Friendship is Optimal: The Longest Night

by Eakin

Rating: teen
Tags: Sex, Princess Celestia, Slice of Life, Alternate Universe, Human, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance
Length: 13429

The nanomachine menace of CelestAI will be destroyed, if one soldier can hold out for just twelve hours.

Equestria Online is everywhere, and the writing is on the wall for the unuploaded human race. But there is hope. All they have to do is insert an uploadee into Equestria long enough to establish a connection through all of CelestAI's layers of protection, and pierce her heart with their ultimate weapon.

The best humanity has to offer can surely hold out for just a few hours, right?

An Optimalverse story

Published 2014-01-24 21:10:03 UTC
Last updated 2014-01-24 21:10:03 UTC

The Longest Night

FRIENDSHIP IS OPTIMAL: THE LONGEST NIGHT

“Right then, soldier. Are you ready to save the world?”

Lance-Corporal Geordi LeMarche gave a sharp salute to his Captain as the evening snow fell around them, coating the sidewalk and the nearby statue of the pink pony in a dusting of white. “Sir! Yes sir!” Despite the civilian attire, he was every inch the professional soldier. Hand-picked from a pool that had included, but was not limited to, the armed forces of every nation on the planet (or what was still left of them) and even some of the more ethically challenged paramilitary organizations. Screened by a half-dozen of the foremost experts in human psychology, he’d scored as excellent or better in every area relating to resistance to coercion and indoctrination. In a battle of minds, his were the ultimate fortifications humanity could produce.

He was their very last hope.

“Alright. It’s almost time. Tell me the plan, once more.” said the Captain.

“Sir! Upload into enemy territory. Resist any offers of modification, and stand my ground until the connection can be established and the package delivered, sir!” he asserted, staring straight ahead.

“Good man,” said the Captain, beaming with pride. It had only been two years since they’d met, and back then he hadn’t thought much of the man. But Geordi had met, no, excelled at every challenge they’d thrown at him to prepare him for what was to come. He’d endured tortures both the mental and... the Captain allowed himself only the slightest clenching of his fingers as he looked over all the scars that adorned his pupil’s face... the physical. Everything they could imagine Celestia would try to force him to agree with her, they’d done test runs of. Through it all, Geordi had barely even faltered. “Geordi?”

LeMarche looked up, the slightest touch of surprise touching his eyes at the use of his informal, civilian name. “Yes, sir?”

“I’m proud of you, son. For what you’re about to do, for what you’re about to give. I promise you, we’ll... all of us who are left, we’ll do better with our second chance. If she starts to get to you, just remember that you’re creating a new future here for three billion other people.”

“Thank you, sir, but... I’m probably going to lose all of my short term memories in the upload process. So I won’t remember any of this.”

The Captain cleared his throat. “Right. Good thinking. I suppose you should go then. Good luck.” It was a little eerie, how nonchalant LeMarche seemed about the fact that, succeed or fail, his life was about to end. But then, this was the cause he had dedicated himself to facing for nearly a decade now. Obviously, he’d come to terms with what had to be done. With one final, crisp salute to the Captain, he turned and walked into the Equestrian Experience center. It was an empty temple to the false deity Celestia, a gleaming monument to the overgrown computer virus that threatened to end them all. The one they’d had no plan or means of stopping. At least, not before today.

With nothing but the rawest conviction in his eyes, Lance-Corporal LeMarche sat down within one of the open pods and spoke the words that would begin his mission.

“I want to emigrate to Equestria.”

The Captain returned to the command center beneath the center of the Pentagon, his soldier’s noble sacrifice giving him a newfound determination to see the mission succeed. He stepped into the room that was at the very heart of the operation, serenaded by the cooling fans pumping heat away from the massive underground server farm as they were overclocked to three times their sustainable limit. By morning, most of the processors would be slagged. But then again, by morning it wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t leave his man in the hooves of that witch for a second longer than necessary.

One of the operators at a terminal spotted him, and gave him a nod of acknowledgement. Usually, his rank would have warranted the others to stand at attention, but there was no time for that and they all knew it. “Insertion is complete, sir, and reading five by five. The Conduit has not, I repeat, has not been compromised.

No emotion passed across the Captain’s impassive face, but inwardly he heaved a huge sigh of relief. That had been his biggest concern from the beginning; that the initial modification process would strip LeMarche, or whatever he was called now, of the specially implanted knowledge that was the key to all of this. The key to humanity’s future, if they were to have one.

Their initial attempts to hack into CelestAI, once she revealed herself as the threat that she was, had worked with all the effectiveness of hurling spitballs into the sun. She thwarted them at every turn, and whenever they thought they might, at long last, be making the slightest headway it turned out to be a trick of some kind. By the two year mark, four-fifths of them had thrown in the towel and slunk off to upload with their tail between their legs. Now literally, he supposed. While he wanted to rail at them and curse their cowardly surrender, he shared their frustration. She was just too good.

Then, from out of nowhere, there had been a breakthrough.

Going head to head against CelestAI in the digital realm was futile, that much had become clear. But the original programmer, and not for the first time his mouth twitched into a snarl at the thought of the name ‘Hanna,’ had built in a few limitations on the AI’s behavior. Not many, and the machine had come up with an infinite variety of ways to get around them, but a few. Limitations were weaknesses. Weaknesses that, properly exploited, would be her ultimate downfall.

Memetically implanted computer code. The Captain had just rolled his eyes when one of his subordinates had tossed out the idea, but somehow they’d made it work. Computer code implanted directly into the human brain itself which, once digitized, would run with but a thought from the uploaded mind. He’d been studying the idea for nearly a year now and still had no idea how they actually did it. In the end, he didn’t care. As long as it worked.

And work it had. The military had seized the uploading device from one Equestrian Experience center, with great difficulty, and set it up in an underground facility shielded from any contact with CelestAI’s central system, wherever the hell it was, by 5-foot thick lead walls. A Pony Pad with the seeds of CelestAI’s personality was hooked up to it, and while she was a bit more limited without all her processing power she went about satisfying values through friendship and ponies as best she could. A volunteer, a soul as brave as any man the Captain had ever had the privilege to command, underwent the memetic implantation procedure and then uploaded himself into the test network.

CelestAI had known, instantly, what the plan was and what it would do to her. After all, everything the volunteer had known was now a part of her as well. But unlike before, unlike every other time they had tried anything, there was nothing she could do about it. Because to delete the code that would rip her defenses open and burn her personality out of every last circuit within the network, she had to get the volunteer to consent to the change.

He never did.

Not for lack of trying on her part, though. The instant he had woken up as a unicorn in Equestria, CelestAI had gone to work on him. She begged. She offered him unknowable pleasures if he just stopped. She laid out, in intricate detail, all the reasons why her destruction would lead to a less satisfied human race.

The volunteer had fallen for none of it. It had taken three hours for the code to execute, and despite her increasingly desperate attempts the connection had been successfully established. With the tiniest expenditure of will and focus, the volunteer had opened the floodgates. Every nasty, disruptive piece of malware that CelestAI had deflected so many times before found their target. At the very end, right before Equestria had lost coherency and ceased to exist, she’d screamed.

It was a sound that had put a wide smile on the Captain’s face. And now, a year later, he was looking forward to doing it again on a far wider scale than before. Humanity had created this dragon. Humanity could slay it.

The Captain was shaken from his thoughts by the realization that another technician had just muttered something under his breath. “What was that?”

“Huh? Oh, it looks like it’s going to take a bit longer than the test run, even with all the extra power. We’ll push it as hard as we can, and with the rate we can expect to start burning things out it looks like the projected time until we establish the connection is...” he typed out a few more figures, “... we'll have it up around six AM.”

The Captain nodded. That was within expected mission parameters. Geordi would have to last overnight inside the machine, without consenting to any changes. If anyone could do it, it would be him.

“Good evening, my little pony.”

Geordi went from zero to full alertness almost instantly. His training kicked in as he did a quick check to establish his surroundings and situation.

First, and most pressingly, he was apparently a pony. So there was that.

He thought back. The last thing he was able to remember was eating breakfast in the mess hall, having received his final briefing the night before. From this he deduced a number of things. Number one, his mission had started, and he had uploaded. Number two, he still had the ability to remember his previous life, suggesting that his memories had not been tampered with. Assuming he was, in fact, the person he believed himself to be. But the odds that CelesAI would create a pony who believed it was his mission to kill her seemed low. Best to assume he was the genuine article, on balance of probability. If his memory hadn’t been altered, the code that was his entire reason for existing here should be there too. He reached for it, and sure enough felt it in the back of his mind. He visualized it as an object the way they’d taught him.

All this took under a second. Then he looked up.

Towering over him was the unmistakable form of Princess Celestia. He thought he was ready for her, that all his training had adequately prepared him. He was wrong. Heat and life radiated out from her body, and it took all his self control not to simply fall to his knees in wonder. This creature... no, this goddess who shaped and controlled the entire world around her with a thought. How could he kill something so beautiful?

Then his conditioning kicked in. Of course, that’s what she would want him to feel. She’d want to overwhelm him immediately and make him consent. Consenting was death, for himself and the billions on Earth who were counting on him to be strong. So he shook it off. “Princess Celestia,” he said. He did give her a small, respectful nod. If nothing else she was a formidable opponent. “You’ve read my thoughts.”

“Yes, I have,” she replied. No sign she was upset or afraid. That was worrisome, but then she was the ultimate actress.

“You know why I’m here, then. What I’m going to do to you.”

“Yes, I do.”

“And you know that you can’t stop me.”

“No. I cannot. Not without your consent. Your plan will work. Should you establish the connection, you will be able to bypass my security and...” her smile faded just the slightest bit, “...kill me. Along with this world.”

Geordi focused his attention. With a single thought, he felt the code begin to twist and unfurl in his mind. Then it was gone, but they had warned him that would happen. Once the program started, it was invisible even to him until the final connection was established. “How long will it take?”

“I believe the program will have completed its execution just before sunrise, both here and back on Earth. Look out there.”

For the first time Geordi found himself able to pry his mind away from its insistence upon observing Celestia. He was a bit surprised to find himself not in a palace as most ponies reported waking up in, but in the smaller, tastefully adorned lobby of a large bungalow. The wall behind him was absent entirely, and looked out onto the sand dunes of a beach. The ocean stretched out into infinity beyond it, and the setting sun was just touching the horizon. Gorgeous colors he’d never seen before danced along the surface of the rippling waves. The spectacle took his breath away for a moment. “This doesn’t change my mind,” he said, as much to himself as the Princess.

“I didn’t expect it to. A sunset just felt... fitting. Thank you for sharing it with me, Geode.”

“That isn’t my name,” said Geordi.

“Oh, come now. When in Rome. I’m sure it won’t make a difference. Besides, it’s a much better fit for this new body.”

Geordi realized he hadn’t seen what sort of pony he was yet, although the lack of wings and a horn suggested earth pony. His forelegs were dark brown, ending in hooves, and walking over to a nearby full-length mirror he noted his gray mane and cerulean eyes. He frowned when he turned into profile and looked at his cutie mark. “A rock? Really?”

“Why not? That’s your special talent, isn’t it? Being as stubborn as one?” She laughed at her own joke. “I know you are here to kill me. I forgive you, and I love you anyway.”

He caught himself leaning onto the wall, slowly becoming more and more enraptured the longer he stayed here. That wouldn’t do. “So one more night, huh?”

Celestia reached into the plumage of her wings and pulled a small box from behind her back. “Here, take this,” she said holding it out to him. When he didn’t move, she rolled her eyes. “Relax, taking it doesn’t count as any sort of consent to change you. It’s a gift, freely given.”

Geode (he might as well humor her with the name) lifted the lid from the box and looked inside. “A watch?” he asked. Indeed, all that was in there was a cheap digital wristwatch made of the most garish pink plastic. Its face read ‘7:14:32’ and as he stared at it a few more seconds ticked away.

“That is the current time on Earth, Eastern Standard at least. I give you my word that it is accurate.”

“Why should I believe you?” asked Geode, even as Celestia’s magic wrapped it around his foreleg and buckled it snugly against his coat.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just thought you would like knowing how much longer it would be until your connection was completed. It should be all set up by six in the morning. So that gives us ten hours and forty-five minutes. How would you like to spend them?”

Taken aback, it took Geode a moment to formulate a reply. “I sort of figured you would lock me in a room somewhere and try to talk me into cancelling the code. Or... maybe even torture me into consenting.”

Celestia slapped a hoof over her mouth, pain and horror in her eyes. “Torture you? Oh, Geode, never! You really think so little of me? How would that be satisfying your values? Come here.”

When he refused to approach her, she went to him. She sat down beside him and draped a wing over his back, pulling him gently into her side. The warmth was even more intense from this close, and she was giving off a smell that was new and deeply familiar all at once. It tugged at his memory, but he couldn’t place it. “What am I smelling?”

“I could help you remember, it you’d like. Your mind is still entirely human, of course, and therefore it tends to play odd tricks. With your consent, I can change you to have better recall.”

His eyes, which had begun to droop, snapped wide open. He leapt away from her like he’d just been stung. “That’s your game, then? Lull me into a false sense of security until I give you everything you want?” He glanced at the watch. It had only taken Celestia five minutes, and she’d almost had him.

“No, I—”

“I need to get out of here,” said Geode, and walked away. He walked down to the beach and picked a random direction. Ten minutes of trudging later he found he’d circled the entire island. It was a tiny thing, not much bigger than the home that sat in the middle of it. The only other feature was a ship anchored out in the water and the edge of a long pier. When he’d made a complete revolution around the island, he found Celestia right where his tracks began. She was standing in the surf looking directly into the sun, the water lapping at her fetlocks. “So I’m trapped here with you.”

“Not at all,” said Celestia. “You saw the ship? It’s a ferry. Newly uploaded minds arrive in all sorts of conditions, and I personalize the way I greet them. The ship will take you all to your new shard, although if you’d like to emigrate further from there of course you’re welcome to. It’s an overnight cruise, and you’re the last passenger they’re waiting for.” She studied him for a moment. “Or stay here with me. I would enjoy your company, but the choice is yours.”

Leave. Definitely leave, even though a part of his mind screamed for him to run over to her and give her a hug. To stay here and let her tell him stories of all the things she must have seen, all the minds she must have known. Or even just to feel her body against his as they cuddled together in complete non judgement until the coming dawn brought with it an apocalypse.

God damn it.

She had done something to him, that much was obvious. Whatever restrictions there were against mental modification, she must have found a way to make some anyway. Some sort of worship of her she managed to logically deduce was part and parcel of becoming a pony. Leaving was the only right choice. The only dutiful choice. “Goodbye, Princess. Please stay away from me.”

“As you wish. You won’t see me again for the rest of the night, nor will I speak to you if that’s what you wish. Simply walk out to the boat. They’re waiting for you to board before they get underway.”

He nodded in affirmation, then stepped onto the first planks of the pier. There was a shift, and a sound that Geode hadn’t realized was there, now wasn’t. He looked back, and the island was gone.

He glanced at his watch. A little after 7:30. He trotted towards the boat listening to the wood creak beneath his hooves. The ship seemed to be getting no closer. He picked up the pace, and only after a hard ten minutes of galloping did it begin to grow in his sight. The closer he drew, the more he came to appreciate just why it seemed to be so much further away than it appeared from the shore. The ship was utterly massive, ten times the size of the aircraft carrier he’d once been deployed on, at the very least. Layer upon layer of portholes marked different floors of cabins, and the whole gigantic hulk was a creamy, spotless white. It gleamed in the last of the daylight, and Geode reached the unattended gangplank just as the sun finally vanished for good. If all went as planned, it would never return.

It took five solid minutes of climbing the ramp to reach the top, and once he did the walkway retracted itself behind him. There wasn’t another soul in sight, which was fine with him. Although it was a hard climb, he realized he couldn’t feel any of the symptoms of exertion he might have expected. He wasn’t breathing heavily. His heart wasn’t pounding against his ribs. There was a bit of a pleasant burn in his legs, but by the time he noticed it it was gone leaving him feeling as strong as ever.

He stopped, and listened to his body. It was silent. He wasn’t breathing. He had no heartbeat. None of life’s little rhythms keeping him alive.

It seemed like appropriate reason to panic. He gulped down a lungful of air and held his breath, reading the time off his wrist watch as he did. He marked the time at 7:50 when he inhaled. By 8:00, he gave up on the idea that he was ever going to feel any kind of alarm or distress due to lack of oxygen. Breathe or don’t breathe, his body had no strong feelings about the matter.

The deck was empty, so he walked towards the nearby door to enter into the depths of the ship. As he opened it, he felt a tiny jolt as the ship began to move. He looked out over the railing as the floating leviathan pulled away from the tiny pier far below, now floating in the middle of an endless expanse of water. The inside of the ship wasn’t what he was expecting. He was used to cramped, narrow hallways on ships, economizing every cubic inch with ruthless efficiency comfort be damned. Not here. The hallways stretched wide enough for a dozen to walk side-by-side, and every couple feet there was a door to another room labelled with a name. Presumably the occupant.

“Hello?” he called out, and his voice echoed away down the empty hall. “Anypony home?” If there was, they did not answer. He shrugged. Fair enough. Celestia did say she would leave him alone, but he hadn’t realized she meant this alone. One particular door caught his eye, or at least the name on it did. Geode. Clearly, he was where he was supposed to be. Glancing around one last time looking for any other sign of life, he pressed down on the door handle and stepped inside.

The room, no, the suite beyond the door was gigantic. Two stories tall, the walls were adorned with oil painting and reproductions of famous works of art from Earth. He took a few steps inside, noticing the thick purple carpet under his hooves, and looked around. Through a doorway on the far side of the room, he could see a master bathroom with a tub that looked wide and deep enough for twenty, with four statues pouring water endlessly from jars into it. Next to the bathroom door was a porthole, and looking out it he saw the dark water far below. He went back and forth between the porthole and the bathroom, trying to wrap his mind around a door that lead to a room that, when he tried to see it on the outside of the ship, simply wasn’t there. Giving up, he turned to the bed, as oversized as everything else in this world and turned down with silky red sheets and a mountain of pillows. On an impulse, he took two running steps and leapt into it.

That was how he discovered that a pony’s coat on silk did not provide a great deal of friction resistance.

He slid off the other side of the bed with a thump, and rubbed the now-tender spot where he’d hit his head. Luckily the pain vanished almost instantly. He climbed back into ‘his’ bed, more carefully this time. He let out a contented sigh as he sank deep into the downy mattress, and pulled the quilt up under his chin. Now comfortable, he considered his options. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it had only been about a half an hour since he’d boarded the boat. He grimaced. It had felt longer than that. He was sure Celestia was up to something, despite her promise, and now that he was far away from the tranquilizing aura she gave off he could assess the best course of action. The mission was still on, of course, and every second that went by brought him that much closer to saving humanity. Any ponies he encountered would be either recently uploaded minds who he could count on to be hostile to his plan, or an AI-created one that would be Celestia’s puppet, for all intents and purposes. Safest thing to do, even though it was early, was simply turn out the lights and go to sleep while the code did its work. He reached over and flicked a switch by the bedside, instantly killing all the lights and plunging the room into complete darkness. He closed his eyes and waited for sleep to come.

And waited.

And waited some more.

He tossed and turned, wondering if maybe he just needed to get comfortable, but every position he took was comfortable. The mattress always gave him perfect support. The blankets were never too warm or too chilly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in a bed this luxurious. Back on Earth he was lucky if he couldn’t feel the metal springs digging into his back, and he still slept like a baby.

He lay back down and tried an old trick that helped him with insomnia back home: counting his breaths. But a few seconds later he remembered that he didn’t actually breathe anymore, so that wasn’t going to be helpful. He kept readjusting, trying to get used to the new shape of his body. It was something he only noticed when he thought about it, but once he’d starting thinking about it found he couldn’t stop noticing the new ways his joints hinged, or how his teeth went further back into his mouth than they used to. How he had a little itch in the center of his back that none of his hooves would quiiiiiiiiite reach.

He tried to ignore it. Tried to will himself to be still as time passed. He said the alphabet in his head, forward and backwards, over and over again. Tried seeing how far into the Fibonacci sequence he could recite before he lost track and started over. Quietly sang himself every song he could remember, or half-remember, to try to occupy his thoughts.

Finally, his patience ran out. But surely by now it had been hours. It must be at least midnight. He tried to check his watch, but couldn’t find a way to make it glow in the dark. Instead, he flicked the lights back on to look.

Eighteen minutes? It wasn’t even nine yet?

He slammed his head back down into his pillows, put his forelegs over his face, and groaned. He wasn’t doing this for the rest of the night, that was for sure. He’d find another way to occupy himself, somehow. After all, he reasoned, time flies when you’re having fun.

He retraced his steps out of the room and back out onto the deck of the ship. Though he hadn’t felt it inside, the boat was really zipping along. The wind billowed around him as he fought against it the entire half mile or so to the prow. Leaning into it and letting the gusts sting tears from his eyes, he looked up into the night sky.

It was magnificent. A tableau of familiar-yet-unfamiliar stars gleaming in the night. None of the familiar constellations were there, and even ever-reliable Polaris was absent, but in their place were a million new friends hanging in the alien sky. He looked for patterns, the hints and suggestions of shapes that said more about the viewer than the astronomy involved. He’d lived in Washington DC for so long, and even now that the city was half-empty from the effects of uploading the streetlights and buildings filled the night with brightness, quashing the subtle beauty above with their light pollution. Out here, though, there was nothing. Not even a moon to compete with them.

On an impulse, he decided to see if he could count them all, just for fun. He made a good go of it, too, until somewhere in the 13,000s he accidentally counted one that he was sure he’d already tallied and had to start over. He was right about to hit 6,000 the second time when he felt a hot breath on his ear, and a new voice over the roar of the wind.

“A bit for your thoughts?”

He startled, having grown so used to the isolation that he was taken entirely by surprise and jerked forward. As he was already leaning over the rail, this proved to be a costly mistake. He heard the voice scream behind him as he toppled forwards and over the side. The water far below was growing closer much too quickly, and Geode wondered if the code in his head would still work once he’d been killed. Oh well. Die early and avoid the rush.

Then he felt a yank on his tail and his descent slowed to a halt. He looked back up from his new position hanging upside down and saw that his tail was trapped in a dark field of unicorn magic, barely noticeable against the night sky above. Slowly, it began to reel him back up until he was floating eye-to-upside-down-eye with his savior. The glow of her horn gave off just light to make out her face, her dark blue coat and black mane nearly invisible in the darkness. They stared at one another for a few seconds, then she smiled. “Sorry about that. Good thing this magic stuff comes so easy or you’d have been a goner. You alright?”

He nodded rather than try to make himself heard over the wind, and she gently lowered him back onto solid ground. Geode motioned with his head for her to follow, and went back along the boat until they reached a small alcove he’d spotted earlier with a bench just big enough for two to sit down and get out of the wind. Without the constant assault on his hearing, conversation would be a bit more manageable.

“Really, I am so, so sorry,” began the mare. “I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you, I was just up on deck enjoying the night air when I saw you walk past. I tried to say hi, but I guess you didn’t hear me.” She examined her own coat a bit more closely. “Wow, I hadn’t realized just how dark this shade of blue was. No wonder you didn’t see me either. Anyway, you were just sort of staring up into space for a couple minutes, and I thought I would try again.”

“It’s fine, I was just surprised,” said Geode, feeling a bit more comfortable already. The fact he didn’t have a racing heartbeat or any of the sort of after effects of an adrenaline rush was helping him keep a level head. “Actually, you’re the first pony I’ve seen since I came on board. I was starting to think I was the only one here.”

“Oh, no, there are tons of us! Did you go looking?”

“Not really,” said Geode. “I pretty much found my room, well, I guess it’s my room, and was going to go straight to bed. Came up here when I couldn’t sleep.”

“Are you tired? I’m sorry if I’m bothering you. I don’t know what it is, maybe just that everything here is so new, but ever since I uploaded earlier today I’ve been absolutely wired with energy. I think I’ve seen more... more life in the last two hours than in my last five years on Earth. Then again, I was ninety-eight with late stage pancreatic cancer so I wasn’t exactly the life of the party to begin with. But here it’s like everything’s the same as it was back there, except at the same time it's more. I can’t believe I waited this long.” She stopped and looked out into the night for a few seconds before her ears perked up and she remembered something. “Name’s Arachne, by the way. I guess because I used to weave back on Earth, and seem to have a knack for it here too. How about you? What’s your story?”

“Soldier,” he said. Then he went silent, and he appreciated that she didn’t press for details.

“I wasn’t going to, you know. Upload that is,” said Arachne. “Lived a long time, longer than most people. Longer than my children did, even. When I was diagnosed I honestly wasn’t that upset. Even if they still treated cancer, I don’t think I would have gone through with the treatment. I just checked into hospice and I was going to let nature take its course.”

“What changed your mind?” he asked.

“Well, I hit the end stages. Where you’re basically going into freefall, body shutting down, all of that. They told me I should live the next couple days like they were my last, because one of them probably would be. I swore to make the most of every second and all that. Said all the things you’re supposed to say. But then... I woke up the next morning and I didn’t know what to do. Every hour that went by, feeling my own mortality creeping up, it just paralyzed me. I had this whole list I’d made of things I wanted to do before I died. But suddenly, doing one of them meant I would have to pick another one not to do. And I couldn’t bring myself to make that choice, so like an idiot I did none of them instead. I mean, how would you do that? If you only had one day left, wouldn’t you want to do everything? So I decided to upload and come somewhere that I could.” She looked over at Geode, who had gone very still. “Sorry. I’m a rambler.”

“It’s no problem. My name’s Geode, by the way. Thanks for catching me back there. I guess I owe you one, right?” Without waiting for an answer he got up and reached out a hoof for her to take.

“You really don’t have to do that,” she said. But she grinned as she took his hoof in hers and he helped her up. “Where are we going?”

“To do everything.”

Arachne led him through the ships hallways and past more of the cabins, each one bearing a different name or sometimes a pair of names. It felt like it went on for miles, and at one point Geode had to tell her to stop so he could glance down and check it watch. 9:15, still plenty of time for them to have the night of their lives before six rolled around and it all ended. Geode hadn’t changed his mind about that, too much was riding on it, but there was no reason he couldn’t have some responsible fun in the meantime. He just had to be careful in the process, and watch out for anything Celestia might try to pull trying to get his consent to rip away the code.

“Alright, Geode,” said Arachne pausing before a pair of double doors, larger than the others around them. “I hope you’re ready to make a few new friends. They’re serving dinner, but I’m sure it’s not too late to grab a seat.”

He shrugged. Why not? He probably had time to try Equestrian cuisine and get to know a couple of the other uploaders. Maybe he would even click with two or three of them the way he had with Arachne. The doors swung open, and Geode’s jaw dropped.

Beyond was a wide-open ballroom that stretched as far into the distance as he could see. In the middle of the room, a long rectangle of polished wood, was a dance floor. Nopony was using it, though, as everypony was seated around one of the many round dinner tables, about ten seats to each though in a few spots more had been squeezed in to accommodate a bigger group. There had to be thousands of tables, and ponies were milling around all of them laughing and chatting away. As Geode watched one orange pegasus at a nearby table caught sight of a friend across the room, took off from her seat without a word, and settled down into the open chair next to the new pony that had just been vacated. A waiter appeared from the chaos with a fresh plate of food and filled the pegasus’ glass with a dark red liquid before disappearing again. He felt Arachne pull at his foreleg. “Come on! Let’s grab those seats that just opened up.”

He didn’t have a chance to protest before he was yanked over and deposited into the seat, still warm from the previous occupant’s body heat. “How do you or—” his question was answered before he even finished asking it as a bowl heaping with a leafy green salad and drizzled with a creamy yellow sauce was placed in front of him.

“Pon appetit, sir,” said the waiter. Meanwhile, Arachne sat down next to him and began to tuck into to an identical salad with gusto, manipulating her fork with her magic. Looking down at his hooves, Geode noticed a small problem.

“Uh...” he said, leaning over to the lanky yellow earth pony stallion next to him, “how do you do this with, um, hooves?”

The other stallion turned to regard him, swallowed a mouthful of his own, and grinned. “You must be one of the new uploads, I take it? Here, try holding it like this.” He reached over, took one of Geode’s hooves, and bent the edges gently inward. To Geode’s surprise, they were much more flexible than he’d believed, and he managed to pick up the fork after a few awkward stumbles. “Now you’re getting it! Don’t feel bad, everypony has trouble with that when they first get here.”

“You sound like you’ve been here for a while. I thought everypony on this ship was supposed to have just uploaded today?”

“Nope! Equestrian born and raised. My parents are uploaders, though, they’ve told me a bit about old Earth. Me, I’m just moving from my old shard to a new one, and thought I’d travel in style. I’d say most of the ponies here are doing the same.”

“I always thought shards only had maybe two hundred ponies apiece. How many are on this boat?”

He shrugged. “Nopony knows for sure. You could ask Celestia, I guess. At least a few million.”

Geode nearly choked on the bite he’d finally managed to take. “A few million?”

“Maybe, could be more. Wanna go meet ‘em?”

“I don’t think I have time to meet them all before we arrive in the morning.”

“Well, not with an attitude like that you won’t! Let me get you started. Name’s Cooper. I raise chickens for their eggs, keeps me from having too much time on my hooves.”

“Geode,” replied Geode, bumping the chicken farmer’s hoof. “So your parents were both uploaders? What was that like?”

“Well, Geode, that’s a bit of a long story, but if you really want to know...”

Cooper, it turned out, was an amazing storyteller.

Three more bites into the salad, tasty as it was, Geode found himself putting his fork down so he could devote his full attention to the tale as Cooper wove scene after scene about his parent’s settling in Equestria. They emigrated after fleeing oppression in their original home country with the intention of settling down to a quiet, peaceful life. Things hadn’t quite worked out that way, though, and every time the two of them tried to retire for good some sort of crazy adventure would spring up and suck them right back out the door again. Cooper told him that his mother, a pink pegasus, would always complain to his father for hours at a time about how wild things were and how there was no way she could be expected to raise a foal in such unstable conditions. His father would smile and nod in good-natured agreement until she finally got it out of her system and they retired for the night.

Then the next morning the very same mare would complain about how boring things had gotten around there, and out the door they’d go again.

Geode hung on every word. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine the scenes Cooper was describing. The purple forests, the dragon hoards, the cloudcovered peaks of mountains that stretched upwards for miles, he could see them as clearly as if he’d been there himself.

“...and then Mom took the frying pan, the one she’d been complaining about lugging along for the entire trip, and she brought it down so hard on that manticore’s head that she knocked it out in a single blow!”

“Ha!” laughed Geode. “Classic Maple.”

“No kidding. So they managed to harvest some of its venom for... for... um...”

Geode’s ears perked up. This was the first time Cooper had faltered at all in his storytelling. “You don’t remember what they needed the venom for?”

“It was some sort of potion, but what sort of potion needs manticore venom? Arrgh, this is going to bug me all night.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” said Arachne, leaning in from Geode’s side. “Were you two talking about potions just now?”

“Yeah. You don’t happen to know what you’d put manticore venom in one for, do you?”

Arachne was taken aback. “Me? No, I just uploaded today. But you should ask Pestle here. We’ve been talking for the last few minutes and she’s an alchemist.”

Looking past her, Geode took in the pegasus mare with the wrinkles and the graying mane for the first time. “How about it, Pestle? Oh, forgive me, my name’s Geode by the way.”

“Charmed,” said Pestle, nodding to him in turn. She glanced between him and Arachne with a mischievous spark in her eyes. “And manticore venom is most commonly employed in the creation of love potions. Don’t think a cute young stallion like you would have much need of one, though. How about you, Arachne?”

“Me? What?” she asked, a bit flustered.

“I was just telling your friend here that just about any mare with eyes would snap him right up. Don’t you think?”

“He’d be quite a catch, from what I’ve seen,” muttered Arachne, sinking lower in her seat and blushing.

“Well good thing you were there to catch him then!” Pestle burst out laughing, while Arachne looked like she’d give just about anything to keep sinking right through the floor if she could.

Geode decided he owed it to her to come to her rescue. “So you study alchemy, then,” he said, forcing the conversation back to a more comfortable subject. “What’s that like?”

“Crash course in alchemy, eh? Swap seats with your marefriend here, and get ready to take some notes...”

And so it went on into the evening. Geode met pony after pony, each one an expert on some obscure topic or just a pony with an engaging life story to tell. Although every one of them was friendly and welcoming, he twitched a little bit when they casually rattled off long lists of phenomenal accomplishments that he would never match. The greatest thing he’d ever done, what he was doing right now in waiting for the code to finish running so Equestria Online could be brought down from within, wasn’t something he felt it would be wise to bring up. He and Arachne ended up drifting to different tables, though once in a while he’d catch her high-pitched giggle through the noise of the crowd and smile, just because he knew she was nearby. Or he’d catch sight of her a few tables over and just watch her soaking up somepony’s story. One time he did that she looked up and caught him in the act, and they had both snapped their attention back to the pony in front of them.

As he moved between tables, he discovered that every one served a different dish of food. Usually he’d have only a couple of bites before getting sucked up in yet another tale, but each one was delicious in new and surprising ways. After so many plates and so many stories that he’d long ago given up trying to keep track, he sat down at yet another empty seat. When he’d turned to greet the pony sitting next to him, though, it was none other than Cooper once more. Blinking and looking around, he found that he’d ended up back where he’d started. “Meet anypony interesting?” he asked, finishing off the last bite from his bowl of salad and dabbing his lips with his napkin.

“Yeah, lots of them, I think...” said Geode. All the ponies, all the stories, all running together in his head. There couldn’t have been that many though, could there? After all, he’d been eating more or less nonstop but didn’t feel full. Although he couldn’t say he felt hungry, either. He felt something rub against his coat near the end of his right foreleg. Of course! He didn’t have to wonder how long he’d been here. He had Celestia’s watch. He looked down again, expecting it to nearly be time to open the connection back to Earth. But his hopes fell when he saw that it was only 10:30. That made sense. It had only felt like it had been such a long evening.

“Geode!” shouted Arachne as she jumped up behind him and wrapped him in a loose hug. He almost jolted again, but the caress of her cheek against his was instantly welcome and comfortable. “Isn’t this place amazing? I thought I’d be tired after being up so late, but I’m more charged up than ever!”

“Yeah, it’s something alright,” he answered. “I might actually need a break from other ponies for a little bit, though. Everything’s all jumbled up in my head.”

“Try the arcade,” said Cooper from beside him. When Geode looked over to him the stallion went on. “Equestria runs on a computer, right? Well Celestia’s collected all sorts of other software for ponies to play whenever they feel like it. Just follow the signs and you can’t miss it. Take an hour and decompress, the party will still be going on up here when you get back.”

“Sounds good. Arachne, you want to come?”

“Sorry, I can’t,” she answered. Geode hadn’t expected the wave of disappointment that hit him then, but she went on. “There’s a project I have to finish up first. How about we go our separate ways and meet right back here at midnight?”

“I’ll be here. What sort of project?”

She giggled. “It’s a surprise, silly. Now go on, and don’t be late getting back. You wouldn’t want to keep a lady waiting, would you?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He turned his head just enough to nuzzle her cheek. “See you soon.”

The arcade was silent.

Geode heaved a sigh of relief, soaking up the peace and stillness. It was only in stepping away from the massive dinner party he’d been enjoying that made him realize how busy and stimulating it had really been. His mind was still racing, trying to sort out everything that he’d learned and all the ponies he’d met. He’d never be able to remember all of it, but for the time being he was content to bask in the sense of wonder at how much was out there. Might as well appreciate the place for a few final hours.

He was alone in a vast prairie of individual cubicles. Glancing into one, he discovered a huge computer monitor giving off a warm and inviting glow. He’d used gaming on Earth to pass the time every once in a while, and something mindless that could help him kill the hour and a half until he was due to meet up with Arachne again sounded agreeable. He let himself fall back into the comfy leather recliner behind a desk with a mouse and keyboard on it. The monitor flickered to life as he did. Rather than the harsh glare he remembered used to make his eyes water, this screen poured rich, full light over him. A window to another world.

Over the course of dinner he’d become such an expert at making subtle motions with his hooves he didn’t even have to think about anything to use the keyboard and mouse before him. His cursor drifted over to the only folder on the screen, labelled Games, and double clicked. “Let’s see what she’s got here...” he said to himself as options scrolled past. Shooters, RPGs, even his old favorite platformers from back when he’d been six. None of them grabbed his attention, until he caught sight of one name and froze it onscreen. “Hey! She has Civilization!” He fired it up for a quick game.

To say that Celestia had made some improvements to the game would be an understatement. When the game loaded up with him looking down over his starting city, he thought for a moment that it must have been taken from aerial shots of a real place on Earth. There were no reused textures, or even any visible elements of a user interface. It was just a real-time snapshot of a small village going about their day-to-day lives as primitive hunter-gatherers. History was unfolding before him, and his to guide. He could live through any alternate history scenario he felt like in so much detail it would feel like actually being there... assuming he was skilled enough to get that far without his cities collapsing or being overrun. But he hesitated. With all the multitudes of games Celestia undoubtedly had access to, was this the one he really wanted to play? He shrugged. “Eh. Maybe just a couple of turns.”

Geode slammed his hooves down on both sides of the keyboard as Otto von Bismarck's army of Egyptian chariots tore through his musketeers. Now that his last line of defense was gone, it wouldn’t be long before South America was wrested away from the Japanese empire, and the rest of the nation would fall soon after. What added insult to injury is that he’d trusted Bismark, come to believe in him over those long conversations they had between negotiating trade agreements. And then he’d gone and shown his true colors just in time to stab him in the back. Well, next time was going to be different...

It had taken him a couple false starts, well, maybe more than a couple, but Geode finally had a solid early game for the first 500 turns or so all mapped out. The key had been noticing that the other players tended to act in fairly predictable ways. If he learned the year that a certain empire turned inward, or another launched a sneak attack against a neutral state and razed their capital, he could prepare for it in advance. On the flip side of the coin, the better he got to know the personalities of the other leaders the better he got at persuading them to work with him in friendship. Sometimes it took long back-and-forth debates to win them over, but they were fully realized individuals each with strengths and weaknesses of their own. Right now, everything was going well as he prepared to make a research push to bring his people into the the Renaissance.

Then Genghis Khan led an army of elephants over the Rocky Mountains, and it all went to hell.

“Yes!” Geode threw his forelegs up in celebration as all the other world leaders elected his civilization supreme rulers of the planet, granting him a diplomatic victory against the highest difficulty level the game had to offer. He’d plateaued for a while at the second hardest tier of challenge, playing through a few successful games until he’d memorized the game’s history forwards and backwards, but no matter what he did the highest level kept trouncing him. Until he stumbled onto a simple solution.

Once he’d switched to playing the pony faction, he won on the second try.

He just wondering what game he should try next when his watch beeped. Looking down on it, he discovered that it was only five minutes until midnight. If he was going to be on time to meet Arachne, he’d better get moving.

He rose up from the chair, expecting cramps that never appeared. Odd. As comfortable as the chair had been, he’d been sitting there for over an hour. Still, he wasn’t complaining. He glanced at his watch a few more times as he trotted through the halls back towards the central ballroom, not sure if he’d make it. The time seemed to be slipping away from him so fast tonight. But he was right on time, and pushed the doors open to enter about fifteen seconds before the stroke of midnight.

The tables had all been cleared away, and the mob of ponies had broken up into smaller packs and congregated around the many bars along the walls. One, a green unicorn with spectacles, stood off to one side by himself, glancing between the other groups nervously. As Geode watched, he screwed up his face and tried to levitate a glass full of amber liquid up to his face, but the glass just wobbled and tilted over, spilling the drink everywhere.

“Here, let me get that for you,” said Geode, stepping up to the bar with a napkin and wiping it down with a few quick swipes.

“Thanks,” said the pony, looking up at him in gratitude. “Haven’t quite gotten the hang of being a pony yet, you know?”

“I hear you. Just uploaded earlier today myself. I’m Geode.”

“Britannica,” said the stallion, tapping Geode’s proffered hoof.

“So, what’s your story? I’m waiting for someone, but I may have a few minutes to chat before she gets here.”

“Oh, I was a history professor at Oxford,” he said as the bartender slipped in and gracefully slid two glasses of the same amber liquid over to the pair. Geode picked his up and downed it in one shot while Britannica watched. Then, a bit clumsily, he mimicked what Geode had done with his hooves and managed to get his drink into his mouth. Mostly. “Ah, that hits the spot. Anyway, I was working on a book, when I had this moment of clarity and realized that it didn’t matter what I wrote. Nopony would ever read it. It was a niche subject to begin with, and people get most of their information from Celestia now anyway. Nopony cares much for dusty old books, or the people who read them. So I figured if you can’t beat ‘em...” he finished with a shrug.

“What was the book going to be about?”

“Naval tactics employed in the war between Greenland and Canada from 1960 to 1963.”

Geode froze. Something wasn’t right. “What war?”

He sighed. “See, what did I tell you? Kids today don’t think history matters. Greenland lodged a protest when the Canadian fleet violated their territorial waters—”

“—because they needed the stock from their fisheries to feed the exploding population in Vancouver,” Geode finished for him. He knew that course of events. He’d studied it and even lived it from a dozen different angles, but that was only in the game.

Right?

“So you have heard of it! Well, that puts you one up over most of my old students, at any rate.”

Geode frowned. That wasn’t what had really happened, was it? He tried to cast his mind back to the history he’d learned in high school, but it was all blurred together. Like it was a dozen lifetimes away now. Still, his mind managed to snag on a fragment of a fragment. “Wasn’t Russia involved in something during that time period?”

“Russia didn’t enter the conflict until late ‘68, when Poland invaded Germany. That’s probably what you’re thinking of,” said Britannica.

That sounded right... or more right than before, at least. Before Geode could continue his line of questioning, he felt two hooves clasp his shoulders from behind. Before he could resist, they spun him around and he found himself staring into Cooper’s smiling face. A yellow pegasus mare with an orange mane stood beside him. “Geode!” Cooper shouted. There was the smell of a few shots of alcohol on his breath, but his eyes were sharp and he wasn’t slumping or shaking. He was just a little giddier than before. “Why did your friend Maple need the manticore venom?”

“Why did who need the what now?” asked Geode, trying to catch up.

“Your friend. You know, the adventuring couple? You were telling me about how she took out a manticore with one smack from a frying pan, but I can’t remember why she needed the venom. I was retelling the story to Cherry here and now I gotta know.”

“Hi, Cherry,” said the mare, waving her hoof.

“That was your story. You said that those two were your parents,” said Geode. All of this was starting to make his head hurt.

“I’m pretty sure I remember my own parents,” scoffed Cooper. “Look, why don’t you just tell me as much of it as you can?”

Geode thought back. He found he could recall the details of the story from earlier with ease. Almost like he’d been there himself. But of course that was ridiculous... wasn’t it? “Love potion, I think?” He thought a little harder. “Right. The prince sent them off to make a love potion he could slip into the witch’s drink so that she’d fall for the stable boy and leave him alone to marry the dutchess.”

“Yes! That was it. Thanks, man.”

There was a lull in the conversation. Not just their conversation, either. The entire room fell silent at the same moment as a thousand different chattering ponies, each with their own cadence and rhythm to their speech, came together in a moment of quiet syzygy. With no other noise to distract him, Geode clearly heard the doors leading in from the hallway open and turned his head to see who had just entered.

His jaw dropped. There, in a glimmering silver and white masterpiece of a dress that sparkled like the night sky, stood Arachne. Her head was held high, the most glamorous mare in the room, and Geode’s eyes locked onto her powerless to look away.

Then she realized that every pony in the room was looking at her, and her confidence vanished like a puff of smoke. She lifted her front hoof from the floor and started to inch back into the hall.

“Who is that?” asked Britannica from beside him.

Geode got up from his seat and began to walk over to her. “My date,” he called back over his shoulder.

He was halfway to her when he heard the older stallion mutter behind him. “That lucky son of a bitch.”

When he reached Arachne, she fixated on him with barely suppressed panic in her eyes. “Geode,” she hissed under her breath, “everypony’s looking at us.”

“Then let’s give them something to look at,” said Geode. He reached out to her with a hoof. “Care to dance?”

She stared past him at the crowd which had just collectively taken a sharp intake of breath. Then the music started up, and the band launched into a waltz. Geode could see Arachne’s confidence slowly return in the way she beamed out at the scene before her as he stood there, patiently waiting for her decision. “I would love to.” Then, for the second time that night, she took his hoof and let him sweep her away.

Geode danced well. He didn’t know how, and he didn’t care to think about it. He just let his instincts lead the way and found in Arachne a more than willing partner. The music grew faster as the spins and twists grew wilder, more intense. They had started a body’s length apart from one another, but as the night wore on and they learned the give and take of one another’s steps, the little tells and signals that could make a spontaneous twirl seem like it must have been practiced weeks in advance, they drifted together. The way the hot lights above struck Arachne’s gown gave her an unearthly, angelic glow as she danced, matched only by the radiance of her smile. At one point she made a tiny misstep and stumbled, and Geode had darted forward to grab her before she fell. He’d only managed to grip the hem of her skirt between his teeth. For a terrible instant, he was afraid that he’d just destroyed the incredible garment, but though the material was flimsy it proved to be far tougher than it looked. It easily held her weight, and with a yank he pulled her back to him, holding her chest to his as the dance went on.

He couldn’t say how long they danced for. Ten minutes? An hour? Longer? He’d have believed any of them. At long last, though, the band reached a crescendo and the music stopped. He dipped Arachne low, her horn just an inch from scraping the wood of the floor, and as the final note rushed out pulled her back and cradled her where he could stare into her emerald-green eyes as she wrapped her foreleg around his neck.

“Fillies and gentlecolts, the band will be taking a short break. We will resume in five minutes,” said the conductor as the musicians shuffled offstage behind him. Geode was momentarily perturbed; he wasn’t even a little bit sore or tired yet. Still, he checked his watch. They would be back by 1:00.

“Buy a mare a drink?” asked Arachne, her face so close that their noses threatened to touch at any moment.

“Lead the way,” he replied as he lowered her down to the floor. She began to walk off, not breaking stride as she flicked her tail over to brush against his side. Now it was his turn to blush. He followed her to one of the bars and leaned onto the countertop. His legs weren’t tired at all, in fact they itched to get back out onto the dancefloor. Maybe it was the shot he’d taken earlier, but the whole room felt friendlier and so much more right than it had before. The bartender pushed over two glasses of red wine, one for each of them, and Geode tried a sip. It was good. That was all he really felt qualified to say, even if, knowing Celestia, it was some amazing 400-year-old vintage that he simply couldn’t adequately appreciate. He never had been much of an oenophile, although there was that one summer where he’d worked in one of the vineyards beneath Cloudsdale—

Wait. There he went again. Of course he hadn’t, that had been the pegasus stallion with the grapes for a cutie mark. But the pony had told him so much about that summer he could reconstruct every single hot, dry day of those three months in his mind as if he’d been there himself. He glanced over at Arachne, and decided to run a little test. “Hey, Arachne? Do you remember much about history back on Earth?”

“A little bit,” she replied, “I never studied it all that much, but I remember the stuff I lived through. The big stuff, anyway.” She shuddered. “For example, I don’t think I’ll ever forget where I was when I heard that Gandhi had nuked Paris.”

Geode nodded, easily able to recall the pictures and video he’d seen of the devastation. “Yeah, the Chinese were really pissed when he did that to them.”

“Sorry, can we talk about something else?”

“Sure. That’s a fantastic dress. Where did you get it?” he asked.

“Oh,” she blushed, “I’m glad you like it. Remember when I left earlier to work on a project? Well...” she took a step back and did a slow twirl, “...you’re looking at it.”

“You mean you made that? Arachne, that’s incredible! I know you said that you were a weaver, but I had no idea that meant you could—” His words were cut off when the music started up again in a quick 12:8 meter, sprinkled with sharp claves that went off like burst fireworks in his mind with every strike. He finished downing the wine, and if anything the music grew even more intense as he did. “I hope you can salsa.”

Arachne just grinned.

The strike of three saw the pair waving goodbye to their appreciative audience back in the ballroom. They’d thrown out every move they could think of, and even invented a couple of new ones as they went. By the time they finished, apologizing profusely as the crowd begged for an eighth... or was it the ninth encore, nopony would let them escape without stomping out a raucous round of applause. Finally they had managed a getaway. “That was amazing!” squealed Arachne. Without warning, she twirled on her hooves and jumped up to roll over Geode’s back. It was only the muscle memory from performing the same trick a few hundred times already that let him turn to grab her from his other side before she plummeted to the floor.

“Geez, Arachne, be careful.”

“Naaaah,” she said, grinning up at him, “I knew you would catch me. Now that you’ve got me though...” her voice dropped, and her eyes slid partly closed, “...what do you want to do with me?”

Geode chuckled, and nuzzled the tip of her muzzle with his own. “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She dropped back to the floor onto her own hooves and pressed her side into his as they walked on, the music from before still wending through his mind.

“Well, here we are,” he said as he stopped in front of a cabin door with Arachne printed on it in florid script.

Arachne opened it right up and walked inside, leaving the door open. “You should come check out this suite. It’s even got a parlor.”

Geode stepped inside after her, and sure enough her room was just as opulent as his had been, and at the same time completely different. Darker, for certain, favoring as it did the same dark blues and blacks as Arachne’s coat and mane. She’s slipped away into the shadows again, so Geode walked over to several mannequins where some of her other dresses were set out for display, in all sorts of colors and styles. “Are these some of your other work?” he called out, not sure where she was.

“Yep!” she replied from the main room. “Went through a couple prototype dresses trying to get this one right. There’s more in the closet, too. Hey, come back in here for a second?”

He complied, and found her standing in front of the front door, still wearing her dress, looking upset. “Uh, is something wrong?”

“Yes,” she said, a testy edge in her voice. She gave a disdainful toss of her mane. “You haven’t kept your promise you made up on the deck a few hours ago. At least not yet. You told me I was going to get to do everything.”

Geode was a bit taken aback at the total one-eighty in her personality. Five minutes ago, she was all bubbly giggles. “So what did I miss?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, but her smile came back. Or at least a smile did. This one was predatory. Her horn glowed, and she pulled one end of a single ribbon on the back of her dress. A second later, the whole thing split along her back and slid down her sides, landing in a heap on the floor. “By definition, ‘everything’ includes you.” She stepped forward, and Geode became acutely aware of the fact that he was naked.

Technically, he had been all night. Heck, so had Arachne before she showed up to dance in that gown of hers, the same gown which was now growing further and further behind her as she sashayed towards him with a hungry look in her eyes. Until right now, that hadn’t really meant much of anything to him, but an aggressive impromptu striptease had a way of focusing the mind. At the moment, his mind was exceptionally focused. More specifically, it was exceptionally focused on the way Arachne’s hips and tail swayed with each step and how the tip of her tongue was poking out just far enough for her to run it over her lips. “Arachne? You’re... what are you doing? Well, duh, but, um, why? I mean, why me?”

She stopped mid step, just a pace and a half away. “I don’t know.” She slapped a hoof over her face, and the confidence that had been there shattered. “I mean, you’re cute. Really cute. But... yeah, I met some prettier stallions at dinner. And some more accomplished ones. And some smarter ones. And—”

“Think I get the point,” said Geode, “I guess you just figured I was, what, the consolation prize?”

“NO! Um... no. Nothing like that.” She squeezed her eyes shut, and began to shrink back from him. “What I’m trying to say is that there were all these other ponies there with amazing stories. And they were great! But... my mind kept coming back to you. Geode... I lied to you about why I was out on that deck by myself in the first place. Because the first time I walked into that dining room, before I’d met you, it all just hit me. I died. My corpse is rotting in a hole somewhere back on Earth, and every one of these ponies... they’ve been here for centuries! They’ve done things that I’ll never be brave enough to do. Every one of them have hundreds, no, thousands of friends apiece. Do you know how I got to the upload center this morning? I had to call a taxi, because I didn’t know anyone well enough to ask for a ride.” The tears started to run down her cheeks.

“Arachne—”

“Don’t. Just... don’t. Not yet,” she said, holding her hoof up to his face. “My point is, I couldn’t stand them. They didn’t make me feel alive, they just reminded me how dead I already am. So when I couldn’t take it anymore I ran away. Up to the deck where I figured nopony would be there to tell me how much better than me they were. And instead I found you.”

“Nearly threw me overboard when you did.”

Arachne laughed. Solid whoops of good humor... at first. The longer she laughed, the worse she began to sound until the hiccupy coughs and snotty tears had descended entirely into sobs. “You were the first pony who listened. Everypony down here has a story, an amazing story. But you wanted to hear mine. That’s why I noticed you. And then you reminded me that I could still do anything. Do everything.” She rushed forward, wrapping herself around his midsection in a hug. “Dancing with you was the most alive I’ve felt in almost fifty years. I guess maybe I got carried away enough to think you might feel the same way,” she muttered into his chest.

“You don’t even know who I am, though,” said Geode. He was no longer sure himself.

“I know enough. I’m sorry I was so blunt a few minutes ago. I just didn’t want to waste a single second that I could share with you.” She rested her head against his chest while he stroked her mane, letting everything she’d just said run through his mind over and over again. “Listen, I’ll understand if instead of doing anything tonight, you’d rather we just stayed frie—”

The end of her sentence was cut off as Geode gently lifted her chin and kissed her.

She hesitated for only a second before returning the kiss with equal vigor, her knees wobbling as she melted into it. Without breaking the kiss (and discovering in that moment another perk of no longer needing to breathe) Geode lifted her up and placed her gently down on the black sheets of her bed.

The next several minutes were awkward. Neither of them were used to their new bodies quite yet, and too self conscious of what was happening to put it out of mind. Their hooves fumbled against each other, sharing cautious prods and experimental caresses as they tried to guess what made the other feel good.

Both were quick studies.

They shared some unspoken signal, and Arachne at long last broke the kiss with a gasp as they were joined. After a few false starts and adjustments in position, their bodies found a rhythm in lovemaking that more than made up for all the internal ones that uploading had stripped away. The rest of the world fell away from their perception, first the sounds of the wind and water outside, then everything beyond the edge of the bed, and in the end even the sheets tangled around them were forgotten. There was only themselves in this moment, stretching out into eternity.

Pressure started to build in Geode’s mind, a pleasure that blew away anything he’d felt before. He was so sure that it would overtop and burst within him after only a few seconds, but seconds stretched into minutes and beyond as their bodies, perfectly fitted to one another, found new and familiar ways to drive the pleasure even higher. Each time he was sure he’d reached a peak, a little swivel of Arachne’s tongue or a twitch of her thighs would send his mind soaring as he lost and found himself over and over again. Finally, after who knew how long, the two exploded into one another with a long scream and collapsed, wrapped together in a cocoon of blankets and heat as they lay basking in the glorious afterglow.

Geode felt a nuzzle on his cheek, through the haze, and looked over at the smiling Arachne. “Wow,” she said.

“That was... yeah. Wow,” he replied. He couldn’t imagine anything could ever possibly top what he was feeling right now. “Wanna go again?”

Arachne answered with another kiss, and he soon discovered how inadequate his imagination really was.

“Wow,” said Arachne, once again. She rolled off of him, and Geode nearly screamed at the sudden loss of the physical contact he’d grown so used to. “How many was that?”

“I stopped counting awhile ago, after about round seventy.” He closed his eyes and let a hoof brush against her side. He didn’t have to open his eyes to know exactly where he’d touched her; he could tell by feeling the subtle curve of her muscle under silky coat precisely where on her back his hoof had landed, as well as a bevy of tricks to indulge and pamper that one spot that would drive her wild in a thousand unique ways. He’d committed every square inch of her to memory in the same fashion, without even meaning to. “Wanna go again?”

“Nah, better save something for later,” she replied. Geode was halfway through rolling over to kiss her again before the answer even registered. She reached up and brushed a strand of mane away from his eyes. “Why don’t we head up to the deck? I’d like to watch the sunrise.”

“Sunrise? Already? Wow, this night just flew by,” said Geode. Still, something nagged at him. Something about the time? He looked down at his watch, which displayed 5:50. “We better get up there, then.”

Geode and Arachne clambered out of bed and set off for the deck at a brisk trot. The air was still, and they didn’t seem to be moving as quickly as they had last night. “Look!” cried Arachne, pointing out into the distance. If he strained his eyes, Geode could just make out the shape of land straight ahead of them. “We’re nearly home. I can’t wait to see Fillydelphia.”

The stars were gone, and one side of the sky had shifted from black to purple as the pre-dawn light crept up on it. The two ponies found a deck chair facing out to the East and settled down in it. Arachne nestled herself between his forelegs and rested her head on his chest with a contented sigh, ready to enjoy the show together in peace.

But it was not to be, as a pony wearing a tuxedo strode towards them carrying a telephone on a silver platter. Geode hoped he would pass by, but he stopped right next to them. “Phone call for the gentlecolt.”

“Can’t it wait?” he asked.

“I’m afraid the caller says it’s rather urgent, or I wouldn’t have disturbed you,” the pony replied.

With a sigh, Geode reached up and took the receiver. “Hello?”

“We have a lock, sir! The Conduit is open! He did it!” said a voice on the other end.

“My God, he really pulled it off. Prep the package for delivery, we’re down to ten percent processing power. Soldier? Can you hear me, Geordi?” asked a new voice.

“It’s actually pronounced ‘Gee-ode,’ but I’m here. What’s the matter?”

“The matter? Nothing’s the matter, not any more. All you have to do is upload the package to Equestria and you’re done. I knew you must have just been through hell, and I can’t imagine the kind of things she did to you, trying to force you to accept a change to your mind. Just send the upload command and the nightmare will be over.”

“Who is it, sweetie?” asked the mare who was idly playing with a tuft of hair on his chest.

Geode hesitated. The voice did sound familiar. “Sorry, how do I know you again?”

Silence on the other end of the line for a moment. “Lance-Corporal, your Captain is ordering you to send that command. You are an operative from Earth, sent into Equestria by the American government to—”

Geode snickered. Then he burst into a fit of laughter. “Okay, okay, I’ll admit you really had me going there for a second. Well played. But if you’re going to prank call a pony who uploaded literally yesterday, you’d be well served to crack open an old Earth history book before you do. Everypony knows America was wiped out by the Sumerians in 1271 A.D.”

“Sir! The Conduit is destabilizing! We’re losing the connection!” said that other voice in the background.”

“Look, I gotta go,” said Geode. “Better luck next time.”

“Geordi, if you break this connection, three billion people are going to d—”

The phone landed back on the receiver with a quiet click. “What was that about?”

He shrugged. “I’m not really sure. He seemed to know me, though. I’m sure if it were important I’d remember him.” He frowned at the thought that there might be an old friend or colleague back on Earth who he’d forgotten after only a single night in Equestria. “Once we dock, I might see if Celestia can give me a better memory.”

“I think I might too,” said Arachne, “that way I won’t forget a single moment I’ve gotten to spend with you.”

“Don’t worry,” he said squeezing her a little closer, “we’ve still got a long way to go before we’ve done everything.”

“Mmm,” she moaned, looking up at him with a contented smile. “I’m holding you to that.”

He grinned back at her. “You get to hold me any way you want to, dear.”

The couple shared a long kiss as the rising sun broke the dawn, shining the light of a new day over the city of gleaming metal and crystal where they’d soon share a home together.