Chapter 10
In the halls of the Somniator Research Facility, the Chaos War’s clangor drew nearer. Two of us—biologists, not soldiers—were Somniator’s last line of defense. Rico and I both understood that, once the door to our medical wing opened, if we fell, humanity would fall with us.
The door exploded inwards, and our rail guns zapped to life. Plasma bullets meant nothing to these creatures; we had developed special rounds with living robots in their core. At first, we seemed to hold our position; folly gave me hope of a victory.
The beasts fell back—regrouping for a final blow. Rico asked me for all of my remaining grenades. When I handed them over, he patted my shoulder and spoke two words: “Protect Her.”
Then, he ran into the hallway outside the repurposed medical wing we had fortified; explosions and shrieks of death followed.
I retreated into Somniator’s chamber, where she slept, hands crossed over her chest, in a large glass tank. Today, I didn’t have my usual greetings for her; instead, I was forced to make the difficult decision to either wake her, or to let her die peacefully in her sleep. She deserved a chance to defend herself, but this war was not her making. It would be cruel to wake her.
Above me, the lights exploded. Thousands of glass shards, grown by chaos, rained down on me. I protected my face, but I fell to the ground with a sharp pain in my stomach. Thick copper spilled from my mouth, and I didn’t bother to look down to see the blood staining my lab coat.
The only remaining light source in the room, Somniator’s tank, cast the room into soft, golden colors. My back pressed against the control panel for the anesthetic regulation system; everything grew distant and trembling as I reached my arm to grip the main power cord.
I didn’t notice the chaos forces’ leader—a serpent-like conglomeration of mythical animals—enter the room. He bent down to gloat in a lisping, mocking voice. “Surely a valiant effort, human, but if you value valor, mayhaps you should have been born a lion?”
The edges of my life grew fuzzy, blurry. I gripped the cord and pulled it out. Looking up at the monster above me, I spat blood. “Maybe… you should go… to Hell.”
I snapped awake, and the barest echoes of memories teased the edges of my mind. I remembered my wife and daughter, my life as a medical researcher, and my death as a soldier.
Waking came with a familiar evanescence, but unfamiliar to me was the sheer, sluggish, exhaustion that draped me. Instead of simply being aware of my surroundings, I had to focus on individual details. To my right, a burning torch over a barred prison door lit lit cracked bricks of three other walls in my cell; beneath me, a dirty stone floor offered the only comfort given to sit on. My arms were held involuntarily above my head; without looking up, I tested them and heard the heavy clinking of steel chains.
When I attempted to melt them, my shackles grew hot—hotter than steel’s usual melting point, by far. I gave up on that endeavor when I began to smell flesh burning; for the time being, I resigned to my imprisonment.
That realization rose yet another question: I wondered how much dignity my captors had given me. I had no expectations, but I looked down to see whether I was still wearing my under-armor jumpsuit or if I were completely naked.
Instead, I was garbed in my lab coat and black slacks.
Seeing my clothes gave me a sudden realization, one of futility and, indeed, madness. I shook, first with a hammering chuckle, but it escalated into a gale of cacophonous laughter that must have echoed throughout the entire prison block.
It cleansed me, or at least, when I felt the edges of my consciousness blend with the hideous, insane laughter I drowned in, it felt pleasantly familiar.
Near the diminuendo of that damned chorus—how long it lasted was lost to me—I heard the rusty-hinged door to my cell squealing open. Fear of the unknown sharpened my mind and silenced my humor; I turned to see who it was.
In the doorway, she loomed, a dusk-indigo idol, the compliment to her so-called “sister”. She walked to me, wearing an equine body this time; I pulled against my chains to lift myself to a standing position.
With my arms behind my back, I scowled down into her cerulean eyes. She smiled piteously up at me before calmly noting, “Defiant until the end, I see.”
I had lived for millennia, yet I had no time for her word games. “Either kill me, or release me.”
Her eyebrow rose. “And arrogant.”
“Arrogant?” I gnashed my teeth and strained, both mentally and physically, against my bonds. Smoke rose from my wrists as I snarled. “Arrogant is coming to face me alone, when the only thing that separates you from—”
Two sharp points jabbed into my neck, hot needles. In front of me, her horn remained dim, which led to the question of the pain’s source. My eyes darted around the room until they landed on the wall to my left; in the light of the torch over the door, I could make out three equine shadows in front of mine.
The silhouettes of spears pressed into my shadow’s neck, and a dark voice sliced through the air: “If you threaten milady again, the shadows will claim you.”
Their liege looked down at her sides, where the shadows’ owners should have been, and calmly addressed the emptiness. “Eclipse. Nocturne. Be still.”
The two points on my neck vanished, and I scoffed at what I suspected to be a well-practiced show. “I suppose subterfuge and deceit go hand-in-hand.” I scoffed. “What did you stab me with from behind, anyway?”
A quick burst of chaos buffeted my head to the side like a slap; when I looked down, her upward glare permeated me like a chill. “Know your place, human. I do not unsheath Noctis Mortem lightly.” She took a breath, and her words softened. “We still have matters to discuss before your fate is decided.”
I turned back to face her. “Then unchain me, and we can speak as equals.”
She looked up at me. “Would you?” Her horn darkened in the already dim room, but abruptly, my arms swung forward.
My chains had vanished. I attempted to teleport back to my facility, but my wrists flared with heat. Shackles still bound me. I grabbed the left one in my right hand, hoping to find a seam to pry it off, but all I found was a ring of perfectly smooth, colder-than-ice metal.
“Do you think me naïve?” She chuckled lightly and shook her head. “You were responsible for nearly thirty deaths last night, and you still actively threaten malice towards my sister and myself.”
“I intend nothing which is not long overdue.”
“That remains to be seen as well.” Her voice was calm in an absolute, elemental manner.
I crossed my shackled arms across my chest. “How? Who could possibly preside in a fair trial over us?”
“Not all trials are battled in court, or end in sentencing,” came her reply. “Will you journey with me and see what I wish to show you?”
My shoulder rose. “That depends entirely on the context you give to what is seen.”
For the first time since entering the prison cell, she smiled. “Perhaps you are not wholly lost to the grips of insanity.”
“What—”
I looked around, and we were standing opposite each other on the tallest parapet of the castle I had earlier laid siege to. She turned around to stand next to me, and I took a deep breath of the frozen night air. It was better than the prison, at least.
Below us, I could see twelve ruined watchtowers, all of them smoothly destroyed as if they were washed away. I had hard-coded a stop into the nanomachines’ self-replication programming, since humanity ill-needed a world of gray goo to live on; regardless, they had done their job appropriately.
Already, scaffolds had been erected and the first stages of repair, even in the middle of the night, were underway. Next to me, a resolute voice spoke quietly. “Twenty seven valorous guards died in the line of duty last night. Does that not bother you?”
I shook my head. “The term that comes to mind is ‘unfortunate, but necessary’. I’m sure that they led fulfilling little pony lives, but in war, tactical decisions must be made.”
In the corner of my eye, she turned up to look at me. “So this was war?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Indeed.” She nodded. “There were alternative, peaceful paths you could have walked.”
I met her eyes. “I find it difficult to trust monarchs who use deceit and displays of power to maintain their rule.”
My eyes blinked, and blinding white light poured into them. A few seconds later, they adjusted to our new locale; now, we stood atop of the clock tower of a tiny desert town. The heat and dryness of the air around me was uncomfortable, but bearable.
In the town below, dozens of pastel ponies walked the streets, to and from their places of business. I smiled at the quaint antiquity; it was as if they strove to recreate a town from some of humanity’s older legends.
“Do these citizens look like they are crushed under the heel of some oppressive regime?”
I shook my head and chuckled. “I have not lived among them to know how they feel about their government.”
“And yet you pass your judgment as absolute.” Slowly, I turned and met her gaze. “You question the fairness of a centralized government, yet where were these concerns when you proceeded to attempt liberation of its populace?”
“They were irrelevant.” I crossed my arms across my chest and looked out in front of us. “Whether through crude obsolescence or systematic malice, these… things, instead of reclaiming their humanity, have embraced the twisted curse that befell all of us.”
Heat, now excruciating, bubbled up from the cracked black glass we stood on. Gale-force winds buffeted us, but they were like gasps from an immense furnace; no comfort could be found in them.
As far as my now-limited eyes could see, we were in a barren, flat plate of glass. I knew that no human weapons could have caused such neat destruction—even Mjölnir-class nuclear warheads would have left a noticeable crater. Over the winds, I shouted, “Where is this?”
Her voice sounded shimmering and quiet, even over the force of the burning air. “Before the events of last night, this place marked the final battle of the Chaos War, as the brittle remnants of human media were able to name it before society collapsed.”
I looked down at my coat and clothes. “So you do remember. The fall of humanity.”
She began walking away from me, so I moved to catch up. The bottoms of my shoes stuck to the ground before my first step, but after that, each liquid step only squished in a marginally less comfortable manner than the one before it had.
“Do you think it a blessing, to remain ever-haunted by the evils which founded our new society? Knowledge is only as intrinsically good as the ability to contextualize it.”
“So then you have perfect context,” I countered. “Surely that outweighs your duty to remember the dark elements of the past?”
She looked up at me, wearily. “Then do you admit that your own judgment is flawed by a lack of memory?”
Logically, I had to yield. Pride made it difficult to do so verbally. Fighting with the turbulence in my mind and all around us, I retorted loudly, “I recorded histories and refreshed myself as I needed to. Millennia without sleep gave me the gift of time to relearn any essential context, and therefore, judgment.”
“Even if those histories were incomplete?”
I walked alongside her, unspeaking, through the wastes for a while. Finally, I asked, “What happened, during the last days of the war?”
She looked up at me. “Do you remember dying and releasing us? Or rather, the man who once inhabited your body, died, saving us.”
I shook my head.
“After reawakening, we were angry. Even in our rage, crude biology bound us to an imperfect form. When the Chaos Lord known as Discord tried to kill that, we were freed—but at a high cost. Our death caused every chaos-powered human creation to explode in a global chain reaction.” She took a deep breath. “Less than twenty million humans lived at that point, but that population was decimated.”
“A war humanity did not deserve,” I pointed out.
“It was unjust.” Her head bowed. “Yet the past is not something easily repaired, even by the enduring, indefatigable will of…” She looked up at me with a piercing curiosity. “I remember your name, from when you spoke to us in the dream. But I know not now who you are.”
“I am no one,” I admitted. “And I am humanity’s last voice in the cosmos.”
“Are you so sure?”
Silence. And cold.
I looked around us at the white dust of earth’s moon. My body balked at the vacuum around it, but that was the reflex of breathing; I did not need air any more than I needed food or drink. There was no scent or sound, but above us floated a beautiful, sun-lit orb of blue and green as it spun through a great, infinite vastness.
In my mind, her voice spoke clearly amidst the silence. After our schism, your fragment lingered in the facility, determined to repay a debt to the human who freed us. Another hid. The other four of us charged to the surface, hoping to rally humanity’s remaining forces. Whether it was our death or some cruelty of the enemy, I do not know. But those forces had been transformed into something new. Something different.
The image came to my mind, but it came with echoes of emotion. The doubt and despair, which were supplanted by a will to restore and rebuild.
Silently, I smiled and looked over to my lunar companion. We are two outcomes of the same desire placed under different circumstances. I had limited means and information—
She snapped her head and cut me off with a hard glare. So. Did. We. Do not think of this conflict in terms of victory or defeat. That you had a disadvantage and we had the upper hand. The first few antebellum decades were rife with uncertainty. We did what we could to ensure the survival of the new human races. Sacrifices were made, especially given what few technologies and knowledges remained. It was crude, but from the ashes of that raw struggle, a miracle rekindled and blazed.
I crossed my arms and waited for the answer to her implicit question.
Peace. Quiet. Family. Values that had long been enforced due to the deadening of human emotion as it was replaced with cold logic. It did not occur suddenly, but when we noticed these phenomena reemerging, organically, and all the stronger for it… Her head shook. We knew there was no return to the old ways.
And you decided that as rulers?
For centuries, we oversaw from the shadows. Gave aid when it was needed, but never revealed ourselves. For a time, it was good. Almost unanimously, across a population of millions, efforts to restore the old life were abandoned for making advancements within the new society. It was imperfect, but somehow, in the wake of an apocalypse, humanity was closer to the utopia that even a lack of scarcity and sickness had been unable to bring.
So they were happier to lose their humanity and live as animals. My diaphragm twitched, trying to scoff in a vacuum. Of course, ignorance is bliss.
In my mind, her voice grew hotter. And you would force your happiness onto them? Rob the sky from pegasi, steal the arcane arts from unicorns?
Better misery in truth than happiness forged in lies!
“And lies are beneath you? At no point during the past nine months have you been dishonest with your intents or plans?”
We stood in the command center of my facility, where I stood mere meters from a computer terminal that could summon an army of patrol sentries. It would be a distraction, which would let me remove the bonds from my hands…
I shook my head and addressed her question. “Misdirecting someone to let her see that her goals were in line with mine is different than misleading an entire nation. She was still aware of her decisions and actions.”
“Does that make it right?”
“No,” I admitted. “But whatever sins you accuse me of, whatever crimes you condemn me for…” I shook my head. “I committed less than thirty murders last night? Where are the answers for how you continue to allow twenty nine billion lives to have ended in vain?”
“They will only have been lost in vain if we allow their descendants to tear themselves apart after learning truths that have lost all relevance.”
“And that makes it right?”
“No.”
She stood in front of me again; we were back in the prison cell. “But as you yourself stated in my domain, we are kindred spirits who were tasked with doing what we thought was right, given the knowledge and means available.”
I tried to cross my arms, but they were chained to the wall behind me again. I snarled. “What is this?”
“This is our impasse.” She bowed her head slightly. “My sister’s and mine, that is. She, with her wisdom of ruling, wishes for you both to be executed—you in secret, your apostle openly, at least as far as newspapers are concerned. We do not condone public executions, even in cases such as this; we are not savages.”
“No.” I grit my teeth and shook my head. My watering eyes confused me, but I continued, “That is not justice.”
“No? Was she not aware of her decisions or actions, and their consequences?”
“I gave her choices that she wouldn’t have made without my presence.”
Blue eyes gazed up into my own; her voice whispered, “Do you mourn for her loss?”
My head hanged. “She is innocent in all of this.”
“So you seek to make this right?”
I snapped back up to her. “What is your price? What is your judgment, that is so incompatible with your sister’s?”
“Incompatible?” Her eyebrow rose. Then, her horn darkened to pitch black. Pain erupted in my left forearm, my shackles dropped to the floor, and my knees buckled to join them. I grabbed my arm as I felt all my strength flow out of whatever wound she’d just inflicted. I tried to call my command of chaos, but the only thing that answered was a dead emptiness inside me.
The fire in my forearm faded, and when I peeled back the sleeve of my lab coat, a black tattoo of a crescent moon lingered on the skin beneath it.
“What is this?” I croaked up at her.
“In seven days, your heart will stop beating, and all other vital functions will cease. Until then, you are as mortal as the day you released us from our slumber. That debt is remembered, and will be repaid as clemency for your follower.”
Despite being delivered with good news, a very human fear of death suddenly overcame me. I fought through it, shaking my head in denial. “Why… why seven days?”
“Is not a week long enough to make a potentially life-altering decision?”
Her words confused me until I remembered the exact timeline I had given Lyra. That memory now came with guilt, but I managed to keep my face straight as I looked up at the alicorn above me. “What decision?”
“Cooperation, or silence. If you swear to cooperate with Equestria in matters of engineering and science, your life will be spared. You will be allowed to live out the life that was robbed of you during an unjust war.” She smiled, sadly. “But the price will be for you to be the one who destroys your facility, the records…”
I returned her smile, but I felt defiance instead of sorrow. “If I refuse, you will have to combat the facility’s security systems. It will take an army, a campaign that will rekindle some memory of humanity.”
She remained resolute. “It brings us no joy to commit evils in order to maintain peace, but do you at least understand why it must be done? Why your history is incompatible with current society?”
“I understand why you believe it must be done.” I shrugged. “But every recorded document? How will you know about the completeness of any destruction I might order?”
“Henceforth, if you are found attempting to teach or spread any lies by using magically falsified documents, you will be executed.”
Then, she winked.
Slowly, the loophole in front of me opened: the facility at large had to be destroyed, but if I didn’t show anyone what I took from it, I could keep some artifacts of humanity.
I grinned at what felt like mercy, but any appreciation I felt was quickly replaced with the realization of the price my punishment came with. A week felt like an incredibly short amount of time, but I supposed it was fitting, given all I had done.
“So, my facility or my life,” I repeated.
Princess Luna nodded.
“Lyra lives, regardless.”
Another nod.
“And I have a week to decide.”
“That is your sentence, as decided by my sister and myself.” After a moment, she added, “If you choose cooperation, you will be given a new body in which to live…”
I nodded. “And I’m assuming that, for a week, I’m not going to leave this cell?”
“You are free to go anywhere you will not be seen by living eyes. Simply ask, and I will appear at your side.”
I climbed to my feet and asked, “What if I wish to speak to someone as part of my deliberation? Someone who already knows of my existence?”
“That could be arranged.” Luna smiled. “But it may require time.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back against the prison wall. “I’ll wait here until then.”
Silence responded. After what felt like an unnatural pause, even for an immortal, I opened my eyes. I was alone, and the door to my cell was closed.
I slid down the wall until I was sitting; the only things left to do now were to wait and ponder.
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And now we're approaching the realm of "reasons I don't understand."
Shame, but ill muscle through it.
Aaand now this has gotten to the point that 'what's going on' isn't even the appropriate question. What isn't going on?
Eeyup.
Nuke the site from orbit.
The planet isn't worth saving if humans aren't human. A graveyard to a powerful civilization, not a mockery of what it was.
Better to die with dignity, than to surrender, as it were.
This planet is ours and ours alone, no matter where those trying to lay claim to it come from, they deserve to burn.
I have a feeling this story is going to suck from here out.
A society built over lies.
So, the offer is to live as a pony slave, helping destroying the last remaining pieces of the human legacy, yet using their science to help such mockery of society, or die.
Go to Hell, Moonbutt!
I swear to God if he becomes a pony I will strangle someone.
I can't believe I'm saying this, but he should have gone for the orbital strike option, despite the casualties. Unless there's something I'm not seeing, which is entirely possible.
3871914 Amen to that
battled in court
3871993
In this situations, one should ask himself "What the God Emperor would do in my place"?
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now im really hoping he switches to his nuke canterlot from orbit back up plan
Seems as of now that Lyra is the only considerably sympathetic character.
Ah..
I preferred not knowing what exactly happened during the so named Chaos War. Let screams and growls come from under the bed, but don't tell your reader what exactly is making those noises.
This was a twist, but I don't think it was a great one to employ. It seems as if you told your story and now you're just trying to get through with the ending.
3871960 I'll fetch the strangling gloves in case he does.
...that's it? That's all the reasons for everything? I'm disappointed.
I'm not gonna advocate murder or genocide, but I don't like any of the characters in the story by this point.
Noticing the commentary from the last chapter and of this one... I wonder why so many demand a black & white answer to the stories moral dilemma. One that takes the extreme of one side or the other.
For myself at this point, the compromise that neither side is apparently willing to make seems like the only ethical outcome. Valid points were made between both chapters for both sides. And absolute "victory" for any one of them would be a travesty of epic proportions, Wiping out a species and it's history is unethical, and immoral (especially when it is seemingly unnecessary). This goes for Humanity and the "post-human" ponies both...
Anyways this is a good (although painful) read
3872148
We're talking about counter-genocide.
Ethics burned a few millennia ago.
There is either the human option, or the molten slag option.
Praise the Emperor.
I don't see Jesse becoming a pony anytime soon. He's clung to the believe of restoring it for so long, that to just give it up would just be insane... Err, crap, Luna said something about that did she... Wow...
"Nuke it from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."
If nukes aren't used by the end of this work, I imagine this is gonna get a "Forever War" treatment to it's "Starship Troopers"
3872195
That argument only works if the side you are "counter-genociding" is the one that committed genocide against you. Not the distant descendants of your sides survivors. Also as a side note: the 40k Imperium of Man was meant to be a dystopia that was the cause of half of it's own problems. It lives in spite of itself in the 40k universe and was the result of the God-Emperor failing. The Imperials as they are... Not what He wanted.
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3872240
The argument is simple.
Human or dead?
Those are the only option that should ever be brought to anyone's table.
it would have been better for him to have allowed tia and luna to die without a chance, hell it would have been even better for him to have killed them himself with how twisted and sadistic they turned out to be. evil is the only description I can come up with! I knew tia (just below that damned holeyer than thou smile of hers) was like this but a luna as well
?
He is beset on all sides by Heritics and Traitors that have willfully chosen happiness in slavery and ignorance over knowledge. These inhuman things have proven themselves unworthy of humanity's hard won wisdom. There is only one recourse, Exteminatus. Let the ponies and griffins and all other races existing on the great grave of humanity know that even when damned by Chaos, Terra is ours. It is ours to build upon, ours to gouge out, ours restore, and ours to destroy.
So now do we command Exterminatus. Let no thing live, Let no thing stand upon our Tomb.
Ave Humanus. Gloria ex Terra. Exitus.
3872258
That's not really what the story boils down to... Within this chapter it was pointed out to Jesse that he could have pursued his goals without genocide, peacefully. Although Jesse did discount that immediately after hearing it. The history/tech erasure is an example of the other side taking things too far. Both groups are making excuses.
I would note that normal Humanities proponent Jesse is not truly a human anymore. Jesse is now one of the things he despises, and is likely irrational if not clinically insane at this point.
If you're referring to the "comment wars" by readers, well that is as pointless as the whole mess around the TCB stories.
3872357
Sure, he could have, but that would have left ponies who refused.
See here > 3872327
And amen.
Seriously why did he not set a failsafe or dead man's switch on the nukes? That is a HUGE bargaining chip. It makes him completely insane but we've already established that and it would be something smart. The story is at the point where it could be good or bad based off the reactions and the next series of events.
What?
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3872370
Which is not really a problem. The ideally society Jesse wanted to resurrect would have no issue with that, Post-scarcity humans and the ponies would not have a viable reason to engage in hostilities. The humans could just pick up were they left off and "conquered" the rest of the universe. Also the ponies are nothing more than humans in funny looking pony suits in the end anyway.
At this point we de-evolved into effectively trolling at this point in the conversation haven't we.
I'm rather surprised at the negative responses to this story in the comments. I find it fascinating, though as one reader noted, additional data is needed.
Realize that in most human society, Lyra and he would be put to death as traitors, even if they took the path of least death at a risk to their plan. Also we don't know what Celestia is really thinking. Good cop/bad cop is a classic ploy in this situation.
I dunno. I think the ponies reaction is pretty darn measured and more than fair in this situation.
I guess that in a way you can say that they won the war. Wether you like it or not, that means they call the shots. It's how it goes. I'm curious how many folks who support Jesse's position roll their eyes when people wave a confederate flag and say "the south shall rise again." Because honestly, it's not far off from that.
Anyway, bravo author. I'm liking this. Also, I appreciate you writing it and then releasing it quickly. It is a rather refreshing change and something to look forward to.
And also, yay! On to the next chapter :)
Ah well. It was a good thought but alas - I am wrong.
Also, uhm .... I not enough data to assess situation. Why would the truth end up tearing the ponies apart? I am confused. Also, this is pretty dumb of once-Jesse. Offering the option and allowing the knowledge to spread peacefully was probably a better option all along. He jumped the gun to guns and now the truth will be lost to the world.
YAY! Good choice. Two bad decisions, huh. How grand. Of course, the two sleepers have taken their vengeance as well in causing humanity to 'sleep' itself. Heh.
What the fuck am I reading?
No offense man, I love your story, but this is an INSANE jump, stupidly so, like throwing your audience over a cliff when only you can fly.
BAM! Luna layeth the smacketh down!
3871914
So if some spacefaring dinosaurs returned home after a 65 million year road trip, you'd roll over and die?
3872357
Jesse's arrogance and blatant prejudice doomed him from the start. The fact that he is a fragment of the dreamer, possessing the shell of it's final defender, and lacking the clarity of memory he admits himself is necessary for the proper context to judge others, makes his argument that he alone was worthy of deciding the fate of the world fall apart. He can cloak himself in good intentions as much as he likes, but there's been only one character so far that has killed indiscriminately without engaging in diplomacy first.
I have no idea why Luna is so insistent of wiping out the technology left over from humanity. She hints at some prior events that showed ponies and the tech were "incompatible," but I fail to see why she couldn't lock down the facility and study what could be integrated successfully at her leisure. If nothing else, the archeological value alone makes it worth preserving.
Ohhhgodmabrain
GET OUTTA MY HEAD PHILOSOPHY ND LOGIC
the conflict going on in my head
Over who's side I should go with!
It's hurts ma brain..
...I think... I choose not to keep my sanity now
After reading through the comments, I have come to a conclusion; y'all crazy!
And that's saying something, coming from a Chaos Marine.
But seriously, why are you making such a big deal about everyone being turned back into humans? If Peter Pony doesn't want to be a real boy, why should you even care? It's not like he's hurting anyone by not changing.
3875606
What if Peter Pony DOES want to be a real boy?
And the response to that ranges from "lolno" to "public execution"?
I can't believe some of you people. What does it matter what is society built on, yadda-yadda? It is LIFE. Humanity is gone already, and just nuking a bunch of people living their lives, peacefully... For f's sake, what is wrong with you? A bunch of terrorists is what I see.
Not going to lie though, if there was actually a choice between nuking ponies and saving humans, I'd press the big red. My point here, there IS no choice in this particular setting. This is not a 'kill or be killed' scenario, society as a whole, while based on a bunch of lies of omission, still functions properly and lives happily, there is no evil overlord slaver or anything that would really warrant such drastic measures.
If it really all comes down to just bringing back humanity-screw the sisters and just set off the nullifiers, something like THAT, even if only temporary and soon-to-be-fixed by those in power, would be hard for them to cover up. Option two on the "save humanity in a human way" is trying to contact those two last ships or whatever colonies they might've founded. Still better than nuking everything because 'I can'.
Still curious where author is taking this tale.
3887699 What you see is the result of unionized public education.
I fucking love how much conflict there is in the comments.
So goddamn much.
Both sides make sense, but I think I've got to take the pony side. Humans were rulers long ago, and ponies may have once been humans, but they're NOT humans. Their culture is different, their lives are different, and though they may have been derived from humanity, they are an independent species from humanity. I might have been for returning ponies to humanity if it had been a hundred years since the ponification happened, due to how similar the cultures must have been and how rough it must have been, but it's been millennia.
Yes, I am a bit irked by the whole 'lying' thing. I think that rather than force humanity onto all ponies (and we should note that other species such as griffins and minotaurs exist, and not much information has been given about how they'd be affected), Lyra and Jesse should have worked towards making ponies aware of the society that existed before them, and attempted to do so with as little bias as possible. It wouldn't have brought humanity back, but it would have allowed its legacy to live on, rather than let it stay hidden from the public.
3871914 That is incredibly selfish. What makes you believe that humanity is somehow superior to ponies and are so deserving of the planet that they should kill its new inhabitants rather than let them live on the old's corpse?
3871931 I don't see it as a mockery, myself. Ponies have been around for a long time. A very long time. They've developed their own cultural identity; they've got their own government, and a benevolent one at that (though it is, arguably, a tyranny); they have their own laws and traditions; they have their own lives. Jesse giving them humanity's technology, rather than feeding a lie, would be closer to integrating the past's scientific breakthroughs with the values and traditions of the present.
The ponies are essencially slaves deprived of true history, full willpower, control of their destiny and physically depraved of their humanity.The Sisters are Tyrants and control the populace by making them believe that they control celestial bodies.I'm REALLY tempted to side with Nuking the Sisters and Canterlot just to be vengeful... But that would be an over-reaction and unwaranted.No instead go back to the bunker grab some GUNS, armour and the robots then show the sisters how much damage a Human can cause with nothing but technology and determination; march right back to Canterlot Castle and put a couple of bullets in each of their heads...I think I may be a wee bit tired, craknky, vengeful and Scottish, can't forget that.
It looks like from here, Jesse's sitation is much like those of the Japanese soldiers left behind on isolated islands after the War--he was still fighting, even after the rest of Japan came to terms of its loss and the changes to its society.
Hard choice to come to grips with.
But in the end, even if they can't remain human, at least they get to live in freedom. "History", however, should not have been buried.
Oh, now that really is unfortunate timing. I comment my thoughts and questions, only for two chapters later for them to be answered.