Applied Starlight

by Unknownlight


5 – White

So, there was a horizon now. That meant that there was also consistent ground now, which would probably be very helpful.

She examined the ground. While before she couldn’t quite tell what the ground was made of, it was very clear now. The ground was made of glass. Specifically, white glass, not clear glass. If it were clear glass then the ground would be the same shade of white as the sky; instead, the glass was clearly a slightly darker shade of white.

Now then, was the glass breakable? She would probably need to know that at some point, so she might as well figure it out now.

Hmm. How would she be able to test whether the glass was breakable without the risk of falling through whatever break she might potentially make? Trying to break the glass with her own hooves was obviously out of the question. And yet…

(She looked around and saw a flat, infinite expanse of white glass stretching out in every direction, with the sky being an equally infinite and expansive tub of clear whiteness.)

…It didn’t really look like there was anything she could use to test with. There were exactly two physical objects in existence: herself and the ground. The ground was what she was testing, and she had already decided that she wouldn’t use herself to test the ground.

The whole situation felt rather unfair to her. She was a scientist! She shouldn’t have to put up with stuff like this!

She took another look around the infinite expanse of white glass.

Glass she created.

She facehoofed.

If she was a scientist, she sure wasn’t doing very well at giving scientists a good name.

If she could create something out of nothing by thinking the word “something”, then surely she could create an object to test the glass with.

Rock.

Rock.

Rock.

Rock.

A rock materialized out of thin air and tumbled to the glass ground.

She walked up to the rock and examined it. She was disappointed to see that the rock was colored white—and not just any white, but the exact same shade of white as the sky. Had the glass not been a different shade of white, the rock would probably be invisible. Between the white glass, the white sky, and the white rock, she was starting to get extremely tired of that color. It didn’t help that she still couldn’t tell what color pony she was herself.

Anyway, she had a rock now. That meant she could test the strength of the glass. She would throw it as hard as she could against the ground and see what happened. If the glass broke, or cracked, then she’d know she’d have to be careful. If it didn’t, then she’d know that, although the glass still might be breakable, it was at least strong enough that she wouldn’t have to worry about it for the foreseeable future. Easy.

She knelt down and tried to pick up the rock in her mouth. Unfortunately, the rock was slightly too large for her to get a good grip on it, and, being a rock, she couldn’t exactly bite into it either. Next she sat down on her haunches and tried to pick up the rock between her front hooves, which did seem to work well enough at first, but she soon found that this didn’t give her a good enough grip to throw the rock with any kind of force.

After the fourth time the rock hit the ground with barely a plink, she knew that this wasn’t going to work out and she’d have to find another way.

She stared at the white rock against the backdrop of white glass and white sky with aggravation. Why did all the simplest things have to be so difficult lately? Why couldn’t the rock just pick itself off the ground?

The rock rose into the air.

She blinked.

Then she realized that the rock was surrounded by a magical aura. A look of recognition flashed across her face, and she lifted a hoof to her forehead to see if she was right.

There was a horn there, surrounded by its own magical aura.

Huh. She was a unicorn. How did she not realize that? How did she not remember that? How could she remember that she was a scientist, but not a unicorn?

Wait a minute…

She twisted her head around to look at her backside.

…Huh. She had wings, too. That’s… odd. What were ponies with all the pony traits called again? “All-corns”?

It was something like that.

Taking full advantage of her newly-remembered unicorn powers, she raised the rock high, high into the air—and, since she couldn’t see it anymore because of the white-on-white, she also moved it a good five yards away from her. Always good to be cautious.

Once the rock was lifted as far as her magical range would allow, she thrust it down as strong as she could into the glass ground.

She heard a crack.

Which meant a success. Yes!

She gleefully trotted over to where she heard the crack, eager to see the results of her experiment. What she found was that the rock was wedged halfway into the glass—part of it in, part of it out.

This was rather significant. It meant that the glass wasn’t a thin sheet over a void, it was thick. It was something that could be dug into, something that probably went down for quite a long way. Like real ground.

I wonder what the glass looks like beneath its surface? Is it still colored white, or does it look different?

Well, it wouldn’t be hard to find out. She grabbed a hold of the rock with her magic, and forcibly tore the rock out of its spot, wedged in the glass. The moment she did so, the solid glass acted like a liquid, filling up the hole in a circular wave, acting nearly identical—in slow-motion—to how water would react if an object were removed from it.

In a few moments, the waves died down and the glass was back to being flat and solid.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Well, this certainly put a damper on the idea that there might be glass mountains or valleys somewhere out there. But it did introduce the idea of glass waterfalls! And that was equally awesome! If there was an edge to this world, somewhere, and the glass acted like a liquid when faced with physical and geographical abnormalities, then there must be a glassfall somewhere! It only made sense! Clearly!

Now all hyped up on her new theory, she left the rock behind and began walking in a completely random direction, figuring that if she kept walking in a straight line then she should get somewhere eventually.

However, after only a few minutes of walking she noticed a slight problem. With pure whiteness on all sides it was rather difficult to know if she was moving in a straight line. There was no context to her walking, nothing visible that she could point out and say, I’m going over there. She just had to walk and hope for the best.

After about an hour of walking into the white, she was starting to feel a strange feeling of discouragement. With nothing ever changing from one step to the other, her brain was starting to think that she was walking on a treadmill or something; it was as if she wasn’t actually moving. It was oddly hard to stay motivated walking when your brain was convinced you were standing still. Still, she pushed on.

After about three hours of walking into the white, she became consciously aware that she wasn’t getting tired, or hungry, or thirsty. A small part of her found that to be very odd.

After about five hours of walking, she was feeling very tired. Not tired in a physical sense, of course, but simply tired of walking. One can only walk for so long into an unchanging void before they just feel too sick of it to go any further, no matter how determined they are.

Of course, it was at the moment she was going to sit down and give up that she saw an irregularity in the distance.

It was very far away. Very, very far. Something very, very small, too. But being on a flat, unchanging surface, even if for not very long, tends to train one’s eyes to catch irregularities no matter how small.

A goal! A direction! Something different! 

With renewed energy, she set off at a brisk pace toward the object. What could it be? Was there more of it? Was it part of the white void, or something else? Was someone else here? Did they create the object? Was it an object at all? So many questions filled her head, and she was so eager to find answers that she found herself at a sprint before long. Even so, it took her a full ten minutes to reach the object.

Her pace slowed to a crawl as she reached the final few yards, feeling too anxious and eager to go any faster. She purposefully looked away from the small object as she neared it, not wanting to see what it was until she was close enough to see it clearly.

She waited until she was right on top of it, and then she looked down with eager eyes.

It was a rock.

A white rock.

That looked an awful lot like the one she had left behind nearly six hours ago.

A part of her said, “Y’know, I really should have expected that. It’s rather obvious, in retrospect.”

The rest of her—the part that wasn’t all nice and logical—slumped down on the ground and stared blankly into space.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair, not at all.

Hope couldn’t be raised like that, and then dashed to pieces so quickly. It just couldn’t.

A terrible anger began to burn inside her, and she wanted to hurt the rock, hurt it very badly. Again, part of her said, “Why would I do that? The rock’s done nothing wrong.”

The rage was already boiling over, though, and sanity has little control over passion. Her face contorted in a frenzied fury; she picked up the rock with her magic and began to slam it against the ground as hard as she could, over and over again. Little shards of glass scattered from the impact zone in every direction, each one settling on the ground for only a moment before melting away. All of her aimless rage came pouring out all at once, and she continued to slam the rock against the ground for many, many minutes, not stopping until the hole she had created was a good three feet deep and large enough to fit a pony.

Trembling, she placed the rock down and crawled into the hole, snuggling into the sharp edges of glass that cut into her skin and made her bleed white blood.

Pain. Something new.

It was her own little bed of needles. A constant discomfort to make her forget about the sameness everywhere else. An irregularity. Her own irregularity, stained with her own liquid life. A home.

The part of her that remembered what a home was said that it was somewhere you rested after a long day’s work. She supposed that fit well enough. With a sigh, she closed her eyes and tried to get some rest.

Very soon she opened her eyes again when she realized she no longer felt shards of glass poking into her skin.

The hole was gone. She was lying down on flat white glass that stretched forever in every direction. She had no injuries. Beside her was a rock.

She tried to get angry again, but instead she found that a lone tear had begun to run down her cheek.

The tear succumbed to the force of gravity and dripped off her face, falling through the air toward the ground.

The tear hit the ground and the glass rippled like a drop of rain hitting a lake, and then the glass was dry and flat again.

She continued to let tears escape, and coupled it with the sound of sobbing in depression and desperation. She was shaking too badly to even stand up.

This isn’t fair.

There is nothing unfair here.

Where am I?

Alone, just like you wanted.

Why am I here?

Because you created here.

I don’t want to be here.

Of course you do.

I want to go home.

This is your home.

Where are my friends? I want my friends!

You’ll see your friends soon.

Why can’t I remember anything?

What is there to remember?

I hate it here!

You’ll love it here. You just haven’t seen here yet. Turn on the lights.

She opened her eyes. Around her was bleak, infinite whiteness. Beside her was a rock. There was no evidence of her tears. She was glowing.

She was glowing?

Huh.

She glowed with a black light. She could feel the emotions that the black light was powered by—the feelings of rage and despair and depression… but most of all, the want, the need, to go home. To see life again, even if she couldn’t quite remember what life was.

The whiteness of this world was just as dark and concealing as the blackest of nights, it just wasn’t as noticeable as being such at first. But it was very much true. She had been wandering about in the white-colored dark for a long time without realizing it, but now she did. She would remove this darkness.

I wish to leave here.

I wish to remember.

I wish to live again.

The black glow started becoming brighter. She was too focused to notice.

I wish for life.

I wish for light.

I wish,

I wish,

I wish…

She tried to keep her eyes open, but the glow became brighter and brighter and brighter until she was finally blinded by black.