Cross The Amazon

by Chatoyance

8. Three Little Kittens

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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U :
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CROSS THE AMAZON

By Chatoyance

Chapter Eight: Three Little Kittens

Calloway took a bite of his latest creation, 'MeatlessLoaf ala Nanotech' and grimaced. Since the Marvelous Dinner, as Dropspindle called it, he had struggled to provide them with at least acceptable meals. For the special dinner, he had been beyond fortunate to find a shriveled-up genuine Equestrian apple and a bale of imported hay in the back of a market storeroom. There were no more such treats to be found. They had both been forced back to scrounging for whatever they could find, as well as using up the opened foodpaks from the jitney.

More and more, Santa Maria de Nieva was feeling like a trap. They had found no more alcohol to fuel the jitney, and were stuck at one and three-quarters liters. The amount was frustratingly almost close to enough to make it the forty kilometers to the only next thing there was - something called 'Estación 5' - under ideal conditions, but the situation was anything but. The road would be bad, or missing entirely, they would likely have to make detours around blockages, and there was no telling what else might be an issue. In such a situation it would be a desperation move to choose to drive as far as possible, then to set out on foot and hoof after abandoning their transportation.

They had been living in the hamburger king's mansion now for fourteen days of the seventeen - sixteen to be safe - allotted them. The Barrier was coming, it never rested, it seldom paused, and it sometimes raced forward. The smog layer still hid the cosmic monstrosity - only Dropspindle could see it, and only when she chose to by changing something inside her unicorn head.

Their searches of the provincial capitol had become more and more frantic. The goal was as much to find potion as it was to find alcohol for fuel, or food to eat, or more sources of water to drink and stockpile. Dropspindle had thought she had found survival itself the night of the Marvelous Dinner. Calloway often found himself drifting back to her excited moment of revealing the kit. He had been ready, and willing, to go pony. It was incredibly frustrating that now he had made such a breakthrough, the option had vanished.

Calloway was on the roof of the mansion, trying to see why one of the solar panel arrays had failed. The panels were quite modern, and used special metamaterials in their construction that made them very efficient. The hamburger king had clearly made some money off of turning the Amazon to dust. It was hot, as it always was, and Calloway stood to wipe sweat away from his eyes. In the distance, beyond the empty houses and stores, and all the abandoned vehicles that...

Calloway slapped his forehead. "I am a god-damned idiot."

He kicked the solar cell. He picked up one of the concrete blocks that held the array down during times of heavy winds and held it over his head. He threw it with all of his might. It did not go far, his might was less than impressive. "Fuck! Fuckety-damn-damn-stupid, moron, idiot, dumb, dumb..."

He slumped to the roof and began to laugh. All the cars. All the fucking god damn cars. All around. And every damn last one of them used a NeoSterling because there was almost no accessible petroleum left on the earth. That was his job as a stratigraphic palynologist, after all. Find the very last oil, for the elite. Because nobody else could have any anymore.

And NeoSterling engines burned alcohol. He and Dropspindle had been trying to collect bottles of booze for fourteen god damned days, and all around them there was an ocean of the stuff. In every lousy tank of every damn car. Right in front of them, and it never crossed his mind once.

He threw a wrench across the roof.

Down the stairs and out the main door, across the grounds, a can and a length of tubing in hand, Calloway walked at a determined pace despite the heat. He picked a truck at random and opened the cap and bent down to sniff. Alcohol. He jammed the tube into the hole and arranged the fuel carrier. A little careless sucking on the hose and his face stung and burned and smelled, but the can was filling up. He would need to find more cans. He wiped his face on his sleeve and spat and coughed repeatedly onto the ground. His eyes stung from the fumes, so he turned to face the breeze to lessen the burn.

The breeze was odd. It was stronger than any they had experienced other than as a result of the effect of the Barrier. They had three days at least until they had to worry about that, and if absolutely necessary, they could potentially out-walk it if they absolutely had to. It wouldn't be easy in this heat, but it wouldn't be impossible. Instinctively, he checked the smog layer - seeing it rolled back had impressed him deeply. The smog layer was there, intact, but it was roiling, and being affected.

He scanned the horizon, back where they had come from. No sign of the Barrier. The air smelled of dust, somehow. Of baked dust. Calloway looked slowly all around. Toward the east, away from the direction of the Barrier, there was what looked like a darkness. That... didn't make any sense. Calloway climbed into the back of the truck and stood up, trying to see over the mass of vehicles. The darkness stretched from horizon to horizon - well, as far as the global smog would allow. What the hell was it? It was like a wall, like the Barrier, only all rough and dark and bumpy - it had texture to it. Whatever it was it was massive. And it was moving. It was moving towards Santa Maria de Nieva.

"Oh Jesus. It's a dust storm." Calloway felt his heart begin to pound. He'd heard about this phenomena on the hypernet. He'd read an article about it once. When the southamerizone became a desert, it helped to alter the way the winds worked, and combined with other factors, led to some truly horrendous dust storms. More than the dust bowl days of the Pre-Collapse Northamerizone. Worse than anything seen before. Dust storms that could sandblast buildings and choke the life out of men. Dust cataclysms that buried entire towns. Storms that could last weeks.

And this might be exactly that. "Shit!" Calloway scrambled from the truck bed and down to the dirt. He raced around the truck and checked the fuel can. The flow had stopped, but the can was mostly filled. The twenty liter Jerry can was more than half full. He estimated from the slosh at least ten, possibly fifteen liters. Hopefully fifteen. "DROPSPINDLE!!!"

There was no answer. "DROPSPINDLE!!!" He began lugging the can towards their new jitney. They had picked out a vehicle that seemed to have less wear than the one they had driven down from the plateau. The new jitney wasn't trapped behind any cars, and it had a domed hatch on top - for a passenger transport, for what amounted to a poverty bus, it was quite fancy. The paint wasn't scraped off the sides, and the wheels seemed relatively new. New-ish. They weren't perilously bald. "DROPPERS! HEYYYY!"

Calloway began filling the tank of the jitney. Over the past many days Dropspindle and he had packed the vehicle with as much food and water as they could scavenge. It was not exactly a horde, but they had most of an entire case of packaged water, and probably half a case of prepackaged food selections. Mostly GovRations and Blackmesh Foodpaks, but there were a few treats. Dropspindle had found an entire box of Nanobars, and those hadn't been made for years. Old candy was the best candy - especially when it literally could not spoil. There were collectors among the elite that would pay a small fortune for an unopened, mint-condition box of Nanobars. The very first nanostructured candy bar. Quite a find for a history buff. In Antarctica, they would be a treasure and a showpiece.

In the Southamerizone, they were edible.

The dark and rumpled wall was closer now, and the breeze had become a wind. It looked like a wall of brownish tan clouds now. It was terrifying; clouds should not be that color, and they should not be vertical, and they definitely should not look like a nightmare version of the Equestrian Barrier.

"DROPSPINDLE!" The new jitney had water. It had food. It definitely had enough fuel to make it to Estación 5, whatever that was. But where in hell was Dropspindle! Calloway began to run, the wind thankfully cooling things greatly, back to the hamburger mansion. It was one place she would have reason to go. Maybe she had noticed the change in the sky, maybe the wind had made her look. Going to the mansion was sensible. If she understood there was danger, then she would go there, surely.

As he made the path to the front door, he wished that he had time to siphon a few more vehicles. He could fill the tank entirely, he could have spare fuel... but they needed to get going. The farther down the road they were when the storm hit, the farther from the Barrier - and of the two, the Barrier was the greater threat. Driving straight at an oncoming sandstorm was madness, of course, but being trapped in a house while the Barrier rolled over and past was certain death. Madness sounded better.

Weeks. A sandstorm that could last weeks. It was... Calloway was in the mansion, screaming, yelling, banging pots together from the kitchen. Dropspindle was not in the mansion. Dammit!

With every second, that terrible storm was drawing nearer. Santa Maria de Nieva was not that large of a town - it was tiny, it would be little more than a minor subsection of a favela, it wasn't even the size of the arcology in Vostok. Where was that damn mare? At the open door, his hair ruffled by the increasing wind, Calloway tried to reason out things. If Dropspindle wasn't in the mansion, she didn't know what was going on. That meant she couldn't see the sky or hear or feel the wind. That meant indoors.

Calloway looked around. Hundreds of houses and buildings. Well, maybe a hundred and change. Too many to run door to door. She must be scavenging, still trying to find fuel and supplies, still trying to help as best she could. She could be anywhere out there. Down in a basement, deep in a house or a shop, searching a store room. She didn't have implants, so she didn't have a phone - of course not, idiot, she's a pony. Crap. How did people in ancient days alert anyone? They must have had some means to...

Sirens! Noise! They still used those things even in an age of softech and permatech and messages in your ear or your brain or on your arm. He just had to make enough noise! Calloway looked around as he ran past the front gate of the mansion. Cars, again the vehicles were the answer, just sitting there, too easy to ignore. He ran to the nearest, a non-self-driving Chang'an Land Wind VX and pressed his fist to the horn. He pumped the horn repeatedly. No sign of the unicorn. More, he needed more noise.

Below his feet, amidst the bottles and clothing and shoes and debris left behind by the big party before the citizens went pony and got airlifted out, Calloway noticed a cinderblock. He noticed it by accident with his foot. After swearing for a while, he snatched the block up, hefted it to the steering wheel, and tried several times to set it so that the weight sat on the artistically curving bar that activated the horn. The horn blared constantly now, using up whatever was left in the battery.

Calloway moved on to another car and found it locked. That made him laugh. The last day of being a human, and someone had locked the car they would never need again because they were abandoning it forever. God. He moved on to another car. This one, a self-driver built before AvtoVAZ was absorbed into the Worldcorporation, was unlocked and still had a charge. He pounded on the horn, until he noticed an emergency situation button. Old-time mid-Collapse Russian cars didn't just flash their lights when in trouble, they honked, beeped, and wailed. An emergency was an emergency! One press and a second vehicle joined the Cacophonic Catastrophic Symphony Of Santa Maria de Nieva.

A third vehicle played horn with nothing more than a swift kick to the door, caving it in. The tiny, blinking light was even more hilarious than the locked car - this A.I. driven IDAD (Intelligent Designs Auto Division) sedan was not only locked but set to call the police and more if it was so much as bumped. Bourgeois bastards! Calloway was beyond irony in the moment - he had once wanted this very car. The world was noise now, three horns blazing constantly with a fourth - just beside the IDAD - the subject of his pounding hand.

For what felt like Much Too Long, Calloway stood trying very hard not to look at the onrushing sand storm, while he pounded on the steering column of some unknown vehicle. His ears hurt, and for this he was glad, because hopefully there was no place in all of Santa Maria de Nieva that the noise could not be heard. Finally, far across the massive crowd of vehicles Calloway spotted strawberry blond hair whipping in the wind. In the middle of the bouncing mass of hair was a single, small, blue-gray cone. A horn. "DROOOOPPPPSPIIINDLE!!!"

Calloway darted from the horn he had been hammering and wove his way through the metal symphony, waving an arm. He nearly fell twice, he managed to bruise himself slamming into cars, but Dropspindle finally had seen him and was making her way through the mess on the ground to meet him.

"What? What's all the noise? What's going on?"

Calloway grabbed her mane at the withers, unconsciously trying to keep a literal hold on her. He pointed at the wall of brown and tan cloud, while Dropspindle turned to stare at it. "SAND STORM!"

"I don't understand... is that something bad?"

Calloway's mouth played fish out of water for a few moments. "YES! SUPER BAD! GET TO THE JITNEY!". He somehow managed to keep from adding 'YOU IDIOT!'. The pair moved as quickly as bottles and cars and piles of clothing permitted - though to be fair, some of the clothing was now leaving the scene on its own. The wind had grown even more powerful. The wall of dark cloud towered over them, and it was still miles away.

The howling diminished once they were inside the new jitney, with the doors closed. Calloway buckled in, then unbuckled, leaned over, and fastened Dropspindle in. He sat upright again and clicked his own belts into place. Pieces of paper and other flotsam flew by, carried by the steadily increasing wind. For a brief moment Calloway lost all sense of the terrible predicament - there, tumbling through the air across his vision, he watched a pair of linked, knitted, warm woolen mittens flying by, like some bright pink bird. The surreal moment passed. He pressed the starter button, and happily, the jitney hummed to life. It was a much newer model and in much better condition than the old jitney.

"What is your plan? What do we do? What is that big thing in the sky?" Dropspindle had picked up on Calloway's fear - she may not know what was going on entirely, but she was very empathic.

"That's the sandstorm. A gigantic one! It could last days or even weeks. We need to get some distance from the Barrier - anything will help, because we definitely can't sit this thing out for weeks." He made it past the houses, down an alley and onto the road that led to the 5N.

"It's... it's coming toward us!" The wall of cloud - of dust and sand - was directly ahead of them, far down the amazonian 'highway'. The highway was little more than Macadam, much of which had not seen anything like a cementing agent for many decades. The tiny stones and bits of ground rubble spanged and clattered against the undercarriage. "If it's so dangerous, is it a good idea to just drive into it?" She blinked, innocently. It would have been cute any other time.

"Not in the least. We are doing a very stupid thing." Calloway put more pressure on the pedal, the jitney sped up, fighting the wind. "In fact, this is a completely insane thing to be doing. But it's either this, or Equestria in a couple of days, and I don't think I'm welcome there yet."

Dropspindle's eyes went wide, and her pupils became small at the thought. One permanently lonely pony and a pile of ashes. But ahead was something dark and terrible and unbelievably vast, and it seemed just as terrifying.

The jitney rattled down the long, straight roadway of the 5N. Somewhere ahead of them, was the mysterious Estación 5. Behind them was the Great Barrier of Equestria, just three days away from catching up - perhaps less. But ahead was a churning blender of sand, dust, and small stones, a continent-spanning mega-sandstorm, born of desolation and heat and the broken remnants of the dying earth's atmospheric thermodynamics. The monster ahead howled rage as wind, and writhed and contorted behind its ever approaching line.

The jitney began swaying. "Calloway!"

"It's just the wind. It's impatient." Calloway's expression was grim. "It wants to kill us."

Comments

[shutaro]

Is this a bad time to say "Welcome, Dropspindle! Welcome to planet Earth!"?
Because I feel like it could be bad timing.

[Wild Zontars]

Have you been reading The Martian?

[FanOfMostEverything]

Mittens. In the Amazon. I have to think they were summoned by the chapter title.

In any case, isn't that always the way? You have an idea the moment you can't put it into action anymore. Well, hopefully there will be some vehicles at Estación 5. Of course, first these two poor souls have to survive being stuck between countless tiny rocks and a strange place.

[Defoloce]

There are lots of pitfalls now. A sandstorm can easily reduce visibility to zero, and if it's tall enough it can bring on nearly nighttime levels of darkness. All it would take is Kotani losing the road, or the engine choking on sand, or spinning out and losing their direction of travel, and his goose is cooked. If foul weather can run right up against the Barrier before being nullified, he may not even ever realize what happened. They must also be careful of ponifying him prematurely, should they come across some intact potion. His human form is still useful as a vehicle driver, and the secondary issue of being lost in Equestria looms large, even if both should survive Earth. Very, very dangerous. Quite a needle to thread.

Speaking of which, what fueled the authorial choice to make Equestrian land gains exponential, rather than at some static ratio? I know it was a feature of the Chatoverse since very early on, but I don't remember if you shared what prompted it.

[Chatoyance]

6163102

Speaking of which, what fueled the authorial choice to make Equestrian land gains exponential, rather than at some static ratio? I know it was a feature of the Chatoverse since very early on, but I don't remember if you shared what prompted it.

This is something that will be answered in 'Fiddler's Green' when I return to it, but the immediate answer is because it was possible for the princesses to do, and it solved the problem of having enough space for up to nineteen billion new citizens - an almost unimaginable population prior to intersecting our cosmos. The entire original pony population of Equestria barely met 100,000 in total, so the incredible numbers of humanity were quite a shock to Celestia especially.

The mechanism for how the Exponential Lands were achieved is hinted at in the stories from almost the beginning, but never explicitly stated, because I wanted to save that for my last novel. There is an explanation, it is rational and not 'just magic', but I do not want to state it yet. There is also a reason that it has gotten a bit out of hand (or hoof), and is a bit of a problem, too. My princesses are powerful, but not all knowing or perfect, they make mistakes and there are things they cannot entirely control correctly. They did not intend for the Exponentials to get as large as they have. That was an error.

[Guiding_Passion]

6164865

because it was possible for the princesses to do, and it solved the problem of having enough space for up to nineteen billion new citizens

You know this was always the thing I found the most unrealistic about your setting Chatty that and the existence of the Worldcorp. Given the amount of environmental degradation in your setting Chatty I find it hard to believe that some all powerful World government let alone one that can feed and support that many people could exist. More likely I'd expect to see a fallout like setting where when Equestria emerges all Celestia finds are the scattered survivors of humanity living in small settlements and tribes with the odd small nation state here or there. All which would be at constant war with each other over what few resources remained. I'd expect a population of no more then 10 million.

Simply put I think it very unlikely such a government could form or maintain itself since such a government would require a large complex system to survive something that wouldn't exist in this setting. That and I know for a fact that when things go bad people stop putting there faith in anything as ephemeral as government and instead turn inward towards there next of kin.

[Chatoyance]

6165016

And people have hated and reviled me for portraying my future as being too dark - sure that all the current nations and structures of today would still exist even in the future I portray. What you find unbelievable because you see no central authority existing in such a global emergency, others see as unacceptable because they are certain little would change at all.

I see techno-feudalism. Why? Because feudalism is all that has ever existed, really, despite all the fancy labels or the attempts to create other ways of living, and because, bottom line, Man is an ape, and apes need a grayback. When things go bad, people turn to the next of kin, sure. But when that fails utterly - as it does in major catastrophes, because, let's face it, what the hell is Uncle Arnold really going to be able to do about global collapse? People turn to whatever authority that provides them with food and water.

And that is my future. Things went to shit, people turned to each other, that failed utterly, but the Good Families stepped in, and with the Blackmesh supplied food and water. They reestablished order after the Austerity Wars and the Collapse, because they did the one thing that matters: they fed and watered all the dying people.

And I maintain that family is only as good as the resources they can acquire, and when there is nothing left to scavenge, or steal, or kill for, when everyone is just starving and dying of thirst, when there is literally nothing, family - just like all human institutions - means shit. What matters is who feeds you and gives you water. They become your new god.

And I have ten thousand years of history to back me on this, so that is the future I wrote. Same as it ever was.

And woe to any current ruler who forgets the foundation of all civilization: food and water.

In my future, that is the primary job the scary Blackmesh troops do. They aren't there to keep order - that's for people to do themselves. They only take military action when their job is messed with. And their job is to distribute food and water, the Guaranteed Government Ration. They make sure it is properly stored, protected, and distributed correctly, so that no warlord can stockpile it, or take it from the people. Nanotech and rational distribution. That is the foundation of my future Worldgovernment.

Because family and community only last until there is literally nothing left. Then people turn on each other, unless a grayback steps in.

[ferret]

6165760
I have to disagree, there. Feudalism is an artificial state that humans don't naturally fall into. It occurs when the divide between the wealthy and the poor is great and there is no middle class. Another way of saying that is, it occurs when a few people trick everyone else into distrusting each other and only being able to rely on the elites for anything. Feudalism didn't exist before the storage capabilities of agriculture enabled the privileged few to (wait for it) become much more wealthy than the poor.

That's not to say that Feudalism isn't inevitable. But I wouldn't go throw in the towel about humanity just yet in that regard. Really whether it's inevitable or not is immaterial, since you either fight it and die, or fight it and succeed. The only people who would want you to accept it as inevitable, or inherent, are the feudal lords. A lot of the "humans are greedy etc destroy everything and shit on their friends" is propaganda produced by said lords, to disenhearten people like you. It might be technically true, or an exaggeration of the truth, but it's carefully designed to make us all lose hope, and in losing hope we submit without argument to what we have been led to think is unavoidable.

tl;dr if some movie or blog says the natural order is for you to give all your money to rich jerks, the reason it's compelling and convincing is probably not that it's true, but that those rich jerks got a bunch of geniuses to make it sound as truthy as possible.

greyface is a lie.

[Arcturus]

AvtoVAZ was absorbed into the Worldcorporation

Ah, so this is it, then.
The real, most essential reason for why everything went to hell in a basket a few years later))

[Madrigal Baroque]

"Oh Jesus. It's a dust storm." Calloway felt his heart begin to pound. He'd heard about this phenomena on the hypernet. He'd read an article about it once. When the southamerizone became a desert, it helped to alter the way the winds worked, and combined with other factors, led to some truly horrendous dust storms. More than the dust bowl days of the Pre-Collapse Northamerizone. Worse than anything seen before. Dust storms that could sandblast buildings and choke the life out of men. Dust cataclysms that buried entire towns. Storms that could last weeks.

My wings are itching. I wish I could help. Yes, I know they make it okay, I'm certain of it, but I could send that storm off in another direction without so much as losing a pinfeather.

Yes, I know, I know. Fix fics suck. That's what I was trying to illustrate with my self insertions on the other story. I just...ohh, my inner pony wants to help!

Weeks. A sandstorm that could last weeks. It was... Calloway was in the mansion, screaming, yelling, banging pots together from the kitchen. Dropspindle was not in the mansion. Dammit!

*facehoof again* Ow.

"SAND STORM!"

"I don't understand... is that something bad?"

*face.HOOF.*

^x_x^ *thud*

"It's just the wind. It's impatient." Calloway's expression was grim. "It wants to kill us."

*wakes up* urrrgh...I think I have a hoofprint on my poll.

Everything in this version of Earth wants to kill you. Because you mortally wounded it. It's bucking pissed.