“Blight!”
Counter’s grip flickered at the unexpected burst of sound. She hadn’t heard the actions of the alcove door.
“Blight in the racks! Dim Cores, I swear I – Ugh! Where are you?”
Counter carefully set the spindle of glassy filaments to the workbench and turned as would be expected of her. She tried to put impedance ratios and the subcycles of work lost to come from her mind.
Grower rounded a column, giving it a rough kick in her aggravation.
“There you are! Blight! That stupid, stupid numb-horn of an apprentice didn’t follow my guidelines – my guidelines, Ori – and now the entire batch is a complete loss!” She lifted several bound notebooks and began floating them around herself. Counter didn’t react. “Do you know how long I’ve spent on those? How long it will take to pick up the work again? I swear I could just... “ Grower tailed off for a moment, glowering at the notebooks she had gripped.
Counter shifted, trying her best to appear attentive to her herdmate. She did her best to approximate what other ponies would do, though she had few observations to draw from. Only half of a lifetime.
“Seven hundred cycles I’ve put in those strains, seven hecs! And that little idiot wipes it all out in a night. You know what that bastard did? Don’t make that face, I know he was ordered. That useless colt went and put an incubator over the entire quarter, mixing biocultures across seven racks. Turns out, he’s been doing that for decs, just now he was so blunted that he put it over my pure strains! I’d break his moronic neck if I could get away with it. He’s absolutely useless. Small blessing that we can at least still eat the standard strains. Dim Cores, Ori, I swear, that he’s supposed to succeed me is some kind of sick practical joke!”
Counter watched Grower as she fumed in silence. She felt her attention drifting back to her workbench and the incessant clicking and faint hum that filled her alcove. With an effort of will she kept her ears and eyes forward, on Grower. Grower’s pause stretched on so long, Counter composed a response and drew in a breath but was interrupted as her mouth opened.
“And you know what happened when I went to Planner Sapphire Beta? He said to ‘handle it.’ That’s it. ‘Handle it.’ I’ve been handling it for hecs, and nothing has changed! That dull-horn is so utterly useless, so dim, so backwards that I almost wish he’d be recycled so I could get at least some use from that collection of chemicals!”
Counter knew she should have felt some degree of disgust at such a reductionist approach of considering a fellow pony, but it was a kind of bare pragmatism that she and, admittedly, few others, could respect.
In the brief lull, Counter stated her reply from before. “There are no practical jokes in the Herd.”
Grower rounded on her, an odd expression on her face. “I know there are no practical jokes, Ori! Dim Cores and tunnel-vision, I get it!” Counter shrank back slightly because she knew Grower would expect it. Grower seemed to recognize herself and sagged with a sigh. “Sorry, Ori. I just… I’m just so mad right now.”
Grower deflated, let the objects she had been levitating fall without care, and leaned heavily against Counter. Counter flinched, as much at the careless dropping of her notes as the abrupt physical contact. Her grip flared once to attempt to catch the books, but winked out at precisely the wrong instant as Grower made contact. There was the sound of dozens of soft ‘whumps’ as the tomes landed.
Counter stood rigid, trying to regulate her breathing to something approaching normalcy. She fought against the flood of heat against her barrel. It felt like burning. If she could just find enough imagination, she could maybe make it feel like something else. Some cycle, she thought, she might manage it.
Grower shifted her head against Counter’s neck. “I’m sorry, Ori…”
“I don’t understand. What are you sorry for?”
Grower sighed. “You really don’t, do you?” A final rub and she pulled away. She stole a kiss – there was no other word for it – and took a step back. “I completely barged in. I know how you are about that. I just… needed to see someone. I can’t go back to the racks, I just can’t. Not thisyke. Not after… That.”
“Why did you not go home?”
Grower laughed. “And what? See Lu?”
“She is Counsel Sapphire Delta Lu,” said Counter, supplying both names.
“She’s a pretentious nag who will ‘help me come to an accord with my roiling emotions!’ That’s if she’s in a good mood and not trying to sleep. And you know I can’t sleep when I’m like this, and it’ll be a dozen subs before Curu gets home…”
“Don’t…” Counter’s face tightened at the mention of their stallion’s name of endearment. She could never tell exactly why she reacted that way. “... call him that.”
“Right, right. You don’t... Whatever.” Grower’s tone was one of earnest apology. “But no. I can’t go home either, and you seriously think anyone else would put up with me? No, it’s you or no one.” She pulled forward to neck, but paused.
“Go ahead.”
Grower reached her head forward and brushed their necks together. “Thank you.” She stole another kiss before backing up again. “Can I just… stay here? Watch you work.”
Counter nodded, as expected, a single down-up motion. “If you wish.” She lifted the scattered volumes and replaced them.
“Sorry again,” Grower said, settling herself restlessly on a the bench. “I’d offer to clean up, but it wouldn’t help, would it?”
Counter said nothing. She simply returned to her work, resuming from the point of interruption as best as she could remember. She lifted the spindle and tried to refocus her mind on the matter. It was a quiet task, considering. There was just enough mechanical and thaumaturgical noise that she could pretend she didn’t hear the breathing and occasional shuffling of another pony in her alcove. The spindle was cleaned and re-tuned, then came a series of coils and ratcheted plates.
“How do you stand this alcove being so cramped? I never can get comfortable here.” Counter tried to ignore the complaint and maintain her focus. A moment later, however, “How have things progressed? You haven’t spoken about your work to us in… a hec, at least.”
Counter settled the pieces to the workbench again and turned her attention to her mate. “It proceeds apace.” This was easy enough for her to tell – it was required to provide regular notices to Planners and other such, adapting it to her familiars was almost trivial. “I have added three more machines to the banks, the proof-of-concept concurrent computation tests are nearly concluded. There are peculiar edge cases that produce unexpected patterns, but the cause should be clear in no more than a dec, with the given suite of tests. I am constrained by limited Feed, but I trust that Planners Sapphire and Emerald have allocated resources appropriately, operating with concerns beyond my own limited purview. My current endeavor, as the concurrency tests are in execution, is an advanced model to verify the geometric computational capacity increase with linear –” She interrupted herself as she noticed Grower chuckling. “Did I say something amusing?”
“No, no,” Grower was quick to say. “I... That wasn’t exactly what I meant.”
“Oh. I was only attempting –”
“I know, Ori. Our Counter. But I wasn’t asking for a progress report. I just…” Grower sighed. “I just wanted to talk.”
Counter frowned and looked away. “Lu would be far better suited to conversation than I.”
“I don’t want to talk to Lu.”
The spindle bearing in column thirteen was beginning to grate. Counter decided she would have to replace it soon, ahead of schedule.
“What do you wish to talk about?”
“I don’t know.”
Counter said nothing, her gaze on the workbench. She was having difficulty keeping her thoughts from slipping into a logical roundabout with the Lorentz Contradiction.
“The Ruby Halls had another incursion by Diamond Dogs,” Grower said. After a breath, “That’s the third this dec. They must be getting desperate. Curu – I mean, Cavalier said the raids must have cost them a dozen, combined. A dozen! That’s… Well, it’s not like we know their numbers, that that’s an incredible waste!”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“And what business do they have in our halls, anyway? They don’t eat our food, it’s not like we’re expanding anymore, and all the minerals have been harvested and repurposed. What are they doing?”
Counter heard Grower grinding her teeth. She didn’t mention it, however, knowing that she didn’t like attention being drawn to her habits. She kept her ears turned toward her herdmate, but said nothing.
“And what’s Elta doing with that Topaz colt, what’s his name, Tun? Tun, I’m sure. Always wandering off, playing games in my racks, it’s astounding they haven’t gotten reprimanded yet! Foalish play is one thing, but that’s all they do! What if they were in the Ruby section when the dogs broke through? Where will the Planners and Seers place them? I don’t know!”
Counter considered this carefully. “Perhaps they will be Scouts.”
Grower stared at her, lips pursed. “A Scout. From my loins? Ha.” The laugh was without mirth. “Ha ha. There’s not a drop of Scout in my line, nor –” she started saying ‘Curu,’ but caught herself, “– Cavalier’s. That’s not for her. Him, maybe, but never her.”
Grower had gotten to her hooves and was managing a very small pace back and forth. Counter shuffled her papers, trying to bring a less distracting item to the fore. She tried to listen very intently on the hum around her while not diverting her attention from Grower.
“Why aren’t you a Core, Ori?” Grower’s question was very abrupt.
“I?”
“You’re from a Deacon line. Seers know you have the mind for it. Not that that’s a bad thing. My mate, at the heart of Sapphire Halls.” She pointed to one of the columns. “That glow could have been yours, Ori. So why isn’t it?”
“I don’t understand. Why are you asking me?”
“Just… conversation.”
Counter doubted that this was true, but could not identify the error in it. “My work is in numbers. That is what I do. I haven’t the power to be a Core, and my place was decided. I don’t bemoan it.”
“Well you should.” The tone was accusatory. “You spend so much time crammed in here alone, away from all of us, doing Seers know what, Elta’s running about, dogs in the corridors, the lights are flickering for order’s sake… Dim!” She bucked a nearby column, causing it to spark and rattle. The faint aquamarine glow from within flared and died. Counter shifted. “Oh, void, I'm sorry, I didn't…”
Even for her herdmate’s mercurial nature, Grower’s behavior was beginning to concern Counter. It was becoming difficult to not formulate a sequence of primes in her head. ‘An escape mechanism,’ as Lu had told her on more than one occasion. She was grateful, at times, that a Counsel was part of her mating subherd.
“That numb-horn apprentice just… So many hecs of work, lost. Lost, Ori! That was my work, my contribution! And he just went and killed it to the last sprout. In a blink.”
Grower wasn’t looking at Counter. Thinking it the appropriate thing to do, Counter stepped forward and placed her neck against her herdmate’s. It burned just as intensely as ever. This time it was Grower’s turn to flinch away, her head whipping around in surprise.
“I,” Counter began, “thought it might help…” Grower didn’t answer immediately. “Was I wrong? I know you usually…” The lack of anticipated response made Counter reconsider her words. “Why are you here, Sa? I do not understand why you are acting this way. You know I don’t.”
“It’s not that I… I wish, you… Thank you, I… It’s complicated, okay?” Grower’s ears flattened in anger and she kicked the column again.
Counter lifted a thick ream of papers from her workbench and slapped Grower across the face with it. Grower stutter-stepped, eyes wide.
Counter could not think of the appropriate words, so she said nothing. She was surprised to see Grower’s eyes tearing. There was no excess dust, and such a strike would not incite such a reaction, as far as she knew. It was easy enough to ignore as she set to opening the expanded metal shutters that enclosed the damaged column.
“You hit me,” Grower said.
Counter detached the Feed from high up near the ceiling, her attention folding so easily into the labyrinth of metal, crystal, and glass. Her grip reached in, detaching increasingly fine latches and mechanisms, exposing spools and gears and fibrous wires of all sorts. Each with a purpose, save at least one.
Grower simply watched her, rubbing her face slowly. Counter was only vaguely aware of this.
Another panel was removed and set aside. Counter pulled a tall rod free, layered with dozens of fine coils and gears, set aside as well. Small, square-ish lattices of crystal were extracted and sent to the workbench with care. At last, a small assembly was extracted, and Counter followed it over to the workbench and set about dissecting it. Paper-thin plates were flensed apart, stacked and sorted; translucent wires coiled impeccably and set in small trays with no apparent pattern, a system known only to Counter.
“How much,” Grower asked. Counter looked up, startled. She had quite forgotten that Grower was still present. “How much time did I… did you lose because of me just now?”
“Three cycles of work lost, at least. I am making assumptions about the state loss, but quite likely three and eighteen subs.” Counter saw that again tears were forming in Grower’s eyes. “Is there something troubling your eyes?”
“Ori, I’m sorry!”
“What for?”
“I’m just so scared. There’s nothing I can do, Ori. The Planners and Overwatch and Cores and that useless apprentice, and Curu and Lu and you and Elta… Don’t you know what they’re saying? They’ve reported Golems, Outside. That’s what they say.”
“Who says?”
“You wouldn’t know! You, spending all your life here, in your work! They, Ori, the Herd.” Grower pointed discriminatorily at a bulkhead. “No one actually says it, but they know it, it lurks in everyone’s mind and I’m so scared of it.”
“Golems aren’t real.”
“How do you know that?”
“They are the monsters of myth, told to children to instill cultural principles. There cannot exist a race of hornless, greedy to the point of cannibalism.”
“Why can’t there, Ori? How can you know? The Scouts say… We don’t know what’s out there, only they know what’s out there, and we have to trust that they’re keeping us safe, but they aren’t! There are dogs in the tunnels, Ori! What are they doing about that? If the dogs are changing, if Golems are real, what else might there be? Seraphim? Scaled Wyrms? The Kryd?”
Counter watched her, trying to understand.
“Up from the earth came the hoarders,” said Grower, reciting a litany, “the under-like, the hornless. With heavy hooves they marched, unrelenting and innumerable. The rock caved beneath their hooves and our grip could nary lift them from it. These myths come from somewhere, don’t they? Ori, say something!”
Counter’s horn flared and crackled. “I do not understand, Sa. I have work to do. Go home.” It was trivial to Send her. Counter knew exactly where home was from her alcove. A sizzling flare of light, and she was standing alone.
It was calm, again.
She thought for a moment. Lu was certainly the pony with whom Grower needed to talk. Counter didn’t know why she was so upset. Now they both had work to make up. Counter didn’t feel anger towards the loss, she could accept the vexing and unpredictable behaviors of her herdmate because it was expected of her to accept them. She decided she had made the correct decision. She spent a moment to guess how many cycles it would be until they spoke again.
As she set back to her work, before she let her mind be consumed in a lattice of crystal and logic, a fleeting thought crossed her mind. ‘If Golems are real, what else might there be,’ Grower had said.
Counter wondered if she should have mentioned the unblemished white orb and the indigo, pony-like phantasm that had taken to visiting her in her sleep – a mare of unparallelled beauty, with appendages reminiscent of those of Seraphim on her back, who insisted on calling her ‘her lost, little pony.’
