“Canterlot has fallen; both princesses are presumed dead,” he said, looking across the group of ponies tightly gathered in the atrium. “What little radio chatter that’s left has confirmed megaspell strikes on Cloudsdale, Phillydelphia, and just about every damn city with more than 12 residents.” His voice trembled as he spoke his next words, “Hell - most of us here saw Manehatten go up in flames ourselves.”

There were a few acknowledging nods from the group. A young mare, positioned at the side of the room, burst into tears, and the stallion with her pulled her into an embrace, attempting to solace her.

The pony at the podium waited for the mare’s cries to quiet some before continueing, “We’ve all made arrangements for this day, and unfortunately, it’s finally the time to put them into effect. On the level below us are 273 magical chambers, one for each pony here, including myself. These chambers will house us indefinitely - for hundreds of years if necessary - and will protect us from the dangerous magics now rampant across our land. We do not need to fight the magical wasteland Equestria has become, we need only wait for the radiation to wear itself away.”

The ponies in front of him merely stood, silently listening. Some were shell shocked, looking onward with vacant expressions. Others’ expressions were unusually attentive, given how many times they’d heard this exact information before. They were grasping at the familiar words of the administrator’s speech as a way to distract themselves. To keep from thinking of the horrors that laid just outside this building.

“Each chamber has two layers of preservation. The first, and most powerful, is the temporal crystal developed by Stable Tech Industries. Each chamber is specifically designed to house and exacerbate the effects of these crystals - indefinitely pausing time for everything within. Should this crystal fail, however, either from magical crack in the material or warping of the chamber, the second layer will activate automatically.”

The administrator pulled an IV needle from his bag and set it on the pedestal in front of him.

“The second layer of preservation is... significantly less elegant. Upon the crystals failure the IVs placed within both of your forelegs and hindlegs will perform a blood transfusion, replacing your blood with a magical poultice. This poultice, once spread throughout your body, has a similar effect to the crystal - freezing your body in time. This effect, however, only occurs when the poultice is brought to incredibly low temperatures, so your chamber will also be flooded with liquid Nitrogen to maintain the necessary temperature. This effect should also be indefinite - thanks to the large array of Nitrogen fountain gems in the facility.”

“Now, if everypony is attentive and comes with me immediately when their name is called, we’ll be done in a couple hours. Let’s start with Anna Belle.” A cream colored mare, hearing her name, started at hearing her name, and quickly made her way to the front of the crowd and followed the Administrator from the room.

~~~

Walking up the stairs to return to the atrium, the administrator considered the small feeling of anxiety that’d been growing since he began preserving the ponies. He’d been working for well over an hour now, and when he entered the atrium for nearly the 100th he realized what was bothering him. There was no panic - no struggling or arguing or any hint of disagreement between the ponies in this room. There was only complete cooperation and understanding between every single pony in the stable. The uneasy feeling that had been growing in his stomach disappeared instantly when he realized this, and the Administrator then paused to consider why he’d been so surprised to see everything running smoothly in the first place. It was the madness outside he thought, Trying to get from home to here was so much different than this. Between the ponies on the ground and the pegasi in the air, and what was happening over the radio, it felt like the everypony had completely forgotten how to work together. He considered that thought for a moment. He was happy this vault existed - the ponies here deserved better than the disaster outside.

“Silvester Starshine, you’re next,” he said loudly, standing just inside the room. A grey unicorn gave a small smile to the blue earth-pony he’d been talking to and turned away, walking over to the Administrator.

“Just Silver is fine, sir,” he said to the stocky green earth-pony in charge.

“Of course,” he replied, “Silver, Follow me.”

The pair made their way down the stairs, entering a wide hallway. It was utilitarian - sparsely lit by the occasional gemstone hanging from the ceiling. The walls were a harsh metal, with large and important-seeming pipes running along them. The floor was just concrete with a protective finish. Silver and the Administrator made their way along the hallway, their hoofsteps echoing loudly in the large space. Entering an open door on the left, they’re both met with a wall of 12 pony-sized pods. The ovaloid shape was much like that of an egg. Pipes running into the room from the hallway wrap around the top edge of the wall, branching off to attach to each pod in various places. Four of these pods are open to the air, with their doors slid to the side to reveal what’s inside. The center of each pod has a rigid structure meant to support a pony standing on their hind legs and leaning back, not touching any internal edge of the pod except for the floor. The internal sides of the pod were much different than the smooth curves of the outside, with a myriad of crystalline shapes tiling the inside edges in a very carefully considered way. Silver approached an empty pod, while the administrator followed closely behind.

“This one is mine, right?” he asked, indicating the pod just to the right of the 8 currently occupied ones.

“That’s correct,” the administrator said, nodding, “carefully step inside and lean against the support, and we’ll move onto the next step.” Silver swallowed nervously, then reared back onto his hind legs. He balanced himself, and in a couple smooth motions stepped into the pod, twisted himself around, and leaned back onto the center support. Despite the awkward position, Silver was surprisingly comfortable against the well-designed device.

“Are you ready for the needles now?”

Silver swallowed again, and nodded once.

“Okay. This will just take a moment.”

The administrator then leaned in, and grabbed the four IVs hanging from the ceiling of the pod. After pulling them from their housing he merely tapped the tip of each needle against the appropriate place on Silver’s legs, and the blood-seeking charms took over; each needle angled itself appropriately and pushed itself into one of his veins. Silver grimaced briefly as each needle did its thing, and then was fine.

“I suppose that’s that, then?” Silver said.

“Yes. All that’s left is for me to close the door and you’ll be frozen in time until this whole thing is over with.” The admin said.

“I’ll see you on the other side, then, sir,” SIlver said.

The administrator just smiled at the unicorn, stepped back, and slide the door shut. A soft ‘click’ was heard as the door latched and sealed itself in place. After a moment’s pause, a green light on the exterior of the pod blinked on, indicating that the temporal crystal was working as intended.

As he walked from the room he spoke softly to himself, “I wish you would.”

~~~

The last pod door slid shut, and the Administrator sighed. He slowly made his way out into the hallway, and then down to the door at the end. His door. To his office. And his pod.

Staring at the door, he said to himself, “It’s alright, you’ve still got a few more things to attend to before you’re done. It’s important to see things through.”

Reaching his hoof out, he twisted the knob and pushed himself into his office. The room was sizable, but was made cramped by the amount of equipment that was forced to fit inside. A large piece of machinery made up the space nearest the back wall, with a line of computer terminals at eye level. Among the terminals were many knobs, switches, dials, and indicators. To the trained eye, this wall was a source of information about the conditions of every pony in every pod, as well as the Stable’s subsystems. A few feet from the mighty computer was a simple wooden desk - it had 4 drawers, two on either side, and its surface was immaculate. The Administrator walked over to the desk and sat down on the chair situated nearby. Lifting his forelegs and resting them on the desk, his eyes drifted to the stasis pod on the other side of the room. Its door was shut, and its green indicator light was conspicuously glowing. Shifting his arms, the Administrator brought the metallic computer anchored around his leg just above his fetlock to his attention.

It wasn’t the newest model of the Pipbuck line, but, like any Stable Tech product, it was still a long-lasting and useful device. A small screen took up one side of the device, and could be set to display a number of useful things: Weather forecasts, maps and your location, the date and time, and in many models the level of ambient magical radiation in the immediate area. They were an incredible tool for any pony that had one, but in many cases were merely used as glorified watches for the rich to brag about buying first.

Pressing buttons on the small device with his left hoof, he navigated to the menu he desired, pressed a final button, and began to speak.

“This is the first, and probably last, of my audio logs. For those of you that find this, I will not be waking up with you. Your administrator will likely be long dead.... It... It terrifies me to say that. To think that. I don’t want to die. But I see no way to live if I stay here, so I’ll have to take my chances out there.”

“Let me explain myself. I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve not just used my own pod - why I’m not here to greet you in person. Hell, I bet a part of you thinks this is just a trick. You’re thinking, ‘his pod’s still closed while the rest of us are out. Surely he’s still in there, ready to come out any minute now!’ I wish... I really wish that were the case.”

“But somepony else is in there. His name’s Tropical Dotty. He’s 15. And he’s nearly dead from a terminal disease. It’s Inoperable cancer. He.. he was on deaths door when I came across him, and I just couldn’t.. I.. Nopony deserves to die like that. Not that young. I figured I could save him. I mean, who knows what kind of great medicine we’ll have in the future, right? I figured.. I figured the bombs would never drop. We’d never need this place. I’d never need this place. So I put him in my pod, frozen in time, hanging on, forever just above the brink of death...”

“He’ll last a long while, though. So you guys get to rebuilding civilization, all right? He will need a cure eventually.”

“If the computer woke you guys up early, because this place needs some maintenance done, then the computer diagnostics and instructions should be all you need to sort things out. If not, there’s schematics of this whole place in the computer. I’ve also made myself a user manual, which is also in the computer. It should be understandable enough. There’s a paper copy of that in the desk, too, if you need it.”

He stopped talking for a moment, and leaned down, opening the bottom right drawer. Inside lay a thick, crudely bound book titled “The Administrator’s Guide to Stable 273.” He then slid the drawer shut again, and went back to speaking.

“Hopefully it doesn't come to that, though. Stable Tech really know’s how to build things to last.”

“It’s a hell of a thing, isn’t it? This place, I mean. It took a lot of ponies a lot of effort to make it happen.”

“I’m rambling now, I suppose. I think I’ll stick around for the night, keep an eye on the computer, and make sure everything’s going okay. Maybe when I head back outside everything will be better than it was today. Maybe ponies will be more organized... Maybe.”

He sat at his desk, motionless. Several moments passed.

“The parent’s don’t know.”

“I mean, I’ll be dead by that time anypony hears this anyway, right? I might as well make it a bit of a confessional. The kid, Tropical, his parents think he’s dead. They didn’t think the pod would save him, when I asked. They didn’t even need to pay a bit, I volunteered my own, and still they wanted nothing to do with it. ‘A fools hope’, ‘crack-pot’, ‘vindicating a madmare’s obsession’ were the kind of things they said to me...”

“I pleaded and begged with the doctor to help me instead. He wouldn’t take my bribes, but he eventually agreed. Tropical had less than a week left, Everypony knew it, so the doctor pronounced him, I snuck him away, and the parents buried an empty coffin.”

“I feel terrible, but I think I did the right thing.”

The green pony then pressed a button, and the recording stopped. Twisting his arm around some, he then released a latch and his Pipbuck opened on a hinge, freeing his foreleg from its grasp. Making sure the device was resting on the top of his desk, he swiveled his chair around and began carefully watching the indicators. It had been an exhausting day, but he knew sleep would be impossible.

Eventually though, his exhaustion was enough, and the Administrator got a few hours of fitful rest.

There was no food, no long term supplies, though, so when morning came he filled whatever he could with water from the Atrium’s bathroom and left Stable 273 for good. Stepping up and outside, the powerful blast-doors included in every Stable’s construction clanged shut behind him, protecting its precious contents from Equestria - for however long it must.

~-~-~-~-~

~-~

Author's Note

And so the story begins! I hope it ends up being a good one.

This started as an attempt at completing National Novel Writing Month. The month is now over, but my story is not finished, unfortunately. Turns out 50k words in 30 days is hard. So, I'm working on editing what I have, releasing it, gauging how much interest there is my writing, and then deciding how much I should work to start updating this thing regularly.

Constructive criticism, impressions, and grammar/spelling corrections are welcome and encouraged.