Dreams and Dementations

by AShadowOfCygnus

The Tower on its Side, I

Is the tower on its side, she wonders idly as the world around her churns to life, or is she?

Nothing has ever seemed to fit when she tries to set it in its place; something slides or slips or rips or tears, and then she is left with her endless questions again. Square pegs in round holes, but the holes are the world and the pegs are people and buildings and ideas and the days spin by too fast for her to get a look at the holes, feel them, taste them.

She has far too many ideas, and far too much to do to do anything with them. And, of course, for as many as she has, the world has a thousand-score more than she, and it always seems to win.

She lies there, as many do, as many must, as her alarm screams into a room smelling of dust and neglect. The grey haze outside is the same as it always is, anymore; sunless, starless, tideless, faintly chill. Empty skies overlook the city, third of three, middle of the row, tenth block, District East, and still—

There is a muffled scream at her from the other side of the dividing wall, and she finally moves to silence the shrieking clock. Magic suffices, though she knows she’ll regret the expense later; only so much left in a lifetime. Silence rings hollow through the room, then, and though she knows it’s Time, she cannot bring herself to stir. The rumbling of automation grinds to life below, the stirring of angry hoofsteps above, around. And here, she, little pool of nothing in the vast expanse of less.

The world is strange when seen on its side. The sliver of unlight burns through the gap in the curtains, and beyond it the Tower, liminal, reaching skyward with its many prongs and edges, unnaturally straight, but irregular, naturally. She knows that if she looked down, could see the ramshackle cable-cars tethering lives by thin spools of wire to various vocations, abject abodes: walls of the Tower, the towering Walls, the infinity of concrete and sheet metal that stretches Between.

Warren-haven-hive, and no way to separate them. Maybe the Changelings had a word in mind as they went about constructing the place, but if they did, she doesn’t know it, nor particularly care. It’s just the City. Same as it ever was, and as it always will be.

There’s drool on the pillow when she finally moves her head.

ugh.

She stretches, tilting her head first one way, then the other. Crackle-snap. The tower swings, pendulously, with the motion: zero-point, geostationary, geocentric.

Words from a bygone age, filtering into her consciousness the same way the others do: accidental, unlearned—unearned? stolen? Or is that just how she feels whenever she manages to find a book that no-one else has stolen from her yet, plumbs the depths within? Can’t speak of reading, of course, they’d Put Her to Work, and nobody really wants that, anymore. Aspiration to obligation to resignation. Only safe to give it voice—pay it mind?—in the slums she knows they won’t be checking.

She readies, leaves. The faucet vomits some particularly brackish water near the end of her sluice, so she throws on another ragged coat to hide the salty sea-smell best she can. Old earth, she knows; clay, somewhere beneath the concrete and corrugate and time. Camouflage enough, wretched as it may be.

The City is as she left it last night, rough-edged in the dim twilight of the eternities. The streets are narrow, the metal ribs of scraping carcasses groan and twist above. She scuffs along, her pale coat all the paler in the grey light of post-dawn pre-dusk fog. Cool, but not as cold as the fog tells her it should be.

Stale, like everything it touches.

It’s the same City, the same Tower, the same endless expanse of grey beyond the Wall, the same tattered rows of bodies moving, back and forth, back and forth. But was she a different pony last night? Can the City ever be the same if we never see it through the same pair of eyes?

She’s awake enough now to start the slow process of turning herself off for the day. Have to. The Changelings would know, they can sense it, she’s sure. Know and act, in whatever mindless capacity their undirected orderly minds deemed best. Safer—beasts of the field, after all, get more than enough grass for their trouble.

The crack-worn pavement, uneven beneath her hooves, blurs just slightly as her eyes slide out of focus. Stumble just enough, come just close enough to a collision, here and there—eyes on the ground, always. No-one looks up—no-one with any sense, anyway. Mistake you for a dreamer, and then where would you be? Layers of obfuscation; time enough for small thoughts before the day begins.

Assuming, of course, that most have the sense to think that far ahead, as she does. She knows she’s special, felt the creep of pride in outmanoeuvring her fellow mare—in the breadline, in the flophouse, in seeking mates on those rare nights the loneliness aches too loudly. On the better days, she could almost make a game of it, the grim pleasure of knowing her mind, even if she’d never use it.

Almost collides with a ragged stallion—half-scraggle, head-down. Half-glimpsed, he sticks in her mind, neither comfort nor pity; just an object in motion. Random trajectories, futures blank as eyes, blank as his flank; another reminder of all things lost. So much they could have had, before they choose the low road—punishment or disdain, with impatience or with fear. They stayed behind, they built themselves their little reefs, they bred and they bred, and somewhere along the line, the spark of Equinity was lost.

Shallow shoals for hollow souls, and echoes cry like mountains, like . . .

She’s there. The squat building at its base where the filing is done; daily bread for daily labour. Too close to risk it anymore, and so she blanks again. No need to think beyond pattern-recognition; A equals A, even here, even now. Don’t need to know what it’s for, who it’s for, why they care; no saving what’s this far gone. Shelve, restock, go blank enough to make the occasional mistake, never perfect, never timely, never just right. Like the crackling fluorescent overhead, just enough to be enough.

The Changelings look on, glassy-eyed, restive, from their posts. Guardians they, and guards. What else could they be, now the world has gone to grey? Needing an answer, needing something beyond the base hungers that drive them. Build the City for their Queen, an answer to the Northern Gem, a crag, a spire, a mockery to fit the heart that drove it.

birthright.

A head turns her way, compound eyes searching, searching, and she lets herself fall into blank. Slack the jaw, dull the eye as she stares at the ancient parchment-scrap in her hand. A equals . . . ?

Can’t slip up. Focus only on the drift, play the natural act; brain blank and smooth and safe from prying minds. Egg-round, slack comfort, hard-won; she can live like this forever, provided she has the Time.

Nothing to sparkle when the diamond’s buried deep; nothing to shimmer when the gossamer’s layered with dust. No glimmer to those teal eyes, no matter how much they should remind her of the stars she knows she should remember.

better this way.

happier this way.

Another mare could’ve done it easily, if she had more distractions, less of a brain to work with. The metaphoric ice-pick. But until she can break herself down enough to smile, vapid, earnest . . .

is the tower on its side, or is she?

And it is as this thought eases its way through her grey-balm mind that the explosion rocks the little building. A brilliant flare, a silent boom, echoing and long and shattering. Shatter-glass, shriek-metal, whipping, burning cable-car-cables writhe and twist like phantom limbs. Ponies clamour, Changelings chatter, and the hive-stucco ceiling comes tumbling down, down, down.

And it takes her a moment, in that moment of blissful emptiness, to realise that the light fixture is swinging free, swinging at her head. And even as it cracks her across the head, even as her jellied legs throw the world on its side, she can almost think she’s dreaming again.

Comments

[Horse Voice]

Your writing is as stylish as ever, and I'll surely have more thoughts when I get to the second and third parts of this story. Here are my thoughts so far.

I'm getting a distinct sense that there was some inspiration from Nineteen Eighty-Four. In particular, the oppressive architecture of the Tower, the protagonist's closely guarded thoughts, and the bleak cityscape are all reminiscent of it.

Some titles are so good that they make you want to drop everything and start reading right away. The Tower on its Side is, for me at least, one of those.