Chapter 1: Precipice? Threshold? Brink?
1 - Precipice? Threshold? Brink?
Vindication! Relief. The flush of success. No more inequality. No more second-class. This would be the time. Everything would change today.
...A paradigm shift...
And my name. My name will be the one on everypony’s lips. My name will be the headline. And why not?
Champagne and warm lights. Cold dark sky.
Why shouldn’t I get my moment in the sun?
A clink of glass.
Doesn’t everypony just want to be somepony?
A clamor of happy voices.
* * *
Why wouldn’t they let me help?
She wasn’t looking where she was going. That, by itself, wasn’t particularly unusual for a pony on the street at this time. Only the mysterious groupthink that arises from large crowds of similarly-minded ponies could be said to be paying attention. A ghostly traffic controller, subconsciously creating lanes and junctions of sleepwalking commuters; a chaotic, bottom-up version of the more managed flyway environment. Then again, if you bumped into somepony on the street, you weren’t risking a several hundred metre drop straight down - through several other busy lanes of traffic - before hitting the street below. A little self-organising chaos could be permitted.
It’s ridiculous, I could have been useful. I have top level clearance for pony’s sake!
No, in this grand social symphony she, alone, was playing the kazoo. Walking forwards, dead to the world; a purple, dumbfire torpedo cleaving aside the waters of the broad sea of perturbed ponies coming in the other direction. Her mind...
“Don’t worry yourself, Miss. It’s our job make sure that nothing bad happens. Now if you wouldn’t mind, you’ve been here for almost three hours.”
...firmly elsewhere.
It was surprising what momentum a small but angry unicorn could carry. If Twilight had actually bumped into anypony she would have had much the same impact as a slightly pointy beanbag hitting a wall. However, despite the crowded streets, there was a distinct path clearing itself ahead of her and a noticeable wake behind. The urgent tocktocktock of indignant little hooves serving as a helpful warning to other ponies; an extra second or so heads up that they might want to consider moving a little to the left or right...
“We have everything well in hand, Ms. Sparkle. Now, please, just let us do our job.” Ugh!
It may, of course, have simply been that she was glaring daggers at the floor and muttering to herself.
Treating me like some panicky foal; don’t they realise that this could be really, really serious?
She trotted angrily towards the city centre, opposing commuters flowing round her like a river round a stone. The claustrophobia of the outer districts began to be replaced by the more open and relaxed central spaces; the landmark skyscrapers, modest attempts at green spaces, and upmarket social venues. Even before Princess had taken over, the city planners had known a thing or two, and a lot of money had been spent to present the illusion of energy and freedom in the middle of square megameters of construction.
The whole of Equestria has been directly threatened! How much more freakin’ ‘serious’ could it be!
Now out of the narrow, rambling streets of the residential districts, she could afford to be on autopilot. The familiar, breezy plazas were easy to navigate thanks, in part, to the self-aggrandising desire for each building to be a brand; a luxuriant, corporate signpost. That, and a lifetime of walking while simultaneously reading text floating in the middle of whatever she was looking at, had left her with a good automatic sense of direction. And a knack for avoiding lampposts.
In front of her stood the Castle’s base, a frozen waterfall of metal streaming from the sky to pour into the foundations. It evoked less of the architectural and more of the geological; the slightly weathered mirror finish showing a fuzzy, distorted image of the open no-build zone it sat in. The tangible mirage filled her vision from a hundred meters away, another fictitious square with its own blurry purple unicorn looking back at her.
She blinked, dislodging the translucent latticework of familiar numbers, facts and geometry hectically constructing itself around her right eye’s view of the Castle. In a fit of petulance she ran a query for ‘Canterlot Security Unhelpful’ but cancelled it before it had time to begin processing. She’d already wasted enough time on the way back and this wasn’t the time to be throwing a tantrum; she was Princess’ prize pupil, and she had a job to do.
Specifically, she would apparently have to do Security’s job for them; show them who's being ‘alarmist’. It was just a question of finding the thing that they’d missed...and there had to be something. Why else would anypony be brash enough to post open threats against Princess with explicit dates and times? You’d have to have a certain...confidence to do that.
She walked through one of the many wide entrance doors dotting the side of the stratoscraper, and stepped into the atrium; a rush of cool air, echoing voices and filtered daylight, captured and reflected down through the superstructure, washed over her. The atrium took up the bottom three floors of the building, opened out into a cavernous multipurpose space with a expansive mezzanine level suspended above. Enclosed glass offices dotted the edges while the middle was a mix of kiosks, tables, meeting spaces and the like; the bright, airy atmosphere making it a popular meeting spot.
The Castle was a great many things: part tourist hotspot, part governmental authority, even part museum in its own honour. And, to Twilight Sparkle and the several hundred other young unicorns who attended Princess’ advanced school, a home away from home. This floor was public access, and was still packed: tourists out to enjoy Canterlot as it transitioned into night; straggly groups of students, milling around before heading out to hit the town after a long study day; business ponies on overtime.
I can do this. All I need to do is find the hole. There is a hole, I know there is. Dream Valley found it, so I can too. So. First, I need a list of every location that could compromise Princess, followed by an investigation into everything anypony could try and do to harm her. Actually...
Twilight wove through the small knots of students, her notes and her notes-about-her-notes overlaid against her vision. Her goal was the nearest of the traveller stations dotted around the hall, anxious, as she was, to ride up to her room to make use of the less portable equipment she had there. The glasseye was useful, but she found the ear-hook uncomfortable, the small active space limiting, and, after a long day of wearing it, she was just getting tired of powering the thing.
Hmm...I think I remember reading something a while ago. That unfinished assignment I took on for extra credit...oh, what was it. I should-
“There you are, Twilight!”
A voice echoed brightly from the mezzanine; a trio of faces, young unicorn mares, poked over the rail, grinning down at her.
-oh, Twinkle, Minuette and Daze! Maybe I could ask them if they...Hmm, doubt they’d know anything. It wasn’t exactly on the curriculum.
“Moondancer is-”
Think, Twilight, think. You know you’ve read this.
“-get together in the-”
Made you stop and think about security. Began with an ‘E’?
“-western balcony.”
You needed personal clearance from Princess to investigate...
“-you wanna come- er?”
Did I ever clear my history?
“Hellooo? Twilight?”
Oh. Right.
“Talk to you later, girls,” she mumbled to the air in front of her, not missing a beat.
The real question was what Princess could not be aware of, she wa- DING. UGH.
An icon, a miniature scroll, flickered into the upper right corner of her vision. She snapped it a frustrated glance. Sender: Colgate, ‘Moondancer blah blah party, balcony, bookworm’.
Reply. ‘Busy. Studying to catch up on.’ Send.
A nonexistent scroll was burnt up by a flash of metaphorical fire.
She engaged the call function for the traveller, a muffled, guttural sigh of frustration echoing from up over her shoulder as the doors snapped open.
I need to take this seriously, even if Princess isn’t...why isn’t she taking this seriously! She always listens to me...
“-think she’s more interested in-” the doors snicked shut behind her as the platform began to carry her upward.
The residential floors spanned a number of floors towards the middle of the building, above the scholastic levels and teaching labs. Four hundred floors was quite a way up and the gentle ride took several minutes. The boredom was alleviated only by projected footage of Canterlot, courtesy of the building’s exterior scry cameras, and any decent conversation that was going. Twilight leaned against the shoulder rail and gazed blankly at the image of the rapidly shrinking city. She couldn’t focus on solving the problem when the problem itself didn’t make sense.
Clearly Dream Valley had found some weakness in the system, and were absurdly confident that they could exploit it. But Princess was the system and she...well, it was unthinkable that she would miss something a bunch of scruffy eco nuts had found. The whole thing just didn’t sit right. As the traveller sped upwards, Twilight only came to one real conclusion; she was achingly, and more to the point distractingly, hungry. A carrot and daisy sandwich sounded pretty good...
A few minutes later a soft chime sounded, the doors hissed open, and Twilight Sparkle walked out into a quiet, carpeted hallway over a kilometer vertically up from where she had started. It was best not to think about the height too much. The corridor looped round, living space around the outside with a small common area next to the traveller shafts and stairwells in the centre. Breaking up the neat rows of interior doors, an unobtrusive airlock was tucked away at the end of a short alcove allowing direct access to the ‘blade’ edge of the tower. In nearly ten years Twilight had seen somepony make use of the external airlocks maybe twice. Well, for their intended purpose at least.
Ostensibly to ease congestion by allowing pegasi or frame-flyers to, given the appropriate clearance, simply fly up or down the structure, the ones at this altitude rarely found much official use. Unicorns, and especially earth ponies, had an innate dislike for using frames at such vertiginous heights, and there was not much call for a pegasus to fly into a magic school. Unless you were a pegasus whose unicorn special somepony had a taste for flight, nerves of steel, and a healthy disrespect for gravity, common sense and continued good health. Twilight was not one of those ponies.
Pushing open the door to her spacious apartment, she finally wrestled the annoying lens from the ear-strap and levitated it onto her desk in her lounge-cum-study-area. The room was an airy, open-plan affair and played host, as all the upper student suites did, to a jaw-dropping view of Canterlot courtesy of a sweeping window making up the outside wall. As Twilight walked through a bland divider into her modest but functional kitchen-diner, the room greeted her renewed magical presence with a sigh of life; lights flickering on, environmental regulation warming the room and, most notably, a large crystal panel sitting in the centre of the lounge stirring with light.
Colour condensed inside the clear crystal, like drops of dye in a pool of water, sharpening and solidifying. A chunky emblem took form, floating in the centre of the room; an aesthetically stylised token of Princess’ silhouette spinning lazily above the words, ‘Data Spike OS 10.2 - Session resuming,’ as the glasseye and the panel made each other’s acquaintance. Twilight could see the screen across the open-plan room, and soon found herself half-watching some modern history program as she began slicing a carrot.
-project was regarded by some as a serious waste of resources. By this time, Princess had only recently been placed in control of Equestria, and opponents of her installation used the Shield as leverage to accuse her of being unfit for governance. After successfully stalling attempts to halt the project and submit to an inquiry for two years, widely regarded as the most competent display of political gamesmanship in recent memory, the Princess’ shield officially became the first Equestrian object to be placed into orbit and significantly eased the rising temperatures. This demonstration of the power of unilateral decision making was what allowed Princess to be given-
The rhythmic clacking of knife against chopping board paused as Twilight reached for another carrot. She glanced up at the footage of a huge wedge of metal, ominous in its glittering gantry, glowing with the beginnings of the most powerful levitation in history. Like most ponies, she had studied the construction of the shield as part of her modern history class. Still, it was almost a tradition for stations to roll out the documentaries again every year as the Summer Sun Celebration came round, basking once more in the glowing pride of accomplishment, strong after all these years. She reached out to massage the intangible magical apparatus that filled her room, and began flicking through the channels, trying not to lose focus on chopping as she did so.
-at Rich Corp, because we know money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy quality engineering-
-scams run in Hoofington three weeks ago and were reported to the local authorities. The public are urged to-
-love me? Just like you loved him, baby? Darlin’, I did everything you ever asked of me and you-
-turn up to the Gala in a flight suit! Same as every year! She’d look smokin if only-
-the safety of Equestria was under threat. Dream Valley make bold claims but experts say they lack the resources to-
With something between a sigh and a groan, Twilight, sandwich floating alongside, walked back to her study and sat heavily on the cushions by the screen. The parade of unhelpful broadcast snippets was replaced by reams of text and times, as she instructed the device to display a complete history of every action she’d taken on her Spike account in the last six months.
It was a long list.
‘E’...‘E’...Oh come on, Twilight, you’ve got a better memory than this. It was something...I remember it made me think of Sherclop Pones for some reason.
She scrunched her face in concentration, skimming quickly down the wall of dates, times, and addresses. She had a vague idea of when the work had been done, true, but that still left about a month of actions to slog through. This was going to take a while.
She settled herself on the cushions and took an absentminded bite of her sandwich. Not like she had anything else to do, and even if she did this would have taken precedence . She looked at the system clock, lurking at the edge of the display.
8:30 pm
* * *
Looking back, Trixie couldn’t be one hundred percent sure that she hadn’t dreamt it all. The does-this-bother-you drone of her alarm, the catatonic shower, the bleary cup of coffee, the tottery trek downstairs with cart in tow; it all had the distant unreality of a fading dream. Clearly, she was not in her room anymore, but she honestly couldn’t properly remember leaving it; just that she somehow found herself walking down a street. She was starting to regret going to sleep in the first place. Performing after staying awake was one thing, but the scant two hours of sleep had just made her feel incomparably worse. She wobbled down the street, stifling another shuddering yawn, hoping that the comparatively fresh air at her destination would perk her up before she had to actually perform.
The walk passed in a timeless daze. Only gradually, as the muffled bustle and noise began to sharpen and swell, pricking her performer’s instincts, did Trixie finally start to shake off the floating sense of disconnection. The streets were opening up and the buzz of activity was filling the air; pegasi and frame-flyers whooping through the flyways, off to live it up in other parts of town, while earthbound ponies were milling through the plazas and concourse areas.
The city was alive and restless with the pent-up energy of a day too hot to be active, and as it seeped into Trixie’s coat her blank, sleepy expression began to twitch into a smile, and her shuffling gait regained its usual swagger. She’d needed a challenge. Do a stunning show while half asleep? Heh, she’d do it and make it look easy.
She arrived in short order at the plaza she was aiming for; a wide open area with a selection of kiosks, stands, and other entertainers scattered about. The areas just next to the Castle had a reputation for a carnival atmosphere, fostered by the warm summer nights; lights and sound playing across the open squares, voices of families and foals mingling with the cries of the plate-spinners, firedancers and other eccentric acts.
Rolling her cart to a stop by a parched fountain, she began to set up her small stage.
When she’d been a foal, her mother had brought her here to see just the kinds of street acts she was now performing. Trixie had always liked this fountain, as it had been the usual spot for a puppet show run by an elderly earth pony. She could still remember the voices he used to do, as he wove all manner of silly adventures, together with his collection of little hoof-puppets. Oh, she had loved it. And to this day the memory of the simple but endearingly earnest adventures of Great Wizard Alakazam and his sidekick, Fiddlesticks, always conjured a silly smile.
‘Oh, if only I had my invisibility potion. We could slip past unnoticed and the princess would be rescued!’
‘Well, here ya go Ally, I brought just the ticket!’
‘...That’s a pot of raspberry jam.’
‘Why so it is!’
“‘Oh, Fiddlesticks!’” she muttered happily to herself, a gruff, sotto voce attempt at the voice commonly associated with favourite uncles, as she set up the fireworks at the base of her stage. She never did find out what happened to him, the old puppeteer. Her mother had stopped taking her out when she couldn’t make time anymore, and Trixie hadn’t come back until her first performance several years later. The puppet show was long since gone, and the fountain was now dry as part of the water conservation measures. It had seemed a rather forlorn sight, to her, like many things at the time. She liked to think that her performances here were somehow, distantly, in memory of Ally and Fiddle.
All done. The stage was, quite literally, set and the audience awaited. Even if they didn’t know they did. Trixie took a moment to focus and then climbed up onto her platform.
“Come one! Come all! Come, and witness the amazing magic of the Grrrrreat and Powerful Trrrrrixie!”
And a new burst of lights and sounds filled the square.
* * *
Twilight had been completely correct about it taking a while. It was getting on for midnight and she was only just getting to the relevant bits and pieces. She had no idea that she read so much...stuff; it never seemed nearly this much at the time.
The room was darkened save for the glow of the seemingly never-ending list that languished, taunting her, on the screen. She was having to pause more and more often to rub the sleep out of her eyes, but that was nothing new. If she could pull all-nighters for an essay about the history of Cloudsdale and the Great Anchoring, then she could sure as hay make the effort for-
She stopped dead, staring at the entry that she’d just passed over. There it was, a single article she had stumbled across called the ‘Elements of Harmony’, a little opened padlock hinting at the lengths she’d gone to to satisfy her curiosity.
Oh, of course. Elements! How could I have forgotten.
She sat up straight, alert and engaged again, and began to read.
About ten seconds later she stopped, having finished the article.
She felt her jaw hang slackly at what she was looking at; the word ‘redacted’ several hundred times over the large blacked out regions of, presumably, previously informative text. All that remained readable were a few lines at the very start.
‘Elements of Harmony - Program Overview (Purview: Operational Sphere of Project Blueblood): Designed as one of the few ways to reliably express control [REDACTED] contains the ability to disable and, if directed, cripple [REDACTED]. Under no circumstances should it be considered for even the most limited access on the Starworks. Public access would void the [REDACTED] security measures and could [REDACTED] leading to widespread destabilisation of Equestrian infrastructure. We recommend continued isolation and containment as per our original guidelines.’ The rest was a complete blackout.
She skimmed again through the hoofful of useful lines.
Suppose it explains why I never got that far in the research. And why it wasn’t that memorable. Princess must have done it, she’s the only one that could, but why? Why would she still let me access the file, but just censor it to the point of uselessness? I don’t understand. This looks like exactly the kind of thing that would be vitally important to know right now, but...
“The Elements are a big, powerful...thing. Probably bad. Nopony knows.” Great.
She leant back and stared up at the ceiling. This was all she had to work with and it wasn’t really anything. Straining to see the screen from the lower corner of her eyes, she ran a few cross-searches for related terms and similar articles. Nothing. She slumped again, feeling sleep start to weigh on her eyelids and, after a moment of silent contemplation, she made the decision that she was always going to make.
She flicked open the inbuilt shooting star client.
My dearest teacher,
My continuing studies of pony magictech have lead me to discover that we are on the precipice of disaster.
For you see, the threats levelled at your person by Dream Valley may not be empty after all, and Equestria may be in peril from the ‘Elements of Harmony’. Something must be done to ensure that these terrible threats do not come true.
I await your quick response.
Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle
The message rolled into the image of a scroll before flying off, twinkling over an imaginary horizon inside the screen.
Well, that’s all I can do about it for now. I’ll just have to start more conventional investigations. I’ll need to go over the venue for the celebration, the list of security protocols, the guest lists and I should probably cross check the threat against past behaviour from Dream Valley, maybe there’s a hint I’ve been overlooking that-
Mirroring her own message moments before, a small green flash popped on to her screen and expanded into a scroll. She opened it.
My dearest, most faithful student Twilight.
I appreciate your concern and your care for both my person and all of Equestria. However, it is late tonight, too late for you to be doing work.
Come to my chambers at 8:00 tomorrow morning and we shall discuss the matter in person.
P
She buried her head into the cushions and groaned. If Princess was telling her that she needed sleep then she was probably right, but Twilight was loathe to just let the matter rest. She hadn’t even accomplished anything yet...besides bothering the Security ponies.
She let out an exasperated puff of air, grimacing as it morphed into a yawn. She’d got a meeting with Princess. Should probably prioritise that for now, and that meant getting some sleep in preparation, otherwise she’d be half-asleep when-....actually come to think of it that was probably why Princess had scheduled it so early. She was diabolically good at that sort of thing.
The weary student reluctantly called it a night, closing her history and retiring to her bed in a little partitioned section of the apartment. The lounge lights dimmed as she left, recognising they were no longer needed, as did the screen, closing down the stacked layers of documents left open. The final words to fade from its surface were the words that had started the whole affair, pasted onto billboards all across the Starworks as well as on walls and lampposts over Canterlot.
On the morning of the Summer Sun Celebration we, the good ponies of Dream Valley, will make our voices heard against the iron hoof of the dictator. For too long have we sat idle, watching as we plunge headlong into the same mistakes. We are tired of repeating history and we are weary of seeing ponykind suffer. All of Equestria will understand our cause and why we must turn back before we go too far. The time for nature is at hoof once again, the time of metal is past.
* * *
There was a great serenity that came with a successful set of shows and, even after years of doing it, Trixie still got the buzz; the odd kind of euphoria. Complete and total elation, but calmed with the knowledge that the hard work had already been done, and that the only thing now was to soak up the applause and prepare for next time. Trixie had wrapped everything up alongside most of the other street acts, recognising the dwindling audiences as the night progressed, and was pleased to see that she’d made almost enough to offset the water chit debacle. That still left her with a minimal profit for the day, but at least she wasn’t worse off than when she started.
She was all but home, towing her cart through the barren forecourt of Foundation 5. The bare stone gleaming under the harsh white flood lights suspended from the plate’s underside scaffolding high above. The hard buzz of the magitech lock echoed in the stairwell until the door snapped shut behind her, and then, after a moment's pause, she was spiralling slowly upwards, cart floating behind her.
Many floors later, she wearily pushed open the hallway door, the lights popping noisily to life. Automatically, her eye wandered to her apartment door, part way down the hall; a narrow, familiar sliver of white-washed wood when viewed from such an acute angle. Something was off, a feeling in the back of her mind, a distinct unease that wrapped itself around her stomach as she looked down the dingy corridor.
Time slowed to a crawl. Her heart began to beat harder as a tightness began to grow in her chest, forcing shallow, uncomfortable breaths. She didn’t move, staring intently, afraid to risk confirming what she was seeing as her blood slowly froze. Hesitantly, she took a step forward, praying she could convince herself of a trick shadow...the dark emptiness remained as more of the doorframe entered view.
...No...
Suddenly, she was shivering, stumbling numbly towards her apartment, cart forgotten behind her, heart smashing frantically against her ribs.
No, oh please no, please...
A wave of nausea rolled over her as she reached the splintered doorframe, leaning heavily against it as the world shrank away beneath her.
Hollow, she stepped over the shattered door and stood in her little room. The muted light from the hallway cast a dull, flat glow over the remains of her life. Upturned drawers filled the meager floorspace; cutlery, plates and ingredients tipped out of the cupboards among a mix of photos, books, and personal knick-knacks and mementos from fun days out crunching softly under her hooves. Her bed was flipped against the wall, mattress torn open in a mess of stuffing, dents and scratches on the wall from the impact of the bedframe.
Trixie walked slowly over to her upturned bed, magic finding her blanket and pulling it out from under the cracked wooden frame. She ran a hoof over the fabric, feeling every roughly cut thread from the long, lengthways tear. She gently, quietly, sat down on the edge of the bed frame, ruined blanket limp in her hooves, watching her room from a thousand miles away. A quiet, logical voice distantly noted that nothing seemed to be missing, just damaged. Photo frames smashed, photos ripped out, clothes torn to ribbons, kitchen taken down to furniture; jars and packets smashed on the floor, books eviscerated.
She sat there awhile.
Time slowly trickled past as she listened to her heart beat, eyes roving blankly over the room.
Her vision blurred with the beginning of tears, hardly breathing, hardly thinking, shaking gently in almost reverential silence, trying so desperately not to break the unreal disconnection she felt; the fragile illusion that this might not be how things really were; that she might just wake up in a cold sweat and laugh it off as a ridiculous dream.
Reality began to seep back in as she sat; the unforgiving wood of her bed frame, the faint smell of herbs from the wrecked kitchen, the sound of her own shuddering breaths, and the creeping fingers of exhaustion. Shakily she rose to her hooves and tried to think; wiping her eyes and focusing intently on the corridor outside so as to avoid the rest of her room.
This...somepony did this...came here and did...this. I need to...I need to get help. Can’t ask neighbours. Who...Security...I should call Security.
She pulled her glassware pendant free of her cape, and moved a hoof to tap the surface before hesitating, hoof hovering over the device. She knew what was coming. The flashing lights, gruff ponies bombarding her with questions, hours of talking, hours of being here. They wouldn’t give a buck, this happened all the time. Just...not to her. They’d tell her she was stupid, a unicorn living in a foundation. Asking for trouble. She...she was too tired for this. Far too tired. Too tired to be angry, too tired to fix it. Too tired to deal with any of it.
She felt a shuddering sob begin to grow in her chest. She pressed her eyes closed and furiously fought to control her breathing again. She wasn’t crying; not for this. She’d been through worse and come out with with dignity intact. Like hay she was going to blubber like a foal now...
She could barely stand and now, as the last dregs of adrenaline were replaced by a groaning weight in every muscle, her pride finally conceded the fight.
I can’t do this. Not right now. Not...here. I need...somewhere...
Her hoof tapped the pendant. A soft chime; deafening against the silence.
“Place a call,” the trembling effort in her voice noticeable even in her whisper.
Ching
“Roseluck.”
A cheerful ringing complemented the pretty bars scrolling across the pendant’s surface as she held it, floating, in front of her. Abruptly the image changed to the face of an earth pony mare, somewhat older than Trixie, her communication device apparently sitting on a bedside table. She rubbed sleep from her eyes, pulled her tousled mane back and blinked blearily out at Trixie, radiating confusion.
“...T-Trixie? Trixie Lulamoon? That you?”
“Hello...Roseluck. I- I’m...sorry I know it’s late...I-”
“Um, that’s...never mind me, what’s happened? What’s wrong? You never call this number.”
Trixie cleared her throat and took a moment to compose herself, mining out her last reserves of willpower.
“Trixie would like to call in the favour that you promised Trixie’s mother some time ago.”
The other pony blinked, rubbing the bridge of her nose with a tired hoof.
“Erm...you want us to put you up?...Are you in trouble?”
“Trixie’s-” she stopped, shaking, as her voice faltered on the edge of cracking. She continued in a strained whisper.
“Trixie’s apartment has been...been...Trixie cannot stay here right now.”
Rose looked off to the side, eyes darting back and forth, obviously unsure despite her concern, rubbing the back of her neck with one hoof.
“Well...I mean, sure...but,” she paused as her mouth soundlessly worked, fumbling for the right words.
“We might not be the best...um...place for you to stay right now. I mean, we’d be happy to...but, you know...” she stared, almost pleadingly, at Trixie; willing her to fill in the blanks.
“Trixie knows.”
Roseluck sighed, again rubbing her eyes, sleep making it difficult to conceal the conflict in her face. There was a moment of weary eye-contact, a second or two, before argument was resolved.
“Right...okay. Um...you’re in Forest North 5, right? You haven’t moved since...”
She just let the sentence trail off as Trixie nodded, eyes closed.
“We’re ten minutes by flash transit. Just...hang on and we’ll sort you out, okay?”
Another silent nod.
“All right, you just sit tight now, love.”
Too tired to take offense at being patronised, Trixie just let the call drop.
And in the darkened wreck of her home she sat. Waiting.
* * *
When Twilight woke to her alarm, her room was already bathed in the soft yellow glow of morning. From this high up, the sun clambered over the horizon noticeably earlier than at ground level; dawn reaching the top of the tower a good fifteen minutes before the base. She yawned, stretched and trotted to the bathroom, incidentally admiring the geometrically perfect ring of the sun as it stood in a coincidental, but aesthetically pleasing manner, above a building carrying a similar sculptural motif.
Breakfast came and went, as fresh morning light mixed with fresh morning orange juice to get Twilight’s synapses firing again. She uploaded her daily essence quota to the river, still a little too sleepy to need the usual calming mantras ensuring no emotional contamination, before leaving her apartment and heading to the traveller; already planning out her arguments as she went. Why Princess should give her access, why the Security services were in dereliction of duty, and so on and so forth.
The traveller ride up to the upper levels was ample time to rehearse her speech. Princess’ office, affectionately but a little pointedly known as her ‘eyrie’, was on the uppermost usable floors; more because of what that lofty position implied about her rather than for any practical reason. Princess tended to use secure meeting rooms on lower floors for day to day mundanities, to give the impression of eschewing ‘all that pomp and circumstance’. All the trappings of the powerful elite and all the accessibility of the everyday pony.
The traveller came to rest at last, and the doors snapped open onto a vast, darkened space. Princess had taken a rather minimalist approach with the decor, and the entire room, maybe seventy metres square, was all but empty. The floor was a smooth, black stone that drank in the warm glow from the enormous window filling the entire far wall; a thick band of yellow-orange in geometrically exacting contrast with the sharply defined black interior space. The dizzyingly wide view washed the space with light that was seemingly absorbed into the jet ceilings and floor. The only thing breaking up that view was a low table, a pair of luxuriant chaise longue to either side, and a pony.
Standing at the window, staring out at the parched sky, was a pony utterly unlike any other. A pure white mare with a long, needlepoint horn and broad, strong wings towering over any other pony; implacably calm, radiating control, and bathed in the gold light of morning. A kind of sculpture that sought to encapsulate every ideal that Equestria represented. Statuesque, an icon, an exaggerated perfection. The embodiment of strength and order, as she was built to be.
Her regal nature was reflected in her golden ornamentation; a heavy, bejeweled torc, a tiara, and anklets. Her mane and tail drifted in the air behind her, aloft on a holographic breeze; glowing, multicoloured auras of flowing symbology and shifting syntax. A pair of calculating, magenta rings shone cooly in their sockets, regarding the miniature city spread out below; her city.
* * *
As the traveller doors opened Princess engaged the avatar’s social suite, restarting blinking and breathing, subconsciously unsettling if not present when looked for. She’d had a long time to think about what Twilight was going to say, now she just had to play out her response.
“Princess, are you busy?”
From some ponies that would have been a joke and Princess idled away an instant, formulating punchlines. She decided against it, in the end; Twilight was just being polite. Instead, she turned away from the window and stepped towards her student, moving in for an affectionate nuzzle. Twilight was a refreshing change to the city’s undercouncil and financiers; there was no need to be stand-offish and formal with her. Though, a cursory biometric sweep coupled with, frankly, basic maths did suggest she was putting in a good show of pretending to be awake.
“Of course not, my faithful student,” she said, her voice rich and soft, carrying faintest undertones of biologically impossible harmonies, “Please, take a seat.”
“Thank you, Princess. I wanted- well, you already know what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Princess watched herself engage in a flurry of tiny, meaningless motions; a small nod, a delicate half-hum-half-sigh as she looked away in thought, the small tics and twitches around the eyes, her breathing patterned to imply she was preparing to speak. Twilight sat patiently, unconsciously playing the game, unwilling to interrupt her mentor’s ‘thinking’ despite the absurdity.
Of course, she knew Twilight was aware of the room-filling processor banks a kilometer below her, as they...she...flipped through the social interaction rulebook to find how long a ‘considered pause for thought’ should be. If anything, the long years that the two had known each other made it easier for Twilight to see her as a normal, relatable pony that was tragically, sympathetically, trapped in a metal shell.
A little under three seconds on the clock. Time to move on.
“I believe I do, Twilight. Now, you I trust your judgement, you know I do, but you simply must stop worrying about ancient history.”
“Now, I know-” she said, firmly. Cutting Twilight off precisely as she started to launch in a rebuttal, “-I can see you are genuinely worried, but there is more to a young pony’s life than studying. I have everything under control. You believe that, right?”
The muscles in Twilight’s face worked to form a response, highlighted by the warm morning light. Princess had some strong bets on how Twilight would phrase her obvious disagreement but, honestly, it was an easy assessment. Twilight wasn’t so rude as to say ‘no’ to her face, and besides which a part of her probably did agree, but she was never one to just let things go. That narrowed her options considerably.
“Well, yes, of course I do. But Security wouldn’t give me the time of day, they just told me to let them handle it. I could have helped...” she added, lamely.
Ouch. That was weak. You must feel more tired than you look, Twilight.
“I know, my little pony, but I wouldn’t let them be Security if I didn’t trust them, now, would I? I promise you, Twilight, I’m keeping an eye on our Dream Valley friends, and I won’t let them do anything bad to you or anypony else”
Her eyes managed to radiate a loving warmth, despite the harsher edge to their purple light; a knack she had spent a comparatively long time developing.
As expected, Twilight had no immediate response. Short of ‘I don’t trust you enough’, which she was clearly not going to say, this called for a decently complex and delicate diplomatic rebuttal. Princess artfully filled the gap.
“Look, I know how much this means to you, and far be it from me to be so ungrateful...” she paused to pretend to think, again trusting Twilight not to interrupt her mid-sentence. The next step was obvious.
“If you want to help, I can send you to supervise the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration in person. How about that? That way you can keep an eye out for anything anypony else missed in Ponyville. I’m sure you’re more than up to the challenge.”
Checkmate. Princess knew Twilight saw it; it was written all over her face.
Refuse, and she’d seemingly contradict all her previous concern; accept and she would be sidelined into a different job. Either way, it seemed like Princess won the argument.
Princess watched herself, her warm, implacable smile and gentle but commanding gaze, as Twilight considered.
Ten minutes later, Twilight was entering the traveller again, burdened with a list of instructions, places and ponies, as well as a distinct feeling that the meeting hadn’t quite gone as planned.
The next bit was the hardest and most uncertain. Princess updated her speech delivery model to include the most recent behavioural data, and committed.
As Twilight activated the controls for her floor, Princess looked up and called across the room.
“Oh, and Twilight, I have an even more essential task for you to complete in Ponyville. Make some friend-” and then the doors were shut and her student was speeding down the massive structure.
Princess smiled as she released manual control over the traveller doors. All in all that had gone exactly as expected, and now it was up to Twilight. She turned back towards the window, indulging in a smile before standing her avatar on power-save. She’d made good progress on a rolling upgrade scheme for the River as Twilight had been grudgingly reading her assignment; noting another 184 unneeded power cables she’d found. Now she just needed a way to finance the changes...
Deep in the bowels of the Castle, a single sub-processor rack hummed tunelessly.
* * *
And so it was that Twilight Sparkle found herself trotting towards the Castle’s local flash transit hub at eleven o’clock in the morning. She had spent the last few hours marking and packing bags for delivery to her new, temporary, lodgings in Ponyville’s town library. She knew a little about the town from her reading; a small, flat-town that had grown up around the old atmospheric humidifiers by the then Everfree Forest. It wasn’t rich, by Canterlot standards, but boasted a strong sense of community and sharing that promoted a higher quality of life than one would have perhaps expected from a settlement of its size and wealth.
She huffed in annoyance as she walked. The third time in the last five minutes. She’d been played; seen the trap coming but been powerless to avoid it.
Princess was Twilight’s best friend and, despite fairly aware of it, she had grown accustomed to the charade; taking the little nods towards ponydom, the faux time-to-think and so on, as the social niceties that they were. That was fine, Twilight had no issue with her mentor’s nature and preferred the charade to the impression her conversational partner was playing games of chess in between each syllable. But, when she was tired or distracted, she always seemed to end up doing just what Princess wanted her to do.
She believed that Princess knew what was best, certainly, but there was still the nagging doubt that nopony seemed to actually be doing anything...
The sky above her darkened with cables, save for the frequent blue flashes jumping between them, all running into a large warehouse-esque building in front of her. Flash transit was one of the most power intensive conveniences that magitechnology had brought to Equestria, it only took a cursory glance at the river distribution maps to see that was the case.
Long, orderly lines of ponies were matched to brightly colour coded gates for destinations in different regions of Equestria, all shuffling slowly towards the rows upon rows of marked circles on the floor and the glowing metal-crystal protrusions that ringed them. The large, echoing building was alive with the overlapping cacophony of crashes and flashes of disappearing and reappearing ponies. She joined a queue for non-local transport, sandwiching herself into a long line of business ponies, and sighed.
Well, I know I’m right. I’ll check on the preparations as fast as I can, then get to the library to try and find some more information about the Elements of Harmony.
She flashed her travel card to the unicorn at the checkpoint and said simply “Ponyville, please” before turning to stand on the metal dias, the air heating and crackling around her coat.
Princess said to check on the preparations. I am her student, and I’ll do my-
in a hot timeless void she floated formless and senseless the world stripped from her like cobwebs in a gale transient ethereal in a boundless size-less sea she slept as thick waves of potential slammed through her cloud in the burning sky
-royal duty, but the fate of Equestria does not rest on me making friends.
She shook the static from her coat, nodded to the sole pony manning Ponyville’s empty flash station, and trotted out into the daylight, glad to be free of the pressing mass of the late commute, finding herself in the town’s plain square.
She experienced a moment of genuine giddiness, as if she had just found herself walking on the ceiling. The buildings were only a few tens of storeys here, at most, with a few sparse cables strung between them, and after a life spent cocooned by metal, the comparative openness of the town left her with the disconcerting impression that she was falling upwards into the yawning abyss of the sky. Twilight had never understood how one could be scared of open spaces; comparing this to Canterlot city centre, she had the distinct impression she didn’t know what ‘open spaces’ meant.
She turned to look back at where she knew Canterlot would be, and was surprised she could actually see it; a horizon that wasn’t a few hundred meters away and terminated by a building held a certain novelty. It was like the view out her bedroom window, except visible from the ground. She drank in the unfamiliar sensation, running her eyes over the long dark smudge that ran across the horizon. She could just make out tiny flickers of light from the base of Cloudsdale as it hung, like a dark but fluffy doll’s house, off to one side.
After a moment, practicality outweighed sentiment and she turned to take stock of the square, calling up a map of town and requesting flags corresponding to her to-do list for the day. As she studied, she became aware the background to her maps was increasingly pink, her glasseye rebalancing the map colour to compensate. Focusing, she saw a pink earth pony with a rather bubbly mane walking up to her.
She began to take a step out the pony’s way and was about to dismiss her when something stopped her, a moment’s hesitation.
Well...Princess did ask me to try and make some friends and I suppose local knowledge can be just as good as a map sometimes. I...I guess it couldn’t hurt to say ‘Hi’. I could tell Princess I tried and then call it a day. And who knows. Maybe she’ll actually have some useful information about security for the Celebration.
Clearing her throat, she stepped out into the mare’s path.
“Um...hello?”
Later, Twilight would find that the word she was looking for was ‘seizure’. Right now, she wasn’t quite sure what to call it. The other pony’s eyes widened as if trying to eject themselves from her skull. She reeled backwards, gasping like she’d just come up for air after a particularly taxing freedive, then shot off to...somewhere as fast as her hooves could carry her.
Twilight stood there for a moment while her mind started up again.
“Huh. Well...that was interesting.”
She sighed to herself, shaking her head before refocusing on her map again.
It looked like the first stop would best be Sweet Apple Acres, the local apple farm. She brightened somewhat at that; her reading had told her about the hybrid-hydroponics system that the Apple family were using to grow their apple trees and that they were unusual for getting hydroponic methods to work successfully in a more natural setting. Maybe they’d let her see how they did it? Oh! Maybe she could get a proper tour if there was time!
Her enthusiasm faded a little as she realised that there probably wouldn’t be time, if she wanted to get her investigation done, but she still set off at a happy trot towards the outskirts of Ponyville, the neat, regimented rows of trees that covered the hillside beyond the buildings, and the first of many stops of the day.
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Sorry that this update took so long. In my defense I had my annual PhD assessment and my pre-reader got a job. I'll try to be more organised in future.
But yeah, this chapter gave me a little trouble but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Hope you guys enjoy it too and, as always, feedback is appreciated whether it be good or bad.
This is really nice. You're going pretty heavy on the descriptions, but considering what this fic is, that's a very, very good thing.
I'm dying to know how Applejack's quasi-hydroponics works, and how Rainbow Dash has a job in this setting.
I like it. Very vivid descriptions, sometimes bordering on purple but it helps set the atmosphere.
A awesome cyberpunk reinterpretation of the pilot episodes.
I want to see how Appaloosa looks in this cyberpunk world.
I can imagine Ponyville being a clean high-tech metropolis but Canterlot being this dirty, gritty sprawling cyberpunk megacity.
Well worth the wait, and every bit as fascinating -if not more so- as the first chapter. This is some damn good sci-fi, on all counts. The long wait between chapters is a bit disappointing, but, certainly worth it. Your descriptions of futuristic Equestria are vivid and almost alien, and Celestia being an A.I. superstructure makes perfect sense regarding the setting. Does that mean Luna was a flawed prototype, then? I guess we'll find out. Looking forward to seeing Applejack's farm, the nuances of Rarity's boutique, the nature of this world's equivalent of Everfree, and generally Ponyville's nature. Even by the show's Equestria's standards, Ponyville is a podunk sort of town, if not a quickly growing one. And seeing Trixie's POV ties in will certainly be entertaining.
Can't wait for that next chapter, yo.
What struck me with this chapter was the distinct differences in Trixie and Twilight's homes. Trixie's is pretty much like mine, with the bear necessities to get by. Twilight's is so gloriously over the top with automatic lights and other environmental features. It was a nice contrast to how these two characters live and gives me some insight in the characters themselves. I'm very curious as to how these two are going to interact if they come together.
Heh, Spike's now an email client. That just makes me smile for some reason.
In the back of my mind, I'm wondering if this is a future Equestria from the show or if this is a different Equestria altogether. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.
Lovely work!
618980
671107 "The long wait between chapters is a bit disappointing" Yeah, you and me both, my friend, you and me both. For an explanation of why, with bonus musical accompaniment, my blog post is a pretty extensive apology
I'm glad you thought it was worth it, though.
670568, 671036 I'm trying to toe the line between going overboard on descriptions while still being immersive. My pre-reader is exceptionally good at this so props to him for toning me down when I get overexcited about a fountain or something.
I'm really pleased that the setting interests people as most of the real fun from writing this is trying to imagine what's changed and inventing all these little pieces of magitech
Hopefully I'll cover all the things that people are interested in without just turning this into an encyclopedia.
672528 I'm glad you enjoyed the contrast between them. One of the main reasons I went with a double narrative (apart from the fact I wanted to do something with Trixie in it
) was that Twilight, as a protagonist, can have a rather narrowed view of things. Especially early on in the show, and I wanted to have a different perspective on things. Twilight hasn't even brought up that water chits exist, for example. She just doesn't think about it.
Thanks for the encouragement, everyone. Next chapter WILL be UP in the next week or two. I promise. For realsies this time.
This is rather interesting. I do like the emotional depth you've given to Trixie and Twilight, and how well they're adjusted to "Neuromancer"ish levels of technology.
Some of the scenery porn could be consolidated a bit. The writing is there, but there's a few places where you're describing the same thing in multiple back-to-back sentences. Although this was more of a complaint in the prologue, so it seems to have cleared up pretty well.
Bravo
It updated!
Great chapter; the last one was good, but this one was simply brilliant. I'm not usually one for purple prose, but your stunningly beautiful descriptions of Canterlot really brought it to life. Love the cyberpunk, especially the nuanced difference in Trixie's and Twilight's descriptions of the city, and the A.I. Celestia, of course. I'm excited to see how you will develop the plot of the first episodes with the universe you've created.
All in all, this was well worth the wait, and is now one of my favourite stories on the site!
675351 Great, thank you! The prologue was a bit...egregious with its scenery, I agree. I'm working on that at that moment and I'm glad you think it's paying off.
675692
Wow. There are a lot of amazing stories on this site; stories I would happily pay money for if I saw them bound and printed in shop. So for you to say that my story is one of your favourites means a huge amount to me. I hope I don't disappoint.
Also, I never mentioned this last time, but you are firmly in my favourite pony avatars list. Top 5. Love it.
679548
I have a story you might be interested in, if sci-fi tends to float your boat.
679679 That it does. Would that be 'The End', then? I'll give it a look
526101
That is actually a parody of the original quote which is "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." It's one of Clarke's Laws look them up, you will probably like them.
Marked for reading later, i'm lookin forward to this.
I am loving this so much.
Sorry Spike, you've been automated and replaced with a computer program. As has Celestia apparently...
The CelestAI was great, and I like the different perspectives Trixie and Twilight are giving us. Twi's pretty damn privileged, yet she doesn't even see it, while Trixie's... not. And the mention of Ponyville as having "merely" buildings several tens of stories tall... This is not the Equestria we've seen before!