To Build a World

They were born too big, and as a result, they both killed their surrogate mothers.

The baby slid from the sex of her mother, the adult animal convulsed one last time. He kneeled, and with a scalpel cut the infant from the amniotic sac. The mother’s final breath passed.

It didn’t matter to him, not in the slightest. The ends always justified the means, even if public opinion disagreed with him, as they had on more than one occasion. Groups rallied against him, led by that pompous self-centered asshole Malcolm.

Especially after the incident in 2015 which wasn’t his even his fault. He wasn’t the one who underestimated his creation. He was almost forced to concede defeat, to give up on his purpose in life, if it weren’t for that woman, whose name he could not remember.

He sighed, and looked down at the infant now before him, the younger of two sisters. Like the primary model organism they were based off of, they were capable at birth, eyes open and able to stand within a very short time after emerging from the womb. The older sister was pale, her mane and tail long, silky, seeming to move by their own volition. Her sister was still slick with fluid, her fur dark blue and her eyes blinking open. She looked up at him.

He reached down, ran his hands over her body, feeling every inch, making sure. Like her sister, she was perfect. Like her sister, from her head sprouted a horn, and from her back sprouted wings.

He picked her up, held her close to him. He felt her heart beating inside of her, the amniotic fluid staining his almost-perfect lab coat.

“And you……” his voice trailed off. “I will call you Luna.” The older sister moved forward, looking from the man to her sister to the dead mare on the ground. He looked at the white animal, and he smiled. “Say hello to your sister, Celestia.”

When you had an advanced level of understanding in genetics, and the proper technology, it was amazing what you could engineer.

The others came easier, designed to be smaller so the mares could produce more than one offspring. He was nothing if not economic. Three kinds were made – winged, horned, and, to satisfy nostalgia for home, a kind only slightly altered from the model organism. All were blessed by him with intelligence, although not as much so as his daughters. Unlike Celestia and Luna, these were not his daughters, and unlike Luna and Celestia, he did not think of them as such. Only the first generations were raised in captivity; after that, they were allowed to breed in the wild.

The wild. It was still a weird concept to him. He had discovered this world quite by accident, and it was alive and ready, green plants and blue skies, but totally lacking any animal life at all. He couldn’t explain it, and honestly he didn’t even try. The lack of animal life simply gave him the freedom to create that he always longed for.

He made some normal things, sure. Birds, otters, snakes, bats, mammals, lions, donkeys, the like. Dinosaurs, what some would consider to be his trademark. All with varying degrees of intelligence, slightly modified traits as he saw fit. But he also tried his hand at more exotic creations: creatures that seemed almost mythological.

In this world, free from the ethical constraints of his homeland, he was free.

He was happy.

He was god.

They aged quickly, at least it seemed so to him. They grew remarkably fast, and matured rapidly, must faster than the ponies he created to be wild. By the age of three, they would have been analogous to teenage horses back home. Unlike the natural ponies he created, he had manipulated the mitochondrial genes in such a way so that his beloved daughters would never succumb to senescence.

He was a smart man, and he taught them. One of the traits he had given his daughters, and the ponies and a few other species, was the ability to verbally communicate. The shape of their skulls, the dimensions of their necks gave them a very peculiar, exotic accent. All it required was the addition of, the a tweaking and a turning on, the FOXP2 gene, and it was done. As they had been designed (all of them, not just his daughters), they picked up language very fast.

Luna and Celestia were five when he first appeared. After being taken out and shown the “natural” ponies, they could move about them by themselves, unsupervised. He was looking out one of the windows of his study, across the geography of his new home, when he heard a voice behind him.

“Honestly, I can’t believe you managed to pull this off,” the voice was familiar. The man had heard it before, even if it had been a very long time. “Getting the buildings, the technology, here… that’s no simple task. I’m sure you had some help from the good doctor. Did you tell him what you were doing over here? Does he know? Hmmmm?”

“And what will I be calling you this time?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” the voice was amused. “You can call me what you called me last time.”

The man turned around to face another man, with curly hair, a little chubby with an amused grin. “I don’t remember what I called you last time.”

“Oh! I see! Your brain’s not quite what it once was, is it?” He laughed, and snapped his fingers. He appeared next to the man, put his arm over the man’s shoulders. A trick the human was not used to. “I suppose, if you must call me something, then you can call me Discord.” Discord looked down at his human form. He sighed. “Oh, but this form simply just won’t do! This must be remedied!”

Another snap of the finger. Before the man stood an assemblage of animal parts, on a serpentine body. Mixed horns, limbs, eyes, and wings.

“There,” Discord said. “This is much more fitting.”

“What do you want?”

“I just came to check up on you. Oh, don’t look so surprised – I told you I would. The Continuum is very surprised, they didn’t think you could pull this off.”

The man chuckled under his breath. Discord continued: “You know, it’s amazing what you can do once you throw your ethics out the window, isn’t it. It’s a wonder they didn’t make you a king back home.”

“They are a stupid, ill-informed, petty, shortsighted people.”

“Or perhaps they are wise, Henry. You are capable of great things, but your experiences pale in comparison to even the most average of my kind. You don’t even yet know why this place is so much like your own yet slightly different.”

“Why is it?”

“Oh, tsk tsk, Henry. That’s for you to find out yourself. We have our own set of ethics, something like a Prime Directive, if you like. Observe, but never greatly interfere. But never mind that, you’ll find out soon enough.”

They both looked out the window. Neither spoke for a few moments.

“Your daughters look very happy, Henry,” Discord said.

Henry looked at Discord form the corner of his eyes, tipping his head a little. “I’ve never seen you this somber.”

“They are so close to you, and you’re so close to them. And yet even in five years, as they’ve grown, you’ve aged. Not much – genetics have been kind to you, Henry – but you have. I can see it. They can’t, and you can’t, but I can. What will happen when the inevitable happens, Henry? What will happen…. When you die?”

Henry looked back out the window. “I will figure something out. I created this. I can prevent death. I did it for them. I can do it for myself.”

“We shall see.”

And with a snap, Discord disappeared.