The Community

We head off once we have everyone situated in a vehicle. Boxer is driving the truck, Celestia is the front passenger. The other three passengers are Twilight, Fluttershy, and Rarity in the back. I'm driving the 4x4 with Luna in the front passenger and Pinkie Pie and Applejack in the back seats. Unfortunately for Jules she got stuck with Rainbow Dash in the bed of the truck. She is only back there since she decided to be nice and give up a cushioned seat. Twilight wastes no time in starting her question session about everything. Her first question was "How does this carriage work?" She asks getting a quill and parchment from seemingly nowhere.

"You'll need to be more specific. There are quite a few systems working in conjunction here", Boxer replies.

"How are we capable of moving forward even though no ponies are pulling us?"

"That would be the engine. The engine creates power and sends it down a shaft through the transmission to the rear axle, where the power is split between the wheels."

"How does the engine create power?" she asks getting more intrigued. Scribbling furiously away on her parchment.

"There is no need for the note taking. Mongoose and I know how to recreate everything about the vehicles, given the appropriate materials of course."

"'No need to take notes', 'NO NEED TO TAKE NOTES!!'" She yells. "Think of the advancements we can achieve with all of this technology."

"Well, the thing, is Twilight, after we invented things that use oil based fuels, such as engines and lamps. We noticed that burning oil produces more CO2 than anything else we've tried. That's why even as advanced as these machines are, we didn't build that many of them. Total we had 5, each for different purposes, so these 2 are pretty important."

"What's wrong with CO2?" she asks innocently.

"Well CO2 itself isn't harmful but when it's produced in the quantities that these vehicles can produce and would produce if everyone had them. We could cause lasting damage to the environment."

"Oh, that is bad."

Celestia takes this time to speak up, "Does where you come from care a lot about the environment?"

"We cared about the environment because whatever we little bit we did to the environment seemed to change it drastically. The weird thing was we had no idea why until recently", Boxer replies.

"Oh? Why is that?" Celestia asks intrigued.

"Well, we left. Now, though, I doubt they'd let us live if we did go back."

Twilight seemingly wanted back in the conversation and asked "Why would you leave a place with technology advanced as this? And why wouldn't they let you live?"

"We stole these prototypes when we left. We left because they wanted to control our lives. They gave us the thought of freedom but then wouldn't let us act upon it?"

"Whatever do you mean?" Rarity seemingly found a lull.

"I mean they say you can be free as long as it only pertains to your job or needs to live. The Community was good to live in. Everyone knew how things should be done and generally were pretty friendly. Outside of work though you couldn't really go somewhere and just relax. It made our lives rather boring, I guess that's kind of what they wanted though. It made your job the most fun part of your day. If you had fun at work you were more likely to make some sort of discovery that could advance the welfare of The Compound as a whole."

"You keep referring to 'The Community' and 'The Compound', do you have names for them?"

"Those are the names", Boxer replies a little more than confused.

"Huh? Wha- Can you explain it please?" Twilight responds.

"Well back in the beginning, The Boss founded a company called 'The Company'. The Company needed a place of business and out of that need grew 'The Compound', which is the place in which The Company holds it business. As the years passed The Compound grew as more went to work there. The workers felt that the best way to create a sense of unity was to refer to themselves as one body, one indestructible force, so that no matter what if one the workers fell. The rest would stand resolute and fight back. They achieved this by referring to themselves as 'The Community', which just so happened to coincide with the theme of everything else. As The Compound grew more workers searched for homes closer to where they were working. The Boss realized this and created homes for everyone and a new office building in the middle of nowhere. And ever since then we have been living there."

"How old is this "Company'?" Celestia asked.

"I don't know an exact date, but I would guess a few hundred years younger than The Boss and he's been around since the beginning."

"The beginning of what?" Celestia asks a little puzzled as to what Boxer is saying.

"I'm surprised you don't know this Celestia, I mean you should know him. Anyway it's said he's been around since the beginning of Druelongi."

Celestia is a little taken aback by the statement. Rarity would've done a spit take if she had had been drinking something. Twilight seems unable to process this information. Fluttershy seems the most capable of handling this all and speaks up first, "But that would mean that Princess Celestia is as old as this planet. And that isn't possible, right?"

Right as Boxer is about to speak Fluttershy cuts me off, "Ooh I didn't mean to say that out loud. I'm so sorry."

"No, it's quite alright. But yes that does mean Celestia is older than she lets on. Probably by a few millennia but what astounds me is that she would hide that fact from all of you."

"A mare should not talk about her age. Do you know anything more about him?" Celestia asks.

"No one has seen him in over a thousand years not since he got his latest second in command, and we don't even see him that much", Boxer replies.

"Can you tell me their names?"

"The alicorn's name-" Twilight cuts me off.

"There is another alicorn?"

"Yeah, we have a few in our society. Don't you have lots out here?"

"No, it's just the 3 princesses."

"Talk about a superiority complex. Anyway his name is Delcer."

"We are only princesses because the three tribes wouldn't stop arguing and many were dying."

"Of course you can't stand to let him do his job so you step in for the purpose of saving souls. It had nothing to do with being a leader?" Boxer asks.

Celestia says, "I had no intention of doing what I did, but when Ponies were on the brink of extinction, I couldn't let them die. I stepped in and stopped the fighting."

"It's a curious thing that in creating the 'Perfect World', most of the creators, that I know of, became corrupt, Ezreal is the only one who hasn't openly taken a leadership role. Granted I have yet to die. The point remains Celestia became the ruler of ponies, Discord tried to usurp her for a bit, and Wisdom takes to creating a highly advanced city, which he is the leader of."

"Ah, so that's where old Ashkore went", Celestia offhandedly remarks.

"What else can you tell me of Ashkore?" Boxer asks.

"He is the oldest of us. He always seemed to have an answer for any question we asked."

Twilight is looking at her Princess with disbelief and shock. "Princess, why did you never tell me any of this. I thought we could tell each other anything."

"Twilight, I never told you because you never asked. I had hoped you would learn that sometimes the best way to learn history is to ask about it."

"So I just outed your biggest and most well kept secret, huh?" Boxer asks chuckling a little.

"Yes, and I would appreciate you respecting my privacy from now on", Celestia threatens.

~~~~ ~~~~

Luna breaks the silence as I shift gears, "So what can thou tell us about thyself?" she asks while looking at me.

"Well let's see I'm 24 years of age, I'm a former military, my current job is an engineer."

"what doth thou do in the military? And doth thou ever fight in a war?" Luna asks either showing genuine interest or faking it really well.

"Well we didn't have to many machines to service in the military so I was a sergeant in the 152nd Air Brigade. No we didn't have any wars as far as I remember", I reply looking for any hints of wars in the past.

"How doth thou not have any wars in thy past? Surely thou must have had something", she asks incredulously.

"Well We did have a few groups trying to lead an insurrection but those get quelled pretty quickly when the first step in your plan is break into the armory to get weapons. Apparently where we lived was a gigantic underground cave that is under the ocean. War is a lot more negligible when you only have to protect against civil wars. All you have to do is keep most everyone happy and defenseless and the citizens can't really do much."

"One must never lead by fear-"I cut her off.

"We weren't scared of him or the government. We were scared of what the almost inevitable outcome would be to declare war on them. We actually liked the government mostly. They set it up so everything was shared; all the food we ate, all the tools we used, any materials necessary. It was all shared if we needed something. We could either just go and take it or fill out a request form. Everyone didn't mind, that's how it was. We had almost zero crime. If there was crime it was usually a murder and depending on circumstances it was either reduced rations or death", I replied nonchalantly.

"That don't seem right, Ah mean reducing some ponies food or killing 'em. Couldn't y'all have just fined 'em or jailed 'em?" Applejack asks.

"We don't have a currency or else our society would have crumbled long ago. And besides what citizen is gonna say 'Oh that guy killed another guy so let's through him in jail, where he doesn't provide for The Community, and gets 3 meals a day'? That's just stupid. If someone is going to be a freeloader, might as well kill 'em. That way they take less supplies and it discourages future infractions."

"That seems mighty barbaric of ya, but if it works..." Applejack responds.

"How doth such a society come to exist? surely it would cause problems at least in the beginning."

"And it did. Those first few years were the hardest on everyone to accept these new rules. There was more violence then than in the rest of our history."

"That sounds like such a mean place, everyone fighting with each other. Why couldn't they all be happy?" Pinkie asks sounding more than a little sad.

"Well they were happy after they learned to accept not getting paid for services. We still have the occasional newcomer that doesn't quite understand right away, but they usually pick it up."

"Newcomer? How doth they know of a place that we have never heard of?" Luna asks.

"I wouldn't know, I was born in The Compound."

"Maybe we will ask 'Tia", and everyone seemed to be pondering what I had said.