Chapter 5
“Dorian, come in.”
“Zenith! Oh, thank Celestia. I lost contact with the lander almost an hour ago and assumed the worst. Are you alright?”
“Yeah, uh… yeah. I’m good, Twilight.”
“Okay, that’s, um, good. So, the war’s getting kind of hot up here and I think it’s going to get even hotter on the surface. Do you need me to bring the Dorian down there?”
“Yeah. We won’t both fit in the lander.”
“...we?”
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Wow, just, wow. I'm so happy that Zenith and Nadir didn't fall into the same endless cycle of war and vengeance that would plague this planet forever, and I really hope the sisters could find in each other what they'd lost during all these years. Great work!
...That was it?
I mean, like, overall, I liked it, but I was expecting something meatier. Over half of the fic is devoted to building an atmosphere that gets nuked in the end, the role of the Mane 6 in the AI doesn't add much and forces them to fight for pagetime, Chrysalis just sort of shows up only to bounce away almost immediately, and the ending is crazy abrupt. Even the central theme of not pursuing revenge doesn't quite work when the only thing keeping Zenith from getting it is that she can't. There's the skeleton of a good story here, but the flesh is lacking. I think having the truth of Zenith's mission come at the end of chapter 2 is what hits it the hardest; it means one of Zenith's two main character traits only appears late into the story. To make the ending hit harder, it probably could've used two more chapters: one at the very beginning, showing bits and pieces of Zenith's journey to emphasize just how much time she's spending on this and her isolation, and another with Chrysalis, where Zenith broods and Chrysalis eggs her on.
EDIT: So, from the other comments, the contest this was for had a word count limit. Working within that, rather than adding the other chapters, strip out all of the Mane 6 except for Twilight and Rainbow. No back-and-forth between the six that's fun to write but eats up words. Less atmosphere-building, more introspection for Zenith to emphasize her drive pre-twist and her hatred and motives post-twist, which helps stick the landing. No Chrysalis, to save on introduction space; when Twilight tries to cut Zenith loose, Rainbow sticks by her (she's Loyalty, after all).
Perfectly paced story; plenty left to think on.
I am left somewhat unsatisfied here. How did she get de aged but left with her suit on? What happened to Chrysalis?
What the hell was her plan to jump out of the lander, then die of exposure or blood loss?
This ending does feel really abrupt.
...Huh.
Huh. That was not the ending I was expecting at all. Kudos on the surprise.
We're left as confused as Twiggles or more, but that doesn't feel that wrong. I believe that is more wear explained the story would've to be much longer for it not to feel like an information dump.
I do like how Zenith could understand and let go, understand truly that the filly that she found was not the criminal she wanted to wreath revenge on. Even after tossing away her life for that journey she still did the right thing... Specially since with them lacking fabrication capacity she'll likely have to sacrifice herself for her sister to have a chance at life.
Either that or ransacking the other ship, but that might've to wait some time for the war to die down again.
I was almost a bit wanting for more meat to the story, but then I remembered that this contest had a 20k word limit, and you came right up to the mark. Excellent work as always, Cold! I’d love to see this idea expanded on further without a word limit.
Yeah the contest word count limit really forced a rush ending here.
I actually kinda like the ending like this - explaining too much would spoil the mystery that surrounds the earlier chapters
Contest word count limit and the speedwriting aspect of getting it in on time is probably what caused you to sort of have to end it so abruptly.
But I actually like the punch of ending it exactly where chapter 4 leaves off. It’s more thematic, to put Zenith at her uh. Nadir there, with the potential of a time-turning planet finally giving us that dramatic payoff. I know many people don’t care for ambiguous endings but it may have worked better without this little bit of Chapter 5.
But also I think that Zenith actually just picked up a Changeling. Be it that Nadir had at some point gained changeling abilities or that Nadir and her ship were never on that planet to begin with, and Chrysalis was actually another ship’s AI luring Zenith closer and probing her thoughts for intel. This is foreshadowed when Nadir pops out of her gooey crysoseep pod and she’s a gray mare with blue green mane and tail, even some holes/speckles.
Heck, maybe the rabbit hole is even deeper. Nadir was never on Lapis. The AI’s on the Dorian manufactured her and the ship and put her there when they found a planet where Zenith and Nadir functionally could not die so that Zenith could have every possible chance to not resort to violence.
When Zenith happily and quickly showed that peace was never an option, again and again, they used a back up plan and retooled Nadir and brought in Chrysalis.
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I think it’s hard to identify what needs pruning due to length as you are in the actual process of writing. It’s an editing step that requires time (for re-reading and fresh eyes) and I think CIG had to speed write this. He may have underestimated how much detail he has in his prose (he always likes to create sensory and literal landscapes, for example) and sci-fi as a genre is all about those detail diatribes into specs and exploration which he seems to have enjoyed writing here. I think given more (time) it may be better to cut out some of the technical descriptions. Cutting out the lander’s extensive reconstruction, or the functional play by play of its decent, for example, would have given the AI’s and esp. Chrysalis more breathing room. Given more (wordcount) it would be fine to leave everything as is and just keep on writing, as the flow was working great until the very very end.
That was extremely underwhelming.
Aw man, kind of an abrupt ending. Not that it isn't fitting, just would've loved to see this fleshed out more. But I really, really like the theme of a cycle of vengeance, and how the people on the planet are forever stuck in it, while Zenith and Nadir manage to escape it.
Perhaps...a sequel to show them moving on together is in order?
I have to agree, this really suffers for the abrupt ending; you've got quite a few threads left dangling. It's a shame that's a contest limitation.
I love the concept, but I'm a little confused about the mechanics of the reconstruction.
Why was Nadir singled out to be de-aged back into a filly, whilst just about everything else, including Zenith, is implied to have been reset to their state just before destruction?
Well! Quite a tantalizing number and variety of questions left unanswered here! :D
I'm in a hurry at the moment, but I enjoyed the story; thank you for writing.
Oooh, a twist.
Yeah, I do agree that the word limit of the contest hurt the ending. (I do like it overall though!)
Still, cool story!
Dat word limit oof
The planet is a really interesting setting for this story. The last days of a war to extinction playing out, getting rewound, playing out again--that's a fascinating steady state for a planet to get stuck in.
By sheer good luck, Nadir may have stumbled into the one place in the universe where she can't be killed--not in a way that will stick. Which isn't to say that Zenith couldn't have the satisfaction of killing her as many times as she liked.
After Nadir and Zenith leave, I wonder if the planet will rewind copies of them back into place. The last few chapters of this story might replay any number of times. Which means they could escape any number of times. Their ship leaves and travels beyond the range of the nanochines. Then the nanochines rewind the planet to a state where it had Zenith and Nadir on it, and they escape again.
Sequel idea: Nadir and Zenith arrive home and awaken from stasis. Their tearful reunion is interrupted when an exact copy of their ship pulls into the berth next to them, and an exact copy of each of them disembarks. Then another copy of their ship approaches, and another, and another, each of which disembarks two mares who have the exact same argument on the docks. The planet continues to create copies of them with no end in sight. Nadir and Zenith have to figure out how to corral their army of clones. How can they turn an infinite supply of two people with psychological issues and relationship drama from a liability into an asset?
please tell me there is gonna be more to this!
Really enjoyed this, and damn, you got me at the end of Chapter 2!
There are so many cool aspects to this story, but honestly it feels incomplete nearly to the point of disappointment, because I know it could be more than this. Still, I'm glad to have read it. Thanks for bringing this to life for us!
Also, it's definitely reminiscent (to me) to the short sci-fi stories you wrote in your blogs years ago, based on the writing 'game' you recommended, but this is much grittier and... dangerous.
I would love to see more science fiction from you. Maybe that will be a thing in the future?
That was a great story. I can understand the complaints about the abrupt end, but I like it even with this chapter. With the object lesson of the eternal nanochine rewound war, it's nice to see Zenith choose a different path at the very end and we don't really need that much elaboration to understand what happened.
This was quite a fun story. The rather generic sci-fi world had enough details to still feel solid, and the concept of the multi-personality AI was great! So many cool ideas with Lapis and the neverending war cycle, and the introduction of Chrysalis was an exciting twist. The concepts introduced are truly interesting and have the potential to be incredibly compelling, and the foreshadowing of both the 'revenge' twist and the planet's reverse entropy are well-done. (IIRC, there's a line in the first chapter that says the craters still register as hot, implying that there's radiation, but later on they say they used environmentally friendly weapons, meaning the only way the craters could still be hot is if they are recent... very cool!)
Unfortunately, like many others, I believe this story suffers incredibly from the 20k word limit. Like, it's a crime. The amount of groundwork laid for both world and character development ends what feels like the halfway point or even the end of an introductory first-of-three arc. All those cool concepts are revealed but aren't followed up on. It just... ends.
Zenith's main character trait is her lust for revenge, which is written off in a matter of sentences. The ease at which she gives up a decades-long chase, full of revenge fantasies and desperation, isn't quite character assassination, but it's damn close. Three of the simulated six - a fascinating concept that I would have loved to see more of - barely appear at all. Chrysalis, a major villain, appears with an air of awe, mystery, and audience dread because we know who she is and what she's capable of while Zenith does not, but she does nothing bad and then disappears anyway. Even Twilight and Rainbow, who are nothing more than simulated personalities, don't get to follow up on their arcs. Last we see of them, they're furious with Zenith, and then they are shuffled away! I was worried about them! If the whole putting-them-in-a-box from Chrysalis is really just another AI simulation, that takes away the entire oomph of their disappearance and her appearance, which, while making sense from a worldbuilding perspective, is just a loss of a plot thread from a story point of view.
Even Nadir, who is built up so much, gets very little payoff. She never gets to actually speak to Zenith - just a younger version of her who is essentially a new character. Zenith's belief of
revengejustice is never challenged. We don't even know if Zenith was right. The AI doesn't argue, and why would it? It makes sense that the only reason it goes against her is to attempt to keep her alive. It's a machine pretending to be ponies, at its core. So instead, she's allowed to pursue her sister into space to an insane degree and is never contradicted except to keep her alive. I'm shocked she doesn't put a bullet in her twelve-year-old sister's head anyway just to get some form of closure.(On a side note, Rarity had to have known Zenith was trying to kill her sister. Why did she use that to empathize with Zenith, when she and Sweetie were so close? Is the AI just trying to comfort Zenith, overriding what the real Rarity might have said, or did Rarity actually disagree? Did the AI have any opinion of Zenith killing her sister at all? Does this matter? I was confused.)
My point is that Zenith's decision doesn't make any sense in its current abrupt state. I'd have loved to see her argue with the real Nadir over their respective choices, maybe even put aside their differences as they attempt to escape an apocalyptic war that's waged in both directions in time simultaneously. Barring that, watching her struggle with her feelings while taking care of a helpless filly in possibly the worst environment to do so would have been just as great (and would keep with themes of isolation! The AI is an AI and the kid is a kid, I don't think either of them can really understand her plight) Zenith deserves a chance to actually develop, but as it is we just see a glimpse of the end result of that... I think.
This is just a minor tic, but it also feels sloppy that Nadir ages backward in the first place, and to such a violent degree. When the planet is reversed, chunks of stone are lifted and assembled into buildings and metal coalesces into spacecraft. Wouldn't Nadir just be reversed back to her ship, or at least back a few minutes? The whole setup strikes me as a last-minute shove to get the story to end.
The aliens are great, though. I think they work super well as a never-seen mystery, trapped forever in their eternal conflict, and I would have liked to see more details like the space stations shooting each other. The hints at ground warfare were interesting, implying that the war runs itself in at least a partially conventional method before superweapons are introduced. I'd have liked to see Zenith (and possibly Nadir) navigating around such a conflict, trying to escape the planet. There's still plenty of danger to be overcome - a damaged Dorian in-atmosphere, an alien war machine wandering far too close and having to hide, the aliens suddenly taking interest in their ship... I think it would have been compelling.
Then there's the wider questions. Nadir obviously did something horrible - why was she forgiven so easily? Was she allowed to go free or did she already serve penance? Was it really that horrible, or was it twisted out of proportion? On top of that, the Chekhov's Gun of asking the AI about the personalities stays on the wall. The whole "don't stare into the black box" thing. I think a conversation with one of the personalities about that could have been really cool, especially with the Chrysalis thing. Like, where did that come from? There was also a conflict between humans and ponies hinted at as well - the Terrans are introduced for seemingly no reason beyond worldbuilding. That whole human thing could be removed from this story and would not have changed it in any meaningful way. I suppose in the end it was a cool detail, but again, I would have liked to know more.
It's not that the story doesn't work with the ending. The story works fine, and it does leave the reader wondering in a not completely unresolved way. We know what happens, in the vaguest, broadest, most detailless sense of the idea, but I can't help but feel like it's a waste, just like the alien civilization with its wondrous tech, doomed and locked in its eternal war. The abruptness just isn't satisfying. Sort of just an "Um, alright, I guess..." instead of the "Wow, now that was really something!" that the first four chapters achieve. The story loses more than it gains by ending as it did.
Still, that doesn't mean it has to stay that way - I urge you to continue! I think one or two more 'bonus' chapters of comparable length to the first four could close up the story in a much more meaningful way, and allow delivery on as many hanging threads as desired - the Aliens, Chrysalis, the simulated six, the AI itself, the damaged Dorian, Nadir, Zenith especially. I'd think it'd go a long way to improving the story's overall quality. Hell, if you want to, write a sequel that picks up where this one leaves off. Might be even better.
Whoof, okay, I better stop. That's just my rather lengthy opinion. I really did enjoy reading the first four chapters! A fascinating sci-fi setting, engaging details, nice prose, interesting twists, and a well and truly flawed main character drive this story quite well. I look forward to what you produce next, and I really, really hope you don't submit yourself to the same kind of limit as you did here.
Exquisite stuff. The ending is abrupt, yes, but what’s there is still an outstanding exploration of Clarke’s Third Law, the cycle of revenge, and the legacy of iconic heroes millennia down the line. You’ve crafted an incredible setting to go with the plot here, and while you didn’t have room for optimal payoff, the journey was still gripping throughout.
Still, I have to wonder, whose bright idea was it to slip Chrysalis into those personality files? And given the “sisters is sisters” rationale, would Applejack go on a similar all-consuming quest for revenge?
In any case, thank you for this and best of luck in the judging.
Fantastic Story, Gardez.
As always, your mastery of landscape detail is second to none.
Enjoyable characters and the AI was a pleasant surprise.
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You make a good point. From an economy of storytelling point of view, Chrysalis feels a bit extraneous. Even if it doesn’t fit the cannon character, having AJ be one that stays to the end feel a little tighter.
Great story, though. Loved the way the narration folds into itself whenever the timeline gets wonky.
agh, there is so much to say here! so firstly, given that it runs right up against the wordcount limit, i do hope you did not have to cut your vision short for the sake of it. 20kw was a soft limit, and definitely could have been raised if asked, as stated in the rules.
there is just so much to love about this story! the twist of Zenith's motivations for finding Nadir, discovering the mechanics of the nanochines on the mysterious planet, the tragedy of eternally rewinding time loops of a civilization-destroying war, and the thread throughout of the AI simulated personalities, and the philosophical questions raised about
the development of the story is certainly uneven, with the reveal of what happened to Nadir and the conclusion all happening in the last 2% of the story, but honestly? i think that really adds to the effect of the story. Zenith's burning desire for revenge is suddenly and hopelessly rendered moot, as is the readers' expectations of a drawn-out emotional climax and reveal of the characters' pasts; both running into a brick wall at the exact same moment, giving all the pent-up energy nowhere to release. and that i find really beautiful. that we don't get to learn what Nadir did, or details about the dead civilization and its final war, or get any long discourse about the nature of justice and revenge and continuity of identity, all really add to the impact of that one moment at the end, and i absolutely loved it.
all that adds up to this being one of my favorite stories that i have ever read on this site. thank you so much for writing it
Wow, that was a cool concept and a great (if abruptly ended) story!
This is such an interesting problem to solve too... You would need a fleet of ships and years of time, but you could conceivably jam each piece and part then keep everyone alive long enough to get them out... That in itself would be a great story!