The Last Pony on Earth

by Starscribe


Chapter 47: August 12

August 12, 2015

Dear Diary,

We’re here. After another long day of travel, we're finally here.

It's a good thing the cars on the road at the time apparently didn't stick around, because otherwise driving here with trucks and buses might be impossible (guess we could still off-road, but that sounds like it would take forever). Roads are all clear. Well, there's litter, rubber bits, maybe a few tiny branches that've blown into the roads, but nothing that makes driving too hard. Probably won't stay this way. I know lots of plants can sprout in cracks, send roots through concrete, stuff like that. Freeze-thaw cycles will eventually destroy the roads, and they'll be covered in soil and plants before that. I wonder if we'll need to put a plow on a big truck or something at some point to keep an aisle clear of all that stuff, keep the highway routes we care about most drivable.

Whatever, not yet. Soon, maybe, but not yet. I can still see them just fine. A few leaves. Honestly I'm afraid those might be a problem in some of the more heavily wooded areas we crossed before anything else. Did you know I saw leaves as wide as my face? LEAVES GET THAT BIG! Like, real leaves.

The longer I stay out of California the more I'm glad to see somewhere else. It will be better to raise foals here. Not... not me raising them. Cloudy, or Moriah, obviously. Some pony else. Hear me, Cloudy Skies? Two words! I can't let my language change just because I get used to hearing it for a week. Or a day.

Spent most of the day traveling, because traveling is what we do. Or did. Did, ladies and gentlemen, because we have arrived! Paris, Illinois, has climbed from population 0 to the staggering metropolis of... 6. Okay, maybe that sounded better in my head. Whatever. Circled up everything in the town square (a real thing!), since all we are is a train of settlers travelin' out west... dangit, we're going the wrong way! I give up.

The grass up here is overgrown instead of dead. A pretty incredible change for me. With no sprinklers running, I would expect it all to be dead. Not so. It’s as much as three feet tall in front of many homes. Like the whole town was simultaneously abandoned and got overgrown. Well okay, that’s exactly what happened… but I digress.

While everybody went to the normal routine (a campfire, dried food and conversation while the animals grazed), I took my saddlebags and went with Huan for a little walk. I had a town map with me, but I didn’t really need one. It’s way small. Didn’t take very long at all to walk to the fairgrounds, and we didn’t encounter any huge stray dog packs along the way. There are predators smells here, though. Dangerous for us? Guess that remains to be seen. We could fence off the whole town if it comes to that, but I doubt it'll have to. Ponies are fast, and we're not nearly as helpless as we were a few months back.

Of course, I knew who would be waiting for me here. We'd already discussed it, and their carrier had probably been parked here all day. There was a safety-line painted on the ground, closer than the one had been in the city. I wondered why, though I know now. One of the enclosed tanks sat parked outside, its weapons tracking me as I approached. A hatch opened, and out came a single man in a protective suit.

It wasn’t Dr. Clark, but Captain Wright, the one who led the team who ransacked our shelter way back when. He warned me to stay back, gave the same warnings about them needing to shoot me as before. I agreed to comply, then took the saddlebags off and opened the side-pouch. I’d left the manacles right where I could get to them, along with the key. He didn’t really have a good angle to see inside at that distance (and I couldn’t be sure if that would release some sort of mystical cascade that would overwhelm him and anyone else who had come along). I didn’t like the idea of bringing the space-warping magic of the saddlebags much closer, but I needed them to be close enough for him to see. About 500 meters was the ideal distance, right on the edge of the fairgrounds.

Short of it? They work. I know what it’s like to be a not-earth pony, now. All that strength ripped away, and the ground beneath my hooves not talking to me the way it’s supposed to. Very hard to explain… it wasn’t very pleasant. There was one positive side-effect, though: when wearing the manacles, I couldn’t feel the lack of magic from anyone else either. It sucked to be wearing them, but I didn’t have an irrational desire to constantly run away. Which was good, because I’d probably have tripped over my front hooves and landed with my horse butt waving in the breeze.

Captain Wright was pretty amazed by the sudden drop in my radiation (to zero), that he called out all his men. A half dozen humans poured out of the airship and the tank, many lacking anything but a basic bio-hazard suit, the ones with those clear fronts that inflate and look really silly. Human faces inside; men and women who look the way I used to look. Weary, curious, frightened. I came all the way over to the circle, and eventually they let me inside it. It didn’t feel any different, aside from the terrible constriction the manacles already provided.

I had the key on my neck the whole time, though. I could’ve taken them off relatively easily (I’m a pro at mouth-things now. Do it for three months and see if you aren’t too), but I never did. Might’ve killed all those people if I did — humans the Earth surely can’t afford to lose.

I told them everything, though of course my memory isn’t nearly as accurate as the perfect crystal thing. I wish I could've used that. Convey how powerful Luna felt, her honesty and frankness. You can't get that just from me telling the story, even if I tell it well (and I don't, I'm not a very good storyteller!). Eventually showed them my “proof” in the form of the magic saddlebags and the artifacts I brought with me from Equestria. Even took a drone with me into the library, which seemed to work so long as the flaps stayed open.

What was the point of the magical song and dance? The HPI already knew about Equestria. Though they hadn't known for sure (until I told them) what Equestrians looked like, they knew about their magical powers. Their ability to open doors in space, in particular. So it was pretty obvious I'd been dealing with Equestria.

I’m not sure if I proved anything other than the fact that the Equestrians (they already knew about them, big surprise) had tons of powerful magic. They didn’t corroborate Luna’s story of interacting with Earth, though they never denied it. I hope our relationship with them will get good enough that they’ll eventually be open with us.

I want them to succeed. The HPI are the last true humans left. I don’t know if they have enough in that base of theirs to keep replacing their machines as they break. Having us on the outside, able to move through the ruins of civilization without having our brains fried, might be what makes the difference between starving one year or surviving. Do they have any long-term plans? It’s going to be hundreds, maybe thousands of years before we can refine more nuclear fuel for them to use in their reactors. Even an apparent ability to use waste fuels won’t keep them going forever.

I wonder if our wizard-ponies will get as advanced as the Equestrian ones. If magical shackles are possible, maybe a magical magic reflector is too. Freed of the need to blow all their energy into shields, I bet they could have a way easier time of things. Maybe have some surface colonies, albeit protected like castles to stop ponies from wandering in accidentally. Or… on purpose.

But why would we fight? God, we did so much of that in the old world. Even if our goals don’t perfectly align, nopony can afford to solve their problems with violence anymore. There are damn few of us, and there’s going to keep being a damn few for hundreds of years to come. The first wave of colonists I brought here will all be long dead before we start seeing the .7 million/year worldwide numbers, assuming Luna was right.

Dr. Clark is genuinely excited about the manacles; when Wright called him, should’ve seen how excited he looked. He wants to bring me back to “Raven” as soon as possible, so they can learn how ponies tick. Wanted to take me right then, actually. I said no, that I’d need to be with my friends for a month or so getting our colony set-up.

He was fine with that; most of his people were in Europe anyway, still trying to deal with all their nuclear plants.

You miss that?

He didn’t try to force me. Could’ve. I was surrounded by armed humans and guns. They’re all bigger than me, and I didn’t have any of my strength. Huan was watching from outside the circle, so they could’ve shot him before he got close enough without even trying.

They didn’t.

So don’t you tell me former humans and real humans can’t be friends. If the ponies of Equestria can be friends with gryphons and minotaurs and weird monsters, then we can be friends with our true selves.

So I couldn't show them the memory, that didn't mean I couldn't explain the essence of what happened. The reason earth is deserted is because the ponies made a spell to save humanity. It worked, and here we are. Everyone else is going to come back as ponies and the other races from Equestria over the next long, long time, though the immediate future shouldn't see that many. The magic wasn't going to go away, at least not if what happened in Equestria's universe suggests the future of our own.

Wright asked me a question I hadn't quite expected: Would the "spell" that made humans into Equestrians before something that could be replicated? Would the former human ponies on earth now be able to do it again, on a smaller scale?

I asked him why, because I was kinda shocked he'd be asking at all. Wright said. "The HPI was meant to preserve humanity. If we reach a point where we've run out of resources, or our equipment is failing, we would serve humanity better by surviving as something else than dying as ourselves. I don't think Dr. Clark would consider it unless we had no other options. It would be useful to know whether the possibility was open."

You can't imagine how excited they are about all the books on magic I brought back. They want us to scan each one, so their engineers can start on them. It was like Christmas for them. I'm going to try and be as optimistic as I can for them, because humanity needs a little optimism when there are only five hundred real humans and they live in a tiny hole called "Raven." I know they built a thaumic shield in just a few years, but that was back when they had the best minds of the world working on it. How long will it take them when they've only got a few hundred?

Well, they managed to improve the strength of their shield pretty significantly with the same equipment, so that's good. I'm not sure if it counts, since the improvements were just based on not having ever been exposed to a field this size before. Just a manner of recalibrating for the way thaumic energy acts in reality instead of based on some theory. Still, I could tell they were pretty confident. Less tanks, after all, not to mention the shorter line. I guess this will make scavenging a little easier, even if I still can't get within thirty feet without those manacles.

Clark is going to come up in person next week, to get what happened in much more detail. Seems fine to me. Hopefully it can be the start of a friendship. After all, I did what they wanted. We investigated the mysterious magic. Learned it was a Thaumic Arc Transmitter making all the "noise" (even if I couldn't tell them why Sunset Shimmer bothered to encode her messages). We'll keep the fairgrounds off-limits except for these meetings, to keep the area from getting "hot".

Time to turn my eyes towards practical matters. We’ve got a colony to build. After that, who knows?

—Alex