> Twelfth Equestriad Interview
>  by Jordan179
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1:  Going Live ...
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Quiet in the studio," said the director, "we are going live in three ... two ... one ... now!"

The technician pushed the button.

The lights went full on, revealing the traditional arrangement of Canterlot Comments.  Cutting Question, the host, was sitting upon his usual red-cushioned rest, the normal plastic foliage behind him, the window looking out on a breathtaking view of the Palace and City, glittering with electric lights.  Beyond was the webwork of roads, a line of automobile headlights trickling down to bear late commuters back home to their families.  Some lights in the sky were jetliners, carrying those traveling further distances.

It was a scene completely familiar to the viewers, watching as the signal was carried live via satellite all over the Earth and beamed out to the colonies beyond.  One feature of the scene was, however, unusual.

The normal large settee where the guests sat had been replaced by an even larger piece of furniture, especially brought over from the Palace.  It was an even larger backless settee, one designed specifically for the very few Ponies who required such an item of furniture.

Two such Ponies sat there.

Their faces were both famous throughout the Solar System.

Ruling Princess Luna Selena Nyx, one-time Diarch and for the last twenty-four years the Monarch of Equestria, was now as large as her sister had ever been.  Starlight shimmered in her flowing blue mane and tail, and great solemn blue eyes gazed at the audience above her long but still-delicate muzzle.  She wore a black gown, modeled on the neo-Imperial fashions that had been popular a couple of decades ago, and her usual silver tiara, pectoral and shoes.  Her mouth was set in a slight frown, then she seemed to remember something, and smiled at her widespread audience.  Still, she seemed somewhat stiff and uncomfortable.

Sitting close by her was her Princess Consort, who refused any higher title or name other than Twilight Sparkle, but was the most respected entity alive save for Luna herself.  She had grown over the last few decades, and was now almost as tall as Luna, bigger than Luna had been in the first years since her Return.  Her long dark-blue mane bore brilliant rose streaks like clouds illuminated by the setting sun.  In the dark-blue parts were stars and galaxies, which were probably astronomically-accurate.  She wore a shorter black gown, set with rose pearls, and her own tiara and shoes, though she had never taken to the pectoral.  Her big purple eyes were wide, curious and friendly, her mouth smiling.

Cutting Question, a dignified pale-orange silver-maned Earth Pony, had to look up at his two guests.  This would have been unavoidable had he not sat upon an elevated throne, which even in the new Equestria would have been considered exceedingly rude, given their royalty.  Equestria was more egalitarian than it had been a half-century ago, but it was not that egalitarian.

"We have with us and welcome," Cutting Question began in his usual crisp style, "two ponies who require no introduction, but whom it is my duty to introduce nonetheless.  Ruling Princess Luna Selena Nyx, the Monarch of Equestria ..."  He paused.

"Good evening and well met, Cutting," said Luna, her voice as calm as the night sky.

"... and her Consort Princess Twilight Sparkle, High Lady of Friendship."

"Hello again, Cutting," replied Twilight, waving a hoof at the audience.  Her voice, as always, brimmed with the enthusiasm of having another chance to educate the public.

"First of all," said Cutting, "I want to say how honored I am to have you on my humble program."

"We are honored, as always, to address our loyal subjects," said Luna, nodding to the host.  "Without the love and support of ... you ... all, our titles would be but empty pretense."  She looked briefly at Twilight, who flashed her an encouraging smile, then returned her attention to the host and the camera behind him.

"I am especially honored," said Cutting, "because I understand that it has been rare for you since ... the victory ... to do live interviews."

"I have been very busy," replied Luna, "since my ... since I have acquired the responsibilities of leading Equestria as Monarch."  She looked warmly at Twilight, putting a hoof over hers.  "Without the valuable help and greatly-appreciated devotion of my Consort, I do not know how it would have been possible."

Twilight met her gaze, smiled back at her.

"But this is a very special Equestriad -- the dozenth since my Return, the half-dozenth since the final defeat of the Shadows.  Our people deserve to see us, to have their representative speak with us for all to witness," Luna concluded.

"You are very gracious," said Cutting, instinctively bowing his head.

"Have you any questions?" Luna asked.

"I wouldn't dream of missing the opportunity," Cutting admitted.  "My first question is to both of you.   Are you happy with the direction that Equestria, and the world, have taken since your Return?"

"Indeed I am," Luna said.  "It was always my dream to see Ponies do all that was technologically-possible, in particular to venture beyond the confines of our little planet and begin to take their place in the wider Universe.  Today, we have colonized the Moon and Mars, we are beginning to colonize the rest of the Solar System, there have even been expeditions through the Gates to other star systems.  A century from now, we shall be independent of any one planet for our survival; a millennium from now, of any one star system.  We shall truly be denizens of the Cosmos."  All awkwardness was forgotten; her eyes were shining at the prospect.

After a pause, Twilight spoke:

"When I was a filly," she said, "Equestria had just completed the transition from muscle and wind to coal and steam, and electricity was a new technology.  We were forced to advance very rapidly during the War -- we made the leap to internal combustion engines and nuclear energy, to electronics and computers, in only two decades.  This was something that took the First Age of Wonders a full century, and it is evidence of the fundamental soundness of Equestrian culture that we were able to achieve this without severe social disruption.  I do not think the ponies of the First Age of Wonders could have done the same without collapsing into chaos."  She looked at Luna for confirmation.

"They could not have done so," Luna stated flatly.  "Moondreamer remembered rampant criminality, social unrest, a general moral decline in the last Age of Wonders.  The Ponies of that age were cruel and callous by our modern standards.  My ... our leaders prepared us well, before my Return.  They built a solid civilization, one that could weather the most extreme storms and retain its basic decency, one which could cherish love and friendship, and yet be fierce to our foes."  Her jaw firmed.  "As we proved right well upon the incorporeal bodies of the Shadows!"  

Her volume rose as she said this, not nearly to the level of the old Royal Canterlot Voice, which modern electronics had rendered redundant, but with a ring to it that reminded the listeners of the battles of the old wars, and the still older wars now buried in history, and those of legend and myth -- and that the mare on the screen had personally led many of them.  Across the Earth and the System, veteran Ponies sat up straighter, some coming to full attention.  A few actually saluted.

"Some think we've advanced too rapidly," said Cutting Question.  "They worry that we are becoming alienated from our roots on the Earth, in the Clouds, amidst ordinary Magic.  What can you say to them?"

"We had to advance rapidly," said Luna bluntly.  "If we had failed to do so, the Shadows would have won, and the beautiful city you see behind us ..." She turned and looked out at Canterlot, "... would have been lain waste, become a ruin peopled only by bones, with the Shadows seething through them like maggots in a corpse.  As would all of the cities on this Earth,"  She closed her eyes and shuddered  "I used to have bad dreams ... I still do sometimes ... it was so close," she admitted.  "The Shadows were terrible ... only those who have been their slaves can fully understand ..." She shuddered again.

This time it was Twilight who placed a hoof over Luna's.

After a moment, Luna recovered herself, opened her eyes, and nodded to her consort.

Twilight spoke now:

"Our roots are on this Earth and in these Clouds and in their Magics," Twilight said.  "It is our cradle, the place of our foaling.  But a foal grows to adulthood, and Ponykind cannot live forever in the cradle."  She looked up at a night sky which existed always in her mind, whether or not it was outdoors or in the day.  "Our Earth is but one small planet in a vast Universe.  Ponies are individually little creatures.  Yet as a race we are every bit as vast as the Universe, because our minds can conceive and our horns and hooves and wings master it.  Any world can be an Earth to us, any skies the Clouds in which we soar.  And, as long as we remember to love one another, the Magic of Friendship will burn brightly, no matter where we roam."  She stopped, and took a breath.  "Um, I think I've answered that, then."

Luna gave her a look of the purest love and admiration.

"You're watching Canterlot Comments,: said Cutting Question, "with my very special guests Ruling Princess Luna and Princess Consort Twilight.  Stay tuned for more after this commercial."

> Chapter 2: First Break
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The picture changes and the volume increases.  The dominant species on this world is of the equidae rather than the hominidae, but advertising techniques are universal.


***


A harassed looking businessmare is in a rainstorm through big-city streets, evidently from a long day at the office.

"Weather team not doing their job?" a disembodied male voice asks, full of sympathetic and kind intonation.

She sits in a stopped car on a highway, horns uluating in the background, slumped over her steering wheel with an expression of quiet desperation as the rain beats against the vinyl top.

"Wasting your evenings stuck in traffic jams?" asks the sympathetic voice, now a bit sadder-sounding.

The same mare waking up in the morning, the skies still overcast and leaden.  She rolls out of bed, her face bleary-eyed and her mane disheveled as if from a very uncomfortable night's sleep.  She staggers to the bathroom.

"Not sure any more why you bother to wake up the next morning?"  The voice seems about ready to contemplate suicide.

She opens the bathroom door and suddenly an impossibly bright sun streams from the room.  Stepping in, she suddenly finds herself standing outside under a full golden sun in a blue sky on a grassy meadow, hills in the distance, the space between containing a small shimmering stream babbling between a small town of fairy-tale houses and festival pagodas, merry music playing the background.

"Why not come to Paradise?" says the voice, suddenly manically-cheerful.

The mare smiles happily, her whole face lighting up with filly-like glee, her bedraggled mane puffing out into a huge fluffy hairdo, and goes running and skipping down the meadow toward the town.

"Meet our friendly natives ..."

Colorfully-hairstyled ponies, heads archaically hammer-shaped, run over to her and drape flower-wreaths around her neck, others pass her what looks like an ice cream sundae ... 

"Enjoy our many delights ...

... and they lead her into town where we see her in a montage of parties, shopping and delicious meals.

"Your health, safety and happiness are 100 percent guaranteed by the most powerful artificial intelligence ever created by Ponykind, while you enjoy the pleasures and splendors of the World That Was Restored!!  All for the low low price of the loan of a very small fraction of your cerebral processing power, which will be returned to you intact at the end of your visit!"

Zoom-in on the mare's face, which looks incredibly relaxed and happy.

"Paradise, where your every wish comes true!  Just contact our tour office at 780 Miter Road, South Dunnich, Whitetail District 28-103, or phone 510-531-1345, e-mail ParadiseDimensionTours@piesistersinc.com.  Paradise is standing by!"

The contact information flashes on the screen, while a rather manic-sounding female voice quickly states:

"Paradise-reserves-the-right-to-refuse-all-wishes-which-may-harm-itself-other-sapients-or-their-property-or-oneself-or-endanger-causality. Paradise-cannot-guarantee-against-emotional-side-effects-of-visits.  Paradise-reserves-the-right-to-eject-disruptive-or-unruly-beings.  Paradise-cannot-refund-travel-costs-in-such-cases."

So does the most awesome thing a species ever accomplished, the most terrible tragedy in its history, the greatest promise ever held out to the individual, become mundane with sufficient familiarity.  So it is that what was once defended by the secret hope of a light flung into the future through strange dimensions of spacetime, is now defended by legal boilerplate which was in fact spoken by that very same light, its Well-Beloved and Most Noticeable Pink Daughter.

Paradise is not complaining.  For it lives again, and so does its world.


***


Dramatic classical music begins.

The camera pans out across an open road, a long straight highway running through what looks to be the arid southern Palomino.  The background is arid country, a desolation relieved only by scattered, scrubby vegetation including cacti and scraggly low bushes.

The music swells.

A streamlined black automobile races across this landscape, trailing a cloud of dust.  We see it from several angles, looking sleeker and faster with every new shot.  Brilliant light, brighter than that of any plausible desert sun, gleams off its oddly glossy (considering all the dust) black surface.  Its engine roars at a volume which would logically imply either very poor efficiency, or recorded engine noise dubbed over the sequence.

A highly-masculine voice speaks.

"When you're the kind of driver who goes out beyond the ordinary, into the extraordinary; when you're not satisfied with the mediocre, you need a car that that takes you where nopony has ever been."

The car slews to a screeching stop that -- if it had actually been going as fast as it looked in the earlier shot -- would have caused it to skid out of control and probably wipe out in a rollover.  Instead, more dust rises dramatically.

"You need the `49 Zephyr.  The car of tomorrow, today, for the stallion of today, tomorrow."

The doors open.  A really handsome, well-built sky-blue Earth Pony stallion, with a flowing yellow mane, rather well-coiffed for a pony who has supposedly been driving into the desert, gets out and gazes dramatically into the camera.  Two young Earth Pony mares wearing long filmy dresses that tantalizingly hide their hindquarters, though still leaving little to the imagination, step into the shot from the side from nowhere in particular and drape themselves over him with sultry looks meant to suggest lust.  The stallion ignores these lovely apparitions who have ambushed him in the middle of the desert, and stares even more intensely into the camera, smirking.

"Get behind the wheel of the future.  The `49 Zephyr."

Base an entire civilization on love and friendship if you will, but advertising agencies will still pitch to the lowest common denominator.  And to any species at all like our own, sex sells -- even when its connection with the product is absurdly hazy.


***
 

A late middle-aged, but still quite lovely white unicorn mare with a medium-length purple and pink streaked mane, wearing a long red gown glittering with diamonds and embroidered with a big musical note over a stylized heart-and-bell over her hip stands on stage under the spotlights, microphone held in aura with negligent ease, singing with evident power, though the volume on her is down so it's difficult to make out her words.  The tune was handed down in one family for four thousand years, but has familiar to everypony since almost forty years ago:  it's "Sweet Music."

"Coming live from the Morgan Philharmonic at 9 o'clock Canterlot time, it's none other than the spectacular Sweetie Belle!"

Now the camera focuses in on her as she belts out part of a song,

"Pardon me, colts / Is that the Crystal Empire choo-choo?"

The voice has the superb control and passion which made her the most popular singer in the world, bursting out on the musical scene as a young mare forty years ago at the Third Equestriad of the new Age, taking by storm a society already anxious as it realized that the recent rash of strange occurrences were not going to stop, but instead were going to get worse and worse as the Shadows seeped down from their dimension of dead stars through the cracks torn in time by ancient errors.  As Equestria realized that it had fought and won what were only the first battles of what was going to prove a very long war.

"Sweetie Belle, everypony's darling, singing the songs you remember from your youth!"

Now her voice becomes lilting, both sweet and mocking:

"Don't sit under the Apple trees /With pony else than me ..."

And the older ponies in her audience remembered when they kissed their special someponies one last time, unsure if they would ever see them again in this life.  Some had boarded trains which took them to fight outnumbered against Queen Nightmare Hunger and her Shadow Swarm, or launched into the air with pathetically-inadequate weapons against the Dark Dragons, or flown off hastily-contrived space warships in rickety fighters to duel with the Shadow Strikers in the void between Earth and Moon, in those desperate days and dark years when ponies snatched every hour of happiness, they could because nopony knew if she would live to see tomorrow.  And some who had stayed home remembered lovers who had looked so nice in their uniforms, but had never returned to keep their pledges of love eternal ... and even now, with the Wars over two decades safely ended, many cried.  Far from all the wounds had yet healed.

"And her most famous song ever ..." says the voiceover.  "The one you all remember from the very end of the War."

Sweetie Belle's eyes gleam as she sings this one, her tears beginning to start as she pronounces the familiar words.  She is very proud of what she did in the War, but she remembers the circumstances which made this song famous.  She remembers the glory, yes, but she also remembers how many Ponies didn't come back, and how much worse things might have gone if it had not been for Celestia's Sacrifice.

"Life is only what we choose to make it / Let's just take it / Let us be free ..."

This commercial is of course showing footage recorded previously.  In her trailer on the Northeast Coast, the real Sweetie Belle is preparing for her big show.  She's already been sewed into her dress, the hairstyling's been done, and the makeup artists are getting to work.  She still feels the thrill of singing, but she has mixed emotions about the particular song being broadcast right now (as it happens, she is watching the Luna and Twilight interview on her portable set).

"With our strength we'll find the might / There's no fight we cannot fight / All together / We can win!"

She remembered a history documentary someone had once left on in the background that used her song as theme music.  It had very good footage of some of the highlights of the action.  When the big space battleship Amaterasu had exploded, she remembered that madcap crew of Neigh-ponese who had once hosted her at their mess, and how they had been such sweet and shockingly young ponies, scarcely more than colts and fillies, so energetic and innocent.  She winced as she saw the  Fillydelphia turn out of the line of battle, launching her death-ride into the thick of the Shadow fleet to save her own squadron, because she had shared a few dates with her sensor officer -- it had not been love, nor even much lust, but he had been her friend.  Every other scene of that show had by implication depicted her old friends dying, and if she hadn't associated the Last Battle with "We Will Win" before, she did now.  And it had spoiled that song for her forever.

Sweetie Belle had many friends in the Fleet that last day of the War, and she had considerably less the next day.

Still, as the Great and Powerful Trixie had once told her backstage:  "The show must go on."

So Sweetie Belle would do just that.


***


"We now return you to a very special Canterlot Comments, with Princesses Luna Selena Nyx and Twilight Sparkle."



> Chapter 3:  Second Segment
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"And we're going back on three, two one ... now!"

Cutting Question turned to face his audience in closeup.

"This is Cutting Question.  I'm here with our two most distinguished guests Their  Royal Highnesses the Ruling Princess Luna Selena Nyx and the Princess Consort Twilight Sparkle, and welcome back to Canterlot Comments." 

The shot switched to show the whole center of the set, revealing the two alicorns sitting side-by-side on their big settee.  Luna and Twilight smiled and nodded at the audience.

"Your Highnesses," Cutting said, "You have emphasized the great progress made by Equestria over the years since the Return.  But with all due respect, there are those in the Earth Federation who argue that it has been progress made only by Equestria, for the benefit only of Ponies, while the Earth is inhabited by many intelligent species.  How would you respond to those critics?"

"Technological progress benefits all," said Princess Luna.  "The Information Revolution, just like the Industrial Revolution before it, began first in Equestria, so it is but in the way of things that Equestria has gained from it first, and hence most.  But it has spread and is continuing to spread worldwide.  When Equestrian artisans can craft more cheaply, this is to the gain of beings all over the world who can get those goods, not only the Ponies who own the factories.  And as the arts spread worldwide, more and more they can be practiced by other races -- by Dragons, Griffons, even Minotaurs."

Princess Twilight's eye twitched almost imperceptibly at that formulation, but of course she said nothing to embarrass her consort.

"Equestria is powerful and peaceful," Luna continued, oblivious to her error, "and we want all the peoples of the world to prosper.  When we put down pirates and keep the air and sea lanes open, when we build railroads and highways, airports and spaceports, we help the trade of all nations.  Famine is a thing of the past, diseases that once ravaged whole continents are now rapidly contained and cured.  Even the pollution of the early industrial days is abating, as power comes from clean atomic energy, and more advanced machines make less waste.  Eventually, we will move heavy industries offworld, and the Earth will become a garden, as beautiful in its own more energetic way as is Paradise."  She nodded at Cutting.

"Do you have anything to add, Princess Twilight?" Cutting asked.

"Only that Equestria is friendly and respectful to all the sapients with whom we have contact," Twilight quickly added, "including those who are presently underdeveloped, whom we take great pains to assist in every manner.  Scientists believe that as the Information Revolution continues, the easy availability of cheap nuclear batteries and programmable fabricators will make all those in the Earth Federation, regardless of their current economic status, wealthy beyond anything that has been known before.  Through peaceful trade and enlightened cooperation, we may all benefit.  A rising tide lifts all boats, as they say."

"Very well put," commented Cutting, "by both Your Highnesses."  He put his hooves gently together.  "My next question comes from other critics, who argue that Equestria is wasting too much of her tax bits on the space program.  They say that ... and this is with all due respect ... these funds could be better spent back here on Earth, to help solve mundane problems such as poverty or drug addiction."  He looked inquiringly at Princess Luna.

"Some ponies," Luna replied with an edge in her voice, "do not grasp what my beloved Consort said earlier, that the Earth is but one little planet in a far greater Universe.  Or, perhaps, they do not understand the deeper meaning of this.  There is not 'the Earth' on the one side and 'the Heavens' on the other, with the former for Ponies and the latter only for Cosmic forces.  There is one continuous Universe, in which the Earth is a tiny part, and now that Ponies have the machines and magic to go beyond that planet, it is plain that in the future Ponies shall spread forth to inhabit many worlds.

"One day, the Ponies of Earth will be but one tiny portion of the Ponies of the Universe.  And though I hope that the Earth remains special to Ponykind, as the planet of their original evolution and the cradle of their oldest civilizations, still it will only remain one planet.  I have lived longer in this incarnation than any Pony now alive, and I tell you that though the future be distant, it will be real, and that it is important to build now the institutions that will secure for us a bright one."

Luna stopped, and nodded to Twilight.

"My consort is completely correct," Twilight said, "and besides it is easy to demonstrate that even Ponies here on Earth and alive today benefit economically from the Equestrian space program.  The costs of the program are quite low, compared to defense or social welfare spending, and we get a lot for our money.  Thanks to the assistance of the Pie Sisters, we can conduct crewed exploration of other planets, even in other star systems, at very little cost, and the scientific knowledge we bring back often has direct applications in dealing with Earthly environmental problems.  

"We've also opened permanent Gates to the Moon and Mars, which enables large-scale colonization of those planets quite cheaply, as Ponies can simply walk through them.  Imagine if we were limited to rocketships, as were the Ponies of the First Age of Wonders!  Asteroidal colonization is eased by the extensive terraforming already accomplished by Princess Fluttershy and her family.  If it weren't for them, we would have to colonize much more slowly.  Since we've run railroads through the Gates, we can import considerable quantities of minerals from these new colonies, including resources rare on our Earth.

"I urge everypony who is interested in the issue to go to www.easa.gov and type 'Riches From Space' into the search window.  I especially advise educators to include this information in their lesson plans.   It is important that the generations growing up today be aware of that the space program helps them in some very material ways."

"Let's get that address and name up on the screen, Princess Twilight," said Cutting Question, "so that the audience at home can write it down."  There was a brief pause, and then the information appeared, courtesy of someone sitting in the control booth typing on a keyboard.

"Now, getting back to Earth," continued Cutting, a question that I'm sure is very much on everypony's mind.  "What is your position on the developing crisis in Myzeqa, and in particular, does Equestria have any plans to do anything about it?"

Luna blinked.  "As I am sure you are aware, Cutting, if we had any immediate plans to intervene we would not announce them on your show and endanger our forces in the region.  However, I can tell you that it is my belief that the Myzeqan crisis is the responsibility of the Old Worlds Union, and if they wish to do anything about it, Equestria does not mean to oppose them in whatever course they take -- or choose not to take.  At the same time, other Powers should also remain clear of this crisis, as it is purely an OWU internal matter."

"What do you say, Princess Luna, to those who would argue that Equestria should intervene to prevent a potential loss of sapient life?" Cutting persisted.  "Perhaps as a peacekeeping mission?"

"If we jump into the Myzequan War, on either side, then we will have to fight the other side, and that will mean a loss of sapient life.  And this is neither our territory nor our responsibility.  It is up to the Old Worlds Union," Luna replied, speaking slowly and with a slightly-irritated tone.  "Death is in the nature of war."

"I think what my Consort is emphasizing," Twilight added, "is that no matter our motives for landing troops in Myzequa, it's going to get us involved in the war.  There's no way to avoid that, and we don't want to get into a war in which no Equestrian interests are at stake.  At the same time, we will not let outside Powers interfere either, because we do not want this war widening."  She looked at the elder Alicorn for confirmation.

Luna nodded.  "Equestria is strong," she said, "but we are still just one Power within the Earth Defense Federation.  We do not want or pretend to rule the whole planet.  Other nations are free to run their own affairs."

Cutting nodded.  "And we have to break for another commercial.  Stay tuned for the concluding segment of our interview."
 


> Chapter 4: Second Break
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once again we go from an examination of Reality to the expression of the Fantasies of the salesmares, the ones they hope will convince you to buy the products of their clients.  Reality all has the same author and quality; the degrees of skill and resultant products of the salesmares are quite variable.

Once again, the volume rises, to sell.


***


Tinkling half-abstract music plays over a  perfectly white room, in which a mare stands.  Her coat is pure white, and she has a long, flowing straight black mane with one white streak down one side; her legs are long and her stance proud.  She wears a peach-colored scarf and a strange frilly sort of garment about her upper hindquarters, rather like a translucent pair of shorts.  She would be beautiful, were she not terribly skinny, but then this is the new fashion for beauty, taken up by a population most of whom have never known real hunger for a day in her life.  Her expression is absolutely emotionless, and she speaks one word as if hypnotized:  "Succession."

We switch to a big, muscular stallion.  He is entirely orange; his mane has been dyed to match his coat.  His face is firm-jawed, beetle-brown, and utterly vacant.  He is wearing a blue propellor beanie and, for absolutely no obvious reason, a matching blue tail-bow, as if he were a mare of six thousand years ago.  The camera focuses on his face; he has an absolutely-determined and yet incredibly-vacant expression, as if he is very heavily drugged.  He says, in a gruff masculine tone:  "Succession."

Three Ponies, a rather trim red stallion wearing a formal dinner jacket and two mares, both peach-coated and very slim, wearing very wispy evening gowns through which their whole forms can be discerned, with frilly shorts on underneath and very high, spike-heeled shoes, trot by as a female narrator,  speaking in a heavy Prench accent, says "Succession."

The music grows wildly and atonally dramatic, almost painful to hear, and all five Ponies stand atop rectangular objects of different heights, facing in what looks like random directions, with very dramatic and yet vacant expressions.  A male narrator, speaking in a Pranco-Germane accent says:  "The new fragrance, for new Ponies who dare to be different yet belong to the future.  The fragrance that comes forth to take up the torch of change, the new leader ..."

All five say together:  "Succession."

Across the bottom of the screen appears a famous logo:  an indigo "R," coiled as if it were a mane, with two lovely long-lashed blue eyes peering out from them, gazing directly at the viewer, over the words:  "Rarity Enterprises, Ltd."


***


Far away from the interview, there is conference room located near the top of a tall skyscraper looking down on the gorgeous tracery of light that is midtown Manehattan by night.  Despite the lateness of the hour, that conference room is full of Ponies.

The Ponies in the conference room are jubilant.

"And it's launched," says the tall, lanky Pegasus stallion in the suit jacket, blazer and tie.  His coat is cream, his mane white-blond, his eyes blue, and his face at once smiling and firm-jawed, as if he is both satisfied and defiant at once.  He turns to the others, obviously expectant.

"Great ad, H. C!" says one of his subordinates, a pert-faced orange-maned aqua Earth Pony mare, standing bolt upright from her chair in her enthusiasm.  Enthusiastic cries of "Yes!" from the others.

"Fantastic ad, H. C!" chimes in another, her eyes shining in honest enthusiasm.

"The best ad ever!" opines a third, waving a hoof excitedly.

"The ..." the fourth one begins. Everypony else looked at him questioningly. "... the greatest ad in ... the history of advertising?"  He is a small Pegasus stallion, gray-coated with curly dark gray hair, wearing glasses held on with an athletic strap.  His face is nervous and eminently forgettable.

"Indeed," replies the tall cream Pegasus.  "I have today initiated a new age of advertising, one which goes beyond the mere presentation of products in terms of their utility or even desirability.  Instead, I shall sell the ad itself to the public, as a work of art which will lead them to herd after it and buy the product so that they can shine in my reflected glory."

His followers look at him worshipfully, smiling in awe and in what -- on most of the female and at least one of the male faces -- looks remarkably like lust.

High Concept beams benignly down upon them.  Just a perfume advertisting campaign, but everypony has to start somewhere.  This catapults Conceptual Advertising onto a broader stage.  It's just the beginning.

He thinks briefly of his real father, who had refused to marry his mother, who failed to see her worth and by implication the worth of his bastard foal.  His father, who did not and had never wanted to be more than a small-scale society writer, a mere hanger-on, a cheeful, mindless bon vivant.  Who utterly lacked in the true vision High Concept himself possessed.

I'll show you, Dad, he vows to himself, and not for the first time.  I'll show them all. 

As much as he can be, High Concept is ... in that moment ... happy.


***


In the parlor of a small mansion near Ponyville, sitting on a very large and overstuffed couch, its framework made of moonsilver, and upholstered with a lush but very tough composite silastic fabric -- resistant to casual penetration even by Dragon claws, which was why the designer chose it -- sit a very unusual couple.  She is a white-coated Alicorn, with the long-elaborately styled indigo mane and lovely blue eyes on which was modeled the corporate logo.  He is a long-limbed, late-adolescent purple Dragon, with green spikes and a yellow-green belly; his eyes are green and intensely intelligent.

They are Rarity Belle and her husband Spike the Dragon, the two principal owners of Rarity Enterprises, Ltd, and their jaws are gaping in utter astonishment.  They look at each other with expressions of dawning horror.

Rarity is, as usual, the first to express herself vocally.

It is not a pleasant sound.


***


We return to the fantasy in front of the screen.  This time, it is shot in a dismal gray-toned black-and-white, subtly out of focus.  The seeming low quality of the image is entirely intentional.

The camera whirls confusingly around the interior of a subway car, such as one might famously find running beneath the streets of Manehattan, or less famously beneath the streets of most large Equestrian cities in this postwar era.  The cities have sprawled; motorcars have congested their streets, and webs of steel and electricity spread through tunnel networks to transport commuters from suburban homes to urban occupations.

The camera stops whirling and finds its subject.  A young, handsome but rather troubled-looking Earth Pony stallion, with a soft light-brown mane and brown coat, wearing a business suit and overcoat, stands in the car.  He is also whirling around, as if he were a small colt confused by the increased complexity of the new world he must inhabit.  He changes trains at a station, and boards a crowded car in which he he can barely find a seat.  Bored Ponies sit all around him, utterly-uninterested in his existence.

He sees a pretty little mare, smiles winsomely at her, a smile offering nothing but the purest Love and Friendship.  She seems for a moment to respond to his sunny nature, then gives a disgusted little moue, rolls her eyes, and turns away to read her magazine.  He will find no friends here -- he is alone in this packed train carriage, in a world which is suspicious of normal equine warmth.

He gets off, walks through the brick and concrete and glass artificial canyons of the urban downtown.  Around him swirl the multitudes, Ponies hurrying from trains and buses to work, Ponies who have no time for any softer emotions at this moment, for they must focus on survival in a competitive environment in its own way every bit as cruel and pitiless as the Primal Plains.

He looks up at the skyscrapers in wonder.  They gaze coldly back down at him in bleak indifference.  He tries to stop and breathe in some beauty from his surroundings.  Most Ponies ignore him.  A few look at him as if he is crazy.

He walks through the crowds, his stride subtly out of pace with the Ponies around him.  He accidentally blocks the way of an inense-looking little black-maned stallion.  They do the little urban dance of trying to pass one another, accidentally blocking each other's way again and again.  The smaller stallion stares at him, obviously blaming him for this situation, resenting the even temporary retardation of his passage to whatever urgent business calls him.

Finally our hero stops and smiles at the smaller stallion, graciously waving him past.  The black-maned stallion gives him an even nastier glare and hurries past, shoving him aside, obviously within an emotional hoof-length of actually kicking him.  Tempers run high in this overcrowded city, where Ponies are packed together in numbers vaster than any conditions for which they evolved.

Saddened, he stops dead in the crowd and closes his eyes ...

... And suddenly, the screen explodes in full glorious color!

He is standing on the white sands of some tropical isle, probably somewhere in the Gulf River or Carriagebean Sea, maybe the Bayhaymas.  Blue waves lap the beach; behind him is a skyscraper, but one whose lines are pleasantly rounded, rather like some colossal beehive, and gaily bedecked in iridescent paneling and multi-hued bunting.

His face breaks out in a disbelieving smile as he sees this beautiful building.  He walks toward the structure.  On the beach are happy Ponies, families or couples, some of the latter very obviously though tastefully courting.  Serving them meals and drinks are equinoid figures -- technically also Ponies, since their ancestors were one of the Five Kinds, but only recently rejoined with their kin.

They might almost be mistaken for gigantic arthopods, for their bodies are sheathed in black exoskeletons of a substance technically called chitkeratin, which strongly-resembles the chitinous shells of insects or spiders.  They bear filmy wings and single curved little horns; their eyes are great and lidless, protected by layers of optkeratin.  Their ears are like antennae.  Small fangs protrude from their mouths.

They are decorated as gaily as is their Hive-scraper.  Their shells have been polished to a high shine, and colorfully-lacquered.  Their Marks, normally visible only in the infra-red, have been outlined in more lacquer, so that they no longer have the lack of individuality that made them so terrifying to Equestrian Ponies in the wars of decades ago.

These were once the Flutter Ponies, though they ceased to be such over two and a half millennia ago.  For most of those two and a half millennia they were a horror out of dark myth, a rumored presence in the darkness outside the circles cast by Pony firelights -- worse, a terror that could take the form of loved ones and slip into those charmed circles, to feed their singular hungers and thirsts.  Still worse, sometimes they would carry off an especially-unlucky Pony, to eke out the rest of his doubtless short life feeding them in their own hidden homes.

Briefly, one of their Domains was revealed as an open Enemy, led by a mad High Queen of Hunger to invade Equestria, overrun the Vale of Avalon, threaten Canterlot itself.  For two and a half years, war raged, with increasingly-destructive weapons, and allies including Friendly Hives led by the High Queen of Kindness, until Hunger and her last Hive perished in a sea of roiling radioactive earthfire, and the long nightmare of the Changelings was at last over.

At last they came blinking out into the light, accepted into Ponykind, integrated into the Equestrian economy, doing their best to become part of the larger Equestrian culture.  This is one of those efforts, and one of their more sucessful ones.

As the stallion trots up to the Hivescraper, two Stewards, members of a Worker subcaste, come out to greet him with happy, welcoming smiles.  The Desk Clerk, an Administrative Worker, smiles even more warmly at him as he approaches her station.  They are glad to see him.  The gladness is quite genuine, though the Administrative Worker for the sake of this advertisement is actually being played by a skilled Infiltrator.  The Hive is putting its best face forward for this spot.

Fade-out on the now-relaxed stallion as he sits on the beach sipping a colorful drink out of a glass with a little umbrella in it.  He is smiling at a cute young mare, who returns his friendliness open-heartedly.

She may even in truth be an Earth Pony.  They get a lot of guests here.

A warm female voice speaks over the images.

"Take a Club Medfly vacation," she says reassuringly.  "The antidote to civilization."

A critical mind might point out that this is in fact the essence of civilization, that the uncivilized thing was the former state of continual parasitism, occasional predation and sporadic covert warfare that existed between Equestria and the Changelings.  By comparison, this is all more or less open and above-board.  The Ponies are Guests rather than Captives:  they pay nominal fees in bits, and the Hive does its best to make themselves loved by their Guests, by providing the most luxurious and sybaritic vacation imaginable, according to the tastes of their visitors.  And thus, the Hive gets the more important payment.

"All we really want is your love," the voice concludes.

Which is quite true.

Welcome to the Reconciliation.


***


The camera centers on an old castle.  It's obviously an old castle, from the design ... high curtain walls in a location defensible from the ground, designed by Ponies who feared neither the gunpowder of the Time of Unification, nor the more potent weapons of the Second Age of Wonders.  The banners it flies are mostly archaic, many the symbols of Houses long-extinct save in their theoretical union with that of the Royal Realm, when Celestia made herself their matriarchs by her adoption into their clans and the passage of sufficient time for her to become their senior mare.

But everypony knows this castle.  They've seen it ruined, in documentaries from forty years ago.  They remember its restoration.  They've seen its reopening, and numerous news reports shot with this iconic structure as a backdrop.

Princess Luna Selena Nyx has the Palace at Canterlot.  Princess Twilight Sparkle has the Castle of Friendship at Ponyville.  They both, together, keep the castle where they first met and spoke to one another in their present incarnations; the castle Luna destroyed and Twilight restored.

The Castle of the Two Royal Pony Sisters, looking down on the reborn City of Everfree.

A mellifluous, confident female voice begins speaking.  The audience has heard that voice before:  she was everypony's darling in the moving pictures of the 1510's, a romantic lead famous in films from the 1520's.  The roles began to dry up in the 1530's.  Unwise personal choices and changes in popular tastes have led her to take any respectable work she can land, the better to keep her in her Applewood mansion high in the Hills.  The voice is full of class:  she perfected the aristocratic and yet approachable tone in her movies.

"Come back to the place where Equestria began, to the city of legends, for gracious yet affordable living in an urban setting in the midst of beautiful primal wilderness, easily accessible by car, train and public transit."

She enunciates each word so well, delivers her speech with such a smooth upper-class accent, that any flaws in the logic of her statements have been lost in the beauty of their utterance, and the beauty of the scene as the camera, now from a low aerial perspective mastered by Ponies the moment that they invented cameras small and rugged enough to be carried and used by a flying Pegasus photographer.

The city of Everfree is both  modern and lovely.  All but its oldest section, built right next to the castle, was laid out after the Wars, and wide, straight, multilane boulevards offer ample clearance for all manner of motor vehicles.  Tall buildings tower in the old town, though by civic ordnance none of them top the turrets of the ancient castle, all of them aesthetically pleasing, both singly and in combination.  The finest architects and engineers bult this city, in part to the plans of its ancient predecessor, in part to the needs of the new super-scientific age of airplanes and fast motorcars, computers and earthfire.

"Here, for but a fraction of what you would find in Canterlot, you can enjoy a studio, apartment, house rental or even home ownership."

The scene repeatedly changes, showing progressively more sumptuous living quarters, with figures flashing to indicate sample prices.  The numbers are less important than the images, of happy, confident and good-looking Ponies -- ranging from healthy young colts and fillies through handsome young stallions and mares all the way to distinguished -- never decrepit -- older stallions and mares breezing through obviously-successful upper-class to upper-middle-class lives.  Notably, none of them were depicted without obvious mates and in many cases happy families.

"Come see us at Everfree Estates, offices in every major city."  A list of addresses and phone numbers roll across the screen.  "We can find you the right home at the right place."

Live here, the advertisement whispers by implication, and you too will be rich and successful.  You will find good mates, you will have children with them.  Live in our houses, and you will have the kind of lives which others will admire.

The Ponies are hardly stupid.  But they are the gregarious descendants of herd animals, and this approach works well on them.  

Besides, the message is mostly true.  Everfree City is a great place to live:  it's mostly new and well-planned construction, advantageously-situated on the superhighway network; outside the urban core, land is still relatively cheap, and thus housing and rents inexpensive.  And Equestria is enjoying a great economic expansion:  most Ponies have plenty of bits to spare.

The Ponies the camera focuses upon are actors and actresses, chosen in part for their appearance and ability to project the desired image.  But some of the clips are pans across crowds of Ponies in Everfree City, and these are just the ordinary folk who really dwell there, though there has been an effort to edit out any scenes of anypony positively unattractive, an attempt to focus on the Beautiful Ponies.

And they are, for the most part, happy and healthy and successful Ponies.  Only -- and this is very subtle -- especially among the younger Ponies, is there something soft about them?  Their smiles are cheerful enough, but their faces perhaps a bit vacant, their body language and expressions somewhat artificial?

Once, the skies opened and the Shadows rained down on Ponykind, and heroines and heroes strode forth to fight for all Earth life against an evil from beyond the Universe.  Once, fires flashed and thunders roared, and Ponies proved their right to live in the only manner which Strife accepts, by successfully struggling to survive.  It was a time of terror and triumph, horror and glory, stark tragedy and high heroism.

The Ponies won, and wrought -- from the tools they made for war -- a bright new world in which to raise their children.  Their civilization has leaped through two centuries of technological progress in two decades, bringing unprecedented safety and security, luxury and wealth.  Now a post-war generation has grown who know naught of peril or predation, life-threatening violence or serious want.  A generation who, perhaps, do not fully appreciate the value of what their parents fought to win for them.

The Ponies have achieved their Second Age of Wonders, climbed back to the heights they had lost four thousand years ago, gained and surpassed them.  They have attained paradise.

Can the children hold on to what their parents have won?



> Chapter 5: Final Segment
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Ready for Final Segment ... lights check ... cameras check ... three, two, one, now!"

Once again the reassuring, distinguished pale-orange face of Cutting Question, framed in its well-coiffed silver mane, filled the video frame.

"Cutting Question here, with the final segment of this very special edition of Canterlot Comments."

The view cut to reveal the two Alicorn Princesses on their settee.  Luna Selena Nyx and her consort Twilight Sparkle face the camera, with expressions of calm resolution, such as Luna in particular might have directed toward an approaching, potentially-hostile army.  Twilight Sparkle looked superficially-friendlier, but anypony who knew her well would realize that she was a bit tense.


***


"She don't seem too happy," commented the elderly Earth Pony stallion.  His light-yellow face looked at his wife with some worry, his features framed between increasingly wispy, flyaway locks of long gray-and-white streaked hair that had once been two-toned green.  His dark green eyes retained the lights of kindness and intellect which had won that wife's affection, long ago before the Wars, when they had been innocent children at play in her family's orchards.

"She's not," replied Applejack, frowning.  There had been a time when she'd been bigger than him, with the quicker physical growth of fillies, and then a time when he'd surpassed her stature, increasing to the full size of a rangy stallion, while she had remained compact, though hard-muscled.  Starting three and a half decades ago, she had begun growing again.  She was now as big as her brother Big Mac, and considerably stronger.  Her husband Landscape was almost insubstantial next to her, but it didn't bother either of them in the slightest.

They were just glad to be together again, after their decade of forced separation.  Even when Applejack Ascended, the obvious potential problem had seemed merely potential.  They were in their thirties, and with modern medicine Earth Ponies routinely made their centuries.

Of course there was a war on, and they both had to fight in it.  And not all wounds are visible.


***


"Your Highnesses," Cutting said.  "Everypony knows that you are good and wise rulers of Equestria, and we are your loyal subjects.  But since the War some Ponies have pointed out that as Alicorns you are not actually one of the original Five Kinds, that you are in fact of a Kind which was created by Cosmic beings who were not Ponies at all, but took the form of Ponies to better interact with Ponykind.  How would you describe your claim, then, to rightful rule over Ponykind?  Would it be literally divine right?"


***


An elderly Unicorn mare sitting surrounded by books hissed with mingled appreciation and apprehension, as if she had just witnessed a really good play in a hoofball game ... by the other team.

"Someone on that show's read Smirk's books," she commented.  "And that was a bold move, given what he always wanted to provoke.  I wonder if they know that?"

"Basic public-debating tactics against Imperators," pointed out the stallion who sat beside her.  "Ambush, goad, and see how they react.  Even a slight scent of tyranny now, and they'll be paying for it politically for a long time to come."  He sighed sadly, as if at a memory.

"We wanted to hurt the Alicorns -- once," Moon Dancer said.

"Times change," her companion said.  "For some, more than others."


***


Anger flared in the depths of Luna's blue eyes, and something even deeper, something the cameras couldn't catch, but from which Cutting Question recoiled with a look of visible fear.

"Had we not come to ward ye --" Luna began, slipping into outright Old Equestrian in the grip of her emotion, and she stood, dark blue wings flaring.  Her star-filled mane whipped wildly in an unseen wind, her horn fluoresced ...

Dragons had fled from Luna in that mood.  To his great credit, Cutting Question merely cringed.  

"Dearest friend," said Twilight Sparkle, placing a hoof gently against Luna's side. "Let me take this one."

Luna's head whipped around, and for a moment she glared at her consort.  Then the anger faded from her eyes, her wings half-folded, and the fluorescence faded. Her mane settled, and she seemed again merely an especially large and impressive Pony.

"Of course, my beloved," said Luna.  Then, looking at Cutting Question, who was now shivering slightly.  "Pardon my passions.  They can run hot at times."

Cutting Question gratefully nodded.

"I was born Pony," began Twilight Sparkle, "and until the age of twenty did not suspect myself to be anything more.  I am in my first life since connecting with my Cosmic Self, and that Self was born with me.  It is, as much as such a Being can be, Pony writ large.

"But I have been at the Cosmic Level," she continued, gazing intently into the camera, "and I know what it is to be Cosmic as well -- know it as well as any Pony, even an Alicorn, can ever know, for the Cosmics are truly far beyond us in intellect and power.  They are the very Concepts by which the Universe is organized, while we are merely life within that Universe.

"They are essential to the Universe.  They protect the Universe and all who dwell within it, from forces that would destroy all Creation in ways which even I find difficult to comprehend or explain in plain Equestrian.  The Shadows were but an external threat; were the Cosmics not, there are internal contradictions which would tear apart All that Is through rampant Paradox.

"Over two thousand five hundred years ago, two Cosmics chose to be born as Ponies.  They did this not to rule us, for at the time they had no design to claim any Realm.  They did this because they loved us; they cherished what we were as unique and special in the Universe, and they wanted to help us and guide us back out of the darkness into which the world had fallen.  They did not pretend to be Pony.  They were Pony.  One of them still is Pony.

"Celestia and Luna might have simply left North Amareica to fall into anarchy, with Ponies suffering under brigandage and war.  Instead, they created the Realm; they unified Equestria from dozens of squabbling feudal principalities; they brought peace and enlightenment; they taught the Harmony that we enjoy today.  And they never claimed to be divine, nor to rule by right of such divinity.  Rather did their claim rest on necessity, and the acclaim of those they ruled.

"Though Luna rules now as monarch, she is quite aware that all rightful rule rests ultimately on the consent of the governed.  She rules only because she knows she has this consent, that she is your beloved Ruling Princess.  She is no tyrant; in fact her history is littered with the would-be tyrants she has vanquished.  Were she a tyrant, would you have even dared to pose that question?

"You may one day withdraw that consent; she may one day step down.  But if and when this happens, you had all better be ready to put a better rule in place of hers.  And -- good luck finding anypony or any assembly of Ponies who could rule better or more justly than Luna Selena Nyx!  For once she lays down the yoke of rulership, you may find it hard to persuade her to pick it up and once again draw the Cart of State!"

Twilight had spoken clearly and distinctly, she had covered the subject well, as if she had been lecturing a class, and she was a very good teacher, having learned the art at the hooves of an even greater one.  Nevertheless, was she perhaps a little stiff, a little overly-formal?

A generation who had grown up since the War, who increasingly valued style over substance, was judging her.


***


Applejack winced as she noticed this.  "Aww, Twi, yer not being honest with them.  Yer leaving too much unsaid.  Too much that anypony knows, anypony who's studied on your past -- or Luna's."

"Give her credit," pointed out Landscape.  "She's been ambushed, she's speaking in public, and she only has so much time.  It's like it was when I was walking into an enemy Hive:  you'd better talk fast or they'll just cut you down.  And you have to choose yer words pretty careful.  She did pretty good, I reckon."

Applejack extended a wing to enfold her husband.  "Ah suppose you're right," she admitted.  "Ah'm being too hard on Twi, because Ah always expect the best from her.  But she's caught twixt a rock and a hard place there, trying to head off Luna's temper and answer that question at the same time.  She couldn't really give them a full answer.  Ah don't know how Ah manage to be a halfway-good politician, when we wind up in spots like that."

"You're a good politician on account of you care, and you speak the truth, and you know how to keep from speaking on a subject where you can't speak the truth," Landscape said, leaning into his wife's side.  "Folk trust you.  On account of you don't betray their trust."

"It's never as simple as just telling the truth," Applejack grumbled.  "Guess I knew it wouldn't be when I became a Delegate.  I ain't got no cause to complain, really -- I knew what I was letting myself in for."

"That you did, Jackie," agreed Landscape, gently kissing her neck, eliciting a faint happy noise from the orange Alicorn.  "That you did."

They settled down to watch the rest of the show.


***


"Very well said, Your Highnesses," commented Cutting Question.  He looked relieved -- perhaps that Princess Luna had not executed him on the spot.  Not that she had been known to do anything like that, but he had seen real rage in her ancient blue eyes, and it had not been until he actually asked the question and saw her reaction that he realized how close the very question had come to open sedition.  It had all sounded better when the staff had hammered out the list a few days ago.

"Thank you," said Twilight Sparkle.

Luna remained silent, but she nodded graciously, and the fire in her eyes had faded.  It had clearly been but a momentary lapse -- though given her power both magical and political, a terrifying one.

"Now a question on policy.  It's well known that the Realm officially supports research into life extension technologies.  How far do you intend to go with this?  Do you believe it is possible for Ponies to live forever?  And would it be good if they could?  What about overpopulaton?  Boredom?  What about the role of death in making us value life more?  Should Ponies live forever?"  Cutting Question got through the very long question very smoothly, using his skilled voice as a tool to keep the two Princesses listening, and his larger audience engaged.


***


"That's silly," said the blue-eyed, extremely pink Alicorn watching the show. "Who wouldn't want to live forever?  There'd always be more parties and more fun things to do with your bestest friends!"  She turned her head and looked fondly at one of her very bestest friends with very special benefits -- the friend she'd married.

"Hey, no argument here," replied Cheese Sandwich.  Age had been kindly to him; it was as if at each decision point when his body might or might not have handled a particular insult to its chemical and anatomical architecture, his body handled it.  The causes of aging are mostly hidden, and mediated by molecular-level interactions, ones small enough that quantum effects are not entirely irrelevant.  These are the sorts of processes easily affected by the power of reality-warping.  And Earth Ponies are in any case a long-lived Kind; even in the days before the Wars and the huge technological advances they brought, they often lived to be 100, and the occasional Earth Pony would survive to 150 or even 250 years old on sheer toughness.

So, it was not that strange that Cheese Sandwich, born almost 68 years ago, looked and felt as if he were still in his mid-forties.  Everypony who knew him suspected the reason why -- they knew of the powers of his wife, Pinkamena Diane Pie, the Alicorn Thalia, Pinkie Pie, the Joy Bringer and Most Beloved Pink Daughter of Paradise.  They also noticed that Pinkie's parents were still remarkably spry for a mare in her 80's and a stallion of over 100.  Though none of this actually contradicted known plausible reality.  None of this created significant Paradox.

Pinkie Pie had plans for her parents' 500th wedding anniversary, and she fully intended to use them.  She figured that by that time, one or more of the many immortality projects would have succeeded long ago, easing the drain on her powers.

And she wanted Cheese Sandwich to be right at her side when she threw that party.


***


For a moment, it seemed as if Twilight Sparkle was about to repsond to this question as well.

"I will answer this," announced Luna.

There was a brief flicker of annoyance on Twilight's face, but she deferred to the senior Princess.

"First," stated Luna, "it is of course possible for Ponies to live without definite end, both because any pattern can be endlessly remade, and because I was born over two thousand five hundred and fifty years ago and yet still live and breathe this studio air.  "Second," she continued, "there are diverse ways to do it.  Unfortunately, we do not know how to transform everypony into Alicorns.  My Sister and I were born Alicorns, for reasons which do not apply to most Ponies; and Twilight and her Companions went through very rare and difficult Ascensions, which could not be readily duplicated and which I doubt most Ponies would survive.  Celestia prepared the ground very well so that they did survive; I cannot claim her mastery of transformations, and have no wish to kill a group of admirable and worthy Ponies figuring out how she did it.

"However, there are several other paths we know to be possible and probably practical.  We are researching them all.  We have already managed to greatly extend Pony lives -- my Sister had in fact already accomplished this to some degree simply by improving sanitation and medical care in the centuries I spent in exile -- and we think that within a half-century we will have doubled Pony lifespans; in a century, we will have achieved full biological immortality.

"Third, as to whether immortality be desirable ---" Luna peered intently into the camera.  "I ask ye all, for the next day, would ye rather live or die?  If you would rather live another day, woud ye not answer the same for a week of days?  A month of weeks, a year of months?  And so on, on to decades, centuries and millennia?  Clearly, you do each desire the continuation of your own lives, increment by increment!

"Fourth -- the opposite of Life be Death -- and make no mistake on this:  if ye do reject the extension of a Pony's life, where pratical, ye do condemn that Pony to an early and needless death.  Ye well may deem this a tolerable fate for other Ponies, ones ye know not, ones that are to you mere numbers, competing with you for the goods of the world.  Ye should mull on this:  if ye deny immortality, that same doom of Death shall come to your friends, your families -- and your own selves.

"As to the problem of the multitudes, of a throng in which there is birth but little death -- yes, if we were all mere animalcules growing in laboratory dishes, we would be doomed to misery as we ate all the food and used up all the jar, and then perished amidst our own wastes, unable to fare any further.  A sorry fate, to be sure.

"But we are not animalcules.  We are Ponies!  We have minds, and we can judge whether or not we can provide for our foals, and on this decide whether we shall conceive them.  If our worlds be too small, we can find new ones.  We need not be limited to just one Earth, or even just one Solar System, we can and shall make ourselves at home in the whole Universe.  Our lives are a blessing, not a curse, upon the common weal!

"To be sure, we must not fear Death unduly.  If we live our lives in terror of their ends, we can neither do our duties to our own selves and others," her face grew stern as she contemplated this, "nor enjoy that which is sweet in them," at this she looked upon Twilight, and her expression softened.  "And this be true whether we live a decade, a century, a millennium ... or more."

She looked once again directly into the camera, her jaw resolute.

"I have led Ponies into battle. I have sometimes had no choice but to hazard their lives --" she frowned, "-- aye, and too often at long odds, for t'were the only road to victory, to the warding of our homes and foals.  Sometimes Death must be risked, sometimes lives lost, to gain a greater good.  This is sad, but true.  And some of those lives lost were ones dear-beloved to mine own self."  She was looking past the camera now, to battlefields forgotten by all others save military historians, upon corpses who had once been friends.  Her ears drooped, eyes closed briefly, a moisture glistening under her lashes.

Then she opened her eyes and gazed directly into the camera.

"But never," she said, "never have I in sound mind and full knowledge simply thrown away those lives entrusted to me.  Never would I march my Ponies into holocaust, for no better cause than that I felt I had of troops too many for ready provisioning!

"That is what t'would be were We -- knowing it both possible and practical for Ponies to live Undying -- to instead decree that they must die, beause we found it too weary a task to change our laws in such wise as to avoid sudden overpopulation.  Did I do this, I would be the most bloody tyrant ever known, for I would thus condemn all my subjects to death!  Has any ruler ever been so cruel?"

She smiled.

"Nor am I, Princess Luna Selena Nyx, that cruel.  I reject Death, and choose Life -- for my subjects as for mine own self -- and would rather suffer the problems presented by messy, living Ponies, than be the keeper of a lich-field, be it the most tidy and pretty lich-field that ever was!"

As she said this she rose, and flared her wings, her expression defiance, and stamped her hooves, as if to challenge Death to personal combat.

Spontaneous applause erupted from the studio audience, startling Cutting Question with its explosive intensity.  Ponies rose and stamped their hooves in response, shouting "Luna!" and "Life!"  Luna clearly could have started an insurrection then and there, had not she in point of fact been the Ruling Princess.

Luna bowed to her audience and camera.  The cheers grew deafening.  Then she sat down, and smiled.

Twlight's eyes shone with admiration as she gazed upon Luna.  As the cheering died down, she spoke:

"And of course, the benefits of our anagathics will be extended to all the races of the Earth, rather than being kept for Ponies alone.  For reasons of biology Ponies may be first to benefit, but the principles on which we conduct our life-extension research are universal to all Earth life and some of them universal to all conceivable life forms."  She smiled.  "I have a little brother I'd like to keep around for a good long time, thank you."

Laughter in the audience.

Cutting Question knew he'd just been upstaged, and by both of them.  He didn't mind.  He knew this would happen when he'd invited them on his show.  He was glad they'd come, and glad that they were making this the best show of his whole career.


***


"Oh, very good, Luna," said the blue Alicorn, "and nice save, Twilight."  Her horn glowed, and she swept back her ethereal mane, which was of a blue so light it was almost white.  In it glimmered the stars of imagination.  "But you'd better get moving on that research.  Some Ponies can't wait fifty years."  Her wings, which glistened with all the colors of the rainbow, and some which existed only in her own imagination, fluffed with agitation.

"It won't be in time to save me," pointed out the very old gray Unicorn stallion.  "We both know that, and it isn't anypony's fault.  There's no point blaming Luna.  Or Twilight Sparkle.  They're doing the best they can."  

"Shut up!" the Alicorn said, turning angry eyes upon her husband.  "Do not say that!  Trixie does not want to hear that!"

"We each get our time on stage, hon," Piercing Gaze replied.  "Mine's almost done.  I've had a good long run.  And the best possible leading lady."  He smiled at her, and in his intense dark-brown eyes flickered the fires that had drawn Trixie to him in the first place, almost half a century ago, when he had been the owner of the Hippodrome and she merely a strolling player.  She could almost ignore that his black mane was now stark white, but not as easily ignore the terrible gauntness of the once-muscular form she knew so well, its former solidity now wasted by repeated cancers.

"Trixie does not want to end the show," she said.  "Trixie ... I still love you.  I will always love you."

"And I'll always love you too.  I'll just be in the audience."  Piercing told her.

She embraced him, and enfolded him in her rainbow wings, and the tears flowed freely down her lovely face.  What was the point of being Great and Powerful, for real, if all one's Great Power could not save the one who mattered most?  In her forelegs, Piercing was so light, so frail, as if any stray wind might blow him into dust.  He returned the embrace, and she could feel the discontinuity of his prosthetic hoof, the one he'd lost saving her from the Night Stallion in that last fight, the one in which Trixie had finally killed -- to save Piercing.

She knew that the Shadow taint he'd taken in her own defense had weakened his system, made it easier for the cancers to come, though at ninety, that might have happened anyway.  But every time she thought about it she felt a little flare of rage, that anypony should have dared to maim her sweet love!  She would at that moment have killed the Night Stallion again, and again, and again.  She would have killed Death Himself, if she might have done so.  It was not fair, but Trixie was not at that point in a mood either just or merciful.

"Yeouch," said Piercing, and Trixie realized she was hugging him too hard.  Fool! she lashed herself with guilt at her thoughtless action.  Piercing needs comfort, not pain!  She relaxed her grip slightly.  He sighed happily, and enjoyed the embrace.

So they held one another, the immortal Alicorn Trixie Lulamoon, and her all-too-mortal husband, as the screen continued to flicker and the show, as always, went on.


***


"One final question to finish the show, and it's for both of you," said Cutting Question.  "What would each of you say is the most important thing to remember about Princess Celestia?  What would she want for us if she were still here?"

Luna and Twilight looked at each other.  Luna gestured with her head, and Twilight nodded, and leaned forward.

"I'll answer first," said Twilight Sparkle.  "What I remember most about Princess Celestia was her kindness.  She was burdened by all the cares of state, she didn't have all the help that Luna and I have because there were far less Alicorns back then, and she faced all sorts of dangers in her future that she knew were coming and dared not yet reveal, so nopony could comfort her when the pressure mounted.  And yet she always had the time for an encouraging word to me, I saw her be gracious and loving to so many other Ponies, and she always tried to help in even the smallest things. She held absolute power, and remained yet uncorrupted.  And I think it was because she was kind:  she did not have it in her to become a tyrant, because to do so she would have had to become cruel.  And cruelty was simply not in her nature."

Her eyes were misty.

"I don't know where or what she is.  I know that she ended her life as a Pony as soon as she rose into the sky at the end of the Last Battle and began growing and changing --  we all saw it -- became some impossible vast creature with so many horns and hooves and wings, something utterly alien to Ponykind -- and yet something that loved us.  We all felt that, too.  She should have been horrible, but she wasn't, because that Love meant that she was instead glorious and wondrous beyond all comprehension.  And she destroyed the Second Shadow Armada, almost casually, with such strength that it's almost incomprehensible in our terms, and passed through the Rift, and sealed all the Gates behind her so that the Shadows could never hurt us again.

"And then there was this great disruption on the other side of the M-brane.  The gravity waves rippled even across the dimensional barrier; on the other side there was an energy release equivalent to a thousand Solar masses being converted into energy in an instant.  The most titanic astronomical event we've ever directly detected, aside from the Big Bang itself.  On the other side -- nothing could possibly have survived such an explosion.  Compared to that the Cataclysm would have been a firecracker to a sunfire bomb.  And we've never seen the Shadows again, only the residues some of them left behind.  She saved the Earth.  She saved us all.  We're alive, each and every one of us, because of Celestia's Sacrifice.

"I've been Cosmic, briefly, and I can't imagine what she did or how she did it."  That was a slight lie.  Twilight actually had a good idea in general of what Celestia had done, and she was worried that it might be done on a smaller scale to single stars -- or even sunfire reactors --  so judged it best not to reveal right away how it might have been accomplished.  "I can't really understand how a Cosmic Concept thinks -- we Alicorns only get flashes of insight from our greater Selves, our incarnate minds are simply too small to contain the vast ideas of the Cosmics.  But I do know this -- Celestia did this because of her great Love, and Kindness.

"I think that, wherever she is, she wants us to be well, and do well.  She always wished that of me.  She was my Beloved Teacher ..."  Twilght's voice broke a little as she said that "... and I will forever and always be her Most Faithful Student."  The last words came quickly, and finished on a sob, and for a moment she hid her face under her mane and in her hooves.  Then she recovered her composure.  "Pardon me," she said, and fell silent.

Luna waited a moment.  Then she took her turn.

"In this Pony life I was born with her as my Sister.  We were twins, but she was born first, as she is always," A faint moue quickly flashed across her facce.  "So she is -- was -- my elder Sister.

"From the start she was sweet.  She loved all and was beloved by all in return.  Most especially including mine own self.  One could not resist her when she smiled, and one did not want to resist her, for she meant only good.

"In the many centuries I knew her, she bore up under the worst losses and most terrible tragedies, the direst emergencies and most crushing pressures -- and never did she cease to love us all.  It was not that she was unselfish -- it was that her Self shone with such love that to help others was what she most dearly wanted.

"What would she want of us today?  Why, the same thing that she always wanted of us.  That we love one another, and know joy in the Harmony, and let love light our way in a Universe that can at times be dark.  Love and Light, that was and is Celestia, and ever shall be Celestia.  And when things seem blackest, let us keep Celestia in our heart, and we shall be not alone in the night.

Luna rose.

"Ye Ponies, one and all, I am your Ruling Princess, Luna Selena Nyx, of Paradise Estate and Equestria, and I am proud beyond measure to lead a species such as ours.  Good be the night for all of you, and pleasant be your dreams!"

Twilight rose as well.

"Good night," she said simply.  "And be good friends."

They curtsied and made their exit, to applause.

"And this is Cutting Question, for Canterlot Comments.  Good night!"

Fade to credits.


***


And the broadcast went out, to Equestria and around the world, and out to the worlds beyond.  It reached Apple Bloom in Tranquility City, the Lunar settlement she was building around Dusk Skyshine's old landing site and the Lunar Tree of Harmony, and the tough middle-aged life support engineer and statespony nodded, and hoisted a glass of foaming hard cider to the loved ones she still had, and those she had lost in the War.  It reached Rainbow Dash where she was training her latest class of Space Guard recruits on Mars, and she smiled at the image of Twilight Sparkle on the screen, and said "Egghead," but very fondly.  It reached Fluttershy and Discord in airless space in the Asteroid Belt, where he had conjured up a big-screen television and some air for himself and their family to enjoy, and Discord cried at the memorial to his old love Celestia, and later claimed that it had been just some flecks of fine asteroidal dust that had gotten in his eyes.  And hours later it reached Scootaloo, where she was testing a new long-duration fighter out around Neptune, and she made the time to listen to every minute of it, for she and Luna had been friends for most of her life.

And some of the feed went through the Gates that Claire Pie and her equally-strange children had made in spacetime to the worlds of other stars, and across dimensional barriers to the World That Was Restored, where most of the Ponies there glanced at it uncomprehendingly, because the issues touched upon were not those which concerned them.  But Goldie Pie and Jasper Quartz, who had been born again there in full renewed youthful vigor, smiled at each other and at the image of the two Princesses.

"That Luna sometimes seems a mite touchy," commented Jasper.  "You reckon she can haul the load?"

"I don't rightly know," Goldie said.  "She's had a hard life.  But Twilight's at her side, keeping her sane and happy.  That's what wives do."

"Don't I know that," said Jasper, grinning.

They embraced.

And some of the signal, as it was being transmitted through hyperspace, leaked out.

And something else heard it.


> Epilogue:  The Listener From Beyond
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

There is nothing obviously special about this point in interstellar space, nothing which would make it the obvious location for a dimensional portal.  It is home to a drift of rogue planetoids, formed aeons ago in some long-forgotten nebular collapse and cast off by the evolution of its original star system, to circle the Milky Way on its own lonely course.  In these planetoids are a sprinkling of the strange atoms of exotic matter -- not enough to register at any distance -- but long ago this was noted in passing by the exploratory fumblings of the Shadows, marked as a minor potential resource after they had claimed the bioferous worlds within a few hundred light-years of Earth's Sun.  Noted -- and remembered, duplicated in storage banks untouched by the white hole Celestia had made of the Shadow System.

Something is stirring.

It is but a tangle of carbon nanofibers, formed furtrively, patiently and methodically from an infinitesimal fraction of the mass of the planetoid.  It comprises far less total substance than any one Pony.  Wispy, insubstantial, it grows from the planetoid it has parasitized.  Into its long molecular chains are woven, here and there, some of the strange atoms it has drawn from the rocky substrate of its host.  Its dispersed structure coils hundreds of kilometers, swathing the planetoid like a strangler vine.

The arrangement of exotic matter gives it one peculiar property -- it can passively detect hyper-spatial vibrations -- such as those emitted by certain magicks; such as the Gates being opened and operated by Claire Pie and her Children.  It listens to the murmur of the civilization spreading out from the Earth, out to the planets of the Solar System, and the stars beyond.  And -- through tiny wormholes, only a few Planck lengths in diameter -- it sends its compressed bursts of information back to its home dimension, back to its masters.

For Celestia indeed wrought a mighty slaughter of the Shadows in her Sacrifice.  She everted a black hole of thousands of Solar masses, creating a Little Bang that utterly annihilated the Shadow System which had been just across the M-brane from our Solar System.  The wave front of utter chaos is spreading at light speed through the Shadowverse:  in time it will destroy a huge chunk of and badly disrupt the rest of the nearest Shadow Galaxy.  Within that curtain of indescribable violence, a baby Universe is being born.

But the Shadows control far more than one System, or Galaxy, or even Galactic Supercluster.  They are the masters of a Multiverse, and though their Multiverse is dead and dying, long since drained of what we would deem life by its cruel masters, the damage Celestia did to them is but a pinprick by comparison, as the death of a few hundred cells might be on the scale of a Pony or Human.

It was a strategically-brilliant pinprick -- it stabbed right into a nerve, forced their grasping claw to recoil from a conquest which might have allowed them to flow through and devour our Universe -- but on the scale of the Shadowverse, the actual damage done was minute.  Even had Celestia managed to slay Vaster's Battleform, he would in time have recovered and grown another.  Cosmic Concepts -- and, for all their foulness, that is what the Great Shadows are in terms of the Shadoweverse -- are almost impossible to kill, and even when they die, their own continua will re-form them by condensing their Concepts around new nuclei.

The fibrous tangle that spied upon the Ponies was not a Great Shadow.  It was a very, very little Shadow, one of the trillions of trillions of Least Shadows who made up the rank and file of the Shadows' starkly malign and nightmarish anti-civilization.  It was very fortunate to have been chosen to crew this outpost, for it otherwise would have been doomed to destruction when the wave-front of Celestia's Sacrifice crashed across its home system.

Here, in a young and living Cosmos, it drank in far more energy than it would ever have enjoyed in its own near-dead continuum.  The faint starlight and cosmic background radiation which, assisted by certain nuclear reactions, warmed the planetoid to some 5 degrees Kelvin, was terribly frigid by Pony standards, but nigh-tropical by those of an entity whose home Universe was so old that even the background radiation of its Big Bang had long since died away to undetectability, utterly-swamped by the random quantum jittering of spacetime.

Call it the Listener From Beyond.

The Listener was not very intelligent.  It was sapient, for some sapience was essential for it to fulfill its function, but its sapience was focused quite narrowly.  On most matters it was no smarter than the Pre-Ponies who coursed the Primal Plains, before the Great G'marr had Uplifted them into Proto-Ponies; which is to say, the same basic equid stock that Humans, in another bundle of our Multiverse, had tamed and trained to be our mounts and beasts of burden.

Pre-Ponies were far nicer, though.  They liked apples and lumps of sugar.  Had by some strange circumstance, the Listener from Beyond been incarnated in one of the tamed Pre-Ponies of the Human universes, and had some Human been unfortunate enough as to offer it a lump of sugar, the Pre-Pony would have bitten off its hand, and enjoyed the lump of sugar as flavoring for its meat-and-bone meal.

For the one thing the Listener did really well, apart from listening, was hating.

The Listener hated this Universe.  Hated the splendiferous glory of the myriad stars of the young and living and happy Galaxy spread out before its regard.  Hated the memory of the old and dead Galaxy which had been its home for the aeons it had existed before being sent to ours.  Hated its masters, for sending it there; hated Celestia, for making death the only alternative to being sent here.  Hated itself, for being so weak and unimportant that it could be forced into such a role, instead of having the influence to join in the hyperspatial evacuation.

It was in large degree a creature of Hate, just as the Ponies were creatures of Love; and to the Listener, its social world consisted not so much of friends and enemies as of enemies of varying degrees of enmity.  It did not love its friends, for it had none.  Instead, it submitted to its superiors, dominated its inferiors (of which it had few, being such a petty Shadow), and accepted an alliance -- little more than grudging and temporary truce -- with those it hated less, in order to harm those it hated more.  From its point of view, the Magic of Friendship was as unnatural and loathsome as a Pony might have regarded the Magic of cannibalistic incestuous necrophilia.  It hated everything.

Most of all, of course, it hated the Ponies.

And, as it listened to their vile and annoying chatter, doing its duty to its masters out of fear of the punishment it might suffer if it failed them, it hated the Ponies with a passion utterly incomprehensible to any inhabitant of our younger and gentler Multiverse.  Almost -- almost -- it would have given its own anti-life, knowing itself doomed, for the sheer joy of killing a Pony.

It could do no such thing, of course, for this Shadow and its incarnation were both far too weak.  As indeed, the Shadows as a whole were still far too weak in this sector to try another invasion of this Cosmos.  Celestia had destroyed the massed fleets of the Cluster in her Sacrifice; it would take millennia to ever again mass a force so great.  She had shut all the Portals in the Solar System, and new ones could not be opened within the widening sphere of detection.  She doubtless imagined that she had succeeded in protecting her little Ponies.

But Celestia was imperfect -- limited -- weakened by her tender emotions, by the fallacies of Love and Friendship.  It might be millennia before the Shadows again could of their own unaided strength open Gates wide enough to admit all but the Least Shadows; millennia before they could send in warships; hundreds of millennia before they could amass another armada like that which Fusion had destroyed.

However, they didn't have to.

For the soft, sentimental life of this Universe was easy to corrupt.  The least of Shadows -- entities like the Listener itself, or even the contemptible Shadow Vices, could slip through tiny apertures, seep into the souls of the Ponies and their allies; seduce them to serve the pruposes of the Great Dark.  And the Ponies, who thought their safety secured for ever by Celestia's Sacrifice, would find that the Shadows did not need to attack them directly in order to triumph.

This was not, of course the task of the Listener.  The job of the Listener was only to listen, and wait, and while it did it hated, and dreamt of the glorious killing to come, when one day -- centuries or millennia from now -- the stars would come right again, in some other sector of space, for the Shadows to return.

It might be a long time before the Shadows could strike again.  But they were an old race, in a terribly old Universe, which had already endured for so long that the whole history of the Ponies' Universe was but an eyeblink, compared to the long nighted abysses of time known to the Night Shadows.

Impatient young children of an infant Universe, they might for a few instants -- a scant several decades or centuries -- keep up their guard, maintain their unity in the face of the foe they knew to be lurking beyond their dimensions.  But as time passed -- as generation succeeded generatons, cultures change, factions alter -- they would inevitably forget that the Shadows were real.  They would imagine the threat to be safely dead and buried by the passage of long historical time.  They would quarrel among themselves -- and drop their guard.

And then, the Shadows would strike.

Until then, the Listener from Beyond would listen.  And dream.  And hate.