"I want to emigrate to Equestria" said Jenny, and shut her eyelids like vice grips. She heard a whirling noise as her chair slid underneath her, and within seconds she was sitting in the room that would serve as her execution chamber. Let's get this over with, she thought, as she felt her right arm restrained in place and the tip of a needle pierce her skin. As the anesthetic began to take effect and her consciousness began to slip, she realized that this was it, she was never going to wake up. But after 6 years of trying to survive in the living inferno that her once beautiful Earth had turned into, the oblivion of death had become inviting by comparison. So she had restrained her fear, walked into an Equestria Experience Center, and said the three fateful words to the entity she hated most in the world. Her last thought, just before the darkness overcame her, was that at least she never have to see that pale long-faced bitch ever again.
Boy, had she been forced to eat crow on that one. Except that Jenny couldn't actually eat crows anymore. Or any other bird, for that matter. That was because Jenny, or "Rough Edges" as she was apparently called now, had been turned into a pony, and ponies were strictly vegetarian.
At least, that's what Princess Celestia had said. Or one of the things she had said, at any rate. Celestia had spent several hours welcoming Rough Edges to her world, denying that she was dreaming, telling her that this wasn't a trick, explaining to her that goring the Princess with her horn would only produce cosmetic damage on an avatar of a vast superintelligence, enduring said damage anyway, calming Rough Edges down to a semblance of sanity, and, finally, providing a royal wither for her subject to cry on as the reality of the situation finally sank in on her.
Presently, Celestia was walking with purpose to the front of Castle Canterlot, forcing Rough Edges to trot briskly in order to keep up. As she walked, she explained what was going to happen. "It is good that you are no longer attacking ponies and wailing at the top of your lungs, Rough Edges, but your acceptance of this world is not complete yet. To truly begin your new life as a pony, you must first put the final nail on the boards which close the door to your old life. In order to do this, I have arranged a meeting with a friend whose fate you have mistakenly mourned for several years, and whose actions are intimately linked with your present circumstances."
Rough Edges sniffed, clearing some of the remaining snot from her snout as she followed the princess into the grand staircase where another alicorn was waiting. She was no fool; she knew who the Celestia was talking about. But for years now, she had though of her old university friend Hannah as being dead, and just because she had been disabused of the notion in theory did not mean that her brain had fully internalized the implications. So it was with baited breath and stretched eyes that she heard the blue pony speak. "Hello, Jenny. It's me, Hannah."
"I'm always glad to hear yer tryin' out new things, sugarcube" Applejack replied before Dash could finish.
"Ha ha," snorted Dash, "no, but seriously, I've been thinking... where are all the earth pony and pegasus alicorns?"
"Beg yer pardon?"
"I mean, look, everypony knows it's us that do all the real work around here. But it seems to me like the royal family could use a little more diversity. Hay, they even made Twilight into a princess. Twilight! When they could have had ME! The most awesome pegasus in the face of Equestria!"
Applejack wasn't paying too much attention to that last bit. Her brain had been kicked into gear by the first point. "Ya know, now that ya mention it, it does seem a mite unfair..."
Rainbow Dash was already heading out the door. "Well, come on! Let's see what the rest of the girls think about this!"
"Uhm, I don't know where all the earth pony and pegasus alicorns are... I am sorry, was I supposed to know? It's my fault, please forgive me..."
"Silly filly, there are no earth pony or pegasus alicorns around because if they were, then they wouldn't be alicorns anymore!"
"No, darling, I do know why there is a lack of earth pony or pegasus alicorns around. Is there not someone a little more obvious to whom you should ask this question?"
"Oh my God, you're right! I can't believe I never noticed that before! Oh no, what if it turns out that Princess Celestia has been a closet tribalist all along? No, wait, she would never do that. Ah! She must have meant it as a test! She deliberately refrained from creating earth pony and pegasus alicorns to see if I would even notice? Maybe every minute I don't notice deducts another point, and she expected me to get it within the first hour but now I'm into the negative thousands right now?! Spike, quick, take a letter!"
"To my most faithful student Twilight Sparkle:
I am very disappointed in you. How could you even come to the conclusion that none of the current alicorns were anything but unicorns? I'll have you know that not only was Cadence born as a pegasus, but that both Luna and myself hail from earth pony roots. It seems to me that perhaps you are not ready for princesshood yet. If you think of unicorns as the default pony type, with other ponies being alterations upon their platonic perfection, then you have some rather obvious tribalist issues you need to resolve. I will be arriving at your house tomorrow at noon in order to take back your wings and regalia, until such a time when you have matured a bit more and are more ready to shoulder this kind of responsibility.
Your truly, Princess Celestia
PS: On a completely unrelated note, could you please ask Rainbow Dash if she has ever been interested in government work? I have a position which has just opened up."
The problem with a brain like Twilight Sparkle's is that it required constant stimulation.
*CLANG*
Previously, her mostly free days spent reading at the library had provided that.
*CLANG*
On other days, her mind had been kept busy solving serious problems, learning about friendship, or simply having fun.
*CLANG*
Is it any wonder that the monotony of clanking a pickax against the walls of a coal mine would eventually make her snap?
*CLANG*
"I am sick of this horseapples!" roared a voice inside her head. Twilight had taken to calling this side of her Twilight Prime. "Every day, every single Monday through Friday, we have to come here and strike the pickax and then move a little and strike some more like some kind of, some kind of common slave!"
*CLANG*
"Come on now, it's not so bad," she imagined a second personality reply. This one, closer to how Twilight had behaved for most of her life, was called Twilight Naught. "Sure, we're covered in coal and grime and we have to spend 8 hours a day down here, but we get another 8 hours of time to ourselves. Hours we have EARNED, Twilight. And our weekends are free!"
*CLANG*
"Our weekends are... are you even LISTENING to yourself?!" roared Twilight Prime. "We have ALWAYS had free weekends. AND free week days, too. We used to deal with the occasional library patron; an hour a day at most! We had the rest of our time left over to study, to talk with our friends, or, hay, to relax and take some time to enjoy the beauty of being alive!" she spat. "There is nothing beautiful about coming home with a sore body and a blank mind after hours of this torture, or having to carefully ration out our remaining time for recovery and chores and squeezing a precious few hours of reading on Sunday when there is nothing important to do!"
*CLANG*
"You talk like we've never done a day's hard work in our life!" said Twilight Naught "Do you remember Winter Wrap-Up? Or that time we helped Applejack collect her harvest? Hay, why don't you go complain to HER about having to do some honest living, she has been getting up with the sun and running her farm for most of her life. In fact, most ponies live like this, you spoiled, entitled little brat!"
*CLANG*
"Oh, is that supposed to make me feel better?! 'Gee, Twilight, sure, your life has become a living hell ever since Princess Bitchlestia decided to cut back your stipend and force you to work to make rent into order to help you 'build character', as she put it, but what do you know, virtually everybody else in the planet has it at least as bad as you, so hey, chin up!' Twilight Prime was seething; her non-existent purple mane threatened to burst into a burst of imaginary fire at any moment."
*CLANG*
"Don't badmouth the princess!" Twilight Naught looked like she was about pounce on her mental counterpart. "She's right, you know! All your life, you've coasted on your talent. You were singled out as a child prodigy, and since then you've scarcely done anything but what you wanted to do! You got to read and study, and hang out with a princess, and when the girls sweetened you on the magic of friendship, oh look, your next assignment was to stay in town and spend all your time with ponies whose companies you enjoy. Guess what?! Life is not a bouquet of roses! That's what the princess is trying to teach you!"
*CLANG*
"...it should be," hissed Twilight Prime as she looked down.
*CLANG*
"...what?" asked Twilight Naught.
*CLANG*
"It should be," said Twilight Prime, with more determination, as she lifted her head. "It SHOULD be! Why should anypony be forced to devote most of their time to these stupid endeavors? Why ME, most of all? ME! I am special! I am the princess's student! I led the team that saved Equestria twice! You would think that would be enough to earn my place in this world, but nooooo, apparently I also have to 'work for a living'!"
*CLANG*
"You've lost it." Twilight Naught was horrified. "Do you really hate this job so much that you will latch on to delusions of grandeur in order to rationalize passing the burden over you onto the back of another pony? You know that's what will happen if you find some clever way to avoid this, right? The mining company will just hire some other pony to do this work instead."
*CLANG*
"But in that case..." whispered Twilight Sparkle, as the mental halves of her wandering thoughts stared each other down in mutual hate and mistrust.
"I don't get it, AJ," said Rainbow Dash, her furrowed eyes turning look at her orange companion. She floated atop the Ponyville street they were walking on, her wings beating harder than necessary to keep her aloft. "I mean, just last month, all these ponies were going ga-ga for these things." She thrust out her hoof, exhibiting the tiny plastic models standing upon it. Some bore the likeness of Princess Celestia, some of Princess Luna, some of this or that foreign representative or head of state. "I didn't see the big deal, but lots of ponies were willing to part with good bits for them, so I figured, if I just got my hooves on a few of these, I could resell for for a pretty nice extra cut. So I went out of town to buy some, but by the time I got back, EVERYPONY had them and they had become cheap as dirt, and now I'm stuck with a bunch of lame little dolls I paid top bit for! Come on, AJ, you're the businessmare. Can you tell me what I did wrong?"
Applejack took a few moments to answer, seemingly chewing the words over inside her mouth before she began to speak. "Well, sugarcube, the thing is, all markets are a little bit like living things. And like all living things, they kinda have their own life cycles, ya know what Ah'm sayin'?"
Rainbow Dash stopped, then shook her head. "Can't say I do, AJ. I mean, what do life cycles have to do with making money? Are you saying I should try to give my bits some privacy and see if they reproduce?"
Applejack laughed as she ceased walking, and then continued. "Nah, that ain't what Ah meant at all. See, Dash, business opportunities go through phases, just like apple trees and cattle. At the first stage of their life, nobody knows about them yet and they are as full of opportunity as a brand new day, when the sky is still red and ya don't even know how much you're gonna accomplish by day's end. Not that ya would know much about that, ya lazy oversleeper," she added, grinning at her friend.
"Hey, I just sleep in because it is the best way to recover from all the amazing energy I spend each previous day. I am awesomeness efficient!" Rainbow said, puffing up her chest and smiling with closed eyes. She soon opened them again. "But anyway, what does that have to do with my problem?"
"Hold yer horses, Ah'm gettin' there. So, that's the best time to invest in a venture and reap the rewards, if ya KNOW it's going to be successful. But other ponies, they ain't dumb, see? They are always paying attention, seeing what works and what doesn't, and trying it out for themselves. So the minute somepony starts raking in handfuls of bits, they're on the clock. Now, everypony else is gonna try to get a cut of that, so they are gonna invest in similar ventures. And before ya know it, the invisible hoof of the free market has done its thing, and the business opportunity is dead. Ain't no use trying to revive it; everypony already knows about it, so lighting ain't gonna strike twice the same place twice. Nope, yer best bet is to move on and look for somethin' else, if ya weren't one of the lucky ones who could get in early while the goin' was still good," Applejack finished with a satisfied nod.
"So... does that mean you can't give me some awesome advice for how I can turn my stock into a nice pile of bits? Or at least on how to recover all the money I put in in the first place?" asked Rainbow Dash, a small amount of hope still lingering in her voice.
Applejack snorted, and began walking again. "Sugarcube, if Ah knew a way to rescue every failed venture Ah ever came across, Ah would trade mah cutie mark with Twilight's, 'cause believe me, that right there would be some mighty powerful magic."
Free Spirit woke up to the feeling of being kicked in the face.
"Ow! What the hay?!" he screamed, his eyes nailed shut by pain. From above him, he heard a reply.
"'What the hay?' That's exactly what I should be asking! Here I am, taking a pleasant stroll on the outskirts of town you have been telling me were so lovely, and what do I find? My new coltfriend is sleeping IN A HOLE, IN THE GROUND!"
Oh, horseapples. He knew that voice. With a wince, he opened his eyes enough to take in the view of his current fillyfriend, Straight Edge, towering above him like a hydra straight from the Everfree. On a second thought, he might have preferred the hydra.
"You told me you were going home last night! What the hay are you doing, sleeping out here like a drunkard?!"
"Knock it off," said Free Spirit as he turned over, rubbing his snout as he got on his legs. Straight Edge was softly pushed aside, but she quickly circled and stared at his face with the burning fury of dragon fire lit behind her pupils. "Look, I am home, okay? This is where I live. For now, at least."
Straight Edge didn't back down, but slowly, the features on her face twisted from pure rage into a smidgen of confusion. "You... live here? Are you saying you are some kind of a homeless pony?!"
"No, I just told you, I AM home. Home is where the heart is, don'tcha know?" he said, with a small, cocky grin that he knew from experience would drive her wild. Unfortunately, Straight Edge's brain was still too shocked to do much driving.
"But... how? Every time I've seen you, you are clean! You are presentable! You don't even have a beard!"
Free Spirit sighted and rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, turns out gym memberships are pretty cheap. You would be amazed at what a couple of daily showers can do for your appearance."
Straight Edge was staring at him incredulously. "But... but how can you keep a job if you don't have a house? Where do you file all your paperwork?"
He put a hoof behind his head, at least having the decency to look a little embarrassed. "I don't, okay? I work on this or that odd job every time I feel my purse running bit light. It's all under the table. No paperwork, no taxes, no nothing."
"But..." repeated Straight Edge, her mind struggling to come up with some other complain that would justify her feeling of utter wrongness, "but that can't be enough to buy all your food! How do you eat?"
Free Spirit gave her a flat look. "We're ponies. There's plenty of grass around. I manage somehow."
Straight Edge couldn't believe her ears. Her eyes started to water. "You have been grazing... for weeks? Oh, Spirit, why didn't you tell me?! Listen, I have some extra room in my apartment. Why don't you come out of the hole and we'll get you nice and settled and in the morning we'll look at the classifieds and..."
"No!" he said suddenly, backing away from her. "Don't you understand? That's exactly what I don't want! I don't want to be tied down in one place, I don't want my life to be spent paying for an ever bigger shelter filled with ever more useless things, alright?! I like this life. Before I came here, I spent months under a bridge in Manehattan, and I met all these ponies and, and we had a lot of fun! And then I felt the need to move on, and you know what? I want to be able to pack my saddlebags and move out of here tomorrow if I want to!"
If her eyes had been watering before, now Straight Edge's eyes were flooded with tears. "Spririt..."
"I'm going for a walk," he announced, packing his stuff in. "You're free to stay in the hole if you want, just lock the door when you leave," he spat, and then walked away.
Twilight Sparkle silently sat in the middle of five lumbering metal cylinders, each of which contained the frozen corpse of what had been one of her closest friends.
No, thought Twilight. Not corpses. Not while there's still a chance to bring them back.
"I miss them, Twilight," said a muffled voice to her right. Wrapped from spines to claws in insulating layers, Spike had some trouble speaking and moving. Twilight turned to look at the one constant in her long life; a life which had just gotten a lot longer.
"I miss them too, Spike," she whispered, bending her head down to nuzzle the outermost layer of cloth which Spike sat under. "But don't worry, we'll see them again. We'll see them all again. Not just the girls, but Applebloom, Sweetie Belle, Scotaloo, Shining Armor... they're all going to be fine one day. It's all part of the plan."
"Could you... could you repeat the plan to me again?" said Spike, and even though she had difficulty seeing his eyes, it was evident from his voice that tears were in his eyes. "I know you've explained it many times already, but it makes me feel so hopeful when you..."
"Oh, Spike!" Twilight hugged her number one assistant, her hooves almost wrapping all the way around his added bulk. "Of course I can, I'll tell it to you however many times you want to hear it." Twilight cleared her throat, and promptly fell back into the familiar rhythm of a lecture.
"The plan is for us to bunker down for a while. You, me, Luna, Celestia, Cadence... we're all immortal, or very long-lived in your case. We can all afford to wait a couple of centuries for the ecosystem to recover from the damage the recent impact event caused."
"But our friends... they are not immortal. And neither is most of Equestria. Even if they were, there simply aren't enough resources to sustain them in this bunker. So they'll sleep. They'll sleep until one day when we can awaken them. Awaken them to a restored world."
"I won't pretend it'll be easy, Spike. The five of us will need to learn the entire collective technological knowledge of our civilization, and we are going to have to rebuild its infrastructure from scratch. Even then, our society at its most advanced could not have revived them. So we'll need to research, and develop, and advance, just the five of us, until we finally hit on something that works."
"But don't worry. I have faith in us. And our friends had faith in us, too. They went into their dreamless sleep hoping to wake up one day... and we're going to honor that trust Spike, even if it takes us one thousand years," Twilight finished, before levitating the dragon onto her back and slowly trotting out of the cryochambers. "Now come on, you don't want to be late for your multivariate calculus lessons. We all have to master the basics before we can decide how to specialize!"
"Hello Princess Celestia," said Twilight Sparkle, the barest hint of a smile adorning her muzzle. "Thank you for coming to my funeral."
"Oh, Twilight, you know there isn't any other place in the world I'd rather be," replied Celestia before pausing, and then she added, "and I'm not just saying that because this is the last place on the planet where any trace of pony civilization remains."
Twilight turned her head around, eyes scanning through plots of grass and granite headstones before turning back to her former teacher. "You didn't bring Cadence?"
Celestia winced. "I... didn't think you'd want to see her, Twilight," she admitted. "You haven't accompanied me to visit her in centuries, and we both know she's unable to participate in any event."
Twilight shook her head. "I know, but it just... feels appropriate, you know? She was with me through so much... I think she'd have wanted to come."
"Well..." said Celestia as she raised a hoof rub her chin. "If you really want to see her, I can always teleport her here."
"Please do."
The graveyard came alive with a white flash like a bolt of thunder, and the next second there stood the form of the pink princess of love, Mi Amore Cadenza.
Or rather, there laid the form of the princess of love. Cadence had her back to the ground, her wings and hooves constantly twitching and spasming in every direction, her mouth alternating between fits of giggles and guttural moans of the kind you'd have sworn came from badly acted clop movie. And plastered on her face, a fixture no less permanent than her horn, was the biggest, widest smile her mouth could make and still continue to function.
Twilight took a step back, eyes tethered to the spectacle of her once foalsitter. There was a reason she didn't come to visit Cadence any more. Twilight knew Cadence was enjoying it; that each second she experienced was more pleasurable than all the nights she had spent with her late husbands, from Shining Armor all the way to Barding Gleam, combined. That still did not make it an easy thing to see.
"Thank you for coming, Cadence," Twilight said after regaining her composure, and immediately cast a silence spell on the perpetually happy alicorn. Just because she wanted Cadence to be there did not mean she wanted her to disrupt the procedures.
For her part, Cadence did not seem to mind, or even notice. She simply continued her enjoyment in silence.
Twilight turned around and gazed into the horizon with a a half-lidded stare. Twilight didn't know how long she sat there until she heard the Princess's voice behind her. "Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?"
Twilight turned back, and saw Celestia looking at her with what had to be the most emotion the white mare had displayed since the fall of the seventh iteration of Equestria, which was to say, not much.
Twilight shrugged, as if it were of no great consequence. "I'm open to alternatives."
"We could always try creating some more ponies and raising up another kingdom," said Celestia. "We haven't done that since Luna left us, Twilight, and I think that maybe if it we pulled it in our own direction we could accomplish something truly..."
"No," said Twilight firmly, shaking her head. "I'm sorry, Princess, but I already told you how I feel about that." She stared down at her chest, as if, by concentrating, she could see her insides. "Every time we repeat an experience, it becomes more and more routine; less and less special. Every time we rebuild Equestria, no matter how new and exciting we try to make it, I've felt my capacity to enjoy ponies and activities flatten as I come to perceive ever more patterns, and start classifying new experiences as small variations on some old one."
Twilight swallowed. "I... I no longer form bonds like I used to. I just don't care about any new ponies I meet. And neither did Cadence, by the end. I'm pretty sure that's what finally caused her to channel her magic into an infinite loop that perpetually stimulates her brain's pleasure center."
Twilight continued. "It's like when you first find a song you love, and then you listen to it again and again and again until you're sick of it, and you can never get that initial enjoyment back, only in our case, it's not a song, it's the whole world." Twilight shut her eyes. "I know you feel it too, Princess, even if you try to hide it."
"Neural modification?" ventured Celestia.
"I don't want to edit away my capacity to be bored so that I can be eternally satisfied by the raise and fall of ever new Equestrias, Princess; that just seems like a more round-about method of doing what Cadence did," replied Twilight.
Celestia hesitated, and then asked "...intelligence amplification?"
Twilight looked at Celestia. "...after what happened with Luna?"
"We cannot be sure that such is the inevitable result of all attempts at increased cognition," reasoned Celestia. "Perhaps Luna's... 'ascension' was simply the result of piling on too many new improvements at once, causing the process to become heavily recursive and go superexponetial. It may well be that a more controlled climb up the intelligence tree is possible."
Twilight looked skeptical. "But even with improved intelligence allowing me to have access to experiences I can't even comprehend now, it's only a matter of time until I run out of novelty at that level, too, and then I will want to boost my intelligence even more. I'd still end up at the same destination as Luna, just more slowly.
Celestia raised an eyebrow. "Surely that's better than being dead?"
"I'm not so sure, Princess," Twilight disagreed. "You saw how she looked at us. Or, rather, how she didn't look at us. It was like we were insects to her; entirely beneath her notice. I suppose it's like asking a pony to care about bacteria, but I saw Luna abandon her only sister without a second thought, using magic more advanced than I'd ever dreamt of seeing, to go off into deep space and do who-knows-what makes sense to her new super-smart brain. I don't want to become the kind of being who would do that, no matter how gradual and incremental the process is."
"I suppose your decision is made, then," sighted Celestia in defeat. She took a moment to compose herself, and then a tiny smile peeked at twilight out of her mouth. "You know, Twilight, for all the ruts you seem to be stuck in, it seems some things really do change given enough time."
Twilight looked at the Princess. "What do you mean?"
"A hundred thousand years ago, you would have never dared to argue against me like that."
Twilight felt a smile of her own sneak onto her lips, along with a sense of contentment. It wasn't the hearty round of joy and laughter such a comment would have elicited in ages past, but she'd take it. She walked over to Celestia. "Even I am not humble enough not to consider myself your equal after that many years of shared experiences, Princess. And the only reason I keep onl calling you 'Princess' is because of the nostalgia factor." Twilight's hooves wrapped around Celestia's torso, giving her the strongest hug she had given anypony in a long time. "Thank you for all you've done for me, Princess."
"Your very welcome, Twilight Sparkle. Know that I will always miss and remember you."
"Princess... I don't think I'm ready yet. Do you think you and Cadence could stay a few more hours?"
"Of course, Twilight. You have all the time in the world."
A few days later, the last intelligent being on the planet sat in front of a fresh gravestone, and wondered how she should spend the rest of her life.
