• Published 15th Dec 2017
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On Getting to the Bottom of this "Equestrian" Business - McPoodle



An exploration of the Equestria Girls setting in the year 1985, pitting Cold War tensions against Equestrian-inspired pacifism

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Chapter 8: Goddess in the Flesh

Chapter 8: Goddess in the Flesh

That night the Archbishop of Baltimare [Baltimore] learned that Bishop Delver was transporting the arch scientist and unbeliever Gus Guiseman to Canterlot in a limo on the church’s dime, and promptly rescinded funding. And so the last leg of the trip was taken via Greyhound bus.

Since discussion of the secrets of the faith was out of the question, Gus spent the first part of the trip going over his notes on the bizarre properties of the penteract quasicrystal he had created. After a lunch break and a nap, he took to looking out the window at the towns and cities he passed through.

This section of Illinois had been settled in the decades immediately surrounding the Civil War, and it showed. In the Christian towns he passed through, there never failed to be a statue of some native-son general sitting astride a rearing horse (or a lieutenant borrowing the general’s horse—it’s not like you could tell the difference). As the same sculptor appeared to be responsible for all of these statues, they soon started to blend into one another in Gus’ head. When they passed through a Markist town, the same marble horse could be seen in the town center—minus the rider.

Once they crossed the state border into New Brass Sky [Nebraska], the number of Christian communities dropped to zero. Advertising posters showed exclusively Markist men, women and children happily consuming their wares instead of Christian with minority Markist as had been the norm in Illinois. Gus light-heartedly mused that somebody born and raised in the great state of New Brass Sky might not even know that Christians and Jews existed in the world.

Finally the bus entered the state capital of Canterlot. Like most communities in the state, it had never had a Christian name, so there was no name in square brackets following it on the signs. As the bus pulled into the station, Gus noticed a teenage girl waiting for them. The streaks of color in her long hair seemed oddly familiar.

As he stepped off the bus and craned his neck to get a better look at her, Delver suddenly appeared in front of him. “Look Gus, before you get mad at me, you have to know that there was one really important thing I wasn’t allowed to tell you earlier. As in, ‘only four people on the entire planet are officially allowed to know’ important. Alright?”

“Sure, sure,” said Gus, pushing the minister aside. Twenty feet [6 m] behind him was the girl, pink skin and pastel hair, wearing a simple pink sun dress over white boots. She was standing on the platform with her hands clasped in front of her and with an eager grin on her face. As she walked forward, the crowd parted effortlessly around her, like Moses parting the Red Sea.

It was her—Crystal, his doomed assistant from 1945. He was sure of it. Yet she was visibly younger than he remembered her.

You…” Gus managed to get out in a near whisper, as time seemed to slow to a crawl. With a distinct effort, he tore his eyes away, looking around him for evidence to prove or disprove the impossibility he was witnessing. What he immediately noticed was that everybody’s eyes were upon her. No matter what they were doing, every man, woman and child seemed to find themselves compelled to look upon this woman’s face every few seconds, as if they needed to continuously confirm that this miracle was still in their midst.

And there was something ineffably miraculous around her. She walked like she didn’t quite touch the ground and her hair seemed to float and perhaps even flow very slowly around her head. The station exterior was in late-afternoon shadow, and yet she was easier to see than the others, like she had a hidden spotlight shining on her and her alone.

“Professor Guiseman, let me introduce you to my friend Celestia, who’s spent her whole life in Canterlot. Celestia, this is the scientist I told you about.”

“Sure, sure,” said Crystal dismissively.

No, it’s not her after all, thought Gus to himself as he extended his hand. “Ce…lestia, was it?” he asked.

“Have a good time while you stay here and stuff,” the teenage girl said, briefly taking and shaking the older man’s hand, her eyes fixed on Bishop Delver’s the whole time.

Gus looked at the touched hand in wonder. At that moment, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the contact had turned it into gold or something equally impossible. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Hearing this, Celestia finally glanced his way for a moment before rolling her eyes. Evidently, not only was his reaction a common one for those meeting her for the first time, but she was also getting a little tired of it. “Luna,” she called out over her shoulder, “would you like to welcome Father Delver back in person?”

“No, I’m good,” said a voice that Gus had some trouble locating. If Celestia was the bright center of Canterlot, then Luna resided in a spot that seemed farthest from it. The bench she was sitting on seemed to be under a broken light bulb, since she was so hard to see. She alone of everyone in the station seemed to be immune to Celestia’s spell, never once looking up from the paperback copy of Childhood’s End she was reading.

Gus looked back at Celestia, to see that she was staring intently at him. The effect was quite unnerving, and for a moment he almost felt himself compelled to apologize for whatever fault the girl had suddenly found in him.

“Wait a second,” she declared. “You’ve met one of me before, haven’t you?”

Gus took a moment to try and fail to parse the strange construction she had just used. “I knew someone who looked and sounded much like you, yes.”

“What was her name?”

“Ah…Crystal.”

“I knew it!” Celestia cried out. She hooked her arm around those of Gus and Delver, and immediately started pulling them in the direction of the parking lot. “Come on, I need to talk to both of you.”

Luna put a slip of paper into her book and stood up.

“Meridiem, could you take my sister back home?” Celestia asked sweetly. “I need some privacy.” The sweetness ended before her utterance did, leaving the last word in a pool of bitterness.

Luna scowled, but said nothing as she followed Gnosi and Meridiem off in a separate direction.


“Alright, I think I’ve got the wording right for this: Father Delver, I order you to tell Gus Guiseman everything secret about me.” There was a brief moment of panic as she considered the full import of her words. “About Celestia in general,” she corrected. “Not me specifically.”

The three of them were sitting in a soundproof group confessional room inside the heart of Canterlot’s main Markist church.

Delver took in a big breath before he began. “Alright, you remember how I told you about the circumstances around Hotspur Percy’s birth in 1377?”

Gus nodded his head.

“Well soon after marrying the Baron de Ros, Lady Percy gave birth to a daughter…who looked exactly like her”—pointing at the girl sitting across from them—“and who was also named Celestia. She didn’t need to touch a sun stone, because when she turned thirteen she knew that her mark was the sun. She was the herald to her brother’s army and did her best to treat anyone who got sick or wounded on the battlefield. She came down with a rather nasty staph infection and died on the night before her brother was defeated and killed.

“Seven years later, another Celestia was born, to a family of Markist sailors in Dover. This Celestia had none of the memories of her predecessor, but in appearance and basic personality was identical. A decade after she died, another one was born in another part of the country. And so the pattern has persisted until the present day. The gap might be as much as fifty years between the death of one Celestia and the birth of another, but usually it’s less than a decade. Otherwise, in any particular year, there’s always a Celestia. They eventually started taking other names, to try and assert their individuality. This one decided to buck the trend and stick with ‘Celestia’.

“The set of twenty-one Celestias act as the most bizarre twin study of all time. The majority of them are even-tempered, natural leaders or teachers, women who work to truly be exemplars of the Markist ideals, to make the world a better place than it was when they showed up.”

Celestia turned up her nose and waved her hand dismissively. “I’ll get around to that stuff when I grow up. Besides, you’re doing such a good job right now that I don’t want to make you look bad when I inevitably show you up.”

Delver ignored her. “Some of them have exhibited strange powers, powers designed to serve the immediate needs of that generation of Markists. Celestia I appeared to have genuine healing abilities, abilities that did not extend to herself. The third Celestia’s voice compelled all who heard it to obey, but that power could be broken by the strong minded. She tried and failed to prevent the outbreak of the War of the Roses in 1455.

“The seventh Celestia, who called herself Belle, was a weather witch, who by exerting her power to the utmost was able to defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588.”

The Celestia sitting next to them rolled her eyes, knowing full well what was coming.

“Wait, seriously?” Gus asked.

“Most certainly,” answered Delver. “In fact, she became so popular as a result of this miraculous act that the people rejected Queen Elizabeth I, and demanded that Belle become their queen.”

“How come I never heard of this?”

“Well, she never got around to getting crowned, so that means she doesn’t have to be included in the official list of British monarchs. I mean, did you know that the future King Louis VIII of France was proclaimed King of England by the barons rebelling against King John and had control of half of England for almost two years? No of course you haven’t, because no Englishman would ever admit that England was once ruled by a Frenchman.” Delver’s triumphant grin fled on seeing the looks on his listeners’ faces. “Oh…right. Wandering again.

“Anyway, Elizabeth became Queen Belle’s handmaiden, and ensured that she got anything she wanted, and I do mean anything. For you see Belle was the worst of the Celestias. She let the power go completely to her head, and the daily business of England ground to a halt as everyone’s lives were re-oriented to satisfying every petty whim of hers. People started to regret taking the crown away from Elizabeth.”

“This doesn’t sound at all like the Queen Elizabeth I thought I knew. She was supposed to be the smartest and shrewdest monarch England ever had.”

“And she was. Elizabeth gave Belle everything she had ever dreamed of growing up as a street beggar on the streets of Canterbury. Especially cake, which turned out to be Belle’s fatal weakness. By 1590 she had eaten herself to death, and Elizabeth was once more Queen of England, more popular than she had ever been before the Armada’s defeat.

“Now, I’ve been leaving out the primary purpose of all of the Celestias, but surely you’ve figured that out by now.”

Delver gestured towards Celestia, and in particular, her hair.

Gus’ eyes boggled. “The Goddess’ name is Celestia!” he said with a gasp.

“Got it in one!” Celestia said with a giggle. “But did you have to bring up Queen Belle? She makes me look bad.”

“That’s why I always bring her up,” Delver said with a mischievous grin.

Celestia groaned before collecting herself and continuing where Delver left off. “We exist to be the voice for Princess Celestia. Every time she’s had to tell anything to us humans, she’s taken one of us over to do it. And always apologizes afterwards for her hypocrisy.”

“And so what fantastic ability do you have?” Gus asked.

“Nothing earth-shattering,” she said with a shrug. “A natural 18 Charisma, in O&O terms. And I can read books in the dark.”

“And the cause of both of these abilities is because…?” Delver prompted.

“Because nothing. That part is none of his business,” Celestia said. “And I don’t like talking about it.”

Every part of Markism is his business,” Delver insisted. “And considering that he’s planning on prodding the barrier between worlds…”

“You are?” Celestia asked.

“I am?” Gus asked, at nearly the same time. Then he thought for a bit. “Well, if I can get away with it…”

“Don’t. Just…don’t. Something really important to the Princess is coming up in twenty-five years, which for her is practically an eye-blink. This puts her even more on edge than usual.”

“And you know this because…?” Deliver prompted.

Celestia sighed deeply. “I’m pretty sure I share her dreams,” she said. “And her nightmares.” Her eyes became unfocused as she looked out over an imaginary landscape.

“I thought Equestria was an idyllic little paradise under the Princess’ rule,” Gus said. “What’s left for her to have nightmares about?”

The ponies she allowed herself to love and watch age and die before her eyes,” Celestia said in a small voice. “The mare she betrayed, for whom she’s risking everything in a desperate gambit where she for once will have to surrender control if she hopes to succeed…” She smirked. “And I can’t seem to stop myself from telling anyone who asks all about them, regardless of how weak they make me look. Almost as if I’m doing what she can’t.

“She wakes up most mornings in tears.” Gritting her teeth over the words that had just left her lips, Celestia glared at Delver, but he just looked at her calmly, so she instead faced Gus. “Like I said, I don’t like talking about it, so I’m preemptively changing the subject. Tell me about my predecessor Crystal—we have almost nothing in the library on her.”

Gus put his hands behind his head as he thought back. “Smart. Really smart. And really forgiving—my fellow scientists never let her forget that she was an Indian half-blood, and therefore inferior to them. I’m ashamed to admit I didn’t always treat her like she deserved, at least until after she disappeared back to Santa Fe for a week to prove how indispensable she had become. And then a year later I replaced her with a computer anyway…” Gus sighed and refused to make eye contact with Crystal’s doppelganger. “She threw her life away at Trinity a few months later.”

“Yeah, that’s the part I do know,” Celestia said with a nod. “Did she have any inexplicable abilities that you can remember?”

“Just her near-perfect accuracy at mental mathematics at high speeds. But she was only incrementally better than the girls she supervised, most of whom were Markists like herself. Those kind of mental tricks are standard for you guys; I don’t remember her doing anything impossible physically.

Celestia sighed. “Fine. I hope you’re better at science than at character analysis.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Gus said wryly.

“Hmm…I wonder…” Celestia mused, rubbing her chin as she gazed into Gus’ eyes. “I read your book, like I suppose everybody else has, but you never really answered one question: Do you have any regrets about giving birth to the Bomb? Other than what happened to my predecessor?”

“I apologize on Celestia’s behalf if you consider the question to be rude,” said Delver, stepping in front of Celestia. “You don’t have to answer it.”

Celestia roughly shoved the elder man aside. “I’d still like an answer. Just because a question is rude doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve to be answered. If the world comes to a violent end in my lifetime, it’s going to be at least partially your fault.”

“Step aside, Delver. I’ll answer the question. The answer is no, I have no regrets whatsoever.” It was obviously a question Gus had been confronted with many times in the years since Trinity, and repetition had honed his reply into a tone of glib certainty. “Mankind will always invent, and mankind will also always misuse those inventions. The former is our best trait, our way of making headway against a senseless universe. The latter is an unfortunate sign of our emotional immaturity as a race, something we’ll get past eventually, but only from surviving our mistakes.

“And make no mistake on this point: the secret to atomic energy was going to be discovered sometime in the Twentieth Century, either by Americans or by somebody else. This discovery, via Manhattan, ended one war and gave birth to another, a Cold War that may yet end with mutually-assured destruction. But if geniuses like Einstein had never been born, it could have been much worse.”

“How?” asked Celestia.

“Imagine the atomic bomb used to start a war instead of end one. In the heat of war, there would be fewer excuses made to not use the Bomb immediately and repeatedly. The result would be the certainty of self-extinction instead of the strong probability we face right now.

“Given that the project would have gone forward with or without me, to want out in retrospect is the act of a coward. I will not shirk the responsibility for unleashing the ‘atomic beast’ by merely being somewhere else at the moment of creation. Humanity at its best and worst did this, and I will not abstain from that responsibility. Besides, that was the time when I had Arline by my side, and I will not give those years up for anything.”

Celestia looked over at Delver, a question on her lips.

“Arline is the name of Gus’ first wife.”

“She died a month before the first bomb was tested,” Gus explained, “of tuberculosis.”

A shocked Celestia looked back and forth between the two men. “Did you know this?” she asked Delver.

“Yes.”

“And does he know…?”

Delver raised an eyebrow.

“No, of course he doesn’t,” concluded Celestia. “Let me see if I have the chronology down: Your wife died in 1945?”

“Yes,” Gus answered coldly. “That’s a brutal student you have there, Delver.”

“She didn’t get it from me.”

Celestia ignored the side conversation. “And the cure was invented three years later. Did you take her somewhere dry? That could have kept her alive long enough to have saved her.”

Gus pressed his lips together tightly and then took a deep breath to regain his temper. “She was staying in a sanitarium in Santa Fe, only a few miles away from where I was working on Manhattan. She got the best that money could buy, but it wasn’t enough.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “You have to understand, Arline was already diagnosed in 1942, when we married, and her life expectancy then was only two years, so every day after that was a treasure. I…I could only kiss her on the cheek at the marriage ceremony, and of course we never got more intimate than that, or else I would have been infected as well.

“No, I have no problem with her dying in 1945. What I do have a problem with is how long it took medical science to develop the streptomycin treatment in the first place.”

This appeared to be another subject about which Gus Guiseman had thought long and hard. But in contrast with his Manhattan answer, this one was a good deal more heated.

“The line of research that led to the TB cure began with the discovery of penicillin in 1928. The chemical product of a soil bacterium was found to be effective against a deadly disease. If medicine was a proper science at that time, like physics was, instead of being a form of glorified quackery, then that discovery would have led to field trials of penicillin in the Thirties instead of the Forties, Merck would have gone ahead with their soil bacteria study a decade earlier—”

“And your first wife would still be alive,” Delver concluded. “Believe me, I understand. I myself was among the first to be given the treatment back in 1948 following the completion of the trials and I owe my life to streptomycin.”

“Oh,” said Gus, taken aback. “I had no idea you were a TB survivor. Does that have anything to do with your…” He gestured towards Delver’s gloved hands.

“My touch aversion? Indirectly, although it’s more tied to how I got my mark.”

“And that’s the other thing I want to ask about,” said Celestia, “your mark story.”

Gus immediately got up. “Well if you’re done with me, I’d better give you your privacy.”

“You haven’t told it to him yet?” Celestia asked.

“It’s…not a story I like telling that often,” Delver admitted in a low voice.

“Oh, but you’re perfectly alright dragging my dreams out for his personal inspection,” Celestia replied with a huff. “Well I’m going to use your own words against you: If ‘every part of Markism is his business’, then he has to know your mark story.”

“Really?” challenged Delver.

“Really.” She then turned to face the other man in the room. “Professor Guiseman, I’m betting that Father Delver here has told you all kinds of incredible stories about Equestria.”

Gus nodded.

“And as a man of science, I’m betting you don’t believe in most of it. I mean, magical pony doppelgangers?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye. “There’s no way that part could be true, right?”

“It is kind of out there,” Gus admitted.

“Well the bishop here saw Equestria with his own eyes,” Celestia told him. “Are you sure you don’t want to hear the story? I can save my questions for after.”

Gus sat back down. “If you’re up to it,” he told Delver.

Delver looked around him, nervous for the first time that Gus could remember. “Well…” he began, then stopped himself. “It was…” He sighed. “It’s a really ugly story. Celestia practically had to force it out of me. I…I don’t know if I want to relive it again.”

“How about this?” Celestia asked Delver after a few moments of thought. “Let’s say that I tell the story, with your help. I’ve been thinking recently about how it must have looked from the other side—what the ponies thought of your visit. If we tell it that way, it leaves most of the unpleasantness out.”

Delver considered this proposal before nodding. “Alright, you can tell it your way. How does it begin?”

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