Chapter 7: The World
Her journey wasn’t over yet. Jackie did not return to the engine room, and the corpse of the second part of her that had given itself for her mission to continue. Maybe they were dreams, and she wouldn’t stay dead for long. But if she broke up into smaller parts and drifted in the Dreamlands, Jackie would probably not discover anyway.
She had information—what she was looking for could be found on the island in the center of the world. She’d come this far—she was going to sail the rest of the way.
Not literally, granted. The “Supership” used a hydrostatic impeller, and when it moved it glided smoothly over the waves in a way that made it feel almost like they were in a comfortable luxury car gliding over smooth asphalt.
Sarah had remained beside her every moment, with the robot’s brain now tucked away securely in her satchel that she never, ever removed. At least she wasn’t still trying to guilt Jackie over the robot’s sacrifice. She lied to us. She wasn’t supposed to die! She even made fun of us when we suggested it!
But it was too late now. She could no more undo what the bat had done than she could go back and save Ezri from dying in the first place. They had both made their choice, and known the consequences. So did I. Meliora is still standing because of me. Earth is safe again because of me. All this is just a bonus. Ezri would be proud of what I accomplished.
The bridge was a large space for such a small crew. They’d done their best to scrub the grime from the windows, Jackie even flying outside and wiping the glass as best she could. But they could only clear away enough of the slime to make the sea outside visible.
It looked like a sea—there were swells, and a gentle rocking that moved the ship from side to side.
Once they’d left the dock behind, Jackie could no longer see any sign that they weren’t on the surface. The sparse flames of fire out along the water gathered together to keep the ocean at perpetual sunset. Or sunrise. Hard to say.
But she knew where she was going, without asking this time. Jackie could feel the bottom of the ocean pulling her down, like gravity towards an invisible planet. She could do nothing if not follow.
At least she still remembered the basics of piloting an HPI vessel. She set a straight course, and avoided the underwater hazards with modest competence.
“You still think we’re in your digital world?” she asked, conversationally. “This is all on some… server somewhere?”
Sarah glanced down at her satchel. “There’s no reason you couldn’t simulate death here like everything else. This, uh… cybernetic pony… would be easier to simulate than you or me. We’d expect her to come back if we put her in a new body. This doesn’t change anything.”
Jackie shrugged. “Then why are you still with me? If you think I’m wrong, you can fly back the way you came. Make your own way.”
Sarah shifted on her haunches, seeming contemplative. Maybe she was thinking over whether to do exactly what Jackie suggested. But in the end, she only shook her head. “Feels like this is where I’m supposed to be. And if I’m here, at least I can make sure you don’t forget about those others. Make them count for something.”
Jackie could see something resolving in the window in front of them—an island concealed in mists. The water sloped up on the computer, with numerous highlighted hazards. A reef, or maybe a thick maze of rocks. Enough to destroy their ship. She turned sharply to one side, sharp enough that her companion squeaked in protest and started swearing as she smacked into the wall.
“Sorry, sorry!” she called. “There’s an island, but… dammit, I’m not sure… there’s got to be a way through.” She slowed the ship to a stop so violently that they smacked into the water on the way down, sending a shockwave reverberating through the ship. The sound of the engines died.
“An island…” Sarah repeated. “You sure there’s anything through the mist?”
“Hy-Brasil,” Jackie whispered. “I think.”
“I have no idea what that is, but it sounds like a myth.” She wasn’t wrong, but Jackie wasn’t going to say so. How much of her life would her younger self have called a myth?
But she didn’t take her eyes from the sea, or her hoof from the controls. She’d come so far now, she wasn’t going to turn back. “If you want to call it that, yeah. Not a bad name. Maybe Valinor. It’s something. I think I’ve been on my way there for a long time.”
Maybe something had been calling her here. Like water spiraling down a drain. Or something a little more romantic. Either way, she was so close. So close she could almost taste the place, feel its tendrils trying to reach out and tug her inside.
But as she circled, she found the reef continued. Crags of broken rock and bleached coral seemed to surround the entire space, without any visible break that might permit her to slip through. Had they circled the entire island yet? If not, they had to be close. Minutes away, perhaps.
“This is it,” Sarah said, staring down at their sonar data. “This is the last time it happens. You’ve given up everyone else, and now it’s my turn.”
“I didn’t—”
“Bullshit,” Sarah said. “Those ponies were only here because of your mission. You never would’ve met us otherwise. It’s like this whole thing is designed. A… program, made to test you. Or torment you. Which do you think it is?”
“I think it’s… a dream,” she answered. “The Dreamlands is a strange place. It reflects back what we expect, or what we want, or what we fear. It’s hard to say which is which.”
“And you think we were your… subconscious? Not even really people?”
“No.” Jackie hesitated. “I think you were all part of me… but then I got hurt. Died in the Dreamlands, but since I wasn’t mortal anymore, it just broke me into pieces. That would make an ordinary bat go insane, but I’m so old and have so much magic...”
“Well that’s bullshit,” Sarah said, pushing the throttle all the way down. “Here’s another idea. We’re not where you think we are. These ponies are real, and they want you to finish your mission. All of us do. What good would Squeak and Moire’s sacrifices count for if I let you fail right here?”
“You know how to get through?”
Sarah shrugged. “I’ve got an idea. Something you said about the ship.”
She watched, waiting for the bug to supply exactly what she meant.
“That looks pretty impassable—but I’m guessing you don’t really care about leaving. If you had someone to keep the ship moving forward, breaking through whatever that is along the way… you might be able to fly the rest of the way. Rather than crossing the whole lake.”
“You mean… break the rules,” she repeated, uneasy. “That’s… not great. Breaking through the reef will probably… trigger some kind of defensive reaction. Dreams don’t like it when you cheat. You have to do things the way they expect you to.”
“And if we cheat… do you think it would focus on both of us? Or just… one?”
Now that was a plan. Jackie couldn’t have suggested it, not without Sarah already volunteering. But now that she saw it—there was no other way. It might be exactly what this realm was expecting from them. “It should focus on the bigger threat,” Jackie finished. “This huge ship with a nuclear reactor in its belly.”
“Which… isn’t going to blow this whole place, right? If we sink?”
“No.” Jackie didn’t hesitate. “It’s fusion. It’ll lose containment the instant anything happens, start cooling off. Worst that could happen would be a conventional explosion—the reactor chamber is hot, really, really hot. Water gets in, well… steam inside a ship-shaped pipe.”
“So you’d have to fly fast,” Sarah said, gesturing up towards the deck. “Go stand right in front of the window. Soon as I get into trouble, you take off and fly as fast as you can for the island.”
“That’s not…” She swallowed. She wasn’t going to refuse the offer now, not after everything she’d done. “Thank you.”
Sarah shrugged. “Thank me by getting there. I’m immortal—I don’t care what kinda fake death this thing has in store for me. That robot seemed pretty fun, I’ll bring her back too. Have a party.”
“Have a party,” Jackie agreed, sticking out a hoof. “Remember me while you’re celebrating, alright? Remember… what we accomplished. The ponies we saved. The ones we helped. The things we built.”
Sarah took the offered hoof. “Sure thing, Jackie. Forever.”
She climbed up a set of corroded steps, along the edge of the deck where gray water sprayed up around her and the perpetual sunset sky turned everything crimson. There it was in front of her—an island that seemed to stretch forever, its coasts forbidden and forgotten. Nothing left ahead of her but fog.
Sarah didn’t wait for permission—she started backing up.
The “Supership” didn’t go terribly fast in reverse. The hydrofoil didn’t work, and it basically dragged itself through the water. But it wasn’t designed for that, and never had been. Jackie tensed, glancing inside through the dirty glass as they came to a stop. There was perhaps half a kilometer between them and the edge of the reef.
“Here we go!” Sarah called, her voice muffled by the glass. The engines roared to life, and the ship seemed to buck under her. Jackie spread her legs, getting the most comfortable, stable perch she could.
A lesser pony would’ve been thrown off, or else crushed by the acceleration to slide sideways off the deck as the prow lifted out of the water. But Jackie was not a lesser pony. Even in death, she had strength beyond almost all others. She spread her wings, narrowed her eyes, and focused on her balance.
The reef grew closer as salt water stung at her face, eyes, and hooves. She could see the fine line of rock just below the surface of the brackish water, an impenetrable barrier that would permit no ships to pass. Yet here they were, probably approaching a hundred knots.
Shit, I’m going flying off this thing like a gun. Jackie climbed past the window a bit, leaning forward on the railing with legs backward. The forward acceleration of the Supership kept her in place, for now. But if it faltered…
They hit the reef. Jackie heard the terrible crack from below as the lower section of the ship went shearing off like snapping plastic. Rock growled and crunched under the pressure, and they began arcing downward towards the water’s surface.
Jackie spread her wings, letting herself separate from the ship as it fell out from behind her. There was a terrible crash, an explosion of water from all directions accompanied by a crunch from the hull. She glanced over her shoulder just once as it started to roll, then tucked her wings and flapped for everything she had.
Something that wasn’t any animal she’d ever heard of roared in the deep, and the water behind her split open with its rage. She couldn’t fly backwards, but even still she could see a terrible reddish reflection as something emerged around the ship. A creature vaster than any vessel was wrapping itself around the massive craft. Steel buckled and screamed, glass shattered. But whatever Sarah was suffering in there, Jackie couldn’t hear her. It was the only mercy she got.
The mist continued before her, as thick as it had ever been. God, what if there isn’t an island here? What if every single one of them died for no reason? What if Archive was right?
Was the sea-monster following her? The mist was so thick all around her now that she couldn’t even see the water, couldn’t see anything. Only that sense of downward gravity was there, guiding her forward inexorably towards… something.
The fog parted in sunlight so brilliant that she was nearly stunned right out of the air. The water underneath transformed from black and angry to a clear, crystalline blue. And up ahead—not much further at all—was a coast. There rich trees grew, with canopies so thick that the sunlight would not burn the eyes of those below.
She imagined a city stretched away into the distance there, its spires rising with the slope up into a misty infinity beyond the sun.
There on the shore was a single pony, their body obscured by the folds of a thick, enveloping robe. She could see nothing of their features—the hood always hung too far, the hooves were wrapped in cloth that dragged wet on the sand.
Jackie landed in the wet sand just past the spray of crashing waves, her body drained and exhausted. The pony turned, and seemed to be moving in slow motion as they made their way over.
“I’ve come for… information,” Jackie croaked, holding herself out of the water as it crashed up on her from behind. But it wasn’t the icy, stinging spray she remembered from moments before—this was warm, the kind of water you could fall asleep in.
“No you haven’t,” answered a voice. “You want to know where to find your mate, the first reborn of Earth.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I refused to go with… Archive. Not without knowing she would be there waiting for me.”
“Now you understand,” the pony answered. Its voice was indistinct—neither male nor female, old nor young. It shifted constantly through all of those, becoming at once too high to understand and at other moments deep and resonant. “You want to know if the one you love is waiting for you. But do you know how deep into the Oneiros you traveled? How far along the Anima Mundi you walked?”
“No,” Jackie whispered, spitting up a mouthful of sand and water. She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have.
“You forgot,” said the speaker. “Let me show you.”
Jackie was sitting in an airport. “Final boarding call for Jacqueline Kessler!” called the disinterested attendant.
She rose to her hooves. Lonely Day did too, standing beside her on the platform. They walked together to the boarding gate.
“Will you be coming too, Alex?”
“One day,” the Alicorn answered. “Almost all the others have. Even the tallest mountain can be ground into sand. Even the dimmest stars burn out.”
“I’m scared,” Jackie remembered. “All this time I wanted this, but now… I’m not sure I’m ready. It’s easy to talk big about something like this, you know? To… claim you’re willing to do anything. Really shove it up Athena’s ass… but now here we are.” She held up the ticket.
The pony behind the scanner looked at her without annoyance, only sympathy. She had seen this before.
“You want to know a secret?” Lonely Day’s voice was low. “No one is. But it doesn’t matter—what’s through there might hurt. It might not be what you’re expecting. But it’s a lot like life—it’s the journey that matters. You’ve had a great one.”
“Yeah.” Jackie handed over the ticket. “I guess I have.” The gate beeped, opened in front of her. Jackie passed through, to where the light swallowed her.
She was on a beach. The pony in front of her lowered her robe. Underneath was green and orange.
Everything she dreamed of.
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I'm not sure I understand what happened at the end. Did Jackie go back and redo her choice from the beginning, or does that mean that she'd just forgotten what she actually chose?
Heh, did Jackie's journey through other stories just sneak in a trip through Friendship Abroad as well?
The hero's journey is a wheel, sometimes more literally than others.
Though that lingering Incomplete tag is a curious one. I mean, we're out of Major Arcana. I suppose we should expect a Foolish epilogue.
Whether or not that's the case, a wonderful if bittersweet journey this far.
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Am I missing something? Because I only see the last 8 of the 22 major arcana.
66.media.tumblr.com/695bc77d57bb4c08620bae014d69bf06/tumblr_pfpaceXbJa1rsmidfo1_r1_540.png
Such a wonderful ending, and yet I'm not at all ready to call it the end.
...I think I need to go back and re-read each story she plays a part in.
I must admit i do not fully understand what happened. but... im satisfied with the end. Thats enough for me.
Goodbye Jackie. You were always one of my favorites.
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I... think the whole story is kinda a metaphor? We're finally laying her to rest. Each in turn. I'm pretty sure the order even matches the order each of the series she was present in reached their Jackie- related conclusion. She started out not ready to move on... as I'm sure a lot of us were feeling. And then finally at the end, just like Jackie was able to accept it, we too can accept that she's gone. By remembering that she had such a long, fulfilling, varied journey.
Just do like they promised each other. Don't forget them.
Farewell, Jackie.
Damn. I didn't expect that ending to hit me like it did.
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I don't either. I was bothered by the fact that I didn't understand the ending, so I came back and read this last part again. I've got an idea that might not be right but I think it's interesting, at least.
The Tarot says that life is a cycle. Maybe... one that can repeat? If Jackie traveled deeply enough, she might've ended up where she started. Not just once, but multiple times. Could be that those other parts of her that appeared to be figments were actually truly her. Time loops, basically. The main Jackie of this story is just the final iteration. The Tarot starts with the Fool, which basically says you don't know anything when your life starts. Could be her memories were mostly wiped on each iteration of the loop, with only her love of Ezri surviving. It'd also make sense for why it is that each of her "figments" each went through a full story of their own. You'd think that if they were just figments that there wouldn't necessarily be a full story behind them. They'd just be a part of some nonsensical dream. But they have full stories that make sense behind them because they're each the real Jackie on one of her cyclic journeys. She had to complete the full cycle before she could start again. This would make the whole thing more romantic, since it would mean she went through the same cycle multiple times to find Ezri.
Not sure if this really jives with the details of the fic. But I thought it was a nice enough idea to post anyway.
My thoughts on this story.
Well, at least the two are reunited now. Somehow, it feels like most of the suffering in the Universe has just passed. And that is a lot of tragedy.
Feels like the ending to the series as a whole, really, which is interesting. Though I wish there were a way for the world to be whole, somehow.
This, was equally parts about what I hoped and expected, and equal parts unexpected...
Dang Jackies had rough rides.
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A fulfilling ending isn't always a just happy ending.
I'm not sure this series is over, but another red thread has weaved it's last knot in the tapestry.
Out of the original crew, who’s stories still need to be tied? (Of course Alex will probably come as the saying; the first shall be the last.)
I'll be honest. I just binged books 1-9, 'cept 7 and 8, all within the span of four days.
Coming back around, I never read this far, till the end. An utter masterpiece, if you ask me.
I also cried, right at the end. It took seeing no "next chapter" button for it to really hit, that last scene. and god damn your words got hands
Thank you. 💚
I've been reading Bedtime stories, to Meliora, to this in like two days. Yesterday alone I've read for 13 hours straight and finished at 1am.
Time for another story. Bottle maybe?
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
YES! Haha! And she did it! Because of course, she did. A fantastic end to her story, Jackie, you did fantastically.
Is this it? No more stories for this universe?
From what I can understand, this was either a metaphor crossed with potential time-loop/multi-verse shenanigans with our farewell to her.
So, I've now finished all but Evoli-victorious in the offical mainline.
I did enjoy this series but I did find Books 4-5 and a notable chunk of 6 very cynical outlook. Even the Brezzie one started so wonderful then we got slapped in the face by the end of it.
The repeated collapses and just the constant downwards slope it has gone down. Especially with Alex & others
bar Jackiecontinually avoiding responsibility to the detriment of everybody. The first two books were so beautiful and amazing filled with challenges yet so much hope, only for that to be slowly grounded away as the series then went on. The 4th started so cynically, yet ended on such a highnote with Alex having learnt not to run away.Bedtimes, at first was nice just to see the missing gaps filled and some wholesome moments set after the 4th... then suddenly large time skip and Alex somehow is no long is taking responsibility and nuclear war, followed by yet another apocalypse and the final confrontation with Alex walking away again not caring about the consequences. A semi-stagnant utopia is better than what she abandoned Earth to . Meliora, the start of it was so soul destroying. And showed that we can't have nice things, though at least that entry redeemed itself
though still very cynical.This one? Is a bit confusing at times, but as i stated seems to be either a metaphor and/or crossed with time-loop/multiverse shenanigans . But was at least unlike majority of the latter series had an uplifting ending.
Sadly though, the direction this universe went has tainted my enjoyment of the earlier stories. As it shows all those struggles we went through with Alex in the grand scheme of things had relativity limited lasting impact in the world. With the primary impact being how the "immortals" were impacted. I understand that in such vast timescales civilisations rise and fall... but it is a cynical take I know that is still notable, but leaves a very bitter taste and makes it painful to reread the earlier stories.
yes, it's so beautiful, they are together now.