The Clockwork Heaven

by Leliel

0: Nightmares, Within and Without

gsh-thunk.

She was running, and she didn't know why.

gsh-thunk.

Or rather, she knew, but she knew it was pointless.

gsh-thunk.

She was running from the gears, but the gears were everywhere.

gsh-thunk.

The gears were behind her.

gsh-THUNK.

The gears were in front of her.

GSH-THUNK.

The gears were above her.

GSH-THUNK.

The gears were a part of her.

*click*

It was foolish to think she could be anything else.

BWROOONG. BWROOONG. BWROOONG. BWROOONG. BWROOONG. BWROOONG.

---

The rain almost made it look like the clock was crying. In any other world, this would be strange. But in this, it was natural that the face was sideways.

Although, that may have been because this world was stranger. Such as the city being on the wall of the cavern. The clocktower was the tallest-or perhaps, the longest-building, taller than even the skyscrapers. On the wall/ground, hundreds of sideways cars drove about, trying to navigate a constant traffic jam. From her point of view, on the side (top) of the clocktower's stone balcony, they looked like mechanical ants, with glowing eyes. She envied them-to them, the world was right-side up.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of depressurizing steam behind her. Startled, she looked back.

On the other wall was a pastoral world, one of bright colors and cheery ambiance, unlike the subdued city behind her, despairing that it would ever see the sun. In the place of cars, there were ponies, thousands of little ponies, all the colors of the rainbow and every other color. But she did not envy them, just pity; they did not have rain falling the right way down upon them, and thus did not know-could never know-that they were sideways. But she loved them all the same; they were like children, those little ponies. Oh, what she would give to be a child!

But that wall was not where the steam she now felt caress her, her long-lost lover, came from. For a moment, she looked down, and only found darkness. She laughed a little at that (of course the world didn't have a ceiling, that would be silly!), then looked up. She almost wasn't scared, but she still gasped a little.

Above, there was a vast, clanking mechanism, all gears, tubes, and wires. The source of the rain was there, generated by giant chimneys. The steam, as it turns out, was also the stormcloud. Even as she watched, more chimneys, farther away from her, closer to the Romantic Field, began to turn on, releasing more steam, which became more stormcloud. The rain followed shortly thereafter, creeping across the abyss. She felt a shudder beneath her as the clocktower followed suit, new floors coming out of the pavement of the Metal Enlightenment behind her.

And from the center of it all, a strange beast-not quite squid, not quite jellyfish, not quite machine-floated gently up to her, spinning over as it did so that it was upside down like her. With its single eye, which could have been equine, human, or a camera, it focused on her.

found you.

---

There was a shriek as the pink-haired mare fell out of bed, followed by a crash as she hit the floor. Thankfully, her housemates were deep sleepers.

Run away. Must get away. Have to hide....huh?

Bleary, she looked around her home as her vision cleared, blinking. Slowly, it dawned on her that the World-Cavern was a dream, a rather vicious prank by her subconscious. Yawning, the pinkette climbed back into her bed, pausing only to situate the pillows and to pull the covers over her a bit more tightly.

As she drifted off to a much better dream, one involving sweets and playing with her friends, the pony took heart in the notion that it was just the product of another bad memory among hundreds, another of the long list of regrets and fears she was free of when she left the old her behind.

There was nothing wrong in the world.

It was foolish to think it could be anything else.

---

If one was not looking closely at the buildings around Sugarcube Corner, one would see nothing wrong. If one looked closer, one would still not see anything wrong...unless one has been living there a while, at which point one would see that the fourth house down, on the left, had a magical generator. This was not all that strange-ponies need electricity to power the lights after all-but then one realized this house belonged to a charming old lady named Simple Living, a Concord Mennonite. That wouldn't seem weird yet, unless one has paid any attention to Equestrian popular culture at all, in which case one would know that the Concord are a religious movement who steadfastly refuse to indulge in any of the conveniences of modern sorcery. Thus, a magical generator, the invention that heralded a technological revolution in Equestria, would be very strange.

It would, however, not seem strange to any burglars who saw Simple Living's house as an ideal target, which is what the thing hiding in the boxy contraption was counting on; it was programmed to understand equine behavior, and thus knew that anyone who wanted to rob her either was a complete stranger or lacked a conscience, and sociopaths were a rare breed when it came to equiforms. Looking out through the cooling slats, an artificial eye switched filters to Twilight vision, only seeing the auras of living and ghostly things. It scanned the bakery, ignoring the two bioforms in one bed and the two similar ones in a crib, until it landed on a sole bioform sleeping fitfully in an upstairs bedroom. The thing switched its filters again, this time to Wyrdic view, seeing the world not in the physical, material sense, but in the tangle of Fate strands, visual abstractions of relationships and causality. Most were a normal, if complex, cobweb of interrelations and correspondences, but the one surrounding the sole bioform was...alive, somehow. More like a twitching, fidgety group of thread-like tentacles, constantly feeling the dead, static threads around them.

On the other end of the data feed, four strange beings observed a mirror in space, showing what the thing saw.

The first leaned forward, light from the mirror reflecting off his chrome-colored scales. "So, this is the one you were so obsessed with?"

The second nodded, an interesting gesture given how his face was built into his chest, and his head was seemingly featureless. "She is a truly remarkable being. Not only does her Fate matrix show signs of sentience and mobility, but she seems aware of its activity as well. Hence, the phenomenon she calls 'Pinkie Sense'."

The third, always the more practical of the three speakers, gave an exaggerated yawn, stretching her butterfly wings as far as they could go, showing all of the circuitry patterns imprinted on them. "Pinkie Sense. Great. You know, I have a Jophiel Sense? It tells me when people are not doing their jobs. Frankly I think I might lose it due to overexertion."

"Patience, little one", said the scaled being. "The Harahel will explain how this relates to our Mission."

"As you wish, Barachiel", said Harahel, head shifting into various platonic solids as he explained his theory. "The entity known as 'Pinkie Pie' shows signs of uncatalogued supernatural abilities relating to fate and probability. I believe this to be because of a unique byproduct of arcane physics, she being born at the center of a correspondence of various Astral and Fae phenomenon that result in the Fate she was born with being partially merged with her developing soul. In plain terms, her Fate web is an extra limb."

Jophiel looked at her scientifically-minded "brother" skeptically. "And this relates to the Mission...?"

"Because we finally have a way to control probability!" Harahel was nearly bouncing with excitement, which caused his head to liquefy and splash. "No longer will the Golden Beach need fear random acts of chance or accidents, we can sense them before they happen and prepare for it! Perfect clockwork, not unlike our Creator!"

"Do not claim to be an equal of the God-Machine, Harahel" Barachiel gently scolded.

"...Understood. My apologies for my hyperbolic program." Harahel looked quite ashamed of himself.

Now officially interested, Jophiel took to the air, observing the spatial mirror with intelligent compound eyes and all the sensors contained within each cell. "I see. So, what do you want me to do?"

"I would say kill her and then transport her ghost back here, but we are in unknown territory here. We cannot take the risk this power has biological components to it and end up ruining our studies. Besides, having her alive means we can have feedback with our experiments straight from the horse's mouth (pardon the expression), which may prove more efficient in the long term."

"....Hm." Jophiel cocked a wing. "It will be interesting to figure out what would draw it to a distant resort town, especially one that draws such an elite clientele, compared to...living in a bakery's attic."

"Do not worry overmuch, Jophiel", Barachiel intoned. "This one is one of the entities known as the Elements of Harmony, and thus is a friend of the monarch."

"A noble, then. Excellent. I'll be researching its interests shortly." Jophiel left through a gap in the walls of the underground chamber, one meant especially for her.

Shortly thereafter, the fourth finally spoke up, politely coughing. "If it's all the same to you, I would like to recall my child now."

"Hm? Ah. You have the Overseers' permission, as given to me by my privilege as Head of Security for the Golden Beach Infrastructure, noble Dalga."

"Understood. Return to base for repairs."

The false generator suddenly fell apart before suddenly flickering like static, at which point the pieces were not bits of sorcerously-infused metal anymore, but random bits of detritis such as hay and bark-not at all out of place around Simple Living's house. Hovering where it was originally standing was a creature that, at a cursory glance, looked like a parasprite...but anything more than that would reveal an expressionless face, an eye replaced by a strange construction of emerald and clockwork, and wings replaced by artificial ones that the best craftsponies in the entire planet would marvel at. Before anyone could see it, the cybernetic beast flew off in the direction of Canterlot, eager to commune with the great being that had remade it.

---

Come to the all-new Golden Beach theme park and vacation resort! Your own tropical island, inland!

When you come here, we can guarantee you'll never want to leave

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Author's Note:

(A/N) Like and review. Don't like and review. Like and don't review. Don't like and don't review. Do nothing with the like buttons at all and review/do not review. Do/n't read before reviewing/not reviewing.

Whee, contradictory orders are fun!

(Author's Notes) Get used to that guy. He's going to be talking a lot down here.

Anyway, first story ever, starting off at an ill-advised run. Still, I love White Wolf, I love MLP, this seemed natural.

In any case, the God-Machine and all concepts introduced in the God-Machine Chronicle are property of White Wolf and Onyx Path Publishing, and I have no control over their intellectual property rights. I do, however, have hopes that White Wolf will one day overcome the great Dungeons And Dragons, and thus give us all a good nWoD version of VtM: Bloodlines, because that game is awesome and if you are old enough, you should play it.

Also, I don't have a beta reader at the time of writing this. If anyone is interested, please post it on my comment board.