> The Fine Line
>  by PostPony
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: No Future
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Unknown

I knew no identity. I knew no self. I knew no peers. I knew the world, however. I knew the small ones. I helped them grow, to know themselves, to mold their world, and to know peace. This was my debt to them from the thrice repelled approach of those I feared and their strange children. I watched the shrouded place for the strange ones and again I discovered their approach. I had no recourse that I could pursue. I did, actually, have a single thread that reached through the eye of a needle created by the greatest of the small ones. This eye looked out upon a different place that existed in no other direction than through its beholding and I could see too the sky it saw.

At the end of this thread passing through the eye was a connection to Those-Of-The-Kind-One which was anchored by a singular ancient act of harmony he had done for the small ones. I delayed calling out through this thread, foolishly. I could see from these lands that Those-Of-The-Kind-One were becoming very clever, but I knew they could destroy as easily as the strange ones. I remembered later the wisdom of one of the small ones. A small chance is always better than no chance, she had said to me, and I knew this was true.

I realized, to my alarm, that I had deliberated upon the merits of this action for far too long. I hastily sent a pulse of will into the eye to anchor its needle upon the bedrock of the void and sent a thought along the thread to seek out and pull those with great kindness and great strength. I could only hope that those it caught could follow the pull.

A great period passed and the clock ticked away, the candle burned to its base and I did everything I could to strengthen the small ones. I did not know if my call would be answered and I wouldn’t know until the echo on the thread told me. Then the thought on the thread returned, thinking of satisfaction. It said it was being followed closely by those who could answer the call. How would they answer, it did not know, but it had hope. It appeared that a great burden was lifted from my form, but it did not leave me for long.

I saw through the eye of the needle the close approach of only a single individual who knew not of the call nor the hoped-for answer, and that one stopped just short of the eye and did other things. There were two others, but they had missed the mark to a degree too great. I panicked and lashed out to avoid failure at the final instant of the final moment. I did not know if I could ever do enough to overcome this series of mistakes, but I would do everything within my power to prevent the end.















Sierra Sky

I was on the verge of hyperventilating. Never could I have imagined doing something so risky and stupid. I had just betrayed my closest friend. A friend that was also royalty! The self-accusations from within led to other thoughts trying to justify what I had done. How dare she even think about risking herself when so many ponies are going to need her soon!? The only future ahead of me was a procession of pain, pain, pain, and then a grave.

I was born with a disease that made my body age very quickly. Apparently, it was a disease from my mother’s lineage. Certain couples would see a quarter of their foals age quickly and die shortly after entering adulthood. No surprise that it was a noble unicorn family that had become inbred, but my father was an earth pony who knew little of his family tree. Maybe they were distant relatives already, but it didn’t matter now.

The doctors at the Palace Hospital were technically there to help in case royalty or other palace staff were hurt, but that was rare. So Former Princess Celestia proclaimed that the very most in need in the nation would be treated when possible at her personal hospital. That meant desperate cases. These days Princess Twilight Sparkle ran things and had brought her niece, Princess Flurry Heart, to the hospital on one of her visits. She seemed to be on imperfect terms with her aunt when they arrived at my room. I was reading a book one day when I heard a knock on my door. I called out, “Come in.” I did not expect to see either princess at the time. Princess Twilight stuck to a schedule. Princess Flurry lived far to the north and was not in the habit of visiting me back then. 

“Hello, Sierra Sky, I’m sorry if we are disturbing you at all, we’ll go if we are, but I was wondering if you were willing to answer a personal question while Flurry Heart is here. It’s a question that maybe I should not ask, so I want to emphasize that you can choose not to answer. Is this acceptable, Sierra?” the princess asked me.

“I’m good with that. Go ahead.” I replied. I noticed that Princess Flurry Heart did not seem comfortable herself. 

“If you could be cured today, what would you want to do?” Princess Twilight asked me.

I was silent and lost in my thoughts for a moment, but as the Princess of Hard-Hitting Questions was about to speak, I interrupted to say, “I’ll answer, I am just collecting my thoughts.”

They were silent. Soon enough, I answered, but in a slow and halting manner. “I would go home and live with Dad. I would go to school. Find my cutiemark, eat good food, fly every... every day, maybe paint. I would help other ponies if I thought I could help. Then I would be happy.” My voice was going to pieces by the end of that. Maybe I should not have answered.

Princess Twilight thanked me and left with Princess Flurry Heart. I realized later that I felt a little better in the aftermath like my book said would happen. Princess Flurry Heart returned by herself the next day. I had no idea how to get a conversation off the ground. I knew she was a couple of years younger than me, but I had no idea why she was here.

After a pause, she said, “I wanted to...I was,” she took another breath as if to give herself time to think, “I feel the need to apologize to you. Aunt Twilight brought me here to make a point because I was being dumb. She even apologized to me because I think your answer hit harder than she hoped. Now she feels guilty about using you against me and I feel guilty that she felt the need to do it at all.”

She seemed to have run out of steam, but I was left a little confused about which point she wanted to make. “And… what do you want to apologize for, exactly?”

She opened her mouth several times. Then she got her words out. “I was born healthy, and powerful. I am a princess. Everything has gone my way but I have had no purpose and it’s made me… moody, I suppose. And here you are, with so little but you seem more… whole, I guess. I’m not sure.”

I said to her, “You can have all of the forgiveness from me that you can handle, but I think the one that you should be asking forgiveness from is yourself.”

Flurry was quiet. Her eyes went unfocused as if she was looking through the wall behind me. This carried on for a moment until she returned her attention to me and said, “Maybe you’re right. How did you...?”

I lifted the book I was reading for her to see. “This is what I was reading yesterday, I would say I was in the right frame of mind.”

Flurry angled her head to read the cover. “Philosophies of Happiness, by Lemon Thoughts.” She returned her gaze to mine. She said, “You are definitely one who takes after Twilight. My mother tried to get me to read this book a few times. Maybe I’ll finally do it.”

I dog-eared the page I was on and I hoofed it over to her. She took it in a foreleg but kept her eyes on me. She said, “I get that you want me to read it, but I am a princess. I could get five hundred of these if I really wanted to.”

I smiled and replied, “This way you have to come back when you’re done.”

I suppose she was touched by the gesture because I think she started to get teary-eyed. She said, “I suppose you’re right. I need to go, but you’ll see me again.” And so I did. Many, many times. For years.

Then there was today. 

I was on my hooves in front of the mirror. I was actually quite tall for a pony, but I think that was due to the previous year of my treatments. The doctors had tried giving me growth hormones to attempt to delay the march of the disease. It helped, but it wasn’t sustainable and they warned about a strong chance that we were running a much higher risk of heart diseases. It didn’t matter too much anyway. My body was failing, weaker than ever. I thought my wings might be shedding feathers faster than they were growing back. My joints hurt, I could feel the wrinkles even if I couldn’t see them. The mirror was actually very kind to me, but I knew the end was near. If anything failed or broke inside of me, it may never be fixed.

Flurry walked in without a knock, as was usual these days. “Hey, Sierra. Ready to go?”

I summoned up some energy, “As can be,” I said. Energy spent.

We left the hospital. Already I was tired, but I valued the time spent with Flurry far more than any amount of useless rest. Luckily the palace lab was not far. It was an addition made by Princess Twilight. Rumor from Flurry was she had tried to get permission for it from Former Princesses Celestia and Luna, who laughed at the question and told her that she was the sole authority over the place.

So as the griffons would say, she ‘went ham’ with the renovations. I had been there a few times before since it hosted several teams of medical scientists trying to solve the problems inside of myself and others. 

The nature of the lab changed when the sky started to flash.

A few months previous we all learned that the night sky we knew was actually inside a bubble. Well, an ‘icosahedron’ if you bothered to remember the word. Apparently, this was already known, but not by most. Luna’s work, she said, was to recreate the sky as it was before a great barrier was created in an ancient conflict that predated Discord’s reign. That conflict itself left few clues behind as to what the world was like, but we did learn that it was against many creatures like the nightmare that had possessed Luna so long ago. Now everypony was afraid that an army of ‘Nightmare Moons’ was going to descend from the sky one day.

Now that this barrier seemed to be under threat, the lab, and the nation for that matter, became far more dedicated toward martial considerations but I knew that there was little hope at the highest levels, except for this project that Flurry was about to show me.

One room was far larger than all of the others. It was like a hexagonal warehouse, but a magic lab.

“C’mon,” Flurry said. I simply followed her into the middle. There were mages and scientists and guards all over, but Flurry seemed to have the run of the place, and thus, I did too, judging by the fact that the magical wall let me through. I could not see what anypony was working on because there were magical barriers that rose to the ceiling that blurred the interiors and probably controlled movement. I had learned a bit about unicorn magic, but like so many others, I did not pursue much understanding considering that I would never be able to do anything with it even if I was healthy.

We entered the central chamber and found it unoccupied aside from a circular marble platform along with six gems spread equally around, not the elements of harmony, though, and a cart with a neat rack of curved rectangular pieces of metal that were each reinforced on one side and bedazzled on the other with gems connected by lines of colored glitter that might have been just more gems crushed into powder. I liked the interesting patterns created by the angles the powdery lines made together.

“This,” Flurry said, gesturing, “is an AMSTER!”

I did not hear that right. “A hamster?” I asked.

Flurry giggled. “That’s what I said too. No, it’s Twilight’s acronym. It means Ancient Magical Space Transportation… uh, Exploration Rover, I think.”

I furrowed my brow in consideration. “So, it lets a pony… rove? I don’t know if I have ever said that word in my life. Wait, space?”

“I know right!?” Flurry agreed loudly. “Did you ever read any of those stories where ponies would go on adventures into mirror worlds or something like that?”

I nodded once, bringing my attention to her instead of the device.

“Well it turns out that I will be doing exactly that, but in space!” she proclaimed.

I raised my right eyebrow. “You?”

She nodded quickly, bobbing her mane at me. “I will be taking this thing into this other dimension and I will simply activate the spells going down the checklist to find...somepony, somecreature. I’m not sure. Luna and Celestia have had visions about this. I don’t know exactly what we are looking for, but this does.” She lifted a large topaz gem in her magic that I had not noticed was beside the rack on the cart. “This gem is an ancient magical artifact. It can cast a whole bunch of spells and make words appear for you and nopony else. Even a creature with no magic can make it work.”

“Can they,” I said, “and will it be dangerous?”

She shrugged and returned the gem to its resting place. “It depends mostly on this creature I need to get. It’s supposed to be powerful enough that it can help against the nightmares.”

I was not comfortable with how this conversation was going. I wondered if there was something I could do about it. Maybe I could go in her place?

Then we heard a muffled bang and we looked out into the rest of the lab. We saw movement and then a pony stuck his head into the area we were in. “Oh, Princess Flurry Heart,” the stallion said, “I’m glad you’re here. We would be glad if you could lend us your strength for a moment.”

She nodded and hurried off in his direction. Over her shoulder, she said to me, “I’ll be right back.”

I had a plan coming together. A stupid one. I did not know if I really wanted to take advantage of this moment of serendipity or not.

At that very moment, I heard a buzz from the topaz on the cart. I looked at the gem and flinched in surprise. It had words floating above it that were somehow more in focus than anything else. I also realized just how bad my vision was. They seemed to take their color from the gem, but their glow made them appear to be nearly white, like my fur. There was also a line extending between the words and the topaz as if to show they were connected.

Password: Serendipity
Password Accepted.

I realized then that my heartbeat was loud and fast, and how nervous I was. Was all of this in reaction to some floating words? Maybe it was actually about Flurry’s mission. Maybe I was more upset about it than I thought. New text appeared.

Welcome, User.
Mission plan: Loaded.
Spells: Charged.
Mana: 99%.
Status: Green.

Ready to launch mission.
Proceed? Yes/No

I read the words while I also became aware that they were not casting shadows from the magical light fixtures above. They were easy enough to interpret. I knew that if I wanted to take this mission away from Flurry, now was the chance, and I dearly wanted to.

Something in that thought must have caused it to think I had chosen the ‘yes’ option. The gem levitated itself off of the cart and floated over the center of the platform.

Please stand here, it displayed to me. 

I figured I still had time to change my mind if I wanted to, so I obeyed. Once I hobbled over I turned to see the metal pieces float out of their rack in quick order. Like a ribbon being pulled through the air, they encircled me until the first one found itself following the last one. There were sixteen of them and I realized that the curve of each piece perfectly matched the curve of the circle they made.

Engage transition? Yes/No? It asked by hanging text in front of me, the line extending above me beyond my sight.

I hesitated. I obviously had not thought about this enough and I had never in my life taken a plunge like this without considering my choices deeply. That was exactly what I intended to do until I saw Flurry’s blurred figure approaching from beyond the shield. I froze up, but then I saw that she had been distracted talking to another pony next to her. I didn’t want to face her while in the act so I rushed my choice by mentally declared a loud ‘Yes! Go go go go!’

Engaging, the words said. I lifted into the air with the metal bits and the magic of the amster created a yellow sphere that appeared around me. Then the room went black and my guts twisted.

Then we arrived at the current moment. I was floating, weightless. It reminded me of the days when I would go for my monthly glides out of Canterlot. The staff would fill me with painkillers and escort me to one of the palace’s balconies that overlooked the edge of the primary Canterlot support plate that a good chunk of the city rested upon.

We would jump off, and two other pegasi would guide me on a route down to Lower Canterlot, the river port below. We would take a winding path and sometimes we would shed speed by pulling up until we entered free fall and gradually curved downward with gravity. That was a blissful moment whenever it happened. All the aches from my body complaining about the indignity being weighed down by other body parts just went away.

Soon my racing thoughts calmed, my guts untwisted, and I could focus on the outside. I realized that it wasn’t that the room went dark, but that I was now in another dimension. I could see stars. Somehow, I knew they were different from the ones that Luna would dress the night sky with. I read the words that were now being displayed by the gem. Or perhaps it was best to say the AMSTER was showing them to me, rather than just the topaz? Whatever.

Initiate search for species: ANTHROPOS? Yes/No?

Anth’what? It didn’t matter. I thought the word ‘yes’ and I felt the familiar sensation of a scanning spell poking me everywhere until it passed me by. I was in for a surprisingly long wait.

Four and a half hours later, I was rudely awoken from my nap. I was very confused for a moment until memory returned. I was about to try to get the AMSTER to take me back home when I read its update.

One partial contact return on search for species: ANTHROPOS.
Form match: 87%...
Mind match: 81%...
Physiology match: 0%
WARNING: Search inconclusive. Caution is advised.
Location of partial return available as an option on the destinations list.

I wondered about the numbers. Was this like how changelings were similar to ponies but were very different inside? I knew a changeling named Nervure who visited occasionally when the hospital requested a ‘ling from King Thorax’s hive to perform emotional checkups on the patients. It turned out that his name had nothing to do with nerves. 

Maybe this was like a changeling? Changelings weren’t always our friends and I had no way to know whether this creature was dangerous, but if it was, I did not want Flurry Heart to be the one to confront it. So I stretched out my limbs where I floated and figured out how to tell the AMSTER to take me to this ‘contact.’ It gave me a countdown. Two hours and fifteen minutes. I guess it was time for another nap. 

It was my last peaceful memory before my first death.
> Chapter 2: Rebirth
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Valerie

The heavy magnetic connection between the anchoring complex and the end of the heavy Kevlar cable dangling from the sky was made. A heavy thunk echoed through the ground beneath me.

I was on a gas giant moon that circled a star one hundred and fifty light-years from Sol. The star didn't have a name, just a catalog number. HIP two one oh five three was attractive because the nearest star was only just over two light-months away. Each system had a relatively large number of planets.

The magnetic rails were now visible high above to my magnified vision as they descended the cable. They would soon allow massive elevators to ascend into space up to a height of three hundred and twelve kilometers. The cable behaved like a cross between a guy wire and a strand of metallic spaghetti. The top of this strand was hung from a silver hair that crossed the sky from horizon to horizon. I could see elevators climbing other cables connected to this strand in the sky. Dots of light, like condensation on a web, reflected the dusk light of the white star that had already fled the thin nitrogen sky. 

Did this world need to be terraformed? No. Why was I doing it? Maybe I thought grand projects would justify the past. It was actually a distraction. 

I honestly had no idea why I had come out all this way without any real purpose. Most of the work going on throughout the solar system was standard fare performed by sub-sapient machines. I added a little bit of creativity to the work going on. The compound I was in was painted simple complementary colors. I decorated the laser propulsion stations being assembled on the thread above and launched into orbit of the gas giant. I designed vistas to be carved into the landscape. I wasn't stirred by any of these things.

I sat upon a boulder that I allowed to remain in the middle of the compound because I thought it was tasteful. I planned to add grass in the future. It probably would have been uncomfortable if I had been flesh and blood, but that hasn't been the case for a long time now. 

My body was a construct of dark metallic bones and white polymer muscles. Perhaps 'chassis' was a better word for it. My mind had long ago been transferred into the black ball I kept in my chest. It was a nice arrangement to my way of thinking. It allowed me to create segments of my mind that could totally focus on a task without truly bringing my full attention to it, among endless other benefits. 

I only had a few segments running at the moment the alerts came in from two of them over the course of a couple of hours. A sudden rush of information revealed itself as the segments' knowledge was written directly to my memory and virtual visual cortex. That is to say, two camera views of a yellow speck appeared in my vision. The first was two light-hours and fifteen light-minutes distant. I quickly became concerned. This was new. Nothing about humanity's centuries of cosmic observations predicted something like this. I had no explanation for it, but neither did I have any reason to take aggressive action. However, I broadcast preparatory instructions to my installations across the solar system. Four and a half hours later, the distant speck vanished, and a new one appeared high above the ground, yet inside the atmosphere. It was moving fast but perfectly stationary relative to the now missing one in the far reaches of the system according to the same mind segment that was watching the cameras. The relationship between these two yellow lights was obvious yet too wild to consider just yet.

The readout told me that the new one was extremely near. I looked up. Nearly directly above me was that yellow speck. I wanted to have a better look, and one of my AIs set about finding useful sensors and pointing them in the right direction. 

I soon had a better view. It was actually a sphere with the volume of a small room. It wasn't totally opaque. There was something small inside, but I couldn't tell what it was. Neither could the pattern recognition bots trying to help, not with the burning luminosity of air compressed into plasma flaring around the object. They did, however, have relatively high confidence that it was a limp body. The yellow hamster ball falling from the sky did not appear to be under control as it fell at atmospheric re-entry speeds.

All of this was confusing. I was more than a little confident that there was not another human in the solar system. The nearest two were out at the neighboring star doing what I was doing, developing a solar system. One of them did have a great time changing the form of her body regularly. Still, she would have to travel here first, and that would take one hundred fifty days minimum and would be obvious in the extreme. Not to mention that they absolutely had nothing like the objects I was seeing. The one above me was falling much more slowly now, and my systems calculated where it would fall without even a single thought from me to prompt it.

With a thought sent across the compound, my personal VTOL woke up, performed some quick checks, took off, and headed my way. In moments, the hum of electric motors and large rotors descended upon me. While still hovering just above the ground, it lowered the ramp for me, and I quickly strapped myself into the chair inside. 

The yellow sphere was still falling when it popped like a bubble. The sensors reported to me the presence of seventeen small objects and a body falling to the ground.

I instructed the VTOL to fly to the projected landing zone. I wouldn't exactly make it in time, but there wasn't a surface on this planet that didn't have the nanoscopic machines that made most of my terraforming efforts possible.

Soon the figure and the other debris struck the ground. Instantly, millions of my nanobots raced across the ground like a swarm of grasshoppers, abandoning their efforts to assist the pastel green and blue lichens in favor of the stranger. It was moments before I saw reports of keratin towers, that is to say, hair and fur, then some had found blood. Those swam 'upstream' to enter through the wounds that were the source. They sent word of their discoveries up their hierarchy of larger, smarter, and more complex machines even as instructions arrived to go further. Discover more.

The largest and smartest of these machines could even rival the size of a grain of fine sand. These in their multitudes did most of the work involved in discovering the identity and state of the intruder, while the smaller ones figuratively served as remote eyes and hands to the larger ones. 

The machines told me of lipid bi-layers catastrophically breached. Circulatory fluids running out of oxygen and nutrients and accumulating waste. 

When they reported the discovery of a recognizable brain, I ordered them to consume the rest of the body to gather and deliver the resources that the brain was draining from its stagnant blood. It had only been moments since the process started. 

I arrived seconds later. Steel valves attached to canisters embedded in the hull of my VTOL opened. Each issued forth a gray stream of liquid that snaked out and raced to the body as I kept a steady pace and took in the sight of a bad scene.

Images and impressions flowed into my mind, and I learned about this dead alien at a rapid pace. Nearly dead, actually. Somehow brain death was still seconds away. Seconds that my machines would make excellent use of in their many millions. Even with the information I already had, I could already tell that this was a bizarre case of convergent evolution. It did not originate on Earth, but nature had found the same solutions to many processes. 

The alien was an equine female with a very similar body layout to Earth-based animals to the point that vast swaths of her biology were familiar except for a few extra organs, such as one that seemed to regulate a third circulatory system. She did have the blood and lymphatic systems that I was familiar with, but my machines could not interact with the material in the third. I couldn't even determine if it was a liquid or a gas, but it was delivered everywhere, especially to the wings and hooves. The wings were a surprise. Feathers on a mammal. I was almost certain that the wings were vestigial considering their size, but the unknown substance kept me from closing the book on the idea. 

A small part of me pondered her colors. Its coat and feathers were a beige-gray so pale it was nearly white. Its mane and tail were desaturated indigo created by pigment rather than dye, which was odd. It was unclothed, but perhaps that was normal in its society. It resembled Pegasus straight out of Greek mythology made me question the possibility of a connection in our shared past. For now, I ordered my internal software to temporarily assign 'pegasus' as the name of the species in all of my documentation.

Much of her tissues were revealed to be failing for biological reasons rather than purely hit-the-ground-too-hard reasons. It took little time to discover that the DNA strands in every cell were coming unwound. Was this alien especially old? I determined that repairs were not feasible before total cellular failure without dangerously overheating the body and sent a command into my network. It took only seconds before cargo drones arrived with several spools of feedstock ordinarily meant for soft robotics. I didn't watch the process too closely. I was glad that I couldn't feel nauseous. It was an intensive process that took hours, but eventually, I reworked the body of my visitor to make it appear and behave as functional and as healthy as I could.

The results were relatively crude in my eyes, but it worked. The new heart was just a vibration device, and the lungs were only good for speaking and influencing otherwise autonomic functions. The flesh was converted from red meat into white fibrous polymers. I added nutrient storage for energetic compounds to enable the equine to move around and sustain her brain. Dyes were added below the surface of the skin such that light would scatter properly, a key ingredient in the perception of liveliness. 

Once I decided that gentle movement was safe, I lifted the pegasus with machine steadiness and carried it into the VTOL.

I shook my head. What a night this was turning out to be.


***


It took an entire day in the infirmary before my efforts started to show the first signs of working. It wasn't my efforts, per se. The sub-sapient AIs were doing all of the work, but I regularly had to make decisions. The body of the alien was complete, but the brain was not. A lot of information had been lost. The strength and pattern of connections between brain cells themselves constituted memories and skills in the alien just as in humans. Most patterns had many copies, but I wouldn't be able to recover everything. 

Soon enough, the brain of the winged alien was known to me to the degree that it became possible to understand the purpose of whole structures of neurons, but not necessarily the information contained within them. I soon replaced important neural structures that were destroyed entirely, but I had to borrow from human patterns to do it, lacking any other examples to choose from.

During the process, a machine walked into the room. It looked far more human than my current mechanical body. This was by design, of course. It was an android, a robot with the appearance of a human. It wore a face that was mine once and would be again, but I could not remember if it was my original look or not. Those memories lay behind digital caution tape that I did not meddle with. I sent a command, and it unbuttoned its shirt. The flesh below the sternum recessed nearly back to the spine, revealing access to a port behind the ribs. 

I instructed my own chest to open, and I retrieved a black sphere the size of a grapefruit. My core. Its surface was covered in sockets and metal plates, and inside was the hardware and software that formed my mind. I looked down upon the device. I remembered for just this moment just how surreal my life was. I delivered the heavy object to the port on the android, and it was collected by small arms that reached out and took it. The flesh below returned to its natural position and closing the seam. My body was now just a remote-controlled robot. The android connected to my core. In an instant, without any new outward change, the android had transformed into a post-human. It was now me. I sent new commands to relinquish control of the metallic form I had worn to that point. 

Now I at least looked more human. I felt a little more alive. I sensed the chill of the thin air. I reached ahead to touch the fur of the pegasus. It reminded me of a house cat. The cut of the fur wasn't long, but it was soft. Somehow, it became easier to set aside my burdens. I found myself with new reasons to heal the stranger. There remained extensive brain damage, however. I focused on following the work of the AIs. It wouldn't be long, now. 

There were times that it seemed almost conscious, but lucidity did not come easily. Eventually, I overcame a threshold. The tiny machines plugged into every brain cell reported patterns of undirected thought. Dreams.

The AIs built into my mind couldn't say with total certainty, but I may have succeeded. I climbed out of my chair and rolled it to the wall beside the bed that engulfed my guest. I pulled a blanket over it in case its state of undress would have bothered it.

I exited the room on soft steps. My system told me that actual 'first contact' would probably go better if it wasn't greeted with the sight of me towering over it. I also needed something with a screen in a hurry. I was willing to smirk at the idea. Very old-fashioned.

I closed the door behind me as I left.







Sierra Sky

My head was full of cotton, and my legs felt only as solid as water. I was confused. I flexed my forehooves. The touch of the bed beneath me was odd. The aching in my joints was missing. I peaked past my eyelids, wondering where I was. I was ready for my eyes to go through a painful adjustment to the light, but there was no such discomfort. That extra oddity fled from my thoughts as I began to study the room I was in.

I thought I was in the hospital for an instant, but the white ceiling didn't look right. Then, as my mind shed its brain fog, I remembered. I stole the AMSTER, I took it to a different dimension, and I got hurt! There was fire! I wasn't sure what had happened, but now I was… somewhere.

My heartbeat picked up its pace. I flexed my limbs. They felt too light; they moved too easily. The pain I expected was still missing. In a slow, deliberate manner, I turned my head away from the wall, searching for something that would explain to me what was happening. 

I quickly discovered several things. The room was half-lit with the natural light of what might have been dawn or dusk. The bed was relatively high off the floor. There was a chair that would have engulfed my body, and it was all so high above the floor. The walls were made of a white… stone? I couldn't tell. There was a wide window shrouded by what appeared to be slat-style blinds.

That's when I spotted a form passing by the window, its shadow leaking through the gaps as it approached my door. It must have been almost twice my height. 

I wouldn't have been so scared if I had put even a little bit of thought into what was happening. Before I knew it, I had pressed myself against the wall behind me. A pair of gentle knocks on the door sounded before it opened.

A strange face peered at me. There was no fur on its pale pink-beige skin that I could see, but it had a mane that was an interesting combination of red and brown. It had no muzzle. Its eyes were on the small side. It was wearing black clothing and stood on two legs. 

It was also very tall, maybe even taller than Celestia, but I wasn't sure about that. Was this the creature I was looking for? I was getting nervous until it sat down and introduced itself. 

"Valerie," it said, patting its chest with the odd flat object that it was carrying.

I let my shoulders slump, and I let out the breath I was holding. It was introducing itself. It wanted to talk. I put a hoof on my chest and replied, "Sierra."
> Chapter 3: Upstairs
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sierra Sky

Valerie gave me what she called a tablet. I figured it was some sort of human magic, so I didn’t question it much. She pantomimed what she wanted me to do until I figured it out. Stylized images would appear on the device, and I would name them. Valerie watched, but she didn’t spend any time doing any of the things I would have expected if she was trying to learn my language. I realized that this didn’t matter when she started talking in nouns. From there, we found our way to verbs and tenses and other stuff. Basic communication started to happen. We established things like the fact that she was a she, and so was I. Basic stuff.

I was waiting for the symptoms usually suppressed by my medication or any other normal bodily function. I wasn’t tired, hungry, thirsty, or in need of the little fillies room. So I decided to go with it until I could actually talk to the creature beside me, or I really needed something. At least the bed was nice.

It took hours, probably. My sense of time was not what it was the day before. I couldn’t say how long it was before I was asked a different kind of question. “Why do you come here?” she said with good clarity, if not grammar.

I hesitated out of surprise, but I answered, “Because my people need help. My whole world is in danger.”

She nodded slowly. I had learned that the gesture meant the same thing for her as it did for ponies, which was convenient. She said, “Where you world? Answer you best. I understand later, if not now.” 

I had to process that a little bit, but I went ahead and replied, “It’s in a different… dimension or universe. I’m not sure which. The device I used to come here can open the way if we take it to the right place.”

There was little reaction. 

Valerie finally replied, “I know words better later. I learn more now.”


***


Later...

Valerie soon took over from the tablet, asking me questions directly instead of relying on the tablet to convey what she wanted to know. Then the questions stopped. I blinked. Were we done? Valerie put the tablet on the table and faced me. 

“So you’re from another universe?” The human asked. 

I blinked in confusion until I remembered why I was here. “Oh, right! Well, um. I think so.”

“Wouldn’t you know?” she asked. 

I tried not to act like a guilty filly caught by hospital staff… or parents if they were lucky, now that I thought about it. Luckily I could hide behind the truth. “Most of what was explained to me was on the practical side of what I came to do,” I replied. The reasons I was here came to focus in my mind. “I used the amster to come here. It was made to search for something called an anthropos. It said there might be one here, wherever ‘here’ is. Is that what you are?”

One of Valerie’s eyebrows rose. She said, “Anthropos is greek for human, which is the English word for my species. The ancient Greeks also had a myth about a creature called Pegasus. Do you know anything about this?”

“No,” I replied, surprised, “this is obviously important, but I had no idea anypony had ever gone to another world. Sorry, Valerie. Actually, there is probably a real chance that the princess knows. Um, anyway, Pegasus is what kind of pony I am. It probably wasn’t their name.”

“I hope I can learn more sometime,” Valerie said, taking all of the new information in stride before and back into the chair. “So, you came looking for humans. Why?”

This was the big moment. I took a deep breath and leaned forward. “We believe we are in danger. Creatures we call Nightmares are coming. We have survived them before, barely. Now the princess thinks we are outmatched entirely, and we want help. I am told that we think anth- uh, humans can help.”

Valerie leaned forward. We were now firmly in each other’s space. “So you’re here asking me to wage war against your enemies?”

I frowned. I did not like that framing, so I turned it around. “We want to live. If we can only do that through war, then yes. We would rather not. My sister is enlisted. She might die.”

“Alright. Answer me this, how do we get to your world, and how much time do we have?” Valerie asked.

I leaned over the edge of my bed, excited. “We should have several months. My understanding is we need to get back to the place I arrived at, and then we can use the amster to take as many humans as are willing back to my… universe or dimension or whatever.”

The human gestured to herself. “It just so happens that I am the only one even remotely nearby. That’s alright, though. If I can have the time I need, my machines can guarantee any outcome I choose. However, there might be a problem. You should see this. We might have a serious obstacle ahead of us.” She got up and opened my door. I spotted the amster in a rack oddly similar to the one it had once rested in when I first saw it, except some of the parts had sections that drooped and were obviously deformed by heat. The rack rested upon a tray that rolled itself into the room. It held the large topaz and a collection of glass bowls. One held several loose gems, one held many drops of metal that had cooled into various shapes, and each of the rest held one color of gem powder each. The rack rested upon some sort of wheeled machine that quietly rolled into our room.

I was speechless.

I carefully climbed off the bed, listening to my body for any of my regular aches and pain. I put weight on each limb one at a time to make sure they wouldn’t fail me. It was all going impressively well. I got close to the gem and thought the code word.

Password: Serendipity.
Password Accepted.

Alert! 28 faults detected! Use caution while operating!

“It’s not happy, but it connected to me. I can see words floating in the air right here.” I waved my hoof through the words above the topaz. “They are telling me that there are twenty-eight things wrong.”

Valerie nodded. “I can do something similar within my mind to interact with my own devices. Do any of those issues make it impossible for us to reach your home?”

I read the list of faults. I didn’t understand what many of them were talking about, but I understood things like air shield inaccessible and flight hardware missing. The transition spell, however. I faced Valerie. “Yes. This can’t get us to where we need to go, but it says the transition spell is working. Do you have a way to travel in space?”

She smiled. “Do I? I think we should head upstairs. If I understand events correctly, I know where we need to go, but it will take about fourteen days, which means we should get a move on. We have been at this for twenty-six hours. I could use a break.” She stood up and walked out the door. 

I was partially relieved from my worries. “Sounds goo-” I blinked. “Wait, what? Twenty-six hours!?”


***


I half followed, and half chased Valerie out of the building, both confused and curious. We were near an exit, but it was a huge hospital, if I knew anything at all. It was clearly meant to handle a considerable number of humans. There really were none around aside from Valerie.

An odd vehicle was waiting for us. It was so different from what I was used to that I couldn’t help but study it, comparing it to the sight of carts usually pulled by an earth pony or a Pegasus, but this had no obvious harness for a puller. Instead, it was more like a rounded rectangle of glass set on four wheels with chairs inside. While I stared, the machine that held the remains of the amster rolled past me. It drove onto a mechanism in the rear of the vehicle that lifted it into a rear hatch that had silently opened at its approach.

A door opened toward me. Valerie walked by on my right. The shadow that passed over me reminded me that she was taller than I was by a good deal. She said, “This is our ride. Do you need any help getting in?” 

I climbed up into the front right seat easily enough. It took some effort to sit upright in the chair at Valerie’s recommendation. My tail needed to be curved one way or the other to avoid crushing it, but it worked. She nodded in satisfaction and went around to the left side.

She climbed in herself and said to me, “I could have laid your chair back.”

I shrugged. I caught sight of a tall building, but I couldn’t see the top from where I was in the vehicle. I had leaned forward. What I thought was just a Manehatten height skyscraper just kept going up until it became just a line. 

The vehicle started moving. I almost slipped off my chair before sliding back to where I was earlier. I had too many questions racing to escape my mouth. The first one I unleashed upon the world was, “Is this thing safe?” 

While I wondered why that was the first one out, Valerie replied, “If we weren’t the only ones on the road, I would have you strap in.”

“Okay. By the way, what is that?” I asked Valerie, pointing my hoof at the tower ahead of us. 

She didn’t even look. “An elevator.”

I didn’t even remember giving her that word. I paused for a moment, thinking about how surreal her ability to simply absorb the language was. Princess Twilight would be incredibly envious. I had never been in an elevator before, but I knew of them.

She seemed to guess my thoughts. “You gave me plenty of root words and suffixes to derive that word. So I’m pretty sure I guessed it correctly.”

I nodded. My thoughts returned to the last day. I didn’t feel tired or anything else I should have been feeling. I had charged out of the room I had awoken in without my typical arthritic restraint. I looked down at myself. There were no obvious signs I was different, but I felt different. I bent and twisted my forelegs, searching for any of the old tells of aging. My cream fur and indigo mane and tail remained pale rather than the shades I had when I was young. 

We came to a stop, and our doors opened. “This way,” Valerie said, climbing out. I followed. I hadn’t paid attention as the base of the ‘elevator’ came into view. In the midst of what could have been office buildings and warehouses was something I had never seen. It looked like a one-pole tent leaning over, but the pole had poked through the top and reached into the sky until it disappeared. The walls looked like some sort of industrial sculpture made of huge trusses. I could see recognizable rails that cut through the far half of the structure while the near side was obviously meant for pedestrians. I looked for where the… elevator, I suppose, ended in the sky. It took a moment before I spotted where it seemed to connect to the center of a line that reached for both horizons. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have been able to spot it before. A wide section of the building was covered in scaffolds. The place was surrounded by walkways that extended far from the building. I noticed that the cart with the amster was still following us.

Going inside was not unlike entering the Canterlot palace, but it was beautiful in a different way. I knew that dad would trade a leg to be here surrounded by such a work of metal and stone. We did not linger.

We arrived at a capsule-shaped compartment near the center of the large building that had many doors around the outside and several large windows. Valerie led me toward one in particular. It was the only one that had a green light above it. In moments we were inside. It was a forest of chairs. She followed the wall until we were in front of one of the windows.

“Take a seat or stand carefully. We are going to be rising in a few seconds,” Valerie said. I looked out the window, noting more details that said that the place wasn’t finished. It honestly felt spooky to be in a place made for so many humans but had only one. A sound rang throughout the large room, and I suddenly felt heavier as the building outside sunk below. It was only a moment before we were outside and ascending above the city. It was actually not as large as I thought. Part of it seemed to be up against an invisible wall, like a coastline without water. I also noticed how there was very little plant life across the landscape. There was green, but I couldn’t see what it actually was.

The experience was a thrill, not unlike my rare flights, to watch the ground sink below us, but it wasn’t something that would have satisfied a wonderbolt. I looked at Valerie and saw that she was looking down at me. I realized that she was waiting for me to speak, her expression neutral. “I can tell that my body,” I hesitated, looking for the words, “before I got here, I was more than a little infirm. I don’t remember what happened between the last time I fell asleep in the amster and when I woke up in that room. Now I feel better than any time I can remember, but I should not have been able to give my words to the… um… the tablet thing for twenty-six hours straight for so many reasons. Will you tell me what you did to me?”

The human nodded slowly. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “but remember that I had no other way to keep you alive. You landed hard. By some definitions, you were dead.” She explained to me how she had saved my brain with the help of ‘nano’ machines and how she built me a body that only imitated my old one. It was a shock, but while another pony might have been upset by such a loss, I could only be relieved. I hadn’t really come to terms, to really appreciate the fact that everything was different. The regret and guilt of what I had probably done to Flurry Heart by stealing the amster faded. Slightly.

I realized two things then. I had squandered any opportunity I had to fly, but if the human had made this body from scratch, somehow, then maybe I couldn’t fly anyway. It was a little freaky to consider the idea that my whole body had been switched out, although it raised possibilities that had never occurred to me before. Maybe there was a way to fly. I would have to think about this.

I focused again on the view. The land below was distant now. It was then that the heaviness I was still feeling transitioned to a lightness. I knew what this meant, even with what little flight experience I had that we were slowing down. 

I returned my gaze to the tall biped beside me. She was similar to a minotaur in some respects, but I had never seen a female minotaur which was strange now that I thought about it. She seemed to have a stiff attitude but was willing to help us repel the Nightmares. However, I wasn’t sure she understood what she was getting into. 

I responded to what she had just explained to me about my body. “I had months to live. I had very little chance of making anything of my life while my sister enlisted. I wasn’t supposed to be the one out here looking for you, but I took this task when the opportunity arose because I see… saw myself as expendable.”

“I can respect that,” Valerie said. “I think you won’t have to worry about living long enough to achieve your goals anymore.” She looked outside again. “We’re almost there.” 

I turned around. What was once a line cutting through the sky now looked more like a long support beam we were about to crash into. My sense of time had once again failed me. It felt like we had just left the ground. The horizon below curved. In another moment, we were inside.

It wasn’t entirely different from the building we left on the ground. Large rooms were visibly incomplete. Finally, we came to a stop. I followed Valerie past several doors that did not open until we were returned to the one we came through in the first place. It felt like there was some sort of weak breeze in my feathers before they took on a numb sensation.

We went through several junctions of sterile hallways, feeling even lighter than I did on the ground. We went on, silently, until we went through a section that was missing a wall. I stopped walking and stared. Nothing was keeping the inside and outside separate. I saw only a few stars that weren’t washed out by the brightly lit planet below. 

I focused on my breathing. It felt like there was plenty of air. I tried to flap my wings, but they met no resistance. There was no air. So the fact that I felt like there was air meant… what?

I put my wings back and took another breath. My lungs filled and emptied. Valerie was standing there, I noticed, watching me in my confusion. “What is…” I trailed off, not knowing how to even frame the question.

She said, “For the moment, just know that you are safe. You are different now, but it can all be undone when we get to your home. Sooner, actually, but I think it is wise to wait.”

I could barely restrain myself from asking for details, but I did. Instead, I pursued other questions. “So, uh, Valerie. I was wondering what’s holding up all this,” I said, gesturing around as we continued our journey. 

Valerie smiled a little bit. “We have a moment. Check this out,” she said, turning down a corridor. We came to a compartment that seemed infinitely long, vanishing into the distance. It was clear that it was all still under construction. Unlike the other times I saw something that was unfinished, I could see machines doing work. I saw a giant mechanical arm lift a metal plate against a frame above it while others fastened it in place. That same frame extended all the way to where we were. Beyond the frame, there were long cylindrical objects that stretched in both directions as far as I could see. Oddly enough, their surfaces were blurry in my vision. 

“The structure we are in is called an orbital ring. These cables,” she pointed to the blurry objects, “circle the entire moon, spinning so fast that there are forced into the shape of a circle. The cables are magnetic, which means that they can magnetically suspend a lot of weight. It would fall down anyway if it wasn’t secured to the moon. Structures like this are amazingly useful,” she explained with a bit more liveliness than I had seen from her so far.

I was impressed. I also saw how Valerie came alive when talking about this orbital ring of hers. Was she really as isolated as she said she was? How did this affect this creature that seemed to have so much ability to reshape a world and build great works but had no one to share her accomplishments with? It was something to ponder.
We climbed up a flight of stairs that were awkwardly sized for a pony. We entered a room with a view out of both sides through another triangle grid of reinforced windows. We had emerged above the surface. It felt to me like an endless metal pier stretching into the distance. Maybe that’s exactly what it was. There were rails set into the structure on both sides.

Moments later, a massive object appeared. Wheels supporting a dense collection of metal trusses carried an unidentifiable object that dominated the view. 

“That’s our ride,” Valerie said. 
> Chapter 4: Changing Spaces
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sierra Sky

I concentrated on it, struggling to figure it out. “I don’t understand what I’m looking at,” I replied. Then, I saw some sort of tube rotate into view until it reached over one end of the craft.

“I’ll tell you about it, but we shouldn’t waste any time. Every last moment can be precious,” she said while walking toward a door I hadn’t noticed, which connected to the near end of the tube. 

We climbed more uncomfortably sized stairs until we were above the craft and entered a tight elevator. A door closed behind us, and it descended. Then, just a moment later, it opened into a tiny room. 

We both went inside. The room was sort of shaped like a regular box, but the edges of the floor to our left and right curved up to be flush with the walls, which also curved the same way to connect to the ceiling. The whole room was made with white panels and warm lighting. The only other door in the room was up on the ceiling, but I figured the human was smart enough to know that I couldn’t reach that without flight. She did ‘rebuild my body’ after all. I had no real idea how she did it, but I figured Valerie would know what I am and am not capable of with this body. I saw that there were two chairs right in front of the elevator doors. They were strangely embedded into the floor with their heads toward the opposite wall. I intuited that I was expected to lay down on the one that seemed to have space specifically meant to support my wings.

I was inspecting the furniture when Val prodded me into action. “If you want us to make the best time, we’ll have to get you strapped in. I can help you if you like.”

I waved the human off with my wing. I wasn’t so inept that I wasn’t at least going to try. A handy bar curved up from beneath the chair that was placed just right to help me get into place as I put my back hooves into the shallow receptacles that were obviously meant for them.

I carefully laid back. The shape perfectly fitted against my knees and hocks. For a moment, I was surprised to have anything fit my wonky proportions so well until I remembered that I was the only pony Valerie had ever met. Her machine magic was very impressive. A large cavity opened up on either side of the chair with a gap between cushions that opened right at dock level that allowed me to not crush my tail. Best of all, my lady bits were not bothered by this setup. From there, I could just lay down with my wings spread wide. 

The lights dimmed, and several panels opened around the room and extended what appeared to be little metal balls on sticks. An image suddenly appeared in the air above me. It was a blue diagram of the spaceship and the structure it was attached to. It was a strange form of magic because looking around seemed to drag the illusion around in my vision.

There were also four circles above the image, and the one furthest to the left was slowly vanishing as a pie slice of emptiness grew in the clockwise direction. I twisted around to face Valerie. 

“I have a question.”

“Ask away,” she said from her chair.

“Why did you agree to help?” I inquired.

Valerie let her focus drift away from me before she replied, “We humans have nearly everything we could want. We can reshape the universe and ourselves, but we are alone in a fundamental way. I want to tell myself that I am doing this for my people, but, honestly, I am doing it for me. I have made mistakes before, but they have led me here to this chance to do some actual good. There’s nobody else around to do it instead. Maybe I can make humanity some friends.”

“Maybe you and I can be friends… if you want,” I said and cringed a little on the inside. That was a sad delivery. 

Valerie smiled, and I knew my concern was unjustified. “I like what you’re saying. I try to be a fun person, but my humor sometimes bites, or sometimes it’s just dirty. Think you can handle that?”

Never mind then. Maybe this would be easy. This alien might not be so alien after all. I smiled slowly, “I think I can. Um, if you can change how you look, you may want to try looking more like a pony. If you remember how I acted when I saw you, then you know we can be a bit panicky. It gets a lot worse if were are in groups.”

Valerie turned her head further to look at me more directly. I think she was reevaluating me. “Is that so.” She smiled and said, “That sounds like fun. I think I can do that. In the meantime, you wanted me to explain the ship to you. We don’t have a lot of time before we start accelerating.”

She pointed to the blue image of the circles. There were three left. From the same blue light, a diagram appeared in the air that had a depth to it. It was only the fact that I knew this was supposed to be our ship that I recognized parts of it that I had seen from the outside.



“I’ll start with the largest parts. We have the three fuel tanks full of… I don’t have the words yet. A certain type of the lightest gas. Each tank feeds its reactor, which forces that light gas to combine, releasing lots of energy. It creates a special kind of explosion that we release out those nozzles to the rear which pushes us forwards,” she said. I could see that these nozzles lined up in a row, with the middle one much larger than the other two. That one was fed by a much longer reactor and larger fuel tank. Valerie continued, “If we need to use the engines, then we need to shed the heat they create from the ship. We have a pair of rather large extendable heat radiators in front of the smaller fuel tanks and on either side of the large one. Those are rolled up right now. If we didn’t have those, our reactors would have to shut down to avoid melting the ship. On this side,” she explained, somehow causing the image to flip over, “We have the heat shield and four flaps. These are essential if I am to land this ship on your world safely.” The image flipped back over. “Up here is the habitat module. That’s where this room,” she gestured around us, “is. I’ll show you around later. Toward the bow, we have sensors and communication systems that fold away and between us and the large fuel tank is the payload. That includes a reactor designed to make energy my machines can use and a compartment with other things we’ll need for the trip and after we get there. Finally, between the ship and the heat shield is where the laser sail is stored. We’ll see that soon.”

Lines that resembled railroad tracks appeared and began moving slowly. Some metal limbs were pulling some straps over me. I noticed the same had happened to Valerie, so I didn’t worry too much. The ship stayed in the middle of our view, but it rotated to follow the tracks, and I felt myself get pushed lightly one way and the other.

Then the weight hit me.

The curve we had just taken raced to our left until it was off the edge of the image. I sunk deeper into my seat. My legs and wings were now so heavy, and I could feel the flesh on my face and my sides trying to drag me deeper. We were accelerating hard. Thirteen and a half circles appeared in front of me just as it felt like four ponies had piled on top of me. This scared me at first because it was far more than I thought I could handle, but the fact that it wasn’t painful reminded me that my body was not what it once was. There was an odd moment when I realized that the bottom of the chair was rotating into the floor, but it seemed just to be matching the change in the direction of the downward force.

Soon thirteen whatever units of time had passed by with only the last half circle withering away. The blue image of the spaceship attached to the rails seemed to flicker occasionally when some surface detail of the structure we were hurling down would flash by.

“Be prepared for weightlessness,” Valerie said to me with a voice that showed no evidence of strain. That wasn’t fair.

The carriage connecting the ship to the rails suddenly released us. All the force that my seat was absorbing was suddenly released, which threw me against my restraints. I should have been hurting after that, at least, but I felt only the pressure. 

Then I felt like I was falling. I started to laugh at one of my favorite sensations while flying returning to me. It was the beginning of a dive that I loved the most because that was when my pain was at its lowest. I had seriously enjoyed that feeling while I rode the AMSTER while it searched for the nearest human. 

I was distracted by new changes in the image. The ‘laser sail’ slid out from the space behind the heat shield before unfolding into a large circular sheet. The forward side had a webbing of thin trusses that grew denser near the center. Soon the sheet extended far beyond the ship, and one last piece covered up the nozzles.

Then my chair rotated until the bottom was well away from the wall. The image of the ship turned with me, staying ahead of me. Then, once again, I had weight, but in a new direction. The elevator door was now the floor, and the other door was now straight ahead rather than above. The mechanical arms that held the restraints over the two of us retracted. Valerie’s chair had not rotated away from what was once the floor, and he simply walked out of it instead of climbing out. I rolled out of my chair and dropped to the floor. The strangeness of the reorientation was...exciting.

“We are now being pushed by one of the light beam stations from one of the other moons. The laser sail catches this light like a heavy wind which lets us avoid using fuel until much later. We can move around now. I’ll show you the amenities, but then I have some work to do,” Valerie said.

Now that what was once a wall was now the floor, the previously inaccessible door was right in front of us. I followed Valerie and listened to the explanation of the place. 

“The room we were in is the center of the habitat and very safe. We want to be in there for maneuvers.”

In front of us was a wide window divided into triangular sections. The wall behind us had two more doors other than the one we came through.

“Do you remember how I said I could arbitrarily modify my body?” Valerie asked. I nodded gently. “I will be doing those modifications in the room on our left for a few hours or so. It takes time. You can visit me if you need to, but I want the final results to be a surprise. The room on our right is your private space. I have set the ship’s intelligence to open it for you and not for me except in emergencies or with permission from you. The computer will be aware of you, but I will not be informed about anything that happens in there that isn’t, again, an emergency. It contains another room that can be set up to facilitate any needs that require plumbing. They are empty, but you can fabricate nearly anything from the computer with voice command, and those things can be quickly built and installed with no effort on our part.”

I walked up to the glass and saw how heavily reinforced it was. Metal beams separated the glass into obviously strong triangles. I couldn’t see any part of the ship from inside, however.

Valerie spoke, but it quickly became apparent that she was not addressing me. “Okay, computer, set up common room layout one, but with a hammock.”

The room made a ding sound at the beginning and end of the instructions, and a timer appeared in the air with eight circles and three-quarters of another.

“If you address the computer just as I did, you will hear that sound, and it will start listening to whatever you say. Just tell it to stop listening if you change your mind. You can ask it questions or tell it to do all sorts of things, including giving you suggestions for something to do. Just remember that it is not a person and has no sense of self. It is not capable of holding opinions or experiencing emotions and is incapable of growth. Just keep in mind that that won’t be true for every artificial intelligence you may talk to. I don’t foresee the occasion, but there exist some that can be offended and will demand respect,” Valerie explained. “Can you think of anything to ask of it? Food might be a good idea.”

I pondered the incredible machine magic once again. That it could make invisible butlers that could follow such complex instructions was amazing. I knew I wanted to see what it could do. I knew I would need time to think about the implications of this.

I shrugged with my wings and gave it a go. “Okay, computer, what food is there?”





I learned how to use the computer. It also got on my case about ‘requiring that I set up my bathroom before consuming food.’ Valerie excused herself. I wondered what magic Valerie used to change her body and why she felt the need to have on all that clothing when I thought about it.  On further thinking, I realized that humans might not be as comfortable in colder temperatures without fur.

I carried myself to my room. I discovered a bare space with no windows.  I managed to explain to the computer what I found to be an acceptable toilet, and I got it to send me a huge bath along with soaps, brushes, some super nice towels, and a rug. I didn’t even need to ask for a mirror. The walls could just show images of me, mirrored or not. It turned out that the walls could somehow turn into windows, so I had it make some.

I furnished my room despite the huge disappointment that a cloud bed would be impossible to procure. The bed I did get was huge, and a dining nook in front of the window was comfortable. Everything was delivered using teams of small-wheeled machines that carried things using arms or little platforms on their backs. They were all composed of very round shapes that I found to be quite adorable.

The only foods available right away were fruits, but I could choose new things from a list that would become available in a while. Then I could pick through a frankly staggering selection. I didn’t understand what could possibly need to be done to pasta for six hours before it would be ready to cook, but I didn’t worry too much. I was distracted by the fact that every fruit I saw was something I recognized. Much of several other lists were also extremely familiar, especially the vegetables.

I ordered some apples. I only then realized, to my shock, that I couldn’t grab anything with my hooves. It was like they were just bricks on the ends of my legs. I felt like a foal. At least I could still handle fruit by using both of my hooves. I realized I would need careful planning whenever I used the bathroom for anything. Maybe I could get the computer to get one of those cute machines to wash me and feed me. At least I was already used to the hospital staff doing that with me. The apples almost could have been from Sweet Apple Acres, that was for sure. They were good.

I had only been awake for a few hours by then, from waking up to traveling through space, so I was wondering what else I could do. I returned to the common room. Valerie’s machines had transformed the place. There were now all sorts of seating options that faced the windows, including a large piece of thick cloth suspended from each end over by the end of the room near Valerie’s room. It looked comfortable. Maybe it was the hammock that Valerie had asked the computer for. 

I shrugged to myself and went straight to it. It was not a stable surface, and I nearly ate the floor before settling down on my side. It was very nice, aside from my stupid legs making it difficult for me to fold myself comfortably. I decided to follow the advice that Valerie had shared with me earlier.

“Okay, computer, what are some things I can do?”

It dinged at me and said, “Options for entertainment during long voyages are mostly limited to sedentary activities. Categories are limited to visual entertainment unless you would like to learn English. Other stored languages are also available. Time to perform translations on selected content is negligible assuming a written language is known.”

It took me a moment to realize that that must have been Valerie’s language. “How long would that take?”

“There are two methods. Traditional education can take weeks, months, or years depending on the learner. One option is the construction of a brain-machine interface from nanomachines that can be integrated with your brain. One package can perform functions including the manipulation, recording, and sharing of sensory data, and another can perform the implementation of knowledge, skills, and other data directly.”

I thought about what the disembodied voice was saying to me. I wasn’t sure what some of those functions could be used for, but learning skills without the learning part would be incredible. “Why would someone want their… um, their senses manipulated?”

It replied, “This capability is usually used to fool the senses such that the mind experiences events that are not real. All imaginable scenarios are possible. Some examples include performing activities or partaking in competitive activities that would otherwise be dangerous. Having an outlet for satisfying desires to perform antisocial activities in a safe environment. Performing sexual activities that are unavailable or unrealistic. Experiencing the outdoors, other cultures, or any other action that could be desired. Fidelity is limited due to restrictions on the pain-inducing package.”

I was blushing as I thought about one particular option that I was definitely not going to do. Definitely. As I thought about it, it became obvious that it hadn’t listed all the possible choices in the first place once it mentioned pain.  “Are there more packages beyond those three?” 

“There are two more packages. One is designed to control motor function, and the last involves the manipulation of thought. The final three options are restricted pending special permissions from the First Custodian. All these options carry a small risk of subversion, but the final three could result in very negative consequences if a hostile entity gained control.”

I used one of my wings to push the air back and forth to get the hammock to swing while I considered the incredible feats of machine magic that were on offer. “Can they be removed?”

“Yes,” it said.

“Then give me the first two, please.”

“Acknowledged.”

There were a few moments of empty silence until I wondered who this ‘first custodian’ was. Valerie, maybe?
> Chapter 5: Changing Faces
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sierra Sky

The sting was less painful than I expected, and I knew needles well. Maybe it was more machine magic. I asked the computer to give me the 'nanomachine packages' it had offered. I was nervous, but I felt there wasn't much risk. Valerie had remade my body. It was a little freaky, but she could have put these little machines into me without asking. 

The little machine that had given me the injection rolled away while I simply laid against the pillows on the hammock in the common room and looked outside at unknown stars. I thought about the 'beam of light' that was supposedly pushing us to greater speeds to reach the piece of space where I could try to return us to Equus. What a fascinating way to travel. Just… five days ago, I had no concept of space travel. Now I had done it with two kinds of magic. 

The computer told me that I would experience 'calibration' soon, so I decided I had nothing to do but wait. Soon after, I felt a wave of static pass over me. My vision was filled with dots of color and brightness that didn't make sense. My nose and tongue experienced… everything, I think. The same went for my ears. My sense of balance went crazy; it felt like I had both more and fewer limbs that were each in every position. I was hot and cold all over. 

Then it happened all over again, except this time I felt like I was passing out of a soap bubble in a smooth transition for all of my senses. Then my thoughts clouded and fizzled. 

Then it was over. The computer said, "Installation complete. Prior data has reduced installation duration by eighty-seven percent. Ready for language download."

I wasn't precisely sure what a 'download' was, but the word itself provided some clues. 

"Do it," I said. 

My mind went fuzzy again. 


***


I don't know how long it took, but when consciousness as I knew it returned, I noticed that there was text floating in my vision, but not like the ancient magical device that I had stolen from beneath Flurry's nose. Instead, that one was a basic menu that mildly responded to thoughts to navigate it. 

This was a whole other level.

The computer said in text, "If you understand this message, think of the word 'yes.' I marveled at the experience of reading a language that I was never taught. The simultaneous feeling of familiarity and unfamiliarity was entirely strange. 

Just reading it prompted the thought it had asked for. The text changed and asked me to think other thoughts to confirm my understanding. Then it asked me if I wanted to try a virtual experience demonstration. I mentally agreed. Machine magic was so easy!

Suddenly, I was in a gray-white void standing on a surface that showed no detail aside from black gridlines. I felt my heartbeat pick up. The change was unexpected. I couldn't have been teleported, right? Before I could panic, I heard the computer's voice, "Please imagine an environment you would find desirable."

I certainly didn't like where I was now, so I did just that. A dark rectangle appeared in the air in front of me with a message asking if I wanted to confirm the environment change, and I mentally acknowledged it. 

Then I was home. 

I was standing in Fillydelphia on the ground in front of my house. My breath came faster, and my heart clenched. I walked up to the home I hadn't been to in years. I opened the door. There was nopony inside. 

I was starting to see mistakes in the place. The floor plan wasn't quite right, and the sink was in the wrong part of the kitchen. I understood that I wasn't actually home, but the place I had made from my memories brought me closer to my family. 

"I'll be back," I said to my imagined mother, father, and older sister. "I'll have lived for something other than my own death the next time you see me."

I decided that I wanted out. But, again, before I could say anything, my sheer desire was known to the computer, so it created a prompt that confirmed my choice. Then I was back in the common room of the spaceship. I lifted my head from the pillow supporting my head on the hammock I was on and noticed that there was a spot of moisture near where my eyes had been. 

I supposed I must have at least teared up. I didn't want to feel melancholic anymore when events had already gone nearly as well as they could have in even my wildest imagination. 

I decided to explore my options. Just not... that one. I wasn't so deprived as to lower myself to such activities. 

Okay, maybe I was.





Valerie

The main segment of my consciousness was floating in a simulated void from where it looked down upon a grid of images that displayed the thoughts and activity of all of the other segments. Some sections monitored sensors, some consumed entertainment, and a dozen watched the mind backup process and ensured that the Damocles protocol was observed. 

At some point, the computer communicated to me that Sierra had requested that the computer install a brain link. I had the opportunity to deny it, but I chose not to. It wasn't long before her presence was registered in the system. I decided not to monitor her. I didn't really care if she dug up dirt on me or humanity in general. I had no intention of deceiving her or her kind.

The segment of my mind responsible for controlling the body was doing busy work on the backup mind sitting on the desk here in the workshop while others conducted internal nanofabrication. One was coordinating with the AI to design the body that I planned to use to conduct diplomacy. Its appearance needed to be capable of sending the right message, not to mention serious self-defense capabilities. I didn't expect to run into any conflict before building up a resource economy as I would do on any other world. The new body would be ready for assembly once the parts were printed.

I closed the backup mind once the copy was finished. A small robot came to fetch it before backtracking to its tiny deployment elevator. A probe launcher was being improvised to carry my backup away. The laser sails on this ship would curl slightly to reflect the light accelerating the whole ship and push the probe back the way we came at very high acceleration. 

Minutes later, a panel on the blunt nose of the ship retracted. A small chemical rocket leaped out in a blaze of fire before angling itself to fly over the edge of the sail, which was still being accelerated ‘upward’ at one G. It was almost identical, physics-wise, as a missile flying over a planet's surface. Once the fragile parts of my remaining fabrication processes were done, I could instruct the facilities on one of the other moons of the gas giant to increase their output and therefore increase our acceleration.

Shortly after that, I instructed the computer to walk my new body out of the fabrication bay. What came out wasn't me just yet. I ordered the arms to open my current body up and transfer my mind, housed in a core identical to the one just launched. 

It was always a little frightening to be outside of a body that could move, but the black sphere that held my mind was carried safely from one mechanical body to another by robotic limbs. It would be my first time being a quadruped. 


***


I walked out of the workshop, or should I say trotted? I had decided to go heavy on servo-style robotics for the sheer strength that modern electronics can push through such devices rather than disguise because blending in was specifically not what I wanted to do. 

It was important that my hosts could relate to me while fully aware that I wasn't one of them. From the solid shell of my chassis arose artificial gray muscle and cables leading up into the reinforced white silicone that made up my equine head. My ears and face could move in all the same ways that Sierra's could. 

My mouth and nose connected to lungs that served no purpose except to create natural speech and a stomach that just stored any food I ate until I had a chance to dispose of it. After all, aside from pleasing my simulated limbic system, those things were important for social activities. Besides, the senses of taste and smell were usually nice to have. 

I was a redhead. I had a mane, a tail, and blue eyes. Most of my body was composed of dark metal servos and structural elements printed using advanced chemical deposition to appear roughly similar to the body plan of my pegasus guest. The hinge and rotor elements of my waist made my rear appear rather large in comparison due to their narrow nature. I also had a couple of sockets in my back designed to hold a pair of wings when they were finished. 

The reaction wheels in my leg joints were not actually involved with the normal movement of my legs, but instead, I could spin them up to high speeds before hitting the brakes and transferring all of that kinetic energy into my legs. 

I had mechanical hands that were usually balled up in the shape of hooves, although they were somewhat fragile. The seams between the plates that formed my hooves were all visible, but I doubted anyone would see them for what they were. I had a few tools secreted away here and there. My limbs otherwise held storage for liquid deuterium for the microfusion reactor that dominated the volume of my chest along with nanobot reserves. Suitable for repairs and reshaping the universe. 

There might have been a genuine risk of true death if the situation turned out much worse than I hoped it would, but I was prepared for that. My backup mind was safe, and my current one was inside the donut-shaped reactor in my chest, not my head. Not that I would tell anyone.

I had noticed that Sierra had come 'online,' as she was now on the list of local users. She was marked as busy. She was certainly getting her first taste of a brain-machine interface. That saved the effort of trying to convince her. Score. 

I sent a silent command to the computer, and the door slid into the wall with only the most gentle electric wheeze. Then, with precise control over my body, I walked silently out into the common room and spotted Sierra on the hammock. She didn't appear to notice me, so I walked up to the side she wasn't facing. I wondered what it was like for her, as a pony, to experience this for the first time, with the context she was coming from. 

I leaned in close. In her language and with the most feminine voice I had used in decades, I said, "Hi!" 

"Gah!" she shouted. Her eyes flew open, and she twisted to face me."

"I need you to answer a question for me, Sierra," I declared and posed. "How do I look?" 

She took me in for a moment and calmed down. Then she replied with sass and in English, "That dumbbell you call a butt is too big. We don't make doors big enough for you." She blushed as shock spread across her face, and she covered her mouth with a hoof and issued a muffled, "I'm sorry!"  

I laughed. The tension left her somewhat. I enjoyed friendships that included ribbing each other, so I gave it right back. "I'm glad you have such self-esteem because I modeled it after yours!"

The redness returned, but it didn't appear that I had crossed any lines. 

"That's a lie, of course. Yours is bigger," I said. 

She outright laughed at that and replied in her original language. "I thought you might throw me out a window."

"Maybe next time," I said. "I have a couple business items we need to talk about. First, we will need to talk more about your people over the next few days so I can limit my faux pas'. If you know anything else about this 'nightmare invasion' that's coming, I would like to know it." I thought about her for a moment and added, "also, if you want me to change anything about your body, I can. I'd rather you not ask for anything that'll be offensive to your culture unless it's something you'll have undone before we arrive, but I'm prepared to do nearly anything you might think of."

Sierra was quiet for a moment. Then she grew more intense. "Why do you share so much so freely? I can see the incredible abilities your machine magic gives you, but I would have expected you to be more jealous with them."

I replied, "There are plenty of things I don't plan to share, but I'm not a fan of the chains reality likes to place on us. Keeping such freedom from those around me is contrary to my values."

She tilted her head in thought but nodded. "Thanks. I think there is something I would like to change about my body."

She stepped closer and lowered her voice as if someone was around to keep secrets from. 

"I want big wings," she whispered.

I smiled in amusement at her antics. 

So I instantiated a virtual environment with a 3D copy of her body and sent her brain-machine interface an invitation to the virtual space. Her eyes focused on the air in front of her as she read invisible text.

Then I got a notification that she had joined, and she looked at her copy. I indicated a slider floating in the air with a hoof. "I don't know how much time you've spent with your interface, but just will the slider to move, and you'll see a preview of sizes that we can work with. Here," I requested that an AI make a change to the code of the program. "Now, you can ask the computer to show you what different poses will look like."





Sierra Sky

I was excited. I had gotten over the interruption that was Valerie with her new body sneaking up on me while I was busy doing… things. My blushes had absolutely nothing to do with what I was or was not doing. 

Now I was using my mind to push a dot left and right and watching the wings on that other body grow and shrink. I was getting used to the computer obeying my thoughts, and I could watch from the hammock as it posed the image of my body for me. 

There was a moment where it looked my way, winked at me, and stared with seductive half-lidded eyes. My ears felt hot. I didn't know that my face could look like that. I gave Valerie my best 'I know you're responsible for this' look and finished my adjustments.

Valerie said, "If you're happy with this, I can get the process started when you sleep next."

"I am," I said. 

"Great, you can do that now or later. I still need to learn about your people and find your limits with my humor," she said. There was danger in that smile. 

"I can tolerate a lot, I think. I don't want to get injured, but I want to see where this ride goes. I'll tell you if you go too far, but I missed out on life enough already. Maybe I'm just weird, but I've never had a relationship where I could use the humor I've picked up from the doctors," I explained. 

Valerie replied, "I understand. I'll just have to see how thick your skin is."






Sahara Sun

I listened to my hoofsteps as I walked through Canterlot Castle. I wasn't happy. I knew I wouldn't have any smile wrinkles in old age, but now it has been weeks since I was last remotely happy, and the last few days were much worse. 

I had been summoned from my training with the E.U.P. standing forces twice. Last time I was told that my sister had stolen an important artifact and vanished. Once I learned the particulars, I admitted that I barely knew her and didn't know she had that within her. Now, I had no idea what awaited me, but I suspected it involved her once again. 

I was right. 

A guard nodded at me as I approached and knocked on the door to former princess Celestia's office. A smooth yet authoritative voice said, "Enter, corporal." A yellow glow pulled the door inward, and I met her eyes. 

I saluted, "Corporal Sahara Sun, reporting as ordered."

She looked at me in silence for an instant longer than expected, her eyes slightly wider as if surprised, before returning to her usual expression. Then, finally, she nodded and said, "Come in, corporal Sun. Take a seat, please." Celestia gestured with one hoof and pushed a bang behind an ear with the other. 

I obeyed. I noticed that the room was very austere. I suspected Celestia was not interested in decorating the place so soon after being pulled out of retirement. 

"You have been selected for training for a project you are already familiar with. You were a part of our final selection group of unicorns of considerable ability. Choosing between all of you would have been an arbitrary choice except you are already in on the secret, and your discretion has been demonstrated," she explained. 

I knew what was coming, so I simply continued to listen. 

"So you are being invited to join princess Flurry Heart as skilled security and assistance to the mission of finding the humans, and your sister, if possible."

I could feel my stomach twist. Guilt. Fear of the guilt to come. Fear of the unknown. I focused on maintaining my stoicism. Celestia had implicitly put the ball in my court, so I made the only choice I could. "I accept the assign… uh, invitation, ma'am."

"Good. Follow the lead of the gentlestallion outside. All matters involved with your transfer will be resolved after the meeting you will now be attending. You are dismissed," She said. 

I got back on my hooves, saluted, and exited. The guard outside started moving without a word, so I followed him elsewhere in the castle. We passed columns, arches, and cartouches. Sometimes the pastels broke up the white marble with cool colors or details plated with gold foil. I did recognize one set of halls that led to the royal hospital, where the best doctors in Equestria served the princess directly. In the meantime, those doctors were tasked with helping ponies who had the most severe ailments.

Such as my sister.

Right next to the hospital were the labs, which not only performed medical research but magical as well. Thanks to the expansions made by Princess Twilight, the monarchy itself led the world in magical research. Maybe that was the reason Sierra had pulled off her little heist. It quickly became clear that the labs were our destination.

The mindless action of following another pony down hallways allowed my thoughts to direct themselves to the aches and pains of my training. My horn was experiencing a phantom buzzing sensation along with its aches. My core and my legs were also very sore. Regardless, I was strong for a unicorn. I didn't have the bulging musculature of a bodybuilder, but I was more than athletic.

We arrived at a door that I knew was the main entrance to the labs. The sign helped. The guard at the door and my escort each cast a spell. I sensed complex yet complementary patterns that created no effects. I sensed a vibrating volume outside my body via my horn where I could feel the spells twisting and adjusting, each guard matching one another in the dance of shapes. 

It only took a couple of seconds until the guard stationed there nodded, broke the spell, and opened the door. The one that led me here turned and left. The one that remained gestured with their head for me to enter. As a member of the E.U.P. branch, I was glad that I did not need to worry about identity concealing enchantments. 

Inside was a huge circular room. Segments of the wall were given over to lab equipment, both magical and mundane, with guards and scientists everywhere. It seemed eerily quiet until I realized that each slice of the room was sectioned off with blue magical barriers that must have maintained privacy and safety in their ways. Some were opaque. The room was dominated by a collection of six steel pillars that each held a large gem chest high off the ground in a hexagon around the room. The center had a slightly raised platform with a low cart beside it that held sixteen curved metal plates encrusted with gems and powder channels. Inspecting them were Princess Twilight Sparkle, former Princess Luna, and Princess Flurry Heart of the Crystal Principality. 

Word had come from the north that the younger generation had successfully pushed a referendum through to change the name of the protectorate to reflect their modern non-imperialist ethos.

The Equestrian monarch noticed me first. She nudged Flurry to get her attention and trotted over to me with Flurry and Luna following several seconds later. 

Princess Twilight said, "You are Sahara Sun, correct?" 

I'll never admit that I was awestruck by the sight of my idol. This was an intimidating crowd. I saluted a bit later than I had meant to. I kept my attitude as flat as I could. "Corporal Sun reporting."

Princess Flurry cut in, "Please tell me you have more personality than sawdust. Ow!" 

Without taking her eyes off me, the Equestrian princess slapped the crystal princess on the back of the head with her wing. The fact that I nearly had a heart attack from shock is another fact that I will take to my grave. I could see Luna smiling from the rear of the crowd at the shenanigans. 

Princess Twilight had kept her eyes on me and said, "My niece's manners are nearly as good as her father's."

Flurry smiled impishly. 

Princess Twilight exhaled through her nose in a manner that seemed to make her relax and said, "Anyway, I understand that Celestia had you first on the shortlist of candidates to help us out with our mission. Come this way."

I followed the three of them into one of the opaque barriers. Princess Twilight cast a spell on it before we entered, probably to make it permeable. I was privately excited to see what could be beyond and was disappointed by the sight of a conference room. The experience of passing through was odd. It was like approaching a wall of silence as far as my magical senses were concerned. When my horn intersected it, it seemed very loud. 

If I had the time, I probably could have deciphered that noise into the patterns of spells that made it up. I could have eventually found a way to dispel it, but then the wall of silence was behind me. 

We sat on pillows around a relatively small table. Then Princess Twilight said to me, "You are going to be trained to full mastery of the Ancient Magic Space Transporter by Flurry to ensure that she has some backup in case of emergency. Following that, the two of you will use the device to enter the realm of the humans. You will need to ask for their help with our troubles. We have reason to believe that they can provide immense assistance."

I said, "Yes, Princess."

"Do you have any questions, Corporal Dawn?" 

I almost gave my automatic no until I remembered that this wasn't boot camp, and this was the princess asking. So I nodded and asked, "How do we know that they would, or even could, help us?" 

The Princess looked away and let her gaze lose focus, probably to mull over her answer. "It's quite the story. Not even us royalty know the whole thing. Luna, you know best, do you care to share?" 

Luna took a deep breath. "You need to know, I believe. Here's what I remember."