01: Moving Forwards, Far Forwards
Ponies traveled up and down streets and alleys, focused on their daily lives. Radios sat on tables and balconies, playing various stations for patrons or residents. Homes and businesses, often 3 or 4 stories tall, dotted the foothills they were scattered upon, rolling down into terraced gardens and parks that followed streams and creeks coming from up in the mountains.
Bridges of concrete and wood could just as often connect the second floor of one building to the third of another, the city on these hills almost as vertical as it was horizontal. Walls and fences were often planted with rolling vines and flowering plants cascading down and providing green between the white concretes and dark woods.
It was for the best. Hardly anyone lived here in the time before. It meant that the odds of terrible accidents to the unexpected were avoidable. While rare, occasionally in the blink of an eye, a vehicle could appear, it’s occupants often no longer in any position to control it in any meaningful way. Some cities, built in places where older civilizations once stood, had to institute civic programs to try and train Unicorns to ‘catch’ these if they appeared, as such events could easily result in many ponies being injured.
For as nice things seemed in New Springs City, a glance down the hills from some of the peaks would reveal a torrid cloud of smoke and dust rising up and moving east. It was from an ancient place, the buried remains of one of the ancient cities from before. Now it was a source of metals. For many, it was a distant vague memory. Not even a legacy, but material necessary to move forwards and grow again. Down there, little villages of cobbled homes sat, speaking something about how well the workers were treated.
Sarah found it as a shock when she learned what had happened. So much so the feathers on her wings bristled at the idea of it. She was among the few that would appear every year, those from when Magic came to Earth more than six thousand years back. There were various names for the Event: the Collapse, the Happening, and Thaumic Advent all come up depending on who she asked.
As she passed a window, she looked at the creature that stared back at her. The frame of a small horse covered in a dark turquoise fur rather than anything she would have called ‘normal.’ The kind folks that had been trying to help her recover from this ordeal help give her a hair- no, mane styling, putting the autumn orange and rusty locks up in a style that she might have found from a 50s-style magazine from before the Event. While most ponies went along with their days wearing little to nothing, it still left Sarah feeling incredibly self-conscious, prompting her to get several light dresses. Today’s was a maroon summer dress that had been tailored for her.
Her mind wandered, pondering the reality she was stuck with as she moved down the street slowly again. Despite all the support she got from these people… She felt lost and lonely. Everyone she cared for, her family and friends… They were lost to time, as she was. For all she knew, they could have come 1000 or more years in either direction. Far outside her reach
Morning Mist, one of the few ponies she’d grown close to here, was the one who made the suggestion. They had given Sarah an address and a name: a place called the Arbor Society. Apparently it was one of the few things that had survived from some of the earliest days. Ponies had faced a rough time since their Advent. Diseases, Wars, and other things had attempted to hold them back through the years though they still chased one thing that they could always see, just out of their reach. That time before the Event, a time of Computers, Technology, and Science. A time when the Stars were in their reach.
Either way, the message was clear to her. While they couldn’t always help, there was still a chance. A chance they could maybe find out what happened to her family and friends. They had tried their best to keep genealogical data from the beginning. It had always been a difficult task. Various records had been lost. Others scrambled, still needing to be rebuilt from scattered copies. Not everyone had picked it up immediately, especially those overseas who they could not communicate with easily.
But the hope, the possibility, existed.
She looked across the bridge she was passing on, over one of the spillways/parks of the city at the large building before her. 5 Stories tall, almost built like a church from long before. Solidly, thickly built with grounds covered in plant life. Out in front of it was a round walkway and plaza with a single, large oak tree in the center of it. She gaped up at the entrance as she passed inside, an arc of wood trestle with vines climbing over it leading into the glass doors.
In modern times, the Arbors covered two roles. They had found long ago the need to fund themselves somehow. Banking proved to be profitable. Practices required to protect people’s valuables doubled as ways to protect valuable records.
The main lobby was a simple place, potted plants periodically following the sides as natural light streamed down from windows above. Down the center led to a small memorial to those left behind. it was said to be modeled after something similar in ancient Alexandria, notes and messages dotting it from people in a similar position as Sarah seeking any way they could to reach out to the lost.
Following the signs directed, she found herself in one of the two wings the building had. A unicorn who was almost parchment tan with a tawny, straight mane was behind the desk, looking up as she entered. “Hello. I am Final Draft. How can the Order of Scribes help you today?” he said in a light tone. Had it not been so quiet in here, he probably would have been easily missed. In here, though, his voice almost filled the space.
Her eyes didn’t quite look at him. Instead, they had pretty much turned to the bottom of the desk before the stallion, her worry that this wouldn’t work, that they would find nothing, showing itself as much as it impacted her voice. “Oh, well… I was hoping something,” she said, looking up at him now. “They said you all could help me. I need to find someone. Anyone, please tell me you can help me.”
The unicorn provided a gentle smile to the mare. “Of course. We just request you fill out these forms. Simple information, the name of the person or persons you seek. Keep in mind the first four are free. Any more than that and we request a fee for each additional person.”
“Four?” Sarah squeaked out.
“Yes.”
“Any reason for that? I imagine many people had more they cared for!”
“We wanted, at the least, to make sure most could at least try to seek their spouse and children. That covered most cases. We try to serve a purpose in our community, but we still have expenses like all others.”
She looked disheartened but started filling out the paperwork regardless. “Four.”
“If you do not mind me asking… Who all do you seek?”
“Hmmm…” she had to think on it. She had no money, really. She was only getting by day to day at the behest of the government providing her room, board, and a small stipend while she learned her new form. It was not the best of arrangements, either. Sterile, small rooms with but a bed and desk and simple foods. The stipend was for getting items she would need to try and join the workforce and live independently when her recovery program was completed.
“My Fiance, to start. He was… Well…” she wasn’t sure how to put it. Important didn’t seem like enough of a work, and everything else seemed expected. “...He’s what gave life to my world.
The unicorn nodded in acknowledgment as he listened. He worked as he did so, the glow of his horn enveloping a pen as he took notes.
“Then my brother. If there was anyone there to support me through anything else, it was him. He always had this silly idea he could protect me from the world but… This was outside of his view.” She gave pause for a sec, the pencil rolling between feathers clumsily as she put some thought into who next. “And I guess my parents. I want to know what happened to them, too.”
“You did not seem so sure about that last one.”
“I… Don’t know who else I would look for.” came the tired response. “There’s a lot of people who I cared for but… I don’t know, they were my family, even if we didn’t agree…” Wing motions, slow and rough, wrote out the information as best as she could guess. Descriptions, but without any about appearance. Aliases. Titles and awards. Anything that might help differentiate them from somepony else. She passed the clipboard back to Draft, the glow of his magic gently tugging it away from her.
After looking it over, he began to inscribe upon it, runes and a language that completely befuddled her. Computers had been lost for longer than any could recount. That many documents and files could be incredibly difficult to search through. Other methods were needed to try and simplify the process. The inscribed sheets were placed over clean papers, the unicorn’s horn glowing as he focused his powers, copies of the information burning themselves onto the sheets before. Once separated, the copies burned, a cloud of purple smoke rising from them and twinkling with an odd light before flying off into the room nearby.
“What was that!” She had seen magic in her time here, but only ever to levitate things. This was new to her, the declaration filled with as much fascination as it was surprise.
“A wisp. With but a simple command, it will flow through the pages of our records seeking those names. If your loved ones filed with us and used their names, it will return to me in time and reform as a page again. That page will tell me where to find what you seek.”
She stared into the room, a childlike wonder filling her as she saw what was going on. Not just scribes with dusty tomes, but a room with a dozen or so of these wisps floating around through shelves, dancing through the air as they moved from shelf to shelf. After watching for a moment, she looked back at Final Draft.
“How long will it take?”