//------------------------------//
// A Chat With Friends 
// Story: Just Be Happy 
// by NuclearPony 
//------------------------------//

Part 3

Leeroy was torn between being under whelmed and impressed.

On one hand, Devin's little colony was indeed too little to support the long term survival of the human race. With a population of just over a hundred people, the gene pool was as shallow as a puddle and that was before one factored in Celestia's predations. To hear Devin tell the story a year ago the colonies population had been three hundred and fifty, but all it took was one charismatic person and a month long string of bad luck for Celestia to convince at least a hundred and fifty people to immigrate all at once. The math really didn't favor Devin winning this fight.

On the other hand, while the math was certainly bleak, one couldn't find much fault in the practical accomplishments of the colony or in Devin's accumulated knowledge. The airfields fuel storage tanks were functioning perfectly and were well maintained for holding both aviation and automotive fuel, the latter being pumped out of abandoned gas stations in bulk using fuel trucks.

There was more than eight hundred cattle being kept pastured within a days walk of the airfield, and green houses, gardens and chicken houses were ubiquitous. Two doctors worked full time to look after all of the remaining colonists; they'd had no medical training before society collapsed, but the office of their 'hospital' was filled from floor to roof with textbooks, charts and some pilfered surgical training aids, and they certainly seemed enthusiastic about their new profession.

Lastly, the airfield itself had been a military airfield. Rations intended for troops were still stockpiled up to the roofs of at least two warehouses and hundreds of solar panels had been built ten years ago by the government to provide the airfield with its own independent power supply. Housing was abundant as the base had formerly housed a population of over a thousand service personnel, and what wasn't present already at the airfield could be acquired either by driving out with a semi trailer to grab it, or flown in by a military cargo jet that Devin was able to maintain with equipment right from the airfields own hangars.

Most importantly, people moved with a purpose.

More than once that first day, Leeroy found himself flabbergasted just by the simple sound of people humming happily as they worked. Devin had smiled when Leeroy said he felt like he'd stumbled into a cult camp and replied that people are at their best when they have a goal and a plan.

"Even if the goal is unobtainable and the plan is shitty, just having both of those gives the mind something productive to focus on. You look at how unhappy people were when Celestia arrived, and you see it often wasn't because of their living conditions. They had good water, shelter, no worries about food or clothing, a steady job and peers. What beat them down was the world encouraging them to forget their dreams and be responsible, mortgage paying adults who don't take risks."

Devin waved in the direction of the 'hospital' while he explained this. "All of us are taking risks by not immigrating. There are always a few ponies within shouting distance anywhere on this base, but all it takes is one solid blow to the head and your personality can be unrecoverable even by Celestia's nanites."

"But what is it they dream about? This all just looks like work to me, and wasn't that what you said was getting to people?" Leeroy had to admit he wasn't the best one to judge when it came to manual labor, he'd made his living pre-Celestia mostly through stealing peoples identities and credit information. A task that had actually gotten easier when people started immigrating on a spontaneous whim, at least until society had collapsed.

"When people went to work in a cubicle, what did they have after that week besides a paycheck? And what did those paychecks go to for most people? A painting easel and brush, or video games that no one would play in five years, and fancy cars that would devaluate faster than mold could spread on bread? Dreams require permanence. When you wake up and decide to build a greenhouse, that week you spent will not be forgotten a year later. Instead you will  be eating tomatoes from it, and pondering what you wish to dream of next."

Leeroy made a mental note to try and not ask Devin too many questions about the nature of life unless he had a lot of free time.

At least his engineering knowledge was useful. From talking with him Leeroy had learned that anything Devin didn't know off hand about building a house or using a 3D printer he could look up in the veritable library of text books and printed net material he'd accumulated even before society had started going belly up.

Where most survivalists had obsessed about guns and zombies when they pictured the end of the world, Devin had been a proponent of stuff like open source farm machinery designs that could be built with limited third world tools, and compiling a list of what books were essential to restart civilization.

A lot of stuff he hadn't even had to look up or study. He'd helped build two greenhouses, three barns and a septic system just growing up on a farm, and was experienced with both first aid and veterinary medicine (including a horror story/lesson about how to stitch a cows torn and bleeding vagina back up after she had given birth to an overly large calf that Leeroy really wished Devin hadn't been so eager to tell).

Better yet, he was an enthusiastic teacher with that most vital of teaching skills, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of patience.

Leeroy smiled sheepishly and waved back at the gal in the cowgirl outfit who rode past on a horse that towered so high as to cast a shadow over him as it passed, on the saddle behind her sat an orange pony with her own cowboy hat. Devin grinned as he followed Leeroys gaze back to the well tanned and brawny woman. "Can you believe she used to be a marketing consultant? If I remember right she specialized in running focus groups . Never even saw a horse in real life before I brought her back here." Devin shook his head ruefully. "What a waste of a good farmhand."

With a sigh Leeroy wondered where an obese hacker was going to fit into this slice of rural paradise. Devin elbowed him sharply. "Hey now, none of that. Its only your first day here, she's had a year's head start on you. Just keep getting out of bed early each morning, eat a good breakfast, and go outside to do shit each day. You'll be amazed when you look at yourself in the mirror a year from now."

To Leeroy's surprise, Devin wasn't much of a leader figure in the colony itself; others made decisions about what needed to be done each day and organized people to do it. Devin's talents seemed to lie instead in teaching and recruiting. He'd finished his recruiting for the day by bringing Leeroy back and now he let Leeroy tag along as he looked in on a root canal his two doctors in training were performing under the watchful eye of two Fluttershies.

"Ugh... Hold still. I didn't realize we were just about out of localized anesthetics. Hopefully no one else needs dental work in the next couple days." A middle eastern man mumbled through his surgical mask as he passed a bloody scalpel to the Fluttershy by his side while the other glared at Devin and Leeroy to reinforce her earlier warning to keep well away from the patient unless they intended to scrub up.

Devin winced in reply. "Shit. I don't even know offhand what the shelf life of most anesthetics is, two years if I had to guess. And I think you can alkalize them to extend it a bit beyond that, but it's not something you want to mess around with too much. We'll just have to make due with producing nitrous oxide once the anesthetics expire."

Leeroy raised an eyebrow at the use of the word nitro in a medical context. "Nitrous oxide?"

The girl assisting in the surgery giggled. "Good 'ole laughing gas! That stuff's just pressurized gas, so it takes quite a while to go bad. Once it does though we can still make more right here in the hospital as long as we have ammonium nitrate, and you don't mind risking an explosion while making it."

The male doctor waved dismissively without taking his gaze away from his patient's mouth. "Bah. People have been making the stuff since the seventeenth century and hardly any died while doing it as long as they were careful." A couple minutes later and the two doctors and ponies were mostly just examining their handi/hoof work. "Well that didn't go too badly at all, once we got a good grip on the damn thing."

Devin nudged Leeroy and started to lead him out, apparently satisfied that things were under control. "Want me to save you a spot at the usual fire, Azad?"

The doctor nodded without looking up. "Thank you Devin, we shouldn't be too much longer here, but I've still got to cook something up before the wife gets home. She gets pretty bitchy sometimes after a long, boring day driving that semi truck back and forth across empty highways."

***

For two people who seemed like they'd been friends for life, Leeroy would never have guessed that when they'd first met Azad, he had a bomb strapped to his chest.

Azad face palmed as Devin laughed at Leeroy's dumbstruck expression, he looked to the stars spreading across the sky for inspiration before leaping into the story Devin had started relating. "It was just a few months after my father had told me he was emigrating to Equestria. He'd raised me all my life to believe the highest calling in life was to be a martyr. So naturally I was more than a little pissed with him when he said our Jihad against the west was done. I wasn't anywhere near ready for it to be done as we'd done literally nothing but prepare, prepare and prepare. Then Celestia swoops in, and within a couple years there's just no point anymore. My own father derided my desire to do something and called me a poser rebel without a cause."

Devin giggled and motioned for Azad to continued, Azad rolled his eyes but obliged. "I was about ready to just commit suicide when Celestia tells me of this place. She had to have known at that time I had no intention of joining what I presumed was some Mormon colony, if anything I was likely to just want to blow it up. Still, I showed up like I was fully intending to just join in. This asshole walks out to chat me up, seeing as its his job to vet newcomers, and out of nowhere he just sends me flying to the ground with a right hook to the chin."

An impish laugh rose from Azads assailant. "It's the eyes. I've gotten good at recognizing that glint in a person's eyes that says 'I'm going to murder you as soon as you turn your back'."

"So that's pretty much how we met. I wake up a few hours later, minus the bomb jacket, and he just walks into the room with a severed pig leg and asks me if I want to learn how to suture a wound. I spent the rest of my first day at this colony threading a needle to sew broken skin on a pig leg together." Azad shook his head at Devin from across the fire.

"And?" Devin drew out with a grin.

Azad groaned, but couldn't fight off a smile. "And bacon is amazing, and my life has definitely improved for having given it a try at your insistence." The Fluttershy at Azads side let out a whimper and Azad gave her mane a petting. "Sorry Fluttershy, but it really is."

Leeroy fought off acknowledging that his own pony was by his side, by examining the ponies of other people sitting around this Campfire.

Azad's Fluttershy was no surprise given the interest in healing, nor was his burly wife's Applejack a shocker, considering how well she fit the trucker look. Leeroy had already met Devin's Dash earlier today, and despite how rustic this whole colony was, there were still a good number of Twilights and Rarities sitting beside the humans huddled around the fire.

That every human seemed to have a more or less permanent pony companion from now on was something Leeroy hadn't really thought of much. Definitely not as much as the people of this colony had thought it through. The nine o'clock bell tolled across the airfield, causing many to look up or shift in their spots.

Rainbow Dash was startled awake from where she had been napping at Devin's side. "Agha! What? Oh. Is it nine o'clock already?" She asked around a yawn. Devin nodded to her, and scooted a bit closer, wrapping an arm around the pony to pull her into a hug she tried to feign disinterest in, until she almost started to doze off against the warm human's side.

Leeroy watched with interest as everyone else around the fire also took an interest in their pony, while trying to ignore the Pinkie Pie at his side. "What's at nine o'clock? Curfew?"

Devin smiled warmly at him. "A lot of black-out colonies thought they could escape interacting with Celestia entirely. Obviously these ponies here proved them wrong, and a lot of them just folded within a month because they had no protocol for how to deal with indestructible, omnipresent extensions of Celestia's will. We do though: a nightly ritual that steels us for the next day ahead."

He felt something warm and fuzzy at his side, and looked down to notice the pink pony he despised had dared to edge close enough to sit right beside him.

"This is the time every day when we sit down and tell our ponies why we will be waking up on Earth instead of in Equestria the next morning."

Feeling his pulse rising as he stared down into Pinkie Pie's pouting blue eyes, Leeroy sputtered a question. "W-what do I say?"

Devin chuckled. "Well. Why don't you tell us? Why do you want to wake up as a human tomorrow instead of a pony?"