The Mistress of Dreams
Chapter 8: Everything Counts
Opal said nothing at this accusation, instead casting her eyes around the ceiling of the room. “Yes, I think you got all of them,” she said at last.
Spike finally realized what the cat’s first question meant. “Yes, we shut down all the cameras. But I still don’t understand.”
“It’s simple, really,” Opal said, as she began to inspect her claws. “Once Rarity saw what Twilight had done with you, she decided to try it out herself. And...here I am.”
“Opal, why are you here?” Twilight asked.
“Rarity figured it was time to answer any questions you might have,” Opal replied. “And since she’s being very closely watched, there’s no way that she’d be able to do it herself.”
“Alright,” said Spike. “If Rarity escaped from Rainbow Dash’s dream, does that mean that she was able to see what the Dragon Emperor was doing?”
“Yes,” Opal said with a grin, “that’s exactly right. You’re smarter than you look.”
Spike merely rolled his eyes at this remark.
“The Emperor made one last attempt to win the war while you were trapped in his dream machine,” Opal explained. “And so he kidnapped Princess Luna, but Princess Celestia personally led a squadron of troops that rescued her, far faster than the Emperor had anticipated. This is why he has had so little involvement in the dreams so far, and why they have been relatively harmless. That will no longer be the case in this and the next dream. Twilight, this dream is going to end very badly, and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. You need to get everypony but Pon-3 out of Ponyopolis before noon tomorrow, or Rarity will not be able to guarantee your safety.”
“And what about Pon-3?” Twilight asked.
“Rarity told me that she was positive that she could get her out of this safely, but couldn’t say the same for any of the rest of you. Do you have any questions?”
“That part about the Princesses,” Twilight said. “Do you know how Princess Celestia was able to find her sister?
“No,” answered Opal. “The Emperor was certain that Princess Celestia would take weeks to find Luna, but Celestia appeared to drop completely out of reality and came back with her exact location. At least, that’s what his magic appeared to tell him.”
Twilight broke out into a cold sweat. “Opal, do you or Rarity know what it means when a god sleeps?”
“Well that’s an odd question,” the cat said. “Hold on a second.” She closed her eyes for a few seconds, as her ears slowly drooped until they were flat atop her head. And then they popped back up as her eyes opened. “Rarity said that was an old philosopher’s joke, from when the Princesses were just fillies.” And then she recited the story:
Dee and Dumb took Luna to the cave of the great red dragon.
‘I’ve never seen a dragon that big,’ said Luna.
‘That’s because she isn’t a dragon, she’s the great god Elle,’ explained Dumb.
‘She’s dreaming now,’ said Dee. ‘Do you want to know what she is dreaming about?’
‘Dreams are private,’ said Luna. ‘It would be rude for me to look.’
‘She’s dreaming about you!’ Dee exclaimed, clopping her hooves together excitedly. ‘And if she left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?’
‘Where I am now, of course,’ said Luna.
‘Not you!’ Dee retorted contemptuously. ‘You’d be nowhere. Why, you’re only a sort of thing in her dream!’
‘If that there god was to wake,’ added Dumb, ‘you’d go out—bang!—just like a candle!’
‘You’re both making fun of me!’ Luna cried out. ‘I’ll just see for myself.’ And so she touched her horn to the dragon’s forehead, and concentrated. And the vision she received was the dream that the dragon was having at that very moment. And the dream that the dragon was having at that very moment was of being surrounded by three silly ponies, one of whom was Luna.
She exited the cave very quietly after that.
“I refuse to believe that Equestria is the dream of Pinkie Pie,” a petulant Spike said, his arms crossed. “For one thing, the place makes entirely too much sense to be a product of her imagination.”
“Oh I agree, Spike,” said Twilight. “But you cannot deny that what happened with the Princesses lines up entirely too well with Pinkie Pie’s dream. I mean...Opal, do you know who was with Princess Celestia when she disappeared?”
“Professor Stein and Waking Terror. Stein was acting very oddly.”
“That’s because I was possessing Stein at the time, thinking that it was just a dream,” Twilight said fatalistically. “And he’s never, ever, ever going to accept my apology for that. Do you know where Pinkie Pie is right now?”
Opal closed one eye and tilted her head sideways. “She...is...lying on a couch with a cybernetic interface plugged into her head. And she’s been in that same position for the past hour, at least. So on a scale from ‘Jus’ Fine’ to ‘I’ll Make a Friendship Problem!’, exactly how much trouble are we in right now?”
The pony, the dragon and the cat arrived at the arcade by spinner fifteen minutes later. Seeing the “No Pets” sign, the cat was left behind.
Piflin ran over to Lunesta and yanked the magical blade out of her forehead. “Wake up!” she cried, shaking the earth pony by her shoulders. “Wake up!”
“What happened?” Piflin’s dragon asked Lunesta’s dragon, who was lounging on top of the couch.
“She was playtesting. She does this all the time. The game will end eventually.”
“No, the game will end now!” insisted the purple dragon. Turning to the sleeping pony, he reached over to pry one of her eyelids open. The blue eye was rolled back into her head. “She’s really out cold!” he exclaimed.
“Told you,” commented the green dragon.
Piflin turned around and trotted over to a small booth to get the manager of the arcade. His name was Phil the Dragon, and a large sign mounted in front made it very clear that tipping him for any reason would not only be a public safety violation, but also a misdemeanor. “Sir, we need your help!” Piflin pleaded.
The little door on the side of the booth opened, and a little orange dragon rolled a cigar around in his mouth as he waddled over to the couch. He then looked up at the game. “She’s playing,” he explained. “No problem here.”
“No problem?!” Piflin exclaimed. “She needs to wake up!”
“She’ll wake up when the game’s over,” Phil said flatly.
“And when will that be?” Piflin asked.
The dragon rolled his shoulders. “Depends on how good she is. If she completely screws up the planet, she’ll be out in another couple of hours. If she really knows what she’s doing, then it could be a day.”
“A day!”
“Maybe two. Aladan’s got a bonus level.”
“We can’t go without P...Lunesta,” Piflin’s dragon said. “Can you wake her up now?”
“Well I could,” the manager dragon said with a predatory smile. “But it’s gonna cost you. You did read the fine print on the game, right?”
Piflin walked around to the back of the arcade cabinet. “Seed has a 100% Satisfaction Rating,” the text at the top read, “and here’s why!” This was followed by a 100,000 word disclaimer and rules, printed in microscopic print. Piflin closed her eyes and concentrated for a few seconds, only to open them in disappointment. “Why can’t I make my magnifying spell work?”
Phil reached up and tapped on the unicorn’s artificial horn. “You unicorns haven’t been able to do that fancy stuff since President Sparkle’s day,” he said. “Let me getcha something from the office.”
Piflin waited while the orange dragon made his way back to his little booth and back.
“Magnifying glass rental charge is 5 bits per day,” he said with a smirk.
Piflin rolled her eyes before pulling some bits out of her saddlebag.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Phil exclaimed. “Are you nuts?! Never give bits to a dragon! It’s like you never heard of greed growth. This operation is strictly credit.” He pointed at Piflin’s right front hoof.
Piflin raised the hoof and examined it, discovering a band with a complicated series of runes carved around the side. She presented the hoof, Phil used a small light-emitting device to scan it, and then she was issued a receipt, “for tax purposes.” Once that was done, she began to quickly scan through the legalese.
“Ugh, this is horrible!” she exclaimed after a few seconds. “This part says that once you’ve played this game, Lunesta’s company is allowed to beam commercials into your head as you sleep, for the rest of your life!”
“Where’s the part about ending the game early?” Piflin’s dragon asked.
“Here it is: ‘The game can be terminated at any time, which will be a sign that the player is dissatisfied with the game. If the player is ever less than 100% satisfied with this game, they will be charged a dissatisfaction fee of 14 billion bits.’”
“Fourteen billion bits?!” the purple dragon exclaimed. “Isn’t that, like, three times the annual budget of Ponyopolis?”
“I’m the richest pony in town,” said Piflin, “and I’m only worth a hundred million bits.” She examined the disclaimer for a few more seconds before giving up. “This is ridiculous! Isn’t there somepony who looks out for the rights of the consumer?”
Phil the dragon backed cautiously away from the pair. “That’s Consie nonsense you’re spouting, Miss, and if you keep it up you can be arrested for defamation of a company’s character. This here is a capitalist republic, where every individual is fairly represented by the corporations she owes her fealty to. The laws serve the corporations, and the corporations feed off of the consumers. It’s the Circle of Life! Like the law that says that ‘the Dragon’ is a required part of all free dragons’ names—you wouldn’t want me to be accidentally hired for a job that was meant for a pony now, would you? Feel the fizz, of Coo-Coo Cola!” The last part was sung more than spoken, and the dragon prevented himself from continuing by slapping himself across the face. “Sorry about that. Advertising implant—it was how I was able to buy my freedom from my former master at his death.”
“At his death?” Piflin’s dragon asked. “What would have happened to you if you hadn’t done that?”
“Look, kid,” the other dragon said. “If you don’t know, you don’t wanna know. Now, have you got the dissatisfaction fee on you, or not?”
“Well, no...” Piflin said quietly.
“Then she ain’t wakin’ up before the game’s over.”
“Can we at least take her with us?” the unicorn asked.
“Yeah, sure,” said the manager. “The game is already downloaded into her, so there’s no reason why she has to stay here.”
“Alright,” Piflin said with a sigh. She tried to pick up Lunesta with her magic, but failed. “Could I get a charge?” she asked her dragon.
A minute later, the unicorn was walking out, the earth pony across her withers.
In this time, Phil the Dragon had put a sign up in front of the Seed game: Session in Progress. He switched the cigar around to the other side of his mouth, and walked back to his booth, grumbling to himself the whole way about how the Consies were ruining everything. This opinion seemed to be confirmed by the latest news report on his televisor, informing him that the Conservationists International had finally claimed responsibility for the outage that had prevented the Lunar colony from communicating with the surface for the past two years. With the outage finally cleared up, the colony was able to report that they had managed to clear the alien invaders from 45% of the lunar surface, with hope that the war would end in time for Hearth’s Warming.
The report didn’t look at all like it had been invented by Rosig the Griffon in response to one pony asking why the colony hadn’t been talking to anypony for all this time.