Friendship Space

by the dobermans


Funhouse

Please be unlocked, please be unlocked, please be unlocked … shit!

They’re closing in from behind, hooting and yelping like a pack of sugar-high third graders. The drumming of little hooves on the floor panels grows to a rattling roar. You send some more plasma their way and keep moving, not pausing to see if you’d tagged any of them.

Not that it mattered. The biometric display on the front of the exit is orange, which in this particular context confirmed your earlier assessment: you’re fucked. The necromorphs and their Princess must have locked it, trapping you inside for their sick playtime. Blood’s in the water and the sharks are hungry. If you can just make it to the door, get your back to the wall like you did in the ER so they can’t surround you …

Something grinds and pops out from under your boot. You look back again, firing another shot. Gumballs and jawbreakers are clacking and skittering towards you across the floor in an ankle-spraining tide. A ragged flock of pegasi was swooping down at you from the ceiling, flinging pails of the slippery spheres. A bunch of them were carrying nets, ready to wrap you up nice and snug. If you trip now, you’d be buried like Franco in a matter of seconds.

There’s a flash, followed by a concussive pressure wave. You stumble closer to the door, steeling your nerves for the worst. Looking down, you search your suit for the place where the lighting had blown a hole through your chest.

Nothing. Still kicking, Isaac, still in the game.

“Isaac Clarke!”

There’s another blast of air from the right, focused into your ear. The noise of the ponies fades to a painful ringing. You cringe, raising your RIG-enhanced fists to protect your head and neck. Not her. An army of slobbering little ankle nippers, a cloud of the candy toting flying ones, anything but her. Your eyes fight back against your will to turn them, a millimeter at a time, trying not see …

… her dark, smiling muzzle in your face, showing all of her perfect white teeth. Her eyes are shining with victory. Huge, depthless green eyes. Something’s moving, deep down inside them, blue-green like the oceans of Earth by the shorelines, cradled in the Mediterranean, her currents running swift beneath the evening sky, brimming with life and warmth …

She is beauty. She is truth.

No. Fuck that. The Mediterranean had been a shithole maritime garbage dump for the past two centuries. She is a royal pain in the ear, with no fucking sense of personal space.

“Fuck off!” You swing out with the cutter, which she dodges as if you’d tried to give her an unwelcome pat on the cheek. She’s toying with you, taking her time. Look at the silly human, fighting for its adorable little life. Still swinging, you stumble backwards towards the wall.

It’s over Isaac. Lie down. Be still for her.

Sleep.

“Shut up! Get out of my head!” Her mane and tail were dancing in a deep violet display of stars and lights, side to side. Were they as soft as they looked? Why not talk with her a while, let her share her wisdom with you?

She advances a few paces, reaching up with a single slender foreleg. The ponies are with her now, whispering and giggling not a few yards behind in a loose circle. Wings are beating just above your head. She calls out again in her unbearable voice. “Thy destiny is with us. It is fate, Isaac! Why art thou fighting us?”

Why are you fighting?

You shake your head and look down. Loud. Too loud. A new cartridge. The plasma cutter is out, needs a new cartridge. That’s OK, just pop in a new one. Plenty more where that came from. Click, click. There. The door is close, the walls are right there. All those ponies? No sweat, Isaac, just line up your shots. You bring up the cutter and push back to the door, ready to make a noise of your own.

Except the door isn’t there. The Princess lunges forward and reaches out with both hooves. Her thin silver shoes slide down your armored chest as you fall through the opening behind you.

You spring up primed to go to work on the beast’s thin, delicate limbs, only to see the door cutting off the noise and the light, returning you to the rusting gloom of the Station’s substructure. It locks again, its display going orange. Hot pipes are ticking somewhere in the darkness.

What the fuck just happened? They’d had you, sure as liquid shit after a 3D printed burger. Couldn’t they execute a simple ambush? Maybe you should just hang the cutter on your belt and wait for them to trip and stub their nubby snouts. Pathetic.

No, no. That would be mean. That would hurt their feelings. Which meant a few more ticks off your health meter, which … godammit … which wasn’t doing that great by the look of it. Either way, this is a bad place to ponder their incompetence. It wouldn’t take Princess Necromorph or whatever her name was very long to turn the entire wall to slag. Best not to be here when it happens.

The tunnel spirals downward, kind of like your luck since you’d left for the Ishimura. Back to the drawing board. That door had been locked before you’d fallen through. You’d seen it. And before that your perception of the infected had gone from sweet ponies to gizzards galore man-butcher and back again.

You swerve to avoid a low-hanging conduit. Ah, but Isaac, believing your eyes at this point was a conscious decision to shove your head up your tired ass. Had reality peeked through back by the MicroStore, whipped open its dirty trench coat and shown you the diseased, naked truth? Or was it the necromorphs that were the hallucination?

Hallucination. Oh fuck. You stop and steady yourself against the plain wood-paneled door at the bottom of the tunnel. Deep, slow breaths, take it easy. Think it through. Stross had mentioned the Princess in the recording. Described her to a T – dark blue, sparkling blue mane. When people have identical delusions, it’s usually called the truth. That meant that the Princess, the ponies, and all their candies and balloons, potions and magic, snazzy done-up manes and goofy babbling - all of that was real.

Unless you had imagined Stross too.

The old wood dents under your fist. Damn it. There aren’t enough clues to conclude anything. Well, almost anything. What you had a hard time doubting was the pain in your ear: it still hurt from Princess Necromorph’s god-awful shouting. Daina’s voice would sound really good right now. Maybe you could raise her before …

Something explodes a level above you. They’re through. You’d spent too much time philosophizing, like some goddamned Unitologist. Your only advantage now is the darkness and your meager head start. You scan your RIG’s armband across the door’s display and mash the telecomm button as you duck inside.

Before you speak and draw attention to yourself, you give the room your precautionary inspection. You’re in another maintenance cellar, probably servicing the hospital. No blood, no gumballs. You vault over an oil-stained workbench, kicking off a forgotten roll of duct tape. There seems to be another passage ahead. Might be a good hiding spot somewhere in here.

The channel to Daina is clear, and the only ones who can hear you now already know where you are. “Jesus that thing was obnoxious. Daina? I’m out of the hospital.”

“OK,” Daina answers through the static. “The tram station is just beyond the apartment blocks.”

A brimming fountain of information as usual. “Hang on. I need more answers. How long have I been here?”

“Three years. Tiedemann found you floating in space near Aegis VII and brought you here for study.”

That would explain the psychiatrist and his pony delusions. The guy had obviously dug too deep. “Why can’t I remember anything?”

There’s a long pause. More of her whispering to someone out of earshot. Oh well. If the team helping her rescue you wanted to remain anonymous, that was fine and dandy. Besides, they seemed to be giving decent enough advice.

She comes back full of confidence. “The Marker you found imprinted your brain with a self-replicating signal. The longer you’re awake, the more the signal spreads. It’s killing you Isaac. Tiedemann tried to keep it in check with memory suppressants.”

How very humane of him. Fucking dick. “You said you could fix it, right?”

“Only if you reach me in time. Tram station. Get moving.” The telecomm beeps, cutting her off.

The pipes are still rattling, ticking in the walls and ceiling. Well isn’t that a hoot. Tiedemann wants the needle, but has to keep feeding the haystack. Fucking himself over nicely.

Midway up the far wall, you spot the lighted faceplate of another service duct, a perfect bottleneck for Princess Necromorph and her little army. The plate comes free with a short burst of kinesis, and you scramble in. This time you’re alone in the narrow crawlspace. Maybe the infection hadn’t spread this far yet.

You kick through into a tech shop. Sweet Altmann you’d been waiting to find something like this. It’s outfitted with a MicroStore, and oh, what do you know, a Nanocircuit Repair Bench. The cutter could use a clip upgrade.

A red tool cabinet spotted with oil and wreathed with flower garlands divides the room island-style. So much for an effective quarantine. There’s an audio log tablet half-buried amidst the pony vandalism. You click play as you circle around to the Store.

“Listen up! This is Sorensen from CEC. Cut off their limbs! It’s the only way they go down! It’s their limbs, that’s the secret! Comms are down, we can’t get a broadcast out, so tell everyone you see!”

That news was old when Daina had spread it half an hour ago, and that’s only if you’re of the zombie alien faction of the world’s new split personality. Noble intentions, Sorensen, but useless. The Store’s display panel flips down. Here we go, now for some real weapons. Let’s see what we have …

“Jesus.” Your forehead hits the screen. All of the items are flowers, carrots, pastries, and saddles. The prices are listed in increments of small gold coins, like some shit you’d see teens plugging into VR consoles at an arcade. Little by little, bit by bit, the ponies - their taint - was creeping into cracks, corrupting even the tiniest details.

According to the Store, you have 7,000 of the coins in your account. Why the fuck not? Nothing to be overly concerned about at this point, really. Placating the creatures seemed to have worked better than shooting them. Cause and effect, cause and effect. That is the law. The funhouse craziness? Incidental.

Saddles would be too bulky, flowers too fragile. Two bunches of carrots and a cherry turnover should do the trick. You glance over at the Bench as the injectors fab your purchase. Would adding a few more rounds to the cutter be worth it if you were going to be playing zookeeper? No, probably not. Better hold onto the power node in case you needed to improvise a voltage source. You step out of the Store’s alcove and head through the exit.

Another pre-recorded message is looping in the next room, which looks to be one of the tram station’s transit hallways. Large windows to the outside provide a dim view of the city. They’re smeared with chocolate words, more nonsense of the fanatics and the broken. There’s trash and debris everywhere, human and pony alike.

Ah, it’s our friendly neighborhood Director of Operations. What self-justified bullshit is he spouting now?

“… is Director Tiedemann. A station-wide emergency is in effect. In accordance with Titan Station Civic Code, I am declaring martial law. All citizens are ordered to evacuate. Looters will be shot on sight …”

You miss the last part of what he’s saying. Nice move, Tiedemann. Now you could snuff anyone you wanted and write it off as protecting the property of law-abiding citizens. And if the corpse of a psychotic engineer or two ended up in the pile of dead looters, who would blow the whistle? The ponies?

You round a corner, using the faint city lights filtering through the windows to search the jumbled mess for threats. Nothing but Tiedemann’s face flickering from a dozen TV screens, explaining how you were supposed to get out or get shot. Not much of a threat there. There’s a moving walkway conveyor leading to the other end of the room. A shuttle moves by, silent out in the lunar night.

Your feet could use a rest, even for just a few seconds. The conveyor starts to roll as you step through its laser trip sensor. Shit, it’s going the wrong way.

There’s movement at the far end. A pony is getting up, shaking rubble and dust from her back as the conveyor speeds her towards you. Her grass skirt is parted over the guava fruit symbol on her pink hindquarters.

She notices you and smiles. Taking a moment to smooth out her seashell motif headscarf, she draws a hibiscus lei from around her neck and gestures with it. “Hey buddy! I’m Cool Waves. Want to come hang with us?”

You shake the cherry turnover back at her and set it at your feet. When she reaches the end, she drops her lei and chows down. Nice and easy.

“Sorry, uh, Cool Waves. I’ve got a job to do for the Princess, getting snacks to all you hungry ponies so uh …” By the volume of her gobbling, you guess she’s tuned you out. “Uh, valiantly winning over new subjects for her kingdom.” The creature mumbles something through a blob of cherry filling.

Hmm. The lei might lend credibility to your guise. A pony supply courier should look laid back. The suit? Oh, that’s to help those hardworking horses outside, of course, funny you should ask.

You crouch next to her and point to the string of flowers. “Mind if I take this? Hibiscus is my favorite.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure. Thanks for the grub. You were right, I was starving!”

“No problem,” you mutter, donning the lei. Fucking disgusting pig.

You move on, passing the multitude of screens flashing an earnest, in-command Tiedemann, giving his spiel over and over. You would loot one out of spite, but you’d have a hard time explaining it to the ponies, let alone Tiedemann’s security teams.

The exit opens into another corridor, letting in the awful noise of chaos. For the first time since escaping the psych ward, you’re able to witness to the full scale of the slaughter. Through a collapsed gateway you can see people leaping, sobbing, running, being transformed where they waited, ecstatic on all fours, playing with their new friends. It’s a picturesque view of things going completely to shit.

The train wreck is unfolding, and there’s nothing you can do but watch. Cause and effect. Did it really mean anything? What if there is no shit, no sanity? What if all of this is just one more of nature’s games, one selfish gene battling another for reproductive dominance? That body you’re occupying? Time to vacate, you’ve been evicted. That ego you’ve spent your entire life nurturing and defending? No worries, just your imagination.

Fuck it. The voice of reason is an asshole sometimes.

A few yards ahead, two mares, white and eggshell blue, are tag-team tickling a writhing, helplessly laughing young woman. Thrown from the train. Too late again, Isaac. You tear off two carrots from one of your bunches.

“Hey there!”

The ticklers turn, both aglow with satisfaction.

You lob the carrots over to them. “Can you tell me the quickest way to get to the apartment blocks? The Princess asked me to do a quick head count of the new, uh, recruits while I’m on my supply run.”

“Um, sure, there’s an elevator right over here,” says the blue one. Her partner digs her hooves back into the lady’s neck and armpit. “That’s how we got in. After that, I’m not sure.”

You give them a salute as you jog past. “Thanks. I’ll add your new pal to my list.” Before they can answer, or think too much about your story, you bring up the elevator and jump in.

Quiet. Peace and quiet. Stop shaking Isaac. She was gone. Going up, up this time for sure. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Elevator noise is so calming. Almost to Daina, almost out of here. Daina would get these monsters out of your head, help you to remember everything, help you …

The lights go out. You’re slowing down. Someone was trying to get in, beating on the panels above, his muffled cries growing louder. “Help! Leave me alone, leave me …”

The elevator jerks to a stop, overshooting the next floor. As the doors stutter open, a guy reaches up and starts lifting himself in. “Help me, please! Get them off me! Get them …” A thick swarm of butterflies enfolds him, drowning out his cries. He disappears as they carry him out of sight like a pastel magic carpet. The doors close again. Your quiet ascent resumes.

Dead. They’re all dead. Death is simple. Natural. Sometimes the lion catches the baby gazelle. Motherfucking lions. Sharks. Keep going, there are still others you can save. Daina’s got the cure.

You reach the top floor and step out onto a balcony. It’s clear, with the exception of a lone resident sitting on a white cushioned bench. He’s humming to himself, looking at nothing in particular, a cigarette between his grimy fingers and a bottle of scotch at his side. His shirt reads My other shirt is a rocket launcher. Hundreds of cigarette butts are arranged into a powdery message at his feet.

Death to Celestia
Shoot ponies in the face

Dude is blitzed out of his mind. All good evidence that he gives zero fucks about his impending doom. Best not mess with him.

Your telecomm sputters. “Isaac! Isaac! Over here!”

You lean against the railing, scanning the first floor. Nothing human left down below. Wait, there. Someone’s waving to you from another balcony across the atrium. His voice barely carries over the pandemonium. Streamers and confetti are raining down from the ceiling, and balloons are thick in the air. There are butterflies and colorful birds everywhere, rampant in the madness.

You shout into your mic, struggling even to hear yourself. “Who are you?” There’s something very familiar about him. If you could only get a good look through the glittering haze.

“It’s the drugs, Isaac. They gave us drugs to make us forget. But it’s all coming back …”

Drugs? Whose ‘they’? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why are you calling me?”

Static. Then, “Isaac. Isaac look out.”

Something was grunting, climbing up the railings. Two twinkling vermillion eyes peer up from the edge of the balcony floor, widening as they find you. The unicorn’s rounded vanilla horn was already glowing.