Equustential Neightmare; or, The Maredarned Prometheus

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Nuclear power is a bust. Twilight killed her friends. Can cloning and philosophy bring them back? (Or will we merely be pone-ished?)

- Content note: In addition to the tags-- references to intercourse (which does not take place). 'Tragedy' nearly suits this as a tag... but should it be swapped with 'Dark' or 'Comedy' since there is a three tag limit? Tagging presented a difficult decision.

- Not a crossover with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (an early Sci-Fi story), but thematically and titularly adjacent!

Cover Image: Source on the image itself as a link. Rights (only to the image) at the link.

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LH45

LH45 #1 · Mar 22nd, 2023 · 2 · ·

And thus her descent into madness begins......
Someone please contact Celestia and Sunset. Oh, and the guards.

Bicyclette

Bicyclette #2 · May 29th, 2023 · 1 · ·

She had become death, destroyer of friends.

very relevant quote with the movie Oppenheimer coming out soon

No worries about radiation, thankfully. The Elements of Harmony hadn't been able to produce that--just death of her friends.

oof!

Her prior thoughts had been a bit overly-dramatic. Spend too much time with dramatic friends like Rarity and their mannerisms did truly intrude. Twilight smiled, then frowned. Rarity was dead.

double oof

Twilight jumped back to Sunset's world, vomited on a sofa, ripped off a science lab door with her magic, swiped radiation pills and a couple radiation suits in case any other pony needed to join her in the Castle.

oh yeah vomiting on a sofa so soon… that truly must be a lot of radiation

She hadn't put up a warning sign or locked her doors and the door with all the Elements of Harmony was open and more dead ponies were at the door. Near it, rather. In pools of vomit. Rest in peace Cutie Mark Crusaders. But Twilight could fix it. Probably.

oof, and of course they would be the first other ponies to go, jumping headlong into a situation like this

"Hello Granny Smith!"
"Why're ya' wearin' that ersatz apiarist get-up?"

hehe, of course that is how a regular pony would interpret a radiation suit

"Heh-heh-heh. Fillies foolin'. That's me an' Applejack, definitely."

so true actually, too bad this story is not the right genre

Alcoholic cider in hoof, figuratively--it was actually levitating behind her whacking into signboards and cracking one pony's portaged fishing pole completely in half, Twilight raced back to the castle and chugged it--the cider, not the shattered fishing pole.

good clarification

Then she ripped off the mare's door with her magic, tossing it aside like a mouth-yanked cork.

very apropos simile

No pony was around, so Twilight Sparkle lifted with her magic a couple of casks of Berry Punch's sparkling "Private" Ponyville: Home of the Elements of Harmony Reserve: Return of Luna Blackberry Edition and went back to her castle.

aww, love Berry Punch's sparkling "Private" Ponyville: Home of the Elements of Harmony Reserve: Return of Luna Blackberry Edition wine

"Don't worry, Rarity," she japed, to keep up her spirits and her sanity. She patted the white-coated mare on her head. "I won't tell anypony about your malodorous problem if you won't tell anypony about my teensey-weensey-ain't-nothing-of-a-thing mistake. Heh-heh. Ain't. Improper. Heh-heh. I'm stupid." It was unclear if the talking was helping or harming Twilight's sanity.

i mean i feel like either way it is a drop in the bucket of what is affecting Twilight’s sanity right now…

"MCS^*, IPS^*, PCR^*, DNA, RNA, NDA for de-neigh-a-bil-ee-tay, la-la-la," she sang as she accelerated cell growth with her magic.

aww, now there is a song we won’t get to hear in canon

Soon enough, she had embryos! But no hosts. Except herself. And some corpses. She looked down at her belly. Then at the bodies. Belly. Bodies. Belly. Bodies.

well, that is quite the direction to take this in

"Uh-huh." Nurse Redheart looked around the room, saw a basket, some rotting chewed-at-one-end cucumbers, an eggplant, and a cantaloupe on one table.

oof, that certainly doesn’t seem like enough calories to knit together eight foals. the rotting food does do a good job in adding to the disturbing ambiance, however

"How do mothers do this?" She demanded.
"Well... usually there aren't eight foals. And usually we're in a hospital..."

i do think of pony childbirth as closer to the one for earth horses rather than humans on the scale of dangerous and painful, but even in that case i imagine octuplets would be a bit much!

"Witnesses!" Redheart backed away. "Are you suggesting, Princess Twilight Sparkle, that you intend to harm these defenseless foals--"
Twilight Sparkle hit her with a keg.

dang, Twilight Sparkle is solving a lot of her problems with violence lately!

Twilight had inserted the eight foals in magic-shaped crystal incubators, filled with supergrowth formula. "You all look so cute!" she said. "Especially you, baby Fluttershy." She booped the baby's nose through a tiny window in its incubator. Lil' Fluttershy made a squeal.

aww, adorable!

Permission granted to cast the memory spell, Twilight took care of matters. It would have been far easier to have started with the memory modification spell from the start, but that spell required full consent, and although her Nurse probably would have granted consent--the pile of dead bodies to explain may have encouraged her to not grant it--at least not immediately--and she'd become an ongoing complication, so Twilight determined this farce was more prudent.

this is definitely how i think of spells like that working, though i guess that doesn’t preclude deceptive shenanigans (to describe roofie-ing and gaslighting a mare very lightly…) like what just transpired here.

Meanwhile, Twilight realized a flaw in her plan. She could clone the bodies, but there would be no mind. At least, not the same mind. Those were gone forever. And without them, were her friends really her friends at all any more?

i gotta say, this was such an obvious problem i kinda assumed Twilight went into this with some sort of magical solution in mind, but i guess she given the insanity of every step of her plan so far she must have really been winging (heh) it in a blind panic

She stole some computers... and a generator and fuel and a solar panel from the mirror world because Equestria still didn't have anything better than coal power especially since nuclear reactions were, rather spectacularly, unfortunately out of the question.

oof, full circle!

And Twilight didn't want to use polluting coal or oil extraction, besides she wasn't all that certain there had been several hundred million years of evolution on Equestria anyway that might have produced enough deceased matter to matter.

gotta say, given the ethical considerations she’s completely disregarded so far i am surprised she is getting hung up on this! but then again her priorities do seem to be fractured throughout and understandably so

Then she stole forcibly borrowed a few humanes who helped program the computers and she inserted the humanes in a time travel loop so not too much time would pass in the outside world that her friends' brains would irreversibly decay. Being quite bright, one of them asked that if she could do this, then why could she not time travel to prevent her friends' deaths?

do love the use of “humanes” here, sort of analogous to “equine” as a noun

"My name is Rosalind."
"Of course Rosy Lined."

hehe, love the inability of Twilight to understand a name not conforming to pony naming conventions

* DNA... Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Crick, etc.

the coïncidence of the surname “Watson” was quite fortunate here

"As has been demonstrated," Twilight breathed heavily. "Quod erat demonstratum. Et cetera and assumpsit and habeaus corpus and therefore." Eventually, she realized she was speaking Old Ponish.

sounds more like Pony Latin to me, which is where modern Ponish derives most of its technical terms from!

She'd only had to teleport away a few particularly resourcefully observant ponies and Derpy before completing her task.

ooh, burn on Derpy!

Amid SARS-PONY-2, which was a name that didn't catch on--humane government called it something else since they had no knowledge of any extradimensional world. Alas. But Twilight didn't know about any of that, about deaths or misattribution of the disease to bats.

oh boy. that is quite more topical than i expected!

They still killed their villains--ponies didn't... except for Sombra, but he was essentially a smoke monster--not even a person. One couldn't be responsible for killing smoke, or a ghost! They weren't even alive.

well, that certainly explains the in-universe self-justification for that incongruous moment…

She frowned. She'd have to look to philosophy.
She didn't like philosophy.
It wasn't practical.

sounds like it’s pretty practical here!

Neightsche, Twilight's favorite philosopher, didn't believe in the immortality of souls, or even their existence. But Immanuel Canter had some interesting thoughts on the matter.

i do wonder given Twilight’s trouble with Rosalind’s name earlier, what she makes of the superfluous “-tsche” in “Neightsche” and the name “Immanuel”

Atoms were the smallest piece of matter--assuming theoretical substances like Ponytrons, Neightrons, and Equestrons didn't exist.**

ooh, love this!

Yes. Leather. From Humor's rumored dead bat pony husband. To immortalize him. Not from the wings of course, but from the more hide-like pony body.

well, that is quite something!

Twilight Sparkle hunted for the pamphlet of Doctor Fränkenfurter, the hot dog-marked pony who aside from inventing a delectable mashed vegan delicacy had once given life to a "Modern Prometheus" as he called it, an automaton that disappeared from history too-soon after its creation.

so that is, what, three layers of references? also glad that the pony hot dogs are a mashed vegan delicacy

A guide banned by Princess Celestia and only present in this library because Twilight had smuggled it out of the Royal Library's restricted section carefully bagged and bulging within her cheeks.

in her… mouth?

She'd ignored those warnings and attempted creation of a soul-dead animal--since she didn't quite believe in immortal souls and besides, if souls *did* exist, animals probably didn't have them since they weren't sentient.

an interesting assertion to make, given how they act around Fluttershy!

Fluttershy had had a mischievous white squirrel named Angel for a long time. Then, the squirrel died and Twilight resurrected... failed to resurrect it. But, soon after, a mischievous rabbit moved in with Fluttershy. A rabbit who acted very much like that terrible squirrel: stealing food, pulling pranks. A rabbit that Fluttershy also named "Angel". But the body that Twilight had incubated had been a squirrel, not a rabbit. Rabbits had been in an adjacent cage. They had been cloned yes, but. Was it possible? Could Twilight really have made a protocol mistake and injected the wrong species? She thought back to the night as much as she could. She had, of course, been quite tired.

that is quite a fascinating origin for the very terrible and awful Angel Bunny

* Don't give a horse or pony coffee.

but i love it when the magical colorful cartoon ponies drink coffee!

Scootaloo developed a lisp in affectation of Twist's--and got grief counseling for it.

oof! definitely see how ponies would assume this

She's just added to her animal menagerie with a new assortment of igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks. And, those additions are completely within the expected boundaries of her character--her reptiles quite appreciate the attention."

aww! that is a great rationalization

"Still, it was not long before our new-styled "flying ace-sexual" herself--is that an oxymoron? Maybe Dash doesn't know what that means?

really love how both interpretations work perfectly for Rainbow Dash

I did not have to look up that word and I realize not much has been written about such events in research papers, so participation would add important original experiential scientific research, like that championed by Darned Humor, to equine history by producing good quality research on the prurient phenomena! But, do I want to be known academically for something foals are prohibited from reading? I have a few hours to decide. There likely will be future occasions, so I am going to turn this one down."

and to be fair to in-story Twilight, i am sure this story has been already written many times

In case you do not have time to consult my prior experimental notebook: the real Pinkie Pie was sad she had been copied so many times--and that's why she was most motivated to survive when I conducted the paint dry-watching experiment!

love this self-justification

"Also! It has been well proven that I did not murder any of the Pinkie Pies we destroyed during that debacle where there were hundreds of copies and the real one demonstrated her worth by being willing to focus on the utterly un-fun activity of watching paint dry.

hoowee, Twilight certainly has been very thorough about insisting how all of her canon and in-story actions are definitely not murder

Clearly unforeseeable side effects weren't her fault and nopony was dead because of Twilight. No pony at all.

so true, very clear!

and yet another delightful and referentially dense work about our beloved Princess of Friendship who certainly is not at all a murderer in any way. though now i am left vexed if i want to keep calling the crime “mareslaughter” in my stories or adopt “maneslaughter”, which hints at a fascinating internal logic in its etymology. and the section about the new lives of the resurrected friends of Twilight bring to mind the world of “Magical Mystery Cure”, as well as the genre of “swapped roles” fics. thank you for writing!

SparklingTwilight

SparklingTwilight #3 · May 29th, 2023 · · ·

...and yet another delightful and referentially dense work about our beloved Princess of Friendship who certainly is not at all a murderer in any way.

Thank you again for your wonderfully in-depth comments!

i do wonder given Twilight’s trouble with Rosalind’s name earlier, what she makes of the superfluous “-tsche” in “Neightsche” and the name “Immanuel”

- A very fair point; however, (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/immanuel) It means "God With Us" in Hebrew, so it follows pony naming conventions.
- Re: Neightsche--I saw the suffix as a Gesundheit/achoo exclamation or as "Neigh" in the proto-Equestrian language of Germane.

well, that is quite something!

The idea came from Jeremy Bentham... (Warning- The top image of the following link may be extraordinarily disturbing for people who do not like mummies or corpses or severed heads. I'd rate it as a high Teen or Mature on the image alone and am a bit shocked why this article from CBC--a public broadcaster--starts with that image. It does, however, quite well illustrate the disturbing situation.) For those who do not want to click on the link, the text of the link gives a bit of an idea: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.4320308/why-philosopher-jeremy-bentham-s-severed-stolen-and-poorly-preserved-head-is-back-on-display-1.4320319

if i want to keep calling the crime “mareslaughter” in my stories or adopt “maneslaughter”, which hints at a fascinating internal logic in its etymology.

Good arguments either way. If your Equestrias are mare-centric in their language rather than neutral, I would adopt "mareslaughter". "Maneslaughter" is probably more neutral but it makes me think about Zephyr Breeze and horse grooming. For killing any of the Mane 6 though, definitely: "Maneslaughter".

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