> 2040: A Matter of Taste
>  by KrisSnow
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Hooves and Housing
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a perfect night in the summer of 2040, Alma dreamed of escaping death. Fleeing from disease, having her brain chopped out and scanned, and becoming a digital mind. She woke up, slowly remembering that she'd done exactly that just months ago.

She lay in her hotel bed as a humanoid squirrel, clutching a warm, fluffy blanket that happened to be her tail. A contented chitter escaped her. She sat up, giggling at the noise. "Best way to wake up." When she'd entered the virtual world of Talespace, she'd been allowed to become anything she wanted. It was time to try something different, though.

Beside, her hotel room was getting tiresome. Other than the view of the thousand-story Ivory Tower from the balcony, it was just a generic room holding her little collection of adventuring gear and teaching paperwork. This world's smell/taste system had finally gotten fixed, but there was still only so much she could take of Hotel Computronium's buffet. The place was limbo, not heaven.

Alma taught part-time in Free Texas using robotics, but she had a long weekend ahead without having to cross between plain-old Earth and her new home. She thought about all the places she could go and all the friends who might pull her into commitments she wasn't ready to make.

Alma crawled out of bed and stretched, ears to tail, glad for being alive to have such problems. Alma had taken to writing notes to Ludo, Talespace's ruling AI, on the desk's notepad. Today she wrote: "Thank you."

One shower later, Alma had decided to go exploring and steer clear of any existential angst for once. She geared up and walked out to the cavern world of Ivory Tower. It was time to be a pony.

She had only seen a few of the worlds of Talespace, each one with its own physics. Today she traveled through the vast cave of the Ivory Tower, and headed for a gate to the Hooflands. The entryway had its own curving entry-cave along the main cavern's border, similar to the little brothel empire Alma had once dared to visit. This area let the usual dark blueish stone fade into vibrant grass and flowers. Alma squinted. There was a different graphics filter here that made everything look slightly cartoonish. A giant horseshoe marked the edge of a shimmering world portal. Next to it stood a wooden sign:

"To Hooflands (West)." A map showed that another portal was on the opposite side of Ivory Tower. "A magical land of equines, cervids and other creatures living in friendship and harmony. If you enter, you'll become a small, quadruped cartoon horse! (Free transformation on entry/exit.) Follow the starting quest to change from your initial form into a majestic deer, a winged pegasus or one of several other species."

The sign added: "Roleplay rules in effect. The locals will be happy to teach you the land's history. Please don't discuss Earthside matters outside of designated OOC taverns. Mean behavior is punishable by a traditional PVP beatdown."

Alma laughed. For a world based on an early 21st-century cartoon, it had a formal attitude. Worth having a look, though. Who knew? She might want to get a house there. She carefully stepped through the warm, rippling portal.

#

She landed on all fours with a click of hooves on stone. Alma grinned and looked herself over. Grey cartoon horse with an unusually bushy tail. The angle of her vision seemed wider than usual. She tried walking around and stumbled repeatedly in the entry chamber before reaching the door that towered over her. She giggled, trotting in place and saying, "I'm a pony!" Unfortunately her clothes and equipment hadn't come with her, so she was nude. She blushed. Considering the family-friendly theme of this place she doubted anything would show.

A checkpoint labeled "Crystal of Salvation" hovered in one corner. She pinged it with one hoof to set her respawn point in case anything here killed her.

Alma craned her neck way over to one side and spotted a table holding a golden key to the obvious keyhole on the door. Picking it up with her forehooves was possible, what with her front legs' flexibility and the way her hooves stuck to things as though covered with tape. Walking on her hindlegs was a disaster, though. She tripped immediately and dropped the key. She spent a minute testing how ordinary walking had become so hard in this body, and four-hooved movement much easier.

She had to grab the key in her mouth to get it to the door. "Germs don't exist here," she mumbled to herself as she slid the key into place. At last the door opened, spilling light across the entryway. She stepped outside and forgot to keep walking.

Alma stood on a hillside overlooking a town at the mouth of a shining river. A castle of obsidian and blue marble watched over a land of sunshine, half-timber houses, and a bustling coast. The sky was filled with pegasi, griffins, airships, hot-air balloons, and buildings with clouds for foundations or even made of clouds. Where Ivory Tower had been a surreal but practical land for work and play, the Hooflands were a fantasy that had sprung to life.

Words brushed themselves directly onto her vision, and a fanfare played from nowhere. You have discovered Noctis: Queendom of the Night.

Not Canterlot or the like? Talespace went by the post-revolt idea of copyright, so it was odd that the old cartoons' setting hadn't been lifted wholesale.

She trotted down the hill road, leaving behind a stone fort that looked designed to keep visitors in, not out. Its outer gate stood wide today. The path took her toward the main town, past cheery thatch-roofed houses. The Mango Inn ambushed her around a bend, hidden by the first buildings. A cheery fruit-themed sign welcomed her to a two-story place with a downstairs tavern and hotel rooms up on a balcony.

A bat-like pegasus with leathery wings and slitted golden eyes trotted downstairs with a broom in her muzzle. "Hi!" she mumbled, and spat it out. "Let me guess. Recent uploader?"

Alma nodded. "Are brooms necessary in the Hooflands?"

"You mean is there dirt? Dust, more like. You have to put effort into maintaining things or they get unpleasant, then broken." She grinned, exposing cute little fangs, and tapped her head with one hand. "The name's Double Mango. Uploader. Before I give you the spiel, you want I should skip the roleplaying stuff and just tell you what to do?"

"No, let's hear the storyline."

"Sure. Ahem! Welcome, traveler! This is the land of Noctis, in the western Hooflands. If you feel destiny's call in this magical land, you should visit our queen. All hail Nightmare Moon! She will grant part of her magic to ponies who prove that they've started making friends."

Alma grinned. "Back up. Your queen is Nightmare Moon?"

"Only the most glorious of equine rulers!"

"And she wants people --"

"Ponies."

"To make friends," Alma finished.

Mango nodded enthusiastically. "Can't have a powerful and fearsome society if her subjects can't get along, right? It's part of her sinister plans."

It made a certain amount of sense. Nightmare Moon had barely been seen on the show, but the episode depicting her as a ruler made it clear that far worse alternate worlds were possible. "Befriending ponies sounds more fun than a quest to 'kill five slimes'. How do I prove I've made friends?"

"You must learn the names and some information about at least three ponies of different races."

"That's more like 'acquaintances' than 'friends'."

Mango shrugged her wings. "It's a start."

"Are you busy, then? I actually am curious about what running an inn here is like. A friend of mine's a cook at a place called Thousand Ales."

"You mean Kai Appian? The man behind the Great Taste DLC?"

Alma giggled. "Is that what we're calling it?" Kai, one of Talespace's first "native" AIs, had just perfected a rewrite of the smell/taste system to fix one of the obvious bugs of being a digital mind: bland scents and food. Alma breathed in deeply and smelled sawdust and hay. "He had me and some friends try the upgrade, but he wasn't the only one working on it. He's just glad it's complete."

"Wait, you mean it's out now? I've been waiting for years to have a really good meal. Do you mind if I run off and get it?"

"Sure, but you'll probably have to do a dungeon crawl or something to get it."

Mango's ears drooped. "Oh. Might take a while then, and you need your quest info, so I'll wait. It should be enough for you to know I'm a former actress who came here in '38, and I bought up this lot so I could meet lots of new ponies."

Alma said, "Do you do much cooking?"

"Nah, I buy from the chefs downhill. Not much point, so far."

Alma knew. Even the mints that constantly appeared on her hotel pillow had improved since the upgrade. "I'll let you get going." Alma started to turn away, bumping her tail into the door.

"Thanks. Stop by later and I'll cook something! Oh, and try Onyx's bakery to meet a unicorn, and the Zen Farm if you want to befriend a strange earthbound pony."

Alma thanked Mango and trotted out, then glanced back. Mango whooshed through the air just over Alma's ears and soared toward the world portal, in search of the taste upgrade. Alma smiled and shut the door behind her. It'd only been around a subjective month for Alma and she'd already gotten tired of the food, so someone who'd lived in Talespace for years must be eager for the improvement.

She kept going downhill toward the town and closer to the castle, looking for other ponies. The colorful population was mostly concentrated below. When a strong-looking stallion went by hauling a wagon full of logs, Alma turned and followed his slow pace uphill. "Excuse me? You're one of the 'earthbound' ones, right?" No wings, horns or other fancy parts.

"Yup," drawled the stallion, and kept walking.

Alma had heard that voice long ago; it came from the cartoons that inspired this world. "I'm looking to meet other ponies. Got a minute?"

"Nope."

Alma left him alone and kept going. A trio of brightly-colored unicorns trotted by, chattering, and ignored Alma. A pegasus soared overhead, seeming not to hear her either.

"NPCs," she said aloud. "This world's full of fake background characters." The Hooflands were a dollhouse where only a few real people played. Why else had Mango named specific ponies to befriend?

Alma shook her head and felt her mane tickle her neck. No angst this weekend. She kept walking.

"Are you all right, ma'am?" said a voice from above. The pegasus hovering there with slow wingbeats had sky-blue eyes and a similar mane and tail on a grey coat.

"Are you real?" Alma waved one hoof around at the seemingly bustling town. "There're all these..."

"Backgrounders," he said, with a note of disdain. "The population is a mix. Some ponies here are a Cluster Intelligence or CI, with one real mind controlling multiple bodies. So, ma'am, don't presume everypony is fake."

"Reminds me of 'P-zombies'. Creatures with outward signs of being human, but nothing inside." An old philosophy argument some people still used against brain uploading. Sure, Alma could jump up and down insisting that she had real feelings and thoughts, but the skeptics insisted that it meant nothing.

"You know the term?" The pegasus looked impressed. He landed and held out his right forehoof. "I'm Sterling, a native."

She wasn't sure how to shake hooves, so she gently bumped his with hers. "Alma. Recent uploader. I've got nothing against AIs with a brain, so no offense. If anything, it's nice to know that this world doesn't revolve around me."

"Good! Looking for friends and your destiny, right? You can list me. I'm what passes for a banker."

Alma tilted her head. "You do currency exchange with Earth?"

"Sometimes. Also loans and trades between Talespace currencies. We have a bank or stagecoach robbery every month or so too; that's fun."

She grinned. Being shot by bandits just meant he'd have a quest to recover the loot. "There must be complicated tax rules for handling Earthside players' money. I used to buy a few things in Talespace with real money, but never really thought about the implications of it being more than an online game." She was more troubled by the thought that since she was officially dead, "her" Earth money was really held by Ludo.

Sterling sheepishly scratched one ear with a wing. "I leave the details to others. I'm a generalist. Also, I'm technically three years old."

Alma felt a bit weirded out. "I guess you're mature. We're just not used to the idea of minds springing forth fully-formed, outside of myths."

"Myths?"

"Yes, like Athena or Aphrodite or the Titans."

"I should look into those. I'm afraid I'm still quite ignorant of Earth even after meeting so many ponies. I don't get out much, as you can imagine."

"It's all right. We're all learning."

Sterling nodded. "Just so. If you'd like to visit sometime and speak more about the old world..." He chuckled. "I'm around."

"Thanks." Alma took her leave and wandered the streets, heading in the castle's general direction. This district seemed friendlier, or just more populated with real minds. She got smiles and waves from strangers. The castle's dark walls stood out in the distance, near a waterfall.

A heavenly scent of chocolate-chip cookies distracted her from trying to chat up anyone else. She trotted into a large cottage with a chef hat for a roof. Inside, a black unicorn behind the counter was using his glowing horn to levitate trays out of the oven. "Just in time!" he said.

Alma breathed deeply through big equine nostrils. "You must be excited about the taste upgrade."

The unicorn's ears drooped. He pointed to a sign on the wall:

"Onyx Bakery FAQ: Baker is probably not emigrating to Hooflands for decades if ever. Baker has a good career and does not need sympathy. Baker would much rather discuss Hooflands. Thanks!"

Alma said, "Sorry. Are you Onyx? Double Mango mentioned a baker."

"That's me."

"I haven't got money on me right now." Alma patted her bare flanks. "Do you charge?"

"Of course." Onyx's expression brightened and he floated a cookie over to her with a pale glow around it, matching his horn's. "This one's free."

Alma sat and took it carefully between her forehooves, sniffed, and devoured it. "You sure got the taste right. Thanks!"

"Newcomer, huh? You haven't got saddlebags yet, and you're still a generic character. Sorry if I make a bad first impression. I spend most of my time in Talespace hanging around with other players like me. I have a good regular crowd." He glanced toward a cluster of empty tables across the room. "At night."

Alma had noticed a few shared shops. "The city's mostly nocturnal, then?" She recalled how the old cartoons had a sun and moon theme, though usually not separated into nations.

"Yes, by the queen's decree." He sighed. "All hail Nightmare Moon."

"So is the other ruler... Celestia, wasn't she called?"

"Yes, yes. If you're doing the 'destiny' thing, you'll have to wait until nightfall to enter the castle. If you want a more conventional area, try the eastern Hooflands."

"Eh. I did most of my Earthside gaming in Talespace's Midgard district, so I've already done generic fantasy."

Onyx said, "I mean, show-canon. That area is run by the new Orthodoxy of Faust."

Alma decided she preferred not to stick to religious fundamentalist pony lore. "What is there to do around here until dark?"

Onyx said, "Best to head out of town and do some adventuring. Not while you're naked and unarmed and without a species, though."

Alma frowned. "I'm not an 'earthbound' pony?"

"You're nothing in particular yet."

Alma looked back at herself and saw no particular muscle definition, so Onyx's claim made sense. The ponies she'd met varied surprisingly in build and height, not just color. "In that case I should leave to fetch my money."

The baker said, "Fair enough. See you around."

Alma headed back toward the portal to Ivory Tower, but a burly green horse-guy galloped up after her, calling out, "Hold on, miss! Leaving so soon?"

She looked him over, skeptically. "I'm just going back for my stuff. I'm not sure how you carry things across."

"That's just it. Most things don't cross over unless they're in a world-appropriate container. So you need saddlebags, like these." He craned his neck around to reach for the leather bags slung across his back, and improbably pulled out an equal-sized set that he tossed toward her. "You can borrow these."

"You happened to have a spare set?" Alma said.

"I'm well-prepared!" said the stallion, beaming. "And if you'd like to borrow some money --"

"That's all right." Alma fumbled with the saddlebags and yelped as they flicked themselves over her back and fastened under her with a buckle. "What was that?"

"Oh, they do that automatically. Reach for the buckle to remove 'em."

Alma did, to prove she wasn't wearing cursed horse stuff. She slipped the saddlebags back on and wriggled to get them settled comfortably, though supporting weight "forward" on her back felt strange. "Thanks. Can I carry money from Ivory Tower in these?"

"Sure."

"And then I'll need to find the banker again, then an equipment shop." She only had the four-day weekend before her next class, and less subjective time than that, and there was planning to do. Wouldn't be enough time for a thorough immersion in Hoofland yet, so she'd just do the intro quest for now.

The stallion said, "He's easy to find. See you around, I guess?"

There was a blush on his muzzle. Why do I attract horse-people? thought Alma. "Yeah. I'll be back."

#

She landed on all fours in the Ivory Tower area, naked and squirrelly. Her clothes, backpack and hip pack had been neatly stacked in a corner, and the saddlebags were fastened ridiculously around her waist.

Alma stood up, wobbled to figure out her balance again, then removed the bags and dressed. The portal stood ready to take her back, but she decided to wait until nightfall. The Hooflands' friendship theme struck her as desperate, meant to forge a community out of people who would rather have a crowd of NPCs around. Alma wasn't sure telekinetic unicorns and flying pegasi and whatnot could have the same bond as some of Talespace's other communities, especially since there seemed to be at least two opposing camps already arguing over cartoon canon.

Also, Hoofland was trying to bridge the gap between Earth and Talespace, by having Earthside players participate alongside uploaders and natives. The rest of Talespace had that same awkwardness, like people popping in and out of local reality, but they didn't try to maintain a strong roleplaying culture. Did the ponies have some social bond she hadn't seen yet?

Alma headed for the Thousand Ales pub to work on a lesson plan for Monday, and to tease Kai about having met a generous stallion.

#

As she guessed, the Hooflands worked on the same time rate as Ivory Tower, around three or four Earthside hours to one local. Alma waited until what should be evening (not that Ivory Tower's stone sky gave much indication) before heading back to four hooves. She'd timed it well: night fell just as she started down the hillside path. The sun had been low on the horizon, but now it sank suddenly and the moon sprang up in a burst of silver light. The suddenly dim sky shimmered with unfamiliar stars. A flat world, thought Alma, as she trotted into town. Won't be many astrophysicists trained here.
F
She reached the bakery again, trotted a little farther, and truly saw the castle for the first time. The walls of obsidian and blue marble shined with moonlight, and the waterfall she'd spotted was one of several that flowed out of the castle towers and streamed down into a moat of lotus-blooms and herons.

The words You have discovered Noctis Castle flowed into her vision, and an orchestral swell dueled with the murmur of the waterfalls. Alma smiled; the music was a subtle reference to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, the standard spooky castle song.

Her hooves thunked on a wooden drawbridge. Guards with spiked horseshoes or unicorn-levitated spears watched her enter a courtyard of obsidian and moonstone. Alma, inspired, began composing a geology lecture weaving together volcanoes, caravans and gem-cutters. But would her slow-witted "Basic" students understand any of it? Would long-time Hooflanders get the appeal of crystal structures as macro-scale expressions of molecular bonds, a window into the hidden nano-scale world that had helped unveil DNA and nanotubes? They probably dug up huge gems already cut and polished, because that's how mining worked in fiction. Pearls before ponies.

Alma stopped walking and slapped her muzzle with one hoof. Ow. Quit being an elitist jerk. Making people see what you see is your job.

She trotted into a hall that ended in a vast silver door, and she banged into the last pony standing in line. Alma staggered back, making a face. "Sorry!"

The stocky yellow mare ahead turned, looking more curious than annoyed. "Careful. New to hooves?"

Alma nodded, feeling her head bob on her long neck. "There's a line to meet the queen?"

"There's only one of her. All hail Nightmare Moon!"

"All hail Nightmare Moon!" echoed down the line.

"So we're using all this technology --"

"Magic," the mare said.

"To simulate bureaucracy," Alma said.

"Oh, not at all! Our queen cares deeply for every one of her subjects. After she raised the moon each evening she makes time to listen to our problems." She beamed. "I'm Golden Scale, by the way."

"What kind of problems?"

The great door opened, the line lurched forward, and a unicorn trotted out with a huge smile. Mist obscured the room beyond.

Golden Scale said, "Legal disputes, weddings, dragon attacks, foals, and of course what you're here for. The Rite of Destiny! Are you nervous? Have you decided what to be?"

Alma was a little taken aback by the mare's beatific smile. "I was thinking pegasus. Will I be able to fly right away?"

"A little. All hail Nightmare Moon!" She joined in as some other conversation in line mentioned the queen. "You also have my tribe as an option, since we're friends."

"We are?"

Scale nodded. "Sure! It's easy to make friends here. A fact for when you're quizzed: I might not look it, but I'm the top-scoring spear carrier against dragons attacking Noctis. Not even he can say that!" She pointed at one of the door guards, who grunted.

"You're a battle sidekick?"

"I do a lot of things. But yes, I help more powerful heroes protect the town. It's fun! If you want to learn about flying combat, look up my brother Meteor."

They chatted for a few minutes about teaching and gems and dragons, until it was Scale's turn for an audience. She hesitated in the doorway. "Hmm... I think I'll skip this session after all. Good seeing you, miss! I'll be around." She cantered away, leaving the guards tapping their hooves impatiently and glaring at Alma. She hurried forward through the mist.

The room of Queen Nightmare Moon (all hail) swirled with the same fog. It pooled and splashed with Alma's hoofsteps on the blue carpet leading across the chamber and up a few stairs. Torches along the walls kept the mist at bay around the tall silver throne, where a round cushion held a black mare twice her size, with a shimmering mane like a window into the night sky. Slitted eyes like Double Mango's peered at her, and the queen had both wings and a horn.

"Well met," said the queen.

Alma stood on the royal carpet, dwarfed by the throne room and the virtual nation it represented. Though her knees twitched, she stayed upright. Texans... No, free people don't bow. She said, "Hello. My name is Alma."

Nightmare Moon tilted her head and smiled. "That's it? I don't mind, but I do usually hear more from new-foals. Even those unattuned to the ways of the Hooflands, who'd rather 'get on with it'."

Unattuned...? Oh. Non-roleplayers. "Are you Ludo?"

"Ha! I believe that puts me in the lead as to whether I or my 'dear sister' is asked that more. No, newcomer, I am but a Noble, a former human blessed with the magic of fate. What shall yours be? Tell me of the ponies you've met."

Alma spoke of Golden Scale, Onyx, Sterling, and Double Mango.

The queen said, "Earthbound, unicorn, pegasus, noctral. You have four choices of tribe, then."

Scale had made sure that Alma had "earthbound" as a racial option, but hadn't asked whether Alma knew any pegasi. Alma began to suspect why. She asked, "Have I been talking to one pony hive-mind this entire time?"

The queen hopped down from her throne and laughed. "Two of those you met are part of Noctis' town spirit." Her mane and tail streamed in a phantom wind.

"Golden Scale and Sterling. So they're that 'Collective Intelligence', a genius loci?"

"Indeed! Noctis has taken an interest in you. They do get the occasional crush."

Alma sputtered. "Your whole town is attracted to me?"

"Just a hundred or so assorted ponies."

"Oh dear."

"Ponies. For deer you'll need to travel to the Hart Forest to the north."

"That's. Uh." Alma shook her head. "Your majesty, could I be a pegasus? I'd love to try flying."

"Of course. Colors?"

Alma liked having a mane after having been in her squirrel-body with no human-style hair. "Blond mane and tail, blue... no, gold eyes, and stick with a greyish coat."

The queen said, "That combination might make you look rather... derpy."

Alma reeled, mentally. "You just referenced the old cartoons that --"

"The ancient tales that inspired the Hooflands' creation. Yes. I believe I qualify as a fan."

"But you look like a villain."

The queen raised one hoof and examined the elaborate gem-studded horseshoe on it. "Becoming this persona was a complex decision for me. I and my solar counterpart maintain an interesting balance for this world. Now, hold still."

A beam of darkness shot down onto Alma and transformed her. As the warm glow faded, she felt new muscles spreading along her back, and looked sidelong at her new wings. "Ah!" The feathers were grey with a hint of blue, stretching amazingly far to either side. She wasn't quite sure how to reel her wings back in, and only gradually figured out how to flex them.

The queen hovered now, enveloped in a silver aura of moonlight. Her wings shed fading feathers with each beat. She studied Alma for a while before speaking. "There are several possible paths ahead for you, Ratatosk. I wonder which one you'll take."
> Flight Lesson
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alma's wings shot out to either side as though ready to bolt into the sky. That one word meant far too much. "Ratatosk, the inexplicable Norse-religion squirrel who runs up and down the World Tree connecting the nine worlds, carrying rumors."

"A good name," said the dark queen, hovering there with lazy flaps. "You seem to have an affinity for it."

"How do you know my background?"

"Have you forgotten where you live?" Nightmare Moon teased. "I have time magic to make each audience last as long as necessary, and mind magic for easy awareness of public information about anypony I meet."

The new pegasus watched her warily. "Subjective time compression and mental upgrades."

"Why not call those magic? Dedicated ponies use filter spells to swap the words automatically."

"So if you'd normally say 'anyone can learn science'..."

"Anypony can learn magic," said Nightmare Moon. "However, I am a true pony. My very thoughts tend toward such words."

"People change their brains for the sake of immersive roleplaying?" said Alma, feeling her tail twitch with unease.

"In a sense. If you lived here you could become a true pony to master flight or even walking, more thoroughly than you can as a natural biped. There are other benefits as well. I can tell that's not for you, today, but do think it over. Would you care for a temporary filter spell? I'll offer it as a one-use item." The queen raised one hoof and a faintly glowing banana nut muffin popped into existence above it. The enchanted treat floated its way over to Alma's saddlebags. "Is there more I can do for you today, Ratatosk?"

Alma didn't challenge the name. "If I lived here, how would I get a house? And would I be free to come and go to my Earthside job?"

"Ask around about rentals. I'm sure a hundred or so locals will be happy to set you up. With company, if you like." One unnerving, glowing, slit-pupiled eye winked. "Since you're a pegasus you should definitely look into the cloud-weaver's art, too. As for leaving, I'm offended. Do I look like some manner of evil overlord?"

Alma looked around the misty stone chamber where torches shone on the obsidian tiles and the nocturnal queen who wanted to rewrite Alma's brain.

The queen smiled. "In truth, you can go at any time, through the portal or not. It's strongly encouraged that you do this where you won't be seen 'logging out', as it were. If you 'leave' while in a private room you'll be seen as asleep or in a trance, which is acceptable."

Alma stepped away from the silver throne. "Thank you, then. It's been interesting. I need time to think. Oh, and your majesty: where is all this heading? I mean, are you planning to be the eternal queen of this place, or to step down and visit other parts of Talespace?"

Nightmare Moon scuffed at the floor with one hoof, looking thoughtfully down. "You're a newcomer, and I know little about you. Why don't you explore our lands at your own pace and try to learn our ways? This place is home for us, and potentially for you as well."

#

Alma rented a room at the Mango Inn rather than return to her main home in Ivory Tower. Spending a night as a pony seemed like a learning experience. She carefully climbed a set of broad stairs to a room where her hooves made the boards creak. A bookshelf perched above the simple cushion and blanket-pile of a bed.

Alma reached out for a book, bonked a hoof against it, and recalled what she was. She had to wobble on her hindlegs and snag the volume with her mouth, noticing her lack of slobber. It fell out of her square, flat teeth and dropped open next to the bed. Alma shrugged and settled onto the cushion, then tugged a blanket over her with her mouth.

Love Your Wings: Preening For Beauty and Performance, read the title. Alma gradually worked out how to turn pages with the sticky effect on her hooves. Much like dusting a room to refill some hidden maintenance meter, a pegasus' wings needed brushing and oiling to look good and fully enable flight. Alma poked her muzzle with one hoof as she realized she'd walked all the way back up here without trying her new wings.

She was surprised to see the little bump of a preening gland hidden under each of her wings, once the illustrations pointed them out. Apparently this was a private detail of pegasus anatomy, similar to how her body was G-rated except now that she was in private and thinking about it. She vaguely recalled that real birds' glands were near their tails, and was glad for this bit of inaccuracy. Alma nosed under one wing and tried brushing a bit of waxy stuff from there onto her feathers, using her muzzle. The touch tickled her feathers and and made her wings stretch out like long-unused muscles.

She'd never had to clean anything in other parts of Talespace. The only real maintenance tasks she'd had to do were going on little dungeon crawls to earn money to pay her bar-and-grill tab (since Kai's place charged), and the time when she'd rented an Earthside robot and the last user left it stinking and dirty. Wasn't it just busywork to make ponies clean and fix things, in a world where dust and damage were fictional?

Alma was still thinking about it as she went outside. I've been too focused on the implications and not on the part about having feathers! She smiled, banged her new limbs on the inn's doorframe, and staggered out to give them a good flap. Wind stirred under her and the wings swirled around like oars, down-back-up-forward. Maybe if she ran? She trotted forward, flapping repeatedly, then got distracted by wondering what kind of bird she was most like. She stumbled and went sailing down the path, yelping. Her wings shot out and wobbled. She glided, out of control, flinched right as a building loomed ahead, then saw only air under her hooves and the town far, far below. She'd gone over the cliff!

Alma flailed at the air, losing altitude whenever she tried flapping or turning. She held her wings straight out but for her attempts to yaw back toward the trail and not plummet to her death.

"Having a little trouble?" said a flame-colored pegasus kid zooming from above.

"Help!"

The colt saluted with one hoof, flew off with a gratuitous loop, and returned pushing a cloud around. He flew alongside Alma, saying, "State the nature of your aerial emergency. Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed."

Alma flapped, began stalling, and barely recovered her glide. "Just help me!"

The kid quit fooling around and pushed the cloud right into Alma's path. She crashed into it and slid to a stop as though she'd hit a ghostly pillow. Nothing but white around her. Alma flapped, struggled, and popped her head up out of the vapor. Her heart pounded but she wasn't moving.

The colt landed with a puff of cloud-stuff next to her and grinned down. "First time flying? Lucky you had me around! My name's --"

Alma's eyes narrowed. "You're the town, again. Following me."

"You said 'thank you' wrong. And no, I'm not part of Noctis. Only a part-time peggy. The name's Phoenix Forester."

Alma shuddered and looked around at the night sky. An aurora shimmered near the moon. Pretty, when she was on something like solid ground. "Thanks. I'm new at this."

"There's your problem. You only have basic gliding to start. Gotta do the quests to 'discover the true meaning of the pegasus heart' or whatever. I tried to get my friends to go pegasus too, but everypony else wanted to be other stuff."

Alma patted her saddlebags, feeling the magic muffin still there. "So I have to study pegasus lore to get my full powers? Or do you mean I have to get my brain changed so I use the cute pony slang like you?"

Phoenix tilted his big golden-eyed head, confused. "Oh! You mean saying 'everypony'? I didn't sign up for the brain thing; I just learned to talk like this while I'm in Hoofland. What are you, anyway? You yelled loud enough I figure you're an uploader, not playing Earthside."

Alma blushed as she managed to climb out of the cloud and sit atop it. "Alma, or Ratatosk according to the queen. Recent uploader, teaching part-time in Texas. You?"

"Been here since I got out of the pediatric cancer ward in '37," said Phoenix, poking his chest pridefully with one hoof. "I got in early. Rich parents. So I've gotta be a hero and help other ponies get to Talespace."

Alma winced. "I had a long life before I needed uploading for medical reasons, and I got in after the big price drop. What do you do to promote Talespace?"

Phoenix lifted off and hovered, a trick Alma envied. "The Interdimensional Seekers of Peace and Valor volunteer for all kinds of outreach programs. My buddy Volt was created as the mascot for a kids' hospital, and the rest of us help with the Talespace Tribune or hang out with the Knights of Talespace."

Alma's ears perked up at the mention of both. "Nice. It sounds like you do good work." Something else occurred to her. "If you're kids, are you going to school?" The University of Ivory Tower was a core institution of Talespace, but she'd heard very little about lower-level education.

"Pssssh. Who wants to sit at a desk all day? We do try to learn, though. Lately we've been trying to figure out how space math works. If you think flapping wings is tough, try planning how you get an Earth spaceship to dock with something in orbit."

Alma looked down from her cloud to the distant ground, and sighed. "I teach the slow kids, and I'm not cut out for it. It's nice to hear from someone brighter."

Phoenix stared at Alma, then flipped over backwards in midair, laughing. "Queen Nightmare Moon strikes again! All hail."

"Huh?"

The colt steadied himself and rested his hoof-elbows on the edge of the cloud, like a swimmer at poolside. "You just met her spooky majesty, right? So she's thinking about you. And I just happened to get a visit from somepony in Noctis asking me to do weather patrol tonight. So I was nearby when a teacher who doesn't know what these flappy things are, got into trouble. Get it?"

"The queen set up our meeting?"

Phoenix said, "Yup! This kind of thing happens a lot. She and the other Nobles are the game-masters. They make stuff happen. Evil dragon attacks Noctis? Probably sent by Queen Gentle Sun. Buffalo tribes stomping ponies? N.M.M. knew some adventuring party was getting bored. Unhappy teacher? Find her some students and make it look natural."

"That's a strangely aggressive approach to friendship." Alma thought back to how Ludo had treated her after the first day or two: no contact but some notepad banter and an invitation to attend "office hours" at the far end of a two-story clockwork dungeon full of traps and monsters.

The kid rubbed his ears with one hoof. "I guess we're friends now. Yay?"

"I'll agree to that if you tell me how to get down from here."

"Glide!" said Phoenix. "It's not like you're going to die for real if you mess up. Come on; jump over the edge with your wings out."

Alma stood, trembling, on the edge of a cloud with nothing below for a thousand feet. Instinct screamed at her to get to solid ground or at least to the center of this fluffy hovering platform. She tried to figure out how to flex her wings and open them wide. The sooner she did this, the sooner she could get to the trail.

Big golden eyes watched her. "I'd offer to tow this cloud, but that'd be cheating. You'll be happier if you do this. Aim for that lower bit of the trail, there, and fly straight. You've gotta jump for yourself."

Alma shuddered. "I... could just call for Ludo to teleport me out..."

"No!" Phoenix slapped the cloud with one hoof, making a bit of it vanish into steam. "That's not how ponies do things! Lady, if you weren't willing to do anything crazy, you should be in the grave right now, not living as an uploader."

She wondered if Ludo would warp her out of here if she really wanted it. Were the rules truly different in the Hooflands, making it more hardcore than other areas?

I want to learn and grow, thought Alma. Not to hide behind the rules of a game. She took a few timid steps backward, craning her long neck around to keep from falling that way, and then raced forward with an undignified yelp. The cloud no longer supported her and she fell... but more forward than down. Wind whipped through her mane and tail and streamed through her feathers. The cliffside trail loomed larger and larger ahead. Alma wobbled, wings aching, heart thumping. Then the trail was right there and her hooves skimmed the dirt, scrambled against it, and sent her tumbling end over end to land sprawled on her back.

"You okay over there?" said a unicorn with a medic's foreleg-band who just happened to be nearby.

Alma rolled over and shook, shedding a grey feather. "Yes, Noctis, I'm fine."

The medic looked flustered. "It was great for your first time. I know a pegasus who does flight training for the Shadowbolts racing team. He could --"

"I'm sure. I've got a lot to think about, though. Maybe later?"

Phoenix hovered nearby, grinning. "Need to working on landing. But yeah, you learned a little about what it's like."

Alma turned to him, though self-conscious about facing directly away from Noctis' latest puppet. "Eye of the tiger, heart of the pegasus?"

"Eye of...? As for pegasus, sure. But I fit right in as one of these because it's really what being an uploader ought to mean. Do you get it?" He bounced up and down in the sky.

Alma brushed one hoof along the cliffside trail. Her only deaths so far (after her legal death on an operating table) had been from traps in the Ivory Tower area, which had only blocked her way from getting someplace important. They'd been trivial because they were game stuff, only existing to get in her way and challenge her. This time, she'd risked the pain and humiliation of "death" because she wanted to become better, and had cared about the act itself. She'd also had a cheerleader.

She looked up at the full moon. "You can't really die, but you can still hurt. You can grow, and learn, and help people."

"Pretty much," said Phoenix. "I don't know if you wanna keep the wings or hooves, but whatever you do, don't be a plain old human. Be cooler than that."
> Cleric of the Sun
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Alma slept at the inn and returned the next morning to Ivory Tower. Half of her four-day weekend was gone, since minds like hers typically ran at maybe a third or a fourth of real-time speed. She frowned as she dressed her squirrelly body in skirt and blouse, and slung her borrowed pony saddlebags over one shoulder. She'd have to return those and get a new set, and that meant talking with part of Noctis again. She sighed; she wasn't eager to have a hundred ponies with a crush on her, even if they were basically one person. She'd have to let them down gently somehow.

She picked up a copy of the Talespace Tribune from a newsstand in the hotel. It was quaintly printed on paper, by a generation that had barely seen newspapers outside museums. She sat at a free hotel cafe to read it and eat a pear-and-walnut salad, perfected by the taste upgrade.

_Challenger II launch already planned: More Uploaders To Asteroid But No Talespace Node? -- Hypocrisy! Rumor of Chinese Brain Robbery. -- "Army of Enough" Fights Sanctions, Demands Crucial Electronics. -- Runaway AI: the 'Riding Jeans' Scenario Revisited. -- Opinion: The Dolphins Belong._

Nice that so much of it was Earth-focused, outside the Lifestyle page that was focused on magic today. Alma considered the brown shamanic markings on the fur of her hands and sandaled feet, that marked her own first forays into the magic system. They'd been absent from her as a pony even though every other world she'd visited here had let her keep them. Hoofland really was a rule system unto itself. Idly, Alma waved one hand to call up the magic system in its usual swirl of glowing icons and dots in the air, but didn't see a marker indicating that she'd earned a new spell element from her latest experiences. Bah; she'd been hoping to get something flying-related.

Alma tossed the newspaper down. If she wanted something like that, then she had to earn it elsewhere. She should be adventuring.

She left the hotel through the huge front doors, built into the cliff-wall of the cavern surrounding the Ivory Tower itself. She walked out of the Tower's suburban college town, then along bare rocky ground toward the portal to the fantasy land of Midgard.

A trio of waist-tall kobolds leaped out from behind a rock and brandished jagged knives. "Gimme gimme money!" said one.

Alma traveled with a staff these days. She yanked a rock out of her hip pouch, stuck it into the sling-like pocket on the staff's end, and flung the rock so hard it knocked one lizard-critter down like a club to the gut. The others stared long enough for her to reload, summon the magic interface, and link up her "Stone" and "Arrow" elements to charge her second blow with extra force. Her hands swirled through the air as she manipulated glowing icons, creating trails of light. "Who's next?"

Like no fantasy monsters ever, the other two ran away yipping in terror.

"What are you, anyway?" she said to the groaning kobold who was just standing up again. "Randomly generated for my benefit, or random relative to this world's need for a monster population, or part of some scripted plotline?"

"Much ouch! You be sorry next time!"

"Come on, spill it. I fought gross little slimes and cute anime slimes here before, and they didn't talk."

The scaly midget backed off with a knife still clutched in his wavering paws. "Know nothing! Just looking for easy prey and saw rat-thing."

It sounded like a random encounter rather than something arranged for her personal entertainment. Alma liked that. "Get out of here." She let the creature run off. On the other hand, there wasn't any significance to the event if the monsters had popped out of nowhere like particles in vacuum. Maybe there was at least a procedurally generated kobold lair nearby, that would keep spawning muggers until someone took it down. Sounded fun, if so, but she'd need backup.

Alma went back to town and walked into Thousand Ales, a bar and grill full of sports memorabilia. Battered-looking televisions loomed on the walls and a crowd of people in Caliphate garb were watching baseball, probably Earthside players who weren't allowed to see decadent Western media but could use this game's world as a loophole.

The centaur behind the bar waved to her. "Hey there. Done with pony-world?"

"For now," said Alma. "I forgot to ask whether you'd been there."

"Of course. It wasn't for me, but it was fun to visit."

Alma said, "Some of the ponies are excited about your smell/taste thing. You could make money or at least friends there." She grinned. "Maybe snag some mares."

For all his brawn, Kai the native AI looked bashful. His long ears flicked back. He tugged at his vest and looked aside at a collection of dangling beer mugs. "I got asked to give a talk at the Tower, to some neuroscientists. I'd feel out of place doing something like that or lording over the pony-people."

"You should! The lecture at least. You're brilliant, helping to come up with a fix for one of the big bugs of Talespace." After years of work, his research group had thrown some of uploading's critics ("and ye shall taste only the emptiness of dust and ashes!") off their game.

"Thank you. Maybe."

Alma told Kai about the kobolds. "Want to go hunting? I'm looking for Poppy too, since I was on my way to learn climbing and try to get some kind of flying or gliding magic."

Kai looked around the restaurant. It was pretty quiet at the moment. "I can leave an NPC bartender for a while. It's a Newcomer Fair day, so Poppy should be around. Before I put up the NPC, want to take over while I look for her?"

A real person behind the bar was always more interesting than an NPC that lacked even a town-style mind. Poppy took the excuse to make a running leap, vault over the bar, and thud into the wall behind it. A customer saw her and snickered.

Kai headed out, flicking his tail and saying, "Ah, the wondrous agility of the squirrel, nature's acrobat."

Once she'd recovered, Alma poured beer for a handful of uploader customers and chatted with them about space news. The Earthside gamers kept watching TV, since the food and drink here were pointless. Before long, Kai returned from the Tower with a red-furred squirrel archer wearing a medieval tunic decorated with a tree. Kai had his cool barding and spear, plus his own saddlebags.

Alma hugged Poppy, who'd recruited her to this species. Poppy said, "I haven't been to Hoofland in ages. Once we pound some kobolds I'd like to visit again and see what Kai looks like with fewer limbs."

"I'm a pegasus in there," said Kai. "It's uncomfortable to not have six." Tauric forms seemed popular among natives due to some code quirk.

Kai, Poppy and Alma ventured outside of town to search for a monster lair. Sure enough, a crude camp of straw nests and bones was hidden in one of the cavern's many blind canyons and outcroppings. Kai spoiled their stealth by blundering into a rockslide trap.

He shouted and staggered ahead just in time to avoid being crushed by falling boulders. Lizard-like yips and hisses came from the camp. Alma and Poppy scrambled over the pile the moment it stopped, and readied their weapons.

A dozen of the mean little creatures leaped out from all around them, swinging knives of stone and bone. Alma flung a rock, missed, then got knocked back by a kobold leaping at her. She bashed away with her staff and covered Poppy long enough for her to fire a few arrows. Then everything became a melee. Kai couldn't use his full speed in the uneven-floored canyon, but he galloped ahead, spun, and skewered monsters left and right with his spear.

Alma used the distraction to charge another magic stone-shot, and brained another kobold with it. There was no more time for fancy spells then, only a flurry of teeth and knives and bludgeoning.

The three of them soon stood bloodied and winded in the midst of lizard corpses and the tribe's pathetic collection of loot. Alma rummaged through the critters' various bags and junk piles. "I still kind of feel bad about wiping out talking monsters."

"They're NPCs," said Kai. "And you once killed that evil skeleton guy who wasn't."

True, though the skeleton was a card-carrying member of the Forces of Evil, a faction of dedicated trouble-makers. Since death wasn't permanent, their fight had been little more than a wager for money and prestige.

Poppy said, "Sometime, we could let a monster population get out of control here, just so we can get a big group battle going."

Kai looked alarmed. "Not near my bar!"

"Oh sure, everybody wants there to be a hoard of bloodthirsty monsters, but not in _their_ backyard. So, Hoofland?"

Alma's fluffy tail drooped. "I'm looking for housing. I should do a tour of all the major worlds before committing."

"Right," said Poppy. "You'll have to arrange for a mortgage and home inspection and contact a realtor, and then it'll be such a hassle to move and _oh wait_."

Kai said, "I've heard of those. Taxes too, right?"

"Don't you join in." Alma turned away, grumbling, and did one last look through the treasure. Under a tattered cloak she found a pouch full of gleaming yellow crystals.

Kai clopped closer to look over her shoulder. "Deltite! Don't know if it's enough to transform you, but if you keep up a stockpile and you ever want to go permanent pony..." To give people a challenge rather than let them shapeshift on a whim, there was a whole magic subsystem involving crystal collection.

"Quit that." Alma turned around with her hands on her hips. "Poppy, I get your point about Earth housing requirements not applying, but that doesn't mean rushing into things."

The other squirrel-lady shrugged. "I'm not saying you should change permanently. You're still welcome to join my town in Midgard." With all that that implied. There was a sort of elven religion developing there, along with a reality TV show. "But since you can enter and leave Hoofland without spending resources, it could be fun to commute there for a while and try being something different."

There was some merit in that idea. Besides, there'd be time to explore the other worlds more thoroughly later. Maybe _much_ later. In a way, being liberated from imminent death made it easier to commit to doing strange things. "Fine. Let's do some equine adventuring. But I do want to climb and upgrade my magic, afterward."

#

They met up again with appropriate gear. Alma had her saddlebags over one shoulder plus her money supply. Her Talespace money; the pittance of real, gold-backed dollars she earned as a teacher was earmarked for uploading of her needy students. Sore subject, that.

She, Kai and Poppy made for the Hooflands' west gate, to show up again in Noctis. Alma jumped through this time and landed on four hooves. Her wings were back, unfurling like muscles that'd been asleep. Kai was an impressive red pegasus stallion with bright orange eyes and orange-trimmed wings, and Poppy... actually no, _that_ was Poppy. Kai was a more ordinary pegasus in a natural brown with deep brown eyes and blond mane.

Poppy spoke in a deeper voice. "Shouldn't your eyes be googly, miss grey pegasus?"

Alma said the catchphrase of the old cartoon pony she looked like. "I just don't know what went wrong!"

Kai looked puzzled. "Has everybody seen this show but me?"

Alma wrestled her saddlebags onto her long torso, then decided to take the plunge. She grabbed the muffin that was still in there, and chomped on it. "Testing, testing. 'Somepony once told me / The world was gonna roll me... / She was lookin' kinda dumb with her fetlock and her hoof / In the shape of an L on her muzzle...' Huh. Guess it doesn't handle song lyrics well. Poppy, you didn't tell me you'd, uh, switched."

"A true son of the forest explores many branches." Poppy looked vain and showed off a mystical mark on his flank, shaped like a sunburst.

"Destiny brands! I hadn't paid attention to those. Do they actually do anything?"

Kai didn't have one. He shuffled his hooves uneasily and said, "I thought they were for full-time residents."

"It wasn't like they could make me stay. Come on; let's find an adventure."

Alma would've asked more questions, but Poppy jumped off the cliff and wheeled around to the right, out of sight behind the entry fort. Kai hurried after him, leaving Alma unsure she had enough flying ability to follow. _At worst, I'll die._ She forced herself to leap off over the edge, too, with her wings spread. She was dropping quickly, more so once she leaned to spin rightward. She was going to smack into the rocks.

Kai and Poppy spotted the problem. Kai made a touch-and-go landing and dived after Alma, arriving a few seconds after Poppy who took a more direct route. They snagged Alma by the forehooves and with a dangerous confusion of wings, hauled her back up to the space just behind the entry fort.

A pair of enthusiastic pegasi and a unicorn, including Sterling the banker, were setting up an aerial obstacle course of clouds and rings on the hilly cliffside land.

"Hi!" said Sterling. "I thought you'd be back, but I didn't expect you'd bring friends. Perfect Timing here happened to be doing agility training, so I --"

Alma trotted over to him and held out one forehoof. "Noctis. I appreciate that you're trying to be friends, but I'm getting a little disturbed. I'm here to do some adventuring, but not the kind full of contrived coincidences."

The unicorn answered for Sterling in nearly the same voice. "Are we being too friendly? We're sorry. We just want you to feel welcome."

Alma ignored the snickering coming from Poppy's direction. "All right. Please give me some space so I can see more of this world, and not focus on, on whatever this is, okay?"

Kai said, "I'd like to try the obstacle course though."

Sterling and the unicorn slinked away along a different hill trail, saying in unison, "Okay. Some other time?"

"Fine," said Alma, and immediately regretted it. The other pegasus remained. "And you're _not_ Noctis?" asked Alma.

"No, ma'am. I'd yell at you for chasing them off, but I can guess what's going on. Newcomer?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, judging from your arrival, you three look like you need flying practice. Want to play?"

The four of them bounded through the rings and bounced off clouds and flagpoles, nearly falling off the cliff again and again but using the danger for motivation. Alma got much better at turning. "I can still only glide, though. It sounded earlier like no amount of practice would let me really fly, because I have to do a quest for that. How does that work?"

The pegasus trainer flopped onto a cloud. "North of here, Mount Improbable is the big questing area for pegasi. It's like the Labyrinth of Night for unicorns or the Centralia Fire-Mine for earthbound, in that you've got to bring all three main races or you'll get your flank kicked."

Alma said, "They're puzzle dungeons that take all three?"

"That, and general combat strategy. Ever fought a four-meter-tall wooden wolf-golem whose eyes burn with unholy flame? Typically earthbound ponies tank, unicorns are damage-per-second or buff/debuff support, pegasi are strikers or --"

"Are you an immigrant?" Alma asked, hearing game lingo. She'd meant to say "uploader" but the word-filter caught it. "I expected to hear it all phrased in terms of friendship powers."

"Got here in January." He glanced again at Poppy. "Say, weren't you in the war?"

Poppy blushed and stepped away from him. "Not importantly. 'Ratatosk' here has got the basics down, so we'd better head for the mountain. Thanks!"

"With an all-winged party like that?"

Poppy sighed. "Right. We'll figure something out. Thanks again!" He headed for the upward trail leading into some woods away from the cliff.

Alma, puzzled, excused herself and followed Poppy. "What was that about?" she asked, once they and Kai were away.

"I only uploaded a few months before you," Poppy said. "I threw myself into this new life, and I was really enthusiastic about seeing all the places I could go and all the things I could be. Not like you with trying to get right back into an Earthside job."

"The 'bounce'," Alma said. A lot of people were trying to make themselves useful instead of just playing, so right after reaching gamers' paradise they asked about earning that degree they'd always wanted or finding an Earth job where they could 'work from home' or use robots.

Poppy's wings twitched noncommittally. "Eh. It was wanderlust more than responsibility. So I ended up in Hoofland, just in time to get involved at the tail end of a huge battle that redefined the map and overthrew the second queen of the east."

"There've been multiple revolutions already?"

"Just one here in Noctis, but yeah. Queen Sunward Ho the Ill-Considered, who had a... different take on pony canon. She wanted a war just to keep things exciting."

"I guess that's not as horrible as it sounds, since nopony could die," said Alma. She practiced hopping up and down between the ground and some tree branches.

"Ever died several times in quick succession? It gets more painful. There's a limit before you respawn at some failsafe location, but it's still torture."

Alma peeked down from her branch. "Ludo allowed that?" She tried to remember hearing anything in Earth media, before she'd uploaded, about events in Hoofland. "I guess everypony dismisses news from here even more than from Talespace in general. It's just a cartoon, right?"

Kai looked thoughtful. "Poppy, you committed to this world, though. You got a permanent mark."

Poppy glanced back at the sun design on his hide. "I thought Hoofland was the solution to the problem I saw, of uploaders fragmenting into a thousand different cultures. Should've seen at the time that people wouldn't rally around something they saw as not just disarmingly silly, but childish."

Alma glided down, thinking. Poppy's decision to become a humanoid squirrel, as her standard body, wasn't just for fun. As she'd explained it (conveniently, after convincing Alma to get a similar body), the point was to create a distinct culture among uploaders that would unite instead of dividing. Essentially a new race, or nation, or religion, all in one. "Wait a minute," said Alma, landing at Poppy's hooves. "Did you tell ponies to worship Nightmare Moon and Celestia?"

The marked stallion stepped back. "I wasn't the first cleric of Celestia, not by a longshot."

Alma said, "I'm not accusing you of anything. Just trying to understand. Your whole 'Forest Lord' thing is abstract since nopony's actually playing the character. The people who worship Miss Fun-and-Games the AI are praising somepony who isn't human and who even teased me for being too respectful." Alma pointed to Poppy's brand. "But the pretty princesses are pony underneath. I mean pony. Damn it." The word filter reflected the absence of humans around here.

Kai said, "I understand. Most human cultures have no problem with their ruler having absolute power over them, so most locals have no problem pretending Their Equine Majesties are god-queens. But you two aren't European or Chinese or American, and it rubs you the wrong way."

"Right," said Alma. "I'm mostly okay with our AI overlord having that kind of power, because I recognize that she's not really pony. Darn it! Can I say 'naked monkey'? Good." She flicked her wings and stared far down at the distant palace, realizing something else. "Nightmare Moon said that she's a 'true pony', mentally, more than with the stupid speech filter thing. So she's trying to transcend 'naked monkey' nature, too."

Kai looked startled. "She's trying to qualify as a goddess?"

Poppy hopped into the air and hovered. "It's not like that. When I was here as a cleric, the point was to rally ponies so we could work together here or on Earth someday. Not to make a cult out of it."

"Yeah, well, that's where it's going."

Poppy slapped a branch with one hoof. "That's not what it's supposed to be! They were supposed to sit on the throne and dispense quests and make sure things stayed interesting, not change their brains to qualify as okay to worship."

Alma said, "Are you all right, Poppy? I didn't know you had this much of a history here."

"Enough that I need to go and look into this business. You don't need another pegasus anyway for your quest. Go have fun while I figure out how screwed up Hoofland got in my absence." She flew off quickly enough to leave a sparkly aura in her wake, toward the eastern lands of Celestia.

Alma looked to Kai. "Great. Hoofland is secretly turning into the Church of Equinology?"

"Huh?" the brown stallion asked.

"There's this cult on Earth that claims alien volcano spirits... Never mind. Tell you later. Queen Nightmare Moon -- All hail --" Alma slapped her hooves over her muzzle.

"Speech filter?" asked Kai.

Alma nodded, tried to curse, and said "darn". "Ugh. Anyway, she told me to explore Hoofland to better understand her intentions. She also hinted at me about thinking I'm important for being a cross-world traveler. She might tell me more than she would somepony else."

"Want to do the pegasus quest without Poppy? I think I can get a spell to temporarily go earthbound, and I know a unicorn if you don't mind him being evil."

"Forces of Evil?"

"That, and he has some influence over the Islamic Caliphate."

Alma swore, "Muffins!"

"It's him or recruit one of Noctis' interchangeable bodies. I don't know a lot of ponies."

Alma frowned. "Let's see if Onyx the Baker is up for this instead. How about we meet up in a few hours? Local time. I also want to get out of here and do anything non-pony-related."

#

Alma tapped a wrench against her fuzzy hand, as she watched the bridge across a gorge. Suddenly the mechanical gun turret beside her started shuddering and beeping. "Spy's sapping my sentry!" she called out to her team. A man in a lab coat was trying to sneak away, but she clubbed him unconscious with the wrench and his disguise wore off, revealing him as the saboteur. Meanwhile a scary guy with a flamethrower ran up to help her fix the gun and guard the bridge against some incoming mercenaries in blue. This particular battle had happened many, many times over, to the point of going from an ordinary video game to a traditional sport among uploaders.

She flexed her hands, wondering what it'd be like to have hooves full-time. She was still missing something about the queens' plans.
> Heart of the Pegasus
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Onyx wasn't available, so reluctantly, Alma walked up to the nearest unicorn and invited him. The stallion blinked and said, "Mount Improbable is a dangerous place. It's no place for me!" He trotted away.

Right. There were filler NPC ponies in this town too. Alma looked around for unicorns who were showing some initiative, and found a green one gardening in druid getup. "Noctis?"

"Greetings, fair filly. Do you need assistance?"

Alma's eyes narrowed. "I can't tell what you are. Come on; are you part of the town and do you want to go adventuring to Mount Improbable?"

"Yes, ma'am, to both. Give me an hour to prepare."

She found Kai again, now missing his wings but tougher and stronger looking. She found a shop in town and bought some leather barding that wouldn't hinder her flying. The druid waited for her at the entrance to a long, hilly trail. She looked over his eager expression, his bulging saddlebags of mystical doodads and potions, and said, "Noctis, why?"

He said, "Because you caught our attention. Even though you haven't been very nice yet."

Alma's thick tail drooped. "Guilty as charged. I'm just not used to this world, Talespace in general and Hoofland specifically. There are so many things going on here that it seems like a mass of conspiracies, sometimes. I'm also not used to being hit on." She sighed. She'd been male as a human and had only really switched to try something new, which made things more confusing. "What should I call you?"

"Grassy Knoll." He held out one forehoof.

Alma stared at it for a moment, then bumped hooves. "Let's explore."

She checked her saddlebags. "Should I get weapons? Oh! What time is it outside? I've got work Earthside on Monday."

Knoll told her as they walked. Two hours, objective time, had passed since she arrived in Hoofland. Alma said, "How? It hasn't seemed like that long."

Kai cast a simple spell, marking runes in midair. "Our time rate didn't drop either."

Knoll said, "It's the magic of the Hooflands, changing those who enter and exit." Alma snorted. Knoll's serene expression faltered. "Would you prefer I speak out of character? It's rude to do that without asking."

"Yes, please. I should've said. Should I do... this?" She tapped her head with one hoof in the "OOC" gesture she'd learned.

Knoll nodded. "File transfer time. Hoofland is on its own set of servers, largely separate from the rest of Talespace and managed through a subsidiary. The code base is a bit different, partly because Ludo isn't so medd -- ah, directly involved in our lives. So it took time to move your data here."

Alma shifted uncomfortably on her hooves. It would be possible to keep her mind's data on one server (with backups) and operate a body in another. So long as her senses were hooked up to the body, she wouldn't notice being "remote". Instead it sounded like her mind was being copied and deleted whenever she visited Hoofland. That was just how file transfers worked. "Piecemeal, I hope."

"Oh! Yes, of course." Knoll's ears perked. "You were human. Many humans aren't comfortable with the idea of having their mental process shut down in one place like Earth and started fresh in Talespace. So, the transfer between servers is done in stages like the current uploading process itself. It takes some time, though, so there's a delay. Does that help?"

Kai said, "Were you designed to not care? I'm one of the Originals."

"Really." Knoll trotted closer. "Should I call you Grand-dad?" The unicorn's expression was carefully neutral.

"Whoa, no! I'm around three years old. I hardly know more..." He trailed off.

Alma thought she knew why. Kai had mentioned that the first 108 native AIs had their own no-humans clubhouse. It wouldn't do to admit that they were nearly as ignorant as newer AIs.

Kai said, "Uh. Let's get going. Lead the way, Knoll."

The three tapped a hovering "Crystal of Salvation" to mark their progress. A trail took them away from the town of Noctis and through the shadow of an airborne shipyard made of clouds. Alma stared up as she walked and felt her wings flutter.

"You'll be able to fly wherever you want, once we're done," Knoll said. "There's still a fatigue factor, but you can rest on clouds."

They were cartoon clouds, isolated cotton tufts. "A more realistic cloudscape would be even more amazing. A whole sky of white islands and mountains, sculpted into canyon cities."

"There's a place like that in griffin lands, and the big cloud town in the east. Our side has the bat-pony caves and some of the zebra settlements like Usilasimapundu the Colossus City."

"On a giant monster's back?"

"It's more of a golem."

Alma's wings spread and wouldn't fold back in, aching to take to the sky. She gave in and hopped into the air, twirling a few times before having to make an awkward, staggering landing. There were endless things to see in this world, preferably from the air.

#

After a long hike, a canoe-riding sequence, and a brawl against a slavering dog-man wielding a spiked chain, Alma had to lead. Her limited flight made her the best suited to fly up a cliff with a rope in her mouth, finding spots to anchor it for the others to climb in stages. Sometimes Kai did parkour, bouncing from one ledge to another with his enhanced strength and stability. Knoll was mostly along for the ride, here. It was nice to work with the two stallions to get past crumbling hoof-holds and recurring rockslides through teamwork. As they climbed, Alma started to get nervous about their height off the ground, despite the slope.

"Are you all right?" said Kai, brushing a hoof against Alma's trembling wings. They were catching their breaths in a shallow cave.

Alma peeked down over the cliff. "I'm a pegasus," she said. "Currently. I can glide down if I fall, and I can't really die anyway." Crashing would only mean wasting the others' time, letting them down, and even that wouldn't be so bad since they could fast-forward ahead and make up for it with a higher subjective time rate later. Climbing the mountain meant understanding this whole new life better, not just the Hooflands. She wasn't bound by human limitations anymore. Some of them.

"Where's your head?" asked Knoll.

"In the clouds," Alma answered. "Is that appropriate?"

"Good. There are some cloud puzzles ahead. We actually need to go through this cave, though." His horn glowed, and an arcane puzzle of shifting circles appeared on the back wall.

"You've done this before?"

Knoll looked back at Alma from examining the puzzle. "Details like this lock vary. We... I, Grassy Knoll, have not. Others of me have, many times. I enjoy the unicorn role in this quest better than the earthbound part. It's the Fire-Mine quest that really makes earthbound like Kai shine, but the spotlight is on them, there."

"Thanks for coming along." Alma scuffed at the cave floor, nervously. "I have to wonder, have you been trying to recruit me to join your collective?"

"By the Queen, no!"

"All hail Nightmare Moon," Alma said before stopping herself. Kai rolled his eyes.

Knoll said, "We don't absorb people! We are a mind with many bodies, the way great minds Panacea and Hygea are."

Alma recalled the day she'd uploaded. There'd been a human in the room, but the main work was done by robots, trying to keep her from panic as they locked her head in a vice and began chopping her brain apart while she was still conscious. She thanked her past self for agreeing to the mood-dampening drug that kept the experience from becoming a lingering traumatic horror. Still, her wings shuddered again. "The surgery robots, right?"

Knoll nodded. "The surgeon and nurse are two of the first Collective Intelligences like us. Two minds with hundreds of bodies, trained by the best of all human surgeons, with unmatched skill and experience that can remake the most intricate machine of the Outer Realm!" The unicorn reared up on his hindlegs and, with swirls of green horn-light, drew a glowing portrait that made Panacea and Hygea look like saints in a church window. "They also play excellent symphony and choir."

Kai told Alma, "Pan's a bit stuck up, but he's an okay guy. Great at what he does. Kind of overspecialized. So's Hy but she works more on her bedside manner."

"We're a bit lesser," Knoll said. "My kind began as several villages of background characters. Fox-people for knights to rule, timid peasants who had their minds overriden one at a time by a submissive uploader in an abusive relationship; backup dancers and stagehands for a vain actor."

Alma considered this. "That's a more humble origin than being a super-surgeon, but you grew, right? My ancestors were a bunch of shaggy barbarians who eventually came to a country that got used as a dumping ground for prisoners and misfits."

Knoll smiled. "I suppose being a town of backgrounders isn't so bad. Here, let me get us through this door."

A few minutes of telekinetic rune-shifting and a few G-rated swears later, Knoll poked the cave puzzle with his horn and the wall fell open, forming a ramp to a staircase. He paused on the bottom step.

"What's wrong?" Kai asked.

Knoll startled and walked upstairs. "Sorry. We were busy."

Above, the mountain had a plateau marred by countless spikes jutting up from the stone. A tiny cloud here and there marked places where a pegasus could go. Alma hopped onto the first one and flapped over to the second and third. "I see the summit! I can't get there alone, though." She steeled herself and jumped down from the high cloud, yelped in fear, then flailed her legs and wings as she glided to a tolerable landing.

"Wait!" said Kai, too late. Once Alma was down he added, "Was there anything else?"

Alma shook herself. "The spikes had cracks in some places, easier to see from above. I guess it's a puzzle."

Knoll grinned. "Yep. I'll leave you two to figure out the solution, but it's earthbound time."

Alma hopped back to the clouds and directed Kai to bodyslam and kick one of the spikes in a certain spot. It toppled and formed a bridge over a gorge, where he and Knoll activated a gadget to create more clouds that let Alma help demolish a few more spikes to clear a path. Alma hummed to herself as she started to get the hang of gliding down from heights, like going down stairs.

At last, she, Kai and Knoll reached a rocky slope that spiraled up to the summit. A checkpoint crystal hovered just below it, and the actual peak was a flat space ringed by spikes and clouds and ledges. A few healing potions were scattered about.

"Boss arena?" said Alma.

Kai was already tapping the crystal. "Looks like. Ready?"

Alma adjusted her armor and practiced hoof-kicking. "I do get to command lightning and things like that afterward, right?"

Knoll said, "If you like! Pegasi have an affinity for weather-related magic. So, no fireballs or teleportation, but according to the Sacred Canon --"

"I know. Let's go!" Probably a giant wolf-golem ahead, or a dragon. A dragon would be scary but amazing to fight.

She led the others up the final slope to the obvious arena. Naturally, a glowing barrier sealed the exit sealed behind them.

Queen Nightmare Moon herself materialized like a mirage becoming real. Here in the open air, with a late afternoon sun, the regal mare looked less menacing, but still tall and commanding in this cage of stone. "Greetings, Ratatosk. I'm pleased to see you taking an interest in my world and its ponies. Perhaps you shall be saved."

Alma crouched, ready to spring. "Hello, your majesty. I assume I'm not allowed to attack during your monologue?"

She smiled wickedly. "Try it if you dare. The good news is, you're about to earn the heart of a pegasus. The bad news is, I'm going to kill you until you agree to be my subject for a year and a day. Once we begin fighting, you have until I fully raise the moon to defeat me, and I will hasten that process while you're busy being dead."

Knoll looked at the queen, surprised. "Your majesty? Since when are there stakes like this?"

"Since just after the last time you escorted somepony like this." She turned back to Alma. "Will you take the bet or slink away?"

"Serve you?" said Alma. "My kind doesn't bow to anypony. This quest is supposed to be how you get your full powers in Hoofland, right? Not risking some kind of mystical contract to a dark queen."

"I haven't heard of this either," Kai said.

"Mister Kai Appian, it's an honor to meet you too. We haven't gone through a formal naming for you, but you're welcome anytime. I would like to see you make a similar bet to gain the full powers of an earthbound, or whatever else you prefer, as soon as it's convenient."

Alma took off and tried to hover, but flopped back to the ground. Too advanced a move. "I'm not going to get my brain rewritten just because I lost a fight. What does losing mean besides that?"

"No brain changes unless you volunteer. Simply wager that I, not the distant AI Ludo, shall be she who decides the residence of your soul. You shall answer to me for quests and magic and access to the Outer Realm or other worlds. I cannot compel you, but nor shall you be coddled. All for a year and a day." She smiled. "And you shall keep your current speech pattern."

Alma drew in a breath. What the hell is this? she thought. The rules of Thousand Tales would never allow me to forced into mental changes. There aren't even mind-control spells in the magic system that work on real people.

"You're wondering how such a thing is possible," said the queen, stepping closer. "You prize your freedom. Your new world values some definition of 'fun' above all things. My world values 'popularity', in a sense. Therefore, our little cosmology allows you to wager some of your freedom for something fun that might make you want to stay here, forever."

"I don't think I can beat an alicorn that rules half of the Hooflands," said Alma. Her mind raced, thinking both of tactics and of what it would mean to lose.

Nightmare Moon waved dismissively. "Bah, you know how these things go. You'll have a fair chance, especially with Noctis in your party. Now, shall we?"

Alma looked to the others. Kai said, "I'll fight my hardest for you, with this at stake, but it's up to you."

Knoll looked uneasy. "We've beaten her like this before, but you don't have reason to trust us."

"Yeah, I do. You've put up with me." Alma had been starting to feel like a background character in her own life, relinquishing control of some things and accepting that she couldn't be the human she once was. Instead, though, she could try to be someone new. "I accept your dare."

The queen stepped into the air. Her mane shimmered with stars trapped in a nebula of darkness, and a wind stirred and pushed her three enemies toward the arena's edge. "Then prepare for your doom!" She threw back her head and laughed maniacally, cueing peals of thunder.

Storm clouds gathered in the sky. Nightmare Moon raised her horn and made it glow, but nothing seemed to happen.

"The moon! Stop her!" said Knoll. The sky had already turned faintly dimmer than even the clouds had made it.

Alma charged for a wing-assisted hoof punch. Nightmare Moon darted to one side, but her moon-raising spell fizzled. Kai bucked a flimsy pillar down and sent rocks flying at the queen. These missed too, but Knoll caught them with a magic glow and whipped them back around, catching Moon by surprise along one wing. She crashed to the arena floor, then conjured lightning from the heavens, forcing everypony to dodge the sizzling beams while she cackled.

Alma swerved past the warning glow of incoming lightning strikes, edging in toward Moon. When she got close enough she flapped hard and flew at the queen again, landing another hit that stung Alma's left foreleg with its force. It was working!

Lightning caught her and blasted her to ash and feathers.

Alma woke up screaming but only in slight pain. She was back at the checkpoint and the others were busy fighting. Then Kai appeared beside her with a yell of his own. He'd been killed too. "Come on!" Alma said, helping him up so they could charge back into battle. The moon had peeked over the horizon. The arena's barrier parted for them and the fight went on, with Knoll harrying the queen.

Nightmare Moon mixed lightning blasts with gusts of wind that threatened to impale everypony on spiked walls Kai had to break, and a dense fog that let her make terrifying leaps at them from hiding. Alma died three times and the others a few times too. Every time the queen had a safe moment, her moon-raising advanced.

"She's using pegasus attacks," said Knoll, helping Alma up at the checkpoint yet again. "Counter them."

"I haven't got weather powers yet." They ran back into action, still bruised and aching. Death seemed to get more painful the more times it happened in quick succession, but they'd gone a few minutes since the last one.

Kai was frantically kicking rocks at the queen to break her concentration. One of their empty healing-potion bottles lay at his hooves. It seemed to take at least two ponies to do any damage. Clouds ringed the battlefield at various heights. The queen had used them, but so could Alma. The new pegasus feinted at Moon, then bounded up the clouds like a spiral staircase. Another round of fog started to fill the arena. Alma willed herself to sink down through her cloud, just in time to dodge a wicked ricochet lightning bolt. She spread her wings and looped back up to the next highest cloud, grinning. From up here the queen didn't look so tough, even with her magic.

Once at the highest cloud, Alma jumped up into the sky with her forehooves raised. The air around her crackled; the storm clouds overhead seemed closer than ever, and moonlight was starting to shine through them. It was too late to dodge the lightning that was coming for her.

I'm a pegasus, thought Alma. I should be able to take a bolt or two if it's part of a cool, flashy attack.

Instead of stalling, Alma's wings carried her higher than ever before. She could see the voltage building up between her and the storm as a magical twinkle, like massing armies of sparks. She reached so high she grabbed them in her forehooves, in time to stall and come crashing down.

Nightmare Moon was backing Knoll into a corner, while Kai ran up into the arena after yet another death. She looked up just as Alma slammed into her with the fury of a magic-charged lightning bolt. The electricity ripped through both of them but Alma was in midair, Nightmare Moon on the ground, and the queen took the brunt of it. The dark alicorn staggered and collapsed. Alma landed nearby, wobbling and singed.

Moon coughed, shaking off ashy feathers. "Ugh. You win, Ratatosk. Know that this was but a fraction of my true power."

"It's true," Knoll said to Alma, propping her up.

Alma said, "How did you get to be a Noble anyway?"

"I used one of two main methods, involving seizing control of mystic energy sources and having ponies defend them for me. So, popular acclaim and violence. The usual." She stamped the arena floor and sent out a burst of magic that reached into the clouds. A crystal floated down, holding a heart symbol with wings.

"No strings attached to taking this, right?" said Alma. "No signing on to be ruled by you?"

Nightmare Moon lay there catching her breath. "Your speech filter will be deactivated. You agree to a minor mental change that enables you to read the air, more intuitively than you must have seen it just now. Aspects of Talespace that have rules for 'auras' will read you as slightly air-aligned, more so if you keep at learning the pegasus way. No obligations."

Alma had so far avoided anything that would change her mind, her soul. This one seemed harmless, and again it was worth starting to explore what she could be in this new life. "Any objections, Kai or Knoll?" They had none.

So, she stepped closer and touched the crystal, feeling it vanish into her own heart. The sky went mad for a moment, then shifted subtly in color. Air tickled her feathers and swirled around her hooves, violet and salty, up past her ears with a whisper of mint and trombone. She looked around. "I... my brain can't handle this. It's not making sense."

The queen smiled. "Minds adapt to greater changes. I'm very glad you've taken a step along this road. There's much more for you to explore along it if you're willing. For now, though, which way is the wind blowing?"

There wasn't enough to be obvious now that the battle had died down. Alma shut her eyes and tried to sense the currents around her, air and voltage. She looked again at the confusing static of mixed senses and felt a subtle difference of pressure. "Up. The wind is rising."

She took off into the sky, as high as her wings would take her.
> Behind the Curtain
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Good start!" said Knoll, over a restaurant meal of apple pasta and something called "hay fries" that tasted like string beans.

Kai seemed especially interested in the food, buying some of everything with the obligatory loot they'd collected on the way down Mount Improbable. "Thanks for coming, Knoll. Or Noctis."

Alma said, "I guess everyone in town... ah, finally. Everyone knows what we did."

Knoll seemed to enjoy the French bread and apples as much as someone with only one body. He ate delicately with the levitation power of his horn, while the others stuffed themselves with their hooves and muzzles. "Just us, not the NPC villagers. I don't want you to get the wrong idea, miss Ratatosk. We weren't trying to snare you in this world the way the queen was trying to do."

"What was with that?" asked Kai. "You said she only just started the high-pressure recruitment? Seems like she's trying to build up her ego by having as many minds as possible on her server."

Knoll waggled a crust of bread in midair. "We -- Golden Scale, who you met -- helped a party of adventurers eight days ago with the Labyrinth of Night, the quest for the heart of the unicorn. That was a good fight! She didn't pull this year-long wager, though."

Alma asked, "How am I doing on time?" When Knoll looked it up by magic she said, "Still have a few hours before work. I need to get going and take a nap, though." She stood up from the pillow she'd been sitting on, and stretched her wings.

"You'll be back, though?" asked Knoll.

Alma bumped hooves with the druid unicorn. "I will."

#

She made it back through the portal to Ivory Tower. She gathered her clothes and turned to see Kai hop through, back in his centaur form.

"Sorry," he said. "I should've waited."

As usual, Alma's humanoid body was physically censored unless she was somewhere private and paying close attention. "Things really are different here," she said, and gave him a hug. "I wonder, does that weather-sense work outside Hoofland?"

"I doubt it'll work here," the centaur said, smiling down at her. "In Ivory Tower, I mean. The physics are simplistic outside some of the labs. If you'd like to explore some other places with better physics, though, I'd be happy to come along."

"Sounds fun."

#

Alma dreamed of a fire burning the world below her. She was clinging to a tree but it was falling too, while a battle raged between giants and robots. She shifted forms between her old human self, the squirrel body, and thumbless pegasus. Only her winged form could keep her from slipping down the burning tree, falling closer to the abyss of war and flame. At last she lost control of which one she was, and she fell.

#

The lingering nightmare rattled her all day at work, teaching a class on Earth via robotics. The Hoofland trip convinced her even more that it was stupid to stand in a classroom tent and pretend she was just another educator with the handicap of having had her everything replaced. She should be more than the human she'd been.

When she was done for the day, she hung out at Kai's bar as usual and checked the news. Since she was experiencing time at only around a third normal speed while not teaching, it was tough to keep up.

Eight days. What happened since then? Alma flipped through a computer tablet (air-gapped for security, basically just narrating the data on a real computer somewhere) and checked a few news sites for the last week's headlines.

Six days ago: "AI Cold War? Key US surveillance opponent resigns; path clear for new bill."

A few anti-surveillance politicians had resigned for "health reasons" or had scandals chase them out in the last few decades, but usually they didn't get elected at all. Why, it was as though the remaining United States had some sort of agency operating above the law and commanding the world's largest blackmail operation, now AI-assisted!

"Anything interesting?" said Kai, sliding a burger and fries across the counter to her.

Alma gnawed, wondering if she should stop picking herbivore species. "What if Queen Nightmare Moon --"

"All hail Nightmare Moon!" said Kai and that kid Phoenix, who Alma hadn't noticed over in a corner. A few other patrons looked confused.

"Quit that," Alma said. "Anyway, what if she changed policy because she's worried about the news?" She showed Kai the article, and another she'd found about a rumored spy/hacker struggle between the three great AIs.

Kai mixed a drink, a form of meditation for him. "What good would it do to recruit more people to be ponies? More faction politics to show Hoofland should be a bigger part of this world?"

"The queen wanted me stored on Hoofland's servers, and she wanted me to get my mind changed. Superficial feather-brain stuff at least, more invasive think-like-a-pony stuff preferably. Seemed like the goal was about more than racking up points by being declared best pony."

"You're seeing patterns that aren't there," Kai said. "You took a vacation and still managed to worry about stuff. Haven't even seen you try to wrangle more magic out of it yet."

"Oh! You're right about that." Alma conjured her magic interface and saw that she'd qualified for another element upgrade, despite Hoofland's disconnect from the rest of Talespace. She spent several happy minutes browsing the words and phrases that hovered around her to represent her recent experiences.

Kai watched her waving her hands in the air and staring at invisible things. "Didn't know you were so into shopping."

She stuck out her tongue at him. "I'm shopping for superpowers." She finally upgraded her element of "Arrow" to "Velocity", making the brown arrow mark on her fur slide up to her lower leg and turn her choice of color, a pleasant blue. "So now I should be able to keep the stone-hurling spell, and if I earn 'Self' I can combine that with 'Velocity' to move faster, and now I have a first-level element slot free to get 'Self' somehow."

"Magic nerd," said Kai with a smile.

"Yes." Alma ate. Her thoughts drifted back to Hoofland, though. "What Nightmare Moon said..." She waited.

"All hail Nightmare Moon!" said Kai and the kid.

"...Mentioned how Hoofland is all about 'popularity, in a sense'. Everybody's been thinking about how AIs are designed to 'satisfy human values', but with different definitions of that. The pony world is weird because it isn't run directly by an AI, just Nobles who're really human."

"Is that good or bad?" Kai asked.

"Bad, I think. I don't want any human to have total power over us. We've got our own super-AI here, and you'd think she wouldn't allow that kind of tyranny by a human mind, in a world that's basically part of her domain. I don't get it."

"My maker values freedom enough to let you walk into a place where you might lose it."

That explanation didn't quite satisfy Alma. Not when Hoofland attracted people like Poppy, who were looking for a new religion for this new digital life. Alma sent Poppy an e-mail that'd reach her in whatever fantasy forest she was in, talking about her quest success and her speculation.

A reply came soon: "Muffins! Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Get over here to Hooflands East, by the airship dock. If we're not on the same page: think 'literal genie'."

Alma set down her computer and stared at it. "Muffins. I need to go."

Kai said, "What's wrong?"

"We might be way off base, here, but I want to compare notes. You can turn pegasus again, right?"

#

Alma and Kai crossed the cavern of Ivory Tower, looking this time for the portal to the sun-themed side of Hoofland. The entryway stood bright and cheerful with its horseshoe-shaped gate and wooden lockers decorated with hearts.

"How much do you know about Old Norse religion?" Alma asked.

"Burn, pillage, rape?"

"I'll give you a history lesson sometime. Anyway, that culture had an unusually detailed doomsday prophecy, and it gave humans an active role instead of suffering while angels tortured them."

"That much I've heard. Valhalla." There was an independent military contractor using uploading for its little robot army, and a substantial group of people 'playing' at soldiering in Talespace, both using the Norse name for warrior heaven.

"Yes, but there were actually two paradise realms like that, run by different gods, connected to other worlds within a larger universe. Sound familiar?"

"You're saying Hoofland is secretly a military training camp?"

"Not exactly. Come on." Alma jumped through the portal, and landed on four hooves.

#

You have discovered Hooflands East, said friendly lettering in her vision, and a fanfare played.

The sun shined on a cartoonish magical land of fields and villages where everything was wholesome and healthy and it seemed nothing bad could ever happen. Alma's first clue should have been that the old cartoons let this land get ravaged by tyrants and monsters several times per season. Only the ponies' friendship and courage kept the place from becoming a hellhole of meaningless chaos or a ruin of grey crystals and slave camps, as the show itself often hinted.

Poppy had dismissed Hoofland as a proper basis for a religion in favor of helping to start another, but it did have some aspects well-suited for that. "She wrote it off as childish," Alma said. "It's easy to do that and ignore what's underneath. Where is this airship dock?"

Kai poked Alma's chin with one hoof and nudged her to look straight up. A city made of clouds towered overhead, surrounded by colorful pegasi and waterfalls of mist and rainbows. Ships like vast wooden whales rested at horizontal anchor next to an aerial dockyard. Too high to reach from the ground... no. The sky lived. Wisps of fog lurked under the town and the winds around it were magically charged and directed into a braid of rising currents that touched the little clouds and moved on upward. "It's practically a staircase!"

Kai waved a hoof in front of her face. "Are we meeting Poppy there?"

Alma blinked a few times. "Yes. I hope so." She leaped into the air to find the updraft and greet it.

The winds carried her aloft, turning and setting her down on clouds well before her wings got too tired. When she concentrated a certain way she could see an energy meter representing far more air time than she'd had before. Kai flew after her, but quickly had to make an emergency glide down. Alma called to him from the lowest stairway-to-heaven cloud. "What's wrong?"

"I'd forgotten! I never did the pegasus quest like you since I never spent much time in Hoofland. I've got some kind of grandfathered flight power, but not enough to follow you."

Alma sighed. "Sorry. Mind if I go on and meet her, then?"

"Tell me what this is about, first."

She jumped from the cloud and spiraled down to earth. "I doubt it's urgent, but Poppy and I seem to be onto the same idea. The Hooflands are a lifeboat."

Kai looked skeptical. "A cute, cartoon emergency backup server network?"

"You're dismissing the idea. That's why it works. Hold on; I want to grab Poppy."

Alma took off again, eager to be airborne, and bounded up through the windy spiral. The air stirred her mane and tail and helped her swirl ever higher until she lost track of the ground or the rules of flying, only thinking to tag the landing-clouds with her hooves and rise again. Then there were no more updrafts, just a flying hill of clouds with buildings like cave-dwellings and Roman temples.

Poppy met her at the docks. "Way better than unicorn magic, right?"

Alma hardly spared a glance at the red-and-orange stallion. "The unicorns and earthbound must get something impressive to make up for not getting to do what I just did. Oh! Kai is below. I hate to suggest it, but we should talk with him down there."

Poppy glanced uneasily at the world below the clouds. "If you don't mind, this is something best discussed between ex-humans, in this world where we're not being watched much. Have you tried cloud-cakes yet? There's a cafe with private rooms." He pointed one wing toward a wispy cloud bank that radiated a smell of sugar, as though it was made of cotton candy.

Alma was glad to have become immune to diabetes. "Kai is my friend. What is there to hide from him?"

Poppy herded her toward the cafe. "I'm sorry. He's a native AI, and I'm just not sure we should blab about this. But I have to talk about it to someone."

Alma sighed. "Have you at least got enough cleric powers to send him a message not to stand there waiting?"

"Yes. Watch." Poppy found a random pegasus and tossed a gold coin to him, saying, "Mind telling the peggy who's waiting below the stairs that Ratatosk and Poppy will be away for a little while?" The stranger saluted and flew away with the coin.

"How'd you do that so easily?"

"Background pony. You learn to spot them."

In the cafe, Alma sat with Poppy on bare clouds with a plaid picnic blanket between them, covered with delicious wispy pancakes. "So," Alma said, once the novelty of pouring liquified rainbows as syrup had ceased to fascinate her. "Literal genie, you said. You mean the theory about the other AIs that are supposed to 'satisfy human values'?"

"Yes. Our AI overlord is mostly sane. China's is nationalistic, but not the sort that'll disassemble the Earth for materials because somebody told it to maximize spork production. The American one, though, was made with Good Intentions. It was an attempt to bolt 'Friendly AI' theory onto a mass surveillance system and to fight other AIs, and to have it be ultimately under human control. Like making a chainsaw with just enough intelligence to understand that it should help whoever's holding it cut lots of things."

Alma nibbled a cloudcake and peered skeptically at Poppy. Team Ludo claimed the US' supercomputer was dangerously insane, but it hadn't launched nukes yet or anything of the sort -- unless, as was fairly likely, it was secretly behind the wave of terrorist attacks last year on Ludo's systems.

Alma said, "Let me see if you're getting at the same thing I'm thinking. If that AI is nuts, it's trying to satisfy human values, which include things like violent domination and strife. It doesn't want humans to have a secure and happy life. So, tucked away in one corner of this virtual universe where we can laugh it off, there's a magical land of cartoon horses who are outside any rival AI's control. Who are, increasingly, different from humans even beyond the fact that they're digital minds now. So they're not valid targets for hurting."

The stallion nodded enthusiastically. "Exactly. If the other AIs destroy the rest of our world -- and I mean even so far as nuking the Earth -- they can leave Hoofland alone and still follow their programming."

"There was a thing..." Alma flapped, trying to recall. "In the story of Ragnarok, all the cool Vikings would die heroically in the last battle along with the gods themselves, but the world wouldn't end. There'd be a hidden place in the heavens called... Gimle."

Poppy paled. "I'd hardly gotten the Ragnarok connection. I was thinking mostly about the mental changes. But there happens to be a type of magic armor that some ponies play with. Covers almost your whole body, has weird restrictions on joint movement. Suppose it's modeled conveniently on a type of real-world battle robot, and we're learning to pilot it without even knowing?"

"This just keeps getting better," said Alma. "But Nightmare Moon was hinting at me about this from when she started calling me Ratatosk. Was that deliberate, or was she just thinking about the apocalypse when it was time to give me a name?"

"She was testing you," said a newcomer stepping through the cloudy wall.

Poppy fell to her front knees, such as they were. Alma only stared at the radiant white-winged unicorn who stood twice their height with a mane that shimmered like a summer morning. A sun design, much like Poppy's, marked her flanks. A golden crown and regalia decorated her already-regal body.

"Your majesty!" said Poppy.

Queen Celestia favored her cleric with a smile that would lift the darkest of moods. "Fear not. I sensed your distress, my faithful student. What may I do for you?"

Poppy stammered, "I... I was worried, your highness. Because of the mental changes, and Alma here, and what Queen Nightmare Moon was doing."

"May I read your recent memories?"

Alma tried to object, but Poppy nodded and the queen's horn glowed a soft white. Celestia said, "I see. It is exactly as you deduce, little ones. Clever of you."

Poppy stood straighter and held her wings slightly out. "What should we do?"

"Poppy!" Alma hopped between the two of them and glared into the queen's serene eyes. "Whatever read/write access you're using on her brain, cut it out."

The queen raised one eyebrow. "Poppy knows you as a restless one, Ratatosk, and jealous of your independence. It must have been hard to agree to upload."

Poppy poked Alma's tail. "She doesn't control me. The queen is my friend and teacher."

"But you treat her like a god."

Celestia turned her smile on Alma, and even the unbelieving pegasus felt how easy it would be to trust her in all things. The queen said, "I am a Noble. I have that effect on ponies. You know that I'm not infallible or invincible, though. I use no mental compulsion."

Alma looked back and forth between the white unicorn and Poppy. "Why test me?"

"With only a hint, as an outsider, you deduced the 'Gimle' aspect of Hoofland. So did Poppy, through somewhat different logic. Others, then, will realize it too before long. That answers a question we Nobles had been worried about: when will the world see past our facade? Which leaves another question: What will you do with this knowledge?"

Alma stepped away. "You can't erase my memory of this. I agreed to nothing."

"Indeed."

Alma blinked. "Indeed? I could blab about this to the world and you'd let me?"

"Would you prefer I threaten to call down the sun's wrath in earnest? With my powers I could reduce your perception of time until you were imprisoned for weeks, but I would answer for the injustice of it."

Poppy said, "Your majesty, Ratatosk wasn't here for the revolution. She doesn't understand how hard we worked to build something wholesome. I... just didn't expect it'd be a cover for something so grim as a digital fallout shelter."

One of the cloudcakes levitated off of the plate and into the queen's maw. She gulped it down. "Tell me, Ratatosk: In stories, why are elves so passive and stagnant?"

Alma said, "They're supposed to be an ideal of beauty, at least for white Europeans. Elusive, eternal, and in touch with nature in a way that real people never were. But they can't change or they risk losing that." She paused. "Are you saying ponies are like elves?"

"In a way." She lifted one hoof. "We're based partly on an animal that humans love, and partly on a dream made to delight children. This virtual world is designed to be even more wondrous. I personally had my mind and body altered to become a living embodiment of light, hope, joy and virtue. Not that I always live up to it, mind you." She swiped another cloudcake.

The alicorn queen was every trope of surreal beauty for a fantasy creature, from her slowly waving and shimmering mane to her bright, large eyes and slender legs. Alma said, "If you're a queen of fairyland, evolved to match a human ideal, doesn't that make it all the more jarring that you're using the Hooflands this way?"

"You noted that the American AI -- named FAE, ironically -- reads human nature as a set of needs for satisfaction and control and strife. You came here ready to believe that the Hooflands would hold some terrible secret, because happiness and beauty are a distant ideal that you can never have." Celestia stamped the cloudy floor. "A lie, in other words. Part of you thinks you deserve to be unhappy."

Ridiculous. Alma was no masochist, and "deserving" meant nothing without context. She was just someone who wanted to be responsible, to always have something worthwhile to do, because otherwise she was useless. Stagnation was death. In other words, struggle drove her.

"I see the thinking in your eyes," said Celestia, giving her time to respond.

Alma said, "What has that got to do with the Hooflands being used this way?"

The queen spread her wings and filled the room with light. Alma averted her eyes to fight Celestia's attempt to use raw beauty on her. The unicorn didn't seem to mind. "If you won't look at me, then consider: I'm a former human, who could have a very pleasant life managing Hoofland. Why did I join a conspiracy to save human souls on Earth? If I were driven by 'duty to society' I would have enough ponies to rule right here. If I were driven by 'the need to be useful', again I do quite enough. Instead, well... Poppy, why do I do this?"

The red pegasus said, "Because becoming a true pony means giving up those parts of human nature. The shame of looking ridiculous, the lust to rule others, the gluttony of wanting what we can't enjoy. That's what we were trying to overcome when I left the Hooflands behind, wasn't it?"

Alma opened her eyes and focused on Poppy. "So, it's reasonable to turn living humans into digital ponies and rewrite their brains in the hopes of surviving a hacker and/or nuclear war, because you're so enlightened you can be happy about it?"

Celestia laughed, and her wings wriggled with the moment of humility. "See, Poppy? I think a lack of ponies like Ratatosk is why you left. We need somepony to pop the ego balloon once in a while. Ratatosk, that's about right. We're no longer fully human, so we can be more like what we wish humans were. The reason we're not stagnant is that we kept joy. True ponies still want to make things and improve the world, but not because they're afraid anymore. I challenge you to read our literature and tell me its beauty is empty and inferior to what humans with all their darkness can do."

Alma had struggled with her teaching job, because as a digital mind inhabiting a robot she was less effective than a regular human. She'd been trying to think up ways to take full advantage of her new nature, to be more than human instead of a human with a handicap. The 'true pony' mental changes were a way to do that, regardless of whether they came with a silly cartoon body. "Poppy, you're really like this inside? You don't feel any jealousy or the like?"

"I never accepted the soul-surgery our queen is talking about," said Poppy, hanging her head. "I flew away when it became possible. Your majesty, I'm sorry."

"Don't be. And don't feel that you must accept it today. I will always be here for you, even if our silly game of monarchy falls apart and I become just another pony."

Poppy's squirrel cult in the greater Talespace world was a secondhand attempt at what she'd been offered in Hoofland, then. Cultural changes without deep, soul-altering mental ones. There was some sense to the ponies' desire to change themselves so deeply, even aside from the threat of a rogue AI. Alma said, "But you do still have kingdoms and tribalism and revolutions."

Celestia nodded. "The best parts of those things, yes. When you play violent games, do you include the gore and screaming and gravestones? No. You experience fun and excitement and consciously choose the light without the darkness. With apologies to Queen Nightmare Moon."

In folklore, fairies or fae or Fair Folk were unnerving because their glory was an illusion, a hollow mockery of human culture. The ponies claimed to be deeper than that.

Alma said, "All right, all right. I see there's a logical connection between mental changes and defense against sadistic AI. But what about these pony robots you apparently have? If you're going to help people in the real world, Earthside, your ponies will need to deal with a world where blood and tombstones do exist. Will they be able to cope with that, and will they be so alien that they kill people while wearing a smile of self-satisfied joy?"

"They're not exactly pony robots, and we have few so far. That's beside the point. The real answer is, I'm not completely sure. Carry the rumors as you see fit, Ratatosk. Talk with ponies, get to know them and their works, and tell me whether my breed of post-humans is really suitable for living on Earth outside of little elven enclaves."

Alma knew too little. There were worlds to explore, books to read, friends to meet. Celestia's question about 'true ponies' applied just as well to native AIs, including individuals like Kai and collectives like Noctis; would they be useful on Earth? "I don't feel like this is a new quest you're offering me," said Alma. "I'm already looking for similar answers."

The queen smiled. "Go with my blessing, in any case. Thank you for a lovely discussion; the other Nobles and I will take it into account as the concept of a pony species and shelter inevitably leaks. Lastly: Would you like to receive the true heart of a pony? Or to have your mind permanently transferred to Hoofland's servers, in case something terrible happens?" She looked also at Poppy. "This goes for you too, of course. Neither of you need commit today."

Alma feared the sudden annihilation of her world, but she'd lived in the shadow of nuclear war for six decades. She wasn't as easily herded to safety as someone younger might be. The real questions were whether to try now to become better than human... and the unstated idea of living under the rule of an equine queen.

She said, "Right now I'm ruled by the Ludo AI. I accepted that because she's not human and doesn't seem capable of abusing her power over me, much. With you I'm less sure; no offense. I think that you, Nightmare Moon and I can be friends for now, if that's all right with you." She offered her hoof.

Celestia bumped it. "I'd like that. What about you, Poppy?"

The red pegasus closed her eyes and breathed deeply. "I'm still not ready, your majesty. I was caught off guard by the bigger picture of the Hooflands' purpose, and I'm involved in the Great Oak movement now."

"Very well, though I believe your squirrelly faith and mine are compatible. In fact, before long we may not be speaking in terms of 'true ponies' so much as 'enhanced humans', who happen to come from this little dream but wear many sorts of bodies."

#

Alma returned to Kai's bar to apologize for leaving him out of the meeting. It felt strange to shuttle between two legs and four, and to be back in squirrel form without her wings. She told him everything.

Kai poured two drinks and threw back one himself. "Being a cartoon horse isn't just a matter of taste, then. No more so than Poppy's squirrel thing. There's more hidden behind it."

Alma swirled the beer around in her mug, and drank. "'Higher up and farther in'. Now I need to read some pony-written literature to see whether they get reality well enough to trust."

"Are you thinking about the mind change, then?"

Alma nodded. "Maybe soon. Once I figure out whether it's reversible, and whether I just got fast-talked into being impressed by nonsense. At best I doubt it's the only way to become a better person. Still, there might be some merit in it. We humans have had the same flaws for as long as we've had records. Maybe we can fix them now."

Kai said, "Remodeling your moral system is a bigger deal than the smell/taste upgrade I got you. That was just a bug fix."

"Yeah. I need to research this." She thought of her Earthside job again. "We need to become better than what we are."

"Why? That same sense of duty the queen was complaining about?"

Alma drank and sighed. "It's not that, nor selfishness. I don't think putting yourself first is bad, mind you. Call me Chaotic Neutral. I see problems out there on Earth and I want to fix them, because I can imagine the world getting better and it won't happen unless people work for it. So, this world is my home now but I want to keep interacting with Earth to protect us, and to help the people who're still there."

Kai listened to all this with forced patience; she could see it in the slant of his ears. "You humans are complicated, you know? I just want to make great things and make sure the world doesn't get destroyed."

A smile stretched across Alma's muzzle. "Nothing wrong with that. Say, uh..." She tapped her mug with one claw, avoiding his eyes, then forced herself to look up at him. "Getting used to this life means trying new things and not being afraid, right? I was wondering... well, you've been exploring more than me. Think we could go somewhere new, together?"

Kai's ears lifted again and he put one big hand atop hers. "I don't think I need to read your mind to see what you're getting at. Yes, I think I'd like that."