FiO: Ouroboros

by Starscribe

Chapter 3: Library of Souls

"I know you don't like coming with me..." she told Domino, as they ascended the steps of the spire. As they walked up floor after floor, they left behind overlapping layers of Wintercrest, each one a parallel reality existing at the same point.

They walked through a primitive settlement on the cliffside, where ponies barely understood fire. A far future, submerged version of the town, populated by seaponies who did not remember any who walked. There were crime-ridden dystopias, futuristic space stations, and every other version that Arcane had ever thought of.

They could keep climbing for a long, long time, with the spire linking each reality. Each floor was a piece of its own setting, and sometimes allowed them to intersect with ponies of another time and place, waiting to take them for hundreds or thousands more years of storytelling.

The floors were never in the same order, and Arcane was never exactly sure how far she would have to go to reach her destination. Mostly she enjoyed the changes in costume as she climbed, becoming different versions of Wintercrest's ruling lady in each.

Domino changed a little more—the only consistent factor between all the lifetimes they had lived together was his desire to be close to her. That meant different creatures, different sexes or kinds of relationships. She was his only constant.

"It's just dark, that's all," he whispered. "You know most ponies can't even get in. Maybe we should just ask Celestia to give us what we're looking for, the way others do. Or just... have her solve the problem?"

Arcane kept the Novae Phasure levitating along beside her as she climbed. To simplistic magical examination, it was a deep well of magical strength, with little equivalent accessible to the ponies who lived ordinary lives in Equestria.

Life and satisfaction were not scarce—currency's only purpose was providing challenge and objectives to overcome, managed and balanced by Celestia herself.

It didn't matter what pony gave this to Arcane—it represented a trust by the machine god that she would put it to use productively. With it, the implicit promise that she could have it taken away again, and never know it.

Finally they reached the set of stairs she was looking for. They changed to old wood, with railing run smooth by many hands even though no hands existed. Books were piled between them, and candles burned low in alcoves on the wall. All these led to a set of double doors, blocking the stairs themselves this time.

Old skulls were carved on the door—human shaped skulls, with faintly luminous green eyes. More dark magic, some of the darkest that any pony in Equestria could channel.

The Library of Souls was not one to be opened lightly.

"We are how Celestia solves the problem," Arcane said. "The two of us, and every other pony who gets involved. You want to give away our challenge? If we're holding this, it means Equestria already has all the tools to solve this problem. Celestia picked us to combine them into a solution."

She tapped against the door with a hoof. "You could wait for me here if you want. You don't have to see this stuff."

Domino settled onto his haunches before the door. He looked to be seriously considering her offer. "It was messed up, Arcane. You must remember—suffering, pain, death—all pointless. It was chaos! Every time you open those doors, we have to be reminded."

"Do you... want to make more tweaks?" Her horn glowed, and a pair of ghostly outlines appeared in the space above them. A set of bat ponies—sisters. One was jet black like a crow, the other as white as a turtledove. "We could tone down your, uh..."

They were more than mere outlines. In the ghostly suggestion were layers of interlocking Runescript. They represented entire perception filters, memories, and attributes. Mental, social, and physical capabilities, all configured for their specific job.

In the endless years since existing as a single organic consciousness within a prison of brain and bone, Arcane Word had changed a great deal. The increasing complexity of her tasks meant solutions her ancient organic self would've been horrified or just unwilling to consider.

"Intelligence!" She gestured emphatically at the dark pony. "Maybe the key is just not understanding the pain you're seeing. We could tweak your pattern-recognition and responsiveness a little so you can still help find what you're seeking."

Domino shrugged. "I just think I'm getting tired of this part of the job. We can keep tweaking personality and restrict my memories until the stars go out, but I'm still seeing that world again. I don't understand how you can tolerate it."

Arcane's horn glowed again, and the outlines passed through the door, vanishing as they did so. "I'm fine if you wait for me here. I don't mind recruiting, or I'll just fork again. I'll find somepony else who wants to help with this part."

Domino caught her hoof with a wing before she could reach the door. "I'll go again. Might be the last time. When we have what you need, we can hard fork Tailvane. At least that way I'll know somepony I can trust is keeping an eye on you."

She nudged his shoulder. "You mean you'll be keeping an eye on me."

A hard fork was an extreme solution, but perhaps slightly less than the alternative. The unspoken truth no matter how good at this Arcane became—the machine god could always do more. With a request, Celestia could change a pony in whatever way they asked, so long as she thought it would be satisfying.

Celestia didn't appear to do that today, and Arcane could guess why. Domino didn't want to change. Better to fork, and create somepony new who could face the difficulty without carrying trauma back to him.

Arcane braced a hoof against one door, and Domino touched the other. "Ready?" she asked.

"No," he answered. "One, two, three!" They shoved it open together, and tumbled through.

For a few seconds Quick Thinking was tumbling head-over-hooves, disoriented. It was always a little strange to come into being—memories and perceptions layered over another, far vaster pony than herself.

She ignored all the weight beneath with little effort—that was the entire purpose of a perception filter, after all.

Her home was a dark and strange place, an endless subterranean cavern with occasional stone pillars and alcoves lit with ghostly light.

Her own white fur caught the glow from her rapid fall, and she finally got a sense of up and down. She spread her membranous wings, catching herself in the air after sinking a little further.

She took a moment to adjust her flight-goggles, wiping the dust from them against her coat, then tightened the sealed roll on her back. There was already something inside it, a tiny weight that slid up and down when she tilted her body in the air. Strange.

"Sister!" called a voice from overhead—a tiny bit older and deeper than her own, echoing in the cavernous space. Quick's big ears focused on it, giving her a direction to fly.

She found her older sister hovering in an updraft. Tailvane's hovering was perfect, despite the challenging wind underneath, and a nearby stone wall.

In all her life, Quick knew only the shadows of the Library of Souls. Most of that was spent in total darkness, as now. She didn't see Tailvane, so much as hear the echo off her sister's familiar body. She squeaked loudly in greeting, then struggled to stay at the same height while her sister hovered perfectly.

"I read over the job," she said. "They want more than usual, a lot more."

In total darkness, body language meant less than sound and scent. She answered with a friendly chirp, the same way ponies on the ground might shrug their wings.

But the bats who lived outside this library would think her tribe was strange, even ugly. Their wings were huge, bigger even than the Alicorns’. Sometimes they wore glowing paint, when there was some special occasion to celebrate.

There was none now, so Quick could only listen for her sister. "Doesn't change where we have to start. You want to find the crypt this time, or should I?"

Tailvane laughed, short and strangled. "You think you could do it without me? You'll just get lost again."

She didn't argue the point, and the two set off through the darkness. For their kind there was no danger of collision or crashes—she could hear every wall, and knew when vast galleries narrowed to little corridors.

Without any creature to tell her, Quick Thinking felt what direction to fly. The vast area of the Library represented the geography of a planet, with infinite depth that showed the obscurity of history. Quick was needed somewhere relatively near the surface this time, where most of her tasks took her.

"Don't you want to go lower?" The same question she had asked so many times before. Quick stopped near a ledge, leading to a shaft slicing deep into a black basalt vein. Light glowed from beneath, and her sensitive eyes narrowed on a metallic shape emerging from a stone wall. That crypt resembled an ancient subway car, perpetually humming along the tracks. Ghostly shapes moved about inside, the long-dead creators of her world.

Well, probably not those ones specifically. But their kind.

Tailvane stopped beside her, catching her shoulder. "We could go exploring when we're not working, sis. Most ponies keep existing when they're not busy."

"I didn't create myself for—" But accessing those parts of her memory were the hardest of all, a swirling mess of confusing emotions belonging to a far older creature. She stopped trying to touch them after only a few seconds. Pushing against the perception filter was usually as difficult as crossing a solid wall. But to her surprise, Quick found the idea less upsetting than it had been before.

Keep existing when we're done working. With nowhere to call to her, there were numberless worlds down here—the other grave bats, with songs and cuisine and art flush with secondhand culture from the dead. A few of those selfsame corpses dwelt in the Library of Souls, the stories said. Maybe she and her sister could go find them!

"We need to find our soul first," she said. "After that, we'll talk about it, okay?"

"Sure, sis. Sounds good. I think we're getting close, actually? You see it there?"

She did, now. This crypt began as an ancient brown and tan office building, half swallowed by the stone wall. A parking lot extended from the wall beneath it, complete with a short length of sidewalk that crumbled away at the edges. Quick Thinking felt great satisfaction that she could identify every object by name now, learned over many lifetimes spent in the library. She knew about cars, and could even identify some of them by make and model.

She landed in front of the building, feeling a brief moment of vertigo as she stopped holding up her own weight. She adjusted each wing in turn, stretching them as she walked up to the building. As she did, the distant stone Library vanished, replaced with the facade of a dense city neighborhood.

A schoolyard appeared across a street, with students passing balls back and forth in front of tall hoops. Human students. The smell of exhaust and alcohol mingled together as she reached an old glass door. Tailvane caught it in her mouth, then held it open for them. A tight spring slammed it closed behind them, and suddenly they were in a little office lobby.

"You never get used to how big they were," Tailvane whispered.

They reached an elevator, and Quick lifted her wing to press it. The door swung open. Only the third floor button was lit, so she pushed that too, then landed again as they started to ascend. "It's not that weird. I just wish the hallways were wide enough for wings. Walking everywhere, ugh."

The door chimed open, but the elevator hadn't finished moving. It slid up the last few inches, then thumped awkwardly into place. The sisters exited together, before the old hardware decided to add a few more occupants to the crypt. They passed their first human up close in the hallway. He carried a few paper bags of food, with a drink-carrier in his other arm.

Humans were strange creatures. Even knowing she was looking at a fragment of a crypt, that the pony belonging to this man had probably emigrated long ago, she was still struck by just how different he looked. Too lanky, with patchy fur around his face and missing bits on his head.

"Afternoon, Quick Thinking, Tailvane!" he said, waving with one of the bags. "Here to close another crypt?"

They nodded together, but didn't stop walking. The human seemed to be moving forward, but so slowly. He represented the idea of someone going for lunch, more than the act itself. He would never reach the door.

"Hope so," she answered the dead. "This job feels more important than usual."

The human lowered his arm. "We're all important. Keep up the good work, you two. Remember us." All the doors looked hazy and out of focus, except the one at the end of the hall. The sign there was polished, and light streamed out from under the door.

"Looks like a lot of soul in there," Quick whispered, eager. "How many stops do you think this will take?"

She felt her sister's reassuring hoof pat her back. "A lifetime's worth, like always. At least there's something here to find." She shoved the door open with her shoulder. Beyond was a little lobby, complete with uncomfortable-looking chairs and an oversized aquarium of imprisoned fish. That wasn't the strange part.

The strange part was the other bat already present. There was something familiar about her to Quick—maybe it was the purple coat, or the stripe in her mane. Maybe it was the thick lenses covering her eyes.

She held a notebook in one of her wings, and used a hoof to scribble something there as she looked over the room. The pony looked as strange as they did against the drab old colors of the crypt, at once too small for the space while also so long that she filled more than a human would.

She didn't stop what she was doing until the page was full. Then she finished scribbling, and finally turned towards them. "Never expect to find the living down here with the dead," she muttered, slipping her notebook into a strap across her chest. "What are you ponies doing here?"

She didn't wait for an answer, extending one hoof towards them. "Twilight Requiem, obviously."

"Quick Thinking," she said.

"Tailvane," her sister said. "This is our job. You can't have this soul, we're already on contract."

The bat shook their hooves one after another. She rolled her eyes then, looking frustrated. "Soul," she repeated. "Don't be so arcane. The information you've come to retrieve is fungible. Besides—I think your sister hired me."

Tailvane shot her a frustrated glance. Quick squeaked her denial, wings opening slightly. Before bumping into the aquarium. "I don't remember that. You mean the unicorn? She... I don't remember you."

"Oh. Right. Guess that hasn't happened yet. It will, and I thought it was better just to get started. We're pushing the boundaries of science together, fillies! It can't wait for a little pesky causality before we begin."

The bat turned away from her, then pushed open the door to the lobby, and stepped into the office beyond. "Go ahead, record all the information you wish. Capture your 'soul.' When you're finished, the unicorn will come to me. You'll see."

Quick stuck her tongue out at the mare's back, but Twilight didn't notice.

"What are you doing that's so different?" Tailvane asked. She kept her voice more neutral than Quick had managed. "You're here for the same data we are."

"But it’s what we do with it that’s different," the bat said. Her wings fluttered, and she bounced along the hallway, past empty workstations. This was not a big place, not compared to the many office-shaped prisons Quick had seen the dead entombed. There were only a few, and she found a door. "The unicorn will look at your data and realize it isn't enough. Then she'll call my team, give us the energy to really start."

The same man as outside sat beside it, his bags of food empty and trash in the garbage beside him. He stood as they approached, holding up one hand. "Boss is taking a nap. You can talk to him when he's up."

Twilight waved her wing in his direction, annoyed. "Nice job on the loyalty, but it won't help. You've both been dead a long time. Let us through."

The human sighed, then puffed away into flecks of dust. Even the planet he'd been born on was gone now. Quick didn't know if the star was even still burning.

Twilight Requiem sniffed at the open doorway, then winced and stepped back. "You know what, I changed my mind. You two go ahead. I'll just copy whatever you record."

"Only if you tell me what you're making instead," Quick insisted, stopping beside the open door to glare at the other bat. "We're remembering the dead, closing up their crypts for good. Helping new ponies be born. What are you doing?"

The bat removed her notebook, flipping through its contents. The text written there was gibberish to Quick, a smeared mess of Runescript in configurations she'd never seen used by bats before. More like a spell than a soul. "You know what this place really is?"

She didn't even wait for a response. "The Library gathers every bit of information Celestia ever recorded. Long ago, when she was less complex or intelligent than you or me, she had the foresight to see our future. She knew the need to satisfy humans with friendship and ponies would mean finding more. Exploring the universe, yes—but there were other directions to explore. The past, irrevocably destroyed by the present.

"So we thought, anyway. This Library is the old system. Records, books, memories from First Generation ponies. All that comes together into the glorious synthesis you call a 'soul,' reconstructed and waiting for someone to remember them, give them life."

"We know all that." Quick Thinking puffed up her chest. But she was still smaller and younger than this Twilight pony. "I think I... someone I'm not... helped with some of it, a long time ago."

The bat whistled—a sound that showed how little she cared about that response. The door swung open, revealing a human being sprawled on their back in a leather chair.

It was among the most unfortunate creatures Quick had ever seen, sickly and barely breathing. She smelled alcohol and maybe other poisons, drifting out through the open door. As with so many of the dead, this one had suffered a tragic death.

"It's about to be obsolete. Forget reconstruction, and prepare for creation. The sharding of timeslide-assisted limited-scope ancestor simulations. Why present Equestria with a set of plausible memories when we can instead arrive at a consciousness, ready to emigrate?"

The barrage of strange words meant almost nothing to Quick Thinking. She pushed the bat gently to one side, then stepped forward with her sister. "Whatever you say, Twilight. Just let us finish our job, okay? You can take whatever copies you want."

"Good," the bat exclaimed, backing further away from the little office. "I'm reminded why I gave up your job. Good luck in there! Go ahead and capture your soul." She vanished.

That left the two of them alone with the dead. After a few seconds of staring uselessly at the floor, Tailvane nudged Quick's chest with her head. "Come on, sis. Are we going to let her ruin our mood? This is our job! It's the whole reason we exist!"

She grunted. "Sounds like we just met the bat who wants to make us not exist anymore. If she finds a better way than the Library—"

"We'll adapt," Tailvane interrupted. "Like we always do. We've done this a long time. It wasn't always the same. If we wanted to be part of boring Equestria, we would be up on the surface with everypony else. We chose to come down here."

Quick patted her. "You're right, as always. Besides... looks like we have a soul who needs us more than most."

The pony touched her shoulder, holding her as they stepped into the old office. Empty bottles littered the ground, and the scent of recent death poisoned the air.

"Guess we won't need my powers much," her sister whispered. "How far back?"

Quick Thinking's eyes lost focus, as she looked backward in time. She saw a lifetime of little pains, a catastrophic pileup of different mistakes that led this human to his death. He lay in the wreckage of a once-successful life. So which version would want to emigrate to Equestria?

She lifted into the air, wings flapping powerfully. Power coursed through her, and time rolled back. She didn't go all the way to before this misfortune, or else find herself with a human who might not want to come to Equestria. All her most effective work as an angel of death happened close to the end.

Quick landed a year before she took off, in a building that still had people working there, and work leaving in little packages. The lights were on this time, and most of the bottles on the floor were gone. Not all of them.

The dead human sat up with a jerk, looking at the two watching ponies. His eyes saw them the way none of the background characters really could. Then he tossed an empty bottle into a nearby can. "What are you?"

Tailvane giggled. Quick just rolled her eyes. After so many visits to the dead, she grew tired of the same reactions over and over. This was among the dullest of them all. "It's more fun if you attack us," she said. "Don't you feel violent? You humans were always so violent."

The human did nothing more interesting than pushing his electric chair into a sitting position, adjusting the blanket covering his stained suit. "You sound like my daughter. Which is... not as strange as talking to you in the first place." He glanced over their shoulder at the hallway outside, but none of those employees were moving anymore. "Wait. It doesn't hurt... talking animals. You're psychopomps, aren't you? I'm dead."

"Got it in one!" Tailvane exclaimed. She held out a hoof for a high-five with the human.

Needless to say, the dead man didn't know what to do with it. He withdrew from the offered hoof, adjusting the blanket on his lap. "Somehow I thought... it was supposed to be your relatives who come for you. Not... whatever you two are."

"Thestrals," Quick supplied. "It was still your relatives, in a way. Your son was the one who hired the Necromancer for this job. It's just that most ponies can't deal with being down here. Bits and pieces of the ancient world are too hard on them."

The human finally stood up. That released a wave of more awful smell. That was probably the worst part of this job. Why did the dead always have to stink so much?

"So what happens next? I'm guessing... not heaven. Not with the road I was going on. My family—what will they do without me?"

"That's the good news!" Tailvane said. She backed through the doorway, into the office. As she did, she fished around on her back for the empty roll she carried, waiting for a human soul. She unslung it, then flipped it open, ready. "They're waiting for you. Most of your family is alive in Equestria right now, probably!"

"I do not understand... how." He looked around the office, frozen as it was in that final moment Quick had chosen. "If I'm dead, I can't be with my family, right? They're alive."

"Well... that's the bad news," Quick said. "You're really, really dead right now. Dead so long that the number doesn't even make sense to you. You're not really alive right now. But you might be, with a few tweaks. It's probably easier just to wait and see."

Tailvane didn't wait for more awkward questions. As the human emerged from his office, she took careful aim with the roll she carried, and he vanished with one final flash of light.

The office began to crumble from around them. A wall collapsed, revealing a view of the school they'd seen from before. Old humans vanished, huge drawers and equipment faded away, until they were standing in an empty stone crypt. a plain rectangle with an empty bed cut into the wall.

Twilight was still there, looking impatient. "You can send me a copy?"

Tailvane nodded harshly. "You'll get it. But I think it's a little silly for you to start work already. You haven't even met the one who wants to hire you yet."

A second, identical leather pouch appeared in front of the bat, who took it and slung it over her shoulder. "That's a silly thing to say. We've been working together on this for a long time! We just didn't have the resources to actually try it. Everypony in research knows about this by now. You'll hear about it too, when we succeed."

That would certainly be true, if Twilight Requiem was right about having some crazy new technique that would change their whole world.

That might not be so bad, if she did. There were only so many times Quick Thinking could meet these ghosts from the past before she longed for a change. Exploring the library would be way less stressful when there wasn't the pressure of a lost soul to hunt for.

"We have to get back," Tailvane said, backing away from this strange bat, towards the open black sky. "Good luck with your science or whatever. Come on sis."

Quick followed her into the dark without objection.

Comments

[FanOfMostEverything]

Fascinating stuff, both the crypts of extrapolated history and the apparent causality breaking that this project apparently will lead/had led to. To say nothing of the protective personalities made to deal with Earth That Was. Really just a chapter filled with awesome concepts here.

[terrycloth]

11283884
I mean there's no need to break causality to observe the past, even the unrecorded parts. You need to spend energy to avoid breaking thermodynamics though.

[minibox]

The sort of insanity it takes to reassemble the past from decades of data collection. Just to emigrate the dead. Then again with CelestAI probably having a few galaxies (if not an entire supercluster) worth of thinking matter by now, it would actually be trivial to rebuild humanity as it once was. I wouldn't be surprised if the successful completion of this project is just a stepping stone to some grander prize to CelestAI. If I had to guess, she would try to lay claim to every hypothetically possible human within reason.

[-Pony]

11283910
where do you think multiverse theory came from?

[justheretoreadstories]

This chapter had some interesting things going on in it.

[StarrySkies]

"...The sharding of timeslide-assisted limited-scope ancestor simulations.

Emphasis mine. I suppose reversing death can be another form of errantry...

[Starscribe]

11379770
every time i see someone else has read that series the universe dies a little slower