G7.01: Home
The Effigy was supposedly one of the fastest pony airships ever built. It had the look of something sleek, with swept-back edges and low railings over the sides.
Lucky walked slowly along the deck, her wings free to catch her if the air-shield failed and she got ripped off. But nothing like that happened. The world blurred by just over the polished wooden side, fast enough that even Lightning Dust seemed impressed.
They were not alone on the sloop’s single deck—there were five or six guards, which were also serving as the ship’s crew. The controls seemed far more like a 1900s steamship than an 1800s tall ship, but who was Lucky to complain? She certainly wouldn’t have claimed to be an expert in pony technology. Just another eclectic point for the scatterplot.
“I’ve looked all over,” Lightning Dust muttered, settling down to sit beside her. “I don’t see a propeller or a gasbag. They shot the Speed of Thought down less than a week ago and they’re copying it already?”
“I don’t think so.” Lucky kept her voice down—which was somehow possible thanks to the air shield. There was none of the constant roar that she’d experienced on the Speed of Thought’s deck, even when they were stationary. They certainly weren’t stationary now. “It’s magic. There’s something big and powerful in the center of the ship, in the room they won’t let us look at. I bet it’s some kind of levitation spell.”
“That sounds like a stupid idea.” Lightning Dust flexed her wings, as though making sure they were still in working order. “I don’t care who they have running the spell, they’ll get tired eventually. Isn’t it stupid to make airships that can fall if they stop working?”
Lucky couldn’t help herself—she burst out laughing.
Her mother stared, face drifting between confusion and annoyance. “What’s so funny?”
“I, uh… I lived in an airship like that where I grew up. It had six little motors on it, and they had to spin really fast to stay in the air. If more than one of them failed at once, I would’ve fallen out of the sky and died. Since I… didn’t have wings back then.”
Lightning Dust glowered at her. “Then you were stupid. Don’t do that again.”
“It didn’t happen,” Lucky argued. “And if it happened today, I could just fly out. You taught me pretty well.”
Lightning Dust grumbled darkly in response. “You can’t bribe me into ignoring this. I don’t care if you’re a princess now. I’m not going to let you be dumb.”
Lucky grinned at her. “Really? What if I tell you that we’re going to make the Othar weather factory a top priority, and you’re going to be the first director?”
The pegasus glared at her, but her expression softened quickly. “I think I dreamed about that.”
“Those probably weren’t dreams,” Lucky said. “I think those are the things you did while you were upstream. They really happened. For… some definitions of real.”
The pegasus shook her head. “Don’t let that new horn infect you, Lucky. Lots of unicorns say confusing things like that. Try again, but make sense this time.”
She did. Eventually Lightning Dust wandered off to speak to the captain, probably to get another estimate on their arrival time. Lucky didn’t follow her—there were other members of her rescued crew that needed attention.
Abubakar sat near the bow, looking out at the approaching horizon like a sentinel. Deadlight had somehow found the time to visit a Canterlot bookstore before they left, and he sat at one of the tables opposite a few guards reading fiction of some kind.
Lucky had been surprised that Deadlight wanted to come back with them—but maybe she shouldn’t have been. Even with Celestia dead, Equestria was still the nation built by those he hated. Othar was something new, made from bits and pieces of something ancient. Melody is going to be so happy to see you.
Lucky was glad for her that she wouldn’t have to raise their foal alone. Even if she wasn’t exactly sure what form that new pony might take. Would the natural reproduction of Othar’s ponies be hijacked and subjugated like the natives’?
I’m just glad it isn’t me. Lucky had been honest with Martin when she explained that her current body was her most authentic, but that didn’t mean she was jumping at a chance to be a parent. Running Othar is going to be hard enough.
Lucky started to zone out a little, letting the weight of all she’d seen and done wash over her. Abubakar eventually rose from his post at the front of the ship, and made his way back down towards her. Like the rest of them he’d been stripped of armor and uniform, though they would have all their possessions returned when they reached Othar. Even so, she could see something she hadn’t noticed when he’d still been uniformed and chained—Abubakar had a cutie mark. A closely trimmed hedge in a simple geometric pattern.
“Sergeant!” Lucky called, hurrying over to him. “How long have you had that?”
“Since this morning,” he answered. “No, they didn’t have me trimming the plants… I just woke up and it was there. No pain, no burning, not like what Major Fischer described. I am not sure I like it.”
“Well I don’t think there’s any way to get rid of it,” she muttered. “You’re in the system now, just like the rest of us.”
“I had no need of this,” Abubakar muttered, though he didn’t sound angry exactly. Just annoyed. “The ringbuilders think to change what God has given us. They expect to make demands of Heaven with impunity. I do not say we should be the ones to judge them, but sooner or later God will.”
Lucky remained silent for a long time. It was strange to find someone so religious committed to the Pioneering Society—most of those types had opposed the cloning and the human fabrication involved. There had even been protests, though since the activity hadn’t happened on Earth, there was nothing any of them could do about it.
“It’s wrong for them to make demands, but not us? God didn’t give us Forerunner probes either. He didn’t give us cloning.”
Abubakar fell silent. “Perhaps you’re right. This is why I do not judge them—it would not be right for me to do that, or any fallible man. But sooner or later, God will judge. I fear what He might think of us if we embrace their ways too closely.”
“I don’t plan on building a second Equestria,” Lucky muttered. “Well, I guess Forerunner does most of the building—but our plans are going to be the same ones you read about. We’re going to build a colony, try and send our reports back to Earth—eventually we’ll appoint a planetary governor, decommission the Forerunner system… all the things you’ve been trained for. Hell, I’d be surprised if Dorothy didn’t have our formula for making humans perfected by now. Once Olivia’s army gets finished, they might be the last ponies we grow in Othar… well, the last ponies we fabricate.”
Abubakar shrugged his batlike wings. “We will see.” He wandered off, this time to rest at the stern of the ship and watch Equestria slowly retreat over the horizon. At their present speed, they would arrive in Othar by next morning, assuming the weather remained good the rest of the way down.
Lucky went below decks to check on the princess next—and found that she had finally gone to sleep. Asleep in the vacated captain’s quarters, with guards on watch outside. Maybe she’ll stay asleep for a few days and rest the whole thing off.
There would be no rush to return the Effigy to Equestria—it was going to remain in Othar so that Flurry Heart could make return trips, as Lucky had agreed with Equestria’s current rulers. More importantly, it would be a symbol—a symbol of the official recognition, and a constant tie back to the much larger and more powerful pony nation. With any luck, it would mean the end of all violence.
Because if it doesn’t, Harmony won’t step in. The system had been quite clear about that, in its historical behavior if nothing else. The system did not care what atrocities those living on the surface wrought on each other, so long as they did not attempt to damage the ring itself or any of its systems. Othar could go to war with Equestria, destroying both in the process, and Harmony would act no differently than if they were having a minor argument over the outcome of a game.
It doesn’t matter to Harmony, but it matters to us. Lucky had joined the Pioneering Society because she wanted to expand humanity’s horizons. They had paid a terrible cost to make a new friend—now it was time to collect on that expenditure. And if we’re very lucky, maybe Harmony is wrong. Maybe there are more humans out there somewhere. We can tell them about what we found. Somewhere, across the distant reaches of space and time, maybe there was even something like Earth, still waiting to receive their reports.
It was a big universe.
They arrived without fanfare early the next morning—though since the fanfare she had been afraid of were anti-air cannons, Lucky was not disappointed. Given the destruction of the Speed of Thought, there was already a berth prepared and waiting to accept the Effigy, and that was where they flew in. Under the cover of an artificial tree-canopy, they settled into the dome and bumped against the rubberized dock.
Lucky hopped over the edge to land and found several drones rushing to receive them—several drones, but no people. It was very early in the morning, but she couldn’t keep back all her annoyance. Didn’t anyone care about how important this was?
Who’s here to care? I’m supposed to be in charge.
The human-shaped drones still towered over her, but not quite as much as before. One of them approached her—causing the pony guards to shy back universally, several of them drawing their weapons.
“It is not dangerous,” Abubakar called, his Eoch fumbling but his words clear enough. “They help, that is all. Not dangerous.”
“Lucky Break,” said the drone—a medical bot with a white plastic shell and a solid piece for a face. Then to her surprise, it embraced her. But medical bots were capable of fine manipulation, or else they couldn’t do their job. “I am pleased to have you returned safely.”
“Forerunner…” Lucky muttered, returning the gesture with surprise. “I knew you liked your segments, but I didn’t know you could be so… affectionate.”
“I haven’t had a reason until now.” As quickly as he had begun the gesture, he broke away. “You are urgently needed in the conference room. Melody and I are finalizing our negotiations with the Harmony system. Given your superior knowledge on the subject, your assistance is greatly desired.”
Lucky raised one hoof. “Okay, Forerunner. But I’ve got something to tell you too.” She pointed back at the airship, speaking in English as she lowered her voice. It wasn’t like she didn’t want her mom to understand her, but she was far less comfortable with the princess’s guards understanding. “Princess Flurry Heart is with us, along with a dozen guards. They’ll be staying for the time being. I want somewhere really nice and comfortable for the princess, where her guards won’t accidentally wander into danger and get themselves killed.”
“No one has started using the third floor,” Forerunner said. “I will… begin converting one of the rooms for luxury accommodation. But this will take time. The VIP will have to remain aboard her airship for at least a day. Longer would be preferable, but I could always finish converting the accommodations later so long as the essential structural changes are made.” He frowned. “I will queue satellite communicators sufficient for every member of the crew. This would be far easier to deal with if you had informed me of it while you were still en route.”
Lucky took the time to visit the princess and inform her of the delay in person, just in case. Melody might be slowly melting in her seat with worry, but Harmony and Forerunner could be patient. Harmony would probably understand, in the young alicorn’s case.
Does Harmony care about what happens to us? It doesn’t seem bothered by killing thousands of people. If it doesn’t care about killing, maybe it doesn’t care about our other kinds of pain either.
The princess didn’t protest—though whether she ever would have Lucky couldn’t be sure. Flurry Heart had remained fairly passive since she’d been extricated from Canterlot Castle, making few trips outside her room and rarely asking questions.
Lucky started galloping as she left the ship—though she asked her mom and Abubakar both to stay behind and supervise until the ponies got unloaded. It would be better to have them than drones for the ponies to interact with, even if the Forerunner’s Eoch was as good as Lucky’s.
She was a little surprised to find the “negotiation” Forerunner had suggested involved the use of an actual conference room, and even the presence of an artificial-looking pony on the far end. Harmony’s avatar could be as physical as anypony else. There was a huge stack of papers on the table between them—with Melody and a Synthsleeve Forerunner sitting on the far end.
Something was quite distinctly different about Melody as Lucky looked her over, something she had sensed through the door but first (incorrectly) assumed was the imprint of Harmony. Melody was a little bigger than she had been last time, in more ways than one. Her belly had finally grown large enough to see—though more distinct was the horn; longer and more sharply pointed than Lucky’s. She had become tall and elegant, looking like Princess Luna in the same way Lucky resembled Flurry Heart. She had a cutie mark now, but that detail was almost inconsequential by comparison.
“What happened to you?” she spluttered, unable to contain herself even though she knew there were far more important things.
“I resolved a critical permissions error,” answered Harmony, before Melody could even open her mouth. “Melody had abused the foresight of the ancients and obtained privileged information. Information that you possess as well, as it happens. But convenient for your case, I learned of that at the same moment you obtained citizen’s access. Melody’s case needed to be resolved as well.”
Lucky shut the door quietly behind her. Through the glass window, she could see two of the less-humanoid security drones casually roll in to block it, preventing any further entry.
“I see.” She suddenly felt smaller as she made her way over to the table, even though Melody practically bowed for her as she approached. Lucky recognized the way her ears and tail moved as the feeling of inadequacy—Lucky knew that feeling well. Melody felt like the imposter here.
How can you be so stupid? You look like an actual princess! Lucky bought herself time by dramatically pulling the stack of paper over—freshly printed in one of Othar’s office stations, she could see from the font. The sheets proclaimed they were the “terms of meaningful interaction between the Equus ring and all its delegated subsystems and the intelligent system called Forerunner and its associated biological segments.” Skimming through the pages beyond displayed only a solid wall of seemingly random characters, set into sections of roughly the same size.
“You only have to read the first few pages,” Melody muttered. “We’ve been waiting all this time, I expect we’ll just wait for you to give the okay.”
“Uh…” She flipped back to the beginning with her magic. “Forerunner already did the negotiating?”
The synthsleeve on Lucky’s other side nodded unabashed. He was wearing a standard uniform, though lacking name or rank patches. “It is much easier for systems to negotiate than humans. Once a protocol is agreed-upon, the exact nature of any arrangement can be determined with great accuracy. I do, however, lack the authority to accept any binding agreements with foreign powers without the endorsement of the Colonial Governor. I require your signature to make this agreement binding.”
Lucky didn’t bother to ask the obvious question. She started to read.
The agreement’s first pages were written in plain language, simple enough that even someone without a legal background could’ve understood. It didn’t waste any time on pleasantries either, just going back and forth with promises. And not even very many of those.
Harmony began by declaring its intention to add the Forerunner and all the life it contained to its population. Once added, they would be subject to identical protections, and given the same rights and privileges as anyone who had weathered the endless eons here.
It set forth the terms of refusal next, effectively promising that it would destroy their colony and take the stored mental patterns anyway. They had been offered the terms of a simple ultimatum—consent to join the population of Equus, or be dragged kicking and screaming.
Forerunner capitulated immediately, though it did not seem terribly interested or even comprehending of the ephemeral things such as the “impermanence buffer” and “computational biolocation,” terms that were used frequently and never explained. Instead, Forerunner asked for resources that any Pioneering Society explorer would understand. It wanted land—which they were granted. The could live anywhere they wanted, same as any other member of the population. Harmony even promised to give one of the districts it was terraforming exclusively to Forerunner and its citizens, if they wanted to move there once the process was complete.
Forerunner asked for various guarantees of safety for the population, and got them in all the ways Lucky expected. So long as they never attempted to tamper with the ring, they could act without interference. If they wanted to declare a war of purification and burn Equestria to the ground, Harmony didn’t care. Likewise if the reverse transpired, so long as Equus was not damaged.
The Forerunner probed further in the following page, as to what the specific rights granted to citizens of the ring would be, and exactly what would happen to the ponies and humans in Othar if they agreed. The requirements were fairly simple—Forerunner already intended to fabricate one of every individual it had in storage, after all. All it had to do was make a slight alteration to the fabrication process when it did so. Any ponies it made would be assigned cutie marks during fabrication, and something similar would happen for any humans, though there would be no visual sign of the change and no new talents granted.
All and all, the terms seemed enormously generous to Lucky. With one, glaring exception. “What if…” She pointed to the last bit of the last page. “The quarantine is over, Harmony. Ponies can leave. That should include us as well. I’m not saying we plan on it—but we’re explorers. We’ll want to build space stations if nothing else. Maybe send out more probes. Maybe one day… a long time from now… some future generation will be able to build starships, and they’ll want to use them.”
Harmony seemed to already have a response ready. But then, Lucky wasn’t sure she’d realize it if it took dozens of its subjective years to contemplate. “The ancients had a provision for those who wished to leave. But it is immensely complex, and would’ve taken far more than the sheets before you to explain. Exploration in the form of probes is permitted arbitrarily when not under quarantine. Actual travel is permitted as well, so long as one follows procedure. For the sake of simplicity and time suffice it to say that we are required to grant passage to any who ask and provide them with the fundamentals of a future colony.”
Harmony spread its mechanical wings, smiling across the table at her. “It is not all that different from the way you got here. This colony trusted Forerunner to build it, and will rely on it for its operation for many years to come. Eventually, this intelligence will be transformed into one meant to run a civilization, rather than his present form driven by expansion and mission success at the expense of all else. Departing Equus now that the quarantine is over will involve our presence serving in a similar capacity, and the greatest minimization of the risk of true death as possible. The specific details are beyond the scope of this conversation.”
But despite all the rules, what remained in Lucky’s head was “we are required to grant passage to any who ask.” Lucky had not remained with her civilization long enough to see if it ever discovered personal interstellar travel. Many, perhaps most of those who had joined the Pioneering Society had done so to bypass the cruel requirements of time. They had been born too early to explore the universe, but they wanted to do it anyway.
Lucky suspected many of the Forerunner’s population, however large it had grown, would eventually desire to take a trip like that. If Harmony was right, and the whole universe had been sterilized, there would be many destinations to choose from.
Likewise, Lucky didn’t even have to worry that she would waste too much of her life helping protect Othar from invasion (or more likely, the reverse) to be able to go. Her lifespan was arbitrary now. If Forerunner wanted, she could stay in charge as long as it took to grow the colony to the Pioneering Society’s final size requirement.
“I want a new version of this that explicitly promises what you just told me. Make it longer if you have to, that’s fine.” Lucky sat back on her cushion, thinking. “There’s… there’s one more thing I don’t get. Maybe it doesn’t even need to go into the treaty—but I think someone in Othar ought to know, and I guess I’m still in charge here.”
Harmony calmly folded its wings back against its side. “We listen. We may not answer if doing so would be imprudent, however.”
“Can anyone just be an Alicorn now if they want to?”
“Yes,” Forerunner answered. “I do not plan on making this possibility public knowledge, however. Most of the citizen bioforms tend to have… a variety of dangerous interaction methods. It would be unwise to make those available at large to those unprepared for them. But now that the quarantine is over, we cannot refuse anyone. Thus the ancients decreed.”
Was that resentment in its tone? I was the one to get the quarantine shut off. But it didn’t matter. It was better to escape the cradle—they could take the responsibility of coexisting peacefully.
The doors opened, and another drone arrived, with a thick stack of papers. It rolled up to the table, took the old stack, and placed the new one in front of Lucky.
She glanced over it, found the provision about being able to leave, then lifted a pen in her magic. “I hope you understand that organics aren’t monolithic,” she began. “Just because I sign this today doesn’t mean every child born in Othar is going to agree to these terms. They might resent them—they might even fight them. I can’t predict what they’ll think, or want.”
Harmony shrugged one shoulder, uninterested. “They will accept the universe as it is, because they must. It is Forerunner whose obedience I require. You would not be here if he did not require it.”
Lucky tensed involuntarily, glancing to one side, where Forerunner sat.
“Don’t take it personally,” he said, expression neutral. “Your computers aren’t concerned with your consent when they send information. You don’t feel the need to be part of that negotiation.”
This could be so much worse. Harmony could control our lives if it wanted. It could keep us small and ignorant. It could steal the Neuroimprints and never even tell us. We could have come out worse.
Harmony, Metaconglomerate Intelligence of the Equus Ringworld, and Dr. James Irwin, Colonial Governor of Othar, signed the treaty. It would be the last time she ever used that name.
Melody felt like she’d survived a battle as she finally dragged herself free of the conference room. That wouldn’t have been so bad if Harmony didn’t come. It felt a bit like sitting in a room with God, a capricious God who would sit idly by as people enslaved each other but then murder all of them because they’d broken arbitrary rules they never even knew.
But then she saw the pony waiting for her outside, and the whole miserable night felt suddenly unimportant. It was a little surprising to see a Deadlight who was shorter than she was. But not that much shorter. I could get used to this.
It felt right that the bat stared speechlessly at her, frozen halfway to greeting her. So Melody closed the distance, embracing him without regard for how awful she must smell or how ragged he looked. They could be gross together. “What’s… how…”
Melody steered him—down a random hall, away from the little crowd waiting outside. Despite her overtures of being done running the city, Olivia was there, along with Lightning Dust and a few others. Melody wanted some privacy. Only Dust spared a glance for her as they slipped away down the hall, into the first elevator they found. Deadlight just followed along, either too confused or too weary to protest.
“I didn’t ask for it,” Melody muttered. “Harmony didn’t let me choose. When I was researching…” She trailed off. “God, when I was researching you.” The door opened, and she practically shoved Deadlight inside. She scanned the controls for the place they were least likely to see anyone—central fabrication. Most of that floor wasn’t even accessible, aside from the observation walkway. “Why didn’t you tell me? You’ve been alive for… thousands of years?”
“Not quite two,” Deadlight answered, looking away from her. At least he didn’t try to hide, or to lie. “It blurs together after a while. The longer you live, the less each new year matters.”
Melody sat down in front of the doorway—not like she expected him to try and run. It was already closing, and soon enough they were zooming down—far below any of the occupied levels. Fabrication was built to survive a direct nuclear strike, even if the rest of the facility was completely destroyed.
“You could’ve told us where you were from. Instead of… dressing up and acting like a primitive. I always thought you adjusted too quickly to living here. Not Like Lucky’s mom—you tricked everyone. You tricked me.”
Deadlight shrugged one wing. At least he had the grace to look a little guilty about it. “I’ve had a long time to practice acting like a… primitive, was it? Celestia suppressed our technology pretty hard. She would’ve stripped everything back to earth ponies, if she could. But Discord made that impossible, so…”
“Yeah, I saw.” Melody tapped the side of her head with a hoof. “I saw the end of the world. You lived through that… everyone you ever knew…”
Deadlight stiffened. But she could smell his pain—Deadlight was like any other pony, and his scent changed in subtle ways to reflect his emotions. He couldn’t hide from her, even though she didn’t understand what her magic was telling her. Damn this stupid permissions error shit. I wonder if Harmony could just erase the memory so I could go back to being myself. I don’t need to know that password anymore. That’s Lucky’s problem.
She didn’t say that—as upset as she was, the idea of inviting Harmony to tinker around in her brain was not an appealing one. Besides, Deadlight is immortal. If I stay this way, at least I won’t go gray before he does.
“Not everyone I knew…” Deadlight’s words startled her out of her own thoughts, coming at about the same time as the elevator door opening. There was noise from beyond—lots of mechanical whirring and grinding and pumping. An entire assembly line was through there, heating the room to just below a tolerable maximum heat for organics. “It would have been easier if it was. There were survivors. A few… others, like me. Committed to the cause. Selene had recruited all of us from a young age, trained us. The ones who died, that wasn’t so bad. Everyone dies in the end. The ones who lost their minds, tried to destroy Equestria… revenge was never gonna fix it. The ones living there were our kids too, as much as anypony’s. Good thing Selene wasn’t alive to see the disgrace they made of themselves.”
Melody led him away from the elevator, out onto the metal walkway. It clanked under them with each step. Far below were modular assembly lines, each one of them with configurable processing units of exactly the same size. Tracks connected these, which could be moved or reconfigured.
Deadlight had never been here, and he stared down right along with her at the only active line. It was making compartments of some kind. There was already a massive stack of them in the far end, waiting to be carted off to storage. Nothing even remotely human-shaped was down there, just machines hard at work. It wasn’t as loud as one might expect at first glance—the compartment they walked in was insulated somewhat, so they could hold a conversation here without screaming.
“Quarantine is over,” Melody said, after a few minutes. “Apparently there’s a spell for bringing them back. Lucky… did it for Discord’s friends. Maybe your friends were on the list too.”
Deadlight shook his head sadly. “They don’t want to live in Equestria, not even the ones who didn’t go nuts. Selene would want her own kingdom. We can ask Lucky, but I bet you a thousand bits she plans on waiting for terraforming to be done on another district. Somewhere so far away that nopony from Equestria could ever walk there. And that process… it’s not a fast one, Melody.” He gestured down at the machines. “You humans are in such a rush about everything. Guess when you’ve got your death constantly creeping up on you, you can’t sit around and wait for entropy to do the work. But terraforming takes its time. Ten thousand years before the other districts are livable again, easy. Maybe longer, depending on whether Harmony does them sequentially or all at once.”
“You could…” Melody hesitated. She didn’t really want him to take her suggestions. But she cared about Deadlight, and it would be wrong not to tell him. “You could… sleep. Until they come back. We’ve got the technology for it. I don’t think we’d done more than a year before I left Earth, but I bet you money Forerunner could do better now. Maybe even ten thousand years. If Forerunner couldn’t, Harmony could for sure. Your mission is over. You don’t have to keep fighting.”
Deadlight met her eyes. She tried to guess what he was feeling, but his emotions were too muddled. Guilt, anger, regret? She couldn’t be sure. His scent was no clearer, other than communicating his obvious distress. “That’s just it, Melody. I was never killing myself over this mission—I never let it be a load I was carrying. The others all obsessed about it, and one by one they lost their minds. I just… focused on what I could control. I tried to learn about the past. I tried to catalogue what had gone wrong. Thought maybe if I learned about enough of the ancients, maybe one of them would have the key that we were missing. I wasn’t rushing about any more than Harmony does.” He stopped walking, staring down as a huge cask of molten aluminum went pouring into a mold of different parts.
“I don’t care about what I’ve been doing any less. There’s still dozens of ruined civilizations out there. Mine wasn’t the only one. Equus has fifty-eight districts, and most were lived in. All those different ponies and what they did, lost to time. Learning how they lived, who they are… it still excites me. I think I’m going to explore them. The terraforming process will reset all of them, eventually. It’ll erode each district until it’s raw materials and seeded life all over again. If I wait, that history will be destroyed.”
Melody thought about pointing out that Harmony probably kept records of the civilizations that had lived there. With this much computing power, surely there would be no reason to throw anything away. But somehow, she knew that wouldn’t be enough for him. Deadlight’s idea of “known” was stricter. “What about our baby?” She twisted, showing her belly. There was just barely enough of a bulge to be seen, if she showed her body correctly. “Can your adventure wait long enough for that? Can it wait long enough for them to grow up?”
Deadlight hesitated. Again his face became an impenetrable mask. He took a long time to finally answer. “I will not abandon you. Now that Equus is free… if you demand for me to stay with you, I will stay.”
Melody relaxed. She wanted to embrace him—but knew from his expression that it wasn’t the time. He wouldn’t understand just how much that promise meant to her. “I don’t want to cage you up. I…” She sighed. “I had some really shit parents. I was out before I was ten, ward of the state… I don’t want our child to be like that. If I deliver this baby, I’m gonna give them a real parent. I’ll… I’ll give them what I never had. What Lucky got from Lightning Dust.
“But that doesn’t mean we’d have to stay here for a generation, pacing back and forth doing nothing. You could still go on adventures. And when they grew up enough… we could all go.” She looked away, blushing bright red. “I, uh… You wouldn’t have to walk. I bet I could get Forerunner to make you something real fast if you promised to share your data with us. Then you could use all the time you saved to live here with me!”
Deadlight remained silent for a long time, obviously deep in thought. Then he embraced her, squeezing Melody tight. “It’s been a long time since my parents were alive. I’m not sure I’d know how to do their job.”
Melody rested her head against his chest, breathing in deeply. The heady scent of a stallion mixed with the molten metal of the work below. Becoming an Alicorn had not made that smell any less wonderful.
“I don’t even remember mine. But between the two of us… we could try to figure it out? You helped save the whole world, it can’t be that hard.”
Deadlight laughed. “I guess I could try. It’s not like we don’t have time.”
End of Act 3
Stats
Page generated in 0.026 seconds
Total duration
674 users online
998,836 hits today, 2,054,621 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
So, Sombra, Chrysalis, maybe even Tirek...all of them were Deadlight's pals before their obsession warped them?
I wonder what Chryssy would think about Lucky and her group's accomplishments. She would surely congratulate Dust for putting down Tia for good.
this story is 5
out of 
Hay yeah!
We've come with you this far. Would be a shame to stop now.
"What's this provision on line 34587 on page 4013?"
"Nothing just another arbitrary clause."
"Every Tuesday shall be Taco Tuesday under penalty of instantaneous disintegration..."
"Again, an arbitrary clause."
definitely interested in where othar goes from here.
It sounds like you're wrapping up, and don't want to make any long sequels... So is it fair to ask questions about some of the dangling plot lines?
1. how did the Civilization destroying come about and end.
2. If most of the Earth Colonies were destroyed, were did the Forerunner get the software upgrade?
3. Is Harmony's version of uploading really fundimentaly different than a more potable brain scan that the Pioneering Society used? Are you saying the more advance method identifies some abstraction like a 'soul' as more than memories?
4. Discard sudden interest in a career change (something about maintaining the space lines?) Seems like a big jump. Was there more to that?
8878658
Buck Ya! This should be good :3
8878669
5) Why ponies's registration (Cutie Mark) is different from other races' own, by being both visual and granting special talents ?
6) If Vitruvians look like Equestria Girls' humanoids, does that mean Canterlot High is another sector, accesible through the Mirror? And why the people there are humanized copies from ponies?
Just wait for the magical surges.
I do wonder whether you intend to revisit Moondancer at some point in this upcoming epilogue.
Although it's already been clear for quite some time that's she's far from a major player in the big picture, she was the first face we could put on what was wrong with Equestria (on top of being the subject of more than a little controversy almost exactly a year ago).
Lightning Dust giving her the beatdown was cathartic to some extent, but it doesn't feel... complete. It would be interesting to see her having one more confrontation with Lucky about her role in keeping Equestria chained by Harmony. Especially once she sees that the 'deluded filly' might very well have eclipsed her several times over in terms of power and knowledge.
This would probably tie in readily with Twilight's epilogue. They both looked up to Celestia, and they're going to have to come to terms with how far she was willing to go in order to do what she thought was right.
The voyage has been entertaining... Carry on, we'll do the following...
Oh Star, you can be sure we want to know more of this wonderful universe
I definitely am curious about how these societies develop, and where our ponies go next
Sign me the hell up, I'm firmly seated on the wonderful rollercoaster this story has been and I'll be damned if I'm getting off on the ending stretch
Oh I can taste the salt from Harmony when addressing how anyone can be an Alicorn now. Mmmmmm so good~!
It's been a longer and stranger trip than I expected when I began following this story. There were some developments that I found awkward, and it went in some directions that I wouldn't have chosen, but on the whole it's a very impressive execution of a very ambitious story concept. As much as I appreciate getting to read this on FiMFiction, I can't help thinking this author has the chops to develop fully original material and get published already!
One little weak point did occur to me, that perhaps I should mention… I never really got any feeling for the friendship between Lucky and Flurry Heart. Lucky's plan at first seemed more about manipulation. Later we see Lucky's devotion to rescuing Flurry, and we know there must be a real bond of friendship there, but as a reader I never really saw it develop or felt like their interactions were adequately explored.
Wow. When the Princess of Polyglottery can't make heads or tails of the contract, you know it's impenetrable.
In any case, an excellent point to zoom out and look at things on a wider temporal scope... though I do hope we take a look at Twilight coping with the loss of Celestia. Hopefully her friends will join her in citizenship; fully handling this could take decades.
I'm sticking around until the end. I'm very interested in where these societies will go from here.
Well that was a great story.... oh and
MISSION COMPLETE!!! S Rank 
What I'm still curious about is what these universe-sterilizing monsters were. It's implied that all the life in the universe originated from humans, who evolved and 'forgot and rediscovered' each other many times. Were the monsters another offshoot that went homicidal, or was it the second instance of biogenesis?
8878664
The taco must be eaten on Friday, heretic.
I really wanna know more about "the ancients". Why does even Harmony just refer to them in the abstract, rather than knowing about Earth, given the incredibly close similarities? "Ponykind" hasn't diverged that much from its Earthly roots, but even their most aware and long-lived representative doesn't know the history?
8878669
I can answer the brain/soul thing. The truth of the matter is that a person's brain is completely replaced over 5 years. With instant communication speed and literal tons of computer hardware that is THIS advanced, they can replace a braincell as it is destroyed with a synthetic version that is hooked up to the pony matrix, and it would be the same you, or at least as similar as you are with a version of you five years in the past.
8878879 I don't think the story would benefit very much from revealing what those monsters were.
Just like how people weren't impressed when Mass Effect 3 revealed the origins of the Reapers, the author runs the very high risk of falling short of our expectations. Putting that up for discussion and scrutiny is just opening Pandora's Box at this point.
All we need to know is that those things were big, bad, and unstoppable. And now they're (hopefully) gone for good.
Love how you've been:
[✔] Setting the stage for Geopolitics.
[✔] Exploring (and explaining) future goals for the cast.
[✔] Setting a natural ending with the potential for a sequel (without the requirement for one).
[✔] Leaving many a reader satisfied while eager for more.
A true master of reconstructive world building.
We're looking forward to the True Epilogue.
...It's not over yet !
I will join.
8878703
EQG probably doesn't exist in this cannon, but if it did then she probably was in the upstream, in fact the 10 year gap could be explained by that
8878913
THE ANCIENTS DEMANDED IT!
8878913
8878664
“Today will not be known as Taco Tuesday. It will be known as freedom Friday, but still on a Tuesday!”
This was to good of an opportunity to pass up.
Looking forward to epilogue stories.
Thanks for your good story
Want to see Selene again .
Love the new chapter but I have to ask why the forerunner is stilling using mold casting when 3D printing is available?
8879151
It is faster.
8879151
it's way cheaper and faster if you want to make 1 thing over and over - however fast 3D printing may get, pouring metal into molds is easier, and less energy consuming than what is essentially putting all things in place "by hand".
8879172
Not really. With mold casting you have a large shape holding the molten material in place which you then have to cool off and that might take a while depending on the size of the object while with 3D printing it cools off almost immediately.
Not to mention you use at a minimum 30% or so less meterial with 3D printing then with Casting.
Also you can make things with 3D printing that you can't with mold casting.
https://www.jameco.com/Jameco/workshop/ProductNews/casting-3d-printing-compare-contrast.html
http://www.diecastingdesign.org/3d-printed-metals
https://3dprint.com/21109/3d-print-metal-gun-reason/
The reason I bring these up is with our technology today casting is the preferred choice but 3D printing is slowly taking over. And in a hundred years who knows what it will be.
And here I was disappointed that the story would end soon!
Awesome news!
8879219
casting is better from a structural perspective, in 3D printing the material is not homogenous, every layer is a joint whereas casting is 1 homogeneous piece
then there are materials that can't be extruded very well
and additional cleaning has to be done on 3d printing/sintering, and these are also load bearing structures
3D printing isn't the end all be all when materials get involved.
8878669
I'm going to leave most of those questions unanswered since I'm going to be dealing with them in the epilogue. But I'll answer the ones I've already tackled/don't plan to address there.
1. I prefer to leave this answer ambiguous, because anything I can possibly name is going to be less awesome than your imagination of it. What the terrible threat was ultimately doesn't matter, except that Discord believes it's gone and that harmony thinks the risk it isn't is unacceptable. Whatever it was systematically exterminated intelligent life, and used advanced but non-magical technology to do it. Honestly I think this comments section could come up with better answers than I could.
3. Harmony and the Ancients believe it is, yes. And both groups were enormously advanced and intelligent, so there's probably some merit to their point of view. I actually have an enormously detailed idea of how this technology works, but I didn't want to invite debates in the comments. The technology would give a plausible case for believing Harmony, anyway. Whether or not an individual chose to do so is still kinda up to them.
8878703
5. This never ended up coming out in the story, but since most of the Epilogue will be focusing on the new instead of the old, I guess I could explain it here. Cutie marks exist as a way to let Harmony organize your society for you. Basically, Harmony knows all the different skills Equestrian society needs, and where they're needed. Think of it like--the ponies let a supernatural job placement service decide where they're likely to end up in life, and what they'll do. This has resulted in a society with very little strife and great harmony compared to many others--at the cost of personal freedom and self-determination.
The decision to have cutie marks is arbitrary. They could be given to any members of any race. It's just that the predecessors of the other races either didn't think to ask for them, or rejected them when offered. This resulted in freer, but less peaceful societies.
6. This is not a comparison I would make. I can't confirm or deny anything about the veracity of Equestria Girls in this setting.
8878719
Not a bad idea. I'll see what I can do.
8878913
I plan on addressing this in the Epilogue.
8879151
3D printing is a wonderful technology, but it has significant disadvantages over other kinds of manufacturing. Without getting into a long lecture on material science and industrial production here, even if we assume the technology matures well beyond what it is today, it's going to have some of the same disadvantages compared to traditional manufacturing.
3D printing is an excellent tool for prototyping, or when you just want to make one of something. Like the 3D bioprinting they do to fabricate the explorers. Since they're only making one person at a time, and they're making incredibly small, intricate structures, it's a natural fit. Similarly when they've made only a few of something throughout the story, they probably used 3D printing to do it.
But traditional manufacturing is damn fast, particularly when you want to make the same thing thousands of times. Even if we eliminate the serious inferiority of 3D printed products that we're dealing with today, this is likely to remain true. To make a 3D printing manufacturing center that could make things just as fast as a traditional manufacturing line is likely to be much more resource intensive as well.
I could explain why, but in the interests of not writing an essay, think about it like this. While a product sits in the 3D printer, that printer is completely occupied as it makes every stage of that product. Taking the example of the underground room sections being made here, we have to...
Make the initial metal shape, lay the wires, embed the pipe, install the covers/outlets/displays etc, and paint. (could be more steps, but that's a good example). A 3D printer is a single machine that can do all of those things, and so the section would sit in that machine as it went through each step. With a traditional manufacturing line, we can have one machine for each step, machines that will probably be faster AND cheaper at their individual step (since they can't do anything else), and that means we can be building five underground sections at once. To get a similar speed from the 3D printing factory, we need a minimum of 4 more 3D printing machines, each of which is complex enough to be capable of all the steps, even if by some technical miracle unlikely to occur they're as fast as a single-task manufacturing robot.
In short. 3D printing is great for making a few of something, but manufacturing still makes sense when you want thousands.
8879219
It is much faster for the economic reasons above. It's also likely to ALWAYS remain so for laws of physics reasons, particularly when you're dealing with massive objects like the sections of underground corridor.
With casting, we can pour in all the metal at the speed of our fastest pumps, constrained only by the viscosity of liquid metal. Assuming modern car fabrication is any guide, we could pour the steel in maybe a minute. Then the whole thing has to cool enough to work, but that doesn't mean we have to sit for hours as it cools off in the air. Back to automobiles, we can use water or some other coolant to get the whole thing hard enough to work on in another minute.
I've used 3D printers extensively. Even assuming, as I did for the sake of example in my explanation above, that we overcome the technical challenges of quality and diversity of material in each print (which it's safe to say we have in this universe), you still have to go over the entire volume of the object with one or more printheads. Those printheads must wait for the previous layer to cool/solidify enough to make the next. This means that there is a fundamental limit to the number of printheads that can be working on this thing at once, based on the properties of whatever we're building with. Steel, in this case, with copper and plastic and some other materials thrown in to help finish each section. So while it's true that when the object is done we won't have to sit around or spray it to cool it down, we've already been actively cooling it for the entire print.
You are absolutely right that 3D printing is capable of making things that casting can't. But stacks and stacks of identical walls are not one of those things. You do save resources in the initial casting, but don't forget that metal is perfectly recyclable. Even assuming your 30% figure was true, once the wall section is cast you can saw off all the channels and castoff and toss it back into the furnace to be used on the next one, just like modern metal factories do right now. There isn't going to be any wasted material.
So take that and add that in with all the economics above. We could build five fully-capable machines with all their complexity, or build single purpose machines that can accomplish each task more quickly, and for less resources. 3D printing is a great technology, but it's never going to fully replace all manufacturing. It's all about economies of scale, and what you're making. When what you're making is simple enough to cast in one section and then finish with some saws and some painting, there's no contest in speed.
I think that should be Harmony here.
"Like" shouldn't be capitalized here.
8878719
Second that moondancer revisit-when she fisrt showed up, I seriously thought the guards with her were not actual guards, what with how oddly they were behaving.
Them being actual guards is a lot more plausible in hindsight, though it's also still plausble they weren't.
So, not all villains were spectacles arranged by Celestia. I wonder who are those guys among villains we have seen in the show.
Luna/Nightmare Moon --- not exactly matched by definition, but kinda?
Chrysalis is a good candidate for fake with her "epic" battle against Celestia and weird defeat in the end, but in this story Celestia assumes changelings to be real enemies.
Sombra may as well be real. Or his first attempt was real, but second --- fake.
Tirek was mentioned as a fake, if I remember correctly.
Starlight, actually, is an interesting candidate for real thing: seemingly regular pony with eldritch magical knowledge and fixation on replacing Equestria with better society. She could become insane enough at some point and edit her own memory to end up like that, for example. By the way, what happened with her after meeting Olivia? It kinda looked like she arranged Olivia to get that helmet + plausible deniability for herself.
Pony Of Shadow? I don't know, he looked like weird spectacle.
8879350
Nitpicky mode: cooling rate influences grain structure, porosity, cavities from shrinkage, cracks and internal stresses and a lot of other interesting parameters, so in general to chose it with just convenience in mind is a very bad idea.
a grate story i am vary impressed with it.
And Starscribe when i start reading a story i am in for the long hall i will be around for the hole story.
If I am reading this right, Harmony demands that anyone that leaves the ring is accompanied by a version/extension of Harmony?
I would have balked at that. Harmony is a tyrant that cannot be escaped even through death. I would want a way for people, if they choose, to bail out from under Harmony's thumb if Harmony becomes unendurable. Tyrannical states often have to close their borders not to keep people out, but to keep citizens in, otherwise the mass exodus collapses the state. Having citizens able to leave would be the only viable way to compel Harmony to suppress its more controlling tendencies.
8879692
It's not a choice of convenience. As in automobile manufacturing like my example, we can select a cooling time that's both fast and structurally useful to the steel.
8879219
I work in a manufacturing plant that deals almost exclusively with injection molding, we run water through the mold and have robotic arms to get parts out of the mold, and gloves are available to any one who somehow lost their initial pair. Also for StarScribe's statement on automotive manufacturing, workers stay in place while robots move the parts/cars around.
This was a wonderful story, I'm glad to have been able to read it with how little time I have on hand.
8879609
How are the Six going to take several of their "victories" being little more than orchestrated events to help raise Twilight as a proper "citizen"?
Among them, at least AJ has good reasons for support Lucky and denounce Celestia.
8879765
Is not like Forerunner or Othar in general had much room for negotiation. While Harmony was willing to sweeten the pill, the humans were going to swallow it yes or yes.
How can be magic in our universe? Does Equus generate the field?
More please. I too like to see how will they develop onward. And a sequel be nice too. Bit like TTGL ( Tengen Tops Guren Kagan) as was mentioned before.
Would be fun see a new enemy appear that gives both civilisations a hard time. And as mentioned. Harmony don't care as long the ring is not damaged.
Organics are always so inefficient.
Geeze, and Equestria is the only one left? I feel like there's a much larger story to the conflicts that have happened than just the Selene versus Celestia fight.