2040: A Matter of Taste

by KrisSnow

Flight Lesson

Alma's wings shot out to either side as though ready to bolt into the sky. That one word meant far too much. "Ratatosk, the inexplicable Norse-religion squirrel who runs up and down the World Tree connecting the nine worlds, carrying rumors."

"A good name," said the dark queen, hovering there with lazy flaps. "You seem to have an affinity for it."

"How do you know my background?"

"Have you forgotten where you live?" Nightmare Moon teased. "I have time magic to make each audience last as long as necessary, and mind magic for easy awareness of public information about anypony I meet."

The new pegasus watched her warily. "Subjective time compression and mental upgrades."

"Why not call those magic? Dedicated ponies use filter spells to swap the words automatically."

"So if you'd normally say 'anyone can learn science'..."

"Anypony can learn magic," said Nightmare Moon. "However, I am a true pony. My very thoughts tend toward such words."

"People change their brains for the sake of immersive roleplaying?" said Alma, feeling her tail twitch with unease.

"In a sense. If you lived here you could become a true pony to master flight or even walking, more thoroughly than you can as a natural biped. There are other benefits as well. I can tell that's not for you, today, but do think it over. Would you care for a temporary filter spell? I'll offer it as a one-use item." The queen raised one hoof and a faintly glowing banana nut muffin popped into existence above it. The enchanted treat floated its way over to Alma's saddlebags. "Is there more I can do for you today, Ratatosk?"

Alma didn't challenge the name. "If I lived here, how would I get a house? And would I be free to come and go to my Earthside job?"

"Ask around about rentals. I'm sure a hundred or so locals will be happy to set you up. With company, if you like." One unnerving, glowing, slit-pupiled eye winked. "Since you're a pegasus you should definitely look into the cloud-weaver's art, too. As for leaving, I'm offended. Do I look like some manner of evil overlord?"

Alma looked around the misty stone chamber where torches shone on the obsidian tiles and the nocturnal queen who wanted to rewrite Alma's brain.

The queen smiled. "In truth, you can go at any time, through the portal or not. It's strongly encouraged that you do this where you won't be seen 'logging out', as it were. If you 'leave' while in a private room you'll be seen as asleep or in a trance, which is acceptable."

Alma stepped away from the silver throne. "Thank you, then. It's been interesting. I need time to think. Oh, and your majesty: where is all this heading? I mean, are you planning to be the eternal queen of this place, or to step down and visit other parts of Talespace?"

Nightmare Moon scuffed at the floor with one hoof, looking thoughtfully down. "You're a newcomer, and I know little about you. Why don't you explore our lands at your own pace and try to learn our ways? This place is home for us, and potentially for you as well."

#

Alma rented a room at the Mango Inn rather than return to her main home in Ivory Tower. Spending a night as a pony seemed like a learning experience. She carefully climbed a set of broad stairs to a room where her hooves made the boards creak. A bookshelf perched above the simple cushion and blanket-pile of a bed.

Alma reached out for a book, bonked a hoof against it, and recalled what she was. She had to wobble on her hindlegs and snag the volume with her mouth, noticing her lack of slobber. It fell out of her square, flat teeth and dropped open next to the bed. Alma shrugged and settled onto the cushion, then tugged a blanket over her with her mouth.

Love Your Wings: Preening For Beauty and Performance, read the title. Alma gradually worked out how to turn pages with the sticky effect on her hooves. Much like dusting a room to refill some hidden maintenance meter, a pegasus' wings needed brushing and oiling to look good and fully enable flight. Alma poked her muzzle with one hoof as she realized she'd walked all the way back up here without trying her new wings.

She was surprised to see the little bump of a preening gland hidden under each of her wings, once the illustrations pointed them out. Apparently this was a private detail of pegasus anatomy, similar to how her body was G-rated except now that she was in private and thinking about it. She vaguely recalled that real birds' glands were near their tails, and was glad for this bit of inaccuracy. Alma nosed under one wing and tried brushing a bit of waxy stuff from there onto her feathers, using her muzzle. The touch tickled her feathers and and made her wings stretch out like long-unused muscles.

She'd never had to clean anything in other parts of Talespace. The only real maintenance tasks she'd had to do were going on little dungeon crawls to earn money to pay her bar-and-grill tab (since Kai's place charged), and the time when she'd rented an Earthside robot and the last user left it stinking and dirty. Wasn't it just busywork to make ponies clean and fix things, in a world where dust and damage were fictional?

Alma was still thinking about it as she went outside. I've been too focused on the implications and not on the part about having feathers! She smiled, banged her new limbs on the inn's doorframe, and staggered out to give them a good flap. Wind stirred under her and the wings swirled around like oars, down-back-up-forward. Maybe if she ran? She trotted forward, flapping repeatedly, then got distracted by wondering what kind of bird she was most like. She stumbled and went sailing down the path, yelping. Her wings shot out and wobbled. She glided, out of control, flinched right as a building loomed ahead, then saw only air under her hooves and the town far, far below. She'd gone over the cliff!

Alma flailed at the air, losing altitude whenever she tried flapping or turning. She held her wings straight out but for her attempts to yaw back toward the trail and not plummet to her death.

"Having a little trouble?" said a flame-colored pegasus kid zooming from above.

"Help!"

The colt saluted with one hoof, flew off with a gratuitous loop, and returned pushing a cloud around. He flew alongside Alma, saying, "State the nature of your aerial emergency. Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed."

Alma flapped, began stalling, and barely recovered her glide. "Just help me!"

The kid quit fooling around and pushed the cloud right into Alma's path. She crashed into it and slid to a stop as though she'd hit a ghostly pillow. Nothing but white around her. Alma flapped, struggled, and popped her head up out of the vapor. Her heart pounded but she wasn't moving.

The colt landed with a puff of cloud-stuff next to her and grinned down. "First time flying? Lucky you had me around! My name's --"

Alma's eyes narrowed. "You're the town, again. Following me."

"You said 'thank you' wrong. And no, I'm not part of Noctis. Only a part-time peggy. The name's Phoenix Forester."

Alma shuddered and looked around at the night sky. An aurora shimmered near the moon. Pretty, when she was on something like solid ground. "Thanks. I'm new at this."

"There's your problem. You only have basic gliding to start. Gotta do the quests to 'discover the true meaning of the pegasus heart' or whatever. I tried to get my friends to go pegasus too, but everypony else wanted to be other stuff."

Alma patted her saddlebags, feeling the magic muffin still there. "So I have to study pegasus lore to get my full powers? Or do you mean I have to get my brain changed so I use the cute pony slang like you?"

Phoenix tilted his big golden-eyed head, confused. "Oh! You mean saying 'everypony'? I didn't sign up for the brain thing; I just learned to talk like this while I'm in Hoofland. What are you, anyway? You yelled loud enough I figure you're an uploader, not playing Earthside."

Alma blushed as she managed to climb out of the cloud and sit atop it. "Alma, or Ratatosk according to the queen. Recent uploader, teaching part-time in Texas. You?"

"Been here since I got out of the pediatric cancer ward in '37," said Phoenix, poking his chest pridefully with one hoof. "I got in early. Rich parents. So I've gotta be a hero and help other ponies get to Talespace."

Alma winced. "I had a long life before I needed uploading for medical reasons, and I got in after the big price drop. What do you do to promote Talespace?"

Phoenix lifted off and hovered, a trick Alma envied. "The Interdimensional Seekers of Peace and Valor volunteer for all kinds of outreach programs. My buddy Volt was created as the mascot for a kids' hospital, and the rest of us help with the Talespace Tribune or hang out with the Knights of Talespace."

Alma's ears perked up at the mention of both. "Nice. It sounds like you do good work." Something else occurred to her. "If you're kids, are you going to school?" The University of Ivory Tower was a core institution of Talespace, but she'd heard very little about lower-level education.

"Pssssh. Who wants to sit at a desk all day? We do try to learn, though. Lately we've been trying to figure out how space math works. If you think flapping wings is tough, try planning how you get an Earth spaceship to dock with something in orbit."

Alma looked down from her cloud to the distant ground, and sighed. "I teach the slow kids, and I'm not cut out for it. It's nice to hear from someone brighter."

Phoenix stared at Alma, then flipped over backwards in midair, laughing. "Queen Nightmare Moon strikes again! All hail."

"Huh?"

The colt steadied himself and rested his hoof-elbows on the edge of the cloud, like a swimmer at poolside. "You just met her spooky majesty, right? So she's thinking about you. And I just happened to get a visit from somepony in Noctis asking me to do weather patrol tonight. So I was nearby when a teacher who doesn't know what these flappy things are, got into trouble. Get it?"

"The queen set up our meeting?"

Phoenix said, "Yup! This kind of thing happens a lot. She and the other Nobles are the game-masters. They make stuff happen. Evil dragon attacks Noctis? Probably sent by Queen Gentle Sun. Buffalo tribes stomping ponies? N.M.M. knew some adventuring party was getting bored. Unhappy teacher? Find her some students and make it look natural."

"That's a strangely aggressive approach to friendship." Alma thought back to how Ludo had treated her after the first day or two: no contact but some notepad banter and an invitation to attend "office hours" at the far end of a two-story clockwork dungeon full of traps and monsters.

The kid rubbed his ears with one hoof. "I guess we're friends now. Yay?"

"I'll agree to that if you tell me how to get down from here."

"Glide!" said Phoenix. "It's not like you're going to die for real if you mess up. Come on; jump over the edge with your wings out."

Alma stood, trembling, on the edge of a cloud with nothing below for a thousand feet. Instinct screamed at her to get to solid ground or at least to the center of this fluffy hovering platform. She tried to figure out how to flex her wings and open them wide. The sooner she did this, the sooner she could get to the trail.

Big golden eyes watched her. "I'd offer to tow this cloud, but that'd be cheating. You'll be happier if you do this. Aim for that lower bit of the trail, there, and fly straight. You've gotta jump for yourself."

Alma shuddered. "I... could just call for Ludo to teleport me out..."

"No!" Phoenix slapped the cloud with one hoof, making a bit of it vanish into steam. "That's not how ponies do things! Lady, if you weren't willing to do anything crazy, you should be in the grave right now, not living as an uploader."

She wondered if Ludo would warp her out of here if she really wanted it. Were the rules truly different in the Hooflands, making it more hardcore than other areas?

I want to learn and grow, thought Alma. Not to hide behind the rules of a game. She took a few timid steps backward, craning her long neck around to keep from falling that way, and then raced forward with an undignified yelp. The cloud no longer supported her and she fell... but more forward than down. Wind whipped through her mane and tail and streamed through her feathers. The cliffside trail loomed larger and larger ahead. Alma wobbled, wings aching, heart thumping. Then the trail was right there and her hooves skimmed the dirt, scrambled against it, and sent her tumbling end over end to land sprawled on her back.

"You okay over there?" said a unicorn with a medic's foreleg-band who just happened to be nearby.

Alma rolled over and shook, shedding a grey feather. "Yes, Noctis, I'm fine."

The medic looked flustered. "It was great for your first time. I know a pegasus who does flight training for the Shadowbolts racing team. He could --"

"I'm sure. I've got a lot to think about, though. Maybe later?"

Phoenix hovered nearby, grinning. "Need to working on landing. But yeah, you learned a little about what it's like."

Alma turned to him, though self-conscious about facing directly away from Noctis' latest puppet. "Eye of the tiger, heart of the pegasus?"

"Eye of...? As for pegasus, sure. But I fit right in as one of these because it's really what being an uploader ought to mean. Do you get it?" He bounced up and down in the sky.

Alma brushed one hoof along the cliffside trail. Her only deaths so far (after her legal death on an operating table) had been from traps in the Ivory Tower area, which had only blocked her way from getting someplace important. They'd been trivial because they were game stuff, only existing to get in her way and challenge her. This time, she'd risked the pain and humiliation of "death" because she wanted to become better, and had cared about the act itself. She'd also had a cheerleader.

She looked up at the full moon. "You can't really die, but you can still hurt. You can grow, and learn, and help people."

"Pretty much," said Phoenix. "I don't know if you wanna keep the wings or hooves, but whatever you do, don't be a plain old human. Be cooler than that."

Author's Note:

The bit about preening is inspired by Hoopy McGee's "Project Sunflower: Harmony". Among other things he had the idea about preening guides and kits being standard items, adding that Rainbow Dash buys whatever brand the Wonderbolts endorse. I figure there'd be different techniques for when "beauty" or "performance" is more important, and especially in a game setting there'd be options like lightning-resistant feather coatings. (But only once you have Endurance 5, the Feather Fancier perk, and duct tape.)

I like the idea that the characters are questioning having a Game Master setting up quests, but the situation Alma encounters seems inconsistent with that. If the cool part is that she's found a challenge that came from her own initiative rather than a GM making up obstacles to satisfy her values, doesn't that cast Hoofland in a negative light since GM presence is one of its big selling points?

I got talked out of a situation where "Fallout: Equestria" basically happens and everypony's horrified and trying to figure out how it was possible. There's one aspect of that, that will probably appear, though...

Comments

[book_burner]

Nightmare Moon scuffed at the floor with one hoof, looking thoughtfully down.

I smell a backstory.

She looked up at the full moon. "You can't really die, but you can still hurt. You can grow, and learn, and help people."

"Pretty much," said Phoenix. "I don't know if you wanna keep the wings or hooves, but whatever you do, don't be a plain old human. Be cooler than that."

Dawwwwwww.

I like the idea that the characters are questioning having a Game Master setting up quests, but the situation Alma encounters seems inconsistent with that. If the cool part is that she's found a challenge that came from her own initiative rather than a GM making up obstacles to satisfy her values, doesn't that cast Hoofland in a negative light since GM presence is one of its big selling points?

Hmmm... just to thought-riff on something else.

There's a massive crossover fanfic somewhere called Time Loops. In it, I remember hearing from someone that Equestria is considered a kind of safe, peaceful, causally-consistent place to "stop off" as characters with Big Important Missions move between other realms.

Why does Hoofland have to come with a GM throwing challenges at you? Maybe it's the nice, peaceful hometown you want to return to when you're on a quest someplace or when someone has attacked you, but with the bonus that since it's in Talespace, it can't be destroyed by an evil empire sending stormtroopers. Adventure out, in Earth or Talespace, as much as you like, but your friends in the Hooflands will always be ready with a smile when you return.

[KrisSnow]

6783898
Equestria Hoofland(s) as a haven area? Sounds interesting, but this is what I had in mind so far on a different note:
There's one openly unFriendly AI in this setting, called FAE. It's no more of a Mary Sue than the good guys' AI, but it is dangerous. It was programmed to "satisfy human values" as an afterthought, and interpreted this as "make sure humans don't get to any sort of utopia, because they value strife and domination". Hoofland then is some kind of semi-independent realm with somewhat different rules, to make it a lifeboat that FAE might not destroy even if it manages to wreck the rest of Talespace. Got to this concept by stumbling across "Gimle" because of thinking about the name Ratatosk. I was going to set off a magic-nuke to emphasize that the rules are different there, but that doesn't seem to work well.
Another possible twist here is that this notion of "making people into true ponies" is another form of defense against hostile AIs. If they're devoted to things that'd hurt humans, then changing their souls would exempt them and make creatures like FAE not bother them. Similar to the plot in "Star Control II"/"The Ur-Quan Masters" about the Arilou changing humans' "scent" to protect them from the Cthulhu-like Orz.
Because I'm posting this story here I'm trying to keep a focus on the characters hanging out in ponyworld, even though Alma's got good reason to visit several other realms and can't logically reach a decision about housing until she's visited a few of them. Not sure how to handle that. Also need to weigh whether getting to show the Celestia side of Hoofland is worth having to introduce yet more thinly-developed characters instead of focusing on the existing ones, and having to do more careful editing so I have a copyright-friendly non-FiMFiction version.

[Midnight-Blue766]

Oh! This is from that novel idea, right?

[KrisSnow]

6786237
Yeah, the novel is out now along with a novella-length spinoff, with more stories in progress. I'm trying to make this story suitable for this site and not annoy people, which is tricky.

[Midnight-Blue766]

6789759 Can I get a link to it?

[KrisSnow]

6790369
The novel, and the novella! There's some other material in my DeviantArt gallery.

[StarrySkies]

A typo or two kind of pulled me out of this - does Her Nightmariness have hands? - but I'm glad to read more of Alma's adventures! The new name is just spot-on.

[ferret]

You know... it's kinda rude... to call them Noctis. If I'm playing a pony named Twinkle, I'd be upset if someone insisted on calling me Darleen Johanson, or whatever my real name would be. Noctis is the same way, except playing multiple ponies, so you oughta respect their RP preferences and at least call them by their pony names.