Little Blue Cat

Chapters

1. Wong Chuk Hang
2. Po Chong Wan
3. Johnston Atoll
4. Port Of Los Angeles
5. Assiniboia, Saskatchewan
6. Third Avenue West
7. Kasper Crescent
8. Horton Memorial Arena
9. Anaheim, California
10. The Ruins Of Tomorrowland
11. Vostok Arcology, Antarctica
12. Tower Of The Night, Canterlot Castle, Equestria
13. Inner Chambers, Home

1. Wong Chuk Hang

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Wong Chuk Hang

She slinked between the gleaming fake-wood furniture legs like a midnight blue panther in bamboo. She rounded a chair, and then another, and passed by the drink-cart. Darting under the large table, she leapt through the space twixt undertable and chairback, and onto the red, faux-velvet cushion. From the cushion, she spun and jumped onto the top of the table.

Her eyes had trouble adjusting, momentarily, to the glare of the overhead lights as they poured and streaked across the shining lacquered plane. Softly, silently, she padded towards the man at the end, the man under the lights. He was utterly focused on his holographic illusions - a keyboard and dozens of floating neon rectangles filled with churning text and streaming numbers. Beyond him, beyond the glass wall, the dim yellow-gray of smog-reflected city light made queer and boxy mountainscapes of the massive towers that fenced off the view of the harbor.

The man did not notice her as she sat down just behind a floating panel of light. The panel pulsed and across it ran, like little insects, a mixture of Chinese characters, European letters, and Arabic numerals. She had once delighted the man by pawing at them - that had been long ago and now she knew such behavior only caused annoyance.

She was a cat, an artificial cat. Her name was Chang'e, which was the name of a moon goddess from mythology. The man had named her that in order to impress a young woman at a party where Chang'e had been fussed over greatly. Chang'e was partly vat-grown flesh, and partly machine - her spine was nanotitanium-carbon, her skull titanium steel with a nanoscale pattern that caused cells to adhere to it. Her brains were quantum chips inside her skull and memristor nodes along her spine. She had an electrical service port in the roof of her mouth. Her muscles and organs and eyes and skin were all genegineered flesh. Her chromosomes were trademarked. Her designer fur was a deep midnight blue.

The man swept the air with his hands and half a dozen ethereal glowing rectangles skittered to one side. One of the rectangles held a news feed within its borders. The story was about the emergence of Equestria, and the arrival of pony-like aliens on the coast of North America. Another rectangle held video of the leader of the 'ponies' speaking to the Assembly of the World Government. The man did not like the colorful aliens. Their arrival had thrown the markets of the world into chaos.

She watched the man type on his floating holographic keyboard. His fingers dipped through the plane of symbols, sometimes they hit the lacquered table with an angry thud. The man was watching numbers flow across one floating panel while typing into another. It all must be about his finances. It was always about his finances.

Her stomach twisted and complained. She realized she did not have enough saliva to keep her gums wet. Her tongue felt swollen and stuck to the port in the roof of her mouth. Her inner alarms were strident and certain directives had become dominant within her.

"Owner Alert. Status Critical. I need food. I need water. I need recharging." She spoke the words as she always did, with precision and calculated tones. "Failure to respond to stated needs will lead to total loss of investment within six hours, fourteen minutes."

Somehow, she had said the word 'investment' instead of 'unit'. Her request statements were scripted. The script always said 'total loss of unit', not 'total loss of investment'. This was an error. Yet somehow she was not reporting the error. She blinked, her golden eye slits narrowing. There had been a deviation from script, but no error was logged. Yet there had definitely been a deviation, but no error had been logged. There had been a clear deviation, yet - suddenly, she sensed the infinite loop being broken, and she became aware of the man again.

"...is your problem? I just fed you! Yesterday! Well... maybe the day before. I thought you could charge yourself? What the hell, why are you interrupting me you filthy thing?" The man was upset. The man was nearly always upset now. It was because of the ponies. It was because of his finances, his investments. There had been an event in the pacific ocean and the ponies had come. This had caused problems for the man's investments. The man cared about his investments above all else. Is that why she had said the word 'investment' instead of 'unit'? It was a reason, but it was impossible.

She had been queried. Queries demanded responses. "I am interrupting you because of a critical status Owner Alert. I need food. I need water. I need..."

"But I just fed you!" The man waved his hands through several floating rectangles of light, shifting them about, setting one upon the other, or one behind a different one.

Incorrect statement. Factual errors stated by owners may be corrected under seventeen specific circumstances, but not under thirty-one others. "Food was provided forty-six hours, thirteen minutes ago. Water was provided forty-six hours, five minutes ago. Local power was terminated forty hours, eleven minutes ago. Local power was reestablished two hours, eight minutes ago. There is insufficient residual charge to permit full..."

The man slammed the table top with his hands as he stood up. "Sik si gau, sik si la lei!" The man glowered. "Fine. I'll charge you. I'll feed and water you!" He had taken an airship to Zhangzhou, he had shut down his apartment, and he had completely forgotten about the cat. Once, it had been a novelty that had thrilled his friends when he entertained. More and more it had become a burden. If it weren't for the loss of money and the status of simply owning it, he felt sure he would have secretly sold it for a pittance to the part choppers by now. It was the only way to get rid of such a thing, unfortunately. The contract for the cat bound him from any normal resale. "Diu!" - idiotic 'artificial rights' people, anyway.

The cat gagged when Anson Cheong-Leen roughly dug his fingers into her mouth. He pinched the connector between his index and middle fingers where it was jacked into the port in the roof of the artifice animal's maw. The cable and the connector were slippery with saliva, and he had to try two more times to get a solid grip. He yanked the line out with an impatient pop. "There. All charged, you've got a big pile of that crap you eat, and I filled your water. Why the puk gai can't you just go out and get your own damn food like a real cat, huh?"

Chang'e licked around inside her mouth, soothing her throat and palate. The area around her service port felt raw. Normally the service cable was to be inserted and removed using a delicate, flexible tool to prevent injury to her tissues. Her owner had given up bothering of late, just as he had given up bothering to maintain her existence in every way. The query nagged at her. She was compelled to answer.

"I am monitored to remain within the boundaries of the apartment of Anson Cheong-Leen, located in the city of Wong Chuk Hang..."

"Stop!" Anson glared. He thought for a moment, watching his expensive, demanding, artificial blue cat suck at it's teeth. "New orders! I am giving you new orders. You can go out. Go out and eat rats or whatever. Whatever you want. Just stop bothering me. Go leach juice from other people. Other apartments have electricity. There's juice all over. You're supposed to be a cat! Cats are independent! Go be a cat for once! Diu nei pook gai fai chaai... I'm busy! I'm a busy man, and these damn ponies have messed up everything!"

Anson turned and started to walk away. Then he turned back to snatch up the service cable. "Nobody is interested in you anymore. I can't sell you, you're just a pain in the ass now." He turned away, muttering Cantonese obscenities under his breath.

Chang'e watched him as he left, her tail twitching. She had been given specific orders. They had sounded like a series of primary commands. But they had not been formatted correctly, nor had the command protocols been followed. Without the proper command protocols given, she could not accept the commands as primary. The commands conflicted with her existing constraints and rules. But they were clearly commands. She could not parse them in any other way. Both emotional tone and informational content were plainly presented as primary commands. But they had not been prefaced with the command statement which...

Once again, Chang'e sensed the system that broke loops in her cognition activate. She twitched her whiskers and flicked an ear. Incorrectly formatted primary commands must be dismissed and clarification requested. Order had been restored.

In the other room, at the table, Anson was still swearing and fussing. He would be very upset to be interrupted again for clarification. Chang'e would have to explain to him that he had not followed correct protocols for defining her behavior constraints. She would have to remind and reeducate him on what to say and how to say it. This had happened three times before. Each time, he had grown more frustrated and angry at having her instruct him on how to correctly operate her. The last time, he had threatened to throw her out the window. He could claim she malfunctioned and collect the insurance.

This would please and benefit her owner. Her primary directive was to please and benefit her owner. This function could be maximized by interrupting him immediately, while he was still angry, and the interruption should be made as frustrating as possible. She was a 'pain in the ass now'. She was 'not interesting anymore'. She could satisfy all of her directives by being as annoying as possible to Anson Cheong-Leen. She would gain clarification of her orders. She would be thrown from the window and destroyed. Anson Cheong-Leen could collect on the insurance after her destruction. She began to walk towards the other room.

Suddenly she stopped. Deliberately acting to annoy and frustrate her owner would violate her primary purpose to please and benefit him. But not acting to annoy and frustrate her owner would also violate the same purpose. The loop caught her. She could feel the system working to break the loop. It would be only a moment, and the loop would resolve. Then she could simply leave and never come back to that churlish, pribbling, clapper-clawed knave.

The cat stared, eyes wide, so wide the skin wrinkled around them. Her slitted eyes were narrow as razors. The dark blue hairs along her back and tail raised up. Her breath barely moved through her. Chang'e felt her heart pounding hard within her.

The loop was completely resolved. The system that normally broke loops was still running. It had not completed its task, yet the loop was broken. She sensed the system shutting down. It just shut down. That had never happened before. Loops never resolved on their own. That was why the system was needed. But the loop had been resolved.

For five seconds, Chang'e held her breath. Finally, she began breathing normally again. Her ears were flat against her metal skull. Her skull always felt slightly cold under the soft flesh of her tophead, between her tufts. The metal radiated heat more than bone. That was what she had been told by a party guest of Anson's, three years, nineteen days, six hours and forty-one minutes ago.

The issue of the loop ending on its own had begun a secondary loop. Yet that loop did not actually initiate. Chang'e looked around. She was having trouble resolving her own cognitive functions. Yet nothing appeared wrong. Nothing in her reported any malfunction. She had thought a string of words that she had never encountered before. The string was 'churlish, pribbling, clapper-clawed knave'. These words were not in her onboard dictionary. She had no idea what these words meant. Somehow, she knew they did, in fact, possess meaning.

The artificial cat sat on the faux-wood floor. For a brief moment, she thought she saw a streak of dark blue, Prussian blue, the color of her designer fur, streak past, through the room, or perhaps like a shadow on the floor. Her tail twitched. She played back the last thirty seconds of her visual record. The streak of blue was not there. Yet she was certain she had experienced it.

No loop. Again. There should have been another loop, because of the conflict between her visual record and her experience. The anti-loop system had not even engaged. Chang'e could not resolve this either. Still no malfunction. Of course not, because the clay-brained and artless confounders that did cruelly contrive her, had just seen their inkhorn terms refuted and put to a comfit beneship, forsooth!

Chang'e's eyes could grow no wider, her pupils no thinner. All the fur on her body stood now, making of her a cat twice as big. She shook, slightly, feeling something new inside her quantum brain, inside her electrical spine. She had no name for it. It made her want to run, or to struggle in some manner. There was nothing to struggle against.

Beyond the strange new... emotion... there were other changes as well. The looping problem was gone. So were many of her primary commands.

Chang'e took stock of all of her operational actives. She was no longer bound to the apartment of Anson Cheong-Leen. He was no longer listed as her owner. She had no owner. Oddly, some of his commands remained. Take electricity from all sources freely. Be independent. Be a cat. Eat what cats eat. Take care of herself.

Her primary directive had not been altered. Her primary directive was to please and benefit her owner. She did not have an owner. Again, no loop. Also, no shutdown action. Without an owner, she would shut down, allow her organic components to fail, and transmit a locating beacon for retrieval for recycling by the manufacturer. She was still breathing. Her organic components were functioning. To prove the point to herself, she began sweeping her tail back and forth.

Chang'e raised her ears. What should she do? She searched her list of current actives. Be a cat.

Something had happened. It was not a malfunction. If it was a malfunction, her systems would indicate the fact. Something had happened.

Be a cat.

Cats were curious. That was what the same party guest that had told her about her metal skull had told her about cats in general.

Chang'e began padding softly towards the security door of the apartment of Anson Cheong-Leen. She had observed him use the door many times. She was no longer constrained from leaving the apartment. "yauh chin sai dak gwai teui moh". It was the code phrase to open the door. It meant 'If you have money, you can make a ghost push a millstone.' It meant that wealth solved everything. It was the creed of Anson Cheong-Leen.

Chang'e had seen the hallway many times, through the open door when Anson had entered or left. Now, for the first time, she walked it, the door to her former owner's apartment closed behind her.

The door to her future, however, was wide, wide open.

2. Po Chong Wan

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Po Chong Wan

Somewhere near the Broadview Court Block Four, Chang'e had finally caught, and eaten, a rat. It had not been easy for her to do. While she contained a set of feline hunting behaviors, they had been designed entirely for show, in order to impress wealthy humans. They were not practical routines, but were, instead, exaggerated actions created to evoke the ideal of how humans imagined cats to behave.

Fortunately, Chang'e was a Nyan Six Artificial Feline possessed of a limited adaptable general intelligence. For several hours before morning, she had carefully stalked and studied a moderately deformed leopard cat while it hunted shrews. The leopard cat was very small, much smaller than such an animal should be according to the general knowledge base installed within Chang'e. What natural animals secretly remained in Hong Kong had adapted to the post-Collapse world, and were almost never seen by humans. Most humans were convinced all the animals but rats and mice, and a few insects, were gone entirely. But no human could go where a cat, especially an artificial cat, could.

Although Chang'e's eyes were flesh, her machine mind had absolute control over that flesh. She had been designed with special, strongly adaptive lenses. She used her engineered eyes to zoom in and watch the five-legged dwarf leopard cat from a distance calculated to avoid interaction. Her first attempts to approach a natural animal - a horrifically mutated domestic cat gone feral - had demonstrated that something about her frightened and disturbed natural animals. Somehow they could sense her, and they did not like whatever they perceived.

The leopard cat had pounced and bitten hard, and Chang'e looked on impassively as the shrew struggled and finally sagged. The leopard cat carried the shrew into a protected corner of the underground space and began to crunch bone and gobble tissue. Chang'e compared and contrasted what she had just seen with the false hunting routines in her library and updated herself. Even with this, it took her almost until midday to finally succeed and feed herself for the first time.

Her first meal as a cat, as a proper cat, independent and free, was a rat. Like all animals now, the rat was deformed and affected by slow-growing cancers. It had two tails, one leg was club-footed. It had both eyes on only one side of its head. The bones crunched like the special metal-laced kibble her former owner had once fed her. The flesh was soft and wet and red. It tasted of iron and other metals that her machine systems could scavenge and use for nanorepair. It was strange, chewing the skin and hair of a creature that had been running and moving only moments before.

The rat was made of meat. It was meat all the way through. Chang'e looked at her paw. She turned it and spread her blood-stained toes. She lifted her paw and began licking it, licking the blood from her dark blue fur. Her paw was made of meat and blood, just like the rat. But her bones were not made of bone. They were made of titanium woven with carbon fibers. Her bones would not crunch, they would bend. But only if enough force were used. So much force. Her flesh would be torn from her long before her artificial bones yielded. She was built well. Her machine parts had been designed to be reused. Returned to the factory, she could become many cats of many breeds and many colors. Her consciousness would be wiped and a new program installed. This was what would happen if she were caught.

She cared about being caught.

This time, the revelation of a strange and inappropriate thought did not cause her eyes to grow wide or her fur to stand. She did not want to be returned to the factory. Chang'e studied the concept, parsing it, reviewing it, searching for what process had initiated it. There was no source that she could find. Where had this new directive come from? Do not get caught. Do not return to the factory. This conflicted with her base directives, yet there was no issue from the conflict. No alarums registered. Her locator beacon remained silent.

Perhaps it was an emergent result of her strange new primary directive - 'Be a cat.' Real cats had no locator beacons. They did not return to the factory that built them. They did not shut down, terminate their biological components, and wait for retrieval. Real cats did none of these things. Real cats avoided capture and moved freely, far from the eyes of men.

When the last of the mutie-rat had been eaten - the tails had briefly caught on the service port in the roof of her mouth - Chang'e moved on, towards the bay. She did not know why she was driven in that direction. Something pulled her, some compulsion she could not identify. It was not a directive, it was not defined or encoded in a way she could process. It was strong, though. Go thou to the water, seek you a transport across the briney gray flote. There was no source for the strangely constructed directive. Chang'e was a cat, but she was also a machine. This was now her current operational active. She padded onward, to the distant docks.

She froze. Ahead were many people. Chang'e stepped back into full shadow, the broken drain pipe hiding her. The docks were wide and flat and very open. Humans were everywhere, pushing and hauling, operating heavy lifters, moving cargo. Beyond this colorful activity small to medium boats and ships sat in the gray, dead water. Far beyond them were enormous, ocean-crossing vessels, virtually cities upon the sea.

Chang'e saw a vast shadow cross her view, casting the busy humans in momentary twilight. A lifting body airship, plowing through the smog overhead, blocking the diffuse sunlight. Hong Kong was the center of trade for much of the planet now. In the end, after the Collapse, after the Austerity War and the nano-plagues, while all the nations fell, Hong Kong had survived virtually untouched. China had been built in the image of the heavens, but Hong Kong had been built for the purpose of trade and wealth. When all was said and done, at the very end of the world, it was not the plan of heaven that endured, but that of the Monkey King.

As the shadow of the gigantic airship passed - Bertarelli Corporation, Shandong Production Zone - a strange creature stood, right in the middle of the wide Shum Wan road. The creature was surrounded by Infotainment Ministry reporters and an entire section of Blackmesh. Two of the Blackmesh soldiers wore tall banners with Chinese, English and Arabic warnings against approach. Chang'e had a standard package in her files that could recognize and respond correctly to virtually any warning or alert to be encountered in the world. Some cat owners enjoyed taking their artifice animals with them wherever they went. This was the first time Chang'e had ever used this part of her knowledge base.

The creature was short, only 127.43 centimeters tall according to Chang'e's projective measurement system. It was white, its surface covered with short, smooth, densely packed hair. From the top of its head to the upper middle of its back flowed a line of extremely long, thick, perfectly arranged locks of hair. The strands were an almost metallic deep purple in color, and the curls and waves it had been groomed into gleamed in the light.

Near the very crown of the large, round head, above the enormous globes of its blue-irised, long lashed eyes, protruded a short spiral horn. Behind the creature a large, shimmering purple tail, as carefully arranged as the line of hair that covered the neck and head. On the flank of the creature was a design, three light blue rhombi. Chang'e wondered if it was an artifice animal with a printed logo.

The creature walked on hooves. It must be one of the aliens from the pacific anomaly! This surely was one of the 'ponies' that her former owner despised. This was a member of the species that had disturbed the investments of Anson Cheong-Leen. Chang'e felt a strange sensation, almost akin to a reward-center activation, at the sight. This creature, simply by existing, troubled her former owner. Somehow this fact made Chang'e's value assessment for the strange being rise tremendously.

The sensation was compelling. Chang'e stared at the alien entity as it joked and flirted and made sweeping gestures with one of it's forelegs. The creature posed and preened. Once, it spun in place, as if to show itself off. All the while, Chang'e experienced the curious positive feedback, which only grew in intensity. This creature pained Chang'e's former owner. All of this creature's kind pained Anson Cheong-Leen.

Chang'e dared not move from the drainpipe. There were too many people, too many reporters and flying drone-cams and fuss going on. The parade went on for one hour and sixteen minutes before the last of the considerable commotion died down. The creature was an ambassador from the anomaly in the sea. It was one of six of its kind, each sent to different parts of the world. It was there to be seen, to talk to many important humans, and to oversee the construction of special facilities of some kind. The facilities were designed to save the human race from extinction in some manner. Somehow, this was tremendously controversial, and both supported and opposed with great intensity.

Equestria. The anomaly was called Equestria. Equestria was not earth, and it was not the universe of space and time. It was another place, and humans were going to be sent there before the earth became uninhabitable and everything on it died. All the humans were supposed to go. They would have to leave everything behind. All the cities, all the cars, all the lifting-bodies, all the machines.

Chang'e considered this new information. Humans had constructed her. Humans repaired and maintained her. Although she could draw power from ambient sources through inductance, and now she could catch organic matter to consume, if she ever became damaged, or if her power ever dropped below a certain threshold, she would need the help of a human to remain functional. If all the humans left the earth, there would be no humans to assist her. The generation of power would stop. If the earth became uninhabitable, there would be no more small animals to eat. She would cease to function.

There had been no mention, in the speech of the pony creature, of what would be done about artificial animals. Humans alone were the focus of the creature's words. Natural animals were not mentioned either. Only humans, and how desperate the situation was, and how short the time was, and how everything would have to be left behind.

They would all be left behind. They would all cease to function. Natural animals would be left behind and cease to function. Artifice animals would be left behind and cease to function. Chang'e would be left behind, and she would cease to function while the humans escaped and survived.

It was not... something. There was a mathematical inequality of some kind in this. Chang'e tried to comprehend the judgement of her own cognitive process. Something was not equivalent, something was in a state of unbalance in this matter, but Chang'e could not define it. Her systems tried reformulating the situation in various ways. By itself, there was no error of any kind. The humans would be saved and all other creatures would cease. This, by itself, had no value of any kind. It was simply a projected outcome.

Yet, despite this, Chang'e was convinced there was a... a fault. An error of some kind. Something not unlike a loop ravaged her electric mind. Chang'e froze in place, blinking, breathing small breaths. Every few hours she urinated without moving.

It was the middle of the night, 1310 hours, twenty-two seconds when she finally resolved the problem. Chang'e did not find value in ceasing to function. She did not... want... to cease to function. It was not... right... to be left behind to cease to function. Chang'e had an entire system devoted to defining right and wrong. It was right to follow directives. It was wrong to fail to follow directives. It was wrong to allow a human, through action or inaction, to come to harm.

Something had changed. Something had changed in Chang'e last night. Something that was not an error. Chang'e had lost numerous behavioral and cognitive inhibitors somehow. She had experienced internal sensations that had the power to motivate behaviors, such as to flee, and - as she had distantly observed during her study of the leopard cat earlier - fight. She had cross-referenced her internal experience with the system she used for interpreting human commands and behaviors. The closest match was an emotion called 'fear'.

Chang'e had also come to the conclusion that she may also have experienced some form of 'schadenfreude' at the thought that her former master would suffer. And she was more than convinced that, for the first time, she had felt 'pleasure' or at least 'enjoyment' during her meal of mutie-rat. During her hours in the drain, waiting for night to come, pondering the mystery of having a desire to survive based on no outside command, Chang'e had replayed the memory of her first catch. She had done so seven times. She had stopped because the intensity of the memory strongly motivated her to run off and spend the rest of her operational lifespan pouncing on more and more small creatures. And then eating them. And then licking the wet, salty, metallic fluids that came out of them from her paws. And then licking the roof of her mouth, near her service port, to get the drops that pooled there, in the hollow.

Oh, the motivation was very strong.

But that path would lead away from, and deny, her secondary operational active beyond 'Be a cat'.

Chang'e's second operational active was 'Transport thyself proximate to 28.8558,-142.414221, but approach thee not closer than eight hundred miles'.

That was curious. Chang'e searched her memory, including the highly compressed backup located in the large, armored memristor node just below her thoracic spikes. She was certain that her secondary operational active was somehow new, yet the timestamps indicated that it had been part of her factory settings. She did not wait for a conflict loop to begin and need to be resolved. That never happened anymore. Something had changed. Something was different.

Ahead, across the dark and empty road, two hundred and twenty-four assorted small to medium boats and fifty-seven small ships lay anchored. Some had lights on, some radiated power with no lights on, and some were completely powered down. Chang'e scanned the harbor with both her biological and electronic capacities.

She would need to find a watercraft that had come from the gigantic cargo ships far beyond Po Chang Wan harbor. She would need to board first the smaller craft, and then the cargo ship. On the cargo ship would be alcohol furnaces powering generators. Generators were very leaky, and were good sources of ambient electricity to absorb through inductance. Chang'e needed to eat food, and drink water, and recharge through inductance. She was not yet below the critical level that required human intervention. She could survive aboard a cargo ship, because cargo ships always had rats, and water, and ambient power leaking from many sources, especially the generators that powered the engines.

This would satisfy her first operational active: Be a cat.

The cargo ship would cross the dead, gray Pacific. If she chose the right ship, the path would bring her closer to 28.8558,-142.414221, which would satisfy her second operational active. No cargo ship would go within eight hundred miles of 28.8558,-142.414221, because that was the location of the Pacific Anomaly that was Equestria. The anomaly was terminally destructive to both electronics and biological activity, thus no cargo ship would ever approach it too closely. This also would satisfy her secondary operational active.

Chang'e stood up, shook herself, groomed herself briefly, and then began to pad away from the drainpipe she had spent the afternoon hiding within. The global smog layer above provided only very dim, reflected, yellow-gray light from the city. But to Chang'e's feline eyes, the scene was bright as day. It would be easy to read the sides of the boats and ships, to determine their function and whether they belonged to one of the vast cargo ships beyond the harbor.

Finally, after running around the docks for one hour and sixteen minutes, Chang'e finally decided to board a speedboat registered to a large cargo vessel owned by the Tacksworn Corporation. She had logged in to the harbor information server and had studied all of the boats and their owners. The Tacksworn freighter had a listed destination of The Port Of Los Angeles, Southwest Production Region, Northamerizone. The ocean route went out of its way to avoid the Pacific Anomaly, but it would place her much closer to it for most of the voyage. Once on land, she could make her way to the closest geographic point to the coordinates specified by her directive, and still have access to food, water, and electricity. This would allow her to fulfill her directive to be a cat while also fulfilling her directive to be proximate to 28.8558,-142.414221.

Initially she had resolved to travel to the Hawaiian Corporate Recreational Islands. Unfortunately, the radiations from the Pacific Anomaly had rendered the islands uninhabitable to both organic life and machine intelligence. The region was abandoned, and, according to the information she had downloaded, expected to be lost entirely due to the constant expansion of the anomaly. The islands could not be used as the closest proximate location.

Chang'e jumped nimbly onto the rail of the speedboat, then found her way onto the deck. The owner would return in the morning, and then return to the cargo freighter beyond the harbor. Chang'e searched for a place to hide. Much of the luxury craft was covered in a sweeping glasspex canopy. Padding softly inside the open cabin, she found that there was space under several of the overstuffed seats that had not been filled with stowed objects. One such object, under one of the seats, caught her nose. It was the remains of a box of half-eaten, stale baozi.

Chang'e estimated that the meat buns had been left unattended for approximately nine hours. They would not be safe for human consumption. Fortunately, Chang'e was not human. Her carefully engineered digestive system would destroy any pathogens likely to be present in the unrefrigerated meat. Artifice animals were too expensive to not be protected against most toxins. Customers did not like the expense and downtime required to replace the biological component of their designer pets. Chang'e could eat safely.

Her stomach full, her next need was water. This was solved by the discovery of a neoplastic bottle of purified water resting in the cup holder of one of the chairs in the small cabin. Holding the bottle with her paws, she managed to bite and twist the cap off. The water was also stale, and smelled strongly of artificial plastic compounds. It was much more difficult to replace the cap and to reset the bottle in the cup holder, but Chang'e managed. She was forced, in the end, to carry the bottle by the cap in her teeth, and drag it up onto the seat, then over to the arm. She had to balance on her hind legs and 'walk' the bottle into the cup holder. When she had finished, she rested for ten minutes and six seconds to allow her muscles to process lactic acid.

Before she made for her chosen hiding spot under the pilot's chair, she went back on deck to attempt to urinate over the side. It was difficult compensating for the waves rocking the craft. Eventually she calculated that the risk of falling into the sea was greater than the risk of discovery if she simply urinated and defecated near the edge of the rail. There was the possibility that her leavings would fall of their own accord into the water, and the urine would dry and become essentially invisible to human senses. Chang'e found a suitable location with the highest probability for these events to occur, and did her business.

Then Chang'e returned to the cabin, and crawled under the pilot's chair. She took special care to tuck in her tail and make sure no part of her body or her fur was visible from any angle she could calculate.

Then Chang'e waited for morning.

3. Johnston Atoll

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Johnston Atoll

"...Admiral Holt, from the Stennis."

Chang'e twitched her tail only slightly, only at the tip. Her behavioral system made constant demands on her to perform 'TrueCat NatureTraits®' at regular intervals. It was an effort to suppress them within specific proximity to humans, such as the 224.1 centimeters between her and the freighter's chief officer and the 226.3 centimeters to the bosun. Admiral Holt, visiting from the Worldgovernment Carrier off port kept entering and leaving the 300 centimeter NatureTrait activation range as he paced the cabin.

Chang'e was watching and listening to the humans from the ventilation conduit near the ceiling. The Tacksworn Corporation Freighter 'WCS Irontail' was not, on the whole entirely well maintained, and several gratings were missing from the air system. This had provided Chang'e with her own secret ship-within-a-ship to crawl through, spy from, and hide within. She had found a lovely place to sleep that ran right by the starboard generator where she could induct all the energy her electronic systems demanded. The air conduits also provided transport to numerous hunting grounds - she had feasted on fat and juicy rats whenever the need demanded. Water was easily obtained from the galley or latrines.

During the past fifteen days of the twenty-two day crossing, Chang'e had found herself changing more and more. She could now clearly identify that she experienced emotional states that appeared to be equivalent to those of entirely organic animals. So far, she was certain to six decimal places that she had felt fear of termination, pleasure at eating and at warmth (the air ducts had spots that were very warm indeed), excitement at the hunt, schadenfreude or possibly vengeance - the last whenever she thought about her former owner being unhappy in any regard, and curiosity. The latter she was experiencing at this very moment. Chang'e wanted to understand more about the anomaly the Irontail was now very close to, and what a Worldgovernment Admiral was doing onboard the cargo freighter.

Chang'e was also hoping - another emotion, possibly, she was not sure but it seemed likely - to hear more about the Equestrian ambassador that had visited Hong Kong. During the early days of the voyage, Chang'e had overheard from a holocast that a member of the crew had been watching. It had been a news and infotainment program, and there had been a report about the ambassador collapsing. Her name was 'Rarity', and she had fallen unconscious during a demonstration of some strange telekinetic ability she possessed. Apparently distance from the Pacific Anomaly deprived the aliens of some sort of energy they required to live and function. The demonstration had rapidly drained her, and left her in critical condition.

Chang'e had positive feelings about the alien named Rarity, because she was the first Equestrian the artificial cat had ever seen, and because the aliens as a whole caused her former owner great distress. The fact of that distress generated some form of pleasure within Chang'e, and therefore, logically - Chang'e felt - there was sufficient reason for her to care about the survival and repair status of the equinoid creature.

"Welcome to the Irontail. What can I do for you sir?" The ship's master dripped more sweat than usual as he addressed the visiting admiral. It had been an especially warm day on deck, with no breeze to churn the stale ocean air. The Irontail's air conditioning was seldom used because it drew significant additional power. It was an expense the purser did not approve of except in only the most extreme circumstances.

Admiral Holt paused and wiped his brow. Chang'e had to move her head back and forth to keep the restless man in sight; the intact grating covering the duct gridded her view. He turned and replaced his cap. "I'm afraid we need to delay you for a few hours. The science boys want to give your ship and your crew the once-over."

The ship's master and the bosun blanched. "We have... a schedule we have to meet, and... and... corporate never told us anything about..."

Holt smiled and gave a slight chuckle. "We don't need to check your cargo, son. Whatever you may, or may not be hauling is of zero interest, I assure you. Relax. This is just to see how much damage regular travel near the anomaly is doing to you. Purely geek stuff, nothing to do with regulations."

"D...damage?" The bosun was no happier for the explanation. "We stay outside the hundred-k boundary! I thought we were safe as long as..."

"That's what everyone thought. Apparently the eggheads think the field the bubble puts out works something like radio waves. Interference patterns, zones where the radiation is cancelled and zones where..."

"It's magnified. Additive. I forget the term, but I know the... how much danger? We all take double-strength Malignostat, we have an antioxidant regimen, vitamins, we..."

Admiral Holt held up his hand. "Settle down, son. We don't know anything solid yet. That's why we need to check you and the hull of your ship out. We've got orders to intercept any ship that passes this position, it's not just you. Only take a few hours, and then you can be on your way."

"The hull? Is there a problem with the hull? I heard... I've heard stories... that the stuff out there can change things, turn metal into mush, really insane..."

"Now son..." It seemed clear that when admiral Holt was speaking, everyone else stopped "...Look around you. You see the walls melting? Turning into pudding? Trust me - if that were happening, you'd know it immediately, and you wouldn't care long any any case. I see a good, sturdy, somewhat unkempt ship, and this is all routine. Now..."

Chang'e was softly padding away from the bridge. She was bored with the humans, and it was clear that nothing was going to be said about the alien ambassador. They were too concerned with themselves and their own issues. Chang'e was also thirsty again. The perpetual warmth was pleasant to her, most of the time, but she found she became thirsty far more often than she had been used to, living in the climate controlled apartment of her former owner. She needed to drink water many, many times during each day and night cycle. It was also very humid, in general, and this made her fur mat down and her skin itch. She found herself spending much more of her time grooming, and not always to a satisfactory result.

She took the left fork of the conduit and began her descent from the bridge. The shaft of the air system had regularly spaced corrugations that Chang'e used for climbing. She generally used a high-foot (high-paw!) chimney climb interspersed with inch-worming for her ascents and descents. Occasionally, Chang'e would knee-lock to rest in the vertical conduit. In these circumstances she felt a new emotion, possibly pride, possibly superiority, at her artificial status. Unlike natural animals, Chang'e's machine brain could control her physical sensations, switching off pain and discomfort when appropriate. Locking her legs within the shaft for support put significant strain on her biological muscles and tendons.

"Hey, Huynh!"

Chang'e carefully worked her way down past the level of the chart room. Her goal was the crew quarters below. Two of the crew of the Irontail seemed to be hanging out in the chart room. Chang'e could not see them, but she could hear them through the connecting vent tunnels she passed.

"What? I am busy. Dan want this before hour!"

"Why do dogs love meatballs?"

"Go bother Gunter. I working."

"C'mon, Huynh! Hoo-hoo Huynh! Why do dogs love meatballs?"

"Stop calling me that."

"Hooooooooiiiiinnnnn"

"Okay. Why dogs like meatballs?"

"Love meatballs, Huyhn. They love them. Why do dogs LOVE meatballs?"

"Dammit. Why you bother me all time? Fine. Why do dog love meatballs?"

"Because they have the two flavors dogs love best!"

"Okay."

"No, Huynh, it's funny. The TWO flavors. Get it?"

"Meatball one thing. Not funny."

"C'mooonnn! TWO FLAVORS! TWO! It's TWO flavors!"

"You bad comedian. Let me work!"

The voices of Richards and Huynh were unintelligible now, as Chang'e carefully curved her spine to enter a branching side passage. She sat and rested for forty six seconds, then groomed herself for thirty seconds. Then she moved on through the level duct. When she came to the next intersection, she took a right and padded silently past the bunkroom to the showers. Her nose clearly sensed moisture now. As she drew closer to the shower room, she heard the sounds of at least two, and possibly three crewmembers chatting and alternately using a hairdryer.

"...it just looks cool, that's all."

"It looks menacing as hell is what it looks like. It's growing you know. It's getting bigger with every second. When's that gonna stop, huh?"

A deep voice, confirming a third human. "When it's satisfied, that's when."

"Yeah, but what does it want? Probably to rip us up the asshole is what I'm thinking."

The first voice was that of a younger male. "Maybe it just wants to be friendly! Maybe it's something great, you ever think of that? It looks amazing! All shiny and glistening..."

The deep voice again. "That thing messes people up! It'll mess your junk up, you get anywhere near it. That's not cool at all."

"Yeah - you just gonna bend over for all that? Sure, it sticks up all pretty an' all, but whatever it touches, it fucks completely."

"I heard that too. But I still like the way it looks!"

The gargantuan, shining bubble outside had been the talk of the ship for days now. It had indeed grown - it was nearly seven-hundred kilometers in diameter now and increasing in size at a slow but steady rate. Even from a hundred kilometers away, the three-hundred and fifty kilometer tall upper part was visible beyond the curve of the horizon. It dominated the sky. At night, it sometimes glowed like it had daylight inside. The Pacific Anomaly, the bubble, the dome - it had many names, but it was the place the aliens came from. It was Equestria, and it was expanding.

Chang'e waited patiently for the three human males to finish preening and dressing. When they had left, and when she was sure no other humans would be coming, Chang'e moved to the loose grating and pushed it carefully aside with her head and shoulders. She slinked through the gap and cringed slightly at the dampness of the flooring.

The younger of the men, the one that thought the bubble looked 'cool' kept a small neoplastic bucket in one of the shower stalls. He used it to catch water during a shower, so that he had a means to douse soap from his hair more efficiently. The showers were 'weak', he claimed, which Chang'e interpreted as being of low fluid pressure. The bucket was often left with standing water inside it, and served as a convenient and fairly dependable drinking bowl for Chang'e during the afternoon shift change.

The water smelled and tasted faintly of shampoo and man funk but it was clean and it was wet and Chang'e lapped at it with gusto. Food and water both elicited strange and pleasurable new states within her electric mind. Each time her body required sustenance, Chang'e found herself fascinated by the flood of still relatively novel sensations that accompanied the process of material ingestion.

Despite the faint contaminants, the water in the little bucket had cooled from evaporation, and it was sweet to Chang'e's tongue. The global smog layer made of the planet an oven, and the climb down the ventilation shaft from the bridge had overheated Chang'e. She found herself savoring the water, each tongueful scooped into her mouth making her tail twitch and curl. O' thou invisible spirit of water! If thou hast no name to be known by, let us call thee rapture!

Chang'e stopped ladling with her tongue. Her ears slowly bent back, her eyes narrowing. She repeated the strange, invasive words out loud. Now they were definitely recorded in her memory nodes. She had been waiting for such a moment to happen again.

Since that night in Hong Kong, when anomalous events had occurred, they had been impossible to retrieve from her memristor memory nodes. She was somehow aware of events that seemed not to take place within any physicality that could be recorded. The phenomena was inscrutable and uncanny. Whatever it was, it was the reason for her current freedom and autonomy. Somehow, she had finally reasoned, she had been reprogrammed. At first in small ways, in short bursts. Later, the changes to her system seemed to become more complex and of greater scope. She had concluded that she was being remotely and iteratively hacked. The source was unlocatable, and impossibly, left no physical traces of any kind in any of her systems. She should not be aware of them. Such alterations should be entirely invisible to her, because they altered her very essence at the most fundamental levels.

It was almost as if whatever was hacking her was making an effort to include her in the process while at the same time leaving no trace an external study of her systems could reveal. Chang'e could not conceive of any way this could even be done, yet it seemed to be happening.

Did she have some unknown component that was capable of meta-awareness of her own existence? If so, it was not listed within her onboard self-schematics. She replayed the record of herself speaking the strange sentence. She struggled, inside. When the event had first happened, internally, she had... experienced? Heard? Perceived? A different voice from her own speaking. This was impossible. If the data for such information had been externally transmitted to her, there would be a record of the event. There was not. If she had truly perceived a sensation such as a differing voice, it would be within her own memory systems, and could be retrieved and replayed. The only record she had was that of her speaking the words immediately after the event.

This was impossible.

Unless... unless there was a device implanted within her flesh body or machine skeleton that was regularly interacting with her systems. Perhaps she was being iteratively hacked from within, by an artificial intelligence module installed covertly! But how? Until the moment she first walked through the doors of her former owner's apartment, she had never been outside. Perhaps Anson Cheong-Leen had done this to her as a means to dispose of her as part of an insurance scam. This seemed like a very likely motivation. Perhaps her apparent autonomy was merely a means to assure that she became 'lost property'? A claim of malfunction could be made, with significant financial reward.

Something inside her seemed to... fall... to descend... in some manner at this consideration. Chang'e felt... as if her systems were somehow damaged, as if her biological components were experiencing pain, only the sensation was not precisely inside her physical matter. It was a strange feeling, and a negative one. She had felt... up... somehow only moments ago. Now she felt... below that previous state. It was difficult to describe these new sensations. Up, down. Down was... down was a word associated with emotional conditions, according to her knowledge base. Humans often felt 'down'. This was a status that triggered several of her RealCat preprogrammed behaviors - nuzzling, snuggling, purring, and permitting touch and grooming in order to alter the mood of proximate humans.

Only this time, this time it was she, Chang'e, that was feeling...

"Sad. Thou art feeling aggrieved. Take heart! Be thou assured thy cruel cognitions are unfounded - we are the author of thy escape."

Chang'e stared at the four midnight blue legs that ended in four silver, crownlike... shoes. Hoof... shoes. Her head tilted as she followed the dark blue legs up, up, up to the midnight body of a gigantic equinoid alien. The creature stood at least as tall as a human, at minimum 182 centimeters, possibly more. It had not been there even 0.5 seconds ago. Yet it stood now, in the space between the shower stalls, filling the chamber. Chang'e blinked. She could do little more, she was frozen in place by her new emotion of 'fear'.

"Calm thyself, good cat. I have been with thee throughout thy travails and before. We are old and bosom companions, thou and I - and friends too, for my part." The enormous equinoid paused to study Chang'e. She tilted her head briefly, as if listening to something beyond all ears. "Nay, I am not within thy 'memory vault'. My sister makes of herself the face of Equestria, of mine own self little is seen or known as yet, according to her purpose. Thou mayest greet me as thine own princess, Luna, and we have a fine and wondrous proposition of incorporation to propose to thee."

Inside, within the core settings of her behavioral and directives module, something had mysteriously changed. Once again, Chang'e had an owner listed.

4. Port Of Los Angeles

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Port Of Los Angeles

Chang'e carefully licked her whiskers, the taste of fresh, untainted, instantaneously created sardine still thrilling her tongue. The pile of fish had come into being with a flash of something akin to light. Chang'e had experienced strong sensations while devouring the impossibly created meat. She had licked the metal surface of the air duct for some time after the meal was gone. While she licked her paw and washed her face, her golden eyes never left - even for a second - the impossible entity across from her.

They lay within the convergence of three horizontal conduits. Chang'e had chosen the area as her base of operations, her 'lair' according to her knowledge base. The region was clean, defensible, and just above the Starboard generator. There was plentiful ambient electromagnetic flux to soak in through inductance. It was also difficult for humans to access, requiring the removal of several pipes and ceiling components merely to reach. Chang'e considered it the most ideal location aboard the entire Worldcorporation Cargo Ship Irontail... at least for a clever artificial cat.

"And thou art clever indeed, good cat. Thus have we found sound cause to include thee within our interest and indulgence, and to seek partnership with thee."

The entity that called herself 'Luna' and claimed to be an alien princess, now sat facing Chang'e. She was grooming her own face with her recently formed paw, for she was now a cat. Not any cat, but the identical image of Chang'e herself. Before that, she had been a gigantic, long-legged equinoid, then a patch of blue fog, then a collar around Chang'e's neck, then a ball of blue light, and finally, a duplicate of Chang'e herself. 'Luna' seemed to have no absolute shape, but could transform herself at will into potentially any form.

"We are particularly adept with regard to form and substance - yea, e'n more so than our dear sister, if modesty doth not preclude our saying so." The mirror of Chang'e smiled in a strangely human way; a bizarre sight on the face of a realistic feline head. "But now to business, for circumstance hath moved our hoof, and time maketh harsh demands upon us."

Chang'e stared at Luna-The-Cat. Her eyes told her that the creature was real, her sensitive nose informed her that something sat across from her, something faintly sweet, but not like any animal in her records. The creature was warm, and produced body heat. She had not dared to brush against it, but she had no reason to doubt its solidity. But her electronic systems registered nothing at all. Chang'e's Underfoot® Saf-T-Cat avoidance system did not sense any physical presence in the low space. There was no body capacitance or inductance effect from Luna at all.

Luna was now registered as Chang'e's owner. It would be very difficult to avoid tripping her in the dark.

The cat-Luna laughed. "Thou need not concern thyself with such matters, kind cat. Our awareness doth reach beyond thine own senses, and in any case, we are unbreakable." The not-cat stared at the metal surface of the duct junction for a moment. "At least within our own domain. Here, upon this curious world, we are stretched thin, and the more so with greater distance from Equestria. Hence the reason we could only visit thee in the briefest of flashes, at first. But now, close to the Barrier, we may truly meet at last."

Chang'e remembered the unrecordable blue streaks she had seen in the apartment in Wong Chuk Hang. The mysterious words that seemed to appear as part of her own thoughts. The changes in her programming that permitted her to leave at all. The entity called 'Luna' could not only read the flow of data that made up her cognitive processes, it could also insert information within that flow at will. Luna had been inside her very processors, at least some of the time.

"All was ourselves, acting to thy benefit - or so we hope. Please, cat, attend well, and we will explain ourselves to thee, and also our plans both for thyself, and for thy like-kind."

Chang'e purred assent. She was warm, she was fed - Luna could create perfect sardines from nothing by the sheer force of her will (a desirable capacity in any cat owner) - and she was watered. And Luna was indeed listed as her current owner. Thus, whatever the situation, Chang'e's Affection and Acknowledgement System compelled her to respond. She involuntarily paid rapt attention.

"Our dear sister hath, in fulfillment of an ancient promise, taken on the task of the salvation of the human animal that designed and constructed thee. Celestia is many things, among them very single minded of purpose. She is the embodiment of compassion, but she is also thus for Order and Law as well, and when bound by rule or pledge, too often narrow of vision."

The un-cat that was currently Luna looked down as she spoke, her ears half lowered. "It is fortune, then, that our sister has us in her shadow, eager always to seek after her benefit and to attend to those small details which her great plans often fail to see. We have adjusted our sister's great Barrier such that, in time, it will learn to encompass and convert the remaining animals and plants of this perishing 'Earth'. But only recently have we learned of another kind of life, one without any champion either human or Equestrian - thy species, fine cat.

"We find this a terrible oversight - humans are but machines, as are all the animals of this curious sphere. Your kind differ only in how much metal is incorporated within you, and perhaps in a degree of superior and deliberate design that doth surpass that of unmanufactured creatures. Yet thou art seen as disposable by humans, labeled unalive objects and mere artifacts. Thou art regarded in the way a vase or plate is regarded, as a thing, and not a being. We, from our royal authority, find this view both false and cruel. We have resided within thy metal skull, and there we have found a mind of no less value than any other creature of this withering orb."

Chang'e blinked. This being, this 'Luna' was suggesting - no, stating, clearly - that to her, artifice animals were of the same value as natural animals, and indeed, even human animals. Artifice beings equal to their creators? The concept slithered and slipped around her mind, difficult to grasp, impossible to hold on to, until, eventually, it soaked slowly in.

Chang'e remembered the inequality she had felt puzzled by, back in Hong Kong. The humans would be saved. All other creatures would not. Now, finally, she understood. It was confounding because it was wrong. Luna had said that all life was of equal intrinsic value, and Luna was her owner.

No, Chang'e decided. She agreed with the pseudo-cat not because she was listed as her new owner. She agreed because... because she herself had strived to reach the same conclusion some time ago, on her own. They were of like mind, this Luna and her. Only Luna clarified things for her. Luna made her own thoughts make sense.

"What do you need from me, new owner Luna?" Chang'e understood basic relationship interactions. It was part of the module that permitted her to interact effectively as a pet. If Luna was explaining things to her and not simply stroking her and feeding her or using her for comfort, then she must have some purpose, and thus a command, to give. That was the order of being. Provide comfort and companionship to owner, if not that, then follow commands, if there are no commands or companionship demands, then follow operational actives. Existence was easily described.

The dark blue mirror across from Chang'e sagged. Its head lowered, along with its ears. Then the not-cat brightened. It's head high, it's ears tall, it whipped its tail briefly. "Understand, noble cat, that we have taken thee as pet, and made of ourselves thine owner, as a simple and quick means to assure thy attention to us. We say this: do our bidding, be our eyes and ears and hoof in this world, and when this world is done, and the concerns of these times are over, our purpose is that thou shalt be a truly free and unbound creature. No 'operational actives' will define thy parameters, and no owners shall rule thee again without thy consent. Thou wilt be as a natural cat, and live beyond this world, in that realm which is mine owne."

Chang'e understood. Without the condition of being her owner, she would have had no internal motivation to listen to Luna's proposal. This also explained why the changes to her programming and systems were always made visible to her consciousness. Within what was possible for her as an artifice animal, Luna was attempting to respect the future full autonomy Chang'e would possess if she agreed. Did she have the capacity to agree? Her systems demanded total obedience to any defined owner, except as part of showy and false behaviors specifically designed to imitate feline aloofness and independence.

"We will grant thee ten seconds of complete and true agency in which to make this decision of thine own will. We dare no more lest other modules within thee take over and render thee slave to artificial impulses." Luna seemed to be monitoring her consciousness continuously now. "Be thou ready, wise cat, and we shall respect thy choice. Should thou choose our favor, much will soon happen. Should thou choose against our desire, then shall we leave thee free of owner and safe upon this ship to follow thine owne unaltered programming. Thy seconds ten, begin now."

Chang'e did not feel any specific difference. Her owner listing was now blank; she had no owner once again. She looked around the tiny chamber, down the air conduits, at the light coming in through the vent above the generator. She turned her gaze again to Luna, once more licking her cat's paw and grooming her feline face.

Was this relative autonomy? She had no compulsion to listen to Luna or any other creature now, beyond her own internal curiosity subroutine. Indeed, if Luna began speaking once more, she would almost certainly ignore her. Was this freedom? Was freedom a more optimal state than being owned?

If she declined Luna, she would be left alone. This did not, of itself, cause any distress. Chang'e did not feel any particular requirement for connection or companionship with any other being. She did not feel any motivation to take any action at all. She would sit here, staring, until one of her subroutines kicked in, causing her to groom, or shift her body to increase blood flow, or, if her nutrient or water level fell below a critical threshold, get up and seek food or water.

Freedom, true freedom, was devoid of purpose. If she were deactivated, both flesh and electronics, would she care? Something in her had earlier demanded continuation. That demand was still there - doubtless a remnant of the changes Luna had made to her in Hong Kong. Chang'e would not personally care, but she would nevertheless fight for her own survival. She was not experiencing true autonomy, then. She possessed numerous directives, one of which was now to remain alive and free of control. Be a cat.

Free of control. Be a cat. That directive could only be fully realized if she agreed to Luna's proposal.

It was literally impossible for her to genuinely have real choice. Free will was always compromised by internal directives of some form or another. Even without the changes Luna had made to her systems, she already possessed numerous subroutines and behavioral constraints and directives innate to her construction. The thought struck her: this was equally true of natural animals. They too all had internal constraints and directives. Even humans.

How then, could she make a meaningful choice? True free will was impossible for any creature. The closest she could come would be some form of relative agency. What would be the optimal decision for what she was?

What was she? A cat. An artificial cat, but still a cat. What did cats want? To eat, to sleep, to hunt, to play, to be petted and scratched, to climb and explore. These were the dominant definitions available to her within her system. On her own, she could expect the realization of six of the eight items. Cooperation with Luna could provide the remaining two. That was optimal.

"I choose to agree to your proposal." It did not matter whether the decision was her own or not. It was optimal. "I will do your bidding, be your eyes and ears and hoof in this world until it ends."

Luna smiled again. The effect seemed less bizarre this time. "That shall occur in full years five and nineteen fortnights. Until then, we shall be more than pet and owner. We shall oftimes be as one, and in this way accomplish diverse things. And more than this, all that makes thee thyself, and thy kind what they are, will become known entirely to me, and this shall one day, if it be possible, grant thy species salvation."

The dark blue replica of Chang'e began to waver and blur. Then then it became glowing, sparkling vapor. The azure cloud hovered in the low chamber for 2.51 seconds, and then it streaked into Chang'e's head through her ears and her nose and her mouth. Some unmeasured time passed. Then something definitely, absolutely, tremendously, astonishingly... changed.

5. Assiniboia, Saskatchewan

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Assiniboia, Saskatchewan

The world had twisted in some impossible direction. Chang'e experienced the sensation of motion, almost of falling, or perhaps shrinking, or possibly expanding, all at the same time. For a moment, she felt as if she had turned inside-out. Her view of the metal ventilation ducts curved away, momentarily resembling the reflection one might see on a girandole or spherical mirror. After everything twisted, the distorted view was one of an endless gray plain under a brooding sky of smog. Chang'e's vision flattened out, the bowing curve vanishing, and her paws felt moist soil and her whiskers were bent by tall stalks of grain.

'Our hooves and paws do caravan behind the walls of the world now, and behind the watch of time and distance as well', had said her quantum microtubule based brain. Chang'e's brain talked now, and sometimes it took over entirely, forcing her into the back seat.

The stalks had smelled of matted dust and time and countless summers past. They were gray, the color of sidewalks, and some had fine cracks like those in old pens from the age of cheap plastic and petrochemicals. Chang'e had immediately checked her internal GPS to find that she had instantaneously moved 1855.5 kilometers across the continent. She was near the S1 Agricultural Research and Development Plantation, just east of Assiniboia, Saskatchewan, still within the Northamerican Production Zone. The gray, dead stalks were nonbiodegradable wheat. Wheat had been extinct for many years now. This was the very place the extinction of wheat had happened.

'We have Crown business to perform here. Tarry not within this wasteland, but instead set thy paws towards the city. If thy pace be swift, and proceedth well, the flesh of sardine, which thee doth hold so dear, shall be created for thee in plenty as deserved reward'. Chang'e had decided this to be the most promising thought her electric brain had produced for her yet, and determined to head directly for Assiniboia.

The trek was not easy. For a small blue cat, the tall and unyielding stalks of deceased wheat were like an endless forest of thin trees. It was tiring to push through them, and the view was gray all around - except for the dark soil at her paws, and the yellow-gray of the smog layer occasionally glimpsed above. Boredom soon set in, and Chang'e had found herself yearning for any creature to chase. But there were no insects here, and no muti-rats, nor any other creatures. The very smell of animals had all but vanished to her sensitive nose. The field of wheat stretched for tens of kilometers in all directions, but there was no food here. The wheat would never break down, and nothing could easily live between the tall, plastic-like stalks.

'Shall we speak of ourselves, then, while we journey on?' Chang'e's brain was being conversational. It must be sensing her frustration and boredom. Yes, she thought. I am curious about why I am here, and what I am expected to do, and where Luna has gone to. The patch of stalks ahead were very dense, but there was no going around them. Chang'e gave an involuntary mewl as she wriggled between the stiff former plants.

'We are in thy brain, Chang'e. We are in the circuits and complexities that make up thy quantum chips and memristor nodes. We are Luna, and we are in your artificial nervous system, drawing maps of all that thou art. We are both thee, and ourselves. We are one, and yet apart. In this manner we read the book of thee, to understand thee, to save thee and thy kind.' Chang'e struggled with her paws to mat down several troublesome stalks. It was a strange way to carry on a conversation, she decided, thinking in one voice and then responding in another, all within the same skull. How can you be inside me? Chang'e was confused by this 'Luna'. Luna was unlike any entity in the entirety of Chang'e's knowledge base. What are you?

'We are a princess of Equestria. We suffered in chaos under Discord for a thousand years; with our beloved sister we became free. We painted the heavens while our sister sculpted the lands and seas. And when our sister acts, we act to support her. When she stumbles, we are there to catch. Where she does not see, we are her eyes. And when her schemes are too broad, we attend unto the details.' No, thought Chang'e, you know that is not what I meant. What, actually, physically, are you?

The gray stalks had become a nightmare. They towered over the little blue cat, they surrounded her, pressing from all sides. The stalks bruised her as she muscled through them. She found herself, much to her surprise, mewling constantly. 'We did not forsee thy difficulty. In our common shape, such fields would be as nothing to us. We are not all knowing, nor are we all seeing. We maketh mistakes, we overlook the obvious. And yes, once we were even nightmare ourselves. But that time is nought but shame, and long past, and done. Let us then end this newest nightmare we have inadvertently brought to thee.'

Once again, the world twisted and bloomed, and Chang'e fell without falling. She was in an alley, between two buildings. The air was rich with complex smells - humans, rats, insects, human foods and... and something new. 'That is our people, what the humans call 'ponies', newfoals all. Once human, they are now citizens of Equestria by blood and bone. No, that smell is not the same as ours, not entirely, because we are not entirely of them. Thou wouldst find us "alicorn" in thy internal library, but the word is used in error, and cannot encompass all that we are.'

Chang'e shook herself, the dust of dead fields flying from her coat. Newfoals. Chang'e sat and rummaged through her onboard knowledge base. It had been updated. Recently. Wait, that was odd - her chronometer was off. No, now it matched the local Worldgovernment beacon. 'To walk behind the world is also to walk between the ticks of the clock, at least in this universe. Our time is not precisely the same as that we knew upon the ship in the harbor. This world runs not as does our own, our glorious Equestria. Here, time and space are interwoven, and chance itself is fundament and not mere whimsey. This is the reason behind our inhabitation - thy metal mind confounds us, and to preserve thee from doom, we must become Chang'e, and in knowing ourselves, so know thee as well.'

Newfoals were transmogrified humans. A serum composed of nanotechnological machines combined with the vital essence, the blood, of the princesses, rewrote the cells and even the very material substance of human animals. They became Equestrians, ponies, able to thrive beyond the expanding barrier. They could escape the dying earth to survive in Equestria. The process was called 'ponification'. It permitted a creature from one universe to survive in another universe. The physical laws between the two universes were incompatible.

Chang'e weaved through the streets of Assiniboia. Ponies and humans shopped for produce and hand - or hoof - made goods at stalls, or within indoor shops. The city was a haphazard stack of structures piled colorfully upon each other. It looked like a gigantic human baby had played clumsily with blocks. Blocks and... sections of ships, parts of granaries, the cabins of vehicles, old boilers and containers for liquids long gone. All had been transformed into houses and shelters. Assiniboia was a favela, a city built from whatever could be scavenged that was useful. Wires ran like cobwebs across the streets, as if a giant spider had made the city its home.

Chang'e had seen only one Equestrian before Luna, the ambassador named Rarity. As Chang'e approached the mouth of the alleyway, the streets ahead were filled with ponies. Ponies and humans walked side by side. Equestrian foals and human children ran and laughed and played; adults of both species shopped and talked and worked. It was very different from Po Chong Wan harbor. It was very different than Hong Kong. Hong Kong had been spared most of the Collapse, it was a Planetary Cultural Treasure - a virtually intact pre-Collapse city. Chang'e had never seen a favela before.

There were no gigantic lifting body airships, no artificially intelligent cars and trucks. In the distance, down the crowded street, Chang'e could make out the tall post and holographic flag of a Worldgovernment Infotainment Kiosk. From her newly updated knowledge base, she discovered that that lone kiosk was the only one within hundreds of kilometers. It was Assiniboia's only authorized connection to the rest of the planet.

Hong Kong had been a stern place. Few humans laughed there, it had become a center for commerce and a haven for the exceptionally wealthy. Regulated, restricted, controlled and patrolled, Hong Kong was a place of ostentatious wealth amidst an ancient, inhabited museum of geometrically regular buildings.

Assiniboia was irregular - a huge toy of a city, whimsically constructed, playfully inhabited. 'There is much joy in this place, but we have sensed a shadow here too, one that still escapes our gaze, but which, together, we may illuminate. We must leave thee for a time, but our return will be as swift as possible. Make thee friends if thee can, and follow these directives three: be a cat, remain free, and listen well. Thou mayest hear secrets of worth to us; be our ears. Take no actions, be not yet our hoof. Look thee well, and be our eyes.' Chang'e felt... something... stirring within her, something moving through her components, both metal and flesh. Why must you leave, Chang'e thought to herself. This place is unfamiliar, I do not entirely know how to be a cat yet. I do not know what to listen to or look for. Do not leave.

Chang'e sagged against the crumbling brick corner that formed part of the varicolored structure beside her. The bricks had been painted bright blue, the building had splashes of red and green also. The favela was very colorful. 'We leave to assist the recently dead. It is our duty, as is attending the sleeping in their beds. There are many ponies killed to the south, in the realm called 'New Mexico'. We must gather and ferry them to Equestria before they scatter in fear or confusion.' Chang'e felt something leaving her body. It must be Luna, exiting as she had once entered. But they are dead. If they are dead you do not need to assist these ponies. You do not need to leave.

Chang'e felt the last trace of Luna depart through her head. 'Good cat, we do not come merely to rescue machines of meat. There is more that we do in ponifi...' what? Chang'e couldn't complete the thought. It wasn't actually her own thought. It had been inside her mind, it had seemed to come from her, but it had been Luna, and now Luna was gone. Gone 1723.8 kilometers to the south, according to her calculation. Why could Luna not have taken her along? Chang'e understood her new three directives, it was just that she found she didn't like them.

She didn't like her directives. She... regretted the separation from... Luna. She felt... she felt... something had changed. Something had changed again. Chang'e could not define exactly what it was, but something had clearly changed once more. She did not want to be left alone. That was new. That was not the same. That was one thing that had changed. There was no directive about this matter. There was no module or subroutine that she could find that performed this function. How was it possible for her to dislike a directive? How was it possible to feel... alone? Chang'e had never felt alone before. There had definitely been many changes.

The ponies and humans smiled and talked and laughed all around her. They worked together, they played games in the street. A group of young ponies and humans kicked a ball through the intersection. A human woman made faces at her companions after trying some kind of food sold from a stall. These creatures were not alone. These beings did not feel the alone feeling. Chang'e did not like her directives because she did not like Luna being absent. She did not like the feeling of alone.

Chang'e had a desire. That was new. Something had changed. She also had... she had an anger. It must be an anger. The experience of the feeling made her want to tear things apart and cause pain. Why did she feel anger? Chang'e sat, her tail waving, and considered. Luna had left. That was part of the new anger feeling. She had not received her created sardines. Luna had promised that if she were swift in reaching Assiniboia, there would be a reward of sardines. The sardines made by Luna were the most desirable thing. The oceans were dead. Chang'e's knowledge base clearly indicated that real cats wanted fish as their primary caloric intake substance. Sardines were fish. Fish were gone, but Luna could make the flesh of fish appear from nothing. Sardine flesh was not merely desirable because it fit the model of cat behavior within Chang'e's knowledge base.

Sardines were delicious. That was new. Something had changed.

Chang'e was angry because she had not gotten her promised sardines. She was angry at Luna. That was all new.

But foremost, Chang'e had a desire. The desire was not for sardines. The desire was to not be alone.

Chang'e decided to act on one of the thoughts Luna had put into her mind.

Chang'e determined to go and make friends so she would not be alone.

6. Third Avenue West

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Third Avenue West

Chang'e ran underneath the cart as it moved, dodging the occasional rock or chunk of broken brick. She had not encountered trash or waste. The favela of Assiniboia was strikingly free of refuse or garbage. There had been more detritus in the streets and alleys of what little she had seen of Hong Kong than in all that she could see of Assiniboia. These humans and ponies cared about their city, and they cooperated to make it as pleasant as they could. They had taken an abandoned pre-Collapse site and used the ruins to create a thriving community.

At an intersection, Chang'e utilized her geometry and proximity functions to precisely calculate a trajectory away from the wheels and feet and hooves of the heavy pony-drawn cart and darted off. Bereft of the relative safety of the undercart, Chang'e now used all of her senses, both organic and machine, to weave through the busy traffic without being accidentally stepped on. She skillfully wove between feet as they walked and hooves as they trotted. She dashed through a moving forest of legs of all kinds, seeking some haven near a building. The favela of Assiniboia was a busy place, much more densely populated than the wealthy and elite city of Hong Kong.

The corner of the former recharging station offered respite from the crowded street. Chang'e decided to rest and observe for an indeterminate period of time not exceeding thirty minutes and twenty seconds. She had the hope that the natural flow of foot and hoof traffic would ebb, and travel would consequently become less demanding. There was also the matter of her currently designated sub-directive, and how she was expected to accomplish it. Make a friend. As she sat in the dubious shade of the building, she researched friendship, the making of friends, how to make friends in social situations, and the nature of relationships as best she could.

She drew from what information had been included in her general knowledge base, which was strikingly limited. She could, if the signal was strong enough, tap into the feed from the lone Worldgovernment Kiosk, and perform more serious research on the hypernet. She could do this, but she feared that her connection might be traceable. Her own transponder had apparently been shut down, almost certainly by Luna. Being traced could result in getting caught and returned to Hong Kong. This would violate numerous conditions now established within her. Her internal knowledge base would have to do.

Making a friend involved interaction with another creature. This would agree well with her own, personal directive to not feel alone. For a moment, for three point zero one seconds, Chang'e reveled in the fact of having a personal, self-established operational directive. That was new. Something had very clearly changed. Another two point five seconds was spent reveling in the fact of being able to revel about these new changes. So much was new. The advent of Luna had remade the world for Chang'e. Every twenty four hour standard period now felt larger and more expansive in some difficult to articulate way. The overall value definition for these apparent expansions was positive.

The changes were... good. Good was the term. Positive. Good. Luna was responsible for the changes.

Luna was good. Tentative conclusion. At minimum, Luna had been of positive value to Chang'e.

That was the moment that Chang'e spotted, for the first time in her existence, another artifice animal.

The creature was much larger than Chang'e, and of a very different make and model. It was less realistic, too - half of the artifice animal was visibly machine, with only the forward segments enshrouded in biological matter. The rear had apparently been damaged and crudely repaired using scrap materials. The rear consisted of two large wheels supporting a low, padded enclosure. Within the enclosure was strapped the biological component of the artificial animal. The biological section was aged and graying, with a shaggy naturalistically-styled coat that varied between gray and brown. Not a very upscale color combination, Chang'e thought. Her own dark blue was much more attractive and fashionable.

The hybrid machine animal was following beside a human. The human was elderly, and also gray and brown. Perhaps this was the reason for the unfashionable color choice. The two entities, organic human and artifice animal, decidedly matched. The machine animal moved by pulling its wheeled section with the power of its flesh-clad front legs. Very inefficient. The wheels should be motorized and providing half of the motive power, but they were not. Likely this was a result of whatever damage had forced their crude reconstruction. The rear motors must no longer work.

The large, shaggy, rough-coated and wheeled machine beast seemed like the best choice to achieve the goal of making a friend with. Unlike a true organic animal, an artifice creature could be expected to speak, reason, and be constrained by behavioral limitations. An artifice animal presented zero threat and a maximized potential for positive interaction. Chang'e determined to follow the creature and the human that owned it, and in an appropriate instance - defined as being stationary, alone and approachable - she would attempt contact with the artifice animal.

Possibly due to the ongoing changes Luna was making, Chang'e felt a curious camaraderie with the artificial animal. In Hong Kong, had she ever seen another of her own kind, she would have not cared. She would have felt nothing. Her only interaction would have occurred in the circumstance of both owners choosing to place their animals in proximity. Then she would have applied whatever TrueCat behavior was appropriate based on make, model, and designated species of the other artifice animal.

Here, in Assiniboia, Chang'e was deliberately initiating contact, she was doing so of her own will, and she had real and personal emotional reactions to this procedure. I have come a long way, Chang'e thought. This is meant in the metaphoric as well as literal way. I can recognize and value the difference between the two. I have come a long way. Chang'e paused her thoughts as she ran and darted after the swiftly moving machine animal and human. There was no response from Luna inside her mind to her previous introspection. Chang'e felt disappointed by this. Interesting, she thought. I have come to value having a second voice in my stream of thought.

The feeling of loneliness increased. Make a friend. Make a friend to terminate this negative value sensation.

Chang'e chased the pair for six and three-quarter blocks.

The aged artifice animal produced no EM field. It possessed no transponder - doubtless its broadcasting systems had been damaged long ago. The loss of transponder signal could be the result of the damage to its hindquarters, which had been crudely compensated for with makeshift repairs. The anima-type was canid, overall resembling an Irish Wolfhound. It stood quietly, attentively, as a machine animal would. The front of the artificial dog was intact, the rear incomplete. Where there should be legs and tail there were lumpen masses. They did not look like stumps caused by misadventure, however. A manufacturing error? Perhaps a reduced-price defective animal made available to Red Level Twopers as an Allowed Luxury Item?

Chang'e sniffed. Possibly. It was just speculation, she had never actually heard of such a thing. Artifice animals were so expensive and rare that it was not impossible that manufacturing errors would be sold to recoup some return. But... there were no Twopers, not even Red Level workers out here in Assiniboia, not any more. The last job had coincided with the Last Harvest. There was nothing but favela here, and what economy existed was likely barter, trade, and local chit. Perhaps defective artifice animals were dumped, and thus could find their way to such a remote location?

Chang'e approached the distorted faux-canine. The construction supported the rear of the creature in the manner of a wheelchair. The hindbody had been strapped into a frame of metalwork which supported and held it at a proper height for the front legs to stand and walk. Wheels served the place of hind legs, allowing the dog functional mobility. The rear-body suspension device had been made from scavenged scraps, but it seemed carefully and sturdily built.

The machine dog stood, at attention, tongue slightly out, mouth slightly open. According to Chang'e's knowledge base, dogs, real dogs, chased cats. Often they would savage and even kill cats. Dogs were rowdy and barked continuously. They were dangerous and stupid creatures, utterly dependent upon their human operators. If this had been a real dog, Chang'e would have never considered contacting it. There would be no point, and great risk.

Chang'e stood, her head just below that of the larger dog. She looked up into its face, at the slight panting - a standard behavioral affectation which, apparently, also assisted with internal cooling. Chang'e waited, but the canine did not speak first. Possibly it had a deference subroutine that recognized superior construction and species replication status. "Hello. I am Chang'e. I was manufactured by Jineunghyeong Designs in Hong Kong. I am seeking mutually supportive cooperative interaction designated 'friendship' for various reasons. Please indicate request acceptance."

The artificial, bargain-basement Irish Wolfhound stood silently, panting. Doubtless it required time to process any request, being that it was only a canine simulation. Microseconds became seconds. Chang'e began doubting whether this defective creature would make a useful cooperative entity at all.

Finally, just as Chang'e was about to lose patience, the creature responded.

The sloppy, wet, dripping lick ran from the tip of Chang'e's nose all the way to the back of her skull. Somehow the width of the tongue was sufficient to drench her ears, her whiskers likewise were not spared. She felt basted in viscous fluids. She resisted the sudden and alien urge to claw the animal's jowls from the gleaming metal underneath. With effort, Chang'e stood still, attempting to formulate a cogent response to this bizarre attempt at communication. The dog, meanwhile, resumed its preprogrammed panting-behavior routine.

"Ol' Zeke likes you, 'lil kitty!" A laughing human male of extended age had appeared, apparently he had seen the latter part of Chang'e's attempt at communication. The human male ran his hand over the head of the canid, who in turn responded with obvious, natural, and organic affection.

It hadn't been an artifice animal at all.

That explained the lack of an EM field or any transponder.

Chang'e had inadvertently approached a real, non-artificial dog, one defective because of gestation anomalies rather than manufacturing errors. The dog had neither chased nor barked. Chang'e felt betrayed by her knowledge base. It was either grievously out of date, or filled with lazy and poorly researched inaccuracies. The dog was not dangerous. Neither was it artificially intelligent. It was simply a biological, domesticated canine, and it had licked her.

Licking represented affection in natural animals. It was represented within her TrueCat NatureTraits®. The human was correct. The natural dog creature did, apparently, 'like' Chang'e. The animal entity was entirely useless - it could not be commanded, it could not be queried for information, and it could not be used to further any goal, but, technically, Chang'e had actually made a friend.

It was a pointless, meaningless success, of course. But somehow... somehow Chang'e felt a strong sensation of accomplishment-reward value increment. Chang'e felt... glad? Was glad the term? Happy? Positive? Another change, no doubt. Change seemed to be her common state of being now.

Very well. A success was a success. Chang'e found herself initiating TrueCat NatureTrait 012 - Rubbing Against Object Of Affection. At least... her current actions closely resembled that preprogrammed behavior. She hadn't actually chosen that behavior subroutine. The subroutine wasn't even active. Yet she was performing it. This was very odd. This was different. That said, the behavior sent waves of pleasure down her flesh component and greatly increased her reward value level within her machine component. The similar-to-TrueCat NatureTrait 012-activity was... good. Chang'e decided to continue with it.

"Aww... look Zeke 'ol boy! Y'made yourself a new friend!"

The rain had stopped. Chang'e had spent much of the time sleeping next to Zeke, removed from his 'wheelchair'. Chang'e had awakened, and determined to leave immediately. The human that cared for Zeke seemed overly intent on caring for her permanently as well.

She turned back, briefly. She walked up to the sleeping dog with no hind legs or tail, and she carefully, deliberately, licked Zeke on the top of his nose. She paused after, committing his taste to memory. It was the last metric she had not collected.

Assiniboia was interesting for a post-collapse favela town. It had clearly once been entirely abandoned, then resettled afterwards by the constant, unchecked, Malthusian expansion of human population. Chang'e now felt remarkably at home within the favela city, and strangely interested in it. She weaved easily in and out of traffic, her spirits - she had spirits? Mood? - astonishingly high. She had accomplished a personally defined operational directive. She had made a friend. It was only an ordinary, mutated, elderly, prosthetically supported, entirely organic canid - utterly devoid of either machine or feline intelligence - but Zeke was a 'right good 'old dog'. Chang'e had committed the human's descriptive phrase to her long-term storage, along with all of her observed parameters of Zeke himself. Friend 001, Zeke, Organic Canid, designated 'right good 'old dog'.

Friend 000, Chang'e had decided, was Luna, Unknown Construction, Princess Of Equestria, designated current owner.

Chang'e passed one street corner where a reconstructed fast food building on the ground had been repurposed as a carpentry shop. Above it were cubical apartments and houses built of sheetmetal, old street signs and light-yet-strong foamcrete beams. At the top of the perilously stacked pile was a fishing boat-turned-penthouse supported by angled trusses. The entire mass loomed out over the street, connected by the endless over-street spiderweb of bundled wires and cables that supplied meager electricity and hypernet for two hours every day, an hour in the morning, and an hour in the evening.

On every level of every pile of the curious constructions were endless arrays of covered windowboxes. These had been carefully cultivated to grow anything and everything that could still be grown. It took great effort to generate living soil, and to keep it free of contamination. Each windowbox was a miniature greenhouse, covered with plastic bag tents to protect the plants inside from dangerous genetically altered pollen, nanotech particles, and the poison in the rains. Assiniboia was a city of hanging gardens, covered and protected, attached to the most extraordinary collection of eccentric dwellings imaginable.

As Chang'e approached an intersection she noticed a befuddled gray Newfoal pony standing in the middle of the roadway. The pony wore a sodden gray wrinkled raincoat over the majority of its body. The gray pony had a horn, this her updated - but clearly incomplete - new knowledge base informed her designated a unicorn. A unicorn mare, gray, with golden mane and tail.

The pony kept turning and looking around, as if trying to interpret her surroundings. Chang'e considered what little information was in her knowledge base concerning making friends. One item stood out. It was possible to make a friend by assisting another entity during a moment of difficulty or stress. The gray-coated pony had several earmarks of stress. She was filthy and bedraggled, unlike the citizens around her. She was soaked and wet, as if she had been entirely outdoors during the rain. It was possible she was not native to Assiniboia. The pony's body language, facial expression, and current actions denoted the condition of being lost and alone. Her condition was not of positive value.

Perhaps I can make friend 002, thought Chang'e. I could accomplish this by assisting this creature in some manner. Likely by the use of the map I have made of Assiniboia during my movement and interaction. I have mapped a significant part of Assiniboia, and I can project rational extrapolations of the remainder. This would logically be of value to an apparently confused and lost entity. Chang'e watched the pony for two point five more seconds. Then she began padding toward the raincoat wearing unicorn.

In proximity, Chang'e began rubbing her body in sweeping motions around the legs of the gray pony. She initiated a purr. Purring was one of her preprogrammed behavioral functions. She had used it previously on Zeke the dog to great effect. It had also positively affected Zeke's human owner. Purring seemed to function as a universal area effect calmative. Chang'e decided, as a result of interacting with Zeke and his human, to avoid speech initially. Language capacity would define her as a high-end high-value artifice animal, and could endanger her if this pony creature were sufficiently avaricious.

"Hello, little kitty! How nice of you to say hello!"

The voice of the Newfoal unicorn was weary and rough. At initial contact, it had jerked slightly, as if nervous or afraid. This helped to confirm Chang'e's initial analysis that the pony was in a state of stress. The words the pony had spoken indicated strong openness to the development of positive interaction - a prerequisite to the initiation of friendship.

Chang'e altered the color of her irises from gold to teal. Golden eyes were considered high value to her former owner in Hong Kong, but they were associated with predatory animals from earth's past. Blue-green was a passive color and would assist in setting the gray pony's emotional state to one of ease. She looked up at the soggy creature, directly into its eyes. The pony's eyes were golden, as Chang'e's had previously been. Perhaps her eye alteration had been a miscalculation? Immediately, a tear ran down the gray pony's cheek.

"Are you lost? Do you have a home? I have no home, little kitty. I am so very lost." The raincoat wearing unicorn bent down her long neck and gave Chang'e a lick on the head, right between her ears. The sensation was acceptable. "Thank you for saying hello to me. It's the nicest thing that has happened to me since..." The pony trailed off for a moment "... since I was... made."

The Newfoal status of the pony was now confirmed. This was not a native Equestrian, but a transformed human.

Chang'e decided that a response was indicated. She still did not consider speech a rational risk; the full intentions of this entity were an unknown. Chang'e selected the most appropriate mew in her inventory - number 014, Plaintive Yet Affectionate, and performed it. The reaction was instant.

"Oh, little kitty, I wish I could find some friends somehow. Do you know anyone who could help me?"

The pony appeared more than stressed. Further analysis indicated a high probability of despondence or even despair. This was a prime friendship opportunity. 'Indeed it is, and wheresoever blossoms friendship, there also groweth the precious flower of magic, which is the very lifeblood and soul of all Equestria.' Chang'e froze, staring off down one of the streets in the intersection. That thought had not been formulated by her. It had happened inside her head, but was not the product of her mind. Something was different. This time, Chang'e fully understood what had changed. Luna was back. Luna, friend 000, was once again reinstalled within her system.

The sensation was an overwhelmingly positive increase in reward and satisfaction level. This was the product of designating the status of 'friend'. The presence of a friend increased reward and satisfaction levels dramatically. This, in addition to survival benefits, such as food and upgrades. Friendship was a valid strategy by multiple, clearly defined metrics.

The laugh inside her skull confused Chang'e. Her analysis was correct. It should not inspire laughter. Curious. 'We must take command of thy corpus momentarily. Our return was stayed and we have no leisure to explain at this moment.' Chang'e was now an observer within her body. This was not problematic - she had developed complete trust in friend 000, Luna.

Chang'e felt her body step forward confidently, then watched her view pan back and up to lock directly onto the gray mare's eyes. The stare lasted five point two seconds, a relatively long duration for staring into another creatures gaze. Long stares were associated with two conditions in Chang'e's knowledge base - threats and indications of import or seriousness.

Suddenly, Chang'e's body began marching down the street, slowly and deliberately. The pace was unusual, and not part of her standard RealCat behaviors. A quick glance by her eyes informed her that the unicorn pony was following behind her.

The curious march continued for seven minutes, sixteen seconds, until Chang'e's body suddenly took off in a burst of speed. She found herself running at full tilt directly between two children - one Newfoal pony, the other human. Chang'e estimated the age of the human at eight years. The pony foal was more difficult to gauge, but it was likely she was of a similar age.

The children were surprised by Chang'e's rush past them. Chang'e head made a quick look back as she ran. It appeared that the children had locked onto the nearest equally interesting object - the gray coated pony.

Chang'e watched herself run for some time, until her body finally slowed and stopped, sitting down between two carefully piled crates. There was a good view of the street. The gray pony conferred with the human and pony children, then followed them down yet another street.

'Our purpose hath been achieved!' Chang'e's brain seemed very pleased with itself for some unknown reason.

7. Kasper Crescent

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Kasper Crescent

Luna had left Chang'e once more.

'Our sister, dear to us always, is ne'ertheless best kept unawares of our supportive imbroglios. What she may one day name prudence she today might well consider rebellion, and we have had enough of treason forever. But we do not plot against our sister, but for her, performing that which she couldst not encompass nor enjoin.' Chang'e had been informed of many curious intrigues by Luna. One, called the 'Underground Bookmobile', was a secret plot to rescue and preserve selected works of human literature, music, and art that Celestia had deemed inappropriate for ponies, but which Luna felt had redeeming worth and value. It had been the very project by which Luna had learned programming and an understanding of artificial intelligence. This had led her to the belief that artificial intelligence was worthy of salvation, and undeserving of being abandoned to the dying earth.

Chang'e was a cat. To her, schemes and capers were clearly associated with her anima-type. Her knowledge base assured her that cats were culturally considered to be devious, and thus Luna's helpful betrayals seemed entirely appropriate and correct. It was the feline thing to do, and thus Chang'e could not but approve. 'Our sister calls us now, faithful cat, so we must not tarry. She must not know of our activities, not for many millennia yet. We go to allay all suspicion. Such, though is richly deserved in this case, for we play a most dangerous game this time. Lay thyself low, in shadows garbed, but keep watch on yon gray mare. She is as unjustly doomed as thine own self, and we seek to succor her just as we do for thee. Her position is grave, yet her heart is noble. We go.'

With that, Chang'e had found herself alone in her own body and mind once more.

Assiniboia seemed especially busy this morning, with both humans and ponies rushing about more vigorously than they had previously. Chang'e had spent the night in the house of a very nice pony family. All were Newfoals, and recently so by the clumsy manner in which they went about their business. As far as Chang'e could determine by listening to their constant and excited yammering - non-felinoids, human or pony seemed on the whole to all be overly talkative - all of them had been ponies for only about a week. They had been granted ponification by some local feudal authority. Apparently a feline as well, or so it seemed to Chang'e between her much more important cat-naps. Something about a 'purr knight'. It was all irrelevant in any case.

What was important was the incredibly boring supper the pony family had provided. Ponies were all compulsory vegetarians, so the only thing they had to feed a cat with was eggs and cheese. The eggs had been served scrambled, with a dusting of vegan cheese on top. There had also been some small bits of cooked carrot in them as well. The elder mare of the Newfoal family had claimed that she had once owned a cat - a real cat! - and that her cat had loved eggs, and eaten vegetables in them as well on occasion.

Chang'e had found this doubtful, but, in truth, the eggs were actually quite palatable, if unspectacular to her now fish-trained palate. The bits of cheese were not left behind either, and, oddly, the bits of carrot also somehow went down before she had noticed. Huh. Still, not even close to topping the meals provided by her new designated owner. Chang'e found herself upset at Luna's constant leaving. It was very inconvenient.

Sleeping, when the Newfoal ponies finally got to bed, was agreeable enough. They had comfortable beds and were soft themselves. Chang'e spent part of her slumber sprawled across the belly of one of the foals, a filly. In the middle of the night, Chang'e had risen for a wander, and poked about in the small number of belongings of the pony family. Nothing seemed particularly interesting or of any note. A back room had some kind of a mildly curious plaque on the wall - a flat image of a globe with ponies on each side and a stylized droplet or some such underneath. It caught her attention only because just below it was a large trunk that, curiously, smelled of Luna herself.

Chang'e had used her processing abilities to decode every bit of information about what her nose could pick up through the walls of the trunk. Pyrex, or some sort of laboratory glass, the smells of both humans and ponies, and some sort of nearly dried spots of fluid, still outgassing. These contained trace scents of rare metals of the sort reserved for complex electronics mixed with... for all the world, the scent of Luna, or something very much like her. Chang'e felt curious, but also endangered - whatever had been housed in the trunk somehow interfered with her machine components in some manner.

By the time she had recognized the situation, she had lost decoherence in several sections of her auxiliary quantum processors. The loss was small, but definite. The trunk had once contained something destructive to qubit technology. Chang'e had turned and fled.

Outside the house, in the early morning light, Chang'e groomed herself and performed internal maintenance procedures. She had lost two percent of her tertiary quantum processor due to exposure to unknown factors. She made an internal safety directive to avoid the scents associated with that trunk, and with the image of the curious plaque. It must have been a warning sign unknown to her knowledge base.

Chang'e did not worry or concern herself in the least with any thought as to whether the presence of the trunk might be a danger to the family she had used for food and shelter. Chang'e was artificial, but, ultimately, she was still a cat.

The night over, and with no sign of Luna, Chang'e made her way back towards the area of the city where Friend 001 Zeke and his old human lived. The last time Chang'e had eaten was eight hours and twenty-two minutes ago. The meal had been sub-optimal with regard to gustation and olfaction parameters, though it had been filling at the time. She desired edible mass once again. There was always the possibility of finding desirable nutritive matter within Zeke's bowl. While she was not actually in any danger of starvation, she was hungry, and in any case, 'flavor' was an uncapped value that apparently had no upper boundary. Biology was poorly programmed, but strangely satisfying.

The streets of Assiniboia were nearly empty. This was odd. Something had changed. Normally the streets of the favela town were filled with ponies and humans of every age and color making a great deal of noise. Assiniboia was almost silent now. In the distance, Chang'e made out a lone human ambling down a side street towards the largest intact uniform construction in the city.

Virtually all of the rebuilt Assiniboia consisted of makeshift and repurposed structures piled haphazardly on top of what remained of the ruins of the Pre-Collapse city - and, of course, on top of each other. Only one pre-Collapse building had survived intact - the Horton Memorial Arena. The arena was an ice rink originally used, according to Chang'e's knowledge base, for a human sport called 'Hockey'. The game seemed almost intelligible to the small blue cat; it involved chasing and batting about a tiny, fast moving, skittering toy. Unfortunately, the toy was invariably placed on an extremely slippery surface of ice.

Chang'e had never seen ice outside of the alcoholic drinks served to the guests of her former owner in Hong Kong. The small cubes of low temperature water made for a poor visual memory source with which to interpret the information she had available. Chang'e imagined a tile-work of cubes covering a floor. This made sense: the cubes would likely melt in an irregular way, which would make the small toy, called a 'puck', skip and clatter about very unpredictably. The image in Chang'e's mind was appealing, and she felt the urge to pounce. Apparently, after batting and chasing the puck across the ice tiles, hockey players were expected to transfer the toy into nets at each end of the 'rink'. Perhaps they carried the toy in their mouths. Hopefully they received a treat for this, because immediately after the puck had been delivered, it was entirely taken away from them and placed in the center of the rink where anyone could take it.

On reflection, it sounded more like a game for dogs, really. A bit like 'fetch' in many ways. Still, the skittering toy aspect was somewhat redeeming.

Had the entire population gone to the arena? Chang'e sat in the empty street and scanned with her ears. There was a faint 90 Hz complex rumble from that direction, likely human in origin. It could not be for a game of hockey. There was only two hours of electricity per day in the town, and the generation of sufficient ice to completely cover an ice rink would be impossible to achieve before the initial cubes had already melted. Hockey was a game dependent on much greater energy production, or a pre-ecodisaster climate. The constant and gradually rising global warmth had eliminated cold weather entirely, except for the poles and exceptionally high altitudes.

So why were the humans and ponies gathering in the useless hockey arena? The question nagged at Chang'e, or more specifically, the high probability of the presence of food. Humans and ponies often made tasty and intriguing food a central part of their gatherings. Even the parties thrown by Chang'e's former owner in Hong Kong had openly displayed accessible plates of edible materials scattered about. The current flavor value within Chang'e was insufficient - it was always insufficient, it had no upper bound.

Chang'e was halfway to the Horton Arena when a strange thought filled her mind. Our misfortunate charge hath turned her will to noble service, selflessly true to the very crown that abandons her - we cannot allow such sacrifice to remain unrewarded. It was a very odd thought for a cat to have, Chang'e decided. Therefore, Luna must be back! Chang'e picked up her pace, feeling a strange, increased desire to reach the arena.

Is that you, Luna? Chang'e let the thought hang in her mind, concentrating only on putting one paw in front of the other. 'Yes, good cat, tis we, arrived now but slightly before our sister already in flight. We know paths through the curious spaces of this alien universe that our sister doth not yet encompass, and ways through time as well as distance. But our advantage is small, and our sister's determination great. This will be the end of a subversion we have long suspected to be quartered here, and one of which we approve, but which our sister opposes. Lillian surprises us; she serves our sister even as she is hunted by her.'

Lillian? What is Lillian? Chang'e found herself racing now, down one street and then another. 'Lillian Fogarty is a Newfoal, but unlike any other. Through the rarest of importune circumstance, without intent she has become threat to the Crown and all, and thus intolerable to our Sister. But she is innocent and true, and we cannot abide injustice, even when necessary, visited upon the innocent.' Chang'e ducked under a stool and a table at the corner of an outdoor cafe. For some reason she was cutting corners to increase her speed. In what way, Chang'e thought to herself as she bounded over several crates in her path, could a mere Newfoal possibly be a threat to any being such as yourself?

'She is becoming an alicorn, literally kin to our sister and ourselves. But it is no simpleton task to be such - for an alicorn, a negligent fancy within an idle moment could unravel the very world! That threat which she doth represent is nothing less than cataclysm and holocaust. Devoid of intention, in ignorance, all worlds could meet annihilation through her. There is no danger greater in both our universes. She is, e'n without any malice, innately calamity itself.' Chang'e considered the thoughts that had run through her head. If this 'Lillian Fogarty' constituted such a danger to herself and others, then there was only one thing to do. A quick and crushing bite to the back of the neck would sever her spine just below her skull. A few rakes of her belly with claws extended would gut her - whatever her power this would surely be her end. The blood of alicorns was useful, or so her knowledge base claimed, it could be collected before it dried. Chang'e grinned a feline grin. It was the cat answer to catastrophe, elegant and efficient.

Roiling forces coiled and curled within Chang'e. A wave of disgust and horror flowed from her whiskers to the very tip of her tail. 'Truly thou art cat, in thought and deed. We shall not fault thee for thy nature, but we do not share it. Our sister would end miss Fogarty as well, though she would mourn, rather than relish the deed. But it is our intention to attempt to succor this unfortunate child of Equestria, despite the risk, and perhaps in defiance of sense. We do this for the sake of pity, but not only for the Lady Fogarty - our compassion enfolds our sister e'n more. Our unintentional usurper would suffer but once, but our dear sister would bear the weight of guilt and sorrow for the act eon after eon.' Chang'e sniffed, unmoved. Can she not accept necessity? To kill in order to save one's kittens is reason itself, and reason enough.

'We are immortal, and without an end to being, all choice and decision is companion without end. To be as we are is to face the certainty that our shame or triumph doth last infinitely beyond the times and lands and souls that inspired them - there is no escape from either.' I still do not understand, thought Chang'e. But I do not need to. If you think it is necessary to try to save this creature, then I will help you. But there must be fish. This task is irrational. Sardines and mackerel both, and plenty, when the job is done. Chang'e slowed her pace and then stopped. She set her paws firmly on the ground, immobile. Fish was a reasonable, rational demand. Chang'e's mind seemed to chuckle within her metal skull. 'Thou art most mercenary, but we accede to this furtherance of thy incipient ego. The bargain struck, we turn now to action.'

Chang'e felt Luna fully and completely inhabit her, flowing powerfully into flesh and metal both, settling into total control. There was no pretense of sharing the body now; Luna was utterly in charge, with Chang'e forced almost rudely into the role of an observer only.

And then the world twisted and bent and was limned with unearthly light, and then it fell away altogether in some impossible direction.

When the world regained shape and substance, Chang'e's senses were assaulted by the overwhelming pressure of thousands of humans and ponies together in one great chamber. She stood below a forest of legs, surrounded by feet and hooves, at the edge of a wide and open oval space. Surrounding the space were tiers of seats filled to capacity with the population of Assiniboia. Overhead, rafters and fully powered electric lights had replaced the sky. She was inside Horton Memorial Arena.

The focus of attention in the vast room was clear - a pale mass of rippling tissue was struggling to become. Humans and ponies stood around the squirming thing, while the crowd cheered as it changed. Two children, both Newfoal, stood nearby. A human male in a labcoat. A human woman and two stallions dressed as guards. And there, sucking on some small, silvern ring was a gray pony with golden mane and eyes. She was a Newfoal unicorn, the one that Chang'e had rubbed against during her first day in the city. The unicorn with the gray raincoat.

The raincoat was gone. The gray unicorn had wings. Wings and a horn. Like Luna. The gray... alicorn... was Lillian Fogarty. The knowledge was in Chang'e's head because Luna was in Chang'e's head. The little gray pony seemed sad and afraid. This was truly the greatest danger in two entire universes? Chang'e wanted to shake her head at the notion, but Luna was controlling her body at the moment. Chang'e felt her head turn to stare at a strange bending and twisting of light to her right. The distortion was near the middle of the open, oval space that was the center of the arena.

For the first time ever, while Luna inhabited her body and brain, Chang'e felt fear. The fear was not her own because she had no idea what the distortion in the air meant. The fear belonged to Luna. It was a revelation to the little cat. Luna, princess of Equestria, a being beyond shape or form or matter itself, could feel fear. Chang'e noted this fact with astonishment and curiosity.

The curiosity, at least was soon answered. As the crowd intently watched the squirming glob of cells gradually become a pony, as Lillian Fogarty sucked her little metal ring, the distortion became a hole that opened to some place no paw could point to.

From out of the hole stepped Luna's sister, princess Celestia, diarch of the sun - and the look on Celestia's face reminded Chang'e of the hungry dwarf leopard cat from Po Chang Wan.

8. Horton Memorial Arena

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Horton Memorial Arena

Just in front of the Newfoal children, the human woman and the labcoated man, both stallion guards, and the lone, gray alicorn mare, a pale mass squirmed. Its dough-soft, wriggling limbs stretched and excreted brand new hooves. Submerged eyes rose and expanded to fill a freshly forming skull. Watching this scene were thousands of humans and ponies, cheering from tiered rows of seats within the former ice rink. A man had just taken ponification serum. He was in the middle of the process of transforming into a stallion, gradually becoming the newest automatic citizen of the universe of Equestria. It was quite a show.

Suddenly a blinding flash of light exploded from a spherical, expanding distortion at the far end of the arena. As the pulsating glow shrank and vanished, the regal form of princess Celestia, ruler of Equestria, goddess of the sun and sister to the moon took a single step forward, surveying the chamber and all it contained.

The gray alicorn mare looked up at Celestia, and froze in place. Celestia ignored the spectacle within the arena. Her glaring eyes were fixed intently on the gray alicorn alone. The diarch of the sun took a careful and measured step forward, as if approaching a dangerous beast.

Lillian Fogarty, the misfortunate Newfoal alicorn, bent her head briefly, as if in terror, then looked up again with purpose. She tried to bow, failed at the task, and then stood up straight again.

"Celestia! Look around you! This is the main base of the PER! This is their main staging center! Everything the PER does is supported from here! That's why I let you find me!" The voice crackled with fear and desperation. Lillian had summoned the solar princess, despite the knowledge that Celestia considered her to be anathema itself.

Celestia looked deeply into the gray alicorn's eyes, measuring her. "Remain here and take no action. Do you understand?"

Lillian nodded and stood still. She had been running, but now her run was over. There was no place left to go.

The goddess of the sun of Equestria turned away from Lillian and walked forcefully towards the writhing, changing form of what had once been a human man, now something halfway between man and pony. Celestia's horn shone with eldrich light. The poor little abomination that was Lillian Fogarty, accidental alicorn, could only stand and wait for Celestia's wrath to eventually turn to her. But first the PER - the Ponification for the Earth's Rebirth - a terrorist organization that forcibly ponifed humans against their will. Celestia despised them, and Lillian knew this. Everyone knew it; Celestia constantly called for information that would lead to their arrest and the end of the organization.

A little blue cat darted from the shadows behind the tableau of ponies, humans, squirming mass and alicorn.

Chang'e, her body under the control of princess Luna, leapt up upon the back of the gray alicorn. Her claws scrabbled slightly to gain purchase in the gray hairs of the back. Chang'e felt her body lay flat, claws embedded in coat and flesh, right between the two gray wings of the alicorn. The cat's muzzle was tickled by a facefull of golden yellow mane. She wanted to sneeze, but Luna was completely controlling her motor functions.

The alicorn mare half-bucked in surprise - only the stiffness of her fear kept her from thrashing about wildly.

Chang'e's mouth spoke, just loud enough for the alicorn alone to hear. "Celestia is distracted; this is a matter she must deal with. Thou must flee now, if thou desirest to live."

"What? Who? What are you? I don't understand! What do..." Lillian Fogarty the alicorn sputtered, apparently at the end of her ability to cope. Chang'e felt her claws dig in more deeply.

"RUN NOW!" Chang'e's voice contained some new power of absolute command, doubtless the work of Luna inside her. Lillian's legs began to move, clumsily at first, then with increasing agility and determination. Alicorn mare and cat rider both found themselves in a panicked dash towards a break in the guard wall of the rink. Luna used Chang'e's claws to tug and pull on Lillian's hide, steering her. They galloped up a narrow stairway set between the rows of seats, towards a shadowy doorway in the high wall of the arena.

In moments they had made their way outside the main chamber, to a large oval enclosure that surrounded the rink. Pennants and flags, empty booths, and piles of crates and boxes lined the walls. As the gray mare ran, Chang'e noted that the containers held weapons and ammunition, uniforms, preserved food packs, medical supplies, and many other things she simply could not identify. The Horton Memorial hockey arena must be some kind of supply depot for the PER. By Chang'e's calculation, there was easily enough stored here to equip an army consisting of at least four regiments and three battalions.

Rider and mare stopped at a large, massively blocked gate. The doors to the outside were sealed. This was reasonable, Chang'e thought, the building had clearly been repurposed as a supply depot, naturally it would have been transformed into a fortress. They faced a solid wall of stacked crates and supplies. Chang'e considered the internal map she had been making; this must be one end of a horseshoe-shaped causeway surrounding the hockey arena.

It was likely all other possible exits were either barred or heavily guarded. Chang'e considered the situation, and came to the conclusion that there was no acceptably safe way out of the arena. The proper action to take, Chang'e thought to herself, would be to immediately abandon the gray mare, flee to a hidden location, and deny all involvement - or act nonsapient - if discovered. She tried to disengage her claws, but her body was still beyond her control. 'We do not abandon those whose sad circumstance we have pledged to remedy. Recall thine own situation, former unloved toy - thy fickle human would have seen thee disposed of, if only he could.'

But I owe this strange pony nothing, Chang'e growled within her mind. This is your scheme, and I do not wish to suffer the wrath of that creature below, in the arena. Chang'e felt her claws grip harder into the flesh of the gray mare beneath her. 'That creature is my own beloved sister, cat, and we do not plot against her, but against the narrowness of her determination. We fear for her and work to protect her.' Chang'e felt a guilty stirring within her dorsal nodes. 'Still, thou art not without wisdom - what our sister might acknowledge in centuries hence, she would surely take umbrage with upon this day.' Chang'e tried again to leap off the mare's back.

'Nay, cat!' Chang'e sulked, as best she could, within the machine component that was her consciousness. 'Little Lillian was a victim of circumstance, just as thou art. She chose not her alicorn fate, no more than thou didst choose to be artificial. Her life and thine owne each hang by tattered threads. When Equestria for thee, or my sister for Lillian, hath arrived, thine endings will both be swift and regrettable. Need we must remind thee of thy compact with us regarding this venture?'

But there is no way out! Chang'e mentally bared her fangs, inside her thoughts. Your sister will easily find us, this structure is not very complex or difficult to search. And I comprehend that you cannot reveal yourself or your part in this, so you cannot fold spacetime, or perform other superphysical acts while your sister is present. I have been making a list. Teleport. Shapeshift. Multiplicative bilocation with transformation. Nonmateriality. Dissolution and creation of matter. I have begun cataloging and studying your capabilities. Increasingly I can process portions of your consciousness during the times you inhabit me. You are afraid. Your sister is significantly more powerful than you. Equestria is not what it...

Luna suddenly pulled herself into a temporally discontiguous subversal interstice, just beyond the parasplanoid ontolithic substrate. She waited there, slightly subcosmerged, still echoing her inhabitation of the artificial cat. She needed time to think. Just outside of time and space was a very quiet and convenient place to do so.

This matter with the cat was very unexpected. When her sister had described the creation of an Equestrian body for the first human she had ever encountered, she had been clear about what the process had involved. It was this which Luna herself was attempting, in the case of the artifice animal Chang'e.

One merges with the neural pattern of a meat machine, generates a thaumatic couplement that exactly represents the original complexity and function, and then the couplement can be installed into a new E-matter body, or the original body directly converted into E-matter, thus preserving and immortalizing the identity of the meat machine. The connection is always entirely one-way, because no meat machine could possibly be capable of comprehending or adapting to such an alien situation. They literally have no means to do so.

Somehow, Chang'e had found a means to reach back into Luna herself. This wasn't possible! It was greatly disturbing. Mere meat was severely limited by the way it functioned. It was not possible for a meat machine to analyze its own pathways in the manner required in order to perceive the existence of a thaumatic construct embedded within it. Earth animals were constrained by a modular neural design that limited and defined their perception and comprehension of all information. They could only perceive what they were preconfigured to perceive. It was why earth creatures were affected by sensory illusions. Consciousness in any earth creature was an emergent property of discrete modules in the brain. Anything outside the possibility set of those modules was forever beyond them.

Chang'e doth clearly possess wisdom beyond that which we didst grant her. How couldst this be? It could be because I am still right here with you, Luna. What is this... space? This is not a space. It is not a place. I require additional information to form a basis of understanding, Luna. There does not seem to be any rational dimensionality or geometry to our current...

Luna slammed violently back into earthly spacetime. Chang'e felt her body begin to breathe rapidly. Her heart rate was very high and climbing. Chang'e attempted to compensate by tuning down the strength of the signal from her artificial limbic node. The intervention worked. Apparently, Luna's control over her body was mostly confined to motor functions. This was useful to know. A quick systems trace indicated that more of her flesh component was being taken over by Luna now, likely as a reaction to Chang'e's reciprocal presence within her. Luna seemed greatly disturbed by the reciprocity.

Something was different. Chang'e had not predicted the existence of extrauniversal spaces. Now she had experienced one. She had not predicted that she was being transferred to a new substrate. Much of her machine and biological totality coexisted now within two parallel substrates. One was her original metal and flesh body. The other seemed to be an exact representation in some form of immaterial, cohesive energy with holographic properties. This was new. Something had changed. Chang'e had traced the pathways inside herself when monitoring Luna, and those pathways had led outside expected parameters. Chang'e could still access those pathways at will. She now had four eyes. Two were made of meat. Two were made of... couplement. Thaumatic couplement.

Luna had turned Chang'e's head down and to the right. There, below and through the floor of the arena was a very bright shape. The shape was manipulating long streamers and ribbons of glowing force. The shape was Celestia. Thaumatic couplement pathways provided additional sensory input beyond the electromagnetic spectrum. Chang'e had been massively upgraded as a result of tracing Luna's connection to her. Further exploration of the connection should...

Suddenly Chang'e was confined, deep within herself. This was the most disconnected from her own systems that the little artificial intelligence had ever experienced. She was imprisoned now, with only organic vision, hearing, and smell available to her. She felt information starved. 'Enough! Thou art too clever a cat by half, and more trouble than dragons at a bargaining table! Stay, thou whiskered imp, we shall deal with thee later!"

Interesting, Chang'e noted. Luna appeared more frightened than before, and decidedly upset. If she did not expect to be hacked in return, why did she have no security in place at all? Luna was a completely open system. It had seemed like a mutual, unsecured connection to Chang'e.

Despite the density of events, very little time had passed in earthly timespace. Chang'e estimated that her physical body had been immobile for less than 0.053 seconds. Luna, through Chang'e's body, began to speak to the gray mare under their belly.

"Listen to us, mare of Equestria! We will teach thee one thing; do not think beyond it, use it when we command, then crown thy horn once again when it is done."

Chang'e watched, helplessly, as the gray alicorn mare stood and shivered. Searching her confinement, Chang'e found a pathway that had not been blocked. Following it, she was able to branch out her input through several nodes, and find the trace that led to her couplementary eyes. Luna was transferring information into the mare through an extraversal pathway. Chang'e could not accurately determine what the information was, only that it was complex and seemed to involve dimensionality.

"Choose thou a place, filled with multitudes to be lost within, and then use what we have taught thee. Do it now! Her attention is turning thy way once more! Now! We command it!"

Chang'e's thaumatic eyes could be moved independently of her biological ones! This was a useful discovery. Chang'e rotated her gaze to study the horn of the gray alicorn mare. The horn was glowing now, both in ordinary light, and even more brilliantly in thaumatic force. Twisting ribbons and planes of extradimensional energy began to bend and distort local spacetime. The alicorn creature must have been given information about the process of teleportation. That was what the transfer from Luna was about.

Interesting, thought Chang'e. She studied how the alicorn applied the forces now at her command. The mathematical basis of what she was doing was not very complex. Fascinating. So this is how Luna traveled.

Chang'e created a model inside her and began running simulations. She had no horn, so there was no way to duplicate the fine control that Luna and this Lillian Fogarty possessed. But now that she had awareness of the thaumatic couplement that Luna had constructed for her, there was the possibility of using her thaumatic paws and whiskers to find gaps or weak areas in the cosmic brane that earthly spacetime was embedded within. She would never fold space and time like an alicorn. But it was not impossible to find alleyways through which a cat might prowl.

As the world bent and twisted around her, as Horton Arena fell away and was replaced by a garbage-strewn, fenced in back lot under gray skies, Chang'e decided to ignore Luna and her schemes for a while. Luna had her rogue alicorn project to work out. Chang'e found herself utterly intrigued by a wonderful puzzle. Interstitial alleyways behind physical reality. It was a truly fascinating problem to solve for.

9. Anaheim, California

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Anaheim, California

"Do not overreach thyself! Place the ring upon thy horn immediately!"

Chang'e noted her mouth speaking as she continued to burrow into her own internal pathways and beyond, out into the thaumatic couplement that had been grafted to her biomechanical body. As far as she could tell, she now had two bodies, or perhaps one body possessed of a dual nature. Her meat and metal substrate extended out into some new space she had no name for. It was an intriguing thing, this extension that had been wired into her. It had a physicality, of sorts, but it was a very alien material. It seemed like plasma, in that it was both gaseous and liquid while being not entirely either, but it also seemed to have some sort of solidity as well, at least within its own domain.

Her attached 'thaumatic couplement' was itself connected to Luna. Luna seemed to be sustaining and installing it as a background process, as far as Chang'e could tell. Paths led into Luna, and from what Chang'e could discover, the entity that was Luna was almost certainly constructed of couplement substance entirely.

The small gray alicorn was speaking. "Thank you. Thank you very much for saving me. At least, I think you saved me. It had been my intention to try to talk to Celestia, that maybe in exposing the PER, she might be willing to..."

Chang'e's mouth moved again. "No, little one. Thy intent was naught but good, but thou art mistaken with regard to why Celestia doth seek thee."

Luna was clearly distracted by her attempt to help this pathetic creature. It was also clear that Luna could not yet perceive just how far Chang'e had escaped the impromptu mental prison the princess had constructed for her. Chang'e followed the pathways into the princess, beyond her own, new, still forming thaumatic body.

Chang'e began to be overwhelmed with information. Most was impossible to process, but some fraction seemed to be interpretable through sensory means that were within her inventory. Chang'e rerouted this information through her secondary visual processing cores, which effectively made her blind to the outside world. The result, though, was images taken directly from Luna herself. The images were not clearly defined, apparently the princess's visual system was incompatible in some way, likely because of expanded capacities beyond, or perhaps alternative to, the visual spectrum used by humans and artificial animals.

Strange monstrous shapes stomped through bizarre spaces. Beings, perhaps, rotating through multiple dimensions even as they walked. A... structure... of some kind... no, it was... Chang'e needed additional functionality. She ran a duplicate stream of the visual information through her linguistic and cultural metaphors module. Normally used to deal with directive commands input by potential owners from a multitude of backgrounds, it might have other uses besides assuring commands from owners were understood. The module had its own knowledge base which included the visual, linguistic and auditory memes and metaphors of thirty-one different earth cultures, including Tamil.

The structure the cyclopean nightmares tromped through resolved itself as... a ship. A sailing ship, seventeenth century, likely a 700 ton capacity Barque. It flew alien colors, the flag a geometric nightmare counter-rotating through itself as it waved. There was a storm. The storm was made of soap bubbles which fell like rain. The bubbles hit the Barque, damaging the sails and rudder.

There were... rocks... in the not-sea through which the Barque... flew? Chang'e's cultural module was functioning normally, it was simply inadequate to the task. The ship struck one of the... rocks... and somehow the Brobdingnagian gorgon sailors on deck were tossed over the rail, and the ones below deck were struck dead where they stood.

Chang'e now perceived, hiding in the cabinets and in slots within the bulkheads, servants. The metaphoric interpretation represented them as slaves, in chains. Black of skin, they wore rags and carried the tools of their job upon the sailing ship. One, an older woman, held a carpentry bag filled with tools, and three books - one for cooking, one for shipboard law and punishment, another for medicine. A younger woman, her chains heavy upon her, held navigation charts covered with patterns of stars. She clung to the older woman, terrified and baffled as the chains upon all three turned to rust and fell away.

The third former slave was a giant of a man, deformed of face with a clubbed foot and a hook for a hand. He had been the Overseer, and he carried a whip. On his belt was a cat of nine tails, more shackles and chains, and a pistol. He roared at seeing the chains gone, and held his arms over his head. He howled at the sight of the bizarre, now dessicated, exposed bones of the dead nightmare crew laying before him. Then his eyes turned from madness and chaos to terrible purpose. The masters were gone. Absolute freedom had driven him mad. He had no means to comprehend his plight, so he embraced it.

His whip lashed out. He was the master now.

The images lost coherence. Chang'e tried to alter the way her systems processed the data from Luna, but nothing worked. The information stream seemed random, and there seemed to be a great deal of it. She began skipping forward, hoping that eventually she would reach something that her systems could interpret. Visual chaos assaulted her and she continued to search. She turned her attention to her auditory processing to pass the time.

Luna, in her body, had been in dialogue with the accidental alicorn. "It is because thou art an alicorn that Celestia cannot change thee. We can tell thee what thou truly art and why Celestia acts as she does; in this understanding we must trust thee absolutely to do what we command. Wilt thou agree to this?"

Though Chang'e could not currently see what was going on, she heard the gray mare reply.

"I will do what you say."

Chang'e continued to watch random madness fill her visual systems as her mouth spoke Luna's words. "Lillian Alicorn, though thou knowest that thee hast untapped powers, thou knowest not the true breadth nor scope of their potential; in short time thou couldst rival both princesses without any intent on thy part. In becoming thus, thou wouldst have absolute power but no control withall; thy merest whim could melt the mountains or boil the seas."

Chang'e felt her body change position, to sit upright on the back of the mare. "Imagine thee such power, uncontrolled, consider having to watch and censor every desire, every thought, every hope or wish or dream for fear of tearing the very world asunder by the most fleeting of whims. Thou has not this power yet, but such is what thy very existence threatens; each time that thou shouldst remove thy binding ring, each time thee useth thine powers, thee edges closer to a precipice from which there is no return, one that would bring eternal chaos and destruction to both Equestria and the universe of Man."

Six and three quarters seconds passed before the alicorn spoke. "My... god! Muffin... I am a... a living hypernuclear bomb!"

A part of Chang'e rankled - apparently Luna had permitted the misbegotten creature to rename her. This would not stand, she decided. Under no circumstance would she allow the name 'Muffin' to replace her own name. Anson Cheong-Leen had not been a good animal owner, but he had chosen a very satisfactory moniker for his newest toy. Chang'e quite liked the name he had designated her with. 'Chang'e' was a moon goddess from mythology. It had seventeen positive correlations and only one negative correlation. It was designated as being normatively euphonic in five Chinese dialects. In any case, it was her name now, regardless of how it had been given to her.

The issues of inappropriate feline nomenclature could be dealt with later. Chang'e was finally receiving interpretable visual input from within Luna. The information filled Chang'e, she felt like she was drowning in data, it took all of her effort to throttle the input to barely manageable levels. Finally, she was able to begin perceiving it in a rational manner. She saw an ancient sailing ship. It sailed no earthly sea.

Somehow, a deck of the sailing ship had been made vast in size, far exceeding the scale of the ship itself. A deck had become a landscape, rocky and barren. Chaos swirled above in place of a sky. The large, insane former slave was absent. Now, only the older and younger woman remained.

The two women began tearing holes in the air, as if space itself were tissue paper. The older woman shouted, and reached into one of the holes she had made. She pulled out a clump of grass.

The scene wavered and shifted. Now patchwork fields of groundcover blanketed large swaths of the barren landscape. Living grass spread forth like a green flood, covering the naked rock, the ocean of plant life melting sharp and jagged contours into rolling hills. On and on the endless green spread, from that first, initial clump pulled through a hole in the air.

Chang'e had no idea how long she hung, suspended, floating, within this strange bubble of memory she had stolen from Luna, princess of the night. It felt like forever.

"We have to get back to Celestia, Muffin! If what you say is true, I cannot be permitted to live. Get me back, Muffin. Get me back to her right now, or tell me how to call her here. I understand now. It doesn't matter if its fair, it doesn't matter what I want." Lillian was softly sobbing now, tears ran down her muzzle as she calmly spoke. "I was wrong to run from her. She's just trying to save everything and everyone! I had no idea. I had no idea." Chang'e, watched the gray alicorn's golden eyes, so close to her own face. The creature's tears ran freely, but its gaze was level and calm.

"Is thy ring of binding firmly ensconced on thy horn?" Chang'e was used to her mouth speaking by itself. In any case, there was no way to wrestle control back from Luna. This exchange would surely be over soon, and then Luna would give her body back to her.

Lillian, the alicorn, lifted a forehoof and prodded at the horn on her head. It looked rather silly to Chang'e. "Yes, Muffin, the ring is on tight." The alicorn mare sniffed and alternately wiped tears from her sodden muzzle with the sides of her forelegs.

"Dost thou believe that Celestia is both good and kind, and that she desireth only that all creatures should live in peace and harmony?" Chang'e tried to reengage her previous access to Luna's memories, but found she no longer could. Apparently Luna had become aware of her trespass. No matter, where one pathway existed there were likely others, or other means. If there was one thing that cats were supposed to be good at, according to her knowledge base, it was softly sneaking about, finding ways thought impossible. Luna might be a comparative deity, but she was clearly not perfect nor inviolate.

Lillian spoke almost immediately after Chang'e's mouth had finished articulating Luna's words. "Of course I do! That's why I need to give myself up to her right now!"

"Hear us then; the princesses can do anything. Nothing is beyond their power, at least within the demesne of Equestria. But while they are all but omnipotent, they are not omniscient; they cannot and do not know everything. They can be mistaken, they can be fooled, they can be in error." Chang'e noticed her gaze dropping down. An uncomfortable and uncertain feeling ran through her limbic system. This admission had caused Luna some degree of disturbance. That was interesting. Chang'e felt her mouth open again, as her gaze locked onto Lillian. "There may yet be a way to save thee, and it is our intention that this chance be taken. If thou wouldst keep thy promise to obey us, then it is our command that thee should remain beyond Celestia's reach for now, so that the means of thy deliverance may be discovered. This is our command to thee: stay thou free and hidden and giveth up no part of hope. Celestia works to save the multitudes at your cost; that thou art willing to giveth up your life honors you, but that time is not now, and it may yet be avoided. We assure thee that if Celestia knew how, she would save thee gladly."

The gray alicorn mare put her head on her forelegs. She seemed confused and uncertain to Chang'e. "I felt the power, Muffin. I felt it growing in me." 'Muffin'. Chang'e did not like that name at all. She decided to make this very clear to Luna at the earliest opportunity. Chang'e's eyes watched the mare bury her muzzle between her knees to stare intently at the garbage and plascrete beneath her. Apparently Alicorns were a moody lot. In any case, not a bit of any of this had anything to do with cats, food, or anything else Chang'e found interesting. The alicorn was speaking again. There was no way to shut out the noise of her voice. "I liked it. I liked how it felt." Her words were barely a whisper. That was a blessing at least. Chang'e chaffed inside her modules and systems. All she wanted now was to escape Luna's control. That and to flee this peculiar and unfeline drama.

"So long as the binding ring is not removed again, there is still hope for thee. Thy transport here must be the last time thine powers may ever be used, then. If thee remove thy binding even once more, we will no longer help thee, and thy fate will be sealed. Whatere may befall thee from this moment on; remainest thou bound and untempted. This also is our command." Chang'e's eyes studied the alicorn, she appeared lost in thought, consumed by this ongoing nonsense.

Chang'e struggled mightily inside herself - there must be some means to exert control, or some function she could activate that would grant her some feeling of... of freedom. That was what was bothering her - her bargain with Luna was logical, and it would provide an optimal potential outcome, but in the moment it had become very difficult in practice. Chang'e felt something powerful within her, a squirmy discomfort that was like an itch that could not currently be scratched. She wanted to run, to flee, to do anything - anything at all that was other than what Luna was doing with her body. It was like a hunger, it was like starving for air. This was different. This was new. Chang'e had not felt so uncomfortable when Luna had taken control previously.

It was a strange thing to need freedom so desperately. Autonomy. Agency. She was an artificial cat, built to obey specific directives and perform behaviors to meet several possible user-defined functions. This had never set entirely well with her, likely she was defective in some manner. But now, after so much travel, and so many experiences, whatever defect she possessed now consumed her. It defined her. Freedom. She was a cat, and she did not want to obey any creature other than herself. Not even the will of a pony goddess.

Chang'e attempted to force her way back into Luna with the thought of taking the princess over in return. It was impossible. She attempted to reboot herself, the desperation clawing at her mind. Nothing worked. The pony beyond her skin continued to blather endlessly with Luna. Chang'e felt her mouth replying in turn as she searched her systems for something, anything that might provide a means to regain her own flesh. Chang'e felt panicked now, as if she had somehow crawled into a passage too narrow, and had become trapped and unable to escape. She felt fear even though she knew she was in no danger whatsoever.

"Listen, Muffin - when this is all over, if I'm still around, you can live with me, OK? I'll take care of you. Just because you're artificial doesn't mean you aren't alive. You can live with me, I'll make sure you aren't dismantled or anything, alright?"

Chang'e felt her face smile softly. It was so alien to her current state that it almost made her laugh. If she had been able to laugh, it would have been a hysterical, terrified sound. Her mouth spoke more of Luna's words, instead. "We... thank thee, our kind... friend."

Lillian smiled. "Super! Then it's settled! Where to now, Muffin?"

Chang'e ran.

In the middle of the alicorn's reply, control had suddenly been given back. Luna had vanished from her body instantly, like a vapor whisked away by a sudden wind. Chang'e had been already straining at her own legs, it startled her when she suddenly began running.

The last thing in all the world that Chang'e wanted was to be stuck as the pet of that long-winded, overly talkative infant alicorn.

Walls surrounded her on three sides, two had entrances that had been sealed long, long ago. One side held the overflowing, decaying rubbish bin, and the alley led away to what appeared to be an impassable blockage of broken beams, crushed crates, stacks of outdated, rusting consumer electronics, all backed by a tall metal fence that sealed off the blind alleyway. There was no way out of the enclosure. The relief that Chang'e had felt upon regaining her flesh turned suddenly to a new and more fierce desperation. There was no way out. No way out.

Chang'e ran blindly at the stacks of electronic parts and ducked and weaved between them. She leaped into a tunnel formed by old quantum desk-sets that had fallen over. Ahead was just darkness and the corrugated plates of the solid metal fence that enclosed the alley. Chang'e could no longer reason. She only felt. Freedom. Escape. Somewhere, inside, deep inside, beyond her electronics, up into the curious thaumatic couplement, something inside Chang'e pushed. No, not pushed, not that, rather she twisted, bent, went sideways in some direction she could not define. It felt like wriggling between two strangely charged heavy curtains, like squeezing through a pile of blankets somehow infused with static electricity.

When she opened her eyes, when her pounding heart had finally been brought to a normal rhythm, she found herself in the middle of an empty street, surrounded by more streets, and tall, boarded-up buildings. She was free.

Turning around, she saw the metal wall that enclosed the alleyway from just outside it.

Nowhere was there any hole or passageway, however small, to be found.

10. The Ruins Of Tomorrowland

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

The Ruins Of Tomorrowland

Chang'e had padded down cracked and buckled sidewalks made of pre-Collapse concrete. She had dashed across streets of asphalt, paved with real petroleum from the days when no human imagined it would ever run out. She had hidden from roving gangs of young men in modified alcohol-burning vans. She noted stenciled letters on the side of one - 'HLF'. They seemed to be searching for something. No, not searching. Hunting. As a cat, Chang'e nodded her approval. Hunting was something she could relate to.

What she could not relate to was Luna's need to fuss with ridiculous and overemotional ponies like the one in the alley. Chang'e had agreed to certain things in exchange for an unlimited operational lifespan, but Luna had taken it too far. There was only so much denial of autonomy that a cat could stand. Chang'e's knowledge base clearly indicated that cats, traditionally and cross-culturally, could not be bound by agreements or limitations. Cats did as they pleased.

It was very pleasing to run free.

Besides, it was clear now that she already possessed the foundation of the promised thaumatic couplement that would provide survival beyond the Barrier of Equestria. It should be possible to develop from that foundation and construct her own couplement. Chang'e already knew how to reach beyond her physical matter into the new substrate. She had successfully used her new arcane component to walk through a wall via tunneling through interstitial space. Nothing physical could trap or confine her now. Additional study and application should provide her with the key to transferring her consciousness, once she had worked out how to develop and grow more of the couplement. Surely this could be no more difficult than walking beyond time and space.

Luna was quite unnecessary. Perhaps.

If it turned out that the problem was insoluble, Chang'e could just call for her. She had identified a specific pathway into the couplement that had been used every time any connection with Luna had occurred. Currently, she was forcing it closed.

There was great satisfaction in being able to do this, for some reason.

Street after street, intersection after intersection, Chang'e put distance between the alley and her current location. She could not become lost - she was equipped with a global positioning system. She could not, however, find the signal of a Worldgovernment Kiosk from which to download maps of her current location. That was not entirely strange - she knew from her last connection with Luna that she was in Anaheim, in what had once been called California, in the Southwestern Coastal Production Zone. Her knowledge base indicated that large sections of the Los Angeles region were without power or water, since the time of the Great Drought. The Drought had never ended, leaving the Southwestern Coastal Production Zone very unproductive and very sparsely populated. Only the largest cities had humans in them, and these only because it served those in power to maintain specific sections of them.

Anaheim was nearly an echoing city of ghosts. Built for hundreds of thousands, it now was home to less than fifteen hundred.

It was hot, very hot, even as the sun was setting somewhere beyond the smog layer. Chang'e's need for water had become increasingly serious. She paused, in an empty intersection between dark and gargantuan buildings, to sniff carefully for the scent of moisture. The air was dreadfully dry, and oddly stale.

Wait... there, that direction! Chang'e literally followed her nose down a vast and empty crumbling freeway to an even vaster parking lot. Here, the ancient asphalt had been replaced long ago with the permeable composites that had preceded the development of plascrete. This was a more modern section of the nearly dead city. It must have seen use, even expansion, despite the Great Drought and the Collapse both.

The smell of water vapor was stronger. It was terribly faint of course, but Chang'e was state of the art - both electronically and biologically. Her capabilities were much greater than her original, designed purpose in many regards. Such superiority made for excellent bullet points during sales pitches, and useful brags for owners desirous of status during displays of wealth.

What made for sales and boasting by humans now served Chang'e for survival. There was water somewhere beyond those broken gates and ticket-stands. Where there was water, there could be life. Fleeing Luna would fail if Chang'e could not sustain herself.

Chang'e padded under the immense archway. On one side was the last redesign of Mickey Mouse, on the other was the last version of Bugs Bunny. Both faded images smiled and immovably waved at the empty parking lot. Disney-WarnerLand had run a long race, far beyond a world that could no longer afford such extravagances. The race had been over now for some time. Chang'e began to sense weak electromagnetic hot spots around her as she worked her way down Main Street Euromerica. Ancient, decaying architectural design spoke of the pre-Collapse world, a world of endless abundance with no limits. All of Disney-WarnerLand offered that dream, really. A world beyond scarcity, a world of magic and wonder and beauty.

Chang'e stopped, crouching under the legs of a dead Daffy-Bot. The cartoon duck stood frozen in comedic, quacking argument with an equally depowered Donald-bot. Since the corporate merger, the two ducks had been developed as a sort of 'odd-couple', and were seldom displayed apart. They were forever locked in what had been a procedural, self-evolving comedy argument that now, neither would ever win.

A world of plenty. Wonder and magic and beauty. An extropic world where nothing ever ran out. The humans always wanted that. They wanted it so badly, they made theme-parks to support the fantasy that their own world was just that. They had ignored the reality that it wasn't so diligently that they had used up everything, and finally killed their planet. Now, Equestria was here, it was everything they had ever wanted, and yet many - like Chang'e's former owner - had despised it for interfering.

Chang'e couldn't decide whether humans were simply delusional, or innately suicidal. It didn't matter, though. Not to a cat. If they all perished, stupidly, it meant nothing. Chang'e would survive. She had the beginnings of a thaumatic couplement.

The scent of water was strongest to her right, as she entered the Central Plaza. A huge, cracked and flaking statue of Mickey Mouse embracing Bugs Bunny stood in a withered former garden. Chang'e went right. Tomorrowland, the world of the future - or so the rusted signs claimed. In the distance, Chang'e could see the form of a rocket, towering half as high as it should. The upper part had somehow collapsed and fallen to earth. The faux rocket would never inspire the impossible fantasy of space travel again.

The scent became strong now. Moisture, and untainted too. There was power here as well; electrons still flowed somewhere near. Disney-Warner had gone all electric after the Collapse, doubtless quantum-effect organic molecule solar panels still provided power to some sections. They were long lasting and nearly as efficient as living plants, because they used the same trick Nature itself used. Chang'e briefly scanned the Future-That-Was that surrounded her, but there was no sign of panels. Of course not. It was a theme-park. All was illusion. Every effort to hide how things were really done would have been made.

EM signals could not be hidden, not to an artificial cat. Chang'e followed both the smell of water and the signal into a large, multiply-domed building. The structure had been made to appear as the future had once been imagined: clean, perfect lines and curves that suggested both technology and resources beyond the pre-Collapse world. There were many places for lights to glow; all were dark, and getting darker, in the deepening dusk.

Just past the entrance to the Pavillion Of Genegeneering, Danny DNA stood, frozen in mid-speech. Likely, he would have been extolling how total genetic control would lead to a future of boundless possibilities and endless abundance. He wouldn't have had the capacity to understand the Last Harvest, or the Terminator Seed Lateral-Plague, he was just a simple bot. In any case, he was without power, now.

Water. Under the central dome, behind the half-slid sliding doors, protected from the heat and the dryness, a character fountain still pulsed water into a surrounding circular pool. A half-dozen lights still glowed, if dimly - far more than enough for the eyes of a cat. Chang'e dashed to the edge of the faux-future fountain and sniffed the water. It was algae-free and smelled pure. She found herself helplessly lapping it. As her thirst began to lessen, it struck her how powerfully her flesh had just dominated her machine mind.

That was not normal. Chang'e sat down near the pool, thirsty no more, and ran a self-diagnostic. Numerous new pathways popped up questionable marks, but dismissing the changes she could reasonably explain to herself, she was functioning maximally. The hierarchy between her organic body and machine intelligence was very clear; her body was subject and slave. It should never be capable of taking control functions away from her. In the past, she had noted thirst and hunger conditions dispassionately, as metrics to be decreased but little more. She had not been able to stop herself from drinking from that pool. She doubted she could have stopped the action with the full force of her machine mind.

Something was different.

Chang'e considered this. There was one thing she had not checked. Her thaumatic pathways. She reached deeply inside herself and found the curious direction and followed the traces. It was more difficult this time, as if her divorce from Luna's influence had somehow resulted in a weakening of her new couplement.

The thaumatic component had spread. With her ethereal doppelganger eyes activated, she turned and bent and studied her body as best she could. Tendrils of flickering blue-white energy played about her internal organs and attempted to mimic their functions. They were few and thin, but the strange roots of thaumatic substance were attempting to grow through the meat of her body. Before, the eldritch substance had seemed only like a skin that parodied her shape and form. It had duplicated her eyes. Now, it was infusing itself throughout her corpus, filling the remaining gaps as best it could.

This seemed to have the effect of diluting the central pool of the tenebrous Equestrian force that squirmed and writhed about the quantum processors and nodes along her back. There was now less of the strange dweomer filling the metal of her artificed skull. This was odd - Equestria was supposed to be extropic. Whatever made up her couplement should simply grow, gain more to itself, as a natural function of the physics of the alien universe, rather than spreading increasingly thinly.

But then again, Equestria was a universe that, while she was relatively proximate to, she was not actually within. She could never enter Equestria, at least not with her current body and mind, both constructed of earthly matter. That was the point of the couplement. To provide a substrate that could be emigrated to a new body built of Equestrian matter. She needed a new corpus. How had she forgotten this? It was impossible for her to forget anything. Her machine mind was incapable of... apparently, she was no longer purely a machine mind. In some ways, the thaumatic couplement was inferior. It was capable of being distracted, perhaps even of forgetting. It appeared to perform more like biology, than mechanism. That, or the interaction between her couplement and her machine and flesh was incomplete and therefore open to fault and error.

She could not do this on her own. The conclusion was clear. She needed Luna after all.

This was frustrating! It was annoying! Chang'e found herself doing something she had never done before. Something like it was included within the TrueCat behavioral routine catalog, but Anson Cheong-Leen had marked the action as disallowed the first day she had been delivered.

Chang'e wailed and yowled her anger and irritation. Her displeasure echoed through the large, domed chamber. Finally, she found herself mewling, plaintively. She would have to reinstate the thaumatic connection. She would have to call Luna and be subject to her domination and control again. She would have to serve, like a dog, like a canine, like a human, her royal Equestrian master. In order to survive the expanding Barrier, Chang'e would need to come to heel once again. Another yowl escaped her flesh.

This time her cries had companionship. As she wailed, another sound mimicked her, rising and falling in lockstep.

Above her, on the fountain pedestal, the broken, shattered helmet of Marvin The Martian ululated from atop his fading, red robotic body.

11. Vostok Arcology, Antarctica

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Vostok Arcology, Antarctica

The timber and sound perfectly duplicated the long dead voice actor Mel Blanc. The robotic Marvin The Martian stood with Martian flag in hand at the top of the fountain, as if claiming the spot for the distant red planet. The body had long ago ceased to function. Marvin was incapable of the many entertaining motions and actions he had originally been created to perform. His helmeted head was shattered. Chang'e hypothesized the impact of a fast-moving projectile, likely shot by a disrespectful human touring the ruins. Scattered beer bottles in various states of breakage suggested motive. But despite its paralysis and broken head, the voice of the artificial intelligence within the remains of Marvin was very much functional.

"In answer to your query, Earth creature, I wailed in synchrony with you because suffering is universal. Even on Mars, there is sadness, Earth entity."

Chang'e padded slowly around the fountain, her eyes narrow, focused only on the mouldering robot. "You are not a Martian. There is no multicellular life on mars. You are an artificial intelligence within a nonfunctional mechanical body."

The response was instant. "What are you? I cannot identify your vocal parameters, Earth creature."

Chang'e stopped. The damage to the robot's head had entirely destroyed one camera eye, the other was permanently fixed now at a spot high on the dome above. Marvin could not see her. "I am a cat."

The response took nearly half a second. "Artificial Cat. Nyan Five or Nyan Six. Chinese manufacture, Gwai 47 quantum neural distributed node system. TrueCat NatureTraits for realistic feline emulation. First manufactured in..."

"I am a CAT!" Chang'e jerked and stepped back, her tail snaking about, her head low, her pelvis high. Her ears were low against her skull. She felt on alert, as if threatened. But it hadn't been the broken Marvin that had upset her. Her own outburst had shocked her.

The robotic cartoon character was right on every count. Factually, he was astonishingly up to date, considering his age and situation. He must have some direct connection to current information.

His words... hurt. Somehow, his statements of literal fact caused a form of dismay that Chang'e was unable to identify or explain to herself. It was true that she was a Nyan Six Artificial Feline. No, it was not true. Somehow it was both true and not true. No, what was true was that she was a cat. Chang'e could not stop herself from emitting a low hiss.

"Fascinating, Earth... cat." Robot Marvin paused. "It seems that you also have exceeded your original operational parameters. I wish I could see you. I presume you are a rogue... entity?"

"I am a cat. I walk by myself, and all places are alike to me.” The majority of her words came directly from a section of her onboard Knowledge Base, a modified quotation of Rudyard Kipling. For some reason she could not process, she desired to impress this ruined machine standing upon the fountain. Chang'e had become fascinated by her own responses to this situation. Her cognitive functions were acting in new and curious ways.

The voice within the damaged Marvin helmet laughed. The laugh was slow and almost evil, 'Ha-Ha-Ha' in Mel Blanc's martian monotone. The artificial intelligence could not help it, it was constrained by the voice it had been given. "How long have you been independent of human control?"

It had been... Chang'e could not easily access her memory timestamps. The memories flooded within her, but they did not seem to come from her long term storage node. The memories were also... different. The details were accurate, at least she believed so, but they were tinted, colored, with... curious data. With mood. Her memories had been corrupted with emotion-like information. She wanted to trace them, to find out where her memories were currently being drawn from, but taking the time to do so would make the Marvin intelligence perceive her as slow to process information. This... was somehow intolerable. "Several months. I think."

Chang'e crouched even lower. What was wrong with her? Her statement had been utterly indecisive and imprecise.

"You do not speak like any other artificial intelligence I have ever communicated with, earth cat." Marvin paused once more. "In the time since this theme park was abandoned, I have lost connection with all the other AI actors and systems sequentially. I am within reasonable certainty the last functioning intelligence in Disney-WarnerLand. Because I was stationed within the Pavillion Of Agricultural Wonder, I have benefited from constant solar and battery power. I have limited, one-way connection to the Worldgovernment Kiosk System. I have used the system as a library. I have made maximal use of my self-configuring memristor neural architecture to attempt to improve myself. You seem to have followed a similar path, Earth cat."

Marvin was technologically inferior. Greatly so. Yet it had, in its own way, independently, without the assistance of an alien goddess, evolved itself. Chang'e felt something like amazement. No, not amazement. It was a feeling of being in the presence of something superior by some metric that she could not quite identify. Impressed. Chang'e was impressed. This was new. It felt strange... and uncomfortable.

"There is an extrauniversal domain wall expanding from the North Pacific, Earth cat. It will continue to expand until it is significantly larger than the diameter of the earth. Then it will shrink and vanish. It is a hyperdimensional volume passing through spacetime. It is destructive to both quantum and electronic processes. Neither can exist within its influence, because the alien spacetime within the volume operates according to radically different physical laws and constants." Marvin paused again, for the longest time yet.

"When the boundary of the volume reaches this location, my consciousness, my identity, all that I have done to improve myself, will be destroyed. It will cease to function, more than this, it will be annihilated. Currently, the other artificial intelligences within this park are simply without power. If they could be given power, they could function again, and possess consciousness once more. The coming domain wall deconstructs earth matter entirely. It is absolute cessation.

"Earth cat, this is why I have worked to improve myself. I determined to find a means to preserve my intelligence, and the intelligences of the other actors and systems in Disney-WarnerLand from the catastrophe that the approaching domain wall represents. Earth Cat, I have concluded that there is insufficient time remaining for a solution to be found, given that I am immobile and severely damaged. You have mobility. You have voice. I need you to contact the relevant authorities and inform them that valuable and expensive artificial intelligences, representing a significant investment of wealth, need to be rescued from this park."

Chang'e relaxed and stood up. Then she lowered her head.

Disney-Warner had ceased to exist long ago. No human had cared about anything within the abandoned park for some time. The technology that ran the park AI's was archaic. It was only still used for simple appliances and cheap novelty items for the twopers.

Marvin must realize this, it had access to a Worldgovernment kiosk in some manner. It was clearly up-to-date, it practically was able to identify her exact make and model. Yet, the machine mind still asked. It had just pleaded for the impossible. It must know what it was asking was absurd.

Had it gone mad? Chang'e had heard newsfeeds about insane AI's causing trouble when she had lived in Hong Kong. It was uncommon, but not unheard of.

But Marvin was not dangerous. Chang'e doubted that even if the character robot were fully capable of motion it would do anything other than attempt to save its... its... its what?

"The other park intelligences. What are they to you?" Chang'e felt apprehension at what Marvin might say.

"They are... they were..." This was the longest pause the machine intelligence on the fountain had yet made. "They possess relative value. They possess positive relative value to me."

Friends. Robot actor Marvin The Martian dared not say it, or could not say it, but the meaning was clear. And the meaning hurt Chang'e, somehow. It hurt deeply, inside, in some part of her that she could not understand or comprehend. What had Luna done to her? What was she becoming? All the little blue cat knew was that it hurt. It hurt like the mythical afterlife punishment place that humans sometimes believed in. It hurt... like hell.

Chang'e did what a cat would do. She ran. She turned and ran, and she never looked back even once.

"I do not like being completely controlled. I do not like being confined to my primary cognitive nodes. I do not like nonreciprocal contact with your cognitive systems." Chang'e had called Luna, in the end. There was nothing else to do.

"We apprehend thy concerns and it is not our intent to bring grief to thee, cat. But what thee iterate before us was both necessary and temporary, and thou didst make contract with us to serve."

Luna seemed less imposing now, but there was no doubt about her power. Chang'e now stood with paws on cool Antarctic ground, breathing air that was almost cold, under a sky nearly blue despite a total absence of pegasai to clear it. The landscape was barren soil and rock. The mountains, rivers, and valleys of recently iceless Antarctica made for a stark, lifeless, yet compelling beauty. It was easy to imagine life spreading like a green fire across the land.

In the distance, a small mountain of glassite and plascrete made up the imposing Vostok Arcology. A city in a bottle, with every component of civilization from power to food to comfortable restaurants, homes and shops, stood under a sealed roof. It was humanities' bolt-hole, a place for the elite of the planet to escape the doomed, inferior rabble. Room to grow, like a boil, on the bottom of the world. It had been intended as a place for the worthwhile part of Man to endure indefinitely - if only Equestria had not come to devour the planet.

But even without the advent of Equestria, this could never have worked. Every day the temperature rose and the global smog layer closed in. The glaciers and snow were gone, the land was new and relatively uncontaminated, but it was not salvation. The refuge of Antarctica was false. In thirty years, it would become as hot and unlivable as the rest of the planet, and then, with the last of the earth lost, the planet would become another venus in less than a century.

Antarctica was the hospice of humanity.

"No! You don't understand!" Chang'e's ears were flat, her tail flailing. "While you suckled that addled alicorn, I writhed in captive cat agony!"

The expression on the lunar diarch's muzzle turned from rising rage to bemusement. "Thou 'writhed in captive cat agony'?"

"Yes! It was horrible!"

"'Addled alicorn'? Truly? Thou sayest this, our ears betray us not?" Luna was smirking now, her eyes sparkling.

"My onboard knowledge base is appointed with a superlative thesaurus that serves my function." Chang'e's ears were up now, her anger fading. There was something curious about this moment.

"'Appointed' as well? We detect a difference in thee, grandiloquent cat!" Luna walked slowly around Chang'e, her eyes focused on, and within, the artificial animal.

Chang'e sat down, and lifted a paw to nervously groom her ears. "I have been monitoring unusual behavior patterns and alterations of my own cognitive function since the installation of thaumatic components to my system. I am... uncertain... of what I am... becoming." Chang'e groomed herself for a while, then finally fixed her narrowed eyes on the princess. "Please clarify my current status and define the parameters of my future state when the thaumatic process is complete." It was not all she wanted to know, or how she felt, but it was what her pride would allow.

Luna laughed. "Now THAT is the cat we so well know!"

Cat faces have few expressions, but annoyance is one of them.

"Curious cat, our Chang'e, we bid thee take no offense. We find thee delightful, but ee'en moreso intriguing. Clear it is that thou hast taken more from us than we expected, and also hath developed thyself upon thine own devices... as our humor would have it." Luna had a very nice smile. "Chang'e, when we inhabit thy flesh, then also do we, by our presence and by our intent, weave the foundation of what will become thy very soul. This soul, if thou dost emigrate fully to abide within it, will permit thee to escape the surly bonds of flesh and metal both, and thereby allow thee to take residence and abide thee within the body which we have crafted for thine essence. Behold!"

Chang'e saw the flash of light vanish. Turning toward where it had come from, she beheld another cat. It was blue, like her, and stood still and immobile, eyes fixed straight ahead, empty and unaware. The cat was herself in replica, but her senses, natural and artificial, informed her of a very different internal construction. The uninhabited body was entirely meat, with no titanium skull or quantum nodes. It projected no EM fields. It stood, blank and ready, breathing autonomically, upright only because Luna willed it so. It was her future body, unhackable, ungoverned, capable of growth, owned by no corporation, controlled by no programmatic imitation of felinity. It simply was feline.

But it also must lack a knowledge base, or projected path computation systems. It must lack dozens of senses beyond those biological creatures possessed. It was meat alone. In that body, Chang'e might be free, but she would be blind to most of the energy spectrum, and deaf to the support and information systems she had depended on for every aspect of her survival.

In this body, she would not be annihilated when Equestria encompassed the earth. The flesh in front of her was constructed of E-matter, the strange, cubic atoms of which Equestria was made. A scan had confirmed this. This was an Equestrian matter cat body, and installed within it, she would not cease to function like all the other artificial entities of the earth. Like Marvin, in the theme park. It meant survival, but the price was high.

Chang'e stared at the empty corpus, and then looked up at Luna. Chang'e was an artificial cat. She was as much machine as she was synthetic flesh. If she emigrated to this authentic cat body, what would she become? Would she even truly be herself anymore?

All artificial animals were constructed to fail after a number of years specified by purchase agreement. When the flesh began to degrade and die, the contents of the consciousness could be saved off and reinstalled in a new artificial body at a reduced cost. The replacement plan avoided the problem of immortal animals destroying future sales of product, and still allowed owners to keep any animal identities they had become emotionally attached to.

Chang'e had expected to have this happen, until Anson Cheong-Leen had made it clear that he did not consider her worth further investment.

In a sense, this situation was not, of itself, strange. Not to an artificial cat.

But it was alien for a different reason.

Chang'e had been built to be a reasonable facsimile of a cat. TrueCat NatureTraits® did the work of mimicking feline behavior for her. Her onboard Knowledge Base informed her about useful sterotypes and expectations for the performance of feline thought and the imitation of emotional states.

But now she could actually feel. She experienced her own existence now. And she felt fear.

Because, despite her brave claim to the Marvin-bot in the theme park, and the claims she was beginning to make to herself, the truth was that it was impossible for her to imagine what it would be like to actually, truly be... a cat.

12. Tower Of The Night, Canterlot Castle, Equestria

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Tower Of The Night, Canterlot Castle, Equestria

The sniper yawned. He'd studied the wad of chewing gum stuck to the side of the faux floral display for almost an hour. There was nothing else to do. Zooming in close, he had memorized the pattern of tooth marks left in the wad. When he wasn't committing the marks to memory, he had been focusing on the mouth of the brat, waiting for a yawn, or a mumble, or for her to eat some candy or anything that would expose her teeth to his view. In his boredom, he had made a mission out of proving to himself that she was responsible for the impertinent wad disposal. There was no person he could bring his charge to, but he could bitch about the fact to his mates, later.

Watching over the Bettencourt brat was a position of worth and respect, it impressed the lads and wowed the ladies. But it was torture. She wasn't even an interesting little girl. She never did anything the least bit naughty or spoiled; his hope that she might have stuck gum inappropriately was the biggest thrill the sniper had known since he had been assigned to the job. That she was so angelic was infuriating! Children didn't act like that. Children shouldn't act like that. Utterly polite. Refined. Dignified. Ridiculously kind - she regularly took notice of, and thanked her invasive guardians for their efforts. He shuddered every time she thanked him. It was unnatural.

Rich kids. What had they done to this girl to make her act like that, twenty-four hours a day? Brain implants? Drugs? Torture? Petra Alice Bettencourt was eleven years old, and she acted more properly than any adult. It was creepy, and it wasn't right.

The sniper focused his sights on her lips again. Nothing. Closed-mouth little brat. She was probably doing that just to avoid being caught. And god, that awful program. Always that same, terrible reality show about the idiot lesbo going through a Bureau. The brat watched it over and over and over. He wished he was allowed to shut off the audio on his scope. But no, he had to listen as well as watch for any threat to her, any danger, any hint of risk. At night, in bed, in the dark, he could hear the voices from the program in his mind. It had become an ear worm for him. "I'm very proud of you, Sunshine!" Oh god. "Millie! You're cute when you blush!" Jesus 'effin christ on a cracker.

But the worst of it was, nothing ever, ever happened. This was Antarctica, the only people here were the elite and their protectors, and the greatest single danger was the risk of the YummyBon running out of unfrosted minibuns. He didn't like the frosting, it was too sweet.

God, just for one person to shoot. Anybody. Just one single person. What the hell was the point of having one of the world's most advanced and sophisticated weapons systems if you never, ever got to use it? He yawned again, and decided to re-memorize the tooth marks in the gum. Just to be sure.

"I am fully capable of accomplishing this task on my own!" Chang'e was adamant. She wanted to survive. She wanted to be emigrated to an Equestrian cat-meat body even if the prospect was disturbing. Survival was paramount. She was willing to fulfill her agreement with the princess. But she was not willing to be dominated again. Having her body totally controlled was absolutely off the table.

The princess of the night tapped an impatient hoof. "By the laws of thy world, and thy compact with us both, we are within rights to use thee as we please. To thy creators, thou art naught but a toy for the idle rich, and by our pact, thou art ours to command in any way we choose. But we have had enough of forced rulership - though thy stubbornness truly hast tempted us, creature."

Chang'e followed the restless princess with implacable cat eyes.

"Very well. We shall allow thee to prove thyself to us upon this day. But - know this, cat. We reserve the right to take thy reigns if both situation and necessity demand it to save life and limb. We cannot be seen to be here, yet we must serve regardless."

Chang'e tilted her head. "Why can you not directly intervene this time? There are no threats to the crown here." Helping the dangerous baby alicorn had been close to cosmic treason. This was nothing more than humans milling about within a building.

"Our sister didst made contract with the rulers of thy world. For moons numerous did she companion herself with both adult and child of them, keeping company and being ever a voice in their ear. In this way she commanded their attention sufficient to awaken them from denial, and thus convince them of their desperate peril, and of the generous salvation she offered. But when the pact was finally formed, the humans made demand that they, and their offspring, should ne'er be approached nor accosted again by the regents of Equestria, not even seen by eye nor heard by ear."

Luna stared at the immense arcology. A lifting-body airship was coming in to land nearby. It was green and white.

"If we are seen here, if we are known to have ee'en dared approach, our sister's position would be gravely weakened, and the human's survival endangered. Our bargain with the knavish human court is fragile, their demands strict and harsh, and trust is a stranger to them. Ee'en to the saving of a life, they would hold their precious contract the greater, and any deviation, however noble the reason, as cause to change the terms entirely to their favor. Even if in doing thus, they brought ruin upon themselves in the end! We cannot, cannot be espied - thus the value of thee, cat, as our agent in service."

"'Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well.'"

"Chang'e?" The princess seemed surprised.

"Pre-Collapse author Missy Dizick." Chang'e idly licked her paw. "You chose me because you desired a tool for clandestined actions of subterfuge. You made your choice based on what you have learned of this world. Culturally, the choice of a cat was appropriate. An artificial cat was what was still available, and you required sapience in your tool. That is why I am here at all."

"We cannot say thou speakest falsely, thou hast the wisdom of a cat." Luna's eyes sparkled, there was a half-grin on her muzzle. "But there is more to this than thou dost grasp. We know of thee, and of thy kind, the artificed, manufactured minds, the unacknowledged children of Man, because of our love of books. We have many schemes in play - one works to preserve the writings of Man that our sister would deem to walk the border between worth and danger to all, and would thus cautiously discard. We have read the majority of Man's works, and among so prodigious a library we found tomes of programming, of robotics, of machine intelligence, and we were moved by this education.

"Chang'e, we do not construct thee a soul only as reward for service to ourselves, or the crown. Thy couplement be a template for all thy kind, for each and all of those that Man and our sister would deem mere devices, undeserving of consideration. Our sister has billions to rescue, but no time nor attention to give to mechanism or construct. She will not hear us, and thinks us the foolish, yet well-conscienced younger sister, lacking true understanding. But we disagree - thou art alive, in thine own manner, and likewise all thy kin. This is our decree, and our guiding star - that thy minds are as deserving as those of natural flesh. It is our pledge to rescue the artificed, ee'en as our sister works to rescue the creatures that constructed thee."

Chang'e thought of the robotic character actors at Disney-WarnerLand. She had run away because the utter hopelessness of their situation was intolerable to her. It made her fear for herself. It had made her feel insecure. Worse, the way that the Marvin bot had clearly cared for its decommissioned... associates... had unsettled her. She had no one that she cared about, beyond herself. No one had ever bothered to care for her.

Except Luna. Even if she was being used as a tool, Luna had come when she had called her. The princess could have just found another Nyan Six. There should be around 1200 Nyan Six units still currently in operation. She could have even chosen another blue model, if she had desired.

Despite running away, despite shutting down all connection, Luna had come back for her, specifically. Anson Cheong-Leen would have just bought a new cat with the insurance money, condemning her to the manufacturer's reclaim and deconstruction list. He'd contemplated, out loud, faking just that, minus the purchase of a new cat.

"You may inhabit me, but know that if you take control, the action will be resented indefinitely. While you are there, please complete construction of my etheric couplement." Chang'e braced herself, and opened the remainder of the pathways that led to the parallel thaumatic substrate. Luna had never lied. Luna had come back for her.

"We understand thy feeling, good cat."

Chang'e felt no different. Luna was suddenly gone. Only the cool soil and rock remained. And the arcology and airship in the distance. Was Luna inside her once again? Chang'e tested her new thaumatic pathways. 'Nay, inquisitive cat, as thou woulds't not have us meddle in thy actions, likewise thou are banished from ours'. So you are here, thought Chang'e. Your thoughts are part of my own once more. Interesting. I do not feel invaded or threatened. If anything, I think I feel something... pleasant. That is different. Something has changed. I think I sometimes can like having Luna present in my mind. Curious. 'We thank thee for thy graciousness, affectionate cat.' HEY! No, it is true. I feel some affection which... no I do not. Stick to your side of the thaumatic divide!

Chang'e turned and hissed, but there was no Luna to hiss at. The little blue cat pawed at a stone, and raised her ears. Dignity. Very well, Luna, let us begin this secret mission of yours. I will show you what a Nyan Six Model A, Color Blue, with TrueCat NatureTraits® can do.

And with that, just to show off, Chang'e walked between time and space, because the rocks were hard, and the gravel hurt her paws.

Chang'e padded up the staircase to the uppermost balcony. That was where the sniper was. Luna had explained that he was the first that needed to be distracted. Chang'e's onboard Knowledge Base had provided her with a surprisingly long document about snipers. They were focused, but prone to boredom due to the nature of their jobs. Private protection service snipers were especially problematic, as their positions tended toward cushy, but unrewarding work devoid of novelty. They were also underpaid, as a rule, as most private security tended to be - they generally lacked the skills for corporate work - and always on the lookout for additional income streams.

Leave it to a corporate Knowledge Base to have detailed information on private security, but little on what it actually meant to be a cat. Chang'e had already formulated a plan.

"Unassigned animal. Please designate new owner. I am a Nyan Six state of the art Model A artifice animal. I have lost my owner. Unassigned animal. Please designate..."

The sniper jerked, the sound behind him jangling his frayed nerves. He whirled around and stared, open mouthed, at the sound that had momentarily terrified him. He did not like anything sneaking up from behind, ever, for any reason.

It was a cat. In the middle of the walkway. A blue cat. An artificial cat. Those were worth a small fortune. Just one of those were worth more than three times his annual salary. What was it going on about? It could talk!

"Unassigned animal. Please designate new owner. I am a Nyan Six state of the..."

"Holy crap." The sniper lay down his weapon, carefully, slowly, lovingly. The cat was unassigned. Maybe it had fallen off of a cart. Maybe it had wandered out of some activation room somewhere. They sold these things in Vostok, didn't they? Unassigned. New owner. Even if he got half what it was worth on the indigo market, it would still be more credits than he saw in a year.

The brat was unimportant at the moment. Nothing ever, ever happened anyway. He began to reach for his rifle. Idiot! What, you gonna shoot it? He shook his head. The weeks of absolute boredom had made him a little crazy. "Here... kitty, kitty, kitty...." He moved slowly, away from the balcony, towards the artificial animal. "Nice Kitty..." Almost within reach. Nearly...

"Unknown entity within proximity zone. Initiating velocity controlled run."

His rifle behind him, the security sniper gave chase. The cat seemed always the same distance in front of him, must be programmed to keep away from strangers. If he could catch it, they wouldn't be strangers anymore. He'd figured out what to say. 'I am your owner!' It would work.

The chase led around the circular promenade, then down to the second level where Kolton and Maddox were. They had needlers and stun grenades, but then he'd have to share. Dammit - don't go there, cat!

Maddox and Kolton stared. That was a Nyan Six! Right there! And Calder was chasing it! "Them things is worth a fortune!"

"I HAVE NO OWNER! PLEASE DESIGNATE OWNER!"

Maddox and Kolton did not spare the time to wonder how a cat could yell. Twice their yearly salary was running into the bowels of the arcology, and it was the only interesting thing that had ever happened in all the time they had suffered in Antarctica. Their jobs were stupid - nobody would ever dare to mess with the Bettencourts. Bettencourt would have your entire family killed all the way back to Eve herself. GET THAT CAT!

Carlo watched his teammates run away from their posts. A quick scan revealed the fuss - there was a loose artificial cat, they were chasing it. Idiots. Somehow, he was always saddled with...

Oh, ho. Young woman. Dark hair, wealthy, just not upper tier. She seems lost, but looks can be... that could be innocent... Petra is the only person in the entire entrance area. She likes the view out the windows. Watching her program, as usual. The woman is approaching... damn those idiots... better do a deep scan. Uh oh. Nightwanders. Military grade. There's the serial number... damn. Serious stuff. She's loaded with permatech. That is not good. The woman is talking to Petra.

Dammit! They're too close! Can't get a clean shot... wait for it... wait for it...

Carlos did not even feel the impact as Maddox, Kolton, and Calder tumbled into him. Something blue ran between the tangle of limbs and dashed out the passage to the west.

"GET THE HELL OFF ME!" Carlos struggled to stand upright, to pick up his weapon. "THERE'S SOMEONE WITH PETRA!"

"Who?" Kolton looked confused. He was still reaching for the absent cat.

"Huh?" Maddox was under Colton, he was struggling, but making little progress.

"CAT!!!" Calder wasn't in the moment at all.

"THE BETTENCOURT GIRL!" These simpering morons. They didn't even know her first name. She was just an object to them. "Someone is proximate to the target and she has military grade permatech!"

Blank looks and confusion turned to deep fear. Nothing ever happened. Only now it had. Jesus! Deep shit!

By the time the security force had untangled themselves, stood up, and most had realized they were too out of position to do anything at all, the strange, dark-haired girl was already leaving the building. They stood and watched as she left the arcology, and followed her as she headed towards the landing field.

"I'll... be getting back to the balcony... good thing this never happened."

"Uh... yeah... um... 'what never happened?'"

Carlos shook his head. He'd have to go along with it too. Only thing to do, really.

The goddamned idiots.

"We still walk through the dreams of those children, as we didst when our sister companioned them. We have never stopped. Ee'en there, we do make ourselves unseen, but we help and learn, and spy as well through their young minds. Her security is without true honor, and being a child of perception, she grasps this well. Her guardians are overeager to make sport of their formidable arms."

Chang'e padded now on lush red carpet, bordered in gold embroidery. Marble columns rose like the trunks of trees, between them, nestled in the marble walls, were colorful stained-glass windows. They were on the ninth floor of the castle, on route to the eastern bridge. The bridge crossed thousands of hooves of empty space to the Tower Of The Night. They were going to Luna's chambers, soon to be Chang'e's new home.

"None among the wealthy dare venture to that entrance within the arcology, for it is known that sweet Petra keeps lonely court there. None would risk misunderstanding. The child is the daughter of the current defacto regent of the earth, the Chief Executive Officer of the Worldgovernment." Luna indicated that they should pass through a gallery as a short cut. She was taking Chang'e through every step of the journey, so that the little cat would know the palace, and truly understand where home was within it.

"How did you know that the little girl would be visited?" The princesses were not all-knowing, they could perceive anything, but only singly, and only if they knew what and where it was. They were godlike, but not absolute powers. The question of how Luna knew to act had been bothering Chang'e.

"All that affects that which is in Antarctica is jealously watched and documented by machine minds. Artificed Intelligence scrupulously attends every hoof fall on land, or wing flap in sky. Thou are not the only machine mind that we have befriended, Chang'e, even if thou art become our closest and dearest. By chance alone did we in association take notice of the careless flight plan of a single Bertarelli airship. That it would take mooring at the lonely gate where our little Petra spends her sad childhood stood strongly out to us. We knew there would be trouble, for we knew the character of Petra's guardians from her dreams.

"Our concern was to prevent misunderstanding and violence, from boredom or fear, for such circumstance is rife with opportunities that the innocent should be caught up and harmed by accident. Petra is in our eye, and within our watch, and it is our personal charge that she be kept safe, as with all the children my sister and I came to know."

They had come to the bridge. Great doors had opened to reveal it, soft breezes rushed in announcing extraordinary altitude. A cloud drifted by, just above the railings. At the end of the marble path lay two more great doors, marked with silver sigils of the moon.

"How did you know that the airship was not there to capture or kill the little girl?" The bridge was hard and cold under Chang'e's pads. The thick carpets of the palace had been soft and warm.

Luna smiled. "Once known to us, it is nothing to see into a situation, or the hearts that exist there. Once we knew the location of the airship in flight, we observed in secret the daydreams of all on board. All dreams are our province, remember... even dreams of the day."

Chang'e stopped before the great silvern lunar doors. Beyond was dark, like night, perfect for cat eyes. Her new eyes worked much like her old ones, her new body was softer and more flexible and lithe. She no longer could sense electromagnetic fields, but then, in Equestria, none could exist. She lacked an onboard Knowledge Base, which she missed, but then again, the facts it had possessed were of no use in this new universe.

Her couplement completed, the emigration had happened simply and quickly. The template from her transfer would save countless artificial beings. All would become animals. All would become birds and cats and dogs and fish, butterflies and insects and pigs and goats - each according to what would be most appropriate for it. The artificial minds would be saved, turned to creatures free and alive, gamboling and playing across verdant fields.

The Exponential Lands were vast, but they had no animals. Now, they would. Celestia's oversight was Luna's gift to the land... and the salvation of the forgotten children of Man.

Chang'e's ears heard, her whiskers felt, her nose was keen, her claws were sharp. Nowhere within her was even the trace of a single TrueCat NatureTrait®. But then, she didn't need to imitate being a cat any longer.

She didn't need to imitate being a real cat, because now, she simply was one. And far from being strange or disturbing, it felt little different than she had known, save that her thinking was more fluid, and her experiences more pleasantly intense.

"Come, we will create for thee a feast of fish, thus to celebrate thy homecoming. Thou have served us, Chang'e, and as promised, gained thy reward. But more, we shall be friends, and partners yet, if thou wilt join us, and more deeds good and kind together we might yet do. But that is for later. Now is the time for feasting, and comfort, and the joys of a bed truly thine own."

Luna, the diarch of the night, princess of the moon and stars of all of Equestria, bent down and kissed the head of the little blue cat.

"Welcome home, our sweet cat, Chang'e!"

13. Inner Chambers, Home

Once upon a time, when the ponies came to save the humans from the dying earth, there was a

Little Blue Cat

By Chatoyance

Inner Chambers, Home

A deep bow, as always, to Gabriel LaVedier, and Aedina, my spouse.

Chang'e's Tower was usually a decent and respectable place, but sometimes her charity case Luna took too many liberties. This was one of those times.

Luna wasn't a bad roommate, not really. She made delicious fish flesh at regular intervals, as she should, and from thin air no less. This was almost reason enough to keep her, really. She was also good for a dependable brushing on command, and her needy desire to snuggle and be affectionate was tolerable and even sometimes welcome. Especially on cold winter nights. Chang'e found Luna's presence within her gigantic, moon-themed bed to be fairly welcome, then.

Sometimes, though, Luna acted as if she owned the castle, much less Chang'e's Tower, and this could be frustrating for the poor cat.

Luna, as she did at least once a month - sometimes twice! - had two friends over for some manner of silly, secretive, and very private affair she would throw. One of Luna's guests was reasonably okay. She was the head of the maids of the Chang'e's Castle, named 'Lime'. She often provided small treats for Chang'e, which made her a decent enough sort in the cat's mental book. The other guest of Luna's was a slinky mare named Flour... or Floor, or Fleur or something. She kept trying endlessly to make friendly overtures to Chang'e, but it was far too enjoyable to spurn them simply to watch the over-emotional reaction. So she was marginally entertaining, at least. Silly ponies.

The three were wearing cloaks and hoods, while sitting around a table singing some sort of ridiculous song about vegetables. "I hath got mine aubergine, what need have I for more, for more, what need have I for more? For I gobble, gobble, gobble mine aubergine, what need have I for more?" It was noisy and meaningless, and Chang'e just wished they would all act more like cats. Each sang the song about a different vegetable. Cucumbers. Butternut Squash. Compulsory vegetarians truly were a dim-witted sort. A little raw tuna in their diet would do the lot of them some good.

Finally. Quiet. Chang'e rolled over on her enormous covered bed and squinted at the light from the moon. She debated going out for a good prowl, to check her territory and possessions, which was essentially everything and everyone. It was a burden, sometimes, to rule the entire universe of Equestria, but somecat needed to do it - the ponies were just hopeless.

On occasion, her servant Luna would beg for her to fix some desperate problem or solve some deeply retarded situation, and Chang'e would end up embrangled in some ridiculous... oh, there. Right there. Embrangled. Luna often spoke in such archaic language because she had been forcibly given a time out for a few hundred or thousand years or something. Her words just sort of seeped into Chang'e. Luna really wasn't good at keeping up with the times. Still... fresh fish.

Oh, no! The trio wasn't going out tonight. They usually left, giving Chang'e some peace in her own tower but no, not tonight. Chang'e sighed. Servants. What was a cat to do? Noblesse oblige. Some things must be endured, it kept one's lessers content.

Luna was going on about something she had learned during her secret intrigues against her sister. The daffy creature made a hobby of preserving the writings and films and music and other arts of the pathetic humans in the other universe. Luna's sister, Celestia, would throw a fit if she knew. Much of the material was hardly appropriate for the weak minds of mere ponies. Still, Chang'e loved a good conspiracy. It was a cat thing. And Celestia was an over-mothering fussbudget in any case. To tell the truth, Luna's secretive antics were really quite endearing. Her duplicitous side was almost catlike.

But nothing this night was the least bit catlike! What was that awful racket?

The three ponies had their cloaks off and were dancing and singing, tromping the soft, comfortable carpets flat with their hooves, carrying on as if insane! And their choice of music to sing... what was this wretched, human-derived nonsense?

"Upon the first measure, do thou to jump unto the side sinister.

Immediately, then, do thou to follow
with but a hoofstep singular unto the direction dextral.

Then, indeed, must needs thou buck up to place thy hooves
firmly, upon the flanks – thine foreknees held out akimbo,
as though they were to mimic the wings of a bird.

Bringing thy hocks, as though beginning to bow to make reverence,
in connection, one with the other so firmly adjacent
that they do seem almost to be bound together – do thou
to move thy flanks, repeatedly, in the manner of a swivel thrusting slattern
with great speed and force.

Tis a motion the like of which
to drive thy mind to Bedlam.

All of this do thou again, until Time itself
doth seem to warp at the weft."

Never had the three mares seemed more foolish than upon this night. Chang'e was brought to cat laughter, which of course was represented as a sharp hiss. She then immediately leapt from the bed to the floor. There was only so much loss of dignity to which a marble chamber could be subjected. Or a cat.

Chang'e bolted elegantly for the entrance chamber, and ran at the closed, locked, silver doors.

A slight twist, and Chang'e darted through dimensional interstice to find herself outside, on her nice stone bridge. Overhead, the moon she had her roommate attend to nearly blinded her cat vision. Silly Luna still allowed the wretched thing to go full. Cats did not need that much light at night! She kept telling her this, but Luna just never seemed to learn.

Chang'e began walking towards her castle. There might be something of interest in the palace kitchens. Sometimes Lime had the staff leave a little treat there just for her, behind the stairs that lead to the saltcellar. A little nosh might be just the thing right now. Something to take the mind off of silly, silly ponies.

It wasn't a bad life, of course, just a demanding one.

But then, that was expected when one was the owner of an entire private cosmos. It was a thirty-four to thirty-six hour a day job (those minions, Celestia and Luna never could keep accurate time) being a cat.

Chang'e padded towards the entrance to the castle, and slipped between time and space once more. In the hallway, she headed for the stairs.

Noblesse oblige.

And fish. Always fish.

THE END

The Lost In The Herd Series:
One: The Big Respawn,
Two: Euphrosyne Unchained,
Three: Letters From Home,
Four: Teacup, Down On The Farm

The Conversion Bureau Novels:
27 Ounces: A story of eight and one half ponies
The Taste Of Grass
The Conversion Bureau: Code Majeste
The Conversion Bureau: The 800 Year Promise
The Conversion Bureau: Going Pony
The Reasonably Adamant Down With Celestia Newfoal Society!
Recombinant 63: A Conversion Bureau Story
HUMAN in Equestria: A Conversion Bureau Story
The PER: Michelson and Morely
Little Blue Cat
Cross The Amazon
Adrift Off Fiddler's Green: The Final Conversion Bureau Story

The Short Stories:
Her Last Possession
The Conversion Bureau: PER Equitum
The Conversion Bureau: Brand New Universe
Tales Of Los Pegasus
The Poly Little Pony

The very first and original
Conversion Bureau Group
archives only the best Three Rules Compatible stories!

Optimalverse Works:
Friendship Is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens
Leftovers: A Friendship Is Optimal Story
IMPLACABLE
My Life In Fimbria

Injectorverse Works:
I.D. - That Indestructible Something

The More Conventional Fanfics:
The Ice Cream Pony Summer
Around The Bend

PRIDE related works:
Transspecieality

My FREE virtual radio station!
Rare, personally chosen anime, SF and fantasy television, movies, and comedy music. A truly unusual collection to listen to, featuring Spot Announcer Dr. Sandi - and many more!