“I think,” Twilight said, “I’d like to be a god.”
She lifted her stylus and added the idea to her notebook. “Deity,” she wrote, the little stylus producing a dark blue line on the tablet screen. She stared at that for a moment, then added a “?” after it. Another few seconds passed before she clicked the side-switch on her stylus, bringing up the options menu. She switched the pen color to red, and then put a little star in the margins of her notes, marking the idea for later review.
Lifting her head from her notebook, Twilight checked the monitors in front of her. There wasn’t much to see. The little patch of dust she’d happened across was barely fifty RU in total, and it was scattered across thirty-two billion cubic kilometers of space in clumps no larger than two or three RU each. The harvesting process was going so slowly, it hardly even seemed worth stopping for. But so far out, Twilight had to take RU where she could get them.
Still, the robots seemed to be doing fine. No news was good news. Twilight typed out a quick command, adding to the scrolling green lines. All three harvesters reported back status-okay. Twilight did a few other checks just to be thorough, but with nothing else to do, soon went back to her notebook.
“I hope you don’t think that’s megalomaniacal or narcissistic of me,” she said, as she considered the page. “Or blasphemous. But I think it’s a reasonable demand. Given your position and all that. I mean, there’s precedent.” A small smile came to her face, and she gave half a laugh. “I suppose it’s still not proper, but I think it’s okay if I’m a little selfish. As long as it doesn’t hurt anypony.”
Twilight again switched the pen color, this time from red to gold, and started drawing a little sketch of herself. In her drawing, she had wings, a horn, and some kind of halo behind her head made of light. The legs were not quite right though, having an elongated, thin quality that looked more deformed than elegantly tall. Twilight frowned, erased them, started again, and repeated that process several more times before lapsing into a silence.
“I don’t want to be, like, the new Empress of Heaven or anything though,” she added. “I don’t think I have the right temperament for it. I’m too neurotic. Particularly when I was a teenager. And a little prone to flights of self-absorption, if we’re being honest. Vain-and-approval-seeking isn’t really what I look for in a leader. The people need somepony who can guide them—help them make sense of their life and offer useful advice. That’s just not me.”
She pressed the stylus to the space where her legs should have been, and swirled it in wide, arcing loops. It made a strange little golden drawing, like her torso and head was floating on a cloud of smoke. “I could totally be a part of the Pantheon though. Like the God of Stars or something. One of those really vaguely defined domains where I don’t have to spend all day giving out life advice or guiding the souls of the dead to the next life.”
A smile touched her face, and she started to sketch faster, drawing some sort of grand hall on the lower half of the page. It started as a temple, but ended up closer to a lecture hall, half-formed sketches suggesting rows of desks instead of benches. “Or I could be a demi-god. That might suit me a lot better. Wings and a horn and I’m all holy and stuff, but no actual divine powers. I want to be special, but the kind of special that makes you feel good about yourself, not the kind of special where ponies are depending on you. More like... pretty than really important.”
Her frown melted away, and she let out a small laugh. “You know, I think that’s the first time in my life I’ve said I wanted to be pretty? Looks never really mattered much to me.” She swallowed. “But you knew that.”
A click of the options menu brought up the selection box, and Twilight wrapped up the drawing she’d made of herself, tapping twice to copy. She opened the brush and layering tools, and pasted the drawing down in her lecture hall, shrinking it so she seemed to fit in the center. She erased the squiggles, and added a lectern to hide her lack of legs. Then, behind her, a very sacred looking holographic projector.
“You know, I’ve seen alicorns fly before? Caren and Daiamiid. But I still have no idea how you actually do it.” Sketching a few non-specific floating cubes over the projector gave the image that little touch of motion—like she was giving a lecture. “There’s a reason pegasi aren’t built the same way as earth ponies. You’re like the size of a car! A really small car, sure, but still. How does something that big get off the ground?”
Twilight’s stylus moved faster, adding the six sacred stars of her Kiith to the space above the projector—and the Sun and Moon above them. “Blossom and Medley would say I’m being foolish. They’re both atheists, you see. Though please, don’t be upset with them for that—they’re good ponies. They just think that... well.” Twilight’s smile brightened, and she gave a small shake of her head. “Medley once said that the only difference between her and you was that she can back up without ‘beep beep’ sounds coming out of nowhere. Which is ridiculous of course—”
The lights in the control room flashed red as a shrieking alarm filled the air. Twilight’s eyes went back to her control pannel at once, and the phosphorescent green text that had appeared there.
“HYPERSPACE EXIT EVENT,” the screen read, in blocky lettering. “Obj Mass: 90,292kg. CD, X: -5km, Y: +4241km, Z: -3211km. VEL, X: 0kps, Y: 0kps, Z: 0kps.”
“Sorry. Give me a moment, would you?” Twilight asked, putting her tablet to one side. She carefully scanned the main monitor, and then kicked her rolling swivel chair all the way across the control room to the monitor on the far control bank. “They’re in the plane of our hyperspace window again,” she said, as she checked the new reading. “That’s five jumps in a row. Not sure why that keeps happening. Well, I mean, I know why it keeps happening. An artifact of how they’re tracking us, obviously. I just don’t understand why it’s happening now. If you follow.”
It only took her a few more seconds to confirm that the mothership’s hyperdrive was fully charged and ready to go. It used to take longer, but she’d largely automated the process. “Anyway.” With a grunt of considerable effort, she kicked back over to the main monitor, where more text had appeared in the time she’d been away.
“HYPERSPACE EXIT EVENT, Obj Mass: 10,800,220kg. CD, X: -5km, Y: +4151km, Z: -3293km. VEL, X: 0kps, Y: 0kps, Z: 0kps. HYPERSPACE EXIT EVENT, Obj Mass: 51,786kg. CD, X: -5km, Y: +4199km, Z: -2245km. VEL, X: 0kps, Y: 0kps, Z: 0kps. HYPERSPACE EXIT EVENT, Obj Mass: 51,083kg. CD, X: -5km, Y: +4201km, Z: -2245km. VEL, X: 0kps, Y: 0kps, Z: 0kps.” And so on it went for some time, more and more scrolling lines appearing as Twilight watched.
“Cmd; Suppress_Output[Twilight_Hyperspace_Exit_Alert]: :timevoid(600s).” The console keyboard clicked rapidly, and when Twilight struck enter, the endless scrolling waves of text stopped. “Cmd; Suppress_Output[General_Alarm]: :timevoid(600s).” She struck enter again, and the wailing of the alarm fell silent, the control room lights returning to normal. “Cmd;” she typed again, “Recall[All_Active].” Then, she waited.
It took another five minutes for the recall command to complete, the control room lights flashing bright blue exactly once. Twilight checked the main panel, then strained to push herself over to the docking controls and the tactical monitor. The incoming ships had gotten very close—less than a thousand kilometers away—and so Twilight wasted no time getting back over to the hyperspace controls. The activation switch was exquisite. It was bright red, and under glass, and you had to turn two keys before it worked. Twilight had long since taped the cover up and jammed the keys in position, but it was still beautiful.
It made a little click when she pressed it. Then there was a quiet humming sound for a few seconds. The bridge lights flashed blue—but twice this time.
“Well,” Twilight said, “That’s that. Looks like we’re going to be in hyperspace for...” She typed another command. “About 9 hours. Plenty of time to see AJ and catch a quick nap. I’m happy with how that went though. I only saw one carrier that time. I think they’re getting bored with us.”
Twilight let out a long sigh and stretched a leg, reaching a hoof down to rub at her stomach. “Well, I’m hungry. Let’s eat. Then we’ll head down to the medical level and see Applejack. How does that sound?”
With a loud grunt, Twilight forced herself up off her chair, knees faintly shaking as she rose. “Sounds good!” she agreed, letting out another hiss of breath as she popped her knees, stretching out all of her limbs. “Ugh. Ugh!” Her neck cracked, and she let out a deep sigh, her head slumping down. “Phew. Sorry.”
Turning back to the control room, Twilight set about fixing her lunch. It was a pretty spacious area. Lots of room for her bed right in the middle, her footlocker, the refrigerator next to it, and that table she’d made out of metal scraps.
And there was plenty of room to stretch her legs. All around the edge of the control room were rows and rows of screens, displays, and hologram projectors, each with a swivel chair right in front of them. They were all shiny and new, still wrapped in their plastic packing material so no dust would despoil them before the crew arrived. On her way to the fridge, Twilight reached down and tripped the master bus, powering all the displays up. They were useless to her, never unwrapped, but their “Error, Drivers Not Found” alerts came in a wide variety of cheerful colors, and made the room brighter.
She pulled a MRE out of the footlocker, and a pre-condensed shake from the refrigerator. She pulled the tab off the MRE and waited for it to cook itself, while she enjoyed the shake at a gradual pace. The cool was nice, but it made the shake so thick it was practically solid. It needed time to warm up a bit.
She replayed some old phone calls to pass the time. Having access to the shipyard’s communications log had turned out to be a windfall, and she was halfway through a series of audio messages between a stallion named Phase Light and a mare named Bolt Action. Though Phase always called her “Space Babe” which made Twilight giggle. She listened to them talk dirty to each other until her shake was gone and her MRE was done, then she heated up two more MREs, dumping them together into one bowl.
“Don’t judge me,” she grumbled, sticking her muzzle down into the rice. “I’m a grown mare and I can eat two bowls of curry if I, fuck.” She spit up a glob of concentrated curry powder, breathing as quickly as she could and fumbling for her water. “Hot. Hot. Hooot.”
It was a long walk from the control room down to the medical level—nearly four miles. There was a tram, but it was still wrapped up in plastic too, so Twilight had to walk, pausing at several points along the way to catch her breath. The first time Twilight had taken that walk, the Mothership had still been under construction—a box the size of a city, its interior full of glittering machinery and busy engineers. She’d been in a space suit then. But once it was finished, those huge open spaces were filled with things, so the walk turned into more of a regular hallway.
“Hey there, Applejack!” she called as she finally pushed into the primary medical level, antechamber 45-C. “How’ve you been?”
Applejack was right where Twilight had left her last week—frozen solid in the glass cryokit next to the examination bed. Her golden mane was frozen into a jagged frill behind her head, her tail twisted up into an icy rope. Her legs were tilted sharply out away from her body, and her head lolled to one side against the pillow. Her spine was twisted at an unnatural angle such that her belly was turned up to the air—as was the long, black scar that ran clear from her groin to the base of her ribs.
Twilight paused in the door, the smile fading from her face. Slowly, she took a step forward, resting a hoof on the glass. “Hey there, Applejack,” Twilight said, slower and quieter than she had before. Her ears folded back, and her tail flicked once.
“I’m uh... I’m glad to see you’re okay.” Twilight forced herself to smile. “Celestia and I are fine too. Well, she’s fine. I am definitely going to need a C-section when it comes to that. You’d laugh if you could see me now. I feel like I’m the size of a barn.” Twilight carefully removed her hoof from the glass. “Want to see how she’s doing?”
The rest of the surgical antichamber was full of medical equipment: a state of the art sensor bed, spindly-looking surgical robots, boxes of sensors, fluid analyzers, the analysis computer, readout screens, IVs, crates of drugs, and more. Most of it was still packed away in its boxes, but Twilight had removed a few items for her personal use. She threw the bus on the main computer, and while she waited for it to boot up, reached for a box of sensors she’d left nearby.
“I am actually a little worried she’ll tear something,” Twilight admitted, affixing the little sensor disks to her belly one at a time. “The computer says it won’t happen, but I freak out a little every time she kicks. She kicks like a mule. Or, well. You. Don’t encourage her.”
Things took far longer than it should have. Even with magic, Twilight struggled to reach her own underside, having to crane her head down so she could check that she’d placed the sensors properly. Though only one pony was inside her, she was swollen as though she carried twins, and the motion left her winded. It was with some effort and using a box as a stepping stool that she managed to get herself up onto the examination bed, carefully laying flat with all four hooves on the ground. Below her, the bed sprang to life, a bright green light appearing at one end and slowly sliding under Twilight.
“So!” Twilight said as she waited, picking up her tablet from the table where she’d left it. “I have something for you I thought you’d like. I was able to work your whole family in after all! It wasn’t exactly what you wanted, but I did the math, and if we count up to your third cousins as family, we manage to get a decent size Apple clan all above the filters. See?” Twilight selected one of her files from the device, holding the genealogy tree up to the glass of Applejack’s tank.
She held it there for a moment, and then pulled it back down.
“Now, I know it’s not... you know. Natural. Like you wanted. But we really can’t... we can’t do that, AJ. It would be such a waste. Such a beautiful opportunity.” A wave of her hoof rapidly cycled through the notes on the little tablet. “I don’t mean that as a put down. Not at all. I really respect a pony who can live in the modern world but still treasure their old traditions, because, that’s hard.” She waved her hoof again, more aggressively. “But I think deep down, you always pictured life in a space colony as just like life back home, only the sky was a funny color.”
The image Twilight wanted flashed by, and she sharply lifted a hoof to catch it. She was a hair too slow, but easily cycled back a few images to the drawing she’d made of a barn and a farmhouse and vast fields of apples.
“And that’s not how it works. But just for you, I’m going to try to get as close to that as I can.” Twilight held the tablet up to the glass for a few seconds. “You see? It’s just like your father’s farm, only I put it right on top of the main optical data track running between the City and the University. So you can still study engineering, and you won’t have to leave the farm to do it. I know that broke you up when you were young. And!”
Twilight lifted a hoof, and scrolled through several more images. “And and, it’s huge. Like, huge. An apple farm the size of Saju-ka. I hope that’s not overdoing it, but... you don’t mind using robots to tend crops, right? I remember you mentioning that your father did that.” Twilight swallowed. “That’s okay, right?”
Slowly, she withdrew the tablet. Her stylus made a little red star in the margin, reminding her to review the entry later. “Well. I’ll go re-read your personnel file and check. Make sure it’s just the way you like it. I know it probably feels like a bribe to overlook the family thing, and I guess it is, but with good intentions? I mean, we have the DNA from seven billion ponies in stock. We have no excuse to...”
Twilight glanced down at the tablet, but her eyes were unfocused, and she didn’t write anything for some time. “Well the point is, with just a little discretion in what we cut, the Apple family has what we need. If we include all of your cousins, you’ve got 76 relatives who have no genetic or emotional disorders of any kind, good health, and an IQ over 140. I think that’s an Apple clan you’ll be happy with. It’s a good size.” Twilight licked her lips. “Sorry.”
Underneath Twilight, the sensor bed let out a loud bing, and an alert flashed on her tablet screen. Twilight turned back to the computer, and frowned as she scrolled through the results. “All looks good. Just a few weeks left. I don’t know if I told you, but I decided to induce as soon as the computer says it’s safe for her. Can’t risk going into labor on the command deck. I’d never make it down here.” She flicked another option. “Hey, wanna see her ultrasound?”
Twilight turned the tablet back to Applejack’s glass enclosure. The screen showed the flickering black and white image of the sonogram, the image moving on the screen as Twilight shifted her torso. Clearly visible on the screen was the outline of a pony: a head, four little legs, the nub of a horn and wings that were nothing more than spindly limbs at the shoulder, naked without their feathers. On the screen, Celestia’s left wing twitched, a little lump visible along Twilight’s side where she pressed.
“The ultrasound always agitates her,” Twilight said, as Celestia twitched again on the screen. “Isn’t she beautiful? I was worried because we’re so close and her wings are still bald, but the computer says that’s normal. Her feathers will start growing sometime this week, and when they do, they’ll grow like mad. And look! You can see her heart beat.”
Abruptly, Twilight grunted and squeezed her legs together, the image of Celestia on the sonogram sharply twitching. “I think she kicked me right in the organs,” Twilight groaned, but a smile reappeared on her face. “She really doesn’t like the ultrasound. Let’s turn it off.” Quickly, Twilight navigated through the various menus, until the scanning bed beneath her went dark.
“There we go,” Twilight gave a small laugh, rubbing her side with a hoof. “And the computer thinks she’s fine. I mean, I’m skipping all the ‘consult with a physician’ steps, but... fine.” Twilight cleared her throat. “It told me to take a vitamin pill.”
Slowly, Twilight turned back to look at Applejack. Then she looked down at the scanning bed. She licked her lips once, her ears folding back to half-station as she took a deep breath.
“I’m a little worried that I’ve gone mad. Can I be honest with you about that?” Slowly, carefully, Twilight extended a rear hoof behind her to find her footstool, working her way down from the bed. “I’m pregnant with a god. And not just any god! The Empress of Heaven herself. She Who is the Unconquered Sun.” Slowly finding her footing on the floor again, Twilight took a deep breath.
“I did style myself as a god this morning,” she said, and when she opened her eyes, she walked back over to Applejack’s tank. “I know you’d hate that. Zero sense of humor for blasphemy. But I mean it. I have the DNA of a god. I have it in little vials and in the computer and here. And here.” She jerked a hoof at her swollen belly. “It’s growing inside me!” Twilight’s voice rose as she spoke, but she soon caught herself, and forced a breath.
“And why shouldn't I take advantage? Give myself a pair of wings and some wide hooves.” Twilight let out a sharp breath. “I don’t know. I probably shouldn't be trying to get moral advice from a corpse.”
Twilight shut her eyes, and lowered her head. “I’m sorry I desecrated your body, Applejack. I promise, it was for a good cause. I’ll bury you properly as soon as I can.” Twilight flicked her tail once, lifted her head, and opened her eyes. She turned towards the door, and as she walked back into the hall, called over her shoulder: “See you next week.”
The walk back to the control room was just as long one way as it was the other, and Twilight was not even a third of the way there before she had to stop to catch her breath. “You know, your Divine Radiance?” she asked, through heaving breaths. “You’re a bit of a pig.” Leaning heavily on the rail, Twilight drew another few breaths before muttering, “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t mean that. Just not used to getting tired this easily.”
She licked her lips once, starting off again at a much slower pace. “What about you? Do you think I’m mad? Some ponies would have said I was mad just for carrying you. Or for getting pregnant at all. The ship needs a crew, but breeding one with the medical computer and my own thighs is pretty extreme.”
A long silence passed, broken only by the steady ring of Twilight’s hooves on the metal. “It’s that or go extinct, though. I’ll teach you all about astronomy when you’re older. But I’ve taken us out of what’s called the galactic plane. It’s the middle of nowhere, really. It would take us a month just to get to the nearest star. Two years to get back to the galaxy proper. I’m amazed the raiders have stuck with us this long. But their carriers are dropping out one at a time. They’ll give up soon. Because we’re not going back.”
Up ahead, the dreaded stairs portion of the exercise came into sight, and Twilight braced herself to take them one at a time. “We’re going forward! To a little extragalactic star our extrasolar VLA detected. I named it Manann—after the wandering Kiith.” Grunting with every step, she squeezed her teeth together and pressed on. “It’ll take us another forty years to get there! But it has a rich asteroid belt, and gas giants, and a planet that’s in the right range for liquid water. Very workable.”
Twilight smiled when she reached the top of the steps. “And this is where the crazy part starts, because... well. We will work with it, won’t we?” She paused to catch her breath. “A million tons of terraforming equipment. Ten million labor robots. A solar focusing array to melt ice caps. Or a refactoring satellite network if we need to freeze them. All the equipment to turn a planet into a lush garden, and to build a city suitable for five hundred thousand colonists. All just for us.”
Lifting a hoof, Twilight give a gentle poke of her belly. “You and me,” she said, before shaking her head and walking on. “And your sister, of course. Our people cannot have one god. That wouldn't be right. But still, I think it’s enough to go between three ponies. You’ll have a temple, all to yourselves. An estate the size of a continent. A vast, perfect, unending garden.”
Twilight stopped, her ears folding back all the way. Her legs tensed, and her jaw clenched as her chest seized up. But she let the breath out, rolling her neck to crack it. “I was never the nature type. But the cities will be perfect too. Because they’ll be made with all the latest technology. All from scratch. Everypony will be comfortable like only the nobility could be back home. All our heavy industry will be in orbit so there will be no pollution. No disease. No war. Everypony will be smart and beautiful.”
A laugh rolled through her. A strange, wavering laugh. “I’ve charted everything out. For all of them. The colonists. Sure, they’re all dead but we have their DNA. So it’s not like they’re dead dead. Applejack’s farm will be waiting for her when she comes back. So will Firefly’s cloud house. And Surprise’s candy store. Once they come back, of course. That will be your job.”
Twilight pushed open the door to the control room, finding her way back to her swivel chair. There was nothing to see on the main monitor, so she rolled over to one of the other consoles: terraforming control. She had to crunch through her latest batch of notes.
“You can’t blame me for feeling powerful. Planning out all the little details of everypony’s life. That Applejack will live here, and Glimmer there. That the City will be here, and the University here, and the farms there. All the little tweaks. Filtering whose DNA gets sent for processing.”
Twilight paused, working her jaw from side to side. “It does worry me though. Pride goeth before the fall. I don’t want to mess this up. Make a mistake. Our race could go extinct.” She swallowed once, and then looked down. “Of course, I won’t be around for any of that, so maybe it’s not true. You are divine, after all. Maybe you’ll turn out the same no matter how I raise you. Or have a better plan for your people. Maybe I tweak my DNA to give myself wings and you decide not to foal me on a new world.”
Twilight laughed again, shaking her head. “It’s a heady feeling though. I’m having fun naming things. I started with names from Kharak. The rail line is the Khar-Toba, the farm control center is Tiir, all that. But I ran out of significant names pretty quickly, so now I’m making them all puns. Los Pegasus. Trottingham. We don’t have a ground map of the planet yet...”
A strange smile tugged at Twilight’s face. “But when we do, I was thinking of calling the primary continent Equestria.”
She glanced down. “Would you like that?”
