Blank Slate

by Integral Archer

Rating: teen
Tags: Crossover, Dark, Alternate Universe, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other, Romance
Length: 68512

Littlepip has always felt a complete disconnect between her thoughts and her environment. When a strange encounter in the basement churns up her thoughts, she reaches out for support. But whom to trust? Based on the Fallout: Equestria universe.

“Of what does the existence of the stable dweller consist? Two words describe it entirely. Finiteness is one of those words. . . . The other is monotony.”

No two words better encapsulate the life of Littlepip, Stable 2’s Pip-Buck repair technician. She understands the arguments to the necessity of such an existence. But in the recesses of her deepest thoughts, she despises it, though she’d never admit it to herself, for she can neither tell herself why she despises it nor what she desires more. When a strange encounter in the basement of the stable churns up her subconsciousness and stimulates her contrary notions, she reaches out for support, not knowing for whom to look for support nor whom she must avoid. Her only outlet is the stable’s radio frequency. However, the radio is merely sound. So far under the earth, it would only take the slightest tremor of the stable to mute it forever.

A massive thank-you to Golden Tassel, my faithful editor. This romance would be missing many of its critical elements if it weren’t for him. He's shown an amazing tolerance for putting up with my nonsense and eccentricity—not my eccentricity but my romanticism. There is indeed a difference.

A thank-you to Malicious Muse, for his help with Chapter III.

Published 2013-07-13 00:20:02 UTC
Last updated 2013-07-13 00:20:02 UTC

Chapter XIX

Nothing existed for Littlepip but the thought of her movement through space. She felt her hooves hitting the ground one by one, the blurred walls nothing but a measure of her speed through the hallways, the ground under her toes nothing but a firm barrier against which to push herself. The air against her clothes, her tail, and her mane were the enemy, drag. Her feet and the floor were her only allies, means of propulsion.

Where I’m going is only my secondary concern, she thought. It will be important later. What’s important now is that I move. Don’t think. Only watch for obstacles and move.

She did not notice the length of the hallway. It had no time to close around her as she ran through it.

The steel doors sat at the end. They looked like two raised hoofs, ordering her to slow down and stop. She bared her teeth and continued her charge.

Still on her own inertia, she grasped the handle and slammed herself against the door on the right. The door hit her back; its cold metal felt like a punch. She fell backward. The back of her head hit the ground, rattling her teeth against one another.

She did not feel the pain. Instead, she stood up without hesitation, grasped the handle with one hoof, leaned on it with all her might, and banged on the door repeatedly with her other hoof.

The door was firmly locked. There was no response. Even with her entire weight on it, the door handle did not even creak.

When her strength failed her, she collapsed back in exhaustion and dragged herself toward the other door. She raised a shaky hoof from the ground to reach the handle. When she felt it on the verge of yielding, she sprang to her feet as if electrified, pushed the handle down, and hit her shoulder against the door with the last of the fury that remained of her charge.

She tumbled into the room and brought herself to her feet as quickly as she had fallen. There was nopony there. There were a few microphones standing tall with nopony to sing to them, a few run-down chairs against which there was nopony to support himself and his instruments; and, on the floor, a few electrical boxes with various switches, dials, and buttons, with nopony to operate.

And, as if to mock them, as if these objects had eyes, a long mirror spanned the entire right wall of the room, reflecting the loneliness as a cruel joke, showing them that they’d stand there forever, that there was nopony to help them, that they were doomed to be silent, waiting for a talent that would never come to deliver them.

Littlepip looked at herself in this mirror. The pony facing her looked exactly like her—but there was no manifestation of her soul in this figure in front of her. She thought that she would look tired; the pony’s cheeks and eyelids were gaunt, pulled straight. She thought that she would see water in red eyes; the pony’s eyes were white and clear. When she felt an anxiety bubble up from her chest, she expected the pony’s lips to quiver; when they did not, when the anxiety turned to panic, when she felt the air in the room thinning, when she felt her heart palpitating, when she began to notice the pain of the absence of sound pressing on her eardrums, she expected the pony to turn white; but the pony stared back at her as she had when Littlepip had first entered the room: with a blank, vacant, unplaceable stare, one that was not angry or happy, one that was not sad or jovial—just a face and an expression with nothing on it, an entity that held no anchor to anything she knew, a canvas that refused to hold the paint of its artist.

She watched in horror as the pony’s horn began to glow, as one of the boxes in the corner lifted itself from the ground. The box was heavy, but there was no strain in the pony’s body. The pony directed it toward her own face, and the face broke with a frightening sound. Littlepip did not feel the glass settling itself into her hair and clothes; nor had she flinched at the impact, which had irrevocably shattered not only the mirror but, with it, the silence of the room. The only thing on her mind was the last expression of the pony before she had splintered: the indifferent expression of one who is performing a routine task, the stare of a well rested pony looking at herself in the mirror.

Glass crunched under Littlepip’s hooves as she rocked back and forth. The adjoining room was empty. It had the same sterility as every other room in the stable—more so, for this room was completely bare. There were no boxes, no wires, no breadboards, nothing that she remembered. A fluorescent lightbulb had been installed in the socket on the roof.

The thermometer was gone.

She nodded as she understood. It was perfectly logical: the mirror had shown nothing because it had been protecting nothing.

Chapter XX

Littlepip grabbed her toolbox, the generation II Pip-Buck, and its projections and sat outside the door marked “Spare Parts.” It had been three days since she had started work on the Pip-Buck. She laughed to herself when she saw the meager process she had made in that time span.

The past three days, like every single day of her life, were a blur to her. She could discern no specifics, only the generalities: that is, she had woken up, had eaten, had worked, and had slept. Just like every other day. These were her only constants. And those days had held them constant.

But it’s not my fault, she thought. It’s these damn first-angle projections! “Damn, damn, damn first-angle projections!” she shouted.

She was taken aback by the manner in which she had pronounced those words. Why the outburst? It really wasn’t that big of a deal. She would figure it out eventually. She was a good, diligent worker. Such an inconvenience did not warrant such an outburst. Am I cursing at something else? she thought—then, she shook her head. Useless line of reasoning. I have to get back to work. I’m not fed to think. They expect me to repair Pip-Bucks, and that’s it. And that’s all I want. That’s all that’s desired of me; that’s all that will ever be desired of me; and that’s all I’ll ever do or be good at. Why strive for anything else? I know my place. I’ve always known my place.

She used a forehoof to brush some of the grain-sized pieces of glass out of her mane. They clinked to the floor with a pleasant ring.

The poster of Velvet Remedy was gone. Stable-Tec’s poster was still there. She noticed nothing.

With a very deliberate magic, she held steadily the screwdriver and removed the screws to the Pip-Buck’s casing. She caught the back of the casing as it fell off. Wires spilled out of the body of the Pip-Buck. Carefully, she took the motherboard, untangled the wires, and turned it over.

And then she laughed.

One of the easiest to replace chips was fried. The CPU was fine; the RAM was fine; the fans were fine; it was the one chip, burned out, a chip that nearly every electronic in Stable 2 used. It was a matter of unscrewing the chip, taking a new one from a junk electronic, and using it to replace the old one.

She opened the door to the closet marked “Spare Parts.” On the second shelf, she kept a variety of electronics. Some of them were harder to open than others, and she scanned the items one-by-one, trying to find the one she thought would be the easiest to open: a run-down ceiling fan, an old computer speaker, a dusty alarm clock, a small set of earphones, a fractured oscilloscope, some weird sort of tablet computer, a prewar wireless telephone, an e-reader, a video game controller, the rusted body of an old robot.

She scratched her head. Finally, she decided that the alarm clock would be the easiest to open and pulled it from the shelf.

The rest was routine. With a few flicks of the screwdriver, the case was off, the chip removed and replaced, and the reset button of the Pip-Buck pressed.

The Pip-Buck flared to life.

She was about to leap for joy when she noticed that the text on the screen was blurry. She flipped through the different on-screen menus in a vain attempt to fix it. Resetting it again didn’t help.

It didn’t like the chip. Perhaps it had something to do with varying voltages? she thought. But how would I be able to measure that?

She glanced back into the closet and saw the oscilloscope. It looked as if it would probably have to be repaired before it could be used. She looked back to the Pip-Buck and shrugged. I’ve worked on you long enough, she thought. I’ll get back to you later. I need an oscilloscope anyway.

She thrust her head back into the closet to get a better look. God, she thought, that oscilloscope really is in disarray. What’s that wire doing on top of the casing? How did that get there? That won’t be easy to put back in—wherever the hell it goes.

But she was confident. She had repaired the Pip-Buck that she had thought were irreparable. Why not this oscilloscope? Why can’t I put this wire back where it belongs? All electronics are the same, anyway.

She levitated the oscilloscope out of the closet, balancing the wire on top, and set it on the floor next to the Pip-Buck. “Now, where do you go . . .” she said, extending her hoof to the wire.

It yielded unresistingly to her touch. It floated a few centimeters off the case, hovered in midair for a split second, then fluttered lightly back down.

She laughed. “It’s a wire.”

She picked it up with the bottom of her hoof. It swayed in the air as she pulled it toward her.

“No,” she said, through her teeth, “it’s a wire.”

She brought it close to her face.

“No, it’s a wire!” It quivered as every one of her shallow breaths brushed it. It swayed like a sail to catch the air of her exhalations.

It was a single, thick strand of golden bronze hair.

She dropped it and staggered backward. She was vaguely aware that her mouth was open.

Her feet could not find their places on the floor. She tried to regain her balance as she felt a weight on her spine. She felt as if the ceiling had come down upon her, crushing her, smothering her. Every time a leg slipped, she would shift her weight to another one, and then that one would slip, and she would shift again, and her body sank lower and lower while the ceiling became ever more heavy. Her muscles burned from exhaustion; her head burned with the half-shaped knowledge of what she was doing; and her eyes watered in response. The weight continued to strain her, only augmenting in magnitude as her efforts increased; until the exertion demanded by the task required more oxygen than there was in the air. She collapsed, belly first, feeling her spine broken, completely shattered, destroyed by the unbearable burden of the roof of the stable.

In Stable 2, the door which is marked “Spare Parts” is nearly always left open. It opens upon a very small room on the floor just above the basement, just below the living quarters, two floors below the cafeteria. The room or, to speak more accurately, the closet, is quite small, about one meter by one meter by three meters. One can usually find the Pip-Buck repair technician in front of this door in one of six poses: standing, crouching, sitting, prone, lying on her back, or prostrate. Each one of these poses corresponded to the difficulty of a problem.

She was now prostrate.

Chapter I

For the sake of a moral point that we wish to argue, let us propose the following:

The plains bear witness to great meadows. The flora here, though not diverse, overwhelms by its scale. The grass sways in the wind, green and lush. Its green is nearly invisible, blocked as it is from sight by its brown, tall, wheat-like brothers, those tall stalks peculiar to the prairies. Overhead, the sun is in the zenith. The wind presses on these flowers of the plains, weaving and jumping through the occasional gaps that can be seen, leaving as evidence of its presence a sound ubiquitous in nature, a rustling similar to the sound an unremitting rainfall makes on pavement, identical to the sound of a great exhalation.

But this field is not our focus. We who are writing these words care very little for landscapes. We care more for she who runs through it.

A filly moves unrestrained in the meadows. She stomps on the short green grass with impunity. The tall grass bends and breaks as she moves through, yielding with a bow to her power. The sun beats down upon her face. Though the air is bright, though the grass is lush, these things come nowhere near to the brightness of her smile and the lushness of her face. She laughs as the wind whips her mane; it feels as if it blows with an intent to carry her away, and she feels she could spread her wings—or, if she has no wings, her limbs—to fly away wherever she pleases. But she doesn’t. She chooses to stay firmly planted on the ground, and her laughs change from those of contemptuous insolence into those of delight at the possibilities that are open to her.

The inevitability of youth is diversity. And her life is infinite. She lives in the firmament.

This filly, this embodiment of youth, has this amazing quality; that is, she is incorruptible by direct means. For youth is reactive. Let evil come at youth suddenly; if she does not destroy it outright, she dodges it with deft ability. Evil may be unrelenting, youth may be tried by it, attacked, bruised, bled, but she always comes on top, for she knows blatant evil when she sees it, and she stands for justice. Blatant evil threatening consecrated right—she knows with which she stands, and she adjusts her tools appropriately. Evidence for this phenomenon? Evil exists; youth exists; evil tries youth—evil, at least in its classic, most recognizable form, has yet to destroy youth completely.

It seems that this natural marvel, that is, youth, that is, the purest form of life, happiness, and joy, is unassailable, ultimate. A titan against impotent pygmies. The latter are jealous of the former’s splendor, and they try time and time again to mount this colossus, falling back over and over again, trying new and new ways to grab her throat, failing each time. How can these demons win?

It is actually quite simple. Allow us to demonstrate:

Attacking her outright is fruitless. She identifies you as the threat and crushes you beneath her feet. She’s a macrophage, and you’re bacteria. Therefore, if you integrate yourself with her environment, she won’t know that you’re the one killing her. Cease to be the bacteria, and become the immunodeficiency virus. In short, be subtle.

First, cover her meadow with blood. Whose blood? This does not matter. For what reasons? For princess, country, ideology; these, too, do not matter. How much blood? Not too much at first; just enough to be seen but not enough for her to recognize it as a massacre. Simply make her choose to stay indoors one day.

She’ll stay in the room the first day, perhaps the second as well. But, eventually, her courage will start to build. How to stanch this inexorable force? Make the battlefield bloodier. Make the weapons more terrible. As soon as she gains confidence, make her opponent that much stronger. But do it gradually, in order that she may not notice.

Sustain this for long enough. Despair will soon set in for her. Do not let it. For once complete despair takes hold of her, you’ve poisoned the treasure you wished to corrupt; your treasure will die with the knowledge that she was good. Instead, under the pretense of delivering her, lock her in a dark cave. If she protests, call the cave a stable; say it’ll protect her.

She’ll be scared at first, but she’ll adapt. She’ll become pale and emaciated. Her strong legs that had once carried her through the meadow will barely allow her to ascend the stairs you have built. Replace the yellow sun with fluorescent lights, and she’ll stop seeing colors. Through this process, make her writhe on the ground, slurp processed food from cans, beg and supplicate to those whom, if not for this illusion, she would’ve instantly seen as her inferiors.

From this spirit, which had appeared so impenetrable, you will have successfully created an eyeless worm, fit only for slithering through the dirt, spending all its life trying to grasp just that little pocket of air.

This state has the peculiar quality in that, though it is base and corrupt, there is still a latent strive for happiness. Youth will try, wondering what is making her unhappy, thinking that there is still that which is worth living for, but never realizing it was you that had set her in such a wretched state. She’ll find others, like her, others that you’ve put with her in the stable in the same manner and with the same intent as a competitor who displays his trophies on a shelf. She will try to find happiness; but her offspring, her daughter, will be nothing like her progenitor. This new creature will be complacent. Unlike her mother, this new creature did not come into the world smiling. She scowls, swears, is dismissive to outside opinions. But in her mind, she carries a conflict; she has a vague conception of what should, could have been, while she sees around her that which is. There is a discordance that cannot be fought. She perceives her mind as base, and that which you’ve subjected her to as normal. Now here is the abject despair that you’ve longed for, the reversal of roles that has always been your goal: a creature that thinks she and her thoughts are evil, a slave to you, whom she perceives as benevolent. You’ve succeeded in making her, good, evil, and you’ve made you, evil, good. She offers her goodness to sacrifice onto your altar of evil, and you consume it. This is your sustenance. Keep her, and you’ll never be hungry.

You cannot call this creature that you have created youth; it is too different. Thus, a new term has been invented.

She is now called the stable dweller.

Be you warned, you who attempt such terrible plans, for the stable dweller has this one advantage over her ancestor: since she is born in the darkness, her pupils have been permanently dilated. Even the smallest amount of light she should be able to detect. But eyes are useless without the brain to interpret their signals. If you’ve effectively stanched her brain, then you’ve stanched the ability for her to perceive such light.

Apply a general method for doing so, for there will only be a select few who will see past it. Do it properly, and your only threat will be the individual who realizes his potential and wishes to seek his vengeance.

Chapter II

Of what does the existence of the stable dweller consist? Two words describe it entirely.

Finiteness is one of those words. From the moment she is born, the stable dweller is constrained. The ones who look down upon her while she lies in her crib are dressed the same, talk the same, and are the same ones she will see for the rest of her life. Those specific individuals will die, but their offspring will replace them, in the same manner, in the same clothing. They will be emulations of their parents. The essence of the stable dweller is preserved from generation to generation, and it does not lose its austerity. Or, to speak more accurately, the power of the stable drains the inherent diversity of those whom it swallows in its folds.

Her job is the same. She takes her aptitude test; it gives her a profession; and she works it, whatever it is, until she dies. There is no hope for a promotion. There is no hope for a change of locale or scenery. The stable dweller awaits the pronouncement of the results of the aptitude test in the exact same manner a defendant awaits the pronouncement of guilty or not guilty by the jury. Celestia help the one whom the aptitude test places falsely!

Colors? For the stable dweller, there are none but gray and white. The fluorescent lighting of the stable casts a harsh white in all its corridors, illuminating entirely the endless sheets of gray. No other colors exist. Perhaps had the uniforms been varied in color, instead of that constant, unremitting dull blue, perhaps had the bodies that occupied those uniforms been versatile, free, jocund, the stable dweller would have distinguished the color blue from the gray and white. But the blue of the uniforms fade, the colors smear, and the stable dweller swears that they are all dressed in gray. Black, the color the stable dweller might see should she go to the sparsely lighted basement, should she close her eyes as firmly as possible and put both her hooves over them, is not a color; it is the absence of color, nothingness, leaving in her mind only the vague notion of what could have been.

Music? The same. It is mostly electronic, synthesized sounds, the grotesque emulations of those pure notes whose recipes had died a long time ago, those notes that spoke of wonderful time, a beautiful time, a time that is long since dead. The few pieces of equipment in the stable that can play the recordings of such music slowly fall into disrepair, dying along with their creators and maintainers, as if they were connected by an unseen wire, a single heartbeat, the death of one causing the signal to travel down the ethereal cord, arresting the heart of the other; it fights back, and it manages to survive a little longer, but, slowly, it withers; and, slowly, it dies. What remains? Mockery. The parakeets of music build machines, lifeless and unthinking, in order to, with all good intentions, resurrect those joyous of sounds; but their memories are imperfect, the machines limited, and the result is an eerie one, a corpse flailing its limbs in the attempt to fool others that it is alive. But the stable dweller sways her head along with these songs; she converses with the corpse as she would with her fellows. She knows all their lyrics by heart. Why? The crude emulation of life is better than death.

Space? The killing blow. The stable dweller is taught about the planets. She knows the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars. One travels around the other, another around that, all spinning together in an incomprehensible amalgam of light. That is what she is told, but she understands nothing. “What does it mean?” she cries. “What is a sky? What is a planet? How can anything be bigger than the stable? The sun? Light without electricity, without combustion? Impossible!” The lessons of her teacher are as believable as the fantasies she reads in her spare time. For the stable dweller, space starts at the back at of the stable and ends at the door. It is impossible to convey the feeling of having no windows, no entrances, no cameras, no possible way to view the space outside the metal of the stable. The tobacco in the middle of a cigar sees more light and breathes more freely. Those thrown into the depth of a dungeon go mad, for they know what is outside, what is waiting for them; they feel themselves confined. They feel their souls trying to burst free and failing. Though the mental state of the prisoner is unbearable, despairing, it cannot be compared to the mental state of the stable dweller; for the former has been deprived, while the latter never had. She touches her hoof at the back—the beginning; she touches her face against the door—the end. All of matter is between two walls. “What is beyond the back wall?” you may ask her. She will laugh and respond: “You mean to ask me: what is before the beginning? A non sequitur!” You may ask her: “What is beyond the door?” She will look at you as if you are crazy and say: “You mean to ask me: what is after the end? A contradiction!” What does the word “universe?” mean? Ask her to look it up in a dictionary. Mark the expression on her face when she comes across it and reads its definition. “The ‘universe’? Meaning ‘everything that exists’?” she will say, incredulous. “What a lofty word for so insignificant a thing!”

Finiteness is one of the two words that describe the life of the stable dweller. The other is monotony. This second word, by its very nature, does not require us to elaborate further in order for its essence to be understood.

Is there any virtue to be had in this forsaken dungeon? There is but one: the stable dweller has never committed suicide. Very few objects lend themselves to lethality in the stable. Knives are blunt. Guns are kept under a constant lock. There is no central atrium; the greatest height that can be seen is from the second floor to the first floor; jumping to one’s death is out of the question. The medications are only available through the psychiatrist, who supplies a pill each time it is needed and no more. The only strings that exist are bonnet laces, which would snap instantly under the weight of any body. The remaining options of suicide are all ugly, shameful, the most ignominious ways to die imaginable, and the stable dweller refuses to take them. Though she has been stripped of her honor, her pride, her wishes, her joys, her optimism, her aspirations, her dreams, her pleasures, her sentimentalities, the stable dweller still holds onto one, refusing to let it go. It is the most important one, for it is the virtue from which all other virtues are derived.

The stable dweller still has her dignity.

With dignity intact, the rest can be restored. All it takes is a spark.

What is that spark?

Chapter III

The door which is marked “Spare Parts” is nearly always left open. It opens upon a very small room on the floor just above the basement, just below the living quarters, two floors below the cafeteria. The room or, to speak more accurately, the closet, is quite small, about one meter by one meter by three meters. No lightbulb illuminates this hovel for tools; in order for one to see the haphazardly placed, rusted parts, many of which broken, the door must be opened entirely to allow the wan rays of the light from the fluorescent bulbs which line the hallways of Stable 2 inside.

The hallway in which the room sits is quite narrow; and the door, when open like this, would block the path of anypony who tried to pass through. This is not the only impediment, though; even during the odd moment when the door is closed, one can still find the Pip-Buck repair technician in the middle of the path in one of six poses, each pose more obstructive than the last: standing, crouching, sitting, prone, lying on her back, or prostrate. Each one of these poses corresponded to the difficulty of a problem. If she were to say to a Pip-Buck’s owner: “this is a standing problem,” the owner would breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that she would have it back to him within fifteen minutes. In any of these poses, she and her door would block the path—if anypony ever came down that hallway.

The hallway, not the prototyping room, was the Pip-Buck repair technician’s work station, for she found herself often quitting the sparsely supplied prototyping room, replete though it was with assorted power tools, in search of a part that was nowhere to be found. Upon retrieving it from the aforementioned closet, it was never longer than five minutes before she found herself needing to return for another part. It was much easier just to take everything she needed, litter the hallway around the closet with the tools she used the most often, and do her work there. Power tools, no matter their ingenuity in construction, lose all their usefulness in the absence of needed parts.

The Pip-Buck repair technician was named Littlepip. And, at this particular moment in time, she was crouching.

Sprawled out on the concrete floor in front of her was a large white piece of construction paper, about two feet by two feet, upon which were the orthographic projections of one of the oldest models of Pip-Bucks, a generation II model.

She jumped to the other side of the projections, trying to make sense of something that she was beginning to think didn’t exist. Then, she looked back to the Pip-Buck she was floating, screwdriver at the ready. She alternated her sight between the two: first at the Pip-Buck, then at the projection, then at the Pip-Buck, then at the projection again. At last, after two cycles of this process, she jumped to the right side of the paper.

“Damn first-angle projections,” she whispered to herself, scratching her head with a hoof in confusion.

She had not worked on generation II Pip-Bucks often, for they were only worn by the oldest of the inhabitants of Stable 2, and the greatest of their problems usually amounted to one that could be solved by shoving a pencil into their reset buttons. But this one now—this one would not even turn on.

She had been forced to reference the orthographic projections, but the only ones she could find on file were first-angle ones. If one is accustomed to third-angle projections, one looks upon the first-angle projections of a familiar electronic as if it were an alien device.

Littlepip let the screwdriver and the Pip-Buck fall to the floor, and she collapsed. She was now sitting.

She looked to the Pip-Buck sitting on her own forehoof. Its frame was an outer metal cast of a sickly gray, almost green color, and it was only beaten in nauseousness by the green of the Pip-Buck’s interface. A small grated speaker on its front was quietly playing music.

Littlepip, in that state of absentmindedness brought on by mental fatigue, fell victim to the next symptom—that is, procrastination. First, her eyes went to the wall of the corridor. She stared at one of the infinitely many points on the endless strip of gray metal that lined the walls of Stable 2. She looked left: long, tubular florescent lightbulbs illuminated the gray of the walls and the gray of the floors. The lightbulbs gave off a white that had no ability to dilute the gray. She looked right: more walls, same ceiling, same floor, just as much gray.

She looked behind her, and she nearly started with surprise. Though the wall behind her was the same gray, at a single spot a piece of letter-sized paper hung on the wall via a thin piece of tape. Compared to the rest of the stable, the paper was tiny, negligible; but, with its colors and content, the paper seemed to have the ability to repel the entirety of the gray, warming those who looked at it, comforting those who read it. Its background was a bright orange. Its subject was a pretty mare staring coquettishly at the camera. Across this sort of poster, in bright green letters, read:

Velvet Remedy, Rerecorded
New Hardware, New Technology, Same Great Songs
February 8th-February 14th, 12:00 p.m., on Cucro’s Frequency
A new, high quality recording every day for a week!

The words, the colors, the mare seemed to burn into the coldness of the metal wall with their vividness. The longer Littlepip stared at the poster, the more she smiled, the more her heart throbbed. The stare of the mare felt soothing, encouraging, and Littlepip felt herself pulled toward it with an inexplicable force. If maybe she could touch it, jump inside it, then everything would be fine—and when her hoof pushed it against the wall upon which it sat, when she felt the cold metal behind the poster, she recoiled and fell back to the firm, icy ground.

Littlepip shook her head and sighed. She moved her hoof across the knobs of her own Pip-Buck, her eyes glazing over as the familiar screens flickered past one by one. They were all the same. She had seen them all a million times. As her eyes began to close, the screens blurred more and more into similarity—except for one.

She opened her eyes. Her brow furrowed, like a mare doubting a sight that she had taken for granted all her life.

Most of the Pip-Bucks’ task screens were nearly identical. They were plain, dreary, and dull, all asking for input to perform tasks that most would never need to be used. But one screen stood out from the rest for a very singular reason. Once that reason was recognized, none could hold a Pip-Buck and look at it the same way ever again. And, at that moment, Littlepip recognized that reason on the “About” screen.

About screens all display the same thing: version number, firmware number, the model name, the model number, the year of foundation of the company that made those aforementioned things, etc. But the Pip-Buck’s About screen showed these things only as a consequence and instead seemed more eager to display, using nearly the entire screen, the face of Stable-Tec: the Stable Colt.

The Stable Colt is a cartoon colt and the mascot of Stable-Tec. He has a short, blonde mane molded into a singular shape, seeming to be held in place only by static electricity; this changes depending on what occupation he is depicting. He is usually depicted holding out his hoof in some gesture of amicability. These aforementioned details are all trivial. The Stable Colt is not.

Upon his face, the Stable Colt bears a wide smile. This is the only thing that does not vary in all his depictions. It is a wide smile and his defining characteristic. But the smile doesn’t match the eyes. It is discordant with his posture. It seems to be glued on, hiding a grimace of malice. As it stands, the smile the Stable Colt wears looks affected, disingenuous. His countenance is like that of a venus flytrap, luring in its prey with the aroma of sweet honey and nectar, just waiting to turn around and bite down its teeth.

He’s everywhere. He’s plastered on the halls of all the stables. He’s on the logo of Stable-Tec. He is lurking beneath the folds of every piece of clothing. If one looks closely while eating cereal—the flakes of which are shaped in his own image—he can be seen on the tip of the spoon. And in every single instance, he is looking at you straight in the eye, no matter the angle at which you look at him. And the smile always seems to be tacked onto his expression at the last second, as if he bared his teeth at all other times, only quickly smiling in response to the unexpected gaze of the stable dweller.

None would look at that smile and say: “That’s a smile of deceit.” But none would look at it and say: “That’s a smile of friendship.” Though if they had to pick one, all would lean toward the former.

Littlepip shuddered.

About one fathom away from the aforementioned poster lay another poster on the same wall, approximately the same dimensions as the first one, that is, the one with the mare. But this was their only similarity. This second poster seemed to ooze its presence into the air with a sort of lugubrious effort. The first poster was a bright yellow and red exclamation which barely managed to contain the spirit and the energy exuded from its subject. It was a bolt of lightning in the form of a piece of paper. But if this first poster was lightning, the second poster was composed completely of gallium. Gallium, Littlepip thought, that’s what it is. It’s gray and flimsy, and it melts instead of shines. There would always come a point in the day when Littlepip would not see the poster but would instead see a repulsive and viscous liquid which was reluctant to run down even the most steepest of slopes. The slope, in this case, was supposed to be the stretch of wall upon which it sat and which seemed tailor-made for it; but Littlepip could swear that its true goal was the slope of her consciousness—she could certainly feel it there leaving its slimy trail in no apparent hurry. Its monochromatic appearance instantly conveyed the intentions of its creator, Stable-Tec, and the Stable Colt was, of course, its subject. There were three identical ones this time side by side, each with the same blank stare, each with the same mirthless smile. The three stood in a line, and on their backs, piled to the top of the poster, was a mountain of debris. But it was impossible to tell where each pile started and where each pile ended; the debris seemed not to be three different loads but one monstrous pile of trash spread out equally among the carriers. Little lines indicating movement of the trash implied that stray pieces were falling over and over themselves and that the pile was endlessly shifting its weight. The bent knees of the three implied the load was heavy but certainly not heavy enough to remove their smiles. Across the bottom of the poster, heavy, bold text read:

You work for all
All work for you
Bless the overmare
Sacrifice is our virtue!

Posters of these kind were spread all over the stable. The stable dweller is all too familiar with them: They decorate the walls of her nursery. When she grows out of her crib, their messages and their morals are taught to her in her schools. When she sees them as an adult, she nods and thinks no more of it. She passes these posters every day and gives none of them a second glance or a second thought. In the context of the stable, they seem appropriate.

But the Pip-Buck repair technician bore a great secret: It was a dark, deep, dangerous secret in the recesses of her heart. It ate away at her as she worked and pulled her mind away from all thoughts of labor and sacrifice. It was an evil thought, a contrarian one, a selfish one, one that made the blue fabric of her uniform irritate and caused her skin to break out in a rash, one that she had told nopony, one that nopony could learn lest she be seen as an outsider, lest she be alienated:

She liked the poster with Velvet Remedy better.

Littlepip slapped her head as the notion recurred to her. Horrible, ungrateful thought! Where had she been born? The stable. Who had educated her? The stable. Who had shaped her into the diligent worker and productive member of Stable 2 she was today? The stable. Whom did she work for? The stable. Who protected them all? The stable. Who gave to her so much and asked so little in return? The stable. Did it not thus follow that the stable should be the subject and attention of all her thoughts and praise? Littlepip knew this. She followed the line of thinking. She agreed with each premise. She agreed with each argument that followed. She agreed with the conclusion, and she agreed that any contrary opinion was evil.

Yet she found herself staring at the poster of Velvet Remedy more than the other one.

She remembered the old tales, the classic ones of survival. The stable’s library was replete with a thousand variations of the same story, wherein a disaster happens, a shipwreck, an earthquake, an alien invasion, something which separates and divides; and in each of those stories, the small remaining banded together. Each was forced to put her interests behind herself for the sake of the rest, for the sake of survival—and the ones who refused, the ones who did not want to pull their weight, were either killed or brought the whole group to ruin. The details differed, but the message was always the same: in a lifeboat, independence drowns survival with its brazenness. Was the stable not a lifeboat in a sense? How would it float if she did not adhere with the rest? How could it move if she were paddling in another direction? She knew the moral well enough: should a single egotist declare himself too great for his fellow castaways, the boat spins, it founders, and all perish.

Despite this, she smiled when she saw the colorful poster, and that smile vanished in the presence of the dark one. She knew it was a fantasy, but her heart rejected all attempts by her brain to relegate it to solely the fantastic.

She knew it was contrary. She knew it was selfish, destructive, even. Yet she couldn’t stop herself. The poster of Velvet Remedy had only appeared about a month ago, but it had instantly captured her attention, more so than the Stable-Tec posters ever had. She turned her back from the ubiquitous gray and green ones which bore similar messages, morals, and depictions of solidarity; and, instead, she stared at the selfish ones, so bright, colorful, and appealing. The hall where she worked was barren; but, somehow, the advertisement had found its way right in front of her door, staring at her day by day. And from that point on, she looked forward to getting up, looked forward to getting to her tools, and being able to look at the poster while she worked and passed the time. A week had passed thus; and when Littlepip had realized she had done nothing for that entire week but stare at that damned poster, she had recoiled, gasped, collected her premises, and understood the horror that such a preoccupation implied. The poster was an evasion, distracting her from what was actually important; it was hindering, pleasant to the immediate senses, but insidious in its appeal. She knew this—but she still could not bring herself to tear it down. She made a strained effort to look at the other one, but her eyes were drawn back to the guilty pleasure like a magnet. She had been unable to fight it. Eventually, Littlepip created in her mind a time bank, where for every minute she spent looking at the dull poster, she could reward herself with a minute of looking at the bright one, all the while endeavoring to keep her head straight, her countenance unreadable, so that none would ever know how she felt toward them, none would ever suspect that she carried thoughts other than how to care for them and the stable, and she continued to walk among them, looking just like them—but, in reality, an invisible aberration.

The music stopped. A voice could faintly be heard taking its place. Littlepip turned up the volume. A deep male voice, smooth, full of bounce, color, and arrogance, speaking with the stereotypical accent and dialect of a lower-class worker, but which was still charming and amicable nonetheless, was heard saying:

“And what is your opinion of that recording, Ms. Velvet Remedy?”

Littlepip turned the volume up to its maximum setting as she got up and began to head in the direction of the basement.

“The more I listen to it,” an airy female voice responded, “the more problems I find in it. At the beginning of the bridge section, I cringe every time I hear that broken chord. At the end of the refrain, the last note is drowned out. I suppose the recording equipment couldn’t handle the sublimity of that last note.”

“That’s true,” said the other voice, with a chuckle. “But would you believe me if I, Cucro, told you that I feel the exact same way every time I hear it as well? And would you believe me if I told you this is something from which you need not suffer any longer? Would you believe me if I told you that I’ve, through nopony’s efforts but my own, created the final . . . remedy?”

Littlepip slapped her hoof across her face and made a growling noise from the bottom of her throat that was one part laugh and nine parts groan.

Velvet Remedy laughed. “I’ve always suspected that Cucro and Cucro’s Frequency are trying to win my favor, but I’d never thought I’d hear it put in such blatant terms by the stallion himself.”

The male was heard to gasp exaggeratedly. “Presumptuousness!” he said, in the airily indignant tone a female actor portraying a bourgeoise in an old black-and-white movie would assume. “Presumption of intent! How dare you!” The intonation of these last three words was sufficient to allow Littlepip to see the haughty and mischievous turn of a smile on the speaker’s lips.

“Have I misinterpreted?” said Velvet Remedy.

“It doesn’t matter!” Cucro sputtered with the affected growl of an aristocrat. “Presumption of intent! Cucro’s Frequency is a high-quality, high-class broadcasting program. We—and by we, I, of course, mean I—won’t tolerate such abominations of logic as the presumption of intent, just as we won’t tolerate poor recording equipment. I’d expect such comments from my listeners of lower intellect—the same listeners who, in vain, attempt to wound me by applying to me such labels as selfish, egotistical, arrogant, incorrigible—but not from you.”

“You are mistaken,” she immediately responded, “for I think of you in terms of those labels as well.”

“Ah, but is your understanding of those words on the same level as those who use them to insult me?”

There was a brief pause. Velvet Remedy was heard to draw a sharp breath; but, before she could say anything, Cucro interjected: “I forgive you. I suppose you can hardly be blamed for that comment. It was only the natural reaction to hearing yourself broken and mutilated. That’s how I feel. To hear anything less than perfection on my frequency! To hear your words and voice unjustly fractured, as we have just now, because of my willingness to suffer the stable’s abuses! The stable’s built-in audio channel is an abomination of nature. You say I’m trying to win your favor? That is only the superficial reason. I’m trying to win my own favor. I’m trying to win Cucro’s Frequency for Cucro. If the label of an incorrigible egotist has never been applicable to me, it certainly will be tomorrow.”

“Elucidate,” said Velvet Remedy.

“For the past months I have, laboriously, slaved over this recording setup. I thought I couldn’t find a piece. I thought it were a lost cause. But I found it. I have built a completely new recording system, and it sounds”—he was heard to kiss his hoof—“beautiful. Starting tomorrow, at twelve p.m., you won’t sound tinny and whiny anymore. You can say it came from anywhere you please: you can say that Celestia dropped it as a gift to us; you can say it’s because of my skill; you can say that it was a side-project I undertook in addition to my regular duties. But if you ask me, it comes from my ego. ”

“You’re a master with words, Cucro. That’s exactly the way to my heart. Do you write poetry?”

Littlepip burst out laughing. She opened the door marked “Boilers, Storage, Courtyard, Plumbing, and Maintenance” and headed through.

The hiss of rushing gas, the crack of metal: an all-too familiar sound to Littlepip, to any frequent listener of Cucro’s Frequency—the sound of the opening of an aluminum can filled the speaker. A gurgling sound bubbled through. When the noise ceased, Cucro groaned contentedly. “Stable-Tec beer, fillies and gentlecolts,” he said. “The finest homemade brew, just like your mother used to make.”

Then, he added: “You know, Ms. Remedy, I think that you respect me a lot more than you like to let on.”

“And are you presumptuous enough to believe that I ascribe any value as to what you think?”

“It’s not a presumption. It’s a conclusion drawn from simple facts. A mere observation. Here I am. Here you are, day after unremitting day, in my inviolable domain.”

“Your point being?”

“It seems to me that you’re placing an overwhelming amount of faith in me and my ability. For the sake of argument—exempli gratia, as we learned folk like to say—suppose that I feel too tired tomorrow. Suppose I don’t want to turn on the radio. I can do that, you know. And you wouldn’t be able to stop me. Nopony knows how the radio works but me; I saw to that a long while ago. Suppose I give no show. What would you do then?”

“Excuse me?”

“Who are you, Ms. Velvet Remedy? A singer. But what is a singer in a world without sound? Nopony. Who are you without sound? Nopony. Who here in Stable 2 controls the radio, id est, controls the sound? None other than Cucro. Suppose I turn off the sound of Stable 2. At a touch of my hoof, you’re mute. At a touch of my hoof, your listeners are deaf. What would you do then? Do you have a contingency plan?”

“I don’t need one.” Her voice pierced the static-filled air with the sharpness of a spear.

“And why is that?” he responded. Nothing in those syllables suggested confrontation; they were the sounds of an adversary who asked nothing better than to be bested.

“It’s the same reason why you go to all these efforts for your frequency. It’s why you spend sleepless nights tuning it, augmenting it, caring for it as if it were an extension of your own body. Turning it off would be no different for you than if you were to stop your own heart.”

“And how do you know I wouldn’t stop my own heart just to spite you?”

“Because that would be spiting yourself.”

“And how do you know that I wouldn’t spite myself to spite you?”

“Because you’re selfish, egotistical, arrogant, and incorrigible.”

Littlepip gasped.

“And you are absolutely right,” said Cucro. And he laughed.

Littlepip perked up her ears at this sound. Cucro had always had a singular laugh, and she always noticed it on the rare occasions he used it. Littlepip was only familiar with the laughter of her peers: a snide, mocking sound, used to ridicule and desecrate. Cucro was the only pony she knew of whose laugh was one of pure exultancy. She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t know why it filled her with warmth every time she heard it. Now, she tried to imitate his laugh, but it came out strained and forced, and she didn’t like the sound of it.

She stopped trying and listened:

“Besides,” replied Velvet Remedy, “you know as well as I do that the lovely ponies of Stable 2 only tune in to Cucro’s Frequency for me. Good luck trying to find listeners without me.”

“Yeah!” exclaimed Littlepip, eagerly staring at the speaker of her Pip-Buck, which was getting increasingly hard to see in the growing darkness of the basement.

“Well,” snorted Cucro, “in that case, to my listeners, I must absolutely, unequivocally, without a doubt, not remind them that you have a performance in the auditorium at seven p.m. tonight. Do miss it, Stable 2. What you should definitely not miss, however, are her rerecordings, which are on, as I have no doubt you’ve forgotten—”

It was here when her reception cut out. Littlepip had reached the depths of the basement.

The basement possessed none of the white fluorescent lighting that the rest of the stable had. In complete contrast, it was pitch-dark. Though most would shudder at the thought of going from complete sight to blindness, Littlepip strode boldly into the darkness without a second thought. She was quite comfortable in the basement. At first, she had found her occupation taking her there—for when parts couldn’t be found in the closet, they could be found in the basement—but then she had noticed the complete darkness: a rarity in the constant lighting of the stable. Without light, she found her thoughts organizing themselves as if on their own accord. When thinking was needed to be done, this was where she went. She did a lot of thinking. Thus, she could traverse the vast plane of the basement with her eyes closed.

Through touch and smell, she found her way to where the parts were kept. She buried her hooves in the assorted debris and withdrew them after the elapse of three seconds when she felt only metal. She wanted the third-angle orthographic projections of a generation II Pip-Buck. Papers, she was looking for. Where were papers? She could find metal no problem, but she had never seen papers. There had to be papers. She flicked on the lamp of her Pip-Buck, and she was simultaneously surprised and upset to finally perceive the reality of the basement, hitherto only experienced by the sense of touch, translated to the sense of sight. Everything that stood was where she had always felt it; but a pang of regret came, a longing, sad reflection, when she saw the crumbling, decayed nature of the fences, the cabinets, the shelves, everything that she had known only by touch before. She had imagined everything here beautiful, perfect; her reasoning was that since nopony ever came down there, nothing could be destroyed. Innocent, naive, even sweet, line of thinking, but one flawed, discordant with reality. Nature desires to be in a state of chaos. An old, dead, controversial philosopher once called this phenomenon: “A wonderful thing.”

By the light of her Pip-Buck, she searched for fifteen minutes in vain. There was nothing. There were papers of other projections, probably ones that would be useful in the near future, but none that she was looking for. She turned around and walked back the way she came, her head bowed in dejection.

Littlepip walked for some time thus. She did not notice the soft light of the Pip-Buck undulating across the dank floor as her forehoof moved in a periodic motion. She had forgotten to turn the lamp off.

She walked for twenty minutes before she rose herself from her reverie. She was still in the basement? Where had she been going? What had she been doing? How could she have gotten so deviated from her original course of action? She brought the Pip-Buck to her face and looked at the local map. The arrow marking the direction she was facing indicated that she was staring directly at a wall. Beyond the wall, there existed nothing. Not possible, she thought; I can feel the open air in front of me. She brought her hoof upward to illuminate the space. She jumped back with a start.

She was at the door of Stable 2.

It towered above her, a nearly perfect circle ten feet feet high and ten across. It was spoked like a wheel, and it fit in its reservoir in the shape of a gear. Its hinges and facade were decaying. But, through the rust, like the eye of a beast glaring at its prey in the middle of the night, a small yellow spot, though covered with rust, formed the shape of the number two.

It was pitiful, like everything in the basement, but it was the zenith of wretchedness. It bent over her like the hanging body of a flayed carcass. The air seemed to rush toward it. Space around it condensed; objects in its vicinity seemed to stretch and shrink toward this omnipresence, drawing everything, even light, and thus, one’s gaze, to it. But it felt alive. Though it was dark, though cobwebs could be seen here and there, though the panels looked dead, though no lights signaled activity, it emanated a breath of life. The light from the Pip-Buck cast oblong shadows into the indentations and crevices of the door; and, for a second, Littlepip thought she perceived a mouth, one on the verge of yawning, one ready to open and consume all that it was supposed to protect. It seemed to be watching, waiting, motionless—but merely dormant.

Littlepip had only seen it in pictures. None ever went down here. They were even forbidden as children from coming down here. Their foalhood bets had brought them many improper places: the boiler room, the freezer, the psychiatrist’s office, the personal bathroom of the overmare—but none had proposed, nor had even thought of, spending the night at the door of the stable. From the sleeping quarters, they could feel it underneath them, two floors down, moving, quivering, informing them of its presence.

Littlepip had not planned to come here, nor did she plan on ever coming back here again. She was about to run away, never to speak of this incident—when she stopped, suddenly. She gazed at the yellow number two. What did it contain? Did it contain anything at all, even? She would not come back here. But she didn’t want to leave without knowing first.

She approached and pressed her ear to the metal. It was cold, colder than the corridors near her closet.

She heard nothing. No, there had to be something, she thought. A door that big, sealed so firmly, did not keep out nothing. She listened. She stood thus for fifteen minutes.

On the sixteenth minute, she thought she could perceive something: a trickling, a running. Perhaps the blood in her ear? No, a definite stream. A stream of water. There was a little brook just outside the door of the stable. It was running slowly.

The racing of her heart blocked out this sound. She took a step back; inhaled deeply, tasting the stale, foul air of the basement; and waited for herself to calm down. Finally, she chose a new spot; the metal was colder than before, but it brought comfort to her burning face.

Again, for the first fifteen minutes, nothing. Where was her brook? Nowhere to be heard. Twenty minutes elapsed. Still nothing. She made an ultimate strain of her hearing.

A scratching noise. Something rubbing against dirt. Something rubbing against metal. Something rubbing against the door. There could be no doubt now. Something was listening for her, too. More scratchings. Movement. Whether it was alive or not, it moved with an unpredictable intent. First to the left, then to the right. It scratched. She could hear its breathing.

A deafening roar shook her skull.

It could not be described as the roar of a wild animal. If it had been animal, the sound was the perfect translation of the single element composing its entire being—malice; this thought scared her more than the sound itself. She tried to scream in response, but no sound found its way from her throat. Immediately, she took to her hooves and bolted in the direction whence she had come. All her muscle memory had left her in regard to the location of objects in the room. A presence filled the space behind her, approaching her, ever-accelerating, swallowing up the ground she had just traversed. She heard the falling over of metal. She slammed a knee against a concrete wall. She raced blindly, confusedly, madly, unthinkingly, putting nothing but faith into her run, using hope alone to guide her to the exit. She dared not look behind her.

Light. The staircase and the corridors above. They seemed impossibly far away. Her breath resounded in her skull. She ran. She felt the entity nipping at her heels. A stumble meant death. She could feel its breath on her neck. The staircase did not seem to be getting closer. Time had lost meaning; the creature was devouring it. It was regurgitating the floor it had consumed and putting it in front of her; the staircase seemed to be farther away with each step. She closed her eyes and put herself into her final sprint.

The tip of her foot missed the first step. She stumbled—but with her other forehoof, she caught herself on the second step, losing no time in her escape. Up the stairs, up toward the light she went, and the more her sight returned to her, the more the entity slunk back. It disappeared when she reached the first floor. She did not stop running until she had made it to her personal chamber and locked the door.

Her Pip-Buck clock read eleven p.m. She collapsed upon the bed. The silence, the sound of the blood in her ears, and the feeling of her pulse in her temples were horrible. She turned on the radio of her Pip-Buck, asking whoever was on the other line to protect her. She heard:

“. . . confusing. Now there is something wrong. Well, fillies and gentlecolts, it’s well past Cucro’s bedtime, and he needs to turn in. He enjoyed talking to you today. Don’t cry, my little ponies! He’ll be here tomorrow, bright and early. But he needs his beauty sleep. Big day tomorrow, so I’m going to—oh hell, almost forgot!” She heard the crumpling of paper. When Cucro spoke next, the words came out like bullets from a machine gun, without the fluff, color, and energy that he had put into every single word that day: “I need to say that I feel my mind tired and my muscles aching after today’s broadcast; and every time my body hurts, every time it screams in pain, I’m glad, because pain tells me that I’m giving. Pain is a primitive feeling, left from the days without language, without shelter, when we lived isolated from one another, when we were at each other’s throats for scraps of food or for dry firewood; pain is the remnant of the time when we hated one another, when it told us that we were losing for ourselves. But whenever my body hurts, whenever I’m drowning in my own sweat, I smile, because I know what that means: it means that my life is fading away, drawing from me and feeding you, my family, Stable 2, and sacrifice—”

Littlepip slammed the off button on her Pip-Buck with such a force that pain shot up through her foreleg. She felt the blood pulsing through the bruise, and she smiled. It was a dull throb, and it felt like a release. Perhaps this is the kind of pleasurable pain that Cucro was talking about, she thought; only, unlike him, I’ve never felt it after work.

The voice, as always, had been carefree—and assuring. She forgot the machine gun speech and thought about the slow, deliberate, cool drawl that had shunted the silence during the entire day past. Littlepip let the voice run through her head as she closed her eyes in contentment, almost with sublimity. When the voice ran out, when it exhausted itself, she was forced to turn it off with the same intent as she had turned it off from her Pip-Buck’s speaker.

She shifted over to her side. Gradually, the silence came back to her. As it began to whine its indescribable tone, she turned to her other side. It grew louder, unbearable, and she put her hooves around the sides of the pillow, pushing the cotton against her ears. But the scream of silence persisted and ate away at her and her chance of sleeping. It was only two hours after she had put on an old recording she had saved on the hard drive of her Pip-Buck of Cucro’s Frequency that she found any sleep.

Chapter IV

A unicorn’s eyes snap open in the darkness.

The first thing she notices is the complete absence of light—an oddity, as such a concept does not exist for her. The regulations of her domicile forbid there to be any chamber that isn’t somewhat lighted. What, then, is the meaning of this? Is the power out? But what about the backup generators? Are those out too? Even then, why haven’t the emergency lights come on?

It is more so than an oddity: it is an impossibility.

She firmly closes her eyes. Then, she opens them as wide as possible. There is no difference between the two states. Both are completely black.

She tries to sit up. Her forehead hits something hard. Instinctively, she brings a forehoof to rub away the pain, only to find that her forehoof, when she tries to lift it, also comes into contact with the same impediment.

In her half-awake state, she tries to make sense of this. Her proprioception is still functional. She knows she’s lying on her back. Her forehooves feel the mattress on either side of her torso, and her hind legs are stretched full. She now notices now that her horn is hitting up against something hard, her bedhead, perhaps. She tries to move her body away from it. She finds that her hind hooves hit something, stopping her. She’s aware that there’s no position in which she’s comfortable.

Now, she’s awake. Like a bird trying to flex its wings for its morning flight, she tries to spread her forehooves laterally. They are stopped prematurely by a hard surface. She tries to raise them upward in the manner of a stretch; they go no further than before.

She still cannot see what is blocking her. Slowly, she runs her hoof over the impediment. It is smooth, soft, cold. It is wood.

It is a coffin. She’s been buried alive.

Instantly, panic strikes. Her limbs thrash out reflexively. The wood does not move. This only serves to increase her frenzy. She gasps, each breath seeming to be less fulfilling than the last. “Help!” she yells. “I’m still alive! I’m down here! Help!” She yells until she is hoarse. She yells until she tastes blood. There is no response from above.

Her vision clouds in proportion as oxygen diminishes. She pounds on the lid as hard as she can. She hits it until her hooves bleed. Over and over again, with more and more fury. It doesn’t yield. Still she hits it, crying, screaming, tears running down her cheeks.

In panic, a creature’s strength is quadrupled. Finally, she hears a fracture. Her relief at this sound gives her more strength. She hits it again. She can feel the wood bending.

A crack, a splinter. The lid has given way. She inhales as deeply as she can, expecting the air of succor.

Instead, she gets nostrils full of dirt.

The loosely-packed dirt runs in torrents, piling over her face. Breaths beget humus. The hole widens under the current. The earth comes down in all its force.

Chapter V

Littlepip awoke covered in sweat, her heart convulsing, her body shivering. In her mind, for a split second, lingered a terrible notion. It disappeared as soon as she tried to grab a hold of it, but it left her in this state of terror.

What was it? Something horrible, was all that could be said. Was it real? No, of course not. Here I am, she thought, in my bed, in Stable 2, where I’ve always been. But how could something not real have put me into such a state?

She didn’t want to think about it.

She glanced at her Pip-Buck. It was 8:59—one more minute before it would vibrate, telling her it was time to get up.

The resulting day could be nothing but bad. A day begun by a nightmare slowly starts to resemble it.

Even with her sweat washed off, her clothes put on, her screwdriver at the ready, at her working space, by her usual closet, the illegible orthographic projections in front of her, she couldn’t concentrate. Her mind kept coming back to the events of the night before. It couldn’t have been real. It had been so out of the ordinary. What was the ordinary? Wake up, eat breakfast if she could stomach it (it goes without saying that, on that particular morning, breakfast was skipped), go to work, eat lunch, go to work, eat dinner, go to work, go home, read a book if time permitted, go to sleep, repeat. Each day blurred together, but at least she knew that any event that fell within one of those time-slots was real. Her vague impressions of the night before had not. Were they real? Her first reaction was to say no; they could not be recalled, so they must not be real. But what could be recalled—and this frightened her the most—was that though she could not recount the events of the day before, she remembered that there had been a time when she did know that they were happening. Though she didn’t remember what she saw, she remembered how it made her feel, and this was unbearable.

Littlepip turned the radio on her Pip-Buck to Cucro’s Frequency; it was silent; she thought nothing more of that. She kept looking at the clock on her Pip-Buck. The minutes seemed to ooze by in no hurry.

She desperately needed to hear a voice, to break up her mess of thoughts. But it was only nine-thirty a.m. She usually didn’t eat lunch until one p.m. It was too early to go. She hadn’t done any work yet.

She began to fiddle with a screw on the generation II model, looking at the clock every thirty seconds. If the Pip-Buck ever dropped from sight, she would find herself staring at the ground; and the gray being all she would be able to see, her sight would cease to provide a distraction and her thoughts would return to the events of last night. Then she would snap out of it, look back at her clock, start to turn the screw, catch sight of the ground again, and repeat the process.

Whatever problem this is, she thought, as she lowered herself onto her abdomen, it has now been promoted to a prone problem. It has to do with the additional trauma of the machinery due to . . . no, that wasn’t right. It was the exact same Pip-Buck from earlier. Nothing had changed. But she knew it was a prone problem. Something had complicated the entire fixing process. What that was was another question. And she knew it was a question that wouldn’t allow itself to be temporarily shelved. Perhaps I can work while thinking, she thought. It’s simple: just put this screwdriver into here, think back to the night before, keep turning until the screw falls out, try to remember the feeling of despondency, the chill, the terror, try not to envelope yourself in your own thoughts lest you—ugh, where was I! When’s lunchtime?

This continued until ten a.m. At ten a.m., Littlepip could bear it no longer. She had to take an early lunch. She looked at what she had done in the span of an hour: she had removed one screw. With a dejected sigh, she lit her horn, rolled up the projections, levitated the Pip-Buck, and brought both with her in the direction of the cafeteria. The hope was that the sounds of the ones she would encounter would provide a good distraction, and she would be able to get some work done.

The cafeteria, as has been said, was two floors above her. The stairs were metallic, full of dozens of regularly spaced, small, identical holes of perfect circles. The stairs were thin and gave a creaking sound as she trudged up them. There were no posters of Velvet Remedy on this particular route, but on the landing of the first floor was a copy of its antithesis, another gray-green poster with an encouraging message. This one said:

Solidarity, Fraternity, Kinship, and Sacrifice
Our great four ensuring our survival!

There were four instances of the Stable Colt on this one: the first was wearing worker’s coveralls; the second was wearing the leather jacket of an unnamed university; the third was wearing a cassock; and the fourth was wearing nothing but a few rags, which dangled loosely from his body. They were all holding hooves.

Littlepip glanced at the poster; nodded to it in the same manner with which one nods to another whom one knows not well enough to speak to properly, but is acquainted enough with one to make a complete disregard uncomfortable to both; and continued to the second floor.

A large, elliptical glass window next to the door allowed a view into the cafeteria. Littlepip could see three bodies around one of the circular tables at the far end of the room, opposite the door in front of which she was standing. Their postures displayed animation, and it was a welcoming sight. With a sigh of relief, she pushed the door open and entered. “Hey, Littlepip!” she heard upon entry.

The three at the table turned to look at her, two females, one male. The male was a faintly yellow unicorn with a brown mane; his name was Silver Dollar, and the toque blanche which he wore with no shame immediately told all that he was the cook on a break. The skin of the earth pony to the left of him could barely be distinguished, for its blue was almost the same color as the blue of her stable uniform; the only evidence of her presence was a mane rendered a nearly invisible white by the fluorescent lighting—her name was Terra Firma. The one sitting across from her, who, unlike her friend, seemed to struggle against the monochrome of the colors of her uniform, was a pink earth pony with a pink of an even darker hue for a mane; she spoke with an enthusiasm that had seemed to wane ever so slightly through the years, and her name was Clover. It was she who had projected this heard salutation, and she was waving eagerly with a forehoof at Littlepip.

These three creatures were ugly. One looked upon them, and one’s initial instinct was instantly to avert one’s eyes. But if one were to spend enough time around them, if one were to see them every day, in the context of the corridors of the stable, its cafeteria, its auditorium, its sleeping quarters, if one were to see them with their heads bowed as they were now, conversing in low voices as if their conversation were something of which to be ashamed, one would realize that which one realizes when one gazes upon a leech, a giant squid, a cockroach, or a parasite of any order: that such wretchedness is not out of malice, not out of contempt, anything but a rebellion against the beautiful work of nature with the intent to offend, but rather that the wretchedness is a reflection of the world around it; for every creature adapts, in one way or another, for survival, changes its form, emulates its surroundings, effects the appearance that would make it the most inconsequential creature in the ecosystem. Natural elegance and radiancy can only be effected by the sun, indispensable for beauty as it is indispensable for photosynthesis. When the sun dies, the flowers close, the birds cease their chirping, and the moths and worms come out, for they are the only creatures suited to such absences of light. It is not their fault that they are repulsive; they are grotesqueness created for a world of grotesqueness. Beautiful creatures can’t be seen in such a dimness; in the stable, their light fades away.

“Hey, guys,” Littlepip said to these three night crawlers, and turned toward the serving counter. Thus ended the extent of that conversation.

The cafeteria had a seating capacity of fifty. The room was small, and no more than thirty could fit there comfortably. A chest high divider, along which ran three booths, separated some of the seats from the serving counter. Stools were arranged in front of this aforementioned counter in the style of a bar. Here and there were those raised circular tables; circular swivel chairs rose up to meet them. On the south wall of the room were a row of square windows, a table suited for four in front of each one. On the north wall, there was the counter, behind which was a spherical robot with a myriad of spindly arms making a small humming noise and awaiting an instruction.

Littlepip approached this robot. “Hello, Randall,” she said.

“Identifying resident—identified resident two . . . four . . . six . . . oh . . . one. Good morning—Littlepip,” the robot growled.

“Is there still breakfast?” she asked.

“Searching—breakfast found. Store: two eggs, three potatoes. Should they be prepared?”

It was a surprise. There was never any breakfast. But as soon as this revelation was put forth, Littlepip realized she was not hungry. Why had she asked? Perhaps she had just wanted to test her luck.

“No thanks.”

“Orders?”

Littlepip sighed. “Just water.”

In a flash, the robot presented a glass and jettisoned from a spout on its body a stream of water so rapid and so thin that one could have sworn that the glass had already been filled before this performance.

After taking the water, she juggled it along with the broken Pip-Buck and the orthographic projections, walked around the side of the divider, and took a seat not at the empty one around the circular table at which the three ponies were sitting but at the booth athwart the divider—on the side that positioned her back to the group. She laid the drawings on the table, the Pip-Buck on top, took a sip of her water, and began to pretend to work. In reality, she was hoping that the three behind her would talk about something.

“Well, not nothing,” responded Silver Dollar. “Went about my room. Didn’t really feel like hanging out. You know, just boring stuff.”

“Nothing?” said Terra Firma.

“Well, not nothing. I entertain myself.”

“Yes,” scoffed Clover, “we all know how you entertain yourself, Silver.”

“You’re hilarious, Clover,” responded Silver Dollar, with a voice flat and sarcastic.

“Well, then, what did you do?” pressed Terra Firma.

“Why are you so interested?”

“You just seemed to have left rather abruptly.”

“It was over. What else was there to do? It was a weeknight after all.”

“You seemed pretty enthusiastic to get home for a weeknight,” said Clover.

There was a pause. Then, Silver Dollar said: “Alright, I was—no, you’ll think it’s stupid.”

“What?”

“No, never mind. I just read and went to bed.”

“What were you reading?”

“Well . . .” Silver Dollar stammered, “well, I found, in my little brother’s toy chest, a book of ghost stories, alright? I stayed up reading that.”

“Well?”

“‘Well’ what?”

“Did you read any good ones?”

Silver Dollar shook his head. “No. I mean, once or twice I did feel the onset of a good shiver . . . but nothing really delivered.”

“Why not? Was it badly written?” said Terra Firma.

“No, it wasn’t that; it’s just that—they were implausible!”

Clover rolled her eyes. “A horror story implausible? What a surprise.”

“No,” said Silver Dollar firmly, pointing his hoof at Clover matter-of-factly, “what I was reading was a ghost story.”

“‘Ghost’? ‘Horror’? What’s the difference?”

Silver Dollar groaned with exasperation. “A ghost story presents impossible creatures in an impossible premise. A horror story—well, more accurately, a terror story—is not only plausible, but true.”

“Example?”

Silver Dollar licked his lips. “Well, there was once—promise you won’t tell anypony, right?”

Clover looked at Terra Firma and smirked. Turning back to Silver Dollar, she said: “Alright, Mr. True-Story. What happened?”

“Well, when I was really little . . . you know how we were idiots as kids, right?”

Terra Firma gasped, holding back laughter. “Clover, remember that one time when you stole Professor Rein’s hockey stick?”

“Ha! He canceled classes for a month!”

“What is up with that guy and his hockey stick? Is a laser pointer not good enough for him?”

“Hey, hey,” said Silver Dollar, “weren’t we talking about me?”

“Oh, yes, sorry, continue,” said Terra Firma.

Silver Dollar paused and stared at her intently, as if waiting to see if she would deviate from the topic of conversation again. “Do you remember when you dared me to spend a night in the overmare’s office?” he said, at length.

“Yes,” said Clover, “and I remember that you lied about it.”

“No,” said Silver Dollar, stressing his voice, “I did. You just didn’t want to believe me.”

“Wait . . .” interjected Terra Firma, “did you actually do that?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to know how I know you’re lying?” said Clover.

“How?” said Silver Dollar, not with the raised intonation of a question but with the flat voice of somepony waiting for a response to a rhetorical question.

“Because had you actually gone into the overmare’s office, you would’ve persisted in your assertion regardless of how much we tried to deny it.”

Silver Dollar stared at her, slack-jawed. Finally, he threw his forehooves in the air, exclaiming: “I can’t win with you! If I drop it, it’s because I didn’t actually do it! If I assert myself, it’s because I’m getting defensive, trying to convince myself that I did it!”

“All right, all right, calm down!” said Clover, holding out her hooves. “Continue, then.”

“Thank you,” said Silver Dollar, with a sarcastic bow of the head. “So, like I was saying, in my night in the office, as soon as I saw the light go off, that was when the hard part started. I couldn’t sleep in the closet; they would find me and that would be the end of me! I had to wait. But wait for ten hours? I’d go mad! So, I did the only thing a little colt would do: I started snooping. In the closet: assorted uniforms, blouses, shirts, socks, underwear, nothing special.”

“I shiver to think what the overmare’s underwear is like,” said Clover, with a laugh.

Silver Dollar affected a shudder. “Terrible, terrible things . . .” He pretended to be on the verge of crying. After recovering himself, he added: “Anyway, in the desk: pencils, erasers, pens, a notepad with some illegible writing, a receipt for something—also nothing special. There was nothing else to be seen but the footlocker. And, surprise, surprise, it was locked. Fortunately, I had in my pocket some bobby pins.

“So,” Silver Dollar continued, “I worked on the footlocker. It took me an hour and a half, but I got it. I got into the the overmare’s footlocker: on the surface, there were clothes with some valuable gems, some wallets with some prewar money, but nothing really intriguing to a young colt. I dug, and I dug, taking care not to throw anything on the floor, and I came across a small notebook. It was brown, bound with leather. I opened to the first page, and I saw some writing. Naturally, I went to the window and held it up against the light that came in; for I was too scared to use my Pip-Buck’s lamplight, lest I be discovered. And, on the first line, I read: ‘My first day. Ready to start. Everypony seems pleased.’ ‘What could it mean?’ I asked myself. I flipped through the first few pages. ‘Got new manecut. Looks professional,’ was the next line. I flipped through, and the notes became more and more trivial and pointless. It took me two hours, while turning it over in my hooves, to figure out who had written it and what it meant. But, when I did, I dropped the book to the ground, and I turned paler than the light.”

“Why?” said Terra Firma. “What was it?”

Silver Dollar laughed. “Don’t you see? It was the overmare’s diary from the day she was inaugurated! And, you know, she really was just like us!”

“Why do I find that hard to believe?” said Clover.

“No, really!” said Silver Dollar. “She was young, eager, but nervous, and she was assigned the ultimate job in the stable. Her notes were very indicative of how I would feel if I were the newly-made overmare. The first few pages were trivialities, her worrying about everything, making sure the stable was running okay. Boring stuff. I skimmed most of it.

“It wasn’t until about the last eighth of the book that the penmanship changed. It looked less rushed, more deliberate, but still as anxious as ever. There was one line in this new writing on this page and one only. It said: ‘First dead. Had to say it was a heart attack. This is what they told me.’”

For a while, all were silent. Littlepip perked up her ears.

“What?” said Terra Firma. “Who . . . who died of a heart attack?”

“Who hasn’t died of a heart attack?” said Clover, a marked amount of apprehension in her voice. “What did the rest say, Silver?”

Silver Dollar shook his head. “I don’t remember exactly all the words. The rest were mad scribblings. I remember reading something about ‘getting closer,’ and ‘everywhere.’ I don’t know; it’s all a haze. But I remember the last page as clear as ever. It changed how I look at the stable. If I close my eyes and think, I can still see it.”

“What did it say?” said Terra Firma.

Silver Dollar put a hoof to his mouth. The sound of his swallowing was audible. “It said . . . it said: ‘I’ve shut the Door. It’s behind it. It can’t be let in. Nothing can be let in. Nothing can get out. It chases you through the hallways. It nips at your heels. You run, but it surrounds you. We must hold it back.’”

Clover and Terra Firma started at a rustling sound. They turned and they saw Littlepip. She had dropped the projections, the Pip-Buck, and she had her forehooves resting on the backrest of the booth. She was staring at them, wide-eyed, her teeth chattering. “What . . . what did you say?”

Silver Dollar repeated, without hesitation: “I’ve shut the Door. It’s behind it. It can’t be let in. Nothing can be let in. Nothing can get out. It chases you through the hallways. It nips at your heels. You run, but it surrounds you. We must hold it back.”

Littlepip opened and shut her mouth a few times, trying to form the words, an impossible number of thoughts passing through her head. She finally manage to squeak: “What . . . what is . . . ‘the Door’?”

“Good question,” said Silver Dollar. “At the time, I didn’t know. It seemed really vague. But I noticed something singular: the word ‘Door’ had its d capitalized. What else could it be? The door to Stable 2.”

“No, wait,” said Clover. “More importantly, what does that mean: ‘I’ve shut the door’? Doesn’t that imply that the door had been open originally?”

Silver Dollar simply shrugged.

“Impossible! The door has always been closed,” said Terra Firma.

“Who knows?” said Silver Dollar. “Maybe it was open before we were born. Maybe things got in. Maybe they needed to keep those things out.”

Another silence followed. Littlepip was frozen. The sound of the plastic on the cushion shifting as Terra Firma adjusted herself could vaguely be heard.

“What . . . what did you do?” said Littlepip.

Silver Dollar slouched. His eyes darted around, as if to make sure no others were watching, and he said: “I’m sorry, Clover; I lied. I didn’t spend the night in the overmare’s office. After I read those lines, I couldn’t. I snuck out and . . . what else would a little colt do? I went to the door.

“It was inordinately dark, but it was nothing my Pip-Buck’s lamp couldn’t handle. I looked at the door.”

“What did it look like?” said Terra Firma, with a gasp.

“It looked like a door,” said Silver Dollar, glaring at her. “It looked exactly like a door.”

“You know what I mean!”

“Not much to say, honestly. It was round—it looks just like it does in the pictures. Go see it for yourself.”

Terra Firma shuddered. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not supposed to go there!”

Clover looked at Terra Firma. “Honestly, Terra, what would they do to you? It’s not like it’s blocked off or anything. Perhaps there’s just broken glass.”

“True,” said Silver Dollar. “I understood this even when I was little. And I scratched my head in confusion. It was just a door. Nothing special, no mystery, just a door. Could that be it? Was something behind it? I didn’t know, but I got the feeling I wasn’t going to be visiting it again for a long time, and I wanted to make the most of it. I put my ear against the door, and I listened.”

“What do you hear?” cried Littlepip, loudly, unrestrainedly, her voice shaky.

“I heard . . .” murmured Silver Dollar, “I heard . . .”

“Was it running water?” gasped Littlepip.

“I heard . . .” he continued. Then, his eyes went wide, and he stared at Littlepip. “Yes, yes! It was running water! How did you know that?”

“What did you hear next? Was it a scratching noise?” Littlepip was now standing with her hind legs on the cushion.

“Not a scratching noise, but more like something on dirt, as if something were moving around,” said Silver Dollar. “I waited. For half an hour, I stood like that. And then, after another half hour . . . do you know what I heard?”

“What!” exclaimed Littlepip, almost a cry, her heart racing.

Silver Dollar closed his mouth, as if the thought were complete. He leaned closer to Terra Firma and Clover. They leaned back. And he whispered: “Terror.”

They stared at him, wide-eyed and silent, for thirty seconds. An involuntary whimper came from Terra Firma’s throat.

Then, Silver Dollar burst out laughing.

Clover exhaled deeply. Terra Firma put a forehoof over her own chest.

Littlepip jumped out of the booth and ran over to Silver Dollar. “What! What do you mean?” she shrieked.

Silver Dollar could barely speak, laughing too hard as he was. “I mean . . .” he gasped, wiping away tears, “that that’s terror. That’s proper terror. Not one of your stupid foalhood ghost stories.”

Littlepip took a step back, her mouth open in disbelief. “Wait a minute,” she said. “So, did you just make that up?”

Silver Dollar had calmed down. He took a sip of his cola. Raising both his forehooves and shrugging in a gesture of perplexity, he said: “Maybe I did; maybe I didn’t. Maybe it’s entirely real; maybe it’s entirely fabricated. Maybe it’s just my faulty memory, since it took place so long ago. Maybe I just wanted to tease you. Maybe it’s a bit of both. Who knows how much I made up? Who knows what’s real?”

Littlepip clenched her teeth together in anger. “You made that up!”

Silver Dollar said nothing. He only smiled.

In a huff, Littlepip turned back to her booth and sat down with a loud thud, turning her eyes back to the projections, mad, distressed—but, above all, overly perplexed. There was no chance of her concentrating now. The phantoms in her head danced round and round with more vigor than ever.

“Well, Silver,” Clover said, “while you were writing ghost stories—oh, pardon me, terror—you wouldn’t believe what happened at the after-party. Mire drank so much that she—”

“Wait,” interrupted Littlepip, dropping all pretenses of work, “what after-party?”

Clover raised her brow. “The after-party after Velvet Remedy’s performance.”

Littlepip scratched her head. If there had been a performance, she would’ve known about it. “What performance?”

“The one last night?” said Clover, sharply raising her tone on the last word.

Littlepip’s eyes went wide. “Oh!” she exclaimed. She then collapsed, resting her chin on the divider, her ears drooping with dejection. “I missed it!” Then, raising her head, reanimating her posture, she yelled: “Tell me about it! What happened? What did she sing? Did she make any jokes?”

“It was pretty awesome,” said Clover. “She was two minutes late, and she spent five apologizing profusely. It was incredibly endearing; and, well, the rest of it was pretty loud, and I just remember it being awesome . . .”

“You’re forgetting the most important part,” said Silver Dollar.

“What part?” said Clover.

“Don’t you remember?” he continued. “Before her encore, she stood up and said: ‘This is dedicated to my biggest, best fan, Littlepip. Wherever you are, I hope you like this!’ And then she sang a completely new song.”

Littlepip’s tongue fell out of her mouth. “She . . . she said that?”

“Yup,” said Clover, pursing her lips. Silver Dollar leaned back in his chair and nodded thoughtfully.

Terra Firma bowed her eyes, avoiding Littlepip’s stare. Slowly, her mouth began to curl into a smile; she tried her best, but she could not prevent a dainty chuckle from escaping. After it was heard, the rest slouched and giggled as well. “Nah,” said Terra Firma, “they’re just messin’ with you.”

“Oh,” breathed Littlepip, slouching her head back down.

“But it was pretty awesome,” said Silver Dollar.

“Why didn’t you go?” said Clover.

And Littlepip’s thoughts were drawn back to that confused amalgam in her brain. What was she doing yesterday that she had missed it? She remembered pacing in her room, thinking of something, but she could not definitively say what it was. But, evidently, it had been strong enough to have kept her from missing the show. “I . . .” she stammered.

She was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. All four of them turned around to see the newcomer. An earth pony with large bags under his eyes had just entered, yawning. His fur was that color of white that light blue cloth becomes after going through the washing machine one too many times. The bones in his cheeks could be seen when the skin on his face stretched in the yawn. If it weren’t for his mane, which was a vivid golden bronze, he would have dissolved out of sight with the gray of the walls of the stable. After yawning, he rubbed one of his eyes with a forehoof. He, like the three others, was also ugly, but his ugliness was worse than that which has been mentioned: In his eyes, one could see the traces of something that beamed, only to be stifled by a retinal glossiness that stamped it. The hairs of his mane seemed to be cut from the same variety of hair that rose with a will of its own, like that of the ponies seen in the prewar pictures, but still it fell, sunken, downcast, depressed even, across his face, as if in a gesture of surrender. His ribs could be seen through the folds of his metal blue Stable 2 uniform, as if his body rejected all the food that the stable put into it, as if it preferred to emaciate rather than to accept that which it considered poison. An unprepossessing countenance, to be sure; but on this figure, with that slouched neck which carried that mane of a color that seemed too bright to be relegated on the ground with him, with that slouched spine which seemed to groan bearing the body of a tired engineer or inventor, with the sunken skin of his face which bore wrinkles like scars of a fight long waged, such an appearance was more horrible than if it had been abject, more wretched than if it had been a complete and pure repugnance like the appearance of the three who stared at him upon entry. His ugliness was that which had no reason for existence. His wretchedness was that which is created by destroying valor and intrepidity. Perhaps in another epoch, he would have been handsome; perhaps he would have taken care of his appearance, eaten better, gotten more sleep, and braided his mane instead of allowing it to fall pell-mell across his face. Perhaps under different circumstances, he would have recognized these aforementioned unbecoming features as nothing more than that thin film of dust and dirt that settles onto monuments to the august and the right shortly after their facades have been desecrated by aggression, brutality, and injustice; and in those different circumstances, he would have torn that film away, deservedly seized what was underneath it, restored the monument’s image, and lived his life fully to the connotations such an appearance necessarily implied. But here, now, he looked like a phantom doomed to forever drift through the barren hallways of Stable 2 in search of something that could never exist where he was looking for it. His name was Copper Chromite.

“Hey, Copper,” said Clover, waving her hoof at the horribly weathered and vandalized marble statue.

Silver Dollar eyed him. “Did you just get up?”

“Don’t judge me,” grumbled Copper Chromite. He stumbled his way over to the counter. “Randall,” he said, addressing the robot, “give me a beer.”

“Identifying resident—identified resident nine . . . four . . . three . . . oh. Good morning . . . Copper Chromite.”

“Give me a beer,” Copper Chromite repeated.

“Attempting to dispense—beer. Warning. Records show that this is resident—Copper Chromite’s—first meal of the day. Are you sure you want to dispense—beer?”

A laugh was heard all around, except from Littlepip, who was pretending to look at her drawings.

Copper Chromite stood up straight and looked at the robot with an air of disgust. “Hey, go to hell, Randall. You know, I still haven’t forgiven you for burning my toast last month.”

The robot beeped. “Searching records . . . status of resident—Copper Chromite’s—toast, one month previously . . . burned. Apologies. Attempting to refund credits . . . error. Credits have already been refunded.”

“Oh, you smarmy bastard,” hissed Copper Chromite, while the laughs redoubled. Even Littlepip could not help forcing a smile.

“Wow,” said Clover, looking at him, irony in her voice, “you can’t even hold your own against Randall.”

The beer served, frothy, in a tall stein glass, Copper Chromite bent his head down to the table and made a horrible slurping noise, trying to get it all before it dripped to the counter. When the foam had subsided, he turned his mouth and licked the side of the stein down which stray rivulets had almost escaped. At the end, he gave a start and a little cough, as if he had inhaled some. “Please drink responsibly,” chirped the robot.

Copper Chromite looked up from his glass to shoot another glare at the robot. Taking the beer in his hoof, shaking his head, he turned to leave. Then he stopped abruptly. His eyes lit up like a stallion who has just gotten a good idea. He turned to the robot and said: “Randall: man my vagina.”

The robot beeped, then said: “Error. No manual entry for—my vagina.”

Copper Chromite gave a breathy, non-vocal laugh through his nose, one that did not express a recognition of absurdity, but more like the laugh one makes when one has bested another. The others at the table stared at him. It took them ten seconds to start laughing. Twenty seconds later, they were still laughing. Copper Chromite couldn’t help but smile.

“Copper,” said Silver Dollar, trying to hold back his chuckles, “we’re not laughing at the joke. We’re laughing at how stupid you are.”

“You need to get laid,” said Clover.

“Don’t we all,” said Copper Chromite. He took a long draft on his beer, summated with a breathy exhale of contentment.

“Hey, Copper,” said Terra Firma. “What did you think of Velvet Remedy last night?”

Copper Chromite took the beer in his other hoof. He looked at Terra Firma and shrugged. “Didn’t go,” he responded.

“What?” exclaimed Clover. “You, out of all ponies, not going?”

Copper Chromite said nothing. He raised the glass to his mouth, closed his eyes; and took another long, deep draft from the glass. When he was done, he then walked straight up to Clover and put his face two inches from hers. She leaned back and made an expression of disgust.

“What are you doing?” said Clover.

“You’re sitting where I was planning to sit,” said Copper Chromite, his voice grave.

Clover sat back up, put a forehoof on his face, and pushed him firmly. Copper Chromite stumbled back, and a stream of orange-brown liquid erupted from the glass he was cradling and landed on the floor. “Piss off, Copper,” she said.

Copper Chromite smiled. “I am, but ‘pissed off’ is better than ‘pissed on,’ the latter you’re going to be once I’m done my beer if you don’t give me my seat.”

This elicited another laugh from Clover, and she turned back to her table. He tried to sit down next to her, but Clover pushed him again. “No,” she said, “we’re saving that seat for Mire.”

“What?” said Copper Chromite. Setting his mug down on the divider, he put his hoof on his forehead, as if his brain were reeling with confusion. “Wait, wait: so, Mire, who could potentially be here, takes precedence over me—who is actually here?”

“Pretty much.”

Copper Chromite curled his forehoof around the mug again and took a sip. “Where the hell am I supposed to sit, then?” he murmured, having not swallowed yet.

“You could sit there, there, or there,” said Silver Dollar, gesturing to the dozens of empty tables.

“You guys suck,” said Copper Chromite. “I’m going to sit with ’Pip. She’ll appreciate me.”

Hearing her name, Littlepip’s ears perked up. She brought her eyes from the drawings to see Copper Chromite walking around her booth and stopping right in front of her. He stood looking at her, his eyes downcast, sunken, depressed, pleading. His cheeks trembled with an exhaustion brought on by cynicism, as he gestured to the bench across from her. “This seat is not taken, I presume?” he said, his voice angry and tired.

“Huh?” was all she could say.

“You don’t have any potential visitors who are so much more important than—oh, I don’t know—a pony who is actually here?”

“Oh.” And when her brain finally collected itself in a manner confused and dazed, but in a manner that still had some level of operative ability, she added: “No, no.” She gestured to the seat with a forehoof. “Go ahead.”

“Good. I need to be able to keep an eye on those bastards over there,” he said, gesturing toward the group of three. Copper Chromite did not sit, but rather fell onto the chair with a satisfying sigh, expertly keeping his beverage from spilling despite its sloshing. His position was such that, though Littlepip had her back turned to the group, Copper Chromite, sitting across from her, could look at both her and them. When he sat back up, he said: “So, you haven’t been talking about me have you?”

“Huh?” said Littlepip, once again, using her pretense of work to give her time to digest her compunctions. “Are you talking to me?”

“Yes,” said Copper Chromite. “What were you talking about before I got here?”

“Silver Dollar was just telling us a ghost story,” said Clover.

“Dammit, terror story!” retorted Silver Dollar.

Copper Chromite bared his teeth and said, in a voice that was so uncharacteristically angry and damning for him that it made those who heard it start with fright: “Silver, if there is such a thing as a scientific story—I mean, one that is outlined not by a writer but by a scientist trying to get the reaction he wants out of his lab mice for the purpose of an experiment—that would be the kind of stories you tell.”

Silver Dollar raised his brow with incredulity. “Excuse me?” he said.

“You weren’t listening to him, were you?” said Copper Chromite.

“What’s wrong with my story?”

“What’s wrong with your story?” exclaimed Copper Chromite, almost indignant that such a question would be asked. For the first time since he had entered the room, he stopped slouching. “If it’s like any of the other stories you tell, the better question is: what isn’t wrong with your story? I know your stories. They’re all the same. ‘What was it?’ ‘What happened?’ ‘Did they ever catch the killer?’ Who cares! Your horror stories are fabrications; fine, enough, I suppose, but you attempt to give them an air of plausibility by playing to the unknown. And the part of the brain that contemplates the unknown is not rational. If I were to give you a box and if I were to say: ‘Something unknown is in this box,’ in an instant, your speculations would go to the absurd. Tell me, Silver, have you ever given an unequivocal response to the ending of one of your stories? Have you ever actually said: ‘I made up this story’ or ‘This is what happened in the end’?” And, turning his attention to Littlepip, he said: “Let me guess: He told you some story about something mysterious, something inexplicable, something that may have something to do with the supernatural? Did he say: ‘Maybe it’s real; maybe it’s fake’?”

Littlepip looked up from the drawings. “Why, yes,” she said, surprised.

“Were you scared?”

This elicited no response. All she did was stare off into space.

“Well, were you?”

“Yes, a little bit.”

“You know why?” Copper Chromite went on. “It’s a very simple parlor trick. It’s like seeing a half-shape in the darkness. When the mind has an incomplete picture, it has to fill in the rest itself. All Silver Dollar has to do is to put you in a dark room and say: ‘Enter.’ When you’re in a dark room, you feel things that aren’t there, you speculate, you conjecture. You’re scaring yourself. There’s nothing there. Look at it rationally. Examine the darkness. Turn on the light. What’s there? Nothing. You may be afraid to look behind you, but that doesn’t mean something’s there.”

Littlepip looked straight into his eyes. The candor of the words Copper Chromite spoke and the conviction with which he said them seemed to ground her. She felt her thoughts returning to reality. She saw the problem of the projections in front of her clearly; she saw the water in her glass which stood with a perfect imperturbability; and, in front of her, she saw an off-white earth pony with a golden bronze mane and in whom, despite his sunken eyes, his emaciated face, his spectral countenance, she saw something that thought, that was grounded, something that a thousand fallacies and scare tactics would never be able to tear from its foundation. “There’s nothing there?” she said, like a frightened child. “Even if I’m sure something’s there?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You are the best when it comes to scaring you. Silver Dollar doesn’t know what scares you, but you do. He’s using your own subconscious for his own purposes: to elicit the reaction and the praise he wants. And, I suppose I can understand the appeal in such a method of scaring; but, quite frankly, it offends me. You, like all of us, know what’s outside the stable. What’s outside? Nothing. It’s all gone. Kaboom. Anything that may have jumped in the night is gone, vaporized. The ghost in that old rickety country cabin has been incinerated. But because you, Silver Dollar, because you’ve never seen the outside, because you know that nothing is on the outside, because you know that others know there’s nothing on the outside, you know just what to say. You know how to make them speculate.”

“And this offends you?” scoffed Silver Dollar.

“Absolutely. You want scary? Try seeing the pictures of the burned corpses when the first bombs fell. Try watching the old videos of Princess Celestia trying to reassure a nation on the verge of death. See how she tries to hide her fear, but notice how her jaw trembles as she stands behind the podium. You want terror? It’s in abject despondency. It’s in the feeling of being completely helpless. The ones outside were helpless. They tried to scream, but nothing stopped the fall of the bombs. Why am I offended? Because you manufacture ersatz helplessness when such helplessness can be seen by your auditors if you were to simply reference the world. And your ersatz helplessness makes light of the actual helplessness.”

“What is actual helplessness?” said Littlepip.

Copper Chromite rocked the base of his mug in a small circle on the table. “For a while, I never knew. But I always knew that the stories that this bastard told”—he gestured to Silver Dollar—“were cheap, that they were nothing more than confidence tricks, but I never knew what actual despondency was. My grandfather used to tell me all the time, and I would always ignore him or fall asleep before he finished the story. It wasn’t until he passed away, it wasn’t until I was only left alone with his words, my memories which are the only things that I have of him, that I thought about them. And it wasn’t until I was old enough to understand them that they terrified me; when I did finally understand them, for several nights, I lay in bed, my eyes wide open, my brain in contemplation of the horrible.” He looked into his glass. “Real horror, true horror, is exactly what the word means. One who says ‘I like horror stories’ doesn’t know what the word horror means. That statement is a contradiction by definition.”

The loud, ever-present humming of an inexplicable origin that seemed to be audible from anywhere in the stable ceased abruptly, and the five of them were only then made aware of loud it had been. A heavy silence followed. At last, cutting the thick tension with a knife, Silver Dollar, with a sad chuckle, with a hesitant voice that changed intensity intermittently in the sentence, trying as he was to find the new comfortable speaking volume now that the background noise was gone, said: “You know, I’ll always remember your grandfather as that old stallion who dressed up as a pink bunny on Nightmare Night, invited us all into his quarters, set a bowl of candy on a chair in the middle of the room, waited until we all swarmed over it before he excused himself, took off the bunny costume, turned off the lights, donned a hockey mask, and came at us with a chainsaw.”

The roar of laughter that ensued seemed to take a weight off all their shoulders. “The blade was foam!” said Copper Chromite, not able to hide his grin.

“Copper,” said Clover, “no matter how you put it, you can’t change the fact that it was a chainsaw and that your grandfather was insane.”

“Yes, yes,” said Copper Chromite with a bit of a mournful air, which seemed to dull the laughter in the air with its sorrow. “Grandpa . . . grandpa was quite the guy.”

The weight came crashing back down. Laughter is a like a white muscle, a reservoir of energy in the midst of even the most overwhelming despairs, fit for a quick, much-needed burst, but tiring easily and yielding quickly to the original fatigue. Littlepip realized this before the rest. “How long has it been since your grandfather died?” she said.

“It’s been about twelve years now.”

“Oh my . . .” gasped Terra Firma, “has it really been that long?”

“Yeah,” said Copper Chromite, with a pensive air. “You know, he could be a jerk at times; but he was still my grandfather, and I loved him. Plus, he had some bedtime stories that still haunt me to this day—in a good way—made me stronger as an individual, opened up my eyes to the world, and those stories are what I remember of him.”

“What kind of stories?” said Littlepip.

And, with a completely straight face, with absolutely no hints of irony, Copper Chromite said: “He would tell me about his time in the Royal Equestrian Navy, when he fought in the war.”

“What!” exclaimed Littlepip. “Your grandfather was an outsider! I thought we all came from the stable!”

“Yeah, ’Pip, don’t you know?” said Silver Dollar, trying his best to hold back a snicker. “Old stallion Chromite was a war vet.”

“Don’t you remember?” said Clover. “Around the time when he starting seeing Doctor Shrink on a near-daily basis, didn’t he hold ‘Story-time with Ensign Chromite’ for all the little colts and fillies? Doctor Shrink said that it really helps the cognitive functions or whatever to spend time with children, so that’s how he helped himself.” And she added, under her breath, to Silver Dollar: “When he wasn’t too strung out on anti-whack pills to walk properly.”

“I remember Ensign Chromite and the Three Lovely Mares,” said Silver Dollar, to all. “That one was always my favorite.”

“Oh, I remember that one!” ejaculated Terra Firma. Then, a cry died as quickly as it had started from the bottom of her throat. “Oh my! I just realized now how inappropriate that story was for children.”

Silver Dollar nodded with an affected air. “No question he was a sailor in Her Majesty’s fleet.”

“What!” cried Littlepip again, her head precessing with the induction of these new, impossible thoughts. “Your grandfather was from the outside?”

“Yes,” said Copper Chromite, with the same grave tone. “Though the stories that he told you were exaggerated, embellished for the sake of entertainment.”

Clover laughed.

Silver Dollar let out an exaggerated shriek. “Those stories? Fake? No!” he said, his forehooves on both his cheeks, his mouth too widely open. “Impossible!”

“They were,” said Copper Chromite, apparently not understanding Silver Dollar’s meaning. “When he told you guys stories, he wasn’t exactly . . . stable, to put it lightly. He didn’t tell you the actual stories. They would’ve stressed him too much, and Doctor Shrink had told him to avoid stress.”

“Was he ever stable?” whispered Silver Dollar to Clover.

“So what did he make up?” said Littlepip, the walls of the cafeteria dissolving away into irrelevancies, the jeers of the three behind her becoming mute, such that she saw only the bluish white of Copper Chromite’s skin and the golden bronze of his mane. Her ears were perked up. “What was true?”

“Well, for starters,” began Copper Chromite, “he wasn’t an ensign. He was a commander.”

“Commander Chromite!” blurted Clover, nearly falling off her chair.

“And he didn’t serve on a destroyer either.”

“What?” said Terra Firma, finally deciding to join in on the action, seeing how much fun her friends were having. “The HMS Killbastard was a fabrication! Who would’ve believed it?”

“So what was he commander of?” whispered Littlepip, almost inaudibly.

“The HMS Canterlot.”

“Did it prowl for mares on the seven seas?” asked Silver Dollar, trying as hard as he could to affect the tone one makes when one asks an honest question.

“What? No!” said Copper Chromite, slightly incensed with this inexplicable tone of voice that Silver Dollar, Terra Firma, and Clover seemed to be taking.

“I cannot imagine anything else that a vessel on which Ensign Chromite—pardon me, Commander Chromite—was an officer would’ve done,” said Clover.

Copper Chromite furrowed his brow. “And you would never be able to imagine it. Your mind would reject it. Like me when I had first heard it from him, you’d stick your hooves in your ears, your brain refusing to accept that such a thing could have happened. The Canterlot wasn’t one of those typical ships that you see in the pictures; it was a submarine boat.”

Silver Dollar snarled in remonstrance. The room was silent as he said, with a captious tone: “‘Submarine boat’? That’s a contradiction in terms!”

Something switched in Copper Chromite’s brain, like a switch diverting a current into a completely different loop; the result of this is that, when he began to speak, the humorous connotations that sprung to the mind of all those who beheld him vanished. His stare was so damning, his words so fast, so sure, delivered with such vehemence, that it immediately silenced the whispers from the three across the room when he said: “You don’t know what a submarine boat is? It’s not like the destroyers that he used to talk about. It’s this long, tubular thing, looks like a cigar, and it travels primarily underneath the water. You know why destroyers were invented? To counter these things. When they were first invented, submarine boats dominated the waters. The sailors who served on them thought themselves invulnerable. It wasn’t long until they found themselves being hunted by new weapons, found the water crashing in through the holes in the hull, if not crushing them with its immense pressure then drowning them. The sailors of the navy had once thought that submariners were lazy, not real sailors, who sat around under the water, doing nothing, firing torpedoes with computers as if it were a video game. But after enough of them sunk, sailors would lie awake at night thinking of submariners, wondering what it would feel like to hear the ocean all around you, what terror you’d feel when you heard a bulkhead crack, the helplessness that you’d feel when you would see the water level around your feet slowly rising.”

“How do you know this?” asked Silver Dollar.

“Weren’t you listening? My grandfather told me. He was first mate on the Canterlot.” Copper Chromite had just told a grave anecdote that had silenced all of them; with this new sentence, he seemed to have jumped from gravity to absurdity. He had said both, the gravity and the absurdity, with the same merciless tone; to most of his auditors, it appeared to be an impossible contradiction.

“What else did he tell you?” said Littlepip.

Copper Chromite glared at her. “You know what a depth charge is?” he said. “It’s this steel drum, dropped by destroyers, programmed to explode at a certain depth—cracks submarine boats right in two. He told me about the time when he had been detected by an enemy destroyer. They dove as deep as they could, turned off their engines, held their breaths, and spent two hours staring at the ceiling with their mouths open. It was the middle of the night. They stood there listening in terror to the explosions above their heads—the depth charges. Not one dared to breathe, lest they be heard by the sonar. It made this ping, ping, ping noise as it resounded off their hull, emitted by the destroyer overhead; when it had stopped, they could hear the soft plunk, plunk, plunk of the charges being dropped from the stern of the destroyer overhead. My grandfather spoke of this chief petty officer: ‘An innocent, young girl,’ he said, ‘had the sweetest, most innocent smile you could imagine. If you saw her, Copper, you wouldn’t have been able to stop yourself from giving her mane a tousle. She looked like a baby.’ He said that the petty officer had put her back to the wall, riveted with fear, trying to find something solid to brace for comfort—a fatal mistake. When a depth charge hit, closer than any of the others, the shock wave that had coursed down the hull snapped the little filly’s spine in two. She instantly curled up on the floor, limp and lifeless.”

“Copper,” said Terra Firma, putting her hooves to her ears, “I don’t want to hear anymore.”

“Why not?” shot Copper Chromite. “Prefer something a little less believable?”

“Shut up,” said Silver Dollar. “It’s hearsay; that’s all it is. It’s meaningless. Even if it were true, which it’s not, you’re telling a story your grandfather told you. You don’t think anything was lost in the relation from him to you and from you to us?”

“Hearsay it might be,” said Copper Chromite, “but it’s still more horrible than any of your horror stories. You know why? Because it’s believable. You can believe that this happened. The way my grandfather told it to me, the way I’m doing my best to emulate to you now—you can hear the bones of the petty officer turn to jelly, can’t you?”

“I said shut up, Copper!” yelled Silver Dollar.

Silver Dollar’s words seemed to be lost to the mist. Copper Chromite continued: “My grandfather had just gotten promoted to commander, and there were rumors of christening a new submarine boat, the most advanced piece of technology to set out on the seas. So he, rash and brazen soul as he was—”

“Your grandfather was a head case!” Silver Dollar screeched.

Copper Chromite recoiled. “What? What exactly are you insinuating?”

“Copper,” said Clover, her voice slow and calm with the intent to simultaneously inform and assure, “you know your grandfather wasn’t really in the navy, right?”

No words can describe the combination of shock, horror, and incredulity that simultaneously appeared on Copper Chromite’s face. “What!”

“Copper,” piped Terra Firma, “you know that the stable door closed forever when it was shut.”

“You’re born in the stable,” said Clover. “You die in the stable. You know that. That’s the policy.”

“Yes, I know what they tell us,” retorted Copper Chromite. “I know what the overmare tells us. What about before her?”

Clover sighed. “Did your grandfather have any medals to show you?”

“He didn’t get any. The military only awards medals after wars.”

“What about his uniform?” said Terra Firma.

“They didn’t let him bring it in. It was bathed in radiation from crawling in the muddy water.” And, in a flash, he stood up, planting both his forehooves on the table, his teeth bared, his brow furrowed, his limbs shaking. “You don’t believe me! You don’t believe him! How can you not after all that he said?”

Terra Firma gave a sad smile. “I’m sorry. I can’t believe. It just doesn’t add up.”

“It’s impossible,” said Clover.

“It’s ludicrous!” shouted Silver Dollar.

“I believe it.”

They all turned to the sound of this last voice, spoken with such ease in the face of dissent. It was Littlepip, and her eyes were fixed on Copper Chromite. The relentless attack of the three on the poor stallion had been too despairing to listen to, and when Littlepip had felt his helplessness, when she saw that the only thing that could have saved him was an affirming opinion, she added hers. Her belief was as founded as the reasons for their disbelief, but it sufficed. A flamethrower can be used to stop the spread of forest fires. But the lever of a flamethrower is too easy to depress; it is another thing to stop the flames from coming out once the decision’s been made and to assuage the damage which results. Why did she believe it? The answer was simple enough: Because it was reassuring, and she wanted to believe it. She wanted to believe that the tempest which had enveloped her mind since last night was not of her own sickness but caused by the poison of that which she surrounded herself with; and, more importantly, she wanted to think that that which she surrounded herself with could be escaped. It was one thing to think this; it was another thing to defend this opinion without subjecting herself to ridicule. She realized this last point too late, and she almost regretted opening her mouth.

Immediately, the responses came. “What?” spouted, unthinkingly, reflexively, with the effort to intimidate, Silver Dollar.

She shivered as she felt their eyes on her. She dropped her head, trying to suppress the heat one feels when one has found oneself cornered into an uncomfortable position from coming to her face. “What?” she parroted, vying for time.

“How can you think leaving the stable is possible?”

“How can I think leaving the stable is possible?” Littlepip repeated.

“You actually believed him?” said Silver Dollar.

“Do I actually believe him?” She turned around, partially not wanting to look at him any longer, but more wanting to see what her deliverer from the frightful abysses thought. She stared into Copper Chromite’s eyes; he looked at her with an expression of longing, a desperate plea that she would save him as he had saved her. “Yes,” she answered, again, reflexively. “I mean . . .” she stammered, “the stable being closed all the time doesn’t make sense.”

“And how does protecting us from the mercilessness fury of the radiation, keeping all that is bad out, all that is good and pure in, not make sense?” said Silver Dollar.

Littlepip ground her teeth. “Well . . .” she stammered again, looking at Copper Chromite. He leaned closer to her. His wide eyes, his quivering jaw seemed to breathe forth the word: please.

And, in that instant, inspiration struck her. A huge smile, so wide that it hurt her cheeks, exploded on her face, and it grew even wider when she saw that Copper Chromite saw it, recognized it, and returned it with a smile that said: thank you. She turned around, her head bobbing with pretension like a mare who is about to pontificate. “Well, you see,” she said, trying to bring as much condescension to her tone as possible, “if nopony were ever let in, how would you keep the DNA diverse?”

Silver Dollar blinked. “Excuse me?”

“We all live together. Generations proceed only from those who live here. And our population is small. Even if the first inhabitants were completely unrelated to each other, if no outsiders were ever let in, the gene pool would get so mingled that, eventually, inbreeding would result.”

Silver Dollar coughed. “What?”

Littlepip shrugged. “Unless you want incest, you’d have to let somepony in, preferably a male, every so often. Copper Chromite’s grandfather was a male, a fit one, a military stallion, a loyal and patriotic one. Everything fits.”

Clover gestured toward Littlepip. “Actually,” she said, “that’s a good point. If our population were closed, wouldn’t we reach a point where everypony is related in someway to everypony else? Pretty soon, we’d all be blood relatives.” After seeing Silver Dollar’s bemused stare, Clover shrugged. “I mean, you don’t want it to happen; but with such a small population, it’s going to happen sooner rather than later.”

“But,” put Terra Firma, “aren’t we really all related? I read about this in one of the old books in Professor Rein’s collection: The population before the war was huge. But if you started with a single pony and went back far enough into her family history, you’d come to a period in time where the number of her direct ancestors who were simultaneously alive exceeds the population of the earth. It’s a paradox. The book went on to say that there was only one possible way that the paradox was resolved: inbreeding. And not just a little bit of inbreeding—lots and lots of inbreeding. So, really, everypony is inbred. It’s just a question as to what extent.”

Upon hearing the door opening, upon seeing three ponies enter, the five of them suddenly became aware of how full the cafeteria had become. The indistinct buzzing of voices filled the silence left by Terra Firma’s comment. A general motion, a bustling, made its way around the cafeteria, the birth of which had come from a few who had slipped in unnoticed in the midst of the conversation. Their inaudible whispers had grown in the time gone by; for, as the morning progressed, they had had to compete with the almost imperceptible influx of more voices and more ideas, the voices growing louder and louder, as if they were climbing on top of each other, the words trampling on themselves, all trying to scramble to the top, not one syllable aware of another’s presence. This slow amassment had continued unnoticed by the five who had been there in the morning, all alone, and they were all shocked when they saw the line, so long it stretched into the hallway, in front of the counter, all who made up its length hungry, all of them angry. Silver Dollar turned bright red. “Silver Dollar,” said the first in line, a tall male with a scraggly black beard, “I presume you haven’t been distracted again, and I presume that we have hot lunch, yes? Or is your conversation so stimulating that you’ve completely forgotten?”

Silver Dollar slammed his forehead down on the table, his horn knocking over an empty glass. “No,” he said, “our conversation has reached a new level of stupid.” He glanced at his Pip-Buck. “And with that goes all my breaks for the month.” And he dismounted from the stool, hurried to the counter, opened the door to the kitchen, and let it slam behind him as loud as he could. Silver Dollar was one of those types who always had to get in the last word if not in speech then through a noisy and dramatic exit.

Copper Chromite, upon Silver Dollar’s exit, brought the stein to his mouth and drank deeply, heavily, slowly, his eyes closed, a strained sound coming from his throat with each gulp. The manner with which he put it back down and wiped the foam off his mouth suggested that he had stopped only to breathe, rather than because his thirst had been quenched. He raised his head to, presumably, finish the rest when he stopped at an unexpected sight—through his glass, he saw a wide, warped, ovular protuberance; when he moved the glass away, he saw Littlepip, leaning across the table toward him, her eyes wide open, her brow furrowed in the most disconcerted manner. Her mouth was open as if to draw breath, but no whistle of air could be heard.

Copper Chromite was taken aback. “Yes?” he said.

“Well?” Littlepip asked.

“‘Well’ what?”

“What happened to your grandfather?”

His face lit up at this question. He looked like a dam about to burst. “Really?” he blurted, ecstatic. “You really want to hear?”

Littlepip nodded.

Copper Chromite wiped his mouth with a fetlock. Through his eyes, Littlepip could almost see the gears of his mind turning forward and back not only engaged with organizing the chaos of thoughts in order for an efficient deployment but also deciding on the manner in which to present them. His jaw moved slightly for a few seconds, as if a stream of words were building up in his throat but had not the sufficient energy to make their escape. The tip of his tongue fell out at intervals. When he came to, his brow was furrowed, his stare deep, and the tone that he assumed when he began to speak contained no traces of jest. “Well, you see, my grandfather was—” Suddenly, he halted.

Littlepip wrinkled her brow in confusion. He had appeared so excited, like nothing in the world could have stopped what he had been about to say, even if it were going to take him the rest of his life to say it. It was not until she raised her eyes and looked in the direction of the door that she realized why. A tall mare had just entered the room. How Copper Chromite had known she was there without turning his head, Littlepip didn’t know, but her presence had been powerful enough to stop his passion.

“Good afternoon, my little ponies!” said the overmare. Copper Chromite closed his eyes, as if in pain.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Overmare,” said the entire cafeteria simultaneously, with mirth—only one exception: Copper Chromite hadn’t said anything.

When the general commotion had finally died down, Copper Chromite leaned closer to Littlepip. “She’s not coming this way, is she?”

Littlepip looked up. “She is.”

Copper Chromite groaned and stared into his stein.

The overmare stopped right in front of their booth.

She was a tall unicorn, upright, firm. The consensus among the residents of Stable 2 was that she was the tallest pony in the stable. She possessed the typical figure and countenance as seen in those prewar stock photos whose captions were often “Nobility, Honor, Integrity.” She had a long neck, without it being remarkable or overbearing; and a slender body, without it being emaciated. Through the folds in her clothes, one could see the outline of a figure, definitive and present, but neither luscious nor fulsome. For a moment, she turned her head toward another table and smiled exuberantly at a pony who was vying for her attention; and then, and only then, one could see a few wrinkles on her forehead and cheeks, enough to give her the appearance of wisdom but still retaining the respectability of middle age. Her mane was almost completely gray—save for the tips, which were a very faded blonde—but few thought of it as gray; and if they did notice it, they assumed that it was something that was simply naturally acquired by being in such an emotionally taxing position as hers. But above all—and this was what most inhabitants of Stable 2 would have said if they were asked to describe her—she was overwhelmingly modest, not even aware of the dignities of her own composure, playing up that which was clearly wretched, downplaying that which seemed to rise even for an instant. In short, the overmare seemed to be the perfect compromise, not too old but not too young, not eager but not laid-back either—and neither lugubrious, nor passionate.

Littlepip smiled earnestly at the overmare, but the smile was wiped away when she saw Copper Chromite: As the seconds went by, his neck, stretched out over the table as it was, seemed to droop lower and lower, as if it were faltering under a heavy weight. Eventually, his mane met the table, and the strands of golden bronze, as if outwardly displaying their owner’s dejection, spread out in a fan on the table as if from a mop. Littlepip understood why. Though the overmare had said nothing, she was still standing directly in front of them. Even when Littlepip looked away, she could still feel the overmare looking down on her, her eyes on the back of her neck; she could feel a silent judgment on each one of her movements. The overmare had a hard presence, one that did not allow itself to be ignored. And Littlepip could see that the longer Copper Chromite tried to fight it, the heavier and harder it weighed down upon him.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Littlepip! Good afternoon, Mr. Chromite!” said the overmare, in a singsong voice.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Overmare,” said Littlepip. Copper Chromite still said nothing. It was only now that he looked up. Littlepip had to fight the urge to gasp with shock; it was as if a transformation had taken place underneath his mane, like an actor changing costumes behind the curtain. A weak, pathetic, affected smile was plastered across his face like poorly applied makeup. His cheeks were raised higher than it seemed possible, showing the bones. Only one thing betrayed the disingenuousness of these aforementioned features: his eyes were red, full of mist.

“Ms. Littlepip!” said the overmare, “good for you!”

Littlepip looked at Copper Chromite. The latter only shrugged and took another draft from his stein. “What do you mean?” said Littlepip.

“Even when you’re taking lunch, you still work diligently. You refuse to let your personal interests get in the way of performing your duties for the stable. Good for you! If only we all could be more like you!”

Littlepip looked at the orthographic projections, her screwdriver, the broken Pip-Buck—all of these things were spread out on the table. “Oh,” she said.

“Mr. Chromite,” said the overmare, “you could learn a lot from Ms. Littlepip. She understands the value of sacrifice.”

Copper Chromite’s eyes went wide, as if he’d just been slapped. “Ms. Overmare,” he said, “in case it wasn’t already apparent, I’m on my break. A break, by definition, cannot have work in it. If work is performed during a break, then it is no longer a break. What is it then? I don’t know. Perhaps this new working-during-a-break fad is the way of the future; but, personally—call me old-fashioned—I will keep my breaks with all their lasciviousness and lethargy intact.” He sipped as loudly as possible from his stein.

The overmare shrugged. “I mean,” she said, “normally, I would say nothing. If an individual decides to poison himself, all’s well—one less to deal with. We would be better off without him anyway. But when his suicide starts to affect others, then it becomes selfishness and nothing more.” And, in the very same breath, she added: “Suit yourself, Mr. Chromite; I don’t mind. Just don’t let it affect your work.” She turned to leave.

“Wait!” yelled Copper Chromite. “Ms. Overmare, I need something from you.”

The overmare turned. Littlepip noted how much similarity there was between the overmare’s smile and that of the Stable Colt. “Yes?” said the overmare.

The words Copper Chromite said next were so loud that Littlepip put her hooves to her ears reflexively. They were spoken so loudly that they silenced all the conversations around them. All heads were turned to Copper Chromite as he yelled: “Ms. Overmare, will you please tell my idiots-for-friends”—he gestured with his hoof in Clover and Terra Firma’s general direction—“that my grandfather really was an outsider? That he really was the mate aboard the HMS Canterlot?”

The overmare must have noticed the stares in her direction, for her head twitched to the right, then to the left; it was an instinctual movement, stanched only by a remarkable willpower. She smiled again and gave a light, airy chuckle while shaking her head slightly. It was a gesture that overtly said nothing, but its manner was composed entirely of condescension. “Mr. Chromite,” she said, her voice taking the tone of a mother who is telling an allegory to her child, “your grandfather was many things. A big talker was one of those things. Oh, how I remember the tales he used to tell. So full of adventure and imagination! He liked to talk on and on and on.” And she added: “I now see where you get your genes from. You remind me a lot of him.” When she heard Copper Chromite hiccup, when he put a hoof to his mouth in order to quiet the oncoming spasms, she added: “And I remember he was quite the avid drinker.”

Copper Chromite leaned back in the booth in a very satisfied manner. All at once, he began to thud his hoof slowly, rhythmically on the table. Every time it came down, a rattle of silverware shook the cafeteria. “Bravo, Ms. Overmare,” he said. His voice, his posture, and his gestures contained a disgusted irony. “Bravo.”

Something changed in the overmare’s manner. She was no longer standing straight. Her eyes darted around the room. She pretended to look at this thing and that. She pretended to wipe dust off of her blue uniform. She gave a quick glance at her Pip-Buck. She laughed again, but this time with a marked amount of fluster. “Oh, did I do something?” she asked.

“That was,” said Copper Chromite, pulling himself up straight, “that was the most profoundly evasive explanation that I’ve ever heard in my entire life. My friends like to avoid my questions, and they always find better and better ways to do so, but that which you just said—that takes the cake. Bravo, Ms. Overmare. You’ve turned evasion into an art.”

There was a short delay, no greater than half a second, before the overmare burst out laughing. But despite this, Littlepip had noticed the delay, and it immediately struck her how uncharacteristic that was of the overmare. Littlepip knew that the overmare always knew what to say and when; that she, the overmare, was never off her guard; that she knew how to turn the conversation in the precise direction she wanted it to go; and the more she effused, the more eloquent she became and the more her interlocutor relented to her will. Thus, such a pause was uncharacteristic of her, and it was enough for Littlepip to realize that this lapse in speech signaled one of two things: either it had taken the overmare half a second to understand what Copper Chromite had said; or she had understood it immediately, had seen its implications, had felt the judgmental eyes on her, and had decided that the best way of dismissing it was with laughter. And when Littlepip looked at Copper Chromite, she saw that he was thinking the same thing—and that he, like her, had instantly dismissed the first possibility.

“Oh, Mr. Chromite,” said the overmare, “you’re such a joker. You always make me laugh!”

Apparently satisfied with this explanation, the cafeteria turned back toward its own business, and the buzzing of the general conversations resumed. Littlepip was surprised to feel her tension gone. She felt as if the conversation had never taken place, that there had never been an altercation, that there had been no dispute; and that even if there had been a dispute, the overmare had won it, had shown what was right and what was wrong, that all had agreed. Littlepip felt as if the overmare had liberated harmony, leaving it free to reign supreme. And it felt good, the absence of the conflict. Conflict was bad, and there was no conflict now, and that felt good. And she thanked the overmare in her mind. She owed nothing but thanks to the overmare for resolving . . . for resolving . . . what exactly had the overmare resolved? There had been a problem, to be sure, but what had that problem been?

She looked around and saw the full cafeteria, each and every pony engrossed in his or her own conversations. She took a breath; evidently, what had been did not matter. She didn’t feel the anxiety she had felt before, and she saw that none there felt it either—and then she looked back at Copper Chromite.

His face was turning red, not with embarrassment—Copper Chromite was incapable of that emotion—but with the agitation that causes one to bite one’s teeth with such a vigor that one can hear a ringing in one’s ears.

The overmare looked out of the corner of her eye and saw the livid countenance of Copper Chromite. She turned her body slightly away from him, in the manner that suggested that she thought that what remained behind her were none of her business any longer, and that it was only by her own choice that she deigned to commit even the slightest amount of attention to what was in her wake. “Yes, Mr. Chromite,” she said, staring in a direction athwart him. Littlepip felt a chill go up her spine; the overmare looking at them with her peripheral vision felt more harsh than when she had looked at them directly. “You, like your grandfather, are a very good talker. And, most of the time, it can be a good thing. But there are times when that can be a bad thing. Your grandfather didn’t know how to exercise discretion, and he got in quite the number of altercations for it, if memory serves. I urge you to be careful. Some might not take too kindly to such exorbitant words.”

Copper Chromite put his stein back on the table. Either he had ignored the overmare’s words, or he had been slurping too loudly that he hadn’t heard her—an unnecessary distinction, for the latter case is simply an extension of the former. In any case, after he swallowed, he said: “Ms. Overmare, do you want to know what I think—no, do you want to know what I know? I know that my grandfather was not born in the stable; I know that he had served in the navy; I know that he was commander—mate of the HMS Canterlot; I know that the Canterlot foundered after a depth charge attack and that he was the only survivor; that he came upon the stable and started a new life here. And all this was while you were just a child. And I think that your maxim is really just a policy; that, before him, ponies just came and went. That’s what I think.”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be right now?” said the overmare.

“No.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Ms. Overmare—” Copper Chromite took a breath “—if you need me to say it a second time, I will: No, I have nowhere to be right now. I am the most organized pony in the stable. Every minute of my day is lined out to the second. I know exactly where I have to be and when. And I know that now, this minute, I’m supposed to be on break. I’m right where I need to be, Ms. Overmare.”

The overmare shrugged. “Well, I suppose you know what you’re doing,” she said. And, with that, she made toward the door. She opened it with a marked vigor and fury and let it fall behind her. It was still in the process of swinging open as she made through it. When the door stopped, it swung back to its position with a frightful speed, such that it appeared that it would shake the whole cafeteria with a deafening rattle when it came to; but the second before it settled into place, it decelerated almost as quickly as it had been wrenched open by the pony whose tail had just now disappeared out of sight down the corridor, and the sound of the door settling into place was barely audible. The overmare had not gotten anything to eat.

Like before, Copper Chromite seemed to be able to detect her presence in the room without sight. He had not looked up from the bottom of his stein during the duration of her departure. The second she left the room and was out of earshot, he groaned. “Can you believe her,” he said.

Littlepip had heard no question mark at the end of that sentence. It had sounded as if he were not expressing an opinion but stating a self-evident fact of nature. From his tone and body language, she could not tell whether he was talking to her, himself, nopony, or everypony. “What?” she asked. “Did you say something?”

“I said, can you believe her. So damn obnoxious.”

“What?” said Littlepip. “How so?”

“Everything,” said Copper Chromite. “Coming in here, none of her business, questions, questions, pontifications, pontifications, demands, demands, evasions, evasions.”

“What are you talking about?”

“With her whole ‘oh, good for you; you know best; you’re so good; I love you.’ Intrusive, conniving, meandering, officious . . .” His voice trailed off as he scoured his vocabulary for the most powerful substantive he could find.

Littlepip sighed. “You know, sometimes, you shouldn’t be so quick to assume intent. Personally, I thought that she were trying to be friendly.”

“Friendly? Friendly—” Copper Chromite stopped himself in mid-word, and his head twitched. When he seemed to have gathered himself again, he said: “She did the exact same thing to me a few years back. I had been working on something incredibly important for Celestia-knows-how-many-hours. I had three breadboards spread in front of me and an innumerable amount of wires going into a thousand different places on them. But there came a moment where I knew that I had to eat if I didn’t want to pass out in a few hours, and—”

“Pass out?”

“Yeah, it happened to me a few weeks prior. I had forgotten to eat for a while, and I passed out on my desk.” He licked his lips and continued: “So, I knew that I had to eat; but I also knew that if I took my eyes off the breadboards for a second, I would lose my place. So I dragged all three here, with my tools and all, and sat down at that booth over there. Then, later, the overmare came by, and—you know what she said? She said the exact same thing to me. She said: ‘Oh, good for you, Mr. Chromite. Working hard even on your break! It’s good to see you exemplifying our virtue of sacrifice,’ or something like that. I don’t remember. Point is, that totally killed it.”

“Killed what?”

“‘It.’ You know, ‘it.’ ‘It’—come on! You know that feeling you have where you’re totally into something? Like it’s the most important thing in the world and that you wouldn’t stop for anything? That feeling where your body aches, but your brain overrides your body’s complaints for food, water, and sleep? I was working on something, and I remember it being really important, that it was going to change the world somehow; but when she said that, it totally killed it for me. She did manage to take my eyes away from my work, and when I looked back, I still knew where everything went; but the wires seemed an incongruous mess; the breadboards seemed to be mere juvenile toys; and I just didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t even remember what I was doing. Do you want to know why I don’t talk about my work when I’m on break? Do you want to know why I don’t let anypony ask me about my work when I’m on my break? It’s because of things like this. Damn you, Littlepip! You just made me talk about work!” He groaned. “No, it’s not your fault; it’s the overmare’s. It’s her fault. I swear, just her presence specifically annoys me. And the tone of her voice! The way she says things!”

“So,” said Littlepip, “if anypony else besides the overmare said that to you, you wouldn’t have minded?”

“Yes! I mean—” He paused, as if collecting the thoughts that had scattered in every direction. “I mean, I mean no, if somepony else had said . . . if somepony else had said . . . then I would feel . . .” He paused. “I’m sorry; I don’t know where I was going with that.” Copper Chromite sighed. Using his hoof, he described a small circle on the table with the stein. “Anyway . . .”

A silence ensued, a silence in which there was no room for filler noise. Copper Chromite, alone with his thoughts, sat across from Littlepip, who could not, for the life of her, make sense of that which was going through his head. When he had first come in, his thoughts had been coherent, understandable, but now it seemed to her that he had descended into nonsense—and, worst of all, with his last words, it appeared to her that he had admitted that there had been nothing in his thoughts that had been worth saying.

He laid his left foreleg, the one to which the Pip-Buck was attached, flat on the table. With his right forehoof, he twisted a few knobs; then, he laid his head down on the Pip-Buck, his ear flush on the speaker, as if he were taking a nap. But his eyes remained wide open, held that way as if he had just guzzled an entire liter of espresso.

“What’s wrong?” said Littlepip.

Copper Chromite sat up. He extended his Pip-Buck across the table to her. “You hear that?”

She leaned closer and perked her ears up. A crackling sound, a noise she could only describe as static, was being emitted from the speaker. “Yeah, I do,” she said. Something wrong with it?”

“No,” he said, taking his foreleg back. He twisted a few more knobs, placed his foreleg down on the table like he had done the first time, and put his head on it in the same way. This time, he closed his eyes. His expression was serene. Littlepip could see the hint of a smile on his face.

At length, he got up and rubbed his eyes. Again, he extended his foreleg to her. “Do you hear that?” he said.

She listened again. It was a crackling sound. It sounded the same as before. “It’s the static sound again?” she asked.

Copper Chromite sat up and shook his head. “You don’t hear the difference?” he asked.

She shrugged. “No. It’s just white noise, isn’t it? I hear that when I accidentally turn the radio knob a little too far away from the stable’s frequency. That sound always feels like a knife through my heart when I hear it loudly. It’s so eerie.”

“Well, yes . . .” he said. “But didn’t you think that the second time I played it, it sounded not eerie but peaceful? Like something you could fall asleep with?”

“It sounded the same.”

He groaned. “Never mind.”

Copper Chromite yawned and stretched his forehooves in the air. As he brought them back down, his eye caught the screen of his Pip-Buck, and his hoof stopped its progress downward. With a start, his eyelids went wide, as if alarmed, then squinted, as if incredulous, then wide again. This alternation continued for about ten seconds until a scoff made its way out of his throat.

“What?” said Littlepip. “Something wrong?”

“No, it’s just that . . .” said Copper Chromite, with a chuckle, “it’s just that . . . that can’t be right.”

“What can’t be right?”

“What time you got?” he said, looking at her.

Littlepip looked at her own Pip-Buck. “12:18—12:19 now,” she said.

He looked back to his screen. At once, his muscles tensed, and the hairs of his mane stood up on their ends, quite in the manner of a frightened blowfish. He stood up, eased—tore—himself out of the booth, and made toward the door; but, at once, he stopped. He made an abrupt turn back toward the table, grabbed the stein, finished off what was left in it, and turned again to leave. His second departure halted even sooner than the first one had, but in an indescribably calm manner, as if, unlike the first termination of his exit, which had been purely out of compulsion, this second halt were completely controlled, as if he had carefully weighed what he was leaving behind with what was in front of him, felt what was pulling him away and what was keeping him there, and realized that the force in the cafeteria was slightly greater. He turned toward Littlepip, with a look that was at once bemused and intrigued.

“It . . .” he said, at length, “it was nice talking to you.”

Littlepip nodded. “It was nice talking to you, too.”

Copper Chromite opened his mouth as if to speak, but his voice caught in his throat; only a small noise, the beginning of a sound, made its way out, the termination of a larger thought. He put his hoof over his mouth, as if trying to cough the words back up, before breaking eye contact with Littlepip. Still, he stood in place, nodding his head, shaking it, grinding his teeth, craning his neck to the ceiling, rubbing his mane with his hoof. Odd as these motions appeared to Littlepip, they did not seem to her to be nervous tics. They appeared more like a pruning process, a fastidious editing of his consciousness, weeding out the superfluous and fostering the succinct candid, all the while taking in account his environment, whom he was with, what their relation was to him, and carefully picking each word thus, in order to maximize the comprehensibility of the words and minimize any possible chance of them implicating him. Copper Chromite had the air of a stallion who thought before he spoke.

When he looked back at Littlepip, when he saw her lips poised open slightly, he gave a start, much like the error noise of a computer when a process is interrupted in the middle of a crucial algorithm. He began to speak—but with the fluctuations and stammers of a second-guesser, like the choking and freezing of a computer program that receives a stop command at a critical moment. “This is . . .” he said, “this is going to sound like an odd . . . like an odd . . . question, but what . . . what do you know about . . . about . . . wave theory?”

“Wave theory?” repeated Littlepip.

“Yeah, you know”—Copper Chromite made a gesture with his forehoof that appeared as if he were stroking the air—“waves.”

“Like . . . in water?”

“Just waves in general.”

Littlepip shrugged. “Not much.”

Copper Chromite threw his head back and sighed not with exasperation but with pleasure. When he spoke again, he spoke so quickly that the individual words couldn’t be distinguished. “Nothing? By Celestia, you don’t know what you’re missing! It’s only the most interesting science that has ever existed! They’re just the transfer of energy, and they can take so many forms, and they’re so beautiful, so perfect that you can map them with a sine function or a cosine function or a combination of the two, and then from those, you can derive the velocity and the acceleration functions with a simple time derivative—’course, nine times out of ten it turns into a messy inseparable differential, but you can still manipulate them with computer programs, stretch ’em, shear ’em, anything you want. There’s this program I use, and my mind is blown when I think about it, ’cause I have problems using it. I’ve spent months trying to learn to use it, and I’ve only gotten to the point where I can barely function—hah, get it, ‘function’?—in it, but my mind is blown when I think about the programmers who built it. How do you build something like that? Well, I look at this book; oh, it’s this amazing book. A paperback textbook, who would’ve thought it? It’s mostly about waves, but there’s also other stuff in there too, but I like the waves, but the other stuff is worth—”

“Comin’ up on 12:21 now,” said Littlepip, looking back at her Pip-Buck.

“Yes, right, bye,” said Copper Chromite.

A tray, loaded with various bowls, plates, and utensils, was hanging slightly over the table next to which he was standing. When he turned, his tail whipped past and knocked it over. The tray fell to the ground with a crash, which elicited a yelp of surprise from its owner. “Sorry! Sorry!” he said, in a voice that was not apologetic but imperative, a tone that insisted what he said was to be accepted rather than pleaded for it to be so. He was out of the kitchen and down the hallway at a sprint before any recompense could be taken.

Clover raised her neck to look in his direction, then lowered it, scoffing. “What an idiot,” she said.

Littlepip turned to her drawings, mechanically contented. Suddenly, her ears perked up. Something had changed in the atmosphere. It wasn’t something quantifiable; it wasn’t temperature, pressure, noise intensity. She felt as if the cafeteria had been lifted from its usual foundation and had been soaring higher than all of the other rooms in the stable; and all of its sensations had been elevated with it, the thoughts, the feelings, the humor. Now, it felt as if it had just been cast back down upon its usual resting place. It was only after experiencing the change that Littlepip could make the observation that, a moment ago, it had not been where it was supposed to be; it had been higher, more elated, more supportive, and more promising. As she looked around her, when she saw the empty seat across from her, she knew that she was where she was supposed to be, but she felt less, hollow somehow. The existence here, on the ground, felt hollow. It felt as if the cafeteria had just heaved a great sigh. But what made her shudder was that this feeling of being at a lower state, the state of being downcast, was the normal one. Something around her, perhaps the colors of the cafeteria, perhaps the faces of those in it, perhaps the tone of voice the overmare had taken, which she could still hear in her mind, told her that this was where her duty kept her, that she was forbidden from sailing as she had done a moment ago. She thought of the posters outside of the closet marked “Spare Parts”; she thought of the one of lightning and the one of gallium. And she thought that wherever the room had been, wherever it had been lifted, it had been in the same domain as the lightning poster, a delightful, desirable, ecstatic existence. With it gone, she felt the gallium coming back, sticking to her hooves, holding her to her proper place.

And, in an instant, she knew: Copper Chromite had taken something with him.

She was about to jump up, to run after him, to order him to pilot the room back to wherever he had taken it with whatever power he had—when a loud sound was heard. It sounded like an explosion, like something in the wall had burst into pieces. She froze with fright. A few ponies around her made surprised screams.

A few quieter sounds followed, much like the sound of popcorn. A few ponies laughed. Littlepip smiled. The radio had just turned on.

A frantic shuffling was heard, as if various things were being tossed rapidly away from the microphone. A heavy, deep, periodic sway of static was heard in the background, and the cafeteria listened with more intent. But as the sound grew louder, as the clinking of electronics faded away, they knew it wasn’t static: it was the sound of heavy breathing.

A deep voice, fractured and strained, spoken with a thick working-class accent, barely managed to come through. The way the speaker paused to breathe between every word, how heavy and painful each breath sounded, carried forth such a vivid impression that two or three of the ponies listening clutched their chests and breathed heavily, for the exhaustion heard in his words was almost contagious and palpable:

“Sorry . . .” he began, “sorry . . . I’m . . . late, but . . . I’m . . . here. I didn’t . . . forget.” When the words stopped, the panting came back. They could hear the sound of shoulders moving up and down as he respired.

A light, airy, female voice came on next, coquettish, full, and with just the hint of haughty contempt in its tones: “You kept me waiting, Cucro.”

“I . . . apologize . . . Ms. Remedy, but—” the speaker swallowed “—you must . . . understand that . . . Cucro is a free soul and that . . . his world doesn’t revolve around you.”

“You and I both know that’s not true.”

Copper Chromite was CuCrO. He fancied himself quite clever.

Chapter VI

There is no reason the stable dweller should ever come anywhere near the radio room unless she has absolutely made up her mind to do so.

Near the psychiatrist’s office is a long blind hallway, sectioned off from the rest of the stable. A single door grants entry to this hallway. Worn brown letters, which were once red, can still vaguely be made out over the door: Medical Personnel Only.

When the door opens, it’s as if the darkness from the inside flows into the hallway, enveloping the prospective explorer with a strange feeling of dread; many of the lights are broken, and none have bothered to repair them—or, possibly, have not worked up the courage to do so. The hallway itself turns seemingly illogically left and right as one walks down. Disorientation is common, even dizziness, when coming down this corridor. No signs mark directions—there are only two, forward and back. But the plaster does not change throughout its entire length. Thus, if the stable dweller is unfortunate enough to trip and fall, if she closes her eyes out of whim, or if anything happens which should cause her to lose her bearings for just a second, she has no way of knowing what direction leads on and which leads out. She can only guess—perhaps it was this way? She’ll walk, and the longer she doesn’t see the end, the more anxious she gets; until, finally, she decides she was going the wrong way and turns around, retracing her steps. She’ll walk for longer than she had walked before in the other direction, and still she’ll see no end. The panic comes quickly. She’ll forget to check her Pip-Buck’s map.

A child went missing one time in this hallway. They found him three hours later, curled up in a ball a mere ten yards from the exit and sobbing.

If she’s not deterred by her imagination, if she pushes herself through the twists and turns, if she ignores the rush of blood to her legs as her heart screams at her to turn back, the stable dweller will eventually take a left, a right, one more left, and there will be one more stretch of hallway between her and the end, about fifty yards in length.

At the end, there are two doors. They are almost not visible from that distance. She’ll have to walk close to them to see that they are both a steel chrome, almost invisible due to the off-white plaster against which they’re backdropped.

The door on the left opens to a square room, about five meters by five meters by three meters. This room would be unremarkable were it not for three peculiar qualities: First, one might be able to notice that in the cracks of the walls, there are trace amounts of some sort of fluff, or foam. It’s dusty, and it tears away easily. Second, a huge mirror spans the length of the rightmost wall. Third, upon stepping into this room, the stable dweller feels as if all the air have been sucked out of her head. Her skull feels too tiny in this room, her brain too big. It takes her a while to realize: the room is both soundproof and sound-insulated. Quietness can not be equated with the absolute absence of sound, and the stable dweller is not aware how much background noise fills her life, noise that she never notices, until she enters this purged room. Fourthly, she’ll notice the vents on the ceiling that breathe neither heat nor cold. What purpose these serve, she does not know, but how the room retains its soundproofing with these is beyond her. If she is particularly observant, she’ll have noticed similar vents all along the hallway as she had walked down.

The mirror is not a mirror; it is a one-way window on the next room. The door on the right opens to a similar room, a bit smaller than the other room, about three meters by five by three. It has no foam in its walls, and it is not sound-insulated. This room commands a full view of the other through the one-way window.

At the epoch in which this narrative takes place, in the first room can be seen various instruments: long, thin stands bearing microphones; wires snaking this way and that; and a multitude of heavy, metal boxes, each with a hundred different knobs. This is where recordings are made. The other room is from where the radio operator observes, through the window, whomever he happened to have with him that day.

Every inhabitant of Stable 2 knew the layout of the studio, knew of the long, arduous walk it was to get there. But not one ever questioned why that was the case. None ever asked why the radio, a thing merely for entertainment, should be so far removed from the rest of the stable. It seemed not worthy of their attention.

Chapter VII

It may be supposed already that these rooms had not always housed the radio.

While Stable 2 was under construction, a notable developmental doctor, the head of a massive research firm, had already planned to move in. He was quite insistent and influential: he asked for a long hallway, a soundproof room, and an adjoining room that looked upon the first through a one-way window. No other stable had this sort of construction.

Though the stables were built for protection, Stable-Tec took advantage of the opportunity to conduct experiments that might have been regarded by some to be morally questionable. Each stable was built for one of these experiments. Stable 2 was no exception.

We do not know the extent of the work of this doctor of Stable 2. We will tell you only what we do know:

We only know that there were times when a nurse would tell a new mother, a day or so after she has given birth, that her baby had died suddenly in the night. If the mother could manage to, through her tears, ask if she could see the body of her child, the nurse would shake her head, apologize, and say that it had to be disposed of quickly to prevent the spread of diseases.

The newborns had been taken down this hallway and carried through the door on the left. The door was shut behind; no further questions were asked.

This was not limited to newborns. It was not uncommon for a child or two to disappear one day, their parents being informed that they had died playing with a fuse box. In reality, they had been, like the newborns, carried through the long hallway, through the door on the left. They were usually followed by the doctor, who would turn at the last second and go through the door on the right.

The lingering traces of foam that can still be seen are left from the days when that room was padded.

Aside from the crude excerpt of dubious veracity that we have rendered a bit further below, there is no documentation of what took place there. The doctor was known for keeping very poor notes.

His neighbors just knew that he kept returning from work more and more flustered. He began to talk to himself. They saw him scribbling frantically in his notebooks in the cafeteria, in the lounge, anytime they happened to see him. Though he never failed to go down the hallway every morning, he eventually stopped his social life. When he wasn’t at work, he was in his room. He ceased to talk with his fellow residents.

As a prank, a few young ponies snuck into the doctor’s bedroom and stole his notebook. We will not bother to transcribe their findings here; the contents of the diary are incomprehensible, nonsensical ramblings, thoughts unconnected to each other, barely legible, and we would consider reproductions of those words to be a waste of paper and ink.

The doctor did not seem to notice this theft.

One day, the doctor flew up to the overmare’s office, his face covered with sweat. He urged the overmare at the time to enact, from her console, something he referred to only as “the fail-safe.”

After a heated argument, words of which the secretary could not pick out with her ear pressed to the adjoining wall, the doctor and the overmare emerged, the former with an expression of a tension slowly being relieved by a mitigation of an efficacy that perhaps left him a lot to be desired; the latter wide-eyed, every single one of her hairs on point.

Two nurses, who were the doctors assistants, and the stable’s janitor were picked by the overmare for a “special job.” They were not informed as to its nature. They were only made to swear that they would never repeat what they saw while on this job. The nurses never breathed a word of the events. The janitor, who was more unscrupulous than the nurses—or, arguably, more scrupulous—recounted the events in his journal, which we faithfully transcribe here:

“I should’ve known it was a bad idea to agree to this the second that they pulled out the hazard suits. We stood in front of a door near the doc’s office—I didn’t even know there was a door there!—dressed in these damn things, with a few buckets, some detergents—namely, the things I prefer when unclogging toilets. Nothing was said to one another. That’s not true. Before we set out, the doc turned to us and said: ‘If you smell hay, even for a second, if you even think that you smell even the faintest trace of hay, hold your breath, turn back, and don’t stop running until you’re out of here.’ I didn’t say anything, just glanced at the nurses and shrugged. That doc—what a nut! I should have known. How long is the hallway! I thought that walk would never end. We walked in silence. I kept taking the strongest whiffs I could—no hay I could smell. How could I? Those suits are so damn thick nothing gets through. The hallway, in an instant, turned from white to pink. I thought something was going wrong with my suit. We stopped. The doctor gestured toward the floor and nodded with his head. He wanted us to approach it. I went first. I didn’t have my glasses on, so I thought that it was just the wallpaper. When I got closer, it looked like putty. When I got closer, I saw legs, then mouths, then teeth, then eyes, gaping, wide, staring with such an animated force that it made it all the more eerie because they were dead. As I started with my mop on the closest mass of flesh I could find, I felt a nudge on my shoulder. I turned. It was the doc. He was smiling. He bent close to my ear and whispered: ‘Show Stopper.’ I looked back at the teeth. I saw the resemblance. So that’s where that brat went! It had been bugging the hell out of me.”

Chapter VIII

Years later, when the doctor and the overmare and the janitor whom we have just spoken of were dead—that is to say, when none of the inhabitants of Stable 2 remembered the work of the doctor, his hallway, and his rooms—the electrical engineer’s apprentice, a young earth pony with light blue, almost white, fur, dark blue eyes, a mane of golden bronze, whose legs appeared to be compelled to jump whenever they touched the floor, stumbled upon the door near the psychiatrist’s office. With that sense of exploration peculiar to colts, he ignored the rust and the faded sign above the door and entered the hallway.

Even before he stepped through the threshold, Copper Chromite knew that it was going to be a good day. He remembered a time, a few years back, when the thought had occurred to him that he had explored every single hallway and room in Stable 2. When he reflected on this, it made him sad. Going down this new hallway made him smile.

It was a long walk. Perhaps, he thought, it’s longer than the floor of the stable if it were laid end to end. He didn’t mind. In addition to feeding that thirst for knowledge, which his teachers called “insolently incorrigible,” this walk down this new frontier also gave him an opportunity to think. He liked thinking; though he didn’t really have the time for it during his normal day-to-day activities. Whenever he got the opportunity to think, he relished it.

He enjoyed sleeping; or, rather, he liked that moment when the lights were turned off and he had just shut his eyes. He liked the feeling of the thoughts that passed, one by one, through his head, a million in the span of a second.

When he came to the end, he did not stop in his tracks at the sight of the steel doors, as every other had done before him. He walked merrily on, content, if not ecstatic, at finding another door to open.

He went through the room on the right first.

How pleasant! was his first thought. All this space, being used for nothing, known by nopony, just for me. It’s even got a window to the next room. Though that other room looked strange to him. Why are there pads instead of wallpaper?

Going into the second room was much more shocking than the first. He had thought his eardrums had collapsed. Upon further exploration, no, he concluded; it was just sound-insulated. It was sound-insulated! it struck him when he thought about it the second time. Complete silence! It’s a miracle!

On his return, the electrical engineer scolded him for not telling him where he had went and for being away for so long. A long lecture was given. Copper Chromite didn’t hear any of it, but he nodded when it seemed appropriate and apologized sheepishly whenever he perceived a break in the engineer’s speech. He saw himself still in the hallway, his mind delving deeper into the possibilities now open to him in proportion as he moved back to the steel doors. He saw wires in place of the padding, a room where oscilloscopes, voltmeters, and ammeters reigned supreme. Though the engineer yelled at him, he heard nothing, silence. He saw a new domain open to him, far away from everypony else, far away from the overmare, far away from the problems of the stable—just him, his ideas, his equipment; and, eventually, the radio.

Chapter IX

The electrical engineer serves a dual purpose in Stable 2. Along with the design and maintenance of the electronics (in other words, the design and maintenance of nearly every aspect of the life of the stable dweller), he is also the one who operates the stable’s only radio frequency. With it, he makes the important announcements, the news of the day, calls various individuals to the overmare’s office, etc.

This dual responsibility has nothing to do with the concept of complementary professions, exchangeable skills, or anything of that matter. It is a much cruder reason, one that is resolved with a psychological argument rather than a vocational one. It is simply this: engineers have the peculiar quality, in that if they see something working that they did not build themselves, if they’re suddenly tasked with the goal of maintaining it, they will convince themselves, truthfully or not, that it is not operating as efficiently as it could be, or it is not performing as many duties as it could be performing.

Stable 2’s first electrical engineer rewired the radio system to the point where none could understand it but him. When he retired, his successor censured what she perceived to be his bad practices in regard to the radio, so she completely rewired it, and it followed that she was the only one who understood it. Her successor rewired it, as did the next, as did the next. The new engineer looks at the wiring of the radio system, convinces himself that it’s wrong, and dedicates his first job to making it better.

Personal projects assume personal conventions. The engineer is usually more than happy to explain to the overmare how it works, but the overmare has neither the time, nor the patience, nor the knowledge to understand it. The engineer doesn’t mind working the radio, so he usually happily wakes up Stable 2 every morning with his voice, which blares over the intercoms and the residents’ Pip-Bucks.

When it was his turn, Copper Chromite ignored all his duties for two months to move the radio down the hallway. He asked for no help. None knew what he was doing; they assumed he was slacking. For two months, there was no radio. It was only when, one day, the stable was shaken by a loud, sonorous voice. It startled them. Many screamed; many dropped what they were holding when they heard: “Testing, test—ha! It works!”

This marked the first time that Stable 2 heard that peculiar laugh of his: the first time in the history of the stable a laugh was born not of spite but of exultancy.

Chapter X

Copper Chromite loved the radio more than all the engineers before him combined.

None really knew why he was not content with the lounge’s antechamber as his broadcasting station, why he had moved all the radio’s components down that hallway. His argument for the long, arduous chore he had himself undertaken was: “The recording room is soundproof. It does wonders for sound quality.”

He occupied the room on the right. His guests occupied that on the left.

His door was always closed. His guests could not see him through the one-way window. Whenever Stable 2 heard his voice on the radio, he could never be seen. They would hear him making jokes, speaking in absurd voices and accents. But he never spoke of what he said after a broadcast. When he was complimented on something funny, he would shrug and ignore the compliment. When he was asked to elucidate on something he said, he would give a vague answer and change the subject.

Copper Chromite kept only one key to both doors. When he wanted to begin a broadcast, he unlocked the door on the right, opened it just enough for his body to fit through, and closed it behind him quickly. He exited it in the same manner, making doubly sure that he had locked the door behind him. He never locked the door on the left.

In the first few days when the new location of the radio was known, it stirred quite the interest in Stable 2.

Copper Chromite was seen to enter the studio. They would hear a voice over the speakers built into the roofs of the common rooms, or over their Pip-Bucks’ speakers. When the voice stopped, they would see him exit the studio. Most thought that it followed that it was he, especially in the light of the fact that he had undertaken that massive chore of dismantling the original radio, who was the voice that they heard. But he never admitted to it nor spoke of it. One asked: “How can we be sure, actually sure, that it’s Copper Chromite that we hear?”

It was a good point. Though he expressed an interest in all electronics, Copper Chromite never spoke of the radio, what he said on the radio, or the maintenance thereof. “I don’t come back from work to talk about my work” was his invariable excuse.

Even when he was not broadcasting, he stayed in the room with the door firmly shut and locked. He only came out to eat; and that, rarely. Most of the time, he never went back to his residence at night.

But the biggest oddity of the entire situation was this: Even in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the hallway, a glowing yellow aura could be seen making its way out of Copper Chromite’s room whenever he was known to be in it. The steel door seemed to shiver in the presence of this energy, its cracks shuddering as it barely managed to hold back whatever was inside. The glow penetrated the steel and emerged from the doorjamb in long, triangular beams; these swords stretched out onto the floor like claws, imperceptibly creeping further and further down the hallway, shunting the white of the fluorescent lightbulbs.

When a resident told his friends what he had seen, they didn’t believe him. One found a small flashlight, just as the electricians, the janitors, and the engineers used, and shined it directly on the floor in the hallway. The spot which the light should have reached was no more illuminated than the space around it, effectively demonstrating that the hallway lighting illuminated a space completely, that nothing was more powerful than it. Even the Pip-Buck’s lamplight failed to displace the hallway lighting.

It had to be seen to be believed. Together, they went down to the recording studio. When they turned the last corner, they stopped in their tracks as if electrocuted. They saw the streaks of yellow with their own eyes. Around it, the white light quivered, dissolving away in the might of this implacable presence. The observers kept their distance. The glow looked like it would burn them if they touched it.

They went away, quite perturbed. “What could he be working on?” said one. Then they started to speculate. “Maybe he’s soldering something.” “I’ve never seen him solder anything larger than a motherboard. An electronics soldering tool could not create the long lines of light we saw. Hell, I don’t think any other soldering tool would be able to either.” “Maybe he has a fire going in there.” “If our electrical engineer thinks it’s safe to have a blazing fire in a small room that is presumably packed with electronics and has no venting, I weep for the future.”

Then one suggested, meekly: “Maybe he’s working on some sort of new spell.” She promptly received a slap in the back of the head with an indignant hoof. “You idiot!” her fellow speculators retorted. “Copper’s an earth pony. Earth ponies don’t have powers.”

“Oh, I beg to differ.”

They turned and saw Copper Chromite standing a few strides’ distance away, leaning against a post, a contemptuous and condescending pout on his face.

The group exchanged puzzled looks for a few moments. Then, suddenly, one took off in the direction of the radio room. It took only an instant for her friends to understanding her meaning, and they started as quickly as she had, following her a few footsteps behind. The one in the rear of the procession looked back: Copper Chromite wasn’t following them; he had not even changed his stance.

When they reached the room, they gasped even louder than they had the first time. The light was gone.

After much pushing, shoving, and quarreling, one of them was thrust from the group. With the help of urgent pleas, persuasions, and threats, he carefully shuffled his way toward the door. The group watched from a distance. They saw him carefully prod the floor where they had seen the light. They saw him touch the door with a shaky hoof. After these gestures of probing, he walked back. He appeared more confused than he had been a moment before.

“Well?” they asked him. “Nothing,” he replied. “What do you mean nothing?” “I mean nothing. It’s just a floor.” “What about the door?” “What about the door?” “What’s wrong with it?” “Nothing. It’s cold.” “Cold?” “Yes, cold. Cold like steel should be.”

“You are hilarious.”

They turned and saw Copper Chromite standing behind them. Though a thousand questions were racing through their heads, they hesitated. The creature in front of them did not appear to be Copper Chromite. He looked taller, more mature, and more self-assured. He had spoken those three words not as a point from which he could laugh—there had been no hints of humor in his voice—but as simple fact, a fundamental observation of reality.

There were two kinds of ponies in Stable 2: those who had power and those who didn’t. These two groups segregated themselves as much as possible, and the powerless avoided contact with the empowered as much as possible. They did not know how, but they all thought that Copper Chromite now belonged to the empowered, and they thought that he knew this too and that he was enjoying it immensely.

Finally, one brought up the courage to speak. “What . . .” he stammered, “what’s in your room, Copper?” “I am,” he replied. “No, I mean, what’s in your room right now?” “I am.” “That . . . that doesn’t make any sense.” “When I’m not in my room, I’m still in my room.”

The spokespony looked to his group. They chattered among themselves in hushed voices. Copper Chromite clicked his teeth absentmindedly. Finally, one blurted: “You’re such a hypocrite!” “Excuse me?” Copper Chromite replied. “You always chastise us for being evasive. Your answer is the most evasive I’ve ever heard!” Copper Chromite chuckled patronizingly. “It sounds that way, doesn’t it? Yes, I can hear that now. I’m sorry that that’s the only answer I can give you. Even if it doesn’t make any sense, it does. I’m not asking you to trust me, but know that I realize how I sound, and know that I don’t believe I’m being evasive. When I’m not in my room, I’m still in my room.”

They walked away, scratching their heads with confusion. They lingered on his words. It was a contradiction, a blatant one. But it was nothing new. It was one contradiction out of many that they lived with. Contradictions do not aggravate the stable dweller; she lives with so many that they merely fatigue her. She feels no emotion when faced with a contradiction, not anger, not incredulity, not indignation, not bemusement; she simply feels bored.

Sarcastic jokes were made initially: He has a magical ball that transforms him into his smooth-talking alter-ego, the DJ Cucro—how else to explain that he refuses to do the voice in front of us? He is plotting a coup d’état of the stable, and his lieutenant is his breadboard. He has some sort of objectionable pornography stash in there.

But through the jokes, his last words remained with them: “When I’m not in there, I’m still in there.” They kept coming back to that contradiction. They eventually gave up their questioning, filed the contradiction along with the other ones, and thought no more of it.

The glow did not disappear when it was ignored. Though none noticed, it shone brighter. But when Copper Chromite was known to be out of his room, it did not shine at all.

Chapter XI

“There is no excuse for being late,” came the voice over the radio, smoothly, coldly, but remorsefully. “How late was I?”

“Forty minutes,” said Velvet Remedy.

“Well, I apologize,” continued Cucro. “Out of all days to be late, this one was the worst. But, my little ponies, Cucro hopes that you can forgive him. He knows he can be a incorrigible bastard; he knows that he can be crude; he knows that he can be irritating, inappropriate, obnoxious, and annoying. But he hopes that after what you hear today, you’ll be able to forgive him.

“He has worked for the past—man, I can’t even remember—for the past while on something very important to him. Before I get into that, let me say something: Do any of you realize, truly realize, the importance of the radio? The importance of speech? Surely none of you would doubt the importance of literature. And I am here to be so bold as to say that the radio is simply a natural extension of literature. Literature immortalized writing and in so doing extended to others the ideas of a remarkable individual whom they would not and could not have heard of otherwise. Likewise, the radio immortalized the voice. An individual always had the ability to speak, but being heard? Well, that’s a different story. How can one be heard in a world so noisy? The answer, my friends, is the radio. But what do literature and the radio have in common? They’re simply different mediums for the exact same sublime purpose: Speech. Ideas. Communication. The fight against ignorance.

“A wonderful purpose, a pure purpose. But, of course, the concrete world throws problems at us when we try to bring this abstract purpose into reality. Allow me to refer back to literature. They took the form of books, paper. How to get ink onto paper? Well, originally, they were simply written. To reproduce an epic novel, monks had to write it manually over the course of years. This is why the act of burning a book became symbolic of ignorance; it equaled the destruction of years of work. But then came the printing press. Then came digitalization. Literature became perfected, and the exchange of ideas in its medium reached far across the earth, open to all, available to all, never to be in short supply again.

“Radio, the novel’s much younger cousin, grew at a much slower rate. Originally, the radio only permitted a voice to be transmitted across a few yards’ distance. Abstraction gave us a beautiful potentiality, but reality presented difficulties. And, to be fair, we overcame some of these difficulties. The great inventors before us dedicated their lives to extending their voices through time and space. And, through their tireless work, culminating in the broadcast tower, they did it. Radio can be heard by all. It is open to all, available to all, never to be in short supply again.

“Unfortunately, herein we see the discrepancy between radio and books. Books ceased to be written and became typed. They became more readable. Radio, however, never really received its equivalent typed upgrade. The radio is still, this many years later, for lack of a better word, slightly illegible. Static is still a persistent issue. Words sometimes appear slurred together. There are breaks in aud—and . . . ha! You see what I mean? Did you hear that break? That is radio’s typo. It was such an unsolvable problem that instead of working on it any longer, they created a clunky language to hopefully circumvent the inherent probability of a miscommunication with the radio. You know what I mean: ten-four-niner, over!

“So why is this day so important? Because today, I, Cucro, become immortalized in history along with the individual that invented the e-book. The transportation of literature ended with the e-book; the transportation of the voice ends with me and what I have. Today, the radio has been perfected.”

In the cafeteria, Clover blurted: “Oh, get over yourself, Copper!”

Littlepip smiled.

There was a silence over the frequency. A cough was heard among the group in the cafeteria. “I hear a distinct lack of applause,” said Cucro.

“You talk too much,” said Velvet Remedy. “You have a huge ego and a big mouth, that’s for sure. But what have you done? What have we seen? Nothing. Why don’t you stop talking and actually do something for once? Why are you even here but to talk for yourself? I’m here because they want to listen to me. You’re here because nopony knows how to operate the damn thing and we can’t keep you off.”

The entire cafeteria broke into a roaring laughter. It was funny because it was absolutely true, they thought. Their laughter was so loud that they were sure that it and the reason behind it could be heard down that long hallway, through the soundproof door, through the one-way window, and they were sure that the figure who hid behind the one-way window could feel it and knew it.

When they stopped laughing, they perked up their ears to listen. They heard nothing. Each one felt as if they were there with Velvet Remedy fighting this ego, telling themselves it was impotent, that they were better because they said nothing, did nothing, and aspired to nothing; and, because of this, they never failed, and that was why they were superior.

“Cucro?” said Velvet Remedy, breaking the silence after a moment. “Are you still there, or are you crying?”

Still no answer.

“Hello?”

“What? Oh. Oh yes, sorry about that. It’s just I’m . . . you can’t see me, but I have this huge smile on my face. I’m watching you, Ms. Remedy, thinking about what you said, thinking about what’s going to happen next, and convicted in the knowledge that no matter what you think, no matter what Stable 2 thinks, I will be the victor when this is all over.”

Velvet Remedy chuckled. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear this explanation.”

“Because,” he said, “in a few minutes, I’m going to switch you off from this channel, Stable 2’s built-in one, and onto mine. In a few minutes, you will be singing through my channel. Oh, of course, they will only hear you, and they will probably compliment you and congratulate you after the fact, and I’ll go back to ignoring them, and they will ignore me. But when I hear your voice come through, I won’t be hearing you; I’ll be hearing the last chip being clipped into the motherboard. Because, you see, Ms. Remedy, when one works on something, one must work with the image of the ideal. No other will suffice if one truly cares about his work. I assume that porcelain dish makers design the dish with the image of Celestia Herself eating off of it. But the problem with this is that they will never see that; they work from the ideal, and their creations are great, but there will be a little bit of longing in their hearts, for they know that their work can be suited to much greater things but that they will never see it realized. This is not so with me. When I worked on this, Ms. Remedy, I heard your voice in my ears. I heard what you sounded like when you came through. You are my ideal. So, do you want to know why, no matter what, I will be the victor? Because I will hear your voice, the voice for which I built this, finish my work. Because I will see the ideal consummate my creation. I will share in a feeling unique in the world, a feeling that none have experienced before: the feeling that comes with seeing one’s own creation, which has been made through the best of one’s own ability, being completed by that which it is only suited for.”

The frequency was silent for a few seconds. The cafeteria was quiet. Out of nowhere, Clover snickered. “Shut up,” growled Littlepip, under her breath. Clover did not hear her.

“A convincing argument,” said Velvet Remedy, “well put and well said. However, it’s all assertions. All’s fine and well, but where’s the proof? Where’s the evidence of your competency? How long are you going to make us wait to see the necessary result of your argument? Do we get to hear it today?”

“Yes!” roared the entire cafeteria simultaneously. “Get off, Copper!” “Put her on!” “I want to hear this!” “Stop talking!”

“Yes, absolutely,” said Cucro, as if he had heard their cries, “you’re right. I’ve milked this moment long enough. Give me a second. Don’t speak until I tell you to. When you hear her next, Stable 2, she will be on my channel.”

During this transition period, the frequency was shut off completely. No static could be heard, no shuffling, no background voices—nothing. In the cafeteria, the slow hum of the refrigerator could be heard. They all jumped with shock when they perceived Silver Dollar emerge from it. He thrust the door behind him with a rude and disrespectful movement, and it slammed to with an equally rude and disrespectful sound. “Call me a bad pony,” he said, “but I really want this not to work. I can’t wait for Copper Chromite to get back so I can say to him: ‘Oh, you egotistic, arrogant bastard! Serves you right! Serves you right! I told you so!’” He refused to admit to himself that his heart was racing with the anticipation of success.

Another loud snap was heard, similar to the first they heard when the radio had initially turned on, but slightly quieter. “Right. I’ve switched you to my channel. Your floor, Ms. Remedy. Your honor. Whenever you’re ready.”

“Good afternoon, Stable 2!”

A gasp, a shout, a scream, a cheer, a cry, an exaltation, all these things combined made up the essence of the vocalizations of every single resident of Stable 2. Whether they were alone in their rooms listening from the radio function on their Pip-Bucks, whether they were at work, whether they were in the lounge, their reactions were the same. The cafeteria served as the epicenter of these emotions, wherein one heard a whirling of cries, some bittersweet, some ecstatic, some melancholy, but mingling with all such that they fused into one recognizable whole, fractured but recognizable in its sentimentality, a mixture of joy, release, and satisfaction; and the result, though not clean and crisp as the pure cry of an individual, was a greater release than the stable had ever seen in its entire history.

Velvet Remedy had not merely sounded good; she sounded full. They heard her voice through the speaker not as if the microphone interpreted the sounds and converted them as electrical signals to send down a wire but as if her voice had occupied the speaker itself, as if it had possessed it, as if it had absorbed everything, the microphone, the circuits, the Pip-Bucks’ speakers, the ears of the listener for a single supreme purpose, that of uplifting the listener, smashing through the ceiling, through all those layers of concrete to behold the open air—a sweet, pure, delivering air, the traces of which were in her tones when she had spoken those four words. Her voice had come through like a raw power; it shook the walls of the stable; the stable had bent, under this force, the most powerful force on earth; and they knew that this force was the polar opposite to whatever power held the stable above them, that this delivering force was great enough to heave upward their disheveled and decaying bodies, suffering and abject and downcast, barely clinging onto the last remains of life, that it was strong enough to lift them from the abyss and elevate them back to their rightful places, upon where they would stand, stronger than they had ever stood before, promising and triumphant. The microphone was not a tool for conveying her voice; her voice justified the microphone’s existence. They felt this, and they knew this; though they could not put this into words. They had to content themselves with exclamations such as “Listen to how clear she sounds!” and “It sounds like she’s standing right next to me!” and “If I could only but listen to those four words for the rest of my life, I would want nothing more in the world!” and “Just think of the possibilities!” They understood now why no other voice could have been the first over this new channel.

“Stable 2 owes you an apology,” said Velvet Remedy, her words conveying deference, but her tone conveying the gesture of a salute. “I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have doubted you, distrusted you like that. This . . . this is quite impressive.”

There was no response.

“Are you there?” she said, at length.

A deep breath was heard. “Yes, I’m here. It was that smile again. Believe me that this is the only time that I’ve regretted that you can’t see me. I’m going to be honest: I’m overwhelmingly tempted to open my door and show you . . . no, I’ll describe it to you. It’s a wide smile. My cheeks are starting to hurt. I can feel one tooth jutting out farther than it should be—damn, I’m no good at this. My teeth are closed firmly, not tightly, just firmly, set against each other just as they should be, firm, purposeful. Even the tooth that’s kind of out of place seems right; it’s an eccentric, but it’s an appropriate eccentric; taken as a whole, it feels right.” He could be heard to take another deep breath. “And that was a sigh of satisfaction. My smile, the sigh, everything I’m feeling right now is the feeling that comes from completing something I’ve set my mind to and hearing my channel as it should be heard. I hear no imperfections, no inconsistencies, nothing. I’m fully convicted. Ah! That’s how to describe the smile. Picture the smile of pure conviction and satisfaction. That’s it.”

And he laughed that laugh of his. And Littlepip knew that the essence of that smile was contained in his laugh. The sound brought to her the image of his smile better than any of his words would have been able to, and she saw it as well as if she were behind that glass window and standing right beside him, right with him.

Stable 2 laughed too, but in a completely different manner. “What a joker!” one said in the cafeteria. All laughed except one: Littlepip sat in the booth alone, looking at those who were displaying such appearances of ridicule, and the image of him disappeared from her mind. She closed her eyes and tried to recall it, but it had disappeared. She grasped at the memory of his words, trying to remember. He had said the word conviction. She wasn’t even sure she knew what the word conviction meant. It means being sure, right? It means being satisfied in being sure? What, then, does it look like to be sure? I knew it a second ago, but I can’t see it now! Does everypony else know it? Why does everypony know but me? Why are they laughing in such tones, a laughter so different from his? They’re making fun of him. Is conviction, whatever it is, something to be ridiculed?

“Well,” Velvet Remedy said, with a sigh, “go ahead. I won’t complain. I guess you’ve earned it.”

“Earned what?” Cucro asked.

“I’ve always hated that thing you do, where you open the can so close to the microphone and sip it as loudly as possible. But I guess you’ve earned it now. Go ahead. I won’t complain this time.”

“Actually,” Cucro replied, “no. This time, I will not.”

The cafeteria gasped with surprise.

“I’m proud of you,” said Velvet Remedy. “This is a good first.”

“Yes, it is. This is a first. For this first, I want to be completely sober. This is too important.”

The sound of the moving of steel was heard, clear as the clinking of glass, to come through the radio. “Sorry!” said a gruff male voice. “Sorry we’re late!”

“No we’re not!” said another. “I thought we agreed in advance that we wouldn’t be sorry for this.”

“Why are you so late?” said Cucro.

“Because we knew you were going to open with a speech nopony wanted to listen to, in addition to being late, so we figured we had some time to spare,” said the second voice.

“So much the better,” said Cucro. “That speech took me a long time to write, and you’d have just messed it up! Fillies and gentlecolts of Stable 2, two others have just entered my studio. I’ve got Rambler here—you’ll remember him as the guy who broke the felt on the pool table last month—and he’s on the keyboard.”

“Hey!” yelled the first voice.

“And on the cello, we have . . . we have . . . sorry, what’s your name again?”

“Really!” said the second voice. “You’ve lived here your entire life—and you don’t know my name?”

“Oh! Oh!” said Cucro. “Well, excuse me, Captain You-Planet, for not knowing your name. How selfish of me! In case you haven’t noticed, I spend quite a bit of time in this room.”

A groan. “Do you seriously not know my name?” A pause. “Remonstrance!”

“Remonstrance . . . Remonstrance . . .” said Cucro. “Now why does that sound familiar? Oh, yes! Right! You broke the leg of that chair in the cafeteria. Thanks for that, by the way.”

“I’m amazed,” said Remonstrance, “you’ve somehow managed to reduce us solely to one action that we already feel an overwhelming amount of guilt for. Bravo. Thank you.” The irony oozed in almost visible rivulets from her voice.

“An electric cello?” said Cucro. “Now that’s somethin’. This is going to be one hell of a performance. And speaking of performance, I really do think—”

Cucro paused for a singular moment. After a while, he began again:

“Speaking of the performance, I really do think—” Another pause. The grinding of teeth was audible.

“As I was saying, speaking of the performance, I really think . . . just a second, my little ponies. I swear I perceive a visitor a-rappin’ at my chamber door; and, before we begin, I must tell this craven interloper ‘nevermore.’ Just give me a sec.”

They listened eagerly with anticipation. “I’ll be back,” they heard, “just as soon as I get this—damn—mute button—working. I swear, I can nev—work, fu—you, if I could jus—stay like—that . . .” They heard Copper Chromite wrestling with the mute button. His voice undulated in and out, a periodic swaying, as if it were a wrestling competition where ground was gained for a second only to have it lost again. In one moment Copper Chromite had the mute button in a headlock; in the other, the mute button had pinned Copper Chromite. The shuffling sound perfectly conveyed his struggle. It was humorous, and they laughed, for the sound contained the essence of Copper Chromite’s work. Metal clanked against metal. They could hear beer cans banging against one another.

“Come on—piece of—stay ther—stay, damn—you. Com—ah, there we go!”

A snicker made its way around the cafeteria when the implication of those last words sank in.

“Goddamn it! Who is it? Go away! I’m in the middle of a thing here!” yelled not Cucro but Copper Chromite. The petulant growl of aggravation was unmistakable.

“Do you think he knows that the mute button is broken?” said Terra Firma.

“No,” said Clover. “He’s so clueless.”

“No, I think he knows,” said Silver Dollar. “It’s all staged. His conversations with Velvet Remedy, what he says every day, all of it. He knows damn well what he’s doing.”

“But then why isn’t he doing the voice?” asked Terra Firma. She got no answer.

“Who the hell is that? I swear, if you make me get up from this chair, I’m going to murder you. . . . Are you serious!” they heard him say—and then more shuffling, like he had slid his chair away from the microphone. This was confirmed when they heard his voice fading away in the distance, saying: “Are you serious! Out of all the times to come, it had to be this one! What does my sign say! What does my sign say! Never, ever disturb me when I’m in the middle of a broadcast, especially not when—oh, hello. Sorry ’bout that.”

Another peal of laughter came from the cafeteria. The change of tone had been so abrupt and so extreme—from the lowest, foulest, most potent of rages, from the point of anger where the foam in his mouth had been so thick that it could almost be felt seething through the microphone speakers, to the point of the most servile of humilities, from poison to pleasantry, from seething with wrath to grovelling in submission—that it had been the externalization of how they all felt, what they thought were expected of them: pleasantness on the outside, swearing and vulgarity on the inside. It was so blatant, so unabashed in its mendacity, so poorly affected that it was obvious, even more absurd because they recognized it, and yet they could think of no other way.

A comedian draws humor from exposing societal truths, forcing his audience to look at them, forcing them to stop their evasions, to think about them, to examine them until their absurdities are exposed from every possible angle. To such an exposure, laughter is the only possible response.

“I bet you anything that it’s his mom,” said Silver Dollar.

An indistinct mumbling was heard. Copper Chromite was silent. They strained their ears, but they could not hear who it was, nor what she was saying.

When the mumbling stopped, they listened for a witty response. None came. A short silence ensued, but one slightly thicker than the ones that had come before it. At length, they heard him say: “This right now? Come on! I’m in the middle of something here! I’ll do it after.”

“Ha!” ejaculated Silver Dollar. “I knew it! It’s his mom!”

The mumbling in the studio became slightly louder.

“No, I will do it after,” was the reply. A few in the cafeteria chuckled.

“There is absolutely no harm in me doing it after,” said Copper Chromite. “What is the harm?”

“Alright,” said Clover, talking to the ceiling, “this isn’t funny anymore, Copper. Come on. We want to hear Velvet Remedy now.”

As if on cue, Velvet Remedy said: “Copper? What’s going on out there? Do you need some help?”

“No, no, stay inside!” yelled Copper Chromite. “Just give me a minute. I have to deal with something. Don’t come out!” And then, much quieter, he said: “Look, I’m not demanding anymore. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. It’s just that . . . it’s just that this is really important to me, and I’ve been looking forward to it, and I really want to do this first.”

“Wait, what the hell?” said Silver Dollar.

“Shut up!” hissed Clover.

“What if I said no? . . . What? No! No! You can’t ask me that! It’s not fair! You can’t possibly expect me to make a decision like that! I don’t think you . . . no, you don’t understand! It’s not that simple! It sounds like nothing to you, but a decision like that is so much more complicated than you could ever possibly understand! Don’t make me make that decision! Just let me do this first! I need to do this first! Please! Please let me do this first!”

A plate was dropped in the cafeteria and shattered against the marble like a clap of thunder. None flinched. Silver Dollar’s sardonic scowl had been replaced with a slack-jawed gape.

When Copper Chromite spoke next, they could only picture him saying it on his knees, on his belly, prostrate. Through the microphone, his voice ran in torrents, bubbling with sorrow, supplication, pleading. They were not words; they were the desperate gasps for air of a soul taking the form of vocalizations. Each word cut into their ears, for each syllable penetrated deep into their minds, past their rationality, to that base part of the brain that acted on impulse. The effect that hearing Copper Chromite’s words produced on them was equivalent to the feeling of horror one feels when one sees a half-shape in the darkness:

“Please! Please! I’ll do anything! Just let me do this first! I know I’m difficult; I know I’m hard to talk to; I know I ask and ask and ask and am rude in response. I know that! I know that, and I’m sorry! Believe me that I know that better than anypony else, and I’m the most sorry for it! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I ask for so much, and I never give anything. It’s wrong! I know it’s wrong! And I’m trying to learn! Really, I am! From now on, I swear, I’ll care nothing for myself. I’ll stop asking for myself. I’ll stop complaining whenever I need to do something. I swear! I swear! I’ll never talk back again! It’s a conscious effort, you know. I have to make a conscious effort to talk back. My obnoxiousness doesn’t come naturally. Naturally, I know what you want and what I want, and I know that what I want is exactly the same as what you want; and, inside, I know that I shouldn’t pretend to be otherwise! I don’t know why I do it. I don’t know why I pretend to be the opposite. I’m sorry! I won’t ever be like that again! But please let me do this first! I’ll never ask for another thing again. I will never ask for another concession ever again if you just let me do this first! Just please let me do this first! I need to do this first! I need to! I need to! I need to . . .”

They heard a sharp inhale of air, like a sniffle. Then they heard the muted voice, still going on. The voice had not changed from the first moment it had spoken; it was still drawling with that same cool, calculated tone.

The voice stopped. “Yes, I . . . I understand,” said Copper Chromite.

It worried them that there had been no pause between when the muffled voice had stopped and when Copper Chromite had responded. They would’ve preferred a cry of protest, some effusion, anything that meant that the incorrigible Copper Chromite still existed in the form that they knew him. To simply say yes, to concede, to submit after such a fervid objection—who would do such a thing? Not Copper Chromite. Not the Copper Chromite they knew. They would’ve preferred the sound of gunshots and screams of pain. They did not want to think about what a life where such a malevolence existed would mean—a life they didn’t want to admit to themselves that each and every one of them was living.

The sound of footsteps approaching the microphone marked the end of the encounter. Beer cans shuffling, banging against each other with a clattering that was more like a rage than an adjustment, signaled that he was sitting back down in his chair.

“Copper,” said Velvet Remedy, “who was that?”

“Sorry, folks,” said Copper Chromite, “but, before . . . before we begin, Cucro has something he needs to say.”

A crumpling, like the sound of the crunching of potato chips, was heard. “Cucro needs to say . . .” He sighed. “He needs to say . . .” He swallowed. “I couldn’t be happier that I’ve been given this opportunity to devote my ability to the complete service of the stable. Today, I have learned what joy and virtue can be found in working not for myself but for those around me. Labor means nothing if its only beneficiary is oneself; true nobility comes from working at a loss for one’s brothers. And I’ve lost so much working this job. I’ve lost my time, my youth, my . . . my pride . . . but I’ve brought something that . . . the stable will enjoy for the rest of its years, and that . . . that means more to me than any feeling of personal accomplishment. Thank . . . you, my friends, my neighbors, my . . . family . . . for allowing me this opportunity to . . . to lay down my life in your service. With my help . . . with your help . . . we survive. There . . . is nothing a stallion could desire more. And if . . . if I . . . if I can . . . die at my post while working on a project that will bring you even the least amount of entertainment . . . I can think of . . . no better way . . . no better way for my life to end. And my only hope is that . . . you feel the same way, that you would be willing to sacrifice yourself in a heartbeat for the one who’s known the least to you . . . for the sake of nothing but sacrifice itself. If one wishes to live nobly, that . . . that is the only thing one can wish for. Thank you, Stable 2. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to . . . to . . . to die for you.”

He said he was Cucro, but the voice was Copper Chromite, undisguised, stripped naked before his audience.

Something singular had happened when he had said the word pride. Before he had said that word, his voice carried the tone of a condemned prisoner who refuses the blindfold and stares his executioners straight in the eye with a smile of insolent, defiant contempt, for he knows that he will be leaving them with a sight that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. But at the word pride, his voice had markedly dropped in intonation and assuredness, and it had assumed the tone of a mother pleading for the life of her infant from the same executioners. At that word, they had heard him lose his foothold; they had heard his ultimate attempt to grab onto, desperately, any abutting rock of confidence he could find. But as the words drew on, his voice grew runnier and each word seemed to be covered in entrails, as if they had passed through his abdomen like knives. That word had chipped and creased a hard classic record. And the record had skipped notes, had strained the voice it carried—and had never reached the end of its song.

“Copper . . .” said Velvet Remedy. “Who . . . what was—”

“Well, are you going to start or not?” roared Copper Chromite. “I don’t have all damn day.” A hissing sound, followed by a sharp crack, followed by a bubbling gurgle, brought those who were listening and who were still confused the full realization of the state of the radio room: Copper Chromite had just opened a beer can.

Littlepip closed her eyes as the she heard the sound of the instruments being set up. There was one song that she had in mind. It was her favorite song. It was called “Unconquered.” It wasn’t one of Velvet Remedy’s more popular songs, nor very well-known, but it was still her favorite. While most of Velvet Remedy’s songs—indeed, the most popular ones—dealt with day-to-day events and trivialities, while most, though recognizable musically, were forgettable lyrically, the song that Littlepip was thinking of was nothing like the others. It had no synthesized sounds. The primary accompaniment was a piano. It was the perfect synthesis of instruments and vocals: one did not support the other; one did not dominate the other. This song, unlike the others, was not one that could be put in the background; the haunting drawl of the piano and the lyrics which grew more potent as the song progressed demanded that the listener devote his full attention to it. The lyrics were bitter, cool, overwhelmingly forceful since they were overwhelmingly relevant; each word seemed to cut into the ear, penetrate to the brain, crawl under the skin, leaving behind one message: You cannot ignore me. The lyrics were bitter, but they were only bitter because they were grounded to the earth, which so often coughs up bitterness, only bitter because they were true. But, also drawing from the earth, the lyrics gave potentiality. They represented not only what the earth was but also what it could and ought to be. The song was a struggle; the piano swayed up, then down, now sharp, now flat, now major, now minor; and if one listened to it improperly, that conflict and struggle would sound utterly despairing. But if one listened to it properly, if one devoted his full attention to it, did not fight against the lyrics, did not try to ignore them, thought about them, dwelled on them as he slept, he would realize that the song was more rewarding and more hopeful than any of her other songs.

And Littlepip clenched her teeth together. Only one thought went through her mind: Please, please don’t sing that song. Sing any song but that one. Oh God, anything but that song!

The first chord of the song was unmistakable. When Littlepip heard it through the speakers, she turned white. Terra Firma laid her head down on its side on the table, sighing as she did so. Clover anxiously turned the knobs of her Pip-Buck. Silver Dollar had disappeared. The rest stared at the speaker on the ceiling, dread evident in each one of their expressions.

The piano was not a piano; it was a keyboard pretending to be a piano. The physical quality of the sound was impeccable; they could hear every strained noise it made, every uncanny utterance it gave forth. Every single note they heard was the same note as it was in the original recording yet sounding nothing like it. That note was an A; a tuner would say it was an A; but this new A seemed to laugh. They remembered the old recording; they remembered that recording’s A; that old A, in a single utterance, carried so much weight and meaning. The new A laughed with the meaningless laughter of an adolescent, laughed with derision, laughed at how seriously the old A took itself. It screamed, a piercing, whining scream: Ignore me! Who cares?

The original recording had no cello. The electric cello filled in for the violin. There were not many violinists in Stable 2, much less any who could play it without making it sound whiny. A cello made a much richer sound than a violin, deeper, more grave and somber, an appropriate instrument for such a grave song. But the electric cello had none of that. The whole notes vacillated; the half notes were unsteady; the termination of quarter notes sounded more like a failure in the audio rather than a proper end. But the audio system was perfect; it was simply playing back the notes of the cello. The physical construction of the cello was perfect; it was simply conveying the musician’s intent.

“I don’t know,” whispered Terra Firma. “I think I like the original better, especially with the acoustic instruments. Perhaps Velvet Remedy—”

She cut herself short when Velvet Remedy’s voice came on. It was clear as it had been when she had first spoken over the channel. They could hear every note that came out of her mouth as if she were right beside them. The channel carried her voice with its merciless precision. When she sang higher, it did not shriek; when she went lower, it did not bellow. Lyrics that had been somewhat muffled in the original did not hesitate this time. Everything Velvet Remedy put into the song came through, and her listeners understood that, and they heard what she meant. There was no possible disagreement on that accord.

It was an absolute representation of reality. Yet they heard absolutely nothing.

There was nothing wrong with the electrical instruments. There was nothing wrong with the channel. On the contrary, the channel was perfect. It carried the sound not as it interpreted it but carried the sound itself. It was a mere vessel for what was actually taking place. And what was taking place was emptiness.

The piano was not laughing; it was twisting in the death rattle, merely for a moment imitating a laugh. The cello was not screeching nonsense; it had nothing to screech about. The statement Velvet Remedy conveyed through lyrics was told through the exact same words. But the words landed on their ears as a meaningless assortment of sounds; they were words in a language that they recognized, words that were familiar to them, but they heard no meaning in the words. The listeners did not taste the bitter earth in the lyrics, as they did in the original; they did not taste sourness—they tasted nothing. Velvet Remedy sounded as a perfect parakeet with a sublime voice. And though her imitation was flawless, the words had nothing behind them.

Behind the voice, there was nothing. Behind the keyboard, there was nothing. Nothing but air was supporting the cello. Copper Chromite’s channel was so acute that it enabled them to hear the vastness of empty space in every tone that blurted from the speaker.

But, just once, for a brief moment, on the highest note on the song, there was something: a cry of pain. It had disappeared almost as fast as it had materialized, and none were sure that they had actually heard it. But they closed their eyes and imagined Velvet Remedy in the recording room: They saw a white, stiff corpse, standing as if suspended by strings, moving its mouth in a rehearsed manner to lyrics about life, in line with the accompaniment whose instruments whined as if they were the tenors of a graveyard choir. When she had come to the highest note, they had seen a surge: a brief flash of color had come to her face, an instantaneous moment of animation—and when the soul had departed as fast as it had come, it left behind it the frozen shape of a silent scream.

The difficulty of the last chord of the song led some to believe that the song was the hardest technical piece for the piano due to that existence of that chord alone. One’s mind lingered well after the song was finished and another song had taken its place on that chord. It was impossible to contort one’s mind to even begin to conceive of the skill that it would have taken to do something so seemingly impossible. For the original recording, it had taken one hundred attempts to get it right; Velvet Remedy had refused to use electronic editing software to splice in a perfect rendering of that chord. On the one hundredth attempt, the pianist had thumped his chest afterward, and he had said that he could not have played it better. But Velvet Remedy had complained, saying that the chord had been held too long, and she had insisted that they try again. The pianist disagreed. Upon compiling the recording into an audio editing program, it appeared that Velvet Remedy had been right—the pianist had held the note for almost a sixty-fourth beat longer than it had needed to be. The pianist refused to play it again, and the song was distributed. None but Velvet Remedy cringed at the end of every playing of that recording.

The listeners thought nothing of the chord when they heard it now. It didn’t even occur to them that Rambler had practiced that chord for the past two months in preparation for this day; that he had slept with headphones on every night for the past two months, listening to that chord on repeat edited down to its appropriate length. When the time came, he hit the keys with the perfect amount of stress, held them down exactly as long as he needed to, and lifted them with the motion exactly as the piece demanded. He had played it as precisely as a machine. He had played it with as much discipline as a machine. He had played it with as much joy as a machine, with as much gravity, emotion, and mind as a machine. It might as well have been played by a robot.

The last note did not have enough time to fade away when the sound of the stamping of feet came over the speaker. The loud pops of jacks being yanked from their holes sounded like the pull of heartstrings. Then, a loud bang reverberated the recording room—the slamming of a door. Then, silence.

They knew the recording room was now deserted.

A minute later, there was a familiar hissing and cracking sound. Copper Chromite had opened another beer can.

“Pop music,” Copper Chromite was heard to grumble, almost inaudibly, after a moment’s silence. “Damn pop music. I’m sick of pop music.”

Not one in the cafeteria breathed a word. Nervous looks were exchanged between all. Such harsh words against music that they had grown up with, music that they all had listened to with delight ever since they had been children, songs that had the amazing ability to retain their meanings despite the frequency with which they were played—yet, not a single word they disagreed with. Copper Chromite’s ten words echoed in their skulls, latching onto an idea in their heads; yet, it was an incomplete idea, one that possessed the emotion of an indivisible, supreme idea, but one that was not realized, for they did not possess the sagacity and the eloquence with which to put it together. The result was that each one looked at each other with sorrowful eyes, a pathetic sense of forlorn audible in every breath, visible in every quiet nod of the head. The result was that one dared not to speak in the presence of Copper Chromite’s proclamation.

At length, a shuffling was heard in the studio. A loud rustle, as if somepony were exhaling deeply on something, came through the speaker; then, a few clicks, a few quiet rustlings, and finally, the ingenuous voice of Copper Chromite, not the affected, evasive accent of Cucro, was heard to say: “This next piece . . . this next piece is an oldie. This was made when they were not fortunate enough to have such equipment as I do now. This was my grandfather’s favorite piece. He used to play it all the time when I was little and when he was tasked with foalsitting me. I hated it; I always complained; but”—and here, Copper Chromite gave a sad, mournful laugh—“but he would always give me a smack under the chin and tell me that, when I turned his age, that nostalgia is the only thing you have, and that he would be damned if some smart aleck, snot-nosed brat would try to sully that. When I got older, when he started telling me stories about the war, he told me that the song I’m about to play next was the song that kept him and his buddies together while they were so far down under the water, in the midst of depth charges, reports of destroyed cities and of pillaged lands. That story was always my favorite; it was the only one that didn’t leave a sinking feeling in my chest.”

There was another pause. Littlepip could only hear the beat of her heart in the depths of her ears.

Copper Chromite swallowed. “This . . . this is for you, grandpa.”

A crackling noise came over the radio. Then, the sound of a joyous brass section came through. Though the horns sounded like they were either being played in a metal tube or underwater, none noticed. None commented. A few closed their eyes and swayed their heads to the beat. “I actually really like this song,” said Clover, sighing sadly.

The brass section played for about thirty seconds before the first verse started; and a young, tender female voice came through, the voice of some long-dead cultural icon, the object of desire of every sailor in the Royal Equestrian Navy; but her voice carried none of those dainty tones that were so common in the voices of the pop stars that they had all known. Though she sang with a wistful gayety, her voice was proud, sure, defiant even. And despite the subpar quality of the recording, it in no way detracted from the sure lyrics, nor from the intonation of the voice singing them:

They knock me down; I fall to the ground
But they don’t know it’s just a feign
I grit my teeth and pull up my coat
As I say “No!” and stand again

It spoke of a simple time: the time when justice prevailed. It spoke of a time where evil existed, but a time where that evil was impotent, laughable, puny in comparison to those who recognized it when they saw it. They knew that it was a simple time long past. But they knew that simple did not mean unrighteous or improper—from the song, they knew it meant exactly the contrary.

And the image of a terrified group of huddled submariners in the midst of a depth charge attack bursting into laughter and performing the motions of the feminine dance that went to this song brought a smile to the stable dweller’s face.

Chapter XII

Littlepip returned to work rather sullen.

She could not name the reason why she felt this way. Something inside her gnawed at her abdomen. Something averted her eyes inward the second she managed to focus them on the orthographic projections and the Pip-Buck in question.

It was a horrible feeling, she thought. It wrenched the stomach inside and out. But the physical pain was bearable. What was unbearable, what distracted her was that she could not name the reason why. She felt like an outsider in her own flesh. Her body revolted in the presence of something horrible, but her consciousness was aware of nothing.

It was a problem she had never encountered before and from which she could think of no resort: a problem that she couldn’t define. She couldn’t even tell herself whether it was trivial or grave. Was it a standing problem? she asked herself. No, she thought; if it were a standing problem, I’d have fixed it by now. It’s not a sitting problem either; I know what that feels like. Is it a lying on my back problem—or, even, a prostrate problem? I don’t think it’s either of those. Hell, I don’t think I’ve ever had a prostrate problem before. What would that feel like? I probably wouldn’t know what a prostrate problem looked like if I were presented with one. And I have no desire to find out. She figured that the lack of knowledge of what a prostrate problem actually was was a blessing in itself.

Perhaps Doctor Shrink would help, she thought. It’s been a while since I’ve talked to her. No, she decided; no, I can’t do that. What would I say? I don’t know why I’m feeling the way I am? I can imagine the response now: Welcome to life. Get used to it, because you’re going to be living in it for a while.

In the presence of nopony, by herself, alone, sitting on the floor, in front of the closet marked “Spare Parts,” the two posters still stared at her. They were the same posters as on the day before, and they still said the same things. But the one of Velvet Remedy had changed somewhat: She no longer looked genuinely eager and playful. She seemed to be affecting a nervous smile in the presence of the other poster, which leered at her with the same sly grin as before. But Velvet Remedy did not reject the leer; she looked as if she were simply uncomfortable in it but accepted it regardless. The leer had something to hold over its bright companion—an empty promise, unfulfilled.

Littlepip looked back to the Pip-Buck and to the projections. She thought back to her work in the morning. What had changed? She could distinguish no break in her work of that day in her memory. She thought she had gone to the cafeteria and had talked to her friends, but she couldn’t be sure.

It crept back to her. When she had voiced this last thought, it became more apparent than ever. I’m in that dream state again, she thought. I can’t distinguish between what happened before to what happened only in my imagination. It’s just like . . .

Littlepip set her tools down and immediately retired to her room.

Chapter XIII

She slept, hard, long, uninterruptedly. Her mind was completely blank. She had thought about nothing when she had been on the verge of falling asleep. No dreams came to her that night. In the morning, when she felt the gentle vibrating of her Pip-Buck at nine a.m., she woke up with a blank stare. She wasn’t tired; she wasn’t alert. Littlepip felt nothing.

It was only when she had alighted from her bed that she regretted that she had not had a nightmare. She craved that feeling of lightheartedness that the end of a nightmare brings, when the opening of one’s eyes dispels the notions that had existed a second before, allowing one to laugh at them, to see them in the light for what they really are, that they are nothing, ridiculous, absurd.

That morning, the tools were exactly where she had left them. She hoped that Velvet Remedy would be looking at her in a more appealing manner that morning; that she, Littlepip, had only imagined the change in her, Velvet Remedy’s, countenance on the evening before.

No such luck: the posters were the same. Littlepip wondered if Velvet Remedy had ever appeared welcoming and opening.

At one p.m., her Pip-Buck vibrated again, and Littlepip realized that she had been staring at the blank wall for the past four hours.

She thought nothing of it. Mechanically, her legs brought her body into a walking position, and she started toward the cafeteria.

The lunch crowd had long since dispersed, and the cafeteria was nearly empty. A few sat in the corners, chatting quietly with themselves. Littlepip recognized Terra Firma sitting at one of the raised stools at one of the circular tables; she was staring into the bottom of a mug. Silver Dollar was at the counter, his horn glowing, a rag moving through a soiled glass.

Littlepip sat down across from Terra Firma. “Hey,” she said.

Terra Firma’s ears perked up five seconds after the sound of the words should have reached her. She moved her head slowly upward. Littlepip looked into her eyes: they were red, tired; and covered with a glossy, mindless sheet. “Hey,” said Terra Firma.

“What are you drinking?” said Littlepip.

Terra Firma looked back into her mug. “Coffee.”

“I see.”

“You don’t drink coffee, do you?”

“No.”

“You probably should.”

Littlepip moved her hoof across the knobs of her Pip-Buck. She nearly fell off her chair when she saw, in her peripheral vision, the sudden tensing of Terra Firma’s neck muscles bringing her head sharply upward, the motion of a frightened cat. Terra Firma’s eyes were wide. “What are you doing?” she asked of Littlepip.

“I’m turning on the radio,” she responded. “I can’t stand this silence.”

“No!” yelled Terra Firma. It was almost a scream. “No, don’t turn it on!”

“Why not?”

Terra Firma opened her mouth to speak, her eyes wide. A noise escaped from her throat; it sounded like a terminated sneeze. Her eyelids drooped as her mouth closed. When her mouth was closed, she brought her neck down again. Littlepip did not see Terra Firma at the end of this process; all that remained of her was a white mane on a long blue neck topped with downcast ears.

Littlepip flicked the switch on her Pip-Buck. The voice was low and deep. It was growling as if it were angry, but it spoke with such a rapidity as to suggest gayety. She almost didn’t recognize it.

“Peaches, pears, plums, plums, so many plums, purple, white, gray, gray, gray, the thought sets up fire, I wonder why red, yellow, peaches, look like the wires, I should think the face of wires, hot, red, why they look at me, I look at them, what I see is blue, blue, eight, loud, box, boxes, mice, I think I hear them, in the walls, plaster with its plastery white, bright, light, fight, sight, sight is light, screw, chew, chew things, on the walls, in my head, in my head so much matter and tissue and stuff, lots of stuff, stuff everywhere, stuff is too much around, glare at holes, plugs, white holes, holes in everything, empty, full, empty fullness, I should like fullness and beans and aluminum, do we have enough? I don’t think so that is the case, but why the swirls and the light and the boxes and the mice and the . . .”

“What the hell?” said Littlepip.

“He’s been like that all day,” said Silver Dollar. “Just spouting incomprehensible nonsense. I don’t think he’s even taken a breath.”

“Well, maybe somepony should go down there and talk to him,” said Littlepip.

“Don’t,” said Silver Dollar. “He’s just doing it for attention. Don’t give him it. He’ll get bored eventually and shut up.”

“How long has he been doing this?”

“For the past four hours.”

“Silver, nopony just says nothing for four hours. Something’s wrong, I think. I think somepony should go, and maybe we should see, maybe look and see and . . . Terra Firma, are you crying?”

Terra Firma’s shoulders were heaving up and down heavily. Her face was pressed to the table. “No,” she said, her voice muffled by her own saliva, “I’m laughing.”

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s not funny; it’s absurd. It’s absurd ’cause he’s absurd. It’s absurd ’cause he can’t put words together. And I can’t put words together. I used to talk and talk and talk, no end to my talking, and it was fun and easy and free and fun. And today—don’t know ’bout you—I can’t talk. I can, but it’s not easy, and I’m really straining here. I think; I never stop thinking, but my thoughts don’t make sense; they come to me out of order, in gibberish; they hurt me; but I can’t stop them. And I try and I try to make sense of them, and it hurts to put them together so that you can barely understand me, and it’s a real effort, you know. But Copper’s . . . Copper’s not even tryin’ anymore. He’s just speaking, and I think it’s funny, ’cause how often can you hear someone’s thoughts so clear and all? It’s real funny.”

“But I thought you just said it wasn’t funny,” said Littlepip.

Terra Firma didn’t respond. She made a strangled gurgle. Littlepip could see a puddle collecting by the side of her head.

“. . . petulant perspicacious ponies poignant in prescient perniciousness, alliterative, injective, surjective, bijective, everything ‘ive’, everything has this ‘ive,’ can’t not have it, oh why does it roll, tumble, bumble down my tongue, hard, rough, papilla, papillae, should be pappilas, sounds strange and rolls weird, and I drone, drone and drawn words, hectic, wrenching, wrench, do I need a wrench, because I have screws, lose screws, screwdrivers, wrenches are wrenching, brutal, viscous, and I don’t want a brutal viscous luddite, temporary mischievousness in work, play, and song, though I like the song, and they sound good, sweet, and caramel is what I want, I have none in here, and I would like some very much, though it’s too hard to wrap and chew, and disgusting drool . . .”

“Turn it off,” said Silver Dollar.

“What is he saying?” said Littlepip.

“He’s saying nothing. He’s saying absolutely nothing.”

“It’s not possible to say so much and not say anything.”

“Well, he found a way, clearly. Goddamn, that’s getting annoying! Turn it off!”

“He’s saying something that I’m not understanding. I can’t just turn away.”

“If you try to make sense of it, you’ll end up however he is now. You can’t use reason to understand unreason. Now, if you don’t turn it off, then I will truly . . .”

“. . . small, weak, insignificant pipsqueak, Pip-Buck, little Pip-Buck, little, pip. Yes, Littlepip. That’s what I’m thinking about. Are you listening? Who listens to me? Hopefully, you do. I’m all alone down here in the studio. I’ve got nopony to talk to, and I’m all alone. I’ve got so much and yet so little. I have lots. A great deal of things that I’m dying to show. Will you come see what I have? I’ve got nothing. No, what am I saying? That’s not true. I’ve got something. Something very important. Is that not an incentive? Maybe you want to see what I have. It’s very nice. You’ll like it; I promise. And it’s just for you. Nopony else. They cannot see. You can. You’ll like it. Come down here. You know the place.”

And the frequency went dead.

Terra Firma lifted her head off the table. “Did . . . did I hear correctly?”

“I . . .” stammered Littlepip, “I think so. What . . . what do you think he wants?”

“That’s not what I’m thinking about,” said Terra Firma. “You don’t understand, Littlepip; I’ve been listening to it all day. It’s been just whatever words popped into his head at the time, all chaotic and confused. He’s never latched onto one, and when he did, it was only to repeat it mindlessly. And I didn’t understand it. I only understood that it was nothing. But he said your name, and . . . and I understood everything he said after he said your name. Your name passed through his head, and he stayed on it.”

Littlepip alighted from her chair.

“Oh!” said Silver Dollar. “I see what this is.”

“What is it?” said Littlepip.

“You tell me.”

“Huh?”

“I know. I know that you and him are planning something, some new big radio thing. Something to keep us entertained after years of staleness. What is it, Littlepip? What’s going to happen next on Cucro’s Frequency?”

“Honestly, Silver, I know as much as you do at this point.”

“Lies! I know they’re lies! All of them. Because, you see, ’Pip, I’m not stupid. Everypony thinks that Silver Dollar’s stupid. But he’s not! He’s much more observant than you give him credit for. They pretend, they did, Velvet Remedy and Copper Chromite. They pretended to not know what they were talking about. They pretended their conversations were not scripted when they really were. And it’s the same with you. You’re pretending that you don’t know what’s going on when you really do. I know it. With Copper, his radio, his room, everything he does, nothing is genuine. Everything’s deliberated upon, and everything’s deliberate. There are no accidents. There are no flukes of serendipity in the radio room. He likes to pretend that everything’s natural, but it’s not. I know it. We all know it! You come in here and turn on the radio, even though you know that I’ve turned off the cafeteria radio because he was being annoying, because that’s what you and him agreed to do. You feign incredulity when he finally says something to make me more convinced that what he said and your reaction were spontaneous. You say to me: ‘Silver, I don’t know what’s going on,’ because that’s what you were planning on saying when you knew I’d ask about it, and you think that I’m stupid enough to believe it. Well, it’s not working! . . . Why are you looking at me like I’m crazy, like you don’t know what I’m talking about? Drop the act. I’m sick, sick of acts! I can’t stand it when there’s talk behind the curtain, to show me, to show all of us, something; that there’s always something they’re trying to make me feel, think, and they’ve thought about the best way to react to me to make me feel what they want me to feel. And I know they do this! And I won’t put up with it! I’m sick of Velvet Remedy, Copper Chromite, all of those who are in on it. And now you! Why can’t you just tell us what you’re planning? Just for once, I’d like some honesty in this damned stable. Tell me, huh? What are you planning? . . . Oh, walk away, fine! Pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. Don’t even give me the dignity of a glance or a response! I didn’t want you here anyway. Get the hell out of my cafeteria!”

Chapter XIV

Littlepip braved the walk down the hallway, her head held high.

Though she felt the walls closing on her, though she felt her vision blurring as her brain began to draw erroneous conclusions from the lack of any distinctive marks in the hallway, she kept her walk straight, for she knew where she was going, whom she was going to see, and why. Her purpose was clear in her mind, and though the hall intimidated her, this kept her going. It wasn’t difficult, but she thought back to the first who walked down that hallway; she thought of Copper Chromite, barely an adolescent, who had first skipped down the hallway after it had been abandoned, not knowing where he was going, not knowing what was at the end, not knowing if there even was an end, just for the purpose of exploration and knowledge. Maybe that kept him from feeling dizzy? she thought. She wondered what that would be like: to have the only motor of her being, the only thing protecting her in a hostile new world, a thirst for knowledge. It was probably wonderful.

She turned the last left and beheld the two steel doors. The one on the right gave forth a bright yellow glow from its margins.

She approached it undeterred but cautiously hesitant, like a cat at the sight of the red dot of a laser pointer. She put a hoof in the distorted yellow square in front of the door. It didn’t burn; it felt like nothing. But it gave her skin a strange shine, a color that she had never seen before, indescribable. The borders of the door allowed the passage of this light; but the light seemed to only pass in one direction, out of the room, making it impossible to look inside. The brightness appeared to her as a living sentry; it quivered as she moved through it but watched with a heavy stare, a stare powerful enough to eradicate the very thought of trying to see the subject it protected without express permission. It consciously deterred her.

She raised her hoof to knock, and only then did she see the sign. It was a white sheet of printer paper taped to the front of the door. It said “The Inviolable Domain of CuCrO.” In a different color pen, somepony had messily and hastily scribbled the subscripts 2, 2, and 5 under the u, the r, and the O respectively.

The second her hoof landed on the door in the form of a knock, the light went out. She heard the shuffling of beer cans banging against one another, combined with the rustling of papers. Another sound which she could not place also came to her ear: the sound of rattling plastic, glass?

Then, suddenly—silence. She stared at the metal door, expecting it to open any second. The door did not budge. She pushed her face to the metal. Silence. She could hear nothing. But, though she wouldn’t admit it to herself, she could have sworn that she felt something on the other side: the metal was hot, not cold like steel, almost as if there were another face pressed to the other side—like some sort of standoff.

She pulled her face away and looked at her Pip-Buck. At two minutes, she thought, I’m leaving.

At the one minute thirty second mark, she turned her head to the left to glance at the other door. It was just a glance, not even that, a twitch. When she turned back, she recoiled with such a force that all four of her feet left the ground. She screamed as she fell.

Copper Chromite was standing two inches away from her face.

He looked the same as he always did, disheveled, unkempt, tired. That close to him, Littlepip could see rivulets of sweat on his forehead and cheeks. She was surprised; she had expected his mane hairs to be standing on their ends, like those of the stereotypical mad scientists. She expected a frenzied, chaotic look in his eyes, his tongue to hang loosely from his mouth; all the while desperately trying to affect a smile like the Stable Colt, coming close, but not close enough, to a genuine grin—in short, an eerie appearance. But Copper Chromite didn’t look as if he were trying to affect any artificial appearance, and he didn’t look condescending, judgmental, or sarcastic, as he usually did. He had not even reacted to her scream. Rather, he just stared at her blankly, through her, as if she weren’t even there, his mouth closed, his ears downcast, his eyelids drooping.

“God, Copper!” said Littlepip, pulling herself to her feet. “I didn’t even hear you come out. You scared the hell out of me!”

For a second, he was silent. Littlepip’s words hung in the air around his head, hovering like a cloud of flies waiting for the second that they would be permitted a landing. When they found their mark, Copper Chromite’s ears first perked up. His eyes then flared to life, darting left and right before settling on Littlepip.

She expected a smile; she got a stare of confusion.

“Littlepip?” he said. “What . . . what are you doing here?”

“You told me to come here, didn’t you?”

“Yes . . .” he murmured, staring at the floor, “yes, now that I think about it, I do believe I did . . .” With a snap, his eyes refocused. He was staring at her with a fervor that she had never seen before, and he smiled. “That’s right, I did! But I didn’t think you’d actually come. Ugh, what was I saying before that! I don’t remember. I didn’t think anypony was listening. I remember getting a hold of myself after I asked you to come.”

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t remember what you said either. Nopony does.”

“And . . .” he went on, “and you just came?”

“Yes.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you asked me to. It sounded like you needed me.”

“I asked you to come, and you did? Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“And you weren’t expecting anything? I didn’t have to bargain, to offer you something in return, and you came just because I wanted you to?”

“Yes,” said Littlepip. Then she turned her head, slightly ashamed, and said: “Well, no, not exactly. You said that you had something for me and that it was really important.”

“I did?” Copper Chromite bowed his head. “Oh, yes, right. I did say that.”

“Well?” said Littlepip.

“‘Well’ what?”

“What do you have?”

Copper Chromite blinked. “Oh, yes. Well, I can’t really tell you. It’d just be better if I showed you what it was.”

Littlepip shrugged. “All right, then. I’m here. Show me.”

“It’s in my room.”

“Show me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s in my room.”

“So?”

“I don’t let anypony into my room.”

Littlepip groaned. “That’s fine. Just bring it out here, then.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because what I have to show you, it can’t . . . well, I don’t know how to explain it, but . . . it needs to be in my room when I tell you, that is. I don’t want to bring it out.”

“So,” said Littlepip, putting a hoof to her head, “what you have for me has to be given to me in your room, but you don’t let anypony in your room, so you can’t give it to me?”

“That is correct.”

She sighed. “Well, I suppose we’re at an impasse then!”

“Yes. It appears that way.” Copper Chromite made no motion. He stared at her as if he were waiting for her to respond.

She turned on her heels to leave.

“Wait!” yelled Copper Chromite, the second she took a step down the hallway.

Littlepip turned back around. “Are you going to show me what you have, or are you just going to stand there like an idiot and waste my time?”

Copper Chromite said nothing.

“Well?” said Littlepip.

“I’m thinking,” he said.

She turned to leave.

“Wait!” he yelled. “Alright, alright, alright!”

“‘Alright’ what?” she said, not turning to face him.

“Alright, you can . . .” He ground his teeth together and winced. “You can . . . come in.”

She turned around, with a smile. She trotted toward him. “Alright!” she said. “We’re getting somewhere!”

“But! stop!” he said. “It’s conditional.”

She stopped. “Fine. What is it?”

“Touch nothing.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me: touch nothing. I’ll let you in, but you can’t touch a single thing you see. Got it?”

Littlepip rolled her eyes. “Fair enough.”

“Alright, then.”

He pushed on the door, opening it just enough for a body to slip through. “Come on,” he said, gesturing to her with a forehoof. “Quickly, quickly.”

She looked. It was pitch-black in the room behind him. She could see nothing in the room, not even the shape of anything on the floor. The light from the hallway penetrated three inches through the threshold and stopped abruptly. It seemed unnatural.

When she stepped through, her face was assaulted with an overbearing heat. It felt as if a giant creature were continuously exhaling its warm, putrid breath into the room. And putrid it was: what she smelled could only be described as an invasion of the nose—sweat, rotten food, decaying plaster, body odor. For a second, she thought she smelled drying fish. But, all in all, she was surprised at how much she didn’t mind it. The rest of the stable smelled like nothing, sterility and blankness; the rest of the stable was stone cold. But this room felt like a warm hug. She felt the heat as a breath, the smell as a mosaic—and her senses told her that something existed in this room, something other than a zero.

“Where’s the light switch?” she asked.

“I don’t have one,” he said.

“How do you work, then?”

He said nothing. She saw him disappear into the darkness in front of her. “Copper?” she asked. “What do you have to give me?”

“I’m getting it for you,” he said. “Close the door, would you?”

She stood three inches from the door. She did not want to push it any farther, much less close it. It was slightly ajar, and it let in the only light into the room. Save for a few inches in from the threshold, the room was in complete darkness. But this darkness was not like the darkness in the basement, an empty, void, free darkness, where thoughts could fly on any whim, unrestricted, unchecked, unquestioned; the darkness in this room felt heavy, firm, close, suffocating—suffocating not in the sense of oppression but in the sense of authority, a darkness as black as the robe of a judge, a darkness that watched her thoughts closely, preparing to rule upon them with firm and disinterested attention, about to decide which of her thoughts were appropriate and which ones were unbecoming to a creature of her intelligence. Thus, her brain refused to process Copper Chromite’s last sentence. She leaned softly against the door; it started to move; she saw that it was shunting the light from the room; she leapt off of the door in a flash, with the same fervor and panic as if she had just seen a pool of water in the desert drying up.

A shape approached her out of the darkness; its body was straight, but its head was elongated and swaying back and forth, much like a hammerhead shark. When it came closer, she recognized Copper Chromite. In his mouth was a long, rolled-up piece of paper. “Here,” he said, through his teeth. “This is for you.”

He opened his mouth as Littlepip lit her horn, taking it away from him and levitating it. She was slightly more comfortable now; the glow of her horn gave a little bit more light—though not enough to see around her and not enough to see Copper Chromite completely. “What is it?” she said.

“Unroll it, and look at it.”

“I can’t see,” she said. “Where’s the light switch?”

“I told you; there isn’t one in my room.”

She groaned but unrolled it regardless. The little amount of light from the hall only permitted her to see the title, in block letters, across the poster: GENERATION II Pip-Buck PROJECTION.

“This is . . .” she said, “this is great, Copper, but I already have one.”

“Are you sure?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. She moved her eyes down the poster, lifting it higher and higher so that the ray of light could traverse the page. “I was working with it in the cafeteria when I was talking to you, and—”

She stopped in mid-sentence when she saw the symbol in the bottom-right corner: a circle etched within another circle; two dotted lines, one vertical, one horizontal, bisecting both circles through the middle, the horizontal one bisecting a trapezoid—to the right of the circles.

“Copper . . .” she said. “Is this . . . is this . . .”

“Yes,” he said, “a third-angle projection.”

The whiteness of her face in surprise could almost be seen in the darkness. “My God, Copper . . . my God! I’ve been struggling for days on a single Pip-Buck. I haven’t gotten any work done, because I only have one projection, and it’s first-angle, and I can’t read it . . .”

“I saw you struggling in the cafeteria,” he replied. “First-angle projections, can you imagine anything more unintuitive? And I thought, hey, I think I have a third-angle one in my room somewhere. Though I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t want to get your hopes up in case I didn’t have it. But I did. Don’t ask me why; I just did.”

“I’ve been looking everywhere for this! Thank you!”

“Don’t mention it.”

She breathed rapidly. She couldn’t remember a time when she was more happy. He said nothing but let her enjoy it. She couldn’t see his face, but she felt his presence implying a smile.

“So,” she said, setting down the projections beside her, “is that what you wanted to give me? I mean—don’t get me wrong—I’m not complaining. I’m very happy, truly happy.”

“Well . . .” he said. “No, not entirely.”

“What?”

“That was just an excuse. That’s not really what I wanted to give you—I mean, I did, but it wasn’t the whole thing, you know?”

“What is it?” she said.

There was a pause. “Close the door,” he said.

The smile drained from Littlepip’s face. She looked to the door. It was open slightly; a sliver of white light permitted her the sight of the entrance to the room and the vague silhouette of Copper Chromite in front of her. “It . . .” she stammered, “it is closed.”

“No,” he said, “I can see light coming from the hallway.”

“It’s closed enough.”

“No, that’s not closed. Closed is when you push it until it goes click. That’s closed. That”—she saw the gesture of his forehoof in the direction behind her—“is not closed.”

“Oh, come on, Copper. Why all the secrecy? It’s unnecessary. Just give me what you wanted to give me, and—”

“I’m not doing a damn thing until you close the door!”

His voice took the tone of an order and sent ice through Littlepip’s veins. It froze her to the spot. It was rage, not very much, but pure, concentrated, and potent—all the more terrifying because she had never seen it before in him. She heard him breathing heavily. “Alright,” she said. “Alright, no need to get angry.” She leaned against the door. When the light went out completely, when all she saw was black, she heard the click.

“There,” said Copper Chromite, “that wasn’t too hard, was it?”

“So what is it?” she said.

“Give me a second.” She heard him shuffling away from her.

Then came that familiar sound: beer cans, plastic, a general rummaging among miscellaneous parts. It sounded exactly as it did when she heard it on the radio. She laughed.

“What’s so funny?” she heard from the darkness. The clash of plastic stopped.

The voice was a judgment. She stopped laughing. “Nothing, nothing,” she said.

The noise continued.

She stood there for minutes; she knew it was minutes, but she was too confused to count them. It could have been two minutes; it could have been twenty. The sound continued. She said, too anxious to stand there and say nothing: “So, what do you work on in here? I mean, when you’re not on the radio, of course.”

“Myself,” he said.

“What?”

“I work on myself.”

“Yes . . .” she said, slightly dejected, “yes, of course you do.”

“Do you feel anything around your feet?”

“What?”

“I said: Do you feel anything around your feet? Any wires, objects—anything?”

“No,” she said, shuffling her feet, “I don’t think so.”

“Don’t move!” he yelled. “Stay exactly as you are. Don’t even flex a muscle.”

She obeyed. The silence grew once more. “Copper,” she said, at length, “you once said that you were working on earth pony magic in here.”

“I never said that. But I suppose if you want to think about it that way, you’re not entirely wrong.”

“It’s funny,” she said, “’cause I didn’t know that earth ponies could use magic. I only thought unicorns could.” She opened her eyes as wide as possible, hoping that her pupils had dilated enough to allow her to see him. It was pitch-black. She saw nothing.

“We can,” he said. The rummaging stopped. “Well, it’s not exactly ‘magic’ in the sense that unicorns think about it, but it’s definitely a force peculiar to earth ponies, just as powerful, arguably more so, than unicorn magic. And more difficult to harness, too.”

She scoffed. “Yeah, right. Try levitating something using only your mind, and then get back to me.”

“I’m serious,” he replied. “Earth pony magic requires a greater use of the mind than unicorn magic. It’s so difficult, in fact, that most earth ponies don’t even try. That’s why you think that earth ponies don’t have any powers; most of them don’t even try to use it—it’s that difficult.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she said.

“You already have,” he said. She heard a click. “Alright, there.”

“Ready to show me?” she said.

“Yes. Now, close your eyes. Shut them tight.”

“What?”

“Close your eyes. Don’t even peek. Shut them as tight as possible.”

“Copper, I can’t see anything as it is, much less see what you have.”

“I’m not going to warn you again. Close your eyes.” This wasn’t an order. It took the tone of a friendly, caressing suggestion.

“Before I do anything you say, first tell me what the hell—”

Her sentence was cut short when she felt a pierce to her brain, like a knife, straight through both her eyes. She screamed. Reflexively, she slammed her eyelids shut and collapsed to the ground. Even with both her hooves over her eyes, she still felt the surge make its implacable course straight through the middle of her head. In her confused mess of thoughts, she knew it to be an overload: her eyes had received too many signals too quickly, and the inundation had burned out her brain. She didn’t see blackness; she saw too much whiteness, too quickly, and she couldn’t process it all. The firing of her neurons haphazardly felt like a lightning strike to her head every time one fell. She writhed on the ground, moaning.

“I told you,” she heard a voice indistinctly say. She heard a slightly condescending and contemptuous laugh.

“What hell, Copper!” she screamed, her hooves over her eyes. “What did you do!”

“What do you see?” he said, his voice calm.

“I see nothing!” she yelled. “I’m blind!”

“Look harder,” he said. “You saw something, and it was powerful. It was so powerful that you can’t ignore it, nor unsee it. Look hard, and you should still be able to see it. What is it?”

“I don’t see anything!”

“Describe it to me.”

“It’s nothing!” She squeezed her eyes as tightly as possible. “It’s . . . it’s a sort of . . . bulbous extrusion, kind of like a teardrop, but much fatter.”

“Is it cold like a teardrop?”

“No,” she said, her eyes still closed, “no it’s . . . warm. Unbelievably warm. Hot. Burning. It’s burning me! It’s left its imprint! I can’t get rid of it! Help! Don’t just stand there!”

“Is that all you see? Is there anything inside the teardrop?”

“No! That’s all!”

“Are you sure? Look harder.”

“There’s nothing, there’s . . .” She felt her mind beginning to cool. The pain ebbed. “There’s . . . something in the teardrop.”

“What is it?”

“It’s . . . it’s kind of a screwy kind of thing, a screw. A coil of some sort, straight through the middle of it.”

“And is the screw hot or cold?”

Her voice flattened out. “It’s unbelievably hot. Copper, I take it back: The teardrop is cold. It only looks and feels warm because of this screw. The screw burns red, red hot. It’s hotter, redder, and brighter than a stove element. It’s warm. . . . It’s inviting.”

“Open your eyes. Carefully, now.”

It hurt, but she was only aware of the pain in that it existed; it did not get to her, and it did not deter her from looking:

At the end of the room sat a short, plastic beige box. Wires connected on either end of the box. On the top of the box was the tear-shaped extrusion. It was bright, brighter than anything Littlepip had seen before. She wanted to look at it, but it was too bright to stare at directly. It seemed to command her, telling her that her eyes were unworthy to behold it in its full glory, that she would have to make do with what it gave. Beams of yellow dust shot out from the extrusion, each serving as conduits of light to every cubic millimeter of the room, like the passage of blood through an infinite number of arteries. And the light was . . .

“Yellow,” Littlepip breathed.

“What?” said Copper Chromite.

“The light that that thing is giving off. It’s not white. It’s yellow.”

“Yes it is.”

She rose, shakily, made more difficult by her uncooperative head, which would not turn away from the light source for even a second.

“What . . . what is it?” she stammered, hypnotized.

“It’s a lightbulb, Littlepip.”

“That?” She stared at him incredulously and gestured to the light with a forehoof. “That is not a lightbulb. Out here”—she reached for the door—“these—”

“Don’t you even think of opening that door,” said Copper Chromite.

He didn’t have to explain himself. No explanation was necessary. She obeyed. She understood exactly why she had no choice but to obey.

“But . . . but that light . . .” she said, “that light is yellow. That’s not the right color for light. Light is white.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“But I could’ve sworn—” And then, her eyes lit up, trying their best to imitate the bulb, and she exclaimed: “Oh God, you’re right! Light is yellow! In all the picture books we read as children, light is drawn yellow! I . . . I never questioned it; it just seemed right. But I’ve never seen yellow light before; I’ve never seen actual yellow light until right now. Why haven’t I? Copper, what is that?”

“The stable uses fluorescent lightbulbs. This is an incandescent lightbulb.”

“What?”

“This lightbulb doesn’t use mercury vapor to make ultraviolet light. Instead, that coil in the middle—you can’t see it right now because it’s too bright, but you saw it in the afterimage—is made completely of tungsten. Tungsten has the highest melting of all the metals. Tungsten stands even when the metals around it have long since liquified; and the sign of its rebellion, its refusal to submit, is a light brighter than any beacon that I know of. And why shouldn’t it be?”

“Incandescence . . .” was all Littlepip could say.

“I light this room only with incandescent lightbulbs. I found a stash in the basement a few years back, and I only use them. The sockets in this room”—he pointed to the long, cylindrical holes on the ceiling—“take only fluorescent lightbulbs. So I built this circuit here—watch your step, don’t want to electrocute yourself—to power this lightbulb. I only use incandescence to light this room. My grandfather would always sit in the dark. He said that he would rather see nothing than see the unnatural white light given off by the fluorescent bulbs. He always asked for incandescent lightbulbs, and he was always refused them. He said he liked them better, because the light they gave was the same yellow as the sun. How many bulbs do I need to light this room, Littlepip? How many do I have connected to this circuit?”

“You have the sun in your room . . .”

In just the light of the one bulb, the room was completely illuminated. Littlepip stood in awe of the things around her. Beer cans were littered everywhere, covering the floor almost completely, lying on, below, and beside various colored wires that ran from unknown sources and ended nowhere. Breadboards were almost as abundant; they mingled with the beer cans, and the rest had been thrown into a box on a flimsy wooden table occupying the entire right wall of the room with no system of organization, the box overflowing. On this table, cluttered to the left and right sides, various boxes with numerous switches, displays, dials, and buttons, stacked one on top of the other and sat like building blocks. Wires snaking from the backs of these boxes went around the desk, behind it, onto the floor. In the middle of the table sat a microphone; next to it was an old computer terminal. Various papers, some blank, some with thousands of unreadable digits, lay strewn across the table, across the wires, across the boxes. In the corner of the room was a sleeping bag, right by the lightbulb. Next to the door was a small table, a nightstand, sitting on top of which was an oscilloscope; an adhesive note had been attached to the oscilloscope’s display, and it read: “Fix me!”

She had not expected to be struck dumb, reverent by the sight of so much trash. She had never felt reverence. She had thought that the first time she would have experienced it would be in the presence of something big; she had not thought that it would have been brought on by the sight of beer cans and chaos. No, she thought, it wasn’t chaos. There was a method to this. It was the organized habitat of a unique creature. He knew where everything was at any given moment. Everything, from the crumpled beer can to the computer terminal, was exactly where it was meant to be and served a very specific purpose. She now understood why he had not wanted her to touch anything.

The other room, separated by the one-way window, did not allow the passage of light from the incandescent lightbulb; thus, it remained dark.

Copper Chromite was sitting on a small swivel chair in front of the table. He pressed a key on the computer, and the screen flickered on.

Littlepip laughed.

“What’s so funny?” said Copper Chromite.

“There were so many legends circulating about your room once upon a time. We thought you were crazy. But you’re the most normal out of all of us.”

“I never understood that,” he said. “There’s no secret, no inexplicable phenomena—it’s just me and my room.”

Littlepip chuckled again. “You said you were working on earth pony magic.”

“I never said that. I said that earth ponies do have powers, and I was using mine.”

“Where?”

Copper Chromite gestured to the lightbulb. “There it is.”

Littlepip groaned. “Oh, come on, Copper! That’s just electricity.”

“Yes.”

“How is that ‘earth pony magic’?”

“How is it not?” he said, standing up. He was not looking at her; he was looking at the bulb. “Electricity is one of the fundamental forces of the earth. I channel it so that it passes through a chemical element, a pure substance which comes from the earth, and I make these things do what I want. I have these earthly artifacts, which were useless and scattered initially—I have them harnessed for my own purposes, to serve me and my own needs. Before, electricity only killed. Before, tungsten just took up space. Now, electricity is the most useful force known to us. Now, tungsten is the most useful substance we know of. And these things come from the earth. This utility hasn’t always existed. These things were useless, even dangerous, on their own. Something put them together and made them how we know them today. What would you call it, then, the ability to tame this most deadly of forces the earth can produce, to create utility from uselessness? ‘Earth pony power’—I don’t like the word ‘magic’—it implies something innate, instinctual, unlearned—is the quickest way I can describe this.”

“Huh,” said Littlepip, scratching her head, “I never thought about it that way. I suppose you’re right.”

Copper Chromite said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the lightbulb. He raised his neck and sighed contentedly, like a father proud at his son, before turning around and sitting down on the chair in front of the terminal.

Littlepip stood alone, watching him type. Suddenly she gasped. Her eyes went wide. She had just realized something that had been screaming indistinctly at her; she had not recognized it until this very moment.

“What is it?” said Copper Chromite, turning to face her.

“Where is he?” she said, her voice in a frenzy. She dove for the stack of papers.

“Don’t touch anything!” screamed Copper Chromite.

She stopped herself. Instead, she spun around in a circle, jerkily, inconsistently, looking all around the room. “Where is he!” she yelled.

“Where’s who?”

“I can’t find him!”

“Whom can’t you find?”

She turned to him. “The Stable Colt! Where is he?”

Copper Chromite sighed. “I tried to get rid of him completely in my room, but he’s still here. In one place. One place where I couldn’t get rid of him.”

“Where?”

Copper Chromite turned the knob of his Pip-Buck and flashed the screen to her after he settled on the right page. “Here,” he said. He was showing her the About screen.

“Oh, that doesn’t count!” she said.

“Why not?”

“It just . . .” she said, spinning back around, “never mind.”

She looked around the room a few times, in disbelief. Copper Chromite didn’t seem to notice.

On her third spin, something bright, something colorful, something that danced in the light of the incandescent bulb as the spinning of her body cast waves of shadows across the walls, caught her attention. By the threshold to the room, on a small wooden shelf on a wall about head height stood a long, tall tube of glass. The tube was cylindrical, except for the top, which summated in a point like the spire of a skyscraper. In the midst of the tube, hovering as if by magic, were ellipses of various colors, blue, turquoise, orange, teal, navy—but these colors were not random; rather they were calculated, clear, defined in shape. She drew closer. The tube was filled with a clear liquid. The ellipses were bulbs, fat spheres with pointed tops; these bulbs were also clear, and they appeared to have their own liquids inside of their bodies; the liquids inside these bulbs were dyed brilliantly, each one a different color, each one shining as if it had its own light. She noticed on each bulb, fixed to the bottom, there was a golden ring with a golden plate hanging from it; they looked exactly like modest earrings. Four of the bulbs were floating; three had sunk completely to the bottom; one floated directly in the middle of the tube.

“Copper . . .” she breathed.

“Yes?” said Copper Chromite, spinning around in his chair.

“My God, Copper,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful.”

“What is?”

“This.” She didn’t point or gesture. She stood, mesmerized.

Copper Chromite didn’t need an explanation to understand the cause of her admiration. “It sure is,” he said. “Do you like it?”

“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Yes. Another example of earth pony power. The earth has many things; electricity is just the obvious one, and—what are you doing? Step away from it!”

“I have to touch it,” she said. “I have to.”

“No!” he screamed. “You promised! You promised not to touch anything!”

“Copper,” she said, turning to him, “I have to.”

“Will you die if you don’t touch it?”

There was a pause. She stared at him, fully, openly, completely exposed to him, and said, without irony, without humor, without a hint of disingenuousness:

“Yes.”

Copper Chromite sighed. “Fine,” he said, as if defeated. “Just be really, really, really careful.”

But as soon as she lit her horn, as soon as he saw the slow motion with which the glass tube descended from the shelf and floated toward her, he knew that his last sentence to her had been unnecessary. Not ever taking her eyes off of it for a second, not ever ceasing to cast her levitation magic on it, she held it in the curve of her forehoof like a mother holding an infant. The bulbs clinked against each other, against the wall of the tube as she held it, swaying it back and forth with a gentle, pendulous motion. “It’s so . . . delicate,” she said. “I feel if I were just to turn it horizontally, it would crack under its own weight.”

Copper Chromite said nothing; he only looked upon her and upon the tube with dreamy, tired eyes—but filled with proud contentment.

“What is it supposed to mean?” said Littlepip.

“What?”

“Who’s the artist? Do I know him?”

“It’s not a sculpture or an artistic statement.”

She looked back at it, at the vivid colors, at the bulbs. The bulbs, though sculpted in the same image, differed slightly from one another: some were more lopsided than others, some slanted more, some were longer, some were fatter. The colors were pure, clean. The glass was smooth, almost invisible. The liquid had not the faintest impurity in it.

“What?” said Littlepip, in disbelief. “What is it, then?”

“It’s a tool.”

“This,” she said, with a smirk, “this is too delicate to be a tool. What does it do?”

“It’s a thermometer.”

Littlepip raised her brow in confusion. “What?”

“Look closely at the tags.”

She looked at the golden plates hanging off of each bulb. “There are numbers!” she exclaimed.

“Yes. It tells the temperature.”

“How does it do that?”

“Earth pony power.”

She scowled at him. “Be more specific.”

“It uses a fundamental law of nature to provide something of use and convenience. As the temperature in the air changes, the temperature of the liquid changes. As the temperature of the liquid changes, its density changes. I’m not entirely sure what the liquid is, but it’s a liquid to which the densities at certain temperatures are known. Each bulb is individually blown to make sure they’re all the same mass and density. The densities of each are then adjusted to certain temperatures by the addition of the tags. As the liquid gets warmer, it becomes less dense. Each bulb’s density is slightly different, and it equals the density of the liquid at a certain temperature. The bulbs rise and fall depending on the density of the liquid, so you can tell the temperature that way.”

Littlepip held the thermometer vertically. “So how do I read it?”

“The bulb that is neutrally buoyant displays the correct temperature.”

She looked. One bulb was floating in the middle. She squinted and looked at its tag. “It’s sixty-eight degrees . . . ‘F.’” She looked at Copper Chromite with bemusement. What are degrees ‘F’?”

“Degrees Fahrenheit,” he responded. “It’s how they measured temperature in the old world.”

She cocked her head to one side. “What’s that in degrees Rankine?”

“Add four hundred sixty to it.”

She eyeballed the glass. “It’s five hundred twenty-eight degrees in here . . .” Her voice trailed off. Littlepip realized that she had no reference for that number. The Pip-Buck did not have a thermometer function. The number, five hundred twenty-eight, floated just like the bulbs; but, unlike the bulbs, the number floated in nothing, over nothing. They were just words, meaningless units, grounded to nothing.

“The refrigerator in the cafeteria is maintained at about four hundred ninety-five degrees,” said Copper Chromite, as if he had heard the unspoken qualm that she could not help but transmit through the room. “To cook a pizza, an oven has to be about eight hundred sixty degrees.”

“Huh,” she said, scratching her chin, “I . . . I could have sworn that it was much warmer in here.”

“I’ve got a million electronics running in here, in this small room, and no air conditioning, not to mention that the incandescent lightbulb gives off more heat than light. It’s much warmer in here than in the rest of the stable.”

Littlepip shivered.

“Actually,” said Copper Chromite, “funny story ’bout that. My grandfather gave it to me as a birthday present on the day I got my Pip-Buck. He said that he had this bag, you see, when he was wandering through the destroyed wasteland of Equestria. He said he collected things that grabbed his attention, the things that had color in the bleakness of the world around him. That was one of the things, he said. He said that when he stumbled into the stable, they made him get rid of his bag, but he said that he forced them, somehow, to let him keep that. I’ll tell you’”—Copper Chromite smiled—“grandpa was a cool guy, but he said the most ludicrous things at times.”

Littlepip smirked. “Really!” she blurted. “Out of everything your grandfather said, that is what you don’t believe?”

“Well, I mean,” he said, “for one thing, what saddlebag would be big enough to hold it? But, more importantly, just look at it: It’s flawless. It’s so delicate and perfect. There’s no way something like that could have survived out there. It would have been the first thing destroyed.”

She stood there holding the thermometer with her magic and cradling it with a foreleg for a long time. At length, she spoke: “Copper . . . do you ever feel that in the presence of something beautiful, something better than you, something you admire, can only aspire to but can never fully reach, you feel unworthy just to touch it, to look at it, to be in the same room as it?”

“Never in my life. Only recently. Before, I’d only heard about that feeling from others. Others told me that it was the most humbling feeling in the world, that it was the most wonderful feeling that one could ever aspire to; but to me, it sounded horrible. And when I finally did feel it, I realized I had been right: it’s a horrible feeling, feeling small and insignificant. But that . . . that was my fault.”

“I feel that way about this thermometer right now.” She staggered. “I can’t hold it anymore. I have to put it down.”

“Put it back, then.”

She turned toward the shelf for an instant—then turned back. She approached the table.

“What are you doing?” said Copper Chromite.

“I’m not going to put it on the shelf in the corner. It’s too good for that.”

“Put it back on the shelf, Littlepip.”

“No, Copper!” It was a plea. “No! I’m not going to put it where it’s going to collect dust. It needs to be right here, on your table, in the middle of the room, right in the direct beam of the lightbulb.”

“I did not invite you into my room so you could rearrange my things!” he yelled. “Put it back on the shelf!”

“But, Copper!” she shrieked, “on the shelf, it’s put away; it doesn’t shine like it’s supposed to! You can’t use it for anything—can you even see the tags at that distance? If it’s on the table, it’ll be the first thing you see when you enter the room. You’ll open the door and beauty will be there to greet you, and it will reflect the light from the lightbulb in every direction; it will be the most brilliant thing in the stable. On the shelf, it’s away; you can’t see it, and if you can’t see it, then nopony can see it, and—”

She stopped herself in mid-sentence. Copper Chromite’s expression was unchanged, but she saw in the reflection of his eyes the true meaning of her own sentence, and she saw in his previous sentences what he had been meaning to say, like suddenly seeing an addendum written in red ink in the margins of a statement.

“Alright,” she said, “I’ll put it back.”

“Thank you.”

As slowly as the first time, she raised the glass tube with her magic, guiding it on the right path away from her with her forehoof. Though she set it as gently as she could on the table, the bulbs shuddered against the wall of the glass, twisting and convulsing as if struck through their hearts. The clinking sounded like a cry. The sixty-eight degree bulb shook longer than the rest, turned forward and back, as if it were trying to fly to the warmness of the bulbs at the top but instead being sucked down by the coldness of the bulbs at the bottom. It twisted, unsure, fighting against a force that couldn’t be seen—then it stopped, settled out; and slowly, imperceptibly, it began to ooze downward until it settled soundlessly on the cold bulbs at the bottom. The whole process looked like that of a creature being drowned.

There were now no neutrally buoyant bulbs in the thermometer.

She looked back to Copper Chromite. He had not seemed to notice. He was staring at his computer screen.

She stepped behind him cautiously, quietly, and looked. From the top of the screen to the bottom showed the lines of his past commands. The very last line showed his current working directory. A small green rectangle sat on the last line, blinking as the computer waited for another order.

Copper Chromite began to type. Littlepip squinted and leaned closer to the screen. The rectangle moved as he typed and left behind it as a trail the command:

rm shittyrecording.flac

Copper Chromite slammed the enter key on his keyboard with such a fervor that the rattling of plastic nearly popped the caps lock key out of its socket. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “That felt good,” he breathed.

“What did you just delete?” said Littlepip.

“The recording that Velvet Remedy made yesterday.”

Littlepip blinked as the question came to her. It was an innocent question, and she wasn’t quite sure where it had come from, but she knew the answer to it was the explanation of the feeling that had pulled at her for the past two days.

“Why was it called ‘shittyrecording’?” she asked.

Copper Chromite spun slowly in his chair toward Littlepip. Even before he established eye contact with her, she could see that he was scowling derisively. His mouth was slightly ajar.

“What?” said Littlepip.

“That is literally the dumbest question I’ve ever heard in my entire life.”

Littlepip groaned. “You know what I mean!”

“No, I don’t.”

“I mean . . . why was it shitty?”

“You liked it?”

“No, I didn’t say that. I asked why it was shitty.”

Copper Chromite closed his eyes. He bent his neck, put a forehoof to his head, and sighed. “Were you listening to the broadcast?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember when I had to go answer the door?”

“Yes. Who was that?”

He did not look at her when he spoke next. He stared absentmindedly at the screen of his Pip-Buck. “It was the overmare. Out of all the times for her to come! Well . . . she wanted me to read one of those speeches she writes for me—you know, the kind that I have to say every so often as a condition for my broadcasting. I mean, usually, I don’t mind; they’re innocuous enough, and I usually say them at the end of the show when nopony’s listening, and I say them as fast as possible. So she came to me and said that I had to say that—what I said before the recording started. I told her that that was fine, I didn’t mind, and I would do it after we recorded the song. But this time . . . but this time, for whatever reason, the overmare was adamant that I do it before I recorded the song. I was afraid of that. I wanted my speech—you remember the speech I made at the beginning, don’t you?—to lead into the song. Now, you see, I had told Velvet Remedy that the first song she was going to sing was ‘Unconquered,’ that that was the song I wanted to hear, that no other song could be the first to be played over the new frequency. I thought, at first, that she was going to ask me questions, what was it about that song that I liked, why I insisted that it be played first. I thought I’d have to explain and that she wouldn’t understand it. But she asked no questions and agreed instantly. I think she knew, ’Pip. I saw it in her eyes. It has to do with the song. Its spirit. But the thing about the spirit of ‘Unconquered’ and the speeches that the overmare gets me to say . . . well, let’s just say that I didn’t want that speech to introduce that song. I told the overmare so, but she didn’t budge. There was a point where I was prone, pleading to her, grovelling at her feet, giving her permission to do anything to me as long as I didn’t have to lead into ‘Unconquered’ with the speech that she had given me.”

Copper Chromite sighed. “You know, I’ve never felt embarrassment before. But I felt it then at the feet of the overmare, even though it was on the threshold of this room, even though Velvet Remedy couldn’t see me, and even though none heard me but the overmare. I was making the most pathetic sounds imaginable. I swear . . . if anypony saw me or heard me then, I wouldn’t be able to show my face outside this room again. I can barely face them as it is, considering all that happened.”

“Wait,” said Littlepip. “You don’t . . . know?”

“Know what?” he said, raising his head.

Littlepip opened her mouth to say something but stopped herself abruptly. “No, nothing. Forget it. I don’t know what I was talking about.”

He lowered his head once more. “I listened to the overmare’s ultimatum: ‘Either you say this first or you say nothing again.’ At the time, I thought of the choice as this: Either I martyr myself, refuse to say it, lose the radio, save Velvet Remedy for herself, but lose her to me in the process; or I martyr her, say the speech, allow her to sing ‘Unconquered’ in the wake of that message, and allow her sublime voice to be mingled with my voice which is wretched. If I speak, I lose my pride, but I get to bring my machine into the world; if I say nothing, I destroy myself utterly. That was the choice I thought I were confronted with.

“I looked at the speech. I saw what it said, and I identified its root. I had to think quickly. I thought: It preaches selflessness and sacrifice. To fight that, why don’t I do something unbelievably selfish? So selfish, so horrible, so grotesque that it would cancel out what the speech would make me say in spirit. So I made the choice. I thought I would sacrifice Velvet Remedy to me. I would get what I wanted from her while leaving her empty. I wanted her voice for my channel. I thought I would have something from her in the end; I knew that it wouldn’t be satisfying, but I wanted to get something. I couldn’t bring myself to say no.

“When I was saying the speech, I hoped Velvet Remedy wasn’t smart enough to understand its implications or understand what I was doing. I was wrong. She understood it from the first word. Do you remember when I was talking about ‘it’ yesterday? I couldn’t find a word for that driving spirit, so I just called it ‘it.’ You wanted to know what happens when ‘it’ is killed? ‘It’ died for Velvet Remedy in that room over there yesterday. You heard perfectly what happens when ‘it’ dies.

“And when she first opened her mouth, I realized the horror: I realized that I had not understood the choice that the overmare had given me. I had thought that the overmare were giving me the choice between selfishness and sacrifice. I know she wanted me to sacrifice, and I chose the option that I thought were selfishness in rebellion to her. But don’t you see, Littlepip? ‘It’ wasn’t just killed for Velvet Remedy by my choice; ‘it’ was killed for me as well.

“I was right in thinking that the overmare was presenting me the choice between sacrifice and selfishness. I was wrong in evaluating the implications of the choices. The overmare knew! I didn’t think it at the time, but she knew well what she was asking me to do! The moment they played the first note of that song, I realized it:

“I had had two choices, both of which the overmare knew: I could either destroy my integrity, thereby destroying Velvet Remedy and eviscerating and mutilating everything that composed her: her integrity, her pride, her conviction, everything that made up her being, everything that made me want her. . . . And with all that gone, my channel, my creation becomes nothing more than a sort of hideous canopic jar in which I place her voice bloody, pungent, and covered in gore, all the more horrible for me to listen to because I know that it was I who had brought it to that state. I could have done all of that—or I could have refused to do that. I could have conceded to the overmare and immolated myself, my machine, and Velvet Remedy for the overmare’s purposes—to preach the value of immolation—or I could have said no. And I chose immolation.

“At the time, I thought that saying no would be letting her beat me—but it wouldn’t have been! I would’ve beaten her! And she knew! I didn’t think so at the time, but she did! She knew exactly how to frame the decision, just to benefit her! She knew exactly what she was asking me to decide between and exactly how to ask it to get the choice she wanted! And I had fallen right for it!

“When I came to this realization, I felt my mind burning. My thoughts refused to work for me. I was a stranger in my own body. I felt myself torn between reality and nonexistence as I held the contradictions in my head. What I was saying for the past four hours before I said your name on the radio earlier—that was the result of a brain dying.”

He pushed a button on his Pip-Buck. “And . . . that’s it,” he said.

“What’s it?” said Littlepip.

He chuckled sadly. “That’s the end of the speech I’d written. I wrote it before my brain burned out completely, so that I could read it again and again so that I wouldn’t forget.” He flashed the screen of his Pip-Buck to her. She saw the words and paragraphs, exactly as he had said them, on the display.

“Copper . . .” she whispered, at length, “can you give me a copy of that speech?”

He looked up at her with heavy eyes. “Why?” he gasped.

“I . . . because I, too, don’t want to forget. I’m worried I’ll forget.”

He shook his head. “No.”

She gasped, as if shot. “Why not?”

“Because I need to think practically here. I wrote it on my Pip-Buck; the file’s metadata has my name and the time of composition. They find you with this”—he gestured to the words on the screen—“they’re going to be after me when they’re done with you.”

“Then scrub it,” she said. “Remove the metadata. Make it a blank file. It’ll look like I’m carrying a ghost file. That way if I’m caught, only I’ll get in trouble.”

“That would raise more questions than answers. Who even knows what metadata is, let alone scrubbing? There are only a few ponies I can think of: me, you, the overmare; and, possibly, Doctor Shrink. You think, considering what the file contains, they won’t know whom it comes from?”

“But I’ll forget if you don’t give it to me.”

“I hope you don’t. But I refuse to martyr you, too. That’s why I came to you when I realized I could never speak to Velvet Remedy again. After what you said to me in the cafeteria, about my grandfather, I figured—” He stopped abruptly and glared at her. “Wait . . . now that I think about it . . . do you actually believe the stories about my grandfather?”

She groaned. “Oh, come on! You’re still on about that?”

“I want to know. I want to know if I’ve been wasting my time with you or not. I want to know if I was right in my decision of you. What do you think about my grandfather?”

“I think—”

“Wait. Before you speak, know that I won’t tolerate anything other than the truth. In my room, everything is exposed for what it is. Secrets run free in my room if nowhere else in the stable. What do you actually think? Don’t sugarcoat it for me, and don’t you dare check what you say for the sake of sparing my feelings. There’s nothing I hate more than ponies who try to manipulate my emotions for their own purposes.”

“I think . . .” said Littlepip, “I think . . .” She threw a forehoof up in the air with exasperation. “You honestly want to know what I think? I’ll tell you: I don’t know. There, I said it. Professor Rein says that you should never say that, that it’s a dishonest answer, that it shows signs of intellectual impotence, but that’s the truth: I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. Your grandfather says that he was a soldier, that he came from outside. But the overmare tells us he’s a liar. It’s her word against his. Whom am I to believe? Each is as convicted as the other, and each has as much to back it up as the other. I’d like to think that your grandfather came from outside; I’d like to think that we’re not stuck in here for the rest of our lives; I’d like to think that; it’d be nice; but I don’t know whom to believe. That’s the truth.”

She winced as she saw Copper Chromite’s face twist into incredulity. For a moment, she perceived it as an unwillingness to accept what had been said; that he thought it had been too harsh and too down-to-earth for him to take. She thought she had destroyed his fantasies and had thus destroyed him. But when he spoke next, she almost hit herself for the thought, as she remembered everything he had said before.

“That,” he said, calmly, “was not only the most truthful answer I’ve ever heard in my entire life, but it was also the most rational. Thank you. I’m glad to see that I was right all along.”

And then he added: “I like being right.”

She laughed. She expected him to join her, but she saw him looking at her with wide eyes—utterly open and relinquished.

“I had to tell this to somepony,” he said. “It was killing me having the premises unvoiced, to have them not listened to. I wanted to tell Velvet Remedy—I thought that she’d be the only one who’d understand—but after yesterday . . . remember when I said that I hadn’t known what it was like to feel dwarfed by something you admire? I now know what it feels like. She’s everything I admire and desire, everything that I think is good, whole, right! I love her! And after yesterday, I can’t even look at her anymore without feeling unworthy, like I’m small, a worm in the dirt looking up at the statue of a goddess. And I’m right to feel that way. Because I’ve failed my ideal; I tried to bring her down to the abject level I had sunk; and, thus, I became unfit for her by the very act of doing so, even if I failed. I became unworthy to look at her.”

There was a silence. In the stillness, Littlepip noticed that the lightbulb gave off an almost imperceptible hum. It whispered at a frequency almost too high to be heard; but it was, nonetheless, full and shrill. It demanded to be listened to. She couldn’t ignore it.

“I can’t do it anymore,” he murmured. “I’m leaving.”

Littlepip rubbed her ears with a hoof, in disbelief. “What did you say?”

“I said I’m leaving.”

“What . . . the radio?”

He looked up at her. He smiled and said: “Well . . . strictly speaking, yes, but . . . but that doesn’t really capture the entire essence of—”

Littlepip laughed. “Oh, Copper, don’t be silly.”

“Excuse me?”

“You can’t leave your job.”

Littlepip was taken aback by the manner in which Copper Chromite responded to her. He sat up straight, removing the slouch that she had thought were permanent in his spine. He parted his mane across his face so that he could be seen fully. His brow furrowed, and he said harshly, through his teeth: “And why not?” The sentence, combined with his pose, had the sound not of a question but of a challenge.

Littlepip was about to say the obvious response: because you’re not allowed to. But something inside her told her that Copper Chromite wasn’t going to accept that response. He looked like a stallion who would not take no for an answer.

She took a minute thinking about how to respond. She quickly ran a summary of her life in her head, trying to remember the times she had successfully gotten somepony to do something for her and how exactly she had gotten him to do it. She thought of the advice her mother had given her: To get somepony to do something, flatter him. Make it seem like he’s wonderful, and whatever it is you want him to do would be a great favor to you, that you owe something to him because of it. She thought about this; it was true. Everypony likes flattery. Tell him he’s great at what he does, she thought, and he’ll be too full of himself to even consider leaving. He stays, and I don’t have to give him the real answer, the answer that he wants but will not accept. It’s perfect.

“Well,” she said, smiling, “you can’t leave the radio. Because, if you leave, who will make us laugh when you’re gone?” She was quite proud of her solution. The second it left her mouth, she felt like she had answered in the best way possible.

It felt like a knife stab in her chest when she heard Copper Chromite’s forehoof slam on his table, rattling his keyboard with a frightening shudder, causing an ammeter to topple off the stack of boxes and crash to the ground with a sound like a punch. “No!” he said sharply. He stood up and faced her directly for the first time in the conversation. “How dare you!” he yelled, as loudly as he could. His voice made the walls of the room vibrate and the glass of the thermometer on the shelf across the room clink. “How dare you, you presumptuous interloper! How dare you have the audacity to suggest that I exist merely for your entertainment!”

His loose, slender muscles tensed in a second; it was as if a bolt of lightning had struck him erect. Sparks shot from his eyes; saliva coursed from his teeth with every sharp exhale he made. Even in the humid, hot atmosphere of the room, she could still see the clouds his nostrils expelled. His ears were perked up. His back legs kicked the chair he had been sitting on over and braced themselves with two loud stomps against the floor, firm, with a power that they did not seem capable of. Copper Chromite had been annoyed, irritated, aggravated, frustrated, angry even; she had never seen him in a rage. It was a terrible sight to behold.

He lunged toward her with a movement that his posture had suggested, a movement that she had wholly expected. She dove out of the way into a corner and covered her head with her hooves. Her first reaction was to yell to him, to apologize for the comment with everything in her heart, and to hope it mollified his oncoming onslaught. She was about to yell—but she stopped herself and said nothing. Though she wanted to scream as loudly as she could, she could not bring herself to. It seemed to her that it would be inappropriate; it seemed to her that it would be a further affront to him to apologize, to say that she hadn’t meant it. Because it wouldn’t be true, she thought, in that moment; when she had said it, she had meant it. His reaction now was not from a misunderstanding between him and her; he had correctly interpreted exactly what she had meant to say, and he was reacting. And, in the next moment, she realized that he was right. In his room, in his inviolable domain, to presume to speak for his purpose, made her, in Littlepip’s mind, completely in the wrong and made his reaction entirely appropriate. But more than that, she thought. She thought of her more egregious sin, which was to check her speech in his room, where honesty had been the standard, to say what she thought he wanted her to say rather than to say what she actually thought. Evil, she thought, that was pure evil, and I deserve the worst from him as retribution. And though she was afraid, she thought that whatever he decided to do to her in the next moment she deserved fully. She braced herself, preparing to accept his decision, like a disheveled and wretched prisoner awaiting the pronouncement of the judge’s sentence after egregious incriminating evidence has been put against her and a verdict of guilty has been returned.

All of this took place in the flash of a second.

Time froze. She peered out of the corner of her eye to behold his sentence. For a brief glance, a snapshot in time, she saw Copper Chromite moving toward the spot she had stood a minute before, charging headlong into it as if she were still standing there. She watched him pass through the spot she had been standing and continue on his way; but he moved through the spot not due to inertia but to emphasize the fact that nothing was there and that nothing had been there. It didn’t seem to her that he had even noticed that she had jumped out of the way.

And in a second, she understood: she understood that in his mind, she had been reduced to an entity of nonexistence. She saw that he did not regard her as something that was worth expending the energy of a retaliation on. He regarded her as an object in the room, as low as a scattered beer can—not even that, for a beer can has a presence, has mass, and serves a purpose. She understood that her punishment for her insolence was the removal of her presence from reality, to exist as nonexistence, to be a zero. She knew that she would continue to be nothing to him until he said otherwise. And she understood that this punishment was worse than any prison sentence, any method of execution, any torture that could possibly be inflicted upon her.

Copper Chromite, within the span of microseconds, crossed the room, threw his hoof around the handle of the door, and pulled it effortlessly. The door flew open as if blown by a hurricane.

Silver Dollar’s horn clipped the tip of Copper Chromite’s nose when the former’s owner fell into the room.

Silver Dollar landed at Copper Chromite’s feet, face first. He brought his face up, ready to say something, but his words failed him when he looked into the room. First, he made eye contact with Littlepip, curled up in the corner by the door. But, as if he too regarded her as a nonentity, he said nothing to her. He looked up not at Copper Chromite but at the air around him.

“Yellow,” breathed Silver Dollar.

“What the hell are you doing here?” yelled Copper Chromite.

Silver Dollar rose slowly to his feet, staring at the walls of the room. “Yellow,” he said again. “Why is your room yellow?”

“Why the hell are you here!”

Silver Dollar’s head came to, as if he had just noticed Copper Chromite’s presence. “Oh . . .” he stammered. “I was just passing through. You know, I never come around that much, and I was just goin’ for a little stroll, and I happened to be passing by your room and—”

“You were listening!”

“No . . . no I wasn’t. What are you talking about?”

“Listen,” said Copper Chromite, gesturing his forehoof in the manner of a professor making an argument, “do I come down to the kitchen and listen to you jerk off into the dishwasher?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t jerk off into . . . into the dishwasher . . .”

“The answer is no, I do not. So do not come down to my kitchen and listen to me jerk off into my dishwasher. Is that clear?”

Silver Dollar twisted his mouth into an expression of bemusement and disgust. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You’re playing the fool, I know. Silver Dollar’s an idiot. He thinks he smart because he’s convinced everypony that he’s an idiot. But he’s so stupid because he doesn’t realize that he’s become a proper idiot in the process. And this idiot has been listening to me! And the idiot has convinced himself that I’m an idiot too!”

Silver Dollar stepped closer to him. His voice took on a cautious, deliberate tone. In any other context, Littlepip would have thought that it were respectable. “Copper,” said Silver Dollar, as if he were a hostage negotiator, “listen closely to yourself. Do you even hear the things that are coming out of your mouth? You need to take a breath and just calm down, okay?”

It looked like an indistinct blur from her position. She saw Copper Chromite make a fast, defined, calculated—above all, disinterested and cold—motion with his hoof. She heard a scream; and in the next moment, Silver Dollar was on the ground again, his mouth open, his eyes wide in disbelief, blood coming from his nose.

“You hit me!” he shrieked.

“Silver Dollar,” said Copper Chromite, as if he had absorbed his victim’s cool tone and replaced it with his frenzied one, “do not take it upon yourself to come down to my room and dictate to me how I will conduct myself. You will not presume to speak for me or for my best interests under any circumstances.”

“You . . . hit me!” The vacillation of his voice was evident more of shock than of pain.

“If you come here again, I will smash my oscilloscope over your head.”

Silver Dollar tried to stagger to his feet. Copper Chromite pushed him back down, rolled him with his forehoof across the threshold of the room, and slammed the door behind him before he had a chance to retaliate.

He stood with his body against the door, his eyes closed, his breaths heavy, his jaw strained in an effort to keep his teeth together. He remained thus for a minute.

“Copper . . .” said Littlepip.

He didn’t respond. He didn’t look at her reaction. His ears didn’t even twitch when he should have heard her voice. She understood: she had not been permitted back into existence yet.

In a flash, Copper Chromite threw open the door again.

Silver Dollar was ten yards from the door, his head leaned in its direction, his ear forward. When he saw Copper Chromite, he turned tail and took off at a sprint down the hallway.

Copper Chromite, his whole body channeled for the single purpose, reached with a foreleg to the broken oscilloscope on the table beside the door and lifted it swiftly. He pulled it toward him with such an ease that it seemed as if his will negated the presence of the mass. The force with which he hurled the oscilloscope down the hallway could only be rivaled by a titan.

The sound of rushing air was audible as the oscilloscope cut its inexorable path through space, tracing a perfectly straight line on its trajectory. Silver Dollar was still running; he had not slowed, but from Littlepip’s perspective, with him and the oscilloscope simultaneously in her vision, Silver Dollar appeared to be pulled back, dwarfed and restrained by the speed of the oscilloscope. At the ultimate moment, it began to arc into that recognizable parabola. It fell short of Silver Dollar’s head and landed on the ground just before his back heels. Dozens of small pieces broke off, and the oscilloscope’s center of mass slammed upon the hard tiles of the floor, sending a deafening blast echoing through the hallway like that of a gunshot.

A smaller piece broke off and shot at an impossible speed toward Silver Dollar, continuing the chase. Littlepip saw it slice against his heels. Silver Dollar let out a sharp yelp; he stumbled, almost fell, but quickly regained his foothold. He disappeared around the corner a second later.

Copper Chromite seemed indifferent. Littlepip wasn’t sure that he had even watched the path of the oscilloscope. He closed the door disinterestedly.

Littlepip said nothing.

Copper Chromite picked up the knocked-over chair and sat down upon it in front of his desk, his back turned to her. Littlepip sat up in awe as she watched him work. With his mouth and his forelegs, he collected the loose, seemingly unrelated wires that lay strewn on his desk, but he not once took his eyes off the box with the hundred holes. He tossed the wires around with the ease of a pianist who knows his work by touch alone. Their chaos and entanglement seemed to mean nothing to him. In a heartbeat, he had organized them in a manner which appeared to Littlepip as meaningless as the order in which they had been left before he had touched them. He then set his body into movement, yanking wires from their holes, putting them into different jacks, plugging in new ones, moving to reach the back of boxes. He moved with just as much motion as was required, as if every gesture had been calculated long before, had been planned and outlined just like a circuit diagram. Littlepip got up and looked at his face. His eyes were immersed in concentration, but they contained no amount of stress. His breathing was paced and regular, his movements firm but easy, as he made new connections and destroyed old ones with a rapidity and will rivaling that of a god creating a world. And in his intransigent countenance, Littlepip understood what devotion looked like. The same mind and the same body that had thrown the oscilloscope in a rage was now building a circuit just as efficiently as it had picked up the cudgel, the same ability now channeled for the purposes of creation after being reserved momentarily for destruction—two diametrically opposed methods of operation, both acting to and for the same purpose, turned at an instant by the implacable will of his mind.

When he was done, he flipped a switch and tapped the microphone with his hoof. He said, clearly and slowly, as if he were just reading the news of the day: “Attention, attention Stable 2. This is Copper Chromite. I need to make an announcement regarding something very important. Silver Dollar, a certain unicorn with whom you live, is not what he pretends to be. An encounter I just had with him proves this unequivocally. He’s a manipulator, a deceiver, and a mountebank. And when I looked into his eyes, I saw what true evil was: the liar. Fear not the murderer, the armed robber, the assaulter, for they hold no pretenses, for they never try to hide their malicious intent. Fear the deceiver, that parasite that slides into your entrails under the guise of sustenance and eats you from within, day after day after day, draining your blood until you are nothing more than a carcass before it moves on to its next prey. That is the most insidious of the destroyers. That is what you must fight. How to fight it? Pursue nothing but the truth. That is all.”

He punched the switch; the movement had as much finality as the period at the end of a sentence and as much irrefutability as the quod erat demonstrandum at the end of a proof.

He spun his chair around to look at Littlepip. He said nothing. His posture and glare conveyed the words of a damning censure. Littlepip pinned her ears. She did not speak. She knew that she no longer had any right to speak in his presence, not even if her words were to take the form of an apology, an apology which she had no right to give and he no right to accept.

“I’m not mad at you,” he said, at length. “Because, a moment ago, you weren’t speaking as Littlepip. You were speaking as the overmare. No, worse—and yet, the same: you were speaking as Stable 2.”

She said nothing.

He went on: “Stable 2 looks to me to make them laugh. It’s always: ‘Say something funny, Copper,’ or ‘Do the voice, Copper,’ or ‘Tell a joke, Copper,’ ‘That Copper Chromite is such a joker.’ They’ve pressured me into a role I don’t desire for myself. Littlepip, I don’t want to be known as the funny guy.”

The deep, solemn silence after his words was deliberate on his part. He meant it as a command to speak. She said: “That’s fine. I understand. But . . . may I ask a question?”

“Go on.”

“What’s wrong with being the funny guy?”

Copper Chromite sat up straight. “Absolutely nothing. But I’m not him. I don’t want to be him.”

And he added: “And that’s why I’m leaving Stable 2.”

She tried to restrain herself, but she couldn’t help bursting into laughter. Every time her abdominal muscles contracted during the throes of these spasms which took the form of laughs, it felt like the admission of an intellectual guilt she had so long tried to hide. “Come again?” she said.

“I’m leaving Stable 2,” he said again, just as solemnly as the first time.

“What do you mean ‘leaving Stable 2’?”

“I mean that right now, I’m in Stable 2. And tomorrow, I won’t be in Stable 2.”

“What do you mean?”

“What exactly is so difficult to understand? I’m leaving the stable.”

“But! . . . but! . . .” she sputtered, reflexively, as if she had not consciously processed what he said and were speaking automatically, “but you can’t leave!”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . because nopony leaves the stable!”

“That’s begging the question.”

Littlepip was speechless. At the sound of the words “I’m leaving Stable 2,” her conscious mind had immediately surrendered its responsibilities. A multitude of arguments against the assertion, without her volition, had instantly lined up in the queue in her brain to exit through her mouth. In the brief amount of time that she was able to examine them, she concluded that each was irrefutable, that each one was stronger and more convincing than the last. She had expected the one she had just spoken to decimate him and his thought; and the train had halted in shock, as if it had just encountered a mountain, when he had torn apart the argument with a mere four words. Now, she could only watch as each passed by one by one, out of her control, with a hope that one would destroy him, with a vague, almost inaudible desire that they wouldn’t.

“How will you get out?” she asked.

“Through the door,” he replied.

“But the door doesn’t even open!”

“Doors, by definition, open. If they don’t open, then they’re not doors, they’re walls.”

“But it’s probably locked.”

“It is.”

“Well, then, I guess you’ll have to stay.”

“I’ve checked it. It uses the same kind of lock that the default security system on my computer uses. It would be trivial to crack.”

“But it’s probably alarmed.”

“It is.”

“Can you crack that?”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to turn that off.”

“Then you’ll be caught.”

He shook his head. “By the time they figure out what’s going on, by the time the alarms get to them and they run downstairs, the door will be open and I’ll be long gone. An alarm is nothing but a loud sound. It’s an argument by intimidation—scary, threatening, but impotent.”

“And then?”

“And then I’ll be outside.”

“The sun will burn you alive!”

“It didn’t burn my grandfather. It didn’t burn those before him. It won’t burn me.”

“But . . . radiation!”

“What about radiation?”

“There’s radiation!”

“So?”

“Do you have a radiation suit?”

“No.”

“Then you’ll get vaporized!”

“Radiation emanates from point sources. Taking a single step back from that point source is the protective equivalent of putting one foot of lead between you and it.”

“What will you do for food?”

“I’ve packed a substantial amount.”

“But you’ll run out!”

“Then I’ll grow some more.”

“But you don’t know how!”

“Then I’ll learn.”

“There are probably dangerous creatures out there!”

“If there are, it means that the outside world isn’t as hostile to life as we think it is. If there are, I’ll fight them.”

“With what?”

“With weapons.”

“Do you have weapons?”

“No.”

“Where will you get them?”

“I’ll make them.”

“You don’t know how!”

“I’ll learn.”

She stared at him with her mouth wide open. “You’re insane!”

“Any more insane than staying in this cave, drinking beer by myself, eating the same processed foods every day, getting skinnier and more sickly by the minute, spouting nonsense day in and day out, working for I-don’t-know-what-or-whom, purposelessly building and rebuilding circuits, dying in the same place and in the same manner I was born, wondering what could have been, wondering if it could have been any different?”

She groaned with frustration. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked.

“This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, for my entire life, even. I couldn’t bring myself to just get up and leave. I’ve faced myself with your line of questioning time and time again, and it’s always deterred me. But after yesterday, I showed what happens when one adopts a moral code that bases itself purely on uncertainty. And I won’t let that happen to me again.”

He stood up and took a step toward her. His body obstructed Littlepip’s view of the lightbulb in the back of the room. The dust in the air became the vessel of deliverance for the rays of light. They shot in oblong spears around his limbs, illuminating everything in the room but his countenance. He stood not as a body but as a silhouette. His head was angled slightly downward, and Littlepip only realized now that she was slouching with lethargy—no, she thought, more like slouching under the weight of a pressure I’m too weak to support. Littlepip thought that if any other were in her position, he would have thought that Copper Chromite appeared like a gargoyle cast in shadow, a dark guardian that protects something so beautiful that the gargoyle in its wretchedness is forbidden to bask in that beauty lest it be seen for what it is. But she thought he looked like an electrical generator, and his ideas were the potential energy, and the periodic moving of his jaw to allow the passage of words expressing those ideas was the turbine. And she thought that that word carried more weight than that of gargoyle: The electrical generator is a guardian, but it is worthy of the thing it protects; it protects life, work, and ability, removing the darkness that puts a premature end to work, and it is that work and that life which made such a guardian as an electrical generator possible in the first place. The electrical generator watched over those who worked, and those who worked watched over it, one in one moment the guardian, in the next the guarded. A symbiosis of mutual gain, a relationship in which none is better than the other, in which the weak does not survive by leaching the strong, where the strong does not flourish by stamping out the weak—a relationship of supreme admiration.

“Did I ever tell you how and why I became the radio operator?” he said. Littlepip had not said a word of her thoughts, but she knew from his rigid posture, evident in which the conscious thought to not move, that he had heard it regardless. “When I was little, I read a book. In that book, the hero finds the world around him destroyed by evil that he alone had recognized only too clearly. He finds himself the only survivor left in the bleak desolate world. He finds a radio tower, spends a day climbing to its summit, and switches it on. It was the tallest tower in the world, the most powerful broadcasting tower that had ever been built. It operated on a single frequency. There were other frequencies, but they only jumped up intermittently: the cries of ghosts and phantoms in the darkness, ramblings of those who had lost their minds, the sound of gunfire, meaningless noises, messages where words proceeded one after the other without connection. The radio tower he’s in is powerful, powerful enough to force away all the ghost signals. If there were any left, they had no choice but to listen. He talks. He talks for three hours. What does he say? He says why the world was destroyed and why it had been avoidable. He describes what the world could have been. He describes what it had become. He describes what had been lost. He describes what could have been gained. He goes from the beautiful, what should have been, and then goes to how it was destroyed. But, despite all this, he’s not angry. He ascribes no blame. He outlines everything like an argument, demonstrating why one naturally followed because of the event preceding it. At the end, he announces the location of his beacon—remember when I asked you about wave theory? Waves are energy. They can be neither created nor destroyed. Once a radio broadcasts a sound wave, it goes on forever, out into space, to be picked up by whoever wants to whenever he pleases. So the hero gives the location of the broadcast tower not as a desperate cry for help but as a record of a history of the world, to alert any out there—aliens, perhaps—that the creatures of the planet had died knowing what had killed them, that they had not died ignorant, that they wished none others to die in ignorance, so they left the message for others to find. He goes to sleep that night. When he wakes up, he finds a crowd around the bottom of the antenna—survivors, just like him. From far and wide, they rally around his tower. It serves as a beacon of hope for the future, a sign to weary travelers who view it in the distance as a symbol of salvation.

“Ever since I read that story, I wanted to be a radio operator. I wanted to talk for three hours like he did and be listened to. When we had to do that aptitude test, I chose not what I thought to be the right answer but the answers I thought they were looking for in an electrical engineer. When the results came in, when I found that I was to be the electrical engineer, I thought that there were nothing I could desire more in life. But when I got older, when I finally took control of the radio, I found that I was gagged. I found my listeners deaf. I was not the hero who had climbed to the top of the tallest tower in the world; I was a rambler who filled the air with nothingness. I have thought about leaving the stable every single day since I realized this.

“If it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to leave Stable 2. I’m going to find the radio tower, wherever it is. I’ll climb to the top of it. If it’s weak, I’ll boost the signal. If it only covers a few frequencies, I’ll force my way into every single one—it’s not as difficult as you’d think. And then when that’s done, when I’m sure that I can be heard by all those who are still alive, I will talk for three hours. I will hijack the other frequencies, even Stable 2’s. The overmare won’t be able to turn me off. If there’s any still alive and if they have anything that can pick up a radio signal, they’ll have to listen to me; they won’t have a choice. I have the speech on my Pip-Buck. I’ve been writing it ever since I had even the vaguest idea of what I’ve wanted to say. But it’s the funniest thing: though the words change as I get older, though I always find more eloquent ways to express them, the message behind it is the same as when I was little.”

When Littlepip spoke next, her voice was neither belligerent nor hysterical. He had eradicated argument after argument, all of which had appeared irrefutable. Her bestial usurper, whatever it was that had forced her consciousness away and had replaced it with the line of arguments that it had just fired and missed, had become downcast, upset after this failure. She listed off the remaining ones, one by one, saying them as if she were ashamed:

“You don’t need to leave the stable to talk for three hours. You talk for eight hours a day, and we listen to you. You talked for four hours straight this morning.”

“Do you honestly believe that in a single word during those four hours this morning there was anything? Do you believe that anything I’ve ever said on the radio was anything? That speech I made yesterday before Velvet Remedy, possibly. For the past hour and a half you’ve been here, I’ve spoken more than I’ve ever said during my thousands of hours on the radio.”

“I want to help you, Copper. I really do. But think about it for a second. Just think. You’re idealistic. That’s fine. But the world is more complicated than that. The world is not a children’s storybook where the hero finds all the means to his end at his disposal. Maybe you are the hero; you probably are. But our world is more cruel than that. It took away all your means. You put it better than any could, yesterday: ‘What’s outside? Nothing. It’s all gone. Kaboom.’ There’s nothing outside. Your radio tower isn’t there, Copper. Nothing is. Everything’s destroyed. And, I’m sorry to say, I think that a little bit of metal designed to reflect and transmit signals would be one of the first things destroyed.”

The electrical generator did not stir. She saw no gesture of recognition. He turned to his table after her words, but the movement was not like a wounded soldier turning away; it was the movement of volition, a gesture made for no other purpose than to fulfill a desire.

“Come closer,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

He began to sift through the papers that were spread out over his desk. When he turned over one, Littlepip saw a small white square, too small to be a letter-sized paper and too small to be a postcard. Copper Chromite slid his hoof under it and overturned the paper as if it were a burger on a grill. “Canterlot,” he said. He continued looking through the papers, as if he had found nothing.

Littlepip craned her neck. It was a small, glossy photograph. It was black-and-white, but it was sharp. It was a picture of a landscape—filled with rubble, uprooted trees, decaying vehicles; and a garbage bag being blown by the wind, the picture holding it frozen in midair, giving the picture the atmosphere of a suspension of time, as if it were depicting a calamity so horrible that time refused to press on and allow the bag to land, in fear of the pain that would come next.

Another picture fell down next to it. “Fillydelphia,” she heard him say.

She saw more rubble. The bones of skyscrapers looked no more significant than the stripped trees around them. A poster was falling from its billboard; the only visible part of it was a wide row of teeth—the remnant of a smile.

Another picture fell down. “Los Pegasus.” Then another. “The outskirts of Ponyville.” Another. “Manehattan.” “Baltimare.” “Vanhoover.” “Tall Tale.” “The Badlands.”

He let a few minutes elapse while Littlepip looked at the photos. “Notice anything singular?” he said, at length.

“I don’t . . . think so,” she said.

“What do all these picture have in common?” he asked.

She shook her head. “The only thing I see is abject desolation.”

“No,” he said. “Look harder.”

Littlepip squinted. She looked at the skyscrapers. They were still standing in a way, she thought, but she shook her head again. Those were not intact. No words could be construed to even suggest that they were still what they used to be. She feared that Copper Chromite would reference those. If he does, she thought, I’ll stay silent and bow my head reverently. I’ll effect the proper manner one would at a funeral.

“I don’t see anything,” she said.

Copper Chromite pressed his hoof to the corner of the picture of Canterlot. “What’s that?” he asked.

She looked closer. A black line shot up in the sky where his hoof pointed. It was thinner than a stick, completely black and shapeless, almost two-dimensional. “I don’t know,” she said. “It looks like a smudge on the film, or . . .”

“What’s that?” he said, pointing to a distance in the picture of Fillydelphia.

It was one of the skyscrapers she had not given any attention to. It was spindly, like the body of a creature that has starved to death. But it retained its form, and though she didn’t know what purpose it served, it suggested that it had served a purpose, unlike the appearance of every other building around it. “It’s the bones of some building or other,” she said.

“What’s that?” he said, pointing to the Ponyville picture.

It was a large, round dish. “Oh!” she said. “That looks like some sort of military base, a center of operations, or a communication center . . .”

“What’s that?” he said, pointing to a building in the picture of Baltimare.

“The headquarters of a news organization.”

“What’s that thing on the top of it?”

“It’s how they received their information, how they knew what was going on in the world so they could write about it the next day . . .”

“What’s that?” He pointed to a building in the picture of Vanhoover.

“A nightclub. No, not a nightclub, but a place that plays loud music—it plays music to the whole world.”

“What’s that?” he said, pointing back to the extrusion in the first picture.

Littlepip looked again. She could not be mistaken now. “It’s a radio tower,” she said.

“What’s that?” he said, pointing to the spindly beams in the second picture again.

“A radio tower.”

“What’s that?” He pointed to the dish in the third picture.

“Also a radio tower.”

He turned to look at her. “Do you understand now?”

She stared at him wide-eyed, in disbelief. It wasn’t possible, she thought. This will, this thought, this planning, this power of acute discrimination—it wasn’t possible in a single creature.

“Everything in those pictures is destroyed,” he said, “except the radio towers. I don’t know what they built those things out of; but whatever it is, it’s invulnerable. It’s inviolable. They’re still there, Littlepip. If nothing else exists, the radio towers are there. Do you see that glare on the top? The light is flashing. They still have power. Something is giving them power. I don’t know what, but I don’t care. And I wouldn’t expect anything different. This is the proof of what I’ve been thinking my entire life: The radio is indestructible. It’s just as much a force of nature as the wind, the rain, or the sun. Can all the evil in the world destroy the sun? Evidently not. It allowed the photographer to take these, whoever he is. Evil can’t destroy the radio any more than it can destroy the sun. But it recognizes the radio as a threat; if the radio knew what it was, if the radio knew what it could be, evil would be exposed; evil would be shown as the impotence that it is. But evil knows the radio’s weakness: Taken by itself, the radio is an inanimate object. It needs a driver. There are good radio drivers and bad radio drivers, and the radio is only as good as its driver. And evil knows that it’s trivial to turn a good driver into a bad one, especially if the driver possess no convictions or is uncertain in himself in any way. There is a radio tower somewhere nearby; I’m sure of it. At night, I turn on my Pip-Buck slightly off my frequency and I hear white noise—a random signal, the chaotic bouncing of waves lost, trying to find their way home. But when I switch my Pip-Buck’s tuner to the frequencies outside, I hear pink noise—and that’s not random. You remember, yesterday, don’t you? I played you the white noise and the pink noise. The first one was white noise—you’re right; white noise is caustic and grating. But the second thing I played to you was pink noise. That’s different. It’s peaceful. I play it to help me fall asleep; I can’t imagine falling asleep without pink noise. Pink noise indicates the presence something guiding, something pushing those lost waves somewhere. It’s the noise of the outside. It’s fractured, but it’s there. It just needs to be nurtured.”

“Copper, I don’t believe that the radio tower still is operating at the exact strength it had before the war. Even if it’s still standing, even if it still has broadcasting capabilities, it’s probably in disarray. It won’t transmit like it used to.”

“Probably. But I’ll fix it.”

She groaned. “It’s one thing to work and fix the stable’s radio; it’s another thing, a completely different thing, to work a national broadcast tower.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“The skills aren’t transferable. You don’t know how to work a broadcast tower.”

“Then I’ll learn.”

“Stop!” she screamed. She pinned her ears.

“Stop what?”

“Stop saying that!”

“Stop saying what?”

“‘I’ll learn.’ That’s all you say! ‘I’ll learn. I’ll learn. I’ll learn.’ You can’t just say that as a rebuttal to any difficulty you encounter! It doesn’t work like that!”

“Why not?”

“It . . . it just doesn’t!”

“Why doesn’t it?”

Her usurper was stripped naked. It had nothing left to give. She felt it falling, relinquishing its wrongful position. She felt her consciousness coming back in a surge—but the usurper lashed out in a supreme effort at her memories, rifling through them for anything it could use in an ultimate attempt to abridge that what she did not want to admit to herself that she wanted.

She remembered her own insolence when she was little. She remembered always wanting to do something that she was told she was forbidden to do. She remembered the fights with her mother. One day, her mother had told her her final argument, and Littlepip had been defeated. She saw her mother’s argument as unbeatable, immune to logic, rebuttals, and reason. And it had stood for her. She thought it would stand for Copper Chromite.

Using the exact words her mother had used, but modifying them for the occasion, she said: “You know, Copper, sometimes we don’t like the cards we’re dealt. Sometimes we want a do-over. Sometimes we want to fold. We look at others, and we ask why we couldn’t be born as talented, as pretty, as smart, or as able as them. They can do things that we can’t. Why can’t I do these things? And that’s fine. It’s fine to think that. We’re all unsatisfied. Nopony is happy with the things he has. We always want more. That’s just a part of life, being constantly unsatisfied. But there comes a point in every pony’s life when he realizes he’s stuck with how he is. He’ll look at back at all the times he was unhappy, unsatisfied. He’ll realize that much of his dissatisfaction comes from him not knowing why he was dissatisfied. But then he’ll realize that there are just some things he’ll never be able to get, that others will but he will not. But if he just stops thinking about it, he’ll eventually find his place, find what he does, and the only thing he can do is to do it as nobly as possible. He has a position he’s in. We all have a position to fill. All unhappiness comes from trying to rise from that position. Unhappiness is Celestia punishing us for saying we know better than Her. Celestia places us in our roles as She sees fit. Who are we to question Her judgment? Fighting your destiny means fighting Her. Who are you to question Her judgment? Who are you to question the destiny that She, in Her benevolence and omnipotence, laid out for Copper Chromite?”

He said, simply, without insolence: “I’m Copper Chromite.”

She blinked. “What?”

He laughed. “You’re out of bromides to spout, ’Pip. You’ve saved the best—or, rather, I should say the worst—for last. That last one reveals all. It reveals the philosophy which the stable has adopted. And it is a sewer of a philosophy; it is that philosophy from which all your other arguments before it were derived. The words before it are the quagmire of the sewer: they look solid, but they yield underfoot, as I’ve just shown you.”

“You . . . don’t believe . . .”

“I reject your philosophy, solely based on the reason that I’ve followed it to the letter and it has brought me no happiness. Something was lacking.”

“What do you believe in?”

“The mind comes into the world as a blank slate.”

The words landed like the breaking of glass on her ear. “What?” she said; it voiced more the desire to make sure she wasn’t deaf than the desire for clarification.

“It is the polar opposite of what you preach. You can say that we are born with what we have, with everything that we’ll ever have, that we fill our positions from the moment we’re born, that we’re programmed from birth to execute a routine action for something of which it is not possible to have any knowledge, that any action we attempt to do otherwise will necessarily fail since it goes against our programming, that we walk a path that has already been charted and planned before us, that we have a ‘destiny’; or you can say that you’re born as a blank slate, that your mind is completely void of any amount of knowledge, ability, or experience when you’re born, that your mind is a sponge from birth, a sponge that is good for nothing but only to soak up reality, that everything must be acquired—from learning how to walk to learning how to work a radio—that all knowledge must be learned, that all skills must be grown by your own volition and work, that your life is nothing from the beginning and only becomes what you make of it. I see the latter possibility as self-evidently true. The word talent has no meaning for me. I wasn’t born knowing how to build a circuit or how to wire a radio. I had to learn it. Do you see now why the answer ‘I’ll learn it’ is so easy for me to say but so difficult for you to hear? Now you know. I don’t know how to work a national broadcast tower. When I was born, I also didn’t know how to talk. And I will learn how to work a national broadcast tower just as I learned how to talk.”

“But your cutie mark,” she said, the last gasp of breath from a dying creature. “It’s different for all. We have destinies to fill. We all have our special talents. If you try to do something else, you fail because you weren’t meant for it.”

Copper Chromite smiled. “You want to talk about that? It’s the strongest evidence for the blank slate. Are you born with your cutie mark, Littlepip? Are you a Pip-Buck repair technician before you can eat without drooling on yourself? Do you know who you are and what you’ll become before you can even speak? No, you don’t. You are born as a blank slate. You have to learn everything for yourself. All skills have to be acquired, and none can help you with that but you. A cutie mark is earned, not given. If it were given, you’d be born with it.”

She only now just noticed his. At a glance, it looked like nothing, one of those floating phantoms in the corner of one’s eye. At a closer look, it looked like somepony had drawn with a permanent marker on his haunch. It was a black line. At its start, it ran straight from nowhere; in the middle, it was jagged, coursing up, then down, then up again, a jagged line—but a sharp jagged, as if it had been drawn with a purpose, not a haphazard jagged like the drawing of a child—and at the end, it ran straight for a distance equal to that with which it had started straight.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s an electrical resistor,” he said.

“I know.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“I wanted to hear it from you.”

He bowed his head, and she knew that it was not out of servile deference nor out of a respect for her but a sign that he had said everything and that she was to ask no more questions. She didn’t. She had no more. She had taken enough from him. It was time for her to give back. She didn’t have much to give, but she hoped it would be enough.

“Copper,” she said, “I have a secret. A big secret. I’ve never told anypony this, because . . . because I thought I were the only one. But after everything you’ve said, I think you’re the same way and you’ll understand. You’ll understand, won’t you?”

“I’ll try,” he said. “What is it?”

Littlepip took a deep breath. “Well, you see, I work in a hallway downstairs. And the walls are pretty boring to look at. There is one poster. It is one of Stable-Tec’s ones, you know? And it looks so runny, messy, a gooey fluid, not even paper . . .”

“Like gallium?” said Copper Chromite.

“It’s like—yes!” said Littlepip. “Yes, like gallium! How did you know?”

He shrugged. “That’s how I think of it. It’s gallium: it calls itself a metal; it has the appearance of a metal; but under pressure, heat, it holds up to nothing.”

“And then you started to put up Velvet Remedy’s posters . . .”

“Ah! Thanks for reminding me. I’ve got to take those down before I go. It’s going to kill me, looking at her, looking at that broken promise, tearing her away. But I have to do it. That’s the only integrity I have left to me: to be able to look her in the eye and admit openly that I failed her.”

“And there’s one of her right next to the poster—the gallium. I have the gallium and her in front of me. And I . . . I . . .”

“What?”

“I like the poster of her better.”

Copper Chromite laughed. “After all that I’ve said, you’d be hesitant to tell me that?”

“Do you feel the same way?”

“Do you even need to ask me that question? Of course I do—well, did, anyway. I had a thousand of her posters plastered all around this room before what happened yesterday. That one that you’re describing where you work—that was a mistake on my part. I didn’t want her anywhere near the gallium. Not because the gallium would run off onto her but because she was too good for it. What do you associate her poster with? You associate Stable-Tec’s with gallium. Is there a metal you associate her with?”

“No. I just think of her as electricity.”

“I think of her as tungsten.”

“Yes . . .” said Littlepip, her eyes widening, her breathing slowing, “yes, she’s tungsten. She can’t be anything else.”

Copper Chromite laughed. “A while back,” he said, “I had the two posters in front of me. I pressed my left hoof to Velvet Remedy and my right hoof to the Stable-Tec poster. After a few seconds, I felt nothing underneath my right hoof. But my left hoof just grew hotter and hotter and hotter—until I had to take it off, convinced that I was burned. And that makes sense: she’s tungsten, and Stable-Tec’s gallium. Gallium is the first metal to melt. Tungsten is the last. I love tungsten. I love her. And I don’t dish out my admiration and love simply because somepony happens to be the same species as me, contrary to what Stable-Tec and the overmare want me to do. There are virtues that I see desirable, a reflection of how I try to be, something I need to make myself worthy of—and I see that in Velvet Remedy. That’s why I admire and love her and nopony else. If I held a bomb and were forced to have it kill her or blow up the entirety of the stable but sparing her, I’d blow up the stable without a second thought.”

“I would, too,” Littlepip blurted. She slapped herself in the face with a forehoof. “Oh, but that’s horrible! See, we shouldn’t say that, even if we feel it. We shouldn’t think that! That’s not what anypony else thinks. It’s a betrayal to the stable and all that we stand for, all that which helps us survive.”

“Not what anypony else thinks?” He laughed again. “Whom are you kidding, ’Pip? Everypony thinks that way. Even the overmare would if you asked her to think hard enough about it. Of course, she never would.”

“Everypony thinks that way about Velvet Remedy?”

“No. Everypony has something that they admire, value, and desire. There’s something that everypony has that they wouldn’t immolate, destroy, or sacrifice for anything else in existence. There are some things that you can’t sacrifice. That unwillingness to compromise those things is what gives an individual integrity. When you compromise them, you destroy your integrity. And with no more integrity, you become as abject as those you tried to appease. What are those things called, those things that define who you are, those things that if you compromise you destroy yourself? Principles, Littlepip. They’re called principles. Principles define who you are and allow you to pick your values. And these values take many different forms: maybe it’s work from which one derives pride; maybe it’s happiness through integrity—a simple, wonderful thing!—or maybe it’s happiness at being worthy of one’s own admiration and love. But it’s a precarious pyramid, Littlepip. Violate a value, you violate your principles, and you violate yourself by corollary. Violate yourself and you end up losing that value by the very act. I did that, and I already told you who was irrevocably lost to me in the process: she whom I love. And that is just. After everything that’s happened, that’s the way it should be.” He sighed plaintively.

She gasped. “Oh, but how can that be? We’ve always been told that our principles and values are the same. Not just from the overmare; I’ve never heard anypony but you speak differently. Not even Velvet Remedy. Maybe that’s why you feel unworthy for her and why she won’t love you—because you’re too different. If I were to go to the cafeteria now and propose the dilemma you just said to everypony there, the dilemma about the bomb, each one, even Velvet Remedy, would say to save the stable and that any answer otherwise would be immoral.”

“Well,” said Copper Chromite, rolling his eyes, “of course they would say that. Each one of them is divided. They have their insides telling them what’s right, and the outside—Stable-Tec, the overmare, all their neighbors—telling them that what they feel on the inside is wrong. And then it’s a big act, pretending you’re moral when you feel immoral, a constant battle to keep what’s inside down and to digest the poison from the outside. Even Velvet Remedy, if I were to ask her, would tell me that I’m wrong, that the overmare’s right. But she wouldn’t say it for the same reason as everypony else; she, unlike me, knows how to keep her mouth shut and recognizes the futility of martyrdom. And I know it’s futile, and I know she’s right, but I . . . I can’t sit and do nothing and say nothing! To look around me and see that not one has the rectitude to analyze the situation, analyze how he feels, what he’s told, realize that what he feels is proper, what he’s told is destructive, and say no! Nopony has the rectitude but me and her, but she’s gone to me now. And that’s why I’ll be gone tonight.”

“The alarm will sound?”

“Yes. I don’t know what it will sound like nor do I know how loud it will be. I imagine it will be scary. But you won’t have to be scared. It’ll blare; you’ll wake up and hear it; but while the rest of Stable 2 will be put on edge, terrified and confused, you’ll just shut your eyes and go back to sleep, for you’ll know that Copper Chromite is free.”

“Well, then,” she said, and Copper Chromite raised his head. He had heard for the first time in her voice the rousing of a dignity that she had always had but not shown until now. She extended her hoof toward him. “Goodbye, Copper Chromite.”

He reached out with a forehoof as well. As soon as she felt the touch of his skin, she felt a surge of energy course through her spine. For a second, she felt as it felt to be in his body, that anxiousness, that inability to sit still, the incapability to look at something and wish without action. She felt herself pulled toward him unexpectedly, and in a sense unwillingly, a movement too rapid for her to have made with her own volition. But she thought that that motion were something that could be learned; she no longer felt her lugubriousness as an unbreakable chain around her neck. She now knew it to be something self-imposed, only taken by her and assumed because she had not known better. She now knew better, and she felt that newly acquired knowledge in the fresh, liberating weight of Copper Chromite’s legs around her neck as he embraced her.

“Did I ever tell you how much I hate hoofshakes?” he said. “It’s as if the one offering it is saying: ‘I don’t want to touch you, but I have to because you expect me to,’ and it’s as if the other who accepts is saying: ‘I don’t want to touch you either, but I’m going to because it would be considered rude to refuse your offer.’”

He held her thus for a long time. She had thought that he would feel cold, like logic and reason. He did not feel cold but overwhelmingly warm. She thought his bones were made out of tungsten, and she could not imagine him animated by anything other than an electric current. She felt him as one feels a newly-lit incandescent lightbulb.

When he let go of her, she saw that his eyes were red. He sniffled once and turned his head away.

“Copper,” she said, “will you be alright?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Go on, now. Get the hell out of here. I’ve got some things to take care of before I leave.”

She felt the air on her face grow colder as she walked away from him and toward the door. The door handle was icy cold.

“Wait!” he said.

She turned. “Yes?”

“They’ll probably ransack my room once I’m gone and loot it. That’s fine; there’s nothing really of any value here. But you need to get here before they do and get the thermometer. Will you take it and keep it safe?”

She looked to her right and saw the glass tube sitting on the shelf. As she rocked on her heels, the liquid swayed, twisting the golden tags in the light of the bulb. They flashed before her eyes. They seemed to be winking at her.

“Want me to take it now?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Wait until I’m gone. I want to look at it for a little while longer.”

“Of course,” she said.

“Littlepip . . .”

“Yes?”

“You’ll . . . you’ll listen to my broadcast when I make it—won’t you?”

She smiled. “I won’t have a choice now, will I?”

He laughed in answer. It was sublime, expressing pure delight at the existence of an irrevocable knowledge. It was what she had waited for since the beginning of their conversation. She had only ever heard it over the radio. And hearing it now as clearly as it should be heard, with no static, with no Pip-Buck speaker to dilute its potency, with nothing to get in its way between him and her—it was as wonderful as she had always thought it would be.

“Yes. Yes that’s right,” he said. “You won’t have a choice.”

“But can you do one thing for me?” she asked.

“Anything,” he replied.

“When you give your speech, laugh twice: once at the beginning, and once three hours later at the end.”

He laughed. “What do you mean?”

“Just like that,” she said.

And as she turned away from him and toward the door, she smiled as that satisfaction she craved so much redoubled in her, for he laughed yet a third time.

A darkness hit her when she opened the door. Though fluorescent lightbulbs lined the entire length of the hallway before her, she saw nothing. In front of her, for a few feet, the light of Copper Chromite’s incandescent lightbulb extended, terminating in a firm horizontal line, as if it marked the end of the domain; and on the other side, she knew that she no longer had any protection. She was scared, but she knew that she was armed. She took a hesitant step forward, as if waiting for her pupils to dilate.

The room had not been hot. The hallway had been unbearably cold. She shivered when she crossed the line.

She permitted herself one more glance back. She once more saw the guardian, standing on the threshold of his domain. A solemn hoof was raised in farewell, the light dancing around his mane and his hoof as if he were sending her a few last rays into the darkness. She firmly shut her eyes, trying to imprint that glare into her mind like it had been when he had first shown it to her. A flash remained; by gritting her teeth, she felt that she could hold onto it. She turned, her eyes firmly shut, and continued down the hallway. The shutting of a door was audible through the ringing of her ears.

Her foot caught something, and she almost fell forward. She opened her eyes and looked: it was Copper Chromite’s oscilloscope, mostly intact, but pieces of wire and plastic protruded from it like a wound. She laughed as she lit her horn. The pieces flew to one another. The process looked like watching a film in reverse. The strewn parts gathered onto one another until they were all together in a manner that bore some semblance of organization.

She turned once to look back down the hallway, then back to the oscilloscope she was levitating. After standing thus for a minute, she shook her head and walked away.

Before she retired to her room, she placed the oscilloscope gently down on a shelf in the closet marked “Spare Parts.”

Chapter XV

Littlepip stood in her room, staring at the circular speaker implanted in the wall above her bed.

She was determined not to fall asleep and be taken off guard by the alarm.

She wondered what the alarm would sound like. Would it be a high-pitched scream? Perhaps it would be a low buzzing drone. Maybe there would be stages to the alarm, each one signaling a different level of urgency.

She thought that when it came, it would be when she least expected it. She imagined that it would feel like a punch to her heart when the adrenaline would hit it—no, something more sharp, a spear, perhaps. A spear to the heart. She clutched a forehoof to her chest. It isn’t going to be a pleasant feeling, she thought. Even worse was the feeling of anticipation; that alone put her on edge.

Concentration was impossible. Sleep was making its surreptitious, insidious crawl toward her. But she couldn’t let it. All she could do was stand, by the side of her bed, and look at the speaker.

She didn’t want to miss it. The second it sounds, she thought, I’m going to run down to the door. I’ll stall the security team. I will be allowed to see him disappear into the abyss—no, not abyss, but portal, a portal to the world where the roof above his head is lifted, where nothing but the firmament stands between him and his vision when he lifts his head upward. She didn’t want to share that with anypony. The sight of him shrinking as he walked away, disappearing into the distance, his figure blurring and shrinking in proportion as his freedom increased, as potentiality turned to actuality, was going to be hers and hers alone. She’d defend that to the teeth from the others. It’s a selfish thought, she reflected, absolutely selfish thought. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Is it destructive? Probably. Am I leading myself to not just a bodily death but a spiritual death? Probably. But if this is how it feels, I would prefer to die that way than to live without it.

Her craned neck began to hurt, but she did not take her eyes off the speaker. Eventually, the pain disappeared, but it was replaced by a wobbling of her knees. She noticed that her vision was doubling. She saw two speakers. Which one was the right one? She had no way of knowing. So she kept her concentration on both.

It was no longer possible to stand. She could no longer make out the individual holes in the speaker; they had blurred together into a single mass.

I can sit and still listen for the sound, she thought. So she did. She sat down on the side of her bed. With time, her head grew too heavy to hold upward. Though she wanted to look at the speaker, she had to relent. No matter, she thought. I don’t need to look at the speaker to hear the alarm. I’ll still know when it sounds without looking at it.

By her bedside table was a book. She opened it, determined to enjoy herself, but the words were too blurry to read. Her eyes refused to move across the page.

Her head undulated like a pendulum. With every effort she made to keep it up, it weighed down on her harder.

I can lie down and still listen for the sound, she thought. So she did. This position had the advantage of not requiring the strain of any major muscles.

Her vision was almost completely gone. She saw only the vague color of the plaster of the wall. Now her eyelids fought her.

I don’t need to look at the speaker, she thought. I can close my eyes and still listen for the sound. So she did.

Chapter XVI

Two images occurred to her.

The first was melancholy, sad, painful even, but carried a warm hope in a vague manner. She didn’t know if she understood it; she didn’t know if she’d ever understand it; but there was a hope there, to be sure, even if she didn’t see it:

She saw him bruised, scratched, beaten, bleeding, crawling on his belly through the sand. His face was caked in mud, his body in dirt. The sand clung to the mud as he dragged himself along. She didn’t know how long he crawled for; it didn’t seem to matter. Eventually, he would come to the end of the path. The dirt would run out, and before him would be a sheer drop to the land below. It was the Badlands, she thought. She thought he had come to a cliff in the Badlands. It was the end of the day. It was dusk. He would lift his head, just enough to see the sun skimming the horizon, and a look of realization would come over his face. His chin would be drooping, quivering, showing a hint of worry, but his eyes were wide, clear, as if what he saw had not been unexpected, that it had logically followed from a set of axioms, that he hadn’t expected any differently, that he had accepted it long ago. He would give one last look over the land with the little amount of light that was left. The land would be bare, and he would smile. He would lay his head down on the sand and close his eyes in contentment, and she knew that he finally had seen what could have been and that that had been enough.

She didn’t like this image. She was grateful that it came infrequently. She liked the second image better, and it occurred much more frequently:

She saw him sitting on a beaten-up leather chair in front of a worn-down command console of some sort. The console and the chair would be in various conditions of disrepair every time the image occurred; but no matter how bad they looked, the chair always supported his body and the console always had lights flashing. Around him would be a network of beams well above his head; the beams closed into each other, funneling upward to the sky, giving the impression of a spire above his head, his body seeming to serve as its foundation and point of origin. There was no glass between the beams. The air was free to blow through them; she knew that it was this feature that gave the beams so much strength. Through the triangular openings where the structure parted, the same brown land as in the first image could be seen. But the land seemed too far away and distant for him to be standing on it; from his perspective, the land looked like a topographic model. The console and the chair were on a wooden platform, suspended high above the ground by this network. The sky would always be dark, and he would always be speaking into a microphone on the console. She never knew what he was saying; the words were indistinct. But they were not indistinct because he was saying them improperly; she knew that she could not hear them because it was she, not him, who was insulated by something. But that didn’t seem to matter. The power the words contained would cause the barrier between her and him to quiver. He had been talking for a long time. He would speak his last sentence and then lean back in his chair. His words, long after they were spoken, would hang in the air like thunder over the earth in front of him, a formidable presence that commanded everything below, an imperative to rise and behold that what was said and that what logically followed. At that moment, the sun would peek out over the horizon, a faint, dull purple, like a bruise healing. He would put his hind legs up on the console in front of him and say nothing; he would only watch. As the sun climbed higher, the sky became red, then orange—then yellow. He would be in darkness until this last color appeared; he did not permit the other colors to touch him. When the light filled his tower and his platform, he took it. His mane of golden bronze, tossed over his neck in the frozen undulation of sine, shone with an impossible intensity. His insolent posture challenged the sun, owned it, gave it permission to be the same color as his hair. The sun was no longer the source of the light; rather, it was the epicenter of the mere reflection of the radiance of his mane, flowing to all corners around him, illuminating what was below. She would see that the land before him was bare. Desolate piles of rubble stood here and there, but it didn’t seem to her that the scattered bricks were ruins; they seemed more like building blocks. They quivered in the light, gesturing in a tremble of desire, waiting for him to put them into some shape, anything he wanted. And she knew that he would.

It was his blank slate.

Chapter XVII

Littlepip opened her eyes as if she had just blinked. She looked at the speaker. A new strength invigorated her. It was no longer a struggle to watch. Her eyes were focused; she felt refreshed and alert.

She glanced at her Pip-Buck and froze. It was 12:23. She had forgotten to set her alarm; she hadn’t thought she would have needed it.

She leapt out of bed, taking no time to change, to shower, to mentally compose herself for the day. No composure was necessary. For her, there had been no break in the events of the day prior. She exited her room at a sprint. It was only when she was halfway down the hall that she knew where she was going.

She encountered nopony in the hallway. She encountered many of the Stable Colt’s posters; she did not nod to a single one.

The cafeteria’s window passed like a blur when she ran past it. She had perceived many bodies through the window, but the lack of motion in the room was so discordant with how many there were that she initially overshot the cafeteria. Before she turned the next corner of the hallway, she slammed her heels down and ran back, swearing under her breath.

“Hey, Littlepip,” came a voice from some corner when she opened the cafeteria door. It was the lunch rush, but that voice had been the only noise in the room. The ponies who were standing in line could not be heard even to breathe. The ponies who were sitting at the tables stared into their soup bowls, not talking to each other, not looking at each other.

“Did you just get up?” said another.

“Don’t judge me,” Littlepip said to the air.

She spotted Terra Firma and Clover in a corner, sipping their mugs silently, and rushed over to them.

“Hey,” she said.

“Good afternoon, Littlepip,” said Clover.

The obligatory pleasantries exchanged, Littlepip began to think. It was so normal, albeit quiet, she thought. It’s like nothing had ever happened. The radio was off, too, and that was peculiar, but it had been off ever since Copper Chromite had shut it down the other day. Had she slept through the alarm, or had there been no alarm? Had Copper Chromite changed his mind last night? Would she find him down in the studio if she ran there right now?

But the one thing that struck her the most was that nopony was speaking. She could hear the hum of the refrigerator through the walls. She could hear Silver Dollar rummaging in the pantry.

Drop it as a casual question, she thought. He probably changed his mind. He probably spoke to them earlier today. So much can happen when you wake up at noon.

After a few more items of small talk, all of which Littlepip instigated and all of which Terra Firma and Clover answered with dismissive, monosyllabic answers, Littlepip asked: “So, have you guys seen Copper? I’ve been looking for him, but I can’t find him.”

Both of her interlocutors’ ears perked up. They exchanged an almost imperceptible glance with each other. Terra Firma stared into her mug. Clover said: “Wait, you don’t . . . know?”

“Know what?” said Littlepip.

“How could she know?” said Terra Firma. “She’s been asleep all day.”

“Know what?” Littlepip repeated.

Clover pinned her ears. Her head vacillated, a motion exacerbated by a visible and violent attempt to keep it still. When she spoke, her voice was a growled whisper. Her words sounded like the rumbling that presages an earthquake:

“Littlepip, Copper’s dead.”

There was a moment’s silence in which Littlepip did nothing but blink. She was conscious only of one thing: the movement of her eyelids. “What?” she said.

“He killed himself last night,” said Terra Firma.

Littlepip had heard perfectly both times. She understood the words and the individual concepts that were being conveyed to her. They were in a language that she recognized. She knew what everything meant. But in her mind, nothing connected. The words and ideas bounced off of each other, her brain refusing to mesh them. It was not an evasion; it was a lucid observation of the facts of reality. With knowledge of her previous experiences, she evaluated the concepts, and she found no relation between them. They were ideas, but they were not grounded to anything. They occupied space in her skull but contributed nothing, parasitic thoughts that demanded brain energy and explicitly promised no return.

No, she thought; there is one connection between them. And she chuckled quietly when she realized it.

“That’s very funny, guys,” she said.

“Oh no . . .” said Terra Firma, placing her head on the table.

Clover extended a hoof and touched Littlepip’s outstretched leg on the table. “This isn’t a joke, ’Pip,” she said. “He’s gone.”

Littlepip retracted her leg swiftly, knocking over Clover’s mug. It fell to the ground with a crash. Heads turned in her direction.

“I see,” said Littlepip, her laughs increasing. “Just like when Velvet Remedy sang a song for me, right? The exact same way? I bet Copper killed himself with the song, right?”

“Littlepip,” said Clover, “if you need to talk to somepony, I—”

“Nah,” said Littlepip, waving her hoof, “I’ve had enough laughs for today. But it’s still a working day, isn’t it? I haven’t even had breakfast yet. Nice talking to you, as always.”

The circular metal stool rattled noisily against the floor as she alighted from it. Every eye on the cafeteria was turned to her. She felt none of them. She only saw Mire, who was sitting in a booth by herself.

“Hey, Mire,” she said, walking up to her.

Mire looked up, looked at the eyes all around her, and swallowed nervously. “Hello, Littlepip,” she said.

“Say, can you help me with something?” said Littlepip. “I’ve been looking for Copper Chromite all day, and I can’t seem to find him. Have you seen him?”

“Littlepip,” said Mire, whispering, “listen to me very closely: Copper killed himself last night.”

Littlepip’s laughter shook the glasses on Mire’s table. “That’s . . .” she said, “alright, you got me. You win! I actually thought you were serious for a second. Bravo, it’s hard to fool me. But I actually have some professional issues to take up with him—very important, you see—so I actually do need to find him. Where is he?”

“He’s dead,” came an anonymous voice from the corner.

Silver Dollar emerged from the pantry. A tiny rivulet of dark clotted blood was hanging out of his slightly bruised nose. “Silver,” she said, “where is—”

“Dead,” said Silver Dollar, not looking at her. He lit his horn and gathered up a collection of soiled silverware from behind the counter. “Killed himself. Last night.”

Littlepip glared at him. “Oh yeah? Do you know what time? What about his last words? Oh, maybe he—”

“Littlepip, I’m busy. Go away.”

“I must say,” she said, “that, coming from you, Silver, it’s actually quite sick. You have this way of telling the most ludicrous stories in the most convincing manner possible. But something like this? It’s actually kind of disturbing.”

He said nothing and began to load the dishwasher.

“Randall,” she said, turning to the robot floating nearby him. “Can you check the resident database?”

The robot beeped. “Resident number?”

“Ah!” she ejaculated, tapping a forehoof against her head. “What was—sorry, is—what is Copper’s resident number?”

The cafeteria looked at her, silent.

“Come on; nopony knows? Are you serious? You’ve lived with him how long?” She turned to the robot. “Resident . . . nine . . . six—no! four three—oh! I know! Resident nine-four-three-oh. What’s resident nine-four-three-oh’s balance?”

“Checking cafeteria balance for resident nine . . . four . . . three . . . oh. . . . balance void. Resident nine . . . four . . . three . . . oh . . . deceased.”

She turned to Silver Dollar. He had stopped what he was doing and was staring directly at her.

“Alright,” she said, “the extent of this . . . it’s sick. It’s sick. You sabotaged Randall just to play a joke on me? Silver Dollar, I appreciate your jokes—when they’re in good taste and harmless. This . . . this is sick!”

“Why is this so hard for you to accept?” came a voice behind her.

Littlepip turned and saw the overmare. She, Littlepip, had not heard her enter. The overmare looked exactly as she had two days ago. Nothing had changed—except those around her. Two days ago, the cafeteria had been upbeat, if a bit slow in method and operation, and the overmare had looked perfectly comfortable in it. Now, it was as silent as a sepulcher—but the overmare looked as serene as ever. Her uncanny ability to integrate her own personality into the atmosphere of the room, to make herself look completely at one with the feelings of others no matter what they were, was more apparent than ever.

“Why is it so hard?” said Littlepip. They watched with wide-eyed disbelief the manner in which Littlepip strode up to the overmare. They couldn’t name it, but the way she walked had an insolence which defied all their senses of good manners. The way she looked at the overmare, the flexing of her muscles, everything about her conveyed a manner of rudeness. But what was it? She was facing the overmare directly; her body was not half-turned, nor fidgeting in her presence. Her eyes did not shift; she held the overmare’s glance with a firmness greater than hers. Her head and neck were not slouching; they noticed that Littlepip was slightly taller than the overmare. Ostensibly, her posture was something they’d expect in an encounter such as this. But something nagged at them; they felt it to be rude. But what was it about her that could possibly be rude?

“Why is it so hard?” she repeated. “Because I spoke to him last night. And whatever the opposite of suicidal is, he was it!”

“Sometimes,” said the overmare, “those on the verge of suicide display signs of outward happiness right before they commit the deed. Before it, they’re usually downcast. Was Copper Chromite not downcast? Did you listen to him on the radio yesterday afternoon? I talked to Doctor Shrink right after he stopped the broadcast, and she said that that line of speech is completely indicative of—”

“Don’t give me that!” yelled Littlepip. The cafeteria recoiled with surprise. “That was something completely different. You know what that was? That was—”

“Perhaps we should continue this conversation outside,” said the overmare, gesturing to the door.

“Oh, gladly!” said Littlepip, walking through the door the overmare held open for her. “Perhaps you’ll be more honest with me there. Silver Dollar, I can’t believe you got the overmare in on your joke, too. Let me tell you something about Silver Dollar, Ms. Overmare—if he says something’s a good idea, that he wants your help with something, then it’s always a bad idea. But, of course, I imagine you know that by now.”

Chapter XVIII

The door slammed shut behind them. As they walked away, Littlepip could see the lingering eyes following them through the glass of the window until they were out of sight. Even when they were separated by solid concrete, she felt their sight penetrating through it, and she imagined that if she were to walk back, she would see them still staring, their eyes fixed on her, their vision like a laser locking onto its target. She wondered what the target was that was inside of her.

Littlepip stopped when she felt that the distance were sufficient. The overmare continued to walk; Littlepip stayed stone still. The overmare had gone a few feet before she noticed she wasn’t being followed. She turned and looked at Littlepip; the latter refused to budge. A smile came to the overmare’s face, as if she understood the intention of such an obstinate halt and a refusal to go forward on her command.

The overmare walked back. “Littlepip, if you need to talk to somepony, Doctor Shrink has extended her office hours for the next week, and—”

“You’re a liar.”

“Excuse me?”

“When you’re not wrapped up in your evasions, you’re lying to protect them. Copper Chromite was always suspicious of you. Personally, I never understood why. You see, Ms. Overmare, I have an intrinsic trust of my fellow ponies. I believe that ponies are naturally good-natured. I thought he were overly cynical. But I now see exactly what he was talking about. You’re lying.”

“About what exactly, Ms. Littlepip?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe about him being dead. Maybe about how he died. You lied to all of them about something. I know you’re lying, just as he knew that you were lying about his grandfather. Perhaps he was not right about what exactly you were lying about. But he knew you were indeed lying about something. Just as I know you’re lying right now.”

The overmare furrowed her brow and frowned. If one happened to be walking by at that moment, he would not have recognized her. Stable 2 knew the overmare as a pony that smiled; and, if she was not smiling, she always had the hint of a smile that lingered. They never saw her with any other emotion but that of a meaningless, unfounded gayety.

“You say that I’m a liar?” the overmare said, her voice deep, quiet, and damning. “Well, that’s quite a serious claim. A very serious claim indeed. If I lied to you, that would be grounds for immediate termination from my position, as per Stable-Tec’s overmare’s constitution. I don’t think you fully appreciate the consequences of what you’re saying. You say I lied to the inhabitants of Stable 2? I assume you have proof of this, yes?”

“I’m not trying to impeach you,” said Littlepip. “I don’t care what you think, what they think, what anypony thinks. I just wanted to let you know that I know you’re lying; that’s all. You can walk around all you want; you can accept the compliments and praises that are thrown at you; but I’ll be contented with certainty, because I’ll look at you and know that everything you ever get from them is undeserved.”

“In the absence of proof, I highly suggest you keep your ideas to yourself, Ms. Littlepip. If something is true, if something is demonstrable, then, by all means, say it. Scream it at the top of your lungs. No matter who is being denounced, I will personally see to it that she’s brought to justice. Even if it’s I. But it would be irresponsible, dishonest, immoral of me to act in the absence of proof, condemn a pony just because of somepony else’s hunch. You know that I don’t tolerate wrongdoers; but you also know that I have even less tolerance for slanderers.”

“Fair enough,” said Littlepip. “But I’m still unclear of the details. I’ve been asleep this entire morning.”

The overmare chuckled. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, because that’s grounds for a formal censure. But with everything that’s happened, I’ll be a bit more lenient for the next little while. Ms. Littlepip, I made an announcement to the stable this morning: Copper Chromite killed himself in his studio last night. That is all I said. Now you know everything.”

“How exactly did he do it, kill himself?” said Littlepip. “Can we see the body?”

The overmare scowled. “In a time of grieving, you ask such dark questions! Oh, don’t mistake me; I’m not chastising you. I encourage you to speak openly to me, of course, just as if I were Doctor Shrink. If you need to say anything, I will always listen, and it is always confidential. I’m just telling you: You should keep such thoughts to yourself. Not all will be as willing to hear your effusions as well as I do. Some will be offended. Especially the departed’s family—Celestia bless them.”

Littlepip smirked. “I’m satisfied. Thank you, Ms. Overmare,” she said.

The overmare smiled. “I’m glad I could be of help to you.”

Littlepip shook her head. “No, not in the way you think. You didn’t help me consciously. No, see, what you just said is another piece of evidence in my mind with which I convict you.”

“What exactly did I say?”

“That’s just it: you said nothing. Absolutely nothing. What did Copper Chromite say to me yesterday? That you’re all questions, questions, demands, demands, evasions, evasions? He liked that word, evasion. I never saw an example. I knew what it meant, but I could not think of a single instance of you—or anypony, for that matter—using it. But what you just said: it just screams to me evasion. Because it screams nothing. Don’t interrupt. It’s fine; I don’t hold it against you. I know what you’re going to say, because I know what nothing sounds like. It’s so simple, isn’t it? Defending nothing with nothing. You’ll never run out of arguments.”

“May I see your Pip-Buck for a second?”

“Sure,” said Littlepip, holding out her foreleg. “Whatever. It’s just a Pip-Buck. Just like any other’s.

“So,” she went on, as the overmare twisted the dials, “he told me many things. Things you’d never understand, Ms. Overmare. I think the rest would understand; he’d have to speak more slowly for the slower ones, but I think even the dumbest resident would understand. But you wouldn’t. Oh, I’m not calling you stupid—far from that. I think you’re one of the smartest here. And that’s not flattery. You know exactly what to say when. You have all these ideas, ideas I don’t understand, that I have no desire to understand. You have all these ideas you’re trying to get us to think, and you know how to get us to do what you want. Social engineering, it’s called, right? You engineer ponies in the same manner and with the same prowess as Copper Chromite engineered circuits. That’s a skill I want to learn. Not circuits, but ponies. I wouldn’t use it, of course—I have no desire for power—but I think it would be a useful skill just to have, you know? Like sewing. How long has Stable 2 stood? And you’ve managed to keep it standing for I-don’t-know-how-many-years with what? Posters and announcements through the radio? That’s impressive. But the only thing that puzzles me is how a Copper Chromite hasn’t appeared sooner—hey, what are you doing? You’re going through my personal files!”

The overmare said nothing and continued to twist the knobs.

“Those are my files!” she screamed. But she did not take her leg away. “What are you looking for?”

The overmare said something under her breath and put Littlepip’s leg down. “Oh, nothing, my dear. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. But I see you have a lot of recordings of his radio broadcasts. Was Copper Chromite a friend of yours? You certainly sound a lot like him.”

Littlepip opened her mouth to speak, but something caught in her throat and slowed the flow of words which had sounded so confident in her head. Her nose tingled. “It’s just that, Ms. Overmare . . . I’m trying to make sense . . . I don’t know what’s going on. . . . I wake up and the things I hear . . . I don’t know why . . . what or how. . . . I’m so confused. . . . I want to find out, but I don’t know. . . . I don’t know. . . . I don’t know. . . .”

The overmare put a hoof on Littlepip’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Littlepip,” she said. Littlepip looked up at her. She felt her chest warm as she saw the overmare’s head, high above hers. Her pitying, sad smile gave her the appearance of a benefactor. Littlepip saw the assurance, and though her legs started to shake and though she started to feel the unbearable weight of her head, though she felt herself sinking lower and lower to the floor in the presence of the overmare, she allowed her body to bow in reverent deference. She felt comforted, swaddled by her presence.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Overmare. . . . I’m sorry. . . . I don’t know what got into me. . . . Oh, I spoke to you like that! . . . How could I? . . . You just want to help. . . . I need to be helped. . . . Can you help me? . . . I’m so lost . . . lost. . . . I don’t know what to do or what to think . . . or what to feel . . .”

“It’s alright, Littlepip,” came the cool, smooth voice. “Have you ever lost a family member? No? It’s alright. It’ll be okay. It’s going to feel bad, but everything will be alright in the end. Don’t fight it. It’s useless to fight it. We’re all sad, and the worst thing we can do is pretend we’re not.”

Littlepip sniffed. “Can you help me?”

“Of course I can. It’s my job to help you. But to help you, you have to understand something very important.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you. You need to hear me. You might not understand immediately, but try. The sooner you do, the sooner I can help you, alright?”

“I . . . I guess so,” said Littlepip, wiping and rubbing her eyes with a forehoof. “What is it?”

“Stable 2 is going to go through a grieving process. We’ve lost one of the most productive of our family—and you see, we are a family, Littlepip. We’re all interconnected. We all depend on one another. And I will be grieving the most; truly, I will be. As a mother myself, it pains me. But I say the word mother in its literal meaning. And we must not be too literal. We can extend its definition. Words have no fixed meaning, you know. I’m a mother in two senses: in the old-fashioned, traditional sense, in the sense that I have a biological son; and in the broader sense, perhaps a more important sense, in the sense that I’m the overmare. An overmare is just another kind of mother, don’t you think? I have to care for all, make sure all are fed, make sure all grow up properly. Do you understand, Littlepip? You call me Ms. Overmare, but you should think of that title just as you think of the word mother. Do you understand?”

“I . . . I think so,” stammered Littlepip, looking up at the overmare with pleading eyes. “You want me . . . to think of you as my mother rather than my actual mom?”

The overmare gasped. “Good heavens, no! No! I’m saying that you have your biological mother, and then you have me, your overmare. I’m like an additional mother. But I differ in many ways from your biological mother: I don’t breastfeed you; I don’t sing you a bedtime story; I don’t ask you how work was. But I do make sure that you are fed; I do make sure you have a place to sleep; and I do make sure that you have work to do. I differ in specifics from your biological mother, but fundamentally I’m the same thing. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I . . . understand.”

“And do you know what else a mother does?”

“What?”

“Does a mother make sure her children follow rules?”

“I . . . suppose . . .”

“Does a mother discipline her children when they do not follow rules?”

“Yes, I . . . suppose so.”

“Are you with me so far?”

“I . . . think so. Is that . . . everything?”

“No. That was the preamble. That was easy to understand. What I’m going to tell you next might be difficult. You may reject it. But I’m trying to help you, Littlepip. I know how frustrating it is to not understand. What I say next will help you understand.”

“What is it?”

“The thing is,” the overmare went on, “there can be conflicts at times, between the mother and the overmare. It’s very common for them to disagree. This is why it’s so hard to be an overmare; this is why the overmare is discouraged from having children: Because she’s torn between the two. She’s torn between doing what makes her children happy and doing what supports the residents of Stable 2. There are conflicts. If an overmare is also a mother, she feels a duty to care for those under her as her children. But she needs to look at them disinterestedly. Many of my predecessors couldn’t do it. It’s a very difficult position. I look strong, yes? Would you believe me if I told you there were times when I think I weren’t cut out for this position?”

Littlepip choked briefly on her saliva and coughed. “I don’t . . . understand . . .”

“What I’m saying is,” the overmare continued, “is that the mother in me grieves at the news of Copper Chromite’s death. When I heard the news, the mother in me wanted to go run to my own son and hug him and never let him go. It is an incomprehensible horror to her to think of how his family is feeling, and she’s reactive; she wants to know how it happened, why it happened, so that it will never happen again. She looks at what’s around her and wonders how it could have been different. Maybe if it were different in this way, he would still be with us. I look at a chair, and I convince myself that perhaps had the fabric been a different color, it would have saved him. It sounds ridiculous, because the thinking of a mother is not quite rational at times; but in the moment, it makes the most sense in the world.

“That’s how the mother, the old-fashioned mother, in me reacts. Do you want to know what the overmare in me says?” She stepped closer to Littlepip. The overmare’s height was more evident than ever.

“What does she say?” whispered Littlepip.

“The overmare in me says: serves him right.”

Littlepip said nothing. She stared at the overmare. Her nose stopped its tingling. “What?” she said.

“He was a good worker; the mother in me praises him for that. But he didn’t know why, or for whom, he was working; the overmare in me damns him for that. He was short, to the point, knew how to communicate his ideas effectively; the mother in me lauds him for being so honest. But he was rude, obnoxious, had his own ideas on the way to conduct things, and dismissed those who disagreed; the overmare in me reproaches him for that. He had an individuality that stuck out, was blatant and forefront: The mother in me is delighted, because she sees that her child is unique—how wonderful that all children are not the same, that I have a reason for looking after my own! The overmare in me also sees he’s unique—and she scowls. How dare that a resident deem himself more worthy than the others! And after I’ve spent my entire life extolling equality, kinship, and fraternity, he has the audacity to say that he’s special! That he’s above that! Do you see now, Littlepip, the conflict I face every day of my life? Do you see why though we’ve lost him in one way, and though that way was tragic, we’ve gained in so many others? This is what sacrifice is. It may hurt us, and we may never understand it or be able to live with it, but that’s our ego trying to muddle our feelings. The ego doesn’t know what’s good for it; it takes, consumes, devours, and holds itself as its only justification. And if we are to get along, if we don’t want to be at each other’s throats, we must quell it whenever we have the opportunity. Isn’t that what I’ve been saying when I’ve spoken of the importance of sacrifice? Sacrifice is the destruction of the ego. Personal opinions aside, none would disagree that Copper Chromite upset harmony, equality, and balance in the stable; and now he’s gone, all that I’ve said would ensure our survival has been restored. Does that not make you view his death as a net gain? Does that not justify it?”

Littlepip found her footing again. Her head lifted from the ground on its own accord, without any help from her neck. Her stutter was gone. The cloud in front of her brow lifted. The overmare was slightly higher than her, but Littlepip found it was no effort to look her in the eyes and say: “They’ll remember him. I remember him. And you can’t expect me to forget him.”

“I suggest you try very hard, Ms. Littlepip, because I’m starting to see a lot of him in you. It’s a blessing, in a way—and a curse. A curse that’s necessarily contrary to our fundamental tenets. Do you know what our fundamental tenets are? Tell me. You might not see that now, but perhaps if you voice them, you’ll see.”

Littlepip pursed her lips.

“Have you forgotten?” said the overmare. “You shouldn’t forget. When you forget them, you lose the will to survive. Why, about a month ago, I asked Copper Chromite—may he rest in peace—what they were, and he told me he had forgotten. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe it’s linked. I know you’re not like that. What are they? Tell me.”

“Solidarity,” Littlepip said through her teeth, “kinship, fraternity, and . . .”

“And?”

“And . . .”

“Say it.”

“Sacrifice.”

“Very good. See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it? It was nothing to you, but it means so much to me. Come now; why the heavy eyes? Do you not think these virtues are what have enabled us to survive against all odds all these long years?”

“No, I think that they have done just that.”

The overmare smiled sadly and shook her head. “I don’t understand you, Ms. Littlepip. Is there anything you can think of that is more desirable than surviving?”

“Living.”

Littlepip turned. No matter how fast she ran, no matter how cold the air felt around her as it whipped past her face, she still felt the overmare’s presence one step behind her. She still felt her touch on her shoulder. It had been as intimate as when Copper Chromite had touched her. She had felt the overmare’s bones as well as she had felt his.

Copper Chromite’s bones had felt like tungsten. The overmare’s, like gallium.