//------------------------------// // Communion // Story: Friendship Space // by the dobermans //------------------------------// The veil tears - the one you always knew was there, the one you had guessed would be lifted only at death, or never at all. In floods knowledge, secrets, images – a three-tiered mask, or was it the creature’s face, glowing neon blue at your hooves? Silly beast, he doesn’t know. These memories are long-shadowed, memories … yes … of the dawn of his kind, swimming and playing in our gentle tides. Every such world has its moon to quicken it. To cast its spiraling light and stir its elements, to bind them in noble purpose. We were old when the nearer planets had formed. Older than the dust trailing amongst them, ashes of suns long dead. Uncounted strains of life had since blossomed and flourished, reaching toward the light for their few precious moments, finally to fade into senescence and obscurity. But not before they had given themselves. Their joyous minds are speaking, laughing and sharing their enlightened discourse with us forever in righteous communion, shining stars rejoicing in accord with their beautiful Luna. Rest, child. We shall clean your lifelong wound. She is taking you now, your gentle Princess is gathering you in. So you too have come to the final refuge of all prey. Perfectly safe and free of pain. Her thoughts shift, growing troubled and anxious. You look up through her eyes and your own, up along her long neck, past her smooth jaws and chin, and up from below your black crown and tingling blue forelocks. The human vessel above is cracking, threatening to fall and crush our long-suffering ward. He must not be harmed. I must not be harmed. Your shared intent turns again, back to warmth and safety. She looks down, finding your eyes somehow through your mask. At last, at long last you know exactly who you are. The remnants of your fear yield to the unspeakable word told by her gaze. There’s no time for magic. You smile with her, deciding together what you must do. Together you unfurl your wings and bend low. The dangling end of the tram breaks loose, hitting the floor and bursting into flames. It’s OK. There’s nothing to be afraid of. She’s strong, as invincible as dreams, and she’s with you. None of it can hurt you now. The ceiling supports give way, dropping ton after ton of concrete, copper piping, drop panels and rebar. The ponies are ducking, covering their heads with their forelegs, scattering away from the avalanche. There’s a crushing weight, and … God no, she’s gone. Please Luna, please don’t go, I don’t want to be alone. It’s dark, and I’m … *** You’re dragging yourself away from the wreck of metal and wires on all fours, mindful of your tail dragging … what happened to your tail? Why had your beloved ponies ceased their jubilant revelry? There’s a structure ahead of you, still intact, half-hidden in the dim amber light. A staircase. Mayhap our children have taken refuge here? Shhh, shh. No, there’s nopony here, no one here. She’s gone. You’re alone, Isaac. You draw in your knees, hugging them and rocking slowly in the corner, shielded from view by the narrow metal mesh ramp. Arms are for … lifting. They should be free, not bearing weight. Load bearing. Studs to joists, locked by tenons, the even rational ribs that build the structure. Sir Newton had been great, truly great. He had revealed the framework, had shown the path for all who choose sanity. He was no speck of primordial slime, no gooey helical selfish self-replicator. A man, a mind. Not a pony. Better. That’s better. No one can see, no one can hear. What’s that? A change in pitch of the mechanism. The humidity control of your suit’s environmental regulator adjusting, drying your eyes and face. It’s OK as long as no one can see your face. A memory is lingering, soft blue strands draped over your visor, shielding you from the darkness. Had it been years or minutes? Nothing in the world – the familiar world of relays and grease and stasis field generators, transgalactic corporations and weak-ass perk-me-up slogans plastered everywhere so you don’t blow your fucking brains out staring into the black vacuum of space every single day of your goddamn life – nothing had been as real as what you had seen in her eyes. It had been the same look Nicole had given you sometimes, lying on the bed, watching you get dressed in the morning. It was the look mom used to give you after dinnertime prayers. Food for flesh and love for soul. Bless Altmann and speed the Marker’s ascent. She had protected you. You activate your telecomm, slowing your rocking, talking into the corner, down at your wrist. “D-Daina? I’m hurt. Are you there? Daina, I need a new route.” This one sure as hell hadn’t panned out. She comes back, no delay this time. “What happened? I thought we lost you.” Good old Daina. You stand, your aching feet finding purchase despite the whirling visions of stars and planets long dead blinking on and off around you. “Unscheduled stop. Where am I?” “How did you end up there? Hang on,” she replies. There’s a rustling, maybe of blueprints or schematics. How about some nice service closets? Some remote access terminals, one-man lockers buried in the deepest crevices of this miserable time capsule of neurotic claustrophobia? Anything as long as it took you far away from windows and the outside. Your RIG beeps, finishing a download. Daina had come through again. “This won’t be the most pleasant route, but it’ll get you to the Thiessen Towers residential sector …” The signal cuts out in a short rash of static. Daina fades back in, yelling over the noise. “Dammit! Tiedemann has your signal again. Keep moving.” You look back at the ruin you can’t remember escaping. “OK.” Keep moving. Nothing else to do. There’s a rare break in the static. Daina’s low, calm voice clears the fog, chasing away the unwanted bliss the sight of the rubble stirs. “You’re very important to them, Isaac. Hold tight, I’ll contact you soon.” Right. Right. Soon. You stand up, swaying on your hind legs. No, your legs, the only two you have. Step by step, you clank your boots down on the mesh incline, up and around. That’s right. This is how men walk. There’s a door at the top, along with some sort of data log console. No need for that. The ponies don’t want to hurt you. The Night Princess had proven that point. Hadn’t she? Besides, it’s not like anyone’s going to be around to study your vital history. Except Tiedemann, maybe, the douche. The door slides up, revealing a short cramped hallway that ends in a T. Something was moving at the end - the shadow of small child, its hands clawed as in the final moments of mortal pain, its back broken and hunched. The shadow jumps and flees at the sound of your entry. You run to the intersection, hoping it was a trick of the light. “No, not the kids, please not the kids,” you plead to the silent walls. Back so soon, you fucks? Feeling that generous with your goddamn disease? You’re not choosy, are you? Not in the least bothered, not in the least satisfied until you pervert every last chromosome. God damn every single one of you. Another short flight of stairs at the end of the corridor leads into a commercial concourse. Fashion Kid chain outlet. Toy store. Not a soul in sight. Upbeat electronica is still chiming from within the darkened windows. The little necromorph had been a vision, that’s all. Just the fading remains of an anesthetized memory. At least your growing madness was leaving something sacred. You advance to the broad doors at the end of the room. Glass breaks to your left. You duck as a wave of yelping fillies and colts storms out of the shattered Fashion Kid doorway, a whirlwind of yellows, greens and pinks clambering to bury you under a squirming dogpile. Clever. You can’t dismember them, and you can’t reason with them. You run, trying to buy enough time to think. Fucking monsters. They’d trapped kids, sweet innocent kids looking for something cool to wear, maybe some sneakers or jeans that mom and dad wouldn’t mind handing over some credits for. Trapped them and defiled them. Light flashes across your eyes, a glance back across black empty space, back through starlit eons, voiceless time spent watching and waiting. Of course. The children had died suffering and in terror. There’s only one thing to do. They must be delighted and comforted as much as possible. They must be instructed. You turn around at the end of the concourse, reaching out and suppressing the mob with slow, steady movements. “Hey now, calm down, calm down!” The youngsters skid to a halt. You count over twenty shaggy heads, stout little bodies hopping, rolling, playfighting and pulling up on your shins. They’re barking out their hearts’ desires, staring up at you with their shining oversized eyes. “Candy!” “Presents!” “Pizza!” You raise a hand for silence. The noise dies to a half-hearted bickering, giving you the opportunity you need. “Patience,” you say, giving them a finger-wag your old Philosophy of Science professor would have been proud of. Some of them stick out their tongues. “Patience? Yuck!” “Boring!” “Who has time for that?” You shake your head and raise your hand again, demanding silence. “Patience. Do you know what’s special about patience, young ones?” “Yeah, it’s specially lame,” grumbles a chubby blue colt. He yanks the tail of a teal filly in front of him, who spins around and whacks him on the nose. Better head that off before it gets ugly. “Hey, listen now. What’s your name?” “Dribble.” “Alright Dribble, what do you want the most right now?” “Uh, lemee see,” he replied, scratching his scruffy head with his hooftip. “Uh, I want it to be my birthday.” “Ah, your birthday. Little one, patience can make it your birthday. And the more patient you are, the more you’ll get what you want.” “Really?” he asks. The foals are sitting in a rapt circle now, trying to see into your visor. “Yes indeed! Patience can take something that’s far away, say, uh …” you glance to your left, into the dark violet glow of the stars. Her stars. “Say, the moon, and bring it closer. You get in your shuttle, you fill your brain up with patience, and before you know it, there you are!” Foals would buy it. Heck, even the adults you’d met were mentally deficient enough to buy it. The colt raises his foreleg. “Kinda like the Convergence?” The fuck? “Uh yeah, yes! Just like that.” He stands up on his hind legs and punches the air. “Awesome!” The rest of the group gets up and starts hopping again. The teal filly makes her way through the crowd and sits in front of you. She mutters to you from behind the back of her hoof, leaning in close. “Thank you so much. Waiting for Holy Convergence will be so much less of a chore now. And now that annoying colt Dribble has something else to occupy himself with besides pulling my mane. Isn’t it pretty?” She flicks it in your direction. Smile and nod to victory, Isaac. “That’s great! Now listen, there are a lot of other ponies out there who are struggling with this whole ‘bored-to-death-waiting-for-Convergence’ thing, so I’ve got to run and give them the good news, too. Why don’t you all go on back to Fashion Kid and think about what you’ve learned today?” She sighs and turns away. The others had overheard and taken your suggestion. They run off, their merry jibes fading into the dark façade of their clothing store. “I can be twice as patient as you.” “Yeah, twice the mental patient.” “Ha ha, real funny …” You watch them leave, fading into the darkness. Shadows. Laughter, silly kids’ chatter still echoing in the emptied corridors of a broken city. Nicole had never wanted kids. Why give someone a death sentence, she’d always said. And look how right she was. Pestilence doesn’t discriminate. Just metes out the pain, trotting along atop its pale … An angry burst of static stabs your ears. Someone is trying to reach you, and not on Daina’s frequency. Your RIG begins to spew out choppy video. “Isaac! Isaac, you still alive? We can’t talk long.” Stross again. Maybe he’d learned something. He goes on, looking around like he’s expecting a stealth necromorph nuzzle any second. “I think they’re tracking our signals! Are the memories coming back to you? They’re coming back to me … the good ones … ow! The bad ones … the more I remember, the more my head hurts. I keep seeing the ponies. Do you see the ponies too, Isaac? And Her … I keep seeing Her face. Ah shit, they’ve found me.” The signal breaks off. As usual, nothing useful on that front. Poor guy hadn’t had the luck of finding even a standard astro suit. Though on the other hand he’s probably immune to the ponies and their bullshit by now. There’s clearly not enough left of his mind to corrupt. Bullshit? That’s right. Sitting patiently wasn’t going to get you to the cure. Now that you have the chance, you appraise the door you’d used to cover your back when the foals had appeared. Another elevator. You step in and jab the button. A few silent seconds pass, alone with another panoply of ads. Stross. Cracked like a moon full of kimberlite. It’s hard to see a man reduced to that. He’s going to be completely useless when you finally get your shit together and draw up a real plan for purging the Station. Maybe Daina has something for him in her medicine cabinet. The doors open on the top level of the concourse mini-mall. The middle of the floor is cut away, giving a bird’s eye view of what lay below. You take a quick peek over the glass safety railing. The bottom story looks to have been transformed into a barnyard stockpile of hay and tilling equipment, complete with a placid, tail-swishing cow. She’s staring up at you, her dull teeth grinding a mouthful of golden hay. You switch the frequency of your telecomm back from Stross’s and open the line. “Hey Daina, there’s this crazy guy that keeps contacting me. I saw him back at the hospital.” She responds without delay. “Nolan Stross. He was a patient in the project just like you.” She must be listening, giving you her full attention now that you’re getting close. You circle around the railing, avoiding the cow’s curious, all-too intelligent gaze. Snazzy upbeat techno pumps from the overhead speakers. A little coke for your soul, shopper. Keep you in the game. “Yeah? Why was he there? What does he want?” “He’s a psychopath, Isaac, stay clear of him. He murdered his own wife and foal. Oh sh …” She’s gone. Did she say … no, that couldn’t be right. Could it? The signal is replicating, oscillating faster and faster now, compounding Tiedemann’s comprehensive mindfuck. It was the child infection, that was it. Some realities are harder to adjust to than others. Nothing to worry about. The foals are fine now, asleep in their hay bales. Where to go? Which one of these shops has a waste chute or duct access that leads to, where was it Daina had said, Thiessen Towers? Your RIG knows, thanks to her download. The ghostly blue line snakes around the glass railing, past the cartoonish faces of well-groomed hair stylists, past the sign affirming the awesomeness of nothing in particular, and into the open foyer of a Unitol … no, Bronitology recruitment center? Bronitology? Could it be some sort of competing denomination that sprang up during your three-year brain melt? You step inside to take a closer look. The interior is paneled in backlit plastic, glowing orange and bearing the mark of Celestia, crown Princess of the necromorphs. There’s a new design too, that of a winged unicorn silhouetted against a blinding sun, her legs outstretched in triumph. The amber LED of a text log is winking at you from under a toppled pile of pamphlets. Some intrepid Bronitologist had put his thoughts to record in the middle of the pandemic. You push the cheery brochures off of the reception table and scan the log. We, the foals of the Solar Mare, grow tired of the discordant, inharmonious attacks from EarthGov on our rights to worship as we please. Reduced hours of operation for the Community, fire marshal restrictions on the size of festivals, permits needed to distribute literature. These are all poorly concealed attempts to quash the Truth. HER TRUTH. And they will not succeed … And on it went. These people weren’t frightened. They hadn’t run from the monsters when they attacked. They worshipped them, knelt down with open arms and assisted in their own impalement. Those messages on the walls you’d seen earlier, wings this and harmony that, those had been the prayers of the disciples of Celestia. You toss the log tablet back on the pile of pamphlets and head to the only door leading into the complex. It’s all dairy farming to you, of course. You’re certainly not taking any ponies with you when you finally blast off from this glorified asteroid. The door is locked. Hmm. Modern security interface, probably fifty thousand plus credits of electronics. It was easy to forget that sects like this comprise top-level scientists, politicians, artists and engineers, not just the directionless and bleeding heart types that flock to anyone who’s convinced themselves of their own bullshit. Anyone and everyone is qualified to become a pony. Regardless of the price tag, the interface is no more than RLC and op amps, and would be hacked into submission like the rest. You have the alarm disarmed and the door open in less than twenty. A new record, maybe. You step through the door, cutter first. *** Your boots touch down on the last platform before the danger zone of the extract turbine, their magnets pulling true even through the layer of chunky brown grease coating the floor. You’d spent the last five minutes dodging the garbage that the giant shielded blades were blowing into the 0 G compactor below Thiessen Towers, the backdoor route Daina had given you that led to her secret location. You almost miss the door at the edge of the platform, slick as it is with the same oily filth that covered the floor. When you lived on a fragmented slab of rock, your options were limited as to where to flush your shit. Compaction and ejection are typical of this sort of outfit. Daina deserves points for seeing the chamber’s potential as a point of entry. Nary a hoof nor pincer the entire way. Which seems wrong. This is the residential sector of the Station. The infection should have run rampant through the apartment blocks, sending necromorphs in every direction. Particularly down into the fudge tunnel network where they liked to fester and mutate. Where are the people who used to live here? The sludge over the door’s biometric display comes away with a swipe of your glove. Behind this door you’re going to find answers. You’re going to put an end to the visions and find a way to save this outpost. The other side is too dark to see without your flashlight. Your narrow beam falls on metal grate floor panels and walls, locked storage cabinets and a few crates. You must still be in the utilities sub-floors, unless the Titan Station civilians had some very Spartan ideas about home aesthetics. Something is tapping down the access tunnel to your right, and it doesn’t sound like the pipes. You kill the flashlight and notice a faint flickering glow at the end of the tunnel. Nothing was bum rushing you yet. Maybe you could take the element of surprise for once. The source of the noise trips into view as you enter the erratic light’s outer glow. A single filly is wandering around in the intermittent dark, stumbling on wobbly knees. “Mom? Mom? Where are you? I was out in the food court and the ponies came and wanted to play just like you said they would and now I’m lost. They said my name is Sugar Free now but my name is Lena, right? Mom?” You stay silent, letting her meander back into the ductwork. A necromorph that doesn’t know its own name isn’t likely to manage decapitating you. The PA splutters to life as you exit the tunnel. “Power malfunction. Please replace the power unit to use the elevator.” How quaint. Power unit … power unit. There it is. The hefty cube had fallen from its wall seating, probably bumped by Sugar Free or Lena or whoever she was in her blindness. They tended to do that, which was why the main power grid had gone nodeless ten years ago. At least it had in the rest of the known galactic sphere. You latch on with your kinesis and fit it into the outlet. The pulley system begins to hum behind the walls next to the elevator. Taking a breath to steady your nerves, you step in. Gravity doubles for a good five seconds, telling you you’re going up this time, and fast. Too easy. This is way too easy. A population center this size would have flooded the substructure with the bastards, and all you’d seen in the past ten minutes was a single feeble-minded pony child. That means that there had been a successful evacuation, or there was a shit ton of apple nibblers up there waiting to make you the guest of honor in their surprise infection jubilee. You rotate the plasma cutter’s guide lasers to horizontal and aim them at thigh-level, roughly the same height as a pony’s face. Game time. The elevator door opens, and you shoulder into the hallway, ready to do combat with anything, equine, necromorph or otherwise, that might be waiting in ambush. But as you gaze about the adjacent rooms and lobbies, your arms drop to your sides, suddenly weak, and you sink to your knees. Your last confidence in your grip on reality bounces away, a tumbleweed rolling into the Technicolor sunset behind the galloping steed of your ego, the idiot star of the show. Nothing you’ve been through thus far has prepared you for this. You had found the residents of Thiessen Towers. There, strolling and skipping happily by long wall murals of round, snow-capped mountains, waterfalls and vibrant green meadows, there, pruning and admiring brightly-lit indoor flower gardens, there, cheerfully conversing amidst vegetable carts and grocery stands with human men, women and children, were ponies. No one was going fruit loops. No one was so much as laughing too hard. It was completely insane. You had to be completely insane. As you kneel, staring at the floor and hoping that death, when it came, would be swift, you hear two sets of footsteps approaching. Someone, a man thank God, touches your shoulder. “Hey there, buddy, are you OK? Were you looking for the recruitment center? And what’s with the engineering getup? The HVAC is working fine in here, not that we’ll need it for much longer. What do you think, Panflute sweetie, is it too warm, or cold, or anything? Do you know if somepony called in a work order?” You raise your eyes, just a little, and take in a pair of black leather work boots. Beside them are four powder-blue hooves.