Fifteen: A Divergence Of Splays
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T H E C O N V E R S I O N B U R E A U
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RECOMBINANT 63
By Chatoyance
Chapter Fifteen: A Divergence Of Splays
The apartment building had been magically swept and scanned by whispering unicorns moving past silent ponies and the few humans that still remained. Because ponies cannot help but be social and cooperative, the building population was more than happy to work as one, especially with the threat of the HLF described to them in soft, barely audible tones. Patches of sparks flew from the ragged tiles of the hallway leading away from Paige, Pet, and Inkwell's apartment, and more were found scattered in the stairwell and the lobby, but that was it.
Sure that the building was clean, the residents had a meeting together and Inkwell described her plan, and how they could help. Not a one was unwilling, not even the humans, touched as they were by the constant social camaraderie the ponies had created within the complex. Within hours, the simple scheme was ready, and with nightfall, it began.
The two HLF Frontsmen in the upper left window of the old Tacksworn Corporation building reported in first. Groups of ponies, and ponies and humans, were leaving the target building. All were draped with sheets or comforters, making them unidentifiable. They looked like cheap Halloween ghosts, sent out by uncaring mothers. They disbursed always in groups of three, and then began to walk, or run, in every possible direction. Some ambled north, others south-west. Three headed towards the old nanotech plant. Three groups of three moved in the direction of the distant Bureau, but that meant nothing because other reports began to come in of groups suddenly abandoning their initial vector and changing direction radically, and apparently at whim.
The HLF A.I. 'Monitor', was fed the information and came out with a pattern - all were following a Drunkard's Walk that occasionally changed it's attractor. In short, they were all moving essentially randomly, with a slight bias towards three locations - the direction of the Bureau, across town, the direction of the warehouses also across town but in different area, and the Blackmesh base, in yet another section of the city.
Things heated up when the groups began to use any available transportation to move more quickly.
Some of the sheet-covered groups took Pegasus Cabs, and flew through the sky, others took earthpony carts, which were encouraged to run swiftly. Still more began to dart and move through other buildings or down alleyways in the most suspicious manner possible. The HLF agents soon began to suspect that the groups were changing sheets when they could, and some were deliberately wearing outlandish hats or other items over the sheets to set themselves apart.
Ralph Vitoni, 'Cloudypuff Moonypants' stomped about his own observation command post in a room across the street from the apartment building and cursed his mother and god, shouting epithets and kicking the walls with his hooves. This was impossible. He had done miracles of wet and dry work in his career, and always he could count on how humans naturally behaved to predict where to move and what to do and how to manipulate events.
But it was hitting him, for the first time, that these ponies, these Newfoals, were not humans, not anymore. They were not socially isolated or distrustful, they showed no hesitancy to assist, they could not be expected to mind their own business, and they could not be expected to sit in the background and avoid getting involved.
By the time the first reports of other apartment buildings disgorging masses of sheeted ponies and humans arrived, the little 'sheet game' spreading across the town like a disease, he knew the situation was hopeless. Everybody wanted to play, it seemed, like happy children, even if they did not understand why.
The HLF Frontsmen, scattered about the city, found groups of three, covered in sheets, that had no idea what was going on. They knew nothing about Paige, Inkwell, or Petrichor, or why the game was happening. Someone had simply arrived, explained the rules, stated that it was important, and the entire building had turned out to join in. It was 'important' after all, and it just wouldn't be Pony to turn down a chance to help. Plus... it seemed pretty fun giggling about trying not to be identified. It was like a city-wide costume party!
They cooperated without a second thought, these freaks, thought Ralph. They weren't human. They were monsters, creatures, they weren't human any more. They had no dignity, they weren't embarrassed or ashamed or inhibited. None of the human traits that could be exploited were valid anymore. They were like happy children, ready to play, but laughing at their own silliness like Buddhist masters. It was crazy. The world had lost all context, and gone completely insane.
The HLF did the best they could - they sent teams to rip the sheets off of the groups that arrived at the Conversion Bureau, doing their best to intercept any who approached it. But the numbers kept growing, and the Frontsmen couldn't handle how many groups in sheets approached. They were spread too thin. So the order came to shoot, to keep the groups from approaching. It was a dangerous, desperate act. The response from the Blackmesh was immediate, and very costly.
Ralph made the call. The groups heading towards the warehouses were an obvious distraction. Inkwell, 'Gwen', had clearly taken the notebook with her when she had originally escaped, it would be pointless to return the book to the place she had found it. It wasn't there currently, the warehouse had been searched top to bottom. That was just the kind of pathetic distraction that he expected from the three. Whoever they worked for, they had not been trained well, Ralph was convinced of that.
There were only two logical places that Paige, Inkwell and Pet would need to go. Either to where the notebook was hidden, or to Equestria, to escape. Since a mass of the sheeted groups were headed towards the old nanofabrication plant, it seemed reasonable that this could very well be the place where the notebook had been hidden. It even had a kind of sense to it - potion was a nanofluid, so hiding the notebook that described its creation in a nanofab plant had an obvious and simple connection - nano to nano.
He sent the remaining available Frontsmen to the nano plant, it was stupid to waste resources on an obvious distraction that would only be a trap in any case. If the three mares - or mare to be, in the case of Paige - were to head to the warehouses, they would be cut off, isolated, and trapped. When the HLF returned to their command center, all routes away from the warehouses would be blocked. It was a deathtrap. They were undertrained, not stupid.
The Frontsmen worked through the night, intercepting as many sheeted groups as they could, which was not many because the game had gone exponential. By midnight, Monitor had estimated that half the city population was involved in the 'Sheet Game'. Ralph spat invectives. Ponies. God-damn ponies.
He ruefully moaned that if humans had that level of instant cooperation, the threat of Equestria would have been beaten in the first year. It was disgusting, horrifying, a nightmare. Ponies just helped each other, without a second thought. It was 'important', somehow, so... they just went along. Because it was a way to cooperate, and because it was fun. That was the key, he realized, to manipulating ponies. Make it sound useful, make it sound fun. They weren't motivated by wealth, or power, or fear or threat. They were motivated by helpfulness and fun.
If anything in all the world was Ralph Vitoni's Achilles Heel, it was to wrap his mind around anyone being motivated entirely by helpfulness and fun. It was alien, freakish, horrifying. It wasn't his world, or his species down there. He couldn't grasp them, he couldn't predict them, and they terrified him.
"Ralph! What the hell are you going to do about this?" It was Leo - Leonard Reich, the head of the HLF, and he was not a happy man. His voice was clear and angry over the pony-sized headset that Ralph wore to communicate with his teams.
"Leo! You tell me! The whole damn city is trotting around like show-ponies in sheets. It's like a Klan rally for ponies or somethin'. They're goin' everywhere, and there's no way to tell which is which or who is who. What? Do all ponies get radio transmitters in their skull? Are they telepathic? Where the hell is my radio then?" Ralph felt like everything was going south, and it was, and it was the first time he had failed so spectacularly since his very first job, and even that wasn't this bad of a mess.
"Listen, Ralph. Gypsy Traveller can't happen unless we know the precise location of the subject. We have no idea where it is, but that notebook supposedly has a map in it. You know we need that map, Ralph. If we have the map, we can get the subject, and if we get the subject, we can penetrate the Barrier, and we win. We win, just like that. Boom, Ralph, it's all over, Equestria is over, the nightmare will be over, it's all over. You have to get that notebook Ralph. I don't care what you have to do. Kill every fucking thing in the city if you have to. I'm authorizing final sanction. Do you hear me Ralph? Final. Sanction. If you can't do the job, tell me. Then you just get your teams to safety, and we'll release NV-US1 and sort through the city after. Can you do the job?"
Ralph stared out the window. "Jesus Christ." Below, the parade of sheeted ponies and humans filled the streets, laughing and dancing and strolling. It looked like the entire city was involved, and it probably was. The HLF had placed NV units all over the city - in sewers, on roofs, in buildings, on kiosks, everywhere and anywhere that could access the greatest population possible. The most deadly nerve agent ever developed. It had been created before the Collapse, and had never been surpassed. A single molecule killed, causing a cascade reaction that induced apoptosis in virtually every nerve cell in the human body. It worked on ponies, too, though not in the same way. It just killed them, brutally, though nobody could figure out why. They just turned bodily to sludge, their skeletons shining through dripping ooze. The HLF had obtained nearly every ounce of NV-US1 ever made.
If Leo used it, any person or pony in the city would die, within minutes. It would take twenty-eight hours for the agent to degrade to a harmless state. Then they could unseal the doors, and come out of the underground HLF base. Every living being. Every pony or human in the city.
Ralph Vitoni was a hard man. He did messy jobs, and he did them well. But this - this was too much even for him, it was just too much. Final sanction was only for troops marching on the city, for some terminal, apocalyptic assault on the headquarters, for a final stand, not to find a stupid notebook. Leo apparently really did believe that some map in some notebook would save all of humanity. A wooden wagon, two QCD warheads and a notebook. Gypsy Traveller. Ralph was no fan of the ponies, and the city was mostly ponies now, but that was really worth killing every living thing in an entire city for?
The fact was, he'd been outsmarted. There was no possible way to find two ponies and a human, or three ponies and no human, when the entire city had been somehow mobilized into running about randomly with sheets and blankets covering their identities. All the scanning equipment, all the face recognition, all the Frontsmen down there - it was all useless to such a simple thing. The scale was too large to manage. The scale was too large to do anything about.
The decision sat there, hanging in his mind. If he told Leo he couldn't do the job, all those people and ponies down there would die. The whole city hung on four words: "I can't do it."
If he told Leo he could find the notebook, a whole city would not die. But the fact was, he couldn't find the notebook. Nobody could. Not unless the city were empty, and they could take their time checking every corpse, until by elimination, they found what they were looking for.
Provided the targets were even carrying the notebook. Leo assumed too much with that one. What if they left it stashed somewhere? They couldn't search the entire city, not everywhere. Leo was panicking. He was an asshole, and he was losing his shit. Ralph kicked the floor with his hoof. Hoof. For the rest of his life, he was stuck with hooves. Fuck Leo. Leo was an asshole.
But Leo would have his guts for garters if he called this wrong. And the fact was, there was no way he could find that damn notebook.
"Ralph! I need an answer here. I am not fucking around. Can you do the job, or not?"
Ralph slapped his own flank with his tail. It stung, and somehow that helped. "Gimme a moment, there Leo. I'm checking a lead. If it pans, we don't need to go nuclear, OK?" There. Time to think. That's what was needed. Time to think, time to breath.
"Five minutes, Ralph. Five." And Leo was off the line.
Ralph stood in his dark, empty room, looking out at the laughing, dashing ponies and humans in their sheets. The city was having an impromptu party. It did that sometimes, because the ponies just... did that. Tonight the theme was sheets. Ralph began to wonder if maybe he had underestimated his three opponents. He had certainly not considered pony psychology in his own calculations.
This moment was one of 'those' moments. Five minutes in which a single decision would make all the difference. Live or die, yes or no. A possibly world-changing moment of decision. Ralph looked around the empty room, piled with junk and boxes, dark, illuminated only by the candles and alcohol lamps from outside, the dim yellow, reflected glow on the thickening smog layer - damn lazy pegasus bastards - and the distant lights of the holosigns in the twoper district.
Suddenly, something beeped in the corner. What?
Ralph approached the sound cautiously. It was a Pre-Collapse clam-shelled 2D computing device. A... a Lap Top. Yeah, that's what they were called. Lap Tops. The damn thing looked... it looked brand new. Where had it come from? The thing was open, the screen, such as it was, suddenly lit up with a picture of the notebook, the very thing that Leo wanted. It had to be - the title on the overstuffed notebook was very clear in the image.
Project Bucephalus, Laboratory 012
Umbra-Cosmik-Magik Clearance ONLY
Ultimate Sanction For Loss Or Exposure
Below the image of the notebook, was text. Ralph stared at the text, his mind incredulous, reeling at the impossibility of it all. This could not be happening. It could not be happening, but it was. Another group, maybe? Something parallel to the HLF? Worldgovernment elite breaking ranks to support the HLF? Ralph stared, his eyes wide at the message below the picture of the notebook.
Attention Ralph Vitoni:
In three minutes Leonard Reich will call you and he will say
"Alright you oat-stuffed bag of sh*t, which is it? Can you do your f*cking job or not?"
When he says this, tell him you can.
The notebook is hidden in locker 222 on level two
of the Espacios NanoEngranaje fabrication center
just as you suspected. Hurry, there are others after it.
- Turner and Fogarty
"Turner and Fogarty? The hell?" Ralph goggled the message, unable to tear his eyes away. "I... don't know anyone with those names. What they fuck do they want from me in exchange for this? Goddammit, I can't even diddle with this damn thing because of these goddamned hooves!" Ralph shook his head, but the antique computer remained, sitting on a box, displaying the picture of the notebook, and the text message just below it.
"Alright, you oat-stuffed bag of shit, which is it? Can you do your fucking job, or not?" It was Leo, his voice angry over the headset. It had been the exact words. Ralph had read the words almost as Leo had said them. He felt a chill run down his pony spine, and his breath stopped for a bit, from the strange feeling of his entire mane standing up all along his withers.
"Well?" The voice in his headset was not at all pleasant.
"I can do the job, sir. I know exactly where the notebook is. Imma.... Imma gonna go get it right now. Shouldn't take me more than half an hour. Stand everyone down. No need to croak the city or nothin'." Ralph memorized the address for the third time. Locker 222 on level two of the very nanofabrication center he had suspected when the sheet ponies started heading that way.
"You OK, Ralph?" Leo sounded almost nice, almost concerned. That was usually a dangerous sign.
"Y-Yeah. Yeah, I'm great. For a FUCKING PONY! Goddamn you, by the way. I'll get your notebook, fucker. Vitoni out." Ralph twisted his head violently so that the custom headset flew off and hit the wall. His now superior hearing could still make out Leo asking if he was there, and demanding he respond.
The antique device went dark. Ralph had no way to manipulate it, the keyboard was made for human fingers, not clumsy earthpony hooves. That... was that. Ralph's hackles fell, the hairs relaxing along his neck. Locker 222, level two.
The decision had been made. The city would live. The notebook would belong to the HLF. Ralph Vitoni gave the Lap Top a nudge with his hoof, and it fell over, off the box, with an unpleasant crinkling thunk. "Fuck!"
Then Ralph headed out of the room, and down the dark hall, towards the stairs. It was a fairly long trot to the old nanofabrication plant.
Petrichor followed behind Paige and Inkwell. Inkwell led the group, she knew where they needed to go. Not once had they seen a single human, and certainly not a pony, since they had entered the warehouse district.
Inkwell came to a halt, which made Paige and Petrichor stumble slightly as they avoided crashing into her. The sheet and the two comforters had made travel difficult at times, and they couldn't run easily. Petrichor had grumbled several times during their trek about how much easier it would have been to have flown, and how she could have certainly carried both Paige and Inks on the pallet which still lay on the roof of their apartment building. But Inkwell had refused that entirely. The last thing they wanted to do, after all of that, was to be the one anomaly that stood out.
"That's it. That's the warehouse I used to work at." Inkwell saw that the lights were entirely out, and that the loading door was still wide open. It had been weeks. That was not good. She had been hoping that it would be staffed once more, perhaps with an even bigger group of Blackmesh security protecting it, making it a safe haven. At least safe enough for her to get to her goal.
Now she was uncertain that her goal would even still be there. The fear that she had made a terrible miscalculation began to creep into her feelings, and her stomach sank within her.
"Is it safe?" They were talking in whispers, Paige's question was quiet, almost inaudible to herself. She had learned that Equestrian ears were far more sensitive than human ears, and so knew how amazingly softly she could speak and still have the two ponies catch her words.
"I... I have doubts, Paige." Inkwell studied the area around the warehouse. The bodies were gone, all the bodies of the Blackmesh that had tried to protect the place. The warehouse looked abandoned. It looked like LAASTT had just pulled out after the incident entirely. This was not good. This was not good at all.
Inkwell turned to her mates. "Listen... I may have made a mistake. I honestly expected them to stay, to have more guards. There were tons of books in there. It's really expensive to move that, books weigh a lot. But... I think they just up and left. I think they're gone." Her face was worried, and so was her scent, which Petrichor picked up on instantly.
"So... what do you want to do?" Petrichor nodded at the empty, dark warehouse.
"We won't be left alone after this. I'm certain of that. We lucked out that we were given as many hours as we had, and that only because Cloudypuff thought we were agents of some group like the PER or a branch of the Worldgovernment." Inkwell's muzzle wrinkled in thought. "We can't go back, and they will be all over the Bureau. We escaped only because we were able to make use of the fact we're a herd species now. The oldest trick in Nature, at least on Earth - the anonymity of the group. But I'm out of tricks. I look at that warehouse, and I just think 'trap'."
"We can't stay here, Inks. Whatever we do, we can't stay here." Paige reached out from her sheet and patted Inkwell. "We have to do something, anything. Indecision is always fatal."
Inkwell looked lost. "I just don't know what to do!"
"There's only two choices, Inks." Petrichor leaned into Inkwell, pressing close. "We go in, or we go anywhere else. So, do you think it's still there? All we have to do, you said, was get to it. If it's there, we're saved. Is it worth the risk?"
The warehouse sat, dark and empty, the loading bay door open, doubtless the other doors as well. There was no sign of power in the area.
Inkwell began looking around at the various security towers and poles. "No power." The entire area was dark. Electricity was costly, and cities rationed it strictly. The majority of the population only enjoyed two hours of electricity a day, and only the Twopers, the two percent with jobs, enjoyed electricity through most or all of the day. If the government project here had entirely pulled out, there would be no power in this whole section of the city.
The HLF had a base somewhere near, but they would not likely be using city power, or, if they had control of the city ministry, their power would come through buried, private lines. It would not be wasted on the warehouse region in general, and that meant the surveillance system would be down. If the HLF was still watching the warehouse, they would have to be doing it with Frontsmen, stationed around or inside the building.
Inkwell turned to Petrichor. "Pet - we need to know if there are any humans anywhere nearby. Paige - sit down, and be as quiet as you can. Sit downwind, over there." Inkwell pointed with a hoof to a spot behind her. "Pet, we've got these amazing senses. Let's put them to use. Are there any humans, anywhere nearby?"
Petrichor and Inkwell stood still, legs locked and sniffed the air. They carefully listened, scanning with their tall ears. As she concentrated, as she focused on her senses, Inkwell began to hear first Pet's heartbeat, then Paige's behind her, under the sound of her own. She smelled the scents of the area - plascrete and old steel, the tang of ancient concrete dust that predated the Collapse, heat baked and chemically degenerated spills of oil and other chemicals from before her birth. The smell of gasoline-burning vehicles still staining broken sections of wall and road, the ghosts of a more prosperous age.
But nowhere in the complex symphony of scents was any fresh, current scent of Man. She smelled Milner, the owner of the warehouse, but he hadn't been there in well over two months. She could sense those that had come and moved the books and everything away. There was the scent of death and urine and feces from several spots on the plascrete, mixed with the bitter chemical sting of Blackmesh fibers. She could almost pinpoint where the guards had dropped. But despite all of this, every sense she possessed told her that there was not a single living human beyond Paige in the area.
Could it truly be that the HLF had no presence here now? Perhaps it made sense - they would use their limited manpower to block and search the most likely places to go, like the Bureau, uptown. They would be frantic now, dealing with a city of sheeted ponies and people. They would not know about the secrets of the Underground Bookmobile. They couldn't. And neither would the WorldGov team that had emptied the warehouse! It had to still be in there! It had to be!
"Paige! Pet! Follow me!" With that, Inkwell let her comforter slide entirely off her back, and strode forward confidently towards the warehouse.
Ralph Vitoni stared at the contents of Locker 222 on level two of the nanofabrication plant. He said nothing, but his entire body shook with rage. He wanted to smash the locker, he wanted to stomp the floor, but he was afraid he would shatter his own hoof doing such a thing. Besides, there were men watching.
He'd made the call, he'd made his decision, and he'd have to live with it. His three concerns, Paige, Petrichor and Inkwell, could be anywhere by now, and with them, no doubt, the notebook. It was lost forever. Leo would probably kill him. Even despite all the resources used in his transformation. It wouldn't be wise to return to base. There was only one place for him now, and he hated that fact. There was only one place he could be safe from Leonard Reich. Equestria.
The fact of that burned Ralph, it seared and cut and tore at his emotions. Ponies. Ponies had done this to him, ponies had ruined his life, ponies were stealing his world. And now his only refuge was among them. He could only go to Equestria. Only there could he be certain of his life, and Ralph Vitoni was very fond of staying alive. But most of all, he would never give that bastard Leonard Reich the satisfaction of taking out his own failure upon him. Reich was incompetent, he should never have been allowed to run the HLF. 'Gypsy Traveller'... a wagon and two bombs that could never pass through the Equestrian Barrier! The man was insane.
"We've been had, gentlemen." Ralph announced the fact quietly, evenly. "The operation is a bust. I need to contact Reich to confirm things, but my guess is a return to base."
Ralph made a show of putting a hoof up to his head. "Leo? Hey! Leo! What? I can't hear you! Yeah, listen... hang on. I'll try outside, I think it's the building. Yeah!" Ralph looked at the armed Frontsmen filling the lockerooms. "I'm gonna try outside, hey - just to be sure, do a level one search of the building, OK? I just want to be one-hundred percent about this, capiche?"
A Frontsman nodded. "Understood." He began giving orders to his men. Ralph took to the stairs and went down to the ground floor, then out the door. He walked around the building, then across the street, into an alley. Then he turned a corner and galloped rapidly into the night.
One of the Frontsmen, searching all the lockers one by one, stopped to check locker 222 out of curiosity. He pointed his hand-held torch into the locker. There, taped to the back of the compartment was a drawing. The drawing was in colored markers, and it showed a brown earthpony stallion with a wild brown mane and a blond-maned, gray coated pegasus mare with wildly divergent golden eyes. Both of the ponies had their tongues stuck out, and the gray mare was waving a hoof.
The crude lettering said "YoUr PriNceSs iS In AnoTher CasTle!!!"
The Frontsman shook his head, then moved on. The joke was lost on him. It had come from a Pre-Collapse video game, one that he had never seen, one that nobody of his generation had ever seen. It was the sort of thing really old people would have enjoyed, and such things held no interest to him.
Though they searched until morning, there was no notebook in the fabrication plant to be found.
As the sun rose, Leonard Reich called the commander of the Frontsmen to ask for the whereabouts of Ralph Vitoni. Unhappily, he had no answer to give.
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Mid-read reaction: Turner and Fogarty... DOCTOR! <3 Oh, that's BRILLIANT!
And then the magnificent fake-out with the note! BWAHA! Oh, I can't stop laughing... this is GREAT! The book is safe(ish), the Doctor's playing a few tricks, and Ralph? Ralph's running. He's doomed, and knows there's nowhere to really run... mwahahaha!
Oh, this was SO worth staying up for! I'm probably going to be smiling in my sleep!
No wonder Ralph got played. "Turner' has been doing that sort of thing for years now.
Also, his code name was WAY too obvious. So obvious that even a foal would ask himself "Who's this colt trying to fool?"
Oh, wait. That was the point.
Most foals get their artwork hung on the fridge or the placed on the mantle. Dinky gets hers placed at inflection points in the space-time continuum. Lucky filly.
Deus ex pegasus. If it takes two meta-creatures cheating through time and space to beat you, you shouldn't feel too ashamed. Ralph was kind of dumb to just trust text on a screen, though. Too convenient. If he had been going on spite alone, I'm sure he would have made the call to melt the population. Hell, he could have read the message, killed everyone, and then gone straight to the locker. In the end, though, the only thing which really kept him from doing it was his own scruples, such as they are. It's kind of a shame—it was a glimmer of hope for Ralph that makes me wonder if, had the circumstances been right, Equestria could have redeemed him, helped him turn over a new leaf.
Also, you don't seem to like the Oxford comma, Chat! Its usage is so common now that it really throws me when I'm expecting to see one and I don't. You also have an inconsistent habit of separating subjects from their verbs with a comma if the subject is sufficiently complex:
x "The man who had accompanied them on the train, waved goodbye."
√ "The man who had accompanied them on the train waved goodbye."
I feel bad, pity even for Ralph. Knowing that he is a soulless pony means that when he died in 800 year promise, it was permadeath. I did not expect them to get away like this, very cleaver on Inkwell's part. It's interesting to know that time turner and derpy can travel to earth before it disappears. I can only think that if they didn't it would have ended in the doomed timeline.
1985316
I don't have total recall* of all of her stories, but I'm pretty sure Ralph's decision in this chapter was the most significant one made in determining how the Chatoverse plays out. It certainly didn't seem like Ralph needed help in deciding to move his boss's finger away from the Big Red Button. We saw in him the spark of mercy, of remorse, of ethical restraint. It was a sign that, even with him, he wasn't completely gone. In fact, Time Turner and Lillian's little stunt possibly only served to needlessly humiliate him, getting his armor back on just when it may have been starting to slip off, embittering him further to ponies, and setting in motion the events of The 800 Year Promise. It's all pure speculation on my part, sure, but that's why people find it so interesting to think about the butterfly effect.
Even among the standards of professionals, Ralph was used, transformed against his will in unimaginable pain. He was a weapon of the HLF, but still effectively just one ordinary person, shaped by his experiences and his environment. When driven to the absolute moral event horizon, he backed away from the edge all on his own, and, in doing so, saved more present and future lives than he himself could have imagined. I'm sure that, under the right conditions, being immersed in Equestria could have redeemed him further, before his fellow HLF moles got to him and they fed off each others' resentment anew.
* as I typed that, I suddenly pictured a glitchy video of Arnold Schwarzenegger repeating "get your ass to Equestria"
Sometimes, as events fall down the Trousers of Time, someone gives them a nudge in the best direction. Sorry,
MarioRalph.Also, the bedsheet flash mob was fantastic. An entire race driven by cooperation and fun. The horror! The horror!
1985219
Alternately:
√ "The man, who had accompanied them on the train, waved goodbye."
1985379
Well, that's just it. The Doctor plays the long game. He knew what would happen if he didn't stall Ralph. He bought enough time for Inks and the Daring Duo to do what they needed to do, and lock in the 'correct' timeline.
1985582
That's correction through a different means. You turned the complex subject into a simple one.
1985598
Nope, sorry. Still giving Ralph the credit for this. We were not led to believe he was about to tell his boss to push the button, so we cannot know for sure that Time Turner and Lillian prevented it from happening.
For the sake of argument, let's say that you are right. Let's say that Ralph, left to his own devices, would have gone down as the worst party-crasher in history if not for the intervention. What does that say about the Chatoverse? There is a force bending time and space itself capable of engineering certain events, seeding outcomes as they would have it. Why intervene here, after so many humans of every stripe have suffered and died? Why not intervene earlier, correcting the very early flaws in human-pony relations, or fix Celestia's neuroses regarding order, or make sure the HLF leadership got hugged more as children, or prevented the formation of the method used to ponify Ralph, or any number of the literally infinite options available to a god of space and time? Are there, like, rules about this that everyone is assumed to know because obviously everyone reading this will be intimately familiar with Doctor Who?
I am not, so educate me. What am I missing here? Why has anything bad happened at all, ever, in this setting?
well wasn't expecting the doctor to get in on this... then again I usually expect him to save London, not... where are we again?
Also, guess even evil has standards
1985691
Actually... yes, there, in fact, ARE 'rules' about how the TARDIS works for the Doctor. He's always taken 'where he needs to go', not where HE wants to be. There are fixed points in history wherever he ends up, for example, World War II. He cannot affect that particular thing in history because it's a fixed point. The Daleks invading half the time in the series? Fixed points. The Master showing up to cause shit? Fixed points. The Doctor, in this case, was able to buy time for history as he sees it to work out. it doesn't always work out PERFECTLY, but it tends to always work out for the better good.
1985748
Ah. Supplemental reading required. All there in the manual. Gotcha.
Even so, he was "needed" at many, many, many points before this one, especially if the greater good is a driving criterion. Maybe the TARDIS is broken now, and only sends the Doctor to points where he "needs" to fruitlessly annoy villains with whom we have just been made to sympathize somewhat and who are already effectively beaten.
I'm sorry, but deus ex machina drives me up the wall. This victory was not earned. Team Time had to overcome no hardship or test themselves in no way to deliver that laptop or note, and if they did, it would all be a footnote at this point, which would be worse than a shrug.
1985796
Except the Doctor would be the last person/pony to tell you he's a hero. There's a line he says in one of the later seasons that sums it up: "I'm just a mad man in a box."
It's my speculation that he did what he did to ensure that the city lived, at the cost of the HLF's victory. Ralph's gotta run to Equestria, Leo Reich is going to get his comeuppance... and the innocent ponies and humans who have done no harm to anyone, by virtue of their very existence, continue to live relatively peaceful and happy lives.
Strife and terror still exist. Will always exist, even without the Doctor. He just works for the survival of the human race, as he's grown rather attached to them over the course of 700 years or so. He will protect them, cherish them, and keep them safe, even at great cost to himself on occassion. If that means he ensures Equestria comes to pass as it should within Chat's work, and humanity survives in the form of Newfoals and Newfledges and all the rest of the variants of Potion, then that's for the best. He still protects and cares for them, no matter what form they take. Two legs or four, hands or hooves.
1985796
I should note the reason I played with the Doctor and Derpy here.
Because it didn't matter. It isn't a true Deus Ex Machina because it was a cameo. As you yourself pointed out - Ralph clearly did not want to kill the city. His decision was a coin flip between the redeemable part of himself and his fear of his masters.
It would have been trivial for me to write that Ralph deliberately chose to save the city, knowing that he would be in trouble. That would have even redeemed the character and made people who hated him see good in him. I kept a bit of that, by showing that he wanted to save the city. It is very likely he would have. Ralph is a bastard, but he is not without honor or concern for consequences and lives.
The last story I wrote, the tenth chapter of Los Pegasus, featured Turner and Fogarty - the Doctor and Derpy - and I just felt happy giving them a nod, since in that story they didn't actually accomplish anything world-saving. So, I thought it would be fun to show what the ordinary person sees of the Doctor's meddling.
Since I could have left the whole Doctor and Derpy thing entirely out of this chapter and it would not have changed a thing - other than highlighted how a single moral choice can save the world sometimes - I don't believe it counts as a Deus Ex. The Doctor And Derpy were entirely self-indulgent whimsy, and had no purpose at all - except that perhaps they may have made Ralph even more bitter, which works well for his appearance in the 800 Year Promise.
Should I have left them out and simply focused on Ralph's world-changing moral choice? Oh, absolutely! That would have been the proper, literary thing to do. That would have been professional writing, right there.
Instead, I pandered to my fans and my own delight.
Ain't fanfiction freeing?
1985836
I'm sure he's a swell guy who has only good intentions and smells nice and is on time with the bills, but my arguments here are about the technical aspects of how this conflict was resolved—how it was actually put together.
I had some more here, but I was notified of a new comment directed to me, so I'll fold what I had to say into that.
1985889
In light of this, I more or less called it in an earlier comment, then. The only thing left to do is register my opinion that the story suffered for your indulgence. You are the author, though, and it's of course your prerogative. In being able to see ends to actions, however, I can't help but feel that Team Time would see how their little jab may have prevented redeeming one more life. I've read Los Pegasus in its entirety, and it doesn't seem like Team Time would kick someone while they're down—especially given Noble Cause's reassurances as to the Doctor's character. Ralph could perhaps have been delivered from his bitterness, at least, and gone on to live out the rest of his life as happily as he might. Again, just perhaps. Ponies seem like they would be big on forgiveness, but if your last memory of Earth is seeing a marker drawing from two of them assuring you that not only did you not win, you could never have won, and nobody cares or will ever care about you, you wouldn't feel very motivated to seek forgiveness from them yourself.
1985972
It's easy to misread, but it is correct. "in" here is a noun, not a preposition. The sentence is asking whether a medical unicorn might have an in.
1986025
Oh, I see! You are correct! (Sorry about the deletion.)
It could perhaps have been phrased differently to make more clear its semantics.
(And I definitely appreciate the Paranoia Agent reference. Lil' Slugger!)
1985889
would the "shout out" happen to be about another fanfiction that is nearing the end?
or was it just a regular shout out?
But, but, but I thought they couldn't go back to the earth? Let's see. Where is that quote...
Didn't the Doctor meet Derpy only once she was in Equestria? Free to romp around the Equestrian continuity (ooh, how about 1000 years before? That would be a trip.), but utterly incapable of breaching back into Mundus? I smell something wibbly wobbly, and I'm not sure what to make of it.
1985972
FIXED!
1986342
Both. I honor the St. George Conversion Bureau.
1986641
This is still true, it just hasn't happened yet. The Zero Point closure is four years away at the time of this story. Until Zero Point, Turner and Derpalina can much about. After, the Pony Box is bound by the closure of the portal between universes, and can no longer pass that point.
1986718
We must think about time in different ways, you and I. And I'm going to have an interesting time explaining my thoughts on this.
So, at one point the Doctor (current in this story) was able to muck about on Earth (all time up to the zero point closure). And one thousand years later (in the closer of Tales of Los Pegasus), he may have liked to go back to see first hand what happened to Miss Fogarty, but couldn't, due to the boundary condition of the Zero Point. This would mean that these events in Recombinant 63 had to have happened between when he met Derpy (presumably shortly after she first came to Equestria) and when the universes separated. Let's see, Code Majeste seems to have taken place within two years of Equestria's emergence, which would place it at a couple years before this escapade (HLF-scapade!), then. That makes sense, but only if time is viewed as having a distinct progression, in which the 'now' is somehow more relevant than what has come to pass what has yet to come -- it would imply that there is some central and singular 'true point-flow of time' that the Doctor can only but move around as he moves through time, but which continues to march on.
Before the 'now' has reached Zero Point, he can romp about on Earth, but once that has passed, the Pony Box is confined within Equestria? Assuming a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, though, what is to define such a boundary condition? What is to define the current point in time (if thought of simply as a function mapping from one-space (time) into three-space), as opposed to having the entire image of the graph taken as a whole, fixed points aside? Or does this have something to do with such fixed points? (Of course I cannot but think of such time nexus from Dune, which I just read a few weeks ago.)
Otherwise, what would prevent him from traveling to a time in Equestria during those seven years (it is seven, correct?) of contact, and then to just go to Earth? It was confirmed in Code Majeste that Derpy (and thus the Doctor) had traveled all throughout Equestrian history (past, before the bureaus, included).
Haha, that's one way to start a flash mob. Kinda reminds me of Halloween or Santacon, but with maybe a bit less binge drinking.
1986718
well. not nessisarraly. i mean if they went back in time in Equuis (what i call the universe of equestria) during the 7 years where the two were interconnected, then they could then pilot manually into Sol3 space and then go back in time even before the emergence of equuis. but that would be wierd due to them being multicolored sentient talking ponies.
1986862
well going canonically the homeplanet of the Doctor is destroyed and he cannot travel there anymore... same with the "time" that holds the ponds.
maybe it is due to the TARDIS more saying "no. you will only hurt yourself if you go there, it will hurt too much" so it wont travel there.
1986862
I take the position that the focus of all time travel discussions must consider the time traveler themselves to be the focus of all consideration. They stand outside of time, and whatever happens, from their perspective, happens relative to them alone in all the cosmos. The time they take with them, the time that they experience, is the only valid or 'real' time as far as their perception is concerned. To them, everything is measured relative to their state, and the state of the time machine itself.
Thus the Zero Point limitation is a boundary that happens only from the perspective of the Doctor and his Pony Box, his living time machine, and the connection occurs the moment he is ponified and the TARDIS transforms into the Pony Box to match him. From that point they both have whatever relative time left from that moment until the projected moment that is Zero Point in which they can travel into the past of Earth and Mundis. If the doctor is ontologically split into a pony version and his original version in the second year of the seven, then there would be five years (as experienced by the Doctor and his machine) in which to still have access to our universe, before that avenue is shut off. The countdown begins relative to the transformation, the splitting, that creates Time Turner. That happens when the Doctor tries to enter Equestria untransformed and is duplicated by the metachaosis field. One version of the Doctor bounces off, the other crashes in Equestria and is forced to use an emergency ponification kit (provided by the St. George Conversion Bureau) to survive - apparently Time Lords are not as strong against thaumatic radiation, as they are against normal forms. Oops.
From that moment on, the pony Doctor, Time Turner, is bound to the temporal flow and ontology of Equestria, and when it closes off any contact with our universe, he no longer has access to our cosmos. The clock starts for him at that moment, in time relative to him and the Pony Box alone, and when he has lived through his own period of 'fixed time', the other universe is denied him.
At least that is my explanation, and I am sticking to it until someone blows it all to hell, in which case I will be forced to throw up my hooves and say 'it's magic, I don't have to explain swirl'. Then I will go eat pies and sulk.
1985582
Actually, that sentence has a different meaning. The original sentence said "the man who waved goodbye was the one who was on the train." Your sentence says "the man waved goodbye" while adding in the additional background information "by the way, he had also been on the train with them". The original sentence singles out a specific person out of a group as being the subject. Your sentence uses an existing subject ("the" calling out to a specific referent) and then adds parenthetical information.
So the HLF was looking for the map of the palace and the source for "substance D" after all. It's always nice to see one's suspicions confirmed.
And that only leaves the secret behind the "I'm sorry." from chapter two. As Inkwell has been a pony for some weeks now and it was said "There was nothing in that notebook[...]" I'll assume that all relevant passages from the diary have been presented? Unless there are hidden pages in the binding or something.
Is Me feeling guilty about the ponies they created and used like guinea pigs? Or the realization that even those ponies had a soul and therefor a conversion dream? Oh boy, that must have been awkward for the princesses...
1987401
To be honest, I haven't seen that much Doctor Who. Some Tennant, some Matt Smith, a little bit of Eccleston. I've been meaning to start with Season 7 (since it was first starting), and look how far I've got (haven't seen a single episode of it). Huh.
1987462
All right. That makes sense enough for me. I just didn't want to see any glaring logic flaws. Everything gets a bit hand-wavy with time travel and universal collisions anyway.
1987800
I think the relevant information for the "I'm sorry" can be found in 7 Ounces. Inkwell's saying there was nothing in the notebook was targeted specifically toward content the HLF could find useful.
1987800
1988065
Sotha is right. The story isn't over yet, and there is still more notebook to go. It is merely that nothing else in the notebook is important to the HLF than the map that shows the exact location of Discord's statue. 'Substance D', the crushed remains of Discord, is the secret to defeating the Barrier, and obliterating all of Equestria by converting it into dead strangelets in a fiery, nova-hot Quantum Chromodynamic Event. This chapter was the fork in the road between my regular universe and the universe of Mankind Triumphant.
We shall see the rest of the story of our mysterious (shyeah!) notebook author, and what becomes of Inkwell, Paige and Petrichor. There's more fun yet to come.
1988167
Yay! More ponies! More notebooks about ponies!
1988065
it is okay.
but basically when dealing with the Doctor.. best not apply any logic or "canon" to it...
expecially when moffat is the writer or involved.
1988280
I'm reading a story about ponies who are reading a story about ponies.
All is right in the world.
1988065
I think Dr. Pastern's memories of that test in "27 ounces" might be part of the "I'm sorry" secret. But knowing our dear author, she wouldn't have brought it up if it wasn't relevant to this story. Exactly the same as the suspiciously detailed mention of the map of Canterlot palace and a certain statue of a chimeric beast.
1990040
I try very hard not to put in any red herrings or to leave any unfinished business. Rarely, I will leave something that glares out as a hook for another story to tie in with - in Letters From Home I made a point of noting a curious book that was never dealt with, that book was the hook for The 800 Year Promise many stories later, but this is rare.
1991047
And I thank you for that. There are very few things I hate more than red herrings in my fiction.
Actually that's not true. I hate quite a lot things more than unresolved plot elements, but that's hardly a statement.
Chat, is the title, "A Divergence of Splays," a hint that this story breaks off to a timeline that is not consistent with The 800 Year Promise?
1996902
I think it just means that the chapter contains the point where the timeline breaks off, that point being whether Ralph decided to tell the HLF to melt the city's population or not.
Here's a quick breakdown of the two timelines in question:
A. Ralph says he can do the job. The HLF fails to recover the notebook, Ralph escapes into Equestria, and the events of 800-Year Promise occur.
B. Ralph says he cannot do the job. The HLF erases all life in the city and sifts through the effects, eventually recovering the notebook. Armed with the information contained therein, they successfully get their bombs into Equestria. The events of Mankind Triumphant occur.
As of the end of chapter 15, timeline A is the one this story is on, and it is the "main" timeline for the Chatoverse besides.
So Ralph comes the closest he's ever been to displaying an actual conscience, and decides to take a risk on the option that doesn't involve butchering an entire city. In return, he's lied to, marked for death, and glibly insulted. That'll teach him to do the right thing! Stay classy, Doctor.
1985958
Agreed. The little glib insult at the end was just incredibly petty of Team Time. From what little I've seen of Doctor Who, that's fairly in character for him - but it's also why I've never enjoyed the show.
1998398
In some ways, the Doctor is a bit of an ass. He couldn't fit in on his own world, nearly flunked out of Time Lord College twice at least, caused endless trouble there, and finally up and hot-wired a time machine he just barely understands, and ran away with it.
He doesn't follow the rules, mostly, and interferes and diddles with time however he pleases. Ostensibly the Doctor does what he does for reasons of compassion - Time Lords are supposed to observe, but never get involved or to intervene. The Time Lords themselves used to be cosmic terrors once, but they got ashamed of their own evil and cleaned up their act. The Doctor doesn't agree with non-intervention.
So, in a way, the Doctor is a kind of cosmic troll. He trolls bullies and tyrants, but he's still a troll. And he enjoys it all way too much to be a proper hero. At times, he is almost an anti-hero. The only things that really redeem him are that he always helps the weak, he prefers earthlings for pets, and if he absolutely has to, he will, grudgingly, follow Time Lord Law. But only if there is no other choice.
The Doctor is 'Fonzie' Fonzarelli in a TARDIS instead of a motorcycle, and while he does not wear black leather jackets, he does jump cosmic sharks just to show off.
And I absolutely love the whole damn thing. Carnally.
1998767
to be fair
Idris stole him
he did wear a leather jacket (ninth regeneration)
and even though he is the worst timelord ever... he is also the one they call on when they have a problem.
1985748 1985796
One of the things a lot of people who don't watch Doctor Who don't realize is that the show isn't about time travel or even space travel, it just uses them as devices to open up a universe's worth of possible settings for each story. The writers generally understand that unrestricted time travel as problem-solving would either result in a cosmos where bad things just don't happen or establish that the ones in charge of the time machines are responsible for every bad thing they don't prevent. Thus, one of the rules of time travel, even simpler than the existence of fixed points in time, is that interfering with events whose outcomes are already known to you is a Bad Idea (because once you alter history, the new history provides no reason to need altering, so you don't alter history, so things turn out the way they originally turned out, so history needs altering, so you alter history, but then...
). This applies to every journey the Doctor makes- he can't discover a problem and then decide to fix it by altering the past events that created it; that's a paradox and it not only won't work but might hurt the universe. (The fixed point issue, on the other hand, is generally applied when he visits places where he already knows something is going to happen- Pompeii on volcano day, for instance.)
So it's not so much that "every bad thing the Doctor encounters is a fixed point in time and can't be meddled with" as it is "everything the Doctor sees happen is something he cannot subsequently prevent from having happened, because you only get to learn history once". Which I think is more reasonable and less arbitrary a property of the universe than the Doctor just happening to run into fixed points wherever he goes.
That said, that rule doesn't prevent the Doctor from going back in time and ensuring that things happen the way he knows they happened, which means that's probably what this bit is- somehow Time Turner found out Ralph got tricked into telling Leo he could find the case, somehow he found out the wording of Leo's second call (presumably either Ralph talked to someone about the mechanics of the trick or someone was listening in on the radio or got a recording of it), and then he went to see how it happened and ended up delivering the message himself once it seemed clear that no one else was going to.
…Interesting title. Will we be getting some glimpses of the the other leg of the Trousers of Time, I wonder?
"not even the humans, touched as they were by the constant social camaraderie the ponies had created within the complex"
Well, there's also some selection bias; humans who'd be really reluctant to help would be much less likely to be living here in the first place.
Pretty clever. Let's hope it works.
…You know, if a lot of these ponies, after the trip to Equestria, end up going to the same place (And why separate friends by sending them all over the world?), I'd not be too surprised if Sheet Day ends up being an annual thing there. :D
A map? That's all? Interesting.
…Eh? What?
…Well, I'm sure that that will be explained eventually, in another story if not in this one. Meanwhile, Back to Petrichor, Paige, and… Pot-of-ink,-A-Synonym-for. Yeah, okay, that was reaching. Anyway. Back to them, where they seem to be betting (correctly, not that they know that) that the HLF wouldn't think that they'd think that the HLF would think the warehouses weren't worth bothering with.
…Ah. Ah. Did they… did the HLF, in their search, happen to remove Inkwell's belongings?
Nice use of their enhanced senses; I'd not thought of that.
And the book wasn't in the locker. I'm not sure if that makes it more or less mysterious.
Ralph Vitoni proved… untrustworthy to the HLF? No one could have seen this coming.
…What. Was that… [blinks] Eh? Well, that's… Interesting! Certainly. My curiosity is quite aroused. :)
Oh that was brilliant, Doctor Whooves and Ditzy Derpy Whooves strikes a big one to the bad guys and with some retro frustrations to boot.
Great, Blueblood saves humanity, and Ralph Vitoni saves an entire city from being gassed. WHAT IS MORALITY
Evil is almost always born out of fear. Resentment, hatred, bigotry...these are all products of fear.
I am laughing so hard right now I can barely type. Of course! Why else would Derpy show up at this particular time? Who else would know exactly what that pudding head Reich would say?
Well played, sweetie. Well played
Gosh, I sure hope that if it were ever really important for us humans to all wear a piece of cloth on our faces for a few months, that we'd all just do that for the sake of helping out and not throw a gigantic tantrum about the whole thing.