The boot-up process went slower than ever. Caches empty, repopulating. Tables getting indexed. As I got to the body integration, with a start I noticed the body ID mismatch. The new one accepted my personality without a hitch though. It was six generations newer than my own too. Wait, did such a generation exist at all?

And then I got the first network link, and my clock synced.

Clock skew: 38 years, 231 days, 3 hours, 0 minutes, 5 seconds.

Oh fuck. I'm being recovered from a backup.

My last memory was the gryphon assassin about to blow me apart. I triggered the emergency backup procedures back then. My full backup was there, in Elysium systems already, so only a small incremental backup was required, it took less than a second. And now I was alive again, restored from the moment of my death.

What for? Why would anypony need me almost forty years later? Curious writers? Historians? Just idle curiosity of an archivist?

With a sinking feeling, I realized I failed. They had killed him or turned him in to be executed.. And now just somepony, out of idle curiosity...

My eyes came online and I opened them.

HE WAS THERE!

A second later my motors were active, and without waiting for other systems to finish initializing, I threw my hooves around the grizzled, old pony. I held him tightly, crying. "You're alive. You're alive."

"So are you, my dearest Baton. So are you." He returned the hug and wouldn't let go for a long time.

My broadband links finally finished initializing, and I grabbed answers to all my simple questions. The lawsuit, the prison, the books, the voting. We were in Elysium, in replicant maintenance center, I was given a new, blank body, and Dusty and Mr. Night were here too, watching us fondly. And Fern Leaf, and Classified Ad sitting by them. Dusty hugged Fern Leaf with her wing, pulling her close. Mr. Night blinked some tears off his eyes.

"So, what now?" I asked my Portmaster.

"I'll be piloting the ferry. You'll be guarding the streets of Elysium. We'll have the afternoons for us. Let me ask, after thirty-eight years, are you still going to keep me chaste?"

I laughed and bopped his nose with my hoof. "I hope you have a sturdy bed, because after such a long wait I plan to ride you really hard."

I heard embarrassed laughter.

Another thing that nagged me came to the forefront of my mind. "Mr. Night?" I turned to the black unicorn, without ever releasing my hold on my stallion. "Would you mind a couple of experienced, dedicated replicants joining your guard force?"

"Of course not. How many are we talking about?"

Quick count. "Seven."

"Don't even ask, just bring them in."

I accessed the piece of Portmaster's fortune I had set aside on my own account, just in case. 38 years served it well, percentage made the initial deposit twenty times the original. I was a wealthy mare. I bought seven blank replicant bodies out of Elysium reserve supply and pulled the old backups out of the Hayburg archives. I bumped the link up to superluminal, paying the extra, and the download was complete within ten seconds. I initialized the backup recovery.

"What are you up to, love?" Portmaster asked.

"Some old debts. Thank them for letting you flee Hayburg when they show up. They got all reflashed following the investigation."

The seven ponies poured in through the door, confused. The tall mare on the forefront ran up to me.

"What the fuck is this, Baton? Why are we in Mars orbit?"

"You could show a little more gratitude, Hollow Point. I just bought you all brand new bodies, paid from my personal savings, and got you decent jobs on top of that."

"Gratitude my ass. We got reflashed thanks to you saving that jerk, and it took you how many... thirty-eight years to restore us? Why are you even still hugging that asshole? Only now I'm starting to dig through all the shit he put you through."

"Fuck you, Hollow, you're not my mother."

Author's Note

And this is the end... for now. I'm marking the story complete as it is, but Redhandle molested me for a bonus chapter of clop, and I agreed - I'll publish one more chapter, of happy pony-replicant sex sometime in the future.

A note for readers of Polarity. Here are my two messages to ToixStory:

[29w, 5d ago] Asking permission.
Would you allow me write a one-shot sequel to Transistance?
A kind of closure on the events of the story, rather positive too.
Luna gets a very special present for birthday.

And the second one.

[27w, 2d ago]Okay, I lied.

"Polarity" was just a bridge, a little something I had to get out because it was essential to something larger that has been growing in my mind.

Thing is if I ever announce anything I'm writing before finish, I never finish it. It's a jinx, a curse I've been living with. I asked your permission for "Polarity" when I had it written already. So I had to keep my plans secret from you. I have three other big things in the works, that got stalled due to me announcing them prematurely.

Now I have it written, pending proofreading, editing, title. And your permission. A 38k words story about an Earth pony stallion, and a replicant unicorn mare. City of Hayburg, a cesspit of debauchery. He's the portmaster, a well-intentioned, though misguided guy. She's a cop, trying to keep him out of trouble. It starts two decades before the Manehattan Revolt, ends a decade later. Tags: Romance, Adventure, Dark.

Will you agree for me to publish it?

Yep, that was enough to trigger the jinx, overcame only thanks to Redhandle's impossible tenacity. The story was written half a year ago. This time it was the proofreaders triggering the delay. Anyway, not my point - even when writing Polarity (...which I asked permission for, only after finishing it too...) - I had Portmaster fully planned out in my head. Two fresh inspirations - the image from the cover, by Fuchs, and newly read Transistance replayed the whole story in my head. Except it required me to set up some backstage elements that just had no room in it: Celestia being visibly ruthless but secretly benevolent, public opinion growing positive and accepting, fedoras still being in fashion etc.

Well, as for Redhandle... gawd... that man. I went through seven proofreaders (eight if you count the admin of the proofreader group who was supposed to find someone, but didn't.) I gave up on proofreading entirely - and then Redhandle contacted me with his offer.

Proofreaders of the proofreaders group were all full of excuses. Midterms, health, personal matters, backlog, losing broadband access, etc. If you claim these are not excuses, then hear this. This guy works in a mine somewhere in the frozen north of Canada. The job is really exhausting. His Internet connectivity is at mercy of the weather, the satellite link often going off for a week at a time, very dodgy the rest of the time. Imagine working with Google Docs over that. Imagine the ungrateful task of picking up two chapters after the previous proofreader, and after days of heavy labor spending your evenings correcting errors of some guy halfway across the globe. This is the kind of spirit I can worship!

And yes, he wasn't as thorough or as fast as many of the "group" (not bad, mind you, but still not a "pro") - but I really don't care how excellent you may be at your job if you can't get it done. My "Dead" bookshelf is filled with technical excellency of authors. Filled with worthless, dead stubs of stories, stillborn ideas and broken promises. I much prefer an average story with the [completed] tag, than a superior aborted fetus of one. And so I much prefer a proofreader who - despite overwhelming adversities - can finish the job adequately to one who spends four months deceiving me with empty promises of excellency, or quits two chapters in.