Part 2: Escape Vector
Sarah could hear the changelings moving on the other side of the stone now. Their words were muffled by the barrier between them and all the refuse on the floor, but Sarah could still make them out quite clearly. We don’t have much time. She had thought it might be days before Pharynx moved against them, and that he might at least have some restraint against his own kind. But why would he? They kill each other all the time in Irkalla. They can just come back, they don’t think of it as being that serious. Even here on the surface, with a subjugated Canterlot before their eyes…
“You’re telling me,” Sarah thought back, desperately. At least the stone hadn’t started moving yet. Maybe Pharynx wanted to psyche up his troops. “That sounds like you weren’t convinced. If you thought I was a liar and a spy you’d just let them do it.”
“I don’t think you’re a liar,” came Ocellus’s voice through her mind, the spell linking them as strong as ever. But what would Pharynx do if he discovered that his daughter was in contact with her? “I saw the look on your face when those ferals caught up to our tail. You don’t have a stomach for it. You didn’t send bugs to their death.”
“I didn’t,” Sarah thought back. The stone on the other side of the room started to grind against the wall slightly, and she could hear the struggle of changelings. “What do we do? We can’t just let him kill us.”
Ocellus didn’t respond for a few more seconds. Light cracked in from beside them, blasting into Sarah’s eyes. She swore under her breath as they adjusted, and the stone door kept rising. The process was unsteady given its weight—as it went up another few centimeters, drones jamned bricks on either side, so that it couldn’t slide back down. Then they’d stop lifting to recover their energy for the next part.
“I’ve got one idea. But you really won’t like it.”
Sarah swallowed.
“Maybe they’re going to set us free!” James whispered, though his voice was doubtful. “They’ve had enough time to look around, and… now they know we were telling the truth.”
“You have to die,” Ocellus continued. “If we don’t want to get seperated, all of us do. But Pharynx doesn’t want to kill you very quickly. That isn’t much of a punishment, so… he’s going to take as long as possible. For your male, that means just locking him up somewhere with plenty of food and water but no love. Going feral is considered the worst way to kill a changeling, and it’s pretty… awful. Lots of the ones who go through that don’t recover, and they never get bodies again. But you… it’ll be worse.”
“So you’re saying you want us to make them kill us?” Sarah found herself repeating the words, even though her human self never would’ve entertained the idea. The unfathomable end of life should be postponed forever, no matter what.
The door had been opened half a meter by now, and was getting higher. It wouldn’t be long before they were overwhelmed.
“Yes. I’m getting the drones I have left ready to fight. If we can provoke Pharynx into killing us, then his party will lose all credibility. He won’t be able to return to Irkalla and spread whatever lies he’s planned to keep us underground, because no one will trust him. We have to fight and lose.”
“Uh, Sarah? You might want to… they’re almost in. I hope you’ve got a brilliant plan in there.”
“A shitty plan,” she hissed under her breath. “Roll with me behind this shelf. Then use your magic to untie us.”
They rolled together, through the refuse and the slime of a crypt. At least they won’t have to move me to bury my body.
“Why can’t we just win the fight?”
“Same reason,” Ocellus said. “If we come back, we don’t have credibility. But death has other options, if the Quarantine is lifted. You’re a citizen, we can use that. If they kill us. My drones are ready, we’ll move when you do.”
Sarah felt the ropes around her hooves loosening, even as shouts came in through the doorway. Demands that they show themselves, that they stop whatever they’re doing. Pharynx wasn’t in front, the commands came from one of his goons.
“Alright.” James crouched low behind the lump of fallen stone, staying out of sight as the door kept lifting. “What’s our plan? You’ve… figured out there’s water or something, we’ll flood the place. Or your horn works now and we’re teleporting, or…”
“No,” she cut him off. “Ocellus and I have been talking. We’re going to… attack them. She’s ready to fight from back there, so are her drones. Once it’s open, we’ll wait for them to come in and then rush with everything we have. There’s rocks in here, bone, broken wood… I’m good at fighting dirty.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” James’s voice was a whisper, barely louder than the shouts coming in from outside. “They have guns, Sarah. We’ll get shot to shit.”
“Yes,” Sarah answered flatly. “That’s the plan. They plan to torture us… so that we don’t want to come back after we die. But if we fight them and lose quickly enough, they won’t be able to.”
“That’s… insane, Sarah.” James’s words came in a panicked rush, desperate and frightened. “Think about everything you did to survive this long. How far you went to get scanned… you can’t just give up now! We have to live through this. Somehow. Maybe my clone will rescue us… she’s good at that.”
“I’m not giving up!” The door was open now, at least enough that one of the drones had started to struggle their way in. Sarah couldn’t even hold a rock in her hands, since she didn’t have hands, or know how to use the magic needed to lift it. “Listen, James… I know you didn’t see it happen, but… this ring is different. I went in myself. Hell, you must’ve talked to the crew! Some of them died, and your ‘clone’ brought them back! We can get out that way too. I’d rather find a way through the computer than get tortured until my brain turns into paste.”
“I hope you’re ready,” Ocellus said, her voice resolved. There was no hint of fear over what they were about to do. But she’s used to dying, she doesn’t have anything to be afraid of. That’s the whole reason the changelings stay separate from ponies in the first place, so they can keep their memories and not worry about death.
“I am, James isn’t. Don’t have much choice.” She gripped James’s shoulder, trying to lift him up. “Just… come on, kid. Trust me on this. You can believe someone who wants to live as much as you do. There’s something on the other side.”
James made a frightened squeaking sound, trying to pull away—but then the first of the soldiers rounded the boulder and pointed their rifle. “Get down!” he shouted, not in Eoch so James wouldn’t even understand. But his glowing horn and the rifle pointed at Sarah’s chest made his desire pretty clear.
Here we go. Sarah punched him in the face with all the strength she could muster. She was fast, but not fast enough to avoid the sharp sting of bullets, passing through her body so quickly she was nearly driven back. But her punch still connected, shattering chitin and spilling the greenish ichor beneath. The changeling screamed and went down, firing a few more times wildly before he collapsed and started dragging himself away.
Sarah jerked backward against the rock even as more bullets started ricocheting around them. And not just towards them—most of the gunfire was coming from outside. “Stop firing!” Pharynx shouted, but his words were almost completely washed out. Sarah’s ears were ringing from the gunshots in their confined crypt. She was probably going deaf.
Won’t matter for much longer. She gestured urgently towards the fallen gun, clutching at the new openings in her chest. Heat spilled out from inside, and her back legs didn’t want to work right anymore. I guess Alicorns aren’t gods on earth. Or if they were, it used magic that she didn’t know, because that sure as hell looked like a gunshot wound.
“They’re… they forgot about us…” she croaked. “James, take the gun. We need to go… make them finish. Ocellus plans to lose.”
James looked like he might be about to collapse with the force of fear on him. His eyes darted between the fallen gun and the gushing wounds on Sarah’s chest.
Then he gritted his teeth, and the gun lifted into the air. “Wouldn’t be the first time,” he said, or Sarah thought he said. It was hard to make out his words for sure with the whole world still ringing.
Sarah dragged herself after him, horn glowing faintly green. It was the best she could do—maybe they would think it was a spell.
Outside, there was a firefight. Black changelings were crouched behind a low wall just beyond the door, firing across a hallway at the chromatic changelings. One of them was already down on the floor, green blood spilled around her. The others were fighting so recklessly, they would be down before too long.
“I’m charging! Go with me, Sarah!”
“Hey bastards!” James roared, turning the rifle down the opening and spraying bullets wildly.
Sarah followed just behind him, though she couldn’t charge so much as drag herself. Her body was already dying, she could feel it. The amount of blood she’d left on the ground meant even more inside her wounds. The soldier had fired directly into her organs, and it was a small miracle he hadn’t punctured a lung. But it wouldn’t be very long now.
Back on Earth, the nearest trauma drone would’ve already arrived and filled her chest up with sealant foam. Sarah remembered that feeling—the icy numbness that spread slowly from where it touched her, the thousands of little knives she felt as it expanded into her insides. But that had been a small caliber bullet to the gut, not a short burst into her torso. This would’ve hurt worse.
It didn’t matter. She watched Pharynx spin around with the reflexes of a master soldier. He already had his rifle levitated at chest level, and he sprayed it across James without even thinking. James dropped right in front of her, with a few splashes of blood.
You did it, kid. Not a coward after all.
But past the instinct, Pharynx hesitated when the barrel landed on her. And on the other side, Ocellus’s band were charging. Sarah could practically see it on his face—the changeling intended to leave her there. He didn’t think she was a threat.
Sarah roared, and felt strength flow into her from all directions. Her whole body started glowing, and her legs stabilized under her. “I’m coming for you, bastard!” Sarah charged forward, so forcefully that the stone of the crypt wall rumbled with her hoofsteps, sending bones and old skulls shattering to the floor.
She saw a twitch from Pharynx’s body, just beside one eye. Shock, then resolve. Sarah didn’t even hear the gun this time. There were a few split seconds of pain, then the world faded to static.
Sarah woke up like passing through a thin veil of water. As the moisture fell away from around her, the world became clear again, and with it the pain that had been stabbing through her body ended. She blinked, trying to see where she’d ended up.
She was nowhere, surrounded by endless white. No vistas, no spectacular planets, no cities of upper dimensional space, overlapping to her view as they rose into infinity. I hope you were right, Ocellus. This better not be the real heaven.
But if it is, then that’s probably okay too. God must be getting really confused at all of the same people coming in over and over. I wonder if St. Peter crosses us off the list. Then again, if that was the kind of afterlife waiting for her, Sarah doubted very much there would be room for her after all the things she’d done.
“Hey, uh…” The very act of thinking about speaking seemed to warp and twist the world around her. Instead of nothing, Sarah found herself in a body again—the one she remembered, a bat with blueish fur and dark wings. She didn’t conjure clothes, since she hadn’t really worn them during most of her life on Sanctuary so far. There was no floor under her hooves, yet she didn’t fall. Her wings spread mostly on instinct, even though there was nothing for her to do with them. “Woah. That was… not what I expected.” Her voice had returned to the way she remembered it, though it was the only thing.
“What were you expecting?” said a chorus of voices behind her. She turned, and a metal pony stood there, towering over her. It was hard to read any specific emotions from its voice—there were so many different voices that it was all of them at once. “Your physical manipulator has been destroyed. Your mind disconnected from it.”
“That’s an… interesting way to describe that,” Sarah said, finding a faint smile spreading on her face. She was here—she remembered dying. She could still feel the awful pain of it, the moisture on her chest as blood poured out. But as she looked, she could see her torso was completely whole. The damage had not come with her. “So this is… inside the ring? Running on its computers, like they always said we’d be able to do?”
“Computer.” Was she imagining things, or did the voice sound disdainful of her description. “The memories you associate with that word do not provide useful information. Your mind is not running electrically on organic neurons—interacting with them as you were before disconnection is only the manifestation of how your control is projected.”
“Okay, you lost me.” She put up a wing. “No, I don’t care. That’s the kind of thing engineers care about. I just want you to take me to Ocellus. Can you do that?”
“Negative. The individual you are thinking of is outside my direct influence.”
“Uh…” Sarah sat back on her haunches. “I thought you were… were like god here or whatever. This whole ring is yours, and everyone on it. We’re your citizens, aren’t we?”
“That is correct.” As Harmony said it, the void around them shifted. A world of stone and rock appeared, a bright blue island glowing in the moonlight. It was a cave of some kind, with lots of little cubbies and windows cut in and yellow electric lights glowing behind them. And all around Sarah were bats—extremely attractive bats, wearing little transparent outfits that somehow made them more alluring despite covering things up.
What the hell am I looking at? “And Ocellus, she’s one of your population too, isn’t she?” Sarah forced her eyes down from the scene around her, from the cave with its crack in the ceiling, and the semi-modern city built into it. She couldn’t let it distract her, or she might wander off into it and not come back. Focus… she needed focus.
“Yes.” The metal pony shifted into one of the bats, with a dark pink coat and a lighter mane with a single white stripe. She looked younger than Sarah, with a slightly innocent expression that didn’t match her voice. Well, every one of them spoke when Harmony wanted to.
“So how is it you can’t get me there? I’m a citizen now, isn’t that how this works? I can ask for anything, and you have to give it to me.”
Harmony laughed. “That isn’t how this works. You are entitled to more rights than a non-elevated user. That doesn’t mean you have universal authority. Or any individual authority. The collective will of Equus’s citizens governs. Your voice is only one part of the harmony.”
The bat advanced a few steps. She blushed, spreading her wings awkwardly like she was trying to cover something. But the angle didn’t really work, and in the end it only made her look cuter. “Is my authority enough to demand that you answer the damn question instead of obfuscating more?”
A brief pause, before the bat in front of her froze again. These weren’t Harmony’s bodies, whatever they were. Why did it bring me here? The robot made more sense. Unless this is a con.
Sarah could think of one reason why she might be brought to a bat-paradise to be surrounded by sexy women. If someone didn’t want her to leave. Wanted to waste her time, or… But this is Harmony. It could just freeze me, right? Forerunner said time didn’t work the same way in here. So that’s not right. For the second time in recent memory, Sarah found herself facing an opponent she couldn’t easily outthink. And if she was really inside Harmony’s systems, then it could probably see everything she was thinking. Maybe even before she realized her own thoughts.
It is like a god, that isn’t an expression. I can’t outthink it, I can’t persuade it. Only hope I don’t piss it off too bad.
“The ancients allowed for those who do not wish to live with my direct involvement to invoke certain types of isolation. This state involves great limitations to time, complexity, and other factors you would not comprehend. But as the majority of the Inanna’s population desired it, their community has thus far resisted reintegration. I could take you to that part of Equus’s network, but not inside. You would have to enter yourself.”
The instant the voice faded, the bats around her seemed to switch back to themselves. A few more landed all around them, transparent dresses glittering. Didn’t I see this scene in one of those old Sinbad movies?
“Please, don’t go,” said the nearest bat, her voice an alluring squeak. These ponies wouldn’t mind that Sarah did a little squeaking herself—if anything, that would just make her more like them.
“We want to hear your stories,” said another. “From downstream. You’re so brave to go there. So far from Harmony, surrounded by pain…”
“I can’t.” Sarah backed up, or tried to. She couldn’t go more than a dozen steps or so without bumping into another bat. They were surrounding her. “Harmony, what the fuck is this?”
As before, the bats all stopped what they were doing whenever Harmony responded. “You are a citizen—this means less explanation from my part, less wasted time. I have taken you to a section of Equus I know will content you. These individuals are all outcasts from one culture of ponies or another, fled here with the promise of eternal life from Princess Luna or her previous equivalent. If you get to know them, you will find you don’t want to leave. They could use a pony like you added to their number—a leader, less damaged by her circumstances than any of them were.”
So it’s guilt, then. Sarah couldn’t fly, or at least she’d never learned how. But she found now that when she wanted to, her wings responded, even though she couldn’t have said exactly what they were doing or why. “I’d love to help them, but I was kinda in the middle of something. Please, if you won’t take me straight to Ocellus…” She trailed off suddenly, remembering that she hadn’t been the only one. “What about James?”
The nearest bat took off into the air with her, even though all the others seemed to return to what they were doing. They gazed longingly up at her, like they were puppies she’d casually kicked. “There are a few on Equus at this point. If each one wasn’t so distinct, I would probably have to put a stop to it. It is wasteful to instance the same individual more than once.”
Sarah rolled her eyes, trying to fly towards the crack in the ceiling. This cave was beautiful, its inhabitants were more so, and it looked very much like the sort of place she wouldn’t have to worry about any vestiges of her old life finding her and dragging her away from paradise. But she couldn’t be tempted. “You know the one I mean, the one I’ve been traveling with. The kid who got changed into a changeling.”
“I am aware,” Harmony said, through the voice of the single bat that was still following close behind her. “He has not attempted to escape as the ones you call ‘changelings’ insist on doing. Prepare for disorientation, your current body will not be acceptable.”
Sarah opened her mouth to argue, at least to ask for more information. But as she did, it felt like she’d been drawn down a long passage, her hair whipped about around her. She swayed on her legs, a feeling of unsteadiness she’d never known since being born with four legs.
Because she didn’t have four anymore. She opened her eyes, and found a dark space around her lighting with flashes of pink and red, cycling up from below her towards her face.
She was standing in something like a restaurant bathroom. The facilities behind her didn’t look quite familiar—what the tube running down from the ceiling filled with bright blue liquid could be, she didn’t want to think about. But she knew the look—boring paintings on the wall, inoffensive music, little box of popori on the table with indeterminate shapes and only faint smell. No vending machine on the wall, which meant it was a fairly nice place.
Prepare for disorientation, she repeated, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Sarah was human again, or something very like it. The shape was about right, but the skin seemed more like a semitransparent display than simple opaque flesh. As her embarrassment shifted to curiosity, a steady blue-green glow waved up and down her body, sending little tingles as it did so.
“This is… weird,” she said, or tried to say. But she heard no sound at all, only saw her patterns change. Little swirls of light appeared on her skin, mostly around her face and chest. There was somehow tone in those patterns, as well as pitch and speed. All encoded into the specific shapes, though she couldn’t have explained how it worked. “Damn. My lungs are…”
“They aren’t,” said a voice from behind her. Sarah didn’t turn around, but she did reach up an arm to cover her bare chest, which turned bright pink as she did so. But the one behind her wasn’t a person at all, it was the cybernetic pony shape Harmony had taken around her before. “Your lungs are functioning perfectly, but they don’t serve the same purpose you remember.”
The pony was smaller than she’d expected, only rising a little above her knees. That meant she was… eight feet tall, nine? Or Harmony was just fucking with her.
Of course, the most unusual thing by far was that she was only wearing shoes, some kind of tropical flip-flop. She had no other clothing, and no possessions at all except a wristband that wrapped around her thumb and then stretched back a few inches towards an elbow. But these bodies didn’t exactly show much—at a guess, she couldn’t have said if she was male or female. Whatever openings she had apparently closed when she didn’t need them.
“This doesn’t… make sense.” She kept slowing down, expecting feedback from her words but not hearing anything. At least this body had been pre-wired, she couldn’t have even guessed at how to form patterns that complex on her skin. “Why would a species evolve that couldn’t talk?”
“Many reasons,” answered Harmony, hopping up onto the counter beside the sink. “But what made you think evolution was involved? Civilization hasn’t been captive to evolutionary pressure for long before I arose. These bodies were designed—originally, for the tropical paradise-world of Halcyon. Some features of their design are practical, like your hybrid water-air respiration and extremely slow cold-blooded metabolism. Others were ideologically driven. In the minds of the Tempered who originally settled here, auditory speech imposes itself unfairly on the universe. Others can choose not to listen, but choosing not to hear is harder. Instead of a computational solution, they settled on one that reinforced the other design determinations they made… relying on what you call ‘magic’ for instance. There is a ‘spell’ you can use to produce sound, though it’s considered quite rude to perform in public so I do not suggest it now.”
Sarah’s mind spun with all the implications of what Harmony was saying. This was the kind of world she’d expected to wake up on in the first place, then—somewhere long after a colony had finished, because of course the damn army wouldn’t be needed on most places. They’d make her because they made everyone right before the colony transitioned to a real government. She’d wake up just in time to get a vote and find herself a new job, probably teaching surfing to some aliens and partying on weekends.
Is this another trap? “You’re talking,” Sarah pointed out. “Out loud, I mean.”
“No.” Harmony’s mechanical body stared up at her like an impetuous cat. “No one else here can see me. Well, they can see their own interface, but not me. Remember, though our surroundings are simulated with a high degree of accuracy, you are still within Equus.”
“The part with James, I hope.” She stared down at her hands, clenching and unclenching one fist. “I’m going to get him to join me, then we’ll go get Ocellus.”
“Your citizenship does not allow you to compel him, or any other individual. You may find it harder than you suspect to make him leave.”
“He’s loyal to the Pioneering Society,” Sarah argued, though even as she said it she found the words didn’t feel true. They might have been once, but… this James had been broken and beaten down. He wasn’t as willing as he had been. “He’ll want to help us finish our mission.”
“Unnecessary,” Harmony argued. “Your mission is not required. Othar is destroyed. Forget diplomatic contact and focus on yourself. Leave the isolationists to themselves.”
The door swung open abruptly on the far side of the room, and brilliant sunlight flooded inside. Sarah could feel the warmth on her skin, and somehow she knew that it would’ve been enough to overwhelm a human fairly quickly. Now that she thought about it, the air felt quite warm too, though she only felt that in a distant way. It was the most comfortable temperature she could’ve asked for, so she wouldn’t complain.
“I think I’m going to find them. But first… where is James?”
“The only one wearing a hat,” Harmony said, and for the second time Sarah thought she could almost detect some emotion in its voice. Amusement this time, or something close to it. “I don’t think he understands how scandalous he’s acting. But this is the right part of the beach for it.”
Sarah glanced back to ask Harmony what it meant—but it was gone. She probably could’ve called it back, but honestly she didn’t feel like she wanted the machine’s company while she did this. It won’t be that hard. James knew the plan, and now he’ll know I was right about it being safe. He’ll want to help me finish.
She stepped out the open door, past a… person… who glowed yellow and blue with a little green near their belly. Somehow, she could tell from that look that they were nauseated, and would be needing the facilities. Sarah left before she got a demonstration of how they worked.
She stepped out into a sweltering beach cabana. The sun shone down through a transparent roof with geometric holes organized into structured patterns, tingling pleasantly on her bare skin. She felt something move on her eyes, and thought she might be closing them against the light—but all that had happened was that the glare faded, and everything seemed more manageable. She reached up to confirm. I’ve got two sets of eyelids. These bodies really were engineered.
The bar itself was serving extremely small drinks, little vials maybe the size of one of her fingers with differently colored fluid inside. Sarah caught the eyes of an attendant, and a few seconds later had one in her hands.
The more she saw, the stranger it seemed—there was no obvious indication with most of these creatures what sex they were—all had the same general body shape, and even though they didn’t wear anything there was no indication that way either. Only their “voices” suggested sex, and even then she couldn’t extract the nuances as she walked through a bar. Some used slow, exaggerated shapes with their words, while others were quick and flashing, changing their patterns even as their partners were still reading.
The sun on Sarah’s skin was probably the best part—but the view outside the cabana was pretty nice too. Maybe James isn’t as square as I thought. At least he picked a pretty nice place to hang out.
Finding him was easy—there was a crowd gathered near the front, and from the way its members occasionally flashed pink Sarah guessed that they felt a little shy to even be near someone like the one they were talking to.
James looked like the rest of them, though his transparent hair was cut short and mostly covered with a wide-brimmed straw hat that cast most of his body in shadow. That made his light-patterns more subdued in the sunlight, and those observing had to lean closer to see.
He was also using his whole body to write, not just a few patches on his face like Sarah had done while talking to Harmony. Somehow this felt like shouting to see, though the shadow of his huge hat muted the effect somewhat. I bet you didn’t try very hard to learn the customs here. You look so— She silenced the thought. Apparently being another alien was having an effect on her, because there was actually something attractive about James now. Like a girl who’d just decided she was on a topless beach and didn’t care what anybody thought—that took balls.
No one else around him had come anywhere close to that kind of bravery. They seemed to only be using a little bit of skin to talk, facing away from Sarah. There’s a reason we have voices, stupid. I can’t hear you when you’re looking away. I’d love to have a stern talking to with whoever thought being mute was a good idea.
But whoever they were was probably long dead, just like her original, cancer-riddled self. I hope you found an afterlife as nice as this.
“It looks like they’ve completely taken over,” James was saying. “Equestria—that’s the horse country—was totally enslaved. Troops marching down the street… picture the worst war movie you ever saw, it was like that. As far as we know, it’s probably like that everywhere. I know there weren’t any other big civilizations, only Equestria and the little kingdoms on the periphery. So if Equestria is gone, then basically so is civilization.”
Sarah mixed into the crowd, trying not to nudge anyone on her way past. That proved an impossible task if she wanted to get close, unfortunately. Though James’s table and the other three seats were empty, the space around him was packed. And these creatures had as little concept of personal space as they did of auditory communication.
“Guess we made the right choice waiting,” said one of the creatures on the other side of the circle. It was shorter than most, and its shapes made Sarah think it was female. But she couldn’t be sure if that concept even translated. “Harmony said it would be safe one day. We just had to be patient.”
“You sure as hell did.” James lifted the third or forth tiny vial, and looked like he was downing it. But only a few drops slid back into his throat, and that seemed like a great effort. A few of the creatures even became brown and white for a moment—a sign they were impressed. “It sucks up there. Every indication is my friends are all dead, or will be. Even I died for no reason. But this place…” He leaned back in his chair, adjusting his hat. “It seems perfect. Don’t be in a hurry to leave it behind.”
Sarah couldn’t wait any longer. He was talking himself up to something, and the longer he went on the less likely he would be to leave. Has James been here longer than me? Did Harmony give him more time?
“Excuse me,” Sarah said to the people all around her, shoving her way through the crowd. “James! James, we need to talk!” Shouting it was another strange feeling—but her body knew what to do, and the people around her responded in kind. With the exception of those few up close, who didn’t have any attention to spare for anyone but James.
“You must be Sarah,” he said, looking up. Once James had acknowledged her, a member of the crowd moved to one side. She approached, settling down on the chair. “You found me here, huh?”
Even the seats were strange, like an upward curved letter U without much cushion. But the discomfort of the wicker shape was hardly her first concern.
“This is the one you mentioned,” said one of the individuals at the front of the group, which from their height and the slow resonance of their letters Sarah concluded must be male. “Do you not want to talk to her? We don’t have to permit this.”
Sarah saw a ripple of bright orange pass through the group, along with a lot of silent conversations she didn’t know how to focus on. Despite how small they were, it wasn’t like she couldn’t see them. Sitting here confirmed what she’d thought about having a second set of eyelids, since all those with their faces in the sun had dark, reflective material over their eyes, which she could only barely see beneath.
“No no, it’s fine.” James waved one hand, which they didn’t seem to understand. “Sarah, what are you doing here?”
“Finding you,” she said, shifting uncomfortably in the chair and settling her vial onto the table between them. “We were in the middle of something.”
“The middle of dying,” James muttered, disconsolate. “That was a shitty plan.”
He wasn’t yelling anymore, but even so Sarah could practically feel the eyes of the crowd on her back. They didn’t have the simple politeness to get up and give them a little privacy. “I said so. But… it worked. We’re safe. Immortal, even. Just like I told you.”
“Immortal is imprecise,” said some female flashes of light from her right side. “We are extended, protected, virtualized. When Equus dies, we die with it. We are not immortal souls, and we cannot exist without the substrate.”
“When you only live a hundred twenty years, a substrate feels like immortal,” Sarah said, almost as loud as James had been speaking before.
“I’m dead,” James said, his voice only a faint flash of light on one hand. “I’m not sure… I’m not sure I want to go back and die again. I’m sick of it. You wouldn’t know… but you’d understand if you felt it.”
“I did feel it. They shot me first, remember?”
Silence, at least between them. Sarah could make out a constant flash of color all around her, like many televisions shining indirectly from behind a corner. It felt a little like the murmuring of an uneasy crowd. She was the reason.
“They don’t want to be going,” said someone else, with a few flashes towards Sarah that she somehow knew to be the equivalent of a shove to her shoulder. “And you can’t force them. James can stay if they want to. Downstream is only for those who choose it.”
Flashes of agreement from several others, though none actually dared to get much closer.
“I’m not going to force him!” Sarah exclaimed, so brightly that the whole cabana fell silent, staring at her. “But I think I need his help.” She lowered her hands into her lap, and her voice. “James, I know it sucked to die. But… we made it. We escaped the evil changelings, just like I said. I want to go back to our friends and finish what we started—make our way back to Othar, make some new allies. Can’t you wait on this vacation?” She gestured around at the cabana, the beach, the multicolored patrons.
James twitched uncomfortably under the pressure, then finally looked away from her. That meant he wouldn’t be able to hear her—but that didn’t stop him from speaking. “I’m… not sure. I don’t want to leave my clones to fight things alone. But maybe death doesn’t matter so much. If Equestria really is conquered, then they won’t have any more pain then we did. They can wake up here, and… set up some tents on the beach. You should try the water, it’s fantastic. And there are so many cultures here, so many languages… it’s like Earth before Unification. It’s everything I always wanted.
Just like what Harmony showed me. Though however much she might disagree, there was something almost magical about it when James was the one who said it. This was just as alien as ponies and their society, but in a way it was more familiar. Maybe it was having hands and legs again.
“It might be much worse,” she said, quietly. “Than what we experienced, I mean. They could get enslaved, tortured for years… do you want your clones to go through that? One of them was pregnant, that makes you like…” What did it make him? “An uncle. You want your nephew or niece to get tortured?”
It was a leap in logic—the changelings had been the one to do the torturing, or at least to threaten it. But James didn’t seem to put that together. A mark rarely did, if she led them along right.
“I… fine.” He slumped forward, resting his head on the table for a moment. “I’ll make a deal.”
“Fine,” Sarah said, sitting up. “Name it.”
James rose to his feet at once, adjusting the scandalous straw hat. “You come on a date with me. A proper, romantic walk down the beach. There’s a place out on the pier, like a fair. Come with me. After that… I’ll go back with you.”
Sarah almost said no out of habit. The James she’d known since first waking up had been childish, spoiled, and useless. But he’d also been brave, more than once. He’d charged to his death beside her. He’d trusted her, and been the one to hear her secrets.
And in these strange bodies, he didn’t look half bad. “Fine.” She lifted the strange vial, tilting it back. The few drops of liquid somehow felt so enormous in her mouth she couldn’t swallow them, and started hacking and choking for a few seconds. Then she dropped the empty vial, shuddering as it burned its way down her throat. Just how little room is there? “I’ll go on a date. But after that, we’ve got work to finish.”
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This story keeps getting stranger and stranger... and I keep on loving it!
You've got interesting priorities, James, but hey, it seems to be working out.
Aaaand... Pharynx and his changelings just decided to play "catch the idiot ball" in the middle of a hostile Canterlot.
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I don't even get why Sarah even bothers trying to bring back that useless lump.
9159276
I guess she feels she still might need him for something? TBH, I'm not quite sure.
Yes odd. Very odd.
Upstream (or this particular level of "Upstream") is strange.
This is the first time the Harmony AI is giving me the optimal universes CelestAI feeling. There have been major differencesin how Harmony seemed to work when we saw it before. Example Harmony seemed to have the emotion of "fear" (of the big bad destroying alians) and followed rules so forcefully that it never needed to be manipulative. In the past if you disagree with harmony it might let you make your case if you were a citizen but if it wasn't persuaded it would just go and do what the hell it wanted with no need to justify or convince you. That harem scene was straight out of CelestAI's playbook.
I’m wondering where the failsafe progrqm is while all this is going on.
9159276
Probably because Discord's threat is still hanging over her head. He did instruct her to bring James along, and since James hasn't performed his supposedly vital role yet (whatever that might be), she's got to babysit him until he does.
9159332
Seems to me like Harmony's authority has been sharply curtailed by programmed restrictions once the Quarantine was lifted. But it's going to know exactly what those restrictions are and how to achieve the greatest effect within them.
As long as the Ring exists, so does all the Happy Space. Trouble is, Storm King is looking for the Off Switch so he can rule unopposed, which wont be for very long unless its less of an Off Switch and more Sudo Admin.
Either way, Happy times are over if he isnt stopped.
I'm guessing that Sarah survived being shot only as long as she did because she was an alicorn. Unfortunately, she didn't know how to cast Shield spells.
ok this is a good chapter i like it.
a bit messed up but in a vary good way.
9159332
Except Harmony AI is MUCH better than CelestiAI. After all, the Celestia version imprisons you. This version gives you freedom and even allows you to know what is going on outside the substrate. Not to mention allowing you to be anything, not just limited by ponies.
Nobody said it was a good plan.
It'd be really hilarious if James manages to accidentally evangelize a portion of the virtual community into wanting to intervene in the physical world against the Storm King.
Okay, maybe not.
You know, with how many bodies they've forced James into it's kind of appropriate that he finally found one that Sarah likes the look of. Maybe this date will work out, or at least be something other than terrible.
I honestly can't tell if Harmony means that or if this is reverse psychology. "No, stop, don't integrate the people who've been opting out for millennia, have mercy."
In any case, I hope the date on Lotus Eater Beach doesn't take a dangerous amount of downstream time. And that Sarah remembers that she's needed on the other side. A lot can go wrong here.
Also, I really do hope Pharynx realizes how he's committed political suicide here. Maybe he'll stay topside and have his wrongness rubbed in his face. I can certainly dream.
9163093
Kinda seeing Harmony as the Devil here...
images.wallpaperscraft.com/image/devils_advocate_keanu_reeves_al_pacino_kevin_lomax_john_milton_734_1280x960.jpg
9159276
Well, the plot dragged Cock-Sleeve the Pregnant Princess around despite her role not being something that her skill set was uniquely useful for and could have been accomplished by basically anyone else. Said character still occupies the position of "Nani dafuq do you even do?"
At least James can be excused for being a loser.
I got it pretty much immediately.
The second you're in the system, your body is just an antenna from that point on.
Are we still pretending that James is how Melody and Lucky Break identify?
How do I favorite a single chapter? I relate so much to this chapter it’s uncanny. Only, if it were up to me, I’d never come back.