Part 3 (Moriah) - Chapter 4
Whenever Moriah wanted to be alone, she wouldn’t fly. She didn’t want to contaminate her favorite activity with the stains of frequent despair. No; whenever Moriah was taken with such moods, she took to the forest. Illinois had long lost its largest forests before encroaching humans and their farms. Some trees had been permitted to remain however, and some of those were by the country club. With her car parked on an empty road, Moriah could wander into the trees and expect to be left alone as long as she needed to.
Rarely was she as disturbed as she was now. What was worse, she knew she had nobody to blame but herself. Like most of what caused her to feel this way. Ever since the Event, she was often brought to wonder if it was even worth it to keep living every morning. She spent many nights reminding herself of the pleasures of life. Yet in the morning, she always woke up feeling even more disgusted with herself than before.
Only in the trees could she forget herself. As she stumbled down familiar trails, she wept openly, not worried that anyone might find her here. Nobody had ever tried to follow her on these trips. Why should they start now? She found the natural smells far more soothing than she ever had when she was human, before the Equestrian spell had taken a life she only tolerated and replaced it with one she actively loathed. There was little sympathy to be gained from the trees.
Sometimes she took a hatchet, and threw it with her mouth into the bark of a tree. It was dangerous enough that she enjoyed the thrill, sometimes wishing she would steer it wrong and cut herself somewhere fatal along the way. Sometimes she just kicked things, destroying bushes and small trees with hooves far sturdier than human hands had ever been. Sometimes, if she was feeling really daring, she would try a spell. She had set a part of the forest on fire with that one once, though it’d been small enough that she had been able to contain it. Even in her rage, she brought a fire extinguisher these days whenever she wanted to try magic for relief.
None of her usual techniques brought her relief today, though. “Of course, they wouldn’t work!” she practically shouted, banging her hooves against a tree. Nothing much happened, except the little shock of impact up her leg, making everything a little wobbly for a few moments. “Of course it’d be you!” She tried to make her next kick even louder, tried to make it bring more pain. It did, but it didn’t help. She still felt terrified.
“You knew this could happen and it didn’t stop you. You knew this could happen!” She briefly considered everything that was going to happen now, advancing rapidly through the chain of reasoning. Moriah was pregnant, she was certain of it. Not just missing one of those positively infuriating cycles of hers, though it was certainly that. Not just the nausea she had started to feel in the mornings, following her through the day and resurging in force whenever she smelled anything cooking.
No; the greatest insult of all was that the thing she had actually wanted to master, magic, had begun to cooperate with her only with her internal environment. Moriah could barely sense the so-called “thaumic field” that made all magic possible, couldn’t sense the supposed radiation that flowed from all living things and had driven her species extinct. Yet even without the prosthetic horn, it took her only a slight moment of concentration to sense the energy coming from within her own body, similar but distinct from her own.
The thing couldn’t be more than a complex ball of cells, right? How could she sense it already? There was so much she had failed to fully process, so much that became clear once she had realized what she was feeling from within herself. Thaumic radiation was a soft thing, like invisible ripples in a pond. She couldn’t see them now, but she could feel them as she moved through space. Her perceptions were woefully clumsy if what Joseph described was any guide: he could feel for dozens of meters all around, pinpoint the positions of living things and ponies in particular with his eyes closed. He could even tell when someone was emotional, though he couldn’t pinpoint what emotion they were feeling.
This last she knew only too well, which was why she came out here in the first place. Joseph knew when she was upset, and would try to comfort her with all the precision and care of a rockslide. What was worse, if she could sense the tiny life within herself, if she had been able to feel it for nearly a week now (though it had taken days to guess what it might be), she was fairly certain he would be able to feel it too.
They would be parents. Moriah felt it with all the grim certainty of someone handed a terminal medical diagnosis. There could be no fighting, no escape. In a world without medical science, even a simple surgery might kill her. Not to mention it felt pretty stupid to try and keep their population down when what they desperately needed was as many people as possible to help rebuild. Even if everyone in this first wave of immigrants stayed, even if there were others… the idea of harming the child revolted her.
Considerably more than the idea of harming herself, as paradoxical as that was. A pity insane urges didn’t follow logical rules. Why had she come out here? What did she hope to accomplish? She couldn’t answer.
Not that anybody asked. Nobody knew. If anything, learning that Alex had endured something similar was almost worse. It reflected on Moriah herself; demonstrating clearly that it was possible to endure the indignity, and to thrive in it. Alex’s success proved what a truly worthless human being Moriah was.
Not even that, anymore, whispered a voice, deep inside. She heard it, and recognized the truth at once. Her only skill and passion, flying, would soon be out of reach. Soon she would be lucky if she could get an ultralight running, with as scarce as fuel would become. She would never fly a jet again, that was certain. Her one real passion, rotting away in tanks and fuel trucks all over the world. What supreme cruelty it would be, to have thousands of little aircraft all over, but none she could fly.
Was the struggle of living really justified by the reward? Moriah considered this very seriously; it wasn’t merely an academic argument. Unfortunately, she usually just went in circles. She had thought over the same points hundreds of times, but never had they been so personal.
She was still considering them when she realized, rather abruptly, that she sensed three thaumic fields nearby, not just the two that were her internal world. Her eyes shot open and she sat up on the ground, searching for the interloper.
Had one of the colonists followed her? A complete stranger from the new colony? Or worse, someone she actually knew? No, as it turned out. They weren’t even “human.”
Her new magical sensitivity showed her where to look, and standing there was a deer. A buck, though his antlers were small and short, so he was either a juvenile or just not very healthy. Even so, the deer towered over her by what felt like at least two feet. He was larger, stronger, and probably faster too.
Fear bubbled up from that same corner of her soul that whispered dark things to her at night. Yes, her life was truly without value. Her ultimate and most prominent fear, which hadn’t even existed until the Event, was about to be a reality. Of course this was what the universe had for her, it wasn’t as though life wasn’t plenty awful enough on its own.
The deer approached, sniffing at her. She froze, as though a wasp had just landed on her nose, not daring so much as a shiver to either side for fear she would prompt retaliation.
There wasn’t any. After a few seconds of energetic sniffing, the deer retreated a pace or two, meeting her eyes.
Moriah had seen deer before, when hunting with her father. She had met their eyes in the moment before pulling the trigger, and it hadn’t slowed her hand. She hadn’t even felt bad about it, really. She was a sapient predator; they were sub-sapient prey.
Something subtle had changed about the eyes. More than that though was the overwhelming evidence coming from where her horn had been. Evidence screaming to her that this “sub-sapient prey” was far more like her than he was different.
“I-I’m sorry if I intruded.” She took a breath, trying to steady her voice. “I come here every few days. If I was imposing in your home, I didn’t mean to…”
Silence. The creature seemed to be listening closely, watching her with more insight than any dog she had seen before the Event. More even than Huan. As though he somehow knew he was hearing meaning, even if he lacked the concept of a language.
Was she communicating with the cavemen of animals? While many animals seemed clever, it seemed Moriah had discovered something not even Alex had anticipated: the spell had apparently uplifted one of Earth’s natural animal species.
“Unless… you used to be human!” She completed her own internal dialogue out loud. Who was going to complain, the deer? “You aren’t human, are you? I get that being alone probably drove you crazy…”
Silence. The buck held himself still as she spoke, watching her mouth. As she watched, he even imitated, opening and closing his own mouth. The motions were at random however, and no sound emerged but those deer normally produce.
“Guess not. If you’d been human, you’d still know how to talk. All of us do, anyway. Unless your mouth can’t make words anymore.” She felt suddenly worried; had she just found someone who had life even worse than she did? “Nod if you can understand me!”
Nothing. Not a tilt, not a gesture, the creature just stared. She sighed then, though she hadn’t relaxed. “Guess you must be like the cows. Sky talks like they’re intelligent. Well, more intelligent than cows are supposed to be. You must be like that too now.”
She walked past the deer, feeling a little braver. He made no gesture to stop her, though she was conscious without even looking that he was following her. Deer were swift creatures, far too swift for her to get away if he wanted to stay with her.
She didn’t run, in case sudden movement might trigger an end to whatever strange fugue provoked his behavior in the first place.
She kept talking all the way back to her car. He followed, silent all the while, looking (as much as any deer can) like he was taking what she had to say very seriously. She went back to her previous line of reasoning, with all her worry about what a terrible parent she was, how she had no desire to pass on her genes. The buck listened, listened the way a good dog would listen, though he made no reply.
Eventually she reached the edge of the wood, where trees faded into a winding country road. She walked over to her car and found he would follow no more. He watched as she climbed up inside, and continued to watch as she started the car and switched on her radio again.
Joseph’s panicked voice came to her over the radio. “-iah! Moriah, say something!”
She reached down, depressing the transmit button with the edge of one hoof. “I’m here. What is it?”
“Thank god!” She could feel the relief in his voice like a physical weight. “We’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour, Moriah!”
“What is it?” She looked to the horizon, but didn’t see any smoke coming from the direction of town proper (or any other direction, for that matter). She left the radio in her lap, driving past the watching deer into a loop that would take her back to Alexandria.
Alex’s voice came in over the radio. “Moriah, something happened in Philadelphia. HPI noticed it during their most recent satellite scan; apparently its the strongest thaumic field they ever measured. It’s fading. We have to get there. We need you to fly us there immediately.”
Moriah’s knee slammed into the break-knob hanging from the wheel, and she nearly skidded off the road. She coughed several times. “You want me to fly somebody to Philadelphia?”
“Four of us, actually. You, me, Joseph, and Oliver. Satellite shows signs of ponies living there recently. Apparently there was some kind of explosion, and some stuff is still on fire. There could be injured in the city somewhere.”
She started driving again, cautiously. “It won’t be very fast, Alex. The learjet is still parked in Indianapolis. That’s hours to drive, more hours to test the fuel and run our pre-flight checks, hoping to God I can manage the weather-”
“Too slow. At the rate the thaumic field is fading, it might be gone in six hours. Any hope we have of getting Joseph there and identifying it depends on getting there before then. Not to mention anypony who might be injured! We’re going to take the Hummingbird. We’re already waiting there, and you remember where I parked it. I need you to drive out and meet us here. No time to grab supplies!”
“Alex…” She took a deep breath, trying not to sound patronizing. Then she realized the effort was futile, and tried to sound as patronizing as possible. “We’ve had the Hummingbird for three days. I’ve spent a few hours playing with its simulator. Asking me to fly it now is beyond suicide. I’m not even convinced a pony could fly it without hands for all those controls. If you want to die, a fuel-bomb would be much easier.”
Alex wasn’t amused. “They’re going to fly it remotely, Moriah! You’re only there in case there’s some kind of emergency, but we still need you!”
“Please Moriah.” Joseph’s voice again. “Ponies could be hurt. Adrian said there is a big group in Philadelphia, maybe bigger than ours. They might need our help.”
Alex wasn’t enough to convince her. Alex she would’ve happily told to shove it. Not Joseph, though. “It’s certain death if I ever have to fly it,” she said. “But there’s no way I’d let you take anything that beautiful without me. Give me ten.”
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So, Moriah has pretty certainly been gender-changed. At the very least, some kind of transformation on top of the species change, but that much we already knew. And now she's pregnant. Well, that is what generally happens. The interesting question is whether the baby will be someone new or someone old. Will people manifest through newborns as well as popping back into time? (Probably not... unless they were infants to begin with. Of course, then the distinction becomes academic.)
The deer may not have language yet, but they certainly seem on their way. That should prove very interesting in time...
Also, some kind of magical burst in Philadelphia? Whatever it is, it's definitely not good.
Was Moriah depressed before the Event, and pushed even further over the edge by the change? Maybe they'll get lucky and find a psychiatrist in Philadelphia, because she could really do with talking to someone.
I kind of thought Alex's desire to see Moriah get pregnant was a bit vicious when she mentioned it before. I hope when it's revealed she'll manage to be a bit more sympathetic about it. Moriah definitely doesn't need any moralising over it, since she's obviously pretty troubled by it already.
Sucks to be Moriah, but from a population perspective it's good news! I'm really interested in what this new, natural-born pony generation will be like. As Equestrian kids, they'll probably be so far ahead of their parents in terms of confidence with their bodies. They'll be really important for getting society going again.
Not to mention, it'll be really weird for them to grow up in a world where their parents were an entirely different species. Can you imagine a natural-porn pony watching human movies? That'd be bizarre!
6278436
This is going to become a big problem for mankind if they ever want to eat meat again. Killing a sub-sapient animal is one thing, but a thinking, self-aware being? That's murder, and I don't think humanity wants that sort of blood on their hands.
Hopefully the HPI has some kind of vat-growth technology in their facilities to create non-sapient meat products. Otherwise humans are probably just going to have to go vegetarian and rely on nutrient supplements. Entirely possible, but not the most healthy diet.
Poor humans. They just can't catch a break.
Maybe it's a pony ascending to alicornhood? Supposedly there's a colony there, it might make sense that successful leaders are gaining some sort of level-up. Or, perhaps a particularly powerful unicorn let loose a big spell somehow.
Maybe a big new group of
peopleponies appeared? I'd imagine such a happening would look to the scanners like a sudden new burst of magical energy.The deer is significant, there's a picture.
Moriah and Joseph as parents... I already feel sorry for the kid
A computer geek with underdeveloped social skills for a father and a semidepressed pilot for a mother... Sounds like one hell of a parenting team
Moriah! To the hummingbird!
stream1.gifsoup.com/view6/3024754/batman-scene-transition-o.gif
I loved this chapter so much! Mostly from the tidbits about pony biology and how magic works. Collect all of the tidbit, compile then into a cohesive truth! Yes! Er... sorry.
The deer and cows are starting to raise the question 'what is a man?'
6278436 I'm pretty sure she wasn't. She gave them her name before she even knew what was happening. Far too little time to make up a female name. Not to mention the way she spoke of her family. But there is something else going on aside from just wanting to be a pegasus...
There is a sequel to The Last Pony on Earth?
I love you man. The first one was awsome to read. I cant wait to read this :D
Keep up the amazing work.
labpony
Ouch.
Quick note, deer have antlers, not horns. It's a common mistake, same holds true for elk and moose.
Let the magic fueled accidents begin
What surprises me about Moriah's apparent gender change is she was willing to try the sex out pretty fast (speaking for a world changing gender and species flip) while Alex has to this point said "The re-population of earth will happen without me". Yet Moriah also seems to hate her change while Alex is more accepting. It's a bit contradictory. I wonder if it's Moriah's way of selling "like hell I'll let this dominate my life".
Wonder if that Thaumatic surge was Sunset coming back through. Having to use insane power to make it happen.
Think Joseph realizes that Moriah is pregnant yet, or is he being a willful obliviot about it?
Edit: What Alex really needs to find for Moriah amongst her library is something covering Equestrian flying machines, be they peddle powered or airships of a more conventional nature.
6275200
Was wondering about that too from the moment it became clear what magic does to humans.
Makes that megaspell even more interesting.
If humans are killed by magic you can't cast it directly on them. Actually you can't use any form of blanket spell on earth. It sounds as if they took some theoretical quantum thaumaturgic construct by Starswirl and did something to spacetime itself.
Did they create a planet sized mirror image of their own universe's parameters and draped it over earth at just the right moment? That way the spell would have been cast on the fabric of reality itself, not the planet sitting in that part of spacetime that suddenly got a whole new set of rules. Pretty sure Twilight was head of the design team.
That spell probably drained Equestria of dangerous amounts of magical energy. Well, they'd do that for friends. Maybe even Discord chipped in? Considering the effects over the next ten thousand years that thing should have been right up his street.
"And I didn't even have to lift a claw."
He just arrived in Philadelphia for an extended vacation btw.
On its own, that might have made me feel me even more sorry for Moriah than the chapter had made me so far. With the picture, it's just
Seriously though, good job rounding her out.
Moriah is preggers. Heh. This poor little foal is not getting the best start in life. Pull it together, Moriah!
Also, this deer intrigues me. A proto-sapient? FiM fan-canon has quite a few works where deer are a fellow sapient species, but I don't think the show itself ever referenced it.
And what's funny is that for a little while I was tossing around the idea of a PaP story, set in the tri-state area (New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania). And now Philly gets a nod!
6278605
A miserable pile of secrets, of course! But enough talk, have at you!
Deers: We listen to what you have to say!
So, Moriah is actively suicidal. That probably explains a thing or two.
Uh oh.
As an aside, that implies interesting things about the ease of pregnancy tests in Equestria.
A deer, and it's detectable by means of it possessing a thaumic field? Huh, now that raises some questions about the possible species targets of the Equestrian spell.
An emergency trip to Philly? I wonder if Sunset just teleported back to Earth.
6279156
What amuses me is that Joe hasn't noticed. If the pregnancy was "visible" in the thaumic field, he would have seen it, and because of his personality, even if he didn't understand what it was immediately, he would have sat around thinking about it until he figured it out. I'm sure there's a spell for it, but I don't think anyone can "see" the child besides Moriah yet.
Unless he knows and just isn't saying anything because he knows it would just set her off. I don't know that he has the social grace for that, though.
6279065
i.imgur.com/bAq2Nk6.jpg
6278545 A semi-depressed mother with (From what I can tell from my completely untrained eye) potentially alcoholic tendencies
6279200
Oh goodie, just hope they keep the bottle away from her for the pregnancy
And once again you raise interesting things to contemplate. The first natural pony. How much, if any, 'humanity' will it retain? And by that I mean are we looking at out first FiM type pony born on earth? I know at times there seems hardly any distinction between pony personalities and humans, but I always gave them a little more credit than us.
Onto slightly less thin ground. Moriah. Wow... Okay, lets try to see this from her perspective. He was a guy, now He's a girl... pony. Very hard to deal with, but not insurmountable. Then He/she becomes pregnant... with a baby pony. Okay, now we hit incalculably high freak out levels. I don't know what ladies feel when they find out there's another life form inside of them, but as a guy... nope... brain shuts down... Cascading Fail Error. And that's before even getting to the idea of giving birth... to a pony. Male or female that one is a pretty big trauma to come to terms with. Still there is a possibility that Moriah just might be good mom material. Ah, and then there's Joseph... who hates kids... I see either a split, or a total about face. No room for a middle ground with these two personalities...
Ah, inferiority in the face of a superior person, that's a sad thing that affects us all.
Moriah can't be blamed for being jealous, or looking down on herself in the face of Alex, not only do they share circumstances, they also switched genders, yet Alex is strong about it and still pushing ahead.
I like the deer... and they can't simply be like cows because it has a picture, right? So that means they will likely be a character or something soon.
Now, Moriah is going to have that HELL YEAH moment right? Maybe even a blues brother reference 'It's ten in the evening, we're driving a plane far beyond my understanding, got six hours deadline, and we're ponies... hit it.'
Heh... anywho, venting, that's what every person needs, Moriah just needs it a little more.
maybe the deer was a human that doent speak english ? like a tourist that was around there or something
6279156 Well to quote an earlier exchange between Joeseph and Moriah
So as far as I can see it, there are three possibilities as to the cause of the explosion:
1: Somebody had a particularly destructive magical flareup, probably a survivor, which was possibly compounded by an industrial explosion.
2: An Equestrian villain stayed behind hoping to start a new regime where the Princesses couldn't get at them, and has just demonstrated their power, also potentially compounded by an industrial explosion.
3: Other Equestrians that stayed behind by choice or by accident have gotten into a conflict with locals and accidentally blew something up.
My money is on an Equestrian search party that got left behind, and might be throwing some sort of (well deserved) tantrum that spiraled out of control.
6278754 Human death through magic field is very fast but it isn't instantaneous. Leave it to Equestria's experts on magic to find a way to transform the humans before they are killed by the thaumic field.
Actually, this seems a pretty hard constraint for the spell (both as difficult and unbreakable).
Mysterious magic explosion? My guess is Sunset, saying screw it to interdimensional drift and just brute-forcing across the gap.
Also, deer-friend!
6278545
Well, on one hand (hoof), they're probably not the best parental candidates in the group. On the other, imagine growing up with both parents playing video games with you.
6279065
Even performing coitus interruptus 100% correctly every single time you have sex, it still has a 4% failure rate in humans. If ponies share certain aspects of horse biology, it would also be more difficult to achieve.
6278526
Just wait until a few thousand years have passed. From what Alex was told, it sounds like the rate of return for 'modern humans' is going to slowly ramp up, with the majority arriving in the distant future. Ten thousand years is a LONG time. I expect that in the near / mid-term, the natural born pony population will outstrip the returning human population.
Which means.. Modern humans arriving as a different species, separated from their friends and family, and dropped into a society and culture that will be more or less unrecognizable... And in which they will be a significant minority at best. I don't think there are words to describe the level of culture shock this is going to represent.
6279437 The strange thing in this case is that the deer didn't try to say anything, not even in another language.
Now the question is, what would make a person not answer in any language? My theory is the deer was a human child (because s/he has a thaumic field), mentally young enough to not know to answer when spoken to. Looking older can be attributable to, when human, having a disorder which prevented further mental development.
I don't think Alex is really better at this than Moriah. Her attitude towards her gender-change might seem stronger, but it's just as messed up, really. Acting as if she's always been female, never talking about it if she can help it - that doesn't seem healthy to me.
Also, I'm really warming up to Moriah. Before, my attitude towards her has always been mixed. She's pretty annoying with her constant hostility towards everything, yet I did like for the simple fact that she's like the only pony apart from Alex who actually cares about being human in this group. I actually liked how she's the only one who rejected Sky's pony wordings when even Alex has given up on that.
I want to see more of Riley, however.
6278496
If only she could contact Doctor Wolf.
pre14.deviantart.net/197b/th/pre/f/2014/326/2/d/dr_wolf_by_vector_brony-d878x4x.png
Then again, on the alternate Earth this story is set in, even if that guy didn't get time displaced, he probably wouldn't make videos about ponies. I'm pretty sure he's a real psychiatrist though.
6278706
I just figured Moriah was gay to begin with.
Not sure if anyone's addressed this, but the Earth cows became smarter after the event like the other animals. But in Equestria cows are sapient. Does that mean there are humans somewhere coming back as fully sapient cows?
I hope not. Considering Sky's growing farm, that would be super awkward.
6286414 I'd read a side story like that. XD
Why are people in the comments warming up to Moriah? Being a tragic hero is fine, but being a selfish bitch about it garners no sympathy. If you don't have useful skills, you develop them. She was supposed to learn how to be an electrician, something Alex didn't master. Count your blessings instead of being such an insufferable cunt.
Jeez, this story gets to me.
6487861
Probably because we're getting into her head, seeing how messed up her depression and other worries have made her.
Riley, she's the adorable changeling we should all love, as the Queen demands righteously. Not even remotely ugly. That... deer is cute, and simultaneously menacing. I'm scared.
6278526
If there's an explosion when alicorns become, well, alicorns in the human world, then Alex should be pretty careful. After all, she's gotta become an alicorn. At least, I hope so.
Fun Fact: The official IDW comics have intelligent and magical, talking deer as characters. These deer are featured in The Root of the Problem, the tenth story arc of IDW Publishing's comic series, spanning issues #27 and #28.
6278436
Sounds like somebody tried to split the thaum...
(Smallest possible "particle" of magic; the thaumic equivalent of the atom.)
Well, Moriah did get one thing correct. She is the most useless member of the group.