The God Complex
Sunset could have been walking for minutes, or hours, or days. It didn’t really matter. Time had no real meaning here. She was beginning to comprehend the nature of this mental landscape -- the Doctor had explained that the Matrix was comprised of all the minds of every Time Lord, which would be the reason why this place was so enormous. But since all the Time Lords were gone, or had never existed, or… something, this place had been emptied out.
Once she put it in that perspective, the vast chamber shifted based on her perceptions. Walls began to spring up, forming a series of halls and galleries. Velvet ropes blocked off alcoves in the walls, empty display cases, darkened rectangular patches on the walls that likely once held paintings. It was a museum, but one which had been emptied of all its exhibits.
She looked behind her. The vast, empty expanse of floor had been replaced with more museum corridors. She could still sense the inimical presence in the halls -- it seemed confused, and its confusion made it angry. She shuddered. If it was so close that she could detect the generalities of its emotions, it was much too close for comfort. She pressed on through the empty museum. Surely, somewhere in all of this, there had to be an exit, perhaps a map…
Of course, no sooner had she thought the word ‘map’ than she turned a corner and ran headlong into a free-standing placard detailing the museum’s construction. Clearly, the Matrix had some solid user-interface programming. Of course, the closer she got to anything resembling the perimeter of the museum, her eyes skated off the edge. Still, it was a start.
Well, it was a start in a manner of speaking. There still wasn’t much on the map. In fact, there was practically nothing, save for a star that was labeled ‘You Are Here’ -- and, near the center, two dots, labeled in tiny lettering.
She squinted. “The Romana Room… currently undergoing remodeling, not very helpful. What’s this, then… Model Train Exhibition?” she muttered to herself. “That doesn’t seem especially helpful… but I guess it’s the only thing to see around here. Fine, let’s check it out.”
The world went blurry for a moment, the walls growing streaky and wobbly as though Sunset was watching a poorly-shot reality show cut away to another scene. When she blinked her eyes clear, she was standing in a doorway, looking in at the sole occupied room of the museum.
“A very solid user-interface program,” Sunset muttered. She took a moment to regain her bearings, then trotted into the room.
The model train set was fairly immense. At Sunset’s best estimation, she could fit three tennis courts in the space it occupied, and still have room left over for spectators on the sidelines. It was tremendously detailed, as well, although if there was a theme, she couldn’t tell what it was. Here, there was a military base with dozens of miniature troops, all with minutely carved guns. Over there was a church under attack by dragon-like creatures, with perfectly replicated stained glass. In the center stood a vast domed city on red-orange plains, and peering closely, Sunset could see intricately carved humanoids the size of ants going about their daily business.
Humanoids?
Yes, she realized, there were humanoid figures all over the model. There were some scenes that consisted only of ponies, as well, but the vast majority appeared to be biped-based.
That made a kind of sense, Sunset thought. Time Lords appeared humanoid in their own universe, so it would make sense for them to replicate that here. She studied the trains themselves. Most of them seemed to go in small loops of track, repeating their paths over and over again. Only one long blue train seemed to cover the entire track. Sunset took to the air and followed the engine as it wound through the landscape, through gardens and quarries and mountains and cities. Then it drove through a tunnel. It didn’t come out the other side.
Sunset blinked and looked back. The blue steam engine was back at the beginning of its journey again, setting out past the domed city for the junkyard by the school. She frowned, and with a flash, she turned herself into a tiny flame and zipped into the tunnel the blue train had disappeared through. It wasn’t lit, but for a creature of fire, that was no trouble at all. She followed the tracks along until they came to a sudden halt at a junction. There was nowhere for the train to have gone.
Sunset looked from one diverting tunnel to the other. Looking down them both, she could see that neither had even been fully excavated, though one had been dug out much farther than the other. She stopped to collect herself for a moment, and that was when she realized something. All this time she’d been focusing on the train, she hadn’t been keeping tabs on the other presence in the Matrix.
She could feel it now, right outside her hiding spot. She could see its shadowy form grinning down at the tunnel she was in. “Oh, Sunset Shimmer,” it hissed, its voice echoing strangely down the tunnel. “You should really have just left this place alone.”
Sunset tried to disconnect, to pull out of the construct of the world, but something was keeping her locked in.
“I should thank you, really,” the voice continued. “Before your mind was here to manifest a physical location onto the Matrix, finding the Doctor’s life was a much trickier proposition.”
The Doctor’s life? Is that what this was? Sunset looked at the two tunnels again. The new information clicked the last pieces of the puzzle into place. One tunnel led to the Doctor escaping the Matrix. The other led to the Valeyard. She had a sinking feeling about which one was dug out farther.
“But unfortunately, the time has come to snuff your flame…”
Shadowy tendrils began to ooze toward her down the tunnel. Sunset struggled to control her breathing, to concentrate. The entity had said that this place was a museum because of her. That was her perception overlaid onto the Matrix. But that wasn’t all the Matrix was, was it? What if she could take a different point of view. This was where all the business of the fake Tower of Rassilon sprang from, where it was all built, designed, and orchestrated. It was like… like…
Suddenly, Sunset was pony-sized again, standing behind a great red velvet curtain. The Matrix was like the backstage of a theater! A snarl from overhead made her look up. A shadowy figure glowered down at her. She ran, and the Phantom of the Matrix swung down from the catwalk in hot pursuit. She raced deeper and deeper into the theater, and everything faded to darkness until she was the only source of light left. She couldn’t even see the floor beneath her hooves, but she could still sense the entity hot on her tail. She struggled to think of something more useful to hide in. The Matrix was once full of inhabitants, trapped there long after they should have died, locked up for new Time Lords to gawk at, like a…
She was in a cage, the only full cage in an otherwise empty zoo. Outside, the shadowy entity raised a hunting rifle.
She ran down the streets of an abandoned city, pursued by a dark taxicab.
She knocked over empty shelves in an ancient library, but shadowy spiders wove webs to hem her in. Her mind, heart, and hooves were all racing. She couldn’t think straight any longer, and for the first time since her ascension, she was tired. She stopped in the middle of a vast plain that looked like vaporwave brought to life, breathing heavily. A glitch moved across the landscape toward her. She shut her eyes tight.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry!”
Then she felt a sharp, stinging sensation across her face and her eyes shot open. Sombra was staring at her, his eyes wide. “Are you alright?” he demanded.
“Oof.” Sunset rolled onto her stomach and pushed herself up. “Sombra, buddy. I think you just saved my life.”
“Oh,” Sombra said faintly. “Mortal danger. Hurrah.”
The doors were stuck tight from disuse and dust. However, after a few minutes of Apple Bloom pulling on one door, Rumble pulling on the other, Dinky teleporting to the staircase on the other side to push them open, and the Chumbley airblasting some of the centuries-old accumulated dirt off the hinges, they were eventually able to open the doors far enough for everypony to squeeze through. Emphasis, unfortunately, on everypony.
Apple Bloom looked at the Chumbley, forlorn. “Well…” Scootaloo said carefully. “It’s not like it could go up these stairs anyway, right?”
“Guess not,” Apple Bloom conceded, reaching out to pat the robot on its side. The Chumbley obligingly compressed itself so that Bloom could easily pat it on the ‘head’. “Hey, now. You gonna be alright down here?”
The robot trilled, but it seemed flatter than it usually did.
“Ah’m gonna miss you, Cholmondeley,” Bloom said softly, resting her forehead against the Chumbley’s dome.
It rumbled in response. She patted its dome one last time and trudged through the doors. At the last moment, she looked back. “An’ stay clear of any big ugly trolls, y’hear?”
The Chumbley trilled one last time, then rolled out of the corridor.
Bloom’s shoulders slumped. Sweetie put a hoof on her friend’s back. “It’ll be alright,” she said. “You put it together yourself, you know?”
“Yeah,” Bloom muttered. “Ah jus’ hope Ah did a good enough job. That’s all.”
Dinky opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again, looking away. “C’mon,” she said, turning toward the stairs. “We’ve got a long way to climb, yet.”
She glanced up and saw Rumble already soaring two stories overhead, doing tight loops and rolls, exulting in his freedom. “Well. Some of us do, anyway.”
“You imbecile,” the Nightmare said.
The Valeyard’s expression went from smugly smirking to sour in the span of a second. “You’re welcome,” he said coldly.
The Nightmare turned its head to glare at the Valeyard. “You’ve allowed one of the prisoners to escape.”
“Escape? Nonsense. I could tell if my psychic barriers had been breached. No one knows the Matrix better than I.”
“Then how was Sunset Shimmer able to access a higher level?”
Celestia went a little paler. The Valeyard scanned the crowd. “Sunset… it seems, is not here,” he conceded. “Nor is Sombra, unless he’s chosen merely to skulk in the shadows once more.”
“You’ve been lax, Valeyard. Sloppy.”
The lawyer’s lips tightened into a fine line. “Sloppy?” he hissed. “Me? How dare you.”
“I see you haven’t been able to retrieve the key, either.”
“Hence, why I had to make do with this substitution. It hardly matters -- they’re your problem now. Or perhaps I should say, you’re their problem now.”
“Is that so? Why? What are you planning?”
“I should be able to be a more direct influence in the physical world.” The Valeyard turned to look straight at the Doctor. “The real TARDIS is still very much unlocked, unless I miss my guess.”
The Doctor shut his eyes in a pained expression.
“Once I’m in there, I should be able to convince the old crate to be a little more cooperative.”
“No!” Ditzy said. “You can’t do that! Please, you were the Doctor, once! You can’t be that far gone.”
The Valeyard regarded her for a long moment. “Watch me,” he said, then faded from view.
Ditzy sat down heavily. “Oh,” she said sadly. “I really thought that would work.”
Silently, the Doctor put a hoof around her and held tight.
There was a fizzling sound in the West Orchard, and the Valeyard stepped out smoothly from behind a tree. The barn was no more than a stone’s throw away, and the Time Lord made a beeline for its main doors. He threw them open, and the rising moon threw harsh light into the darkened room beyond. Against the wall, the TARDIS sat, its windows as dark in reality as they had been in the Matrix. The Valeyard noticed with a small amount of satisfaction that the blue paint was beginning to peel and flake, and several fairly severe cracks were developing in the wood itself. The TARDIS’ power supply was diminished far beyond operational capacity, and its last limited trickle was being diverted to maintaining its interior dimensions, rather than the exterior.
At the current state of decay, the Valeyard estimated, the police box shell would be corroded to nothing by dawn, leaving behind only the smooth silver cylinder of the TARDIS’s true exterior.
That was good. True faces were meant to be revealed. Everything else -- colorful coats, anachronistic boxes, pseudoscientific babble -- they were merely pleasant lies. Lures to pull in unsuspecting victims. Not that he had any qualms about such things in principle, but the Doctor had always looked on them as being superior to the truth. Things to look up to, even. It was pathetic. Now the time was nigh for the mask to be ripped away. He grabbed the handle of the TARDIS door and pulled. Nothing happened.
He pulled again, frowning. Still nothing.
He pulled as hard as he could, and the handle snapped off the door.
It was locked.
How had it gotten locked? The only beings in town that might conceivably have had keys to this Ship had been knocked into a coma well before they could have --
No. No, that wasn’t quite true, was it?
The Valeyard’s lips drew into a line so fine and tight it could have pressed coal into diamonds. “They always take the hard way,” he growled, setting out in search of Romana.
The staircase wrapped around the inside of the tower, around and around in wide and dizzyingly high spirals. The Crusaders walked single-file up the steps, all of them keeping their sides close to the wall. There wasn’t any real need -- the stairs were wide enough for two ponies to walk comfortably abreast without bumping flanks ot getting too near the edge.
However, the psychological effects of ridiculously high and not-supportive-enough-for-comfort stairs twinned with Rassilon’s apparent distaste for anything resembling OSHA-compliant safety rails had on earth ponies and, to a slightly lesser degree, unicorns, much the same effect that miles of twisting underground tunnels had on pegasi.
Apple Bloom took the front of the herd, carefully keeping her eyes only on the single stair at her eye level. She was followed immediately by Sweetie Belle, who kept having flashes of memory pertaining to crystal palaces and somber kings. Button Mash came next, his tote bag balanced carefully by his side. He was almost kissing the wall in his desperation to overcorrect for its weight. Behind him was Scootaloo, who was constantly calculating mentally how best to catch a falling friend and pull them into a glide to a lower point of the staircase. Dinky brought up the rear, the glimmer of a levitation spell constantly sparking around her horn.
Rumble, naturally, hadn’t quite overcome his euphoric flight of freedom, and was doing laps from bottom to top of the staircase over and over again. It had been nearly twenty minutes, and they had only made it about halfway to the top.
In all that time, Dinky was able to think about quite a few things, when she was able to settle her nerves enough to think about anything more than the old saying about how it wasn’t so much the fall that killed you as it was the sudden stop at the bottom --
Regardless. She looked back on the quest as it had transpired thus far, replaying certain events over in her mind. The earth tremors gained particular attention in these reflections. They didn’t seem to add up in any meaningful way -- they couldn’t be depended on as any kind of help or hindrance, as it seemed that they had done both in equal measure. There was no apparent cause for them, nor any kind of timing in their frequency or duration.
Which, now that she thought about it, was how minor earthquakes tended to appear in the real world as well, at least to ponies without any seismological equipment. In here, though, the tremors were part of a simulated environment. They had to mean something, surely. She just had to figure out something that all the instances had in common.
It was unfortunate that she had been so occupied with other things at the time -- yelling at her friends, running from the Nimons… er, yelling at her friends again, come to think of it…
And that was quite odd, really, the way the tremors came at her lowest ebb. It was almost as though her emotions could affect the simulation.
Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said.
The line stopped and everypony looked back at her. “Oh?” Button repeated.
“I, uh. I just remembered. I’m half Time-Lord. I’m supposed to have some level of control over this place, right? And it’s been manifesting every time I let my emotions run away with me, I think.”
Apple Bloom frowned. “So… you just gotta stop repressing and you can change th’ world?”
“Well, I mean. It seems that way? But I can’t really control it. Or, y’know, stop repressing.”
“Oh. Hm.”
“So I think maybe I should keep repressing my emotions, actually, until we can get somewhere they might not start destroying things.”
Sweetie Belle nodded. “Okay. Um, but just so you know… we’re always glad to listen and help you work through whatever’s on your mind."
Then why are you leaving
Then why are we drifting apart
Then why do I feel so alone
“Thanks,” Dinky said shortly. “Yeah. Break’s over, let’s keep going.”
It was a quiet night in the Stick and Carrot. Call it what you would -- a primal instinct, a sense of foreboding, maybe just an ill, sour-smelling wind blowing in from the mountains -- but everypony in Ponyville knew that tonight wasn’t a night for drinking and carousing.
Not that Berry Punch put much stock in premonitions of that sort. Living in Ponyville soon taught you to never fully disregard anything, but the barkeep couldn’t help but think that the nervous feeling in the town had less to do with psychic affairs and more with the fact that the entire ruling body, the biggest heroes and reformed villains in Equestria, and some beloved locals had all been struck down that very evening. That was enough to give anypony the heebie-jeebies.
Either way, the bar hadn’t seen a soul pass through its doors all night. Now that three hours threatened to tick into four, Berry was beginning to seriously consider just closing up for the evening and going to bed. The only thing stopping her was the certainty that she would only lie staring at the ceiling until daybreak, and there were uses of her time that were slightly more useful and much less psychically damaging.
Just as she was in the middle of the sixth cycle of having this same debate with herself, staring at her reflection in the bar’s shining surface and moderately dissociating, she heard the bell ring. She had her first customer of the night, and she immediately distrusted them. Looking up did nothing to alleviate her suspicions.
The stallion’s coat was bone-white and he looked about as dry and flexible as one, too. Still, customers were customers, even if they had… she regarded his black skullcap and collar for a moment. Even if they had questionable taste in clothes. So, she nodded at him. “Evening,” she said. “What can I get for you?”
“I’m more interested in ‘who’ than ‘what’,” the stallion said, sending Berry’s suspicion levels skyrocketing.
“In that case, I’d suggest you go find a private detective,” Berry said shortly. “I do drinks and sympathy, and right now I’m emotionally prepared to give you exactly one of those.”
“This is the residence of Romanadvoratrelundar, correct?”
Berry squinted at the stallion. “Now, why would I tell you something like that?”
“She has something I urgently need -- a key.”
“She isn’t here.”
“Where is she, then?”
“Uh, number one, I’m a landlady and innkeeper, not a Time Lady’s keeper. She could be any number of places in this town, and I wouldn’t know a thing about it. Number two, Romana’s my friend. I’m not in the habit of telling total strangers where they might find my friends. Number three, get out of my bar before I throw you out, creep.”
The stallion blinked long and slow, like an alligator eyeing up an insolent raccoon. “Is that a threat, Ms. Punch?”
“It’s an order. I can smell the trouble on you from here, and I don’t want trouble in my bar.”
“And if I stay anyway?”
“Well. First of all, you won’t find Romana any time soon, on account of her not being here, and second of all you won’t find Romana on account of being unconscious.”
She pulled a cudgel from beneath the bar -- it wasn’t used all that often for overly rowdy bar patrons, but Berry had used it to whack everything from alien invaders to snooty deer to eldritch horrors. “So get out, before I show you why I’m called ‘Punch’.”
The stallion sniffed. “Very well. I can tell when my welcome has run out. If you see Romana, tell her that the Valeyard is looking for her.”
Berry stared at the stallion for a long minute as he left the bar and trotted away. As soon as he was out of sight, she locked the doors and turned out the lights before running out the back way toward the hospital. She needed to warn Romana.
From the bushes, the Valeyard grinned wickedly before moving to stalk after the bartender.
The chariots rattled as they hit the streets of Ponyville. Starlight looked up from her papers and shuddered. “Talk about a homecoming,” she said.
Fleur looked at her with mild reproach. “You surely did not expect a parade.”
“That’s not what I meant at all,” Starlight said, glancing down the street. “It’s like… it’s like all the life was sucked out of the whole town.”
“Considering the number of prominent citizens that are currently lying unconscious in the hospital, I hardly think that’s surprising,” Blueblood said, stepping out from his chariot. “This town -- no, I daresay this country has just suffered a particularly nasty preemptive strike, and we all must wait with bated breath for the other horseshoe to drop.”
“Hey!” a voice shouted sharply. “You four stay where you are!”
Blueblood shut his eyes. “Why. Why do I ever speak?”
“You’re too fond of your own voice,” Fancy said.
Blueblood considered this and acknowledged it as the griffon swooped down from above. “Okay,” she said, glaring around. “Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you doing here?”
“We’re from the government,” Fancy said smoothly. “Here to inspect --”
“Names, organization, position.”
Fancy blinked, his smile fading. “Sir Fancy Pants, second in command of GUIDE.”
Fleur stepped forward. “Commander Fleur de Lis, also of GUIDE.”
Starlight raised a hoof. “Starlight Glimmer of, um, the Canterlot Magical Academy, I guess. And, uh, I study time.”
“Prince Polaris Blueblood, similarly of GUIDE. Espionage agent, diplomat, and current regent of Equestria. And you, madam, I believe I know already. I must say, Gilda, you’re overstepping your ambassadorial bounds rather a lot.”
Gilda shrugged. “Someone needed to take aerial security seriously around here. With Dash out of the game, I figured I might as well fill in.” She relaxed slightly and gestured to Blueblood. “So you’re the nephew, I take it. I’ve read about a Starlight Glimmer in Rainbow’s letters, too, and the royal guards look real enough.” She considered for a moment. “Yeah, sure, good enough for me.”
Starlight nodded gratefully. “We’re here to investigate exactly what happened this evening. How much do you know --”
“Jack all,” Gilda said immediately. “I know what happened at the end, but if you want explanations… well, you’d better hit up the hospital. The head nurse and the hot alien egghead seem to have a lot of it figured out between them.”
“And this is where all the patients are as well, I presume?” Fleur asked. “Very good. Where is this hospital from here?”
Gilda turned and gestured for them to follow. “C’mon, I’ll show you the way. I wanted to go check up on them, myself.”
Fancy signaled to the charioteers, who took to the sky to park by Twilight’s castle. Then, the quartet followed Gilda, unaware that at that very moment, dark forces were already arriving at Ponyville General.
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Yeah, Sunset's a bit out of her league there in terms of mindscape combat. Thank goodness she brought backup in the slightly more real world.
SYMBOLISM!
To her credit, the pause is more than I expected.
As Dinky said, she can't just clap her hooves and unknot years of emotional repression. Her Matrix influence could be very useful, but trying to force it will only lead to disaster. Mind you, if they're desperate enough that a disaster might improve things...
I'm in favor of anyone smashing length of wood into the local elf-analogues, to say nothing of bludgeoning squamous nightmares.
That said, it's important to remember that the Valeyard is just as clever as the Doctor, without any of his scruples. This could be very bad indeed, especially if he gets access to the physical bodies of his prisoners on top of their minds.
Honestly, the thing I remember The God Complex for most is introducing Tivolians, the species that straight up let their planet get conquered. Also there's a Minotaur. Not a Nimon, a completely separate Minotaur species that function extremely similarly. For some reason. There's also actual plot development for the Doctor and some foreshadowing but honestly I find the tiny details more interesting.
I never got the impression that The Last Great Time War retconned the Time Lords out of existence, considering plenty of characters mention them and the Time War during the course of the series. The War in Heaven, on the other hand, may have unexisted Gallifrey from history (depending on which writer you ask), but then again that whole War in general got retconned so... (My personal "haven't read the books and am going from the wiki" headcanon is that the Last Great Time War was so devastating the entire Post-War Universe was erased due to temporal shenanigans)