The Conversion Bureau: Final Flight
It was more of a glide than a flight, really.
Feather Fall took a constitutional flight every day, as he had for the last two-hundred fifty-six years. Each time he had to drag himself out of the cloud house to start, and each time he wished to get home sooner than he did. But he took them, because he was a pegasus pony, and pegasus ponies fly. No matter how wrinkled his hide was or how stringy his mane was, he was a pegasus, and pegasi fly.
He dimly remembered a time when his wings didn’t hurt with each flap.
He stayed over the clouds and let his hooves drift, feeling the support. Like a child on a swingset who runs along the ground at the nadir of each arc, he bounced whenever he reached cloudstuff, just for the added lift. It let him flap his wings that much less.
One more turn, and there was the cloud house.
Even dimmer than his wings’ health, Feather remembered a time when he could not fly. A time when standing on four legs hurt, and he had to balance on only two. He’d been a…newfoal? Was that right? No, that was what he was first called when he was a pony. Something before that. Whatever. Maybe it was “oldfoal.” That would make sense.
Why was the house taking so long to arrive? Was it even moving? No, it wasn’t the house that moved. It was Feather. Only he wasn’t. Why not? He looked down. Right. I always stop here for a rest. And to remember her.
Obviously the marker was symbolic. Back when he was an oldfoal stones like this actually showed where bodies were kept in airtight boxes. Oldfoals were silly like that. Even if ponies could keep bodies in clouds, they would be smelly, and nopony liked that.
No, it was only a stone, enchanted to stay on the cloud like he could. But it was all he had left of her.
“These last five years have been the hardest,” he said to the stone. “Why did you have to leave me?”
But nopony was around, and nopony answered.
Five years. What was that memory? It was awful, being old. Everything came harder. No, this time he would not let it go. Feather sat down next to the stone and made himself remember.
***
“Five years. That’s all you have. Every speck of land will have been crossed by the barrier then, and there’s no way around it.”
The expert went around to colleges and workplaces, giving the lecture. But for a young man (Man! That was what the oldfoals were called!), ready to make his way in the world, he wasn’t ready to hear it. They’d been predicting disaster forever. Acid rain would end the world. A pandemic would end the world. Global warming would end the world. Whatever. What’s the score of the game?
And so, for four of the five last years of the world, he hadn’t noticed. The barrier was a western problem. So California was gone. They always said that it would slide into the ocean anyway. Whatever. Any day now, they’ll announce that the barrier’s stopping and we can all start worrying about genetically modified food or peak oil or something.
It didn’t happen. Instead, an evacuation order went out for his hometown: leave or convert within a month. Feather (Was that his name back then?) had to leave his home. Not for a week until they turned the power back on like in the last hurricane, but forever.
Whatever. They’ll figure it out. They always do.
It wasn’t until the west-side window’s view was changed to solid swirling silver that he started to panic. Still rebellion flared in him. This was his life. He had a right to it. He wasn’t leaving. He was going to sleep in his own bed.
Remembering that he had the dream was just as hard as the rest of his reminisces. Remembering the details was not. Her face was clear in his mind as any thought.
“What are you?!”
“My name is Celestia.”
“Am I dreaming?”
“You are dying. The thaumatic radiation from the barrier is killing you. Your toes are already dead. It is lucky you sleep with your head to the east.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I am the barrier, and the barrier is me. I am entering your mind to explain to you that the only way you will survive is to convert and to become a pony.”
He tried to turn his head, but it was impossible. Celestia set the rules of this dream. “You do this to everyone?”
“Most people are aware of their danger. Some have, in their pride, elected to be overrun. Others have, to my regret, committed suicide. Many more have accepted my offer, but all people must make the choice. You have ignored it until now. You are attempting to die by default. I do not permit this. If your survival is of no interest to you, wake and face the barrier as it consumes your mortal flesh. If you wish to live, wake and flee toward the rising sun. There is a bureau there which will convert you. But be quick about it. They are closing after today.”
Then the dream was no more. What had he done then? Faced down the barrier, right?
No, that was silly. If he had done that, then he wouldn’t be in Cloudsdale. Feather remembered. He had panicked. He had acted out of fear.
And yet, out of that panic and that fear had come paradise. He had drunk something that tasted of grape, and was assisted by the most beautiful pegasus in Equestria.
Or so he had assured her, every day, for two-hundred fifty years. Their romance was based on a simple equation. He needed help, and Wind Shear was as nice as she was beautiful. She had calmed his anger, taught him to fly, and borne his foals. For a long time, that first year, he had felt guilty about taking so much from the relationship without giving. Finally, he’d sat her down. “I need to know. Why do you stay with me? I’ve done nothing for you.”
“I stay because you ask that question. Every look you’ve given me, every smile tells me that you’re thinking about me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. When you cover me with a wing to protect me from the rain, when you fly in front of me so I can draft behind you, when you swoop down to pick up something that I’ve dropped, I feel something that nopony else makes me feel. That is why.”
He had asked her to marry him that very night.
That he could go from a life of wage slavery and loneliness to making rainstorms for fun and profit while being married to such a loving and generous mare, it had to be a miracle. Something that only Celestia could have made.
A tear fell on the stone. “Then why did you have to take her away?!”
It wasn’t just Wind Shear, he thought as he cried. Everypony, all his old friends had gone. Patient Wisdom, the old unicorn, he’d been the first. That was the first time he’d even realized that ponies could die. He’d thought that, like Equestria, it kept going on exponentially.
But Patient had been over four hundred. Not the young two-sixty that Wind had gone at. Two hundred fifty years was barely time to get to know somepony.
Enough. Time to get home. There was no reason to lie there reminiscing.
That gave Feather Fall a start. That was right. There was no reason. So why was he doing it?
One more memory hit him. Reading an article somewhere, back when he was an oldfoal—a man. A disjointed bit of text:
“…believe that the phenomenon of one’s life flashing before one’s eyes is an evolutionary survival boost, as it allows the brain to search through its memory rapidly, to find a situation analogous to the one that threatens…”
Feather noticed that the edge of his vision was darkening.
He could barely creak out his words “No! Somepony…help…”
But nopony was around, and nopony answered.
***
His sight deteriorated until all he could see was a black void with points of light. They looked like stars, and he wondered briefly how many more observations he had to make. But then it seemed that the points of light no longer looked like stars. They were stars. And he was no longer lying on a cloud. He was floating in a three-dimensional space. Instinctively, he flared out his wings to avoid falling, but the air pattern was wrong. He had nothing to beat against. But when he folded his wings back to his body, he did not fall.
From a far distance walked a figure he had seen only once, many years before, but who had not been out of his mind for very long.
“Princess Celestia? Where is this place?”
She grinned. “The Conversion Bureau.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Once before, I stood before you and demanded you make a choice. To be lost forever, or to live as a pony. Now a new choice awaits you. Here, among the stars, all the souls of my little ponies reside. They live in peace, just as they did in Equestria, but now everypony is a part of one another, a part of the cosmos. You have the choice to join them, now.”
“Then, it is heaven?”
Celestia looked out at the distance. “You will know the name of this place if you choose to stay.”
“What if I don’t?”
“Equestria always needs new foals.”
“So, reincarnation, or nirvana?”
Now Celestia faced him in full. “It is difficult to explain, my little pony. Your human self would not have been able to understand flying, or living in harmony with other ponies, or living as long as you have. But you do. If you stay, you will understand more.”
“You want me to stay, don’t you?”
She smiled.
“It still sounds like heaven or nirvana to me.” Feather Fall leaned next to the princess. For a long time he watched the movement of the stars around him. “But then, I thought Equestria was heaven too.
“Wait! I do understand! It’s never eternal, is it? Heaven was a place where souls stayed forever, but even if I stay, someday I’ll have to move on from here too. That’s right, isn’t it?!”
Celestia only smiled. She held out a cup of tea. It smelled faintly of grape leaves.
***
Princess Luna knew the sky completely. If a single heavenly body moved an inch, she would mark it. As she used her magic to raise the moon, she saw a new star in the sky. If it happened to cleave close to another one that had appeared five years before, nopony else would notice. Luna did, and she smiled.