Chapter One: The Morality of the Empire
A thing that’s drilled into all us crystopians from birth is that “it could be worse.” and at first I was stupid enough to believe it as fact. But as time when on, and I would catch my reflection while I washed the crystal glass, I began to question that sentence's legitimacy.
Don’t get me wrong, life in the Crystal Empire was pretty good, there was food and water, arguably comfortable beds and the only deaths I’d seen were those executions set up outside the prison. But it has this tendency to leave me wanting… more. It’s something I never understood and is something I still don’t fully understand today, but it’s like an undiscovered thirst, once you get a taste, you want more and more until you get trapped with addiction.
So I tended to keep myself entertained with books and magazines in an attempt to keep myself out of whatever figurative plague was circumventing around the Empire. But mum and dad had been pushing me to get a job since I was legally allowed to get one; As a unicorn I was snatched up by the labor force for the “finer manual labor positions.” which was basically glorified window cleaning and basic repairs. I would spend my days scrubbing windows and fixing generators while my nights were spent with a good book and warm sheets.
But due to reason unbeknownst to me, I was kicked off the labor force, which was a pretty impressive feat to achieve according to dad. When some guys in uniform show up at my door a few days later and began asking for “Limelight” I told them to look no further.
For about half an hour, I had stood in my doorway while some guy in a trenchcoat and a pristine beret was yapping on about the tremendous honor which had been bestowed on me. At first I thought I was getting indoctrinated into the army, which would result in a instant nope on my part. Then he started talking about the prison...
To keep it short I was offered a job as a ‘handymare’ at the prison. While daddy’s jaw was stuck to the floor and mum had began prematurely panicking about her baby girl going to work with a bunch of convicts, I said yes to his offer. Work like that normally resulted in easy money and the promise of interesting stories to tell at a bar.
In standard soldier boy style, he took my hoof and planted a nice little kiss on it as a sign of appreciation. Then he walked away with his comrades in tow and I spend the rest of my night calming my mother, who seemed convinced that something bad was going to happen.
And boy was she right…
The first week was alright, I breezed through it, learning the ropes and which carts go in that shed and where i wasn't allow to go. Pretty boring stuff I guess, but that sums up most of life in The Crystal Empire, optimistically boring.
But sometime during my second week, something shifted, some star fifty billion light years away exploded and sprinkled stardust down on me, destined exactly on that day to fuck up my life. I had just put my grey jumpsuit and was walking down the solitary aisle of the prison, apparently one of the cameras was offline and I was meant to fix it before the hour was up. I guess it was a pretty important camera to have on, since solitary kept some right nasty bastards caged up like starving dogs, with only an inch thick set of bars between me and them.
I had just finished up, carefully doing up the last few screws on the casing of the camera while balancing on a ladder, when two ponies ran down, completely absorbed in each other. They managed to get about halfway down the hall before the stallion (I think he was one of the kitchen staff) pinned his ‘marefriend’ against the wall and began busying himself with her more tender parts.
With burnt cheeks I awkwardly passed holding the ladder between me and the display. The graphic moaning and the occasional howling from inside the cells painted enough of a picture for me. I slowly packed the ladder into the maintenance room, careful not to make any unwarranted noise but in my desire to keep my noise down, I hadn't been paying attention to my surroundings as I packed the ladder away.
“Hey, you there, can I ask a favor?” the mare’s voice asked, not too far from behind me. I quickly yelped out and spun around, keeping my head low to hide my flustered appearance.
“W-what do you want?” I said, my voice finding it hard to mask the growing levels of embarrassment in my voice.
“I have some… urgent business to attend to.” She bit her lip and eyed her partner hungrily from the corners of her vision. “But I forgot to feed that last cell just at the back, so if it’s no problem do you mind handling that for me?” When she saw my hesitation, she quickly added on, “I’ll give you a snowflake.”
How could I resist? “Err... sure, I guess.”
“Sweet, thanks darlin'.” she reached into her saddlebag and pulled out a gem, but it was a special gem, a snowflake. About the size of an average hoof, this gem literally radiated frost off it, giving it a somewhat ghostly appearance. It fell into my hooves and was quickly packed away into my pockets.
As I went to close the maintenance door, a hoof fell on my shoulder. “Leave it open…” she whispered into my ear, then quickly faded into the dim lighted room. She was followed shortly by her partner, who had all the excitement of a puppy going for a walk, he even had his little tongue hanging out in anticipation.
The door closed behind him, and I made it my quest to put as much distance between me and the room as I could. As i walked down the aisle, I pulled the snowflake out and examined it closely. By eye they all looked real, but after a tiny lick it confirmed that it was really real. Snowflake was drug, plain and simple, but like all drugs in The Crystal Empire, it’s illegal to distribute them, but not consume them. It had largely replaced cigarettes in the Empire and almost everypony was taking the stuff (unless you were a NCR soldier or one of those patriotic ponies) and I was no exception. In fact, most of the ponies in the prison were here because of narcotics dealing, as it was a gold mine for those who could sell it without getting caught. I tried my best to keep off it, but snowflake was a trusty friend on those harder and lonelier days, and there were a lot of those.
As I reached the final cell, I saw the box of provisions and the keys resting on a wheeled cart. I tucked the snowflake away and picked up the keys, suddenly regretting my decision. In these cells were some of the scariest ponies in the prison, and I was going into the lion’s mouth with no protection or backup. Maybe i would luck out and get a simple murderer, who would simply kill me; worst case scenario would be some rapist or some dark magician who'd turn me inside out with his mind.
With a deep breath, I put the key in the lock and turned it. The heavy metal door was stubborn but eventually yielded to my demands, and I entered with the cart in tow.
I had never been in a cell before, but why would I? I had expected them to be like the rest of the prison, completely tiled and faded white with time. But instead, I was greeted with murky darkness, cold stone walls and floors with the only source of light being a miniaturized window opposite the door, which viewed out over the playing field.
It took me a few seconds to see the steel grey stallion on the stone bed. His black hair alluded his eyes and the unmistakable sight of feathers on his sides made me gasp a little in surprise; his hooves were folded over his chest in a way that mocked the way bodies were packed up into coffins and a cutiemark of a red cross adorned his slender flanks.
Without opening his eyes, he parched lips slipped open. “You’re a little later than usual.” he commented, seemingly unaware of the change in management.
I cleared my throat the same way guards did when speaking to prisoners (apparently it caused them to listen up?) before replying with all the authority I could muster. “There was an issue that needed to be attended to, I’m your temporary caterer for the morning.”
His deep blue eyes shot opened at the sound of my unfamiliar voice. His neglected body slumped up and I passed over the box filled with provision cautiously, to which he casted aside absentmindedly, his eyes locked onto me the whole time. Apparently between the choice of me or the food, I was the taster prize.
“I haven’t seen you before, a new girl I take it?” he asked, an eyebrow raised as he slowly shifted his gaze from me towards his food, flipped the lid off the box and browse his selection of rations.
“Started a week ago.” I said, trying to sound confident and at ease, when I was very much the opposite of the two.
“That so? Well, have they ran out of uniforms or are they short on staff nowadays?” he asked through a bite of some sort of cereal bar. Before I could stumble a reply, he raised a hoof and smiled. “Wait, wait, don’t tell me, somepony paid you to do this, hmm?”
“Well... yes.”
“And I can imagine it wasn’t caps they paid you in?”
Reluctantly, like a foal who’d stolen from the cookie jar, I removed the snowflake from my pocket. He looked at it with passive eyes, then back to my face, looking disappointed.
“Well, I suppose we all have our… needs.” he replied with no small amount of forced neutralism. He placed down two plastic cups provided in the box and poured water into both of them from a bottle. “Care to have a drink.”
I made sure to close the door behind me as I approached him on the stone slab he called a bed. I carefully and cautiously lifted the plastic to my lips and my nose scrunched in response to the warm liquid. I suppose he could see that I was trembling as i lowered the cup with my hooves, untrusting of my magic in this stressful time.
“You don’t need to be scared, I’m not like those savages down the hall.” he said, taking a sip of his own drink and suppressing the same reaction I had to the foul liquid.
“They don’t just lock ponies up in here for nothing, so you must've done something wrong.”
He smiled, giving me the shivers. “Very perceptive. However I pride myself on having some thought behind my action unlike the others, who have been desensitized by the wasteland enough for them to act solely on instinct. I feel like I'm driven by a more beneficial purpose.”
He stood up, apparently been kicked into passionate action by my passive inquiry. He jumped up on his hind legs, supported by the wall as he looked out the window. “I was part of The Follows of the Apocalypse. I’d been born into them and have traveled the wasteland with them, seen lots of monstrous things with them to. But I never regretted it, for seeing those things gave me purpose, a new perspective on life in the wasteland and how badly things need to change.”
“A noble goal.” I pitched in, rather intrigued by the story and by watching his wings twitch and ruffle as he spoke. Although they were starting to integrate back into society, I was still curious of those oddities on their sides.
“You would think so, wouldn’t you?” His dismounted the wall, fueled by his passion and hatred. “But those ponies!-” he pointed to the door, giving me a vague reference to who he was talking about. “-Don’t agree, the preach freedom and progress, but the NCR are just as bad as pre-war counterparts.”
“While mares like President Amethyst are in power, we as a species are doomed to repeat the past, again and again until it become enough to kill us.”
I held my silence for a little while, but not for long. “Why are you locked up in here?” I asked, not so much interested in his rant but rather who I had just locked myself in with, who held such a hatred for a force I (at the time) perceived as good.
“I realized that in order to get out of this hole our ancestors have dug, we must make advancements. So I used my knowledge as a doctor to try and develop some new medicine, something that would make us stronger, better, faster.”
“In doing so, sacrifices had to be made.” he sat himself down on the bed, taking deep breaths to calm himself. “Some ponies died, some suffered a bit, but no more than necessary. I was so close, yet the NCR stopped me before any solid benchmarks were met and I fear they have destroyed my notes.”
After a dramatic pause for effect, he turned to me and must've seen the horror plastered on my face, as his eyes filled with bloodlust. “Don’t give me that look, you know I’m right. Do you think those ponies in the ivory towers before the bombs didn’t make sacrifices? Because I swear, they did, all so you could enjoy your little snowflake and forgot the horror that came with making it. How can we make progress when ponies are drugged up on past creations like you?”
Suddenly, it all clicked. He was locked up because he was insane, or at the very least had some mental illness which drove him to be so heartless and insincere towards death.
“But why waste my time… You’re just a little girl, probably just out of school from the looks of you, you haven't seen the horror what lies out there, haven’t known the pain of holding a dying hoof or seen a friend’s life flicker out like a candle. When you have felt something out of the lies the NCR spoon feeds you, come find me, maybe then we’ll discuss the morality of the empire.”
And with that, he seemed to switch off, lying down on the bed and refusing to open his eyes. Not that I cared at that point, for all I knew he was an emotionally scarred stallion who wasn’t worth my time.
But boy was I in for a surprise when I left the cell. “W-Warden Quicksteel!” I quickly threw myself into a salute, but it didn’t shift the maroon stallion nor the lips under than prestigious brown mustache of his.
“Miss Limelight, what were you doing in a high security cell alone?!”
“Somepony told me to do it!” I blurted out, quickly pointing towards the maintenance room at the end of the hall. Judging from his face, Quicksteel was neither surprise nor moved in any way by my response, so he likely already knew about the fun going on in there.
“Hmm… I don’t know if I should reprimand you or reward you for your bravery. Not my ponies would go in a cell with ‘Doctor Hopeful’, even if they were armed.” He began walking with me, matching my pace even though his strides would normally be larger than mine.
“Is he really that terrifying?”
“Indeed, before he’d been arrested he managed to foalnap at least six individuals, each one meeting an even more disgusting end than the last.” surprisingly, he chuckled, “It was one of his friends, Doctor Goodheart, or I think that was his name, turned him into the authorities. Guess you can never tell who to trust around here these days.”
I hummed in agreement, but didn’t speak my mind, feeling like a child among adults. Doctor Hopeful's words stuck to me like glue, with no signs of leaving my mind any time soon. Quicksteel kept talking, but I had tuned out for the most part, only occasionally humming an agreement to any question sent my way.
We stopped walking, I had lost track of time and we had already arrived in reception. “Anyway, enough sidetracking, I suppose I should reprimand you, so come see me in my office tomorrow morning and I’ll have decided on the suitable punishment.”
I nodded, “Goodbye sir.” to which he nodded back and I set out towards home.
[***]
Unsurprisingly, sleep eluded me. The night was hardly silent, punctuated by the occasional scream or gunshot, normally one after the other. Doctor Hopeful’s words wouldn’t leave my mind, his criticisms on my innocence, as if innocence wasn’t the goal of peace anymore. I’d been a sheltered child, the offspring of two wasteland wanderers whose goal was to raise me as naive and pure, just like in the pre-war times. I suppose the possibility of such an occurrence was enough of an landmark of the progress the wasteland had made, but we still had a long way to come.
Oh who was I kidding, I was far from innocent. I like so many other enjoyed the occasional snowflake and all around me violence and abuse festers. I was the product of my narrow mindset that I could feign naivety when all around there was death and chaos.
From that moment on, I changed. I hopped out of bed, sneaked past my parent’s room and headed out into the night. It had been the first time I had done anything daring without a catalyst in my whole life, normally it was other ponies that would push me in and out of situations, but this was my first conscious act of defiance.
With most things, I looked for landmarks, places of convenience or a marker of sorts to base my actions towards. And as a pony looking to lose innocence, what better place to see blood, tears and general poverty than a hospital...
A Follower's hospital...
[***]
It was midnight by the time I arrived at the spire, long ago the spire had the title of crystal palace, where one of the princesses lived with her husband and kid. Now it was left deserted and was protected by the NCR, with laser turrets blocking all entry up to the interior. Yet, to the Followers of the Apocalypse, it served as a beacon to anypony sick or injured in the empire, as it could be seen for miles away and had always been a symbol of hope, even in pre-war times. The followers had several tents surrounding a campfire, with ponies gathered around and waiting for the doctors to finish with their former patients.
As to be expected, they were undermanned, unequipped and relied on donations for more supplies. I think they had some funding from the NCR, since most of their patients were NCR citizens, yet I wondered just how much they got considering the absolute mess of a field hospital they ran. Even in the dead of night, the camp was full of the sick and injured, but I guess the wasteland never needed sleep.
“Can I help you miss?” A mare asked, she wore the Follower’s uniform and she looked generally worn out to the breaking point. I honestly couldn’t tell which one was more of a giveaway that she was a Follower.
“I’m looking for Doctor Goodheart.”
“Huh, we don’t normally get called by name around here.” She commented, raising her hoof to point towards one of the many tents. “He’s in tent six, please don’t take too much of his time, he's a very busy stallion.”
As I walked towards the tent, I got my first true taste of the wasteland. A stallion had lost his leg and was forced to sit patiently by the fire until somepony came available to help, a mare had lost her eye and had wrapped an old cloth around her head and finally, a young colt, barely the age of four from the looks of him, laying peacefully on his shaking mother’s lap, completely still. All were forced to wait by the fire and stay awake long enough for a doctor to come and save or condemn them if the situation required it.
It only got worse as I entered the tent. As soon as I entered I was assaulted by the smell of infection and blood. A mare was laid out on the table, a piece of rebar piercing through her lower barrel and out the other end. The mint green stallion (who I automatically assumed was Goodheart) was attempting to remove the object carefully with magic, but the rebar must of been caught between something, as it refused to pull free.
Goodheart noticed me instantly, but didn’t acknowledge my presence until he needed my help. I watched the gross scene play out before me, about halfway through pulling the piece of rebar free did it dawn on me that the mare was still conscious, but was silenced by a sound dampening spell and an syringe of Med-x. When the rebar was freed from her chest in a spray of blood, the mare’s scream of pain broke through the sound spell, coming out as unnerving gargle which probably tore apart her vocal chords.
“Hey, make yourself useful and get a healing potion out of the box, hurry!” he shouted, snapping me back from my dazed state. I rushed over to the table and opened the three butterfly marked box, pulling out a potion vial and passing it over to him.
She drank it greedily and he poured the last remaining dribble over the wound itself. However, the mare had lost too much blood, which had pooled at the bottom of the surgery table and her eyes rolled into the back of her skull, marking her unfortunate end.
“Fuck It!” Goodheart shouted, kicking the metal tray beside him onto the floor. He magicked over a rag from next to the medical box and wiped his hooves clean of the blood. After all the blood had been cleared and the anger gone from his brow did he finally address me directly.
“Sorry about that, but it’s frustrating when ponies die regardless of the supplies I administer.” He held out a hoof towards me, and I cautiously accepted, knowing what was on those hooves a few moments prior.
With his magic, the rubber band holding his silver mane in a ponytail (I couldn’t tell whether the color was the result of stress or natural) dropped, revealing his mane to be around shoulder length. He dumped the medical supplies he used in a small box and picked up the fallen tray from the floor.
“Anyway, time’s valuable and you don’t look critically injured, so what’s the problem?”
“I’m here to ask you about Doctor Hopeful.” I said, enjoying the look of surprise grow on his face which soon evolved into understanding.
His tone grew colder than before, “Should've known the NCR would want my account in writing, very well, but we’re going to have to walk and talk.” I followed beside him as he walked from the tent, signaled for somepony to clear up behind him and when over to the water dispenser, talking all the way.
“Well, me and Hopeful were long time friends, we use to travel together with this caravan, going to town to town healing folks who needed it. Then we met up with the Followers, lead by Velvet Remedy herself. Eventually we both ended up here, Celestia knows they need all the help they can get around here. As time when on, Hopeful grew more and more cynical, saying how all of this was just one big waste of time and that we needed to think bigger. I first got a whiff of suspicion when he started proclaiming he was going to find a cure to everything, saying he was educating himself in a way books couldn’t. We were long time friends, so I guess he trusted me with his biggest secrets. He showed me the bodies, the diagrams, the madness, I understood it perfectly and I wouldn’t be a doctor if I didn’t admit to the genius behind some of it, but i knew Luna would make me a special place in hell if I didn’t call the guards on him right then and there, so I had him arrested.”
“Why the change in heart? Why do you think he suddenly wanted to save everypony again after growing so cynical?”
“When you’re a Follower of the Apocalypse, you see a lot of death and you’re expected to pick up lots of pieces. One in four of my patients survive, less than half of those are left unscathed by the event. Yet it’s those moments of satisfaction, those tiny hints of glee in a pony’s eyes when they're told they’re going to be alright, it makes up for all the death. I don’t think Hopeful ever lost his faith in ponykind, he just went too long without seeing the good side.”
It was rare when something brought a genuine smile to my lips, but right then and then, I had gained a new perspective on life in the Crystal Empire and I was damned sure I was going to smile about it. Goodheart was one of the many extraordinary ponies I had the pleasure of meeting in my life, for he had the ability long lost to the world, hope, the hope that persistence birthed success, and with success came happiness.
“You’re not really NCR, are you?”
I had to blink a few times, “How could you tell?”
“You smiled, NCR ponies don’t smile.” then he gave me his own brand of smile. “So, who are you then?”
“My name’s Limelight, think of me as a concerned citizen.”
“Well, I’ve met quite a few of those in my time, patched quite a few up to. If you’re looking to help out, we’re in desperate need of supplies. Anything you can spare will go a long way, I assure you.”
“Anything in particular?”
“Food, blankets, medicine and alcohol for sterilizing. Those are all in dire need, but anything else is greatly appreciated too.”
One of the doctors shouted Goodheart's name and I looked over in time to see somepony gravely injured get pushed into the surgery tent. Before he ran off I caught him, pulled him into a quick hug and whispered a goodbye, which he returned. Afterward he ran off back into the tent to do Celestia’s knows what to the poor injured buck. Maybe that was one of his one in four ponies, and he'd leave that tent with a smile from a job well done.
I didn’t stick around much longer after he left me, I didn’t have the stomach for it. Instead I walked home and silently turned the house upside down looking for anything of use for Goodheart. I left a few scraps of medicine where I found them in case of household emergencies, but most of it went inside the burlap sack I found.
In the end, I found two syringes of med-x, three healing potions, one fixer and half a bottle of whiskey. As I overviewed my meager haul, I caught myself mumbling “It could be worse.” over and over again until it stuck...
