Prologue - From Beyond the Veil
The Other Side of the Spectrum: a Series of Unasked Questions
Prologue
From Beyond the Veil
“Is it done yet?”
“Patience, patience. This is hardly a simple process.”
The passage was dark. Small bulbs imbedded in the ceiling provided little light to the metal corridor. Its walls were featureless and cold, bare of any personality. Their dark gray color clashed violently with the vibrant white coat of the alicorn mare trotting through them. Her multi-hued mane and tail hung limp against her fur, giving the pony an unusually subdued look. Harshly glinting metal wires traced the right side of her face, twisting along the surface before disappearing beneath her skin. Each wire attached to a small circular hub just in front of her ear. A small green LED light at the hub’s center lit briefly every few seconds, clearly an indicator light.
The limp-maned alicorn stopped and frowned, causing some of numerous scars marring her muzzle to stand out in high relief. “Marcus, I thought you found it already,” she said, seemingly to no one. Her voice seemed to tremble slightly, as though she was about to either laugh or cry.
“I said that I had located another universe,” a warped, decidedly inhuman voice corrected from the walls. “I have yet to ascertain what universe it is. It could be the one I was looking for, or it could be the Queen’s universe. It could even be a universe we have never seen before.”
Princess Celestia gave an involuntary shudder at the word ‘queen,’ but otherwise did not seem to react. In fact, she did not even seem to notice that she had reacted to the word at all. The alicorn’s frown deepened, and she seemed to momentarily lose herself in thought.
“The queen…” Celestia muttered, her eyes becoming distant and unfocused. The indicator on the side of her head suddenly went from green to red and began flashing rapidly. The metal implant began emitting a barely audible hum. The alicorn shuddered, winced, then squeezed her eyes shut. She swayed, as though about to fall.
Then, as quickly as the change to the princess’ demeanor had come, it passed. Celestia shook her head and put a scarred hoof to it in an attempt to assuage the mild headache that had suddenly manifested. The wire device on her head blinked red one more time, then reverted back to green.
“Are you alright?” the disembodied voice said in a concerned tone.
“I…” Celestia shook her head again before continuing. The tremble in her voice was now more pronounced than before. “I’m fine. It was just...the Memories were coming back.”
“Again?” despite the alicorn’s attempt to put it’s worry to rest, the voice remained very concerned. Celestia took a deep breath to steady herself. When she spoke again, her the quiver in her voice had reduced to its previous, barely noticeable level.
“I’m fine, Marcus. I promise.” The mare gave a reassuring smile to no one in particular and resumed her leisurely trot down the featureless hallway. “The implant is still working, so there’s nothing to worry about.”
The voice was silent. Celestia knew perfectly well that it disagreed, though. Most likely it was simply choosing not to fight this particular battle.
The princess rounded a sharp curve in the hallway and came face to face with a massive bulkhead, easily twice as tall as she was, and heavy enough that even she would have trouble lifting it, despite the magical power she possessed. Of course, Celestia had no need to use magic on it, she just had to wait for-
“Nonhuman bioform detected,” a monotone voice grated from the armored door. “Identify immediately or be subject to termination.”
One of Celestia’s eyebrows rose, causing the wires snaking across her muzzle to warp and twist as she gave the door a bland look. She had no reason to fear its hollow threat, the entrance’s weapon systems had been disabled decades ago. However, she was unimpressed that it still did not recognize her as an authorized pony.
“Marcus…” the alicorn deadpanned.
A moment of silence, then, without another word, the door shuddered and began to slowly swing outward.
“I did plan to eventually reprogram the door,” the voice said somewhat defensively. “There was simply no hurry. I was devoting my attention to keeping the factory in liveable condition and locating the Equestrian universe.”
Celestia’s brow rose higher as she clambered through the circular opening, careful not to trip on its raised lip. “It took you all of five seconds.”
“Only because I was able to devote more than a tenth of a percent of my processing power to the reprogramming effort. The Doctor was very...thorough with his cyber security measures.”
The princess chuckled as she continued on the old, cracked pavement outside, doing her best to ignore the dust and sand blowing in the wind and the gloomy gray clouds overhead.
“Ah yes, good old Doctor Whooves, he always was a bit-” Celestia stopped cold. Her smile disappeared, her wings and ears drooped, and her mane seemed to become even more limp than before.
“Doctor Whooves…”
Celestia’s ear twitched at a series of clicking sounds behind her, but she did not turn to face it. She already knew what it was - one of the maintenance drones. Just as she expected, a six-legged metal spider roughly as tall as her knee clicked and clattered its way in front of her. The small machine gazed up at her with three sets of multi-faceted eyes.
“I am sorry,” the voice said through the drone. “I...should not have brought that up.”
Celestia shook her head and managed a weak smile. “It’s fine. Don’t...don’t worry about it, Marcus.” She gave a humorless chuckle. “Besides, if we avoided talking about departed friends, who would we talk about besides ourselves?”
The drone continued looking at her for a moment, then turned away. “I suppose you have a point...”
Without another word, it continued walking past the scarred alicorn, following a thick cable that snaked along the ground, leading to what looked like a giant tuning fork in the middle of the road ahead, the one structure around (not including the factory) that wasn’t old or falling apart. Celestia lifted a hoof to follow, but hesitated. She put her hoof back down and looked around her.
Las Vegas...Celestia would have given anything to see what this place looked like when it was alive, back before...before her. Back then, it had been a wondrous place, or so she had heard. Now it was dead.
The skyline was clear and open where the city’s tallest skyscrapers should have been. Those had collapsed decades ago from exposure to the elements and lack of maintenance, as had almost any structure more than ten stories tall. The ‘neon’ signs that she had heard about, the ones that once lit up the city so brightly that night looked like noon, were all dark. Many of them had fallen from their mounts, and were now strewn about the street and sidewalks. The many stores and restaurants, once bright and vibrant, were now nothing but drab shells of their former selves. Their windows were all cracked or broken, most of their paint had either faded or flaked off, and some had even partially collapsed. A few human automobiles were parked in the street as well, though all were in the same decrepit condition as the city around them. Some had apparently served as impromptu landing pads for falling signs and debris as well.
The sound of claws clicking against concrete again reached Celestia’s ears. This time it was louder, and it’s sources more numerous. She looked down to see more maintenance drones scuttling past, following the same path as the previous one. One of them stopped and looked up at her.
“Coming, Celestia?” it said.
“Yes, I am. It’s just…” The princess looked back at the decaying bones of Las Vegas around her, then sighed. “Nevermind.” She began to follow the drones toward the ‘tuning fork’ ahead, hurrying her pace slightly to catch up. Her ears went flat somewhat at the silence around her. The only sounds were that of her own hoofsteps, the scuttling of the maintenance drones, and the periodic moan of the wind. Whatever cheer, grim though it was, that she had earlier was drowned by the atmosphere hanging over the old city. It was as though the world had lost all color, more than it should have even in the wake of the Yellowstone disaster. The ruins of human civilization, once so vibrant and colorful, had dulled to black and gray.
“Everything is broken…” Celestia muttered.
She half expected one of the drones to respond, but none of them did. It was just as well, though. What could be said about that? It was the truth. Anything else was merely a delusion, and Celestia had quite enough of those to deal with already. There was no reason to add another to the list.
Celestia gave a derisive snort. At least today was one of her good days, if one could call any day being the last living, fully organic, non-mind hive creature on Earth ‘good’. No psychotic episodes, no bouts of manic depression, no serious bipolar mood swings, and the implant had been activated only twice so far.
All in all, it was as close to good as a day on the dead Earth could get.
...Then again…
Celestia’s gaze rose to meet the dual towers as she continued to approach them. As with everything around them, they were depressingly gray, yet the princess could not help but think they were brighter than their surroundings - more polished, and more like a bright but drab lighthouse. If Equestria had finally been found, maybe things were finally starting to look up. Maybe things would finally be something approaching ‘good’.
...Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to get her hopes up. She wasn’t sure if she could handle another let down.
Suddenly, something jammed into the alicorn’s shoulder. She gave a soft yelp and jumped to the side, gazing at the object that had just struck her with a somewhat panicked look before quickly calming down.
It was just another human vehicle, an ‘SUV’ if she remembered correctly, and a rather large one at that. It had apparently run up and over the curb back before Yellowstone. The hood and one of the front tires (which was now deflated and half rotten, just like the other three tires) were jutting onto the sidewalk. The princess realized that she had simply been focused rather intensely on her thoughts and did not notice the obstacle before she ran into it.
The alicorn turned her attention away from the truck and began to walk away...but paused after a few steps and looked back at it. She gave it a curious look and cocked her head at it, causing her mane to fall to the right side of her head and drift over that part of her face. She trotted up to the front of the vehicle and looked rather intensely at it.
“I remember this,” she said to no one. “I know it from somewhere...but from where?”
She saw now why the vehicle had run over the curb and onto the sidewalk rather than simply remaining parked. The entire front end of it was partially caved in. The headlight covers were broken, and the windshield had a large crack running its length. She could see the symbol at its front, a blue oval with the word “Ford” written on it in cursive, though it was damaged nearly beyond recognition.
She recognized the vehicle - not just the style or the model, but that specific vehicle. She just couldn’t seem to remember why. Was it somehow tied to her Memories, the events surrounding it kept hidden by the implant, or was it merely something that her own damaged psyche was suppressing?
Celestia continued staring at it for a moment and ‘hmm’-ed to herself. As she studied the damaged vehicle, something suddenly struck her. She looked closely at the caved-in front, then down at herself, then back at the truck again.
“Could it…?” she said to herself. “No no, I would remember something like that.”
The princess shook her head and turned back to continue following the maintenance drones.
“I should really stop talking to myself,” Celestia said with a chuckle. “Marcus’ll think I’m crazy.”
What little humor there was in the situation immediately evaporated.
“...Of course, I am crazy…”
The alicorn’s wings drooped somewhat. At the back of her mind, she wondered if her mood swings were starting up again. She certainly hoped not. It was hard enough to stay positive without crippling bouts of unexplained, wholly inappropriate happiness followed by utterly abyssal sadness. If she could go a whole day without having to deal with that, it would make it a lot closer to ‘good’.
Celestia paused at the edge of an old intersection. The structures on all sides had been reduced to rubble, though she could not tell if they had collapsed from neglect, the Yellowstone event, or from some pre-Yellowstone battle that she could not remember. At the intersection’s center was the portal machine. It was rather unimpressive visually, being little more than a pair of slightly curved gunmetal gray towers roughly three times her height. But despite its appearance, she knew it was far more than that. She knew that those towers contained equipment sensitive enough to detect the wingbeats of a butterfly (had any still existed) from a mile away, and that below it were deployable defensive systems with enough firepower to level a city block, should anything hostile exit the portal.
However, the focus of her attention was not the portal device, but rather the nine maintenance drones standing around and on it.
They were all staring at her.
A shiver of anticipation ran up and down Celestia’s spine.
“Is it ready?” she asked, her voice becoming more and more shaky. Her mane seemed to lift somewhat, as though it was about to flow about freely in the air as though suspended in the wind, something it had not done for more than thirty years. The drones all nodded in unison.
“I have successfully synchronized our universe with the one I found,” the voice said from all nine drones simultaneously, producing a somewhat dizzying echo effect. “Calculations for the portal corridor are already underway. It should be ready to open momentarily.”
Before the statement was even finished, the two towers that formed the portal machine began to hum. The maintenance drones turned away from the alicorn and directed their attention to the machine. They scuttled all over the towers and the massive cable line linking them to the factory’s power grid, performing final checks and calibrations on the systems of both.
Celestia found her apprehension growing in tandem with the volume of the portal machine’s humming. Once the portal was open, a quick check would reveal whether or not they had found the right universe. If it was, then she would finally get to see her sister, her world, and her little ponies again.
If it was the wrong universe, then it could be decades, even centuries, before another possible Equestrian universe could be located, if one could be found at all.
The humming began to reach a crescendo, and a small pinprick of light appeared between Celestia and the machine. She blinked a couple times in surprise.
“That’s new,” she mumbled to herself. Previously, portals had to be made in-between the machine’s towers. Now it seemed that it had been improved to the point that it could create them remotely. That was significant. When it’s location had been fixed between the towers, it limited the size of the portal. Its event horizon had to be kept away from the surface of the towers, lest they cause the portal to become dangerously unstable. If portals could be formed anywhere within a radius of the machine, though…
The pinprick began to grow in size, quickly becoming the size of a hoofball. At that size, Celestia could see that this portal looked much more stable than previous ones, as well. The others merely looked like whirlpools of chaotic light and colors. This one looked almost like a miniature star, complete with prominences, surrounded by a halo of calm water. It continued to grow. Soon it was larger than even the largest of watermelons. Then, within seconds, it swelled to become roughly a head taller than Celestia, with the edge of its event horizon mere inches from the aging, dusty pavement. At that point, its growth halted, and it gave out a wave of almost invisible power that made the air around it shimmer and caused the world to taste like purple and green for a moment.
Celestia felt her heart hammering in her chest. A bead of sweat ran down the side of her head, over the implant’s wiring and numerous scars, causing the latter to tingle slightly. This was it, the moment of truth. Now that the portal was open, one of the drones just needed to-
Suddenly, the tone of the portal device shifted. It’s humming grew in volume, while becoming deeper and sounding strained. Tiny bolts of purple, red, and black lightning crackled between the towers, causing the air to smell strongly of ozone. The starlike heart of the portal suddenly grew brighter, and its prominences began to appear and disappear with greater frequency and violence.
“Marcus?” Celestia inquired in a slightly apprehensive tone, her already quavery voice now becoming unstable to the point that it cracked. She leaned slightly away from the portal, eyeing it with suspicion. “Marcus, what’s happening?”
Without warning, the drones jumped away from the device and clustered around the former sun princess, also eyeing the portal.
“Something is wrong,” the voice said from one of the drones. “The portal is entering transit mode.”
Celestia’s eyes widened. She backed a half-step away from the portal. “Something’s coming through?”
“Yes,” the voice began to sound ever so slightly nervous. “It entered transit mode before I could fully stabilize it. The portal must have opened in an occupied space.”
“But I thought portals vaporized whatever they touch if they aren’t stabilized!”
The speaking drone turned and looked up at her, managing to convey a grave expression through its mutli-lens optics. “Marginally unstable portals only destroy nonliving objects. Someone is coming through, not something.” The voice paused, then added. “Judging from the high frequency thaumic waves that the portal is emitting, it is more than one ‘someone’ as well.”
Celestia’s ears flattened against her head, and she seemed to shrink into herself somewhat. This was not good. This was not good at all. They didn’t know what universe this was, yet. What if it was an alternate version of the queen’s universe? Even if it wasn’t, whatever came through could easily be unfriendly. What would happen then? Well, the machine had defenses for a reason, but that would mean there would be a firefight...with her in the middle of it!
Every one of the alicorn’s limbs suddenly clenched tight, immobilizing her. Her pupils shrank to fearful pinpricks, and her heart started thundering even harder. Oh no no no, Celestia could not be in a fight. No way, no how. That couldn’t happen, it just couldn’t!
Suddenly, the waterlike event horizon of the portal changed from glassy and smooth to chaotic and rippling, like the surface of a storm-tossed lake. The side facing Celestia and the drones bulged outward before bursting like a bubble, sending out a seaspray-esque cloud of energy and expelling two blurs - one white and the other pink.
Celestia all but squeaked in fear, covered her face with her forelegs, and clenched her eyes shut.
She waited...and waited...and waited...but nothing happened. There was no gunfire, no sound of combat spells or magma weapons, nothing. The only sounds she could hear were her own frenzied breathing and frantic heartbeat.
The alicorn slowly cracked one eye open, then the other. After a moment of peering through her forelegs at the two beings expelled by the portal, she cautiously lowered her hooves to the ground, peering at them in complete and utter confusion.
Both had landed on the ground and skidded to a halt no more than two bodylengths away from her, and they were very, very familiar beings.
No, not beings, ponies.
One of them was none other than her long dead niece, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, who was laying in a rather undignified position. Her chin and forelegs were on the ground, but the back half of her body was raised up into the air, arching over her head. She was conscious, but evidently too busy doing her best imitation of a googly-eyed doll to realize what had just happened.
Beside the young, pink alicorn was a pony that made Celestia’s confusion skyrocket. Sitting in front of her, groaning as she recovered from the rather rude exit from the portal, was an alabaster alicorn. Her coat was a pristine shade of white that had eluded Celestia for many years, was free of scars, and completely lacked a garish cluster of wires. Her multicolored mane flowed about, held aloft by magic, in a fashion that Celestia wished hers still could. She also wore a set of golden slippers, a royal yoke, and a gold tiara, garments that Celestia had lost after Yellowstone.
At the back of her mind, Celestia knew that this had been a possibility, but that made it no less confusing and vertigo-inducing when it happened.
Princess Celestia had just been thrown out of a portal in front of Princess Celestia!
