Her ears pricked. The connection was terrible, and the results full of static and noise, but she could see numbers that were not normal. Something was wrong, possibly very wrong.
"Mmm..."
"What's up, Mom?" Moonbeam, her adopted son, poked his head in, tufted ears perked at her. "You look upset."
"Does this look normal to you?" She gestured at her screen, a maze of numbers, static, and charts. "It's not right. NefNef may have become infected with something."
"Yeah?" He stepped in on quiet hooves. "So? Unless it's killing her, she'll get over it. We all get sick sometimes."
"True... but I'm also seeing this..." She waved at the screen as her horn glowed, bringing up a little... nothing, barely a splotch.
"Yeah? What... am I... looking at?"
"NefNef Jr. or whatever they call them. They're too far away to try to determine the sex, but illness in the early stages of pregnancy can cause a termination... She... wouldn't even know she ever had a child. It's so small..." Samantha heaved a little sigh. "It's not fair, Moonie! Imagine that, being killed before you even had a concept of existing. Unfair!"
Moonbeam swung one of his ears off to the side a moment. "It can't really suck."
"How can that not suck! Moonie! Don't be mean!" cried Samantha, hiding her face behind her hooves.
"If you don't know it can suck, or not suck, it can't suck," argued Moonbeam with a shrug. "But it sucks for us, because we know. So, uh, mom, can you help?"
"Yes! Help, good idea." She rebounded instantly, sitting up in her cushy chair. "Now, NefNef might get... a little angry... but what if I took it?"
"Took... what?"
"The almost-baby!" She thrust a hoof at the splotch on the screen. "I take it away for a little while, just a little, put it back when everything's calm again."
Moonbeam smiled a little. "You'd have to never tell her, ever. If you tell her, even if everything's great, she'll be so mad at you, Mom, and you know it."
"Yeah... but that didn't sound like a no!" She leaned forward, her hooves wriggling as her horn glowed, starting to put things into motion. "This is going to be super tricky. She's so far away! If she was right here, it would just be slightly really hard. But with her a whole ocean away, it's graduated to S-Grade Mega Super Hard!"
Moonbeam nodded softly as he grabbed her half-filled mug and trotted off with it. He didn't say goodbye, there was no need. She didn't notice his presence or lack of it until she reached with her magic for her refilled mug and took a big slurp of coffee. "This is warm. Oh, thank you!" She took a second sip before setting it down. "Now..."
He left her to her work, heading off to do things more suitable to a teenaged lunar pegasus such as himself.
To copy what was there, and make it here, invariably messed up what was there, but that was alright, since it would be here. Samantha smiled to herself as she worked as quickly as she could, horn glowing softly as she manipulated so many things at the same time to get it just right. She pulled over a jar of fluid. "You'll rest in here."
A loud piercing beep startled her. The signs from Nefertari was degrading, rapidly. All the static in the world didn't hide that whatever was happening, it was bad.
For just a moment she wanted to try to pull all of Neferartari, but that was... she couldn't do that. Even trying for the little splotch was beyond the grasp of any ordinary pony. "Good thing I'm not that," she half-sung to herself, renewing her efforts. Surely someone on the other side would help Nefertari. She couldn't lend a hoof there. She could just maybe save that almost-child before it was gone before it even arrived.
She had to work fast, so fast. The reading were wild. It could hurt the child. It could kill the child, insomuch as something so tiny could ever have been said to been properly living in the first place.
She glanced to another smaller window, showing Silver's numbers. They were elevated, but not in any way that spiked into the red. He must be there. Maybe he was worried? Of course he was. He'd save Nefertari. Of course he would, that was just a thing Silver did. She had to have faith. She had to save the child and assume NefNef was fine. She'd be fine.
Focus. So many numbers, so many strands. It was so far away... She drank from her cup to notice it was drained again. Was she that thirsty? No time to consider that. Her horn flared with blindingly bright magic that she wasn't focused on. The machines began to grind and groan, being pushed past all reasonable safe limits.
She almost had it. The numbers were looking so terrible. Silver, save NefNef! She bit at her lower lip as she slowly swiveled a hoof, marking off the area around the splotch that she would excise. "And..."
A new alarm rang. It was only getting worse. It was reaching the child, and everywhere in Nefertari. "What is going on?!" Samantha cried as she pulled her hoof back, starting to draw the little precious splot through the hair-thin connection. "C'mon, c'mon... c'mon... Work work work work!" Her eyes darted to the vial that trembled and shook with the power it was being rocked with, trying to transport something such a tremendous distance. "Work!"
Her head wanted to split in two, brain throbbing with a pain that would have sent most unicorns to the ground in a whimpering mass. There was no time for that. She had to work faster. "Work!" She smashed a button and her vision swam a dangerously dark red, obscured with blood in much the same way that Nefertari's insides were. "Work! C'mon C'mon!"
Something popped, like a balloon inflated too hard.
The room went dark, all she had was the screaming pain between her ears.
Worked or not, she fell to all fours and almost collapsed on the spot. "Gotta..." She grabbed the jar with numb hooves, staggering out of the room. "Gotta..." She half-fell, slapping the jar into a machine that was in a better lit room where the power hadn't been blown. "Yes..."
If the child had arrived, it would live, she hoped. "Yes..."
Silver would save Nefertari. He had to. That was how that sort of thing worked.
She slid to the floor, groaning in pain. Consciousness fled her fatigued form.
Holy...
Samantha just hit Tier Zero.
Current occupants, Tree Of Harmony. Discord.
Thats going to hurt in the morning. Hope she practised her blind science for loss of power, eyesight, optical cortex.
HOOO boy if Samantha pulled this off?? well things just changed for everypony.
9409689
My old arse comment got neckro-ed by the author himself... Wait a minute... There's several more chapters here than last time... Didn't this story have an ended tag on it at one point?
9409797
The fans refuse to let it die, and thus is continues.
9410976
Are they actually immortal in this story?
In any case, my comment wasn't specifically about this one, but attitudes in general.
True immortality is relatively uncommon amongst the stories I've read; getting emotional about simply outliving everyone else however is a very common theme regardless of whether the matter is being truly unable to die or just not aging and being very hard to kill.
But yeah, true immortality will ALWAYS mean hell. Eventually. Even if paired with invincibility. Anything short of near omnipotence/omnipotence will always end with eternal torture. Unless you count being unconscious forever as still immortal I suppose.
Something tells me Sammy gonna ascend eventually. You don't do the impossible and get nothing from it beside the expected.
BTW, why exactly Silver can't travel back in time and preven this bullshit? I do recall Starswirl got rid of that scroll with fixed spell, but it doesn't mean Silver can't repeat what he did once, travel back in time and stop that turkey before it use that artefact or temporary turn Nef into a breezie and go transform that entire group (spare the bear) into jakals to let them taste their own medicine. She can die and she did, but does she have to?
If she does have to, then Sammy absolutely must ascent from what she did into a being this world doesn't need, but absolutely deserve to have. --_--
Eh, and here I am at the end of the universe waiting for it to expand.
9421724
When has time travel worked out well in Equestria?
9421886
Why, it did at least once for Silver already. There is always a price, though. He died. But he got better, didn't he? And he died not from his time trave, but from Starlight's actions. Well, guess his travel back in time entangled him into that mess and were the reason why he traveled through timelines. It just depends on how far in the past you going and what you attempting to change. Starlight went far in the past and meddled with things without thinking how badly that will affect the future. Here, though, travel back for a few hours or a day should do just fine and won't creat so large ripples through time. So, it really depends on should Nef get back or are you going to replace a dog lady with a cat lady and a lot of other ladies. Does Silver really need all these servants? That would be the way to avoid them as well.
Also, if Nef's gone for good then this world really deserves Sammy the Princess of (Mad) Science and Justice (she took that Golden Rule very close to heart).
Of course she is an alicorn too