nor even pillow for thy head." Luna brought her face close to that of the little man before her. "Thy progress is folly and death. Save thy mare and thyself, Stefan Bettencourt! I would make of thee both proper citizens and welcome thee with open hooves."

Luna pulled back, her eyes pools of sadness. "We beg thee."

"Nothin' doing, right sweetheart?" Stefan pulled his wife closer. Liliane nodded, assenting. "See, princess, me and the missus here are going to go into that forest there. You know why?"

Luna shook her head. The act was incomprehensible. It was suicide. There wasn't even a word in Equestrian for suicide.

Stefan grinned. "Because that isn't Equestria in there. I've been studying. The Everfree is a scar on reality itself, it's a place other than your realm. It's a land apart, one that you can't control, and one that you and your sister don't hold sway over. It's free for the taking, a fresh new land to conquer. I figure it's Eden, in there. The Garden Of Eden, and I'm Adam, and this is my wife Eve." Stefan laughed. "Say hello, Eve!"

Liliane giggled. "Hello!"

"Now I reckon that anything can happen in there. That's what I've heard, anyway." Stefan studied the dark, gloomy forest. "Anything. Things you don't know about. Things you can't explain. Things even you and your sister don't understand. I look at that forest, and you know what I see?"

Luna could only stand and watch. A tear trickled down her cheek.

"I see a fixer-up opportunity! I see empire, I see a new start for Mankind. Adam and Eve, starting over, fresh, in the Garden of Eden. You wouldn't know about that. It's not for ponies, no offense."

Luna nodded. Not once did either Stefan, or Liliane, show the slightest fear. For all her insults, Luna knew the humans weren't stupid. The two understood the truth, yet they acted like this. It was insane, yes, but it was also courageous in a way that no Equestrian had ever been.

Finally, Luna found words. At first they were halting, but they grew stronger. "Thou... thou art old. Sixty and more in the years of vanished earth thou art, and thou hast not even a cane to support thee."

Liliane Bettencourt smiled. "We had our ova and sperm stored until we were ready to have..." For a moment, she looked away. "We'll manage."

"We would give thee a gift in parting, Bettencourts. We offer thee renewed youth. If truly thou dost intend to brave the Everfree, grant us leave to give unto thee stout limbs and a strong heart to face it with." Tears ran nakedly down the muzzle of the princess of the night.

Stefan conferred with his wife. "As long as you don't turn us into ponies, we don't see any harm in that. We accept, graciously."

Celestia watched, as Luna's long horn shimmered with silvern light. Ribbons of force licked like tongues over the two humans, and decades of decay melted away. It was a blatant, untenable violation of the Covenant, of law and order and propriety, but Celestia had just given her word to her sister that she would do nothing. The transgression ate at her, burned her, but Celestia bit her lip and forced herself to remain still.

Luna withdrew her power. "It is done. Blessed be thou in body and spirit, and may thy days be long and good."

Liliane gave a small bow. "Thank you princess."

"I think it's time, Liliane. We're wearing out our welcome." Stefan Bettencourt, the last man in Equestria, held the hand of his wife, the last woman. "I should probably say something, shouldn't I? Propriety must be maintained, after all."

Stefan cleared his throat, and then recited "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a God!"

"Just lovely. I always did enjoy your speaking voice." Liliane squeezed her husband's hand. It felt young.

"Good day, princesses. Celestia. Luna." Stefan nodded a farewell, and then he and his wife stepped forward upon the rough, pebbly trail.

The two last humans stopped, briefly, at the boundary of the forest. They looked at each other, and then marched ahead, as if they were going on a picnic.

A few minutes later, the forest enveloped them, and the only thing that remained were their shoe prints in the dirt.

Celestia and Luna, and the team of Pegasai stood and silently stared after the passing of the Bettencourts for some time.

Eventually, Celestia directed the chariot team to return to Canterlot. For some time, after they left, Celestia stood where the chariot had been, and studied her sister from a distance. Luna cried, softly, but in time, the storm passed.

"Comest thee home, dearest Luna, thy hearth and bed await thee, and good ponies all to cheer thy wounded heart." Celestia's sad eyes followed her sister as she approached.

"You... you should talk like that more often." Luna pressed herself into her sister. "It was nice to hear."

"I love you, little sister."

"I love you too."

A brilliant gold and silver light fought the very sun for a few moments, and when the brilliance faded to a point and vanished, the path was empty, and open, and only the impressions of hooves and shoes remained.

The End

The Lost In The Herd Series:
One: The Big Respawn,
Two: Euphrosyne Unchained,
Three: Letters From Home,
Four: Teacup, Down On The Farm

The Conversion Bureau Novels:
27 Ounces: A story of eight and one half ponies
The Taste Of Grass
The Conversion Bureau: Code Majeste
The Conversion Bureau: The 800 Year Promise
The Conversion Bureau: Going Pony
The Reasonably Adamant Down With Celestia Newfoal Society!
Recombinant 63: A Conversion Bureau Story
HUMAN in Equestria: A Conversion Bureau Story
The PER: Michelson and Morely
Little Blue Cat
Cross The Amazon
Adrift Off Fiddler's Green: The Final Conversion Bureau Story

The Short Stories:
Her Last Possession
The Conversion Bureau: PER Equitum
The Conversion Bureau: Brand New Universe
Tales Of Los Pegasus
The Poly Little Pony


The very first and original
Conversion Bureau Group
archives only the best Three Rules Compatible stories!

Optimalverse Works:
Friendship Is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens
Leftovers: A Friendship Is Optimal Story
IMPLACABLE
My Life In Fimbria

Injectorverse Works:
I.D. - That Indestructible Something

The More Conventional Fanfics:
The Ice Cream Pony Summer
Around The Bend

PRIDE related works:
Transspecieality


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