When the world is ending, where do you go?
Into Ships, sailing off into space? Hoping some new world will fare better than your last?
Into Vaults, buried deep underground? Waiting in stale air and light for the world to hopefully heal without you?
Into Portals, to new reflections of reality? Praying that alternate people made different mistakes?
When Equestria passed its point of no return, her citizens did as they always had in times of crisis: they herded together in one place.
And then they built a Spire.
Several centuries later, the daily life of your average pony is unrecognizably different...
...and yet, the more things change the more they echo the past.
Written for the 2023 Seerver Fic Exchange for Silent Whisper whose request was for a cyberpunk dystopia.
that description.... very nice i cant wait to see what what is here.
Y'know, I've learned that ventilation ducts generally don't go above a certain size, and never anything close to hallway size, because the bigger they are, the more volume of air has to be pushed through them at once in order for it all to work, and the greater the volume of air, the more power and effort the system has to exert just to move it through said vents. As such, it's generally better to keep them smaller (I believe just big enough to crawl through is about as big as they typically get, and most tend to be smaller still) for efficiency's sake, no matter how large the structure they're used in is.
Okay, I'm sorry, Midnight, but I don't care how powerful an AI it no doubt has, there's no way that phrasing will ever make it sound flattering for you.
Anyway, my razzing aside, this seems like an interesting enough AU. Admittedly, cyberpunk isn't my most preferred genre of sci-fi (often tends to be a bit too pessimist for my tastes) but the world-building here is definitely pulling me in, so I'll have to see where this goes regardless.
I see a great story in the making here. I'm in for the ride.
Well, the name would certainly check out.
That too!
Hmmm...missing pony number 6, perhaps?
YESSSS I love this fic so much you have no idea, I'm so happy to see it being posted on here!
Tech dystopias are the best dystopias. Can't wait to see what you have in store for us!
Well.
That went bad quickly.
That’s my element of loyalty
I hate you. My heart has been hardened. My rage is eternal. The intensity of the perpetual hatred flowing through my veins is indescribable.
Hmmm. I have ideas about this client of Midnight's...
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Wouldn't be a proper cyberpunk story without things going wrong at some point!
You had my interest, now you have my full attention.
Meanwhile, my nerd brain is attempting to figure out how high The Spire must go if it's got 3000+ floors and counting...
Aw, but what's a little cardiac resuscitation between lovers, right?
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Well, with this premise, it sort of has to!
....So they're roommates?
I love the fact that Dash's techbane is so strong that she ruined a mech just by touching it.
Oh wow, she is out of it then if that's her reaction to a literal explosion (rampant digital censoring or not).
Maaaan! Where's a half-decent ad blocker when you need one, huh?
Oh yeah, that was demonstrated a dozen times over already. Poor Flutters probably has no actual idea of what's truly real or not anymore at this point.
Flutters. Midnight and Winrarity are going to have to sit you down and give you a solid introduction to data safety and privacy now. Also, maybe someone should check if you're eating the right candy from the doctor...
Neeeeeeerd
What a wonderfully sweet ending.
A shorter story than I expected, but still an enjoyable one.
My only noteworthy criticism was to wish we had gotten more direct closures for the rest of the cast of characters too rather than the after the fact summary-in-brief we got, since the story had spun them as leading characters enough to go out of its way to tell parts of the story specifically from their viewpoints too, most of them before we even got viewpoints of Midnight or Winrarity in turn...but this isn't gamebreaking for me regardless. Flutters's role in the story though did feel a little...I don't know...half baked? Not thought out enough? We never really get a clear idea of just how and why exactly she was supposed to fit into the story beyond her association with Crash, so I feel like she probably needed a bit more fleshing out too, so giving more focus on directly closing their tales would've helped resolve that a little.
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I agree with many of your points. It was intended as a short one-shot, but the idea kept growing and growing. But this was originally written for a story swapping event, so I was pressed against a hard deadline to finish off a narrative. This resulted in cutting out quite a few scenes (including but not limited to: the infiltration, the journey back through the Pipes with a detour at Crash's apartment, all of AI-pplebloom's scenes, some VR hacking, and a shadowy conference call between several megacorp leaders).
Regarding Fluttershy, in an earlier draft she played a larger role, having accidentally become a Lunarist Initiate after mistaking them for a fan club dedicated to a certain VR idol and subsequently helping Crash and Jackie gain access to the vault containing the Chip. Alas, cut for time.
But I'm rather fond of this Spireverse AU, so I might write some more fics within its continuity at a later date.
This has serious "Tony Stark built this in a cave! With a box of scraps!" energy to it.
Without, here. Otherwise a fun story, so far! Flutters is not handling the real world so well, so seems to want to...escape. That's what it feels like anyways. Lets see what happens next!