17. A Gift From Within
I.D. INJECTOR DOE
That Indestructible Something
By Chatoyance
═════════════════════
17. A Gift From Within
"Anything that has real and lasting value is always a gift from within."
- Franz Kafka
Michel cautiously scraped the sandstone away until Gregoria assured him that the distance was three inches. The diamond dog crouched in the tunnel, his right forepaw raised over his head, deep in the rock above. Using only one sharp claw, Michel cut through the last of the stone to the air above. The perforation to the external world was only two inches wide.
It had been too long since the last patch of stone, so the three decided to sit for awhile, and allow Damon to become a living air pump. Damon's horn grew slightly brighter as he focused on driving air through the hole in the sandstone down to them. Gregoria felt the hot breeze blast from above, warming the cool underground space. The air felt good, but more importantly, it smelled and tasted fresh.
Michel lay flat, rubbing the muscles of his forelimbs with his massive, dextrous paws.
"How you holding up?" Gregoria studied the dust drifting through the tiny shaft of sunlight from the hole above. Considering how small the carefully dug, narrow shaft was, the sun must be at its zenith in the sky. A tiny spot of day glowed on the stone floor she lay on.
"I'm sore. Tired. Not too thirsty. Yet." Michel began rubbing the upper muscles of his powerful limbs. "How long you think it's been?"
"I can tell you exactly." Gregoria squeezed carefully past Damon, who was in his usual 'circulation trance'. Pumping air around was somehow difficult to do. He'd tried to explain it - it was easy to lift an object within his silver glow, but air had nothing to 'grab' on to. So, instead, he had to constantly imagine some construction of telekinetic force and make it work. He had started with making fan-like blades, but now preferred a sort of peristaltic effect - disks of force rippling down, pushing air along between them. It took deep concentration on the unicorn's part, because he had no idea how to make it into an actual, automated, 'spell'.
Gregoria tried to stretch her legs as best as she could while she walked back to the supply sled. The 'sled' was an eight-foot long strip of material coated on one side with a slippery but durable, teflon-like coating. Piled and tied to this carpet was what had been a huge collection of sacks and canteens and packs. The massive pile was significantly less impressive than it had been when they had started their long, difficult dig, the missing contents having passed through their bodies over time.
She gripped the harness in her teeth and tossed her head to flip it over her neck. Turning, she shook the harness until it settled properly, and began to pull. Gregoria hauled the sliding, scraping mass forward for a bit, stopped, counted to three, and pulled again. She counted to five, then pulled for a shorter time. Then two, and a longer time, mixing up pulling with waiting as randomly as she could. Shortly she had returned to her teammates.
"Hmph." Michel was rubbing his claws now, and picking out stone and dirt from the impossibly sharp nails. "Gimme a mint. My breath smells like shit."
"Mints don't help, but sure." Gregoria unbridled herself, and followed the scent of peppermint to the zipped pack that contained the Altoids. She nibbled at the zipper, caught it and pulled. Digging around with her muzzle, she found the tin and pulled it out. A flip of her head tossed the container to Michel, who caught it expertly with one paw in the dim light.
"Nmm. Not many left." Delicately pinching a candy between two nails, the diamond dog slid it into his muzzle, and began sucking on it. "Whoo. Stings."
Gregoria turned her attention to the largest pack which contained their special iPad. Crown had some fancy toys in his collection, and the special iPad was a donation to the cause. The device could not be tracked, was shielded against passive and active detection, and it had a special interface with extra-large icons and buttons. Normally, it never contacted the outside world. The large buttons made it possible to be easily used with pony lips. Gregoria stared down her yellow muzzle and lipped her way to the page with their mapping app. She noted the time and date.
"This is day eleven. I thought it was twelve. It's eleven." Gregoria studied the special map and used her lip to continue the line that approximated their overall progress.
"Shit." Michel sucked on his candy for a while. "How much further?"
They had been making reasonable progress, but not as much as Gregoria had hoped. It hadn't helped that the push on day eight - or was it six? - had forced them to lay low for a day and a half doing nothing. The sand had been loose, and Michel's special powers were not enough. The tunnel began collapsing behind them, despite Damon's brave efforts to support it through sheer telekinetic power. Michel had been forced to dig quickly, and if they hadn't found a large zone of sandstone, they may have been forced to the surface to avoid being buried alive.
The surface would have offered no salvation - while they hid within the edge of the sandstone region, no less than three, and possibly four (Gregoria wasn't sure about whether one group was actually two groups or not) squads of men swept the area immediately after their perilous dash. This had proven beyond all doubt that even the very earth was being constantly monitored for unusual vibrations or movements. The level of security being applied was nothing short of incredible.
Then again, what such an effort was working to hide was itself even more incredible by far. If only what was hidden away within the Majic facility was merely flying saucers and little Gray men. No wonder, Gregoria had mused, the government didn't just open up about extraterrestrials - they couldn't, because there weren't any. There never had been. The real truth, which was indeed 'out there', just a little bit farther in fact, was very possibly beyond the ability of most humans to even comprehend.
Compared to trying to wrap the mind around living inside a tiny, mutable simulation of reality run for some unknown purpose, the notion of space aliens was positively mundane. Crown had said the secret somehow kept itself. It might simply be that it was too mind-mangling to cope with for most humans, Gregoria often wondered. It was hard enough for her, and she had been changed by errant cosmic source code into a real-world representation of a cartoon pony.
Gregoria studied the line she had just drawn, then used both lips to move the map on the iPad screen slightly. "Two more days and we have a decision to make. Highway or defense wall."
Damon opened his eyes and sagged. His horn ceased its labors entirely, leaving them all in darkness save for the tiny shaft of dusty light from the surface above. "The underground highway. We have to cut through there. It's got to be the weakest point, they're going to have the actual walls of the facility seriously hardened!"
"Michel can cut through solid rock with a finger, Damon." Gregoria, after replacing the special iPad, decided to have a candy herself.
"No... not hard, hardened." Damon lay down, exhausted from his telekinetic efforts. "It's a... military styled term. I mean that there is probably going to be traps, sensors, and yeah, super-hard alloys and stuff too. They're not going to do that for thirty miles of underground highway tunnel."
"Howdya know that?" Michel scraped some dirt out of his left ear in the dark. "For all you know, they did the highway tunnel too."
Damon sighed. "Yeah, okay, I don't know. For sure anyway. But come on - doing sensors and traps and stuff is expensive, and trying to cover a thirty mile long tunnel just seems ridiculous."
"You're forgetting the big problem, pony." Michel sat up, because his back was getting a cramp. "We pop out in the tunnel, we still have to get past whatever big door and defenses they have. We come in through the wall, and we're in. No checkpoints, no big doors. I say breach the fuckin' wall."
Gregoria thought for a moment. "Hey, what if we dug down. Way down. Say... four stories down. Go under the wall, defenses, sensors, traps and whatever. Come up from below. They can't be expecting that! We come up through the floor of their basement. I bet they wouldn't even consider that."
"Unless they read old superhero comics." Michel chuckled.
"Huh?" Gregoria was baffled.
"Mole men from inside the Earth's core?" Michel didn't need to see the shrugs to know they happened. "Kids. Never appreciate the classics."
──── ∆ ────
In the dark sea of the lithic world, the buried nets of metal burned like incandescent bulb filaments. The Majic complex stood out like a beacon because of the protection it used, and Gregoria was able to guide Michel with ease. The steel nets were electrified, and doubtless were intended to block the efforts of any who would dare to tunnel their way in from the side. There was no doubt in the minds of any of the three Equestrians that beyond those grids were even more perils.
As Michel dug them down, farther and farther into the ground, his guess about the base construction was shown to be true. The bottom-most layer of the installation was protected only by solid, nearly impenetrable rock. The engineers who had designed S-4 in the fifties could not have imagined the capabilities of an Equestrian diamond dog.
It was slow going, with Michel digging in erratic bursts. There was no doubt that the bedrock was being monitored for vibrations, and all were sure their approach had been noticed and was likely being studied. By keeping their efforts as random as possible, the hope was that the humans would be unable to define whatever their instruments were perceiving as a deliberate action against them. With luck, they might consider Michel's erratic scrabblings as a natural phenomena of some kind.
Michel had carefully widened the chamber he had made below the ceiling of concrete and rebar. Their ceiling was the lowest floor of the secret desert base. Gregoria pressed her hooves against the stone walls of Michel's chamber, and the concrete above, trying to sense anything that might help them.
"I... there is thrumming. You know, like wum-wum-wum-wum... like that. And some kind of really faint grindey thing. It feels like machine stuff. I wish I could hear it, but... I have to interpret what my hooves are telling me." Gregoria was struggling to remain upright on only her back legs, as she raised her forelegs against the ceiling. She staggered to the left a few feet. "I think... augh... my flanks... I think this is an open space. I think." With a groan, Gregoria dropped to all fours and bent her long neck back and to the side, so she could nibble at her own flank. The muscles quivered from the strain of standing on two legs for so long. They almost itched from the painful effort.
"So... right here, I should dig here?" Michel tapped a claw to a portion of the gray surface above them.
"Yeah. As best as I can tell. I don't do so well on concrete and stuff." Gregoria stretched her hind legs, grimacing at the soreness. "I think pony powers prefer organic stuff. Pony powers are 'Green' powers I guess."
Damon brought his glowing horn closer at a wave of Michel's massive paw. Michel began scraping with a single nail, in seconds he had dug out a hollow, which he proceeded to slowly and carefully widen. Occasionally he had Gregoria try to estimate the distance left before he breached the upper surface of the concrete foundation. Each time, Gregoria had to stretch herself up on her hind legs farther and farther.
"Hey, how are we going to climb up there, once you break through?" Damon could easily picture the diamond dog pulling himself up with his finger-like claws, but it didn't seem very easy for a pony.
"Watch." Michel went to the stone wall and began carving out a zig-zag shape. He was very quick, to him the hard stone was soft as peanut butter. When he had finished, it required all three of them to push his impromptu stairs into position. "Should... have cut... bricks... and piled them... instead." Michel panted, sitting for a rest.
"Pretty impressive though. You can build my summer castle when Rachel makes Equestria." Gregoria grinned in the silver light.
"...and the... you... you rode in on." Michel grinned back.
"Do you really think she's going to rewrite the world?" Damon ended his magical light, since nopony was using it. All had gotten used to sitting in utter darkness when resting, to allow the unicorn to regain his energy.
"It's... a possibility, I suppose. Frankly, it scares me." Gregoria spit a bit of gravel out of her mouth. That too was something they had all gotten used to - sand in everything, everywhere. "I'm worried that if she tries something like that, and they find her before she can do the job, they won't just try to capture her. I'm also afraid that she might lose herself and not be Rachel anymore."
Damon rested his head on his forelegs. "Like Sunny, like how he turned into Winona - you're worried she'll go full Celestia? Lose herself in the role?"
"Yeah." Gregoria lay on her side in the dark and focused on relaxing her overworked hind legs as best she could. "Crown said the world has changed several times, right? Complete rewrites, only all we know about it are myths and stories. What if reskinning reality also changes all the data, right down to everypony's minds? Maybe none of us would remember the world or our lives anymore."
Damon blew out air in something that was less a whistle than a sigh. "I hadn't considered that. Maybe we would end up thinking the world had always been Equestria, and all we would ever know about the human world would be half-remembered fantasies and stuff. Whoa. That would be a nightmare, wouldn't it?"
"Fuck... you ponies, Jesus." Michel laughed, a curious, bitter laugh. "What about the poor anthropomorphs that lived before the last change? A whole world of magic and animal people, probably had amazing powers. Pixies and elves and shit. Whole fucking 'Lord Of The Rings', 'Dungeons and Dragons' world, and some capitalist, greedy, dope-pushing bastard erased it so we could have A-10 Warthogs and third-world poverty." Michel snarled. "You pansy-ass rich-bitches think everything is just peachy, don't you? All iPads and big screens for everybody, huh? Fuck you. I've seen the world, the real world, and most people - real people - live in shit and die hungry. That's the human world, that is real. That is a fact. So, you going all liberal guilt about the plight of robber-baron humans and permanent death - you remember that part? Clockwork Victorian universe, you die and you don't come back? - Fuck you whining about 'the poor humans'. Tell it to the animal people before them!"
Both ponies were speechless for some time. Finally Gregoria dared to break the silence. "I... I didn't know you felt that way."
The diamond dog growled softly. "You ever seen the world, the real world? You ever leave your little suburban neighborhood?"
Gregoria shook her head in the blackness. "No. I... I haven't. I didn't have the money to..."
"Didn't have the money... you know what most humans live on? A dollar a day. Or less. That's most humans, the majority of humans. The money you spend going to fucking Mickey Dee would feed the most common human family for a week, maybe a month. That is human life, right there, taken on average. You think you are poor, 'oh, I can't get a job' - bullshit! You are part of the elite, privileged pony. Like all of us." Michel grumbled to himself. They could hear his claws scraping the rock. "Humans killed the fairy tale world. I don't have any pity about the loss of their take on things, because their version of life sucks."
Neither Damon nor Gregoria knew what to say to that, so they just sat in the dark, waiting for the next shoe to drop. It did occur to Gregoria, though, that they didn't know anything about Michel's human life, only that he had worked at Apple once. Gregoria had just assumed that Michel had been an upper-class, white, American computer geek. Maybe... maybe that wasn't his background at all.
"Damon. Party's over. Let's rescue us a pony princess." Michel growled the words, still upset.
Damon's silver light revealed the diamond dog already at work, standing on his stone steps, digging cautiously in the hole above him. Chunks of concrete fell to the stone floor of the chamber as he worked. "Okay, this is it. Any idea what to do if alarms sound?"
Gregoria looked around at the chamber, the pile of supplies, the tunnel that led away and eventually up... to a wall of collapsed earth. "We make it to Rachel somehow, no matter what. We free her - they must have her bound somehow, or she would have gone Celestia on them already. And then we let her take it from there."
"Your plan sucks ass. But I was dumb enough to follow you, so fuck me. Let's do this." Michel stuck a claw through the concrete and revealed darkness above. They waited, breathing quietly. No alarms - that they could hear. Michel widened the hole.
They had come up between two very large, metal, boxy chambers, from which led thick conduits. Whether it was plumbing or wiring, none of them could say. Everything was painted battleship gray - the concrete floor, the conduits, the metal structures, everything. Around them, the sound of machinery pulsed and thrummed and ratcheted. "It's like a cargo ship in here." Michel was whispering. They were all whispering.
"Where do we go now?" Damon kept his silver glow very low, very dim.
"We find Rachel. You try to scan for magic, I guess, and I'll do what I can with my hooves. Stay together, and search." Gregoria sniffed the air, hoping for a guiding scent. Only old dust, lead paint, metal and concrete presented themselves to her.
The entire room was bank after bank of blocky metal cases with conduits leading up and across the ceiling. Occasionally the monotony was broken up by a panel of controls that looked like something from World War Two. The basement was old-tech, and it felt like a museum, but apparently everything was doing the job, whatever it was. As they crept along, constantly on the alert for anything that might set off an alarm, they finally came to a large, half-open vault door.
"This place looks like the Fallout games, you know?" Damon studied the doorway. No sound or light came from beyond it.
"It was probably built during that time." Gregoria peeked around the corner of the door and into a room filled with pipes and handles and pressure wheels. Another, smaller door was visible on the far side. It was closed.
After they entered the next room, Gregoria put her hooves against the far wall and floor and door, alternately, trying to use her earthpony senses to tell anything about what was on the other side. Damon and Michel were busy reading the signs they discovered on the walls - apparently there were rules about overloads and various conditions, as well as warning signs about not messing with electrical boxes, but the only thing that might indicate where they were amounted to a string of letters and numbers. "S4B-PRT-H4" Damon read out loud.
"Shit For Brains, Perfect Retard Trap, Holds Four." Michel intoned.
"At least we're not over the limit." Damon grinned.
"Will you shut up! I'm trying to concentrate!" Gregoria pushed her mind as hard as she could into the concrete, metal and paint, but she was getting nothing useful. Only the buzz of electricity, somewhere, and the distant vibrations of slowly turning fans... again, somewhere. The substance of the facility was not like living soil, or natural rock. It was hard for pony powers to work through. "I can't sense anything beyond. We might as well try it."
Michel and Damon walked to the sealed, metal door. Michel took the round, wheel handle and tried turning it. One direction worked, and something inside the heavy door unlatched. Michel pulled the door open, and dim light spilled into the room.
Michel, Gregoria, and Damon walked carefully out onto a wide balcony walkway. The wall behind them led left and right to more doors like the one they had just passed through, and then to doors at either end of the massive chamber they had just entered.
It looked, at first, like a huge warehouse store, or a strange supermarket. The lighting was dim, apparently deliberately so, and below them, some two stories down, were what looked like endless multicolored backlit racks and displays of ice cream, fish, and frozen foods. As they tried to make sense of what they saw, an uneasy feeling came over them.
A large set of stairs led to the floor below. The racks and displays were glass-fronted containers. Some were boxy, others round, some looked like caskets with domed, transparent lids. These were arranged prone, or upright. In the upright position, they resembled fancy frozen food refrigerators. The contents were not ice cream at all.
The jaguar-man was very clearly dead. He had a hole through his spotted, fur-covered chest. His hands were part paw, and part human-like. He was upright, preserved in some reddish liquid, lit from below and above within the case. "Animal man." Michel spoke the words reverently, quietly. "Anthropomorphic cat man. Some... must have survived the rewrite. I wonder how?"
"He... he doesn't..." Damon was having pony problems dealing with the dead being "...he isn't old. I mean he isn't... Victorian old."
Michel gently laid a paw on the glass-like front of the casket. "No. He survived to our time, or close to it. Somebody shot him, with a gun."
"How... how come..." Gregoria was also having her pony sensibilities offended by the dead humanoid in the glowing fluid. "...how come we can see him. For what he is?"
Michel slowly pulled his paw back. "Crown said some changed people don't ever get the benefit of that blindness thing. Grays, Sasquatches, things like that. Things in the culture. But I think this guy's different. He's from a previous version of the world. I bet there's no magic blindness to protect something like that. I'll bet only brand-new injector stuff is invisible to normals. Someday, it will probably stop for us, too."
Gregoria studied her hooves. Looking at the dead anthropomorph was difficult. "What... eventually normals will be able to see us clearly?" The thought was terrifying. The perceptual blindness was the only way she could walk around unharmed.
"Yup. Once we're old news." Michel took one last look at the proud, fanged Jaguar face. He noticed small holes in the tall ears. "This guy wore earrings, once. Probably clothing, too. Fits. Once, his kind were probably the real Incas and Mayans and whatever. Now, everyone is hairless and boring. Fuck Victoria."
As the three moved on, in silence and awe, they found the cases and racks contained an endless selection of impossible creatures. One very large case held a Yeti, another what must be a Sasquatch, each preserved in a different color of translucent fluid, lit from behind. A rack held glowing, lit-up tanks that were filled with bizarre, tiny animals. At least Gregoria thought they were tiny animals, until Michel pointed out that several were Jaguar-man babies, with fingers and toes. Yes, they were animals, but they were animals in the same way humans were.
There were far more than Jaguar-people. There were shaggy monkey-people, a large buffalo-humanoid, and a strange, shriveled, unwrapped mummy with the head of a Jackal, all preserved in brightly lit, multicolored fluids. Most of the exhibits had clearly been dead for centuries, but some were as new as the Jaguar-man.
"Stop." Michel's voice was calm, but authoritative.
"Why, what is..." But it was too late. Gregoria had caught a glimpse, just the tiniest glimpse, yet it was enough, more than enough. There was no question. Michel couldn't stop her from being certain, and then they had to wait while Michel and Damon held Gregoria and fought to keep her as quiet as possible. She couldn't help crying. Neither could Damon, despite his best efforts. Even though she had betrayed them, Gregoria had known her personally.
The freshly installed case with the lemon-yellow fluid held the body of a partially dissected Equestrian pegasus pony. Not long ago, it had been Joanna.
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i want to go there, and i want to nuke them. no one dissects an equestrian pony and gets away with it.
2754486 For starting out so cheerful and keeping that tone for a while, this story is getting really dark. Fine it was kind of depressing at a point but this is a whole different level of disturbing.
Well, she had a family.
So I take it these aren't the good guys.
2754575
What? Of course they're the good guys!
Gregoria, Damon and Michel are dangerous terrorists working against both American interests and American law by deliberately infiltrating a top secret united states facility, damaging official government and military property, and observing things that are of the highest security classification possible. Worse, their intent is to permit the unlawful escape of a threat to national security which was duly and properly taken into custody by the full legal authority of the government of the United States of America!
Gosh, you aren't one of them dirty, left-wing 'Freedom and The Constitution', socialist radicals, are you?
2754625
You meant Gregoria, right?
There's another spot where you did this, when they're looking at the jaguar man, and her sensibilities are offended
This chapter is dark...
I even had to change from my pre-assigned music to something more appropriate.
Feels...
2754757
FIXED!
This is the most annoying error my brain does to me when I write. It is so hard to spot - even during editing, reading the chapter to my spouse, both of us trying to find errors, we missed these. Graaaaaaahhhhh....
Sweeet, they made it inside...
What evidence does Michal have, though, that the previous world was any more pleasant or egalitarian? It could have been every bit as violent and barbaric as the historical past reconstructed for the current world.
These people must just really like dissecting - it's pretty clear how a pegasus works isn't a function of a 3D digital model of a pegasus corpse.
I think a part of me just died inside.
Joanna was dissected...Well I kinda expected that would happen... after all, dissection in the name of science isn't very uncommon and they clearly were not dealing with nice people... It's still disturbing though, she helped them! Even if it was blackmail, they should have felt honor-bound not to kill her just yet!
Love the fic though, chat. That was a seamless transition from peaceful life on the estate to disturbing and really dark rescue attempt.
2754625 I'm actually a far-right libertarian, but the "Freedom and the Constitution" thing still applies. And yes, that is really muffin disturbing. Well, it would be, I guess, if you'd never had to see that sort of thing before.
I can't tell you how much I enjoy this crazy ride. The only way this could get better is to have another layer of deception.
Also you get a +5 on crazy popculture for the idea that the US military would secure their installations against mole men. Seriously, making us believe they don't exist was the greatest fest of propaganda those guys ever pulled of! (The mole men, not the US military)
Not a fate I'd wish on my worst enemy... but they can't help her now. Better keep moving.
HOLY SHIT! WHAT THE FUCK AGH! NO GOD DAMMIT!!!!!
YOUR KILLING MY HEART DUDE
2754925
That is not necessarily true.
Lots of Scifi or Fantisy universes have either custom materials (Applied Phlebotinum) or particular configurations of normal materials that do things like create anti gravity fields, forcefields, teleportation effects, etc. Presumable, as some are mass-produced, It is reproducible, and follows some rules (on variance in material configuration, quantity, etc) that alter the effect. Now, Note that some of these configurations could occur randomly in biological organisms, and, if a Pegasus had the proper phenomenon occur inside their body, possibly as a specific organ, which generates an anti gravity field. The best example I know of, Is Mass Effect Biotics, Which are essentially Psionics, or Spellcasters, or whatever you want to call it, produced by Electric Currents going through Element Zero Modules to create Gravitational Fields, Simulating Telekinesis, and Energy Shields. (Which exist on starships as well, as Tractor Beams and Shields, and Mass Accelerators)
Actually, Loyal2Luna's Equestrian Codex, From Mass Effect 2: Equestrian Equation, went ahead and did it.
\
That all said, I am still horrified at what they did, although not really surprised.
All I can hope is that Narrative Causality is active (easily feasible in the framework of this universe), and that, killing a trator who defected to you, will result in Karmic Retribution.
2754625
Full legal authority of the government of the United States of America, eh? So if I were to ask, say, the President, he'd know about the alicorn sun goddess being detained in the Southwest?
In any case, I honestly can't say I'm surprised. They've gotten as much as they could out of her while alive, and now she's served a purpose in death.
...I can't help but notice that I'm now thinking about the U.S. government in the same terms as a fantasy race that I've described as "like the Borg, but with magic and less attachment to the human form."
2755032 She outlived any other uses. Considering that our "trustworthy" agencies are willing to sacrifice civilians for their own gains, I do not expect them to have the concept of honor at all.
imageshack.us/a/img33/5764/likethischapter.jpg
Meh. Fuck her.
ouch, you certainly do love to get your readers with the old one-two sucker punch, don't you! I'm left idly, grimly, wondering whether it was dissection or vivisection... probably the latter, sadly. poor joanna!
Hi again!
Okay, since you suggested I should rather post my thoughts as a comment instead of a note, here are my thoughts on the chapter "17. A Gift From Within";
...oh dear. O_o;; This story is so drastically thought-provoking, I seriously have trouble keeping up to match the speed at which new chapters are released.
Geez! I know I'm a very slow writer, but ... I've literally spend more than 3 hours writing this comment. O_o;;
...aaaand just to prove my point, there's already the next chapter out, now I totally walked right into that one. ^_^; Haven't read it yet, gonna get to it later.
Hehe! I see you addressed the topic from my previous note! So, let's start with a continuation of that subject!
"Humans killed the fairy tale world. I don't have any pity about the loss of their take on things, because their version of life sucks."
Okay, he does make an argument there. But that's just it - it is an argument. But he then plans to go through with his plans regardless of any opposing opinions...
Or, as the old saying on the internet goes:
"I have a rocket-launcher / a world-altering magical power, your counter-argument is invalid."
"Fuck you whining about 'the poor humans'. Tell it to the animal people before them!"
...uhm, so you're going to do the same thing to the humans that the humans did to the animal people? ...err.
Yeah, sure, the humans didn't have the "right" to "do" this to the animal people - then again, that was several generations ago. The one guy who did this is long dead. (Ironically enough, he wouldn't be if he hadn't wished away re-incarnation.
) None who are alive today could be held responsible for his actions. And in this exact same way, they don't have the "right" to do this to the human civilization. Sure, the universe "doesn't care". And the simulation is obviously set up to let this kind of thing happen frequently. But they are not the "uncaring universe". They are people. (Well, ponies and diamond dogs, respectively.) They should have ethics, morals, etc, etc, that should set off all sorts of red flags here.
I suppose the core of the issue I'm having here is this:
How is turning the earth into Equestria, rewriting everybody's memories, and erasing history...
...any different from essentially blowing up the planet and killing everyone on it?
I mean, that seriously needs some clarification. O_o;;
^_^; )
(And on top of that, they'd be burning all the books in all the libraries on the entire planet. I suppose Twilight Sparkle would... erm, not approve, to put it mildly.
Otherwise, essentially, what they'd be doing would be to end the "Human-Earth" simulation, and then starting an "Equestria-Earth" simulation instead. Or, well, that's as far as it looks like to me from all the information we got so far.
Though I am guessing that the title, "ID - That indestructable something" does hold some signigicance there.
"Caelum Est Conterrens" made the statment that the mind is a process. But... how far can you alter that process, swap out memories and such untill you're no longer, well, you? I'm actually not having much of an issue with Gregoria's mind running on a "pony brain", but I'm pretty sure our memories play a huge important part in making us who we are.
Plus, we really can't know what kind of re-writes the system is gonna do - unlike CelestAI in "Friendship is Optimal", this program doesn't bother to "only perform minimal changes" or "respect your values", or anything of that sort. Who knows, Crown could end up becoming "the evil king of the changeling empire", for example.
In a weird way, this actually kind-of reminds me of the schemes of a James Bond villain planning to start his "perfect world", except that the "old world" has to go first.
Except that you can perfectly sympathize with their situation.
They're surrounded by examples of the worst ways mankind can act, and there are powerful forces out to get them, and do unspeakable things to them.
...Poor Joanna.
I can see where this is going. By the end of their rescue mission, none of them would even want to give the above concerns a second thought. They're going to be beyond the psychological breaking point to even care about those. ...although I do wonder about "Rachel-lestia" here - how would they react, if they rescued Rachel, only to find her believing herself to always have been Celestia, and thinking them members of her royal guard or something? It would certainly give them pause, raise the concern for the implications of their actions... and then they'd probably go through with it anyway. Because at that point, they'd probably not see any other way out of their situation.
And you could perfectly symphasize with them.
(Which was why I suggested in my previous note that Rachel-lestia should try teleporting, or them grabbing one of the UFOs to go use her "Equestrianification"-magic on Mars, creating a new Equestria on a second inhabitable planet in the solar system, while leaving Earth intact ....buuuut I don't think it is reasonable to assume they'd have the nerve to set up their own personal magical space program while on the run from the authorities. So yeah, "Earth - either us or them" it is, then. )
We, as readers, seeing what trials Gregoria and her friends are going through, naturally want the story to have a positive ending. And I guess it's gonna end with them getting their Equestria, whatever the implications of that may be.
But that's only one side of the coin. And the fact that there were still "animal-people" around after the last rewrite ... well, let's just say, this leaves room for some extra chapters, or perhaps ... a potential sequel?
Telling the story of the last few remaining humans left on Earth. Ironically, the focal character could be a Brony. Heh - it even could start with the cliché "Brony wakes up one day, suddenly finds himself in Equestria".
Except that Equestria is - or was - Earth, all of his life's accomplishments have been undone ... and his wife thinks he's a monster from the Everfree Forest. Possibly a monster who she thinks might have eaten her husband, or something to that effect... or not remembering to ever having been married in the first place, depending on how the rewrite works. Some people might have been awake during the transformation; some litterally might have seen everything they ever knew being overwritten right before their very eyes, people running away in terror from that "glowing wall", only to stop running and just chill after turning into ponies. Others again might bemoan the loss of culture. Could be a musician, or someone working at a museum, perhaps ...or, yeah, okay, someone working in the videogame industry - seeing how in Richard's and Rachel's interpretation of Equestria, there is no electricity (that detail about lamps using fireflies versus power from electrical damns that "the show got wrong"), that would mean the loss of all "modern" media. Which, I admit, strikes me a bit on a personal level being a digital artist and all... (Even if not a professional one... Or a particularly talented one... Okay, okay, I draw small comics and do silly animations and videoediting on the internet, geez *eyeroll*). And yes, of course, others again might rejoice, as their lives take a turn for the better!
The story could be about coping / adjusting to everything they ever knew being gone or altered, life in Equestria, finding out what remains of human culture, literature, films, etc... and to answer the question how much of the "identity" of the people they knew is still left in these small technicolor equines. Also, seeing how this isn't the Optimalverse, the "secret" of Equestria being a falsehood - especially with eye-witnesses seeing the change happen, and others knowing of the television show - might actually not necessarily remain a secret.
(Altough statistical chances of any of the few people on the planet who already know of the true nature of the universe making it into Equestria unaltered is... rather small.)
. . . okay, onward to other one and a half other topics:
We can only just barely guess at whatever goal the simulation overall has. Although I am guessing it's goal might be to reach a stable state, from which no further iterations occur. Seeing how injections occur under specific, apparently dramatic and violent circumstances, and taking the dying's "wish to live in a different world" (or something to that effect) as input... I suppose the iterations would cease, if there were no such "wishes" under these circumstances. So... that might mean an iteration in a world without war or any such disasters ... or, a possible dead end with an iteration full of brain-dead drones with no creativity whatsoever. ...OR, a world that's so fantastically great that noone would sufficiently wish for anything different for an injection to occur in the first place. Which might just be the goal to accomplish, finding the "perfect world".
...and that brings me to the next point;
The fact that some of the animal-people survived to the modern era, as it likely had happened with the dinosaur-people before - I don't think it's a bug. It's a feature.
A random element introduced to recover from a "bad" iteration or a dead end.
And huh - old legends and myths, tales of magic and such that was a "leftover" from the previous iteration was the inspiration for "My little Pony: Friendship is Magic". Go figure. You could argue that, perhaps, from an "objective" outside perspective, mankind was a "bad iteration", and the emergence of fantasy-worlds such as "My little Pony" and "Lord of the Rings" were "recovery"-plans.
Although that does not impede the previously mentioned arguments against a person making that choice to completely overwrite an existing world. But ... yeah! It's a possible argument for Michel's side of the argument. ;)
Oh - and by the way, something that I was reminded of when Joanna mentioned her family in a previous chapter; I may just have a case of "faulty memory" ;) ...but I don't think Gregoria ever mentioned her family again after a specific point in the story. I was wondering about this when she and Rachel were making plans to "go to Equestria" over the bridge, with the prospect of possibly leaving Earth forever. The matter of "family" never came up - and not during the time on Crown's farm, either. I'm just wondering, is all. *shrug*
Anyway, thanks again for your lengthy reply on my note, and I'm gonna give the compliment right back for an "utterly brilliant" story. Onwards to the next chapter!
Oh, and by the way, I'm 28. Heh. And here I always feel "old" whenever that comes up on this site. ;)
Reading this during breakfast may have been ill-advised.
THOSE BASTARDS!!!!
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It's been a while, and I wasn't sure what you meant... so I re-read my chapter. Wow. Coming back to a story long after it was written... and with my memory having forgotten most of it... damn. Oh my.
I'm going to have to re-read this story in earnest. I remember I based all of S4 on the most commonly repeated stories and beliefs that folks-in-the-fringe have about the facility (though their ideas are all Greys and saucers and stuff). This chamber, with the bodies, was based on a piece of film supposedly smuggled out of S4, which purported to show alien bodies stored in formalin exactly like the specimens in this chapter. I watched the film, as part of my research, that is where I got the multicolored lights illuminating the tanks and containers holding the bodies.
You wouldn't believe the level of research I did for this assault on S4. If the saucer fanatics are to be believed... I think I have represented their vision of the real secret base as closely as possible to what they consider real. Only it would have extraterrestrial stuff in it, and not Changed Folk. Weird, fringe stuff is kind of fun to research, actually. It's very wild, yet disturbingly consistent. It almost makes one go 'I wonder'... at least for a second.
Wait... the entire universe frequently re-writes itself? And doesn't spectacularly explode in the process...
I don't even... No, I'm not touching this one.
The guys who do this sort of thing? They don't keep bargains with anyone. Joanna probably didn't understand this or was so afraid for her family that she couldn't let herself care about the possibility.
This shit just got real!
"Compared to trying to wrap the mind around living inside a tiny, mutable simulation of reality run for some unknown purpose, the notion of space aliens was positively mundane."
…Hm. Maybe (probably) it's an uncommon perspective, but I'd be inclined to reverse those. With my understanding of the universe as it is, I'm sure that there's intelligent life somewhere else, but there's a big difference between "extant somewhere in the gigantic universe" and "flying around Texas abducting cattle and doing things with hopefully-sterilized probes". It's just not plausible to me. "Reality" being simulated, though, is not only relatively plausible (if not, as far as I know, a usable hypothesis in our universe at the moment), as Bostrom pointed out, but capable of explaining all sorts of odd thought-to-exist things that don't fit with our understanding of the universe. Aliens under our understanding of physics develop interstellar travel and excellent atmospheric flight and stealth technology and use it to play gorey practical jokes on primitive farmers? Why? The incomprehensible post-singularity Kardashev-V equivalent of a bored teenager is doodling on its homework for universe-creation class? Why not? I mean, we don't have a way to confirm that, but it still, if one really thinks about it, seems more probable than the space alien idea.
…Unless Douglas Adams (who seems to be coming up a lot in these comments tonight) was right and the population of the universe really is just that ridiculous.
""Yeah." Gregoria lay on her side in the dark and focused on relaxing her overworked hind legs as best she could. "Crown said the world has changed several times, right? Complete rewrites, only all we know about it are myths and stories. What if reskinning reality also changes all the data, right down to everypony's minds? Maybe none of us would remember the world or our lives anymore.""
Ah, but Gregoria, think about what you just said. You have the myths and stories. Mr. Crown was able to find enough evidence to pin down when the world changed, even, and what the previous one was like. The current world could be completely erased, sure, but that isn't how it's worked in the known past.
Michel's speech does make me wonder about that previous world-changing Injector. Someone who, faced with magic on a regular basis, believed that it didn't exist so strongly that the belief changed the world to match itself. I mean, they were facing it as it was cut to ribbons by cannons, but still.
I remember seeing a comment from someone saying that they stopped reading your work after this story because it was too misanthropic. I'm still not seeing that. I mean, sure, you didn't have to highlight the conditions so many people live in, but not highlighting them wouldn't make them not exist. You're not saying that all humans are evil and irredeemable or anything like that; you explicitly state that they're not, even.
I'm slightly worried about what's in those cases.
Well, there's a downer ending for the chapter.
…And… It's not that late...
They dissect their allies. With allies like that, ¿who needs enemies?
That reveal at the end of the chapter... I actually threw up in my mouth.
The sick thing is... humans, we, would do this.
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>socialist radicals caring about the constitution
They're the ones who made Biden's Ministry of Truth a thing.