Nightmare

I am a God.

No, you’re just another asshole.

    The day started like any other. After slapping at her alarm clock for several seconds, Pinkie finally found the button to make it halt its incessant keening. With the shades down and curtains drawn, the bedroom was still inky.

    Clicking on the lamp fixed that, its warm yellow light throwing a gentle illumination on the furniture of the room. The bed sported a dark green spread that matched the carpet, which in turn felt nice on the groggy pink hooves that set upon it. The half-awake pony rubbed her eyes with a hoof as she walked past well-stocked bookshelves and a messy worktable, all made of a dark wood with a pronounced grain. A layer of dust veiled all the surfaces in the room, as if the occupant either hadn’t used them or hadn’t cleaned the room in a while.

    After she reached the bathroom, she drew a nice hot bath, and climbed into the tub, and soaked in the hot water for a few minutes before washing her mane and coat. Another short soak preceded her draining the tub and grabbing a towel. The bright pendant on the choker gracing her neck sparkled from the water as much as it seemed to glow with an inner light. The pendant itself matched her cutie mark almost perfectly: a test tube flanked by wings of scientific implements, indicating her talent as a multi-disciplinary scientist.

    With a huff, the pink pony dropped into the chair before her vanity, leaning back and watching in the mirror as the Otto strapped to the back embraced her skull. There was a brief moment of silence as the automaton’s arms moved into place with spider-like grace. With a whirr, the mechanism simultaneously applied tasteful makeup and brushed her mane into tight, cute, but businesslike curls that swept off one side of her head and spilled down her neck with one forelock left to lie before her face.

    She clapped and smiled before stretching her hooves to either side and allowing the machine to slide gauntlets over each hoof. Pinkie gave an experimental twitch to test their action before cinching the straps tighter to her forelegs. Her own invention, they translated electrical impulse and muscle movement into the articulation of three digits mounted to each gauntlet, allowing her similar dexterity to a griffon. Once they were secured in place, she slipped boots over her hind legs, standing straight up to check the action of the braces that would assist her balance as she stood and walked on only two hooves to free the other two for manipulating things.

    A leather flight jacket lined with fleece and a cap of the type worn by newspaper colts completed her preparations for the coming day. She made a note to have her room dusted as she sat down at her cluttered desk. A pen carefully gripped in the fingers of her right gauntlet, she tugged a diary towards her. She licked the nib of her pen before beginning to write in careful calligraphy.

Dear Sunny,

Today is the opening day of the World’s Faire and Exposition here in Fillydelphia. As I wrote yesterday, I only got back from the Valley of Kings in Saddle Arabia last night. Luckily, there was an airstrip built during the Great War, or we’d have the devil of a time getting there and back again.

It was all there, just like the legends said. The Lost Tomb of Sun-Hoof. The Elements of Harmony. The Stone Soldiers and the statues of the Deposed Queens. I have to go help set up the exhibit for all that, and later today I’ll be showing the Pega-Chute to the Queen herself! I’m so nervou-cited!! … I can’t shake the feeling like something bad is about to happen today, though…

Anyway. I hope to speak to you again soon. I should be home again by 6:00 my time. I can’t wait to hear about what’s got you and Dr. Leary so busy you haven’t written or called and can’t attend the Expo.

Hearts, Hugs, Love, and Kisses

~Pinkamina Dianne Pie, Engineeriteer Extraordinaire.

    Her note completed, Pinkie shut her book and carefully wandered downstairs and into the early Fillydelphia sunshine, turning a corner down another street to find tea and a bagel to try and alleviate the sick feeling in her stomach.

    A new day had begun.

    Across town, Twilight Sparkle, currently of the Fillydelphia Police Department’s Special Crimes Division and formerly of the Canterlot Castle’s Bureau of Investigation, was also starting her day. The daughter of a wealthy and influential family that served in the Castle itself, and a recently discharged veteran, she had led a highly structured life. Her uniform shirt bore wing-pins on the collar and the silver cufflinks of her department. The shirt itself was perfectly pressed, a tight-fitting sash looped across her chest bearing a her badge embroidered with her cutie mark- a shield with a pair of swords crossed behind it. A black tie, perfectly tied in a Windsor knot, hung over the robin’s egg blue shirt, a tailored blazer of the current cut and style.

She finished ensuring her mane was straight and tidy, cut to a perfect military regulation 1” and pulled into a crest, lifting her eyepatch from its stand to cover the left eye she had lost as a child.

Just as she had gathered her things to leave and set her hoof on the handle of the door, she heard metallic knuckles on the other side. She scowled as she threw the door open to reveal the hulking shape of her “partner,” an intelligent Fritzie styled after a dragon, to better interact with the residents of the Dragontown borough. She’d seen Fritzies in Ghangzhou; Griffon-built monsters that were almost impossible to stop and fully worth a tank.

Spike Irontail was its name, and in Twilight’s opinion, that is where they had gone. Giving it a name made it think it was a person which was a preposterous notion. It didn’t have a brain; it had a thinking machine housed in the torso next to the oil pump and the socket for gem cells that produced the electricity it ran on. It did not sleep, eat, drink, feel, breathe, or dream.

And yet, she was expected to treat this tool, this machine, as if it were a person rather than a glorified toaster oven.

The green catseye lights that served as its eyes looked down at her, and its ugly face split into a grin filled serrated teeth.

“Twilight! I’m very glad I get to be permanently assigned to you. I think you’ll find I make a very good partner. Number one, if I may brag a bit.”

Twilight cut off its simulated pride with a ‘silence’ hoof motion, and the square-wave voice trailed off. It was bad enough she had to ride around with it, let alone endure its inane conversations.

But it was useful for relaying information, she supposed. She hated asking it, as it felt like she was taking orders from this machine, but since its home was her precinct house and the chief spoke to it every morning, it could relay their orders for the day.

“Report,” was all she said as she finished getting ready, which included strapping her service pistol into a holster hidden behind the shield on her chest.

“Chief says he wants us working the Expo. Says the arson case can wait, and the theft case will hold.” Spike’s eye-lights avoided meeting Twilight’s eye.

Twilight just stared at him, her expression hardening gradually. The wisps of her short tail and crest of her closely shorn mane seemed to smolder before she took a deep, slow breath to cool the rage bubbling in her gut. Her eye closed as she focused on breathing for several seconds.

“The torch-job case could wait? What if another caper gets pulled while most of the coppers and fireflies were keeping peace at the Expo?” She felt she was close to closing it and had been looking forward to avoiding the crowds with procedural police work today.

He was nervously ticking his claws together as he finally looked down to her face. He’d been worried-- her temperature had climbed almost to 130° before she’d calmed and cooled again. He’d worked with her long enough to have learned that an angry Twi was a dangerous, destructive one, that she was a bluenosed-bearcat constantly searching for something to blow up at. Usually, she blew up at or abused him since she didn’t see him as a person.

She just sighed and gave up, finally meeting his eyes. “Let’s just go out and get today fucking over with, Spike.”

Over the last few months, Rarity had the majority of her employees set constructing temporary structures for the World’s Fair and Exposition in Fillydelphia, renovating local businesses that contracted her and revamping the Fillydelphia Museum of Art, History, and Science to admit their new exhibits as well as the crowds that would strain the aging structure. Now, all the work had been completed, had been for days, actually, and she was performing a walkthrough with her structural engineer, the Fire Chief, and a pony from the city government. As always, the work performed by herself and her crew was exactly to code, under budget, and ahead of schedule.

Her last walkthrough completed and full payment plus bonuses assured, she stood before her employees with a smile on her face.

An imposing, bulky mare, the average pony could walk right under her without brushing her tummy. As far as her employees knew, she’d earned every ounce of muscle in the frame beneath that denim jacket on a job site, having spent half her wakeful life holding a tool. Not one of her gathered employees could remember a time when she’d been less than openly friendly and straightforward with any of them.

“I really gotta hand it to you boys and girls. Ya did a right ducky job an’ earned your bonuses, don’tchyaknow. Now I’m only gonna need one crew here until the end of the Expo, so talk to Rivets or Girder if you’d like to work this week. Otherwise, I’ll see you at the end of the Expo for teardown.”

It had been strange at first to employ and command ponies twice her age, and she herself had put in a lot of time and effort to grow her business into a profitable and successful entity. Like most of her employees, she didn’t live in Fillydelphia, having a small house in Ponyville. Unlike most of her crew, her house was empty. A tall, serious mare more prone to work shirts and steel-shod boots than dresses and heels, she had no children and hadn’t been on a date in eons.

She was satisfied with having a few close friends, and closest she had to a child was a pitbull named Dozer. Sometimes it did bother her, but most of the time it didn’t, for her crew was her family, and her company was at once husband and child.

She resolved to try to have fun with this year’s Expo, which promised to be a good one. The traveling circus had decided to make a stop to coincide with the event. There was going to be a demonstration of new building material and methods that were currently coming into vogue that she’d personally built.

The Canterlot Castle aeroplane casually violated the natural laws of physics as it hung at least a thousand feet above Fillydelphia, and a visit from the Queen herself was promised at the noon ceremonies. All in all, there was a felicitous air as if nothing bad could happen. Ever the worrier, Rarity couldn’t help but imagine something would. Fillydelphia wasn’t the nicest of cities, and bad things happened every day, after all.

Still, she did her best to ignore the cold feeling that settled into the pit of her stomach as she joined the crowd heading towards the podium where the opening ceremonies would be held, and where the Queen would give her speech.

To Rainbow Dash, it was just another town and another show. Like every morning she had bathed in a nearby stream with her sisters, dried herself off, and quickly dressed into her costume for a quick rehearsal before the opening ceremonies at the Faire with the performance following sharply at 9:30.

Life as an itinerant performer was difficult, but the troupe was like a family to her. Her body was trim, slender, and taut after years of high-wire walking, trapeze, and general acrobatics. The daring look and feel of her costume was achieved with a mane and tail cropped and styled to a downy texture that streamed readily with the slightest breeze and was dyed a veritable rainbow of bright, showy colors. Every strand of fur in her coat showed a shade of blue that matched that of a clear sky. Glittery makeup around her eyes matched the sequins of her leotard and wings, the clingy garment a shade of a reddish-purple with gold trim beneath the sequins and sparkles and bore a symbol of a top hat spilling out a jagged rainbow directly over her real cutie marks, which bore the same symbol.

Costumes could be assembled and put on alone, but usually, she, Flitter, Cloudchaser, and her big sister Trixie gathered in the trailer where cosmetics were stored so they could do and check each other’s mane and makeup. They all understood that their image was just as important as their actual practice and training.

Right now she was sitting in Trixie’s vardo, helping the unicorn adjust her bright shoes with their hidden flashpaper mechanisms. As skilled an illusionist as Rainbow was an acrobat, Trixie preferred practical effects, props, and sleight of hoof to the straight magic. The glow of her horn would give away her tricks. Both ponies declared the preparation of the other “good” at roughly the same time, Rainbow’s flashy costume was a perfect counterpoint to Trixie’s more mystic one. Her cape and peaked magician’s hat were embroidered with a pattern of stars layered over a black cotton leotard sewn with tiny silver sequins.

Rainbow sighed quietly as Trixie helped her down off the wagon, leaning against the bigger unicorn. Dash’s small, spare frame fit her leotards well and gave her incredible agility, but it also made her a little bit fragile. Trixie worried about the hairline cannon fracture she was currently walking on. She allowed Dash to use her for support as they walked towards the big tent together, a small warmth flushing her cheeks when the smaller pony tucked her nose in against her neck.

Trixie sighed, smirked, and nudged Rainbow with her hip as they approached the center ring. Their beginning routine was fairly simple. Trixie would conjure flames from her hooves, drawing and curving it with magic into a ring. Rainbow would swing down from one of the lower sets of platforms and release her bar, appearing for all the world and soaring like a real Pegasus. A click would be heard from the barrels of the firework launchers set flush to the platform Trixie stood upon as she tapped the switch as surreptitiously as she could. Then she’d tilt herself upward, catching another bar thrown by Flitter and Cloudchaser on the high platforms and swing out over the crowd.

She’d reach the apex of her swing and pause within inches of a pony sitting in the stands for just long enough to hoof-deliver an autographed photograph of herself to whoever was directly before her. She mimed the action of pulling it from her leotard and passing it off to somepony and then let herself swing back.

From there things would get more complex. The two pegasi would swoop down and snatch up the ropes of her trapeze and dive, pulling her almost all the way up to the platform directly across from the one they’d started on. A few feet from it, they’d suddenly brake midair, spreading their wings wide and slingshotting Dash straight upward to land neatly upon the platform.

Nopony noticed the pony that sat in the stands and watched them, set back in a shadowed corner as it was. If it had been there as they’d entered, one of them would have noticed it in setting up. Suddenly as it had appeared, it turned and took a step, vanishing as if it had crossed an invisible threshold.

Applejack had set up in the parkland where the Queen would deliver her ceremonial speech and open the Expo proper. It was almost time; ponies were gathering on the lawn surrounding the stage where the curtain was set to rise soon.

Applejack was unconcerned about any of this. The orange pony was slender, obviously well-used to working out of doors. Her mane and tail hung loose, not styled in any particular manner but recently trimmed to just above her withers and left to curl around fetlocks, respectively. A chainmail shirt sparkled dully underneath a faded forest-pattern camouflage shawl that hung above well-worn boots on her back legs and dented, tooth and claw marked bracers over her forelegs. She solely concerned herself with what she was doing just that moment.

She made no noise as she walked from enclosure to enclosure, making sure each different animal had everything it needed.

She had brought monsters and creatures from the Everfree to the Expo and was fairly nervous about the reception.

She watched mutely as a large, white-coated unicorn leaned upon one of the enclosures to peer down at the trio of cragadiles in their artificial pond. She gently tapped a hoof against one of the mare’s flanks, pursing her lips in dull surprise at the sound of hoof meeting an appreciable layer of fat over unyielding muscle. She shook her head, clearing her thoughts of happy little animals, and pointed down at the sign posted on the fencing at about the mare’s eye-level stating specifically not to lean on the fence.

The bigger mare grinned sheepishly and dropped back to the ground with a dull thump.

“I was just curious. I’ve never seen a cragadile up close, so I…” she was hushed by Applejack putting a hoof on her lips and pointing over Rarity’s shoulder.

The bigger pony blinked and turned her head to peer at whatever Applejack was pointing at. Her eyes widened when she caught sight of an equine figure, its features shrouded by a trenchcoat and wide-brimmed hat turned down to meet the turned-up collar of the coat. When Applejack had noticed them, they were walking towards the stage where the Queen was supposed to give her opening speech. Out of the other ponies that had started to file into the park, only they seemed to have noticed the pony.

Rarity and Applejack caught a glimpse of yellow eyes and a hunter-green snout glancing their way before it twisted in a way that made the brain itch to watch and promptly disappeared entirely.

Gradually they agreed that they must have had imagined it (with Rarity doing most of the asserting) and eventually forgot about the figure entirely. It was gone now, so it just didn’t seem important anymore.

Fluttershy had awoken early and prepared herself for the day. Her living space featured more boxed belongings than not. She had just moved into her cloud apartment on the outskirts of Fillydelphia days before and had been more more concerned with unpacking her furniture and typewriter.

She’d been awake most of the previous night ticking away at her typewriter, forming the details of what she’d uncovered into a full article on the corrupt administration and poor working conditions of one of the local factories. She had packed this into a folder along with photographs she’d taken and sent the package across town to her editor’s office to be formatted, headlined, and set for tonight’s evening edition of the Fillydelphia Gazette.

She smiled over her coffee as she flipped through her book of leads. A new automaton had been assigned to a fresh-faced dandy investigator from Canterlot, the diamond city in the sky. There were rumors about her, many of which could not be true.

She’d left herself enough time to maybe catch this Twilight Sparkle or anyone else in her lead-book before the Queen’s speech, and the rest of her day would be spent chasing the rest.

She had planned interviews with a spokespony of the Wandering Moons about their superb magic shows and starlet Rainbow Dash. The acrobat’s expression and muzzle shape she’d seen in published glamour shots had seemed familiar to her, but it wasn’t possible she knew such a star.

On the list was Rarity Belle, the owner of the simply and honestly titled RB Contracting company to which the Faire and lots of new construction across Fillydelphia owed their existence. She’d broken into owning her own company six years ago at the age of 18, quickly building success from a foundation of straightforwardness and hard work.

There were creatures from the Everfree to meet and pet. Their “mother,” Applejack, was pushing for the queen to cease sanctioning the hunting of innocent animals and the recent clearcutting of acres of the untamed forest for which Fluttershy humbly felt there was no real defendable reason. This appealed to Fluttershy’s sense of justice.

She shrugged into a plain jacket light green in color as she moved to the next possible lead for today’s investigations: the final name and possibly the strongest story.

A reliable tipster had informed her that the pink mare’s plane had just gotten back late last night from Saddle Arabia bearing news of the single most important archaeological discovery of the last hundred years in the Lost Tomb of Sun-Hoof.

She remembered from her school days that a network of storehouses and catacombs beneath the stones of her adoptive city existed dating back to the same era and that the place had been used as bomb shelters in the Great War.

She settled down before her vanity to put on makeup, admiring her own face. She wasn’t stuck-up in the least, but her mother had taught her that the key to feeling good and keeping one’s compassion alive was to first love yourself, so she had a morning ritual of saying nice things to herself. She spoke softly to her beautiful reflection, filling herself with a quiet yet self-confident knowledge of the majesty held by her tall, slender form and the severe French features of her muzzle and visage.

Eventually, she found herself closing her front door after tokenly petting her cat, splaying her swanlike wings wide and leaping into the world below from the little cloud stoop of her apartment. She banked sharply, the sun warming her feathers and the wind whipping the tails of her stylishly short mane. As she circled the park, she noticed a pony in a trenchcoat near the stage set up for the Queen and that only two of the ponies at the gathering seemed to even see, the one pointing it out for the other to notice.

Her journalistic instincts kicked in as she watched, tipping her wings up and raising her camera to snap a few photos of the scene. It might turn out to be nothing, but all morning she’d had a low-level apprehension that something awful might happen.

She made a more or less perfect four-hoofed landing, taking a deep breath to calm herself. As she approached the pair, she rapidly formulated questions, taking back to the air to free her hooves for notes. She decided to speak first to the unicorn, for the earth pony, hiding behind the white mare, seemed shaken.

As Rarity was trying to fit the impossible event that had just occurred into her concrete worldview, her vision filled with buttery yellow pegasus. She took a step back and held up a broad hoof almost against the pony’s nose to stem the fusillade of questions the thing had for her.

“Jeez Louise, slow it down there. One question at a time,” Rarity smiled as she removed her hoof from the mare’s snout.

“Sorry. I get a little worked up sometimes.” She smiled back and found her hoof fit neatly inside that of the white mare, nudging gently against the frog. “My name is Fluttershy Whisperwing, I am an investigative reporter and interviewer for the Fillydelphia Gazette. Do you have a few moments to talk to me?”

“Rarity Belle, and oh, gosh, is it just the nicest thing to meet a reporter from the Gazette! It’s just the darned best paper in print. Not a single writer afraid to talk about what’s going on in Chromia’s kingdom.”

“Yes.. uhm… Wait! Uh, I wanted to ask you about the figure by the stage just now.”

“You saw it, too? Strangest thing I ever saw. I didn’t think anybody but us even saw it.”

Applejack nodded from the other side of the fencing, petting the head of a crocodilian rock monster… thing. Her voice was quiet, soft with a harsh burr like her words were her first for the day. In general, she spoke sparingly, as if she were a miser and words cost dearly.

“Wasn’t a pony. Critters wouldn’t be this badly stir’t.”

Fluttershy and Rarity exchanged a glance before the Pegasus hurriedly scribbled in her notebook. Ponies, dragons, and griffons were starting to pack into the area.

Fluttershy left the issue for later, flipping forward in her book and starting a new page as the familiar strains of the national anthem thundered from the floating city of Canterlot occupying the sky above them.

With the sun at its highest peak behind the jewel of Equestria, the opening ceremonies of the Fillydelphia World’s Faire and Exposition were about to begin.

Across the park, six ponies’ previously subdued uneasiness elevated to a sense of dread, and Pinkie hit the ground, clutching her head as it filled with visions of smoke and fire.

Across town, a security guard was making his rounds about the Museum. As he approached the darkened Ancient History wing, he clicked on his flashlight and began sweeping the beam over artifacts in their glass cases. A small smile crossed his muzzle as he whistled, content in knowing that everything was five-by-five.

When he came to the newly renovated hall currently housing the treasures dug up from the Lost Tomb of Sun-Hoof, he leaned against the doorway to light a butt. Puffing thoughtfully, he let his flashlight sweep the room as he entered it. His cigarette fell from his mouth at what his beam revealed or, more accurately, what it did not.

He walked over and listlessly kicked a fragment of stone on the floor. Nothing. The hall, previously filled with statues and artifacts, was now filled with nothing but dust and broken shards of the same stone the statues had been carved from. The only thing he could think about was how he was going to lose his job with the unveiling of the now-empty exhibit later today.

A shame, thought the dark-pelted stallion. His retirement was going to be in two weeks.

He never saw the darkened shape that struck him from behind with four hooves slamming into his withers and snapping his spine and never felt the sharp teeth tear the side of his neck free.

A pair of yellow eyes set in a gray, stone-dusted face watched the moon slowly rise with the crescendo of the Anthem.

A high-pitched shriek bellowed forth as the bat pony slammed through one of the windows and took wing into the gathering gloom.

The day had become a nightmare.**

A brown-pelted pony was halfway through her long-winded introductory speech and starting to catalog the various proper titles of the High Queen Chromia of Equestria, when the daylight dimmed and took on a reddish hue. Finally, after a full thirty seconds of squinting at her notepad, she turned to the closed curtain behind her to introduce the beloved monarch and promptly burst into flames. The magical fire burned an ugly blood-red hue as it spread to the curtains and blackened the boards of the stage.

As the curtains burned away, they revealed not the queen but instead a pair of far larger ponies. Veritable giants to the crowd, the the ponies contrasted each other perfectly. The one was ivory, hooves gilt in gold and armored in the same material, mane and tail a bright corona of sunfire. The other was ebony and clad in silver, and her mane and tail evoked a violet smoky nebula.

As the moon fully eclipsed the sun and bathed the area in a blood-red light, the two shark-toothed alicorns threw back their heads and cackled to the high heavens. Their voices thrummed through the crowd, cowing and shaking those assembled.

“Our beloved subjects, how good it is to see your precious little faces!” the white one began.

A flare erupted from the crowd, a second conflagration that quickly died back down as Twilight was thrown bodily into the mud by Rarity.

“Where’s our Queen!?” came the challenge from Twilight, echoed by the bravest of the crowd.

The black one cackled. “Are we not royal enough for you?”

The white one smirked, “Are our crowns no longer valid after a thousand years of imprisonment?”

Pinkie’s blood ran cold as she straightened back up on her hind legs, tugging her cap off and nervously working it in the fingers of her gauntlets.

“Do you not know who we are?”

“Did you not see the signs?”

“Did you forget the legends?”

Black crystals arose from the ground, growing and overtaking some of the closer exhibits and demonstrations, the fences on Applejack’s critters falling over entirely or otherwise disintegrating from the quakes.

Pinkie spoke up. “We… at least, I know who you are. The Bogeymares. Slim White and Tall Dark. The wicked Queens of Old Equestria: Solaire Flaire and Midknight Moon!”

The pair cackled louder than ever before speaking again, in complete unison. “Exactly right.”

Twilight blinked and swallowed, rage cooling with the ice forming in her veins, as she remembered a tale told to get her to behave in her foalhood. “That means…”

Above them, the Canterlot Castle emitted a keening shriek as it began to pour out soldiers, a shimmer obscuring it before it simply vanished, which had been the result of a mechanism to ensure the safety of their Capital. The alicorns’ near-endless maniacal laughter echoed off a castle-like structure growing from the crystals and demonstrations from the Fair. Its base struck Rarity as being very close to the lower floors of the Sisters’ Shattered Tower from the old myths.

“Mark this day of freedom and self-rule well, my little ponies. For it shall be your last.”

Midknight cut in, slamming her forehooves as the Tower built itself in the midst of the park. All around it, an overgrown forest sprung up, stocking itself with the dangerous animals and monsters that Applejack had so thoughtfully brought.

“Our rule shall last FOREVER!”

Blasting aside the soldiers who charged them as casually as one might swat at flies, the pair disappeared into the growing tower, leaving the blood-red noon filled with the sounds of fighting and anguish across the city.

Above the action, a bat pony with a dark, hunter-green pelt sat on a cloud next to a brown pegasus stallion, the pair of them watching with every evidence of disinterest. The bat turned to the colt and nudged him, lifting a coin from a plate with a fang-filled smirk.

“Pieces are set. Heads, or tails?”

“Heads.”

The coin was flipped, and clattered back onto the plate with a sigh from the male, as he marked the 137th “tails” flip, the entire other half of the chalkboard quite completely empty.