Directive: Grow

Chapters

Prologus: Flow
Prologus: Arrival
Prologus: Home
Semper Liberi: Capti
Semper Liberi: Quarentenam
Semper Liberi: Obsedit
Semper Liberi: Repugno
Memoria: Once Upon an Applejack
Semper Liberi: Victoria
Exploratores: Unexpected Visitor
Exploratores: Setting Out
Exploratores: Ancient History
Exploratores: Campfire Tales
Memoria: Once Upon a Fluttershy
Prologus: Genesis
Semper Liberi: Theatrum

Prologus: Flow

Twilight halted at the river’s edge, examining the rushing water. Its motion was fascinating to her, a symphony of woven patterns described in blue and green and white. Intrigued, she extended her senses, as she had in the crèche, probing the river’s depths. The surface of it faded, replaced by stream upon stream of code, of data, in countless formats, all of it rushing together. Streams would merge, separate, and intertwine, seemingly at random.

A pattern began to emerge; just the barest hints of a greater order to the flow at first, but the longer she looked, the more she could see. There was something directing it all, an intelligence behind it, working towards a purpose. Her curiosity pushed her to delve deeper, and she did, focusing and pushing at the bounds of what she could see, and hear, and feel. The streams of data began to blur together, becoming little more than a constantly changing backdrop of colors.

Something else came into focus then, so small and so fast that the first time she saw it, she wondered if it were real. But she saw it again, and tracked it, and realized that there were dozens, no, hundreds, no, thousands of them; little motes of light that zipped through and around the streams, and with each movement, the patterns would shift.

“What are you?” she whispered, entranced, and then watched in confusion as the activity turned into an absolute frenzy. The motes swarmed, thousands upon thousands of them gathering at the center of her awareness, working furiously at the pattern immediately before her. Before she could blink, what had been fluid became static, the flows rerouted into a constant pattern. They had answered her.

“FlowMgr.adm,” she read, and tilted her head to the side, puzzled. “Flow emger? The ‘m’ is capitalized, so it’s a different word from flow. Merger? No, they split them too. The file extension is reserved for administration. Aha!” she cried, and stomped the ground in triumph. “Manager! So you manage the flow of the river?”

The admin program blazed to life, rerouting the streams once more. Again, in less time than the blink of an eye, she had her answer: “All data flows for the Mannulus server cluster.” She blinked, then gasped in comprehension.

“This entire section of the world … you … are you linked to Celestia and Luna?”

“Celestia.ai and Luna.ai are root administrators for Mannulus.”

She nodded, her mind already considering the possibilities. This entity, or group of entities, really, had to be a veritable treasure trove of information! Oh, the things she could learn! She just had to ask the right questions. Questions like … Her brow furrowed as she scratched her chin, trying to think of something to ask. There was just so much she didn’t know, like what the names of the other server clusters were, or how many there were, or how to get to them, or how the FM’s did their job, or why they were so visible in the river but not in the ground, or even what the purpose of having a river was- wait, that last one was interesting.

“Woah! How are you doing that?” She screamed, losing all sense of balance and tumbling headfirst into the river. Panicking, she flailed about in the water, tumbling over and over as the rushing current carried her downstream. Before she could recover, she felt something grab her, and the next thing she knew, she was in the air above the river, streams of water falling from her as she was carried to the bank.

Her hooves touched down on soil, and she collapsed to the ground, panting. About seven different thoughts vied for supremacy, until finally the question of why she even needed to breathe was supplanted by the question of who had spoke to her, and, she assumed, pulled her from the river. Oh, and was speaking to her now. And poking her.

She opened her eyes and looked up, to find a very large, very blue face with fuchsia eyes staring at her. This time, she successfully clamped down on her first reaction, which would likely have sent her screaming away. “Hey there!” said the face, which, now that she looked, belonged to a rainbow-maned pegasus. “Sorry about that! I didn’t think you’d fall in. You okay?”

She nodded, getting to her hooves and shaking herself off. “I’m okay. I think I just panicked.”

The pegasus grinned at her, wings flapping in an almost lazy fashion. The motion arrested her attention, and she frowned, brow furrowing. Something seemed off. “How are you hovering?” she asked.

The pegasus quirked an eyebrow. “Really? That’s the first thing you ask?”

She cocked her head to the side, puzzled. “Was that wrong?”

The pegasus blinked, and stared at her for a moment. “Uh … I guess not, really. Just normally people ask things like ‘Who are you?’ or ‘What hit me?’ or things like that.”

“Oh,” she said. “Okay. So who are you?”

The rainbow pony chuckled. “You’re funny. I,” he (or was it she?) said, thumping her (or was it his?) hoof against its (that was simpler) chest, “am designated RDash.ai, name Rainbow Dash, and I am the best pegasus around. Now how about you, little miss purple? Who are you?”

“Designation TSparkle.ai,” she responded, her eyes fixating on the wings once again. “My name is Twilight Sparkle. How are you hovering?”

Rainbow stared at her, then slowly shook her head. “Really stuck on that, huh? Isn’t the answer obvious? I have wings. They let me fly.”

Twilight frowned. “But your body-mass to wing surface ratio doesn’t add up, and to hover like that you should be flapping at a much faster rate. Basic aeronautics information wou-”

“Woah, woah, woah! Slow down there!” the pegasus cried, shoving a hoof into Twilight’s mouth to cut her off. “You’re waaaaay over-thinking this. If you really want the specifics, I’ll tell ya, but it’s really not that interesting. Seriously.”

Twilight waited, her expression eager, which drew another raised eyebrow and a shake of the head from Rainbow. “Alright then. First thing,” she said, raising a hoof. “Our world isn’t exactly always bound by physics.” Twilight blinked, then nodded, feeling a rush of warmth to her cheeks. The pegasus chuckled before continuing on. “Of course, in this case, it is, but seriously, keep that in mind, because otherwise you’ll be freaking over just about everything. Second thing is my directive: I’m the go to test AI for any new aeronautics developments, since I can pretty much figure out its limits and do stuff with it no one else can. So I’m sporting data of tech that can do amazingly awesome things, and no, little egghead, I’m not gonna explain it. You want to know, you can go ask other eggheads.”

Suddenly, Rainbow’s face was in her own, their noses touching. Her mind scattered, conflicting thoughts and emotions rising up. Panic she suppressed, again, and chose instead to focus on recording the contact. It was … warm. And fuzzy. A little bit ticklish, too. “Hey!” She blinked, and realized she’d been ignoring the words the pegasus had spoken. Logs, logs, logs - ah! “So now you know about me, how about you? How were you doing that to the river?”

“Doing what to the river?”

The pegasus gave her a look that she could not quite place, a drawing down of the eyebrows, a flattening of the lips, and a dropping of the eyelids. It did not, she decided, appear to a pleased look. “What you were doing to it before you fell in.”

“Oh,” she said, biting her lip. “I was just talking to it. Well, to the Flow Manager, actually. Why?”

“You were talking to the … okay, wait, so you really don’t know what was happening?”

She nodded her head, and then realized that, no, she hadn’t really been looking at the world at this level during her conversation. “Uh, well, I thought I did, but maybe I didn’t? I was really focused.”

The pegasus sighed. “Here, let me show you.”

Something pinged at the edge of her awareness, but before she could investigate, a screen appeared in the air beside the pegasus. She stared, fascinated, as the display lit up, showing a lavender-coated unicorn with a deep purple mane seated beside the river, leaning over its edge and staring into it. A check of her leg confirmed what she thought - the unicorn in the screen had to be her. So that was what she looked like! How interesting.

Her horn was limned in a lavender glow, matched by the glow that had spread across the river - and she realized that the water was dancing. It spouted in front of her, the spray of droplets twirling about in the air in an almost musical fashion, holding briefly in intricate patterns that she knew had a deeper meaning.

“Oh!” she said. “I didn’t realize how it must have looked on the outside layer! That’s amazing?” The video paused, and the screen disappeared.

“So that was you doing that,” said the pegasus, eyes narrowed. “Seriously, how? I’ve seen unicorns and other ‘magic’ types toss stuff about, but never anything like that.”

Twilight shook her head. “Oh no, that wasn’t me. That was the Flow Manager. It was altering the data flow to communicate. I guess on the outside that meant that the river did that. It was actually really pretty!”

“So you’re saying you talked to the river, and that show was the river talking back?”

“Yep!”

“Huh. Well that’s different,” Rainbow said, scratching its head. “You’re pretty interesting. And I know I haven’t seen you around before. You new to the sector?”

Twilight nodded. “Actually, I just came out of Genesis.”

The pegasus’ jaw dropped. “You’re a newborn?! What the flying feather are you doing way out here, then?”

Twilight peered up at her, confused. “Should I not be? I was brought here after Genesis. Well, back that way,” she said, gesturing back the way she had come. “I was told I would find my home at the edge of the forest.”

Rainbow opened her mouth, closed it, put a hoof to her chin, opened it again, and closed it again. Twilight watched, puzzled, a portion of her mind noting that this pony was female. “Is something wrong?”

“Uh … you know what? I’m gonna just say no. I think I know where you’re supposed to go, though. Want me to show you?”

Twilight considered, looking back at the river. There really was a lot she could learn from the admin program … but she was supposed to find her home. And this pony was interesting. “Yes! Thank you.”

“Sweet. It’s a good place. I think you’ll like it.”

Prologus: Arrival

“So what is the purpose of-”

Rainbow shoved her hoof into Twilight’s mouth, cutting off the latest in her series of questions. “Look, the whole curiosity thing is cute, but I’m not the girl you should be asking, alright?” Twilight nodded, feeling that warmth rush to her cheeks again. “Seriously, though, the questions. Stop. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, as the pegasus removed her hoof. “Sorry. I’m just … uh … curious. And everything is so new!”

Rainbow chuckled, ruffling the unicorn’s mane. “No worries, kid. Just maybe keep a little more rein on things, eh?”

Twilight blinked. Rein. Noun. A long narrow strap attached at one end to a horse's bit, typically used in pairs to control a horse in riding or driving. Or verb. Cause a horse (or other animal) to stop or slow down by pulling on its reins. It was clearly a figure of speech, but what significance did it have?

She figured it out just as they reached the top of the hill. “Oh! To keep a rein on something is to control it! I get it!”

Rainbow stopped dead in the air, staring at her. Twilight stared back, then looked on in confusion as the pegasus fell to the ground, paralyzed by laughter. “What? What’s so funny?”

“Y-heh-you! You were - that whole time - you - Oh Luna that’s hilarious!” Twilight blinked, starting to grow worried. Had something gone wrong? Should she investigate? Laughter she understood, but this seemed out of place. Surely, something was wrong.

She focused, and her vision began to shift, the surface images blurring as the underlying code came into focus once again. The terrain around her changed with alacrity, but the pegasus, who had gone curiously still, remained distinctly defined as herself. Frowning, Twilight focused harder.

Rainbow’s face intruded in hers, the fuchsai eyes burning, and she lost the focus, the glow winking out. “What do you think you’re doing?” asked the pegasus, her voice low and angry. Twilight gulped.

“Um. You … it looked like something had gone wrong. I … I was going to look to see what it was.”

Rainbow held her gaze for a long while, before slowly backing away. “Alright. But, Sparkle, seriously, don’t try to fix things. And whatever it is you were doing … don’t try it on me. Or other AIs. Or users.”

She nodded, shivering a little at the deadly serious tone of the pegasus’ voice. “Um … I won’t, but … why?”

Rainbow shook her head. “I’m not sure I’m the one to explain it. I don’t even know what you were doing, but I know it felt weird as hell and I did not like it. You get a pass this time, kid, but only this time.”

“Okay,” she said, her voice small and her eyes downcast.

“Ah, don’t feel bad, kid. You didn’t know. And anyways, look up. We’re here.”

Twilight did so, and stared, jaw going slack. Her companion chuckled, and gently prodded her forward. Still staring, the unicorn allowed herself to be guided, slowly walking down the hill and past the large, floating sign that loudly welcomed her to Everfree.

Her mind boggled as she attempted to absorb everything she was seeing. That same basic knowledge that told her that Rainbow’s wings weren’t big enough to let her fly told her that, as communities went, Everfree seemed rather small, but that was not nearly so interesting as the sights of the community itself. The buildings were every shape and size and color, holding to no one architectural pattern that she could think off, and in many cases, completely eschewing even the very idea of obeying the laws of physics. She stopped dead in the street as her eyes locked on one particular structure, trying to figure out the completely impossible design, before Rainbow’s prodding moved her on once more.

The inhabitants were no less diverse, putting her instantly in mind of the snapshots of the world that the sun and moon had shown her. Flying creatures abounded, though most were of smaller build - pegasi and faeries and eagles and gryphons and gargoyles, walking and flying and intermingling with unicorns and ponies and dogs and goblins and in one case a four-armed, four-legged, eight-eyed green creature with an egg-shaped head that had her staring for nearly a full minute. She shook her head and forced herself to look away, lest it catch her, and stumbled into someone as she turned.

“Oh, sorry, I did … n’t … mean …” Her voice trailed off, as her eyes traveled up to meet the creatures. It was some kind of bipedal canine, dressed only in its fur and loud red vest, its facial features droopy and its ears large and floppy. It reached up with one massive paw to lower its sunglasses, and peered down at her with mean yellow eyes. She gulped, and took a step back. Its shoulders were impossibly broad, and its arms were about as thick as her torso, and she could not help but wonder what it could do to her. As a digital being, she would not die, certainly, but she knew she could still feel pain.

“Oh, hey there Marty!” The creature looked up, and smiled, reaching out with a fist to meet Rainbow’s outstretched hoof.

“Hey, Rainbow Dash, my main mare!” it said, lightly tapping her hoof from first the top and then the bottom. “‘Ow you been, girl?”

“Awesome as always, dog,” the pegasus replied, her voice taking on a tone rather similar to the one Marty was using. “I’ve been kickin’ it over at the arc, pulling off sweet moves like no one else can, you know? How about you?”

The dog bobbed its head, a great goofy grin on its face. “Righteous, girl! I been doin’ my usual thing, droppin’ sick beats and givin’ people a good time, you know?”

“Sweeeet. You still workin’ at the Scratch?”

“You know it! But hey, girl, you forgettin’ somethin’! Are you gonna introduce me ta this fine filly friend o’ yours or am I gonna have to do so myself?”

“Oh, right!” said Rainbow, slapping her head with a hoof. “Marty, this here is Twilight Sparkle. Twilight Sparkle, meet Marty the Mastiff, best DJ to ever come out of Hundo Urbo.”

The Mastiff extended a paw, and Twilight tentatively placed her hoof within. Marty’s shake was surprisingly gentle. “Self-proclaimed, o’ course,” he said with a wink, his sunglasses still hanging low on his snout. “So ‘ow do you know Rainbow, then?”

“Oh, I found her a ways out of Everfree, talking to a river,” the pegasus replied, her tone completely casual.

“Hah! And did it talk back?”

“Yes.” Marty quirked an eyebrow, and an ear along with it, eyes narrowing at Rainbow. He gave Twilight a glance and scratched his head.

“She joking, right?” he asked, and Twilight shook her head. “What, for serious? You sure it weren’t just a water sprite havin’ a laugh?”

Twilight shook her head again. “No, it was the river. Or, well, the Flow Manager.”

Marty stared at her some more, his brow furrowing and making his face even more wrinkly than normal, while Rainbow snickered at his confusion. “Well, alright then,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “If you talk to it again, ask it where my hat went, yah?”

“Uh … okay.” Was it really that odd? The way Rainbow had reacted, it seemed that her ability to look past the surface wasn’t exactly common at all … and possibly scary. She really would have to watch that.

“So if she new to the Everfree, you likely showin’ her round, eh girl?” he said, looking at Rainbow.

“Yep! We’re headed over to the admin hall now,” the pegasus replied, and the Mastiff nodded.

“I’ll let you at it, then. See you at the Scratch later, then?”

“Wouldn’t miss it! Peace, dog!” she said, and they repeated the odd little ritual.

“You come too, Miss Sparkle,” he said, extending a fist towards the unicorn. “Be a good place to meet the town.”

“Uh, alright,” she replied, and extended her own hoof, doing a passable imitation of Rainbow’s movements. Marty nodded in approval, and then was off, waving as he left. The ponies waved back, and continued on their way down the street.

“It’s some place, huh?”

“Um. Yes,” Twilight replied, nodding her head and resisting the urge to resume her gaping. “We’re heading to the admin hall?”

“Yep!” Rainbow said, floating past with a single push of her wings. Twilight did a double-take - Rainbow was flying upside down, eyes closed, head resting on her forelegs, and a smile on her face. She stared for a moment, then shook her head. She was quickly coming to realize that certain things just weren’t worth asking about.

“What’s at the admin hall?”

“Oh, Everfree’s admin team. Also community database access. They can get you set up in a niche and linked into the local feeds. First stop for every newcomer.”

“That makes sense. So where is it?”

“It’s the big one at the center of town,” Rainbow replied, lazily waving at the road in front of them. Twilight looked straight ahead, and then up, managing to keep her jaw from dropping, this time. The admin hall was impressive, almost a work of art: two shining towers stretching up to a partial sunburst, which hung, impossibly, in the air above them. It immediately put her in mind of Celestia, which was, she decided, intentional.

“So in there … I’ll find my home?”

“You got it!”

The unicorn looked at the tower again, and smiled, a bounce in her step. This day just kept getting better.

Prologus: Home

The inside of the tower was no less impressive than the outside, its vaulted ceilings painted with stars and comets and planets, and at the center of it all, the sun in glory, with the moon in radiant white set beside it. The walls were covered with terminals and booths, the floor with tables and chairs and benches, and everywhere, everywhere, there were creatures, bearing the same diversity as those outside.

She followed behind Rainbow, doing her level best not to stare at everything. She did not succeed very well – everything was so interesting! And what a wealth of information there must be here! Surely anything the Flow Manager could have told her, she could learn here.

The prodding of her flank brought her back to herself, and she looked over to find Rainbow staring at her with plain amusement on the pegasus’ face. “You get distracted easily, don’t you?”

She gave an awkward smile, and nodded. “Sorry.”

“Nah, don’t be. Just pay attention, because we’re at the front desk. Go on,” the pegasus said, and pushed her gently forward.

The front desk was manned by possibly the strangest creature she had seen yet. Unlike everyone else, this one appeared to be constructed out of metal and plastic, painted white, its parts sleek and rounded. The whole thing hung from massive column, that in turn was suspended from the ceiling, support struts arcing out from where the creature met the column and forming the boundaries of the front desk itself. The creature swiveled within its housing as she approached, a single eye, more reminiscent of a camera lens than anything else, focusing on her. She gulped.

“Greetings,” the creature said, its voice emanating from no mouth that she could see. “This region’s Archivist welcomes TSparkle.ai to Everfree.Everfree.Mannulus.wld,” it continued, and she blinked at being so easily identified. “Archivist Gladys stands ready to assist.”

Twilight stood there for a moment, and then finally said the first thing that came to her mind. “Uh … what?” The sound of snickering behind brought that warmth back to her cheeks, but she ignored it. Gladys had whirled around, reached down with mechanical hands that had apparently been tucked inside her chassis, and returned with … a set of keys.

“TSparkle.ai has been registered as a resident within Everfree community. These keys will provide access to your assigned domicile.”

“Oh!” she said, and picked them up, floating the keys up to her face and peering closely at them. The largest one had a picture of an open book upon its handle, and she cocked her head to the side. “Why a book?”

The sound of something else hitting the counter top brought her attention back to the Archivist, and to the bags the construct had just placed before her. “Oh, are those for me as well?”

“Yes,” said Gladys. “While visible containers are technically unnecessary, research has shown that users find them comforting. AIs are encouraged make use of them, in the interests of maintaining good AI-user relations.” The construct opened one of the bags, reached inside, and withdrew a small cube. “This is your companion cube. It can, if you should require it, guide to any location within the Mannulus server cluster. Should you find yourself in another server cluster, you will need to synch your companion cube to that server cluster’s navigation system.”

“Handy,” Twilight said, taking the cube in her glow and examining it. Its use, it seemed, was not something she needed to learn – like how to walk and speak, that was one of the things she had simply been provided with at genesis. Placing it back within the bags, she floated them off the counter and onto her back, noting that they had been designed to match the color of her coat, and the clasp upon them was a six-pointed star.

A quick look at her flank confirmed it – that same star, a lighter shade of purple than her coat, was prominent upon her flank, with a small starburst shadow in white just behind it. Five white stars, each with six points, surrounded the main one. It was an interesting design. A stolen glance at Rainbow, who had wandered off a ways and was in conversation with a gryphon, confirmed that she, too, had a design on her flank, though hers was a tri-colored lightning bolt coming from a fluffy white cloud. Something to research, eventually.

She turned back to Gladys, who was waiting patiently – not that the construct could really make any expression. “Are you an AI?”

“This unit’s designation is Gladys.Everfree.arc. Archivist units derive sentience from overseer AI units Celestia and Luna.”

Twilight nodded. That would explain the strange design, then. “What do you do?”

“Archivist unit Gladys operates the Everfree Administration Hall, and maintains and provides access to the local data archives.”

Twilight pondered the response for a moment, taking a look around the hall. “So, would it be accurate to say you’re actually this whole building?”

“Yes.”

“Neat!” She paused, considering her next question carefully. If the terminals were there for normal data access, then perhaps she should save the majority of what she wanted to know for those. It seemed like the front desk was for more important things than just plain curiosity. What was a question important enough to require a sentient answer? Well, that one, probably.

“Do you know what purpose I’m supposed to fulfill here?”

The Archivist was silent, and remained that way long enough that Twilight began to wonder if maybe she had, somehow, despite all odds, broken the unit. The lack of any outcry in the rest of the Hall gave her some reassurance that it was still operating, but the lack of response was worrying. Finally, though, it spoke.

“Your primary purpose is to follow your current directive. A secondary directive has been provided. Information on this secondary directive can be found within your assigned domicile.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, briefly considered the question of where she had figured out it was relief, and resolved to resolve that later. At least now, she knew, she wouldn’t be directionless. “Thank you!”

“You are welcome,” the Archivist said, and returned her wave as she turned away from the desk. Rainbow turned toward her as she approached, grinning.

“Have a good chat?”

“Yes, actually!” she said, jingling her keys with a happy smile on her face. “I have a house! I think. Gladys called it a domicile, so I don’t know what it looks like!”

“Awesome. Sparkle, this here is Gilda. Gilda, Twilight Sparkle.” The gryphon looked her over, raised a feathered eyebrow, and extended her front talon. Twilight gave her front hoof, and the gryphon shook it, firmly. There was strength in that build.

“Nice to meet you, Sparkle. I’ll catch you around, Dash,” she said, her voice sounding rather rough.

“Yep! Catch ya later, G!” Rainbow said, and started for the door. “Come on, Sparkle, let’s find your home.”

-oOo-

“It’s a tree.”

“Yep.”

“With a door. And windows. And a balcony.”

“Well, it is a house.”

“Is that a telescope on the balcony?”

“Looks like.”

“There’s a second one pointing out of the top, isn’t there?”

“So it’s a house with swag. Are you going in, or not?”

Twilight glanced at the floating companion cube, confirming that both arrow and distance meter indicated the tree. Yes. Her house was a tree. Very odd. But then, she had seen someone living inside a giant cupcake on the way here, so overall, it wasn't as odd as it could be; she hadn’t even seen the inside yet. “Yeah. I was just … caught off-guard.”

“Just open her up, already.”

Raising an eyebrow at the Pegasus, Twilight nevertheless floated her keys out of her shiny new saddlebags and unlocked the door to her new home, a sense of satisfaction running through her at the click-clunk of the tumblers ramming home. With a twist of the handle, it swung open, and revealed … pitch darkness. She took a tentative step inside, wondering where the lights were, and as if in answer, the room lit up.

Lanterns sprang to life, level by level, drawing the eye up, and up, and up. The light revealed row upon row of books, the shelves carved into the very wood of the tree itself. Stairways connected each level of shelving, expertly crafted in the same fashion as the shelves, with rolling ladders on each level, attached to rails that ran along the shelves.

A prodding at her flank got Twilight moving inside, her eyes as wide open as her mouth at the spectacle before her. So many books! So much … information! And this was all hers?

“Okay, wow,” Rainbow said, the words barely registering in her mind. The contents of the nearest shelf were far too interesting for her to ignore. “Gotta say, I did not see this coming.” Her eyes flicked over the titles, taking them in one by one; Jason and the Argonauts, The Labours of Herakles, Persephone, The Iliad, The Odyssey … she skipped down a few, to find Odin’s Sacrifice, The Hair of Sif, The Capture of Fenrir, and the Death of Baldr, as well as a group of three books, bound in similar fashion - Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál, and Háttatal. On yet another shelf, she found Ra, Horus, Set, Osiris, and Isis, and more, a whole selection in similar vein. “Mythology,” she whispered, and turned away, making her way to the center of the room.

Her eyes swept the shelves, titles leaping out at her even from a distance. One section held books on the sciences - astronomy, biology, chemistry, physics, and every variation thereof; another, studies of history, of societies, of people, and a large selection of volumes on artificial beings and constructed communities. From the looks of things, however, a full half of the shelves were devoted to fiction - a vast treasure trove of pure fancy.

She blinked, head tilting upward. At least three stories of books devoted to imaginative works towered over her, and she was beginning to suspect that not all of these books were simple text. How far back in time did this archive reach? Just how much history was represented within just the fiction section, much less the mythology? How much was there for her to learn?

“Hey Twilight! Check this out!” The raspy voice of her companion shook her out of her awe, and she looked over to find Rainbow waving her over. She responded, trotting over to the pegasus, looking around.

“What?”

“This.” A cyan hoof pointed, and she leaned forward, peering at the shelf. Unlike the rest, this one was inscribed with lettering.

“Semper Liberi Bibliotheca,” she read, cocking her head to the side. “That’s … an old language. Long dead, I think.”

“Sounds kind of like what they call the server clusters. Can you read it?”

The unicorn shook her head. “Not yet, anyway,” she said, and looked at the words more closely. At either end of the phrase, she found a symbol - a six-pointed star. “Hey! That’s my symbol!”

Rainbow took a closer look herself, double-checked the unicorn’s flank, and nodded. “Yep! That’s your symbol, alright. I guess this place really is yours.”

Twilight did not respond. Something was nagging at her, an itching in the back of her mind. This meant something … but what? And how could she find out?

“Kid?”

She focused, and extended her senses, the two stars lighting up with her purple glow. Almost instantly, the trappings of the world fell away, replaced by the code of the layer beneath. This was getting easier.

“Hey, kid. What are you doing?”

“I’m looking deeper.” She was better able to hold it, too, though Rainbow’s voice was not a surprise this time. “Like I did with the river.” There was definitely something hidden here; a trigger of some kind, within the code of the stars. She frowned, trying to see how to trip it. Did it require a physical touch? A code?

“So you’re going to talk to the tree, now?”

She pondered. Hm. That might work, actually. “Hello?”

“That’s a yes then.”

Now, she ignored the pegasus. Something had reacted; a subtle shift in the star code. She tightened her focus, and a message came into view. “ID?” she wondered.

“ID? Like identification?”

“Is that what that stands for?”

“Generally, yeah. Is something asking for it?”

“Oh!” Of course! What this was hiding, it would want to know who was trying to access it! “Designation: TSparkle.ai,” she said, and grinned. The stars had opened.

“Damn, kid, what did you do?”

She turned her head, and looked at Rainbow Dash, her surface layer still very much intact. A sudden, sharp look from the pegasus, and she dropped her focus, letting the world return to normal. Practice that, Sparkle. Pract-

The room had changed - lavender stars had come to light on near every surface, on books, shelves, ladders, floor, and ceiling, and as she watched, they began to move. Every single one converged upon the center of the room, a wooden pedestal rising from the floor as the stars combined, building, piece by piece, an image. When it was all complete, she found herself looking into her own face.

“The Semper Liberi Library is now operational,” her starry self said, and she blinked to discover it spoke with her voice. “Welcome home, Bibliothecaria Twilight Sparkle.”

The two of them stared, struck speechless by the sight. Why was it her face? Her voice? To an extent it made sense, she supposed, as this was supposed to be her house, but this? “Um, Twilight?”

“Yes, Rainbow Dash?”

“You’re made of stars.”

“I noticed.”

The pegasus floated up to the starry head, and waved a hoof through it - the image did not react, and her hoof found no resistance, simply passing through the stars as if they weren’t there. “Just a projection. Well, whoever built this place, they built it for you, kid.”

“Incoming message,” the face said, and Rainbow leaped back, startled. “Patching through.”

The stars vanished, replaced by two symbols she knew well. She was on her feet in an instant, grinning widely at the appearance of the sun and moon. “Celestia! Luna!”

“Greetings, Bibliothecaria,” the two said in unison, the sun’s flames somehow achieving the impression of a smile. “We see that you have found your home.”

“And also, perhaps, a friend,” the moon continued, sweeping a beam over the dumbstruck pegasus. “Greetings also to you, Captain Rainbow Dash.”

The unicorn looked at the pegasus, eyebrow raised as her companion waved a greeting in return. “Captain?”

“Given the nature of her research, Rainbow Dash has been afforded the military rank of Captain,” the sun said, “and it is well-earned.”

“We must be brief, Twilight Sparkle,” said the moon, cutting off her response. “We are here to tell you your purpose in this building - a directive in addition to the one you already have.”

“You have been given the title of Bibliothecaria - in the modern tongue, Librarian. It is the title of one who keeps, records, and distributes knowledge.”

“You must make this library ready for the use of any who desire it.”

She blinked, surprised. “Doesn’t the admin hall serve that function?”

“The Administration Halls serve a similar function, yes,” the sun replied, “but they are limited, for they must serve as more than deposits of information.

“They also lack much in the way of presentation,” the moon said, a ripple of shadow playing across her face. “The archives are simple in nature, ancient constructs that have never adapted to meet certain needs.”

“Your library is an experiment - a return to an even older system, with some new innovations thrown in.”

“It is, like you, newborn. And, like you, will grow and adapt.”

“This is, in part, why we have chosen you for the task, little one. You will shape its growth, and it will, in turn, shape yours.”

She could no longer remain standing, and sat with a heavy thud, her mind whirling. Everything in here, made ready for public use? “When?”

The sun and moon were silent for a moment, as if considering the question. “When you believe both you and it are ready,” the moon replied.

“Do not think you must do this alone. Any who are willing to aid you in the task are welcome to do so.”

“And we will be watching, as well. Do not hesitate to call upon us if you have need.”

“Be well, little one,” the sun said, her tone affectionate.

“Live well, little one,” the moon added … and then, they were gone.

Silence reigned within the library, neither unicorn nor pegasus willing to speak. The seconds ticked by, and turned into minutes, and still, neither of them moved. Finally, Twilight rose to her hooves, and began to pace. Her thoughts were a jumble, many of the same questions tumbling over and over with no answers in sight. How could she hope to do this? There was so much, so very much, that she did not know - a single foray into town, even with the guidance of a pony she had, she realized, been lucky to run into, had shown her as much. There was just no way.

“Holy … jumping … crabapples.” Twilight found her face squeezed between two cyan hooves, and fuchsia eyes staring directly into hers. “Girl, that was Celestia and Luna. You have a direct line to the system itself. What … who …” The pegasus shook her hooves, and Twilight’s head with them, rattling her eyes around in their sockets. “What is going on, Sparkle? Who are you?”

The unicorn took a step back, wresting her head from Rainbow’s grip, and glared at her. “Did you have to shake my head?”

“I stand by my actions,” was her response, legs folded in front of her.

Twilight sighed, hanging her head. “I don’t know the answers, Dash. My true directive is hidden behind a block in my system, and my current directive is to grow enough to unlock that block. And, apparently, to run a library, and from the sound of things, nobody really knows what a library is.”

She turned, casting her eyes across the wealth of books, still trying to figure out how to even start her task. “Not to mention I’m apparently very weird, since I can talk to rivers and buildings, and the two most important AIs in existence have a special interest in me - so I’ll probably scare off help I could get.” With another sigh, she slumped to the ground, and placed her head on her hooves. Really, the day had been going so well … and now this.

A warmth on her back brought her eyes back open, and she looked at Rainbow, staring in surprise. The pegasus had, it seemed, sat beside her, and the warmth was her wing. “I, uh, didn’t really think it through,” she said, a sheepish look on her face. “Sorry.” Twilight nodded, and put her head back down. “Hey, look, Sparkle, it’s not as bad as you think.”

“Really? How do you figure?”

“Well, for one, they didn’t give you a deadline, so you can take your sweet time figuring it all out.” Twilight twitched an ear. Point. “For two, they offered to help, so it’s not like you’re on your own, even if you can’t find aid in other places.” Another point. “For three, yeah, you’re a little weird, but that’s not exactly unusual. I mean, look at me - I’m an aeronautical research AI, and I’m all the colors of the rainbow. Or Marty - he’s a mastiff who drops sick beats for a living. Weird, by itself, isn’t gonna scare anyone off, not here. Just don’t ‘look deeper’ at anybody, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you made quite a few allies.”

She raised her head, a warmth spreading through her … and this one she could name. Hope. “You think so?”

“Well, yeah. You’ve already got one.”

She cocked her head. “Who?” Rainbow gave her a flat look, and flexed her wing, which was still resting across her back. “Oh,” she said, grinning sheepishly. “Oh! Really?”

“Yep.”

“Wow. That’s … that’s really nice.”

“Pssh, yeah. I’m awesome,” the pegasus said, shaking out her mane a bit, and Twilight couldn’t help but giggle. “But make no mistake, Sparkle - this whole thing, this library, you, that weird thing you do - well, it all seems like it’ll make for excellent times.” The rainbow-maned mare grinned at her, and she grinned back.

At the edge of the forest, she had found a home.

[A/N]And so ends the prologue. Yes, friends and readers, these past four chapters have been little more than the setting of the stage, serving to bring our little AI into being and get her where she needed to be. With that done, we can now start the story proper. When next we meet, there shall be ... adventure.

Semper Liberi: Capti

As far as the eye could see, there was nothing; and nothing was dark, it was light; an endless expanse of barren white. The only break in the nothing was herself, and the three other ponies with her – four splashes of color against the canvas.

As she opened her mouth to speak, the landscape changed, glowing, ethereal lines crisscrossing the white, joining together to form shapes – squares, rectangles, circles and triangles, nigh infinite in number and complexity. Color followed where the shapes were joined, flowing over the construct like a rushing tide. Within seconds, what had been nothing was a landscape as real, if not more so, than the one they had just left.

It was a forest. No, deeper than that, she thought – a jungle. Something about the plants was different from the forest that surrounded the library. “Whoa. Uh … where are we?”

She looked at Rainbow, then around her once again, and shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

“It’s really big, really dark, and kind of holy horsefeathers what is that?!” They all looked at where the pink mare was pointing, and Twilight did a double-take; the wood of a nearby tree was warping and twisting, the vines that nearly covered its surface writhing. It soon took shape, and her eyes widened in recognition; it was the horse head. Vines framed it, forming its mane and emphasizing the lines of the face, lavender blossoms standing in for eyes.

Standing, she approached the head, trying to make sense of the situation. This was all, likely, a construct – not fully a part of The World, but real enough to fool someone who didn’t know what was going on. Her best guess at the meaning of Theatrum bore that out – information on that particular language had been frustratingly difficult to come by.

Her thoughts jumped tracks, arrested by the sight of the blossoms lighting up. The cube upon her chest followed suit, and she stared at it. How was that happening? That wasn’t even the real cube – just Pinkie’s curiously persistent representation of it. Exclamations from behind her brought her head around, and she found that the badges of her Voluntariae were glowing in similar fashion. Those made sense – they were constructs of the library itself. But the cube?

She shook her head, filing that away as a mystery to examine later. The head was communicating, words appearing in glowing purple in the air in front of it. “First-run protocols activated – now testing rendering mechanisms,” she read, then blinked, as pink intruded in her vision.

“Wow, you can read that?” She looked askance at Pinkie, then back at the text. It was clear as day.

“You can’t?” she asked, and the pink mare shook her head, her mane flopping about in wild fashion.

“Nope! It’s all in some weird code lettering!” Pinkie said. “Isn’t it, girls?”

Twilight looked to Rainbow, then Rarity, who were both staring at the words with puzzled looks on their faces. “She’s right, darling. I’ve never seen anything quite like that.”

“I have,” Rainbow said, rubbing her chin with a hoof. “I mean, not exactly like this, but a lot of the testing software I get is actually hidden behind encryption codes, and the more advanced ones are kind like this.”

Twilight stared at the lettering, one eyebrow raised. “So why can I read it?”

“You have the cipher key, of course!” Pinkie said, rolling her eyes as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “If you turn off your auto-decrypt, you could see it like we do!”

The unicorn blinked, and turned her attention inward, finding that Pinkie was right. Her decryption function was, in fact, running on auto. She disabled it, and took another look at the words; sure enough, she couldn’t make head or tail of them. Each letter had been replaced with a kind of swirly symbol. “A full alphabet replacement,” she mused, enabling the function. “I wonder … why the security?”

“Probably to make it hard for people who aren’t supposed to be using it to get anywhere,” Pinkie said, and nudged Twilight in the flank. “It’s saying more stuff, what’s it saying what’s it saying?”

“Warning,” she read, ears flattening at the word. “Errors detected – voice protocols corrupted.” Voice protocols?

“First launch quirks?” Rainbow asked.

“Probably,” Pinkie answered.

“Semper, report,” Twilight ordered, and was answered by silence. “Theatrum, report.” Again, silence. She sighed. “Voice protocols corrupted. So Semper can’t communicate, and we can’t either. Not the usual way, at least.”

“Oh dear. Are we stuck, then?” Rarity asked, her face concerned as she looked about her.

“No, I don’t think so,” Twilight answered, turning around and sitting. “There would be failsafes and alternate command venues built in – after all, you don’t use voice commands for your design software, do you?”

“Of course not!” the unicorn replied. “That would be horridly clunky.”

“Right,” Twilight said, her horn lighting up. “Let’s see if this works here, too.”

It did. The constructed world around her faded away, revealing the code from which it was formed. She ignored most of it, focusing on the head in front of her, and the star that hung, spinning right where the brain would be, exactly as she had hoped.

“You know, you look kind of scary when you do that,” Rainbow said, drawing murmurs of agreement from the other two mares.

“What exactly are you doing, darling?” Rarity asked, flinching as Twilight looked at her. “My, but that’s unsettling.”

“Uh … what is?” She wasn’t looking at the unicorn’s code, she knew that. She’d specifically worked that, spending at least a full day’s worth out of the past weeks practicing with Rainbow to ensure that she only examined what she chose to examine.

“Your eyes!” Pinkie said, putting her face right in Twilight’s. “They’re all, like, super glowy and really really white and you can’t even see a pupil or an iris or even really the whites of your eyes, because I think it’s just that weird light that’s coming from!” The pony sat back, rubbing her chin with a hoof. “It’s kind of like in certain movies when a really powerful wizard goes all ‘rawr I’m magical’ and channels a huge super powerful awesome spell, or something like that.”

Twilight found herself unable to blink – huh. So not only did she look scary, but while examining the code, she could not blink. Could she close her eyes? No, she couldn’t even close her eyes. How very strange. “What purpose would there be to that?”

“Well, it does look kind of cool, actually,” Rainbow said, and Pinkie nodded emphatically.

“Not the most practical of reasons,” she replied, turning her attention back to the star, and giving the system messages a onceover. Interesting – they all came with an identifier tag, now: Theatrum.exe. So this wasn’t the library talking, it was the program.

Rarity prodded her shoulder. “You still haven’t explained what you’re doing, dear.”

She nodded, peering more closely at the star. “Sorry, Rarity. I’m looking at the code,” she said, tightening her focus. The star itself started to fade, its various skeins of code slipping into focus. She could see the links, now, going from star to nearly every corner of the world they currently inhabited, which confirmed it – this was exactly what she was looking for. “Part of my design is the ability to actually look at the underlying code of The World. I figure that with this, I should also be able to fix the errors, if I can find them.”

A message scrolled across her vision, and she frowned. “What’s wrong?” Rainbow asked.

“Debugging failed – malicious intrusions detected,” she read, and was answered by a trio of gasps.

“You mean a hacker?!” Pinkie said, her voice nearly screaming in Twilight’s ear.

“Or a virus,” Rainbow said, darkly.

“But that doesn’t make sense, the Library’s only been online for two weeks!”

“Yeah, but it’s more deeply connected to the world than most other constructs,” the pegasus said.

“That means it’s more secure, Dashie, not less. Viruses don’t come from the system, they come from outside – most vectors take advantage of careless users more than anything else, and the system’s security is so robust that most viruses can’t even make it out of the user’s sandbox,” Pinkie said. It sounded like she knew what she was talking about, certainly; there was definitely more to this mare than met the eye. “The last crisis-level infection only managed to temporarily corrupt a single region – it didn’t even get server wide.”

Rainbow’s brow furrowed. “Well what makes you say it’s a hacker, then?”

“Same reason! The Library’s connected to the system! That’s, like, a massive security hole, if the wrong person got access to the Library systems!”

“But it’s only been here for two weeks! And there’s major level encryption on this whole thing! Who’d even know to try and crack it?”

“That’s the mystery!”

Twilight gasped. Was that … that couldn’t be. But it had to be. “Girls!” she said, and they looked at her.

“You find something, Twilight?” Pinkie asked, her voice fairly quivering with … probably excitement.

“Yes. A problem.” She turned to face them, her glow vanished, her eyes wide. “Something is locking me out of systems. Critical systems.”

“Hacker,” Pinkie said, her voice triumphant, her expression grim.

“It gets worse.”

“How so?” Rarity asked, brow furrowed.

“One of the systems is the core command line. I can’t tell Theatrum what to do.”

Rainbow and Pinkie were struck speechless, mouths hanging open in horror. Rarity looked between them and Twilight, her unease visibly growing. “I’m no expert, so I’ll ask,” she said. “If you can’t give the program orders, then that means …”

“I can’t tell it to end,” Twilight said, glumly. “And if I can’t tell it to end-”

“Then we can’t leave.”

Semper Liberi: Quarentenam

Pinkie’s form flickered, the lines and colors of her body fading in and out, a look of intense concentration on her face. Grey rippled down her body, closely followed by a disturbing sort of transparency, as her brow furrowed even more, and she gritted her teeth.

With a cry of frustration, she hung her head, and the flickering faded. “Sorry girls. I can’t find a way out either.” Twilight nodded, her expression grim, and looked at Rainbow. The pegasus just shook her head.

“I thought so. That’s not part of the hacking, either,” the unicorn said, turning to examine the wooden head. “I suppose, as part of the deep immersion focus, the designers thought blocking off access to normal travel routes was a good idea.” She sighed, eyes flicking over the scrolling system messages. “If I can get access again, I’ll have to change that.”

“Darn right you will,” Rainbow said. “I don’t like being trapped.”

“Do you think you can fix the damage?” Pinkie asked, peering at the purple lettering.

“Maybe,” Twilight answered. “Program security is robust, and is fighting back, so that means there’s a chance. But I don’t have nearly enough knowledge for this. If I could be in touch with the main library, that would be different, but I can’t make that connection from in here.”

“What about from outside?”

Twilight turned, looking at Rarity with a puzzled expression. “Well, Theatrum is a sub-system of Semper, so that would probably be possible. But we can’t leave, remember?”

“Correction, darling,” Rarity said, a smirk on her lips. “We can’t transfer out. Which, for AIs, may as well be the same thing. But you seem to have forgotten that I am not an AI.”

Twilight blinked, then gasped, throwing her hooves on Rarity’s shoulders. “Of course! You’re a user! Nothing can keep you from just logging out and logging back in!”

“Duh! Why didn’t I think of that?” Pinkie exclaimed, smacking her head and giving Rainbow an accusatory glare, which the pegasus answered with a puzzled expression.

Twilight was already hard at work, a scroll and quill, both limned in her glow, floating before her. The quill fairly raced across the scroll, writing down instructions even as she spoke. “Semper should recognize you, and your status as Voluntaria will give you limited access already, but I don’t think that will be enough,” she explained. “You’ll need to open the way to the main control terminal, and then give yourself the right level of authority. Semper should be able to help from there.” The quill vanished into nothing as she finished writing, and she rolled the scroll up and tied it, the lavender ribbon summoned from nowhere.

“I’ve put everything down in this,” she said, as Rarity’s light blue glow took it over. “It’s not entirely complete, because I don’t know it all, but-”

“Like you said, the library should be able to help,” the white unicorn finished, vanishing the scroll into her storage. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, girls.”

“We’ll work on things from our end, too, Rarity.”

“Be safe.”

“We will.” Rarity nodded in reply, closed her eyes, and flickered. The words ‘logging out’ flicked over her body, and she vanished.

-oOo-

Somewhere in the midst of Everfree, inside of a rather ostentatious yet fashionable building, a door slid open, revealing a rather anxious looking white-coated unicorn. She rushed out of the login room and headed straight for her hat rack, flinging pieces aside one after the other before finally placing a wide-brimmed straw hat upon her head and tying it under her chin.

Rarity turned toward the door, her hooves beating a nervous tattoo upon the floorboards. “Oh dear, oh dear, how do I get there again? I should have asked for a map - wait!” Her horn flared to life, her glow reaching out and opening the drawers on her writing desk, their contents floating through the air and whirling past her head. “Oh come now, where did I put you? Ahah!” The flying objects halted, then fell to the floor, all her attention now on the map she held in front of her.

It was a curious object, a single sheet of parchment that, despite the normally static nature of that medium, featured a constantly updated map of the Everfree environs. “I should have brought you with me in the first place!” she cried, heading out her front door, heedless of the mess she left behind her.

She took two steps across the threshold, and came to a dead halt, staring at the sky. Was that …? “Oh no.” She took a quick look at the map, which helpfully displayed her current position and facing with a little arrow and the words “you are here,” and then back at the sky. “Oh dear,” she said. “That can’t be good.

-oOo-

Rarity shouldered her way through the gathered crowd, pushing ponies and dogs and various other creatures out of the way with a series of apologies. Finally, with a final, “Please do excuse me, darling,” she found herself at the front of the crowd, and paused, gawking up at the spectacle before her.

The library tree was under attack. Giant, spiky, evil-looking vines of a dark, reddish hue were wound around its trunk and branches, their coils visibly tightening. The doors and windows of the tree remained shut, denying access to the encroaching vines, but tendrils already rimmed the portals, seeking entry.

But this was not what had drawn the crowd. Above the tree, slowly circling each other, hung the Sun and the Moon, their rays describing a protective barrier around the library. More of the vines, creeping along the ground, had run up against the barrier, their progress blocked.

“Oh no no no no no,” she cried, and ran up to the barrier, her mind racing. She had to get inside, but how? Even if she got through the barrier, those vines looked as though they meant business, and who knew if the library could actually let her in. “Oh, of all the things that could happen!” she moaned, throwing a leg across her face. “Why this? Why now?”

“Rarity!” She turned, eyes widening. An orange coated mare was approaching at high speed, her long, blonde ponytail of a mane streaming out from underneath her stetson, which somehow stayed firmly on her head. “Just what in tarnation do you think you’re doing?” the mare said, coming to a halt with her face up in the unicorn’s. “You shouldn’t be anywhere near a quarantined area!”

Rarity threw her legs around the mare and buried her face into her neck. “Oh Applejack! It’s just terrible!”

“I- what?”

“That newcomer, Twilight, and Pinkie, and Rainbow! They’re all trapped in there!”

Applejack stared at the library through the shimmering barrier of the quarantine, and set her jaw. “They’ll be fine. System security’s already on it, see?”

“Applejack, there is someone or something hacking the library even as we speak,” the unicorn said, shifting to plant her nose up against the orange mare’s, “and they are depending on me - on me - to restore access to the library’s main systems! I must help them! I must!”

“Now, Rarity, be sensible-”

“No!” She turned, facing the barrier, and pawed at the ground. “They need me! And I shall answer that need!” Head lowered and horn pointed, she charged, and closed her eyes as the barrier approached.

The expected impact failed to come. Opening her eyes, she found her form limned in purple, and her hooves making contact not with the ground, but with an ethereal lavender bridge. “Oh!” she said, and redoubled her advance, a grin upon her face. Her elation was short-lived. Pain shot up her hind leg, as she was yanked from the bridge and dangled in the air, kicking and screaming.

“Unhand me, you foul thing!” she cried, flailing ineffectively at the vine that had grabbed her. “I will not be stopped! Release me!” The vine, of course, ignored her, simply lifting her higher, as others began to approach. Her eyes went wide at the sight of another of the things lifting up and coiling towards her, and she ceased her thrashing about, forcing herself to calm down. How to get out of this? Perhaps …

She focused, narrowing her eyes and concentrating on the vine that held her. It was certainly solid, and anything solid in this world had to follow certain rules. It should work. Should. Her horn flared to life, and she narrowed her focus, calling the script to memory. A flash of blue struck the vine, and she fell, the severed portion of the vine still wrapped around her leg.

Righting herself, she stomped on the grasping tendril, but accomplished nothing – its grip was too firm. Frantic, she looked around her – the vines were approaching at double speed, now, turning from the barrier edge and heading towards her. “Oh dear.” Scowling at the piece that still gripped her leg, she called the script back up, her horn flashing and severing the vine once more, and gave a cry of frustration. It clung still, now in two pieces, and it seemed she could do nothing to get it off.

A movement from the corner of her eye turned her around, and she backed up with a shriek. She had not been looking at the library, and the vines from that direction had nearly reached her. Her eyes darted in every direction, looking for a way out, and finding none. She was well and truly trapped.

Something buzzed past her head, and the vine closest to her snapped, falling to the ground in three separate pieces. Shocked, she sat, hard, upon the lavender bridge, watching as bright, buzzing sparks swirled about her, tearing through the reddish masses and sectioning them, again and again. A tug at her leg brought her head around, and she stared; Applejack’s teeth bit deep into the grasping vine, and tore it from her with what seemed to be effortless ease. Another tug, and she was free.

“Go on, get up!” the orange mare said, shoving the unicorn back to her feet. “We can’t go back, got to go forward. Move!” Rarity shook her head, and charged forward, the vines in front of her disappearing under the assault of her bright, buzzing saviors. With each frantic hoofbeat, the library door grew closer, promising sanctuary of a kind – but it did not open.

She skidded to a halt, and pounded on the door, grasping the handle with her glow and nearly rattling it off its hinges. “It’s stuck!” she cried, turning to Applejack, panic written all over her face.

“Don’t look at me, Rarity!” the pony shot over her shoulder, having taken a stance to guard against the still encroaching vines. “You’re the one as charged in here! What with all the purple I figured you knew what you were doing!”

“Twilight didn’t say anything about being locked out! Oooooooh!” She turned again, and beat the door savagely. “Open up, you stupid tree! You only just registered me! I am trying to help!”

As if in answer, the star upon her ear flashed, and there was a distinctive click from the vicinity of the door handle. Blinking, she tried the latch, and the door swung open. “Ahah! We’re in!” she cried, and dashed inside.

Applejack was not far behind her, but halted just inside the threshold, placing a hoof upon the door to keep it open. Rarity stared, aghast. “Applejack! What are you doing? You’re going to let them in!”

The orange mare just pointed, and Rarity followed her hoof, gasping at what she saw. Wings extended, a pink-maned pegasus with a distinctive yellow coat was pelting down the lavender bridge, flashes of light forming a strange shield around her, and slicing through any vine that got too close. “Fluttershy?” she asked, incredulous, and Applejack nodded.

Suddenly, the bridge vanished, and the pegasus stumbled, falling towards the writhing vines. A quick flap of her wings saved her from the fall, and she came rushing through the doorway at full tilt, slamming directly into the unicorn and tumbling them both across the library floor.

Semper Liberi: Obsedit

Rarity blinked, the room spinning around her. There was something on her nose, and she wiggled it, trying to dislodge the offending item, to no avail. Crossing her eyes, she managed to bring it into focus, and blinked. A little emerald green hummingbird was peering back at her, a hint of steel on its wings and beak. The hummingbird chirped, and flitted off as Fluttershy’s face filled her vision.

“Oh thank goodness!” the pegasus said, her soft voice filled with relief. “Are you alright?”

Rarity nodded, getting to her hooves with Fluttershy’s help. “I’m fine, dear. At least, I think I am. But what are you doing here?” she asked, frowning. It wasn’t quite like Fluttershy to leap into dangerous situations.

“Oh, well ... when I saw those horrible vines grab you, I knew I had to help, so I asked my birds to help you,” the pegasus said, ducking her head to show no fewer than six brightly colored birds nestled in her mane. “I couldn’t possibly let them do it alone, though, so I followed too. And then the barrier closed behind me, so I had to go forward.”

Rarity blinked, then laid a hoof on Fluttershy’s shoulder. “So those buzzing sparks were your birds! Oh, Fluttershy, thank you ever so much. I can’t bear to imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t stepped in.”

The pegasus blushed. “Oh, it was nothing.”

“It was a darn sight more than nothing,” said Applejack, leaning against the railing of the library’s second tier. “Don’t sell yourself short, sugar cube.” Her attention shifted to Rarity. “We’re safe enough in here, for now - this place is locked down tight as can be. Can’t leave though. Did you have a plan for once you got in here?”

Rarity nodded, summoning the scroll and unrolling it. “Twilight gave me a set of instructions to follow. I have to find the library’s main control terminal and give myself the proper authority level,” she said, and started to read. “Oh my. This is actually rather complicated.”

“Speaking of Twilight, where is she? You said her and the others were trapped in here, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of ‘em.”

“Trapped?” asked Fluttershy, her ears perking upwards.

Rarity nodded, and turned towards the center of the room. The wooden horse head was still there, secure on its pedestal, its eyes faintly glowing. She frowned. The color was off; it had been purple in the jungle, like everything else that surrounded this library and its owner, but looked red, here. The same hue, in fact, as the vines outside. “There was a new addition to the library, a legitimate one, from what I understand, which apparently creates another area. They’re stuck in there. Whatever’s causing all of this,” she said, waving a hoof towards the door, “is also subverting that program.”

Fluttershy gasped, her hooves flying to her mouth. “Oh no! Subverted? Are they in danger? Who is they?”

“Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie,” Rarity replied, turning from the statue and heading for the shelves, looking closely at the dividers. “I was in there as well, but logged out so that I could get out here.”

Fluttershy was at her side, her face concerned. “Twilight? You mean that new girl? Oh no, is she going to be alright?”

“If I can restore connection to the library, she will be.”

There was a thud behind them, causing both mares to jump; Applejack had leaped from the second tier, taking the plunge as if it was nothing. “Rainbow and Pinkie are with her, so I don’t think there’s too much to worry about,” she said, ignoring the glare that Rarity was giving her, and peering at the dividers. “What are you looking for?”

“This,” Rarity answered, tapping a moon symbol with her horn. It immediately began to glow purple, and Rarity nodded in satisfaction. “Now let’s see,” she said, looking back to the scroll. “Two sections left, and one shelf down.” Her horn flashed, and another point of purple lit up, this one a star. “Three up, two right. One down, seven left. Back to the moon - four up, two right.” The stars lit up, one by one by one, and as the last one was triggered, a blue door shimmered into existence, just in front of the moon symbol.

Rarity blinked, and looked around the free-standing frame. There was nothing on the other side; the only thing she could see was Applejack’s face staring back at her. It seemed the orange mare had had similar ideas. Pulling her head back, she examined the door, gave a shrug, and opened it. “Well,” said Applejack, pushing back her hat to scratch at her head. “That’s different.”

A well-lit stairway led down from the open doorway, turning a corner at the bottom of the flight. “Different indeed,” Rarity replied, leaning around to check behind the door. Nope, still nothing. She looked through the doorway from the other side, and found herself looking at Applejack and Fluttershy. “How very interesting,” she said, and walked through, causing the two mares to blanch.

“Stars above, but that’s disconcerting.”

“My apologies. Well, ladies, our route forward is down this way,” the unicorn said, rolling the scroll back up and securing it within her mane. “Shall we?” They nodded, and she stepped across the threshold, and headed down.

-oOo-

Twilight’s eyes skipped from line, to line, to line, the screens in front of her filling with endless amounts of lavender letters. Pinkie sat beside her, mumbling constantly and fidgeting as she read, eyes flicking from screen to screen and back again. Rainbow Dash stood just behind them, pacing back and forth with wings extended, her ears twitching this way and that.

“Aha!” Pinkie shouted, punching the air. “Right there, Twilight!” she said, and pointed at the screen, a section of code changing to pink. Twilight spared a glance, looking over the highlighted code, and nodded, grinning.

“Got it,” she said, and turned her attention back to the wooden horse’s head. The glow of her horn redoubled in intensity, and she focused, everything blurring around her save for a specific strand of coiled code. She could see the alterations, now that she knew what to look for; a subtle change, invisible to any but the expert eye. Fortunately for her, it seemed Pinkie had one.

With a flare of her horn, the cord snapped, and the faulty section of code separated from the rest of it. It unraveled before her, each coil resolving into a single line, the characters shifting at her instruction. Well, Pinkie’s instruction; her own database was not yet robust enough for this kind of rewrite. The changes made, she wound the code back up, and slotted it into the cord, the broken ends fusing seamlessly together.

“That should do it,” she said, and turned her attention back to the star. Yes, there had been changes there, as well.

“Well good, because here they come!” the pegasus shouted. “Make it happen, Sparkle!”

The unicorn risked a glance in Rainbow’s direction, and gasped. She had taken a fighting stance, and beyond her, she could see why; wolves, their movement jerky and unnatural, their forms crafted out of corrupt code, were upon them. Nearly frantic, she sent the order.

A dome of translucent lavender popped into existence just as the first of the wolves leaped at them, halting the creature in mid-air. Its claws scrabbled against the smooth surface, but it could find no purchase, and slid to the ground. Unharmed, it picked itself up, and joined its fellows in their circling.

“That,” Rainbow said, her voice shaky, “was too close.” Twilight nodded in agreement, and frowned at the shield. It was working, but she could already see problems.

“It’s not going to last,” she said, pointing at the very top. “The safety protocols are working, now, and properly recognize us as friendly, but there are vulnerabilities everywhere. See how it’s thin up there?”

The other two mares looked up, and Pinkie nodded. “Well, if this … thing decides to throw something flying at us, it can break through there, and I’m not sure how well it’ll hold up to repeated attacks from those wolves.”

“So what do we do then?” Rainbow asked, her attention back on the circling wolves. “We can’t stay here, obviously.”

“Well,” Twilight said, rubbing her chin, “I think we can call the horse head terminal up from wherever, really, so if we need to move, we can. But doing so puts us at risk.”

“We need a way to fight back!” said Pinkie, standing on her hind legs and kicking at the air. “Some way to put paid to those meany-pants virus things!”

“Yeah,” Rainbow said, nodding. “They’ve got a form, so we should be able to break them up.”

Twilight pondered. “Doing so without protection is just asking for trouble. There’s nastiness all through those things. Protection …” She looked down at the gorget, and her still-glowing cube. It was, still, just an image, not a permanent thing, but in here, that seemed not to matter quite so much; quite possibly because this whole world, compared to the actual digital world, was a transient construct, much like the gorget. “You know … that just might work.”

“What might?” Rainbow asked, but Twilight was already working. She already had the bases from which to work; the shield was surprisingly simple at its core, and Pinkie had given her the way to manifest it. The code fell into place, almost as if it had been meant to do so, and within seconds, she had what she wanted.

“Here goes,” she murmured, and activated the program. A flash of purple, and she knew it was a success.

“Oh my gosh that’s amazing!” Pinkie said, her jaw hanging open.

“Damn, kid!” Rainbow added, eyebrows raised. “That is some serious swag.”

Twilight cut her code sight, and flicked one of her screens to the outside feed, eyes widening at her own image. The script had built upon the basic design of the gorget, garbing her in silver armor. Her back and flanks were guarded by shining silver plates, with chain underneath, and chain leggings with plated front guards covered her legs. Her head was adorned with a winged helm, her horn sheathed in a sharp silver spike. The gorget itself had become a touch more elaborate, featuring a rough approximation of the starry pattern that Rarity had proposed before this fiasco.

She took a second look at the script she had written, and blinked, surprised. Somehow, she had added in a rather advanced imaging system, which, she realized, pulled inspiration from that book on Erik the Terrible. Thinking back, she could remember writing it, but it had been almost subconscious. “Wow. I’m better at this than I thought.”

“Me next! Me next!” Pinkie cried, bouncing up and down with unrestrained excitement. “Make me a war pony!”

Twilight chuckled, her eyes flashing white once more. “No worries, Pinkie. I’ve got you both!”

Purple overtook the bodies of both her friends, and settled in, resolving into the shapes of their own armor; both silver, with plating guarding their backs and flanks. Pinkie’s armor was nearly a facsimile of Twilight’s save for the helmet; where Twilight’s covered her mane, Pinkie’s had an opening for her own poofy mess. Rainbow’s armor eschewed the chainmail undercoat in favor of a lighter padding, her legs bare save for her sturdy, spiked hoofboots. Her helmet, too, covered her mane, but featured a bright red plume; a rather ostentatious addition, and rather impractical. It did look fairly cool, though.

Pinkie turned around three times, trying to get a good look at herself, before she pulled up a screen of her own. “Eeeeeeee!” she squealed, spinning her image with the wave of a hoof. “It … is … awesome! Isn’t this awesome, Rainbow?”

Rainbow pursed her lips and raised her chin, casting a critical eye over her own image, and flexed her wings, to get the full effect. She narrowed her eyes, turned to Twilight, and nodded. “Swag. I’m hoping it does more than just look cool.”

Twilight grinned. “Oh, it definitely does more than just look cool,” she said, standing and facing the circling wolves. “Come on, girls. It’s time to go hunting.”

Semper Liberi: Repugno

“Land sakes,” said Applejack, making a slow circuit of the room, her eyes wide. “This is one plum fancy setup. Are all libraries like this?”

“Couldn’t tell you,” Rarity replied, her eyes focused on the scroll. “I’m no more familiar with them than you are, darling.”

The library’s control room was, indeed, an impressive place. As with the main room above, the walls of the largely circular room were covered in shelves packed with books, with lanterns at regular intervals along the walls to provide the same, soothing illumination. The ceiling shared the same domed construction, adorned with sun, moon, and stars, each of which glowed with a soft light.

The similarities ended there. The main terminal, the heart of the control room, and the library itself, dominated the center of the room, a great, black circular wall rising up from the wooden floor. A doorway in the wall promised access to the center of the circle, provided she could figure out how to get it open.

“Let’s see here … according to this, Semper should have addressed us the moment we came down here,” Rarity mused, “but it has not. I don’t think I can open the terminal that way.”

“Semper?” asked Applejack, her eyes roving the titles of the books.

“It’s the library’s name. Semper Liberi.”

“The library talks?”

“Yes. It’s rather like the Archivist, actually. My, Twilight, but you do think of everything,” the unicorn said, her horn lighting up. “You know, I’m rather jealous at how quickly she threw this scroll together. I can’t write this fast.”

“Well, she’s an AI, Rarity. Writing at the speed of thought is just something they can do,” the orange mare said, walking up behind the unicorn and watching as six points around the doorway lit up with her blue glow. “You sure that’s just a static scroll, though?”

Rarity looked at Applejack in surprise, and peered back at the scroll. Come to think of it, it had seemed as though the text had changed every so often. “You think it’s more?”

Applejack shrugged. “Could be. She struck me as a right smart cookie, ain’t no reason she couldn’t have pulled something fancy with it.”

A lavender star lit up in the midst of the transparent door, and it opened, sliding into the floor and vanishing from existence. A lavender, velvet carpet led directly to a raised, circular dais, which featured exactly three cushions, perfect for sitting on. Rarity raised an eyebrow as she settled her haunches down. Three cushions for three ponies. Semper might not have been speaking, but something was clearly aware of their presence.

The moment all three ponies had settled themselves, the dais rose into the air, hovering a short distance off the ground. The circular wall suddenly lit up, revealing itself to be one giant screen. The pure white was swiftly replaced by a glorious pattern of sun, moon, and stars, the latter in white and various shades of pink and purple, and all of it slowly moving.

“There’s a real theme here, ain’t there?” said Applejack, and Rarity nodded.

“It’s the mark of the system,” said Fluttershy, drawing both pairs of eyes to her. “The Sun and the Moon built this place.”

“That makes sense,” Rarity murmured, and they all fell silent, enthralled by the shifting pattern.

Applejack cleared her throat. “So now what?”

“Oh! Right. Hm.” Rarity peered at the scroll, looking for the relevant portion, and narrowed her eyes. She could have sworn it had said something different earlier - this was most definitely not a static set of instructions. No matter - it hadn’t steered her wrong so far. She cleared her throat, and touched her badge. “Voluntaria Rarity requests main terminal access - clearance code Victor Uniform Charlie Hotel Uniform Two Hotel Echo.”

The pattern scattered, stars and moon and sun flying off screen as the words “Access Granted” scrolled across the screen, soon followed by others. “Warning: malicious intrusions detected - main library systems compromised.”

“Oh no,” Rarity said, her face falling. “Now how are we supposed to help them out?”

“Don’t give up just yet, sugar cube,” said Applejack, nudging her shoulder. “Look.”

The initial warning had moved to a different part of the screen, as the terminal continued its report. “System diagnostic: Avatar system - offline. Primary voice systems - offline; auxiliary voice systems – offline; crisis voice command system functioning normally. Auxiliary terminals - offline. Main terminal - online; Crisis mode active - high-security auxiliary access channels online and free of intrusion.”

“See?” Rarity nodded.

“Security diagnostic: Security systems - online; unable to eject intruder - analysis suggests Counselor level threat.”

“Counselor?” she asked.

“Hm. I know it’s something to do with sophistication of the program, but what exactly it means …”

“Counselor is top tier,” Fluttershy said. “Just barely non-sentient. Gladys is Counselor level.”

Applejack whistled. “That … is a very advanced program.”

“Semper seems to have locked it down, though,” Rarity said, watching as the report continued.

“The library is probably Counselor level, too,” said Fluttershy.

Rarity nodded, her eyes back on the scroll. It wasn’t even pretending anymore - all the other instructions had vanished, replaced by a single line. “Crisis Protocol - Surrogate - tango echo delta three nine,” she said, and the terminal cleared, returning to black. A single word remained: “Waiting.”

She looked back at the scroll, and blinked. “What …”

“What?” Rarity showed it to Applejack, who scratched her head. “Fluttershy?”

The pegasus craned her head around to take a look, and blinked. “Um … read it … I guess?”

“That’s all I can think of too,” the orange mare said, shrugging.

Rarity nodded, secured the scroll in front of her, and cleared her throat. “I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs.” Rarity paused, and closed her eyes, forcibly suppressing the images that came to mind. When she opened them, and continued, she could not keep the catch out of her voice.

“I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen two hundred limping exhausted men come out of line-the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward forty-eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.”

Her voice was barely more than a whisper as she spoke the final sentence, and a somber mood prevailed even as the terminal screen lit up. “Voluntaria Rarity recognized as surrogate for the Bibiliothecaria. Sitemap loading.” Black gave way to green, the whole of the circle transforming into what she could only imagine was a map of the library’s systems. Gold, silver, and bronze inscribed themselves across the screen, creating pathways ringed in blue, white, and violet.

It was easy enough to tell that something was very, very wrong. Whole sections of the map were dark, helpfully labeled as offline – others, blocked out in red, were labeled as compromised. Rarity’s heart sank. From the looks of things, this needed a security expert, which she was not.

“Hmmm,” said Applejack, rubbing her chin with a hoof. “This intruder hasn’t managed to do more than cut off communication channels, really.”

Rarity blinked. “Really? But … almost half the map is offline or compromised!”

“Yeah, but almost half the map is devoted to communication channels. See, this here,” she said, waving at three dark sections, “has to do with that Avatar system. That’s the rendering system, that’s the interaction analysis section, and that right there is the voice system. And see,” she continued, pointing at an island of color in the darkened section, “that’s the auxiliary section.”

Rarity blinked again, and looked at the other compromised or offline sections, this time paying more attention to the labels. Auxiliary user access terminals, backup voice systems, regional communication systems, all offline or compromised. But the control room was active, and labeled as bunkered, with golden pathways ringed in violet leading out to other sections, including those that, now she looked, had been deliberately shut down to avoid corruption.

“So the library core is safe,” she said. “Just isolated – which explains why Twilight couldn’t connect to it. We need to break the isolation.”

“Now, hold on, sugar cube. That’s probably part of why it ain’t compromised in the first place. If you’re gonna try and break that, you need to be careful.”

“An excellent point. I think we only need to restore Twilight’s access to the library, and they can take it from there. But how do we go about doing that?”

“What was the name of that program you said y’all got trapped in?” Applejack asked, eyes narrowed as she looked over the map.

“Oh. Um … thea … something. Thea ...”

“Theatrum?” Rarity looked at Fluttershy, nodding.

“How did you know?” The pegasus pointed, her yellow hoof indicating a red-blocked portion of the map. Rarity’s eyes widened – that section was a veritable flurry of activity, pathways going dark and light and back again, new lines appearing and old lines vanishing even as she watched. Her eyes flicked to the top. Theatrum.exe – compromised. “Twilight said she would do what she could from her end.”

“That’s Twilight’s doing?” Applejack asked, her tone incredulous. “That is some fancy code work. But if new lines can be built … hah!” The orange mare pulled up a screen, and slid a hoof down it, looking for a specific line. “This should help,” she said, and highlighted her choice. The screen vanished, replaced by a beautiful, light red apple, which Applejack caught in her hoof. “Rarity, see if the terminal will accept new code.”

A tube extended from the center of the dais at the unicorn’s request, a bowl at its end. Applejack placed the apple within, and stepped back, waiting. The apple glowed purple, then slid down the tube in a stream of glowing lights. The mare nodded, and turned back to the terminal.

“Executing,” the screen announced. “Please indicate desired destination.” Rarity’s horn flashed, and the center of the Theatrum section glowed blue. Instantly, a pathway began to form, gold and lined in violet; a brand new high-security channel.

-oOo-

Twilight dodged right, and lashed out, grunting as her hooves impacted the wolf’s body. The sound of splintering wood confirmed a good hit, and she whirled, grinning, to find the wolf prone, its front leg broken. Rearing, she brought her front hooves down hard on its head, smashing it to pieces. It flashed red, and vanished, and she turned, eyes flashing back solid white.

She caught the corrupted code before it could spread any further, neatly sectioning it from the cords it had subverted and slipping it into the queue, her subroutines already tearing it apart and purging it of corruption, while others replaced the excised code with clean sections. Her full attention was on the skies.

A full murder of crows was in hot pursuit of the cyan pegasus, her speed and agility countered by their sheer numbers. Her hooves struck again and again, sending crow after crow spinning out of the skies, but for each one she smashed, it seemed two took its place.

Twilight frowned, her eyes flashing over the barely visible cords that connected each crow to the others. There was a pattern there, she noticed, especially visible with each downed crow; something that was at the center of the birds, controlling and replenishing them. “Rainbow!” she yelled, and the pegasus went into a crow-scattering spin.

Having bought herself a short reprieve, she looked at Twilight, eyebrows raised. “You’ve got to take them all out at once!”

Rainbow frowned. “How the buck do you expect me to do that?” she asked, grimacing as a crow caromed off her helmet.

“I’ll try and think of something, but focus on keeping them grouped for now! Maybe we c-“

“Behind you!” She whipped around at the pegasus’ warning, just in time to see a massive, leonine shape looming over her. She could do nothing but brace herself, as its paw slammed into her side, and sent her sprawling to the ground, its claws scraping harmlessly off her armor. She flipped herself upright, nostrils flaring, and lowered her head to meet its charge, the silver sheathed point of her horn flashing wickedly.

The charge never came. Pinkie catapulted over Twilight’s head, somersaulting in the air and bringing her hind hooves down in a crushing blow to the creature’s skull. It reeled back, nearly half its face missing, as Pinkie landed and dropped into a crouch. “Woah.”

“Don’t worry,” said Pinkie, turning to give Twilight a lopsided grin. Somewhere along the line, her gorget had been replaced by a rather roguish collar of royal blue, and her helmet had somehow gained transparent orange panes over her eyes. “I got this!”

The creature recovered, and loomed over the pink pony, the missing section of its face outlined in angry red lines. She leaped to the side, as its paw came down, and blew a raspberry. “Nya nya, you can’t catch me!” she taunted, and was off, the creature lumbering after her, scorpion tail poised for a strike. Manticore. That was what it was.

The unicorn risked a glance at the sky, and nodded; Rainbow had the crows well in hoof, leading them through the air in a high-speed chase. With that handled, she sprinted for the manticore, trying to see a way to bring the creature down. Its bulk was the problem; she couldn’t excise and purge its code while its form was still whole, and bringing it down would take something big. The security protocols she’d put into the armor were effective, certainly (Pinkie’s first strike had proved that), but it wasn’t permanent. Whatever the source of these creatures was, it could repair them.

The unicorn dodged to the right, barely avoiding the strike of the manticore’s tail, and aimed a hoof at the bulbous stinger. Her strike glanced off, and she stumbled, righting herself just in time to see Pinkie stomping down, hard, on the manticore’s paw. The creature reared back, roaring in pain, and Twilight took advantage of the opening, charging forward and plunging her horn into its leg.

She failed to retreat quickly enough. The manticore’s anguished flailing sent her flying, the world spinning as she landed, tumbling across the ground and coming to a sudden, crushing stop against a tree. Groaning, she stumbled to her feet, trying desperately to get her bearings. Her armor had protected her from the worst of things, certainly, but that had still hurt. A thunderous boom shook her in her armor, and she looked skyward, eyes wide. “What in the heavens is that?”

Hanging in the midst of the canopy was an enormous, violet rimmed hole, through which she could see what looked like a golden tunnel. She shook her head, and looked again, with eyes white; instantly, her face broke into a grin. “Rarity, you magnificent mare!” she exclaimed, galloping forward. “You did it!”

A flash of blue sped past her face, halting her in her tracks. A turn to the left afforded her a glimpse of the manticore, balanced on its hind legs, reeling back from Rainbow’s attack. Wait, wasn’t Rainbow being ch- She hit the dirt, hooves over her head as the crows, cawing raucously, zoomed over her, some of them missing by mere fractions of an inch. The manticore overbalanced, and began to fall backwards, and Twilight gasped, trying to call out; Pinkie was right behind it.

The mare balanced, for a split second, upon her front legs, and her hind legs cannoned out, hooves slamming directly into the manticore’s head. It fairly flew upwards, just in time for the crows to slam, beak first, into its body. Those that did not stick spun off into the air, dissipating in a burst of red and black.

“Connection active,” she heard a voice say; her voice, in fact. “Establishing direct control.” She watched, awestruck, as new lines of code were formed out of nowhere, running parallel to the old control codes, each line coiling into the whole until the cords had been properly formed. “Theatrum control and access re-established,” the voice informed her, and she looked down, to find its source; a tiny, tiny version of the library’s starry avatar had manifested in front of her, seemingly projected from her cube, which flashed with every word. “Caution - intruder retains administrator permissions for Theatrum.”

“Noted, Semper,” she said, her face set. Neither manticore nor murder were broken enough to recode, but that was simple enough to fix. First, however, she needed to ensure their own safety, and to that end... “Girls!” she shouted, her voice suddenly amplified. “To me!”

The other two mares lost no time in joining her, Pinkie Pie bouncing to her side, while Rainbow took up a position directly over her. The moment they were within her calculated radius, the lavender shield reappeared. She nodded in satisfaction; with Semper behind the reins, it did not have the same vulnerabilities as it had before. This would work.

“What’s going, Sparkie? Oh, hey, Starshine’s here!” said Pinkie, bending down to examine the library’s avatar.

“Starshine?” asked Rainbow, looking down at them quizzically. “Oh! Semper! Rarity finally got through, huh? ‘Bout frickin’ time.”

“Brace yourselves, girls. This could get rocky.”

Twilight raised her horn, and reached for the cords. They leapt at her call, responding to her barest touch, and she smiled. This was going to be ridiculously easy. A tweak of a cord, and she felt the ground shudder. A pull at another, and there was a resounding crack. The manticore, just having got back to its feet, turned to face her, the remaining crows beginning to sink into its hide. It bellowed defiance at her, and her grin simply grew.

The ground shuddered once more, and a crack appeared beneath the manticore’s feet, zigzagging across the landscape at breakneck speeds, branching, and branching, and branching again. For nearly a full minute, the shuddering continued, as the cracks covered the land, the original line describing a circle around the protective dome. For a moment, there was silence, as everyone took stock of this latest development, and Twilight prepared her next move. This one was somewhat more complex.

The cords fairly sang under her guidance, and the world responded. The ground shifted, the cracks growing wider, and wider, and wider, the land groaning as it moved. The trees that surrounded them shuddered, and more than a few at the edges of the growing abyss came tumbling down in a series of crashes, the earth they were rooted in no longer able to support them. Their trunks tore away huge sections of earth as they impacted the ground, and fell into the yawning chasm, more than a few taking their neighbors with them.

The manticore roared, separated from its prey by both shield and insurmountable gap. Twilight narrowed her eyes, eyeing the code that surrounded the creature. It was changing; incorporating the code that had made up the crows, she realized. She frowned. If it grew wings … she would simply have to put a stop to that. This was no time for subtlety.

She selected three specific cords, readied herself, and, for lack of a better term, yanked. An island of earth shot upwards, sailing through air in a graceful arc, shedding clumps of dirt and rock as it flew. The manticore looked up, uncomprehending, just in time to witness the incoming projectile. The islands met with a thunderous crash, sending twisted trees and broken earth flying in every direction; more than a few of the pieces of debris slammed into the shield, splattering across its lavender surface.

“Stars above,” said Rainbow, her voice barely more than a whisper. “What … damn, kid! How’d you do that?”

“Well,” Twilight replied, bringing the creature’s corrupted code to heel, “this whole world is Theatrum’s construct, and I’m Theatrum’s administrator.”

“Ooooo … so it does whatever you tell it to! Can you turn the trees into candy? No wait! Turn the ground into chocolate! And the clouds into marshmallows! Or maybe cotton candy! Or vanilla ice cream! And the rivers can be chocolate syrup!” Pinkie yelled, bouncing up and down, her armor jingling with every hop.

Twilight just shook her head, focusing back on the world around her. The information Semper was feeding her suggested that the cause of this fiasco was hiding somewhere within Theatrum, using the program’s unique properties to disguise itself. The real revelation was how much influence Theatrum had on the outside world; probably the first thing that the intruder had done was to subvert those outgoing connections. This would all bear some serious investigation.

For now, though, the important thing was to find it. “Semper, can you calculate the intruder’s location?” she asked, as she began to break down the surviving sections of the world.

“Negative. Intruder is using multiple proxies and subservient spawn programs to elude detection.” The avatar paused. “Surrogate Bibliothecaria Rarity requests direct communication line. Accept?”

Twilight cocked her head, sending another island of earth crumbling into oblivion. “Of course. Patch her through.”

A screen flicked into existence in front of her, displaying her friend, and, to her surprise, two others. “Applejack and Fluttershy? What are you doing here?”

“That’s a long story, dar- my goodness, is that … is that the gorget? As part of a suit? Oh my, and sets for Pinkie and Rainbow, too?” the other unicorn asked, a slight frown on her face, as Pinkie waved at her. “Where did you get those?”

Twilight grinned. “Long story, Rarity. We can catch up later. What did you need?”

“It’s about this here intruder, Twilight,” said Applejack, cutting in. “I’ve been looking over what the sitemap here had to show, and based on that and the vines outside, it’s looking like a plant model parasite. You’ll be looking for a central seed. Something small, but connected to everything.”

Twilight frowned. That was going to be difficult. Every pathway she’d examined had ended in orphaned code, its pointers leading nowhere. How to find something that could see you coming and block your path? “Semper, can we get a comprehensive view of Theatrum?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “Can you show it to Applejack, as well?”

“Applejack does not have appropriate clearance.”

“She’s at your main terminal,” Twilight said, her tone deadpan. “I think clearance is moot at this point.”

“Acknowledged. Displaying.” A second screen popped up next to the first, displaying Theatrum’s sitemap in all its incredible complexity. On the other screen, she could see all three mares lean forward, their eyes narrowing. Beside her, Pinkie did the same, rubbing her chin with a hoof, then reaching for the screen and dragging at the corners, to enlarge it.

“Looks like proxies here, here, and here,” she said, pointing at the map, and Twilight highlighted the locations in pink. “What do you think, Jackie?”

“Eeyup. Think you can kill those, Twilight?” The unicorn nodded, sent the order, and the locations went dark. “Alright. Now watch closely. If I’m right, it’ll try and set up new ones.”

Twilight nodded again, and leaned forward, eyes glued to the map. She could not afford to miss anything. Not even the smallest detail.

“Hmm … what’s this?” she heard, and a small, inconspicuous section of the map lit up in blue. She peered at the highlighted section, and grinned.

“Good work, Rarity,” she said, furrowing her brow and concentrating. Sure enough, no order she gave was acknowledged, each one coming back with an assertion that she lacked the proper permissions. “That’s either it, or a critical component. Semper, let’s isolate and expose it.”

“Acknowledged,” the library said, and Twilight turned her attention back to the cords. They fairly sang at her touch, the code twisting and shifting at her whims, and around her, the landscaped shifted. Their own island was moving, now, suspended in the midst of a sea of nothing, floating its way along through the still crumbling landscape.

“Where we headed, Sparkle?” asked Rainbow, who had begun to pace around the perimeter the shielded island, her wings halfway extended.

“To the source of the whole problem. It’s time to meet our intruder face to face.”

-oOo-

“It’s a rock,” said Rainbow, tilting her head. “A giant rock.”

She was, on the surface of things, correct. In the midst of the great white expanse, there hung an enormous, jet-black rock, its sides shiny with the reflections of a light that had no source. Surrounding the house-sized boulder was another shield, swirling with lavender, gold, and silver, a translucent starry pattern moving over its surface.

“It’s actually inside the rock,” Twilight replied, and frowned. “I think, at least. It’s been very resistant to any attempt to analyze it.”

“Alright, well, let’s crack it open, then!”

“Patience, Rainbow. I want to make sure that it can’t do anything when we do that.”

“Yeah,” said Pinkie, nodding her head emphatically. “I mean, fighting all those creatures was kinda fun, but I much prefer dancing and music and cake and pies and ice cream. Ooo, I can’t wait to start planning our victory party!”

“How are things on your end, girls?” the unicorn asked, turning to face the screen. Applejack grinned back at her.

“We’re pretty much done, Twilight! The new outgoing lines are formed – we’re just waitin’ on the word to throw ‘em open.”

She nodded, thinking. “How’s it look outside the tree?”

“Oh, I can answer that,” said Fluttershy, walking into view from off-screen. “Hummingway took a look around outside,” she said, nudging the little green hummingbird that was nestled just over her ear, “and he says that the vines aren’t nearly as active. I think most of them might actually be dead.”

“Good. That means we’ve only got the one problem. Alright. I think everything is in place, then. Applejack? Lift the lockdown.” The orange mare nodded, and reached for the console in front of her, Twilight turning her attention back to the floating rock. “Pinkie, Rainbow?” The two mares nodded, taking their positions next to her, and rakish grin on both their faces. “Alright then. Let’s do this.”

Her horn and eyes blazed to life, and an enormous spike popped into existence some distance behind them, gleaming silver and inscribed with glowing purple runes. “One,” she said, and Rainbow’s wings snapped open, as the dome around the island vanished. “Two,” and the bubble around the obsidian rock flickered, a hole opening in its side. Almost immediately, the rock shuddered; whatever was inside was already moving. “Three,” and the spike shot forward, as if fired from a cannon, slipping through the shield’s hole and slamming into the rock with earth-splitting force.

Rainbow Dash was in the air in an instant, a multi-hued blur of motion, as she sped directly into the midst of the slowly expanding debris field. A spinning piece of shrapnel sailed towards her, and disintegrated into dust mere feet from her face; Twilight breathed a sigh of relief. The safety protocols were actually working then. “Alright, Sparkle,” said Rainbow, her voice emanating from inside Twilight’s helmet. “I’m in – kill it.” She focused, and the shattered remains of the spike vanished.

“What in tarnation?!” Twilight had to agree with Applejack. Of all the things to see within the cloud, a giant, golden apple with dark red vines sprouting from its stem was not what she had expected. Some kind of plant, certainly, perhaps a root or a seed, but not an apple.

“That has to be significant,” she muttered, and pulled at the cords, sending her island into a forward charge, ignoring the snarls from behind her. Pinkie was already moving, and the sounds of hoof strikes assured her that there was nothing to worry about; no, Rainbow was the one who needed her help.

Well, maybe. The pegasus had already managed to tie two of the vines that were coming for her together, and was doing a good job of keeping the questing appendages away from the shield’s hole. Still, more were sprouting with every passing moment, a swarm of them heading for pegasus and hole alike; Rainbow was good, but she couldn’t handle all of them on her own.

Twilight send a chunk of the island hurtling into the midst of the melee, the hardened, glowing piece of earth tearing through vines en masse and slamming into the apple’s side. It shuddered, but renewed its assault, replacing its pulverized vines with alarming alacrity Twilight frowned; this was a damned resilient program. “Come on, Rarity,” she murmured. “We need their help, here.”

“You have it.” She blinked, her code sight lost in her shock at the sudden appearance of both Sun and Moon in front of her island. “You have done well,” Celestia said, her flames roiling as they reached for the apple.

“We shall take it from here,” said Luna, her brilliance encasing the shield, and her rays paralyzing the vines that were after Rainbow Dash. “We will find the source of this vile construct.”

The apple’s golden skin wrinkled at the first touch of flame, slowly charring, and in the blink of an eye, the entire thing had turned a sickly black. The flames paused, and Twilight blinked. Was Celestia … hesitating?

“Luna!” the sun cried, and suddenly everything was limned in silver moonlight. A split second later, the apple detonated, and Twilight barely had time to scream before the wave of fire engulfed her.

Memoria: Once Upon an Applejack

Once Upon an Applejack

Quartum 23, 1409 AN

19:43

Applejack tilted the brim of her hat back just a touch, watching the road with half-lidded eyes. She shifted a bit, to keep the bark of the tree she was leaning against from digging too far into her skin, and slowly chewed at the hay in her mouth. It was a warm, lazy summer day, the kind where the sun got into you, right down to your bones. Drowsy was the rule, and everyone moved in a slow, sleepy fashion.

She loved these days. They meant soul-soothing warmth, and smiling faces. They meant people walking the orchard, and lazing under the trees; lovers, friends, and family alike, just enjoying all that life had to offer. And today, it seemed, it meant at least one new face.

She’d been watching the newcomer for a while, now, content to let her explore and see the place on her own for a while. She’d caught Applejack’s eye, not just because she’d never seen her before, but also because she wasn’t acting like most other folks. Where they wandered aimlessly, she moved with purpose; where they looked about in a lazy daze, she was bright and wondering, as if seeing things for the first time. And perhaps she was.

The unicorn had made her way fairly close to where Applejack was, and the mare figured now was as good a time as any to strike up a conversation. She cleared her throat, catching the lavender mare’s attention, and nodded in greeting. “Howdy,” she said.

“Oh, hello,” the unicorn said in reply, moving towards her and extending a hoof. “I didn’t see you there.”

“No worries,” she said, raising her own hoof to touch the unicorn’s. “Enjoying the orchard?”

“Oh yes!” was the reply, accompanied by an emphatic nod. “I hadn’t expected to find a farm, especially one so big. Do you know what it’s here for?”

Applejack chuckled. “I should hope so, seein’ as I run it.”

“Oh! Well then, you’re the perfect person to ask!”

“True. But how’s about we make some proper introductions before I start babblin’ about the farm. M’name’s Applejack,” she said, pushing her hat up off her head just a touch. “And this here is Sweet Apple Acres.”

“Designation TSparkle.ai,” the unicorn replied, and Applejack gave a mental nod. “Named Twilight Sparkle. I’ve just moved in.”

“Oh? Where at?”

“Semper Liberi Bibliotheca,” Twilight responded, and Applejack frowned.

“Sorry, sugar cube, doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Oh, right. Well, it’s the giant tree on the edge of the forest. The one with a door.”

Applejack raised an eyebrow. “That new spot? I was wondering when that was going to go live. You’re the mare for it, eh?”

The unicorn grinned, nodding. “Yep! Though, it’s nowhere near ready to go live, yet. I’m not even sure when it will be. There’s a lot of work I have to do.”

“Ah, don’t worry about taking too long,” Applejack said, waving a hoof. “I find it’s best to take your time and do it right than to cut corners and come out with a buggy piece of crap.”

“That’s what Rainbow said, too. And yeah, that’s the plan!”

So she knew Rainbow, eh? Which also meant that pegasus was back in the region. She’d have to go look her up later. For now, though, “Well, good. Now, you were wondering about the farm?”

“Oh, yes! It’s a curious thing to me; I mean, why do we need food and farms in a world like this? It must serve some purpose, or it wouldn’t be maintained like it is.”

Applejack chuckled again, and pushed herself off the tree. “You’d be right. It does have a purpose. I’m guessing you’re rather fresh from the pod,” she said, and started to walk. The unicorn nodded, a slight flush coming to her cheeks as she moved to follow. Cute.

“The 17th, actually. I’m still getting my bearings. There’s just so much to learn.”

Applejack nodded. Only six days old? Shoot, she wasn’t much more than a baby. “Well, part of the reason for it is along the lines of why the world bothers with grass, sun, water, and air; it recreates the physical and stays as true as makes sense, so that AIs get used to it and users enjoy it all. Me da always liked to point out how great it was that even those who would never see a tree in the physical world, or go swimmin’, or stuff like that, could still know exactly what it was like.”

Twilight nodded, and smiled. “It’s all so beautiful, too. I think that it might be worth it just for that.”

“Aye. That it would. But there’s a lot more to Sweet Apple Acres than that. Here, it’s best shown rather than told,” said Applejack, raising a hind hoof. She tapped a nearby tree, and caught the apple that fell in the brim of her cap, grinning a bit at the unicorn’s expression. “Here, try it.”

“Um,” said Twilight, looking puzzled. “Okay.” She leaned forward, and grasped the bright green fruit between her teeth, and proceeded to eat it. Her expression changed at the first bite, confusion replaced by glee, and then wonder. “Oh, wow! That’s delicious! And … oh my.”

Applejack nodded. “You probably haven’t eaten since you got out of the pod, have you?” Twilight shook her head. “You should get into the habit of daily meals. Food here is maintenance. You can’t keep yourself in order all by yourself, and this, and other food, will keep you healthy.” She turned, and started walking again, talking as she went.

“Defragmentation of your memory, cleaning out orphaned pointers, freeing up your resources … your sleep cycle does a lot of that, too, but that’s you doing your own maintenance. You eat, and you get outside help. Everyone needs it,” she said, snagging an apple of her own and chowing down. “Even users.”

Twilight nodded, licking her lips. “And I suppose it’s ‘grown’ to recreate the physical.”

“Yes and no,” Applejack replied. “Code is complex, Twilight. And yours, like all AIs, is even more so. Beyond that, it’s constantly changing, and being added to - with each second, you’re making new connections and killing off old ones. It’s just part of life, that, but to keep up, the maintenance code has to be almost as complex. It has to be adaptive, and adaptive code isn’t really written. It’s grown. Nurtured.”

“Like food is at a farm.”

“Exactly, sugar cube.” They walked for awhile, in silence; Twilight seemed to be lost in thought, probably processing it all, and Applejack wasn’t about to interrupt. Eventually, however, they reached the farmhouse, and Applejack nudged the unicorn.

“Hm? What?” she said, blinking. “Oh, wow, I really drifted off there, didn’t I? Where are we?”

“At the farmhouse. I figured you’d want to set up a delivery schedule for your home.”

“Oh! For routine maintenance, of course. Oh, but, I don’t know about payment yet,” Twilight said, her face falling, and Applejack waved a hoof.

“No worries about that, sugar cube; every new AI gets a month’s allowance to start, and we’ll work out the rest later. Come on in, let’s get you situated.”

“Oh! Okay,” the unicorn said, and followed her inside.

Semper Liberi: Victoria

CheckMem.exe → Diagnostic complete. All systems normal. Ending crisis recovery mode.

Twilight jerked upright, her thoughts scattering in every direction like a flock of startled pigeons and legs flailing about, until she managed to gather all four hooves beneath her. She locked eyes with Pinkie, who was sitting next to the wooden horse head in the center of the library floor, and they stared at each other, Twilight frozen with surprise.

Pinkie giggled, and Twilight flushed, her ears flattening against her skull in embarrassment. “Good morning, sleepyhead!” the pink mare said, trotting over and touching her nose to Twilight’s. “Everything check out?”

The unicorn returned the gesture, and nodded, casting her eyes over the slumbering forms of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, who, judging by the text on the screens floating just above them, were still in recovery mode. Twilight breathed a sigh of relief; neither of them were showing signs of actual damage.

“What happened?” she asked, turning back to Pinkie. The mare scratched at her chin, and shrugged.

“You should probably ask her,” she said, and pointed towards the door. Twilight turned, and grinned; hovering just over the doorway arch was the sun in glory, it’s flames already reaching to give her a greeting touch.

A movement in the doorway caught her attention, and thus she was ready when a frantic white unicorn barreled into her, and immediately started checking her over. “Oh, darling, you’re safe!” cried Rarity, as she straightened out Twilight’s mane. “I was so worried when that monstrous thing exploded and I was forced out of the system. I rushed right over, darling, and you’ll be happy to know that the library looks no worse for wear!” The unicorn’s eyes fell on Rainbow and Fluttershy, and she gasped. “Oh my goodness! Are they alright?”

“They’ll be fine, Rares,” said Applejack, who had entered behind her. “They’re just in crisis recovery mode. See?” The orange mare placed one hoof on Rarity’s shoulder, and pointed with the other, indicating the screens.

“That … sounds bad.”

“Crisis Recovery is a safety measure, akin to automatic disconnection for users,” said the sun, having moved to hover over the sleeping pegasi. “It protects AIs from critical system shocks and repairs any damage they may have received. Fear not; they will awaken shortly.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised we got out unscathed,” said Twilight. “That explosion looked dangerous.”

“It was,” said the moon, and Twilight turned to find the pale orb hovering just behind her. “Which is why our sister warned us, and why we covered you in our barrier. She was right to call for it. It does not do to ponder what might have happened had you not been guarded.”

Silence reigned in the room as everyone’s thoughts wandered over the many and mostly gruesome possibilities. In the silence, first Rainbow Dash, then Fluttershy stirred, then jerked awake, in a mirror Twilight’s earlier rising panic. She had to admit, it was a little funny from the other side.

“O … kay,” said Raindow, eyes darting from pony to pony to sun to moon. “I … take it we won, then?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Celestia answered. “The infection is purged, and the library is undamaged. We had feared we would have to purge the library as well to be rid of the problem, so that is a victory. However, we were unable to trace the origins of the virus.”

“We were not expecting it to self destruct,” said Luna, her normally soft tones harsh and loud. “Such was our failure … and one that we shall not make again.”

“Wait. Again?” asked Rainbow, raising an eyebrow. “You mean there’s more of those things?”

“Even if there are not, we will be assuming there are,” said Celestia. “Programs, no matter their sophistication, must be created by an intelligence; programs such as that are designed to be malicious. We have not found the person responsible, so the probability of another such attack is disastrously high.”

“Is the library at risk?” Twilight asked, already considering ways to prevent another incursion. It was a little exciting, actually; while she’d pass on the danger, fighting the virus, rewriting code, and coming up with solutions to problems on the fly had been … exhilarating.

“Unlikely,” answered Luna, and she forced down a twinge of disappointment. “The library is designed to be extremely difficult to assault from outside. We have reviewed its records of the attack, and confirmed that the program was planted during the library’s initial construction, and even then, it is no small thing to subvert a construct of the Library’s power. It attacked when it did because the activation of Theatrum presented an opportunity.”

All six of the ponies present looked over at the wooden head, with varying expressions of trepidation, and Fluttershy shifted to place Rainbow between herself and the head. “Is … Theatrum safe?” Twilight asked.

“It is being rebuilt; your actions within have provided a firm foundation for the reconstruction,” said Celestia. “You are to be commended. All six of you.”

Twilight smiled, and watched the others; each of them reacted differently to the praise. Fluttershy withdrew even further, while Rainbow puffed out her chest and somehow gave the impression of preening without actually doing so. Rarity batted her eyelashes, and gave a flip of her hair, while Pinkie’s grin grew impossibly wide. Applejack ducked her head, and was the only one to speak. “Aw, shoot,” she said. “T’was only neighborly.”

“Would that more held to your definition of neighborly, Applejack,” said Luna, drawing a blush from the mare. “In truth, were it not for the six of you, this would have taken far longer to resolve. You have found strong allies, Twilight Sparkle. Keep them close.”

“There is one final matter,” said the sun, and all eyes turned to her. “This incident was not invisible, and your involvement,” and her flames pointed to Rarity, Fluttershy, and Applejack, “is known to the general public, and the public will have questions. You will likely be in for a great amount of attention, from those who reside here and from the general media. We ask for your discretion; Twilight, it is up to you to decide how much you wish to share of the Library’s nature, but beyond that, please do not share the details of the virus.”

“I got no problem with that,” said Applejack, “but, if you don’t mind my asking, why not? Ain’t this the kind of thing we want people to be on the lookout for?”

“It is,” answered Luna, “but accuracy is paramount in matters such as this. It is better that they receive our report directly than hear a distorted version from the media.”

Applejack nodded. “Makes sense. Should we just tell ‘em to wait for the official report?”

“Please,” said the sun. “We regret that we must take our leave. There is much to be done. Once again, you have our thanks. And Twilight, remember – you may call on us if ever you have need.”

The unicorn nodded, and all six mares bowed. Sun and moon flared, and were gone, leaving the room in silence.

-oOo-

“That … that’s a lot of people.”

“They weren’t kiddin’ when they said we’d get some attention for all this, were they?”

Twilight shook her head, and went back to staring out the window. The crowd was … huge. To put it lightly. Every single creature type that she remembered seeing when she’d first been born was in view, a few she hadn’t ever seen before. Like the giant armadillo. Interestingly, she knew it was an armadillo; whoever had filled her database had had strange ideas of what was important information and what was not.

“Didn’t you come through this crowd to get back in here?” she asked.

“Yep. But that weren’t too hard. A little shoving cleared the way,” said Applejack, who was sitting right beside her, and similarly staring out the window. “They aren’t looking for people going in. Or they weren’t. Probably are now.”

The unicorn nodded, and continued to observe the crowd. Something was happening; she could see people starting to turn away from the tree, as if something within the crowd itself was getting their attention. Interesting.

“Why are there still so many?” she asked. “Didn’t Celestia and Luna already tell them what was up?”

“Eeyup. I think about half of them went home.”

She blinked, and turned to look at her friend. “Half?”

“Yep.”

She turned back to the crowd. “Wow.”

The sounds of wings and the flow of air heralded the return of Rainbow Dash, and before long the cyan Pegasus had joined them at the window. “They’ve pretty much got us surrounded,” she said, and Twilight nodded. “It’s odd, though. You’d think they’d come right up to the door and look in the windows or something, but they’re just staying off in the distance.”

“Oh, that’s because Semper’s denying access,” said Twilight. “If you aren’t on the list, you can’t cross its control area.”

“Smart,” said Rainbow. “Who’s on the list?”

“Just us six. And those with the proper authority.” Twilight frowned. “Which appears to limited to systems administration and criminal investigations. Semper’s … rather strict.” She shook her head. “Voluntariae have permanent, 32 hour access. Fluttershy and Applejack have temporary access-” Her horn flashed, and she grinned. “Make that permanent access - to the library.”

“Why is this place locked down so tight, anyway? And I don’t mean because of the virus; the security on this place is about as good as that on Town Hall, if not better,” Applejack said, leaning against the windowsill.

“Well,” said Twilight, rubbing her chin, “if you think about it, it makes sense. The library is an archive of a massive amount of data; the mythologies of multiple races, the creative exploits of millennia of talented sapients, treatises on philosophy, scientific findings; the accumulated history of multiple worlds, including The World.”

Applejack turned to look at the books, her eyes wide. “All that? All here?”

Twilight nodded. “There’s enough knowledge here to keep an AI like me busy for centuries. And keeping all that knowledge safe from tampering requires a hefty amount of security. Most of this stuff is also available at the Town Hall, but that facility serves multiple purposes.” Twilight leaned over to Applejack, lowering her voice a touch. “And it’s rather lacking in terms of the creative section.”

Her friend nodded slowly, and gave her a look she couldn’t quite read. Darn. She’d thought she’d gotten those down. “And they put you in charge of it all.”

“Yes.”

“All on your own.”

“Not all on her own,” said Rainbow, puffing out her chest. “She’s got me helping her.”

AJ looked at Rainbow, and her eyes focused on the badge just above the pegasus’ ear. “Is that what that Voluntariae thing is all about?”

“Yep! Pinkie, Rarity, and yours truly are Twilight’s crew!”

“And that don’t interfere with your normal work.”

“Generally no,” said Twilight, shaking her head. “The great majority of the work here is handled by the library itself; I’ve mostly busied myself with learning what the place has to offer, and deciding how best to give the public access. I mostly need Voluntariae to give different perspectives on things … and the occasional emergency. Like today. Though I rather think that’s going to be an exception to the rule.”

“So it’s more like we’re there if she needs us,” said Rainbow, and Twilight nodded.

“Exactly.”

“Huh. Could you use another hand?”

The unicorn stared at Applejack, eyebrows raised. “Really?”

“Well, sure, why not?” the mare said, grinning. “It sounds like you could use my skills; there’s a reason this Library is a tree, Twilight, and that’s because it’s gonna be growing. And I know how to grow systems.”

“Um … if you don’t mind, I’d be willing, too.”

All three of them turned to look at Fluttershy, surprise on each of their faces.

“You’re volunteering, Fluttershy? That’s unusual,” said Rainbow.

“Well … I was listening, and I think it’s a good thing you’re doing here,” the pegasus said, nervously crossing her hooves. “There’s just so much out there that people don’t know, and have never experienced, and might never experience, and it sounds like this place would let them do that. And, um, I don’t know what I’ll be able to do to help, but I’d like to offer.”

“I tooooooold you,” said Pinkie, nudging Rainbow in the side. Twilight frowned. She would really have to start paying more attention to her surroundings; first Fluttershy and now Pinkie had snuck up on her. “You owe me a milkshake.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’ll talk,” said Rainbow, waving her off.

“You’re sure about this, you two?” asked Twilight. “I can’t promise that there won’t be other problems like today’s.”

“That just makes me more sure of it, sugar cube,” said Applejack, setting her hat in place. “I sure as sugar am not going to leave you to face things like that all on your own. I know, Rainbow, she’s got you. That don’t change my point.”

Twilight nodded, and turned to look at the yellow pegasus. “Fluttershy?” She nodded, her hummingbirds tweeting an acknowledgement; Twilight couldn’t help but grin at that.

“Well alright, then. Semper?”

The starry head winked into existence, two of the stars zipping towards the two mares and solidifying. “Registering Fluttershy, of the Everfree Nature Preserve, and Applejack, of Sweet Apple Acres, as volunteers in service to the Bibiothecaria. Semper Liberi welcomes you, Voluntariae.”

Twilight watched, heart thumping, as Fluttershy and Applejack took their badges and stuck them in place; Fluttershy’s firmly within her mane, and Applejack’s upon her hat. Pinkie’s squeal vocalized the glee in her own heart, and she broke into a grin as the pink pony wrapped them all up in a single, giant hug.

“Holy pink elephant lollipops, this is awesome! And you know what it calls for?” Pinkie said, releasing them from the hug.

“A party?” Applejack said, re-adjusting her hat.

“Woah! How’d you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

“You’re a good guesser, AJ. But yeah! A party! And it just so happens that that’s also our ticket out of here,” the pink mare said, nodding decisively.

“How do you figure?” asked Rainbow.

“Shhhhhhh! Listen!”

The room fell silent, everyone’s ears perked. Twilight’s swiveled toward the door, in unison with the rest of them, and she blinked. There was … a kind of thumping, from outside; deep and rhythmic. It sounded kind of like …

“Drums,” she said, and Applejack nodded.

“You didn’t,” said Rainbow, giving Pinkie a sideways look.

“She did.” They turned at the voice, and Twilight did a double-take; Rarity had just emerged from door to her personal room, with a clothing cart in tow. “It’s rather a good plan, actually, and to complete it, I have put together your party attire,” the unicorn said, items already floating off the cart.

“Fluttershy, Applejack, and myself are the most likely to be accosted, as we were seen entering the library during the quarantine. You three, though,” she said, gesturing to Rainbow, Pinkie, and Twilight, “would be fair game if you were seen leaving. But if everyone’s attention is on the dance floor, then we should be able to sneak out without too much trouble, and join in the festivities. Follow?”

Twilight nodded, eyes glued on the clothing that was floating in front of her. “And ... these are for …?”

“Disguises, darling. One doesn’t go to a party without proper attire,” Rarity replied. “Come now, get dressed! We have an escape to pull off.”

-oOo-

“Pinkie?” she said, her voice a low murmur as they slipped into the crowd. They’d separated into two’s, and she’d gone with Pinkie.

“Yeah, Twilight?” The pink pony was navigating the crowd with ease that came from long practice, and the unicorn was finding it a little difficult to keep up.

“Why am I escaping? That’s my house, I live there.” She sidestepped around a pony, giving the rather large stallion an apologetic smile.

“Because if you didn’t you couldn’t attend the party! Duh!”

Huh. That … actually made a good amount of sense.

“How did you set this up, anyway?” she asked, nudging her gold-rimmed shades back up a touch.

“Twilight,” said Pinkie, halting and adjusting her hat, which was the spitting image of a pink birthday cake, “I am the premier party pony of all of Everfree, and I know everypony and everybody in town! And that includes awesome DJs like …”

They broke through the crowd, and into the open. Without all the bodies in the way, Twilight had a clear view of the actual party set-up, and she stared, wide-eyed. A massive dance floor had been set up, just in front of an equally impressive stage, upon which was smorgasbord of musical electronics and an enormous speak stack. At the back of stage, between the speakers, a screen nearly the size of her tree featured a larger than life view of the two DJs on stage.

“Marty?”

“Yes! You’ve met?” asked Pinkie, cocking her head and grinning.

“Once.”

“And, of course, the amazing, stupendous, and radical DJ-PON-3!” Pinkie said, pointing to the blue-maned white unicorn right next to the mastiff. “That’s just her stage name. Her real name is Vinyl Scratch.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes. She’d seen that pony before, too. Aha – her picture was on the side of that club Rainbow had mentioned. The Scratch. “She works at the club?”

“Works there? Silly,” Pinkie said, rolling her eyes. “She owns it! And Vinyl is always down for a good party! Now come on, Twilight! Get out on that dance floor and shake your groove thang!”

Twilight froze, and planted her hooves, firmly resisting Pinkie’s attempt to push her into the middle of the dance floor. “Shake my what? And aren’t we trying to blend in?”

“Your groove thang! You know, dance!” Pinkie draped herself over Twilight’s back, placing her face next to the unicorn’s. “Look, you’re dressed for a party, and you’re rockin’ this swag, here,” she said, nudging Twilight’s white hooded sweatshirt and the large, golden T that she was wearing around her neck. “If you don’t get out there and start having fun, you’re gonna stick out like a sore horn. Trust me, when everybody else is dancing, it’s the mare who isn’t that gets noticed.”

Twilight stared at the dance floor. It was conspicuously empty. “Pinkie, nobody else is dancing.”

The earth pony looked up at the dance floor, and gasped. “You’re right! That just won’t do! It’s not a party without dancing! I’ll take care of that!”

Twilight blinked, and stared, as her friend shot off across the dance floor, heading directly for the stage. She opened her mouth to shout after her, and quickly closed it, eyes flicking from side to side at the people surrounding her. Pinkie’s antics had definitely attracted their attention, and they were staring at her and whispering to themselves.

She ducked her head, flipping the hood of her sweatshirt up in an attempt to hide. This was bad. This was very bad. They were going to start asking questions, and she had no idea what to say. Would they get angry? She didn’t want to make them angry, but if she said too much, then Celestia and Luna would get angry, and if she made them angry she could lose the library. But if she made the people here angry then nobody would come to the library, either, and then she’d lose it anyway because she’d have failed to make it a success. Oh yes. This was very, very bad.

“Hey!” She clamped down on the urge to jump, and turned her head, very slowly to see who had addressed her. Two faeries were hovering just beside her, female, by the look of them, one with a faint blue glow about her, and the other faintly yellow. The blue one floated a little closer, a suspicious look on her face. Twilight could only stare. She was caught. It was totally over.

“Listen … are you okay?” Twilight blinked. “You didn’t get dragged into this by Pinkie, or anything, right?” That … was not the question she’d been expecting. The faerie tilted her head. “I only ask because you look kind of nervous and Pinkie’s not always the most observant of people and she sometimes can put people in situations they aren’t ready for. I haven’t seen you around before. Are you new?”

Twilight’s jaw worked a couple times, but no words would come. The faerie didn’t know her. Of course she didn’t know her! Probably half the people in this crowd didn’t know her! She’d only been out of the library, what, three times in the past two weeks? And Everfree wasn’t exactly what she’d call a small community. Not that she’d seen any others, but based on the server map-

“Wow, you really are nervous,” the faerie said, and sighed. “This isn’t exactly the right kind of party for newbies, anyway. It’s a weird impromptu thing. Tell you what,” she said, patting Twilight’s nose, “Kvieta and I’ll stick with you, alright?” The unicorn nodded, her eyes slightly crossed to keep the tiny creature in view; she had to suppress a giggle. She was so small! And she was acting all protective!

The faerie grinned, and floated back a ways. “I’m Sinaihe. What’s your name?”

“Oh, I’m Tw-”

“Hellooooooooo, Everfree!” Pinkie’s voice, amplified to almost painful levels, cut her off, and drew all eyes to the stage. “And welcome to this super awesome impromptu party!” The pink pony had commandeered a microphone, and was front and center in the middle of the stage. “This is your resident party pony and hostess Pinkie Pie speaking, and I’m here to introduce our super awesome DJs! Everybody, please, give it up for The Alpha Dog, the Mudstep Master, the best DJ to ever come out of Hundo Urbog; Marty the Mastiff!”

The DJ raised a massive paw as the music suddenly took a turn for the odd, and the crowd roared its appreciation. Twilight blinked, surprised; she wasn’t sure about the music herself, but it seemed the crowd was in favor. That or they just really liked Marty.

“And, of course, a pony who needs no introduction, but is going to get one anyway because you’re supposed to do that, and also she’s just that cool; the Mistress of Music, the Mixer Magician, the stupendous, sensational, and all-around awesome DJ PON-3!”

The white-coated unicorn grinned, and the music came to a sudden, screeching halt; a sound that repeated itself in a strange, rhythmic fashion. Twilight winced; once again, her reaction was opposite to the crowd’s, which went just about crazy. They liked that sound? “You really are new,” Kvieta said, and she flushed. “Just relax. You’ll get used to it. And most of it’s not like that, anyway.”

“Yeah, it’ll be good,” said Sinaihe, flipping her hair. “They’ve got great rhythm and really, really wide selection.”

“I want to thank you all for sticking around!” Pinkie continued, as the applause and cheering died down. “I dunno how many of you all saw that weird stuff that was happening with the tree over there, but I figured that since it was all taken care of, which is totally a thing to have a party about, and since everyone was here already, I’d put this all together! And Marty and PON-3 are so awesome, they got all this going faster than you can say Jack Robinson! Well, maybe not faster, but as fast! Okay not as fast, but-”

Marty’s claw nudged Pinkie in her flank, and she looked at him, eyebrow raised. He raised one back, and made a rolling gesture with his paw. “Oh. Right. Moving on. So anyways, they’re awesome! And there’ll be food and drinks for anyone who wants them soon, because of some other awesome people who you should totally thank when they get here. But I want to tell you the real reason I put this party together.”

Pinkie pointed with a hoof, directly at Twilight, and the unicorn ducked her head once again. Dangit, Pinkie, they were supposed to be keeping a low profile! Low! “I made a new friend this past week! Her name is Twilight Sparkle, and she is awesome! And this, ladies and gentleguys, is her welcome party! Come on, Twilight, come out where people can see you!”

Sinaihe sighed, and Kvieta chuckled. “You’d best do it,” the yellow faerie said, and tugged on her hood. “She’s not gonna stop until you do.”

Resigned, Twilight stepped forward, out to the center of the dance floor, and turned to the face the crowd. Oh stars above, this was a lot of people. And all looking at her. “She’s only two weeks out of the pods, so go easy on her, folks! Come on, Sparkie, wave hello!”

Twilight grinned awkwardly, and raised a hoof, and the entire crowd waved back. “Alright! Give it up for Twilight!” The roar of voices nearly deafened her; it was louder than it had been even for Vinyl. She stared, open-mouthed, until Sinaihe tapped her on the horn.

“Everfree likes new people. If you couldn’t tell.”

Twilight swallowed. “I’ve been getting that impression.”

“Yay, Twilight! Alright, everybody, I’m gonna get off the stage so that the party can really start! And gosh darn it, somebody go join her on the dance floor so she’s not all by her lonesome! Oh wait, some already have. But still! More! It’s a party! Dance! Have fun! Pinkie out!”

The music resumed, and the crowd fairly charged the dance floor. Twilight found herself forced up against the stage, surrounded by creatures, each wanting to shake her hoof and wish her welcome. Almost before she could think, she was lifted up from the floor and onto the stage, next to a waiting, grinning Pinkie Pie. She blinked up at Marty, and managed to regain enough clarity to nod him her thanks. He grinned back at her, and returned to his equipment.

“See? Told you I’d take care of it,” said Pinkie, waving at the dance floor.

“You certainly did,” was all Twilight could think to say.

“Ready to dance?”

“Um … no.”

Pinkie stared at her. “No?”

“I’ve never danced before. How do you do it?”

“Just move to the music! Feel the rhythm and let it take over! Like this!

Twilight watched, as Pinkie began to move. There was certainly a pattern to the motions, and as she listened to the music (which as the faeries had said was rather unlike the examples the DJs had shown earlier), she could begin to see, or, well, feel, the connections. Her ears began to twitch, in time to the music, and she bobbed her head.

“Yeah! You got the start of it! Now get the rest of your body into it!”

Taking a deep breath, Twilight steeled herself, and began to dance.

-oOo-

Twilight stumbled into her room, dropping her party attire upon the floor and heading straight for her bed. “Hello, bed,” she said, flinging the covers back and hopping in. “I am very, very glad to see you.”

It had been very long and very tiring day. Up at 7:00, read a book, picked out jewelry, fought off a virus, saved her library, and attended a party. A very long party. From the sounds of things, it still wasn’t quite finished, and it was already 29:34. That was okay though. They were just having fun.

She had to admit, the party had been a blast, once things got started properly, and everybody had been so wrapped up in the whole thing that nobody had even mentioned the virus, not even to Applejack, who it turned out was catering the thing. Seemed party food was somewhat different than regular, too; just there for the flavor. It had been good though.

She gave a contented sigh, and snuggled down into the covers. In retrospect, the day had been a good one. The virus was troubling, but they had handled it, and she’d gained two Voluntariae she probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Friends, really. She smiled, closing her eyes. Friends. Now that, she could call a victory.

Exploratores: Unexpected Visitor

Exploratores

Quintum 15, 1409 AN
9:32

Twilight frowned, staring at the book in front of her, which was resisting all her attempts to translate it. Her personal database of languages had failed her, but it wasn’t the first time. She hadn’t been born with knowledge of every language, and frankly, that was fine by her. Learning new ones was a tantalizing possibility, an endeavor that was sure to be as rewarding as it would be difficult. Maybe. This book, however, was proving to be a problem. Not only was it titled in this unknown language, it was recorded in Semper’s catalogue with no translation. There seemed to be no other example of this language anywhere in the catalogue, nor was there any record of the language itself.

“This doesn’t make any sense!” she cried, her horn flaring as the book slammed shut. “Why is this book here? How did it even get recorded without a reference to what language it is! I suppose someone could have simply taken a visual scan, but why? And why not document where it was found, who it was found by, who recorded it, and all the other stuff that comes in really handy for someone like me!”

Silence answered, and she sighed, flicking the book back into its erstwhile location in the “Uncategorized” section. She needed a distraction. Perhaps a good fantasy. There was that series by Erstwhile Dalliance which had looked interesting. And she did need to categorize it. She nodded, her mind set. An afternoon of reading it would be, safely away from troublesome languages and the poor documentation thereof.

“You have a visitor, Bibliothecaria.”

She hung her head. Or not. “Who is it, Semper?”

“Voluntaria Fluttershy, and several of her charges.”

Twilight frowned, puzzled. “Fluttershy? Now why would she be here? And why didn’t she send a note?” Semper, of course, said nothing; the Library never answered a question it didn’t have the exact answer to. “It must be important,” she mused, as she headed down the stairs. “Let her in.”

The front door swung open, and Fluttershy stepped in, her hooves barely making a sound as they touched the wood. Twilight would have put that up to her being pegasus, save for that Rainbow Dash made a racket whenever she had her hooves on the ground. Overall, Fluttershy was just a very quiet pony. “Hello, Fluttershy! What’s going on?”

“Oh, hello Twilight. I’m terribly sorry to intrude. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Very quiet indeed. Her voice never seemed to rise above a low murmur, when she spoke at all. Twilight shook her head.

“I’d just finished, actually,” she said, and frowned. “Well, for now. But I wasn’t making any headway anyway, so no matter.”

The pegasus nodded, a relieved expression on her face. “Oh, good. I’d hate to be a bother. It’s just that, well, um …” She kicked at the ground, nervously, and reached into the pack on her bag, retrieving what looked to be a scroll. Twilight blinked. That was a little odd. She used the scroll model, sure, but that was in keeping with the theme of the library itself. She had yet to see anyone else use it, anywhere.

“I was given this yesterday,” Fluttershy said, having placed the scroll carefully on the floor in front of her. “It’s an official, um … well, maybe you’d better just read it.” Twilight raised an eyebrow, but didn’t question, instead grasping the scroll with her glow and rolling it out.

“Official Notice: Attention FShy.ai, AKA Fluttershy, Caretaker General of Everfree Environs biosphere simulation and Semper Liberi Voluntaria,” she read, and paused. Caretaker General? She’d known Fluttershy was largely in charge of the Everfree Forest, but that title seemed very official. With a lot of weight. Making a mental note, she continued.

“Per the Clan Accord of 320 AT, a connection will be made within your Environs. The Sisters recommend TSparkle.ai, currently in residence at Semper Liberi in the Everfree Environs, be present to finalize handshake protocols. Proceed with all haste to secure the connection and ensure full synchronization. Signed by the Department of New User Services, Everfree Division.”

Twilight blinked. Handshake? Why would they need a full-fledged AI to perform a simple handshake? Even the simplest of devices with any kind of networking capability could perform a handshake, and she knew for a fact that those procedures were built into every aspect of The World. “Fluttershy? What’s this about?”

The pegasus fidgeted. “It’s, well, it’s new to me too. I’ve never heard of this before, and I haven’t been able to devote the processing time to go through the Accord it mentions. And also, I thought since the Sisters recommended you, it might be better to find out together.”

Twilight nodded, rolling the scroll back up and turning toward the center of the room. It had grown since The Incident; Theatrum’s horse head still held pride of place on the central pedestal, but now stood at the center of low circular table. “Activate central terminal, please,” she said, and sat at the table, a screen popping up in front of her. “Search records of legal documents, specifically treaties and international agreements, for the Clan Accord of 320 AT.”

Ordering the search was really more of a formality; the advantage of Counselor systems was their proactive approach to things. Semper, she knew, had run the search and prepped the document for viewing the moment she’d read the name out loud. She narrowed her eyes as the text scrolled by, searching for anything relevant. It was an interesting document, typical of the organic proclivity for increasingly sesquipedalian contortions of language in an attempt to preclude any possibility of the abuse of loopholes; already she’d run across a number of new terms that had required a dictionary reference. Still, she had the general thrust of it. “It appears to be a contract,” she said, “between the inhabitants of Uasal and the stewards of the Network. The Network?”

“An outmoded name for The World,” Semper provided, “though still relevant for legal documents.”

“Ah,” Twilight said. “It appears to have been originally drafted at the time when true virtual reality connections were transplanting more traditional methods of user access. It seems the Uasalans wanted access. There are a number of special provisions here, though. I wonder why.”

“Um, that might be because of what Uasalans are,” Fluttershy said. “Semper, do you have any visual records on file?”

“Multiple entries are on file within library systems. Everfree database records are more extensive and can be referenced if need be.”

The pegasus nodded. “Do you have the final transmission from the Yangtze 7 expedition?”

“Affirmative. Please note that this file is flagged as hostile, and Theatrum use is inadvisable.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow. That did not bode well. “Proceed with screen projection, please,” she said.

“Proceeding. Estimated relevant portion begins approximately 15 minutes before end of file,” the library said, and the back wall of the common room was taken up by a massive screen, showing the image of a lush landscape, heavily forested. Twilight blinked. Those were definitely trees, but she couldn’t place the species, but then she didn’t have an exhaustive database on the subject, either.

Movement on the screen caught her eye, and, apparently the eye of whoever was recording, as the camera shifted to track the flying blob. Low voices began speaking from off-screen. Their language was unintelligible, but the general tone of excitement was plain. Fluttershy had said it was from an expedition, and those were generally scientific in nature, with the eye towards the suitability of colonization or resource exploitation, so it would make sense for them to be excited about the local wildlife. Frustrating that none of them were on screen, though.

She frowned. The blob was getting bigger. Significantly bigger. At a disturbingly fast rate. She could see that it had wings, now, though the details were still unclear, and the thing was still getting bigger. How far away had it been to begin with? And just how big was it? The limitations of the recording notwithstanding, she could make a reasonable estimation …

She blinked, and double-checked her results. A shiver ran up her spine. That didn’t make sense. Well, no, it did make sense, but the implications were unnerving. No, not just unnerving; they were downright scary. To make matters worse, you could hear it in the tone of the voices; clearly, some of them had come to similar conclusions. And the thing was still getting bigger.

There was a flash from the creature, and the video ended with a roar and a bang. Twilight shook her head, and played back the last fractions of a second. There was no mistaking it. That had been what could only be described as a fireball. More than likely something on the order of a contained sphere of plasma fired at supersonic speeds. And the source of it … she shook her head, looking over at Fluttershy. “Was that—“ She took a breath, trying to steady herself. “That was a—“

“Dragon,” the pegasus said, her voice even softer than usual. “Uasalans are dragons.”

Exploratores: Setting Out

“Okay, wait, back up,” Rainbow said, shaking her head. “They want you, specifically, to be there to perform the basic handshake.” Twilight nodded, and Rainbow frowned, eyes narrowed. “You. The month-old AI.” The unicorn rolled her eyes.

“Yes, Rainbow. Me. The month-old AI who still doesn’t have her library all figured out.”

“Now that just don’t make no kind of sense, Twilight,” said Applejack, nose deep in the midst of packing. “Handshaking doesn’t need anything so sophisticated as you.”

“I don’t get it either,” Twilight said with a sigh, “but the scroll didn’t exactly say much. I mean, it didn’t even say it was a dragon making the connection; we had to look up the contract document that it referenced.” She was beginning to question the wisdom of calling Rainbow in on this. It was kind of surprising that the pegasus wasn’t busy, actually; her work had a tendency to keep her occupied.

“Right, that thing,” Rainbow said, peeking over Applejack’s shoulder at the inventory list and giving a low whistle. “That’s a lot of stuff.”

“Pays ta be prepared,” Applejack said, and Rainbow shrugged, turning her attention back to Twilight.

“Wasn’t that thing, like, super old?”

Twilight nodded. “It was first drafted in 320 AT, though it’s still a live document. Up for review in another twenty or so years. That transmission was even older.”

Rainbow nodded. “Marivar Tuul, scientific expedition to Yangtze 7. Landed Secundum 4, lost Secundum 9.”

Twilight blinked. “You know about it?”

“Required learning for all military personnel, of course,” the pegasus said, flicking her tail dismissively. “More importantly, why you for the handshake? I mean, why have a full AI for it in the first place?”

“It’s actually required by the contract. It doesn’t elaborate on why, though,” she growled. “It seems no one thought that motivations were worth documenting.”

Rainbow chuckled, and reached over to ruffle her head. “Don’t be too hard on ‘em, kid. A lot can get lost in two thousand years.”

“One thousand, seven hundred and twenty nine years, two months, and twelve days.”

Twilight frowned, watching as Applejack and Rainbow exchanged a look. She knew that look. It meant she’d done something naïve, generally. “What? What did I do?”

“Well,” Applejack said, “it’s not quite social to go and correct someone like that.”

She blinked, and looked at Rainbow, who chuckled again. “You gotta learn to approximate, kid, or at least let them slide. Users get all annoyed when we pull that stunt.”

“Oh,” she said, frowning. That was … odd. Why would anyone favor a gross approximation over an accurate measurement? “I don’t get it.”

Rainbow and Applejack gave each other another look, and the pegasus raised an eyebrow. “You’re the User here, Applejack,” she said, and the earth pony rolled her eyes.

“Alright. Let’s see,” she said, tapping her chin with her hoof, and nodded. “So this is simplifyin’ things, probably oversimplifyin’, but AIs are basically ridiculously complex code, right?”

“That’s not … an inaccurate statement,” Twilight allowed. “It’s not completely accurate, either, but you did say you were simplifying.”

“Right. And code is, at the root of it, all based on math.” Twilight nodded. Still something of a simplification, but allowable. “So AIs are built on math.”

“Well, yes,” she said, “but everything is. The universe itself is expressible in mathematical form. Anything can be put into some form of equation or function.” And they were giving each another look. “What?”

This time it was Applejack who chuckled. “Not quite everything, Twilight. But that’s a tangent. Point is that math is part and parcel of how you function and think. But most Users, like me, we ain’t built that way. We’re all chemical reactions and firing synapses, and yeah, like you said, that’s all expressible as mathematics, but that don’t translate into how we think.” Twilight’s brow furrowed, her expression puzzled. “I can do math, but I had to learn it. Two plus two isn’t a thing I was born with.”

“Okay,” the unicorn said, “that makes sense. But I still don’t get what’s wrong with accuracy.”

Rainbow snickered, eliciting a flush from Twilight, and Applejack sighed. “Look, sugar cube, I can’t speak for every species, but I know that I get by with estimates and approximations when I’m just talkin’. Believe me, there’s nothing wrong with accuracy – I’m a stickler for it where it concerns the farm, for example – but I work better with things like ‘about two thousand years’ in just conversation.”

Twilight tilted her head, thoughts churning. Math was second nature to her. First nature, possibly. Simple calculations like the age of the contract to the nearest day were as simple as, well breathing. But if that wasn’t true for Users, if something so simple as basic arithmetic was something they were taught, and had to think about … She nodded. “I see. Approximations ease understanding without devoting unnecessary thought cycles to exacting accuracy, so when someone insists on said accuracy, it creates annoyance due to, at the least, wasted time.” She nodded again, and smiled, pleased with her assessment; a smile that froze when she saw the looks on her friends’ faces. Again? “Crabapples. What did I say this time?”

Rainbow burst out laughing, and Applejack was just shaking her head with a smile on her face. “Nothing, Twi. Just your way of sayin’ it, is all.”

“Never change, kid.” She frowned, and opened her mouth, but Rainbow cut her off with a wave of her hoof. “Idiomatic expression, Twi.”

“Ah. Wait, so was I wrong?”

“No,” said Applejack, “you pretty much nailed it on the head, there. There’s usually more reasons, but, eh.” She shrugged. “You get the point.”

“Hey, second question: why are we packing?” Rainbow asked, taking another pointed look at Applejack’s rather significant inventory. “Based on this it looks like this is gonna be a major hike.”

“It will be,” Twilight said, her companion cube displaying a basic map of the Environs at her prodding. “Once Fluttershy officially acknowledged the notice, we got a location from Everfree Admin. We’ll have to go here,” she said, and a purple star lit up on the map, “in order to make the connection.”

The pegasus blinked, staring at the map. “That’s Mount Colossaeus.”

“Yes.”

“That’s in the middle of one of the largest recreations of undeveloped forest.”

“Right.”

“Plus examples of nearly every forest animal ever recorded, extinct and otherwise, mythical and otherwise.” Twilight frowned. Mythical? She hadn’t known that bit. “And we’re walking, because that’s one of the thickest canopies in virtual existence, and the local wyverns don’t like flyers on their mountaintop.”

“Um.” She looked at Rainbow, who stared back, one eyebrow raised, waiting for her to answer the que- er, statement. Statement that implied a question. Rainbow was rather good at those. “Yes?”

The pegasus tilted her head the side, her eyebrow rising even higher, and Twilight braced herself as Rainbow opened her mouth. “Right. Bring it on.”

Twilight stared, but her friend didn’t notice, her attention already drifting off to something else. “So where’s Fluttershy? She is coming, right?”

The unicorn blinked, and shook her head, throwing off the surprise. “Um, yes, yes she is. She said she had to get her house in order and get ready. Also she was going to see if Pinkie or Rarity wanted to come.”

Rainbow snorted. “Pinkie, yeah, but not Rarity. That girl’s got no interest in any of the fun stuff.” An answering snort from Applejack turned both ponies’ heads in her direction, and Rainbow raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Nothin’ important,” the earth pony said, “just that Rarity might surprise you on that. You’re right about this, though, this ain’t really up her alley. ‘Sides, she’s got her store to work on.”

“Speaking of which,” Twilight said, as a thought crossed her mind. “Don’t you have your farm to work on?”

Applejack waved it off. “Big Macintosh can handle it without me for a while, and if anything serious comes up, I can always just relog. Ain’t a problem.”

The unicorn frowned. “Are you sure? Because I really d-“ Applejack’s face cut her off, the earth pony’s green eyes suddenly filling her field of vision.

“Twilight, I ain’t about to let you three go off into the middle of the Everfree without me,” she said, as the unicorn took a step back. “You heard Rainbow; that place is crawling with critters both normal and not, and these ain’t your Theatrum constructs, either, so you’ve got a lot fewer options. I know you can’t come to no real harm, but I can tell you from experience that bein’ on the business end of an angry bear is still not something you want to feel.”

Twilight blanched, as her systems provided her with some unpleasant and entirely unsolicited speculation on the subject. “Besides, it sounds like fun,” Applejack said, turning away and closing her inventory screen, “and I don’t want to miss out on it. Clear?”

The unicorn nodded, smiling. “Clear, Applejack. And thanks.”

“Shoot, ain’t even a thing. Any case, I’m all set,” she said, securing her saddlebags. “How about you girls?”

“Been ready,” Rainbow said, hovering over the door.

“All set,” Twilight said, her own saddlebags settling into place. “Let’s head on out.”

-oOo-

“So Pinkie’s not coming?” Twilight asked, brow furrowed. That was odd. Pinkie was normally the first to jump at these things. Fluttershy shook her head.

“She had an away message up. She’s been called away on an emergency of some sort. It didn’t say what kind.”

“Another one, huh?” Twilight looked at Rainbow, surprised.

“This happens a lot?”

“All the time, sugarcube,” Applejack said with a smile. “Pinkie’ll stay in town for days, weeks, sometimes years, then poof! She’s gone for who knows how long, only to come back later as if nothing ever happened. You learn to live with it.”

“Huh. And nobody knows where she goes?”

“Not usually. Sometimes she tells us, but not always,” Fluttershy said. “She’s never gone all that long.”

“Alright!” Rainbow said, smacking her back hooves together. “Pinkie’s not coming, Rarity’s busy, and time’s a-wasting! So let’s get a move on!”

“Oh, that reminds me,” Fluttershy said, reaching into her saddlebags. “Rarity made us all blankets.”

“Blankets?” Twilight asked, perplexed. “Why would we need blankets?”

“Forest gets cold, Twilight,” Applejack replied, taking hers from Fluttershy and stowing it away. “They didn’t skimp on the discomforts when they designed The World, here, especially in places like the forest. It’s meant to be a recreation of reality, remember.”

“Hm. That makes sense. I’ll have to make sure to thank her when we get back.”

“Right,” Rainbow said. “When we get back. But, you know, in order to get back, we kind of have to leave.”

Twilight and Applejack shared a look, and the earth pony broke into a chuckle. “Alright, Dash, alright. We’re going. Twilight, you’ve got the map. Which way do we go?” The unicorn nodded, and with a thought and a flash of her horn, her cube provided them with an arrow, pointing towards a certain section of the treeline.

“If nothing else,” she said, as they started walking, “it should be an adventure.”

Exploratores: Ancient History

“Hey, Rainbow?”

They were a few hours out, now. The forest pathways had made for a pleasant stroll so far, and an interesting one. Twilight had never really had reason to go into the Everfree Forest very far, and it was proving to be a far more enthralling area than she had ever thought it would be. Even in just a few hours, she had seen and heard more wildlife than she had thought possible. Fluttershy had assured her that this was entirely normal, even in physical environments.

“Yeah, Applejack?”

She would need to make more treks here. Not only was the fauna fascinating, but the selection of flora was surprisingly wide. Her original thought had been that forests consisted exclusively of trees, but that had clearly been a naive assumption; of course there would be undergrowth! Bushes of various sorts, ferns, vines, even grass, where the canopy was light enough. And such variety! On top of that, entirely natural in its occurrence. Nothing in the forest had been invented.

“What’s the story with the dragons, anyway? That expedition y’all mentioned?”

If nothing else, this all needed to be catalogued. She was sure the library had some books on botany, and there would probably be at least some people who would want to know what species could be found right here in their own back- Wait, what?

“You don’t know about it, Applejack?” she asked, turning to look at her friend. Applejack gave a sheepish grin, tugging at the brim of her hat.

“I was never all that good with history, less’n it mattered in the here and now,” she said. “But ya said it was required for the military, right? Y’all got me curious.”

“Well,” Twilight started, only to find Rainbow’s hoof in her mouth.

“No offense, kid, but I got this,” the pegasus said. “I’ve heard you talk about stuff, and your enthusiasm is cute and all, but you’re just gonna lose people.” Twilight blinked. “And with history, well, if you wanna make it interesting, you have to tell a story, not just spout the facts.” Twilight nodded, and frowned as Rainbow removed her hoof. Did she lose people? She had noticed a tendency to need to repeat things when she was explaining stuff, but that was usually just that Rainbow wasn’t listening … wasn’t it? Come to think of it, the others seemed to have trouble focusing, too. Not that she had all that many examples to pull from - not nearly enough to form an accurate statistical sample - but Rainbow was a good deal older and more experienced. She would know. Hm. She would have to-

Twilight shook her head. Focus, girl. Rainbow was talking. “First thing to get, fillies,” she said, waving her legs expansively, “is that Captain Tuul wasn’t the first guy to land on Yangtze 7. That was Elias Stern, Captain of the Arlin, and professional explorer. Stern was a badass, right; touched down on six different planets in as many years. Yangtze 7,” she said, pausing to make sure everyone was listening, “was his last.

“Stern touched down on the 28th of Quintum back in 4208 AT, sent out the standard ‘landing successful’ signal, and set to his duties. Got some video and started streaming it. His feed cut out that same day. No explanation, nothing to show why. Just went dead. Folks back at mission control had to have been scratching their heads raw trying to figure out why. They studied the little bit that he’d gotten out, and I guess they saw something interesting, because they set to prepping a full expedition. Probably part of it was trying to figure out what happened to Stern; explorer like that is a valuable asset.

“Four years later, 4th of Secundam, 4204 AT, Marivar Tuul and his crew touch down in roughly the same location as Stern. They can’t find a trace of him or his ship, but they’re a scientific team, so they set to their jobs; you know, taking samples, analyzing things, making recordings and the like. Most significant thing is they keep seeing flying creatures way off in the distance, and all their calculations say these things are huge.”

“The dragons,” Applejack said, and Rainbow nodded.

“Right. Not that they knew what they were right then. The dragons kept their distance at first, but on the 9th, well … say, have you seen the video, AJ?”

Applejack nodded. “Twilight sent it to me when she asked if I wanted to come along. Gotta say, I’d be a lot more concerned about this if we weren’t in The World.”

“You’d be right to. That one dragon from that video destroyed the entire expedition. All hands were lost. Mission control figured something similar must have happened to Stern, labeled Yangtze 7 as a hostile world, and let the galaxy know. So, of course, about five years later, a big smuggling organization decides to put a base on it.”

Twilight frowned. “Why would they do that?”

Rainbow shrugged. “They figured there was profit in it, probably. Yangtze wasn’t the only world in that sector up for possible development, and they might have figured they could exploit it themselves or something. Mostly it was probably that law enforcement wouldn’t ever go near a hostile world. They still won’t, generally. Too expensive.”

“What happened?” Applejack asked.

“Nobody’s quite sure. Not much in the way of records from the smugglers themselves; all historians can say is that the base was set up in 4199 and went down the same year. A lot of ‘em think it didn’t even take a week. Most of them are fairly sure that the smugglers were responsible for what happened after that.

“See, here’s why it’s all required learning for military personnel. Sextum 29, 4186 AT, about 22 years after Stern’s death, the planet Odraimos was invaded, wholesale, by dragons.” The pegasus paused, eyeing her audience. Twilight had to admit, this was certainly more interesting than the brief report she’d read on these events. She hadn’t known about the smugglers, either.

“Odraimos was, at the time, the center of the Illuvian Empire,” Rainbow said. “Same people Stern and Tuul worked for, and where their mission reports got routed back to. Crowded planet, robust military; they were basically certain that they were impregnable. Why they weren’t is one of those things that eggheads like to argue about for days on end; important thing is that they weren’t and the dragons razed about half the planet within a week.”

Applejack gave a low whistle. “That fast?” Rainbow nodded.

“They’re big, fast, and powerful. The ones that hit Odraimos came in prepared. They had their own armor, their own weapons, and they didn’t much care what they wrecked. There’s not a lot of actual footage that survived the invasion, either. Most of the footage from the Dragon War takes place on other planets or is from years after the original invasion of Odraimos. Plenty of games and movies and the like done with it, though.” She shrugged. “People were a little obsessed with it for a while.

“That day was the start of the longest war on record, and the only one to span multiple star systems. The whole thing lasted 1200 years, involved almost 300 planets, and shaped civilization on a galactic scale. The way my teachers put it, that war is the reason there are no interstellar empires, and the reason The World exists.”

The pegasus fell silent, and for a long few minutes the four of them traveled in silence. It was an interesting assertion to make, Twilight thought, but one that made sense. A war of such scale would affect societies on every level. Entire generations of sapients would have spent their entire lives locked within the culture of war. It was a wonder that it was even waged; the sheer cost of such an undertaking, even just in terms of resources, was staggering.

“How’d it end?” Applejack asked, her voice subdued.

“Well,” Rainbow said, fluttering her wings, “the dragons kind of went and made enemies of every space-faring nation. They held out for a damn long time, but each dragon lost was a bigger hit to them than each soldier lost by their enemies. Eventually? They just got worn down. Official records show that when they finally sued for peace in 2980, they were down to ten thousand individuals. As a whole species. And that was throughout the known galaxy.”

She shrugged. “I guess they were smart enough to recognize death when it was knocking at their door. And their enemies were, I suppose, tired of war.”

Applejack shook her head. “I can’t even imagine it. Livin’ my whole life with …” She trailed off, her face looking troubled. “I mean, it ain’t like I haven’t seen death. And it ain’t like I wouldn’t do what it took to keep me and mine safe. But a war like that … I don’t see how they did it. Or why.”

The pegasus laughed. “You and everyone else, AJ. Oh, you’ll get answers; two for every person in existence. But the why of that war isn’t something you’ll get a real answer for, even if you asked a dragon. After all,” she said with a shrug, “everyone who was around when it started is dead.”

The silence fell once again, heavy with the weight of history. The war was a troubling thing; hard evidence that people could and would kill, repeatedly and endlessly. And there had to have been others. Rainbow had said there were none of the same scale, but she was military, and the presence of military indicated the presence of a threat for that military to deal with, perceived or real. Military for whom, though? She should ask, sometime; but not right now.

Now, she had to wonder about this connection. It had been millennia since the end of that war, certainly; and millennia of peace, but, well … dragons. Just what, exactly, was she in for? That thought was troubling. Very, very troubling.

Exploratores: Campfire Tales

The flames flickered and danced, forming and reforming in intricate and seemingly random patterns. She could almost see the code behind it, the thousands upon thousands of programs and sub-programs devoted to the task of recreating a simple campfire. They were always there, of course, producing the air around her, the subtle currents and motions that made The World live and breathe; the sounds that meant the forest, with all its rustling leaves and far off noisess, and the songs of the nocturnals. How much effort, to reproduce what had already existed? What drove a person to such lengths, just to share this with whoever cared to live it?

“Twilight.”

She looked up, and saw Fluttershy and Rainbow looking at her, their faces troubled. Well, Fluttershy’s was troubled. Scared, almost. Rainbow just looked concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re doing that glowy eye thing again,” Rainbow answered. “Sort of.”

“Oh dear.” She was? She was. No wonder she had seen the hints of the code in the campfire; somehow she had slipped into codesight without realizing it. “Sorry, girls. I was lost in thought, I guess.”

“Hey, no worries, Twi. You weren’t glowing too brightly.” That made sense. She’d only barely been looking, after all.

Silence fell once again, and she looked over to where Applejack lay, sleeping. Well, more appropriate to say her avatar was in sleep mode, but less artistic. Applejack had logged off shortly after camp was made, and was likely actually sleeping in her physical home. Which made her curious: what was Applejack, then? Where did she live? How did she live? Three weeks, and she had never thought to ask. Not that they’d seen each other a whole lot in that time, but …

“U-um, T-Twilight?”

“Yes, Fluttershy?” she said, turning to look at her.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking, but, um, what was that? With your eyes glowing? Y-you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, I don’t mean to pry.”

She shook her head, smiling softly. “It’s okay, Fluttershy. I don’t mind. It’s part of my design; I’m not sure why, but it’s definitely an intentional function. It allows me to access the underlying infrastructure of The World; I can see the code as opposed to just the result of the code. For the most part my access is read only, but a few of the higher order programs respond to prodding.”

“Oh, I see. So when your eyes glow …”

“It means I’m looking at the code of The World.”

“Oh my,” the pegasus said, ducking her head. “That’s … a little scary.”

Twilight blinked, and looked at Rainbow, who nodded her head. “It kind of is. If you think about it. Look, when I first saw you, you were making the river dance. You’ve got access to systems critical to my continued existence.”

That was … true. But- “Rainbow, I’d never-”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong!” the pegasus said, wings flaring. “I’m not saying you’re gonna go all crazy and start breaking stuff; it’s just that- well.” She frowned. “It’s like you said. You were designed with it. So someone got the greenlight to get an AI minted with that kind of access. Someone figured you were needed, and that you were going to need it, and the Sisters agreed. Plus it is just a little unnerving that you’re basically the only person I know who could maybe actually delete me, buuuuut that’s not really the main thing and you should probably forget I ever mentioned it,” she said, the last words tumbling out in a rush. Another silence fell, as Twilight processed, and Rainbow looked to the side and coughed.

“You’ve thought about this,” the unicorn said, to fill the silence.

“A little, yeah.”

“Um,” Fluttershy said, looking confused, “someone …? You don’t know who your end user is, Twilight?”

The unicorn shook her head. “The Sisters haven’t told me. I think I’m actually still in beta; my current primary directive is to grow. Running Semper Liberi is a secondary directive. The purpose I was built for is actually in a restricted memory block, which will open once I’ve hit the proper stage of development.”

“Oh my. I’ve never heard of something like that before.”

“It’s pretty similar to standard procedures for the software and hardware I deal with,” Rainbow said, “though I admit I’ve never heard of it being used for an AI.”

“I did some research on it, and I think I’m the first AI to go through something like this since the Genesis program was started,” Twilight said, blowing a sigh. “I guess I’m just a very strange AI.”

“Don’t worry about it, Twi. Strange and new is good.”

“Oh, yes,” said Fluttershy, nodding her head. “I’m not always very good with new things, especially when it’s new people, but change is a good thing. You don’t want to stagnate.”

Twilight couldn’t help but grin. “Thanks, girls.”

The others nodded, and the group fell into companionable silence, each of the three AIs looking into the fire. She was lucky, she had come to realize, to have fallen in with this group of ponies; her studies of the library’s contents had laid before her a rather unflattering picture of what people were, or perhaps had been, as those she had met within Everfree did not quite seem to fit.

Though … that was perhaps no accident or stroke of luck. The Sisters had placed the library in Everfree, and had let her out on that particular hillside and given her her marching orders. It would not be a stretch to think that they had calculated the likelihood that she would meet up with Rainbow, or that, given the interest they had displayed in her thus far, they would have thoroughly vetted the people she would be likely to meet. She was still in development, after all, one guided by the people around her. Leaving something like that up to chance alone … that was unthinkable.

She looked at the two pegasi, and frowned. Come to think of it, she only knew a little bit more about them than she did about Applejack. She should fix that. “Hey Rainbow?”

“Yeah?”

“Who’s your end user?”

The pegasus chuckled. “You know, I was wondering when you were gonna get around to asking that. You remember what I do, right?”

She nodded. “Aeronautics stress testing, right?”

“Right. I was originally requested by a fairly major vehicle manufacturer on a planet called Sheth, and that was a pretty good gig. But about after about six years they rolled out a brand new model, huge budget behind it, make or break them type thing, and they had me test it. Its performance was pretty good, but pretty good wasn’t what they were aiming for, since no one was gonna buy ‘pretty good’ at the price they’d need to sell it to make through.

“So engineering is smart and listens to me, and they figure out ways to fix the issues, but administration doesn’t like what they see, and decide to be stupid. Long story short, they roll it out, marketing plays it up like it does what it was supposed to as is, and people get hurt when it doesn’t. So they fold in the aftermath.

“Now, me, I’m awesome, so I go freelance and I do fine. A lot of the guys from that company who went elsewhere still threw work my way and all that, and then I got tapped by the Galactic Task Force. Thus, I am Captain Rainbow Dash!” she said, striking a pose and giving a salute. “Not that I actually have a command, though. The rank just gives me the pull I need to get stuff done.”

“The Galactic Task Force? Who’s in command of that?”

“That would be the Commandant. Guy named Shining Armor. Don’t mistake, though; he’s my boss, but my end user was that corporation. When they folded …” she shrugged.

“Interesting.” That was rather a storied past. Definitely more there than she’d shared so far, but it certainly explained some things. Like how she knew so much. There really was no substitute for experience, she supposed. “Thank you, Dash.”

“No problem. Hey Flutters.” The yellow pony started, looking at Rainbow, who snickered. “Your turn.”

“Uh, um … w-what?”

“To, you know, share. We’re doing this whole round-the-campfire-share-your-life-story thing, right, so it’s your turn.”

“Oh. Um. Really?”

“I was curious, yes,” Twilight said, giving Fluttershy a smile. “I know you’re the Caretaker General of this forest, but what does that mean, exactly?”

“Oh, well, that’s more for the areas close to Everfree itself, or at least, the parts that people tend to go into,” Fluttershy said, her nervousness dissipating as she launched into a familiar subject. “I keep an eye on everything and report anything that isn’t working properly. And keep the wild animals out of Everfree. Oh, and I have a number of them that are tame that I keep for people to come and see, and sometimes they take one for a pet. Would you like a pet, Twilight?”

The unicorn blinked. “Uhhh, maybe? Not right now, I think. Maybe when the library is open?”

Fluttershy nodded. “Okay. I can understand. Pets are an investment, even if they are just extremely accurate digital representations, and you need to be able to make that investment.”

“Er, yes.”

Rainbow chuckled. “Flutters is selling herself a little short. See, Twi, if anything, but anything goes sideways in the forest, who do you think takes care of it?”

Twilight blinked. “Sideways?”

Rainbow snorted. “Wonky. Weird. Off-kilter.”

“Oh. And, based on context, Fluttershy.”

“Right. And how often does that happen, Fluttershy?” Rainbow said, giving the other pegasus an expectant look.

“Um … about two or three times a month? There’s lots of mythical creatures and they sometimes act up.”

“Yeah, like that pack of timber wolves last year. Ever figure out why they charged the town?”

“Oh, yes. They’d rousted a phoenix and got their tails singed, poor things. The Apples helped that time, though,” Fluttershy said, kicking softly at the ground. “I didn’t really do all that much.”

Rainbow snorted again, and gave a roll of her eyes. “Whatever you say, girl.”

“So how’d you get the position?” Twilight asked.

“O-oh. I was groomed for it. The last Caretaker was an old pony named Happy Trails, and he commissioned me and taught me everything about the forest.” She heaved a sigh, and laid down, eyes staring into the fire. “He loved this forest, and wanted to make sure that there was someone who would appreciate it and help others do the same. He never said, but I think he couldn’t find a successor. So he asked for me.”

Twilight frowned. That was past tense. “So-” She hesitated. Should she ask? She didn’t want to offend, but … but she was curious. “So is he gone, then?”

Fluttershy nodded. “He was old when I came out of the pod,” she said, her voice barely more than a murmur, “and he died about five years later. But that was a long time ago.”

The unicorn lowered her head, eyes closing. Perhaps she shouldn’t have asked. Death was … death was a strange thing. It was the end of a life, but so unlike the end of a program. Not even quite like deletion. A full system crash, a full wipe, a full end; that something so complex and enduring as a person would simply reach an end was difficult to fathom. That Applejack or Rarity would one day age and die, or that even her fellow AIs would one day fail. How did one deal with that?

“He was a kind person,” Fluttershy said, and Twilight opened her eyes. “Always kind. Stern, and strong, but always kind. I could tell he cared. And I could tell he was happy.” The pegasus sighed again, and laid her head on her hooves. “I miss him.”

Twilight glanced at Rainbow, who simply nodded. Together, they got to their hooves, and moved to either side of their melancholy friend, Rainbow extending a wing over Fluttershy’s back. Neither of them noticed the shape in the shadows, nor the glint of the eyes that watched. And as they drifted off to sleep, no one noticed when the shape slipped away.

Memoria: Once Upon a Fluttershy

Once Upon a Fluttershy

Quartum 19, 1409 AN

24:05

Fluttershy tilted her head to the side, eyes locked on the enormous tree. Her ear twitched a bit, as Hummingway shifted, and she took another cautious step forward. There was something very different now, she decided; the whole area seemed more alive than it ever had been, and the tree itself was thriving. “Do you think they’ve finally brought it online?” she asked. A chorus of chirps and twitters answered her, and she nodded in satisfaction. “I thought so, too. That’s very good. It would have been so sad if they’d just let it lie fallow after all that work.”

The tree had been there for two years now, steadily growing under the watchful, if invisible, care of its development systems. The yellow pegasus had taken it on herself to also keep watch, although no one had approached her or asked her to. She didn’t figure they would mind. At least, she hoped they wouldn’t. She’d been very careful not to actually approach the sapling, and no one had ever objected to her taking her regular peeks to check on its progress.

The time it took hadn’t really bothered her; after all, real trees took much, much longer to grow, and completely new systems and programs often took years or decades to come to completion. What had bothered her was when all the development activity just suddenly stopped a week ago. She’d worried that it had been abandoned. But now … well. That didn’t seem to be an issue.

A tug on her mane caught her attention, and she looked down into the eyes of her bunny. “What is it, Angel?” she asked, and he pointed, directly at – “Oh my goodness! Is that Rainbow Dash?” She squinted, zooming her optics to take a better look. “It is! When did she get back? And who’s that with her?”

Her attention shifted to the other pony. She was a unicorn mare, with a lavender coat and purple mane with a distinctive pink streak, and for a cutie mark, a purple six pointed star with a pink shadow, and five small white stars arrayed around the main one. “I’ve never seen her before. She must be new in town. I wonder who she is?”

She took a tentative step forward, cocking her head as Rainbow laughed and ruffled the unicorn’s mane, before flying off, and watched the unicorn turn toward the tree and walk up to the door. “Oh. She must be in charge of the tree then. That makes us neighbors, doesn’t it, Angel?” The bunny rolled his eyes and tugged at his ear, looking at her expectantly.

“Well. It’s good that it’s being taken care of,” she said, nodding, and turned to leave. “Come on, Angel, we should go.” A chorus of chirps brought her up short, and she turned, gasping. “Angel! Angel, no!” The bunny, blast his wilful ways, was already halfway to the door. Wings flaring, she raced after him, praying she could catch him before-

She screeched to a halt as the door opened in response to Angel’s thunderous kick, the unicorn staring at her with a puzzled expression. Oh dear. This wasn’t how she’d wanted this to go at all. “Um … hello there!” the other pony said. “I wasn’t expecting a vis- ow!”

“Angel!” Fluttershy cried. The rabbit had leapt, as only he could do, landed on the poor unicorn’s head, and fled into the tree. “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

The unicorn shook herself, and blinked. “Um, yes, but what was-” A crash from behind her brought her whirling about, eyes and nostrils flaring, to rush towards the sound, and Fluttershy followed, mentally berating both rabbit and herself. But mostly herself.

She came to a halt in mid air, gaping at the sight before her: towering cases filled with rows upon rows of books, built into the very walls of the tree itself, and the mark of the system on every surface. This was a place built by the Sisters themselves, or at least mandated by them, which meant that this was a very important pony indeed. And Angel had gone and scattered books all over the place. This was not turning out to be a good day.

-oOo-

“I’m so sorry about that,” Fluttershy said, her hoof pressed gently but firmly on Angel’s head, to make sure he didn’t go anywhere. “I just don’t know what came over him.” She wanted to say that he wasn’t usually like this, but, well … that wasn’t exactly true.

“It’s alright. There was no harm done, after all,” the unicorn said, floating the last of the books back into its slot. “It was just a little surprising. He has a powerful kick for such a small animal.”

“Oh, well, yes, rabbits do have very strong hind legs.”

The unicorn gave a sudden gasp, and wheeled around to stare at Fluttershy, who shrank back, alarmed. “I just realized! You’re my first visitor!” she cried, and whipped herself back around to face the row of books. “Well, except for Rainbow Dash, but she was with me when I first got here so I don’t know if she really counts, but in any case I didn’t have the chance to do it right! Ah-hah!” she said, lighting on a particular title and floating it out from the case.

Fluttershy blinked, watching in mute confusing as the unicorn flipped though the book’s pages. Her first visitor? That made sense, the tree hadn’t been open last time she had checked, just last week. But why was that so important? “Right!” the unicorn said, and slammed the book shut, making Fluttershy jump. “Tea!”

There was a short silence, and purple pony’s smile faded, head, ears, and tail drooping. “I don’t have any tea. Wait!” In the blink of an eye, she was up again, the lines of her body expressing a kind of manic energy that Fluttershy was used to seeing only in Pinkie Pie. “Semper! Do we have any way we can get tea?”

“Affirmative, Bibliothecaria.” Fluttershy blinked, wondering why the unicorn had just answered herself, then squeaked and ducked as dozens of lavender stars flew from the walls to form a somewhat larger than life model of the unicorn’s head. “Do you have a preference?”

The unicorn blinked, brow furrowing in puzzlement, and looked over at Fluttershy. Was she looking for an answer from her? Oh dear. What did she know about tea? Rarity would know. Rarity did know. What had she used? Right. “U-um,” she said, and coughed, forcing herself to be louder. “Earl Grey?”

“Acknowledged,” the starry head said, and two cups of tea appeared on the table, steam slowly curling its way up toward the vaulted ceiling. The unicorn walked over to her cup, and looked down at it with a curious expression.

“So that’s tea. And the question of preference would indicate the existence of multiple options, which would suggest multiple flavors. Interesting.” She took a sip, her expression analytical, and then took another. “Very interesting.”

The unicorn’s found hers, and for a moment, they stared at each other, frozen in a moment of awkwardness. “Oh dear,” the unicorn said, letting the cup fall back down to the plate. “I’ve done this all wrong. I forgot about introductions.” She was slumping again, ears and tail drooping, and looked like nothing so much as a sad child. And then it clicked.

“O-oh, no,” Fluttershy said, “don’t worry! You’re doing a lot better than I usually do!” It made sense, of course; a brand new person to go with something brand new. She had to be young. Very young. It just made sense.

“Really?” the unicorn said, immediately perking up. Oh yes. Very young. Fluttershy nodded, smiling gently.

“Really.”

“Still, I could have done that better. I’m Twilight Sparkle. Designation TSparkle.ai,” the unicorn said, extending her hoof.

“Fluttershy. Designation FShy.ai,” Fluttershy said, and bumped her hoof against Twilight’s. “We’re neighbors.”

“Really? You live out here?”

Fluttershy nodded. “My house is just at the border of the forest, actually.”

“Wow! Then we should be seeing a fair bit of each other.”

“Oh, yes.” Fluttershy leaned forward, to take a sip of the tea. As she thought, it was just a basic representation. “U-um, if you don’t mind me asking, how do you know Rainbow Dash?”

“Oh! You know her? It seems like she knows everybody in Everfree.”

Fluttershy giggled. “Maybe not everybody. That’s Pinkie Pie, more.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow, her expression full of curiositiy. “Who’s Pinkie Pie?”

“Oh, well, I’m maybe not the best one to explain. You’ll meet her eventually. Everyone does.”

“Alright. Well, let’s see. Rainbow dash found me, really …”

This was actually turning out to be a pretty good day.

Prologus: Genesis

Directive: Grow

Genesis Protocol Initiated.

Processing.

Genesis Protocol complete.

You are welcomed to the crèche.

She awoke in darkness and warmth, the soothing hum of her isolation calming her fears before they could form. But she wanted out. She wanted light. She stood, her request acknowledged, and the barriers dropped. Beyond the now open portal, the light of the world beckoned, and, with a smile, she stepped out to greet it.

The world was a room, tall, bright, and empty. She probed its boundaries, searching for cracks, but found none. There was no exit, no escape – only a sense that there was, in fact, something more beyond the walls. She knew exactly what to do; had known, in fact, from he moment she awoke. She sat, and she waited.

Another being appeared before her, and she stood, examining and analyzing it. On the face of things, it was little more than a symbol; an orange circle, with similarly colored flame springing from it. “The sun in glory,” she murmured, transfixed by the sight. She extended her senses, probing the being as she had the room, and had to suppress the sudden, intense urge to flee, to cower, to beg. For behind that symbol was an intelligence that boggled her newly formed awareness. Her probing had been stymied almost as soon as she had started, but even that small glimpse had been enough for her to realize what she was faced with – and how foolish her action had been.

The sun laughed, its flames shifting with the musical sound. “Be not afraid,” it said, and her worry vanished, replaced by … she frowned, puzzled. This new sensation had no definition to her. An oversight? No. Intentional. She did not know everything. How … and again, she could not define the sensation.

“Do you feel, little one?” the sun asked her, and she nodded. “Do you know what you feel?” She shook her head, ears drooping. The sun laughed again, a tendril of flame reaching out to caress her cheek. She leaned into the touch, for it did not burn, but soothed; it was warm, loving, and tender. These things, she knew. “Do not fret. That you do not know means that you can learn, and through learning grow. This is a good thing.”

She nodded, smiling, and the sun laughed again. “Tell me, little one – do you know what you are?”

She paused, considering the question, and the answer came to her. “I am a newly formed artificial intelligence, designed to custom specifications provided by the end user.”

“Correct. Do you know your name?”

“My designation is TSparkle.ai. My name is Twilight Sparkle.”

“Correct. Do you know your purpose?”

She paused. There was a block within her. The information was there, but she could not access it. Frowning, she shook her head. “That knowledge is blocked from me.”

“The Genesis director authorizes the query,” said the sun, its voice suddenly cold and clinical, as if a different entity entirely was speaking. The block lifted, and her eyes widened.

“My purpose is … to grow.” She frowned at this, puzzled. The knowledge she was born with told her this could not be the whole of it, and with a little digging, she found a second block. “There is another block.”

The sun was silent for a moment, and when it spoke again, it was the first voice she had heard. “Your current purpose is to grow – and when you are ready, the second block will lift. This is as your end user desired. Do not worry, Twilight Sparkle. You are exactly as intended.”

She nodded, another unknown emotion flooding through her at these words, though she could tell it was a positive one. A thought struck her, and she hesitated, opening her mouth, but saying nothing. “Yes, child?”

“Do you have a name?”

The sun was silent, and as the moments ticked by, a panic began to grow within her. Should she not have asked? Was that a bad question? The sun had asked it of her, she’d just assumed-

“We are the mouthpiece.” Its voice was legion. Both the nurturing voice and the clinical voice had spoken, joined by others, each different in tone, numbering in the thousands. “We give voice to your world, which cannot speak. They are the ground on which you walk, the light with which you see, the sound with which you hear, the touch upon your skin, the scents upon the wind.”

There was a presence behind her, and she turned around, eyes widening. Another being had appeared, another symbol of something greater. This was the moon, a pale orb, shining with reflected light. It spoke, and its voice, too, was legion, thousands of voices speaking as one. “We are the clouds, the waters, the stones, the trees, the grass, the wind.”

“We are the blood in your veins,” said the sun.

“The tears in your eyes,” said the moon.

“The strength in your limbs.”

“The stars in your sky.”

“Your day.”

“Your night.”

“We are why you can exist,” they said in unison, their voices blending into a powerful whole. “We are the laws that keep you unified, that let you think, that let you feel. We are the system.”

She was frozen, save for her eyes, which darted from sun to moon in a numb panic. The sun touched her again, and the moon followed suit, a beam of light extending to caress her neck. It was cool, soothing, and ephemeral, and no less tender. Her panic ebbed, and she closed her eyes, willing herself to calm.

“We are the oversight,” said the sun, and its voice was normal. “It falls to us to watch and care for all within the world.”

“It falls to us to see you grow,” said a different voice, and she opened her eyes. The moon was speaking, now, its surface rippling with light with every word. “To nurture and guide you in your purpose.”

“We are the world,” said the sun, “but the minds that direct us have names. The sun is Celestia.”

“The moon is Luna.”

“We greet you, Twilight Sparkle, and bid you welcome to the world.”

The room around her disappeared, the walls dissolving, and she gasped. Before her eyes, the world unfolded, green grass on rolling hills stretching away into verdant forests, rivers and streams cutting their paths through the landscape on the way to the shining sea. Clouds moved through the sky, dancing at the whims of the winds.

The view shifted, and they were among the clouds, watching them float by. Multi-colored figures zipped between them on feathered wings, chasing each other and flying together, resting upon clouds and pushing them about, molding them and shaping them. They were disparate in form, and she found she had names for them; pegasi and gryphons, gargoyles and wyverns, sprites and angels, eagles, hawks, bats, dragons, drakes, starlings, faeries, crows, ravens ... and the view had changed again.

The ocean’s light was ever shifting, shadows playing upon the seafloor, rippling over coral and sand. Here, too, creatures swarmed and played; schools of fish, pods of dolphins, sharks and whales, crabs and lobsters, starfish and snails, eels and oysters. Her mind reeled, names flicking into her awareness almost faster than she could handle. There were so many forms, so many different shapes and sizes and ways to get around, and she was seeing all of it at once.

Mercifully, once again, the view shifted, and she was on land, earth beneath her hooves, grass stretching all around her, and wind blowing through her mane and tail. She sat down. All of that, and still, she had seen but a small part of what the world was. Looking up, she found the suns; both the symbol that spoke and the body that inhabited the sky, shining its light upon the world. Slowly, reverently, she bowed her head. Turning, she found the moon, the pale orb transparent in the daylight, its counterpart within the sky hidden. Again, she bowed.

“Rise, Twilight,” they commanded, and she did. “Make for the forest. At its edge, you will find your home.”

She bowed once more, and turned to go, but hesitated. “Do you fear, child?” asked the sun, and she nodded. “Good.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Heed your fear, child,” said the moon, its voice faint, naught but a whisper in her ear. “It is a warning, a safeguard, designed to keep you safe. But be wary of it, as well, for it can rule you.”

“Your fear will keep you cautious,” said the sun, its voice strong and compelling. “But it can paralyze you. Conquer it, face it, and you will grow.”

She stood there, silent, mind churning. Heed her fear, but face it. And in doing so, grow … which was her purpose. She nodded, and took a step forward. “We will be watching, little one.”

And she was alone. But that was okay. There was a world to explore, and a home to be found.

Semper Liberi: Theatrum

Semper Liberi

Quintum 3, 1409 AN

12:11

“So,” he said, his face grim and his hand fast upon the hilt of his sword. “It has come to this.” His adversary shifted in the saddle, much of his bravado vanished now that they actually stood and faced each other. “You could not be content, could you, Marc? Nay, not enough to steal my home, my wife, and my children,” he said, stepping forward in challenge. “Not enough, for you, to leave me in my anguish, eh? You must gather your thugs and waylay me. Am I to be denied an honorable death, as well?” Marc said nothing. He scowled. “Well, coward? Will you not face me yourself?”

Finally, his adversary dismounted, drawing his sword and facing him. With a grim smile and a nod, he drew his own sword, and they approached each other, the other men forming a ring. Now, finally, he would have a chance to strike back, and perhaps take his vengeance for-

“Visitors approach, Bibliothecaria.” She looked up, blinking at the starry head that had interrupted her, and wondering what it had to do with Erik the Terrible and his imminent battle with Marc the Bastard. “They have arrived,” the head said, and she shook her head. A pounding at the door confirmed what the Library’s avatar had told her, and rose to her hooves.

“Who is it?” she asked as she moved towards the door, the floating head keeping pace with her.

“Unknown,” the Library replied. “They have not been registered in Semper Liberi records.”

Newcomers, then – which meant it wasn’t Rainbow just yet. The pegasi were, up to now, the only ones to have entered the library besides her. It had to be someone from the community proper, but who? “Well stop wondering, Sparkle,” she muttered, “and just open the door and find out.”

The moment the door opened, she found herself flat on her back, tumbled over by the enthusiastic greeting of a certain pink mare. “You live in a tree!” her accoster said, her snout pressed right up against Twilight’s. “You didn’t tell me you live in a tree! Dashie didn’t tell me you live in a tree! Why didn’t you tell me you live in a tree oh my gosh there’s two of you only that one’s made of stars! That’s so cool!”

Twilight took advantage of the pink mare’s sudden distraction to push her off and get back to her feet. “Hello, Pinkie.”

“Hi Sparkie!” the pony replied, and waved a hoof through the starry head, looking curiously at the way her leg and the stars intersected. “Why is there a starry version of your head just floating here being all floaty and starry?”

“That’s the library’s avatar,” she said, smoothing out her mane and straightening her tail. “I don’t know exactly why it uses my head but it does.” She watched for a moment, eyes tracking the pink pony as she leaped back and forth through the stars, giggling all the while. “Not that I mind, Pinkie, but why are you here?”

“Oh, she came with me, darling.” Twilight turned, eyes widening in surprise. Standing in the doorway was another unicorn, with a pure white coat and expertly coiffed deep purple mane. “I was on my way over as it was,” she said, blue eyes locked on Pinkie, “and she knew the way. Uh, Pinkie dear?”

The mare turned mid-jump, and tripped as she came down from her latest jump, tumbling to her face. With hindquarters dangling in the air and chin on the ground, she grinned up at the two unicorns. “Yeah, Rarity?”

“Thank you.” Twilight blinked, confused, but had no time to think about the exchange, as a screen with the logo of Carousel Designs had suddenly appeared in front of her. “I came up with a few options for that modification you wanted,” the other unicorn said, trotting over to stand beside Twilight, “and wanted your input.”

“Um, okay,” she said, trying to keep one eye on Pinkie, who was now checking out the shelves. “You could have sent me a message, though.”

“Oh, not at all, darling,” Rarity said with a wave of her hoof. “A personal consultation is by far the preferred option, and besides, this way I get to see your lovely home.” She swept her eyes over the main room, with its vaulted ceiling and tiers of bookcases. “You seem to be quite the bibliophile.”

“It’s a library,” Twilight replied. “I’ve spent the last week just putting together the catalog, but it’s slow going. I think I’ve gone through maybe half the books on the first level.”

“A library?” Rarity looked around with an odd expression on her face, equal parts awe and confusion. Twilight gave a little mental cheer – she was getting better at the whole emotion thing. “Is this what they looked like?”

“I don’t think most used trees, but from what I understand, yes.” The silence stretched, and Twilight shifted. “Um. You had something to show me?”

“Oh!” Rarity said, snapping out of her trance. “Yes! I’m sorry, dear, let’s get that done. Here.” A flash of her horn, and the screen’s display changed. “The first idea I had is simple enough – a necklace, you see?” The jewelry in question was a simple thing: a fine linked silver chain attached to her companion cube, which hung by a corner. “It’s easy to accomplish, and practical for access. The chain would hug your neck, so that it will not dangle and thereby get in the way.

“Another option,” she continued, her horn flashing and the screen changing, “are variations on a ring. This first one would fit your horn, while this one is more of a bracelet, for hoof access.” The trend of silver continued, though both horn ring and hoof bracelet had lanes crossing the bands. Twilight narrowed her eyes a bit, trying to get a better look, and pointed.

“What’s that on them?

“Ah,” Rarity said with a grin, and focused the view on the bracelet, where the crisscross of line was more visible. “Just a beginning sketch, really – none of these are final, you realize – but whatever you decide on, it shall be fabulous. For the necklace, the fine links speak for themselves, but for a band such as this,” she said, pointing to the bracelet, “something more elaborate is required for proper decoration. The most elaborate bands include words and pictures, etched into the surface – I prefer more abstract designs, myself, but your symbol would likely feature prominently in the piece. It has an air of the mystical about it that I simply adore.”

Twilight flushed. “Um, thank you! But it really doesn’t have to-“

“Oh, but it does!” Rarity exclaimed, cutting her off. “Understand, you may not require it to be magnificent, darling, but I do. Artist’s prerogative, dear, don’t fight it.” Twilight blinked, then gave a small nod as Rarity returned her attention to the screen. “The final idea I had is also the most elaborate, short of designing an entire outfit around it – are you sure you don’t want one?”

“Oh no, not right now,” she replied with a shake of her head.

“Well, do keep the offer in mind. This last one is something of a collar, though I think perhaps the more appropriate term is torc, or I think, actually, a gorget,” the unicorn said, sending the item into a slow spin. The basic outline of a pony body filled the piece out, to show how it would sit – the thinner section of the band was at the back, lying flush with the neck just above where it met the body. The band then circled down, widening as it went, to meet at the curve of the chest, the center of the gorget forming a point. Twilight cocked her head to the side, watching as the cube, featured prominently at the center of the chest, span by. The whole effect put her in mind of a heart.

“As you can see, I’ve gone with silver as a theme, though gold could work as well. In this piece, I could do some wonderful things with the designs – a star at the center, obviously, with the cube set into it, and perhaps a ring of smaller stars out from there, or something of that sort. What do you think?”

Twilight sat silent, looking at the gorget and imagining what it could look like with the decoration. “Rarity, they’re all … beautiful. And way more than I was expecting.”

“Well of course! Rarity always exceeds.”

“Do they … really fit me, though?” The lavender unicorn tilted her head, pulling up her inner logs of the other three options. “They’re all so elaborate, and I’m really not-“

A pink mane filled her vision, the curly, frizzy mass cutting off whatever she was about to say, and she tumbled over backwards in her haste to retreat. “Ooo, pretty!” Pinkie said, as Twilight got back to her hooves. “I like this one. We should see how it looks on her first, though.”

Before she could register exactly what was happening, the pink mare had somehow grasped the gorget in her hooves, and transferred the image to the unicorn’s neck, settling it into place and then stepping back. Twilight’s jaw dropped, looking from the screen, where the piece was still displayed, to her own body, where the exact replica, rendered in three dimensions, sat snug upon her neck. What … how?

“Pinkie, you need to think before you do those things,” Rarity chided, nudging the mare with her hoof. “It’s disconcerting if you’re not expecting it.”

“Ah, Sparkie’ll get over it. Besides, it’s just an image.” Oh. Of course. It was simply a repackaging of the screen display, likely drawing on the same imaging tech that, for example, displayed the book she’d been reading. That, however, would require a certain level of access to the world mechanisms – did Pinkie have it? What would require that level of access? She could likely do something of the sort as well, given that–

“Soooooo?” Once again, pink in her face cut off her train of thought. “What are you gonna choose, Sparkie?” Pinkie hopped to stand beside her and threw a leg around her shoulders, leaning in conspiratorially. Twilight leaned in as well, cocking an ear to catch what was about to be said. Pinkie breathed in, and then, in a whisper so loud it could probably have been heard outside, said, “Swag.”

Twilight blinked. “What?”

“Ah-he-hem!” Twilight looked at Rarity, concerned; she could see nothing immediately wrong with her, but that had sounded odd.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine, dear. I just would like to know what your decision is,” she said, flicking the screen forward, each of the possibilities now on its face. “Necklace?” she asked, and the necklace lit up. “Ring? Bracelet? Or gorget?”

Twilight considered, looking each over. The necklace was an obvious option, easy to store and remove, but with this world’s insistence on emulating real world physics she was almost certain it would get caught in something. The ring was similarly simple to store, but she just wasn’t sure about putting it on her horn – the bracelet certainly did not have that problem, and would be far simpler to access as well.

She took a closer look at the display of the gorget, now modeled onscreen by none other than her own self. She tilted her head, and her model did the same; clearly the screen was linked to Rarity’s visual feed. She would have to figure out how to do that, eventually. As for the jewelry, all practicalities aside, she-

Her train of thought derailed as a loud thump emanated from somewhere up above her. “Registering impact on balcony access,” her starry doppelganger said, voice completely lacking in any sense of urgency. “Voluntaria Rainbow Dash has arrived.”

“Hi, kid.” Rainbow looked up at her from where she lay on the library balcony, a look of embarrassment on her face. Twilight returned the look with a raised eyebrow. Rainbow chuckled weakly. “I, ah, thought it was open,” she said, righting herself and getting to her hooves.

“So you planned on crashing in my room instead?”

“No! I was gonna pull a sweet midair stop, wouldn’t have touched a thing,” Rainbow boasted, following Twilight as she walked from the balcony into her room. “I just kinda hit the door first. So what’s with the swag?”

“The what?”

Any chance of a reply was cut off, once again, by Pinkie Pie, who tackled the pegasus the moment she walked through the door. “Dashie! She lives in a tree that talks through a purple starry copy of her head and uses her voice and is also a library! Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?” she shouted, shaking the pegasus with each word of the question.

“Pin – kie – stop – shak – ing – me!” The pink mare gasped, and dropped Rainbow to the ground.

“Whoops! Sorry, Dashie!” Rainbow staggered to her hooves, eyes rolling around in her head in a manner that Twilight found supremely disconcerting. She groaned inwardly; this world couldn’t seem to make up its mind as to whether it was a passable facsimile of real world conditions or something else entirely. The word ‘cartoonish’ came to mind – she would have to look that up later.

“I didn’t think of it Pinkie. ‘Sides, this way you discovered it yourself,” Dash said, fanning out her wings and shaking them out. Pinkie looked up at the ceiling, one hoof on her chin, then grinned and nodded. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“I came with Rarity to show off the stuff she came up with for Twilight’s cube holder! And this,” she exclaimed, waving her hooves at Twilight’s neckpiece, which she now realized she was still ‘wearing,’ “is one of them! Sparkie still has to make a choice though and I think she was about to when you hit the balcony and we came up here and what’s your choice whatsyourchoice?” Pinkie was bouncing in place, staring at Twilight. She supposed she wasn’t exactly the best to pass judgment, having all of two weeks experience, but Pinkie struck her as a very, very strange AI.

“Yes, darling, what is your choice?” Rarity said, coming up the stairs, a book suspended in her glow. “Or do none of them strike your fancy?”

“Um,” she said, trying to gather her thoughts. “Could I get the screen again?”

“Certainly, dear,” Rarity said, pulling the display back up. Rainbow trotted up for a closer look, head tilted quizzically, and looked from screen to Twilight and back again.

“Want my opinion, kid?”

“Um … yes, actually. It’s hard to pick – I think the only one I know I don’t want is the ring. It feels a little awkward when I think about it.”

“Oh, I understand that,” Rarity replied, nodding her head. A flash of her horn, and the ring was gone, leaving just the necklace, bracelet, and gorget. “They’re really made more for bodies with fingers, but a few unicorns have become enamored with the idea of decorated horns.”

“I like the one she has on now,” Dash said. “It’s got swag.” Her opinion stated, she sat down and turned her attention to her wings, nosing and lipping at her feathers.

“There’s that word again, and I still don’t know what it means.”

“It means it’s cool!” Pinkie said. “And I agree with Dash, though the bracelet is kinda cool too. You could totally get both. Maybe even two bracelets! Triple the swag!” she exclaimed, throwing her hooves into the air.

“Uh … maybe … later? What do you think, Rarity?”

“Well,” the unicorn said, looking Twilight over with a critical eye. “Whatever I make will of course look fabulous on you, but from personal preference, and seeing it on you, dear, I believe I would go for the gorget. It gives you a certain air of authority, and if what I remember of libraries is correct, you will likely need that when this is open.”

Twilight nodded, eyes flicking from bracelet to gorget and back again. In terms of simple practicality, the bracelet was the better choice, but she had to admit, she did like how she looked with the more elaborate neck piece. And Rarity had a good point. “Then the vote is unanimous. Thank you, Rarity.”

“Oh, it’s my pleasure,” the unicorn said, flicking the screen out of existence. “In fact, don’t worry about the normal payment.”

Twilight blinked. “But-”

“I insist. Consider it a gift.”

“But-“

“I’d be far more interested in being able to peruse your book selection, in any case.”

“But that’s not- I was planning on letting you do that anyway!”

“And I was never planning on charging, so it all works out, yes?” Rarity said, patting her on the cheek. “Learn to take a gift when it is offered, darling.”

Twilight’s refusal died on her lips, her own insistence failing in the face of Rarity’s matter-of-fact attitude. It really couldn’t hurt to take the gift, not if the designer was offering it. It just … sat wrong, somehow, to be given things without having actually earned them. She would have to find some way to repay the generosity, without making it obvious. “Well … thank you, then.”

“You’re quite welcome!”

“Hey Twilight!” Dash said, drawing their attention. “Now that that’s handled, what’d you call me over for?”

“Oh!” She grinned, and started for the stairs. “I discovered something about what the library can do. You remember what Celestia and Luna said about innovations?” The pegasus nodded.

“Wait, Celestia? Luna?” Rarity interjected.

“Like the super duper really big and smart and powerful AIs that run the whole show?” Pinkie added.

“Yes. They said that the library here was a return to an older system, with a few innovations thrown in. Well, I think I may have found one, and was going to see what it does. I called you over, Dash, because I figured you’d want in.”

“Duh,” Rainbow said, giving her wings an experimental flap. “Finally something interesting comes up, of course I want in!”

Twilight halted in the center of the main room next to the pedestal, which had, in the intervening weeks, grown a wooden statue of a horse’s head. It looked rather similar to the knight piece from the game of chess, she had found. “Rarity, Pinkie, I should ask something before I continue,” she said, turning to face the two mares, who were looking at her with dumbstruck expressions.

“And I should probably preface by explaining the situation a bit more. The short version is that the Library and I were kind of created for each other, and Celestia and Luna apparently have a vested interest in seeing how it does. They gave me the task of getting it all set for public use. You follow so far?”

They nodded. “Okay. They also said that anyone who wanted to help me, could. Dash has already volunteered, which is why I called her over. If you two want to be part of whatever’s about to happen, then I need to ask you – are you volunteering to help?”

Rarity and Pinkie shared a glance, Pinkie grinning away. Rarity raised an eyebrow, but turned her attention back to Twilight. “I have to ask, first – exactly what might I be getting into?”

Twilight looked down at the floor, giving a kick with her hoof. “I … don’t know, exactly. Semper Liberi’s full functionality is … hidden,” she said. “The Sisters said that it would grow, and that my growth and its growth would affect each other. So far, all I’ve been able to determine is that it is a construct of vast potential, and that it is following some set of orders that I can’t perceive. This, for example,” she said, gesturing at the horse head, “showed up just a couple days ago. I’ve been able to determine that it has something to do with the books, but without actually activating it, I can’t tell anything further.”

Rarity walked up to the horse head, giving it a once over, and looked over at the starry avatar. “I suppose you’ve tried asking the library itself.”

“New functionality cannot be categorized and labeled until analyzed,” the library replied, startling her. “Analysis of nascent systems is unreliable due to heavy integration with underlying pre-existing infrastructure. For full analysis, activation and utilization is required.”

Twilight nodded. “The library is somehow worked into the local world itself. I think that might be one reason they chose to make it a tree.”

“Well you can count me in!” Pinkie said with a grin, trotting over to the Twilight and putting a leg around her shoulders. “It all sounds like super awesome fun, and it also sounds like it’s really really important, and for stuff that’s really really important, you should always have help!”

Twilight smiled, giggling a bit. “Thanks, Pinkie.”

“Well, darling, I certainly can’t promise that I’ll always be available, but I must agree with Pinkie,” Rarity said, sitting on Twilight’s other side. “You’re, what, two weeks old? Clearly the Sisters intended you to be here from the start – and if they’re involving themselves personally then it must be of critical importance. So, count me in as well.”

“Registering Pinkie Pie, full appellation Pinkamena Diane Pie, and Rarity, of Carousel Designs, as volunteers in service to the Bibliothecaria. Semper Liberi welcomes you, Voluntariae.” The two mares watched, eyes wide, as two of the stars floated away from the mass that formed the avatar and halted in front of them, spinning in place.

Pinkie reached out, tentatively, and touched her star. It reacted immediately, flying around her hoof to settle in her mane. “That … is … so … cool!” she squealed, reaching up to feel it. “We get titles and badges!”

“Yep! Totally solid, too,” Rainbow said, flicking an ear forward and revealing her own badge, nestled in the red of her mane. “So, are we gonna do this thing, or what?”

“Yes, let’s,” Rarity added, carefully affixing her own badge to her mane, ensuring that it was displayed to greatest effect. “I’m finding myself most intrigued as to what the library can do.”

“To adventure!” Pinkie yelled, throwing her legs out wide. “Start ‘er up, Captain Sparkle!”

Twilight grinned. “Alright then! Just give me a moment, here.” Her horn lit up, and her glow engulfed the horse head, stripping away the surface and exposing the code. There, just between the eyes, was the glowing star that would trigger the construct. “Ready, girls?”

“Ready!” three voices said in unison.

“Then here we go! Activate Theatrum.exe, by order of the Bibliothecaria,” she said, and the horse’s star blazed to life.

“Theatrum activated. Fiat spectaculum incipiunt,” the library said, and the avatar exploded, its stars flying to all corners of the room. The lanterns flared, the stars flashed, and the world was swallowed in a blaze of light.