November 7, 2039
Canterlot
Monday
Hal checked his pack.
Rummaging around inside the canvas shoulder bag he sometimes carried his textbooks in, his hoof poked against each item he would need to tackle his day – three extra pencils; a garish notepad inlaid with gems that were probably worth more than what an average pony earned in a year; two rutabagas; and the tiny teddy bear he’d been stuffing somewhere on his person, ever since his mother gave it to him and told him it had special powers to make him more confident on the primary school playground.
The pencils were there because his pocket protector was pulling other duties these days. The notepad wasn’t his style, but he had little choice in the matter. The rutabagas were a critical necessity, and the teddy bear was his best kept secret.
As he stood before the mirror, adjusting the collar of his gold and purple checkered turtleneck and arranging each spike of his frosty-tipped mane with the alacrity of the upper crust, Hal turned his thoughts to his best friends - the two mares who had accepted him for who he was back in freshman year. He’d made other friends since then, but those two had always been the ones he felt he could truly be himself around.
One of them was coltcrap crazy. The other one was a self-declared mass murderer.
Shaking the remaining sleep out of his brain with a few sharp swishes of his head, he set out for his destination; wary as usual to change up his route, backtrack a few times, and ensure that nopony was following him.
* * * *
The blasted hallway of the science wing hadn’t changed an iota since the day of the conflagration, and Hal was getting used to seeing it this way. The building was condemned – the engineer corps had declared it a total loss, and the Canterlot Academy of Sciences had already seen fit to transfer all of the classes that were once held here to other buildings on campus. The structurally unsound building would someday be bulldozed – of that Hal had no doubt, but a certain somepony with a lot of clout had secretly promised to keep that from happening as long as possible. It was the same pony who had approved both Hal and Tissy’s requests to pursue ‘private study’, and thus remain unfettered by the daily demands of university life. An average student might have seen it as a free pass to goof off, but neither of the two independent students could remember a time when they were busier.
The only sound echoing in the empty halls was the hum from that machine – the device they had affectionately dubbed the ‘Quantum Vault’. Hal might have heard the echo of his hoofsteps first, but he had since taken to hovering to the Accelerator lab on his burnt-orange wings in the morning. There was something about listening to the clopping rhythm of hooves on linoleum while passing the skeletal husks of familiar old classrooms that made him feel uneasy. The condition of the building was one thing, but he wasn’t certain he could ever find it in his heart to become accustomed to the silence. Since the building was condemned, the school board had disallowed the students from returning to collect their materials – thus, every room he passed was still outfitted and filled with projects as though the students were simply out to lunch.
Hastening the beating of his wings, Hal turned the corner and slipped into the one remaining laboratory that didn’t feel like a village of the dead.
The room looked much better than it had the first time he’d seen it after the disaster. They’d had to work in secret, but Hal and Tissy managed to remove most of the crumbled masonry and set up a generator to take care of the overhead fluorescent lighting and various electronics. The walls were still cracked, but the fact remained that the two of them simply weren’t carpenters. Even if they had been, the building itself was just too far gone to have much in the way of expectations for it. Hal thought maybe that was a good thing, as the unfamiliar surroundings served to blunt his nostalgic impulses.
As always, Hal found himself shading his eyes with a foreleg before they adjusted themselves to the gleaming light and white walls that made this place look like a vision of the afterlife.
“Tissy?”
Hal heard typing. He turned to find a wine-colored mare seated at her usual desk, tapping away on her usual keyboard and staring blankly at her usual screen. Her poofy, powdery mane of cyan blue licked her ears and curled back from her body in cascading waves. It was really quite beautiful, but Hal couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen it groomed past the level of bedhead. He landed and trotted over to his companion, smiling softly and reaching out to touch her shoulder.
“Tissy, did you go back to your room last night? You know you need to go back and sleep every night like we talked about, right?”
Tissy’s muzzle was hewn from stone, and the glassy look in her eyes suggested she hadn’t done any such thing. Hal sighed. After failing to draw her attention by waving a hoof in front of her face, he glanced at the screen and found deep sets of arithmetic calculations – streams of numbers so long and so complex that even he, bright enough to win himself a scholarship to the most prominent academy in Equestria’s capital city, couldn’t begin to fathom.
“What’cha working on?” He offered, continuing the conversation himself without waiting for a reply. “That’s some pretty snazzy number crunching you’ve got going on there. I’m gonna say you’re either calculating the value of pi, creating a utopian society, or just tapping on keys because it’s fun.
The pegasus laughed. The earth mare didn’t. Hal settled down.
“I brought you some breakfast.”
On the heels of his announcement, Hal sifted through his pack, retrieved one of the rutabagas, and unceremoniously tossed it right at the mare, who caught it in her teeth and began chewing on it, raw, without taking her attention from her work. The second one was for lunch. Hal never brought three, even though that usually meant he had to go and find another. Bringing one to cover dinner felt too much like he was giving up trying to get Tissy to go out into the world. He wasn’t sure what the mare liked about raw rutabagas, but it was the only thing he’d ever seen her eat.
“Anyway,” Hal went on amidst the sound of chewing, “Any updates? Have you been able to triangulate Cutie’s new position?”
Hal knew his ears weren’t going to be any use in this conversation. He stood behind Tissy and got a quick look of her goofy, tummy-filled grin in the reflection of the monitor before she switched to a word processor and began typing. Her words per minute made court stenographers look illiterate. Hal continued his one-sided conversation as he read.
“…no, huh? Alright, well…as soon as you do, let me know. I’ve got to get a report about the last vault to Princess Twilight today. I just…”
Trailing off his words, Hal found himself staring at that huge, power hungry contraption that took up a large chunk of the room. The Accelerator hummed patiently back at him. The cables hooked up to it and components scattered around it reminded him of bones outside a dragon’s lair. He’d once looked on the ‘Quantum Vault’ with so much promise. Now, he just wasn’t sure what to make of the machine.
The pegasus felt pressure. He looked down to find Tissy’s deep wine-colored hoof covering his. He read the screen and smiled.
“You’re right. Eyes on the prize and hooves in the game. We’ll get her back somehow.” He patted Tissy’s shoulder affectionately. “I’ll be back with lunch. You’re going to bed tonight even if I have to carry you there.”
It was neither an empty threat nor the first time he’d have to act on it.
Ten minutes later, Hal found himself trotting under gray, overcast skies to the one place in the entire city nopony wanted to be – the residential district. The air was still misty from the previous night’s downpour, and the cold of winter was setting in early. The toasty pegasus thought it a shame, since autumn was his favorite season. Glancing about at the rubble of blasted homes, he reminded himself that there was no longer any life in this area to denote the passing of seasons anyway.
“Halifax Calavanner.”
At the sound of a name only his mother ever used, Hal turned his attention to the Princess of Friendship, whose illustrious presence seemed so out of place on such mournful, quiet streets. He took a knee.
“Your Highness.”
“Hal,” Twilight chuckled softly, “You know how I feel about bowing when I’m not at court. Especially from one of my students.”
Hal perked with some confusion and got back to his hooves. “One of your students?”
Twilight smiled. “I consider every student at C.A.S. to be one of my students. You’re all working towards the betterment of ponykind. I’m proud to be a part of it.”
“…oh.” Hal nodded with understanding. “I just thought…well. Cutie was your student. Ma’am.”
A stray, mottled shaft of sunlight glinted off of Twilight’s mane. It would have caught and refracted the beauty of her crown, had she been wearing it. She frowned and chose to digress. “You have a report for me?”
Hal cleared his throat and began rummaging through his pack for the gilded, royal-looking notepad. Just resting the official-looking thing in his hooves encouraged him to straighten his back and puff out his chest before he began reiterating the events of the last few subjective days to the princess. Twilight kept her silence until the young scientist’s recital was complete.
“Nothing changed,” Twilight stated flatly.
“Ma’am?”
Twilight smiled again – the way she smiled when lecturing as a special guest in any number of campus classes. “You’re going to ask me if anything Cutie did changed anything in her mother. Furthermore, you’ve been fighting back the urge to ask me if Applejack, whom you know to be a close personal friend of mine, remembers anything about having the flu during an apple harvest thirty years ago. The short answer to the latter question is no. Not no no – inconclusive no. Applejack has been harvesting apples about as long as I’ve been in books, and this one, single event is simply buried too far into antiquity to stand out.”
“And…the former?” Hal ventured.
“As I said,” Twilight replied. “The world is still the world. Trixie Lulamoon is still in a maximum security dungeon. She’s severely mentally ill. She spends what little lucid time she isn’t buried in the past either missing her daughter, or cursing her. Asking her anything about a club in Baltimare she once worked at is an exercise in futility. And as always, the only reason she isn’t public enemy number one is that she’s safely behind bars. On the other hoof, a certain other mare a large portion of the populace would like to see dangling at the end of a rope is still at large.
Hal felt himself wince under his sovereign’s rough words. He glanced out over the scorched remains of what was once a small park just to avoid making eye contact.
“Quantum is my friend.”
“I know,” Twilight replied.
“I’m…going to help her however I can. I’ve already made up my mind.”
“That’s why I put you on this project in the first place. You and Tissy. To be frank, there are no other ponies in all of Equestria – not even my closest friends or Princess Celestia herself, who I’d trust not to just destroy the Accelerator and be done with it.
Hal scoffed. “I thought friendship is magic.”
“It is.”
Hal didn’t have to touch his cheeks to feel the blood boiling in them. Forgetting his place, he turned his grimace upon the princess. “I don’t care what Cutie says. She DIDN’T do it! Celestia love her, she’s just covering for her mother, despite what Trixie did. Why can’t ponies see that? Why do I have to listen to ponies going on and on every day about hunting down my best friend and tearing her to pieces in ways so vile just hearing it makes me want to lose my lunch all over the sidewalk?” His chest began to heave, “With all we are and all this nation stands for, how can ponies be so cruel as to say things like that!? Even if they think she did it, what good does it do to murder a murderer!? Where does it all end? How can friendship be magic if we’re all hung up on hate!? Cutie is my friend. I forgave her. Why can’t anypony else!?”
Twilight’s brows narrowed, but she didn’t dignify the outburst with a response. Turning on her heels with a royal poise it took her years to learn, she began slowly walking down the street.
“Walk with me, Hal.”
Feeling suddenly embarrassed for his outburst, Hal fell in with the princess.
For a time, there was silence. The two of them trotted down an empty street in what used to be one of the most crowded parts of town. Hal found himself cowed by the change in the décor – the masonry, once just shattered and broken, was worn away in places the closer they got to ground zero; as if it had partially disintegrated. There where shadowy imprints passing by under his hooves – blades of grass that had once existed, but had instantly vaporized this close to the epicenter of the blast, leaving behind burned effigies in the very stone itself. Just as Hal was about to ask the princess where they were headed, she stopped abruptly and turned to him.
“I want you to see something,” Twilight commanded, her voice calm and even. “Look there.”
The burnt-orange pegasus followed his sovereign’s hoof until his eyes came upon a framed photograph, propped up against a portion of a ruined wall. The picture was surrounded by bouquets of fresh chrysanthemums, and it depicted a young stallion with a vermillion coat and a shock of blue mane. He had a pair of crossed ski poles on his flank, and was grinning broadly with a few friends against a backdrop that looked like a winter ski lodge.
“Do you know him?” Twilight asked.
Hal examined the image again, sure he was being tested somehow. A moment later he had little choice but to offer the princess a confused turning up of his eyebrows. Twilight continued.
“His name was Slopes. He was in the same year as you, Quantum, and Tissy. Applied physics major. You’d think he’d have a cutie mark like yours—” Twilight pointed at the patch of argyle with an atom over it that looked like it was perfectly sewn into Hal’s flank, “but his real passion was skiing. He was a very bright student, and he was working on a self-contained motor system for ski lifts, so they wouldn’t have to be cranked or operated by pulleys. It qualified as a ‘betterment to ponykind’ because it was more efficient, required less upkeep, and most importantly, was ten times safer. His blueprints are still sitting in room A-305. You should know that room. You pass it every day on your way to the Accelerator lab.”
Hal faltered, watching the grinning stallion in the photo as if he were standing there beside them. “…what happened to—”
“When they found him,” Twilight cut in, “he was crying like a newborn foal. Two of his legs were gone—” She pointed at spots on Hal’s shoulder and flank as she spoke, “Here, and here. The other two were still attached to his body, but the bones had been pulverized into powder. His jaw was hanging off of his face, he was stone deaf, and both his cutie marks were burned clean off his body. There was a slit down the back of his skull that ran so deep you could see grey matter if you looked close enough. His mane was gone, and his tail was a stump. His left eye was hanging out of the socket—”
“Y-your highness,” Hal put his hoof to his mouth and made a gagging noise, “…please….”
“Be quiet.” Twilight ordered. Unused to the intensity in the Princess of Friendship’s voice, Hal shut his mouth and waited for her to continue.
“He had sixty-three puncture wounds from shrapnel all over his body, but not one of them was bleeding because they had all been cauterized by the heat. Eight of his vertebrae were crushed, and part of his spine was jutting out of his lower back. But Celestia help him, he was still alive. Alive, conscious, and sane enough to feel every nerve screaming at him all over his body. When the paramedics loaded him onto a stretcher, he kept begging them not to look at him. It took him two days to slip into a coma. He died fourteen hours later.” Twilight took a deep breath, as if the words were as difficult to utter as they were to hear. “His mother, father, younger brother, and his girlfriend put that photo and those flowers there. His contribution to ponykind will never come to fruition. His family insisted on a closed casket because they didn’t want to remember him the way he was found.”
Hal found he couldn’t remove his eyes from the smiling photograph. He felt that if he stared at it long enough, perhaps the smiling pony therein would simply walk back down the street to continue its life. “…why are you telling me this?”
Twilight pointed at yet another photograph. This one had no flowers. The image inside, that of a postpartum earth mare with a preemie mewling, was faded and creased to the point that Hal couldn’t make out their coloring.
“Rolling Sunbeam and her daughter, Spark. She’s younger than you. When she was a teenager she got too serious with her boyfriend and her family disowned her for getting pregnant. A lesser mare might have died on the street somewhere, but she was strong, and she refused to give up. She and her boyfriend became lovers, and eventually husband and wife. She had the baby, and the two of them put their whole lives into raising their foal right. They lived in an apartment the size of most bathrooms and sewed nearly all of their own garments. Splurging to them was buying a few pieces of fruit to go with their oats and flax one day a week. They were overworked and had no time to make friends, but despite all of that, they were happy. They smiled every day, and they were thankful for what they had. Their sheer tenacity was the kind of thing that could make even the Apple family look lazy.”
Hal swallowed. He didn’t dare speak.
“The mother and child were close to the epicenter of the blast. Emergency crews found a mare lying on the sidewalk, covering a foal with her body. When they tried to move her, both of the figured crumbled to ash, along with a cheap, poorly constructed baby carriage. A breeze scattered them to the wind after that, and there was nothing left to bury. They didn’t own a camera. That photo is the only one the husband ever had. A week after the explosion he stopped coming to work, and he hasn’t been seen since. At the service, he insisted that his wife and child were still smiling, somewhere.”
Hal didn’t even realize he was shaking until a tear wet his cheek. He sniffled hard and forced the emotion down, closing his eyes just long enough to take in a deep breath and straighten his back. He intended to repeat his previous question, but found there was no need.
“Despite how you, I, and Tissy feel, Halifax, we have to face a certain reality. Quantum swore before open court that the explosion that cost these lives was her fault. That her mother came to her with the idea and she went along with it. You don’t believe she did it. Neither do I. But we have no evidence to support that claim, while at the same time having a confession that says we’re wrong. Friendship is magic, Halifax, but you need to understand the leap of faith you’re asking ponies to take in forgiving Quantum for her perceived crimes.”
Twilight fluttered her wings, and Hal couldn’t help but notice the hardness in her stare. Her stance, her tone of voice…the other elemental keepers had begun to soften with age, but the Princess of Friendship was ever young and vigorous. The trouble, Hal thought, was that the weight of Twilight’s office seemed to be tempering that vigor into melancholy. Then again, he hadn’t often seen her like this, so to him it was something new. He dared to inquire.
“Your Highness…are you okay?”
Twilight’s commanding air slackened into a rueful smile. “Seems I can’t fool my students. You should trust in your perceptive abilities, Halifax. They’ll serve you well if you do.” She let out a deflating breath, and Hal thought she looked somehow smaller after the effort. “The truth is…no. I’m not okay. And it isn’t just as a result of the horrors we’ve witnessed these past few weeks. I’m sure you don’t know the story because it happened years before you were born, but Trixie Lulamoon had the alicorn amulet once before she came to this city.”
Hal nodded. “She used it to take over Ponyville almost thirty years ago. I didn’t know the story up until recently. Now I think almost everypony does. You, the other elemental keepers, and a zebra from the Everfree Forest tricked her into giving it up, and then it was hidden away.”
Twilight shook her head, “Apparently it wasn’t hidden away well enough. I don’t have time to go into all of this with you right now, but suffice to say even though my friends and I showed Trixie kindness, many of the other residents of Ponyville did not. What she did back then could be considered less heinous than the horrors I just described to you, but only in degree. Running Trixie out of Ponyville set off a chain reaction that reduced her from a hopeful, if not boastful, young wizard who might have been a benefit to society if she could work through her social problems, to a hateful, bitter nag who saw fit to bring about the destruction around you right now. We’re not even sure if she could be considered sane enough to even know what she was doing or if it was just the amulet influencing her mind again, but…”
Hal waited patiently for his sovereign to get her bearings.
“…that’s the life Quantum was born into. I don’t know all the factors that shaped her into the pony she is today. You’d have to ask her. But, if we…if I had only tried harder. Had only made them all find a way to forgive her…this may never have happened. And now you want everypony to forgive her daughter for what amounts to the same.”
Hal’s brow furrowed with confusion. Twilight turned away, and held up a hoof to stop him when he made to follow.
“I’m not trying to exonerate or condemn Quantum. But I believe there’s something inside her worth saving. Worth it to all ponykind to save. And I know you do too. I can’t stay here any longer or important ponies will start to wonder where I am. I have a lot of influence Halifax, and I can use that to keep a lid on what we’re trying to do here, but it won’t last forever. You’ve got to find a way to bring Quantum back. Before it’s too late. I’ll help you however I can, but I can’t make a show of it. I’m sure you understand. Think about what I told you. And never forget that friendship is magic.”
With that, the regal alicorn caught a chilled breeze with her wings and was gone.
* * * *
Hal twiddled his hooves in the Accelerator lab until he was quite sure it was dark enough that nopony would see him leaving. He’d been alone with his thoughts and the incessant clackety-clack of Tissy’s hooves over a keyboard for several hours, and in that time, he felt he was no closer to understanding anything the princess left him with.
“Tissy.”
He expected no response, and there was none. He rose to his hooves and gave the grey-eyed mare another appreciative glance. She really was exquisitely beautiful.
“Tissy. C’mon. Let’s go get dinner. I’m buying.”
Hal cocked his head and glanced at the matrix on Tissy’s screen. The equations looked familiar.
“Almost found Cutie? I guess it’ll be a busy night. I’ll order take out, but,” he chuckled, “somepony will have to go and pick it up.”
Tissy didn’t so much as twitch. Hal watched the technobabble on the screen reflect in her empty eyes until he finally reached out to put a hoof on her shoulder.
“Come outside with me. Just for a little while. You’ll feel bet—”
Abruptly, Hal felt a stinging slap against his cheek from Tissy’s hoof. The blow wasn’t painful, but it was jarring enough to give him pause as the normally catatonic mare curled into a ball and began shivering while staring off into space.
“….don’t wanna….” Tissy muttered miserably.
Hal sighed. Quantum had always had better luck bringing Tissy out of her shell, even though that often translated into the minty mare being the butt of the savant’s jokes. The very fact that Tissy would play a prank or smile at all was exceptional, and Hal usually left himself open on purpose; just hoping Tissy would put a pail of water over the door or slip a whoopee cushion under his rump as he sat down. But what little fire had ever shown in the rattled mare’s eyes was even colder since the whole business with the ‘Quantum Vault’ began. He tried three times before she finally allowed him to stroke her withers with a hoof.
“Alright,” he cooed, “alright. I’ll go get us something.”
Hal rose back to his hooves, favored the shuddering mare with a helpless glance, and turned to gather his bag and wander through the night in search of a fresh rutabaga. He was a bright young stallion…he knew that. He was capable of so many things, but alone, he could do nothing to get inside the head of one of his two best friends – to understand her past, her pain…and to somehow ease it.
Hal checked his pack.
Inside he found three extra pencils; a garish notepad inlaid with gems that were probably worth more than what an average pony earned in a year; no rutabagas; and the tiny teddy bear he’d been stuffing somewhere on his person, ever since his mother gave it to him and told him it had special powers to make him more confident on the primary school playground.
Smiling wanly, he took up the teddy bear in his teeth and sat it on Tissy’s desk, right next to her keyboard.
“His name’s Brutus,” Hal explained. “It’s a big, scary name, but that’s only so he has the power to protect you. He’s really very sweet, kind, and he’ll always listen to anything you have to say. If you keep him in your saddlebag, nopony will ever laugh at you.”
Tissy peeked out from the cave she’d created with her own body. Hal pushed the little bear closer to the edge of the table with his muzzle.
“Go on. Take him. I can personally vouch for his effectiveness.”
The wine-coated mare hesitated for a long time, her one eye sliding back and forth between the bear and the pegasus. She nabbed Brutus up and drew him into her personal bubble so fast Hal almost missed it. He placed his hoof on her withers again. Somehow, she felt a little warmer.
“Cutie.” Tissy said. Hal’s ears perked.
“What about her?”
“Cutie,” Tissy repeated. She smiled, and held the bear up in her teeth, looking like a filly with a new toy – which wasn’t far off the mark.
Hal chuckled. “Alright. I guess that’s his—her new name. Keep her close. I should tell you though, she likes going outside.”
Despite the single voice in the room, the two ponies kept the hum of the accelerator company with their conversation for hours.