G4:05: Transitional State
“You want to what?” Mayor Capital Ledger stared at her from across his desk, eyes widening with shock.
“Exactly what it says.” Lightning Dust pushed the form a little closer to Ledger with one outstretched wing. “I’m applying to be a temporary foster parent. I know Stormshire has a pony in need.”
“That’s…” Ledger glanced down at the form, flipping it over and reading over all the information she’d scribbled there. Lightning Dust had everything in order, she’d made sure of it. “This is… most irregular, Miss Dust. I know the factory is happy to have your help on the weather team. Having you as our unofficial Wonderbolt lets everypony sleep a little safer at night. But… adopting a foal?”
“Not adopting,” Dust corrected. “Just fostering. It’s not the same thing.” And it wasn’t. Equestria’s policies of adopting orphans were quite strict. Only couples were eligible, couples who had been together for at least two years and had lots of financial resources she did not. Lightning Dust might’ve got a parasprite up her flank into pursuing this crazy plan, but she wasn’t prepared to go that far. Besides, she didn’t like any mares or stallions enough to commit to that. And by the time I did, it’d be too late anyway.
“Stormshire doesn’t have the facilities to care for a foal with her specific… needs,” Ledger said, his voice halting. “I know you want to help her, that’s a noble endeavor. But she’s… we don’t even have a school, Dust. Only a day-care.”
“That’s not a problem,” Dust said. “Updraft on the weather team has his teaching certificate, and he says he’ll homeschool her. I know there’d be a budget from the Family Services Department to pay for it.”
Ledger’s frown deepened. “We don’t have a flight school either, Miss Dust. I had to read her report before I forwarded it on to Dodge City. She can’t fly at all, not even gliding. In a city like ours…”
“I’ll teach her,” Dust snapped back, leaning across the table, glowering at him. “Come on, Mayor Ledger. Haven’t I done right by Stormshire? Haven’t I been the best damn weatherpony you ever had? Why are you fighting this?”
“There’s, uh…” He retreated a few steps, shifting uncomfortably on his hooves. “Liability concerns. Having a child her age—”
“Those are my problems,” Dust said, voice flat. “Is there anything wrong with my form? Is there any reason I can’t do it?”
“Well, uh…” He turned back, flipping the form over. “You have a single resident domicile, you’ll have to remodel and provide her with all the required accommodations.”
“Well it’s a good thing we live in the clouds then,” Dust said, sitting down on her flank, and glaring across the desk at the mayor. The longer this conversation went on, the more she was starting to smell slime. But why? “I can do that easy. Before nightfall. I’ve got the bits for some new furniture if I need it.”
“Why?” Ledger stared at her, bafflement on his face. “I understand why you’d be unhappy with her accommodations in City Hall, but that’s only temporary. A week from now and we’ll have drifted close enough for Dodge City to send her transport to the ground. She can grow up in an orphanage there, around ponies her own age. She isn’t your problem, Miss Dust.”
Dust felt her blood starting to boil. “I’m sure. Here’s my form, here’s my fee.” She dropped a large sack of bits onto the desk between them. “Everything should be in order.”
Ledger sighed a long, hard breath. “Look… I’m… Miss Dust.” He turned back to face her. “I’ll match those bits on my desk if you take that form and pretend we never had this conversation. No questions, no guilt—you just take the bits and never mention this again. If you don’t… we’re going to have a problem. Not today, not this minute… but we’re going to have a problem. Do you understand me?”
Dust’s eyes narrowed. Her wings flexed instinctively, and she could feel the charge of static building up around her wings, ready if she needed it. She wouldn’t, of course. Violence wasn’t the pony way. But she remembered her foalhood, when conversations like this had been more common, and getting hurt wasn’t as rare. “Oh, I’m sure, Mayor Ledger. How about instead you take my form, and I pretend you didn’t just try to bribe me. No charge.”
Their eyes locked, and Dust could feel the static. A deadly silence persisted for nearly a full minute before Ledger finally spoke. “Alright, Miss Dust.” He reached down into his desk, drawing out a black stamp and a pad of ink. He took the stamp in his mouth, dropping it over the center of the form. “You’re approved. Take this form and these bits to the clerk downstairs.” Each word came slowly, laced with venom. “She’ll handle everything.”
Dust rose quickly to her hooves, taking the form and her little bag of bits with her. She turned her back on the stallion, wings splayed in triumph and defiance.
“And Miss Dust,” the mayor called, as she pushed the doors of his office open again. “I won’t forget this. You have my word.”
Lightning Dust didn’t give him so much as a backward glance. She snapped the door shut with a slam, stomping off down the hall for the stairs. The mayor probably wasn’t lying or exaggerating. He might have power to make her life difficult. But she didn’t care. If she could survive her foalhood, survive climbing to the top of the ranks only to be dismissed from the Wonderbolts in disgrace despite being their best new recruit, she could survive his petty vengeance. Let the stallion rot for all she cared.
* * *
Dr. James Irwin was not having as bad a time in the basement of City Hall as might’ve been expected. A part of her realized being treated this way was completely unacceptable, and she would’ve been furious at her own government had they done the same to a child in need. But she was far too engrossed in her studies to think much about it.
The alien, the pony who had rescued her from drowning had also saved her from ignorance. Spending the time to teach individual words through painstaking trial and error had been kind of the nurses back in the hospital, but it had also been painfully slow. James’s rescuer hadn’t stayed to try and help her through individual words. She hadn’t even given her a dictionary. Instead, she’d been provided with a book specifically designed to teach children how to speak.
Though the book was old and had mildew on many of its pages, it was exactly what Dr. Irwin had hoped for. Each page was filled with illustrations, each concept was taught more than once over the course of a chapter, and there were wonderful guides to the alphabet and sentence construction placed throughout. With another few weeks and some time with the aliens to practice, James didn’t doubt that she would soon have a mastery of this alien language.
In the two days since she’d been given the book, James had learned a great many things. She’d learned the name of the language was Eoch, learned the aliens called themselves Ponies, learned they had at least three distinct subspecies that each lived in different parts of the world. She had learned the country was a monarchy, its capital was a castle high on a hill, and it had some fantastic mythology. The book had been written from the perspective of the “pegasi” mythology, which described an intricate economy of weather production and supply as though it were factual. Not just flight, which was patently true… but far more. Whole cities built on clouds, and out of clouds. Truly preposterous concepts, yet to which whole sections of the textbook had been devoted.
Working with a heavily religious species will be a little trickier. Hopefully they don’t have anything negative in their mythology about alien visitors. Even if they did, that was a problem for someone else. All James had to do was get her translation back to the computer. Do that, and maybe spend a few years teaching newly-instanced diplomats how to speak Eoch, and then she could retire. Retire to live among the aliens, or help build the colony? She wasn’t sure yet. It would depend on whether she could get more of those burgers…
The ponies set to watch over her mostly left James to her own devices, so she did her best not to be a bother in return. The ponies coming in and out of her basement changed over the few days she spent there, but not meaningfully. None of them treated her the way her rescuer had. None of them bothered to so much as learn her name. That was all right, though some part of James wished they had. She’d never have admitted that, and certainly not while she had such important work to do.
The aliens, or ponies, or whatever she wanted to call them, appeared to have neglected many fundamental aspects of her care. They didn’t give her a change of clothes, they didn’t even give her soap or a place to shower. She was lucky the building had what passed for a toilet, or else conditions would’ve been much worse. Without the XE-201 to keep her clean, Dr. Irwin was conscious of a general stench and griminess that grew during her three-day exile in the basement of some large pony building.
None of it matters. Just leave me alone long enough to memorize everything in this book, and it’ll be fine. Dr. James Irwin told herself this every few minutes. Sometimes she even believed it.
James could feel the book on her face. She wasn’t tired! It wasn’t as though she had a real bed to sleep in anyway. There was no point getting up. Eventually she slept.
* * *
“James!”
He jerked suddenly awake, sitting up in his metal chair.
The regular grid of the holodesk was pressed into the skin of his face in regular lines, like the worst job at a tattoo ever. Half a dozen different datapads scattered around him as he jerked into an upright position, tumbling onto the ground at his feet.
James looked up, staring into the stern face of the janitor. “Building closed an hour ago, James.”
“Y-yeah! Course it did.” James scurried about like a squirrel cornered by a cat, scooping all his pads, and stuffing them away into his gray satchel. “Sorry about that. Guess I dozed off again.”
The janitor, Roman, sighed. “Come with me, then. I’ll let you out.” Roman held the door a little wider, gesturing for James to follow.
They passed Roman’s cart of computer parts, past where the diagnostic interpreter was still connected to one of the other holodesks. James nearly tripped on a puck-shaped vacuuming robot as they went, eyes adjusting poorly to the gloom. None of the automatic systems were running at night, naturally. “So you’re still studying for that test, huh?” All Roman had to do was wave his card vaguely towards the doors, and they swung open for them, unlocking a clear passage to the exit. “Didn’t you already flunk it once?”
“That’s normal,” James snapped back. “The CADFAT is meant for those at the top of their fields. It’s not uncommon for people to take it every few years until they pass.”
They passed into one of the central classroom buildings, under a dome of glass and cascading curtains of water. In the dark of the early morning, the fountains had only the light of the stars coming through the windows for illumination. The building was nearly deserted, though James did spy a dark-haired woman sitting in one of the chairs along the wall, pretending to read. Why wasn’t Roman asking her to leave?
“I don’t think the Pioneering Society needs translators, James.” He kept speaking, switching seamlessly from English to Mandarin. “Everybody already speaks every language there is. What’s the point?” They stopped at the exit doors to the building, but Roman didn’t open them.
Through a single layer of glass James could hear swamp insects, the buzzing of mosquitoes and the croaking of frogs. “It wasn’t always like that, Roman.” He held up his satchel, shaking it so the datapads would rattle together. “I’ve got two dozen languages in here.”
The janitor reached to the side, flashing his card along the scanner. The doors slid open, and they were both blasted with a wave of Florida humidity. James’s glasses fogged up, turning the world into a blurred mess. “So, what? If there’s really something living up there, they won’t speak some dead language.”
“I know that.” James walked through the opening, onto the plastic walkway. It was suspended mere inches above the wetland, so close he could see the lilypads floating and the motion of fish beneath the water. “It’s not about any specific language, it’s about selecting for the talent to learn them all. They want a polyglot, and that’s what I am.”
“If you say so.” Roman’s silhouette looked washed out under the single amber light outside the library. His old features looked even grayer—closer to two centuries than one. “You give me a call when you figure out where you’ll go after you get in,” Roman said. “You know you’ve still got a life after they photocopy you, right? Said it yourself… most people who do this do it as part of their career. This isn’t ancient history—you’re not joining NASA.”
James turned away from the door, lowering his voice to a whisper. “It won’t matter what happens after that. I won’t be here.” He walked away from the library, nodding politely to the alligator watching him through the transparent repulser fence, little more than a pair of dark yellow eyes just above the surface of the water. He pressed a single button on his phone as he walked, glancing down only long enough to see that the signal had been received.
He passed several more classrooms, each one suspended over the wetlands on concrete pillars just like the library. From ground level, it was very easy to forget his university even existed, it blended so well into the natural environment. The mosquitos were a little harder to forget—he felt several of those landing on his skin, and he was only fast enough to kill a few.
Eventually, he made it back onto dry land, to the arrival platform. There were no cars parked here, but his own little delivery van rested on the ground, its four large fans silent and still. The paint was peeling along the door, and rust crept up from the bottom of the frame, but otherwise, the van looked intact. The door swung open for him as he approached, revealing what passed for his house inside.
Cold air washed over him, the delicious feeling of conditioned air giving relief to his skin. He flopped inside onto the carpeted floor. He lifted the satchel over his head, covering it even as the lift motors started to spin. The interior of the van was a mess of blankets, pillows, and dirty clothes. Only one chair remained, the others had been ripped out to make room for his propane stove, his collection of old books, and not much else.
“Welcome back, James,” said the car, through his phone. “We are parked in an illegal zone. Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t care,” he answered, reaching up above his head for his pillow. His hand found the headstock of his guitar instead. It took all his concentration not to slam the stupid thing into the wall.
“Response invalid,” said the car, its voice even and emotionless. “It’s currently 3:24 AM. Would you like to get coffee?”
“No!” he shouted. “I want to go somewhere out of traffic so I can sleep until six.”
“Searching… Destination accepted. Time to Plant City Recreation: nineteen minutes, eight seconds. Enjoy the flight.”
The floor listed under him, and several heavy books slipped off the counter above him and smacked him in the face. James didn’t care. Shoving the guitar out of the way, he crawled back through the mess until he found his mattress and curled up against the wall.
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Waiting for updates is torture.
A propane stove in an enclosed space? He's lucky he lived long enough to go into the database.
8128859 The wait might be the worst thing in my life right now. I do my best to just froget about the story during the week.
There is something just a little bit ironic in reading about man named James Irwin, who has traveled through space to visit another world, worrying about aliens having too much religion.
So before he ever became a space pioneer, he was basically living in his van to sneak into libraries and learn all the languages.
Future Florida is almost worse than Now Florida. Been to quite a few educational institutions around here and not once have I seen one built over a bog like that. Not to say they don't exist, and even if they don't creative licence and all that.
Also what's up with that Mayor? I know how shady politics gets, but what possible benefit could be gained from treating a child that nobody knows like that? There's gotta be some kind of shadow group with a weird agenda and heavy influence to want this.
I'm extremely happy that you haven't gone through the cliche of James meeting each of the mane six immediately after arriving in Equestria; there's hence a better sense of progression than stories like "Project: Sunflower". Another thing I love is that you're one of the few writers I've seen on FimFiction that has mastered techniques both in first person prose and third person prose across your different stories.
I would hate it if you ever went dead online, so keep on keepin' on, Starscribe~
help is one the way James.
now I am curious as to way the mayor was blocking Lightning Dusts request to foster James.
exultant chapter.
You know, those numbers at the start of the chapters are feeling kind of ominous now. I mean, it seems unlikely that they'd be there if they were just going to stay G4.05 for every chapter from this until the end of the story... so presumably at some point they're going to start ticking up again as new iterations of James get created, because the computer has lost contact with another one.
And... I have to wonder in light of the mayor's strangeness, if Lightning wasn't willing to do the fostering thing, how long it would have been before James vanished altogether from that orphanage. Surely his reaction doesn't make a lot of sense unless he'd been bribed/threatened to make sure James is treated a certain way?
Interference from changelings who've figured out advanced aliens are trying to make contact with ponies is seeming more and more the most likely answer at this point. Is there a captive G1_human_James somewhere, I wonder?
Yikes. Was original James intending suicide after getting copied? I mean, I was definitely wondering what kind of person would spend a lifetime learning a skill that would only be useful to their copies and not to themselves, but that's pretty dark...
8128931 To be fair to Sunflower, Erin landed right outside of Ponyville, and the main 6 weren't the main characters she interacted with at first.
8128922
Remember how Moondancer stole the device after James told him he was an Alien?
It's probably because they want his technology or knowledge. Maybe for profit as well.
PS: Starscibe: The story is great and all, but please make your chapters longer. It's quite disappointing how small they are after waiting for a week.
Staaaaar, give us more pleeeeease
Awesome
8129002 First pony she encountered was AJ unless I'm remembering things wrong.
But I agree that Sunflower was good about establishing a setting and characters before introducing the mane 6.
8128974
I don't think it was suicide. I think he's just thinking about continuity of consciousness. There was a horror game that came out a couple years ago called SOMA that dealt with this very concept extremely well, so I'd recommend watching part of a play through of that, but I won't assume you're going to, so here goes.
James Irwin exists on Earth in whatever future year it is. He lives his life, sleeping in his van, learning languages at the library, etc. He's approved for the copy program and has his consciousness coppied. From that point in, there's no longer just one James Irwin. There's at least two (and possibly an infinite number more): the one that leaves the facility and goes on with whatever dull life he has on Earth, and the one that's going to lay dormant in a computer out in space for an untold number of years before being put into a manufactured body in order to talk to aliens and learn their language. (And again, there could be a James created from every probe, and as we've seen in this story, in fact multiple Jameses per probe.)
The way he sees it, sure the one James is going to continue existing on Earth until he dies, but that's not the one that matters. Somewhere out there, another James is going to wake up on an alien planet, remembering walking into the copy facility, being hooked up to a machine, and then be instantly, seemlessly on a new world with the important mission to initiate a first contact and learn alien language. That James still has the continuity of consciousness of being "James". Because he IS "James". From the point he was copied, his life branched off in different directions, and the one that's important in his eyes is the one where he's not there on Earth.
8129053
I generally agree. It's better to have a long wait between long chapters than a short wait between short chapters because, either way, the wait between chapters is going to be "too long" but, with long chapters, you can get enough to immerse and be satisfied. (The one exception being if the entire fic was written before being published, like Calamity Cordite's fics over on fanfiction.net, and you know that they'll be coming out at the same time every morning/evening. Then you can feel safe letting yourself get hyped up.)
I think I spotted a Luna *yay*
8128974 8129106
As Von Snootingham said, the original James will have continued to live his life on earth until he eventually died. But for ALL the copies created from his imprint life will continue from the very moment the imprint was made. This philosophically opens a whole can of worms. SOMA explored the concept, and CGP Grey made an excellent video regarding this topic (this time with Star-Trek transporters - and sleeping)
8128922
8129053
I beleive the idea is to get James lost in the system, or just "lost" when time comes for the transfer to Dodge. It could be a government agency a private company or a 'ling infiltration but there is definately a big conspiracy to gain alien tech.
I believe I will stick around :)
Anyway, this was a good chapter. Can't wait to read the next
Chapter is just long enough for a quick fix, but not long enough for any satisfaction. This is going to be torture, isn't it?
Anyway, decent chapter. Seems we got a dream (memory) of the previous James before being copied. I wonder who that dark hair girl who was pretending to read was? If this really was a dream, then I have my suspicions. Hmm.
I'd just like to point out that the solution to the existential quandary of a teleportation clone is a mind meld. Connect two minds together until they become one. You'd remember being scared that the result of the meld would be someone different from you, but all that would happen is you'd start to remember the clone being scared in the same way. Except now that you think about it, you can't tell which of them was originally you.
Just in case anyone worries about that sort of thing. I know it bothered me for a while. The solution to being copied is something even weirder and more mind bending!
Wrong answer, mayor.
I'm really worried about this though. Why are they trying so hard to sneakily abscond with the filly? Do they know she's an extraworldly invader, and are planning to adopt her right into their secret prison to be tortured for information? I could understand if they were just uncaring, and tossing her in the basement because foals don't matter to them. But to try so very hard to ensure that this foal will receive as little aid as possible and be crushed by the so-called un-caring system? Somepony knows something, and somepony wants this little filly to disappear. I don't even think the mayor's in on it. He's acting like a slimy bureaucrat who's received orders from on high with an addendum that he can kiss his cushy life goodbye if he doesn't comply. That is to say, he's doing absolutely everything he can to ensure that their orders are obeyed, but when push comes to shove he's a spineless coward and all he can do is hope the flak falls on Lightning Dust for doing this. That's what's really scaring me, because the mayor has no power to threaten Lightning Dust, yet he told her there was going to be a problem. Was he in some way trying to warn her?
All I can say is I really hope Lightning Dust has a bug-out bag.
8128879
Yeah, and with enough power available to lift an entire vehicle, youd think the grill would at least be electric. Or he would have an induction stove.
Also, flying vehicles, why is it rusting? Wouldn't it be made out of aluminum or carbon fiber? Or titanium? 3d printers for that are maturing quickly, and it is quite abundent in oxide (titanium oxide is used to color white paint)
Moral of this chapter, woo! A new home, more language skills, corruption!
Princess Luna?
8129771 Perhaps. Or, if she was really there back then, perhaps a test administrator, and "failing" is part of the test. Good catch, either way—I missed that entirely.
The advantage of having Lightning Dust as an occasional protagonist, I suppose, is that it's very in-character for her to immediately react to any kind of perceived threat with antagonism. A more measured character might have probed the mayor a little more for the actual reason behind his behavior, and even worked out something mutually satisfactory. Lightning just escalates and goes for the jugular. This means that a confrontation designed to set up later story conflicts can be very short and sweet instead of drawn out
8129771 That was my first thought. Which would make this a dream-flashback, not a narrative one.
8129106 I never really got the whole shock-horror thing about duplication of consciousness, but then again I grew up on sci-fi stories. There are even a few fairly recent modern SF novels where self-copying is a normal part of one or more characters' lives. Things like "Oh I want to monitor 1000 cameras in a space station to see if specific things come up, and it's a bit complex for a simple program and I don't want any AIs to do it for me, so I'll spin off a mind-copy of myself, edit it to render it super-autistic and hyperfocused on that one goal, make 1000 copies, and assign each one to a camera feed."
Or you get musings from characters who know perfectly well that they're cut-down spin-offs of a "prime" version of themselves, assigned to a task until they die, at which point they'll be merged back as a nonsentient memory track. But it does mean that all future versions that the prime spins off will have that memory (unless edited), so it's sort of the same as living on.
8130084
Well, it's not a horror game because of the mind copying (mostly). It's a horror game because of the setting. You're trapped by yourself in a decaying facility at the bottom of the ocean with a bunch of insane biomechanical monstrosities trying to kill you, and this is actually the BEST place to be since the surface was wiped out by a meteor impact.
Also, reading your examples, I can't help but be reminded of (god help me), Naruto using his shadow clones for that exact purpose. Because I'm a filthy weeb apparently.
Hmm, some interesting backstory. But wait... did James Prime kill himself after getting uploaded? Yikes.
Also, oh man. Mythology. Can't wait until Lightning takes him/her into her cloud house. Or the first time he watches Celestia or Luna move the sun and moon. He's... uh... gonna be a bit shocked I think.
Hmm. Well, there's definitely something going on under the surface. The question is just how far it goes, and just who Lightning Dust is unknowingly messing with.
James is in for a tremendous shock when he realizes just how much of that apparent religiosity is anything but. The look on her face should be priceless.
Also, a glimpse of Earth as it was when James left. Very interesting glimpse of the culture and technology levels he left behind, and that left an impact on him. (Also, that library apparently closes at around 2 AM.)
Sorry james, as a pony, you are now under Luna's jurisdiction.
8130284 There's some speculation in the comments towards that, but it's also possible that he was simply more concerned with his descendant consciousnesses being out amongst the galaxy doing the work he loved, than what might happen to his original self after that had been accomplished; and that was going to be something he worried about later.
I guess it's entirely possible that he became an Earth-based linguistic archivist/xenotranslator/collator, dealing with information sent back by other people's earlier probe-clones. It'd be interesting to be dealing with the works of, for example, five separate and light-cone-current instances of a xenotranslator who was originally brain-copied in James' grandfather's generation, and whose original self may even have gone on to write some of the reference works James would be using as a new graduate.
In every other story I've read, Cloudstale is the only floating cloud city. I love how you've gone against that and make your own town, even hinting at its small size without saying it outright. And acknowledged the fact that Stormshire moves unlike static ground towns, even making it an important part of the story.
This is becoming somewhat perplexing. With answers come more questions...I'm more and more intrigued.
Yes, those emotes were necessary to show my feelings on this........but maybe not all of them. 
Aha! I,ve figured out my problem with this fic. It lacks the funny! It misses the singing! Where's the lyrics, and the music of cartoony fun?
Lightning Dust has issues for sure, but I know this AU so I have to wonder if her view of events is overly skewed or not. How bad were the Mane 6 to her really? Moondancer hinted that Princess Twilight Sparkle could very well get involved. There is a rabbit hole that James is set to slide down and I feel Dust hopped on Mr. Bones WIld Ride as well.
Well I wonder what Luna thinks of James' dreams.
I wanted to favourite this story. But I can’t. I hope to as things progress but as things stand… no.
The writing is excellent. Structure and pacing decent. The basic concept and world building are intriguing. However the actual events, one in particular, all but ruin it.
This can be summed up with one sentence: Moondancer is a blithering moron.
She is a royal representative sent because ponies are being poisoned, with at least one death. She finds a filly that has highly abnormal biology, including insane regeneration. Who was brought in wearing equipment they cannot father, demonstrating an understanding of it. Who speaks what is clearly a full language but one utterly unknown to Equestria. And who claims to be an alien. She declares that the equipment is dangerous and must be studied. And mentions a dangerous faction in the Badlands.
After all of this she decides that the potential alien, potential infiltrator, potential mutant, potential abductee… should be dropped in Family Services. In an area with no Family Services.
If Moondancer was even remotely competent to have any responsibility James would have been dragged to Canterlot/Ponyville to be investigated.
I dearly hope that there is some explanation for this down the road. Till then I shall enjoy the parts of the story that work without a critical character holding an idiot ball larger than her head.
8134063 As much as I agree with that, indeed, I had a few of the same thoughts as I read that part, I feel that I must point something out. I'm not sure about you, but to me, that actually felt like something Moondancer would do. As strange as the filly might be, her attention would surely be fully grabbed by the possibly deadly device, not the obviously disturbed, and quite possibly abused random filly, as I think she would've thought it.
8137276 You need to consider context. While Moondancer is anti-social in the extreme this is clearly post Twilight’s intervention, so she should be at least somewhat better than in her episode. More importantly her cover story is that she is here specifically to use a translation spell and find out who the mysterious filly is. A task to which she devoted about… thirty seconds to accomplishing. Also to reiterate they already know there is something weird about her due to the regeneration.
More than this we know MD is perfectly willing to engage with people if it will teach her something. She saw James use the device in a clearly deliberate way. Even if she though James had just managed to trial and error her way into using it that is still information MD wants and, assuming she is actually part of a royal investigation, needs.
Yet she ignores the anomaly talking to her in favour of the anomaly she can’t get anything out of.
8139696 True, true. I didn't notice that. I concede the point. Well noticed.
Awesome chapter as always!
Chapter 7?
8134063
This comment is a great example of why I'm not making substantial comments until I'm caught up, and even then.
There's clearly a lot going on that hasn't been revealed yet. I'm just holding out for that. If we know what the situation with Moondancer is aside from a few sketchy, incomplete, possibly half-truths or even complete lies she blurted out to get an annoying random citizen out of the way, then I think it will all make a lot more sense.
To summarize this chapter left unexplained two things, why the mayor acted the way he did and who was the dark haired woman pretending to read that Roman didn't asked to leave?
8333116
I think the lady is Luna and it's a dream.
8349890
It seemed like a memory from before James had it's brain scanned to me. I believe she is foreshadowing for a future crew member to be synthesized into the story.
Yikes, years? I mean, that seems a little ridiculous for a test. If you take it once, it won't take years for you to feel ready to take the test. I guess this is how things are in their time, seeing as the janitor is a century old. I kind of hope that's a joke because if they really do live that long, it makes me wonder why people would want to continue living on after all that time. After living for that long, you get bored. If everyone lives that long, life itself becomes rather boring.
8419334
Part of why people grow tired of life when they get old is because everyone who means something to them starts dying. You don't get quitr as bored if you're not lonely.
I totally forgot there are a few memories of the past for James. Actually I wish there was more past memories for all the characters to tell us the origin and feel of the chapter they are in. It’s sad this idea wasn’t really push for the later chapters.