Synch

by sunnypack

22 - Dream Sequence

That night as I was sitting in chains not really thinking of much, I drifted off to sleep. During my brief and fractured rest, I dreamt of Angel and Paul. They both wore strange expressions, worried and concerned, urgent and pleading, insistent and afraid. I smiled at them, trying to comfort them.

“No worries, my friends, I will be back”, I croaked, glancing at the ethereal bonds that bound my wrists.

“I will succeed.”

I shook myself from the remnants of the dream, the aftermath falling like shards of glass in slow motion, reflecting small parts of myself but yet never showing the true image of the whole.

I tried desperately to capture the dream, to remember what I had done and why I was here. All I could remember was working desperately on Synchrony, trying to stop the creator before he unleashed Ultimate Zero Day again.

I sighed as the chains dug into my hands. I would have welts if this kept up.

What was I doing here? I needed to get back, those people laid to rest in over a thousand beds under our Grooble branch demanded my presence. How could I get back? I asked myself again, how far was I gone? Could I really accept this as reality and abandon all those people? What would it mean for them? What would it say about myself?

Questions and malformed answers swirled together in a vortex of unsung emotion within the confines of my head space. The whole situation grated on my nerves.

I was interrupted from my dark musing as Twilight moaned and shifted in her temporary sleeping position. I felt a well of sympathy and patted her withers. She seemed to calm down and sleep more soundly.

One of the guards had spotted me doing so and grinned when I put a silent finger on my lips and scowled at him whilst making a zipping motion across my mouth.

He nodded in good humour but then scooted over and sat down next to me.

Now that the excitement had died down I doubted whether my first assertion that these were a figment of my imagination was true. They felt too real too detailed for me to just accept them as part of my psychology. Perhaps I had analogously transcribed humans as ponies and I was suffering a massive delusion.

I frowned. That didn’t make any sense even to a crazy person.

I touched Twilight again, feeling the softness of her coat and the gentle warmth radiating from her body.

It felt a little too real.

“Got a soft spot for ponies there, lad?” he quietly queried.

I- Uh- What?

I turned to the pegasus guard and pointed to his wings, ignoring his question completely and deciding not to think about it.

“Those wings”, I whispered to him conspiratorially. “Can you use them?”

He nodded slowly.

“Then I have a plan”, I said.

-----

Twilight woke to find the two guards and myself gone. She initially panicked thinking they had escaped without the rest of them but then shook her head. The guards wouldn’t have kept quiet about leaving citizens of Equestria in the hooves of a hostile enemy, or they would come back, fetching help.

The truth was, Twilight didn’t know much about the creature who she had been chasing thus far and though it was ludicrous to assume he was evil, Twilight didn’t know if he was entirely good. In fact, his demeanour reflected a certain trickster draconequus that she loathed but his actions never suggested any harm, at least not beyond fun and games. Though darkly she reflected that so too did Discord.

Playing with the dirt beneath her hooves she considered the fact that might have misjudged the poor creature. After all, she got the impression that he-she- no, definitely a he was somewhat desperate for… something. He was searching for something beyond what they could give him, as if there was a whole realm just beyond their reach that only he could see.

Twilight didn’t know what gave her this impression, it was like the thousand quick superficial glimpses she had of his character reflected a far deeper and possibly darker character than either of them had experienced. Yet, she also felt his loneliness and his fundamentally good heart.

That night she had a nightmare. Celestia had looked at her with disappointed eyes. Though she knew it could never have been true, it still cut her heart deeply and the pain from it had flowed out of soul and drained from her mouth like the smoke that drifts from a sleeping dragon’s nostrils. She had felt the creature’s hands on her withers and though she had stiffened on contact, fearing for the worst, she had found that her anxiety had been misplaced, her fears unfounded.

He had stroked her until she had calmed down and she found that her sleep came more pleasantly than before no longer troubled by anxiety-laden dreams. She had tried to listen in on the conversation the guard had then brought up but she had lost track of the indistinct mumblings and fell to sleep.

A twist of fate, it seemed, had tied their knots together and Twilight couldn’t help but feel that something connected all of them in a grand tapestry that will cause ripples in the world, like a pebble thrown into a pond.

-----

As I had expected we were brought before a supervisory diamond dog that had simply pointed to a part of a cavern and told us to dig.

Slavery had still existed as a concept in my world, but I had never given it thought other than the wide majority outlook that most people of my age, living as myself would, it was horrifying to be sure but it never touched me so I could never be truly sympathetic to their cause. It had seemed selfish, of course, to assume such things wouldn’t reach me but I couldn't help it.

My country had been a country of peace for over three hundred years of its short history, wars did not ravage the world, there was no world conflict, and the nuclear age had effectively prevented any major incursion from happening at least on a global scale. The people had been distracted by the wonders of our age, the Internet and then the extranet became the proving ground of the international peoples, wars were fought between countries by their technological advancements and the concerns for our daily survival needs became more and more pleasantly distant.

We were a spoilt people living in a comfortable age. I loved it.

The only scar, the only blemish, the only fly in the ointment that we had was Synchrony and I could do nothing about it.

Angel and Paul must be worried sick, my parents must be frantic, and nobody had managed to stay off the grid for more than two days. Where in the world was I that satellites and biometric feeds could not penetrate?

I reasoned that the caverns had been effectively shielding my presence from wireless transmission, or my implanted ID tag would have been contactable by now. For some reason though, I doubted help would come or if they knew where I was, help could not be sent. I was beginning to believe that I had somehow stumbled upon an entirely new world, improbable as it sounded.

The logical part of me struggled and wailed against the idea, trying to smother it in reason. I simply could not reconcile my senses and my logic and it was tearing me apart.

I acted along, of course, pain was real no matter imagined or psychological and I didn’t want to feel the hard strike on the lash or think about what that would do to supple human flesh.

I smirked under my breath as I began to dig.

They would get what was coming to them, for sure, I thought menacingly.

It was time to put my plan in action.

Author's Note:

A little plot movement for our main character as he tries to get out of the bind he has gotten in. Fortunately there was not much to be said in terms of an existential crisis on his part but trying to reconcile both world has been hard. Will our main character be able to remember the events leading to his deposition in Equestria? What was his plan back in the world of Synch?

Only one way to find out.

As always, thanks for reading!

Comments

[DerpTape]

A twist of fate, it seemed, had tied their knots together

Could this be a reference to the 'knots' the Synch uses like apps?