There is No Tomorrow
By Prancingfox
hOw mAnY rOAds mUst A mArE wAlk dOwn bEfOrE shE's cOnsIdErEd A mArE
An excerpt from The Pages of Sandy Waters, Rendition 12, Page 1
The End.
We all know it, we all live it. Yet do any of us truly understand what the End is? For as long as the End existed, we ponies have been hiding behind the barriers and walls of our settlements; too afraid to explore or find rationality as to why the world exists the way it does now as opposed to the Time Before. No, instead we all cower in what we want to believe is our safety zone, caring little for those around us as we count off the seconds for when the day will end. You can die at any second, you can die the very next hour, you could die without seeing the next day rise before the night has ended.
You are all afraid, and you should be.
For the long, dreary years we have spent fighting each other over scarce resources and fighting the abominations that wish to join our flesh with theirs, never have we stopped once to think, ‘Where are we going with this? How will the next generation survive? Will ponykind live to see another day?’
Sadly, there is little to look forward to in this forsaken realm, existence is painful, yet suicide is painless. Why should we care as to what we do, why should we care at all for the agony and suffering that surrounds us every moment?
I cannot answer that for you, but for me... I have my personal quest.
You all know very well from my earlier renditions of my papers what my quest is, my ambitions and desire. My question to you is... Do you have a purpose to live?
thErE Is nO mEthOd tO mAdnEss
Extinction is inevitable. Hope is gone. Dreams are nightmares. Survival is meaningless. Life is dead. Friendship is forgotten.
There is no tomorrow.
How many times have I heard that phrase uttered by good old Doctor Pebbles? How many times have we joined hooves and spoken those words aloud whenever we gathered for somepony’s funeral? How many times did I say that disheartening slogan before I went to bed?
Extinction is inevitable.
There were thirty-seven of us in here, in this vast empty building christened Asylum. Last year there were fifty eight of us. Two died giving birth, their offspring dead without even drawing one breath of life in this world. Four died fighting Tartarus spawns outside the walls of our shelter. Five died when the burning rain tore through the roof and set them ablaze in a horrid inferno. Three died while trading with the nearest settlement over, the inhabitants there suddenly deciding it would be better to take then barter. Two died in an explosion due to a mishandling of various chemicals we found in the basement. One died from revolt poisoning after the water tank was infected by carcass-sprites, and the other four just vanished one day without ever being seen or heard from again.
One year, twenty one deaths, and no children were born. Nopony dies here peacefully in their bed. The youngest here is Sinkhole Waves, she’s only twelve. The oldest pony here is Doctor Pebbles, and he’s eighty-nine. There are thirty-two stallions in Asylum, and only five mares including me. At this rate, this settlement will die within the next twenty years.
Hope is gone.
I wake up each and every day to hear the PA system crackle with Mud River’s voice proclaiming the time and shifts. I go upstairs to the fifth floor, the new roof ever since the sixth floor caved in, and shovel off the ashen snow that accumulated from the night before. Then I go down to eat revolt for breakfast with the rest of the gang. I go outside to the North Face Gorge with a broken binocular and watch for any intruders coming within a three kilometer radius travelling on Sickler’s Road. I eat revolt for lunch. I head back inside to clean up and fix whatever tools have been used or broken that day. Then I’ll stand beside Doctor Pebbles Shores as he lectures me and Cove Bottoms on the anatomy of the pony body over the partially preserved yet perspiring corpse of some unlucky traveler we picked up just beyond our territory. I join the gang again for more revolt for dinner. I help with the purifier to make safe the black ooze we call both a drink and a food for the next day’s meal, and then I go to bed.
Repeat the next day. The same schedule. Nothing ever changes, unless something terrible happens that results in somepony getting killed. Then we mourn and rejoice. Its fresh meat.
Dreams are nightmares.
I can’t sleep, I simply close my eyes and lose myself to insanity. Every morning I wake up, I lay in bed for hours soaking with sweat, just staring at the ceiling, trying to forget the painful memories that haunted my weary state of being. Its fortunate nopony can remember what it was they dreamed about; otherwise we would have all gone mental when the End first began. There is only one cure to the horrors, and that’s to put revolt in your eyes before you go to bed. It will play havoc with your vision for the first few days, and your eyes and fur will eventually become monochrome gray, but at least you will sleep without screaming in your dreams.
Just make sure you have purified revolt, if it’s not distilled and still dirty, you can very well go blind.
Survival is meaningless.
In the Time Before, there were only three things a pony needed to survive. Eat, sleep and sex. In the End, the only possible edible thing to eat is revolt, and each and every meal is a painful experience as the black ooze squirms down your throat, making you jerk and twitch in discomfort as if someone was pouring liquid knifes through your gut. It’s even more painful when you go to the bathroom. Sleeping is not something anypony looks forward too; the forgotten dreams and unremembered nightmares can torment you for hours on end after you awake. But then again, what else is there to do? And sex, well… don’t even get me started on how the End has utterly destroyed the joy of the reproductive cycle. So what exactly is there to look forward to in life? Let me tell you… absolutely nothing.
Life is dead.
I have never journeyed beyond the safety of the canyon walls that protect Asylum from the more dangerous forces that roam the End. The farthest I have travelled was to atop the watch posts that surround our home. There is nothing but the barren wasteland that the End has brought upon the lands. Nothing but black, twisted trees where forests once stood. Nothing but soggy bottom filths where lakes and ponds once glimmered. Nothing but gray, white ashen mud grounds for as far as the eye can see. Nothing survives. Nothing grows. Nothing lives.
Friendship is forgotten.
In Asylum, we have rules and a system. Follow the system, and our little community survives. That is how we have lasted for so long. But from what I understand, the other settlements have not. I remember a time when we would have to go on for years without trade because the nearest settlements found something about us that they found disagreeable and would rather beat us with clubs then share and barter. On occasion, we would all gather and work out the maps. Solid Seas would then take a knife and paint a nearby settlement with a bloodied red X. No words were needed on such occasions. That settlement was now lost to the ravenous forces of the End, or by the greed and rage of other, more powerful settlements.
We had rules. We had a system. Sometimes, when nothing catastrophic would occur, our schedule would remain the same, so much the same that everypony would just know what to do without orders or say so. There was no talking, there was no smiling. There was the only the rules and the system.
“There is no tomorrow.”
“Indeed.” Cove Bottoms murmured as the three of us gathered around the overturned refrigerator. Doctor Pebbles Shores was very old pony; his face was adorned with wrinkles and his vision nearly gone. Like everypony in Asylum, his eyes were gray as well as his coat due to our constant use of revolt for food and medicine. His foggy white eyes stared past his lenses at the upper torso of a corpse between us, a dead wanderer we found outside the canyon just yesterday. The cadaver was too foul and diseased to be carved and roasted for a meal, a pity; we could have used the meat considering we just finished the last of Granite Blue a month ago.
“Cause?” I asked.
“Arrow to the hind leg. Didn’t kill him though, just went through the knee cap. Dragged himself to shelter under a rock canopy just outside where he slept. Didn’t know the mud out here was the eating type.” Pebbles answered in a throaty voice as he adjusted his glasses.
I simply nodded as I jotted down the dead’s description on a journal with my magic. A gray aura of arcane surrounded both the blood tipped sketcher and the clipboard as I wrote how the victim was dismembered by his lower torso.
“Wait.” Cove’s face looked twisted in confusion. “If his lower half got sunken into the ground, then how do we know he got hit by an arrow in the back leg?” A good question, I should have thought of that.
Pebbles coughed violently, turning his head to the side as he started spitting blood into a conveniently placed bucket before regaining his composure. “To reiterate, his left leg was swallowed by the ground, his right leg, the impaled one, was resting upon a rock, so it didn’t get sunken. But irrelevant. Whoever shot him must have found him again. His body was separated by what looks like a machete, based on the gash lines here and here.” He pointed out the opened ribcage and the severed spinal cord. “Didn’t cut his way through though, he hacked at him before ripping him apart with his own bare hooves.”
“Looks like his attacker didn’t have any table manners.” I joined in on the discussion. “Didn’t even bother cutting off the other limbs, just went on and started chewing.” I could see Cove make a face at the thought of uncooked flesh, and frankly, I was as equally disgusted at the thought of raw meat with all the fur still attached.
“Well can we salvage anything?” Cove asked. “I know the attacker left his germs everywhere but can’t we at least cut small bits and pieces and boil what’s left out?”
I shook my head. “Unfortunately, no. See these pimples and bumps all over his coat?” Cove leaned in and looked while I provided him with a cracked magnifying glass with my magic hovering over the least torn and bitten part of the body. “He’s covered in drek spores, not something we can disinfect ever since we ran out of Type C. You eat this and you can expect drool worms spawning inside your eyeballs and feasting on your brain.”
Cove sighed as he gave in, taking survival over hunger. Pebbles snarled up a nasty sound before spitting into the bucket again as he growled. “Imagine how the poor sod that ate him must feel now.”
“I can’t say I envy him.” I replied as Cove stepped back while Pebbles and I used our magic to shove the worthless corpse off the top and into the refrigerator before slamming the door shut. I tossed the paper on the clipboard onto a stash of reports in a nearby drawer while Cove removed the plastic rag that covered the refrigerator to be washed in a nearby revolt bin. Pebbles took a black charcoal out from a pile on the floor and wrote on top of the fridge the words, DISPOSE, before the three of us filed out from morgue room.
The way Pebbles was coughing and hacking blood made Cove and I exchanged glances with each other. Ever since Volcano screwed up with the purifier and served everypony unclean revolt, we all got a bit of bleeding lungs for a week or two. After that, our bodies adjusted and healed itself. Not Pebbles'. Maybe it was his old age, that was probably the best guess we could come up with, but his body hadn’t healed ever since that incident, and now we were just counting the days until he would drop over dead. It was a terrible thing to think about. Pebbles was the oldest of us all and his leadership and guidance was probably the only thing that kept Asylum alive and working together.
“Golden Lake, please clean Morgue Room B. Golden Lake, please clean Morgue Room B.” Mud’s voice ordered from the intercom in a bored monotone. A tan colored pegasus stumbled down the hall and murmured under his breath as he entered the room the three of us just left. We nodded heads before turning in different directions to go our respected ways.
Revolt. By Tartarus how I hate revolt.
As I sat in the cafeteria with my bowl sitting in front of me ten minutes later, I could only wonder what sick nefarious deity could grant us such a wretched and vile substance to feast on. Revolt. In the olden days in the Time Before, water was in abundance everywhere where you could find. And you didn’t eat it, you drank it. But ever since the End, the only water substance there is now is revolt. A thick, black ooze that wriggled and wormed, expressing animal like sentience as it squelched and burped with each popping bubble that it made.
Stuffing my nostrils with mud so that my tongue would not feel the taste, I took one great slurp from the bowl, trying to think about anything else other than the squeamish screams the revolt made as it drained through my mouth and down my throat, crying in blurps and squeals before the noise ceased, but not without leaving a painful throbbing in my neck.
In two or three hours I was going to have to pee that stuff out. I was not looking forward to that moment.
“Sandy.” Dr. Pebbles walked in with his own bowl of revolt setting down on the table with his magic. I nodded my head.
“Pebbles.”
“I know I could had asked down at the morgue when you came back from your work, but how has the End been treating you today?” Pebbles moved slowly as his haunches twitched sitting down on the bench. He gave a short cough as I pushed a small plate of mud across the table that he generously accepted by stuffing some dirt up his nostrils.
“The same, the usual unusual stuff.” I replied. “The Cake and Pie settlements to the north seemed to have given up their attacks on each other, or I just missed all the action. I’ll write a note for Solid Seas right after dinner.”
The old stallion stared deep into the black writhing putrid liquid in his bowl as he listened. Ever since he contracted bleeding lungs and never recovered like the rest of us, revolt wounded and pained him each and every time he ate. Revolt was disgusting to eat, but after twenty-three years of being fed the same meal for each and every breakfast, lunch and dinner, I could handle it well enough. I could only imagine how terrible it must feel though to know that the one edible thing left on this Tartarus plagued world aside from pony flesh could now kill you slowly and painfully.
“The longer you put it off,” I told him. “The more it’s going to hurt.”
The elder simply grunted and took a small slip, immediately spitting and hacking blood all over the floor. Several other ponies in the cafeteria looked up before returning to their food and discussions while I left my bench to go around and pat him on the back. I sympathized for our dear leader. I really did.
“I’m tired, Sandy.” He finally croaked out after much hacking and sputtering.
“Then go to bed. I’ll get some sleep revolt for your eyes.”
“No, no.” Looking into his eyes, I saw a mixture of anger and sadness. “Please, sit. Stay awhile and listen.” With nothing immediate coming up and having nothing better to do, I complied with his orders. “Its no secret,” He began mournfully. “Of my conditions. Have you considered though, what will happen after I pass?”
I shook my head truthfully, I hadn’t given it much thought.
“I’ll tell you.” Pebbles looked around, double-checking to see that most of the other ponies had finished their dinner and were now gathering in the adjacent kitchen to wash. He looked me straight in the eye, making me feel rather uncomfortable as the silence began to drag out before he whispered. “Anarchy.”
I wasn’t in the mood for dramatics, even if I didn’t want to do it, I would rather be spending my time updating Solid Seas on the neutrality conditions between the Cake and Pie settlements before joining Cove on maintaining the purifier. Still, I humored the old pony and listened. “Anarchy, Dr.?”
Leaning back on the bench, his gaze wandered up to the cracked and musty ceiling. “You and I, we’ve both lived in Asylum for the eternity of our lives, never venturing beyond the protection of our canyon.” His eyes lingered there as he spoke, his mind and thoughts drifting to old, forgotten times. “All of us have lived here for as long as there has been a here.”
“Do you know how old I am, my girl?” He asked suddenly.
“Time is irrelevant in the End.” I reminded him, frowning slightly, I really did not like it when he called me that. There really wasn’t a day and night anymore like in the Time Before, but we created a schedule anyway to keep track of our duties and shifts. “Yet if I remember correctly, eighty-nine.”
Pebbles shook his head solemnly as he returned his look on me. “I should be dead already, I should have died long ago.” I looked at him quizzically before clearing up my expression. Of course, Pebbles Shores was quite possibly the oldest living thing to have ever existed. The second oldest pony I ever known only lived to be about thirty, the average life expectancy within Asylum due to the vengeful wrath of the End for hiding discreetly within the hidden canyons away from nature’s malformed dangers.
“When I could first remember memory, there were hundreds of us here.” That was a number I had difficulty fathoming. “As each generation passes, I noticed a cycle, a trend, how we exposed ourselves to needless harm and danger when we could easily be protected within. We needed knowledge, we needed…” He paused, looking past me for several moments before retuning. “No one from my time then is alive now. Everypony is dead, and we will continue to die unless we change.”
“We have the rules, we have a system. That’s how we stay alive.” I reminded him.
He waved his hoof. “Yes, yes. The rules, the system. I created them, you know? And that is how we stayed alive. In my time, we were disorganized, confused, distorted, unsure, dying. It wasn’t until I and a few others attempted to learn what the others called the unknown before we discovered the treatments and avoidances that would keep us safe. For fifty years, I kept us safe, and now look. What happened last year?”
“We lost less then half our numbers?” I wasn’t sure where he was going with this.
Pebbles fixed his glasses and sighed. “We haven’t been following the rules.”
“What?” I looked at him in disbelief. From the way I saw things, we were following the rules perfectly. Well, not counting the times I missed out on patrol protocols, but that never hurt anypony.
Pebbles nodded. “Not in the way you have imagined. For the past decades, we played it safe, we did what we could to survive, but now we are paying dearly for not expanding our knowledge. Things have changed, Sandy. Many things have changed. The sky did not always rain fire each and every night. Mares would not immediately die after giving birth. The day was not always frozen, and the night did not always burn. Revolt has never been infectious, and Tartarus spawns have never braved large groups of gatherers.”
“Times have changed, my child, and we have been left behind.”
“Sandy Waters, report to the security room, Sandy Waters, report to the security room.” Mud’s voice crackled over the intercom system. I continued to look at Dr. Pebbles before giving him one last pat on the back as I got up to leave.
“We will speak more of this later.” He told me as he returned his eyes on the barely touched bowl of revolt in front of him. Yes, I’m sure we shall.
After blowing my snot to rid the mud from my nostrils and traversing down the hall, I honestly gave little thought to Pebbles’ words. It wasn’t until after I wandered through intersecting hallways and marked and unmarked doors did I begin to ponder.
According to the questioned to be believed history, Asylum was established hundreds of years ago after the End disfigured the Time Before. Ponies died by the dozens until Pebbles came along and managed to save the dying Asylum. Back in the days, ponies did not stay in one place and huddle. They traversed the End to kill each other for whatever food or resources they could find. It wasn’t until only revolt remained as the only edible food source did they begin to stay within walled communities. If everypony hid like we did, we could only assume their level of protection was roughly the same as ours.
But they lived in the End, didn’t they? While we stayed in the dark of the canyon walls, everypony else was not just dying, but learning on how they could survive while we remained stagnant and weak.
My little train of thoughts was cut short as I finally entered Asylum’s security room. Hoof drawn maps adorned the walls and tables while racks and drawers filled with survival gear and weapons were strewn all about the room. Solid Seas, a stallion with an originally red coat but now with fading gray colors, stood at the central table, his hard gaze piercing the maps beneath him as a wrote down notes, sketches and details to places, names and terrain.
“I was going to come to you to report on my patrol,” I started off to gain his attention. “But normally my shift tells me to manage the purifier after dinner. Is something the matter?”
Solid only looked up for a brief second before returning his attention to the map. At his side was a short-range radio, a rare equipment and irreplaceable resource in the End. “Get your flank over here.” Was his only response. After coming up to his side, I noticed what he was working on, pencil sketches littered the East Path at the canyon’s rear entrance. A small X was scribbled in the small windy crevice that made a delta exit out from our territory with the words, No Range written in tiny fonts.
Lets see, East Path, dinnertime. Ah yes, that was Bronze Current’s patrol. He was always the last one in before the burning night began.
“East Path, dinnertime, Bronze Current’s patrol.” Solid informed me with the redundant information. “You know how it goes, stand guard and watch for three hours, return within radio range to report, go back out for another three hours, then return home with a final report. Right now he’s on his fifth hour, no reports.”
I rolled my eyes. This was hardly anything worth noting. I forgot to make the three-hour interval report nearly once a week. But then again, I could understand Solid Seas' concern. Patrol ponies went out into the End with the heaviest, most useful and some irreplaceable equipment. If anything was to happen to the patrol pony, or worse, if any of the equipment was lost…
“You know the drill, pack, go.”
For the pony who drew our maps and kept inventory in check and who was also in charge of our armory, Solid Seas was sure a pony of few words. Trotting over to the adjacent locker room, I opened the baskets and containers that had my name scribbled on them and began to equip myself with the appropriate outdoor gear.
Inside the Asylum, we only needed the flimsy dirty white rags to cloth ourselves for decency, or if the temperature was to hot, we would just go about our business naked. The End was a completely different story.
First up, boots, the black leather kind so that your hooves would never have to touch the actual ground itself. In a world where the world itself was trying to kill you, it was best not to think what kind of soil material might be clinging to your hooves with every step you take. Next, the rain jacket. Yellow rubber ponchos that did not rip and tear easily, thank Tartarus for that, and would protect your ashen and delicate hide from the meaner elements of nature that the End had in store for you. After that, the brown heavy duty saddle bag, pegasus-grade material to survive the harsh weather from the Time Before, but for now made excellent use of repelling all sorts of hazardous and anomalous weather from shredding your bags apart.
After clothing it was equipment. Khaki hat to mat down my raven mane, necklace purse to carry even more stuff in, bracelet purse for even more equipment, safety goggles to protect the eyes from the ashen air, a canteen filled with revolt for drinking, a map of the canyon and the surrounding settlements around, scissors, knives, spoons, papers, pencils, charcoals, binoculars, tarp, radio, so on and so forth. To somepony who lived their entire lives in protected solitude without any fear of things trying to kill them, this may have looked a little over excessive. But not in this land.
As I finished tying up my mane and rubbing my face over with a thin layer of mud with my magic, I hesitantly picked up my last and final equipment. A crossbow. If my understanding of the Time Before was correct, then there was hardly any needs for armies or weapons, yet somehow, in a building that should not exist in the dead middle of a canyon, a stash of weapons had found there way here, and they’ve been ever so useless to us in fighting against the Tartarus spawns that attacked our patrols.
Still, it empowered me with some sense of protection, no matter how false that protection may be, at least it would protect me from mortal ponies that dared to threaten the safety of Asylum and its ponies. And if a outsider pony did manage to stray too close to Asylum territory, well, let’s say I never passed up the opportunity to provide my kin with a free meal.
Leaving the locker and heading out the door, I gave one last glance to Solid. “Oh, and before I forget, I wanted to tell your that the Cake and Pie settlements to the north seemed to have stopped fighting for the past week now, maybe a ceasefire?” He replied with a grunt, never taking his eyes off of the map. “I’m glad to know you appreciate my help.” I muttered as a I left.
At the main hall, I met Gravel Falls reading through a musty old book that I’m pretty sure I saw him reading several times for the past few years. Oh, the dictionary. “State your business.” He asked in a lazy voice.
“Double check patrol, East Path.”
“Uh huh.” He continued to read a couple more sentences before finally getting off his lethargic flank and yawning, taking a charcoal and writing on a heavily smudged wall, Sandy out Dinner Double Check Patrol East Path under a table of black lines filled with names and dates. After he finished that, he smacked his lips, obviously in no hurry, as he went over to the double doors to remove the padlock and a heavy wooden plank and steel pipe that barred the doorway. He waved me in and gave me a unextraordinary bronze key before shutting the doors behind me, the sound of metal, wood and locks clonking and clanging together before they finally came to a stop.
“Oh, and the password’s your own name backwards.” His muffled yawn sounded through the barricaded door. Giving a nod that he not would see, I took a brief look at my surroundings. The main lobby was small with nothing glamorous, just a broken bench on the side and a few cracked pots that I’m sure at one time contained dirt and plants, although such greenery then does not exist now. In one corner was a speaker and in another was a dusty camera with a blinking red light that followed my movements slowly.
“Attention, Sandy Waters is leaving Asylum. Attentions, Sandy Waters is leaving Asylum.” Mud’s bored and lifeless voice echoed in the small room from the speaker, the noise ringing through my ears before I shook my head and faced the door in front of me.
For such an unremarkable door, there certainly was a dark and mystical foreboding presence about it. A double door with faded green paint peeling to reveal the ugly brown gray metal tinge underneath with silver steel handles that beckoned me to open them. I sighed. Waiting wasn’t going to make this any easier, and besides, I went through those doors every day. And every day, I came back safe and unharmed through those doors… well… most of the time. Bronze Current hardly ever missed up on his three hour interval report, but then again, I screwed up that one rule at least once a week, and Solid would always send a double check patrol to scold me on my insubordination on patrol protocol.
Pulling the age weary yellow safety goggles over my eyes, straightening my khaki hat and tying up a bandana over my mouth and nostrils, I looked up to give one last wave at the camera to tell Mud River I was good to go. I heard the automatic lock disengage and a beep come from a small alarm above it. Taking one good last breath of the stale, dry air inside the lobby, I put a hoof on the handle and pushed forward.
Welcome to the End…
Where there is No Tomorrow.
