Earth Without Us

by Starscribe

Episode 3.2: The Dreamquest of Unknown Alexandria

Dear Journal,

This isn’t one of my journals. This isn’t real paper, it’s some kind of silicone resin that I’ve never seen before, and I don’t think was invented when I lived in Paradise.

Today I woke up alone. Crater has been destroyed. The three receiving warehouses had collapsed without a trace, leaving no sign on the surface that the city had existed. I walked all day, until it got dark and my strength ran out. The old me would still be walking now.

Paradise was destroyed by a violent conflict of some kind. My working theory is that the destruction of the city’s CPNFG is what allowed me to return. Whatever magic I use to return to life, it was apparently suppressed in some way. Some kind of… null transit channel in the thaumic probability space… Joe would be better at explaining it. If he were still alive, I mean.

I wasn’t myself when I woke up. My wings are all batty now. Presumably I’ve lost access to weather magic, though I haven’t tried using it much since that time I barbecued a pony. There are other physical changes as well. Ears and teeth seem to be a little different, and I have much less difficulty navigating at night. If it wasn’t so much colder I might switch to traveling purely in the dark. But judging by the temperature and the stars, it’s spring. This will be a very difficult winter.

I searched for supplies before leaving Paradise, but there wasn’t much to find. Here’s what I have:
1 backpack
1 half-broken pony gun harness
5 bullets, made of an unidentifiable silvery metal. Have ruled out brass, silver, tungsten based on properties
2 quickdraws
1 belay device
1 rappel rack
100m composite line
1 helmet with broken lamp
1 folding knife
1 set assorted screwdrivers
pens and pencils
1 journal

There is no food, no communications devices, no water purification tools, flashlights or useful clothing. I could probably get some of the last out of the ruins if I wanted to go back in there, but… so much of it was stained or damaged that I don’t think I want to. Until a proper winter arrives I should be alright.

I’m scared. My magic is so weak now, tenuous and feeble. Either the former humans of Earth have been nearly wiped out, or the memory of humanity is nearly gone. I don’t know which. I also don’t know what would happen to me if they all forgot. Would I disappear? Would I cease to exist? Or just… grow old and die like anypony else? The last one doesn’t seem so bad.

I have made detailed observations of the stars and compared their positions to the stellar catalog. More observations will be required to determine the present year, though I can see significant drift. I wish I had a compass and a calculator.

I need to learn what happened. Was the HPI destroyed? What happened to pony society? The nearest city to Paradise Crater used to be Salt Lick, and I should reach it tomorrow. I could just visit and see what I find, but I have other plans first.

Thestrals might lack weather magic, but they do have something else, and that something might be my only source of information.

The Equestrian books explain dream magic was a gift of somepony called the Shadowspinner, during an ancient rebellion Equestria had apparently forgotten. I don’t know if that’s true, but like all the Equestrian books, I memorized it. If I knew enough to teach Jackie to use her magic, I know enough to use it myself. I have nowhere to sleep but this shelter I’ve made with fallen logs and leaves, and I hear noises outside. Assuming I’m not attacked by wolves in the dark, I’ll see about using Luna’s techniques myself. I will find the library, wedge open its doors, and step beyond into the Dreamlands.

I will find a sympathetic dreamer and see what I can learn. My… friends might be dead by now. Ezri, Jackie… unless the destruction started right after I was killed, I don’t think their odds of still being alive are very high. I pray to God I didn’t miss any of my family in Portland. Without access to Athena, I have no way of checking.

Before I died, Jackie said it was possible to find the dreams of humans, even when those humans slept protected by an antimagic field. I’ll write tomorrow about my results, whatever they are.

-A Very Lonely Bat

The spell did not place Archive in her library. The simplest of all dreamwalking magic, the sort that took her little practice and only careful meditation along with the words and diagrams of the spell, deposited Archive at the top of a set of worn stone steps, stretching down into the darkness of unconsciousness.

In light slumber she descended the seventy steps to the cavern of flame, where the bearded priests Nasht and Kahman-Than waited in their vaulted chambers with Pshents on their heads. The priests seemed surprised to meet one they had heard so much about, but not known to be a dreamer of any skill or significance. Archive explained her predicament, and her quest, to discover dreamers with two legs instead of four. They wished her well, and offered a farewell blessing before she descended the seven hundred steps to the Gate of Deeper Slumber and set out across the Skein.

Flight was her first gift, given of the simple will that was its only prerequisite. She swam through the air of an enchanted wood, filled with strange dreamers with identities that were not obvious at first. Curious, she passed through the barrier of one, soaring high and blending into the dark so she might pass overhead and observe. She saw a village hidden in the trees, a village woven of living branches where fires were never kindled and prayers were always offered to the greatest trees.

The villagers were not ponies, nor did they seem to share any of the blood of her kind, but were instead very ancient dwellers of the forest, given an intelligence she had never seen before. The deer might have been any of Earth’s hunter-gatherer tribes, save that the only animal skins they wore were their own. Mineral paints of white and red seemed to mark the individuals, and their language was… strange. I could stay and learn it, she thought. Take on the role of one of the characters and join the dream. It wouldn’t take much time.

Still more time than she had, though. She stayed long enough to observe and classify the civilization—close familial bonds, a patriarchal structure where antlers were an expression of one’s right to rule, without an apparent written language, without metals or mining or any kind of hunting. They did have agriculture, and construction with mud and tile and woven branches. From the shape of their living-tree structures, it seemed magic too was somehow within their grasp, though none had wings or horns or any other visible means of channeling it.

She did not stay to study, as much as she would’ve wanted to, and departed by the same dream-gate she had used to enter. There were many such dreamers in the enchanted wood, a vast culture of similar dreamers with similar dreams. Indeed, even though the space in the Dreamlands was infinite and non-euclidean, she found it difficult to pass through the wood without bumbling into some dream or another. Either these deer are culturally homogeneous, or else extremely numerous, or maybe both. She couldn’t speak their language, or else she would’ve asked.

Eventually she passed beyond the enchanted wood, flying deftly under twin moons to the rolling countryside that borders the village of Ulthar. Many cats wandered the dirt roads and quaint lanes, without fear of being struck by vehicle or any worry over what the people might do. Ulthar had many citizens, and where she saw they greeted felines and each other alike with polite bows.

Jackie had known the secret language of the cats, and Archive found herself longing for her company. Jackie could have consorted with them, and asked directions to the dreamers they were looking for. Of course, there were many other citizens and not all of them were cats. She sought out a quaint farmhouse where a polite human couple greeted her with thick accent, offering her water from their well and directions to the town proper. She thanked them, and asked after news of the waking world, though they could tell her nothing. It had been many centuries since they had left it behind, and once dead no dreamer would ever return.

Maybe Jackie’s still in here. She was a powerful dreamer, powerful enough to survive in the Dreamlands when her body died. The real question was whether she would even want to, if she couldn’t take Ezri. Could she?

Archive traded stories of the waking world for a pint of fresh milk from the farmers, which she took with her in the saddlebags Equestria had given her. In the Dreamlands such a gift could not be taken, though it would not follow her when she awoke. It was only a memory, after all.

Eventually the peaked roofs and crumbling gables of Ulthar came into view, with its tidy cobbles and streets always alive with the mewling of the cats and the sound of conversation. This was an old place—a very human place, and so her equine body attracted more than a few nervous looks. She walked alone through the streets, searching for familiar human dreams. She could find none here of course, since dreams of such country places were no longer within the minds of men. Whatever humanity had become in the centuries since the Event, it wasn’t a race of gentry farmers.

But Archive had known this, even as she knew a great deal about the unconscious world. Dreams drifted through the Skein, grouping and clustering together according to their nature. One who dreamed of forested places would do so within the enchanted wood, though few dreamers were wise or able enough to ever leave. Perhaps a thousand years ago Archive might’ve found these streets packed with human dreams, but not today. She would have to venture further.

She inquired with several of the respectable merchants in town, but none had seen the dreams of their own kind in uncounted years. They could give her no advice, and in the end the night found her wandering increasingly empty streets with only the cats for company. Archive had expected this, and prepared accordingly, pouring out the milk that she had bought in a silver bowl as an offering to the many felines. Though she could not speak their secret language, she suspected many of them would understand her, and might be moved by compassion to aid a dreamer in distress.

Though a large number of the animals flocked around her to drink and many remained close to listen, ultimately she was left with only a solitary black kitten for company. The animal licked a little at her face as she spoke, apparently sensing her distress. It did not speak, but soon after set off slow enough that she could follow, leading her atop the densely-packed houses to the peak of a crumbling church tower. There it looked meaningfully at her, squaring its shoulders in preparation for a jump. She could see no visible destination but the ground below, but even so she imitated, spreading her wings in preparation for what she expected to be a fall.

The cat jumped, but instead of falling to the cobblestones below it continued upward, soaring higher and higher in plain defiance to gravity. Archive did not know its magic, but she had her wings and could keep up so long as she focused. The kitten seemed to have a destination in mind.

That destination was apparently the moon. In dreams time was a strange thing, and distance even stranger. It warped and stretched around her, day and night alike blending together until her hooves eventually touched down on the crumbling sand of the lunar surface. She felt the chill of space, but not the vacuum that would’ve stolen the breath from her lungs on the real moon. This was only a dream after all, with very different rules. She would not suffocate unless she entered the dream of someone who knew enough of the rules of the universe to replicate them.

“I don’t know why you would take me here,” she entreated her nocturnal guide. “I’m searching for the dreams of living humans, not the dreams they used to have. Maybe NASA scientists used to dream of that place, but that ambition died even before the Event. We won’t find anyone here.”

The cat ignored her, bounding across to another nearby hill and expecting Archive to follow. She did, though this time she didn’t need her wings. The strange properties of the moon itself were enough to bear her onward. Though the soil was pale and the gravity far reduced, she found trees growing along some of the banks, trees with pale bark and leaves that curled away as she passed, tucking themselves away in the crevices of branches as though they feared what she might do. There were rivers too, running with black liquid not easily identifiable as anything she understood. Whatever it was had a very foul smell, and her guide avoided it even more judiciously than it had stepped around the little puddles in the streets of Ulthar below.

Eventually she saw something strange on the lunar soil, something she had not been expecting. Domes of rock, made from strange hexagonal segments that seemed to slot together. They weren’t very numerous, clustered together near one of the craters, though that scarcely bothered her. There was construction equipment here, of the unmanned and automatic variety Athena had favored for her HPI. The writing on the domes was familiar too. “Please, tell me! Are we looking at something real, or some imagined creation of the unconscious? Does this place exist?”

The cat mewed, though it had stopped in its advance and would walk no closer to the automated tanks and grinding drilling machines. It sat back on its haunches, as if waiting for Archive to advance on her own. She lowered her head with respect, thanking the creature, though she did not try to imitate the words of its secret tongue. She would not risk offending it, after it had done her such a kindness in leading her here. The feline licked at the gray dust at one of its paws, then rose and shook itself, turning away. It left her there on the moon, alone with the machines.

Archive followed the familiar pattern of work as diggers extracted lunar stone, walking beside tractors as big as buildings to an impressive open refinery. Regular blocks of metal and pale silicon emerged from the end of the line, rolled by smaller drones towards the dome. These she followed, getting in line for an airlock behind several of the little robots. She paused just beside the mechanism, then darted behind it as its tracks ground inside.

It was even more familiar inside. Familiar hyperstable alloys made the tracks, though the walls seemed made from some kind of pressure-treated version of the lunar rock. The pattern was quite similar to the one she had seen used in Paradise, with an excavation wrapping around in interlocking loops towards deeper levels of increasing importance. The writing was all English, and she followed it through a processing plant and then an automated factory. There were no doors for her size, nor any doors that would permit anything that wasn’t human to pass, and so Archive was forced to call upon one of her newest dream powers. Just as any dreamer could do within the space of their own mind, a thestral could do anywhere, and she forced herself to change.

It was not very difficult. Being a pony had been her natural state for hundreds of years, but some part of her soul still had two legs. She changed into that Valkyrie, that young woman with bright green hair and glittering medieval armor. Her spell-book appeared in place of the saddlebags, and the transformation was complete.

No sooner was it done than alarms began to sound all around her, the machinery all falling still. She waited patiently, though she could very easily have used her magic to avoid the door if she wanted. Someone or something had made this place, and she intended to find out who.

Eventually a doorway opened, and a security drone rolled through. It was on tracks like many of the others, though it also had a pair of limbs and other containment tools attached. “Citizen, you have wandered into a dangerous area. Please follow me to habitation.” The voice was familiar—feminine and confident.

“I will comply,” she responded, following the drone from the doorway with a skip in her step. The interior resembled the exterior stations, with hexagon shapes cut into moon rock and resined natural stone the preferred building material. She bounced along behind the rolling drone, through a deserted hallway where the only other occupants were other drones.

Then she found a dream; just one, alone in a single chamber of the moon. It was so small and faint she nearly missed it, thanks to her ignorance of the method for dream travel. Archive squared her shoulders and passed inside, preparing her spellbook to protect her.

It was a human alright, hard at work. He sat at the top of a large earthmover vehicle, toppling over a seemingly endless ocean of broken city. Whole skyscrapers crumbled before his comically-oversized craft, crunching glass and rubble that vanished beneath the wheels instead of leaving an ocean of debris behind it.

The face was perfectly familiar, completely unchanged from the last time she had seen him. Isaac had been only a youth when he had defended her in Paradise Crater, perhaps in his mid-twenties. It was true that the surgeries and enhancements had strange effects on the lifespan, making aging hard to determine from that point on.

Even at a distance she could see clearly that Isaac hadn’t changed in all the intervening years, like a statue frozen in time. He couldn’t see her, as his machine was loud and at least five stories tall. He would flatten her without even noticing.

He would’ve, if she hadn’t teleported into the cabin of the wrecker with a faint flash of white light. She managed the atmosphere, controlling the explosion so that it wouldn’t be too obtrusive.

Even so, Isaac heard. He rested in a docking port as much as a chair, his body bare from the waist up. He was thickly muscled, tanned, and covered with deep scars. Cables and tubes ran into him, granting him only limited flexibility, but it was apparently enough for him to turn sideways and look at her. The wrecker grinded to a halt, its massive engines spinning down. “What do you want me of, Valkyrie? It’s been years since you called.”

He doesn’t know he’s dreaming, she reminded herself. I have to help him see. There was magic one could use to show a dreamer they were asleep, but it was dangerous. Not because it might hurt anyone, but because it could destabilize the dream. Finding Isaac was itself a miracle… she couldn’t risk it. Many people simply couldn’t lucid dream, and would wake if forced to realize they were asleep.

“Isaac,” she approached him slowly, replacing her spellbook in its holster. “I have come for information.”

He nodded, lowering his head to her. “I would give my life for you, Valkyrie.”

I thought you already did. No human could’ve survived the magical exposure he had endured. “Where do you live, Isaac? On the moon? But then why would you dream of working on Earth…”

He ignored the second question, shaking his head emphatically. “Athena would have it so—I am too valuable to risk in war. But a soldier’s life is war. I cannot serve if I spend my days in a box far away.” He gestured out at the controls. “This is our compromise. I serve, but not in battle. Neither of us are happy.”

He rose suddenly. As he did, the multi-jointed assembly along his spine hissed and clicked, disconnecting one cable after another. Some foamed with liquid as they came loose, while others sparked briefly in the second they broke contact. “You have come to call me to something higher, Valkyrie. You always do.” He dropped onto one knee before her, raising one fist to his chest. “You have my sword as ever you did.”

Archive stared down at the kneeling Isaac, speechless. So far as she knew, she had been absolutely and completely dead until just now. Has someone been impersonating me in Dreamlands? She couldn’t ask him, couldn’t call his faith into question when she still needed information so desperately.

“What happened to the HPI? Are they living in steel boxes?”

He grunted. “Some are. I know it isn’t their fault, but I still feel they could find a better way to be useful. Soon they will all be gone, and only I will endure.” He gestured behind him again. “I clear the way for a city no one will live in.”

“They can’t,” she responded. “Humans can’t live outside a thaumic field. Just putting buildings unprotected on the surface and expecting them to live on them is stupid. They couldn’t even if they wanted to.”

“I know!” He rose, suddenly reaching out and gripping her by the arm. His hands were impossibly strong, nearly as strong as an earth pony’s grip. She couldn’t get away as he tugged her to the large glass window. Below them, as far as she could see was an endless rotting city, larger and more sprawling than any that had ever really existed. It towered overhead, yet all would be crushed equally by the craft they sat in.

“If I survive, other humans can too. Immunity to magic is transmissible.”

“What?” She jerked her hand away, staring slack-jawed at him. “You’re immune to magic?”

He stiffened, looking suspiciously. “Do you test me, Valkyrie? You gave me the gift. Why would you doubt it?”

The whole world seemed to flicker around her, the craft started shimmering at the edges. Everything but Isaac started to blur and fuzz. Dammit! The dream was falling apart. If she didn’t leave, its destruction would “kill” her, and wake her up.

Jackie probably could’ve stabilized a crumbling dream, if she were alive. But Jackie probably wasn’t alive. “Where can I find you?” she asked, panic in her voice. “Where’s the last of the HPI?”

Isaac only pointed above his head, his expression growing cold. “Why don’t you visit them and ask? They’ll tell you.”

Archive reached out, opening her mouth to scream in protest, to no avail. The dream crumbled to dust. Far away, her sleeping body woke with a painful start, still seething from the frustration of her failure. She didn’t know if Isaac would remember the dream, but she sure would.

Comments

[Jirodyne]

That's the problem with dreams. Are they real, or fake? will you remember it, only parts of it, or none of it? Also was anything that happened, what really happened or just what you believe to have happened.

[bonberjean]

well... progress

[Neece]

7644347 that's true for normal folk. Alex had dream magic now, so remembering it is child's play for her.

Now, things are getting interesting. It would be nice for Jackie and Erzi to still be alive, too. Alex deserves the chance to reconnect to daughter and her wife

[Firebirdbtops]

I think Archive should have memorized a few more books on hallucinogens.

[AyanamiRei]

Okay, now I am curious: Why the HELL is going on???

Seriously, I thought I would get more answers, but instead I found only more questions!! I now hunger for a new chapter even more than before @.@

[Doppler Effect]

That's a worryingly (and appropriately) Lovecraftian chapter title for the subject of this chapter...

[Derpmind]

So... if Alex can get Isaac to remember something from a dream, then she can get Isaac to tell Athena of her general location. That's a good plan, right?

[ChaosDX1]

I like how it opened with a journal entry. Nostalgic in remembering how Alex's journey began so long ago.

[Vadelent]

Well, considering about a thousand years have gone by since she last walked the planet things don't seem too badly off...

[Biker_Dash]

I feel like I've gone down the rabbit hole with this chapter...

[redpandapaw]

I'm stuck on a small detail mentioned in this chapter and the last. If it's spring, then summer is coming, why is Alex so caught up on winter? Twice it has been mentioned how bad the coming winter will be, but that is two seasons away.

[harts fire]

wow a good chapter and now I am wondering just how long it took Archive to regenerate this time?
it sounds to me like it was several decades at lest.

[Yami Vizzini]

...I'm sorry, I can't treat Alex's plight with all the gravity it deserves when I'm looking at that adorable pout.

She thanked them, and asked after news of the waking world, though they could tell her nothing. It had been many centuries since they had left it behind, and once dead no dreamer would ever return.

Did we learn before that that was an afterlife option? That sounds new.

Maybe Jackie’s still in here. She was a powerful dreamer, powerful enough to survive in the Dreamlands when her body died.

o, nvm

[Lucky Star 33094]

7649128 I thought the same thing. For a minute I thought she might have mistaken the start of fall for spring, but hinestly I don't know.