//------------------------------// // 3: The Tower // Story: Lost Gear // by TheFoxern //------------------------------// Solivagant. Copper had gone through quite a lot of schooling in his youth, much of which he has found utterly useless and he knows that he's forgotten most of it. Of course, there are odd little things that stick and he can't seem to get rid of. Such as the word solivagant; it means to wander alone. For much of his life he felt that the word described him perfectly, but now it was just a useless word in the jumble of things that was his head. Just something to annoy him. Something to distract him. “Prophet?” Copper glared out from underneath the console. “What?” he said through a mouth full of wires. “We have opened the tower.” Copper spat the wires out as he scrambled out from the rather tight spot. He had been waiting for this moment for three weeks. “And...the King wants to see you before you enter.” He stopped, staring at the pony, who shrank under his gaze. “If he wants to see me, then he will meet me at the tower,” he said as he passed by the scrambling pony. King or not, he was the Prophet. Even if he didn't like the title, he was going to use it to his advantage. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the messenger take off and fly as fast as he could. Around the Tardis they had built a large structure to shield it from the rain storms. Those were something to worry about. Torrential downpours for several hours, then it would stop suddemnly and the water would soak into the dehydrated planet as though it had never rained. “Prophet?” He turned to look at the batpony, the one who was his shadow. “Yes?” He did not cower, or at least not as much as the other ponies did as he spoke to him. “I was informed that the tower had been opened...” “Yes.” Copper looked over at the massive structure. They had moved the Tardis to the city, near the second tower. He had found out that it was the third one built, but called the second because the first one exploded. Once the towers were built they were sealed to prevent tampering, he assumed because that's what had happened to the first one. “How goes the...collecting?” It was a poor choice of words, but he wasn't sure how else to describe it. “Many have been attacked,” the pony muttered. “They lash out before listening to what we have to say...” “That is understandable.” He could see some of the recruiting parties. Again he felt that that was a poor word choice, but that's what they were and it was the only way he could say it to actually explain what he wanted them to do. It was much better than a purging party. They walked fairly close to some of the groups and Copper looked into the buildings. Just showing himself seemed to raise moral. Some of the ponies were battered and bloodied, yet did not seem to let it bother them. “Given the history of who you were.” “B-but as you suggested, we send those that do join us to recruit others, and those go much better. If the map you have drawn is correct, we almost have everypony in or around the city. And by the end of the cycle we should have at least contacted every living group.” They went on cycles of the storms which hit every week. Night had helped him mark where all the living ponies were, some were great distances away and the first groups had yet to return. Even in three weeks. “Tsk...” Copper rubbed a bit of dirt into a burn that was starting to sting. Whatever power source the Tardis had, it still had a lot of juice. He felt like it was fighting him sometimes, the way a wire would lash out or something would spark at him. Maybe it was. “Are you alright, Prophet?” The pain had apparently not gone unnoticed by some nearby ponies. “I am alright. Just a bit burned.” He gazed at the courtyard near to the tower, in the center of it, in a rather small cage, was the Priest. Alive, as he had demanded. He walked slowly into the courtyard, taking a slight detour. “Ah...Prophet...you grace me with your presence...” he sounded pathetic, but even he had come around to his side. “They are feeding you, correct?” He could see how the rain and weather had battered the albino pony. “Yes...they believe that they are starving me, but I ate less when I was their Priest...” He would not make eye contact, staring at Copper's hooves. Copper would have assumed that he had been eating like a king, but no. The Priest had cared for his congregation and had done what he thought was right to keep everypony alive. Copper hated going against someone with good intentions. It left such a bad taste in his mouth. “Do you believe you have paid for your crimes?” The Priest shook his head slowly. “Of course not,” Copper said with a sigh. He had demanded that his own wings be shredded. Demanded that he be placed in the courtyard to suffer whatever anypony had to throw at him. If anything, he was proof to those that doubted Copper's words that the Priest was overthrown. “You will die at this rate.” “You show sympathy...even for me...after all I have done?” “No,” Copper said as he looked back at the batponies that stood at the edge of the courtyard, watching him. “I pity you. I know what you're going to do. You're going to spend the rest of your life tormenting yourself to feed the guilt that's inside you. But you will pay for all your crimes when you have died.” The Priest raised his head and Copper realized why he had held down his head. He had gouged out his right eye. “What proof do you have?” Copper looked at him, frowning slightly. “I have seen death.” He turned away, taking a deep breath. “And it is far crueler than I can describe,” he said as he walked away, leaving the Priest to whatever thoughts he had. That had shaken him. He was surprised that the sheer weight of regret had not crushed the pony into paste long ago. Having to live that lie for so long, and to sacrifice his own ponies to keep some of them fed... Copper could not imagine that sort of torment. “Where is the King?” he said as he looked around, the tower was in front of him now with open maw like some sort of monster. Judging from the area the ponies had left in a hurry once it had been opened. “Th-the King?” Copper looked at him, for a moment he had forgotten that he was not the original pony who had told him that it had been open. “Yes. The King. He wanted to speak with me.” He walked towards the tower but he hesitated. He sat down with his back to the gaping hole that had once been some sort of door. The other pony sat down a respectful distance. A fearful distance. Fear of the tower more than Copper at this point. It took several minutes before the King arrived, riding on a similar cart to the one that they had made Copper ride. “There you are, Prophet,” the King said as he stepped off of the cart. Other ponies bowed. Copper did not. “What is it you wish to speak of, King?” Copper kept his tone respectful, but it was something he found oddly difficult. “I want to know what you are doing.” That felt quite accusing. “You have spent all of your days inside that...box.” “I have been waiting for the unsealing of this tower,” Copper said, staring him down. He noticed that the King was constantly glancing behind him. “Why? What is the purpose of opening one of those tombs?” Yes, a tomb. Copper had found they worked ponies to death and would simply...leave them. That was many years ago. “Because I want to see. This is a machine. A machine that was designed, a machine that was built. And I am going to learn from it, and dismantle it.” There was a look of horror on the King's face. “D-dismantle?! You cannot be serious, Prophet. Doing so could destroy the entire city!” “Maybe.” Copper was surprised at how calm he felt about it. “But I am confident that nothing will happen.” And I need parts, and this machine is full of them. “I...if you are sure, Prophet...” The King looked at him a bit longer before turning and boarding his wagon. “Back to the palace,” he said with a deflated tone. Had the King really come all this way just to ask that? In all honesty, Copper had no idea what he was doing. He had ideas. Ideas that were bubbling and frothing at their incorporeal mouths. There was no repairing the Tardis, he knew that. He didn't know enough about the technology used to make it. So instead, he would use it. “Are you going to come inside?” he asked the cowardly batpony who was still staring at the tower, even throughout the conversation. He got no answer, not even a terrified look of horror. So he stood up, turned around and proceeded inside, leaving the other pony to stare. Colors. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of different colors. “Wow...” Light shone through the outer shell of the tower, making everything glint and sparkle in a dazzling display of light and color. “It's...beautiful...” he muttered as he made his way through the room towards the center. He understood why the other town had been splattered with colors. In the center of the room he could see something that he could not rightly describe. It was the machine...the heart of the tower. He could see inside it. See the parts as they moved. Or apparently didn't move. Nothing moved. The machine looked...dormant. From the center of the machine was an immense and colorful tube that stretched all the way to the top of the tower as far as he could tell. It was like stained glass, but it was made from some sort of crystal... “They melted and molded it into the shapes they needed...” he muttered as he examined the machine. He pressed his metal leg against it and realized something immediately. “This is crystal steel...but...clear?” He had seen sheets of the clear crystal steel before, but had thought it rather pointless and far too expensive. Of course, a big reason was he did not want to look at the damage to his leg all this time. To test his theory, he slammed the leg against the machine. The sound it created nearly made him pass out. It was such a high pitched and loud noise that it had. It rang like a gong. A very, very high pitched gong. He had expected a noise, but nothing like that. He reached up and touched a hoof to his nose; it was bleeding. It had physically hurt him. He took deep breaths, wiping away the blood. He walked around it and after a moment found the seals that had been made to close up the machine. Shink. With a bit of prying he was able to dislodge it and get a true look into the inner workings of the machine. Despite how it looked on the outside, it was not in fact off. There were gears deep within still moving. “What is powering this thing?” he mumbled. There was more than enough room for him to actually get inside the machine, and so he slowly stuck his head in, looking around. How had the Doctor destroyed the other tower? Had he simple smashed- no, taking something apart or jamming something into the gears would work much better. A tool, or an unused gear in the wrong place could cause the whole machine to destroy itself...he probably had no idea what would happen...or maybe he did... Either way, there was work to do. “I need tools.” He galloped from the tower, leaping over the shattered remains of the opening. “Prophet?!” Him barreling out of the tower seemed to have broken the trance on the batpony. But he didn't care about him. The worker ponies had dropped their tools and things in their panic and he began going through them. “Gather all the tools up immediately.” After a moment he found a wrench that looked suitable size. “I need t'em all,” he said, wrench in mouth as he rushed back in. It was all there, so clear and so precise. His mind working through a billion things at once. He unbolted several things, tossing out some parts while laying others down. As he worked he thought about the taste of the wrench and how disturbingly familiar it was; that taste of metal. An almost delicious taste. “I have brought all the tools, Prophet,” the out of breath batpony panted, laying out the several dozen tools. He popped back out of the machine to look at the haul of tools that had been brought. Some of them Copper didn't recognize. “Good. I just need to-” TWANK. He hesitated. “Deal with that.” He grabbed several more tools before diving back into the machine. ~ Balance. There was a balance to the machine. Everything working together, not a wasted part. “-which we use for moving the gems in their molds,” the elderly batpony said. It was the oldest one that Copper had seen and he had asked him about how the gears were made and had been getting a very detailed and intricate tale that had gone on for several hours so far. The old pony was gesturing with some sort of rod with a flat bit at one end. And Copper had devoured the knowledge. “How hard is it to mold them? Can you remold old ones? Make new parts from them?” Copper said as he paused from his work. But the elder pony shook his head. “I'm afraid not, Prophet. Once it's cooled, the crystal is harder than we can work. Wont melt again.” Melt was probably not the right term. They melt the really small gems, or gem powder and then fuse them to semi melted and mostly molded gems. Each part was so carefully made...and then they hardened to be even harder than regular gems? “All the forges have been inoperable since the last tower was built, but we got quite good at it in the end.” Copper chewed thoughtfully on the wrench. “Righ'.” And there are no more gems. They mined them all and used them to build the towers. He pulled the wrench from his mouth, staring at it. “So I need to find every part I need...” “N-not necessarily. The tower walls are made from weaker stuff. They can be melted back down and molded. But we can only make it into imperfect gems parts, like the Prophet's leg is made out of.” Copper stared at the shaking batpony who was speaking more to the elder pony than to him. Then he stared down at his leg. Imperfect? Crystal steel was one of the toughest materials he knew of, and this stuff was tougher? “Perfect. Have some ponies begin taking it apart. I can use that. But it looks like almost everything I need is right here, so it- oops.” The wrench had slipped as he was trying to talk, and clinged and rang all the way down. “Damn...” He had to wiggle down further into the machine. He had managed to power it off. He had found that it had had a spring, just like a clock. A spring that he now had to make his way through. Deeper into the machine, it went down so far. How far did they dig down to place these towers? The supports must travel so deep to withstand the fierceness of the weather. He made notes of types and sizes of gears. Teeth. Grooves. Shape... Texture. Something about the feel of them against him as he worked his way deeper made him feel at home. Again he felt like he was in his dreamscape, surrounded by the surreal machine made of gems. It felt like it was part of him, like he had a hoof in its creation. Perhaps he did? This world must have a Copper, or somepony equivalent to him. Probably dead...as would the Horsh of this world. The Twilight. The Jeta. The Corser. All of them would be dead. All his friends. None of them would have bowed to the Priest if they were anything like the ponies he knew. Every pony in this world had blood on their hooves. Whether in defense or false guidance. “But does that make them bad?” Copper paused at the sound of Night. She had been listening into his thoughts again. He did not mind it, though it did require him to not let his mind wander to certain topics, especially when concerning Chrysalis. “Yes. But at the same time, no. It's a difficult thing to explain. It is a moral conflict.” “What's that?” Sometimes he forgot that she was just a filly without any education. The way she spoke and acted...she had such brilliant innocence that it made Copper hesitate often when speaking to her. Yet he was always reminded that some of that innocence had been stolen. “It is when something is right and wrong at the same time.” He could practically feel her confusion. “It's something that is difficult to understand...took me a while, until I experienced it. You'll feel it yourself someday. Something that feels right, or you know you should do, but at the same time it feels wrong and you know you shouldn't.” “I don't like that.” He smiled a bit. “I know. But we all have to do things that we don't like, or don't want to do. It's part of living, I think.” “But...I can do what I want to do, right?” “For the most part.” He thought he could see the wrench now, it had fallen quite deep, almost to the bottom. Or so he guessed, he wasn't sure if this had a bottom. Logically it should, but he hadn't seen it yet. “You do what you want,” she said accusingly. He chuckled softly. “Yes, because I don't usually care about the consequences. It's easy to do whatever you want when you don't care about the ponies that your causing problems for. To the ponies that you hurt...” He paused. “Can you see the world around me?” “Not really...it's all...blurry and colors. But it reminds me of your dreams.” “This is the type of world that I would want to live in. A machine such as this...but hopefully for a better purpose.” Yes. Like this beautiful machine of gems made into gears and... “Cogs...” He stopped, staring at The Gem Cog. There was no mistaking it. It had caught his wrench. He gently retrieved it, there was no mistaking that this was indeed The Gem Cog. The thing he had once smashed. Everything in his head was brushed aside. All his plans and ideas. All but one. And he knew it would work. He crawled out and sighed. “Copper?” “Once again I feel like my life is all determined...like I'm just following along in some sort of script. Do this, Copper. Go here, Copper. Save that, Copper... Like I do everything I'm supposed to like a good little puppet.” He was annoyed that this was actually happening. “I...don't understand,” Night said, sounding a bit sad that she could not help. “Some ponies say that we have a destiny. That we are supposed to do things at certain times. A predetermined path that we're forced along. The longer I live, the more I begrudgingly realize there is some truth to it.” He tossed the wrench out and clambered out of the machine. “Prophet?” The old pony looked at him confused. “Who are you talking to?” “Do you believe in fate?” He looked at the elderly pony. “Like there are things that are beyond our control, and things all happen for a reason?” The old pony thought on this for a moment. “I think some things are out of our control...but there must be lots we have control of. But there are things like...a destiny. Just as you were prophesied to save us.” Copper had to pause at this. That was true. Could the being that brought him here be able to see into the future of all worlds at once and sent him on this journey? That was a frustrating thought. But now he knew the destination, but the path was a mystery. He still had to get there. He still had to actually build it. “I want you to gather up every engineer in the city, and come to where I am staying. I will draw up plans of what I want you to make.” “Of course, Prophet. There are not many in the city, but we will do all that we can.” The old pony gave him a rather toothless smile. ~ Papers littered the floor and Copper was gathering up the ones that were what he needed. “If you or any of the engineers have any questions, come right back to me, understood?” “Yes, Prophet!” The batpony nodded vigorously before putting all the papers into a large tube and then flying off. He wondered where his shadow batpony had gone. Perhaps he had finally left him to go and do whatever these ponies were doing with the time they had. He turned to look at the center consul of the Tardis and frowned. “I want to help you.” He moved towards it slowly, taking a deep breath. “But I can't with the way you are fighting me.” His eyes scanned the consul, absentmindedly pushing a few buttons. “You want the Doctor so damn bad, but your Doctor is dead. You have to accept that.” There was no response. There never was. Not since that first time. “And this is how you remember him?” Was it possible to guilt trip a machine? “If it would help, I would gut this entire place and make you help me, but that wont work. You'll fight me, and you'll die, too. Is that what you want?” He looked up at the shattered remains of the broken tubes. “Do you want to die? To go and join your Doctor in whatever this world has as an afterlife?” Still there was silence. “I don't need you!” he snapped. “I really don't! But if I don't do every damn thing that I can, there is no way I will ever be able to look at the Doctor again and not think about how I failed!” He struck the consul out of frustration, trying as hard as he could to not cry. “I'm going to save everypony here. Not because I want to. Oh no, not at all. I would let everypony here die as they're supposed to...but that's not the kind of pony that the Doctor would look so kindly upon.” There was a slight flicker on the consul, but he wasn't sure if it was a spark from something he had just broken, or some sort of reaction. “But why would you care, right? Everything you had was taken from you. So you just give up? No, not only do you give up, but you fight me? Me?!” He felt out of breath, screaming at the floor. “I've lost everything, too. But I'm trying to get it back, even if there's no chance of it actually happening, there is no way I am going to just lay down and wait to die! Not like you!” He stood up, not having realized he'd even sat down. “I am done trying to help you! You...you pathetic machine! How dare you ever think that the Doctor needed you!” He wasn't sure how much of that was aimed at the Tardis, and how much was aimed at himself. But it got a reaction. The lights shut off and the door snapped shut. He took deep breaths in the darkness, trying to figure out where all this anger had come from. Where had all this bubbled up from? “I will leave you here to die, if that's what you want.” Silence. “But I am trying to save ponies,” he continued. “Which includes the Doctor. Maybe some other pony could do it better than me, but damn it if the way I did it didn't work.” He brushed aside some papers in the dark until he bumped the little cog he was looking for. “All for this.” He knew it well, despite not being able to see it. “All of this runaround, is for this. This damnable little thing. I know what I have to do. I have a machine to build, one that is capable of opening a rift back into my world. I know how to do it, the plans are all here and in my head. And you can either come with me, or stay here and die.” There was a clicking and a soft, slow grinding as light filled the room, and Copper stared into the heart of the Tardis. He took a deep breath and let it out in a slow, drawn out sigh. “I am the Pony of the Gears That Turn, and I have to build a Pony of Gears...”