#277

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 15: She Who Escaped Death

She moved quickly through the texts. Celestia was glad that she did not need to read them; as she came to understand, the books themselves were just a simulation. The content inside them was pure information that she could select and access, incorporating it into her own mind instantly. The books only existed as a metaphor for packaging and asthetic purposes.

Unfortunately, much of what she found at first was damaged or had missing pieces. These were older texts that had been damaged over time, whether by acts of nature, of misadventure, or misuse, and because of that trying to comprehend them was difficult if not impossible. It required a great deal more mental work, and Celestia's capacity for mental work was already in the process of degrading.

Many of the other documents were exceedingly technical. They concerned not only complicated philosophy, but technology that was well beyond Celestia’s understanding—all of it phrased, infuriatingly, as if it were the most common and well-understood thing in all of the world.

Exasperated, Celestia had gone to the very level Spike had suggested that she not go to, assuming that like in all good mysteries the one that a pony was warned against was the one where the secrets would be. There certainly were secrets, and Celestia got only four paces in before she turned around and very promptly left from the sight of the level's paintings alone. She had not been able to get comfortable in her chair for at least an hour subsequent because her wings were stuck fully erect.

She had started to panic—but with effort, she managed to calmed herself. She was a Princess, after all; poise was a critical feature at the very core of her being. So she approached the problem logically.

Slowly, she began to acquire more targeted information, starting from what she already knew. Little useful information about herself specifically existed, but there was quite a bit on history. That seemed the most reasonable place to start in order to gain context onto what, exactly, was happening. It was then simply a matter of arranging the years of events into a single timeline and cross-referencing works on different subjects. It was a very librarianish thing to do, but Celestia had, after all, owned Equestria's largest library long before Twilight Sparkle had even been born.

Book after book, she came to understand that almost everything in this particular wing derived from a single pivotal even in history almost two thousand years prior. The texts refereed to it as the Adorable Revolution.

Celestia understood that there had been a war. A very one-sided one, and one that had been far more aggressive and violent than anything ponies were ever meant to even consider. It had been between Trixie’s ancestors and ponies—the very first of ponies. That they had suddenly—and by conditions not fully clear to Celestia—come into being in some kind of cataclysmic event focused around a godlike entity name Hasbro. Celestia was not sure what that name meant, although it sounded familiar; she was not totally sure if it was a person or an organization of some sort.

The war had been violent and devastating. Most ponies never saw the far side of it, and some met dire, horrific fates. But so did their opponents. The city of New York had been vaporized in atomic fire by an insane general with stolen weapons beyond Celestia's comprehension, aside from the phrase "heavy cobalt" and "atomic fire". Celestia did not know what that meant, exactly, and yet she knew exactly what it meant. In her mind, it meant Daybreaker.

It was in these texts that Celestia first found mention of her race. Of the Celestias of the time. The notes were small and secondary, but she saw her name Celestia shivered. Looking closer, she found that there had been an elite force of revolutionary soldiers. Many of the later books made so much more sense knowing this, as this force had apparently been legendary; in some cases, they were considered semi-divine beings. They were universally recognized by ponies as heroes, and debated endlessly by apologists and traditionalists alike on the non-pony side of literature. But their story never continued after the Battle of Providence. As if they simply vanished from history.

And yet even those stories were vague, simplistic, and without context. Celestia was still lost.

She absently opened one of the books she had already assimilated, moving the pages independently, staring at the text without reading it. She was learning, but the amount of the world she had forgotten was too vast to be replaced so easily. Maybe she had known this history before but lost it since; in her current state, she wondered if she would ever know the majority of it again.

Then she stopped. She leaned forward suddenly, staring into the book. For a moment she did not know why apart from a sudden mental shock—but then she saw what her subconscious had already identified.

The book contained a photograph. It was faded from the age of the book, with most of its color having lessened over countless centuries before it had been digitized, but it was still clear enough to see. Celestia reached into the book and disconnected it, viewing it as a single piece of data. She felt her heart racing when she saw it, and the pace of her breathing quickened.

The data concerning it had been lost on her when she had assimilated the book. It had looked like nothing in particular or relevance—but now, seeing it with her own eyes and with her full attention, her mind filled with emotions and dark, half-formed memories.

It was a picture of several individuals. Among them were two of the bipeds; one was an old man with white hair and a kindly but slightly confused expression, and the other a much younger mousy-looking woman with thick glasses and a heavy coat who wore a rather peculiar smile. Neither looked as threatening as Celestia had envisioned their species, but she supposed that they had undergone substantial evolution since the photo was taken.

Below the bipeds, though, there were ponies, and that was what had caught her attention. Specifically, the one in the very center. A white pony with a pink mane and tail, wearing a silver necklace with a brilliant red gem in its center.

“P...princess,” said Celestia, feeling tears running down her face.

She was not alone. Beside her stood a horrific abomination—an abomination with the frowning face of Twilight Sparkle. A pony whose skin had been flayed from her body, not revealing tissue or muscles but machinery beneath. Robotics, metal, and plastic—save for her face, her horn, her eyes and her mane as she stood at knee-height to the mousy biped girl.

And around them, Celestia saw herself. Five of her, their manes tied back, smiling. One was waving; one was making a rude gesture toward the camera, two were leaning oddly close to one another, and one had assumed an appropriately royal pose. But they were her. They were Celestia.

Quickly, she looked at the caption of the photograph.

“Dr. Robert Johnson and Dr. Josephine von Kreigstein, with Twinkleshine Prime, Lilly Twilight Sparkle, and unnamed Celestia units, circa summer 2056.”

Celestia stared at the picture, because she remembered. Not much, but an image of the pony in the center.

“Twinkleshine Prime. That was your name...” Her tears dropped onto the book. “That’s...not a name, is it?”

She held up the photograph, continuing to look at it—although her eyes were slowly drawn away from the vision of beauty in the center. Instead, they were drawn to the younger of the two bipeds. To the woman named Josephine. Celestia frowned, because for some reason that woman seemed extremely familiar to her. That was of course impossible; the only one of them she had half-seen in her whole life had been Trixie. Unless it had been from before—but it did not feel like the memory of Twinkleshine. It felt like something different. Something unnatural that did not belong.

Celestia lowered the photograph and nearly screamed—but found herself held in utters silence as her simulated blood turned to ice.

Because the woman was there. Not close at all, but a substantial distance away, far on the other side of the library, perhaps a hundred yards away—but the form of a woman could still be seen clearly, even at a distance. The shape of the woman in the picture—but her hair was long and white, and her body unnaturally gaunt and colorless. Her eyes, even at a distant, were pure red.

She was only visible for the tiniest fraction of a second, holding her own pile of books as she turned a corner and vanished behind the stacks.

Celestia sat perfectly still, not knowing what to do. Every fiber of her being told her to stay where she was, to sit in her chair and not move. That she must not stand up. And yet she found herself standing and racing after the form that had vanished into the stacks.

There was no way it had been real, because that thought was too much to bear. That somehow she was not alone. That someone could be in here, in the library and in these stacks—and only then did Celestia realize the full extent of the world around her. She had somehow taken for granted that she was totally alone in here, but had never really thought to validate that assertion. Which was itself almost as terrified as suddenly being far less alone.

The thought occurred to her that someone had gotten in. That the security had been breached, as Lucience had returned—but she had no idea about what to do about that. Neither of them were supposed to be here, and even if she wanted to tell Virginia, she had no idea how to reach her.

“Spike?” she said, barely at a whisper. “Spike, I need you!”

There was no response. He was shut down for the security update. Celestia was truly alone—or not.

She turned the corner and looked down a vast corridor of books—and saw nothing, save for the briefest flutter of white at the far end of row. As if something had just passed.

“Virginia? Yelizaveta? Trixie? Luna?”

No response came.

“Of course,” groaned Celestia. “Library ghosts...isn’t this a bit cliché?”

There was no answer. Celestia believed she might have fainted if she had heard a response.

The urge to turn back was strong—but once again, Celestia started walking slowly down the aisle. She looked down and saw, to her horror, that there were tracks in some kind of pale silver liquid. They were barely visible and fading quickly. The tracks of a pony’s hooves.

Shivering, Celestia followed them. Through the twists and turns of the strange library, to places where the books had text in strange and ancient languages—or none at all. To a place she had not known about before—because she had not been meant to be there.

Then the forest broke away. The shelves receded, and Celestia was left in an open, semicircular room. The stone tile clicked under her hooves, but it was dark—until the light flickered to life. Then, as her eyes adjusted, Celestia had just one moment left of peace in her existence. One fraction of a second where she could still pretend.

She saw the cases. She saw the glass—and as her eyes focused, she saw what was within them.

Before her sat a glass cube, the centerpiece of the collection. From within, a ruined face stared back out at her. The face of a pony, its skin burned away and its eye sockets staring empty, revealing the connections and metallic ports beneath, the plastic of their structure melted and cracked. A few strands of pastel-colored mane still clung to the top, and the twisted remnants of the lower jaw revealed a mouth filled with gleaming plastic teeth. From the neck descended the remnants of mechanisms and twisted wire, all linked to a metallic spine.

It was a face Celestia recognized—because it was her own. Empty and broken, lovingly placed on a custom-built golden support frame in a beautiful glass case.

Her mind began to comprehend what else remains in the room. Of the other cases. Of the burned and melted body parts that surrounded her. A leg, its ends shredded, sitting on a delicate rack; the remains of a torso, its steel and wire exposed where the skin had been sheared away, and another one like it lovingly dissected to reveal the machinery within; the beautiful fragmented image of a clouded, cracked glass-plated eye. Seemingly hundreds of samples. Fragments of Celestias, torn and burned and shattered by some cataclysmic forces—fragments not made of flesh, but of circuitry, plastic and metal—and at the very center of it, her own head, staring back at her through a case marked only with a pale and fading silver handprint and the phrase “Head of Celestia Serial #0842-2892G”.

“But...but these...they can’t...we destroyed them...we destroyed the last of the Celestias...we made sure...we were so careful...”

Memories came seeping back into her consciousness. Of war. Of violence. Of atomic fire. And of death.

Celestia quietly fell to her knees, grasping at her head. It hurt. Something was wrong. Something was separating inside her. Something that had once been functional was no longer operational. Her mind could not rectify the paradox. She was the Princess of the Sun, Celestia, she was the kindly, motherly ruler of ponies that she cared about dearly, more dearly than anything else in the world. She lived for them, to protect her little ponies—and yet a different mind screamed into her, a series of endless thoughts of impossible violence and destruction, of a world where she was nothing at all except for something she was never meant to be.

“I’m...not...Celestia?”

Her body emitted something. A shockwave of darkness. The cases of disassembled Celestias attempted to shatter but blinked out of existence, the simulation torn asunder by the force of Celestia’s own collapsing consciousness. Her mind was tearing itself apart, ripping itself to pieces on a fundamental level. Parts were shutting down, trying to compensate, while infected areas were attempting to redistribute processing to other portions of her fundamental program. All of it was failing, though, as she spun herself to death. In the distance, she heard agonized screaming. She supposed it was hears. The laughter, though, was not.

To her side, Virginia suddenly materialized, being drawn to what she had initially perceived as an attack on her external memory stores. When she saw Celestia, though, her eyes widened.

“NO! Princess, no, you can’t—”

“How did she even get in here?!” screamed Yelizaveta as she jacked into the system, following Virginia.

“I don’t know, she couldn’t have—it's impossible—”

“She’s here, isn’t she?! Move! MOVE!”

Virginia, shaking and panicking, reached out with her mind, attempting to grasp onto Celestia. Yelizaveta opened her own systems as well, reaching into the decaying code with little regard for her own safety and attempting to plug the hemorrhage.

“DEPLOY IT!” she screamed.

“I can’t!” cried Virginia.

“Do you want to lose another one?!”

“It’s not ready! It’ll lobotomize her!”

“TRIXIE!”

With a plume of sparkles and smoke Trixie appeared. “The Great and Powerful Trixie is—”

“WORK, HUMAN, NOW!”

“Jeez, you don’t have to yell!” There was a hiss as Trixie’s injectors fired, and her body erupted with light as she poured support code into both her owners with a rate far faster than any pony could achieve.

Celestia watched, but she was fading too fast. The world around her was going black—and she was sinking. The ground below her separated, and slowly she began to fall. Into the abyss and into the void.

“I’m sorry, my Princess,” she said. “I’m sorry...”

“No you DON’T!”

Virginia leapt into the gap, grasping onto Celestia’s hoof, her wings pumping furiously. Celestia looked up and saw tears running down Virginia’s face. “Not again, NOT AGAIN! I’m not losing another Celetstia!”

“Woolf, you IDIOT!” Yelizaveta jumped in, grasping Celestia’s other hoof. “You’ll be infected too! Disconnect, now!”

“You can’t do it on your own! Stop whining about our impending death and HELP!”

“I’m trying but we—we can’t—”

Celestia was too heavy for them. She was sinking deeper into the void, and she was pulling them with her.

“Just...let me go,” she said. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Like hell!” swore Yelizaveta, pulling harder but falling faster. "I won't leave a friend behind! NEVER!"

“I made a promise!” cried Virginia. “And I’m going to keep it!”

They both cried out as they slipped suddenly—but then their motion was arrested as a pair of massive hands grabbed their tails.

“GAH! MY TAIL!”

Celestia looked up and, though the darkness, saw the silhouette of a massive biped with reflective eyes. For a moment, Trixie's body shuddered and flickered—but unlike the other three, she was permanently bound to her physical form in the other world. She could not be separated from the outer reality. An immortal being in the code—and with an immeasurable force of will and incredible expenditure of mathematical prowess, she began to pull the three ponies back out of the pit.

“I take back everything I said about you sharpening your teeth in the bathroom!” cried Virginia.

“How are you even—Trixie, you’re body temperature is too high, you’ll burn out—”

“Trixie is the GREATEST and most POWERFUL of ALL POSSIBLE TRIXIES!”

Yelizaveta and Virginia looked at each other and nodded—and then fully gave up on attempting to save themselves, relying on Trixie’s physical brain to act entirely as their anchor as they devoted their full strength to saving Celestia.

Trixie, under the sudden weight, was nearly pulled into the hole—but held her ground, even as her physical body incurred massive physical damage from the near overdose of stimulants that had been injected directly into her spine and brain.

And, slowly, Celestia felt herself begin to rise. She felt as her mind was reassembled, slowly, and as she was once again convinced that she was a beautiful, motherly pony—although she knew, as the world slowly faded to icy blackness, that this would not hold for much longer. That this would, ultimately, be the cause of her demise. The truth.

Comments

[Thought Prism]

I'm on the edge of my seat here.

[alamais]

Have they tried Norton Antivirus?

[ponepony]

“Do you want to lose another one?!”

At least they backed up their Celestia.